Doctor Who - Series 7 Finale Recap: The Impossible Girl(s)
Recap Video and Review of Doctor Who - Series 7 Finale - The Name of the Doctor:
One of the biggest reasons Doctor Who has endured for fifty years is because, perhaps more than any other scripted drama in television history, it's a show with abiding fidelity to its own history. Maybe there's the occasional continuity snafu, as one would expect from any series that's run this long, but for the most part, you don't get many long-running series that look into its own past this frequently. Most series save that for the end of its run, as a nostalgic bit of retrospection that, while pleasant, isn't actually integral to the story it's trying to tell. Yet, with Doctor Who, that retrospection is paramount to the story at hand. In this sense, the seventh series finale is a microcosm of the series itself, as "The Name of the Doctor" involves The Doctor (Matt Smith) delving into his own timeline and venturing to the one place no time traveler should ever go: his own tomb. It's an episode that deals not only with The Doctor's mortality, but with the sins of his past, as well as the consequences of a universe without him. The exploration of any one of these themes would have been enough to make for a remarkable finale, but we also finally get the answer to the question that's been plaguing viewers this entire season: Who/what is Clara Oswald, and how is this Impossible Girl possible? "The Name of the Doctor" is an episode that flies by, setting up this fall's 50th Anniversary Special beautifully, while also succeeding as a standalone finale in its own right.
Credit: BBC
So...about Clara. It probably should have been apparent that the solution to the Clara mystery would have been something far simpler than her being, say, a regeneration of The Doctor's granddaughter, Susan (or any of the litany of other wonderfully insane theories about her true identity that have been floating around online since her introduction). Doctor Who, in many ways, inspires outlandish theorizing, and this tendency to overanalyze often blinds us to the more mundane solutions to its mysteries. Of course, "mundane" is a terrible word choice on my part, since the solution to the mystery of Clara (Jenna-Louise Coleman) is anything but. Clara's multiple appearances across time and space are the result of her having entered The Doctor's time stream, fracturing her into countless copies across the dimensions of time and space, all towards the singular purpose of saving The Doctor. All things considered, it's a solution that is every bit as sensible as it is mind-blowing, as it finds a clever way to explain Clara within the confines of the rules the story sets for itself. I was more than impressed, I was downright enthused. However, to get at the heart of the story, we have to go back to the start of the episode.
Credit: BBC
Clara is invited by Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh) to a seance-like "conference call" with herself, Jenny (Catrin Stewart), Strax (Dan Starkey) and River Song (Alex Kingston) to discuss a secret revealed to Vastra by a prisoner in London: "The Doctor has a secret he will take to his grave. And it is discovered...." Before the crew can get to the bottom of the mystery, they're interrupted by a featureless, translucent-faced group of monsters known as the Whipsermen, which are revealed to be the henchman of The Great Intelligence, still inhabiting the body of Dr. Simeon (Richard E. Grant). Though River is able to save herself and Clara, Vastra and Strax are captured by the Whispermen while Jenny is presumed dead. Clara reports the happenings to The Doctor, telling him about the mention of a place called "Trenzalore," and just like that, The Doctor is confronted with having to do the unthinkable: visit his own end point.
Credit: BBC
Trenzalore is a pretty terrifying world, not simply from its volcanic, apocalyptic barrenness, but in how it illustrates a post-Doctor world. The planet is apparently The Doctor's final resting place, with the last Time Lord entombed in his dead TARDIS in the distance (ballooned to the size of a skyscraper, as the "bigger on the inside" energy leaked to the outside as it died). It's a stark visual that marks some of the show's best design work this season, as the TARDIS is a completely ruined, hollow shell of its former self, communicating in one image the unthinkable idea of a world without The Doctor. As The Doctor and Clara venture deeper into the ruins, they encounter The Great Intelligence, who is continuing his obsessive, destructive campaign against The Doctor by threatening to stop his friends' hearts unless he unlocks the TARDIS doors by speaking his name. The Doctor refuses to say the word, and pleads with The Great Intelligence to see reason, though one generally doesn't reason with The Great Intelligence. However, River's ghostly image is able to save the day, having apparently whispered The Doctor's name into the TARDIS, at which point the doors opened on their own. Inside, the travelers discover The Doctor's final remains, a representation of his time energy that exists as an open wound into The Doctor's own timeline. And it is this discovery that gives The Great Intelligence the opportunity he's been looking for. In essence, though he will die by entering The Doctor's own time stream, he will be scattered throughout the Time Lord's history, which will allow The Great intelligence to rewrite every one of The Doctor's victories as defeats.
Credit: BBC
The Doctor pleads with him to stop, but The Great Intelligence follows through, and what results is cataclysmic: entire galaxies and star systems that The Doctor had saved blink from existence, while Strax turns hostile against Madame Vastra (since The Doctor never existed to make them comrades) and Jenny disappears from the universe (without The Doctor to save her life upon their first meeting, Jenny dies -- although if Jenny died before Vastra could fall in love with her, one would think the Silurian detective wouldn't have been nearly as devastated as she wound up being, if only because her own past should have been rewritten to exclude all memories of Jenny. But then, it's a minor quibble when set against how effectively Neve McIntosh taps into the deep reservoirs of Vastra's grief. It's a wonderful portrayal). Clara realizes that this is why The Doctor knows her -- she must have scattered herself across time and space to save him. She recognizes what she has to do, knowing that the process will kill her, leaving only copies of the real Clara, each one different yet similar to her, yet none of them the original. The Doctor is too weak to stop her, and as she heads toward the time stream, she tells The Doctor, "Run, you clever boy. And remember me."
Credit: BBC
What follows is the same sequence that opened the episode, and it's one of the biggest treats for long-time fans of the series that the show has ever delivered: we see Clara interacting with every Doctor, across time and space, dating back to the First Doctor at the moment of his TARDIS theft back on Gallifrey. The use of archival footage to simulate Clara's interactions with each of these Doctors is tremendous, and while it's complete fanservice, it's magnificently effective. We see her interact with The Doctor as Victorian Clara and as Souffle Girl, among other incarnations. Clara doesn't always remember who she is in these various incarnations, but deep down, she always remembers her mission: to save The Doctor. This explains Clara's instinctual tendency to aid The Doctor, even if the various versions of Clara don't remember him specifically. It's a clever solution to a complex mystery, and those are always my favorite resolutions. Sure, it taxes the mind, to a certain extent, but I don't think we necessarily have to do logistical gymnastics to make this reveal work. I loved it.
Credit: BBC
I also loved The Doctor's final goodbye to River Song. He hates endings, as River repeats throughout the episode, and it's a theme that carries through the narrative. Though River appears as a sort of ghost to Clara, we learn that The Doctor could always see her, and he was always listening. He just never spoke up because he feared it would be too hard on him, and he was right. The Doctor decides he must venture into the time stream to rescue Clara, as she's likely still alive in there somewhere. He and River then share a kiss (which, The Doctor notes, must look strange to the others, since they can't exactly see her), and The Doctor sadly muses that this echo of River should have faded by now (in a sense, she's every bit as impossible to him as Clara). She responds by saying that she can't bring herself to leave without a goodbye, yet The Doctor states that he doesn't know how to say it to her. And so River declares, "If you ever loved me, say it like you're going to come back." It's a highly emotional parting, with The Doctor saying he'll "see her around," and telling her not to wait up. The pain on The Doctor's face after River vanishes, following her final "Goodbye, Sweetie," stands as another feather in what's been a tremendous season for Matt Smith, where subtlety and nuance are concerned. The man is tremendous at what he does, and this episode illustrates just how well he's nailed the various dimensions of The Doctor (Lonely God, Heroic Savior, Childlike Wanderer, Damaged Soul, Dashing Rogue, etc.) and blends them into a singular portrayal in a way few actors have been able to.
Credit: BBC
And so we come to the conclusion, in which The Doctor finds Clara in a void populated by versions of himself (hey there, "blink and you'll miss it" Ninth Doctor!). The Doctor scoops a weakening Clara up into his arms as he sees another version of himself in the distance -- a mysterious man from before the time he adopted the name "The Doctor." As he tells Clara, "The name you choose is like a promise you make. He's the one who broke the promise. He is my secret." The mysterious man responds to this accusation, saying "What I did, I did without choice. In the name of peace and sanity."
"But not in the name of The Doctor," The Doctor responds, as the mysterious man turns around and the title card reveals, "Introducing John Hurt as The Doctor." Bring on the 50th Anniversary Special!
"The Name of the Doctor" is an outstanding finale that allows Doctor Who to double back on its own history without completely rewriting the entire book, so to speak. I suppose I'm still a bit concerned over the rumors of just which iteration of The Doctor John Hurt will play, but this finale has gone a long way in softening those concerns a bit, since the rumors no longer seem as likely as they had seemed. But even ignoring this, it's an excellent episode of television that allows Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman to display the full range of their acting talents, while also resolving the Clara mystery, opening the door for us to get to know her better in series eight, since we don't have that pesky question of just who/what she is hanging over everything. I'll see you in the fall when The Doctor returns! Thanks for reading this season!
