User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-1293767-20151029072618/@comment-5918438-20160108204808

And if we admit that the two-parter is an alternate way of dividing up a series' worth of episodes (alternate to a full series of standalones, that is), then we have to stop studying the scripts and the writing, and take a look at concrete production choices which show the deliberate choice of making a story two episodes.

KingOrokos wrote: Also SOTO, I hate to be this irritating, but your system as I understand it classes The Beast Below/Victory of the Daleks to be a two-parter. Consecutive stories, same production block/director, and a recurring guest character/actor in the form of Ian McNeice/Winstom Churchill. Wait, what? Winston Churchill doesn't appear in...oh. Blah. I was about to discount that, and say it's only very briefly at the end, as a cliffhanger leading into the next episode, but then we have no case for Gallifrey being the link between Heaven Sent and Hell Bent. That is, unless we don't count the ending in Gallifrey as the connecting link, but rather the fact that the entire episode takes place in the confession dial, on Gallifrey?

Ugh, things would be so much easier if we could just let go of HS/HB as a two-parter, because it's the only problematic one. Moffat has somehow managed to make the very first Doctor Who two-parter with not a single guest character between them. And those two episodes are so different, in fact, that he and the production manager were able to double bank them each individually, with two standalones. I know it seems to be the intention, judging by the titling scheme and the big reveal at the end, but it's starting to seem to me that it's only being sold as a two-parter, when it's really nothing at all like any two-parters which came before it.

By the way, I don't suppose that Gallifreyan child at the end is seen in the next episode?


 * 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.

This really just feels like marketing to me. Not just that quote specifically, but the whole classification of the finale as two-parted. As they admit, those episodes are "wildly different" (one's brilliant, the other ruins it, in my opinion). On they other hand, they did hire the same director for the two episodes. And, again, the name, following the convention of all the two-parters before it. (screams head off)

I'd really like to see some more official statements (Steven Moffat or BBC)

But I think we might just be encountering a very different two-parter here. What's different is that the first part pretty much only features the Doctor. The two episodes very much stand alone in terms of plot and theme (and actual quality :P), but at the same time it cannot be denied that the intention was at least to market it as a grand two-part ending.

If truly a two-parter, this series' finale was the first Doctor Who two-parter ever produced without a single guest cast member in common between them. (Because, from a production POV, they're not really a two-parter. It makes perfect sense that they were filmed separately, because they have almost nothing in common, production-wise. And now we run into a conflict between intent/marketing, and actual production choices.)

Do we just make an exception here? Or do we just consider them two stories? Is there anything we can pinpoint that actually does make these two a single story? It's all very confusing. (Though nobody go back in time and change anything, because Heaven Sent was perfect!)