New Who 6.4: The Doctor's Wife
This one I did see at the time of broadcast, but I was still too unwell last weekend to get it written up straight away, and besides wanted to write about The Curse of the Black Spot first. So I'm way behind the bulk of the conversation about it again. But at least I can get my own thoughts down now before tonight's episode.
In general, I thought this was way better than last week's story. The tone and atmosphere were great, if exactly what we would have expected from Neil Gaiman. The dialogue was fantastic, ranging from lovely quotable lines like Amy's "Did you wish really hard?" to more revealing exchanges like the Doctor's comments about his role in the Time War. The plot and setting dangled all sorts of exciting opportunities for future story developments - Time Lords who can be either male or female, the ability to travel beyond the Rift, and left-over psychic imprints and indeed actual body-parts of Time Lords. Those latter may have been left behind outside the universe in the course of the story - but given River's comments about the value of Doctor's body in The Impossible Astronaut, there is obviously huge potential in the fact that we have now met actual characters walking around with the arm, spine and kidney of a deceased Time Lord. As for the Doctor and the IdRIS - what joy! Perhaps no actual, human-written script could quite live up to fandom's fevered expectations after 48 years of waiting for that conversation - but I think it would have been a tough call to do any better.
The most striking thing about the story for me as I watched it was the density of references to past stories, so I've compiled a little list of the ones I spotted, helped in some instances by the continuity section of the episode's Wikipedia page:
The other thing which most caught my interest was the Corsair - and not just for his/her gender-changing abilities, or left-over body-parts (see above). I wasn't familiar with the word 'corsair' before, but the use of the definite article made it sound as though it fitted into the same Time Lord naming tradition as 'the Doctor' and 'the Master', so I Googled it - and sure enough, a corsair is a sort of naval mercenary, almost equivalent to a pirate sanctioned by the French crown. Sounds like just the sort of character the Doctor would get on well with, and it of course provides a link (of sorts) back to the subject-matter of the previous episode, as well.
Meanwhile, I did recognise the Corsair's symbol, which is the Ouroboros - a snake-like being which continually swallows its own tail. This was interesting, too, given its resonances of repeating cycles and regeneration. Given all the continuity references I've noted above, it could perhaps be taken as a comment on the nature of the show itself: constantly recycling and reworking its own heritage. But for me, the more immediate question which it prompted was - "So why didn't the Corsair (or indeed any of the other Time Lords who ended up on the House) regenerate, then?" Did the House have some system for stopping them? Could it somehow steal their regeneration energy? Are their potential regenerations still out there somewhere? And might the answers to some of these questions open up another potential route for the Time Lords to be recovered somehow? Oh, I do hope so...
Click here if you would like view this entry in light text on a dark background.
In general, I thought this was way better than last week's story. The tone and atmosphere were great, if exactly what we would have expected from Neil Gaiman. The dialogue was fantastic, ranging from lovely quotable lines like Amy's "Did you wish really hard?" to more revealing exchanges like the Doctor's comments about his role in the Time War. The plot and setting dangled all sorts of exciting opportunities for future story developments - Time Lords who can be either male or female, the ability to travel beyond the Rift, and left-over psychic imprints and indeed actual body-parts of Time Lords. Those latter may have been left behind outside the universe in the course of the story - but given River's comments about the value of Doctor's body in The Impossible Astronaut, there is obviously huge potential in the fact that we have now met actual characters walking around with the arm, spine and kidney of a deceased Time Lord. As for the Doctor and the IdRIS - what joy! Perhaps no actual, human-written script could quite live up to fandom's fevered expectations after 48 years of waiting for that conversation - but I think it would have been a tough call to do any better.
The most striking thing about the story for me as I watched it was the density of references to past stories, so I've compiled a little list of the ones I spotted, helped in some instances by the continuity section of the episode's Wikipedia page:
- Opening dialogue about robot-double kings: The Androids of Tara
- Jettisoning TARDIS rooms to generate thrust: Logopolis and Castrovalva
- Junkyard setting: An Unearthly Child (and by default Remembrance of the Daleks too)
- IdRIS wanting to snog the Doctor: a return for his TARDIS-console snog in The Ribos Operation
- Auntie, Uncle, Nephew and a sentient House: all felt a bit Lungbarrow to me, although similar family names are also used in The Family of Blood
- Patchwork people made from the victims of crash-landings, including parts of at least one Time Lord: The Brain of Morbius
- Running around along TARDIS corridors: The Invasion of Time, Castrovalva
- The Doctor sending his companions back to the TARDIS on a wild goose chase to keep them out of harm's way: done to Rose in The Parting of the Ways. (I feel sure this happened fairly regularly in the Classic series as well, but can't pin down a specific example - can anyone help on this?)
- Building and piloting a stand-alone TARDIS console between universes: Inferno
- Experiencing strange hallucinations while trapped in a maze of corridors: Sixth Doctor believing that he is trapped in a burning desert with no water in Vengeance on Varos
- And of course appearance of the Russell T. Davies-era console room
The other thing which most caught my interest was the Corsair - and not just for his/her gender-changing abilities, or left-over body-parts (see above). I wasn't familiar with the word 'corsair' before, but the use of the definite article made it sound as though it fitted into the same Time Lord naming tradition as 'the Doctor' and 'the Master', so I Googled it - and sure enough, a corsair is a sort of naval mercenary, almost equivalent to a pirate sanctioned by the French crown. Sounds like just the sort of character the Doctor would get on well with, and it of course provides a link (of sorts) back to the subject-matter of the previous episode, as well.
Meanwhile, I did recognise the Corsair's symbol, which is the Ouroboros - a snake-like being which continually swallows its own tail. This was interesting, too, given its resonances of repeating cycles and regeneration. Given all the continuity references I've noted above, it could perhaps be taken as a comment on the nature of the show itself: constantly recycling and reworking its own heritage. But for me, the more immediate question which it prompted was - "So why didn't the Corsair (or indeed any of the other Time Lords who ended up on the House) regenerate, then?" Did the House have some system for stopping them? Could it somehow steal their regeneration energy? Are their potential regenerations still out there somewhere? And might the answers to some of these questions open up another potential route for the Time Lords to be recovered somehow? Oh, I do hope so...
Click here if you would like view this entry in light text on a dark background.