The best part of the Doctor Who Christmas special is the bittersweet irony

Doctor Who Fans will get an extra special treat under the Christmas tree today with the arrival of ‘Joy to the World’ this year Eid special episode. But they get better gift wrapped inside That: Because beyond the episode’s expansive, celebratory covers, this larger-than-life adventure has a side story that can stand on its own as a great episode of from In its own rights.

About a third of the way into its runtime “Joy to the World” takes a sideways step. After setting up the Time Hotel in which the Doctor resides – a collection of countless portals currently set up to send guests to every Christmas in history – we are whisked through a set of those doorways as he follows a strange suitcase that travels between handcuffed people. seemingly. Vacant hosts. The Doctor and the briefcase’s current host, Silury’s manager at the hotel, find themselves passing through the door leading to Christmas 2024 London, where they meet a young woman named Joy in her dilapidated hotel room. After some chaos, the Doctor discovers that the Bag is somehow dismantling the hosts after she jumps to a new Bag: the Silurian dies and Joy is captured as the Bag’s newest bearer, causing her to sing ominous warnings about the opening of a star seed. Before the Doctor can understand what’s happening with the bag… The Doctor walks through the door.

This Doctor, at some point in the future, takes off on his predecessor’s annoyance with him for not providing any information on how to solve the briefcase mystery, as he proceeds to drag Joey out of the room and leave our Doctor, forced to figure things out the long way around. The door closes, and we’re left with the perspective of our Doctor, who realizes he’s now stuck in 2024 with no TARDIS and no way back. A whole year.

What follows is an extended sequence filled with the potential for a killer episode Doctor Who By itself. With no money or a place to stay, the doctor must offer his services to the hotel manager, Anita (Steve De Waley, in a truly wonderful supporting role), doing odd jobs, and renting out… He was Joey’s room. The Doctor is working on trying to figure out the bag in his downtime, sure, but he’s still forced to sit moment to moment, in one place, and actually live a life he wouldn’t normally have to experience.

This is not an idea Doctor Who Completely unusual, of course. The entire first half of the Third Doctor’s existence was built on the premise that the Doctor had been banished to modern-day Earth and forced to live on his own, but was still regularly going on adventures as UNIT’s scientific advisor. The Fourteenth Doctor’s arc concludes with him being granted the blessing of existing and living with Donna and her family, freed from the need to be a Doctor. Steven Moffat in particular, who wrote Joy to the World, was fascinated by the idea throughout his time as director of the series; Episodes like “The Lodger,” “The Power of Three,” and even a pre-holiday special, “The Husbands of River Song,” all deal with the idea of ​​the Doctor, either by choice or circumstance, temporarily giving up his life as a Doctor. The wanderer is in the fourth dimension to live “normally”.

But in contrast to that sequence in “Joy to the World,” those past episodes examine it in the abstract, the fact that the Doctor spends a disproportionate amount of time in one place, in one moment, largely in the background against the world. The real reason for this. And that’s honestly because Doctor Who It’s a show we all watch to see the Doctor travel through time and space, fight monsters, and save worlds from catastrophic destruction. Having him live a normal human life is rare because, like with the Doctor in the beginning, it’s a bit boring for a sci-fi adventure show.

However, for a third of the episode – and arguably the episode at its best – we are asked to sit down with the Doctor as he lives this year, get to know Anita better, and learn about the meaning of life Like himbetter, so much so that when the time comes when his year ends and he has to say goodbye to his new friend, it’s almost as heartbreaking as losing a comrade. There’s no major threat or mystery, the Doctor doesn’t even count down the clock in particular, even if he knows that Joey’s hotel room is only booked for a year, and instead the entire sequence becomes more about exploring the possibilities of this different lens into the Doctor’s life And his sense of existence.

Even more importantly, it’s a necessary healing period for this particular doctor, to make a friend and then break up with him in that way. Not only because the last season of Doctor Who Really struggled with Its internal element To make the Doctor and Ruby feel like they’re friends the series constantly tells us they are, but because he’s not with Joy, the actual “companion” of the special in which the Fifteenth Doctor deals with his loneliness after his breakup with Ruby. It is only with Anita, and her connection and inspiration, that drives him forward in the wake of the loss of his first friend, one of the first people he imprinted on in this incarnation. Again, this is something the previous holiday specials have touched on as well – “The Runaway Bride” and the Tenth Doctor’s feelings for Rose, “Voyage of the Damned” and the Tenth Doctor’s feelings about Martha – but their ultimate conclusion are reminders that the Doctor needs someone to share adventures with.

For a moment, and in its brightest, “Joy to the World” asks both us and the Doctor whether life itself is the adventure he needs to share with someone, not time and place.

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

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