It’s the best advice I can ever give to someone watching new Who, really. I feel like too many people breeze through the Doctors and don’t really take the opportunity to mourn them. You lose something when you lose a Doctor – whether it’s Nine, Ten, or now Eleven – and if you don’t wait at least a little while before picking the series back up, you’ll never quite appreciate the actor who replaced your beloved. If I hadn’t waited before beginning season five, I would have spent the entirety of the rest of the series lamenting the fact that Matt Smith wasn’t David Tennant – that Eleven was nothing like Ten. And honestly, I DID do that throughout 90% of “The Eleventh Hour.” I was skeptical of this new face; he wasn’t like Tennant at all. He was younger and sillier and he talked with his hands and babbled.
But the end of “The Eleventh Hour” changed my perception. As “I Am the Doctor” swelled and the audience saw flashes of each Doctor’s regenerated face, I felt the sudden sense that this new Doctor – Eleven – was not a child. He might have been younger than Ten and he might have been a bit goofy but he was also every bit as determined and strong and willing to defend the planet. He was epic. He was a hero.
Over the years, Matt Smith has really grown on me, to the point where I now cannot tell you exactly which Doctor (Ten or Eleven) is my true favorite. I’m going to miss Matt Smith a lot, who brought this quiet sort of intensity to his Doctor. He was unsuspecting but not to be dismissed. He could be cold like Nine and full of self-loathing like Ten. He was a man with nothing to lose and should therefore not be trifled with. He had fantastic episodes (“A Good Man Goes to War” is my favorite new Who episode of all time and one of Matt Smith’s best episodes), brilliant co-stars and companions and some pretty epic emotional moments. And he put EVERYTHING out there as The Doctor. Literally, his transformation from series five until now is just astounding. He’s physically aged, of course, but you see the aging of the Doctor with him. You see those “big sad eyes” and the pain and heartache that occasionally drags him down. You see every single emotion of The Doctor in Matt Smith’s face and I cannot adequately express how much I will miss him.
As Eleven, Matt Smith has been fortunate to have had some amazing and memorable lines and speeches. He’s a master at delivering a monologue, and Moffat has given him plenty of meaty, emotional, and gut-wrenching material because of it. So I decided that in order to celebrate Matt Smith’s era and send him on a proper farewell, I’d revisit eleven of the best lines/monologues from Eleven’s era.
Grab those tissues, cuddle up with your TARDIS blanket and head below the cut, because we’re counting down some of the best moments in Matt Smith’s era now!
