The Day of the Doctor Review

This review comes from my Letterboxd profile, where I review movies and limited series consistently.

Yeah, I'll admit, as a piece of media on its own accord, The Day of the Doctor definitely has some structural issues that would actually make this more of a four-star program. That being said, as a Doctor Who fan, there are so many perfectly built-up and established arcs here and the ending (for the most part) is so phenomenal that I have to give it four-and-a-half. Yes, it definitely does appeal to the geeky fan side of me that loves this show (and admittedly, it sometimes does it too much, which I will get into), but overall, this is a really great episode of the show and probably the best 50th anniversary special the crew could have made.

Let me just get my thoughts on Doctor Who out of the way before we start this review, and I'll try to be quick about them: In middle school, my friend recommended I watch Doctor Who for the longest time because she loved it so much. When I finally did, I started watching it with my parents. I would talk to her about each episode when I was done with it, and it was a total blast experiencing this show for the first time. I haven't seen very many of the original episodes, but I'm pretty well-versed in the reboot. Overall, I really love the series. In my opinion, seasons 1-4 are pretty much perfect in their execution, direction, and particularly writing. Seasons 5 and 6 were also pretty great, but once they introduced a brand new companion for Matt Smith halfway through season 7, the show started to falter for me. Season 8's scripts were completely underwhelming, but I kept trying to watch the show. Unfortunately, the first three episodes of season 9 were so terribly written that I couldn't watch any more of Capaldi's era. I've since seen his regeneration episode and all of seasons 11 and 12 (at least, thus far), but boy, do I miss Russell T. Davies' era.

Now that my thoughts on the show as a whole are out of the way, let me establish right off the bat that I think Stephen Moffat is actually a really good writer. Again, I thought seasons 5 and 6 were pretty good overall, and frankly, he's responsible for some of the best story arcs of the reboot as a whole and some of the best episodes of the Russell T. Davies era. He wrote Blink, the Silence in the Library two-parter, the Empty Child two-parter, classic episodes like that, and he is responsible for the INCREDIBLY consistent continuity of River Song's entire story arc. That's why I still have faith in him as a writer overall, and with Day of the Doctor, he once again proves that when he writes a great script, it can really land with audiences. I think this episode perfectly balances callbacks from previous episodes (including from the original run of the show) with the new story being told so that it doesn't feel like we're constantly being waterboarded with callbacks to moments from the show we love. In fact, I would love to see what a first-time viewer of Doctor Who would think if this was the first episode they ever saw of the show. I think they would actually be able to follow it really well even without the context of the rest of the show.

That being said, it's definitely better if you've seen at least all of the reboot prior to this episode if only because of the amount of buildup the characters have gotten leading up to this big moment. Three reincarnations of The Doctor get the chance to tell each other how they feel about the most traumatizing event of their past, and it's completely riveting. The chemistry between these three really shines, and of course, all three of them are brilliant as their respective roles. I wish John Hurt got another few attempts to shine as the War Doctor because that reincarnation of his character is so fascinating to me. He's worn-down, he's seen so much, he's about to make the biggest decision of his entire life, and he's so, so tired. He's such an interesting incarnation and Hurt did a fantastic job. I will say, though, as fantastic as Matt Smith is at capturing the character of The Doctor and despite how funny he was during his run and as much as I love his incarnation, watching this episode made me realize that of the Doctors I've watched, none of them were able to elevate the material given to them in the script as much as David Tennant did. Seriously, what an actor. Every single line out of him felt so naturally funny. There were quite a few moments in his first few scenes where his line delivery had me in stitches because of how perfect it was. In terms of all of the Doctors since the Eighth Doctor, none has captured that character as well as Tennant, in my humble opinion.

Jenna Coleman is the best she probably ever was as Clara. Her performance was never the issue for me, it was always the way her character was written. She was always just so bland compared to the grandiose character they seemingly set her up to be, but in this episode, she actually gets the chance to deliver some good one-liners and do actually useful things and make an actual impact on The Doctor's life with the things she says and does. This is probably the best she's ever been, and I was surprised coming back that I was able to completely buy Coleman as Clara after getting so used to her incredible performance in Victoria. I think this woman's career is only gonna get bigger and better, especially considering that I think she just won an Emmy for a miniseries. I'm really pumped to see what else she does.

I will put a spoiler warning now just in case you haven't gotten to this point in the show and you're watching through the reboot and don't know about a returning actress in this episode. If you don't know the returning actress in this episode and don't want to know who she is, then please skip to the next paragraph now. Billie Piper is actually in this episode playing a different character than the one she's most known for, and she does a terrific job here. She perfectly encapsulates an all-knowing, omnipresent conscious and delivers some great one-liners along the way. It was really cool to see her return to the show for one more episode, even if it was in a different way than most Doctor Who fans originally thought.

The script has a really clever way of working in references to previous and future episodes, along with allowing the characters to thank each other in a way that sounds like it could be either those characters thanking each other or the actors playing them thanking each other. The show brilliantly combines elements from previous seasons in a way that's not only plot relevant and/or funny but also a chance for fans of the show to geek out when they catch an awesome reference. That's the best kind of callback, in my opinion -- you call back to a certain element of a show, movie, book, etc., and it doesn't just come out of nowhere just to make the fans excited about it. I think those references are perfectly worked in here, and in general, the script is just clever. Like I said, the Doctors get a lot of great one-liners, and the new sci-fi concepts and plot twists that the script incorporates not only add on to knowledge previously gained throughout the show, but also improves upon it and changes our perspective on that knowledge. It doesn't try to rewrite anything to shock the audience, which I'm personally very worried the new season is about to do with its major plotline. It takes events that have already been established and simply changes their perspective without changing the information that has been established, and to me, that's impressive.

Oh, there are definitely flaws with this story. You bet there are. I'm not gonna deny it for a single second. For one, you can tell that the creators of this show got a bigger budget for that episode, and they sometimes show that off a little bit too much. There's a lot of really jump editing in this episode that doesn't feel like it adds anything to the story, it just seems more... cinematic, I guess? There's a sequence involving two characters who work at this organization getting captured by aliens called Zygons that had so many quick-cuts and strange close-ups on the Zygons that I couldn't tell what the creators of the episode were trying to communicate with the way they told that scene. There's a scene where Billie Piper's character seemingly jumps around unnaturally while chanting "No more," there's a weird moment demonstrating how glass breaks in a certain scene, there was just a lot of strange editing in this episode that didn't work for me at all.

I also felt there were some elements of the story that didn't fall into place. There's a moment where all of the Doctors hide themselves away to break into this archive and I'm not entirely sure how they managed to do what they did to break out of their hiding spot. Along with that, there are absolutely moments that call back to previous Doctor Who episodes that DO feel pretty unnecessary. There's a callback to one of David Tennant's most famous lines, and let's be honest, that entire line of dialogue was just awkwardly written and didn't fit in the context of that scene. I also thought that while Matt Smith's ending monologue was pretty awesome, the ending SHOT was absolutely nonsensical. It was literally just there to get fans excited and do nothing else. Cut that ending shot out of the episode, nothing would have been lost in the story. That just personally annoyed me.

However, as a huge fan of the Doctor Who reboot, The Day of the Doctor is about as good as any episode of the show could be. I think it's the perfect 50th anniversary episode, combining a ton of elements from previous seasons while also making a new, riveting story that doesn't only feel like an unnecessary callback episode to all of the great moments of Doctor Who. The performances are great, the direction is a lot more cinematic than usual (again, probably a higher budget), the writing is sharp, clever, and dramatic, and even though the ending shot isn't the best, the actual ENDING of this episode is such a fantastic ending to the build-up of arcs that had been established ever since the first episode of the reboot. This is a really great Doctor Who event and if you love the show and haven't seen this yet, definitely check it out.

Letter Grade: A