[Ed. Note: After the success of Speed Me Deadly, our weekly Breaking Bad recap series, we're pleased to welcome our friend and colleague Scott "Famous Inker" Williams on-board to talk about Doctor Who. As always, there are spoilers abound in these articles and you should watch the episode in question before reading beyond the header. Geronimo etc!]

Doctor Who, 2013 Christmas Special:

The Time of the Doctor

“Eleven’s hour is over now / The clock is striking Twelve’s…”

Nothing is so guaranteed to disappoint and divide people as much as an ending. This is especially true when the thing that’s ending still basically needs to continue. The mission statement of “The Time of the Doctor” was to wrap up several of the plot threads that had been introduced since the beginning of Matt Smith’s tenure, closing them off to future speculation, leave just enough open so that there is some direction for Peter Capaldi’s Doctor, and to tell a good story while doing so. Each of us must judge for his or herself whether this episode was successful in doing so. I liked it, though.

As we know, the Silence was a religious order dedicated to the notion that the Doctor must not speak his true name at Trenzalore, and to this end they had engineered both the explosion of the TARDIS back in Series 5 and the raising of River Song as a psychopath bent on murdering the Doctor so he would never reach the planet (“I totally married her.”) In case anybody wasn’t quite certain about that, it’s explained rather quickly here; the Kovarian branch of the order (as in Madame Kovarian, the human face of the sect who gleefully kidnapped Amy’s baby,) broke off from the initial order, and pursued these extreme measures on their own. The alien species that we’ve been calling “The Silence” are, as it happens, confessional priests (although what good a confessional is if you forget you’ve spoken it, I don’t know.)

I had thought that the “Silence must fall” prophecy actually referred to “The Name of the Doctor,” but there was one last twist. On the planet Trenzalore, there is one more crack in the universe, through which Gallifrey is broadcasting a message: “Doctor Who?” They want to know they’ve got the right guy, so it’s safe to come back. They’re even transmitting a truth field into the sleepy little Trenzalorian village (called Christmas) to ensure no shenanigans. The problem is, the planet is surrounded by Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, and tons of other bad guys ready to restart the Time War if and when Gallifrey returns. Quite a dilemma.

The Doctor ends up stuck in Christmas without Clara for hundreds of years, aging into an old man fighting an endless war. “Finally, a place that needs me to stay,” he quips. Late in the episode we learn that the old-series limit on regenerations still applies, and that with the inclusion of The War Doctor and Ten’s pseudo-regeneration in “The Stolen Earth,” The Eleventh Doctor is actually the Thirteenth and final one: when he dies, he dies. Moffat does a great job of setting up a seemingly unwinnable situation, and then figures out a way for the Doctor to win anyway, with a great assist from Clara.

The Time Lords beam him some fresh new regeneration energy through the crack in the Universe, and he uses it in explosive fashion. He has a touching scene at the end with Clara, sees visions of Amy and Amelia Pond, and then… blip. On to the next one.

As I said, I liked it. Not only did it wrap up several of those plot threads that were more or less ready to be resolved, it did so while showing the Doctor at his usual best: helping people, giving as much of himself as he possibly can to others, not giving in. It had a lot of humour and heart thrown in, with Clara’s family and the Doctor’s tragic friendship with the head of a Cyberman called “Handles,” as well as references to Smith’s then-freshly shaved head. It sealed up Matt Smith’s time as the Doctor as being about basically this specific series of events, and teed up Capaldi’s tenure pretty well.

Matt was my Doctor. The first episodes I caught were “Closing Time” and “The Wedding of River Song,” so although I alter circled back to Eccleston and Tennant, it was the specific character of Eleven, and even more the storytelling style of Moffat that really engaged me. The latter, I know I’m not losing, which helps me through this transition, but I’m sad to report that I seem to be hearing a lot of backlash about it: people tired of the ongoing mysteries, interconnected plots, etc, etc. I think that’s a shame. I think Moffat has, and will continue to, bring out the best in the Doctor, revel in all the underexplored corners of thought, mystery and heart that you don’t get from other shows. If Peter Capaldi doesn’t end up being “my Doctor,” the way Smith was for me or Tennant may have been for you, then he’s still going to be The Doctor, the man who stands for something, the protector, the helper, the repairman. The guy who saves everyone even when it’s not possible because anything less is a betrayal of his name. That’s not going away, no matter how the story is told or what he looks like.

Unless this is the year he turns into a guy who just throws bombs at weird looking aliens every week. Then you have my permission to change the channel.