The TARDIS is summoned to a pocket universe via a Time Lord distress signal. The Eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory discover a weird, fantasy world inhabited by a disembodied being called House. House strips the TARDIS’s consciousness and puts it inside a woman called Idris, giving the TARDIS a human form. House eats TARDISes and has killed hundreds of passing Time Lords. However, the Eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory were able to defeat the terrifying House with help from the TARDIS herself.

The Doctor’s Wife

★★★★★

TX: 14/05/2011

Written by Neil Gaiman    Directed by Richard Clark

The Eleventh Doctor receives a distress signal from another Time Lord via a psychic container (The War Games). The TARDIS is drawn to a barren world in a pocket universe. The only inhabitants of this fantasy, Tim Burton-esque world are Uncle, Auntie, an Ood called Nephew and Idris, a woman who has had the TARDIS’s consciousness implanted inside her. The Doctor discovers that House (Michael Sheen) has lured many Time Lords to their deaths there over the centuries. House now plans to feed on the Doctor and his TARDIS. House traps Amy and Rory inside the TARDIS and plays many tricks and mind games on them. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Idris build their own scrapyard TARDIS and use it to track down the real TARDIS. The Doctor and Idris materialise inside the TARDIS moments before Nephew the Ood (possessed by House) can kill Amy and Rory in one of the old control rooms. House tries to kill the Doctor, Amy, Rory and Idris, but fails. House miscalculates the consequences of letting Idris inside the TARDIS and the TARDIS’s consciousness is restored, destroying House in the process. “Letting it get to you. You know what that’s called? Being alive. Best thing there is. Being alive right now is all that counts.” The Doctor makes a tearful goodbye to the TARDIS’s consciousness. The Doctor is a very nice man! I don’t think nice is boring, nice is great! Amy and Rory ask the Doctor if they can have a bedroom of their own in the TARDIS. The Doctor can still communicate with the TARDIS, because she takes them to their next destination without the Doctor having to operate the controls. I have no desire to meet Neil Gaiman. The Doctor’s Wife is an important episode because the fact that Doctor Who made the TARDIS into a woman was a key step towards a female Doctor. The iconic wheezing groaning sound of the TARDIS was originally created by Brian Hodgson of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1963 by running his mother’s house key along a bass string of a gutted piano, after which he electronically treated the recording. When I become the Doctor Who showrunner, my first choice to play the new Doctor would be Michael Sheen!