I saw The Day of the Doctor at the pictures with my good lady and a bunch of good mates from Leicester area fandom- Phoenix Arts Cinema to be precise: it's a rather arty place with none of the petty annoyances you find with the large chains, and you can take your pint of Boddingtons into the screening. I recommend it hugely.
This also means I got to see a rather amusing introductory bit by Strax, our favourite Sontaran, and an introduction to all that new-fangled 3-D stuff by Matt Smith and David Tennant. Oh, and the episode itself was pretty damn good too. The visuals, especially the opening bit with the TARDIS, were certainly cinematic.
Quite rightly, the Moff refused to saddle himself with leading men and restricted himself to three: Matt Smith, obviously; David Tennant, who has only recently left and this has not appreciably aged; and the outstanding John Hurt, on a part which was, I suspect, originally intended for Christopher Eccleston. But no matter: John Hurt is magnificent, for that is what he does, and he absolutely knocks it out of the ground for a six.
Having not saddled himself with too many leading men, Moffat manages to produce a magnificent script, one which honours the past while not overly dwelling on it and changes the status quo of the series while doing so. In this respect, it is more The Three Doctors than The Five Doctors. Oh, and it's a damn good script in its own right, ranging from epic scenes of Daleks on Gallifrey during the Time War (which we finally get to see, albeit in 3-D rather than 4-D) to deeply affecting character scenes for the Doctor. And the big, status quo-defining change also serves as a brilliant plot twist. All that plus Peter Capaldi's eyebrows, and a brief yet wonderful scene with Tom Baker as a possible future, retired Doctor with nostalgia for past faces and a future beyond thirteen of them.
The necessary narrative restrictions on how many leading men a script can bear may well restrict the number of returning Doctors, but there are many nods to the past. UNIT's engineering wallah is called Osgood. We get the Hartnell opening titles, I.M. Foreman and Coal Hill School. The Zygons are back, albeit not looking quite as co as they did back in the day. On a more recent note we also see Kate Stewart, now fully established as a recurring character. Here's hoping Osgood comes back too.
Clara is much better here, finally able to be a character rather than a plot point and spreading her wings. She's sassy, clever, brave, witty and cool. We get a glimpse into her future, too, as Kate Stewart refers to a security clearance she has not yet acquired for the Black Archive. The Black Archive is a nifty concept, a UNIT deposit of juicy alien artifacts including a vortex manipulator with belonged to the late Captain Jack, and which absolutely must be kept secret. ("Think about it. Americans with the ability to rewrite history? You've seen their movies!!!")
We also get Billie Piper, though not as Rose but as uber-MacGuffin the Moment. And we get Queen Elizabeth I whose accent occasionally betrays the origins of the Ap Twdyr dynasty. And people hiding in paintings. And Time Lords. Lots of Time Lords.
Mainly, though, the heart of the episode is about their interactions and the effect of one devastating decision made by the Doctor on "the day it wasn't possible to get it right." It is the Moment who allows the War Doctor to interact with his future selves before making said decision and, of course, despite the usual frictions, he eventually concludes that the inevitable has to happen, mainly because of a reluctant admiration for his future selves, both scarred by his decision in different ways. Tennant's Doctor's scars are raw, whereas Smith's Doctor's scars bear the sign of long years of repression: to his previous self's disgust, he no longer remembers how many children died on Gallifrey that day. Yet, as Hurt's Doctor puts it, "How many worlds has his regret saved, do you think?"
Fittingly, the B plot is resolved via a very clever third option, cutting the Gordian knot by forcing the two parties to negotiate terms while they have forgotten who is human and who is Zygon. And this leads to a fiendishly clever way for all three- no, all thirteen Doctors to save Gallifrey. It may still appear to have been destroyed (and Hurt's Doctor regenerates into Eccleston cruelly forgetting that Gallifrey in fact survives), but Gallifrey is out there, somewhere. The Doctor has a quest. The days of post Time War angst are over after eight long years. What now...?
Do you think you can do a review of the Doctor Who fan film "El Mundo Imperfecto" on YouTube? It was a fan made film made for the 50th anniversary that features actors playing Classic and New Who Doctors and Companions. It features good acting and nice references. It is in Spanish so you have to turn on the captions.
ReplyDeleteMoffat's "Day of the Doctor" left in its wake more than just satisfied audiences, critical acclaim and renewed interest in the show. To those who saw more than just a epic, there were unanswered questions regarding its context, in particular with the first RTD era.
ReplyDeleteNotwithstanding Chibnall destroying the time lords for good at the hands of the Master, while it was interesting for Moffat to bring the time lords back in the 50th, I don't like how he had to recton RTD’s story that Gailfrey was destroyed in the time war, and portray the Doctor as being happy on "going home the long way round" to Gailfrey (ironically in hindsight with Chibnall/Master, the Doctor might as well have been kept as killing them in the first place). RTD's having Gailfrey destroyed was literally the only reason the show was allowed to come back on the air. Having the Time War and getting rid of the Time Lords was an agreement that RTD made with the BBC so that they would agree to put Doctor Who back on the air, so that new viewers could get into the show without having to struggle too much with 40 years of Time Lord backstory. The show we have now would not be here without that Time War.
Let’s just disregard the fact for now that it might have been highly disrespectful for Moffat to rewrite RTD’s big plot like that. Instead, looking back I think the ending was out of chracter for the Doctor. Even if he felt relief at the Time Lords back, I don't think Eleven would have acted happily as he did in the 50th. How he called Gallifrey ‘home’, how he looked so excited at the idea of being with his people. Gallifrey has never been the Doctor’s ‘home’. Earth has always been his true home. The very first season of the show began with him living on Earth, on the run from his people. Earth has always been where the Doctor was happy, where he found the people that made him happy, where his true family has always been from. The Time Lords? Are villains. They have always been dicks, who never understood the Doctor, who banished him and forced him to regenerate and took away his TARDIS and stranded him on Earth. The Sixth Doctor even denouced them where he put on trial by them in "Trial of a time lord"; "In all my travelling throughout the universe, I have battled against evil, against power-mad conspirators. I should have stayed here. The oldest civilisation: decadent, degenerate, and rotten to the core. Power-mad conspirators, Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermen - they're still in the nursery compared to us. Ten million years of absolute power. That's what it takes to be really corrupt!" They were even bigger villains during the Time War, contrary to how they were seemingly portrayed in the 50th special, all you have to do is watch End of Time to see that.
The only understandable reason for Eleven to be so happy at the idea of going back is that in 400 years he’s somehow forgotten that the Time Lords were great big jerks who never made him feel welcome, who never understood him, who rarely wanted him around, and that the frozen time he’s trying to go back to is when they were literally at their very worst, just as bad as the Daleks.
Same goes for Ten. In The End of Time, Ten is horrified at the Time Lords returning, and fiercely willing to do whatever it takes to send them back to hell. In The Day of the Doctor, he’s so happy to save them he’s grinning ecstatically, and jumping around with joy.
Moffat rectoning the time war in the 50th was why many fans were feeling hollow when rewatching previous episodes now, every time we see Nine’s rage at the Dalek, his guilt at having killed them all, his pain at being the last one left… every time we see Ten explain how his planet is gone, when we see the pain in his eyes when Donna tells him that his people burned… we will know, thanks to the 50th special, that it didn’t. That it never really happened. That his guilt isn’t over a real thing, that it’s cheapened, that this man, our Doctor, will suffer for 400 years over something that has now been ret-conned and never happened. It makes Fires of Pompeii redundant, that raw charcter development, that stark lesson about how life is hard and FINAL and the real experience of living is enduring those losses, and knowing you can’t change them?. THIS IS WHAT Steven Moffat RUINED. In fact, Eccleston said this was the reason he refused to return for the 50th. He felt it didn’t do justice to the 9th Doctor.
ReplyDeleteOn reflection I can't disagree: Gallifrey's destruction shouldn't have been retconned away. I didn't know that Gallifrey being destroyed was a condition for Doctor Who to come back, but it makes absolute sense. They should have stayed firmly in their box. As you say, the Doctor has far closer connections to Earth.
ReplyDeletePlus, as villains, in 21st century Doctor Who... I don't rate the Time Lords. They're overpowered, one dimensional and carry far too much baggage.
Fan works I highly recommed: The Ten Doctors fan made comic by Rich Morris; the Doctor Who fan film "El Mundo Imperfecto" on YouTube; “batmanmarch” Who Figure adventures series on YouTube.
ReplyDeleteThe original version of the 50th would have had 9 as the time war doctor. Not alot was released, I believe it was just the barn scene with the moment? The biggest difference was that the moment was a little girl rather than bad wolf.
ReplyDeleteThe whole thing would have had so much more emotional resonance with Eccleston, given his pre-existing arc... but, alas, it was not to be.
Delete