Doctor Who's 50th anniversary episode breaks the Timelord's number one rule and re-writes history - and reminds us why Matt Smith and David Tennant were so irritating

It was the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, one of the classic programmes in the history of British television.
The BBC commemorated it with The Day Of The Doctor, an episode that was 75 minutes long, transmitted simultaneously in 94 countries, screened in hundreds of cinemas across the UK in 3D, and featured several Doctors, including John Hurt as the War Doctor, the legendary Tom Baker and the return of David Tennant, as well as Billie Piper as Rose, the Daleks and 1970s vintage shape-shifting aliens, the Zygons. Apart from that ? Hardly anything.
Yes Steven Moffat was taking no chances, throwing everything but the kitchen sink in the TARDIS at the occasion, which was number 799 in a programme that will presumably run for time immemorial.
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The 50th anniversary Who featured several Doctors, including (from right to left) Matt Smith (the current Doctor), John Hurt (the War Doctor) and David Tennant (the Cockney Doctor)

Given that it was so special, it made the decision to screen it at 7.50pm after Strictly and directly opposite The X Factor all the more perverse and, frankly, annoying.
On the one hand, the Beeb was clearly trying to blow The X Factor out of the water and send Simon Cowell a message – namely ‘you just haven’t earned it yet baby. This is what a TV great looks like. Get back to us in 40 years.’
On the other, ultimately scheduling clashes only feed the egos of the TV executives and really affect the viewers, denying us the chance to watch one of the weekend’s big TV events live.

 

As for the episode itself, The Day Of The Doctor was typical of the way Doctor Who has regenerated during Moffat's time: a clever, chaotic, infuriating combination of nifty, knowing tiny detail and big, hollow, pompous bluster.
Depending on how you feel about the series or sci-fi generally, the plot Moffat came up with was fantastically audacious/ingenious/ridiculous, or possibly all three. It had so much going on, it was like several episodes jammed into one: The Doctor and Queen Elizabeth, the return of Rose (Billie Piper), and, mostly, the return to grace of The War Doctor.

 

John Hurt, Matt Smith AND David Tennant all play Dr Who

Billie Piper came back as The Doctor's former companion Rose, now The Doctor's conscience able to hear his thoughts. Ask a ten-year-old to explain it to you

Essentially, this was Doctor Who’s equivalent of the shower scene in Dallas – when it turned out that major events we had watched in previous series hadn’t happened at all.
For years now, The Doctor has been tormented by his decision to ‘save the universe’ from being conquered by ‘billions of daleks’ by destroying the planet of Gallifrey, the setting for The Last Great Time War between the daleks and the Time Lords, wiping out his own people in the process.
His actions (featured in the 2007 series finale and portrayed in the two-part special The End Of Time in 2009) have been the only thing in all his lives/travels to haunt him; condemning him to an eternal life of solitude, remorse and the search for penance.
'He was there - me, the one that I don't talk about,' Matt Smith's Doctor said of all the incarnations he had had, looking at a mysterious 3D oil painting of Gallifrey in flames. 'He killed them all.'

A bizarre 3D oil painting depicted the destruction of Gallifrey - the act that had tormented The Doctor for years. Until now

Here, through an alliance of three generations of The Doctor (John Hurt, David Tennant and Matt Smith), that decision was reversed.
Like the notorious episode of Dallas where the previous serious turned out to be a dream, this was basically Moffat re-writing Doctor Who history, TV history.
It seemed a bit rich considering all the emotional mileage the programme has milked out of The Doctor's angst in the past and somewhat ironic given that re-writing history (stopping The Titanic, saving Pompeii, killing Hitler) is the one thing The Doctor is always telling his companions he can’t do.
You can't help wonder whether Moffat will regret it. Being responsible for a holocaust surely gave The Doctor an added depth and edge. Without it, there is a danger he will simply be an eccentric, albeit one who can journey through space and time.
Matt Smith appeared reading a book on Advanced Quantum Mechanics, jauntily making Clara Oswald the offer 'fancy a trip to Mesopotamia followed by future Mars?' and cramming in quirky references to 'spoilers', 'grunge' and cup-a-soup that were meant to be hilarious.

Without The Doctor's angst over his destroying Gallifrey and the Time Lords, he is in danger of becoming just an eccentric, like the way Matt Smith portrays him, reading books about Quantum Mechanics and joking about cup-a-soup

 

Tense trailer for Dr Who The Day of The Doctor

Still, the merits of Moffat’s move are best left to the Whovians.
This aside, it was as if Moffat had concentrated on putting so much in to the 50th anniversary special, he had forgotten what it most needed. It was neither scary or funny enough.
Instead, it had too far much gratuitous content that only seemed to be there to live up to its billing.
The opening helicopter shots of the London Eye, Parliament, Trafalgar Square, and Tower Bridge were blatantly for the American audience.
The scale of the flashback to The Last Day Of The Time War seemed all wrong and too showy – shot on a huge set, full of extras, and packed with lavish, blockbusting special effects, explosions, and slow motion shoot outs with daleks being blown to smithereens.

The opening scenes of blockbusting special effects and shots of the London Eye seemed mostly for Doctor Who's American audience

Given that Moffat has said he is loathe to writing episodes about the daleks because they have become too familiar, the way they were used was a waste. Sadly the Zygons weren't scary enough, resembling large, squelchy bits of seafood salad.
The sub-plot in which David Tennant as The Doctor married Queen Elizabeth I was worthy of BlackAdder with Joanna Page seemingly playing Miranda Richardson. Scenes of soldiers wearing ruffles shouting 'the Queen !' were so amateurish they were more like Monty Python or as camp and dated as Blake's Seven.
'He's a fool !' one of Gallifrey's commanders said of The Doctor.
'No, he's a madman !' said another.

The Zygons weren't nearly scary enough to compensate for the daleks' absence, resembling large, squelchy bits of seafood salad

There was much sub-Prog Rock mumbo-jumbo about 'a tear in the fabric of reality', 'isolated sonic shifts' and a planet being 'frozen in an instant of time.'
Worst of all was the excruciating spectacle of Matt Smith and David Tennant meeting each other and struggling to understand their shared identity which was like watching mime artists doing the achingly unfunny identical mirror mime.
Tennant and Smith were clearly enjoying themselves enormously - far too much so the scene became more about the actors not the character. The one thing a drama should never do.
Since his departure, Tennant’s accent had become decidedly more Cockney – such an alarming mix of Arthur Daley, Michael Moon and Ray Winstone that Smith’s Doctor sarcastically called him ‘Dick Van Dyke.’
In return, Tennant’s Doctor called Smith’s ‘chinny.’ When Smith started talking about ‘time’ as ‘timey whimey’, even John Hurt’s Doctor asked: ‘do you have to talk like children?’
It was all far too Zany.

The sub-plot in which David Tennant's Doctor married Queen Elizabeth I was more reminiscent of Black Adder, with Joanna Page seemingly playing Miranda Richardson instead of the Queen

Luckily Hurt was there to lend it all some gravitas and carry the show, acting both Tennant and Smith off the screen and imbuing The Doctor with the one quality that, as a Time Lord, he needs most - one that David Tennant and Matt Smith have always been sorely missing: wisdom.
As Clara Oswald, the Doctor's current companion, Jenna-Louise Coleman doesn't look strong either - not after Karen Gillan and Billie Piper as Rose. In terms of the part Clara and Rose – the Doctor’s conscience – played in persuading the three Doctors to change their own history, I’m sure it all perfect sense in Moffat's universe and someone can explain it to you. A nerdy Whovian or a ten year-old child for example.

Clara Oswald resorted to persuading The Doctor to reverse his decision to destroy Gallifrey by asking if he ever counted how many children had lived there

The tension over Hurt's decision was gone the moment Clara asked if he had ever counted how many children had been on Gallifrey when he had destroyed it, and we saw them playing.
'You know the sound the TARDIS makes ? That wheezing groaning ? That brings hope wherever it goes,' Clara told The Doctor, rather optimistically.
In the end, we were asked to believe that - instead of the version we and the subsequent Doctors had believed all these years - The Doctor hadn't blown up planet Gallifrey but moved it to 'a parallel pocket universe' with the daleks that were surrounding it being destroyed by firing on each other.
'It's delusional !' cried one of Gallifrey's commanders of The Doctor's plan - or the plot.

John Hurt acted David Tennant and Matt Smith off the screen and showed what their portrayals of The Doctor have been missing: wisdom

The over-riding moral of the 50th Anniversary episode was that, in Doctor Who, any thing is possible; that even after we’ve seen it, it might not be ‘real.’
It was also a timely reminder how irritating David Tennant and Matt Smith were as The Doctor.
It’s a shame John Hurt didn’t play him for a lot longer, but, like Tom Baker’s enjoyable cameo, he reminded us of the type of man The Doctor should be.
Bring on Peter Capaldi.