By Viv Miah.
There are certain caveats for certain stories that ought not be broken. For example: Harry Potter’s parents will never return. Gollum is inextricably, eternally bound to desire the Ring and be the physical manifest of his warped soul, too.
The Doctor should always bear the guilt of the genocide he committed against the Time Lords of Gallifrey. Thematically, it’s what’s lent a darker gravitas and allowed varied levels of tragedy to the various incarnations present in New Who; it’s been the backbone of the Doctor’s character and what’s factored into many of the calls he’s made during his tenure as favourite time-traveller for thousands across the globe.
The Day of the Doctor shatters this one rule.
But more on that later.
The 50th anniversary of the sci-fi series follows a fairly basic plotline that manages to meld Old and New Who with particular care: in it, Doctors Ten and Eleven (along with a plethora of others) team up to take on shape-shifting classic baddies, the Zygons. As both a gentler welcome and a love letter to it’s longevity, the episode opens with a throwback to the 1963 opening sequence and blooms into the gentle kind of soundtrack one might find on a country drama to accompany Clara’s biking off to meet the Doctor once more. As could be predicted, the reunion doesn’t last long; the TARDIS in it’s entirety is airlifted to the National Gallery on the summons of Queen Elizabeth I as per his duties to protect a collection of alien artefacts. As it transpires, said baddies (tentacled, impressively unattractive things) have been hiding out in 3D art until the right moment to strike arose. As far as bad guys go, the Zygons bear some of the hokiest dialogue in the entire piece and their story finds them subject to Doctor Who writers fondness for explicit writing. Ten and Eleven snapping at Kate is one example of this; the straightforward pleading of Scarf and Inhaler Girl (Osgood) is another.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Or more precisely, the straight-and-narrow plotline doesn’t matter.
From here, Moffat splits off spectacularly from the anticipated globe-wide, sonic-screwdriver’ing chase to pursue not one rescue story, but instead follows three different stories that further flesh out the tenuous balances the Doctor traces between the man who rescues, and the man who requires rescuing. It’s an overlapping mish-mash of different points in the Doctor’s life and an ambitious mammoth of his task, though to his credit, Moffat handles these layers of story and necessary layering of character masterfully. Curiously enough, the key character to tap into these depths is as much outsider as the audience is, though it’s John Hurt’s War Doctor who much of the choices and questions revolve around. Fresh from the events of the Time War, though still due to commit his genocidal act that’s the genesis for a (sadly missing) Ninth Doctor’s rage and horror and all the following regret, Hurt’s dragged into a joined timestream with the pair by an admittedly entertaining series of time loops. (Circles? Rifts? Holes? Frankly, who cares?)
With a more impressive budget the hour-long running time’s punctuated by the marks of a feature; blooming soundtrack, luxuriant visuals and beautiful, shifting kinetic shots to mark the Doctor’s mindset. This is the first time we’re placed so squarely within the Doctor’s headspace and the distortions, changing angles and enormous volume of shots — the details he takes in — that accompany his perception upon life are at points a detriment to the narrative. The same energy can be seen in the camera’s giddy intoxication with swooping into frames and the rapid transition from 3D artwork, to realtime action to reintroduce perennial favourite, David Tennant. For all of the anniversary episode’s conceits and certainty, Tennant and Smith are electric together and very, very funny; they riff off one another in what appears to be a battle to see who can speak the fastest and delight at self-knowing winks at the character makeup of each other. (Eleven declares at one point that Ten’s wearing sandshoes and proceeds to bring it up at every available opportunity, while Ten derides the new TARDIS interior with a pout fit to be immortalised in .gifs across the net. ) We’d forgotten how Tennant delights inn pronouncing words, ridiculous comments and their accompanying reversals and his breakneck delivery speed, but has he missed it? (Yes. The answer is presumably yes.)
Where Ten is roguish and charming, Eleven’s still packed full of his whimsy — and to Hurt, both are utter strangers. The trio shift through different states as they grow to know and delight in one another’s company. Pronouns too are used with deliberate effect and in a multitude of ways; Hurt acknowledges his separation from these new two men, whereas Ten and Eleven both lobby implications at one another. It’s a thrilling, impossible chemistry and undeniably a utter delight to see the Doctor’s world collide, although resolving the clash of the timelines is better left to physicists.
The anniversary then is their story; not the story of one Doctor, or Eleven alone, but the attempts of the Doctor to resolve the multiple strands of his identity.
For all the scientific banter and the easy, arrogant physicality Smith and Tennant radiate, both Ten and Eleven’s existences are laced through with the grim aftermath of the decision Hurt’s Doctor is yet to face. “Do you have to talk like children? What is it that makes you so ashamed of being a grown-up?” Hurt asks at a point, when the three of them are incarcerated in the Tower of London. The truth is far more simple than that; it’d be easier not to be an adult. Adulthood, with all it’s connotations of responsibility and the need to properly take on board one’s life so far is akin to penance for the Doctor; not only has he wreaked havoc on Gallifrey, but as demonstrated by the Ponds bitter end, he’s prone to spread chaos wherever he goes. Plain and simple. For the Doctor, it’d be far more easier to babble at the wonder and simple beauties in life which he can seek out, a trait that’s been especially played by Matt Smith’s Doctor as a thin veil to cloak his rage. But there’s the crux of the matter: they’re “the man who forgets,” as Billie Piper’s Moment says, and “the man who regrets.”
For all our issues with Moffat, Piper’s appearance as a post apocalyptically-dressed, sentient weapon is the greatest. As the first companion, Rose Tyler’s of emotional significance to long-time fans, although there’s no trace of the shopgirl here. Piper’s given new offbeats depths to play with and a certain quirky, humorous. air as befits a sentient weapon. Her reaction to the fez is one highlight out of many; it’s in her emotional beats that Piper truly hits her stride. Like the Name of the Doctor kept the essence of it’s power elusive, so too is the power of the Moment kept to it’s basest description — a moment, one moment, in time and space with the power to eradicate entire worlds. It’s not it’s power that matters here, but the philosophy behind the Moment and the significance of utilising it that’s most potent, as seen. While the lack of recognisable personality here, and closure for either Ten or Eleven (who shows precious little reaction to the mention of her existence), Rose’s appearance should be seen as a portent of doom for what the Doctor might face and is forced to face in the recollection of her existence: regret. In other words, she’s emblematic of the tragedy the Doctor leaves behind him. But while she’s still the Doctor’s ghost and a weak copy of her, with many of the puppet strings around her plot-device status feeling rather flimsy. But Rose/The Moment’s being the one to communicate with Hurt’s War Doctor is both a humble nod to the roots of New Who,with Rose a catalyst for the Doctor’s humanity. While there’s no such evolution for Hurt here, it’s Rose/The Moment that’s manipulating the events; it’s Rose that forces him to acknowledge these phenomenal incarnations of himself; men that are capable of ending horrors with calls he still struggles to make.
Clara, by contrast as a companion, has always felt like little other than a mystery-slash-plot-device wrapped up in the form of a perky brunette. She’s wisely sidelined for much of the episode, though her crucial moment borders both the unbelievable and believable. Clara, you see, is finally laid bare aside from her quirks and her cheek and is found to be at her core, bursting with the raw humanity and empathy Eleven would find it easier to forget. Perhaps this is the primary, and the only point of the companions: put aside the big spinning police box and the Doctor could any day exist as a man with a god complex and a thin conscience. The travellers he takes with him operate as the voice of the people he visits and the people he’s left behind. Clara, aghast, is unable to understand how to reconcile the horror she’s seen her Doctor bear with the choice he’s made to help the War Doctor. “I never thought you’d do it,” she says, peering wide-eyed at the trio. The nature of regret is a horrible thing, after all; it plagues you and hollows you out from within, and both Smith and Tennant acknowledge this in the subtlest of gestures throughout. With her refusal to accept that they could be anything but “the Doctor; never cowardly or cruel” the die’s cast for the episode to plunge into it’s final third.
What’s at question in the Day of the Doctor isn’t an adherence to the laws of time; it’s a rewriting of character and Doctor Who history. Needless to say, it’s a fierce gamble, and one that plays out with the requisite fervour and unrelenting optimism Doctor Who’s boasted during it’s tenure. The reunion of all thirteen incarnations of the Doctor, with one cameo standing out above the rest, is marvellous cinematic stuff: it’s difficult not to cheer out loud at the rousing soundtrack or the rush of the TARDISes towards Gallifrey. But Moffat faces a near impossible task; recreating the Time War and now, recreating it’s salvation. An event as cataclysmic and formative to the Doctor as this will always have viewer expectations stacked against it and Moffat’s clever enough not to dwell too long upon the admittedly ridiculous visuals of the Daleks destruction, just as he chooses not to linger upon the logic of how the Doctors might save Gallifrey.
Granted, in comparison to his predecessor (Russel T Davies), Moffat’s more prone to play around with the with the (admittedly) malleable rules of the Doctor Who universe. Whether or not the gamble pays off is another matter. My personal issues with the return of Gallifrey might stem from Russel T Davie’s previous decision some three years back to set the number of regenerations for the Doctor at 507. By extension of this near-immortality, the stakes of a Doctor-death felt considerably less. In a similar vein, my main beef with the implied survival of Time Lord citadel, Gallifrey is this: in one fell swoop, the Doctor’s emotional journey is entirely shattered. In previous mentions and brief flashbacks, there was an element of mystery to the unobtainable; much as fans longed after a spot in the fictional TARDIS, the Doctor’s home was synonymous with what was lost and impossible. Neither Nine or Ten set about attempting to right their wrongs. In comparison, Smith and the War Doctor here are filled with variations upon the same kind of innocence: the War Doctor looks to his future in the search for what he ought to do and how he might be the genesis for these future heroes, Eleven looks backwards and skims over the details in search of how he might be a saviour. Both are one another’s salvation.
And for what it’s worth, regardless of Moffat’s past sin or preference for furious, overarching life or death plots, this particular showrunner shows he could just have the balls — and as evidenced by this anniversary, enough grasp of the heart of the show — to pull off Gallifrey’s return. Where it leaves the Doctor, however, is questionable; didn’t time go entirely wibbly-wobbly when an event as large as this occurred? Does Ten go back to his timestream with his regret intact? If so, how can Eleven alone be unburdened by his choices? And with this formative decision rewritten, how can we believe the Doctor’s contextualisation of horrific events, if moments are large as this can be rewritten?
But perhaps it’d be easier to label me a sadistic sucker and go away with this impression alone:
While the ending comes too soon and with particularly muddy closure, Doctor Who’s 50th is an anniversary episode at it’s finest. Packed full of references for Doctor Who fans and the same whimsy that’s characteristic of the series; think musical stings fit for a hokey recreation of a Christie mystery, the 50th anniversary delights in diving in and out of triumphant moments and poignant ones, only to return to the silly stuff too. (Logic? What’s logic? Physics? Never heard of it!) But it’s this ever-evolving nature of the serial that both Smith and the proceedings take such delight in that’s the real pleasure — for who saw Doctor Who as anything but enthusiastic, emotion-driven, all-embracing glee?
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