Doctor Who Christmas Special 2017: What ‘Twice Upon A Time’ Really Means
4. Putting Christmas Into The Christmas Special
It is the possibility of a momentary peace on the Western Front that brings the Twelfth Doctor to his senses. He is able to reinterpret the Doctor of War as a person willing to enter the battlefield and stand on the front line in order to save lives, regardless of which side a person is fighting on.
Artic snow aside, the only Christmas reference in Twice upon a Time is the historic Christmas Truce of 1914. The Doctor uses it to save the Captain’s life, exactly for how long is unknown, but in the words of the ninth Doctor, just this once everybody lived. It is a moving scene beautifully directed by Rachel Talalay and offers hope that kindness can win the day, even if it is the exception rather than the rule.
Of course the reality was a little less romantic, not everybody followed the ceasefire and attempts to repeat in over the next two years of the war were less than successful. It led to even more concerted efforts to dehumanise the enemy, desensitise soldiers to the act of killing, and invent more ways of killing people out of sight, but history records the most moving accounts of those who experienced this interruption to the inhumane logic of war.
In The Doctor Falls, the Doctor passionately tried to persuade Missy to show kindness, but tragically did not get to see that his words hadn’t fallen on deaf ears after all. Having witnessed death and destruction in a epic scale he might be forgiven for thinking that kindness was out of reach, but here he witnesses it first hand – spontaneous and without any intervention on his part. These are the moments the Doctor lives for, and they inspire him to fight another day and to never give up believing, not in his own kindness but in the kindness of others.