Doctor Who Special Reviews: Joy To The World
“Joy To The World” Seemed Like Quite An Apt Title
I always look forward to the newest Doctor Who Christmas special—and this episode, “Joy to the World” was no exception. It has already been too long since that last episode. Already too long since I got to see some adventure with the Doctor.
But “Joy to the World” is a weird episode. It’s split up—almost disconnected. Halfway through a story that heavily plays with cause and effect and time travel, we get a diversion. We get a series of scenes that while both heartwarming and very Christmasy, feel like a whole different episode. And, though I don’t mean this as that harsh of a complaint, it’s a micro episode revolving around the reuse of an overused scenario.
This Sort Of Storyline Has Been Done A Lot Lately
Basically, and I’m sorry for minor “Joy to the World” spoilers, the Doctor ends up stranded on Earth for a year. A whole year. And, like the caretaker in the anniversary special, the bi-generation played by David Tenant, or the multiple times Matt Smith’s doctor spends time on Earth, we kind of already know how this goes. The Doctor does a lot of quirky things and makes friends. The only major difference is that it’s framed as the Doctor learning to heal after leaving behind Ruby Sunday. Which is a theme that, honestly, was pretty well established by the moment—right at the beginning—where the Doctor picks up too many cups of coffee. But I digress. The scenes are well-acted and sweet, but I was admittedly more interested in the Time Hotel.
Because the Time Hotel is a game-changing piece of lore. It’s an excuse for the writers to play around with some seriously different storylines—and to explore a ton of character ideas. For one, it’s a location where everyone is perfectly comfortable with time travel, and it doesn’t seem to have any bad side effects like a vortex manipulator. The Doctor needs friends, right? Okay. There are so many people who will understand the Doctor’s perspective better in this hotel.
Secondly, though the magic system in Doctor Who has never been very defined or followed, the Hotel has a new set of them. They reiterate it: the Hotel doesn’t cause paradoxes. You can run around and meet yourself and alter things, and it won’t bring down Reapers or cause other issues. The Master once converted a whole T.A.R.D.I.S. to make it possible to do what this hotel is doing.
“Joy to the World” Breaks A Lot Of Existing Rules
And I loved this in “Joy to the World.” There’s a real sense of planning here, with throwaway scenes serving the greater whole. I was delighted once I worked out why the train was important. Even the way the story plays with the bootstrap paradox was amusing—though it did foreshadow where “Joy to the World” goes wrong.
Because for an episode that uses its own internal logic and foreshadowing so effectively, it’s odd how often “Joy to the World” turns around and abandons that during other plot points. There was a precedent for the mental copies that Villengard makes of people to rebel against their programming from back in “Boom,” but it honestly feels like cheating to have that solve another issue. An evil company that is constantly doing stuff like this wouldn’t let that be a common, exploitable weakness.
Several Of The Solutions Strain A Ton Of Credulity
And it was even worse when the Doctor used anger to save Joy. First off, because of how mean-spirited it is (this episode has a weird mean streak in several places). The insults were barbed. I understand the narrative justification. I do. But for a character that’s only in one episode, why did we spend so much time having her mind controlled or being berated? I get that anger could break the control—that works well enough—but why would it let her out of the cuffs? Why wouldn’t removing it still be lethal?
Furthermore, the whole premise of the “bad hotel room” is pretty damn classist. I don’t agree that you can tell someone’s having emotional issues because of the kind of room they rent. There are a million ways or reasons that someone would choose or get a cheaper or less comfortable option, in all sorts of circumstances, and they don’t reflect on the nature of a person.
And, somehow, the story’s big ending is still yet more narrative cheating. A star is not an intelligent being. A star shouldn’t be able to merge with a person, carry copies of digital identities, or take a dying person’s essence. I know that Doctor Who is allowing more magic in its stories, but it strained credulity to drop all of that in at the last second. And it’s got vast implications when you think about all of that in relation to that big ending twist, too.
“Joy To The World” Has Such A Surprising Ending
And since I’m just going on questioning things, I don’t know how I feel about putting a COVID-related death in “Joy to the World.” I am extremely fortunate to have not lost anyone close to me to that disease, so I can’t speak on if it’s too soon to include someone being saved from it in a story—but I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if people found it insensitive. It’s only been a few years since the lockdowns. Certainly, I can understand how being unable to see her mother caused a great deal of trauma for Joy, but if you’re going to include something like that in a narrative, it needs to be very thought through. And I simply don’t have enough experience or information to judge if it was.
So, that is a lot of negatives for “Joy to the World.” Really quite a bit. More than I thought there’d be. The acting, set design, music, all of the stuff that’s usually good is good—but that’s true for every episode recently, and I can’t let it be a win-all defense. The best parts of Joy to the World are pretty much contained to the middle, where we’re running around the Time Hotel or letting the Doctor bond with Anita, and the worst bits are everything else. It’s kind of a case study of how the show can both go wrong and right. And I guess, if nothing else, that’s notable.
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