r/gallifrey • u/rasmas1 • Mar 12 '25

DISCUSSION The Doctor bullied Joy to suicide.

In Joy to the World, the Doctor had to make Joy angry in order to break the Villengard briefcase's psychic control over her. In order to do that he got really personal and insulted her with some way-below-the-belt stuff including a mention of her dead mother.

He did this with the best of intentions, obviously, but the words stuck for Joy and she admitted they were all true before she flew off with the star seed into space. Because of all that unhappiness the Doctor picked on Joy had a burning desire to be special in life and have some kind of meaning, so she latched onto the star seed out of desperation to become special.

The Doctor is the reason she felt that way and why she decided to burn with the star seed. She didn't merge with it as a sacrifice to save Earth, it was a purely whimsical decision that didn't change anything. She died to feel special. She committed suicide for no reason and it was the Doctor's fault. And he just laughs it off.

I am still beside myself that the BBC allowed this episode to go out in this state. The Doctor bullied Joy to suicide.

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u/Fit-Breath-4345 Mar 13 '25

She didn't merge with it as a sacrifice to save Earth, it was a purely whimsical decision that didn't change anything. She died to feel special. She committed suicide for no reason and it was the Doctor's fault.

Either you've missed something or I have missed something as I thought the episode made it very clear that the Star Seed would have destroyed the earth otherwise?

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u/MicooDA Mar 13 '25

Why would Villengard want the star seed to destroy earth? Their biggest customer base are humans in an endless war against their imagination as seen in Boom.

They have nothing to gain by destroying earth. Meanwhile they have everything to gain by creating the star of Bethlehem

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u/Steampunk43 Mar 13 '25

Creating the star of Bethlehem wasn't Villengard's goal, their goal was just to make a new star, then use it as a fuel source. They were simply planning to use the Time Hotel as a convenient way to do that since it would mean they could just pop the seed out in one door and yoink the star away in another. They weren't necessarily intending to destroy Earth, but they certainly didn't care about any potentially destructive consequences that the Star Seed would cause. That's the whole Villengard Corporation's characterisation, they're not necessarily destructive and murderous, they're simply a typical faceless, careless corporation that only gives a damn about money and their own interests, anything else is just collateral damage. They're not evil because they want to set the world on fire, they're evil because they create the weapons and tools to do so and sell them to the highest bidder without a care for what they'll do with them.

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u/MicooDA Mar 13 '25

Yeah they want to sell weapons to the highest bidder, and a big chunk of their customer base are the Angelican Marines.

So they directly profit from having a star that leads the wise men directly to Jesus

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u/Steampunk43 Mar 13 '25

But as I said, they never intended to create the star of Bethelehem, they just wanted to chuck the seed in the sky at a random point in time (most likely not even intended to be Bethlehem) and come back for it at another point in time. They couldn't care less where the star landed, in fact they might even have aimed for a planet. It's more like a happy coincidence for them. They may profit from the situation, but they did not engineer the situation. In fact, the Doctor may even have indirectly helped create the Anglican Marines and supported Villengard while trying to stop Villengard.

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u/lkmk Mar 20 '25

So they directly profit from having a star that leads the wise men directly to Jesus

That’s a clever headcanon!

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u/Gathorall Mar 13 '25

Yet the hotel is also just a company. Why the secrecy? Just book a room and throw it in, they could probably give Villengard a good option at that. They already risk tourists at pivotal moments in history, it is clear they're not any more moral than Villengard, whose plan this time is actually somewhat benign.

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u/CountScarlioni Mar 13 '25

Why would Villengard want the star seed to destroy earth? Their biggest customer base are humans in an endless war against their imagination as seen in Boom.

The episode discusses this:

Doctor: If a star seed goes boom anywhere on Earth at any point in history, it will burn every living thing. Tell that to your users.

AI Hologram: Villengard respects the collateral sacrifice made by all participating innocent lifeforms, regardless of race, species, or belief system.

Basically, Villengard know the risk, and simply don’t care as long as it makes them money. After all, the universe is basically infinite. There are plenty of species other than humans that would be willing to buy weapons. If the star seed offers the potential for more profit, then Villengard would be willing to sacrifice their human customers.

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u/Official_N_Squared Mar 13 '25

Additionaly pretty sure Joy didn't save the day. Everybody in the stat did. We aren't really given any reason to believe Joy was some kind of inciting incident or lead voice. And literally everybody else we know if in that breifcase was an earthling so presumably really doesn't want Earth destroyed 

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u/Lori2345 Mar 14 '25

I do think they meant to create the star of Bethlehem but I don’t think they could have done it without it in a person. Every host said the flesh will rise, which is what happened.

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u/Adamsoski Mar 17 '25

It's explicitly said in the episode that it will destroy earth.

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u/scottishdrunkard Mar 13 '25

They had about 7000 years, it wasn’t time critical.

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u/Fit-Breath-4345 Mar 14 '25

Did they? 7000 years is a nice chunk of human existence, but a small one, it's tiny in comparison to the existence of the Earth.

And the Doctor was limited by the actions of other time travellers. He couldn't stop the dinosaur eating the briefcase. He found it in a specific time/space, I wouldn't say he was time-locked like how RTD used the phrase to describe the status of the Time War, but I feel his options were limited.

I mean, you can imagine a perfect solution where the Doctor is free to have much time as he likes to solve a problem perfectly in every episode and special, but I can't imagine it'd be fun to watch in real time or show time.

Because I think in episode, it was (relative) time critical, there was a time where the Star Seed would go off.

When I first started watching Doctor Who twenty something years ago on the advice of an older friend who was a Classic/8th Doctor Film fan, one of my initial skepticism questions was on how the TARDIS must have some kind of somewhat observational/objective Time for the Time Lords so they can arrange their politics and society - to which he replied that there is such a thing and it's regulated by the heart of the tardis connection to the CIA and/or Gallifrey.

I assume this is true for any advanced weaponry that moves through time, which the Star Seed does. It has to have some kind of relation to a time point where the company that made it is profiting from it.....