What does this mean for the Doctor Who Christmas special?
https://www.radiotimes.com/news/2018-08-10/when-is-doctor-who-back-on-tv/
....rumours have been knocking about for a while that new showrunner Chris Chibnall doesn’t fancy doing a Christmas special this year, with the initial announcement of the series only mentioning the ten-episode main series and the BBC Worldwide Showcase also not referencing any extra festive episodes.
Of course, it could be that the Christmas special is being counted as part of the
next run that comes
after the forthcoming series 11 (not unusual for Doctor Who – series nine technically began with the 2014 Christmas special before it kicked off properly in September 2015) – but it could also be that Chibnall is getting rid of the separate festive episode entirely.
Or it could allow for Chibnall to create a Yuletide episode
within the confines of the main series, assuming the episode aired near enough to Christmas Day. And this wouldn’t be completely without precedent in Who – prior to 2005, the only Doctor Who Christmas episode was the seventh part of 1965-66 serial The Daleks’ Master Plan, an episode called The Feast of Stephen that just so happened to air on Christmas Day and so had some Yuletide shenanigans shoehorned into the plot.
However, we’ve had it pretty much confirmed that all series 11 will air in its entirety in “autumn 2018” so assuming it won’t spill over into 2019, and that Chibnall wants it to run weekly without a break from start to finish, that might give us a specific and slightly later start date. If we count backwards from Christmas Day, a Tuesday, and assume the rest of the episodes are in their traditional Saturday slot, that gives us a series 11 launch date of 27th October.
Of course, we have all our fingers and toes crossed that we’ll have all ten episodes AND a separate Christmas special, but to quote the Rolling Stones, you can’t always get what you want.