Doctor Who Series 6 Episode 4 - The Doctor's Wife - Review
Starring: Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill & Suranne Jones
Written By: Neil Gaiman
Directed By: Richard Clark
There
have been several reasons to be both excited for, yet also nervous
about The Doctor's Wife.
On the one hand, it sees Neil Gaiman, the writer of the brilliant
Coraline (a
book which was adapted into a 2009 hit film), in the writer's chair,
as well as the equally brilliant Suranne Jones and Michael Sheen
joining the guest cast. On the other hand, this is an episode that's
playing around with some very firmly established Doctor Who
mythos, and the last time we had
an episode with a similar title to this was 2008's misfire, The
Doctor's Daughter. It seems
this episode is set up either to be really good … or not. So, which
did it eventually become?
After
picking up a distress call from a Time Lord, the Doctor is led to the
possibility that he may not actually be the last of his kind. Tracing
the source of the signal, the Doctor, Amy and Rory find themselves on
a sentient asteroid outside the universe, where the TARDIS shuts
down. The TARDIS Matrix is absorbed into the body of a young woman,
Idris, and she essentially becomes the TARDIS in human form. With the
Matrix gone, the sentient asteroid, called House, takes over the
empty TARDIS ship and pilots it back into the real universe in the
hopes of finding more. It's up to the Doctor and Idris to stop him.
First
things first, I'm pleased to say that you don't need to be fooled or
put off by the title, as this isn't another misstep like 2008's
similarly named The Doctor's Daughter.
This episode isn't examining the relationship between the Doctor and
a woman we've never seen before, but rather his relationship with the
one thing that's been with him over the past forty-eight years of
adventures – his TARDIS. The idea of the TARDIS in human form and
being able to directly interact with the Doctor, is an intriguing
one, but one that could so easily have gone wrong. For this episode
to work, Neil Gaiman needed to tap into the core Doctor Who
formula, and take a huge gamble.
Thankfully, it's one that really pays off as it doesn't take
decades-old continuity and spit in its face, it simply provides
another way of looking at it. Idris/The TARDIS even says at one point
that the Doctor didn't steal her from Gallifrey, she stole him –
now you don't necessarily have to agree with that, but it adds
another layer and greater depth to the Doctor and the TARDIS's
relationship. As a one-off idea, it's brilliant to see these two
finally getting to talk with each other, not to mention entertaining,
as Suranne Jones as the human form of the TARDIS shares some
wonderful moments with Matt Smith's Doctor.
Idris/The
TARDIS is made wholly engaging thanks to a standout performance from
the brilliant Suranne Jones. It would appear to take great
inspiration from Helena Bonham Carter, and Idris/The TARDIS is very
fun to watch as a result. The supporting cast in this episode is
relatively small, but another standout is the voice work by Michael
Sheen as the dark and enigmatic entity, House. House's voice can be
heard in the Series 6 trailer, and when I first heard it, I genuinely
thought it was the voice of Gabriel Woolf, who voiced Sutekh in
Pyramids Of Mars
and the Beast in The Impossible Planet/The
Satan Pit. If you heard
either of those voices, you'll know that's a compliment. Michael
Sheen turns House, who is literally nothing more than a voice and an
ominous green light, from someone who could have been very
forgettable, into something genuinely powerful.
The
Doctor's Wife also
turned out to be one of the darkest and scariest episodes in recent
memory, with some scenes echoing certain moments from Day
Of The Moon.
This was particularly noticeable when Amy and Rory are locked inside
the TARDIS, and House starts messing with their heads. It was really
creepy and downright scary when Amy found the elderly and enraged
Rory in the TARDIS corridors, and later finding a decayed skeleton of
him. These scenes also showed how director Richard Clark was able to
make the most out of what he was given to work with in this episode.
There was only about 20ft of TARDIS corridor to film with, but from
the way these scenes were shot, it never feels that way. Admittedly
the corridors are a bit generic, but I don't think it was ever Neil
Gaiman's intention to give us a brief tour of the TARDIS along the
way. Even outside the TARDIS, this episode looks great and the
production works on every level. The lighting is limited yet
effective, Richard Clark brings a cinematic edge to the episode, and
the make-up and costume design was really good, particularly on
characters like Auntie and Uncle.
Something
else The Doctor's Wife showed
us how to do, was how to do moments of fanservice well, and in a
subtle way. Given the things this episode explores to do with the
Doctor, the TARDIS and the Time Lords, it's only natural that we're
going to get plenty of fanservice, but it never gets too obvious or
gets bogged down trying to please us with nods to the past. For
example, the Doctor is brought to the asteroid after receiving a
message from a hypercube, which is a callback to 1969's The
War Games.
It didn't have to be a hypercube that delivered the message, it could
have been anything, but it was, and it's a nice callback. Living with
Auntie and Uncle on the asteroid is an Ood called Nephew – again,
Nephew didn't have to be an Ood, but it was nice to see them again.
Towards the end of the episode, the 9th and 10th Doctor's TARDIS console room shows up, and by now I think you get the
gist of it.
If
there's one frustrating thing that stops The
Doctor's Wife
from achieving full marks, it's one simple thing – it was too
short. Apparently, before this episode was broadcast, thirteen
minutes of footage was omitted from it, and it kind of shows as
there's a definite sense that this episode has been rushed. I doubt
this was what Neil Gaiman envisioned as the final product. For
example, the first ten-fifteen minutes of this episode begin to tease
us with the idea that other Time Lords apart from the Doctor (and
technically the Master), may have survived on the asteroid. This
should be huge when we consider how long they've been gone, but we
get the real answer too soon, and when the Doctor discovers the
truth, we can't feel the same as he does because we haven't had
enough time to get invested in the idea. During Idris's farewell to
the Doctor at the end of the episode, it's a beautiful and touching
goodbye, but it's over before we're able to feel anything towards it.
What The Doctor's Wife needed
was to be extended by about an extra fifteen minutes, or better yet,
turned into a two-parter. Considering next week's episode is the
start of another two-parter, it's going to have to be really good to
justify making The Doctor's Wife a
standalone story. It's made frustrating by the fact that this is the
type of concept you can only do once, so it needed to get it right in
one go, but didn't have the time to fully do it.
It's
simply and sadly time constraints that stop The
Doctor's Wife from
being a practically flawless episode. In every other aspect, The
Doctor's Wife is
a modern classic, that provides a different way of looking at the
show after forty-eight years of time travelling. It's by far the
strongest entry to Series 6 so far and a massive improvement over
last week's episode. It looks great, has a fantastic array of
performances from everyone involved, Neil Gaiman makes one hell of a
debut as a Doctor
Who writer,
and I really hope that he'll back to write in Series 7.
The Doctor's Wife
9/10