I think it was a beautiful idea that the Doctor exiled himself to this tiny little crap town for CENTURIES, knowing he could never ever leave, just so that those people could live their lives, grow old, have children, die in peace, and repeat the whole cycle. As well as keeping the Time Lords in their cage to prevent the Second Time War. I thought that was a very touching sacrifice.
I liked the idea that not since the 1st Doctor has The Doctor been able to live to a very ripe old age. This one actually got through all of his years.
^ The Seventh Doctor was dying of old age also. Before his abrupt murder by heart probe at the hands of Dr. Grace Holloway. Hahahaha.... That death was stupid.
Was there any indication how long the 7th Doctor had lived prior to falling victim of a second rate cardiologist?
What is it with the timelords these days sending secret messages through? First it was 3 taps to get a response from the master. Now it's a question and reponse method Timelords- in order to verify we got the right universe we have ask a question. What is the doctors name? Doctor who?
Shouldn't they already know his name? I would have thought so. Also another recurring Moffat theme which is getting tiring which probably had a hand in ruining The Time of the Doctor for me is using multiple monsters at the same time for bit parts. It's the third time he's used it now and it's gotten old. The first time was the Pandorica Opens which was okay as it was a new idea and would have been unique. Then the second time was A Good Man Goes to War which is when I got fed up with it. It was like a failed version of Pandorica Opens and by then the theme was getting old. But now it really was worthless. I mean all this hype of the wooden cyberman for example and we only even saw it for about 20 seconds. They Cybermen, Weeping Angels and Sontarans were utterly pointless in this episode. They just got in the way and were dull. Should have just been the Daleks and Silence like it ended up being anyway. Should have been the Silence joining forces with the Doctor like they did and fighting the Daleks like they ended up doing. Or even better, just the Silence and they could be the ones against the doctor. Yeah, just ditch the Daleks. Instead of all these minor appearances from famous monsters which is really getting me down, how about a whole episode devoted to one type like in the good old days? I mean we've had numerous appearances from Sontarans over the Moffat era but only one two part episode orientated on them back in the RTD era and apart from Strax, just brief cameos from them. Get it right for fucks sake.
The Timelords know his name, and are waiting for The Doctor to say it so they know it is once again safe to bring Galifrey back into the universe. And they waited centuries while The Doctor fought off Daleks, Cybermen, Sontaran and Angels. Clearly it is still not safe for Galifrey and the Timelords to return. Capaldi's Doctor will somehow have to make the universe safe for the Timelords and Galifrey to return.
Been a long time since I saw the TV movie but I recall that in the opening narrative, there's a line along the lines of 'I was coming towards the end of my 7th incarnation.' No years specified, though.
But he wiped out all the bad guys in the area at the end so it was - if it wasn't safe, does that mean that he left the people in Christmas to die? And if just leaving makes it safe, why didn't he leave at the start?
Actually, the Timelords closed the crack to make it possible for the Doctor to fight of the Daleks and live when they send through the regeneration energy.
Wasn't the purpose of asking "Doctor Who?" also to make sure that they were in the correct universe and not an alternate one?
This is just my view of what happened, I think this is what Moffat intended but I can't really confirm it since he left so much out of the episode.. I had to infer a lot of this stuff. What is very clear is that the time war will start again if the Timelords re-entered the universe now. The allied villains want to stop this from happening by permanently sealing the crack. The Doctor wants to stop the time war from happening again, but he is biased in wanting Galifrey and the Timelords back in the universe too. The way I see it, the crack at Trenzalore is a small defensible location. Its kind of like that valley in the movie 300 where the Spartans only had to defend with 300 because only a hundred opponents could enter the valley at any one time. In the case of Trenzalore, the space around the planet is filled with thousands of Dalek/Sontaran/Cybermen ships. But the Doctor can hold the crack just by himself because the combined allied villain forces can only send a handful into the room where the crack is located. Thus the stalemate for centuries. Ultimately, the Timelords realized that it still isn't safe to re-enter the universe.. thanks to Clara talking into the crack. So I presume the Timelords decided the best thing to do is end the stalemate. They gave The Doctor a new set of regenerations, move the crack to a new (secret?) location and hope The Doctor can somehow make the universe safe for the Timelords to re-enter. Maybe the Doctor has to negotiate a treaty with the Daleks, maybe he has to fool them somehow, I don't know what the solution is going to be.
I'll be quite disappointed if Capaldi's first episode doesn't deal with the continuation of the Trenzalore standoff.
So why doesn't the doctor just say "it is not a safe location" and they leave? The problem with the episode as presented is that there is a missing bit of dialogue where it is explained why they can't happen.
But the problem is there is nothing in the episode that states they can't simply reopen the crack after he has killed the Daleks.
Maybe, if the Gods are kindly, this will transpire into something much bigger and dethrone "Star Trek Into Darkness" vs. "Star Trek into Darkness" rename war at Wikipedia as the lamest one yet. Or maybe not, looking at the other contenders