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Doctor Who: The Doctor's Wife

That was so much better than last week's where I was looking at the clock wondering how much longer was to go, while this week I was looking at the clock in horror that there was only that much to go.

That said, and without spoilers, which I will get to under a cut-tag, that episode felt about fifteen minutes too short and that hung there, in the heart of the emotions, like a very sad wound, which maybe, considering Idris' speech at the end of the episode, is appropriate: there is never enough time, it's sad when it's over. But...yeah. That's my overwhelming emotional reaction to all this - I want to reach out and grab it and shake it and ask why it didn't do more when it would have been so wonderful. I would not have this visceral reaction if the episode weren't amazing enough to want more. I needed more time. It should have had more time.

So, let's get down to it. The plot was good, but frankly, not breathtakingly amazing. This bothers me not a jot - there's plenty else in the episode to make up for it. But perhaps it's why I feel it was overcrowded. The core of the episode was the Doctor and the TARDIS and everything else was window-dressing. And that's the problem.

The subplot with Amy and Rory was chilling and creepy. It made good use of their personal histories in order to increase the horror factor. It was great to see more of the TARDIS to give a real sense of its scope, and the very appropriate house of mirrors aspect of it, with the Escher-like repetition of corridors and events, the potential warping of time, the gravity issues. If you're going to tell this kind of subplot this is the way you do it. On the technicalities of it, it was excellent - I cannot criticise the choices Gaiman made.

But I spent most of their scenes waiting to get back to the Doctor and Idris.

For all the fact the idea is creepy, the true horror of what House did to the Time Lords never quite came through for me on a deep, emotional level the way I think it needed to.

I mean, individual lines? Certainly. His words to Amy about wanting to be forgiven were perfect. When he finds the distress beacons and realises that he's been tricked, again, the way he's actually quite quiet, and Smith's delivery on the line about how taking that hope away would turn most people dangerous, but god knows what it will do to him, is startlingly good because it's a threat but only because it's true. He's not fronting, he's explaining; and I believe him that he honestly doesn't know, yet, what he's going to do, because the discovery was devastating.

But...throughout the course of the episode, honestly, there's no payoff to either of those moments. And honestly, if you're going to raise the spectre of the Time Lords returning in any capacity and then go, no, lolz, it was a trick, how cruel! you need to treat it like a pretty epic event. The Doctor doesn't seem more furious with House than any other big, mean villain. The Doctor was given a chance at redemption and forgiveness for something he thought he'd never be able to have for either, and it was snatched away from him, casually, by a cupboard of little boxes that made him angry (somewhere in there there is a clever line about boxes that contain the worst things in the world). But there's no cathartic moment about that either.

Now, on the plot of it, there's a lot of parallels going on with Idris, the last TARDIS. Her line about her sisters corpses really brings home that she's also the last of her kind; that she and the Doctor are tied together by more than their mutual theft.

What I think this episode was going for was an expression of the Doctor's loneliness, desperation and anger through that relationship and the ultimate loss of it. That's why it's so tragic he loses her in physical, human-contact form, even though he still has her. Because they are the last. She's his best friend.

And 90% of that story works; really, really works.

But it's 10% shy of amazing.

That moment, say, when the TARDIS is surveying the graveyard of her people, there's...no time. We move on to building one.

Anyone who knows me is probably surprised I'm basically arguing that we needed more wallowing in emo, because that was my perennial irritation with the Tennant-era. And certainly I didn't want things on that level. But I also didn't feel we reached the level of Nine's single tear in The End of the World. I didn't want things any more overstated or overwrought than they were in the episode - the emotional tone of most of it was spot on. But I wanted more of it.

I wanted more of those moments between the Doctor and Idris. I wanted more moments of quiet, subtle, fleeting recognition that they are the same, and that they stand in the graveyard of their hopes. And all of this is there in the episode if you dig for it, but I think it needed to be more towards the surface. It makes me honestly wonder if this episode ran long and they had to cut a lot of stuff? Because the plot/character balance seems off for the type of story Gaiman was telling.

I just think...adding ten minutes of character stuff would have skyrocketed this to incredibleness instead of very good with some beautiful moments.

And there really were a lot of them. I mean, basically the entirety of Idris' storyline was wonderful, and if I wish the Doctor had said more, or shown more reaction to certain things, the same isn't true of her - she was a brilliant guest actress/character. Gaiman's dialogue for her is incredible and touching, circular and right. He paid off a lot in that last speech in a really good way.

All the inversions around her were brilliant; that she stole a Time Lord to explore the universe and she has no intention of ever giving him back, and her confusion that people are bigger on the inside - how beautiful! The word she spent the whole episode looking for; when she finally found it, I was sure it was going to be love, and I thought that would fit fine, and be perfectly satisfying in a big, sweeping, all-encompassing way, but of course then it was "alive" and it was so much better. Big, and complicated, and sad.

This is the part where we spoke, and now it's over. Hello.

And the Doctor looked like he was crying the way you cry when you're a kid and you don't understand why it has to be someway, and it worked because I didn't feel manipulated, and because it was sad without being tragic. Which is, I guess, a bit unusual on telly. Well done, Gaiman, for giving the Doctor an excuse to Cry and Look Devastated, without it actually requiring the genuine fridging of another character. I hereby give you the Donna Noble Award for Good Writing.

So yes. There's my thoughts. I feel like a bad fan for not being unambiguously squeeful over every bit, but the criticism is only because I think it was so close to being one of the best of the best, it's hard not to want to point that out. Generally I only bother to do that when I either really love something or really hate it. And I definitely didn't hate this. ;)

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I watched it earlier and I think the problems that you're seeing are those of a Neil Gaiman story not only stuck inside a 44 minute show, but one that was originally slated to be a season finale.

Neil Gaiman's inclusion also really brings home the fact that under the Moff's leadership, Doctor Who is a fairy tale and as Neil Gaiman once said, "Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."

Interesting - I don't think I'd want a season finale written by someone other than Moffat under his own showrunning tenure, but I do think that yes, this kind of episode would have made a great two-part finale.

And the quote about fairy tales is very apt: I thought it was GK Chesterton who originally said it? But it's definitely very Gaiman.

Yes to this reaction. I loved the episode. I loved the concept. I loved the fact that Gaiman let characters ask questions viewers may wonder and never hear ("Doctor, do you have a room?" heh).

At the end of I was physically crying - I was sad, I followed the arc to the end. But I did not feel catharsis. It skipped a bit, like the emotional point was reached too late, without enough before it to make it hit as deep as it could, without enough after to fully bring it home or resolve it. And that is appropriate, to a certain extent, because that must be how the Doctor and Idris!Tardis were feeling, but as a viewer it did seem there needed to be a bit more.

I think what's most heartbreaking for me is that there was so much potential - and we know it's only for a limited period, and we know we'll never see it. It puts us as a mirror to the Doctor's sadness, which makes the point quite well, but we don't get to fully explore it because the show didn't fully explore it.

Aaaaaand I'm talking in circles now, aren't I...hm.

Thanks for your comment - I'm really glad that you understood what I was talking about. Like you say, in some ways I feel I'm being too unkind because the feeling it leaves us with is probably very similar to that of the Doctor, but then, yes, we desperately want it to be explored and feel sad it wasn't.

I think that's why I didn't particularly want or need more of any particular aspect, or even really, more emo, despite my tag - I wanted more...quiet moments. Or just more of the moments like the Doctor and TARDIS!Idris looking over the graveyard. I think I just needed more, not even different?

I agree with wanting more moments to just rest on the implications of what was happening, especially when they were looking out on the graveyard. But then Idris did seem much more disturbed than the Doctor was.

As for the Doctor not being angry about the devoured Timelords, I actually thought he really wanted to be. But he had to make sure the weren't killed before Idris could go back into the TARDIS, and so he had to keep talking to the House (all that clapping and so forth). And then... I think he was too overwrought to bother.

I think it was right that Idris was more disturbed than the Doctor? But I do think that it could have been used as a jumping off point for both of them to bond more over being the lasts of their kinds? Although, as

chaila43 says below, to some degree, they can never dwell on that forever - it's not who they are - there is a reason beyond that that they are always running, but I just wanted...more of those moments maybe. The more I try to define it, the more I fail to do so because it's a minor thing in many ways. I just wanted...a few more moments where the quiet realisation drops before they move on. There just weren't quite enough.

As to the ending - I absolutely agree, that's a perfectly plausible explanation but it's still one that makes me feel I want more time on that? Or maybe they should have played his anger at finding the distress beacons differently. I mean thinking about it, if they'd played that as just exhausted, hopeless, with the anger there but buried under all the rest of it, the rest of the episode might have played differently to me?

Ah, so much of tone is personal, and I did really, really like it on the whole.

Great episode really enjoyed. Just the right mix between wackyness and emotional moments.

I think the 10% missing for me though was dangling the presospect of an old tadis control room and it turning out to be one from about 2 years ago. Would love to have seen one from the 80's 70's or 60's. The last 2 are so similar its hard to get excited.

I too thought Idris was a blokes name. I gues they took it from the star gazing giant of mythology plus well it kinda sounds like tardis.

Yeah I really enjoyed it on the whole too, though I didn't have the same reaction to you about the console room. I think they wanted one that more viewers would recognise as being a genuine one they'd seen as the main console room before rather than one that only older viewers of the classic era would recognise, but even aside from that (cus it's not a super important difference), they probably did it for budget reasons. This episode was originally supposed to be in S5 instead of The Lodger, but they didn't have enough money for it because it was quite a big budget episode, and they ended up having to film The Lodger because it was really cheap instead. They already had to construct the corridors for this episode, I think they probably couldn't have afforded to rebuild one of the old sets. :(

Idris is a boy's name in Welsh, certainly. I'm not sure about other languages. I think that Gaiman probably knows that, even, and picked it for a combination of oddness and the fact it sounds like "TARDIS".

This was my favorite episode of the season thus far (last weeks ep played like a rejected PotC script), but, I agree, it felt like it could have used another ten minutes. I thought the Amy/Rory scenes were important, not just for them, but to demonstrate the urgency of the Doctor and Idris returning to the ship. But, like you, I wanted to see more of the other couple. It's like, I know we'll get to see more of Amy and Rory together, but this is it for the Doctor and TARDIS in human form.

I also agree that the Doctor finding out he was lied to and, more importantly, House luring hundreds of Time Lords to their deaths should have been made a MUCH BIGGER THING. While it could have been developed more in the writing, I think a loss that no one but the Doctor can feel might have been conveyed better by Tennant. I love Matt Smith as the Doctor. He has many fine qualities. And I felt Tennant too often over-acted the part. However, there was the moment, when the Doctor realizes he's been tricked and tells Uncle he needs to run that I felt Tennant could have conveyed the barely contained rage better. Maybe it has to do with age and experience, but Matt's Doctor has not yet had a moment where he's scared me with the potential of what he could do.

One of my favorite moments of the episode is the reveal the ship didn't always take him where he wanted to go, but where he needed to be. THIS EXPLAINED SO MUCH! And, as I commented to someone else, I kind of like the idea that it's really the lady who is in charge. ;)

Oh god, last week's episode was a bit dire, wasn't it? I also agree, the Amy/Rory stuff was really important to the overall structure of the episode, but yeah, the problem is not resenting those scenes even as they fulfill a function.

I think there were two ways they could have gone with the lying bit. I think either they could have underplayed it - like exhaustion, he's been tricked and lied to and had hope snatched from him so many times, it just crushes him and the anger is very powerful but very muted and he just pulls himself together and moves on, and it's through that that the relationship with Idris is more powerful because it's this wonderful gift of a thing in the middle of such an anhedonic experience? Or they could have made more of his anger.

I'm not sure I'm willing to say that I think Tennant would have done better, because I still have residual Tennat-era twitching that makes me want to reject that immediately! I think for me it was more the lack of aftermath than the execution in the moment, but I do get where you're coming from. I kind of like that I have not been scared by the potential of what he might do. I sort of like that really, he never will do those things anymore. But equally, the reason he never will is worth paying attention to, and...however you slice it, it was a moment that didn't get paid off. And I think you're right - going with the Tennant style rage isn't right for Smith's Doctor.

I LOVED the bit where the TARDIS says that. It's just so wonderful and so true. It's sort of an idea I'd heard before from fans, but it's wonderful to hear it on screen, and yes, absolutely, the lady should always be in charge. ♥

It's funny (and oh so predictable, as you will see), I sort of agree with you in theory but in practice I disagree in some ways, and I wonder how much of what you wanted more of was intentionally not done? (And I've only seen it once, so it's possible I'll change my mind). I totally agree that I didn't really feel the enormity of what House had done to the other Time Lords in any visceral way. But I'm not sure I needed to? Or that that was meant to be a big emotional point? Because I did viscerally feel his sadness that his time actually talking to the TARDIS was limited, and I liked that better. The horror was the personal, the patchwork people and the mindgames on the TARDIS, and the Doctor outsmarted House not really to avenge the Time Lords but to save *his* TARDIS, and Amy and Rory. Like the end of the universe was four people in a museum, a Time Lord's graveyard is the last TARDIS, the one that's his, and a failing kidney in a tiny human body.

And especially with the last five minutes or so, with the Doctor back being a madman in a box talking about bunk beds, the emotional takeaway was more, it'll be the Doctor and the TARDIS long after everyone else is gone because they're both mad thieves who wanted to see the universe, and less, it's just the two of them left because everyone else is dead. Though both aspects are in the ep and both are true, I almost prefer the one they chose, which is far more hopeful and far less tragic, and far more, I think, a choice typical of Moffat-era Who. Though I do think you're right that we never got a payoff on the Doctor's hope of other Time Lords being alive, and of forgiveness (and the dialogue about that was perfectly done, I agree), I almost prefer that they chose instead to show the Doctor and the TARDIS building a patchwork TARDIS to fly off and save the humans, who are bigger on the inside too, rather than give us scenes of the Doctor wallowing, again, in being the last of his kind. Because no matter where they go there, that's what a follow up scene about the Time Lords has to be about. I almost prefer all of that being just in his obvious but quiet desperation to track down the source when he hears the voices, and those few beats where he doesn't know what he's going to do after he finds the boxes. I just didn't more I guess?

And yes, of course they could have done BOTH with more time, and partly it's unfair that holdover annoyance from Ten's melodramatic, ego-centric emo spills over to make me not want those scenes with Eleven, but...I didn't need them. I loved that little moment where Idris!TARDIS is looking at the graveyard of her sisters, and the Doctor's a mad, gleeful Time Lord, and she's got this devastated look on her face as they survey the landscape and he's got a grin because he's already moved on to the present and what he can do with the spare parts. It's so discordant and shows her devastation so well but so quietly. And I almost prefer that to anything more explicit?

The short version is, I think I like the choice to not give the Doctor time to wallow in his dashed hope of seeing more Time Lords, because he's got to save his strays, with his TARDIS, who is alive but can't be for very long.

Hmm, okay you have me partly convinced because you do present a compelling perspective.

I've been thinking about this a bit more and I think it boils down to this - as much as I want to believe the four-people-in-a-museum analogy, I never felt the weight of it quite the same way I did when Eleven was telling Amy a bedtime story. It didn't quite feel earned.

I think there are two problems. The first is that there's a part of me that will always want a little more time spent on the Time Lord issue than you because I loved it during Nine's era then absolutely, furiously hated it during Ten's and kind of want it fixed, but even beyond that, I think there was a bit of a miscalibration in having Eleven yell that way about it and then dropping it.

And I do think that, as I said a bit further up, even just playing that very differently would have helped the whole episode for me - if that had been a moment of crushing despair/acceptance but more quiet? It would have set the tone more. You just move on. Because you have to.

But also, I don't think I needed a different tone, because I agree - I didn't want a different one. I wanted four people in a museum. I think I just didn't have enough of the story for those quiet beats to really hit home. And I think just adding more of them would have fixed that. A few more moments like the graveyard one before they move on. I really don't think it would have taken much more than that? But I deeply felt their absence?

You make some beautiful points about how they ran off before the Time Lords died - they're not actually living this life because they are the last. "Mad glee" is the best phrase. It's all tinged with sorrow but also with relief - the ending really is perfect, you're right.

I guess I think that then, if the point is that he really can't wallow because he has to save them, because he can be the boy with a box again, that's the best thing in the world, even if it's a bit complicated and sad at the same time, but there was also never a moment that clarifies that quite so much?

Bah, I'm being like, pointless now. I can't put my finger on it except I guess I felt it was five minutes away from perfection, which is so close I find it frustrating it didn't quite get there. Somehow the balance was...just off, much as I loved what was there a really big amount that is probably not that clear from the fact I chose to spend most of this review talking about what wasn't quite achieved?

Awww, I feel bad and uncharitable now. *cuddles Eleventy and TARDIS!Idris*

I think there was a bit of a miscalibration in having Eleven yell that way about it and then dropping it.

Yeah, I get this. I think what it comes down to is that everything you say seems right to me from a storytelling perspective and from an objective sort of critical standpoint? But while watching, I appreciated the choices so much that it just didn't matter. And some of it is my own weird Ten-disliking baggage where I've equated emo spent on the Time Lords issue with bad melodrama, when it doesn't have to be that way. So some of what I have is plain RELIEF, because I saw the "Fear me, I killed all of them" lines in the promo and was not looking forward to how they'd play that, and then ended up really liking the route they took. I was so, so relieved that the core of Doctor/TARDIS is their mutual madness and thievery and desire to run off and see the universe and not their bonding over being the last ones standing, on top of just thinking that's already a beautiful idea.

But I think the show's choices here are also a function of Eleven's way of being the Doctor? If Ten was all like BECAUSE I'M THE DOCTOR, BITCH, Eleven is all, oh by the way, did you know I'm the Doctor? Sometimes while even saying lines that Ten literally could have said, I just prefer his approach so much more. So I actually quite like that they give us those reminders with Eleven and the tiny little boxes that he is a Time Lord with that kind of power, that Uncle *has reason to be very afraid* at that moment, and yet don't pay it off. Because that's not what Eleven does. He has those feelings and that capacity, but in the end, he's always going to be rushing off to save his TARDIS or Amy or Rory or the universe? And I like that the show's going to pay more attention to that, and less attention to his all-powerfulness, even though we know it's there. (And I have to wonder if they're going to play that card later, and have it mean something? I mean, who knows, but if so, when they do, it will *mean something* you know? It would have here too, of course, but I am curious about whether they're saving it...)

But also, I realize I'm TOTALLY on the fringes in my way of being a fan of the show. I think we agree generally on all of the things we like about Eleven, but I do think I go a bit further in liking that the show isn't afraid to upstage him. I LOVE that it's with Eleven that the TARDIS shows up and preempts all his technobabble and is even more mad and manic than he is, and that Amy has lines like "it's just what they're called, it doesn't mean he knows what he's doing," and that River can drive the TARDIS better than him. I REALLY, REALLY like that they don't exploit this "lord of all space and time" aspect of the Doctor the way they could, and that instead he almost just quietly outsmarts all his enemies. Like I often have to *think* about exactly how he won, because it's never even that obvious what he's doing to make them do what he wants. And I can completely see why this method can be criticized, the way they remind us he's a Time Lord and then have him win in a non-epic way, exactly in the way that the emotional beats weren't necessarily clear enough in this ep? But to me it just feels like the show is making choices I really agree with about the Doctor and about what's interesting about the Doctor? And so it just WORKS for me. Ugh, I ramble, so hopefully that made some sort of sense.

And to be frank, mostly I just love the idea of the core of Doctor/TARDIS being their mutual thievery (I may quote "where is my thief?" from now on), and I'm an easy viewer to please for (Riverless) Doctor Who. :D

But I also didn't feel we reached the level of Nine's single tear in The End of the World.

I really like this comparison, and not just because that's possibly my favorite episode from that season. (Also, that was Nine's console room they were in, yeah?)

I'm probably...90% in agreement with you? ;) Because I do feel left hanging a bit with Eleven's reaction, but I'm also so happy it was interrupted by Idris and THAT part of the plot that I can't find much fault with the direction it went overall. Though I would've liked if his anger at the end was clearly about what had been done to this specific (Team) TARDIS and losing this time with her, but also reminded us that House had done it while resurrecting hope of survivors too? It's probably a matter of degree. You're absolutely right about emotional payoffs and I know you aren't arguing that they should have changed anything they actually did, but I just feel it a little less.

It may go back to how, for all that I adored Nine, I'm ok with his arc only lasting the one season exactly because of how much of it was his despair and guilt as a survivor. (I also thought for a second that maybe Ten would be a less emo with a bit more distance from that and AHAHAHAHAHA forever. *glares at him*) So it's a bit of a relief to have the main story here turn away from that end up with two mad thieves alive together, right now. Best thing there is.

Some general notes on the episode- the original script had been for Series 5, but they were already out of budget by then, and couldn't do anything with it so they had to push to Series 6.

And budgetary reasons are also some of main reasons behind why there are some scenes that were talked about (like a scene with the pool) that had to get cut, and why an Ood was chosen to be Nephew instead of an original creature that Gaiman had come up with.

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Doctor Who: The Doctor's Wife

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