May 24: "The Doctor's Wife"

In 1983, producer John Nathan-Turner was concerned that he had a fan leak somewhere in the Doctor Who production office, so he laid a deliberate trap: on the planning board in his office, in place of The Caves of Androzani, he wrote "The Doctor's Wife by Robert Holmes" as a fake title to see who would bite.  (I've never heard if anyone did.)  But since that title entered fanlore, it's probably been only a matter of time until a real story under that name would show up.  Fortunately, the story we got was so much better than anything we could have imagined with that title.

"The Doctor's Wife" is by Neil Gaiman, who rivals Douglas Adams for the title of "most famous author to write for Doctor Who" (the other primary contenders are Richard Curtis ("Vincent and the Doctor") and Frank Cottrell Boyce ("In the Forest of the Night")), and it's likely because he's so well-known and highly regarded that they've let him play with the mythology of the show so much.  You can tell that Gaiman has fond memories of the old show -- how else to explain the use of the Time Lord distress cube that we last saw way back in The War Games? -- and that he's drawing on that to write this story.  And so we get a strange entity that tricks Time Lords and feeds on TARDISes, only it's found out that there are no more TARDISes coming, so it's time to head into the real universe from the bubble universe it's inside.

But of course, if you're hiring Neil Gaiman to write an episode for your show, it's probably because you're looking for the qualities that Gaiman brings, that sense of magic mixed with the ordinary, of fantastic situations that characters nevertheless react rationally to, and "The Doctor's Wife" doesn't disappoint on that front.  And so we get the marvelously wonderful and audacious conceit of taking the "soul" of the TARDIS (for lack of a better word) and putting it inside a humanoid body (that of Suranne Jones, who was the Mona Lisa in the Sarah Jane Adventures story Mona Lisa's Revenge), which allows the Doctor to have a conversation with his TARDIS.  But it's not just that; Neil Gaiman takes 48 years of the show's history and turns it on its head:

IDRIS: Do you ever wonder why I chose you all those years ago?
DOCTOR: I chose you.  You were unlocked.
IDRIS: Of course I was.  I wanted to see the universe, so I stole a Time Lord and I ran away.  And you were the only one mad enough.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Doctor's Wife)

Idris and the Doctor in the junkyard TARDIS. ("The Doctor's
Wife") ©BBC

A simple, quick piece of dialogue, but it changes our whole understanding of things -- and the episode's filled with lovely little touches like that.  (There's the "Pull to Open" discussion²³⁰, but my favorite bit is how Idris/the TARDIS reminds the Doctor that the first thing he ever said to her was that she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever known -- there's something oddly wonderful about imagining Hartnell saying that.)  This is a story that is absolutely in love with the show and the mythology that's been created, but it isn't so reverent that it causes everything to sink.  There's just the right balance to make this feel wonderful and special.

And while we could justly laud the other elements of this story (Amy and Rory's chase through the TARDIS corridors (ooh, TARDIS corridors!  It's been ages since we've seen any of those) is tense and scary, and the mind tricks House is playing on Amy are genuinely creepy; the way Idris thinks that Rory is the "pretty one" is wonderful; the appearance of the ninth/tenth Doctor's "coral" TARDIS console room is thrilling; the way the junkyard TARDIS is the result of a Blue Peter contest; "Fear me, I've killed all of them"; and so much more), ultimately this story is about the one thing always with the Doctor: his TARDIS, the closest thing to a wife we've ever seen him have.  "Look at you pair," Amy says at the end.  "It's always you and her, isn't it, long after the rest of us have gone.  A boy and his box, off to see the universe."  And it is.  And for one brief moment, the Doctor got to talk to his TARDIS and hear her reply.  It's mad, bold, magic, and beautiful, and more evidence that even after 48 years, the show still has the ability to surprise us, and to do so with both style and heart.  Little wonder it won the Hugo.








²³⁰ As many people pointed out after this episode was broadcast, the "Pull to Open" message refers to the door on the phone compartment, not the main door.  But that doesn't actually change Gaiman's point, which is that real police box doors did indeed open outward -- the TARDIS doors open inward because of space concerns in the '60s studio.  (Note, for comparison, that the doors of Tardis open outward in both Peter Cushing films, where floor space isn't an issue.)