 This is the final story of Season Thirty Three (New Series 7) and has the intriguing title "The Name of The Doctor" and has been described as a jaw-dropping end to a spectacular season.
Written by Steven Moffat this story has been directed by Saul Metzstein, who directed "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship", "A Town Called Mercy", "The Snowmen" and "The Crimson Horror".
This story revealed the mystery of Clara Oswald, provided closure for the character of River Song and introduced an unknown incarnation of The Doctor. It features the return of Alex Kingston as River Song, Neve McIntosh as Madame Vastra, Dan Starkey as Commander Strax and Catrin Stewart as Jenny Flint. Also returning was Richard E. Grant playing the part of The Great Intelligence.
River Song's previous appearance in the show was in "The Angels Take Manhattan", while Madame Vastra, Strax and Jenny previously appeared in "The Crimson Horror".
This story also featured new aliens called The Whisper Men who bear a strong resemblance to The Trickster that was seen in The Sarah Jane Adventures.
Executive Producer and lead writer Steven Moffat stated that he wanted to have a new monster in the finale after the show had seen the reappearance of old monsters the Ice Warriors and the Cybermen. The idea of The Whisper Men came from the thought of stylish whispering almost faceless creatures.
This marks the first television story to refer to The Doctor by his number after Clara used the term Eleventh Doctor. Previous stories, such as "The Lodger" and "The Five Doctors" have either heard the number as Eleventh or as a regeneration Fourth regeneration respectively.
In this story, it was revealed that Clara has lived thousands of lives throughout The Doctor's history, saving him from The Great Intelligence's sabotage in each life, finally revealing why The Doctor met two versions of her at the Dalek Asylum and in Victorian London. However, according to Clara, The Doctor almost never notices her, with the exception of the First Doctor and the Eleventh Doctor.
Ultimately, Clara's companionship with The Doctor is something of a paradox; The Doctor might not have invited 21st Century Clara to travel with him if he had not met the echoes of her in the Dalek Asylum and Victorian London, but if she had never travelled with The Doctor, those echoes would never have existed.
Clara's splintering into multiple copies is somewhat reminiscent of what occurred to Scaroth in the 1979 Fourth Doctor story "City of Death". Clara, however, made a deliberate choice to put herself into a situation where she would become divided whereas Scaroth was caused by an accident.
It is clear that not every copy of Clara is identical in all details, especially in memory and circumstances. Most obviously, only Victorian Clara seems to have the full name Clara Oswin Oswald, while in "Asylum of the Daleks" she was Oswin Oswald and the Clara that The Doctor met in "The Bells of Saint John" was Clara Oswald up until The Doctor asked her if Oswin were her middle name, which she denied and then decided she liked. Each Clara appears to live a normal life under the circumstances she is born into, including one who lived on Gallifrey.
The copies of Clara that least remember The Doctor are the ones who seem to have the most luck actually interacting with him. While she does successfully intercept the First Doctor before he steals the wrong TARDIS, most of her other active attempts to seek out and save The Doctor seem not to work out (or at any rate, work out off-screen and in a way which does not involve interaction with him). By contrast, the three times she meets the Eleventh Doctor, she doesn't actually remember him and merely gets caught up in events in such a way that she does, in fact, save him.
In this story Clara regains her memories of being trapped in the TARDIS that occured in "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS".
The most important leaf in history is shown and is returned to Clara (see "The Bells of Saint John" and "The Rings of Akhaten").
Clara is heard screaming I don't know where I am several times while going through The Doctor's timeline. She's said this before in "The Bells of Saint John" and as a copy of her in the Dalek Asylum was being converted ("Asylum of the Daleks").
Clara attempts to make soufflιs and states that her love of them stemmed from her mother. Interestingly, her Oswin Oswald copy, in the Dalek Asylum, made a soufflι specifically on the occasion of her mother's birthday ("Asylum of the Daleks" and "The Snowmen").
The full address for the Maitlands' home is finally given in this story. A closeup on Madame Vastra's hand-written envelope reveals that she's living at 30 Oak Street in Chiswick. This ties in with "The Bells of Saint John" where we only got to see the house number, 30, on the right doorjamb. Interestingly Donna Noble, who travelled with the Tenth Doctor, also lived in Chiswick.
Clara refers to having seen eleven Doctors meaning she has not interacted with any future incarnations of The Doctor, if there are any.
Events from River Song's death during the 2008 Tenth Doctor story "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead" are recounted to explain her presence in this story.
Because The Doctor was responsible for saving Jenny's life and turning Strax into a nurse, his absence from the universe makes Jenny disappear and Strax revert to a more typical Sontaran.
Interestingly, Vastra remains both unchanged by and aware of the changes to the timeline, possibly implying she was strong enough to remember Jenny and Strax.
Jenny and Madame Vastra play Spring from The Four Seasons as they enter their conference call.
Jenny refers to the different appearance of the conference call as a change in the desktop theme, the same terminology used to describe the Console Room's appearance by the Fifth Doctor in "Time Crash".
Strax expresses that he did not know that River Song was a woman and he also mistakes the boy, carrying the conference call message, as a girl - so once again demonstrating his difficulty of separating the genders (see also "A Good Man Goes to War" and "The Snowmen").
The Great Intelligence says that The Doctor has been cruel several times, telling about the leader of the Sycorax, whom the Tenth Doctor kills in the 2005 Christmas special "The Christmas Invasion", Solomon, the merchant whom the Eleventh Doctor sent to his death in the 2012 story "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship", the Daleks and the Cybermen.
The Great Intelligence states that The Doctor will be known as The Valeyard before the end of his life. The Valeyard appeared in the 1986 The Trial of a Time Lord season of stories, where he is described as an amalgamation of the darker sides of The Doctor's nature, somewhere between his twelfth and final incarnation.
The Great Intelligence also mentions The Beast, and Storm, as names for The Doctor. One of the names the Daleks have for The Doctor is the Oncoming Storm.
This story contains clips of different versions of Clara scattered throughout The Doctor's timeline. Imagery of all The Doctor's prior incarnations (including a colourised version of the First Doctor) are used during these scenes in which Clara and The Great Intelligence interact with The Doctor. Archive footage used are:- Clara advising the First Doctor to steal his Type 40 TARDIS on Gallifrey (colourised from "The Aztecs").
- Clara seeing the Second Doctor running across a palm-tree lined beach in a fur coat (with footage taken from "The Five Doctors").
- Clara calling out for the Third Doctor as he's driving away in Bessie ("The Five Doctors").
- Clara chasing after the Fourth Doctor on Gallifrey ("The Invasion of Time").
- Clara finding the Fifth Doctor trapped ("Arc of Infinity").
- Clara trying to find the Sixth Doctor in his TARDIS.
- Clara attempting to rescue the Seventh Doctor from falling off of a cliff ("Dragonfire").
- Clara running after the Eighth Doctor.
- Clara watching the Tenth Doctor as he stands in The Library.
- The Ninth Doctor runs past Clara while she was inside The Doctor's time stream.
While many of these appearances are taken from actual footage of the original actors in character, many of them are lifted from different contexts than they appear here. For example, there was no previous footage of the First Doctor stealing the TARDIS that would become his. Similarly, the Second Doctor has never before seen before running across a palm-tree lined beach in a fur coat, although he was seen running in a fur coat in "The Five Doctors".
The Second and Eighth Doctors crossed timelines at some point, as evidenced by Clara's encounter with the both of them on the palm tree-lined beach.
The First Doctor and the Eleventh Doctor interact with Clara, and the Third Doctor and Seventh Doctor appear to notice her, but only for a brief moment.
This story features, for the first time on television, The Doctor prior to stealing the TARDIS. This event had previously only been seen in the comic strip adventure: "Time & Time Again". The opening scene includes a representation of The Doctor's granddaughter Susan Foreman and reference to The Doctor's original exodus from Gallifrey (as a globed city, previously seen in "The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords"), with Clara directing him to steal the Type 40 TARDIS because it will be more fun.
The Capitol and the Citadel in these scenes look a bit different from those shown in "The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords" and "The End of Time" - showing the Citadel and the globe resting on a bigger structure below where the TARDIS workshop is located.
When the First Doctor steals the TARDIS, neither he nor Susan are wearing Gallifreyan clothing. The Doctor has mentioned his dislike of Time Lord dress sense in previous stories ("Time Crash" and "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS").
Audio clips can be heard when The Doctor points his sonic screwdriver towards the wound in time left by his travels, similar to the scene in the console room in "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS". The audio clips in this story include:
The use of these archive clips mean that this story contains the greatest number of Doctors in any medium, with twelve Doctors.
This is the first televised story in which we see The Doctor's TARDIS in what appears to be its default form, in the scenes set on Gallifrey. We also see it flying through the vortex soon after the First Doctor steals it.
The TARDIS default form is slightly different from, but similar to, those seen in the TARDIS bay on Gallifrey in the 1969 Second Doctor story "The War Games".
The concept that time travel leaves scars upon the universe is previously alluded to in the description of the horrors of the Time War mentioned by both The Doctor and one of the members of the High Council in "The End of Time". Both of them suggest that the writing and rewriting of time in the course of the war created the horrors, among others, as an unintended side-effect.
When The Doctor connects Clara's memories to the TARDIS through her hand, he reassures her by saying This won't hurt, only to apologise afterwards with I lied so repeating the same lines that Rory Williams said to his father in "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" and the lines River Song said to Amy Pond after injecting her with the radiation vaccination in "The Time of Angels".
Whilst discussing The Doctor's secrets, Vastra is heard to state that The Doctor doesn't share his secrets with anyone, and that if Clara is under the impression that she is an exception, she should ask herself what is his name. Previously, in a conversation with the Dream Lord, Amy Pond stated she was The Doctor's closest confidante. The Dream Lord proved her wrong by asking her what The Doctor's name is, which she couldn't answer ("Amy's Choice"). Nor could Ace answer the same question asked by Lady Peinforte in the 1988 Seventh Doctor story "Silver Nemesis".
Vastra mentions The Doctor dying in the Dalek Asylum ("Asylum of the Daleks"), on Androzani ("The Caves of Androzani") and in Victorian London ("The Snowmen"). By mentioning The Doctor dying where the Fifth Doctor regenerated, "The Caves of Androzani", it is possible that Clara was not able to save The Doctor every time.
The Doctor has been killed prematurely before, and, just as in this, the stars went out, and his actions undone ("Turn Left").
Among other things that have been undone are: saving Jenny, making Strax good ("A Good Man Goes to War") and stopping Davros from obliterating the Universe with his Reality Bomb ("The Stolen Earth/Journey's End").
The Doctor also previously tried and failed to help Amy Pond remember Rory Williams after he was erased from history in "The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood".
The prophecy of The First Question is referred to again, and silence indeed falls ("The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang", "Let's Kill Hitler" and "The Wedding of River Song").
The Whisper Men comment about Clara as the girl who died will die again, which is similar to what The Silence said about Rory Williams in the previous season finale, "The Wedding of River Song" - the man who dies and dies again. Die one last time.
The Whisper Men refer to The Doctor as the man who lies. In "A Good Man Goes to War", Colonel Manton also refers to The Doctor as the man who lies. Also in "The Wedding of River Song", River Song tells Amy Pond that the first rule regarding The Doctor is that he lies.
It is revealed that The fields of Trenzalore will become The Doctor's final battlefield.
The Doctor saw his gravestone before, in the 1985 Sixth Doctor story "Revelation of the Daleks", in which he muses that he had never thought precognition of his own death would be so disturbing. However, this turned out to be a fake set up by Davros.
The Doctor and River Song both mention The Doctor's hatred of endings ("The Angels Take Manhattan"). River Song also states this as the reason for him saving her to the Data Core. Ironically, this took place in the same story in which The Doctor exclaimed, You need a good death. Without death, there'd only be comedies. Dying gives us size ("Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead").
John Hurt's unknown incarnation of The Doctor has a full beard and moustache. This is one of the few times on-screen that The Doctor has been shown with facial hair ("The Leisure Hive" and "The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon").
This is the second season finale, of the revived show, not to feature a Dalek ("The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords"), though the Dalek Asylum is mentioned and appears in a flashback ("Asylum of the Daleks").
This is the fourth season finale, of the revived show, to end with a cliffhanger ("Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways", "Army of Ghosts/Doomsday" and "The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords"), and the first since Season Twenty Nine (New Series 3). "The Stolen Earth/Journey's End", "The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang" and "The Wedding of River Song" all didn't end in proper cliffhangers, and "A Good Man Goes to War" and "The Angels Take Manhattan" are only mid-season finales (the latter of which doesn't have a cliffhanger anyway).
A prequel to this story was released immediately after the preceding story, "Nightmare in Silver" on the 11th May 2013 via the BBC red button service. "She Said, He Said" has The Doctor and Clara each having a monologue about how little they know about each other and that they discovered each other's secret at Trenzalore.
On the 12th May 2013, a week before this story's first broadcast, the BBC announced that a small number of Doctor Who fans in the USA had received their Blu-ray box set of the second half of the seventh series early due to a distribution error, and asked those who had received the final story early not to spoil it for other fans.
| |
|
The Firsts:
The first Doctor Who story to refer to The Doctor by his number.
The first Doctor Who story in which we see The Doctor's TARDIS in what appears to be its default form.
|
|
(Position = 1 out of 9)
(Position = 40 out of 241)
