The Time of the Doctor reaction post

[tardis_stowaway]

I am apparently Grumpy Fan in relation to Doctor Who.  While there were definitely some things I enjoyed, if you are looking for unadulterated squee you might want to scroll past.

[Spoilery reaction to ]Sadly, "The Time of the Doctor" carries on the tradition from "The End of Time" of sending off a popular Doctor with an overstuffed wreck of a final episode.  I wish

Comments

[wendymr]

I agree with most of this - "incoherent mess" is the phrase I used to my husband after we'd finished watching. And I also noticed the contrast with Eleven's non-ageing elsewhere.

The aborted regeneration refers to Ten - unless you were wondering why the other aborted regeneration didn't count also? Yes, it did feel as if Moffat's been doing a "I won't be showrunner for ever, so I'm going to grab and then pack in every single important plot point set up for the Doctor that could conceivably happen naturally over the next 5-10 years and have them all to myself. Nyah nyah."

And I completely agree on the nudity 'joke' - so unfunny. I'm equally not a fan of Smith's Doctor and am happy to see him go, but he deserved better as his exit. And, yes, much as I'm looking forward to Capaldi, my reservations are the same as yours.

[tardis_stowaway]

"Incoherent mess" is a very good description for this episode.

The aborted regeneration refers to Ten - unless you were wondering why the other aborted regeneration didn't count also?

I know Ten's aborted regeneration at the end of S4 is counted here, which would mean Eleven should have known from the start that he was actually the last. My confusion is that when Eleven was shot on the lakeshore in "The Impossible Astronaut," he appeared to start to regenerate before being shot again. How could he do that if he was already out of regenerations? Would River know that he shouldn't be able to even start regenerating? I don't remember enough of the "robot duplicate full of tiny people" explanation for his survival to know whether that was actual regeneration energy (even though he wasn't really dying) or some special effect to fool those who needed to think him dead.

I don't really get why Moffat felt the need to try to pack so many plot points into this to make it more confusing and less emotionally centered. Twelve will still

[ladymercury_10]

and decided to count the metacrisis as a regeneration to manufacture the danger of this being the Doctor's last life
OH, is that what that line meant? I thought he meant Ten had regenerated at some point we hadn't seen, and then I got all confused because Ten had been so anxious about regenerating I couldn't understand how he could have done it once for vanity and then gone on like nothing had happened.

I also continue to be confused as to how Gallifrey being "in another universe" is fundamentally different from being a drumming noise in the Master's head, beyond the fact that apparently one of these makes it salvageable and the other does not.

I was really happy to see Amy again. I got spoiled for it by Tumblr, but it was still a really emotional moment.

[tardis_stowaway]

Yeah, they counted the time that Ten got shot by a Dalek but stuck the energy in the severed hand while keeping his own face.

The new canon regarding Gallifrey just doesn't seem to make any sense with "The End of Time." It's not like TEoT makes a whole lot of sense either, but it would be nice if there had been SOME attempt to reconcile and connect the two explanations for the end of the Time War rather than increasing the confusion.

Tumblr is the worst for spoilers. I'm glad you enjoyed seeing Amy anyway!

[iwouldbegood]

I definitely agree with your reaction. I was left feeling quite underwhelmed. The episode reminded me of so much I hate about Moffat's writing and his overly complicated plots and story arcs. And it just did not have the emotional effect I was hoping for. I wasn't very happy with The End Of Time either, but I connected with it and felt so much when it was Ten's time to go. With Eleven's regeneration, it was more my sadness for wonderful Matt than anything else. For me, nothing can compare with the wonderful Parting Of The Ways.

And, needless to say, I am so very bitter Moffat couldn't be gone together with Eleven...

[tardis_stowaway]

Yep, I agree with what you say!

Moffat has been such a disappointment as a showrunner on Doctor Who. He's a much better storyteller when working at a smaller scale and not as the sole person in charge. When doing just one or two episodes a year under RTD or when co-running Sherlock's brief seasons with Mark Gatiss, he seems to be able to do plots that hold together and have an appropriate number of twists. But his timey-wimey puzzlebox stories don't necessarily scale up to work as arcs over multiple seasons of Doctor Who. I don't know how the dynamics are in the DW offices, but it just seems like there is nobody who tells him when something isn't working.

Parting of the Ways was so much better than either Ten or Eleven's regenerations.

[reverendjmg]

I was also kind of upset that Eleven aged. The Doctor NEVER ages. One is super old looking because that regeneration is super old, not because he'd been in that regeneration forever. STUPID MOFFAT

[tardis_stowaway]

I don't necessarily have a problem with the concept of the Doctor aging, but it seems like it ought to take a hell of a lot longer than he spent on Trenzalore to see that much of a change. The only thing I can think of is that doing without the TARDIS for so long was messing his body up. Or maybe the various enemies had some sort of weapon that contributed? It's stupid.

Sometimes I feel like Moffat just asks a bunch of eight year old boys what they think will be cool, writes down what they say without paying much attention to it, and puts all of that into the show.

And I was also very, very disappointed by his hand-wavey solution to the limited regenerations problem. If he's going to take that plot point for himself, he could at least spend the time on it that it deserves.Exactly! It would have been so easy to either not count the metacrisis or not have created the War Doctor. If one of those regenerations didn't count, then the limit could have been a plot arc for Capaldi when Moffat is initially still running the show. I don

[reverendjmg]

So, I remember a moment after River Song first regenerated into the River Song we know and she said, "Maybe I'll take the age down gradually over the years, just to freak people out." I guess it's possible the apparent age of a Time Lord is an expression of their mental state, something they can control with enough mental discipline, but something that might slip into old-old age if they're feeling really down and depressed. That's kind of stretching for an explanation, though. At the end of the day, the writers just wanted the Doctor to feel old so they made him up to look old. I have to admit they did a good job with it, and Matt Smith did an excellent job of ACTING old and tired. It still bugs me though.

[timemachineyeah]

"Also, I am a bit annoyed that Moffat created the War Doctor and decided to count the metacrisis as a regeneration to manufacture the danger of this being the Doctor's last life, but then this episode was the first we heard of it."

He went to such convoluted extremes (The Day of the Doctor could TOTALLY have just been told with Eight and RTD had said before that he didn't intend for metacrisis!Doctor to count as a regeneration) to make this The! Last! Regeneration! and then did nothing worthwhile with that at all. He barely mentioned it, it didn't even add to the tension as we'd ALREADY SEEN Capaldi in the episode prior, and it was resolved out of nowhere with little effort and no work on the Doctor's part at all.

WHY DO ALL THAT MYTHOLOGY STEALING AND RUINING
IF YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE A GOOD STORY PLANNED FOR IT???

He took a great opportunity for a Doctor Who story away form future writers in a really deliberate way and then didn't even USE it.

What a mess. Moffat makes me so angry.

[tardis_stowaway]

WHY DO ALL THAT MYTHOLOGY STEALING AND RUINING
IF YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE A GOOD STORY PLANNED FOR IT???

He took a great opportunity for a Doctor Who story away form future writers in a really deliberate way and then didn't even USE it.

Yes! I am honestly as baffled as I am annoyed by this. As far as we know, Moffat is still going to be head writer for the next season, so even if he wanted to tell this story himself, he could have done it with Capaldi. The Doctor fretting about being on his last regeneration could have made a good season-long arc. It's not like it had to be dealt with before Matt Smith regenerated, because I don't think anybody would have had a problem with not counting the metacrisis. Why do this to himself as well as whoever follows?

I wish Moffat could hire Donna Noble as his PA, because sometimes I think he needs someone to stop him.