This time last year we got our first full-length look at Ncuti Gatwa in the role. Fast forward 12 months, and here was a man with a season behind him, beaming his way confidently through a story that was a mishmash of Christmas movie viewing genres, if somewhat light on plot.

In this Steven Moffat-penned tale, we got an action sequence on a train, treasure hidden in a stone chamber, a lengthy romcom interlude, and even a dinosaur that apparently pooed out an important Christmas plot device. There was also a strong emotional heartbeat running through it, and there will have been tears before bedtime in many a household watching it.

Joel Fry was enjoyable as Trev, though the character gave strong vibes that it had been written with Richard Ayoade’s awkward Maurice Moss mode in mind, rather than directly for Fry. Still, he managed to make the most of his screen time. Nichola Coughlan (Joy), despite sharing top-billing as this year’s guest star, was sidelined for much of the story. She got an opportunity to show her acting chops as a potential villain for a while, and then the more lovable side of Coughlan we know from Derry Girls and her real-world social media interventions arrived.

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Doctor Who Christmas specials have previously walked a fine line between using lots of festive imagery – think evil Santas, killer Christmas trees, robot angels – but not directly bringing religion into it. Putting a fantasy supernova as the source of a bright evening star above Bethlehem at the dawn of the first millennia was certainly a bold choice to link the show’s lore directly into the nativity itself.

The centrepiece was the Doctor being stranded with Steph de Whalley’s Anita Benn in a hotel for a year as her slow-burn unrequited love for him developed – a vignette that could easily be slipped into Love Actually or Four Weddings and a Funeral. It isn’t the first time in the modern era the Doctor has been forced to think about how lonely his life is without a companion, although the fact he was collecting miniature police box figurines was a clue to who he was missing the most.

Life aboard the Tardis

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The structure was effectively three consecutive two-handers where Trev, Anita and Joy auditioned to be potential companions, then fate intervened. At least Anita eventually got a better job out of it, even if she had her heart crushed along the way.

Fear factor

This was an unusual episode in not really having a monster-of-the-week, but the underlying fears here were of loneliness, regrets and dying alone. It touched on the real world by showing the kinds of difficult isolated goodbyes to loved ones experienced during Covid lockdown rules by people like Joy, in scenes that were likely to remind some families of the empty seats around their Christmas dinner tables this year.

Mysteries and questions

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Expect Doctor Who fans to argue long and hard about whether Gatwa explaining he knew the suitcase code because he was “bootstrapping” was a clever meta-nod to previous criticisms of Steven Moffat’s timey-wimey plotlines, or just too much of a hand-wavey plot convenience to be taken seriously. When Joy asked the Doctor if people usually actually feel any better after the Time Lord has explained things, it could have been the fans speaking directly to the former showrunner about exactly this kind of habit of his.

Deeper into the vortex

• There were lots of callbacks to previous things the Doctor has said, like having to go “the long way round”, and the idea that living their life one day after an another was an adventure they could never have, echoing famous speeches from Gatwa’s predecessors in Day of the Doctor (2013), Dragonfire (1987) and Doomsday (2006).

• The 15th Doctor – without his trusty time machine – visited New York in 2025 in order to return to the Time Hotel. In The Angels Take Manhattan (2012) he said he could never take the Tardis there again, as the “timelines are too scrambled” and visiting “would rip New York apart”.

• Joy’s mum was in the Royal Hope hospital in central London, which was transported to the moon and back during the events of Smith and Jones (2007).

• The 15th Doctor said he was “good with rope”, a callback to learning the rope technology on the goblin vessel in The Church on Ruby Road (2023).

• Villengard and its weapons factories have featured in several Moffat-penned episodes, including his first story for the revived 2005 series, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, and his last three for the show – Twice Upon A Time (2017), Boom! (2024) and this Christmas special.

• Joy’s full name in the credits was given as Joy Almondo, not the first time Moffat has used a literal translation – see The Return of Doctor Mysterio (2016).

• Thanks to the bi-generation in The Giggle (2023), presumably the whole time the 15th Doctor was stuck in that hotel with Anita, David Tennant’s 14th Doctor was sitting around with his trotters up retired at Donna’s house – with a spare Tardis on-hand.

Next time

Doctor Who will be back in the New Year! Ncuti Gatwa! Varada Sethu as new companion Belinda Chandra! Millie Gibson as Ruby Sunday for at least some of it! Mrs Flood returns! Showrunner Russell T Davies says it is coming “sooner than you think” and includes “a lot of scares”, “a planet in the far future that’s absolutely terrifying” and a Tardis trip to Miami. See you then. Have a great new year!

• Television
• Doctor Who: episode-by-episode
• Doctor Who
• Ncuti Gatwa
• Nicola Coughlan
• Fantasy TV