N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!
The Girl in the Fireplace provides us with the first evidence of Steven Moffat’s love of The Time Traveler’s Wife. While in this episode, the timelines of the Doctor and Reinette both move forward in the same direction, they travel at different speeds; for the Doctor it might be five minutes, for Reinette it’s the ‘slow path’ where months, even years, pass between the Doctor’s visits.
“Some things are worth getting your heart broken for,” said Sarah Jame Smith to Rose in the previous week’s episode, and this week it was the Doctor’s turn, which either by intention or good fortune makes The Girl in the Fireplace almost the perfect companion piece to School Reunion.
The story, in which time portals exist between a space shop thousands of years into the future and eighteenth-century France, specifically the life of Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Madame de Pompadour, known as Reinette, would be engaging enough on its own — I mean, what’s not to like about space-age clockwork robots!
“One may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel.”
Reinette, The Girl in the Fireplace
But what elevates The Girl in the Fireplace is the relationship between the Doctor and Reinette, as he passes from someone she believes at first to be an imaginary friend to someone she loves, she from a girl he’s protecting from the monsters to his realisation that she’s a woman of some renown, someone he’s rather pleased with himself to have “snogged”, someone we believe he also loves — even having travelled the fast path himself.
And that ending? Even if you knew the history and suspected what might happen, the ending is a gutpunch and beautifully played by all involved, especially David Tennant. The Doctor might claim that he’s ‘always all right’, but we’ve rarely seen him like this.
It’s tempting to leap ahead of myself here and claim that in The Girl in the Fireplace is the blueprint for the Moff’s own tenure as showrunner. The puzzlebox of a script that slowly reveals itself, a healthy dose of wit and humour thrown in, the time-fractured relationship with women — they’re all here, but for now, I’ll savour this for the wonderful standalone episode it is.
… if only for that ending! Wow, just wow!
It makes me wish the Doctor had been able to travel the slow path with Reinette and raises The Girl in the Fireplace to as near-as-dammit perfect story we’ve had yet in new Who.
