The Day of the Doctore Review Thread (Spoilers?)

She definitely looked like she won a magazine comp for A Day on the Set with the Doctor

 

Which is why I think it's one of #4's original scarves. It's like a badge of honour to be worn by the top UNIT boffin.

 

Except the Fourth Doctor didn't work with UNIT that much. Only three times on television. You'd think if there was a particular Doctor that was worshipped at UNIT, it'd be the Third.

 

Flannel shirts and velvet jackets, then? Somehow I don't see science geeks going for that look.

 

Just watched it and really liked it. It was great fun, and seeing Tennant and Smith together was great. The only thing I didn't like was Rose as "The Moment". I liked Rose as a companion, but it just seemed like when she was on screen, I got taken out of the story. I wonder if Cathrine Tate would have been better, as she did play the role of "Doctor-Donna" in Journey's End.

Despite that, I enjoyed the episode and John Hurt did a great job as the War Doctor. It was a great Doctor Who weekend, as I saw Adventures in Space and Time and The Name of the Doctor before I saw the special. Looking forward to the Christmas special and maybe getting back to normal.

 

Watched it twice yesterday. First at the cinemas. An amazing experience, to be in a room full of Whovians, was just awesome. And then later that day. Plus talking about yesterday on FB, as I read half of this thread.

 

I assumed she was the Doctor's hero-worshipper, not unlike Malcolm in the planet of the dead. As such, yes she does represent fandom. But notice in the lift, while she may plead for the Doctor to save her, she actually saves herself, and then goes on to save Kate. Which means she's a vital part in saving the planet. Not to mention the fact that, courtesy of having only one inhaler, she knows which of her is a zygon, so could choose to ruin the peace talks but doesn't.

For someone who's a nod to the fans, she's pretty important to the plot and quite a strong character underneath.

 

True.

Although I was puzzled by the way that scene was shot. With the camera focusing so much on the separate buttons to summon the lift and open the doors, I was expecting Osgood to open the doors without the lift being there and push the Zygon down the shaft. But the buttons were never significant to the scene, so I'm not clear on why they got so much attention from the camera. Unless it was just to have a reflective surface to shoot the Zygon in, maybe to set up the "mirror" theme, or maybe to do the old horror-movie trope of not showing the monster directly.

You know, I thought of that about the inhaler, but I didn't quite see the significance of that bit. I think you're right, that she made an unspoken deal with "herself" to keep the peace.

 

I went on the Internet today and I found this:

 

Let's take another look at the narration of the teaser trailer now that we've seen the episode:

First off, shouldn't it be more like 1200 years? Unless he's lying.

But the main problem is that penultimate sentence. Presumably the impossible day was when the Doctors came back through the time lock to stand with their former self, and the "single moment" was actually the Moment. But that's not the day he's been running from all his lives -- he's only been running from it for his past three lives. So that's kind of an overstatement. The narration led me to believe the story would have something to do with the very beginning of the Doctor's journey and the reasons he fled from Gallifrey. Which, of course, it didn't.

 

900 years is the amount of time he has been running not how long he has been alive. The TARDIS said they'd been on the run together for 700 years back in the The Doctor's Wife, a couple of hundred years earlier in the Doctor's timeline. But I think it's a case of listening to Basil Exposition's advice.

 

Hmmmm... I'm not big on math, but I could swear that 1200 is over 900.

 

I feel this was more of a writers preference if you call it that


RTD's ADORED his Tenth doctor. No one was better than him.

So much so that he wrote a line that 10th doctor delivered with disdain towards the new guy.


We clearly see that 10 leaves on good terms with 11 in "Day of the Doctor"

So where's the bitterness come from?

 

Screwdriver envy

 

I don't see it as bitterness toward the next incarnation, but fear of ceasing to exist in his current form.

Anyway, that last scene stressed that neither the War Doctor nor the Tenth Doctor would remember these events (which is why Eleven told Ten about Trenzalore).

 

Day of the Doctor was brilliant, absolutely brilliant! It had everything a Doctor Who fan could want: it was epic, it showed us the time war, it was funny, there was adventure, multi-doctors bantering, reveals some big things about the universe and story, and it really showed us the soul of the doctor. Perfect!

 

Loved it too, but no crying...

 

It's interesting reading the discussion about the Doctor's storyline in this episode. I don't consider it outside the realm of possibility that Moffat is fine with people drawing their own conclusions about whether the Doctor's actions created a new timeline or not.

I prefer the view that this is "always" what happened for two storytelling reasons. First, it truly redeems the War Doctor and therefore the Doctor's character on the whole as a man who chooses to do the right thing and never gives up.

Second, if saving Gallifrey created a new timeline, then everything we've seen from "Rose" onward would have happened completely differently because of how much the Doctor's guilt shaped his character and actions (another theme of the episode). I don't even think his eventual regenerations would have taken the forms that they did if the Doctor had known from the beginning that Gallifrey was still out there.

Virtually nothing about the timeline would be the same, and even if you assume that we still end up with Matt Smith some 600 years later, it would now be a Matt Smith with a totally different back story, none of which we have seen. (Oh-- I just realized the irony of objecting to a rewritten timeline on a Star Trek board! )


There are a couple of other things I'm still trying to figure out about the Zygon plot of the episode, though. It's possible that it just doesn't hold up to scrutiny, since the main focus was on the three Doctors, but I wonder if anyone can answer these questions.

-- When the Doctors are trying to return to present-day London to deal with the Zygons, but they can't land in the Black Archive, how exactly do they manage to come out of the painting?

What happened to the TARDIS? Did they land it somewhere first? Did they go back to Elizabeth I's time and hide in the painting for centuries? Or did they go back to the actual Time War and then emerge from the painting somehow? I'm confused.

-- Why did the Zygons bring Clara to the Black Archive? Did they need her for some reason, or was it just classic villain "Let me tell you all about my plan before I kill you"?

 

One has to wonder why a pair of red high heels are some of the most dangerous items on Earth?

 

I absolutely loved this episode. I'm going to see it in the theater tonight, that's how much I loved it. Schedule permitting, of course.