Doctor Who S33E14 "The Day of the Doctor" [Spoilers]

[InsaneTD]

They possibly had time to prepare a backup plan. It might have only been an episode later, but how much in universe time actually passed between the two events?

[Eternal_Freedom]

I haven't got the DVD to hand, but IIRC it was a couple of hours at most. Gharman interrupts the Doctor to tell him about the vote Davros has called, which they go to, then Doctor and Co slink of to stop Nyder and get locked in Davros' office, witness the slaughter, get rescued and then the Doctor heads off to blow up the incubation room.

[jollyreaper]

I enjoyed the 50th anniversary specials more than the entire run of Matt Smith's Who. Day of the Doctor, Night of the Doctor, Adventures in Time and Space, the Five(ish) Doctors, it was all tremendous fun.

The only quibble comes from what the true implications of a Time War would be. It's really a more complicated and snarly concept than they want to get into with this show. But a true Time War would take place across all of space and time. Every point of view is going to be subjective. To a non-TT species, the Time War would have always been. There would be no before. Only the TT species could possibly have memories of what came before.

For the most part, the Time War seems to be carried out in a conventional, Star Wars-on-a-budget manner. Star Wars itself basically transplants conventional, 20th century warfare with a stylized, cinematic vibe to the big screen. Armies are transported through space on great honking starships, fight in a conventional fashion on the ground, space navies gamely fight like battleships. Most things are a fairly direct analogue for things the modern audience is comfortable with. Firearms become blasters, ships and fighters become starships and starfighters, servants and slaves become droids, etc. The Time War doesn't even really keep up with late 20th century developments. In a nuclear war of annihilation, the enemy would never set a boot on your home soil. It would all be a-bombs raining from the sky. it would be a rare thing to even have a bomber crew parachute down from a crippled aircraft.

It's not really the story they're looking to tell so I won't ding them for that but it does make me wonder what a proper Time War might look like. Much would depend on the technology at hand. The most basic time machine I've ever seen in fiction can do little more than send a simple text message back in time. The most elaborate would be some flavor of TARDIS that could well move anything from armies to planets, depending on the writer.

Depending on the power of the time machine, the effect it has on the war could be analogous to codebreaking -- learning of the mistakes you were about to make and correcting for them would be the ultimate intelligence coup -- all they up to moving agents through time to change the past. History could well become a muddle. The go-to example is killing Hitler as a child. Depending on the theory of history you subscribe to, that either takes the Nazis out of the picture or we just end up with some other fascistic power in charge of Germany and a different supreme leader. But if the Nazis had a time machine and tried to save Hitler, spiriting away the baby to a safer time and place would have a number of changes. This Hitler would lack the same experiences that shaped the original Fuhrer. Even if they tried to inculcate the same racial theories through his upbringing, they might not take. Of course, this very problem presupposes that time theory in this story allows people to have memories of a time and place that now do not exist. Time travel really is like a magic system -- it is entirely created by the author, should have some self-consistency for the sake of creating good drama but he can make those rules anything he wants. For example, it could well be that any two powers who engage in a time war will eventually result in nullifying both sides from history.

There was an ok novel about a time war that came out in 2004.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowl_(novel)

A lot of people liked it but it didn't quite nail it for me. Stross' Palimsest is probably the strongest take on the concept.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsest_(novella)

[TimothyC]

"All the Doctors lined up is a big wallpaper being cried out to be made. HD screen grab is needed!"

I tried but the video quality I was getting on the iView was terrible. BBC might release it anyway.

Not the best quality, but I did manage to grab a couple:

The last 11 from behind looking at Home

All 12 so far, from the front

[Eternal_Freedom]

Having just re-watched the episode, I have found one pretty good reason why
Spoiler

Tom Baker's character at the end is indeed a future Doctor. It doesn't list "The Curator" at all in the credits, it simply lists Tom Baker under "The Doctor."

[Korto]

Meh.

Didn't like the Doctor destroying everything being undone. Yes, he was probably angsting about it too much, but him having done that was one of the few things that gave him a little depth, instead of 2D perfect. I would have preferred them spend perhaps half a series of him coming to terms with it, and then getting on with his life.
Oh well, maybe I'm just not the same Doctor Who fan I used to be.

How could someone with a conscience be okay with committing genocide, much less committing genocide against their own people? Its something that should haunt someone for the rest of their life.

And the Doctor is far from perfect. He can be very ruthless and arrogant. The Doctor had become a very dark character. The Day of the Doctor went a long way to restoring the balance.

You don't have to be OK with something to get over it. Time, acceptance, and a decision that it's time to look ahead, and leave the past behind. They made so much of the Doctor wiping out his own people, it's cheesy to then just make it all OK, never happened.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Sorry for the necro, but the masterful SFDebris has reviewed the anniversary special, you can watch it here. Its the usual mix of insightful analysis and amusing sillyness.

Also, haveing watched said review, I notcied something weird. When the Moment is showing the Doctor the world outside he's about to destroy, you see a mother comforting a child...who is wearing a shoulder sah with a swastika on the front.

[Crazedwraith]

An interesting thing in the review is Chuck's repeated references to a 'first time' when the War Doctor actually used the moment to burn everything.

Now given that the impetus for the multi-doctor even was the moment itself. I never saw the events of the special as an altered sequence of events but what had 'always' happened.

It's not like the later doctors crossed their own timeline to interfere. There's no reason for The Moment to have done anything different in 'that time' through than it did the 'first' time

[Starglider]

Finally got around to watching 'The Night of the Doctor' (the prequel mini-episode with Paul McGann) and it was quite a compelling little character piece. It's a shame that couldn't be attached to the front of the main piece, because the extra context was a significant improvement.

[Eternal_Freedom]

An interesting thing in the review is Chuck's repeated references to a 'first time' when the War Doctor actually used the moment to burn everything.

Now given that the impetus for the multi-doctor even was the moment itself. I never saw the events of the special as an altered sequence of events but what had 'always' happened.

It's not like the later doctors crossed their own timeline to interfere. There's no reason for The Moment to have done anything different in 'that time' through than it did the 'first' time

I wondered about that. I think the only thing to support that it happened "the first time" was Ten's line about "Are you actually suggesting we change our own timeline?" But since he doesn't remember these events he still thinks he did it so it doesn't work. Then again, his aversion to changing history might be a reaction to his whole Time Lord Victorious spiel that was for him quite recent.

EDIT: Also, I think this explanation of what happens makes the events of Parting of the Ways even better. Before, it was the Doctor deciding not to slaughter the innocent to stop the guilty again, whereas now it him still saying no, reaffirming that he is indeed the Doctor.

[Batman]

An interesting thing in the review is Chuck's repeated references to a 'first time' when the War Doctor actually used the moment to burn everything.
Now given that the impetus for the multi-doctor even was the moment itself. I never saw the events of the special as an altered sequence of events but what had 'always' happened.
It's not like the later doctors crossed their own timeline to interfere. There's no reason for The Moment to have done anything different in 'that time' through than it did the 'first' time

How is that supposed to work? Both Tennant's and Smith's Doctor quite obviously believed they did burn Gallifrey, that's half of what this episodes was about. If them deciding to timefreeze Gallifrey instead was what always happened, that'd be what they always remembered which is quite obviously not the case.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Except that they state at the end that Hurt and Tennant's Doctor's won't remember what happenned, so as far as their memory is concerned, they stole the Moment, walked tot he barn intended to detonate it, then woke up having regenerated and the Daleks, Time Lords and Gallifrey were gone and the events were time-locked. It's a pretty reasonable conclusion to reach that he did in fact burn everything.

[InsaneTD]

11 flat out tells the war doctor that he won't remember that he froze them instead of killing them.

[Batman]

Why would they remember it that way if that never actually happened? If, as Crazedwraith posits, this is what always has happened, where do those memories come from?
We can't have it both ways. For the Doctor to remember having burned Gallifrey requires the Doctor to at least think he burned Gallifrey, and if the events of 'Day of the Doctor' were the way it always happened he'd know he didn't.
I'm absolutely with you that it's something they can't remember due to timey-wimey and altering your own past and all but I don't think this works with Crazedwraith's idea that the depiction in this episode are the way it 'always' happened. For the Doctor to remember, regret, and desperately wish to undo his burning of Gallifrey, the Doctor has to actually have done so (or at least think he did).

[Crazedwraith]

If that isn't always what happened. What changed? Why did The Moment go all time warp 'this' time as opposed to 'last' time?

As Eternal_Freedom says the Doctor's memories stop with him just about to trigger the moment totally determined to burn both Daleks and Time Lords. If we posit that his memories then start again freshly regenerated as Eccleston and returned to Gallifrey orbit, after Gallifrey is gone but with the Dalek ship still burning from shooting each up. Then his statements about watching everything burn still hold true. (specifically he said he saw the Dalek fleet burn)

He just mentally fills in the blanks about what happens to the disappeared planet, since everything he can see is burning.

[Tribble]

If the other races lacked the means to defeat the two when they threw everything against each other, I doubt they would be able to pose that big a threat to Gallifrey even if some of them now do have time travel.

That's not exactly what I was aiming at. We know some Daleks survived the events of this episode, and the Empire is steadily rebuilding. They are at least equals to the Timelords in military capability, if not a bit superior. If and when Gallifrey is found and the two species eventually become aware of the fact that they both survived, what would happen? I can't see the Daleks or the Timelords standing still and doing nothing. Would the Time War start all over again? Or, given the fact that this was a war involving time travel and paradoxes, was Gallifrey's survival potentially the event that ultimately triggered the war in the first place? Because the second the Daleks realise that Gallifrey is still out there (however long that takes), I would imagine they would do everything possible to try to locate it and destroy it.

[mr friendly guy]

If the other races lacked the means to defeat the two when they threw everything against each other, I doubt they would be able to pose that big a threat to Gallifrey even if some of them now do have time travel.

That's not exactly what I was aiming at. We know some Daleks survived the events of this episode, and the Empire is steadily rebuilding. They are at least equals to the Timelords in military capability, if not a bit superior. If and when Gallifrey is found and the two species eventually become aware of the fact that they both survived, what would happen? I can't see the Daleks or the Timelords standing still and doing nothing. Would the Time War start all over again? Or, given the fact that this was a war involving time travel and paradoxes, was Gallifrey's survival potentially the event that ultimately triggered the war in the first place? Because the second the Daleks realise that Gallifrey is still out there (however long that takes), I would imagine they would do everything possible to try to locate it and destroy it.

Well the Christmas special has billed "the Time War threatens to restart" and it has Daleks in it, so we will see.

[Broomstick]

Did anyone else catch the parallels between

- the screwdrivers are all the same software with a different casing
- Clara is the same "recipe" appearing in different iterations of a "souffle"
- the Doctor is the same man in a different body