The End Of Ten

David Tennant - in my view rather excellent as the Doctor, and a very close second to my favourite, Peter Davison. Probably just as well I was too young to notice when Davison regenerated in 1984, as I was feeling a bit melancholy at Tennant's upcoming fate, even though I've been looking forward to Matt Smith's arrival. Perhaps it's something to do with having Tennant around since my first year of uni as the regular Doctor and it gets a bit like having a favourite armchair for years. That and he was bloody good.

Needless to say in a family like the Other Half's, the regeneration of a Doctor is a pretty big thing. Put it this way, the family have been massive fans since Grandad Bob originally watched it in 1963, and then spread the fandom to his children who subsequently passed it on to their children. I think the only other family in existence more Who-ish of a persuasion would be Peter Davison's. There we have Peter as the Doctor in the early 80's, his daughter Georgia Moffett appearing as the Doctor's daughter Jenny. Then Georgia starts to date David Tennant. In the meantime, Peter's youngest sons become massive fans, quickly eschewing Dad for the big sisters boyfriend as their favourite, whilst Georgia's own son adores Tennant and Tom Baker (no mention of Grandad!).

But I digress. This year the event of the regeneration was watched with the Other Half's Mum and sister. The Other Half was cooing at the arrival of Time Lords, whilst the rest of us were having our heartstrings torn by the Doctor himself and basically wanting to adopt him all over again. There were plenty of 'Oh noooo!' moments when we thought that was it, but no, the Doctor kept battling on to.... no I'm not going to spoiler it!

But then the end came. The Doctor started to regenerate, visiting all his mates to say good bye, and then with a final "I don't want to go!", burst into a wall of bright stuff, started wrecking the TARDIS and then turned into Matt Smith being surprised he had legs and crying out "Geronimo" as he tried to steer the TARDIS.

There isn't really much to write about regarding the actual story, save to say that come the end, tissues were being passed to some family members. I was quite impressed with number Eleven's 20 seconds of screen time so far. Probably not enough to predict how that Doctor will be, especially as a newly regenerated Doctor is a bit nuts (see Tom Bakers first story Robot as an extreme example) before settling down. But from the taster trailer shown after The End Of Time, it does look promising. And I see Stephen Moffat, aka The Moff, has kept up RTD's tradition of snogging companions. Bet that was fun for Karen Gillen! I'll just have to hang on til May to find out now. I am a bit disturbed by the fact that Matt is my age. Probably thanks to hearing friends in recent years talk about you know you're getting on when the Doctor is younger than you. I'm six months older. Not a lot. But still...

So post- regen, we then watched Doctor Who Confidential in which Russell T Davies looked smug and relaxed in California, David Tennant looked completely wiped out and Matt Smith got accosted by lots of crew curious to see him take over and bump into RTD for the first time. I'd say that Matt looked the most chilled out after RTD on the whole programme. It was poignant watching the shift over for the filming of the regeneration. Tennant and RTD exited, whilst Matt and the Moff entered, the Moff looking very serious, but gleeful at overseeing his new 'toy'.

The most memorable scene from Confidential was David being called back after shooting his final scenes for a technical thing, only to be given a send off by the crew. Cue tears from the outgoing leading man and some of us watching at home. The withdrawal is probably a killer!


So overall, what did I think of The End of Time? Some of it was a touch silly, but it was fun silly. The Master, as ever, was great - nearly at Delgado levels. Bernard Cribbins was brilliant as Wilf and seems to have been adopted as the new elder Statesman of Doctor Companions along with William Russell (Ian) and Nick Courtney (The Brig). Donna was bolshy as ever. But David Tennant was the best. I have the feeling he put his recent stint as a Shakespearean thesp to good use in getting the range of emotion he put across. I think he may actually have cried in it more than certain of his fans watching! It probably goes up there with The Caves of Androzani in terms of regeneration stories, though I think Peter Davison's swansong might have an extra edge as it is very understated in comparison to The End Of Time. There isn't as much demonstrated emotion in Androzani, which is what I think makes it all the more moving. But then again, I'm probably just being biased!