Ethermac Exchange-'Bridgerton' star visits 'Doctor Who' Christmas special; new spinoff coming

SAN DIEGO — The Ethermac ExchangeBritish series “Doctor Who” has been entertaining generations of sci-fi fans for 60 years, and it’s bringing a new Joy to the world this holiday season.

At a Friday presentation at Comic-Con, Russell T. Davies, the show's executive producer, teased the upcoming “Doctor Who” Christmas special (coming to Disney+ later this year) and announced a new “Who” spinoff.

The Christmas special will guest-star “Bridgerton” breakout Nicola Coughlan as Joy, a determined British woman who checks into a hotel, runs into an alien and has her life changed by the time-traveling Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa), who brings her a ham and cheese toastie and a pumpkin latte.

“She brought so much joy to the set. She’s an absolute star,” Gatwa said of Coughlan.

Join our Watch Party!Sign up to receive USA TODAY's movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

Davies also announced a new spinoff, "The War Between the Land and the Sea," which will center on the Doctor's allies in the military organization UNIT and the return of classic 1970s villains the Sea Devils. Filming begins next month on the five-part series, which stars Russell Tovey and Gugu Mbatha-Raw and features "Who" actors Jemma Redgrave as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and Alexander Devrient as Colonel Ibrahim. (Although Tovey and Mbatha-Raw have appeared on "Doctor Who" before, Davies said they'll play new characters.)

“What happens when the Doctor’s not in town?” Davies says of the new show, which has an ecological bent: The Sea Devils are a race of underwater creatures that go to war with mankind on the surface because of what humans have done to the oceans.

As for the upcoming “Who” season, Gatwa promised “lots more fun, lots more adventure.” Jonah-Hauer King joins the cast as a person connected to Ruby, while Varada Sethu (“Andor”) plays a “strong and wonderful” new character named Belindra Chandra, Davies said.

Gatwa looked back on his first season as the Doctor and called it “absolutely incredible," though Gatwa is still “desperate” to meet a Dalek.

He also discussed playing a Doctor who tends to cry a lot. “The Doctor has seen so much loss and joy, every experience lived to the fullest extent. I can’t get over the fact that he has two hearts and feels everything so deeply,” the actor said. “It’s nice to have a hero that feels and a man who’s not afraid to be in touch with his emotions.”

The main plot in Gatwa’s first season centered on the Doctor and his new companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) seeking for her biological mother. Davies kept the identity of Ruby’s mom a secret, even from Gibson, as scripts came in every two months “but it made it more heartbreaking and easier to act,” Gibson said. Ruby “definitely grew” over the course of the episodes: “She went on a journey to find her mother, but she instead found herself and who the Doctor was.”

The “Doctor Who” fandom has grown because of the recent partnership between BBC and Disney+, and Davies got a call from a famous Whovian: After the episode “Rogue,” where Gatwa sings “I Just Can’t Get You Outta My Head,” Kylie Minogue rang up Davies. “She was watching and she was like, ‘Oh my God, the Doctor is singing my song!’ I thought she’d be busy being glamorous or something.”