‘The Doctor’s Wife’ (TV)

 

‘THE DOCTOR’S WIFE’

Please feel free to comment on my review.

The TARDIS is Alive

This episode is by Neil Gaiman, who makes his first contribution to the TV series.

‘The Doctor’s Wife’ is an interesting story about the Doctor meeting the TARDIS in the flesh. I really liked this episode when I first saw it on TV. It told a story about the TARDIS that’s never seen before.

The Doctor receives a distress call in the form of a Time Lord hyper-cube in his TARDIS. He; Amy and Rory journey to the end of the universe where they fall into a trap and someone steals the TARDIS.

This episode is unique as the Doctor actually meets his TARDIS in the flesh in the form of a woman. This is unusual as the mind of the TARDIS gets removed from the ship and put into a woman’s body.

I’m pleased that it’s established that the TARDIS is a living being inside the Doctor’s spaceship. This has been hinted at both in the classic and the new series of ‘Doctor Who’. Now it gets realised.

Suranne Jones guest stars as Idris, the woman who becomes the TARDIS. I liked Suranne’s performance as human version of the TARDIS and I liked her interaction with the Matt Smith Doctor.

It was interesting seeing how the Doctor and the TARDIS talked to each other. Sometimes they’re flirting with each other and sometimes they talk seriously about which one of them stole each other.

I did like it when the Doctor tells the TARDIS that he never found her reliable as she didn’t take him to places he wanted to go to. But she replies saying that she did take him to places he needed to be.

In the story, the Doctor and Idris/TARDIS build a make-shift TARDIS console. This was designed by 12-year old ‘Blue Peter’ winner Susannah Leah, and it looks very impressive in terms of the design.

Unfortunately, the Doctor’s police box TARDIS gets taken over by an entity called House. He makes the rooms with a horrible green and forces Amy and Rory to run in the TARDIS before he kills them.

I liked the scenes where Amy and Rory are running down the TARDIS corridors. This is the first time we get to see more of the TARDIS in the new series and it put me in mind of stories like ‘Logopolis’ and ‘Castrovalva’.

There’s also the return of the previous TARDIS console room from the Russell T. Davies era of ‘Doctor Who’. I liked that TARDIS console room and was pleased to see it make a return here in this episode.

The guest cast also includes Adrian Schiller as Uncle and Elizabeth Berrington as Auntie. There’s also Paul Kasey as Nephew, a green-eyed Ood which was I pleased to see and is very scary in this story.

‘The Doctor’s Wife’ is a pretty good ‘Doctor Who’ episode from the Matt Smith era. I enjoyed the story and found it an interesting take of the new series humanising the TARDIS as a woman in this.

The DVD special features on this episode are as follows. On Disc 3 of ‘The Complete Series 6’ of ‘Doctor Who’, there’s a commentary with writer Neil Gaiman. There are also four ‘Night and the Doctor’ mini-episodes featured on this disc, including ‘Bad Night’; ‘Good Night’ and ‘First Night’/’Last Night’. On Disc 6, there’s the ‘Doctor Who Confidential’ episode ‘Bigger on the Inside’.

‘The Doctor’s Wife’ rating – 8/10

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The previous story For the Eleventh Doctor was ‘The Eye of the Jungle’ (Audio) For Amy was ‘The Eye of the Jungle’ (Audio) For Rory was ‘The Eye of the Jungle’ (Audio)	The next story For the Eleventh Doctor is ‘Borrowed Time’ (Book/Audio) For Amy is ‘Borrowed Time’ (Book/Audio) For Rory is ‘Borrowed Time’ (Book/Audio)
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