Note: The Bulk of this review was written shortly before the passing of John Hurt. I have made minor alterations since but my opinion of this special is unchanged
It’s time
Month!
And I’m
still not recovered from Time Shifter’s awfulness I need something half decent
to review.
Of course!
Doctor Who is staple when it comes to time travel and the like, so tackling something
like Doctor Who is an inevitable part of the month. And where Steven Moffat
tends to excel is using time tricks in writing episodes, rather than just using
the ability of time travel to have an episode set anywhere and any when.
Day of the
Doctor uses a couple of those time tricks, it was also a special that
celebrated the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who, so it’s worth taking
a look.
Series 7
ended with a bit of cliffhanger. The Doctor jumped into his own timeline to
save Clara but upon completing her mission she came across a Doctor she didn’t
recognise. He’s the Doctor that broke the promise his name infers. We’ll get to
that in due course. But for now, let’s start the main event
We open with
the original titles for Doctor Who back when it premiered, in Black and White,
savour it fans of Classic Who, you won’t be seeing another reference for a
while. As we pass Coal Hill school we fade from black and white to colour and
find out that Clara works there, as a teacher. Yeah… was the entire of the back
half of series 7 during the summer break because she sure as hell wasn’t
teaching and yes, you’ve spotted the massive elephant in the room 30 seconds
in. How did Clara and the Doctor escape? No answer? Put that on the long list
of questions Steven Moffat will never answer.
Anyway, with
school done for the day, she heads out on a motorcycle to the TARDIS, which she
manages to close with a click of her fingers because she’s Clara Oswald and
she’s more special than Donna Noble in god mode. OK, this is the point where
Clara had no personality rather than the point where I wanted Clara dead for
her arrogance.
So as they
make small talk, the TARDIS is picked up by a helicopter, owned by UNIT. At the
Tower of London, UNIT HQ a woman we’ll later know as Osgood brings a phone to
Kate who for some reason didn’t have her phone on her. It’s the Doctor, calling
from the phone in the TARDIS phone-box which if you remember an episode YOU
wrote Moffat you’d remember that it isn’t a phone at all. But I suppose you
could argue the TARDIS redesign in season 5 did it or something… I don’t care.
Kate
Stewart, Frau Nepotism, her existence is an extended apology for the lack of
Nicholas Courtney before his death. I like her. Moving on. She’s the one who
asked for the TARDIS to be brought in. Here’s a thought though, if you have
contact with the Doctor, why didn’t you contact the Doctor? Sure you wouldn’t
know if he was in this time period but a) it’s be decent guess since he’s
around the present day a lot and b) neither did the person driving the helicopter.
Anyway, he
hangs upside down on the phone because comedy I guess… I do hope it wasn’t to
create tension, no-one is buying that. But somehow gets the right way up and
ends up hanging onto the convenient hand-holds on the bottom of the TARDIS.
Kate tells the Doctor she was acting on authorities directly from the throne,
Queen Elizabeth I. I know continuity has never been Doctor Who’s
strong-point but did we forget about that tease at the end of the Shakespeare
Code where the Doctor and Queen Elizabeth I were sworn enemies that was never
resolved, or was that the result of that sh*t from The End of Time where he
apparently f*cked her.
Apparently,
they have proof of credentials inside the National Gallery. A painting called 'No More' or 'Gallifrey Falls'. A Time Lord Painting. How did they get this
painting? F*ck if I know. It’s a slice of real time or something so actually
not a painting. The Doctor remembers how ‘he’ was there, the War Doctor, played by the late John
Hurt. This was the day he activated the Moment and destroyed all of Gallifrey
and the Daleks, well, most of them… OK, some of them. There are so many Daleks
about these days you’d wonder if the Daleks were impacted by the Time War at
all. And it didn’t just happen after this either, Asylum of the Daleks is one
of the most egregious examples of this. At least in the Russel era, they gave a
reason why the Daleks survived the Time War.
We see the
perspective of the last day of the Time War, weird black Dalek variants are
shooting things and the Time Lords are failing to hold them off. The Doctor
takes a soldier’s gun and wastes ammunition shooting a wall, our hero. The
Daleks detect him and decide not to kill people they could kill in mere seconds
and corner him. The Doctor destroys them all with his TARDIS making me wonder
why no-one else has thought of trying this. I know the shape is stuck but
they’d still have some mass to them.
We cut to
the war chamber. The High Council is in emergency session because The End of
Time is happening, much as we wish it wasn’t. So, it’s up to the General and
his men to work out what the Doctor is up to. Apparently, he’s stolen the
moment from the *sigh* “Time vaults”, a weapon so powerful it gained sentience,
somehow and now judges you as you use it.
The Doctor
leaves his TARDIS behind and heads to a barn he supposedly grew up in. He
begins setting up the moment and it’s take the form of Bad Wolf aka Rose Tyler aka
that companion that was in love with the Doctor, which apparently, Clara was
but it was a little subtler. Anyway, she tells him that if he uses the weapon
he will survive as punishment and she offers to show what that would turn him
into. She opens a portal into his future and a Fez pops through.
So, the
Doctor has been summoned as curator of the under-gallery, where danger to
England lies. Do I need to bring up the mortal enemy thing again? We use a
portrait of Elizabeth I with the Doctor to cut to England 1562 where the Doctor
is looking for a Zygon and confusing real things for it. *sigh* this will be
the comedic highlight of the episode. He proposes to Elizabeth, thinking she
was the Zygon, and it turns out it's her horse. Right…
They split
up but the Zygon catches Elizabeth and now there are 2 of them and the Doctor
has no idea which is which. Oh, but first he gives the speech from Voyage of
the Damned to a rabbit… Ha… The time portal from earlier appears and a Fez pops
through.
Back in the
present, the Doctor and Clara are taken into the under-gallery. There’s a lot
of stone dust on the ground and because UNIT are stupid they didn’t think this
was worth noticing. The Doctor insists on an analysis in his usual quirky
style. The quirky style that gets irritating, fast. Kate shows them 3
paintings, all 3D with a lot of glass on the floor. Given the shatter patterns
they’ve been broken from the inside. There also used to be figures in the
paintings that are missing.
The time
fisher appears and he throws a Fez he’d picked up through before jumping in
himself. He meets with the Doctor from the Elizabethan era, I’m just gonna call
the 10 and 11 to avoid confusion. They examine each other and make penis jokes
about their sonic screwdrivers. The two Elizbeth’s both suck 10s face before
running in opposite directions. Clara can talk to them through the portal, 11
throws his fez through but it doesn’t land in the gallery because it’s gone to
the War Doctor, I’ll just call him 8.5.
8.5 heads through
the portal to a horrified 10 and 11. Initially assuming they’re the Doctor’s
companions, 8.5 is surprised to see his face getting so much younger, you and
many others. He scorns them for holding their screwdrivers like weapons because
he’s never done that before. The Elizabethan guard surround them, thinking the
Doctor has bewitched the Queen. 11 tries to make Clara act like a witch but
she’s a figurine made of plastic and unable to do so convincingly
Elizabeth
arrives, having disposed of the other one, somehow, considering they were
running in opposite directions. She orders them imprisoned in the tower, much
to 11’s delight. Locked in a cell together, 10 quizzes 8.5 on why he’s here.
Osgood
completed her analysis of the stone dust. The statues were smashed up and she
soon realises the Zygons are now hiding as statues, all 8 of them. They attack
but Osgood escapes, briefly, she’s cornered, but manages to evade her
kidnapper. Kate tells a team at the Tower to look out for a string of numbers
etched to the wall of the tower from the 1500s. They’re heading to the Black
Archive which has been clearly relocated from where it was in the Sarah Jane
Adventures. Maybe they worried after something was stolen from the archive
under the watch of a Bane infiltrator. More on that another time.
It seems the
security has been updated too. The room is TARDIS proof and all colleagues
working in the archive have their memories wiped. Might raise suspicion with
everyone they come home too but whatever. Inside, amongst many other things is
Captain Jack’s vortex manipulator. OK, they last time we saw Captain Jack… was
in the abomination that is Torchwood: Miracle Day but I mean before that he was
not exactly trusting of UNIT, why would he bequeath to them something this important.
But it turns
out the Kate is a Zygon but Clara outwits her and uses the Vortex manipulator
to escape. Meanwhile the Doctors discuss the children on Gallifrey. 11 pretends
he doesn’t know how many there were whilst 10 can give an exact number. *Sigh*
I’ll get to this but later. They come up with a complicated plan to use setting
221034d on the door which with the 3 combined sonics would cause it to
disintegrate... The door was open the entire time
Elizabeth I enters, saying she was interested to see what they’d do upon escaping. Osgood
heads back into the under-gallery, finding Kate in an imprint machine and
rescuing her. Apparently the Zygons lost their home in the Time War, they want to
have a new home on Earth but in 1561 it’s too primitive so they’re using a
thing to insert themselves into Time Lord paintings which they have for some
reason. And because this joke isn’t dead yet we get a reprisal of the 10
thinking Elizabeth I is a Zygon when she’s actually the real deal. It’s not funny
and makes 10 look massively incompetent.
So, after 10
and Elizabeth I marry, *sigh* the Doctors head into the TARDIS and the control room
begins glitching out because reasons, well they do give a reason but it’s a
stupid one, so I’ll pretend there’s none at all. Clara says the Zygons are in
the Black Archive, alarming the Doctors, including 8.5 for some reason.
Kate and
Osgood enter the archive and activate a nuclear warhead that would destroy all
of London, the Doctors try and communicate but they can’t land the TARDIS. 8.5
has an idea. 11 gets whatshisname to move Gallifrey falls into the Black
Archive then uses the thing the Zygons were using to put them in the painting.
They use sonic screwdriver setting 39212k to push a Dalek through the painting
so they can escape.
10 and 11
try and make her see sense, relating to his own experience in the Time War. He
was wrong and wants to make her get it right, thankfully they use sonic setting
121493j to alter the memory device so neither side can remember who’s human or
Zygon, they begin working on a treaty for peace between Zygons and humans.
Clara talks
to 8.5, he looks a lot younger apparently and she soon realises that he hasn’t
done the deed yet. She tries to tell him not to but he says that good came out
of it, such as the peace treaty that doesn’t last 5 minutes between the humans
and Zygons. He says he’s ready and he’s taken back to the barn on Gallifrey
He’s about
to push the button when 10 and 11 arrive. They console him, he was the Doctor
on day it was impossible to get it right and they agree to do it together. But
then Clara cries and says think of the children and f*cking Clara
<censored>
Yeah, for
those thinking her in Kill the Moon was an isolated incident, it really wasn’t,
it even happened again in the other sh*t episode of season 8, ok the other
other one. Gallifrey is falling, the Daleks are killing millions upon millions
and it’s not isolated just to Gallifrey, this war reverberates across time and
space. But no think of the children of Gallifrey, not the lives of everyone
else in the universe. But it gives 11 an idea
They can
freeze Gallifrey in time and the Dalek armada constantly shooting on the planet
will shoot at itself and f*ck the rest of the universe affected by the Time
War. Anyway, they need help so cue stock footage. All 12 Doctors surround the
planet with their TARDISes and begin the process of freezing Gallifrey, wait,
all 13. You know, it rather devalues the whole I’m out of lives bit if you hint
at a 13th Doctor now. Anyway, they do it but are unsure if it was
successful.
8.5 and 10
are going to forget this to keep timelines in-tact, 8.5 leaves and regenerates
for some reason. 10 asks where 11 is going, and 10 mentions Trensalore and we
get a reprise of ‘I don’t wanna go’ as he leaves in his TARDIS. Clara tells the
Doctor the curator is looking for him and it’s played by the one and only Tom
Baker. He tells the Doctor that the painting is actually called “Gallifrey falls
no more” and the Doctor will have to find it.
So, that was
Day of the Doctor, what did I think. It’s okay
As an
anniversary of all of Doctor Who it sucks, hard. It barely looks back and when
it does it feels too scared to risk looking back beyond New Who outside of the
opening and the appearance of Tom Baker. Any episode of a show can allow the
Doctor to move forward, but with an anniversary you need to look back and this
is where the biggest and most spectacular problem is.
But given
what we have it’s a perfectly serviceable story and I liked the more friendly
dynamic between the Doctors, it’s a change not to have them constantly being at
each other’s throats like whenever 2 and 3 shared the screen. I like the
in-jokes and references too, those made me smile more than 10 getting it wrong
with the Zygons.
John Hurt is an interesting choice for the War Doctor, being one of the more well known actors to play him. Whilst I'm fully aware that his existence is really just a way around using the 9th Doctor since Christopher Ecclestone declined to return, he really did sell the part of a war-hardened but saddened Doctor who's been through hell and just wants to see it end.
I also
didn’t mind the resolution, just how they got there bothers me as it begins the
change from boring clara to mind-bendingly awful Clara. The Zygons were
interestingly used and the peace treaty allowed some recognition with the War
Doctor’s work.
Rating -30%
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