Doctor Who season 2, episode 1: Joy To The World by Steven Moffat.
Is there such a thing as a time hotel? It looks like these days every advanced alien race has a means to time travel, which is likely to mess up all the timelines in the past, present, and future. When you consider in the old days how the Gallifreyan Time Lords ruthlessly vaporised the War Chief for such a crime at the end of the War Games, things have gotten a lot more reckless since. If anything, the Doctor’s own manipulations look mild in comparison; now he’s just one of many time travellers.
OK, so what have we got here? This is a time-traveling story by Steven Moffat. The pre-credits introduction hasn’t happened yet, but that’s in the future. I did make note of the different time periods:
1940 Queen’s Hotel.
1962 Orient Express.
This is the 1953 Everest base camp.
2024 Sandringham Hotel, London.
4042 Time Hotel, London.
From here, there might be spoilers.
It’s with the latter date that the TARDIS is in the lobby of the Time Hotel, offering its guests visits to the past for a price. Quite why you would want to appear on trains or in hotel rooms beats me.
A sentient suitcase disposes of its hosts as it moves from person to person. It then portals to 2024 through a Silurian hotel manager (actor Jonathan Aris), and Joy Almondo (actress Nicola Coughlan) becomes the latest recipient. The Doctor (actor Ncuti Gatwa) gets inside the briefcase, trying to work out how not to kill her, finds it contains a starseed, and activates a self-destruct. Shutting the case doesn’t stop it, and the Doctor from the future arrives, gives the code, and takes Joy back to the time hotel, telling his younger self he’ll have to go the long way to avoid a paradox.
So we have the past Doctor living in 2024, specifically at the Sandringham Hotel, working to get some money doing chores and being friends with the hotel receptionist Anita Benn (actress Stephanie de Whalley), who’s there for half the story and could well make a beneficial companion. However, the portal only opens at the York Hotel in New York, not at the Sandringham Hotel. How he knows the password remains a mystery. From that point on, the plot becomes highly spoiler-focused.
So, let’s turn on my critical eye. Ncuti Gatwa is definitely more Doctor-like here. The only problem is that he’s tending towards becoming a supporting character in his own story. The starseed’s avoidance of the conventional star-making process doesn’t help. For something that is supposed to be benevolent, it seems a long way from starting out malevolent. Science fiction, even space fantasy, does have to make sense. It’s more like writer Stephen Moffat has made up some criteria without looking too heavily into the understory to make it fit together other than to serve a Christmas theme.
The behind-the-scenes ‘Confidential’ extra is supposed to be designed for a channel switch after Wallace and Gromit, giving everyone a chance to write up the first parts of their reviews. Quite why they couldn’t time this to after it The animated one is crazy, but having a DVD recorder means I can watch it from the beginning. This yuletide special was made in 2023, so before the first one.
That means Gatwa must have stretched it in season one. I wonder if the cast and production team were locked up for a year. Based on Steven Moffat’s description of a smile front, I must be insanely sad. There are a lot of exciting things happening behind the scenes. I enjoy witnessing the preparation of Silurian make-up these days. The practice of casting people’s faces in plaster has been replaced with the use of 3D scans. I wonder how long it will take to create a reverse mould from this scan.
I might be critical of the actual story, but the production side is always good work.
Geoff Willmetts
25 December 2024
