Doctor Who fans have been well and truly spoiled this festive season with The War Games in colour, the 2024 Proms, Doctor Who: Unleashed and of course the Christmas Special Joy to the World, written by Whoniverse stalwart Steven Moffat — and this is unmistakably a Moffat script, for better and for worse.

Teaming up Ncuti Gatwa‘s flamboyant Fifteenth Doctor with Derry Girls star Nicola Coughlan as guest-companion Joy seems like a recipe for success, but unfortunately the story isn’t very interested in keeping them together. Instead, Joy is side-lined for substantial portions of the special, leaving the character feeling underdeveloped and wasting the talents of Nicola Coughlan in the process. The entire supporting cast of characters are flat and uninteresting, simply there to adore and/or vaguely threaten the Doctor at any convenient moment. Under Moffat’s writing, Ncuti Gatwa ends up playing a more generic version of the Doctor, reciting dialogue more suited to Matt Smith or Peter Capaldi. Even his ‘mean moment’ (teased by Moffat in his commentary for Boom earlier this year) feels out of character and more suited to a certain other Scottish Doctor. The missing companion storyline has been done before (and done better), while his year-long wait for the hotel door to reopen not only serves the same purpose as the Fourteenth Doctor’s ‘retirement’ in last year’s The Giggle (why repeat this plot point so soon?) but also evokes the ‘slow invasion’ storyline of The Power of Three. It’s a strange narrative detour in the special, losing focus from the eponymous Joy, distracting from the Star Seed plot and offering nothing more than repeated character beats in the meantime.

It’s been said that a Doctor Who story is only as good as its villain, but Joy to the World has nothing to offer in this regard. Despite a cameo from a Silurian (played by Jonathan Aris) and an appearance from a T-Rex (a scene almost entirely spoiled in the Children In Need preview last month), there aren’t really any monsters here. The threat of the Star Seed is so vague and offers so little tension that it’s no surprise that the ending is so lacklustre. Joy disappearing to join the stars is ultimately a less romantic version of Astrid’s ending in Voyage of the Damned, while ‘resurrecting’ the supporting cast to go with her cheapens any stakes the story had, as well as falling into the usual Moffat trope of undoing any character deaths. There’s an argument to be had that perhaps a Christmas Special is the kind of story in which death shouldn’t stick, but when every Moffat episode ends with a variation of “everybody lives” (which began back in The Doctor Dances in 2005), it gets a bit tedious.

Joy to the World is Steven Moffat‘s ninth Christmas Special, while 2024 marks his nineteenth year writing for Doctor Who, and it’s difficult not to feel like his latest instalment is running on fumes. As a special, it doesn’t explore a fun dynamic between the Doctor and Joy, it doesn’t even lean into the comic potential of the Time Hotel, it doesn’t offer a fun new villain and the time travel mechanics feel so familiar that it’s almost like this script was written on autopilot. There’s also a lot of tonal whiplash throughout, jumping from a dramatic scene of Joy talking about how her mother died alone in hospital in 2020 to a dinosaur cameo. Even then, the dinosaur cameo is ripped straight from Moffat’s own Deep Breath, and likewise serves as nothing more than a neat visual to engage the kids. Moreover, the location-hopping pre-credits sequence is a Moffat cliché, evoking the openings of The Pandorica Opens, The Impossible Astronaut, The Magician’s Apprentice and various other episodes. There is some surprisingly ropey visual effects work throughout, and Murray Gold‘s music felt very familiar at points, all contributing to the sense that this is essentially a Doctor Who script from a decade ago (while Moffat was showrunner) re-packaged for this ‘new’ era.

Maybe Joy to the World will grow on me with inevitable rewatches, but for now I’m just hoping that the new season of Doctor Who will offer some new writing talent to refresh the programme – especially when the past thirteen episodes have slid so comfortably into familiar territory. In a Christmas Day slot with more eyes on the programme than usual, you’d expect better from Doctor Who.

Doctor Who returns to BBC One next year

Join us for our series blog review in 2025!