After several years of absence, the Christmas episodes have made their return to the lore Doctor Who. This year, it’s Steven Moffat who takes over the reins of the exercise (for his ninth contribution to a festive episode, no less), intending to transform the solitude of the character played by Ncuti Gatwa into festive and introspective tale. Without equaling certain special episodes that have become cult – we still have our hearts aching when we think back to the Christmas Special which began the sixth burst of episodes of the 2004 series, Merry Christmas wants to offer viewers a mixture of everything that makes the series magic. Bet successful?
Subscribe to WorldOfSoftware
A temporal hotel
In Merry ChristmasSteven Moffat offers us a closed sessionas only Doctor Who knows how to do. Ncuti Gatwa finds himself in the heart of a mysterious hotel, where each door is a time portal to another place, and another time. Throughout his exploration, the traveler visits a hotel room in Manchester in 1940, the Orient-Express in 1962, Edmund Hillary’s Everest base camp in 1953, and ends his journey in 2024, a Christmas evening at the Sandringham Hotel.
The Time hotel is full of surprises and back doors, and it is at the heart of this Merry Bazaar that Ncuti Gatwa will have to deal with an environment in perpetual motion. If the issues are not immediately obvious – the Christmas episode stands out more as a enchanted parenthesis before the resumption of hostilities in 2025 — we find in this Christmas Special all the ingredients of a good Christmas episode. Even the dinosaurs are there.
A 5-star cast
It is first of all thanks to its high-flying casting that this new episode of Doctor Who the firmament offers itself. The brilliant Ncuti Gatwa, who has played the new Doctor for almost a year now, has been joined by a galaxy of new characters. Nicola Coughlan, who already shone in The Bridgerton Chronicles et Derry Girls proves to us that she definitely has more than one string to her bow, and shines in the shy, but effective role of Joy, a young woman a little lost, who tries as best she can to find her place in the fragile balance of the universe.
Of love dripping
That’s ultimately all we ask for in a good Christmas episode of Doctor Who : dive head first into the dripping good feelingsand give us the experience of an enchanting Christmas. Clearly, this episode does not have the ambitions of last year, and does not constitute any particular tipping point. There is also no question of the Doctor meeting his new companion here (who, we already know, will be played by Varada Sethu).
If the issues of the episode sometimes struggle to be heard, Steven Moffat preferring to rest on comfortable laurels, rather than offering us a real end of year showthere is one point on which the writing definitely fails: the introspection of the main character. Between desire for solitude, nostalgia after Ruby’s departure and desire to live an almost normal life, Ncuti Gatwa offers us a beautiful moment of emotion, and great Christmas entertainment to savor by the fire.
Doctor Who is on Disney+
🟣 To not miss any news on the WorldOfSoftware, , .
