The Cutprice Guignol

Look, I know it’s Christmas and all, but that doesn’t mean that I can have a day off from being a bit of a grouch about Doctor Who. What if I forget how? Well, at least as long as the series continues to be as abjectly dodgy as it has been for the last dozen episodes or so, that doesn’t seem likely, but anyway – let’s get into this year’s Christmas special, Joy to the World.

Now, I’m not going to bore you again with my diatribes on what a Christmas special should be – in short, I’m not expecting high art or astonishing quality from a seasonal episode, but I’m looking for something entertaining, a bit daft, a bit mushy, something that can be absorbed through a miasma of mince pies and hot cider. But, to be honest, going into this episode, I was less than enthusiastic – after how dreadful I found the previous season of the show, it was hard to believe that it would magically re-align itself on some moderately decent path, even for something as low-stakes as a Christmas special.

And, spoiler alert: it didn’t. Joy to the World is a pretty bad episode, even by the standards of the Christmas special – and I promise I’m not just saying that because my close personal nemesis Steven Moffat was the one behind the pen, though that’s certainly part of my issue with it.

Because, as ever with many of Moffat’s episodes, Joy to the World has some great stuff in it. The set-up, a time hotel that allows travellers to dot through history at will, is a fun (though clearly show-breaking) idea, and Ncuti Gatwa really gets to shine as he flits through that setting, unburdened by She of the Road Signage. After so much of the last season was bogged down by an ultimately unsatisfying plot surrounding Ruby, it’s such a joy to see him as a more solo lead – his charisma, his energy, his wit, his charm, it’s a pleasure to watch, particularly when he’s paired with the brilliant Joel Fry in the first act.

But, as it went on, Joy to the World grated on me in all the ways that Moffat’s least endearing habits always do. Key plot points are handwaved away with mutterings about bootstrap paradoxes, feminist talking points from several years ago are tossed around with cheerful abandon at inappropriate times that betray a total lack of understanding about what they actually mean, everything is doused with that gratingly arch tone that occasionally gives way to cloying and unearned attempts at pathos. Hell, they even tossed in random moments referencing lesbian relationships (instead of actually exploring them in any meaningful way, as the show has dodged for so long) for the purpose of what seems to be little more than self-satisfied back-patting. It feels like the kind of episode an AI would have spit out after glancing through the back catalogue of the Capaldi era.

And speaking of terrifying technology, Joy to the World also lands some bizarrely similar beats to Boom, Moffat’s one-off episode last season – the character being absorbed into a mainframe by a weapons production company to nobly sacrifice themselves. I’m not saying Who can’t retread beats, but doing this one so soon after Moffat’s previous episode trod uncannily similar grounds feels downright lazy and derivative, especially given the smattering of interesting plot points that could have built to something far more unique and satisfying.

You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned Nicola Coughlan’s highly-touted guest-starring role as the titular Joy, either (and that’s not just because of what I said about her in the Rogue review, thank you very much), and I’ve got my reasons. I adore Coughlan, and she, to me, seemed like the perfect choice for a Christmas special – charismatic, funny, charming, and bubbly, able to make you really care for and root for a character in a matter of moments of screentime. But I really felt like the ball was dropped pretty spectacularly with Joy here – we’re meant to get this powerful story of a woman who chooses to spend Christmas alone to punish herself for not being able to share her mother’s final moments with her due to Covid restrictions in 2020, but what we end up with is a rushed, top-heavy arc that delivers everything through a dump of exposition instead of building it in to the story in a subtler and more impactful way.

I’ve got no issue at all with the show taking on political issues such as the Covid lockdown restrictions and how they were ignored and flaunted by those in power, but I really want to see these kind of stories treated with the skill and respect they deserve. We know so little of these characters that isn’t yelled down the lens in the last ten minutes or so, and it leaves this issues feeling more like a button to press than a topic to explore in a meaningful way. Functionally, we needed more time with Joy to make this happen, and that’s limited by the episode’s conceits – with Joy being attached to a magic briefcase that turns her a bit evil and robotic, or demanding to know what’s going on, or nearly being eaten by a dinosaur, it’s hard for us to really dig into who she is as a person. No space for that, when we have to get to a Sherlock-esque extraordinarily boring monologing about what a perfectly decent hotel room says about her psyche.

No, that’s not true, there was space – but it was dedicated to a subplot that I’m still not entirely sure about. For about ten minutes of this episode, we follow the Doctor spending a real-life year with Anita (Steph de Walley), an employee at the hotel where Joy has just booked in. And it is, genuinely, probably the highlight of the episode – de Walley and Gatwa have lovely chemistry, and there isn’t enough time for Moffat to turn this into the overwrought nonsense he so often does. It’s a touch of normalcy for the Doctor, softness and quietness amongst all the noise, and it’s really, really good, restrained, and even a little tear-jerking as they bid their farewells. But then, Anita is gone, and we switch back to Joy, and the episode jolts back into her plot and asks us to buy her story as the emotional climax of the episode, even though we invest more on-screen weight to the relationship with Anita.

It’s a really, really odd choice, and I’m not entirely sure why it’s here – I understand that there’s a theme in this episode about the Doctor not having friends, and seeking that companionship, but why not do that with Joy instead to make her eventual sacrifice even more impactful? Or why, indeed, not focus the episode entirely on the story with Anita (which I, for one, think I would have made for a downbeat but potentially really memorable special)? Did they figure out on the last day of writing they had ten extra minutes to fill? I can’t make sense of it, honestly.

And, perhaps most egregiously, this little sequence with Anita really drove home to me just how rough the relationship between the Doctor and Ruby has been over the course of the previous season. In these ten minutes, the show created a more layered and compelling friendship than they have over nearly a dozen episodes with Ruby and the Doctor – when Ruby turned up at the end of this episode, it took me a moment to remember who she was, and it wasn’t even anything to do with the mulled wine. Here, we got a glimpse of what Gatwa can do working with a character who seems far better-suited and more filled-out than he has with the decidedly distant Ruby Sunday plot, and it’s just a tantalizing glimpse of what we won’t have again going forward. Look at this wonderfully-rendered friendship between the Doctor and a human companion! Anyway, here’s Millie Gibson wearing Maggie Costello glasses again, I guess.

It wouldn’t be Christmas without me complaining about the Doctor Who Christmas special (especially when it had to go up against a brilliant Wallace & Gromit episode, which I would thoroughly recommend as a palette-cleanser), but this one didn’t make it difficult for me to fulfil this tradition. With a wonky, half-baked script that leaned far too heavily on Moffat’s worst habits, some bizarre pacing choices, and a waste of the talent of Nicola Coughlan, it’s a grim end to one of the worst years of the show since I’ve been watching it. But I’d love to hear what you made of this episode – how did it stack up against other Christmas specials for you? Do you want Anita to return? Let me know in the comments below!

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(header image via Empire)