Matt Smith’s tenure as the Eleventh Doctor inDoctor Whowas one filled with highs and lows. He went from a strong first season to a disappointing second, with his third and final season being a bit all over the place in terms of quality.
There’s arguably no better illustration of the inconsistency of the Eleventh Doctor era than the fact that the epic 50th anniversary celebration, “The Day of the Doctor,” is followed immediately by Smith’s final episode, “The Time of the Doctor.” Despite having all the potential to be the perfect sendoff for Matt Smith’s run, it instead serves as an underwhelming anticlimax that tries to do too much at once.
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Infinite Potential
While overarching series-long plotlines have been a prominent aspect of the revivedDoctor Whoseries since its beginning, Steven Moffat — theshowrunner for the Eleventhand Twelfth Doctors — took them to a whole new level. While Moffat is an undisputed master of building hype, creating a satisfying payoff to said hype is another matter entirely. Such is the case in Series 5, in which the all-time great cliffhanger of “The Pandorica Opens” is followed by a somewhat disappointing season finale in “The Big Bang.” Despite some strong points, the episode fails to resolve the overarching mystery of the season: the true nature of the enigmatic Silence.
Series 6 then offered more questions than answers, with the Silence’s motives being remarkably unclear. It’s eventually established that the Silence are a cult of religious extremists dedicated to preventing the so-called “First Question” from dooming the universe —a question that is revealedin the Series 6 finale to be “Doctor Who?” It’s an incredibly on-the-nose twist, and yet Moffat places so much emphasis on it throughout Series 7 that he seems remarkably proud of it nevertheless.
Frustratingly, instead of exploring the Silence in further depth, Series 7 instead focuses primarily on standalone adventures. However, the later episodes of Series 7 began foreshadowing a truly monumental finale — the Siege of Trenzalore, a battle where the Doctor is prophesied to meet his end. First mentioned at the end of Series 6, the aftermath of the battle is witnessed firsthand in “The Name of the Doctor.” The Siege of Trenzalore is spoken of asa truly apocalyptic event,and the ruination left in its wake only supports this.
The Fall of Trenzalore
After so much buildup, the idea of witnessing the Siege of Trenzalore firsthand in the Eleventh Doctor’s final adventure is a tantalizing notion. However, the version of events that’s actually depicted in “The Time of the Doctor” is very different from the one that was promised. The basic premise is strong enough: the Doctor discovers one final crack in time on Trenzalore, with Gallifrey and the Time Lords sealed on the other side. Refusing to let the Time War be reignited, the Doctor decides to stand guard at the rift for the rest of his days, preventing the Time Lords’ escape while also defending Trenzalore and its people from any who would see the planet destroyedto ensure Gallifrey’s ruin. And to cap it all off, it’s revealed that the Silence’s true purpose is to prevent the Time Lords’ return by any means necessary.
On paper, this sounds like the perfect conclusion to every story arc that had been set up throughout the Eleventh Doctor’s three seasons. Not only is it the culmination of both the Trenzalore foreshadowing and the Silence plotline, it also ties everything back to the aftermath of the Time War, which drove the overarching plot of the Davies era. And of course, it provides an opportunity for an epic final battle that sees the Doctor taking on a legion of all his greatest enemies. Conceptually, “the Time of the Doctor” is a truly brilliant finale. However, it’s in the execution that everything goes awry.
For starters, the episode suffers immenselyfrom being a Christmas special.While other specials like “The End of Time” or “The Husbands of River Song” have been content to ignore any real holiday elements and focus on the plot instead, “The Time of the Doctor” makes the downright baffling decision of making the Siege of Trenzalore itself Christmas-themed. The Gallifreyan rift is located in a town called Christmas — the town itself is named after the holiday. No explanation whatsoever is provided for why this is the case. Moreover, the town itself looks like it was plucked out of a Charles Dickens novel, trapped in perpetual winter with an inexplicable Victorian aesthetic.
Even worse, this bizarre Christmas aesthetic affects the story itself. When we finally see the fabled Siege of Trenzalore, it’s notan intense, cataclysmic battle,but a series of comedic beats in which the Doctor whimsically foils his enemies one by one. The Cybermen, Weeping Angels, and Sontarans are all reduced to punchlines as they fall into the Doctor’s traps, like a sci-fiHome Alone. It’s just about the furthest thing imaginable from the mythic war promised in previous episodes.
Short on Time
Even the Silence, the antagonists pulling the strings since the Eleventh Doctor’s debut episode, get the short end of the stick. Despite having their true motives revealed at last, they accomplish very little within the story. They even getupstaged by the Daleksas the final villains of the episode. And while this results in the truly awesome visual of the Doctor joining forces with the Silence, walking side by side with them onto the battlefield, this team-up ends as soon as it begins. It leaves the Silence as merely a footnote in the climax of their own story arc.
As for the Daleks themselves, they don’t fare much better. Despite being the ultimate antagonists of the episode, they hardly do anything to serve the plot. “The Time of the Doctor” can’t really be described as a Dalek story, because they only show up towards the end to serve as obstacles for the Doctor to overcome with ease. The climactic scene where the Doctor wipes out an entire Dalek fleetwith regeneration energy mayvery well be the least threatening that the Daleks have been in the entire revived series. The Siege of Trenzalore is, in effect, the true final battle of the Time War. As such, the Doctor’s last stand against the Daleks should carry immense narrative weight. But instead, it feels hollow and anticlimactic. Any other monsters could have appeared in their stead, and the plot would have remained the same.
Thankfully, the actual ending of the episode is a fitting sendoff to Matt Smith before he regenerates into Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor. But despite ending on a high note, it’s hard to deny that “The Time of the Doctor” is filled with numerous storytelling missteps. Despite having incredible potential, it clumsily attempts to wrap up both the Silence and Time War storylines while alsoserving as a Christmas special.And in trying to do everything, it fails to do just about anything. Moffat’s ambitions with “The Time of the Doctor” are commendable, but the execution sadly falls short.
