Doctor Who Fans Think This Year’s Climactic Christmas Special is a Sequel to One of the Series’ Most Beloved Episodes, Following Official Rose Tyler Tease

An official teaser on the Doctor Who website has sparked fan speculation that the series’ upcoming climactic Christmas special will be a sequel to Doomsday, the iconic episode where David Tennant’s Doctor originally bid farewell to his companion Rose Tyler.

A fresh in-universe blog post from UNIT, available on the Doctor Who website to logged in users, serves as a reminder of the “Rose Tyler (2006 Cold case)” incident — essentially, the events of Doomsday, where Rose Tyler crossed over into a parallel universe, parting her from Tennant’s Time Lord, before she briefly returned to save the day once more.

“As Rose Tyler is currently both missing from this universe and flagged as a complex space-time event, maybe keep an eye out,” the blog reads. “I’ve got the Vlinx scanning all media channels and the subwave network,” the note continues, referencing UNIT’s resident robot assistant. Maybe someone should tell it to check BBC1 on Christmas Day?

Of course, the final episode of last year’s Doctor Who season saw the apparent return of Rose Tyler yet again, or at least someone also played by actress Billie Piper. The show dropped her latest return as a last-second shock reveal, as outgoing Doctor Ncuti Gatwa seemingly regenerated into her, somehow.

One explanation for all this was that Billie Piper had actually been cast as the next incarnation of the series’ hero, but the episode’s credits deliberately kept her role vague, while fans strongly suspected yet another headscratching fakeout by current showrunner and writer Russell T. Davies.

Now, in the wake of Gatwa’s abrupt departure and Disney’s decision not to continue funding the show, this year’s upcoming Christmas Special is expected to wrap up this bizarre cliffhanger, and likely provide another dose of nostalgia for fans of Davis’ acclaimed original run as showrunner back in the early 2000s.

Rumors have persisted that Davies will next mine Doomsday, the emotional conclusion to Piper’s original period as a series regular, for material on which to base his next episode (which many fans have speculated will likely also be Davies’ last hurrah as showrunner for the series, following a mixed response to his work over the past few years).

The stage is certainly set for some kind of Doomsday sequel, too, with Billie Piper now somehow back, and the second incarnation of The Doctor played by David Tennant also back (and parked living an apparent suburban life, for now).

As ever, reaction to the blog from Doctor Who fans has been mixed.

“You guys are gonna hate me, but nostalgia is my weakness, and I started watching Doctor Who during Season 2,” wrote Listen-5980 in a long thread on reddit. “I’m hyped.”

“Russell, you already undid that iconic farewell scene two years after it happened,” wrote Clara_Finn. “You don’t need to go back to it again boo. Original ideas that don’t fawn over the show’s history, I beg.”

“There was no reality where this special wasn’t going to be a Tennant and Piper nostalgia fest,” concluded SuicideSkwad.

Doomsday, originally broadcast 20 years ago this summer, earned Doctor Who its first perfect 10/10 episode score from IGN. “This action packed episode one of the most emotionally moving and poignant stories about loss and refusing to let go,” we wrote at the time. But, two decades on, is the show finally ready to let go of Tennant and Piper?

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social