11.46: The Time of the Doctor

In which the last four years make far more sense than they have any right to do.

…But first, some other anniversary bits. 

An Adventure in Space & Time is structurally a mess, makes Hartnell out to be ill-er than he was, and Gatiss being Gatiss even the clever twist but is lifted from something better (specifically, Vincent & the Doctor). Nonetheless, it’s kind of crazy that for the 50th anniversary the BBC successfully made hundreds of thousands of people weep at the fact they fired Bill Hartnell, 47 years before.

The Five(Ish) Doctors Reboot is even more crazy. I lost count of how many people whose dad were Doctor Who are in this – I think it’s about 11? Anyway, the number of in jokes suggest Davison is clearly far more invested in Doctor Who than he ever let on in the 90s.

Anyway, let’s crack on and finish the era so I can get on with my life:

Broadcast: December 2013

Watched: February 2022

CLARA: I need you. I’m cooking Christmas dinner!

DOCTOR: I’m being shot at by Cybermen!

CLARA: Well, can’t we do both?

Mind you, the silly Christmas/naked Doctor hijinks bit takes up much less of the story than I imagined. It’s a few minutes early on. 

Anyway, I’m not sure about the episode title – feels like an attempt to show it’s part of a sequence leading back to Name, but I’m not sure it actually means something in itself. Also I’m not sure it completely sells the idea of centuries passing from the Doctor’s point of view; Heaven Sent plays that note better. 

But actually it works far, far better than it has any right to. Moffat basically delivers on tying the last four years together, from the exploding TARDIS on. It explains why we’ve met bits of the church that want the Doctor dead, and bits that see him as an ally. It comes up with a workable in-story reason why the question “Doctor Who?” might actually matter.

It also feels like a bit of a 11th Doctor greatest hits parade, which helps bring the era to a close with a satisfying click. Along the way, we get: Daleks, a female voiceover, endless alien ships filling up a sky for a third time, Matt Smith flirting with a woman 20 years his senior, Silents (love that they’re priests), an explanation for why silence must fall, the crack, weeping angels, Matt Smith acting like an old man, a wall of children’s drawing, the return of the humanoid Daleks, the Doctor using anger to break someone’s conditioning before kissing a woman against her will, and fishfingers and custard. It’s like the companion/monster parades from Logopolis, but actually outside the Doctor’s head.

The actual story feels quite right for the character. In the same way the 4th Doctor died to save the universe but the 5th died to save one friend: 10 howls about how unfair it all is, while 11 stays in a single town for centuries to protect it and then goes meekly to his death. Also, using regeneration energy as a weapon is another one of Moffat’s literalisations – this one of the idea the Doctor dies to save the town.  

It’s not perfect. But it’s a miracle it’s anywhere like this good. 

Other thoughts:

• Is this a Dalek story? Obviously we don’t think of it as one, but they’re the main enemy, in the first scene and last battle.

• The idea of a planet with a day that only lasts a few minutes is lovely even if it makes no sense (yeah, no way do these people have food). Ditto, the idea of a siege that lasts that long doesn't work either, the Daleks would be in in about five minutes. But metaphors, so.

• It’s sort of weird how Tasha Lem is apparently not a late replacement for River, because she is a sexy older woman who can pilot the TARDIS. I like the joke that the papal mainframe has a female head almost as much as I like that a character who has apparently decided simply not to age is played by the world’s youngest looking 52 year old.

• Handles is great, and his death is weirdly heartbreaking.

• As with Day, they’re making really nice use of the music archive here. We get the season 3 theme when Tasha declares that silence will fall; a bit of Day when Clara asks the Doctor not to send her away again; the End of Time music when we see the ancient Doctor.

• I don’t actually mind Clara being sent away twice – firstly it’s needed to move the plot on, secondly it gives us a moment when the Doctor just lies to her face.

• The “So, I may have accidentally invented a boyfriend”/“Yeah, I did that once and there’s no easy way to get rid of an android” feels like a Death Comes To Time reference so perhaps I’ve been driven mad by this pilgrimage.

• Bbald Matt Smith looks absolutely dreadful, keep the hair mate.

• Tessa Peake-Jones has six lines in this. Her Christmases are not what the were in the 90s when she was one of the female leads on Only Fools and Horses.

• The weeping angels in the snow, the wooden cyberman, the monoid puppets: all lovely. Ditto the joke about accidentally making someone’s barn bigger on the inside.

• Clara has seemingly forgotten she’s seen the Doctor’s grave on Trenzlaore. She forgets a lot in this run.

• The regeneration scene... Matt and Jenna are both amazing, but Amy is still better than Clara, sorry. I do like the way that just by removing the bow tie it becomes a completely different outfit. Clever how the Doctor resets to 30-ish before regenerating so Smith gets a goodbye scene without prosthetics on, isn’t it.