10 Greatest Speeches In Doctor Who History
6. "We're All Different People" (The Time Of The Doctor)
The big regeneration speech was a trope of the Moffat era, but the Eleventh Doctor's final words are nonetheless utterly beautiful.
It's an attempt to relate the experience of Time Lord regeneration to the experiences of the viewers at home, and to Matt Smith as an actor:
"We all change, when you think about it. We're all different people all through our lives. And that's okay, that's good, you've got to keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be. I will not forget one line of this. Not one day. I swear. I will always remember when the Doctor was me."
In the hands of Moffat, regeneration shifts from being some magical get-out-of-jail clause, to a reflection of how we learn and grow over the years. We may move on, but as long as we retain our core character and honour the successes and mistakes of our past, then everything will be alright.
There's a great deal of poetry in Moffat's best scripts, and this is a beautifully melancholic goodbye to Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor. Smith is visibly emotional delivering his final speech as the Doctor, and he perfectly encapsulates the highs and lows of regeneration: the excitement of where a new Doctor will go, but the tragedy of losing the previous incarnation.
It's an evocative and emotional summing-up of this ancient Time Lord process, and reaffirms that regeneration's not just a cheap trick to cheat death, or to change lead actors every three years.