Review by Tim Robins
When Joy checks into a London hotel in 2024, she opens a secret doorway to the Time Hotel – discovering danger, dinosaurs and the Doctor. But a deadly plan is unfolding across the Earth, just in time for Christmas…
SPOILERS AHEAD
If this year’s Doctor Who Christmas Special were a festive food, it would be a plate of brussels sprouts – the most controversial of Christmas fayre. Indeed, Joy to the World, written by former showrunner Steven Moffat, represents the writer at his most flatulent.
Hold the sprouts, because Joy to the World was another of Moffat’s overstuffed turkeys, filled with faux profundity, just-in-time exposition and sitting about the place. The story concluded with a deus ex machina that sought to save the script, and every life on Earth.
But enough with the bah-humbug. At least I enjoyed unwrapping Moffat’s present to viewers, even if it was like a gift from a well-meaning but out of touch Aunt: it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, or was almost right, but was the wrong size or shape.
Joy to the World saw the Doctor visit a Time Hotel, whose bedroom doors opened up to different Christmas’s, throughout time and space. As it turned out, these were confined to Earth. Even then, we were denied the pleasure of seeing what the Zygons get up to at this time of year (same as other people, I guess). Cue ebullient Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor, springing in and out of doors and time periods, offering a pumpkin latte and a ham and cheese sandwich to the startled residents. And cue more establishing titles than an entire season of Doctor Who by the former showrunner, Chris Chibnall.
Post title credits, the plot developed as a series of two-handers and slapstick moments in which The Doctor found himself chasing a sentient suitcase, hell bent on being carried around through time until it gains enough of a charge to blow everything up. To this end, the suitcase attached itself to the wrists of hapless couriers. Cue various supporting cast, including companion of the day, Joy Almondo, played by Nicola Coughlan, who becomes the suitcase’s final courier.
There were misdirections marketed, so if you thought the pairing of a Silurian with a T-Rex was an exciting adventure along the lines of Jon Pertwee’s 1970s run-in with the creatures, you would be very much mistaken. Instead, in an audacious move, quite a bit of the story involved The Doctor stuck in a hotel for a year where he gathered a collection of toy TARDISes and shared Easter eggs (ho, ho) with a hotel receptionist, Anita Benn (ho ho), played by Stephanie de Whalley. As if by magic, an interesting friendship appeared between Anita and the Doctor, all the better to demonstrate the Time Lord’s need for a human connection.
But my overwhelming impression of Joy to the World was that it was the most morbid Doctor Who story that I have ever seen. Once again, we were faced with a heartbreaking tale of a writer trying to come to terms with his own mortality through fantasy. The trouble is, it is through fantasy. If I were Moffat’s counsellor, I’d be suggesting that Moffat invite his fear up from the basement and sit with it for a year, and come to accept it as one of the “givens” of human existence.
I had to admire Moffat’s writing chops to tackle death, loss and regret in a story about time hopping folk and their weapon of mass destruction, even if the revelation felt on the wrong side of tastelessness. Still, thumbing a nose at faith is the kind of mischief science fiction revels in – a famous example being Michael Moorcock’s “Behold the Man”, published in 1966, in which a time traveller replaces Christ on the Cross.
It was also bold to root some of Joy’s anger in not being able to see her Mum in hospital where she lay dying alone, because of the UK’s restrictions put in place during the Covid-19 pandemic. It was also bold to connect Joy’s feeling to people’s genuine sense of betrayal when it was found out that Prime Minister Boris Johnson was out partying all the while. I just think this would have been more profound if it were delivered other than by garbled dialogue and running around. Just-in-time exposition just trivialises all it preceeds.
And yet, despite all this, I came away with the feeling that Joy to the World might not be the best Doctor Who has to offer, but it was still Doctor Who. It has become clear that Disney’s money isn’t showing on screen. I guess the price of HD cameras, costumes and sets is providing a real limitation on the series.
But a limited budget keeps Doctor Who being Doctor Who. I don’t want it to simply be the UK equivalent of the moribund Star Wars universe, or the increasingly confusing universe of Star Trek continuity. Let Who be Who, even if it means the show becomes a cosmic chamber piece now and then.
The one point where my heart skipped a beat was when The Doctor was told that he needed to change. I thought it was foreshadowing his regeneration. Who knows? Maybe it was.
Tim Robins
• Doctor Who – Joy to the World is available on BBC iPlayer in the UK, and Disney+ where available globally
Doctor Who Magazine Issue 612, on sale 2nd January but already in the hands of subscribers, includes a terrific interview with Steven Moffat, talking about Joy to the World – grab a copy here from Panini UK direct
- About the Author
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A freelance journalist and Doctor Who fanzine editor since 1978, Tim Robins has written on comics, films, books and TV programmes for a wide range of publications including Starburst, Interzone, Primetime and TV Guide.
His brief flirtation with comics includes ghost inking a 2000AD strip and co-writing a Doctor Who strip with Mike Collins. Since 1990 he worked at the University of Glamorgan where he was a Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Media Studies and the social sciences. Academically, he has published on the animation industry in Wales and approaches to social memory. He claims to be a card carrying member of the Politically Correct, a secret cadre bent on ruling the entire world and all human thought.
Categories: Doctor Who, Features, Other Worlds, Reviews, Science Fiction, Television
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I enjoyed your review, I’d just like to make a minor point – in “Behold the Man”, the time traveller IS Christ. That is, there was no one for him to replace. He wants to find out what really happened around 1 AD, travels back in time, finds there’s no one playing the part of Jesus, and eventually takes on the role himself, using what he already knows will happen. So it’s a time loop (a bit like the code the Doctor delivers to save his earlier self and Joy).