Doctor Who: Joy to the World ★★★

“A hotel but instead of rooms, time portals? Package deals for all of history’s biggest hits. No wonder there was no room at the inn” – the Doctor

Storyline
London, Christmas 4042: the Doctor arrives at the Time Hotel, which has portals to hotel rooms and lodgings throughout Earth history. In 2024, a woman called Joy is spending Christmas alone at the Sandringham Hotel in London, but she gets manacled to a deadly suitcase. It contains a star seed that requires millions of years to grow and is key to a plot by the Villengard corporation to destroy Earth. The Time Lord must save Joy but he gets stuck in London for a year, befriending hotel receptionist Anita. Ultimately, after a trip to prehistoric times with the Doctor, Joy is transformed by the energy into a benign star.

First UK broadcast
Wednesday 25 December 2024

Cast
The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa
Joy Almondo – Nicola Coughlan
Trev Simpkins –Joel Fry
Anita Benn – Steph de Whalley
Hotel manager – Jonathan Aris
Hilda Flockhart – Julia Watson
Basil Flockhart – Peter Benedict
Sylvia Trench – Niamh Marie Smith
Edmund Hillary – Phil Baxter
Tenzing Norgay – Samuel Sherpa-Moore
Receptionist – Ruchi Rai
Mr Single – Joshua Leese
Angela Grace – Fiona Marr
Barman – Liam Prince-Donnelly
Joy’s mum – Fiona Scott
Ruby Sunday – Millie Gibson

Crew
Writer – Steven Moffat
Director – Alex Sanjiv Pillai
Music – Murray Gold
Series producer – Vicky Delow
Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson, Steven Moffat

RT review by Patrick Mulkern

Time really does fly. It wasn’t so long ago that Ncuti Gatwa and Nicola Coughlan were among the stand-out stars in two of Netflix’s biggest hits – Sex Education and Bridgerton – and here they are now, confidently fronting the Doctor Who Christmas special. Though both shine effortlessly as individuals, Steven Moffat’s time-twisting plot doesn’t allow them many moments to sparkle as a duo.

Unexpectedly, he lets more chemistry develop between Gatwa’s Doctor and hotel receptionist Anita, played winningly by relative newcomer Steph de Whalley, who escaped all the advance publicity hoopla. She is his true friend and companion in this special. The Time Lord is obliged to spend a whole year with Anita at the Sandringham Hotel, earning his keep and enjoying his sojourn.

He admits, “I don’t usually live like this, one day after the other. I always wondered what it would be like.” This Doctor has perhaps forgotten some of his previous Christmas adventures. Matt Smith’s Doctor spent many decades defending the planet Trenzalore in The Time of the Doctor (2013), and Peter Capaldi’s Doctor was shacked up with River Song for 25 years in The Husbands of River Song (2015). No matter: this lengthy hotel booking in 2024 allows Gatwa to show his heart and his flare for comedy. And Anita would be welcome back any time.

The sequence where the Doctor taunts Joy, calling her a “sad sack”, forcing her to drop her smile and unbottle her rage is uncomfortable viewing but pointed writing. It culminates by thrusting us back four years to the pandemic, to the point in 2020 when the prospect of spending Christmas together was dangled but then cancelled by the Tory government, when many weren’t able to spend time with their loved ones, whether they were hearty or dying in hospital, as Joy’s mum was. This is the one stand-out, truly emotive scene in this story – in a period of Who when most of the emotion is surface and sound.

We’re always on solid ground with Steven Moffat as a storyteller, even as he whisks viewers off their feet for a madcap spectacle, twiddling with time and locales. The heart of Joy to the World, though, is his portrait of four lonely people at Christmas – the Doctor, Anita, Joy and her dying mum. His final flourish – transforming Joy into a benign celestial force, indeed the Star of Bethlehem – is a cheeky, radiant reminder of what Christmas is all about. But maybe Steph de Whalley is another new star too.