The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) arrives at the Time Hotel in London. It exists in the year 4202 but offers rooms in various times. The Doctor recruits Trev Simpkins (Joey Fry), one of the employees, to investigate a strange man handcuffed to a briefcase. It gets passed from person to person and takes control of their body as the previous holder disintegrates. It eventually comes to the Manager, who is a Silurian, and the Doctor follows him to the room of Joy Almondo (Nicola Coughlan) in the Sandringham Hotel in 2024, and Joy takes control of it.
The Doctor opens it to find a strange device. Before it can disintegrate Joy, a duplicate Doctor from the future arrives from the Time Hotel and gives the override code. The Doctor from the future takes Joy back (or is it forward?) to the Time Hotel, stranding the contemporary Doctor in 2024, who takes a job at the Sandringham Hotel and befriends the Manager, Anita Benn (Steph de Whalley) as he waits for himself to appear.
On Christmas Eve in 2025, the Doctor returns to the room in 2024, gives his past self the override code that he figured out, and takes Joy to the future, completing the causal loop. They open a door to 65 million years ago and the Doctor frees Joy from the briefcase by provoking her anger concerning her mother’s (Fiona Sciott) death on Christmas Day 2020 from Covid. He learns that the briefcase is made by Villengard, a weapons manufacturer he has encountered before. The briefcase is an incubator for a “star seed”. The Company’s intention is to use the briefcase as an incubator and to allow the Star Seed to grow in the past, then detonate as an energy source.
Unfortunately, a T-Rex eats the briefcase and chases the Doctor and Joy back to the hotel. Trev, who is dead but still psychically linked to the Villengard system, leads the Doctor to a shrine with the briefcase sealed inside. The Doctor opens it safely into space and it detonates, becoming the Star of Bethlehem. Various people through time take hope and comfort from seeing it, including Joy’s dying mother and Ruby Sunday (See previous series).
Steven Moffat wrote the episode at the request of Russel T. Davies. Villengard has appeared in various Doctor Who episodes as an evil weapons-maker. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were shown at the 1953 Mount Everest Base Camp. Actor Samuel Sherpa-Moore played his real great-grand-uncle Tenzing Norgay. The episode received mixed reviews, though it garnered 80% on Rotten Tomatoes. Personally, I enjoy every time the Doctor runs into himself anywhere, anytime, and you can always get my attention with a T-Rex. The Joy character is quite charming. At one point, they travel on the Orient Express and meet a love-interest of James Bond.