Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-1293767-20151029072618/@comment-27501528-20160107085657

SOTO wrote: Heaven Sent and Hell Bent also share a director, but had a production block in between them. Same situation with Face the Raven and Sleep No More, so I'm wondering if Moffat has actually made any statements about the finale being two-part, rather than Heaven Sent being more of a Turn Left or Utopia. "Heaven Sent and Hell Bent were two wildly different episodes. Both unique, bold and startling they combined to create a two-part adventure – a hybrid, you might say – that brought Series 9 to an unforgettable finale." That's from the BBC website, on an announcement releasing the scripts for the story. So officially, definitely a two-parter.

Also as I mentioned above, even though RTD said he considered Utopia a seperate story, it's counted everywhere as part 1/3, including here. Does anyone know on what basis that decision was made? I'm not arguing with it, I agree with it; I'm just curious to see how these sorts of problems were resolved previously.

SOTO wrote: This makes for an interesting case of Girl/Women, which only features one guest character in common (understandably so because the others are dead). Yes, different writers, yes not necessarily the same story, but it's definitely a narrative which continues on from the last one. Again, official statements should rule here. Are there any other prospective two parters written by different writers, by the way, or is this a one-time oddity?

I think the point you made earlier about them being in the same production block, and filmed by the same director, is a valid one. Plus, unlike AGMGTW/LKH, these two are counted as a two-parter by most sources. Does anybody happen to know on what basis, say, regular wikipedia decides that it's a two-parter or not? Girl/Woman is the only story out of the ones we're debating which I'm still unsure about, one way or the other. I would argue that it's obviously not a single, multi-part story - Woman is a sequel to Girl, in the same way that Closing Time is a sequel to The Lodger - but that we're intended to take these two seperate stories as a single piece, like a miniature anthology.