Review for Time of The Doctor

Time of the Doctor Promo Art. BBC America. BBC 1. Doctor Who.

This is a review for the Christmas special and the last episode of Matt Smith as the Doctor. The special did come out yesterday so I'm warning everyone that this review will have spoilers. If you haven't seen it please take a moment and stop reading this to watch it.Okay, are you back? Are you good? Got yourself a snack? Okay, let's get started.

Let's go over the story of the episode. A signal has drawn most of the Universe to a planet. The Doctor arrives and land on the planet with a bit of help from the church, a space church that happens to have grey slender man like guys working for them.The planet is a human settlement no more advance than a farm. That's when we find a crack in a wall, yes it is back, and the Doctor finds the timelords calling from the other side. The Timelords are asking a question: Doctor who? The question is transmitted all over the universe and time. It all boils down to this, after being saved in the 50th they are trying to get back. If the Doctor answers the question they return and there is a truth filled so no one can lie so literally he's the only who could answer. The trouble is that the many aliens drawn by the message are scared and will destroy the planet if the Doctor speaks his name. The Doctor tricks Clara back home to keep her out of danger. The Doctor stays on the planet, revealed to be Trenzelore, and protects it from the aliens. The Doctor fights off weeping angels, sontaran, cybermen and the church too for centuries. 

Clara manages to get back to the planet by the skin of her teeth to find the now much older Doctor.  The Doctor tells here that this is where he dies and explains how he's out of regenerations. The church invites him on board and his friend Tasha explains how they have the end the whole thing. She even explain the whole mess with the Silence trying to kill them. It answered questions but I would have liked to have explained it in more than a moment dialogue. Enter the daleks or should I say they were already there. They killed everyone on the ship and took them over as puppets. The daleks remember who the Doctor is from Tasha's memories. The daleks really want the timelords not to return and the church just wanted to make sure the Time War didn't restart.  The Doctor manages to get Tasha to fight the dalek's control and they take out the daleks. The Doctor tricks Clara back home and the church and the Doctor fight off every invading alien until it's only them and the Doctor. 

Yeah, this is when your heart starts breaking. Tasha goes and picks up Clara because the Doctor after more centuries of fighting is getting old and the Daleks are winning and he has no plan. Tasha brought Clara to comfort the Doctor in this last moments. The Doctor goes to meet with the daleks and Clara begs the timelords to the crack to save the Doctor. The weary Doctor is ready to die when the Timelord's manage to send in another set of regenerations.  This one is a big one and it lets him blast away the daleks are he regenerates. The planet is saved and Clare find the Doctor in the Tardis looking young again as he starts to regenerate.  This moment is touching and heart breaking as it feel like the Doctor and Matt Smith are saying good bye. The Doctor gets to see a vision of Amy one last time and he regenerates.

Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor shows up and the tone changes as the Tardis starts to crash and he asks if Clara knows how to fly the Tardis.

Overall the story was rather wonderful. It was fun and faced paced and it had great heart. Even when things looked bad the under current of hope remained. For every moment the viewer still hoped that the Doctor would find a way to save the day. There were some wonderful moments through the whole episode and just watching the Doctor stay somewhere and make a life was great. To see him bask in a life with the towns people was great. Even as an old man he is still one of the kids. It was something to see the Doctor get really old, it was realistic like he was slowly going away. Matt Smith does a great job acting both as a little boy in a man's body and a real old man. A special companion Handle was a wonderful addition for this episode and even for a short time he was a companion that was loved and missed. This was the Doctor's episode as he confronted what he was sure to be his final day and both the acting and the story did a wonderful job at it.

This all did a good job answering all the fan's concerns. The story tied together a lot of plot lines form Matt Smith's time and the Doctor. Near the end, the old Doctor looked like the first Doctor and the end has the Doctor as an old man who doesn't know hot to fly his Tardis traveling with a school teacher. That regeneration cycle started like the last one started.

Overall it was a great episode. The biggest flaws were that sometimes the mood swings were jarring. The plot line is a little confusing and left a lot of people confused that they needed to watch it multiple times to try and get it.  Acting was great from everyone, everyone brought their best. As a final for Matt Smith as the Doctor I'd give a perfect score, well close to perfect. Overall I'll give 4.7 out of 5 for the episode. No major problems a little confusing, mood swings were a little bad but nothing too bad.This is really great episode and anyone who loved Matt Smith's run will love this episode.