Joy to the World
review

Holistic Review: For the past 20 years, I've wished for a Christmas special like this; Joy to the World is excellent not just because of its refreshingly straightforward plot — enlivened by time-travel shenanigans, and witty banter delivered by a stellar cast — but because its themes of true friendship, interpersonal connection, and selfless giving exemplify the very best of Christmas.

Ever since The Christmas Invasion in 2005, I've been asking for a Christmas special that went beyond the mere trappings of Christmas to focus on the meaning behind the season: love, joy, togetherness, giving. And in Joy to the World, I think we've finally gotten a version of it.

But let's start with a quick look at the plot, which for a Moffat story is (refreshingly) rather simpler than it first appears. To fill their need for an unlimited power source, the wicked weapons-manufacturing corporation Villengard has R&Ded an embryonic atom which will eventually mature into a(n evidently sentient) star, given enough time. Villengard, being the impatient type, decide that rather than waiting millennia for the star to develop, they'll just transport it far enough back in time to make it ready-to-use now. The nearest organization with that kind of far-distant time-travel capability is the luxury-resort Time Hotel, so Villengard pops the star seed into a briefcase — which has the power to possess and brainwash its hosts (and prevent them from opening it, or tampering with the star seed inside, on pain of disintegration) — attached to a smart handcuff, which is programmed to glom on to the nearest host(s) who can ultimately deliver it to its intended destination.

And that's where the Doctor comes in, intercepting the briefcase and its courier just as it finally reaches the Time Hotel, where its only remaining task is to find the right person who can take it through the right portal to send it far enough back in time. It eventually hitches a ride with 21st-century Joy, who successfully carries it through a portal back to prehistoric Earth, where it gets swallowed by a dinosaur and spends the next 65 millennia brewing and developing and possessing passing humans until it winds up maturing in turn-of-the-era Bethlehem. But, as Villengard has foreseen and shrugged off, the star poses a danger to Earth: if it isn't taken offworld, the star will consume the entire planet in flames when it blossoms to full size. The Doctor plans to transport the star seed out into space using the TARDIS, but with only minutes to go, Joy — who has formed a bond with the seed — steps in, dedicating her life to saving the star by fusing with it and giving it the means to find a new home elsewhere in the galaxy.

Joy to the World is another increasingly-less-rare example of Doctor Who incorporating time travel into the plot of a story. This is made possible — and simpler than usual — through the episode's setting: the Time Hotel, a 43rd-century London resort where travellers can dress up for the historical period of their choice, and then be whisked there via a portal that leads to an unoccupied hotel room in that timezone. From the brochures and destinations we can make out, the options for travellers include numerous Western locations and events (the fall of Troy, ancient Rome, the assassination of Julius Caesar, Pompeii, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the OK Corral, the London Blitz, Manchester 1940, Area 51, the Orient Express, the assassination of JFK, a Russian submarine, Pisa, Monaco, and (ha!) the Icelandic Alliance), and a smattering of non-Western ones (the Mesozoic Era, the Stone Age, Mesopotamia, the construction of the pyramids of Giza, Everest — albeit with a team of white English-speaking mountaineers — and, er, Hiroshima). There's more than a whiff of dark tourism here, but okay.

Joy to the World also incorporates time travel in the form of an unorthodox bootstrap paradox — the Doctor never figures out the security code to the briefcase; he simply remembers his future self saying it — which skips right past the logical plot motivation we were expecting. Scriptwise, this decision is a bit weird and feels quite like cheating, but because it's shoehorned in so needlessly — the obvious, even signposted, solution was that the Doctor would gradually solve the code over the course of his solitary year ("I could figure it out if I just had time!"), and we see his pages and pages of calculations — that it surely must have been a deliberate decision, and probably an attempt to wind up fan-reviewers like me. Anyway, Moffat and Gatwa employ a lot of charm to successfully breeze past this 'minor' niggle.

The Time Hotel setting was inspired by a typical Moffat Idea, of taking something perfectly ordinary — like blinking — and figuring out how to spin it into a scary monster or a clever story concept. Here, the high-concept idea is:

For once, the Moffat Idea isn't a scary one, but actually a mind-blowing one, to the point that you feel he could've easily anchored a whole TV series on this frankly brilliant notion, rather than using it up on a single episode of Doctor Who. (But it does make for a great Doctor Who plot.) Moffat mines the Time Hotel for humor, too, like the notion that the kitchen receives your room service order 30 minutes in advance, thus allowing your food to arrive the very moment you've placed your order.

I must admit that, from the opening sequence — which was trailed separately, weeks before the episode aired — I wasn't sure that I was going to be too keen on this story. I like my Doctor Who to build atmosphere by exploring a single time and place, so I always get nervous whenever the series gets epic ambitions, trying to cram too many different settings into one plot, because it tends to make the story as a whole feel disjointed. Here, not only were we teased with multiple locations around the world and across various times, but also a Silurian... it had me fearing the worst. But once those scenes — and the potentially-ridiculous line "Ham and cheese toastie and a pumpkin latte?" — are placed in the context of the Time Hotel, and the Doctor's very clever room-service ploy, they're brilliant.

It helps, too, that most of these settings and characters are only briefly featured in fleeting supporting scenes. Manchester 1940 is included purely for local color, with scenes bookending the story; whereas the Orient Express and Himalayas only play a role in the plot when the Doctor needs to generate enough force to pull the stone door off the Israeli shrine. Sir Edmund Hillary and his men barely feature, whereas Basil and Hilda are mainly present for comic relief. Even in the main plotline, what initially appears to be a gigantic guest cast (and an overabundance of characters) quickly gets whittled down to just a few, and many of those are quickly offed. This gradual narrowing to a core set of characters and a select handful of locations really helps to keep the story focused.

The storyline is broken into roughly 4 acts: first, the setup, as the Doctor puzzles out the mystery of the briefcase and it finds its final host (onscreen, anyway) in Joy. Second, a digression as the Doctor lives out a full year on Earth in, unusually for him, real time. Third, the briefcase finds its way back to prehistoric Earth and the Doctor rescues Joy from its clutches. And fourth, the Doctor and Joy track down the briefcase's current location to stop it from wiping out all life on Earth.

The story is so refreshingly straightforward (despite its time-travel shenanigans) and fast-paced that, in the moment, it feels pretty free of plot holes, though on closer examination, a few do develop.

  1. Why did Mr Single want to take the briefcase to the third floor specifically? This is sort of a corollary to my next question:

  2. Why, when the briefcase finally gains control of an employee with an all-access pass, does the manager take it to Joy's room at the Sandringham, a mere ~400 years in the past? The briefcase — and Villengard — surely must realize that it needs to go millions of years further back in time, no?

  3. When the Doctor grabs the briefcase in Joy's hand, why doesn't the handcuff immediately switch to his wrist?

  4. If the Time Hotel guests are entering very specific hotel rooms in-between official bookings, are they ever able to leave the rooms? (They wouldn't have a key to unlock it from the outside.) Or do they just stay in and order room service from the perplexed hotel staff who are 100% certain that the room is unoccupied? (Or perhaps the Time Hotel has some way of booking local reservations, and making payments, under their client's names?)

  5. It is rather surprising that the Time Lords (assuming their extinction doesn't make it retroactively impossible) didn't object to the existence of the Time Hotel. It seems to be the sort of thing that would exponentially increase the risk of the butterfly effect, at the very least.

  6. If Villengard wanted to create a customizable source of functionally infinite energy,
    (a) why did they have to create their own star (rather than using a preexisting one), and
    (b) why does the fully-matured star appear to believe that it will no longer be harnessed by Villengard because it's now "beyond them", even though its development occurred on the exact timeline that Villengard anticipated? (Unless the star's fusion with its previous hosts was unexpected, and has enabled it to expand beyond Villengard's original specifications?)

  7. The Doctor says that, in order to find and retrieve the case, Villengard would have to send a telepathic signal to "the last case carrier", who he assumes is Joy. But surely, after the dinosaur, ah, 'processed' the briefcase, it was passed onward to further hosts? (One might assume that it had no need for further hosts now that it was far enough back in time to mature, but the Doctor explicitly theorizes that "it would've lain around for millions of years, hijacking any living thing that passed it by," which suggests future carriers post-Joy.)

  8. The briefcase wasn't very well concealed in Bethlehem! From the shrine — which isn't a hotel room, so has no clear reason to be connected to the Time Hotel in the first place — it's nearly impossible to access the exit stairway, but anybody wandering past outside would just have to walk down the flight of stairs to find it!

  9. What enables the fusion of Joy and the star-seed to fly offworld? Neither of them individually possesses the power of flight.

Scriptwise, the story flows really well, all four acts transitioning seamlessly from one to the next. And the resolution is well signposted, starting with the clue that emotion affects the briefcase's control of its host's mind; when the Doctor realizes that Joy cares about dying again, he also realizes that he can loosen (and disrupt) the possession by making Joy angry.

And, I say that the story is fast-paced, but what's really lovely is that it takes moments to breathe and just live in the moment (as we all need to do). There's an early scene when the manager has just been 'killed' (ie, the briefcase has detached from his arm, so he's marked for imminent death), and — even though the Doctor has places to be, and the plot is most certainly anxious to get moving — the story takes a beat to allow the Doctor to sit with the dying man, and (futilely, but sweetly) encourage him to keep on fighting to live. It's a lovely moment that re-centers how the thing that really matters to the Doctor is not the adventure, or the fun, or even fighting the good fight, but the lives of individuals.

This point is driven home even more powerfully when the Doctor takes his year-long sabbatical at the Sandringham. (Where, miraculously, he doesn't even have to fend off one alien invasion. Not one!) This whole sequence is just adorable and moving, as we gradually see Anita get drawn into the Doctor's world, from his automated mopping to his bigger-on-the-inside microwave. Even though the entire second act only takes a mere eight and a half minutes, the development of Anita's friendship with the Doctor feels so gradual and natural. It's amazing how Moffat and these two actors make Anita and the Doctor's relationship feel so real in just a few minutes.

This feels like the first key theme of Joy to the World: the importance of close relationships and interpersonal connection, as traditionally seen during the Christmas season when families gather to celebrate the holiday together, exchanging gifts and sharing quality time and making treasured memories. The Doctor and Anita model the influence that a cherished friendship can have on a person's life, whereas Joy's grief at her mum's passing alone in hospital reflects the impact of family, especially since both Joy and Anita are audience stand-ins for anyone who feels isolated and alone at the holidays. For that reason, it's all the more powerful that Joy to the World allows Joy to reunite with her mum, by encouraging her mum's soul to become part of the Star of Bethlehem just before her passing.

Another key theme is selfless giving. Aside from the Doctor's more literal present to Anita (of a model TARDIS), Trev gives his life — and even dedicates his afterlife — to help the Doctor, just as Joy abandons her own life path (admittedly one that currently looks sad and lonely and full of regrets) in order to fuse with the star-seed and give it — and her mother — a new lease on life.

This being a Christmas special, the ending also carries a powerful (and much-needed) message of hope, that even when things look their bleakest, there's always the possibility of something better around the corner. In this story, the symbol of that hope is Joy herself, and as soon as she exploded in the sky, I knew what the star-seed must be, and therefore where the Doctor must be. What a sweet sentiment that the Christmas Star, according to this story, symbolizes (and maybe even inspires) hope throughout Earth's recent history.

So, I tip my hat this week to Steven Moffat, who is truly back on fine form now that he no longer has to run the whole show. Not only has he nailed a really satisfying plot, he also nails the dialogue, which is hilarious (and poignant, in the best Moffat tradition) from start to finish. I'll be quoting many examples below.

Ncuti Gatwa gets a lot of fun Doctorish moments this week. The opening sequence highlights a really fun facet of the Doctor's personality: that even when he's half-asleep and his only goal in life is to get some milk for his coffee, his brain is still so alert that it picks up on cues when something isn't right. ("Okay, so I just put my coat on. Why did I do that? [...] What did I see?") I also loved his use of the psychic paper to predict people's orders at the Sandringham, perhaps inspired by the room service at the Time Hotel. Though the fifteenth Doctor is contractually required to cry at least once per story (here the tears roll down his cheeks three times: first when the manager dies, later when he says goodbye to Anita, and finally when he witnesses Joy's transformation) — which I love because it encourages all the little boys in the audience to stay in touch with their emotions — for the most part, the Doctor breezes (dare I say) joyfully through this week's events. Of Gatwa's most exquisite line readings: "N- ...ah, yes. Habit.", "What's that then?", and possibly my favorite delivery of his yet: "I mean, I could just get a fridge."

Curiously, as the Doctor sails through Joy to the World, he accumulates not one but three quasi-companions, who take it in turn to keep him company, and all of whom wind up playing an unexpected role in the story's proceedings.

The Doctor's official, heavily promoted quasi-companion is Joy Almondo, played by the luminous Nicola Coughlan. Surprisingly, not only is Joy not immediately thrown together with the Doctor in a meet-cute — that honor goes to Trev! — she doesn't even truly partner with him until the fourth act, spending act three as a borderline villain, and being completely written out of act two. This kept me very much wrong-footed, as the Doctor was repeatedly paired up with characters who were not played by Coughlan.

Wrong-footed, I say, because I was really looking forward to Coughlan's turn as a regular, having grown to adore her over the past few years. I'm very sad to say that I wasn't a big fan of Derry Girls (humiliation/pain humor makes me cringe for all the wrong reasons) but Coughlan was the highlight of that show for me, and made it worth watching all by herself. She's likewise been one of the biggest highlights of Bridgerton, a show which boasts no shortage of highlights. So to have her stepping into such a prominent role on Doctor Who is a thrill and an honor.

Coughlan is unsurprisingly superb throughout, but she really gets to show off her talents in the third act, when the Doctor deprograms Joy from the malign influence of the briefcase. Although his treatment of her is hurtful — tantamount to bullying — I appreciate that there's precedent for his behaviour in Doctor Who. As per 1975, the Doctor is pulling a Sarah-in-the-ventilation-shafts on Joy, insulting both her personality and her name in order to motivate her; in this case, to loosen the briefcase's grip on her mind. (This also explains, I think, why he rags on her hotel room so hard, even though it's super nice and spacious.)

Impressively, that is exactly how Coughlan has been smiling all this time. Precisely because his words cut so deeply, it's really, really good that the Doctor apologizes to her not once, but twice, sincerely. ("You're thinking that maybe that wasn't a good way to save your life. Let me tell you something: there's no such thing as a bad way. I'm sorry, Joy.") But his needling of Joy succeeds in making her explode with suppressed anger, in a superb scene that really shows off Coughlan's skills. Joy's fury about having to let her mother die alone during COVID is a super-relatable character moment, and it's nice to finally see the pandemic recognized in Doctor Who after the Flux season tried so valiantly to distract us from it:

Ultimately, it's so sweet that Joy wants to give her life to save the star seed, to become a part of something bigger, and to be able to rescue her mother as a result. Her transformation is a lovely moment in the show, another example of Moffat turning the tragic into something rather beautiful.

On the topic of costumes, I adore Joy's bright red jacket and beret, which provide a cheery pop of holiday color, especially in the bright white Time Hotel. Coughlan delivers so many lines delightfully, like "Oh! Hello, Merry Christmas." and "And I thought I was going to be lonely." In Coughlan's capable hands, Joy is sunny, friendly, funny, self-deprecating, distant, sad, and furious, often several of these emotions simultaneously. And I love the subtle difference in Coughlan's performance when Joy is taken over: for example, "You'll be dead in two shakes of a lamb's tail. Pop yourself on the bed before you have a nasty fall." is clearly Joy speaking (despite the underlying callousness of the utterance), but Coughlan adopts a cool unruffled tone in her delivery, which matches well with her perpetually-smiling unblinking exterior, as in the elevator scene. And that shot of Joy's smile fixed on her face is amazing, as is the way Coughlan's face crumples as the Doctor cuts to the heart of Joy's insecurities. How lucky are we to have her on Doctor Who even for an episode?

Quasi-companion #2 is hotel manager Anita Benn (Steph de Whalley), who initially appears to be nothing more than a throwaway character — albeit a throwaway character who has 'companion material' written all over her, given that her reaction to finding a Silurian unexpectedly materialized in one of her hotel rooms is just "I'm so sorry. This has never happened before." — but who then suddenly develops into a breakout star. Her working relationship with the Doctor blossoms into a sweet friendship when the Doctor invites Anita to sit and chat with him ("Have a chair. Sit down with me."). Every time I watch it, I spend the rest of this sequence with tears brimming in my eyes. (Anita's line "This is my favorite night of the week." always sets me off, hearing just how much she cherishes her time with the Doctor, and so does "Anita, at the Sandringham. Think of me sometimes, for auld lang syne." I think we all want to know that the people in our lives truly cherish the time they spend with us, so this point really hits home.) That chair becomes such a meaningful plot point that our last glimpse of it, when the Doctor loops back around in time to the Sandringham hotel room, is really poignant and sweet.

Naturally, Anita winds up developing an unrequited crush on the Doctor, which feels quite trite and played-out by this point, but hearing the pain in her voice on lines like "Sneaking off without saying goodbye?" still really hurts. Partly because of that, though, I admit that I find the Doctor's treatment of Anita almost worse than his treatment of Joy. He insults Joy in order to save her, but he lies to Anita in order to shield himself. There's no reason why he couldn't have been fully open with Anita about the fact that he was antsy to get on with his regular life at the end of his year of enforced exile, but instead he leads her to believe that nothing's wrong, then nearly skips out on her without even saying goodbye, all of which surely makes his loss far more devastating for her than it would've been otherwise. Hardly the way you should treat a true friend, Doctor.

Anita is just a perfect example of the Doctor's philosophy that every single person is special; when the Doctor (and thus the audience) actually takes the time to get to know her, he uncovers hidden depths and uncorks a fountain of joy inside her that, hopefully, will continue to affect Anita positively, even after his abrupt departure. And when Anita admires the Doctor's TARDISes, he confides, "They like you too, I can tell." In a nice little coda, Anita gets offered a job at the Time Hotel, so I hope that doesn't prevent her from returning someday. If there is any justice in this world, Anita will get at least one trip in the TARDIS at some point!

Quasi-companion #3 is Time Hotel employee Trev Simpkins (Joel Fry), who initially looks like he's going to be the one sticking by the Doctor's side for the duration of the story. He's set up for a relatable character arc — thanks to Moffat's skillful characterization, Trev immediately feels like a well-rounded person, from his rather bumbling attempts to exert authority over the Doctor, to his heartstring-tugging declaration that "This is gonna be the least I've ever let anybody down." — so it's all the more surprising and jarring when the barman passes the briefcase to him, thus ensuring his incipient demise. Happily, as it turns out, death doesn't interrupt Trev's character arc, as he manages to return from the dead in the form of a communication interface to assist the Doctor as a spy on the inside:

I really enjoyed Joel Fry in this year's "Boo to a Goose", the first episode of Inside No. 9 season nine (which, unforgivably, did not contain nine episodes, but I guess I can't complain since no season of that series ever has before), and even then I was going "Where do I know him from...?" (Turns out I know him from Our Flag Means Death!) Fry is pitch-perfect in the part, imbuing Trev with an air of dim-but enthusiastic likeability. Loved his performance on "Sorry, sir. Can I just check, you have priority access to all of the time portals, haven't you?"

Joshua Leese looks appropriately creepy as Mr Single, the briefcase's first host, until it detaches from him, at which point the realization of what's happened to him — and his inescapable fate — seems to hit him all at once, in a great bit of facial acting from Leese. Mr Single passes the briefcase off to the jolly barman (Liam Prince-Donnelly), who only gets a few lines before he likewise winds up disintegrating in a shower of sparks. Ruchi Rai also has a couple of lines as the cheery receptionist who assists the Doctor with his room-service order, delivered by the server (Ell Potter), who gets a single line delivering the Doctor's 'light snack'. The hotel manager (Jonathan Aris) is, unexpectedly (and somewhat jarringly) a Silurian. His rather touching death scene also provides a very welcome opportunity to give him some backstory and character development, as we learn that he stumbled upon a portal to the Time Hotel while lost in the caves, and they offered him a job. Though one does wonder how a Silurian felt on joining the Time Hotel, only to discover that all the rest of Earth's history was human history! Here again, that would've been a strong hook for a Time Hotel series regular.

As essentially two-scene characters, Hilda Flockhart (Julia Watson) and her husband Basil (Peter Benedict) are basically caricatures, Basil being a stiff-upper-lip Englishman who gives off vibes of the pith-helmeted explorer archetype (albeit without the pith helmet), with Hilda his perpetually-vexed upper-class wife. Despite the brevity of their screentime, their performances are pleasingly nuanced: Basil was obviously a bit of a skirt-chaser in his day, in response to which Hilda has refined an acerbic wit. Niamh Marie Smith plays fashionable Sylvia Trench, who's penning a letter to her lover while en route through Italy on the Orient Express. I'm not sure quite why Sylvia seems so delighted with the Doctor, after he insulted her writing style and assumed she was in a relationship with a man. He's not that charming. Nor am I quite clear on why she rips up her letter; is she planning to try to rewrite a better, and likely more successful, version? Meanwhile, last and sadly also least, poor Edmund Hillary (Phil Baxter) and Tenzing Norgay (Samuel Sherpa-Moore) are the only characters who get zero development.

Fiona Marr has a couple of lines as Angela Grace, who receives the bountiful breakfast of jelly and biscuits, and her mild reproach on that matter is fun. Without many lines, Fiona Scott largely emotes as Joy's ill mum, but the scene of her saying goodbye to Joy over the iPad, then reuniting with her in the star, had my eyes welling up all over again. And it's nice to get a glimpse of Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) again, even though the episode rather cruelly fakes us out, thinking that the Doctor has finally given in and called her!

The unseen villain of the story is the Villengard Corporation, now referred to as the Doctor's "old enemies" — which is interesting, because although it's literally true (the Doctor has been mentioning them ever since 2005), we've still never seen a direct confrontation between them. For that very reason, I appreciate that a Villengard scheme has now catalyzed not one but (at least) two Doctor Who stories. Their plan here is a really interesting one, playing very well to traditional Doctor Who body-horror tropes. The idea of a briefcase that attaches itself to a succession of different owners, disintegrating the body of the host it's just vacated, is rather horrifying. (Though the detail of the hosts' nictitating membranes feels a bit similar to Harmony Shoal.)

On that topic, I note the mostly-comforting presence of several Moffat hallmarks: alien body-takeovers (as in The Return of Doctor Mysterio), and tragic character deaths softened by their continued virtual existence (as in Silence in the Library and Boom). There's also the rather peculiar repetition of Donna's speech from The Runaway Bride, as Joy echoes her words to the tenth Doctor: "You need to change too. [...] You need to find a friend. Do that. Go and find one, now." I wouldn't mind this so much — been there, done that, but it's been long enough ago and it's a sentiment that still resonates — except for the fact that, yet again, the Doctor's self-imposed therapy exile on Earth was supposed to have fixed all this angst and emotional inhibition, and it seems that the current creative team just doesn't know how to write for a Doctor who doesn't self-sabotage. (See also "Do you know how alone you are? You live in a great big giant spaceship, and there aren't any chairs! And you haven't even noticed, because nobody ever comes round!" On a related note, re: authors remembering continuity, the Doctor claims that "I don't usually live like this, one day after the other, in the right order, and I always wondered what it would be like," which is great except that his previous re(bi-)generation literally just did exactly that. Short memories all around, apparently!)

The flipside is that, while Moffat has taken strides to establish some feminist credentials, his track record during his Doctor Who tenure was emphatically not the best. Even in this story, he gives the "I'm on a diet!" line to a woman, not to mention the way the Doctor treats his two female pseudo-companions. So although I appreciate the effort and the intention, it feels a bit weird for Moffat, of all people, to educate the audience about men interrupting women, and mansplaining, especially when his explanation of the latter is, worryingly, a bit off-target:

I suppose technically he's not wrong — the Doctor can indeed be pompous, and after all, language does change — but it feels like Moffat is setting up an incorrect, overly broad definition of mansplaining that's easier for men to take objection to. To be specific, mansplaining isn't anytime a man explains something to a woman, as Moffat's dialogue seems to imply. Originally, it was a very specific term referring to a man explaining something to a woman that she already knows (specifically, a clueless and unjustifiably overconfident man explaining a woman's own research to her); or, as the term has evolved, explaining something that she didn't ask to have explained. This instance presumably doesn't fall into that category, given that (although Joy does have a lot more knowledge now about the briefcase's function) the briefcase is overriding her mind without her consent. While I very much appreciate Doctor Who incorporating the idea of mansplaining and humorously criticizing the practice, using a strawman definition of the term feels a wee bit risky, as if Moffat himself is poking fun at the notion of mansplaining rather than recognizing it as the serious microaggression that it is.

As is often the case, the effects team proves to be a total whiz at blockbuster effects — like people dissolving into showers of sparks, and especially the scenes of the dinosaur chomping on the lookout hut and swallowing the briefcase — but less successful at the smaller moments, like the handcuffs writhing around snake-like.

The sets throughout are a real highlight. In the Time Hotel, the circular lobby is a particular triumph, both in its construction — each of the floors above it that the Doctor visits has the same striking curvature, and the dizzying atrium overhead is indeed awe-inspiring — and its sleek Art Deco-inspired design, as reflected in the wooden doors, signs and brochures, buffet icons, and shop fonts. The marble lobby with its glowing tube lights is dominated by the shiny, futuristic reception desk (surrounding a luxurious golden Christmas tree), and the green-lit bar with its herringbone-patterned floor suggests luxury (and absinthe). And I very much appreciate that the design teams counteracted a bit of the story's eurocentrism by making sure that the lobby scenes featured an excited group of people dressed up to visit African royalty. (In my mind, they're going to Dahomey in the mid-1800s.)

Despite how much the Doctor and Joy both insult it, I love the design of the hotel room at the Sandringham. For goodness' sake, it's so spacious! And the orange walls are so cheery! I love the damask wallpaper and the wainscoting, and there's a charming little workdesk and a cozy tea tray (which hopefully includes an assortment of biscuits; we don't get a good enough look to be sure!).

Murray Gold's music is pleasant, especially the jolly music during the scene of the Doctor fixing things around the hotel, the music as Anita picks up the model TARDIS (though why she's left it in one of the hotel rooms, I don't know!), and as Joy's mum's essence goes to be with her in the star (at least until the horns kick in, at which point it becomes more than a little glurge-y). I also really liked the sound effects as the camera follows the straining rope across the hallway, and as the star seed changes forms.

Alex Sanjiv Pillai makes a confident directorial début on Doctor Who, utilizing lots of interesting angles in the Time Hotel, with my favorite shot being the Doctor standing on top of the train, whirling the grappling hook like Wonder Woman with her lasso. (I also love the color grading in this shot, with the warm reds and yellows of the train contrasting with the deep blue exterior mountainside.) And there's a gorgeous final shot of the wise men and their camels outside Bethlehem.

Two personal stories this time. First: the premise of this episode reminds me of the time I was spending a weekend at the Congress Plaza Hotel in Chicago, and my room did indeed have one of these locked doors. I mean, I was pretty sure it was a connecting-room door — these mysterious doors are almost always either a room connector, or a supply cupboard, right? the spacetime portals are ever so rare — but you have to try the handle anyway, don't you? Just in case it is unlocked and you can get a peek at whatever's on the other side. So I tried the handle, and to my surprise, it swung open — and on the other side was a pitch-black hotel room, presumably occupied by strangers who were fast asleep. Major faux pas. (Since when does a connecting room only have one door that can be opened by either side?!) So I quickly closed and locked the door as quietly as I could, only to hear my poor neighbor immediately get out of bed and come over to check that I hadn't infiltrated his hotel room or anything! Whoops!

Second: for the holidays this year, I flew down to Mexico (for the first time ever) to visit friends. I spent Christmas day in Mexico City, exploring the Pirámides de Teotihuacán, and grazing (on pozole, chiles en nogada, dulce de tejocote, ponche, café de olla, and marigold mezcal) at Mercado de Coyoacán. I finally got back to my hotel just after 5:00 pm, having miraculously avoided spoilers all day long. My journal entry reads, "I loved it — the plot was a little ridiculous (or at least the ending was), but after I'd just been complaining about RTD not working to earn his emotional moments, Moffat showed him how it's done. I had tears running down my face for a good portion of the runtime."

Minor points:

The rational part of my brain recognizes that there are some pretty big faults with Joy to the World, including its use of illogical glurge and limiting Nicola Coughlan's star turn (no pun intended!) to mainly the third act. Maybe I was just in a receptive mood for emotional catharsis when I watched it for the first time, but this year's witty Christmas special really got on my good side by emphasizing the spirit of Christmas over the commercialized pageantry. I hope this kicks off a new trend in Doctor Who Christmas specials (and I hope Anita returns at some point), but even if not, I really enjoyed Joy to the World for what it is and what it tries to do.

posted: 11 April 2025

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