Doctor Who: 10 Cleverest Classic Who References In NuWho

3. The Doctor's Wife

Despite the fact that the Doctor and the TARDIS have been about the only constants across all fifty years of the show, it wasn€™t until Neil Gaiman came along that the relationship between the two was properly examined. The Doctor€™s Wife became one of the highlights of the Matt Smith years, thanks partly to Gaiman€™s narrative genius, and partly to the chemistry between Smith and Suranne Jones as Idris, the personification of the time machine. And for fans of a certain vintage, that title had an additional resonance. Deep in the 80s, Doctor Who was taking a turn towards excessive continuity and returning monsters. Producer John Nathan-Turner made this move to please Who fans worldwide, but one of the consequences of this decision was the emergence of the spoiler as a key meme in fan discourse. Nathan-Turner was paranoid that someone within the production team was leaking information to fanzines, and to weed the perpetrator out, invented a fictitious serial that occupied The Caves of Androzani€™s eventual spot in Season 21. The title of that serial? The Doctor€™s Wife. No details were given about the episode, but the fans were more than able to invent their own. That€™s what fans do. Fast forward nearly thirty years, and spoilers are a commonplace hazard in genre television. Gaiman has acknowledged that he borrowed the title from JNT. Why did he borrow it? So that fans wouldn€™t realise the episode was actually about the TARDIS. Now that€™s pretty nifty. Almost show-runner nifty€