The Day of the Doctor

[sharplittlteeth]

(I meant to blog my thoughts about this episode. Then I wrote all this as a comment in a friend's journal, so I might as well post this.)

I enjoyed it, but I had very mixed feelings.

Comments

[damien_wise]

I agree with most of what you said, and the only real differences are slightly complementary. In the spirit of things, here's a comment I posted elsewhere:

I can sorta see how it looks like a big revision/ret-con...but at the same time, I think it's not total because most of the Hurt Doctor and all the Eccleston Doctor still see things from their original point of view. That's enough for me, and I'm actually glad it's not a permanent scar on his psyche. I don't think the change in motivation for subsequent Doctors is a bad thing, and in this story we identified a contrast between the three Doctors. (Or, to put it another way, he learned to to let Zygons be Zygons? :-P)

The change of heart of the Hurt Doctor was one of the highlights for me of the last nine years, IMHO...I quickly got sick of the 9th Doctor's morality. This affected the following two, though Moff had been quietly weening Doctor Smith off it. It was moral short-sightedness, which went something like this: 'Daleks forced me to kill everyone, therefore I'm now okay to judge and execute anyone at whim."

Interesting to see how Doctor Who has reflected the morality of its times over the years -- seems that in the last decade or so, the world's superpowers are okay doing terrible things with the excuse 'Because terrorists'. Recall that the 4th Doctor was send back to the 'Genesis of the Daleks' by the Timelords to commit genocide, but when the moment came, he couldn't. Some would say that's a weakness, but I think it's a strength.

[greylock]

Making The Hurt Doctor a warrior, and seeing the things he must have done during the war, was lacking.
Nope, he was the kindly old granddad, with a chatty superweapon that would burn a galaxy (and those billions of kids of Gallifrey - but let us ignore the other races in that galaxy), called The Moment for no obvious reason that is explained (but we can theorise it would time-lock the war within the Medusa Cascade because why?).