River Song Returns For Doctor Who Christmas Special
Alex Kingston will meet the Twelfth Doctor for the first time
Fan favorite Alex Kingston will make her much-anticipated return to Doctor Who at the end of the year.
The BBC has announced that Kingston will reprise her role of River Song in the 2015 Christmas special, airing worldwide on Christmas Day. The episode is currently filming in Wales.
The network teases the story this way:
It’s Christmas Day in the future and the TARDIS is parked on a snowy village street, covered in icicles, awaiting its next adventure. Time traveller River Song meets her husband’s new incarnation, in the form of Peter Capaldi, for the first time this Christmas.
With her storyline evidently wrapped up during Matt Smith’s run as the Doctor, viewers have spent the last two years wondering whether River would have reason ever to show up in the Twelfth Doctor’s timeline.
“Another Christmas, another special for Doctor Who — and what could be more special than the return of Alex Kingston as Professor River Song,” head writer Steven Moffat said. “The last time the Doctor saw her she was a ghost. The first time he met her, she died. So how can he be seeing her again? As ever, with the most complicated relationship in the universe, it’s a matter of time …”
Kingston’s character now crosses the timelines of three different incarnations of the Doctor, having started her run in the David Tennant two-parter “Silence in the Library” and “Forest of the Dead” (Season / Series Four of the revival). But her main story was with Smith’s Doctor, bringing her total to 15 episodes to date.
“To be honest, I did not know whether River would ever return to the show,” Kingston said — “but here she is, back with the Doctor for the Christmas special. Steven Moffat is on glittering form, giving us an episode filled with humor and surprise guest castings. I met Peter for the first time at Monday’s read-through, we had a laugh, and I am now excited and ready to start filming with him and the Doctor Who team. Christmas in September?, why not!”
Douglas Mackinnon is directing the special, written by Moffat.
Season Nine of Doctor Who starts Saturday, September 19 on BBC and BBC America!
