During the BBC Children in Need charity live entertainment extravaganza, a clip was released from the Doctor Who Christmas special Joy to the World.

The clip features characters seen in the previously released clip featuring the pre-titles sequence from the special — the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa), Joy (Nicola Coughlan) and Silurian Melnak (Jonathan Aris).

When we first meet Joy, she has checked in to the Sandringham Hotel in London. Melnak 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.

The Doctor enters through the same door curiously trying to find the person who ordered a ham and cheese toastie with a pumpkin latte.

Melnak’s appearance in the new clip comes in the form of a hologram projected from his briefcase. The hologram’s spiel suggests that Melnak has died and the briefcase, owned by major arms supplier Villengard, has subsumed his personality to communicate its intent.

If Villengard sounds familiar, it’s because it has featured in past Doctor Who episodes, most recently as the manufacturer of the treacherous ambulances in the 2024 Doctor Who episode Boom.

Before the Doctor can work to thwart Villengard’s dangerous plot to harness the energy of a volatile manufactured star, they are interrupted by a rampaging tyrannosaurid who swallows the briefcase containing the star seed. How will the Doctor and Joy recover the dangerous star seed and escape being eaten by the dinosaur? Fans will need to wait until Christmas to find out.

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 in the 2024 holiday season, likely Christmas Day, on BBC One in the UK and Ireland and Disney+ everywhere else.