List of Doctor Who Christmas and New Year's specials

Regular episodes were occasionally broadcast during the Christmas period during its original run from 1963 to 1989, but only made significant mention of the holiday in "The Feast of Steven" (1965).

Beginning with the programme's revival in 2005, yearly special Christmas episodes were produced in addition to a regular series until 2017.

During the third season, the twelve-part serial The Daleks' Master Plan was broadcast weekly beginning in November 1965 and ending in January 1966, with its seventh and eighth episodes scheduled for Christmas and New Year's Day, respectively.

The former, "The Feast of Steven", was scripted as a comic interlude in the style of a pantomime, in the middle of an otherwise epic adventure.

"[1] The following episode, "Volcano", returns to the main narrative of The Daleks' Master Plan, although its ending briefly features a contemporary New Year's Eve.

[10] The three holiday specials made during Chibnall's tenure, airing in 2019, 2021, and 2022, all featured the Daleks and formed a loose three-part story arc.

A bomb detonates, and the Master escapes while the Doctor is captured by one of the aliens, leaving her companions in the falling plane.

Doctor Who holiday specials have consistently brought in higher viewing figures than other episodes of the programme.

[37][38] Richard Riley, a Biostatistics professor at the University of Birmingham, conducted a study and claimed that there was a connection between Doctor Who Christmas specials and lower death rates across England and Wales.

[41] A further editorial by the professor admitted that while there were "impeccable mathematical models [...] a single television broadcast cannot affect an entire country's mortality rates.

[43] The Doctor Who episodes "Planet of the Dead" (2009) and "Legend of the Sea Devils" (2022) were broadcast on Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, respectively, in years that lacked a full series.