Logline
When Joy checks into a London hotel in 2024, she opens a secret doorway to the Time Hotel — discovering danger, dinosaurs and the Doctor. But a deadly plan is unfolding across the Earth, just in time for Christmas.
Written by: Steven Moffat
Directed by: Alex Pillai
The actor playing Trev did such a delightful heavy lift at the start. Wow.
So few lines, so relatable, what an immediate hook.
And gosh darn it, Villenue had better have such a huge commupance coming! The Daleks have given me decades of terror and heartbreak, but I just despise Villenue in a whole other way, for what they did to Trev!
The big location reveal was super obvious to me, but I still enjoyed it.
If
location
the Biblical nativity
happened at all in the Doctor Who Universe, of course the Time Hotel would have a door there.
And of course it happened, in the Doctor Who Universe. The rules are pretty clear that anything and everything hard to believe in history is absolutely bound to turn up.
With that in mind, where and when else is a newborn star named Joy going to make their first appearance?
See, what I always liked the best about Doctor Who christmas episodes is when they manage to use the holiday traditions as a background for science fiction, which in itself is just a big idea way of talking about the human condition. When these specials really play well, they loop back and produce secular little narratives that join the speculative science and the human need for connection that can be at its most precarious during midwinter.
Spoilers for the episode ahead
Joy to the world(s?) had a lot of that between poor lonely Joy herself, the Doctor aching for companionship, the Time Hotel connecting people across time eras, and that cosmic nuclear football that seems to threaten it all.
Moffat can really pull at your heart strings when he wants, even with characters you’ve only known for minutes. Joy speaking forlornly to a fly in her depressing hotel room; eager to please concierge Trev, wanting so much to not let people down too much; and Anita from reception — in particular her bottle year with the Doctor was a significant parenthetical before he caught up with the main rush of narrative.
The Scooby-Doo conceit of running from door to unconnected door down a corridor holds up even under pressure of a holiday related trauma and time travel. The star seed, in all its Pulp fiction-y MacGuffin glory, isn’t nearly as clever as the prefab conflict Villengard whipped up in Boom, but it’s vaguely threatening enough to drive the story.
The climax is where they lost me, though. I was fully on board with Joy’s loss of her mother, Trev infiltrating the star over the course of aeons, and the Doctor using the Orient Express to force a door open (a more convincing use of rope than Empire of death). And all of it coming together in Joy’s ascension made perfect sense — until that reveal of the location.
I realise that this era of Who is more fantasy- and fairytale-prone than previous ones, but tying the ending into the actual f—king biblical nativity isn’t cute, or topical, or even relevant. It’s just pandering, and lower than I’d expect from a hardnosed atheist like Moffat. My entire family groaned.
All in all a very good special, bookending a beautiful sabbatical vignette in the midst of the convoluted action — all let down by tacked-on religious bullshit in the final minutes.
It’s just pandering
True. But let me share an experience that may make it more palatable.
I was raised in a faith, and occasional pandering by excellent science fiction authors made a tremendous difference in my life.
Moments of connection from scifi to concepts of faith, and respect from scifi toward the faith I was raised in - made science fiction accessible to me at a time when it might not otherwise have been, and my life is so much better for it.
For me, a few such bits of pandering were exactly the little steps I needed here and there to introduce me to a more inclusive, better, approach to the world.
My favorite atheists have found ways to share their perspective - as a gift - with the religious. As a recipient of that gift - to me, it is amazing and beautiful.
I wouldn’t be who I am - and I’m frankly delightful - without the loving and clever choices by some loving and clever atheists - in how they shared their world view with people raised as I was.
Thanks for that perspective! I needed the reminder that as much as religion v science is a conflict, there is also the chance of changing minds on either side.
I still think the scene in question is a sharp turn for Who, which I see as largely secular, but I may rewatch it more kindly after your reply.
With kind regards to the generous atheists who helped shape you — stay delightful!
that reveal of the location.
You know, you’re not wrong about any of this…but I honestly didn’t look at it as an overtly religious thing. I guess in a show that’s visited Atlantis multiple times, and established that the moon is a space dragon egg (except when it isn’t), I just looked at it as a big ol’ slice of holiday cheese.
It probably helps that it was a wide shot without any real details.
On a completely different note, I wanted to give more attention to the segment of the Doctor’s “lost year” in the hotel with Anita. They did a lot with a little in that sequence, and I thought it was pretty special.
Also, the Doctor bootstrapping up the combination was hilarious, and I hope they don’t do something like it again for a long, long time.
I may be reading too much into the religious bit, it just jarred so much with the show’s history of (granted, loosely) science based storylines and resolutions. Just yesterday I watched The daemons where the Third Doctor berates Jo for her new age-y superstitions:
Everything that happens in life must have a scientific explanation. If you know where to look for it, that is.
But I guess I’ll have to ignore the biblical setting in JttW as a rare lapse, unless of course it is revealed to lead into the opening scene of Life of Brian…
The more I think about this special episode, the more I love the Doctor’s year with Anita. The way it was compressed and showed their bond growing made me think of the first minutes of Pixar’s Up. Just the gentle, fragmented sketching of a shared life, leading up to an inevitable but still devastating loss — and the significance of armchairs!
Finally, re “bootstrapping” — Moffat has form in this area. Yes, obligatory nod to Before the flood, but the way it was handled this episode really reminded me more of an earlier example. Only a few days ago I watched the Red Nose Day shorts Space and Time, and it’s basically the same situation:
Amy Pond: Who the hell are you?
Amy 2: I’m you … from your future.
The Doctor: Tell me exactly what’s happened.
Amy 2: Well, the exterior shell of the TARDIS has drifted forwards in time. If you step into the box now you step inside the control room a tiny bit into the past.
Amy Pond: I don’t understand.
Amy 2: Neither do I.
Amy Pond: But you just said it.
Amy 2: No, I’m just repeating it. I’m just remembering what I heard myself saying when I was standing where you are standing now and repeating it I’m just repeating this, too, and this … and this.
Amy Pond: Ah, I still don’t understand.
Amy 2: You still don’t.
At some point you just have to trust the process and hope you don’t create a new “mavity” situation, I guess 🙂
where the Third Doctor berates Jo for her new age-y superstitions
You actually just made me think of the other recent Moffat episode, “Boom,” in which the Doctor berates faith (and, more broadly, religion) throughout the episode, and then ends the episode admitting to having a kind of “faith” of his own.
Yeah, Moff is going soft in his old age 😄
My initial reaction is that it was pretty good - not in the top tier of Christmas specials, but pretty good.
I would imagine that some people might not appreciate the lockdown stuff, but I don’t think it was pushing any kind of agenda - just acknowledging that there were some tragic side-effects of that whole situation.
What really struck me was how well the episode fleshed out Joy, Anita, Trev with fairly limited screen time. Ironically, Joy was probably the least fleshed-out, but Nicola Coughlan played the part very well.
I would imagine that some people might not appreciate the lockdown stuff, but I don’t think it was pushing any kind of agenda - just acknowledging that there were some tragic side-effects of that whole situation.
Yeah. I didn’t take it as pushing an agenda, just acknowledging the pain from the sacrifice. Doing the right thing just sometimes feels awful.
I somehow missed that Joy had a line that was a (very) thinly-veiled reference to the fact that she had to go through all of this while Boris Johnson and his lot were out partying.
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