8 Doctor Who Episodes With Alternate Endings

3. The Doctor's Wife

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The Televised Ending

When the soul of the TARDIS arrives back in the Eleventh Doctor's main console room, the villainous House is vanquished, and the Doctor says goodbye to Idris - the woman who has been playing host to the TARDIS' soul for the majority of the episode.

Idris' body then fades away in a burst of white light, and the Doctor, struggling through the tears, puts on a brave face in front of Amy and Rory as the TARDIS drifts through space. The trio then has a quick chat about bedrooms, and the Doctor excitedly dances around the main console room.

The Alternate Ending

During the earliest stages of the scripting process, writer Neil Gaiman was working with the belief that The Doctor's Wife would be airing in the latter half of Series 5, taking place after Rory has been wiped from the universe by the cracks in time.

The alternate ending reflects the episode's original Series 5 placement, and completely deviates from the televised ending in almost every way.

In this version, Rory isn't included, and rather then having Idris' body fade away into nothingness, the Doctor and Amy actually bury her instead.

They then sit on a hillside together and the Doctor ponders the destruction of his TARDIS, and the episode ends with the Doctor telling Amy "I'm taking you home."

Well... it doesn't end quite yet. In a final twist, a beam of green light shoots up from Idris' grave, implying that House has somehow survived, and now, he's in the main universe, rather than a small pocket universe.

It's clear sequel-bait, but when The Doctor's Wife was significantly re-worked for its broadcast during the first half of Series 6, no hints of House's survival were given.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.