So, I finally got around to watching "Time of the Doctor"....and...no Valeyard?
As for the episode itself...kind of a mess trying to tie up all those plot threads in one hour. But still totally worth it for Matt Smith's last performance as the Doctor. Blew both Tennant and Eccleston out of the water IMO. Having spent some time catching up on the series after a 4-year hiatus, I can't help but feel that Smith understood the Doctor's non-human nature better than his predecessors, as opposed to their more "touchy-feely" approach--but that may be as much due to the different approaches of Steven Moffat and Russell T. Davies. Either way, Peter Capaldi has a very tough act to follow.
cheers,
Gabe
From a couple of great articles (and Neil Gaiman's tumblr post on Peter Capaldi's casting), I've pieced together why each was perfect in their way.
Christopher Eccleston - Remember, he came in with no budget, they had no idea if they had a hit and it had been 9 years since the TV-Movie and 16 years since the original series left the air. To bring the Doctor back to a new generation, they needed to show him as easily relatable to. If they had made him too alien or strange, people would have more than likely just flipped the channel, thinking it was more 70's nostalgia campy-ness. So his wardrobe, attitude, and overall style was more subdued than any other Doctor. And Eccleston still managed to play him to the hilt, showing all the stuff that was going on in his head with just a glance or a half-smile. He set it the foundation for people to trust the Doctor.
David Tennant - (warning, I'm a bit biased) The 10th Doctor revealed the Intelligence of the Doctor. He's the one that showed he was the smartest one in the room, and brought in a bit of distance by showing that he was alien and didn't really "belong" to or on Earth. But that he did care about the planet and its denizens and always wanted to bring out their best (although he often brought out their worst as well). Whereas Eccleston was the guy with the box showing you the universe, Tennant brought home the
title of Doctor to the role.
Matt Smith - The 11th Doctor brought the weird back to the character. Of the three modern Doctors, his was the most obviously alien. He had the foundations of Eccleston's "runner" and Tennant's "smart-guy" and took off to show how the alien was a part of both of those. Although I think they went too far some times with the manic five-year-old act, they did balance it nicely when he was forced to be serious. Not too mention, where Eccleston and Tennant got you to trust the Doctor (both as a companion and as a viewer), Smith's Doctor firmly proclaimed "Rule #1 - the Doctor lies." Which means that everything we knew of 9 & 10 now had to be take with a grain of salt (and brings up a lot of other fun nuances when rewatching the older episodes knowing that fact).
Peter Capaldi - To paraphrase Neil Gaiman, the Doctor after Smith had to be older, gruffy and wiser to counterbalance everything that happened in Smith's era. In following with my view, Eccleston invited us to travel with him; Tennant showed us how smart the Doctor really was; Smith reminded us that the Doctor is an alien first and always; and now Capaldi will show us the Doctor's age (which is greater than 1500 years by a large margin by the end of Time of the Doctor). He might be more like a mix between McCoy and Hartnell's Doctor and letting his companions do the heavy lifting.