Man it's weird you guys talking about Tennant's departure being heartwrenching or whatever. Everything about that entire sequence of events rubbed me the wrong way, from the ridiculous chinese-fingertrap-plot-device to the "aren't I just wonderful" speech to the jumping from the spaceship to the masterclones to the 20 minute farewell tour to the "I don't want to go" smack in the face.
Ugh.
I'm talking very specifically about the events of the regeneration itself, really - the scene with Wilf, the manner of the sacrifice etcetera. The End of Time is, like a lot of RTD stories, several great scenes wrapped up in a set of bad ideas. The Master stuff made for a good cliffhanger, but things like that Star Wars shooting sequence etc etc were all unnecessary. The companion visits were unnecessary. I did like the Donna one, and the Rose was ok due to the simplicity of it and how it made that entire 'era' circular, but they could've cut the rest and I wouldn't have been bothered.
I mean, the thing about the whole Tennant regeneration is it was tainted by being also a farewell to an entire era and entire suite of characters, I suppose. The Eccleston regeneration was clean because there was nothing they had to do; Rose was with him, Jack was at that point already being placed into a new show, so it was a very clean break.
If you remove that window dressing, I do really like the scenes between him and Wilf, his elation when he thinks he's saved, his little breakdown when he realizes he still has to go... these are states you don't tend to see The Doctor in, and the episodes where that happens are some of my favourites.
I thought it was fine, until "I don't want to go." That was just too much. I just wanted to say, "where would you be going?!"
This line is weird, but is fine, really. The Third Doctor made similar allusions to regeneration feeling like death for aspects of his personality, so it isn't an entirely new idea.
But, again, it just felt like a desperate need to tug heart strings. I dunno. I sat there on new years day and watched my girlfriend at the time - only a casual Who watcher - cry at it, so it must've done something right. I wasn't that bothered, really.
I'm sure that line will be contested forever and ever. It fit Tennant's Doctor, though - he was an over-emotional, very human iteration of the character. Too much so - to his detriment both in a story sense and as a character all too often. It's no surprise he viewed regeneration as dramatically as he did. The line literally sums up the best and worst of his Doctor in one go. I imagine Matt's will be more like Tom Baker's, and he'll just be like "Well, this is it. Geronimo" and be done. Already seen that in The Big Bang.
Another reason the Tennant regeneration went OTT was because the RTD-era producers, Julie Gardner in particular, was very good at squeezing more money out of the BBC and even more time in the schedule. That episode was 75 minutes long! The Moffat-era producers have been less savvy at this stuff (or the BBC have got tighter) - they tried to get extra time for The Big Bang and failed, for instance - so we'll probably not get that level of outlandishness in one episode for a long time. They've not managed to get one extended run-time out of the BBC in 3 series' - the Eleventh Hour and Christmas Specials were commissioned for an hour - whereas they constantly got last-minute, late-game extensions and things.
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