Story 240 - The Name of the Doctor

In which Clara Oswald prompts the First Doctor to steal a faulty TARDIS from Gallifrey, rather than a fully operational one...

Madam Vastra visits a murderer in prison - a man named Clarence, whom she had helped to capture. He claims to have information regarding the Doctor. What Vastra doesn't know is that he has been haunted by visions of strange faceless men - the Whisper Men - and it was they who gave him this information. What Vastra hears shocks her, and so she hurriedly arranges a psychic conference. Strax is summoned to take part from Glasgow for this. Joining the Paternoster Gang will be the minds of Clara - and of River Song. Clara learns of the meeting when she is given a letter from Vastra, posted over a century before. She is resistant to participate, but a candle accompanying the letter, which she has lit, proves to be a soporific, and she soon finds herself at the meeting. 

Vastra tells the others of what Clarence told her - that the Doctor has a secret which he will take to the grave, and that it has been discovered. Accompanying this is a set of Gallifreyan space-time coordinates, which River Song identifies. Clarence also mentioned a word - Trenzalore. Vastra has assumed that it is the secret which has been discovered, but River guesses otherwise. Jenny suddenly alerts the others to a presence in the room with their physical selves. Whisper Men have gained access, and have already killed Jenny, who vanishes from the conference. River gets Vastra to wake up, and she wakes Strax. The Whisper Men reveal that they are employed by Dr Simeon - the physical embodiment of the Great Intelligence.

Clara returns to the present day when she wakes up, and finds the Doctor is visiting the Maitland household. She tells him of the conference and Clarence's messages. The Doctor becomes extremely upset, and reveals that what Clarence was saying was that it was his grave which has been discovered. He tells Clara that he has heard of Trenzalore - from Dorium Maldovar, who spoke of a great battle there. Going to the TARDIS, the Doctor has Clara link herself to the telepathic circuits so that he can discover the coordinates she had seen. These take the ship to Trenzalore - a far distant planet, where the Doctor's final resting place is supposed to lie.

When Clara came out of the psychic conference, she was still linked to the mind of River Song, and she has accompanied them. Only Clara is aware of her. The Doctor crash-lands the TARDIS, as it refuses to materialise normally. The Doctor knows the dangers of crossing his own time stream - especially at the location of his grave, which will be a weak point in time. They come across a huge TARDIS, hundreds of feet high, in the middle of a graveyard and the Doctor explains that this is his ship, broken down and with its dimensions leaking. He has been buried in inside it. Looking for a way in, they see a grave marker for River Song. The Doctor knows that her body was left at the Library, and deduces that this marks the entrance to a secret passage to his tomb. The Whisper Men have also arrived on Trenzalore, along with Simeon. Inside the TARDIS-tomb, Clara begins to recall things which she shouldn't, as they belonged to closed off time-lines. This is a result of the TARDIS deteriorating. She now knows of the Doctor's suspicions about her.

Vastra and Strax find themselves on the planet, close to the tomb - brought her by the Great Intelligence as a lure for the Doctor. Vastra is able to revive Jenny. The Doctor and Clara arrive at the entrance to the tomb, and Simeon informs everyone that it will not open unless the Doctor states his name. The Doctor refuses, but the tomb suddenly opens anyway. Clara finds that River Song spoke the Doctor's name to open it, unheard by everyone else. Once inside the TARDIS-tomb, they find a bright column of light at the centre of the console room. This is the Doctor's time stream. The Great Intelligence reveals that it intends to enter this so that he can undo everything the Doctor has ever done. This will be his ultimate revenge against his old enemy - to turn evil every good act. It will destroy the Intelligence, but it is a price worth paying. Simeon enters the column of light and vanishes. The Doctor's time stream becomes poisoned.

All of history starts to unravel. They see whole star systems blink out. Jenny vanishes, and Vastra is attacked by Strax, who no longer knows her and is a Sontaran warrior once more. The Doctor seems paralysed, so Clara elects to enter the time stream to put a stop to the Great Intelligence. She finds herself interacting with Doctors throughout his history, including prompting the First Doctor to take his TARDIS rather than another. This explains why the Doctor has seen other versions of Clara recently - they are splinters of the original, who hve an existence of their own. Back in his tomb, the Doctor reveals that he has been aware of River's presence the whole time. With is history being repaired, the Paternoster Gang are reunited. The Doctor decides that he must save Clara, and so enters his own time stream. he finds her in a hellish environment where they see ghosts of all his previous incarnations. However, there is one person present that she does not recognise - an incarnation which the Doctor has suppressed and tried to forget about - someone not deserving of being known as the Doctor...

The Name of the Doctor was written by Steven Moffat, and was first broadcast on 18th May, 2013.

It marked the conclusion of Series 7, and was the last episode broadcast before the 50th Anniversary celebrations in the Autumn. Having failed to talk Christopher Eccleston into returning for the Anniversary Special, Moffat had been compelled to devise his own "Three Doctors" by creating a hitherto unknown incarnation - played by John Hurt - who would feature alongside Matt Smith and David Tennant.

The mystery of the Impossible Girl is finally settled - as we discover that the two previous Claras (seen in Asylum of the Daleks and The Snowmen) were splinters of the original. We also see Clara interact with the First Doctor on Gallifrey (using footage of Hartnell from The Aztecs); the Second Doctor in what looks like Venice Beach - using footage of Troughton from The Five Doctors. Also from that story we see her with the Third Doctor, driving Bessie. She's on Gallifrey again with the Fourth Doctor in a scene from The Invasion of Time. The Fifth Doctor is seen in the Matrix, from Arc of Infinity. The Sixth Doctor is only glimpsed in the corridors of the TARDIS, whilst the Seventh Doctor is seen on Iceworld (the cliffhanging scene from Dragonfire). The Eighth and Ninth Doctors are also only glimpsed, whilst the Tenth is seen in the Library, from Forest of the Dead. Simeon is superimposed into some of these clips as well, before Clara comes to right things. The Intelligence gets a clip of its own, with a scene of the Yeti from The Web of Fear.

The episode was graced with two prequels. The first of these was He Said, She Said, which simply showed the Doctor and Clara against a background of props from the series, talking about how they saw each other. The second one asa proper sequel, in which murderer Clarence De Marco is visited by the Whisper men in his cell and they give him their cryptic message. This was titled Clarence and the Whisper Men.

For a big series finale, the story features only main cast members already known to the viewers. The big guest artist only appears in the closing seconds - as John Hurt is credited as "Introducing John Hurt as The Doctor". It's TV tradition that "Introducing..." is only used when it's an actors first big role, whereas Hurt has a TV career going back to 1962 (an appearance in Z Cars).

Simeon is once again played by Richard E Grant - probably his final appearance as the Great Intelligence, as the character is effectively killed off in this episode. Alex Kingston is back as River Song, despite being dead. This is a post-mortem version of River - her consciousness saved by CAL.

The Whisper Men are the Great Intelligence's latest creatures, after robot Yeti and carnivorous Snowmen. They appear as blank-faced men, in black Victorian garb, and speak with whispering voices - hence the name. They're empty shells - inhabited by the Intelligence's will - as is Simeon himself.

Overall, it's a fan pleasing episode, with appearances by old Doctors and lots of clips from classic stories. The Clara mystery is solved in a satisfying fashion, and things are nicely set up for the November anniversary story with the John Hurt cliffhanger. At the time it felt as if the anniversary had started early.

Things you might like to know:

• As mentioned above, this story was supposed to lead to the Ninth Doctor, with Clara discovering that he had committed genocide at the end of the Time War. This idea was nixed by Eccleston's refusal to return to the role. Moffat then considered Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor as the one who fought in the War, but he didn't think this behaviour matched the Eighth Doctor's persona.
• It was rewatching Richard Hurndall as the First Doctor in The Five Doctors, who was different in personality and build to Hartnell's original Doctor, which made Moffat consider possible unseen incarnations of the Doctor.
• There's a Sherlock Holmes reference as the Doctor considers bee-keeping as a retirement activity.
• This is the first series finale since the revival to be set on an alien planet. All others have been set on, or above, the Earth.
• This is the only time that the TARDIS is ever seen in its natural state, before the Chameleon Circuit got it stuck looking like a Police Box. It is a cylinder in shape. previous undisguised TARDISes, seen in The War Games and The Claws of Axos tended to have a squarer shape.
• This episode does seem to contradict The Doctor's Wife, where the TARDIS itself had a hand in being chosen by the Doctor. Here it seems to be entirely down to Clara that this particular TARDIS is selected as it will be "more fun". This could be explained away by Clara entering the time stream changing the Doctor's history slightly.
• It transpires that the Maitlands live in Chiswick, making them near neighbours of Donna Noble and her family.
• As well as the clips from earlier stories, we also get snatches of dialogue when the Doctor points his Sonic Screwdriver into the rift in his tomb. Clips come from An Unearthly Child, The Moonbase, The Time Monster, Genesis of the Daleks, The Caves of Androzani, Trial of a Time Lord, Parting of the Ways, Voyage of the Damned and The Pandorica Opens.
• The Doctor has seen his gravestone once before - in Revelation of the Daleks. It didn't affect him anything like what it does here. Then it was a fake rigged up by Davros. Here, it is the real thing, but history will be changed and this timeline will never happen.
• Vastra's letter to Clara is dated to the year 20013, instead of 2013.