If there was any doubt, official media has announced that the Doctor Who Christmas special Joy to the World will transmit on Christmas Day, 25 December, 2024 on BBC One, BBC iPlayer and Disney+.

In Joy to the World, after parting with his best pal Ruby Sunday, the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) is lonely, bored and looking for adventure. His encounter with with ever-optimistic Joy (Nicola Coughlin) turns out to be enlightening and exactly what he needs. Writer Steven Moffat described the opening premise of the special.

“Imagine in the far, far future. Imagine that 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 realise they had an opportunity to sell all the unsold nights in their own hotels in history.”

When we first meet Joy, she has checked in to the Sandringham Hotel in London. A Silurian named Melnak (Jonathan Aris) suddenly and expectantly enters her hotel room through a locked adjoining door carrying a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist and is confronted by Joy pointing a hairdryer toward him. Being a hairless Silurian, it seems Melnak is unfamiliar with hairdryers and assumes it’s a gun. Momentarily, the Doctor enters through the same door, curiously trying to find the person who ordered a ham and cheese toastie with a pumpkin latte.

Sometime later in the special, Melnak appears in the form of a hologram projected from the briefcase, which perilously contains a star seed meant to ultimately become a power source for the sinister weapons manufacturer Villengard. If the star seed explodes on Earth anywhere or anytime in history, it will burn every living thing.

The Doctor’s quest to thwart Villengard’s nefarious plan is further complicated by the appearance of a ferocious dinosaur.

Written by Steven Moffat and directed by Alex Pillai, Joy to the World, starring Ncuti Gatwa, Nicola Coughlan, Jonathan Aris and Joel Fry, will transmit on Christmas Day, 25 December, 2024 on BBC One in the UK and Ireland and Disney+ everywhere else where available.