The Day of the Doctor
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janetteB 7 months, 3 weeks ago.
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3 September 2014 at 17:37 #31031
Any one know how the Doctor and Clara got out of the Doctor’s own time stream? End of the episode “The Name of the Doctor” where we are introduced to John Hurt as The Doctor? Been puzzling me for quite a while…
3 September 2014 at 18:14 #31032Anonymous @
Hi Nightmare and welcome,
The answer to your question will be somewhere on the Name of the Doctor Episode, under Forums and the Eleventh Doctor. You posted your question under the Day of the Doctor.
I’m sure Bluesqueakpip answered that question on the right forum.
3 September 2014 at 18:46 #31034@nightmare – I also answered it on the Into the Dalek forum. Post 30918.
3 September 2014 at 19:01 #31035Hi, thank you.
Thank you both, I hadn’t realised that, one of those little things that bugged me.
Seems like a friendly place this, I can’t believe I haven’t searched for a Doctor Who forum in the past……strange
4 September 2014 at 13:56 #31073One thing I will say is that this episode is my favourite of all time, I really enjoy how the three Doctors go together their on screen chemistry is brilliant
8 December 2014 at 04:20 #36097I just watched this on Netflix (as contrasted with my previous viewings on Canada’s Space Channel). It was wonderful to see it in high definition, and commercial-free. I’d forgotten so much! As Nightmare noted, it was such a joy to see the three Doctors sparring with one another. There was a remarkable contrast yet cohesion between the three personalities, which I really enjoyed. The Moment and Clara had great scenes, as well … as did The Curator … or Doctor? Hmmm … just writing about it makes me want to watch again!
22 June 2015 at 18:17 #40769Hello, I’m new to these forums! I have been lurking for just under a year though 😛
I see now that the last post was in December, an awful amount of time ago, so for the really quite tremendous bump I must apologize.
I was re-watching
The Day of the Doctorjust a few moments ago and I thought about the scene where the three Doctors have a nice chat right after saving Gallifrey and I thought; “I wonder if off-screen there were other Doctors present?”.As in perhaps ALL the Doctor’s went to the gallery to chat, and of course, after some time elapsed they all left but the remaining 3 we see on screen, nice thought.
Another thing I noticed is that in the Tower of London scene, 10 talks about how having 3 Doctors in one room will eventually cause anomalies.
So how come later on they’re all right to just sit down in one room and have a lovely little chat about the painting?
I appreciate how that is what some would call
nitpicky, so my apologies for that, anywhom, thank you for reading if you did so and I hope to be a fairly active member of this forum, can’t wait till Series 9!24 June 2015 at 19:28 #40803By far my favorite episode to date. This is really a perfect blend of excitement, character development, humor and intrigue. It was entertaining for all ages and well-paced.
23 July 2015 at 02:27 #41363Don’t worry about bump threads, new ideas are good and people are mostly worried about avoiding spoilers so posting on the right thread is the best way to go.
Nice theory about all the doctors being together and we just didn’t get to see them. Off screen reasons are mostly why we didn’t see them all together at the end, but for onscreen reasons it makes perfect sense they would’ve been there. I’m officially adding that to my personal whoniverse canon now. Thx very fun to think about. 🙂
For explaining the possible paradoxes, DotD has Bad Wolf to explain how it happened without destroying the space time continuum.
But to explain the Curator scene, they might have been in a kind of void space at that time (like the void space in the BG story Warrior’s Gate). I think the time line where Gallifrey was destroyed ended and they were in the void space between switching over to the new timeline where Gallifrey was in the paintings.
Welcome to the DWF, hope to read more of your posts.
22 October 2015 at 22:06 #45315So in this episode there are thirteen doctors at once. Does this mean there are thirteen different versions of the doctor roaming around time and space?
22 October 2015 at 22:19 #45316At least thirteen. Possibly twenty six. Possibly an infinite number of them.
Or possibly the entire population of Gallifrey consists of different incarnations of the Doctor. It’s just that most of them keep it a secret. 😉
28 October 2015 at 17:26 #4574828 October 2015 at 17:44 #45749Check out the Dream Lord (Amy’s Choice) for the answer to that one. 😉
28 October 2015 at 18:45 #45752Thanks Bluesqueak.
9 December 2015 at 20:05 #49174One thing I’ve been wondering is if the painting, Gallifrey Falls No More, could possibly be the actual Gallifrey, sicne they said they would freeze it in time, “Like a painting.“
3 May 2016 at 14:47 #52093Episode brilliant. But why there was no classic Doctors (omitting Tom Baker, which who had really small role, but yes, great)? Really, even only Paul McGann would be great in episode like this, we’ve seen him only in movie and “The Night of The Doctor”. Oh c’mon! Sylvester McCoy still feel young! 😛
10 May 2016 at 08:56 #52241Most excellent episode and by far my favourite.
I did have a thought spring up into my mind. This isn’t something that usually happens as I’m very articulate in paradoxes and time travel etc but my problem is this…
The doctors don’t remember the events of the “Day of the Doctor” however does Clara? And do the other humans who would be now randomly be in partnership to this weird looking alien race with big sicker and venom sacks in the tongue? I’m not sure if anything was mentioned in the capaldi episodes where there were rogue zygons though.
Any help would be much appriciated
“GALLIFREY STANDS!”
26 October 2016 at 19:11 #54406Okay, here’s my theory about the Day of the Doctor.
So, Hurt and Capaldi are a bit older than Eccleston, Tennant and Smith. It may just be a coincidence, but did anyone notice how Hurt repeatedly asked the other two about why they were so afraid of being grown-ups? And then they looked at him somewhat oddly? In the Time War, it was certainly an ageing experience. The Doctor was faced with an extremely tough and extremely grown-up decision. After that, he tried to put it behind him, and not dwell on it again. Well, perhaps the War Doctor is why they’re so afraid of growing up – they prefer to bounce cheerfully around space and time fixing planets, insisting on looking young and fresh as opposed to growing up and making tough decisions like that again. With each regeneration after Hurt, the Doctor gets younger, and more whimsical and childish. After The Day of the Doctor, however, they accept the War Doctor, accept that it wasn’t entirely his fault, and accept that we all have to make tough, and adult, decisions sometimes. Then Smith generated into Capaldi, became older and less childish and carefree. Could this mean anything?
‘All those years, shutting you out, pretending you didn’t exist … you were the Doctor on the day it wasn’t possible to get it right.’ — the Doctor.
‘When you love an ageless god who insists on the face of a twelve year old … never let him see the damage, and never, ever, let him see you age.’ — River Song
26 October 2016 at 23:28 #54409Sometimes it’s hard to read block text? So (someone once said this to me) paragraphs are your friend 🙂
I think you have it right.
And I love the quotes….just right.
PuroSolo
26 October 2016 at 23:31 #5441013? Really. My 14 year old never writes “somewhat” -it’s rather an odd expression for one so young.
Still, we are all anon here much like Dante was as he wandered into the 9th circle. Welcome!
PuroSolo
27 October 2016 at 08:42 #54420I am a very odd person! Also my teacher always encourages me to use words like ‘somewhat’, ‘therefor’, ‘whereas’, ‘moreover’ etc.
27 October 2016 at 09:55 #54423ha! yes, my son is told this too.
There is a newer style used by writers these days which encourages a simple yet cohesive expression.
Words like ‘moreover’ and “furthermore” are great but I know of some who simply chuck ’em out.
Still, don’t listen to me!
I’m retired
*grins*
Hah!
27 October 2016 at 10:17 #54424@puroandson I would love to ‘chuck ’em out’, but I’m not allowed. Tell that to my teacher!
27 October 2016 at 10:29 #5442529 October 2016 at 01:17 #54446my teacher always encourages me to use words like ‘somewhat’, ‘therefor’, ‘whereas’, ‘moreover’ etc.
All power to you and your teacher!
Words are wonderful, and a large vocabulary and the skill to deploy it flexibly and appropriately are valuable assets. Conveying your meaning simply and clearly does not mean restricting your choice of words – for that purpose the more you have at your disposal the better. The main thing to avoid is giving people the impression that you have swallowed and are regurgitating a thesaurus or, still worse, resorting to ‘management speak’ 🙂
As for being an ‘odd person’. When I was around 12-13 I was told that I was ‘peculiar and talked like a book’ – and that was one of my friends; goodness knows what the others thought! Despite being considered an oddity I cruised reasonably happily through my school career, and positively flourished afterwards, and I hope that the same is true for you.
29 October 2016 at 08:37 #54449Thank you! My friends nicknames for me are ‘Doctor Potter’ which I like and ‘Dictionary’, which is probably not a good sign. Oh well. I’ll do my best.
29 October 2016 at 08:38 #54450*friends’, sorry. They call me a dictionary but I can’t even get the grammar right.
27 December 2017 at 17:55 #62786OK, I just watched this episode again last night, and loved it once again. For me, it was a nearly perfect celebration of the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who.
But I have one question (and I know I’m not the first to ask about this): Where does the War Doctor fall in the numbering system? I’m thinking he came between Paul McGann’s Doctor No. 8 and Chris Eccleston’s Doctor No. 9, correct? So shouldn’t the numbering of the Doctors have been changed to reflect this? Thus making Eccleston No. 10, Tennant No. 11, Smith No. 12, Capaldi No. 13 and now Whittaker No. 14? Or does that make the timeline more hopelessly complicated than it already is?
27 December 2017 at 22:23 #62788Have you not seen this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U3jrS-uhuo ?
The numbers weren’t changed because The War Doctor did not consider himself worthy of the lineage.
27 December 2017 at 23:00 #62789@pedant I guess I missed that. I know that Smith and Tennant’s Doctors mentioned they didn’t like to think of that incarnation of themselves, and Hurt’s Doctor mentioned not considering himself worthy of the title. But I thought he came around when they ended up saving Gallifrey (though they also noted that none of them would remember doing it). Thanks!
30 January 2020 at 15:44 #69492The majority of my problem with The Day of the Doctor is that it makes the Time War a spacial reality and strips the entire event of its seductive mythos. The exhilarating aspect of references to the Time War from Eccleston’s and Tennant’s Doctors was the mythology of it, mentions of The Nightmare Child and The Gaping Maw and The Could-Have-Been King as godlike phantoms from an inconceivably vast conflict of biblical proportions. When the war turns into simple spaceships shooting at each other, it becomes incredibly boring. Thoughts?
21 March 2020 at 13:02 #7019921 March 2020 at 13:34 #70200You just beat me to it. New Moffat-written content dropping online at 6.30 this evening (for the benefit of those who don’t click through)….
21 March 2020 at 14:13 #70201@xad4 Thank you for the link. I am now properly excited. Just watched Day of the Doctor as we will be asleep when it is shown and the S/O and I were alone tonight which does not happen often. Really looking forward to seeing the new material tomorrow.
Cheers
Janette
21 March 2020 at 14:47 #70202Yes, thank you for this. I haven’t posted on here for quite a while, and forgot that links don’t automatically expand into previews.
I look forward to seeing many of you tonight at seven-ish, or tomorrow catching up.
21 March 2020 at 18:36 #70203Well, here it is.
Yes! Here it is, courtesy of @StevenWMoffat and with the help of @McIntoshNeve, my esteemed colleague Strax entreats you to #SaveTheDay and join us in our viewing of The Day of The Doctor. Today at 7pm GMT, 3pm EST and all around the world! #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/ljqFWM6QRE
— Dan Starkey (@StanDarkley) March 21, 2020
21 March 2020 at 19:42 #70206Well, I’m settled down in the Lakes (our nearest neighbour is half a mile away – and she’s a sheep) with a small, but still medically inadvisable glass of wine, and enjoying the shit out of this.
It brings back a lot of warm memories.
Just to note Moffat has temporarily rejoined Twitter and is posting a Twitter commentary which is quite nice of him. It’s typically very funny.
https://mobile.twitter.com/StevenWMoffat
Other thoughts (including from other people involved) can be found on the #savetheday hashtag (you don’t need to join Twitter to follow these threads).
I’d love to post a running commentary myself, but a bit knackered after a long trip. See you later!
21 March 2020 at 20:55 #70207That was great, I really enjoyed watching it again. It’s only been less than a year since I last watched this episode but I’d forgotten quite how brilliant it is. I loved Strax’s introduction video too, that was hilarious.
Also, this quote from @bluesqueakpip in this thread, four and half years ago, has aged remarkably well. 😉
At least thirteen. Possibly twenty six. Possibly an infinite number of them.
Or possibly the entire population of Gallifrey consists of different incarnations of the Doctor. It’s just that most of them keep it a secret. 😉
21 March 2020 at 22:00 #70209Well, that was just fantastic and certainly revived my love for Who. A nice palate cleanser after Timeless Children. Love the little Strax intro too. I’d still love to see a proper Paternoster spin-off. The Big Finish audios are nice and all but it’s just not the same. And to echo @phaseshift, I’d recommend checking out Moffat’s Twitter feed for the rewatch. Nothing ground-breaking in there but it’s very amusing and worth a scan.
But what to say that hasn’t been said already? The performances were all terrific. Matt and Jenna were at the top of their game and John Hurt is incredible in solidly convincing as a Doctor within the space of one special episode which he has to share with two established stars in the role. It’s such a shame that we never got to see more of him in the role. The interplay between all three Doctors is terrific throughout. (A note to Chibs for when the 60th comes — three is the optimum number for screen Doctors at any one time. Remember not to overcrowd them.
It’s a terrific opening too, isn’t it. From the blast of the old-school opening titles to the sly giving us of both Coal Hill School and Barnes Common. And the airlifting of the TARDIS to me cements Kate as very much her father’s daughter for sheer operational ineptitude. I could totally see this scene being played out with the Brigadier and the Third Doctor with not much of a change.
The plot itself seems to be rather typical of peak Moffat — seemingly complex and timey-wimey but actually far less complicated than it seems (something he points out in his Twitter feed. It’s Queen Liz who saves the day!!). But it’s the journey more than the destination that is the point and I think it’s often forgotten that the appeal of SM’s Who is as much the well-handled character work as much as the involved plots — and, in fact, one of his defter writing skills is the careful dancing around massive infodumps as we’ve seen recently by circumventing them with a load of playful nonsense about Cup-a-Soups or whatever.
Then there’s the Zygons. I get that they were a little present to David Tennant but I’ve never particularly liked the Zygons. Terror of the Zygons is a fun enough story in a generic, 70s alien menace runaround kind of way. Even at the time of broadcast, it felt rather incongruous — as if a Pertwee story had escaped to run amok in another era. Their rubbery unwieldiness is, for example, a little at odds with the otherwise charged nature of the Zygon Invasion/Inversion. But here the Zygon plot is unobtrusive enough that they don’t overturn the emotion of the Gallifrey arc.
The denouement of which is nicely elegant too. Having Gallifrey found but lost, in existence but in a pocket universe was a clever way of returning Gallifrey to the Whoniverse, removing the angst of the ‘Last of the Time Lords’ shtick but without making them too dominant, without returning the universe to the parochial place it had become in the 1980s. It was a delicate balance to achieve and it’s a shame that it’s been (apparently) lost now.
And then there’s Tom’s cameo. Which was lovely. The man is clearly still bonkers after all these years and his performance is nice in that it evokes the Fourth Doctor but which also allowed Tom to play to the strengths of his ‘oldness’ instead of just trying to ignore it (in a way that some of his Big Finish audios have to do with sometimes mixed success). I do still hope that we’ll see some ‘old favourites’ revisited in the future.
Finally, I’d say to any fans of this story who haven’t read the novelisation, I’d encourage you to do so immediately. It changes and deepens the story in all kinds of ways and contains oodles of SM’s engagingly tricksy humour within it to boot.
21 March 2020 at 23:10 #70210Well, that was fun. Is it really six and a half years since the 50th?
I agree with @jimthefish – everyone is working at the top of their game, trying to make something really special. This isn’t a love letter to the fans – it’s a love letter to Doctor Who. All of Doctor Who, from the actors who’ve played The Doctor on TV, to the slightly naff rubber monsters, to Gallifrey, to the reboot. All of it, right down to the then-present-day Moffat loop (where does that fez come from?).
John Hurt’s performance is excellent. The most Doctorish thing about his Doctor is the sheer charm he brings to the role. Not only is he charming Clara, he’s charming the audience into believing that he is ‘The Doctor’, even though they’ll only see him in this story.
And I did like the Strax introduction video. 🙂
22 March 2020 at 00:46 #70211That was great fun to watch again and I enjoyed it as much as I ever did. All the Doctors were together,so different in looks but still the Doctor and it reminded me why I love this show.Tennants brave warning to a fat bunny and Smiths remarks on 10s skinniness still make me grin as well as Hurts complaints about the other Doctors use of the sonic screwdriver and the kissing. As @bluesqueakpip says this is a love letter to Who and one I would sign in an instant.
I also think this was a very funny show with just the right amount of silliness balanced by a few scares and some sadness.It brought back some old favourites with a flash view of a future favourite.How does Moffat do it?
I urge everyone who needs some cheer and some hope to watch this again and I bet they will feel better if only for a little while.
22 March 2020 at 04:12 #70215Just watched it. Well, yes, it was wonderful. All of it. Everyone above has said the same thing.
And there is a subtext to that praise.
But it is so painfully obvious that there is no need to point it out.
22 March 2020 at 04:24 #70217As we got to the undergallery and saw the three shrouded figures, of course I immediately imagined Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy under the sheets. What a great show “The Five-ish Doctors” was.
22 March 2020 at 06:43 #70218I think @jimthefish has really covered it perfectly, only disagree about the Zygons. They are classic rubbery Old Who monsters, more comedic than scary, other than for their shape shifting abilities but Terror of the Zygons was my introduction to Dr Who so I have a sentimental attachment to them and when I heard that they were to feature in the anniversary special I was delighted.
My S/O gave me the novelisation of Day of the Doctor penned by Steven Moffat himself, for Christmas and it was a very, very enjoyable read. I recommend it.
Cheers
Janette
22 March 2020 at 15:06 #70219Yes, that’s exactly what DotD is. Very well put. You can feel the love and affection oozing out of every pore of this story.
Yes, I know that there are many out there who love the Zygons and they’re very much the epitome of Old Who men in rubber suits. Which, now I think of it more, are why they’re maybe the perfect monster for this story. I even loved the way that old-school sound effects were used for their technology.
Just a heads-up that there will be a similar thing happening for Rose later this week, with RTD live-tweeting throughout. That will be worth tuning in for too, I would think. I believe there’s also plans to do The Eleventh Hour at some point too. (It also makes me wonder whether we should as a forum go back and revisit the RTD and early SM eras, maybe week by week, as if its being broadcast. I think we only came into existence round about s6, so there maybe be a gap to be exploited there. I can’t recall offhand.)
22 March 2020 at 17:52 #70220I concur with the idea of revisiting some older shows, and (especially in light of The Day of the Doctor) would probably favour early Moffat to begin with. My memory of when this site came together was season 5. I say that because I recall posting on the site from Qantas Club lounges back in the day when I was doing a bit of international travel for work. Those halcyon days ended by early 2011, and as I recall, the site came into existence to escape the pointless vitriol over on t’other place by “fans” who hated Moffat and yearned for RTD. The early group who moved here, by contrast, were uniformly excited by Moffat’s approach. Hold on, now that I think about it, it was @craig who gave us the great sub-heading “Theories even more insane than what’s actually happening” and that was from “The God Complex” in season 6. Or did the subheading come a while after the establishment of the site?
In any event, the site was established by a group who responded to Moffat primarily (we even had threads here on “Sherlock”) and for that reason alone I would jump at the opportunity of revisiting the early Moffat years of Who. But, hey, as someone who is spending a lot of time indoors at the moment, I am up for any nerdy discussion with a bunch of congenial people.
22 March 2020 at 18:07 #70221I’ve just had a rummage through the archives and it looks like we’ve covered every episode of Nu Who, some of which obviously retrospectively. That’s no reason we can’t dig into them again, of course, it people want to do that.
22 March 2020 at 19:12 #70222Thanks for the shout out to the novelization by Moffat. I was not previously aware of it, but have just rectified that courtesy of amazon.
p.s. I am sure you are right about the site starting in season 6, as I realise that my world of Qantas Club Lounges kept going till early 2013. As for the Blenkinsop memory, however…
22 March 2020 at 19:23 #70223@jimthefish
Maybe see what people are going with online initially? I think we have done rewatches of every new-Who episode, plus the 50th Anniversary Specials, so joining in a worldwide rewatch of ‘greatest hits’ might be fun – especially if the relevant showrunners are along for the ride. The Moffat beard is pretty scary, though.If we did go with forum-only rewatches, another go at Adventure in Time and Space would be my vote, but I’m not sure it’s on iPlayer. Likewise, @janetteb‘s suggestion of The Five(ish) Doctors would be a good one.
@blenkinsopthebrave
You weren’t the only one who promptly thought of Davison, Baker and McCoy under those sheets.The subheading was Craig’s choice and my suggestion, if I’m recalling rightly. Craig asked for a few possibilities and I suggested the quote from The God Complex.
22 March 2020 at 19:44 #70224Both “Adventure in Time and Space” and “Five-ish Doctors Reboot” are excellent suggestions for a re-watch.
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