Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song

We can all relax; it was entertaining.

If we’re being completely honest, Steven Moffat’s first venture into writing a season special for Doctor Who was ok, his second was pretty bad and his third was pretty dark and kind of killed Christmas. I mean the Christmas specials have never been that good, given the difficult task of working in a continuing narrative, maintaining continuity and staying light hearted enough. The last point has always been Moffat’s problem. “A Christmas Carol” was essentially the Doctor accidentally pushing someone a day closer to death, every Christmas in order to save his friends.

This episode opts for a far more lighthearted turn…with the Doctor going toe-to-toe with a genocidal cyborg.

Alex Kingston is back as River Song, the twist; this time she doesn’t know who she’s talking to. As far as she’s concerned, the Doctor died/will die on Trenzalore, so there’s no possible way there could be another one of him. Err that doesn’t make sense, since that event was rewritten by the Time Lords, so surely the history that she based her knowledge on would have been rewritten too, meaning – you know what; it’s Christmas; Moffat can have this one.

Kingston and Capaldi have pretty good chemistry, which is good, given that Moffat seems to have taken to writing scripts as character focused pieces rather than stories. This is a good decision given the ending of the episode, although it does involve retconning a small section of Matt Smith’s tenure.

The comic talents of Greg Davies and Matt Lucas are much appreciated if a little underused (Davies spends half the episode asleep).

The ending does get a little bit serious, but in fairness, Moffat did say that he wrote this before his contract was renewed, so you can see why he wanted to essentially tie off everything he’s put together over the last few years.

So yeah…entertaining….

Doctor Who: Last Christmas

Alien, The Thing and Inception. Being self-aware of where you’re getting your ideas is ok, but I’m not sure about this one.

So, I liked this episode…kind of…I liked the claustrophobic sets, I liked Nick Frost’s Santa and I liked he self-aware references to all the films that were making a more than significant contribution to the story. The problem is that if you’ve seen one of those films, the big twist of the episode isn’t really a twist. In fact, if you’ve seen “Amy’s Choice” then the third act twist won’t be a surprise at all.

But that aside, this is pretty fun to watch, Santa is a pretty good addition and watching Nick Frost run through the logistics of Christmas Eve is quite fun.

Capaldi is on top form as always. He seems to be toning down his Scottish accent and using a Tom Baker voice for some parts, which is an interesting choice.

Coleman is on similar form, though she doesn’t seem to be able to do a old-person voice.

The rest of the cast are all fine, but seem to fade into the background a little bit, one of them being a red-shirt.

But the purpose of the episode becomes more evident as it goes on. This is about resetting things to the way they were before the events of “Death in Heaven”. That’s slightly disappointing, since Moffat crafts a pretty good and suitably emotional way to write Clara out in this very episode. In fact you get the impression that he was among those who didn’t know whether Coleman would sign on for another series.

But anyway, everything’s back to normal aboard the TARDIS and back in place for series 9.

Regenerated or Resurrected?

Steven Moffat has revealed that, as many have speculated, Matt Smith is the last life of the Doctor. To give context, a Time Lord has thirteen lives, facilitated by 12 regeneration cycles. The War Doctor took up one of those cycles and the Tenth Doctor wasted one in order to heal himself in “Journey’s End”. This means that when Ten regenerated into Eleven he used his last regeneration cycle and is no longer capable of brining himself back to life in a different body.

So how’s he gonna do it?

Peter Capaldi has the role; he even appeared as the Twelfth Doctor in “The Day of The Doctor”so how will he survive.

Theories:

The limit is artificial:

It could be that the higher ups in Time Lord society, such a Rassilon and other members of the council could regenerate as many times as they wanted and that lowers such as the Doctor and the Master were limited as a means of ultimate control over them. Part of the Second Doctor’s punishment at the conclusion of his trial was to be forced to regenerate, effectively bringing him one cycle closer to the limit; a warning shot if you like, to tell him to stop breaking the rules or they’d burn out all his lives. This also showed that the Time Lords could control aspects of the Doctor’s regeneration such as his appearance; meaning that they could feasibly have the power to control how many times one could regenerate.

Of course this theory doesn’t really stand up as if they artificially controlled the regeneration cycles, there’s no reason that they wouldn’t have just stripped him of his ability to regenerate at all and told him he was welcome to break the rules, in the knowledge that when one his adventures inevitably got him killed he’d be dead for good. The revived series has also demonstrated that the process is born out of regenerative energy, which would suggest that the limit is caused by this energy being too depleted to bring a Time Lord back to life properly. In fact the Master attempted to regenerate after exhausting his cycles and turned into a disgusting hooded creature, presumably a half regenerated body.

The Doctor Will be Resurrected

So Gallifrey is still out there somewhere and the Doctor is tasked with finding it. Add to that that Capaldi’s Doctor didn’t seem to be present on Trenzalore (at the Doctor’s grave) and all indications are that Matt Smith’s Doctor will die and be buried at Trenzalore and then the new Doctor will be the product of a Time Lord resurrection, something the Time Lords reserve only when absolutely necessary; like bringing the long dead Master back for the Time War. If the Doctor were to be responsible for bringing the whole of Gallifrey back from the Pocket Universe, he may be rewarded by another life cycle. He would still be dead and buried at Trensalore, but the Twelf Doctor would effectively be a new First Doctor, with a full set of new regeneration cycles, like the new Master. This is the most likely way around the limit and does fit with the established grave of the Doctor.

But who truly knows? Steven Moffat could simply be lying about not being able to break the rules as he frequently has in the past. But after what I consider a very successful 50^th anniversary, I am confident that whatever he comes up with will be clever and entertaining.