If you are a Whovian and are confused or want to read yet another recap, continue, if not, I'll be back soon with a different blog, I'm sure.
First, I'd like to remind all the adults out there that Doctor Who IS FOR CHILDREN! Or rather a family show adults can watch with their children. Adults have commandeered the show, when I'm not certain, but definitely during the reboot at the very least.
Second, this is not a HARD science fiction show. There are continuity errors, faulty subplots, and probably a fair share of plot holes, for sure, but just about EVERYTHING that's happened (especially with the reboot) has had some type of explanation, and I'll point out some of them in my recap.
Third, the debate between showrunners and writers Davies vs. Moffat is so silly, they are both geniuses in their own right, you just really have to pay attention.
Now, onto the recap:
The Doctor arrives at a planet which is being shielded by the Church of the Papal Mainframe (Mentioned in A Good Man Goes to War) and it's leader the flirty Tasha Lem (we'll get to her). A message is being transmitted, all The Doctor's enemies are there, parked and waiting...full of fear. The Doctor wants to know what the message is. (He's OCD of course) After picking up Clara, they head into the church to seek permission to go down to the planet.On board, Clara runs into the Silence aliens who are asking her to confess. Creepy!
The Doctor and Clara head on down to the planet and WHOA Weeping Angels. This is bad!
Run!
They escape into the town, nearing the tower which is transmitting a message and come upon a couple. The Doctor has a white lie to tell, but when he speaks to the couple, only the truth comes out. Hilarious scene!
The town is called Christmas, (How can you have an Island called Easter, hehe) it's encased in a truth field, no one can tell a lie ("On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a Question will be asked, a question that must never, ever be answered.") The Doctor is charmed by the truth field, thinking it's quaint...until he goes inside and sees the crack in the wall. THE CRACK IN THE WALL! (This crack is first seen in 11th's FIRST episode The 11th Hour. Little Amelia Pond asked Santa (!!) for help by sending a police man...or....)
The Doctor said he was waiting for it to show up again because he knew it wasn't completely closed. A quick recap of cracks are shown, including when he opened the 11th door in the hotel room in The God Complex and it's shown slightly in the bottom of his eye. (I went back to that original episode, and IT WAS THERE!!! MOFFAT!!)
Using the bodyless Cyberman head Handles (Wilson), The Doctor translates the message confirming Dorian Madolva's spoiler...the question is "Doctor Who". Once it is translated, it's sent out through space AND TIME making it the oldest question in the universe.
Since The Doctor may have saved the Time Lords in a pocket universe in the 50th Special, he concludes that the Time Lords are stuck there and trying to break back through to our universe. But wait, you say, the planet was frozen in a moment of time, right? YES! But remember the Time War was originally Time Locked to prevent it from destroying the universe, yet The Lord President and his High Council were still trying to break out. They failed because 10 and The Master sent them back (End of Time). While all this was going on, the other Time Lords (from the 50th) realized that The Doctor had stolen The Moment, mentioned by Lord President, and The War Doctor was about to blow up Time Lords and Daleks until Bad Wolf Rose stepped in. Still with me? So even if the planet was frozen in a moment of time, the Time Lords are still able to communicate out, just like they did with the Time Lock.
Now The Doctor knows why he can't speak his name, because if he did, the Time Lords would know they found the right exit, return, and possibly start the Time War again. He tries to convince Tasha Lem that they would return in peace, but with all the enemies waiting, and fearing the return, The Church of the Papal Mainframe changes their religion to The Church of Silence so The Doctor can never say his name and bring the Time Lords back.
The Doctor sends Clara home, but she's not having it and hijacks a ride back on the TARDIS as it materializes away. While she is traveling back to Trenzalore, a 300 year battle commences on the planet where The Doctor's enemies are trying to break into the town of Christmas to stop him. During these 300 years, Kovarian breaks off from the Church, takes a group of the Silence aliens with her back in time and attempts to stop him from reaching Trenzalore in the first place.
Clara returns, 300 years later to see an older Doctor, visibly aged. The Doctor explains his regeneration cycles to Clara, saying that he is the last and has no more energy to regenerate.They return to the Church, where Lem confirms that Kovarian was rogue, (Slience aliens are priests? yikes!) but since it already happened to The Doctor in his personal past, he's stuck in a Destiny Trap which he knows he can't get out of now.
Lem, now a Dalek, tries to hold Clara hostage, but The Doctor snaps her out of Dalek control, gives her a big flirty kiss, and says to her "You've been fighting the psychopath inside you all your life, shut up and win". Could she be an incarnation of River? Lem = Mel? (Since we don't know what happened to River between being a little girl in the 60's and when she regenerated into Mels to go grow up with her parents, this is possible since the Church obviously knows how to time travel and River was 'created' by the Church and technically had control of her until she killed the Teselecta Doctor.)
Back in the TARDIS, Clara's turkey is done. The Doctor, after promising not to send her back home, does indeed, knowing the war on Trenzalore is about to erupt.
Another few hundred years pass, The Doctor and his allies fend off their enemies until only the Daleks are left. When the TARDIS reappears an hour or so later to Clara, she steps in to see Tasha Lem piloting the ship. "Flying the TARDIS was always easy", RIVER?? Lem sends Clara to The Doctor saying no one should die alone...
Clara finds a really old Doctor sitting by the crack, tired, sad, and ready to die. They have a very touching scene where he says GOODBYE for the first time ever to a companion and begs her to stay inside where she'll be safe, one last victory.
Clara, unable to believe this is the end because she's The Impossible Girl, tells the Time Lords to save him. She tells them his name is The Doctor and if they love him, they'd save him.
The crack closes. Oh crap.
She runs outside, where The Doctor has basically given up, and is telling the Daleks that they can have at him. But then, the crack reopens in the sky and a shit ton of regeneration energy pours out and flows into The Doctor. That's a hell of a lot of energy, enough to lay waste to the remaining Daleks which The Doctor does in a Randy Quaid meets the Aliens in Independence Day kinda way. Hello Boys!
Everything blows up.
Clara finds The Doctor in the TARDIS, he's young again, but it's only a reset. He's got a whole new regeneration cycle now, 13 more Doctors are coming, but first, 11 has his quick reward tour, seeing Amelia Pond, the first face his face saw, then the grown up Amy who says "Goodnight" and then BAM, the new Doctor appears just like that (whoa!), says his kidneys are the wrong color (hilarious), and then asks Clara if she knows how to fly the ship (hilarious-er, is that word?)
So, there you have it. BRILLIANT! Moffat wrote an entire Doctor Who plot, backward!!!
Kovarian, from the future, basically created the entire plot of 11's reign by going back into his timeline to try to prevent him from going to Trenzalore. They, by blowing up the TARDIS in Big Bang, created the cracks, thus making it impossible for The Doctor NOT to have met Amelia Pond as a child. What they didn't count on was River Song (after being released from prison for killing a man who didn't exist) showing up in 10's timeline in SILENCE in the Library. If she had shown up before then as a younger version, she may have actually killed him because she was programmed to do so, thank goodness for Timey-Wimey.
Some have said that Moffat's writing isn't as emotional as Davies. 10's send off was so touching an emotional, but he was alone. 11's was quick and crazy, but at least he wasn't alone. But Moffat used many of Davies' plots in his tenure, and created an even bigger overall story with the Time Lords returning.
Regardless if they plotted any of this together during the time the worked together OR used the past information to write future episodes to clear up plot holes is moot, they are both brilliant in the way they pepper in the clues to create a cohesive story. However, if you now go back to the reboot with 9, knowing the full story, (and watch with captions!) you'll see how amazing the writing actually is on this show.
I'm content with all the answers because in my Wibbly-Wobbly mind, it all makes sense now.
Do you have any questions left? I can try to answer them. :-)
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