2013: The 50th Anniversary
The BBC made up for it however with the 50th anniversary—although we’ve heard plenty of nightmare tales about how it nearly fell apart in the years since, Doctor Who united David Tennant and Matt Smith’s Tenth and Eleventh Doctors with a new incarnation, the War Doctor, played by John Hurt in “The Day of the Doctor.” Featuring appearances by every Doctor through archival footage, and even a teasing glimpse of Peter Capaldi’s incoming Twelfth, the special marked the climax of an ongoing plot point in the revived era of the show: the destruction of Gallifrey during the Time War, with the Doctors working together to save their people for good.
Well, for a few years at least.
Elsewhere, the 50th was marked with a mini-episode called “The Night of the Doctor,” marking Paul McGann’s return to on-screen Doctor Who for the first time since the 1996 TV movie, and “An Adventure in Space and Time,” a docudrama retelling of the creation of Doctor Who.
