‘Doctor Who’ Recap: ‘Joy to the World’

12/26/2024

Written by John Edward Betancourt

Ncuti Gatwa as The Doctor in ‘Doctor Who: Joy to the World’. (Photo Courtesy of Disney+/BBC.)

Caution: This article contains spoilers for the 2024 ‘Doctor Who’ Holiday Special.

There are few things that we cherish more during the holiday season, than handing over the perfect gift to someone we love. Because there is something supremely special about seeing the look on their face as they tear away the wrapping paper to behold a gift that was chosen just for them. That reflects their likes, their wants, their joy, and that is why we spend so much time during the season, searching for that gift. So that we can bring happiness and love, which we deeply believe to be the sole reason for the season. But truly… while the perfect gift is important and something we should hold to, sometimes our quest for it has us lose sight of something equally as important.

In that, we sometimes forget that giving gifts to others and feeding off of their joy, can be detrimental when the gift giver is in fact, hurting. For the joy of others doesn’t fill a hole when someone has lost someone during the holidays or is in need of something more to soothe an ailing soul, and well… it is high time we point that out and think about it more often. So that we all come to understand that the season is more than just gift giving. It’s also about making sure that people feel loved, seen, and whole, and that sometimes… what they really need to have a wonderful holiday season is a chance to heal and love themselves and find what gives them new meaning or perhaps a chance at closure.

If anything, these more unique aspects of the season are top of mind today, simply because they were put on display during this year’s holiday special of Doctor Who on Disney+. Which ‘Joy to the World’ accomplished by having the Doctor arrive at a very unique place… the Time Hotel. A massive and classy hotel that harbored the ability to send anyone to any time period they want, through the locked door in hotel rooms we pay no mind to, and well… the Doctor couldn’t help but notice that something suspicious was happening in this hotel. Something that prompted one of those lessons to come forth for the Doctor. For while he was tailing the hotel’s manager, who stepped through into a tiny hotel in London in 2024, he encountered a woman named Joy, who became attached to the lethal briefcase that the manager had attached to him, and in the midst of trying to uncover that briefcase’s secrets, Joy was whisked away by a future version of the Doctor, which stranded Doctor Prime in London for a full year.

Ncuti Gatwa and Nicola Couglan as The Doctor and Joy in ‘Doctor Who: Joy to the World’. (Photo Courtesy of Disney+/BBC.)

For he would not be able to return to the Time Hotel until 2025, and while there, he just lived and worked in the hotel, and hung out with its manager, a woman named Anita. In fact, they became fast friends and well… the simple nature of that friendship and time to reflect, really helped the Doctor to understand some of his toxic behaviors and how the pain in his past created them. All so he could heal and think about how to culture relationships going forward. Because clearly, the current path he was on kept him lonesome and in pain, and if he could be his authentic self as he was here, perhaps he could finally stick with a companion for longer periods of time. In fact, he worked so hard at this, he even avoided contacting Ruby, despite her cameo. Which did indeed bring about a powerful lesson about how some need the holiday season to heal and reflect and find strength for tomorrow from it, and it was Joy, that explored the other lesson.

Because eventually she and the Doctor reunited at the Time Hotel, as the time loop, we saw early on predicted. And their time together, revealed that Villengard, the nasty weapons manufacturer from last season’s episode, ‘Boom’, set this briefcase up to create a star seed. Which would create an actual star in an effort to create an endless energy source, and it was set up to explode at a time in human history, that would wipe out all of humanity. But in between those stakes, were moving moments with Joy, where we learned she lost so much in the past few years and was broken and desperate to find some measure of closure. Which for her, involving doing something worthwhile. For the death of her mother, and other mistakes in life, made her feel as though she had accomplished nothing. So, to save, all of humanity, and to be reunited with her mother, she became the star seed. Giving herself the gift of closure and purpose.

All of which made for a supremely different kind of Doctor Who holiday special. Since they usually aren’t this cerebral and this moving. They either feature a grand holiday adventure that sets up the new season or just offer up a wild story that we outright enjoy. So, it was refreshing to see Joy ponder upon what she needed and see the Doctor think about his journey and his own behaviors. Which of course, related to that central theme of looking at the holidays in a different light and how others are searching for more than the perfect gift, but the perfect way to heal, the perfect way to feel whole and that makes for a special story. One that not only reminds us that this new era of the show is going to be far more introspective, but a holiday special that is more than the sum of comfort and joy, since it speaks to how we truly find the latter. Until next time.

Watch ‘Doctor Who: Joy to the World’

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