The Doctor's Wife (TV story)

The Doctor's Wife was the fourth episode in the sixth series of Doctor Who. It was notable for being written by famed fantasy and comic book writer, Neil Gaiman. Such was the notoriety of Gaiman writing an episode of Doctor Who that he was given some of the perquisites of a head writer — he wrote the production diary section in Doctor Who Magazine and hosted on Doctor Who Confidential. The story received an exceptional amount of pre-broadcast hype in part because of the length of time it had to wait to be released. Originally scheduled as a part of series 5, it was not released until the 2011 series.

Like Love & Monsters and Utopia before it, The Doctor's Wife was significant for its connection to a Blue Peter competition. Teenager Susannah Leah's winning design for a TARDIS console was prominently featured in this episode, and subsequently turned into a Character Options action figure set.

Narratively, Wife was important because it depicted the TARDIS in human form, and offered revelations about the relationship of the two time travellers. It was also the first episode of BBC Wales Doctor Who to extensively feature the corridors of the TARDIS — a setting common to several stories of the 1963 version of the show. It also contained the first appearance of the Ood in the Steven Moffat era, and was thus the first time that Russell T Davies was formally credited as their creator.

The story was further remarkable for its unmistakable similarity to Nineveh, an obscure Seventh Doctor comic story from the pages of The Incredible Hulk Presents.

Synopsis
The Doctor receives a distress signal from an old friend. Could there really be another living Time Lord out there? Hopes raised, he follows the signal to a junkyard planet sitting upon a mysterious asteroid in a Bubble universe, populated by a very strange family.

The Doctor, Amy and Rory are given the warmest of welcomes by Auntie, Uncle and Nephew. But the beautiful and insane Idris greets them in a more unusual fashion – what is she trying to tell the Doctor? As the Doctor investigates, he unwittingly puts his friends in the gravest danger.

Plot
In another universe, a woman named Idris is led down a corridor by Auntie, with Idris admitting that she is afraid of what's about to happen to her. Auntie tells her that she is right to be afraid, as it will hurt, but that her actions will serve a greater purpose. A green-eyed Ood brings her onto a platform and drains her mind and soul in preparation for the arrival of a Time Lord.

In the main universe, the Doctor's TARDIS is floating in deep space; regardless of this, however, there is a knock at the door, thoroughly puzzling Amy and Rory. The Doctor, confused and intrigued, opens the door to find a small white cube, which flies into the TARDIS and whizzes about wildly before he is finally able to catch. When Amy and Rory wonder what it is, the Doctor excitedly responds that he has mail. He refers to the object as a hypercube -- a form of communication for Time Lords. This one is from the Doctor's old friend, the Corsair, and comes from outside the universe. They follow the signal, deleting the TARDIS rooms for fuel, and succeed in breaking the barriers of their universe, landing on an unfamiliar planet in a bubble universe. Upon landing, the TARDIS loses total power; the Doctor worriedly explains that the matrix -- the heart and soul of the TARDIS -- has completely vanished. They step out of the TARDIS to find that they've landed on a planetoid junkyard. Optimistically, the Doctor observes that the yard is full of Rift energy, and so the TARDIS should refuel.

They are spotted by Idris, who kisses, then bites the Doctor, calling him her "thief" while speaking madly. She is closely followed by Auntie, Uncle, and Nephew, the green-eyed Ood; all make their apologies for Idris, explaining that she is insane. The Doctor is excited to see Nephew and, in a gesture of goodwill, fixes his broken translation sphere; upon activating, it plays a series of interwoven distress messages from various Time Lords, instilling hope in the Doctor that there are other Time Lords who weren't corrupted by the events of the Time War alive nearby. Idris passes out, and Nephew carries her inside; additionally, Auntie and Uncle invite the Doctor and his companions to come speak to the House.

The House is, in fact, secreted matter formed around the sentient asteroid on which they've landed. House allows Auntie, Uncle, Nephew, and Idris to live in exchange for doing his will. The Doctor asks about the Time Lords, admitting to House that he is the last of his kind and that his TARDIS is the last TARDIS in existence. House offers the Doctor, Amy, and Rory free reign for as long as they'd like, giving them the opportunity to explore. The Doctor sends his companions on a fool's errand to retrieve his sonic screwdriver, which he claims to have left in the TARDIS; in fact, he has it with him, and uses it to lock the doors of the police box once Amy and Rory are secure inside. He traces the distress signals to a cupboard, where he discovers the horrific truth: the Ood's translation sphere was picking up a series of hypercubes, all transmitting similar distress signals from Time Lords that are now long dead. Auntie and Nephew -- at House's behest -- released the hypercube as a means of luring the Doctor to the asteroid. Distraught, the Doctor turns on them and deduces that House has been "repairing" them with bits and pieces of the Time Lords who have landed here. He tells them to run.

Back in the TARDIS, Amy and Rory realize that the Doctor has lied to them, but are distracted by a green glow that is suffusing the TARDIS, spilling in through the window.

The Doctor confronts Idris, who had foreseen the Doctor's anger over "the little boxes"; he wonders how she could have possibly known, leading her to reveal that she is, in fact, the TARDIS -- on landing, House removed the TARDIS matrix and implanted it in her body. While the Doctor is initially reluctant to believe her story, he comes to realize that it is true when she explains that she "borrowed" him because she wanted to see the universe, and he was the only Time Lord that was mad enough. He releases her from the cage in which she has been imprisoned and, with her help, deduces that the House "eats TARDISes" by feeding on the Rift energy bursting from them; but because he can't "eat" a TARDIS without blowing a hole in the universe, the House removed the matrix and placed it inside Idris with the hope that it would die off on its own, far away from the console room. Realizing that Amy and Rory are in danger, the Doctor rushes outside.

The TARDIS doors, however, are deadlocked, and Amy and Rory cannot escape; the Doctor can only watch as the House takes control of the TARDIS, prompting it to dematerialize and hurtle through the time vortex towards the bigger, energy-rich universe. Inside the control room, the House reveals his presence and explains that he will kill Amy and Rory unless they can defend why they should live; Rory claims House needs entertainment, and so House demands just that, ordering them to run -- which they do without much persuasion.

Back on the asteroid, Auntie and Uncle die without the House's presence to keep them alive. The Doctor realizes that Idris only has a short time left to live, and if they are to save Amy and Rory, they need to act fast. Remembering that they are in a "TARDIS junkyard," the Doctor and Idris decide to construct a TARDIS control console from the remnants of other models.

Running through the TARDIS corridors, Amy and Rory must contend with House's mind games; first, he separates them, placing Rory in a faster time stream than Amy whereby he ages and dies in a matter of minutes, devastating her. However, the true Rory unites with her soon afterwards.

The Doctor and Idris bond while constructing the new TARDIS console; Idris informs the Doctor that although she has not always taken him where he's wanted to go, she's always taken him where he's needed to go -- which he remembers fondly, expressing the desire to talk to her even when she's "inside the box." They manage to successfully launch the console and pursue the TARDIS through the vortex. Because House has raised the TARDIS's exterior shields, the Doctor orders Idris to send Amy a telepathic message, directing her to one of the old control rooms; she mistakes Rory for "the pretty one" and sends him the message instead. On their way to the console room, House continues to play with Amy's mind, turning off the lights so that she can't see. As Rory goes ahead, Amy is confronted by Nephew, who has been brought aboard to do House's bidding. The couple flees to the old control room only to find the doors locked; Idris sends Rory another telepathic message to give him the password. Amy, remembering the TARDIS interface is telepathic, mentally visualizes all four of the words, and they succeed in entering the control room that was used by the Doctor's Ninth and Tenth incarnations. They lower the shields.

As Nephew pursues them into the room, the makeshift console materializes, atomizing him. The Doctor reunites with Amy and Rory, introducing them to Idris, whose body is failing. Realizing how little time they have left, the Doctor engages the House, explaining that he will need the Doctor's help reentering the larger universe. He suggests that House delete 30% of the TARDIS rooms for extra fuel. The House agrees, firstly deleting the room in which they all stand.

However, instead of dying, they find themselves in the main control room, where the Doctor reveals the emergency failsafe the House failed to consider: all living things present in deleted rooms are automatically transported to the main control room. House sees no reason to delay killing the Doctor and his friends now that they have reached the main universe, leading the Doctor and Amy to enthusiastically congratulate him for defeating them; however, the Doctor is merely buying time, watching as Idris dies just after whispering something in Rory's ear. The Doctor reminds House of his plan -- to trap the matrix in a mortal body, where it would die off safely far away from the control room; however, this plan has failed, and because the matrix has been released into the console room. Upon entering the console, the matrix quickly overrides House and the entity screams in pain as it he is consumed.

The matrix has one last conversation with the Doctor, projecting itself as Idris's form into the room. She remembers the sad word she'd forgotten all along -- "alive" -- which the Doctor insists isn't sad until it's over. She also tells him the one thing she never got to say to him: "Hello." The Doctor pleads that he doesn't want her to go, but she disappears in a burst of light, whispering "I love you" before vanishing entirely. The heartbroken Doctor tearfully begins to work the console as Amy and Rory look on.

The Doctor works underneath the console platform, placing a firewall around the matrix to prevent it from being removed again. Rory admits to the Doctor that, before she died, Idris whispered, "The only water in the forest is the river," which she believed they'd need to know one day. As their bedroom was one of the ones deleted, the Doctor constructs them another but it disappointed that the two go for a double bed instead of a bunk bed like they had before. As the two head off the Doctor, now with a new appreciation of the TARDIS and his relationship with her, speaks to the console and tells her they can head wherever she wants... the Eye of Orion for some peace and relaxation or to wherever the TARDIS thinks he needs to go. One of the levers moves of its accord making the Doctor gleeful as he goes heading into another adventure with his oldest companion leading the way as always.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Matt Smith
 * Amy Pond - Karen Gillan
 * Rory Williams - Arthur Darvill
 * Idris / The TARDIS - Suranne Jones
 * Uncle - Adrian Schiller
 * Auntie - Elizabeth Berrington
 * Nephew - Paul Kasey
 * Voice of House - Michael Sheen

Crew
to be added

Real world

 * Rory asks the Doctor if the House is the "junkyard at the end of the universe", possibly a reference to Douglas Adams' "Restaurant at the End of the Universe".
 * One of the code words to enter the archived control room is "Delight", referencing the character of that name in Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" series, who (much like Idris/the TARDIS) speaks in odd but meaningful phrases.

Time Lords

 * The Doctor mentions an old Time Lord friend, the Corsair. This character had never been mentioned before, and was presumably killed by House after being drawn into the bubble universe.
 * The voices of many other Time Lords, male and female, are heard coming from other hypercubes and Nephew's voicebox

TARDIS
This episode offers many revelations of the nature of the TARDIS:
 * The Doctor references rebuilding the TARDIS before. (DW: The Claws of Axos, The Horns of Nimon)
 * The Doctor also references using rift energy to refuel the TARDIS (as seen in DW: Boom Town).
 * The matrix, described as the "soul of the TARDIS" by the Doctor, is sentient, appears to be female in nature, and has affection for the Doctor.
 * The TARDIS reveals her longstanding "unreliability" is intentional, as her aim is to take the Doctor "where you needed to go."
 * The TARDIS has (or, at least, had) several squash courts, as well as a scullery. The scullery and Squash Court Seven are deleted.
 * The TARDIS' swimming pool is also referenced, though it is also deleted; the pool had earlier made its way to the TARDIS library after the ship was damaged by the Doctor's regenerative energy (DW: The Eleventh Hour).
 * Idris/The TARDIS states that police box doors are meant to open outwards, and the Doctor has been ignoring those instructions all along. The "Pull to Open" instructions referenced are on the phone compartment, however, and seem to only refer to its own small door as seen in The Empty Child. It's possible the TARDIS is simply mistaken; either way, the Doctor continually pushing the doors open has been a cause of annoyance to her for seven hundred years.
 * Amy and Rory's deleted bedroom had bunk beds. It is later replaced with another bedroom that, per their request, doesn't have bunk beds.
 * Time can be manipulated within the TARDIS itself, with two people near each other able to experience different time streams and alternate timelines (such as one in which Rory spends two thousand years alone).
 * Locked doors in the TARDIS are unlocked telepathically by envisioning passwords.
 * The TARDIS has archived approximately thirty past and future control rooms, even though the Doctor recalls only changing the desktop a dozen times. The TARDIS is able to make these old control rooms available at will, including in this instance the control room used by the Ninth and Tenth Doctors.
 * The current version of the TARDIS still has many corridors (a fact of which House was unaware before he hijacked it), but not all run horizontal. Anti-gravity is usually employed for accessing vertical tunnels, though ladders are also available.

Story notes

 * This episode was originally planned as the eleventh episode of Series 5, but because of budget limitations, was delayed until Series 6.
 * In an interview with Neil Gaiman on BBC breakfast he revealed that his episode is "very spooky" and that fans "are likely to be biting their nails off by the end".
 * Michael Sheen is credited as Voice of House on-screen, and as House in Radio Times.
 * On his blog, writer Neil Gaiman released a short conversation between Amy and the Doctor that did not make the final cut in the episode he wrote.
 * This episode had the working title of Bigger on the Inside. That title was eventually used for the Confidential episode for this story.
 * While it has been hinted at before a few times in the franchise, most directly in the ending of DW: The End of Time, this episode offers the first concrete confirmation that Time Lords can change genders when they regenerate. This was a deliberate addition to the mythos on Gaiman's part.
 * Gaiman had wanted to use a classic-series-era console room for the sequences in the archived control room, but a set could not be reconstructed due to budgetary constraints. Instead the Tenth Doctor's console was left standing in the studio at Gaiman's request, secretly waiting to be used in this episode.
 * Early drafts of the script featured more of Idris before having her soul removed, more backstory about the Corsair's relationship with the Doctor , more TARDIS rooms , burial of Idris' corpse and clear indication that House survived its defeat.
 * Neil Gaiman read the written text of his script in a video short posted on the BBC. The last lines of the script indicated that the TARDIS took the Doctor and his friends "somewhere that is almost certainly not the Eye of Orion".
 * The TARDIS corridors built for this story are now standing sets, available for use in future stories.
 * Since the series was revived in 2005, any episode to feature classic alien species would include a tribute in the end credits (with the exception of the Silurians for unknown reasons, until they were ultimately credited in DW: A Good Man Goes to War), crediting the aliens' original creator - e.g., "Daleks created by Terry Nation". This is the first episode to utilise this credit with an alien created in the revived series - specifically, "Ood created by Russell T Davies". The complete change in the production team before Series 5 could be in part the reason behind this.
 * The Junk TARDIS console was the subject of a 2009 design competition on Blue Peter. The winning design was by then-12-year-old Susannah Leah, whose subsequent visits to the BBC Art Department and location filming for this story was featured in the 10 May 2011 episode of Blue Peter.
 * The junkyard of TARDISes references the first appearance of the TARDIS in An Unearthly Child, when it was sitting in a junkyard.
 * According to The Doctor Who Companion: The Eleventh Doctor Vol. 3, the gibberish Idris is heard speaking in her cell (prior to asking about fish fingers and referencing the motorbike) was supposed to be "The only water in the forest is the river" backwards.
 * Also according to The Doctor Who Companion: The Eleventh Doctor Vol. 3, Gaiman originally created a new alien for Nephew, but was asked to choose a previously established race when the budget didn't allow for the creation of a new monster.
 * According to Gaiman, writing in The Brilliant Book 2012, up until the day shooting began the episode was to have begun with a shot-on-location sequence showing the hypercube inadvertently saving the Doctor, Rory and Amy from being sacrificed by a group of aliens. Later dubbed the "Planet of the Rain Gods" sequence, Gaiman writes it was rewritten as a TARDIS control room scene when the production schedule changed leaving insufficient time to film the planned opening. The Brilliant Book 2012 includes a comic strip adaptation of the aborted opening.
 * The Seventh Doctor comic story, Nineveh, contains the same narrative backdrop of this story. In the comic, the Doctor is drawn to a world outside normal space which is a junkyard for old TARDISes. There, a figure called the Watcher of Nineveh has been luring Time Lords to their deaths. The Doctor himself is nearly killed, because the Watcher has the ability to penetrate and inhabit the Doctor's TARDIS, just as he did all the others. That said, the earlier story doesn't even hint at the personification of the TARDIS, beyond the fact that the Doctor calls the TARDIS "old girl". Nor does Nineveh feature any companions or people on the "junkyard planet".
 * The Eleventh Doctor Companion mentions additional script elements that were cut before broadcast, including the fact the TARDIS indicates that the chameleon circuit is not broken - she simply stays as a police box because the Doctor likes it; and, during their farewell conversation, the TARDIS was to tell the Doctor he was forgiven for his actions in the Time War (providing narrative bookending to the earlier discussion about the Doctor wanting to be forgiven).

Ratings

 * 7.97 million (34.7% market share)

Myths

 * There were rumours this story would be set in a giant doll's house this also seems more likely due to the working title of his story being "The House of Nothing". Incorrect, House was an asteroid. However, the episode Night Terrors was set in a giant doll's house.
 * Suranne Jones' Idris is the Doctor's wife. Whilst Idris was not the Doctor's marital wife, she was his TARDIS in human form, and had many attributes of a wife.

Filming locations
to be added

Production errors

 * When Amy finds the aged Rory it is obvious that his arms and hands are still those of a young man. (No make-up or appliances were added to age them.)
 * When the Doctor reaches for the phone in his pocket to call Amy and Rory, the camera is facing his back. In the next shot, however, when the camera is facing his front, he repeats the action.

Continuity

 * The Doctor asserts that he killed all of the Time Lords. (DW: The End of Time)
 * The Cloister Bell rings as House takes control of the TARDIS. (DW: Logopolis, The Waters of Mars)
 * An Ood appears and the Doctor mentions his continuing inability to save them. (DW: The Satan Pit, Planet of the Ood)
 * The Doctor tells Uncle and Auntie to "Basically, run!". He said the same thing to the Atraxi. (DW: The Eleventh Hour)
 * The TARDIS previously took on the form of the Brigadier to communicate with the Doctor in BFA: Zagreus 
 * A hallucination of an aged Rory mentions waiting two thousand years for Amy, 'and you did it to me again'. (DW: The Big Bang)
 * Amy's thought of delight is her wedding. (DW: The Big Bang)
 * The Doctor mentions he had an umbrella that resembled the patchwork of body parts that Uncle and Auntie both have. Said umbrella was on the Fourth Doctor's coat rack, though it is associated most with the Sixth Doctor, and was used briefly by the Seventh Doctor. It resembled the multicoloured coat worn by the Sixth Doctor.
 * Behind the Doctor's back, Amy and Rory again discuss what they are going to do with him concerning them witnessing the death of his eleven hundred three year old self. (DW: The Impossible Astronaut, The Curse of the Black Spot)
 * The Doctor previously sent a message by hypercube. (DW: The War Games)
 * Previous TARDISes in human form include Marie in PDA Alien Bodies, Compassion from EDA: The Shadows of Avalon to EDA: The Ancestor Cell and Glinda in BFA: Omega, though they were evolved future TARDISes. The idea of TARDIS minds in human bodies was also seen in BFA: Unregenerate!.
 * The previous TARDIS console room appears for the first time since DW: The Eleventh Hour.
 * The TARDIS first used psychic connection to send messages (and to frighten) its inhabitants in DW: The Edge of Destruction.
 * Extra energy is given to the TARDIS by deleting various rooms of the TARDIS. (DW: Logopolis, Castrovalva)
 * The Doctor offers to take Amy and Rory to the Eye of Orion. (DW: The Five Doctors)
 * Idris/The TARDIS states she has all of the older control rooms saved in her archives, as well as many that have not been seen yet. (IDW: Tesseract)
 * Idris/The TARDIS tells the Doctor that although she didn't take him to where he wanted to go, she took him to where he needed to go, which explains most of the times that the TARDIS gets the flight wrong (e.g. landing on the Moon rather than Mars).
 * Idris/The TARDIS mentions the Doctor "bringing in strays"; Martha Jones made a similar comparison to the Doctor's practice of taking on companions. (DW: Utopia)
 * The Doctor and the TARDIS reference the ability to change the TARDIS 'desktop theme'. (DW: Time Crash)
 * The inhabitants of House's asteroid refer to themselves by familial titles, much like the Family of Blood. (DW: Human Nature / The Family of Blood)
 * While housing the Matrix, Idris names herself 'Sexy' in reference to the Doctor calling her 'you sexy thing'. (DW: The Eleventh Hour)
 * The TARDIS says that she likes it when the Doctor calls her "old girl", which the Doctor did numerous times. (DW: Planet of the Spiders)
 * The TARDIS calls the Doctor her "thief", and they discuss how he stole (or "borrowed") her. The Doctor's theft or 'borrowing' of the TARDIS has been referenced in previous television stories, notably The War Games and The Five Doctors. However the script twists this by suggesting the TARDIS allowed him to take her.
 * The Doctor says that the place they materialise is filled with rift energy, which will enable the TARDIS to power up quickly. (DW: Boom Town, Utopia)
 * While trying (unsuccessfully) to get into the TARDIS, the Doctor snaps his fingers to gain access. (DW: Forest of the Dead, DW: The Eleventh Hour and DW: Day of the Moon)
 * Ian Chesterton was the first to observe of the TARDIS "It's alive!" (DW: An Unearthly Child)
 * The Third Doctor previously travelled using just the TARDIS console. (DW: Inferno)
 * Idris claims that she's known the Doctor for approximately seven hundred years (the Doctor claimed he was nine hundred nine years old in The Impossible Astronaut), implying that he stole the TARDIS when he was approximately two hundred nine years old. However, the Doctor's age as given in the post-2005 series does not correspond with his age as given in the classic series (DW: Time and the Rani) so it's not possible to confirm his exact age when he stole her.
 * Idris claims that the Doctor has walked past the "Pull to Open" sign on the TARDIS door for the past seven hundred years. The TARDIS has been using the police box disguise since the events of An Unearthly Child, suggesting that from the Doctor's point of view, seven hundred years have passed since that time giving, for the first time, a timeline for the Doctor's adventures since then (regardless of the question of the Doctor's age, the TARDIS' figure can be taken as definitive).
 * If the TARDIS has had the police box form for 700 years, and the Doctor has been travelling in her for 700 years, this also means the events of An Unearthly Child occurred not long after the Doctor stole the TARDIS, since she took the form of the police box for the first time when the First Doctor and Susan arrived in London in 1963.
 * Idris is annoyed that the Doctor never reads instructions. The Doctor once admitted he threw the TARDIS instruction manual into a supernova because he disagreed with it. (DW: Amy's Choice)
 * Idris tells Rory to tell the Doctor "The only water in the forest is the river". The significance of these words is revealed in DW: A Good Man Goes to War.
 * The Junk TARDIS console features safety belts to hold onto, a feature seen on the console of the Doctor's TARDIS in DW: Timelash.
 * This story marks the first time that a TARDIS (or parts thereof) other than the Doctor's have been shown on-screen since DW: Time and the Rani.
 * This story also marks the first time on screen that the Doctor has been shown piloting a TARDIS other than his own.
 * The fact that old console rooms were archived within the TARDIS had previously been a major plot point in the Tenth Doctor comic book story IDW: Tesseract, however this episode contradicts a key element of that story: in the comic book, the Doctor is well aware of the archiving, but in the episode this fact takes him by surprise.

Adaptations

 * The Brilliant Book 2012 includes a 3-page comic strip adapting the unused opening sequence for the episode, under the title Planet of the Rain Gods.
 * In interviews given in June 2011, Gaiman indicated that he was in talks with BBC Books about writing a novelisation of The Doctor's Wife.

Home video releases
Released as Series 6 Part 1 with The Impossible Astronaut, Day of the Moon, The Curse of the Black Spot, The Rebel Flesh, The Almost People and A Good Man Goes to War on 11 July 2011.