[h2]2. The Doctor’s Wife[/h2]
Written by Neil Gaiman
“Did you ever wonder why I chose you all those years ago?”
“I chose you. You were unlocked.”
“Of course I was. I wanted to see the universe, so I stole a Time Lord and I ran away. And you were the only one mad enough.”
For the last two slots on this list, I wound up choosing relatively ‘normal’ episodes of Doctor Who, which feels oddly appropriate. It is easy to praise the ‘big’ episodes of the series, like Specials or Premieres or Finales, just as it is easier for the writers to make those episodes stand out. It is far more difficult to create a great and lasting normal-length, mid-season episode, and when they arrive, they can often be the most memorably entries of the series.
Look no further than to Neil Gaiman’s Series 6 contribution, “The Doctor’s Wife,” for proof. The episode may have been produced on a slightly higher budget than the standard Doctor Who hour – and looks every penny of it, too – but otherwise, this is a ‘normal’ episode of the series, and one made legendary by simple virtue of tremendous writing and powerful acting. Gaiman’s core concept – the spirit of the TARDIS becomes encapsulated in the body of a woman, allowing the Doctor to physically interact with his one true love – is so fundamentally brilliant that one wonders why it was never done before, and Gaiman executes upon it perfectly, crafting a story that fully realizes the emotional potential of the idea. And while Matt Smith turns in some of his very best work over the course of the episode, Gaiman’s writing is so good, and so pure in terms of how he understands Doctor Who as a series and the Doctor as a character, that this is one of the few Who stories ever written in which it is easy to imagine any of the eleven actors who played the character inhabiting the part. Truly, this is as universal a Doctor Who story as has ever been created, and one of the great achievements of the modern series.
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