C+Q - The Time of the Doctor (2013)
Steven Moffat knows how to do foreshadowing. The Time of the
Doctor is the last adventure of Matt Smith as the Eleventh
Doctor (until the 60th, obviously) and in a very literal sense
every episode he's ever been in has led to this. The Kovarian
chapter sabotaged the TARDIS in an attempt to stop the Doctor
from ever reaching Trenzalore, and the resulting explosion
creating cracks in time which feature in a majority of episodes
throughout Series 5. When that plan failed and the Doctor
survived, Madame Kovarian stole the Ponds' baby and brought her
up to be the perfect assassin capable of killing him, thus
creating River Song, who's relationship and eventual marriage to
the Doctor formed a significant part of the plot of Series 6.
But even before the Eleventh Doctor first appeared, The Siege of
Trenzalore had been affecting his life. In Series 4's Forest of
the Dead two-parter, the Tenth Doctor had a run in with River
Song long before they chronologically first met. In Series 2's
Rise of the Cybermen, the Doctor, Rose, and Mickey end up
falling out of the universe through a "crack in time" which
takes them to a parallel world. In 1966's The War Machines,
WOTAN was intelligent enough to have picked up and decoded the
Time Lords' message which echoed all throughout time. Not
understanding that it was a question, WOTAN mistakenly thought
that "doctor who?" was the Doctor's name. Seriously, this was
all planned. The Time of the Doctor was first written by Sydney
Newman and every consecutive showrunner was given a copy of the
script on appointment should they ever reach a time when the
Doctor's regeneration limit needed to be extended. Philip
Hinchcliffe knew about it, JNT knew about it, RTD knew about it.
It just so happens that Moffat was the one to actually unleash
this story onto the world after 50 years of preparation.
The Time of the Doctor is, in many ways, a perfect farewell to
Matt Smith. It's basically his entire era in an hour: mostly
good, well written, and funny with a lot of heart and a
childlike sense of fairytale wonder, but with a few awkward
moments, some plot points that don't quite add up, and a huge
sense of scale that makes remarkable changes to established Who
canon. Big, paradigm-shifting plot points that have featured in
the Matt Smith era include the Doctor getting married, the
Daleks forgetting who he is, the introduction of the War Doctor,
the revelation that Gallifrey could return one day, and, in The
Time of the Doctor, a fix to the regeneration limit. I love that
we got a huge epic story to solve the problem of the
regeneration limit, but I just wish it was handled better by the
BBC's marketing department. This episode is trying its hardest
to convince us that this is the Doctor's final battle. We saw in
The Name of the Doctor that he'll definitely die on Trenzalore
one day, we have armies of Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Weeping
Angels, and Silence, references to classic stories like The
Visitation and The Five Doctors, and the Doctor aging to death,
just like his First and War incarnations.
Unfortunately, this attempt to make The Time of the Doctor seem
like a massive epic finale to the entire show is all for nothing
because we already know he was going to survive. We were all
watching having been told beforehand that Peter Capaldi would be
taking over the role. We're all waiting to see how he'd
regenerate so I never at any point thought that this was really
the end. What they should've done is held off on announcing the
Twelfth Doctor and instead marketed The Time of the Doctor as if
it was going to be the last episode ever. Sure, some of us
wouldn't have believed it, but it would've convinced some
people. Taking this episode on its own merits and ignoring the
fact everybody watching it already knew that there would be a
new Doctor, this episode actually does a great job of making you
think this is it. The grand finale. The death of the Doctor. All
of the loose plot threads get tied up, all of the Doctor's
greatest enemies (with the notable absence of the Quarks, the
Voords, and the Chumblies) appear, and Matt Smith delivers one
of his best performances as the Doctor. If it weren't for the
fact I knew the show would continue, a little bit of me would
have been wondering if this really was the end.
The 'awkward moments' I mentioned typically all stem from the
hologram clothes gag which is both entirely unnecessary and also
very uncomfortable to watch. The whole gag is making Clara
uncomfortable. It's just cringe-worthy farce that clashes with
everything else. The only good thing that I could take away from
these scenes is by far the best line in the entire episode: "The
old 'key in the quiff' routine. Classic." Another plot point I
really could've done without was the Doctor physically aging to
death. I'd much rather have had something actually kill him
instead of the Eleventh Doctor (who was always associated with
his youth) going the same way as the First and War Doctors.
Having him live for a thousand years in one hour of television
just didn't work for me as we didn't feel the passage of time.
For a story that's been foreshadowed since The Eleventh Hour,
The Time of the Doctor was a tad rushed. Centuries of the
Doctor's life flew by in a single montage and it's hard to care
about how long he's lived there or how old he is if all of that
time passes in mere seconds. This story should've been told over
either two or three episodes or in a single hour without the
excessive aging. It's hard for me to wrap my head about the fact
that the Doctor aged a thousand years in The Time of the Doctor
but aged only about two days in The Snowmen, both of which are
an hour long.
What completely sold the Doctor's aging however was the
performance of Matt Smith who is definitely one of my favourite
actors to have taken on the role. This script required the
Doctor to be at times funny, serious, angry, overjoyed, young,
and old, and Smith hit every note perfectly. The Time of the
Doctor is one of his finest performances for the show and it's a
real shame that it's his last (until 2023).
The regeneration itself took place over two scenes: the first
was the initial reset on the clock tower and the second was the
full transformation from Eleven to Twelve in the TARDIS. Both of
these scenes were very well done but I think they should've just
gone with one of them. Giving the Doctor two regeneration scenes
is just a bit much. The clock tower scene would've been a
perfect way to send off the Eleventh Doctor as, unlike past
regenerations, the scene wasn't played as being sad and instead
was something triumphant, as a regeneration should be. The
Doctor didn't die; he cheated death. Instead of crying and
moaning about how he doesn't want to go, the Doctor is filled
with excitement when he realises what's happening and the
soundtrack swells into a joyous fanfare. It would've been
perfect if it weren't for the fact they do a sad version
immediately after.
The TARDIS scene is also well handled but having both versions
of the regeneration in the same episode just detracted. Unlike
some, I had no problem with the reappearance of Amy Pond as it's
been firmly established that the Doctor can see visions of his
companions before he regenerates (Logopolis, The Caves of
Androzani). I fail to grasp the complaint that Steven Moffat was
in some way being "self-indulgent" by bringing back his own
character. It's like people accusing him of "overusing" River
Song. Did you accuse J.K. Rowling of being "self-indulgent" when
she wrote The Chamber of Secrets after The Philosopher's Stone?
Are writers supposed to create original characters and then
immediately ditch them? I'm not familiar with that rule.
Speaking of River, it seems pretty obvious that she was supposed
to be in this episode but Alex Kingston was unavailable, leading
to the creation of Tasha Lem. In an episode trying its best to
convince us that this is the day the Doctor dies by filling the
screen with reference after reference after reference, Tasha Lem
sticks out like a sore thumb. The Doctor treats her like an old
friend and their first scene together seems to suggest that
they'd met before ("Is that a new body? Give us a twirl." "Tash,
this old thing? Please, I've been rocking it for centuries.")
but it didn't really make a whole lot of sense. If the Doctor
had met the head of the Church of the Silence before, why didn't
he mention it earlier considering they've tried to kill him
twice? It's clear Tasha Lem was supposed to be River Song, not
only because they can both fly the TARDIS and because they've
both been "fighting the psychopath inside" for all their lives,
but it also fits more with The Time of the Doctor's attempts to
feature and wrap-up every big mystery from the Matt Smith era,
and River Song is probably the biggest mystery of them all. If
she were in this episode, it would've been a perfect opportunity
to finally explain how she found out the Doctor's real name. Her
absence is really felt and the budget stand-in River Song
doesn't help at all.
Overall, I enjoy The Time of the Doctor although it's far from
perfection. I love the way it ties up all of the loose ends and
gives us answers to those burning questions (although I could've
done without knowing the Doctor saw a crack in time in his hotel
room from The God Complex. I imagined he saw the War Doctor, his
guilt personified, and I'd much rather have viewed the thing he
fears most in all the universe as a piece of irrelevant
character building rather than a plot point). There's some great
stuff in here but I think just one more draft was needed. The
plot wasn't perfect but in terms of being a showcase for
everything we adored about Matt Smith, The Time of the Doctor is
a great send-off.
Next: Deep Breath