"Twice Upon a Time" Review

It's become a Christmas tradition of mine, that after spending the whole day with the family, opening gifts and eating way too much food, that I settle down that evening to watch the Dr Who Christmas Special. Plus, as an added bonus, this episode will be the last of Peter Capaldi and the introduction of Jodie Whittaker. It's also the last episode for Steven Moffat as show-runner, but more about that later. 

In this episode we see the 12th Doctor and the 1st Doctor team-up to stop....well really nothing. This episode is them literally deciding on if they should regenerate or just die. Oh, there is a "glass being" that they are first trying to stop but then realize that the "glass being" is actually good and that really this whole episode is a waste of time. Throw in a couple cameos and a not-so shocking surprise at the end, that the Captain's last name is "Lehtbridge-Stewart", and there you have probably the worst regeneration story ever. The previous episode of series, "The Doctor Falls" is how Peter Capaldi should have went out. That was a fantastic story, with excitement, emotion and the Doctor sacrificing his life to save people he hardly knows. Instead, we got 2 Doctors acting like kids who don't want to clean up there bedrooms. 

These last 2 episodes are a great example of Steven Moffat's run on Dr Who. He can come up with a fantastic episode from time to time, but then he will drop a stinker and it feels like he's not even trying to have a good episode. In this episode he thinks that if he throws a bunch of nostalgia elements into the story, that we won't notice how bad it is and a lot of Dr Who fans fell for it. I mean what's the point of bringing Clara back, when the Doctor is supposed to have no memory of her, other then getting a cheap "pop"? He took one of his best episodes "Hell Bent" and made the emotional ending, meaningless with this cameo.

The thing that upset me the most about this episode was the way Moffat gave a big "F You" to fans of Dr Who, who were not on board with a woman playing the Doctor (like myself). The 1st Doctor making continuous sexists remarks about women, was a direct shot against some of us in the fan base. I'm guessing that is how Moffat sees us, as male chauvinist pigs that think women should only be home taking care of babies, cooking and cleaning. Which is further from the truth. The 1st Doctor might have been crabby, but was a lot farther from being a male chauvinist pig then what this episode has you believe. Then they hit us with the line "Let's get it right", when Peter Capaldi is getting ready to regenerate. Which I take it as that every regeneration before this, he got wrong. Well, that's a fantastic way to say goodbye to Dr Who fans. 

So I will give "Twice Upon a Time" a 1.5 Tardises out of 5. Why couldn't "The Doctor Falls" have been the regeneration story? I hope that Jodie Whittaker and the new show-runner Chris Chibnall get us back on track.