Unwrap the 15th Doctor's Christmas special with Dom Bettinelli, Jimmy Akin, and Fr. Chip Hines. With star seeds, time hotels, and a heartfelt nod to the Star of Bethlehem, they discuss themes of hope, humanity, and a very Moffat Christmas.
Jimmy Akin Podcast
Joy to the World - The Secrets of Doctor Who
The secrets of Doctor Who is brought to you by the Star Quest production network and is made possible by our many generous patrons. If you'd like to support the podcast, please visit sqpn.com/give. You're listening to the secrets of Doctor Who, where we discuss everything about the hit BBC series Doctor Who. And today we're discussing the 15th Doctor 2024 Christmas Special Joy to the World. I'm Dom Betanelli and join me today is Jimmy Akin. Hey, Jimmy. Howdy, Dom. And special guest, uh, Phah, I was in Phah, Corey Stiga, Phah, Chip Hines. Hey, Dom. It's Phah, Chip Hines, yes. It's so used to saying his name in this episode in this podcast. Folks, we're sure to get your very own secrets of Doctor Who T-shirt or phone case or more by visiting our merchandise store at sqpn.com/merch. And I want to tell you about another new show on the Star Quest network. I'm sure you'll enjoy called Vatican II in a year. Father Matthew Schneider is going to take you every day of 2025 or whatever year you wish to start. A little bill, a little by little through the documents of the second Vatican Council. Open them up and explaining them to you and helping all of us understand a little bit more about the second Vatican Council. So you can check that out wherever fine podcasts are found or at sqpn.com/vatican. So we are discussing this time, Joy to the World. Jimmy, can you give us a recap of this story? This week, the 15th Doctor visits the Time Hotel, an establishment in the future that is connected to hotels all throughout history. And currently, they're running a Christmas special connecting to all the Christmases throughout history. Also checking into the hotel is a victim of the Villengard Conflict Solutions Corporation, who has a briefcase chained to his wrist. The briefcase is guided by an AI and keeps jumping hosts, killing the former carrier each time and mind control in the new carrier. The briefcase ends up being attached to a young woman from 2024 named Joy, but the Doctor is able to make her mad enough that the briefcase comes offer. The Doctor also learns that the briefcase contains the seat of a star, but it needs to be planted 65 million years in the past to give the seed time to grow into an actual star, hence the Time Hotel. And Joy has taken them to a room, to a hotel room, 65 million years in the past, where the new detached briefcase is eaten by a dinosaur. All this means that the star is now set up to detonate sometime in human history, and the Doctor is concerned that this will, you know, kill everyone on Earth. He and Joy managed to track down the briefcase in another of the hotel's rooms, but as the Doctor is preparing to save the Earth by taking the star into space using the TARDIS before it can detonate, Joy takes the star seed herself. She merges with it and reveals that it was always Villengard's plan to get the star off of Earth, so nobody will be hurt except, you know, for the briefcase carriers. She then flies off and becomes the star, which shines throughout all the different Christmases, and the Doctor realizes that the star is, in fact, the star of Bethlehem, because, of course, it is the end. I saw that coming as soon as I heard star seed. Yeah. Father Chip, what did you think of this one? Well, I'm good. This is paint praise, but I thought it was probably the better story that I've seen from this Doctor. I liked the weird thing I liked about this was the story of him spending a year as a civilian, so to speak, and that part I enjoyed very, very much. The rest of it was kind of like, there was, I couldn't figure out the reasons for why things were happening, like, why did the host that had this briefcase have to die, why did, why did those three characters in the hotel have to die, none of it kind of made sense to me, but overall, I guess I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed some of the other specials that they've done with this Doctor. OK, Jimmy, how about you? I thought it was OK. It had Stephen Moffat dialogue, which was nice. I agree with Father Chip that the the high point is of the whole show is the year that the doctor spends stuck in 2024. That's that's by far the most interesting thing in this. The rest of the stuff. OK, it's interesting, but it doesn't really hang together. Well, this has the same problem as Raiders of the Lost Ark and all the President's men, namely, the lead character doesn't do anything to contribute to the plot. It all would have played out basically exactly the same way it did if the doctor had never been involved. So it it the doctor didn't display a lot of agency in this. It's just a lot of running around and the nicest part is when he's not running around when he's just stuck and has to live and inform relationships with people and he forms a relationship. So in addition to joy who gets title credit, you know, joy to the world, there are two other major characters. One of them is a hotel clerk name or concierge or something named Trev. And there's also a manager who I don't know that he gets a name, but he's a Silurian and then there's this woman in 2024 who runs the hotel that Joy checks into and her name is Anita and she is really a nice character. She's really a good character. She has companion potential. She ends up working for the Time Hotel due to the doctor's influence once he gets back to the future, and he recommends her apparently to the Time Hotel and they offer her a job. But, but there's some fun stuff in it. And, you know, it's okay. It is not the best doctor who Christmas special. That would be a Christmas Carol with the 11th doctor. But, but it's, it's okay. So I, I agree with a lot of what you all said. I think it's a very Moffat story. It feels like a Stephen Moffat story very much so he likes to explore the strange possibilities and mundane mysteries like hotel room do wars or cemetery angels or that sort of thing. You know, then turns them into this mysterious connection to a strange world. And, you know, that's fine. That's, that's fun. I would say it's probably the, the Doctor Who Christmas special that most touches on the actual meaning of Christmas just by the virtue of the fact that Jesus is somewhere in the end of that, that story. It's not about Santa. It's not about, you know, uh, seeing your screws. Right. Right. It's, it actually ends up being about something connected to Jesus. So that that was nice. I like that. That was surprising. Yeah. And it's, I don't intend that to be faint praise. I actually, I do want to praise them for that for connecting a Christmas special story to Jesus. It's not about Daleks run amok with with the 13th doctor and that sort of thing. So that was, that was good. I do have to point out though, as a Bible geek that, um, there's no way this would work because no, so essentially the star is a nova. It's a new star. You know, novus is Latin for new. And so it's a newly appeared star. And that means that it has no meaning in any astrological system. And so therefore the wise men would say, Oh, there's a new star that has no meaning. They're not going to say, Oh, there's a new star that has no meaning. Let's go to Bethlehem. They're not going to say that. So it wouldn't work. Right. But that's the geek in me. We willing to spend our disbelief because you have to with the special doctor. I liked, I liked the idea of the time hotel. I thought that was fun. I thought there was some fun Easter egg doors. Everyone's probably noticed the hobbit door, the round, you know, hobbit hole door, which I would love to go through. That would be, uh, it just implies that, uh, that hobbit didn't exist somewhere in time or at least homo floriances. But yeah, right. So that was fun. And I liked the concept of that. Um, you mentioned, uh, well, before I get to the, to what you mentioned, I want to do as an overall concept. It feels like the 15th doctor is much more about an exploration of the character internally than about plot in action. Cause that's one of the things that I think both of you said is that the plot was thin in the, in the sense, but it was much more that the part that I think all three of us like the most that year in the hotel with Anita, was really an exploration of an internal exploration of the doctor as a person. Um, so then we ever got with 13 or 12, especially. I also really like the Anita is just a great character. Even when she's introduced, she's just so unflappable. You know, joy, this woman from 2024 is checking into a hotel room for Christmas, 2023, I guess. And, um, and she, she gets to her room. And the doctor later on tells her he's tried. This is when he's trying to make joy mad. And the reason we find out that joy is checking into the hotel room for Christmas is because she, her mom died at Christmas, 2020. Due to the COVID during the COVID virus pandemic, apparently not from COVID because she doesn't, when we see her mom, we don't see any respiratory symptoms, but because of the COVID pandemic, she was not allowed to go into the hospital and had to say goodbye to her mother. For the last time over an iPad, and she feels now like she can't be with anyone at Christmas, which I understand. If you're, um, you know, if you've had someone die at Christmas, that's going to mark your Christmases going forward. Oh, sure. So, so I understand all that, but she's checking into this hotel room and the Salurian shows up and he's the current carrier of the briefcase. And Joy does not know what a Salurian is. And she, she happens as she's exploring her room as, as Anita is like putting the towels in the bathroom. Joy takes a hairdryer, has happens to have a hairdryer in her hand. It looks like a laser gun. She points it at the Salurian and he freezes and the doctor later when he's trying to make joy mad so that the briefcase will come off of her. He tells her that your hotel room is the worst, loneliest, saddest hotel room in the world. And I can tell you that is flatly not true. I, I, I, I take trips across the country. You know, I drive across the country. I never know where I'm going to stop for the night. I tend to stop at motel sixes because I can have my Siri tell me where's the nearest motel six and get a room. And wow, I have been in much, much, much worse hotel rooms than what Joy was in. She didn't even have cockroaches. But when Anita is checking her in, you know, the Salurian is there and Joy is freaked out. And she says, why is there a lizard man in my room? And Anita is just, I'm sorry. This has never happened before. So unflappable. That was free. Yeah, speaking of bad hotel rooms, there was the time I was driving back from college and got caught in a snowstorm in Northern New Jersey and had to stop in Pacific at hotel where the, the, the clerk was behind bars. It was much worse than the Sandringham Hotel. Oh, that's for sure. Now they're just behind thick thick plate plastic. Right. So that the doctor, you said that the doctor doesn't really have agency or anything to do. There was one thing that I think if, if the doctor had not intervened, it wouldn't have gone the way it did, which is if he hadn't gotten Joy mad enough, you know, to, to, to be introspective about her motivations and what's going on with her. I'm not sure she would have absorbed that Starseed at the end. I don't know. What do you think? I mean, or is that? Well, they don't connect the two. I mean, she apparently the Starseed has some kind or the briefcase has some kind of influence over the carrier. And it causes them to spout the Lindgard rhetoric, you know, like the, the, the Starseed will bloom and the flesh will rise. Right. And the flesh rise and part is a reference apparently to the fact that Joy is going to ascend with the Starseed when it becomes a star. So it seems, it seems like that was part of a Lindgard's plan. So it wouldn't have been Joy because of the time travel. It wouldn't have been Joy who ended up carrying the Starseed at the last, but it would have been some hotel guest. True. Yeah. Yeah. There was again, there was a lot of, I think, just not things that just didn't just didn't connect in a story. And I don't want to gloss over the fact that like Trevor and the bartender and, and the slurry and all died for basically no reason. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's this. Although in typical Stephen Moffatt format, he walks those deaths a half a step back by having their data ghosts uploaded to the Lindgard system. So their, their data ghosts aren't dead. It's just they're dead. Right. No, it ever dies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That bothered me because it, because that whole scene in the bar where they, where they were passing it back and forth had no, why did it exist? It didn't have to exist at all. Why didn't you jump from person to person? Right. Yeah. I mean, the briefcase was trying to get to a particular floor in the hotel and it needed someone. And because the floor was full, it needed someone who had access. So it ultimately needed manager, first needed an employee, which was a bartender, then it went to Trev, who I think was actually security. I think he had a security badge. And like I know what a 42nd century security badge looks like. I think it said security on it, but I was looking closely on my second watch through. So that could be that could be excused. And then, you know, ultimately, it makes him take it to the manager who would have access to everything. Right. So that would be, it's just trying to find the person who has access, but you're right. I mean, it does seem a bit gratuitous that all these people die. And there's one of the things that kind of sometimes bothers me about some of the Doctor Who stories is how, how disposable life is sometimes with the people that the doctor encounters. And, you know, it's like, he feels bad, especially about Trev a little bit, but then we move on and, you know, things, you know, and we don't really feel bad about, I mean, and he felt bad about the Salurian. I thought that was good that they had him. He was very emotional as the Salurian was dying. You know, he's the only character that dies in front of him. Right. Yeah. And, but also there's no reason once it has the Salurian why it wants to try to jump again, because he's got all access to the hotel. Now he can go where it wants. But nevertheless, the doc, it wants to jump to the doctor when they're in the 2024 hotel room. And presumably, this is because, and they gesture at this, but it goes by really quick, but it's presumably because the doctor is this time traveler. And that's how going to help the the star seed, but it's not really clear how because all the Salurian needs to do is walk up to the right floor and go into the right door. Right. And then and then by mistake, it ends up on on joy instead. Right. You know what the right door was. That's the thing. I mean, with the doctor, like he's, he's got a TARDIS just he just needs to walk in said 65 million years ago and go. I suppose, maybe it's not a very bright AI. Well, then don't be sending it to deliver a star. Right. Right. Well, Millen Garvey, we've learned is not the most ethical or bright of all the bad guys that we've encountered. But that was interesting that Villengard has showed up again, especially given that we know that the new main companion of this next season is going to at least be the same actress who was in the Villengard episode of last season. Yeah, I suspect that's unrelated. I think the real reason is when that actress in the episode that actress was in was also written by Stephen Moffat and Villengard is a creation of Stephen Moffat. He introduced it in the first, I forget the name of the episode, but in the ninth doctors one season where they go back to World War II and they introduce Captain Jack. And that's when they that's when they first mentioned Villengard. Right. That's the, are you my mummy? Yeah. Yeah. The empty, the empty child. Empty child. Thank you. Yeah. You know, speaking of callbacks to previous stories, I felt like that the whole like the doctor having to go around the long way, which I thought was a really nice and interesting timing, why me element to introduce in the story. Reminding me a lot of the power of three, which was when the doctor stayed, you know, the little cubes appeared all over the earth. And so the doctor stayed with Amy and Rory, living their regular day to day life outside the TARDIS. For like a year. Yeah. For a year. And it's a big contrast to how the 11th doctor handled it versus how the 15th doctor handled it was very different. He kind of got into it. He became part of his, you know, he was part of the routine. It was something in fact that he seemed to enjoy after a time. So I thought that was kind of interesting difference. Yeah. He was, he was working at the hotel during that year, you know, to, I guess, pay the rent and keep his room. But he did a whole bunch of stuff. There were nice little timey, wimey winks or doctor who winks to the audience. Like at one point, he fixes a microwave oven and, and Anita comments. It's now bigger on the inside. And then the doctor fixes the sat nav, meaning the GPS in Anita's car. And she complains, now it doesn't take her where she wants to go. And he says, no, but it takes where you need to go, which is what the TARDIS does. And she also says, and why is my car blue now? Right. Yeah. That was great. That was excellent. Yeah. He also, he drops very quickly and you may not even notice it. I noticed it because I always have the captions on. He used the word Mavity. So we're still doing that. And I wonder if that is all although in a, he refers to rotational Mavity in a con, in a context where I don't believe that makes sense, but at least they got the word Mavity in there. Yeah. I wonder if Mavity is going to be like the indicator that we're in this, as we talked about before, from the specials, the 60th anniversary specials, we're in this fantasy version of the creation of reality. And once we switch back to using the word gravity, if we ever do, they have used gravity before in the new Russell T. Dave easy or I think it's just an end joke that they're doing for a while and they're going to be inconsistent about it. Okay. Okay. See, I'm trying to think of some other things. I liked Trev. I thought he was an interesting character. He, you know, he was security, but he doesn't come across as a heavy. And that's, that was actually, I mean, it did so much so that you're not even sure he's security unless you see the badge, but he's at least an employee there. And he's kind of amenable that, you know, the doctor does his usual blustering his way through things. The doctor's landing at the time hotel, because he needs milk for his coffee. His morning coffee. I thought that was a nice little touch. And he's got a home and routine in his in his navigation to find fresh milk. And he says, or I could just get a fridge. So nice little self awareness there. A nod to the fact that the doctor is now traveling alone because he's by habit has two cups of two mugs of coffee. And he does give, he does give one to Trev and so it's bigger on the inside, which is another nice. I would love a coffee cup that's bigger on the inside. That would be really nice. It would be very nice. No, no, I thought Trevor was a good character. I thought, actually, I liked most of the characters in this, in this episode. The actors were actually very good. You know, sometimes you, on Doctor Who, you get one or two clunker actors, but not, I didn't think there was really clunkers this time. I thought they were pretty good. Like Jimmy said, the actors that played Anita was great. And I would, I would have loved for her to be the new companion. So apropos of that, I've seen a fan theory and it is just a fan theory. So take it with a monstrous, you know, huge boulder of salt. But there is a proposal that Anita may be Mrs. Flood. And if you look at the younger actors who plays Anita, she does kind of look like a younger version of Mrs. Flood. And it would explain why she knows why Mrs. Flood knows so much about the TARDIS and the Doctor and things like that. Now, I think that's unlikely, but it's at least a possibility. It would require Anita to go work at the time hotel, then go travel back in time, age, to be Mrs. Flood. But that's true. Yeah, that's interesting. That is an interesting theory. I hadn't given that much thought, but it would, you know, I just think as a character, she was just great character. And by the way, I really like, so this being Steven Moffat, this is unusually time you wind me. I mean, we've got the time hotel. We've got the year he spends, you know, we've got 65 million years in the past. There's a lot of time you wind me this over this. Just another little bit is when the Doctor goes, so he decides to go undercover to try to track down what's going on in the hotel because he sees the guy with the briefcase. At this point, he doesn't know what's in the briefcase, but he senses something is going on. And so he's going to go undercover to try to find out what's going on. And he enlists Trev in this, which is actually is interesting to Trev. He's a security guy. I guess he's interested in the secret mission that he and the Doctor now have. But to go undercover, the Doctor pretends to be room service. And so what he does is he orders himself a ham and cheese toasty and a pumpkin latte, which he then tries going into all the rooms to deliver to the people who were in the rooms. None of them ordered it. So he just basically is to just get a peek into these rooms, you know, to see who's there is the briefcase guy there. And he rapidly goes from room to room throughout time. But when the Doctor hears the added bit of time, he wind me this when the Doctor has the menu in front of him and presses the pay diamond, which is based on the Doctor who logo. And instantly a person from room service steps up to him and says, here's your ham and cheese toasty and pumpkin latte. And Trev explains that the kitchens get your order 30 minutes in started 30 minutes in the past for when you ordered. So, so you get your your food instantly because they've already been preparing it for 30 minutes. The Doctor does note though that the ham and cheese toasty is still microwaved and Trev says, well, you can't work. You can't expect miracles. That was that was good. Yeah, there was a toasty, by the way, is apparently just a toasted sandwich. Yes. Yes. Like a cheese mill or it's like a grilled cheese sandwich or we call it. I like the fact that like we mentioned a lot of all the morphisms. There's the moment in the year in the hotel where the Doctor and Anita are debating Anita thinks that you know the idea of the weeping angels who can only move when you're not looking at them is kind of silly, which is great because that's a Stephen Moffett invention he's poking fun at himself. And there's a couple other nice lines like when the Doctor learns that the time hotel, they're doing a Christmas everywhere at once special. He says no wonder there was no room at the end, which is one of those time travel and one of those things where like people will sometimes say, of course time travel couldn't be real because if it was, Bethlehem would be packed with time travelers, right? Everyone, everyone in Bethlehem at the birth of Christ would be a time traveler because everyone throughout the history of time travel would want to go see it live or the crucifixion or whatever. Maybe that's why there's no room at the end. Well, and there's just two problems with that. The first one is if if branch and timelines work, then only some timelines are going to be full up and we're just not in one of those timelines. The second reason is that's not what no room at the end means. It is actually a mistake to think that Oh, you know, Tom Bodette turned off the light at the at motel six in BC three. That is not what the word in in Greek is cataluma and it refers to a lodge in place and specifically it refers to a lodge in place within a house. It's the plate part of the house where the family lived. And so I actually did my Christmas episode of the Jimmy Akin podcast was all about this. But like when Jesus has the last supper, he tells the disciples, go to this guy's house and he'll show you a large cataluma that's that's already set up for us. So it's the part of the house where the people lived. And meanwhile, the animals lived on the lower level of the house. And so that's why Mary, it's all full up because the Roman enrollment. And so the living area is full. So Mary and Joseph go down to the animal part of the house for some privacy for the baby Jesus. Right. That's why again stable need be in a Bible geek. You know, that's good. No, we can think of the good stuff. Oh, before I forget, what about that scene where she has the joy has the briefcase locked on to her. He opens it up and he has to press in a code. Right. And then he gets the code from himself. Right. Yeah. It's a little weird. Well, it ends up being a bootstrap paradox. So she acknowledges. Right. He refers to it as bootstrapping and he says, yeah, it's weird. It comes from nowhere, but so did the universe and no one complains about that. Yeah. I thought that was an interesting funny line, but. And that was a fun way to deal with it, like to write to write around it, you know, nobody complains with the universe coming from nothing. Okay. That's right. That's right. Speaking of Trev, he talked, he talks at what in early on, he says, you know, when he's recruited, this is the least I will ever let anyone down. And he lives up to it. I mean, in fact, that's kind of why his uploaded data ghost does what it does. It does what it does independent of the briefcases AI is because he, as he was dying, apparently, apparently they don't spell it out, but it's apparently from my point of view, he is determined to not let the doctor down. And that's why it was able to act independently within the briefcase. So I thought that was a nice, interesting part of Trev. Like he comes across a little buffoonish at first, a little silly, but he ends up being actually an effective, competent person in the end, which I think is good. Yeah. And, but you know what else is interesting about that is what happened to them afterwards? Like are they, are they still in the briefcase? Is he still in the briefcase? You know, the star. They're presumably star. In the star. Yeah. Okay. Because as joy had absorbed the star issues that glowing internally. Yeah. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. The maternal pregnancy sort of, yeah, it also, it also makes no sense. If you've got a star, number one, even if you, even if you say the briefcase is bigger on the inside, so it can contain an entire star, it, they treat it like this is a seed that's going to detonate and become a star at some moment. In which case, it doesn't need 65 million years. Yeah. Right. So, and then it doesn't need to get inside a human being and zoom off into heaven. So this is this doesn't make any sense, it's all just poetic imagery, right? It's Steven Moffat science fantasy. But as she's glowing, you see the other the other care briefcase carries briefly flash cycle through their images. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So they're there. But I like the, it's a bit of the line, a line where the dark says pardon my French, what the French is going on and use French in that term, several times. Yeah. I thought that was nice. I like, you know, pardon my French, but what the French is going on. And then later when he sees the dinosaur, he says, Oh, French. Yes. That's good. I thought the, the, we had that opening scene where we talked, you know, that you mentioned how the doctor went to the very hotel rooms and we start with this couple, this elderly couple in a hotel in London during the Blitz. And in the beginning, they basically have no hope, right? There's no hope of, you know, this is it, you know, everything's going to fall. The Nazis are going to win, you know, take over. But at the end, they have hope and something, something changed in between and the only difference being the, the star as a sign of hope at Christmas. And, you know, I don't want to stretch it too far. That's it. You know, that why should a going out and seeing a star in the sky on Christmas, you know, everything. And, and why are, and are they implying the star is only just appearing on Christmas Eve every Christmas because the way real stars work, they hang up there forever once they start. Right. Is it a time you win me star where it's it's shine throughout all of history, starting on, you know, well, they say, they say, yeah, when they finally show that the final caption because they're using on screen captions to tell us when we are in history. And the final one is Bethlehem, zero, zero, zero, one, right, which would be a D one. Now, that's not when Jesus was born and even on the traditional record, and that's not when Jesus was born, but this is, this is silly, well, British children's family science fiction. So we have to, we have to make it clear to the, to the, to the general audience that this is Bethlehem at Christmas. So yeah. That was one. Um, I thought that that older lady had a funny line at the beginning, you know, shut the window. You're on very, very upper crest British, you know, we're very stiff upper lip. But yeah, that was really nice. They also. And so the, the older couple is one of the, are in one of the rooms that the doctor breaks into. And apparently the way this, the time hotel works is the time hotel only normally has access to a room. If it's not occupied in its native time period. Right. The couple is really from 1940. They're not, they're not guests of the time hotel. They're guests of the 1940 hotel. And so the time hotel is not supposed to have access to this room because there are time native guests in it, but the doctor uses his override to enter the room anyway. And this, then they touch on something that I guess, various hotel guests wonder about, because hotel guests will sometimes notice they have an extra locked door in their room. And this may be more common in Europe than it is in America, but they wonder where do these doors go and let's like, well, okay, I use and the on screen explanation is, oh, they all go to the time hotel. But I actually used to manage a motel. And so I've actually been in the hidden passageways behind rooms where they keep, keep all the plumbing and electrical stuff. So the hotel guests don't have to see it. But that's what's really hidden back there. Couldn't have just been in a joining room door, too. Yeah. Yeah. Or that's what I always thought it was. Yeah. Or a closet containing extra supplies or, you know, yeah. All right. But maybe really is the time hotel that would be nice. Nice. Um, a couple other, uh, fun moments, uh, well, not, not so much fun. I thought it was interesting. We talked about the doctor focusing on the dying solarian manager and he does does so to the point where he ignores joy who's now strapped to this briefcase with a star in it. Uh, he, he loses track of her in a sense here. And, you know, the, what am I trying to say? It's interesting how, uh, this present danger of a star that's going to explode somewhere in earth's history, which would destroy a, you know, earth's future is not top of my day. It's this person dying person in front of him. And I think it's, it's just a good thing about the doctor here. We talked a little earlier about how, uh, how casually, uh, people die, you know, in these stories and the doctor, but in this case, the doctor is very much present to this dying solarian and it, it almost, um, almost takes you out of the story for a moment and just kind of stops as he focuses on a person, which is good. I think that's a good thing to, to not overlook the, you know, the death of a person. Yeah. Um, I think I feel like they're, I feel like they're trying to maybe, uh, explore as we mentioned earlier, some of the, um, the inner aspects of this, of the, of the doctor's character this, this time around. And you know, I think him focusing on someone who's dying in front of him is, is, you know, I mean, that's showing his, uh, you know, sort of, I mean, using this word loosely, humanity. Um, and I think that's a good thing, um, because in the past, I think sometimes the doctor has overlooked those things. Oh, yeah, he's dead or she's dead. It's okay. Let's move on to the next thing before this really bad thing happens, you know, right? So I think that was a, I think that's a good, uh, aspect of this doctor. One thing that I liked in this is this is again, just on the dialogue level, but, um, you know, Joy does not know what the sonic screwdriver is. And she sees the doctor using it and she refers to it as his zappy thing. And, and he says it's a sonic screwdriver and then he says, actually zappy thing makes more sense, which it frankly does. Um, so, so I liked that, um, there, there's, there's, there's one little exchange. In the dialogue, I'm kind of of two minds about, uh, where the briefcase is explaining what's going on with the star. And there's this line of you're being mansplained by a briefcase. And I have never cottoned to the word mansplained. Um, it is, it, it doesn't mean anything. It's just an insult. Um, you know, men don't explain things in some different way than women do. Uh, so I, I mean, I guess it's supposed to mean like explain in an insensitive or a thoughtless, or a thoughtless manner or condescending or something, but, um, I'm sorry men don't have a monopoly on that. Sure. And so I've fifth, so I've, I've, I've never, I've never appreciated this term, but it is a little funny in this context. And even the doctor has a line that's something like, well, you're traveling with the doctor. That's mansplain central. Yes. Um, and she says, I thought I was being manceling by you and he says, the doctor's in the room. That's mansplain central. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And which is because there's so much exposition on the show, um, a lot of which comes from the doctor. So, you know, I thought that was funny, even if I'm not a fan of this term. The other thing I wasn't a fan of is, and again, this is just the science and it's like Steven Moffat, you could have fixed this on the dialogue level. Dialogue is what you're good for, um, but at one point they're explaining what's going on inside the briefcase. And the doctor says that inside the briefcase, there's a star seed, which is a single atom. And in that atom, a chain reaction has already begun. No, that is not what chain reactions are. Chain reactions are reactions involving chains of atoms. Not within a single atom. Yes. That is the chain part. Speaking of the doctor explaining things, there's a later line where I think it's joy who asks, when you explain things, do people usually feel any better? No. No. I thought that was good. Yeah, that was good. When he's spending his year at the hotel, uh, the concept of a chair becomes very important. The idea, he realizes there are no chairs in this current version of the artist. Yeah. And, and what that means symbolically for him, since he doesn't have a companion right now, and, and he's sort of thinking, like, maybe I don't have someone who travels with me because I've made myself on welcoming or I'm not sure what he's getting at, but in what he does eventually do is has this chair in the, in the hotel room that he invites Anita to sit in and they, they form this bond and they have chair night, chair night, you get together. And, and this is the chair is something you have as a form of hospitality. And he, he earlier, when he first realized is he doesn't have any chairs on the tardis. He is like, Oh, no, I don't have any chairs. He realizes no one ever drops by. Well, you're not putting out chairs for people to sit in. You're not being a welcome in host. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Oh, you know, when you mentioned the GPS and the microwave, there was a third thing that was, I thought was really funny where she, she cans him a plunger and tells him to go fix the toilet in one of the rooms and he looks at and goes, is it art? Yeah. I can't, I can't. Like, like, I stock. Yeah. Or I don't like plunger. Yeah. That was a great line. That was a great line. Yeah. I really, yeah. I enjoyed in this episode, I think we've all hit on it and Jimmy particularly has hit on the dialogue aspect of this episode. That's what apparently, you know, Moffat's, you know, just, which is really good. And, and, and of all the, of all the episodes that, that, and this current iteration of the doctor, I'd rather have Moffat writing them. Yes. Then, then, then Russell and Elsie gave these. Yeah. I mean, I just, I, and he's, his, his dialogue is snappy and it, and it has, um, just. His plots are timing windier. They are. They are. And, and it's just a, it's a, I think it's just a much more enjoyable experience, you know, just to have him writing the episodes. And he, I guess, famously said he wasn't going to do it again and then has always just done it again. I think the, I think he's the best modern writer of Dr. who, I think you're right. I think you're right. Although he does have flaws as a writer, some of which we talked about during, during his era. Yeah. Um, and, and he also, you know, and I, this is a, this is a minor element in this episode, which is why I haven't mentioned it up to now because I wanted to get on the table. All the things I really liked about this episode. And this is, this is a minor flaw on the dialogue level, but they have these, they continue to have these gay jokes. Yep. You know, so they, they indicate that the doctor is physically has the hots for Trev at one point and Trev apparently reciprocates that also the, one of the, the rooms that the doctor goes into is in 1962. I think it's on a train, the Orient Express and the woman's traveling apparently, if you check the credits is named after the first bond, bond girl, but so she's like an homage to the James Bond franchise, but, um, she's apparently writing a love letter to a, to a fellow female and it's like, guys, this is, this is a family show. It's Christmas. Um, and in general, I just rather not have this, but at least they're not shoving it in our face this time because it's on the dialogue level. It goes by quick. Um, and so, you know, it's not near as bad as it could be, but it is something that detracts. Something that I also wondered about was, uh, because the show has become so identity politics central that now I can't look at, uh, I can't look at an episode of Doctor Who and notice diversity without wondering, is this some kind of statement here? Um, whereas I used to could like in midnight, midnight, which actually is penned by Russell Davies is, I think the best episode of Doctor Who ever written. And it's one of the four that I show a person who's never seen Doctor Who before. And I was showing it someone last night and I was noticing, Oh, okay. So here in midnight, you know, we have, uh, a very small cast that are confined to this basically bus that's traveling across the surface of the planet midnight. We've got the doctor, we have a driver, we have a, we have a mechanic, we have a hostess, and then we've got the passengers and the passengers are an old professor, his young assistant and a family of three and the, uh, one of the, and three of these characters happen to be black. The mechanic is black, the hostess is black and the young assistant of the professor is black and she is the one that has the most companion potential. She's kind of a temporary companion in this episode. She's the most sympathetic. She's really smart. She's central to the plot. And I didn't have to, back then, I didn't have to think about anything. I just accepted, Oh, these are these characters and I thought they were great. And I didn't, I didn't, I didn't mind care one way or another, what ethnic backgrounds they came from. Um, but this show has become so political in its cast in where, Oh, we can't have Davros in a chair now because that's something, says something about handicapped people. And we must have a scientific advisor for unit who's in a wheelchair now and we've got to change up the races and the sexes and every, it's become so political that now with this, uh, with this Christmas special, I see, okay, the woman who plays joy, she's obese. And I have to look at that and not just accept this character, but wonder, are they making some extra kind of statement about bossy, body positive imagery here or something? Right. Um, but I think whether they were or not, it ends up working because when the doctor gets mean, and here he essentially does the same thing that the seventh doctor did to ace at one point again for their own good. Um, but when the doctor is being cruel to joy, the fact that she's obese helps her convey this sense of insecurity, um, and even potentially, you know, self unappreciation, if I can put it that way, and this is something I know about because I spent decades being obese before I finally figured out how I could lose weight. I mean, I was over 300 pounds at one point and, um, and I've really struggled with weight. Um, but I think regardless of whether they meant it as a statement, I think they handled it in an artistic way. And so initially I was hesitant to say, uh, this is our temporary Christmas companion. Is this a statement? But then they redeemed it with, by exploring joy zone insecurities. And I thought, okay, this is, this makes joy a much more interesting character. Right. They're not, they're not glossing this over. They're treating it. Even though they don't really refer to it, it's part of her character and, and she's got this whole network of things that give her reason to feel bad at Christmas and, and this is plausibly one of them. And she's a much more interested character. Once they explore her own feelings about Christmas and herself and her mom and everything, it really makes her a much more rich character. And so I didn't have a problem in the end, but I didn't like the fact I had to initially ask that question. There was a similar moment of restraint when they were talking about her mom dying under coat alone in the hospital under COVID lockdown, where Joy kind of points, points out, I can only talk to her on an iPad while other people were having parties. And that is, if, if people are not familiar with recent British politics, was it is possibly a reference to the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, there was a scandal about how in the midst of the lockdown, they were having parties that down the street and just like Gavin Newsom and Nancy Pelosi and lots of American politicians were doing the same thing. Right. Right. And so I thought that was good commentary actually. It was good. It was restrained. It didn't get too political. I think everyone understood exactly what they were saying and the hypocrisy she's pointing out and then how that hypocrisy harmed people in real life. And I appreciated them addressing that. So that was really good. Yeah, I thought that was excellent commentary because, I mean, you know, Boris Johnson gets a bad rap. I mean, on that stuff, but, you know, it wasn't all him either. But it was, you know, but I think them pointing it out is a good thing because all of the power people of the world needed to be kind of called out on that. Yeah. We were, I was lucky that I was able to go see my grandmother before she died. And you know, and that was only because they were loosening the COVID restrictions at that point. She had died when I couldn't have visited her. I would have been very upset. Right. There was a moment where the doctor says that, which I think I appreciate the most in this line where he says, mums there, even when they're gone, they never stopped saving us. And that struck home for me because I lost my mom recently and it, I felt it was a particularly beautiful line in the context here as well. Absolutely. All right. So I'm trying to see what else we need to say about this. We should mention just briefly that Ruby Sunday has a cameo appearance, but the doctor doesn't meet her in this. We just see her at home. Yes. So Joy, at the end, says she's not dying. She's changing. The flesh will rise. The sorrow will shine, which she's, it's now different from perhaps what Villengard intended. And I will shine everywhere and forever, she says, yeah, that's not how stars work. No, I'm sorry between science and religion. You know, they're not getting either one of them right, but they're not. The key thing has to note that I love when you know it. So I need to get tired at the time hotel on the doctor's recommendation, which I thought was a nice little wrap up for Anita. I noted that Joy's mom is in Royal Hope hospital being a term that is often found in this story. And in fact, at the end, you know, he's the doctor says, of course you are, you are joy. And he yells out joy to the world, you know, outside Bethlehem. I don't know if Moffat intended this, but you are joy, joy to the world. That's as much addressed, I think, in some way, to Jesus as it is to, you know, he is the joy in the hope that we turn to it's no, I mean, he's standing in Bethlehem, yelling out joy to the world. That is, that is going to be even if unintentionally on Moffat's part. Something to do with Jesus. I thought that was a really nice moment there. It was. So, and I have to say, as soon as they said, Starseed, I said, Oh, it's Christmas. That's our Bethlehem. Okay. It was clear. It was pretty clear. So Father Chip, do you have any of the last notes on this one before we wrap things up? I am all set. How about you, Jimmy? Nope. So I did promise some lists for feedback. So I just want to quickly go through that because we love getting lists for feedback. This is from our recent episode, last episode, Nightmare of Eden, with the fourth doctor, Robert Hawkins on our Facebook page writes, I'd coincidence your last story. The Time Warrior had the same director as this one, Alan Bromley. That might explain the actor David Daker or Dokar the font with the arrow being in both stories. From what I've read, Bromley had a bit of trouble on the Time Warrior as well, but nothing like this one. Remember the Nightmare of Eden was a bad shoot. As a kid, no, not a terrible episode, but a bad shoot. Yes. Exactly. Right. As a kid, though, the mandrels look like sweetens from the Muppet shows. Yep. Cousin. Sure. And for whatever reason, whose poor budgets never bothered me at all as a kid and I couldn't get into original series Star Trek to save my life. And Tom's dismissal of Triss excuses at the end is one of his great underrated bits of acting. It is. It is. That is well acted by Baker. Yes. I think we called up the mandrels looking at each our puff and stuff, but it all get the sweetens to. Excellent. Well, thank you, Robert, for your feedback. We do appreciate that. And now before we go, we'd like to take a moment to thank our patrons who make it possible for us to create the Secrets of Doctor Who, including David H, Jonathan A, Marie P, Colin H and Nancy R. They're generous donations at SQPN.com/give make it possible for us to continue the Secrets of Doctor Who and all the shows at Star Quest. And you can join them by visiting SQPN.com/give. This Star Quest show is also brought to you by Exodus 90 and the Exodus 90 Challenge, which begins this year on January 20th. This isn't just a 90 day program, Exodus 90 is a spirituality for men in modern times built on three ancient pillars, prayer, self sacrifice and fraternity. We all longed for something more, and that something is to be found in becoming the men that God created us to be, sons of a loving Father. It's time to turn away from our idols. It's time to break free from the pharaohs that hold us in bondage. If you're ready to make a fresh start, to break free, refocus and rediscover who God is calling you to be in the New Year and embark on a journey to uncommon freedom in Jesus Christ, then download the Exodus 90 app today. We start January 20th, 2025. So go to Exodus90.com/SQPN to learn more about Exodus 90. That's Exodus90.com/SQPN. So that's it from this time. We would love to know what you thought of Joy to the World. You can let us know by commenting on the show at SQPN.com, the Secrets of Doctor Who Facebook page, and send an email to DoctorWho@SQPN.com, visit the StarQuest Discord community at SQPN.com/discord. You can watch us and leave comments on our YouTube channel at youtube.com/StarQuestMedia. We'll be back next time when we'll be discussing our 400th Secrets of Doctor Who episode. We'll be discussing the special direct to VHS downtime video. So that's going to be an interesting discussion. So I should point out the 15th Doctor's next season is apparently coming in May of 2025. So that's where you'll see that from us discussing that. So until then, Jimmy Yakin, thank you for joining me in sharing the Secrets of Doctor Who. Thanks, Tom, and I want to thank Father Chip for being here with us, and maybe you can join us again when the 15th Doctor's next season appears. I'm open to that, and I thank you for the invitation, and it was great to be with you guys. Thank you, Father Cory. Thank you for listening to the Secrets of Doctor Who on StarQuest, and remember, the Star Seed will bloom, and the flesh will rise. (dramatic music) (loud thud)