‘Doctor Who’ Canonizes Christmas. And It’s Complicated.
“Joy to the World” comes at an interesting time on planet Earth. What does it say about us and Doctor Who?
Doctor Who at Christmas is now a tradition. Other than the Chibnall era, there’s always a bit of the Doctor, the TARDIS, and merry mayhem to ring things in. From Sycoraxx to Crystal Feasts and now to the Time Hotel, we can always count on our favorite Timelord to be there.
And yet, for all the many Christmases of Doctor Who past, there is something which makes this years adventure “Joy to the World” unique. There are a number of things which make this story singular. We’ll talk about a few of them as we merrily roll along.
But perhaps what’s most fascinating is the way, despite the episode itself being filmed in summer of 2023, that “Joy to the World” is so representative of where we are culturally right now. And not to put to fine a point on it, but where we are is terrifying.
Doctor Who, Joy, and the Ghosts of Recent Christmas Past
Steven Moffat introduces us to Joy Almondo (Nicola Coughlan), a woman who smiles because it hurts. And that smile, that feeling is something we can all recognize in ourselves. Joy’s entrance into this Doctor Who adventure comes because of a hotel visit. And she’s in the dingiest room she can find because of one reason—guilt.
The 2020s have been, let’s be honest, hell on Earth. And that hell started right at the start with the COVID-19 pandemic. For the first time, Doctor Who does not shy away from that. Joy isn’t just pushing herself towards misery for no reason. She’s doing it because, in 2020, she followed the rules and watched her mother die from an iPad rather than in person.
And it’s killing her. It’s been killing her for years.
You can do the right thing and still yield the worst result. Attempting to slow the spread of infection was the morally correct thing to do. But also Joy’s mother died alone. While the rest of the world moves on, Joy just can’t. And she’s not alone. Both in the real world and on our screens this Christmas.
Hotels, Time and Otherwise
“Joy to the World” is set primarily in two hotels. One is a gateway across time and space. The other is just a hotel. But in each of them we find that same sad smile. We even see it on the Doctor’s face. And it’s not just any kind of pain the smile masks—it’s the pain of feeling like there’s no place in the world for you.
Joy leaves her mother to die. And there’s no place in the world for her to hide. Trev, the Time Hotel employee the Doctor ropes into things, alludes to always letting people down. That feeling of always failing the ones you love makes it hard to stay in this world.
The Time Hotel manager is a Silurian. He is quite literally a part of the original sentient species on Earth who is homeless because of humanity. He has a place of employment. But that’s not a home. And our terrestrial hotel manager Anita Benn works alone because even she has a regret whose name she can never quite mention. Lonely, lonely, lonely.
And no one does lonely like the Doctor. His whole thing is being apart. A Timelord and yet not. A lover of humanity who always seems to leave human death in his wake. He literally yells at himself in “Joy to the World”. “Nobody likes you!” “This is why everyone leaves you!”
There’s no place in the whole wide universe for the Doctor. At least that’s how it feels right now. And he’s not alone.
Doctor Who and Stars of Hope in the Dark
So about that plot. The story of “Joy to the World” centers on a mysterious briefcase, inside of which is an infant star. The star is created as an endless power source for the villainous Villengard (the biggest weapons manufacturer in the universe). But ultimately it finds a different utility as both energy for the universe at large and as a beacon of hope.
Trev, the Time Hotel manager, and, ultimately, Joy all become links in a chain that bring the star to its birth. And it causes each of them to die in the exchange. But it’s a death they embrace because it means being part of this light that brings hope everywhere it touches.
And that’s complicated, isn’t it? Because, yeah, hope, light, the miracle that we are all star stuff—that’s well and good. But these are people who, for one reason or another, became so sad and so isolated that they felt there was no place in the world for them.
In “Joy to the World” people die to bring that hope. They call it changing but it’s dying. The light of the star inspires climbers to reach Mount Everest’s apex. It brings hope to a sad lesbian pining for her lost love. It reunites Joy with her mother. But only in death.
Also, the star is the one which brings the three wise men to Bethlehem at the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Yes. Golly. More on that in a moment. But first let’s talk about the Doctor’s year with Anita Brenn.
I’m the Doctor, I Work in a Hotel Now
One of the most interesting structural choices in “Joy to the World” involves the Doctor getting waylaid working in Anita’s hotel for an entire year. The Doctor doesn’t do time in order very often. The last memorable example is “The Power of Three” but the Doctor takes that journey with his two best friends and UNIT, too. In “Joy to the World”, he does it in a hotel with a stranger.
Anita asks the Doctor at one point about his boyfriend, which the Doctor doesn’t have at the moment. It’s a textual acknowledgement of the Doctor’s queerness. And it comes in this interesting year where the Doctor stays in Joy’s very lonely hotel room. He doesn’t call Ruby. He doesn’t call anyone. The Doctor chooses isolation.
And in a way, this feels connective with where a lot of us are right now. 2024 represents a massive turn towards assimilation. Conservatives are finding power everywhere and they’re finding that power on the promise of putting those of us who can’t fit in back in our place.
The Doctor spends 2025 hiding in a hotel with the one ally he can find. That’s the 2025 (and beyond) a lot of us, queers, immigrants, and people with disabilities, are all about to have.
There’s a light somewhere out there. But we can’t see it yet. And a lot of us will die before it comes.
Canonizing Jesus
How about Jesus, huh?! He’s a part of Doctor Who now! The Doctor doesn’t witness Jesus’s birth, but he does witness the birth of the star, which brings the wise men to a little manger in Bethlehem. And the Doctor, seeing this, proclaims, “Joy to the world!”
You know, assimilation happens in ways both large and small. In the world of fashion there’s been a shift towards neutral colors and “natural beauty”. Beige everywhere you look. Softened brows. Disintegrated lip fillers and removed BBLs all around.
We’re moving towards modesty culture. Before this, women showed off their high cheekbones and their sharp features. Cis women looked “clocky” on purpose for years because trans women had become the taste du jour.
Now trans women are enemy number one. The ones least likely to see the light at the end of this tunnel.
But Joy to the World! The Lord is Come! Doctor Who embraces Jesus! Any other time that would be sweet. After all, Jesus isn’t the sole propriety of conservatives. But right now, it’s hard to separate this literal representation of Christmas from the people who celebrate it as a means to shut out those who cannot assimilate.
Steven Moffat couldn’t have known any of this. And “Joy to the World” is very good. In many ways, it is very good because of what makes it terrifying. Anita finds a new future. Letters are written. Mountains are climbed.
But people die. Alone. Because there’s no place in the world for them, and it’s hard to feel joyful about that.
