“Memories. You’re talking about memories.” — Rick Deckard, Blade Runner
It almost seems like a no-brainer that Steven Moffat should craft his final hour of Doctor Who — a finish line he crosses alongside leading man Peter Capaldi — as a meditation on the power of memories. Following the episode proper, Moffat revealed in the half-hour BBC America wrap-up special that he’d always intended to come back and fix this Doctor’s missing memories of his longest-serving companion, Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman, who appears here for all of 30 seconds). This mission seems to have been the springboard of the entire concept of “Twice Upon a Time,” which is surely one of the least bombastic, most thoughtful Christmas specials the series has produced.
Beyond the narrative, the no-brainer part really comes into play when one considers that Moffat has been waist-deep in Doctor Who for the last seven years as executive producer, and at least knee-deep as a writer for the five years prior to that. He’s been crafting how we view this TV series since the very first season of the revival way back in 2005, when he unleashed “Are you my mummy?” on an unsuspecting public, and he’s barely had time to look back since. Perhaps this final hour was his chance to walk down memory lane by reintroducing the incarnation of the Doctor that started it all, and toying with the notion that more than anything else, memories make us who we are. After 12 years of working on the show, coupled with a lifetime of fandom before that, there can be no doubt that Steven Moffat’s memories are often overflowing with Doctor Who.
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Graphic courtesy Design by Stuart Manning.
