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.
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
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.
