Doctor Who: MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY

With screams of "IT'S CHRIST-MAAS!!" in his ears, Christopher Morley gets sleighed...

At the time when every Santa - or Jeff, as the Eleventh Doctor knew him - has a ball, prepare to allow that most infectious of earworms back into our Christmassy collective consciousness once more as Noddy Holder & chums wish us glad festive tidings.....

For as well as being all over the radio airwaves, perhaps inevitably, it also appears in several of New-Who's Yuletide specials! Its first use comes as we prepare to welcome David Tennant's Tenth Doctor in the wake of Christopher Eccleston's Ninth.

After all surely everyone must recognise the tune playing in Mickey Smith's garage?

MICKEY: Hey, turn that down. Turn it off, Stevo. Turn that off! John, shut up!
JACKIE: Mickey!
MICKEY: Jackie, it's the TARDIS!
JACKIE: I know, I know, I heard it. She's alive, Mickey. I said so, didn't I? She's alive!
MICKEY: Just shut up a minute.
JACKIE: Well, where is it then?
DOCTOR: Here we are then, London. Earth. The solar system. We did it. Jackie. Mickey. Blimey! No, no, no, no, hold on. Wait there. I've got something to say. There was something I had to tell you, something important. What was it? No, hold on, hold on. Hold on, shush, shush, shush, shush....

It was clearly on Russell T Davies' playlist somewhere when it came to writing the new Doctor's seasonal extravaganza- for it was heard yet again at new companion Donna Noble's wedding reception in The Runaway Bride.

Of course, we know now her beloved was in league with the Empress of the Racnoss, so plenty to run from. And where did she end up?

DOCTOR: What?
DONNA: Who are you?
DOCTOR: But...
DONNA: Where am I?
DOCTOR: What?
DONNA: What the hell is this place?
DOCTOR: What? You can't do that. I wasn't. We're in flight. That is, that is physically impossible! How did...
DONNA: Tell me where I am. I demand you tell me right now where am I?
DOCTOR: Inside the TARDIS,
DONNA: The what?
DOCTOR: The TARDIS.
DONNA: The what?
DOCTOR: The TARDIS.
DONNA: The what?
DOCTOR: It's called the TARDIS.

Wherever she went, it seems that four glam-rocking Brummies were never far behind. Even in the parallel universe of Turn Left (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kQVtWuvsUU), they were a fixture.

DONNA: Oi, Gramps, get that. That'll be breakfast. We've got croissants.
WILF: Why can't you get it, Lady Muck?
SYLVIA: It's Christmas Day, I never get up before ten. Only madam there was up with the dawn chorus, like when she was six years old.
DONNA: I'm not wasting a second in this place. How was the sofa?
WILF: Oh, yeah. Oh, not so good, really. Oh gawd. You know, we could have paid for a second room. Oi! Merry Christmas.
DONNA: Merry Christmas.
SYLVIA: Merry Christmas, Dad.

Well, Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without a nice heartwarming moment. Which is soon out of the window as a world without the Doctor crumbles under the threat of alien invasion! And when the time came to open presents in The End Of Time, Noddy, Dave, Don & Jim were, well, present.....

It would mean the end for the Tenth Doctor, mind, and so the first & only incarnation to be "born" & "die" at the most wonderful time of the year exited stage left. But not before going down in legend!

WOMAN: They call it the Legend of the Blue Box.
WILF: Oh. I've never been in here before. I'm not one for churches. Too cold.
WOMAN: This was the site of a convent back in the thirteen hundreds. It's said a demon fell from the sky, then a man appeared. A man in a blue box. They called him the sainted physician. He smote the demon and then disappeared.
WILF: That's a bit of a coincidence.
WOMAN: It's said there's no such thing as coincidence. Who knows? Perhaps he's coming back.
WILF: Oh, that would make my Christmas.

The man he would become might as well have yelled "ITS CHRIST-MAASS!!" as he tumbled down that chimney in A Christmas Carol, having ticked every other cliché of the season?

DOCTOR: Ah. Yes. Blimey. Sorry. Christmas Eve on a rooftop. Saw a chimney, my whole brain just went, what the hell. Don't worry, fat fellow will be doing the rounds later. I'm just scoping out the general chimney-ness. Yes. Nice size, good traction. Big tick.

And he knows old Saint Nick better than Slade ever could, it seems!

"Me and Father Christmas, Frank Sinatra's hunting lodge, 1952. See him at the back with the blonde? Albert Einstein. The three of us together. Brrm. Watch out. Okay? Keep the faith. Stay off the naughty list."

Their salute to him appears once more in Last Christmas as something of a distraction from those nasty Dream Crabs for Shona...

..who uses it to ward them off, sort of.

And Clara gets the present so many of us dream of at its conclusion. Aww.
So here it is, Merry Christmas one & all!