Exterminate! It’s the Doctor Who special and ’someone’ dies…

Christmas Day usually follows the same pattern. Eat too much at dinner, then wobble out to the couch and stick on the Doctor Who Christmas Special. Last year it saw the return of the Cybermen, the year before it was on the Titanic (kind of) and this year the Doctor dies.

Doctor Who must be one of the only major TV programmes that can kill off the main character so regularly.

So far there have been ten incarnations of the Doctor, with another one on the way.

Whovian lore says that the Doctor only has 12 lives, so after the new Doctor, there should be only one more. Somehow though, I can’t see them killing off the Doctor entirely. Doctor Who is too deeply engrained in the history of the BBC for it to be axed completely, as the 2005 resurrection showed.

David Tennant, the current Doctor, has taken the series to a new level that may never have been reached with Christopher Ecclestone (the ninth Doctor) as a lead character. The Scotsman’s charm and charisma made him the Doctor of choice for many Whovians, being voted “the greatest Doctor of all time” in a poll by Doctor Who Magazine.

Killing off Tennant then, was always going to be a difficult thing to do. This year’s Christmas special, The End of Time, is set in London and at the mysterious Infinity Gate (I don’t know what it is either.)

This is the first Doctor Who Christmas Special to be spread over two episodes, with one aired on Christmas Day and the finale being aired on New Year’s Day (both on BBC1).

No-one knows what exactly is going to happen in the episode, apart from David Tennant dying and being reincarnated as Matt Smith, the 11th Doctor.

On Matt Smith though, is it just me or does he look like he should be in Skins?