The Doctor and Handles

The Doctor, in his TARDIS, is among thousands of spaceships orbiting an unknown planet after hearing a message being broadcast from it, a message that no-one can understand.

The Doctor visits one of the spaceships, holding a Dalek eyestalk to show his bravery. Unfortunately, the spaceship belongs to the Daleks, who fire at him until he teleports back to the TARDIS, where a disembodied Cyberman head, that The Doctor calls 'Handles', is plugged into the console. The TARDIS' telephone starts to ring which The Doctor answers and discovers his travelling companion Clara Oswald pleading that he helps her out with her family's Christmas dinner by pretending to be her boyfriend. The Doctor though has more important things to do. He visits another spaceship while holding Handles. This though turns out to be a Cybership, where he is also shot at until he teleports back to the TARDIS again.

The Doctor picks up Clara from her home (after she experiences a bit of embarrassment when she discovers The Doctor naked when he forgets to update his holographic suit when she enters the TARDIS). The Doctor, with Clara aboard, returns to the mysterious planet's orbit. When asked to identify the planet, Handles claims it is Gallifrey, which The Doctor refutes. The two are invited aboard the Papal Mainframe, a space church headed by Tasha Lem, an old acquaintance of The Doctor. While Tasha Lem and The Doctor discuss the signal, coming from the mysterious planet, Clara is left alone where she encounters The Silence. Feeling threatened by them she bursts into the room where The Doctor and Tasha Lem are conversing and immediately forgets all about The Silence and so the reason for entering the room in such a rush.

Introducing Clara's Boyfriend

Having put up the force field around the planet, Tasha Lem allows The Doctor and Clara to teleport to the planet's surface, but accidentally places them in the middle of an ambush of Weeping Angels. They manage to escape and after a short walk they discover themselves in a town called Christmas, surrounded by a truth field, so no one can lie. There The Doctor locates the source of the message in the church tower. He also discovers another Crack in Time (see "The Eleventh Hour") through which the message is being broadcast. The Doctor explains to Clara that this crack is 'scar tissue' from the cracks originally closed when The Doctor rebooted the universe (see "The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang"). Handles identifies the language as Gallifreyan and The Doctor using a copy of the Seal of the High Council, he once took from The Master in the Death Zone, enables Handles to translate the repeated message as the first question: 'Doctor who?' (see "The Wedding of River Song"). The Doctor concludes that the Time Lords are calling to him from the pocket universe, in which Gallifrey was trapped ("The Day of The Doctor"), and where they are trying to escape from.

But if The Doctor answers the question, by revealing his real name, the Time Lords will know they are in the right place and come through. But this will cause the aliens gathered above to descend on the planet to destroy the Time Lords, effectively restarting the Time War. On discovering this Tasha Lem contacts The Doctor, telling him that she cannot allow this to happen even if it means destroying the planet. The Doctor asks her for the name of the planet, and she reveals it to be Trenzalore, the planet where The Doctor is to die and be buried (see "The Name of The Doctor"). Learning this The Doctor refuses to withdraw so that he can defend the planet from incursions by the aliens overhead.

The Cybermen

To protect Clara from the danger they face The Doctor tricks his companion into plugging a device into the TARDIS that transports her home. However, immediately after landing Clara home, the TARDIS begins to return to Trenzalore, but realising that she has been tricked Clara tries to re-enter the TARDIS as it dematerialises and so only manages to hold on to the outside of the ship and join it on its return trip. However, to protect her from the time vortex, the TARDIS is forced to increase its shields, consequently slowing down the return journey. Arriving back at Christmas, Clara meets a visibly aged Doctor who now has grey hair and needs a walking stick. She discovers that he has spent the last 300 years defending the town against his enemies. The Doctor did this in a number of ways seeking the help of the local population to warn him of any infringements. One time he disabled the cloaking device on a Sontaran vehicle, allowing the Church to destroy it. On another occasion, he tricked a wooden Cyberman, created to be too primitive to set off the alarm, into destroying itself after using the truth field to make it think its gun had been turned around.

The Doctor reveals to Clara that the Time Lords can only regenerate twelve times and although he is known as the Eleventh Doctor, he has already used all twelve of his allotted regenerations. Once The War Doctor, who fought in the Time War (see "The Day of The Doctor", and the Tenth Doctor's aborted regeneration (see "The Stolen Earth/Journey's End") are counted he is in his final body and so can no longer regenerate.

They find themselves transported to the Papal Mainframe, now the Church of the Silence, where The Silence are revealed to be genetically engineered senior priests, whose aim is to ensure The Doctor does not release the Time Lords. (The Kovarian Chapter broke away and travelled back in time to stop The Doctor reaching Trenzalore). It is then revealed that Tasha Lem and her crew have been killed by the Daleks and turned into Dalek puppets - thus regaining their memories of The Doctor. With help from Tasha Lem, who regains her mind, The Doctor and Clara manage to escape from the spaceship and find themselves back in Christmas. Despite promising never to send Clara away again, The Doctor does so and she finds herself back on Earth as the siege of Trenzalore becomes an all out war.

The Daleks

As the years go by on Trenzalore, most of the races depart, leaving only The Silence (with whom The Doctor puts aside his differences and allies himself) and the Daleks. Later the same day (from Clara's perspective) Clara hears the TARDIS engines and runs outside her flat, to find the TARDIS piloted by Tasha Lem who returns Clara to Trenzalore to see The Doctor, saying she could not let him die alone. The Doctor is now very old and often acts slow and slightly confused. He still won't release the Time Lords, knowing that it would mean Hell for all the universe. It is then that the Daleks launch their final attack and The Doctor, out of ideas, weapons and regenerations, goes to meet them after telling Clara that changing the future is impossible without the Time Lords. She cannot bear to watch what follows and so instead returns to the Crack in Time, pleading with the Time Lords to save The Doctor, saying; 'His name is The Doctor! All the name he needs, everything you need to know about him, and if you love him, and you should, help him!'. The crack suddenly vanishes.

At the top of the clock tower, The Doctor is preparing to die when the Crack in Time suddenly appears in the night sky and through it, the Time Lords grant The Doctor a new cycle of regenerations, thereby saving him from death on Trenzalore and changing his future. As his thirteenth regeneration starts, The Doctor uses the excess energy to destroy the Daleks and their spaceship.

In the aftermath, Clara returns to the TARDIS, finding The Doctor, whose youth has been restored. Despite this, he tells her he will regenerate anyway. He states that this temporary rejuvenation is a 'reset' for the new cycle of regenerations to begin and the second phase of the regeneration is taking some time to begin but he will soon change. The Doctor then starts to hallucinate seeing first Amelia Pond (she was 'the first face this face saw') and the walls inside the TARDIS are covered in her drawings of their adventures together, alongside those given to him by the children on Trenzalore. He then sees an adult Amy Pond in the TARDIS. As Amy descends from the balcony she places her hand against his cheek and tells him 'Raggedy Man, good night'. Despite Clara begging him not to change The Doctor smiles, and then abruptly regenerates into the first incarnation of his new regeneration cycle. Utterly dumbfounded by this older-looking man with curled silver hair and a totally different face, Clara can only watch as The Doctor stares her right in the eyes and proclaims, 'Kidneys! I've got new kidneys! I don't like the colour'.

Suddenly, the TARDIS begins shaking, and to Clara's horror, The Doctor, in his new body, not only tells her that they're crashing into something, he also implies he's suffering from partial amnesia when he asks her if she knows how to fly the TARDIS...