User blog:New Dalek Paradigm/Why I didn't like The Day of the Doctor

contains major spoilers

o boi can't w8 2 reed teh retaliation coments

Well then, let's get down to business. Doctor Who 50th anniversary, was it a solid story with likeable characters or was it just extreme fan service to both fake Whovians who only watched the Tennant era and extreme Whovians who liked the classics? I say it's the latter, but of course, I can't post a heavily opinionated blog without having some evidence to back up my answer for w̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶S̶a̶m̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶O̶b̶i̶ ̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶g̶u̶m̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶m̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ ̶s̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ the people who want a valid argument.

Let's begin with David Tennant. Don't get me wrong, but I was looking forward to seeing the darker version of his character. A while back I had read an interview with Steven Moffat saying that the Tennant in the anniversary was the Tennant in between The Waters of Mars and The End of Time, so I was honestly expecting some better insight to that timespan of the character since I've always despised The End of Time. When the "Tennant vs. Evil Rabbit" clip was released a week ago, I knew that I was in for some crazy Moffat banter between 10 and 11, despite the fact that it was made clear this was the Doctor who knew he was going to die soon. And what do we get first with this Doctor who doesn't care about re-writing history anymore and saving the lives of those who can't be saved?... ...a picnic with Queen Elizabeth I, of course, what better way to introduce our beloved merciless anti-hero? To be fair, he is technically re-writing history by getting engaged to Liz on accident, but Moffat's writing takes it so lightheartedly that you can't help but feel like this is the Doctor right after The Last of the Timelords. He seems fairly content with his current lifestyle, and quite happy with it for that matter. While I do agree that the witty banter between 10 and 11 is nice, it just feels so out of place that it's hard for me and a small minority of Whovians to enjoy it.

My biggest issue out of all was the flimsy story. Most people were too shocked to see David Tennant and Matt Smith together to notice how genuinely holey the plot was, but I watched the episode looking to have a fun time while also making minor criticisms. But in the end the story got too many criticisms on my part for me to have fun. Let's go backwards for this one, since my largest criticism comes from the end of the episode. No no, it's not Tom Baker appearing at the end, that was a delicate touch that I didn't mind. But what I really didn't like was how all 11 Doctors came in at the end to save the day. Most people saw this as a thrilling climax, but I thought it was dreadful. First of all, what's keeping the other 8 Doctors from remembering the incident? It was made clear that Hurt and 10 spent too much time with 11 to remember it (which caused anomolies for the sake of the plot), but the other 11 come in for 30 seconds and leave. So... why can't they remember it? And, for that matter, why don't 10 and Hurt remember it? All of the other Doctors besides Eccleston appeared BEFORE Hurt and 10nnant, so why don't the two of them remember it, as well? And with this newfound knowledge of the Time War which the 1st Doctor would've never predicted, wouldn't that rewrite the entire story of all of Classic Doctor Who? Help! (maybe David Bradley should keep playing the 1st Doctor in a new "Classic" series). Oh, and before I move on to a new aspect of the plot, I'd just like to point out that this "frozen Gallifrey" thing does not affect the events of The End of Time. It's only mentioned for a second, but if you listen to one of the Generals in one of the scenes, they say "to Hell with the High Council, their plan has already failed", meaning that Rassilon and his gang already tried to become gods, but failed, meaning that all of that happened BEFORE the events of this episode. Anyways, back to the bad parts of a plot, what happened with the Zygons? Are we just going to accept that UNIT has two leaders and they've made some peace treaty? Which ones were the Zygons again? Are they going to help UNIT undercover? That solution felt too rushed, we never find out what happens. By the way, what about the other Zygons in the museum? There are clearly 3 or 4 more of them, so are they just going to hide in plain sight? Queen Elizabeth I says that they're not smart enough to differenciate between their own disguised kind and humans, so now we have no idea what happens.

As a final bash on this episode, I'm going to personally say that Billie Piper was unnecessary fan service. If you're going to bring an actress back, bring her back as her own character. I was hoping to see Rose Tyler or even the Bad Wolf entity, but we got an Interface that just mocked Hurt half the time and gave him useful advice the other time. Why not introduce the Interface as a whole new character? That's more interesting than watching Billie Piper dance around moaning "No More" with weird camera shots.

I'll give this episode a 4 or 5 out of 10 because of the fan service, but I don't really think it's worthy of being called the grande 50th anniversary special. Sorry.