The Doctor's Wife and other intergalactic, interdimensional love stories
The Doctor's Wife, and other intergalactic, interdimensional love stories
Okay,
For some reason, experiencing anything Neil Gaiman-related has always played merry hell on my subconscious. For instance, one night, after watching Neverwhere for the eleventy-billionth time I had a dream that he came to speak at my High School for some reason, and although the details are a bit fuzzy now, I know he inadvertently let loose a cadre of supervillains who wreaked absolute havoc on my little school, Ultimate Spider-man style. In my dream I had the dual duty of helping my principal and Neil Gaiman round up the loosed supervillains and also convincing my principal that it actually was a good idea that Mr.Gaiman came, and that we should invite him to speak again, because yes, the bad guys sort of came pouring out of a chasm in the floor during his decidedly weird speech, and they were sort of looking for him, but we can't really say that was his a fault, can we?
(A side note: when he came to my college to read Odd and the Frost Giants and sign books, I told him about that dream and he said, "That sounds like something I would do", and signed my book "Sweet Dreams" Swoon.)
This morning I woke up from a dream where I ran into him at a book fair and not only did he sign my book, but also gave me a kiss on the cheek for being so polite and courteous when everyone else was swarming him and pulling at his clothes trying to get him to sign things.
Naturally, I wasn't looking too awesome in the eyes of the other people at the book fair. I won't get into specifics, but suffice it to say, it was like the scene out of Inception, where Dom's projections are literally swarming around and grabbing Ariadne and trying to kill her. I woke up after having to roundhouse kick a woman's head all the way off.
I blame The Doctor's Wife for this.
I really, really liked this episode. A part of me (a very small part) wondered if I liked it so much because I know Neil Gaiman wrote it, or because it was genuinely such a great episode. I came to the consensus that it was a happy mixture of both and moved on. Come on, who wasn't going to curl up in the Fetal Position of Joy after watching the opening credits and seeing Neil Gaiman's name?
After last week's episode, which seemed like a little bit of a throwaway, I was definitely pleased with the way things unfolded in The Doctor's Wife. Then again, I love the stories that have to do with the main characters the best. The episode itself had the right mixture of silliness and scary moments to make it a really great time, and when The Doctor and The TARDIS in Idris's body, or Sexy, as she is apparently called by The Doctor, bicker like an old married couple over who stole whom and how The Doctor never listens and he complains how she never takes him where he wants to go and she replies that she takes him where he needs to go, it finally really hit me then that the TARDIS herself really is the Doctor's Wife. More than that, she's his soulmate, the one he's truly, truly been with all these years--this madman with a box, and when I really processed all that, it made it even more wonderful and sad that he was finally able to talk to her, albeit in a dying human body.
The scenes where the baddie of the episode, a sentient asteroid-type thing takes over the TARDIS with Rory and Amy trapped inside were pretty intense at times. My friend Jonas says he almost crapped his pants when old, haggard, crazy Rory lunged at Amy howling at her about how she left him, but the parts that freaked me out the most were seeing Rory's desiccated corpse with the words HATE AMY KILL AMY scrawled everywhere. Obviously the House (the sentient asteroid thingy) was messing with their heads, but it was extra unsettling all the same. Which I loved.
I'll admit, I most definitely got all kinds of choked up when the TARDIS left her human form and left the doctor crying, devastated that he'd never be able to talk to her again, but even that bittersweet moment was a lovely piece of storytelling.
All told, it was a great episode that read like a love letter in so many ways, and left me satisfied and full in a way that only great storytelling can.
Spoilers...