“The Day Of The Doctor” is the story of three men. Or perhaps it’s the story of one man, or maybe even thirteen. It’s the story of all the different kinds of person that the Doctor can be, and what they mean to the universe, not to mention to each other. Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary special takes its time to determine just whose Doctor’s story this really is. For much of its running length, the most important Doctor is the one who doesn’t consider himself the Doctor at all. John Hurt’s warrior incarnation is the effective protagonist, as he is forced to consider not only whether he can make the ultimate sacrifice to end the Time War but also whether he can live with the sort of man he will become if he makes that choice. It’s only in the final 20 minutes that Matt Smith’s 11th Doctor steps back into the limelight, as Clara reminds him that he is neither a warrior nor a hero. He’s not better, necessarily, but he’s different. He’s the Doctor, and that’s what allows him to figure out the escape from the ultimate impossible trap that is the Time War, even if it takes him two tries and 400 years.
The great joy of “The Day Of The Doctor”—of all the multi-Doctor stories, really—is seeing the various incarnations of the Time Lord interact. Both Matt Smith and the returning David Tennant are in fine form, and the 10th and 11th Doctors prove to be a very funny double act. The 11th Doctor marvels at his predecessor’s impossible skinniness and offers this “matchstick man” the mocking reassurance that what he gets up to in the privacy of his regeneration is his business. The two also play well against John Hurt’s War Doctor; after the initial fear and distrust of their forgotten incarnation subsides, the two Doctors start putting down each other as though they’re trying to score points with, well, their granddad. David Tennant gets the biggest laugh of the special when, in response to the War Doctor’s disbelief at the 11th Doctor’s use of the phrase “timey-wimey,” he leans in and offers the bald-faced lie: “I have no idea where he picks that stuff up.” While the War Doctor has his own distinct role to play, he is also there to serve as a de facto stand-in for all the Doctors of old, responding to his ridiculously youthful older selves much as one might expect William Hartnell or Jon Pertwee would. He at first treats the Doctors much as he would children, politely asking whether these two are the Doctor’s companions.
In the prison cell, the War Doctor asks his successors why they must always talk like children and what makes them so ashamed of being grown-ups. It’s a line brimming with meta-commentary, doubling as the grouchy old-school Doctor Who fan’s lament for the brash ridiculousness of this new incarnation of the show. But the response to that question is what brings “The Day Of The Doctor” back into focus, as the two Doctors articulate just why they dread the sight of their predecessor. The pronouns are important here; the 11th Doctor refers to “The day you killed them all,” while the 10th Doctor corrects this as “The day we killed them all.” The 11th Doctor claims there’s no difference, but it’s apparent just how much his perspective on the Time War has changed from that of the 10th. He has forgotten—or, perhaps more accurately, chosen to forget—the 2.47 billion dead children on Gallifrey that his predecessor once counted. In that the moment, the 10th Doctor appears just as disgusted by his future as he by his past. The Moment (who, yes, looks just like Rose Tyler in post-apocalyptic haute couture) defines them as “the man who regrets” and “the man who forgets,” and neither life seems all that palatable to the incarnation who must decide whether to bring their timeline into being.
The most audacious aspect of the anniversary special is the 11th Doctor’s decision to rewrite the last day of the Time War and save Gallifrey. In so doing, “The Day Of The Doctor” redefines the fundamental question that has shaped the new series, and that’s whether the Doctor was right to commit double genocide in order to end the Time War. Until now, it’s not a question the audience has had sufficient knowledge to answer; the issue turns on whether Gallifrey, the Doctor’s home, was beyond saving. The 10th Doctor’s regeneration story, “The End Of Time,” is the only other story to properly deal with that issue, and it presented the exact opposite conclusion, as the Time Lords there had become so corrupt, so evil that they were willing to destroy the entire universe to enable their own survival. Reconciling “The Day Of The Doctor” with “The End Of Time” is difficult in strictly narrative terms, not least of which because I’m pretty sure they are both set on that very same last day of the war. If nothing else, one has to assume that Rassilon’s High Council of Time Lords and the General’s Gallifrey High Command maintain extremely separate jurisdictions.
So then, does the anniversary special invalidate the major themes that “The End Of Time” kicked around? Honestly, I’m not sure, though I think they can coexist when understood in terms of the Doctor’s evolving perspective. Nothing (except possibly the Daleks) is entirely good or entirely evil; here, the 11th Doctor chooses to remember the good of Gallifrey and so save it from destruction, but the 10th Doctor was forced to focus on the evil in “The End Of Time.” After all, the most important moment in David Tennant’s final episode is when the Doctor, who repeatedly refused to kill the Master, picked up a gun to take on his own people, even if he struggled to follow through on that hard choice. Although the 10th Doctor no longer had the War Doctor’s capacity to commit genocide, he still seemed to believe it was the correct course. He was still so scarred by the Time War that he could not dare hope for anything from his people, and Rassilon did not disabuse him of that notion. But the 11th Doctor is different. He has allowed himself to forget the worst of the Time War, and in so doing he has restored the possibility of someday finding his way home. He’s able to give that hope not only to Gallifrey but also to his earlier incarnations, even if the shifting timestreams mean his predecessors won’t remember his gift for long.
What’s at issue in “The Day Of The Doctor” isn’t the morality of the decision to destroy Gallifrey; after all, the latter-day Doctors come to accept the War Doctor and offer to help him push the big red button. Let’s not forget that it’s Clara—and, in her way, the Moment—who refuses to accept that there is no place left for the Doctor’s defining promise: “Never cowardly or cruel. Never give up, never give in.” It’s the earlier Doctors who repeat those words, but it’s the 11th who dares to see the path not of the warrior or of the hero, but of the Doctor. It’s crucial that the sole companion present is the one who points out that there could be another way, because Doctor Who needs that human voice just as much as it needs its alien in a police box.
The question that Steven Moffat’s script is really concerned with is whether there’s such a thing as a scenario without choice. He clearly believes that there isn’t, although the Doctor has to break all the laws of time 13 times over in order to prove the point; in terms of what the Doctor accomplishes, this is arguably the most unabashedly optimistic episode in Doctor Who history. But it’s very much up to the individual viewer to decide whether this fatally undercuts the Doctor’s emotional journey in the new series up to this point. On balance, I would say that it doesn’t, but never before has Steven Moffat so relied on the impossible logic of time travel to drive the Doctor’s character arc. The emotional burdens carried by the 9th and 10th Doctors are part of what enabled the 11th Doctor to develop this new perspective. As he says, with four centuries to consider the situation, he has changed his mind, and he’s in the unique position to change the original outcome. Maybe his new decision doesn’t entirely make sense—indeed, there’s plenty about “The Day Of The Doctor” that doesn’t entirely make sense—but that’s when 13 TARDISes and a whole bunch of rousing stock footage shows up, and it’s difficult not to get caught up in the triumph of that moment.
Indeed, it doesn’t seem right to approach this purely as a story, not when so much of what happens here is defined by celebration. There are all the references, of course: the original opening theme; the initial shot of Totter’s Lane, complete with policeman walking the beat; Clara’s new position at Coal Hill School, where Ian Chesterton is listed as Chairman of the Governors; the impossibly long scarf worn by UNIT scientist Osgood; the “Greyhound Leader” callsign that once belonged to the Brigadier; his daughter Kate Lethbridge-Stewart’s reference to the “Cromer” incident that also featured three Doctors and took place in the ‘70s or ‘80s, depending on the dating protocol; the reappearance of Jack Harkness’ vortex manipulator; the War Doctor’s final observation that his body is wearing a bit thin, just as his original incarnation once observed—and those are all just the obvious references. So much of what happens in “The Day Of The Doctor” is determined by the need to tell the most epic story of the Doctor’s lives, not to mention incorporate as many familiar faces as is feasible.
That’s why Billie Piper returns to take the Rose-like form of the Moment. This is one of those compromises between story and celebration that likely won’t please everybody; there’s no sensible way to bring the actual Rose into this story without even more exposition than there already is, but it wouldn’t really feel like a proper 50th anniversary special if David Tennant was the only person to put in a return appearance (we’ll get to the third returning player in a moment). Piper absolutely isn’t playing Rose, but there are enough little touches of humanity and humor—her reaction to the fez is perfect, for instance—to make her feel like more than the glorified plot device that she is. The presence of the Zygons and UNIT is more easily justified; the former’s centuries-long, painting-dependent invasion plan would make for a good story in its own right, and it works well as narrative and thematic support for the central Time War story. And Steven Moffat finds a funny way to split the difference with the payoff to the long-running Queen Elizabeth gag, revealing that the Doctor’s apparent courtship of and marriage to Joanna Page’s monarch was part of a botched effort to expose Zygon infiltrators.