The Night of the Doctor [TV/2013.11.14]

★★★★☆

  Steven Moffat is not beating the Eighth Doctor Big Finish fan allegations. It rules that the showrunner of Dr. Who in its 50th anniversary year remembered his favourite Doctor and his adventures from an audio company he almost wrote adventures for, and wrote his own little love letter to the incarnation as well as a fittingly somber and bleak sendoff to the character to fit with the ongoing Time War story thread. I remember being a bit disappointed by his work in Series 7(B), and subsequently being reminded of the fact that Moffat still has a lot of love for his childhood show watching The Night of the Doctor. It's very obviously a work of love first and foremost, before being a part of the 50th anniversary celebration.

  Paul McGann leaps at the chance to return to the screen as the Eighth Doctor; it's as if he's never left, with a confident stride as he barges into an incredibly dangerous situation, befriends an innocent and whisks them off into his TARDIS. Or at least, that's what the plan would've been... had the Time War not been in full effect. Now, Time Lords are just as hated and feared as the Daleks, Cass sacrifices her life to enact her own sense of justice (taking down a Time Lord), and the Doctor is forced to witness her body laid out in front of him as the Sisterhood of Karn begs for his death and rebirth, to be reborn as a warrior who will end the war. McGann delivers a heartbreaking performance once he lands on Karn, a deeply scarred man awaiting his death and choosing to betray everything that he's stood for, for the greater good. To this day, this minisode is still one of the most downer regeneration stories (even moreso than The Caves of Androzani, I reckon, for its utter destruction of the Doctor's psyche), and it's a brilliant Dr. Who adventure for it. I still don't know what Big Finish has been doing with Cass these days, but I suppose I'll give it a go later. For now, this is a lightning-focused six-minute showcase of Paul McGann's talent, and Steven Moffat's vision of a breathless romantic stripped away of every source of hope and love he has ever had in the face of death... at the heart of the Time War. Director John Hayes employs a bit too much handheld, though.