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Episode Discussion | Doctor Who | Special: "Joy to the World"

Logline

When Joy checks into a London hotel in 2024, she opens a secret doorway to the Time Hotel — discovering danger, dinosaurs and the Doctor. But a deadly plan is unfolding across the Earth, just in time for Christmas.

Written by: Steven Moffat

Directed by: Alex Pillai

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1 comments

  • My initial reaction is that it was pretty good - not in the top tier of Christmas specials, but pretty good.

    I would imagine that some people might not appreciate the lockdown stuff, but I don't think it was pushing any kind of agenda - just acknowledging that there were some tragic side-effects of that whole situation.

    What really struck me was how well the episode fleshed out Joy, Anita, Trev with fairly limited screen time. Ironically, Joy was probably the least fleshed-out, but Nicola Coughlan played the part very well.

  • Surprisingly enough, the cuts for (much shorter) airtime worked quite well. Some parts of the plot were lost, and people were inexplicably saved from certain pickles to appear unharmed — but that was to be expected. I enjoyed the edit more than I expected. There were more exterior shots added than strictly necessary, and I guess they were often used to disguise cuts.

    PREVIEW_HERE

    I had issues with the hamfisted way the War Chief was retroactively confirmed as an earlier incarnation of the Master, with the Saxon Master's theme inserted into the soundtrack, and a sound effect of a beginning regeneration after the War Chief's demise. That seemed an unnecessary indulgence of old fanboys' head cannon.

    The reason to race through most of the serial, of course, was to get to the Time Lord trial and the Second Doctor's regeneration into the Third — canonically eliminating another ambiguity from the Whoniverse that had until now allowed for the Season 6B theory.

    The trial had some fun, 21st century additions that I rather enjoyed — if you know you know — but the added regeneration sequence didn't just fill a gap where fans' imaginations had run creative for 55 years. It also gave us an absolutely atrocious CGI rendered closeup shot of "Jon Pertwee".

    Is anybody happier and better off that we have this new end to War Games? I doubt anybody is more than indifferent to those dreary last minutes. And I'll definitely remember season 6B fonder.