Doctor Who: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About The Waters Of Mars
17. It Was Originally A Christmas Special
Instead of airing on a random date in November, The Waters of Mars was originally going to debut on 19 December 2009, with The End of Time Parts One and Two set for Christmas Day and New Year's Day.
That's right – the original plan was three Doctor Who episodes over the festive period. What a gift!
Unfortunately, as you'll find out a bit later on, the production of The Waters of Mars was all over the place, and so its airdate got brought forward to November.
This presented somewhat of a problem for Russell T Davies and co-writer Phil Ford, who had envisioned it as a Christmas-themed episode (initial outlines of the story were titled "Red Christmas" and "Christmas on Mars").
Ultimately, all Christmas references were removed from the script, and any hopes of seeing zero-gravity Brussels sprouts were scuppered.