Every Doctor Who Christmas Special Ranked From Worst To Best

5. The Runaway Bride (2006)

Doctor Who Christmas special David Tennant Matt Smith Peter Capaldi
BBC

The Runaway Bride was Tennant's first special with a series already under his belt, and after the departure of Rose Tyler in the recent Army Of Ghosts/Doomsday two-parter, a simple, entertaining festive romp was just what the doctor ordered. The episode first introduced us to Donna Noble (the titular runaway bride), who appeared as a one-off companion before returning for a full run of episodes in Series 4.

And despite Catherine Tate's character being a little annoying at times, her banter with Tennant is so zippy and fun that it's easy to forgive her abrasive attitude. The Runaway Bride by no means reinvented the Who formula - it's a bog-standard episode with a Christmas paint-job - but it reinforced that the characters are what makes this show great, and that strong chemistry and witty dialogue can easily elevate formulaic and simplistic material.

The robotic Santa villains are cheesy as hell but they do add to that campy Who charm, and with ridiculous highlights like the TARDIS taxi rescue, the creepily-designed Empress of the Racnoss, and the Doctor travelling back to the literal inception of the planet, the episode is basic B-movie Doctor Who at its very best.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.