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Spoilers follow for Joy to the World. If theres one thing Steven Moffatt loves to do with Doctor Who, its to find a monster buried in the mundane. Hes made statues, shadows, lost children and even the idea of silence into some of the shows most terrifying villains. Sadly, the mysterious extra door you often find in older hotel rooms isnt as universal a concern, but its still a rich seam for him to mine. Thats the inspiration for Joy to the World, Doctor Whos 2024 Christmas Special. Which is light, fun and a little bit scattershot, much like Christmas is meant to be, right? When Doctor Who returned, the show was woven back into the UK's cultural firmament in a way it never had been before. Part of that process was adding the show to the BBC One Christmas Day schedule, making it a universal cultural touchstone. For most of its post-2005 run, it has aired an episode next to the Strictly Come Dancing and EastEnders festive specials. Imagine the British equivalent to those everyone-gathered-around-the-TV events like the Super Bowl or the Macys Day Parade, but on Christmas Day. Even if you dont like any of the fare on offer, youre still expected to sit with the family and consume it. With these specials, the prestige timeslot, longer runtime and bigger budget are burdens as much as they are benefits. The show has to play to a far broader audience than normal, with diehard fans sitting elbow-to-elbow with elderly relatives filling every silence with gossip about their neighbor's garden project. Consequently, the story needs to be a little looser, with less need for the audience to be paying undivided attention to whats going on. And it needs to be an oasis of fun in the melodramatic drudgery that is the BBC One Christmas Day schedule. Normally, the festive special would be the sole province of the showrunner but Russell T. Davies handed the reins to Steven Moffatt. Moffatt succeeded Davies as showrunner the first time around, co-created Sherlock and is widely-regarded as the best Who writer of the 21st century. With a pedigree as impeccable as that, and having already written "Boom" for the Ncuti Gatwas first season in the title road, expectations are high. Bad Wolf / BBC Studios Moffatt is an arch farce writer and has a strong grasp of structure, so its no surprise we open in medias res. The Doctor is offering room service to a variety of people in different time periods including Edmund Hilarys base camp at Everest and the Orient express before stumbling in on Joy in a miserable London hotel room in 2024. After the credits, we spool back to the Doctor arriving in the Time Hotel, which allows guests to vacation throughout history. Dont worry about causality or any A Sound of Thunder shenanigans, the Hotel is somehow built to protect its guests from screwing up the timeline. The Doctor is looking to steal some milk for his coffee from the hotel buffet, but his eye is caught on something sinister: A person carrying a briefcase with a handcuff chain is trying to check into a room. The Doctor recruits Trev, one of the employees, to keep watch while he scouts ahead to work out what scheme could be afoot. As it turns out, the case is sentient and evil, leaping from host to host and possessing each one in turn. Once its leapt to the next host, the last one disintegrates. Bad Wolf / BBC Studios Its here the Doctor bumps into Joy who, through hijinks, winds up handcuffed to the case in place of the hotel manager. When the Doctor opens the case to try and find a solution, the case threatens to kill whoever its connected to unless it gets a four digit code. Who shall provide the code? The Doctor, emerging from his own future, taking Joy with him while leaving our Doctor trapped in 2024 without the TARDIS. As the hotel door closes, the Doctor hurls abuse at his future self, about why hes always alone and people are always leaving him. Hes doubly upset as he never normally has to travel the long way around, one day after the other. And so, the episode essentially stops to give us an extended sequence of the Doctor making friends with Anita, the hotel manager. The Doctor gets a job as the hotels handyperson, and slowly lets his guard down, spending more time with Anita until theyre a platonic couple. Its a sequence youd never see in a regular episode, with snatches of the Doctor and Anitas life. He makes the microwave bigger on the inside, repaints Anitas car TARDIS blue and they even sit and talk to one another on chairs a key visual given the lack of chairs on the TARDIS. But as the year elapses and its time for the Doctor to return to his own show, he waves goodbye to Anita. Bad Wolf / BBC Studios Returning to the time hotel, the Doctor bursts back in on the events of a year ago, sharing the code and yanking Joy off to new adventures. The Doctor works out the briefcase holds the embryonic form of an artificially-created star that would offer a source of imaginable power to whoever owned it. But unless you own the Hand of Omega, stars take a long time to develop, far longer than anyone would be able to wait and test their experiment. Unless, of course, you hijack a time hotel and send it back to dinosaur times, waiting for when human history begins to see if it works. Joy, still possessed by the case, heads to the hotels dinosaur room while the Doctor tries to break its hold over her. To do that, he provokes an emotion strong enough to poison the link between the case and its host before it obliterates them. He bullies her, goading her into disclosing why she's staying at a downmarket London hotel. Turns out shes grieving the loss of her mother who died of COVID-19 in an isolation ward and Joy was unable to say goodbye to her in person. Sadly, before the Doctor can deactivate the star seed, its eaten by a (brilliant-looking) dinosaur, putting it out of his reach. Bad Wolf / BBC Studios The Doctor and Joy head back to the hotel and, 65 million years later, find the star is now ready to detonate. Its been locked inside a stone structure with a heavy stone door that neither of them can move, and time is running out. So, the Doctor, who boasts that hes good with rope, steals a rope from the Everest base camp, hanging it off the back of the Orient Express to haul the stone away.. Its an impressive and kinetic sequence let down only by the dreadful CGI when Gatwas standing on the train. Typical Doctor Who: It can now do convincing dinosaurs, but now cant do a convincing train. Its here things lose their coherence, since Joys eyes flash with possession energy, but by the time the Doctor returns, Joy has eaten the star? Absorbed it somehow? Made friends with and bonded with it? He finds her standing on a cliff edge, where Joy says shell merge with the star and take it to the heavens, where it will do nobody any harm at all. At this point in my notes, I wrote Dont let this be Bethlehem, when the camera pulls out to reveal thats exactly where they are, complete with three camels parked outside a stable. Oy. Bad Wolf / BBC Studios Joy reunites with her mother and the Doctor goes back to traveling, but not before he gets Anita a job running the Time Hotel. We also get a little shot of Ruby Sunday, who will return to the show for its second season proper. As I said at the top, you cant judge Joy to the World on the merits of a regular episode since its serving multiple masters. But I dont think we could call it the strongest episode of either Steven Moffatts oeuvre or the shows various Christmas Specials. Like all of the Disney-era episodes, it has a slightly incoherent quality where the pacing sags and zips in all the wrong places. Im for the lengthy aside where we see a normal year in the life of the Doctor, but the story framing it should have been tighter to balance out the slowness. Its a fun enough way to pass an hour with a stomach full of holiday turkey (or your preferred equivalent) with enough mawkishness to make you think youve seen something quite profound. But I dont think Ill be coming back to watch this one again and again like I would for, say, The Christmas Invasion.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/doctor-who-joy-to-the-world-review-what-a-star-190018215.html?src=rss
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If you received a bunch of gift cards for the holidays, consider it a blessing. Whoever gave them to you likely wanted to give you a gift you'd actually use, and rather assume (incorrectly), they wanted to ensure you'd get their money's worth on something you actually like. Maybe there's nothing on your wish list at the moment, but you're keen to spend that gift card on something that will make your commute easier or your home feel more cozy. Below are some of our favorite items that are well worth that $50 gift card you're eager to use up, from power banks to streaming sticks to smart lights. Check out the rest of our gift ideas here. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-best-ways-to-spend-your-50-gift-card-130021816.html?src=rss
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Android phones have been the first to feature a bunch of notable standards. They were the first to support 4G, 5G, USB-C (way back in 2015 no less) and in-screen fingerprint sensors. And when it comes to wireless charging, you can trace that lineage all the way back to the Samsung Galaxy S3 from 2012 (though the webOS-poweered Palm Pre and its Touchstone charger is the true OG). Unfortunately, when it came to adding support for the Qi2 wireless charging standard to devices in 2024, it feels like Android phone makers were stuck on outdated patch notes. The Qi2 standard was officially announced in early 2023 during CES. We even gave it an award, as the spec looked to bring 15-watt wireless charging (and possibly more in future revisions), improved safety and critically the introduction of Magnetic Power Profiles that make it a cinch to align and attach compatible charging pads. In essence, Qi2 was set to bring the simplicity and ease of use iPhone owners enjoy with MagSafe products to the Android ecosystem. Not a single phone from any of the top three Android phone makers in the US (Samsung, Google and Motorola) offered support for Qi2 in 2024. Photo by Sam Rutherford Even more surprising is that in a rare move for a company that likes keeping its tech siloed neatly inside the walls of its ecosystem, Apple shared core parts of the MagSafe spec with other members of the Wireless Power Consortium (which is the governing body that oversees the Qi and Qi2 standards) to speed up development and interoperability. So youd think after seeing the convenience and popularity of MagSafe accessories among iPhone users, Android phone makers would have rushed out to add Qi2 to as many devices as possible. But nearly two full years after the spec was finalized, the grand total of Android handsets that support Qi2 stands at one: the HMD Skyline. At this point, you might be saying that product development cycles are multi-year processes that are difficult to change prior to launch. And in most cases, youd probably be right. But let's be honest, its not like Samsung, Google, Lenovo and others didnt see this coming. Like Apple, practically all of the big Android phone makers are also members of the WPC, so they would have known about the development of Qi2 long before it was officially announced. On top of that, the first iPhone with MagSafe was the iPhone 12, which came out four years ago. So even if we assume that the first time Samsung, Google et al were presented with the idea of a magnetic wireless charging system was during Apples keynote in the fall of 2020, youd imagine thats still more than enough time to engineer similar technology for use on todays Galaxy and Pixel handsets. The HMD Skyline was the only Android phone to feature Qi2 this year. Photo by Sam Rutherford For manufacturers, another concern when adopting a new standard is that there may not be enough accessories and other compatible peripherals on sale to make implementation of new tech worth it. Weve seen this in the past with modular phones like the LG G5 and Moto Z Force line and the funky palm-reading tech on the LG G8. However, because Qi2 and MagSafe gadgets are largely interchangeable, theres already a huge market of options like Ankers MagGo line of power banks, which are some of my current favorite portable battery packs. Another annoyance is that some phones like the Razr Plus and Pixel 9 Pro Fold will even stick magnetically to some Qi2 accessories and may even suck down a tiny bit of juice. Unfortunately, this is more of a coincidence caused by the magnets used to help keep foldables open or closed, rather than an intentional use case. This means that even though these devices may appear to support Qi2 at first glance, accessories dont maintain a firm grip and often slide off even in what appear to be ideal circumstances. Even cases that claim to add support for Qi2 are hit or miss, resulting in a poor experience for Android phone owners hoping to recreate the magic of MagSafe on their own. Its really a shame, because it almost feels like with a few small tweaks Google, Moto and others could unlocked Qi2 support on a wider range of devices without a ton of extra effort or cost. The lack of Qi2 support on Android phones is preventing users from enjoying a huge range of handy charging accessories. Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget Unfortunately, while many Chinese phone makers have avoided Qi2 up until this point, thats sort of to be expected with manufacturers like Oppo often favoring proprietary tech like its 65-watt AirVOOC wireless charging instead of more widely accessible industry standard. And because the Galaxy S24 family came out at the very beginning of 2024, Samsung didnt have quite as much time to add Qi2 to its current flagship lineup as Google, which launched the Pixel 9 series just a few months ago. Regardless, this still doesnt explain the general reluctance of OEMs to adopt what Id argue is one of the most meaningful upgrades in accessibility and general usability you can add to a smartphone today. But the most frustrating thing is that six months ago, our friends at CNET pondered why we had yet to see any Qi2 Android phones. And as were nearing the end of the year, theres still only a single model trying to spark hope that 2025 will be different. So kudos to HMD for doing what Samsung, Google et al. couldnt be bothered to figure out. Now Im just worried that if things dont change next year, one of the most promising standards could end up in the graveyard (at least for Android phones) before ever getting a chance to thrive.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/android-phone-makers-dropped-the-ball-on-qi2-in-2024-191029769.html?src=rss
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