Awesome / Doctor Who — 50th Anniversary Specials

aka: Doctor Who 2013 CS The Time Of The Doctor

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"The Night of the Doctor"

• Two words: PAUL McGANN!
• Also, The Eighth Doctor saluting his companions by name from the Big Finish audios before his regeneration, solidifying their status in the televised series's continuity. That means he has given himself a fully-fledged tenure without even appearing onscreen for the ride.
• His re-introduction, appearing behind Cass on a crashing spaceship while she argues with the computer about needing a Doctor.
  Eighth Doctor: I'm a Doctor. [Beat] Though probably not the one you were expecting...
• The moment Christopher Eccleston appeared as the Ninth Doctor, fans began clamoring about what happened to the Eighth Doctor, not even knowing if it was a straight shot between 8 and 9 (which was later quashed). It became a gigantic blank space in the continuity of the show that was left unchecked and even Paul himself wanted it dealt with properly. The demand built up to have it take place, until the 50th rolled around and fans were bellowing for it to happen because it was the perfect excuse to show it. Paul even had to quell the commotion on his Twitter account repeatedly to hide his involvement and play coy the whole time before his minisode aired, until at last, the impossible happened... and the video posted on Youtube by the BBC exploded with over a million hits in a matter of a week.
• The fact that this story was so engulfed by hype that its release date had to be moved forward to prevent a full information leak. Understandable, since Series 7 Part 2 DVD copies featuring "The Name of the Doctor" released before the official episode premiere date by accident, and got a hush order placed on them until the massive twist at the end went public.
• The Eighth Doctor makes it audibly known he doesn't give the slightest rip that he's dying:
  Eighth Doctor: Four minutes? That's ages! What if I get bored or need a television, couple of books? Anyone for chess? Bring me knitting.
• His new costume is a badass revamp of the old one, and the Doctor looks a bit messy — five o'clock shadow, unkempt hair, clothes all wrinkled and unbuttoned. He is evidently exhausted — who knows how much running he's been doing since the Time War began? Even the TARDIS is banged up with laser fire scorches and weathering paint. But he's still going.

"The Day of the Doctor"

• As the show's 50th anniversary there was a truly gigantic level of hype surrounding this episode. It not only did not disappoint but had literally countless Moments of Awesome throughout.
• The entire Time War scene, which managed to outdo all the epic battle scenes beforehand in the revival show's history as thousands of Daleks swarm Arcadia while Time Lord soldiers fight for their lives in the chaos.
• The War Doctor has had it with the Time War and he wants his enemies to know it. How does he do it? He calmly asks a Gallifreyan soldier for his gun and engraves "NO MORE" into a ruined wall of a building in Arcadia. He then steals the most dangerous weapon ever known to be created and threatens to activate it, not caring if he goes up with them all. After the War Doctor blasts down the Daleks, the Gallifreyan Soldier notices one of them is still alive—a bisected Dalek ranting for someone to explain what "No More" means. He then proceeds to give it a Shut Up, Hannibal! by blasting it in the eyestalk, causing it to explode, in one of the most beautiful explosions in the history of the show. That soldier, whether he died or not, had balls of steel.
• The appearance of every single Doctor, all working together to save Gallifrey.
  • There weren't 12 Doctors there. It was all 13. Yes, including Capaldi. Really, that whole sequence starts with a bang.
    First Doctor: Calling the War Council of Gallifrey; this is the Doctor!
  • The sight of the 13 TARDISes whizzing around each other? Even better as it was each Doctor's individual TARDIS.
  • This moment may be the crowning moment of the entire canon. For a half-century, fans had been wowed by the brilliance of the Doctor as they used their ingenuity, bravery, and time-travelling abilities to save helpless individuals, worlds, and galaxies. And in this one scene, it's revealed that they were always secretly working on the calculations that they would need to save Gallifrey, and ultimately the universe, from the Daleks. Over fifty years of episodes — and several hundreds to thousands of in-universe years — the Doctor told no one that they were doing this, as the secret was too important to entrust to even their closest companions. Every single depiction of the Doctor made from 1963 - 2013 was one in which he was quietly laboring (unaware most of the time due to how the timelines go out of sync whenever they're acting in tandem with their other incarnations) to save the universe from a cosmic apocalypse that only they could prevent.
  • And a further one still. The Daleks were still wiped out, but instead of being wiped out by the Moment they were wiped out by their own firepower as all the shots they'd fired at Gallifrey hit them instead.
• Clara is surrounded by Zygons in a room with nothing but a vortex manipulator. Clara takes the vortex manipulator, puts in the activation code and escapes in seconds.
• Four words: Gallifrey Falls No More. Long story short: the Doctors finally figure out a way to save Gallifrey while keeping history intact, and end up conscripting all 13 Doctors to help them.
  Eleventh Doctor: Gentlemen, I've had 400 years to think about this. I've changed my mind.
• The final scene with all the Doctors standing side by side, War Doctor included, staring upon Gallifrey, now saved.
• Though drowned out by the epic story surrounding it, the Zygon plot of the episode has multiple Moments of Awesome in its own right.
  • The Tenth Doctor gives the Eleventh a huge What the Hell, Hero? over having forgotten how many children were on Gallifrey on the final day of the Last Great Time War after 400 years. (The fact that Ten checked could be considered a moment in itself.) Then the War Doctor estimates that it'd take hundreds of years for his Sonic Screwdriver to figure out how to melt the wooden door. Finally, the Moment points out the obvious: they all have the same coding in each of their screwdrivers. The War Doctor puts the calculations into the screwdriver's programming, Ten (100 years older than War) has it still going and Eleven (300 years older than Ten) checks and sees that after all this time, it can now destroy the door.
  • Queen Elizabeth I both killing her Zygon double with a dagger and then successfully impersonating it to trick the other Zygons into entering stasis.
  • The Brigadier is so badass he gets a posthumous moment of awesome. The Zygon Kate thinks that human Kate is bluffing about destroying London. The real Kate responds with two sentences that leave her counterpart visibly terrified and absolutely assured that she will go through with this.
  "Somewhere in your memory is a man called Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. I'm his daughter."
  • Osgood is cornered and helpless, about to be killed (or at least, covered in Zygon goop to allow her continued impersonation). Then she notices that her attacker is standing on the end of her scarf... One good yank and the attacker is flat on her back on the floor.
  • How do the Doctors resolve the stand-off: By activating the memory filters, meaning that no one will remember if they're human or Zygon until it wears off. So the two of them, because neither of them remembers what side they're on, work out a completely fair peace treaty.
  • Both Osgoods get a quite understated one: The Doctors' plan to have no one know if they're the real thing or the Zygon didn't account for how there was only one inhaler. But upon discovering this, they both agree to keep quiet and let the treaty be made.
• The Moment gets quite a few, for a sentient super-weapon that developed a conscience. Taking the form of the Bad Wolf, she kicks off the entire plot by opening the windows in time to allow the War Doctor to meet the man he'd become if he pushed the button, in addition to offering him advice as an invisible Stealth Mentor for most of the episode.
• Two moments in one for the Doctors getting into the Black Archives. First, they come up with a plan to get past Kate's TARDIS-proofing. Second, they make one hell of a Big Damn Heroes entrance by sonicking an active Dalek through the plate glass of the picture frame.
  War Doctor: Hello.
  Tenth Doctor: I'm the Doctor.
  Eleventh Doctor: Sorry about the Dalek.
  Clara: Also the showing off.
• Early on, we see just how much the Daleks fear "The Oncoming Storm" during the Time War.
  • About to exterminate a group of helpless Gallifreyans, including scared, crying children, the Daleks suddenly are distracted from this task because they detect the Doctor. Not one of them even considers stopping to execute their prey at this point. They're all so scared of the Doctor, they don't dare divert their attention to anything else when they realize he's on the scene.
  • Alluded to in the climax; when 13 TARDISes start flying towards Gallifrey, each with an incarnation of the Doctor in them, the Daleks' only response is to increase their firepower, clearly terrified out of their wits at the thought of all thirteen Doctors coming at them.
  • The novelisation cranks it up even further, by revealing that some of the Daleks just flat out ran away when they fully realised just what was happening—and kept running, ever since. Also, according to the novelization, it wasn't just the first thirteen, but every Doctor ever who helped save Gallifrey.
• Even after spending his life as a warrior, the War Doctor has not managed to end the Time War. It was just too big a conflict to end on his own while in his youth. He outlived that purpose and grew old. And all the while, he has gone through hell, but never abandoned his compassion for the innocent men, women, and children of Gallifrey and everyone else who was dragged into this war. He has a bandolier taken from someone he failed to save as a reminder of his purpose for fighting from the start of his life to the end of his life. His clothes are also really beaten up compared to the other Doctors, showing that he hasn't had the luxury of being whimsical.
• How does the War Doctor escape the Daleks advancing on him? He uses the TARDIS as a battering ram to decapitate them!
  • The War Doctor says he's 400 years younger than the Eleventh Doctor, who claims to be 1200+. Assuming that he's started counting since the beginning of his tenure, considering the inconsistency with his age before the war, that means that he likely spent 800 years fighting on the front lines of the biggest war in the history of the universe, against the most evil beings in all of creation. And as later Time Lords recount, he was almost always unarmed.
• The opening brings back (a variant of) the original arrangement of the theme tune for the first time since the first episode of "The Faceless Ones" and the original opening visuals for the first time since the fourth and final part of "The Moonbase".

"The Time of the Doctor"

• A minor one, but the means the Doctor uses to sneak a TARDIS key past Tasha Lem are clever. The church is accustomed to people using holographic clothes, but the Doctor exploited a blind spot by shaving his head and hiding the key in a wig.
• The raw terror of fighting the Weeping Angels in a blizzard.
• The Doctor fought for centuries in the same town just for a chance to finally bring his people back. Think about that. Centuries spent fighting Weeping Angels, Cybermen, Daleks and the Silence all for a chance to undo his greatest regret. And in all that time, the town called Christmas never fell to any of them.
• The brief puppet scene, adorable and awesome.
  Eleventh Doctor Puppet: Christmas is defended!
• The Cybermen are able to create versions of themselves out of wood. Just how they managed to upgrade trees we'll never know...
• The Doctor managing to trick a Cyberman into killing itself while under the influence of a truth field.
• The Doctor forces the cooperation of the Silence due to the Daleks nearly destroying them during the siege of Trenzalore. Think about that. The organization that planned so far ahead that they almost outsmarted the Doctor turned around and ended up being among the last True Companions the Doctor ever had this regeneration.
  • As if to illustrate this, there are shots of the Silence zapping Cybermen and of the Doctor leading a squad of Silence into battle. That's right, the Doctor was able to win the allegiance of an army of Slenderman-Expy Humanoid Abominations and lead them into battle against the Daleks.
    • Even better - when you look away from The Silence, you forget all about them and what they look like. This means the Doctor thought he was going into battle alone.
• Tasha Lem, after a little Reverse Psychology from the Doctor, is able to regain control of her Dalek-puppet body and uses her Dalek weapons to kick Dalek ass.
• One must give props to the Daleks as well. 300 years where most of the Doctor's other enemies just gave up in their siege, and only the Daleks never gave up trying to kill the Doctor. Nobody can say they aren't determined.
  • By 900 years everyone else had given up; who knows how many centuries later, the Eleventh Doctor is dying of old age and the Daleks are still at it. Determinator, thy name is Dalek.
    • Even better is that this includes powerhouses like the Weeping Angels and the newest Cybermen, who many believed to be capable of curbstomping the Daleks. Who's Laughing Now? indeed.
    • Not to say the others didn't try. The Cyberiad somehow dispatched a Cyberman made entirely of wood - just how they managed that, we don't know.
  • And even when they seem to have won, when they have the Doctor completely surrounded, in an old, decrepit body and knowing that he can't regenerate since he's used up all his lives, the Daleks are still too afraid of the Doctor to actually shoot. That is how much he scares them. Even later on, while regenerating, they're still too terrified to come right in.
    Daleks: YOU WILL DIE, AND THE TIME LORDS WILL NEVER RETURN.
    Eleventh Doctor: And you still can't work up the courage to shoot me, can you? You're still worried I've got something up my sleeve.
• The Doctor is dying. He has run out of options and the Daleks are going to, at long last, finish him off. There is no one that can save the day, right? Wrong. Cue the Time Lords, with an absolutely heroic version of This is Gallifrey playing, reaching out from a pocket universe to give the Doctor, the man so many of them saw as insane and whom they belittled and mocked, a brand new set of regenerations... all because Clara told them that they didn't need to HEAR the Doctor's real name... that the name he chose should be good enough for them.
  • Clara talking the Time Lords into giving the Doctor more regenerations. She talked the Time Lords into something they didn't want to do.
  • The Time Lords already know the Doctor's name. Even if it was somehow erased from their obsessive filing system, there's no way the name of one of the most (in)famous renegades in Gallifreyan history isn't in the Matrix, or known to one of his House members. The Time Lords didn't need to learn the Doctor's name; they needed him to say his name. He refused because he didn't want to give that kind of power to his enemies. Clara's appeal to the Time Lords was essentially saying that the Doctor wasn't ever going to play that game but that he had spent centuries fighting to protect them and he was about to die for them. After millennia of tormenting him, the Time Lords finally listened to the Doctor and gave him his chance to save them.
  • They also must have realized: If they don't save him, there won't be a thirteenth Doctor to help save them.^note That's including the War Doctor.
  • The fact that the Time Lords get to have a Big Damn Heroes moment when we've only seen them as antagonists since the revival. Heck, the fact that they get to have a Big Damn Heroes moment without appearing on-screen!
• The Doctor uses his regeneration to destroy a Dalek Cruiser!
  • The speech leading up to that is fantastic as well:
    Eleventh Doctor: What did you say? Did you mention "the rules?" Now listen, bit of advice: Tell me the truth if you think you know it, lay down the law if you're feeling brave, but, Daleks, never, ever tell me the rules!
    Daleks: EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY, THE DOCTOR IS REGENERATING, THE DOCTOR IS REGENERATING!
    Eleventh Doctor: Oh, look at this, regeneration number thirteen! We're breaking some serious science here, boys! And tell you what, it's gonna be a WHOPPER!
    Daleks: EXTERMINATE!!! EXTERMINATE THE DOCTOR!!!
    Eleventh Doctor: You think you can stop me now, Daleks? IF YOU WANT MY LIFE, COME. AND. GET IT!
  • Culminating in his Pre-Asskicking One-Liner to the Daleks as he uses the excess regeneration energy to destroy them;
    Eleventh Doctor: Love from Gallifrey, boys!
    • The Doctor has so much regeneration energy in him, that he literally destroys the outer surface of a planet!

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