8.2: Night of the Doctor

In which it’s probably not the one you were expecting.

Broadcast (well, released… I remember a long and surprisingly aggressive mailing list row about the meaning of the word “broadcast” at the time): November 2013

Watched: January 2022

“Will it hurt?”

God, do you remember the excitement of this dropping without warning? Not sure I closed my mouth the entire thing. 

Anyway, it plays automatically on iPlayer and Ohila appears again in Hell Bent, so it’s definitely canon. At the time the excitement was all about McGann, which is weird because it’s not like he’s actually that good (although he’s great on this bit: “Where are we going?” “Back of the ship.” “Why? “Because the front crashes first, think it through.”). 

I think what’s really clever about it is how it uses a template we’re all used to now – the companion introduction story – and then shows the times are out of joint by breaking it. We know that the universe is messed up, not because they keep telling us, but because the Doctor meets a brave young woman and invites her onboard, and the *moment* she realises it’s a TARDIS she decides she’d literally rather die. And she means it. Both within the fiction and without it, the world of Doctor Who has gone wrong. 

Once we reach Karn (Karn! It’s a bloody Brain of Morbius sequel as well!), it’s not Ohila’s begging for help that persuades the Doctor to regenerate: it’s the memory of the look of disgust on Cass’s face. There’s no place for a Doctor any more because he’s been rejected by a companion.

As with Asylum – and later, Magician’s/Witch’s and World/Time – Moffat is using the sort of furniture and rhythms of Doctor Who to tell stories that feel like myths. He uses what we used to call “fanwank” to tell an entire story with more content than some six parters. And he does it all in less than seven minutes.

Someone could write a book on it. 

Other things, briefly:

• “But probably not the one you were expecting” doesn’t really make any sense within the fiction. Which is a shame

• Not for the first time, Moffat characters have power to bring people back from the dead, sort of. Also, the Doctor mocks eternal life again, the big hypocrite.

• “Fat or thin. Young or old. Man or woman.” Moffat continues leading us to a female Doctor.

• This list of companions suggests Big Finish is canon, sorry. I subscribe to Jim’s theory that he just names the dead. Love that in the novelisation is a different list.

• “Doctor no more.” Introducing John Hurt as the War Doctor. That feels like a contradiction, but it’s actually setting up the central dilemma of Day. Also, given how young the reflected Hurt is here, the War Doctor clearly lives for *ages*. Or the Daleks are using Time Destructors again. One or the other. 

  I’m amused that the way I’m doing this means 8.2 is up before 8.1.