Her Indoors
The Doctor’s Wife
When J. Michael Straczynski was writing The Amazing Spider-Man comic book in 2001, he revealed for the very first time that the spider responsible for biting Peter Parker possessed special powers before it was zapped with radioactivity; in short, the spider bit Peter on purpose, transferring its abilities to a teenage nerd before the radiation could kill it. Why the spider had superpowers in the first place is a story for another time, but I believe The Doctor’s Wife plays a very similar card. For decades we have blithely assumed that the Doctor stole/borrowed his TARDIS from Gallifrey but now we know different: the TARDIS stole him – the only Time Lord mad enough to team-up with a time machine positively aching to explore the universe.
It’s a subtle but fundamental shift. Until now, we have assumed that the Doctor was the one flicking the switches and pulling the levers but now it turns out that she’s been the one pressing his buttons. It also confirms something we have suspected for many years: the TARDIS is not only sentient, she’s kick-ass too.
If you’ve been following Adventures With the Wife in Space, where I am currently subjecting my not-we wife to the classic series from the very beginning, you’ll know she’s been repeatedly asking two questions: 1) Why can’t the Doctor steer the TARDIS? and 2) Why does the TARDIS always land where some shit is about to hit the fan? And now she knows the truth: the TARDIS has been proactively seeking out problems for the Doctor to solve. Marinus? Blame her. That palaver with the Sensorites? She’s the one responsible. You could even argue that she only bequeaths control to the Doctor when he starts to aggressively seek out injustice and tyranny for himself, and she doesn’t need to point him in the right direction anymore.
It’s an elegant theory and it’s nice to see it confirmed on screen after all these years. And be honest, doesn’t it explain a great deal? For example, she must have stopped the Doctor from flooding her in Logopolis and she must have had a soft spot for Tegan too (maybe she went back for her because she knew the Mara was still inside the stroppy Australian?). All these weird coincidences now make perfect sense! But what’s really clever and satisfying about this subtle shift in emphasis is it doesn’t corrupt the original text. It might play havoc with some of the spin-off books or Big Finish plays (I honestly don’t know) but it’s entirely consistent with what we’ve seen in the television series. If anything, this revelation enhances everything that’s gone before.
I’m not trying to suggest that the Doctor is a gullible patsy in this relationship, either. No, this is a true partnership, hence the title of the episode (a lovely misdirect, that); the TARDIS is the Doctor’s equal and they clearly love each other to bits. Put simply, one couldn’t exist without the other. We even discover exactly how long they’ve been together, which is nice.
If I have one criticism it’s that the Doctor and the TARDIS don’t spend enough time talking to each other. The row about her doors was great fun but there were so many other things they could have discussed; I don’t know about you, but I’d rather see the Doctor quiz the TARDIS about what the hell she was playing at during The Edge of Destruction than watch Rory pretend to die again.
“Oh my God! You killed Rory!” It is supposed to be a joke now, isn’t it? Good.
Narrative deja vu aside, the mind games in the interior of the TARDIS are about as dark as Doctor Who gets, and while it’s immediately obvious it’s just an illusion created by House, the imagery was still very potent. We haven’t experienced horror quite like this since the Hinchcliffe era, and while it’s bound to ignite the age-old argument about the show’s suitability for children, it’s nice to know that our favourite programme can still pack a punch when it needs to.
Michael Sheen as House was… well, are we absolutely sure it’s the Michael Sheen? It’s a fine performance (as far as deep, booming disembodied voices go) but when you cast the greatest actor of his generation in the greatest television show of all time, isn’t it a bit perverse not to capitalise on it?; imagine hiring Tom Cruise and hiding him in a Dalek (well, he is the right size). They could have got Nick Briggs for a fraction of the cost (unless Michael is a fan and he did it for peanuts?) and the savings could have been funneled into another TARDIS room; I had hoped Amy and Rory would run into Tegan’s boudoir but, alas, it wasn’t to be.
Thankfully, I haven’t watched Coronation Street since Ken Barlow punched Mike Baldwin in the face in 1982, so I didn’t bring any baggage with me when it came to Suranne Jones. I found it difficult to get a handle on her at first – erratic and kooky don’t really do it for me – but by the time she was helping the Doctor build a TARDIS from scratch (which, if you squinted really hard, looked a bit like the original console room) I had fallen for her completely. It’s a brilliant performance that could have remained inaccessible and alien but which blossomed into a fully three-dimensional – and yes, very sexy – character that I won’t easily forget.
But the episode belongs to Matt Smith. After briefly flirting with glibness as a dominant character trait last week, he’s back to being the best Doctor ever. The emotional journey he takes is quite extraordinary: from the righteous anger he unleashes on Auntie and Uncle (played with memorable panache by Adrian Schiller and Elizabeth Berrington), to the look he gives when he surveys the TARDIS graveyard and the enormity of the situation begins to sink in, to his heartbreak when his closest companion becomes a ghost in the machine again, he’s magnificent throughout. All told, this is Matt Smith’s best performance in the role so far. The coda, where the Doctor embarks on another adventure with his best friend, managed to be both jubilant and touching, and it’s entirely down to Smith that I believed every second of it.
And you’ve got to hand it to Neil Gaiman. I wasn’t particularly enthused when I heard he was writing for the show – as far as I am concerned, he’s responsible for the worst episode of Babylon 5 ever made, which is no mean feat – but more than makes up for it with this barnstorming addition to the mythos. As a love letter to the show, The Doctor’s Wife will take some beating, and while his script fizzes with some of the best lines ever heard in this series (“Did you wish really hard?”), it’s the way he subtly and effortlessly alters the very shape and dynamic of the show that will be remembered and debated for quite some time. Sure, House’s backstory really needs a novel to explain it fully (is he a glob or a gas?) but there are just enough clues to form a plausibly coherent framework for what we’ve just seen, and with an episode that begs to be watched again and again, you’ll certainly have fun working it out.
In summary, The Doctor’s Wife is the perfect episode of Doctor Who: mysterious, thrilling, scary, witty, audacious, poignant and just a little bit controversial. The bar for series six has been raised seriously high…
