Doctor Who: 5 Defining Moments Of Matt Smith's 11th Doctor

By Brendan Foley /

Matt Smith is leaving DOCTOR WHO, with the 50th Anniversary and later Christmas special serving as his swan song. It€™s been a wonderful ride with the youngest ever portrayer of The Doctor, one marked both by a reverence for the show€™s time-honored standards, and by a willingness to blaze fresh trails. So as The Eleventh Doctor readies to depart the TARDIS, it seemed fitting to look back on the whole of Smith€™s run and remember those episodes and moments that made this particular incarnation stand-out from his Gallifreyian brethren.

5. €œThe Eleventh Hour€: Amy Wishes For A Policeman

€˜The End of Time€™ marked the end of both David Tennant€™s tenure in the TARDIS and Russell T. Davies€™ control over where and when the chameleon-circuit-busted box landed. Smith inherited the screw-driver and Moffat took up the typewriter. Immediately, Moffat introduces a tone that is a good deal more fantastical than before, owing a narrative debt more to fairy tales than to the pages and pages of techno-babble that consumed so many episodes under Davies. By having the first real scene of the Eleventh Doctor€™s run revolve around him falling out of the sky to assist a scared little girl with a Boogeyman inside her wall, Moffat plants the character firmly in the realm of fantastic children€™s fiction. It€™s a spot that Smith, with his Aardman Animation face, fills quite perfectly, and it€™s a welcome change from the previous Doctors. If Eccleston was a tortured soldier and Tennant was the tragic hero, that makes Smith the trickster figure, a gleefully anarchic force that was truly unpredictable. He was as likely to honk your nose and giggle as he was to commit genocide and then also giggle because, really, The Doctor€™s had a couple screws spun loose from all the timey-wimey nonsense. Anyway, the point is that between Moffat€™s love of sand-blasting his way through narrative corners and Smith€™s cartoonish build and ability to speak faster than human ears can possibly hope to process, theirs was a union that could not have been more perfect. Smith€™s Who was a Who that was a very different beast from the previous incarnations, both behind and in front of the camera, and the creative team wasted no time in communicating that.