Trivia / Doctor Who S32 E4 "The Doctor's Wife"

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• Ascended Fanon: The episode all but confirms a lot of fan theories about the TARDIS and its relationship with the Doctor.
  • Such as the fact that, while she might not take him where he wants to go, she nevertheless takes him where he needs to go.
  • The fact the TARDIS holds actual affection for the Doctor and is female has been suggested numerous times in licensed novels, short stories and fanfic.
  • Also confirmed is the long-held fanon belief that Time Lords can change sex during a regeneration.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: Michael Sheen as the House.
• Completely Different Title: The French title is "L'Âme du TARDIS" (The TARDIS's Soul).
• Contest Winner Cameo: The winning entry of the Blue Peter TARDIS interior design contest held back in Series 5 appears in this episode. It's the makeshift TARDIS the Doctor builds to get back to his own.
• Trolling Creator:
  • After a billion-and-one hints that River Song might be the Doctor's wife, Steven Moffat and Neil Gaiman casually throw out this kind of title. River does not appear in the episode, though the episode strongly implies that the Doctor's one true companion isn't actually her - or anyone else - but the TARDIS. Who loves him back.
  • It's also a Call-Back to an earlier Trolling Creator; 1980s showrunner John Nathan-Turner, suspecting his office had a leak, wrote this title on the whiteboard to see if the fan press would pick it up.
• What Could Have Been:
  • This episode was originally written for the Tenth Doctor, as Smith hadn't been cast when Gaiman started writing, but was retooled for the eleventh episode of Matt Smith's first season, and was then rewritten to fit in elements like Rory into the plot when moved to Smith's second season.
  • The opening scene was first meant to be the Doctor and company visiting the Beatles, which got changed into being sacrificed at the planet of the Rain Gods, before finally becoming the "I've Got Mail" scene. The Rain Gods version of the opening was later reworked into both a comic for the 2012 annual and a minisode for Series 7 about the Doctor and River.
  • House was originally supposed to be the Great Intelligence as a preview to his appearances in the next season, but the rights weren't acquired in time.
  • Gaiman stated in an interview that the original plan for this episode would have involved an entity chasing the Doctor through the TARDIS; however, this was changed to the companion being the target of the chase as the Doctor would know the ship too well, then the enemy became an entity possessing the TARDIS itself to stop it being a simple 'cat-and-mouse' chase, and only then did Gaiman have the idea of focusing on what happened to the mind of the TARDIS during this assault.
  • House was originally a literal house in Gaiman's very first version of the story before being told that there were already creepy houses in the series, so he decided to make it a planet instead.
  • Originally, House would be revealed as having grown from a spore which entered a bubble universe via one of the cracks in time which featured throughout Series 5. Gaiman intended the Doctor to glimpse the true House, an enormous mollusc-like entity concealed beneath the asteroid's mantle.
  • When Amy was sent back to the TARDIS to fetch the sonic screwdriver, she originally found her engagement ring - a version of which ultimately appeared in "The Lodger".
  • A scene involving House toying with Amy and Rory's perceptions as they traverse a hallway lined with mirror-like walls was cut due to budget constraints.
  • A scene where Rory is trapped in the TARDIS Zero Room from "Castrovalva" was cut due to budget constraints.
  • A scene where Rory thought Amy was trying to kill him and House gave Rory a knife to see what would happen was cut for time.
  • A scene set in the TARDIS swimming pool got cut when Gaiman was informed that Karen Gillan could not swim.
  • There was more of a focus on Idris before having her soul removed, as well as backstory about the Corsair's relationship with the Doctor (which included the Corsair being part of the "Time Lords' Universal Survey Team"), more TARDIS rooms, and the burial of Idris' corpse, but also a reveal that House survived its defeat. The Idris burial specifically was from drafts when this was intended for Series 5 as a much darker ending that had Amy and the Doctor discuss mortality and endings. Gaiman later revealed this version of the ending for a tweetalong watch in 2020.
  • There were even more Classic Who references that Gaiman wished to include, like the Mercury Fluid Link, that got left out of the final draft.
  • Auntie, Uncle, and Nephew were originally patchwork aliens of Gaiman's own creation, but a need to save on the budget led to Auntie and Uncle just being patchwork humans (with Time Lord parts) and reusing an Ood costume for Nephew instead, albeit with the new green eyes.
• Working Title: The House of Nothing (the very first title of the story before the setting changed), The TARDIS Trap, and Bigger on the Inside (the title used up to six weeks before airing, then Gaiman and others decided this title gave too much away about the story).

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