Thoughts on: The Name of the Doctor

“What kind of idiot would try to steal a faulty Tardis?” are the opening words of this finale. Then the zoom out to the magnificent, domed Capitol of Gallifrey with the captions “Gallifrey, a very long time ago…” Without further ado, we’re treated to a scene of William Hartnell as the First Doctor nicking the Tardis for the first time, with a little help from one Clara Oswald. This episode doesn’t mess about in getting across the message that this finale was going to be big, but big in a very different way to any previous finale. Previous finales have all been huge, universe-shaking events, the stakes always bigger and better than ever before. There are no reality-destroying schemes afoot here, no universes to reboot, no Dalek legions to thwart, but, in terms of its significance for the show itself, this finale was as huge as any of Russell T Davies’ show-stoppers or Moffat’s mind-benders.

This finale was rich in continuity, advancing the 50-years-and-counting narrative of Doctor Who more than any dramatic standoff with the Daleks or the Cybermen or the Master has ever done. I love that. For suckers for continuity like me, this finale was just 45 minutes of entrancing viewing, notwithstanding that not all that much actually happened. Given a choice between a soaring series of Doctor Who at its storytelling best, but light on continuity, like Series 4, and a fairly undistinguished series that nevertheless advances the narrative of the show in an exciting way, I have to admit I’ll choose the latter every time. Maybe that’s why I adore the somewhat maligned Series 6 so much more than much of the rest of the fandom. And what we got in The Name of the Doctor was very exciting indeed. The punchy, jaw-dropping pre-titles sequence, showing Clara popping up everywhere throughout the Doctor’s life (with delicious cameos of the classic Doctors), established in an explosive way that, if you thought you know what “Impossible Girl” mystery was about, the answer was bigger and better than you could ever have imagined.

Let’s start with the meat, though. In essence, this is a fairly uncomplicated story about Richard E. Grant, who wants to take his revenge on the Doctor for all the Doctor has done to thwart him. With his terrifying minions, the Whisper Men, Grant lures the Doctor and his friends to his grave at Trenzalore, where he’ll enter the Doctor’s time stream and upset the Doctor’s life (but killing himself in the process). This was all riveting stuff, but Grant could have been given a more convincing motive. It’s the fact that it involves a sacrifice on Grant’s part that makes me question it. If J.K. Rowling taught me nothing else, it’s that malevolent beings like Lord Voldemort and Richard E. Grant fear death more than anything else. Perhaps he could at least have sent a few of his Whisper Men into the Doctor’s time stream to do the dirty for him, instead of killing himself.

One of the critical scenes of this finale was where the Doctor was enjoined to speak his name in order to open his tomb, else Grant would kill his friends. And the Doctor resists. For a moment it seems like he’d see his friends die rather than utter his name, before River saves the day (although, did anyone else initially go “What, his name is ‘Please’?!”) That raises a pretty big question about what’s so significant and critical about the Doctor’s real name that he won’t even divulge it to save his friends. It was suggested at the end of the episode that the Doctor reverted to using his real name during the Time War, when he dropped the moniker “Doctor”, which is why he’s so secretive about his real name, but the Doctor was keeping his name secret long before the Time War. Sorry, my fanboy imagination is running wild here. Just indulge me for a moment. I like the idea that the Doctor has an even bigger, darker secret behind his real name, and his concealment thereof, which he’s kept close to his chest ever since he adopted the name “Doctor”, when or before he set off in the Tardis all that time ago. It’s never really been made clear why the Doctor left Gallifrey in the first place. In Hartnell’s time the Doctor very suggestively referred to himself as an “exile”. But that’s all for another time. The scene was, in any case, a hugely tantalising tease about the mystery surrounding the Doctor’s real name, the secret “hidden in plain sight” which no writer for this show has ever thought (or dared) to answer.

The centrepiece of this episode, though, was the much-hyped revelation of the nature of the impossible enigma that was Clara Oswald. The vicious disruption of the Doctor’s time stream is destroying everything the Doctor has done over his life; whole galaxies are being extinguished in the sky, all the Doctor’s friends dying. To save the Doctor, Clara enters his time stream to expel from it the scourge of Richard E. Grant, frustrating the latter’s heinous devices once again. She splits into a million echoes across time and space, always there to deliver the Doctor from the designs of his rat-faced assailant. Those scenes, portraying Clara living a million lives in a million places and times, stalking the Doctor like his guardian angel, were just wonderful. Clara’s interactions with the Doctor’s past selves were fan-pleasing in themselves, but it all sent a distinctive chill down my spine (particularly Clara pointing the Doctor’s first incarnation to the right Tardis). Moffat sure knows how to conjure up classic references effectively. I hadn’t seen the classic stories when I first watched this, but even I felt enriched by the great invocation of the show’s history that it represented. I acknowledge the criticisms of this sequence to the effect that Moffat has made Clara too important an influence on the Doctor’s life, but I don’t really entertain them. The Doctor’s companions have always been the best of him, as the Doctor himself admitted. It doesn’t bother me that Clara is given such profound importance in the Doctor’s life. On the contrary, I loved the idea.

What tops this finale off, though, is its emotional appeal. For one, the relationship between the Doctor and Clara has just been rendered of cosmic importance, which is bound to tie the two together more closely than ever before. We can see that in the touching way the Doctor risked everything by going into his time stream to recover Clara. Their “reunion” inside the Doctor’s time stream, a distressed and confused Clara tumbling into the Doctor’s arms, was moving. The love and gratitude on the Doctor’s face as he embraced Clara was real. Especially given his realisation about how devoted Clara is to him, that she would go into the Doctor’s time stream, split herself into a million pieces, live a million lives, to save him. Secondly, there was River Song. The reappearance of River Song’s ghost, following the Doctor as he faced up to this terrible ordeal on Trenzalore, was poignant enough, but the revelation that the Doctor could see and hear River all along was too much. “You are always here to me. And I always listen, and I can always see you.” Beautiful. Shut up, there’s just something in my eye. Like a stake. Their final, final farewell had a satisfying, yet sad, air of closure and finality, and, really, there was no better way it could have been done. “See you ’round, Professor River Song.”

Rating: 8/10.

P.S. I have a feeling I’ll live to regret this, given I’ve got exams very inconveniently coming up in the next few weeks, but I want to try to finish off the rest of these reviews for the specials and Series 8 before Series 9 airs on the 19th (or the 20th for me). That means I’ll probably have to do one review per day until then… allons-y! (he says unsurely).