A familiar foe is going to make their presence felt in “Joy to the World,” the upcoming Doctor Who Christmas special. In a clip just shared to social media to boost charity event Children in Need, we see Ncuti Gatwa‘s Doctor and guest star Nicola Coughlan (playing a character with the seasonally appropriate name of Joy) confronting a sinister briefcase belonging to… yep, Villengard is back.
“Evil must logo,” the Doctor advises his new friend, as he uses the sonic screwdriver to scan the case and learn where it came from. “Villengard,” he chuckles when he realizes the truth. “Biggest arms manufacturer in recorded history. Very old enemies of mine.”
As you’ll see in the clip, the scan activates a communicator (a dapper Silurian) that engages them in an ominous conversation, during which the Doctor tries his best to reason with a sinister corporate hologram. Then… dinosaur? DINOSAUR!! Check it out:
Christmas in November, courtesy of @BBCCiN! 🧸🎄
Watch a sneak preview of the upcoming #DoctorWho special JOY TO THE WORLD… pic.twitter.com/pHLGJW9vkA
— Doctor Who (@bbcdoctorwho) November 15, 2024
Oh, fridge indeed! The brief scene gives us a little more detail about the Time Hotel plot in the Steven Moffat-scripted special episode—and the author is important, because Moffat also wrote “Boom,” an episode in the most recent season that saw the Doctor in a high-stakes face-off with “the Villengard Algorithm.”
It also fits into what Moffat teased about the episode in a recent interview with the BBC: “Imagine in the far far future… a hotel chain got hold of the idea of time travel. What’s the first thing a hotel chain would do if they had time travel? They’d realize they had an opportunity to sell all the unsold nights in their hotels in history.” Add in an apocalyptic twist and some Christmas cheer, and you’ve got a festive gift from Doctor Who ready to deliver.
“Joy to the World,” Doctor Who‘s Christmas special, arrives December 25 on Disney+ internationally and on the BBC in the UK. Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor will return for his second season of timey-wimey adventures in 2025.
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