10 Lessons Doctor Who Teaches Us About Christmas
7. Remember That Unexpected Present?
There’s always one unlabelled present left at the bottom of
the tree, that neither Santa nor our family or friends will own up to getting
for us. These things live with us for years, we never forget them, even if we
never used them.
At the end of the Ninth Doctor’s adventure, The Doctor Dances, the Doctor makes a curious confession when Rose Tyler says “You’re beaming away like you’re Father Christmas.” He replies with an alien twinkle in his eye, “Who says I’m not. Red bicycle when you were twelve?”
As it stands, the red bike is just a throwaway line, but originally this story was to be followed by the abandoned episode, The New Team by Paul Abbott. It would reveal that the Doctor had been visiting Rose at several points in her past, including her twelfth Christmas - another example of the Doctor prepping his companions to be.
Plenty of fanfics have been written about that mysterious gift but now we can finally read the official story, penned by former script editor Gary Russell in the Penguin books anthology, The Twelve Doctors of Christmas, published in October 2016. No spoilers, suffice to say it’s called The Red Bicycle and the blurb states: “The Doctor faces alien terrors and some very human problems as he tries to get Rose the perfect gift in time for Christmas Day.”
So that unexplained present? Well, you never know…