Doctor Who: 8 Matt Smith Era Problems The New Series Should Improve Upon

7. Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Finales

One thing that the 11th Doctor's era did better than either the 9th or 10th was experimenting with time and alternate universes. The 10th Doctor did have a rather large story arc concerning a parallel universe, but that was the closest he came to the 11th Doctor's time-warping, reality-bending stories that have involved the TARDIS fracturing the fabric of time and space, all of history occurring at once and The Doctor entering his own time stream. Even before taking over as showrunner, Moffat realised the potential that a show about time travel possesses and has made the most of it. While the creativity that has marked the 11th Doctor's era shouldn't be discouraged, the reliance upon it, especially for season finales, raises a significant problem. Throughout all of Matt Smith's time as The Doctor, his biggest enemy was always time itself. Series five the biggest issue was restoring the universe and ending the TARDIS' endless explosion. The largest concern of the series six finale was trying to avoid a fixed point in time, with the battle against The Silence taking a back seat. Though the series seven finale featured an old enemy attempting to destroy The Doctor, the Great Intelligence's plan came down to the manipulation of The Doctor's timeline, with the stabilisation of it becoming The Doctors final goal. The series finale, ideally, is the climactic summation of everything that has occurred throughout the previous episodes. The scale, tension and excitement all reach new heights and, most importantly, The Doctor faces his most difficult challenge, going head to head against his greatest enemy. While having the final struggle for the series being a battle against time and space works for one finale, having it as the conclusion for every series implies that there is not a single person €“ human or alien €“ who could possibly pose a challenge to this incarnation of The Doctor. While The Doctor has sometimes had the self-esteem of a God, he is not meant to actually be one.