The Day of the Doctore Review Thread (Spoilers?)

[Kolrad]

Wow! Terrific episode! I loved it!

I think that the intention of the episode is that this is what "always" happened-- Gallifrey was preserved; the Doctor just didn't know it until now. As for what everyone remembers, this is my understanding based on the episode:


The War Doctor (Hurt) does not remember that Gallifrey was saved, or meeting Tennant's and Smith's Doctors. At the end of the episode, he regenerates into Ecclestone, and at that point he believes that he used the Moment to end the Time War for the sake of the universe by wiping out both the Daleks and the Time Lords.

I am not sure whether he even remembers the Moment's conscience appearing in the form of Rose/the Bad Wolf, because it would seem that otherwise he would react differently when he met her.


The Tenth Doctor (Tennant) remembers more about the events of this episode, perhaps because he was not pulled out of his own time stream until later on? (Smith visited him as opposed to yanking Tennant out of place)

Anyway, we know that Tennant remembers everything that happened in 16th-century England, because in "The End of Time," he mentions marrying Elizabeth I. Also, he remembers the fez coming out of the portal followed by Smith's Doctor, because Smith recognizes the appearance of the portal as his "cue" to toss the fez in and jump through shortly after. He remembers these events from his previous regeneration.

Note that when they toss the fez back through the portal and it seemingly vanishes, neither Tennant nor Smith understand what happened to it. That's because it landed with the War Doctor, and he forgot about it when he regenerated into Ecclestone.

This means that during "The End of Time," Tennant's doctor knew that one of his future incarnations would be Matt Smith. Perhaps it was on his mind when he mused about how regeneration still feels like an ending, because "some other fellow goes sauntering off..." But there is precedent for the Doctor knowing about one of his future incarnations-- in "Time Crash," Peter Davison met David Tennant, and he must have retained his memory of those events, because that's how Tennant was able to solve the problem.

I'm less clear about how much Tennant's Doctor remembers about "The Day of the Doctor," but he does forget at least some of it, because in the final scene in the museum, he gets Smith to tell him about his death on Trenzalore by pointing out that he won't remember it, so "you might as well tell me."

It's possible that Tennant doesn't remember anything after he left 16th century England. Maybe he also remembers helping to solve the Zygon conflict. But he must have forgotten about going back to help the War Doctor save Gallifrey, because otherwise Smith would already know that it was saved, and he still thinks he killed all of the Time Lords. (He says as much to House in "The Doctor's Wife.")


Finally, the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) apparently retains the memory of everything that happened in this episode-- that Gallifrey was possibly preserved (okay, we all know it was!), and that the War Doctor did not break the promise he thought he broke. This brings resolution to a storyline that has been developing for eight years (and peace for the Doctor after what, 600 years or more?)

I would also note that the Eleventh Doctor had good reason to think that the plan to save Gallifrey would fail, as all of the time from Hartnell up to Smith was not quite enough for the TARDIS to run the calculations for preserving the planet. Thankfully, unknown to him, Capaldi showed up with the finished calculations.


All of this is, of course, my own rationalization; it is probably easier to say "timey-wimey" and be done with it. Just offering this in case it helps someone else to make more sense of the episode. But if anyone has corrections or clarifications, they are welcome to add them!

-- Kolrad

 

[Christopher]

The whole "time lock" thing was always a lazy handwave for why a time traveler had to live with a tragedy in his past. RTD never actually bothered to explain what it was or how it worked, any more than Moffat explained why the Doctor couldn't go back to '50s New York and see Amy and Rory again.

The Wiki says it was the Doctor's use of the Moment that locked the war, but that was apparently asserted in a comic.

(By the way, does anyone know why the Tardis Data Core -- i.e. the Wiki -- is so sluggish to load? It's doing something that slows down my computer and makes the cooling fan kick into higher gear. When I had two pages open at once a little while ago, it kept briefly freezing up. Talk about a time lock.)

I am not sure whether he even remembers the Moment's conscience appearing in the form of Rose/the Bad Wolf, because it would seem that otherwise he would react differently when he met her.

Yeah, I doubt he consciously remembered the "Rose" interface, and he certainly didn't remember the name Bad Wolf. But he may have had a subconscious memory of the interface and what it had done for him, which could explain why he was so drawn to Rose. On the other hand, maybe it wasn't an accident that the Moment chose Rose's form, since she was the one who would save him, i.e. help him recover from his guilt, after the war. So the Moment was saving him too, in a way, and thus maybe it sensed the significance of that form.

This means that during "The End of Time," Tennant's doctor knew that one of his future incarnations would be Matt Smith. Perhaps it was on his mind when he mused about how regeneration still feels like an ending, because "some other fellow goes sauntering off..." But there is precedent for the Doctor knowing about one of his future incarnations-- in "Time Crash," Peter Davison met David Tennant, and he must have retained his memory of those events, because that's how Tennant was able to solve the problem.

I'm not so sure. I don't think it's a black-and-white choice between remembering and not remembering. When the current Doctor saw the vortex, he seemed to remember it only fuzzily and only when his memory was jogged by its arrival. So I think maybe the Doctor only retains partial memories of the events in question, maybe recalling some aspects of an experience but not others. I'm sure we've all had instances where we remembered an experience but forgot that another person was there with us.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I suspect the Time Lock on Gallifrey was never there, but the Doctor never thought to go to Gallifrey because he assumed that he could not reach it. In the comics, Martha has seen Gallifrey; the Doctor lets her see it through a telescope. If Gallifrey were never time locked, that makes more sense.

When does he allow Martha to see Gallifrey though a telescope? He told Rose at the end of The End Of The World that there's nothing left of Gallifrey but dust.

Prisoners of Time #10.

 

[Captain_Amasov]

The whole "time lock" thing was always a lazy handwave for why a time traveler had to live with a tragedy in his past. RTD never actually bothered to explain what it was or how it worked, any more than Moffat explained why the Doctor couldn't go back to '50s New York and see Amy and Rory again.

The Wiki says it was the Doctor's use of the Moment that locked the war, but that was apparently asserted in a comic.

It's one of the reasons I don't like alternative media trying to explain things like this from the actual series. Especially things like the time lock, which was stated to be in effect before The Moment was even used, as per Rassilon and the other members of the High Council mentioning it in "The End of Time".

 

[DWF]

The whole "time lock" thing was always a lazy handwave for why a time traveler had to live with a tragedy in his past. RTD never actually bothered to explain what it was or how it worked, any more than Moffat explained why the Doctor couldn't go back to '50s New York and see Amy and Rory again.

You can't blame the time lock idea on RTD, the Time Lords time locked the Fandahl's planet in The Image Of The Fandahl and the Doctor himself time locked the Vardan's homeworld in The Invasion Of Time. But he does say it's a criminal thing to do in The Image Of The Fandahl.

 

[Christopher]

The Wiki says it was the Doctor's use of the Moment that locked the war, but that was apparently asserted in a comic.

It's one of the reasons I don't like alternative media trying to explain things like this from the actual series. Especially things like the time lock, which was stated to be in effect before The Moment was even used, as per Rassilon and the other members of the High Council mentioning it in "The End of Time".

Well, yeah, but... it's a time lock. "Before" and "after" are words that have little meaning for time travelers. It may have been instituted by an act at the very end of the war, but that doesn't mean it couldn't take effect retroactively.

 

[Captain_Amasov]

The Wiki says it was the Doctor's use of the Moment that locked the war, but that was apparently asserted in a comic.

It's one of the reasons I don't like alternative media trying to explain things like this from the actual series. Especially things like the time lock, which was stated to be in effect before The Moment was even used, as per Rassilon and the other members of the High Council mentioning it in "The End of Time".

Well, yeah, but... it's a time lock. "Before" and "after" are words that have little meaning for time travelers. It may have been instituted by an act at the very end of the war, but that doesn't mean it couldn't take effect retroactively.

True, though it does feel more like something the Time Lords and/or the Daleks had instigated themselves, to stop one another from altering the outcomes of their victories, and failures, during the war. The first thing you really need to do to a time traveler is to stop them from time traveling, or at least direct them to particular times and places. At the very least you'd want third parties stopped altogether from getting involved, like the Sontarans were. I can't think of another body capable of doing something like this right now, the only intergalactic body we've really heard and seen are the Shadow Proclamation, but they don't seem like a good fit.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

The Wiki says it was the Doctor's use of the Moment that locked the war, but that was apparently asserted in a comic.

There's some plausible deniability to that.

The person who makes the assertion is the Advocate. She's an insane immortal who blames the Doctor because she was driven mad and trapped within the Medusa Cascade for a thousand years with the Daleks.

We already knew that the Doctor had sealed the Medusa Cascade (a rift in time and space) during the Time War, but we've never known the circumstances. It's possible the Advocate didn't know those circumstances either and simply assumed that the it was the Moment that did it. And if you read The Forgotten, it was McGann's Doctor who sealed the Medusa Cascade -- or at least built the device that did it.

 

[auntiehill]

I just got to watch it today.

I LOVED it. Seeing Tom alone was worth it; it brought tears to my eyes.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Again, I'm fairly sure Moffat's intent is that the Moment didn't change anything, that this is what happened all along. For narrative reasons, that's the most likely interpretation, because it would render the events of the past eight years' worth of stories irrelevant if history had really been changed in any major way. (Sure, Moffat's cracks in time undid some historical events, but nothing involving the Doctor's own personal journey, which is the important thing here.) So it can reasonably be assumed that everything that was true before about the Time War is still true, except for the interpretation of what happened to Gallifrey at its very conclusion.

I respectfully disagree. Time Lords have been told, again and again, to be able to sense change in a timeline and what not. Ten and Eleven clearly state that they remember Gallifrey falling, watching her die, and not wanting to have that happen again. Eleven, in particular, is specific in wanting to alter their history in that way, because he's had "four hundred years to think about it". He admits he changed his mind. It was history to them, because it happened - if it wasn't supposed to happen, Eleven and likewise Ten would've realized that. In fact, if it hadn't been for Clara, all three of them would have pressed the Moment. She stirred the moral compass of Eleven, because he didn't destroy Gallifrey, but the Warrior. But hey, now there's three of them... and soon, ten more! And finally, both Nine and Ten remembered Gallifrey falling. Not dissapearing, but actually being destroyed. Its fact. They lived through it, at least once.

Here's what I believe happened: The Warrior destroyed Gallifrey, barely survived but regenerated into Eccleston. The latter agonized over the destruction of Gallifrey, but because of Rose, he was OK. When Rose became Bad Wolf, she influenced the Moment to prevent the Doctor from destroying Gallifrey. As such, she caused The Warrior, The Tenth and the Eleventh to meet, and The Day of the Doctor occured. The Warrior was redeemed as the War Doctor, Tenth might have remembered the whole ordeal BUT, in a crucial detail, prefered to have Gallifrey time-locked because of Rassilon being a totally insane douchebag (as opposed to Eleven being rather cheerful about the idea of finding Gallifrey again) and as he was dying by radition, temporal amnesia overtook the memories of the Gallifrey survival, at least until Eleven lived through it again.

OK, the Tenth-remembering thing is fan theory of mine, and may not last. But Ninth and Tenth did remember, and possibly still do because of them being Time Lords, capable of being extra-sensory with the whole timey-whimey.

EDIT: Didn't read Kolrad's post, nice one. Althought it IS more plausible that Ten, rather than either remembering all of it or none of it, might have retained some memory of it. Would make Eleven's complete lack of knowledge until the actual special more believeable (if he knew about Gallifrey as early as The Eleventh Hour, he'd have said something, right?)

 

[M.A.C.O.]

Again, I'm fairly sure Moffat's intent is that the Moment didn't change anything, that this is what happened all along. For narrative reasons, that's the most likely interpretation, because it would render the events of the past eight years' worth of stories irrelevant if history had really been changed in any major way. (Sure, Moffat's cracks in time undid some historical events, but nothing involving the Doctor's own personal journey, which is the important thing here.) So it can reasonably be assumed that everything that was true before about the Time War is still true, except for the interpretation of what happened to Gallifrey at its very conclusion.

I respectfully disagree. Time Lords have been told, again and again, to be able to sense change in a timeline and what not. Ten and Eleven clearly state that they remember Gallifrey falling, watching her die, and not wanting to have that happen again. Eleven, in particular, is specific in wanting to alter their history in that way, because he's had "four hundred years to think about it". He admits he changed his mind. It was history to them, because it happened - if it wasn't supposed to happen, Eleven and likewise Ten would've realized that. In fact, if it hadn't been for Clara, all three of them would have pressed the Moment. She stirred the moral compass of Eleven, because he didn't destroy Gallifrey, but the Warrior. But hey, now there's three of them... and soon, ten more! And finally, both Nine and Ten remembered Gallifrey falling. Not dissapearing, but actually being destroyed. Its fact. They lived through it, at least once.

Here's what I believe happened: The Warrior destroyed Gallifrey, barely survived but regenerated into Eccleston. The latter agonized over the destruction of Gallifrey, but because of Rose, he was OK. When Rose became Bad Wolf, she influenced the Moment to prevent the Doctor from destroying Gallifrey. As such, she caused The Warrior, The Tenth and the Eleventh to meet, and The Day of the Doctor occured. The Warrior was redeemed as the War Doctor, Tenth might have remembered the whole ordeal BUT, in a crucial detail, prefered to have Gallifrey time-locked because of Rassilon being a totally insane douchebag (as opposed to Eleven being rather cheerful about the idea of finding Gallifrey again) and as he was dying by radition, temporal amnesia overtook the memories of the Gallifrey survival, at least until Eleven lived through it again.

OK, the Tenth-remembering thing is fan theory of mine, and may not last. But Ninth and Tenth did remember, and possibly still do because of them being Time Lords, capable of being extra-sensory with the whole timey-whimey.

Dialogue from episodes that corroborate Galifrey falling and burning. Off the top of my head would be.

Doctor Who
"End of the World"
"Dalek"
"Father's Day"
"The Parting of the Ways"
"The Sound of Drums"
"Fires Of Pompeii"
I want to say "Journey's End" and "Stolen Earth" but I can't be sure. I haven't seen them in awhile.
"The End of Time"

Torchwood
"Adrift"


The Day of the Doctor is a reset of events. Warrior Doctor is redeemed and Tenth would forget the details. However for Eleven these new series of events remains current for him. He's absolved of his guilt and crime for destroying Galifrey in one timeline, but it did still happen from his and the audience point of view.

 

[Christopher]

I respectfully disagree. Time Lords have been told, again and again, to be able to sense change in a timeline and what not. Ten and Eleven clearly state that they remember Gallifrey falling, watching her die, and not wanting to have that happen again.

Again: Because the Doctor didn't remember the events of the crossover, he only remembered having his hand on the button and then recovering to find that Gallifrey was gone and had apparently exploded. Memory is not infallible, and often we fill in the gaps of our memories and convince ourselves that we perceived things that we're really just guessing about.

Eleven, in particular, is specific in wanting to alter their history in that way, because he's had "four hundred years to think about it". He admits he changed his mind.

Yes, exactly. What he specifically said, paraphrasing, was, "We change history all the time. What I'm proposing is something much more dangerous... I've changed my mind." Which I took to mean that he was proposing an alternative to changing history.

It was history to them, because it happened

See, that's the thing. History isn't what happened. It's our stories about what we think happened. "History" and "story" are variations of the same word. History is a narrative we construct out of what we think we know about the past. And that narrative is often inaccurate -- which is why historians are able to stay gainfully employed by arguing with other historians about what version of the narrative is more valid. Just because something is history doesn't mean it really happened.


I've just been watching BBC America's replay of "The Impossible Astronaut," also by Moffat, and in it, River says that they can't undo something in the Doctor's personal timestream or it would create a paradox: They couldn't save the Doctor from his future death because it's only because of witnessing that death that they would know he needed to be saved. So whatever happens has to be self-consistent. This is the same thing. The reason Smith's Doctor thought of a way to save Gallifrey is because he's spent centuries dwelling on the memory of having to destroy Gallifrey and wondering if he could've found another way. Change his own history so that he never destroyed it and there's no recrimination to lead him to save it. So it has to be a consistent history. Gallifrey just looked like it was destroyed, and it's because the Doctor believed he'd destroyed it that he was eventually able to save it.

(And note that the story arc about the Doctor's death was resolved the same way: Events still happened as we saw them the first time, but they weren't what they seemed to be.)

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Again: Because the Doctor didn't remember the events of the crossover, he only remembered having his hand on the button and then recovering to find that Gallifrey was gone and had apparently exploded. Memory is not infallible, and often we fill in the gaps of our memories and convince ourselves that we perceived things that we're really just guessing about.

Thats not the point. Point is, he said he saw Gallifrey burn. He said it because he remembered it, not because he "guessed" thats what happened. He's certain beyond a doubt. No ifs or buts.

Yes, exactly. What he specifically said, paraphrasing, was, "We change history all the time. What I'm proposing is something much more dangerous... I've changed my mind." Which I took to mean that he was proposing an alternative to changing history.

Yes, because changing history would mean that Nine, Ten and him would live radically different lives by actually not destroying Gallifrey. He changed his mind because he didn't want to destroy Gallifrey, but seal it in a pocket universe. That way, the timelines of Nine and Ten can be salvaged, without anyone on Gallifrey dying.

I've just been watching BBC America's replay of "The Impossible Astronaut," also by Moffat, and in it, River says that they can't undo something in the Doctor's personal timestream or it would create a paradox: They couldn't save the Doctor from his future death because it's only because of witnessing that death that they would know he needed to be saved. So whatever happens has to be self-consistent. This is the same thing.

But he did rewrite history in Series 6. And River also did, with disastrous consequences. But yeah, the Doctor DID change his own history by having the Teselact disguise itself as the Doctor in order to play out the stated events, because that day on the beach was a fixed point in time. The Doctor cannot change history, but he can alter his fate, and this likely set the precedent for the far more ambiguous altering of history in Day of the Doctor.

The reason Smith's Doctor thought of a way to save Gallifrey is because he's spent centuries dwelling on the memory of having to destroy Gallifrey and wondering if he could've found another way. Change his own history so that he never destroyed it and there's no recrimination to lead him to save it. So it has to be a consistent history. Gallifrey just looked like it was destroyed, and it's because the Doctor believed he'd destroyed it that he was eventually able to save it.

Nothing in the narrative of eight years of NuWho even remotely supports this. If there was ever any doubt that he didn't destroy it it'd have been a narrative point earlier on. The point of the special was to ALTER history, by NOT destroying history.

Ten and Eleven very, very plainly state that. They say that they saw it fall before, and they don't want to see it fall again. Why is that a big deal?

(And note that the story arc about the Doctor's death was resolved the same way: Events still happened as we saw them the first time, but they weren't what they seemed to be.)

Because the Doctor altered them! He died in the first version of history. Had it not been for the Teselact, he'd still do. This is a show about time travel, where predestional paradoxes AND time altering events can happen in equal pace. Time can be re-written!

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I just finished it. I loved it. Got one question, was Osgood the girl with the scarf and inhaler supposed to represent fandom?

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I just finished it. I loved it. Got one question, was Osgood the girl with the scarf and inhaler supposed to represent fandom?

I hope not. That'd be rather stereotypical.

Incidentally, the character of Osgood just didn't work for me - like, at all. She was probably not written as anything other than a kid's idea of a woman scientist.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

You don't think she was classically mary sued into it? Fandom scarf, praying for the Doctor to save her?

 

[Christopher]

Thats not the point. Point is, he said he saw Gallifrey burn. He said it because he remembered it, not because he "guessed" thats what happened. He's certain beyond a doubt. No ifs or buts.

And my point is that memory is fallible, that what we remember is a reconstruction and an extrapolation from our experiences. Just like history, memory is a story we tell ourselves to make sense of our impressions of the past, and just like history, it can be fallible. We can convince ourselves of the absolute truth of things that never happened. Especially if we go over the same memory over and over, trying to make sense of it or dwelling on our recriminations of it. We modify our memories every time we recall them, so the more we go over them, the more they change.

And that's just us ordinary humans. We know that the Doctors forgot a lot of the details of this encounter because of the crossed timestreams. So the Doctor's memory of the end of the Time War would've been muddled by that on top of everything else.

But he did rewrite history in Series 6. And River also did, with disastrous consequences. But yeah, the Doctor DID change his own history by having the Teselact disguise itself as the Doctor in order to play out the stated events, because that day on the beach was a fixed point in time. The Doctor cannot change history, but he can alter his fate, and this likely set the precedent for the far more ambiguous altering of history in Day of the Doctor.

No, in that instance as well, he didn't change anything. It happened that way the first time -- we just didn't know that. Just because your personal perception of an event changes, that doesn't mean reality itself changed.

The reason Smith's Doctor thought of a way to save Gallifrey is because he's spent centuries dwelling on the memory of having to destroy Gallifrey and wondering if he could've found another way. Change his own history so that he never destroyed it and there's no recrimination to lead him to save it. So it has to be a consistent history. Gallifrey just looked like it was destroyed, and it's because the Doctor believed he'd destroyed it that he was eventually able to save it.

Nothing in the narrative of eight years of NuWho even remotely supports this. If there was ever any doubt that he didn't destroy it it'd have been a narrative point earlier on.

I just told you what part of the narrative supports it: River's own words about paradox in another episode written by the exact same person as this one.

I'm not going to keep arguing. But I will point out that the Tardis Data Core, the official Wiki, interprets the episode my way, at least currently:

The disappearance of Gallifrey caused the Daleks to be caught in the crossfire. The War Doctor realised that it would have appeared to the rest of the universe that they annihilated one another, as Gallifrey was gone and the Daleks were destroyed. Because the Doctors' time streams were out of sync, the War Doctor didn't remember their effort to save Gallifrey, rather than burn it, and realised he would have to live with that.
...
He gladly allowed his regeneration to pass and changed into his tenth incarnation, but the ninth to call himself "the Doctor". This new incarnation lost the crucial memories of how the Time War truly ended, believing his people were lost forever.

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/War_Doctor

 

[Awesome Possum]

You don't think she was classically mary sued into it? Fandom scarf, praying for the Doctor to save her?

That's what I took away from her appearance. If you look closely the end of the scarf gets smaller, so it looks like one someone made and messed up.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Oh yes I assumed she (the character) knitted it herself!

 

[Christopher]

You don't think she was classically mary sued into it? Fandom scarf, praying for the Doctor to save her?

That's what I took away from her appearance. If you look closely the end of the scarf gets smaller, so it looks like one someone made and messed up.

Well, we've seen that UNIT scientific advisors tend to be Doctor groupies; Kate was talking on the phone with Malcolm, the groupie/advisor from "Planet of the Dead." Really, it's kind of understandable. To UNIT sciencey types, the Doctor would be a rock star.