Doctor Who finale granted Capaldi his heart’s desire
Saturday’s (BBC One) was more than just a series finale. It was, in many ways, an era finale. Time is almost up for star Peter Capaldi and showrunner Steven Moffat, both of whom vacate their roles after the Christmas special. But for companions Pearl Mackie and Matt Lucas, as well as mortal enemyturned-companion of sorts Michelle Gomez, it really was over. All three made their exit, thus beginning the process of tying up loose ends for the arrival of new boss Chris Chibnall.
And what a way for poor Bill Potts (Mackie) to go. Having your physical body mushed up and effectively poured into the shell of a Cyberman, while your consciousness remains the same, is the sort of watch-from-behindthe-sofa stuff that Doctor Who is famous for. But, being a family show, somehow Bill was rescued by Heather, the woman with whom she’d had a passing flirtation in her first episode but who had been kidnapped by a haunted puddle (long story).
It had been a wish long-held by Capaldi for his Doctor to face a very, very old foe: the Mondasian Cybermen, a different race from the ones famous for walking down the steps near St Paul’s Cathedral. And so in this finale, his wish was granted, with the Time Lord attempting to save a band of humans from a growing army of them.
The episode was as nerdy as superfans could hope for, without derailing the enjoyment for occasional viewers. References to Whovian history were peppered throughout, from the Doctor’s echoed lament of “I don’t want to go” (David Tennant said the same thing before his regeneration), to the inspired return of the brilliant John Simm as the Master. Together, Simm and the magnificent Gomez as Missy (who is a later version of the same rogue Time Lord) made a fantastic duo as they quibbled over whether to stand with the Doctor or continue their villainous ways. It was a shame that by the end of the episode the possibility of the two teaming up again had been eradicated.
The threat of regeneration loomed over the whole two-parter, as the Doctor’s hands began to intermittently glow. Though we knew that Capaldi was supposed to be back for the Christmas special, there was always a chance of that being a bluff and the new Doctor making an unexpected appearance. But instead we were given an entirely different surprise – not the next Doctor but the very first one.
In the closing seconds, David Bradley, who played William Hartnell in the Doctor Who biopic An Adventure in Space and Time, appeared out of the shadows to greet number 12. The first and latest Doctor teaming up for a Christmas adventure? That should prove a fascinating swansong for the current era.
‘The scale of the television revolution on the make-up of our daily lives is impossible to overestimate,” said Lord Bragg at the outset of Melvyn Bragg on TV – The Box that Changed the World (BBC Two, Saturday). It’s impossible to encapsulate, too, in the space of two informative but far too intense hours of clips followed by panel discussion, followed by clips, followed by panel…
In the end, it was like attending one of those conferences where you’re assailed by information and emerge hours later with your head spinning. Which is not to say that there wasn’t much to appreciate here. Inevitably, any survey of the 80-year history of British television is going to throw up endless fabulous clips and memories, many of them capable of producing instantly pleasurable responses or transporting us back to where we were in our lives when we first saw them.
Still, Bragg’s intention was rather more serious than that. He wanted to “make sense of the momentous impact television has had on the lives of just about every one of us”. Which is a bit like wanting to make sense of the whole of art, or science, in one go. To do so he invited lots of TV folk to sit around a table and talk about it with him. Which, ironically, was a format more suited to a radio show like his own Radio 4 show, In Our Time.
Indeed, for a programme celebrating television, this one was unwilling to use the tricks learnt over the decades to encourage us to keep watching.
Perhaps I’m being unfair. This was a live event filmed at Bafta after all. The panellists were among the most talented and powerful people working in broadcasting. And Bragg made a credible case for television being the most socially, politically and culturally influential medium of the latter half of the 20th century, and beyond.
But that in itself didn’t make this a great piece of television. It was too long and really wasn’t the way to spend a Saturday night in front of the box. Doctor Who
Melvyn Bragg on TV – the Box That Changed the World