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Cast The Doctor Matt Smith
Crew Written by Neil Gaiman
Best Boy Pete Chester
Make-Up Supervisor Pam Mullins
Ood created by Russell T Davies
Plot Outline from Wikipedia While in deep space, the Doctor, Amy and Rory receive a cube containing a distress call from a Time Lord. Tracing the source of the call to a rift leading outside the universe, the Doctor deletes part of his TARDIS to generate enough energy to cross through the rift. After landing in a junkyard on a solitary asteroid, the TARDIS shuts down and its matrix suddenly disappears. The three explore, and meet the strange inhabitants, Uncle, Auntie, a green eyed Ood called Nephew and an excited young woman named Idris who fawns all over, and then bites, the Doctor. While Uncle and Auntie lock up Idris, and Amy and Rory return to the TARDIS, the Doctor follows the distress signal and finds a cabinet containing a large number of hypercubes. Upon further investigation of Uncle and Auntie, he finds they are constructed of body parts from other beings, including Time Lords. They are controlled by the asteroid, called House, which is sentient and able to interface with other technology around it. House led the Doctor there and ripped out the TARDIS' matrix, initially in order to consume its Artron energy, but upon learning that the Doctor is the last Time Lord and that no more TARDISes will ever arrive, decides to transfer itself into the TARDIS and escape from the rift. Amy and Rory are trapped inside as the House-controlled TARDIS dematerialises.
The Doctor learns that Idris contains the personality of the TARDIS' matrix. Idris, as the TARDIS, and the Doctor come to realise they selected each other hundreds of years prior when the Doctor fled Gallifrey, and have a personal chat. Without House's support, Uncle and Auntie die. Idris reveals that House had stranded many TARDISes before on the planet, and that this universe only has hours left before it collapses, and that Idris' body only has a short time before it also will fail. The Doctor and Idris work together to construct a makeshift TARDIS from scraps, and then pursue House.
Aboard the Doctor's TARDIS, House threatens to kill Amy and Rory. He plays with their senses as they try to flee through the corridors, then sends Nephew after them. Idris makes a psychic connection with Rory to give him directions to a secondary control room, where he and Amy are able to lower the TARDIS shields without House's interference. This allows the Doctor to land the makeshift console in the secondary control room, which atomises Nephew. House deletes the secondary control room as he prepares to break through the rift, which the Doctor anticipates. The TARDIS safety protocols transfer them to the main control room, where the dying Idris releases the TARDIS matrix back to where it belongs, deleting House from the TARDIS machine. As the Doctor, Amy, and Rory recover, a remnant of the TARDIS matrix, still in Idris' body, sadly comments she will not be able to communicate with the Doctor after this but will be there for him. Idris' body disappears as the TARDIS matrix is fully restored. The Doctor installs a security field around the matrix to prevent it from being compromised in the future. Rory asks the Doctor about some of Idris' final words—"The only water in the forest is the river"—but the Doctor doesn't understand. After Amy and Rory leave to find a new bedroom, their original purged by House, the Doctor talks to the TARDIS, and, in response, a nearby lever moves on its own, sending the TARDIS to its next destination.
Analysis by Cuisle This was the long-awaited, much-anticipated Neil Gaiman episode, and it fully lived up to expectations. It was an amazing episode from start to finish, pure fan heaven. The only question has to be why Neil Gaiman, an obvious Doctor Who fan has never been asked to write for the series before now. He understands the underlying pulse of the whole entity that is Doctor Who. And he got right to the heart of it with a two pronged attack, first on the hearts of The Doctor, who still feels very strongly about his lost home world and his lost people. The strongest thing he feels, as we are reminded in this episode, is guilt. The idea that he might find some living Time Lords and rescue them, thereby redeeming himself from having to destroy the rest, and be ‘forgiven’ as Amy suggested, was too much of a draw for him. He had to go in search of the origin of that psychic letter that arrived at the TARDIS door.
At the same time, Gaiman attacks the very heart and soul of the TARDIS, taking it from the old blue box and putting it into a woman, instead. Idris as the living, Human – or humanoid – embodiment of the TARDIS is a mad, initially confused, passionate being. The Doctor reacts by being mad, initially confused and ultimately passionate, enjoying the chance to interact with his TARDIS as he never has before. The result is an unbelievable partnership forged in desperation as the TARDIS is stolen by the malicious entity called ‘House’ who wants to escape his bubble universe and have the whole of the real universe to consume.
House’s torture of Amy and Rory as they run around a fantastically realised series of TARDIS corridors – the first time we have properly seen the inside of the TARDIS for a very long time - is a dark side show to what is happening back on the asteroid. And what is happening is fantastic. The Doctor and Idris – aka Sexy aka the TARDIS, build a rudimentary console room. It is the TARDIS stripped down to the bare bones, the essential TARDIS and it is beautiful, and obviously bound to become a new and expensive must have toy in the next few weeks.
Then there was the showdown with House once The Doctor and Idris had caught up with the TARDIS. It was almost inevitable that the Human TARDIS was going to have to be sacrificed in order to do that. Her death actually gave us the first sight of the Eleventh Doctor crying. He has never done that before and it was as shocking as when we saw the Tenth Doctor having said his last (or so we though) goodbye to Rose at the end of Doomsday. Those tears proved once and for all that the one woman who The Doctor has always loved and always been faithful to is his TARDIS. And that’s why the otherwise inexplicable title, The Doctor’s Wife. He is actually married to his space ship! Mind you, that still doesn’t stop him being married to River or Good Queen Bess, Marylin Monroe and any other flesh and blood woman!
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