We have plenty of evidence of the Doctor’s familiarity with British culture and customs, including its religious ones. He’s also at least aware of many other human practices and can identify them as readily as he does members of Species X from Planet Y (e.g., recognizing that Rita was Muslim in The God Complex). So I can’t help but wonder what sort of winter festivals he could show us, were we to travel with him to the far reaches of the Galaxy.

Usually when we get a look in on the Doctor, he’s put his foot in it, and things are about to go all wahooney shaped. But it’s only when he’s on Earth that we ever seem to see his adventures intersect with an annual religious/cultural festival. The closest thing I can think of off the top of my head is the Festival of Offerings in The Rings of Akhaten, but that was a rarity, rather than yearly event. Why don’t we get to see other people celebrating their “most wonderful times of the year”?

Granted, certain species aren’t likely to have any such thing. Given that the Daleks don’t (normally) have a concept of blasphemy (see: The Parting of the Ways), they wouldn’t have a sense of the sacred, either. No Dalek Christmas, then. Similarly, I find it unlikely that the “emotionless” (~cough~) Cybermen would have any such thing. Not exactly a celebratory lot.

But what about other alien cultures we’ve seen repeatedly? Sontarans? Ice Warriors? Those species aren’t exactly good candidates for having high holy days, but perhaps they’d have a regular commemoration of an important military victory. There’s got to be something these people get excited for besides the next battle.

Then there are the Sisters of Plenitude—the Catkind nuns, as seen in New Earth and Gridlock. As members of a religious order, they obviously have some sort of deity. Surely there is a regular religious festival that calls for raucous celebration at some point in their calendar!

Even without bringing (organized) religion into it, though, you’d think that every culture would have some sort of recognition of the turn of seasons (unless, of course, they originated somewhere that had no seasons—an interesting story conceit in and of itself). That idea was rather hammered on in Eleven’s first Christmas adventure, A Christmas Carol, when everyone keeps talking about being “halfway out of the dark” around the time of the winter solstice. Surely other species would mark that transition in their own way, as the experience of changing seasons and daylight hours should be all but universal.

So I’d love to see more nods to the actual cultural underpinnings of some of the alien worlds the Doctor visits. It doesn’t have to center on a holiday/holy-day, or even on the turning of the seasons (though I have to say, the idea of nocturnal or achluophiliac beings celebrating their summer solstice for making it “halfway through the light” intrigues me). I just want the chance to immerse myself more deeply in an actual culture than the surface tourism we usually get when we tag along with the Doctor.

I know that, especially with the modern 45-minute story format, we’re unlikely ever to see anything but shorthand and brief, voyeuristic views of the new species the Doctor encounters. That doesn’t stop me from wishing someone would try. Maybe it could be done over several adventures revisiting a particular species. Maybe it would only work as a novel.

Maybe I just need to write it myself.