Doctor Who: The Time of the Doctor (2013)

The Worst Film Ever

the audience applauded

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

So, where to begin? Moffat collects the table scraps from previous script meetings and scrambles them together to try to form any semblance of a feature length episode. That's about as accurate of a synopsis I can give.Basically, a clone of River Song (yes, I know she's a different character but she's written exactly the same way) warns the Doctor about his upcoming fate on Trenzalore.Meanwhile, Clara tries to masquerade the Doctor off as her boyfriend to her family, who are quite possibly the most pointless characters. They just sit at the dinner table looking bewildered, with no familial character development being established at all.Basically, the Doctor spends centuries safeguarding this Christmas themed planet from alien threats. (Oh wait, 'threat' would imply that they were actually threatening!) The Doctor has reached his final regeneration in his life cycle so he essentially lives out his life repelling aliens.As he ages thanks to the use of ridiculous looking prosthetics, the Daleks have him cornered, making him surrender.Then a literal Deus Ex Machina happens where the Time Lords fracture the skin of the universe just to give him a new regeneration cycle. He regenerates twice for some reason because Moffat is convinced to drain as many tears from the fangirls as possible. In a supposedly heartfelt farewell speech to Clara, all of a sudden, BOOM! CAPALDI! The tonal inconsistency is terrible and there's no reason for it to be so sudden. They clearly blew their CGI budget already.Overall, this episode was a mess. Matt Smith's tenure was in no way honoured here.

Simply astonishing episode. Clearly one of Matt Smith's best ones. This piece is full of emotion and we see Matt Smith being the doctor for one last time. Moffat clearly had many ideas he wanted to carry out, and the episode might be just too short for that. There would've been material for a full movie but instead it is all squeezed in one episode. However the episode itself works as a lucid ensemble and it made me laugh as much as it made me cry.Wonderful story with wonderful acting. I think Matt Smith gave his everything in this episode and this is the kind of Matt Smith I want to remember. The regeneration itself is different this time around. Without spoiling anything, let's just say, that you shouldn't expect anything too discreet. Definitely one of the best doctors is now history and it's Capaldi's turn to win people's hearts.

On the whole it was OK.It never stood a chance of eclipsing The End Of Time and sadly the writing again let the episode down. Large parts of it felt really stretched like most of Moffat's episodes. Series Five in particular seemed a struggle just to get to forty minutes an episode. The fact that the show maintains such a high profile is simply down to the cast. For the most part the cast have had little to work with but they've always shown they're more than capable. I particularly liked Orla Brady as Tasha Lem, she brought a nice element of classy flirtatiousness to the role and like most passing allies she showed an outstanding loyalty to our Time lord.Jenna Coleman, who was not a pleasing appointment for me, was again not really given any chance to prove me wrong and that she can be a strong companion. Despite the fact that she has been awarded such a pivotal role throughout all of Who history, it has never really been explored properly. Matt Smith again showed that he has the ability to carry the show and keep you focused when the story seems to be slipping away which is all too frequently in my opinion. He had his work cut out here as there were long periods were the story stalled and it was left to him to engage the audience single handedly.On first viewing I felt the regeneration to be all a bit brief but I didn't take into account the need to use the first part of the sequence to annihilate his attackers so it was a productive use of the process. Thinking back to ten's regeneration he used time whilst his regeneration started to take a trip down memory lane to say goodbye to his companions. Thankfully Smith didn't do this, though it would have been nice to see Rory, maybe even River. But if we'd have had that we'd have got Craig too and we don't need any more James Corden on TV. The morph did seem a bit swift which gives ten's actual regeneration morph points over Smith's but having said that eleven's was much more pivotal and destructive than any before.On the whole The Time of The Doctor wasn't displeasing but it wasn't great either.The writing must improve. Capaldi is in now and I have high hopes for what is to come.

As others have pointed out, the main problem with The Time of the Doctor is that it is too short. Or perhaps Moffat had too much to put in it. Either way, it leads to an episode with a few frayed ends where it has been stretched too thin. The whole family Christmas dinner, for starters, is basically pointless. What should have been no more than an establishing shot, a starting point for the story, is allotted too much screen time, the loss of which is only compounded in other places. For example, Mother Superious (Tasha) being Dalekified and then un-Dalekified in the space of a minute. That's no way to put us on the edge of our seats, Moffat, you have to build up the tension, then release it, not pop the balloon while you're still blowing it up.Anyway, that can all be forgiven, which I can't say of my main objection: the Time Lords suddenly going all weak in the knees, giving the Doctor a new regeneration cycle and (apparently) just giving up the entire plan of trying to bring back Gallifrey. If that wasn't important, then why go to all the trouble? And hasn't it been established (in The End of Time) that the Time Lords are basically evil now and would rather destroy the universe than remain stuck in the Time Lock? So now we are to believe that all it took was a pretty girl saying "please" and that's that? Suddenly they all love the Doctor, and are okay with not doing the whole "getting back into the universe"-thing if it means helping him out with his bad back? Sorry, but no. I don't buy it.That is, I don't buy the motivation. I accept that it happened. I accept that the Doctor was granted a new regeneration cycle and used it to defeat the Daleks and that it set up an excellent regeneration scene. I also feel that given the number of loose ends that needed to be tied up, we can take this in our stride and just be happy that it isn't Damon Lindelof who's running the show. At least we were given some fairly decent answers and everything mostly came together. I'm sure that had this story been given half an hour more to reach it full potential, it would have done so, and so I'm just going to imagine that it did. The canon stands, and I'm happy to fill in the gaps myself. But please, BBC & Steven Moffat, next time, take your time.