The Day Of The Doctor: 50 Things We Loved (And A Few Things We Didn’t)
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21. “Someday you could just walk past a fez.” “Never gonna happen.” The fez being tossed to each of Eleven’s younger selves made for a nice excuse to bring them together, but I can’t help but wonder: since the Undergallery is described as the place for storing art deemed too dangerous for public consumption, what the hell is the fez doing there? How dangerous could a fez possibly be? I demand an online minisode explaining the fez’s many atrocities!
22. “Is it important?” “In 500 years, I’ve never stepped in anything that wasn’t.” This was a nice little throwback to one of Matt Smith’s best lines in 2010’s Christmas special, “A Christmas Carol.” The original line was, “You know that in nine hundred years of time and space I’ve never met anybody who wasn’t important before.” It’s one of many times the special tips earlier quotes or moments from the show’s history on their ear.
23. The bit where Ten and Eleven are both trying to “reverse the polarity” on the time rift, only to realize they’re canceling each other out, was both a funny bit of business and a jab at one of the most time-honored bits of technobabble in science fiction history.
24. The way the show used Hurt’s War Doctor to mock the show’s overuse of sonic screwdrivers as a get-out-of-jail-free card. What does a sonic screwdriver do exactly? Pretty much whatever the script calls for. It’s basically Batman’s utility belt. Best moment: when Ten and Eleven threaten a contingent of medieval troops with them, leading Hurt to reply, “They’re screwdrivers! What are you going to do, assemble a cabinet at them?”
25. The Three Doctors themselves: this is probably the most enjoyable element of the entire special, the back-and-forth interactions between these three incarnations of the same man. Whether it’s Eleven mocking Ten’s “sand shoes” or ribbing him for making out with a Zygon, Ten critiquing Eleven’s interior decorating, or the War Doctor’s constant frustration with both of his older selves’ general goofiness and predilection for phrases like “timey wimey,” the characterization is spot on. Even more important than the funny moments is the way they interact when they finally start honestly discussing the way they ended the Time War. Smith, Tennant, and Hurt must all deliver regret and sadness and pain in varying degrees, and they don’t disappoint. Without those moments, all the funny stuff wouldn’t matter because The Day of the Doctor wouldn’t have any weight to it.
26. Smith’s idea to leave a message for the future by scratching it into the wall of a dungeon is a very, very Doctor Who idea. Keen eyes may have noticed that the “coordinates” are 17-16-23-11-63. Those numbers weren’t random; they were the time and date Doctor Who first premiered: November 23, 1963, at 5:16 pm.
27. Torchwood may be stuck in limbo after the disappointing Miracle Day, but it was great to see Captain Jack Harkness present in spirit via the time vortex manipulator that saved Clara’s bacon and united her with the three Doctors.
29. “Do you have to talk like children? What is it that makes you so ashamed of being a grown up?” Hurt’s exasperation with the whimsical personalities of his later selves is funny as hell, but it also reminds us that those personality traits are, at least in part, a way the Doctor distances himself from the dark memories and guilt he’s accumulated over the centuries. It also stands as an example of how William Hartnell’s Doctor might have felt about his older but sillier incarnations.
30. The portrayal of Ten and Eleven as “the man who regrets” and “the man who forgets” was a very powerful idea. However, this is one of many moments where Christopher Eccleston’s involvement would have taken things up a level. The absence of the Doctor who was most close to Hurt’s War Doctor is felt frequently, and you can’t help but notice the moments — like this one — where he really should have been there. Whatever the reasons Eccleston didn’t want to participate, it’s a shame and a missed opportunity, and not just because it would have been great to see Hurt fully regenerate into Eccleston.
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