It’s been a while – well, two years, but time travel messes things up, right, so it could have been days or it could have been decades – since David Tennant bid a lip-wobbling farewell to the TARDIS and was replaced by a spry, bony youth with long hair and more energy than a Duracell Bunny.
Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor has been a revelation since the very beginning, and as filming begins on his third series, we look back at some of his finest moments so far…
11. The Doctor plays football (The Lodger)
The Doctor moves in with James Corden to investigate the weird goings-on in his attic, banging in a few goals for the Kings Arms pub side in the process.
Having air-kissed the team captain and described his best position as ‘the front … the side … below’, it’s amazing that he gets a game at all, but of course, the greatest miracle of the episode was making Corden’s character likeable.
10. Fish Custard (The Eleventh Hour)
Full of energetic post-regenerative confusion, the new Doctor cavorts around young Amelia Pond’s kitchen, rejecting yoghurt, bacon, beans (‘Beans are evil… bad, bad beans’), ice cream and carrots in favour of fish fingers and custard.
It must have tasted pretty spectacular, because he was still going on about it a year later.
9. The Doctor meets the Fuhrer (Let’s Kill Hitler)
Last year’s mid-series break saw a feverish outpouring of speculation as to how Adolf Hitler would fit into this wonderfully-titled episode.
The answer, it turned out, was tangentially, the Fuhrer’s presence in the story being more conceptual than physical, but he did appear – and the Doctor was suitably dismissive of the mono-testicular madman: ‘Rory, take Hitler and put him in that cupboard.’
8. The Doctor gets married (A Christmas Carol)
No, not to River Song; that was just a Teselecta driven by the Doctor.
His first nuptials occurred during his Christmas adventure with Kazran and Abigail, where he inadvertently got hitched to a certain Norma Jean Baker. ‘Marilyn, get your coat!’
7. Items of clothing are cool (most episodes, but especially The Impossible Astronaut)
Having always displayed a certain standard of sartorial elegance – except during the mid-1980s, when Colin Baker’s bad acid trip of a coat was an affront to the eyeballs – the Doctor’s love affair with his clobber has been taken to new heights by his eleventh regeneration.
In addition to his groovy Oxford don’s tweed blazer, shirt and stolen trousers, there’s the ever-growing wardrobe of accessories: braces, bowties and a fez… not to mention the ten-gallon cowboy hat he acquired in the US, drawling, ‘Stetsons are cool.’
6. Crying happily (The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe)
‘It’s Christmas, you moron!’ After learning that Amy and Rory still set him a place at the Christmas dinner table every year, the Doctor realises why humany-wumanys can cry with joy and blubs happily as he enters the Pond house.
It’s everything that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s discovery of weeping at the end of Terminator 2 isn’t.
5. ‘You haven’t been here for a long, long time …’ (The Almost People)
After a drawn-out romp around an acid mining facility, the Doctor drops a fairly substantial bomb on Amy Pond: she’s actually been replaced some time ago by a doppelganger filled with emulsion paint.
‘We’re coming for you, I swear it,’ our hero promises his best friend, and then zaps her with the sonic screwdriver. To many, this was the game-changing surprise of Series 6, not the one in the following episode.
4. The Doctor gets angry (A Good Man Goes To War)
Having unexpectedly appeared from beneath the cloak of a Headless Monk, the Doctor confronts Colonel Manton and rants at him for a few minutes about running away.
‘Oh, look, I’m angry,’ he says in delight after a stream of breathless invective. ‘That’s new. I’m really not sure what’s going to happen now.’
3. The Doctor is killed (Series 6)
Killing off the lead character in the opening episode of the series was a bombshell of brain-spangling proportions, yet it worked perfectly – not only in the introduction, explanation and resolution, which spanned the whole series, but on an emotional level.
Matt Smith’s portrayal of the Doctor edging closer and closer to his demise was a week-in, week-out masterpiece.
2. Saying goodbye to Amy (The God Complex)
Having decided that it’s too dangerous for his best friends to travel with him in the TARDIS, the Doctor gives Team Pond a house and car and bids The Girl Who Waited a fond farewell.
‘Why now?’ she asks. ‘Because you’re still breathing,’ the Doctor replies. It’s a wonderful, understated way of saying goodbye – shades of Sarah Jane Smith’s departure decades earlier – and powerful enough to withstand the taint of having Mr and Mrs Pond-Williams reappear in the subsequent three episodes and beyond.
1. Saying goodbye to the missus (The Doctor’s Wife)
Having finally met his TARDIS face-to-face and discovered she’s extremely beautiful as well as being infinitely wise, the Doctor is gutted when she changes back into her ordinary police box persona.
‘Hello Doctor,’ she says to him as light engulfs her. ‘It’s so very, very nice to meet you.’ He pleads with her to stay in her humanoid form, but it’s too late. Idris disappears, whispering, ‘I love you,’ and a nation joins a Time Lord in his tears.
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What’s your favourite Eleventh Doctor moment so far? Let us know below…