Here’s an interesting drinking game idea: take a drink for every self-referential joke in the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special. Bonus points are earned if it includes leaning on the fourth wall.
It’s difficult to know where to start with something like The Day Of The Doctor. As per usual in Doctor Who of late, the plot is an incomprehensible mess, and it is clear the writers and producers couldn’t care less about the result. The sole purpose of this special episode is to provide an excuse to put David Tennant and Matt Smith together in the same episode, not to further the story or to expand the concepts, but to solicit cheap laughs from the near-religiously dedicated fanbase. And yes, it is entertaining to watch on some level, but only through gritted teeth; laughter reluctantly emitted through a painful cringe. At this point, Doctor Who is straying dangerously close to self-parody, and the humour comes from laughing at the inherent absurdities within the show. Watching David Tennant and Matt Smith shadow each other side-by-side is funny because it illustrates the uncanny similarities between both incarnations, and thus the evident lack of imagination regarding the portrayal of the character - something the “Whovians” (a despicable word) probably won’t easily grasp.
If you were expecting something interesting in the form of The Day Of The Doctor, then I’m afraid you may have to go home empty handed. The episode is almost entirely constructed of fanbait, and is only interesting to the inner cult of Doctor Who fandom. The plot in question is clearly a slapdash effort, little more than a token framing device as an excuse for the three Doctors to get together. It is evidently so because the plot is hardly elaborated on, and is almost forgotten underneath the chemistry between the Doctors. It’s something about some alien race trying to take over the world again, doing so over the course of five hundred years so as to inherit superior technology, while the alternate, past doctor (played by John Hurt) agonizes over whether to end the Time War via double genocide. This episode opts to shed light on events before the 2005 revival of the series, exposing the events of the Time War so often talked about - the past Doctor is transported to the company of the future doctors (David Tennant and Matt Smith, predictably) by an entity resembling Rose, (whose presence is also only justifiable as a means to excite the hivemind of Doctor Who fans rather than to enrich the story) to help him make up his mind. What’s curious about this episode is that the story literally ends exactly where it started: the three Doctors decide not to commit genocide, but choose an alternative with a near identical consequence, while proceeding to forget the events of the episode and continuing to believe they had still killed them all - so it’s an unnecessary episode, because nothing new is added. Weaker still, no one thought to point out that despite killing both Daleks and Time Lords, the former race manages to keep coming back, so the genocide is a failure anyway.
Doctor Who increasingly feels like it is merely pandering to what the fans want, rather than actually trying to write a compelling story, and it shows by being fraught with inconsistencies, poor judgement, and revisionist history, the latter of which demands great care when dealing with old franchises. Despite all this, it remains ridiculously popular, presumably in part because it appeals to nostalgia. When an old franchise is rebooted, the creators will almost always be fans of the original, and thus the reboot will inevitably be nothing more than fan-fiction. I think it is apparent that Doctor Who has strayed down this road far too often of late, and the story is just going nowhere.
I was once a Doctor Who fan several years ago, but since then I can’t say I’ve been much of a fan of the series. But as someone who appreciates the concept and the idea, I can enjoy it from time to time, albeit with a grain or two of salt, and I can see several conspicuous flaws which ruin the potential for the show to be something spectacular. The most obvious one is simple: the appeal of he show is based near entirely on watching a young, handsome British white man dance around acting like an eccentric, peculiar genius on screen. I wager this is the main reason many of the fans continue to watch this show; and while it is certainly entertaining on some level, there is only so far you can take it before it begins to run stale.
There is another, large pitfall which the show’s producers have fallen into, and that is this: Doctor Who has far too many fantasy and action elements. The sonic screwdriver has become an all-purpose magic wand, the various time travel elements make no sense, and the writers seem to think they can slip by us some completely nonsensical technical jargon to make it sound “science-fiction” and hope we won’t notice. All this causes Doctor Who to fall well outside the realm of plausibility, and plausibility is one thing which keeps stories compelling. Referencing concepts outside the sphere of modern knowledge is fair game, but to outright defy conventional science is just irresponsible and lazy - here I speak of the scene in the prison cell, for which I cannot find a direct quote.
As for the time travel elements, I no longer believe time travel is an excuse for outright self-contradiction in a narrative. Part of the point of time travel in fiction is paradox, and I understand that, but Doctor Who has fallen to a new level wherein they no longer try to make it seem convincing. I would like to get one thing straight: is the Doctor one person, or several people at different times? Canon would have you believe the former, but this episode (and all the previous “multiple doctor” episodes) tend to suggest the latter. And in this episode, the self-contradictory parts are “resolved” via amnesia, which is about as lazy as you can get.
Some enjoyment can certainly be gained from this episode if one does not endeavor to take the story too seriously, however I don’t see this as a point in its favour. If something is good, it is good in its own right, and if Doctor Who fails to meet the mark under even the slightest scrutiny then I can’t say it is anywhere near decent. And yes, I will concede that I did find The Day Of The Doctor entertaining, and I had a good laugh. But I take it upon myself to say what others don’t necessarily want to hear, which is that Doctor Who is a messy, incompetent, poorly written “science-fiction” show which does nothing other than pander to a hive-mind fan cult who have no desire for anything interesting or challenging in their lives - and the inclusion of Tom Baker at the end is really the culmination of all this, as it has no purpose to the story.
The concept of Doctor Who is a great idea, and it has had its moments in the past, but it has only been squandered by poor writer after poor writer. I’d like to see something challenging and different in Doctor Who, something more subversive and complex, because I think it could be done really well if executed properly. I know Steven Moffat is better than this because he made Sherlock, but his current efforts with Doctor Who have been poor at best. While I hope next year might breathe some life into this franchise, I still expect nothing to change.
