Come back Doctor Who Showrunner Russell T. Davies may have pioneered the modern Doctor Who special holidays—Christmas monsters, long scenes, an occasional amount of Kylie Minogue—but it’s arguable that it’s her successor, Steven Moffat, who really nails the balancing act of what’s good. Doctor Who The Christmas story is a must. The answer, paradoxically, isn’t really a great sci-fi story so much—or at least, that’s not as important as a piece of earnest, almost shocking sentimentality about romance at the time. This year’s offering, by Moffat first Christmas script since 2017’s Twelfth Doctor sent “Twice Upon a Time,” mostly succeeding in balancing act with an interesting time twist. Doctor Who adventure laced with festive charm—one that relies on the latter to help make up for some missteps in the former.

“Joy to the World,” which premieres next week on Christmas Day, has some similarities to Ncuti Gatwa’s full debut as the 15th Doctor in holiday episode last year“The Church on Ruby Road,” so much so that it relies on an array of brilliant performances to try and cover up when its story doesn’t quite come together. It trades the fantasy twist of creepy baby-snatching goblins for more traditional sci-fi aesthetics as the Doctor shacks up a futuristic “Time Hotel” for the holidays, offering temporal gateways to Christmas throughout human history. It also leaned HEAVILY in that seasonal aesthetic too, with lots of snow, tinsel, and trees, feels more of the season than any old episode that happens to air near the end of December.

Intrigued by the mystery of a strange suitcase that appears to be a fatal exchange between hotel hosts, it has festively timey-wimey scenario—and through the aforementioned gates of the Time Hotel—which the Doctor crosses the only Joy (Nicola Coughlan), as she checks into a run-down hotel in London during Christmas 2024. The mystery of why Joy became so important to the Doctor’s latest adventure is actually set aside for a good chunk of “Joy to the World” as it took a side step to explore the branches of the gates of Time Hotels, and the temporal paradoxes that accompany them. It’s all perfectly Moffat-y, a combination of laughs, time-spinning narrative, and the almost mandatory sadness that comes with his best outings as a writer, while the Doctor finds himself pushing the life of another lonely woman along the way (Steph de Whalley’s Anita, perhaps secretly the breakout star of “Joy to the World”). This is a killer Doctor Who story idea, one that also cleverly touches on the Doctor’s own loneliness afterwards breaking up with Ruby. It happens to be timely wrapped inside another Doctor Who episode that… well, hasn’t been given the time to breathe into something interesting.

“Joy to the World” makes up for the structural shortcomings of Joy’s storyline by allowing that element of the episode to go all sentimental during the festive season, with a climactic narrative that high on the heart-pounding emotional drama to make up for the fact that it plays a little fast and loose with the logistical underpinnings, especially compared to the plot-within-a-plot of the first half of the episode is devoted in. For the most part it works, thanks to stellar performances from Gatwa and Coughlan, and makes people especially nervous about going through Christmas without loved ones. But if you find yourself more immune to Doctor WhoOffensive sentimental beauty at this time of the year, you may find the end of everything a little wanting-and wondering what the episode would be like if it remained the first plot-within-a-plot as its main idea.

But even if you don’t find yourself emotionally in tune with everything, there is at least a good bit of good. Doctor Who to be found in “Happiness to the World,” though it wasn’t the final focus of the episode. There’s enough here to satisfy anyone looking for a good one Doctor Who idea, or someone who just wants something big and Christmassy to fill their heart with seasonal spirit as they sit with the festive season—and at this point in Doctor WhoThe long history of holiday specials, that we still get stories that balance the two is a welcome little gift under our collective trees.

Doctor Who returns to Disney+ worldwide and the BBC in the UK and Ireland on Christmas Day, December 25.

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