User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Celestial Toyroom/@comment-188432-20140512223153/@comment-4677076-20140518202120

To be honest, I think that "Day of the Doctor" was a bit overrated here. Not saying it's a bad episode - far from it, I think it was the best we could have hoped for from a 50th-anniversary episode; while I was skeptical about there being only two Doctors featuring prominently, I think Moffat made the right choice there, and all of the nods to the classic series were handled beautifully.

Personally, though, I would argue that Genesis of the Daleks was a far more powerful episode, trumping it in terms of story and especially in terms of how the villains were handled. For one thing, it was a lot grittier and more realistic, and made the Daleks a very credible threat - which is more than Moffat's ever done with them, to be honest. That was one of my main problems with "Day of the Doctor" - for a Time "War", we didn't really see much exterminating on-screen. Sure, you got ships firing on cities, but in order to make a villain threatening, you have to show them killing PERSONALLY - and for all the times the Daleks squawked "exterminate" in that episode (and every other Moffat Dalek episode), not ONCE did we see them actually shoot and kill someone. They usually just stand around talking about their plans only to all be blown up by the Doctor for one big happy ending.

That's why Genesis was more powerful and thought-provoking than "Day of the Doctor" - not only did it portray a more in-depth look at war, but it also subverted our expectations and made us question who was right and who was wrong.