Some times people forget that Doctor Who is a children’s show (I think they get the same look on their faces as when you tell them that The Book Thief is in the Teen section). The 11th Doctor, however, strikes me as an obvious teenager despite his more than 900 years of living. Therefore, it’s a given that if you love Doctor Who—particularly this Doctor—you’d love teen fiction, and if you love teen fiction, then you’d love Doctor Who.

Anyway, “The Doctor’s Wife.”  Spoilers. A lot of them. If you haven’t seen the episode and would like to, I believe it is currently streaming on Space.

I loved the episode. It was…how did I tweet it? I think “splendid & terrifying & sad & brilliant.” There are so many elements that are wonderful on their own: Uncle and Aunty. A junk heap at the bottom of the universe’s plughole. A TARDIS graveyard. Amy’s deepest fears laid out in the corridors and a mad bitey lady locked in a cage.

The episode did what the show does best: makes us laugh, makes us tense, and allows us to believe that nothing is impossible for this mad man in a box.

There’s something innately creepy about House. Your dwelling should be a safe place, a sanctuary, and having it turn against you or “fix you when you’re broken” is viciously clever—disturbing in the best possible way. It’s the kind of concept that lingers and haunts long after you’re finished watching.

But it was Idris who captured and held my attention.

Remember that crush who didn’t seem to know you were alive, but you’d keep devising schemes to create situations where you could meet them and say hi because obviously they’d fall madly in love with you? Who hasn’t had that experience of  “notice me, oh please notice me, I love you so much and you haven’t even asked my name and I’ve been waiting (what feels like) 700 years for you to ask.” But I wouldn’t recommend the scheme employed by this episode, as it’s very dangerous and rather complicated and you have to die at the end (although most of you aren’t TARDIS matrixes so that simplifies matters a lot).

Perhaps it’s better explained this way: How many of you have attended author events recently? Remember the thrill of getting to say hello to someone who had created something that you loved so much? Well, then you know exactly how Idris felt.

The other comment I want to touch on belongs to Amy, who remarked how companions come and go but it’s always going to be the Doctor and his TARDIS. This reminded me of the moment in Cassandra Clare’s City of Fallen Angels where Alec realizes that Magnus has loved others before Alec—and will probably outlive Alec to love others after him.

That moment could have been just as sad for Amy, but it wasn’t. Seeing that the Doctor has that constant companion is comforting for her, because she has Rory. It’s not treated as a moment of “one day I’ll have to leave and that is an insurmountable suckage” so much as  “one day, I’ll leave, and it’ll suck but you’ll be ok when you continue on.”

I appreciate seeing that emphasis on enjoying the time you have with someone and not getting hung up on how long it’s going to last. Not because you got to do all the things you wanted—but because whatever you had will have mattered.

Thoughts on the episode? Any teen titles that remind you of Doctor Who? Share in the comments or on Twitter.

The image came from the BBC's Official Doctor Who website.