Writer Steven Moffat promises that his Doctor Who 2024 Christmas special is lighter and more fun than his previous episodes: “It’s not Blink”

Writer Steven Moffat has penned some of the best Doctor Who episodes of all-time but they aren’t always exactly the lightest of instalments. 2007’s ‘Blink’, which introduced the haunting Weeping Angels to the show, was truly terrifying, whilst most recently ‘Boom’, which we gave the full five stars to in our review, was a tense affair seeing Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor stranded on a landmine.

However, Moffat promises that his next episode, the upcoming 2024 Christmas special ‘Joy to the World’, will take a different tone. As he tells SFX magazine in the new issue, which features the upcoming special on the cover and hits newsstands on December 3, for this episode he really leant into the festive spirit with a funnier story.

But this is Moffat we are talking about, so you should still expect plenty of emotion too. The writer teases: “It’s got your Christmas whimsy in there, so I suppose it leans toward the slightly more humorous end, to a degree. But actually it gets quite emotional, and there’s also the fun element that within the context of the wider series the Doctor has just lost one of his mates.”

Here, Moffat is referring to Millie Gibson’s companion Ruby Sunday, who waved goodbye to the TARDIS in the last series finale ‘Empire of Death’. We know it’s not a final farewell given that she will appear in the upcoming Doctor Who season 2 in some capacity, but for now, the Doctor is once again alone.

And whilst that will be explored in the Christmas special, Moffat is keen to emphasize it’s not all doom and gloom: “That puts the Doctor in a particular place, and in the modern show we’ve always honored that. So it’s the Doctor alone – which makes it sound sombre, and it’s really not. It’s whimsical and heartwarming and emotional. It’s not ‘Blink’. That’s how they review all my episodes – it’s not ‘Blink’!”

Gatwa’s Doctor will be joined by Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan in ‘Joy to the World’, so she is sure to bring humor too. In the episode Coughlan will appear as a stranger named Joy who the Doctor meets at a hotel and has a strange connection to a mysterious briefcase… intriguing!

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The Doctor Who Christmas special ‘Joy to the World’ airs on Christmas Day on BBC One in the UK and streams via Disney+ in all other territories. Read more in the latest issue of SFX magazine, which features the episode on the cover and hits newsstands on Tuesday, December 3. Check out the fittingly festive cover below…

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