Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor
Ratings6
Average rating4.5
A short read but really wonderful! It takes an already amazing TV special/anniversary celebration and heightens it and expands on it in ways that can only be accomplished through this format. This is the definitive version of DotD.
“The Day of the Doctor” was a 50th-anniversary party episode, an extravagant romp featuring three Doctors and Clara, plus UNIT, Zygons, and a very implausible version of Queen Elizabeth I. It's quite fun to watch (John Hurt is good in it), but a bit of a mess, and the Queen Elizabeth stuff is ludicrous.
Moffat is a screenwriter, but here he gets to play at being a novelist, adapting his own script. He makes a decent stab at it. The main features of the story remain, of course, plus some extra details—about which I have mixed feelings, but at least something has been added to the screen version.
I find the result readable enough, but I prefer watching the show on screen. As a novel, I think 3 stars is a fair rating: I can reread it occasionally with some degree of enjoyment, but it doesn't come close to being a favourite.
I haven't bought any other Doctor Who novels; I tried this one as an experiment. Although this wasn't one of his best scripts, Moffat is the best screenwriter yet to write for the show, so it seemed worth trying.