Doctor Who: Joy to the World (2024 Christmas Special)

I really really love Ncuti Gatwa in this role, y'all, he brings such an amazing energy to the Doctor... I wanna keep him for a long time...

Cons:

This is an extremely cheesy episode and honestly that's exactly what the doctor (hehe) ordered, but there was one moment that didn't work for me, and that was the ending with the Doctor literally saying "oh, I get it! You're joy!" Like, yeah, we get it, Doctor. We got it from Joy saying the same thing as she ascended to become a big light in the sky. It was this weird unnecessary repetition of the cheesy conclusion and I didn't need it quite so spelled out for me? Same with Joy's mom in the hospital literally saying Joy's name out loud as she saw the light. Again, trust the audience maybe a little bit more to get what you're doing without saying it all out loud!

Pros:

This was just just a lovely meditation on friendship and loneliness and grief and, yes, joy! It has kind of a lot going on, conceptually: there are a lot of "false companions" in this episode, or temporary companions, people who the Doctor has a connection with but that doesn't end up being the core of the episode. In particular, you've got Trev, who wants to help the Doctor and stop letting people down, and then you've got Anita, who the Doctor spends a whole year getting to know. The emotional core of the episode is with Joy, played by Nicola Coughlan, who gets to open the episode after the brief comedic bit with the Doctor, but who then doesn't really play much of a role until towards the very end. Structurally I found that interesting, like we were really getting a chance to explore what life can be like for the Doctor sometimes, as he comes in and out of people's lives, sometimes for short moments like with Trev, and sometimes for longer stretches like with Anita, but always without being able to fully relax and put down roots. It's tragic that Trev died, totally randomly, and in a different episode it would have been the Doctor's job to somehow save him, but he's distracted and busy and when it all goes down he's not even aware of it. That must happen all the time, and I liked the way this episode was structured to emphasize it.

The best stretch of the episode was honestly the stuff with Doctor and Anita. I loved that it was played sort of slant-wise like a romance thing, but then there's also this moment where Anita casually wonders if the Doctor has a boyfriend. I love how casually queer the Doctor is in this iteration, too, it really does seem like he's mostly into men, or at least that's the way he presents to other people. (God, if Jonathan Groff ever comes back to smooch him some more I will cry tears of joy.) But their friendship is so precious and yet so ultimately fleeting, just a year in the life of a human, just a moment in the life of a Time Lord.

The concept of the time hotel was really fun, but I liked that they didn't spend the whole episode just making one-off jokes about it. We got the setup with the different times and locations, and then the payoff of Joy rising into the air and shining down on all of the different scenes we'd already established. Very neatly done, I enjoyed it!

This is a bit all over the place as a review, but I'll end by saying that I cried real tears during the whole final moment, of Joy taking on this burden to become something new, the Doctor accepting the choice she'd made, and the gift that her mother got, to see her daughter in some form in her final moments, instead of dying alone and scared. We even got to see Ruby, and when her phone rang and she answered it and it was her mother and not the Doctor... oof, talk about tugging at my heartstrings! That was brutal!

So yeah, I'm very excited for more of Gatwa's Doctor back on our screen in 2025. He's such a dynamic and talented performer and I'm incredibly drawn in by what he's doing with the role. This was a lovely, sugary-sweet and fully sentimental episode of a silly show, and it really hit the spot for me this year.

9/10