From MadCap's Couch - "Doctor Who: Time Crash"

The last hurrah for Series 3. The end of the line. Doctor Who has done several of these mini episodes since the New Series began in 2005. Several of them were done for Series 2, one to set up each episode, in fact. However, I didn't cover those mostly because they weren't full length adventures and really only served as mini-trailers for those episodes. Time Crash, on the other hand, is a little bit different in that it is, itself, an episode...albeit about thirty-two minutes shorter than the standard length.
It makes the first multi-Doctor story of the Revived Series. This may not seem like a big thing, but it most definitely is seeing as such events were not only more common in the Classic Show, but were big events when they did come around. In the classic series, there were only three big ones - "The Three Doctors" (1973), "The Five Doctors" (1983), and "The Two Doctors" (1985). If you hadn't worked it out, the first two are for the tenth and twentieth anniversaries of Doctor Who. "The Two Doctors" is a special case of a non-anniversary crossover, much like this episode.

We'll be getting back to anniversary crossovers in 2013's "Day of the Doctor"...but that's a ways away.

Time Crash is a much simpler affair and an enjoyable short eight minutes penned by Steven Moffat. Coming up from where we left last time, the Doctor says goodbye to Martha and takes off...only for everything to go to pot. Alarms blare and the Doctor passes...the Doctor. Namely, the Tenth Incarnation (David Tennant) passes the Fifth (Peter Davison) much to the shock of both. While Ten is able to recognize his previous incarnation, Five does not recognize Ten as a future version of himself - instead believing him to be a fan.

Also, we learn that the Doctor has been aware of LINDA since at least his Fifth incarnation...which raises far more questions than it answers, but never mind.

We get a few jokes here, Ten poking fun at some of the aspects of Five's tenure (the glasses he doesn't actually need, the stick of celery on his lapel, the fact that he doesn't use a sonic screwdriver, etc.) while Five laments the change in the TARDIS "desktop theme" and berates Ten as a "skinny idiot", which I found particularly amusing after the Doctor's nuts behavior in Last of the Time Lords.

Regardless, Ten ends up saving the day using technobabble and avoids the TARDIS blowing a hole in the fabric of space and time the exact size of Belgium. This manages to convince Five that Ten is actually a future version of him, Ten makes a few cracks about things like Time Lords in funny hats, and the two part on good terms after some heartfelt words. In particular, Ten's speech to Five - talking about how much he admires him and how much he got from him in terms of personality and mannerisms - feels almost like super fanboy David Tennant gushing to his childhood idol Peter Davison, which it admittedly probably is.

Five gives a reminder to put the shields up, but it's too late...the Titanic crashes into the TARDIS wall, much to the Doctor's confusion, and we end with a problem that Doctor Who will return at Christmas in Voyage of the Damned.

Spoiler warning: If The End of Time didn't exist, this would be my least favorite of the Russell T. Davies era Christmas specials.

But as for Time Crash, it's a fun little aside. Tennant absolutely bleeds the inner fanboy that he is in his heart, gushing over Five while still being able to poke fun at some of the silliest bits of his era. I can only imagine an episode in 2032 where Tennant comes back to whichever incarnation is currently running them and they gush over him. It would be hilariously cyclic.

Davison comes back into the role, having not played it on screen since Dimensions in Time in 1993...and less embarrassingly in The Caves of Androzani back in 1984. He does well, but then he fits perfectly in with my theory that there are no bad actors who have played the Doctor. Five isn't my favorite from the Classic Show, but he is pretty high up on my list. And no, I'm never doing a ranking of my favorite Doctors. I like them all on their own merits and don't place any one of them above any of the others and it's Colin Baker.

...

...oops.

(And, for New Series Doctors, it's Matt Smith. Hate, Tennant fangirls, hate!)

Anyway, Time Crash is good, but it's a Moffat episode from before he took over the show and started getting tired, so of course it's good.

Next time, less so...as the Doctor climbs aboard the Titanic (except not really), finds a new companion in an Australian pop star (except not really), and we are introduced to one of the greatest characters of the Russell T. Davies era (no, really!).

Also, next week we go from traveling around space and time to an inconspicuous space station orbiting a little backwater world by a wormhole. Warp 1, Engage!

Doctor Who is the property of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

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