June 30: "She Said, He Said - A Prequel" / "Clarence and the Whispermen" / "The Name of the Doctor" / "The Inforarium" / "Clara and the TARDIS" / "Rain Gods"

They've been pulling back on the online prequel teasers recently, but now it's time for the series 7 finale so they make a return.  The nice thing about the prequel teasers is that usually they provide a nice taste of what's to come and are entertaining in their own right.  "She Said, He Said" is the exception to that trend, however.  It's genuinely painful in places, watching first Jenna-Louise Coleman and then Matt Smith wander through what appears to be the BBC Wales prop department, telling us all things we already know.  I suppose they wanted to add mystery to the upcoming episode, but this prequel lacks the trust that the show has been generally quite good at placing in the audience, and so it's a general misfire and the weakest of all the prequels to date.

"Clarence and the Whispermen" is a much better prequel for "The Name of the Doctor"²⁴⁹, as it gives us a glimpse of strange creatures called Whispermen, who come for a man named Clarence with a message for the "reptile detective", in exchange for a pardon.  It's a nice moody piece, even if at this point we have no idea what its meaning is.

But then it's on to "The Name of the Doctor" itself, which opens in a surprising way: it tells us upfront who Clara actually is.  "I'm Clara Oswald.  I'm the Impossible Girl.  I was born to save the Doctor."  And this is accompanied by clips of former Doctors, as she tries to get their attention and largely fails.  These clips are genuinely thrilling to see -- there's something about bits from things like The Invasion of Time, Arc of Infinity, The Five Doctors, and Dragonfire being broadcast at 7:00 pm on a Saturday in 2013 that's amazing and wonderful to behold (although, did they have to use McCoy dangling from that cliff from his umbrella?).  And we even get a look at the first Doctor leaving Gallifrey all those years ago, furtively ushering Susan into a faulty TARDIS.

Clara, Strax, the Doctor, Vastra, and Jenny prepare to enter
the Doctor's tomb, surrounded by Whisper Men. ("The Name of
the Doctor") ©BBC

So, we know Clara isn't a trick or a trap, and thus we're free to focus on the rest of the episode.  This involves the Great Intelligence's third appearance this series (and consequently more appearances here than in the 20th century -- so does that make him a 21st-century villain now?), and the trap he lays for the Doctor's friends, the Paternoster Gang, in an effort to lure the Doctor himself into the trap.  It seems the Intelligence has learned something important about the Doctor: "The Doctor has a secret, you know.  He has one he will take to the grave.  And it is discovered," Clarence tells Vastra (thus tying in with the prequel, as it's the Intelligence who's given Clarence the information).  This is what leads Vastra to perform her telepathic conference call, which also includes Clara and River Song (in what's to date her last appearance on the show (well, "Rain Gods" excepted, but we'll get there)).  There's a lot of setup going on, as this trap is baited, but what's impressive is how well it works.  We have a scene that consists of five people talking around a table that ends up being a fascinating and tense moment -- and when we learn that the Whisper Men (as it's spelled in the closing credits) have killed Jenny and surrounded Vastra and Strax, we know just how high the stakes are.

But what's most impressive about "The Name of the Doctor" is Matt Smith.  His scene with Clara in the Maitlands' place, where he blinks back tears after hearing about Trenzalore and realizing that he's confronting his future and his death, is a fabulous piece of acting, but it's just part and parcel of everything he does here.  Whether it's running through the secret passage to his tomb, confronting the Great Intelligence, or his emotional interaction with River, Smith is incredibly watchable, drawing the eye in every moment.  It's therefore a credit to everyone else here that they can hold their own, and the result is an extremely good cast giving their all.

The tomb of the Doctor. ("The Name of the Doctor") ©BBC

It helps they've been given good material to work with.  "The Name of the Doctor" is about the future coming back to haunt us, and while it's emphatically concerned with the big questions that have been raised (why does Clara keep appearing?  Who actually is the Doctor?  What's going to happen at the Fall of the Eleventh?), it doesn't lose focus on the details.  It may be about the Doctor's final battle, but it's things like the Great Intelligence's desire to die, not to triumph (although he wants to take the Doctor with him as he goes), that make this special.  The idea that a Time Lord leaves not a body but a tear in the fabric of reality when they die is a clever, lyrical idea, and the use of it to defeat the Doctor (by having the Intelligence enter the wound and rewrite all the Doctor's victories as defeats) is interesting -- the effect it has on the universe is impressive, but when you see how it affects Strax and Jenny, it's given a smaller, more personal element as well.

And that of course leads to the climactic moments, as Clara follows the Great Intelligence into the Doctor's time stream to undo the damage, which leads to all the clips again -- and we see that Clara is the one who told the Doctor which TARDIS to steal, among other things.  It's a neat idea, and it's up to the Doctor to rescue her -- which leads to that glorious confrontation with River's ghost, where he ends up kissing her ("Since nobody else in this room can see you, God knows how that looked," he remarks afterwards, which leads to a marvelous cut to Strax, Jenny, and Vastra looking on in confusion) before finally, properly saying goodbye to her.  It's the Doctor at his most vulnerable and at his best, and it's a great prelude to his rescue of Clara.

The one who broke the promise. ("The Name of the Doctor")
©BBC

"The Name of the Doctor" has been a lot of things up to this point, a balancing act of the big with the small, and it's generally been a satisfying piece of television that's done a good job of accomplishing just that.  As a piece of foreshadowing (remember, Matt Smith only has two stories left) it works extremely well.  As a story in its own right it's slightly less successful, but it does a good job of resolving Clara's "Impossible Girl" storyline as well as the Great Intelligence strand that's run through this year's stories.  If that's all "The Name of the Doctor" had been, it would have been enough, to have that story matched with those fabulous performances.  But it's those last few moments that change everything, that make this into something surprising and incredible.  The Doctor rescuing Clara is a beautiful moment ("You're my Impossible Girl.  How many times have you saved me, Clara?  Just this once, just for the hell of it, let me save you"), but it leads into that fabulous cliffhanger, as the Doctor observes a figure with its back to him and tries to get away:

CLARA: Who's that?
DOCTOR: Never mind.  Let's go back.
CLARA: But who is he?
DOCTOR: He's me.  There's only me here, that's the point.  Now let's get back.
CLARA: But I never saw that one.  I saw all of you.  Eleven faces, all of them you.  You're the eleventh Doctor.
DOCTOR: I said he was me.  I never said he was the Doctor.
CLARA: I don't understand.
DOCTOR: Look, my name, my real name, that is not the point.  The name I chose is the Doctor.  The name you choose, it's like, it's like a promise you make.  He's the one who broke the promise. ... He is my secret.
FIGURE: What I did, I did without choice.
DOCTOR: I know.
FIGURE: In the name of peace and sanity.
DOCTOR: But not in the name of the Doctor!

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Name of the Doctor)

And look! It's John Hurt (now Sir John) as that figure, who is revealed to be...the Doctor?  Now that's a cliffhanger to send out series 7 on.

Series 7 is a bit of an odd beast, just by the nature of airing over a two-year span instead of the typical one.  And admittedly, series 7 does have a disjointed feeling -- even beyond being spread across two years, those two separate runs feel different from each other.  Part of that might be down to the changes being rung (new companions, Doctor outfit, control room, title sequence...), but it's also the case that the focus shifts between 2012 and 2013.  2012 seemed more interested in exploring the Doctor himself, about whether he was as good a man as we all assumed he was, while the 2013 stories are focused on Clara and who she really is.  The advantage of this is that the Doctor's character snaps back into focus as being generally heroic and morally upstanding, which feels more natural than trying to explore the darker sides.  That's not to say that darkness shouldn't be explored, but there was a sense in series 6 and the first part of series 7 that that was all the scriptwriters were interested in.  It's nice to get a change of scenery.

Another change of scenery regards that overarching plot.  It's still more prevalent than during Russell T Davies' era, but Steven Moffat seems to have taken aboard some of the criticisms regarding series 6, which means that this series' "Impossible Girl" is much more straightforward in the telling -- there are less mental gymnastics involved this time around.  I think the idea that series 6's plotline is too convoluted is wrong, but it is the case that many of the episodes last time around were very heavy on that storyline, in order to accommodate that storyline.  This doesn't happen here.  Now you may prefer or disprefer that (I know at least one person in the latter category, who couldn't understand why we were bothering with planet-sized parasites and Cold War Ice Warriors instead of getting on with the Clara storyline), but it is the case that these episodes stand alone much more easily, and thus are a little more casual viewer-friendly.

But the main thing to note is that series 7 has continued their run of consistently good stories -- in fact, it's an improvement on series 6 just by virtue of there being more variety in the stories we got.  It's no mean feat when the vast majority of your episodes are clear winners, and it simply confirms that this production team definitely know what they're doing.  The confidence that bursts from every scene is evidence of that, and it certainly seems like we're in safe hands as we approach the 50th anniversary.  And if the end of "The Name of the Doctor" is proof of anything, it's that after almost 50 years there are still plenty of surprises left in this show.

(Oh, and before we go, three more quick disc-only mini-episodes to discuss: "The Inforarium" details one of the Doctor's efforts to erase himself from history, and is charming and clever.  "Clara and the TARDIS", meanwhile, gives us a bit more insight into Clara's somewhat fractious relationship with the TARDIS, and this shows that it's definitely not just in her head (as you might have wondered).  It's also fun, even if you have to wonder when Clara was actually sleeping in the TARDIS instead of just being dropped off by the Doctor at the end of every adventure.  And finally, "Rain Gods" is an adaptation by Steven Moffat of a scene cut from the beginning of Neil Gaiman's "The Doctor's Wife", with River substituted for Amy and Rory.  It's harmless and a bit daft, but as it doesn't overstay its welcome (none of these run much longer than two minutes) we can forgive it some minor silliness.)








²⁴⁹ Or at least it would have been if it had come out ahead of time, but strictly speaking I'm cheating again with regards to release dates: this wasn't available until roughly a week after the broadcast, as part of the Series 7, Part 2 (and then also later The Complete Seventh Series) boxset.