Doctor Who writer teases ‘epic’ Christmas special plot for Ncuti Gatwa and Nicola Coughlan

Doctor Who writer Steven Moffat has teased details of the Christmas special, guest-starring Bridgerton’s Nicola Coughlan alongside Time Lord Ncuti Gatwa.

It’s been almost a year since the world was introduced to Sex Education star Gatwa as the first queer Doctor, and the festive special, “Joy To The World” – a nod to Isaac Watts’ classic Christmas carol – features Coughlan as Joy, an endearing if slightly awkward young woman checking into a London hotel in the present day.

But, as Moffat told BBC South East Today, there’s more to the Sandringham Hotel than meets the eye.

“Imagine in the far, far future, imagine that a hotel chain got hold of the idea of time travel,” he said. “What’s the first thing [they] would do? They’d realise they had an opportunity to sell all the unsold nights [at] their hotels in history.”

Moffat is known for writing some of Doctor Who’s best-loved episodes during Russell T Davies’ initial run as showrunner in the mid 2000s.

He was drafted in again to write this year’s Christmas episode “from scratch” because Davies was too busy completing the second series of his new Doctor Who era.

Whovians got their first taste of the Christmas special in July, when Coughlan revealed that Joy is a “determined woman whose life is changed for ever when she meets the Doctor”.

A brief clip was then shared, showing Gatwa popping his head into various different periods in history, including a war-ravaged Manchester, aboard the Orient Express in Italy in the 60s, and at the top of Mount Everest in 1953.

He offered each of the people he encountered a toasted ham-and-cheese sandwich and a pumpkin latte, seemingly becoming an employee of the hotel.

Davies has previously described the episode as “one of the maddest” in Doctor Who history, saying: “It’s epic, it goes to so many different places, and it’s a great story of who the Doctor is when he’s alone.”

Since returning to the series, Davies has given the Doctor a queer romance with enigmatic bounty hunter Rogue, played by Jonathan Groff, and featured a host of LGBTQ+ stars, including Drag Race legend Jinkx Monsoon, Heartstopper favourite Yasmin Finney and the show’s first trans man, Pete MacHale.

“Joy to the World” will stream on BBC iPlayer and Disney+ on Christmas Day and is expected to air on BBC1 the same day.

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