The moment the whole world (or at least the nerds of the world) has been dreading has now arrived. Matt Smith is no longer The Doctor.
The Doctor Who Christmas Special served as the send-off to the raggedy man who’s been saving the universe for the last three seasons. Also, more importantly, it finally tied up all those pesky plotholes and answered all the questions we’ve been asking for years. In this episode, “The Time of the Doctor”, it was all tied up in a neat little bow.
I’m not one for spoilers, so I won’t reveal any crucial bits of the episode, but here are some of the burning questions that get answered:
-Who blew up the Tardis in the season 5 finale and caused the cracks in the universe?
-What exactly are The Silence?
-Why is there an entire religious organization that believe “silence will fall when the question is asked: Doctor Who?”
-Where is Gallifrey, the Doctor’s homeworld, after the events of “The Day of the Doctor”?
-Will the Doctor finally meet his end on Trenzalore?
The episode balanced out humor with seriousness. In the beginning, the Doctor is wearing hologram clothing, and meets Clara’s family, only to realize that they can’t see the hologram. Clara explains with “he’s Swedish”. And of course, we have heart-wrenching parts of the episode, as the Doctor is placed in a crisis; spend his years defending a town called Christmas on Trenzalore, which every race in the universe is out to destroy, or leave them to their fate.
It was a tear-jerker, as we saw the Doctor getting older and older, knowing that his time is growing thin. The Doctor only has twelve regenerations, and if you count the War Doctor and David Tennant’s trick with the hand in “The Stolen Earth” and “Journey’s End”, he’s all out. He will be the last Doctor, and there’s nothing to stop him from aging and aging until he dies from it.
The episode had its problems, of course. The viewer has to spend some time trying to justify the plotholes that arise, which is kind of par for the course with writer Steven Moffat. It’s not as impressive as the 50th anniversary special, but it does Matt Smith justice as he leaves the show, making way for the 12th Doctor, Peter Capaldi. At the end of the episode, the Doctor takes off his bow tie, one of the signatures of his character, and lets it fall to the ground.
“I’ll always remember the time when I was the Doctor,” he says before his regeneration, in a scene that rivals David Tennant’s departure and the famous line “I don’t want to go”. After such amazing actors, Peter Capaldi has a long way to go to earn an equal place in our hearts.
