Live from Master Closet Studios, you’re listening to the only podcast on the internet whose studio experienced a size leak: It’s the Noobs and the Whovian!
My name is Austin and I’m the Whovian, and these are my sons Corbin and Tripp and we’re the noobs!
This is the podcast that introduces a whole new generation to Doctor Who by watching an episode each week and discussing it from the perspective of a dad who’s seen it before, and two sons who haven’t.
Welcome to Episode 111 covering the Series 7 episode 13: The Name of the Doctor .
This is the one where the Doctor and Clara and River and Jenny and Vastra and Strax finally figure out what the deal is with Clara and the souffles!
Production notes
- Story # 239
- Originally aired May 18, 2013 to 7.45 million viewers which made it the 3rd most watched thing that weekend.
- Written by: Steven Moffat
- Directed by: Saul Metzstein
Misc Trivia
- This is the only NuWho season finale (up until Chibnall’s/Thirteen’s time) that isn’t immediately followed by a Christmas Special. In this case, they 50th anniversary special came in between. In Series 11, there was a New Year’s special called Resolutions, instead of a Christmas special. It seems that will be what’s happening after Series 12 as well…
Cast
- The Doctor – John Hurt
- Kane in Alien, and then “John Hurt” in Spaceballs
- Ollivander in Harry Potter
- Professor Oxley/Ox in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
- We know him best as the voice of the Dragon in Merlin
- He also played two roles I found interesting. He plays Winston Smith in 1984, but he also played Adam Sutler in V for Vendetta.
Checklist
- Name of the episode spoken in dialogue?
- What I did, I did in the name of peace and sanity. But NOT in the name of the Doctor!
- Creature of the week
- Dr. Simeon
- The Whispering men
- CGI
- Simeon’s face tearing off was pretty awesome
- Jiggery Pokery
- Sonic
- TARDIS
- He jacked Clara into the navigation circuits because she saw the coordinates in the conference call
- She fought against going to Trenzalore, hard.
- He broke one of her windows!
- When a TARDIS dies sometimes the dimensional dams start breaking down. They used to call it a size leak. The bigger on the inside starts leaking to the outside.
- The Question/Doctor Who?
- The doors to his tomb require a key that is a word.
- Of course, River knew it and said it for him
- The name you choose, it’s like a promise you make. He’s the one who broke the promise.
Other stuff we noticed
- In the babble of the world there are whispers if you know how to listen
- Time travel has always been possible in dreams
Who’s Who?
- Who is Jenny?
- She got murdered
- Who is Strax?
- This place is surrounded. Give up your women and intellectuals!
- Unhand me, ridiculous reptile!
- Who is River Song?
- Clara never realized she was a woman based on the Doctor’s mentions of her and having never seen her before
- Strax, having both heard of her AND seen her, never realized she was a woman because he’s a loveable idiot
- Strax also didn’t realize that her hair is not, in fact, her head
- She knows the Doctor’s name. I’m not 100% sure when this happens, because the scene where Eleven whispers to her and then says “I just told you my name” it was a lie. He actually said “Look into my eye” to reveal that he was the Tessalecta.
- She apparently was coming to the conference call from the Library Data Core.
- This means this is the furthest down her timestream we’ve ever seen her
- To my knowledge, this is the furthest down her timestream that has ever been aired… yet
- Clara never realized she was a woman based on the Doctor’s mentions of her and having never seen her before
- Who is The Doctor?
- He’s probably time traveled more than anyone, making his grave potentially the most dangerous place in the universe
- GI: Welcome to the resting place of the cruel tyrant, the slaughterer of the 10 billion and the vessel of the final darkness. Welcome to the tomb of the Doctor
- He will have other names before the end: Storm, Beast, Valeyard.
- Bodies are boring, i’ve had loads of them.
- He can always see and hear River.
- Since I’m the only one who can see and hear you, God knows how that looked…
Can we talk about Clara?
- Born to save the Doctor
- Tripp said this was more than we got the entire season
- She’s going to be Souffle Girl
- The souffle isn’t the souffle. The souffle is the recipe.
- Like Amy, she is somehow able, eventually, to remember events from a timeline that never existed.
- If this works, get out of here as fast as you can. And spare a thought for me every now and then.
- In fact, run. Run you clever boy, and remember me.
- Corbin: It’s going to be the stupid LEAF!
- What do yall think of The Impossible Girl?
- I kinda wish there had been more time to explore this. I mean like, a LOT of time. Like multiple Doctors. I wish Jenna Coleman had appeared in an Tennant episode (like Capaldi and Karen Gillan had), and then we’d had some time with Eleven, but then have the modern leaf-born incarnation die, and then have her meet Twelve several different times.
- There’s a part of me that wishes a showrunner would plant some seeds like that, intentionally, and make it part of handing off the show to the next runner. They have to pick up the baton.
Classic Who Connection
- Valeyard – Trial of a Time Lord, Sixth Doctor
- In Revelation of the Daleks the Sixth Doctor thought he saw his gravestone and was quite disturbed by it
- The Doctor says to Clara that dimensioning forces deep in the TARDIS make one giddy. The Fifth Doctor also said this to Adric in Castrovalva
- Androzani was mentioned
- Again we have a connection to Silver Nemesis and talking about the name of the Doctor being a secret that he does not share with anyone. Lady Peinforte points this out to Ace in Silver Nemesis
- In City of Death with the Fourth Doctor, Scaroth was the last Jagaroth who tried to repopulate his species by traveling back in time. He divided into 12 copies when his spaceship exploded and was spread throughout the time vortex, much like Clara.
- The fast return switch in the TARDIS was first seen in The Edge of Destruction with the First Doctor
- When the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver on the wound in time we hear (much like with the time leak in Journey to the Center of the TARDIS) voices from the past
- The First Doctor – “Have you ever thought what it’s like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension?”
- Sixth Doctor “Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermen! They’re still in the nursery compared to us.”
- Second Doctor “There are some corners of the universe that have bred the most terrible things”
- Fourth Doctor “Do I have the Right?”
- Fifth Doctor “So you see”
- Third Doctor “It was the daisiest daisy I’d ever seen”
Overall impressions
- Overall rating out of 10 –
- Austin – 9 half faces
- Corbin – 5.5 open wounds
- Tripp – 10 old Claras
- Creep Level – out of 500
- Austin – 300
- Corbin – 90
- Tripp – 90
Theories
- Tripp thinks all the Claras are the result of the TARDIS exploding in Journey. The time leaking out created echoes of Clara that have taken on a life of their own and don’t remember each other or the Doctor or anything.
- Corbin says Clara will somehow travel back in time in the future. She is immortal like Captain Jack but forgets everything each time she dies.
Listener Input
- We haven’t gotten a new review since August. Just sayin…
The Game Plan
- Next week, we finally get to the 50th Anniversary Special: The Day of the Doctor!
Closing
Noobs and the Whovian is a production of Master Closet Studios, where it’s always smaller on the inside. Your Senior Producer is Austin Reason. Our Audio Engineer is Tripp Reason. Corbin Reason is our Production Editor. Special thanks to tardis.wikia.com for the trivia, and to Jared for the Classic Who Connection. Shout outs to Victor, Jared, and James for their Patreon support.
You can find us at facebook.com/noobsandthewhovian or twitter.com/noobswhovian and email us at [email protected]. Consider supporting us at https://www.patreon.com/noobsandthewhovian. Please subscribe and leave a rating wherever you found us, and share us with a friend not because we’re a great show but because we watch one.
