Spoilers comply with for “Joy to the World.”
If there’s one factor Steven Moffatt likes to do with Physician Who, it’s to discover a monster buried within the mundane. He’s made statues, shadows, misplaced kids and even the thought of silence into a few of the present’s most terrifying villains. Sadly, the mysterious further door you typically discover in older lodge rooms isn’t as common a priority, nevertheless it’s nonetheless a wealthy seam for him to mine. That’s the inspiration for “Joy to the World,” Physician Who’s 2024 Christmas Particular. Which is gentle, enjoyable and a bit of bit scattershot, very similar to Christmas is supposed to be, proper?
When Physician Who returned, the present was woven again into the UK’s cultural firmament in a method it by no means had been earlier than. A part of that course of was including the present to the BBC One Christmas Day schedule, making it a common cultural touchstone. For many of its post-2005 run, it has aired an episode subsequent to the Strictly Come Dancing and EastEnders’ festive specials. Think about the British equal to these everyone-gathered-around-the-TV occasions just like the Tremendous Bowl or the Macy’s Day Parade, however on Christmas Day. Even for those who don’t like all of the fare on supply, you’re nonetheless anticipated to take a seat with the household and eat it.
With these specials, the status timeslot, longer runtime and larger funds are burdens as a lot as they’re advantages. The present has to play to a far broader viewers than regular, with diehard followers sitting elbow-to-elbow with aged family members filling each silence with gossip about their neighbor’s backyard mission. Consequently, the story must be a bit of looser, with much less want for the viewers to be paying undivided consideration to what’s happening. And it must be an oasis of enjoyable within the melodramatic drudgery that’s the BBC One Christmas Day schedule.
Usually, the festive particular could be the only real province of the showrunner however Russell T. Davies handed the reins to Steven Moffatt. Moffatt succeeded Davies as showrunner the primary time round, co-created Sherlock and is widely-regarded as the very best Who author of the twenty first century. With a pedigree as impeccable as that, and having already written “Increase” for the Ncuti Gatwa’s first season within the title highway, expectations are excessive.
Moffatt is an arch farce author and has a robust grasp of construction, so it’s no shock we open in medias res. The Physician is providing room service to quite a lot of individuals in numerous time intervals together with Edmund Hilary’s base camp at Everest and the Orient categorical earlier than stumbling in on Pleasure in a depressing London lodge room in 2024. After the credit, we spool again to the Physician arriving within the Time Resort, which permits friends to trip all through historical past. Don’t fear about causality or any A Sound of Thunder shenanigans, the Resort is in some way constructed to guard its friends from screwing up the timeline.
The Physician is trying to steal some milk for his espresso from the lodge buffet, however his eye is caught on one thing sinister: An individual carrying a briefcase with a handcuff chain is attempting to verify right into a room. The Physician recruits Trev, one of many workers, to maintain watch whereas he scouts forward to work out what scheme could possibly be afoot. Because it seems, the case is sentient and evil, leaping from host to host and possessing each in flip. As soon as it’s leapt to the subsequent host, the final one disintegrates.
It’s right here the Physician bumps into Pleasure who, via hijinks, winds up handcuffed to the case instead of the lodge supervisor. When the Physician opens the case to try to discover a resolution, the case threatens to kill whoever it’s linked to until it will get a 4 digit code. Who shall present the code? The Physician, rising from his personal future, taking Pleasure with him whereas leaving “our” Physician trapped in 2024 with out the TARDIS. Because the lodge door closes, the Physician hurls abuse at his future self, about why he’s all the time alone and persons are all the time leaving him. He’s doubly upset as he by no means usually has to journey “the long way around,” sooner or later after the opposite.
And so, the episode basically stops to provide us an prolonged sequence of the Physician making pals with Anita, the lodge supervisor. The Physician will get a job because the lodge’s handyperson, and slowly lets his guard down, spending extra time with Anita till they’re a platonic couple. It’s a sequence you’d by no means see in an everyday episode, with snatches of the Physician and Anita’s life. He makes the microwave larger on the within, repaints Anita’s automobile TARDIS blue and so they even sit and speak to at least one one other on chairs — a key visible given the shortage of chairs on the TARDIS. However because the yr elapses and it’s time for the Physician to return to his personal present, he waves goodbye to Anita.
Returning to the time lodge, the Physician bursts again in on the occasions of a yr in the past, sharing the code and yanking Pleasure off to new adventures. The Physician works out the briefcase holds the embryonic type of an artificially-created star that might supply a supply of possible energy to whoever owned it. However until you personal the Hand of Omega, stars take a very long time to develop, far longer than anybody would have the ability to wait and take a look at their experiment. Until, after all, you hijack a time lodge and ship it again to dinosaur instances, ready for when human historical past begins to see if it really works.
Pleasure, nonetheless possessed by the case, heads to the lodge’s dinosaur room whereas the Physician tries to interrupt its maintain over her. To try this, he provokes an emotion robust sufficient to poison the hyperlink between the case and its host earlier than it obliterates them. He bullies her, goading her into disclosing why she’s staying at a downmarket London lodge. Seems she’s grieving the lack of her mom who died of COVID-19 in an isolation ward and Pleasure was unable to say goodbye to her in individual. Sadly, earlier than the Physician can deactivate the star seed, it’s eaten by a (brilliant-looking) dinosaur, placing it out of his attain.
The Physician and Pleasure head again to the lodge and, 65 million years later, discover the star is now able to detonate. It’s been locked inside a stone construction with a heavy stone door that neither of them can transfer, and time is working out. So, the Physician, who boasts that he’s “good with rope,” steals a rope from the Everest base camp, hanging it off the again of the Orient Categorical to haul the stone away.. It’s a powerful and kinetic sequence let down solely by the dreadful CGI when Gatwa’s standing on the practice. Typical Physician Who: It may well now do convincing dinosaurs, however now can’t do a convincing practice.
It’s right here issues lose their coherence, since Pleasure’s eyes flash with possession vitality, however by the point the Physician returns, Pleasure has… eaten the star? Absorbed it in some way? Made pals with and bonded with it? He finds her standing on a cliff edge, the place Pleasure says she’ll merge with the star and take it to the heavens, the place it should do no one any hurt in any respect. At this level in my notes, I wrote “Don’t let this be Bethlehem,” when the digicam pulls out to disclose that’s precisely the place they’re, full with three camels parked outdoors a steady. Oy.
Pleasure reunites together with her mom and the Physician goes again to touring, however not earlier than he will get Anita a job working the Time Resort. We additionally get a bit of shot of Ruby Sunday, who will return to the present for its second season correct.
As I stated on the high, you may’t choose “Joy to the World” on the deserves of an everyday episode because it’s serving a number of masters. However I don’t assume we may name it the strongest episode of both Steven Moffatt’s oeuvre or the present’s numerous Christmas Specials. Like the entire Disney-era episodes, it has a barely incoherent high quality the place the pacing sags and zippers in all of the incorrect locations. I’m for the prolonged apart the place we see a “normal” yr within the lifetime of the Physician, however the story framing it ought to have been tighter to stability out the slowness. It’s a enjoyable sufficient approach to move an hour with a abdomen filled with vacation turkey (or your most well-liked equal) with sufficient mawkishness to make you assume you’ve seen one thing fairly profound. However I don’t assume I’ll be coming again to look at this one many times like I’d for, say, “The Christmas Invasion.”
