Joy to the World

@craig @blenkinsopthebrave     Merry Christmas! We are halfway out of the dark.

My day was a lunch bag let down after sickness prevented my family from coming over. They were worried that we might get sick so we have postponed till new years. When I watched the episode I remembered how scared I was that I would get Covid and be in the hospital all  alone.  My nice old neighbor died in hospital during lockdown and most of his family never saw him. Parts of this made me sad because of those memories but it also lifted me up and left me feeling hopeful and grateful. I can’t ask for more from a Christmas show.

I really want to stay at the Time Hotel and I could have watched an hour of the Doctor going into all the rooms.Loved, loved Trev! He  would have made a great and loyal companion.The nice, unflappable women at the hotel and her relationship with the Doctor gave me a warm ,cozy feeling.The Doctor cries more now and I have always been a “sympathetic crier” so I cry more too.

There was maybe too much going on in this episode so I feel all those story lines were crushed into one show. But it is Christmas and a white one here where I am so I will be cheerful and say I liked this and it was a good Christmas episode over all.

Thanks for this place Craig.

stay jolly

I need to watch it again. I certainly need to hear the Silurian’s testament again. Important details there, I’m sure.</p>
But I feel I could be entertained and carried along by it… again… in a way that ‘The Legend of Death’ still has not. Rewatching that really does feel like a waste of time. Which is curious because the flaw in both is the dubious metaphysical resolution. Is that Disney at work? Or just a general plea for us not to give in even though we appear to be surrounded by murderous idiots.</p>
Or does it take 65 million years for a bunch of hopeless outsiders to subvert Villengard’s programming? And enable Joy to develop faster-than-light psycholevitation. Or was that because the extensive reprogramming during Boom? Who was in the cult cave that prevented suit case guy from marching in at the start. Might be better to avoid that. As Who has done until now. I was waiting for a Life of Brian reference. It didn’t arrive.</p>
The lockdown references seemed quite sound.

High points. The hotel concept. Supersized Dinosaur again… why not? Maybe they got that big but we ain’t dug one up yet. Doctor does the caretaker/lodger/trapped in time thing. Anita and Joy were both curiously underwritten but perhaps that’s always been the fate of occasional characters in Who. I would like to see Anita again tho.

The bootstrap paradox rehash was a bit ho hum. Just show this timewimey ‘thing’. It’s not like dumb intentional plot holes of Eternity or Time Lash… ‘gosh Doctor how did you do that?’

It wasn’t Last Christmas or Husbands of River Song but the leads aren’t characters Moff has invested in, I suppose.

Well, I liked it.

And there were at least three characters who would have been better than the “companions” 15 has been saddled with, so far…

I absolutely loved it! I was sobbing mess throughout and I felt our Doctor showed a little more sensitivity and emotion than earlier this year?

Merry Christmas to all.
Puro.

Merry Christmas all. (there are still a few days to go..) I really enjoyed it and it was just we needed after a rather “intense” Christmas Day. Warm and fun. The family were all engaged. So nice to be watching all together again. the ending was a bit sickly but not sure quite what the religious connotations of that are.

cheers

Janette

@dr-pepper-bean

well, as Voltaire might have said, if there wasn’t already a religion which has, for the last 1600 years, been throwing up its hands at the suffering and injustices of this world whilst reasoning that the slavishly obedient or insensate ones will be rewarded in a purely hypothetical next one, and simultaneously condemning those who can’t deal with this revolting process, you might have to make it up.

Mind you, that aspect of the story was the bit I liked least.

So, not weird exactly. Who knows, maybe Moff did this on purpose. Could he be an unreliable witness to the ressurrection? Because we have here a concatenation of rebirth for various victims of Villengard’s wonderful tech… definitely not nativity.

WHO doesn’t normally play with any specific religious elements. Sounds good to me. But Moff can write. So, these elements shouldn’t be accidental. Is he kicking back against good ol wholesome Disney? Or just doing his average play with Christmas tropes? Bear in mind this is supposedly his last outing. Well, maybe not.
Villengard is clearly significant. Translates as ‘the wild garden,’ in norse languages. Valeyard maybe ‘old man’ in french… but there is a superficial phonetic resemblance.

And something beginning with V is lurking within UNIT

@thane16

How wonderful to see you online again, Puro! It has been a while.

I’m with you. I found myself getting very emotional by the end. And why not?

All the best.

@whohar if they did explain how joy got the bomb, then I missed it as well…

Well enjoyed the episode but wonder where it’s ultimately going to lead us the arms company seems to be rearing its head and makes me wonder if they are going to be the big bad of the next series. And I’m assuming the case code was a time paradox that may have its resolution in the future

I mean Space Odyssey of course!

Mavity… 15 talks to Holo Trev about where the case is and asks about ‘rotational mavity.’ I could not find it again… thought I was going mad! I mean I thought I heard something about Trump invading Greenland and becoming Father Christmas….

Another problem though… if the Silurian Hotel Manager was the ultimate upgrade and could presumably go straight to the top floor… why did he choose Joy’s room? Unless he was only trailing a coat for 15… ie it was a trap for The Doctor all along! He was very keen for 15 to take the case. But, in that case, why didn’t the first carrier approach 15?

Also, why didn’t the Silurian just use the tree house door to get home? OK, maybe he liked slumming it in the hotel.

nb one of the other doors appeared to be for Bag End! But then this would seem to be a virtual reality…

@winston

hmmm. Talk about ‘may you live in interesting times!’

Apparently, Seward wanted to grab Greenland in 1867, when the US purchased Alaska, presumably while the Danes were still reeling from the Schleswig War. Congress blocked him! Upstanding Democrats that they were.

I suppose you could sub Ukraine for Schleswig. Also that would reduce Canada to an inconvenient little stretch of land between the east and west bastions of  North America. Shaman and The Proud Boys could invade through the panhandle of Idaho!

Apparently the Danes have a dodgy claim to Greenland, having scarpered with it when Norway was forced to get into bed with Sweden. This is The Monroe Doctrine looking North East for a change. Oh these perfidious Europeans! They’re all so conflicted. Delinquent. Let’s face it, the fate of Iraquois and the Five Civilised Tribes was so not dodgy. Also, unconflicted, and hardly perfidious at all.

And it happened a long long time ago. Calm down Donald.

OK, just watched it.   First thoughts –

[Anorak mode ON] Oh dear, at 1 minute in, the Orient Express is shown crossing the Landwasser Viaduct. Only 5 things wrong with that: 1. The caption says Italy and the Landwasser is in Switzerland 2. The Orient Express never went that way. 3. The Orient Express could never go that way because 4: The OE was a standard gauge train and the Albula Bahn (part of Rhaetian Railways) is metre gauge 5. The line was electrified in 1919 Aside from that, not a bad bit of CGI 🙂 [/anorak]

“Should I make my mind blank too sir?”
“It may not be necessary in your case Trev.” ROTFL!

Joy is kind of irritating at first (she improves later).
But I do like the developing friendship between the Doctor and Anita, the receptionist.
Love the joke about the sink plunger, “Is this armed?” And the in-joke about Anita’s satnav that now takes her where she needs to go.
And my eyes got a bit damp when he had to leave her.

“Many things about this are – suboptimal.” Love it!

Incidentally, I’m pretty sure that’s not how stars form. They require an accumulation of billions of tons of – anything, being squished together by the extremely weak force of gravity – but a force with the unusual power that it’s always attractive, until the pressure and temperature at the core is high enough for fusion to start. Or something like that. You can, in theory, have a tiny sand-grain-sized black hole, but I don’t think you can have an atom-sized star. Never mind, the Who way is more poetic. (Maybe someone who actually knows will correct me 🙂

I found all the timey-wimey stuff a little bit confusing, though not enough to spoil my enjoyment. I guess on re-watching I’ll find it all fits, as I often do with Moff stories.

Now to read through the reactions

This is basically a fresh review, since it’s long enough since I watched that I’ve forgotten much of the ep.

‘Orient Express, Italy, 1962’ See my previous post for 5 ways this is technically incorrect. 🙂
The book the girl is reading, though, does look like an authentic Penguin paperback.
And I don’t think the mountain in ‘Everest Base Camp 1953’ is actually Everest. I’d like to ID it, it isn’t the Matterhorn or K2, I suppose I could try a reverse image search but my geek streak doesn’t stretch that far.

The dialogue in the Time Hotel is interesting and witty – who wrote this? Oh, Moff. What a surprise.

“Make yourself comfortable. And don’t attract attention. You should be dead quite shortly.” Yep, definitely Moff.

I really like Anita as the harassed manager of a modest hotel.

That countdown on the briefcase – FutureDoc bursts in with the code, then ducks back into the Time Hotel with Joy and leaves NowDoc in the Sandringham Hotel to go the long way round. Moff absolutely loves these ‘long way round’ scenarios, any immortal can expect to encounter at least one in their ‘lifetime.’ In fact this one was the inverse of The Day of the Doctor where the 3 Docs were in a dungeon and the Screwdriver needed 400 years to work out the molecuar structure of the door – which the newest iteraion of the Screwdriver had just completed (and then Clara walked in because the door wasn’t locked).

The relationship developing between the Doctor and Anita is rather charming. Love the sink-plunger joke – ‘Is this armed?’ And Anita’s Satnav now takes her where she *needs* to go, and her car is now blue.
And the little row of Tardises – “Where d’you get them?” “Online, mostly. For some reason there’s loads of them.” Nice little nod to the fans, I think.
And I had a tear in my eye when the Doctor left Anita to close the time loop.

But I still can’t figure out where he got the code for the briefcase, maybe I missed it.

And *of course* the villains are Vilengard.

Geek mode on again – when he lassoes the track behind the train, causing the rope to pull the door in the chamnber open – why do the train wheels emit sparks? – they’re not transmitting any brake force.

I have to admit the last few minutes were a bit too mystical for me; how did Joy acquire the ability to fly and take the starseed with her into deep space?

Never mind, for a feelgood Christmas episode it was entirely wachable.

@dentarthurdent  @ps1l0vey0u       I always enjoy the Christmas episodes and I like a sappy ,happy ending so this one was a good one. I loved Trev!  I would gladly watch a show about the hotel with Anita and Trev managing all the tourists and doors. Fantasy Island goes Time Hotel. I would definitely visit the Hobbit Door. My imagination is going crazy just thinking about it.

stay timey- wimey

I’m finally holding in my hot little hands the Season 2 DVDs from the library!

I’ll start with things I disliked:

I thought it was too bad that Anita and Joy had to compete for screen time. I would have preferred Anita as the primary character. I found her more engaging than Joy (though I’d warmed up to Joy by the end).

The music was way over the top, basically telling me what to feel instead of supporting the narrative flow.

And I really didn’t need the Bethlehem Year 1 title card. It was pretty clear where/when we were, and what the star was meant to represent.

Things I enjoyed:

The Time Hotel was spectacular. The dinosaur felt shoehorned in, but still pretty impressive.

As usual, I got a little lost in all the timey-wimey stuff, but I just rolled with it.

Poor Trev. But, in the end, he didn’t let the Doctor down.

The friendship between Anita and the Doctor really resonated with me. I would have liked more of that, but it was overshadowed by Joy’s discovery of her destiny with the star seed.

The scene of Joy on her iPad, wishing her mother a Merry Christmas, was deeply moving.

The reference to COVID and dying alone hit home with me. In November 2020, my 93-year-old father got a mild case of COVID and was hospitalized in isolation for many weeks. When he was fully recovered, my stepmother got him a room at a nursing home, but because he still tested positive, he had to remain hospitalized and in isolation. The only people he saw were hospital staff.

Finally, he tested negative and was admitted into the nursing home, where he spent only a week before going back into the hospital not because of COVID, but a different condition he’d been managing for a few years. I’ve always believed that COVID, mild though it was, and six weeks of isolation did him no favors. A few days later, it was clear he was dying. The only people allowed in were my stepmother and stepsister … and we were grateful that they could be with him at the end.

Before COVID, my biggest worry was, would I get there in time? I never imagined that I wouldn’t be allowed to be at my father’s side. It’s a plight I did not repeat with my mother a year and a half later. All of her loved ones were there with her in the last week of her life.

@nerys I agree about Anita, I really liked her. I would have liked to see her as a Companion.   The Time Hotel is, of course, a species of time machine. I’m sure it generates all sorts of time paradoxes.

The just-married couple in Anita’s Sandringham Hotel honeymoon suite took the Doctor’s incursion remarkably calmly, I thought. Just a reminder that the Doctor has odd little gaps in his knowledge of humans, not faulting Gatwa but I think that would have been perfect for Capaldi.

Um, Covid. If I had to go into isolation I’d go quietly bonkers. My condolences for your father and mother.

I didn’t know anyone personally who died of Covid, but we were very lucky in New Zealand. Easy to close the borders, and our PM was popular, nobody in the Opposition thought there was any political capital in opposing quarantine or masking or vaccines. Also, by pure luck, we had a Director-General of Health, Ashley Bloomfield, who had no political associations and an excellent TV manner, you felt instinctively inclined to trust him, so PM Jacinda left the day-to-day announcements to him. Of course we had a few perverse anti-socials who refused to mask or quarantine or vaccinate because ‘their rights’, fortunately very few. I tend to be anti-authoritarian but I’m not stupid.

Enough of that.

I must admit, I was looking for the bit where the Doctor found the code for the briefcase, too.

I think the answer is absolutely simple. The Doctor who went on the year’s interlude with Anita knew it because the Doctor who burst in through the door had told him. (So even if Anita had told him, it would have been superfluous because he already knew it. And it’s not the sort of thing he would be likely to forget). So that’s how he knew it when he burst through the door, how could he not have known?  He knew it because he knew it.

Absolutely simple, absolutely logical, I defy anybody to tell me how that’s wrong. Oh, and completely, utterly bonkers.

I think the Doc explaining his deliberate cruelty to Joy was for the benefit of the viewers, in case they missed it.

Totally aside, we’re in the middle of winter here – just had two of the coldest weeks ever, though in Auckland it almost never freezes – but anyway, the osteospermums (african daisies) I planted in time for last summer (and they flowered then) have just come out in full flower again. And our rose bush has a few flowers on it. Auckland vegetation is weird.

@nerys   I guess Nova Scotia was a bit like New Zealand in respect of Covid, being relatively easy to isolate.    Omicron was, I think, way more infectious than previous variants, but probably less deadly.   Also, I think, by then people were starting to get a bit more blase about precautions.   Part of the rationale for the precautions was not to stop anybody ever getting it, but to stop them all getting it at the same time and swamping the hospitals – as happened in many places.

Re the briefcase, I didn’t say ‘he knew it because he knew it’ was particularly satisfying.   Would have been more satisfying if there was some other way the Doctor could have learned it – but for that to be necessary, the Doc who burst through the door would have to be the one who keyed it in.  Because, since the original Doc was told and knew it when he keyed it in, any other source of the information to him while he was staying with Anita would have been superfluous.

Timey-wimey or what?   As I said, bonkers.

It’ll be a couple or three months before any of our flowers start seriously blooming.   Just these few that are strange that way.

@nerys   I didn’t put any effort into making my ‘theory’ of the briefcase code work, it’s just a conclusion I came to.   I can’t say I like it very much.   But, to mangle Sherlock Holmes, ‘when you have eliminated every other possibility, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth’.

I don’t like it very much.   This is definitely not a hill I’m willing to die on.   🙂

I do agree, that briefcase code did seem almost – irrelevant.   Quite possibly Moff had a different solution in mind, or he wrote in the year in the hotel with the intention of making it fit somehow, then couldn’t.   But that doesn’t feel like Moff, when you consider the precise plotting of, say, Blink.

@nerys @dentarthurdent

This isn’t really an explanation but…

DOCTOR: ….four digits. That narrows it down to a possible 10,000 numbers. Feeling lucky?
JOY: Really not.
DOCTOR: I mean, the variables are never equally weighted. I could figure it out if I just had…
JOY: What?
DOCTOR: Time. The Time Hotel.
JOY: The what?
DOCTOR: I couldn’t use the Tardis again, that would re-engage the causal nexus, but in this hotel, the time zones are physically connected. They’re already interacting. So in theory… Come in!
(Less than five seconds. A second Doctor bursts in.)
FUTURE DOCTOR: 7214.

In the words of Harry Shearer in Chicken Little. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, it’s just gibberish. Gibberish of an insane person.’

I mean, it’s techno babble of a sort, the general concept presumably being that there are only so many variables, The Doctor is very clever, but even HE can’t always do this because the Tardis would normally cancel it out.

Could it be Moff going extremely meta. Folks, this is no more nor less than the squidgy nature of the Heart of Who. aka Timey Wimey.

It’s also… probably… a VR. Like something out of a dreammm…

I also speculated that the numbers were significant: McCoy, Troughton, Hartnell, Baker T.

Or, I suppose McCoy, Troughton, Tennant.

I was more concerned with why Courier One didn’t immediately ask for the Silurian? Why didn’t the Silurian go straight to The Cretaceous Door? Was it because he was distracting The Doctor? Was the Star Seed MEANT for The Doctor? Bearing in mind The Time Hotel is linked to… oops Spoilers!

Well, may not be relevant now.

But, IF you ignore the doubt over the future of the show, you would think there was a lot of stuff seeded in this ep… as if The Plan was still being devised and developed. I know RTD said nothing was written… surely that means it WAS all written. The initial delay was the BBC stalling.

Does that go toward illustrating the RTD/corporation stand off?

Otherwise, the progress of The Star Seed WAS a bit loose for Moff.