Doctor Who: Twice Upon A Time Review

INTRO

Christmas 2017 has been and gone.  Wasn’t it a cracker? We got a new Star Wars film, Moffat leaving Doctor Who and Jodie Whittaker… But we also lost Peter Capaldi’s incarnation in the trade off…

I still remember, crystal clear, my reaction to his announcement way back when in 2013.  It was one of giddy excitement and enthusiasm.  I knew Peter would be a great Doctor the moment he walked out onto that stage and I was not proven wrong.  From day one of filming series 8 Capaldi simply radiated the Doctor at its purest.  He’d meet with fans and go out of his way to help children to understand that Matt (Smith) said it was okay for him to take over being the Doctor.  His charasmatic nature and sheer thrill at being able to play his childhood hero was infectious and he truly brought his A-game to the role.

However, like all good things, his tenure had to end and on 25th December 2017 it happened.  Peter Capaldi’s (questionable) “12th” Doctor regenerated into Jodie Whittaker – the 15th incarnation of the Time Lord… Lady… Gallifreyan in Doctor Who: Twice Upon A Time.

 

Spoilers ahead.

 

PLOT SYNOPSIS

So following on from the cliffhanger we left off on in “The Doctor Falls we find the current Doctor meeting up with the first Doctor (Played by David Bradley who previously played William Hartnell in the excellent “An Adventure in Space & Time”) and shortly after they find themselves thrown into one final adventure for each of them.

Time has frozen and a captain from World War I is stranded at the south pole with the two Doctors.  A mystery has surfaced and this time it’ll take two Time Lords to solve it.  What follows is a ridiculously fun back and forth through space and time to figure out the mystery of the captain and to fix time.

The captain warns the two Doctors that a race of glass-people are after him and soon after they are abducted by Testimony.  The glass-people, the Testimony, offer the Doctors Bill – The former companion of the previous series – in exchange for the life of the captain.  The current Doctor immediately identifies Bill as a false duplicate but he manages to escape with his prior self, the captain and Bill.

The Doctor takes the other three to the centre of the universe.  There he confronts Rusty (The Dalek from “Into the Dalek”) and learns that the Testimony is New Earth technology dedicated to preserving the memories of the deceased.  No big, evil doomsday plan whatsoever.  The Testimony glass-person Bill convinces the two Doctors to put the captain back in his allocated time of death and they oblige.

On the way back to the battlefield and the captain’s fatal standoff the Doctor tweaks it slightly so it is somehow Christmas 1914 and the Christmas truce is about to begin.  The captain, accepting his fate, resumes his position in history, forgetting any of his sidetrack adventure even happened.  Before time recommences he asks the Doctors to look after his family, revealing himself to be Captain Lethbridge-Stewart and by extension a relative of the cherished and sorely missed Brigadier of Classic Who.  Captain Lethbridge-Stewart takes up position in the trench as time resumes but is saved when the Germans begin carolling, the English joining soon after and the truce takes effect.

The first Doctor accepts he has to change and asks the current if he feels the same way to which he replies he will find out, the long way around.  The first Doctor then departs, meeting back up with Ben & Polly at the closing moments of “The Tenth Planet” and regenerates into the second Doctor (Patrick Troughton).

The Doctor then says goodbye to glass-people representations of the memories of Bill, Nardole and Clara before stepping foot into the TARDIS for the final time.  He resolves to regenerate on the logic that the universe will do it wrong without him to save it anyway.  Before giving into his regeneration though he provides some advice and relays some rules to his next incarnation before vanishing into a void of yellow regenerative light.

A new Doctor stands in place of the previous.  New possibilities cloud the minds of the viewer (Singular) who didn’t know what was coming next.  The Doctor adjusts one of the TARDIS monitors to get a good look at herself but shortly after the TARDIS veers out of control, resulting in the central console blowing to smithereens and the Doctor being flung out into the skies above a city that’ll probably end up being London again.

 

GOOD POINTS

1. The cast.  Peter Capaldi, David Bradley, Mark Gatiss & Pearl Mackie gave it their all.  Every one of them were perfect and it really was a treat.  Capaldi, in particular, really shone through in this episode.  His last scene in which he departs his advice to the future Doctor is one of the best performances he has ever given and this episode as a whole I’m confident in saying was his best performance to date.
2. The two Doctors had such a magnificent chemistry and they worked so well off one another.  The interactions between the two easily overshadow the rather tame “I-guess-I-have-to” interactions between David Tennant & Matt Smith’s Doctors in “The Day of the Doctor”
3. There was no big, doomsday, death to all, evil plot this time.  It was really refreshing too.  It’s one of those things you don’t realise you’d like to see happen until it actually does and it was a great light-hearted story to just bask in the original and the most current incarnations of the Doctor interact.
4. One thing I really am glad they kept is the original footage of the first Doctor’s regeneration.  I’d have been fine with them re-doing it with David Bradley’s version but it was fantastic to see William Hartnell appearing on broadcast television in one of his most iconic roles again – as it always is whenever he turns up.
5. On one hand, yes, I love it.  On another… Just… Why? The Brigadier twist.  You know when you have an idea what something is but you don’t want to say anything because it’s so ridiculous and unlikely that there’s no way it’ll be true and it’ll be a spot of ridicule for you thinking such a thing if you were to tell anyone? That was the Brigadier twist for me.  Ages and ages ago I had a passing thought Mark Gatiss’ character could be the Brigadier’s father but I dismissed it.  Turns out I was pretty much right on the money.  It’s nice Moffat’s last contribution to the Brigadier isn’t sticking a middle finger up at him and converting a hero to so many into a run of the mill Cyberman.  Never. Forget. But at the same time… Why?
6. A minor good point here but I really liked it.  Remember in “The Day of the Doctor” when we got out first glimpse of Capaldi? When his eyes lit up the screen and we knew for certain the future of the programme was in good hands.  Yeah, they paralleled that in “Twice Upon A Time” by having the last shot of Capaldi’s Doctor focus on his eyes.  Symmetry.
7. Something I didn’t expect to see in this episode was Rusty, the first Dalek Capaldfi encountered in his second episode – “Into the Dalek”.  It was a nice addition, though ultimately unnecessary. I like it when a Doctor’s era comes full circle.  Tennant had Ood Sigma, Smith had… Best we forget Time of the Doctor, ey?
8. Speaking of Time of the Doctor, remember when Moffat shoehorned in Amy for no reason other than for closure? Remember how it made no sense whatsoever in the context of the story? This episode did that again, but it made sense! Clara, Bill & Nardole returned to bid the Doctor farewell in the shape of the Testimony.  It was so much better than Karen Gillan showing up to wish Matt Smith goodnight from out of nowhere and vanishing in the blink of an eye.
9. Speaking of Steven Moffat – the Moffat Era is over and the Doctor Who universe can finally breathe a sigh of relief.  It started out amazing in series 5 and then slumped to the worst in the show’s history in series 6, crawled back to a respectable place in series 7 and then just freefell at the reveal of John Hurt’s “War” (9th) Doctor from which it never truly recovered from until this year’s series 10.  Like a phoenix from the ashes.  Moffat’s era had some ups and some downs (Mainly downs, hence why this is in the good points section – it’s finally over!) but at the end, the crazed Scotsman with writing issues pulled it out of the bag to give Capaldi the best send off we could have hoped for.
10. Let’s talk about Jodie.  It’s too early to have an opinion of her Doctor, but she’s given a good impression so far.  She’s kept the accent – which is all I really wanted from her – and the cliffhanger she leaves us on is one of the more “How will they resolve that?” cliffhangers of recent years!

 

BAD POINTS

1. The Dalek hive mind is more knowledgeable than the Matrix of Gallifrey?  Really though? Really? Don’t do that, Moffat.  Honestly, you were doing so well.
2. I feel I need to mention to mention the sexism. People seem to be having a problem with it, and I totally understand why.  It wasn’t necessary and it didn’t add anything.  But the first Doctor was written in a time when things like that were perfectly normal.  I’m not saying it was right, but it was the accepted social norm.  I promise you if you go back and watch some of Hartnell’s or Troughton’s episodes you’ll see other sexist comments, intentional or no.  Obvious or no.
3. Can we just make not of how badly CGI’d the Testimony glass-people were? There were moments where they moved in a certain way that made them look like early 90s attempts at visual effects…
4. As much as I loved Capaldi’s regeneration… The children comments whoffled on a bit didn’t they? You could cut the whole “Children can hear your name” bit entirely and the scene would actually benefit from it.  If you were determined to include some of it, just leave it at “Oh, and you mustn’t tell anyone your name.  No one would understand it anyway.” I don’t know.  It just took away from the emotional gravitas of the scene for me.
5. Whilst we’re on about the regeneration scene, let’s move onto Jodie’s half of it.  Wasn’t it remarkably similar to Matt Smith’s entrance into the series? Regenerate, first line, TARDIS veers out of control, bang, bang, boom, cliffhanger – next series begins with the Doctor hanging in the air in some way whilst the TARDIS crashes about and will require a new ‘desktop setting’ for the new Doctor to use.
6. Murray Gold is leaving the series after twelve years of amazing musical scores, but this episode just seemed like a “Greatest Hits of” rather than any effort put into it.  It was very distracting and look out of the moment at times.  The example that sticks in mind is this:

The Doctor has just regenerated, it’s all mystical and mysterious, the audience doesn’t know what’s coming.  What will this new Doctor be like? What does this new era of the programme have in store for us? I wonder what her unique theme will be – David Tennant’s Doctor’s theme blasting away.  Well that’s fitting.

CONCLUSION & RATING

All in all a fitting end to the Moffat era.  Ups, down, laughs, cries, anger, joy.  A perfect summary of his work.  As Capaldi’s swansong, it’s not perfect, but damn it’s a good send off for the man.

This episode left me feeling like Capaldi’s era was complete, in a way Time of the Doctor failed to deliver on a massive scale for Matt Smith’s Doctor.  It’s because of this, I don’t think I’ll miss him too much.  I mean, I will miss the guy, but his time is done now.  The story has been told.  Any more would just be meaningless add-on fodder.  All wrapped up in a neat little package with a Jodie Whittaker-shaped bow on top.

I’m eagerly awaiting September to see how Jodie does in the role and I wish her all the success and love that Capaldi received during his tenure.  The Doctor is dead, long love the Doctor.

With all of this in mind, Doctor Who: Twice Upon A Time, Peter Capaldi’s swansong episode, gets a very impressive 9/10 from me.

… I have no ideas what to do next week… Should probably get on that…

With hopes you had a fab-tacular holiday season,

The Spectacled Observer. 🙂