This Christmas, Doctor Who will feature the titular Time Lord hitting up a bizarre hotel that uses some kind of time travel to book its empty rooms. We don’t know much about the holiday episode — titled “Joy to the World” — but we do know that the writer of this timey wimey romp is the person who invented the phrase “wibbly wobbly timey wimey” to begin with. But in a new interview with BBC South East, writer Steven Moffat dropped a few juicy details about the plot of the upcoming Who Christmas special, along with the surprising reveal that this might be his last Who — ever.
According to Digital Spy, Moffat has revealed that “Joy to the World” will revolve around a hotel chain in the distant future that “sell all the unsold nights in their old hotels [throughout] history.”
Fans have pointed out that this setup is vintage Moffat, and is reminiscent of other high-concept time-travel stories throughout his various Who tenures. Moffat began writing for Who in 2005 with the 9th Doctor two-parter “The Empty Child” and “The Doctor Dances,” then delivered the instant hit episode “The Girl in the Fireplace” in 2006. But in 2007, his crowning achievement was the immortal episode “Blink,” often considered the greatest episode of modern Who, period. By 2010 Moffat became the showrunner of Doctor Who, taking over for Russell T Davies. This tenure lasted through two Doctors — Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi — and Moffat stepped down in 2017, which led to the Chris Chibnall showrunner era led by Jodie Whittaker’s 13th Doctor.
But the timeline has reset itself recently, because just like the 2005 to 2010 era of Who, Russell T Davies is once again the showrunner, and Moffat is once again writing under him. In the newly rebooted “Season 1” of Doctor Who, Moffat penned one episode, “Boom,” which was generally considered to be one of the stand-outs of that new season if you don’t count “73 Yards.”
And, apparently, when Moffat wrote “Boom,” and then the upcoming Christmas special, he wondered if he had written his last words for the Last of the Time Lords. In an interview with TV Choice this year, he said this:
“As I got to the end of ‘Boom’ and ‘Joy to the World’ I did think, ‘Is that it? Is that the final moment?’ I think they both have quite good final moments for the Doctor, [so] I was thinking, ‘Yeah, that could be goodbye.’”
Obviously, Doctor Who will continue without Steven Moffat. It has before and will again. But, among fans of his eras and episodes, there is something about his style of approaching time-travel stories that has given the contemporary era of Who its basic style and DNA. Although Who is known as a famous, long-running time travel series, there are shockingly few episodes from the pre-2005 classic era that actually focus on time paradoxes as the primary narrative. But once Moffat infused his nimble time-travel storytelling skills into the Who mythos, the full potential of Doctor Who was arguably unlocked.
So if Steven Moffat is leaving the TARDIS forever, his writing and flair for a gonzo time travel story will be missed. His return in the second era of Russell T Davies may have been a bonus lap, but that doesn’t mean fans want “Joy to the World” to be the last Moffat Who story ever. Moffat may feel like he’s at the end of his own personal regeneration cycle, but Who fans will always want more.
