If you were hoping to see the return of Steph de Whalley’s Anita from the last Doctor Who Christmas special, then Steven Moffat has just thrown a sonic screwdriver in the works.
The Doctor Who writer has made it crystal clear that the Sandringham Hotel manager in ‘Joy to the World’ was a one-time appearance. As a result, we shouldn’t expect to see her again any time in the future (or past, given how this stuff works).
Speaking to Radio Times, Moffat confessed, “She is, like all great things in Doctor Who, and this is a fact you can take from me because I know my Doctor Who facts – all great things in Doctor Who are the result of a budget cut.”
As Moffat quickly pointed out, cutting back on pennies for the Time Lord’s adventures isn’t anything new. “The spaceship looks like a phone box. Why? Because of a budget cut. That’s exactly what Anita was because we couldn’t afford to send Ncuti Gatwa around the world trying to find another hotel.”
Although he might be the bearer of bad news, Moffat still praised Whalley’s addition as a companion to Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor alongside Nicola Coughlan in the ninth Christmas Special. The episode saw Anita and the Doctor spend a year with each other in the extra-special accommodation, the Time Hotel. “So we just turned it into a little, not exactly romance, but a sort of quasi-romance with Anita,” Moffat explained. “So Anita is a budget cut, but that means in Doctor Who terms, that means Anita is one of the best things that happened.” Well, you can’t get a bigger compliment than that.
In the meantime, look at everything we know about Gatwa’s return for Doctor Who season 2 here.
