So, after a whole year without Doctor Who, we finally return to see Steven Moffat's last stab at a Christmas special.
Not his last Christmas special, Moffat is writing the 2017 Christmas special, which will in fact be his grand finale as Doctor Who showrunner.
He seems to have gone through quite a few grand finales in his time. It's the bit about actually leaving that always proves tricky.
Yes, he had a Grand Finale and an Epilogue last year; now he's into Lord Of The Rings doesn't-know-when-to-bugger-off territory...
I find that my one main hope for the Dr Who special is that there's a trailer for season 10 afterwards...
They'd better. There must be enough ready footage to slap something together by now, and we are owed after a gap year.
Sadly, neither would I. But someone is really dropping the ball bad if we don't. Although, a reminder, was there a trailer for season 7.5 after The Snowmen?
Yes there was - and I've been told last night by someone who was at the premiere that there is a trailer, mostly focussing on Bill, the new companion.
Two minutes until the start - this is really early even by the erratic standards of Doctor Who timetabling over the last few years.
Unsurprisingly, Titan Comics is doing a digital-first comic about the Ghost's adventures written by George Mann, with the first chapter dropping tomorrow. Mann, I think, will be more than capable of mixing superheroics and Doctor Who; he wrote some super-hero steampunk novels that were quite good.
Well, that was better than I expected from the trailer. Good fun, filled with geeky if somewhat obvious comic books references (I especially liked the moment where Grant did the one-finger Christopher Reeve glasses-push. A tiny irrelevance I know, but I reacted immediately). Capaldi was on top form, and Nardole was... er, OK, actually. I quite liked him in this, a lot more than I did last year. There's hope for him in season 10, then. It was funny, and entertaining. I like that they acknowledged within it that the Doctor has been away - i.e. that there's been a year without a season - though I'm not sure that tying it so much to last year's special will have made much of an impression on the casual viewers, who won't remember it and will think those bits were padding. Though Lesley immediately went "that's you! That's you at Yule Ball!" in the last bit. So, overall... Not a really *special* Special, but a fucking good season premiere episode, if you see what I mean - just a shame we have to wait till April (AIUI) for the second episode... I suspect that will work even better next year if the season 10 DVD set includes this as the first episode...