Doctor Who: 10 Things You Never Knew About The Day Of The Doctor

10. The Revived Series Poked Fun At Itself

Doctor Who has been a reliable staple of quality television since its revival in 2005 but that hasn't stopped it from developing some clichés and quirks. The Doctor seemed to get younger with each successive regeneration; there was more romance than viewers would have ever dreamed of seeing in the classic series, and oddball phrases kept popping up as reasonable explanations for the hard-to-explain (timey-wimey, humany-wumany). The disparities in tone between the classic and revived series can be jarring. In the 50th anniversary special, the show actually addressed that in the form of the War Doctor. When he first encountered the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors, he assumed they were his future companions mostly because they were young, younger than he how he would normally regenerate. When he learned they were, in fact, his future selves, his first reaction was, "Am I having a mid-life crisis?" He went on to point out more of the attributes he found ridiculous in his successors. Eleven's inability to talk without gesticulating wildly, the absurdness of the phrases they used, and the way Ten and Eleven bickered with each other. The episode also revisited Eleven's fez infatuation and Ten's reputation of the charming, dashing hero in a way that gently recognized the silliness of those elements. It was one of several instances in which the two series reached across the decades and gratefully acknowledged the other's presence.
In this post: 
Doctor Who
 
Posted On: 
Contributor

Paula Luther hails from Pennsylvania and has been an avid Whovian since 2008. She enjoys writing (obviously), reading, dancing, video editing, and building websites. She has also self-published two books on Amazon, "Bart the Bard" and "Android Mae and Other Stories".