Hello all and welcome to a new journal :D

I'm late on this topic, but whatever; Doctor Who celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2013. What a legacy the series had, starting 1963 with ground-breaking eerie electronic score:


The original series ran on until 1989 when it was cancelled due to some jerk becoming head of TV in the BBC and ruining the show because he hated sci-fi. What a twat
But then the series was revived in 2005 and became a huge success, quickly restabilising itself.

Sadly I feel like the series, under the wings of a guy called Steven Moffatt has grown a bit soft recently. Too many happy saccharine endings and not enough memorable scenes. Even when its trying to be dark its sometimes too reluctant to kill characters off. Its like its afraid of being itself. Old Doctor Who was never afraid to give characters gruesome and memorable sticky ends and to terrify kids. But now....now it just feels soft and squishy and a bit too pompous at times.
Also the moping. There's a lot of "boohoo" moments in New Who, when the Doctor goes all sad at the Time War (fought between the Time Lord and the Daleks; which are mutants inside a protective case with an ideology that would put Hitler to shame). Its ok to have characters be sad in a show, in fact its important to have them feel some emotion otherwise they'd be emotionless robots.
But here its just too much :
"Oh boohoo the time lord children are dead, oh boohoo! Feel sorry for me!"

There's a difference between raw emotion and just balling at the audience. Maybe this is just the ramblings of a cankerous old fart like myself, but maybe I am missing something.

But aside anyways, lets move on and look at the 50th anniversary episode.
It features only two of the established Doctors, with one being added (John Hurt as the War Doctor). This is one of the problems of the special. The 50th anniversary having only two of the past Doctors doesn't feel like its celebrating its roots. Where's the other living Doctors? Well they show up in pre-existing scenes taken straight from older episodes, which is a real shame; a lot of the actors who played the later Doctors were interested in coming back for the anniversary. Also Doctors 10 (David Tennant) and 11 (Matt Smith) are odd when they meet each other; they get along. Most other multi-Doctor stories have the Doctors squabbling and trying to be in charge.

Oh and Doctor 10 also ends up marrying Elizabeth the First....mmm. Yeah Doctor no.10 is usually painted as all romantic. Its odd though because every other Doctor is shown as pretty asexual. Points for being different maybe?

So in a way it doesn't feel too much like an anniversary of the entire series. It just feels like an overlong episode of the new series. There's a few links to the past here and there like the Zygons appear randomly, they're weird aliens who's home has been destroyed and they want to make Earth their home. But they're kind of unceremoniously side-lined and forgotten about. The Zygons have only ever appeared once in the entire series; and their first appearance was solely about them and so they had more screen time, focus and development; they're not evil for the sake of evil, they need a new home to survive. Here, the costumes and effects are great looking, but there's nothing much for them to do except be the bogeyman of the day.

Now for the good parts, there's some interesting concepts like 3D paintings and the fact that we get to see the Time War. Its weird though, since the Time Lords are loosing against the Daleks, even though the Time Lords are pretty darn powerful; they can destroy whole races with a thought, but here they're getting their butts kicked by tin cans!

Oh and then there's a cameo by Doctor No.4 actor Tom Baker. And every DrWho fan squeed

Overall:
I honestly felt a wee bit disappointed. And no its not because there's not references to every single thing in the past series, that would be dull. Its more that some bits just trailed off into nowhere like the zygons.

If you want a better anniversary I recommend An Adventure in Space and Time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Adv.....Space_and_Time) which is about the creation of DrWho and feels like a proper anniversary; one that looks back and says "look how far we have come."
Also unlike the wailing of the new series, this actually does tap a lot of raw emotion; giddy happiness at the goofiness of the beginning and sadness as the actor who played the First Doctor weakens and eventually resigns.

Also recommended are The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors. Both very fun and you get to see the Doctors argue and face a whole host of villains.