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Notes on - Doctor Who: Joy to the World

 

Doctor Who – Joy to the World notes.

The Queen’s Hotel – Manchester 1940

I quite like Basil and Mrs. Basil

Why are we in WWII again?

Basil: It’s the end of everything, you know. Everything we hold dear.  Democracy itself will fall.

I hate Pumpkin Latte

Aren’t those locked doors pretty much always just connecting rooms?

Orient Express – Italy – 1962

Do a lot of people read Murder on the Orient Express on the Orient  Express?  Bit on the nose.

OK, we’re opening with a montage of the Doctor bursting in on various time periods and places to offer them the same lukewarm toastie and pumpkin Latte.  That’s a pretty clever way to establish the concept of the hotel from the back door, as it were

MOTOE is a much thicker book than that.  And she has handwritten pages

Base camp – Everest 1953.  Is there only one base camp?

Sandringham Hotel – London 2024.  So, time of airing then.

I’m not loving Joy’s outfit

Apparently there’s a gay cabaret called ‘Main Stage’ right next to the Sandringham

Joy: Do you have a room please?  Just for the week.

Anita: Single?

Joy: Oh, does it show?

Anita: room, I mean.

Has Joy never seen connecting doors between hotel rooms?  Why are we pretending this is a mystery?

Joy does seem lonely.  Talking with a fly will give that impression.

***  The star seed will bloom and the flesh will rise

And now there’s a Silurian with a briefcase coming in through the locked connecting room door uttering what is clearly this episode’s quote of the week

London 4202.  It’s built up a bit.  I’m sure there are inside jokes there that I just don’t get

The Time Hotel.  Love the mix of costumes in their lobby.

Doctor in his jammies with two mugs

Creepy man with a suitcase looking for the third floor

The Doctor:  I’ve got a nav-com algorithm that homes in on fresh milk.  I mean, I could just get a fridge.

When the Doctor asks who takes a coffee to the loo, the concierge guy starts to say ‘I do.’ Before switching to ‘To ech their own’.  The CC doesn’t reflect it.

Perceptive that he asks about the two mugs

The bigger on the inside joke might have worn out its welcome.

The Doctor:  OK.  First I put my coat on.  Why did I do that?  Oh. And now I’m getting the sonic.  What did I see?

Yeah, suitcase guy could not look creepier

Trev is sweet

Trev looks happy to be working with him

The Doctor:  Stroll with me.  Keep it casual, like you haven’t noticed anything dangerous.

Trev: I haven’t noticed anything dangerous

The Doctor: Then why aren’t you strolling better?

Trev: I’m pretending to not notice something I really haven’t noticed. I haven’t perfected a stroll for that.

It is telling that the guy yhasn’t looked up to see that atrium if they hadn’t seen it before.

The Doctor has enrolled Trev in the traditional ‘accomplice who thinks the Doctor is an agent for someone and he;s helping him.’  I always enjoy that.

Why the mystery about where the guy is?  He clearly heard the clerk tell him to wait in the bar

Trev: Should I make my mind blank too, sir?

The Doctor: That may not be necessary in your case, Trev

The concept of the hotel is pretty cool.  And not a million miles away from The Girl in the Fireplace

I didn’t hate the Pisa joke.

It really isn’t a mystery why there’s an extra door in hotel rooms.  It’s for adjoining suites.  Is that not a thing in other countries

Wouldn’t it be that the kitchens are 30 minutes in the past so that they can delivery your food just as you order it?  Trev says the future

Trev: Psychic graft.  It’s very efficient.  It still calls my mum if I forget to flush

Ah.  OK.  The Doctor knows that Mr. Briefcase is going to a room that’s currently occupied.  That’s why he’s checking out unavailable rooms instead of following the guy.  I guess that makes sense.  Seems like a very long shot though.

Trev:  I’m on this.  This is going to be the least I’ve ever let anybody down.

Ok, I totally love Trev

So they’re establishing a link from creepy suitcase guy to the Silurian by having them both say the catch phrase.  Love the way the handcuff is sentient and strikes like a snake and also how only one person is under its spell at any one time.

The eye flit thing is just like Harmony Shoal

Oh no, not poor Trev

And we’ve looped back to where we came in with his room service tour

Trev being forced to betray the Doctor and the hotel is heartbreaking

And at the end of the opening montage the Doctor sees Silurian manager entering a room with the briefcase, so he knows he found the right one

Trev’s last words are ‘Oh dear.  I went and let him down.

I adore how Anita is totally unfazed by lizard men and the whole thing

Joy:  Oh, this is men all over.  Even lizard men.

Anita: (poking her head around the corner) Oh, I know.

The Doctor: Pardon my French, but what the French is going on?

I love how unfazed Anita is

The Doctor trying to get him to remember his own story as a way of clinging to life is touching.  And also very Moffat

So this Silurian wandered into the hotel back in Silurian times.  Have the Silurians not risen per the agreement back in Cold Blood?  It kind of appears not.  Typical.

It’s a nicer moment when the Doctor is forced to acknowledge that Joy knows what the star seed is and hew doesn’t

The Doctor: I’m thinking

Joy: Well, could you close the case and think?

The Doctor: I’m a very visual person

Of course it had to be more complicated than just closing the case.  4 digit code needed

I like the solution that the Doctor can will himself to create a bootstrap paradox to tell himself the code in a year’s time.

I don’t enjoy that the Doctor is mooning over a lost companion yet again in the Christmas episode.

I’m not sure I like the Doctor attacking himself for being lonely.  It’s solely to set up the chair as a vehicle to introduce him to Anita and it feels out of character just a bit

Convenient that The Doctor has the pamphlet showing where the time hotel is featuring for the following year

I like using the psychic paper to take orders for what people actually want

Man, Anita just will not be flustered by anything

And good on her for pressing the ‘who are you not phoning’ conversation. 

What’s her story?  Who did Anita lose?

The microwave is also bigger on the inside.  Seriously guys, you have to let that joke go.

The handing him a plunger gag was absolutely perfect

It takes you where you need to go.  Steven Moffat is really hitting all the greatest hits

He’s buying toy TARDIS’ on line.

And they’ve bonded over loving it when the clock goes forward, leading to the Doctor remembering he has a chair and making a friend

Anita:  You know what?

The Doctor: What?

Anita: This is my favorite night of the week.

The Doctor: Yeah.

OMG, the honeymooning couple while the Doctor investigates the door.  So funny

I LOVE these two as best friends.

Very smooth way to tell us it’s Guy Fawkes night.

And I love how casual they are about Anita just assuming that the Doctor is gay and not making any sort of deal about it.

December 2025.  The Doctor was just going to leave her a present and leave without saying goodbye??  Dick move Doctor.  This woman’s been your dear friend for an entire year.  Take her WITH YOU!!

The Doctor: You know what it was like?  It was amazing.  And you know why it was amazing?  You.

The Doctor:  Everyone who knows you is so lucky.  I bet you they tell you that all the time.

Anita:  Just the once, actually.

I love everything about this relationship SO FUCKING MUCH

NYC Christmas Eve – The Exeter hotel

The Anita section is the perfect short story.  Shame there has to be an episode around it. He criticized himself for being alone, then his past self learns from that and makes a dear friend, and then has to leave nher.  It’s about the Doctor learning that he’s worth being loved

The Doctor:  I mean, basically the code came from nowhere, but then so did the universe and no one complains about that

Meanwhile, back in the actual plot

Why would they need to make a new star.  There’s hardly a shortage of them

Interesting theory about hotel rooms.  I’m not sure I buy it

He’s not wrong, that was a very sad room

He’s being so cruel to Joy

Ooo, him mentioning her mother pushed a button

That’s a beautiful view out of the treehouse

I know that the Doctor is deliberately pushing Joy into her anger to free her from the suitcase, but it was right for her to obey the rules.  Even if she’s right that it’s bullshit that the rich elites were partying anyway

Love the visual of the snapping handcuffs

Joy was conditioned by the case to think she was a star and was beautiful.  So the carrier becomes the star?  I thought the star grew from the seed?  That’s muddy

I hope we never actually meet Villengard

And just like that we get the reveal that they’re in a room 65 million years ago

I ijust don’t understand what making a star gets them. 

The clear implication was that the case would ignite after the elapsed time.  Now they’re changing the rules to say that the corp has to recollect the case and send a signal to ignite it.  They’re mioving the goalposts.

The consciousness upload is a direct lift from the library, isn’t it.

Trev:  As I told you a very long time ago, I will not let you down, sir.

Mavity again.  I’m very over that joke

I do like the overall Indiana Jones vibe of the room.  And the joke that the doctor has this whole scientific plan to find the box and Trev just tells him the room number

Rope really has come up a lot with this Doctor.

And now all the time zones from the beginning montage play a little part in getting the shrine open

I don’t think the standing on top of the train bit would work anytime other than in a Christmas episode.

Woman on the train – James Bond connection

So Joy took out the seed – which we’ve been told numerous times is going to detonate, and somehow absorbed it into herself and now it isn’t going to detonate, because they keep changing the rules.  Will it explode?  Yes, but I guess she can levitate and somehow fly billions of light years away so that the earth doesn’t blow up.  Oh, and it makes her magic consciousness now because… reasons.

You found a friend.  Her name is Anita.  Go FUCKING get her right now!!!

And somehow Joy cam connect to every single Christmas ever now, because fuck defining what the rules are

OK, we get it.  Every single Christmas Joy’s star can be seen and gives everybody hope.

Ruby gets a call from her mum,  That’s pointless.

Recommending her for working at the Time Hotel is better than nothing, I  suppose

And now star-joy can suck out and eat souls, I guess.

Bethlehem 001. I guess they don’t specify the month.

 

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