An Hour of Who a Day: July 3: "The Time of the Doctor"

July 3: "The Time of the Doctor"

Now this is a cause for celebration: "The Time of the Doctor" is Doctor Who's 800th episode. And, somewhat less celebratorily, it's also Matt Smith's final story.

This is the 2013 Christmas special, and the first story in the wake of "The Day of the Doctor", but while that episode spent a good deal of time dealing not just with the BBC Wales run but with little moments from all fifty years, "The Time of the Doctor" is concerned specifically with the Matt Smith era, with wrapping up most of the plotlines and questions that have been dangling since series 5.

(Incidentally, what does the title "The Time of the Doctor" actually mean? Why is this the time of the Doctor? The more I think about it the less clear it becomes to me...)

So, the plotlines. This episode includes stuff about the TARDIS blowing up, about the cracks in time, about Madame Kovarian and about the Fall of the Eleventh at Trenzalore. But it's still a Christmas special, so we start with some Christmas shenanigans involving Clara and her family coming over for Christmas dinner, with Clara making up an imaginary boyfriend and needing the Doctor to help bail her out. There're also some awfully silly jokes about nudity thrown in for good measure, while we wait for the plot to get going. Fortunately it doesn't take too long, and soon we're dealing with coded messages and lots of alien species and the Church of the Papal Mainframe (as run by Mother Superious Tasha Lem), while the Doctor investigates the source of the message being broadcast across creation, the one that Handles (the Cyber-head that the Doctor's been carting around) says is apparently from Gallifrey -- which leads to a town called Christmas, surrounded by a truth field that prevents people from lying (presumably to fulfill the bit of the "prophecy" about how "no living creature can speak falsely, or fail to answer"). And the Doctor traces the source of the message to a crack in time, from outside this universe, and uses the Seal of the High Council (the one the third Doctor took from the Master in The Five Doctors -- the same story where the High Council offered the Master a new regeneration cycle; is Steven Moffat subtly reminding us of this?) to translate the message, which is the Time Lords asking "Doctor who?" so that when they get the answer they'll know it's safe to come back through into this universe. Except that's the question that leads to silence falling on the Fields of Trenzalore and the Fall of the Eleventh. So far this has been shaping up to be quite the epic finale, as the Doctor finally confronts his destiny.

The Doctor gets ready to face the Daleks for the final time.
("The Time of the Doctor") ©BBC

But then the story takes an odd left turn, as Clara is tricked into going back home, leaving the Doctor behind to defend the town of Christmas from everyone who wants to ensure the Time Lords never return. Up to this point it had been a fairly standard action epic, but now it becomes more like a fairy tale, as we're told of the Doctor's efforts, repelling any invaders while helping out where he can -- something he does for 300 years, while waiting for the TARDIS to come back from dropping Clara off. It's curious just how quickly this story shifts gears; at the time it was rather jarring, but familiarity has made it a little smoother. It also probably doesn't help that there seems to be a bit of padding: Clara is sent away and then comes back three hundred years later, has a quick conversation with the Doctor establishing that he can only regenerate twelve times and that this current body is number thirteen, so this will actually be the end for him, and then is tricked again into going back home, so that she can have a conversation with her family and then head back one more time, to see the Doctor as even older, as for him it's something like 500 years after the last time he saw her (judging by comments in the next episode that he's over 2000 years old at that point). It is a nice little fairy tale story, though; the scenes of the Doctor partying with the villagers are rather lovely, and they do a good job of making this all seem magical. And so when Clara begs the Time Lords to help the Doctor, it does seem like a natural extension of what's gone on before, rather than some arbitrary deus ex machina designed to keep the show going.

Ultimately, however, this episode is leading to one thing: the end of Matt Smith's Doctor. Smith does a great job as the Doctor, defending the town from the various alien cameo threats, but it's really quite lovely to see him happy at the end -- clearly he loves the town of Christmas ("Hey, after all these years, I've finally found somewhere that needs me to stick around," he tells Clara at one point), and Smith is very good at letting that joyous side through. He's also quite good as the aged Doctor, delighted to see Clara again after all this time and willing to face the Daleks for one final confrontation -- except, because of Clara's plea, the Time Lords grant him a new regeneration cycle, which he uses to save the town and keep on living. That, of course, leads to Matt Smith's final moments, as he ages himself back to how he was before he came to Trenzalore ("This is just the reset," the Doctor says by way of explanation. "A whole new regeneration cycle") and prepares himself for the end of this body -- something he faces with calm acceptance (in contrast with the previous regeneration²⁵⁵). "We all change, when you think about it," the Doctor tells Clara. "We're all different people all through our lives. And that's okay, that's good, you've got to keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be. I will not forget one line of this. Not one day. I swear. I will always remember when the Doctor was me." (This is probably meant to be the Doctor's final words, but technically his last word is, "Hey," as he starts to reassure Clara right before he regenerates.) Then there's the beautiful moment where he imagines seeing Amy again (fun fact: Matt Smith is wearing a wig in this story (as you probably noticed from the bald scene), but so is Karen Gillan, she having recently shaved her head for her role in Guardians of the Galaxy), and then it's time to go. It's a different regeneration from how they've been doing them, though; while we still get the glowing orange dust streaming out, instead of the usual slow morph between the two actors we get a whip-quick change, as the Doctor throws his head back and then is instantly Peter Capaldi. (This appears to have been a creative decision, rather than a logistical one related to, say, actor availability.) The twelfth Doctor has finally arrived (even if his first lines here are incredibly nonsensical)...

So it's a bit of a strange beast, "The Time of the Doctor"; instead of an action-packed epic we get something more whimsical, more storybook. This does mean that this episode is often quite uneven in tone, but ultimately it does work; there's enough here that's interesting and well done to outweigh any concerns about consistency. If there is in fact one problem, it's that the resolution of so many plot threads does mean that some of them feel less consequential than we might have thought -- the revelation of the relationship between the Church and the Silents, for instance, is almost thrown away in favor of other business. But at the end, "The Time of the Doctor" is still a generally satisfactory and entertaining end to the Matt Smith era.

This is therefore farewell to Matt Smith, the youngest actor to date to play the part, and it's safe to say that (despite the initial rumblings of misgivings from people before they'd, y'know, actually seen him in the role) they made the right decision to cast him. From day one he has simply been the Doctor, and you really did get the sense of an old man in a young man's body. Smith had some very big shoes to fill, following on from David Tennant's phenomenally popular portrayal, but he took the part and emphatically made it his own, in a way that was recognizably his but still the same character. Full of energy and joy and life, the eleventh Doctor was a whirlwind of activity with equal parts steel and child-like glee. Matt Smith made his mark on the role in a big way, and through his abilities and those of Steven Moffat's, secured the future of a show that was initially uncertain if it could survive the departures of both Tennant and showrunner Russell T Davies. During Matt Smith's Doctor, the series not only survived but thrived, and a very large part of the credit goes to Smith. Simply wonderful.

This thus brings an end to the handful of specials comprising the 50th anniversary (all right, "The Time of the Doctor" isn't really part of that, but it was part of the 50th Anniversary Collector's Edition, so that's good enough for me), which have done a good job of closing one chapter of the series' history while preparing the way for the next. In the hands of Peter Capaldi and Steven Moffat, the future looks pretty bright indeed.

²⁵⁵ Although to be fair, the eleventh Doctor was around for something like 1100 years, while the tenth Doctor was around for, er, seven, so you can see why Ten wasn't ready to go.