am a doctor With the arrival of “Joy to the World” this year, fans are getting an extra special gift under the Christmas tree today special holiday episodeBut they’re getting an even better gift Inside This: Because beyond the episode’s sweeping celebratory finale, this larger-than-life adventure has a side story that could stand alone as a fantastic episode. Who In your own right.
For about a third of its running time “Joy to the World” takes a sideways step. After setting up the Time Hotel where the Doctor is staying – a business of innumerable gateways currently set to send guests through every Christmas in history – we quickly go through a set of those doors as he Sees a strange suitcase skipping between handcuffs, seemingly empty host. The Doctor and the briefcase’s current host, a Silurian manager at the hotel, find themselves walking through a door in London at Christmas 2024, where they both meet a young woman named Joy in her shabby hotel room. After some confusion, the Doctor discovers that the suitcase is somehow disintegrating the hosts after being boarded onto a new suitcase: the Silurian dies and Joey is captured as the latest bearer of the briefcase, Whereby he chants ominous warnings about the blossoming of a star seed. Before the Doctor realizes what’s happening with the suitcase… the Doctor walks through the door.
This Doctor, from some point in the future, channels his predecessor’s irritation at not being given any information on how to solve the mystery of the briefcase, as he begins to drag Joey out of the room and forces her to ” Leaves our” doctor. Find things at a distance. The door slams shut, and we’re left with the point of view of “our” Doctor, who realizes he’s now stuck in 2024, with no TARDIS and no way to return. . a whole year,
What happens next is an extended sequence that is loaded with the potential to be a killer episode. am a doctor in its own right. With no money or place to stay, the Doctor has to offer his services to the hotel manager, Anita (Steph De Whaley, in a really great supporting role), doing odd jobs, renting out Is Was Joey’s room. The Doctor is trying to figure out the suitcase in his spare time, sure, but he’s still forced to sit in one place, moment to moment, and indeed to live a life he might not normally have But it doesn’t have to be experienced.
This is not an idea am a doctor Of course, completely unfamiliar. The first half of the Third Doctor’s entire existence was built around the premise that the Doctor had been exiled to contemporary Earth and forced to work for himself, but he was still active in his capacity as the Unit’s scientific advisor. I was going on adventures regularly. The Fourteenth Doctor’s arc ends with him being freed from the need to become the Doctor and given the grace to live a life with Donna and her family. In particular Steven Moffat, who wrote “Joy to the World”, was thrilled with the idea during his tenure as showrunner; Episodes like “The Lodger,” “The Power of Three” and even a prior holiday special, “The Husbands of River Song”, all explore the idea of the Doctor momentarily sacrificing his life through choice or circumstance. Are related to. A wanderer in the fourth dimension to live “normally”.
But unlike this sequence in “Joy to the World”, those previous episodes really only examine them in the abstract, the fact that the Doctor is spending a disproportionate amount of time in one place, at one moment, largely in the background. Are. The real reason for this. And that, honestly, because am a doctor It’s a show we all watch to see the Doctor traveling through time and space, fighting monsters and saving the world from cataclysmic destruction. It’s rare to see him living a normal human life because, as the Doctor sets himself up here initially, it’s a bit boring for a sci-fi action adventure show.
And yet, for a good third of the episode – and arguably the episode at its best – we are asked to sit down with the Doctor as he lives out this year, to get to know Anita better, it To know what it’s like to live Like thisBetter, to the extent that when the time comes that his year is up and he has to say goodbye to his new friend, it is almost as sad as losing a partner. There’s no big threat or mystery, the Doctor isn’t even particularly counting down the clock, even though he knows he’s just booked Joey’s room at the hotel for a year, instead the whole sequence plays out through this detached lens. is about discovering the potential in the Doctor’s life and sense of being.
Importantly, this is a necessary period of treatment for this particular doctor, making a friend and then being separated from them in this way. Not just because last season am a doctor really struggled its home element To make the Doctor and Ruby feel like the friends the series constantly told us they were, but because this is not the special’s actual “companion” with Joy, the Fifteenth Doctor deals with his loneliness after being separated from Ruby. Is. It is only with Anita, and it is her connection and inspiration that propels him forward after losing his first friend, one of the first people he left an impression on in this incarnation. Again, this is something that previous holiday specials have also touched on – “The Runaway Bride” and the Tenth Doctor’s feelings about Rose, and “Voyage of the Damned” and, uh, the Tenth Doctor’s feelings about Martha – But their final conclusion is a reminder that the Doctor needs someone to share adventures with.
For a moment, and most brightly, “Joy to the World” asks us and the Doctor alike whether life itself is the adventure it needs to share with someone, rather than across time and space.
you can see now am a doctor“Joy to the World” is on Disney+ worldwide and on BBC in the UK and Ireland.
Want more io9 news? See when to expect the latest Miracle, star warsAnd star trek release, what’s next DC Universe on film and TVAnd everything you need to know about the future am a doctor,
