Spoiler

The Doctor's greatest fear was the crack in time and space? Seriously? After all he's done, against what he knows his darkness is capable of, his greatest fear is the crack in space and time?

Bleh.

Beyond that, I did quite like the episode. The regeneration itself was rather abrupt, but it worked well. The vibe I got from Capaldi was less serious than I was expecting, but I guess we'll see how that plays out next season.

 

When did that come up? I must have missed it.

 

In the recap of all the places the Doctor saw the crack, we see him looking into the room in the fear hotel. It flashed to a crack in a wall that we hadn't seen before, then back to his face as he closed the door.

 

Not a very good episode, IMO.

Spoiler

Not only did it fail, for the most part, to tie the scatterbrained plot points of 11's tenure into a cohesive whole, there was just a lot of stuff that could've been done better.

1) The war on Trenzalore was underwhelming. Two Sontarans, a wooden cyberman, some Daleks, some snow covered weeping angels, dudes in camo, and a few explosions, does not a thousand year war make.

2) The Truth Field, which was a legitimately great idea, was barely used, and it certainly wasn't used for the purpose it was created for. The Question, when it was asked, wasn't actually answered. Oswin knows his name. She could have answered and the screen could have cut away to the Doctor while she did.

3) I don't understand why the Time Lords didn't return in this episode. Moffat set it up perfectly, and then... nothing came through the crack except regeneration energy. He had the chance to add a game-changing element into Davies' formula for the show, but chose not to implement it. Was so looking forward to Capaldi having it out with Rassilon and other battle-crazed Time Lords.

4) The Doctor's death. I suppose he can still die for good on Trenzalore in a future episode, but it seems to me like Moffat isn't ever going to address this particular 'fixed point'. What they should have done was kill him, REALLY kill him, then have the returned Time Lords fiddle around with his timestream grave, revive both him and his dying Tardis however many thousands of years later, and give him a full regeneration cycle. That would have been a sweet ending.

 

I liked the episode, personally. Yes it could have been better, but it served its purpose well.

I didn't really expect Smith's regeneration to be as powerful as Tennant's (then again it's really, really hard to top that), but this was dissapointing a bit. I liked Smith's sendoff monologue, but that he changed faces in a split second was not a very good decision, imo.

Eager to see how Capaldi will do.

---------- Post automerged at 01:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:23 PM ----------

I forgot to ask. What the hell happened to the Angels?

 

There was a five second shot of an Angel looking into a mirror with a message from the Doctor written on it. That's the last we saw of them, iirc.

 

The Siege of Trenzalore was just a bunch of guys in camo, three Silent, two Sontarans in an invisible car and a retro Cyberman? Well yeah, of course it was. If you were expecting anything else then you're crazy, because they already spent most of 2013's budget on the Fall of Arcadia last month. With so much effort poured into making the 50th anniversary as good as it was, there can't have been much left over - creatively or financially - for the Christmas special.

Time of the Doctor really wasn't that bad at all. As a Christmas special it was better than Voyage of the Damned or The Runaway Bride. As a regeneration episode it was better than Ecclestone's and much better than the self-indulgent bullshit we got from Tennant. Yes, it felt a little underwhelming after Day of the Doctor, but anything would've felt underwhelming after that.

I don't think there's a single episode of Doctor Who since 2005 that could've aired after Day of the Doctor and not felt a bit crap. Maybe The End of Time, but that shouldn't really count since it was a two parter.

 

(Don't even) Blink. Provided of course that the Weeping Angels hadn't been seen before.

 

Blink is an outstanding story, but after Day of the Doctor? Not a single fucking chance. For a start the Doctor only appears in it for about four minutes.

 

That HP/DW cross with the angels was more entertaining, imo.

---------- Post automerged at 05:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:57 PM ----------

That which holds the image

 

But that's exactly what was needed after Day of the Doctor; something with a bit of a great story to show us that DotD wasn't just a flash in the pan. Ever since Blink, Moffat has been terrible. Excellently terrible.

Let me explain: The first bit is really good and looks promising... and then the second bit is half-assed and bad. Case in point, Series 5 to 6 and 7. Series 5 ended on a good note; the Doctor had saved the universe (once again), and there were still questions. Who were the Silence? If the Doctor stopped the TARDIS from exploding, how did the cracks happen? How does the Orient Express exist in space?

And then Series 6 happened, which again, the first bit was really good and looked promising... the Silence appeared, The Doctor's Wife... looked like another cracking season. And then along came A Good Man Goes To War, and the bottom fell out. River Song turned out to be Amy and Rory's daughter, and she could regenerate just because. Was she born on the planet of the Mary Sues? And we give so much flack to Twilight for having weird pedo relationships, but all of a sudden it's okay because Steven says?

The back half of Series 6... I cannot think of any episode that stood out. I'm going to have to go on Wikipedia to even find out what they were about; not because I didn't watch them, but because they weren't memorable - not even memorable for being bad.

The first half of Series 7 was okay, but poorly planned... Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, adding superfluous characters (not Brian Williams) for no good reason; Power of Three, extolling the virtues of the Doctor/Rory/Amy dynamic the very episode before they split up permanently.

After the promise of amazing from Day of the Doctor, we needed something really properly good, and Time of the Doctor couldn't make the cut, especially since it was advertised as a beautiful double figure eight knot, neatly tying everything together for Matt's Doctor. Instead it was a clumsily hasty half-Windsor.

Thankfully it wasn't the Twin Dilemma, which was a slap in the face by a great big, dripping Rottweiler knot.

 

Welcome back to this thread Inq.

Can't really disagree with you anymore. Series is going to shit.

Not only was the episode mediocre, but it was mediocre in a time when the show really needed awesome.

 

Could be a realisation of the fact that the crack is now the Time Lords being able to come back?

It's stretching it a bit, but you could say that the recap was The Doctor going through it all in his head, realising it's the Time Lords and that they're coming back/able to come back.

Meh.

I enjoyed the episode, Smith was great, better than David Tennant's regeneration, which annoyed me as I'm a DT fan boy. I've enjoyed Moffat's writing and handling of the series. I think he brings a depth to the series that RTD never did. Although, yes, his plot lines get twisty and windy as fuck.

 

Good episode. Not great, I admit. Felt very rushed. But overall, I liked it. Certainly nowhere near Day of the Doctor, as Inq said.

I was prepared for Capaldi's entry when Clara entered the Tardis, but I guess that was Matt Smith's goodbye. Nicely done, and loved Amy's quick cameo. :3

I'd say Matt Smith's overall tenure as the doctor was pretty good. Though I prefer Tennant, I think a lot of that has to do with the decline in quality of writing and direction. Smith was awesome as the Doctor, and I'm gonna miss him. Here's hoping Capaldi doesn't suffer from the same fate.

 

Except that, as far as I can tell, up until Day of the Doctor he was absolutely, 100% positive he had killed all of them.

 

It's a crack in time caused by his TARDIS exploding. Didn't seem to do much on Trenzalore, but elsewhere it started eating reality, stars and all. And at the hotel, he had no idea what had caused it, not really. Seems like a reasonable fear to me.

 

Was Smith's departure according to Moffat's plan? Cause I read somewhere that it was Smith himself who wanted to leave, and wasn't sure how accurate it was.

---------- Post automerged at 09:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:24 PM ----------

Something else that I've been wondering about. Was Eccleston contacted for Day of the Doctor and refused, or was he never part of the plan for that episode?

 

According to this Eccleston was originally going to be the Doctor that was around during the Time War. When he refused Moffat decided to create the War Doctor.

 

Yes but that's not my question. I was asking whether Eccleston was asked to participate like Tennant did, or at least provide a small vid like Capaldi did.

 

The fact that Moffat had some meetings with Eccleston makes me think that he was definitely offered a role or they discussed some possibilities of him returning in some form. If not officially then then the idea was likely talked about.