Very occasionally a story will come along which makes the show slightly turn on its axis, one that gently changes the show forever. At the heart of this story is Idris and The Doctor; Doctor Who and the TARDIS. It redefines their relationship by making it more explicit, by giving the machine a voice.

Neil Gaiman builds a whole world in The Doctor’s Wife, one that sits perfectly within the context of the show, but also one that could sit independently of it. There’s a small number of characters but an epic scale. House and it’s three creations all have a spooky charm which is played perfectly. Quirky, but never silly.

Our regulars are on fine form. Matt Smith when he discovers that the cries of Time Lords is in fact just the distress signal cubes, is something to behold. Karen and Arthur slowly going mad in the TARDIS is another excellent turn.

Another stand out moment is the mind bending quality of seeing Tennent’s TARDIS out of context, where it shouldn’t be.

I remembered loving this, but I didn’t expect to get quite so swept up in it. This is the beauty of a less remembered era, your absolute favourites can take you by surprise.

Some of the dialogue is a lot more cringe than I remembered - especially from the TARDIS - but when performances, script (other than aforementioned dialogue), ideas and feelings are all this good who cares! House is a great villain, and I love the way He messes with Amy and Rory. And of course the TARDIS and Doctor stuff is delightful when not cringe and "haha aren't we so wacky" 💖

New Who Review #78

The Doctor's Wife

I enjoyed this story a lot. It's such a unique concept to make the tardis a body and let it communicate with the doctor. It made for some great scenes between the Doctor & Idris and it was sad too especially at the end when they had to say goodbye. The tardis was still alive after Idris wasn't though which I like because it's not dead entirely. House was such a mind tricking monster with what he did to Amy & Rory. It was so dark seeing a dead corpse and the line "they come for me every night and they hurt me" that is so eerie and dark but I love it because the show is stepping out of its comfort zone. Overall a really strong story that has some really dark moments. 10/10

It's an interesting one. To me this is one of the very few episodes that actually manages to pull off the frantic and convoluted style of the Moffat era. At the same time, it also has some of the most annoying and poorly aged early 2010s quirky dialogue that hurts a lot of the 11th doctors run. Somehow makes that almost possible to overlook with it's amazing set and costume designs, cool world building and a truly malevolent feeling villain. Also it has an ood, YAY!!!

Few episodes can claim to have made a permanent change to your perspective of Doctor Who. 'The Doctor's Wife' is one of the few, changing our perception of arguably the deuteragonist of the show, the one character besides the Doctor who is constantly with us and reminding us that though she may just be a Blue Box, she is alive and she is always there throughout it all.