First broadcast 25 December 2013.

Matt Smith’s tenure as the Doctor in Doctor Who ran for three seasons over about four years, and it all came to end here: “The Time of the Doctor”, the 2013 Christmas special, the third and concluding part of an episodic trilogy, and the wrapping-up of all of Smith’s long-running story arc and mysteries. As an episode in its own right is a deeply uneven mixture of scenes with an inconsistent pace. As a finale, it is an enormously satisfying hour of television. That almost feels like 21st century Doctor Who in a nutshell. The series is ultimately rather inconsistent, but its emotional beats and climactic sequences are superb.

A mysterious signal is being transmitted from an isolated planet. Every power-mongering civilization in the universe arrives out of fear, while the Doctor arrives out of curiosity. He finds a crack in the universe he thought he had left behind, a town named Christmas and a future he has been desperately hoping to avoid.

The Matt Smith years differentiated itself from previous eras of Doctor Who in a number of ways, but the most obvious was its reliance on complex, long-running story arcs that presented a broader mystery than could be contained in each individual episode. I always viewed these arcs with a general suspicion that showrunner and writer Steven Moffat was at least partially making them up as he went along. Season 5 was fairly cleanly plotted, but left key narrative strands exposed. Season 6 was packed with a little too much incident for comfort. Season 7 spent much of its first half essentially hiding from the arcs altogether, only for them to suddenly come back into force in the second.

If there is a highlight to “The Time of the Doctor”, it is that all of those threads and mysteries finally get gathered together and resolved. If there is a key caveat, it is that all of those threads must be resolved within 60 minutes and the episode wastes the first 10 with some unfunny Christmas dinner hijinks between the Doctor (Smith), Clara (Jenna Coleman), and Clara’s family.

It is nice to see the episode swing back to the folkloric quality of Smith’s first season. There’s a jolly winter town named Christmas, where a mysterious energy field forces the locals to always speak the truth. Strange little fairy tale elements are littered throughout, whether in the narrative – the Doctor moves in for 300 years to defend it from hard – or the detail – the wooden Cyberman is a lovely and unusual touch.

Sadly the episode is forced by time constraints to jam a fair amount of implied back story and new characters in without giving them sufficient space to be established. In particular the introduction of Orla Brady as the mysterious Tasha Lem, ruler of the so-called Papal Mainframe, feels awkwardly rushed and would have benefitted from some more screen time.

Finally, at the episode’s end, the Doctor regenerates. It’s a perfectly-pitched scene, heads-and-shoulders above the rest of the episode, and delivered exceptionally well by Matt Smith. When the episode first aired I swore there hadn’t been a better regeneration in 50 years of Doctor Who. Coming back to the episode 13 years – and four more regenerations – later, and I still think it’s the best. The writing is excellent, the direction is excellent, and even Jenna Coleman – whose acting I generally don’t enjoy – is heartbreakingly good. Then, just when you think there’s going to be an epic explosion of gold and white, Smith’s face all but blinks out of existence, leaving Peter Capaldi in his clothes – staring like a madman.

This was the 800th episode of Doctor Who, which is quite the occasion on which to end an era. When Matt Smith started I noticed a lot of cynicism: too young, too energetic, too weird-looking. When we came out the other end, it was after a four-year period of great ideas, engaging performances, and more than a few all-out classic episodes.

Next up, another Doctor accused of being too young for the role and the Doctor during whose tenure I first became an obsessive fan of the show.