Doctor Who’s 60th Anniversary Specials Travel Back in Time to When the Series Was Cool

As someone who was converted into a Whovian through my sci-fi club during middle school, the first Doctor Who anniversary special I witnessed live was for its 50th anniversary, when I was 13 years old. 

Revived just eight years prior, the show felt like it was at its height. David Tennant and Matt Smith won the hearts of all my male-presenting-Time-Lord-sexuals, and I would bring friends over to my house to binge old episodes or have watch parties for new ones. After every day at school, I would watch an episode of classic (pre-2005) Doctor Who on the car ride home using the car’s built-in DVD player and discs shipped from Netflix. For Halloween, I dressed up in a suit, wore a fez and brandished a sonic screwdriver in my shoddy attempt at dressing up as the Doctor.

For its 50th anniversary, Doctor Who not only simultaneously aired the special all over the world, but also held events at theaters so Whovians could gather and experience the special together. When I went, I saw hundreds of fans dressed up in much better cosplays of characters than my costume, and witnessed the theater’s screams as Tennant’s 10th Doctor, and all the others at the time, returned to team up with Matt Smith’s 11th Doctor and John Hurt’s War Doctor to save their home planet of Gallifrey.

Doctor Who has had many an anniversary special over its 60-year history, usually including the return of classic regenerations of the Doctor, companions, and villains. But from what I gathered, the 2005 revival turned the show from something only really nerdy, mostly British people enjoyed to something only somewhat nerdy fans from all over the world loved, the way the Marvel Cinematic Universe made superhero stories mainstream—although not quite to that level. 

Its 50th anniversary was, in many ways, the culmination of that popularity. I would venture to say it was never as popular as it was before then, and sadly, likely will never be that popular again.

In the 10 years that have passed since 13-year-old me witnessed the Doctors save Gallifrey, the show has struggled to maintain the amount of momentum it had in that moment in time. Peter Capaldi’s 12th Doctor brought with him a darker, more moody tone that threw many people off, and Jodi Whittaker’s 13th Doctor brought with her a bunch of great stories, to be sure, but also one of the worst seasons Doctor Who has ever had with its seven-parter, “The Flux,” and more overall misses than hits, even outside that season. 

Doctor Who had gone from something we basically had an entire club for at school to something only one of my friends still kept up with, who literally made a podcast about how the show went downhill.

Anyone who says Doctor Who had become “woke trash” is being dramatic and obnoxious. Anyone who says Doctor Who had become a shadow of its former self would be right.

Enter Russell T. Davies, the man who brought Doctor Who back from the dead in 2005 and is back to try to do so again in 2023, along with—for a shorter time—David Tennant, not as the 10th Doctor, but the 14th. Both made their return in the three 60th anniversary specials, and while it’s hard to predict if this will bring the show’s quality or its popularity back to what it was long-term, these specials are like taking a trip in the TARDIS back to my middle school sci-fi club.

The first special, “The Star Beast,” is my least favorite of three great episodes. It sees the return of companion Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) and her family, along with a new addition, her daughter Rose (Yasmin Finney). It’s often hilarious and a rush of nostalgia, not only seeing all these familiar faces but also hearing Murray Gold’s iconic musical themes from that show’s era, as the composer has also returned for the specials after some time away. Despite this, it felt like the most typical Doctor Who story of an alien threatening to destroy Earth and being stopped.

The second special, “Wild Blue Yonder,” has the least things “happen,” as in there aren’t many things that increase the mavity of the plot, but it’s my favorite of the three. It feels like a classic adventure between the Doctor and Donna, and their creepy doppelgangers brought back a type of cosmic horror that’s been missing from the show.

It’s the third special, “The Giggle,” that really sets things in motion for the show’s future, however. Neil Patrick Harris plays the role of the Toymaker, a villain almost nobody will remember since the only episode he appeared in during the ‘60s was literally lost. It doesn’t matter, however, because the character is as delightful as he is upsetting. It’s evident how much fun Harris is having, and his manic energy coupled with his nonchalance at killing makes him seem a whole lot like a new regeneration of the Master (although the episode makes it clear that he’s not).

As an early Christmas present, though, we get a taste of Ncuti Gatwa’s 15th Doctor early! It’s been Doctor Who tradition to have the Doctor regenerate at the end of the episode and give the new regeneration a few lines before ending the episode with the iconic BZAAAAWRHHH sound. (You try typing out that sound!) 

Instead, the Doctor “bigenerates,” separating into two Doctors, one being Tennant’s 14th, and the other, Gatwa’s 15th. The two team up to take down the Toymaker and the sheer glee both have at being in each other’s presence is palpable. In the 15 or so minutes we get of him, Gatwa’s Doctor brings a playfulness and youthful energy to the Time Lord that is something entirely new, and I can’t wait to see what adventures he’ll go on.

As yet another version of Tennant’s Doctor breaks away from the Doctor we’ll be following in the series to settle down with Donna’s family, so ends the weird, short period between the 13th Doctor and the 15th. Although we did get an inter-Doctor team-up in the end, it doesn’t feel like most of the anniversary celebrations that came before it. Instead, it feels like both Tennant, Tate, and Davies doing three more episodes of the same show they left in 2010 like nothing had happened in between.

After the years of mixed quality and waning popularity, the Doctor Who 60th anniversary specials reminded me of why I fell in love with this goofy show in the first place. I hope Davies and Gatwa can create the next generation of Whovians who can fall in love with the show for the first time, just like I did when I first saw the TARDIS phase into reality at my sci-fi club.

Joseph Stanichar is a freelance writer who specializes in videogames and pop culture. He’s written for publications such as Game Informer, Twinfinite and Looper. He’s on Twitter @JosephStanichar.

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