This review contains spoilers
One of the great ironies of Doctor Who is that the one episode that most people tend to watch – the big, broad appeal Christmas special – is often the least inspiring. I am still haunted by the year, for instance, in which my uncle, baffled by one particularly saccharine special, turned to me and said, “do you actually watch this?”
Blessedly, this year’s festive instalment, “Joy to the World”, is not one of those episodes.
Written by ex-showrunner Steven Moffat – best known for his superlative stories “Boom” and “Blink” – it is a dizzying barrage of smart, funny, interesting ideas, a showing of the kind of creative genius that scratches an itch deep in your brain.
We caught up with Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor in the year 4202, where he had popped into a “Time Hotel” in London to pick up some milk. Each room leads to a different period in history, from the assassination of Julius Caesar to the Blitz. It is a brilliant concept that could fuel an entire series, each episode focussing on a different room.
The Doctor noticed a mysterious man in the lobby carrying a briefcase that was handcuffed to his wrist. As it turned out, however, the man was not carrying the briefcase – the briefcase was carrying him. It was some sort of AI parasite, taking over one host after another (killing them in the process) in the hope that it would be carried up to a special room on the top floor – a portal to one of Earth’s earliest points in history.
By chance, the briefcase found its way on to the wrist of the titular Joy (played by the eternally endearing Derry Girls star Nicola Coughlan), a grieving woman who was spending Christmas on her own in one of the hotel’s rooms, though hers was a rather rundown one in our current time.
It was soon revealed that the case contained the seeds of a star. It would take millions of years for the star to bloom, so a shady corporation was using possessed hosts like Joy to sneak the case back in time to speed things up.
It’s worth taking a detour here to praise the boldest swing “Joy to the World” takes: the episode-within-an-episode in which the Doctor, having used a timey-whimey trick to save Joy from being disintegrated by the case, found himself spending a year trapped on Earth in 2024.
Cue a delightful vignette in which the Doctor took a job as a handyman at a hotel (“is this armed?!” he screams at a Dalek-like plunger) and struck up a beautiful friendship with manager Anita (Steph de Whalley). The charismatic Gatwa was terrific here as a Doctor learning to live one day at a time – a poignant mediation on slowing down and appreciating the people that make life worth living.
It provided a fitting contrast to Joy’s storyline, which was full of tragedy and rage. It turned out that the reason she was spending Christmas Day alone is because it is the day that she said goodbye to her mother through a computer screen, just before she died in hospital of Covid.
It was a jarring twist – a bracing splash of reality – but Coughlan sold Joy’s grief and anger (notably at following the rules while others partied) marvellously. Some may find it crass, but I’m sure it will resonate with millions. After all, Christmas is a time for reckoning with loss, with the empty space at the dinner table.
Perhaps the only scene that would have made my uncle leave the room in search of cheese was the nonsensically mawkish ending, in which Joy floated in the air for what felt like forever and eventually became a new star. But even this moment had a genius twist at its heart. For Joy has not become any star. She has travelled back to Bethlehem, to become star “0001” – the famous star who marked the birth of Jesus himself.
Proof, as if it was needed, that Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without Doctor Who.
Doctor Who is streaming on BBC iPlayer
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