Doctor Who S32E4, "The Doctor's Wife" [spoilers]

[Broomstick]

"Where's my thief?"

What? Whoa! SHE'S THE TARDIS! I dunno, was I supposed to get it that quick? I don't care. And I love it that the TARDIS is as mad as the Doctor. They are quite a pair. Makes me wonder if the chameleon circuit isn't broken but Sexy Thing just likes being a blue box.

The only thing that could possibly have a pet Time Lord is a TARDIS.

And yes, Thanas, Neil Gaimon wrote it.

[SilverWingedSeraph]

Is this the one written by Neil Gaiman?

If so, I might just watch this one.

It is, and I'd say it's definitely worth watching. I heard from someone that is was kind of weird, and then when I saw it was written by Neil Gaiman, I understood why, and was confident it would be enjoyable despite the weird. I was right, I think.

[mr friendly guy]

5

The House wants Timelords -
"Hey, we have been travelling with a Timelord. We know the lay of the land and where to go to find more Timelords. Keep us around and we will show you / help you find them"
House - "Nice try at bluffing me, I would much rather be entertained by seeing you run for your lifes. RUN !"

Nah, lets have Rory suggest the House kill them slowly... what the fuck ?

The Doctor already mentioned that his was the last TARDIS around those servants. If House knew there wasn't much point trying that bluff. I thought Rory's suggestion was what House, sadistic entity that he is would want to hear. Of course if it was me, I would suggest that we can show House this universe even if no more Time Lords are left.

[Parallax]

Is this the one written by Neil Gaiman?

If so, I might just watch this one.

Yes, it was.
And it was brilliant.

[TimothyC]

To quote The Incredibles, "That was Totally Wicked!"

That was easily the best of the the 11th Doctor episodes, maybe all of nuWho.

I reserve the right to call the Tardis 'Sexy' at any and all points in the future.

[FaxModem1]

Anyone else feel bad for Nephew?

In any case, nice to see some more of the TARDIS besides the control room, since they already built those sets, think we'll have more scenes in those hallways?

I enjoyed the episode.

So, it goes like this: Amy and Rory= Doctor's pets. Doctor = TARDIS's pet.

Is that about right?

[Ahriman238]

I'm so very sorry for this, but it needs to be said.

[TC Pilot]

That really was a very good episode. I can't really think of anything major to complain about. Nice to see the old TARDIS set, and I also liked getting the chance (I think this is the first time in all of the new series) to see other parts of the TARDIS than the control room, which I do believe had a very retro decor to them. I particularly like now having some solid evidence that the Doctor really knows what he's doing all the time, and is therefore incredibly evil.

It occurred to me, given how they threw in the fact Canton was gay in the last seconds of "Day of the Moon," that it might have been more interesting for the TARDIS to have ended up in a man's body, if only to avoid another "one-shot woman falls in love with Doctor" routine. I also think the three French people could have used some explanation to them, and that they drew out the House's defeat too long.

[Anarchist Bunny]

Can't add much more to what the others have said. Best Matt Smith story, possible best of the restart. There was a lot of expectation with Neil Gaiman written episode and it did not disappoint. The contained consciousness of the TARDIS in a human body was acted out perfectly, and the sentiments getting to be expressed between the TARDIS and her Doctor was true enough to bring a little boy who grew up watching Tom Baker stumble about about the universe near to tears.

[Gurachn]

Amazing episode!
The personification of the Tardis is just about perfect.
The farewell scene is truly a tearjerker, seeing the doctor realizing that his brief face to face encounter with the entity he has been so close to, for so long, is coming to an end...
Its pretty clear that even though he had always known that the Tardis was a sentient being, he had never really imagined it in this way. It was like meeting a long imagined perfect love, then almost immediately having her ripped from his grasp.
Did you all hear the whispered, 'I love you' as she faded?

I like the characters of Uncle and aunt also. Twisted, quirky and a bit creepy, but with a helping of sadness also.
It would be interesting to hear their stories also.

I am, however, getting a bit fed up of seeing Rory being made into a punching bag yet again, though.
I really am not fond of his charactor. He strikes me as just a bag of weak, nervous, patheticness, just tagging along to be abused. I could do with both him and 'Pond' being dumped.

[Revy]

Personally, I'd love it if some kind of weird hand wavy timey wimey stuff happened so that the Doctor's next Companion was actually a future regeneration / alt timeline version of himself, so we had two Doctors travelling together, played by two different actors. That way the Companion would be the Doctor's equal, wouldn't be useless, would know as much as he does, but could have a different personality. It could even be used as a way to have a female Doctor, still keep the male Doctor for those who aren't so keen on it, and it would probably rule out any sort of romance plot between them, unless the Doctor feels like chatting himself up the same way Amy does.

Question though - when 11 is shot by the astronaut and dies, did he die because he was shot mid-regeneration, or because he only had one regeneration left? I'm just remembering the Sarah Jane episode where someone asked him how many times he could regenerate, and he said five hundred or so. Do we know if they're tossing the twelve limit out, or was the Doctor's death meant to reinforce it?

[Parallax]

First point - it wouldn't work. Companions are often there so the Doctor can explain stuff to them and thus the audience. He wouldn't need to explain things much to himself. There have been times when the Doctor has been alone and this has become a glaring flaw in the story flow - an example of this is The Deadly Assassin (which basically was the Doctor talking to himself).

Second point - it was he was halfway through regenerating.

[Big Orange]

I am, however, getting a bit fed up of seeing Rory being made into a punching bag yet again, though.
I really am not fond of his charactor. He strikes me as just a bag of weak, nervous, patheticness, just tagging along to be abused. I could do with both him and 'Pond' being dumped.

I've grown to like Rory, but his pretend deaths are starting to get old now. At least we've seen other bits of the TARDIS, with its endless passages still using the retro 1960s desktop and it's likely they'll be used again in future episodes.

House, a deeply malevolent creature who's a dense green mist that possses people and feeds off Time Lords comes across as a bigger and older relative to the Family from "Human Nature"-"The Family of Blood", don't you think? Like the Family who call themselves Father of Mine or Daughter of Mine, House also sarcastically uses family terms to name its possessed slaves (Auntie, Uncle and Nephew).

The first episode of the season I've given a "5" score to, which is a no brainer. Mind you the only Neil Gaiman relate novel I've read has been Good Omens many years ago from my early to mid teens, which was good.

[NecronLord]

I find it intriguing that out of three stories so far, the Doctor has encouraged just plain killing the bad guy in two of them. And the other one didn't have a bad guy. Not that I disapprove, of course, but it seems like they're very definitely moving away from the no-kill technical pacifist routine.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I think the 'You want to be forgiven.' 'Don't we all?' between Amy and the Doctor was one of the most heart-wrenching thigns I've ever heard.

[Big Orange]

I find it intriguing that out of three stories so far, the Doctor has encouraged just plain killing the bad guy in two of them. And the other one didn't have a bad guy. Not that I disapprove, of course, but it seems like they're very definitely moving away from the no-kill technical pacifist routine.

This could be related to the flash of nastiness we saw in "The Waters of Mars" bubbling back to the surface - Time Lord Victorious - where he felt could do what ever the fuck he wanted, first by saving people that shouldn't have been saved and threatening the established timeline, then recently getting much more blasé about being judge, jury and executioner (with the 11th Doctor now not really warning the aliens villains at all: crucially at least the 10th Doctor warned SOBs like the Racnoss and Krillitane once). Though he's still pretty much hung up about wiping out the Time Lords, but it sounded like he had no room to manoeuvre when they were being led over the edge by an ominicidal, war wacky Lord President Rassilon who terminally silenced internal dissent with a flick of a gauntlet...

The junk yard was full of not only fragments of destroyed TARDISes, but also fragments of ships (and... people) from many other cultures (I wonder if amongst the rubble there's an injoke to other sci-fi franchises?).

[J Ryan]

The junk yard was full of not only fragments of destroyed TARDISes, but also fragments of ships (and... people) from many other cultures (I wonder if amongst the rubble there's an injoke to other sci-fi franchises?).

I just assumed they were the other TARDISes (after all they can look like anything). We've seen them disgused as spaceships before.

[El Moose Monstero]

The junk yard was full of not only fragments of destroyed TARDISes, but also fragments of ships (and... people) from many other cultures (I wonder if amongst the rubble there's an injoke to other sci-fi franchises?).

I just assumed they were the other TARDISes (after all they can look like anything). We've seen them disgused as spaceships before.

And possibly washing machines, from one scene!

[Shroom Man 777]

That was amazing.

Also:

I heard from someone that is was kind of weird, and then when I saw it was written by Neil Gaiman, I understood why, and was confident it would be enjoyable because of the weird. I was right, I think.

There, fixed for you.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Bloody awesome. But I had to give it a 4 not a 5 because I too am fed up with Rory getting psuedokilled all the time.

That's the only downside I think. The TARDIS chosing the Doctor? Brilliant.

"I chose you"
"No, I chose you, you were unlocked"
"Of course I was."

"You were never very reliable. You never took me where I wanted to go."
"I took you where you needed to go."

There've been hints throughout the series that the TARDIS will take the Doctor to just the right place at the right time, but to just come out and say it to his face? That's just awesome. The look on Matt Smith's face when he heard that was perfect.

[Broomstick]

Ironically the House was defeated by the safety features which work just as intended. When has that ever happened in sci-fi?

Rarely. It's rare to get a safety feature that makes sense, much less one that works. Hard wired, so you can't accidently kill something living when deleting TARDIS bits.

"The only water in the forrest is the river" or something? Uh-oh. I don't like where that is going. Please tell me Eleven is not going to go to the Library and pull River out of the computer in order to bring her back from the dead. Please no.

We know we're going to see River again, so just take a deep breath and grit your teeth. Maybe we should have Gaimon write the next story with River in it? She'll probably still annoy you, but at least it will be a good story, right?

"I wanted to see the universe, so I stole a Timelord and ran away."

ROFL!

So, who's actually having the adventure here?

The thing is, a TARDIS has to be a very alien form of life, and I thought they did a great job of showing that. I'm sure from Sexy's viewpoint that is what happened – she stole a Time Lord and ran away. And it makes sense she'd have problems with verb tenses.

Near as I can recall, the Doctor has always called the TARDIS “she” and talked about it like it was alive. In NuWho we kept seeing hints that it actually was, and I think it was in “School Reunion” that the Doctor said solving time equations required a living mind, which would also imply the TARDIS is alive in some way, but now the TARDIS is alive and a character in a way she hasn't been before. I wonder if they're artificial life forms/intelligence or some sort of living creature the Time Lords captured or even cut a deal with – giving them forms and a home in exchange for carting Time Lords around the universe. Sort of like really powerful time and space traveling hermit crabs, critters that seek out shells made by something else in which to live and protect themselves.

Hmm... House was a thing that lived inside a shell, the TARDIS as a shell, which is Sexy's shell but built by Time Lords rather than growing from or built by Sexy... this is starting to make an odd sort of sense to me... Would that mean that Sexy and House are sort of similar in some ways, both living off rift energy with Sexy/TARDIS matrices sort of herbivores feeding off it directly and House by the equivalent of a carnivore feeding off TARDIS's, and they're both “cosmic hermit crabs” which is why House was able to get into Sexy's shell so easily and use it?

Wonder if Time Lords and organic beings weren't quite real to her and now, having interacted with them on their level, she'll somehow be able to relate to them much better. Really, in some ways the Doctor and his companions are sort of like fleas – small little creatures always hopping on and off.

It's not just Sexy, either – she looks across the junkyard and talks about seeing her dead sisters and corpses and she means that literally.

I'm hoping this situation leads to the Tardis being a bit more sentient in future but I highly suspect it will remain weak things.

Not sure “more sentient” is the correct phrase. It's now clear that she's always been sentient, but her mind is very different from either ours or the Doctor's. Again, I wonder if we'll see more independent stuff from the TARDIS in the future. It also explains the prior occassions it has run off on its own or otherwise seemed to act independetly – because it can and it did.

Great stuff. It succeeded where The Next Doctor failed, celebrating Who's vast history without being self-indulgent. The corridor scenes between Amy and Rory were geniunely unsettling, and did I see Sontarons next week...?

The corridors scenes felt gratuitous to me in some respects, we could have done with about half of them, though when Rory said “I waited 2,000 years... you did it to me AGAIN.” you could feel his pain. Why couldn't they do fake Amy deaths? Just for a change of pace?

Was also nice we didn't have Eye Patch Lady pop in, either – that sort of thing can get old quick.

I did like that the TARDIS contacted Rory, it gave him something to do other than just stand around.

I particularly liked the console only Tardis.

And he even managed not to land it in the shit this time.

That's because Sexy actually knows how to fly one, I suspect.

I liked the idea of the telepahic password being more than just thinking some words and actually being feelings, I was a bit confused by the cake but then figured out it was the 11th birthday, it actually make telepathy different from just talking.

Ditto.

Anyone else feel bad for Nephew?

I always wind up feeling bad for the Ood. They're like the Red Shirts of Doctor Who. Look! It's an Ood... well, we know that one won't make it to the end of the episode. They're amazingly sympathetic for Cthulhumanoids

It occurred to me, given how they threw in the fact Canton was gay in the last seconds of "Day of the Moon," that it might have been more interesting for the TARDIS to have ended up in a man's body, if only to avoid another "one-shot woman falls in love with Doctor" routine

Meh. The TARDIS has always been referred to as a “she” by the Doctor. Sexy calls the other TARDIS's her “sisters”. For whatever reason the TARDIS seems to identify as female although what would constitute gender for such a creature in her natural form (assuming “up and downing things in a blue box” could be called a “natural form”) is anyone's guess.

Personally, I'd love it if some kind of weird hand wavy timey wimey stuff happened so that the Doctor's next Companion was actually a future regeneration / alt timeline version of himself, so we had two Doctors travelling together, played by two different actors. That way the Companion would be the Doctor's equal, wouldn't be useless, would know as much as he does, but could have a different personality. It could even be used as a way to have a female Doctor, still keep the male Doctor for those who aren't so keen on it, and it would probably rule out any sort of romance plot between them, unless the Doctor feels like chatting himself up the same way Amy does.

You mean, the way Fourth traveled around with Lady Romana for awhile? For those of you who don't know, Romana was a female Time Lord who stuck around long enough to undergo a regeneration. She was much less experienced with the universe outside Gallifrey than the Doctor so the he did wind up doing a lot of explaining to her, but … well, I was never thrilled with her as a companion.

The Doctor likes humans. He's had companions of a few other species (Alzarian, Traken, Trion, mechanical entities) which, except for K-9 and Kamelion, were all humanoids that looked as human as he himself does. Well, maybe he has a bias for traveling with entities that look superficially like Time Lords, but for some reason he really favors humans.

The NuWho companions seem to be more useful and less “scream and get into trouble” types than in OldWho, though quite a few OldWho companions rescued the Doctor or helped him rather than being dead weight.

Question though - when 11 is shot by the astronaut and dies, did he die because he was shot mid-regeneration, or because he only had one regeneration left?

Because he was shot before the regeneration was complete. He had said in prior episodes that being killed before regeneration was complete could kill him (“The End of Time” when he was talking to Wilford) and River said as much on the spot where the astronaut suit shot him.

I'm just remembering the Sarah Jane episode where someone asked him how many times he could regenerate, and he said five hundred or so. Do we know if they're tossing the twelve limit out, or was the Doctor's death meant to reinforce it?

The “507 times” answer always struck me as a not-quite-serious answer, flippant and off-the-cuff, and frankly I don't take it seriously although plenty of fans seem to have. The 12 regeneration limit wasn't ever that hard and fast in the old series. The Master got around it, after all (he came back as a lich sort of thing and then just plain stole a Traken's body in “The Keeper of Traken”). At one point I believe the Time Lords offered the Master an entire new cycle of regenerations. The 12 regeneration limit may have been something inposed by the Time Lord society and not a true limit and if that's the case the Doctor can keep regenerating as often as he wants or needs to. It is notable that the Minyan crew in “Underworld” had been searching for a lost ship for something like 100,000 years, using regeneration over and over to vastly extend their lives with no mention of a 12 regeneration limit.

It's always been clear, though, that regeneration isn't pleasant and not something the Doctor particularly wants to go through. Given his lifestyle that's a problem because he does go through bodies fairly frequently, certainly much more frequently than either the Time Lords back on Gallifrey or some of the other races we seen using the same technology, such as the Minyans. Regeneration certainly seems to have some side effects in the Doctor and appears traumatic. Explanations kicked around for years are that with more regenerations there is more chance of something going wrong, accumulating errors, accumulating trauma, and so forth such that while a Time Lord could regenerate more than 12 times there was considerable risk in doing so, which would seem to be the case with the Master who showed up after his 13th regeneration looking like barbequed road kill.

I know the whole Tenth wagnsty thing of "I don't want to go!" annoyed the shit out of some people, but aside from being alone and thus not feeling compelled to put on a brave face, it could be that the process isn't getting any more pleasant and he's liking it less and less. It's damn few shows that can show character development over 47 years but this could be a case of it. Between how regenerations get triggered in this guy, usually some catastrophic thing that is presumably horrifically painful and awful in and of itself, like massive radiation blasts or lethal poison or whatever which there is no way to look forward to going through, plus the usual post-regeneration crap he winds up with I can hardly blame him for being reluctant to go through yet another one. If the risk of something going wrong increases with each regeneration then that's another reason to dread it. Eleventh's first act was a physical inventory, which would lend credence to "things going wrong" being of concern.

I find it intriguing that out of three stories so far, the Doctor has encouraged just plain killing the bad guy in two of them. And the other one didn't have a bad guy. Not that I disapprove, of course, but it seems like they're very definitely moving away from the no-kill technical pacifist routine.

Can you really describe someone who wiped out his entire race as a “pacifist”? Really, the doctor has always been able and at times willing to kill, it's just that he's always struggling to find another way out. Not that I think he had much choice about that business at the end of the Time War, it was clearly something he felt forced into for the good of the universe as a whole. That's one of the things that makes the Doctor an awesome character – he puts the good of the whole above not only that of himself but of his own people. He won't let anyone destroy the universe.

Really, though, killing House was self-defense of the Doctor's little band of adventurers. The Doctor doesn't like killing, but he seems to find doing so in self defense when there is no other choice something tolerable. As for the Silents – the only thing the Silents have to do to escape that particular death is to stay the hell away from humans, it's their choice whether or not to take the risk. The humans were defenseless against them and he gave them a means of defense.

[andrewgpaul]

One thing I just noticed, after Confidential spelled it out was that at the end, as he's repairing the console, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to ... drive some screws.

[NecronLord]

Can you really describe someone who wiped out his entire race as a “pacifist”?

Ahah. TV Tropes reference. I guess I thought that term was more widespread than it is. "Technical Pacifist" is someone who will kill by exotic means but never just by directly stabbing/shooting the enemy. The Doctor is pretty much the archetypal example of that.

Really, though, killing House was self-defense of the Doctor's little band of adventurers. The Doctor doesn't like killing, but he seems to find doing so in self defense when there is no other choice something tolerable. As for the Silents – the only thing the Silents have to do to escape that particular death is to stay the hell away from humans, it's their choice whether or not to take the risk. The humans were defenseless against them and he gave them a means of defense.

I'm not disapproving at all, I merely find it interesting to note that the Doctor does seem to be growing into something more like the Doctor River Song described initially. He even opens the TARDIS doors with a snap of his fingers now and then.

Thought; When River Song implies that she's been taught to fly the TARDIS by "the best" could she perhaps mean the ship itself?

[Thanas]

Man, I just hope we see the last of River Song soon.

[NecronLord]

Personally, I still don't know what to make of River Song. I can see where the people who don't like her are coming from; conversely, I also sorta like her.