Matt Smith (right) as The Doctor, introduces Kazran Sardick (Michael Gambon) and a frozen beauty (Katherine Jenkins) to the meaning of Christmas in Doctor Who "A Christmas Carol." ©2010 BBC

Christmas specials are one of my favorite parts of the season. Whether it’s a holiday special about Santa’s favorite reindeer or a holiday-themed episode of my favorite television show, I love seeing a feel-good Christmas story. As a fan of Doctor Who, I’m especially fond of how the time-traveler celebrates Christmas.

And when The Doctor (Matt Smith) celebrates Christmas, he does it right. In the aptly named “A Christmas Carol,” the Doctor serves up a Dickens-inspired holiday story.

The tale begins with a crashing space liner on which the Doctor’s companions, Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill), are trapped. To save the space liner, the Doctor must convince Kazran Sardick (Michael Gambon) to use the spire to open up the clouds and allow the ship to land.

You can see where this is going, can’t you? The miserly Scrooge character must be shown the true meaning of Christmas. And without any ghosts readily available, the Doctor improvises in the way he knows best. He travels into the past and teaches a young Kazran about love and self-sacrifice.

At its best, Doctor Who tells emotionally packed stories that transcend sci-fi. In fact, many have pointed out that Doctor Who may better be described as a fairy tale. And in his current incarnation, that is certainly true. The fantasy quality of the series comes through here, as the Doctor helps an evil king find kindness in his heart by rescuing a sleeping beauty.

The “sleeping beauty” in this tale is Abigail Pettigrew (played by Welsh mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins). Frozen as “security” for her family’s debt to Kazran’s father, Abigail is released by the Doctor and introduced to a young Kazran, who is instantly smitten. So they promise Abigail to visit her every Christmas Eve.

All seems to be going well, as we see the old Kazran looking through photos and reliving “new” memories he never had before. But after several years Abigail reveals a secret to Kazran, now a young man, who then locks her away forever.

While there are a few crazy moments in the story (including a “one-shark open sleigh”), “A Christmas Carol” tells a wonderful holiday story that is filled with emotion. This may be one of the best Christmas specials I’ve seen from a television series.

Beginning with David Tennant’s first appearance in “The Christmas Invasion” (2005), the Doctor’s Christmas specials have become something of a tradition in the UK. But for Doctor Who fans in the United States, Christmas has always come late. We have had to wait until spring — or later — to view these episodes (which often had little to do with the holiday itself). This year, however, BBC America aired the first simulcast for a Doctor Who Christmas special.

This effort to bring Doctor Who to America in time for Christmas has given fans on two continents reason to celebrate. Let’s hope it’s the start of a new holiday tradition.

Doctor Who comes to BBC AMERICA this Christmas Day at 9:00 p.m. EST with a festive Dickens-inspired adventure, “A Christmas Carol.” See Michael Gambon as a Scrooge-like character and… well, just watch. It will give you goosebumps.

Newlyweds Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) are joined by Harry Potter’s Michael Gambon and opera diva Katherine Jenkins, for what may be “the Doctor’s most Christmassy adventure yet.”

Lead Writer and Executive Producer, Steven Moffat, commented on the upcoming special: “Oh, we’re going for broke with this one. It’s all your favorite Christmas movies at once, in an hour, with monsters. And the Doctor. And a honeymoon. And … oh, you’ll see. I’ve honestly never been so excited about writing anything. I was laughing madly as I typed along to Christmas songs in April. My neighbors loved it so much they all moved away and set up a website demanding my execution. But I’m fairly sure they did it ironically.”

Perry Simon, General Manager, Channels, added: “Doctor Who has become a key part of the BBC AMERICA schedule, and having the opportunity to air A Christmas Carol on Christmas Day is like receiving our very own holiday gift. The Timelord may travel through time and space, but he’s certainly found a home at BBC AMERICA.”

In the run up to “A Christmas Carol” on Christmas Day, BBC AMERICA will be running a marathon of the series, beginning at midnight on December 24 and leading up to this year’s special. The marathon includes previous Christmas specials and a selection of favorite Doctor Who episodes from recent seasons.

Christmas Day will also see the premiere the Doctor Who Prom, a live concert featuring stars Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill as hosts. The Doctor Who Prom was filmed earlier this year at the world renowned Royal Albert Hall and features appearances from the Weeping Angels, Daleks and the TARDIS. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales, who record the soundtrack for the series, present a selection of intergalactic music – including Murray Gold’s music from the TV show, plus a selection of classical favorites.

Behind-the-scenes photo from Doctor Who's new Christmas special, "A Christmas Carol" - airing Christmas Day on BBC America.

If your family is anything like mine, your Christmas is a bit on the geeky side. Stockings are filled with goodies from ThinkGeek, and there are plenty of Star Wars, Star Trek, and comic book-related ornaments on your tree. So what could make Christmas even more nerd-tastic?

How about a new Doctor Who Christmas special?

BBC America just announced via Twitter that they will be premiering the new Doctor Who Christmas special at 9:00 p.m. ET / 8:00 p.m. CT on Christmas Day.

Titled “A Christmas Carol,” the new special stars Matt Smith as The Doctor. BAFTA-winning acting legend Sir Michael Gambon and Welsh opera star Katherine Jenkins will join Smith, Karen Gillan (Amy), and Arthur Darvill (Rory) in the special.

“A Christmas Carol” follows a long tradition of Doctor Who specials which (until coming to BBC America) were only available in the UK on the holiday. The days of waiting six months or more to see the latest Christmas special are over. Now we can celebrate the holiday as it was meant to be celebrated, with the Doctor and his TARDIS.

Check your local cable provider for BBC America on your channel lineup. If you don’t get BBC America, it may be time to upgrade your cable subscription.

Update: BBC America has announced that on Christmas Day they will also premiere “Doctor Who Prom,” a concert showcasing incidental music from the British science fiction television series, along with classical music, performed as part of the BBC’s Proms series of concerts.

“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect. But actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly… timey-wimey… stuff.” – David Tennant, Doctor Who (2007)

Matt Smith as the new Doctor.

For generations, time travel has engaged science fiction writers and led to some great books, film and television. Since my youth, I have been fascinated by time travel, and I make a point to see nearly every television show and movie that deals with the subject.

Almost every science fiction or fantasy series, from Star Trek to Charmed to Lost, has dabbled in time travel for an episode or two. But my favorite shows are those that deal with time travel itself, where every week characters are flung through time to deal with a new crisis.

To commemorate the latest season of Doctor Who, premiering on BBC America on Saturday, April 17th, I’ve come up with a list of my favorites.

While this list is by no means definitive, here are The FilmGuru’s Time Travel Television Top Ten:

Scott Bakula (right) and Dean Stockwell paired up for one of the great time travel stories in Quantum Leap.

1. Doctor Who (BBC: 1963-1989, 2005-Present) – This is where it all begins. Since 1963, Doctor Who has engaged viewers with stories of the Time Lord and his companions. Utilizing his TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space) time ship, the Doctor can travel from the Big Bang to the ends of the universe and back again – and yet, he seems to love England most of all. The show ended its initial run in 1989, but returned in a big budget remake on BBC in 2005. His list of adversaries has grown over the years, but he is probably best well known for fighting Daleks and Cybermen, as well as his fellow Time Lord nemesis, the Master. Over the past 40+ years, we have seen 10 different actors play the Doctor on television. Matt Smith is now the 11th incarnation of the Doctor.

2. Quantum Leap (NBC: 1989-1993) – Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) stepped into a machine of his own creation and vanished into the past. The experiment didn’t quite work as planned however. Sam awoke in someone else’s body, in the middle of a strange life and (as was often the case) an awkward situation. Every week, Sam would leap into a new life, in a new point in time in a period that spanned 40 years. He experienced everything from segregation to the fight for women’s rights – all from a front row seat. With the aid of his best friend, Al (Dean Stockwell), Sam would try to help those whose lives he has leaped into. Hoping each time that his next leap… would be the leap home.

Eliza Dushku is a morgue worker with a side job in Tru Calling.

3. Tru Calling (FOX: 2003-2005) – Time is not always on your side, as Tru Davies (Eliza Dushku) found out. For reasons she did not understand, she had the ability to travel back in time to help the recently deceased. But her power only allowed her to go back one day (repeatedly, if necessary). And she soon discovered there was a price to pay for saving lives. This excellent series not only died too soon, it was yanked from the air just as its complex mythology was dialing it up a notch. Not only did we find out that Tru’s dead mother had her gift, we were just beginning to discover the connection her father had to her counterpart Jack Harper (Jason Priestly), who used his power to make sure people died as fate decided.

4. Journeyman (NBC: 2007) – This short-lived series (13 episodes) followed a similar concept to Tru Calling. Kevin McKidd played Dan Vasser, a San Francisco reporter, who inexplicably found would find himself yanked into the past. Using his knowledge gained from one trip into the past, he would try to fix things on subsequent jumps. As his “disappearances” took his toll on his family life and his career, he discovered that his former fiancée (thought dead) was also jumping through time.

5. Time Trax (Syndicated: 1993-1994) – In this inventive series, police officer Darien Lambert (Dale Midkiff) traveled back in time from the 22nd century to recover criminals who had escaped through time to the 1990s. Darien had to “tag” criminals and send them home, but he himself could not return until his mission was finished. His only connection to the future was his credit card-sized computer, SELMA, which briefed him on cases and certain aspects of life and culture in the 1990s.

Ted King as Jack Logan in Timecop.

6. Timecop (ABC: 1997) – This VERY short-lived series (9 episodes) was based on the world created in the 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme movie of the same name. In it, members of the Time Enforcement Commission monitored the timestream for possible tampering. Lt. Jack Logan (Ted King) worked with his partner to keep criminals from interfering with history. While the show was a bit formulaic, it offered one nice wrinkle to the plot. A villain used time travel to become Jack the Ripper and then created some of the greatest disasters in history – from the Titanic to the Hindenburg.

7. Seven Days (UPN: 1998-2001) – Using a time sphere engineered from salvaged wreckage of the UFO crash at Roswell, a top-secret government agency sent Frank Parker (Jonathan LaPaglia) back in time to stop unstoppable disasters. The only limit with the technology was that it could only send someone back seven days. As a result, Frank was always racing the clock to discover the cause of each crisis and the means to stop it.

Jon-Erik Hexum (right) and Meeno Peluce are a time-traveling duo in Voyagers!

8. Voyagers! (NBC: 1982-1983) – This series from my childhood is one of my favorite memories. The story followed Phineas Bogg (Jon-Erik Hexum), a traveler through time who helped give history a nudge in the right direction now and then. With the help of his Omnichron device, he could travel through time and tell when history has been altered. But when he saved a young boy, Jeffrey Jones (Meeno Peluce), he lost his guidebook and was forced to rely on Jeffrey’s knowledge of history to fix things. The series, while not great, was a nice adventure series and a fun look at history.

9. Primeval (BBC: 2007-Present) – My love of combining time travel stories with dinosaurs has been around since Land of the Lost aired on Saturday morning television. With this series, time travel took center stage and dinosaurs came to our world. Nick Cutter (Douglas Henshall) lead a band of scientists investigating temporal anomalies popping up all over the U.K. These holes in time, to both the past and the future, resulted in dinosaurs and other creatures rampaging through the streets of London. While the overarching story about Nick and his wife Helen (Juliet Aubrey) was at the center of the series, the apparent death of Nick didn’t stop the series from continuing. Even after it was cancelled in 2009, it was been revived for a fourth season (to air in 2011).

Even the concept of time travel took on a "groovy" look during the '60s in The Time Tunnel.

10. The Time Tunnel (ABC: 1966-1967) – No list of time travel television would be complete without this classic from the mind of Irwin Allen. When a government project in time travel was on the verge of being shut down, Dr. Tony Newman (James Darren) leaped through the time tunnel to prove it worked. Lost in the past aboard the doomed Titanic, he couldn’t get home. So, Dr. Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert) entered the time tunnel as well. Each week, the two men found themselves in a different time, often in conjunction with historical events. Though they tried to warn people of pending disasters, no one would listen. History always proceeded as it did originally. Although the show was simplistic, it dared to bring time travel to mainstream television in the U.S. only a few years after Doctor Who aired in the U.K.

Matt Smith as the new Doctor.

Two weeks is nothing. It’s 14 days, a fortnight.

The good news is BBC America has officially announced Doctor Who is coming to America. The bad news: the U.S. premiere of the fifth season — and the introduction of Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor — won’t begin until Saturday, April 17th.

The new era of the BBC’s iconic BAFTA-winning drama, Doctor Who will  include 13 episodes and premiere two weeks after it airs in the UK. Smith debuts as the new, Eleventh incarnation of the famous Time Lord alongside a new traveling companion, the enigmatic Amy Pond (Karen Gillan).

“Britain has a tradition of reinventing its iconic characters, like James Bond and Sherlock Holmes – and Doctor Who. In introducing the Eleventh Doctor, writer Steven Moffat is opening the show to a whole new audience, while serving fans with an exciting mix of inter galactic, time travelling adventures. We can’t wait to meet his new Doctor!” comments Richard De Croce, Senior Vice President Programming, BBC America.

BAFTA-winning writer Steven Moffat, creator of some of the most frightening and award-winning Doctor Who episodes to date, takes over as lead writer and executive producer.  Writers for the new series include Richard Curtis (Love Actually), Chris Chibnall (Torchwood), Toby Whithouse (Being Human, Torchwood), Mark Gatiss and Simon Nye.

Guest stars include SAG Award winner Alex Kingston, Oscar nominee Sophie Okonedo and Tony Curran.

Traveling both through time and space, the new series has the mysterious Doctor and Amy Pond together exploring sixteenth century Venice, France during the 1890s and the United Kingdom in the far future, now an entire nation floating in space. The first three episodes of the 13-episode series have been confirmed as “The Eleventh Hour,” written by Steven Moffat, “The Beast Below,” also by Moffat and “Victory of the Daleks” by Mark Gatiss.

David Tennant ends his reign as The Doctor in "The End of Time," his final episode of the BBC television series Doctor Who.

Since my childhood, I have followed the adventures of the Doctor, a renegade Time Lord who travels through time and space repeatedly saving the universe and (more often than not) the planet Earth. So, tonight’s episode “The End of Time – Parts I & II” (on BBC America) is more than an event, it’s a goodbye.

For four years now, the titular role on the BBC television series Doctor Who has been David Tennant. With a variety of companions and friends, the Doctor has met threats from outer space and beyond. Now, everything comes full circle as he encounters his arch-nemesis, the Master (John Simm), and the reemergence of the believed-extinct race of Time Lords.

“The End of Time” is not just the end of a series. It is the end of Tennant’s tenure as the Doctor. With this episode, he leaves the series to a new actor and a new doctor, the young, emo-looking Matt Smith. So, the story has brought more than an anticipation of something big, it has brought a sense of loss as one of my favorite characters prepares to change once again.

Watching Doctor Who over the years, from the days of Jon Pertwee in the early ’70s through the present, I have discovered that the only thing consistent about the Doctor is change. As often (if not more) as the Doctor regenerates, his companions have come and gone. His villains have been born, died, and been reborn again. Even the Time Lords, the race of time travelers from which the Doctor came, were wiped out in a Time War with the Daleks. The only thing that has remained unchanged over the years is his TARDIS, a time-traveling ship forever frozen in the shape of a London police call box.

Despite the changes over the years, I find myself unwilling to let go of Tennant and his version of the Doctor. The past four years have given audiences so many unforgettable moments, including the return of the Doctor’s companion Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) and the introduction of Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman). Both Sarah Jane and Captain Jack were quickly spun off into their own series, The Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood, respectively.

Tennant’s Doctor has been blessed with some amazing companions, including Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman), and Donna Noble (Catherine Tate). Each of his companions brought a different flavor to the stories, with Rose as a love interest, Martha as an unrequited love, and Donna as a strong-willed best friend. The importance of his friends and companions was made most clear in the fourth series finale (the two part story “The Stolen Earth” and “Journey’s End”). In that story, each of his friends comes together across time and space to help repel a Dalek invasion and save the Earth. It was, for me, the finest story of any Doctor Who.

But in his last year, through the final four specials leading up to and including “The End of Time,” the Doctor has been traveling alone. Without a human companion, he has become more lonely and — as a result — more Time Lord than man. He has become arrogant, godlike. The effect, seen most clearly in “The Waters of Mars,” is almost frightening.

“The End of Time” returns the Doctor to Earth. It also reunites Tennant with his human companion Donna, by proxy through her grandfather Wilfred Mott (Bernard Cribbins). Though the Doctor has returned to Earth (after the Master’s return is foretold by the alien race The Ood), it is Wilfred who seeks out the Doctor. As the human element of the equation, Wilfred gives the Doctor a touchstone — something to anchor him through this dark time when (as the Ood prophesied) the Doctor’s “song is ending.”

Even if the Doctor regenerates, a part of him dies with us. Tennant is leaving, and with him goes some of the best moments and memories of Doctor Who.

Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars courtesy of BBC America

BBC America has announced the imminent arrival of the final Doctor Who episodes starring David Tennant as the Doctor. Television’s longest running science fiction series, shot in HD, has just three episodes to go before a new Doctor arrives on screen next year.

The next special, Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars airs on BBC AMERICA, Saturday December 19, 9:00pm ET/PT. It stars Tennant and British stage and screen actress Lindsay Duncan as Adelaide, his “cleverest and most strong-minded companion.”

All will be revealed as the Doctor and his companion Adelaide face terror on the Red Planet in one of the scariest adventures yet. Peter O’Brien guest stars as Ed, Adelaide’s second-in-command at the base.

The Waters of Mars is written by Russell T Davies and Phil Ford and directed by Graeme Harper. The executive producers are Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner.

The remaining episodes, starring Tennant, will air over the holiday season as a two-part special. Airdates will be released in early December. Tennant shot a total of four specials before exiting the role – Planet of the Dead was the first one to air, last July, on BBC America.

The new Doctor Who logo courtesy of the BBC.

This morning, the official Doctor Who Web site offered an exclusive first look at the new Doctor Who logo. The logo will accompany Matt Smith’s on-screen debut as The Doctor in spring 2010.

The logo is the 11th to have been used on screen in the show’s history.

Unveiled with the logo is an animated insignia of the show’s initials, which will be used as branding for the new series.

According to a press release by the BBC:

Steven Moffat, the new Lead Writer and Executive Producer, said: “A new logo. The 11th logo for the 11th Doctor – those grand old words, Doctor Who, suddenly looking newer than ever.

“And, look at that, something really new – an insignia! DW in TARDIS form! Simple and beautiful, and most important of all, a completely irresistible doodle.

“I apologise to school notebooks everywhere, because in 2010 that’s what they’re going to be wearing.”

The new series of Doctor Who will premiere in the UK in spring 2010.