Smith’s Regeneration won’t be a repeat of Tennant’s
Moffat told SFX magazine: “The Doctor doesn’t die. He really doesn’t. He just gets a new body. He escapes death, he evades death, so that’s a triumphant ending rather than a sad ending.”
He adds: “I was trying to think about it from the point of view of what it would be like if someone told you, “When you wake up tomorrow morning, you’ll still be alive, but you won’t be the same. You will like different things, you will sound different, you will look different, and have a different temperament.” That would be utterly terrifying.
“That would feel not like death, but something quite mortifying – you would be horrified by the idea of just being rewritten like that. I think that’s what contemplating regeneration must be like for the Doctor. So there’s an element of that, but because it was played that way the last time we wouldn’t play it the same way this time – that would just be wrong.”
Moffat says that the special will contain plenty of humour, especially early on: “There’s a lot of humour in this one, because Matt’s Doctor has been a funny Doctor, and if you’re going to make people miss him then just remind them how funny he is. Certainly the first 20 minutes or so are very funny.
“There’s a scene at the beginning where we kept joking, “We should have a live studio audience for this bit”, because it was very much Doctor sitcom. I thought if you were going to say, “Here’s your last go at the Eleventh Doctor” he should be as he was, and what you will miss is not him crying – I think the danger is if you cry the audience don’t. It’s about “This is the last hurrah. These days will not come again.”
