Anniversary Specials reaction post

[john_amend_all]

I was rewatching Silver Nemesis the other day. Strange to think episode 1's now closer in time to An Unearthly Child than the present.

Anyway, this constitutes a bundled reaction post to various of the anniversary programmes, in my usual hail-of-bullets style.

An Adventure In Space And Time

• I found this... gripping, I think, is the word. Because any fan with knowledge of that era knows how it's going to end, and so all the way through I was dreading what effect it would have on Hartnell-the-character.
• The only cameos I spotted the first time round were William Russell and Anneke Wills. Once I saw Carole Ann Ford's name in the credits, I had to go back and look for her.
• Regarding the various impersonations, I think Claudia Grant as Carole Ann Ford was particularly good. Less so with some of the extras they had for the later companions, and while Reece Shearsmith had a decent stab at Patrick Troughton's voice and mannerisms, his lack of facial resemblance was a little jarring.
• I think, if I have a criticism, it's that Bradley-as-Hartnell-as-One felt rather flat and wooden, and they overplayed the stumbling-over-lines aspect. After eighty minutes of seeing him as a forgetful old man barely able to remember his lines, the archive footage of Hartnell actually playing the part, with feeling and fluency, was something of a jolt.
• And talking of forgetting lines, I was wondering if the teleprompter shown early on was going to be a Chekhov's Gun. Apparently not.
• I'm in two minds about Matt Smith's cameo. On the one hand it was a charming vision of the glorious future awaiting the show, and on the other it broke my suspension of disbelief into a gajillion pieces and danced on them.
• On Thursday night, I thought "That's how you do 'I don't want to go' and make it work." Little did I know...

The Day Of The Doctor

• Original credits, yay! (And to my amusement, it looks as if they had trouble getting the added 'BBC' logo to track the words 'Doctor Who').
• Is that the same Coal Hill location that they used for Remembrance? If not, it's similar enough in architectural style to pass for it. I didn't notice Ian's name on the sign first time round, but I did spot that the headmaster's surname was Coburn.
• So Foreman's Yard is still going in 2013. I wonder who's running it? Of course, there's always the explanation from the EDAs...
• Billie Piper, but not as Rose, and hardly even as the Bad Wolf. So I don't have to write another verse for my filk — well, unless I want to.
• Incidentally, judging by the thread on Gallifrey Base, the fruitless angels-on-a-pin argument about whether what we saw was the Moment controlling Bad Wolf, or Bad Wolf controlling the Moment, or Rose Wolf, or Wolf Moment... that's going to run for years.
• Amusing that in a story full of shapeshifting Zygons, they found another way for Billie Piper not to be playing Rose.
• Something that should have been there, destroyed leaving only sand on the floor... was that a deliberate Discworld reference?
• I find that the Ten-and-Liz-1 plotline is inexorably linked in my mind with Blackadder, thanks to the brilliant fanfic Just Impediment. So I'm wondering whether Elizabeth's joking remark about executions was a deliberate reference to the Miranda Richardson version, or whether that's just my ill-regulated mind.
• I was sure it wasn't a coincidence that the camera dwelt on Susan's photo when the Doctor was discussing the death toll from blowing up Gallifrey. Made me wonder if they were going to bring her back — and maybe now they have.
• So from now on, in the Whoniverse, there are Zygons peacefully sharing the Earth with humanity?
• Inter-Doctor bickering is always fun, and I particularly liked John Hurt's exasperation with his successors' youth, gimmicks and catchphrases.
• For those who believe that Moffat is doing his best to wipe out key elements of RTD's tenure... well, there's certainly enough in this story to support that view. The End of Time seems to have got it particularly hard. For instance...
  • That coarse and out-of-character gag about deflowering Elizabeth I gets reimagined as a chaste accidental marriage after the manner of Eleven (and for that matter One).
  • "I don't want to go" reimagined from whiny self-indulgence to a deservedly mocked catchphrase.
  • Oh, and weren't the Time Lords too evil ever to bring back? Creatures so terrible that at the mere thought, the Doctor grabs a gun? Nope, most of them were innocent civilians, and anyway they're back. All of them.
  • And the whole war-guilt thing, the core of the new series Doctor's motivation — gone.
  Such is the power of one Armed With Canon.
• I share the Doctors' approval of roundels. Let's hope they take better care of that set now they've gone to all the trouble of rebuilding it.
• Given that I'm a whole-hearted Seven fan, I was delighted that he actually got a reasonably comprehensible and audible line, where some of the others didn't.
• I'd seen headlines hinting that an extra Doctor would show up, and assumed it was Capaldi (and, sure enough, there he was, flagged with the requisite "it's Christmas!" line). Consequently Tom Baker was a complete surprise. Of course, with Blackadder still stuck in my mind, I found it hard not to think of Captain Rum. And it's quite possible that the Curator isn't, in fact, a future Doctor; maybe he's Maxil. Or Wyvern.
• Regarding the Time Lords' return: I remember posting years ago on radwm that I thought RTD had painted himself into a corner with the Daleks. The Doctor had committed a terrible act in order to wipe out the Daleks, so each time the Daleks came back, it rendered his act a little less meaningful. RTD's attempted fix in The End of Time was to make the Time Lords just as bad, so that even if the Daleks kept coming back the Doctor's actions were still justified. But now there's a new equilibrium: it's just as easy for Time Lords, good or bad, to come back, as it is for the Daleks.
• And with Gallifrey hidden somewhere down the side of the Sofa of Rassilon, you just know the Master's going to find a way out.
• Maybe, just maybe, at Christmas Moffat is finally going to deal with some of the Silence-related hares he's set running. Maybe.

After-Show Party

• Great to see all those companions (And whoever sent out the invitations definitely seems to think that Sara Kingdom counts).
• I thought it a pity that we didn't hear from more of the companions who were there, as opposed to the ones who weren't.
• That said — getting Jackie Lane to make a contribution, even pre-recorded, was obviously something of a coup.
• And obviously, since they addressed the companions by their characters' names, they couldn't have spoken to Wendy Padbury because of the One Steve Limit.
• K-9's monologue would only have been any use if it had ended with something along the lines of "Number of episodes previously believed missing: 97. Number of episodes currently believed missing: 90" (or 80, or 70, or 60...). Which it didn't.
• Reading out tweets is a Waste Of Money, Brains And Time.

The Five-Ish Doctors

• Given that Peter Davison has already done two similar videos previously, it seems that we are witnessing the birth of a new expanded-universe continuity.
• I didn't spot her, but judging by the credits it seems Lisa Bowerman was one of the companion cameos in Moffat's nightmare. Benny sneaks into televised canon through the side door?

Also, today my copy of The Enemy of the World came. Yay!
This entry was originally posted at http://john-amend-all.dreamwidth.org/78369.html. Feel free to comment there or here.

Comments

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to say thank you so much for making this post! I hadn't heard anything about "The Five-ish Doctors," but after I read your post, I found it on the internet (at the BBC website, legally) and watched it. That was so funny, and so great, and such a perfect thing to watch on the anniversary day!

We didn't get the After-Show party here. Would you say that's worth seeking out? Assuming it's on the internet?

[john_amend_all]

I thought it was harmless enough fluff, though I skipped the Fabled Live Hookup With One Direction which looked as if it had all the makings of toe-curling embarrassment.