On paper, the combination of Doctor Who and Neil Gaiman looks like a winner. And while many fans were looking forward to the season premiere of series six, I’d be willing more than a few were equally or more excited to finally see the story from writer Neil Gaiman finally hit our screens this year.
It’s been rumored for six years now. And while we heard positive buzz on the story from the production team, cast and crew, I’ll have to admit that as we counted down the hours until “The Doctor’s Wife” finally aired, I was a mix of excitement and worry. Excited that I’d finally get to see it. Worried that my expectations would be so high that no episode could ever live up to them.
Those worries evaporated within the first three minutes of this magical episode and for the rest of the story I was swept up in what is one of the best episodes not only of the new series run but also the entire tenure of this long-running series. This one is making a serious run at my top ten of all time* Doctor Who stories based on my initial viewing.
* One of the things that vaults a story into my top ten is its re-watchability value…and the eagerness I have to re-watch the story. If a story demands a repeat viewing almost immediately after the closing credits have faded, that’s a good sign. Such is the case here…
After receiving a hyercube message while in deep space, the Doctor takes the TARDIS outside our normal universe and lands on what appears to be an alien junkyard. The Doctor discovers the planet a large creature named House who lured in Time Lords to feed on them and energy from their TARDISes.
Also living on this world are a trio of people and an Ood, named Nephew. One of the trio is Idris, who behaves strangely and we eventually discover that House has pulled the personality Matrix from the TARDIS in order to feed on its energy. Upon the discovery that the TARDIS is the last of its kind, House decides to take over the ship and enter our universe to try and find more forms of energy on which to feed.
At several points in the history of Doctor Who, people who grew up watching the show and are fans have been given the opportunity to pen a script or two for the series. But none are quite as prominent (at least in fan circles) as Gaiman. Some of the stories penned by fans have been great (“Full Circle”) while others went woefully over the line into fan-fiction with too many continuity references and muddle storylines (“Attack of the Cybermen.”) Thankfully, “The Doctor’s Wife” is from the same school that gave us “Full Circle.”
Gaiman’s story pays homage to the roots of the show as well as examining the fundamental relationship at the heart of the series. Over the years, the one constant piece of the show has been the TARDIS and while certain abilities the time machine may or may not possess have changed from story to story, season to season, it’s still been one of the fundamental centers of the show. And yet, we’ve never really had an episode that really explored the nature of the relationship between the Doctor and his beloved time machine.
At least until now…
Gaiman equates the long relationship of these two travelers to that of a marriage and it works beautifully on every level. Lines about how the two chose each other to feel Gallifrey and see the universe were spot-on perfect as was the TARDIS’s jealousy over the long line of companions who have traveled over the years. The chemistry between Matt Smith and Suranne Jones as Idris/the TARDIS jumped off the screen.
Seeing the two working together to try and build a functional TARDIS console of the bits of destroyed TARDISes on House was delightful.
But where Gaiman’s script continued to deliver was in not just having the story be merely focused on the relationship of the Doctor and his TARDIS. Just as Rob Sherman did with “Dalek” a threat was created to keep the story momentum. In this case, it’s Amy and Rory trapped inside House as the TARDIS, participating in the Doctor Who Olympic sport of corridor running. Seeing House’s games he played with the two to try and keep them from reaching their ultimate goal and deciding whether or not to keep them alive kept the story moving and on the edge of your seat.
It’s one of those cases were the script gets every big thing and every little thing absolutely right and you end up with a story that is, in my mind, an instant classic.
It took six years for Neil Gaiman’s first Doctor Who script to see our screens. Hopefully if he’s got another idea half as good as this one, we won’t have to wait six more years to see it.
Is it just me, or did the Rory and Amy being manipulated by the HOUSE/TARDIS remind anyone else of “I have no mouth, yet I must scream” by Harlan Ellison®?
I loved the episode, my one complaint, and it is a minor quible, why did they reuse the old Eccleston/Tenant control room? I know that they probably still had the set, and used it to keep construction costs down, but if they didn’t how cool would it have been to show an even older control room as a nod to the fans? Was it the size, did they require the larger control room for script purposes? If so why not make the backup control room a combination of several old ones, or would it have looked too cheesy? Just my little whine.
It was the old set with a new console. There was a children’s contest to design a new console for the TARDIS and the winner’s was created for the episode.
Actually, the so-called “Blue Peter Console” was the one that Matt Smith built out of the scrap TARDISes in order to get himself and Idris back to the TARDIS. As far as I know, the console in the old Console Room was the same, or very similar, to the one that was supposed to be in that room.
“…Ood, named Cousin…”
Sorry to pick a nit, but the Ood was called “Nephew”. The two other characters were a patchworked couple of “Auntie” and “Uncle”.
I loved this episode. The TARDIS virtually being The Doctor’s “Wife” and believing that it was she who stole The Doctor instead of The Doctor stealing (borrowing) her, was charming and quite touching.
Seeing her leave him was like seeing all of the other Companions leave him.
And it reminded me of how he lost Astrid.
Yeah, I almost teared up at that point.
The most chilling thing to me was Amy and Rory in the possessed TARDIS’s corridors. I won’t make any comments here, but…wow.
And Suranne Jones was all kinds of Awesome as TARDIS/Idris.
This may be a bit stupid to mention, but I just realized that Astrid is an anagram for the word TARDIS. I wonder if the intention was to call Idris by the name Astrid, but since that name had already been used fairly recently in Doctor Who they had to change the name. I have no idea how long ago Neil Gaiman wrote the basic story for this episode. Even though I know it was supposed to be made last season, it is possible he could have had the concept in mind much earlier than that.
Actually, the woman who becomes the TARDIS is named “Idris”. Not “Astrid”, who was a character played by Kylie Minogue (sp?) in the Christmas Special regarding the Space Titanic.
I don’t think there is any correlation.
It would be a clumsy call-back, and IMHO would be something that Gaiman is a better writer for. (And that was a clumsy sentence.)
I had to laugh at the “If a story demands a repeat viewing almost immediately after the closing credits” line, because I actually did replay it as soon as it ended – and I never did that before. I do like Gaiman’s stuff (Neverwhere, Stardust, Coraline) so I was hoping for a better-than-usual episode – but wasn’t expecting this. Has got to be among my all-time favorite episodes ever – and I’ve seen more or less every complete story since thee beginning. The dialogue and its execution were absolutely amazing.
One of my favorite bits worth repeating – when the Doctor told Idris/Tardis how she wasn’t always reliable and didn’t always take him where he wanted to go – her response was, “No, but I always took you where you *needed* to go.” Brilliant.
I have to admit I was very excited when I heard that we would see more of the TARDIS, and it was only until after the show I reliessed that all they showed was corridors.
It says something about a show that you don’t relies that you should be disappointed until well after the closing credits.
But, outside of the Main Control Room, the TARDIS *IS* corridors.
How would you expect to get to the Library Swimming Pool?
OK, seeing the 9 and 10 control room was cool, but how awesome would it have been if we’d gone back even further than that? OK, maybe there was no way they could pull it off without it looking bad, but still…
I agree completely. I was amused at the idea of all of the control rooms having been archived. It sort of gives a background as to how the Doctor and Sarah Jane found the older, nautical looking control in Hand Of Fear. While I suppose it would make more sense to go back to the 9 and 10 control rooms for many of the current fans, to go back and see something from the FIRST Doctor would have been tremendous, especially given Idris’s comment about how “she” chose the Doctor all those years ago.
It was an okay episode, but for me it had absolutely ZERO re-watchability.