I know that most people who enjoy Doctor Who also love Neal Gaiman, so the two of them coming together for even just one episode seems like a possibility engineered to win over every geeky fan ever. And this week’s episode delivered exactly what we could have expected from such a pairing. For me, as someone who has never really understood the appeal of Gaiman, it was an episode that fully tested my love for the Doctor.
Seeing Matt Smith suddenly become full of joy is something I could have set the stage for every episode of Doctor Who, so starting out with the Doctor getting mail in the form of a floating cube was nothing less than a delight. The sudden revelation that there might be another Time Lord out there could have easily been a return to what looks like the season’s main arc, but instead we are taken to another universe that is attached to ours sort of like a little bubble attached to a bigger soap bubble (but not really). And once we’re there we find that the Doctor and the TARDIS were lured there so that some alien force going by the name House wants to eat the TARDIS.
This is all really promising, but the bubble universe is so Gaiman-y that it becomes almost painful. First, the place is an industrial graveyard. Second, it’s whole population is made up of patchwork people who have no souls and look like faux-steampunk 19th century Grey Gardens residents. Third, the place is basically a big trap. This kind of place pops up so often in Gaiman’s work that I wonder if he didn’t actually wonder into a junkyard inhabited by gypsies in his youth and suffer some kind of horrible trauma. Maybe if I were not so aware of Gaiman’s other work I would be totally simpatico with this, but as is, I spent most of the episode waiting for the wise creature that was going to hold the key to the Doctor’s escape. Luckily that last part turned the TARDIS into that creature, but they had to cut the script down considerably after Gaiman turned it in, so I wager that there was also a talking bird or something that was left the writers’ room floor.
Anyway, the part of the whole script I have to give Gaiman credit for is the dialog between the Doctor and the TARDIS, Sexy (that’s what the Doctor calls her when they are alone after all). Once the zany kissing and biting are done with we get to some awesome dialogue that really works to show us that the Doctor’s love for the TARDIS is not one way. They choose each other to runaway with, and Sexy always makes sure that the Doctor gets to where he needs to go, even if it isn’t exactly where he wants to go sometimes. Why the whole episode was not just the two of them building a TARDIS and flirting is beyond me. The whole ending where they end up in the old control room only to go to the main one when House makes the old one disappear wraps things up almost too quickly, making the Doctor and Sexy’s last words to each other happen so fast that by the time she is a spaceship again, the whole episode feels just too sudden.
Of course, because we are in the middle of a season we still have Amy and Rory around to get locked in the box under House arrest, if you will. Wondering around the halls of the TARDIS the pair keep getting separated and Rory keeps getting old and dying. The whole sequence does show just how wacky the inside of a ship that is bigger on the inside than the outside can be, but it is also even more pointless than the drama the couple is already used to.
As much fun as this episode is, the build up to it was more fun. The Internet had already figured out the whole TARDIS as wife thing so all of the rest of the posturing by Gaiman et al about how they couldn’t talk about the episode made me hope for something more. Years from now if I rewatch this episode I will likely be happier with it because I will be so totally without expectation or as worried about it being a Gaiman story.
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