Touche Matt!
SO here it was the final episode with Matt Smith playing the elusive Doctor Who and my final review with him in the title role. Which brings a lump to the throat and a tear to the eye. What can you write about an actor who came and made the part entirely his own and put so much into the role that you really laughed, cried, and so many other mixed emotions into the fore. The Doctor said all things must come to an end but not in this way. Some things you wish would go one forever and Matt in the role was one of them! My wishful thinking.
This episode Matt's final swansong had to be different to the one with the Tenth Doctor and it was with so many references and answers to questions that were raised over the almost four years Matt played the Doctor. The Silence, the Church of the Silence and how they fought with him, the message coming through the crack in the wall, were the Time Lords waiting for him to answer the question, "Doctor Who?" The question that can never be answered. He ended up back at Trenzalore, the future that he and Clara saw. River Song was a psychopath and he married her, he wouldn't be here without her he replies, again that was true continuing on from the last episode of the last series.
Then there were the emotions with Clara (Jenna Coleman) summing everything up for us and going through the pain and heartache of losing him, that face, that chin, that wig! Ha. Well I had to get a funny line in there somewhere. Just like the 'knock knock' joke he wanted from the cracker but never got. Then there was the bell, the Bell of St John, or rather the bell of the church of the silence, whatever it was, it didn't signal the end of the Doctor but the start of his regeneration, of the introduction of the Twelfth Doctor, yet for some of us time will stand still at the Eleventh Doctor's final moment, cos right now, couldn't really care about the next one! The Time of the Doctor will always be Eleven O'clock!
The Doctor has a Cyberman head who he calls Handles and this helps him with information he needs. A message is being transmitted throughout the universe and all of his foes have gathered, the Daleks, the Cybermen, Sontaren and he must find out what he means. He must also patch the phone into the main console, which he tells Handles' to remind him 'when.' Clara calls and invites him to Christmas dinner with her family and he's her 'pretend' boyfriend. When she arrives and finds him in the TARDIS, he's naked since he's going to the Papal Mainframe, well church. She takes him home and he hasn't programmed them into the console so they can see him as naked. The turkey's not cooked but he can cook it in the TARDIS.
He takes Clara to the church and she must get naked too by swallowing a pill. Here he meets Tasha Lem (Orla Brady) the Mother Superior who has been protecting Trenzalore. Handles tells him Gallifrey has been found but he knows Gallifrey is gone. Handles deciphers the message as being from Gallifrey. The cracks in the wall were the Time lords who were hidden on the other side and trying to break through, But it didn't explain why they seemed so sinister when we first met the crack in Amy's house and throughout the fifth series. Clara got her first encounter with the weeping angels who were also buried in the snow, is this where they were all this time that we saw them after the episode in New York, or did they come here through the crack, where the Doctor dispelled them in season 5. Also why the Silence were in pursuit of the Doctor back in series 6, to protect him from River. As well as the line "Silence will fall when the question is asked." Which is why Tasha silenced everyone.
Thus the Doctor ended up on the planet where he was always destined to be, the planet where he meets his end. The Time Lords must have the Doctor say his name so they can come through the crack, but it's a bit of a stalemate as Tasha warns him, if they do, a war will succeed and this world "will burn." Kind of like damned if you do and damned if you don't. Hence if the Time Lords break through when they find out his name the planet will die and if he doesn't tell them his name then he will die. So it was left to Clara to come though with her own answer to this. As we remember Clara saw the book and found out what his name was.
The Doctor sends Clara back to the TARDIS for a charge for one of his devices and the TARDIS takes her back home. He's saving her and doesn't want her here. He becomes "the sheriff" of Christmas and is here to protect it, fighting off Cybermen and Daleks. Cue a wooden Cyberman which destroys itself cos the Soinc is useless on wood. Three hundred years pass and he begins to grow old. As he later tells Clara when she returns, he finally found a place where he could stay and never leave. The Doctor will die here and he's resigned himself to that fact and that the Twelfth regeneration will be the last since the War Doctor was a regeneration even if he didn't call himself the Doctor. But she tells him to fight it and change the future since he has his TARDIS now.
Some of the mid-point of the ep felt a little repetitive and tedious since the Doctor wasn't doing much. Also have to mention the scene where he gets back to the Mainframe to find Tasha died several times over and is assimilating into a Dalek but he tells her to fight it. The Doctor also has a penchant for pink marshmallows now and he has been getting them from his supplier, Tasha of course. A nice moment, very touching when he sits and waits for the sunrise which only appears for a brief incidence. A chance to reminisce and talk, grow even older for him and to showcase Handles's end, showing a similar fate awaiting the Doctor. He reminds him to fix the phone and dies.
Clara makes him promise to let her look into his "sad eyes" that he will never leave her again. A promise he can't really keep since he is leaving, okay not the character, but still...yet he lies to her as we all know in his own words, "I lie." She ends up home again but the TARDIS finally gets back with Tasha at the helm and she wants her to be there for the Doctor, "you can't let him die alone." They pull a cracker with some help from Clara for him and finds a poem which is apt for his transition and farewell. "And now it's time for one last bow, like all your other selves. Eleven's hour is over now, the clock is striking Twelve's."
Which the Doctor claimed he didn't know the meaning of!
He must go and do battle one last time as the Daleks request the Doctor and Clara tells the crack the Doctor's name is the Doctor and if they love him, they will help him. The Doctor now looking as if he's in a homage to William Hartnell, it seems, rings the bell as he's given a burst of energy from the Time Lords, allowing him to destroy the Dalek ship this time round (whereas last time the regeneration from the Tenth to the eleventh had the Tenth destroying his TARDIS) and so the regeneration begins. The enemies are defeated and he returns to the TARDIS. Clara goes in and finds his clothes on the floor and a bowl of fish fingers and custard. HE appears but only for the briefest of moments. He sees Amelia as a little girl and then Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) the elder as she too vanishes after saying her goodbye to her "raggedy man." One second he's walking and the next minute he's zapped into the Twelfth Doctor, who says he has kidneys and doesn't know how to fly the TARDIS.
Nice touch with The Eleventh removing his bow tie, cos "bow ties are cool" but bow ties are no more! I'm not going to get into the arguments I've read on other sites about the end of the episode and who (no pun) did whatever better, sufficed to say everyone will have their own thoughts and theories on the ending and how Matt was written out as the Doctor, or go into comparisons with the Tenth Doctor's departure. Cos it's done now and there's no way it can be changed.
Some comedy in this episode also included the Doctor going onto the Dalek ship with his cloak and a "Dalek part in my hand." But it appears there was too much going on here and we never got to say a real farewell to Matt and his Doctor. It could have been extended for over an hour cos it seemed like he was here and he was gone. At least David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor got to say goodbye in a more casual and slow paced way, seeing all his friends. Here Matt was gone in a second, what he didn't have any friends aside from Amy! Yes he sees Amy and Clara is forgotten, they (Matt and Jenna) had so much chemistry and she even blurts his feelings for him when they arrive at the town and the Truth Line, but no more is made of it! Why? Yet he kisses Tasha in front of her and comes up with the comment, "now that is a real woman." Again leaving Clara with nothing to say, er, wouldn't he have said that about River too.
We also get to see that what the Doctor saw in season 6 ep The God Complex behind door number 11 was the crack, but it seemed to be tacked on here like there was no idea of what to do with the crack and any explanation for it. Very amateurish! To be honest and don't all shout at me at once, the Tenth and Eleventh were my Doctors and I can't say I'm enthused or looking forward to number 12.
Perhaps the town called Christmas could have been given a reprieve this year and though it was meant to be a Christmas special it could have foregone the festivities cos we knew what it really was and given us the proper goodbye to Matt we deserved! Clara's parents were rather boring and standoffish, I mean yes they were old but was her mother really like that. The woman her father met with the maple leaf was stuck on the face. She deserved a much better family than that. Aside from her gran who recalled her husband and how she met and remembers him, something much more closer to home for Clara, "my Impossible girl." That's all her Doctor could call her.
Episodes alluded to here were: The Wedding of River Song, The Big Bang, The Day of the Doctor, The Name of the Doctor, A Good Man Goes to War, where River was engineered to kill him as Tasha explains when she calls her a psychopath; The God Complex. The seal the Doctor places on Handles's head to decipher the message he stole from the Master in the story with the Fifth Doctor, The Five Doctors.
As I tweeted, "Matt Smith may be the Eleventh Doctor, but to me he will always be my number one!" Enough said!
Doctor: "I will not forget one line of this. Not one day, I swear. I will always remember when the Doctor was me! And so will we, well I will at least, ha!
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