Easter Special

Advertisement for the first Easter Special, Planet of the Dead.

The Easter Special is an episode of Doctor Who which airs outside the regular run during the Easter weekend. Unlike Christmas and New Year Specials, this was not a Doctor Who tradition year-to-year.

As of 2022, there have been only two Easter Specials. The first came in 2009, with Planet of the Dead, which aired on the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Years later, the 2022 Easter Special, Legend of the Sea Devils, actually aired on Easter Sunday itself, taking advantage of the show's then-regular Sunday evening timeslot.

The Easter holiday was not significant, symbolically or thematically, to either special, though Planet of the Dead featured the Tenth Doctor enjoying a chocolate Easter egg and musing about having been present at the very first Easter.

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Even before the first labelled Easter special was established, the BBC Wales era of Doctor Who had been an annual presence over the Easter weekend television schedules, dating back to its first episode, Rose, airing on the Saturday that fell between the Good Friday and Easter Sunday of that year. The same thing occurred the following year with the broadcast of New Earth, kicking off Series 2.

For 2007 and 2008, the first episodes of Series 3 and 4 were broadcast the weekend before Easter, with their respective second episodes, The Shakespeare Code and The Fires of Pompeii instead serving as the "Easter episodes" of those years.

Series 5 began over the Easter weekend in 2010 with The Eleventh Hour. In this instance, the first few minutes of the episode are explicitely identified as taking place at Easter. Series 6 premiered in 2011 with The Impossible Astronaut, with the crucial scenes of the Eleventh Doctor's supposed death occurring on the same date as the episode's broadcast, although no references to Easter were made.

After 2012 became the first year since the show's return to lack an Easter premiere, Easter 2013 saw the premiere of The Bells of Saint John, kicking off the second block of Series 7.

Finally, the show returned again to an Easter premiere in 2017 with the broadcast of The Pilot, beginning Series 10.

List of Doctor Who Easter specials

• 2009 - Planet of the Dead (series 4)
• 2022 - Legend of the Sea Devils (series 13)