The Doctor's Wife
"The Doctor's Wife" is the fourth episode of the sixth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was broadcast on 14 May 2011 in the United Kingdom, and later the same day in the United States. It was written by Neil Gaiman and directed by Richard Clark.
This article is about the Doctor Who episode. For other uses, see The Doctor's Wife (disambiguation).216 – "The Doctor's Wife"
2.3
45 minutes
14 May 2011
In the episode, an entity called the House (voiced by Michael Sheen) lures the alien time traveller the Doctor (Matt Smith) and his companions Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) to an asteroid outside the universe, by sending a distress call to the Doctor's time machine, the TARDIS. The House removes the matrix of the TARDIS and places it in the body of a woman named Idris (Suranne Jones), who proceeds to help the Doctor prevent House from escaping its pocket universe with the TARDIS.
"The Doctor's Wife" was originally intended to be produced as part of the previous series, but was pushed back due to budget constraints. Gaiman revised the script many times, having to add and remove characters and events as production saw fit. The episode was filmed in the autumn of 2010 and featured a makeshift TARDIS control room which was the design from a winner of a contest on the children's programme Blue Peter. The episode was seen by 7.97 million viewers in the UK and was met with positive reviews from critics, with praise for Jones's performance. The episode won the 2011 Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation and the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.
Plot[edit]
Synopsis[edit]
The Eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory follow a distress call with the identification of the Time Lord with the name of the Corsair, to an asteroid outside the universe. After landing in a junkyard, the TARDIS shuts down and its matrix disappears. The asteroid, called House, removes the matrix, and places it in the body of a woman called Idris. The Doctor discovers the Corsair and hundreds of other Time Lords on the asteroid were murdered by House and that two inhabitants of the asteroid, Uncle and Auntie, are constructed from the body parts of Time Lords. Upon learning that the Doctor is the last Time Lord and that no more will ever arrive, House transfers its consciousness into the TARDIS to escape from the rift. Amy and Rory are trapped inside as the House-controlled TARDIS dematerialises. Uncle and Auntie are allowed to die.
The Doctor learns that Idris contains the personality of the TARDIS's matrix and that they can talk to each other for the first time. With minutes before her body fails, Idris reveals that House had stranded many TARDISes before, and that its pocket universe is hours away from collapsing. The Doctor and Idris work together to construct a makeshift TARDIS from scraps, and then pursue House. Aboard the Doctor's TARDIS, House threatens to kill Amy and Rory. He plays with their senses as they try to flee through the corridors, and then sends an Ood called Nephew after them. Idris makes a psychic connection with Rory to give him directions to a secondary control room, where he and Amy are able to lower the TARDIS shields. This allows the Doctor to land the makeshift TARDIS in the secondary control room, which atomises Nephew. House deletes the secondary control room as he prepares to break through the rift to the main universe, which the Doctor anticipates. The TARDIS's safety protocols transfer them to the main control room, where the dying Idris releases the TARDIS's matrix back to the TARDIS, destroying House. A remnant of the TARDIS's matrix, in Idris' body, states that she will not be able to speak to the Doctor again but will be there for him. Idris's body then disappears as the TARDIS matrix is fully restored.
Continuity[edit]
The Doctor refers to altering the control room's appearance as changing the desktop theme, as the Fifth Doctor does in "Time Crash".[2] Like the Third Doctor in Inferno (1970), the Doctor and Idris operate a TARDIS console without an outer TARDIS shell.[3] The Doctor also jettisons TARDIS rooms to create thrust, as he had done previously in stories such as Logopolis (1981) and Castrovalva (1982).[4] The Doctor admits he killed all of the Time Lords, alluding to the events of the Time War.[2] In The War Games (1969), the Second Doctor contacted the Time Lords using a cube similar to those seen in this episode.[5] The Doctor refers to himself as "a madman with a box", reprising Amy's and his own description of himself in "The Eleventh Hour".[3] The Doctor refers to Nephew as "another Ood I failed to save"; in "The Satan Pit" the Doctor commented that he did not have time to save the Ood.[2] Idris' cryptic words, "the only water in the forest is the river", are explained in the mid-series finale, "A Good Man Goes to War".[6]