Review - The Day of the Doctor

Well there was a whole bunch of hype leading up to this momentous event. It could have gone either way, but I'm glad to say it lived up to the hype, and I very much enjoyed The Day of the Doctor.

The 50th anniversary Special - The Day of the Doctor

Starting with the original credits and a reference to both Coal Hill Secondary School and the I. M. Foreman scrapyard where we first encountered the TARDIS in An Unearthly Child, right from the off you can see we are set for a whole flood of references to the past 50 years of Doctor Who. We had a couple of references to Omega, a big scarf, some nice bits and bobs in the Black Archive, and to my great pleasure, a reversal of the polarity. Sure, it wasn't of the neutron flow, but obviously The Doctor has sharpened his physics knowledge in recent years.

Nostalgia ahoy!

The Moment was sort of interesting, but I'm still not sure how I feel about it choosing Rose/Bad Wolf as it's interface form. This essentially boils down to getting Billie Piper into the episode somehow, really, but that's fine. It would have been good to see the Interface shift a few times to take on other forms using file footage. Maybe just flicker between them at times, or when first settling on a form.

When Ten and Eleven get together the interplay between them is truly awesome. Matt Smith and David Tennent have a clear chemistry on screen that gives a wonderful energy to the episode. I was worried John Hurt's War Doctor would end up being all dour and sombre and kill the buzz, but he only made things better. I loved every second of Hurt's interplay with the other two Doctors. In a way he was an in-show avatar of me expressing confused bewilderment at where Doctor Who has ended up, commenting on everything from the age of the other Doctors to the use of the phrase "Timey wimey".

They're scientific instruments, not water pistols!

Despite making fun of many of the things that usually irk me, we still had a whopping great In-Who-Endo added when Ten and Eleven compared Sonic Screwdrivers. We had plenty of other bits of funny banter between them without resorting to a tired old dick joke, thanks very much.

Hur hur hur! Willies.

Some of the scene transitions seemed to be a bit weird. I recall one wipe came in far too soon, whilst Kate Stewart was still talking, which seemed a bit sloppy to me. That said, the morph effects on the Zygons were awesome. Really smooth and natural looking. The 3D paintings looked really cool too. I imagine seeing it in 3D would have been quite the treat at that point, but I feel it would have been wasted throughout most of the rest of the episode.

The episode did have some pretty glaring continuity issues though. I'm still struggling to see how this whole thing fits with the events of The End of Time. The Doctor is clearly now looking to find Gallifrey and restore it to the galaxy, but he was previously determined not to let the Time Lords return because they planned to destroy reality. Is the Time Lock the same thing as the Stasis Cube, or are Rassilon and the other Time Lord high council trapped somewhere else? Hopefully subsequent episodes that build on this story and fill in the gaps, because I am rather confused at the moment. I may have to re-watch The End of Time again and see if that helps. It would have been awesome if they got Timothy Dalton back in to play Rassilon though.

There were also some internal story issues with Elizabeth and the Zygons. She would have had to be remarkably quick thinking to be able to replace the Commander and subsequently find out all of the details of the Zygon's plans without arousing suspicion. Overall I found that to be a tad clumsy even with the offhand "they never considered I would survive" line. It was fun to see the gap in Ten's life just previous to The End of Time filled in there. Of course you have to feel bad for Liz because you know she's going to end up bitter and hateful towards The Doctor. I'm also left feeling The Doctor is a bit of a dick for following through with the wedding when he wasn't actually interested. And how is he able to tell Ood Sigma about it? Doesn't he forget? Either way, John Hurt made that little bit of Hunka hunka burning Doc tolerable.

Is there a lot of this in the future?

It does start to happen, yeah.

The Zygon plot was sort of left unresolved. I don't think it would have taken too much to make mention in the closing scenes of whatever resolution they came up with. It felt a little unfinished, or that Steven Moffat decided it wasn't important any more, as we'd moved on to resolving the Time War plot, which was far more interesting and important. In a way it was always just a secondary plot that provided the vehicle for plot exposition as well as the final solution, but it got so much screen time that I feel it deserved more of a resolution than it received.

Throwing Capaldi in there at the end was inspired. I only wish that was the first reveal of him in the role of Twelve. The fan reaction would have been insane, especially if it was just that short flash of his eyes. There would have been so much discussion about who it was. Such a missed opportunity.

Do you recognise these eyes?

Overall I'm excited about how things were left, even if I was a bit annoyed at throwing Tom Baker in there with a weak "reusing old faces" line. Seeking out and freeing Gallifrey is a great way to go, assuming the aforementioned plot confusion is addressed. Most excitingly it gives us an opportunity to resurrect a sorely wasted foe.

The Master is waiting!

10/10

Can we fix it?

No. All we need was a bit more exposition on some of the minor plot points and the removal of a rogue wang reference. It was a perfect homage to the 50 years, encapsulated in that epic final shot.