For 13 years in a row, a time-traveling doctor showed up on British television on Christmas Day. A peer-reviewed study in the BMJ found that those broadcasts were associated with lower death rates the following year. This December, for the second year running, there will be no new Christmas episode at all.
The TARDIS study, published on December 18, 2023, was a deliberately playful analysis of 60 years of Doctor Who broadcasts. It was never meant as proof that a TV show saves lives. But the BBC's decision to scrap its 2026 Christmas special has given the paper's tongue-in-cheek premise an unexpected real-world twist.
