The Return of Doctor MysterioDoes New York finally have a genuine superhero?

It’s been pretty much a year since the Doctor was last on our screens – setting aside the (currently internet-only) appearance in Class, and the brief skit for Children in Need – so this Christmas Special has a little bit of ground to make up with the general audience, who are notoriously fickle about shows that vanish for a considerable length of time (and no matter how it’s spun, a year is a long time off air). The good news is that this hour long special very much reaffirms the core nature of the programme, presents us with a considerably lighter version of Peter Capaldi’s incarnation, and has a lot of fun with witty dialogue laughing with (rather than at) the current superhero genre.

The opening sequence could have been written for Matt Smith’s Doctor and is an early indication of the repositioning of the Time Lord for 2017 (as the throwforward at the end very definitely indicates). There’s a degree of sadness about the Doctor – I’m not sure that Steven Moffat would write him any other way now – but it’s very much tempered by a lively humour that plays to Capaldi’s strengths. Matt Lucas’s Nardole is nowhere near as broad as in his original appearance last year, and there’s a very different dynamic inside the TARDIS that bodes well for Series 10.

The tone is reminiscent both of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman from the 1990s, and of the current Greg Berlanti Supergirl series, and the hour speeds past. The flying effects hearken (deliberately, I suspect) to the classic Christopher Reeve Superman movie and there are plenty of nods to other highpoints of the genre – listen out for the name of the two secretaries mentioned at the start of the show. Justin Chatwin and Charity Wakefield have fun with their scenes while Tomiwa Edun and Aleksandr Jovanovic make a suitably larger than life pair of opponents. Director Ed Balzagette keeps the tone light, while still allowing the occasionally heavy moments to have due prominence (one of these beautifully played by Matt Lucas towards the end of the episode).

Verdict: You wouldn’t want a whole season of stories like this – Capaldi is in full Tom Baker mode at times – but as a reintroduction to the show, and a treat for Christmas Day (albeit one that definitely has a couple of real scares for the youngsters) it would be hard to better. 9/10

Paul Simpson