[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Doctor Who Christmas special “Joy to the World.”]
As showrunner Russell T Davies pointed out to TV Insider, with the 2024 Doctor Who Christmas special, what’s different is it starts off with a companion sad. That’s not how they would normally do that with this show. But the nature of the episode allows for that for the special’s writer, former Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat, to bring the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Joy’s (Nicola Coughlan) story to the conclusion it does.
The Doctor meets Joy when he finds himself in the Time Hotel and follows whoever’s in possession of a briefcase through doors, ending up in her room in 2024. After the briefcase ends up cuffed to her — with its previous owners disintegrating — the Doctor sets out to stop whatever’s coming (“The star seed will bloom and the flesh will rise”). For him, that means spending a year in Joy’s hotel room waiting until he can use another door to return to the Time Hotel and show up with the code to unlock the briefcase that he gave himself (and which actually came from nowhere).
The Doctor realizes that since it takes thousands of years for a star to be born, some big corporation is using the rooms in the Time Hotel to “microwave” it. And to free Joy from the case (and the fatal effects as previously seen), he taunts her with how sad she is, based on her hotel room in which he’d stayed. He also uses the death of her mother, who died alone in the hospital due to the pandemic, against her. By making her angry, he’s able to wake her up. Once the briefcase is no longer attached to her, he’s able to scan it to find out who’s behind it — and it’s none other than Villengard, the biggest arms manufacturer in recorded history and very old enemies of the Doctor’s. If they accomplish what they want and the star seed explodes anywhere on Earth, it will burn every living thing. Unfortunately, bringing the suitcase into a room 65 million years ago (dinosaurs!) and then when it eventually ends up is long enough for that “microwaving.”
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Filming that scene in the room that’s from millions of years ago was Coughlan’s favorite, she tells TV Insider. “It had a little bit of everything. You got that emotional moment and then you have the dinosaur and the escape, and I loved all of that,” she shares. “It’s such a fond memory.”
While the Doctor works on a way to stop that explosion from happening, Joy takes the case and the star seed into herself. She thinks she’s saving the world, she tells the Doctor. He argues that she’s dying, but that’s not how she sees it; rather, she’s changing and she will shine everywhere and forever. She then flies off and turns into a star … the star that shines across time, including over her mother’s hospital as she dies. And that star? Well, that star originated over Bethlehem in the year 0001!
“I was trying to work out what we could do. We had all those Christmases, and I thought logically, well, we should have the first one as well, shouldn’t we?” explains Moffat. “And then I thought, well, oh, hang on. And so I then created a whole plot around the star seed so that somebody, the case could be flown in.”
He continues, “Originally I thought they’d just detonate the star and get rid of it. But then I thought that just made the star a great big explosion. It should be the loveliest star ever. It’s a star that exudes love, and when people look up at it, they feel changed and uplifted. You actually see a star, and it changes how you think and feel. So I thought, well, Joy should become the star and go from being a sad woman who draws unhappiness to her into becoming the star that radiates joy and actually launches every Christmas after that and then saves her mom at the end.”
Coughlan calls that ending for her character “beautiful,” noting, “It’s a tribute to Steven Moffatt’s writing that he can fit in this kind of adventure, the humor, dinosaurs, and then real heartbreak all in a one-hour special. But I feel like it’s a very relatable thing, what he’s written about. And it’s that thing at Christmas, it boils down to all that really matters is the people we love. And both Joy and the Doctor feel that in different ways.”
As the special began, the Doctor had two cups of coffee, used to traveling with Ruby (Millie Gibson, who briefly appears in the special, at home). And then when he sees his future self (who has the briefcase code), he lashes out at him, noting how alone he is and how he lives on a giant ship with no chairs, which he doesn’t notice because no one comes around. Then, before Joy’s transformation, she tells the Doctor he needs to change, too. What he’d said about her room applies to him as well, since he’s the one who spends a year living there. She tells him he needs to find a friend, perfectly setting the stage for Season 2, with Varada Sethu joining as a new companion, Belinda Chandra.
“I’ve got to say Steven came up with that line and that whole plot line knowing full well that there would be another companion,” notes Davies. “You don’t actually need to know the next season to know that that setting up. But we have got an unusual introduction for Varada Sethu coming in as Belinda Chandra, which is a slightly different introduction, quite by chance. It starts with the Doctor looking for her. I can give that away. He’s been told about her. So yeah, it dovetails very nicely into it.”
The episode did bring back Villengard, which makes sense for a Moffatt story… which does feel like it’s setting up another one with the foe.
“It never really is,” Moffat says with a laugh. “It was in my first story, obviously, Villengard. It was in my very first story and when I was writing what I thought was going to be the last one I ever did, which was Peter Capaldi’s last episode, I put Villengard in again. I thought, right, that’s some kind of bookend. So I thought then I thought, well, I’m writing, ‘Boom,’ I better stick Villengard in again. Then Russell gets me to do Christmas, I think, oh well, Villengard in again. So it’s solid Villengard to the end of time now I think.”
He adds, “I do think you should go there at some point and do something.” Interjects Davies, “I want to meet Miss Villengard.”
Showing just how well they play off each other, Moffat agrees that would be “cool,” suggesting, “Somebody who just seems really ordinary, nice, and homely, and finally gives their name. We’re getting worse at spoilers.”
Laughs Davies, “We’re spoiling things that haven’t been written yet.”
What did you think of the Christmas special? Let us know in the comments section below.
Doctor Who, Streaming now, Max and Disney+
