2024 Christmas Special - “Joy to the World” by Stephen Moffat

When I heard that Moffat would be writing this year’s Christmas special, I thought it could’ve gone one of two ways. On one hand, Moffat has written all of my favourite Christmas specials from the underrated Last Christmas to the utterly beautiful A Christmas Carol. However, he has also written The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe, The Snowmen and The Return of Dr. Mysterio, all episodes I utterly loathe. Now, I’ve found RDT 2 to be, so far, mediocre. Whilst a couple good episodes here and there regained the lost magic of the late 2000s and the cast is really trying their best with corny and unnatural dialogue, it all felt like a poor man’s imitation of what came before and I’m sad to say, I found Joy to the World to be the same.

On Christmas Day, the Doctor finds himself in the Time Hotel - a time-hopping establishment that allows you to stay anywhere, anytime. But when a mysterious briefcase psychically links to young Joy Almondo, the Doctor must play with causality to save her life.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Frankly, I found Joy to the World to be indicative of all of RTD2: a visually stunning, creatively rich soap opera with a great cast of weak characters. Joy to the World’s greatest attribute is its appearance. Not only are the effects magnificent (and strangely placed) but the sets are wonderful too. Vibrant and endlessly detailed, the Time Hotel especially makes for a great setting. It’s really obvious how much bigger the budget is here than in RTD1 because I’m pretty sure they blew the cost of a Series One episode on the cold open. The effects begin to stumble towards the end - used up on the five seconds of dinosaur we get halfway through -  but mostly it’s the strong suit. Plus, since we’re dealing with a Moffat script you just know that it's going to have a good idea or two in there. The Time Hotel is a fantastic concept that’s used excellently, though not as well as it could be due to the episode’s preoccupation with the Doctor’s character. I liked the paradox stuff and using the hotel’s time zones to speed up action but this episode isn't really about the hotel, it’s more just Moffat coming up with a good idea and running with it which is fine but insubstantial. As for characters, I’ll get onto why I think this episode struggles with them but I have to say I got by on the performances alone. Despite having a personality that can be summed up in a short sentence, Nicola Coughlan adds a lot of likability to her “companion”. I found Joel Fry, an actor I always am excited to see pop up, misused and yet still the best member of our cast and Steph de Whalley did a lot of heavy lifting in Moffat’s attempt to make Anita interesting. As for the episode itself, whilst I mostly enjoy the cosmetic aspects of Joy to the World, I did find it to be a good time. Really, that’s RTD2’s saving grace, whilst I think it is undeniably flawed, it is fun, it is lively and a great big shot of character has been injected into the show’s veins. Which is strange because I find many of this era’s main problems to align with the issues of my oh-so-beloved Chibnall era: underbaked plotlines, cardboard cutout characters and cringe-worthy, inhuman dialogue are all present here, but rather than play it straight like Chibnall does, RTD manages to have a little fun with it and his ability to cast electric talent certainly helps. I didn’t hate Joy to the World, and it was certainly more tolerable than last year’s effort, but it was incredibly flawed.

For instance, every time Moffat tried to write in an emotional beat it simply fell flat. There are about five in this special alone, three of them about characters we’ve known for five minutes. Like, do you seriously expect me to care that the Silurian with five lines of dialogue is dying? When people kept complaining about 15’s incessant crying, I didn’t really see the problem before I started noticing it here and, truth be told, he cries so often it loses all emotional weight that might come with the Doctor letting his emotions slip out. And this is where my big problem comes in, this is an episode not about the Time Hotel, or Villengard or even Christmas, it’s about 15, a character whom I do not like. RTD’s attempts at making a more human Doctor simply haven’t worked and with this episode entirely based on his inability to accept companionship I start to see why. RTD has abandoned the character arc. I agree, it could be interesting to watch a Doctor become more akin to us, to start settling down, to begin a retirement and get more in touch with his emotions, but the problem is he just is this character without any development. From his first episode, this was 15 and RTD refusing to acknowledge that for 2000 years the Doctor has been a weird little alien man ruins it. Plus, I don’t know if Moffat didn’t watch the previous season or something, but these are character beats I thought we’d covered, I was under the impression that was what the whole bigeneration storyline was for - transitioning over to a more human Doctor so RTD wouldn’t have to think about it. We even get him settling down, again, which works even less this time because he gets a job and finds out he actually loves staying in one place at one time because he has a friend (the entire UNIT era is irrelevant, apparently). Also, 15 whinging about being alone forever doesn’t really work when he told Ruby to leave. Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t she want to go with him and he told her not to because he thought she needed to spend time with her “real mum” because f**k Carla I guess. Basically, this whole episode was an attempt to characterise a character who skipped his own development and because of that, every attempt to say anything about 15 fell flat.

And as for the other characters, it's really not much better. Joy is barely even there, her personality built in one hokey speech after a scene that fully just stole from The Curse of Fenric. And really, the actual companion here seems to be Anita, the random hotel manager the Doctor spends a year with whose entire character is established in a montage sequence. Once again, I am asking why I should care? As for Joel Fry, he is immediately the most likable person in this cast (mostly because he’s Joel Fry) but is then killed in about ten minutes and I can’t actually remember his character’s name an hour after finishing the episode. Three characters established in an episode beholden to none of them leads only to a hollow side cast that fails to impress and when anything unfortunate happens to any one of them, I’m left feeling nothing. Especially in the ending, which is just weird and one of the most absurd emotional beats I’ve ever seen. You could not have convinced me before this episode came out that it would end with Nicola Coughlan turning into the North f**king Star. Plus, I really don’t know what this is trying to say. Don’t be worried because Grace from Derry Girls is up in the sky looking down at you? How many times has anybody looked at the North Star and magically felt better? It’s out of the blue, doesn’t hold any weight because of Joy’s under-characterisation and its absurdity and also means that Villengard won. Honestly, I think choosing to have a concrete villain in this episode, especially a reused one, was a misstep but it’s strange that they just… succeeded. Like, great, we’re all looking up in hope at the power source that will fuel a billion wars. In the end, I’m just confused as to what the point of this whole episode was. It was near plotless, its own namesake had little to do with it and it was strangely lacking in substance. It’s a weak attempt at a character study that doesn’t even feel like a Christmas special, with little festive cheer to it at all (and no, a title card saying “Bethlehem” does not make it any more merry). It all felt like there was no point to any of it, it had next to nothing to say and had all the impact of a Hallmark movie. Whilst not particularly painful to sit through, this is just such a nothing episode. It’s the TV equivalent of empty calories.

If I had to call Joy to the World one thing, it would be disappointing. Even some heinous mistake would’ve been more interesting than this, which I left only feeling hollow. RTD2 feels like RTD1 with all the magic and character stripped away, left with pretty lights and empty characters, a violent clash of attempts at relatability and heightened reality. This feels like the poster child for this whole era now, it’s not bad but it’s overwhelmingly mediocre, like the off brand reboot of Doctor Who. I just pray this doesn’t actually end up being Moffat’s final hour, because this is such a low note to go out on.

5/10

Pros:

+ Fantastic set design and a great overall look

+ Brimming with brilliant concepts

+ Great performances from all members of the cast

+ Effortlessly fun

Cons:

- Overbloated with poorly written emotional beats

- Nearly every companion was barely a character

- Reinforces why 15’s character just doesn’t work for me

- Absurd ending that fails to land

- Bizarrely lacking in substance

- Near plotless