NuWho Rewatch: The Doctor's Wife
Jul. 29th, 2015 10:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatThere have been rumours of one sort and another, I think almost back to the days when Neil Gaiman first came to prominence with the Sandman comics, that he was going to write something... or other... for Doctor Who. It became a bit like the rumours that someone... or other... was going to make a Doctor Who feature film. So it was, perhaps, more of a surprise to me than it should have been when he actually was announced as a writer for this episode. In The Doctor's Wife a sentient asteroid sucks the personality out of the Tardis and dumps it in the head of a woman. It's a good episode for Gaiman, allowing him to be playful and dark and to mess around with the show's mythology, which combination is basically his forte.
There is lots to like about The Doctor's Wife, I feel slightly badly about it because, I suppose, it is such a blatant fan-pleaser of an episode. On the other hand, it does what it does whole-heartedly and with a fair amount of skill and finesse, delivering a stack of lovely moments. It irritates me slightly that the personification of the TARDIS, while not exactly a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, certainly borrows a good many of the trope's mannerisms and ticks. Suranne Jones does an excellent job with the part, though, and forms a nice partnership with Matt Smith and a human personification of the Tardis was always going to have to be quite strange in order to work, and probably a bit manic in order to avoid being dull - particularly if placed opposite one of the modern doctors, all of whom have also been on the manic side.
NLSS Child struggled with it a bit, and tended to need points explained to her. I'm not sure if it was the rapidity of the delivery of some of the key information, or that the plot was actually drawing on tropes and expectations that she was unfamiliar with. She loved the concept though.
I've been forgetting to add the![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
metanews coding assistance, but meta news is now following me on two platforms which is mildly confusing. I don't know if metanewsmods/![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
metanewsmods have a preference for which post they want to link to?
metanews coding (LJ): <a href=http://louisedennis.livejournal.com/304915.html>NuWho Rewatch: The Doctor's Wife</a> (LJ) <i>Discussion of the sixth series episode</i>
metanews coding (DW): <a href=http://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/165963.html>NuWho Rewatch: The Doctor's Wife</a> (DW) <i>Discussion of the sixth series episode</i>
There is lots to like about The Doctor's Wife, I feel slightly badly about it because, I suppose, it is such a blatant fan-pleaser of an episode. On the other hand, it does what it does whole-heartedly and with a fair amount of skill and finesse, delivering a stack of lovely moments. It irritates me slightly that the personification of the TARDIS, while not exactly a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, certainly borrows a good many of the trope's mannerisms and ticks. Suranne Jones does an excellent job with the part, though, and forms a nice partnership with Matt Smith and a human personification of the Tardis was always going to have to be quite strange in order to work, and probably a bit manic in order to avoid being dull - particularly if placed opposite one of the modern doctors, all of whom have also been on the manic side.
NLSS Child struggled with it a bit, and tended to need points explained to her. I'm not sure if it was the rapidity of the delivery of some of the key information, or that the plot was actually drawing on tropes and expectations that she was unfamiliar with. She loved the concept though.
I've been forgetting to add the
metanews coding assistance, but meta news is now following me on two platforms which is mildly confusing. I don't know if metanewsmods/metanewsmods have a preference for which post they want to link to?metanews coding (LJ): <a href=http://louisedennis.livejournal.com/304915.html>NuWho Rewatch: The Doctor's Wife</a> (LJ) <i>Discussion of the sixth series episode</i>
metanews coding (DW): <a href=http://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/165963.html>NuWho Rewatch: The Doctor's Wife</a> (DW) <i>Discussion of the sixth series episode</i>