HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO

 Truth, justice and the Gallifreyan way? As Steven Moffat tells Nick Setchfield, the Doctor’s in for his unlikeliest Christmas yet…

- Nick Setchfield

“Can you imagine,” says Peter Capaldi, his lean, pale face creasing into a smile, “if you’re in Midsomer Murders you never get the chance to watch someone fly into a skyscraper with a cloak on, pick up a girl and fly with her…”

The TARDIS has never troubled the corpse-littered hamlet of Midsomer but it has arrived in the ancestral home of the superhero. It’s Christmas Eve in New York – or at least an unremarkable September day in Cardiff, where a skyline backdrop of tower blocks and water tanks wraps around a rooftop set in the BBC’s bayside studios. Any day now the Doctor Who team will decamp to Bulgaria, where two blocks of an equally make-believe Manhattan stand waiting, ready to double for the city that never sleeps. New York, New York, so good they built it twice…

This unreal real estate is protected by a masked crusader known as the Ghost – part of an eternal love triangle with a mild-mannered guy named Grant and a plucky girl reporter named Lucy. Sound familiar? It should do. This Christmas the Doctor’s plunging full-tilt into the spandex-wrapped realm of superpowers and secret identities. It’s a collision every bit as improbable as the Time Lord trading clues with John Nettles in the murder capital of England.

As writer and showrunner Steven Moffat tells SFX in an exclusive interview, “The Return Of Doctor Mysterio” is Doctor Who filtered through the lens of comic book cinema. “It’s a good thing to watch on Christmas Day,” he grins. “A big superhero movie! Hopefully it’s a good family blockbuster for Christmas Day…”

Stash your sonic in your utility belt. Prepare the popcorn. Up, up and away we go…

So why superheroes?