Doctor Who Review: The Doctor's Wife

I’m a fan of Doctor Who. I’m not ashamed to admit that. So when I heard about this episode I was very interested. The title, the promo pictures, that it was being written by Neil Gaiman and my favourite, the clip from the trailer where a voice taunts the Doctor “Fear me, I’ve killed hundreds of Time Lords” and he replies “Fear me, I’ve killed all of them”. That just made it look like this one, would be one to remember. And, I wasn’t disappointed.

I couldn’t say it had me rethinking anything about the series, which Gaiman promised it would. It wasn’t an episode with any shocking revelations. But what it was, was very well written. The dialogue in this episode made me laugh, made me sit on the edge of my seat, and if I wasn’t such a hard nut to crack up, then it probably would’ve made me cry. Matt Smith gave a great performance acting pretty much every emotion possible in 45 minutes, and Suranne Jones was fantastic as “Idris”. Michael Sheen, House, had a menacing voice, but I don’t think his character was very well developed. He had a complex plan, but we never really found out why he wanted to do any of this, except for fun. But he was still fun to watch, like Auntie and Uncle, who I wish there’d be more of, because they did make me laugh.

So I liked the dialogue, I liked the acting, I liked the set design, the junk planet looked suitably barren and the temporary Tardis looked great reminding me of the Tardis from the classic series. I didn’t really like the look of the Tardis’s corridors, they looked a bit bland compared to the parts we’ve seen before, but they look better than in the old series.

"Will we make a Tardis set?" "No, let's just use an empty factory!"

I did like seeing the old control room back, and the Doctor’s plan was reasonably good compared to the “hope for the best” shit from last week and the “turn everyone into killers” plan from the week before. There wasn’t a lot for Amy and Rory to do, except for Rory to die, again, which seems to be a theme now. But it wasn’t their story. It was the Doctor’s and the Tardis’s. So good story, well written, good acting, good look, well shot, and hardly anything for me to complain about. Overall, a very good episode, much needed after last week.

5/5