Day Of The Doctor

It might have escaped your notice, as the BBC have not really gone to town over it, but Doctor Who was fifty this week. 

Yeah, I know why didn't they make more of it? At the epicentre of the overkill was Day of the Doctor a special edition that promised all manner of surprises; which in truth  delivered precious few. Things started well with thousands of Dalek ships bombarding Gallifrey, but that opening ten minutes seemed to eat up the budget because we were soon back to the usual run of the mill lab sets. The plot, if that is what it was, mainly seemed to serve to get Matt Smith's Doctor together with John Hurt and David Tennant's Time Lord incarnations. There was an ultimate weapon, Elizabeth the First, and Billie Piper sitting on boxes, that was about all I could gather from it all. Ended up the real villains were a bunch of shape shifting aliens that looked like a geezer in a suit. I don't know if this was a nod to the old days where every alien looked like they were rejects from a Blue Peter create a monster competition. But the real joy of the show was seeing David Tennant back as the Doctor, he really could juggle that quirkiness with the required menace so you believed he really had a dark side. Unlike Matt Smith who just goes for eccentric college professor and be done with it.There was a neat cameo  at the end, which kind of made no sense, but was good anyway. 

All said Day of the Doctor was OK, because Doctor Who is OK, not the stone cold classic the BBC think it is. Although they conveniently forget it was unloved and axed when Sylvester McCoy was in the role. But wouldn't you know it, as the end titles rolled, with the faces of all the previous Doctors the BBC couldn't resist talking all over them, to let us know about the after party with Zoe Ball. Wow, we really needed the atmosphere broken for that piece of information. 

So Matt Smith will bail out at Christmas and next year Malcolm Tucker will take over, cover the kids ears for that one.

Over