Joy to the World is Moffat’s rumoured last final episode of Doctor Who, but he’s said that with Boom and with Twice Upon a Time before, so this is his third “my last time guys, honest,” bit that he’s done with the series. And it feels like there’s only so many callbacks he can do and plot-beats that become repetition rather than something new – as that’s the feeling that I got from Joy to the World, a throwback to his era of Who rather than the leap forward, that having relied on two previous showrunners for so long now, that Doctor Who desperately needs. It’s all a bit “yes, we’ve seen this all before”, which is only natural for a show that has been on air since the 1960s, but we’re getting stale here when reinvention should be the watchword of the day.
Ruby has left the TARDIS and save for a brief cameo, the Doctor is on his own again – investigating in the Time Hotel, a clever concept that pokes fun at there always being a locked door in the hotel room and the hotel room that you pick being a window into who you are. Do you take the fancy hotel, or the stripped down, lonely, cheapest hotel you can afford? For Joy it’s the latter, alone on Christmas day – with Nicola Coughlan playing her character with heart and soul having just lost her mother during the COVID lockdown, which hasn’t previously been addressed on the show. Coughlan steps across from Derry Girls and if Joy to the World was anything to go by, we should have more Derry Girls actors making the leap across – she’s wonderful! The right amount of heart, spirit and emotional depth is needed so when she’s forced to confront the grief over her mother’s death, and the anger at the corrupt Tory Government and lies, it feels real, bold and earned, and especially brave of Moffat to put all that hatred in an episode airing to the public on Christmas Day – which has historically been when most people will be watching Doctor Who.
The episode is clumsy and sweet – I have questions about the ending, of course, with Moffat deciding to casually make Jesus and the whole Christ mythology part of Doctor Who canon in the most Who way possible by having the star that guided the three wise men to Jesus be a 20-something woman from 21st century Earth and have them be played by a Derry Girl, and it feels a bit hammy – but it’s much better as a bittersweet memory for people going through the pain of dealing with loved ones and it can’t help but feel like it’s what Doctor Who does best, really. The performances from both Gatwa, excellent from day one, able to have in-built natural charisma with anyone, and Coughlan are terrific, and the real heart of the show rests around their relationship. Yet when The Doctor is forced to spend a year in 2024 to learn the code to stopping a bomb from killing Joy – he has great natural chemistry with Steph de Whalley’s Anita too, a hotel worker at the same hotel Joy checked into. I wanted more of Anita and The Doctor and in an episode with no traditional companions, Doctor Who gives us two would-be great ones.
The reaction when he’s handed a plunger and has a PTSD flashback to a Dalek is pure gold, pure silly Doctor Who – and the comedic beats call back to episodes like The Lodger nicely when 11 was stranded on Earth for a long period of time, and The Power of Three – it seems to happen a lot to 11 in particular, doesn’t it? This gives Big Finish plenty of room to work for in the audio dramas where Davies might not have; and allows for a more intimate, grounded epilogue that feels like the Twice Upon a Time to Boom’s The Doctor Falls. It takes a big concept like the time hotel and focuses more on the characters that inhabit it – grounding the storyline and making it small.
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