A regeneration is a big deal for Dr Who and its fans, and I hadn’t been so excited since Logopolis. And yet by the time Matt Smith took over the role on New Year’s Day, I was hoovering David Tennant out of the TARDIS like an overstayed party guest. I never wanted to see his overexposed pointy Scottish face again.

I have been a huge Dr Who fan since the earliest days of Tom Baker. OK, It went a bit rubbish in those tricky Colin Baker/Sylvester McCoy years and, like the Tories, had to spend 16 years in the wilderness as a result. But its regeneration by Russell T Davies has been the televisual triumph of the century. It has brought the world’s longest-running science fiction series to a new generation, with modern production values, filmic special effects, and retained the heart and soul of the Whoniverse. And it’s British!

I am more a fan of Dr Who than David Tennant though. And I think that’s where things started to go a bit wrong for me this Christmas. By trailing Tennant’s departure a year in advance, and having him make SEVENTY-FIVE TV appearances over Christmas, he had already entertained us long enough before his swan song aired. We already knew the ending. We knew who was taking over. The mystery was gone. And the story was sacrificed for a televisual event and a farewell tour.

By the end of part one of  The End of Time, the Master had become everyone on Earth. Meanwhile, the Doctor had become everyone on television. It felt like The Editor was back in charge, broadcasting to all channels on Earth from Satellite 5. The whole thing became a Harriet Jones tribute act: ‘I’m David Tennant, and I’m leaving’. Yes. We know. Bye, then. Shut the TARDIS door behind you.

So it seemed a shame that, after such a huge build-up, this finale seemed to get bored of the story half-way through the final episode, when the 4th Bond turned up and surprised the 10th Doctor with his Big Red Book and hosted a Gallifreyan episode of This Is Your Life.

We expect the Christmas specials to be a bit silly. But this was a season finale, and suffered a little from the lack of a preceding series. We’ve become used to huge, epic, emotional stories in the final acts of these New Whos: Rose absorbing the time vortex and destroying the Dalek fleet; Rose being separated from the Doctor in a parallel universe; Martha walking the Earth for a year trying to save the Doctor from a fate as the Master’s prematurely aged prisoner; The Doctor-Donna saving reality itself from Davros and the Daleks.  These episodes usually have huge, series-long story arcs, emotional depth, clever three-dimensional-jigsaw plotting, and are incomprehensible unless you’ve followed the series for thirty years. They also have a focus on the companions: we see things through their eyes.

In this story, the Doctor had no companion – just his ex’s granddad, like an awkward family reunion. The companions were saved for indulgent cameos in the 20-minute ‘we just came for the wrap party’ bolt-on. I do like a full set on Dr Who – this worked brilliantly in the last finale, Journey’s End, at the end of Series 4 in 2008, where companions from all eras and three TV shows were cleverly folded into the plot. But, while Tennant’s lap of honour through time and space had echoes of Tom Baker’s Logopolis flashbacks, it mostly just felt like he was getting his coat and saying his goodbyes at one of end-of-the-pier immortal John Barrowman’s cocktail parties. And Ood Sigma calling last orders with ‘This song is ending’ (yes, we know) was a neon signpost too far.

The one nice twist was that the ‘he will knock four times’ prophesy turned out to be far more pedestrian than we expected, and that seemed fitting. But there was no real peril. This time it was the Time Lord President who clicked his fingers and pushed that annoying Whovian reset button to undo the Master’s Evil Plan. And then the Master zapped them and they went away. Not perilous at all. And the Master is a different kind of villain when he can suddenly jump like Wonder Woman and fire electricity from his fingers like the Star Wars Emperor. It is also a different kind of regeneration when it is portrayed more as a death. This, too, seemed to have more to do with signposting Tennant’s departure (we know) than Gallifreyan metaphysics. I’m sure Matt Smith won’t be calling on Derek Acorah to contact his previous selves: he’s still the same character. Same same, but different.

It was interesting to get a bit of an insight into the Time War we’ve heard so much about since 2005, and – for us Who veterans – to discover that the Time Lord President was Rassilon himself. I also think the ‘When Time Lords Go Bad’ backstory is a believable one, especially when you realise it was the Doctor who ended the war with the genocide of his own race. No wonder he’s been a bit glum about that for five years. I hope we see more of it though Matt Smith’s eyes. And if we can have Time Lords again, is there any chance we can get Kate O’Mara to come back as the Rani? Please? And what about Romana – she was left in some parallel universe back in the early 80s, wasn’t she, so would have avoided the Troubles back on Gallifrey?

I thoroughly enjoyed Tennant’s tenure – and even this finale. I just got weary of him by the end. Maybe that was clever BBC strategy, to manage our grief by making us sick of the sight of him? I’m almost looking forward to the Matt Smith episodes now. I’m certainly looking forward to Stephen Moffat taking over as Whopremo. Moffat has written some of the most interesting – and darkest – episodes of Dr Who: The Empty Child, The Girl in the Fireplace, Blink, and Forest of the Dead. Scripts with big ideas and complex narratives. Scripts that make full use of the fact that the Doctor travels in time and space, and play with, twist and subvert both.

To me, that is really what this show is  all about – the writing. The cunning device of regeneration ensures character continuity when the actor leaves. That is what has made it endure for 47 years. Who plays Who – however brilliantly – is secondary. And that is what seems to have been lost sight of at The End of Tennant.

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