Posted in: Look! It Moves! by Adi Tantimedh, Movies, Recent Updates, TV | Tagged: David Tennent, Doctor Who 50th Anniversary, matt smith, neil gaiman, peter capaldi, steven moffat, the day of the doctor, The Five Doctors, tom baker

The Grand Theme of The Day of the Doctor – Look! It Moves! By Adi Tantimedh

 Adi Tantimedh writes;

I've been reading the reviews and commentary about the Doctor Who 50^th Anniversary Special The Day of the Doctor over the past week.  All the smart analysis by fans who loved it, the dumb rants by those who didn't., the smart analysis by disappointed fans who dislike Steven Moffat's script made up an interesting overview.

None of them commented on the main theme of The Day of The Doctor, which only just occurred to me a few days ago:

The John Hurt Doctor, the David Tennent Doctor and the Matt Smith Doctor meet in this story just as each of them is on the cusp of the end of his life and is offered hope for their futures.

Even the Smith Doctor, expecting to go to what he believes is his final death at Trenzalore, is told by another future self, in the guise of The Curator, that he would live on and eventually retire to become a curator in an art gallery.

This is what always struck me as poignant and touching about Doctor Who: it's a show about hope, about snatching joy and victory from the jaws of defeat and despair, about cheating death or putting it off.  It's really about teaching children about death, as many stories tend to be.

The plot here is "The Doctor meets two of his past selves and works with them to save the day".  The big theme of The Day of The Doctor, then, is about Hope again. It was about one man – three, even four versions of him – approaching his death but he is surprised to find he has a future after all.  Steven Moffat has been very clever in peppering the theme of hope and salvation through the script: John Hurt's Doctor, in his deepest moment of despair, is about to destroy both Gallifrey and the Daleks and expects to die in the process. David Tennent's Doctor has been traveling in his own right before he goes to his final adventure in The End of Time – this is subtly hinted at in the start when he comes out of his Tardis larking about and mentioning to The Ood that he went off to do stuff, met Queen Elizabeth, got married and what a mistake that was, in an attempt to cover up his despair and fear over their prophecy of his impending death. Matt Smith's Doctor has previously been to Trenzalore and seen his grave, the site of his final battle.  We, of course, already know he's going to regenerate, somehow, into Peter Capaldi's Doctor, cheating death one more time.

Each of these Doctors is given new hope that they would not only go on, but also achieve great things and save more people. Smith's Doctor even comes up with the idea to save Gallifrey instead of burning it, giving Hurt's Doctor the hope and redemption he so desperately craved, and sees that his future selves are good men.  Tennent's Doctor sees he will become Smith's Doctor and is relieved.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/Cn9yJrrm2tk[/youtube]

Then there's the reappearance of Tom Baker.

Someone pointed out that the final scene in the art gallery might be taking place in Baker's Doctor's Tardis. He might have materialized it around the other three and their Tardises to tell Smith's Doctor that not only did they manage to save Gallifrey, but also to offer proof that Smith's Doctor will not meet his final end at Trenzalore, that he, The Curator is a future self, not a past self. The Doctor has offered his former self hope once again, that he has a future beyond what he thought would be his end, that he will eventually get to retire peacefully and become an art curator with the face of an older incarnation.

It's interesting to think about the subtexts of that scene.  It feels to me that it's more than fanservice to actually have Tom Baker back on the show covertly playing The Doctor again, possibly for the last time on screen. Watching it again, I see the melancholy and tenderness in Baker's eyes as he talks to Matt Smith. Baker has said in recent interviews that at his advanced age, he's going to die soon, so here he is looking at the future: a younger man carrying on something he did all those years ago.  It's completely in keeping with the story's theme of the man facing his own death and being presented with hope for the future.

This might be one reason so many fans wept as they watched the special.  Themes are ideas that fuel the plot of a story, and with so much detail informing the structure of the plot, it's unlikely that Moffat was unaware of the theme when he wrote the script.  For all the criticisms of Moffat's flaws or limitations in his writing, I think he got this one right. He chose this theme to make the special stand out rather than just end up with a big multi-actor crossover that's generally a game of musical chairs when writing the script, which was what happened with The Five Doctors back in the 1980s, which didn't have any real emotional impact despite the fun and games. It's also a sign of how TV writing has changed since the 1980s, now that there's a greater emphasis on emotions and themes rather than just plots, because the best writers and showrunners now get that audiences invest in the characters rather than the plots.  That tens of millions of viewers worldwide tuned in to watch The Day of The Doctor, that the show is now a multimillion-dollar franchise since its revival in 2005, is an indication that this new dynamic in TV writing works. It's remarkable that Moffat has chosen to make the show as poignant as he does, and it's paying off. Fans just love the feels.

Neil Gaiman has said that all stories are ultimately about death, and Moffat is continuing to show in Doctor Who that it's only in stories that you can cheat death. Nothing sells like Hope.

Always after more time at lookitmoves@gmail.com

Follow the official LOOK! IT MOVES! twitter feed at http://twitter.com/lookitmoves for thoughts and snark on media and pop culture, stuff for future columns and stuff I may never spend a whole column writing about. 

Look! It Moves! © Adisakdi Tantimedh

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