Twice Upon a Time (TV story)

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Twice Upon a Time was the 2017 Doctor Who Christmas special. It was the final episode under showrunner Steven Moffat's tenure, and featured the last regular appearance of Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor.

Concluding the Twelfth Doctor's life, as teased in World Enough and Time and The Doctor Falls, this episode displayed the Doctor's regeneration and introduced Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor, marking the first female incarnation of the Doctor in the series history.

After a surprise appearance at the end of The Doctor Falls, the First Doctor had his first full appearance on the programme since The Five Doctors. Here, he was portrayed by David Bradley, who had previously played the original actor William Hartnell in An Adventure in Space and Time. The episode was the first televised interaction between a "classic" Doctor and a BBC Wales era Doctor since 2007's Time Crash. Archival footage from The Tenth Planet was used to bookmark the First Doctor's place in this story. The special also introduced Archibald Hamish Lethbridge-Stewart, credited as "the Captain", a new member of the Lethbridge-Stewart family.

Ben Jackson and Polly Wright made a brief re-reappearance in the programme for the first time since their exit in 1967's The Faceless Ones. Bill Potts joined the two Doctors, and Captain Lethbridge-Stewart, as a Testimony glass avatar. Past companions Nardole and Clara, made similar brief appearances. The "good Dalek" Rusty, from Capaldi's second episode, Into the Dalek, made his second appearance—in Villengard, a location mentioned only once before on television, in Steven Moffat's second television story, 2005's The Doctor Dances.

Synopsis

In the Twelfth Doctor's final chapter, he must face his past to decide his future, discovering hope in his darkest moment. But can he convince his original self to also change?

Plot

The First Doctor is towards the end of his encounter with the Cybermen from Mondas. He is freed from his restraints by his companions Ben and Polly, now that the threat is over. However, he is weak, his body beginning to regenerate. Refusing to give in, he leaves and wanders the South Pole, mumbling to himself that he will not change. Nearing his TARDIS, he hears a voice in the distance claiming to be the Doctor. He approaches the man knelt in the snow next to the TARDIS, also claiming to be The Doctor.

The Twelfth Doctor gets to his feet, and is shocked to see his past self. The Doctor is delighted at meeting his first incarnation, but realises that he is refusing to regenerate. The First Doctor is confused and dismisses his future self as just another Time Lord, until he notices what appears to be his TARDIS. The Twelfth Doctor questions why his younger self is refusing to regenerate, fearing the consequences the decision might cause. However, the snow suddenly freezes in midair, capturing the pair's attention, as a man dressed in World War I attire approaches them.

The worn torn battlefield in Ypres, 1914.

On Christmas Day 1914, the soldier, a captain in the British Expeditionary Force, lies in a shell hole on the battlefield in Ypres. His revolver is aimed at a German soldier, who also has his sidearm trained on the Captain. Both men realise they will kill each other in self-defense, their respective troops far away in their trenches, unable to assist either of them. Just as the Captain prepares to accept his fate and fire, a wave of energy flows through the field, freezing everything around him. As he exits the hole, a bright light suddenly flashes and encapsulates him. He collapses to the ground in the arctic and, hearing the two Doctors discussing the static snow, he approaches them.

The scene once more shifts back to the Twelfth Doctor's perspective. A portal of light opens in the distance, and the two Doctors approach it. The First Doctor orders the portal to reveal itself, while the Twelfth Doctor declares that the planet is protected, to the confusion of his first incarnation. However, the light quickly vanishes, surprising the Twelfth Doctor as "that almost never works." The First Doctor returns to the Captain, telling him to enter his TARDIS, and the Twelfth Doctor coaxes him to follow. As they enter, the First Doctor is shocked by the changes to the TARDIS interior, while the Captain is shocked by the room's size. The Twelfth Doctor attempts to convince his younger self they are the same person by displaying that he too is undergoing regeneration. He also points out that the First Doctor's TARDIS is 70 feet away, and they are inside a later version of the TARDIS, hence the differences in appearance. Regardless, the First Doctor remains sceptical. The First Doctor notices the Captain's unease, telling the soldier to sit down and orders the Twelfth Doctor to fetch some brandy. He does so, and the First Doctor notices that there is less in the glass than he remembered.

The TARDIS captured by the Testimony.

Suddenly, the TARDIS shakes violently, prompting the Twelfth Doctor to attempt to take off, only to find that the engines are unresponsive. Looking upwards out of the TARDIS doors, he sees large metal claws pulling the TARDIS upwards. Once the TARDIS has stopped moving, the Twelfth Doctor instructs his predecessor to confront their captors. A humanoid glass figure seated at the top of a staircase speaks to the Doctor, addressing him as "The Doctor of War." The figure requests the return of the Captain in exchange for a friend of the Doctor.

Much to the confusion of the First Doctor, Bill then exits one of the corridors. The Twelfth Doctor quickly exits the TARDIS to hug her, before slowly pulling away, drawing his sonic screwdriver, and scanning Bill. To her surprise, the Twelfth Doctor demands that she proves herself to be real, as he believes Bill to have sacrified herself to defeat the Cybermen. Bill insists she is her real self, explaining how Heather had saved her. The Twelfth Doctor asks where Heather is now. Bill struggles for an answer.

"Indoors?"

The Twelfth Doctor decides to confront his captor directly and runs up the staircase. He is slowly followed by his younger self, who questions the need to move so fast. They find an empty chair with several panels behind it. The First Doctor takes to observing the panels, commenting on their extraterrestrial origin. He turns to his older self, his eye glass dropping from his eye as he notices the Twelfth Doctor wearing sunglasses to scan the panels. They turn to the chair, where a woman made completely of glass materialises. While the Twelfth Doctor scans the panels with his sonic screwdriver, the original Doctor looks more closely. He berates the Twelfth Doctor for not noticing the asymmetrical features of the woman's face, blaming his use of the sunglasses instead of his eyes. The Twelfth Doctor shyly agrees, and his younger self throws the sunglasses to the ground.

Cast

The Tenth Planet
And introducing Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor

Uncredited

The Tenth Planet

Invasion of the Dinosaurs

Genesis of the Daleks

Arc of Infinity

The Happiness Patrol

The Night of the Doctor

The Day of the Doctor

The Parting of the Ways

The Waters of Mars

Journey's End

The Pandorica Opens

Crew

General production staff

Script department

Camera and lighting department

Art department

Costume department

Make-up and prosthetics

Movement

Casting

General post-production staff

Special and visual effects

Sound



Not every person who worked on this adventure was credited. The absence of a credit for a position doesn't necessarily mean the job wasn't required. The information above is based solely on observations of the actual end credits of the episodes as broadcast, and does not relay information from IMDB or other sources.


References

Culture

Technology

Biology

  • Rusty scans the Twelfth Doctor, noticing his life signs are failing.
  • When the First and Twelfth Doctors shake hands, regeneration energy glows intensely from them.

Food and beverages

Art

Sport

People

  • Captain Lethbridge-Stewart and a German soldier both have no desire to kill the other, wishing the other spoke English and German, respectively.
  • Everyone except the Doctors, the Captain and the glass avatars freeze on the spot when time freezes.
  • The First Doctor remarks that it's a shame Polly Wright isn't around, saying that the Twelfth Doctor's TARDIS is in dire need of dusting.
  • Bill Potts returns to the Doctor's side.
  • Bill tells the Doctor about Heather, the sentient oil girl, coming back for her, to which the Twelfth Doctor notes "how romantic".
  • Bill asks the First Doctor about his reason for running away from Gallifrey.
  • The Doctor finds Rusty inside a tower in Villengard.
  • Rusty projects a video of a Professor Helen Clay.
  • Clara Oswald appears to the Twelfth Doctor, and his memories of her return.
  • Nardole returns to say goodbye to the Doctor.
  • Nardole reveals that he had nipples made of glass, and that he has invisible hair.

Species

  • The First Doctor asks the Twelfth Doctor if he is a Time Lord.
  • The Twelfth Doctor says the First Doctor was "weak as a kitten".
  • A bird freezes mid-air.
  • Glass avatars, part of the Testimony, are creatures with ability to freeze time and extract memories and personality of a dying person so they will remain forever.
  • The TARDIS team encounters Kaled mutants which have mutated even further.
    • The Captain first thinks they are rats, saying he is used to those.

Locations

Events

The Doctor

  • Due to the timelines being out-of-sync, the First Doctor forgets trying not to regenerate and so the Twelfth Doctor does not remember it.
  • The First Doctor's face is, according to Twelve, "all over the place" as a result of him trying to hold off his regeneration. This also results in him regaining the strength he had lost during his fight with the Cybermen on Snowcap.
  • The First Doctor doesn't know who his future self is, and keeps denying it even after the Twelfth Doctor reveals himself to him. Only after the Testimony shows him snippets of his future does he finally give in and accept it.
    • The First Doctor first thinks the Twelfth Doctor is another Time Lord trying to capture him for running away with a TARDIS.
      • The First Doctor later attempts to make the Captain understand better, saying that the Twelfth Doctor is his nurse, however improbable due to him being a man.
  • The First Doctor tells the Twelfth Doctor that he assumed he would get a younger appearance after regenerating.
  • The Twelfth Doctor tells the First Doctor that between those two there are "a few false starts".
  • The Twelfth Doctor calls the First Doctor Mister Pastry.
  • The Doctor is called "The Destroyer of Worlds", "The Imp of the Pandorica", "The Oncoming Storm", "The Shadow of the Valeyard", "The Beast of Trenzalore", "The Butcher of Skull Moon", "The Last Tree of Garsennon", "The Destroyer of Skaro" and "the Doctor of War".
  • The Twelfth Doctor calls the First Doctor Mary Berry.
  • The Twelfth Doctor attempts to distract the First Doctor with the blinking lights on his astral map after his unfavourable remark to Bill about Twelve needing her for cleaning his TARDIS.
  • The First Doctor admits to being afraid of regeneration.
  • The Twelfth Doctor calls himself Corporal Jones.
  • The First Doctor says he travel around to get a question answered about why there is good and evil in the universe and how the balance is held between the two.
  • The Twelfth Doctor admits to only pretending to like Bill's rug.
  • The First Doctor regenerates into the Second Doctor.
  • The jacket that he wore on his trip to Spiridon as the Third Doctor is hanging in the Twelfth Doctor's TARDIS.
  • The Twelfth Doctor regenerates into the Thirteenth Doctor.
  • The Twelfth Doctor's ring falls off of the Thirteenth Doctor's hand, as it doesn't fit on her finger.

TARDIS

  • The First Doctor calls the TARDIS "the Ship".
  • The First Doctor remarks on the exterior changes; the windows being the wrong size, the blue colouring having changed and its size having expanded.
    • The Twelfth Doctor says its size is because of all those years having been "bigger on the inside".
  • The First Doctor disaproves of the Twelfth Doctor's TARDIS, saying about the console room that it is "the flight deck of the most powerful space time machine in the known universe, not a restaurant for the French".
  • The Twelfth Doctor still has blackboards in his TARDIS.
  • Bill remarks the windows are the wrong size.
  • The First Doctor's TARDIS has a name tag on the console that says Bernard Wilkie.
  • The Cloister Bell rings in the Twelfth Doctor's TARDIS, before he regenerates.
  • The Twelfth Doctor's TARDIS interior ends up exploding due to "Multiple Operations Failures" after the Thirteenth Doctor causes a "Systems Crisis" by clicking a red button on the console. The exploding TARDIS throws out the Doctor as it dematerialises.

Music

Story notes

  • The cinematic release featured two documentaries: The End of an Era, a retrospective and behind-the-scenes look, before the showing, and Twice Upon a Time at the end, an in-depth look into the making of this Christmas special.
  • Twice Upon a Time features a "Previously on Doctor Who..." sequence saying "709 Episodes ago" and showing footage from TV: The Tenth Planet with William Hartnell, Anneke Wills and Michael Craze as the First Doctor, Polly Wright and Ben Jackson respectively. The footage slowly morphs Hartnell into David Bradley, and Lily Travers and Jared Garfield then appear as Polly and Ben, who then proceed to reenact the missing bits on Snowcap from said episode.
  • This story features a rare instance in which actors that only appeared through use of archive footage were also credited. Another notable instance of this happening is TV: The Day of the Doctor.
  • Rachel Talalay had actually shot a number of scenes from The Tenth Planet, with a complete set reconstruction, recast characters, and the series 10 Mondasian Cybermen. She said in an interview that she tried to make both the set, and the cinematography, as accurate to the original scenes, and original production values, as much as possible. She did admit to having fun with some parts of the set in particular, and embellishing with a "60s feel", and noted that some details of the action had to be invented. These scene recreations were not used in the final edit of Twice Upon a Time; the original footage was used in its place. However, these specially shot re-tellings were shown in the cinema feature DOC: Twice Upon a Time.[6]
  • The First and Twelfth Doctors meeting also features the scene acted out differently in TV: The Doctor Falls and Twice Upon a Time, similar to how episodes in the 60s reshooting the prior scene’s cliffhanger, often resulting in little differences. The same situation also occured when TV: The Runaway Bride followed the TV: Doomsday cliffhanger 11 years prior.
  • The recreated Hartnell TARDIS interior set actually included props from the original set in the 1960s. As told by Mark Gatiss, these included the brass pillars, which are indeed the brass pillars from way back in 1963. Other aspects of the set were recreated.[6]
  • The Twelfth Doctor's regeneration has a new visual effect, and even sound effect, to those used previously in the BBC Wales series. Resembling slow travelling, elongated golden lightning. It is the first regeneration for the Doctor, since the Seventh Doctor's in 1996, to use an effect which is visually distinct from that seen in The Parting of the Ways, with the Ninth Doctor up to The Doctor Falls.
  • Toby Whithouse, with his performance here as the German soldier, is the second person to be involved in the BBC Wales series as both actor and writer, following Mark Gatiss.
  • The First Doctor's amazement and confusion about the Twelfth Doctor's sonic screwdriver would appear to contradict PROSE: Venusian Lullaby, which features the screwdriver used by the First Doctor.
  • This is the third consecutive regeneration story to include the word "time" in the title, following The End of Time and The Time of the Doctor.
  • This is the second multi-Doctor story to feature a regeneration, and the first in which it is the current incarnation of the Doctor who is shown to regenerate.
  • Nikki Amuka-Bird is credited as "Helen Clay" on-screen, and as "The Glass Woman" in Radio Times.
  • When Bill's glass avatar and the Doctor talk and she restores his memories of Clara Oswald, the music from The Husbands of River Song when the Doctor and River were on a date before the Singing Towers of Darillium plays.
  • On the last day of filming, Mark Gatiss brought in the jacket that Jon Pertwee wore in TV: Planet of the Daleks. It was featured hanging from a stand in the background in the Twelfth Doctor's TARDIS during the regeneration scene.[7] He also published a Behind the scenes picture of Capaldi wearing the jacket.[8]
  • Nardole having invisible hair was already jokingly stated by Steven Moffat in a BBC post episode interview. There he also stated that Nardole was the only one able to see it through his glasses and that it was purple.[9] Matt Lucas had been aware of the invisible hair, but not the glass nipples.[6]
  • The Twelfth Doctor's final lines about his name and how humans would understand it are directly taken from a theory Capaldi stated at a press screening interview of The Pilot.[7]
  • The Twelfth Doctor's line "never, ever eat pears" is a tweaked version of the one in a hidden scene in TV: Human Nature by the Tenth Doctor. It was also said in TV: Hell Bent by the Twelfth Doctor.
  • This is the first regeneration story in the revived series without any direct connections to the Last Great Time War.
  • This is the third televised multi-Doctor story, after TV: The Two Doctors and Time Crash, that is not an anniversary special. It's also the first televised Christmas special to also be a multi-Doctor story.
    • Time Crash was also written by Steven Moffat.

Ratings

  • 5.70 million (UK overnight)[10]

Filming locations

to be added

Production errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.
  • Bill's shirt changes constantly throughout the entire episode, from the rainbow shirt that was seen in Smile, to a new shirt which we have not seen before.
    • However, this could be attributed to the fact that this version of Bill is a collection of her memories and not her physical self.
  • After the Captain requests a favor from the Doctors, the First Doctor can be heard saying "Oh, anything. Name it," but his mouth is not actually moving after the word "oh."
  • During the scene in which the soldiers are playing football, the shot is flipped. This is visible due to the soldier's uniforms.
  • The Twelfth Doctor begins regeneration with his back to the stairs, but immediately following regeneration, the Thirteenth Doctor is standing at a different angle and is further away from the stairs.
  • When the Doctor catches herself from falling through the TARDIS doors with her foot, her boot briefly changes to a different shoe.
  • In the shot where the Doctor falls through the TARDIS doors, the bottom-right section of wall has clearly been digitally extended on the last frame.

Continuity

Home video releases

DVD releases

to be added

Blu-ray releases

to be added

Digital releases

to be added

External links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Archival footage from TV: The Tenth Planet.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 In archival footage
  3. ↑ In footage from TV: The Waters of Mars, the Tenth Doctor says, "they all died."
  4. ↑ In archival footage from TV: Journey's End, Davros names the Doctor "Destroyer of Worlds!"
  5. ↑ In archival footage, a Cyberman from TV: The Pandorica Opens is heard saying, "You will be assimilated."
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 DOC: Twice Upon a Time
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Doctor Who: The Fan Show – 2017 Christmas Special
  8. ↑ Peter Capaldi wearing Jon Pertwee's jacket from 'Planet of the Daleks'
  9. ↑ Doctor Who: The Fan Show - The Aftershow Ep 1
  10. ↑ Ratings; DoctorWho TV
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For the purposes of this list, a "regeneration story" is one in which a regeneration is actually and initially depicted. For this reason The War Games is not included below, even though it is commonly thought of as a "regeneration story". It doesn't actually include a clear scene of regeneration, and the preponderance of stories in other media confirms that the Second Doctor did not regenerate at the end of it.
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