#time of the doctor

[moodywho]

Raggedy man... Goodnight.

#crying in the club rn #the doctor #doctor who #11th Doctor #eleventh doctor #Matt Smith #Regeneration #amy pond #karen gillan #amelia pond #11 #eleven #time of the doctor #fish fingers and custard #cinematography #screens #stills #moodywho #raggedy man #whovian #whoniverse #dw #nuwho

[firstofficerkittycat]

forgot clara was like dont deadname my boyfriend and the timelords were like oh my bad heres ten billion more regeneraions

#time of the doctor #doctor who #liveblogging #clara oswald #this epiode chasing me down a long empty road with a bat

[clairedelune-13]

Plaid skirt on Christmas

#clara oswald #ruby sunday #time of the doctor #the church on ruby road #doctor who

[anotheruserwithnoname]

It's hard to believe it's been 10 years since the Ship Whouffle underwent its retrofit into the Ship Whouffaldi in The Time of The Doctor. Here is that amazing moment (officially posted to Youtube by the BBC so posting it here is legit though I don't know if the vid plays everywhere.)

#whouffle #whouffaldi #eleventh doctor #twelfth doctor #clara oswald #amy pond #time of the doctor

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

#doctor who #dw #the doctor #the day of the doctor #the end of time #the power of the doctor #the giggle #the star beast #time of the doctor #waters of mars #wild blue yonder #night of the doctor #legend of the sea devils #eve of the daleks #the church on ruby road #planet of the dead

[starlyght000]

#doctor who #new who #doctor who best arc #dw #dw heaven sent #dw hell bent #hell bent #heaven sent #time of the doctor #day of the doctor #name of the doctor #11th doctor #10th doctor #12th doctor #utopia #matt smith #david tennant #peter capaldi

[khruschevshoe]

Hello! You recently posted a 11th doctor analysis/critique(?) post and I really want to post my point of view and such and maybe start a sort of discussion? You obviously wouldn't have to respond! I don't even know if I'd respond, I'm not good with conversations. I just kinda want to get your permission I guess, because I really don't mean what I'd write as hate and maybe you just made this as a sort of vent/your opinion post and don't actually want anyone to discuss it.

Here's the post in question btw.

Hey, I totally wouldn't mind you responding and I would love to see your opinion (especially since you were so polite about it) but I'm going to be completely honest: my opinions on Eleven's arc have already changed somewhat since I wrote it! I've been reading a lot of analysis of his era recently and I've been getting a better overall view of his arc all the way through the end of it entirely. Though I still agree with some of the points that I made regarding kindness v. cruelty and agency, I feel like they only apply to the Pond era specifically, and even then it's a bit more nuanced than I wrote it, more about the framing of the end of their arc by the writers rather than choices by the characters themselves. Taking into consideration his entire arc/era I think softens the thematic arc I wrote about, though once again framing in the Time of the Doctor kind of posing Eleven as this sort of god-like all-important figure gets a bit dialled up (though tbh regeneration episodes tend to be a bit sloppy on that front in general, and I think my problem with the Time of the Doctor has less to do with framing/these themes specifically and more to do with the fact that we don't really get any emotional investment in the town of Christmas from a character point of view making it feel a bit less impactful from a character-driven v. plot-driven writing lens).

Still, even with my (personal, subjective) critiques of the Time of the Doctor and the Day of the Doctor from a writing point of view, I do have to say that rewatching them, they posit Eleven where I wanted to see him all along: as a Doctor driven by kindness. As a Doctor who looks at his trauma and his past and says "no more." No one else will get hurt by what happened.

I still don't like Angels Take Manhattan and I still really, really hate how the River Song arc played out in A Good Man Goes to War/Let's Kill Hitler (I think I might have made a post about it but I can't quite remember) and I personally think that a better ending for the Ponds would have been for them to decide to stop travelling with the Doctor on their own for character arc reasons, but I think that by the end of Eleven's era, we get to see the Doctor from the Beast Below. We get to see all that pain and misery and loneliness, and it just made him kind. I think even if I have some questions about the exact details of how it plays out, we get a return to theme. We get an Eleven that sacrifices his life for someone else. We get The Doctor, a man who comes to heal.

I'm sorry if this came out a bit rambling; I think that reflects the more nuanced, messy opinion I have on Eleven's era now. And I think that as I've grown older and read more critiques and analysises of every era of Doctor Who, that's how I've begun to feel about every era of the show. Season 3 might be my favorite season of the show, but you cannot deny the antiblack undertones of the writing of both Mickey and Martha (despite how much I love their arcs). While I still am not a fan of the way that the narrative takes agency away from Amy and River in Season 6 (and the way that the narrative framing posits River Song and Clara as being "born to save/kill the Doctor"), I now really, really love the Pandorica Opens/Big Bang as well as several other episodes of Eleven's era that gave me a sour taste in my mouth as a teenager. I like Season 8 Clara's arc more than I used to, especially when it made me quit watching back in the day (even if I think that Danny deserves better). I think that Heaven Sent/Hell Bent is an amazing finale, my third favorite of the show (proving an old opinion that I tend to dislike Moffat finales wrong), but I don't think that Season 9 is the strongest lead-up for it. Season 10 is my third favorite season of the show (though I do question the fact that both of Moffat's black companions get turned into Cybermen). I honestly think that many episodes of Thirteen's era are well-written (Demons of the Punjab, the Witchfinders, and Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror are classic episodes of all time for me) or were, like, one tweak away from brilliance and that though there are a few stinkers (Kerblam, I hate you with a burning passion) every showrunner has a few stinkers under their belt (Girl in the Fireplace, Let's Kill Hitler, Kill the Moon, for example). I even think the Timeless Child is not as bad as I think it once was (I think the Cybermasters might actually be the worst part of that episode). I think that the 50th anniversary and the Power of the Doctor are better celebrations of the show than the 60th anniversary specials.

And none of that I would have thought a couple of months ago, much less nine years ago when I first quit the show. But that's the value of time and thought; you gain more nuance if you're willing to think about something long and hard enough.

Once again, I'm so sorry for rambling; I've been trying to find a way to put all of these messy thoughts together for awhile now and your ask gave me the place to do so. Thank you for that.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter, though! Please feel free to start a dialogue/write your own response/etc.

#eleventh doctor #steven moffat #chris chibnall #twelfth doctor #thirteenth doctor #meta #analysis #angels take manhattan #time of the doctor #amy pond #river song #nuance is part of growing up #doctor who #the beast below #my asks

[quantumized-insanity]

Sometimes a relationship is just a thousand year old dude and a cybernetic head that slowly dies as the sun rises.

#I'm not crying you are #handles #Doctor who #time of the doctor

[phyrexian-lesbian]

handles’ death was more emotional than the entire “60th”

#doctor who #eleventh doctor #handles #time of the doctor

[of-monsters-and-werewolves]

Steven Moffat smacking his hand down on Doctor Who: You can fit so many poems in this thing.

#a good man goes to war #dw listen #the beast below #doctor who #time of the doctor #steven moffat #pro moffat #moffat era

[felt-squirrels]

The Doctor’s an old man now and I cried three times during “Time of the Doctor”

#just sad #i’ll miss eleven #but twelve is going to be a great doctor #man i really miss eleven #i am okay #eleventh doctor #twelveth doctor #time of the doctor

[moodywho]

There’s a first time for everything. And a last time.

The Eleventh Hour - The Time of The Doctor 

#the doctor #doctor who #11th Doctor #eleventh doctor #Matt Smith #dw #nuwho #11 #eleven #amy pond #Amelia Pond #karen gillan #TARDIS #the eleventh hour #time of the doctor #Regeneration #the crack #firsts and lasts #screens #stills #cinematography #moodywho #whoniverse #whovian #colour palette #palette board

[elliottexists]

i think its time that we recognise just how bad time of the doctor is, okay? okay. thank you.

#am i gonna get hunted down by the matt smith fans? #probably #just speaking my truth guys #not just my truth the truth actually #im really not a fan #whatsoever #doctor who #dw #time of the doctor

[daisylikesmedia]

Holiday Special 12: Time of the Doctor

Welp, here we are. It’s the end of Matt Smith’s run of the Doctor, and we’ll be reviewing his swan song Time of the Doctor today. Does it give him the ending he deserves? Let’s find out.

So for me this episode is clearly split into two halves, so I want to talk about the first half hour first. Long and short of it is that it really stinks imo. A lot of the jokes/gags used in this time don’t fit the Doctor’s socially capable character at all. Alongside this, there’s a lot of Moffat cliches that pop up here too. The constant changing of location, the bombardment of past enemies (the Weeping Angel routine is *very* overdone at this point), etc etc. At this point I’m very tired of these things, and it really deflated me to see that these cliches were still present in Moffat’s writing 4 years after he started as showrunner.

HOWEVER, as soon as the Doctor gets settled as the protector of Christmas, this episode pulls a complete 180 and becomes something amazing. 11’s Doctor has typically been described by a lot of fans as “a silly old man in a young man’s body”, and this is the story that shows us that silly old man. Seeing him fighting off wooden cybermen and the like whilst also teaching the kids of Christmas his silly giraffe dance or fixing their toys. It’s so so sweet, and as much as I can rag on Moffat cliches for days this is truly a fairytale ending for the character.

Alongside this Moffat takes the cliched villains seen in the first act and starts to do some really creative things with them once we’re on Christmas. The wooden cybermen are inspired, the Dalek-people clones are super dark (especially in the scene with Tasha omg) and work really well to raise the stakes of the story. It’s really good stuff, although it’s nothing compared to the final act that we get.

Having aged for 300 years, the Doctor stumbles to the top of the bell tower to face down the Daleks yet again. He’s very clearly on his last legs, and seeing him so old and withered is heart-breaking. Despite this, he keeps on with his taunting, as Clara begs the time lords to do something to save the man who saved them in a very poignant speech. As the Daleks mention the rules of regeneration, a crack opens up in the sky and the time lords send the Doctor an extra cycle of regenerations. And wow, the line that the Doctor throws out after this. “Did you just mention the rules?”. Of course our silly old Doctor doesn’t care about the rules, and he blasts the Daleks out of the sky with his newly found regeneration energy. He gets one final speech in the TARDIS, talking about how moving on is good as long as we remember all the people that we used to be, and then he bows out.

I don’t think any Doctor’s ending has been as fitting for their specific incarnation as that ending was. That is the 11th Doctor. Love him or hate him, he’s the goofy old man who will protect us silly humans from the monsters under our bed. I struggle sometimes with 11, and often I find his inconsistent romances and character arcs can get in the way. But when a story takes the time to focus on that mission statement, the goofy old man who saves us, it pays off and it pays off hard.

TL:DR/Overview: The Time of the Doctor is maybe the story that encapsulates what the 11th Doctor means to me the most. Despite a very sloppy start, the special in its 2nd and 3rd acts understands exactly the kind of Doctor 11 is, and gives him the most fitting ending any Doctor has had for themselves. Idk if I’m just more emotional recently but seeing 11 tirelessly fight to defend Christmas and its inhabitants got me to shed a few tears, and for that and a lot more, it’s deservingly going into A tier.

#daisy reviews media #doctor who #11th doctor #time of the doctor

[anotheruserwithnoname]

Although most of the episodes featuring Clara (except Day of the Doctor) are listed in the middle-of-the-pack, there are still some nice things said about Jenna Coleman in this round-up. Noticeably absent from this list: Planet of the Dead, Return of Dr. Mysterio (which I’d happily replace Husbands of River Song with), The Doctor the Widow and the Wardrobe (to be fair I keep forgetting that one even exists), and anything after 2017.

#jenna coleman #clara oswald #last christmas #the snowmen #time of the doctor #day of the doctor

[thelvadams]

DOCTOR WHO • 'The Church on Ruby Road'

#they were over 2000 years old #they should have been at the club

#dw spoilers #doctor who #dwedit #dwgifs #timelordgifs #ncuti gatwa #fifteenth doctor #the church on ruby road #vindicia #thelvadams.gifs #good for him 🥰 #also forgive the next time trailer quality