Doctor Who: "Twice Upon a Time" Review

NEVER FORGET

Much like the episode that preceded it six months ago, "Twice Upon a Time" is a deeply mixed bag, and in that sense representative of the era it marks an end of. When it's on form, it belongs in the same category as the portrayal of Vincent van Gogh's battle with mental illness. When it isn't, it ranks alongside the revelation that Davros had eyes all along.

At the beginning of the episode, we run into a worry I had before broadcast, namely the decision to make the story a sequel to the First Doctor's own (partially lost) regeneration story, The Tenth Planet. The Christmas story should be accessible to the casual viewer, and starting with a recap of monochrome telerecorded footage, specified as being "709 episodes ago", seems a surefire way to alienate a considerable proportion of your audience. But on the other hand, the morph from black-and-white footage of William Hartnell to David Bradley in glorious technicolour is a neat effect, and one it seems a shame to lose. This juxtaposition of something I really like and something so baffling I can't see why it's there is fitting for the last episode of this era.

But then we get to the real story, and it turns out it isn't really anything to do with The Tenth Planet at all. Why is the recap there at all? Why go to such trouble to recreate the sixties sets? Why recast Ben and Polly and then make such a big deal of it, when they're around for so little of the episode we saw all there was to see of them in the promotional material? (The fact that they don't appear at all when the First Doctor returns to his own time is baffling.) If they want to make clear that this is a First Doctor about to regenerate, why not just say so? No other multi-Doctor story has felt the need to make it clear where in the timeline it goes, and only a select few are really going to care about potential continuity issues that arise from the fact that this story technically takes place midway through another story. Just scrap the recap, have the Doctor say he's regenerating, then show him returning to monochrome at the end (the use of original 60s footage at the end definitely does work, and I think it would be so much the better if it was the only example of it).

But as the story unfolds, my fears as to why the episode might alienate its viewers fade, and a new and very nasty story thread pops up to take its place as we discover the First Doctor is in fact a horrible bigot spewing sexist banter. This is a deeply unpleasant development, and I don't really want to write too much about it given how genuinely angry it makes me. Suffice to say that the man responsible for Amy Pond not giving a toss about her abducted baby or "squeezed into a skirt that's just a little bit too tight" has no real business taking the sixties to task for casual sexism. It shows a lack of understanding of the character that no amount of TARDIS set recreations can make up for. The "jolly good smacked bottom" line is a key example of this - in its original use it was about how he still treated his granddaughter as a child. It's not representative of his attitudes to all women, and Moffat has fundamentally misunderstood it if he seriously thinks it is.

That's one bit of unpleasantness that has been a recurring problem in the Moffat era dealt with. The other is squeamishness and a lack of consequences, as Mark Gatiss' rather charmingly played Captain gets returned to the point where he's meant to die, and then the Doctor finds a way to make sure it doesn't happen. It's Christmas, so this development doesn't bother me as much as it usually does (and it's certainly nowhere near as troubling as the episode's reinvention of the First Doctor), but I do still wish Moffat would kill someone and make it stick.

But apart from that? The episode works, pretty much. Pearl Mackie's return as Bill works. The deceptively intimate nature of the story, with its comparatively small scale and limited number of characters, works really well. Peter Capaldi's final scenes are beautiful (and just about manage to avoid feeling overblown), managing to work in a few final cameos without feeling gratuitous, with a lovely performance from Matt Lucas in particular, and a final shot that will stick in the memory, and leaves a lump in the throat, as Bill and Nardole (unquestionably two of the best companions ever) fade away. And Jodie Whittaker's first scenes are unquestionably absolutely perfect, with her first words as the Doctor being oh so simple, but oh so brilliant.

So, then. An episode with so many lovely moments, one or two confusing ones, and one running thread that I dislike so much it actively makes me angry it's there. For better or for worse, this episode is representative of the Moffat era. I just hope its final minute is representative of what's to come. And thanks to Big Finish, David Bradley may yet get to play a version of the First Doctor who isn't an utter twat.