The Time of the Doctor (TV story)

The Time of the Doctor was the 2013 Doctor Who Christmas special. It was the 800th episode of the series and the final appearance of Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor. It served as a conclusion to the entirety of the Smith era, bringing back both the Silence and Trenzalore and bringing their stories to a close. Karen Gillan also made a surprise cameo as a hallucination of Amy Pond, rounding out Smith's era.

The special tackled an issue that hadn't been talked about since the series came back in 2005: that of the limited amount of regenerations, introduced in The Deadly Assassin. It confirmed that the Doctor was actually in his 13th and final incarnation, before being granted a brand new regeneration cycle at the end of this story. It also served as Peter Capaldi's formal introduction as the new Doctor, after making a surprise cameo appearance in The Day of the Doctor.

The special marked the departure of producer Marcus Wilson, finishing his work with the series after Matt Smith's final scene was filmed.

Synopsis
Orbiting a quiet backwater planet, the massed forces of the universe's deadliest species gather, drawn to a mysterious message that echoes out to the stars. Among them, the Doctor. Rescuing Clara from a family Christmas dinner, the Time Lord and his companion must learn what this enigmatic signal means for his own fate and that of the universe.

Plot
The Doctor is among thousands of ships orbiting a planet after hearing a message being broadcast from it, a message that no-one can understand. He visits a ship, holding a Dalek Eye Stalk to show his bravery. Unfortunately, the ship belongs to Daleks, who fire at him until he teleports back to the TARDIS, where a disembodied Cyberman head that he calls "Handles" is plugged into the console. Clara calls the Doctor via the TARDIS phone, and pleads that he pretend to be her boyfriend for her family's Christmas dinner. The Doctor then accidentally visits a Cybership while holding Handles, where he is also shot at until he returns to the TARDIS again.

The Doctor picks up Clara from her home (after causing major embarrassment when he forgets to update his holographic suit to be visible to her family) and takes her to the planet's orbit. When asked to identify the planet, Handles claims it is Gallifrey, which the Doctor refutes. The two are invited aboard the Papal Mainframe, a space church headed by Mother Superious Tasha Lem. Tasha and the Doctor discuss the signal coming from the mysterious planet, while Clara repeatedly sees and forgets several Silents that surround her. She bursts into the room where the Doctor and Tasha are conversing, but forgets why after she does so.

Tasha sends the Doctor and Clara to the planet, but accidentally places them in the middle of an ambush by Weeping Angels. They escape to a town called Christmas, surrounded by a truth field, so no one can lie. Here the Doctor finds a crack in time through which the message is being broadcast. Using a copy of the Seal of the High Council he once took from The Master in the Death Zone, he has Handles translate it. The message is a repeat of the same question: "Doctor who?" The Doctor says this is the Time Lords, trapped in a pocket universe, trying to get out. If the Doctor speaks his name, the Time Lords will know they are in the right place and come through, and all the alien species above will descend on the planet and begin the Time War anew. Tasha contacts the Doctor, telling him this cannot happen and the Doctor refuses to withdraw and let his enemies destroy the planet, which she reveals to be Trenzalore – the place where he is supposed to die.

The Doctor tricks Clara into plugging a device into the TARDIS that transports her home. For the next 300 years, he defends Trenzalore from his enemies. He defended Chrismas in a number of ways. One time he disabled the cloaking device on a Sontaran vehicle, allow the Church to destroy. On another occasion, he tricked a wooden Cyberman, created to be too primitive to set off the alarm, into destroying itself after using the sonic and the truth field to make it think its gun had been turned around. According to Tasha, the Doctor seemed to forget of life before the siege. He spent his sparetime fixing the toys the children played with. He grew close to a child called Barnable.

Clara returns after gripping to the sides of the TARDIS and forcing the TARDIS to increase the shields and bring her back through the Time Vortex, slowing it down considerably. She meets a Doctor who has spent three centuries defending the town of Christmas. He now has grey hair and needs a walking stick. He reveals to her that Time Lords can only regenerate twelve times. She surmises that this shouldn't be a problem, as he is the "eleventh Doctor". He reminds her of "Captain grumpy", his Time War incarnation; although he didn't call himself "the Doctor", it still counted. So, too, did the regeneration used by the Tenth Doctor during his Meta-Crisis. He is therefore on his thirteenth, and final life. He and Clara then watch the rise for a few minutes. Shortly after, Handles dies – but not before finally reminding him that he needs to patch the TARDIS phone back into the console. He is then transported, with Clara, to the Papal Mainframe, now the Church of the Silence. The Silents are revealed to be genetically engineered confessional priests, whom Church members can confess their sins to, then later forget. (A renegade faction of these priests called the Kovarian Chapter broke away and travelled back in time to stop the Doctor reaching Trenzalore.) The Doctor later discovers that Tasha and her crew have been killed by the Daleks and turned into Dalek puppets. Three Daleks accost the Doctor. At the Doctor's urgings however, Tasha regains her mind and defends the Doctor, who escapes from the ship and tricks Clara home for a second time. He and the Silence then defend the planet from attackers above, until only the Daleks are left. This war lasted for a large number of years, possibly hundreds as The Doctor is seen to have become very old by the end of it.

Meanwhile, having returned to her family (who assume she's broken up with her "boyfriend"), an upset Clara later hears the TARDIS engines and runs outside, to find the TARDIS piloted by Tasha, claiming, "Flying the TARDIS is easy, it's flying the Doctor that's hard." She returns Clara to Trenzalore to see the Doctor, saying she could not let him die alone. The Doctor is now very old and often acts slow and slightly confused. He seems to have developed dementia, shown by how he thinks a man is Barnable despite the man telling him he isn't. He still won't release the Time Lords, knowing that it would mean Hell for all the universe. All his enemies have withdrawn save for the Daleks, whom he has been fighting with the aid of the Silence. The Daleks launch their final attack and the Doctor, finally out of ideas, weapons and regenerations, goes to meet them. Clara cannot watch this and returns to the crack in time, pleading with the Time Lords to save the Doctor, saying: "His name is the Doctor! All the name he needs, everything you need to know about him, and if you love him, and you should, help him!". The crack vanishes. At the top of Christmas's clock tower, the Doctor is preparing to die. Then, the crack appears in the night sky and through it, the Time Lords grant the Doctor a new cycle of regenerations. This happens just as the Daleks begin to taunt him: "The rules of regeneration are known! You have expended all your lives!" As his regeneration process begins, the Doctor uses the energy to destroy the Daleks and their ship.

In the aftermath, Clara returns to the TARDIS, finding the Doctor, whose youth has been restored. The Doctor informs Clara that this is "a reset", enjoying a bowl of fish custard, a meal he enjoyed at the very start of his now fading incarnation. Despite this renewal, he tells her the regeneration can't be stopped, and that it is simply taking some time to begin. Although revitalised, he will still change. Clara is saddened greatly when she realises that the Doctor she knew is about to disappear. However, the Doctor is not upset about the regeneration yet to come. He understands how fast everything about him and life itself can be gone in a moment, because it is always changing. He comforts Clara by telling her that times change, and so must he. The Doctor's hand begins to glow with regenerative energy and he makes peace with the fondest memories he had during this incarnation before its time is up.

Suddenly, he sees a little girl prancing through the balcony of the TARDIS with cheerful giggling, with every inch of its walls covered in her drawings of their adventures together, alongside those given to him by the children on Trenzalore. Aloud, he starts to reminisce about the past companion Clara never met: Amelia Pond, The Girl Who Waited, the one he lost so long ago - "the first face this face saw." Happily awaiting the regeneration, the Doctor gives this incarnation a fond eulogy. He assures Clara, "We all change, when you think about, we are all different people, all through our lives, and that's ok, that's good, you've gotta keep moving, as long as you remember all the people that you used to be. I will not forget one line of this, not one day, I swear. I will always remember when the Doctor was me."

He sees an adult Amy Pond in the TARDIS - though she's been gone for so long and has been lost to him for hundreds of years - with her wedding ring on; it's not just her returning, but Rory too, in a symbolic way - the Eleventh's first companions are seeing him on into a new life. Amy descends from the balcony, places her hand against his cheek, and tells him, "Raggedy Man, good night."

The Doctor places his hand against her face as well, only to see he's reaching out for air. Ready to move on and become a new man, the Eleventh Doctor lets go of his greatest attachment to this incarnation – he removes his cherished bowtie, dropping it to the floor. In tears, Clara begs him not to change. He smiles, consoles her once more, and then suddenly jerks his head back.

In barely a second's time, the Doctor has completely changed from the youthful alien Clara knew, to an older-looking man with curled silver hair and the impeccable razor-sharp gaze of the Doctor that joined the previous twelve to rescue Gallifrey from the Time War. Utterly dumbfounded by this new face, Clara can only watch as the Doctor stares her right in the eyes, before keeling backward, clutching his waist. He proclaims, "Kidneys! I've got new kidneys! I don't like the colour." Suddenly, the TARDIS begins shaking, and to Clara's horror, the new Doctor not only tells her that they're crashing into something, he also implies he's suffering from partial amnesia when he asks her if she knows how to fly the TARDIS...

Cast

 * The Doctor - Matt Smith
 * Clara - Jenna Coleman
 * Tasha Lem - Orla Brady
 * Dad - James Buller
 * Linda - Elizabeth Rider
 * Gran - Sheila Reid
 * Colonel Albero - Mark Anthony Brighton
 * Abramal - Rob Jarvis
 * Marta - Tessa Peake-Jones
 * Barnable - Jack Hollington
 * Colonel Meme - Sonita Henry
 * Handles' Voice - Kayvan Novak
 * Young Man - Tom Gibbins
 * Voice. - Ken Bones
 * Cyberman - Aidan Cook
 * Voice of the Daleks & the Cybermen - Nicholas Briggs
 * Dalek 1 - Barnaby Edwards
 * Dalek 2 - Nicholas Pegg
 * Silent - Ross Mullan
 * Sontaran - Dan Starkey
 * Weeping Angel - Sarah Madison
 * Wooden Cyberman - Daz Parker (uncredited)
 * with Karen Gillan as Amy Pond, and introducing Peter Capaldi as The Doctor

Species

 * Amongst the species massing at Trenzalore in response to the mysterious signal are the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Judoon, the Sontarans, the Silurians, the Terileptils and the Slitheen family.
 * The Cybermen are shown to use the Cybus phrase "Delete" in one of the drawings.
 * The Doctor traps a Weeping Angel with a mirror so that it is forced to look at itself.
 * A drawing of what may be one of the Racnoss hangs on the wall of the clock tower.
 * A drawing of a Smiler hangs on the wall of the clock tower.

Story notes

 * This is the first televised regeneration story in which the Doctor regenerates at the end of the story to end on a shot of a character other than the Doctor and the second since The War Games not to end on the Doctor's new incarnation. In this case, this story's final frame shows Clara's reaction to the newly regenerated Twelfth Doctor, not the Twelfth Doctor himself.
 * This story takes place over a longer amount of time than any other, with the Doctor having lived more than three-hundred years (probably far more) since the beginning of the episode.
 * This is the shortest regeneration story (in overall run time) to be broadcast on BBC1, as The Night of the Doctor was only shown on Red Button.
 * The regeneration is presented differently from other regenerations shown in the revived series, with the use of a prolonged explosion of energy occurring before the actor transitions. The final transition consists of a brief flash of light around the actor's head.
 * Regenerations in the revived series are presented as getting bigger and stronger each time. The ninth Doctor's regeneration into the tenth Doctor's introduced the regeneration flames. The Tenth Doctor's regeneration into the Eleventh Doctor's used the same effect but as a result of holding it in for too long, causes damage to the TARDIS. When Eleventh Doctor's regenerative abilities are reset into a new cycle, the effect is big enough to destroy a Dalek ship. However, when the first regeneration after the reset completes itself (the physical change from Eleventh to Twelfth), it is shown as a simple transition. This could be a callback to the first regenerations from the classic series, insinuating that regenerations grow increasingly violent and dangerous as Time Lords near the end of their regeneration cycles.
 * Before filming for this special began in September 2013, Matt Smith agreed to play a role in the American film, How to Catch a Monster. His character was depicted as having a thug-like buzz cut, which meant Smith had to have his signature quiff completely shorn off. By the time the filming was underway for the special, Matt's hair had not grown back enough to fill out the Eleventh Doctor's hairstyle. It was decided that he would use a hairpiece identical to his quiff, which also made it easier for makeup artists to apply ageing effects through older-looking hairpieces. In a humorous moment in the episode that references the wig, the Doctor, surprising Clara, removes a wig to reveal he is bald. (A cap was used to achieve the effect)
 * Though it can be assumed that The Doctor's hair grew back to normal during the many long years he stayed on Trenzalore and before he regenerated.
 * Coincidentally, Karen Gillan had also shaved her head for a role in the Marvel film Guardians of the Galaxy and wore a wig alongside Matt Smith in their final bow on the series.
 * Smith can also be seen wearing a wig in the teaser trailer for The Day of the Doctor.
 * During the filming of the special, Matt Smith suffered an injury to his leg and later had to visit a physical therapist to recuperate from the accident. This injury inspired a rumour that the script for the special would be altered to have the Eleventh Doctor lose a leg when the Weeping Angels attacked. The rumour was proven false when no such event took place in the episode.
 * This is the eighth story overall to feature both Daleks and Cybermen in the same episode with major roles, preceded by The Five Doctors, The Ultimate Adventure, Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang, Return to Earth, The Mazes of Time and The Eternity Clock.
 * Additionally, Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Silurians, Judoon and Slitheen were all part of TV: The Pandorica Opens; Cybermen, Sontarans, Silurians and Judoon were all part of TV: A Good Man Goes to War; and Daleks, Cybermen, Silurians and Silents were all part of GAME: The Eternity Clock.
 * Moreover, Daleks and Sontarans were both part of AUDIO: The Five Companions; Daleks and Silurians were both part of GAME: Evacuation Earth; and Daleks, Cybermen and Silurians were all part of GAME: The Mazes of Time.
 * This is despite the fact that Steven Moffat said he had no desire to write a story in which the Doctor faces all of his enemies (REF: The Brilliant Book 2011) yet he is the writer that has come closest to doing this after writing three episodes now which have featured multiple recurring enemies.
 * With their role in The Day of the Doctor, this marks the second time the Daleks have featured in two consecutive episodes, excluding multi-part stories and flashbacks. The first time was Frontier in Space and Planet of the Daleks. However, Planet is a continuation of Frontier and both deal with parts of the same Dalek threat, whereas some time has elapsed between the events of Day and Time and they both involve two separate Dalek threats: The Time War and the New Dalek Paradigm respectively. If Frontier and Planet are considered to be one story, then The Day of the Doctor and The Time of the Doctor can be considered the first stories to do this.
 * Though considering himself not much of a "weepy person", during the table read-through for the script of The Time of the Doctor, Matt Smith had an emotional breakdown while trying to read his final lines and cried. Steven Moffat immediately came over to his seat and hugged him while Jenna Coleman tried to avoid being overcome with sadness herself.
 * The new Doctor not knowing how to fly the TARDIS seems to suggest he has managed to have partial memory loss after regenerating, though this is the second time the Doctor has had amnesia/partial amnesia after regenerating as the Eighth Doctor soon after his own regeneration could not remember who he was at all until much later. (Doctor Who (TV movie))

Ratings
8.3 Million.

Filming locations
to be added

Rumours

 * Because of the leg injury suffered by Matt Smith during filming, the Doctor would lose a leg during the episode. This turned out to be false. The middle-aged and elderly versions of the Doctor, however, both rely on a walking stick to get around.  In addition, while in the TARDIS waiting for his regeneration to kick in, the youthful Doctor is clearly limping in pain as he uses the console.

Production errors

 * When the Doctor and Clara arrive at the Papal Mainframe, the right column of the TARDIS is noticeably missing.
 * When the doctor is on the dalek ship at the beginning of the episode, one of the Daleks' eyestalk lights are not turned on.

Continuity

 * The Doctor tricks Clara into returning home in the TARDIS, presumably using Emergency Program One, although modified in that the TARDIS was programmed to return to him after Clara's departure. The Ninth Doctor previously tricked Rose into returning home in the TARDIS, and just like Clara, she manages to return both herself and the TARDIS to the Doctor, and playing a part in saving the Doctor and activating his next regeneration. (TV: The Parting of the Ways).
 * Handles' response "Affirmative" parallels that of K9 to the Fourth and the Tenth Doctors. (TV: School Reunion)
 * The Doctor explains the Cracks in time and the events of the reboot of the Universe to Clara. (TV: The Big Bang)
 * To allow translation of the message, the Doctor uses a Seal of the High Council of Gallifrey, claiming he "nicked it off the Master in the Death Zone." The Third Doctor did exactly that, incorrectly assuming that the Master had himself stolen it. The Doctor stated at that time he would return it to the High Council at his "earliest convenience". (TV: The Five Doctors)
 * The Doctor confirms to Clara that although he is the Eleventh Doctor, he has used all twelve of his regenerations, and is therefore unable to regenerate again. The two "missing" lives are the War Doctor (who was not generally referred to as the Doctor due to his actions in the Time War, and had in fact rejected the title), (TV: The Day of the Doctor) and the abortive regeneration by the Tenth Doctor when he sent his regenerative energy into a matching bio-receptacle (his severed hand) rather than change. (TV: Journey's End)
 * It is confirmed that Time Lords can only regenerate twelve times (for a total of thirteen lives), but that a Time Lord can be granted a new regeneration cycle. Judging by the Doctor's reaction when this happens to him ("We're breaking some serious science here, boys!"), this is uncommon. The Master had been offered a new regeneration cycle by the High Council to persuade him to rescue the various Doctors trapped in the Death Zone, (TV: The Five Doctors) and was apparently given one when he was resurrected to fight in the Time War. (TV: The Sound of Drums)
 * Regenerative energy again proves to be damaging to non-organic objects, with the Doctor using some to blast the Daleks and their ship. When the Tenth Doctor regenerated, some of that energy hit the TARDIS console, causing major damage and sending it out of control. (TV: The End of Time, Part Two)
 * The Doctor visibly ages during the 300 years between when he sends Clara home and when she returns, gaining grey hair and wrinkles and requiring a cane to walk; he is therefore about 1500 years old at this point. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) By the time Tasha Lem returns Clara to Trenzalore once again, he has aged significantly further; it is unknown how much time passed between her second and third visits.
 * It is learned that Madame Kovarian led a faction of the 'Church of Silence' that broke off and traveled back along the Doctor's timeline, trying to stop him from reaching Trenzalore and answering the First Question. Their actions failed, and in fact caused the events they feared to occur; trying to blow the TARDIS up caused the cracks to appear, and the assassin they manufactured to kill the Doctor - River Song - ended up being the Doctor's wife and ally. The Doctor called this the Destiny Trap - "You can't change history if you're already a part of it."
 * A similar such paradox is set up during Day of the Daleks - the guerillas' assassination of Styles in the belief his death would prevent the Daleks' invasion of Earth actually led directly to it.
 * The Silents are revealed to be high ranking Confessional Priests of the Papal Mainframe (later the Church of Silence), which were genetically engineered to allow people to confess their sins without remembering doing so, accomplished by fashioning the priests so anyone looking at them would forget their encounter when they looked away.
 * As the Eighth, War, Ninth and Tenth Doctors did, the Eleventh Doctor examines his glowing hands before he regenerates. (TV: The Night of the Doctor, The Day of the Doctor, The Parting of the Ways, The End of Time)
 * The Doctor silently materializes the TARDIS on Trenzalore. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Time of Angels, The Impossible Astronaut)
 * The greatest fear in the Doctor's room from The God Complex is revealed to have been a crack in time.
 * The Doctor again uses the phone on the outside of the TARDIS (TV: The Bells of Saint John, The Day of the Doctor) once more despite having previously claimed that it is not a real phone (TV: The Empty Child). It is revealed that this is because he keeps forgetting to patch it back through the phone on the console. (TV: World War Three, The Beast Below)
 * Clara now has her own TARDIS key. (TV: The Rings of Akhaten, Hide)
 * The Doctor uses "reverse the polarity" once more (TV: The Day of the Doctor), a favourite phrase of the Third Doctor.
 * The Daleks now once again remember the Doctor (TV: Asylum of the Daleks) due to harvesting the information from Tasha Lem's mind.
 * Dalek puppets reappear. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks) Tasha Lem is able to resist her conditioning and fire on three Daleks in a way that mirrors Jenibeth Blakely. (PROSE: The Dalek Generation)
 * The Doctor eats fish fingers and custard once more before regenerating. (TV: The Eleventh Hour, The Power of Three)
 * The Twelfth Doctor's first words — "Kidneys! I've got new kidneys!" — keep to the modern "tradition" of new Doctors immediately commenting on their bodies. Previously, the Tenth Doctor commented on his "new teeth", (TV: The Parting of the Ways) and the Eleventh on his legs. (TV: The End of Time) Past Doctors had similar comments later on. (TV: Robot, TV: Doctor Who, TV: Rose)
 * The most lucid and frequent voice emanating from the crack in time is that of the General seen in The Day of the Doctor.
 * While regenerating, the Doctor hallucinates seeing his past companion Amelia Pond, similar to the Fourth and Fifth Doctors thinking of their past companions at the time of their respective regenerations. (TV: Logopolis, TV: The Caves of Androzani)
 * While the species themselves are not mentioned, Judoon rockets (TV: Smith and Jones, The Pandorica Opens) and Silurian Arks (TV: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship) can be seen among the fleets orbiting Trenzalore at the beginning. Terileptils are mentioned as being one species present. (TV: The Visitation)
 * This is not the first time someone rode through the Vortex on the outside of the TARDIS. This was previously done by Captain Jack Harkness (TV: Utopia) and the Doctor himself. (TV: Hide)
 * The town of Christmas has a small graveyard with headstones identical to those in the mass grave from Trenzalore's alternate future. (TV: The Name of the Doctor)
 * This is the first time in the revived series to acknowledge the fact the Time Lords have a limited capacity to regenerate twelve times. The Eleventh Doctor previously joked about this limit in The Sarah Jane Adventures episode Death of the Doctor, claiming to Clyde Langer he could regenerate 507 times.
 * The Doctor teaches the children of Christmas to do the "drunk giraffe" dance he performed at the wedding of Amy Pond and Rory Williams. (TV: The Big Bang)
 * At his oldest before the regeneration process, the Doctor's hair resembles his first incarnation's hairstyle.
 * The gathering of spaceships at Trenzalore is reminiscent of the Alliance which came to Earth in 102 AD for the Pandorica. In both cases, Daleks, Cybermen, Judoon, Silurians, Sontarans, Slitheen and Terileptils were part of the gathering. The Weeping Angels are the only race seen or mentioned here not known to have been in the Alliance. (TV: The Pandorica Opens)
 * The Sonic screwdriver still doesn't do wood. (TV: Silence in the Library, The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe) This episode also shows that it doesn't do turkey.
 * During his time on Trenzalore the Doctor says "Christmas is protected" (TV: The Christmas Invasion, The Eleventh Hour) and that "cool is not cool," adding to the many things he says are not cool.
 * The puppet show put on display for the children of Christmas shows an adventure between The Doctor and a Monoid, an alien species last seen by the First Doctor. (TV: The Ark)
 * The Time Lords contribution to the Doctor's regeneration can be considered opposite to the reasons for his regeneration from the Second Doctor to the Third Doctor. (TV: The War Games)
 * The Doctor says "Geronimo!" with the children of Christmas, the last instance he ever uses that word. (TV: The End of Time onward)

Home video releases
to be added