Doctor Who Recap - The Name of the Doctor

By Edwin Davies

May 21, 2013

She's getting ready for her honeymoon night. I'd tell you more but...SPOILERS!

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Before we get into the finer points of dissecting this episode of Doctor Who, it's worth establishing that the episode exists in two states in my mind. In one part, it exists as a single, fun episode of television with all the accompanying thrill and peril of your average Doctor Who episode. In the other, it exists as both the culmination and justification of a troubled, often frustrating run of episodes. It's important to point out this dichotomy because it cuts to the heart of why this episode was simultaneously one of the best of the recent half-season, and also why it was also deeply problematic and exacerbated a lot of the problems that have irked me about the show this year.

In isolation, this was an episode brimming with vim, vigour and verve in a way that much of the recent episodes have not been. From the opening seconds, in which Clara is shown floating through a shimmering time tunnel reminiscent of the heart of the TARDIS (not to mention the credits), it was clear that the show was gearing up to answer who Clara is and why she is so special. Ultimately, that answer was more than a little underwhelming, but the journey there was pretty exhilarating.

Clara is brought into a psychic "conference call" with Madame Vastra, Jenny Flint, and Strax, as well as River Song, making her customary finale visit. It turns out that Vastra has received a dire warning about The Doctor from the lips of a deranged murderer: "It is a secret he will take to the grave, and it is discovered." Unfortunately, while they are conversing in this manner, which requires them to enter a kind of shared trance, The Paternoster Gang are attacked by mysterious, faceless and fucking creepy beings known as The Whisper Men, resulting in Jenny being seemingly killed and the rest taken hostage by the Great Intelligence (Richard E. Grant), who says that The Doctor must go to the planet Trenzalore in order to rescue his friends.




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Clara returns to consciousness to warn The Doctor about this shocking turn of events, to his clear and obvious distress. One of the things I love about Matt Smith's performance as The Doctor, and which sets him apart as my favourite actor in the role, is that he manages to handle often brutal shifts in tone with astonishing ease and grace. When he arrives to pick Clara up, he's ebullient, even going so far as to play a game of Blind Man's Bluff with Angie and Artie - in reality a trick to distract him while they go to the cinema, which he takes in his stride with good cheer. As soon as Clara tells him what has happened and what is required of him, though, he turns instantly and descends into an almost fathomless despair.

What's great about his work in that scene - as well as the way he switches again to steely resolve - is that both emotions are fully and believably felt, and neither seems contradictory or out of place because Smith so inhabits The Doctor at this point. It also helps that he so often plays the character as daftly confident that seeing him crumple upon hearing bad news has a clear and palpable impact. If The Doctor is afraid to go to Trenzalore, then it must be a terrifying place indeed.


Continued:       1       2       3       4

     


 
 

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