The Time of the Doctor

Chapter the 274th, where the Doctor makes a house call and stays for simply ages (it tends to happen as one gets older).

Plot:
A coded message is being signalled out from a planet, and this attracts spaceships from every alien species (you know, like in the Pandorica one). The Doctor investigates, but Clara distracts him for a bit getting him to pose as her boyfriend making an appearance at Christmas dinner on contemporary Earth (where Clara's relatives see him naked - don't ask). Soon, Clara is helping him uncover the mystery of the message. It turns out to be from the Time Lords, and the planet turns out to be Trenzalore, the place where the Doctor is destined to die. Tasha Lem, a great friend of the Doctor that he's never mentioned before and never will again, is leader of a religious order based on one of the ships in orbit. She helps to get the Doctor and Clara down to the planet; they land in the town of Christmas, where no one can lie. In a tower in the town, the Doctor discovers the crack in space and time that he first saw in Amy Pond's bedroom. Through it, the Time Lords are broadcasting the signal from another universe in which they are hiding; once decoded it is heard to be the question "Doctor Who?" If the Doctor answers with his name, they will know it is him because of the truth field they are also creating, and will know it's safe to come through. This, though, will start the Time War again. All those in the ships surrounding the planet will attack to prevent the Doctor answering the question (in other words, to ensure 'silence will fall').

The Doctor tricks Clara into travelling home in the TARDIS, and stays to defend the town and the planet. Lots of different aliens attack, but he sees them off. Clara, annoyed at being sent home, comes back with the TARDIS. By the time she gets to Trenzalore, the Doctor has been there many years, and is looking much older. The Doctor persuades her to travel home in the TARDIS again, and stays to defend the town some more. Lots of different aliens attack, but he sees them off. Clara, still not happy at being sent home, is picked up by Tasha Lem in the TARDIS, and comes back. By the time she gets to Trenzalore, the Doctor's been there many more years, and is looking very old. The Daleks come in for a final big attack. The Doctor knows he's going to die, as he has no regenerations left, and has seen the future of his tomb on the empty battlefields of Trenzalore. Clara doesn't want to accept this, though, and persuades the Time Lords, talking through the crack to them, to grant the Doctor more regenerations. He uses this gifted regeneration energy to zap the Dalek ships, then goes back to the TARDIS, sees a vision of Amy Pond, and changes into Peter Capaldi. He then talks about his kidneys for a bit.

Context:

It's been a while since the randomiser has chosen an unseasonable festive special to watch in the middle of Summer. As if to compensate for this, the UK weather at the start of August 2023 when we watched this turned chillier and wetter. At least it didn't snow. I watched this on a Sunday afternoon with all three children (boys of 17 and 13, girl of 11) from the disc in the 50th Anniversary Collector's edition Blu-ray box set, which brought together the specials shown in 2013. All the children did me proud one way or the other. The eldest, when watching the (first) scene where the Doctor fools Clara into leaving in the TARDIS because the situation is too dangerous, said "Isn't this just a rip-off of The Parting of the Ways?" He's so right. After the story had finished, the middle child went into a very Doctor Who fan rant about how the Timeless Child arc from Jodie Whittaker's time had retrospectively ruined the drama of The Time of the Doctor. He's a chip off the old block. The youngest really enjoyed all the jokes about the Doctor and Clara being naked. (You hear that Moffat? The humour is at just the right level for 11-year olds!) She was also excited to see Amy again at the end, though she'd forgotten all about the significance of fish fingers and custard.

First Time Round:

Christmas day 2013. After the in-laws had gone home in the early evening and the kids were abed, the Better Half and I would have had a friendly and harmonious discussion about which we would watch first that evening, the Doctor Who or the Downton Abbey special episode. My memory is that Julian Fellowes's posho potboiler was on an hour later than Who, around the time we were both finally alone, so we could watch it as it went out live. So, we did. When Downton finished it was 10.30pm; after a long day of eating and drinking and being merry, I feel sure that the BH went to bed at that point, leaving me alone to watch the recording of The Time of the Doctor. She then caught up when I watched it again the following day. Some of the later Capaldi festive ones I left until I was a little fresher on Boxing Day, but at this point it was still important to me to watch the special on the big day. Reminiscing years later, when I wrote the blog post for the The Doctor, The Widow, His Wife and Her Lover or whatever it's called, I satirised the tired, tipsy conversations the BH and I would exchange when trying to work out the continuity of the show that was the other person's favourite, thus: "Why is he in old guy make-up now?" "Why is the crack in the wall back?" "Have we ever met this footman before?" "What relation is the American guy from Sideways to the Granthams again?". I feel, though,  that this is probably verbatim what was said on December 25th and 26th 2013 chez Perry.

Reaction:

Responding to change can be better than following a plan. There's so much evidence that Steven Moffat, writer of this story and showrunner since Matt Smith took over as the Doctor, had planned for this finale throughout his time in charge; so many detailed set-ups are paid off here. I wonder, though, whether he anticipated that he would have to set the story that represented the culmination of all that work at Christmas, and almost immediately after a big, showy anniversary episode, and whether he had sufficient time to respond to that. I think not, as the narrative structure of The Time of the Doctor is all over the place. It's particularly striking just how wrong the structure is, because this is an area where Moffat is usually very strong. Three years worth of plot comes to an end in this story: where Gallifrey has disappeared off to, what was the final significance of the crack in space/time that appeared in Amy's bedroom wall, what the true meaning was of the oldest question, hidden in plain sight, why silence had to fall, what was destined to happen on Trenzalore, who exactly were the Silence that the Doctor encountered in 1969 and why they wanted to kill him, what the Doctor's greatest fear was that he saw in The God Complex. All these are explained in a coherent sweep: it's all about stopping the time war from starting up again (and so links ever further back to the very earliest episode of the relaunched series, Rose). I don't know how much Moffat worked out opportunistically as he was going along, but a lot of past material must have been produced knowing exactly where things would end. But, in The Time of the Doctor, all that explanation is done in the first 20 minutes out of 60; there's still two thirds of the running time to go.

Why in the name of all that's sacred did Moffat blow all that story material so early on? It's even worse than it seems, as that first 20 minutes is also shared with some misfiring comedy about nudity, domestic scenes of Clara's Christmas (the scantest lip service being paid to the festive season), and lots of set piece sequences with Doctor Who monsters like the Daleks, Cybermen and Weeping Angels. The culmination of the plotting of three years of episodes is spaffed away in something like 10 minutes. This would be okay if there was a lot of incident left to happen in the remaining running time, but there's barely anything. A clear indication that something's gone wrong is that, in the last two-thirds of The Time of the Doctor, Clara is tricked by our favourite Time Lord into getting in the TARDIS, is sent back home to safety, refuses to accept that and returns to find the Doctor has aged in the meantime... TWICE. The same damn story beats - too similar, as my son pointed out (see above), to what happens to Rose in another regeneration story - play out again in the same way. It's first draft stuff; any cursory review of a screenplay would clearly show this, and the two sets of repetitive beats would have to be combined to form one stronger sequence. For a start, the first time round, the TARDIS stays with Clara, which is a terrible mistake that the second time round rectifies. It can't be a heroic sacrifice by the Doctor to defend Trenzalore if he's trapped there anyway and has no choice. Was this a first draft? Did Moffat put all his energy into preceding 50th anniversary story The Day of the Doctor and have no time to do any rewrites on the subsequent script?

Aside from Clara yo-yoing back and forth between contemporary Earth and Trenzalore, all that's left is a Western-style stand off, with the Doctor as the Sheriff protecting the small town from bandits, or rather another succession of set piece sequences with Doctor Who monsters (Sontarans and Silence included as well this time). It's not that there aren't nice moments (Dan Starkey being funny as identical Sontarans, a wooden cyberman being outwitted, the Silence fighting alongside the Doctor) but each lasts for a few seconds at a time. The rest of the final two-thirds of the story is just a lot of droning on about mortality (to get my own back, I am going to drone on a bit in the Deeper Thoughts section below about my own mortality - you can judge how entertaining or not it is). Even if a viewer has been living under a rock and missed that Peter Capaldi is taking over (and that was showcased in its own live broadcast entertainment extravaganza), they still know the Doctor's not going to die, so the ageing of the Doctor and the long, drawn out sequences dwelling on it seem dull at best, over-sentimental and manipulative at worst. To make it in any way work, Smith has to persuade us that at least the Doctor really thinks he's going to die, but he struggles to do that from deep within a mound of latex. There is no make-up job that can convince that the youngest ever Doctor is an old man. Maybe he could do this with his performance, and Moffat was quoted as saying that he thinks that it's Smith's best performance in the role, but I don't agree. His best performance was when he was the Doctor, young and early on. This is tacitly confirmed by returning him to look like that before the regeneration happens properly.

The significant character of Tasha Lem is so similar to River Song that it makes one wonder whether Alex Kingston just wasn't available and it was a hasty recasting. Tasha Lem doesn't age (presumably to avoid a guest artist having to also endure a restrictive make-up job), but that doesn't make sense (it's covered by a quippy line of dialogue). Two fine actors - Rob Jarvis and Tessa-Peake-Jones - are wasted in tiny cameos as passers-by in the town of Christmas; this isn't the first time such a thing would happen in the Moffat era, but it's a problem here as it would be good to have more feeling for the people whom the Doctor is protecting. The scene in the TARDIS for the regeneration with the appearance from Karen Gillan as Amy is fine, but Capaldi's first line being about his kidneys doesn't really work, and displays a desperation towards wackiness. Less is more. Here's how I think it should have played: first, lose the nudity gags. Expand out the investigation and solving the mystery to 35 to 40 minutes; there is definitely enough there to keep things pacy at that duration. At that point, send Clara home (just the once) and return the TARDIS immediately to Trenzalore, so the Doctor is choosing to stay. If you can't get Alex Kingston to play a Library hologram version of River (who wouldn't age), then have a succession of different cameo appearances as different leaders of the religious order over the years or write out the role altogether, and instead build up the roles of one or two people who are with the Doctor on Trenzalore. At around the 50-minute mark, get Clara back to find out the Doctor's aged (but maybe just have Smith play him older rather than overdo the latex), Clara then works out how to save him, and there's Daleks and energy bolts just as it plays now. When Smith turns into Capaldi have the Doctor and Clara look at each other for a moment or two, then he says "Just one question: do you happen to know how to fly this thing?!". Crash to credits, and we're out.

Connectivity:

The Time of the Doctor and The Ambassadors of Death both feature a grey-haired Doctor stuck on a planet helping the locals against alien invasion. Both stories see the Doctor go into battle on the same side as some scary-seeming but ultimately nice aliens (space-suited ambassadors in the Pertwee story, the Silence in Matt Smith's swansong).

Deeper Thoughts:

What do you want to be when you grow up? It's a question, even after half a century of ageing, that I keep asking myself. I'm not looking yet as old as Matt Smith in either stage of his old man make-up from The Time of the Doctor (but then, I doubt anyone has ever looked like that, it's well over the top!). Recent readers of the blog (Hi Mum!) will know that I have found a box of old diaries when cleaning out the garage. Reading these and getting a glimpse of the old me at different and more youthful stages of my life, I do find myself dwelling upon my mortality and my place in the world, very much in the manner of the Doctor in a Steven Moffat screenplay that was maybe written in a hurry. If you'll indulge me, I'd like to share a section of a diary entry from 1995 here, as I think it's illuminating, and I think that the 22-year old me who wrote it pretty much nails it. Is there ever anyone who dwells upon their own mortality more than a 22-year old bloke does? Except maybe characters in a Steven Moffat screenplay that was maybe written in a hurry, perhaps? Anyway, to set the scene, it is early 1995; I had finished at university the year before, and hadn't shined academically; without a clue what to do next, I had come back to my home town of Worthing, and started working in a temp job to pay off my student overdraft, while I waited for inspiration to hit me. At university (in St. Aidan's College, Durham) I'd vaguely known a chap that was a student union rep, and wrote for the university magazine, Palatinate. On February 21st of 1995, with a long wait for a bus to take me home after work, I popped into the W.H. Smiths near the bus stop and flicked through the latest Doctor Who Magazine (issue 223, out since the 16th February, fact fans!). With surprise, I found that that chap I vaguely know from university, Gary Gillatt - for it was he - has become the editor of said magazine.

 

This immediately made me, a wannabe writer who received the same class of degree as Gary after three years, incredibly uninspired, and very envious. The following day, I explode the following screed upon the pages of my journal: "First off, you're young and the world of the telly and the world of you and your mates are entirely separate. It stays that way (unless you're at stage school, or happened to be young like I was when that 10-year old from Musical bloody Youth was always on the TV) for many years. Then, at about sixteen or seventeen years of age, you realise that the teenage daughter in the sitcom is the same age as you, and you fancy her and she's probably doing coke at Stringfellows every night. Then, you get a little older (and maybe wiser) and you're still on the same course or the same pay. You're flicking through the Mirror lifestyle pages when you find out that Andi Peters / Dani Behr / some page 3 model are one year, two years, three years younger than you. Then, the first of your baby sister's friends has an abortion. A year later, you're maybe hanging around the student union, when someone tells you that the woman you were sure was looking at you in the bar used to have a promising career in modelling. A friend gets engaged. Someone from another class at middle school dies on the flyover. Then, you get to the present, and you're flicking through Doctor Who Magazine when you realise that it's being edited by someone you knew vaguely at university. The world of the media and the world of you and your mates are almost overlapping. The next stage will be for someone that you're good friends with to become famous. And it better be me!"

I never did become famous. Nor did any of my friends. I know a couple of radio presenters, and some people who have written Doctor Who extended universe media, or other books or films. That's about it. I only ever wanted to write, and I suppose I am doing that. In fact, I'm doing it right now. Piecing things together, I look at the dates of all the diaries collected in that box from the garage. In fits and starts, I keep a journal from youth in the mid-1980s through to starting university. Then, in all my time studying for a degree, I don't keep a diary. I'm instead writing lots and lots of poems (which occasionally are taken seriously by other parties and get performed and shared in a small way). As soon as I've finished studying, I start a diary again, and again in fits and starts keep that going through the rest of the 1990s.  From 2000, I give up writing poems and work seriously on screenplays for about a decade. During this time, I never keep a journal, though I do have a blog. When I stop screenwriting, I start a diary again. I give that up, and within a few months I start this Doctor Who blog, with enough material to keep me going for a decade. Writing is less a vocation and more an affliction; one can't stop doing it, it'll escape out, one way or the other. This makes me feel better - if I had become famous or not, it would have been the same, I'd have still been writing. An author too can be any age when first successful, so I can always live in hope. It makes me more disposed to be nicer to Steven Moffat, a habitual writer if ever there was one, for his sometimes less than perfect efforts. I can also take some small comfort - now that I can look such things up easily on the web - in my being slightly younger than both Andi Peters and Dani Behr.

In Summary:

Some good stuff is buried in there, but the screenplay desperately needed another rewrite.