Twice upon a time doctor who dvd3/2/2024 Obviously, the TARDIS had to die so that the interior decorators could get to work and really make it Whittaker’s TARDIS. The remainder of the introduction, and the episode, seemed slightly contrived. Leave the discovery of the Thirteenth’s personality and character until next year. A bit of a hint of the Yorkshire accent, a far more visible smile, and that was it. Instead, all those emotions and observations, and all their insight into the newcomer, were coalesced into one simple line, delivered with a perfect sense of enjoyment by Whittaker: “Oh, brilliant!”. There were no comments about hair colour, teeth, age, or anything. Whittaker’s introduction also bucked the established trend of frenzied blabbering that has usually, and memorably, accompanied the new Doctor. Here, Capaldi and Twelve were blended together far better, culminating in a powerfully calm inversion of the Tenth Doctor’s classic “I don’t want to go”, as Capaldi/Twelve declared: “Doctor, I let you go”. I will always remember when the Doctor was me”. With Smith’s departure, it felt a bit like the Eleventh Doctor had already gone and this was quite literally just Smith saying goodbye: “I will not forget one line of this, not one day, I swear. It was, as he noted, ‘basic stuff’ – “Never be cruel, never be cowardly” – but it managed to accomplish the same fourth-wall-breaking send-off as previous exists in a less disconnected way than, say, Matt Smith ever did. The famous speech in ‘ The Zygon Inversion’ has undoubtedly come to define the Twelfth Doctor in outlook and demeanour, and while his final words here didn’t have quite such a substantial context to draw from, they were elevated by Capaldi’s sincere delivery. Peter Capaldi’s best moments on the show have played upon his Thespian qualities, and his capacity as an actor to monologue like the best. We’ll get to all those elements in due course, but in the end, this was an episode that was unavoidably about the end, as one Doctor bowed out, and another entered the fray. The Christmas Truce in Ypres sits alongside the final moments of the First Doctor’s life in ‘ The Tenth Planet’, the appearance of a new, enigmatic alien interference, and the return of Bill Potts among other cameos. What’s immediately impressive about the 13th such special, this year’s ‘ Twice Upon a Time’, is that it manages to weave together almost all of the above, to relative success. There have been famous moments of the past and of fiction, alien invasions, alien planets, and significant episodes in the canon with more at stake than just ‘the meaning of Christmas’. There are only so many ideas for a show at any time of year, so narrowing that down to snow, festivity and so on only makes it more difficult. Really, it provides a kind of answer to another persistent question at this time of year: how many more Christmas Special ideas can there really be for the show? How is it that, after 12 previous Doctor Who Christmas Specials – that makes me feel old, thinking back to ‘The Christmas Invasion’ – this is the first time the focus has been on the Christmas Truce of 1914? Alright, technically, it’s not the first Who usage overall, with semi-canon prose and comics having visited the moment, but it’s the first on-screen.
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