How fandom can crap on that but vote Day of the Doctor the greatest story ever is quite beyond me. Here's your anniversary special with naff Zygons, the Brig's bland daughter and a fake Doctor. Enjoy!
You can just about shut up. If you have anything horrid to say about Ingrid Oliver you can just about blooming well say it to me first!
In all seriousness The Three Doctors is better than Day. Regardless of anything else, Three is NOT just a squee fest. Ironically Rushy's assessment fits Day far more.
The Three Doctors actually does have a proper story and a compelling villain in Omega who added hugely to the lore. You could have the Three Doctors with just one Doctor and it would still be interesting thanks to Omega, but at the same time the threat and scope is big enough for 3 Doctors to take part. When I was young it was the tragedy of Omega that really got to me about the story not the Doctors and I was the generation who grew up in the 90s and had them all on video. Also in spite of three protagonists, it manages to juggle lots of characters well. Jo and the Brig and Benton are all used properly in the story with the Brig getting probably his best comedy moments after five rounds rapid, Benton taking a more central role and being the voice of reason and Jo developing a nice rapport with Pat.
Day however is pure nostalgia bait for Tennant and at the end Tom Baker. There is not even a logical reason Tom's Doctor should have been there it really was just fan service.
Meanwhile the Zygon story is undercooked, silly, sells them short as monsters and makes 0 logical sense. One of them turns into a woman and kisses the Doctor (seems to be a trend in New Who, a female variant of a monster/villain/icon that wants to shag the Doctor? Female TARDIS, Jenna Coleman as the flirty Dalek, Missy etc.) Their plan also doesn't even make sense. Why wait until the planet is more interesting to invade? That sounds like such a first draft idea. Surely they'd want to take it over when it was more primitive? Also how did Queen Elizabeth overpower and kill her Zygon double? Yes it was in her form, but couldn't it have just morphed back? Also how the f*ck did Queen Bess know about Zygons, the Time War, the monsters plan etc enough to fool them into thinking she was their commander?
The resolution to the plot is also lazy too. There conveniently happens to be a machine that can erase everybody's memories close by, but not the Doctor or Clara's and even then it's not properly resolved. Indeed it STILL isn't 11 years on LOL.
What happened to those 30 million Zygons? Why haven't they helped us out during all these other earth invasions? Maybe rather than disabled people with machine guns, a kid with a machine gun and a ridiculously crappy robot, RTD should have had some Zygons in UNIT and carried on that arc? Zygons vs Daleks would have been interesting considering the Daleks destroyed their home planet.
To be honest I don't even think the series 9 Zygon two parter was planned. I think that was a last minute decision because of the outrage over Osgood's death. Had Ingrid not been so cute and likable, then I think the Zygon arc would have been just abandoned completely it was so half cooked.
To top it all off, the new design for the Zygons was shit. The expression is goofy, the skin too smooth and plasticy and they look too cumbersome. The only bit that seems to take the monsters seriously is when Osgood and her friend are alone in the room with them and the Zygon double corners Osgood, but even then it's undermined a bit by the fact that Zygood taunts Osgood like a mean girl in an American High School movie LOL. (Also if you expect me to believe that anyone is prettier than Ingrid, you've taken the suspension of disbelief too far.)
Also yes Jemma Redrgrave is f*cking awful in the 50th like she always is. Her voice warbles dreadfully during the cancel the detonation bit.
Now having said all that I did like the 50th and still do for other reasons. Tennant, Smith and Hurt have great chemistry together, there's some lovely moments with Matt and Jenna, Osgood is cute, and the way it brings back Gallifrey is brilliant. I love the twist of all the Doctors saving the day, that is an all time iconic moment in DW history and Capaldi's cameo is amazing.
Also the 50th it must be said did set things up for a potentially amazing new era of Doctor Who. The return of the Time Lords, the Doctor not being so mopey anymore, a new UNIT family with Kate and Osgood etc.
However even then the 50th sadly falls short because everything it set up either wasn't used or was undermined by what came after. The return of Gallifrey was nothing and then it was killed off a few years later anyway, and it turns out they weren't his people, they were his abusers and torturers, the first arc with 12 is also "Am I a good man" after he saved his people and surely laid that to rest, and the new UNIT family led nowhere on tv (despite the huge success it had in audio making it even more baffling that they didn't use Osgood more?)
The Three Doctors meanwhile also set things up for future stories by ending the Doctors exile but it actually followed through on that. Right away the next story is the Doctor on another world, so The Three Doctors holds up better than the 50th in every way, and to be honest it holds up better than the Five Doctors. I do love the latter and in some ways it's more creative, but having to juggle so many characters means its plot does become a bit muddled at times. Also unlike 3 which expanded on Time Lord lore and moved things on by having the exile lifted, 5 Doctors was just wanking off to the past. It did it very well LOL, but again Rushy's complaint actually applies more to it.
Two Doctors meanwhile, its plot is an absolute joke that makes no sense and is all over the place and undermines the Sontarans, and is only saved by its stellar cast, namely Jacqueline Pearce who true to form gives a fabulously over the top performance. (BTW according to Colin Baker that bit where she licks the blood off of the floor? She improvised it! Why the f*ck wasn't she in more things after that?)
Finally Time Crash is a nice tribute, but nothing more than that. (To be fair it was never intended to be anything else.) The 60th specials meanwhile? A clumsy attempt to empower trans people by comparing them to weird, funky, shape shifting aliens, Donna being an even bigger creators pet than before, blatant misandry, no mention of Martha, the number 1 Amy Winehouse hater dancing on Michael Gough's grave to almost the same extent he did on Amy's, Ncuti growing out of Tennant's dick and wandering around in his underpants, the actual character of the Doctor being written out and replaced with a clone and finally able bodied Davros.
I don't think it can be denied that the Three Doctors is the best of all the anniversary stories, unless you count Remembrance? It doesn't quite reach that stories heights, but it is Five Doctors aside light years ahead of all the others. (It's only marginally better than 5.)
