Over a week has gone by since The Day of the Doctor was simulcast around the world and screened simultaneously in cinemas before enjoying a further limited theatrical release of surely unanticipated success. The madness in which Doctor Who 'took over television', earning jibes from satirists which they once reserved for John Barrowman, has passed. The general medium-term implications and consequences of the way the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who was marked are still taking shape, but The Day of the Doctor contended that the episode presented a paradigmatic shift in content as well as in distribution.

It's tempting to say that The Day of the Doctor was a soufflé of a story, expansively frothy with fan-pleasing references, self-aware retroactive continuity, ironically-realised old monsters, and actors doing familiar turns. Instead it was more of a meringue - a solid enough pudding, not over-egged, and densely stuffed with sweetmeats to suit a variety of palates.

The density of the episode's construction is revealed in the opening scene. What looks like a homage to one particular point in the series' history moment turns into the first use of arranging references as part of the foundations for Doctor Who's revised manifesto. The policeman leads the audience past I.M. Foreman's sign, towards Coal Hill Secondary School, before the camera reminds us that our involvement is at its grace and that we are on the other side of the screen from our characters. In a shot more powerful in 3D than in 2D, Clara's hand impresses on the screen and us the much-quoted sentence from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations: 'Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be', leaving out the injunction 'Be one'. Summoned by her Doctor to the TARDIS, Clara nonchalantly says she's not taught anything good, and the Doctor says he hasn't learned anything; but this story completes an arc of the Doctor's moral re-education begun in 2005 and echoing fan readings of the first two seasons of Doctor Who, in which Ian and Barbara teach the Doctor to turn his abilities outwards towards helping people.

Clara's hand is mirror-writing to us, and Doctor Who is a mirror of our own universe. Here it is a mirror of our own (presumed) experience of Doctor Who. Classrooms and galleries and televisions are our TARDISes. Clara's classroom even has a 4:3 ratio television on the wall, a modern echo of the original TARDIS set. For Clara to leave Coal Hill at 5.16pm she is presumably supervising an after-school club or in-school homework, or else the clock is as broken as the TARDIS's navigation system appeared to be in the 1960s. I[an] Chesterton is the chairman of the board of governors - perhaps this is who appointed Clara or makes sure that no questions are asked about her sudden disappearances from work. The Cwmdare Road location provides the Cardiff-as-London familiarity of latterday Who. The street bears some resemblance to that where Clive lived in Rose, leading those so minded to wonder whether Clive was staking out Coal Hill eight years ago, but also foreshadowing the return of Billie Piper as the Moment-Rose. Clara's biking and outfit bridge the 1960s of mods and rockers (arguably as much a media confection as Doctor Who) and the present day; but recall previous uses of motorcycles in Doctor Who, most recently contemporary Clara's introductory episode, The Bells of Saint John, but also (given the ride into the TARDIS) the 1996 TV Movie which The Day of the Doctor's distrib counterblasts by challenging Hollywood dominance of cinema and television rather than seeking to be assimilated by it. The Doctor is reading a book on quantum mechanics jacketed in an approximation of the old livery of the 'Teach Yourself' book series, but bearing the imprint of the TARDIS's police box shell. The implication that the ship is attempting to teach the Doctor recalls the relationship between Time Lord and ship in The Doctor's Wife.

The opening scenes continue to revisit beginnings. The start of Doctor Who and the introduction of Clara are followed by a reprise of the eleventh Doctor's first episode's pre-credits sequence, the gangly Matt Smith again hanging from the TARDIS prop but this time with the mechanics showing. Instead of one redhead, Amelia Pond, he lands at the behest of another, Elizabeth I of England, and instead of a private domestic garden, the TARDIS is brought down in a public commemorative square used for entertainment and national and local ceremonial. It's right that the adventure should begin there, given the claims this episode makes for Doctor Who as part of British or English national mythology, but the setting also marks one of the episode's jumps between modes of presentation, as a scene led by CGI, greenscreen and mechanical special effects merges seamlessly with one which comes close to being a recorded performance of live theatre. There can be no attempt to hide the crowds in Trafalgar Square watching Matt Smith's descent clinging to the undercarriage of a police box and so they are incorporated into the scene with a reference to illusionist Derren Brown as provider of a cover story, one of the references to contemporary real-life personalities more frequent when Russell T Davies was showrunner than now. Illusion, though, is also a theme of the episode, where even the ravens at the Tower of London are artificial, part of a tourist-heritage setting which conceals a future-facing bastion of planetary defence. Likewise, Doctor Who seems here to be looking backwards to its earlier history, but is celebrating its recent success as a consolidator of large and broad audiences as much as anything.

Reacquainting the audience with the Doctor's past is also a reminder of the post-2005 series' advertising of its emotional literacy, widely regarded as part of its audience-unifying appeal. The renewal of interest in the Time War is aimed as much as those who might not have watched since David Tennant left in The End of Time as at committed viewers. The introduction of the painting 'Gallifrey Falls'/'No More' through another demonstration of 3D isn't merely a gimmick but a way of emphasising Doctor Who's interruption of the mundane with the otherworldly as well as representing the multi-dimensional nature of the war itself. The painting is one of the few effects designed for 3D which is almost as impressive in 2D; it's designed for the illusion of depth and the added texture of 3D was a bonus.

The painting also chimes with this episode's invocation of memory. The Day of the Doctor knows that viewers will watch to see their recollections of past adventures flattered, and exploits this in ways that seek to surprise. One of these is the much-trailed appearance of John Hurt's War Doctor; another is the removal of the veil on the appearance of Billie Piper as the interface of the Moment, both figuratively and explicitly recalling Rose's transformation into the Bad Wolf. This manifestation is also a memory, Billie Piper's performance and the editing choices of the decision-makers behind the camera making the flippant 'I always get those two (past and future) mixed up' absolutely credible without provoking even a sympathetic snigger. The use of rapid cutting as the Moment found her new personality has been used before in Doctor Who in a similar situation, the post-regeneration orientation of Matt Smith's Doctor. It's refreshing to have Billie Piper back in a new role which borrows within the narrative from her previous one; but it also celebrates how the programme has benefited from performers and others seizing the opportunities it's presented to transform their careers. Indeed, the reintroduction of Clara in her classroom recalls not only An Unearthly Child but also the earlier career of Jenna-Louise Coleman playing a schoolgirl in Waterloo Road; Clara's reappearance as a teacher could be interpreted in terms of the move of the actress who plays her to a post-juvenile professional identity as Jenna Coleman.

The hut in the desert to which the War Doctor brings the Moment is intriguing as a playing space. The depiction of a vast conflict through the reactions of a few participants or observers in a small space is an old device. The restrained use of music in the hut scenes allows The Day of the Doctor to again echo as-live performance and recall the ancient conventions of the programme's former homes in west London. The hut is more than just a studio or theatrical stage; it becomes a camera obscura which can not only capture and project the image of distant environments, but make those projected environments real. Despite the War Doctor's attempt to escape the judgement of the TARDIS, the hut is a TARDIS-substitute and the Rose-Moment, as in-narrative director of the hut scenes, even places the crucial 'big red button' front central as if it were the TARDIS console. The hut becomes an analogy not just for the TARDIS, but for the programme. Doctor Who's title character once insisted he was only an observer, but soon developed a habit of becoming involved in things. All three principal Doctors here try at some stage to limit their exposure and their moral ambition, but when they hide in the hut, the universe comes to them and demands they recognise the choices beyond the limits they have defined.

The War Doctor goes to the hut to make an end, but there are clues scattered throughout its design that it is a place of beginnings. After his long trudge through a scorched desert, the Doctor's feet rest on dry straw and a few fresh green leaves. Agricultural implements sit in corners. It's one of many deceptively simple set designs from Michael Pickwoad. The place of destruction is introduced subtly as one of cultivation.

The Day of the Doctor benefits from such skilful use of rhetorical devices, though they are sometimes glib. Moments of crisis are always prefigured by less portentous parallels. The sequence where the three Doctors believe themselves trapped within the Tower dungeon leads them first to look inward, though it is the War Doctor, relatively unburdened by guilt, who provides the pseudo-scientific solution to their captivity. It's Clara, though, who turns up to point out that the door wasn't locked in the first place, just as she later expresses her belief that the Doctor she knows wouldn't have wiped out the Time Lords but would have found another solution. Here she complements the Rose-Moment without interacting with her, as if guided by the patron saint of latterday companiondom.

The appearance of Gallifreyan art in the National Gallery emphasised more directly than ever before Doctor Who's identification of Gallifrey with England/Britain, just as the placing of the TARDIS in Trafalgar Square proposed Doctor Who itself as national commemoration as well as public entertainment. The inclusion of Elizabeth I in the story builds on the identification of the Doctor with the English and British monarchies established by Steven Moffat in The Beast Below, elaborating two minor sequences in earlier stories by other writers into a scheme by which the Doctor has a close if achronological and irreverent relationship with the royal lineage. Indeed, Elizabeth's letter to the Doctor explicitly dedicates him to England's service.

Telegraph.co.uk reviewer Ben Lawrence criticised the casting and performance of Joanna Page as Elizabeth, but this was unfair and missed what The Day of the Doctor sought to achieve. Page's Elizabeth was woven from several skeins of audience appeal. Her performance accorded with that briefly established by Angela Pleasance in The Shakespeare Code and with the half-told anecdote about Elizabeth's nickname in The End of Time. Casting Page acknowledged latterday Doctor Who's Welshness by drawing from another BBC Wales success of the last decade, Gavin & Stacey. While warmer and more balanced, Page's still capricious Elizabeth owed some of her spirit to Miranda Richardson's Elizabeth of Blackadder II, and probably more than anything (though I'm less familiar with it) to the Elizabeth of Horrible Histories, perhaps the realisation of the last Tudor queen now most current. Elizabeth R and Glenda Jackson's methodical exploration of the queen's character is lost in the remote forgotten traditions of intensely researched BBC history plays, and though still a point of comparison for critics has little contribution to make to modern Doctor Who's playfulness. In any case this Elizabeth was based on all the parts everyone thinks they remember, a kind of '1562 and All That' where the tenth Doctor finds that he was misinformed about Elizabeth's strict adherence to a non-matrimonial policy. In the spirit of the Doctor's perilous journey hanging from the TARDIS, Elizabeth's easy grasp of the TARDIS and implausible skill in impersonating a Zygon is another case where The Day of the Doctor resembles a greatest hits package, building upon Shakespeare's intuition of the non-sixteenth century origins of the Doctor and Martha in The Shakespeare Code and for that matter Henry Avery's grasp of the TARDIS and then of space travel in The Curse of the Black Spot.

The Doctor's marriage to Elizabeth is more than the fulfilment of a tag scene and a throwaway line from earlier episodes. In marrying Elizabeth the Doctor casually marries England and eventually Great Britain given Elizabeth's emblematic immortality in post-Union mythology as patron saint of protestant Britain. In a multi-faith, secular age Doctor Who has provided a sort of national religion, aware of its own fictionality but (most consciously under Russell T Davies) borrowing iconography and language liberally from Christianity. Britain's obsession with its royal family was once compared to Japanese Shinto and the role the Imperial family plays there; it's tempting to compare the Doctor's marriage to Elizabeth to the ritual marriage of the sun goddess to the Japanese Emperor, were it not that the Doctor immediately evades his responsibilities.

Since 2005, UNIT has been tied closely to British symbols too, with its headquarters established at the Tower of London, the English crown's stronghold since Norman times. The Tower of London is explicitly introduced as Kate's office, implying a rough parallel between Kate and Elizabeth I, whose fortress it is. There's a possible echo too of the identification of Kate's father with Arthur in Battlefield, though as someone who has always found the shoehorning of the Doctor into the Merlin archetype problematic it's good here that it is the Time Lord who marries Elizabeth, a virtuous knight as well as a mighty sorcerer; though Elizabeth is some years off from being Spenser's Gloriana, and the audience knows the tenth Doctor will abandon his marital commitments.

In 1562 there are two Elizabeths - human and Zygon. Likewise in the present day there are Zygon copies of Kate and her two junior colleagues. The move from a single monarchical figure to a collective feeds into the episode's theme. Responsibility, to mean something and be capable of change, has to be collective and sufficiently pluralist to accept different points of view. Absolute monarchy, unquestioning military command or self-absorbed withdrawal, whether by human, Zygon or Time Lord, leads to cutting off heads or destroying planets. Discussion without preconceptions leads to solutions. Removing the assumption that genocide (or anything) is inevitable enables everyone to escape from their dungeons, real and metaphorical. The message is one of hope: assuming the worst means that you never know whether to push or pull the door.

The Zygons aren't always served especially well by this script. Monstrous villainy in The Day of the Doctor has a pantomime aspect, with several early Zygon appearances unapologetically calling for cries of 'Look behind you!' accompanied by comedic playing from other cast members. This does make their attack in the undergallery store more frightening, when they threaten and assault and the danger from their touch is made more explicit than in Terror of the Zygons. Jemma Redgrave clearly signposts that she is playing a Zygon by using a subtly lowered tone of voice; the tension nonetheless subsists in Zygon-Kate's scenes with Clara, because Clara has no reason to suspect Zygon involvement. The transformation of Zygon-Kate into Zygon form is pleasingly and disgustingly organic and more consistent with the realisation creatures' technology than the electronic effect used in Terror of the Zygons. Aidan Cook plays the lead Zygon (presumably the deputy commander, Elizabeth's counterpart having been slain by the knife of a king, and a king of England too) as aiming towards the back of the stalls, and a rubbery face following it even without the aid of 3D. Elizabeth I seemed unbothered as she explained that she wasn't a Zygon after all, despite presumably within the hearing range of the Zygons in the pit below.

Several commentators in the past few years have had difficulty with Steven Moffat's idealisation and emblematisation of women. In Moffat's world, women learn things which men do not, and are beings held in awe. The female companions and disciples of the Doctor represent those who hope and those who learn to turn that hope into action. Clara and the Rose-Moment enable the Doctor to see that the destruction of Gallifrey isn't inevitable. When we meet Osgood, she has not yet understood her potential. She's burdened with asthma and a history of being bullied. She's a grown-up child dressing as the fourth Doctor, with a history many of the writers and fans of 'old' Doctor Who could empathise with as well as many younger members of the present day audience. Following her (out-of-character for plot convenience and unwise) revelation in the gallery, that she knows why the statues have been crushed, she hides in a corner with her eyes closed, praying for the Doctor to save her from the painting-smashing and scenery-chewing Zygons. Instead, realising that she has copied more from the Doctor than his scarf, she saves herself and everyone else, moving afterwards from addressing her superior in deferential tones as 'Ma'am' to the familiar 'Kate', though there will still be room later for one more prayer which confirms her faith. Ingrid Oliver's performance was assured if like others a little broad, but television acting conventions have evolved and diversified from the hard-nosed days of absolute conviction and she still conveyed belief; though I can't have been the only viewer finding it difficult to imagine what a prettier sister might have looked like.

UNIT here move closer than ever to LI'n'DA from Love & Monsters. Thankfully Lee Evans's overacted and misconceived Malcolm from Planet of the Dead is absent except on the other end of a phone, but the unspoken purpose of the Black Archive seems to be a fan-like reconstruction of the Doctor's adventures. Pictures of former companions are joined by string, as if UNIT staff spend their days trying to work out a chronology of the Doctor's adventures and associates. The appearance of Mike Yates in an otherwise very well-known Sara Kingdom photograph must surely inspire a thousand fanfics. We at last see the Space-Time Telegraph referred to in Revenge of the Cybermen and Terror of the Zygons, as if closing a loop between first and second Zygon stories.

Sadly the Black Archive section of the plot fizzled out somewhat. This may be the result of harsh editing and this author's willingness to be misled, but when watching in the cinema, music and performance seemed to suggest wariness and possible betrayal when the two Osgoods shared an inhaler, rather than the conspiratorial reconciliation we were presumably meant to take away and which I could see, eventually, on later viewings. I wanted and expected to return to the Black Archive and see what settlement humans and Zygons achieved; it would have helped maintain the symmetry already established. Perhaps the outcome will be explored in the more Zygoncentric story we seem to have been promised.

Osgood has discovered her own maturity. Doctor Who since 2005 has, one way or another, been about growing up, where it was only intermittently so in the 1963-1989 period. The fourth Doctor asserted that there was no point in being grown-up if you couldn't be childish sometimes, but often maturing was equated with falling in love and getting married, though not always as the end point. (Jo's decision to find adventure and purpose in her trip to Llanfairfach is the point of change, not her marriage to Cliff. Sarah rediscovers childhood wonder, triumphing over cynicism.)

Failing to grow up is an early theme of the War Doctor's conversation with his older/younger selves. The War Doctor has lost his enthusiasm for life and discovery. The first crack in his resolution to use the Moment and end the war comes when the Rose-Moment informs him that if he operates the device, he will survive. Much of the strength of John Hurt's performance comes from his delineation of slow realisation that there is a future to live for, even at great cost. It's an old story, of course - Scrooge has met Christmas Past and Christmas Present and we discover him meeting two unexpected futures. The twist is, here, that the futures aren't especially certain that they deserve to exist. Where the War Doctor rebukes his successors for being ashamed of adulthood, the tenth and eleventh Doctors are ashamed of having been the War Doctor. Throughout, though, the War Doctor is clearly delineated as the Doctor, from his sense of theatre (the carving of 'No More' on the wall at Arcadia, the wish for a big red button) to his relationship with the TARDIS and proprietorship of the Sonic Screwdriver.

Hurt has not played the Doctor before, but his seniority and reputation as an actor are combined with his novelty within Doctor Who to lend authenticity to his running critique of his future - the current programme - from the undercurrents of folk memory. The current Doctors are too youthful; there is too much kissing; the sonic screwdriver is waved about like a weapon when it's a scientific instrument with a specific function. It's tempting to view the saga of the War Doctor as a grumpy old fan reluctant to accept the post-2005 iterations of Doctor Who and slowly reconciled. The occasional appeals to The Three Doctors - probably the most artistically and critically successful previous multi-Doctor anniversary story - recalls Jeremy Bentham's article in Doctor Who Monthly 58, where he argued that Troughton's return had brought many Doctor Who fans of the 1960s who had been alienated by the Doctor's exile to Earth back to the fold. It's surely not an accident that Elizabeth's guard is captained by Lord Bentham, perhaps a fictional forebear of Jeremy. As The Three Doctors built up to a recodification of the series' format, with the Doctor's freedom to travel in time and space formally restored (though it already was in practice), so The Day of the Doctor approaches with greater deliberation the event which has since the series' return, though with varying intensity, defined the Doctor's character and actions.

Before the Moment can be activated the War Doctor has to accept his successors for who they are. The tenth Doctor appears more flippant and less responsible than before. It's unclear whether this 904-year-old Doctor is seen after The Waters of Mars, in denial about his actions and his fate, or in the period between that story and Journey's End. This could allow for the origins of the double portrait of the tenth Doctor and Elizabeth; though given that the portrait bears only a general resemblance to Tennant (though it seemed more precise in 3D) and lacks the precise lines and narrow faces of Elizabethan portraiture, perhaps we are to take it as drawn from Elizabeth's memory, before she turned against the Time Lord king who left and never returned. There's a parallel with The Five Doctors there after all.

One of the ironies of The Day of the Doctor is that the Doctor who has tried hardest to erase himself from the record seeks to save himself - and inadvertently rescues Clara - by inscribing the activation code for Jack Harkness's vortex manipulator on a stone at the Tower of London. In seeking to be forgotten, he's tried also to forget. Instead he has become the version of the Doctor with the greatest number of active friendships, for a while even with a wife and family. He knows how he is shaped by the people who trust him, something with which the tenth Doctor had difficulty. Where the tenth Doctor shaped his friends into his proxies as weapons of war, the eleventh Doctor is himself a weapon, recognised by the Daleks as a predator, by the Cybermen as a battle computer, by the Pandorica coalition and by the Silence as something to be isolated and obliterated to avoid mass destruction. As with his apparent death in The Impossible Astronaut, the Doctor has not been in posession of the full historical record. He is, like the Moment, a weapon with a conscience, but in the Doctor's case that conscience has been misinformed until the last phase of The Day of the Doctor.

Something like The Day of the Doctor has been evolving in Steven Moffat's imagination for a long time. The idea of the Doctor's name as a promise which his actions can break first took shape in The Beast Below. Those commentators who have noted the greater prominence of children in Moffat scripts and those he has supervised compared to those written or executive-produced by Russell T Davies are vindicated. Though I didn't notice her on screen, the official website reports that there is a small child wearing a multicoloured scarf in the Gallifrey scenes, a direct parallel with Osgood. It's not only on Earth that people hope that the Doctor will save them. There seemed to be no place for children in Davies's Gallifrey, a planet of the deranged and many-times resurrected, inhabited by phantoms from its history devoted to victory at any cost, but Doctor Who is a collaborative enterprise open to reimaginings. Moffat imagines a people who are not necessarily at one with their leaders and so have not descended to the level of the Daleks, supported by a military who are exasperated with and on the verge of revolt against the High Council revealed in The End of Time to be dominated by the ruthless ideology of Rassilon. The Time Lords are successfully recalibrated as sympathetic and worthy of rescue in a way they were not in their previous appearance.

As late as The Night of the Doctor, the idea that there could be a distinction between Daleks and Time Lords in the Time War was dismissed as a delusion which the Doctor clung to as consolation for his losses. His faith in human beings acted as compensation for his inability to stop the Time Lords descending into destructive hatred, but it was constantly challenged and at times - such as in Midnight - overwhelmed. Here, hope in both humans and Gallifreyans is shown to promise vindication after all. It's Clara and the Rose-Moment who steer the Doctor towards the realisation that there is no need to destroy Gallifrey. 'No More' need not mean 'Gallifrey Falls'.

The revision of Doctor Who history here has angered some writers who have argued that the integrity of the Christopher Eccleston series in particular has been undermined, or that Steven Moffat's writing absolves all characters from the negative consequences of their actions. This isn't so. Gallifrey is still ravaged by war. Arcadia (realised more prosaically than I'd imagined when its fall was first mentioned in Doomsday) is still a ruin, even though the Dalek conquerors are dead. The people of Gallifrey are left like the Doctor and Susan in An Unearthly Child - cut off without friends or protection, with the aspiration that one day they will return to their own universe. This is a doubtful kind of rescue. Additionally, the fact that neither the War Doctor, the ninth Doctor or the tenth Doctor - or their predecessors - will remember their efforts gives the affair an extra poignancy. Lost in time and with the person who could help them find their way back unable to remember their existence, until The Day of the Doctor the Time Lords might as well be all dead.

The Time Lords might be lost, but their prominence in the story reflects how Doctor Who has been discovered by a worldwide public. In an age of box sets and downloads and streams of various legalities, and just as importantly of numerous reference sites on the internet, backstory is assumed to be much more accessible than it was even when Doctor Who was revived in 2005. The sense of humour expressed by The Day of the Doctor assumes a familiarity with the conventions of the series, even if it isn't what the fandom-literate might recognise. The gag about the 'round things' plays on long-term popular memory without using the 1980s series jargon term 'roundel', though it also maintains the mystery of the TARDIS. The ripple of laughter across the cinema when Kate made her dating protocol joke while requesting the 'Cromer' files confirms the wide dissemination of fan culture at least.

We've seen the end of the tenth Doctor, so here he can only have limited character development. David Tennant's physical appearance is slightly more weathered than it was when he last played the Doctor and it lends emphasis to the nostalgic evidence in his performance. He becomes a caricature of the David Tennant Doctor's image, irresistible to (most) women, emoting but patchily empathic, and suppressing a deep anger with a veneer of nonchalance. At the same time Tennant's timing has if anything improved; his energy is undimmed and the passion in his catchphrases enhanced. These allow for jokes which lightly deconstruct the tenth Doctor's persona: his Mockney accent earns him the label 'Dick Van Dyke', his branded trainers genericised with the archaic regional term 'sandshoes', and Clara's assessment of him is 'nice suit'. At the same time the tenth Doctor's disgust with the eleventh Doctor when he realises his future self has forgotten the number of children alive on Gallifrey at the activation of the Moment jars with what we thought we knew; as the eleventh Doctor says, only partly defusing the awkwardness of the situation, this is what it's like when he talks to himself. The tenth Doctor's departing gag is a gift to local radio quiz hosts everywhere in that the tenth Doctor's last line remains the same, but it also allows him a moment of gravitas. This draws on the reality that David Tennant played the Doctor before Matt Smith and thus enjoys seniority, but that he's playing a younger Doctor who doesn't know the circumstances of his own departure. 'I don't want to go' becomes an almost paternal injunction urging that the eleventh Doctor find a way of avoiding his final death at Trenzalore.

The destruction of Gallifrey is presented as an experience which the Doctor had isolated within his own timeline, the work of an incarnation explicitly created (within and without the narrative) to fight and end the Time War. In contrast the salvation of Gallifrey is the work of every known iteration of the Doctor. It's the act which brings John Hurt's Doctor into the fold. It's one of those moments dubbed fan-pleasing, but it adds, tongue-in-cheek, a unity to Doctor Who which doesn't really exist. John Guilor's lofty and authoritative impersonation of William Hartnell is all the more trans-temporally spine-tingling because this version of the first Doctor sounds authentic but has lines the historical first Doctor wouldn't have said. Bar Guilor-Hartnell and the interpolated Hurt, all the Doctors up to and including Christopher Eccleston are represented by old clips and sampled dialogue. The determination of all concerned that this story look forward as much as it looks back made the inclusion of Peter Capaldi's Doctor inevitable; the new Doctor remains mysterious, a silent presence marked only by his tense grip on the TARDIS controls and angry, fierce eyes which seemed to fill the air in front of the cinema audience.

In Doctor Who looking forward and looking to the past can end up being the same thing. John Hurt's Doctor's regeneration into the ninth Doctor seemed to use one of the publicity images which dominated billboards across Britain as winter became spring in 2005. The undergallery to which the Doctors return 'Gallifrey Falls' seems to be a different place to that we saw earlier; none of them, nor Clara, note the roundels on the walls. Visual art might be a viewer's TARDIS, but it's been pointed out to me that in The Invasion of Time part of the TARDIS was an art gallery too. Perhaps the undergallery was part of a future TARDIS all the time. Projecting a remote future in which the Doctor once more looks like Tom Baker is unsurprisingly reassuring to someone guided through their childhood by the fourth Doctor. It's a final grand indulgence, but it works; a sage who talks in riddles but offers hope that even after fifty or twelve hundred years it's far from being all over. One day the Doctor will get back, perhaps (given how hackneyed the quest narrative can be) sooner than we think.

The final image of The Day of the Doctor dovetails narrative with marketing imagery in the form of the montage of Doctors, Hartnell set apart but not assuming the overwhelming prominence he did in some early examples of multi-Doctor fan art such as that which adorned the Doctor Who Appreciation Society's information leaflet in the early 1980s. Especially in the cinema, it appears like a poster image or, with the benefit of 3D, a set of collectable action figures. If so, it's a fitting tribute to Doctor Who as licensing phenomenon, as much as earlier scenes have built upon other aspects of the programme's history. It's not an exposition of that history, nor is that history seen as something to rest upon. The laurels are still to be won and this situation can never change in a medium obsessed with new ideas. Current Doctor Who knows this and The Day of the Doctor is forever puncturing the bubbles of self-congratulation until the end.

Earlier in this review I compared The Day of the Doctor to a meringue. Meringues have spaces in them, and there are gaps in The Day of the Doctor. As previously acknowledged, the UNIT-Zygon plot is left unresolved; the audience never sees whether the Doctor is right to hide the preconceptions of humans and Zygons behind the philosophers' veil of ignorance. It's not clear how the Zygons obtained the Time Lord stasis cube, though perhaps we are to infer that Tom Baker's future Doctor orchestrated this situation in order to guarantee a particular future. Of Doctor Who's creators, C.E. Webber might be proud of this, though Sydney Newman would assuredly have written 'Nuts!' Nevertheless, it's these gaps which have contributed towards Doctor Who because they encourage audience speculation; to extend the meringue metaphor, breaking into a meringue placed over fruit and cream lets those flavours seep into the gaps, and those extra flavours were definitely there. Perhaps dessert comparisons are wrong; all the straw in the hut suggests wholemeal bread was ground there, perfect for soaking up cup-a-soup.

Maybe the contrived food analogies are mistaken. Doctor Who is an edifice of mixed materials, a modern storytelling structure of indefinable something but which has some of the qualities of reinforced concrete. It needs frequent repairs and renewal but survives as long as expert care can be found. There are always going to be gaps in some places because they are essential for absorbing the weight of multiple expectations. On the basis of the manufacture of the anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor is now and then and will also continue to be, so long as those responsible for it understand just where the spaces in Doctor Who should be, and what is needed to keep the rest of the structure resilient and flexible. Transformational moments are part of the process of reconstruction. As the eleventh Doctor says, the Doctor changes history all the time; correspondingly, the historical environment in which Doctor Who is made changes the Doctor. The traumatised soldier seeking to atone for the crimes of war was appropriate for the post-9/11 environment, an adventurer for a West struggling to deal with the myriad complexities of a new geopolitics just as its leaders thought their financial sector might have solved want. With a few years of hindsight, The Day of the Doctor might seem part of popular culture's involvement in the delayed reaction to the 2007 crash, an aspiration to the belief that one can make great leaps of ethical responsibility and principle in a universe where it's difficult to distinguish the merely expedient from the greatest moral good.

"Oh, I’m much more than one man. I’m an eleven-man team, Doctors United!"

To paraphrase David Tennant’s incarnation of the Doctor, doesn’t that just sum a potent series up? You get through all of the presents, and at the bottom of the pile, there’s a Satsuma. In the case of Destiny of the Doctor, the aforementioned spherical orange fruit mentioned in The Christmas Invasion symbolises a decent yet ultimately underwhelming conclusion to a franchise of audio adventures which could have resulted in so much more with the correct denouement. There’ve been weaker instalments than The Time Machine, but boy, have there been stronger chapters in the saga by a considerable distance.

This isn’t a release that’s for want of an accomplished narrator, however. Quite why Jenna Coleman’s on-screen companion Clara hasn’t been included in proceedings this time around is beyond this reviewer, for the standalone assistant Amy Watson comes off as little more than a stand-in here. If anything, Watson seems to have been named as such primarily on the basis of the literary implications of her surname, which naturally serves as the source for more than one gag based around the Great Detective himself. All the same, Coleman’s dictation is constantly engaging and efficiently brings across the rapid, blockbuster-esque pace of the narrative, even in spite of its negating to include the Impossible Girl at the Doctor’s side for the ride.

Joining the piece’s leading lady are Nicholas Briggs and Michael Cochrane, the former portraying the drama’s antagonists, the Creevix, and the latter taking on the role of Doctor Chivers. It took some time for this reviewer to discern to which alien race from the revived series of Who Briggs’ Creevix bore an uncanny resemblance, but in the end, The Power of Three’s Shakri commander appears to have had a significant influence. This familiar vocal adaptation certainly doesn’t work in the piece’s favour in terms of innovation, and that Cochrane’s performance echoes past whimsical professors aplenty isn’t beneficial in the long run either. Perhaps the series’ producers had scarce choice for vocal contributors to this final instalment- either way; it’s a crying tragedy that their selections pale so immensely in comparison to their predecessors on the run.

As the Destiny run has developed over the course of 2013, it became evermore apparent that its resolution of the ongoing arc of the Eleventh Doctor’s visits to his past selves would be paramount to the series’ success in hindsight. The approach which writer Matt Fitton takes in creating both a standalone narrative and a satisfying conclusion for long-term fans is admirable; although overall the resolution in question feels rather rushed and haphazard. Partly, that’s due to the threat of the tale hardly being dangerous enough to warrant such a dangerous timeline-crossing excursion for the incumbent incarnation. Moreso, though, this plot arc connection is only re-established in the drama’s closing moments and is dealt with just as swiftly as the Eleventh’s cameos came and went in previous chapters.

In the scheme of Doctor Who’s 50th Anniversary, it’s fair to argue that a great degree of threat is required so as to have a grand celebratory impact on the viewer, or in this case the listener. The Day of the Doctor has an evil, apparently lost incarnation of everyone’s favourite Time Lord and The Light at the End resumes the seemingly undying threat of the Master, yet The Time Machine’s antagonist is neither iconic nor particularly original. The Five Doctors’ Borusa may not have gone down in the history books, but at least that anniversary special had enough in the way of returning companions and foes to compensate. Devoid of classic adversaries or allies beyond a few references and throwbacks, this is a member of the 50th ensemble which is remarkably hollow when judged alongside its ambitious cohorts. AudioGo’s Destiny range hasn’t lacked ambition in the past, so this sudden subversion of followers’ expectations is a bitter shock, an inadvertent betrayal of our hopes for what could have been a truly noteworthy outing.

This is a disheartening end, then, to a range of audio dramas which showed so much promise throughout its run. Though there were most certainly sore notes, Vengeance of the Stones and Enemy Aliens among them, Destiny of the Doctor has had its fair share of highlights, Babblesphere and Death’s Deal the most noteworthy by far. The Time Machine lies somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, and while as a finale it’s a worthy listen for series veterans, as a standalone instalment of Doctor Who it stumbles and veers close to falling flat on its face. Coleman’s narration is superb, yet her supporting stars are steeped in the framework of what’s come before when it comes to their character performances, and Matt Fitton’s script struggles under the weight of the series’ convoluted plot arcs.

Big Finish and AudioGo’s first major collaboration has been something of a mixed bag, but for those fans still craving further 50th Anniversary homages and stories, the overall experience of hearing Destiny of the Doctor in full is accomplished enough to warrant an investment. Hunters of Earth kicks proceedings off with a bang, and the momentum of the overarching storyline rarely lapses from that point onwards. Each narrator does a fine job of representing their respective era of Doctor Who, as do each of the eleven intricate scripts. Just be warned, though, that its finale is undoubtedly the Satsuma of the pile.

The Monster Collection is a new series of DVDs that each focus on one of the Doctor's adversaries; unlike previous collective releases such as The Dalek Collection and Cybermen, however, this time around each of the six DVDs pair up both the modern and classic appearance of the subject in question.

There's obviously been an attempt to pair up 'origin' stories: for the Sontarans we have The Time Warrior with The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, the Silurians have Doctor Who and the Silurians with The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, and with Dalek creator Davros it's Genesis of the Daleks alongside The Stolen Earth/Journey's End. Things start to go a little awry with The Master, where it's Terror of the Autons paired with The End of Time (though the latter story does explain why the Master is how he is so perhaps more relevant than Last of the Time Lords. The Cybermen are then represented by Rise Of The Cybermen/Age of Steel and The Tomb of The Cybermen (this being the first 'complete' story featuring them) - I'm guessing either the animated reconstructed version of The Tenth Planet wasn't ready for that set's preparation, or maybe it was actually a decision that having an animated episode is mis-representative and might detract newcomers from the show (I doubt it would have been through it's inclusion in the recent Regenerations boxed set, though, being The End of Time is included here!). However, I'm rather more mystified at Asylum of the Daleks's inclusion with The Daleks - I would have thought Dalek would have been a better choice - not to mention meaning that Christopher Eccleston's contribution to the series could also have then been represented!

Speaking of incarnations, only the first four 'classic' Doctors are represented, though with all of the adversaries in the set introduced during the first twelve years of the show that's inevitable. For those that are, we have one Hartnell, one Troughton, three Pertwee and one Tom Baker story (though Troughton only makes it in through The Tenth Planet not being used). Perhaps if the Terileptils, Bandils and Tetraps return then the others could get a look-in (grin).

If future collections were to be considered, then candidates might be - assuming animations remain off the menu - the Ice Warriors represented by The Seeds of Death alongside Cold War, and the Zygons through Terror of the Zygons and the still-be-broadcast The Day of the Doctor. The Autons are another notable absentee, though with Terror already in The Master collection and Spearhead from Space only just been re-released on Blu-ray that set is probably unviable (though it would have given Eccleston another chance with a pairing with Rose!).

However, I suspect that sets such as The Macra (The Macra Terror and Gridlock) and The Great Intelligence (The Abominable Snowmen and The Snowmen) are rather less likely ...

The Discs

The Cybermen and The Sontarans are presented on one disc, with the others across two. As these are a collection, all the discs use the same basic "rainy" montage with spinning TARDIS in the background, with the main protagonist taking centre stage (see the screenshots below). Unfortunately this doesn't extend to the stories themselves, so the 'classic' story has the same graphic as the 'modern' - this is most noticeable with The Master, where John Simm graces Terror of the Autons where I would have really liked an imposing Roger Delgado!


Other than that, these are vanilla releases with only subtitles as an option, and the story-specific sub-menus only give the option to choose a specific episode. There is no restoration work undertaken on these discs either, retaining any rendering issues encountered on their previous dedicated DVD release (for example, David Daker and John Carney credits are still missing from The Time Monster); however, The Tomb Of The Cybermen is the re-released, VidFIREd version from Revisitations 3.

Conclusion

The pairing of a classic era adversary with its modern interpretation is an interesting way to bring those creatures' earlier exploits to the attention of those solely versed in the 21st Century version (not to mention a 'fresh' Doctor, too!) As the publicity says, "These collections are perfect for younger viewers just discovering the scary delights of fifty years of Doctor Who." This is quite a canny move on the part of BBC Worldwide in order to engender an interest in the older stories (and the back catalogue of hundreds of adventures to purcha- enjoy, as well...).

However, there is nothing new of interest to those who already owns previous releases - and the chances are you have, of course - for example with something like Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel this is its fourth outing, having been previously released as part of Series 2 Vol 3, The Cybermen (2009) and Doctor Who: DVD Files Vol #10 (not to mention complete series and era boxed sets!). But then, these DVDs are not really aimed at you!

On the other hand, if you are thinking of treating a younger cousin etc. to a Doctor Who DVD in order to introduce them to larger history of the show then these are perhaps a relatively cheap way to do so.

(It's just a shame that the Jagaroth didn't make a re-appearance in order to have City of Death, so you'll just have to buy them the classic release instead!)

You have to envy Nicholas Briggs. Aside from living every young (and old) fan’s dream as a voice artist on the modern Doctor Who TV series – as the embodiment of the Daleks – he has also established himself as a prolific storyteller. Since the inception of Big Finish’s Doctor Who audio range, he has contributed countless serials for the medium, including numerous confrontations with Skaro’s infamous pepperpots (whom he has also voiced), as well as four seasons of the excellent spin-off Dalek Empire.

Given that he has spent over a decade virtually living and breathing Daleks, it’s a wonder Briggs did not exhaust every ounce of his creativity on the creatures long ago. His enthusiasm for the monsters has never waned and he has still been able to develop fresh angles for the Daleks in his stories, emphasising them as astute, rational and devious villains. The Dalek Generation, Briggs’ first official work of Doctor Who prose for BBC Books and AudioGO, also offers an unconventional take on the metal meanies. However, whereas Briggs’ Dalek tales are regularly epic, ambitious, action-packed and cleverly structured, The Dalek Generation is a mishmash of competitive elements and styles. The story is part urban noir, part urban thriller, part ancient mystery and part children’s drama. It is also more intimate and introspective, emphasising characterisation over action. Unfortunately, the presence of so many competing elements means it is hard to envisage exactly what kind of story Briggs is trying to tell as you listen to it.

The premise of The Dalek Generation is more implied than spelled out. The prosperous and harmonious Sunlight colony worlds are convinced the Daleks are saviours and philanthropists, not conquerors and devastators. The excellent prologue hints at a Dalek snake in an all too perfect Eden where people are happy and wealthy and (in typical fascist style) the bullet trains run on time! Like the classic Who serial The Happiness Patrol, doubters and dissidents are sought out and reconditioned – or “rehabilitated” - and the general populace are distracted by the joys of consumerism and reality television, oblivious to the true nature of their overlords. But as fascinating as this premise is - it certainly shows us another facet of the Daleks’ ingenuity and cunning - it is not as well developed as it ought to be and it is covered much too late in the story. Indeed, you are led to believe from the prologue that the book will focus strongly on the Doctor (as he so often does) arriving to “turn this mad upside down world up the right way again”. The book defies that expectation. Briggs at least convincingly portrays the Doctor’s failure to show the Sunlight colonists the deceit of their Dalek saviours. However, the underbelly of this so-called perfect world could have been so much more chilling, horrific and graphic. Past Dalek tales like Revelation of the Daleks and Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways have taken no prisoners when unveiling the horrors (both graphic and implied) that the Daleks hide behind a façade of civility.

The major strengths of this novel are actually in the characterisations of the story’s core juvenile characters which I suspect Briggs has based closely on his own young children. Like many fans, if you despised the presence of Clara’s “brat pack” Artie and Angie in the recent episode Nightmare in Silver, then brace yourself. In The Dalek Generation the Doctor, in the absence of a regular companion, befriends three orphans he rescues in the opening chapters. While the three children – Sabel, Jenibeth and Ollus Blakely – could have been extremely irritating, they are, through strong writing, sympathetic and endearing. Their innocence and straightforward attitudes, completely devoid of the pretentiousness of adults, also ably complement the madcap Eleventh Doctor, a man who is extremely hyperactive and who is (despite his great age) child-like and childish in equal measure!

Other themes in this story also resonate with the reader but again seem disjointed in the overall narrative. Not so long after the tragic conclusion of The Angels Take Manhattan, the ugliness of time travel rears its head again. We are reminded why, for all the good he does, the Doctor’s propensity for meddling, coupled with the Daleks’ machinations, can have an unintentionally tragic impact on the course of people’s lives. Briggs definitely knows how to tug at the heartstrings and convey the Time Lord’s anguish when the Doctor must explain to the Blakely orphans why he cannot go back in time and rescue their parents:

The Doctor could still hear Sabel’s crying and when a big sister cries, he thought, so would her little brother and sister. He was right. He could hear Ollus and Jenibeth start to sob. Here he was, thought the Doctor, the man who could bring empires to their knees, stand up to and defeat the most terrible creatures the universe had to offer, and when it came to children crying, his arsenal of rhetoric, ingenuity and witty ripostes was utterly bare. For a moment, all he wanted to do was run away. How could he tell the children he couldn’t go back and save their parents?

Indeed, the Blakely children’s full life story is very affecting and the book’s conclusion is bittersweet. The conclusion, however, would be more powerful if it is not so rushed. Briggs ties together all the distinct elements that make up the book so that you finally understand the scale and depth of the Daleks’ nefarious (and rather over-complex) plan. However, I feel the book’s deus ex machina – the so-called Cradle of Life – is both an unnecessary and clichéd SF staple. It fits in with Briggs’ penchant for giving the Daleks extremely overcomplicated, long term schemes of conquest but clashes with the more personal, intimate story that he has also been striving to write.

Briggs ably performs this audio reading of his own work. Naturally he brings out the voice modulator for the Daleks but he also performs the other voices for his characters, from the naive, bolshie Blakely children to the Peter Miles-like delivery of a colonial judge on the Sunlight world Carthedia (an unashamed nod to Miles’ classic performance as Nyder in Genesis of the Daleks). Briggs also reasonably apes Matt Smith’s performance as the Doctor. Smith’s Doctor has been described by many fans as the “shouty” Doctor and Briggs definitely conveys this trait in his portrayal of the Time Lord. You can literally visualise the exclamation marks whenever Briggs delivers some of the Doctor’s more excitable lines and his rants are a contrast to the Daleks’ calmer, rational, calculating and emotionless tones. This is particularly noticeable given the pepperpots are uncharacteristically on their best behaviour and at their most reasonable!

The Dalek Generation is an oddity from Nicholas Briggs. Its premise is interesting but underdeveloped and has also been recently bettered by Malorie Blackman’s Doctor Who e-short The Ripple Effect which offers its own superior vision of a benevolent Dalek society. The story is also teeming with too many other complex, interconnected ideas and themes for the reader to absorb in one sitting. Nevertheless, Briggs’ attempt to write a more personalised, intimate tale between the Doctor and the Blakely children is the highlight of the book and does show that the author is, despite his inner Dalek, capable of subtlety and empathy.

This review contains plot spoilers from the outset and is based on the UK broadcast of the episode. 

“It’s the closest Who’s ever come to poetry, And we haven’t yet reached the anniversary…”

This has to be Steven Moffat’s greatest reversal. Having set up the expectation that we’ll finally learn the Doctor’s true name, instead we get a figure (presumably an unknown incarnation) who has failed to act in “the name of the Doctor". It’s slightly muddled in the execution though: a cheesy “introducing John Hurt as the Doctor” crashing over the story’s events feels like the polar opposite of Sherlock’s on-screen text, being faintly ludicrous rather than classy. And haven’t we just been told in closing dialogue that this Hurt version has failed to carry the Doctor’s name? But no, he's captioned as “the Doctor”. Of course, it’s a moment designed for maximum impact, so perhaps it's irrelevant if it doesn't gel with what we’ve heard.

The same problem – impact over logic – occurs elsewhere in this finale-that’s-actually-an-anniversary-prequel. The Whispermen are its greatest exemplar: they speak in rhyming couplets and look immensely creepy, but we never get much in the way of explanation or rationale for any of this. They may as well be known as Gimmickmen, amounting to precious more than sensation-seeking for its own sake. From the special effects sequence where Dr. Simeon peels away his face and is regenerated afresh we can surmise that these Whispermen are shells upon which the Great Intelligence can imprint information – but given that G. Intelligence Esquire is supposedly pure information without a body, the precise materiality of the Whispermen remains murky. Never mind; they look distinctive and they sound distinctive – perhaps they’re the first entirely self-referential Doctor Who monster, hollow except for the formulaic need to make an instant audio-visual impression.

Sections of the audience may be tempted to describe much of this episode as ‘fanwank’. And there’s certainly no denying the thrill that accompanies seeing the first Doctor and Susan about to escape from Gallifrey. Even here, though, Moffat doesn’t simply deliver fan service. Instead he executes yet another inversion, leading his fellow fans to assume that Clara is about to disastrously undo series’ history – creating a Doctor who’ll never have any adventures – when in actual fact she’s getting the show back on track. Regardless of patchy picture quality and a far from seamless integration of new and old footage, I’m not completely sure that fanwank is quite the right term for this. It’s the ultimate retcon, for sure, rewriting the Doctor’s entire timeline so that the current companion becomes the longest-serving “travelling assistant” in the show’s history (pub quizzes are going to have a field day with all this). Perhaps ‘fan-swank’ would be a better description for such an audacious, showy reworking of every previous production team’s work, and every previous era of the programme, in the image of the current producer-fan showrunner and his creations. In an instant, Doctor Who’s history becomes permeated by the here-and-now; all discontinuities and developments since 1963 are bound together and unified by “the impossible girl”.

But if the Whispermen and the “old man” who may or may not be “the Beast” both apparently represent a demand for attention rather than water-tight storytelling, there are other elements that deliver more immediate substance. The giant Police Box is a wonderful idea, though I wish effects shots had clearly incorporated human figures, so that the scale of this TARDIS tomb could be better established and appreciated. Its brilliance is intensified by the fact that Moffat’s Asylum of the Daleks opened series seven with a giant Dalek statue; the show’s icons have therefore neatly book-ended this (split) run of episodes, transformed into vast story-world monuments to themselves. Of course, this wasn’t the only callback to Asylum, as “soufflé girl” makes a re-appearance, lending the notion a newfound thematic and emotional resonance. Whether or not he plans all these grace notes and motifs, it has to be said that Moffat’s writing creates an impressive sense of unity and wholeness on occasion, even if casting the Doctor and Clara back into the Time Lord’s own time-stream pushes this gutsy desire for a grand unified theory of Who perhaps a little too far.

Moffat also weaves River Song coherently into proceedings, crafting moments of real heart and emotion among the story mechanics. Likewise, the Paternoster Gang are generally well-served, although Jenny’s demise is far too easily taken back, and this twisty-wisty stuff reminded me of problems I had with The Angels Take Manhattan where characters were dead, then saved, then lost again, and all so rapidly that any emotional through-line was sorely attenuated. We also know that Moffat enjoys abruptly collecting characters together across time and space, and the “conference call” allied to dream logic was another great idea which enabled an epic sense of scale to be achieved round one ornately decorated table. However, the ‘stars going out’ sequence was just too much of a riff on a previous Moffat cliffhanger for me, and the impact of this scene was weakened as I began to reminisce about The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang. It’s one thing to play on fan nostalgia via blurred or re-graded clips of old Who, but I’m guessing that this “universe without the Doctor” business wasn’t intended to activate memories of Moffat’s own previous scripts. Self-referential Who starts to become jumbled up with showrunner self-repetition here, not always to the episode’s benefit.

“Bodies are boring”, we’re pointedly told inside the Doctor’s tomb, as if Moffat is also anticipating fan commentary to the effect that some of these plot points have sort of happened before in Doctor Who, albeit not on television. Lawrence Miles’s novel Alien Bodies revolved around the apparent discovery of the Doctor’s future coffin, and revitalised Who storytelling on its initial 1997 publication. The Name of the Doctor works hard to justify its place as an equally revitalising game-changer, but it left me feeling slightly ambivalent: I partly hope that all this retconning and will-to-unity is tidied away by the end of the anniversary special so that Doctor Who’s history can return to its gloriously ramshackle and uneven pastness rather than being assimilated into latter-day coherence. Clara's blunt assertion that "my story is done" also raises the question of where the character can be taken next.

The real strength of The Name of the Doctor, and one reason why it will live on long after anniversary kerfuffle has died away, and long after excitement over the digital blending of classic and new Who has abated, is that it combines a lot of very funny lines with some beautifully poeticised writing (and I don’t mean the Whispermen’s rhymes). Clara’s heightened, stylized talk of “I blew into this world on a leaf” comes elegantly close to encapsulating life as art. The Doctor’s account of his own time-line is similarly poetic, and even Dr. Simeon is compelled to admonish the Time Lord with a curt request for “less poetry”. Closing dialogue likewise rings out as precisely composed. Moffat’s sheer love for words, and their scrupulous manipulation, shines out in these and many other moments, for example in the need for precise interpretation of "the Doctor has a secret he will take to the grave. It is discovered." Rhythm and metre have rarely felt as central to a Doctor Who script as they do here. It’s just a shame that Moffat’s desire for anniversary unification – seeking to bring together all of Who’s history at the same time as articulating his own prior scripts and creations – reduces new elements such as the Whispermen and the Big Secret Ending to somewhat incoherent attention-grabbing. But viewed as a set-up for November 23rd 2013, it’s hard to fault this blend of showmanship and sheer wordplay.