Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor

I started watching and then awesomeness happened.

I’m going to be honest, I was expecting to be let down by thus episode. It had a massive task; introduce a new Doctor, while balancing the massive personalities of Ten and Eleven. This is something that could have gone very wrong.

Steven Moffat pulls this off by giving himself enough time to do each. It sounds simplistic to say that, but with this kind of Blockbuster phenomenon that’s built up around the 50^th anniversary, there would have been massive pressure to get straight to the action. But no, Moffat takes his time and sets all the pieces in place.

The real masterstroke is the John Hurt’s War Doctor; rejected by his later selves and then treated like he might pull out an Uzi and let loose as soon as they see him. But the point is, that he is the Doctor. The impression that Eleven gave in “The Name of the Doctor” was that the War Doctor was a complete departure from the Doctor persona, taking no elements whatsoever from his previous incarnations and (even in appearance) having more in common with the Master.

But Hurt’s performance shows elements of at least the First and Sixth Doctors. This could have very easily been about an evil version of the Doctor forcing his later selves to unite to defeat him, but instead Moffat went for the harder job; show the Doctor (not a bitter, bruised or insane version) but someone who could clearly be recognised as the Doctor, by classic fans and new, stooping to the level of mass genocide.

The War Doctor has been misrepresented by his later selves; he is not evil, he is not insane; he is desperate.

The contrast between Ten and Eleven is pretty good as well. Their dislike for each other’s outfits serves as a nice bit of comedy and Eleven’s mocking of Ten’s err investigative techniques is a very nice send up of the Everybody-kisses-David-Tennant convention that built up during his run. On that point, the war Doctor’s reaction to that mirrors Colin Baker’s reaction (outside the show) to the idea of the Doctor and romance. In fact there are too many intertextual references like this to count.

I also like that Rose Tyler wasn’t in this episode, in favour of the Bad Wolf persona. I’ve made my feelings about the Rose love story clear in another post and the last thing that such an important episode needed was that weighing it down.

There really isn’t much else to say; this is a really good episode and more than a fitting 50^th Birthday present for Who. A very well written script, paired with top-notch performances from David Tennant, Matt Smith, John Hurt and Peter Capaldi’s angry eyes.