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As a show about time travel, Who is the doctor? Never afraid to incorporate contemporary moments into his stories. but This week’s holiday special “Joy to the World” creates a particularly pointed and emotional tension from the most recent memory part of its whole stress–which Author Steven Moffat The feeling was impossible to ignore.
Part of “Joy to the World”. Nicola Coughlan’s guest ‘companion’, the titular Joy, turns out to be the host of a mysterious, weaponized briefcase that the Doctor is tracking—a process they both discover fatal for the briefcase that gets stuck. Trying to puzzle out how to free Joy from the briefcase without killing Joy, the Doctor suddenly turns on his new friend: angrily mocking him for putting on a fake front to other people, hiding his grief and sorrow all Christmas Day. The Doctor pokes and prods at Joy until it suddenly hits him: the reason he took himself to a seedy hotel at Christmas was to avoid other people and the anger he felt at seeing his own mother die in the hospital. Christmas Day during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“He died on Christmas Day. on christmas dayAnd I said goodbye to an iPad because of the rules” she shouts at him. “She died alone! And with those horrible people with their wine fridges, their dances and their parties, and I listened to them—and I let my mother die alone.”
“I think it was something else in the first draft, I can’t remember what. And then I sat there thinking, “Why would you be angry on Christmas Day?'” Moffat said recently The Hollywood Reporter The story is about the beat. “And I thought, ‘Well, oh my God, that’s it! Once you have that one thought, you’re not going to leave it behind. that Why would you be angry on Christmas Day.”
Not only is this a specifically pointed reference to the epidemic, but outrage was felt in the UK following the publication of a series of reports, including by several members of the Conservative government at the time. The then Prime Minister Boris JohnsonRejected new rules and laws against mass gatherings during lockdown throughout 2020, Party hosting in government offices-One of several scandals that eventually led to Johnson’s eventual resignation in 2022. But for Moffat, it seemed natural to include that anger, and to specifically include the epidemic.
“I think there was a certain amount of anger in very, very many people’s minds. But it’s not something you want to make a huge point of. It was simply looking for a reason that meant something about why someone was sad on Christmas Day,” the author continued. “I’ve heard that version of the story many times. so Many times I don’t think there is anyone who doesn’t know someone who has that story, or who has that story themselves. It is now a part of our history. Our most recent history; It has defined us. So, if someone is going to be angry on Christmas Day, why not? It was a good cause.”
It certainly is Far from the first time-and definitely not the end – we see Who is the doctor? There is a less-than-friendly approach Contemporary British Politics. But perhaps not the most joyous thing for a Christmas Day adventure.
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