And so we bid goodnight and goodbye to Matt Smith as the
curtain also comes down on 2013. ‘Time of the Doctor’ finishes my marathon too,
begun back in February and I have to say, if you ever want to get to a point
where you are partially ‘over’ your favourite TV, for a short while at least,
then try watching 800 episodes of it in one year. In fact, try it in 11 months.
That’s something like three episodes a day on average. So yeah.
The Oswald Christmas |
‘Time of the Doctor’, like Moffatt in general, is dividing
the Doctor Who ‘community’ with a very clear between those that think it (and
he) is brilliant, and those who loathe it all. There are very few in the middle
there. ‘Time of the Doctor’ for me is full of fantastic stuff, with equally as
much stuff that made my eyes roll like some cantankerous old man who thinks
only the Lambert era had anything of value yet watched the following 48 years
of the show complaining all the way. And I really don’t want to be that guy.
Honestly.
Clara and 'Handles' - the Cyberhead. |
So. I really loved the last fifteen minutes, and I adored
the way that this Doctor, now the 13th as David Tennant regenerated
into David Tennant officially according to the extrapolation in this episode
using up a regeneration and counting John Hurt’s Doctor, died of old age. This
consisted of two makeup jobs on Matt Smith, one to age him a bit which was very
unconvincing, and
Orla Brady as the curious Tasha Kem. |
The way that he was given a new life cycle, to use the
regeneration energy to destroy the Dalek fleet, also, was much better than I
feared it was going to be. Something given to save his life through the crack
on the wall because Gallifrey was on the other side of it and without the
Doctor they will be stuck there forever. So it made sense.
Inside the Papal Mainframe. |
Clara’s father, as he is now, was seen for the first time
with little impact as was her grandmother and presumably father’s girlfriend.
They were treated as mostly irrelevant. The Christmas stuff didn’t work so
well, and you’d think the episode would have been much darker had it not gone
out on the 25th of December. So I guess we have to make allowances
but really, a town called ‘Christmas’. What I wanted to see was it play out
over a longer period of time, for the Doctor’s relationship with this town to
develop as a little love affair.
Karen Gillan makes a fleeting appearance. |
There was a lot of attempts at humour that for me simply
fell flat I am afraid. The Doctor being naked essentially for the sake of it,
wearing holographic clothes which Clara’s family couldn’t see. Just to show
that after all this time, and Matt Smith’s Doctor is supposed to have lived for
many hundred years, he still doesn’t get social skills to the point of utter
stupidity. I don’t buy it for one second but I also for one second do not blame
Matt Smith for it either.
There’s so much I could analyse and
A Hartnell-esque farewell to Matt Smith's Doctor. |
The change from Doctor to the other was lightning quick and
we get to see Peter Capaldi in a very impressive 15 seconds as the Doctor. More
traditional? Looks that way. Hopefully a better bunch of eccentricities than
we’ve seen from Matt. I liked his Doctor for the most part, but at times he
went too far for me. C’est La Vie. I am more excited by the new than upset by
the leaving!
5.5/10