‘Doctor Who’ 2024 Christmas Special “Joy to the World” Review

The 15th Doctor is back for the annual Doctor Who Christmas special, “Joy to the World”! Nicola Coughlan guest stars as Joy. Read our Doctor Who 2024 Christmas Special Review below.

This review contains spoilers for Doctor Who (Series 14) and Doctor Who: Joy to the World.

It’s that time of year again! Yup, another warm and cozy Doctor Who Christmas Special to watch as your kids play with their presents and your parents admire the ‘#1 Parent’ mugs they got. 

The last time we saw The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa), he had dropped off his Series 14 companion, Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), back to meet her biological mum. As a result, Ncuti Gatwa gives a stellar performance to The Doctor in this episode, bringing a lot more weight to how his version of The Doctor grapples with loneliness. 

Notably, this special was written by Steven Moffat; Executive Showrunner of Series 5-10 and who most recently wrote the third episode of Series 14, “Boom”. In my opinion, Moffat handled the structure of a time-loop episode with enough care so that it didn’t feel repetitive from his own episodes (Series 9’s “Heaven Sent”) or even from the previous season (“73 Yards”).

Doctor Who: Joy to the World Recap

The episode follows The Doctor as he checks into The Time Hotel, a hotel with time portals leading to every Christmas in history. He’s greeted by Trev (Joel Fry), who The Doctor immediately entrusts with a mission to find a customer with a briefcase. After several death-by-briefcases later, The Doctor meets Joy (Nicola Coughlan) in a December 2024 hotel room right as a Silurian Hotel Manager is about to hand over the briefcase to her. 

Joy ends up picking up the briefcase, and The Doctor has roughly a minute to save her life from a fully energized star locked inside the briefcase. A future version of The Doctor suddenly barges in at the last second to give the present Doctor the code needed to turn off the briefcase’s self-detonation, and The Doctor is forced to spend a year alone at the 2024 hotel as The Future Doctor brings Joy to his present.

But The Doctor finds solace (and work) thanks to the hotel manager, Anita (Steph de Whalley). The two spend the year together in what’s probably the first year in The Doctor’s recent life where he didn’t have to worry about much. After bidding farewell to Anita, The Doctor makes his way back to The Time Hotel to complete the time loop and return back to the main plot of the story.

Upon reuniting, The Doctor and Joy finally connect with each other, but not after having to dehypnotize Joy from the briefcase. The Doctor cleverly invokes Joy’s anger and she breaks free from the briefcase’s curse. Joy expresses her irritation at The Doctor, who had been grieving the loss of her mother who had died a few Christmases ago. The Doctor apologizes, and the two eventually stumble into a room transporting them back 65 million years. This is the precise amount of time needed for the star to fully mature. Once in the room, a Tyrannosaurus Rex swallows up the briefcase and The Doctor and Joy speed out of the portal.

The Doctor then receives an alert through the Sonic Screwdriver, conversing with Trev (who, after being killed by the briefcase, was absorbed into the star’s consciousness), who leads the two into a room where the briefcase is buried. The Doctor leaves Joy in the room with the briefcase as he leaves to figure out a solution, but when he returns he finds a glowing Joy about to become a physical star in the sky.

Joy reveals that the words The Doctor used against her to free her from the star earlier convinced her that she should be the one to detonate the star. Joy’s final scene in the episode flashes back to Christmas 2020, when her mom was dying in the hospital, as she ends a video call with the 2020 Joy. As Joy’s mom looks out to the sky, a star begins to glow and the mom begins to become absorbed by the star’s consciousness.

We end the episode with a surprise shot of Ruby Sunday looking out her window and calling her mum, and a scene of The Doctor transporting back to the first Christmas with a final shot of the Nativity scene and the words “Bethlehem 0001” above it.

Doctor Who 2024 Christmas Special Review: “Joy to the World”

“Joy to the World” is one of the most heart-warming Christmas specials Doctor Who has made as of recent. In no doubt thanks to Steven Moffat for stepping in as writer, this year’s special is leaps ahead of the last few years’. 

One thing I appreciated about the episode is how relevant it is to today’s audience. The episode still feels timeless, but has a subtext that resonates with many this holiday season. The details of how each character spends their Christmas lonely may feel like a gut-punch; as so many people are still grieving the losses of their loved ones coming out of the Pandemic, and others are suffering an overwhelming amount of political hatred that may have caused them to distance themselves from others. 

Doctor Who has always been a show hoping to help people understand the bigger picture, and I feel this special utilized the right opportunity to present this statement beautifully. The episode felt right along the lines of a Matt Smith/Peter Capaldi adventure, and had a much better portrayal/introduction to Ncuti Gatwa’s rendition of The Doctor than “The Church on Ruby Road” did.

Nicola Coughlan’s Joy was wonderful and fun for the scarce amount of screentime after being sidelined for a third of the episode. I think both her and Steph de Whalley’s Anita did a wonderful job as the companion, and both of their characters were able to have charismatic tension with The Doctor without it feeling romantic.

Overall, The episode felt fresh and new, and I’m excited to see where The Doctor goes next season. Series 15 is set to premiere in 2025, and you can watch the first trailer for the upcoming season here:

Doctor Who: Joy to the World is directed by Alex Pillai and written by Steven Moffat. It stars Ncuti Gatwa, Nicola Coughlan, Joel Fry and Stephanie de Whalley.

Thanks for reading. If you liked this review of the Doctor Who 2024 Christmas Special be sure to check out more reviews and Doctor Who news here at Feature First.