‘Doctor Who’ Christmas Special 2024 Sneak Peek: Nicola Coughlan Meets Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor (VIDEO)
Joy to the world! Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan will be joining Ncuti Gatwa in Doctor Who‘s 2024 Christmas special, and thanks to a sneak peek released at San Diego Comic-Con, we see how the two cross paths.
“I am so excited for you to meet my character, Joy, a determined woman whose life is changed forever when she meets the Doctor,” Coughlan says in the video, which you can watch above. (She wasn’t in attendance for the show’s panel.) “I had the best, best time shooting this episode with Ncuti and the whole crew.” The special will be released on Christmas Day on Disney+ in the U.S.
The sneak peek takes us from Manchester 1940 (and The Queens Hotel) to Italy 1962 (and the Orient Express) to Everest 1953 (and base camp) and finally, London 2024 (and the Sandringham Hotel). Traveling between all these times and places is the Doctor, with a tray of food. “Wrong room, never mind,” he says in Italy when the passenger asks who he is.
It’s in London 2024 that we meet Joy, as she checks into the hotel. “Does it show?” she asks when the woman at the front desk asks, “Single?” referring to the room. “It’s quite … pink,” Joy says upon seeing it. She notices a locked door. (It’s not the first one in this clip.) “There’s always a door like that in a hotel room,” she remarks.
It’s once she’s alone that things get weird, first with an alien walking through that locked door (wearing a Manager name tag) and then the Doctor. He smiles when he sees Joy.
The special was written by Steven Moffat, a former showrunner of Doctor Who. “I couldn’t turn that down because I love doing the Christmas ones. I absolutely love Doctor Who on Christmas Day, and I had thought, ‘Well, I’ve done ‘Boom,’ I don’t need to do another one,’” he told TV Insider. “Then Russell [T Davies] emailed me and said, ‘Do you want to do Christmas? And I said, ‘Oh, well, right. Got to do that.’”
Doctor Who, 2024 Christmas Special, December 25, Disney+
Watchlist Easy access to only the shows you care about — all in one simple place
Alerts Only important notifications — when a show is returning, when it becomes available to stream, and more.
Special Offers Exclusive products we release related to your favorite shows and streaming services