Warning for spoilers for "Doctor Who" series seven, episode 13, "The Name of the Doctor," herein. Tread lightly if you have not seen the episode yet. If have seen it, you may continue, but may God have mercy on your soul.

For fans of Classic Who, the opening is perfect. Blending old with new, we see Clara Oswald (Jenna-Louise Coleman) walking through time in various places, including Gallifrey, interacting with past incarnations of the Doctor. She says, "My name is Clara Oswald, and I was born to save the Doctor." With the 50th Anniversary coming up in a few months, it seems only right that we take a brief walk through the extensive history of the show, and it sets the tone for the threads of past and future that intertwines in this episode, "The Name of the Doctor," written by showrunner Steven Moffat. 

I made some very, very undignified noises as I watched the opening. My mom, who watched the episode before I had the chance to, rushed up the stairs after the opening simply to tell me, quite effusively, how fantastic the opening sequence was. My mom (says she) doesn't care about the show (although she watches it without me, without prompting, so I'm inclined to doubt that just a little bit.)

Silurian Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh), her wife Jenny (Caitlin Stewart) and Sontaran Strax (Dan Starkey) make their return; we first see the former at a London prison at the behest of a serial killer, who killed 14 women and is now facing the gallows, all the while repeating a suitably creepy rhyme about the "Whispermen," who, if heard, will "stop and look at you." 

Vastra then sets up a "conference call" throughout the ages, wherein linked consciousnesses throughout time can interact in dreams. River Song (Alex Kingston), Clara and Vastra, Jenny and Strax come together in a seance-like tea party to discuss what the prisoner said about the Doctor's secret. The seance ends abruptly when the three latter are attacked by the Whispermen and Jenny is murdered. 

When Clara presents this information to the Doctor (Matt Smith), he breaks down, but states that he needs to go regardless. They arrive at the war-torn fields of Trenzalore. The fields of Trenzalore is where the Doctor is buried. As a time traveller, he must never, ever go to his own grave. Trenzalore is a battlefield graveyard, and the larger the gravestone, the higher the rank. The TARDIS has become a tomb for the Doctor after this battle. 

We find that River Song has already met her fate at this point, which we have already witnessed in "Silence in the Library" in Series Four, with David Tennant's incarnation. Her first appearance was originally intended to be a one-off episode, but she returned to become the Doctor's wife in a timeline-crossed romance. The Doctor witnesses her death in the library as his first meeting with her and her last with him. According to River, the Doctor didn't say goodbye before she left for the library, although he knew that she would be going to her end. He doesn't like endings, she says. Clara and River's consciousnesses are still linked from the "conference call," which means Clara, and no one else, can communicate with the echoes of the late Professor Song, whose grave serves as an entrance into the tomb. 

Pursued by the Whispermen ("This man must fall, as all men must. The fate of all is always dust"), Clara, River's echo and the Doctor enter the tomb to enter the ever-expanding and dying TARDIS, where his body is kept, and where Strax and Vastra and a revived Jenny are trapped.

We see the Great Intelligence, embodied once again by Richard E. Grant, last seen as the possessed Doctor Simeon in "The Snowmen." The Whispermen are echoes of Simeon's bodies dressed in Victorian top hats and tails, with featureless faces that open up to wide mouths with jagged teeth. Moreso than any other creature in the past series (save for, perhaps, the Slanted Man in "Hide", which was decently frightening throughout the episode until the less-than-terrifying twist reveal at the end), the Whispermen actually do what the "Doctor Who" of past years has done: scare me. They used to say that the safest place to watch "Doctor Who" was from behind the couch, and I was close to leaping behind the sofa or hiding beneath a blanket several times throughout this episode. 

Within the tomb, opened only through a key (and that key is the Doctor's name, whispered by River Song to open the door), is a brilliant blue light, twisting and turning. It is, as the Doctor says, "the scar tissue of the journey through the universe", and an "open wound" containing the Doctor's past and future. Doctor Simeon/The Great Intelligence, in order to rewrite all of the Doctor's past victories and make him die and suffer a million times as revenge, enters the "wound" at the expense of its own life. As the Doctor begins suffering these attacks on his timeline, Clara, realizing that her past incarnations whose shades she only has begun to remember and realize (the Soufflé Girl in "Asylum of the Daleks", the Victorian governess) are echoes of herself. In order to save the Doctor, she enters the "open wound" after Doctor Simeon and reverses all the damage he's caused. She says:

Sometimes it's like I've lived a thousand lives in a thousands places. I'm born, I live, I die. I'm always running to save the Doctor, again and again and again. And he hardly ever hears me. But I've always been there, right from the very beginning."

River and the Doctor, before she enters the time stream, say that these bits and pieces, her appearances all throughout his timestream, are echoes of the "real Clara Oswald", copies who are born and die to save the Doctor throughout his past. 

As Clara's "doctoring" begins to make its mark, and the Doctor is slowly revived, he addresses River, his late wife, a shadow of the life she's lived. He says that he never said goodbye, even to these shades (ones he's always known have been there, in the peripherality of his consciousness), because it would hurt him too much. But his echo "should've faded by now", but because he hasn't said goodbye, she doesn't feel she can leave yet. 

But if River was only a manifestation of the mental link from the conference call, one born from Clara Oswald's consciousness, then why is she still there if Clara is dead? (Spoilers, naturally.) 

The Doctor follows Clara into the timestream. Her work completed, and the Doctor safe, her story is done, and she is dropped into a sort of limbo within the Doctor's timestream, surrounded by his consciousness and past incarnations whizzing by with every day he's ever experienced. All of his pasts collected in one rocky and barren wasteland. 

The leaf, last seen in "The Rings of Akhaten", the one that symbolizes all of Clara (and her mother's) days and past and future, blows to Clara, frightened, confused and lost. 

As she follows the leaf and finds the Doctor within himself, they see a figure, unknown and unrecognizable to all viewers (of Classic and New) standing on the edge.

Doctor Simeon said that "the Doctor lives his life in darker hues. The Storm, the Beast, the Valeyard." When Clara asks the Doctor who he is, why she did not see him as an incarnation of the Doctor and why she never interacted with him in her travels through his timeline, he says that "he [the figure] was me." He explains that the name "The Doctor," one that he chose for himself, is a promise. And this figure  broke the promise. This "Doctor" protests that "what [he] did, [he] did without choice. in the name of peace and sanity."

The Eleventh responds: "But not in the name of the Doctor."

The figure turns and we see John Hurt, now introduced as "the Doctor." Hurt's appearance has been publicized for the 50th Anniversary on Nov. 23. Fans of Eleven need not to worry, because he's been signed on for another series and will be appearing with David Tennant, Billie Piper, Jenna-Louise Coleman and John Hurt in the 50th Anniversary. This bit only furthers my suspicions that John Hurt, who is said to be playing an incarnation of the Doctor in between the Eighth Doctor and the Ninth Doctor, will be playing either the Shalka Doctor or the Valeyard in the 50th Anniversary.

(What really sold this episode for me was when the Doctor mentions that he should've retired and taken up some alternate hobbies, one of which is beekeeping, a reference to Sherlock Holmes, who, in "His Last Bow" and "The Lion's Mane", retires to the Sussex countryside and takes up beekeeping in his autumn years. Any oblique reference to Sherlock Holmes in anything is enough to make me a happy viewer indeed.)

This episode was a satisfying conclusion to a rather up-and-down past series. While my satisfaction with some of the other episodes has not been consistent over the series, this episode actually was a perfect ending. There were tie-ins to Classic "Who", it was frightening, it was (occasionally) funny, and it seemed as though the pacing was much more spot-on than it has been in previous episodes. Although, once more, the music seemed to overwhelm the dialogue at places (something that has been problematic throughout the series, I've noticed), the entrance of John Hurt and the lead-up to the 50th Anniversary will make this almost-six month hiatus rather painful. Of course, fans of "Doctor Who" will never have a dearth of material to watch and re-watch, or read, so perhaps we can make the months seem shorter by revisiting old episodes to lead up to the 50th Anniversary special. 

Let me tell you: Never watch "Doctor Who" if you have an ounce of common sense. I love it to death, and it can make me smile and laugh, but it hurts. There's death and sacrifice and tragedy and war and morality plays, hidden over with a thin veneer of humor and jaunty fun through alien worlds and the future and the past. And I know, going in to watch, that as fun as it is to watch, there's always something darker within each episode. And like other much-beloved classics, "Star Trek" and similar programs with great staying power that have been enjoyed for nearly half-a-century, there is something about that balance between heavy, emotional subjects and the passion in each adventure—the childlike wonderment of the world, fictional realities and possible futures, that one day, perhaps, we too will feel that thrill of discovery—that calls to audiences young and old. 

It may have been intended as an educational children's show, teaching little ones about history through time travel, but somewhere between the lines of fright and sadness, something might have gotten lost. And now "Doctor Who" is a British cultural staple enjoyed by an international audience for 50 years. And maybe I'm waxing emotional too much for a simple recap, but "Doctor Who" has been a part of my life for a very long time, and I hope that it will remain so for years to come. 

And if you have an ounce of common sense, I say that you should never watch "Doctor Who"—but rather, ignore that common sense. Never sacrifice fun in the name of "common sense". So first, you should let go of that ounce—when embarking on a fantastical journey, common sense is something that should be left behind. 

You can reach Staff Reporter Christine Bancroft here or follow her on Twitter here. In the meantime, she'll be counting the days until the return of the Doctor.