Hey there. If you’re on the homepage right now, you may or may not be able to see an in-progress version of my year end list. Ignore that. Very soon now, I will be publishing the complete one in its place. Meanwhile, a characteristically paltry Christmas selection of four reviews. As is traditional for weeks like this, the picks of the week go to two non-podcasts.

Television

Doctor Who: “Twice Upon A Time” — The Capaldi era, and more crucially the Moffat era, got a good send off. Nobody’s going to argue that “Twice Upon A Time” is Steven Moffat’s most brilliant Doctor Who story, or even in the top ten. But there is enough brilliance here to remind us that on the whole, Moffat’s Doctor Who has been epochal television. Moffat has spent his last stint on the show (series 10) rehashing the reasons why Doctor Who is great — not why his version of Doctor Who was great, mind, but why the show is an institution worth preserving. And why the Doctor is a character deserving of their iconic status. It hasn’t been his best run on the show, certainly. In general, I’m inclined to think Moffat peaked in series 8, save for the unspeakably brilliant two-part series 9 finale. These two series, plus the full run of Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor that preceded them, leave series 10 feeling a little bit like Goats Head Soup. But as victory laps go, series 10 did a lot right. It felt like a benediction from a version of the show that had naturally run its course. And “Twice Upon A Time” is the natural culmination of that. Moffat has always been in dialogue with the history of the series he’s helming. What more direct way is there to literalize that dialogue than to have the most recent Doctor be able to converse with the earliest version of himself? (David Bradley is to be commended for playing the First Doctor as a character, rather than simply imitating the tics and mannerisms of the late William Hartnell. He does what works for the story. So does Moffat, for that matter. Hartnell’s Doctor, and the writing for him, wouldn’t translate straightforwardly to modern television. Which is, of course, the source of much of the humour in the episode. Not all of that humour lands, but I’m quite fond of the moment when Bill shuts down the Doctor’s insistence that they simply ignore his former self’s racism and sexism. It feels like a tacit approval on Moffat’s part of the segment of fandom that insists on holding him to a high standard on this. Because his track record is less than perfect.) Aside from the premise of having Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor share the limelight with the First Doctor, the best and most Moffaty idea in this story is the way that the famous Christmas truce of 1914 factors into its resolution. Moffat’s previous Christmas specials have repurposed elements of the Christmas tradition ranging from A Christmas Carol (whose implicit time travel elements worked into Doctor Who to produce one of the show’s staggering masterpieces) to Santa Claus (meh). The Christmas truce is one of the most fitting Christmas stories to repurpose in this show. It is an illustration of humanity’s ability to be good and kind rather than simply vile and monstrous. This story’s denouement is striking because the Doctor doesn’t actually save Mark Gatiss’s captain by removing him from harm’s way: he simply adjusts the timeline a little so that he’d be saved by the mercy and goodness of humanity that managed to seep out even in a context of intense and senseless violence. It’s a brilliant summation of everything this show has come to stand for over its 50-plus years, and of the way it has come to articulate that worldview over the last seven. As for the future, I shan’t decide what my hopes are until I’ve seen Broadchurch. But the look on Jodie Whitaker’s face when she first sees her reflection is a thing of beautiful, childlike wonder. We’ve seen that look on many faces before: Patrick Troughton’s, Tom Baker’s, David Tennant’s… Wherever the show goes, story-wise, I’m enormously excited to get to know 13. “Twice Upon A Time” is a perfectly good episode of television, which represents the end of one of the greatest runs on any television show ever. I came to love Doctor Who because of Steven Moffat. Now I just love Doctor Who. Geronimo. Pick of the week.

Music

Björk: Utopia — I like parts of it. But for most of this album, I can’t help but feel a broad divide between what Björk and her co-producer Arca are doing in the music bed and what Björk is doing vocally. The lyrics are some of her most prosaic, and she phrases them semi-improvisationally over the music in a way that suggests melody wasn’t one a main priority during the writing process. This is fine, but it doesn’t make it easy. After the brilliant, raw directness of Vulnicura, this feels like a return to the weeds of Biophilia — but with mercifully less dubstep and more flutes. So, let’s call it a… B-minus?

Barbara Hannigan & Ludwig Orchestra: Crazy Girl Crazy — There are several levels of “why bother being this good” at play here. Barbara Hannigan could easily have settled for being merely one of the great sopranos of our time. But no: she has to also be a trailblazer for contemporary music, daring to learn the heretofore unlearned scores of composers who write vocal challenges few but her could rise to. This is the version of Hannigan that brought us last year’s best classical recording: let me tell you by Hans Abrahamsen. But even that isn’t enough for her. She’s also got to be a brilliant conductor. And since she can both conduct and sing, she clearly has to do them both at the same time. In music that’s crazy hard to begin with. Crazy Girl Crazy is Hannigan’s first disc as a conductor, and indeed her first disc as a conductor/singer. It contains a selection of music from the 20th century that all feels like it’s at the core of Hannigan. We get Luciano Berio’s Sequenza III, a piece for unaccompanied voice that shows off her crazy chops and her ability to inject drama into even the most potentially baffling scores. We get a new arrangement of music from Gershwin’s Girl Crazy that Hannigan leads and sings with Gershwin’s romanticism in mind as much as his jazz background. And sandwiched between them, we get a lush, romantic reading of Alban Berg’s beautiful Lulu Suite. Hannigan has been the soprano of choice for the role of Lulu for years now. Hearing her take on the orchestral music from that opera just confirms that she owns that piece as thoroughly as any musician owns any piece of music. The Ludwig Orchestra, a young ensemble that makes its recording debut here, plays skillfully, and with all of the intensity of an orchestra that’s not sick of making music yet. It’s a performance that makes you hope this orchestra and Hannigan have a long relationship ahead of them. It deserves the Grammy. Pick of the week.

Podcasts

Radiolab: “A Match Made in Marrow” — I got so behind on Radiolab that I almost considered using that as the out I’ve been looking for. This show isn’t what it was. But I started listening to this because it was the only thing downloaded on my phone, and goddamnit it’s pretty good. It’s the story of a very non-religious person becoming a Christlike saviour to a very religious persona and trying to reconcile this. I dunno. Maybe I’ll give them a few more episodes.