Time to react to The End of Time
It’s been two days since I watched The End of Time and I think I’ve recovered enough to quickly express some rambling thoughts that I NEED to express.
"Read more" or River Song? River Song.
(And lots of words and feelings.)
I could talk about just these two (brutal!) episodes for like a year but for now I just have to vent my feelings about the regeneration. Nine’s regeneration into Ten was a little bit sad, because, as Ten explains to Wilf, regenerating is essentially like dying and becoming someone else. So Nine’s last words to Rose really were last words. But when he died, he was smiling and triumphant and, most importantly, with Rose. And then Ten replaced him, and it was all right because, while he was a different person, I (and Rose) could still see Nine in him. When Ten died, he was scared (“I don’t want to go”) and sad and defeated and alone. The last expression on Chris’s face was laughter, and pride in Rose and himself. The last expression on David’s face was terror and despair. He was breathing heavily and there were tears in his eyes (WHY DOES HE HAVE TO BE SUCH A GOOD ACTOR). Then Eleven replaced him, and he was immediately all energetic and enthusiastic. David, while very much his own character, felt like a continuation of Chris, but in that last minute, Matt didn’t feel like a continuation of David. So now it feels like my Doctor is really gone.
I’ve been wondering if each Doctor’s mental state in his last moments can affect his next incarnation. Nine would still have Rose afterwards, so it makes sense that he’d want to remain basically the same man she knew. Ten had lost everything. If he had to go, maybe on some level he wanted to be someone totally different. If that’s the case, the jarring difference between Ten and Eleven is both happy and sad: happy because the Doctor has been freed of his pain, and sad, first because he was so unhappy in the first place, and second, because this time it really feels like he’s gone and replaced with a different person. I hope that in Eleven’s seasons, echoes of Ten sometimes come out in him.
Oh, and I was hoping he would swing by and wave at Wilf one last time.
I am going to take a nice long break from Doctor Who now, before embarking on a voyage into the Age of Moffat. At least I have Karen Gillan’s hair to look forward to.
