You’ve had your chance to watch Day of the Doctor (or if you haven’t, why not?), and it is time for Matthew and Stephen to go into so very spoilery territory as they discuss the 50th Anniversary special of Doctor Who, “The Day of the Doctor.”
“The Day of the Doctor” is the fiftieth-anniversary episode of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. It is written by Steven Moffat, an executive producer alongside Faith Penhale. It has been described by series producer Marcus Wilson as a “love letter to the fans” and by the controller of BBC One, Danny Cohen, as an “event drama”.
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Thank you so much for doing this Dueling Review! Major Spoilers is the reason I discovered Doctor Who, so I’m really excited about what you have to say!!
Just a point for Stephen, Who didn’t quite seem to see how “The End of Time” fit in..
When, during the first part of this Special episode, The War Doctor (Hurt) stole the Moment (AKA Bad Wolf Rose) The Gallifrey War Leaders, discovered this and would have, naturally, Informed the High President (AKA Rassilon, AKA James Bond). At this point, we begin the events of “The End of Time” where the Leadership of Gallirfey Decide to enact the “Ultimate Sanction”, which would have caused the Time Lords to survive the Time War as beings of Conciousness, and the rest of the Universe to be distroyed. Gallifrey was brought forward to the point in time that would have followed the planet and Time Lords being distroyed by using connections to the Master, and the White Point Star Diamond, which the presence of both provided a point in time for the Time Lords to target. The Doctor, (ok actually the Master, using Wilfred Mott’s gun) managing to foil the High Presidents plan, sending the Planet Gallifrey back to the point it left, which was before the War Doctor had put is plan with The Moment into effect.
So Basically “the End of Time” becomes a loop in the timeline of this 50th Aniversary Special.
Just to clarify the BBC are calling John Hurt’s charecter the War Doctor and not changing the numbering of the later Doctors.
My wife spoted a good Easter egg the headmaster at Clara’s school is I Chesterton and the Moment/Rose being confused about the difference between past and future mirrors the Tardis’ line in the Doctor’s Wife, could be implying a connection?
Overall a damn fine episode.
Re: Doctor Numbering – You are correct, sir Rob. Hurt is not a “Doctor”, he is a “War Doctor” and thus does not negate the standing numbering. A bit of an easy out? Sure, but makes it a lot easier :-)
My point being – it doesn’t negate the number of regenerations the being that is called/not called Doctor has gone through ;) Of course I expect the Christmas Special to answer/solve that problem.
Moffat has now came out and said the War Doctor is actually part of the regeneration number and Matt is regeneration 13 as Tennant had 2 (his initial and the regeneration where his hand spawn Human Doctor) so he is going to have to bring the 13 regenerates into the Christmas special and work around it.
I’m interested to see how he works around this but I’m sure it will be fabulously interesting.
I’m also excited to see a Scottish Doctor actually keeping his native accent (albeit watered down so it is more accessible to none-Scots).
the odd point about the Doctor/War Doctor, At the end of The Name of the Doctor, it says “and introducing John Hurt as The Doctor” then at the end of the mini episode The Night of the Doctor it says “introducing John Hurt as The War Doctor” they called him the Doctor before then changed it to the War Doctor, based on what he does, which is destroy Gallifrey and end the Time War. though they appended the War descriptor to his name, he is still called The Doctor.
They’ve certainty given us all a good bone to chew on, I can see this debate rambling on for many years to come. I suspect that all the really BBC wanted to do was have a unique name to put on John Hurt’s action figure. Still that’s Who fans for you we never saw a lose thread we didn’t want to pull on.
This is my only real ‘beef’ with this episode. It introduced what I like to call ‘the accounting’ problem’ into the discussion. There is now going to be endless fan debate/bickering/smug correcting of the ‘correct’ numbering of all of the post-8th Doctors. Ugh.
Stephen did it. I tried to stay away from it… :)
I love hearing you talk about Doctor Who! I do agree that John Hurt did an amazing job as the Doctor, I wish we could see more of him.
However, I thought the episode as a whole was dreadful. The way it messed with the canon of the show was upsetting to me. I envy Matthew for not unraveling any threads – I started doing that right from the beginning, it all felt so inconsistent.
And the big solution at the end was downright silly, in my opinion…
thanks very much for doing this
I really needed to hear someone talk about this
It’s true, that the entity that we know of as “the Doctor” has regenerated, as of the 50th anniversary, no less than 12 times. However the persona that is regenerated into the 9th encarnation of that series does NOT consider himself to be “the Doctor”. So there have been 12 regenerations, but only 11 Doctors.
According, for the first recorded time, to the 4th encarnation, the Time Lords can only regenerate 13 times. However, according to the 11th regeneration, “the first rule of the Doctor, is that the Doctor lies.”
Thanks for doing this I was interested in your take on the special. I loved it as a long time fan. Stephen asked about references and there were tons, ones that I think you didn’t mention were ‘Greyhound Leader’ being the Brigadiers call sign. Osgood might well be another daughter of a UNIT member as the technician in the Daemons is called Sergeant Osgood. ‘The Cromer file’ references the fact that the Brig thought that he was in Cromer in Norfolk on the East Coast of England rather than in Omega’s anti-matter world in the Three Doctors. There were plenty of items in the black archive too! As for the ‘messed with the Canon’ reference above, Dr Who has been fantastically inconsistent over the 50 years, even within the terms of a particular Doctor. Messing with ‘the canon’ has and probably always will, be the name of the game. The Doctor is no different from a long running comic character in this respect. Fun cast thanks again to Stephen and Matthew.
One of the best Dueling Reviews ever recorded.
Please make sure to do the Christmas Special and The Twelfth Doctor’s first episode.