Posted in: BBC, Disney+, TV | Tagged: doctor who, ncuit gatwa, Nicola Coughlan, steven moffat

Doctor Who Christmas Special Teases More Steven Moffat Worldbuilding

The clip from the upcoming Doctor Who Christmas Special "Joy to the World" shows that Steven Moffat is still in stealth worldbuilding mode.

This Friday's Children in Need charity event continued the tradition of having a Doctor Who event, this time previewing this year's upcoming Christmas Special, "Joy to the World." The script is by former showrunner Steven Moffat, his fiftieth script for Doctor Who, which might be the biggest number of scripts a single writer has contributed to the series in its sixty-year history. "Joy to the World" guest-stars  Bridgerton (and Big Mood) star Nicola Coughlan as the Joy of the title since Moffat just loves puns with characters' names in his titles. And Moffat brings back a recurring villain that he created in the series for the story.

Villengard Again!

Even in just this short clip, Moffat brings back a villain he created and has been the only writer to keep using them in Doctor Who, just like he's been the only writer to take River Song (Alex Kingston) from her entire arc from birth to her marriage to the Doctor and death and afterlife since he created her. The Villengard Corporation is a galaxy and centuries-spanning evil arms-manufacturing corporation that's not a single evil person but a faceless corporate entity that uses and destroys people. Villengard last appeared in Ncuti Gatwa's first season in "Boom," where the Doctor stepped on a landmine manufactured by Villengard in a war overseen by Villengard so that the warring factions could continue to buy weapons and equipment from Villengard. War Capitalism is just one of the many enterprises Villengard has its fingers in for making money.

"I can tease something about the Christmas Special," Moffat told BBC South East a few days ago in an interview."Imagine in the far, far future that a hotel chain got hold of the idea of Time Travel. What's the first thing a hotel would do if they had Time Travel? They'd realise that they had an opportunity to sell all the unsold nights of their own hotels in history…" Looks like the hotel chain might be owned by Villengard. In Steven Moffat's Doctor Who universe, evil corporations are the most pervasive evil of all. At least the Daleks are more honest about their intentions. Here, it looks like Villengard is using time travel to create a power source for their time travel technology by hatching it 65 million years ago, which means they might have wiped out the dinosaurs for the sake of profit.

Moffat didn't necessarily set out to make an anti-capitalist statement. He's just drawing on stuff he's read in the news to use for entertainment, and evil corporations are perfect for providing endless plot ideas for fun and satire, and that just happens to fit Doctor Who perfectly.

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