Doctor's Day

Episode of the Doctor Who series
title	Doctor's Day
Original title	The Day of the Doctor
Country of production	United Kingdom
original language	English
length	77 minutes
classification	Season 7, episode 14 new series: 103rd episode overall, including classic series: 799th episode overall ( list )
First broadcast	November 23, 2013 on BBC One
German-language first broadcast	November 23, 2013 on FOX Channel
Rod
Director	Nick Hurran
script	Steven Moffat
production	Marcus Wilson
music	Murray Gold
occupation
Matt Smith : Eleventh Doctor David Tennant : Tenth Doctor John Hurt : War Doctor Jenna Coleman : Clara Oswald Billie Piper : Rose Tyler / The Moment Jemma Redgrave : Kate Stewart Ingrid Oliver : Osgood Ken Bones : The general Joanna Page : Elizabeth I. Tom Baker : The curator
chronology
←  Predecessor The name of the doctor Successor  → The time of the doctor

The day of the doctor (English original title The Day of the Doctor ) is the 15th episode of the seventh season of the remake of the British science fiction series Doctor Who . The episode is the anniversary special for the 50th anniversary of the series in feature length. Screenwriter was then showrunner Steven Moffat . It was first broadcast worldwide on November 23, 2013, 50 years to the day after the first broadcast of the very first episode, The Child from the Stars .

In addition to the current lead actors Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman at the time of production , the former lead actors David Tennant and Billie Piper are also returning. John Hurt can also be seen in a leading role .

Doctors' Day was nominated for the Hugo Award in the Best Dramatic Implementation Short Form category (alongside the comedy short film The Five (ish) Doctors Reboot and the docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time ) and received the audience award at the BAFTA Awards .

action

In 2013, UNIT asked the eleventh doctor and Clara Oswald to make an urgent appointment. UNIT is acting on a direct order from Queen Elizabeth I, who warns the doctor in a letter of great danger. In the basement of the National Gallery there are some paintings of the planet Gallifrey , the home planet of the doctor believed to have been destroyed. Their special feature is that they capture living moments. Among these paintings is one that depicts the last day of the last great time war , the day Gallifrey was destroyed and all of its inhabitants - including 2.47 billion children - wiped out. In addition, an extraterrestrial being seems to have escaped from another of these images. When the doctor wants to start examining the painting, a time portal opens.

In 1562 the tenth doctor spends time with Queen Elizabeth. Since he suspects that Elizabeth has been replaced by a zygone, a shape-changing species of world conquerors, he proposes marriage, believing that the real queen would never agree to it. When Elisabeth accepts the application, the doctor thinks he has discovered the zygons, but it turns out that Elisabeth's horse is the zygons. While escaping from the zygone, the doctor and Elisabeth are separated from each other. When they find each other again, however, the zygon has assumed the shape of the queen. Before the doctor can find out who is the real Elisabeth, a time portal opens for him too.

On the last day of the Time War, the war doctor managed to get the moment , the most powerful bomb in the universe, into his possession. Nobody had ever dared to touch the bomb before, few Timelords know of its existence. Legend has it that its enormous potential power led to the fact that the machine itself developed a wise consciousness over the millennia, which has so far prevented its deadly use. With this bomb, the doctor wants to end the warfare between his people, the Timelords , and the Daleks with the destruction of the Dalek fleet and the entire planet Gallifrey once and for all. He sees in this simultaneous genocide against his own people and their worst enemies his only and last possibility to save the rest of the universe from complete extinction. Before he can figure out how to set the bomb, however, the awareness of the moment speaks out in the form of his future companion Rose Tyler , calling himself Bad Wolf . She took this form in the hope that the doctor would sooner listen to a person to whom he had readily entrusted his life. Unfortunately it got lost in the timeline and looked into its personal future - Rose or Bad Wolf only got this deep meaning for the following ninth and tenth incarnation of the doctor. The doctor, marked by the war and with no will to live, refuses Rose's pleading attempts to dissuade him from his terrible decision. She then opens a time portal to show him the consequences of this act based on his future incarnations.

Back in 2013, the eleventh doctor crosses the portal of time and thus arrives at the tenth doctor in 1562. Knowing that an overlapping of their different timelines does not mean anything good, they try to find out what the portal is all about. After they have both sent Elisabeths away from the portal to bring the right one to safety, the war doctor crosses the portal and comes across his two future incarnations. Shortly afterwards, one of the Elizabeths returns with guards who lead the three doctors away and lock them in the Tower of London , from where they cannot break out immediately due to the old-fashioned nature of the door (the sonic screwdrivers have no effect on wood). Three worlds collide in the dungeon: the serious but still quite young war doctor at around 800 years of age is still facing the most difficult decision of his life and cannot understand why his older incarnations run around with such youthful bodies and seemingly immature sayings. He scratches the surface and encounters the deep trauma that his decision, which is still in the future, has caused in both of them. But the older two also look at the events very differently. The tenth doctor, now around 900 years old, masks the deep remorse and grief that haunts him with his youthful naivete. He has now also spent a long terrible night counting how many children were probably running around on his home planet at the moment of his act (almost 2.5 billion). The eleventh doctor, another 300 years older (he himself is not entirely sure), in his hopelessness, has opened a completely new chapter and pushed the dead children aside. Another traumatic experience lies behind him: He saw his own grave on Trenzalore and had to find out that he would be involved in countless other never-ending wars until the end of his life and that he continued to break his promise as a "doctor", healer, Hope bearer who will move away.

At the same time, in 2013, Clara and Kate Stewart, the head of UNIT, who were able to overhear what was happening through the portal, also set off for the tower to look for clues to free the doctors from the situation. At this point in time, this is a UNIT branch, called the black archive . Once there, it turns out that Kate has already been replaced by a Zygon at the National Gallery. Just in time, Clara escapes with the help of a time manipulator and the corresponding activation code, which the eleventh doctor scratched into a wall of the cell in 1562. Meanwhile, the real Kate is freed from the National Gallery by her assistant Osgood, who is also copied by a zygone in the black archive.

Clara manages to free the doctors. It turns out that it was the real Elisabeth who stabbed her doppelganger and had the doctors locked away. It was also she who locked the zygons in the Timelord paintings to protect their kingdom. With the help of the painting of the last day of the war, the three doctors and Clara reach the black archive and manage to stop a military offensive by the two Kates and bring the parties to the negotiating table just in time. Impressed by what his future incarnations have just moved on the warring sides, the war doctor returns to the last day of the Time War. The idea of ​​becoming these men who, driven by their own guilt, have dedicated their entire lives to saving other peoples no longer scares him, but gives him the courage to end the cruel endless war in this terrible way . The awareness of the moment can hold out the war doctor just long enough until the other two doctors and Clara unexpectedly arrive for him. They confess to him that they buried him so deep in their memory that they no longer saw him as part of themselves. But now they want to help him in the destruction of Gallifrey because they have realized that it was impossible to do the right thing that day. When the war doctor mentions the blonde girl and the term Bad Wolf is mentioned, the tenth doctor suspects for a brief moment which old friend has saved his world one more time.

When the doctors want to ignite the moment, Clara and Rose finally manage to convince them that there can and must be another way to end the war. The doctors come to the conclusion that together it should be possible to freeze Gallifrey like a Timelord painting in a single moment in time and thus bring it to safety in a bubble on the outer edge of the universe. With the help of all his incarnations (all previous and one future - the twelfth doctor embodied by Peter Capaldi ), this dangerous undertaking actually succeeds, the planet orbited by twelve TARDISs dissolves. The Dalek ships in orbit of the planet destroy each other when Galliffrey suddenly disappears.

Unsure whether they succeeded in freezing Gallifrey, the war doctor, the tenth and eleventh, and Clara return to the National Gallery, where they again examine the painting of the last day of the war. The eleventh doctor explains that the title of the picture is controversial and that the experts disagree between no more ( no more ! - enough! ) And Gallifrey . Furthermore, he explains to his younger incarnations that they will lose their memory of the time together as soon as they are back on their own timelines and thus continue to assume Gallifrey's destruction. At least the eleventh doctor and his subsequent incarnations will now be able to draw hope for a reunion with their people. After parting, the war doctor's body dies of old age and he regenerates in his TARDIS to become a ninth doctor . The eleventh doctor, who remains alone in the gallery for a moment, meets the curator (the aged Tom Baker - fourth doctor ), who tells him that the painting's title is no longer Gallifrey . He indirectly gives the eleventh the hint that he succeeded in saving Gallifrey and that it is now his task to find the planet again.

The episode ends with a dream sequence by the eleventh doctor, in which he sees his new goal on the horizon together with all his previous incarnations: Gallifrey.

background

In the day the doctor is the fourth multi-Doctor story (The Children in Need Special Dimensions in Time and Time Crash not counted) Series history. Originally, showrunner Steven Moffat planned to have all previous doctors in the new series meet. However, since the actor who played the Ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston , refused to return to his role and Moffat was too concerned about using the Eighth Doctor , played by Paul McGann , the character of the War Doctor was specially designed for this special. All previous incarnations of the doctor have an appearance in the form of reused scenes and all actors are recognized accordingly in the credits. A special feature, however, is Tom Baker, who plays the fourth doctor and is most often associated with the classic series due to his long "tenure" , who appears as a mysterious curator towards the end of the episode and whose additional role is not mentioned in the credits. In the dialogue with the eleventh doctor, his resemblance to the fourth doctor is alluded to, but despite cryptic hints it is not discussed in more detail. Capaldi's cameo as the twelfth doctor, which was kept secret in the run-up to the broadcast, is a novelty in the series, as for the first time a future incarnation of the doctor (apart from Valeyard, which is not actually a regeneration in the true sense of the word) occurs before the regeneration of its predecessor. Capaldi's hand and eyes can only be seen for a few seconds and he is the only incarnation of the doctor who is not mentioned in the credits.

Two prequels in the form of mini-episodes were produced for the special. For one, the night of the doctor (engl. Original title The Night of the Doctor ), showing the regeneration of the eighth doctor to war doctor and thus also shows McGann return to his old role, and The Last Day , from the events of the last war day the sight of a Gallifreyan soldier. In addition to being broadcast on TV, the episode was shown worldwide in selected cinemas in a 3D version.

Home theater publication

The special was not released in a season box, but as a separate film, on Blu-Ray and DVD, with the Blu-Ray version including the 3D version of the film. In the United Kingdom, the home evaluation was published on December 2, in the USA a day later, on December 3, 2013. In German-speaking countries, the special was released on December 20, 2013 on DVD and Blu-Ray.

A 13-minute making-of film with the title Behind the Lens received a humorous presentation from the off by Colin Baker ( sixth doctor ), who can also be seen in a short video sequence in the recording studio.

Sequels

The story about the Zygon lookalikes was continued in the ninth season in the double episode Die Invasion der Zygonen (English original title The Zygon Invasion ) and The Inversion der Zygonen (English original title The Zygon Inversion ). Gallifrey's fate in the frozen moment is portrayed in The Doctor's Fear ( Heaven Sent ) and In Teufels Küche (Originally Hells Bent ).

synchronization

Splendid Synchron GmbH was responsible for the synchronization of the special, while Luise Charlotte Brings , who also wrote the dialogue book, was responsible for the dialogue direction.

role	actor	Voice actor
The (11th) doctor	Matt Smith	Tobias Nath
The (10th) doctor	David Tennant	Philipp Brammer
The (war) doctor	John Hurt	Fred Maire
Clara Oswald	Jenna Coleman	Ilona Otto
The moment / Rose Tyler	Billie Piper	Maren Rainer
Kate Stewart	Jemma Redgrave	Andrea Aust
Osgood	Ingrid Oliver	Ghadah Al-Akel
Androgar	Peter de Jersey	Thomas Schmuckert
The general	Ken Bones	Axel Lutter
Time lady	Sophie Morgan-Price	Nana Spier
Queen Elizabeth I.	Joanna Page	Cathlen Gawlich
Lord Bentham	Orlando James	Florian Hoffmann
McGillop	Jonjo O'Neill	Karlo Hackenberger
Atkins	Tom Keller	Dirc Simpson
Daleks	Nicholas Briggs	Gregor Höppner
The (4th) Doctor / The Curator	Tom Baker	Michael Schwarzmaier
The (1st) doctor	William Hartnell
The (2nd) doctor	Patrick Troughton
The (3rd) doctor	Jon Pertwee
The (5th) doctor	Peter Davison
The (6th) doctor	Colin Baker
The (7th) doctor	Sylvester McCoy
The (8th) doctor	Paul McGann
The (9th) doctor	Christopher Eccleston	Frank Röth

Trivia

Since the episode is an anniversary special, there are various allusions to the series past:

• The intro from the very first episode The Child from the Stars is used.
• Osgood is wearing the fourth doctor's scarf .
• The last day of the war time and the removal of the moment by the doctor were subsequently in 2009. The end of time 1, Part (Engl. Title The End of Time, Part 1 discussed).
• The eleventh doctor instructs the tithe to reverse the polarity of the time portal. The third doctor's standard solution .
• It is alluded to earlier encounters various incarnations of the Doctor, in particular to the events of The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors (Engl. Title The Five Doctors ), where Kate's father was Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, involved.
• In the black archive hang photos of former companions of the doctor.
• The doctors give each other nicknames because of their physical characteristics, just as the first doctor did with the second doctor and third doctor in The Three Doctors .
• The time manipulator with which Clara travels to 1562 belonged to Captain Jack Harkness , a recurring companion of the ninth and tenth doctors, and the main character of the offshoot series Torchwood .
• The tenth doctor does not like the new facility of the TARDIS due to the eleventh doctor ( "You have this place redecorated. I don't like it." ). An allusion to the multi-doctor stories The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors , where the second doctor had a similar experience with the third doctor's TARDIS and the brigadier's office, respectively.
• The war doctor's last words before his regeneration are “Oh, that makes sense, of course ... if a little worn. I just hope the ears are to my liking and a bit more inconspicuous. " ( " I suppose it makes sense ... wearing a bit thin. I hope the ears are a bit less conspicuous this time. " ). The first doctor justified his regeneration in The Tenth Planet with the words “wearing a bit thin” . The desire for more inconspicuous ears is an allusion to the episode Rose , in which the ninth doctor is the only one to criticize this on his body when he sees himself in this form in the mirror for the first time.
• The tenth doctor shows his appreciation for the eleventh doctor with the words “Nice to know that my future is in safe hands. ” (English. Good to know my future is in safe hands. ). The first doctor thinks of the fifth in The Five Doctors with exactly the same words .
• The tenth Doctor says goodbye with the words "I will not go" (Engl. "I do not want to go" ) by Clara and the eleventh Doctor. These were before his regeneration in his last words The End of Time, Part 2 (English. The End of Time, Part 2 ).

On March 21, 2020 at 8 p.m. Central European time, the film was watched “together” as part of an event organized by fans. Everyone saw the episode for themselves and tweeted about the film under the hashtag “SaveTheDay” (which was already used for the 2013 release) . This event was well received by fans worldwide and was repeated a few days later with the episode Rose . The author of the episode, Steven Moffat, also took part in the action.

Web links

• Doctor's Day on the official BBC website

Individual evidence

1. ^ What if Eccleston Had Returned for 50th? . Doctor Who TV. December 16, 2013.
2. ↑ The Night of the Doctor: A Mini Episode - Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor Prequel - BBC . YouTube . November 14, 2013.
3. ↑ The Last Day: A mini-episode - The Day of the Doctor prequel - Doctor Who - BBC . YouTube. November 21st 2013.
4. ↑ DOCTOR WHO anniversary episode THE DAY OF THE DOCTOR as a worldwide 3D cinema event - all German venues [update ] . Digital canvas. 22nd October, 2013.
5. ^ The Day of the Doctor: DVD and Blu-ray contents announced . Doctor Who TV. 18th November 2013.
6. ↑ Doctor Who: Doctor's Day . schnittberichte.com. March 26, 2014.
7. ↑ German synchronous index: German synchronous index | Series | Doctor Who. Retrieved November 24, 2018 . 
8. ↑ Radio Times: Global Doctor Who rewatch the anniversary episode. Retrieved March 19, 2020 .