DOCTOR WHO: TWICE UPON A TIME Discussion (Spoiler Version)

[emeraldknight47]

With Christmas upon us, thought I’d launch a couple of threads to chat about the Doctor Who Christmas Special. THIS would be the thread where you can spill the whole can of beans.

Looking forward to this, just not to Peter Capaldi’s departure. Season Ten firmly cemented him in my mind as one of the top three Doctors of Classic or Nu-Who. I’m sure there will be some free flowing tears come tomorrow evening...

[Gorn Captain]

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Not a bad episode. A bit weak on the storyline, but the two Doctors "spar" well together, and you get some very nostalgic vibes in the old Tardis.
The ending is a bit long-winded, though.

And I will miss Capaldi, no doubt about that...

[fallensaviour]

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Not bad overall,it left me wanting more David Bradley 1st doctor episodes than it did more capaldi doctor episodes.
The more I think about the more 1st doctor episodes I want....lol
The transition into Bradley doctor was done very well.
Capaldi to Whitaker was just meh for me.
The regeneration reminded me more of tenant to smith.
In that aspect I hope they don’t get lazy and just have her fall back into the Tardis as it’s already been done.
I did enjoy it and we’ll see where the next three years take us.

[Falstaff13]

I will definitely miss Capaldi, but I am looking forward to the new era. I felt Moffat went to the well too many times. He's a good writer, so I hope they have him back to write an episode here or there, but he often resorted to the same tricks on auto-pilot.

And I did enjoy the special, although I agree it was weak on overall story. They tried too hard in some places to create differences (such as making the first Doctor a relic of another era, which I didn't think necessary in order to find differences). It's easy to have different incarnations bicker either over methods or egos. I think they might have been better served to have kept up the mystery that surrounded Hartnell (at the time, because much had not yet been created/revealed) and had him frustrated with how "out in the open" Capaldi's Doctor tends to be (which has been an evolution during the series). I have already seen online chatter complaining about the first Doctor's sexist ways and comments, and I do think they deliberately accentuated it, but I find it more out of character for the first Doctor to immediately start talking about "how do you know regeneration? are you a Time Lord?" In the new series, they've gone away from the idea two Time Lords (let alone the same one) automatically sense each other, so I think he'd have been more guarded. They could have paralleled the way the Doctor and the Monk first talked to each other suspiciously.

When they first revealed Mark Gatiss' role, I said at the time they'd link him to the Brigadier, so that was a nice touch but felt obvious to me (perhaps that's fine as part of a Christmas special). There were rumors he would turn out to be the Valeyard, which I thought would have been interesting, just as I was curious about the rumors linking the first Doctor's TARDIS interior to the Curator's wall from "Day of the Doctor," but I guess those rumors just missed the mark. I had hoped the use of World War I could actually bring in the only time I can think of the old series evoking the Great War (in "War Games," end of Troughton's era) and had this idea the out-of-time soldier might tie to the Time Lords trying to return all the abducted soldiers from that serial, but, again, that's why I'm speculating and not writing.

[Gorn Captain]

I loved the part where he said "they cut out all the jokes"...