Mark Gatiss has revealed that an Easter egg for Doctor Who fans was cut from Lot No 249, his latest Christmas ghost story special.
Based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1892 short horror story of the same name, Lot No 249 is a Gothic tale starring Kit Harington and Freddie Fox.
The show was created by Sherlock and The League of Gentlemen star Gatiss, who admitted in a new interview that the special had originally included a nod to Doctor Who.
Gatiss, who has written on the sci-fi series, originally wanted the show to include a prop scroll featuring Scaroth, a character from the 1979 Doctor Who story “City of Death”.
In the original Doctor Who episode, which starred Tom Baker as the titular Time Lord, the alien Scaroth is depicted on an ancient Egyptian scroll.
Gatiss had a replica made for his own BBC show, which centres on Egyptologist Edward Bellingham (Fox) and academic Abercrombie Smith (Harington).
However, the writer told RadioTimes.com that a tight shooting schedule meant the prop was never given its chance to be seen on screen.
“The downside, always, is time,” he said. “Bellingham’s room... the design is beautiful and I wanted so many cutaways... we just didn’t have time.
Harington (left) and Fox in 'Lot No 249’— (BBC/Adorable Media Ltd/Colin Hutton)
“There’s a cutaway which will pain you because I actually commissioned it – I had the scroll made from ‘City of Death’ with Scaroth in it. You can see it just behind Kit’s head. Things like that really pain me, especially when you’ve actually gone out of the way to do it.”
The BBC first aired its A Ghost Story for Christmas specials in the Seventies, with the format being sporadically revived since 2005. Gatiss worked on his first episode, 2013’s The Tracdate Middoth, 10 years ago.
While the stories he has televised since 2018 have been based on the work of M R James, this year’s is the first to be based on a story by Sherlock Holmes creator Doyle.
Gatiss has his own connection to Doyle, having played the detective’s brother Mycroft Holmes opposite Benedict Cumberbatch in the BBC’s popular drama Sherlock from 2010 to 2017.
Speaking to The Independent, Gatiss admitted that this A Ghost Story for Christmas was his favourite he’d made so far.
“Ghosts are my favourite thing and I’ve always loved Christmas too, and the two go together like chocolate and orange,” he said. “At the end of the year, you are looking backwards and forwards, and I’ve always thought that if anyone is going to come back, it would be at Christmas. There’s something about the thinness of the end of the year, when a lot of those things feel more possible.”
A Ghost Story for Christmas: Lot No 249 airs on Christmas Eve at 10pm on BBC Two.
