Can I just say how immensely glad I am that Twice Upon a Time did not go out of its way to force Twelve into regenerating? I’m not even sure I can put into words how much that means. Heaven Sent showed the brutality of living through trauma. The sheer, bull-headed determination it takes to keep going when all you want is to lie down, stop fighting, and just lose. Twice Upon a Time was utterly gentle. There was no threat. No bad guys. Just a few people who were very afraid to die, and very afraid to keep going. And the fact that it did this without the need to Raise the Stakes or make it bigger or better or more explosive or more impressive is a relief - a bit of an anticlimax is, after all, good for the hearts.
For them to move through this story, to show the Doctor even the faintest fraction of hope, for him to show the sort of kindness only he can show - that fundamental message he chose his own face for, to just save someone, just one person and have that be enough - and through that show that even on the battlefield, even when the war looms, and wars upon wars after that, that in that one moment there can be kindness and goodness and hope is staggering.
For them to do this, for a man that has wanted nothing more than to stop, means so much. That they don’t use some big ridiculous threat the Doctor must agree to survive to protect the world from, to let it, at the end of it all, remain his choice whether he lives or dies, his decision, his agency, in the face of his own fears…I can’t tell you how much that means. I can’t tell you how important that is.
The Testimony are the embodiment of everything the Doctor has ever feared about regeneration. The existential dread of a new body, a new self, something dragged up out of the ether that isn’t you but is you, remembers you, remembers being you; a flesh avatar, a 3-D printed transmat you, a clone, a copy, a space puddle, a glass woman - the list is endless, take your pick. It’s why they’re important. It’s why they matter here. And it’s why, at the end, it matters so much more that the Testimony tapped into Bill and Clara.
There’s a lovely film documentary I saw a couple weeks ago about Nick Cave called 20,000 Days on Earth, and in that there’s an exceptionally poignant moment where Cave is asked about his greatest fear. And what he says is that above all he fears losing his memory. “Because memory is what we are. I think your very soul and your reason to be alive is tied up in memory.” And I keep coming back to that because it feels really really important in the context of this regeneration story.
And I think it’s why Clara’s appearance matters, more than people give it credit for. The Testimony are reflection of the Doctor somewhat, but more accurately, of Regeneration itself. He needed to not only see it as something that was not a threat, but something that, above all else, could be kind. Could give him back that piece of him that he missed, that shard of his soul he’d blocked up and thought gone for good.
Bill Potts, through Testimony, gave the Doctor the one gift that could pay him back for that shoebox of pictures. Memories for memories; a loved one for a loved one.
