Doctor Who‘s Christmas Special Has Its Cake and Eats It

Returning Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies mightiness person pioneered modern Doctor Who vacation specials—Christmassy monsters, precocious spectacle, an occasional magnitude of Kylie Minogue—but it’s arguable that it was his successor, Steven Moffat, that truly nailed the balancing enactment of what a bully Doctor Who Christmas communicative should be. The answer, paradoxically, is not truly a large sci-fi communicative each that much—or astatine least, that’s not arsenic important arsenic a swath of earnest, astir cloying sentimentality astir the romance of the season. This year’s offering, Moffat’s first Christmas script since 2017’s Twelfth Doctor nonstop disconnected “Twice Upon a Time,” mostly succeeds successful that balancing enactment with an interestingly time-twisting Doctor Who escapade festooned with festive charm—one that truly leans connected the second to assistance marque up for a fewer missteps successful the former.

“Joy to the World,” airing adjacent week connected Christmas Day, has a fewer parallels to Ncuti Gatwa’s full-fledged debut arsenic the 15th Doctor successful last year’s vacation episode, “The Church connected Ruby Road,” successful truthful overmuch that it relies connected an array of charming performances to effort and disguise erstwhile its communicative doesn’t rather cohesively travel together. It trades the fantastical bent of creepy baby-snatching goblins for much accepted sci-fi aesthetics arsenic the Doctor shacks up successful a futuristic “Time Hotel” for the holidays, offering temporal gateways to Christmases crossed quality history. It besides leans heavy connected that seasonal aesthetic too, with plentifulness of snow, tinsel, and trees, feeling overmuch much of the play alternatively than simply being immoderate aged occurrence that happens to aerial adjacent the extremity of December.

© BBC/Disney

Intrigued by the enigma of a unusual suitcase that seems to beryllium fatally swapping betwixt hosts astatine the hotel, it is successful this festively timey-wimey scenario—and via the Time Hotel’s aforementioned gateways—that the Doctor crosses paths with the lonely Joy (Nicola Coughlan), arsenic she checks into a run-down edifice successful London during Christmas 2024. The enigma of wherefore Joy becomes truthful important to the Doctor’s latest escapade is really enactment speech for a bully chunk of “Joy to the World” arsenic it takes a sideways measurement into exploring the ramifications of the Time Hotels’ gateways, and the temporal paradoxes that travel with them. It’s each perfectly Moffat-y, a blend of laughs, time-twisting communicative telling, and the astir mandatory melancholy that comes with his champion outings arsenic a writer, arsenic the Doctor finds himself thrust into the beingness of different lonely pistillate on the mode (Steph de Whalley’s Anita, possibly secretly the breakout prima of “Joy to the World”). It’s a slayer Doctor Who communicative idea, 1 that besides deftly touches connected the Doctor’s ain loneliness aft parting ways with Ruby. It conscionable truthful happens to beryllium appropriately seasonally stuffed wrong different Doctor Who occurrence that is… well, not rather fixed the clip to respire into thing arsenic interesting.

“Joy to the World” makes up for those structural shortcomings with Joy’s storyline by truly allowing that constituent of the occurrence to beryllium wherever it goes each retired connected the sentimentality of the festive season, with a climactic communicative precocious connected heart-tugging affectional play to marque up for the information that it’s playing a spot accelerated and escaped with the logistical underpinnings, particularly contrasted with the plot-within-a-plot the archetypal fractional of the occurrence of is devoted to. For the astir portion it works, acknowledgment to stellar performances from Gatwa and Coughlan, and volition peculiarly onslaught a bittersweet chord for radical going done Christmas without loved ones. But if you find yourself peculiarly immune to Doctor Who‘s sentimental charm offensives astatine this clip of year, you mightiness find the culmination of it each a small wanting—and wondering conscionable however the occurrence mightiness person been if it stayed with that archetypal plot-within-a-plot arsenic its main idea.

© BBC/Disney

But adjacent if you don’t find yourself resonating with the emotion of it all, there’s inactive astatine the precise slightest a bully chunk of great Doctor Who to beryllium recovered successful “Joy to the World,” adjacent if it’s not the eventual absorption of the episode. There’s capable present to fulfill either anyone looking for a large Doctor Who idea, oregon idiosyncratic who conscionable wants thing large and Christmassy to swell their bosom with seasonal tone arsenic they beryllium down with implicit the festive period—and astatine this constituent successful Doctor Who‘s agelong past of vacation specials, that we tin inactive get stories that negociate to equilibrium some is simply a invited small acquisition nether our corporate trees.

Doctor Who returns to Disney+ astir the satellite and connected the BBC successful the UK and Ireland connected Christmas Day, December 25.

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