Doctor Who Christmas Special review — Ncuti Gatwa and Nicola Coughlan pair up for a zippy and tearful treat

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It’s Christmas, the year is 4202, and the Tardis has landed in the lobby of The Time, a gleaming hotel with a rare selling point. Each room is a time portal with doors that open like an advent calendar to different scenes from the past, whether Manchester during the Blitz, Edmund Hillary’s tent at the base camp of Mount Everest or ancient Mesopotamia.

Another opens in 2024 to a room in an unremarkable London hotel, where Joy (Derry Girls’ Nicola Coughlan) has checked in for a week, having decided to spend Christmas alone. That’s the plan, anyway, until The Time’s manager appears in her room, pursued by the Doctor, and hands her a suitcase that puts her on a countdown to certain death.

Behold “Joy to the World”, the Doctor Who Christmas special, where the fate of the universe lies in the hands of the 15th Doctor, played by Sex Education’s Ncuti Gatwa (still stylishly channelling the 1970s in brown slacks and a tan leather coat). A stern list of spoilers from the BBC prevents me from divulging more about the plot, although dedicated Whovians will know what to expect from an episode written by Steven Moffat, the pen behind classic episodes “Blink” and “The Girl in the Fireplace”, and with Russell T Davies returned to his rightful place as showrunner.

It arrives after a much-improved previous series that helped restore faith in a franchise that had lost its mojo during the Jodie Whittaker years. Much of that is down to Gatwa and his undeniable magnetism, although a cash injection from Disney has also surely helped matters.

The hour-long special features love, loss and fleeting nods to real-world events, including Covid and Downing Street parties. If that sounds grim — who wants a reminder of the pandemic four years on? — Moffatt and director Alex Pillai handle it with a lightness of touch, keeping the action zipping along as the Doctor bends time to unlock the puzzle of the suitcase. There are some winning gags, too, as a hotel worker mistakes the Tardis for a Portaloo, and the Doctor comes face to face with his future self and delivers irate home truths about life in a “giant spaceship [where] there aren’t any chairs because nobody ever comes round.”

If there is an absence of menace, once a hallmark of the series, there are still some big emotions, most notably the loneliness of a Doctor adrift without a companion following the departure last spring of Millie Gibson’s Ruby (a situation that may or may not be permanent). A big starburst of sentimentality arrives with the climax, lasting a full five minutes longer than is necessary. But then what is the point of Christmas if you can’t have a little cry during Doctor Who?

★★★★☆

BBC1, Christmas Day, 5.10pm and streaming on iPlayer and Disney+ thereafter