WARNING: THIS POSTING CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS FOR THE JOY TO THE WORLD DOCTOR WHO CHRISTMAS EPISODE.
Anita: I like them.
The Doctor: They like you too. I can tell.
Joy to the World, Doctor Who
Dear Steven Moffat:
Oh, Mr. Moffat, you audacious, clever man. Congratulations for pulling off such a spectacular bait and switch, and in such a high profile setting!
We all watched the trailer for the 2024 Christmas episode, and we saw all the bits you wanted us to see to pique our interest: Nicola Coughlin as a much-heralded guest star; a glimpse of Joel Fry; a Silurian; something called the Time Hotel; a dinosaur; and the Doctor yelling at himself.
When the time came, you started the episode with everything that we would expect. After a solitary Doctor in search of milk forgetfully pops out of the TARDIS with two mugs rather than just one, we (and the Doctor) very quickly discover a mysterious suitcase, the MacGuffin that drives the action. The Doctor has chosen to have his morning cup of tea at the Time Hotel, which has portals that lead to other eras in lieu of accommodations.
The suitcase, which casually kills its previous mind-controlled carriers as it moves to more advantageous hosts, is revealed to contain a starseed - part of a plan by the Villengard Arms Corporation to create a limitless source of energy in the form of a star, with the destruction of Earth as an acceptable price in the process. (Come to think of it, we were first introduced to Villengard in Boom, an episode that you also wrote.) The carrier must transport the starseed through an appropriate time portal into the past so as to allow the star to gestate over thousands of years, creating an apparently instantaneous result.
The case ends up manacled to the arm of Joy, a melancholy young woman who is spending her 2024 Christmas alone in a rental room that has a portal to the Time Hotel. It's the Doctor's task to save Joy from the suitcase without killing her, and to save Earth from the birth of the starseed.
And then, in the middle of it all, you boldly drop everything and have the Doctor work in Joy's hotel for a year with Anita, the concierge.
I actually timed it, Steven. Surprisingly, it's only eight minutes and fifteen seconds from the moment he books a room in the Sandringham Hotel to wait out a time loop, to the NEW YORK CHRISTMAS EVE 2025 slate. It feels more like it's half the episode, there's so much crammed into that eight minutes. It's a sweet, sad, wonderful interlude, all the more wistful because we know it has to end.
It’s the Doctor's life in miniature, a reverse twist where he stays in one place for a year with a companion, a beloved friend that he finally has to abandon to return to his mission and save Earth. Ncuti Gatwa and Steph De Whalley, who plays Anita, have incredible chemistry, to the point where I felt a bit sorry for Coughlin - in less than ten minutes, that segment steals the entire show, as two lonely people develop a deep and loving relationship.
The special itself? Not to worry, the rest of the program is a perfectly acceptable Christmas episode, well performed if a bit dodgy in plot. There's a poignant backstory for Nicola Coughlin's Joy, good foreshadowing of the various time portal destinations that fuel the climax of the show, and a brief but welcome cameo by Ruby Sunday. I won't lie, I saw the Bethlehem thing coming, but I've got an awful lot of science fiction to draw upon for clues in these situations.
My only complaint is that you attempt to give Anita a happy ending by having the Time Hotel recruit her, and that’s the only place where this episode slips. I realize that she's not going to be the new companion for the upcoming season of the show, but honestly, Steven, if there was ever a character who deserved to be visited by a blue police box at the end, it's Anita.
- Sid
