Welcome back for this week’s thoughts on the latest episode of Doctor Who. This week’s episode is written by everyone’s favorite Neil Gaiman! Everyone’s favorite, that is – except for me. While I certainly have nothing against the rather diverse and prolific writer, he is certainly not one whose work I purposefully gravitate to based on the books of his I have read. In fact, while discussing Gaiman with another writer of the site, I noted that Gaiman to me is like Batman, since everybody seems to love him and I just don’t get what the big deal is.
So with the pressure high on Gaiman to prove me wrong, does “The Doctor’s Wife” end up being a success of an episode, or another story of his that takes me a year or so to finish? Find out after the cut!
As a note, some spoilers are discussed.
I have quite a few friends who watch Doctor Who with me now, which I assume is due to the large push done by BBC America to bring the show to new audiences with the last season. It’s kind of a refreshing thing, because I used to only be able to talk about Doctor Who with two people. Now I get a fair amount of e-mails/texts about it, one of which read, “I think Gaiman is overrated, but when he’s on he is on” (obviously I added the italics). In only a few words, I think that sums up the quality of the episode entirely, which looks like it could be the best non-Moffat episode of this season.
That’s obviously high praise. Doctor Who with Moffat and Smith has been a rather high energy/octane show that is known for jumping around and usually being a rather vigorously engaging show to watch, but last week’s pirate episode threw the viewer in a loop due to it’s slow pace and emphasis on the horror elements to a rather disappointing effect. However, with Gaiman’s episode, he manages to fill up the entire hour of the show with quirky new characters, snappy dialogue, and a brilliant concept that is easily one of the most intriguing and oft-thought about elements of the show – if the TARDIS is a living thing, what exactly would it say/think if given the capabilities to do so? And boy, are the results entertaining.
I think it’s safe to say that I’m not the only one who assumed that an episode called “The Doctor’s Wife” would deal with the enigma that is River Song, but in a poignant way we instead get to deal with the Doctor’s “real” wife, his partner in crime: the TARDIS. The TARDIS has always been noted to be a living thing that exists at all points in time, making it a rather complex being whose perspective we’ve never really been able to fully understand. What Neil Gaiman does in this episode is finally give the poor girl a voice and a body in that of the lovely Suranne Jones, who was on two episodes of the Sarah Jane Adventures as Mona Lisa and starred in a BBC mini-series with David Tennant last year called Single Father (which was very sad, but very good). It allows for the show to be both endearing and riculous in it’s typical fashion, as Smith’s Doctor tries frantically to comprehend and keep up with this beautiful woman who knows him better than anyone else. Gaiman’s TARDIS personification also allows a lot of very intriguing elements to become discussed, such as the full depth of what exists in the TARDIS as well as the origin of how the Doctor became the time traveler he now is and the emotional relationship he has to his traveling home. Of particular note is the line in which Jones tells Smith that she stole him so she could see the world, which is the mirror of the original Doctor Who story in which the Doctor stole the TARDIS.
The other great thing that Gaiman does here is introduces a new villain called House, played by Michael Sheen (who is by far and large one of my favorite actors). House is a sentient asteroid outside our universe able to interface with other technology, and in an effort to get out of it’s pocket universe and into ours it hijacks the TARDIs out of her body and inhabits her himself, locking Amy and Rory inside and abandoning the Doctor on the asteroid before heading for our universe. In turn, he also begins to play mind games with Amy and Rory to torture them for his amusement. In summation, this is exactly what makes any given episode of Doctor Who particularly great: a helping hand of humor, and a helping hand of sci-fi/horror. Gaiman gives us our humor with the interactions between Smith and Jones, and he gives us our horror with Sheen The House and his brutal mindgames against Amy and Rory inside – well, himself. All of the best episodes of Who manage to strike a balance between these two elements, and Gaiman realizes this, giving it to us in a style that’s very resonant to his style of work. Anyone that has read any of Gaiman’s previous work will note his handling of dialogue against the dark, and his Doctor Who episode – which we’ve all been waiting for for a long time – feels like it’s been preened to perfection for the audience, offering the best of what Gaiman does in a nice hour-long episode of Who.
Of course, the episode wouldn’t be half of what it is without the phenomenal performances by the cast. Smith’s madman Who is particularly great as written by Gaiman (who has written quite a few British madmen in his day), and Suranne Jones and Michael Sheen are great additions for the episode. Jones herself looks like she’d be perfect for the role of Mrs. Lovett, and Sheen is barely recognizable as House (due, in part, to voice modulation) to the point that he sounds more like Douglas Rain – and he manages to be just as feircely and politely menacing as Rain ever was as HAL. Plus, Arthur Darvil and Karen Gillan continue to be one of the most heartbreakingly real couples on a popular show, with their interactions while inside House being particularly moving this episode. Moffat has played rather violently with the relationship between Amy and Rory, always testing their resolve together, and Gaiman adds his own dark spin on the complicated triangle between Amy, Rory, and the Doctor to a rather brutal extent at one point. The whole episode certainly screamed and jumped to life much more than last week’s episode, and it’s always nice to see the cast responding so vibrantly to strong direction and a great script.
Suffice it to say, this week picks up rather nicely from where last week lulled down. Doctor Who is a show that is always best when it pulls you in right from the get go with a high octane concept and performance, fully utilizing the crazy elements that surround the show. Smith’s Doctor is one that should theoretically be easy to write, but not all writers can do it as well as Moffat has been doing (since he is pioneering this version of the character and all). Gaiman, who had the odds stacked against him in my mind, managed to pull off an episode that felt fresh and vibrant to the capabilities of the Doctor. This is how you write a great episode of the show: mix some sci-fi horror together with fast, snappy dialogue and humor, and treat the tremendous canon of the show with a good amount of respect that it feels like a continuous show, even if Moffat is the only writer who is really writing the “important” episodes of the season.
So congratulations, Neil Gaiman. You win this round. The bar has certainly been set for next week.
(Maybe now I’ll give that second volume of Sandman I’m always saying I’ll read a shot.)
