Wednesday 27 December 2017

Doctor Who - Twice Upon a Time review

Doctor Who - Twice Upon a Time Review
The 2017 Christmas special, where the Twelfth Doctor is refusing to regenerate, and meets the First Doctor. A quite interesting and poignant story, but there are some missteps. But, despite those missteps it was quite enjoyable. More on those later. The beginning scene, with the merging from the footage from The Tenth Planet, was done in a very effective way. The meeting between the two Doctors and the British Army Captain was done quite well also. More on the Captain, and his link to earlier Who, below.
The investigation into the frozen time (what there is of it) the the subsequent meeting with the glass people/Testimony was done very well. Of course, the Testimony doesn't tell the Doctors what they do. Their lack of communication leads to most of the story in this episode. Was this one of the missteps. No, but first, the Doctor's reaction to Bill (or rather Testimony!Bill) was what one would expect of him. He had lost his friend, and wants to be sure that it is her, after what had happened previously.
What is a misstep, certainly, is characterising the First Doctor as a bigot. That's not very consistent with the way Hartnell portrayed him. (Not really explainable by the withholding of regeneration either, the Twelfth's personality didn't change.) The Twelfth deciding to find a database to match the Non-computer generated glass interface of the Testimony was an interesting development in the story. Meeting 'Rusty' again in order to gain access to the Dalek group database was certainly a surprise, but not gratuitous.
The ending at the Christmas Truce of 1914 was very poignant, as was the reveal of the Captain being the Brigadier's grandfather. The appearances of Clara and Nardole were also a great moment. The regeneration may have been drawn out, but the brief appearance of the Thirteenth Doctor was well done. 8.5/10.


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