Oh. My. Gallifrey.

Everybody's seen "The Day of the Doctor," right? I don't need to worry about spoiling anyone?



Still shaking, still crying (though not as much as I was about a half hour ago).

Where do I even begin?  How can I even begin? The opening title sequence! Foreman's Scrapyard! Clara's a teacher at Coal Hill School! (with one I. Chesterton as Head of the School Governors!!!) Kate Stewart and UNIT! The girl with the Tom Baker scarf! Mentions of "The Three Doctors!" Companion pictures! Zygons! TARDIS interiors! (with commentary on the roundels and how none of the Doctors know why they're there!) And The Thing that happens at the end! (actually, several things) EVERYTHING! I LOVE EVERYTHING IN THIS STORY!

This special is so vastly different to any previous anniversary specials or multi-Doctor stories Doctor Who has done before.  It's not the fan-wanky goodness of "The Five Doctors" (though heaven knows I dearly, dearly love that one) - there is an actual story to tell. There's history to be made. We're not here to rest on our laurels and think that the future will take care of itself. But there are little nods to the past, appropriately and lovingly done.

There are actually two plots going on here.  The A-plot with the War Doctor on Gallifrey with The Moment (that takes the form of Bad Wolf - and not Rose Tyler. I sort of figured that was going to happen).  And then, the B-plot with the Zygons and Queen Elizabeth I woven inbetween.  Smack dab in the middle of this, is the Eleventh and Tenth Doctors meeting up and crossing timelines. Of course, we get the interplay with the three Doctors in the cell beneath the Tower of London.  They'd already gotten all the fun little digs at each other out of the way - Sandshoes, Chin Boy, that kind of stuff.  And then - The Story.

Steven Moffat has used the whole "timey-wimey" thing quite well to this point, so it follows that it would come into play in this multi-Doctor story in a huge way.  The War Doctor - before he does The Thing that makes him Not-The-Doctor - gets to see the future.  And the other Doctors get to see the past.  The story's really about making things right what went wrong and learning from your mistakes.  It's sort of like Back to the Future - Marty changed his past, but he still remembers what came before to get him to that point (and yes, hard sci-fi fans - I don't know how it works. But let's just pretend for a minute that you aren't a bunch of pedantic hardasses and let's have some fun with this).  The post-Time War Doctor has been emotional and angsty to this point and no one's going to take that from him.  He wouldn't be the Doctor we know and love if he did that.

But avoiding the Moment isn't about the Doctor.  It's about the people he's going to save. It's about putting aside his regrets and doing what he's spent 400 years thinking about how he could have fixed it and What Went Wrong and reclaiming his title and being the man that he's always been - the one we've loved for so many years and so many regenerations.  It's about second chances.  For once - the Doctor gets to save himself.

And, boy, did I squee when ALL THE DOCTORS appeared!  And I heard them!  I saw them! First Doctor! Second! Third! Fourth! Fifth (I distinctly heard Peter Davison's voice!) Sixth! Seventh! Eighth! Ninth! (yup - he was in there too - probably reused audio, but I don't care!) Tenth and Eleventh, of course. And...

ASAFLKJSDLKFJOIWGNO WHAT???? PETER FREAKING CAPALDI???

(I think I might have died at this point. And then I regenerated. My second incarnation is typing this up).

So, the day is saved - and so are millions of Gallifreyans.  Gallifrey is out there, somewhere in a hidden pocket of the universe.  And that's the next step - go back to Gallifrey and see what New Who can do with that.  After 50 years - the Doctor is finally going back.  But not before the Doctor meets a certain curator... whose appearance is going to be discussed and dissected ad nauseum in the coming days and weeks.

Only because I know what this means to the fandom and I'm part of the fandom - yeah, I was hands-in-my-face bawling at this point.  Tom Baker came to the party.  The Doctor no one can ever really be sure of, but everyone still loves.  I know, I know - Tom Baker isn't my absolute favorite Doctor... but it was a special moment and I'm glad he came in for this cameo.

In "An Unearthly Child," the Doctor says that he and his granddaughter are cut off from their own world, but that they will get back one day.  Well, Susan is somewhere else but the Doctor remains.  He has remained for fifty years in our timeline.  He just saved his home world after having destroyed it.  But for once (and it wouldn't surprise me if this was mixed in the Christmas Special with all that Trenzalore stuff) - he has a purpose and a target.  He's going home.  Of course, we know that it's quite never that simple with the Doctor.  You step out to take a look around, and you inevitably find yourself captured before you can explain anything.  Honestly, the future of Doctor Who is secure (at least, from where I'm standing).

But we always love nostalgia and the past because we know that it's still there.  So, the Eleventh Doctor walking out of the TARDIS to stand among his past regenerations (including the War Doctor - oh, that made me happy!) was right and proper and good.  Made even better (probably because I've still got An Adventure in Space and Time feels running through my system) by the fact that the First Doctor stands in the middle of the circle and the first, the original, the one who started it all.  And then the credits put all the Doctors' actors names under "The Doctor" - by that point, sobbing and laughing and tears were pouring down my face and everything was beautiful and nothing hurt and EVERYBODY LIVES!

This entire special was a delicate balance between fanwank and moving the Doctor's story forward. And they hit just the precise balance with "The Day of the Doctor."  Doctor Who isn't going away - not anytime soon.  We now have a whole new direction to go and new places to explore.

Friends, Companions I've Known - Review of "The Night Of The Doctor"

I guess we've all had a day to process and come down off our adrenaline highs and knock out the spoiler cobwebs, so here is my review and analysis of "The Night of the Doctor." Spoilers ahead! (but if you still haven't seen it and you want to avoid being spoiled - take seven minutes out of your day to watch it now and then you won't have to worry about it!)



There is so, so much to take away from this little mini-episode, even from the get-go.  First of all, it was GENIUS to have the Doctor's voice heard before you actually saw him.  The Eighth Doctor has existed in audio format for so many years now and that's how most people know him - by his voice.  If we suddenly saw Paul McGann before he started speaking, it would take a moment to realize who it was (especially since he does look a bit different from his appearance in the TV Movie).  But by hearing his voice first, that was enough to remind us who this is and get the fannish-adrenaline-rush going into overdrive.

Next - the Doctor's looking for a companion! Seeing as this is a truncated storyline, everything (of necessity) must happen so fast. But it has no less impact than if there was a whole season for this storyline to play out. The Doctor immediately recognizes Cass as a prime candidate for Team TARDIS.  Cass stayed behind to teleport people off the crashing ship because they were all panicked and frightened.  Cass was likely the only one (or one of a very few) who kept her head long enough to stay at the controls and get everyone else to safety, risking her own life.  The Doctor only takes the very best - and Cass has immediately shown herself to be the very best.

I said this on Tumblr yesterday (inbetween fits of fangirl glee) - I had a hard time imagining the Eighth Doctor as the Doctor who fought in the Time War.  I don't know why that is, because I have no problem with the Fifth Doctor threatening Davros with a gun or the Seventh Doctor cruelly breaking Ace's faith in him in "The Curse of Fenric," - but Eight?  He's just not a soldier to me. To me, he's the one who would stay as far away from the fighting as possible.  And that theory (or belief - whatever) was validated when the Doctor insists that he isn't part of the Time War that has broken out and threatens to destroy the universe.  He wants to stay as far away as possible - but he also wants to help people affected by the horrors of the War.  Problem is - he's a Time Lord.  And Time Lord reputation is severely damaged in the eyes of others in the universe.

Cass doesn't see the TARDIS as a place of safety and refuge - she sees it as just another sign of the war.  It's never really said what kind of ship Cass was on or why it was crashing - but it could be possible that it was full of war refugees escaping a battle-ravaged planet.  She is angry that a Time Lord would dare land on her ship and try to take her into the Time War - even though that's the exact opposite of what the Doctor wants to do!  So angry, in fact, that she would gladly die if it meant taking one of those horrible Time Lords with her.  And, it speaks to the kind of Doctor Eight is, that he stays behind, trying to save the one person who wants to see him die.  It's a powerful moment - full of meaning and characterization and story in just a minute or two.

So, the ship crashes.  The Doctor is dead - but he's landed in the midst of the Sisterhood of Karn.  Now, I've only seen "The Brain of Morbius" once (but it seems I'm due for a revisit), so I'm a little shaky on the details of the Sisterhood.  But everything I need to know, I'm given in this episode.  The Sisterhood knows of Time Lord technology regarding regeneration.  And they have singled out the Doctor as probably the last Time Lord who isn't up to his eyeballs in Time War carnage and battle.  For some reason, they believe that he is the only one who can stop the war before it destroys the universe.  And he's probably been asked before to join the fighting, but he refuses every single time.  But those times, he wasn't dying AND he wasn't given the chance to choose the kind of regeneration he needs to be effective in the war.  And, likely, it's being faced with Cass's dead body that really changes his mind.  He had it in his head to save her, to take her away from the war, to travel in time and space just like he has with all his other companions (which is another reason to include their names - beyond just making Big Finish part of the canon.  Remind us of all those people he's come to love in this regeneration).  But that opportunity - and Cass's life - was stolen away because of the war.  And the Doctor is faced with the fact that he cannot be the Doctor anymore.  Not in the way he has been up to this point.  He can't hide away and let the universe sort itself out because the universe is falling apart.  The universe doesn't need the Doctor anymore - it needs a Warrior.

Thus, he chooses his new regeneration.  And the episode ends with a younger John Hurt reflected in the mirror.  Meaning that this War Doctor probably fought for years upon centuries before the events of "The Day of the Doctor."

Those are the major points I got out of this short episode.  But there is so much more - like the fact that Paul McGann is the best Doctor that never got a fair shake on TV.  To people who've never heard Big Finish, this is a major shock. There are still some who don't count the TV Movie because they hate it so much (and I, being a fan of the TV Movie, still don't get that but whatever) - but I saw more than one person on Twitter and elsewhere lamenting the fact that the Eighth Doctor didn't get a full series - and there were plenty of TV-only Whovians saying these things.  I sort of hope that the response to this mini-episode leads to possibly a spin-off series with the Eighth Doctor.  It doesn't have to supplant the main TV show - maybe just a miniseries in the vein of "Torchwood: Children of Earth" or "Miracle Day" where it's part of the overarching series, but it's also it's own story told over the course of 5-10 episodes and that's it.  If anything, "The Night of the Doctor" proves that there is more we could see from Paul McGann and there are people clamoring for it! (over one million YouTube views in one day?! You don't get that kind of response from something that nobody wants or cares about!)

Another thing - and this was pointed out to me on Tumblr yesterday, but it bears repeating (oh, does it bear repeating!) There has been a lot of complaining that the 50th Anniversary isn't so much a celebration of 50 years as it is a celebration of just the past eight years of New Who.  Doctor Who fandom, sadly, has divided itself into factions of Classic Who fans, New Who fans, Big Finish fans, Torchwood fans, Tennant fans, Matt Smith fans, Eccleston fans, Moffat fans, and RTD fans and probably others that I'm not aware of.  And, personally, I kind of hate that because I love all of Doctor Who (well, okay, I'm not huge into Torchwood, but I don't actively hate on the show or its fans).  But for seven glorious minutes, the entire fandom fell in love with the show again. There was no complaining or carping or kvetching (that's become my new favorite word, by the way) or divisions or factions - there was just celebrating.  There was no "My Doctor is better" or "This writer was better" or "I miss when so-and-so was on the show."  It was all "Isn't Doctor Who awesome?!" Now, if there was any complaining - it's that we wanted more Eighth Doctor, but it wasn't so much "complaining" as it was wishing for something good to come back. But my point stands - there is no Classic Who or New Who or Big Finish Who. There is just Doctor Who.

And it was Steven Moffat that made it all happen.

Oh man, "The Day of the Doctor" is going to be so cool!

***
Librarian in the TARDIS - Reviews of the Eighth Doctor -

Review 8.01 - Mostly Dead is Slightly Alive (TV: Doctor Who the Movie)
Review 8.02 - The Not-So-Dark-Mystery of Time and Space (Audio: Invaders from Mars)
Review 8.03 - "What Are You Going To Do Now?" "I'm Going to... Somewhere That Isn't Copyright Infringement!" (Prose: EarthWorld)

***
Here's an excellent interview with Steven Moffat about "The Night of the Doctor" - from which came a quote about Big Finish, which kind of makes me think that they may get the rights to do New Who stories eventually (fingers crossed!)

Trailer Alert! Trailer Alert! This Is Not A Drill!!

Shout it high to the heavens, my friends! The endless kvetching can now finally cease. For, my dear fellow Whovians - WE HAVE A TRAILER!!

BEHOLD -



Here are my initial impressions -

- Ten and Eleven comparing everything from sonics to brainy specs to TARDIS interiors.  And, further proving that you cannot have a Doctor Who anniversary special with the line about redecorating anything. I think that's when the DayQuil finally kicked in because I started bouncing up and down and fangirl-flailing all over the place (silently, because I was in the break room at work watching on my iPhone).  I love how that is a distinctive Patrick Troughton line and pays homage to his performance, but David Tennant makes it his own moment for his Doctor. And Matt Smith's reaction - beautiful!

- It's not Handy!Doctor! Sing praises to Rassilon and Omega! (I had a... let's just say discussion with a 19-year-old girl I met a few weeks ago who was so thrilled that Rose and Handy were coming back and I had to vehemently disagree with her and she didn't like that very much. We did not leave on pleasant terms).

- I'm not sure what to make of Rose's crypticness and all-knowing whatchamawhozits.  I don't think this is Series 2 Rose, neither do I think it's Alt!Universe Rose. I wonder if it's the TARDIS doing a "Bad Wolf" projection at the last minute and that's what we got? I dunno - but it makes me excited!

- We got the Doctors being funny and lighthearted - but I love, love, love, LOVE the darkness there at the end. I don't think any multi-Doctor story has really dealt with the ramifications of meeting your future self and the bad things that could possibly happen form that.  It gave me chills and I love it!

That's just a few of my initial thoughts. I gotta go watch it on loop about fifty more times before I'm completely satisfied.

ETA: BBC America has a version that puts the trailer with the version of the theme from the cameo-licious 50th Anniversary teaser trailer. I'm sort of hoping they use that theme tune in the opening credits of the actual special (pretty please?? I've been ever-so-good).

Who's Waldo - or Where's Doctor - Oh, You Know What I Mean!

Well, folks, we're in the homestretch regarding Doctor Who 50th Anniversary celebrations (Librarian in the TARDIS is no exception - two more reviews to go!)  As such, the official promotions are ramping up.  Feast your eyes on the latest tribute trailer (which may end up being a teaser for "The Day of the Doctor) -



Plenty of fannish eye-candy as well as some vocal cameos (I caught both Peter Davison and Paul McGann's voices echoing Matt Smith's in a few places).  And if you're like me and want to pick out all the little treats hiding in this quick 1-minute trailer, Kasterborous has a fantastic shot-by-shot photo gallery on their Facebook page that you can pour over to your heart's content.

(Also - I'm kind of hoping we get this version of the theme on a soundtrack at the very least. It's probably too much to hope that it'll be in the actual special, but I actually love it).