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With the 2024 Doctor Who Christmas special now weeks away, a new clip has arrived featuring Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor and guest star Nicola Coughlan’s character Joy finding out what they’re up against in the festive adventure.
Perhaps more importantly, they find out who’s behind what they’re up against, and it’s a name familiar to fans of writer and former showrunner Steven Moffat. No, not a rubber-suited monster, but an evil corporation – Villengard.
Aired as part of annual BBC fundraising event Children in Need, the two-minute clip sees the Doctor and Joy in a tropical treehouse investigating a briefcase attached to a dangling pair of empty handcuffs. The Doctor’s questions activate an automated Q&A response from the case, which declares itself part of “Villengard Conflict Resolution”.
“Villengard, ah! Biggest arms manufacturer in recorded history, very old enemies of mine,” the Doctor explains to Joy. It seems that Villengard has pivoted from weaponry and is now trading in a new vertical: energy. Except that according to the Doctor, their new star-seed energy project could well accidentally end up as the greatest weapon of all. Here’s the clip:
As long-time viewers will know, the planet Villengard gives its name to a corporation that runs throughout Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who writing. It initially came up in his first ever* TV story, 2005’s “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”; was then returned to as the setting for 2017 Christmas Special “Twice Upon a Time”, his final instalment as showrunner; and was a key part of his 2024 return episode “Boom”. Three different Doctors (four if you count David Bradley as William Hartnell in “Twice Upon a Time”), one evil planetary corporation that values profit over life.
As discussed in more detail here, the Doctor hinted back in “The Doctor Dances” that he was behind the critical reactor meltdown that destroyed Villengard’s manufacturing HQ, which was subsequently replaced by a banana grove (“Good source of potassium!”). This being Doctor Who though, something having happened in the Doctor’s past doesn’t mean it isn’t also due to happen in the Doctor’s future. The Doctor’s fun like that.
However the timeline plays out, Villengard – last seen whipping up very real wars over very imaginary conflicts in order to keep casualty levels and profit margins high in “Boom” – are back, and they’ve checked into the time-travelling hotel that forms the premise of “Joy to the World” in order to grow a star that could destroy everything, if that T-Rex doesn’t get there first.
Merry Christmas!
*Before anybody writes in – yes, technically the first ever Doctor Who episode written by Steven Moffat was 1999’s Comic Relief spoof “The Curse of Fatal Death”, but 2005’s The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances two-parter was the first real one, as in, the first broadcast on telly as part of a season of Doctor Who and not just an excuse to put Joanna Lumley in a push-up bra.
Doctor Who Christmas Special “Joy to the World” will air on BBC One, iPlayer and Disney+ in December.
The post Doctor Who 2024 Christmas Special Brings Back a Recurring Steven Moffat Enemy appeared first on Den of Geek.
