'The Name of the Doctor' (Story Code 7.13) by Steven Moffat

“The path I carved through time and space, from Gallifrey to Trenzalore... My own personal time tunnel, leading back to every moment I ever lived. Every step, every tear, every kiss. Even the days I haven’t’ lived yet... Which is why I shouldn’t be here. The paradoxes – very bad...” – The Doctor

Gallifrey, a very long time ago: an alarm goes off in the Time Lord Capitol’s maintenance area, warning that someone is stealing a faulty TARDIS. In the repair shop, an old man and his grand-daughter are about to enter a particular time capsule when they are stopped by a young girl - Clara Oswald - who warns that they are about to make a very big mistake… Somehow falling through time, Clara encounters the Doctor throughout his life: inside the TARDIS as the Sixth Doctor strides along a nearby corridor; inside the time-space ship again, as the Fourth Doctor hides from invading Sontarans; watching as the Seventh Doctor hangs over a chasm in Iceworld; standing at the roadside as the Third Doctor speeds past in his yellow roadster, Bessie; on a Florida beach as the Second Doctor rushes about; inside the Matrix where the Fifth Doctor is imprisoned; and finally, Clara’s first encounter with the Eleventh Doctor in Nineteenth Century London. It seems that Clara was born to save the Doctor…

London, 1893: Madam Vastra pays a visit to a prison to see Clarence DeMarco, a condemned mass-murderer who has information on the Doctor with which to bargain for his life. After reciting a strange poem about ‘Whisper Men’, Clarence tells Vastra that the Doctor has a secret that he will take to his grave – and it has now been discovered… Returning to Patanostra Row, Vastra instructs her maid Jenny to start a conference call, while she sends out invites; lighting a specially-scented candle, the two women fall unconscious and their minds join in a dream environment. Meanwhile, Strax is on holiday in Glasgow, Scotland, enjoying a spot of fighting with one of the locals when his battle is interrupted by the arrival of a small boy bearing an urgent telegram from Vastra; reading his instructions to join the conference call, Strax asks his opponent, Archie, to knock him unconscious…

10th April 2013: Clara is busy preparing a soufflé for Angie and Artie when she finds an envelope on the kitchen counter: it contains a special candle and an old message from Vastra that instructs her to join the conference call; Clara is suspicious, but Vastra has also coated the letter in the soporific chemical, and the girl quickly falls asleep… Clara comes to at a table at which Vastra, Jenny and Strax are seated having tea; the group are soon joined by the last invitee, a certain Professor River Song. After some awkward introductions, Vastra recounts her conversation with Clarence, whose bargain provided space-time co-ordinates that lead to Trenzalore, the location of the Doctor’s greatest secret. [In the real world, something that whispers breaks into Vastra’s Patanostra Row house and closes in on Jenny…] Jenny cries out that she has been murdered, and then fades away; River forces Vastra and Strax to wake up, and the duo come to in the real world to find themselves facing four Whisper Men – terrifying, eyeless creatures dressed in undertakers’ garb. Back in the dream world, Whisper Men materialise around River and Clara as the image of the Great Intelligence appears before them; he tells them that the only way to save their friends lies with the Doctor, who must travel to Trenzalore… Clara wakes up back home, where she finds the Doctor playing Blind Man’s Bluff with Angie and Artie – who have actually left for the cinema; Clara tells the Doctor of her experience, and is shocked when her friend breaks down in tears on hearing the name of Trenzalore. When the Doctor leaves for the comforting environment of the TARDIS, Clara follows; the Doctor is distraught at the prospect of going to Trenzalore, but he knows that he has a duty to save his friends; the Doctor explains that Vastra misinterpreted Clarence’s message: his secret is something he will take to his grave – and it is his grave that has been found. Linking the TARDIS’ telepathic circuits to Clara, the Doctor extract the planet’s co-ordinates from his companion’s mind and then sets course for Trenzalore; but the TARDIS protests at his attempt to cross his own time-line, and tries to stop him. The Doctor forces the ship’s controls – and the console room explodes under the strain! The TARDIS shuts down to prevent a landing, leaving the Doctor and Clara in orbit around the storm-lashes planet Trenzalore, so the Doctor turns off the ship’s anti-gravity system, sending it plummeting down to the planet surface! After a crash-landing, the Doctor and Clara emerge from the TARDIS to find themselves in a battlefield’s graveyard; here they see a huge monument that looks like a colossal Police Box: the future TARDIS, its inner dimensions leaking as it dies, in which the Doctor’s future self’s body is entombed. As the duo make their way through the graveyard, Clara sees River again – only Clara can see her as they are now psychically linked after Vastra’s conference. As the Doctor sees River’s grave, the four Whisper Men appear. Repeating River’s words, Clara ‘suggests’ to the Doctor that River’s grave is false and conceals a way in to the Time Lord’s tomb; the Doctor immediately sonics the gravestone, activating a hidden chute that whooshes him and Clara into the catacombs below the graveyard… Vastra and Strax awake inside the top of the TARDIS monument, where they find Jenny’s corpse; Vastra is distraught, and orders Strax to use his medical device to revive her lover. Strax complies – and to Vastra’s joy, Jenny is restored to life! However, their happiness is short-lived: the Great Intelligence appears, wearing the form of the late Doctor Simeon, and accompanied by his Whisper Men. The Intelligence explains that they are at the site of the Doctor’s final, bloody battle… Making their way through the dusty catacombs, the Doctor and Clara are found by the Whisper Men, but they manage to reach the safety of a door that leads into the ancient TARDIS; as they make their way to the top of the ship, Clara becomes ill from the ship’s uncontained dimensional and telepathic forces, and recalls the Doctor telling her how she died twice before… At the top of the monument, outside the entrance to the Time Lord’s tomb, the Great Intelligence tells his captives that only the Doctor’s name can open the doors. At that moment the Doctor and Clara arrive; a face-off between the two enemies ensues, but quickly ends when the Intelligence orders his Whisper Men to stop his prisoners’ hearts unless the Doctor answers the most important question ever: ‘Doctor Who?’. As the dreadful creatures close in on Vastra, Jenny, Strax and Clara the Doctor pleads with the Intelligence – but then the tomb doors open a crack: unheard by all but Clara, River has uttered the Doctor’s name. With his friends’ lives at stake, the Doctor has no choice but to pull open the doors and invite his enemies inside. As the Cloister Bell chimes, the Doctor leads the assembly into the ancient, vine-encrusted console room; the console is missing, and in its place is a glowing, twisting mass of light is suspended in the air. The Doctor identifies this as a scar in time and space – the path of his life, from Gallifrey to Trenzalore. Being this close to his time-stream generates a multitude of paradoxes that send the Doctor falling to the floor. The Great Intelligence gloats in triumph, as he now has a means to get his revenge on his greatest enemy, even though it will mean his own death: by entering the scar he can change the Doctor’s history. As the Great Intelligence steps into the light, the Whisper Men vanish and the TARDIS trembles – the Doctor’s life is now being rewritten as the Intelligence attacks him throughout his lives, killing him again and again all at once. As the scar turns blood red, Vastra and Jenny rush outside, where they see the stars vanishing one by one – the consequences of a universe without the Doctor to save it. To Vastra’s horror Jenny vanishes; then Strax turns on her, before he too is erased from history. Clara realises that to save both her friend and the universe she must follow the Great Intelligence into the Doctor’s time-stream; River warns Clara that the time winds will shred her into echoes scattered throughout time, but Clara knows that even that will be enough to save the Doctor. Jumping into the time scar, Clara’s multiple personas save the Doctor throughout his history – and most importantly, a Clara makes the First Doctor and Susan pick the right TARDIS to steal. As time restores the scar glows white again, and the Doctor awakes on the floor of the ancient TARDIS, where he finds Vasta, Jenny and Strax – but no Clara. The Doctor vows to enter the scar to save Clara, but the image of River objects, even though she cannot be heard by the Doctor – or can she? Grabbing River’s arm, the Doctor reveals that he can see her, and always has. After kissing River goodbye – which weirds out the Patrenostra Row gang – the Time Lord jumps into his timestream… Elsewhere, Clara lands in a misty graveyard, where she sees spectral images of the Doctor’s past selves rushing past her – the ghosts of the Doctor’s lives. To Clara’s relief she then hears the voice of her Doctor, warning his ‘Impossible Girl’ that his time-stream is collapsing, and instructing her to hold onto the item from her past that he is sending her: Clara’s special leaf, the one that caused her parents to first meet. With this object anchoring her in time, Clara is able to see the Doctor standing nearby, and she rushes into his arms in a huge hug. But then the duo sees another figure standing in the graveyard, a figure that Clara has not seen before. The Doctor explains that the man is him – but whereas he took to calling himself ‘The Doctor’ as a promise to heal, this man broke that promise. As Clara passes out, the ‘secret’ Doctor replies that he had no choice for his actions, and he watches as his elder self carries Clara away…

To be Continued on November 23rd 2013…

Matt Smith (The Doctor), John Hurt (The Doctor), Jenna-Louise Coleman (Clara), Alex Kingston (River Song), Neve McIntosh (Madame Vastra), Catrin Stewart (Jenny Flint), Dan Starkey (Commander Strax), Richard E. Grant (Doctor Simeon / Great Intelligence), Eve de Leon Allen (Angie), Kassius Carey Johnson (Artie), Nasi Voutsas (Andro), David Avery (Fabian), Michael Jenn (Clarence DeMarco), Rab Affleck (Archie), Samuel Irvine (Messenger Boy), Sophie Downham (Young Clara), Paul Kasey (Whisper Man)

Directed by Saul Metzstein
Produced by Denise Paul
Series Producer Marcus Wilson
Executive Producers Steven Moffat and Caroline Skinner
A BBC Wales production

TX (BBC 1 & BBC 1 HD):
18th May 2013 @ 7.45 pm

Notes:
*Featuring the Eleventh Doctor, Clara, River, Madame Vastra, Jenny and Commander Strax - and introducing the War Doctor...

*Due to a mistake in the North American distribution of the Blu-rays and DVDs for this season, some copies of the discs were sent out two weeks early, giving some customers a sneak preview of the final episode; the BBC appealed to anyone who had seen the episode to keep the show's secrets until it was broadcast

*A tie-in 'minisode' called 'She Said, He Said' was made available on the BBC's official website and via the Red Button service straight after 'Nightmare in Silver' was broadcast; although billed as a prequel to 'The Name of the Doctor', the minisode actually takes place after that story, so is strickly speaking an epilogue!

*On 26th May the BBC released 'Clarence and the Whispermen', an extra scene / prequel written by Steven Moffat, which showed how the condemned Victorian prisoner Clarence came to know the coordinates to Trenzalore

*We later see the Eighth Doctor regenerate into the 'War Doctor' in the minisode 'The Night of the Doctor'