Day of the Doctor

[delericho]

Yep, loved it. Especially the cameos by Doctors past and future. Interesting, though, that Capaldi makes it "all thirteen". So, he is both the thirteenth Doctor and also the last. Well, barring the inevitable dodge/retcon/handwave, of course!

That one did bother me - this episode does seem to deflate the tension from the End of Time storyline.

However, bear in mind that Rassilon & co. were planning to literally end time, leaving Gallifrey alone in the universe. If ever Gallifrey is brought back in the future, that will likely need to be a plot point that's dealt with.

My completely unsupported theory: the worst excesses of the Time Lords during the war were perpetrated by a rogue group, who first resurrected Rassilon and then were led by him (and probably resurrected the Master as well). And they probably were time locked - just in a different lock from the one Gallifrey just avoided.

Or something like that.

Yeah. The whole thing with lots of Dalek ships firing lasers at Gallifrey seemed very sub-Death Star, where the tech is traditionally magnitudes beyond that. I mean, Davros and others have deployed universe-destroying weapons before. Shooting laser at targets on a single planet seems a bit pathetic. And surely a single TARDIS outweighs an infinite number of laser-firing saucers?

Depending on how nasty the war was and how long it had lasted, this makes sense. They've probably used up pretty much all their big weapons. They were probably only a couple of steps short of throwing rocks at one another.

 

[Morrus]

Overnight ratings were 10.21 million (42% audience share). That's pretty good. That's just the overnights; usually goes up by a million or two by the time the final consolidated figures are in.

(That's the domestic figure only, of course - the worldwide figures are going to be in the tens of millions; dunno what the cinema figures will be, but that probably won't make much difference - apparently it's 1400 cinemas worldwide - though mine was showing it on 3 screens, all sold out).

 

[Umbran]

Yep, loved it. Especially the cameos by Doctors past and future. Interesting, though, that Capaldi makes it "all thirteen". So, he is both the thirteenth Doctor and also the last. Well, barring the inevitable dodge/retcon/handwave, of course!

Well, we know that the Time Lords can grant new regeneration, perhaps entire sets of a dozen. Finding Gallifrey would probably earn hi a gold star and a new set from the people there.

My completely unsupported theory: the worst excesses of the Time Lords during the war were perpetrated by a rogue group, who first resurrected Rassilon and then were led by him (and probably resurrected the Master as well). And they probably were time locked - just in a different lock from the one Gallifrey just avoided.

Or something like that.

Or something. Note that the *children* of Gallifrey were a major issue here, not so much the adults. The Doctor may feel that getting several billion children back is worth the trouble of a few rat-bastard leaders.

Depending on how nasty the war was and how long it had lasted, this makes sense. They've probably used up pretty much all their big weapons. They were probably only a couple of steps short of throwing rocks at one another.

They should have spent a couple of sentences describing that, then.

 

[Remus Lupin]

Actually, I think the events of this episode are reconcilable with "The End of Time" (which they actually had on here in the U.S. right before the replay of the special).

1. The Doctor acquires the moment (as seen in DotD and referenced in TEoT).
2. The Doctor disappears in order to use the Moment (TEoT: "Any sign of the Doctor?" "No, but he still possesses the Moment!").
3. Rassilon and the High Council attempt to avoid annihilation by sending the Master the Sound of Drums to summon them to future, thereby bypassing the effects of the Moment.
4. The Timelord General and his aides are meanwhile somewhere else on Gallifray attempt to repel the Dalek forces.
5. Rassilon and the council are repelled by the Doctor in TEoT, thus finding themselves back in the midst of the time war right before the Doctor presumably uses the Moment.
6. The Doctor(s) then come to the rescue by placing Gallfray into a stasis cube (or something similar).

So, everything we see at the end of DotD occurs after everything we see at the end of TEoT. Though, truth be told, this will probably lead to some awkward conversations between the Doctor and Rassilon if Gallfray is ever found. But maybe we'll get an answer to who the two women were in TEoT (I'm guessing Romana and Susan, though RTD suggested it didn't matter, which it clearly DOES!).

 

[Jester David]

2) It is not the same screwdriver... it has been destroyed at least twice in new who.

They explain that. Different case, same software.

3) The lamest battle for a war ever ended the time war?!?! Really did they not have any tardis left on galafray? Could no soldiers regenerate?

Galifreyans are not the same as Time Lords. Common ground soldiers likely don't have access to TARDISes. And after a few thousands years of war, you'd think the Daleks would be good and bypassing their enemies regenerative capability.
Time Lords also only regenerate from non-instant death. Really, they regenerate when dying not dead.

Really, the seige of Galifrey wasn't going to "end" the a Time War. The Doctor did. It was the end of the Time War because that's when it ended.
And the Daleks strike me as the kind who would just go in and shoot everyone rather than use some super weapon because, well, they like shooting people and casualties mean little.
And even in modern warfare which is based on information, viruses, drone strikes, cruise missiles fired from floating steel islands miles from the target sometimes you still just need to send in troops.

But, at the end of the day, narrative was why the battle was so contentious.
The battle need to be emotional for it to make sense that the Doctor to want to kill everyone. There had to be death and the suffering of innocents. There had to be destruction. People had to die on screen and non-combatives had to be endangered. And that's easiest with a traditional battle sequence.
The battle was not a huge part of the story. 90% of the special was about the Zygons and the Time War was just a background element. They couldn't stop and explain the Time War; they couldn't go into great detail on weaponized paradoxes, unique doomsday devices, and temporal mechanics. You can't sit down and have the Time Lords talk for five minutes explaining how they're boned. Especially when the end result is the same: the planet's effed, everyone still on the planet will suffer and die, and the war will continue, spilling out into the rest of the universe. And especially when all that's relevant to the plot is that they're boned and the Doctor's going to kill everyone. That happens if the Daleks are using lasers or mass driving singularities or using crazy unimaginable weapons. With the result the same, keep it simple.

4)I have pushed for a return of the time lords, but what a crappy cop out. Why did tenet risk his life at worlds end to stop them? Oh right no reason....

This is a big dangling plot thread. But it's really set-up for a future return of the Time Lords. Likely Capaldi's Doctor.

My hope is that time is passing for the Time Lords. That they're not technically frozen and have time to reflect and think on what they did during the war.
And, arguably, the Doctors saved Galifrey not the Time Lords. Not every Gallifreyan is a Time Lord.

5) What happened with unit and the talks?

They had boring negotiations for an hour and found a compromise. The absence of resolution on this was a bit of an unresolved plotline but I don't know where they could have fit it into the narrative. The only place would have been right as Hurt's a Doctor left. But that delays the conclusion.

Over all I give it 4 out of10... I want RTD back

Meh. He used up his best ideas. And he'd have just ended it with a companion saving the day via some Deus Ex Machina.

 

[Morrus]

So, some more observations:

• Re. the "I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman" line - I've now seen some angry folks on Twitter claiming that Elizabeth I would never say such a thing.
• I kinda get the sense that things are going to be very different with Capaldi, the way Hurt constantly referred to to stylistic criticisms - language like "timey wimey", waving sonic screwdrivers around (incidentally, despite his claim, all three shot a dalek with their sonic screwdriver), lines like "why are you so ashamed of being an adult?" and the like. There has been criticism leveled at the show that since Moffat took over, the number of kids watching has increased, but it has lost a lot of the 30+ yr. old demographic. The BBC may be addressing that.
• If Capaldi is incarnation 13 (including Hurt), he's going to be more cautious: if he dies he won't regenerate (at present; obviously that'll change, but for now he's going to finddeath a more scary prospect than he ever has before in that it's permanent this time).
• Isn't it easy to get out of a painting? The Zygons did it; the Doctors did it; the Gallifrey painting is easily escapable.
• Short Xmas Special trailer:

[video=youtube;DMOOLd_44Mo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMOOLd_44Mo[/video]
​

 

[Jester David]

They should have spent a couple of sentences describing that, then.

Except it was irrelevant to the episode. The point of the battle was to set-up the Doctor's emotional conflict that drives the episode. The actual battle is a MacGuffin until the very end.

 

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

And the Daleks strike me as the kind who would just go in and shoot everyone rather than use some super weapon because, well, they like shooting people and casualties mean little.

Dalak's seem to be a group with poor grasp of strategy and tactics, aside from smash everything insight and their individual lethal powers usually lets them get away with that approach. Some dalaks (the Emperor dalek, Davros, the Dalak prime minister, the Cult of Skaro) are exceptions, but en masse they seem to be direct thinkers.

As for the attack on Gallifey, that was more or less the seige of Stalingrad, where both sides had nukes and were about to use them. The soldiers are pouring through the streets and that is theatrical, but other horrors are going on elsewhere. And the civilian leadership is about to kill everyone everywhere forever just out of spite.

 

[Remus Lupin]

Finally got to see "The Five(isn) Doctors" and loved it. My favorite bits were the "John Barrowman is secretly straight" joke and the change in music from the old series tinny synthesizer music to the new series bombastic orchestration music as the three old doctors moved into the new studio.

One question though: Paul McGann was getting a call from his agent about being in "The Night of the Doctor," right? Why then ask about being part of the 50th? He was in it, wasn't he? And why then volunteer to join the protest, unless he was bluffing them?

 

[Bedrockgames]

You can watch it here - it is about half an hour long:

http://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/watch-the-fiveish-doctors-reboot-56047.htm

Anyone know if this can be viewed on an ipad. It isn't playing on my device.