Doctor Who: Joy to the World

Christmas Day wouldn't be the same for Whovians (myself included) without Doctor Who!

Last year's The Church on Ruby Road re-established the fan-favourite timey-wimey tradition. Following Boom, Steven Moffat returns with a festive special.

Does Nick Smith, our US-based veteran Whovian, find joy in Joy to the World?

Guest post by Nick Smith

It’s difficult to capture the joy inherent in the winter holidays in fiction without sounding corny. Charles Dickens met the challenge by cloaking his best-known story, A Christmas Carol, in bittersweet dusk cloth and unforgettable characterisation. Readers have to bite through dark chocolate to get to the sweet centre. Other, more recent attempts have used cynicism to connect to modern sensibilities, as if to say, ‘look at us, aren’t we ridiculous, taking the time to stop our busy lives and care about others?’

Although this is the ninth Christmas special written by Steven Moffat, it shows no sign of writer fatigue; his break from the show, from 2017’s Twice Upon a Time up until 2024’s Boom, did him some good.

The eponymous character Joy (Nicola Coughlan from Bridgerton and Derry Girls) does not dominate her story; she spends part of it possessed, and another large chunk separated from the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa), who is stranded in our time, poor guy. Joy is there to state the obvious like a classic companion - albeit, a dumbed-down version - and in one scene, the Doctor is mean to her in a manner that echoes the Fourth Doctor's (Tom Baker) treatment of Sarah-Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) when he goads her out of a tight squeeze in The Ark in Space.

15’s badgering of Joy leads to a revelation that she couldn’t be with her mother when she died, developing a theme of loneliness that is as relevant to Christmas as carols and figgy pudding. The holidays are a tough time to be alone, and as the year draws to a close, we are reminded of friends and family who can’t be with us. It’s up to us whether we choose to pull up a chair and make new friends, or shut ourselves in a room and wait for the thaw of a new year.

Steph de Whalley’s character, Anita Benn (named after her father no doubt) is a standout character, connecting emotionally with 15 in a way that his previous companion, Ruby (Millie Gibson), never did. She listens to the Doctor’s crazy talk and encourages us to care about her, partly because of her loneliness. Another solitary character, Sylvia Trench (Niamh Marie Smith), is found on a train, doubtless fresh from an adventure with James Bond since she is 007’s original movie girlfriend.

The Doctor also bumps into Edmund Hillary (Phil Baxter) at a Mount Everest base camp, accessed by a portal from a Time Hotel where any room – or tent – can be entered via the locked door you find in many suites.

Who cares about the laws of time when there’s humour to be derived from the Doctor popping up with ham and cheese toast?

Luckily, locations like the Everest camp are reused, so they don’t feel like they’re just thrown in because the Disney+ budget can withstand their inclusion. The Doctor has a mystery to solve, goes undercover and does his best to save the day – but the real danger here, the one the Doctor can really help us with, is the threat of being alone at Christmas.

Thanks to Moffat, locked hotel doors will never be seen the same way again, just like statues, shadows and snowmen. Thanks to him, less and less everyday things are safe in the universe. I applaud him for sharing his imaginative, occasionally disturbing, ideas with us and creating the Time Hotel. It’s the perfect place to take a break from cynicism, pull up a chair, have a pumpkin latte, and relish a slice of new Who.

Moffat’s 2024 Doctor Who Christmas special, Joy to the World, offers us many gifts: adventure, drama, time travel trickery, a dinosaur, and jokes worthy of a Christmas cracker. It’s like a seasonal feast without the sour brussel sprouts of disparagement. Lacking in cynicism, Joy to the World might seem old-fashioned to some, but to me, it is a shining light in a gloomy time of war and polarised thinking.

Have you seen Joy to the World? What did you think? Let me know in the comments below.

Nick Smith's new audiobook, Undead on Arrival, is available from Amazon (affiliate link).