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Before we get down to the business of saying what happened in this Very Special Episode of Doctor Who, let's stop for just one second and acknowledge how insane it is that not only is Doctor Who 50 years old, but that it is something people are celebrating. When the series returned a mere eight years ago, its reputation had sunk to an utter low. It was a campy irrelevance that had been all but abandoned by the BBC, seemingly destined to be forgotten by all but its most ardent fans. Much like The War Doctor (John Hurt), it felt like a secret to be hidden away and forgotten, at least as far as executives were concerned. Hell, the 30th anniversary was marked by one of the most legendarily terrible things to ever air on British television. All credit should be given to Russell T. Davies and his team who, despite a run that was of incredibly variable quality, successfully resurrected an icon of British science fiction and took it to heights of popularity unimaginable in 2005. To go from that to having a global simulcast of an episode on television and in cinemas is truly unprecedented.

So, when we last left The Doctor (Matt Smith) and Clara (Jenna "No Louise Anymore, Apparently" Coleman) in "The Name of The Doctor" they encountered The War Doctor, revealing to Clara and the audience that there was an incarnation of the Time Lord we had not previously met; the one who did what had to be done, and ended The Time War by destroying Gallifrey and killing his entire race. A man who carried out a monstrous act for a noble reason, and who his subsequent regenerations tried desperately to forget, for reasons of trauma and grief (that are also continuity-friendly for writer Steven Moffat). To clarify the chronology, the utterly brilliant short "The Night of The Doctor" was released in the run up to this special, establishing that the Eighth Doctor, played by Paul McGann in the ill-fated 1996 film, chose to regenerate into Hurt's War Doctor so that he would become the warrior needed to defeat The Daleks, whatever the cost to himself and his people.

Now, not only do we get to see more of this grizzled and beaten warrior, we are also shown just how he ended the Time War. Smith's Doctor is making travel plans with Clara, who has become a teacher for some reason and begins the episode with a thematically appropriate quote from Marcus Aurelius (“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”) when the TARDIS is whisked away helicopter to the National Gallery by agents of UNIT, operating on the orders of Kate Stewart (Jemma Redgrave). Once there, she shows The Doctor something that truly shocks him; a 3D oil painting (PUT ON YOUR GLASSES NOW) depicting the fall of Gallifrey's second city, Arcadia. It's a piece of Time Lord artwork which, much like the TARDIS, is bigger on the inside - it captures a moment in time and preserves it, and this particular moment includes the arrival of the War Doctor as he sets his deadly plan in motion.

Cue a flashback showing the War Doctor as he steals The Moment, a doomsday weapon with an artificial intelligence so powerful that it developed a conscience. That conscience takes the form of Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), who tries to convince the War Doctor not to use it and make himself a monster. To that end, she opens up a time fissure that connects the War Doctor's time stream to that of both the Eleventh Doctor and the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant), who is gallivanting about with Elizabeth I (Joanna Page), the original owner of the painting. After a brief bit of business in which Ten proposes to Elizabeth, believing her to be a shapeshifting Zygon (turns out it was actually their horse), he is joined by Eleven and War. It's here that the fun really begins.

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