"The Time of the Doctor"

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"The Sixty Minute Televisual Crime of the Doctor." Ugh. Why do I do this to myself? Well, it took me over six months to muster up the effort to sit through the 2013 New Who Christmas Special again and here we are at review time. This is a weird episode, because not only is it the aforementioned Christmas instalment but it is also Matt Smith's final feature as the Doctor. The Christmas references are fairly perfunctory, but they are nonetheless as present and pointless as ever. We begin with a Moffat favourite from Series 7: an introductory voiceover. Do you know how many times real Doctor Who did voiceovers? As far as I'm aware, precisely once, in the first episode of "The Deadly Assassin." That was the first story to be entirely set on Gallifrey - although we had seen it previously in Part 10 of "The War Games" and in cutaways during "The Three Doctors" - and it was a big deal. It was, as it were, an event. These days every other episode is an "event" or a "blockbuster," which is to say they're dusting off some costumes or stretching the CGI budget, so I suppose I should hardly be surprised. It doesn't make the use of voiceovers any less inept, in my opinion. This reveals some message heard throughout the universe which brings ships from all the various Doctor Who aliens to circle around in orbit. That is to say, it's basically the same scenario as "The Pandorica Opens" from Series 5, Matt Smith's first series. Is Moffat trying to show how we've come full circle, or could he just not be arsed with a new idea? I'll leave that one up to you.

"I'm just... just fixing a Dalek eyestalk..."

Moffat has not abandoned his penchant for obnoxious twee twaddle, however, and the Doctor, arriving on the scene, is described as "The Man Who Stayed For Christmas." I think the cringe will break my face. He shows up in some area that's obviously a Dalek ship waving a Dalek eye stalk around saying he's come in peace. He also wears a cloak for no discernible reason. The Daleks show up feeling cross and he neatly teleports away, complaining to a damaged Cyberman head attached to the TARDIS console that it needs to be more careful where it sends him. I'm not sure why he hadn't figured that out himself, but in actual fact it's just pure, senseless time wasting for the sake of a joke. The TARDIS phone rings and Smithy sets up a long winded subplot with the Cyberman head involving the need to remind him to make it start ringing inside again rather than in the dummy box on the outside, which I suppose is an effort to justify that pointless set piece in the Anniversary Special where he was hanging from the ship in mid air. Back on Earth in the present day Clara implores the Doctor to impersonate her boyfriend at Christmas dinner. He goes into full on Leslie Phillips mode exclaiming "ding dong!" and telling her that he "may be a bit rusty in some areas." It's mildly amusing but it's also crass and unnecessary. Clara's accent slips as usual when she tells him to "shoot oop" and Murray Gold's "silly" theme starts playing so that we don't accidentally think the scene is serious. The Doctor makes one more expedition to a nearby ship with his Cyber-head: it's of course a Cyberman ship, and the joke from the beginning gets repeated. As openings go, it's a load of directionless pointless waffle indicative of the already obvious fact that the people making this thing have no idea what to do with it. The titles roll.

"Dad, why don't you tell us the story of the time you
got a face transplant and aged twenty years in eight?"

So Clara has a few random family members around: a grandmother who says pointless things, a nonspecific lady and a man who is apparently her father. I guess they had to recast because last time we saw her father he looked like he was Clara's only slightly older brother. Clara enters the TARDIS to discover the Smith strutting around in the nip because he's "going to Church." This doesn't get explained for a while. He uses some holographic device to project clothes into Clara's mind, scares her family by pratting about in front of them, as they can't see his holographic clothes, spanks Clara on the bum to fulfil the "boyfriend" role and helps Clara with the turkey by sticking it in the time engines or something in the TARDIS. Struggling to fill sixty minutes are we, Moffat? We also get a bit of casual racism when Clara attributes the Doctor's nudity to him being "Swedish". Then the Doctor and Clara piss off back to the planet, relatively arbitrarily as far as I can tell. Although all of the Doctor's biggest enemies are there, none of them seem to especially mind the TARDIS in their midst, even despite the Doctor repeatedly boarding their vehicles with bits of their dead kin. The planet is conveniently "shielded" which stops them from investigating the message, but Handles the Cyber-head reckons the planet is Gallifrey. Well that was quick, wasn't it? Guess we've wrapped up the new plot arc established in the previous episode already! The Doctor of course doesn't believe it, although he doesn't propose any way of checking.

Two hearts, thirteen lives, four bollocks.

A huge ship appears, which the Doctor reveals to be the "Papal Mainframe" which I believe was mentioned back in "A Good Man Goes To War" - and yes, I really am embarrassed to remember that. Some woman's gigantic hologram face appears on the side and beckons the Doctor over. It turns out that this "Papal Mainframe" ship is the one "shielding" the planet. Why don't the Daleks or someone blow them up then? Don't they have those giant planet cracker missiles from the Asylum episode? I shudder to recall it. Inside the ship we meet the "Mother Superious," a character named "Tasha Lem" aka the narrator of the opening and the hologram face on the ship, whose role seems to be "River Song substitute." She flirts with the Doctor, calling him "babes" among other things. The flirty dialogue is utterly wretched. Clara has to use some hologram thing too to project clothes onto her because "You can't go to Church with your clothes on." Why? It's never explained - it's just an excuse for Moffat to get everyone to say "naked" a bunch of times and probably because he wants to imagine Jenna Coleman with her kit off. Imagine if back in '63 you'd told Bill Hartnell that in fifty years time the character he pioneered would be pratting around talking about being naked in a space church. He'd spit his gin halfway across the publican's house. Smithy describes Clara as his "associate," struggling for some reason to say that she's his friend. Why? Is it meant to imply that he carries a bit of a torch for her or something? Urgh. Tasha Lem says she has "confidential matters" to discuss with the Doctor, heavily implying that they're making Clara stand out in the corridor while they bone in her room. The Doctor scoffs at Clara for suggesting to this effect, but the connotation's still the same: he treats Clara like a dick and as if she doesn't matter. I don't have much interest in Clara, but this bit really irritates me because it seems so out of character. It's all part of Moffat's annoying portrayal of the Doctor as this lying, secret-keeping anti-hero who always turns out to be a good guy in the end. While the Smith and Tasha Lem chinwag in her puritanical sex dungeon Clara gets menaced by a familiar figure: oh look, it's a Silent from Series 6. Long time no see. Turns out they work for the Church, I guess, and not the other way around.

"Steven said he likes them shaved."

Tasha Lem claims that the message from the planet is causing "fear" among the other species present, which seems awfully convenient, almost as convenient as the Church people getting there first to "shield" the planet. Nonetheless she's concerned about the possibility of conflict breaking out. There's some pointless waffle about the Doctor handing over his TARDIS key before he and Clara, all Silents forgotten, teleport down to the planet. It's cold on the surface so the Doctor essentially grabs and rubs his naked companion for warmth before Weeping Angels start grabbing them from the snow. It really is a Moffat-stravaganza. The Angels supposedly "must have got past Tasha's shield." That's also very convenient. How? Do they use ships, or do they just fly through space like the Fungi from Yuggoth? It doesn't matter because the Doctor reveals he's wearing a wig, whips out another TARDIS key and summons the TARDIS. Apart from a short moment later, that's the entire pointless cameo of the Angels. The scene where they actually appear from the snow is also clumsily shot and incoherent. The Doctor decides he needs to search for "The Mysterious Message." It's a phrase he likes, and it does have a ring to it. Baldness surprisingly works for him too - I believe he had to shave his head for a film role. With the TARDIS they head for the town where they spill the beans about themselves to a few locals due to a "truth field." Among other things this causes Clara to fess up that "I really fancy-" someone, presumably the Doctor. The New Who female companion is attracted to the Doctor? Zero points for originality Moffat, and besides, we've danced around this nonsense already. When they ask if the inability to lie makes anything difficult, the local woman replies "not at all" while the man remarks "yes." I don't even want to contemplate what's being implied there, although I expect it's Moffat's usual insane gender dynamics. Clara wonders how the town can be called "Christmas" but the Doctor retorts that the same could be asked of Easter Island. Well, it's called that because Jacob Roggeveen found it on Easter Sunday. What's the excuse for this alien town on some planet in deep space? Then again it's implied to be a human colony.

"Push!"

The message is coming from a sort of Church Hall type building in town, and inside the Doctor discovers another blast from the not especially distant past, a Time Crack of Series 5 fame. We get flashbacks to 2010 when New Who was briefly good. We also get this as the explanation for what was in the Doctor's room in "The God Complex." Was this really his greatest fear? The Doctor claims that the crack is still there because "the scar tissue remains, a structural weakness" in the universe. Doesn't this contradict the ending of "The Big Bang" which basically said that the cracks never existed? Maybe when Amy "remembered" the Doctor back into reality that ipso facto remembered the cracks too. Who knows. Someone's trying to send a message through the "weakest point" of the universe, along with the truth field, which explains why Handles the Head thought it was Gallifrey: the Time Lords are on the other side of the crack. In an unexpected reference to "The Five Doctors" the Smith whips out the Seal of the High Council which Pertwee took from Ainley in the Death Zone and Handles uses it to translate the message. There's a weird pointless bit where the head describes the message as a "request for information" and the Doctor fumes "Why can't you just say it's a question?" Why does it matter? Anyway the question is our "oldest question": so old that it dates back to ancient Who history, or rather "Let's Kill Hitler" of a few years ago, and because the Time Lords are sending it through "all time and space" that explains why it's so old. The question of course is "Doctor who" which is shown being played in this ridiculous drawn out fashion in the Dalek ships and so on: "Doctor whoooo?" I thought the explanation had something to do with John Hurt back in the Anniversary Special and "The Name of the Doctor" but apparently not. So the Time Lords want the Doctor to say his name so they know it's safe to come through. Why would they do it in such a contrived way, yet broadcast everywhere so everyone could hear it? Of course if they return the "Time War will begin again" blah blah blah so it doesn't seem like a good idea. The floating disembodied head of Tasha Lem reveals that the planet on which they're standing is Trenzalore, aka the site of the Doctor's supposed final battle, the ruins of which were seen in "The Name of the Doctor." But they're concerned that "The Time War will begin anew." Does Moffat keep having to riff on RTD's crap ideas? Clara gets sent home while Tasha Lem starts spouting off pseudo-medieval sounding dialogue like "This world will burn" and "The Siege of Trenzalore is now begun." The Doctor gets riled at Handles for being too specific. Why does he never tell any of these plums off with all the bollocks they spew constantly?

"Mark and I came up with a new setting for the Sonic.
It's going to make writing Series 8 much easier."

Tasha Lem declares that the Church's top priority is now "Silence," an overly elaborate way of saying preventing the Doctor from saying his name, which he seemingly doesn't want to do anyway. Ridiculously, the other Church soldiers all start chanting "Silence will fall." I guess that explains that catch phrase then. She goes back to narrating about how the Doctor defended the town from the alien interlopers trying to stop him from saying his name. He doesn't want to say his name because he knows the time isn't ripe for the Time Lords to return, so why doesn't he just leave? I suppose the Daleks or whoever might just blow up the innocent town to be on the safe side. Defending the town involves a handful of tokenistic attacks, like a couple of comedy Sontarans in an invisible car, an Angel getting trapped in front of a mirror (what if someone covers it?) and a very plastic-looking wooden cyberman designed to sell action figures. I googled it and yes, there is a wooden Cyberman toy. Arbitrarily it seems, sometimes the Church blows stuff up and sometimes the Doctor blows stuff up. When the Church blows up the Sontarans it declares that "the relevant afterlives have been notified." When I heard this I realised what I was hearing was basically a poor imitation of Douglas Adams humour. Oddly enough, in the extras on one of the Tom Baker DVDs from the Graham Williams era Moffat suggests that Adams wasn't the best choice of script editor at that time, which is probably true. I can't help but think from this, though, that if he'd been Executive Producer he'd probably be Moffat's idol. Anyway this is Moffat Who so we have to have a kid. The kid rings a bell and Matt Smith emerges with some latex wrinkles on his face and some toys for the children. He convinces the wooden Cyberman to blow itself up by telling it he's used the sonic screwdriver on it, but of course in New Who it doesn't work on wood. What about the truth field then? Who knows. We get some more montage stuff of the Doctor partying with the locals. In the background there's a weird Punch and Judy show featuring a puppet of a Monoid, referencing classic Hartnell serial "The Ark," an early story to feature a time-skip. That served a narrative purpose, and "The Ark" is generally not considered one of the greats of Doctor Who. Here the time skip seems relatively pointless, but I'm led to believe, as I've stated elsewhere, that it's what Moffat does when he's struggling to write.

Personally I'd sue the surgeon.

The Doctor tells the little kids "cool is not cool." I guess that's kind of giving them a good message to not succumb to peer pressure? Then he asks one of the kids "How's your father's barn," which sounds deeply euphemistic, especially when the kid replies that they've "fixed the leak." Then the TARDIS reappears with Clara still clinging on. The kid asks the Doctor if he's leaving and he doesn't say anything. Much like the earlier moment it's cod-dramatic nonsense where the Doctor refuses to be straightforward purely for the sake of forcing the sentiments. In the hall, there are cheesy things like drawings of the Doctor with "I love you" written on them and stuff. The Doctor takes Clara up to the roof so they can witness the brief daylight. We get a vaguely poignant conversational scene here, although the best bit, and saying it's "best" is stretching the friendship by a terrific margin, is when the Cyberman head reminds the Doctor about the telephone and then carks it. The Doctor replies, "Thank you, Handles, and well done." Despite being a touch drawn out, it's simple and effective enough. Why couldn't it be more like this? Smithy tells Clara that he sent her away because it was that or bury her, and reveals that he has no regenerations left because of the newly revealed John Hurt incarnation and the fact that Tennant regenerated twice: he had "vanity issues." Yeah, and shit writing issues. Basically Moffat's using all this as an excuse to be the one to answer the regeneration limit question, having played hell with the numbering: suddenly Eccly is the tenth incarnation of the character, Tennant the eleventh and the twelfth, and Smith is the thirteenth! Good grief. People are still arguing about this on the internet, some people trying to seem like clever clogs by calling Smithy things like "Thirteen" and "The Thirteenth Doctor." The Doctor reminds Clara of the cemetery from "The Name of the Doctor" and how this is where he dies. He's sticking around to save lives, but despite three hundred years fixing toys he can't seem to figure out a way to save his own. Incidentally, his wrinkly face makeup doesn't match his non-wrinkly neck.

It was a really sour lemon drop.

Tasha Lem summons him to the Church ship. Moffat's arbitrary kid, "Barnable," is hanging around at the TARDIS. His very brief conversations with the Doctor don't do much to add any additional pathos to the narrative. Lots of cheesy "ooh ooh ooh" background choral warbling comes in as well. It turns out the Silents are "confessional priests" genetically engineered to be forgettable. So they're human, then? In Tasha Lem's sex chamber the Doctor discovers that the events of Series 5 and 6 were caused by the "Kovarian Chapter" of the Church breaking away and going back in time to try to stop anything happening. They blew up the TARDIS and caused the cracks in the universe. How, precisely, did they blow up the TARDIS? Did someone go inside? We'll probably never know unless Moffat deigns to tell us in an interview or something. Heaven forbid it ever get revealed in a timely fashion during the actual programme. I've seen a video from a convention where Matt Smith tries and fails to explain it, deciding that we ought to just "blame the Daleks." Matt Smith always seems like a good sort. He really wasn't best served by the writing during his tenure. So it's all explained away as a "destiny trap," or, to put it more accurately, an ontological paradox where the effect is also the cause: the efforts of the Silence to prevent the cracks in time were the very actions which created them. There are also some offhand remarks about River but I'm buggered as to how all that mess fits together. It's a hurried explanation for everything that happened which only goes to show how muddled Series 6 in particular was. Tasha Lem reveals that the Church was attacked by the Daleks and they've all been turned into Dalek puppets: "I died in this room screaming your name." It's typical Moffat weirdness and a reiteration of the Angel Bob thing from Series 5. How do I remember all this shite? The Doctor gets all cranky about Tasha Lem being taken over, but who cares? I don't know who she is. The Daleks burst in and reveal that despite losing their memories of him back in "Asylum of the Daleks" they recovered all the necessary information from Tasha Lem, so that whole thing's just been repealed instantly. The Daleks don't want the Doctor to answer the question. Wouldn't they want to have a big old war? Isnt' that what Daleks do? Besides, as has been established, the Doctor doesn't want to say his name either! I don't know.

Miracle Matt?

To get Tasha Lem out of her mind control the Doctor harasses her until she slaps him - more of Moffat thinking that female equality means showing them responding to problems with violence - and then they mack on each other because of course you can't have an important female guest star without her kissing the lead at some point. Kind of shoots any egalitarianism right between the eyes, doesn't it? The croaked line of Smith's regarding Clara, "That is a woooooman," is horrible as well. Tasha Lem conveniently blows up all the Daleks. Why are they vulnerable to their own puppets? Convenient really is the watchword of this episode. She sends the Doctor back down to Trenzalore so that the Church can continue the fight against the Daleks and the Doctor can escape. Wouldn't this mean that "The Name of the Doctor" could never happen? Then again that was pretty pointless anyway, serving only really to introduce the John Hurt incarnation. Back in the TARDIS, the turkey is done. So what? Who cares? Clara makes the Doctor promise that he won't abandon her, which he does as soppy music plays, but then he shoves some weird thing into the console, disappears, and ditches Clara in present-day Earth again. Why does Clara live in a council estate? Are teachers in the UK paid that badly? Back on Trenzalore the Doctor tells Barnable that the TARDIS is a "reminder." To rewire the phone, I suppose. We see some montage of the Doctor teaming up with the Silents to fight their enemies until everyone's pissed off except for, of course the Daleks. This conflict has united the "ancient enemies: the Doctor and the Silence." Yeah, ancient since 2011. Back at Clara's place we get some really cagey efforts with appalling dialogue as the nondescript lady - is she Clara's dad's partner or something? - waffles on and the grandmother tells a story about a time when she "wanted nothing to change." How apposite! The TARDIS instantly returns and Clara pisses off again. What was the point of that? It's being piloted by Tasha Lem, who apparently knows how to control it. She must be a stand in for River Song. She takes Clara back to Christmas town, which over nine hundred years has barely changed despite getting the shit blown out of it by the Daleks. Having been told that the Doctor "shouldn't die alone," Clara finds Smithy slathered in even more old man makeup, almost evocative (maybe if you squint and turn your head) of a bedraggled, rubbery Hartnell. One of the better lines is when the Doctor asks Clara "Were you always so young?" and she replies "No, that was you." They break open a Christmas cracker and Clara recites a cheesy "extract" of a poem (actually by Moffat) which directly ties into the Doctor's circumstances. It's clunky and heavy handed. The Doctor decides to face the music and, after briefly mistaking a young man for the little kid from centuries earlier, goes upstairs. He tells Clara that despite what he said to the boy, he doesn't have a plan. How, again, is he lying in the truth field? He says he'll "talk very fast, hope something good happens, take the credit." Sounds pretty much bang on about how New Who works. We get some very late foreshadowing when he says that he could have changed the future if the Time Lords were still around.

Only Time Lord magic can dissolve BBC (Wales) latex.

Clara gives the Crack a big speech about the "question" and how "his name is the Doctor." Symbolism doesn't matter, they just want proof if it's safe to return. She argues "if you love him, and you should," they'd help him change the future. "Love him"? Seems like a really weird thing to say to the Time Lords. Up on top of the tower the giant saucer-shaped voice of Nicholas Briggs is ranting at the Doctor about regeneration but Smithy claims they "can't work up the courage" to shoot him. They're still blowing up the town, though. Then the Crack conveniently appears in the sky and shoots generic RTD-style golden Time Lord energy into the Doctor's mouth, apparently giving him new regenerations. I think that's more or less what everyone expected, that he would be given new regenerations by the Time Lords somehow. The earlier reference to "The Five Doctors" seems to be deliberately harking back to that time when the idea of new regenerations was first put forward in the show. The Doctor gives the Daleks a big spiel about how he doesn't care about rules while gobbing everywhere, perhaps in tribute to his first scene. He tells them that this regeneration, changing the ordinary sequence, is "gonna be a whopper." Have I just become completely desensitised to this kind of inane dialogue? The regeneration of course causes giant weaponisable energy beams to shoot out of the Doctor's hands which he uses to blow up the Daleks, apparently saving the day. Was there only one saucer left? What about all the reinforcements? There's loads of smoke and detritus but the town itself inexplicably survives. Clara heads for the TARDIS in pursuit of Smith. So long Christmas Town. So long Tasha Lem or whoever you were, Silence and so on. There's absolutely no resolution to them whatsoever. The Doctor ditches his Christmas costume, gets back into his generic Series 7 duds, eats fish fingers and custard, and whaddya know, reappears without makeup as his regeneration takes effect so that he can do the final scene "as is." What a surprise. He puts the TARDIS in motion, now completely forgetting the town and everything. He muses that "everything you are" instantly disappears, which reminds me of the Tennant Doctor speculating about his death, but we don't get any "I don't want to go." In fact he declares that "Times change and so must I." Then he has a vision of young Amy played by a very obvious stand-in: Caitlin Blackwood would of course be too old by now. The Doctor goes on, saying that people always change and become "different people" but need to remember who they used to be, which isn't too bad as departing sentiments go. His final words, seemingly, are "I will always remember when the Doctor was me." I probably will too, but with a great deal of ambivalence. The "wake up" music from "The Rings of Akhaten" starts blaring, an oddly coincidental reference to another episode where there was absolutely no closure on the setting or supporting cast, as a hallucinatory Karen Gillan steps down. They must both have been bald and wearing wigs for this scene because they'd both shaved their heads for American film roles. It's a predictable cameo but I don't mind. I never disliked Amy and I think the idea of him hallucinating before he dies has a kind of whimsy to it which is preferable to say, oh I don't know, going on a grand tour of every companion ever. Seeya 'round, Matt Smith. As final moments go it's not terrible, but it's not terrifically memorable either in my opinion. The best bit is his speech about change.

"Do you happen to know how to fly this thing? Or why
the fans on Facebook are so horrifyingly ageist?"

Then he lurches backwards and wahey! It's Capaldi. He complains about his kidneys and then asks Clara if she knows how to fly the TARDIS. It would have been a decent ending if they'd cut the kidneys line. The body part complaint is pretty cliché at this point. I saw a version of this with the music mixed out and it was much better. So that's the end of "The Time of the Doctor" and the end of the Smith era. As for the episode itself, well, it's not something for which I can really feel much emotion. It's padded and badly-paced, it indicates how little Moffat really cared about the arc plots and it seems a bit hubristic to solve the regeneration limit as it does. Tasha Lem is annoying, it feels like a rehash of past Moffat episodes and Clara seems like a bystander. Matt Smith is not given A-grade material for his final performance. It's just another episode to get lost to the ravages of time. To cast my gaze back over the Smith era, it really is a disappointment. Series 5 is not as good as I made it out to be at the time, but it was decent. Series 6 was, in my opinion, generally poor, and Series 7 mediocre. Series 7 also should have been two series. Matt Smith was not allowed to reach his full potential, with his character being written after Series 5 as a clownish buffoon having to move through limited and often nonsensical narratives. The whole thing is rather hollow, Moffat unrealistically convinced of his own cleverness. It's a shame, and it makes me feel much more wary about Capaldi's tenure than I would like to be, but what can I do? Watch Classic, which is to say real, Doctor Who, I guess. The idea that this is the same show is absurd. By this point the tone and style are so radically different that they almost can't be compared. The Time of the Doctor, I'm afraid to say, is really long past.

"The Day of the Doctor"

Panic in the cinema.

So here it is, the long awaited Fiftieth Anniversary Special of Doctor Who. In tribute to this we begin, appropriately enough, with the original 60s title sequence, but before the average viewing public to whom Classic Doctor Who occupies an identical cultural space as a 1920s silent film start switching off in droves the intro fades without even getting to the full theme. Now we've switched to black and white footage of a policeman's shadow much like the opening of "An Unearthly Child." Look, the I.M. Foreman junkyard. What's the first thing we're going to see or hear? Billy Hartnell? Susan, Ian and Barbara? Nope, we colourise, see a modern policeman and are treated to Jenna Coleman reciting a quote from Marcus Aurelius. The Coal Hill school, now chaired by Ian, natch, is apparently right next to Totter's Lane these days. So Clara's a teacher now? It's a nice enough quote I suppose, and it's good to have Who referencing a bit of Classical literature. As is always the case with school scenes the bell immediately rings and some wet-looking guy who I fear will turn into a love interest for Clara next series bumbles in to deliver a note from the Doctor. Let's call this guy Rory Mark II, shall we? Clara gets onto a motorbike because she's sassy and cool, drives off to the TARDIS and finds the Doctor inside reading a book about quantum physics because he's a scientist and loves reading about scientific science.

As much as he might not like to admit it.

What follows is an unbelievably cringe-inducingly cheesy back-and-forth between Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman, the latter issuing the line "Moon'll do," in particular in a surprisingly stagey way. This is followed by typical big hug times between them before a huge crane picks up the TARDIS. At the Tower of London some cliché dorky girl wearing the Fourth Doctor's scarf as pointless fan service hurries over to Kate Stewart aka the Brigadier's daughter from "The Power of Three." Is Doris her mum? Anyway she has Kate's phone. She also has asthma. Got to know that she's a proper nerd. Turns out the Doctor's calling Kate Stewart from the TARDIS. Apparently he has to use the phone outside the box now, when in the rest of New Who it's always been inside. In fact in "The Empty Child" written by Moffat himself Eccly explicitly states that the phone on the outside isn't real. Regardless, UNIT are bringing in the TARDIS by helicopter for the sake of pointless spectacle. Wouldn't a truck do? And why were they bringing it in if the Doctor himself wasn't there? Then we get the Smith hanging from the TARDIS for no particular reason as they fly over London, along with cinematic titles to show that New Who is all grown up and wearing big boy pants now and is a movie instead of TV.

"City of Death? Never heard of it."

The Doctor jumps off outside the National Gallery. "Why am I saluting?" he asks, saluting UNIT. Don't you love the Doctor constantly referencing his own behaviour? Kate Stewart gives him some letter from Elizabeth I who we might remember a lot of shit jokes being made about in previous New Who eps and the Doctor and Clara head inside. The Doctor tells her about how he used to work at UNIT and they talk a lot of rubbish about jobs and such. Elizabeth I's "credentials" are a big 3D painting of Gallifrey featuring the "fall of Arcadia," an event from the Time War evasively referenced by RTD in the past. Moffat's decided that Arcadia is "Gallifrey's second city" to explain why it looks so much like the Capitol without having to actually be the Capitol. The picture is apparently a "slice of real time, frozen." It makes me think of the bit in "City of Death" where Romana says Gallifreyan paintings are all computer generated, except not. What follows are a bunch of weird cuts to shots of the Doctor's face and him standing alone, before revealing that the painting shows an event at which "the other me" was present, stating that of his past selves "I don't admit to all of them." Why not? We know by now that John Hurt is a secret incarnation between P McG and Eccly. He's admitted openly to numerous people over the course of New Who that he ended the Time War by killing all of the Time Lords and Daleks and besides that he fought in the war generally. So what's the big secret about John Hurt? It's a meaningless thing to keep secret within the narrative of the show, only done to surprise the audience, and as such makes absolutely no sense. He says that as the War Doctor he was "a man with more blood on his hands than any other" but we see absolutely no evidence of that.

Yeah, that's how I felt.

What we do see is the "Last Day of the Time War" which, in complete contradiction of what happened in "The End of Time", features about a bajillion Dalek saucers pwning Gallifrey with lasers like a poor man's Star Wars prequel. It's a cliché, generic sci-fi battle with green and red lights and boring conventional weaponry. No time travel, no weirdness, just lasers and explosions. If Moffat didn't have the money or imagination to do it properly, why did he bother doing it at all? While RTD's completely at fault for inventing the Time War in the first place, he always said that it was better left to the viewers' imaginations, and apparently he was right. Wasn't Gallifrey safe and sound at the "edge" of the War, and wasn't it a war of mutually assured destruction with the Daleks and Time Lords as bad as each other? Weren't we reminded of this as recently as "The Night of the Doctor"? Well not any more, instead it's the Time Lords getting totally victimised, with the Gallifreyans running around screaming while weird flying Dalek things that look like the spy droids from The Empire Strikes Back zoom around blowing shit up. Where's the Time Lords' military hardware? Weren't they meant to have become bad ass mofos? Murray Gold's pouring it on thick, too, just in case we're not aware that bad things are happening. Some soldier with a regional accent sees the Doctor's TARDIS, and John Hurt shows up and asks for his gun. Are we about to see the War Doctor finally kicking some heads in? Blasting Daleks away? Creating a diversion while civilians are ushered to safety, perhaps? Nope, he just stands there shooting words into a wall. What's the point? How is this the "War" Doctor? The Dalek ground forces show up (apparently the infinite number of ships in space weren't enough) and it keeps arduously cutting back to John Hurt shooting this wall like he's bored in Goldeneye 64 and deciding to write his name in bullet pocks. The Daleks detect that the Doctor is close, but before they can do anything about it the TARDIS bursts through the wall, killing all of them somehow. Empty Dalek cases fall to the ground, no mutants visible within them. "What are these words?" one Dalek demands. "Explain! Explain!" He's got a point.

"The mind probe you say?"

In all honesty it's purely meaningless spectacle, the Doctor arbitrarily doing "cool stuff" that serves no purposes besides grandstanding. The Time War itself looks utterly banal, and the Time Lords are presented in a totally uninteresting way. They were repeatedly portrayed as corrupt and incompetent in the Classic Series, but the whole point of "The End of Time" was to show how bad they'd become. There shouldn't be streets of civilians or Blitz-style sirens blaring. It's stock and unimaginative. Speaking of which, in some corridor so primitive it has fans in the ceiling a bunch of Time Lords are discussing their options. The general reveals that the plans of the High Council have already failed, a grudging concession to RTD's storyline. Presumably we're meant to picture Timothy Dalton getting bitch slapped around by electric John Simm. They observe the Doctor's message: "No More." "He's a fool," one Time Lord declares. "No," refutes the other. "He's a mad man." Is there, like, a big book of clichés that Moffat uses to write his scripts? What kind of exchange is that? Supposedly the Daleks, having dealt with Arcadia, are now converging on the Capitol, but a token female Time Lord arrives to reveal that someone has broken into the "Time Vaults" where the "Omega Weapons" are kept. I suppose this is another Classic reference. The Doctor's seized "the Moment," the weapon mentioned in "The End of Time." Surely this means the events of "The End of Time" can't have happened yet, if the Doctor's only just now taking the weapon that they said he already had in the Tennant finale? For an episode so obsessed with its own continuity this one really manages to bollocks things up. The Moment is apparently a "galaxy eater", whatever that means, that is so powerful and arcane that it has a consciousness and will stand in judgement over whomever uses it. I admit that this idea is interesting. As a super-nerdy aside, the events of this episode contradict a much earlier comic which suggested that the Eighth Doctor ended the Time War and the "Moment" was a souped-up version of the D-Mat Gun from "The Invasion of Time."

The TARDIS interior after the next round of budget cuts.

We cut to John Hurt in a desert somewhere. Is he still on Gallifrey? Who knows. He issues a declaration to the Time Lords and the Daleks, apparently for his own benefit given that none of them are around, and goes to a hut in which egregious amounts of the remainder of the episode will be spent. Ditching the Moment out of a big cartoony sack it's revealed to be a goofy-looking steampunk cube with clockwork bits. It doesn't look like a weapon at all, more a contrived prop for a sci-fi TV show that secretly yearns to be the worst kind of high fantasy. Hmm. John Hurt, at least, brings a touch of class to proceedings, but before we can get too comfortable Billie Piper shows up. She starts hamming it skyward, going "Taaaaardis" and dancing back and forth mocking the Doctor saying "No more." It's just embarrassing. Apparently she's taking the form of Rose as "Bad Wolf", for no particular reason given that she's from this Doctor's future. Seriously? I mean, no offence to her, but why is Billie Piper even in this? She's not playing Rose and, spoilers beware, she never interacts with Tennant onscreen or any character who would actually recognise Rose. It's purely New Who fan service. Isn't this the Fiftieth Anniversary? John Hurt declares that he's lost the right to be the Doctor, despite never having done anything onscreen to prove it, and now wishes to end the suffering caused by the Time War. He has no desire to survive, and so the Moment declares that his punishment will be to live on after everyone else has died. This is one idea I actually thought made sense. The Moment argues that he needs to put a bit of thought into the decision. He'll kill the Daleks, but he'll kill "all those children too." Ah. Well here we are, the same old Moffat plot trotted out where children are the be all and end all of character motivation. The Moment decides to show John Hurt the future, opening up a time portal, out of which a fez plops onto the floor. How amusing.

Secret phone built into his face.

Back in the gallery, Kate Stewart restates that the painting is "Elizabeth's credentials." How? What does it prove? How does she even have it? The letter states that the Doctor was appointed the curator of the "Undergallery" where dangerous artworks are locked away. The National Gallery was founded in 1824, over two hundred years after Elizabeth's death. How could there be an "Undergallery" when there was no regular everyday gallery for it to be under? Why does it have such a cheesy name, too? It's sort of like the "Underhenge" from "The Pandorica Opens." As they piss off some knob end in a lab coat gets a mysterious phone call telling him to move the Gallifrey painting, but we cut away to Maxwell Smart style doors sliding from the ceiling to trap the Doctor and Clara in a room with a painting of somebody wearing a yellow-white dress with red hair and a pale face who's supposed to resemble Elizabeth I, and David Tennant. As Smithy goes back into recollection, we cut to a shot of coastline where the words "England 1562" are cornily sitting on the sand.

"It also has a bell on the end, much like m'good self..."

Oh god no, it's David Tennant on a horse. Riding with him is some woman putting on a twee accent and speaking atrocious dialogue to apparently be Elizabeth I. Abandoning any pretence, we see the Tenth Doctor as nothing more than a decadent lothario as he lounges around having a picnic, with Elizabeth and her prominent bosom resting upon him. Tennant reminds Elizabeth that he's not English, which the massive nerd in me contrasts to the Eighth Doctor's agreement with being described as British in the TV Movie. Tennant asks Elizabeth to marry him, to which she agrees, before he gives a long winded speech about how this proves she's a Zygon. He has a machine that goes "ding" which is over described beyond the point of humour. It turns out, however, that in actual fact the horse is a Zygon. It transforms into a big rubbery red alien and comes charging at them. Around this point we get more of the Doctor being blatantly self-referential, describing his own appearance as a "handsome bloke in a tight suit." Is that really plausible? The return of the Zygons was a big deal given that they were something of a fan favourite in classic Tom Baker serial "Terror of the Zygons" after which they were never seen again. At the risk of sounding like an appalling Classic Series apologist, I find them more convincing than these Zygons, who due to advances in costume technology look more detailed but at the same time infinitely more fake than the Zygons from 1975. They are hyperreal and as such implausible. It's similar to an uncanny valley effect, I propose - in trying to make them more convincing they go too far, and it becomes more difficult to suspend disbelief.

"Was it a mistake to not do a non-RTD series? No, no, of course not..."

After declaring that he's "going to need a new horse" David Tennant accosts a rabbit, which is also too hilarious for words, before tracking down Elizabeth and a duplicate Elizabeth. One of them is, of course, a Zygon. Don't they have to string people up in stasis to copy them? We will see that this episode tries to have it both ways. The two Elizabeths argue as I despair, Tennant standing around like a numpty abusing his ding machine before the time portal opens. It's a "tear in the fabric of reality," Tennant declares, regurgitating the same tired descriptions of modern sci-fi. Out falls the fez, Moffat taking immense pleasure in his own inventions.

You know what they say about big faces.

Back in the Undergallery, where apparently there is "art too dangerous for public consumption," whatever that means outside a totalitarian police state, the Smith observes stone dust on the floor, which apparently is important. Desiring an analysis of this dust, he asks Osgood if she has a name: "Yes." I stifle a guilty chuckle as the Smith replies that he's always wanted to "meet someone called Yes." He goes on to tell her that he wants "a report in triplicate with lots of graphs and diagrams and complicated sums" to be delivered to his non-existent desk "ASAP. Pronto. LOL." I repress a smile tinged with self-loathing, Matt Smith finally getting another chance to perform some of the humour that made him so endearing in his first series. Kate gives Osgood her marching orders, and Moffat completely spoils the moment by having Osgood become all asthmatic with excitement as the Doctor winks at her like Barney Stinson replete with "ting" noise, another New Who woman for whom a dominant character trait, much like Elizabeth I, is wanting to play Doctor.

"Yeah, just like that, just like that..."

Moffat continues to constipate over his own exhausted imagery as the Smith procures a fez from a case and Kate shows him and Clara to a painting with broken glass in front. The Doctor observes that the glass has been broken from the inside. The paintings used to feature figures which have now apparently escaped. Before we can go any further, however, a Time Warp opens in the ceiling, something which Smithy seems to "almost remember." He chucks in his fez before leaping in himself, finding himself in the woods with David Tennant, who puts on the fez for the sake of the Tumblr girls. For the billionth time the Doctor pointlessly references his own appearance, the Eleventh Doctor describing the Tenth as "proper skinny" and a "matchstick man," as if his physique is noticeably different from his predecessor's apart from being shorter and having a less conventional face. If I'm going to be perfectly honest, Matt Smith and David Tennant have a nice rapport, and for the most part David Tennant is far more watchable in this than he was in RTD's frivolous era, but it possibly highlights how similar the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors are, especially with the Eleventh Doctor's character degeneration in his later two series. I actually think that the Special might have been improved in some respects had it just been Matt Smith and David Tennant, but again it's possible that they might have merged into a homogenous "New Doctor" blob. We do get some amusing put downs from the Eleventh to the Tenth, accusing Tennant's Doctor of "wearing sandshoes," and telling him "I'm not judging you" after hearing he may have kissed a Zygon, but then the two of them snap on their stupid glasses and look like inseparable bell ends. Both queens run off after kissing Tennant, an image which is worn into the ground by the end of the episode.

Fangirls are coming.

Clara wants to know who Smithy's talking to: "myself", Tennant and Smith amusingly glancing at each other. Kate Stewart pisses off to make a UNIT dating reference joke and we perceive from an ominous silhouette that the Zygons are present in the modern time as well. As Smith cannot remember what happened as Tennant, he accuses Tennant of "not paying enough attention." I think it would have been nice if he'd said "we never remember" or something to that effect, because they never do. In a pointless Pertwee pastiche they both elect to "reverse the polarity" but this doesn't do much until John Hurt arrives, asking "Anyone lose a fez?" Enough with the fez, I think. John Hurt thinks that by their apparent youth Tennant and Smith must be the Doctor's companions. Has he forgotten being Paul McGann and Peter Davison? Accusing himself of having a "mid-life crisis," he amusingly reprimands the two young bucks for their ridiculous ostentation with the sonic screwdriver, reminding them that they're "scientific instruments, not water pistols." Tennant is snide about his "posh gravity," a quality which would drastically improve present Doctors, and I think we're meant to assume that despite having no cachet within the show proper John Hurt is meant to generally represent the style, manner and demeanour of Classic Doctors. Smith calls Tennant "Dick van Dyke" because Doctors must endlessly take the piss out of each other.

"I do think your best role was in Spaceballs."

A bunch of Elizabethan soldiers show up in a deeply tedious fashion to interrupt the Doctor interaction, while back in the present Kate Stewart returns. Is she a Zygon now? I think we're meant to assume so. Hurt wonders why Smithy and Ten-Inch are pointing their screwdrivers at the soldiers, wondering whether they intend to "assemble a cabinet at them," amusing in a way but also Moffat more or less reusing one of his Eccly jokes. Hurt's fine, but he doesn't need to be here. It should be Paul McGann. I'll get to that. Smith wants Clara to scare the soldiers off through the time hole, addressing her as the "Witch of the Well." A reference to recent mediocre horror episode "Hide"? "He means you," Zygon Kate tells Clara pointlessly. Hurt chews Smithy out for using the phrase "timey wimey," something I'd appreciate more if it wasn't Moffat taking the piss out of himself. He also asks Smith if he's capable of speaking without flapping his hands about, further pointless self awareness. Realising that the Tower's the place to be, the Smith demands to be taken to the Tower of London with "sandshoes and granddad." "They're not sandshoes!" Tennant complains. "Yes they are," Hurt retorts, getting to be amusing as far as I'm concerned. In the present, Kate declares with all the plausibility of a caption that she and Clara must travel to "my office: otherwise known as the Tower of London." Sarcasm is not sufficient to handle the clunkiness.

"Wait 'til you see how we did the Skarasen!"

In the dungeon of the Tower the Smith starts scratching a message onto the wall. Tennant suspects that unlike him and Smithy meeting by accident, Hurt arrived expecting to find future selves. Before we can delve deeper, however, we return to the present-day rock dust investigation, where Osgood reveals to an emotionless Irishman, the one who moved the painting earlier, that the dust must be from destroyed statues. The Zygons are hiding where the statues were, not bothering to tidy up after themselves to avoid detection. They accost the two of them, Osgood cowering in the corner reciting "The Doctor will save me." It's one of the most teeth-grindingly awful moments in the episode. The Zygon copies her, once again without stringing her up, and gets tripped up as Osgood escapes. At the Tower, Clara and Zygon Kate enter a cheesy UNIT secret repository with the obnoxiously cliché name of the "Black Archive." It has a mind wipe device to stop the security becoming too familiar with it, but inside it's just a warehouse full of junk like a cut price Raiders of the Lost Ark final scene. The location is supposedly "TARDIS-proofed" to stop the Doctor getting in. Apparently Clara's been there before but had her mind wiped. She's up on the wall with a bunch of stock photos of Classic Series Companions which are meant to be enough to celebrate fifty years of the programme. Once again deciding that it'd much rather just rehash stuff from the last eight years, Zygon Kate shows Clara the vortex manipulator time travel thing belonging to Jack Harkness. She states that it's one of their biggest secrets, knowledge of which must be denied to the Americans especially. Why them in particular? Despite the United Nations name being revoked, isn't UNIT meant to be an international organisation? This episode treats it like a singularly British institution. So is UNIT Torchwood now? At this point it's just a pointless dig at America, Zygon Kate especially denigrating American cinema as indicative of their blinkered attitude towards history. Seems a bit rich in New Who, which is so breathlessly desperate to be a Hollywood film, especially given how shallow this episode's treatment of Elizabeth I is.

I know the feeling.

Zygon Kate gets a message from the dungeons showing what the Doctor was scratching into the wall. It's the code for the vortex manipulator, but everyone reveals themselves to be Zygons. Zygon Kate spews red liquid everywhere before transforming in a rather disturbing composite effect. Clara, however, being the plucky young lady she is, swiftly enters the code and vanishes into the past. Back in the dungeon, John Hurt wants to use the sonic screwdriver to disintegrate the door, but despairs of getting through to the childish Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. "They think their future is real," the Moment informs him. What the hell is that supposed to mean? That sentence doesn't even make sense. We get a nice line from Tennant when the War Doctor tries to refuse to talk about what's happening in his time: "You're not talking about it. There's no one else here." We must, however, revisit the children, as Hurt questions his successors about whether they counted the children who perished at the end of the Time War. Smith, claiming to be now around one thousand two hundred years old, displays the natural extension of his reservations about the matter in episodes dating back as far as "The Beast Below", asking of remembering the numbers of children: "What would be the point?" Tennant's not having any of it, declaring that there were 2.47 billion children on Gallifrey at the moment of its destruction. Hurt is exasperated, telling both of them that he doesn't "know" either of them, but Billie Piper reminds him that they're him in the future: "The man who regrets and the man who forgets." If Eccly had agreed to be in it, what would he have been? The man with Tourette's? They realise, however, that if John Hurt gets a program going to disintegrate the door, it should be done by the time he's become the Smith due to the screwdrivers all having the same software. The Tenth Doctor's screwdriver was destroyed at least twice, and the Eleventh's once, so I find that rather surprising, but apparently the program is complete by the Eleventh Doctor's time, so they prepare to disintegrate the door when Clara bursts in.

Can't do wood or give you a shave either.

"It should have been locked," John Hurt complains, getting to be somewhat amusing again. Before we can get too comfortable, however, Elizabeth I returns too. In the present, Osgood discovers Kate all strung up "Terror of the Zygons" style for duplication. Why haven't they needed to do this at any other time, then? For Osgood, or Elizabeth, or (presumably) the horse? It's never explained. In the 16th Century, Elizabeth I explains that the Zygons lost their world in the Time War, something completely inconsistent with "Terror of the Zygons" in which the aliens were a small group of crashed spacefarers, not an entire race, especially given that we have no evidence of the Zygons as time travellers. The 16th Century is too primitive, however, the Zygons wanting to wait for humanity to become more advanced. Wouldn't that just make them infinitely harder to conquer? The half-arsed excuse is that the Zygons are "used to a certain level of comfort." Well, that makes sense, then. Better to be comfortable than have the conquest of the Earth being incredibly easy. The Zygons are entering the "stasis cube" Gallifreyan paintings to survive until the Earth becomes more advanced. How did they get these paintings? Again, it's never explained. Smith describes them as being like "cup-a-soups," a line that makes me want to bash my head in. Tennant proceeds to have an embarrassing rant at Elizabeth, erroneously accusing her of being a Zygon once again, and declaring her, in his veiled Scottish accent, to have breath that could "shtun a horse." Elizabeth reveals that she assumed the place of the Zygon Commander with implausible aptitude, having stabbed up her impersonator in the forest. The Commander apparently suffered from the same failing as all of its kind, and by kind, Elizabeth declares that she means "men." Moffat once again displays his spectacular incompetence at writing strong female characters, believing that all "strong women" are apparently sex mad and discriminate against the opposite gender. On the other hand, she tells them that at the time the Zygon, like her, had "the body of a weak and feeble woman." It's typical hole-digging from Moffat, whose efforts to be pro-feminist tend to reveal an utterly condescending view of women.

Did you know Time Lords are related to Terileptils?

In order to get the TARDIS back Tennant must marry Elizabeth, which proceeds in a cheap-as-chips-looking ceremony with nothing more than a pavilion, a priest, and Hurt, Smith and Clara in attendance. Obviously given Elizabeth's reputation it's meant to be a secret, but it more just looks like the point where the budget was wearing a bit thin. As Elizabeth vehemently assaults Tennant's lips with her own, Hurt asks Smith "Is there a lot of this in the future?" Doesn't he know? He's already been McGann. Tennant tells Elizabeth that he'll be "right back." What, to deflower her? They high tail it to the TARDIS, where Smithy describes the RTD layout as a grunge phase. The presence of the three of them is apparently causing the "desktop" to "glitch", at which point it transforms into a bizarre hybrid of the Classic Series and RTD era TARDISes, seeming to the trained eye inconsistent as we know that the steampunk McGann TARDIS came in between. Why couldn't it have just turned into the full blown Classic Series TARDIS? Tennant and Smith become wistful about the roundels, or "round things" as they call them, Tennant observing that he has "no idea" what they're for. It's typical of New Who's deeply troubled relationship with its heritage, loving and loathing it in constant tension. Don't we know perfectly well from days of yore that the roundels are for storage and access? And anyway, didn't the 2005 TARDIS have hexagonal equivalents to these? I'm such a nerd. Of all the New Who TARDIS interiors my favourite is the 2010 one, but it doesn't get a look in. It now transforms into the current TARDIS interior. How? It doesn't make any kind of sense that the Tenth Doctor's TARDIS would "compensate" for the Eleventh. In fact the entire thing seems to happen purely so that Tennant can utter the classic Patrick Troughton line from "The Three Doctors": "You've redecorated. I don't like it." It would have more impact if Smith hadn't already used the same line in "Closing Time" which, disturbingly, was an episode broadcast over two years ago as of my writing this. That two-year Series 7 was stupid.

Swish and flick.

In the Black Archive the real Kate and Osgood burst in to confront the Zygons, revealing that there's a five minute nuclear self destruct in the floor to prevent aliens exploiting their goodies. Kate is forced to pointlessly remind us of the Brig that "I'm his daughter." The Eleventh Doctor announces via "space time telegraph" that he's coming in, but the TARDIS can't land due to "alien technology plus human stupidity." Wondering how they can enter, John Hurt is forced to utter the phrase "cup-a-soup," surely a low point of his career, revealing that they can sneak into the archive through the paintings. Seriously, you don't get John Hurt and then have him say "cup-a-soup." So it turns out that the weird phone call that Irish McGilliop got much earlier telling him to move the painting was the Smith so that they could enter the Black Archive. Kate and Zygon Kate shout at each other pointlessly a bit to try to activate and deactivate the nuke, while Osgood cringe-inducingly whines for the Doctor to save them once again. We cut to the three resident Doctors in the Time War painting. How did they get in there? Who knows. They turn around and kill a Dalek with their sonic screwdrivers in total contradiction of what John Hurt said about their functionality earlier. So are they actually in the Time War or is this just a representation? Twentieth Century-sounding air raid sirens blare in the distance just to ram home how comparable this is to real wars. How did this painting come into the possession of the National Gallery? At which point did the Doctors enter it? Who knows. The dead Dalek bursts out of it, followed by the three Doctors striding forth in ludicrous slow motion, which only serves to remind me of the joke in Garth Marenghi where they talk about slow motion being used wherever possible to pad out the runtime. Just to let us know she's there Clara pops out of the painting too. Good thing she didn't get zapped by a Dalek or anything.

"No, I don't know why I'm here either."

The Doctors declare to Kate and Zygon Kate that they can't let them "murder millions to save billions" in overt, heavy-handed parallel with the Time War, stating that the justification for such consequentialist acts is a lie. Tennant and Smith sit next to each other and mirror each other's movement, making the two of them seem less and less distinct. They muck about with the memory wiping thing so that none of the duplicates can tell anymore if they're humans or Zygons, which apparently will force them to broker a peace. "Peace in our time!" Smith gloats. What? So he's implying, by quoting Chamberlain, that there in fact won't be peace? Zygon Osgood hands real Osgood the inhaler, giving away her identity, but it's never followed up on. If the Zygon could replicate her clothes, the scarf, even her glasses, why couldn't it do it with the inhaler? Meanwhile, John Hurt's sitting around having a cup of tea. Who knows what Smith and Tennant are up to. Talking to Clara, he muses that the regret he must feel at using the Moment will contribute to all the good that all his future selves perform as compensation. Clara observes that he can still make a different choice, however, seeing from his eyes that he's "so much yoounger" as her accent slips a touch. Making up his mind, the Moment takes the War Doctor back to the hut. Why is he called the "War Doctor" if he gave up the name of Doctor, incidentally? Shouldn't he call himself the Warrior or something?

Just lie back and think of Gallifrey.

In the hut John Hurt believes that in the end using the Moment is the right thing to do because he'll go on to do good things as Tennant and Smith. She replies that there's still hope as two more TARDISes arrive. I guess they moved Smithy's TARDIS from the National Gallery to the Tower at some point. The two of them reassure the War Doctor that they were wrong to repress his memory, stating that he was still the Doctor the whole time "on the day it wasn't possible to get it right." They offer to push the button with him so he doesn't have to do it alone. Before they can do so, however, Clara starts having a big cry because she never pictured the Smith being the one to do it. The Moment for some reason shows them a vision of the Time War: "It's reality around you." I have no idea what that's supposed to mean, but we see the aftermath of the attack on Arcadia. The Daleks seem to have pissed off and left everyone to their own devices. It's completely unclear to me what's meant to be going on. The Doctors, on Clara's advice, remind themselves of the "promise" of being the Doctor: to be kind, brave, steadfast and all that. The Eleventh Doctor decides that he wants to change history and puts the Moment away. Stating that he has a plan, it somehow occurs to his past selves as well, John Hurt having to ham it up himself as he yells "That is good!" Smith decares that he's been working on this "for centuries" and performs a ludicrous hand gesture to go with it. Tennant tells Clara the plan, sounding utterly mad as he asks "What if the whole planet just disappeared?" This would, he claims, cause the Daleks to all destroy each other in their own crossfire. What? How would that work? How can they expect that every Dalek ship will fire a shot that will hit another Dalek ship? It will look like the two sides wiped each other out, but actually Gallifrey will be safely hidden in stasis in a pocket universe. Basically, it's an excuse for Moffat to bring back the Time Lords.

Violent sexual imagery inbound.

We return to the war room on Gallifrey where the three Doctors appear on screens to reveal their plan. Tennant feels "so grown up" using basic scientific language like "equidistant" and we discover that the hybrid Classic/RTD TARDIS is the War Doctor's. The general complains that the calculations to put Gallifrey in stasis would take hundreds of years, but that's fine because suddenly loads of TARDISes show up. John Guilor does his best Billy Hartnell impersonation as, like "The Name of the Doctor", stock footage of the past Doctors at their consoles appear on the screen. Rather bizarrely we see footage of the Seventh Doctor from both the Classic Series and the TV Movie, so he appears to change his outfit and hairstyle partway through proceedings. How did the First Doctor know to do this? Was the Eleventh Doctor meant to have sent him a message or something? It makes no sense. As the general despairs of the presence of twelve Doctors including the War Doctor, his adjutant replies that there are in fact thirteen Doctors present and, in one of the few genuinely cool moments of the episode, we see a brief shot of the eyes of soon-to-be Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi, which gets me excited because he looks pretty cross and therefore potentially bad ass. I've always thought it would be cool to foreshadow a future Doctor's appearance in an episode so I actually appreciated this bit. Smith and Tennant bust out their catchphrases, which exasperate the War Doctor, who gives his own more suitable battle cry of "Gallifrey Stands!" There's a big explosion and that's it.

"OH GOD KILL ME."

Back in the gallery, Smithy and Tennant are wondering about the painting, the three of them not knowing if they succeeded or failed with Gallifrey. They have no idea how the painting got to Britain in the 16th Century, and the issue never gets resolved. Tennant and John Hurt won't remember these events due to the bollocks resolution of the "time streams" being "out of sync" to avoid the events of this episode having any effect on prior episodes. John Hurt's happy to be the Doctor again and pisses off to his TARDIS where he promptly begins regenerating through sheer old age, getting some of the worst final lines of any Doctor: "I hope the ears are a bit less conspicuous this time." He starts regenerating into Christopher Eccleston and it cuts away before we have to endure too much of the awkward effects shot, Eccleston himself refusing to have any involvement with the Special. Smith tells Tennant that he's seen Trenzalore, where he'll die in battle. "I don't wanna go," replies Tennant, and off he pops. It's a pretty lame reference to his actual parting words, but he sells it here better than in his own episode. Alone in the gallery, Clara leaves the Smith with the painting, telling him that an old man, perhaps the curator, was looking for him. Smith muses that he could be a curator.

"They put you in a recording booth with Nick Briggs and you can't get out..."

"You know I really think you might," states a distinctive voice. Holy shit, it's Tom Baker. The episode's one grudging concession to actors who made the show what it is today, at least they got him. Insinuating that he's a future version of the Doctor who has for some reason decided to take a form reminiscent of an elderly Fourth incarnation, he tells Smith that the painting's real title is "Gallifrey Falls No More." This is enough to get Smith thinking that Gallifrey must have survived and that he ought to go looking for it. Tom Baker hams it up a bit and leaves. It's a nice enough scene, I suppose, but short and insubstantial. Tom also looks older and less healthy than he has in footage at events after this special was filmed. To conclude, the Eleventh Doctor narrates a conversation he's had with Clara about dreams, declaring that he now knows what he wants to do: to find his home, to discover his people and his planet. In doing so he walks out of the TARDIS and lines up on a cloud with John Hurt, Tennant and a bunch of stand-ins in costumes nabbed from the Doctor Who Exhibition, which flips around to show the three of them standing in the middle of a line of embarrassing-looking cardboard cutouts of Eccly and the Classic Doctors with good old Billy Hartnell positioned behind in the centre. Amusingly, due to Hurt's presence and Eccleston's absence, the lineup is out of order at the end. They had McGann in to film the prequel, couldn't he at least have contributed to this bit? With that over, the episode mercifully ends.

The proud tradition of every-Doctor photoshoots:
stand-ins and dummies.

So what's good about this episode? If I'm going to be perfectly honest, it's probably one of the better episodes Moffat's written in the past few years, not being pointlessly dark or convoluted. Matt Smith and David Tennant, as I've said, work quite well together and are actually rather pleasant to watch once their two Doctors meet up. Capaldi's cameo is an exciting glance to the future, and Tom's scene is a welcome nod to the past. John Hurt brings a touch of class to proceedings. That's about it, however. The problem with the War Doctor is that he simply doesn't need to exist, and what is most problematic about this story is its superfluity. The Zygon plot is needlessly long-winded and heavy handed as a parallel to other events, which exacerbates the already poor pacing of the episode quite substantially. Elizabeth I is pretty wretchedly portrayed and the new UNIT characters are irritating, especially Osgood. The salvation of Gallifrey is a rushed final act which retcons a huge amount of established New Series background, not just in terms of events but the characterisation of the Time Lords, and as a new direction for the show I'm not sure it's really very interesting. At the end of the day, however, like too many New Who episodes over the last couple of years, it's more mediocre than offensive.

"The Mighty Docs!"

What is most egregious about "The Day of the Doctor", however, is how it acts as a celebration of fifty years of the show. Apart from a bit of stock footage and a few photos, the Zygons and Tom Baker's incredibly brief scene, the Classic Series doesn't get much of a look in despite constituting most of the show's televised history. What the special does seem to want to do is celebrate the last eight years of New Who: we have David Tennant returning, we see what was going on in all the dropped hints about Elizabeth I, Billie Piper comes back for absolutely no reason besides tricking the squee girls into watching the episode expecting Doctor/Rose romance, and the overarching narrative is focused exclusively on the Time War, a plot device RTD invented for the sake of the Doctor's characterisation in the New Series which has nothing to do with the original show whatsoever. The exemplification of this, however, is the creation of the War Doctor character. As I've said, John Hurt does a fine job, and I mean no offence to the man himself, but the character simply does not need to exist. It was all done for the sake of suspense in establishing a plot arc at the end of 2011, and it makes no sense in narrative terms. Given how open the Doctor is about his genocidal actions ending the Time War, something Clara in fact declares in this very episode that he's "always" talking about, a secret incarnation who performed said actions is completely meaningless and unnecessary.

The Time Lord Constructor Fleet.

Whether or not Christopher Eccleston was willing to be involved, to my mind without a doubt one of the starring Doctors in this Anniversary Special should have been Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor. I say that with absolute conviction. It's true to say, I suppose, that the other Classic Doctors are too old to portray their characters onscreen, something Moffat still avoided with Tom Baker's scene as well as with Peter Davsion in "Time Crash", but we've seen in "The Night of the Doctor" that Paul McGann isn't. He's not old or fat, the ladies still fancy him, and he fits perfectly into the gap between Classic and New. There's no need for the War Doctor except that someone at the BBC must have thought that having John Hurt in the Special would sell more cinema tickets. That's the worst thing about "The Day of the Doctor." It only really celebrates fifty years of Doctor Who in a superficial way, revelling rather in the mythology, imagery and celebrity of the New Series. Celebrating the Classic Series was consigned to supplementary material for the sake of not alienating New Who's audience, and to my mind the success or failure of the Anniversary really hinged on the Anniversary Special proper, which in my opinion was simply not good enough as a tribute to the last fifty years. Perhaps it's irrational of me to expect this episode to celebrate a show of which it really isn't a part, but this still strikes me as a bungled opportunity. I think I could forgive it more if at least Paul McGann had been the third Doctor in the episode, and not confined to a brief prequel. That said, in the end it reeks of corporate decision-making, especially in the needless presence of Billie Piper and the casting of relatively large name John Hurt in one of the starring roles. As a device to sell a BBC brand, "The Day of the Doctor" has evidently been a success. As an episode of New Who it's okay, I suppose, but hardly one of the highlights. As a celebration of 50 Years, however, I think it's obnoxiously poor in many respects, a frustrating indication of ever-increasing corporate interests co-opting our culture. I don't blame Moffat for this, or anyone involved, in fact, except for the faceless pen-pushers at the BBC who are responsible for New Who being such a sinister entity, this special episode being the most distressing kind of television by accountancy. Maybe it's just that part of me which wants my naff old interests to be acknowledged and celebrated publicly, shoved in the face of all the shitheads who just swallow up the latest thing that the neoliberal media throws at them with utter disdain, but I'm not convinced that this episode couldn't have been a better celebration. At the end of the day, New Who is about control, conformity, exploitation and manipulation, a complete anathema to its own founding principles. I might be making more of this than I should, and I'm trying to remain optimistic about Capaldi's upcoming tenure, but this episode, focused almost solely on the New Series and merely puppeteering the corpse of the Classic Series around obscenely for the sake of its own profit, I think justifiably bothers me. This review has taken on a far more grim tone than I intended, but that's how I feel: abused, treated with contempt by a show wearing the stolen skin of a long-dead show I love. In this episode the Doctor himself says that he'll "never give up, never give in." That's how I feel. Maybe in that way, somehow, "The Day of the Doctor" succeeds, but it doesn't mean I'm happy about it. The show could be so much better than it is, and only the strange thrill I see at the staring eyes of the Twelfth Doctor is keeping me very enthused about the future, given that the show is so insanely ambivalent about its past.