Although the events of this episode don't occur in a Christmas Special, the Doctor's - albeit accidental - foray to a Christmassy Cardiff in 1869 definitely deserves its place on this list because an encounter with Charles Dickens is pretty much as festive as it gets. The episode in question is The Unquiet Dead which formed the Ninth Doctor's third on screen adventure back in 2005. For Christopher Eccleston's leather-clad incarnation of the Time Lord and his fiesty new companion Rose Tyler, who was at this point still adjusting to the somewhat twisted moralities of life as a coveted time traveller, it was to be a season of undivided terror as it wasn't long before they encountered the gas-dwelling Gelth in a sinister ghost-turned-zombie story which in itself had all the makings of a Dickensian classic. Set against the backdrop of the snow-covered Welsh capital, in the show's first on screen tribute to the city in which it is filmed, the fact it's Christmas is irrespectively irrelevant to the narrative as a whole, but there's still some nice little festive moments to be enjoyed including Charles Dickens' eventually-interrupted-by-a-terrifying-zombie-reading of his iconic novella, A Christmas Carol, which, incidentally, would go on to form the basis of a future Doctor Who Christmas Special. But more on that later...
Dan Butler is the Doctor Who Editor at WhatCulture.com. When he isn't writing his own articles or editing other people's, he can be found trawling the internet for gifs of Steven Moffat laughing. Contact him via dan.butler@whatculture.co.uk.
