The TARDIS materialises in the bedroom of four-year-old Daniel Francis Thompson on Christmas Eve, 2006. To the Doctor’s surprise, Daniel enters the TARDIS and sets it in flight, claiming that he wants to see Christmas. The TARDIS takes the Doctor and Daniel to Ypres in 1914, to the temporary truce and football match between the English and the Germans, but this doesn’t seem to satisfy Daniel. The Doctor throws a Christmas party with guests from all over time and space, and even takes Daniel back to Bethlehem to see the very first Christmas, but none of this is enough. As Daniel begins to fade out of existence, the Doctor finally realises what the TARDIS is trying to tell him, and manages to track down the real Daniel Francis Thompson to St Nicholas’ Hospital in London; the young boy had slipped away from his parents just for a moment, and was hit by a car while running to see the Christmas lights in a house across the street. The Doctor steps in, arranging things so that the doctors at the hospital aren’t distracted by any other cases and find exactly what they need at hand exactly when they need it. With great effort, they save Daniel’s life, and when Daniel returns to his body and wakes, the Doctor is there waiting to wish him a merry Christmas.

SYNOPSIS

Tom Wake, a nine year-old boy living in 1920, awakens on Christmas Eve night to hear something moving downstairs. He gets up and rushes to see what it is. Instead of finding Father Christmas as he had hoped, he discovers the Doctor, who is hanging upside down inside the chimney. The two introduce themselves once the Doctor has dislodged himself and the Time Lord explains that his TARDIS landed in the flue. Unaware of this he walked outside and got stuck.

Just as he is about to go outside to climb up onto the roof and down the chimney again, he notices a Sonic Screwdriver hanging from the Christmas Tree. He takes it and looks at a label, which has been attached. It reads:

"To the Doctor,
In the next nine decades you're going to save us from danger so many times at Christmas. Thank you.
Christmas 2007”

Both the Doctor and Tom are bemused by this message, but the Doctor realises it will be his duty to return each year to ensure Tom and his family are safe. He prepares to leave, but not before he has handed Tom a Christmas present – an Orange.

Next year, when Tom is ten, he sees the Doctor in the street, looking worried and puzzled. He waves to him and worries that something bad is going to happen, but nothing does.

Years pass and Tom becomes a young man, one who no longer believes in Santa Clause. One Boxing Day, in 1931, his mother dies and the Doctor appears soon after, apologising that he couldn’t save her. He claims he couldn’t have because she died not out of danger, but because of old age.

As the decade passes Tom meets a girl named Alice, whom he tells about the Doctor. She comes to visit him on Christmas Day 1936, where the Doctor is seen again, looking for danger. He leaves soon after and the next year the young couple get married and have their first child, Mary, who is born on Christmas Day.

Upon returning home with their newborn baby, Tom (who believes in Santa Clause again for the sake of his daughter) and Alice discover a stocking of toys for the child, and as Alice looks through them her husband sees the Doctor outside, again waiting for something but also seemingly frustrated with himself.

The next Christmas, Tom has joined the 1st battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers and is fighting in the jungle, He finds himself wounded and alone, but the Doctor soon appears to help. He stalls the enemy soldiers advancing toward him and soothes his dismembered arm. He explains that he has become obsessed with finding out what is going to happen to Tom and what it is he is to save him from. After admitting to checking on Tom and his family more often than just every Christmas, he runs with him to a cliff, where they promptly jump together, landing in the river below

After the war Tom becomes an insurance salesman. His daughter Mary has come to know of the Doctor and is delighted when he shows up as a magician at her birthday party to chase away the other children who bully her.

In 1955 Alice tries to offer the Doctor a room to stay in but he declines. Tom notes that before he went on his way he had the look of a man with a love for things that had been gone a long time, suddenly his visitor seemed very guarded and alone.

Another decade passes, Tom’s father dies and Mary ceases to believe in the Doctor, opting to move out of the house and marry a lawyer. The Doctor continues to visit Tom and Alice; still pondering what danger there might be left to save them from. The recent death and Mary’s departure are not what he has come to save them from; it must be something more…

Through the 1970s and 80s the Doctor meets the couple’s grand children and attends their family party. Soon Tom and Alice are retired, and one day Alice dies after falling over and breaking her hip. Tom finds solace in the Doctor, whom he regards now as an old friend…and yet realises he knows nothing about him.

In the 1990s Tom is forced to move into sheltered accommodation, where again the Doctor continues to visit, and one year ensures the old man is safe from one of the more offhand nurses.

The millennium passes and Tom finally finds himself in 2007, once again believing in Santa Clause because he has no reason not to. The Doctor arrives and decides it is time to solve the mystery of the note hanging from the tree the first Christmas they met. As the Doctor guides Tom, now in a wheelchair, to the TARDIS he admits he doesn’t visit Tom to check for danger anymore, he simply has a chance to see the life he never had.

The TARDIS takes the two men back to 1920, to Tommy’s house the night the Doctor first appeared. Tom realises the writing on the tag from the tree is his own, and replicates the message on a new tag. The Doctor is somewhat dumbstruck by this and after hanging the tag up on the tree along with his Sonic Screwdriver, takes Tom home.

As the Doctor flies away in the TARDIS he realises the Sonic Screwdriver was to signal a present for him, as well as Tom. His regular visits helped Tom maintain hope for the future and the mission to protect Tom gave him the chance to witness an entire lifetime, one he could not have for himself. A present from infinity…

SYNOPSIS

Instead of heading to Chiswick in 1985, where Donna hopes to go shopping, the TARDIS is dragged off course to Belgium in 800AD, where the travellers arrive in the pantry of a large manor house.

The two friends are initially greeted by two fearsome guards but receive a far wormer welcome from a man named Baldebert, the keeper of the kitchens. He welcomes the Doctor, believing him to be Emperor Charlemagne’s new food tester. Donna asks who Emperor Charlemagne is and the Doctor tells her that he is a famous leader who helped bring Europe out of the Dark Ages.

After the Doctor tests the Emperor’s dinner for poisons, a young pageboy named Macon arrives to deliver the news that Charlemagne has disappeared from his carriage, the very same day he is meant to meet the Pope and be crowned Leader of the Roman Empire.

Macon takes the Doctor and Donna into the forest of the Ardennes, where Charlemagne disappeared. The Doctor arms himself with a bow, arrows and a short sword whilst Donna simply follows him as he hacks his way through the undergrowth.

They arrive at the site of the disappearance and the Doctor finds Quantum detritus, residue left over when something or someone is taken out of time. Seconds later, he and Donna disappear in a flash of light.

They arrive in a decaying palace that the Doctor notes is not on Earth. A booming voice claims they are in the Palace of Hy-Ridion. The voice introduces itself as Momus the Wise and then tells the travellers that they are on Planet 12 of the Ridion Alliance, a world ravaged by war.

Momus tells the Doctor that he is the final guest at a grand dinner party he is hosting, and invites him to join the others he has gathered together. After looking around Donna sees Momus, a small silver robot hovering in the air above them.

A section of a nearby wall opens up to reveal a dilapidated banquet hall, filled with famous figures from history; including Cleopatra, Winston Churchill, Michelangelo and Galileo. The Doctor introduces himself and joins in the conversation, speaking with Noel Coward, Sir Francis Drake and Cher – all of whom are somewhat confused by their presence at the party.

The Doctor assures Charlemagne, another guest, that he will be able to return him home in time to speak with the Pope and then speaks to Momus about the purpose of the party. The computer explains that he was built be the first people of Ridion, but when they descended into war and slipped into their own Dark Age they forgot what he was for. He was left alone in the palace with nobody to talk to. He brought the great thinkers of Earth together so that they could keep him company and help bring the people of Ridion to a new age of enlightenment.

The Doctor warns Momus that he is contravening Galactic Law and he must accept that his people are a crumbling civilization. He assures him they will rise again but he cannot force it to happen ahead of his time. He tells Momus that he must return the humans to Earth so they can fulfil their own destiny, then claims that the computer must leave Ridion and make his own way in the universe.

The computer agrees and sends the guest back home, before returning the Doctor and Donna to the Ardennes and promising to leave Ridion behind and start afresh. Back on Earth the Doctor asks where he and Donna will be travelling to next. Donna tells him she still wants to go to 1985 for a shopping trip, an adventure the Doctor decides he will sit out in the TARDIS.

A scruffy semi detached house in Sydenham: Robert Mann, a 13 year old boy greets the Doctor who wakes up in a strange room in pajamas. Robert tells the Doctor it is 1940 and a war is on and that he wants to be an explorer like Marco Polo. The Doctor recalls, “And he pinched my caravan.” Rob’s mother introduces the Doctor to the other guests including a Major Wooly, 74 year old Miss Sillington who lost all her money in the big crash and came to live here in 1933, young Miss Gibbs and Mr. Plympton. There was also a cook named Mrs Baxter. Rob’s dad is deceased, died when Rob was 6. They call the tree Mr. Lofty and Mrs Mann declares it needs a cutting down to size. Rob mentions n othing ever happens here and no one ever does anything. The Doctor tells Miss Sillington she should never have stopped painting, one can be 104 and it’s never too late to be brilliant, “I should know.” She tells him that the house used to be cursed or haunted. Rob tells the Doctor that the Major cannot recall why he will not leave the house and go fight in the war. For some reason, he just cannot. Mrs Baxter would like to leave but won’t. She’s been working here since 1934. The Doctor cannot recall why he was here. Rob lifted his sonic screwdriver from his jacket when the Doctor was sleeping, the Doctor likes that, it’s cheeky. Rob reveals this when the Doctor claims he is going to his motor car, ala the TARDIS. Rob knows he’s an alien and has a spaceship. The Doctor cannot get out of the house and it seems to engulf him and he passes out as he hears Rob’s voice calling, screaming his name, “Doctor!”

The Doctor wakes up and declares that one of the people in the house is an alien. The Doctor20finds a crack in the basement wall. He tells the others that something is sucking away their motivation, making them unable to do anything. It sucks potential like a sponge sucks water. It has not affected Robert, the Doctor reasons, because he is too young and hasn’t made up his mind what he wants to do in life: Robert keeps changing his mind what he wants to be: chef, escapologist, etc. The roots of the tree are digging into the house through the basement. Squiggly waves of psychic force they need an anchor, intelligent parasites that they are. The Doctor saw something like this before in Esto in the Lagoon Nebula. The parasite here has been in the tree for hundreds of years. In the 18th century criminals were hung on the tree. As the others try to stop him, Rob starts to cut down the tree. The creature comes out as a light and the others have to take their turns in helping Rob cut down the tree fully. It flees into the oldest form of life around…the Doctor, who tells them he is 904. At diner, that night, everyone was making plans on getting on with their lives; Mrs Mann will make some changes; Bertha Baxter will go to live with her sister in Bridport, come January; Clive Plympton will get on with writing his novel and seems interested in Miss Gibbs; the Major will sign up on Monday even if it is Home Guard; Miss Sillington will paint again; Rob wants to be a lumberjack. The Doctor would leave and with the TARDI S’s help, flush the parasite out into the vortex where it could do no harm. The Doctor slipped away when no one noticed…