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A shameless pitch to the fanbase at the same time as seeking to be broadly entertaining, though there must have been a sector of the Children in Need audience wondering what was going on.
Doctor Who was meta almost from the beginning, with the cut lines from The Keys of Marinus explaining that the Doctor was hanging around in London in 1963 to wait for the BBC to develop colour television so he could repair the scanner which was only showing images in black and white. As the Doctor said of television in The Time Meddler, he is familiar with the medium.
Now we have a short story explicitly placed within continuity and drawing on David Tennant's own accounts of his young fandom, and while I'm not exactly sure how the Doctor can say of an earlier iteration of himself that 'you were my Doctor', in a lot of ways the tenth Doctor comes across as a souped-up modernised version of his fifth self. Great to see Davison working with a Moffat script - his best performance on screen as the Doctor apart from The Caves of Androzani - and full of details. How long has the Doctor known of LI'n'DA?
There's more of Moffat's timey-wimey theory of paradoxes, just to infuriate people (though to me it makes a sort of sense). The time differential is a glib but acceptable way of explaining that Davison looks older than he did in 1982-1984. While some of the painfulness of Davison's costume is pointed out the overall effect is to rehabilitate the fifth Doctor - if he ever needed it, as the media perception that Davison wasn't highly regarded by the audience can be counterbalanced by audience reports and anecdotal evidence that suggests that a large number of people of my sort of age (i.e. David Tennant's) regarded him with respect. The Davison Doctor here manages to combine authority with anxiety, and superiority with sensitivity, just as he once did; and is able to play the role that Hartnell's Doctor did in The Three Doctors, even going further and having the last word, reminding the tenth Doctor (too late) to raise the TARDIS's screens as we weave back into the closing scene of Last of the Time Lords. Not quite absolutely brilliant television, but certainly very entertaining stuff.
Now to donate.
Doctor Who was meta almost from the beginning, with the cut lines from The Keys of Marinus explaining that the Doctor was hanging around in London in 1963 to wait for the BBC to develop colour television so he could repair the scanner which was only showing images in black and white. As the Doctor said of television in The Time Meddler, he is familiar with the medium.
Now we have a short story explicitly placed within continuity and drawing on David Tennant's own accounts of his young fandom, and while I'm not exactly sure how the Doctor can say of an earlier iteration of himself that 'you were my Doctor', in a lot of ways the tenth Doctor comes across as a souped-up modernised version of his fifth self. Great to see Davison working with a Moffat script - his best performance on screen as the Doctor apart from The Caves of Androzani - and full of details. How long has the Doctor known of LI'n'DA?
There's more of Moffat's timey-wimey theory of paradoxes, just to infuriate people (though to me it makes a sort of sense). The time differential is a glib but acceptable way of explaining that Davison looks older than he did in 1982-1984. While some of the painfulness of Davison's costume is pointed out the overall effect is to rehabilitate the fifth Doctor - if he ever needed it, as the media perception that Davison wasn't highly regarded by the audience can be counterbalanced by audience reports and anecdotal evidence that suggests that a large number of people of my sort of age (i.e. David Tennant's) regarded him with respect. The Davison Doctor here manages to combine authority with anxiety, and superiority with sensitivity, just as he once did; and is able to play the role that Hartnell's Doctor did in The Three Doctors, even going further and having the last word, reminding the tenth Doctor (too late) to raise the TARDIS's screens as we weave back into the closing scene of Last of the Time Lords. Not quite absolutely brilliant television, but certainly very entertaining stuff.
Now to donate.
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