12 Emotional TV Moments That Made Us All Cry In 2013

8. Doctor Who - Matt Smith Regenerates

We knew it was coming. In fact, we had months of advance notice, but that didn't make Christmas Day any easier; not by a long shot. In the Doctor's most explosive regeneration yet, we bid adieu to Matt Smith and welcomed Peter Capaldi, whom we all know and love to hate for his iconic role as Malcolm Tucker, and his comically discolored kidneys onto our television screens for the first time in the TARDIS. The Eleventh Doctor's regeneration wasn't nearly as tearful as that of his predecessor, but it still maintained a bittersweet tone with the return of the girl who waited, the Doctor's eulogy of his favourite and longest living incarnation and the symbolic removal of the bow tie. It also gave us a big victory, with the Doctor using his regeneration energy to take out an entire fleet of Daleks and the new regeneration cycle itself which, let's face it, we all knew would happen. How it happened, however, was up to the imagination. Among other notable events this golden anniversary in the Whoniverse include the regeneration of Paul McGann (finally), the return of David Tennant and Billie Piper, the existence of John Hurt's War Doctor, and the solution to the regeneration conundrum where the meta-crisis regeneration did in fact count and that the regeneration limit is biological and not Time Lord law. You can read a full review of Matt Smith's swan song here, but for now let's move on.