Messy. And Confusing. I've seen every episode of NuWho and I still struggled to figure out what was going on. I know we get a Christmas Special but do we have to get smashed over the head every year with Snow and Christmas trees and shit. We get it. Its Christmas! They sure do ladle this stuff on. "Its Christmas...It Christmas...DID WE MENTION ITS CHRISTMAS????" How old is the Doctor now? 1500? I voted Fish Fingers, but I wish I'd put average to be honest.
Agreed, say what you will of the episode but the way in which Matt's regeneration was written for me made it harder to man up . 'Any moment now, he's a coming!' It was the antitheses of the 10-11 regeneration. Unfortunately the uber fast change cheapened it to a degree, I really needed a few more seconds of the golden glow and a face morph.
Well, I watched it, and... I loved it. It was undoubtably rushed, though. Whereas End of Time, the last Christmas/New Years special that featured a regeneration story, felt too long, especially for that story, this felt like a condensed version. This seriously needed to be at least 30 minutes longer, especially in the beginning. But the story did feel unique, and Christmas-y, although noticeably less so than in Moffat's acccompanying specials. I'm kinda organizing my thoughts still, but I thought Matt Smith's performance overall was truly superb. He really got to go out solidly. As for the regeneration scene itself... did anyone else think about the Fifth Doctor afterwards? Cause it really reminded me of his regeneration, when he thought about his past companions "talking" to him. But really, I didn't even expect Eleven would get such a scene, let alone that beautiful, wonderful, absolutely fitting last moment of his - I thought "Love from Gallifrey, baby!" would be his final line. Good thing it wasn't. And the inevitable comparison of 2013's three regenerations: This is better than Day of the Doctor's (the fan-edited version of it is noticeably better, but still falls below this one), but Night of the Doctor's version is the best regeneration scene of the year. The Eighth kinda stole the show, didn't he? Overall... a fitting final story for the Eleventh. Roll on the Twelfth!
Well I'll give him a chance. He has potential but then again so did Smith but I didn't feel he preformed to the full of it, although I blame Moffat's writing for that. I'd like Capaldi to be the dark doctor, maybe a nice long black coat. But I rarely get my wishes granted with Doctor Who these days save for Day of the Doctor and Night of the Doctor with Paul McGann. Indeed, and it's ironic that one of them was the youngest actor to ever play the doctor. :P A shame though, I didn't think it had much impact. I wanted a more traumatic cause. Oh well, I can always write a fanfic of an alternative regeneration.
Agreed, Night of the Doctor was fantastic. That sort of makes up for the Time of the Doctor. Paul McGann went out perfectly and the story was good, especially for a what 7 minute episode?
I do agree strongly with this. Especially since I'm Jewish. I'm no Scrooge, there is nothing wrong with clebrating the festive holiday, but I got very annoyed with "The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe", that episode had the attitude that every living being in the entire universe is Christian, and celebrates Christmas.
I liked it, but it does cram so much in from Smith's whole tenure that it feels like getting a synopsis of his time as the Doctor. None of it built a great care for it all. I did like having Clara coming back to the Doctor over the years. It harkens back to River's comment about the Doctor not wanting to see his companions grow old and die. He gets to see things from their side in the end with Clara being the ageless one time traveling through his life. I wish more had been done to develop that. An uneven story with moments of brilliance coupled with a mess of arcs that were there to justify what we knew, the Doctor would regenerate and wasn't going to go kaput on his 13th face.
I agree with you and I understood everything that was going on. When the Doctor mentioned the Master and the Death Zone on Gallifrey he was referring to The Five Doctors story. Actually Moffatt tied everything up pretty well.
Well, that's odd. I am not a fan of the Moffat era at all. In fact, I even stopped watching for a while (the second half of the sixth series though I plan to remedy that sometime soon). But unlike many others in this thread I actually thought this was pretty good. I wish we would have spent more time with the Doctor on Trenzalore over the course of the centuries he lived there but those are the time constraints of modern Who, I guess. The regeneration limit problem also came out of nowhere. The 11th Doctor always knew that he was the last regeneration - since the reasons why were not new (I personally do question counting 10.5 as a regeneration as Ten used stored regeneration energy from 9 to 10 to do it but whatever) - and yet, he never acted that way and never even mentioned it. It would have made an interesting story arc for Capaldi. The prophecy that he would die at Trenzalore would have sufficed for him to know that there was no escape. I agree that the resolution to the Trenzalore arc was a bit anti-climactic but I didn't expect much, anyway. I hope Moffat leaves those grondiose sounding arcs be from now on. As a story, it worked well for me, otherwise. I loved the dinner scenes, the humour (especially the beginning) and even liked the rather casual way some of the mysteries of 11's run were resolved (in a few sentences) because that's often how it is with life's mysteries. I liked the Tasha Lem character. I didn't expect Capaldi to get much screen time and it was used quite well. He came off sufficiently weird and crazy. I hope he does remember how to fly the Tardis in time, though. I really want to see the first episode with Capaldi now instead of in 8 months or so. From the dialogue I felt it was rather obvious that Tasha Lem was meant to be a reincarnation of River Song. First, Tasha refers to River as a psychopath created by the Church and then later, he tells her to fight the psychopath within. How that's supposed to actually work, considering River ends up being trapped inside the library computer, is anyone's guess. Minor details like that haven't stopped Moffat before. But we did see his leg looking petrified in one scene (when Clara returns for the second time). So, it stands to reason the scene was cut. I wonder how much else?
Downloading River into a new body probably wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility. Or,if Tasha Lem is a incarnation (regeneration?) of River Song, at some point the Doctor might figure out how to retrieve her from the library or rewrite history--again.
Rapid-fire first impressions: Hmm, yeah, not sure what to make of that. As well as shameless cribbing from the Parting of the Ways (sending the companion back to her estate so she's safe... and the fact Clara now lives on a Rose Tyler style estate sort of sums up how random her character really is) and The End of Time (ominous narration opening) there was the clumsy explaining of plot points from old episodes I think pretty much everyone had stopped caring about (the lack of explanation for the Tardis exploding was annoying three years ago, covering it in a exposition speech now managed to be equally annoying). And considering he seemed to remember The Day of the Doctor well enough, why was the Doctor expecting not to regenerate when there were 13 (well, 14 if you count the continuity cock up that resulted in two different Sylvester McCoy's being there) Doctor's saving Gallifrey? Why were the Time Lords being dickish about shooting him a new regeneration cycle when they already knew about Capaldi from that story as well? How did how the Daleks get blown up at the end not kill everyone in the town as well? If the Time Lords have the ability to do that to Daleks in the first place how did they ever come so close to loosing the Time War (just find a Time Lord on his last life, zap him a new cycle and the change will blow up entire space fleets...). Why erase the Daleks' knowledge of the Doctor when they got it back in their very next "Present day" appearance? Couldn't we have had at least one new monster amongst the usual ones they parade out for every monster mash sequence in the Smith era? Hell, even dusting down the Slitheen costumes would have added some variety to the Daleks/Cybermen/Sontarans monotony. Old age make up that not only wound up making the Doctor look more like a Dick Tracy villain than aged, but seemed to result in a worse and worse performance from Smith the more and more heavy it got. Good points.... Errr, the priest woman not being revealed to be some form of River Song despite the Tardis flying skills and and flirting seeming to signpost it. No Tellytubby Daleks (and that has to be the final nail in their coffin surely if they're not even using the props to pad out Dalek crowd scenes now?). The rapid-fire actual regeneration. This was basically the clusterfuck I was expecting Day of the Doctor to be, and any reassurance from the special that the Moff wasn't burnt out and the show needed a new chief writer has been completely blown away. Still, he got it back once, so here's at least hoping Capaldi gets off to a better start.
Neither did I. I'm surprised anyone did to be honest. It seemed obvious that this was always going to be Smith's last episode and Capaldi would only show up at the end so as not to take away focus from Matt. I liked this episode, I loved that Pond came back in some form at the end to wrap it up. I felt everything tied into the previous episodes well enough and it entertained me. If I'm making snap judgemnets, Capaldi didnt scream "Doctor" at me in the brief moments he was on screen, but snap judgements are unfair. That said, I've always been more of an 11th Doctor fan than a Doctor Who fan in general, so I may end up taking this as a jumping off point, but regardless, it was fun! Also, I so thought the nun woman was a iteration of River, shame she wasnt really. and for a moment I thought they were setting Barnabumble or whatever his name was as a future companion. Ugh.
Karen has been dropping hints about it for a while now https://twitter.com/KarenGillan2/status/382535243321720835 So yeah that wig used to be her real hair.
Well it's 13 lives, 12 regenerations. So "All 13" still works from the POV that the War Council was thinking it was every life of the Doctor; original body and 12 regenerations. And 13/1a* showing up might have been something the original 12 didn't plan on. * 13th Doctor, 1st Doctor of his second regeneration cycle.
i thought it was fun. like most of you, i agree that it was a rushed mess. lots of throwaway dialogue. there were good moments. especially right before the regeneration.
My main complaint about this, and the last main regeneration story, is the following: The End of Time was too long for the story it was telling; The Time of the Doctor was too short for the story it was telling. The Time of the Doctor needed more breathing room, so to speak, it didn't need to be a two parter but making it at least 75 minutes might have helped.
Time Of The Doctor would have worked better had we been set up for it through the season. The Papal Mainframe needed some episodes to set them up. And the mystery singal needed to have been brought in earlier in the year--maybe even as the event that led to the discovery of Trenzalore by the the Great Intelligence. Still, I liked it. Liked it better than End of Time.