Warning: spoilers. Read no farther until you\u2019ve seen the episode<\/i><\/p>\n
It\u2019s the fate of The Time of the Doctor<\/i> to be overshadowed by the fact that it immediately follows the 50th Anniversary Special. In a way, it should<\/i> be. While a Doctor\u2019s departure is a major milestone in the series, it is still part of Dr Who\u2019s ongoing business-as-usual. The 50th had to stand out from that, as a celebration of the whole history of the show. And it did\u2014 but that leaves Matt Smith\u2019s final episode feeling just a tiny bit anticlimactic.<\/p>\n
It does what the best departure episodes do: showcases the outgoing Doctor\u2019s era, giving us a story that\u2019s typical of his tenure, only even more so. The Eleventh Doctor\u2019s era has been marked by stories with massive armies mobilized against him: at the Pandorica, at Demon\u2019s Run, now at Trenzalore. And it\u2019s been positively obsessed with \u201ctimey-wimey\u201d stories\u2014 how many times now have we skipped ahead on a character\u2019s time line, to learn how long he or she\u2019s been waiting, or to see him\/her grown old\u2014 or both at once? These kind of things are going to define this era of the program as much as UNIT defines the Third Doctor\u2019s. (As an aside: they\u2019re Steven Moffat\u2019s obsessions, and he\u2019s not going anywhere\u2014 will he make a break with this approach and find a new style for the Capaldi Doctor, or will this sort of thing continue? You can probably guess I\u2019m hoping it changes.)<\/p>\n
At the same time that gives it a bit of a been-there-done-that feel. At the end of the Third Doctor\u2019s run, the production pulled out all the stops and staged the biggest 007-action-man chase scene the series had ever done, both showing off Jon Pertwee\u2019s distinctive style and topping anything they\u2019d done with it before. But at the end of Matt Smith\u2019s first season every alien the Doctor ever fought ganged up on him, and the whole Universe was wiped from existence. You can\u2019t top that\u2014 you can only repeat it, which the series has several times since. Matt Smith’s era suffers from too-big-too-early syndrome, making it hard for his finale to be properly bigger than what came before.<\/p>\n
There are also some odd dramatic choices and one gaping plot hole that I can\u2019t overlook. Having the Doctor send Clara away, and then have her get back, twice, is needlessly repetitive. Moffat did it so that Clara could see multiple stages along his centuries of protecting the town, but dramatically it drags things down. Separating the giant blast of regeneration energy that destroys the Daleks from the Doctor\u2019s actual (and much simpler) regeneration allows the tearful farewell of the Eleventh Doctor and Clara but makes no sense (internal logic is far more necessary to science fiction than to \u201cmainstream\u201d fiction, but it’s something Steven Moffat doesn\u2019t seem to care much about\u2014 although he’s stopped using “bonkers” as an all-purpose term of praise for Dr Who stories, he still, in the words of a Doctor Who Magazine<\/em> reviewers, only grudgingly bothers to explain anything).<\/p>\n I also would have liked to see the story take us all the way to the giant TARDIS tombstone we saw in The Name of the Doctor,<\/i> and have the Time Lords resurrect the Doctor (and the TARDIS) with a new regeneration cycle at that point. Instead this story negates that future, undermining the earlier episode. It would have been just as easy to respect it.<\/p>\n The big plot hole, though, comes when we learn that Clara was able to talk into the crack in time and be heard, and that the Time Lords can close the crack from the other side and reopen a different one apparently at will. This means the whole situation was avoidable from the start. The entire standoff takes place because if the Doctor says his name the Time Lords will interpret it as a sign it\u2019s safe to emerge through the crack, but if he leaves the Daleks (& co.) will destroy the planet and the human settlers in order to make sure they never do. This made a bit of sense if we assumed that the Doctor\u2019s name was some sort of unique code, the only thing that could be heard through the crack. But if Clara can just talk through it, then the Doctor could have said \u201cReally bad place to come through, guys, close up this crack and try again later\u2014 preferably without sending a universal Daleks-look-here signal at the same time.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n The Doctor is clever enough to think of that, and the fact that I thought of it while watching took me out of the story right when it was supposed to be hitting its dramatic climax.<\/p>\n I’ve been giving the negative side\u2014 let me turn to the positive. Except for the facepalm moment I really did enjoy the episode. I liked the idea that the youngest Doctor to date should become the first one since the First One to \u201cdie\u201d of old age (very clever twist, that). (I suppose you could say the War Doctor went the same way, but he\u2019s a separate case.) I thought Matt Smith turned in an outstanding performance, and that the story did a really good job of showing us exactly who the Doctor\u2014 and his <\/i>Doctor in particular\u2014 really is. We\u2019ve seen this Doctor maddened by the idea of having to sit still even for a few hours\u2014 we know what it meant that he had to settle down for hundreds of years, but was still willing to do it rather than let the innocent town be destroyed.<\/p>\n I like that the whole \u201csearching for Gallifrey\u201d idea, introduced in The Day of the Doctor,<\/i> has been resolved, and in the very next episode. Of course it\u2019s possible that Steven Moffat still has it in mind, but it at least looks<\/i> like it\u2019s been resolved: we\u2019ve definitely got a resolution on the question of whether the attempt to save Gallifrey succeeded, and we\u2019ve got the Time Lords able to pop open cracks in time if they want a peek outside the pocket universe where they are safely installed. That really seems to take care of it, and though Moffat might prove me wrong I suspect that\u2019s what he had in mind all along. In hindsight, the fact he kept calling the quest for Gallifrey a \u201cnew paradigm\u201d for the series might have been a clue he didn\u2019t really mean it. \u201cNew paradigm\u201d was the term for the plastic Daleks which no one liked, so Moffat using the term again could have been a subtle hint that he didn\u2019t mean it.<\/p>\n Still, he might prove me wrong on that. We\u2019ll have to wait for the next season to find out.<\/p>\n To sum up: The Time of the Doctor<\/i> was a vivid example of both the strengths and the weaknesses of Matt Smith\u2019s time as the Doctor. Which, in many ways, is what a regeneration episode should be. It doesn\u2019t measure up to the giddy heights of the 50th Anniversary Special, but then it shouldn’t have to. On balance, I call it a good\u2014 and appropriate\u2014 finale for the Eleventh Doctor.<\/p>\n Asked by an interviewer to describe Peter Capaldi\u2019s Doctor in three words, Steven Moffat answered: \u201cDifferent from Matt.\u201d Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Warning: spoilers. Read no farther until you\u2019ve seen the episode It\u2019s the fate of The Time of the Doctor to be overshadowed by the fact that it immediately follows the 50th Anniversary Special. In a way, it should be. While…<\/p>\nNext:<\/h4>\n