A TOOBITS AWARD WINNER!

Every year in the Inner Toob blog, I do an awards presentation for "Best Of" categories for the year just ending... just like every other media site.  'Doctor Who' gets plenty of attention since it returned in 2005, mostly for historical revisions, guest characters, and of course, for "Recastaways" when it happens every few years.

This year, it's for Best Crossover Character between two different media.  (Mediums?)

On Christmas Day, as BBC and Disney+ launched the 'Doctor Who' Christmas Special ("Joy To The World"), Mashable published a story by Kristy Puchko about a minor - but intriguing! - member of the guest characters:

'Doctor Who' has returned with the tender yet tear-jerking holiday special "Joy to the World." And amid a rollicking adventure across time involving dinosaurs, holograms, game night hangouts, and villainous capitalism, returning writer Steven Moffat also dropped some exciting new lore into the canon: James Bond and Doctor Who exist in the same world.

The link between these epic British heroes (and their franchises) is a bombshell named Sylvia Trench. In an interview with Mashable, Doctor Who executive producer and "Joy to the World" writer Steven Moffat revealed the details of her Whoniverse appearance and what it means.

Sylvia Trench was the first Bond girl. The late British actress Eunice Gayson played the sultry spy's love interest in 1962's "Dr. No" and 1963's "From Russia with Love". Notably, it's in 1962 that this stylish character crosses paths with the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa).

In "Joy to the World," the two-hearted time traveler zips through several Time Hotel doors, popping into 1940 Manchester, 1953 Everest, and 1962 Italy. The last of these is where he meets a beguiling brunette in a coral-colored skirt suit, cradling a copy of Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express" — along with a handwritten love letter.

The woman never reveals her name, but the episode's end credits identify her as Sylvia Trench (played here by Niamh Marie Smith, who teased the appearance on Instagram on Oct. 4). This detail connects our lovely traveler to James Bond, and gives greater context to her scenes in the episode, as well as her life beyond Bond.

In our interview, Moffat confirmed this Sylvia Trench is intended to be the same chic stunner from "Dr. No" with a simple "Yes, yes."

Moffat felt Sylvia deserved better than she's gotten from pop culture. "Sylvia Trench remains James Bond's girlfriend for the first two films. He has a regular girlfriend back home in the first two films!" Moffat emphasized, "But while she was doing all that, she was also having an affair with the woman and traveling on the Orient Express. I thought, 'That's inevitable.' I felt I was doing her justice, you know? Because she's the most cheated-on woman in the history of fiction, right? Because she made the mistake to go out with James Bond."

In "Joy to the World," Moffat gives her a surprising new spin. When the Doctor comes back to Sylvia during the climax, he takes a look at the love letter she carries and scoffs, "You are better off without him. His sentence structure is appalling."

O'Bservation: But she wrote the letter.

The Doctor tries to recover with a smile and by saying, "Great letter! You should send it to him." To which she retorts tartly, "To her!" And as fast as the Doctor skedaddles out of her train compartment, Moffatt has re-imagined Sylvia Trench.

No longer is she a tragic Bond girl left waiting for her globe-trekking spy boy to come back. She's off on her own adventure, racing across Italy in the Orient Express, penning a letter (however poorly structured) to her Sapphic lover.

Thank you, Ms. Puchko, for that article.  When my brother and I watched the episode, we knew there had to be something about her.  Because it was 1962, we knew it couldn't have been a recasting of Agatha Christie - she was too young!

Sylvia Trench is my 2024 Toobits Award winner for Best Crossover between Toobworld and the Cineverse.  (Unfortunately, the character did not appear in any of the Ian Fleming novels.  That would have been a fantastic triple crossover!)