Saturday 18th May 2013 saw the release of the Series 7 Part 2 finale of Doctor Who, and what a finale it was. Current companion Clara has only been on the show for half a series, but she has shook the Who-niverse so much in that short time. From day one we’ve speculated and rumoured about who this impossible girl may be, and The Name Of The Doctor brought that information to us at long last.
*SPOILERS PAST THIS POINT*
Jenny, Vastra and Strax make a big return in the episode, as they have a ‘psychic tea party’ with Clara and River regarding the Doctor’s biggest secret. The Whispermen are on the hunt for the Doctor’s closest friends (the human, the lizard and the Sontaran), and the only way to save them is to travel to the one place a time traveller should never go – his grave.
Yes, Trenzalore is revealed to be the Doctor’s burial planet, and what a grave it is. The TARDIS leaks its ‘bigger-on-the-inside’ technology when it dies, and grows. The perfect monumental grave for our time travelling hero. Breaking into his grave is a massive paradox, as he crosses his own timeline, but he’d owe anything to his friends. River Song accompanies the Doctor and Clara as an echo.
Clara starts to remember things she shouldn’t, for example her forgotten conversation with the Doctor about how she’s died twice already. We finally meet our villain, the Great Intelligence in the shape of Dr. Simeon. He forces the Doctor to open his grave by saying the single activation word – his name. With Jenny, Vastra and Strax and Clara at stake, the Doctor’s in a tricky posiition but the door opens by command of River. As she’s an echo, nobody heard her say his name, but the grave still opened.
Inside we see the Doctor’s timeline. Everything he ever did or will do, and the Great Intelligence steps right through it, ripping him apart, but also contaminating the Doctor’s timeline. Every victory he ever won was reversed. All of the planets and civilisations he saved, was gone. The Doctor was being rewritten. Strax was now pure sontaran, attempting to kill Vastra, but she kills him instead.
Eventually, Clara figures it out. She was born to save the Doctor. It was her in the Dalek Asylum, and in Victorian London. She steps into the timeline, scattering herself across the Doctor’s life, saving him whenever she could. We see her help the First Doctor choose the right TARDIS, look for the Sixth Doctor in the TARDIS, chase the Third Doctor in Bessie, watch over the Tenth Doctor in the library. She is soufflé girl after all.
This is when we get some real closure on River Song. The Doctor confesses to always being able to see and hear her echo, but never saying anything because it would hurt too much. They kiss and he finally says goodbye, and she fades away.
Jenny, Vastra and Strax couldn’t see her so god knows how the kiss looked to them (good old Who humour). Then the Doctor steps into his timestream and finds Clara in a part of his timestream with just incarnations of him. The Doctor sends Clara’s red leaf down to her, and then he falls down to the same room she’s in.
The timestream closes and they see a figure in the distance. Since everybody in the room is him, how come Clara has never seen him before? Choosing the name ‘the Doctor’ is a promise. That man broke that promise. He is the Gallifreyan we know and love, but not the Doctor. He turns around then we see John Hurt, who is starring in the 50th as, what we can safely presume to be, the Valeyard – a dark incarnation of the Doctor between his 12th and final regeneration. This is a massive build up to the anniversary special and I cannot wait. There you have it. Brilliant!
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