Wow! Just wow! As
much as I have complained about Stephen Moffat in the past, one thing must be
said in his defence: he certainly knows how to put on a show.
Day of the Doctor is a special episode of Doctor Who to
celebrate the show’s 50th anniversary. As an enormous fan of the
series, I and all of my friends have been anticipating this episode since the
first trailer was shown in July. I’m not going to bother warning you about
spoilers in this review, because if you haven’t yet seen the episode and are
reading this review first, I seriously doubt your sanity.
Before I talk about the many things I loved about Day of the
Doctor, I’m going to have to wade through the sizable puddle of faults that the
episode had.
Firstly, the plot of the episode was extraordinarily weak.
Aside from all the exciting time war and past Doctor awesomeness, there was
still around 45 minutes of boring zygon invasion storyline to sit through. As
much as I love the zygons as monsters, I think that this was the wrong time to
bring them back. Their only purpose was to facilitate a rather pretentious plot
point about Gallifreyan art. Furthermore, the inclusion of Queen Elizabeth I
was irritating and totally unnecessary. I’m sure Moffat could have come up with
a much less annoying way of bringing the three Doctors together without
reinforcing the illusion the David Tennant’s Doctor is only there to get the
girls.
There were a few things that I was relieved about though.
Firstly, I’m glad that they didn’t actually bring Rose back as Rose. As popular
as she is, I never really liked Rose’s character and her eventual romantic
relationship with the Doctor’s half human clone, and I think that bringing her
back would have brought with her some unwanted baggage. I’m also relieved that
Moffat didn’t completely change the show’s mythology as many of us were
expecting (and dreading). I think that the way the Time Lords were saved was in
excellent taste, as well as making Doctors 10 and War forget about the events
of the episode, as having them remember would have been confusing and annoying
in the long run.
This next paragraph concerns all the things that caused me
to physically ‘nerd out’ on the sofa, so, what follows may be a little erratic
and perhaps slightly confusing…
First of all, John Hurt’s performance as the War Doctor was
enchanting. He was every bit as dramatic and mysterious as we’d hoped. Not only
that, but he was also charming and funny and as curious as the Doctor should
be. Secondly, the interactions between the three of them were fantastic. I
loved how judgemental Tennant was of Smith and his characteristics. The best
parts of the episode however, were all the bits of fan service that were
thrown. There were perhaps too many to talk about all of them in one review so
I will list my top five (in no particular order):
- Tom Baker as the ‘Great Curator’.
- Tennant’s TARDIS transforming into the current one.
- 13 TARDISs!!!!!
- The War Doctor’s Regeneration.
- An appearance from Peter Capaldi as the 12th Doctor.
I thoroughly enjoyed the Day of the Doctor, but not because
of its story. It was a fun adventure with plenty of fan service and excitement
along the way.
Scores:
Story – 5/10
Fan Service ∞/10
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