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 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 scared of something that's about to happen. She is told everything will be all right; she serves a greater purpose by being drained of her mind and soul in preparation for the arrival of a Time Lord. A green-eyed Ood does this.

In the main universe, the Doctor's TARDIS is in flight through deep space. There's a knock on the door, perplexing Rory and Amy. The Eleventh Doctor, confused and intrigued, opens the doors to reveal a cube of light. The Doctor beckons it in, but it knocks him down before whizzing about wildly until he manages to catch it. Amy and Rory wonder what he has and the Doctor gleefully responds "I've got mail!"

The Doctor explains the object is a hypercube, a form of communication for Time Lords. This one is from the Doctor's old friend, the Corsair. The message comes from "outside the Universe". They follow the signal, deleting TARDIS rooms for fuel. They land in the bubble universe. The TARDIS loses power. The Doctor seems perplexed at the idea. It's actually due to a different cause than before: the matrix, the soul of the TARDIS, has vanished. They open the doors and see the planetoid they've landed on is a junkyard.

They are spotted by Idris, who kisses, then bites the Doctor, calling him 'her thief', and speaking madly. She is closely followed by Auntie, Uncle and Nephew, a green-eyed Ood. They apologise for Idris, saying she is insane, and Nephew takes her to get some rest. Idris asks if there's an 'off switch' and falls asleep before being carried off.

Auntie and Uncle lead them into a cavern to meet House. The planetoid is accreted matter around a sentient asteroid. House allows Auntie, Idris, Nephew and Uncle to live upon him in exchange for doing his will. The Doctor proclaims he wishes to find and help any living Time Lords; he also tells House he is the last of the Time Lords and his TARDIS is the last one. He sends Amy and Rory back to the TARDIS to find his sonic screwdriver in his spare coat. Once they reach the TARDIS, the Doctor locks them in with his sonic screwdriver (he had it with him) and heads towards the distress signals.

The Doctor finds a cupboard full of hypercubes that keep repeating distress calls from Time Lords. Distraught, he notices Auntie and Uncle behind him. The Doctor tells them that losing hope is enough to drive anyone mad, but it could be worse with him. He now discovers House has been "repairing" them: they've been jigsawed together from bits and pieces of unfortunate Time Lords who found their ways to the planet. They remind him of his Sixth incarnation's umbrella, and he tells them to run.

Back in the TARDIS, Amy and Rory have no success in their fool's errand and notice that a green glow is suffusing the TARDIS. As the Cloister Bell rings, the Doctor runs to the TARDIS, shouting. He fails to unlock the doors, to the horror of Amy and Rory. The TARDIS dematerialises and hurtles off towards the bigger, energy-rich universe. Inside the control room, House announces he has complete control of the TARDIS and will kill Amy and Rory if they don't give a reason not to. Rory claims that House needs entertainment; killing them quickly wouldn't be fun, buying them time. They head for the TARDIS' corridors. House separates them. Amy is sent into mind-games of a fake Rory ageing, attacking Amy and finally dying (his madness similar to Omega's), before the real Rory finds her.

Back on House's old shell, the Doctor finds Idris, who tells him that she houses the TARDIS' soul. They talk (and flirt) until their non-linear flow of conversation begins to make sense and the Doctor lets her out of her cage. They again meet Auntie and Uncle, who drop dead, unable to live without House to repair them. The Doctor realises Idris has little time to live. They agree to rebuild a TARDIS console from all the junk, while they bond. Idris infuses the mechanical bits with a part of her inherent energy (matrix/soul) to allow them to follow House.

House has raised the shields of the TARDIS to prevent anyone from entering. The Doctor has Idris send a telepathic message to 'the pretty one' on how to get to a backup control-room; Idris sends the message to Rory instead of Amy. They arrive outside a door which opens when Amy mentally visualises four words sent to Rory. Inside the control room used by the Ninth and Tenth Doctors, they lower the shields as they are followed by House's obedient puppet, Nephew. The junk TARDIS lands on the Ood, blasting him into atoms. The Doctor quickly introduces Amy and Rory to Idris and engages House, offering to help him enter the main universe. The Doctor suggests House delete 30% of the rooms for power. House agrees - and deletes the room the group are in.

They are suddenly standing in the main control room; all living things in deleted rooms are transported there. House doesn't care; the TARDIS has reached the normal universe and he can use whatever method he pleases to kill them. The Doctor congratulates House on defeating them, while Idris, dying, whispers something into Rory's ear. The Doctor reveals that House's plan was to trap the matrix in a mortal body, then allow it to die and be released a long way from the TARDIS. Instead, the matrix has been released inside the control room and merges with the TARDIS. It purges House. The matrix has one last conversation with the Doctor, saying the word she never got to say to him: "Hello." The Doctor begins to cry, and pleads with her not to leave him, but it is too late and she vanishes, whispering "I love you". The heartbroken Doctor tearfully begins to work the console again, as an equally upset Rory and Amy look on.

The Doctor is putting a firewall around the matrix as he works under the console platform. Rory says that before she died, Idris told him 'the only water in the forest is the River', and that they'll need to know that some day. Thinking Amy and Rory need to rest, the Doctor suggests that he take them to the Eye of Orion for the peaceful atmosphere and quickly remakes Amy and Rory's room (without bunk beds per their request), sending them off to bed. Though Rory stalls to ask the Doctor if he has a bedroom of his own, Amy quickly grabs his arm and takes him into the corridor. The Doctor tries to talk to the matrix again, wondering if it agrees with going to the Eye of Orion and is rewarded when the speed lever pulls itself, making him laugh joyfully.

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 makes many revelations regarding 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 previously 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 700 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 located 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 10th 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".

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 11th July 2011.