Somehow, it’s been half a year already since Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor last graced our screens. In all fairness, though, having just stopped Jackal God Sutekh from delivering his dust of death to the universe and bid his bestie Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) an emotional farewell in Doctor Who series finale ‘Empire Of Death’, everybody’s favourite two-hearted Time Lord had more than earned some time off. Aptly then, ‘Joy To The World’ — an absolute treat of a Christmas special, poured from the pen of former showrunner Steven Moffat — sends the Doctor off to a luxury hotel for some well-deserved R&R… and a spot of planet-saving with Nicola Coughlan. Naturally.
Having penned arguably both the best (‘The Husbands Of River Song’) and the worst (‘The Return Of Doctor Mysterio’) Christmas specials in modern Who, Moffat smartly plumps for a quintessential Whovian formula here, taking a passingly curious yet ultimately mundane element of normal life (those random locked doors in seemingly every hotel room) before explaining it with aliens and wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey shenanigans. In this instance, those locked doors lead to the self-explanatorily named Time Hotel, a place whose every room is a portal to a different time and place. Mid-20th-century Orient Express, base camp at Mt Everest, the dawn of the dinosaurs and the birth of a baby thousands of years ago are all just a check-in away. Honestly, what could possibly go wrong?
Ncuti Gatwa, as you’d expect, continues to be the new-look Whoniverse’s great revelation.
It’s always frustrating to say that the less said about the plot of a film or show, the better, but in the case of ‘Joy To The World’, it’s warranted. Moffat makes such a well-garlanded little mystery box of an episode that all you really need to know heading in is that something is amiss at the Time Hotel when the Doctor arrives, it may or may not involve a recurring Moffatian foe, and you can bet your baubles there’s a Christmassy tie-in that’ll leave you with a satisfied grin as the end-credits hit. It’s simple stuff, a far cry from the political and philosophical complexities of Moffat’s last tango with Gatwa on ‘Boom’, but by no means simplistic.
Without getting into specific narrative beats, it’s safe to say that in the absence of Ruby Sunday, the Doctor has no shortage of company on his latest adventure — and pointedly, poignantly so. Over the course of the ep, Fifteen meets Joel Fry’s self-deprecative concierge Trev (“This will be the least I’ve ever let anybody down,” he meekly promises the Doctor upon first meeting); an elastically expressive Silurian hotel manager played by an assignment-ready Jonathan Aris; and Stephanie de Whalley’s delightfully human, low-key, show-stealing housekeeper Anita. Each reflects and refracts figures from the Doctor’s recent travels in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, occasionally distractingly so, but never without a clear sense of purpose. And then, right at the heart of this eclectic ensemble, we have Derry Girls and Bridgerton breakout Nicola Coughlan, whose Joy is a force of nature with a smile, as the Doctor himself says, “like the lid on a boiling pot”. Seeing just how and why that pot boils is part of the episode’s magnetic appeal.
Even with such a fine ensemble, though, make no mistake: Ncuti Gatwa, as you’d expect, continues to be the new-look Whoniverse’s great revelation. Now, across Gatwa’s first season as the Fifteenth Doctor, much had been made of the former Sex Education star’s particularly lachrymose take on the show’s eponymous Time Lord. The online hypothesis being bandied about was that if the Doctor’s crying in almost every episode, then surely the emotional heft of it happening lessens with each instance. What that particular discourse fails to recognise, however, is that Gatwa is an extraordinarily gifted weeper, and every glassy-eyed stare and perfectly placed teary cheek-trickle here is a reminder of just how fresh — how open to everything, exquisite highs and lows — the latest incarnation of the Doctor is.
And there’s the kicker: Gatwa’s Doctor, poles apart from the last Doctor Moffat wrote for, Peter Capaldi, does cry more — but he also feels everything more. As such, while ‘Joy To The World’ is dappled with sombre grace notes, the episode functioning as both a festive ode to togetherness as well as the Doctor’s chance to process the pain of having lost another companion, this is a cosmic caper through and through, with Gatwa front-and-centre as the spriteliest spaceman you ever did see. His is a Doctor who’ll never knowingly just walk anywhere, whose pooling eyes are only as deep as his smile is wide, and who looks at everything around him with all the wonder of someone who’s lived thousands of years and yet still remains a child at heart(s).
After the Pantheon of Gods and Susan Twist and Ruby Sunday’s parentage drama of the first series in Doctor Who’s bold new era, Steven Moffat once again returns with a sage reminder of what, at its core, the world’s longest-running sci-fi show is all about: a lonely man with a blue box exploring a universe filled with beauty and danger, ever searching for a friend to share it all with. And this Christmas, whether we see in the season surrounded by loved ones or by ourselves, ‘Joy To The World’ — random dinosaurs, contrived doodads, sickly sweet sentimentality, tantalising Season 2 teasers, and all — promises to bring us all together in the way only Who can.
