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Saturday, January 6, 2018

TV Tuesday... Doctor Who 2017 Christmas Special Review



Quick Summary:
The Twelfth Doctor, still refusing to change, goes on a last adventure with the First Doctor.

SYNOPSIS: As the Doctor nears regeneration, he stumbles on his younger self, also refusing to change. It takes a captain, a glass avatar and a familiar face to convince the Doctors the universe still needs them.


Twice Upon a Time was the 2017 Doctor Who Christmas special. It was the final episode under showrunner Steven Moffat's tenure, and featured the last regular appearance of Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor.

Concluding the Twelfth Doctor's life, as teased in World Enough and Time and The Doctor Falls, this episode displayed the Doctor's regeneration and introduced Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor, the first female incarnation of the Doctor in the series history.

After a surprise appearance at the end of The Doctor Falls, the First Doctor was an integral part of this narrative. Here, he was portrayed by David Bradley, who had previously played the original actor William Hartnell in An Adventure in Space and Time. Though so-called "classic" Doctors had appeared on 21st century Doctor Who before, this episode was the first televised interaction between a Shepherd's Bush- and a BBC Wales-era Doctor since 2007's Time Crash. Archival footage from The Tenth Planet was used to bookmark the First Doctor's place in this story. The special also introduced Archibald Hamish Lethbridge-Stewart, credited as "the Captain", a new member of the Lethbridge-Stewart family.

Ben Jackson and Polly Wright made a brief re-reappearance in the programme for the first time since their exit in 1967's The Faceless Ones. Bill Potts joined the two Doctors, and Captain Lethbridge-Stewart, as a Testimony glass avatar. Past companions Nardole and Clara, made similar brief appearances. The "good Dalek" Rusty, from Capaldi's second episode, Into the Dalek, made his second appearance—in Villengard, a location mentioned only once before on television, in Steven Moffat's second television story, 2005's The Doctor Dances.

Full Synopsis. CONTAINS SPOILERS!

Wandering back to his TARDIS through the South Pole after leaving his companions behind, the First Doctor refuses to undergo regeneration. He encounters the Twelfth Doctor outside his own TARDIS in a similar state of mind after his previous ordeal. The pair are soon approached by a confused and injured First World War British captain, displaced from December 1914 while in a gun-point stalemate with a German soldier. All three are then forcibly taken into a large spaceship. Inside, they meet with Bill Potts; the Twelfth Doctor, however, doubts she is the real Bill. Upon encountering the ship's glass-like holographic pilot, they are offered freedom in exchange for allowing the ship to return the Captain to the moment of his death. Refusing to allow the Captain to die, they escape and take the First Doctor's TARDIS to the planet Villengard.

Alone, the Twelfth Doctor meets with the rogue Dalek Rusty, who has taken refuge from other Daleks hunting it. Given access to the Dalek Hivemind, the Doctor learns that the pilot and its ship, known as Testimony, were created on New Earth, designed to extract people from their timelines at the moment of their death, and archive their memories into glass avatars. "Bill" is one such avatar, created from her memories. Seeing no evil to fight, the Doctors agree to return the Captain to his timeline. Upon doing so, the Captain asks the Doctors to keep an eye on his family, introducing himself as Archibald Hamish Lethbridge-Stewart, a surname shared by the Doctor's frequent ally and lifelong friend the Brigadier. As time resumes, the Doctors watch as soldiers on both sides begin singing "Silent Night". The Twelfth Doctor explains to the First that he deliberately shifted the Captain's timeline to the start of the Christmas truce, to ensure his life would be spared.

With the Captain saved, the First Doctor informs the Twelfth that he is prepared to regenerate and says his goodbyes before returning to his TARDIS. Now alone with Bill's avatar, the Twelfth Doctor adamantly contends she is not really Bill, but she argues that memories are what define a person. Bill's avatar restores the Doctor's memories of Clara Oswald before they are joined by Nardole's avatar. The Doctor, however, refuses to give the avatars testimony of his life. They respect his wish to be alone and leave after he embraces them both. The Doctor then returns to the TARDIS and decides to regenerate, but not before relaying advice to his next incarnation.

After the Thirteenth Doctor examines her reflection, the TARDIS suffers multiple failures. Tumbling out of the turning ship, the Doctor watches the console room explode, and the TARDIS dematerialises while she plummets towards the Earth below.

THE TRAILERS:



MY LIVE TWEETS: 







MY REVIEW: 


You can probably work out by now that I LOVED IT!! It was really great! It was very entertaining and lovely. And while it's always sad saying goodbye to each incarnation of The Doctor - because I really do love each of them even if Eleven is my favorite - this was a solid farewell to Capaldi... and a solid hello to Whittaker! 

I can't wait to see where the show goes from here. I really do think that the show has needed a change for awhile now. It's needed something to refresh the series. It was only in my wildest dreams that I imagined an actual female Doctor. But we're finally getting her! And I'm fucking ecstatic about it! We've only seen her Doctor for that minute or two at the end, but I am optimistic that she's going to do it well! 


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