Now that Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies has returned, the show is going back to the classics. That means a new Doctor, played by Ncuti Gtawa, returning cast members like David Tennant and Catherine Tate, and a new initiative restoring the time travel show’s history. But one of the biggest Doctor Who traditions Davies brought back is the Christmas special, a holiday-themed episode airing on Christmas night — for four years before Davies took over, the special aired on New Year’s Day.
Last year, the Christmas special introduced us to the 15th Doctor and his new companion, Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson). Now, Ruby is back home with her family, and the Doctor is getting into new hijinks with a mysterious woman named Joy (Nicola Coughlan) in this year’s Christmas special, aptly titled “Joy to the World.” In a new trailer for the special, we see the two encounter prehistoric creatures, a green and scaly Silurian, and, confusingly, another version of The Doctor. Check out the full trailer below.
“Joy to the World” is written by Steven Moffat, one of the most renowned writers in Doctor Who history. Though he served as showrunner for seven years, he’s gained a reputation for writing one-off episodes like Season 2’s “The Girl in the Fireplace” and Season 3’s “Blink.” He returned to writing under the supervision of Davies earlier this year with the extremely tense bomb-defusing story “Boom.”
We don’t know much about the special, but Moffat let a few secrets spill to BBC in November. “Imagine in the far, far future that a hotel chain got hold of the idea of time travel,” he said. “What's the first thing a hotel chain would do if they had time travel? They'd realize they had an opportunity to sell all the unsold nights in their own hotels in history.”
That certainly explains why we see Joy and the Doctor in a hotel room, and perhaps even why we see a dinosaur — maybe that’s a hotel room sold in the distant past? But what it doesn’t explain is why we see two versions of the Doctor in the same room. For a time travel show, that happens surprisingly rarely.
There are rumors this special will be Moffat’s last foray writing for Doctor Who, so even if we don’t know what to expect from the plot, we can definitely expect some typical Moffat whimsy. “It's whimsical and heartwarming and emotional,” He told SFX Magazine. “It's not ‘Blink.’ That's how they review all my episodes — it's not ‘Blink!’”
