Matt Oliver gets a sneak preview of the festive season's hottest – and most secretive – show, the Doctor Who Christmas special, courtesy of set designer, and North Oxford resident, Michael Pickwoad

CHRISTMAS and Doctor Who. Neither really screams for the other, but for some reason it just works.

Amazingly, the science fiction show has now enjoyed top billing alongside Songs of Praise, the Queen’s Speech and other beasts like Strictly and Bake Off for more than a decade.

Why? No one really knows. But tradition comes with expectations.

And for production designer Michael Pickwoad, that means ‘you have to keep doing better’.

No pressure then. But in an interview at his North Oxford home, the 71-year-old cheerfully explained this year’s Christmas special might be the best yet.

“It is seriously good,” he says. “And very funny and… rather nice.

“It is probably the nearest Doctor Who has got to a rom-com, in a good way, because it is actually about a triangle of love with only two people - so there’s a bit of confusion for you.”

Mr Pickwoad, whose other work includes Comrades (1986), Longford (2006) and Poirot (2003-4), designed the current interior of the time-travelling TARDIS and has been working on Doctor Who since 2010, after joining at the end of Matt Smith’s first series in the lead role.

His first episode was the Charles Dickens-inspired A Christmas Carol, featuring Michael Gambon and Katherine Jenkins.

It is still one of his favourites, but he reckons it will be rivalled by 2016’s The Return of Mysterio.

It sees Peter Capaldi’s version of the titular Time Lord saving New York with the help of an investigative journalist and a superhero.

“A Christmas Carol was very different, a lot more moral in the Dickensian sense and really quite charming,” Mr Prickwoad muses.

“But this year will probably end up being a first equal, even though it is totally different.

“It is cleverly written, it is silly, it is sweet and very Doctor Who. And just quite fun.”

Doctor Who’s Christmas specials are by no means a predictable affair. Writers have used them to kill-off or introduce actors in the main role.

The most recent have featured a robot king played by Greg Davies, face-hugging aliens, Nick Frost as Santa Claus and a village called Christmas which, in real life, was actually a military training ground.

Mr Pickwoad said: “That worked very well actually. I give the military designers full credit, because they are better than town planners.

“They built a village that is actually laid out in such a haphazard way that it does not look deliberate.

“From a distance you think it is a real Eastern European town but the houses are only made of breeze blocks and have square holes for windows which, being made by the army, are all naturally the same size.”

Another Christmas episode in 2012 saw Mr Pickwoad working again with Richard E Grant, who played villain Dr Walter Simeon and then later the alien ‘great intelligence’.

The two originally met filming the cult classic Withnail & I (1987), also starring Paul McGann, who would go on to star in Doctor Who, with director Bruce Robinson.

“Richard and Paul are both lovely,” Mr Pickwoad says. “And I think they are still pretty grateful for Withnail because it put them both on the map in no uncertain way.

“It was quite funny working with Richard again, because he got brought in for one episode of Doctor Who and then got used in another and he said to me, ‘this is disgraceful, they’re getting me to do two episodes but they already killed me off!’

“And I said, ‘look, Richard, the more you get killed off in Doctor Who, the more you come back’.”

With production of Doctor Who’s next series currently in full swing at Cardiff where it is based, the grandfather-of-two’s schedule is as hectic as ever but he still returns to Oxford to spend time with his wife, Vanessa, every weekend.

It is to be his last series, except for one final Christmas special he expects to do with outgoing showrunner Stephen Moffat next year. New boss Chris Chibnall will take over in 2018.

It is by no means the end of Mr Pickwoad’s career, but certainly the end of its most demanding chapter so far.

“I always tell people if you can survive doing Doctor Who then there’s absolutely nothing you can’t do,” he adds.

“I’ve never had a job where I have had to think so continuously and imaginatively all the time. It has required me to draw on everything I know.

“And to do it well, you have to keep doing better.

“So it has been great fun, but I think one can now enjoy having done it.

“There are still plenty of things I’d like to do. It would be brilliant to work on James Bond.”

Doctor Who will be broadcast on BBC One at 5.45pm on Christmas Day.