With less than two weeks to go until Doctor Who returns with the 2015 Christmas Special The Husbands of River Song, we round-up everything we’ve already learned in one quick guide.
The Husbands of River Song
Synopsis
It’s Christmas Day 5343, on the remote human colony of Mendorax Dellora, and the Doctor is hiding from Christmas carollers and comedy reindeer antlers. But when a crashed spaceship calls upon the Doctor for help, he finds himself recruited into River Song’s squad, and hurled into a fast, frantic chase across the galaxy ~ pursued by River’s new husband, his Infinite Majesty King Hydroflax of the Final Cluster. Will any of them make it out alive? And when will River Song work out who the Doctor is? All will be revealed on a starliner full of galactic supervillains, and a destination the Doctor has been avoiding for a very long time…
To Be Broadcast: December 25, 2015 5.15pm (UK), December 26, 7:30pm (AU), December 25 9pm EST (US), December 25 9pm EST (CA), December 26 7:35pm EST (NZ)
Length: 60 minutes
Cast
Peter Capaldi (The Doctor)
Alex Kingston (River Song)
Matt Lucas (Nardole)
Greg Davies (King Hydroflax)
Rowan Polonski (Flemming)
Robert Curtis (Scratch)
Chris Lew Kum Hoi (Alphonse)
Phillip Rhys (Ramone)
Anthony Cozens (Concierge)
Nicolle Smartt (Receptionist)
Liam Cook (King Hydroflax’s body)
Nonso Anozie (Voice of Hydroflax)
Crew
Writer: Steven Moffat
Director: Douglas Mackinnon
Producer: Nikki Wilson
Notes
Taking place after the events of The Angels Take Manhattan, we can expect fireworks between the Doctor and the “not precisely faithful” River (complete with sonic trowel), despite not recognising him for the majority of the episode.
The villain it appears is none other than River’s other husband, King Hydroflax. Moffat describes Hydroflax, as played by the hilarious Greg Davis, as being “big, bad [and] rather stupid” who he hopes “kids will laugh at, and hopefully adults too”.
River Song actress Alex Kingston has said that The Husbands of River Song has been nicknamed “Doctor Blue” on-set thanks to it’s racy one-liners!
Quotes
Steven Moffat
“The Doctor is an all new man and has been for a while. It may have slipped his mind that out there, in a very tangled and complicated way, is his wife that has never seen this face before and doesn’t even know about this incarnation. We’re about to stand with the Doctor and see what River is like when she doesn’t know he’s looking. We’re about to see what River thinks of Matt Smith turning into Peter Capaldi.”
“River Song meets the Capaldi Doctor, that’s got to be fun – I’d like to write that. That’s what made me want to write. I knew it had to be a big romp for Christmas day and there’s nothing like River Song to make that evident – River brings a whole storm of camp glamour to it.”
Peter Capaldi
“The Christmas special is very Christmassy, which I’m sure everyone will be relieved to hear. It finds the Doctor in a Dickensian kind of world, in a Christmas card sort of world which he’s been brought to in order to do a favour for a king. So there’s quite a festive spirit to the episode. But the favour is more complex and isn’t exclusively for the benefit of the king, but more for the benefit of the king’s consort.”
“I have lots of favourite scenes from the Christmas episode, but I think being met by Matt Lucas on a wonderful wintery Dickensian street with the TARDIS covered in snow was delightful, because it was like a Doctor Who Christmas card. Matt is such a fabulously funny person to have around, so I loved that! …you can expect a lot of laughs and pathos. He is, as ever, a hugely loveable personality, a little naïve, a little out of his depth and quite cosmic.”
Alex Kingston
“It’s a wonderful slapstick caper. There’s a lot of great laughs, there’s a lot of fabulous River one-liners. The fans are going to love the things she says and there’s a lot of play. They’re also fighting a very interesting alien played by Greg Davies. It’s a really great episode and Steven has done my character proud. I’ve been really lucky in this episode as River gets to do an awful lot. She gets to run around in snow, I’ve been flying and have done harness work against a green screen. She’s got quite a few husbands in this episode and there’s a lot of fabulous quick-fire dialogue between her and the Doctor. She gets to snog the most handsome man in the work, his character name is Ramone. It’s all going on!”
“I’m used to change. I had that experience of going from David to Matt. It’s taken me a few days to gauge Peter but that’s fitting of the story. I’m learning and becoming more familiar with who Peter has created as the Doctor… At the moment the Doctor’s confused, not sure why I don’t recognise him. And that’s fun. The interaction between them is sort of like the old slapstick movies, like Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn. It’s got that sort of screwball quality to it.”
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