Doctor Who - Parting Gifts

Well, Steven Moffat has hung up his timey-wimey detector and joined days long ago.

That's something that probably should have been said with the previous episode. Or the previous Christmas special plus one. Or the plus three. Because Moffat has been trying to get out of this show for half the time he's been in charge of it, and when you consider he considers the experience of dealing with fandom "rancid" it's not hard to see why it was so hard to find another replacement. I'm not saying "Ask what you can do for your showrunner" but why would anyone want to deal with all the shit internet trolls can carry out?

Ah, but Moffat had metaphorically shot himself in the foot a long, long time ago with a 1995 interview for the TSV fan club which is now notorious. No doubt you can google it yourself, but basically he spent the whole panel rubbishing Doctor Who as pitifully crap, unfit for broadcast and unworthy of note or obsession. It's not hard to feel a bit insulted at the spiteful abuse and many have quite understandably wanted Moffat to sod off if he thinks he's too good for the show. Hell, why did he ever want to run it if he hates it so much?

I, Claudius is brilliant. Doctor Who isn't.

When I look at Doctor Who I laugh at it. As a television professional, I think how did these guys get a paycheck every week? Dear god, it's bad! Nothing I've seen of the black and white stuff should have got out of the building. They should have been clubbing those guys to death! You've got an old guy in the lead who can't remember his lines; you've got Patrick Troughton and his companions - how did they get their Equity card? Explain that! They're unimaginably bad. If you look at other stuff from the Sixties they weren't crap - it was just Doctor Who. Once you get to the colour stuff some of it's watchable, but it's laughable especially when some drunk old lardie like Tom Baker is hogging the screen. Really hideous.

I wouldn't care to show it to my friends in television and say look, I think this is a great programme, because I think they might fling me out! It's shit!


Now, far be it from me to suggest it is possible to change your opinion over a fifteen year period, Moffat himself has distanced themselves from the comments. He insists he was jet-lagged, drunk and foolishly arrogant in his abilities - the fact his awesome career nose-dived directly after that New Zealand trip he declares cosmic justice for slagging off Robert Holmes as a hack. As for the rest, well, there's no denying that the rest of the panel weren't offended by Moffat's behavior, even when he was calling them all losers and insisting they should only print a New Adventure when he personally felt inclined to read one. His deliberate mockery and automatic contradiction of everything everyone else says certainly supports the idea he was "spicing things up" provocatively.

Yet it's strange it's much easier to find sincerity in hatred than love. If Moffat had, similarly pissed out of his mind and in a mood to start an argument, praised Doctor Who to high heavens would people instantly point to that as justification? Or would he be considered a toadying yes-man sucking up to the punters? Is honesty really being told what you don't want to hear? Certainly, fan expectations and for this episode in particular have been "it's more likely to be horrible crap than good." Every leaked detail has been damned as a poisonous insult, most particularly when Andy "I rewrote everything from episode one of Spearhead in Space onwards coz I hate Tom Baker" Frankham whined about Moffat messing with other people's intellectual property.

I mean... sheesh!

Anyway, there can be no doubt that Moffat is a fan. Because he and I were on the same opinion forums back in 2003 when it seemed the show was coming back with Richard E Grant as the Ninth Doctor. Oh, fandom wailed, what about Paul McGann? We wanted a regeneration scene! But the idea of bringing back an old Doctor for a story to kill him off was considered a bad move. And then, by osmosis, fans pieced together the perfect solution.

Wait for the Ninth Doctor's final story (surely after five years or so) and then bring back the Eighth Doctor! They'd meet each other, do the usual things, but be caught up in a deadly tale. The Eighth Doctor would be killed off and regenerate into the Ninth, and at the end of the story the Ninth would regenerate into the Tenth! Yes, we thought, that'll explain everything to the new audience, give PMG a decent finale and be a winner!

There's no way that Moffat would have missed that concept (which was heavily re-pitched in 2009, and indeed all the time until 2013). Note that we get the War Doctor perishing in such a manner in Day of the Doctor, before a more straightforward version in The Doctor Falls only with the Master and Missy. And now we have it done with the First Doctor, though the return to black and white stock footage does rather interrupt the narrative flow as we return to widescreen new material.

Of course this isn't the first attempt to mess about with the First Doctor's regeneration. Why? Because it was crap, that's why. Arguably The Tenth Planet would have been better without that last moment rewrite (which is why the central guest character Cutler is immediately forgotten about halfway through the fourth episode) but as Nigel Kneale has taught us, doing things first and doing things well is not the same thing. As an introduction to the Cybermen or a swansong to the Doctor, it sucks big time. Even the original version, where William Hartnell was playing the fourth incarnation of the Doctor, was a damp squib as he undergoes a painful biological cycle with as much dignity as irritable bowel syndrome. His exit was barely on screen, let alone heroic.

Big Finish tried to "epic" it up with lots of missing bits, from the Daleks in the Time War trying to stop the TARDIS reaching Snowcap to change the Doctor's life to the First Doctor's spirit being sucked out of his body to help an aged Steven fight the Vardans. But Moffat has instead focused on the First Doctor choosing to change rather than die. It's not important why he's regenerating, just whether he goes through it.

This in turn is the key to story where the sour-faced Scots bastard in charge of the show tries to cheer things up for the first time in four years. After driving every lead character to suicidal despair, robbing the dead of dignity and hope for the future even showing us the universe ending in pointless, meaningless entropy, Moffat has to convince the Doctor twice over that there is any point going on. Many will look to Capaldi's final scene for the double-entendres and script writer addressing the audience, but the First Doctor's musing that the universe is an utterly horrible place that logically has nothing of merit to offer is closer to the mark.

This I think would be the truest challenge to Moffat. His tales have always been trying to bear with tragedies - yes, everyone may live in The Doctor Dances but that's one night in one city of a World War. Are Nancy and Jamie really going to live happily ever after? Moffat himself admitted that, had outside forces not required it, Jack would have perished in that story. Reniette dies alone, forsaken and abandoned. Sally and Larry have to live in perpetual fear of Weeping Angel reprises. All the data ghosts are trapped in a computer, unable to leave it until they finally reach closure. River Song and the Ponds, Clara and Ashildr, the Osgoods, all have been defined as people who refuse to crumble under the shitstorm of cruel twists rained down on them yet all that stubbornness is shown to come to naught and they all end up dead sooner or later after much, MUCH suffering.

Asking Moffat to tell a story of life worth living is probably the most difficult task he's faced. It's much easier for him to horrify the First Doctor with tales of his future self's blood-soaked carnage, or have the Twelfth Doctor consider his life summed up by an empty battlefield with him the only survivor. The brilliant bit where the Doctor dubs a summary of his warlike life - "They cut out all the jokes!" - rings true. It's only the gags that distract us from the endless, agonizing horror of Moffat's universe. Is it any wonder that taking away the silly jokes made the Doctor hide in his pitch-dark TARDIS wondering what the hell is the point of it all?

So we get a story without an evil plan. The glass people are the antimatter opposite of Missy in the Nethersphere, ensuring whatever torments the entire human race suffered there are duplicates existing happily in the far future, with Clara and Nardole and Bill all existing on somewhere as good as alive. When a malfunctioning Auton can be properly called a resurrected Rory, there's really no line drawn. The Doctor might be the last one standing on a battlefield, but his army live on - every poor sod from Clive to Jackdaw who's carked it has not vanished into oblivion. They are gone but not forgotten and it's not the worst thing if the Doctor can't save people.

And the Doctor gets the closure of knowing Bill is off traversing the cosmos with her time-space common law wife, of having Clara returned to his memory (after two series explaining she was absolutely the worst thing to ever happen to him and render him a non-functional psychopath) without ill-effects. Their toxic and doomed friendships are hastily redefined as wonderful, bittersweet happy endings where they went their separate ways instead of utter soul-crushing disasters.

We also get Mark Gatiss as Captain Archie Lethbridge-Stewart doing a damn fine evocation of the Brigadier and everything he stands for. Yeah, he might enjoy a sexist joke but he'll not hesitate to sacrifice himself for a coloured lesbian he's never met before. He takes no pleasure in violence or warfare, but there's no doubt he'd be damn good at it should push come to shove. I doubt anyone would have blamed him for scarpering back to his own trench, but instead puts all his faith in a vaguely-defined truce to get medical attention for his German counterpart.

Given this intense timey-wimey continuity-driven tale, he even keeps a good grasp on what's happening and proves he is not the pudding-brained retard the Doctor has repeatedly declared his entire species to be. He is worthy of saving, he deserves the second chance the Doctor gives him just as the Christmas truce is something Capaldi can't jeer about with a vaguely-affectionate "aww, you fucking morons!" It is a moment of peace and understanding that Moffat doesn't tie down as being some cosmic masterplan that renders it totally meaningless.

Although a reference to Villengard takes Moffat back to his first story (or second episode anyway), the real throwback is to Silence in the Library and River Song's future nostalgia. The future is not something to be feared but looked forward to. River's tales of Matt Smith are something to be happy about rather than dreaded with certainty (which clashes with the bit where River is horrified to meet Donna Noble). Here, the First Doctor discovers his uncouth, immature future incarnation is brave enough to alter the universe for the better, and the only downer about regeneration is that it'll be a while before he gets to be Capaldi. Whereupon he'll become a suicidal emo misery guts once again - but you can't have everything, can you?

So we are reminded that the universe can be a good place and life is worth living if you pull your bloody finger out and make it better. If the Doctor wants a reason to keep going, do it him frigging self. As we finally burn away the scary Scot to the yummy Yorkshire lass - and, between you and me, it would've been nice to see the whole change for once - it's treated not as a death scene but a birth scene. There's no weeping, no railing against the unfairness of it all, not even whining about the nature of self-consciousness.

In her first scene, Jodie's Doctor is grinning, happy, healthy and fun. She's not worried about her identity crisis or whether she's a distorted echo of William Hartnell or if she's not a good person or if her companion cannot comprehend what happened. She's not just glad to get through it in one piece, she's happy about the result and in her one line of dialogue feels more comfortable as a children's hero than her predecessor managed in four years.

But of course she's not the only new Doctor in the episode.

There's plenty of concern over the "sexism" of the First Doctor, but it really was a storm in a teacup. His references to a male nurse being odd are directed at a confused and frightened WW1 soldier. His glass woman joke is meant to be a joke. His threat of a smacked bottom to Bill after she's hurled abusive mockery at his future self is mild to what he would have done if Ian had done the same - "Write a farewell note to your testicles, Chesserman! It's on!". He's far less startled to learn Bill's gay than the Captain, and his shock is mild compared to how the Doctor and Romana got awkward around Merak when he said he was straight. The only real issue is him assuming female companions dust the TARDIS but, considering his baseline for 20th Century feminism is Barbara Wright and she kept insisting she "spring clean" the time ship, it's not exactly unreasonable.

Hell, the biggest anomaly is him referring to the TARDIS as "the Ship" when he stopped that the same time Verity Lambert left. And abandoning Ben and Polly in the Arctic night twenty years in their future might have merited some comments (indeed, we could have stood to see a little more of them all said).

Frankly, David Bradley does a fine job as the First Doctor rather than William Hartnell on set. His body language, switch between the stilted "remember the words, Bill, there's a bag of chips in it for you" to the more naturalistic "yeah this is it, more or less" feels like the Doctor constantly on guard for letting slip the wrong thing. Added to his new BF adventures, he has undoubtedly earned his DWM magazine title. His Doctor, cluelessness about his future self aside, is shown to be smart, compassionate, clever and friendly. Compare his treatment of Captain Archie to the way Capaldi dealt with Journey Blue, or even the Celts a few episodes ago. This is a man who can be nice, kind, and stand up for himself without being "a complete prick everyone hates" (copyright SFX).

Ultimately, it's only Capaldi's skill with the TARDIS and knowledge of Rusty that gives him any kind of an edge over the First Doctor who deduces all the same things with all the same ease. True, Capaldi is the one who saves Captain Archie but Bradley is the one that gives him peace as he goes to his death. In short, the First Doctor is capable of being the main character for the next series just as well as his feminine descendant.

So, bar a final complaint that Moffat reduced the Daleks from harbingers of total apocalypse to the Skaroine equivalent of Bernard Black with a telephone directory, there's little left to say. It's an epilogue to everything we've seen since Capaldi screamed about his kidneys, since Smith yelled about his legs, and further still to Hartnell wondering what two schoolteachers were doing in his junkyard. To misquote CS Lewis, the school year is over and the summer holidays have begun.

Of course, it's going to be fucking ages until we get the next episode but you know what?

It'll probably be worth the wait.