DOCTOR WHO – ‘Joy to the World’

Christmas was reclaimed by Doctor Who last year when audiences got their first look at the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) in “The Church on Ruby Road”, and it seems showrunner Russell T Davies is ensuring this tradition is maintained after a half-decade where the show’s winter special was punted to New Year’s Day — which is ironically a more popular time for UK TV viewing now, as the culture has shifted away from families gathering on the sofa during Christmas Day. Regardless, “Joy to the World” bridges the gap between Gatwa’s inaugural run and Series 15 next year, with Steven Moffat dropping in to write a seasonal treat.

Interestingly, after RTD left Doctor Who, he didn’t return to write a single episode during the ensuing eras, but now that he’s back in charge, the same isn’t true of his successor. Moffat seems to have resumed his old role during RTD’s first tenure, gamely writing one-off stories that are often series highlights—as happened with Series 14 and “Boom”. Perhaps it’s a sign that Moffat is even more tethered to writing for his favourite show, whenever he gets the opportunity to, or that he’s seen as being more gifted at writing for versions of The Doctor he didn’t come up with himself. (Although I’d argue that Ncuti Gatwa isn’t a huge stretch from David Tennant’s tenth incarnation, only with suaveness replacing nerdiness.)

It’s just a shame there are times when you feel like RTD and Moffat have slightly different notions of what The Doctor should fundamentally be like (the former’s penchant for a lovable but lonely God or the latter’s crackpot alien inventor), so there’s some discordance with the character’s sense of growth in this special. Also, let’s face it, half the time it feels like The Doctor forgets whatever evolution they’ve been through with each regeneration if it’s detrimental to the emotional needs of the current story.

“Joy to the World” finds The Doctor, sans companion Ruby Sunday, arriving at London’s Time Hotel in 4202 A.D. He soon discovers the business has marketed time travel itself, so each room connects to a specific location across all of human history. After befriending a porter called Trev Simpkins (Joel Fry), The Doctor’s curiosity is piqued by a mysterious man carrying a briefcase around the premises, which dissolves those who touch it and takes control of others — such as likeable hotel guest Joy (Nicola Coughlan). It’s not long before The Doctor’s intentions to solve the briefcase mystery collide with the ‘timey-wimey’ nature of the hotel’s doorways, as his future self appears to crack the briefcase’s passcoded lock, but in doing so leaves him stranded in the hotel for a year, where he gets romantically close to the manager, Anita Benn (Steph de Whalley).

Naturally, there’s a lot of wonderful character interplay during this special. Steven Moffat has a knack for writing zippy banter while throwing in meta-jokes and amusing references with regularity. Did you spot the Mr Benn sight gag about renting out era-appropriate costumes for the hotel guests? This means even a bad Moffat screenplay has a certain bubbliness to it, or a vein of humour and fluid pace that often makes you overlook other problems. I didn’t find this episode particularly festive (beyond an action sequence atop the Orient Express in winter), and the storyline itself felt like a barebones espionage plot that lacked clarity and depth as there were too many other things buzzing away in the background.

Christmas specials have a long afterlife, of course, but they’re first broadcast during a time when British families have eaten twice their body weight in turkey and mince pies, so one could argue a Christmas Day special should primarily be easy to grasp and lighthearted nonsense that appeals to a wide audience. A lot of non-fans are watching at the behest of children on Christmas Day, so I always say they’re an important recruitment tool ahead of the next full series. I’m not entirely sure “Joy to the World” would have enraptured newcomers, who perhaps still haven’t come back to the show despite Ncuti Gatwa’s much-vaunted debut and RTD’s return to right the ship.

Nevertheless, whilst I don’t think this episode hung together all that well, and I didn’t connect to Joy as a stand-in companion, there were plenty of amusing moments and sequences to make you sit up and take notice. The Doctor popping up throughout history to offer various people a “ham and cheese toastie and a pumpkin spice latte”, the Tyrannosaurus Rex moment where the show’s budget was flexed, the method to open a safe involving a length of rope being stretched through the centuries, and many others. There was even Moffat’s cheeky subversiveness on full display, giving the famous Star of Bethlehem a very different alien origin. And fans of his work will appreciate the Weeping Angels reference, and the return of the Villengard Corporation he recently introduced in “Boom”. It’s amusing that Moffat still gets to develop a little corner of the Whoniverse this way, even though he’s no longer in charge of its overall direction. But he’s also deferential to what other writers have established, to the running joke of the word “gravity” now being “mavity” (due to Sir Isaac Newton mishearing the Fourteenth Doctor) recurred once again.

Still, for as amusing and entertaining as “Joy to the World” often was, there’s a feeling these fast-paced specials could do with slowing down and letting their ideas and moments breathe a little. One of the unexpected highlights is just The Doctor having to spend a normal year in the hotel with Anita the manager, one day at a time, as it was the only part of the story that had to shift gears and sell the idea of The Doctor’s crazy life being a little ordinary for a bit. But even that part of the special whizzed by, just not as quickly as the rest of it. I understand attention spans are shorter these days, and the demands to make Who captivating often mean it has to speed through multiple big ideas per episode — but sometimes it all feels a bit wearying. It would be refreshing to have a few stories that built a sustained mood, or focused on one thing that is more character-focused and let us explore that for longer than five minutes.

There have been some dark years for Doctor Who in recent memory, for me anyway, so it feels churlish to be too negative about “Joy to the World”. It was bright and bouncy, narratively interesting at times, funny throughout, and there was even some light social commentary on the human cost of COVID-19 (Joy couldn’t say goodbye to her terminally ill mother due to pandemic restrictions), so it was great to have an episode that was an entertaining mix of things with something chewier under the surface for the adults watching. Even if it didn’t all work as cohesively as I would have liked, the villains were sorely lacking any sense of threat, and the Christmastime element was too subtle, “Joy to the World” was a mostly merry offering.

UK | 2024 | 54 MINUTES | 16:9 HD | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

writer: Steven Moffat.
director: Alex Sanjiv Pillai.
starring: Ncuti Gatwa, Nicola Coughlan, Jonathan Aris, Joel Fry, Steph de Whalley, Peter Benedict, Julia Watson, Niamh Marie Smith, Phil Baxter, Samuel Sheroa-Moore, Ruchi Rai, Joshua Leese, Ell Potter, Liam Prince-Donnelly, Fiona Marr & Fiona Scott.