"And now it's time for one last bow,
like all your other selves,
11's hour is over now,
the clock is striking 12"
Truer words have never been spoken about the famed 11th Doctor played by Matt Smith. While Christmas is a time of joy for some, it was met with a little bit of hopeful sadness when the actor stepped into the TARDIS for the last time before regenerating into the 12th Doctor.
"I'm glad I don't have two hearts because they'd be both breaking. I have a complaint against time travel, I would have liked today never to have arrived. Everybody, the biggest round of applause for the best and bravest Time Lord of them all, Matt Smith," said the Steven Moffat, the man behind most of Matt Smith's time as the Doctor in a behind-the-scenes video posted to YouTube and featured below. "We had a lot of returning monsters in this, I wanted it to be a grand-standing battle for our eleventh Doctor's final moments. It doesn't take just one monster to end a Doctor's era. It takes loads of them."
SPOILER ALERT: For those who haven't seen the Christmas Special, the remainder of this article will contain heavy spoilers.
Loads of monsters is just what the 11th Doctor found himself up against as he battled Daleks, Cybermen, Weeping Angles, Prophets and the Silence for hundreds of years in order to avoid starting the Time War all over again.
The final adventure for the Time Lord saw him discover his home planet of Gallifrey through the crack in space and time that he first encountered during his first season as the Doctor. He stopped a siege of enemies for all those years in order to maintain a peace in the universe. Eventually, his time ran out and the last cycle of regeneration for the Doctor was dying of old age, a fitting end that no one really saw coming. However, in an act of mercy and forgiveness, the Time Lords gave 11 another regeneration before leaving the crack in space and time alone and disappearing to somewhere deep in the galaxy.
"Everyone that has watched Doctor Who and supported number 11, this is it, this is the end and you've been amazing. I feel quite emotional... thank you, thank you very much," said Smith in the behind-the-scenes video as he began to well up and had to walk off camera.
Although Smith is departing, Peter Capaldi had his debut as the doctor for a brief moment in the special. The video of that moment can also be found below.
