Time of the Doctor

Since I made a topic about Day of the Doctor, I feel like I should make one for Time of the Doctor as well.

Overall, it was a great episode. I agree with some critics that the pacing was sometimes a little quick and that the parts with the narration were pretty cheap, but I still thought it was a great send off for Matt Smith while tying up most of the loose plot threads of the previous seasons.

I know this might be profane of me to say, but I was actually much more moved by Smith's Regeneration than Tennant's. Tennant's was sad, but I was never actually close to crying. Smith's last farewell did manage to hit me in the gut a couple of times. I look forward to the continuing adventures of Peter Capaldi and his strangely colored kidneys.

I saw about the first five mintues and about the last ten.

They were okay, I guess. ;)

I hate to repeat what I said in the thread of the Day of the Doctor, but this episode made me dislike Moffat even more. I don't want to be a downer, but I had a really hard time getting past the pacing issues and the fact that certain plot elements were brought up so quickly and brushed aside with so little care that I felt like the story didn't care about itself. Why was his regeneration glossed over so quickly? Tennant got such a beautiful moment of getting to see all the companions and people he had affected, whereas Smith only got to see Amy and not a single other side character that he had interacted with. I felt like Smith's Doctor deserved more than what the episode gave him. The episode was fine, but that pacing just slayed it.

Cinematography was nice, though.

He was on the planet for like 900 years, and really the only important thing going on is a war, which the best way to show is how they did it, with little individual highlights here and there. A lot of the plot elements that were brought up were explanations to mysteries and questions that had been asked since series 5. All of the important things we actually needed to know were shown to us in the episode.

Matt's regeneration wasn't glossed over. He got to use new energy to blow up a Dalek spaceship, then got to give a dramatic speech to Clara, and then still got to have a touching moment with Karen Gillan. Honestly, the moment with Karen had a lot more impact then Tennant's trips to his companions. For one thing, we already had a tying of loose knots so to speak with season 4's finale, we didn't really need it again with End of Time.

Amy hasn't been gone that long but she is the Matt Smith companion. Rory is awesome but his whole plotline is tied in to Amy, and having him there too would probably be a bit redundant. You don't really need the other important side characters because River already got a send off in Name of the Doctor and most of the other ones are probably going to make appearances in the future.

The moment with Amy was very poignant and wasn't longer than it needed to be. Smith's regeneration wasn't longer than it needed to be. In a lot of ways Tennant's was overdramatic and bloated. Smith's was sad but still hopeful and optimistic for the future which is more interesting and more in the general spirt of the show.

All in all, I thought it was a great send off for Matt and a great way to kick off Capaldi's tenure. I love Moffat's style an look forward to seeing what he pulls out next.

I could dive in and debate all of what evandan said, but debating the quality of Doctor Who tends to make me sad, so I'll just talk about the regeneration, because it's worth mentioning that Davies annoyed a lot of people with his (admittedly beautiful) fifteen-minute indugence of visiting everyone he possibly could. Smith's was more succinct, and I think the 'we are all lots of people' speech made a lovely contrast to Tennant's 'I don't want to go', and the brief moment with Amy was just lovely, I thought.

io9 had a lovely article about how each Doctor's final episode kind of sums up their entire character.  For me, It felt like an appropriate sendoff for Matt Smith, in that it was hectic and glossed over some of the important bits (wait, he has a new best friend/lover that he's known forever that we're only now meeting?  AGAIN?)...but thats been a key component of his character since Amy Pond's departure. Its one of the reasons that it felt so right that she made a cameo at the end to take him away.

For me, it felt like the doctor died when Amy couldn't be saved.  they were tied together, and without her he drifted.  There were adventures, but many of them happened without us (the audience).  He was starting to pull himself back together with Clara, but it felt like the 11th doctor had lost his steady anchor.  Clara is a good companion, but he held her at a distance- dropping her off between adventures, "saving" her by sending her off, and keeping her at arm's length.  

I can't deny that the show itself had pacing problems- but I didn't mind the narration, because to me that's what the Doctor's life WAS without Pond. He'd gotten more withdrawn and fatalistic, and the only way anyone could know him anymore was from the outside- even those that he flirted with or helped.

Amy Pond, and his adventures and interactions with her was his entire life.  And when he saw her again, he could let go and be someone else- hopefully one who can let people in again.  

I'v never seen an episode of this show in my life up until my sister made me watch this episode. So, as someone who is not emotionally tied to the series, here were my impressions:

Sending Clara away multiple times took away the impact (for me) of doing it in the first place. Kinda a "fool me once" type deal. Wasn't quite sure her presence was at all needed aboard the church ship thingy from a narative standpoint when the lady turned into a dalek. It could have been a much more profound moment if the first time she saw him again was an old man. 

If they did it that way, they could have cut down the narrated montoges by half (which were all pretty unnessesary. do they happen offten on the series?). Those scenes contributed in no small degree to the pacing critique.

The crack in the wall. Didn't clara answer them? Wasnt the whole point that answering it would bring them back? They just stopped trying? If there was already war, why not just bring them back? Granted these all stem from my ignorance of the show, but it felt a little contrived? 

All that being said, the show admitedly had a lot of charm about it, and it certainly caught my interest.

And the snowy statue things remind me of the ghosts in Bowers Castle.

Time of the Doctor is not a great first episode. Sort of like how the end of season 4 and End of Time was Davies giving himself one last large hurrah, he felt a need to give himself two hurrahs for some reason, Time of the Doctor was Steven Moffat tying up all the plotlines he's been creating over the past few years so that the new Doctor can start with a mostly clean slate. He's got the plot line of trying to find and bring Gallifrey peacefuly back into the universe, but other than that he won't have to deal with too much past baggage.

For me, personally, the revelation of the crack was pretty awesome. I had been wondering for a while why the Silence blew up his TARDIS to up the universe they were trying to protect. There's no way to know what all the Timelords can do on the other side of the crack. They may be able to send things through like regeneration energy or maybe other small or light objects, but they may not be able to bring in their whole planet from the other side.

The best episodes to start with continuity wise are either Rose, the first episode of the reboot in 2005, or the eleventh hour, Matt Smith's first full episode and the start of Steven Moffat's tenure as head writer and show runner.

Interesting! I haven't been a big follower of the modern show but do you think this could be an angle used to work through the problem of the limited number of regenerations? Forgive me if I'm wrong but isn't this new Capaldi Doctor supposedly the final incarnation according to the lore of the show?

As for the special, through the lens of someone stuck in the Baker/Davidson era, I watched the first fifteen or twenty minutes and was quite exhausted by it all -the pacing was definitely too fast and so much of the content seemed unecessary that the one could have been solved by removal of the other. The gags were amusing but a little obvious and overdone, not sure personally but it seems to be the Smith Doctor's thing. The weeping angels in the snow were fantastic and make me want to go and find the other episodes they were in, properly behind-the-sofa terrifying Doctor Who villains! Those rubber men with the shrimp heads were more reminiscent of the worst of the shows budget monsters (Confessssss - yeah, okay).

It was okay, but when I was distracted away by something else I didn't feel like I missed much. I guess I will catch up on the ending on the iplayer or one of the repeats to see the regeneration, between this and the other special I'm still not coverted to becoming a regular watcher yet.

Actually, according to this episode, Smith was supposed to be the last, but the Timelords game him another one.

The regeneration where Smith blows up the Dalek ships didn't count for me. I found that to be extremely over-the-top and silly. The timelords just gave him the ability to do that? Suddenly regeneration can blow up a ship? Why? And maybe everything that had loose ends was tied up, but one extra-long episode wasn't an appropriate amount of time to do so.

Amy wasn't the only "companion" he had, though. I mean the side characters to whom he could have said goodbye. When they did that for Tennant, it made it clear that the next Doctor would be someone totally different with a whole new cast of minor companions, so we wouldn't need to take time to constantly revisit the others. What about Strax, Madam Vastra, and Jenny Flint? They made quite a few appearances, no goodbye to them?

I'd have preferred it if the episode didn't take place over 900 years. I've never been a huge fan of time-lapses that are just summed up with some lazy narration. If they had fixed the pacing, this probably would have been a much better episode.

Thanks! As you can see, I am woefully behind on my Doctor Who geekery.

I've long ago stopped trying to critique Doctor Who. I've learned it is science fantasy, not science fiction, and I need to not expect it to be logical, consistent, or realistic. My spouse loves the characters and enjoys the show greatly, for which I am very thankful, but for me it's just okay.

On your points, evandan, because Moffat's still running the show, I imagine we're going to see more of those characters, so we (as the audience) will not need a goodbye - and in Tennant's case, I really looked at those moments as the audience's goodbyes as much as Tennant's.

For the regeneration destroying ships, I extrapolated that this regeneration was different, that the Time Lords actually gave him a full new set of regenerations, and the power output of that was huge. This was mostly just me making up a justification, so don't read into it, but it's one of the approaches I've taken to make the show make sense for myself.

The 900 years is, for me, more of an issue because there's no way a society under attack for that long would not advance technologically in ways to improve their own defensive and offensive capabilities, even with the Doctor there. But it is what it is…

They were used to much greater effect in their earlier episodes… At least I thought they were.

When he blew up the ship with the regeneration energy, I had to ask my sister if he was super powerful. I assume the details of the special regeneration will be told in this season? And if the Timelords have access to that kind of destruction power, how hard would it have been to crush Daleks in all out war (in which the entire point of the doctor staying in christmas was to prevent this war)

Time Lords are seriously, seriously powerful, but so are Daleks. Both races were dealing a lot of dmage to each other, but large portions of the universe were being destroyed as collateral damage.

I've been wondering exactly how they'd get around the regeneration restriction. It seems the answer is essentially "a wizard did it". 

Well, it is Doctor Who - that's often the answer.

A Time Wizard :P And, to be fair, Time Lords did invent regeneration, and them giving out extras is nothing new.

The whole 12 regeneration limit was always kind of a dumb idea. It was done with the 4th Doctor to create a confict for the Master who had run out of regenerations. The Master reappeared in season 3 with a complete new set of regenerations with no explanation other than the Timelords revived him. There is some precedence for Timelord magic.

Tennant's regeneration was very goofy. I liked it, but was there any real reason for the TARDIS to be destroyed? Eccleston regenerated just fine in the TARDIS with no damage done at all. The explosive destroy the Daleks with regeneration energy was silly, but so what? Doctor Who has always been silly. We need to stop pretending that the Davies era wasn't also stupid. The Davies era was completely silly what with the whole Doctor absorbs psychic energy which somehow makes him young again and gives him momentary super powers at the end of season 3. How does that work? Psychic energy, that's how it works, I guess. At least Time of the Doctor had some genuine emotion behind its silliness.

Clara getting sent away multiple times probably hurt her character development a little, but the Doctor has done this to his companions before. In season 1 he sent Rose away when there was danger. If he's in a situation he doesn't think he can win, he'll do what he can to save his companions, and this is not a character trait Clara was familiar with, so maybe now she'll be more used to it in her adventures with Capaldi.

I'll agree that the narration was the weakest part of the episode, but it kept the viewer from having to view the more repetetive parts of the plot and just move on with the actual story of the episode, and so I can live with it.

Like Rabit said, there wasn't a need for a really long drawn out goodbye to every companion because we'll probably be seeing most of them again anyway.

That is a pretty big what.  It is the biggest single flaw with the show, the fact that it makes only a tenuous effort to make sense, and constantly undermines its own integrity as a result of the ever-changing creative team.  Imagine what a mess SOTM would be if new people took it over starting in Infernal Relics and rewrote all the continuity, so that now Tachyon was actually a space alien from the planet Speedulon while Tempest was really Legacy's undersea clone-brother with a lightning-variant AZ suit implanted under his skin which turned him green.  SOTM retains its quality largely as a result of being kept under the control of its original designers.  If the people who keep taking over Dr. Who and reinventing it would instead have created original shows, similar to Dr. Who but with their own continuities that don't constantly reinvent the past of a profitable franchise, the result would likely be substantially better.

And that's probably the main reason why I don't care for Dr Who. 

I think Moffat has done a great job at keeping with the continuity. My point was that his silliness isn't really any less than Davies's silliness. It's different, but not any worse. The reason Doctor Who has been able to survive for 50 years is because of its changing staff and dynamic nature. It can evolve and be relevant to any era. Silliness is just fine if it works in the context of the story being told, and most of the time it does. I do not think the show's integrity has ever really been compromised. It has always been a silly soft sci-fi show about a man with a magic box who travles through time and space trying to make things better for everyone that he can. Despite it's many changes, the show has managed to stay true to that course and remain popular and interesting.

Dis

A

Pointing

(Yes, it requires 3 lines. No I don't have time to elaborate further right now, curse you holiday fun!)

Incidentally, those of you who've commented on thinking the Weeping Angels are cool, check out the third (new) series episode "Blink" - this was the first episode in which they appeared and is fine to be watched as a standalone one as it has no connections to the main story arc - this was the nearly-the-end-of-the-season episode in which the Doctor only really had a small role, as David Tennant was busy filming the much more busy end-of-series-finale three-parter which started after this episode. Anyway, Blink remains one of my favourite episodes, and the one in which I think the Angels are at their most spooky (possibly because this was their debut and you're learning about them from scratch).

Also, watch The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon; the Silents are used MUCH more effectively there.

My thoughts aren't anything new.  Like many, I thought Tennant's goodbye was a little too drawn out and lengthy, so I thought Matt Smith's was a nice contrast.  I'm a little surprised that when he sent away Clara for the second time (right after swearing to her that he wouldn't) they didn't bring up the whole "Rule #1: The doctor lies." thing, but whatever.  Overall I liked the episode, and I thought it was an interesting explanation of the whole Trendzalore (sp?) thing.

As for silliness in Doctor Who, the near breaking point for me came with the whole galactic prison thing.  <SPOILER> They spent several episodes building this whole thing about this unbreakable prison, and what/who could possibly be inside.  Once he's imprisoned, how does he get out?  He basically pulls a Bill and Ted, and after he gets out, he goes back and lets himself out (via Amy Pond).  Wait what? </SPOILER>  <- Is there a way to do that on here?

It bothered me a lot at first, and then I just kind of got over it, but now I reference it as an example any time someone tries to get overly "technical" about Doctor Who.

Having finally watched it after being horribly ill and then on vacation, I will weigh in.

This is the most epic send-off any doctor has received.  Far cry from the sad lay down and swap faces that the old ones got.  

As to the story, I'm a fan of the old shows so all of the new stuff seems fast paced and full of glossing over things to move the story along too fast.  I thought the plot fit his character, this doctor never let himself live in the past, always his mind on where he was, the Doctor who wouldn't look back.  The regeneration energy as the most powerful weapon in existence was ridiculous, but excusable if you try hard enough, and the start of Capaldi went very well.  Every Doctor gets bombed for his regeneration openning, and everyone gets over it and moves on.

I hope Capaldi brings in a slower style that actually develops characters and has the doctor find answers by doing more than pointing a screwdriver at everything.  There are recurring characters that I don't feel like I have any idea who they are, and have a hard time caring about, in the old days you got a real good sense and attachment to characters that were only around for a story arc, or less in some cases.

Basically it was better than expected, but they still don't make them like they used to.

I'm a fan of both New and classic Who. My favorite Doctor is still Sylvester McCoy. I've always found the characters in both the Moffat and Davies era easy to relate to and care about. I actually enjoy complicated plotlines and time travel quirkiness, and so the fast pacing hasn't really bothered me that much except in a few cases. That being said, I do hope that with Capaldi comes a new style to the show.

McCoy gets a bad rap, he is a really good doctor.  My favorite is still Troughton, but that has a lot to do with Jamie, Zoey and him being so great together.

I do love the new ones, just not as much and I really wish they would develop characters more than they do, and give time for the plots to evolve and twist.

Matt Smith is frimly entrenched in my second tier of doctors I like, with Baker, McCoy and Eccelston.

Although I find it hard since watching the Fivish doctors reboot not to say Peter Cushing is my favorite, that had me rolling on the floor, couldn't believe he went there.

I think most of the characters and plot were given as much time to develop as they needed to.They're not exactly in depth characters, but they're interesting and entertaining. The fast paced nature of the narrative also perfectly complemented Matt Smith's portrayel of the Doctor. the only characters in the Davies era other than the Doctor that I felt particularly attached to were Donna and Captain Jack. I've pretty much loved every side character introduced in the most recent era. Craig and the Pasternoster Gang are very fun and vibrant characters, and although there were times Amy needed to be slapped, I still found her story arc much more engaging and emotional than the Tween puppy love Rose had with the Doctor. I think Clara is a bit underrated as a companion. She's the only traveller in the new Who that hasn't just entirely abandoned her life to travel with the Doctor. She's kept a very clear line between her real life and her adventures. The romance angle was slightly forced and unnecessary, but I think it will be interesting to see how that changes now that the Doctor is an old man.

That being said, I do think this is a good time for a stylistic change, and I can definitely understand the want and need for a slower pacing. You can go only go so big before you need to start going small again.