Day 328. This is the day. (24/11/13)

Here's what you didn't realise you needed in your life: a review of a TV show that went out seven years ago.

So was it worth it, the wait, the anticipation, the hints, the spoilers?

Well, if you're ever asked to celebrate the fiftieth annversary of a major, long running, much loved drama in one programme that will pull together themes stretching across those fifty years and resolve dangling plots issues dating back to the rebirth of the show's current mega successful incarnation eight years ago in a single compelling stand alone episode then last night's 'Day Of The Doctor' is definitely the template to follow.

If you're ever in the mood to talk time travel tales then, for me, Back To The Future Two has always been the set text; multiple overlapping storylines, time streams crossing, characters encountering themselves, avoiding themselves, changing their worlds. Steven Moffat's script for this weekend's anniversary special was of the same calibre.

Three Doctors, three stories in three distinct times, every beat of the story having resonance that would explain itself later in the show, every action having a notable effect. Big enough to tackle grand themes of redemption, responsibility and the capability to cope with the consequences of your actions while still small enough to play with the broad comedy that can both enhance and afflict the series almost simultaneously and wise enough to critique itself.

The casting of John Hurt as 'The War Doctor', a man with (seemingly) more blood on his hands than any other individual in history was the kind of coup that only a series with the lineage of this can achieve. Hurt brought a gravitas back to the character that has been lacking for quite a while and in doing so was able to comment on both the youth and the flighty tones of the characters/actors that have most recently inhabited the role.

David Tennant's Doctor was 'the one who regrets', Matt Smith's more eccentric, childlike version 'the one who forgets', both living with the slaughter of billions that their forebear carried out. There has never been a more chilling line in a family based, tea time entertainment than 'how many children died on Gallifrey that day?' The answer was in the billions. The wound that has been hinted at since Christopher Eccleston ushered in the 21st Century incarnation of the show was explained in full dreadful detail; every second of the show had brought us to this point and now, as in all the best time travel drama, there was the chance to put right what had previously been wrong.

There was a moment, a split second, when it appeared that there would be a sharing of responsibility, a communal blame and then there was redemption and with the redemption came a reboot of the purpose of the show; suddenly a series that appeared to have backed itself into a corner was wide open again. We had seen a plot point that we had assumed that we were never supposed to see, a point that we assumed would not be as grand as we wanted it to be and we had been shown that it was actually much more than we thought.

Specifics would be wrong; if you watched then you know, if you didn't then you either don't care (and stopped reading a while ago) or haven't seen it yet and won't want spoilers but if you're a fan of any era then last night was everything that you could hope for, from the small, subtle references to past storylines to a pair of unexpected cameos; one from the forthcoming incumbent of the role and one from a previous, much loved inhabitant of the title (who went very public with his appearance a couple of days earlier than expected)

From conception through intent to realisation; utterly immaculate.