kafjsakjilmi REVIEW: While I don't think that the characterization of the 1st Doctor as sexist was a very good idea, it wasn't too bothersome. Capaldi was great and is the best actor to ever play the Doctor (his performances in Heaven Sent, The Doctor Falls, and the Zygon Inversion are nothing short of BAFTA worthy), Pearl Mackie gave a wonderful, emotional performance, and Mark Gatiss was very good too. I thought the ending speech was contrived. Capaldi's farewell to Nardole and Bill was much better. The direction was good, as was the score, and I really liked the Testimony. I give Twice Upon a Time an 8.5 out of 10.----------------------To those unsure about a female Doctor, From someone who was against the idea before. I think it could really help the show's ratings and make it feel exciting and fresh again. As for who the next Doctor is, Jodie Whittaker was good in Broadchurch and great in ADULT LIFE SKILLS- but she's just incredible in JOURNEYMAN. If you are unsure about her as the Doctor, please go watch it. She gives a masterclass in acting without ever looking like she's trying. Her performance is one of the best I've seen all year. I'm sure she will be a wonderful Doctor.

nekosensei I never really understood why DW Christmas specials tend to be so morbid and maudlin until I realized that they were meant to be watched by British extended families who'd been drinking and eating together all day. So you get enslaved tortured whales pulling starships and neurotic millionaires with PTSD and nonstop gut-wrenching encounters with dead loved ones. Except of course for last year's, which was an upbeat superhero spoof designed to please DW's new international fandom. And this year's, which being Moffat's last is less tacky and bombastic than usual, maybe because he's spent so many years having his faults pointed out to him that he's more in the mood to ironically reference them than repeat them. Thus the running gag about the Twelfth Doctor nervously trying to stop the First Doctor from making sexist comments.This year we're back to the traditional DW Christmas themes of death, grief and hauntings (well, maybe I should say the traditional British Christmas themes of....), which gives Moffat one more opportunity to yank the audience's heart strings with unmercifully long rambling scenes in which characters chattily prepare themselves for death/bereavement. Capaldi, mercifully, doesn't milk these scenes for sobs but camps them up so as not to upstage the impending Jodie Whittaker. The transformation is smooth and sweet and we believe it's still him even when we can see it's her. Well done all!

jaygpeterson It gets a "C" as a story -as a end of a Doctor aka Regeneration story: D-. The only part of it that brought any emotion to me other than "Oh God, it's awful" was when "the Captain" asks for the Doctor to check in on his family and he gives his name as "Lethbridge-Stewart." And as a YouTuber "Wingy Media" said it is a far better nod to the great Brigadier (Why was he never promoted? Surely between his record and longevity and coming out of retirement, he would have at least made Major-General, if not Lieutenant-General?) than that stupid Cybermen story which was 98% bad. Wingy Media noted that there is no real threat in the story. Compared to the best regeneration stories of "Planet of the Spiders" and "Logopolis" it falls flat. Here are my nit-picky comments. Who were those moderately good looking "actors" who were supposed to be Ben and Polly? Anneke Wills was/is beautiful, the replacement Polly was looked okay but she looked like she had bleached hair. Michael Craze was a handsome chap, this guy was ordinary with an awful haircut. Michael deserved better. Now to David Bradley. He did a good job, I agree with Wingy Media the sexism of him was WAY overdone and completely unnecessary and out of context. He would not have said "smacked bottom" to someone he just met. The problem with Bradley was the way he was written. Bradley should have added some of Hartnell's fluffing to his lines. There have been three First Doctors. Richard Hurndall played him in "The Five Doctors" and was much better written. Well to be fair to Steven Moffat, "The Five Doctors" was written by Terrance Dicks.Finally, the regeneration scene: Long drawn out and a little boring until we blow up the console room again and now the Doctor falls out of the TARDIS -sorry that isn't believable outside of an atmosphere. I mean Doctor Who plays very fast with physics (I can much more readily embrace relative dimensions -I was pretty good at algebra), but falling out side of the space time capsule from at least a high altitude? Not believable: For every action there is an equal and opposite action.Post Script: Jodie Whitaker. I liked her in Broadchurch, she delivered some lines/scenes that were extraordinary. The proof will be in the acting pudding. My initial reaction to her is a bleach-haired woman as the first woman Doctor! That's sexist from the start. At least with Peter Davison they made sure his roots didn't need attention (or as Mrs. Slocombe would say, "Me roots need doin'." I would have like the first woman Doctor to be more exotic looking. I would have cast Emerald Fennell mostly known here in the USA as Nurse Patsy Mount in "Call the Midwife." She is tall and exotic looking whether in her natural blonde hair or the red of Patsy Mount. And the last side note of Jodie's 13th/14th Doctor: The outfit. Oh my God! My brother defends it saying "it's what you would expect of a man newly turned into a woman." At first I kind of agreed with that, but upon reflection: No. The man has traveled for hundreds of years with a whole bunch of beautiful and hot women with him. The wardrobe is full of their various items plus what the original material that the commissioners of this type 40 space time capsule thought it would need. My thoughts were the following top three previous outfits: Wendy Padbury's (Zoe) sparkly catsuit, Sarah Jane Smith's Andy-Pandy outfit, or Leela's skins. Those outfits would be a real nod "to the Dads."PPS: At least this story isn't the worst regeneration story. That award goes to David Tennant's two parter end which was really, really bad.

jc-osms Well we all knew how this one was going to end so it was really just a case of how also departing writer and show-runner Steven Moffat would get us there that mattered. In so doing he found a nice juicy part for his sometime collaborator Mark Gatiss with character whose identity I guessed long before the end and a story which saw us encounter the Doctor's first incarnation, plus the reincarnations, or so it seemed of Bill Potts and more briefly Nardini and more welcomely, Jenna Coleman as Clara. There was a mysterious presence going by the name of Testimony, a glass-formed creature which handily gathers and retains the memories of individuals on the verge of death, a meet-up with a reformed Dalek and of course at the climax, the at last welcome regeneration into new doc, Jodie Whittaker.For once then the doctor wasn't pitted against some galaxy threatening do-badder, although I felt the lack of any sense of danger, coupled with the inevitability of the outcome, rather took some of the edge off the episode. The commemoration of the Christmas 2014 World War 1 Armistice (remembering this episode was this year's Christmas Special), was apt and tastefully rendered. Perhaps more could have been done in the interaction between the two Doctors, although the old doc's antiquated sexist outlook couldn't have been more accidentally topical if it tried.I'll certainly miss Capaldi's waspish humour and yes, his Scottishness, but with a new writing team as well as the first ever female doctor the next season will be intriguing to say the least.I wish Ms Whittaker well in the part and will be keenly anticipating the new doctor's new adventures in the coming year.