If you've been following my blog up to this point (and if you haven't, hello and welcome!), you'll have noticed that I've generally been pretty satisfied with Steven Moffat's run on the show, and even when he doesn't quite get it right there's enough there to satisfy me for the most part, and I can usually see what he's getting at. But with this episode, I think I started to see what his detractors were talking about. There's definitely a sense of Moffat being too clever and knowing that's running through this episode.
That's not to say that there aren't some great moments, because there definitely are. I love the confidence of opening the episode with footage from a 51-year-old black-and-white story (The Tenth Planet, in case you need reminding), which ends up blending rather well into footage of David Bradley, doing his own version of the first Doctor. (It seems they had a go at restaging the relevant bits of The Tenth Planet with Bradley in the whole time, but wisely, they decided to stick with the original footage until halfway through, at which point most of what we see is from the now-missing episode 4 anyway.) And as I mentioned last time, making David Bradley an official canon Doctor actor, rather than just in the Adventure in Space and Time docudrama, is really lovely as well. And Bradley, unsurprisingly, does a good job as the first Doctor, making his version similar to William Hartnell's but still distinct. (Although his speech patterns do occasionally feel more like William Shatner than Hartnell.)
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| The twelfth and first Doctors exchange a look. ("Twice Upon a Time") ©BBC |
But I don't know if it's because they've decided it's a Christmas special and they need some jokes, or if it's Steven Moffat being Moffat, but there are some problematic elements with the first Doctor as he's portrayed here. It starts with the first Doctor describing the twelfth to the Captain as his nurse, going on to say that elderly gentlemen can be made useful. "OK, well, he's just rationalizing it for the Captain," I thought. Then he makes comments about how dirty Twelve's TARDIS is, so obviously Polly's not around anymore. "Well, Polly wanting to dust things actually would be in character for her," I thought somewhat desperately, "so that's just about all right." But then he starts talking about women being fragile and being surprised that Bill likes girls and it becomes too much. It's infuriating mainly because that's not how the first Doctor was. Was William Hartnell the actor like that? Sure -- but the first Doctor wasn't. It doesn't even make sense for him to be that way, given that he comes from the advanced and enlightened society of the Time Lords, as the twelfth Doctor would occasionally mention during series 10. And crucially, there's virtually no evidence on-screen that the first Doctor was any less enlightened than the twelfth.282 But no, this is how a generation of children are going to think the first Doctor behaved, just so they could make some cheap shot jokes. And it's particularly frustrating because when David Bradley doesn't have to deal with this and can just be the Doctor (such as his discussion with Bill about why he went out into the universe), he shines, making his Doctor very likable. But the "haha, the '60s were so backwards" material casts a pall over things, making it not as enjoyable as it should be.
Balancing that, though, is Mark Gatiss's very enjoyable turn as Captain Archibald Hamish Lethbridge-Stewart (although they don't reveal his identity until the end, thus fooling almost no one). I love the stiff-upper-lip approach Gatiss gives him, and the speech to Bill about no longer being ready to die is really well done. I also adore the way he responds to the Doctor, after the Doctor points him out as a World War I captain. "Yes, but what do you mean, 'One'?" he asks. It's a great performance, and I liked it a lot more than his last major role in the show, as Professor Lazarus in "The Lazarus Experiment". And plus it's always great to have more Pearl Mackie, even if she's a memory of Bill rather than the person herself. (Yeah, think I'm on the Doctor's side on this, no matter how much she protests otherwise.) Ooh, and we get to see the inside of the first Doctor's TARDIS, and they've scaled everything properly this time (versus the similar look in "Hell Bent") -- and the extra props like the elaborate clock and the astral map are great too.
So it's not all bad by any means. But it does sometimes feel on some level like Moffat's just running through some of his greatest hits, and not as well as the first time around. The enemy that's not actually evil was done far better in "The Pilot" at the start of this year, because there at least it seemed like there was an issue with communication; here it looks more like Testimony is being deliberately obtuse, just to make sure the Doctor gets the wrong end of the stick. "We take from you what we need and return you to the moment of your death," the glass avatar tells him, rather than something more useful like "we record their memories before they die so that we have a record of their lives and experiences". It's like Testimony wants to fight the Doctor of War. (Well, maybe they do; maybe they engineered the whole thing so that they could talk through Bill to the first Doctor, to find out what he was looking for when he left Gallifrey.) All this just so the ending can be about a happy misunderstanding about New Earth historians from 5,000,000,012 doing some research, instead of something sinister.283 And then there's the pointless inclusion of Rusty the Dalek from "Into the Dalek", who's here...just because? It's not like they're making a thematic connection between the two episodes, so it feels tacked on, like Moffat felt the need to tie up a loose thread that no one was that bothered by. Then there's how the first Doctor's comments about his future (particularly regarding the sonic stuff) feel like a bit of a retread of the War Doctor's in "The Day of the Doctor". And even the inclusion of the first Doctor's TARDIS, while lovely, loses a bit of its impact because we'd already seen something like it at the end of series 9.
So the overall feeling of "Twice Upon a Time" is one of frustrating unevenness. Because when it works, it really works. Capaldi and Mackie continue to be a delight, the non-sexist first Doctor stuff is great, and while setting the World War I stuff immediately before the Christmas Day Armistice is a bit obvious, they pull it off by playing it so sincerely. (Oh, and I wonder if the timeline error related to the Captain was not the presence of two Doctors at the South Pole, but the fact that he was supposed to die but didn't, due to the Doctor's change.) It's also fun how they cast writer Toby Whithouse as the German opposite the Captain in the crater, and I like how, if you know a bit of German, you know that he doesn't want to kill the Captain anymore than the Captain wants to kill him, but because neither can understand the other they would have ended up shooting each other anyway, had the Doctor not intervened. And the part where Testimony restores the Doctor's memories of Clara is lovely -- and I like the farewell scene between the Doctor, Bill, and Nardole (hooray, Nardole!), as they get to say goodbye one last time. But at the other times I've already mentioned, the episode just falls flat. It's like they needed one more pass at the script to take out some of Moffat's self-indulgence. "Twice Upon a Time" could have been a winner, a fantastic send-off for the twelfth Doctor, but as it is, it's just somewhat middling.
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| Peter Capaldi regenerates into Jodie Whittaker. ("Twice Upon a Time") ©BBC |
But before we get there, there are some farewells to make, not the least of which is to Peter Capaldi. I know some people were put off by his initial portrayal as a darker, less caring Doctor, and while I didn't mind it too much, it felt like he really came to his own after series 8, as he became far more relaxed and fun in the role. Capaldi had some truly excellent moments, and it was while I was rewatching series 10 that I fully realized just how perfect he is as a Doctor. Each Doctor finds a way to make it their own, to make it clear that you're not watching an actor but the character, and Capaldi was no different; in fact, I found myself believing he was the Doctor almost more than the other modern Doctors, he embodied the character so well. I wouldn't be surprised to see people's estimation of his Doctor go up as they come back to these stories and find just how good he really was. And so it's sad to see him go, but he definitely made his mark on the show. For me, he was the Doctor.
It's also time to say goodbye to series composer Murray Gold, who's been here since the beginning of the BBC Wales run. While I'd sometimes found his scores a little too on-the-nose, I also think he really matured as a composer over the last ten series; there are some really wonderful and imaginative scores and orchestrations in some of his later stuff, as he became more comfortable with taking risks, using electronic instruments and backwards music and such. I don't think it's unfair to say that his music defined Doctor Who over this period as much as the actors or showrunners did, and it'll definitely be different without him.
And of course, this is the final story for Steven Moffat as showrunner. As I noted above, not everyone loved what he did. But I thought he brought some (to me) welcome elements of magic and fairytale to the show. Doctor Who under his tenure became more about exploring the universe again, about seeing what else is out there, instead of being as focused on Earth as Russell T Davies' era was. He also had a more relaxed view toward continuity than RTD had, which meant offhand mentions of things like the message box from The War Games and Alpha Centauri could coexist along more modern references to things like the fate of Gallifrey and "The Next Doctor"'s Cyber-king. Some people didn't care for this, but I didn't mind; I like how it made it feel like all of Doctor Who was fair game and anyone or anything could pop up if they really wanted -- with the Mondasian Cybermen only being the most spectacular realization of this.
But the main thing about Moffat's Doctor Who is how confident it feels. There's always the sense that they know exactly what they're doing and that the audience will come along, and that means that even when they want to try something as complex as series 6's arc, there's that feeling that this is precisely what they want to do. Moffat's Doctor Who is not a show that talks down to its audience, but nor does it hold their hand all the time. And even when they don't pull things off (*cough*iPod Daleks*cough*), you get the sense that the production team is glad they tried it, rather than just choosing to play it safe. For me, this is a period of the show with far more hits than misses, and I'm glad that Steven Moffat got the chance to put his mark on the show.
But Doctor Who is a show about change as much as anything else, and now it's time for the next big one: Chris Chibnall is the new showrunner and Jodie Whittaker is the new Doctor, and I can't wait to see what they get up to. I'll be back on August 21, 2019, to discuss this exciting new beginning; hope to see you all again then!
282 Moffat tried to justify this by noting that the "jolly good smacked bottom" line is lifted straight from The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Well yes, but he's addressing his granddaughter Susan at that point after she's just buried the TARDIS, and I'm pretty sure being annoyed at family members who you've helped raise is different from just general sexism. And the thing is, this is basically the only example of anything like this at all during the Hartnell years. The only other thing (unless you want to count things like his being annoyed at Dodo's slang) is a moment at the end of The Gunfighters, when he smacks Dodo on the butt with a rolled-up poster to get her to enter the TARDIS, but frankly it's very easy to envision him treating Steven in exactly the same way.
283 Do you suppose Testimony was wiped out by the Bliss virus from "Gridlock", seeing how that episode is set after the year five billion and twelve?