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return Doctor Who Showrunner Russell T. Davies might have been a pioneer of modernity Doctor Who Holiday offers– Christmas monsters, big spectacle, the occasional dose of Kylie Minogue – but there’s an argument to be made that it was his successor Steven Moffat who managed the balancing act into something really good Doctor Who Christmas story should be. Paradoxically, the answer isn’t really a great science fiction story – or at least that’s not as important as a touch of earnest, almost cloying sentimentality about the season’s romance. This year’s offering: Moffat’s first Christmas script Since 2017’s Twelfth Doctor’s “Twice Upon a Time,” this balancing act has largely been accomplished with an interesting twist on time Doctor Who Adventure full of festive charm – one that really leans on the latter to make up for a few missteps in the former.
Joy to the World, which airs on Christmas Day next week, has some parallels to Ncuti Gatwa’s full-fledged debut as the 15th Doctor Last year’s holiday episode“The Church on Ruby Road,” in that it relies on a series of charming performances to hide when its story doesn’t quite fit together coherently. It trades the fantastical nature of creepy goblins snatching babies for a more traditional sci-fi aesthetic as the Doctor settles into a futuristic “Time Hotel” for the holidays, offering temporal gateways to Christmas throughout human history. It also leans difficult also on that seasonal aesthetic, with lots of snow, tinsel and trees, which is much more evocative of the season than just any old episode that happens to air towards the end of December.
Intrigued by the mystery of a strange suitcase that appears to be fatally exchanged between the hosts at the hotel, he finds himself stuck inside festive contemporary scenario– and via the aforementioned Time Hotel gates – which the Doctor encounters the lonely joy (Nicola Coughlan) as she checks into a run-down hotel in London for Christmas 2024. The mystery of why Joy becomes so important to the Doctor’s latest adventure is actually put aside for a good portion of Joy to the World, which takes a sideways step in exploring the implications of the Time Hotel gates and the temporal paradoxes that surround them. It’s all perfectly Moffat-esque, a mix of laughter, time-bending storytelling and the almost obligatory melancholy that comes with his best performances as a writer, as the Doctor casually finds himself forced into the life of another lonely woman (Steph de Whalley’s Anita, maybe secretly the star of “Joy to the World”). It’s a murderer Doctor Who Story idea that also cleverly addresses the doctor’s loneliness afterwards Separation from Ruby. It just so happens that it gets stuffed into another one to suit the season Doctor Who Episode that… well, doesn’t quite have the time to get into something that interesting.
“Joy to the World” makes up for these structural deficiencies with Joy’s plot by really allowing this element of the episode to focus on the sentimentality of the holiday season, with a climactic narrative full of heartbreaking emotional drama to make up for the fact that it plays a bit fast and loose with the logistical fundamentals, especially in contrast to the plot-within-a-plot that the first half of the episode is devoted to. For the most part it works, thanks to the outstanding performances of Gatwa and Coughlan, and will particularly strike a bittersweet chord with people experiencing Christmas without their loved ones. But if you are particularly immune to it Doctor WhoGiven the show’s sentimental charm offensive this time of year, you might find yourself missing the climax of it all a little – and wondering what the episode would have been like if it had stuck with the initial plot-within-a-plot as its main idea .
But even if you can’t witness the emotions, there’s still a fair bit of greatness Doctor Who can be found in “Joy to the World,” even though it’s not the actual focus of the episode. There’s enough here to satisfy anyone looking for something great Doctor Who Idea, or someone who just wants something big and Christmassy to fill their heart with seasonal cheer as they sit down over the festive season – and at this time Doctor WhoThanks to the long history of holiday specialties, it’s a welcome little gift under our shared trees that we can still get stories that balance the two.
Doctor Who returns to Disney+ around the world and on the BBC in the UK and Ireland on Christmas Day, December 25th.
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