Fanboys Anonymous

Well. Folks. It has happened. The BBC has announced that Matt Smith will be hanging up the ol' sonic after the 2013 Christmas Special. Ugh.

He made bow ties cool.

Is this as upsetting to you as it is to me? Likely. No matter how you felt about Matt Smith upon immediately filling Tennant's shoes, it's easy to see how well the actor grew into the role. The Eleventh Doctor even rivals the popularity of Tennant's Tenth. I know many people who were attracted to the show during Smith's tenure. Moffat's stint as lead writer saw the show focusing more on overarching story lines as opposed to the mostly one shot episodes that were most common in the Eccleston and Tennant era. These overarching story lines focused more on the Time Lord. Such storytelling may have done it's fair share of cementing Smith into our minds.

It has been quite a ride since crash landing the blue box into the backyard of the girl who waited. We've seen the rise of the Silence. The return of the Daleks. A new breed of Cybermen. And, perhaps most prominently, the Doctor's wife, Professor River Song. We've been companions ourselves. We were there when the TARDIS exploded, threatening to blow apart the universe. We saw the Doctor cheat death at the hands of the Impossible Astronaut. Most recently, we were there to solve the mystery of the Impossible Girl, Clara Oswald. (There are a lot of impossibles, it seems.)

We've had enough time to see who Eleven truly is. We've seen some of his greatest victories, on top of some of his worst defeats. From Demon's Run to Trenzalore. Now that it's time to say goodbye, which episodes will you remember most fondly?

Personally? A Christmas Carol. The first Moffat Christmas special is my absolute favorite. You see a Whovian retelling of the Christmas Carol, as the Doctor uses the TARDIS to affect the memories of a bitter old man, and slowly turn him into a decent human being. As far as the episodes go, I believe the latter half of series seven were the best. We saw a return to the traditional stand alone types of episodes more prominent before Matt Smith, and they were all wonderful.

This time it'll be for real.

What direction will the series take after Smith is gone? And what sort of Doctor will Twelve be? These questions will have to go unanswered until our first glimpse at Twelve on December 25th, 2013. One thing is for certain though. The Doctor is praying for a ginger.