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Coming back Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies could have pioneered modern Doctor Who holiday specials-Christmas monsters, high performance, an occasional amount of Kylie Minogue – but it is arguable that it was his successor, Steven Moffat, who really nailed the balancing act of what is good. Doctor Who The Christmas story should be. The answer, paradoxically, is not really a great sci-fi story at all – or at least, this is not as important as a band of sincere sentimentality, almost stewed over the romance of the season. This year’s offering, Moffat’s first Christmas writing since 2017, the Twelfth Doctor has been sending “Twice at a Time,” mostly succeeding in that balancing act with an interesting time twist. Doctor Who adventure festooned with festive charm – one that really relies on the latter to help make up for a few missteps in the former.
“Joy to the World”, airing next week on Christmas Day, has a few parallels to Ncuti Gatwa’s full debut as the 15th Doctor in last year’s holiday episode“The Church on Ruby Road”, in that it relies on a series of fascinating performances to try to mask when its story is not sufficiently cohesive. It trades the fantastical slant of creepy goblins capturing children for a more traditional sci-fi aesthetic as the Doctor finds himself in a futuristic “Time Hotel” for the holidays, offering temporal doorways to Christmases throughout the story. human It also leans heavy on the seasonal aesthetic too, with plenty of snow, tinsel, and trees, we feel much more of the season rather than just being an old episode that happens to air near the end of December.
Intrigued by the mystery of a strange suitcase that seems to be fatally exchanged between hotel guests, he is into it. a festive scene at party time– and through the aforementioned Time Hotel doors – that the Doctor crosses paths with the joy alone (Nicola Coughlan), while checking into a seedy hotel in London during Christmas 2024. The mystery of why Joy becomes so important to the Doctor’s latest adventure is actually put aside for a good part of “Joy to the World ” as he takes a side step in exploring the ramifications of the Time Hotel gates, and the temporal paradoxes that come with them. It’s all perfectly Moffat-y, a mix of laughs, timely storytelling, and the almost obligatory melancholy that comes with his best outings as a writer, as the Doctor finds himself thrust into the life of another lonely woman on the way (Steph de Whalley’s Anita, perhaps secretly the background star of “Joy to the World”). He is a killer Doctor Who story idea, one that also deftly touches on the loneliness of the Doctor later they break up with Ruby. It is just so that it is seasonally appropriate in another Doctor Who episode that is…well, not quite given the time to breathe into anything interesting.
“Joy to the World” makes up for those structural deficiencies with Joy’s storyline really allowing that element of the episode to be where it belongs in all the sentimentality of the holiday season, with a narrative climax high on an emotional drama that tears the heart make up for the fact that it plays a little fast and loose with the logistical bases, especially contrasted with the plot-within-a-plot the first half of the episode of is dedicated to. For the most part, it works, thanks to Gatwa and Coughlan’s stellar performances, and it particularly struck a bittersweet chord for people going through Christmas without their loved ones. But if you find yourself particularly immune to Doctor WhoSentimental charm offensive at this time of year, you might find the culmination of it all a bit lacking – and wonder how the episode might have been if it stuck with that initial plot in a plot like its main idea.
But even if you don’t find yourself resonating with the emotion of it all, there is still at least one good piece of great Doctor Who to be found in “Joy to the World”, although it is not the ultimate focus of the episode. There is enough here to satisfy anyone looking for a great one Doctor Who idea, or someone who just wants something big and Christmassy to fill their heart with the spirit of the season as they sit with the festive period – and at this point in Doctor WhoThe long history of holiday specialties, that we can still have stories that manage to balance the two is a little welcome gift under our collective trees.
Doctor Who returns to Disney+ worldwide and on the BBC in the UK and Ireland on Christmas Day, December 25.
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