Overall it was a great special! I really loved how the Christmas setting was very clear and comfy, Anita was a great character! The only that that I wish we could've got more was moments with Joy, such a incredible actress and with so little screentime, maybe if the special had 30 minutes more, it would be perfect!

Okay, so I guess, I'll start with what I liked. I liked the idea of the time hotel and I absolutely adored the set and how they made it look (even though I think it would have been cute to hand out dos and don'ts to the guests on how to avoid paradoxes or how to avoid changing history?). Hobbit Door! Thank you Disney for the budget, also for the cool dinosaur. I liked Anita and I liked Trev. I liked what I guess was the idea behind the story.

Now to the things I didn't like and boy, there were quite a few, so I will only go into my main issues here. I think this was one of the weakest, if not the weakest episode Moffat has ever written. The whole story felt kinda incomplete and all over the place. As if they tried to cram 2hrs of story into barely an hour of screen time and some things just didn't make any sense. The whole scene with the Doctor coming down at Joy to jerk her out of the trance was..... painful to watch. Too close to the reality of many people who are getting abused, mistreated and discriminated by family, friends and strangers, just to be said "oh I was just joking" especially as half the arguments the Doctor used were simply lies (Joy didn't pick the room and barely spent five minutes in it before the manager stepped through the door).

The Doctor suddenly and out of nowhere screaming at his future self about how he is hated, he is alone and nobody likes him. While it would have made sense for 10, 11 and 12 - 15 was supposed to be the Doctor who let his emotional baggage behind with 14, started a new life, fresh and light - so where was that sudden outburst of self hate coming from? It was so badly out of character that it completely threw me out of the story.

Joy - while I liked her, we didn't get to know her. We got to know her pain about losing her mother, but nothing else. And the fact that she sacrificed herself in the end with words that were more fitting to the teachings of a sect than the words of a woman who looked as if she definitely had a life outside of her pain on Christmas including friends and a job. It loses even more of its impact knowing the original idea was that the Doctor would throw the star out of the Tardis. But I guess it isn't Moffat if he somehow can't make a woman suffer or sacrifice herself for the greater good.

We lost Trev and the manager too quickly. Would have loved if we'd get to know him better so their deaths would have actually left an emotional impact.

And last - the religion stuff. Did they really just confirm the whole Jesus birth story as fact in the Whoniverse?? JFC. I absolutely utterly HATE that. Yes, it's a Christmas story, but this is taking a side and it's a terrible one. They better confirm all the other religions as real now.

All in all, the Christmas special I liked least. I watched it twice and I will definitely never watch it again.

It was alright. A bit all over the place, but I enjoyed it. Weird that they put so much importance on Joy though, when ultimately she really didn't spend that much time with the Doctor. I would've enjoyed a full episode about the Doctor and Anita living together. Would be fun. I really liked the future time hotel. Overall, decent story.

Wow. Okay, that was a fun one. Ncuti was as always a great Doctor, even if he's acting very Moffat-ish. Deliberately provoking Joy was a bit of a dick move, and having come straight from Invasion of the Dinosaurs, the new Dinosaurs were great. However, this special was littered with missed potentials. While using it to essentially time skip the creation of a star was clever, I can't help but feel like it's almost impossible to properly utilize the setting without giving it a properly timey-wimey story. Fifteen spending a year on Earth is very fun, I like the montage. That being said, there will now be three Doctors in 2025. Fourteen in therapy, Fifteen in the Hotel, and Fifteen when we inevitably spend most of Season 2 on Earth. Joy wasn't super likeable, but I did enjoy the COVID allegory. That being said, I will admit the scene where Joy's mother was sweet, but unnecessary. I think that scene was mostly there to elicit a tear-jerker reaction. Also, slight nitpick. Moffat messed up the year. When Joy takes her place as the star of Jesus, it's 0001; thus Jesus would be one, not a newborn. God, I can't believe I just wrote that. Then again, I'm surprised Doctor Who hasn't delved explicitly into religion. Also, another nitpick, everyone pronounces Villengard different to how it is in Series One. Yes, I know it also happened in Boom, but I noticed it in this one.

Usually with Doctor Who, I find it much easier to concentrate during an episode. This time, however, was different. We were still opening presents in our household, which partly contributed to the episode feeling harder to follow than usual, although judging by the reaction to the episode afterwards, it does seem like some of it is also the way the narrative itself was written.

Joy To The World is an episode I enjoyed a lot. The Time Hotel is a fantastic concept; I love the idea of a hotel where the rooms lead to different periods. However, it does also lead to the episode feeling a little disjointed. When the Doctor is bouncing between rooms that go to such wildly different times and places, it can make it harder to follow. It also doesn't help that the episode doesn't do much to explore the central concept. It never really makes full use of the idea of a hotel where you can go to any time, or spend much time in the time periods the Doctor travels to. It would have been nice to have seen more of the prehistoric era, for instance.

Joy is also surprisingly underwritten. Before the episode aired, I expected Joy to be the star of the show, as so much of the marketing of the episode was focused around her. She's strangely underutilised however, and abandoned for a large chunk of the plot when the Doctor is locked out of the Time Hotel by his future self.

On the other hand, I loved the Doctor's friendship with Anita. Their dynamic as friends is engaging to watch during the year that the Doctor spends working at the normal hotel, and Ncuti Gatwa and Stephanie de Whalley have tons of chemistry. I actually came away from this episode hoping Anita would become a future companion at some point, and I expected to feel that way about Joy.

Another highlight of the episode is when the Doctor manipulates Joy by being mean toward her, hoping it will make her angry to stop the suitcase brainwashing her mind. This scene felt like a classic Doctor moment, similar to the scene where Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor manipulates Sarah Jane out of the air vent in The Ark In Space. It culminates in a fantastic emotional sequence, where Joy talks about her mother's death and how she was unable to see her in hospital during COVID. It's Joy's best moment as a character, and Nicola Coughlan's best performance in the role.

The reveal that the Villenguard's artificial star is the Star of Bethlehem felt like a fitting means of tying the special to the Christmas period. I have no doubt that it was probably controversial and upset some diehard Christians, but I thought it was clever, and a neat way of explaining an iconic Christmas element within Doctor Who's lore.

It was lovely also seeing Millie Gibson briefly cameo as Ruby Sunday. She was not announced prior to the episode airing as featuring within Joy To The World, so I was surprised when she appeared. It felt like a nice and unexpected Christmas treat, as Ruby has been one of the best aspects of RTD2 so far. Overall, I would give Joy To The World an 8/10. It has a bold and brilliant concept, but the time hotel is confusing and underutilised, and Joy as a character feels surprisingly weak. I was expecting more from Joy, whilst Stephanie de Whalley's Anita was the true guest star who shined.