BBC "confirms" the 'Doctor Who' Christmas Special & Neil Gaiman to pen another episode

The BBC, ever a cheeky group of commitmentphobes when it comes to announcing transmission dates of their shows, has broken with tradition and confirmed, yes confirmed, that the traditional Doctor Who Special will air on Christmas Day –though no official start time was announced. Imagine that. The episode –which is rumored to be called The Snowman- will introduce new full-time co-star Jenna-Louise Coleman to the franchise and is set (again) in Victorian times. Feature actor Richard E. Grant will guest star along with returning actors Neve McIntosh, Catrin Stewart and Dan Starkey reprising their roles of Vastra, Jenny and Strax respectively from last year’s episode, A Good Man Goes to War. Expectations are that for us folks here in the US, the special will air on that day as well on BBCAmerica. Meanwhile, when fantasy author Neil Gaiman accepted his Hugo in September for his script The Doctor’s Wife, he mentioned he was penning another episode. What was not known then was if that episode would be part of season seven or part of season eight –and based on how The Doctor’s Wife was originally part of season five but got pushed to season six for scheduling and budgetary reasons, one could understand why we’ve held our breath. Now it’s been confirmed that his script will be the penultimate episode of season seven. As of now, this is the line-up for writers for the back 8 of Doctor Who’s seventh season:  Episode 6: Steven Moffat, Episode 7: Neil Cross, Episode 8: Mark Gatiss, Episode 9: Neil Cross, Episode 10: Stephen Tomkinson, Episode 11: Mark Gatiss, Episode 12: Neil Gaiman, and Episode 13: Steven Moffat. The line-up more or less confirms that rest of the season will be stand-alone stories that made up the first five, though it’s obvious Moffat will probably have some sort of vague, probably frustrating, arc thread through the rest of the season.

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