Theoretically, this should make the Doctor more likely to risk their life, since they can always just grow a new body.īut regenerations happen rarely enough that they’re always a big deal, and “Twice Upon a Time” is a doubly big deal, because Moffat is simultaneously turning over the showrunning keys of Doctor Who to his successor, Chris Chibnall, for season 11. The Doctor knows that regeneration comes with the territory of being a Time Lord. (The woman taking over for Capaldi, Jodie Whittaker, has already led an incredibly successful career that can only rise to another level now that she’ll be the first woman in Doctor Who’s history to play the title character.)īut the regeneration aspect also means that Doctor Who’s regeneration episodes end up trying to play big emotions for the show’s viewers, who may be sad to see their favorite Doctor leave the program (barring cameos in the occasional special), even if those emotions probably shouldn’t hugely affect the character.
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Indeed, the four men who’ve played the Doctor since the series rebooted - Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith, and Peter Capaldi - have all enjoyed incredibly healthy non-Doctor careers. It has also allowed the series to attract top-flight talent to its main role, because if an actor of Eccleston’s caliber wants to play the lead for 13 episodes only, he can do just that. But the regeneration aspect has meant that any time the show seemed to be creatively flagging, it could recast its main role and jet off in another direction.Įverything you ever wanted to know about Doctor Who, but were too embarrassed to ask The show was always science fiction, and it had always had time travel and visits to alien worlds baked into its premise of an alien in a stolen spaceship gallivanting about the cosmos.
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Indeed, the regenerations are the primary reason Doctor Who was able to evolve from British children’s educational programming to a 50-years-old-and-counting genre TV standard with fans all around the world.
If that sounds confusing, it’s really not.
Regeneration episodes are curious beasts, because, technically, the Doctor will still be around, just with a new face, but everybody (especially the Doctor) acts like the Doctor is leaving forever, because that’s basically what’s happening - the new actor will bring their specific flair and personality to the role, so it will be like a new character has taken over the show, even though one technically hasn’t. (The Doctor, in case you didn’t know, can regenerate into a new form if the character sustains heavy enough damage to “die.”) “Twice Upon a Time” is a regeneration episode of Doctor Who, which is to say that it doubles as a fond farewell to the actor exiting the role of the Doctor and a quick introduction to the actor entering the role for the new stretch of episodes to follow. “Twice Upon a Time” is a rather subdued hour for such a major tentpole in the series’ run The Doctor pilots the TARDIS toward parts unknown. There’s been plenty of water under the bridge since those early days, but it’s fitting that “Twice Upon a Time,” the 2017 Doctor Who Christmas special and Moffat’s final contribution to the series as its showrunner (he took over for Davies during the “new” show’s fifth season), nods all the way back to that early two-parter. He seemed to understand perfectly how the Doctor behaved, and his puzzle-like plots were a perfect match for the sorts of clever sci-fi that was Doctor Who’s stock in trade. Fans greeted Moffat’s every episode during the Davies era with increasing delight.
Davies (who had revamped the very old series - which had aired from 1963 to 1989 on its first go-round - for a new millennium). The episodes also marked Moffat’s arrival to the series, which at the time was run by Russell T. It was the new series’ conception of the Doctor in a nutshell: traveling all of space and time to put things right, like something out of myth or legend.
He’s just averted a major alien crisis and saved countless lives in the midst of World War II London, and his sheer joy at the thought that nobody had to die in order for the day to be saved marked the moment when (for me, at least) the series went from something I watched with casual interest to something I was really into. Reduce “The Empty Child” and “The Doctor Dances,” the 2005 two-parter that marked Steven Moffat’s first contribution to the then-recently-rebooted Doctor Who, down to a single moment, and you’d almost certainly land on Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor’s wide grin as he exclaims “Just this once, everybody lives!” The episode of the week for December 24 through 30 is “Twice Upon a Time,” the 2017 Christmas special of BBC America’s Doctor Who. Every week, we pick a new episode of the week.
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