It’s been long enough now–going in to the tenth series of Doctor Who and the sixth under lead writer Steven Moffat–that we should expect to get as little information as possible about upcoming episodes of Doctor Who. I get the feeling that Moffat would just prefer there never be any trailers for anything and instead just a still frame of star Peter Capaldi giving the two-fingered salute with the words “we know you’ll watch anyway” emblazoned below. But at NYCC, a “first look” at the 2016 Christmas special was released…and it shows precious little of what’s to come.
There were a few interesting takeaways here, despite the couple of actual clips being interspersed with behind-the-scenes footage of Capaldi and returning guest star Matt Lucas (Nardole) being silly. The first is the confirmation that the title of the Christmas special is “The Return of Doctor Mysterio,” which we can assume is referring to the Doctor himself (obviously) who might be somehow in league with the superhero in the episode. Oh yeah, remember the superhero?
In the middle of last week, we learned that actor Justin Chatwin would be appearing in the special as some kind of unnamed superhero, and we definitely get a good look at him here. He looks sort of like Nightman from that short-lived ’90s syndicated TV show (anyone remember that?), but his emblem is a red brick-looking number with the letter G.
Granite Man? The Great Grinner? Gentleman Bandit? I’m fairly baffled as to what he could possibly be, but I’m very excited to see where this goes, as I’m also excited to figure out why a kid suddenly disappears while talking to the Doctor on a fire escape. It seems the special takes place in New York, too, so this’ll be the first time the Doctor’s been to the Big Apple since he lost a pair of companions in “The Angels Take Manhattan.”
On top of that little minute-long thing, the panel at NYCC also gave us a montage of the Twelfth Doctor’s best moments through his two series stint thus far. (Sidebar: boy, it’s only been two series! Capaldi’s been the Doctor essentially since 2013 and yet we only have 26 episodes with him… that’s nutty.)
At any rate, despite the vagueness of the teaser, we’re counting down the days until Doctor Who is back… and then even more counting down until April 2017 when series 10 begins. Hurry up and wait, huh, Doctor?
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Images: BBC America
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor and the resident Whovian for Nerdist. Follow him on Twitter!
