"Just this once, everybody lives!" - The 50th Anniversary Analysis

In May of 2008 Steven Moffat was announced as the new head writer of Doctor Who. Fans were rejoiceful with Moffat being the new head writer as all his contributions to the series were always of the highest quality, my personal favourite being the two part The Empty Child (2005) and The Doctor Dances (2005). 2010 arrived and with the series starting with a new show runner and actors for the roles of the Doctor and companion, everyone was ready for a very different style of show. Doctor Who changed a lot during the Moffat era. Including many events which occurred prior in the series. I shall however be looking at the fiftieth anniversary special The Day of the Doctor (2013). The story revolves around the Doctor’s darkest day, the day he destroyed Gallifrey to end the war. The following is a short video I edited explaining how the anniversary special ends and how this affects what occurs in later episodes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjehH-lfSoY

As you can see from the video I created above, all incarnations of the Doctor save Gallifrey from being destroyed by removing it from our universe and freezing it in an instant of a second. However, this changes everything we’ve been taught up to this point and major canon has changed suddenly. No longer are the Timelords dead and Gallifrey gone. Steven Moffat single handily changed everything we thought we knew. The question is, can this be considered canon?

When looking at textual poaching, we learn that it’s taking characters, plots and story-lines made by someone else and making them your own. The Time War was conceptualised by Russell T Davies and by right his creation. Steven Moffat unarguably textual poached the

A Young Steven Moffat

idea of the War for his own story telling. Textual poaching blurs the line between producer and consumer, as discussed earlier. Moffat has always been a fan and avid consumer of

Doctor Who. He was a fan a long time before producing the show (picture left, a young Steven Moffat) so, can Moffat’s script The Day of the Doctor (2013) be seen as only a fan fiction and there for not canon? However, the situation has become even more complicated with the recent novelisation of the fiftieth anniversary special. First, we need to decide which version is the official version of events before we can even consider either of the story as canon.

In April 2018 the target novel of The Day of the Doctor (2018) was released, written by Moffat himself. This novel is far a more in-depth version of the televised story. The book is

a paratext, a text which prepares you for other texts. Yet which of the two versions should be considered more canonical? They’re both penned by the same author and tell the same story with slight changes to plot or detail. With the book being more detailed, perhaps the television version is in fact the paratext. The main text is surrounded by paratexts and the

text is considered usually as more canonical than the surrounding material. With Doctor Who originally being a television show, most fans hold the television as the ‘strongest’ canonical version and all paratexts to it as possibly non-canonical unless stated otherwise by the producers or mentioned within the show. Sticking with the majority of the fan base of the fans, we shall consider the first version of the story as the original text and now consider whether it should be considered as canon.

When looking at textual poaching, we learn that it’s taking characters, settings and story-lines made by someone else and making them your own. The Time War was conceptualised by Russell T Davies and by right his creation. Steven Moffat unarguably textual poached the idea of the War for his own story telling. Textual poaching blurs the line between producer and consumer, as discussed earlier. Moffat has always been a fan and avid consumer of Doctor Who. He was a fan a long time before producing the show so, can Moffat’s script The Day of the Doctor (2013) be seen as only a fan-fiction and there for not canon? This is a plausible argument that fans could put forward, yet Davies has recently stated in a recent interview with Frank Skinner about what happens when you leave the show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhVql5P5V-k

As seen, Davies states that once you leave the show everything is up for grabs and the creative power of the original author is gone. This connects to the concept of ‘the death of the author’. Roland Barthes created the concept and wrote an essay about it, which later

appeared in his book Image Music Text (1977). Barthes states “the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the Author.” (Barthes 1977, p148). What Barthes is describing is that once an author publishes their work, their control over it dies due to the audience (‘reader’) being able to interpret as they want, possibly not as the author may have desired. Using this concept Steven Moffat is no longer textually poaching, but instead interpreting what Davies created since his authorship over Doctor Who had died. But which concept transpired first? Davies stepped down from the show back in 2009 after announcing he was leaving in 2008. This suggests that his death of authorship occurred before Moffat penned the script The Day of the Doctor (2013), meaning textual poaching could not have occurred due to Davies control already being dead. This would suggest that the fiftieth anniversary special should be considered as canon and not as a fan fiction.

Having analysed the two eras of the revival of Doctor Who it is time for me to reflect on whether I believe that the fiftieth anniversary special should be considered canon.