50. The Day of the Doctor

THE DAY IS HERE, EVERYBODY. THE DAY IS HERE. The moment we have all been waiting so patiently for (hopefully), the day that we has been the constant topic of conversation and the most anticipated day of 2013–certainly the most anticipated day for Doctor Who, period–has AT LONG LAST arrived!!

Gracious, I’m getting crazy butterflies just sitting here writing this. It’s going to take me WEEKS to recover from this episode. It was POSITIVELY SPLENDIFEROUS!! Absolutely perfect in EVERY SINGLE WAY POSSIBLE! Steven Moffat!! WELL DONE, SIR! You GENIUS!!! How do you keep being so brilliant?? This is Moffat’s best episode to date! It really is! The story was MAGNIFICENT and all the Doctors together…AAAGGGHHH! It was just fantastic!

So! Premise of the story! It’s the end of the Time War for John Hurt’s Doctor, and he’s trying to decide whether to destroy Gallifrey or not. He stole a machine called The Moment that he was going to use to perform the deed. Suddenly, the “conscience” of the machine comes to life, in the form of Rose Tyler, and she takes him into his future to see what kind of man he’ll be in the future, after he’s destroyed Gallifrey.

Blimey, there’s SO MUCH to talk about! So Clara and the Doctor are still on a tentative schedule, as far as time traveling goes. Meaning Clara doesn’t live in the TARDIS with the Doctor 24/7 like Rose, Martha and Donna did. She apparently has a new job as a teacher. I didn’t quite catch if she liked the job. It sounded like she didn’t, but again, didn’t catch what she said.

The opening title!! I LOVED IT!! The words “Matt Smith” comes up on the screen as he flies by hanging on to the TARDIS. It was priceless! XD

Can I just say how BOSS Gallifreyan paintings are?? Of COURSE they would be bigger on the inside, hence the whole 3-D effect. That’s going to look SO COOL at the cinema in 3-D! That’s probably the thing I’m looking forward to the most when my sister and I go to see it on the big screen.

I don’t know how Moffat came up with the idea to go with the whole Doctor and Elizabeth I story, but it was a GREAT idea! They were quite an amusing couple. Bess was absolutely infatuated with Ten, but Ten didn’t seem completely enthusiastic about the whole thing. The fact that he couldn’t tell her apart from the Zygon was a clue, I think, that their whole relationship was a mistake.

Okay, Zygons are absolutely terrifying! They’re shapeshifters, I guess. They can take the form of any living thing and assimilate their personalities, so as to avoid discovery. Things got confusing very quickly. They’re the perfect “Moffat monster” and I’m VERY surprised that Moffat hasn’t brought them in sooner. He could do so many evil things with those creatures. Oh dear…

So this is the story of how all three of the Doctors came together. I guess it was The Moment that created those time fissures, tears in reality, that enabled them all to be together. THE FEZ RETURNED! AGAIN!!! And it was absolutely FANTASTIC to see Ten put it on! Tee hee! John Hurt had the opportunity to put the fez on. I was sitting there on the couch saying, “Put the fez on, John. JAWN!! Put on the fez!” But he never did. You had ONE opportunity, John. ONE! :p

I LOVED John Hurt’s Doctor SO MUCH!! He was TERRIFIC. Just…perfectly terrific! His character was actually a bit unexpected for me. I was expecting him to be this really grim and gruff Doctor, but he actually had a good bit of “twinkle” in him too. And it was wonderful!! He was serious enough to be the show stealer we know him to be (he really does steal the spotlight with just a look), but he also still had that playful, childlike side to him. Oh goodness! I loved him!!

And Ten and Eleven together…oh my goodness! There couldn’t have been a better pairing. They played off each other so well, and it was so interesting to watch the differences and similarities between them, all in the same scene. Ten and Eleven are so similar, but they’re also VERY, VERY different. It looked like Matt Smith and David Tennant had a blast acting together.

One thing the episode did NOT do was explain WHY ON EARTH THE MOMENT’S “CONSCIENCE” LOOKED LIKE ROSE! It was very evident that we were not seeing Rose Tyler, but somebody else entirely. Which makes sense ’cause I’ve heard Moffat isn’t a Rose Tyler fan. So I applaud him for indulging the fans with Billie Piper coming back. But at the same time, he couldn’t have Rose Tyler in there, ’cause he doesn’t like her, so he went all clever with her character and gave her a completely different role that I don’t understand, to be honest. Is she supposed to be Bad Wolf? The Moment is supposed to be Bad Wolf? How can that be? If anyone can shed any light–theories, anything–to help us understand. ‘Cause I was completely confused. But I liked her character, whoever she was! She was kinda like Idris in The Doctor’s Wife.

That scene in the Tower of London with the door was priceless!! It’s SO like the Doctor to spend hours and hours, potentially, on a door, trying to figure out how to open it, despite the fact that sonic screwdrivers don’t work on wood, only to find that the door is actually unlocked. Classic!! That made my life so much! XD

Was anyone else almost crying when John Hurt’s Doctor went back to Gallifrey, and Ten and Eleven joined him to push the “big red button”? They decided to be there too so he wouldn’t have to do it alone. MY FEELS!!! It was heartbreaking!! They all were going to be part of the darkest day of the Doctor’s life. His home, his family, his friends, everything that was familiar to him, everything he grew up with he was on the brink of annihilating.

Except…a thing happened.

Who was it who had the idea? Clara? Ten? Eleven? All of them? I don’t remember who it was ’cause I was caught up in the moment (PUN! Haha! Anyway…), but someone came up with the BRILLIANT idea to throw in a little surprise for the Daleks. One last battle maneuver in the Time War. Freeze Gallifrey in, what was it, a time lock or a parallel universe, that would make the planet disappear and make the Daleks THINK that it was destroyed.

GALLIFREY WOULD BE SAFE. In a nutshell.

GALLIFREY WOULD BE SAFE.

Before I go on, I have a point I’d like to talk about. The Day of the Doctor wasn’t a typical Moffat episode where there’s one HUGE mindblowing thing at the end. Instead, there was a series of little mindblowing things scattered here and there all over the episode. It was a lot of fun! The first mindblowing thing was where we find out that the Zygons were the things that got out of the paintings and THEY were what was under the sheets in that one room. A VERY The Time of Angels moment!

The next moment was with the whole door scene, where John Hurt’s Doctor was talking about software on the sonic screwdriver, and how it would take centuries to download. But of course, since they were all there, Eleven being himself centuries older than John Hurt, has had time for the software to download, and it was actually completed on his screwdriver!  That was one of those gradual realization moments, and it was fantastic!

(I AM going somewhere with this, by the way. Just so you know.)

There was another mindblowing moment that was more of a “OF COURSE!” moment with the painting. I had a feeling that the two names for it, “No More” and “Gallifrey Falls”, would amount to something, but I didn’t know what it would be. Then the curator came along and put the two titles together: “Gallifrey Falls No More”. OF COURSE! Of course, the two titles could be put together! And it makes a beautiful title, I must say!

There’s different types of mindblowing moments with Moffat, I’m realizing. :p

And finally, the last one was with freezing Gallifrey. With just three TARDISes, it would be impossible, but with multiple TARDISes, they could do it. Now again, I was caught up in the moment, so I didn’t catch how all the Doctors were there with their TARDIS. But there they were, all of them there to save their home planet.

Nine was there. NINE WAS THERE!! I squealed in pure delight. HE WAS THERE!! I was as happy as can be.

But THEN…

TWELVE!!! THE TWELFTH DOCTOR!!! ASDFGHJKLKJHGFDSA!!!

I literally SCREAMED at the television. The kind of scream that you instantly regret because it was so loud and ridiculous. XD BUT HE WAS THERE!!! OH MAH WORD!!! I was hoping, and secretly suspecting, that we would catch a sneak peek of Twelve here in the 50th. I saw a post on Facebook that got my suspicions up. AND THEN IT HAPPENED!! It was definitely my favorite part of the episode. 😀

So I had gotten everything out of the episode I wanted. WELLLLL, almost everything. We got all the classic Doctors into the episode, in a way, which was something I was secretly hoping Moffat would do. But we were so close, SO CLOSE, to seeing a Hurt-to-Eccleston regeneration! It was there! It was happening! But we didn’t get to see it all the way through. 😦 Oh well. I’m just glad that, again, Moffat indulged the fans, because I’m almost certain that he’s heard that the fans have been crying out for a regeneration scene.

We got to see Tom Baker at the end of the episode too! That was just a fun scene ’cause we didn’t know who it was going to be showing up. It was great. 🙂

I liked how the story covered the Doctor’s tracks in this episode. Since they all weren’t supposed to be there, whenever they left, they would forget what happened there. Since the Daleks believed that Gallifrey was destroyed, so would the Doctor. Simple as that. Nothing complicated. It makes perfect sense. Nine was the aggressive Doctor he was because he actually thought he had killed everyone. But he didn’t. It’s actually kind of a good thing he didn’t remember because if that secret got out, that Gallifrey wasn’t destroyed and was still out there, the results could be catastrophic!

Moffat was NOT kidding when he said that this episode changes all of Doctor Who from here on out. Gallifrey’s out there! It’s not destroyed, the Doctor still has a home and everyone is still alive. SO. MUCH. YUS. EVERYTHING changes from here! It means the Doctor has to go out there and find Gallifrey again. Twelve, that’s going to be your job! 😉 Oh my goodness, I’m SO EXCITED!!! We’re possibly going to be actually seeing episodes ON GALLIFREY next series! HOW COOL IS THAT!!! Oh, it’s going to be beautiful to watch!

Okay, what was your favorite part of the episode? Any thoughts that you have?

I was so excited afterwards, so full of joy that I was shaking! Actually shaking! A new type of reaction to Doctor Who for me. :p I CAN’T WAIT to see it again on Monday at the movie theater! It’s going to be AMAZING!!

A million thanks to you, Steven Moffat, and everyone else who helped make this 50th anniversary episode. You truly performed wonders with it, and it couldn’t have been more perfect. You are GENIUSES, the lot of you! 🙂

HAPPY 50TH ANNIVERSARY, DOCTOR WHO!!!! ❤ ❤