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| "Hello, Doctor. It's so very nice to meet you." |
I absolutely love guest writers' episodes of Doctor Who. (Yeah, I know there have been a few clangers. I'm talking about the good ones.) Because, I've realised, they remind me of what I love most about the show, sometimes more than the show-runners' episodes. That's probably precisely because they only have one shot at it, and if you only have one shot, you're going to make sure you convey your love and excitement for the show and its characters.
The other day I re-watched The Doctor's Wife and realised that it's definitely one of my favourite guest-written episodes. Oh, how I cried at the end. And I noticed that the Doctor's connection to his past selves was especially strong in this episode - something I miss terribly under the Moffat regime. From the moment Eleven came into being, he simply forgot - or suppressed - almost everything I knew and loved about Nine and Ten. But The Doctor's Wife has so many nods to the RTD era - and possibly some allusions to Classic Who that I missed. The old Tardis desktop came back! Hooray! "Another Ood I couldn't save" was a clever reference to another guest-written Tenth Doctor story, The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit. And kudos to Matt Smith for the casually deadly way he delivered that chilling line: "Fear me - I've killed all of them." Granted, this is something Nine or Ten would probably never say, but it's a much-needed acknowledgment of the Doctor's past - his experiences, his fears and regrets, what motivates him. "You gave me hope and then took it away. That's enough to drive anyone mad - imagine what it will do to me." That's the Doctor I knew, and it reminded me of what happened to him when he lost Rose - our sad and potentially dangerous Doctor under all the mannerisms and cute stuff. We need to be reminded of that every so often, otherwise the Doctor risks becoming some kind of harmless space tourist instead of a powerful and compelling character with a complex past. ""Letting it get to you." You know what that's called? That's called being alive" reminded me of the Cyberman's taunt to Ten: "You are proof." "Of what?" "That emotions destroy you." "Yeah, I am." The Doctor is proud of his humanity, and so he should be.
Guest writers don't just bring a fresh take on the show's history, though - they can also expand the mythology of the show in important and memorable ways. Watching The Doctor's Wife, I realised what an exquisite thing writer Neil Gaiman has done. Because in this episode, the Doctor becomes the companion to the Tardis. Which he always was - he's been the Tardis' most faithful and only companion - but it took Gaiman to flesh that concept out and bring it to life (actual bodily life in the form of Idris). When Idris is about to disappear, the Doctor says, "No, please don't..." And he becomes us. He becomes the companion (which we viewers also are, if we've spent any time with the Doctor). He experiences exactly what we've all felt, when we've watched our Doctor die and be replaced by a stranger who's somehow still the Doctor. No one has actually died - the Doctor continues to exist; in this episode, the Tardis is still alive, just in a different form - but we still feel a sense of loss. It's an ending and a beginning at the same time.
And that precisely is the genius of Doctor Who. At its best, it captures the reality that time is evanescent, slipping through our fingers - that personal identity is transient and mutable - that as we travel through our lives we are constantly saying goodbye and hello both to ourselves and to the people we love. "Thus play I in one person many people", said Shakespeare's Richard. This is what I love most about Doctor Who, and about the Doctor himself - who, after all, is a human creation - that through this intricate, symbiotic relationship he holds with the human race, he helps us understand what it means to be us. Who would have thought we could use an ancient, crazy alien to remind us of our humanity.
"Human beings. You are amazing! Ha!"
So let's have more guest-written episodes, please! There are so many talented writers out there who adore Doctor Who, and their skill, love, and fresh perspectives can only enrich the show.
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