Day 800: The Time of the Doctor

When I started Matt Smith's tenure as the Doctor, I kept on saying that Series 5 was my favourite series of all of Doctor Who. It's a beautiful fairy tale, where we see a daft old madman who stole a magic box go through the Universe and be wonderfully impossible. And I suppose that one of my great disappointments about the rest of Smith's tenure as the Doctor is that Moffat decided to move on from Series 5 and go into different territories; first making the series BIG and epic, and then going through a period of simple variety as it tried to figure out what it really wanted to do. And that's okay, that's good, it's got to keep moving, so long as you remember all the things that it used to be. And The Time of the Doctor does exactly that.

The Time of the Doctor is a return to the Series 5 model of Doctor Who - a fairy tale writ large. The concept is quietly beautiful, telling the story of a man who spent 900 years protecting one little village from all the forces of the Universe combined. It's not a big story, even with all the flashy special effects and the fact that every single villain that the Doctor has had is attacking all at once, because it focuses on the smallness of the occasion - everything is centred around the village, which is just a simple little town with nothing much to distinguish it as anything special. It draws the mind to Leadworth, that other little town that this Doctor protected, right at the start of his incarnation. And that's not the only comparison that you can make about that fresh faced Doctor compared with his far more ragged ending come his final death. The children's pictures of the Doctor bring to mind young Amelia in The Eleventh Hour, whilst the dancing scene is reminiscent of the Doctor at Amy and Rory's wedding in The Big Bang. Even the crack makes a return appearance, this time signalling the return of the Time Lords as Gallifrey tries to find a safe passage back to its home universe. But there's a little bit more to the story than just that, something which makes it special in my opinion.

The Time of the Doctor feels like one of the few regeneration stories to regard regeneration as something joyous. The End of Time saw it as another word for death, The War Games read it as punishment, and the less said about Time and the Rani, the better. But The Time of the Doctor says that regeneration should be seen as something truly beautiful, proudly proclaiming that it's the perfect way to cheat death. It feels absolutely magical to see the Doctor begin to regenerate as Murray Gold's music swells to a heroic climax, because we can recognise that regeneration isn't the Doctor dying, it's the Doctor living. It feels like it's one last magic trick from the raggedy Doctor, before he goes off into his TARDIS and takes on a new life.

And so we say farewell to Matt Smith as the Doctor. I'm not going to lie, Smith is one of my absolute favourite Doctors. He brings so much magic to the role, turning the Doctor into a weird and bizarre, but ultimately clever hero. And there are so many stories of his that rank amongst my personal favourites, like The Eleventh Hour, Vincent and the Doctor, The Doctor's Wife, The Girl Who Waited, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, The Snowmen, or even The Time of the Doctor, to but name a few. And, even though we're about to go to someone who might trump Smith as the best Doctor ever, Smith still remains my Doctor. And I will always remember when the Doctor was him.

Day 794: Hide

I should begin this by saying that I also coincidentally covered this episode for an issue of The Terrible Zodin found here, which I did two or three years ago. I'd really recommend having a look at that issue, there's a lot of good stuff in there besides me blathering on about Hide. Consider that a brief recommendation to start this entry off.

But speaking of recommendations, I would recommend Hide as one of the better episodes in the second half of Series 7. Written by Neil Cross, whose work on this episode would lead to the production team inviting him back to write The Rings of Akhaten, it's actually a very well made episode of Doctor Who. The atmosphere provided is excellent, which helps to strengthen the already well conceived concept of the scientific ghost story. The prosthetics also are very strong, the Crooked Man is a masterpiece because it has to look terrifying from a distance but sympathetic when the camera's allowed to focus on it, which is a complex task, but one that ultimately leads to a strong pay off at the end.

Speaking of the ending, I feel that that is one of the real highlights of this story. I'm struggling to think of any Doctor Who episode that has ended in the exact way in which Hide has done and managed to pull it off. To explain, Hide ends with a spectacularly rushed conclusion as the Doctor suddenly realises that he's misunderstood the entire situation. And, whilst as written it looks as if it should not work, on screen it works amazingly well because Cross has already written the conclusion to the story. With the main human characters all settled, and the Doctor and Clara left to simply talk about their time, it lulls the audience into a false sense of security that everything is alright. But then the Doctor realises that the story isn't over yet and rushes to get everything completed, which lends the conclusion an organic feeling, ensuring that it's not tacked on and that it's part and parcel of the story itself. It's actually one of my favourite endings to any Doctor Who story ever, and whilst I wouldn't necessarily rank this episode as one of my absolute favourites, I still love it for what it does.