Doctor Who spoilers follow.
Who knew it would all come down to something as simple as a game of catch – with not one, but two Doctors – just moments after a not-to-be-forgotten homicidal dance montage to 'Spice Up Your Life'?
After three anniversary specials that placed us firmly and blissfully in the crosshairs of a nostalgia play, the moment we had all been waiting for, when David Tennant would sunbeam into Ncuti Gatwa, arrived. Albeit 20 minutes earlier than anticipated and bearing a new piece of Doctor Who lore which will irrevocably alter the show.
Instead of morphing into the Fifteenth Doctor, the Fourteenth essentially birthed him, atop a helipad with Neil Patrick Harris's devious Toymaker looking on with a smirk full of too many teeth. Here, Russell T Davies introduced the fresh concept of "bigeneration" into the Whoniverse.
Davies has already teased the ripple effects this will have on the show as a whole, explaining this moment has bigenerated the entire lineage, so every previous Doctor is now wandering out there somewhere in the time vortex.
"I think all of the Doctors came back to life with their individual TARDISs, the gift of the Toymaker, and they're all out there travelling round in what I'm calling a Doctorverse," he said in the episode's commentary. We'll pause here for a moment to try and process what that might mean.
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Aside from the new mythos of the moment, once we could bathe in Tennant and Gatwa's magnetic chemistry, the bigeneration began to feel like a natural progression, gifting Davies the elbow room to usher in the Fifteenth Doctor with a fresh slate.
'The Day of the Doctor' told us that the Tenth was "the man who regrets", while Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor was "the man who forgets" and even though we can see differences in Tennant's two Time Lord iterations, he was still just as introspective this time around.
Throughout the three 60th specials, we saw pained flickers of the Doctor agonising over his recent history, whether it be The Flux or the demise of a string of companions. But while Donna (Catherine Tate) tried to probe what had happened, the appearance of Mad Aunty Mel (Bonnie Langford) touched on how the Doctor's companions only ever see a brief sliver of the Time Lord's life and might then never be mentioned again.
If the three episodes, traversing from Earth to the edge of the universe and back, were all in search of closure, it seems the Fourteenth Doctor got that from a warm embrace with the Fifteenth Doctor. It was only his own self who could truly understand what it is to be the Doctor and to have lived his many, varied lives.
Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer's finale expansion of Slayerdom beyond the lonely life of the Chosen One, having another person to share that burden with transforms Fourteen into someone who can now have the one adventure he told Rose he would never be able to: live a life day after day, with the Noble-Temples.
The decision to bring Tennant back allowed a shift from a Doctor who said he didn't want to leave when he regenerated as the Tenth, to one who said it was time moments before he bigenerated. It was an opportunity to find closure for the man who has regrets and to tend to a number of the defining wounds of his recent life.
Beyond that, it seems a logical step to tie up the big, unwieldy storylines from previous seasons, to create a fresh slate for Gatwa to make his own mark unburdened by the trauma of the Doctor's recent past.
This is not to say that regenerating – or even bigenerating – is like downloading a new iOS system and jettisoning all that has gone before. But going by the episode labels on iPlayer, which has separated this new era out into its own bundle from 2023 onwards, Gatwa's Doctor is going to be a reset of sorts.
You might have now wrapped your head around that new lore, so we can start to hypothesise about how this major bisecting of the Time Lord timeline could result in some familiar faces strolling back onto our screens one day not too far from now.
But it also ushers in a new Doctor Who jumping-off point for Gatwa's Doctor, Ruby (Millie Gibson) and the brand spanking new accessible TARDIS.
Doctor Who's 'The Church on Ruby Road' will air on Christmas Day (December 25).
Previously Deputy TV Editor at Digital Spy and, before that, a TV Reporter at The Mirror, Rebecca can now be found crafting expert analysis of the TV landscape, when she's not talking on the BBC or Times Radio about everything from the latest season of Bridgerton or The White Lotus to whatever chaos is unfolding in the various Love Island villas. When she's not bingeing a boxset, in-the-wild sightings of Rebecca have included stints on the National TV Awards and BAFTAs red carpets, and post-match video explainers of the reality TV we're all watching.
