The Name of the Doctor

Wow! I am still recovering from the dramatic finale to series 7 of Doctor Who and scratching my head trying to work out what is going to come next. Join me as I discuss the episode and try to work some things out. If you haven't seen the episode yet (er, why not) then do not read on…

The finale begins with a sort of montage of Clara meeting the classic Doctors. We see the First Doctor about to steal the TARDIS, the Third Doctor driving in Bessie and many more. Clara tells us she was born to save the Doctor, but how? Well we now know that she followed the Great Intelligence into the Doctor’s time stream and continually tried to save him. I found this a satisfactory explanation to the mystery of Clara and it was great to see classic Doctors properly appearing in the show- I particularly liked a version of Clara telling the First Doctor which TARDIS to steal.

This was another episode where the Doctor didn’t make an appearance until a good ten minutes into the episode. Instead we see the Paternoster Gang joined by Clara and River Song in a “conference call”.  According to Vastra “time travel has always been possible in dreams”. I was once again convinced that the Paternoster Gang need their own spin-off show. One day perhaps? The highlight of this great scene was the chilling line from Jenny saying “I think I’ve been murdered”. Fortunately all three of the Paternoster Gang survived the episode so the spin-off series can still happen.

Once Clara told the Doctor what she had seen, he knew he had to go to his grave at Trenzalore. The TARDIS wasn’t too keen on this and the Doctor could only get there by using the planet’s gravity, cracking a TARDIS window in the process. I feel that the crack may well be an important clue because when we see the Doctor’s grave, the TADIS having grown to a huge size, the same window has a crack in! Does this mean the Doctor is going to die soon, before the window can be repaired?

The finale saw the return of River Song, after her death in Forest of the Dead. It’s the latest in her timeline we’ve seen and she is effectively a ghost, saved to the database of the library. Her appearance here is fairly understated, her role mostly being as an assistant to Clara, still connected through the conference call. There is a great scene though where the Doctor reveals he is connected to her and hasn’t contacted her since the library because he felt it would hurt him too much. Very emotional.

I feel that we have now come to the big talking point of the episode, the ending. The Doctor goes to get Clara from inside his timeline but before the two of them can leave they see a shadowy figure, who turns out to be legendary actor John Hurt and, as the caption said, “The Doctor”. But how can John Hurt be the Doctor? Well some rumours suggest he is a Doctor that fits between the Eighth and the Ninth Doctors. This seems most likely as we have very little idea of what happened between the TV Movie and Rose. Perhaps what this new Doctor said can give us a clue:

John Hurt’s Doctor: What I did, I did without choice in the name of peace and sanity.

Matt Smith’s Doctor: But not in the name of the Doctor!

Well all we can know is that this new Doctor did something bad and didn’t have a choice. Time war? Seems the most likely. If this is the case and John Hurt is technically the Ninth Doctor our naming system is going to be messed up. Fingers crossed that he’ll be given a new name so we don’t get too confused.

Other possibilities? Well maybe he is the First Doctor, coming before William Hartnell, although this doesn’t feel right to me. Or perhaps he is the next Doctor, coming after Matt Smith. Possible but the fact that the Eleventh Doctor knows what he has done and the fact that it seems Matt Smith will probably be around for at least another series, this too seems unlikely. So I’m going for my first theory.

Still, even if that is the case there are still so many questions. What exactly did JH Doctor do? What has he got to do with the 50th anniversary special? And what about the Tenth Doctor? And the Zygons? Well I guess we will have to wait until the 23rd November to find out! How are we going to cope? This feature will be back on the 24th November to analyse the special but stay tuned as there might be the odd other thing before then too! Thanks for reading!