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Am I having a midlife crisis?
There was indeed a pleasing amount of John Hurt in "The Day of the Doctor."
Briefly, because I have to be awake in a very few hours to meet with a jeweler— Yes,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
poliphilo, ashlyme, I loved him. Of course he regenerates immediately following the parting of the three Doctors: he was created to end the Time War and with that task accomplished, he can cease to be. He told the Moment that he had no desire to survive the destruction of Gallifrey, for which his punishment would have been to live; because he finds another way, crazy, timey-wimey, continuity-bending as it is, he is allowed to die. And he leaves the time anomaly understanding that he will retain no memory of the events contained within it, but because he regenerates when he does, he—the Warrior, the War Doctor, the secret who deserves the name after all—dies knowing what he tried to do; it's Eccleston's Nine who won't remember. There are ways in which this would have made a perfect Christmas episode. Tennant and Smith's Doctors have been running from their past, but Hurt's is the one confronted with his future, forced to assess whether he likes the pattern he's about to set in place: the man who regrets, the man who forgets . . . Why do you have to talk like children? What is it that makes you ashamed of being a grown-up? He's battle-wearied, self-sick, resourceful as a suicide; he remembers the name he cast off, knowing a doctor's business was to save, not sacrifice, the way fallen angels remember turning their backs on heaven. (Naturally he's all the more aghast at his future incarnations: if he last remembers being the Eighth Doctor who died trying to save even someone who despised him, or that master game-player the Seventh who talked the Daleks into self-destruction, then "Chinny" and "Sandshoes" must seem a very poor recompense for all the blood on his hands, all the endless, interleaving centuries of struggle. He was young on Karn, already shadowed. How long does it take for a Time Lord to grow old?) And yet he's not all grim, with his mordant exasperation and gradually, gloriously, his lightening sense of hope. He catches fire as brightly as his mercurial counterparts; he realizes and improvises as swiftly as they do. He is younger than they are, seeing no way out but the dreadful sacrifice he was born to make, and when shown the chance of a different future he fights for it, gladly, instead of merely against. He burns away into life-gold light, smiling. It could have been a golem story, too. I have my arguments with some of the plot, but John Hurt is not one of them. Nor that burning-eyed glimpse of Capaldi's Twelfth Thirteenth Doctor, split-second to set the record straight.
(I still wanted more.)
Briefly, because I have to be awake in a very few hours to meet with a jeweler— Yes,
poliphilo, ashlyme, I loved him. Of course he regenerates immediately following the parting of the three Doctors: he was created to end the Time War and with that task accomplished, he can cease to be. He told the Moment that he had no desire to survive the destruction of Gallifrey, for which his punishment would have been to live; because he finds another way, crazy, timey-wimey, continuity-bending as it is, he is allowed to die. And he leaves the time anomaly understanding that he will retain no memory of the events contained within it, but because he regenerates when he does, he—the Warrior, the War Doctor, the secret who deserves the name after all—dies knowing what he tried to do; it's Eccleston's Nine who won't remember. There are ways in which this would have made a perfect Christmas episode. Tennant and Smith's Doctors have been running from their past, but Hurt's is the one confronted with his future, forced to assess whether he likes the pattern he's about to set in place: the man who regrets, the man who forgets . . . Why do you have to talk like children? What is it that makes you ashamed of being a grown-up? He's battle-wearied, self-sick, resourceful as a suicide; he remembers the name he cast off, knowing a doctor's business was to save, not sacrifice, the way fallen angels remember turning their backs on heaven. (Naturally he's all the more aghast at his future incarnations: if he last remembers being the Eighth Doctor who died trying to save even someone who despised him, or that master game-player the Seventh who talked the Daleks into self-destruction, then "Chinny" and "Sandshoes" must seem a very poor recompense for all the blood on his hands, all the endless, interleaving centuries of struggle. He was young on Karn, already shadowed. How long does it take for a Time Lord to grow old?) And yet he's not all grim, with his mordant exasperation and gradually, gloriously, his lightening sense of hope. He catches fire as brightly as his mercurial counterparts; he realizes and improvises as swiftly as they do. He is younger than they are, seeing no way out but the dreadful sacrifice he was born to make, and when shown the chance of a different future he fights for it, gladly, instead of merely against. He burns away into life-gold light, smiling. It could have been a golem story, too. I have my arguments with some of the plot, but John Hurt is not one of them. Nor that burning-eyed glimpse of Capaldi's (I still wanted more.)
no subject
They have very much that dynamic, but strangely reversed: for once the Doctor is bound to time in a way the Moment isn't. She can see ahead of him; she knows his possibilities. (I think she must have the name because she is the moment that is all time at once. I'm not sure we're ever told how this ultimate weapon was meant to work, but I wondered if it was not just destruction, but destruction in a way that could never be undone: no going back to retrieve what was lost, re-run events to make it come out all right this time; not even a time-lock, but a complete eradication from the timestream itself. Hence the conscience, and hence the Moment's intervention: once the War Doctor uses it, there will be, even for a Time Lord, no going back.) Hurt's Doctor has been from one end of time to another, fighting the war, but he still doesn't know what happens to him until the Moment starts cracking his timeline open. It's much more sophisticated than a superweapon that simply refuses to let itself be used—this is a weapon that actively works to make its attempted user find another answer to the problem.
He went into it with joy, and no other Doctor ever got that.
I think you're right. Maybe Smith's Eleven will be able to take a cue from him.
The greatest crime of this fiftieth anniverary—taking "The Night of the Doctor" and "The Day of the Doctor" together—was giving us just enough of McGann and Hurt to want so much more.
I like to imagine him never wholly retiring, solving strange art crimes in his old age.
Even if the Curator is a never-explained, never-revisited tantalizing loose end, he was the correct way to end this episode. It wasn't just the fact that Tom Baker is still the face of Doctor Who for so many viewers; he's onscreen for two, three minutes and he is as alien, mysterious, appealing, and faintly perilous as a Doctor should be. I don't know how he's supposed to square with the Doctor dying at Trenzalone; I don't know if he is the Doctor, or some strange echo; it doesn't matter. He doesn't even have a scarf. He's right.
Also, you could write that person.