The Doctor has regenerated with Matt Smith taking his last bow as the eponymous Time Lord in the big Christmas day special, The Time of the Doctor, to make way for Peter Capaldi to take up the reigns of the Tardis. It was the culmination of nearly 5 years as the Dr, and especially important as it fell in the 50th Anniversary Year of the series, but was the 1 hour episode the touch paper lighting transition that it needed to be or did it fizzle a little shy of the exterminate button?
While it’s hard to fault the storyline overall, given what we know about the character’s limited regeneration capabilities, it just felt that having only a 1 hour episode to cover the story was too short. The series writers have clearly combined the Gallifrey saving ending of the 50th anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor, with the tears in the fabric of the universe plot that has ran through Matt Smith‘s tenure as the Doctor, which is genuinely genius, but it just needed more time to build out the story for the transition to Peter Capaldi.
We all knew that the regeneration was coming, but we didn’t know how it would play out, and the concept of Gallifrey sending a message through a tear in the Universe with the question “Doctor Who?” worked well as the premise for the storyline. The Doctor’s decision not to answer the question to prevent the return of the Time War and to stay on the planet containing the tear (which turns out to be Trensalore, the place revealed in The Name of the Doctor to be the location of his death) to protect it from its attackers is also in-keeping with the character progression of the 11th Doctor Who.
However, the protracted war with the Cybermen, Daleks and the Weeping Angels that follows as the Doctor lives out his naturally long life on Trensalore feels like a bit of a stretch. We’re used to the Doctor pulling something genius out of his noggin at the last minute to win the day, not a bleak series of years passing by in stalemate battle with attacking forces, so not only is there not enough time to bring the story to life, it also feels a bit out of character in general, especially considering the fact that it would also imply that the rest of the Universe can get along just fine for a few hundred years without the Doctor turning up to save it every now and again.
Matt Smith is his usual far-flung self, but he’s stretched a little too thinly in the time compression of hundreds of his years battling the attacking forces in just an hour episode. The make-up is good enough, but we’ve never really seen a Doctor going through the aging process, which brings a little too much earthly mortality to the Time Lord.
Jenna Coleman was her as endearing as ever in her role of Clara Oswald as she repeatedly tries to save the Doctor from his own pseudo-surrender to the stalemate of the situation, and Orla Brady puts in a strong hard-nosed performance as Tasha Lem, the Mother Superious of the Church of the Papal Mainframe working with the Doctor to prevent the return of the Time War.
There’ a very endearing scene at the end of the episode featuring the Doctor saying goodbye to Amy Pond and reliving his beginnings as he’s about to go through the final processes of the regeneration. The hallucination rapidly recaps on Smith’s first introduction to the role as the Raggedy Man of Amy’s childhood and reiterates the magical feel the series has had under his tenure.
The final regeneration as Matt Smith becomes Peter Capaldi turned out to be a very jagged affair, which probably suits the new direction the series will take with the Raptor like presence of the new Doctor. Whatever will come in the next series, it’s clear that the new doctor has been affected by the Time Lord’s intervention to reignite the regeneration process, and might have even more memory problems than Matt Smith did.
On the whole, The Time of the Doctor was an enjoyable episode, but just didn’t feel big enough, or all encompassing enough to be the implement to usher in the new era for the 12th Doctor Who. Spanning it over two episodes (Christmas Day and New Year’s Day) might have given it the momentous gravitas that it needed.
Doctor Who: The Time of the Doctor review: 3.7/5
That’s “tear” not “tare.” Tare is short for “tare weight,” or “unladen weight,” which is the weight of an empty vehicle or container. I know “tear,” which means to rip, looks like “tear,” which is the product of crying.