Doctor Who: The Woman Who Lived

Last week I referred to “The Girl Who Died” as the first half of a two-parter. It was pretty obvious even then that, along with “The Woman Who Lived,” this pair wasn’t a two-parter in the same vein as the previous tales this season. Not only are they entirely different settings, but they’re not even by the same writer. Catherine Tregenna is new to Doctor Who, but not to the Whoniverse. Between 2006 and 2008 she wrote four episodes of Torchwood, the show about the immortal Captain Jack Harkness (who gets a name check here). Was that experience an ideal primer for this series of extended gut wrenching conversations between two immortals, traveling through time on very different paths?

Perhaps, but I’d argue that the best primer was her sex, which brought a refreshing, vital point of view to the ongoing story of Ashilder/Lady Me that surely would have been absent with a man at the keyboard. Mind-bogglingly, Tregenna’s script is the first written by a woman for the series since Helen Raynor’s “Sontaran Stratagem” two-parter back in season four. Season four… when David Tennant was still the Doctor! It is absurd that it’s taken this long to “find” another woman to write for the series, particularly since one can hardly accuse Doctor Who of being a series steeped in machismo. The even better news is we’re getting yet another female perspective later in the season.

Read the rest of this recap by clicking here and visiting Vulture.

Artwork courtesy Design by Stuart Manning.