15 – New Series Two: Ncuti Gatwa

Joy To The World – 2024 Christmas Special

This has an interesting premise. There is a Time Hotel a few thousand years into the future (4202) where each door leads into a different point in Earth history. One of those points in history is a hotel room in London in 2024, at Christmas, and a lady named Joy checks in to the hotel and gets this room. Meanwhile, The Doctor lands his TARDIS in the lobby of the Time Hotel, and notices a Man checking in who is dressed in a suit and has a briefcase chained to his wrist. This seems suspicious, so The Doctor decides to investigate. He goes from room to room looking for clues, I suppose, though it isn’t clear that he is doing anything at all useful, but the rooms he visits prove useful later in the plot.

Meanwhile, the briefcase seems to have a mind of its own, and arranges to be transferred from one person to another, and each time says it “upgrading access”. But the problem is that the previous custodian of the briefcase always dies after this transfer. And as soon as a new custodian takes over they say “The star seed shall bloom, and the flesh will rise.” Eventually the Briefcase, The Doctor, and Joy all meet in the hotel room that Joy rented, and Joy ends up attached to the suitcase. The Doctor attempts to separate her from the suitcase, when a countdown starts, and a future version of The Doctor burst into the room to give them code to stop the countdown. It urns out that all of this was set in motion by Villengard, the evil arms merchant that has appeared in several prior stories, and they plan to use the contents of the briefcase, a Star Seed, to start a star. The problem is if it starts on Earth everyone burns up in the star. But this is a Christmas Story, after all, so what happens is that the star they create becomes the Star of Bethlehem.

This is not Moffat’s best story, but it has its elements of charm, even if the ending is a bit over the top. But it is really the germ of two stories, either of which could be developed in interesting ways. Ask yourself if it revolves around Joy, or Anita. I’d have liked more Anita, in fact.

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