Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh) finds the Doctor (Matt Smith) is in trouble after she visits a prisoner about to be hanged for murder. He tells her about the Whispering men. She arranges a conference call whilst they're asleep bringing Jenny (Catrin Stewart) Strax (Dan Starkey) who is fighting some Scot in a Glasgow pub and has to take a raincheck when he gets a message from a "girl." He asks to be knocked out with a shovel, which will take some time. Others present at the table are Clara (Jenna-Louise Coleman) who is given a message in a letter transcending time. Even if she doesn't take the potion, the letter has been lined with it so she passes out too. Last to arrive is River (Alex Kingston) who brings champagne and doesn't drink tea. Clara is introduced by Vastra as the Doctor's new companion, assistant traveller. Clara wants to know who River is.
Jenny senses someone else is there as she senses she has been murdered and is surrounded by those men in top hats, the Whispering men. Vastra comes out of the sleep and River throws her drink onto Strax to pull him out too, but it's too late. Clara wakes up to find the Doctor playing blind man's buff with the children who have sneaked off to the cinema anyway. She tells him about the message and he is in tears. Clara follows him to the TARDIS. He mentions the place Trenzalore but everyone go it wrong. It wasn't his name they weren't meant to discover but that place. He takes the TARDIS there but she fights him and doesn't want to return there. They get to the place and the TARDIS stops short of the planet. Clara asks if they're going to jump. No, but he'll disable the anti-gravity so it'll be a bumpy landing.
Arriving on Trenzalore the Doctor tells him his grave is here. His future grave. They all die eventually and he is buried in the TARDIS. SO it's coming undone, it's now getting bigger on the outside. There's also a tear in it in the fabric of time. The place was mentioned by Dorium in The Wedding of River Song. (Should have known that episode would be kind of relevant here since there were lots of recent views on my blog.) Here he also finds River's grave and she appears to Clara. She can't tell him she's here but tells them to go to the grave as it contains a way for them to get in. Which leads them to the catacombs. Clara begins to remember memories the Doctor said she would forget, like the girl who saved him from the Dalek's and being in the heart of the TARDIS. She wants to know who she is and why she can remember. This not being the time for answers. Here they're followed by the Whispering men again and meet up with the others. Vastra wants Strax to get Jenny back so he administers some cardio shock to her. Also here is the Great Intelligence (GT) in the body of Dr Simeon (Richard E Grant) from The Snowmen episode.
Simeon/GT wants to get inside the Doctor's tomb but he can only open it if the Doctor says his name. Which he refuses to do. GT threatens his friends and one of the men puts his hand inside Strax to reach for his heart. The Doctor pleads for him not to, but to no avail. The entrance to the tomb opens since River said his name. Inside they don't find the Doctor's DB but light. The scar tissue of the Doctor's time travels which he calls his "time tunnel."
We see how Clara helped the First Doctor (William Hartnell) choose the correct TARDIS to steal. That Clara has always been there throughout the Doctor's time and travels, throughout all of his regenerations. As we get footage of all of the Doctor's (barring Paul McGann and David Tennent). Clara was born to save the Doctor and how she was a leaf blowing in the wind and she's still blowing. Always there to rewrite history and save the Doctor as we saw her first do in Asylum of the Daleks. Clara also learns River is the Doctor's wife and earlier on she said she had heard the Doctor mention Professor Song, but thought she was a man. River tells Clara how the Doctor saved her and put her into a library when she died.
GT wants to enter the Doctor's light and says he will not be the one who feels pain but the Doctor will and no one can stop him. He can kill the Doctor anywhere in his timeline. The Doctor falls to the ground in pain and Clara realizes she must save him now as she did all those other times too. He doesn't want her to enter and River tells her she knows what entering will mean. Clara has no other choice. Outside Vastra sees the stars and planets are disappearing, all those worlds the Doctor saved and Jenny also disappears as he saved her too. Strax and Vastra become enemies once more as he tries to take out the reptile but Vastra kills him. Clara enters and everyone returns.
River's an echo the Doctor tells her who should have faded a long time ago, but it would have hurt too much. River says she would have taken it but he replies it would have been too hurtful for him. He kisses her and she wants him to say goodbye only in a way she knows he'll return and she'll see him again. He adds the others can't see her so their passionate clinch may have looked strange to them.
Doctor: "since no one else in this room can see you, God knows how that looked."
He says " see you later" and the usual. With her "hello sweetie" to him. But she reminds him that Clara must still be alive if River is still here and she's connected to her. So what does that mean? "Spoilers." Clara is who exactly? Their daughter, granddaughter. Yes it's all still intriguing even if we know she's the impossible girl who was created to save him over and over.
Clara sees the other Doctors running about the place inside his tomb. The Whispering men were a little disappointing and no match for the Silence, as they came up with rhymes relating to what will happen to the Doctor. The GT was a bit of a disappointment too since he entered the light but didn't really do much of anything else as Clara saved the day. Yet there was still much more going on here. The Doctor has to rescue Clara just this once as he speaks to her. The leaf she lost blows to her and how she was born on that leaf, still blowing. Then reaches out to her. She tells them she saw all of his eleven faces but not that one. As a man stands with their back to them. The Doctor explains he took the name of the Doctor for himself but that other man is his future self? The Doctor tells her "I said it was me I never said it was the Doctor."
He turns around and is revealed as John Hurt. He was the one who broke the promise and did he bring about the Time War. So in the count of Doctors' who is the Twelfth Doctor, John Hurt or Matt Smith? The GT also said he'll be come to be known as "the storm, the beast, the Valeyard." The Valeyard was in Trial of A Time Lord. He says "What I did, I did without choice." So what was that? We get many questions to be answered as we're told Doctor Who will return November 23rd. Ugh six months away! The 50th episode!
Also in The Crimson Horror dating back to 1873, Clarence knew where the Doctor's grave was, as did Dorium. Also alluding back to the first episode of this season with Clara, The Bells of St John, we don't know why Clara was in that painting either. So some questions were answered, but isn't there that little question left of who Clara really is still? Re River's spoilers. Liked Clara making souffle again where we came in, in Asylum of the Daleks and adding like her mother said, it's not the souffle itself but the recipe. Which is the line she uses for saving the Doctor. Uttering the line, "run you clever boy and remember me." Which he did. Also she recalled that line too.
One of the best Doctor Who episodes in a long time, especially as it solved a little mystery, but left more to be answered. Had some excitement, funny moments with Strax and of course some weepy bits too, like River too and the Doctor saying goodbye to her, as well as saying he's always seen her as she's always been by his side! Also how he hates endings that's why he wouldn't let her go. Well we hate endings too and especially when they end on such a cliffhanger!
As always, we knew Steven Moffat wouldn't actually reveal the Doctor's name (but is it really Doctor?) and no can say it, Clara didn't remember what that was here as she read in the journal, but it was a build-up to this episode. Perhaps the name no one should have known was Trenzalore since that's where the Doctor is buried. It was just like a repeat of Let's Kill Hitler really title wise, cos you knew that wasn't going to happen either!
Vastra's line: "the stars are going out" said by Wilf in Turn Left with the Tenth Doctor (David Tennent). Here were more lines included too. In The Parting of the Ways, the Doctor is known as "the oncoming storm" as part of Dalek legends. In The Trial of a Time Lord, the Valeyard was referred to by the Master as "...the darker side of the Doctor's nature...penultimate regeneration...between his Twelfth and Thirteenth regeneration. The beast hasn't bee mentioned before, except with the Tenth Doctor in The Satan Pit. Could this be a possible allusion?
SO why did the Doctor look especially as the piece of broken glass on the TARDIS window?
Doctor: "What did you expect, a body. Bodies are boring I've had lots of them" As he's shown as strings of light, almost like a mass of DNA sequence.
"On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the Eleventh, when no living creature may speak falsely or fail to give answer, a question will be asked. A question that must never, ever be answered." Which was kind of answered here. Then again we weren't actually shown the battle at Trenzalore itself.
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