Story 241 - The Day of the Doctor

 

In which the Doctor revisits events at the conclusion of the Last Great Time War.

Clara is now working as a teacher at Coal Hill School. She goes to visit the Doctor in the TARDIS, which is parked outside London. The Doctor receives a call from Kate Stewart of UNIT, seeking his help. Suddenly the TARDIS is picked up by a helicopter and flown towards the city. Kate explains that she thought the ship was empty. The Doctor accidentally falls out of the doors but hangs on as they arrive at Trafalgar Square. Kate is waiting to meet him, along with Osgood - UNIT's latest Scientific Adviser, who is another great fan of the Doctor's exploits - even wearing a long multi-coloured scarf.

The reason the TARDIS has been brought to Trafalgar Square is because of something to be found in the National Gallery, which looks onto the Square. This building has a secret under-gallery, which can be accessed behind a huge double portrait of Queen Elizabeth I and the Tenth Doctor. 

A number of paintings in this under-gallery have had their glass smashed, and a number of statues appear to have been broken as well. The paintings are all landscapes - but the Doctor is told by Kate that they used to have figures in them - and the glass has been broken from the inside outwards. Something has escaped from the pictures. 

The Doctor notes a large 3-D image of Gallifrey under attack during the Time War. It is known by two titles - "No More" and "Gallifrey Falls". The Doctor recognises the events depicted as the fall of Arcadia, the planet's second city. It was on this day that he decided to end the War - by destroying both sides. He had broken into the Time Lord arsenal and stolen the Moment. This was an immensely powerful weapon, but one with a sentient interface. This would try to ensure that the operator fully understood and accepted their actions in using it - forcing them to examine their conscience. The Doctor was in his ninth incarnation at this time, having regenerated on the planet Karn with the help of the Sisterhood. This was an incarnation which the Doctor had elected to forget, believing him not worthy of the name due to his actions in the War. He took the Moment to a childhood haunt of his, an old barn, on Gallifrey, and the Moment manifested itself to him as a young, blonde-haired woman, who went by the name "Bad Wolf". This was an image of Rose Tyler, taken from his future. She will show him part of that future, before he decides to use the weapon.

At the under-gallery, a temporal anomaly opens. The Doctor decides to enter it, and finds himself in Tudor England. His tenth incarnation is here, on a picnic with Queen Elizabeth. However, he is secretly on the trail of a Zygon. It disguises itself as a horse, and then as the Queen herself. The temporal anomaly has also appeared in the barn of Gallifrey, and the Time War Doctor also enters it - arriving at the same location as his two future selves. Soldiers arrive and they pretend to be sorcerers to hold them at bay. Elizabeth then appears and informs them that she has killed the Zygon duplicate, and they find themselves captured and sent to the Tower of London. The three Doctors discuss the Time War, and the destruction of Gallifrey, as they look for a way to escape. Clara has followed the Doctor to 1562 using Captain Jack Harkness' vortex manipulator - given to her by Kate. Clara discovers that Kate has been replaced by a Zygon duplicate, but she escapes using the manipulator. (The Doctor had left the co-ordinates and operation code scratched on the cell wall for Clara to find in 450 years time). Clara releases the Doctors from their cell.

They discover that there are more Zygons in the Tower. Elizabeth is impersonating the Zygon commander to discover their scheme. They are refugees who have arrived from their dead homeworld in search of a new home. As the time is not right, they are going to use Time Lord technology, stasis cubes, to hide themselves in a number of paintings - to emerge in a few centuries' time, when the planet will be less primitive. They emerged from the paintings in 2013 - hence the glass breaking outwards - and then hid under the covers which were draped on the statues, smashing the statues first. They have overpowered Kate and Osgood in order to gain access to the Tower, and UNIT's Black Archive.

The Doctors must return to 2013 to stop the Zygons, but first the Tenth Doctor weds Elizabeth - honouring a promise he had made. They take to the Tenth Doctor's TARDIS, and the console room layout struggles to compensate for the presence of three Doctors.

In order to get into the Black Archive. the Doctors hide within the "Gallifrey Falls" painting, which they then arrange to have transported into the complex. Kate and Osgood have arrived, but the Archive has a gas defence - a substance which causes amnesia. The Doctors confuse both human and Zygon by ensuring neither knows which side is really which. The Doctors force them to forge a treaty.

The stasis cubes have given the Doctors an idea for resolving the Time War without destroying Gallifrey. Their combined TARDISes, with this technology, may be able to place the whole planet in stasis - only appearing to have been destroyed.

All of the Doctor's incarnations respond to this plan - including a future, twelfth Doctor.

Gallifrey vanishes, and the Dalek fleet destroys itself in the crossfire. 

The War Doctor has been rehabilitated - now worthy of being called a Doctor. He and the Tenth Doctor won't remember these events, and the Eleventh Doctor does not know the new location of Gallifrey. The War Doctor returns to his TARDIS and begins to regenerate. After the Tenth Doctor has departed - soon to regenerate himself - the current Doctor meets an old man, who claims to be the curator of the under-gallery. He looks and sounds just like his fourth incarnation. The old man reveals that the title of the Arcadia painting is really "Gallifrey Falls No More".

Later, the Doctor dreams of rediscovering his lost homeworld.

The Day of the Doctor was written by Steven Moffat, and first broadcast on 23rd November 2013. It marked the 50th Anniversary of the series. It was simulcast globally, and also enjoyed a number of cinema outings. It was available in 3-D.

Moffat's original plan had been for a new The Three Doctors - the 10th Anniversary story - featuring the last three Doctors rather than the first trio. After an initial interest, Christopher Eccleston elected not to participate - which is how Moffat came to create the previously unknown War Doctor, as played by John Hurt and seen at the conclusion of The Name of the Doctor.

One of the earlier Doctors did make a new appearance - Tom Baker, in the role of the enigmatic Curator, who may be a future incarnation of the Doctor revisiting an old form. All the Doctors have a couple of cameos - first of all piloting their TARDISes to save Gallifrey (using footage from various episodes), and then in the final dream scene where the Doctor is flanked by all his predecessors.

Peter Capaldi made a surprise appearance - only his eyes being seen in close-up - a whole month before he was due to make his debut.

Being an anniversary story, there are many nods to the past. The story opens in black & white, with a policeman at the gates of the junkyard at 76 Totter's Lane. This turns out to be just around the corner from Coal Hill School, and the school sign states that Ian Chesterton is now Chairman of the Board of Governors, and W Coburn is headmaster. This all relates back to An Unearthly Child.

As the story concerns the Time War, the Daleks naturally appear - shown beating the Time Lords as they attack Arcadia, another domed city on Gallifrey. We see the head of Gallifrey's armed forces - the General - but reference is made to the politicians debating elsewhere (Rassilon and his council, as seen in The End of Time Parts 1 & 2).

From Tom Baker's era we have the man himself, but also Osgood's wearing of his scarf. The guest aliens are from his era. Ever since the series returned in 2005, fans had been clamouring for the return of the Zygons. They had only ever featured in one story - Terror of the Zygons - but this is regarded as a classic, and the creatures are a superb design (courtesy of James Acheson and John Friedlander).

Fortunately, the design isn't messed with, yet they are still somehow inferior to the originals.

The War Doctor is used to comment on the new series, as though he were a representative of the Classic Era. He bemoans the fact that Doctors seem so young these days, and enquires about the amount of kissing which goes on.

Moffat had asked for the previous TARDIS console room to be retained - it had a new home at the Doctor Who Experience - and this was used by the Tenth Doctor. The TARDIS for the War Doctor utilised the same console and pylons, but added more traditional white roundeled walls, as a nod to the Classic Era ship. The exterior of the War Doctor's TARDIS was a smaller copy of a Classic Era Police Box.

Of the new guest cast, Elizabeth I was played by Gavin & Stacey's Joanna Page. The General was played by Ken Bones, and his deputy, Androgar, by Peter De Jersey, who had featured alongside David Tennant in the RSC's recent production of Hamlet. 

Jemma Redgrave returned as Kate Stewart, and Osgood was played by Ingrid Oliver.

Billie Piper appears throughout as the manifestation of the Moment's interface.

Overall, an excellent way to celebrate an anniversary - with a brand new adventure which could stand on its own two feet, but loaded with fan-pleasing nods to the past.

Things you might like to know:

• The working title was "The Time War". Until contracts were signed, Moffat also referred to it as "The No Doctors".
• Shots of the Doctors in their TARDISes come from the following episodes: Hartnell (The Daleks - the voice sounds nothing like him); Troughton (Tomb of the Cybermen and The Mind Robber, audio from The Seeds of Death); Pertwee (Colony in Space, audio from The Green Death); Tom Baker (Planet of Evil); Davison (Frontios, audio from The Five Doctors); Colin Baker (Attack of the Cybermen), McCoy (Battlefield and The Movie); McGann (The Movie), Eccleston (Rose and Aliens of London, audio from Parting of the Ways). McCoy looks very different in his two clips.
• The operating code for Captain Jack's vortex manipulator is 1716231163 - which derives from 17:16 23/11/63 - the time and date of the broadcast of the very first episode.
• UNIT's Black Archive was previously seen as a separate building in the countryside in The Sarah Jane Adventures. It may have been moved after Sarah successfully broke into it.
• The Archive was going to include a poster for the first peter Cushing Dalek movie. In his novelisation of this story, Moffat had these films as movie versions of the real Doctor's actual adventures.
• What is seen in the Archive is a board covered in photographs of various companions, in very odd combinations - to suggest a huge number of unseen adventures.

• UNIT has a file codenamed "Cromer" - a reference to the Brigadier's belief that an alternative anti-matter universe was really the Norfolk coast (The Three Doctors).
• Kate mentions contacting Malcolm - presumably Malcolm Taylor, a previous Scientific Adviser seen in Planet of the Dead.
• It is said that the Zygon homeworld was destroyed at the beginning of the Time War, yet it was already said to have been destroyed long before the Time War in Terror of the Zygons. This story also claimed that it would take centuries after the 20th for the refugee fleet to arrive on Earth - yet they are already here in the 16th Century. 
• Capaldi filmed his scene alongside his regeneration at the conclusion of The Time of the Doctor.
• Some items contained in the Black Archive include River Song's red high heel shoes; a Cyberman head; a Dalek dome; the Space-Time Telegraph from Terror of the Zygons; Dalek tommy guns and Sontaran rifles.
• There are many verbal references to older stories throughout - including the War Doctor stating that his old body was wearing a bit thin (as the First Doctor said in The Tenth Planet); and the Tenth Doctor tells the Eleventh that he doesn't like the redecoration of the TARDIS (as Troughton did in The Three Doctors, and said about UNIT HQ in The Five Doctors).
• The episode was followed on BBC 3 by a live event known as The After Party. This brought together many Doctor and companion actors, who had assembled at the BFI on London's South bank to watch the story go out. It was a ramshackle affair, which came across as amateurish.
• Far better was the comic The Five-ish Doctors Reboot, which was written by Peter Davison and produced by his daughter Georgia Tennant. This told of Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy attempting to get involved in The Day of the Doctor. This was on the Red Button digital platform only, and has never had a commercial release (other than as an extra on a very limited - and expensive - special edition). It was full of cameo appearances by Doctor Who actors and production personnel. They finally do get to appear, but hidden under dust sheets in the under-gallery. However, in the actual TV episode it is extras who fill these places.