This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 6, Episode 9
• Airdate: 3rd September 2011
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: Amy, Rory
• Writer: Mark Gatiss
• Director: Richard Clark
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

Review

You see these eyes? They're old eyes. And one thing I can tell you, Alex: monsters are real. – The Doctor

"Night Terrors" was originally meant to air in the first half of Series 6, as episode 4 to be precise. But Showrunner Steven Moffat found himself looking at a run of pretty dark episodes, and so decided to push it into the second half…after the episode had already been filmed. This left behind some artifacts, like the Doctor going back to wearing the tweed jacket, or the fact that going by in-episode dialogue this episode actually takes place before "Let's Kill Hitler's" present-day sections (it's nice that time travel can just solve that problem, isn't it?). More substantially, a line at the end of the episode where the Doctor says the main cast are all back together "in the flesh", meant to hint at Amy being her Ganger version, ends up feeling, if anything, a bit insensitive, but that's only if you notice the turn of phrase. Oh, and the big thing: a story centering around a child and fatherhood which follows on from the events of "A Good Man Goes to War" and "Let's Kill Hitler" shoves Amy and Rory off into a corner and focuses on the Doctor's relationship with the father and childhood.

But I always try to evaluate stories first and foremost on their own terms. So with that in mind, what do we make of "Night Terrors" as a standalone adventure?

I think the best parts of "Night Terrors" belong to Amy and Rory. Considering that they spend the majority of the episode just trying to survive and have no actual impact on the plot, this isn't a great sign. It reminds me a bit of Terminus where Tegan and Turlough got an excellent subplot that made up for a main plot that was a bit weak. But Amy and Rory's subplot doesn't really dig into their characters the way that Tegan and Turlough's did in Terminus. Instead what makes their stuff work is just that these characters work well together and have good comedic chemistry.

From the Doctor asking if either of them have found the scared child that they're looking for and Amy responding that she's found "scary children", to the moment at the end that Amy and Rory reappear in the elevator they were taken from looking just…done…with everything, pretty much everything Amy and Rory do this episode is a delight. It's also a minor plot point. The Doctor on the other hand…

"Night Terrors" pretty much always gets compared to Series 2 episode "Fear Her" as like "Fear Her", "Night Terrors" focuses on a child who has the ability to manifest things with their mind. And while the specifics of how this works is very different, the result is a similarly forgettable story. I think "Fear Her" probably has the more interesting idea for a story, but the execution in "Night Terrors" is a bit better. But "Night Terrors" just has so few worthwhile ideas that it kind of doesn't matter.

Frankly, I think this is the point at which the 11th Doctor era's tendency to constantly involve children begin to grow tiresome. It doesn't help that Series 6 in general has been less successful than Series 5 in how it integrates its child characters, with the arguable exception of young Amy, Mels and Rory in "Let's Kill Hitler". But we've reached the point where my ability to be charmed by the child we've shoved on screen this week is starting to fray.

The actual story we're telling doesn't help. The story begins with parents Alex and Claire at their wits ends with their son George. He's scared of everything and they don't know how to help him. They've developed a strategy with him – anything he's afraid of he mentally puts in the cupboard. But it's not helping, in part because the apartment complex they live in is full of strange noises and odd people, including a very intimidating landlord.

I actually really like this apartment complex setting. In theory it's a very boring setting but, partially because it's just something we don't really see on Doctor Who (unless you count Paradise Towers) and partially because there's a lot of effort put in to make the setting feel more distinct, the end result is a location that is brimming with life. The people who live here all feel like they're different flavors of dead inside, but that actually helps set the atmosphere perfectly. It's the kind of place that feels like it's due for some sort of horror movie. And when I say that Amy and Rory's bits of the episode are the best, that includes when they're running around the apartment complex looking for the a distressed child and having to deal with this colorful yet drab cast of characters.

But once we begin the focus around Alex and George the episode kind of loses me. Matt Smith is, as always, good acting opposite a child, but honestly even his material isn't doing much for me. There's hints of previous episodes that put the Doctor in domestic situations, particularly "Fear Her" and "The Lodger" but it doesn't quite land the same. It ends up feeling a bit like quirkiness for quirkiness' sake. There's still some fun bits in here mind, particularly when the Doctor is considering whether or not to open George's cupboard and keeps second guessing himself…and putting that second guessing on Alex.

That's because the Doctor has worked out that Alex and Claire's idea to have George put things that scare him "in the cupboard" has somehow turned said cupboard into a psychic repository of all of George's fears. That's where Amy and Rory are through all of this, being menaced by giant peg dolls that can turn anyone they touch into more peg dolls (sure…why not). Again, I can see the promise in this idea, but I think I prefer "Fear Her's" take on this idea, mostly because drawing things as a way of capturing them feels like a more tangible process. As it is the world inside George's cupboard ends up feeling like a mish-mash of disconnected ideas.

The episode does get one absolutely brilliant moment out of the Alex and George stuff mind you. The Doctor's been spending a lot of time talking about how something in this scenario feels off to him in a way he can't fully describe. And then he realizes what it is. He shows Alex a picture of Claire from a Christmas party about a month before she supposedly gave birth to George…and she's not pregnant. And also drinking alcohol which I thought was a nice touch, just to fully reinforce that this woman is most definitely not about to have a kid. And then Alex exclaims, having finally remembered this crucial detail, "Well, of course not. Claire can't have kids!" And after a brief conversation the Doctor and Alex turn to look at George, just sitting on his bed, and there is something absolutely chilling in that moment.

It's just a moment though. The episode is not remotely set up to pivot to George being something sinister, and even if it was, that would be the wrong move. George as it turns out, is a Tenza, a species whose children can assimilated perfectly into any other, filling the needs of the parents. Alex and Claire, who desperately wanted children but could not have them, were a natural landing spot for the Tenza that became George. George's increased phobia was born out of a fear of rejection. I guess he was always a bit nervous and with Alex unable to work and Claire's nursing job presumably not paying all that much, Alex and Claire had to consider putting him somewhere else, where they thought he could get the care he needed. George, hearing this, and thinking he was being rejected, instinctively…did something psychic. Yeah, not entirely sure what, but the point is all of this is being caused out of a fear of rejection. So the climax naturally revolves around Alex declaring that he'll never send George away, ending the threat and reversing all of the damage.

I have no problem with a "power of love" ending. I have absolutely no problem with an episode ending without any deaths (which we haven't seen since "Fear Her" anyway). And yet…this feels weak. Here's what can make a power of love ending work: you need to establish a strong bond between the characters. And frankly, I don't think the episode ever manages it with Alex and George. The love between father and son, which is essential to this episode working, it just somehow never comes through. Maybe it's just because Alex spends the majority of the episode being exasperated by George. And I don't think this would necessarily be a problem in an episode where Alex being a father were an incidental part of the plot, something that was important to understanding his character but not much more. But in an episode built around this relationship, the relationship never actually feels all that strong.

And when we talk about George, let's talk about how the story of the strange kid who is turns out to be an alien actually works. In my 10th Doctor retrospective (this is relevant, trust me), something I talked about was my lack of interest in the conversation over how "alien" the Doctor was. In response, a couple commenters pointed out that what was likely going on is that how "alien" the Doctor is was really just standing in for how neurodivergent-coded an incarnation is. And, well, that's pretty much explicitly what's going on in this episode. George is extremely neurodivergent-coded, most obviously in the required ritual of the parents turning off and on the lights five times before leaving the room. Also, a lot of George's phobias are sensory stuff that lean in that general direction as well.

And, look, I'm well out of my comfort zone here. But ever since I got those comments on the 10th Doctor retrospective, the whole question of alienness when applied to human-appearing characters has felt a bit uncomfortable to me. And frankly in this particular story it feels worse. I guess just because these traits that I can tangibly relate to actual neurodivergence are being presented as, essentially, symptoms of a child being a literal alien. It's hard to take this any further than to point out an uncomfortable pattern because, again, this is a bit outside my knowledge base, but I did think it was worth pointing out.

Though there is another problem with this episode that I do feel is a bit easier to talk about: Claire feels very absent in all of this. As I said this is an episode focused around a father/son relationship, and that's, in and of itself, fine. If left alone that episode concept doesn't actually need the mother to be present. But this is also an episode about a father coming to understand his son better, and it's an understanding that the mother never gets. As far as we know, she never learns that her son is an alien. And that feels off – actually especially in light of that neurodivergent stuff I talked about above, loathe as I am to open up that can of worms again. And look, I have a bias here. Realizing that I tended to identify with fictional women was a big part (though far from the totality) of how I realized I might be a woman. And as such I tend to be a bit sensitive to women being left out of narratives. But also, Claire's absence from this narrative just seems wrong here. George is her kid too, she deserves to go on this journey just as much as Alex does.

But while that does form part of why this episode doesn't quite work, it's not the main reason. I think that main reason is just that the bond between George and Alex never feels fully established. For the first time, the 11th Doctor starts feeling like a parody of himself at times, not helped by the fact that this is yet another 11th Doctor story with a child in it. It's not all bad: the apartment complex is a surprisingly fun setting and Amy and Rory's bits are fun. Even there though, the way this episode was moved around in the episode order kind of hurts Amy and Rory's story and they are largely kept over to the side. "Night Terrors" has its moments, but on the whole it's a pretty dull story that doesn't do a good job telling its story.

Score: 3/10

Stray Observations

• Mark Gatiss was asked to write a horror story set in an ordinary modern building after having done something similar in creating TV Series Crooked House.
• Mark Gatiss' first idea was to set it in a hotel that manifested the fears of members of a psychiatric conference. However there was a later story already planned for the series that was incredibly similar to that. It was Steven Moffat who suggested working in an apartment complex instead.
• Using the Peg Dolls as monsters was inspired by Mark Gatiss' childhood fears of various dolls.
• The landlord Purcell, meanwhile, was inspired by a PE teacher Gatiss had.
• Early plans were to double bank this story with another one, and as such early drafts of this script had very little of Amy and Rory. Plans changed however, and so Amy and Rory were integrated back in to the plot.
• There was at one point a running gag about door to door God-botherers being suspected of being aliens that was dropped at a late stage.
• This episode was actually filmed before it got moved to the back half of series 6. As such, a scene involving Madame Kovarian was filmed for this episode.
• This was actually the first episode of Series 6 to be filmed.
• The nursery rhyme the Peg Dolls sing came about because the production team was trying to make the Peg Dolls creepier while moving. Steven Moffat was so pleased with Mark Gatiss' rhyme that he decided that the Peg Dolls shouldn't speak much outside of that rhyme. And of course, the rhyme would come back.
• Daniel Mays, who plays Alex, was drawn to the story in part because he himself had a young son.
• Upon arriving inside George's cupboard, Rory briefly comes to the conclusion that he and Amy have died. Eh, it's pretty weak, but I'll count it, that's eight times that Rory seems to have died.
• Though it's actually Amy who gets turned into a Peg Doll later, which feels like the stronger implication of death.
• I don't envy whoever it was in charge of making the "Next Time" trailer for this one. "The Girl Who Waited" is a hard episode to tease without giving too much away. They do a decent job all things considered, though I don't know if it was a good idea to show older Amy

Next Time: The Doctor accidentally leaves Amy behind for nearly 40 years. Absence typically makes the heart grow fonder, so this should be fine, right?

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 6, Episode 8
• Airdate: 27th August 2011
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: Amy, Rory
• Other Notable Characters: Amelia Pond, River Song, Mels (Maya Glace-Green, Nina Toussaint-White)
• Writer: Steven Moffat
• Director: Richard Senior
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

Review

Well she did kill me. Then she used her remaining lives to bring me back. As first dates go, I'd say that was mixed signals. – The Doctor, on River

So the last episode I reviewed was of an episode that's generally well-liked, and I gave it a fairly negative review. It's not my most negative review ever, but it does go against the grain somewhat. I think that, at the very least, I did a decent job of giving my case for why it didn't quite land for me. And even if I didn't, I certainly think it's a defensible position.

I'm going to have a lot more trouble defending my opinion on this episode.

"Let's Kill Hitler" is a weird-ass story. Maybe that's part of why I enjoy it, every choice that is being made here feels like it's the most counterintuitive one imaginable, and the fact that that works at all is kind of a wonder. But there's two really big flaws, flaws that, frankly, I can't really defend, and wouldn't even want to try.

The first is that, well, Nazi Germany is just kind of a weird backdrop within which to tell this particular story. There's not much in the way of thematic resonance between the actual plot of the episode and the horrors of Nazi Germany or the insidiousness of fascism. Sure you can maybe get tenuous links here and there – fascism as a form of brainwashing linking to the brainwashing of River, the Nazis as war criminals and River being described as such, a third thing that I'm sure someone smarter than me could think of, but the problem is is that none of that is substantive. I don't mind treating the Nazis with ridicule, as this episode ultimately does. But I don't think it's a setting that can be treated as frivolously as this episode does. There's no getting around it. Nazi Germany could be substituted for just about any setting and this episode would largely remain intact. And that's an issue.

And point number two is that, well, this episode is sexist. As with the last point, there's no getting around it. And look, as I always say, I don't want this to reflect on the writer. Steven Moffat seems like a decent person all told, and honestly a lot of his later work suggests to me a maturing on his views of women. But he was a sitcom writer, and, frankly, a lot of the "jokes" in this episode feel like lazy sitcom writing. The first thing that the woman has to do after regenerating is to weigh herself. The Doctor, explaining River's somewhat inconsistent behavior includes a legitimate explanation: she's been brainwashed, and then adds "plus she's a woman". When Amy, rightfully, gives him a look, he says "shut up I'm dying". Again, there's no defending this. It's easily the worst thing about this episode. The above point you can at least argue isn't that much of an issue in the grand scheme of things. This is just unbridled sexism.

So okay, we've mentioned those issues, but if you can look past that –

Okay, but should we?

This obviously isn't the first time I've covered a story with questionable politics. But I give the 1960s stories a pass because, honestly, they're pretty progressive for their time (seriously, compare how women are handled on Doctor Who in the 60s with the original Star Trek). The most obvious example of bigotry on Doctor Who is always going to be The Talons of Weng-Chiang but I just generally enjoyed that story more as it moved away from Li H'sen Chang over to Magnus Greel and stripped away the faux Chinese mysticism for some excellent worldbuilding, which made it easier to talk about. How do you deal with an episode you genuinely enjoyed but has these gigantic issues baked into even the stuff you liked?

Here's what I'll do. I'm going to try to make the case for "Let's Kill Hitler" being a good episode aside from its two big issues and then I'll come back to them at the end when I'm evaluating this episode as a whole. Is that a good approach? God I have no idea. But it's the best way for me to actually talk about the stuff I like in this episode without getting bogged down in its problems.

Which isn't to say we're done talking about problems. But for a while now, the problems are going to be a lot less…heavy. For instance, let's talk about this plot.

I'm not sure this plot makes sense. It's an ongoing problem with Series 6. Thing is, I'm also not sure that that matters. At least not taking this episode in isolation. I guess it's like the "Impossible Astronaut" two parter where the episode gets hurt by being part of a larger story that doesn't ever really come together. For the purposes of this episode though, we get to meet Amy and Rory's childhood friend Mels, who was constantly getting in trouble, with the Doctor's future companions generally coming to her aid, and being the responsible ones. Still, the three of them remained close, with Amy even naming her daughter Melody, after Mels.

So, obvious problem here, we've never met this character before. Honestly, this isn't something that bugs me too much, but Mels absolutely should have been integrated into Amy and Rory's lives from the beginning. Part of this is definitely a consequence of Steven Moffat putting less work into his companions than Russell T Davies used to, as they never had the recurring casts associated with them that past Revival-era companions tended to (see also: Amy's parents and everybody who attended Rory's stag party). However, even if this had been the case, Mels has the feeling of a character that was come up with very last minute.

Still, as I said, this never bugged me all that much. Since Series 5 never showed us that much of Amy and Rory's everyday lives, I can completely believe that they have a close friend we never met. Hell, I wouldn't have guessed that Mels wasn't actually at their wedding if the Doctor hadn't pointed it out, I would have just assumed that she was there and we never saw her on camera (apparently she's "not a wedding person"). And the montage of Mels growing up with Amy and Rory is undeniably charming.

It's especially charming with the context that Mels…is Melody Pond. This was an intentional decision by Moffat to try and diminish the sting of Rory and Amy not getting to raise their daughter. Because, as shown in the flashback they kind of did. And this actually works for me. It does raise some questions mind. Was Mels adopted by anyone? Given that we saw her regenerating at the end of "The Day of the Moon" in 1969, how did she end up growing up with the Millennial pair of Amy and Rory. And did Amy and Rory just end up taking care of Mels out of…I don't know…weird parental instinct towards someone they saw as a peer? You can come up with answers to these questions, but that's not really the audience's job, and it does cause issues. But I don't know, I kind of love this idea all the same. Hell, Mels helps her parents get together in a really cute scene (although I'd hardly describe it as Rory "dropping out of the sky" because that bit in "Impossible Astronaut" is completely nonsensical).

We actually get to Nazi Germany because Mels pulls a gun on the Doctor and decides she's gonna kill Hitler. That's not what ends up happening (can't change the past that much, fixed points in time and all that). Instead Hitler shoots her, which is where, as Mels puts it, the penny drops, as she regenerates into Alex Kingston. And I just love the shellshocked looks on Amy and Rory's faces as they put the pieces together. And try to ignore the sound of Adolf Hitler banging on the cupboard that Rory shoved him in.

Running in parallel to all of this is the story of the Tesselecta, a robot that can mimic people and is being piloted by a miniaturized staff. I love this thing. It's a really inventive idea, and the episode gets some good comedy out of the staff running around and trying to respond to situations without giving the game away. Their whole thing is traveling back in time, finding histories greatest monsters at the point they'll no longer have any effect on history and giving them a tortuous death. Which is why the "anti-body" robots inside the Tesselecta seem to have been programmed to give darkly humorous quips about how their victims "will experience a tingling sensation and then death" and the like. Naturally, Nazi Germany is fertile ground for victims to this group, although how they messed up their targeting of Hitler so badly that they arrived in 1938 is a question for another day. Anyway, when they realize that they've got River Song and she's somehow managed to assassinate the Doctor ahead of schedule, they readjust to targeting her.

Wait, what was that about River/Melody killing the Doctor?

Yup, it would seem that the conditioning that Kovarian's group gave baby Melody hasn't worn off as much as you'd hope, and she's determined to kill the Doctor. What follows is a very fun game of cat and mouse, as River pulls out a truly ridiculous number of guns, only to discover that the Doctor has removed the ammo from each of them. River, apparently having planned it this way all along, instead gets the Doctor with a poisoned kiss, before running off into the streets to find some clothes (okay, this part isn't sexism, it's pretty much what the Doctor does every other time they regenerate, although the Doctor fixates on stealing from hospitals for some reason. But yeah, looking for a new outfit is part and parcel of regenerating it would seem).

And yeah, all of this is very fun. "Fun" is perhaps not the word you'd expect to use to describe the followup to the very serious "A Good Man Goes to War", but it kind of works. Things do gradually get more serious, in spite of the Doctor's best efforts to go out joking, as slowly Melody Pond morphs into River. And it's simultaneously slow…and too quick. On one hand, Alex Kingston does a really good job demonstrating Melody growing more and more impressed by the Doctor and coming around to admire and even like him. But it just feels like the episode wants to have its cake and eat it too. We simultaneously want to understand that Melody's conditioning is so deep that she pretty much immediately tries to kill the Doctor upon meeting him, and yet the conditioning is apparently overwritten rather quickly and easily. But, in terms of episode time it plays out slowly. I think this is where the episode's light-hearted tone does allow it to get away with more than it would otherwise.

Eventually Melody pilots the TARDIS, having the information implanted in her because she's the "child of the TARDIS". You know what, fine. It might seem like a plot contrivance, but between what we know about Melody's birth and what we know about the TARDIS it works well enough. She's piloting the TARDIS to save her parents from the anti-bodies in the Tesselecta who have, inevitably, turned hostile (this one was Amy's fault actually). One final moment to have her realize that the "River" that the Doctor keeps talking about is, in fact, herself, and she uses up her remaining regenerations to save the Doctor from her poison.

So, obviously, River is at the center of this episode, as tends to happen with River Song stories, especially in Series 6. As, effectively, River's origin story, "Let's Kill Hitler" does okay. As mentioned above, it does feel like we rush a bit of her character development, but that's a natural consequence of cramming a lot of this stuff into a single episode. And Alex Kingston, as usual, nails her material. Hell, Nina Toussaint-White, who plays Mels, absolutely nails her material as well. You can completely believe that this is a past incarnation of River in retrospect. She has a similar troublemaking attitude, but is different enough to feel like her own character. It's a real shame that this episode is all we got of her. Imagine if someone had had the foresight to include this character in earlier episodes.

Really, what this episode is showing is the birth of the River Song persona. A character who will resort to more morally questionable actions than the Doctor but is still ultimately going to try and do what is best. Born out of the ashes of Melody Pond, the girl conditioned to kill the Doctor. At the end of the episode she's heading off to get her archaeology degree…so that she can find the Doctor again (yeah, we'll get back to that later). We also get to see River (or Melody) really treat Amy and Rory as her parents, something that in the past she's always kept close to her chest, which is kind of a fun twist on their existing relationship.

Amy and Rory, for their part, are really acting in concert throughout this episode. From the beginning where they're spelling out "Doctor" with a car and some crops, to working together to save their daughter from the Tesselecta crew these two have never presented a more unified front. Scenes of the pair as kids (including Ezekiel Wigglesworth being very cute as young Rory) are just kind of fun to see. They do also spend the entire episode kind of in a perpetual state of shell shock, which Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill portray wonderfully. To fully cement this episode's absurdity there's a bit where Rory first tricks a Nazi official (who turns out to be the Tesselecta in disguise) in to doing a Sieg Heil so Rory can punch him to steal his motorcycle, then when Amy asks if he can actually ride the thing he deadpans "I expect so. It's that sort of day".

But there are more serious moments. Amy is genuinely hurt to hear Melody describe herself as a "psychopath". In fact throughout the episode Rory and Amy are very concerned for their daughter's mental state. It's odd, they've met River enough to know she turns out okay, but it still makes sense that they're going to be worried. After all, "time can be rewritten" means that nothing is guaranteed. And it's distressing to see in the moment. Amy gets most of the shine in this regard, including some clever moments and eventually showing her daughter "River Song" to make the point, and fully complete the transformation. When River wakes up after giving her regenerations away, it's probably the most parental Amy and Rory will ever be towards her, and it's just kind of a sweet moment.

And then there's the Doctor. No character is riding between the serious elements of this episode that will tie into the series arc and the more comedic stuff more than him. And it's something he does intentionally. Once Mels regenerates and then poisons him, the Doctor has an odd moment inside the TARDIS where he tries to summon the strength to continue by talking to the TARDIS' voice interface. So on one hand it kind of undermines the tragedy of "The Doctor's Wife" if the Doctor can just talk to an avatar of the TARDIS like this. Sure it's just a voice interface and not nearly as personable as Idris was, but that still bugged me. But on the other hand this scene does continue us down our path of the 11th Doctor's self-hatred and self-pity. The voice interface initially appears as the 11th Doctor himself, to which the Doctor replies "give me someone I like". It then cycles through the main companions of the RTD era, but those just give the Doctor guilt. And that, to be fair, makes sense, after all, Rose was abandoned to an alternate universe (twice), Martha just generally got treated poorly by the Doctor not to mention her "year that never was" and Donna got her memory erased. It helps explain why the 11th Doctor in particular has this streak of self-hatred.

He eventually settles on someone he hasn't "screwed up yet" – young Amelia. This is interesting for a couple reasons. First of all, the idea that when seeing Amelia he can at least pretend that everything that happened to Amy afterwards never actually happened. And on the second point when he sees Amelia he says that it's her "before I got it all wrong". The Doctor feels like he's screwed things up with Amy. Is it the accidental waiting for 14 years? The near sabotage of her marriage? His failure to save baby Melody? What's weird is that Amy has actually ended up in a pretty decent spot all things considered. But the 11th Doctor always fixates on the negative consequences of his actions.

I suppose I should mention the episode does briefly stop for a whole bunch of arc stuff that won't really make sense down the line. The Doctor asks the Tesslecta database to tell him who wants him dead. What we get is a lot of vague hints that will just lead to more nonsense in the future. It doesn't impact this episode quite as much as it did the opening two parter, but I still can't watch these scenes without being reminded of just how disappointing these answers are going to be.

And okay, good. We've gotten through the easy part. So far what we've described is a fun episode that maybe doesn't quite live up to what it needed to be, but that was the risk in following up "A Good Man Goes to War" with something so lighthearted. Let's get back to the other stuff.

Starting with Nazi Germany again, there's moments where this is working for me. Shoving Hitler in a closet is quite funny. And more seriously, the way the Doctor reacts to seeing Hitler really lands for me. He sort of freezes up for a second and his tone of voice suggests he's trying to keep himself calm. Good stuff. But then, other than a fun line from River (which sadly contains a slur for Romani people, though I'm sure this was a case of ignorance), there's nothing else that really uses the time period to any effect. And I'd argue that any historical that could be set in any time period is inherently flawed. But this especially goes for a setting like Nazi Germany. That's just a moment in time that does mean more than most others.

As for the sexism, there's not much more to say that I didn't say up above. I guess I should address River only becoming an archaeologist to find the Doctor. It's far from the worst thing in the episode, but it does still feel uncomfortable. Like, why not let a woman become an academic for her own reasons, why does it have to be about "a good man"? This is something that is just done with women way more than it's done with men and it's frustrating. Beyond that though, it's kind of shocking just how sexist this episode gets sometimes.

So what do these elements do to our really fun if slightly flawed episode? Well, they don't quite sink it, at least for me. But they do taint it a lot. I wish I could enjoy this episode more, because at its best it seems like a good time. But then the Doctor makes an offhanded sexist remark and I just don't know what to do with that. This episode's biggest flaws are just too big to ignore. I guess you can shove Hitler in a cupboard for a while but he's still going to be Hitler at the end of the day.

Score: 6/10

Yikes, is that really how I'm ending the review? I mean I guess it's a decent analogy but ^(it definitely feels like it's pushing the borders. Which is sort of the point but…)

Stray Observations

• Around the time that this episode aired, the fourth series of Torchwood, subtitled Miracle Day was airing. That series featured a world-wide situation where nobody could die anymore. As far as I, or anyone else, can tell, the Ponds at the very least lived through this situation and it's possible that "Let's Kill Hitler" takes place before it's resolved. In either case, feels like a big thing to just…not get talked about at any point.
• The cast seem to have enjoyed this one. Before it aired (which in fairness, could just be publicity talk), Matt Smith said it was "maybe my favorite episode to date". Arthur Darvill enjoyed that Rory got to be more of an action hero.
• This was the last thing that Caitlin Blackwood shot for Doctor Who, though later episode "The God Complex" was shot earlier, which Blackwood also cameoed in.
• The Anti-Bodies were originally written as humanoid robots. This was changed because it too much resembled the Hand-Bots, from later episode "The Girl Who Waited".
• Steven Moffat intentionally decided that Adolf Hitler should be written as a comical and belittled figure, citing inspiration from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.
• Among those who auditioned for the part of Mels was an actor by the name of Jenna Louise-Coleman…who we will of course be hearing more from soon.
• Outfit change! Yeah, the Doctor has now replaced his tweed jacket with a longer pea-green coat. On one hand I do like a long coat and it does suit the darker turn the show started taking in Series 6. On the other hand, there was something special about the tweed. I think the fact that, while standing out, it also made the Doctor feel a bit comical, the kind of person you wouldn't necessarily take seriously, really worked for the 11th Doctor.
• The Doctor lies, claiming that the TARDIS exists in a State of Temporal Grace to prevent Mels from shooting it. The State of Temporal Grace as a concept was introduced in The Hand of Fear and seemed to be working then, though by Arc of Infinity it had stopped working.
• Weirdly, Mels seems to have had a catch phrase of "penny in the air…penny drops". We only see her use it twice, but it's odd to think that use of catchphrases across a single incarnation is something common to regenerating individuals.
• One of the Tesselecta operators mentions that "time can be rewritten", specifically referencing something to do with "Kennedy". Did…these people somehow cause Kennedy's assassination?
• The still images of Rose, Martha, and Donna were sourced from promotional materials from Series 3 and 4.
• The Doctor suggests getting out of his poisoning by regenerating, to which the TARDIS voice interface replies "regeneration disabled". So I'm sure at the time that line was meant to suggest that said poison had done that, but in retrospect, he couldn't regenerate because he was at the end of his regeneration cycle. Although I would assume that the poison in question was chosen because it could prevent regeneration, seems like the sort of thing you'd do when trying to kill a Time Lord, and it's not like River or her masters would have known about the War Doctor at that time.
• River suggests she might lower her apparent age over time, just to "freak people out". Of course this is used to explain why River does seem to be getting older as we get earlier in her timeline. Now the idea that Time Lords (or similar beings like River) can do this has its own set of implications, but it's a funny line regardless.
• This might be just me, but the Doctor's line about River at the end of the episode in response to "she'll be fine", "no she won't, she'll be amazing" reminds me a lot of the 4th Doctor's line about Romana after leaving her in E-Space at the end of Warriors' Gate: "Alright, she'll be superb". It feels appropriate, given that Romana and River are somewhat similar characters.
• While never stated on screen, the name of River's professor at the end of the episode is Professor Candy. That's a character Steven Moffat created for his very first Doctor Who work, a short story for Virgin Publishing's third Decalog anthology series. Appropriately that short story featured Bernice Summerfield, a character with even more similarities to River.

Next Time: Boy the 11th Doctor sure does run into a lot of children

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Novel Information

• Novel: Doctor Who: The New Adventures (VNA) #15
• Published: 17th June 1993
• Companions: Ace, Benny
• Author: David A. McIntee

Spoiler-Free Review

I mostly came away with a positive view of White Darkness, and I rather suspect that if you're a fan of zombie fiction, you may enjoy this one a fair bit more than me. Then again these zombis hew more closely to the Haitian practice than what you may be be used to. This novel succeeds in giving Ace the spotlight, as well as being a pretty interesting period piece. Haiti 1915 is a rather unique choice of time and place, and writer David McIntee does make it feel truly alive. I would recommend giving this one a shot, even if it's not one of my personal favorites.

At this point, the following novels have become more or less standard for me to recommend reading: Love and War for introducing Benny and Deceit for Ace's return and the establishing of the character dynamics aboard the TARDIS with its new crew. Add previous novel Lucifer Rising to that list as it further explores and resets said character dynamics.

Full Review

The legends also say that someday [the Great Old Ones] may return, but that’s a facet of legends about everything from Davros to King Arthur – Benny

While reading White Darkness I found myself thinking a lot about the TARDIS team of the 7th Doctor, Ace and Benny a lot. And this is the 3rd novel in a row where that's kind of been the main takeaway I've had. For the first two it kind of makes sense. Deceit introduced this new TARDIS team and Lucifer Rising was about stabilizing a trio that seemed fairly unstable going in. But White Darkness isn't really about its TARDIS team. If it could be said to focus on a single character, it would probably be Ace, but the reality is is that this is a period piece first and foremost, with a "truth behind the mythology" framing.

But still, I found myself wondering a lot about this trio, and specifically wondering if they're a little bit odd together.

Ace is no longer the troubled teenager archetype that she was introduced as back in Dragonfire or even the version of the character that was slowly growing more and more distrustful of the Doctor over the course of the early VNAs. She is instead a battle hardened soldier who is trying to reclaim her goodness. Benny might at first glance look like a good counterpoint to Ace. She's an academic first and foremost after all. But in reality she too has a military background even if she never actually fought and also tends towards an action hero archetype. She's, and I can't believe this is the first I'm making this comparison, more Lara Croft than Romana. And then you have the Doctor, normally presented as a pacifistic hero. Except, due to the manipulative nature of the 7th Doctor and the VNAs clearly wanting to push Doctor Who in a more adult direction, the 7th Doctor has become a lot less pacifistic than he used to. What we're left with is three characters who, admittedly all in their own ways, spend a lot of time struggling between the desire to do good and the frequent cases where violence seems like the easiest way to achieve their goals.

And to be clear, I'm not even saying that this is a bad thing. But it does leave us with a TARDIS team that feels very aggressive, without anyone to really balance that out. In this novel it's Petion, a Captain who starts the story serving under the brutal regime of Jean Vilbrun Guillame Sam, who arguably provides that counterpoint a lot of the time, which says something. In principle there's nothing wrong with this evolution of Doctor Who, especially with the unconstrained nature of the VNAs, but it does feel off from time to time.

You know what else felt off to me in White Darkness? Zombis.

Okay, a few quick disclaimers. First and foremost, as you may be aware, I'm not a horror person. Don't necessarily hate it, but I always need some other hook to get me invested. Zombie stories might be the height of this. I've found most zombie stories I've tried to watch actively boring. There are exceptions – see for instance my review of "The Waters of Mars" – but this is a much more "pure" zombie story than that one was. And honestly, the portions of this novel that focused on the zombi stuff were probably my least favorite.

Though it's worth saying that writer David A. McIntee made a real effort to try and pull from actual Haitian practice for this one. It's why I've been mostly spelling it "zombi". It's because that's a distinction that is made within the text itself. McIntee spells this out in his Author's Note at the beginning of the novel: he's using that spelling to distinguish between characters like the Doctor who are familiar with Haitian practices regarding the zombi and someone like Ace who knows "zombies" from a more pop culture lens. And McIntee has done at least some research. From what I can tell the primary source he pulled from, anthropologist Wade Davis' book, The Serpent and the Rainbow has its issues, particularly with some of the scientific claims it makes, but is still largely well-regarded. That combined with McIntee working from a few pop-science articles probably makes this most well-researched VNA to date, which is, if nothing else, impressive.

Of course that means this is also a period piece. I'd like to note that historical stories have been something of a rarity in the VNAs, in spite of the first two qualifying. However since then, only Nightshade and small portions of The Pit have followed suit. And this story is definitely a departure from the standard Doctor Who historical setting. Haiti in 1915, with World War I lurking in the background, makes for a unique Doctor Who story. And McIntee's research does shine here, making the island feel very real. While I can't speak to the historical accuracy of the piece, it sure feels like a novel that is making a genuine effort to present a realistic picture of Haiti, while still incorporating some sci-fi elements.

Those of course centers around the zombis, and the mysterious entity that is pulling the strings to create more of them. For a zombie story this novel honestly features very little of the shambling monsters, despite one of them appearing on the cover. That being said there is a lot of talking about them, watching scientists working on creating them and, of course, a log. Every zombie story has a log (or at least that's my impression of the genre). And as I said, I just didn't find a lot of this material particularly interesting. It's at its most engaging when it's focused on Henri and Mait, the two Haitian characters who are most involved with the creations of zombis as they at least have the cultural connection to the rituals being performed.

But this isn't just a zombie story. Because the creation of the zombis is being directed by one of the Great Old Ones. This is our first mention of what I'm vaguely aware becomes a staple plot for the VNAs and the wider stuff in the 7th Doctor's Expanded Universe material. As a start to this arc, White Darkness does a fair job at hinting at the threat that these beings present. The Great Old One is an ancient threat that once controlled the Galaxy, and while it's no longer able to manifest properly in our universe, is able to manipulate human beings to do its bidding and create the conditions to manifest itself. What exactly this has to do with making all of Europe into zombis (which, yes, is the ultimate evil plan in this novel) is unclear. But that level of mystery kind of works in the novel's favor. The Great Old One, who is never named or identified beyond that title, is something largely unknowable. Even Mait, who serves it directly, doesn't really seem to understand what it is he's working for.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this novel also has kind of a magical bent. While it's mostly kept in the cosmic horror area that the Great Old One represents there are other little intrusions of the magical into this one. Most obviously we have Henri, who acts as Mait's second, and carries around a Tarot deck he regularly uses to make accurate assessments of people's roles in the novel. In principle this isn't really all that different from how coin tosses and the I Ching were deployed in Warriors' Gate. In practice though it somehow feels a lot more magical. Maybe it's because Warriors' Gate was already such a surrealist story that the magical elements just kind of slipped by, whereas White Darkness is set in the real world, so anything magical just stands out that much more. Either way, I wasn't a fan of Henri's magical Tarot deck, as minor of a point as it really was.

That being said, Henri and Mait did largely work for me as characters. For the majority of the novel they're just kind of background figures, and it's unclear what kind of role they'll even play in the story. It's only towards the end of the novel that it becomes clear that Mait is going to operate as our main villain, the representative of the Great Old One. So Henri and Mait largely hang around over to the side, commenting on the goings on of the novel. You can tell that they're more than they seem, partially due to Henri's Tarot routine, but mostly due to the way the stuff from their perspective is highlighted. These two always seem to have a point of view on whatever's going on, and a greater purpose beyond what is immediately apparent. And Mait is clearly in charge, with Henri seeming to be some sort of advisor. Still, for the majority of the novel these two kind of function as a package deal. We see more of Henri, but everything he does is in service of Mait.

Mait is also much older than he seems. Most people guess his age as being in his 60s, so he doesn't seem young, but nobody would think to guess that he was born in 1744. While he's presented as being Haitian, he was actually born a member of the Dahomey in West Africa. Taken by European slave traders as a child, he learned of the Great Old Ones from the "Leopard Chief" after they were the sole survivors of a shipwreck. This granted him long life and a profound hatred of Europeans, or blancs as the Haitian characters generally refer to all white people. This hatred is exploited by the Great Old One as his plan for revenge is how you get the "turn all Europeans into zombis" plan. Somehow this will actually lead to the Great Old One consuming the world, but I don't get the sense that Mait knows this.

Though for a while you can almost forget Mait and Henri exist. As mentioned this novel takes place in Haiti in 1915 and if your know your Haitian history (which, to be clear, I don't) you'll know that this was the point at which the Haitians overthrew their dictator Jean Vilbrun Guillame Sam, usually referred in this novel simply as Sam. Sam is presented as an irredeemably evil character with a huge ego, the kind of person that genuinely believes that morality is centered around how events affect them personally. In other words, he's loathsome, but there's not a ton more to him. That doesn't make him a bad villain, and indeed as things spiral out of his control, Sam gets several chilling moments. Honestly, it's just a very impressive portrait of a mad autocrat. In a bit of an ahistorical moment that kind of works nonetheless, instead of being killed by the rebels as happened in real life, he commits suicide. It works because the writing of those final moments is actually fairly well done, and because it allows for a pretty interesting moment where Bobo, the rebel leader, decides to claim that he'd killed Sam, to manufacture a more satisfying end, sort of hinting that Bobo will be no better than Sam – though Bobo would never take control of Haiti. Beyond that, Bobo doesn't have too many memorable moments.

But Haitians are not the only players in the political games being played. There's a whole German contingent that is also being manipulated by Henri and Mait. The backdrop of World War One is necessary for this novel – the Germans having introduced chemical warfare to the Great War is important context as they plan to use the zombi-creating tetrodotoxin in a similar manner. That is how Mait plans to turn all of Europe into zombis. However some of the German contingent kind of drop out of the story for much of its run. We're introduced pretty early on to a pair of scientists, Dr. Ingrid Karnstein and Victor von Stein. The pair are assigned to work on the tetrodotoxin.

A lot of Karnstein's stuff focuses on her as a woman in science, being overlooked by her superiors and colleagues alike. She's ultimately given a fairly sympathetic read, someone who was willing to push back her morals to work on this project, but still holds her reservations. Eventually she finds herself incapable of pushing her morals back any further, and destroys solution. When von Stein questions her, she argues that she's just preventing the Americans from putting the work together. Von Stein points out this is just an excuse…which she admits is true, knees von Stein in the groin and runs off. Von Stein for his part is largely characterized as a bit of a buffoon, and as such this ending feels very in character for him. The thing is, these characters kind of vanish from the narrative for quite a while. After a lot of time is spent establishing them early on, Karnstein and von Stein just stop appearing until the ending when they're suddenly back and Karnstein is kneeing von Stein in the balls.

Security for the Germans is provided by Richmann. The American mercenary is generally presented as reveling in the violence he creates. He's technically working for Mait and Henri, who are helping the Germans because they'll bring their modified tetrodotoxin, but really is defined by his self-interest more than anything else. He'll be on whoever's side pays him, as long as they let him enact his brutality. For a lot of this novel he's honestly a bit dull, but towards the end you do start to see what McIntee was intending to do with him, as he's actually used as a sort of dark reflection of Ace. The idea seems to be that Ace's love of explosives and her growing feeling that violence is all she's good for could turn her into something like Richmann. But I'll talk about that more when I talk about Ace. For now, just know that after Richmann shoots Petion's hand, Ace empties her gun into him.

Speaking of Petion, as I said he kind of takes up the role of the novel's moral center. He starts as a Haitian captain under President Jean Vilbrun Gillaume Sam, but from the beginning it's clear that he has his doubts. Though he starts off by arresting our heroes, he quickly becomes their ally and stays in that role for the rest of the novel. Early on he gets compared to the Brigadier, and I think it's a valid comparison. The big difference is that Petion essentially turns rebel early in the story, but in fairness that is actually something that happened to the Brigadier a couple times. He does seem fairly concerned at Ace's violent streak. He also gets a journey in the TARDIS.

Oh and I should mention the American contingent here. Honestly there's not a ton to say about them. They're a group of Marines who have been stationed on Haiti to protect American interests, and eventually are part of America's occupation of the country. Beyond that there's not much to say about any of them individually. They are, as a collective, very racist, obviously thinking less of the Haitians and repeatedly using the n-word to describe them.

Oh and Benny actually also says the n-word in this one…but in fairness she'd never heard the word before, and was mostly just curious about it from a historical perspective. There's not a ton to say about Benny in this novel. The thing that stood out most to me is that we're clearly seeding the idea that Benny might try to find her father. It's something that was sort of introduced back in her introduction in Love and War but I didn't think of as much more than backstory at the time. Beyond that, her status as an archaeologist is leveraged quite a bit in this novel to good effect. But probably the most memorable thing she has is a lengthy escape sequence from the German's cave base. There's a genuine feeling of desperation throughout this sequence from Benny, you really get the sense of her every action being crucial. She uses brains by disguising herself as a scientist, and brawn when she needs to fight or swim away.

As for the Doctor, as I hinted at above, we're definitely still playing around with the Doctor as a darker figure in this novel. It's not so much directed at his companions for the first time in what seems like a while, but instead at his enemies. I will say, I do miss the time when the 7th Doctor could come across to strangers as a harmless little man, which seems to be less and less of a thing in the VNAs at this point. He's showing a lot of trust in his companions, especially Ace, to take initiative in the ways he wants, even though he's clearly concerned by Ace's increasing violent streak. I do feel like since Ace returned we're seeing a bit less of that innate trust he had in Benny when she was sole companion. Partially this would seem to be here to reinforce some of Benny's insecurities concerning Ace. But also it's just natural for the Doctor to trust Ace more quickly, since he knew her longer. Then again, after the events of Lucifer Rising, you'd think he'd be a bit more cautious with her.

The novel ends climaxes with him blowing up Mait with Ace's explosives. In fairness (I suppose) he does try to warn Mait about his impending death, but that's only after he did everything he could to trick Mait into walking directly into them. Again, it does feel like a bit of a decaying of the Doctor's supposed pacifism. It's not just this moment but a culmination of the Doctor's behavior for, frankly, the last few novels. I'm just not sure that I love how our whole main cast has evolved into "darker" versions of themselves, including Benny despite her being in these novels for a shorter period of time than the other two.

On the other hand…I do really like what was done with Ace in this novel. I mentioned above that she gets the most focus in this novel, and how Richmann essentially serves as a dark mirror to Ace. Indeed, one of Ace's final thoughts in this novel is one of concern that she's turning into Richmann. Earlier, she had explained to Petion that she felt that violence was all she had to offer anymore, so she might as well use it for good. Petion makes, essentially, the "when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail" counterpoint to this. It's an interesting conversation, a part of a larger friendship between Petion and Ace that really landed for me. And you can see how Ace is constantly going for a more violent solution throughout this novel. But again, she's very conscious of that tendency, and ends the novel worried of where it will take her. All in all, a really good novel for Ace's character.

I do want to end on a slight criticism of this novel: I didn't love the prose style. Now this criticism is fairly mild – this isn't another situation like we had with The Pit. But I did find the prose style of White Darkness to feel a bit empty, often describing events without really bringing them to life. On the other hand, there are some rather memorable scenes, particularly the caverns where the Germans have set up their base. Also, McIntee nails the voices of our three main leads, especially Benny (although she's probably the easiest to write for).

On the whole, I did largely like White Darkness, but came away a bit nonplussed. It's far from a bad novel, but it did feel like it lacked a certain spark. I was particularly struck by how grim our main cast have become, which I do think is to this novel's – and the VNAs as a whole's – detriment. But the politics of Haiti are well-written and Mait was a good antagonist, in whatever else I might have felt about the zombi plot.

Score: 6/10

Stray Observations

• Holy shit what the fuck is this cover? Ace's head looks massive on her body (at least I can recognize Sophie Aldred's features for a change), the facial expressions on all three of our leads look almost comical with Benny in particular looking less like she's scared of the zombi menacing her and more like she left the oven on at home. The Doctor meanwhile looks like he's aged about 40 years or so, and his face is doing the expression you might associate with a mildly confused four year old. I've never cared for most of the VNA covers but this might actually be the worst yet.
• This novel is the first to refer to Bernice Summerfield more frequently as "Benny". To this point it's been a nickname that only occasionally gets used. You may have noticed that I use "Benny" more frequently than "Bernice" and that's largely because the Benny that I'm familiar with barely goes by her actual name, but that wasn't nearly as set in stone in the beginning as I had assumed going in.
• The Doctor considers taking a few different umbrellas before settling on his usual one. Among them is the 6th Doctor's which he describes as "too garish". On one hand, that's fair enough Doctor. On the other hand, you're the one who's decided to emphasize your air of mystery by not only putting a question mark on your umbrella handle but also wearing a sweater of question marks. Maybe you're not the incarnation who should be commenting on the "garishness" of other people's fashion choices. Though he does modify his outfit, getting rid of the sweater, at the beginning of this novel.
• The Doctor starts wearing a brooch with a serpent coiling around an eagle. This is the engagement brooch given to him by Cameca in The Aztecs after he accidentally proposed marriage to her.
• Based on comments by the Doctor this adventure takes place immediately after "Lucifer Rising". He had intended to take them on a vacation. As you'll know from watching any amount of Doctor Who, the Doctor intending to take his companions on a vacation only for an adventure to break out is a pretty standard start to these stories.
• Petion tries to open the TARDIS (he thinks it's just a weird box that might have a phone in it) with the TARDIS key but it won't open for him. There's been a variety of explanations given over the years for why the TARDIS key might not work for a stranger.
• Just once, I would like for a fictional scenario involving tarot cards not to involve the "Death" card. It just feels too obvious is all.
• The Doctor insists that our heroes can't interfere with General Etienne's massacre of political prisoners as it's a matter of established history. Ace refers back to the Beer Hall Putsch, which she and the Doctor couldn't interfere with back in Timewyrm: Exodus.
• In Chapter 8, The Doctor's perspective narration mentions that he got a degree of medicine from Lister, matching up with what the 2nd Doctor claimed in The Moonbase, in which he claimed to have received the degree in Glasgow in 1888. After this it's revealed that the Doctor generally feels awkward claiming a medical degree considering how far in the past 1888 usually is where he travels. But in this instance, what with it being 1915, he figures his training is just about up to date enough to claim the medical degree, though he is sure to mention he's a doctor "of many things."
• He also seems fairly annoyed when he mentions that he's from Gallifrey that Dr. Phillips assumes he's from Ireland, sick of every human he runs into thinking that.
• Ace mentions having seen severe injuries being inflicted by the claws of "big cats". This is almost certainly in reference to Survival.
• While it makes sense for her character, it still weirds me out to see Ace saying "cut that shit out". To be clear, if any Classic Who companion would have been swearing it's Ace, and that was before she spent the better part of three years as a soldier. But it's weird thinking of any companion swearing, because Doctor Who, at least when on television, is a family show. Hell Ace in Big Finish doesn't swear as far as I can remember.
• When the idea of visiting a history museum is first presented to Benny she seems kind of bored by the idea, as she's not expecting anything that would impress her. However by the time she's arrived she seems more interested, not just because of the artifacts, but a chance to see what an early 20th Century History museum looks like. "Double historical interest" she calls it. I don't mind either of these reactions, but it feels like an inconsistency.
• Benny seems excited that if she gets back to the 26th Century the artifacts in the aforementioned museum, which imply alien incursion in Haiti, would earn her a Nobel Prize…or "maybe even" something called a Magnees.
• She also mentions wishing she'd brought a tricorder. That's a word I associate with Star Trek and it sure seems like the "tricorder" she's referring to functions much like Star Trek's tricorder. Odd.
• In Chapter 12, narration is quick to assure us that, when the Doctor backs over someone threatening him with a weapon, it was an accident.
• Benny apparently took ballet lessons at one point, probably as a kid.
• Benny thinks that the caverns might have been constructed by "Earth Reptiles" before dismissing the idea. This presumably refers to the Silurians, or maybe Sea Devils.

Next Time: A return to the television series as the Doctor finally tracks down Melody (by accident). Naturally this episode set in Nazi Germany is a comedy.

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 6, Episode 7
• Airdate: 4th June 2011
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: Amy, Rory
• Other Notable Characters: River Song, Dorium Maldovar, Madame Kovarian, Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh), Jenny (Catrin Stewart), Strax (Dan Starkey)
• Writer: Steven Moffat
• Director: Peter Hoar
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

Review

Oh look, I'm angry, that's new. I'm really not sure what's going to happen now. – The Doctor

Towards the end of "A Good Man Goes to War" our heroes and their allies are being menaced by the "Headless Monks" a force of literally headless monks with fire swords. As they chant, one of those aforementioned allies, Dorium Maldovar says the line, "Oh dear God. It's the attack prayer."

Whenever I watch this scene a part of me can't help but think that none of this feels remotely like Doctor Who. The whole thing. The monks with the fire swords. The ominous chanting. Dorium's line. The whole thing just does not feel even a little bit like Doctor Who. Which is weird right? Constantly you'll hear people say that Doctor Who is always changing, that's it's never just one thing. I've made this point too, I titled my review of Season 6 of the Classic Series "Doctor Who is Whatever You Want it to Be", and I ended that review on that same line.

But just because a show is flexible does not mean it doesn't have a tone. There's a lot to like about this episode. It contains some of my favorite 11th Doctor moments, and some of the most important to understanding his character. The twist at the end of the episode is one of the few major plot points from Series 6's arc that lands properly. But at its core, this story centering around a big battle with explosions, and swords (both made of fire and not) and even a lot of the high stakes drama, and overall it's not what I want out of Doctor Who. And frankly, I'm not sure this show is particularly good at it.

I recognize that this is a minority opinion. Hell, I even understand why it's a minority opinion. There's arguably more to like about this episode than not. But evaluating an episode's quality isn't about putting the good and bad bits on opposite ends of a scale and seeing what there's more of. For all of the interesting character work and fun twists, every time I watch this episode there's a nagging sense that I'm watching a different show, one that I probably wouldn't like.

The episode itself picks up in the aftermath of the Doctor melting Amy's Ganger at the end of "The Almost People". And immediately let's talk about this first scene. There's narration from Amy, which I'll get to a bit more later, but the main point is Rory showing up on a Cyber-ship in full Roman dress, threatening the Cybermen and demanding they tell him where his wife is. The Doctor then promptly blows up some Cyber-ships, just to make the point. This scene, popular among the fanbase, has always struck as a bit cringy. For one thing, I've never fully understood why Rory is in his Roman garb for this episode, but as that was apparently the Doctor's idea and it's at least reasonably in character for the Doctor to go for the showy presentation, I won't harp on it too much. A bit more substantially, the whole scene feels like, and trust me when I tell you I'm too old to use this phrase but I can't think of a better one, aura farming. Blowing up the ships, Rory's "badass" presentation, it's entirely unnecessary for the episode, tells us very little about these characters that won't be better expressed later in said episode. At most it shows an angry Rory and a Doctor who's being pushed to extremes. But the Doctor's not actually in this scene, we don't even have a clue how he blew up the Cyber-ships. And Rory's going to have plenty of time to express a whole range of emotions this episode.

But okay, that scene is largely harmless. And what follows next is something genuinely interesting: the Doctor assembling an army. It's mostly characters we've never met before, but the episode does a decent job giving quick characterization to each of them that gives us a sense of who they are. Vastra and Jenny are a Silurian and her maid living in Victorian times and, while it's not made as explicit here, Vastra is very Sherlock Holmes-coded. Oh and by the end of the episode it's pretty clear that their relationship is less detective/maid and more lovers. Next is Strax, a Sontaran who the Doctor somehow forced to become a nurse during a sci-fi war that looks oddly like the American Revolutionary War for some reason. Rory tries to recruit River but she insists she can't come along. And finally, Dorium Maldovar, last seen in the opening sequence of "The Pandorica Opens" is given a larger part and is also recruited by the Doctor.

The idea of the Doctor calling in favors from past adventures is an interesting one, though I do wish we'd gotten at least one character we'd met before aside from Dorium, who was barely in "Pandorica". Sure, Captain Avery and his son Toby have brief cameo later on in the episode, but aside from "The Curse of the Black Spot" not being an especially memorable episode, their cameo in this episode is so short it's barely worth mentioning. Original plans called for Jack Harkness to make his return, but John Barrowman was busy filming for the 4th Series of Torchwood, Miracle Day. Writer/Showrunner Steven Moffat has since stated he feels like it was better not to include Harkness, since an episode featuring him would sort of become about the return of Jack Harkness and pull focus away from the plot. I do see this point, but at the same time, a connection to an RTD-era character in a time where those were rare would have helped the show's universe feel more connected. And it would have been a character that the audience would recognize. And that would just better match the idea of the Doctor bringing together a bunch of allies.

Still, the allies we do get here are fun in their own right. Jenny probably gets the least amount of time in this one, mostly just being there to back up Vastra, but she's got fun chemistry with her reptilian wife, and there is something entertaining about this Victorian maid running around with swords on a space station. Strax is mostly just a comic relief character, but Dan Starkey is so good at playing the obliviously deadpan humor of a Sontaran that it really works. Plus he does get some interesting character notes. Particularly the idea of a Sontaran who had always dreamed of dying in battle getting that wish and discovering he doesn't enjoy it is quite poignant in its own way. As is his final words (as far as we knew at the time) being him acknowledging himself as not a warrior, but a nurse. Dorium Maldovar, for his part, is great in this episode. We only got a hint of the powerful operator that Dorium is in his first appearance, but here he really does get to shine. Openly taunting main villain Kovarian creates a fun scene, and while he doesn't get to do much in the episode proper (until his beheading that is), you do get the impression of a man who is at the center of his own web of power and money.

And then there's Vastra. It's long been speculated that a lot of Vastra's material in this episode was originally meant for Jack Harkness when he was going to be in the episode. I can't find any concrete evidence of this but I do see why one might think that. Vastra is positioned in this episode as a character who has known the Doctor for a long time. Apparently she was planning on taking revenge for the deaths of her family on innocents in the London Underground before the Doctor managed to talk her down. There's plenty of evidence, even in this first appearance, that Vastra actually knows the Doctor quite well and, I like to think, has known her in multiple incarnations. Regardless, Vastra acts as the voice of reason throughout this episode, a role she generally does well in, because the Doctor's kind of blinded by everything else that's going on.

To this point the relationship between the 11th Doctor and his companions has been that of close friends. That's going to change in a pretty substantial way by the end of this episode, but from the beginning we get the sense that Amy, and yes, Rory as well, mean more to the Doctor than that would indicate. Again, he's calling in a bunch of favors, a move I can't think of the Doctor ever pulling on television before this, to rescue Amy. The closest comparison I can think of is the Doctor's friends all uniting in "The Stolen Earth" but that was something they did on their own accord.

And at first, it seems to really work. The Doctor's plan to save Amy involves a ton of misdirection and not a single shot actually getting fired because, in spite of everything, this is still the Doctor we're talking about. Misdirection is his favorite tactic and avoiding bloodshed is his preference. It also, however, reveals a lot about him in the process. Colonel Manton is the leader of the enemy forces, this army that has been raised on the asteroid Demon's Run. He mostly comes off as pretty competent, notably preventing things from getting out of control between his forces and the Headless Monks. Maybe a bit of a caricature, and definitely not a good person, but good enough at his job. And the Doctor absolutely destroys this man.

The Colonel Runaway speech, and its followup represent crucial points to understand the 11th Doctor. The Colonel Runaway speech…honestly more than anything else it's just bluster, but it's kind of a look of what the Doctor could be if he chose to be cruel. There was no reason for the Doctor to insist that Manton order a surrender using the phrase "run away" in order to "make [him] famous for those words". But as he says, Manton and his army tried to get at the Doctor through the people he loves. That's enough to make anyone vindictive. And a vindictive Doctor is scary because the Doctor puts a lot of thought into everything, meaning that he'll have put a lot of thought into the precise nature of his revenge. And that's what the Colonel Runaway speech is. But it's the follow up, after Kovarian insists that the Doctor's not to be feared because as a good man he has "too many rules", that's really worth keeping in mind. The Doctor says, simply "good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many".

Again, it's a bit blustery. Kovarian has no idea what the Doctor's threatening, Manton has no idea what the Doctor is threatening, hell the Doctor has no idea what the Doctor's threatening. But it still works. And more to the point, it reinforces something that we've been hinting at since "Amy's Choice": the 11th Doctor does not see himself in a positive light. Ironically, I do think that the 11th Doctor is a good man, at least he is most of the time. Everything I've just quoted, all these important lines…again on some level they're all just bluster. And there will be more to consider on this point in the future. But for now, I just think it's worth considering one idea. What if the fact that the Doctor doesn't consider himself to be a good man is how he gives himself permission to do cruel things when he's in his worst moments? What if it's how he allows himself to be cruel to a man like Manton and turn him into Colonel Runaway?

Regardless, things are going well. Rory's even got his and Amy's baby, who Amy's named Melody, and brought her back to Amy. The reunion between Amy and Rory is genuinely quite touching, especially as it includes baby Melody and, eventually, the Doctor. Amy's been convinced that the Doctor and, especially, Rory would be coming to save her but there's still this overwhelming sense of relief you can feel coming off of her. But this scene absolutely belongs to Rory. For one thing his entrance with the baby is great. He's, by his own admission, trying to be cool but the sheer emotion of seeing his wife again and holding his daughter for the first time has overcome him. And then, when the Doctor makes himself known in the middle of this reunion, Rory calls him over so they can share in the joy of the moment. It's the moment that I think firmly establishes this TARDIS team as having a family dynamic. It's not just Amy, Amy's husband, and Amy's best friend. It's not even Amy, Rory and their friend. The Doctor is very much a part of this family and it really cements the uniqueness of this era of Doctor Who. And I think for it to do that, it really had to come from Rory.

We then get a break from the action as our leading trio just kind of get to hang out for a bit. This material is solid, if a bit unremarkable. The most interesting thing is that we get to see the Doctor's cot. And then, the penny drops. Let's talk about Melody.

In that narration by Amy I mentioned earlier, this episode decides to do something really annoying: pretend that the Doctor might be the father of Amy's child. There's another case of that really bad deceptive writing that was present in "Day of the Moon" where Amy, speaking to Melody, describes her father. She says a lot of things that sound like they apply to the Doctor but also apply to Rory, thanks to his time as The Last Centurion. In there she says that Rory is "the last of his kind" which could technically be referring to the Centurions but is a really weird thing to say about Rory that doesn't quite line up. I can't imagine this fooling anyone.

Except it comes back. Later in the episode, Melody's DNA is scanned and they discover that she's "human plus Time Lord". Now the explanation is eventually given that due to Melody being conceived in the TARDIS (possibly during the closing credits of "The Big Bang" because, yes, that's what the title actually meant) she was born with a unique relationship to time, like the Time Lords were created in part via exposure to the Untempered Schism (hey, there's your RTD era link, as that idea was introduced in "The Sound of Drums"). Now this wasn't enough to "cook yourself a Time Lord" as the Doctor puts it, but the people who took her have had time to work on her and create, possibly a new kind of Time Lord. However, there's a pretty long gap of time between the reveal that Melody is "human plus Time Lord" and this explanation. Enough time that it really feels like the episode wants you to believe that the Doctor might actually be Melody's father.

Now I wasn't fooled. You probably weren't fooled. It's not a very convincing lie, since the show has repeatedly drummed it into our heads that, in spite of some outward appearances to the contrary, Amy really is devoted to Rory. Hell even when she was coming on to (and trying to sexually assault) the Doctor at the end of "Flesh and Stone" (I wish I didn't have to keep mentioning that scene) it was pretty clear that Amy wasn't all that interested in him so much as she was a vulnerable person landing on the nearest warm body. It's still an awful scene mind, and yes, I'm going to point that out every time it comes up. But the point is "Amy's Choice" did such a good job convincing me that Amy and Rory were the couple of this era, and these repeated implications to the contrary just annoy me. Especially in this episode where they're little more than, for lack of a better word, trolling. It's fortunately a small part of the episode, but man is it awful.

But going back to Melody herself, why would the people who took Amy want to cook a Time Lord? Well, this is where we have to talk about our villains for this story. I've already covered Colonel Manton, leader of the army, but we've neglected a crucial point. These guys sure appear to be the same religious army we saw back in Series 5's Angel two-parter. And now they're preparing to go to war with the Doctor himself.

How an army might go to war with the Doctor is kind of interesting. We see soldiers training to recognize psychic paper for what it is, a sign explaining the sonic screwdriver (it reads "1. It's not sonic/2. It's Not a screwdriver"). But on the whole it's hard to know what to make of these guys, now confirmed to be Anglicans because why not. Oddly enough, in spite of being given more focus than last time, the religious aspect is arguably de-emphasized as compared to their introduction. There's a bit with the headless monks that implies they're open to having their members forcibly converted, even if it means getting their heads chopped off, and a vague reference to something called the "Papal Mainframe" but by the time the Doctor arrives on Demon's Run they may as well be any military force.

And what characterization any of them do get is very mixed. You've got Colonel Manton, a competent if fairly unremarkable character. But then there's a pair called the Thin One and the Fat One. No they don't have names because, to quote the Thin One "We're the thin fat gay married Anglican marines. Why would we need names as well?" This might be the worst attempt at representation that was still meant to be positive that I've ever seen. Seriously, what the actual hell? Anyway the Fat One gets his head chopped off upon joining the Headless Monks. When it's revealed that all the Headless Monks are, in fact, literally headless, the Thin One looks a bit dismayed…I guess.

On the more positive side, we do have Lorna Bucket. She's joined the church/army because she met the Doctor once and hopes to meet him again. She joined a military force to do this because, "how else do you meet a great warrior"? This ties into some stuff we'll get to later. Regardless, Lorna remains successful as part of the larger project to humanize the enemy forces. Sure the Fat and Thin Ones (miserable, absolutely miserable) also try to fulfill this role, as well as some smaller scenes, but Lorna is where it is most successful. Of course Lorna also changes sides by the end. It foreshadowed thanks to her connecting to Amy, who, after initial hostility, does recognize Lorna's compassion and tells her to be on the right side when the Doctor arrives. Lorna, realizing that Kovarian has lain a trap for the Doctor, warns our heroes, and while it doesn't come to much other than her death, it completes a decently presented character arc.

And her death scene does represent another good moment for the Doctor. As she dies, the Doctor reassures Lorna that he does remember meeting her, saying "Hey, we ran, you and me". But this is a lie, if a lie born out of kindness. When she dies, the Doctor reveals he doesn't know who just died, and presumably just took a wild stab in the dark that someone who he met did some running (the odds were pretty good). When Vastra says that Lorna was brave his reply, "they're always brave" is a bitter reminder that the Doctor has lost people he liked before. This tenderness is also an interesting contrast to the cruelty he displayed towards Manton earlier.

It all ties into the larger point that this episode is trying to do: the Doctor's reputation is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it allows him to put together this army he gathered to rescue Amy. But on the other hand, his reputation is the reason he had to rescue Amy in the first place. As we eventually learn, Madame Kovarian has done all of this to fight a war…against the Doctor. When River does finally show up, once everything has ended she drives this point home, emphasizing that this was all done "in fear of you", and asking the Doctor if when he started traveling he ever though he'd be the sort of person who could scare off an army. It's a pointed remark when the Doctor is in a vulnerable place, because, while he's rescued Amy, it turns out he didn't rescue Melody. In a heart-rending scene, Melody melts in Amy's arms, revealing the baby to be a Melody Ganger.

All of this should make Kovarian feel like a truly stand-out Doctor Who villain, who tricked the Doctor twice, and in the same way by replacing someone with a Ganger. After all this whole episode represents a plan by Kovarian to get her hands on Amy's child, a plan that ultimately succeeds against the Doctor. And yet something feels off with this character. Frances Barber is chewing the scenery through all of her scenes, and it definitely gives Kovarian menace, but at the cost of her feeling like a coherent character. For the second story in a row it feels like a main villain shouldn't have been quite so much of a sadistic monster. Kovarian should probably feel like a character who sincerely believes everything she's doing is necessary, damn the moral implications. But she just kind of comes off as a standard villain. A villain who's going to such extreme lengths "in fear of" the Doctor should not come off quite so one-dimensional. And should, you know, seem a bit afraid of the Doctor, and not be taunting him so constantly.

And this goes back to a lot of this episode just feeling off. The Headless Monks are especial offenders as, frankly, I'm not entirely sure what they're doing in this episode, their only appearance. They've allied with the Anglican Church, but what the Monks are getting out of any of this is never made even remotely clear. Hell what they provide to the Anglicans feels equally murky. They've got an unexplained mysticism, the ability to decapitate people and having the victims survive, hell even anything more than their very basic theology, it's never explained. They seem to only be in this to provide some fun visuals and so that the Doctor can briefly trick the Anglicans into thinking he's disguised himself as a Monk.

The episode seems to be heading for a downer ending, with Amy traumatized and Rory completely devastated at the loss of their baby. The Doctor's feeling pretty awful about the whole thing himself. And then River shows up and after pointing out all those things to the Doctor I mentioned earlier, she shows him something and he cheers right up. To a frankly inappropriate degree, although at the very least he promises to Amy and Rory that he'll find baby Melody before running off in the TARDIS. And it all feels off. Amy certainly feels so as she pulls a gun on River.

Which is when we get the big reveal: River is Melody. It seems to have happened thanks to some odd trickery with a mistranslated name and switching around the first and last names ("Melody" becomes "Song", "Pond" becomes "River". And this reveal absolutely works for me. Remember what I said about this TARDIS team feeling like a proper family in this episode? Well that final reveal clinches it. River is Amy and Rory's daughter, the Doctor, at this point, is effectively her boyfriend. They're all family. It helps tie together the whole story, and while it does somewhat guarantee that Amy and Rory will never get the chance to raise their child, it also permanently alters the dynamics between all these characters in a way I think ultimately served this era quite well. And it was foreshadowed. The most obvious is the ending of "Day of the Moon" where River is clearly just having fun when she says, in full view of her actual father Rory, "my old man didn't see that did he?" But even in "Flesh and Stone" there were moments where you could tell that River was more invested in Amy's survival than you'd expect.

But I'm still not entirely sold on this ending. The Doctor is just a bit too gleeful upon learning all of this. And he just kind of leaves Amy and Rory standing there in shock. Amy pulling a gun on River feels wrong somehow as well. Don't get me wrong, I get she's upset and as far as she knows River refused to show up for no good reason. But it still feels like an extreme reaction, and a bit out of character. The reveal itself is good, but a bit too drawn out, especially on rewatch. River's really milking this moment and there's even a misdirect with the Doctor's cot. These might seem like nitpicky things but they do kind of hurt that ending.

And this episode is full of those little moments. River says that due to what happens in this episode the Doctor will "rise higher than ever before and then fall so much further", a line that can only be hyperbole, and kind of detracts from the genuine sense of a rise and fall that happens because the episode can never live up to that quote. And that's kind of this episode in a nutshell. For every clever writing decision (who's the "good man" from the title, the Doctor…or Rory?) there's something goofy or a bit too over the top. Kovarian doesn't work for me. The Headless Monks feel like they come from an entirely different show. The Fat One and the Thin One were characters that were created. Some things get a little too drawn out. It's not all bad, and the character work for our leading trio is some of the best and most important of this era. But something about this episode just feels off.

Score: 4/10

Stray Observations

• You know, in preparing the "Story Information" section for this post, I noticed that Vastra and Kovarian both go by "Madame", and as I've listed them back to back it kind of looks like they're associated or something. Weird.
• The original impetus for this script was Steven Moffat wondering what could prompt the normally pacifistic Doctor to assemble an army.
• This served as Doctor Who's first mid-series finale (of two). Series 6 was intentionally structured to have both a long term storyline that would be resolved in the Series 6 finale (the Doctor's apparent death in "The Impossible Astronaut") and a shorter term storyline that could be resolved in the mid-series finale (Amy's pregnancy and the "eye patch lady").
• Showrunner/Writer Steven Moffat had given Amy the last name "Pond" with the idea that she'd turn out to be River's mother.
• Amy and Rory becoming parents was also meant as a way to explore how having a married couple traveling on the TARDIS would be different. At the same time, Moffat realized that he couldn't have Amy traveling with the Doctor while heavily pregnant. Initially the plan was just to skip over the pregnancy entirely, before Moffat instead came up with the idea of a doppelgänger Amy being on the TARDIS.
• It's long been speculated, though as far as I know it's unconfirmed, that Jack would have had his head chopped off by the Headless Monks, which would have lead to explaining how he became the Face of Boe.
• Also originally meant to cameo in this story was Paul Kasey as Ood Sigma, and this was even filmed, but ultimately edited out. For whatever reason, Russel T Davies still got credited for creating the Ood in this episode's credits.
• The idea that the word "doctor" came from "The Doctor" was an idea Steven Moffat had had for a very long time, and had posted to a usenet board in 1995.
• To preserve the reveal of River's true identity from leaking, several false endings to the story were devised, including one that was actually used at the read-thru, with only Matt Smith and Alex Kingston knowing the truth beforehand. Meanwhile Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill, who were somewhat suspicious, were told the truth immediately after the read-thru.
• This was the first episode that Frances Barber filmed as Madame Kovarian, with her previous appearances in Series 6 having been filmed during the production of this one.
• Neve McIntosh, who plays Vastra, previously played Silurians Alaya and Restac in the "Hungry Earth" two-parter. The script specified that Vastra was related to those two, presumably the family she was avenging in the London Underground.
• Jenny and Vastra's backstory was hashed out between actors Catrin Stewart and Neve McIntosh. It's not great honestly, as the idea that Vastra adopted Jenny before they became romantic partners is…yeah that's just grooming. Fortunately, that part of their backstory hasn't ever been made cannon, and from what I can tell, between spinoff material and shorts, Jenny's always been said to have met Vastra as an adult, though I've not yet listened to any of the Paternoster Gang audio stuff.
• A lot of the work on the actual Battle of Demons Run was directed by Julian Simpson. The episode's proper director, Peter Hoar, was unhappy with not being brought in to work on this.
• The Cybermen in the opening sequence mostly have the Cybusmen look, but in place of the Cybus Industries logo, it's now just two concentric circles.
• For some reason the opening titles have been modified to include TARDIS noises upon the logo reveal and as the TARIDS spins out of the logo that completely drown out the theme song. As if it wasn't hard enough to hear the music during the lightning strike sound effects. What a weird, pointless decision that actively makes the titles worse in my opinion.
• We're introduced to Vastra by learning that she is a detective…and that she apparently ate Jack the Ripper.
• Henry Avery and Toby's cameo was filmed during "The Curse of the Black Spot". In the time since it would seem that Toby is no longer dependent on the breathing tube he was wearing at the end of that episode.
• So in the past I've said that moments where Rory's background as a nurse comes up are frustratingly rare. But actually, if you're looking for them, there are plenty of references, they're just never prominent. For instance in this episode when Rory brings baby Melody back to Amy he mentions that he's "checked" that she's okay and reading between the lines, this can only mean that he's actually given her a proper, if basic, medical examination. Now, do I wish that side of his character were more pronounced? Absolutely, but these references are more common than you probably think it is.
• It is in this episode, when talking to baby Melody, that it's revealed that the Doctor speaks "baby".
• And in the next scene it's revealed that Strax (and presumably any Sontaran who might choose to "gene splice" himself in a similar manner) can lactate.
• No "Next Time" trailer again this time, instead an MCU-style "The Doctor will Return in LET'S KILL HITLER".

Next Time: Back to the VNAs, and The Doctor takes Benny and Ace for a tropical vacation. Naturally a zombi plague breaks out. Don't even pretend to be surprised.

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant pages here and here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 6, Episodes 5-6
• Airdate: 21st - 28th May 2011
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: Amy, Rory
• Other Notable Characters: Madame Kovarian
• Writer: Matthew Graham
• Director: Julian Simpson
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

Review

I have to get to that cockerel before all hell breaks loose!…I never thought I'd get to say that again. – The Doctor

On paper, the "Rebel Flesh" two parter might actually be the perfect Doctor Who story. It's a "base under siege" story in an era where the show wasn't overloaded with that particular story type (meaning, not in specifically Season 5 of the Classic Series). Its idea of human beings growing what they believe are mindless clones that they can control, only to discover that the clones, called the Flesh or Gangers (sort for doppelgängers), have an intelligence when an accident causes them to split from their operators is so rich with potential for a deep exploration of what it means to be human. And the specific setting of a dangerous factory where Gangers are regularly "decommissioned" due to workplace accidents (or as we see in the opening, the operators just horsing around because as far as they know there's no danger to anyone) leads to all kinds of ideas about worker exploitation and dehumanization. And if you were to lay out the two-parter plot point by plot point in a series of bullet points you'd have a hard time identifying any flaws with the execution here.

This is not the perfect Doctor Who story.

I do think that this two-parter is pretty badly underrated. While it doesn't live up to it's potential "The Rebel Flesh" and "The Almost People" form a solid story that does translate a lot of that potential on to the screen. But there's also a lot of missteps in this story that cause it to fall well short of what it probably should have been.

The most obvious of these are probably the special effects. The general look of the Gangers is very well done, with their literally white, slightly too smooth yet cracked skin (though I will say it kind of only works as well as it does because we have an all-white cast). They can look more human, but only with practice. But when they get more monstrous things do tend to fall apart. One character, Jennifer, has a particular tendency to just turn into the most monstrous forms. This could have worked but the end result tends more towards the comical than the horrifying. There's also a moment when the Ganger of Miranda Cleaves turns her head around 180 degrees and not only is the effects work iffy but I genuinely have no idea why she did this.

Thing is, I'm not convinced that this is as big a problem as you might assume. Sure, wonky effects have become less a part of Doctor Who's identity in the Revival but I will always maintain that, regardless of era, a good story can more than make up for bad effects. And like I said, the actual look of the Gangers is great. Plus there's a really great scene where Jennifer is trying to convince Rory that, in spite of being a Ganger she's also a real person, and she's repeating the word "me" over and over while hitting her chest and each time she hits her chest she shifts to her more human skin tone. And honestly, for me at least, that scene's brilliantly conceived and very well realized effects work kind of makes up for all of the rest of the poor visuals.

And this episode has all of these ideas swimming around about dehumanization, about workers' relationships to their bosses and the artificial divides that that first ideas creates with the second. But it's energy that can sometimes feel wasted. The divide between the Gangers and humans feels a bit contrived. While the episode does a good job of making sure you're aware of who the Gangers and who the originals are (with one notable exception), the two factions' conflict feels like it kind of comes out of nowhere. And the story gives a lot of time and importance to its worst character, Jennifer Lucas.

Once again, Jennifer works pretty well in concept. And like the two-parter itself, Jen isn't a bad character necessarily. But she does feel like a character who needed more time and care put into her actual writing. The idea is that Jennifer starts off as the quietest and kindest member of the factory crew. But gradually as the story goes her Ganger (who, like all the Gangers, starts off with the same personality as the person she was copied from) becomes more and more violent and angry towards the humans. By the end of the story she's going all genocidal and is the one who has most of those dodgy effects associated with her as she turns monstrous. A big reason why she undergoes this shift is that she's the only one who can remember the deaths her past Gangers suffered. We don't know why this is the case – originally it was mean to be because she had perfect recall but that was cut for time.

But Jennifer kind of doesn't work for me. For one thing, I think it was a bad move to make her quite so sadistic. It just feels like a character shift that comes out of nowhere, to signal that she's the baddie. There is some sense of progression here, but in practice it ends up feeling very abrupt. Also, the sadism just feels like the wrong move. What's supposed to be happening here is that Jen is so overwhelmed by the memories of the pain of being repeatedly killed and discarded that she can't help but lash out. But Jen actually comes off very calculating and cruel. There's a mismatch.

The idea here should be that Jennifer is lashing out at the wrong people. The Gangers' originals aren't to blame for a company that uses a technology it doesn't fully understand or a government which keeps it under wraps, probably to avoid scrutiny. The originals have been told that the Flesh is just a tool and they believed it. And how could they possibly know any better, they're factory workers, not scientists. And the idea of fighting the bigger fight does come into play at the end when the Doctor sends the two of the surviving members of our cast (one Human one Ganger) to testify to their experiences. That's honestly as much as the story needs to show on that end. But nobody makes that point to Jen. Instead the reasons that the other Gangers give for abandoning her revolution, while reasonable, don't offer her an alternative path to getting the emancipation that she wants (though it feels like she was beyond any kind of reason at that point).

But I don't want to complain too much because, as I said, I enjoyed this story. While abrupt, the Gangers vs. Humans fight did set up some very tense moments. The fact that the entire cast (save Amy and Rory) have duplicates running around creates some interesting character moments, as we actually get a lot of time to know most of these characters. Sure the story can tend towards the melodramatic. One moment in particular stands out as the Ganger version of Cleaves runs out of a room screaming in a moment that I'm sure was supposed to convey pure horror on the part of Cleaves but ends up being more comedic than anything. On the other hand the moment before that at Cleaves realizes she is a Ganger is really well done.

And honestly, I thought Cleaves was mostly really well-handled as a character. She's the classic obstructionist base commander that so many base under siege stories have. But she reminds me a lot of the earliest iterations of that character archetype. Still a problem a lot of the time, but doing the best she can under difficult circumstances. On one hand, she – or more precisely her human self – does in fact start the war when she kills the Ganger version of Buzzer with a cattle prod. On the other hand, her Ganger is just standing over in the corner providing very helpful psychoanalysis of her original: "We always have to take charge, don't we, Miranda. Even when we don't really know what the hell is going on."

It sort of helps explain Cleaves in a way that makes her feel sympathetic. She's the foreman, she's supposed to be in charge, but she's ended up in a position that's entirely beyond her. The human Cleaves did still kill the Ganger version of Buzzer, a fact which probably doesn't get the attention it deserves. But a lot of this story is this bizarre chess match between the two versions of Cleaves, each of which knows each other well enough that they can predict their moves. It's also worth pointing out that Ganger Cleaves is often a counterpoint to Jen. Both versions of Cleaves feel very cynical in their approach, but while the human Cleaves refuses to acknowledge the personhood of her duplicate, Ganger Cleaves seems the most comfortable of the Gangers identifying with her original. For this reason, she only joins Jen's revolution because it seems like the best way for her to survive, and leaves it the second a way out is provided. Also, Raquel Cassidy gives an excellent performance here, showing both strength and vulnerability very effectively in appropriate moments.

Mind you, Ganger Cleaves' ending is a bit disappointing, but I'll get to that when discussing the Doctor. As for human Cleaves, she eventually comes around on the personhood of the Gangers, though what exactly does it for her is hard to say. At a guess, just more time interacting with the Gangers. Though pretty late into the story she's still very much acting in an aggressive manner. But even when she's being aggressive there's a humanizing tendency underneath it. After the solar storm that initially causes this incident, Cleaves, who'd been fairly hostile to the Doctor's warnings puts it aside to work with the Doctor and check on her people (though this does turn out to be the Ganger, she doesn't know it yet). And she's also got this blood clot in her brain that's apparently going to be fatal. The Doctor offers her a cure at the end of the episode, but it gives her headaches…that Ganger Cleaves gets as well, another reminder that the Gangers are fundamentally more alike to their originals than different.

The member of the secondary cast that gets the next-most focus is Jimmy. Jimmy is probably the most sympathetic to the Gangers of the human cast…and the most sympathetic to the Humans of the Gangers. This mostly comes through references to his son, Adam. Ganger Jimmy talks about his memories of seeing Adam born, and this does seem to convince human Jimmy that this alternate Jimmy is as much Jimmy as he is. The two do still join their respective human and Ganger camps, but seemingly mostly because they're the only camps that will have them. Human Jimmy dies to acid (shockingly the only character who dies to acid in the story set in a deadly acid factory), leaving Ganger Jimmy to be Adam's father in a touching scene. There's not a ton more to Jimmy but I enjoyed his presence.

The other two factory workers, Buzzer and Dicken get a lot less attention. As mentioned, Ganger Buzzer is the first casualty of the human/Ganger conflict. As for human Buzzer he generally seems the most hostile to the Gangers of the humans, refusing to view them as anything more than tools for most of the story although he, like the rest of the cast (save Jen) does eventually come around. I liked Buzzer…but there wasn't much to him. As for Dicken…I got nothing on this one. The human Dicken sacrifices himself to slow down Jen (who at this point has gone full CGI monstrosity), but he's very much the least developed member of the cast, in both versions.

You'll notice at this point that by the end of the story there's only one version of each of these characters left (besides Jen who killed her original before being melted herself). That's the human versions of Cleaves and Buzzer, and the Gangers of Jimmy and Dicken. I think that's a shame. At the end of the story Cleaves and Dicken are going in to tell their story to the world, presumably to get reforms made around the Flesh technology. We hear throughout the story rumors of Gangers throughout the world, with the Ganger version of Dicken referencing 10 million in India alone. But why not have both versions of Cleaves and Dicken going into that room? After all, neither character's death felt particularly necessary, even in the context of the plot. That, I think would have been a much more interesting ending. Plus a reconciliation between the two Cleaves in particularly feels like it would have enhanced the episode, instead of the Ganger's pointless self-sacrifice.

But at this point it's time to address the elephant in the room – the Doctor's got a Ganger as well. The Doctor comes into this story having very intentionally arrived at this factory to learn about the Flesh, for reasons that don't become clear until the end of the story. He had actually intended to leave Rory and Amy behind, as he wanted to keep his investigations somewhat secret. Regardless, having arrived at the factory, naturally the first thing he does is scan the Flesh. Except the Flesh scans him back and the first episode ends on the reveal that it's created a Ganger Doctor. Episode 2 then is this whole long plan by the Doctor where he's trying to gauge if Amy notices any differences between the Flesh Doctor and the original…while also trying to create a peaceful resolution between Gangers and Humans. He does this by switching shoes with his Ganger.

No really, that's a crucial part of the plan.

See in the first episode, the Doctor's shoes were melted by some acid, so he borrowed someone else's. So, everyone thinks that the Ganger version of the Doctor is wearing his original shoes while the original is wearing the borrowed shoes. So by switching shoes, the original Doctor can pretend to be the Ganger and vice versa. It's kind of an interesting idea, slightly hampered by the fact that the 11th Doctor's shoes are not really a particularly focused-on part of his costume design. If this were the 10th Doctor whose tennis shoes were always being focused on, that would be one thing, but even now, having recently watched this two-parter, I couldn't actually tell you what the 11th Doctor normally wears on his feet.

It does end up recontextualizing what is already a pretty intense scene. Amy goes to talk to who she thinks the Ganger Doctor is. First of all she tells him that she saw the Doctor's death, meaning that, while he doesn't know the specifics, the Doctor does know about his death, and that he invited his friends to see it. But then the Doctor ends up being overwhelmed by the Flesh's desire to know why it's being made to suffer. The other Doctor feels it, but not as strongly. Which seems to make sense…until you learn that this is after the Doctors recently had switched their shoes, meaning that the Doctor who broke down and was fairly threatening towards Amy…that was the original. Then again, the Doctor did seem to form some sort of a psychic link with the Flesh when he scanned it, while the Ganger would fundamentally be not that different from the other Gangers, so maybe it does make sense.

But pretty much from the moment that the second Doctor is introduced, Amy starts favoring the original – or later who she thinks is the original. This, unfortunately, gets laid on a bit too thick. Amy's behavior towards who she thinks is the Ganger Doctor just feels off. And sure, that's kind of the idea, but it goes to the point of feeling a bit cruel, at least before the "Ganger" Doctor does have that threatening moment towards her. That's kind of the main thing for Amy in this story. She doesn't get a ton to do in the first episode, and in the second episode she's kind of cruel to the Ganger Doctor…until she realizes that they swapped and she finally comes to accept the duplicate (who she'd thought was the original). Of course there is one other thing to talk about with Amy, but I'll get to the ending later.

But to briefly return to the Doctor, the original (pretending to be the Ganger) eventually ends up joining the Gangers. At one point it genuinely feels like he's joined Jennifer's revolution, as he even rejects the name "Doctor" in favor of "John Smith". However, of course, it's a trick (though I should point out it's sometime after this that we learn that the Doctors switched shoes). Still, Matt Smith acts the hell out of these scenes, given the chance to play an evil Doctor, or at least what seems to be an evil Doctor. He's honestly quite chilling in those scenes. Though ironically probably his most chilling line, which is him shoving Rory while saying "Ring ring" turns out to be him referencing the phone being about to ring. This turns out to be Adam calling for his father, which ends up dissolving Jen's revolution entirely. This was actually set up much earlier with the Doctor putting in the phone call to set up his plan.

Which raises the point that I'm not sure the Doctor's plan entirely makes sense. Or more to the point, I'm not sure it's possible for him to have planned out everything to the extent that the story seems to want us to think he did. This plan requires the "Ganger" Doctor to be double-crossed by Cleaves ordering Buzzer and Dicken to knock him out but not lock him up, and for the Ganger revolutionaries to find him and recruit him. That's a lot of moving parts is all I'm saying. On the other hand, that the Doctor wins this one in part by reminding the Gangers of their ties to humanity, when proving their humanity is all the Gangers really want, is quite appropriate.

Ultimately, because Jen is intractable, the Ganger Doctor stays behind to use his sonic (yeah, that seems to have duplicated along with the clothes…somehow) to melt Jen. Unfortunately he can't direct this, it melts both the Ganger Doctor and Cleaves who stayed behind because…I have no idea. I'm honestly not too sure why the Ganger Doctor did this bit when the original could have done it and not melted, but I suppose you could argue that he didn't know for sure that it would work, and there's good reasons not to leave a Time Lord corpse just lying around an acid factory that's been taken over by a psychotic Ganger. It still feels thin, but we definitely couldn't have two Doctors permanently.

Which leaves us with Rory. Rory ends up separated from most of the cast for a lot of this two parter. See pretty early on he connects with Jen (specifically the Ganger version, he barely meets the human one) and tries to help her. This sets up Rory spending most of the story trying to help Jen in one way or another, whether he thinks it's the human or the Ganger (it's always the Ganger). There's hints of a bit of chemistry between the two, though Rory, being married, isn't willing to get further than hints, Jennifer even saying "Amy's a lucky woman". It was nice to see Rory getting to do his own thing for a change. I think the story did effectively ride the line between building this chemistry between the two but not forcing some sort of unconvincing relationship drama (no, that's reserved for Amy for some reason, even though it never worked after "Amy's Choice"). Of course, as Jen gets increasingly hostile and manipulative, she ends up betraying Rory, and sadly there's not much follow up beyond that.

Though, in fairness, Rory has other concerns at the end of this one. Specifically Amy melting. Because Amy's Flesh and has been since the end of "The Impossible Astronaut".

This is why the Doctor wanted to investigate the Flesh and gauge Amy's reactions to his Flesh duplicate since she ended up coming with him, despite him not wanting her to. He'd worked out that Amy was probably Flesh and needed to figure out how to make the deactivation signal to melt her. Now why he needed to know how Amy reacted to the Ganger Doctor I'm not entirely clear, given that Amy's Flesh body was still fully being controlled by the original Amy. It's not like the Gangers in this story, who were given independence by a freak accident. Still I suppose you could argue that the Doctor was looking to see if there were any tell-tale signs of a Ganger that are just endemic to the Flesh. It feels thin is all.

Though this does finally explain why there's been a woman with an eyepatch opening hatches in walls that don't have hatches and staring at Amy all Series. Yeah, I haven't been mentioning it, but that's been a thing that's been happening. Amy actually tells the Doctor about it in this episode. Meanwhile the Doctor – both of him actually – is making real sure that Amy is breathing properly, because the reason the TARDIS scanner can't work out if Amy's pregnant is because she is…just not in her Flesh body. The woman looking through hatches is, presumably, some bleed-through from her real surroundings.

And then the Doctor…just melts Amy's Ganger. Yeah, this feels a bit off. After all, we've just spent a full two episodes doing a pretty good job reinforcing the point that the Gangers are, effectively, fully human, and now the Doctor just kind of kills one. Yes, it's not independent, but the Gangers prior to the solar storm incident were also not independent but we know through Jen's memories that they still felt the pain of death. Sure the Doctor says he's trying to be "humane" but is there really a humane way to murder a sapient being? The best explanation we can get is the Doctor saying that this story took place in the "early days" of the Flesh and maybe later that pesky sapience was engineered out of the Flesh, possibly due to the work of Cleaves and Dicken. That feels like a stretch, and frankly, I never want to be making excuses for poor storytelling.

And that's frustrating because otherwise that final scene is really good. It's another instance of the ongoing story arc sort of barging in on a two parter, but at least in this case it's confined to the end of the story, after the plot as been resolved. And again, it's a really good scene. The interplay between our three leads is genuinely chilling as Amy goes into labor despite not even knowing she's pregnant, Rory trying to help her but not knowing what to do, and then the Doctor telling him he needs to get away from his wife. It says something about the trust that Rory has developed in the Doctor that he does in fact do as he's told, in spite of Amy clearly being in distress.

Musically, this story is largely unremarkable, but I will say I've always quite enjoyed one of the main themes used in this story "Which One is the Flesh". Just an appropriately mysterious and paranoia inducing theme, though ironically I don't think it's ever used at a time when we don't know which version of a character is the original and which is Flesh.

On the whole, while it's kind of flawed, and arguably doesn't go far enough with its themes, I still quite enjoy this story. I do wish some of the effects work were better and that Jennifer had more care put into her character, but a strong concept, and otherwise solid guest cast do ultimately make up for it. While the ending easily stands out more than anything else – it's one hell of a cliffhanger to end on – this story deserves to be appreciated for more than just that.

Score: 7/10

Stray Observations

• Showrunner Steven Moffat's original brief for writer Matthew Graham was to set the episode in a more traditional factory. Graham suggested making the setting more unique by using a monastery, inspired by The Name of the Rose.
• Graham initially expected to write a standalone episode, but Steven Moffat, who apparently loves cliffhangers, pushed him to write a two-parter.
• Perhaps this is obvious, but it was Moffat who told Graham that the Doctor should arrive at the factory intentionally to investigate the Flesh, rather than the normal accidental arrival.
• That being said, Graham was the one who created a lot of the specific ideas about the Flesh. Moffat's original pitch was about "avatars that rebel", but he was concerned that this would be too similar to the movie Avatar.
• Inspirations for the Flesh included John Carpenter's The Thing and Frankenstein.
• At first there would have been a larger crew working at the factory. This was discarded partially for budgetary reasons, partially to better focus on a smaller crew and partially because Graham's early drafts were getting confusing with too many humans and Gangers running around.
• Location filming at Cardiff Castle (one of three castles used for filming) was cold and the costumes were not designed for those conditions. The crew were worried for the cast's health but fortunately they suffered nothing worse than discomfort.
• Karen Gillan enjoyed how Rory's friendship with Jennifer put Amy on the back foot in their relationship for a change.
• So the titles for this one bug me. Specifically, I feel like they're reversed. "The Almost People" is taken from a line of the Doctor's in the first episode, yet it's the title of the second, even though by the end of the first episode we've well and truly established that the Gangers have become fully-fledged independent people. Meanwhile "The Rebel Flesh" would work better as the title of the second episode, where the majority of that "rebellion" actually happens.
• After the opening credits, "Rebel Flesh" starts off with a scene of Amy and Rory playing darts. While this exists mostly to show the Doctor still scanning Amy as her pregnancy continues to flit between present and absent, I liked this scene. It's rare that we see the TARDIS crew just hanging out on the TARDIS.
• Rory never appears to die in this episode, however this episode does feature the first instance of a meta-commentary about how often it seems like he might die. When Jennifer says she thought she was going to die, Rory replies with a rueful "welcome to my world".
• It tracks that the next story after "The Doctor's Wife" is the one that sees the Doctor start really talking to the TARDIS like a person. Yes the Doctor's always spoken to the TARDIS, but often much in the same way that you could imagine talking to a car. But when the Doctor sees that the ground beneath the TARDIS has begun to decay under the Acid and the TARDIS has fallen through he says "what are you doing down there?" in much the same tone of voice that you might speak to a cat whose found its way into a difficult position. Later the Doctors (original and Ganger) refer to the TARDIS as "Sexy" referring back to the nickname given to the TARDIS in her Idris form in that episode.
• Weirdly, the "Previously" segment starts by making it sound like the TARDIS crew arrived at the monastery in the 13th Century. No idea why, and we quickly get obvious signs that the story is futuristic, including the Doctor saying it's in the 22nd Century.
• The Flesh Doctor channels the Doctor's previous incarnations, and for the 4th and 10th Doctor, specifically their voices. Audio was pulled from The Robots of Death and "The Girl in the Fireplace". It's definitely odd to have a whole other person's voice come out of Matt Smith's mouth.
• The Doctor, angry with Rory calls him "Rory Pond", already not his name. Then he Latinzes it to…Roranicus Pondicus.
• No "Next Time" trailer this time just the unnecessarily dramatic "To Be Continued" with each word coming up individual and the boom sound effect. Makes sense honestly. Any "Next Time" trailer would undermine the sense of "What the fuck" that this story ends on.

Next Time: With Amy missing, Rory does the only thing to do in these sort of situations: dress up like a Roman.

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 6, Episode 4
• Airdate: 14th May 2011
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: Amy, Rory
• Other Notable Character: Idris (Suranne Jones)
• Writer: Neil Gaiman
• Director: Richard Clark
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

DISCLAIMER: In 2024 the writer of this episode, Neil Gaiman, was accused by several women of sexual assault in manners that, frankly, are some of the most disturbing shit I've read. The behavior of the writer is well beyond the scope of this review, and frankly I wouldn't know how to deal with it if I did have a good reason to bring it up. So this is going to represent the last direct reference to Gaiman I make in this review.

Review

I exist across all space and time and you talk, and run around and bring home strays. – Idris, to the Doctor

In 1963, as a last minute script to complete the initial 13 episode order for Doctor Who, then-Script Editor David Whitaker wrote The Edge of Destruction. That story, which could easily have never been produced, contained the first hints that the ship that the Doctor, Susan, Barbara and Ian travelled in might actually have a mind of its own, as the TARDIS seemed to be trying to warn the crew of their impending fate. Six years later, after a planned four and six parter that would have closed off Season 6 fell through, Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke wrote a ten part story called The War Games, which, along with introducing the Time Lords and a mysterious method of communication where the Doctor used his mind to create a cube he shoved a bunch of information in, also revealed that the Doctor had originally stolen the TARDIS.

By 2008, as incoming Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat was preparing to take over from his predecessor, Russell T Davies, those two facts about the show were well-established in the minds of most fans. Stories like Castrovalva and "Boom Town" had played with the TARDIS' sentience and references to the Doctor stealing a TARDIS and running away from Gallifrey had pretty much become a running gag.

It was at that time that the idea that would eventually become "The Doctor's Wife" was first proposed to, and approved by, Steven Moffat. A story that would explore both the TARDIS' sentience and why the Doctor might have stolen this particular time machine. Two ideas that had been originally introduced in stories that had been created out of necessity due to banal production issues would get some exploration. After a Series 5 airing for the episode proved impossible due to budgetary concerns, "The Doctor's Wife" was set to be aired in the front half of Series 6.

Almost instantly it became one of the most beloved episodes of Doctor Who ever. And it's not hard to see why. It's a concept that will instantly appeal to Doctor Who fans. Especially anyone who's been a fan through multiple Doctors and other cast changes. By Series 6, the Revival era was on its third Doctor and its fifth and sixth regular companions (not to mention characters like Adam, Mickey, Jack and River). Even the sonic screwdriver and TARDIS interior had changed at the beginning of the 11th Doctor era. That's not even getting into all of the Doctors and companions the show went through in the Classic era. The only constant was the TARDIS exterior (save for a few cosmetic tweaks) and, by extension, the TARDIS itself. Of course the fanbase would latch onto an episode which personified her.

But "The Doctor's Wife" also just has a very imaginative plot. The Doctor receives a message from another Time Lord, the Corsair, which seems to indicate that they might be in another universe. The Doctor, eager for the possibility that other Time Lords might be out there forces the TARDIS into said other, very small, universe. There they arrive on a small planetoid which turns out to be sapient, and, eventually hostile, named House. House eats TARDISes, and has taken the soul of the TARDIS out of the machine and into the body of one of the few people on House, named Idris. Throughout this episode "Idris" is in fact the TARDIS.

We've seen the TARDIS care for the Doctor in Castrovalva. We've seen it intervene on the heroes' behalf in "Boom Town". We've even seen it try to communicate in Edge of Destruction. But we've never seen the TARDIS actually talk. Throughout the episode, Idris is an actual presence. From the beginning, thanks to some basic film language, we know that she's the TARDIS, and so every moment is a chance for us to understand the TARDIS' perspective, hell to understand that the TARDIS has a perspective. Her sense of time is different than ours, unsurprisingly, remembering things before they happen and getting very confused with the idea of grammatical tenses. She's got opinions on which way her doors should open. She sees a TARDIS junkyard as, essentially, a graveyard.

She's got a personality too, and while it's hard to judge, it would seem that by TARDIS standards she's as eccentric as the Doctor is by Time Lord standards. The Doctor says he stole the particular TARDIS that he did because its doors were unlocked. As it turns out, that's because the TARDIS chose to leave its doors unlocked. "I wanted to see the universe, so I stole a Time Lord and I ran away. And you were the only one mad enough," she says. This is a line that effectively mirrors the Doctor's own reasons for leaving Gallifrey (depending on interpretation and writer, etc. etc.). I'll be honest, I'm not too fond of the title of this one, the idea that the Doctor and the TARDIS are in some way "married" feels like the wrong word to describe their relationship, but this episode is pretty consistently suggesting an equal partnership that does feel appropriate for a marriage. Perhaps never more than when the Doctor points out that the TARDIS "didn't always take me where I wanted to go", Idris countering with "but I always took you where you needed to go". And while moments where the Doctor names the TARDIS "Sexy" (which Amy rightfully mocks him for) just kind of don't work for me, the whole relationship between these two does.

And House is a really good villain for this concept. Like the TARDIS, House is a sentience in a form you wouldn't necessarily expect. Like the TARDIS, House has people living on him – in this case the "patchwork people" Auntie and Uncle as well as the Ood Nephew. But House is cruel. Not only has he been luring TARDISes and their Time Lords to eat them, but the Time Lords have served to patch up the patchwork people (hence the Doctor naming them as such). Long before House infiltrates the TARDIS itself to try and enter the universe proper, House kind behaves like an evil TARDIS. And then he does invade the TARDIS, and takes off with Amy and Rory inside.

This episode doesn't really have a ton for Amy and Rory to do honestly. They're stuck in the TARDIS with House just kind of fucking with them for much of the runtime. That's perfectly fine, this is an episode concept that almost designed for the Doctor to get most of the focus of our main cast. Still there is a little to pull from. Amy really takes up the role of Doctor-whisperer in the early portions of this episode, which works for the point in their relationship that we're at. For much of the running around the TARDIS corridors portions, our married couple do a really terrible time sticking together. This section feels a bit perfunctory to be honest. Like we had to give the companions something to do, but the plot didn't really have much of a place for them. At the end of the episode, Rory's medical training does actually get a rare reference as he tries to keep Idris alive as long as possible. He even has a nice conversation with the Doctor, admitting that Idris dying while in his care did get to him, and the Doctor comforting him.

I don't think we should neglect talking about the Doctor outside of the context of his relationship with Idris as well. When he thinks that there might be Time Lords still alive in the bubble universe, he has this moment of hope. Amy identifies it as him wanting to be forgiven to which he responds "don't we all?" In the Eleventh Doctor era we've gotten a lot less references to the Time War, which is fair enough, Time War fallout dominated the RTD era to such an extent that a move away from that theme is probably warranted. Still, this return of Time War angst works in this episode's favor, especially as it's a rarer reference in this era. It also allows for a new angle on the Doctor's self-hatred, a running theme for the 11th Doctor era. It comes back in a little way towards the end of the episode when House says "fear me, I've killed hundreds of Time Lords", to which the Doctor, calmly, replies "fear me, I've killed all of them."

He even loses control a bit at one point. When the possibility of the Time Lords returning gets taken away from him, his hopes of being forgiven are dashed. "You gave me hope and then you took it away," he says to the patchwork people, "That's enough to make anyone dangerous, God knows what it will do to me," and then adds a furious "basically, RUN!" The 11th Doctor raising his voice at all is noteworthy, but also worth remembering is the part before that. This won't be the last time this series the Doctor will suggest that he might become infinitely more dangerous if put through the right emotional stresses. I think because the 11th Doctor has this core of self-loathing he's more willing to give himself permission to behave in this way. But we'll talk about that more in the near future.

But ultimately this episode is about the Doctor getting a chance to work together with an embodied version of his TARDIS. He and Idris put together a TARDIS console out of the aforementioned TARDIS junkyard – this was partially inspired by the 3rd Doctor traveling by TARDIS console in Inferno. While the Doctor does most of the actual building of the thing, it's the spark from Idris' soul that grants this item the ability to properly fly. The climax of the episode sees the Doctor trick House into sending our heroes back into the primary console room (they'd been in an archived version of the RTD-era "coral" console room before this) so that Idris can return herself to her rightful place in the TARDIS, making quick work of House. And then the episode ends with the Doctor chatting away to his "old girl", not expecting a response, only for the lever to take off pulling itself, ending the episode on the wonderful image of the Doctor grinning like an idiot.

You won't find many Doctor Who fans who don't love this episode. And I don't buck the trend in that regard. If you're a Doctor Who fan you probably know this is good without needing it explained any further (and if you're not a fan, goodness knows what you're doing here). Whatever minor issues I have melt away in the face of a very creative idea almost perfectly executed. And more than anything else, I'm glad that this concept got done at some point.

Score: 10/10

Stray Observations

• In the Series 5 version of this episode, Idris would have warned the Doctor about upcoming events from the finale, instead of her "the only water in the forest is the river" remark.
• Of course this meant that Rory had to be added into the episode, as he wasn't there initially.
• The name "Idris" was chosen as a slightly unusual name that sounded a bit like "TARDIS"
• Original plans called for a classic era console room to be used as the "archived" room. However, the show didn't have the budget to create a brand new console room. Instead the RTD era room was used, preserved for this purpose.
• House originally would have been the Great Intelligence, as Steven Moffat was planning on using the 2nd Doctor enemy for Series 7. However, the show couldn't get the rights for it in time. Honestly probably for the best. House's sadism in this episode doesn't quite match The Great Intelligence.
• The "junk" console room, meanwhile, was the subject of a Blue Peter contest (similar to the monster in "Love & Monsters", with the winner chosen by the production team and Matt Smith himself. It was won by 12 year old Susannah Leah. The production team liked how Leah captured the random "bits and pieces" aesthetic that modern TARDIS consoles had been going for. Having looked at her concept art, it's pretty fun. Also, Leah was brought on location during filming for the scenes set in her TARDIS design, and got to meet Matt Smith as a result.
• Michael Sheen, who voices House, offered to do something for this episode due to being friends with the writer. However, he almost didn't get the part due to showrunner Steven Moffat misinterpreting the seriousness of his offer.
• The message the Doctor receives at the beginning of the episode is from the Corsair, as identified by the snake tattoo which is reproduced on the container. Notably, the Doctor says that the Corsair, while mostly male, was a woman in at least a couple regenerations, proving that Time Lords can change gender as a result of regeneration.
• The Doctor mentions that House's universe is "full of rift energy" allowing it to refuel. The same kind of refueling that the TARDIS would do on the Torchwood rift (eg, "Boom Town".
• Amy's reaction to seeing Nephew is shock. I know Ood look a bit odd, but I'd expect her to be more used to seeing strange looking aliens by this point.
• When locked in the TARDIS console room, Amy and Rory are trying to get out. Rory's trying the Door, but Amy is trying a switch on the console. I suppose this must be the door control, rarely seen in the Revival era as the door largely seems to just open like an ordinary door now.
• Since Amy and Rory run through the TARDIS corridors this marks the first time in the Revival we've seen a part of the TARDIS other than the control room.
• House tricks Amy into thinking she's found Rory's corpse in the TARDIS corridors, having supposedly aged to death due to non-existent time shenanigans. Seven times. That's seven times in the last seven stories to feature Rory that Rory has apparently died (accounting for two times in "The Curse of the Black Spot"). The streak is about to be broken and while Rory will appear to die again in future, it's not going to be nearly so frequent from now on, but Jesus Christ. You know, I of course knew the memes about Rory always dying, hence why I started tracking it in here, but I don't think before I started tracking it I quite realized just how ridiculous the stretch of stories from "Amy's Choice" to "The Doctor's Wife" really was. Again, the only story in that stretch where Rory both appeared and didn't seem to die was "A Christmas Carol", and he was barely in that one.
• When she's doing a psychic passkey to open the door to the old control Room, Amy has to think of the word "delight". Her word association for that is taken from her wedding reception, scenes specifically from "The Big Bang". While I'm sure the main reason that this was used was because the show had the footage from the prior episode, it still a really nice moment.
• The "Next Time" trailer is interesting in that it gives a fairly accurate (if arguably a bit over-detailed) impression of the basic premise of the next episode, but makes it seem like the story is a more constant-horror vibe than it actually is.

Next Time: Matt Smith gets his ideal scene parter: himself