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Doctor Who

The Day Of The Doctor: an appraisal by: GF Willmetts.

With all build-up for the past month, it would have been disappointing had ‘The Day Of The Doctor’ been a failure. It wasn’t. With the people in 94 countries watching it at the same time, are there any surprises for anyone? That being the case, I can skip the synopsis and go on to reaction.

I mean, do you really want to know the dilemma that was facing the Hurt Doctor or ninth, pushing all future regenerations up one or how that was finally solved, even if he still has to regret the decision for three regenerations? That won’t go away. Memories of encounters with other regenerations tend to be temporally erased. Well, apart from the current Doctor.

Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor... teaser.
Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor… teaser.

Despite saying how much of the story was secret until being shown, it wasn’t difficult to join the dots from what had been shown although there were twists even beyond there. The return of the Zygons in 1563 does suggest that various fractions can appear for future (sic) stories. Considering their liking for being underground, should we expect to see them facing off against the Silurians sometime (sic) down the line, even if only to steal some of their dinosaurs. Already there are possibilities from this story that are going to have repercussions later and I haven’t even mentioned Gallifrey.

It goes without saying that there was a brilliant performance from all of the Doctors and cast and a brief appearance of the Daleks and even more of Gallifrey. I can’t help think though the slight adjustment to creating a Brigadoon moment is setting up the stories for the Capaldi Doctor as he must surely be seeking a means for getting some more regenerations. Hopefully, Steven Moffat has already got something in the works about that.

Interestingly, the certain gap in the Tennant Who tenure where he married Queen Elizabeth the First is finally shown even if he did exaggerate what happened next. I mean which version was ‘the goer’? The repercussions of ‘The Five Doctors’ was cleverly remembered and used again although the jump to how they find their own TARDISes to meet again at the end is jumped although with an 85 minute story, it’s amazing how much was squeezed in. The solutions to the various problems the Doctors had to sort out were thought out in the Science Fiction tradition and very little running around, mostly because the story didn’t need any padding.

The extra twist showing UNIT has an archive beneath the Tower of London is hardly surprising considering the unmentioned Torchwood was also doing a similar thing and I doubt if the Zygons had ever bumped into them. The Doctor really ought to be more careful what he leaves of alien encounters and invasions on Earth.

As you might have noticed, I’m still putting things together. I think the fans, that’s practically everyone reading this here will have a similar problem. My luck, you aren’t here tonight but watching it again. As such, treat this as memory stirrers and a jump back to a certain junkyard on Totter’s Lane and not a savage in sight.

GF Willmetts

November 2013

 

UncleGeoff

Geoff Willmetts has been editor at SFCrowsnest for some 21 plus years now, showing a versatility and knowledge in not only Science Fiction, but also the sciences and arts, all of which has been displayed here through editorials, reviews, articles and stories. With the latter, he has been running a short story series under the title of ‘Psi-Kicks’ If you want to contribute to SFCrowsnest, read the guidelines and show him what you can do. If it isn’t usable, he spends as much time telling you what the problems is as he would with material he accepts. This is largely how he got called an Uncle, as in Dutch Uncle. He’s not actually Dutch but hails from the west country in the UK.

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