by Sarabeth Pollock:
Doctor Who Recap: “The Name of the Doctor”
Original Air Date (BBC/BBC America): Saturday May 18, 2013
Season 7 Episode 13
Well, it seems like this journey through Series 7 has spanned years (technically, it has…), but after twelve episodes we have finally arrived at the season finale. This episode promised twists and turns, and it certainly delivered.
We open tonight on Gallifrey. The time, a very long time ago. About 900 years ago. We see the First Doctor attempting to steal a “faulty” TARDIS (so say the machine shop people). Clara steps out and addresses him, telling him he’s about to make a very big mistake. Clara’s inner monologue tells us that she was born to save the Doctor. We see her chasing after the different incarnations of the Doctor through the years. We see Four, and Five, and Three…but they can never hear her. She’s always there, just out of reach, trying to find him. That is, until she connects with Eleven in Victorian England so long ago. She “blew into this world on a leaf,” she says, and she still hasn’t landed. As we relive her beginnings as a baby, we see that her life has always been happenstance. Her parents would never have met were it not for that leaf. She is Clara Oswald, the “Impossible Girl,” and the Doctor’s savior.
1893, London. A man in prison recites a poem about the Whisper Men. It’s a warning, really. Vastra is there, and she tells the prisoner that he has the blood of fourteen women on his hands and she won’t listen to him. Ah, but he has a secret about the Doctor. This catches her attention. She tells Jenny back at their home that she cannot dispatch the prisoner until she has learned from him. They need a conference call. As Jenny prepares to make the arrangements, she hears whispers nearby. Vastra asks where Strax is, and Jenny tells her that it’s his weekend off. Vastra sighs, wishing he had never discovered “that place.”
“That place” turns out to be Glasgow. Strax bursts through a door with a burly Scot who wields a mean looking anvil. Strax prepares to take him out with a shovel in the name of the Silurian Empire…and then a messenger interrupts. It’s a telegram, and it’s urgent. “Conference call,” Strax sighs. He tells his burly friend to knock him out.
Back in London, Jenny and Vastra fall into a sleep at the pentagonal table and wake up in an alternate reality kind of place. Tea appears on the table from one of Vastra’s favorite memories. Strax joins them, complaining that he was pulled away from his battle with a “primitive.” He asks who will be joining them. “The women,” Vastra replies.
In modern day England, Angie sighs when she sees that Clara is going to cook again. She’s not just cooking, she’s attempting another soufflé. “This time I will be a Soufflé Girl.” Clara notices a letter on the counter addressed to her. It arrived earlier in the day, the kids tell her. She takes it to her room and reads it. It’s from Vastra, and it’s a missive asking her to join them. A candle is enclosed that will induce the necessary sleep state, but in case Clara doesn’t trust it, the paper is also treated with the same compound. Clara collapses and wakes up at the table in time to receive a freshly poured cuppa from Vastra. Jenny explains that Clara is still in her room at home, only she’s sleeping. Strax complains that their last guest is the one with the big head. “It’s hair,” Jenny corrects him, and on cue River Song appears. She turns the tea into a bottle of bubbly. Vastra introduces her to Clara, and River seems surprised that Clara doesn’t know who she is. Clara tries to clarify that she didn’t realize that Dr. Song was a woman (“Neither did I,” adds Strax). Vastra calls the meeting to order to avoid more awkwardness.
Vastra explains that Clarence DeMarco, a murderer condemned to death, offered a set of space-time coordinates in exchange for his life. He also offered one word to prove their value: Trensaloor (my spelling is most likely off on that one). River is shocked by it. Clara wants to know what kind of secrets the Doctor would be keeping there. Vastra poses a question to her—if she thinks she knows the Doctor, does she know his name? While this question sinks in, River reveals that she knows his name but only because she made him tell her. (Technically, Clara knew his name when she read about him in the library during the events of “Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS,” but he made her forget) Clara starts to understand that River knows the Doctor much more than she’s letting on. When Jenny asks if the Doctor has seen River since some mysterious event, River replies that he hasn’t come to see her, but that’s because he hates goodbyes.
While all of this is going on, Jenny starts to realize that something is going on back in their house. She forgot to lock the door before they slipped into the trance, and now someone has broken in. Vastra dismisses her at first, but then she notices how distressed Jenny has become. Jenny realizes that the white-faced monsters have murdered her. Her image disappears. River slaps Vastra to wake her back up, and when she awakens she is surrounded by the white-faced monsters. River throws water at Strax and he wakes up in a similar situation. When Clara wakes up, she hears the Doctor downstairs with the children. She goes to find him and discovers that he’s playing Blind Man’s Bluff. The kids wanted to go to the cinema but he said not until she woke up…but Clara tells him they’re already gone. “The little Daleks,” he mutters, looking at Clara.
Clara pours tea for the two of them and asks who River was. “An old friend,” he says. When she tells him Vastra’s exact words about a secret he’ll take to the grave, he gets emotional. He apologizes and retreats to the TARDIS. There, he links the TARDIS into Clara’s memories to get the space coordinates. He tells her that the secret isn’t his secret, the secret is the fact that the Doctor’s grave is on Trensaloor. That’s where he’ll die. That’s why it’s a place he can never go. As a time traveler, it’s possible that one day he’d inadvertently come across his own grave. He will be buried there. But if that’s the only way he can save Vastra, Strax and maybe even Jenny, then they must go there. Plucky Clara isn’t afraid at all. She’s ready.
The TARDIS doesn’t want to cross the Doctor’s timeline, and she fights him every step of the way. The TARDIS shuts down to avoid having to land. The Doctor opens the door and sees that his grave is on a fiery planet. He muses that he saw himself retiring, maybe getting into bee keeping, but it appears that he ends up dead on a burning planet. Clara asks how they’ll get down there. That’s easy. They turn off the anti-grav system and plummet.
The landing cracks a window on the TARDIS. Clara asks if the Doctor is ok, acknowledging that anyone visiting his own grave should be worried. He posits that his grave site could be the most dangerous place in the world given how much time he’s spent traveling through the galaxy. They come across an empty shell of the future-TARDIS. Its energy is leaking out and causing a rift as it dies. That’s when River appears to Clara. The Doctor can’t see her. River explains that she kept the psychic link open with Clara. The Doctor notices that Clara isn’t following him, and he sees through the apparition of River to her gravestone. He fingers her name lovingly. Clara doesn’t understand how she can be dead if she just saw her. He says it’s a long story, but something isn’t right. The Whisper Men approach them, chanting. “The man who lies, lies to all.” River tells Clara that maybe it isn’t a grave stone but an entrance to the tomb. When Clara relays the message, the Doctor agrees, given that he’d “never bury his wife out here.” He aims the sonic at the grave marker and the entrance is revealed before Clara can ask what he means.
Inside the shell of the dead TARDIS, Vastra and Strax wake up. Strax starts shouting that he’s claiming the area for the Silurian Empire while Vastra rushes to Jenny’s side. She begs Strax to help her (technically she threatens him), and he is able to use an electric charge to restart her heart. As soon as Jenny comes back to life, they’re met by the Whisper Men and Mr. Simian. Mr. Simian was the vessel used by the Great Intelligence during the Christmas special “The Snowmen.” Simian leads the trio to a great door, which he tells them is the entrance to the Doctor’s tomb.
In the catacombs, Clara asks the Doctor how it’s possible that she met his dead wife. He tells her that he lost her long ago and he made a copy of her. River appears and explains that she died saving him, and he made a copy of her and left her the greatest library in the universe. He doesn’t like goodbyes, after all. Before she can say more, the Whisper Men burst through her image.
Mr. Simian explains that there was a skirmish at the hands of the “blood-soaked” Doctor. Vastra doesn’t believe that the Doctor can be described by the words “blood-soaked.” Simian tells them that he has wiped out billions of people: the Sycorax, the Cybermen, the Daleks. Jenny points out that this is coming from a bodiless mind, so how could he know? Simian rips his face off and removes his hat, revealing that he is still a bodiless mind. One of the white-faced Whisper Men step forward and its white face is replaced by Simian’s visage once again.
As the Doctor and Clara escape the Whisper Men and find themselves in a corridor inside the TARDIS, Clara starts to faint. He grabs her and blames the overload of psychic energy from the failing TARDIS, but it’s more than that. Clara starts to remember the things she’d forgotten in “Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS.” The Doctor tries to stave off this conversation, but Clara remembers him saying that they keep meeting and then she dies. The Whisper Men fill in the rest: “The girl who died he tried to save, she’ll die again inside his grave.”
Simian reveals that the key to the tomb is a word. The Doctor and Clara arrive. “Late to my own funeral,” the Doctor deadpans. Simian demands that the Doctor speak the word to unlock the door. The Doctor refuses, and Simian orders the Whisper Men to attack his friends. Strax attacks one of them, but it instantly heals itself. Simian demands to know the Doctor’s name. “Doctor Who?” he presses. Clara is about to be attacked. The Doctor takes in the scene of his friends fighting off the Whisper Men and knows he must act.
Just like that, the door opens. He didn’t speak his name…but River did. She walks in front of her husband but he can’t see her. Instead, he peers into the doorway that is filled with a blue light. He rushes to Clara’s side to make sure she’s okay, hugging her tightly. Simian tells the Doctor to invite them all inside, for it is inside where Simian will find peace. The Doctor’s face becomes stoic as he makes a decision to go inside. He opens the doors wide to reveal a rundown version of the TARDIS control room. A blue light is spinning in the middle of the room. It looks like a series of ropes and vines.
The Doctor explains that the light is “the tracks of his tears,” or more literally the trail of his existence through the years from his time on Gallifrey up until now. He aims his sonic screwdriver at it and the voices of previous Doctors fill the room. The Doctor collapses under the strain of it. Simian sees it as an opportunity to cross into the Doctor’s timeline and rewrite his history. The end result would be the death of the Doctor. Simian steps into the light and dissolves.
Simian starts rewriting the Doctor’s history. He watches as the previous Doctors go through their lives just as Clara did at the beginning of the episode. Vastra monitors the places that Simian is visiting and she mentions the Dalek Asylum. Clara looks up at her, recalling the memory of the Doctor telling her that he met her there. Vastra notes that a lifetime without the Doctor will bring consequences, and when she and Strax and Jenny go outside, they see the planets and galaxies disappearing. Every victory is being reversed. He saved so many lives. At that moment, Jenny disappears and Strax returns to his origin as a soldier. She zaps him before he can attack her.
Clara begs the Doctor to explain what she did to save him in Victorian England and in the asylum, but he’s in too much pain to respond. His life is burning up. She realizes that she needs to enter the light. River appears and tells her not to do whatever she’s thinking. If she enters the light she’ll be torn into an infinite number of Clara’s who will live and die saving the Doctor, but none of them will actually be her. She’d just be copies. It would be enough to save the Doctor though. It’s not the soufflé, it’s the recipe. She gets up and goes to the light as Vastra tells her the planets are gone and Jenny and Strax are dead. Clara turns to the Doctor: “Run you clever boy, and remember me.” She enters the time vortex and we see the infinite variations of her as she rushes to save the Doctor. She’s always been there, she says, right from the very beginning. Always there to save the Doctor.
The Doctor knows he must enter his own timeline to save Clara. Jenny and Strax are alive, but Simian died. Before the Doctor enters his timeline, River appears and begs him not to enter. He could die in there. She moves to slap him but he catches her wrist. He’s been able to see her the entire time, but for his own sake he was afraid to say anything for fear of hurting himself. He has never stopped loving her or thinking about her. But she’s just a copy and it’s time for her to sleep. River smiles and asks for him to say goodbye the only way she’ll accept, meaning that he must say it while making it sound like he’s going to come back. “See you around,” he manages. She tells him there’s one more thing. She has been psychically connected with Clara this whole time, and she can still feel here. When the Doctor asks what that means, River grins. “Spoilers.” Then she bids her Sweetie goodbye.
Clara falls through the timeline until she lands in a dark cave full of voices and whispers. She shouts for the Doctor, fearing that she’s alone, but he answers her. She’s in his timeline, so he’s all around her, he says. Suddenly, we see the older versions of the Doctor walk past her. They’re his ghosts, every good day, and every bad day. His timeline is collapsing upon itself. She urges him to leave, but he won’t leave without her. He sends her the leaf that brought her into this world and urges her to fight. When he appears in the cave, he tells her that she has saved him so many times, so let him save her just this once. Clara reaches him and he hugs her like she’s his most valuable possession. Then she sees a man standing in the distance. The Doctor says the man’s name doesn’t matter. He chose the name of the Doctor and that man didn’t act as the Doctor. Clara faints, so the Doctor picks her up. He faces the stranger. The man says that he did what he had to do, and the Doctor says that he didn’t act in the name of The Doctor.
The man turns around. Introducing John Hurt as the Doctor.
So…the adventure continues on November 23rd.
I’m not even sure how I feel right now. So much happened, and yet I’m not really sure what happened. I need time to process all of this.
What did you all think? Did “The Name of the Doctor” live up to the hype? Leave your comments below.
Until November, Whovians!
Sarabeth Pollock is a contributor for DarkMedia. She covers True Blood, Doctor Who, and American Horror Story, as well as the True Blood comics and whatever movies and books happen to catch her fancy. She’s an avid writer, reader, and pop culture fan, with interest in everything from True Blood to Doctor Who to Anne Rice to Deborah Harkness. Follow her on Twitter at @SarabethPollock and check out her blog at http://sarabethpollock.wordpress.com
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