It often seemed like the two seasons with Peter Capaldi and Jenna Louise Coleman spent so long defining the identity of the Doctor and playing with the concept, so the final season felt like a “back-to-basics” approach right down to the present-future-past trifecta of The Pilot, Smile and Thin Ice.Įven in the context of the coda season, Twice Upon a Time feels like a coda itself. The season has a number of interesting episodes and ideas, with an endearing and refreshing energy that often feels refreshing when stepping away from the big bold themes that defined the previous two seasons. ![]() This is not to belittle or diminish the final year of Moffat’s tenure. Moffat arguably wrapped up everything that he might want to say about the Doctor and about Doctor Who in Heaven Sent and Hell Bent at the end of Capaldi’s penultimate year, even finally resurrecting Gallifrey and restoring the last vestiges of the status quo from the original run of the series. Peter Capaldi’s entire final season feels like a coda to Moffat’s tenure on the show, a very polite holding pattern waiting gracefully for his successor to take the reins. The most striking aspect of Twice Upon a Time is that the episode has no reason to exist. It is not especially graceful, but is charming nevertheless. It is an episode dancing around the inevitable. It is an adventure that doesn’t really need to exist, and one which accepts that premise as its starting point. Twice Upon a Time is a Christmas indulgence, but one that feels earned. In some ways, this feels like an appropriate way to bid farewell to Steven Moffat’s tenure as showrunner on Doctor Who, to draw down the curtain on an impressive and momentous six seasons (and almost eight years) that radically redefined what the programme could (and even should) be. Twice Upon a Time is a collection of witty banter and wry observations held together by a plot that even the Doctor has to admit does not exist. Moffat’s Christmas specials like A Christmas Carol or The Husbands of River Song have set pieces, but they often feel incidental to the characters and dialogue. Davies tended to jump from set piece to set piece with his bombastic Christmas specials like The Runaway Brideand Voyage of the Damned, with only the thinnest of plots holding them together. ![]() Twice Upon a Time does something similar, albeit in the style of Steven Moffat.
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