Series 6 (2011)

Episode title: The Doctor's Wife
Featuring: Eleventh Doctor
Companions: Amy Pond, Rory Williams
First shown: 14th May 2011
Related articles: House, TARDIS
Guide: The episode starts on a baron wasteland of an asteroid, just outside our universe, with Auntie, Uncle, Nephew and Niece. Niece is dying, so Nephew removes her brain and soul to await a new Time-Lord replacement. Meanwhile, in deep dark space, there is a knock on the TARDIS door. The Doctor investigates to find a hypercube knocking on his door. Hypercubes were used by Time Lord’s in distress to call to each other throughout time and space. The Doctor recognises that the Time Lord Corsair sent the hypercube by a snake drawing on the side of the cube, stating that the Time Lord in question always had a tattoo of a snake in all of their regenerations. The Doctor locks the TARDIS onto the co-ordinates of the distress call and lands upon the asteroid. Upon landing, the soul of the TARDIS is removed, and taken into Idris’ (Niece) body to bring her back to life. The Doctor, Amy and Rory step outside the TARDIS to investigate their surroundings to find the wasteland of junk before their eyes. Greeted by Auntie, Uncle, Nephew (an Ood) and an eccentric Idris (who bites the Doctor), the trio are taken to meet House, the asteroid upon which they inhabit.

The Ood as Nephew, guarding Idris in her cage

House introduces itself through the bodies of Auntie and Uncle whereas Idris has been locked away by Nephew. The Doctor decides to explore the asteroid for signs of his Time Lord brethren, revealing to Amy that he wants forgiveness from a fellow Time Lord for his acts against them in the Time War. The Doctor asks Amy to return to the TARDIS to find his sonic screwdriver in his other jacket, to which Amy and Rory oblige and return. However, the Doctor had lied to them to get them to safety as he had his sonic screwdriver on him. The TARDIS locks Amy and Rory inside while the Doctor continues roaming, until he hears the voices of many other Time Lords. He opens a cabinet to find many more hypercubes rather than Time Lords and realises that any Time Lord who came to the asteroid also perished on the asteroid, their body parts used to heal Auntie and Uncle. Auntie and Uncle run while the TARDIS is hijacked by House with Amy and Rory still inside which the Doctor fails to stop from dematerialising. He returns to Idris’ cage and discovers that she has the soul of the TARDIS within her and that she is the human personification of the TARDIS.

Amy and Rory trapped on the TARDIS

Together, the Doctor and Idris roam the asteroid further, while House makes Amy and Rory run around the TARDIS rather than killing them quickly. House messes with Amy and Rory’s heads badly while they run around the corridors of the TARDIS. The Doctor and Idris stumble upon a TARDIS graveyard, an patch of land littered with the remains of broken TARDIS’ from all of the other Time Lords who had ventured so far from home. Together, the pair begins to build a new TARDIS console from the remains of the TARDIS’ available to them, in order to save the Doctor’s TARDIS. The duo do so and set off in pursuit of the Doctor’s TARDIS and House, but are unable to materialise inside until the shields are removed. Idris contacts Rory telepathically with instructions on how to find the old TARDIS console room and remove the shields that protect the TARDIS. Rory and Amy do so, but are followed by Nephew, who is ordered to kill them both by House. As Nephew advances, the Doctor and Idris materialise into the old console room. Idris begins to die and the Doctor makes a deal with House that will allow them all to live and to fly back into the Doctor’s universe. House agrees, but as soon as the Doctor tells him how to do it (by deleting rooms archived by the TARDIS), House goes back on his word, choosing to delete the console room with them inside it.

The Doctor with Idris, the human personification of the TARDIS

Luckily though the TARDIS has a failsafe protocol in place that stops living beings from being killed in the event of a room being deleted with them inside. Instead, any living beings are transported back to the main TARDIS console room, which is what happens to the Doctor, Amy, Rory and Idris. House says that he doesn’t care what room he kills the Doctor in, saying that the Doctor should fear him for killing hundreds of Time Lords. The Doctor retaliates by saying that House should fear him as he killed them all. Idris dies, and the Doctor tells House that because she was taken from her home (the TARDIS), she will now return to it as she is back in the main console room. A golden energy seeps from Idris’ mouth and back into the TARDIS’ despite House’s pleas. The TARDIS is then the one that actually beats House and transports the Doctor, Amy and Rory back to their universe. The TARDIS speaks to the Doctor one last time before returning fully to her role of TARDIS, saying how great it was to be alive. The Doctor does some maintenance work on the TARDIS below the console room to patch her up, and then tries to speak to her again. She does not respond, but instead controls the TARDIS control panel to fly them to a new destination.

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