Sandshoes and Grandad

50 years is a long time. It's longer than I've been alive. It's a lot longer than I've been alive.

My negative reviews have aged me beyond my years.... you whippersnapper.

For a human, it's not a ridiculously old age - 50-year-olds are called "middle-aged" for a reason. But a 50-year-old TV show is practically a 500-year-old human (or a several million year old Time Lord). Admittedly, Doctor Who did go on hiatus for a while - in 50 years, it's had 34 full seasons, as well as a made-for-TV movie and enough books to fill the TARDIS Public Library.

Still, it's the 50th anniversary of the day William Hartnell kidnapped two innocent teachers before realizing that he was on camera, and that's definitely something worth celebrating. The Day of the Doctor is that celebration.

The Story

The Night of the Doctor

Oh noes! Cass's ship is going to crash and burn! Fortunately, there's a dashing young fellow.

I don't buy it. The Eighth Doctor was supposed to have long hair.

The Doctor takes her to his TARDIS, but once she realizes who he is, she refuses to go with him, and they both crash on Karn. The Keepers of the Flame of Eternal Boredom resurrect him, and finally persuade him to take an interest in the Time War. Doctor drinks Ohila's "Warrior" potion and regenerates into a Hobbit.

The Day of the Doctor

Clara has taken up teaching, and the Doctor has taken up learning.

I'm guessing the icon means that the book was published by Amelia Williams.

They have also both taken up not being trapped in the Doctor's time stream, and are about to take up visiting some interesting event in the history of the universe, when they are both taken up into the air by a helicopter.

"When I said I wanted to hang out, I didn't mean literally!"

Kate Stewart and her army of scientists have picked up the Doctor in order to have him investigate some broken paintings, but while they're all looking at the paintings, a Time Window opens up. After he jumps through, he finds himself face-to-face with...

"I wonder if this will look better on me in a few hundred years."

The older younger Doctor Warrior jumps in as well, and they all go and get arrested, although they are too busy bickering to notice.

"You destroyed all of the Time Lords!"
"Well you kissed Joanna Page. That's at least as bad!"

Clara's still with Kate, and they go off to the Black Archive to get a Vortex Manipulator, but Kate makes a comment about "the humans" and Clara uses the Vortex Manipulator to escape.

"I forgot to put on my makeup this morning. Does it look bad?"

The great threat this episode is that the Zygons have been invading 2013 from 1562. The Zygons arrived on the Earth in 1562, but 1562 is too boring for them, so they're hiding out in artwork until they can break out in a more modern era.

Back in 2013, the Zygons have impersonated Kate Stewart and her UNIT underlings, but the UNIT humans show up to cancel Christmas and blow up London. Clara and her army of Doctors show up to save the day, which they do by turning up the memory dampers and making them all forget which side they're on, thereby beginning a "perfect negotiation".

"You can have Venice. I'm pretty sure most of the population there is alien anyway."

The War Doctor sees how many lives his "crime" has saved, decides he's ready to kill the Time Lords, and gets teleported back to the Moment, which he was going to use to blow up Gallifrey. Clara and the other Doctors follow him, and the Three Doctors line up around the Rose button and prepare to press it.

A Rose surrounded by three The Doctors. Sounds like someone's been reading the fanfics.

...until Clara starts crying and Eleven thinks of a better idea: basically gathering up all of the Doctor's previous incarnations and faking the planet's death.

They have no idea if it succeeded (although of course it did), and they all exchange some farewells. The War Doctor's wearing a bit thin, Ten "doesn't want to go" to Trenzalore, and Eleven meets The Curator.

"You know, I used to play you on TV."

50 Years

This episode was primariy supposed to be three different things, so in order to be completely fair, I really have to review it three times. First and foremost, The Day of the Doctor was to be a 50th anniversary special. This, of course, means that its job was to celebrate the history that it's built up over the last half-century.

Did it do this?

Well, it started in style with the original title sequence:

Kind of glad they've changed it since then.

And included all sorts of other little nods to the past:

• The name "Foreman" on that sign right after the title sequence. (Even I know that the First Doctor's first on-screen companion was Susan Foreman, and I've seen a few of the very first episodes.)
• I. Chesterton, another of the First Companions, chairing at Coal Hill School, where he taught Susan Foreman.

• References to Gallifrey, the Doctor's home planet.
• Osgood's Tom-Baker-Scarf.
• The Zygons.
• The Round Things!
• All of the Doctors getting together with re-used footage, and saving Gallifrey.

• That scene at the end where he lines up with photographs of his earlier incarnations.
• And, of course, a completely unexpected and kind of confusing cameo by Fourth Doctor Tom Baker.

"This is a Who Nose."

So since the episode was rife with references to Classic Who, it succeeded in its goal... right?

Not at all. Those nods were just that - nods, nothing more. For a half-century celebration, this episode could have, and I would argue should have, done a lot more. For instance, here are all of the actors who portrayed the Doctor in Day of the Doctor:

Notice something?

They are all Doctors that I'm familiar with. Which is to say - none of them are from the Classic series. That, at a core level, deep within my gut, feels wrong to me. Twelve actors have played the Doctor, and yet only four of them reprised their roles for this episode (and you end up with the even more dismal score of 2 out of 11 if you don't count Baker's cameo or Hurt's War Doctor as legitimate).

Admittedly, some of the actors are dead, and some have gotten old and fat, but honestly, that's no excuse. We've already seen in Time Crash that you can toss in a throwaway line about the Time Vortex making you... saggy, and no one will second-guess you.

"Who's a good Doctor? You are!"

It's not like the old Doctors weren't interested - Colin Baker was reportedly peeved that nobody approached him, and Sylvester McCoy actually ran away in protest and started talking to birds.

"They didn't contact you either?"
"Chirp chirp"

For the dead ones, you can recast, no problem. After Hartnell died, they recast Dr #1 in The Five Doctors, and there was even a special released at the same time as The Day of the Doctor that cast David Bradley as a very convincing William Hartnell (so I've heard).

He could definitely have pulled it off.

Okay, so we're not doing old Doctors. What about old companions?

That's Susan Foreman, aged 50 years since her first appearance on Doctor Who, but still alive, and still acting. Who knows, maybe she's too old, or too tired, or just didn't want to play. But of all of the people who have played former companions, how can it possibly be that none of them were willing and able to return for a single episode?

In short, this episode should have been filled to the brim with Classic series actors: Doctors, companions, and villains, even at the expense of a complex story. Instead, it had a few nods, but focused almost exclusively on recent events. Which is fine, but then call it the 8-year anniversary special that it really is.

8 Years

David Tennant

So I tend to be a huge fan of the "No Spoilers" thing (probably part of why I've enjoyed River Song's character so much). When I see spoiler warnings, I avoid reading articles. Unfortunately, there was no avoiding the considerable press generated by David Tennant's and Billie Piper's returns. That's a huge shame, because the episode as it was did a pretty good job introducing Tennant, and it would have been a very pleasant surprise to see him suddenly appear, first in the painting and then in "real life".

As expected, they brought back the David Tennant that we know and love, and even tied up the Elizabeth I plotline that I thought was going to be permanently relegated to the background.

Although it seems like it would have been a good idea to bring back whoever wrote for Tennant during his Tenure (ha ha). Rather than writing contextually appropriate in-character dialogue for him, Steven Moffat just recycled some of the old favorites, including his dramatic introduction from Voyage of the Damned and his Transformey Wormey detector from Blink.

"Once again, I have a machine that goes ding and has a number of other irrelevant features, which was funny in Blink and just kind of awkward here."

So to my mind, there were only two legitimate Tennant moments:

• "Oh, very good", where he stream-of-consciousness figures out the Zygons' plan.
• "Well... You've certainly come to the right place."

"That's the scipt? Haven't I read that before?"

Of course, it's a 50th Anniversary special, so rehashing some of the better lines isn't the worst thing in the world. Plus, it's always nice to see an old favorite.

Billie Piper

And yet, with all the press leading up to it, the show did still manage to surprise me with Ms. Piper. I knew (obviously) that she was going to be in The Day of the Doctor, but I, like most people, assumed that she would be reprising the role of Rose Tyler, the Doctor's companion. And, like most people, I was wrong.

She was the disturbingly sensual conscience of the Moment, a big box that could destroy Gallifrey but lacked a big red button.... at first.

Get it? Get it? The button resembles a ROSE!

Oh, and she was only visible to the one Doctor who hadn't yet met her.

It was interesting to see the tension when Piper and Tennant shared a room. Ten couldn't see her, and she didn't know him, but there was still... something. I was a bit afraid that we'd get another "I can always see you" moment, but the writers instead gave us just the right amount of tease.

"Is there someone sitting behind me?"

At which point they could have had Ten be like "no, I will be the one kissing Bad Wolf Girl", but instead decided to go the more subtle, and more effective, route.

"Like a malicious lupine of some sort? Nahhhhh"

Christopher Eccleston

It was a huge shame that he wasn't part of The Day of the Doctor, given that he was the First Doctor for many of today's Doctor Who audience, and at least helped popularize and bring back the iconic character. In his case, unlike with the others that I griped about above, Eccleston was approached and declined the opportunity. So I guess the production team did the best they could, under the circumstances.

Thankfully, his eyes were willing to come in for a cameo appearance.

The Time War

I was so excited for an episode on the Time War. Not so much the actual pulling of the trigger, since we kind of saw that in The End of Time, but a bit more depth into the actual war.

What caused the war? Why were the Daleks and the Time Lords fighting to the death? Why was the fighting happening around Gallifrey rather than at Skaro?

How was it affecting everyone else? The Earth seemed to be fine, and the only sign we saw that the Time War was anywhere other than just Gallifrey was that Kass was cheesed at the Doctor for being a Time Lord. I guess her ship was crashing, but we don't have any idea why. Are we to believe that "the world is burning" means "ships occasionally start crashing for reasons that are not explained on-screen"?

What we got was:

• Some Daleks flying around shooting at people with Star Wars lasers.
• A vast, empty desert, apparently on Gallifrey.
• The Doctor agonizing over whether to push a big red button.

And we got not one, not two, but THREE magic wands sonic screwdrivers blowing up a Dalek.

As A Standalone Episode

It was... decent.

I really enjoyed how they tied all of the various threads of two different plots together into a story that, as a whole, made pretty good sense. The writers tossed a lot of nice little hints and nods that made the whole story a truly enjoyable ride.

Nice touch, sneaking that painting in and showing us! I noticed, and wondered what was going on, and found the answer imminently satisfying.

Tying Tennant's and Smith's stories together by the Zygon plot? Wonderful!

Showing Hurt just how much good his destruction of Gallifrey has done, in the form of things like a peaceful negotiation between humans and Zygons? Brilliant!

The paintings being vessels both of the problems and the solutions? Amazing!

I did say "decent", rather than "wonderful", "brilliant", or "amazing", and that is because of the details. Things like:

• How did the Zygons not recognize Liz I as not-a-Zygon? Even if they can't tell by psychic stuff or by smell, couldn't they have just asked her to authenticate by turning back into a Zygon for a moment?

AuthentiKate

• If human Kate had to be kept alive for Zygon Kate to keep her form, then that would also have been true for Elizabeth. That, as well as the above, should have been a dead giveaway that Liz 1 was the human, not the Zygon.

"Like my new dress?"

• Elizabeth was pretty loudly telling everyone that she was the real Elizabeth, well within earshot of all of the Zygons. Does that not seem like bad planning?
• Why in the world was she still willing eager to marry Doctor 10 after the horrible things he said to her?

Pictured: A more fitting response.

• The Zygons smashed the statues and were hiding where the statues were. Why would they need to do that? Couldn't they just hide in the paintings until the attack was ready?
• Presumably, the stone dust was there before, or else Kate and her UNIT people would have noticed its sudden appearance. So does that mean that some of the Zygons had been hiding there since the Black Archive was created? Then why hide in the paintings to begin with?
• If Ten wasn't going to remember this, then why was he later able to remember marrying Queen Elizabeth I?
• What possible "fair" deal could the humans and Zygons reach other than "Zygons leave the Earth and find a home somewhere else"?

So while we did get an interesting ride and a story that tied itself together fairly nicely, The Day of the Doctor ends up yet again showcasing the fact that nobody reads the script for consistency before filming.

Also, while I was thrilled with John Hurt's acting as The War Doctor, and Coleman, Smith, Tennant, and Piper all performed beautifully, Joanna Page was dreadful as Queen Elizabeth I. She was shrill and annoying, not at all regal, and whoever was directing her scenes clearly cared more about her bosom than getting a decent performance out of her (you can tell because every shot of her starts just below the face and pans up).

The only thing more irritating than a scene involving Queen Elizabeth I was a scene involving two of her.

All my worst nightmares...

Although Matt Smith's reaction to them was priceless.

Continuity

The Eight-and-a-Halfeth Doctor?

The Night of the Doctor confirms it. My questions about who John Hurt is are answered! He is between Paul McGann and Christopher Eccleston.

That means that technically, Eccleston was Ten, Tennant was Eleven, and Smith was Twelve. And Eyeballs, with his brief cameo line, seemed to confirm that.

Confirmation: The Thirteenth Doctor does have eyes.

If I'd had any editorial power, I would probably have done it differently. Instead of sneakily inserting a new Doctor into the mix, I'd have led up to the final moments of The Name of the Doctor Clara mentioning "all ten faces", leaving the audience wondering what she was smoking because obviously, there should have been eleven. And then at the last moment, the "hidden one" turns around and you see:

That would have been shocking. That would have had a wonderful impact on anyone who had seen the Classic series, and would have forced everyone else to read up on enough Doctor Who lore to know who Paul McGann was.

Don't get me wrong, I thought John Hurt portrayed his character very well. He really let the weight of his impending crime shine through, while still portraying the Doctor that we all know and love. And at the end, it was refreshing to see him smile, to see his relief, to see that he really was a full character, rather than just an embodiment of the posh gravity that Eccleston strove so hard to get away from.

:)

So for the character that John Hurt played, nobody would have done a better job. I just question the need to have had that character to begin with. I would put the decision to exclude McGann from this episode in the "Missed Opportunity" category.

There is another little issue here. Does John Hurt's appearance in The Day of the Doctor mean that Math Smith's successor will be the last Doctor? There's some established lore that states that the Doctor only gets to regenerate twelve times, which means that the Thirteenth Doctor is by definition the last, and since Smith is now portraying the Twelfth Doctor, rather than the Eleventh, well...

Gallifrey Stands

He's done it. The Doctor has managed, after four hundred years and three regenerations, to save his home planet and all of his fellow Time Lords from destruction at his own hands. And he even manages to do it without erasing his pathos from the previous eight years, since his earlier two incarnations won't remember this encounter.

What a wonderful twist! At long last we can have adventures on Gallifrey again! We can see the Doctor interact with his people, and everyone can live happily ever after! The Doctor is no longer the haunted figure that he once was, and can move on to being a perfect hero who has always found the exact course of action where nobody gets hurt and everybody lives!

Hooray! We can all do a silly dance and go home!

Give yourself one point for every sentence in the above paragraph that you could tell was pure sarcasm.

What a distaster! What an absolute mess Moffat has made of this show with that one decision. With that quick neat fix, he's taken away arguably the most interesting facet of the Doctor's character and replaced it with a huge side of boring, and with, quite frankly, a terrible message to boot.

In the scenes leading up to the stand-off on Gallifrey, I liked what I was seeing. The War Doctor was making his peace with what he needed to do. He was starting to recognize that even though it was a difficult decision, and even though it caused the immediate deaths of billions of Time Lords and Time Ladies and Time Children with their Time Heads, blowing up Gallifrey would, directly and indirectly, save the lives of trillions. Lives that would otherwise be forfeit.

Depth

"You were the Doctor on the day that it wasn't possible to be the Doctor."

That was such a powerful line. So beautifully delivered, and so true. There are situations in which there is no option that will make you feel good about yourself. It was a dark moment, and the only light in that tunnel was the light of knowing that whatever the Doctor(s) did, he(they) did with only the best interests of the Universe at heart.

And then, just like that, Clara starts crying, and the Doctors figure out another way. Rather than giving the Doctor that moment where it's impossible to be the Doctor, the writers took it away in favor of a happy ending.

I'll give them this much, they managed to do it in a way that doesn't screw with basic continuity. Since the War Doctor and Ten don't remember this encounter, they'll both still think that they did, in fact, destroy Gallifrey, and all of the angst of Nine thru Eleven (no wait - it's Ten thru Twelve now, isn't it? Gah!) is preserved.

What will the show be without this angst?

But after this episode, it's all gone. The guilt that haunted his character and gave the Doctor depth - wiped clean.

I complained about Jenni's resurrection in The Name of the Doctor. I complained that it meant that the writers couldn't commit to anything, even the death of a fairly minor character. But even then, I never imagined that they would waffle on one of the biggest decisions made when the show was restarted in 2005. Now, it's not just that the writers can't commit to their own decisions. They can't even commit to already existing lore! They can't commit to anything!

Nowhere is that more true than here. No single death carried the emotional weight born by Gallifrey's Fall. No single event did more to shape the recent Doctors' personalities than the end of the Time War. So now I'm going to repeat myself: There is no more tension in Doctor Who. No more emotional investment in a tough situation, because the Moff behind the curtain will always, without fail, every single time, work to make sure that everything works out in the end, and we get to see John Hurt smile.

Although... This image... might be worth it :)

Overall

As an episode by itself, The Day of the Doctor was interesting. It had a pair of interesting stories wound intricately together into a decent narrative. The resolution of the Zygon plot was well-staged, and I liked the use and reuse of elements that we had seen before, like the memory dampers and the Gallifreyan art thing. The acting, as usual, was top-notch, with great performances from a wonderful cast of side-characters (except Joanna Page and Joanna Page).

Unfortunately, The Day of the Doctor, like many more recent episodes, was riddled with plot holes and inconsistencies, and yet again sends the message that the editing process at BBC doesn't actually involve reading the script.

"It's fine! It's fine! Just don't make me actually read it!"

But in all reality, this wasn't about the story. It was supposed to be about two things: recognizing the 50-year legacy on top of which this episode was built, and Moffat's other stated goal of changing the direction of the show. And while it did succeed at changing Doctor Who's direction by erasing the terrible deed that shaped the Doctor's character, this episode neglected to give more than passing nods to what preceded the show's revival in 2005.

So all in all, The Day of the Doctor failed at doing the right thing, and it most certainly succeeded doing the wrong.

NEXT EPISODE: THE TIME OF THE DOCTOR