Doctor Who: 12 Fanboy Complaints That Need To Die

4. The 50th Anniversary Was A Wasted Opportunity Because There Were No Classic Doctors!

The Day Of The Doctor was a great celebration of Doctor Who with some electric interplay between the War, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. (You can read my review of this and the other 50th specials here). Having visibly older, larger Doctors running around, squeezing into their old costumes, trying to keep up with Tennant and Smith; is that what audiences really wanted? They would have become caricatures of their former selves. Besides, if you really wanted the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors in action again, then you had to look no further than the brilliant Five(ish) Doctors. Steven Moffat absolutely went in the right direction with the 50th special; he focused on story first. Had his first thought been to fit as many Doctors in the episode, we might have ended up with something like The Five Doctors - a virtual fan-love-in of Doctors and companion cameos without any real content. There's still the bickering interplay between Doctors as per the previous anniversary specials and David Tennant and Matt Smith light up the screen together, only to be outdone by the mastery of John Hurt's performance. But it really was about the most significant event in the Doctor's long life; the Time War and the fall of Gallifrey. If there was ever a moment to delve straight into it, it was the 50th and it was done with real style and celebration. Old Doctors weren't forgotten - they all got a part to play in saving their home world and the unforeseen arrival of Peter Capaldi's Doctor had audiences cheering in the cinema; immediately outdone by the wonderful scene between Smith's Eleventh and Tom Baker's curator, surely the most touching homage to the show of them all.