The best part of Doctor Who’s Christmas Special is a bitter paradox

Doctor Who With the arrival of this year’s “Joy to the World,” fans get an extra special treat under the Christmas tree today. special holiday episode. But they get an even better gift within o: because aside from the episode’s broad holiday wrappings, this larger domestic adventure has a side story that can stand alone as a fantastic episode. WHO in their own rights.

“Joy to the World” takes about a third of its working time sidestepping. After setting up the Time Hotel, where the Doctor is staying – a work of countless gateways now set up to send visitors to every Christmas in history – we quickly pass through a set of these doors as he follows a strange, handcuffed, apparently jumping suitcase. idle hosts. The Doctor and the briefcase’s current host, the Silurian manager at the hotel, find themselves through a doorway to Christmas 2024 in London, where they both meet a young woman named Joy in a run-down hotel room. Some chaos later finds the Doctor somehow tearing apart the hosts after jumping from a suitcase to a new one: the Silurian dies and Joy is bound as the briefcase’s latest carrier, causing him to read ominous warnings about the starseed blossoming. Before the Doctor can figure out exactly what happened to the suitcase… The Doctor walks through the door.

This Doctor is annoyed that his predecessor has not given him any information on how to unlock the secret of the briefcase at some point in the future, as he is forced to take Joy out of the room and leave “our” Doctor. understand everything from a long way. The door slams shut and we’re left in the perspective of “our” Doctor, who now realizes he’s stuck in 2024 with no TARDIS and no way back. the whole year.

What follows is a sprawling sequence full of potential to be a killer episode Doctor Who in its own right. With neither money nor a place to stay, the Doctor must offer his services to the hotel’s manager, Anita (Steph de Wally, in a truly fantastic supporting turn), doing odd jobs, renting things out. was Room of joy. The Doctor is trying to figure out the suitcase on hiatus, sure, but he still has to sit down every now and then and actually live a life he doesn’t normally have to live.

This is not an idea Doctor Who not completely familiar with, of course. The first half of most of the Third Doctor’s existence was based on the Doctor being exiled on modern-day Earth and forced to fend for himself, but he still continued to have regular adventures as UNIT’s scientific advisor. The Fourteenth Doctor’s arc concludes with him being freed from the need to be a doctor and given the grace to exist and live a life with Donna and her family. In particular, Steven Moffat, who wrote Joy to the World, was fascinated by the idea during his time as a showrunner; Episodes like The Host, The Power of Three, and even pre-holiday episodes like The Husbands of the River Song all tackle the idea of ​​the Doctor, either by choice or circumstance. to live “normally” as a wanderer in the fourth dimension.

But unlike that sequence in Joy to the World , these past episodes only explore them in the abstract, the fact that the Doctor spends a disproportionate amount of time in one place, at one moment, mostly in the background. the real reason for this. And that’s honestly because Doctor Who It’s a show we all tune in to see the Doctor travel through time and space, fight monsters and save worlds from catastrophic destruction. It’s rare to have him live a normal human life, as the Doctor exhausts himself here at first, which is a bit boring for a sci-fi adventure show.

However, in a third of the episode – and perhaps the best episode – we are asked to sit with the Doctor as they live this year, to get to know Anita better, to learn what it is to live. like thisso much better that when the year ends and he has to say goodbye to his new friend, it’s almost as heartbreaking as losing a companion. There’s no big threat or mystery, the Doctor doesn’t even count the clock even knowing Joy’s room has been booked at the hotel for a year, instead the whole sequence is about exploring the potential of this different lens. To the doctor’s life and sense of being.

Most importantly, it’s a necessary healing period for this particular Doctor to befriend and then part ways with them in this way. Just not because of the last season Doctor Who really struggled its inner element Making the Doctor and Ruby feel like the friends the series has always told us are, but not with Joy, the de facto “companion” of the special, the Fifteenth Doctor processes his loneliness after parting ways with Ruby. It’s only with Anita, and her connection and inspiration drives her forward after losing her first friend, her first friend, in this incarnation. Again, it’s something that past holiday specials have touched on – “The Runaway Bride” and the Tenth Doctor’s feelings for Rose, “Voyage of the Damned” and the Tenth Doctor’s feelings for Martha – but their bottom line is reminders. The Doctor needs someone to share his adventures with.

For a moment and most brilliantly, Joy to the World asks us and the Doctor if life itself is an adventure to be shared with someone more than Time and Space.

You can watch now Doctor Who“Joy to the World” on Disney+ worldwide and BBC in the UK and Ireland.

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