Holistic Review: A real treat to see two of my favorite Doctors interact, and both of them get some great moments.

I'm more than a bit delayed reviewing Time Crash, mainly because I still haven't reviewed the first Children in Need special. At the time, I thought, well... it's only the equivalent of one scene. Even if it was Tennant's first real appearance as the Doctor, it didn't seem long enough to warrant a special review, but now I wish I had. I may have to go back and take a look at it in the near future. But Time Crash... well, not only does it get its own title, but it also happens to be our very first multi-Doctor story of the revival, which sort of means that I have to review it. But I'm nothing if not consistent, and it felt strange to review the second Children in Need special without having looked at the first, so I've been dragging my feet about it. But, now that Voyage of the Damned has aired and I've reviewed that, I think I'd better hurry up and take a look at this before I get tainted by any more foreknowledge!

When I first heard that the rumors were true and Peter Davison was returning for this charity special, I was utterly delighted. While I've never put Davison in my "favorite Doctor" slot, that doesn't really mean very much — my top tier of Doctors are all practically neck-and-neck, and I've always had a particular fondness for the fifth Doctor's relaxed and friendly nature. Since the Big Finish era, Davison has effortlessly recreated his Doctor, which has been a delight to listen to, and I knew it would stand him in good stead with this opportunity to return to the role onscreen. And, indeed, he captures the fifth Doctor wonderfully. It gets off to a bit of a rocky start — Moffat insists on giving him lines that seem a little better suited to Colin's Doctor (like "Is there something wrong with you?" and "Shut up! There is something wrong with my TARDIS and I've got to do something about it very very quickly, and it would help — it really would help — if there wasn't some skinny idiot ranting in my face about every single thing that happens to be in front of him!"). Happily, this is offset by his first line ("So sorry!") and the followup to his outburst (a very polite "Thank you!"). By the time Davison gets a little monologue, in which the fifth Doctor is puzzling out loud about the temporal collision and Belgium, he sounds absolutely like his old self. And it's really cool to see his name in the title credits.

For his part, Tennant amps up the manic nature of the tenth Doctor, and it's surprisingly interesting to see how these two incarnations play off one another — I'd always thought of them as being pretty similar, but it turns out that the fifth Doctor is a bit grouchier than the tenth! And I guess there is some evidence for that in the TV series, although I suspect a lot of that was due to Tegan's influence. At any rate, Tennant is clearly having a ball with the opportunity to act alongside Davison, and his enthusiasm is great fun to watch.

I actually get to praise Murray Gold's score here, as he very cleverly mimics the incidental music of the fifth Doctor's era, both when he first appears and especially when the fifth Doctor is trying to analyze the temporal paradox. It's a lot of fun! I should also mention the very nice effect at the start, as the TARDIS console room seems to distort and the Doctor has to struggle to hit a button on the console.

Minor points:

• Shorting out the time differential is a handy little explanation as to why the fifth Doctor appears to have aged. (But not all that much! Davison really looks great! — and it occurs to me to mention that Davison is the first, and so far only, Doctor Who star that I've had the fortune to meet, back in early 2004 when he appeared at the British Isles Show in Toronto, along with Sue Cleaver from Coronation Street... Gray and I made a pilgrimage, I got to tell him about dressing up as his Doctor for Halloween, and had my picture taken with him, in which my eyes were well and truly closed. Oh, how I wish I'd had a digital camera then! And at the time, I remember thinking how little he'd changed since he played the Doctor. The same definitely holds true here. It's really bizarre to think that he's a year older in this than William Hartnell was when he first started playing the Doctor! You'd certainly never know it.) This also has the nice side effect of retconning why the past Doctors always looked older in multi-Doctor stories, so yay!

• Tennant gives a great line reading here, making it obvious that the tenth Doctor isn't exactly full of sartorial nostalgia for his celery:

  tenth Doctor: "But never mind that, look at you! The hat, the coat, the crickety cricket stuff, the... stick of celery... Yeah. Brave choice, celery. But fair play to you, not a lot of men can carry off a decorative vegetable."

• Err... why does the tenth Doctor insult the back of the fifth Doctor's head? There's nothing wrong with it! It's a very nice back-of-head!

• HA! Very nice, another successful retcon:

  fifth Doctor: "You've changed the desktop theme, haven't you? What's this one? Coral? It's worse than the leopardskin."

• I'm tickled by the reveal that the fifth Doctor doesn't really need his half-moon spectacles... it makes total sense that he only wears them to gain a little respect! I also love that they touched on the fact that Davison wanted his Doctor to solve problems using everyday items like a piece of string... very nice.

• Great delivery by Davison!

  fifth Doctor: "Level ten now. This is bad. Two minutes to Belgium!"

• Cute quote, especially the "sort of marvellous" part!

  fifth Doctor: "Okay, you're my biggest fan! Look, it's perfectly understandable, I go zooming around space and time, saving planets, fighting monsters, and being... well, let's be honest, pretty sort of marvellous, so naturally now and then people notice me. Start up their little groups. That LINDA lot. ...are you one of them?"

• But, hrm. Here we get a retcon that I do not like nearly so much. I find it very hard to believe that, as the fifth Doctor says, "You remembered me watching you doing that. You only knew what to do because I saw you do it." We've never seen any evidence of this in any previous multi-Doctor stories; in fact, just the reverse, we were always led to believe that the Doctor's memory of the events was wiped (or at least blocked) so that he could relive them in a new incarnation with no foreknowledge. Besides, if the fifth Doctor doesn't know how to pilot the TARDIS that way, and the tenth Doctor only knows how to do it because he saw himself do it before... then who did work out how to save the TARDIS? That is a wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey paradox that I do not like. In fact, I'm not sure it deserves the "timey-wimey" label. And don't go trying to placate me by mentioning zeiton crystals, because it won't work... but, mmmmmm, zeiton.

• Speaking of zeiton crystals... if the Doctor fries them in this little scheme, then shouldn't he be heading back to Varos sometime around now to get some replacements? Or does refueling at the Rift somehow substitute for zeiton energy?

• Yay, more name-checking! Okay, now I'm placated. What can I say, I'm a sucker for zeiton crystals and the Mara and especially Nyssa.

  tenth Doctor: "Where are you now? Nyssa and Tegan? Cybermen and Mara and Time Lords in funny hats and the Master?"

• Cackle!!! I can't quite believe Moffat wrote this! ...wait, of course I can believe that Moffat wrote this. I just can't quite believe he got away with it! (And it went straight past me on the first couple of viewings — nice subtle job!)

  fifth Doctor: "Does he still have that rubbish beard?"
  tenth Doctor: "No, no beard this time... well, a wife."

• I'm of a very divided mind about this quote. On one hand, I think to myself, this isn't something that the Doctor would say... it's something Tennant would say. And it takes me out of the scene for a moment. And then I think to myself: it's so sweet, particularly when you realize that it's essentially Tennant speaking to Davison. So ultimately it gives me warm fuzzies and I like it. (And the idea that the tenth Doctor looks back fondly on his days in a previous incarnation is really rather sweet too.)

  tenth Doctor: "You know, I loved being you. Back when I first started, I was always trying to be old and grumpy and important, like you do when you're young. And then I was you. And I was all dashing about and playing cricket, and my voice going all squeaky when I shouted — I still do that! The voice thing, I got that from you. Oh!" (puts foot up on TARDIS console) "And the trainers. And..." (pulls out spectacles and puts them on) "Snap. 'Cause you know what, Doctor? You were my Doctor."

• And a lovely sweet delivery:

  tenth Doctor: "All my love to long ago."

• I'm really glad that this mini-episode gives us an explanation for why the Titanic crashes through the TARDIS wall. That had been really bothering me (some kind of "impenetrable" time-ship, indeed!) and now it makes a whole lot more sense.

So, we've got a mixture of good and bad retconning, and some odd fifth-Doctor moments in among the great bits, but overall the positives far outweigh the negatives. And besides, it's for charity! So, yeah, this is a lot of fun, and you can put me in the camp that wouldn't mind seeing Davison make a proper, longer, appearance further down the road. (Do you think the whole "shorting out the time differential" excuse would work for Sarah Sutton or Nicola Bryant? 'Cause that would be awesome.)