Doctor Who (2005): The Day of the Doctor - Part 2

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I want to go to London and slide down that railing.

Anyway, I'm still writing about The Day of the Doctor, arguably the most special of all of Doctor Who's anniversary specials. I've reached the middle third of the episode, but you can CLICK HERE to return to part one.

There will be SPOILERS here for this and older stuff, but nothing for newer stuff. I'll mention a few things from the novelisation as well, which shouldn't be too much of an issue as it's the same story.

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Previously on Doctor Who:

The Eleventh Doctor was inadvertently airlifted over to the National Gallery to investigate a mystery so mysterious that the episode hasn't yet gotten around to revealing anything about it. It probably would have, but the Doctor got a bit distracted along the way looking at paintings.

The first painting was of the fall of Arcadia during the Time War. This led to a flashback showing the War Doctor stealing a sentient superweapon and trying to figure out how to use it to kill everyone. The weapon's interface took the form of Rose Tyler (or Bad Wolf to be precise) and used its immense power to open a portal and show him what this choice will turn him into. And then a fez fell out of it.

The second painting was of the Tenth Doctor with Queen Elizabeth I, which triggered a second flashback, this time to England in 1562, 451 years ago.

And now, the continuation:

Here's another stitched-together shot for you, just because I could. (Also, this is some nice scenery and I wanted to show it off.)

It's weird that the fancy Panic Room-style text effect isn't used for any other locations in the episode, as far as I can remember, but it's still a nice touch. Though wouldn't the reflection look more like this:

Actually, hang on, I've just checked and literally no one in the world cares.

There's the TARDIS over there on the right by the way. Every version of the TARDIS gets a different big introduction in this story: Clara drove a bike into The Eleventh Doctor's TARDIS, the War Doctor drove his TARDIS through Daleks, and in 1562...

...the Tenth Doctor rides out of his TARDIS on a horse with Queen Elizabeth I on the back, yelling "Allons-y!" Because that's the sort of thing the Tenth Doctor gets up to when he's not busy crying in the rain.

Yep, that's the actual David Tennant, being more of a Patrick Troughton than a Tom Baker by reprising his role just a few years after leaving.

His hair's a bit flatter than usual though. Also, he's having a picnic with the Queen, which is fairly atypical for him as well. Though there was that one time he fell in love with Madame De Pompadour.

This takes place during the 2009 specials, between The Waters of Mars and The End of Time, and I know this because the Doctor actually mentions this adventure in End of Time. You know, the further I get into Day of the Doctor, the more convinced I am that 80% of Moffat's research was watching that episode. Or sending an assistant to watch that episode.

3-02 - The Shakespeare Code

However, Queen Elizabeth I's first appearance was actually in series 3's The Shakespeare Code, where she was 37 years older and furious with him for reasons he had no idea about. He must be getting close to figuring it out now though, as when he asks her to marry him she says yes!

In Steven Moffat's The Day of the Doctor novelisation, its mysterious narrator jumps in here with a message to people worried that the story's implying that the most famous virgin in history wasn't quite as chaste as their public image suggests. It basically says that the Doctor had a granddaughter, get over it. It's a playful novel.

The Doctor brings out a device that downloads comics from the future. It can also microwave frozen dinners from up to twenty feet and goes 'ding' when it detects shapeshifter DNA. By agreeing to marry him the Queen has proven his suspicions and revealed herself to be a Zygon in disguise!

It doesn't take him long to realise that the Zygon's actually the horse.

Okay, that is a surprisingly faithful and weirdly good looking Zygon.

This 2013 run of episodes was full of returning classic enemies that hadn't been seen for a while, like the Great Intelligence, the Ice Warriors and the Sisterhood of Karn, and now the Zygons are finally back after 38 years. Does the Sisterhood really count as an enemy? They were dropping spaceships, that's kind of villainous.

Zygons only made one appearance in the classic series, when they faced off against the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith in season 13's Terror of the Zygons back in 1975. Well, one confirmed appearance anyway. It's a shapeshifter, it can shift into any creature which has a shape, which is a significant percentage of them.

The Doctor's first priority is to get Queen Elizabeth to safety. Unfortunately, the Zygon runs off while his back is turned, so now he has to find it again.

He spots a bunny trying to act nonchalant and launches into an extended version of his speech from Voyage of the Damned.

"I'm the Doctor. I'm 904 years old. I'm from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. I am the Oncoming Storm, the Bringer of Darkness, and you are basically just a rabbit, aren't you?"

The age is interesting as it's one year older than he was in Voyage of the Damned and two years younger than he was during The End of Time. Well, okay it's not that interesting, it just means that there weren't any huge jumps in time when he was travelling with Donna.

The episode has some very nice shots of this forest by the way.

It looks especially pretty with two Queen Elizabeth Is and a time fissure.

The two Elizabeths have some great dialogue here as they each trade barbs while trying to sound as much like her as possible. One of them has the advantage of actually being her but so far there's no clear winner. Right now though, the Doctor's more concerned with the time fissure and wants the two of them a safe distance from it. Anything could come out of this thing.

And then a fez drops out.

Back in present-day London, the Eleventh Doctor has finally made it down to the Under Gallery beneath the National Gallery. There he finds... stone dust.

He's never stepped in something that wasn't important, so he orders Osgood to run tests and give him a report on his desk, in triplicate, with charts. Also, he wants a desk. Kate correctly identifies the useful part of that request and gets Osgood working on the analysis. She also reminds her to take a breath of her inhaler, which is a running gag in this story.

The Under Gallery is where they keep the art that's too dangerous for the public, which raises all kinds of questions about the fez the Doctor finds down there

I'm hoping it's not here as an artefact from the time travel in this story, because I hate it when objects have no origin.

Also, that painting back there is hardcore. It's The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault, except it's apparently from a reality where the survivors of the Méduse were all Cybermen. It's also one of the few paintings here that still have figures in them. Further on there's a room full of landscapes and shattered glass, indicating that the characters in the paintings got out somehow.

Just then the Doctor gets interrupted in the middle of his adventure by the time fissure appearing! Past multi-Doctor stories mostly just handwaved the subject of memory, but here the Doctor explicitly says that he remembers what happens next. Well, almost remembers. He recalls that the fez goes in first and then yells his catchphrase "Geronimo!" as he goes in after it.

I'm glad Eleven doesn't say Geronimo all that much during his run. I mean it's fine sometimes, but saying a catchphrase all the time is Ten's thing.

A person who'd never seen The Three Doctors or The Five Doctors might have come into the episode with the expectation that Ten's appearance would be a short cameo and he'd never interact with Eleven. They are definitely interacting though. In fact Eleven interacts with the fez, smacking it off Ten's head while calling him a matchstick man. (Because he's so skinny).

It must be a rule that when Doctors meet they need to be immediately and needlessly insulting to each other. Ten hasn't met himself from the future before, but he clearly has a suspicion about who this is and takes out his screwdriver to test his theory.

The other Doctor whips out his wand as well; it's more of a proof of identity than an attempt to run a scan. Though when Ten sees how much more extensive his future screwdriver is, he extends his own scanning abilities to compensate. Though he accuses Eleven of being the one that's compensating.

So now there are two Doctors that look different and two identical Queen Elizabeth Is who are different people.

Hey, they've found something they have in common: wearing glasses they don't need so they can look more brainy. It's nice to see the one of them finally getting on with himself.

They decide that this is too dangerous and weird for the Queen to be around, so Ten tells the real Elizabeth to run in the opposite direction to the Zygon. They're both so eager to prove they're real that they'll both do it...

... after they've both given him a kiss. Ten really didn't think this 'make the Queen fall in love with me' plan through. Eleven's not impressed... mostly because one of them was a Zygon.

Kate and Clara can hear all this through the time portal, and when Clara yells through the portal they can hear her too. So Eleven tests if physical items can return by throwing the fez back through to her. It was a really good throw, but it doesn't get there, instead landing in front of the War Doctor. So the fez mystery has been resolved! Why it fell out of a portal on Gallifrey at least, not where it came from in the first place. Hey I wonder if it was the same fez that Seven found in Windsor Castle in Silver Nemesis.

Now that Kate knows they're dealing with two Doctors, she phones Malcolm and has him get her the files codenamed 'Cromer', from the '70s or '80s, depending on the dating protocol. Cromer refers to a resort in Norfolk. The Brig thought that UNIT HQ had been teleported there in The Three Doctors, so I guess he named the whole incident after it to make it easier to remember. And the dating protocol reference refers to the series being a bit confused about whether the Third Doctor era was set in the present day (the '70s), or 10 years in the future (the '80s).

As Kate turns the corner a shadow of a Zygon appears from the other direction and growls. So that's a pretty big connection between Ten's adventure and Eleven's adventure.

Back in 1562, Eleven admits he doesn't remember what happens next, so they try to sort out the polarity of the swirly thing. The trouble is that they both reverse it, which has the effect of doing asolutely nothing, besides maybe confusing it. The episode's definitely going for comedy more often than not.

Suddenly the War Doctor drops in!

Now that I've got a clear look at his costume it looks like he's basically wearing Eight's outfit with Nine's coat on top, along with the bandolier he took from Cass. It's a good look, makes sense. What doesn't make sense, is the Doctors pointing their screwdrivers at him, and he himself points that out.

He's a bit shocked to discover that they're his future selves, as he assumed that they must be his companions. His very young companions. I think he's just forgetting how young he could look though, as by Day of the Doctor David Tennant was around the age of Four, Six and Seven and Matt Smith was about Five's age.

A bunch of soldiers rush up, unhappy that the Doctor has bewitched the Queen... though they're not sure which of them is the Doctor. The heroes point their screwdrivers again, but all that achieves is to have the War Doctor mock them for attempting to "assemble a cabinet at them". So Eleven switches to a new plan. He has Clara do a bit of voice acting through the portal and pretend to be a witch, which she does very badly. Some people would jump at the opportunity to play a witch and scare off soldiers, but her heart's not in it.

A slightly sinister Kate has emerged from the Zygon haunted hallway by this point, and Queen Elizabeth returns in the past, having ensured that the other queen is indisposed. She wants them taken to the Tower of London and Eleven wants that too. In fact, he demands to be taken there, loudly. Of course the Doctors would get captured at some point, this wouldn't be proper homage to classic Doctor Who if they didn't.

Kate gets the clue though. She and Clara need to rush off to her office... at the Tower of London.

So now the Doctor is alone in a cell with his own thoughts. Eleven has a plan so he gets to work immediately, scratching some numbers into a pillar.

In the novelisation, Eleven's pretty much just playing along with the scene, doing the things he remembers doing, saying the things he remembers saying, as the memories come back just in time. Which kind of ruins the whole point of him losing his memories! Fortunately, this isn't shown or even hinted at in the episode.

The War Doctor also has an idea, involving his sonic screwdriver and the cell door, but this time it's the others who tell him that waving the sonic around won't do any good here. He can't open the cell door with it as it doesn't work on wood.

Back in the Under Gallery, Osgood has analysed the mysterious stone dust on the floor and discovered that it's not from the building itself. In fact, it seems to be from multiple different statues.

It's almost as if someone got a bunch of statues and absolutely demolished them, turned them into powder... but none of the statues are missing. Osgood's bright so she soon figures it out. The trouble is that she tells McGillop what she figured out while standing right next to the Zygons hiding under the sheets, and they attack them.

Who can just stand under a sheet for hours anyway? Did they shapeshift into statues?

One of the Zygons corners Osgood and copies her, getting her memories too. She even inherits her need for an inhaler, which she mocks her over, before mocking her jealousy of her pretty sister. She's a mean Zygon.

The novelisation kind of loves Osgood though and spends a lot of time in her head, and both of these things are true for the Zygon as well. The Book Zygon enjoys being Osgood, as a very bright and resourceful person to be. TV Zygon realises this too when Osgood pulls the scarf she's standing on, sending her flying to the ground. Osgood grabs her inhaler back and makes a run for it.

Hey, another corridor set. Doctor Who loves its hallways, but then who doesn't? This particular hallway leads to the Black Archive, the most top-secret location on Earth. It's so secure that it's completely TARDIS-proofed. It even has a door too primitive for a sonic screwdriver to open.

Everyone who works here has their memories erased by devices in the ceiling, even Atkins, the guy at the door. There's a throwaway joke here where Atkins says it's his first day there, and Kate tells Clara he's been working here for ten years.

The book really plays up the horror of Atkins, as in the novel he's so confused by his daily mind wipes that he's a mess who has trouble remembering how to even use his phone. It really makes UNIT seem monstrous, and "Kate" doesn't have a high opinion of "the people" who did this to him. But there's none of that in the episode, thankfully. I don't want to hate UNIT, they're the good guys!

Clara goes inside and finds herself in the British version of the Indiana Jones warehouse or Henry Van Statten's lair from Dalek. So, quite a bit smaller and filled with Doctor Who memorabilia. It was too expensive to get posters of the Peter Cushing Doctor Who films though.

Kate explains that Clara already has clearance from her last visit, which she doesn't remember, because: memory wipes. UNIT screens all of the Doctor's associates, the ones they know about at least.

Kamelion! Martha! Mickey! Captain Magambo! Rose! Wait, that's a picture from the averted timeline in Turn Left, how did that get here? Did Rose have someone take a photo of them with her phone?

Kate mentions that they can't risk having information about the Doctor and the TARDIS falling into the wrong hands and puts a bit too much glee into the line "the consequences could be disastrous" for someone who should be defending the Earth. I wouldn't list Kate Stewart or her actor very highly on my character rankings... and I'm not sure why, because she's pretty great in this episode. Maybe she did something in a later story that annoyed me? I can't remember.

In fact, everyone in this story is good. High marks for everyone.

Hey, it's Jack Harkness' vortex manipulator from Utopia/Sound of Drums etc.

Kate's figured out that the Eleventh Doctor is currently etching the code to activate the thing so that someone can go back to 1562 and get them out of the cell. She's got someone photographing the code and sending it to her phone now. She's also got her people disposing of the humans and securing the Under Gallery.

Surprise, she's a Zygon!

That's a really good transformation effect, though the way she spits something out first (venom?) is just weird. There doesn't seem to be any point to it.

Clara sees the code on Kate's phone and types it into the vortex manipulator real quick, just in time to teleport away to safety. She was definitely quicker than I would've been, as it would've taken me ages to figure out what the etched numbers were even supposed to be. Plus I would've had to work out how to input the location and date, which is made harder by the fact that we only know the year, not the date or time the Doctor was locked up!

Incidentally, the unlock code itself (1716231163) is a time and date. It's the time and date the first episode was broadcast back in 1963.

Back in the cell, the Doctor's getting on his own nerves.

The War Doctor figures out a way to get the door open with his sonic after all, but the calculations will take centuries, so they might as well talk for a bit. He's wondering why they act like children, like they're ashamed of being a grown up. Hey, that's nothing new for the Doctor. Even Three liked to be childish on occasion and Four was a goofy lunatic.

The Moment's hanging around in the cell with them too, invisible to everyone but the War Doctor, and she encourages him to ask what's on his mind. So he asks if they ever counted how many billions of children they killed on Gallifrey. That's a bit dark for a Doctor Who episode!

Eleven says he has no idea and we get the line about how old he is, 1200... unless he's lying. He's old enough that he can't remember if he's lying. (He's been a bit inconsistent in the past, telling Amy he was 1200 in A Town Called Mercy and Clara he was 1000 in The Bells of Saint John... though he may have been rounding down.)

Steven Moffat is of the opinion that the guy has no idea of his age, as it's not like he can check a calendar. The War Doctor, on the other hand, feels pretty confident that he's 800 years old, as Eleven is 400 years older than him. The Ninth Doctor said he was 900 years old in Aliens of London, so if everyone's correct and telling the truth, that episode is 100 years in the War Doctor's future.

But the Seventh Doctor claimed to be 953 in Time and the Rani, and the War Doctor's clearly hundreds of years older than that. Thousands maybe, seeing as Seven and Eight visibly aged as well. The best answers I can think of are a: the Time War messed with his history or b: the Eighth Doctor got amnesia and started again from 0.

Anyway, there's a bit of arguing about Ten knowing the number of dead kids and Eleven allowing himself to forget and move on, and then an observation from Moment gets the War Doctor back on the right track.

The Doctors are all the same software in a different case... and so is the sonic screwdriver. There's continuity of code between the models. So a calculation started by the War Doctor's screwdriver now can be completed by Eleven's screwdriver four hundred years later! Incidentally, that's a way the Doctor can know his age: calendar app in the screwdriver.

Everyone's impressed by how clever this is, even the Moment.
 

And then Clara spoils the mood by opening the door and revealing that it wasn't locked.

This pretty much demonstrates why the Doctor needs a companion. Three incarnations of one of the smartest beings in the universe, with a sentient superweapon as a guide, and it didn't even occur to any of them to just try opening the door.

Queen Elizabeth pops up and explains that she left it open to see what they did when they escaped. And now that they're out she might as well reveal the whole evil plan.

Back in the present day, it turns out that those Zygons had definitely not secured the Under Gallery, as Osgood is still loose and is freeing anyone she can find. They don't kill their victims, as they need them alive to refresh their image. This was also the case in Terror of the Zygons I believe.

Once Kate is freed, the two of them realise that the Zygon are at the Black Archive, which contains everything they need to conquer the planet. All that security and mind wiping didn't help much when UNIT's leader leads from the front and they're up against mind readers.

Back in the past, Queen Elizabeth gives the prisoners the tour. She explains that the Zygons lost their planet in the Time War, which we already knew from Terror of the Zygons. Well, we knew what happened to it, not why.

The Zygons want to conquer a more advanced and comfortable world than 1500s Earth, so they're freezing themselves in suspended animation using Time Lord technology: stasis cubes that look like paintings. They're like a Cup-A-Soup, Eleven explains, as you just add time and then stir.

This explains how they got into the gallery through the Trojan paintings! Ten and Eleven have been investigating the same plot from different ends.

Ten seizes the opportunity to take a full inventory of all the ways that Elizabeth's appearance and smell offends him, seeing as she's such a flawed copy. So flawed, in fact, that she gave her own plan away!

Elizabeth takes it all in stride, explaining that it's not her plan, she murdered the Zygon imitator with a dagger while she had the form of "a weak and female woman". Then she goes and criticises the other Zygons for being dumb men, so arrogant that they accepted her as their commander without even considering she could be the real Elizabeth.

Are the Zygons men though? I mean they seem kind of... homogeneous. There's just Zygons and Zygons, until they take on the attributes of the creature they're doubling. Which is a woman more often than not.

With the Zygon invasion put on pause, the Doctor has plenty of time to actually marry Queen Elizabeth! So he wasn't lying when he said he got married to her in The End of Time. It's a bit of a small ceremony though, conveniently light on witnesses.

The War Doctor asks Eleven if there's a lot of kissing in the future and he has to confirm that there is. War is definitely standing in for the classic Doctors here, who managed to go 30 years without a kiss... before the Eighth Doctor came along. After that, you've got Nine kissing Rose, Ten kissing Kylie Minogue, Eleven kissing River Song, plus the occasional wedding. I jumped into Doctor Who during the Eleventh Doctor's era so this doesn't bother me at all, but I can see why some fans have been annoyed by it. Especially as that age gap is only getting bigger.

Now that Elizabeth has been placated the heroes are free to go to The Tenth Doctor's TARDIS and stop the Zygon invasion! And there's no way Ten's coming back here afterwards. The mystery of why she hated him so much in The Shakespeare Code has been solved.

TO BE CONCLUDED IN PART 3

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NEXT TIME

Next time on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the ending of The Day of the Doctor, where stuff happens and then someone hopefully wins.

Comments are encouraged!