I am forever saying that Tennant's and Smith's Doctors are too similar, and seeing them paired like this emphasised the likeness. Hurt's reaction to them picked out where my problem lies, and made an opportunity of it.
I didn't have much experience of Tennant's Doctor going in, but I've had plenty of problems with Smith's, and I am both impressed and appreciative of the ways the script called him out on them, particular since Moffat wrote them there in the first place. I am not quite sure I am convinced it was a conscious act of characterization leading to this episode so much as a brilliant way of retconning an inconsistent immaturity, but it worked for me.
Not that I would expect Matt Smith's Doctor to be less whimsical, more adult, now that the paradox has been accomplished: but he doesn't have to, because there was that moment of Capaldi...
Yes! He's a teaser for the audience, obviously, and a nice way of canonizing thirteen Doctors instead of twelve, but he's also an assurance of the future: things have changed. The Doctor doesn't have to run backward into recrimination or distraction anymore; he doesn't have to refuse to grow up (because look what happened the last time he tried) because this time he tried, it was an act of hope rather than despair. He can move forward again.
And that John Martin was struggling to reproduce the art of Gallifrey (this last does not surprise me).
I was expecting Gallifrey to be frozen within the time-slice of painting, since I thought it belonged now to a timeline that no longer exists (Gallifrey falling, burned), but I guess it remains as an artifact no matter the uncertain quantum/many-worlds state of Gallifrey itself? And also I suppose that would have been too simple. Tom Baker would have known where it was all along. (Tom Baker probably knows anyway.)
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I didn't have much experience of Tennant's Doctor going in, but I've had plenty of problems with Smith's, and I am both impressed and appreciative of the ways the script called him out on them, particular since Moffat wrote them there in the first place. I am not quite sure I am convinced it was a conscious act of characterization leading to this episode so much as a brilliant way of retconning an inconsistent immaturity, but it worked for me.
Not that I would expect Matt Smith's Doctor to be less whimsical, more adult, now that the paradox has been accomplished: but he doesn't have to, because there was that moment of Capaldi...
Yes! He's a teaser for the audience, obviously, and a nice way of canonizing thirteen Doctors instead of twelve, but he's also an assurance of the future: things have changed. The Doctor doesn't have to run backward into recrimination or distraction anymore; he doesn't have to refuse to grow up (because look what happened the last time he tried) because this time he tried, it was an act of hope rather than despair. He can move forward again.
And that John Martin was struggling to reproduce the art of Gallifrey (this last does not surprise me).
I was expecting Gallifrey to be frozen within the time-slice of painting, since I thought it belonged now to a timeline that no longer exists (Gallifrey falling, burned), but I guess it remains as an artifact no matter the uncertain quantum/many-worlds state of Gallifrey itself? And also I suppose that would have been too simple. Tom Baker would have known where it was all along. (Tom Baker probably knows anyway.)