The Day of the Doctor (Spoilers!)

This morning I found myself in a very pressing dilemma. The night before was the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who and the episode, "The Day of the Doctor" was airing. It was a huge event that actually broke a Guinness World Record as largest TV drama simulcast in history. I however found myself tied to other engagements and wasn't able to watch it when it aired.

So this morning I was looking high and low for the episode online and I could not find it. So I had the decision, wait for it to show up on line which could take days... or buy it on Itunes. Short answer so I can get to the review, I bought it.

The story starts mainly with the current Doctor (Matt Smith) remembering the day he destroyed

Galifrey at the end of the Time War. As explained by the mini episode with Paul McGann,

This One

The Doctor regenerated into "The War Doctor" played by John Hurt. He breaks into the time vault of Galifrey and steals a weapon called "The Moment". The Timelord explain that the weapon had developed a consciousness and could talk to the user.

When the War Doctor is setting up the weapon the consciousness appears and for all the Who fans out there, she is a familiar face.

The consciousness is that of Rose Tyler (played by Billie Piper) who actually might be the

consciousness of Bad Wolf. That was something a little unclear because the end credits say Billie Piper played Rose when really she played an interface, assumingly Bad Wolf, with the appearance of Rose Tyler. Maybe I'm splitting hairs but it was a little confusing.

The Moment opens a time vortex that connects the worlds of the War Doctor, the 11th Doctor and the 10th Doctor (David Tennant). All three of them are thrown into a conflict with an alien race called the Zygons.

Zygons are aliens that are able to take the form of other beings perfectly. They are shape shifters and

they wish to take over Earth. But Earth isn't ready in the 16th century so they hide in paintings using Galifreian technology and emerge in the present day to use special UNIT weapons to take over the world.

The three Doctors, plus Clara Oswald (played by Jenna Coleman) must stop the plot of the Zygons all the while Rose is showing the War Doctor the man he becomes after doing the unthinkable act of destroying Galifrey.

The episode ends with The Doctors stopping the Zygon plot and all three of them going to the point in time when the War Doctor is about to destroy Galifrey.

Disclaimer. If the first section of this wasn't spoilers enough, the next part is spoilers beyond belief. Don't read ahead if you don't want to know. 

Before they use the weapon, the 11th Doctor stops and proposes that they save Galifrey by locking it in a pocket universe, frozen in one single moment of time.

By doing this, they move the entire planet of Galifrey, they have the Daleks destroy themselves and Galifrey disappears as if it was destroyed.

The way they do this is so brilliant. They all fly to Galifrey and begin the process of putting Galifrey in the pocket universe. But suddenly all the incarnations of the Doctor appear, including Peter Capaldi and they do just that. They save Galifrey.

"No Sir. All Thirteen"

There's not much of an explanation of how all thirteen incarnations of the Doctor show up to do this but its one of the coolest moments of television I have ever seen. 

So once Galifrey is save, each Doctor goes back to his TARDIS and back to his time. John Hurt regenerates into Christopher Eccelston.

David Tennant returns to his time and Matt Smith is visited by another familiar face before the episode finishes. A very old Tom Baker shows up as the Curator of the museum that holds all the Galifreyan art and basically says, Galifrey is still out there. Go find it. And there's the set up for the next season and the season of Peter Capaldi. 

As a Doctor Who fan, this episode was just fantastic. 

The back and forth of David Tennant and Matt Smith beyond brilliant and beyond hilarious. It was just a huge celebration of everything Doctor Who, executing perfectly. It also ties up a couple loose ends

from the David Tennant era, like the relationship he has with Elizabeth the first and not only that but it does a great job at explaining how this happens in a timeline like this.

I cannot express the brilliance of the relationship between Tennant and Smith in this episode. They play off each other so well and its unfortunate that the two of them couldn't do more episodes together.

Frankly there are too many good things I can say about this episode. I may be on a high because I just watched it but it was just so good.

There are very few to anything I find wrong with this episode. Almost all of the "complaints" I had were things that were impossible to change and couldn't really be put in a better way then they already were. 

And I kind of already mentioned it. One thing I had a problem with was Rose. Like I said before, Rose

isn't really herself in this episode. She is more Bad Wolf, or the consciousness of The Moment in the form of Rose Tyler.

So she's not actually flesh and blood Rose Tyler. She actually can only be seen by the War Doctor and is more of a figure overseeing the entire ordeal. She did a very good job and I'm very glad we got to see Billie Piper in Doctor Who again, but it wasn't quite the Rose I was expecting.

But again, this really isn't something that could have been done any other way. At this point, Rose is in the alternate dimension. She is not seen until the fourth series and had it been the 10th Doctor from before Rose was trapped in the alternate dimension, we would have had a less experience 10th Doctor. And too many people love David Tennant for them to make him not one of the sharpest ones in the bunch. So as much as I wanted actual Rose Tyler, this was one of the only ways it could have been done.

The second thing I found was the lack of appearances from essential characters. Especially from the 9th

Doctor, Christopher Eccleston. I like a lot of Doctor Who fans really liked Eccleston as the Doctor and because the War Doctor regenerates into him, you'd think that he'd be essential to the storyline.

However, they did do a very good job considering and the fact of the matter is, it was dependent on whether or not Eccleston wanted to participate or not, and he didn't.

Lots of fans may be angry about this but I understand it. The man played the Doctor for a year but I'm sure he wants to move on from it. I read something that criticized Eccleston for not participating because he is whether he likes it or not, apart of a special club and needs to honor that.

Listen, the guy doesn't want to be the 9th Doctor anymore. Let him do his thing and enjoy what he gave us. We can't expect an actor to do more than he wants to.

As much as I wanted to see Christopher Eccleston, if he doesn't want to do it, he doesn't have to do it.

Also, Tom Baker.

I thought that this cameo was just brilliant. They didn't really specify whether or not he was actually the 4th Doctor and that's okay. He was there and that's all that matters. It would have been nice to have similar cameos from Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, and others.

However, this falls again under the category explained before. If they don't want to do it, you can't make them.

Overall it was a brave episode. It did a perfect job at celebrating Doctor Who and remembering where it came from. It also set things in motion for conflict of future episodes. Stephen Moffat recently said that

John Hurt's incarnation of the Doctor does count as one of his regenerations. That puts the Doctor at 13 regenerations when it comes round time for Peter Capaldi to take over as the Doctor.

As its been stated in episodes and movies, Timelord are only allowed 13 regenerations. Whether or not it is a law or they are only capable of 13 is unknown but if Capaldi is the 13th regeneration, that will cause trouble for the Doctor in the future.

In both ways, its interesting. If its a Timelord law, then with the return of Galifrey, they can actually enforce that and the Doctor will be in trouble with his own people, the people he saved.

If its in Timelord Nature, then its even more interesting because the Doctor is fighting his own physiology. This time if the show is to continue past Capaldi, the Doctor must actually escape death.

This is why I am so excited for the new season to begin. I am always excited when there's a new regeneration despite my love for past actors who have played the Doctor like Eccleston and Tennant.

But Capaldi is going to bring something totally new to the series and its just going to be brilliant. I can already tell.

Overall, the episode is one of just awesome celebration and remembrance of all Doctor Who has done in the last fifty years.

So did you see the 50th Anniversary episode "Day of the Doctor"? What did you think? Who is your favorite carnation of the Doctor and why?

To finish, I will leave you with this. The teaser for the Christmas special, the next episode to come in December.