It's been about a month since Matt Smith bid farewell to "Doctor Who," and now that the corpse has cooled and the bow-tie given a proper burial on the fields of Trenzalore, it's time to take a closer look at the Eleventh Doctor's era. As other writers have pointed out, "Doctor Who" is a show that thrives on renewal, and like the Doctor himself the series has long embodied an eagerness to change and adapt to the shifting landscape of entertainment. Every chapter of the show is unique in and of itself: the William Hartnell years were largely designed as an after-school program for children; the Pertwee era was a kind of science-fiction spy thriller; and David Tennant's tenure was basically the story of a post-war survivor trying to find his place in the world while also dealing with the aftermath of a cataclysmic intergalactic war. By this logic, the Matt Smith era is a dark, bombastic fairy tale about the dichotomy between fiction and reality. And like all incarnations of the show, the Eleventh Doctor's tenure - largely the brainchild of current showrunner Steven Moffatt - essentially acts as yet another chapter of "Doctor Who" while simultaneously operating as its own independent artistic statement. Thankfully, "Doctor Who" isn't a show that's overly concerned with its own subtext, nor is it seeking to shatter the audience's worldview with a pretentious harpoon of truth soaked in philosophy and cynicism. It's a piece of popular entertainment, and its foremost goal is to entertain. But still, that doesn't mean you can't have some fun reading between the lines. And while it's tempting to deconstruct the narrative issues Moffat has run into, the aim here is to examine the subtext rather than the text itself. We'll leave it to slightly more intellectual commentators to give rundowns of plot mechanics and story structure. And yes, this article is full of SPOILERS that cover everything up to "The Time of the Doctor", so read at your own risk.
