Day of the Doctor Review
"Day of the Doctor" was a big disappointment. While the big-screen production values were nice, the script failed utterly to live up to expectations. There were three big problems:
- The Warrior
- The Time War
- Script Details
The Warrior
"Day of the Doctor" expands on the Doctor's forsaken incarnation, played by John Hurt. This incarnation was labeled "a warrior" in the preceding teaser, "Night of the Doctor," denoting a change in the Doctor's behavior. His eighth incarnation, Doctor-McGann, was apparently not psychologically equipped to be a part of the Time War, necessitating a reincarnation into someone who could fight and presumably win. This new warrior incarnation, as explained in "Name of the Doctor," ended the Time War by killing all the Time Lords and Daleks (and presumably Gallifreyans who weren't Time Lords) in an act so horrific that subsequent incarnations stripped him of the name "Doctor." Clearly, this new character isn't so much the Doctor as he is the Warrior.
Except that John Hurt clearly is playing the Doctor. A troubled and weary Doctor, but still essentially the same person as all the other incarnations. Stripped of the Time-War context, Doctor-Hurt mixes with other incarnations as if this were just a regular multiple-Doctor special. Doctor-Hurt doesn't express any warlike inclinations, nor show any emotional scars of a lifetime spent fighting the Time War. He certainly doesn't seem driven to commit an atrocity -- killing the Time Lords and Daleks seems to be just an unfortunate necessity (as he said himself at the end of "Name of the Doctor"). His ethical uncertainly seems little different than Doctor-TomBaker contemplating Dalek genocide in "Genesis of the Daleks." Just another tough choice for just another Doctor.
The Time War
Just as Doctor-Hurt fails to live up to expectation, what we see of the Time War disappoints equally. The Daleks bomb Gallifrey, zap futuristic soldiers, and round up innocents for extermination. But that's just standard Dalek procedure. They've done this on countless worlds throughout the entire series. The only difference is that they're now exterminating Time Lords. While this might mean they eventually wipe out all non-Dalek life, they've already come quite close to doing this before (as seen in "The Stolen Earth" / "Journey's End") and have consistently been stopped by the machinations of a lone Doctor. This doesn't begin to justify the Doctor committing double genocide, or the psychological scarring the seems to suffer. Remember that the very next incarnation of the Doctor, Doctor-Eccleston, wins approval from a Dalek. What we're shown of the Time War doesn't explain such a change.
Nor does what we see live up to the teasing glimpses offered in "The End of Time": "the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-Have-Been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Never-Weres." Such promise. And yet we get nothing of imagination. Just zaps, booms, and the familiar "Ex-ter-min-ate!!!"
According to the script, everything exciting has already happened…off-camera. The Time Lords have exhausted all their tricks, and the Daleks are just mopping up. Except for one last super-weapon, which not even the Time Lords were mad enough to use -- the Moment. Which is never explained. No one doubts that it can kill all the Time Lords and Daleks, but so could lots of other weapons from other episodes. It's artificially intelligent, can project telepathic images, and can bend the laws of time…but so could other weapons. Why be so frightening of this one? And without an explanation of its power, without any idea of its limits, why can Doctor-Hurt not imagine any way to end the Time War except double genocide? If the Time Lords are utterly spent, why do they need to die? Why can't the Moment shift Gallifrey out of time by itself? Why can't it magically transform all the Daleks into happy puppies? A script can't introduce a deus ex machina and then claim a lack of options.
Script Details
The aforementioned problems -- the lack of difference in Doctor-Hurt, the lack of emphasis or imagination in the Time War, the fuzziness about the Moment's capabilities -- are all manifestations of the script's weakness on details. It offers breezy, big ideas without making the slightest attempt to justify, explain, or place in context. This isn't a new problem, but it becomes unforgivable for a large production of such canon significance. The Time War was built up over the last seven years, and the movie is the 50th Anniversary. The script desperately needed to be better.
This problem with details appears on all levels of the script -- from the early throw-away stunt of airlifting the TARDIS to the sub-plot of Zygon invasion to the resolution of the main plot. Stuff just happens…apparently for no good reason except to fill out dramatic requirements.
Why is there a standing order for U.N.I.T. to physically relocate the TARDIS to London? Without even trying to contact the Doctor? Might perhaps this be a bad plan if the Doctor already happens to be fighting world-shattering alien plots and needs his TARDIS to be right where he left it? Isn't this new version of U.N.I.T. supposed to be commanded by an intelligent scientist, rather than a dimwitted soldier? Or was that part of the Zygon invasion plan, considering that Lethbridge-Stewart had already been body snatched? No, this incident isn't that important, but the sloppiness is representative.
And that Zygon invasion plan? Can we find out a little more about that? How many Zygons were involved -- just the handful shown, or where there millions more awaiting the chance to repopulate a new homeworld? How did the Zygons get their claws on Gallifreyan art technology? How did they figure out how to use it? How did they figure out how to *modify* it? How did the entrapped Zygons effect their release centuries later? And how was the plan supposed to play out without the interference of the Moment's time twisting? Unimportant…or so the script would have us believe.
Instead, we should concentrate on the Time War and its resolution. Which doesn't make much more sense. The Doctors three realize that they don't have to kill everyone, but can kill only all the Daleks and save the Time Lords by trapping them in a Gallifreyan artwork just like the sub-plot Zygons! Only…the Doctors thirteen don't know where Gallifrey went.
If you don't have the subject trapped in an artwork, then you haven't really borrowed the idea from the sub-plot. If they shifted Gallifrey out of time, why do they need to search for it -- shouldn't it be in the same spot, just inaccessible? Shifting planets out of time seems to be a normal trick for the Time Lords, seeing how they time-looped planets back in "Image of the Fendahl" and "Invasion of Time," so how can this be a miraculous salvation?
But most importantly, this miraculous salvation utterly undermines the Doctor's ethical credibility. Because rather than regretting doing something unspeakable, rather than regretting committing genocide, the Doctor has spent the last seven years regretting killing off his own people. While understandable, that's not exactly heroic.
"Day of the Doctor" failed not just my own hopes for the show's 50th Anniversary, but also the expectations built by seven years of dramatic teasing. Previously framed as the most important event ever in the show's canon, an event that shaped the fictional world and our hero's subsequent personalities, the Time War is instead presented as an uninspired, pedestrian, shoddily scripted conflict that differs little from the average Doctor Who episode.