This is your Spoiler Alert. Don’t read if you haven’t seen the season finale of Series 7 of Doctor Who.
50 years. Series 7. 11 Doctors. Clara. All these things have come and gone. So what is left to explore? We learn in this finale where the show will go next and it’s not about new lands or future times, instead it’s about the past. A very specific origin. The Doctor’s origin. There is probably no better place to go in the TARDIS than the start.
For this finale, we didn’t get the name of the Doctor as many of us believed we would, but we did get a look at the face that started it all. When Steven Moffat said we would never see the Doctor again after the credits rolled on The Name of the Doctor - he wasn’t kidding.
The episode started with Clara’s identity finally being revealed. She’s the Doctor’s protector. But she doesn’t know why, so we have to let the story take us there.
Our favorite trio, Jenny, Vastra and Strax learn the Doctor’s biggest secret had been uncovered and assemble Clara and River Song to decide what to do. Unfortunately, they’re interrupted by the Great Intelligence and their creepy empty bodies.
After being captured by the vampire pod bodies, the trio are locked away in the Doctor’s tomb on Trenzalore, while Clara and the Doctor make their way there. I have to say that Matt Smith has really blown me away week after week since the return of the show. The scene in Clara’s home where he breaks down was so real and raw. I felt a rough spot in my throat swelling up and it’s still there now.
Once Clara and the Doctor arrive at Trenzalore, River shows up in some kind of mythic echo. She starts giving hints and clues, eventually leading the pair to the Doctor’s TARDIS tomb. It’s not the Doctor’s body that resides inside, but his travel DNA. All the places he’s been, the people he’s seen - in a genetic, glowing weave of love, loss and life. After all, what’s a time traveler without his travels? When the Great Intelligence tries to step inside it, the course of the Doctor’s history changes causing Jenny and Vastra to disappear, the stars to fade and history to rewrite itself. This may be a story about death, but it’s also a story about births: the birth of the Impossible Girl. Clara holds the Doctor as she realizes her purpose: she is meant to save the Doctor.
This brings us back to the beginning. Clara steps into his timeline and spreads across the universe, which is why she’s lived a thousand lives in a thousand times. If you thought the Doctor’s life was full of longing, tragedy and loneliness, can you imagine the life of a person whose entire existence is hinging on watching the Doctor make choices and trying to ensure he survives them? It sounds like the most tortured self-sacrifice martyrdom I can imagine.
But self-sacrifice is what women do for the Doctor. River Song is further proof of that and she needs an ending. I know the Internet universally loves River Song and I too have a soft spot for her, but watching the Doctor and River kiss just made me sad. All I want for River is peace. Maybe now she can have that.
I don’t know how this is even possible, but the Doctor stepped into his own timeline to try and save Clara. There, he finds not just his past, but his origin. And apparently, his origin is not a name, but rather a person. That person is actor John Hurt, who is standing in as the Time Lord who made those first mistakes. Those mistakes that were so large and those decisions so heart-wrenching that the Doctor shed his identity and became the man we know.
So this is what Steven Moffat was leading up to after all these years. I sort of feel victorious for him, because I had no idea it was coming, but it was beautiful, real and believable. There’s no better compliment than that.