Accepting a new Doctor is always a challenging prospect but thankfully this year fans had an old one to help them move the process along. In the Series 8 premiere, Deep Breath, Clara Oswald was finding it particularly difficult to grasp the concept of the Doctor's regeneration, despite the fact she has literally met all of his predecessors and arguably understands the tendencies of a Time Lord better than most. Overlooking this, viewers who found themselves in the same boat as our impossible girl were given a glimmer of hope for the future through the means of a phone call from the past. The Eleventh Doctor's tenure was as timey-wimey as they come so he was always going to jump at the chance to cross into the timeline of his next life. Not that he was jumping in this instance, of course, since he was dying and all, but he foresaw the fear that would engulf his best friend and took it upon himself to reassure her in his final moments. So that's what he'd been doing at the end of The Time of the Doctor, and that's why the TARDIS phone was off the hook, too. Don't you just love it when a plan comes together? You're probably not surprised that this has made the list of 2014's most memorable Doctor Who moments because it was as gut-wrentchingly heartbreaking as it was beautifully inspiring, which is pretty much the show's mantra anyway. A new Doctor had arrived and if the old one had it in hearts to accept him, there was no reason the fans couldn't do the same.
Dan Butler is the Doctor Who Editor at WhatCulture.com. When he isn't writing his own articles or editing other people's, he can be found trawling the internet for gifs of Steven Moffat laughing. Contact him via dan.butler@whatculture.co.uk.
