The Tour prides itself, when in season mind you, at turning around stories for inclusion in the Tour with relative rapidity, but Joy to the World vexed the Tour Honchos in this regard. We had the gallery ready to go fairly quickly, but finding a suitable 4K version of the story to draw screen caps from proved abnormally, at least for the current day, elusive. So elusive in fact that we eventually caved and capped the story in ‘standard’ HD.
As for Joy to the World itself, our big take-out was that it provided Ncuti Gatwa an opportunity for a full charm offensive. This was one of those Christmas specials, and we once graded all of the Specials (through 2013 that is) on their Christmassy-ness, where some of the iconography denoting Christmas was there, but honestly, except for the callbacks at the very end, weren’t important at all to the story itself.
And that’s (quite, quite) OK.
Which is also how the Tour feels about Joy to the World itself. A nice, though rather inoffensive story, tuned into what the casual viewer on Christmas day would like, but little more for the fans. And that’s (quite, quite) OK.
It’s new Doctor Who, and that’s more than OK.