The Doctor Who Christmas special is a technicolour rumination on loneliness

Guest star Nicola Coughlan joins Ncuti Gatwa in a chaotic festive episode

Things associated with a British Christmas: charred pigs in their charred blankets, blue flames licking round an inedible pudding, crackers dispensing choking hazards, mountains of balled up wrapping paper, and a time-travelling alien cracking wise on the telly. Yes, Doctor Who has become a Christmas tradition to stand along presents, dinner and political arguments. And this year it returns to BBC One with “Joy to the World”, a festive special about loneliness and its cures.

Let me try and wrap my noggin around the set-up. Joy (Nicola Coughlan, guest starring) checks into what I think is supposed to be a rather drab London hotel (but in reality would cost £300 a night) for Christmas. “Welcome to my room,” she tells a cohabiting fly. “And I thought I was going to be lonely!” Meanwhile, the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) is staying at the Time Hotel, in the distant future. It’s there that he witnesses something strange: a bloke handcuffed to a briefcase, acting as though he’s under mind control. A naturally inquisitive fellow, the Doctor starts sniffing at a conspiracy, and finds himself bursting through the locked door of Joy’s hotel suite, kicking off an adventure that will take the pair from Hillary’s ascent of Everest to the dinosaurs, by way of V-2s raining over Manchester and lovesick lesbians on the Orient Express.

Back in November 2023, Disney struck a deal with the BBC for the international broadcast rights to Doctor Who, with bods at the corporation promising the partnership would “elevate the show to even greater heights”. What this has meant, in reality, is that the quality of the CGI is dramatically improved. The tyrannosaurus rex is not a man in an articulating dinosaur outfit, but a full-blown reptilian menace.

What it doesn’t mean, however, is that Disney will be contributing much towards the creation of internal logic. They are, after all, a company that owns both Star Wars and Marvel – two franchises that have failed to produce a coherent entertainment product in recent years. Big, flashy action sequences they can manage; plotting that balances genuine stakes with character development, less so.

‘Derry Girls’ favourite Nicola Coughlan guest stars in this festive special (BBC Studios/James Pardon)

But, then again, Doctor Who is intended to have a frenzied sense of chaos. “You have to be mysterious all the time!” the Doctor tells himself, when a second Doctor bursts through from the Time Hotel. “That’s why everyone leaves you, that’s why you’re always alone.” Just as Joy is alone (with her fly) for Christmas, so too is the Doctor. He is missing the teenage girl, Ruby (Millie Gibson), who he usually hangs around with. And “Joy to the World”, written by Steven Moffat, is really a rumination on loneliness. Joy, lamenting things left unsaid when her mother died in the pandemic (yes, Covid is canon to the Whoniverse). Anita (Steph De Whalley), her hotel’s manager, left alone to hoover and plump and re-towel for the rest of time. And the Doctor, always up to some shenanigans, knowing that eventually his companions – Karen Gillan, Catherine Tate, Bradley Walsh – will leave him. For Jumanji, for The Office US, for Blankety Blank; the Doctor always ends up alone.

And so, Moffat’s Christmas special this year is an attempt to find solace in self-reliance. And even though Doctor Who doesn’t really hold together, when viewed from a totally dispassionate critical perspective, it’s still transparently a point of communion. Kids will find a hero in Gatwa’s grinning, shouting, rambunctious protagonist, while plenty of grown-ups will pick out references that hark back to the days of Christopher Eccleston or even William Hartnell. With streaming services offering an increasingly atomised menu for different generations – Beast Games for the kids, Pride and Prejudice for mum and dad – it’s a relief to have something like Doctor Who, which aspires to be an unpretentious crowd-pleaser.

Look, Doctor Who is not an aesthetic masterpiece. The production design is a dizzying, technicolour hellscape, and the script is constructed with scant regard for the casual viewer. “When you explain things, do people feel any better?” Joy asks the Doctor. “Not usually,” he confesses. But some things don’t require an explanation. And cheap, silly sci-fi has become a Christmas tradition, whether you like it or not.