TV Review- Doctor Who: Joy to the World

 

Unashamedly sentimental and including variations on ideas Steven Moffat has utilised before, `Joy to the World` is the best episode featuring Ncuti Gatwa so far. It’s a three-act story, the first frantic and light as we have come to expect for Xmas Specials, the middle part quieter, considered and the best thing about it and then an ending that is likely to provoke differing responses.

 

The story riffs on the lonely side of Christmas. Tis the season where people get together with family and friends but when that’s not possible it can seem like the loneliest time of the year. Steven Moffat says the idea for this story was inspired by that locked door you always find in a hotel room though I have never stayed in a hotel room with such a door. Have you?  These doors lead to a Time Hotel, one of those ideas that is so rich you could probably set a series entirely in it  although it’s not used to its full potential in the subsequent storyline. There’s certainly mileage to use it again. The plot concerns a briefcase that attaches itself to people who then pass it on until it finds someone suitable for its purpose. Inside is a star that is trying to be released but needs enough time to build the necessary momentum.

Its ultimate carrier is Joy, a lonely girl who stays in a down at heel hotel at Christmas since the death of her mother means she can’t face the festive season at home. The Doctor, intrigued by the briefcase from the beginning, follows it until he ends up stuck in a hotel in 2024 for a year once again essaying Steven Moffat’s fascination with people waiting for long periods though this wait is nothing compared to previous ones. 

The episode shows a lot of promise early on especially as we can enjoy a more well calibrated performance from Ncuti Gatwa. He is much more like the Doctor in this episode than any previous ones he’s done so that his behaviour fits the story rather than detracts from it as if he’s relaxed into the role. Right from the start he is on the ball as he appears to be flustering over coffee but really is noticing that briefcase.  We finally get a sense of why his audition convinced the producers at the last minute to hire him. I’m still unsure about his overly emotional reaction to everything only because it leaves him with nothing else when we get to any truly upsetting development.  

As Joy, wearing Christmassy red, Nicola Coughlan does a very good job especially later on when she has to put over her backstory in a hurry. The character needs to express a number of emotions as well as sometimes being under the control of the star and she handles these changes really well. For me the standout performance is from Stephanie de Whalley. She plays Anita, the manager of the 2024 hotel where the Doctor is forced to linger for twelve months and the friendship that develops between them as he becomes an odd job man and they meet each week to play board games is delightfully warm yet realistic. It feels like a very long time since Doctor Who has presented anything so down to earth, so identifiable and mature as these sequences.

The detail is intricate yet the stakes are no higher than passing a year and getting to know each other. Along the way both of them are healed a little by the time spent together and when they have to part it is emotional because both actors underplay it.  It shows too that for all the tricksy time hopping sometimes linear time can be just as fascinating. The clear chemistry between Ncuti Gatwa and Stephanie de Whalley makes me wonder if perhaps she could be a future companion or at least pop up again should the show return to the Time Hotel where she ends up getting a job.  I would willingly watch an hour of just these two. The quiet can’t last and soon we’re back with the adventure including a showing from a dinosaur and some hard truths for Joy as the Doctor goads her into anger which spurges out in a diatribe about the circumstances of her mother’s death.

I’m still in two minds about this aspect of the episode. On the one hand you can only applaud Moffat for slipping in a jibe at the former Tory government over Partygate but I’m not sure whether it’s a topic to be used as an enabler in a science fiction story. The ending has confused people too regarding what is happening after Joy has ascended and her mother is suffused with golden light. I think what it is trying to say is that even in the darkest situations (Covid, World War 2 etc) we should still try to cling onto hope, to optimism but maybe it doesn’t quite come over as clearly as it should. Putting it into personal context as someone whose own mother passed last year, I did find it strangely moving even though I’m not sure why.

Maybe the same restraint at play earlier would have benefitted the final sequence; adding a name tag of Bethlehem over the village in the distance is certainly a step too far. Then there’s the star itself which lest we forget, though treated at this point with a sense of wonder has essentially killed several people. Ok so they’ve ascended rather than died but really they have died. It is an ending that also has similarities with `Voyage of the Damned`.

I used to always watch a new Doctor Who episode at least twice as you don’t catch all the details first time round. Since `The Giggle` I’ve not felt the need to do so, partly because the episodes have seemed simpler and partly because I’ve not found them very engaging. I did watch `Joy to the World` twice and found it to be, for all its familiarity and odd bits, a much richer text than we’ve had in the series for some time. Christmas specials are probably not the best episodes with which to judge the direction of traffic but I’m wondering, especially after seeing that interesting trailer (cartoon character crawling off a cinema screen!) whether Doctor Who is about to turn a new corner to somewhere more interesting.