[Gothmogxx]

On the 25th of December 2017, Twice Upon A Time premiered. It wasn't perfect, especially compared to World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls but for a lot of people, it was the last genuinely good Story of Doctor Who for a long time. Between 2018-2022, The Power of the Doctor was the only one that vaguely resembled anything good (because of past Doctors, Ace, Tegan, The Master, the regeneration scene etc) but the quality of the past was gone. I absolutely hated almost the entirety of the 2018-2022 period and I doubted we were ever going to get good Who again (I thought cancellation was more likely).

On Saturday, RTD brought it back. It wasn't faultless, but that was the best Story I've seen in years.

Tennant was on the ball, Tate likewise. To an extent, It felt like 2008 all over again. There is a bittersweet element to it though, knowing we only have two more Stories with them together

I liked the E.T. aspect of trying to conceal the Meep, which was a memorable alien btw, only to have it turn out that he-eh she- eh- er- yeah I'll get to that, was the villain. The Wrarth Warriors also had a nice design.

UNIT! Proper UNIT involved in shootouts (Chibnall tried to kill them off, he failed)!

But I think if I had one bit I liked the most, it was the bit everybody else already got spoiled before watching it. I had no idea that we were getting a new TARDIS interior, and I saw none of the leaks. Also, having seen the Children in Need special, where the 13th Doctor's TARDIS interior was in the background, I just assumed it was staying the same until Gatwa turned up. But that scene, where 14 and Donna went inside... It was absolutely magical. Seeing him run around there with the beautiful music: it was at that moment I knew we had Doctor Who back. It's the best interior of Nu Who and it might even be my favourite overall.

But everything comes with a price it seems, and in this case as has already been noted above, RTD isn't going to back down on the woke stuff. And by woke, I don't mean Rose. Rose was actually a good character and the idea of tackling something like that is something Doctor Who could have done well. After all, its tackled environmental issues via The Green Death, Nazi's in The Daleks and Genesis of the Daleks, North Sea Oil in Inferno, mindless warfare more times than I can count but standouts being The Silurians and The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion (I mean Capaldi's speech though). But its was all done far more cleverly because regardless of how people feel on the topic, we got towards the end and then...

One single line. One single line from Rose undone just about every part of whatever message RTD tried to sell. That stuff about a male-presenting time lord that would never think about just letting it go because he wouldn't understand? It comes completely out of nowhere: Nobody male-presenting would ever choose to just power go? Its the kind of thing that wouldn't be picked up upon if RTD wasn't trying to present that message, but in the context of this particular Story, it kind of spoiled the rest of RTD's points he was making: especially as the Doctor has been both genders...AND Rose herself picked him up on the use of "his" pronouns earlier, which was the cringiest scene in the whole thing. I just feel Doctor Who can and has done a better job invoking politics into the Stories in the past.

But that said, the rest of it was all good. Inferno would still be a masterpiece even if all 7 episodes had a 20 second scene of any random character complaining about how "the drilling is damaging to the environment, just like the drilling out at sea" or something like that (I mean it would be preachy and annoying but hey). It's not going to spoil things for me overall. I'm glad to see Doctor Who back again after Chibnall almost killed it. There will be episodes and moments like this, and episodes and moments that are very different. Part of the beauty of the show.

8/10.

Next week is supposed to be terrifying. Return of the Weeping Angels? Whatever it is, I'm actually, for the first time in years, looking forward to it!