12:40: Twice Upon a Time

In which we look a long way back.

Broadcast: December 2017

Watched: May 2022

Lot of possible lines to sum it up:

“The very first time that I – you – we – regenerated.”

“Exit your capsule. The chamber of the dead awaits you.”

“It’s not an evil plan. I don’t really know what to do when it isn’t an evil plan.”

Oh, also: “Previously on Doctor Who... 709 episodes ago” is an amazing caption, that I don’t think you could do on any other show, really. Also, lol that someone had to sit down and work that out.

The thing that doesn’t work here, oddly, is the thing that seems to be its main conceit: the return of the first Doctor. Bradley lacks Hartnell’s twinkle, and jokes about e.g. male nurses feel like a generalised satire on mid 20th century values rather than what Hartnell’s Doctor Who was actually like: it’s not’s not really about the first Doctor, it’s about the passage of time, the baton passing to another generation. Also he just stands there asking annoying things like “A sonic what? Doctor of what?” As someone on Twitter said, “it’s your bigoted uncle come round for Christmas, with the first Doctor shoehorned into that role”.

But that’s actually one thread in an episode in which everything else is lovely. The use of clips from The Tenth Planet. The  unnerving frozen battlefield. Mark Gatiss being, unexpectedly, really, really good in the role of the captain, playing it with such dignity (his fourth role in the show, I think? Lazarus, Danny Boy, the chess playing Viking thing, this). It is obviously hilarious that Moffat chooses as his last big guest star “one of his mates”, and he gets his name in the credits and everything, but he absolutely earns it – he’s terrific on “World War One... But... what d’you mean one?” Nice to see Toby Whithouse on screen, speaking German, too.

Meanwhile, in the plot, there’s a genuine uncertainty to whether this is Bill or an imposter – it’s great the way we get a completely convincing scene of her as Bill, and then see her glass hand – but of course, this being Moffat, it turns out to be both. The whole idea of Testimony is gorgeous: I’m told it feels a lot like Philip Purser-Hallard’s Of the City of the Saved, which alas I haven’t read, but of course it’s an idea that Moffat’s been playing with since River got stuck in a computer with some randoms from a work trip for the rest of time at the end of the Library story. The extraction thing is like Hell Bent, too. I suppose this is sort of a writer’s idea of immortality – that you’re preserved, somehow, in a database somewhere through your ideas – but now he’s actually off it’s thematically appropriate at last. Moffat, a few months after losing his mother and coming to the end of what he knows will be the biggest thing he ever has on his CV, is thinking about death and legacy.

You can see the Lethbridge-Stewart twist a mile off, of course, but it’s lovely and allowable on a last episode I think. The singing and the Christmas Armistice, and the fact the Doctor’s fiddled things to save the Captain’s life, is genuinely touching.

And then it becomes clear that the point of this story is to show the first Doctor why he should regenerate, why the universe needs him, what, fundamentally, is the point of Doctor Who in Moffat’s eyes... so maybe he did need to be in it after all. Also, the scene in which he confesses he wants to understand what’s making good prevail, and Bill tells him he does, without ever quite saying so out loud, is sort of Moffat’s last statement on the series.

The regeneration bits... I thought I could do without the inevitable Clara bit, but it actually got me this time. Even so, Nardole’s cameo is better: the way he turns on a dime on, “Got a suggestion for you then. Don’t die.”

The speech in the TARDIS... it’s good that the Doctor has a conversation with the TARDIS, even if we can’t hear her half. Nice to hear the Shepherd’s Boy one last time before Murray Gold too toddles off. But the speech itself is kind of annoying: there is a reason writers generally dramatise things, rather than just have people announce it to empty rooms.

Hang on, here comes Chris Chibnall.

Oh well, at least Jodie’s first words are perfect. The ring falling off is pretty cool, too.

Other things:

• The regeneration scene is also undermined, a bit, by the fact we’ve seen the 12th Doctor die about 400 times by now.

• “Your face, it’s all over the place, but you’re trying to hold it back”. Moffat loves a good “explaining why someone looks totally different now” joke.

• Mind you, Ben and Polly neither look nor sound like Ben and Polly, and they don’t bother to explain that.

• When I said on Twitter I was watching it, Jon Dear said, “I like that it features Moffat’s two preferred writers shooting each other.” They don’t in the end, but yes it is a lovely end. A metaphor for what Chris Chibnall is about to do to the Doctor Who writing team I suppose.

• The 12th Doctor calls the 1st both “Mr Pastry” and “Mary Berry.”

• “The Doctor has many names. The Destroyer of Worlds. The Imp of the Pandorica. The Shadow of the Valeyard. The Beast of Trenzalore. The Butcher of Skull Moon. The Last Tree of Garsennon. The Destroyer of Skaro. He is the Doctor of War.” Moffat has read the New Adventures. I love that 12’s reaction is, “To be fair, they cut out all the jokes”.

• Was there anyone who was longing for a return from Rusty the Dalek, really? Was there anyone who even remembered him?

• “Can’t I ever have peace, can’t I rest” is Moffat’s final, final, FINAL statement, cf RTD’s “I don’t want to go” (which now, of course, he’s lived up to).

• Weird how both Moffat’s last two stories involve Mondasian Cybermen but they’re not in any way connected? 

• I am hoping the length of these posts will reduce now we’re moving to a writer with fewer layers.