The concluding part to this supposed '______ Of The Doctor' trilogy has finally aired and sadly Matt Smith is no longer the Doctor. His era has been for the most part good but has succumbed to the occasional flaw. Yes, I'm looking at you 'Nightmare In Silver' AND you 'The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe'. One thing I think we can all agree on is that the 11th Doctor has been consistently brilliant throughout, with Smith clearly giving it his all in every single story. From 'The Eleventh Hour' onwards he has been captivating to watch and even up against what many people consider to be THE Doctor himself, David Tennant, in 'Day Of The Doctor' he has shined and held his own. 'The Time Of The Doctor' is no exception, but I'm having a hard time feeling satisfied with it. Why? Well once again this is a case of too much sh*t going on. David Tennant got a whopping 2h15min spread out over two parts to say goodbye back in 2009 while Matt Smith only got the traditional 60 minute special on Xmas day. That's hardly fair is it? A special that not only had to say goodbye to his Doctor but also wrap up three years worth of story arcs (four technically) AND force a Christmas theme down our throats. 'Day Of The Doctor' was equally ambitious but was squeezed into a more modest 75 minutes and was utterly brilliant in it's execution. Here we get literally hundreds of years worth of storytelling condensed into mere minutes! It's Steven Moffat's fatal flaw, his stories are just too big or try to do too many things to possibly do any of them justice in the allotted time frame. I genuinely think they should extend the run time for his episodes just do something that allows his episodes to breath a bit more because as it stands 'The Time Of The Doctor' is the worst case I've ever seen of 'Moffatitus'. It's not bad, but because it's Matt's final episode it's a shame he didn't go out on a high.
Before I get into just why this episode felt a tad disappointing, what did I like?
Well the story for this one is a doozer. While it's execution is lacking, there's some epic stuff going on here: The Doctor (and half the universe) have been called to a backwater planet in the middle of nowhere via an incomprehensible message being broadcasted throughout all of time and space. It's basically an excuse to reunite all of the old foes underneath the same roof (I was getting serious flashbacks to 'The Pandorica Opens'). After a brief trip to Clara's household for Xmas dinner the Doctor and Clara get beckoned by Tasha Lem, mother superior of the papal mainframe to sort this mess out. Upon arriving at the message's location, a not-so-subtlety named town called Christmas, the Doctor finds another crack in time, with the implication being that the Timelords want to break into our universe using the crack and they're using the age old question of 'Doctor Who?' as a pass-code for 'is it safe to come out?' with the answer being no as by now pretty much everyone is gathered around this thing. The Doctor can't speak his name and answer the question because bringing Gallifrey back would start another Time War killing everyone, but he can't leave because that would put the town in danger and everyone wants him dead so he can't answer the question. Cue an epic siege that last's hundreds of years where the Doctor defends Christmas and his enemies do their best to defeat him. There's also the implication that the Doctor has used up all his regenerations and this conflict will be his last.
As I said epic stuff, and a fitting scenario for Matt Smith's final episode. It's a shame that this 'epic' siege is ultimately reduced to a few short scenes and completely wastes villains. We get about 30 seconds of The Weeping Angels in the woods, a few Cybermen and Sontaran cameos, some nice shots of Dalek's blowing stuff up and that's about it. And the fact that most of the conflict is covered by a few narrated lines is quite frankly insulting. The siege lasted for hundreds of years til' only the Dalek's and the papal mainframe were left you say? How exactly did the Doctor and a small town of people fend off a universe full of creatures knocking on their front door for hundreds of years? I accept that Moffat's vision of Who is to resemble a sort of dark fairytale (it's pure Science-fantasy) but that's a tough point to swallow. A whole planet maybe, but just a small town? Not buying it. Oh, did we see some cool space battles? And any chance of multiple enemies fighting each other? Nope. It's just disappointing, as Moffat has created to what is essentially every DW fanboy's wet dream: every monster ever fighting in a war against the Doctor for hundreds of years, how cool is that? Well you're going to have to imagine it folks because we're already half an hour into the episode and we've got to wrap this up pretty quickly so Matt can have his 'goodbye' scene! Yeah, this was wasted potential.
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| These guys could have featured more...perhaps I forgot a few of their scenes? |
I'll give Moffat credit though, he somehow managed to fill the episode with a metric ton of nod's to Smith's DW past: we had the Dalek eyestalk from 'The Wedding Of River Song', fish fingers and custard, that crazy dance he did from 'The Big Bang', a great cameo from Amy (more on that later), the cracks in time, mentions of River Song and 'The Kovarian chapter', the Silents, the papal mainframe (only hinted at before), that 'endless, bitter war' that Mme Kovarian was going on about in 'A Good Man Goes To War', the big question that Dorium hinted at, the whole 'Silence will fall' mantra, Matt Smith has a relationship with a kid (11 seem's very fond of kids), general arc stuff from 'Name' and 'Day' of the Doctor, robot Dalek puppets from 'Asylum', disembodied Cyberman heads and.....yeah that's pretty much it. With so much stuff referenced or explained with one line of dialogue it was VERY easy to miss things and fail to keep up with the plot. I kind of like the idea that the Silents that influenced the events of Series 5 & 6 were basically just a break away chapter of the papal mainframe that wanted to kill the Doctor before any of this stuff happened, the irony being that they made the cracks that the Timelords want to use to come back (timey-wimey and all that). Talk about incompetent! Actually when you put it like that the ENTIRE Matt Smith era was defined/caused by his final adventure, another fantastic idea. This was all relegated to a few lines though, so the impact was minimal and merely glossed over.
So Tasha Lem then. While she's basically River as a space nun actress Orla Brady did a good job. Her church has basically been the cause of everything so it's a shame we didn't get any of the back-story to her that the Doctor kept hinting at ('You've been fighting the psychopath inside of you all your life') and their implied history. I still don't really get how her character escaped the Dalek mind control, or how she can fly the TARDIS, in fact her character literally wanders off right after that scene, never to be seen again. WTF? Is she going to be another returning character? I hope so because Tasha Lem just SCREAMS lazy writing on Moffat's part. Another victim of a rushed episode I guess.
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| Looks like an epic scene right? Unfortunately that takes up literally 3 seconds of screen time. |
And for an episode so packed with stuff to do Moffat still seemed inclined to jam in as much Christmas as he possibly could. 'A Christmas Carol' is one of my favourite episodes from the 11th Doctor's era, and (in my opinion) the only one to successfully incorporate Xmas into the story in a way that made it seem organic. Previous specials have simply been adventures set on or around Christmas day, 'A Christmas Carol' is the only one that made Christmas seem essential to the story. Here Christmas actually gets in the way of things, I mean why is the town the Doctor saves called Christmas? Couldn't it have just been set on a planet that has a cold/snowy environment? Isn't that Xmassy enough? And the stuff with Clara's turkey and her family eating Xmas dinner was completely unnecessary and just like Tasha Lem went NOWHERE. There's so many dead ends in this episode you are left genuinely questioning if your T.V hasn't somehow skipped five minutes ahead!
While I may seem bitter about most of the stuff in this episode that's largely because of the wasted potential and the fact that it was clearly rushed to fit everything into the time limit. The first 25 minutes for example are really good and set the scene perfectly for the big conflict that we never got to see. The dialogue is still snappy, things get suitably ramped up towards something big and the scenes with Handles are really funny. Even the stuff with Clara's family and the Doctor being naked the whole time I like, it's just that they could have used all this time to do something better. Start the episode off with the Doctor and Clara meeting Tasha Lem, forget everything before that, you'd have shaved off 10 minutes that could have gone to better coverage of the conflict! Show us Mme Kovarian plotting to blow up the Doctor's TARDIS with the Silents! Give a hint towards some enemy team-ups, show the Dalek's blowing some more sh*t up, stuff like that. Oh what could have been.
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| Am I the only one getting flashbacks to Catherine Tate's Nan character? |
But THANK GOD, that wasn't Matt's last scene. He actually got a really heartfelt, well written speech towards the end that even managed to bring Karen Gillian back for a cameo. Must have felt a bit odd for Clara though, especially considering she had just saved him and all. This scene actually reminded me a bit of the rivalry between Rose and Martha back in the DT days. Sure they're both good companions but the Doctor clearly likes one better than the other. I personally would have left Clara out of his final moments somehow, and just have him hallucinate talking to River Song with Amy coming in at the end or something like that. I also liked how there was no fuss with the regeneration into Peter Capaldi, it was literally *BANG* and Matt was gone. There's something quite tragic about that, especially after Matt rips off his bow-tie, you know his Doctor is over. Heartbreaking, but the show's got a brand new slate to fill in now. As for Capaldi's 20 seconds of screen time it's pretty impossible to judge what he'll be like, all he got was a few lines of generic eccentric Doctor regeneration talk. Comments about a new body part? Yep, heard it all before. Says that the TARDIS is crash landing to conveniently start the next episode off in a new location? Indeed. I think the general consensus so far is that he'll be good in the role, but we don't know why he'll be good, as Peter Capaldi has pretty much played every manner of character possible, from short tempered rage monsters to quivering lawyers. Based on what we've heard so far he'll be an 'angry scotsman' and 'a young man in an old man's body' i.e the reverse of Smith's Doctor, which sounds interesting. I think we can all agree that we're looking forward to see just what Peter Capaldi's cooked up for Who's return next year.
I should also comment on the direction and overall presentation, which has taken a step down from 'Day Of The Doctor'. To put it bluntly we've gone from a movie back to a T.V show in terms of production, and the absence of slow-mo explosions, pretty CGI and slick panning shots are extremely noticeable. It could be down to a lack of budget but all of Nick Hurran's previous Who episodes ('The Girl Who Waited' 'The God Complex' and 'Asylum Of The Daleks') excluding DOTD all have a real cinematic edge to them. Here Jamie Payne does an adequate job but having just seen DOTD this episode comes across as a tad underwhelming visually. They should basically hire Nick Hurran to do every single DW episode!
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| There's something about Dalek's in front of cool looking explosions that really turns me on... |
I guess if you were to boil down my feelings about this episode into a cohesive sentence that doesn't just ramble on about plot arcs, rushed narratives or missed potential, I'd say this episode did a good job of representing the Matt Smith era as a whole, warts and all: it was fast paced, funny, bombastic, and even a tad emotional but it was also full of convoluted storylines and threads that just plain went nowhere. It was ambitious and brilliant, if not a bit underwhelming. It was somehow epic yet not epic (if that makes sense). But, as always Matt Smith was brilliant as the Doctor. It's a shame his final episode was such a let down:
Positives:
+ We did get explanations for some of the larger questions (and even THE question)
+ Lot's of nod's to Matt Smith's tenure as the Doctor
+ Tasha Lem was another great character from Moffat
+ All the bad guys are back together again!
+ Clara continues to climb up the companion ladder
+ Epic story
+ Emotional final scene with Matt Smith
+ Capaldi!
+ Handles!
+ Amy!
+ They addressed the regeneration problem
Negatives:
- BUT the explanations were literally throw-away, blink and you'll miss it
- BUT Tasha Lem's character went nowhere and just outright disappeared towards the end
- BUT they were blink or you miss it cameo's, and the Dalek's were very poor
- BUT the epic story was largely delegated to a few voice overs and a few cool monster shot's
- BUT the regeneration problem could have been fleshed out more
- Christmas elements were painfully shoe horned in
- Clara's family: why, just why?
- Really old Doctor was painful to watch
- Complete Deus Ex Machina at the end
- Just overall a bit rushed
Overall score: 6,5/10
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