Monday, January 1, 2018

Steven's Last Night in Town: An Overanalysis of Twice Upon a Time



Senioritis:  A condition peculiar to high school seniors, hence the subword "senior" in senoritis. Symptons include a general apathy towards classes, homework, future i.e. college applications, restlessness and a "cannot do" attitude to surmountable school load. - Urban Dictionary

Despite all the hullabulloo about "Twice Upon a Time" being Peter Capaldi's last episode, we're forgetting another goodbye here.  It's also Steven Moffat's last episode writing for Doctor Who.  Moffat always kept an open invitation extended to Russell T. Davies to come back and write a one-off episode, but Davies never took him up on it.  All signs point to Chibnall holding out the same invitation to Moffat, but Moffat has indicated he doesn't intend to take advantage of the invitation either.  After six seasons as showrunner, 47 episodes, four minisodes, and one licensed parody, Steven Moffat is finally done (so he says) with the Doctor Who franchise.  (Of course, Rule 1.)  And for the conclusion off all that work, the greatest writer Doctor Who has ever known (fuck the haters) caps off his run on the show with possibly his biggest limp dick of an episode.

"Twice Upon a Time" can't really be called a "story" in the traditional sense.  The elements of a story are considered to be character, setting, plot, conflict, and resolution . "Twice Upon a Time" lacks conflict.  Hell, I'd argue it barely has a plot.  The episode even goes so far as to point out its own biggest flaw when the Doctor shouts out "It's not an evil plan!"  More or less, the Doctor happens upon a perfectly innocent science project, mistakes it for something evil, realizes it isn't, and moves along on his way.  That's distinctly not a story.

But the episode is an excuse to have some interesting conversations between the 12th Doctor, the 1st Doctor, Mark Gatiss for some reason, and Bill.  Here's the thing, I hate William Hartnell's 1st Doctor.  He played the character as a pompous ass, and Hartnell couldn't remember his lines to save his life, which was especially difficult when they couldn't afford to reshoot anything. Steven Moffat has talked about how, looking at David Bradley's version of the 1st Doctor is like looking through a time machine and seeing William Hartnell's Doctor in the flesh.

The fuck is he talking about?

Bradley's voice is distinctly deeper than Hartnell's, for starters.  His face looks nothing like Hartnell's, as the 12th Doctor comments on.  He doesn't act like the 1st Doctor at all.  While the 1st Doctor had a general air of superiority about him, that was always directed towards men and women equally.  He never showed himself to be the rampant misogynist that he appears to be in the "Twice Upon a Time."  Either Moffat hasn't watched the black and white episodes in a minute, or else he wanted to show everyone who accused him of sexism what sexism actually looks like.  Also, bragging about sexual exploits?  No Doctor does that.  The first Doctor had presumably one partner that we've never met, since he has a granddaughter, and he had a brief romance with an Aztec woman that probably amounted to nothing.  Either way, he's never been one to kiss and tell.  Remember that just because the 1st Doctor lived in the 1960s and his era aired in the 60's doesn't mean that he's a man from the 60's.  Any regeneration, and the Doctor is still an alien who has travelled all of time and space and is millennia ahead of simple human prejudices.

There are only a few things that "Twice Upon a Time" gets right about the 1st Doctor. One is that he always holds his damn lapels whatever he's doing.  The other is that the 1st Doctor is not truly a hero.  He's surprised by the notion of the 12th Doctor declaring the Earth to be "protected," because the 1st Doctor didn't see himself as a protector of the Earth.  He was just an explorer bumbling about, much like 12's speech at the end of "Death in Heaven."  I did love the 1st Doctor's explanation of what he was running to, though, that he was trying to realize why good so often triumphs when everything suggests that it shouldn't.  He went out in search of the source of that balance in the Universe, and accidentally became the balance he was looking for.

If I let go of my lapels, my neck will fall off.

I loved the line "To be fair, they cut out all the jokes" and it is my nw go-to response for everything now:

Why are the DCEU movies so boring?
Why wasn’t Two and a Half Men ever funny?
Why was Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s press conference so weird?
Why didn’t Kevin Spacey’s apology speech go over better?

Honestly, some of the banter between the two Doctors was amusing, but the fact that the 1st Doctor wasn't the 1st Doctor spoiled it for me.  Although I did like that 12 could steer 1's TARDIS which confirms something I've always suspected:  The 1st Doctor's TARDIS didn't have a broken navigation system, the 1st Doctor just never had any fucking clue how to steer the damned thing.

While Rusty the Good Dalek is a great name for a Saturday morning cartoon show (RIP), I don't understand why Rusty is so intent on killing the Doctor.  They seemed to part on good terms, they have similar goals, what do they have to hate each other over?  It seemed like Moffat didn't go back and watch his own episode before writing this one.



I did like the moment of the Christmas Armistice, which is a fascinating point in history, and I don't know how I didn't see that one coming.  That being said, it annoyed me that that was the only part of the episode that had anything to do with Christmas!  Moffat once said he hated Christmas specials that didn't actually have anything to do with Christmas.  Well, he's written two back to back (this and "Mysterio") that only feature one scene on Christmas.  I was sad to see his last one lacked any real Christmas to it.

Christmas bells, those Christmas bells, ringing through the land...

The Doctor's regeneration scene, however, was better than the rest of the episode combined.  The goodbyes from Bill and Nardole felt hollow since we knew they weren't really them.  Admittedly the same could be said of Clara's goodbye, but I think the main point of that moment was to give the Doctor back his memories of her, not for her to say a real goodbye to her.  The speech he gives his future self is some of Peter Capaldi's finest work, and a reminder of why he will always be one of the finest actors to ever play the role.

Speaking of actors, hello Jodie Whittaker, who I'm so excited to see taking on this role.  The Girl Who Was Hated.  I honestly expected they wold make a joke about her noticing she's not ginger before she realized she was a woman now.  The revived series has this annoying pattern where, every time the Doctor is about to regenerate, he punches in coordinates and starts the engines right when he is about to regenerate.  Think about it, it's happened every time:  War to 9, 9 to 10, 10 to 11, 11 to 12, and now in this episode we can not only say the same about 12 to 13, but also about 1 to 2.  Smartest man in the universe and he can't figure out that it's a bad idea to start up the most powerful vessel in the universe right before he's about to come down with massive amnesia and confusion.  "I'm about to go blind, now's a good time to go for a drive."  This time it ended more disastrously than ever before, as the 13th Doctor pressed one button, catapulted herself out the door, at which time the TARDIS dematerialized, leaving her both plummeting towards the ground and stranded without her TARDIS.  (The first person I hear make a joke about women drivers, I will detach something valuable from you.) . She'll probably survive the fall because she's technically still regenerating and therefore can heal her injuries, but I'm really excited to see Series 11 start off with a Doctor in a new gender, confused, lost, stranded, with no companions.  It's likely to be her most desperate situation upon starting a new regeneration, and I can't wait to see it.  Sadly, rumor has it we won't see the next series until September or so.  I can't wait.

While we're waiting, I might post in here once or twice.  I have been watching all of Jodie Whittaker's other roles and intend to make a post about that at some point.  Maybe I'll make another post or two in the meantime.  So, until then, fuck you, get pumped, the Doctor is a woman and this is gonna rock!