DOCTOR WHO SPECIALS MATT SMITH CRACK
Furthermore, the question hidden in plain sight is being asked by them: “Doctor Who?” So is it supposed to be that the crack on Amelia Pond’s bedroom wall from The Eleventh Hour was the Time Lords all along? And is it just us that wonders if that’s an explanation that’s been added later, rather than the idea from the start? Mind you, reinvention and revisiting past threads to throw differing lights on them is not uncommon to Doctor Who. These have been explained before, of course, but now there’s an extra ingredient: we’re told that behind them are the Time Lords trying to return to the universe. We know why the TARDIS blew up now for instance, why the Silence first came for the Doctor, and a bit more about River Song.Īnd then there were the cracks in the wall. In fact, they were answered in abudnance, at speed, and not always with much impact. And as it turned out, it was on the surface of Trenzalore, in that town of Christmas, that lots of questions about the Eleventh Doctor’s tenure were answered. The planet, we found out, was Trenzalore. And as the Doctor and a good selection of monsters sat waiting in their assorted craft above a planet they couldn’t get on to, it was left to Orla Brady’s Blade Runner-inspired Tasha Lem as the Mother Superior of the Papal Mainframe to get the Doctor, and Clara, to the surface of the planet. After all, there was the spectre of Gallifrey back on the horizon, as Handles the Cybermen head deciphered the aforementioned message and declared its origin. When it got down to other business though, it was more successful. As a festive episode, The Time Of The Doctor didn’t really work. There wasn’t space to spend much time in the company of Clara’s family, and it’s hard to see what those segments really added here.
Notwithstanding the fact that a large chunk of it took place in a town called Christmas (where Raquel from Only Fools And Horses lives, fact fans), Clara’s festive feast felt fleeting and – in more than one sense – undercooked.
Inevitably perhaps, the Christmas element got in the way if anything.
It makes it a bit disappointing then that Matt Smith didn’t get a little more, especially when The Time Of The Doctor was trying to fit Christmassy things in as well. Tennant himself then had a couple of hours over Christmas with The End Of Time two-parter to wrap his adventures up and say a proper goodbye. Arguably the best Yuletide special remains The Christmas Invasion, which gave David Tennant an hour just to introduce us to him as the Tenth Doctor (or, arguably, the tenth and the eleventh). Doctor Who has dealt with regeneration at Christmas before, of course.