The BBC’s new Christmas advert is meant to be a somewhat heart-warming tale of friendship and acceptance over the holidays. Instead, it reads more like The Doctor and Sherlock inviting a sentient sprout-being to get consumed by a variety of British Television stars. Ah, the true spirit of Christmas.
The video, which you can see below, sees Doctor Who star Peter Capaldi narrate the sad tale of a living sprout as it gets casually insulted by a variety of people, because generally, screw sprouts and everything they stand for. Don’t give into the BBC’s pro-smelly-vegetable bias!
But never fear, because an animated Capaldi, in his full “Hobo Doctor” regalia that he’s worn for much of Doctor Who’s current season, welcomes the sprout to dinner with a host of BBC stars—from faces familiar to U.S. readers like Graham Norton or Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, to ones a bit more recognizable to my fellow native U.K. readers. But is the sprout being invited to dinner, or is it actually part of dinner? Isn’t The Doctor’s cry of “At Christmas everyone loves a sprout” a) factually wrong and b) an invitation for the stars of BBC One to voraciously consume this sentient plant being? Is the sprout secretly an advanced scouting party for the Krynoids?
We have far too many questions about this. Hopefully they’ll be answered when Sprout Boy becomes the leading contender for Doctor Who’s next companion.