Doctor Who: Ranking Each NuWho Christmas Special

Airing on Christmas Day 2008, The Next Doctor is the first in a series of special event episodes that followed the closing of season four and ultimately led up to the departure of David Tennant and Russell T Davies.

This episode rather felt like a degree of trolling, given that David Tennant had announced his intention to leave the show a couple of months prior, the episode is called The Next Doctor and it introduced popular British actor David Morrissey (who would later go on to have a memorable villainous role in The Walking Dead) as “The Doctor.” Given his status and respect in British drama, Morrissey was an absolutely believable candidate to take on the role and that was obviously part of the intention.

The trick is given up on quite quickly, however, with us soon realising that Morrissey is not The Doctor at all but a man named Jackson Lake. Compared with previous bombastic specials from the Tenth Doctor era, this one just feels sort of empty.

Revolving around a vague plot in which The Cybermen want to use children to power their giant steampunk Cyber King, the Cybermen are robbed of all their dramatic tension here and this probably ranks as one of the worst Cybermen stories ever.

This episode also gave us the terrible Cybershade, which is ostensibly a Cyberman using the brain of a cat or a dog. The costume is absolutely awful and looks like it would have been more at home in one of the infamously low-budget classic serials in the early years of the show.