Doctor Who - Twice Upon a Time

SPOILERS, sweetie!

With Twice Upon a Time, Doctor Who celebrates another Christmas special with significant import. 

We get to see the First Doctor back in action thanks to David Bradley's clever channeling of William Hartnell who originated the role of the Doctor back in 1963.   

We get another go round with Pearl Mackie as Bill Potts. Well, kind of. sort of.  

We get some quick appearances from some other companions as well.   

We get a send off for Steven Moffat, headwriter and showrunner since 2010. But even while heading out the door, he's still adding to the show's mythology.  

We bid farewell to Peter Capaldi as the 12th Doctor. 

And we say hello to Jodie Whittaker as the 13th Doctor, the first female to be cast as thew Doctor.  

So how did all this go down?  

Well, it was... good. Maybe not great but definitely not bad. 

The episode is unusual for a regeneration episode in that the precipitating event occurred in the previous episode, the Doctor being electrocuted by a Cyberman in the first part of The Doctor Falls. So the bulk of Twice Upon a Time is the Doctor actively resisting what is going to come next.  

Which apparently the Doctor also did when he regenerated for the first time.  Which is what causes a problem with time, with the Doctor in two different times working against their respective fates. And this problem with time brings the Doctor face to face with himself.  

This problem with time also brings in a British captain from World War One who is about to die in a one on one face off with a German soldier. Mark Gatiss plays the Captain who has a significant role in the episode. We find out why near the end when he reveals his name as Letheridge-Stewart, the future grandfather of a certain UNIT Brigadier who will later work with and befriend the Doctor. Not a big surprise what with the Captain's prominent mustache but a very pleasant revelation nonetheless.   

Our aliens this time are glass entities known as the Testimony with the mission of collecting memories from people at the moment of their deaths. So it's not quite an evil plan which leaves the 12th Doctor a bit puzzled on what to do.  

Bill Potts is back. Sort of. Maybe.  She's a manifestation of the Testimony, a culmination of all her memories so Bill is insistent she is still the real Bill Potts.  So the Bill that went off with Heather at the end of The Doctor Falls to be Liquid Space Lesbians is not the Bill we see in Twice Upon a Time. But hey, it's still Pearl Mackie back on screen being Bill Potts so it works for me.  

Also showing up as memory manifestations of the Testimony are Nardole and Clara. Yes, Clara! And this results in the Doctor getting his memories of Miss Oswald back which is a good thing.   

The big guest star of the episode is David Bradley as the 1st Doctor who brings the original Doctor to life with a sort of irascible charm.  

There was a lot of fun to be have with the Doctor interacting with himself, his first incarnation having some decidedly outdated views about things, especially about women. Noticing the very dusty TARDIS of his future self, the First Doctor presumes the lack of a female companion to keep things clean.  

But the 12th Doctor has some lessons to learn from his earlier self about the importance of looking at things through his own eyes instead of through the filter of his sonic specs.  

Ultimately, the problem with time gets resolved when the Doctors bring the Captain back to his appointment with death. Except the 12th Doctor fiddles with things a bit to have that appointment occur on December 25, 1914, the day of the famous Christmas armistice which occurred when soldiers on both side mutually agreed to give the war a rest for one day.  

It is a perfect "just this once, everybody lives" resolution like the ending Steven Moffat gave us with his first script of the revived Doctor Who, The Doctor Dances in 2005 with the 9th Doctor.   

Which brings us full circle in our journey with Steven Moffat as he bids farewell to Doctor Who. Quite frankly, I have never understood the animosity expressed towards the Moff from certain quarters of fandom. He has clever ideas and can express those ideas with razorsharp humor and heartfelt emotion.  

And that emotion is on full display with Peter Capaldi's final monologue as the Doctor returns to his TARDIS. It's a moment that seems to on a bit, as if both Moffat and Capaldi are just not quite ready to say goodbye. 

But the end is reached.  

"Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind. Doctor... I let you go."  

Then the Doctor who has been fighting his regeneration since the opening of episode 11 finally relents. 

The morphing effect focuses on the eyes as they change from Peter Capaldi's to Jodie Whittaker's.  

Then we pull away as we see the Doctor silhouetted against the glow of a damaged TARDIS. The haunting music motif is one we haven't heard since the Davies' years.  Then we shift to a view from the Doctor's eyes, scanning the TARDIS until spying a reflection in a scanner. 

Then our view shifts again as we see Jodie Whitaker in the black suit and the white shirt. A smile makes its way across her face as she says, "Oh, brilliant!"  

And then things go downhill. The Doctor presses a single button and the TARDIS goes crazy, exploding and shaking about.  Then the Doctor gets hurled out of the TARDIS and hurtling towards the planet below.  

From the split second after  "Oh, brilliant!", I find I'm not happy with what's going on here. I believe this called for a moment of triumph and affirmation. Instead, our first impression of the first woman Doctor is someone who pushes the wrong button and has no control of her own TARDIS. Yes, I know the 10th, 11th and 12th Doctors crashed the TARDIS on their first go-round. But do we need to make the women hating trolls out there have an easier time of it.  

Jodie Whitaker's first scene as the Doctor ends with her as a damsel in distress. I really think this needed to be handled differently.   

So Peter Capaldi and Steve Moffat exit Doctor Who on a high note.  And Jodie Whitaker enters on a good note right up to "Oh, brilliant!" 

So I'm a little worried about the future. But the past got a good send off.