The Day Of The Doctor: 50 Things We Loved (And A Few Things We Didn’t)
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31. “It’s the same screwdriver.” The notion of each sonic screwdriver being the same one, only in a different case, is classic Who problem solving, not to mention a foreshadowing of the episode’s climax and a comment on the nature of the regenerating Doctor as well (“same software, different face). However, what really sells the moment is that, after very cleverly coming up with the idea of having Hurt start the calculations so Smith’s screwdriver can open the door, Clara simply walks in through the unlocked door, which none of them bothered to check. There’s a reason the guy keeps companions around…
32. I’ll never look at a cup-of-soup the same way again. Of course I almost never look at cup-of-soups, but the truth still stands.
33. Here comes the Queen, and yet again, Ten is completely wrong about who’s a Zygon. At this point, he should just assume that whoever he thinks is a Zygon, probably isn’t.
34. “Is there a lot of this in the future?” “It does start to happen, yeah.” Hurt’s comment on David Tennant getting one planted on him is a sly little jab at the notion of the “sexy Doctor” ushered in by Tennant. Not that the earlier Doctors weren’t dashing and heroic, but they didn’t seem to get snogged nearly as often as the latter-day blokes.
35. The three TARDISes. Simply getting to see the three side-by-side, as well as their different interiors, was a treat. And you have to love Smith dismissing Tennant’s TARDIS with the line, “It’s his grunge phase, he grows out of it.”
36. “Look, the round things!” “I love the round things!” “What are the round things?” “”No idea.” (The round things, of course, are a nod to the very first TARDIS set — seen above — the one that shepherded William Hartnell’s First Doctor around the universe.)
37. “This is not a decision you will ever be able to live with.” The choice the Doctor faces when it comes to ending the Time War is very much like the no-good-options challenge faced by another iconic science fiction hero — Star Trek’s Kobayashi Maru test, the so-called no-win scenario. And just as Kirk defeated it by changing the parameters of the scenario (i.e., cheating), the Doctors also refuse both solutions and create a third option. It’s outside the (phone) box thinking at its best.
38. The revelation of the three Doctors in the painting as they’re using it as a shortcut into the Undergallery — simply epic.
39. The quiet conversation between Clara and Hurt’s War Doctor lays out the fundamental question of the entire special. Did Hurt make the right choice? Even though his actions were terrible, and left him scarred forever, they’ve spurred his later selves “How many worlds has his regret saved?” It’s Clara whose instinct helps her realize that Hurt hasn’t actually taken those steps yet, and that there is still time to sway him. Yet again, she is there to save the Doctor, and to remind him who he is, even when he tries to abandon that promise he made to the universe. “[Do] what you’ve always done. Be a Doctor.”
40. He finally gets a big red button.
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