Richard E. Grant, who previously appeared as an incarnation of the Doctor in the spoof The Curse of Fatal Death in 1999 and as a possible Ninth Doctor in Paul Cornell’s BBCi drama The Scream of the Shalka, is going to be in the new Doctor Who Christmas Special, it was announced earlier today.

The BBC confirmed the news, which was initially released by the official Doctor Who twitter feed , and the Sun newspaper suggested that he was playing the baddie, alongside Silent Witness star Tom Ward. The Sun quotes Grant as saying, “I played Doctor Who in the digital animated Scream Of The Shalka  episode and I’m honoured to be in the Christmas special.”

The Christmas special also sees the debut of Jenna-Louise Coleman as the Doctor’s new assistant. It is written by Steven Moffat and directed by Saul Metzstein, and starts filming this week.

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