The Weekend of the Doctor

Because the 50th Anniversary had just too much for the day of the Doctor.

First off, apologies to those who follow my “Dr Who from the Start” series for missing last week. I was in Houston for homecoming at my alma mater, Rice University. This week, meanwhile, there’s New Who to talk about, and a momentous anniversary. Rest assured the Classic series posts will continue— I’ll be posting on the next story, City of Death, tomorrow.

This week has offered a lot of exciting stuff in the run-up to the Golden Anniversary episode, The Day of the Doctor.

An Adventure in Space and Time

I expected to enjoy this docudrama about the early days of Dr Who. I didn’t expect to love it— but I did. In real life, all the messy twists and turns seldom add up to a well-structured plot, and writer Mark Gatiss did an excellent job hitting the balance of staying faithful to the real history while also extracting a dramatic story from it.The movie focuses on two stories, simplifying both from the real-life events and altering some (although then again, showbiz people giving interviews for the benefit of fans, in the pages of Doctor Who Magazine or in DVD special features, might well also take a little dramatic license— and also didn’t all know all the sides of what really happened. So you could say the movie’s version is as good as any.)The first story is that of Verity Lambert, Dr Who’s first producer and, with Sydney Newman, co-creator of the series. It was Lambert’s first time as producer, she was unusually young for the job, and she was the first woman producer the BBC had— all things which got in the way of either her, or her new series, being taken seriously. The second story— and really the main focus of the movie— is that of First Doctor William Hartnell, as he goes from being an actor disappointed in his career to the star of an unexpected hit, to his devotion to the series, and then to the final realization that his deteriorating health would make it impossible for him to continue.
The movie begins with Lambert’s story and stays with her POV in the early part, then gradually shifts to make Hartnell the main character. Since Lambert left Dr Who around halfway through Hartnell’s tenure, the movie in its latter half focuses entirely on Hartnell.The story touches more briefly than I’d like on Hartnell’s delight during the time when the show was a hit and everything was going well. Still, it’s got a tearjerker to set up as the story focuses in on Hartnell’s decline.

The movie does something wonderful in making scenes from the series into commentaries on what was happening in real life. The connection is obvious enough— Hartnell was dismayed when cast and crew began to turn over, starting with Carol Anne Ford who played Susan— and it’s been noted before that the Doctor’s emotions when the early companions departed were equally Hartnell’s own. The film takes that idea and runs with it, most especially in a scene that (even if you knew nothing of behind-the-scenes drama) was already one of the most remarkable in early Dr Who.

It’s at the end of The Massacre when the Doctor is left alone in the TARDIS, with no companions at all, for the first time since the series began. He gives a soliloquy in which he questions his wandering life and wonders if he should return to his home planet (still unknown at this point in the series). “They’ve all left me…” he begins. In the movie, they make it the moment when Hartnell realizes he can’t go on much longer. It sets up a crescendo of heart-breaking scenes as the story runs to its conclusion, before finally ending with a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming (as TV Tropes would call it) that won’t leave a dry eye in the house.

The Night of the Doctor

What an unexpected and delightful surprise this “minisode” released in the final run-up to the 50th was! In this Internet day and age, it’s astonishing they managed to keep it all such a secret. As Steven Moffat said in discussing it, his “completist heart” was unsatisfied with not having all the Doctor’s regenerations recorded, so Paul McGann returned to role to tie up the final loose end.I thought it was a terrific little piece, and served as a great prelude to the main episode.

The Last Day

Not much substance to this one, it was entertaining but just a bit of fluff. It’s a brief POV scene for a rookie Gallifreyan soldier who is unfortunate enough to have his first day of duty on the last day of the Time War. It pretty much just feeds into the opening of the 50th Anniversary episode.

The Day of the Doctor

I went to one of the 3-D theatrical screenings of the episode (costumed as above), which was hugely fun on multiple different grounds (I had the best costume, if I do say so myself, at least in the theater I went to).

For all you poor souls who stayed home to watch it on TV, you must forever regret missing the short pieces with Strax the Sontaran discussing theater etiquette, followed by Matt Smith and David Tennant tag-teaming the instructions on how to put on your three-D glasses. I suppose they’ll wind up on YouTube sooner or later, if they haven’t already. Suffice to say that from now on I will always refer to making popcorn as “ruthlessly detonating the miniscule corn creatures.”

As for the episode itself, I love it. Loved it. If you followed my new-series posts back on Facebook (this is the first new episode since I set up this blog) you’ll know I was really down on Steven Moffat over the course of the last season. Well, not any more.

I considered that maybe I just loved it because of where I saw it. A sold-out theater full of Dr Who fans applauding at every pause (and going positively delirious at, er, certain moments) is an ideal place to just get carried along, enjoying everything and blowing past any flaws. Well, I went home and (after having some friends over for a Golden Anniversary Party) watched it again on my ordinary, if large, TV set. And I still loved it. And again on a third viewing. Yes, three viewings already.

All through the past season, even when I really liked an episode I had a laundry list of concerns, things that just weren’t quite right, but not this time. It’s a home run. The Doctor Who news feed reported today that the BBC have updated their standard Eleven Doctors publicity image to now include Twelve Doctors— John Hurt no longer some mysterious other but taking his place in the line. I approve (so what if we only really saw this one adventure with him: Paul McGann also has only one canonical episode and there’s never been any objection to saying he’s the Eighth Doctor). I want to see Matt Smith referred to as the Twelfth Doctor in-series from now on (he can still be the Eleventh when they talk about the actors).

Okay, I’m talking about my reaction instead of discussing or reviewing the episode. So…

Well, I loved it. It was terrific. What else can I say?

Do I have to be critical? Okay, maybe I’m a weensy-bit worried about this idea that the Doctor will now be searching for Gallifrey. If that’s a set-up for the next season’s story arc, that’s fine. If it’s meant to be the new premise for Dr Who as a whole, then no. However I am not really worried— even if Moffat does mean it to be a permanent change, in the end it won’t last any longer than the silly plastic Daleks did. The real thing will return soon enough (a far worse change happened back in Classic when the then-producer thought exiling the Doctor to Earth would be permanent, but since it later turned out not to be, it actually makes a charming era of the series in retrospect).

No doubt there are reviewers out there less blown away, able to extract their minds from fannish delight to a better extent than me who can come up with a more objective view of the episode’s virtues and vices (if it has any of the latter).

But so what? IT WAS GREAT!

See you tomorrow for the Classic story City of Death.