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This episode, written by [[Neil Gaiman]] and directed by Richard Clark, won the 2011 Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation.
 
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The TARDIS is in flight. There's a knock on the door, and when opened, a far-away cube of light is seen. When beckoned, it hits the Doctor in the chest, whizzes about and then actually comes to him. "I've got mail," the Doctor says with glee.
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The hypercube is a form of communication for Time Lords. This one seems to come from one named the Corsair (previously mentioned by the Fourth Doctor in the [[Expanded Universe]]) and the Doctor knows him/her quite well. They were friends, through many incarnations, and although the Corsair's sex changed freely with new regenerations, one thing was always the same: the Corsair always got an Ouroubourous tattoo on each new body. The small mail cube has that exact same mark.
 
The Doctor counts the Corsair as "one of the good ones". The message originates from "outside the Universe", somewhere where the trio has never gone before. They follow the signal. [[Doctor Who/Recap/S28/E06 The Age of Steel|As happened before]] when switching from the natural home-universe to a different one, the TARDIS loses power -- butpower—but this time, it's actually due to a different cause than before. This time, the soul of the TARDIS has been transported into the body of a humanoid female called Idris. And the planetoid they've landed on seems to be a complete junk yard.
 
The travellers are greeted by two very raggedy old humanoids named Auntie & Uncle. They're closely followed by Nephew, a green-eyed lobotomized Ood. The TARDIS, in Idris' body, is ''delighted'' to see the Doctor, greets him with a "goodbye!", realises that that's wrong -- timewrong—time is all too linear in a humanoid body -- andbody—and snogs him instead. The Doctor's a bit confused, especially when Auntie & Uncle warn him about contact with Idris, saying she is mad. And that she'll bite him. Which she promptly does. And she tells Rory what "petrichor" means, which he'll ask about soon enough in the future. But she has no idea how to behave around her "Thief", and before she knows it, she's carried off again by the humanoids.
 
The planetoid turns out to be accreted matter around a sentient lifeform, which glows green -- likegreen—like the eyes of the Ood Nephew. The planetoid's name is simply "House". The Doctor's single-minded purpose, though, is to find and help any possibly lost but still alive Time Lords that he senses nearby. Amy conjectures that he might just want to be forgiven for killing his race. The Doctor sends Amy and Rory back to the empty TARDIS husk for an errand, then locks the doors remotely as soon as they're inside.
 
He discovers a cupboard full of hypercubes in the junk yard, and they keep repeating emergency messages from a number of Time Lords. Auntie & Uncle approach, and the Doctor uncovers how House has been "repairing" them. They've been jigsawed together from bits and pieces that found their way into the "sink hole" where this "bubble universe" exists, on the outer-edge of the natural universe we commonly know the Doctor to travel in. Uncle literally has two left feet. Auntie has a big manly arm with the Corsair's tattoo on it. House, at it turns out, has been luring Time Lords to the planetoid since long before the Time War, and has trapped the souls of their TARDISes in humanoid bodies in order to safely consume the TARDIS husks. The accompanying Time Lords were, to him, simply spare parts for TARDIS soul receptacles.
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Afterwards, the TARDIS reanimates Idris' body one last time in order to share a few tearful last words with her Doctor. Although she's going nowhere, she knows she'll never be able to speak to him again, so she says two things she'd been wanting to tell him: "Hello" and, as Idris' body vaporizes, "I love you."
 
Amy and Rory get a new bedroom. They hope for one without bunk beds this time, although the Doctor just loves the idea of a bed with a ladder. As they leave to check it out, the Doctor installs a security field around the matrix to prevent it from being compromised again, and gently talks to the TARDIS, not expecting an answer -- onlyanswer—only for a nearby lever to move on its own, sending the TARDIS to its next destination.
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=== Tropes ===
* [[A Boy and His X]]: Amy refers to this trope by name at the end:
{{quote|'''Amy:''' It's always you and her, isn't it? A boy and his box, off to see the universe.}}
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** Resolved in [[Doctor Who/Recap/S32/E07 A Good Man Goes to War|"A Good Man Goes to War"]] - {{spoiler|it refers to River Song's true identity of Melody Pond, and that the people of the Gamma Forests have no word for "pond".}}
* [[Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?]]: Used very much for drama here.
* [[Ascended Fanon]]: The episode all but confirms a lot of fan theories about the TARDIS and its relationship with the Doctor -- suchDoctor—such as the fact that while she might not take him where he wants to go, she nevertheless takes him where he ''needs'' to go (or where ''he's'' needed).
** The fact the TARDIS holds actual affection for the Doctor and is female has been suggested numerous times in both licensed novels and short stories and fanfic.
** Also confirmed the long held fanon belief that (some? all?) Time Lords can change sex during a regeneration.
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** [[Doctor Who/Recap/S31/E01 The Eleventh Hour|Fish Fingers.]]
** At the very end of the episode, there's a nebula in the background that looks like the crack from season 5. Could potentially be more significant.
** [[Doctor Who/Recap/S6/E07 The War Games|Time Lords sending distress signals in the form of psychic]] [[Companion Cube|Companion Cubes]]s.
** Wasn't it mentioned in the first episode of this season what people would do with the body of a Time Lord?
** A police box in an old junk yard - [[Doctor Who/Recap/S1/E01 An Unearthly Child|just like it all began]].
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* [[Noodle Incident]]: Whatever story the Doctor was telling Rory at the beginning. Apparently, it wasn't the Robot King.
* [[Not So Different]]: House and the Doctor bizarrely get a few.
** The Doctor's plan of building a new TARDIS from scratch, as said by Idris: "Let's take these half digested corpses and sew them together into a single body and then make it go for a run" is basically what House was doing to Aunty and Uncle.<ref> Although the Doctor at least wasn't using living ones</ref>.
** Or how both react after getting new bodies:
{{quote|'''Doctor''': ''[newly regenerated]'' Legs! I've still got legs. - [[Doctor Who/Recap/S30/E17 E18 The End of Time|"The End of Time"]]<br />
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