Who Reviews The Doctor's Wife by S.F. Cambridge

 

Staring Matt Smith as The Doctor, Karen Gillan as Amy Pond & Arthur Darvill as Rory Williams 

The Doctor: “Sorry. Do you have a name?”

Idris: “Seven hundred years, finally he asks.”

The Doctor: “And what do I call you?”

Idris: “I think you call me… Sexy!”

The Doctor: “Only when we’re alone.”

Idris: “We are alone!”

The Doctor: “Oh. Come on then, Sexy” 

After receiving “space mail” directly to the TARDIS in the form of a small floating cube, The Doctor, Amy and Rory soon realise it’s a distress call from one of the Time Lords known as The Corsair and follow the signal to what looks like a junkyard planet which is sitting just outside the universe in what The Doctor calls, a pocket universe. 

Immediately after landing the TARDIS mysteriously shuts down and its matrix disappears as though it has been deleted. Somehow, during it deleting it gets placed inside a woman called Idris who becomes confused and disorientated from being outside its usual constraints of the TARDIS. 

Discovering the only inhabitants of the strange planet are Idris, two other beings called Aunty and Uncle and an OOD, The Doctor soon comes to learn that they are made up of body parts from dead Timelords and that the planet known as House, is actually alive and eats TARDISes by feeding on the rift energy bursting from them and that it has been using the distress calls of Timelords to lure them to him. As it did with The Doctor. 

House: “Fear me. I’ve killed hundreds of Time Lords.”

The Doctor: “Fear me. I’ve killed all of them” 

The Doctor sends Amy and Rory back to the TARDIS to keep them safe and locks them in without realising that House has now transported itself into the empty Blue Box in order to plan it’s escape from The Doctor but upon finding Amy and Rory inside, it starts playing a deadly game with them as he chases them down corridors, playing with their minds before he decides to capture and kill them. 

Rory: “Killing us quickly wouldn’t be any fun. And you need fun, don’t you? That’s what Auntie and Uncle were for, wasn’t it? Someone to make you suffer. I had a PE teacher just like you.” 

The Doctor and Idris hatch a plan to save them when they find out that the junkyard is actually full of broken TARDISes which destresses them both but they overcome their grief and work together using their combined knowledge and Idris’ power of flight to construct a makeshift console that can travel through time and space and with their help, they managed to combine it with the TARDIS and save the day as well as Amy and Rory by putting the TARDIS's matrix back to the TARDIS and destroying House. 

The Doctor: “Yes. Yes, I have actually rebuilt a TARDIS before, you know. I know what I’m doing.”

Idris: “You’re like a nine-year-old trying to rebuild a motorbike in his bedroom. And you never read the instructions.”

The Doctor: “I always read the instructions.”

Idris: “There’s a sign on my front door. You have been walking past it for seven hundred years. What does it say?”

The Doctor: “That’s not instructions!”

Idris: “There’s an instruction at the bottom. What does it say?”

The Doctor: “Pull to open.”

Idris: “Yes, and what do you do?”

The Doctor: “I push!”

Idris: “Every single time. Seven hundred years. Police box doors open out the way.”

The Doctor: “I think I have earned the right to open my front doors anyway I want.”

Idris: “Your front doors? Have you any idea how childish that sounds?” 

A remnant of the TARDIS's matrix, in Idris' body, states that she will not be able to speak to the Doctor again but will be there for him. Idris's body then disappears as the TARDIS matrix is fully restored. 

There are far too many spoilers…sweetie…. to go into with a full in-depth review as I think an episode like this is far better watched the first time without knowing the full details, but the above quote does beg the question and maybe the answer of how long The Doctor has been travelling since he left Gallifrey which appears to be for 700 years! 

One of the best episodes of Matt Smith’s time as the runaway Timelord simply because of the chemistry between The Doctor and Idris (Played by Suranne Jones) was so intense that you could quite easily have believed that she was in fact his TARDIS in human form.

Complicated, funny and loyal, she was everything you would expect the TARDIS to be if it could in fact have spoken to The Doctor. Their banter was very true to form of any husband and wife and they seemed to connect instantly as if it was true love at first sight. 

I think this episode highlighted The Doctor’s loneliness and his need for a companion that was truly his own. His delight upon realising who Idris was, was a very special moment as was his complete sadness when he knew she had to go. It was a sad ending but a fitting tribute to the relationship that the two had developed over the years they had been travelling together. 

But…this wouldn’t be Doctor Who without a cliff-hanger and a forward look into Amy and Rory’s future as Idris had a clairvoyant way of seeing this seeing as she could see the whole of time and space, but not always in the right order which would explain why The Doctor never managed to get to the right place at the right time and perhaps why he and River Song met the day she died after knowing him for many years even though that day just so happened to be the first time he had ever met her. 

Idris: “The only water in the forest is the River” 

Funny, intriguing, hopeful, worrying, sad and heart racing energy. This episode has it all.