Thursday 26 December 2013

The Time of the Doctor Christmas Special review

Doctor Who's Christmas outing takes over Twitter

As a family of Whovians, we were very much looking forward to the Dr Who Christmas Special this year, though with sadness too as Matt Smith makes his exit.  We have come to really love Matt's incarnation of the Dr, though for us David Tennant will always be our favourite.  Matt Smith is a very close second though, ably helped by excellent storylines and better villains.

It was a little bit of a shock to see the Dr naked though :)

Smith gets naked in Who Christmas special

For those of you that missed it:

Matt Smith in Doctor WHo

And who would have thought that the church of the future would mean you have to go nude.  Well, I suppose it is one way to get bums on pews.

Seriously though, with most of the enemies of the Dr gathered at Trenzalore, including our personal favourites the Daleks, Cybermen, Silence and Weeping Angels, we knew this wasn't going to be an ordinary trip.  Once Clara (Jenna Coleman of Captain America: The First Avenger, Emmerdale) was whisked away from her Christmas family dinner (with a lovely surprise treat of Benidorm's Madge, Sheila Reid (Brazil, The Dresser) as her Grandma) the last thing she was thinking of was what they must have thought to her new 'Swedish' boyfriend.

The 'head psycho space nun' Orla Brady (Wuthering Heights, Fringe) sends him down to protect a planet, where he has to keep saving the town of Christmas over and over again from constant attacks from all of his enemies.

Doctor Who (2005)

It was so lovely to see a cameo from Karen Gillan (Not Another Happy Ending, Outcast) as Amy Pond saying goodbye to her raggedy man.

Doctor Who Amy Pond Raggedy Man

With nods to River Song (loved that he 'went and married her' and that he 'wouldn't be where he was now if it wasn't for River Song'), other Drs ('the tenth Dr had vanity issues' and 'let's not forget Mr Grump') and to the omnipotent Time Lords, it had pretty much everything a Whovian could wish for on Christmas Day.  When it came to the regeneration (as established in the Deadly Assassin, the Dr can only regenerate 12 times or 13 incarnations of the Dr in total), those pesky Time Lords came in handy as they passed power onto the Dr they loved (thanks Impossible Girl) to enable him to regenerate once more.

For me, I did wonder about Matt's last line 'I will always remember when the Dr was me' if it was referring to how Matt felt about this star-making role or if it was a nod to the Dr now no longer being the Dr.  When this was followed up by Peter Capaldi (World War Z, The Thick of It) asking Clara how to fly the Tardis, I thought it was less a nod to Capaldi's age in the role (Alzheimers setting in now he is over 900 years old) but rather to the possibility of him now being an amalgamation of the remaining Time Lords (this would be one way to get into a world being protected by The Time Lord and attacked by all of the worst species in the Universe).  What does anyone else think?

We were so sad to see Matt go but are interested to see what Capaldi does with the Dr now.

The moment Peter Capaldi made his Doctor Who debut

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njNnTDiLOd4&feature=player_embedded

#MattSmith  #TheTimeOfTheDr  #DrWho

No comments:

Post a Comment