Nobody ever really wants to spend Christmas with a doctor… unless that man is Doctor Who.
In fact, the Doctor Who Christmas (and, at times, New Years) special has become quite a tradition in recent years. And 2024 is no exception. Now fully settled into the Tardis, the current Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa, has once again decided to make a house call with Doctor Who: Joy to the World, a gift to be unwrapped on Christmas morning on Disney+. Asked what he believes makes Doctor Who such a special addition to the Christmas season, Gatwa suggests that the core of the story taps into the very soul of the holiday.
“It feels very nice to be back with a Christmas special,” Gatwa begins. “It’s got such a joyous, lovely, warm Christmassy feel. There is so much heart in this story which touches on loss, love and humour, which is exactly what you want for a Christmas Day adventure with the Doctor. I can’t wait for the audience to see it, it’s very joyous.”
As such, these episodes have become their own Christmas tradition for devoted fans of the Who-niverse. Now, with the release of Joy to the World, the Doctor himself explains that he’s still very much dealing with the loss of his companion, Ruby in the previous season.
“We find the Doctor at the start of this episode alone,” Gatwa clarifies. “He’s lost his companion and he’s on the hunt for some milk! He’s landed in a very exciting hotel, and then the adventure ensues. He’s obviously still dealing with losing Ruby, who is back at home with her family, and he’s trying to fill that void with an adventure, and it is a big one!”
“Fighting a T-Rex and working with Nicola Coughlan, Jonathan Aris, Steph de Whalley and Joel Fry was great fun. It was a really great cast and a really beautiful touching script. I was excited for the character development for the Doctor in this episode, I thought ‘this is good for you, you need this!’.”
Over the years, the relationship between the Doctor and his companion has always been an essential one to the success of the series. With the addition of Joy, Gatwa believes that the latest addition to the Tardis has a ripple effect that affects his character emotionally in a different way.
“I think they have a really interesting dynamic. Their relationship isn’t plain sailing and there are bumps in the road, but I think Joy forces the Doctor to look into himself and his life and question it somewhat. There are also some really funny moments between them.”
Of course, much of the… well… joy of Joy comes from some wonderful work by Bridgerton star, Nicola Coughlan. For Gatwa, the experience working with Coughlin was so enjoyable that he struggles to put it into words.
“It was so much fun working with Nicola,” he points out. “We are fans of each other and each other’s work, and see each other out and about in London, and I’ve always loved and respected her as an actor. We’ve always wanted to work together and so this was the perfect opportunity. It’s quite tricky describing what it was like working with Nicola because everything just sounds like a bad pun – she was a Joy, she is a star, quite simply that.”
“Working on the jungle platform with Nicola was precarious,” he continues. “It was on a gimble so it would move and the whole set was like a bucking bronco! It was mad to watch the crew have to reset everything after each take. Oh, that was fun. It was a set where you had to let whatever be, be, because everything was going to break, and not going to do what it was meant to do because everything was going to obviously fall. It humbled us all. The things we can do here are really cool.”
Even so, despite his love for the series, don’t necessarily /expect Gatwa to spend his holiday watching himself amble about the Tardis as the actor struggles to watch himself onscreen.
“I still find it mortifying watching things I’m in!,” he claims. “And so I don’t know whether I’ll be watching it with my family and friends or pretending it isn’t happening and catching up later.”
Doctor Who: Joy to the World is available on Disney+ on December 25th, 2024.
