Doctor Who: Ranking Each NuWho Christmas Special
4. The Return Of Doctor Mysterio
The Return of Doctor Mysterio is probably the least Christmas-y of all of the Christmas specials, and actually benefits from it. By the time we get to this point in the series (just about to start the tenth season) Christmas has sort of been overdone (perhaps a reason why the next showrunner elected to scrap the tradition). Even so, The Return of Doctor Mysterio could quite easily have gone very wrong. A Doctor Who take on the superhero genre? Sounds risky.
Actually though, the story comes across more as a love letter to classic superhero comics. Justin Chatwin’s “Ghost” is an obvious stand in for Superman with perhaps an even more mild-mannered alter-ego in Grant. He plays off of The Doctor surprisingly well, and the episode is filled with comedic moments that remain genuinely funny.
It had become an oft-repeated cliché by the time he reached this episode, but as always, Peter Capaldi is darn perfect in the way he choose to portray each scene. This episode takes place immediately after The Doctor has left Darillium, knowing he will never seen River Song again (in his own timeline – she will now go on to meet the Tenth Doctor in the library). In the RTD era this would have been played up with a huge orchestral score and long-lingering GIF-able shots of The Doctor in complete anguish. Instead, this episode takes a more subtle route and Capaldi plays the grief a layer below, so that it always seems to be there, hurting him just below the surface. When he finally does confront it at the episode’s close, there are no tears or mournful tirades. Instead he remains stoic;
“Everything ends and it’s always sad. But everything begins again too…and that is always happy.”