Day 799: The Day of the Doctor

The Day of the Doctor is, unsurprisingly, perfect. It's a massive celebration, not so much of the programme itself, but of the philosophy behind the programme. And there's honestly so much happening in this episode that I'll have to skim over an awful lot, and I'll just look at a few highlights that I feel are what makes this episode special.

For a start, there's the very concept of the episode itself, and how it plays out. One of the biggest changes that Russell T Davies made to the character of the Doctor when he brought the series back in 2005 was to have the Doctor destroy Gallifrey and kill all of the Time Lords. And that's good for the programme, as it introduces a new facet to the Doctor's character; something which leads him to have a new found sense of regret and guilt about what he's done. But the problem with this is that this doesn't seem like something that the Doctor would do. The Day of the Doctor keeps coming back to that question as John Hurt's War Doctor, who is about to commit that act, continually questions himself about what is his best option. So that gives the story an opening to consider what the character of the Doctor really should be, what connects each of the twelve actors who have so far played him into doing what the Doctor does.

And we see that through the sub-plot of the episode, where the Doctors have to not only prevent a Zygon invasion of Earth, they also have to prevent UNIT from blowing up the Earth as well. So they do this by forcing them into a situation where they have to negotiate a peace, by wiping everyone's memory of whether they are Zygon or human and then forcing them to sit down and talk. It's put down in the episode as penance for the Time War, where the Doctor feels so guilty about what he has done to Gallifrey and how he was forced to take the violent solution that he opts to always seek for the peace in the universe. It's what drives the New Series Doctors in a nutshell, that they remember what happened on that fateful day on Gallifrey and that they swear never to do it again, they will be the Doctor forever-more.

But the problem with that reading, as the story points out, is that it still doesn't excuse the War Doctor from destroying Gallifrey. Because that title that the Doctor has taken on extends far back to before the series even started, all the way back to before the TARDIS landed in a junkyard in 1963. It's a decision that he made to never be cruel or cowardly, always to help people in their time of need. And with all of that in mind, it's still impossible to imagine the Doctor destroying Gallifrey like that. As Clara says when the Eleventh Doctor joins the Tenth and War Doctors in support to use the Moment to destroy Gallifrey "I never pictured you doing it". As written, it's an easy decision to make for the character, but when you start to picture it in your mind, you can't see any of the Doctors doing it - actually killing so many innocent lives.

So, naturally, the Doctor decides to rewrite history, bringing together all of his past, and one of his future, selves so that they can save Gallifrey by sending it away somewhere safe from Daleks. And it's one of the most beautiful moments in the history of the programme because it's all about saving lives on a massive scale - taking the peaceful solution en masse. And throughout that sequence, there's one moment that stands out for me as a single segment of joy that's never fully explored in the episode. Of all the Doctors there, only a handful get put on the screen by themselves. And chief among them is not the eyebrows of the Twelfth Doctor, instead it's the face of the Ninth. This man, who has been so tortured by this decision that he believes that he has made, is here saving Gallifrey and doing the thing that he constantly wished that he was able to do throughout his all too brief time aboard the TARDIS. And that's kind of perfect.

So that's The Day of the Doctor in a nutshell. It takes the concept of what the series is all about and plays around with it, before finally settling on this idea of the Doctor as the man of peace in a Universe at war. And it's that concept that's made Doctor Who one of the greatest television programmes ever, in my opinion, and it's what made the last 2 and a bit years such a joy to do. But that time must come to an end, as all things do, and the end is rapidly approaching for We've Got Work to Do...