My thoughts on Doctor Who “Joy to the World”

These are just some random thoughts I had on “Joy to the World.” I don’t have a system to give it a grade, but I’d say on a scale of 1 to 10, it’s a … 5ish.  There is a near-certainty that I will never watch it again, and in a few months I’ll probably be hard pressed to remember the plot.

Spoilers.

What I liked.

Fifteen or twenty years ago, I came up with a story idea of a Doctor-like character who travels through time losing a bet and having to live for a year like a normal person.  They get a job and possibly start dating a coworker.  I’m not saying “Joy to the World” stole my idea, because it is highly unlikely someone broke into my house, dug out an old writing notebook, found this specific page, and was able to decipher my horrible handwriting to get that basic description, because that’s basically all the work I put into the idea.  Also, just seeing The Doctor trying to live as a normal person is a pretty basic idea.  We’ve seen parts of this in previous episodes.  Sometimes these are either short time periods or are just mentioned in passing, like I believe in “Blink” The Doctor and Martha are stuck in 1969 and she’s a tad upset she had to get a job to support him, but that’s about all we get.  Other times there is some epic story thing going on, like I believe one of the Smith Christmas episodes has The Doctor in Christmas Town for a … century, or something.  (I have a vague memory of this, but don’t care enough to look it up.)

Anyway, I liked the idea of The Doctor living out a year in normal time.  In fact, I would have preferred an entire episode of The Doctor trying to figure out the solution to some problem while also dealing with some eccentric characters one can find in a neighborhood. 

I guess I also liked that they at least acknowledged that “Global Event That Must Not Be Named.” (I can’t remember if they actually named it in the episode.  If they did, I wasn’t really paying attention, but if they didn’t name it, we all knew what it was.) Although, I guess the world of Doctor Who isn’t our world, like, I don’t remember the time everyone was turned into The Master. 

What I didn’t like.

First off, why didn’t the first guy go in, say he needed to speak to the manager, and have the briefcase hook on to the manager, and then – knowing that they needed millions of years – go directly to the dinosaur room instead of futzing around in the human era stuff?

So Anita was like the tenth or so companion to basically fall madly in love with The Doctor?  Also, hasn’t The Doctor been told a dozen or so times by now that they shouldn’t be alone and they should find someone?  I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with those – like the later does show that even the smartest people might not readily take good advice because they think they know better – but it does seem like this template is being used too often. 

As soon as they mentioned something about creating a star, I knew where this was going.  I think they then did the Anita stuff, so I kind of forgot about it for twenty minutes or so, but when it came back I was going, “Please don’t be so obvious, please don’t be so obvious,” but in the end they were. 

Final thoughts

There were basically two parts to this episode.  The part with Joy and the star was … meh.  The part with Anita I liked the concept, but would have liked more, especially if they did something else with it.  Like, maybe Anita had a bit of a crush on the person who ran the whatever store next-door.  And over the year – while he’s working on solving some problem – The Doctor’s helping her build up her confidence to ask them out.  And you could have had a sappy, “Nobody deserves to be alone on Christmas,” and then someone could ask, “Who will you be with, Doctor?” And after a moment, he’ll laugh and say something silly, then step into the TARDIS with some sad music, and then … the TARDIS will be rammed by the Titanic again, or whatever will lead into the next episode and companion.