‘Oh, I don’t think so. No. Dear me, no. You may be a Doctor, but I am the Doctor. The original, you might say.’
Twice upon a time, is an episode that not one, but two showrunners didn’t really want to make. ‘World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls’ is so comprehensive an ending for the 12th Doctor, it would have actually made a superb ending for ‘Doctor Who’ as a whole. You could stop watching the show at that point satisfied – the Doctor giving everything in one final battle, the ending for the Master is simultaneously both redemptive and not – which is incredibly clever. And then there is that final scene of the Doctor’s dead body lying on the floor of the TARDIS console room – travelling on through eternity. But no Christmas, wouldn’t be Christmas without a ‘Doctor Who’ Christmas Special – so Steven Moffat is wheeled back out one final time, years after he originally thought he was leaving. And a story is conceived during a convention panel. Steven commenting that bringing back the first Doctor would be the only interesting multi-Doctor story left, but William Hartnell was dead and Peter Capaldi commenting that they could ask David Bradley.
I couldn’t quite see how it would work, but it sounded interesting. Would bringing back an older Doctor for the present Doctor’s last story overshadow the end of the 12th? Especially when we had already seen a perfectly good ending. Would it all feel a bit dragged out, like maybe the coda to the 10th Doctor’s time? Would there be a good enough reason to bring back the original Doctor?
‘Sum of your memories?’
More than anything, I think the story is an exploration of memory – Steven is a big fan of the Fifth Doctor – so we get ‘a man is the sum of his memories, a Time Lord even more so’ writ large. Testimony is a ‘good’ version of the Nethersphere or a variation on River and her crew saved within the library or indeed the Matrix – ‘Deadly Assassin’ being another of Steven’s favourite stories. It is a lovely idea. It is also a missed opportunity. If you are going to press the First Doctor into action again – where was Susan? This expectation (given Peter Capaldi’s stated desire to meet her again) is played with in the scene where Bill returns. The 12th Doctor gets Bill Nardole and sees Clara once again – his memories of her returned – it is his farewell. The First Doctor gets bugger all out of this – except to be ridiculed and well, to regenerate, but we’ve already seen that, courtesy of Biddy Baxter and ‘Blue Peter’. Seeing Susan, if only for a moment before the end of his life would have really added something to story of the end of the First Doctor and would have been a fitting tribute to the era – it would also have given him a better reason for refusing to regenerate – wanting to see her one last time in this body. From Paul Cornell’s novelisation of the story it seems pretty clear that he thought so too. As it is, it feels unsatisfying and there is ultimately only the flimsiest of reasons for him to be here.
Mondas Passing
I reviewed ‘Attack of the Cybermen’ last year, a story that supposedly hinges on knowing ‘Tenth Planet’, it isn’t a great story, but you don’t really need to know about ‘Tenth Planet’ for that story any more than you do here. I mean I’m always happy to see that story, it is a favourite of mine and it is very nicely done here, but nice as it is, I’m not really sure why it is here. Likewise, the First Doctor. What is he doing here? It is nice to see him again and I really like David Bradley, so it isn’t a performance issue, but I’m not entirely sure I get it. Unless of course he is here to look down at in a slightly superior manner, at the programme as it was 50 years ago? A young generation of fans have recently got to see the First Doctor and have seen Barbara Wright on Twitch – ‘made of glass’ my arse. It is a real mis-step and a great shame.
Like, say ‘Time Crash’ or ‘Day of the Doctor’, the production is suffused with love – it really is, the TARDIS interior is beautiful, the recreation of the scenes from ‘Tenth Planet’ likewise, but the writing of this aspect doesn’t feel like it is to me. ‘Time Crash’ was a love letter to the 5th Doctor, one of Steven’s favourites, this isn’t unfortunately. My objections are the same as many others and have been done to death, so I won’t dwell on them – but every one of them feels like an irritating dig in the ribs, during something that I am otherwise quite enjoying. Only the ‘smacked bottom’ joke works and pays off – because it is truthful and funny, the ‘women made of glass’ comment is both untruthful and crass, someone should have excised it.
However, I do like the developing relationship between the First Doctor and Bill, that is rather touching at times.
BILL: You’re the first one, yeah? Like, the original version of the Doctor.
BILL: You’re the one who stole the Tardis and ran away.
DOCTOR 1: Oh, I’m sure your Doctor has explained.
BILL: I’m not even sure he remembers.
DOCTOR 1: There were many pressing reasons.
BILL: I don’t mean what you ran away from. What were you running to?
DOCTOR 1: That’s rather a good question.
BILL: You dash around the universe trying to figure out what’s holding it all together, and you really, really don’t know?
DOCTOR 1: You know me in the future. Do I ever understand?
BILL: No. I really don’t think you do. Everyone who’s ever met you does. You’re amazing, Doctor. Never forget that. Never, ever.
DOCTOR 1: Well, that’s very kind of you.
It is nice to see Bill once more, but it felt like her story was perfectly well wrapped up in ‘the Doctor Falls’ and that counts many times over fro the Twelfth Doctor.
Those are the parts that work for me. Not everything has to be a tribute, of course the issues of the past can be addressed, but there are better ways than this.
‘But for one day, one Christmas, a very long time ago, everyone just put down their weapons, and started to sing. Everybody just stopped. Everyone was just kind.’
Anyway, moving swiftly on. The First World War strand works rather well, Mark Gatiss gives a lovely performance as the Captain – it is funny, wistful and pitched perfectly for ‘Doctor Who’. The tie-up with the character as Archibald Hamish Lethbridge-Stewart is rather charming, the salute referencing ‘Death In Heaven’ and in some ways this feels like an end for a character I love so much and a writer smoothing over the ill feeling generated for some by the events at the end of the series 8 finale, which for me was clumsy rather than malicious.
‘I adjusted the time frame, only by a couple of hours. Any other day it wouldn’t make any difference, but this is Christmas 1914, and a human miracle is about to happen. The Christmas Armistice.’
The ‘Christmas Truce’ was at the top of my list of what Christmassy things haven’t been mined yet for a Christmas Special. It is really rather beautifully done here. Rachel Tallelay’s direction of these scenes is really beautiful (as ever) and the production design is stunning. It is nice also to see Toby Whithouse with Mark Gatiss – a tip of the hat to two of the writers that Steven Moffat has relied on during his tenure. They also both get to be described as ‘handsome’ in the novelisation!
‘We’ll take a cup of kindness yet’
Kindness is a theme running from ‘World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls’. This is even referenced here by the singing of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ during the truce. I think that this comes directly from Steven Moffat – he spoke about it when I saw him interviewed in 2017. I think that he took a real battering over his time as showrunner – from all sides – the more traditional fans, but just as much, if not more from fans who regarded everything he did as sexist, racist etc. Unfortunately, this was something that his children also saw online. The times aren’t kind unfortunately and there is a perfect platform to express your unkind thoughts. In story though, I’m not sure yet whether imploring us for ‘kindness’ is a natural progression for the 12th Doctor, who starts very unkindly and even by ‘Thin Ice’ seems to be fine with a child dying or whether it feels a bit tacked on. Either way it is a welcome aspect of the last 3 episodes of the 12th Doctor’s time and I completely agree with the sentiment.
Random monsters
Before then though, we get a bit of a mis-step. How many people were actually wondering about what happened to Rusty the Dalek? This section reminded me of the matrix in ‘Hell Bent’ or numerous other parts of Steven Moffat stories where random monsters turn up. I know why they are there, but it just feels odd and could have been integrated better into the story.
In the novelisation, which includes some scenes that were excised or shortened, the two Doctor’s pause to explore regeneration and what it means for the person about to change. This is a scene which is truncated on screen, as they are fired at in Villengard. That seems something important to me that is missing here – the reason why the first Doctor in the story.
‘It’ll be fine. You just have to let yourself go. Hold tight to everything you believe. Jump into the darkness. And hope you land safely’
‘Who I am right now, my consciousness, my … soul.. is about to rip apart. Someone else will walk back out of the storm. A stranger. And that stranger will be me.’
It strikes me that they cut the wrong scenes.
A life this long, do you understand what it is? It’s a battlefield, like this one, and it’s empty. Because everyone else has fallen
And finally, the regeneration, well I feel slightly like we had that in ‘The Doctor Falls’. However, the build up to it is rather lovely. His meeting with Clara and Nardole and well his weariness with the fight and sadness more at going in than his ‘death’. The regeneration – the main event is here, it is fine, the speech sort of works, but it feels slightly too long, maybe one too many beats. There is one last reference to the work of Paul Cornell:
‘Never be cruel, never be cowardly, and never, ever eat pears!’
The ‘Children can hear it sometimes’ line, I think comes from Peter Capaldi himself, there is something to be mined in that, but it didn’t quite hold together for me. Then amongst the pyrotechnics the 12th Doctor is gone and so is Steven, released at last – ‘let go’ and it’s time, as ever and I guess how it should always be, to get on with the next adventure.
Coda
I watched this story on Christmas Day, on holiday in Monterey Bay, California. As I watched it, my smile slowly fading, shrugged a little, then we went out to photograph Sea Otters. The sad part of all of this is that the first thing I think of when I remember ‘Twice upon a Time’ is the way that it treats the First Doctor, not the ending of Peter Capaldi’s 12th Doctor. I still don’t know whether the concept behind the story was flawed or whether the execution just didn’t quite work for me. Anyway, if we really are just made of memories, it is a shame that with a few trims and a little more substance that this one could have been a much happier one. As it is, I’m left clinging to the positives and there are quite a few, but with a sense of sadness for what could have been.
A Journal of Impossible Things 