In a huge surprise to Doctor Who fans everywhere, BBC has announced that Alex Kingston will be reprising her role as River Song on the show’s Christmas special later this year.

The news was confirmed by the BBC via their website Wednesday morning. “It’s Christmas Day in the future and the TARDIS is parked on a snowy village street, covered in icicles, awaiting its next adventure,” the network writes on their website. “Time traveller River Song meets her husband’s new incarnation, in the form of Peter Capaldi, for the first time this Christmas.”

For those of you who loved River Song and her relationship with Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor, this year’s Christmas special is going to be a must-see. For those of you who detested Kingston’s character, then you’ll probably want to avoid this until the last possible moment on Christmas day.

Not very much is known about Kingston’s return to the series, but she is quite excited about the prospect. When asked to make a comment about her return she states, “To be honest, I did not know whether River would ever return to the show, but here she is, back with the Doctor for the Christmas special. Steven Moffat is on glittering form, giving us an episode filled with humour and surprise guest castings. I met Peter for the first time at Monday’s read through, we had a laugh, and I am now excited and ready to start filming with him and the Doctor Who team. Christmas in September? Why not!”

Doctor Who will begin filming the Christmas special this week, which makes this announcement way less surprising since they’re trying to get ahead of the sneaky fans that will most definitely be surrounding their shoots.

You might be thinking “wait, but she’s dead!” Well, has logic ever stopped Steven Moffat from creating ridiculous plots? The answer is unequivocally no. He brings up this fact in his statement about her return saying, “Another Christmas, another special for Doctor Who — and what could be more special than the return of Alex Kingston as Professor River Song? The last time the Doctor saw her she was a ghost. The first time he met her, she died. So how can he be seeing her again? As ever, with the most complicated relationship in the universe, it’s a matter of time…”

While we’re not entirely thrilled about the idea of rehashing old characters, we do actually enjoy the character of River Song quite a bit. Well, some of us at Hypable do anyway! The most interesting aspect of her return is going to be seeing her relationship with Peter Capaldi’s twelfth Doctor. Will they get along? We don’t think so.

Are you happy River Song is back on ‘Doctor Who’?

Even though it’s just for the Christmas special, we’re sure you Whovians have some opinions on this matter. So tell us, are you looking forward to this?