The Doctor's Wife
May. 14th, 2011 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcWow. That was very Neil Gaiman.
(And how awesome is that, by the way? If you'd told me just a few years ago that Neil Gaiman would be writing Doctor Who, it would have seemed as outlandish and absurd as, er, Michael Moorcock writing a Doctor Who novel, or Brian Aldiss doing a story for the annual...)
I've spent the last few weeks trying to guess what the title "The Doctor's Wife", a Time Lord S.O.S. from outside the universe and the hints that Idris was a character we've seen before but never like this added up to. I didn't get anywhere remotely close to the answer, but it all made perfect sense. One thing I thought was very nice is that the meaning of the title didn't get over-explained -- no-one said "It's like she's the Doctor's wife", or even "You're bickering like an old married couple", it was just clear that yeah, that's exactly who she is.
From the appearance of the psychic message box from end of "The War Games", it's clear that Neil is a man who knows his Doctor Who. The junkyard planetoid is, as I said, very Gaiman, but is also very Who -- as Confidential revealed, it's described in the script as "the Totter's Lane at the end of the universe". And then we get TARDIS corridors, and the old console room, and a lashed-together console room that looks like the old-series ones, and really does consist of two walls and a console, just like the original set! And the Eye of Orion from "Five Doctors" gets namechecked as well!
Idris is a fantastic character, from her initial confusion, to treating the Doctor (who she has, after all, been trying to look after for the past several centuries) like a child, to her final ... well, it's not exactly a sacrifice, since she's simply going back where she belongs, but she's sacrificing her chance to continue talking with the Doctor. I hope she returns; there must be some way of bringing her back.
(Story set inside the TARDIS telepathic circuits -- Idris versus the Dream Lord? Or is that too Zagreus?)
Creepiest moment: the corridor with the "HATE AMY!" graffiti just beats the revelation that Aunt has the Corsair's arm. (And that's also very Gaiman: introduce comedy characters, then make them scary, then make them pitiable. Better yet, don't stop making them comedic when they're scary, or scary when they're pitiable. And now I think about it, it's also quite Doctor Who.)
Funniest moment: Amy's "Did you wish really hard?" just beats Idris's insistance that she wanted to escape from Gallifrey, so she stole a Time Lord, and the "Pull to open" bit.
Heartwarmingest moment: "I always took you where you needed to go" just beats ... every other Idris and the Doctor scene.
No Eyepatch Woman, because frankly it wouldn't have worked; in the only scene where Amy is alone she's supposed to be having creepy hallucinations from an entirely different source, and there's no sense confusing things too much. No mention of the pregnancy either. Instead, our weekly nod at the arc plot would appear to be "the only water in the forest is the river" (or possibly "the River").
Next week's episode is, sadly not written by Neil Gaiman, but still looks very good.
(And how awesome is that, by the way? If you'd told me just a few years ago that Neil Gaiman would be writing Doctor Who, it would have seemed as outlandish and absurd as, er, Michael Moorcock writing a Doctor Who novel, or Brian Aldiss doing a story for the annual...)
I've spent the last few weeks trying to guess what the title "The Doctor's Wife", a Time Lord S.O.S. from outside the universe and the hints that Idris was a character we've seen before but never like this added up to. I didn't get anywhere remotely close to the answer, but it all made perfect sense. One thing I thought was very nice is that the meaning of the title didn't get over-explained -- no-one said "It's like she's the Doctor's wife", or even "You're bickering like an old married couple", it was just clear that yeah, that's exactly who she is.
From the appearance of the psychic message box from end of "The War Games", it's clear that Neil is a man who knows his Doctor Who. The junkyard planetoid is, as I said, very Gaiman, but is also very Who -- as Confidential revealed, it's described in the script as "the Totter's Lane at the end of the universe". And then we get TARDIS corridors, and the old console room, and a lashed-together console room that looks like the old-series ones, and really does consist of two walls and a console, just like the original set! And the Eye of Orion from "Five Doctors" gets namechecked as well!
Idris is a fantastic character, from her initial confusion, to treating the Doctor (who she has, after all, been trying to look after for the past several centuries) like a child, to her final ... well, it's not exactly a sacrifice, since she's simply going back where she belongs, but she's sacrificing her chance to continue talking with the Doctor. I hope she returns; there must be some way of bringing her back.
(Story set inside the TARDIS telepathic circuits -- Idris versus the Dream Lord? Or is that too Zagreus?)
Creepiest moment: the corridor with the "HATE AMY!" graffiti just beats the revelation that Aunt has the Corsair's arm. (And that's also very Gaiman: introduce comedy characters, then make them scary, then make them pitiable. Better yet, don't stop making them comedic when they're scary, or scary when they're pitiable. And now I think about it, it's also quite Doctor Who.)
Funniest moment: Amy's "Did you wish really hard?" just beats Idris's insistance that she wanted to escape from Gallifrey, so she stole a Time Lord, and the "Pull to open" bit.
Heartwarmingest moment: "I always took you where you needed to go" just beats ... every other Idris and the Doctor scene.
No Eyepatch Woman, because frankly it wouldn't have worked; in the only scene where Amy is alone she's supposed to be having creepy hallucinations from an entirely different source, and there's no sense confusing things too much. No mention of the pregnancy either. Instead, our weekly nod at the arc plot would appear to be "the only water in the forest is the river" (or possibly "the River").
Next week's episode is, sadly not written by Neil Gaiman, but still looks very good.
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no subject
Date: 2011-05-15 12:20 am (UTC)And yes, her complaint about instructions was priceless. You can tell she's been wanting to say something about it for ages.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-15 12:57 am (UTC)Heh. I seem to recall thread discussions from the 'old days' on RADW that lead to precisely that conclusion, and that therefore, the TARDIS is the real hero of the series because she's the one answering the distress calls, and delivering the Doctor to where he needs to be... :-)