A fantastic goodbye for my favorite Doctor so far. I loved how they wrapped up so many long-running threads during the Eleventh Doctor's time on the show and how they did his regeneration scene from the help it was given from the Time Lords to the emergence of the Twelfth Doctor.
Well, it was a bit of a jumble, but I enjoyed the vast majority of it. The end was very odd tonally...first he regenerates, then he's 11 again, then he just "pops" into being Capaldi. It was very much the shedding of an era though. Karen Gillan showing up was a nice touch, and I admit I lost it when Clara started crying and said "No!" and reached for him. Overall not as bad as I feared.
It was a bit silly, though, having Gallifrey help. I mean, how many other timeshas the Doctor had things happen that could have resulted in him having extra regen energy? The energy he got from River? Donna? His daughter that everyone seems to have forgotten? Etc and so on. And what was that planet's name again? Trent Reznor?
I think the reson 11 didn't get all energy explodey when he became 12 was due to his regeneration cycle being restarted as the regeneration shot off more energy later in the cycle.
While yeah, it was a bit convoluted in places, and apart from the Doctor ageing, it really didn't seem as if hundreds of years passed. Also the bits about being naked and the Doctor shaving his head seemed a bit pointless. Overall thought I enjoyed it for the most part. The Mother Superior turned out to be quite an amazing character. some lovely little dramatic scenes with the Doctor and Clara. And yeah, I teared up a bit when Amy turned up. And it was good to see a fast regeneration for a change. The way I see it, the Doctor is the only hope the Gallifreyans have of ever returning to our universe. So naturally they're going to give him all the regeneration energy they have to spare.
Phenomenal! I need to see it again but I thought it completely blew away the other Christmas specials and It's probably my favorite episode since "Vincent and the Doctor".
That was pretty damn good. Yes, too rushed. But to reverse what someone else said, there were some fantastic moments in a dodgy episode. Knew the Time Lords would give him extra regens. Was completely surprised by Amelia/Amy. He also said something I've been thinking about over the last year, but hadn't put into words, about how we're still us but always change, and that's going to be my new sig. Good stuff. Not as good as Day, but still a good conclusion to Eleven/Twelve. And as for Thirteen/1... "Kidneys! I've got new kidneys!... I don't like the colour!" Almost as good as "New teeth..." Thought for today: When the Doctor was 1, back in 63, he was an old man, and now...
I enjoyed it. Oddly paced as folks said, but I thought it nicely answered all the questions that had been raised during Smith's tenure. Very much looking forward to seeing Capaldi's Doctor.
Did anyone happen to understand what Clara said when the couple asked her her name on their first arrival on Trensalor? I've rewatched it half a dozen times but I can't make it all out. * I hope next series they can bidget for more music. I was surprised at how many old musical themes were recycled for this story. * Regeneration scenes are so damn weird. I just rewatched it and the way you jump from tearfulness at saying goodbye to smiles as you welcome a new Doctor is tough on the emotions.
A few additional thoughts beyond a review of the episode: I think bringing back the Time Lords could be quite tricky since it seems it'll reignite the time war. The Daleks seem to back to their old strength, which makes it difficult. On a related note, the whole forgetting the Doctor thing didn't last very long. It's a nice idea, but it's too tempting to have an adversary who knows you. Although I do think the hope was to have things a bit smaller in scale and return to the Doctor just a wandering man in a blue box. However, I do wonder if Capaldi asking if Clara knew how to fly it is a sign of a return to the Doctor not being able to fly it.
I wondered about that, too. No. He was 1200 when they got to Trenzalore, 1500 when Clara first reappeared there, then some undetermined amount of time passed. Enough time that the young man was not Barnable. Please help me understand 1) Gallifrey was frozen in a moment of time in a pocket universe, but somehow managed to connect with the Doctor (and our universe) both in this episode and in ’The End of Time’ with Rasillon and the Master. 2) Gallifrey was using the crack, which was in the universe/Amelia’s wall/Father Octavian’s ship from ‘Flesh and Blood,’ to try to re-enter our universe. 3) Were the Doctor to answer the question at Trenzalore, Gallifrey could narrow in on his location and re-enter our universe. 4) The Kovarian Sect was evidently an unauthorized and rebellious offshoot of the Papal Mainframe and acting without their authority. Mme Kovarian was the titular head of it and commanded at least some of the Silence, but either this was not true or the Silence supposedly under her command rebelled and killed her in ’The Wedding of River Song.’ She also commanded at least some of the Headless Monks, from ‘When a Good Man Goes to War.’ 5) The crack was created by the Kovarian Sect of the Papal Mainframe when they blew up the Tardis in ‘The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang’ in an attempt to kill the doctor so that he would never answer the question “Doctor who?” at Trenzalore. 6) The Kovarian Sect also kidnapped Amy so that they could control her baby River and train her up to kill the Doctor for the same reason as in (5). 7) The Silence who were on Earth ages ago directing human development up until the 1960s were assumedly affiliated with Mme Kovarian,based on their possession of the child River Song. 8) Amy and Rory’s friend “Mels” remembered her training and attempted to kill the Doctor in ‘Let’s Kill Hitler,’ but by the time she was River Song and talking with Mme Kovarian, she did not remember having met him. She was sent, as River, to kill him in ’The Impossible Astronaut,’ but fails due to the Doctor changing the past and being inside of the robot Doctor. 9) Father Octavian was possibly affiliated with the Papal Mainframe (wikipedia calls them “militarized clerics”), but evidently not with either Mme Kovarian or her group of the Silence. There is no known affiliation between Father Octavian and the Silence or the Headless Monks. 10) “Silence will fall,” which was assumed to be disastrous for the Doctor, was actually an audio silence initiated by Tasha Lem, head of the Papal Mainframe, to forestall anyone answering the question of “Doctor who?“ and leading to a renewed Time War. I must’ve gotten something wrong, although I know that some of these thread were not intended to be tied together at the time they were created.
Jenna could have a great future as an auctioneer. The first was something like: 'I'm an English teacher from the planet Earth and I've flown off with a man from space because I really fancy...' The second was something like: 'nobody (or multi) personality masking body control freak'
" <something> personality masking bossy control freak" Might be compulsive, might be multiple. BTW, I thought Smith's old Doctor acting was better than Tennant's old Doctor acting. I think they were recycling musical themes for a storytelling reason. Was not expecting the crack in the wall. And Clara's eyes after regeneration, they were priceless (and one of the few moments I've really warmed to her).
I really enjoyed it. I did a little "Mr. Thick Thick Thickety Thickface from Thicktown. Thickania!" at myself when I finally connected the truth field to Dolorium's warning: I liked how everything about that came true. Now we know why it must never be answered, as it would have re-ignited the Time War. Some random thoughts: What if the Doctor sending Clara to the TARDIS was not to save her, per se, but to save the TARDIS? In "The Name of the Doctor," we see the final resting place of the TARDIS. Perhaps the Doctor thought that if he sent her away, he was rewriting time? Not sure why it came back the first time, other than, perhaps figuring it was easier to just bring Clara back than to risk having another companion open and stare into her heart? I thought it was fitting that upon leaving the Church's ship, it was seeing a young boy that convinced Eleven to return to Christmas Town and continue fighting. As someone pointed out, Eleven is defined by his empathy for children and his need to help them. Perhaps an extension of, as Nine stated, knowing what it was like to be the child left all alone in the cold. Either way, Eleven landed where a little girl needed him and on his first adventure in the TARDIS, wanders off (after telling Amy he never interferes) to help a girl in need. He's done this throughout his tenure, always being there for kids who needed help. I thought they were going to actually reveal that Tasha was a version of River, somehow out of the Library computer and trying to do to the Church what Jack did for Torchwood. Overall, I'm glad they didn't, thought it would explain a lot. I think Eleven expended the bulk of the regeneration energy on taking out the Daleks, so there wasn't enough for a grand outpouring of energy at the end, like we'd seen with Nine/Ten and Ten/Eleven. In that case, it does seem fitting that (a) the actual change was split-second quick and (b) Capaldi is older (after expending all of that energy and then having it de-age him at the very end, there likely wasn't enough for another young incarnation). I quite like Clara, especially how she bounces between clever and clueless. Actually, "clueless" might be a bit harsh, more like feckless. She's a bit like the leaf from "The Rings of Akhaten," in that some times she's got a clear direction and others she just goes along. Amy, Donna, or Rose would have spoken up during the meeting between Dalek-Lem and The Doctor. Clara is content to just sit there. And there's no way Amy would have just waited outside during their first meeting. If she absolutely had to stay out, she would have wondered off and I think, so too would Rose. Donna would have been inside the room before the Doctor or Lem. It felt weird tacking on Clara's family, since we hadn't met them. Clara's mother seemed to be Sylvia Noble 2.0. The father was a non-entity, though Gran stole the show. Though, and knowing Moffat, it means something, it was odd for the father to keep wanting to hear the story about how she met her husband (his father or his father-in-law?). Especially seeing as how he had his own "meet-cute" with the leaf. And isn't this a bit weird, seeing as how her mother died when Clara was 16? The TARDIS Data Core is saying that's actually Clara's step-mother. And what year did the "modern" day parts take place in? Exactly how much about the Doctor and his enemies does Clara know? She knows he can change his face, which might be due to the events of "The Name of the Doctor" or seeing two other Doctors in "The Day of the Doctor." But this Clara never encountered the Daleks (and we're led to believe that this Clara knows nothing about her other lives or did that change after she jumped into the Doctor's timeline? Side-note: I wasn't a huge fan of it in "Asylum of the Daleks" and I was even less a fan of it in this episode, so can we please not have any more humans turning into Daleks? For a race that's supposedly obsessed with Dalek purity, I don't see them turning others into Daleks, rather, just exterminating them. Besides, they are kind of making the Cybermen obsolete as enemies, when they can assimilate others, as well. While we're on the topic of things to avoid doing, I'm quite done with these "all of the Doctor's enemies coming together" plots. It was cool to see in "The Pandorica Opens," but after "Army of Ghosts/Doomsday," it's odd seeing the Cybermen and Daleks agreeing on anything, even their hatred of The Doctor, to work together well. Besides, the "villains hating each other, but only teaming up to defeat a mutual enemy" is a bit cliche. Almost as cliche as "the hero teaming up with a mortal enemy to defeat a mutual enemy" trope. Back to Clara, what was up with the TARDIS originally not liking her in "The Rings of Akathen"? That, to me at least, never got a full resolution. Especially after learning it was a version of Clara that directed the Doctor to this particular TARDIS (going against what Idris told us in "The Doctor's Wife." As someone pointed out earlier, why didn't Clara feel the compulsion to kill the Silence on sight? Oversight on Moffat's part or something else (such as a Donna Noble-esque, she just never saw the footage? While we're on the topic, why were the Silence on Earth for so long? Did they have plans and upon being defeated by the Doctor, hooked up with the Church? How does hearing confessions match with being on Earth since "the wheel and the fire"? Perhaps the Silence are like the Ood, overall pretty benign, until controlled by an outside force. In this case, Madame Kovarian's off-shoot branch of the Church. Could Kovarian have guided the Silence to Earth as a part of her plan to stop the Doctor from reaching Trenzalore. What is the Church's ultimate aim? It seems they were most worried about the return of the Time Lords, to the point of setting up a situation where, if they were to return, they'd return to face their enemies (moreso than just the Daleks this time). Are they just anti-Time Lord? Where is the Shadow Proclamation in all of this? Hell, if you ask me, they would have made more sense than the Church of the Mainframe or whatever. They'd at least have something at stake, seeing as how they took the place of the Time Lords in terms of watching over the galaxy. Perhaps they did not want to relinquish their authority? If you ask me, the Angels were there because they sensed the crack. They'd tried to feast on the crack's energy before. Imagine if the Angels had feasted on Gallifrey! Now that would have been very, very bad! I think that's all for now. ETA: I think she started off by saying "bubbly," not "nobody."
Bossy does sound more likely than body. And bubbly works for me, too. Sounds far less self-deprecating.
I really liked the idea of the story--of the Doctor growing into old age while protecting Trenzalore and preventing another Time War-- but I have to agree something seemed a bit off with the execution. The story was just way too frantic and chaotic, with way too many wacky ideas and aliens and jokey moments jammed into it, and I really wished Moffat had simplified things and let it breathe a bit more (it's not until the quieter final scenes with the older Doctor that I really felt myself engage with the story). I normally have no problem with Moffat's style of storytelling, and the way he likes to keep you constantly off balance, but this and Wedding of River Song are two times when I think he went a little overboard with the craziness. As for Capaldi's entrance, it was a decent enough, but not nearly as memorable as Smith's I don't think. It's hard to really get excited or get a good idea of what his Doctor could be like at the moment, unlike with Smith where you could tell from the start that he was going to be pretty wacky and different.
Recreating the hand in "The Christmas Invasion" was the "stored regeneration energy" trick. 10.5 burned through a whole new regeneration - and as he said in "Journey's End", he had to shunt the extra off into a matching bioreceptacle that is, the hand). If Ten had been able to use stored regeneration energy at that point to fix the Dalek blast, there would have been no 10.5. On an unrelated note, whatever happened to being "unable to ... fail to answer" on Trenzalore? Because there sure as hell was a lot of failing to answer on the Doctor's part...
Hmm. Kind of average. I wasn't wowed by it. I may have to watch it again to reassess, but it didn't strike a chord with me first time around. Some quick takes: It seemed a bit too goofy Didn't like how the church was suddenly a time travelling super power that could hold back the evil forces of the universe for centuries Too much talking and not enough actual plot Hand wave magical solution I hope I have a better opinion after a rewatch. Mr Awe