Twelve Thoughts
I’m staggering into well-trod ground here, I realize, but bear with me. I’m going to lay out a series of thoughts, and let’s see where they may lead.
Thought #1: Steven Moffat has been on a mission lately to wrap up dangling story threads, from River Song and her screwdriver to Simm’s regeneration into Gomez, to the “missing” regenerations between old series and new, to generally resetting the show to its factory settings (as well as that’s even a thing) for the next show-runner to make use of at will — putting Gallifrey back in the sky, putting the Doctor on the run, returning major foes to recurring status. Not all of these threads are his own; some, he inherited from Davies. Some predate Davies, to an extent. If there’s a loop to close, late-era Moffat has gone out of his way to close it.
Thought #2: Moffat also has gone out of his way to cater to Capaldi’s whims. Capaldi said over and over how much he’d like to face off against the Mondasian Cybermen; how if he was to go out, how great it would be to be done in by one of them. Moffat scoffed, and he scoffed. But, look what happened. He’s been sending the scripts (e.g., the upcoming special) past Capaldi for review, taking on board minor and major suggestions, and altering them accordingly. In turn, Capaldi, being a fan since the show’s beginning, has his share of suggestions — not all realistic, but many well-informed and well-intentioned.
Thought #3: In wrapping up his era — in fact, the whole “revival” era of Doctor Who — Moffat is not only returning the show to its factory settings. He’s bringing Capaldi back to his own first memories of the show. Capaldi gets his own Mondasian Cybermen, which is fine — and then as he denies his regeneration he’s transported back to the Doctor’s first encounter with those same Cybermen, which is in turn the Doctor’s first regeneration. Dramatically, this is some good stuff: some by-the-book thematic mirroring, to draw clear metaphors and enhance semiotic coherence amongst far-flung events, creating a sense of epiphany and oneness. It’s kind of like Chekhov’s Gun, or advanced intercutting (a technique with which Moffat overtly experimented throughout series 8, e.g. in “Listen” and “Into the Dalek”), in terms of James Burke-ing a sense of holistic significance on the chaotic and often desperate causality that tends to define the show’s narrative.
Thought #4: Moffat not only hews to Capaldi’s whims; he also seems to take an impish glee in running with off-handed remarks that tickle him enough for Moffat to make mental notes, e.g. the Doctor’s electric guitar. There were no plans to insert an electric guitar into the show, but after the first series Moffat asked Capaldi what changes he’d like to see; Capaldi had no clue, so, being an ex punk rocker, he joked about putting a guitar amp in the console room. Of course that would be silly; he just didn’t didn’t know how to respond to the question, in that moment. So, for no reason other than to rise to the ridiculousness of the suggestion, Moffat did as he wasn’t really told. Likewise at a convention panel, in response to Moffat’s canned joke about Hartnell not returning his calls for the 50th anniversary special Capaldi fleetingly suggested they could have got David Bradley in. And Moffat had a Larry David moment, staring off into space and thinking, “Oh.” So, lo, William Hartnell’s impostor is the Fender Stratocaster of series 10.
Thought #5: There is one glaring, famous unresolved thread of continuity to this series that presents itself in every clip show, at the show’s every anniversary, that people tend to collectively pull up their collars and avoid mentioning, lest they stray into “Paul McGann is the Rani” territory. You just don’t go there, for some reason, like it’s an unwritten law. For someone of Moffat’s impulses and humor, that challenge must seem awfully tempting.
Thought #6: Moffat is not exactly known for the expansiveness of his toolbox. In Capaldi’s era he’s become more adept at using his few tricks more constructively to tell meaningful stories, as opposed to flashing them around at the audience to show how shiny his tools all are (see: the Matt Smith era). Still, his scripts are typified by a few concepts that he uses over and over again. For instance, out-of-sync relationships with extreme time gaps. We first see this with Reinette, where we meet her as a girl, then a few minutes later as an adult, then eventually the Doctor pauses too long yammering about the plot only to find her dead — that he just missed her by moments. The same concept is remixed a bit for River Song, is worked into a monster-based story for “Blink” (e.g., when Sally turns her back only for Kathy to turn up dead, her note for Sally as delivered by a relative echoing Reinette’s for the Doctor), becomes basically the entire basis for Amy Pond, nearly becomes Clara’s exit in “Last Christmas”, and has some of its final echoes in the way Capaldi’s Doctor misses Bill by just a few hours, as a result of getting distracted by exposition back at the top of the ship. Moffat has a half-dozen patterns that he uses over and over, but this one seems to be his favorite.
Thought #7: Earlier, between the filming of series 8 and 9, a certain actor from the show’s past visited the current production and was shown by Capaldi around the TARDIS set. He said to that actor, oh, you need to come back, seriously. Then he went to Moffat, and said, oh, Steven, wouldn’t it be great to see them back? Moffat gave a non-committal response, as one does to that luvvie nonsense. Yeah, sure. Everyone should come back. Put them all in a boat with a single oar, and see what happens. We’ll broadcast it exclusively in IMAX at 2 a.m. Apply in the affirmative; nod and smile; yes, of course, let’s do it. Now let’s move on.
Thought #8: As further evidenced by the selling point of the forthcoming Christmas special, Moffat sort of a has a thing for screwing around with Hartnell’s continuity. He’s had Clara visit the Doctor as a young boy, then several hundred years later shown a splinter of her interfere with the Doctor’s choice of an escape capsule. Outside of the modern era, there’s no other part of the classic series that Moffat has shown such a significant and repeated interest in reinterpreting. This interest is starting to border on an obsession, and considering that Moffat is now brazenly dancing into the events surrounding Hartnell’s regeneration — something already fairly well-documented if one ignores that the episode in question is in fact missing — one wonders how deep this obsession will go.
Thought #9: Throughout series 10 — and here, if you’ve somehow been glazed over with my argument so far, you should be ready to groan — the Doctor has two photographs on his desk, representing the painful dangling threads of his family. One of those, Moffat took the care to resolve two Christmases ago, so for us her portrait is more of a recent, rather warm, reminder — though for the Doctor it’s a certain recent and raw trauma, as obliquely addressed in his Missy flashbacks. The other portrait is the one we’re not supposed to talk about, lest we look like total loons. And yet there it is, receiving regular camera focus — a recent continuity reminder, sitting with equal status beside what we must interpret as another deep-dive continuity reference, of the sort the show seems to do more and more under Moffat (e.g., Hartnell’s face turning up on that dingy machine in “Vincent and the Doctor”). Which is fine. Though, the camera really does like to focus there.
Thought #10: It has become something of a modern series cliche at this point that at the moment of regeneration the Doctor revisits the companions of his recent past. David Tennant’s narcissistic Doctor claimed his “reward” by visiting every major companion of his era, including threatening to bring on a paradox by visiting Rose several months before she ever met him — or, rather, met his previous incarnation. Smith’s Doctor had his weird “Head Amy” moment while Clara stared on. The recent trailer confirmed that Pearl Mackie is making one last round this Christmas, despite apparently having left in the previous episode, and well-informed whispers suggest that her predecessor has also put in at least a cameo.
Thought #11: At the start of the recent trailer, we were graced with a tampered Hartnell quote. It wasn’t the quote, the quote that you’ll always expect someone to use, for instance at the start of The Five Doctors (the previous time that Hartnell’s Doctor was recast with a not-quite lookalike); it was a moment from Hartnell’s final serial, into the final moments of which Moffat has chosen to insert his own final script for the show — in much the way that Hartnell’s visage weirdly morphs into David Bradley, to misdeliver his last few words. The quote used for the trailer was appropriate for its provenance, and yet because of its positioning and because of the expectations set about by prior art, it is conspicuously not the quote that we’re looking for. If anything, it seems to undermine that expectation. To read in some possibly unwarranted motivation, almost to misdirect from that expected quote — and by so doing, to create a dissonance that sets up a certain subconscious expectation.
Thought #12: In the recent past, Moffat has shown great willingness to bring back old characters when it suits the story, and to totally refuse to unless it does. In the forthcoming special alone, we’re already bringing back the (recast) first Doctor, and — to enormous surprise — a recast Polly Wright in some capacity. Clearly bringing back the two of them suits the story that he wants to tell about Capaldi’s Doctor. About facing the regrets and the pain and exhaustion that prevent him from feeling entitled to, or even to want, redemption. It seems to me there’s one deep regret that the Doctor has never addressed, that his fourth and twelfth incarnations may both share with a similar (if in one case more present) ache. If the Doctor is going to move on, and unreservedly accept a new, unburdened life, it may be some therapy to release that pain.
All of which is to say, the Doctor never did come back, did he. At least, not in dramatic terms, in the primary continuity of the television show. He made a bad call, and he knows it, and he’s been avoiding it ever since.
And, all things considered, it seems to me this may at last be his moment of catharsis.