Inspirations: The Time of the Doctor

 

The Time of the Doctor is a regeneration story, bringing the TARDIS tenure of the Eleventh Doctor to a close. It also brings to a conclusion the entire Moffat era up to this point, in that it draws together elements which first appeared back in The Eleventh Hour and which have run throughout Series 5, 6 and 7.

In some ways you could argue that the story really begins with Rose, as it includes a postscript to the Last Great Time War.

That is potentially going to be reignited if the Time Lords return to the Universe - last seen being saved by being deposited in a pocket time zone by the multiple Doctors in the 50th Anniversary story.

The mechanism by which the Time Lords seek to find out if it's safe to return just happens to be the crack in Space / Time which the Doctor first spotted in Moffat's first story in charge, the one in Amelia Pond's bedroom and through which people and things disappeared - the story arc for Series 5.

The thing which will let them know that is safe is a certain code - the Doctor's real name, which has been the arc for Series 7.

Along the way we meet old foes, as well as yet another of those long-term friends of the Doctor whom we have never actually met - something which Moffat has been introducing ever since gathering his Demons Run gang.

The main location for the story is Trenzalore once more, which has been referred to since The Wedding of River Song and was finally seen in The Name of the Doctor.

Then, we saw the planet devastated after the events of this story, but in an alternate timeline in which the Doctor failed.

As well as a regeneration story, this is also a Christmas Special, so the village setting is a town called Christmas, and it's permanently snowy and festive looking.

If we go back to Dorium's words in the Series 6 finale, there's reference to no living soul speaking falsely - and that's covered by the crack emitting a truth field. This is because the Time Lords want to make sure that it really is the Doctor giving his name.

The new / old friend is Tasha Lem, who is basically a surrogate River Song - old friend who is flirty with the Doctor, that kind of thing.

She is in charge of the Papal Mainframe - the militaristic Clerics having been introduced in Time of the Angels / Flesh and Stone. She provides a hefty info-dump which explains a lot of leftover bits of Series 5 and 6. 

We learn that the Silents are the way they are because they are confessors - you'll happily tell them your sins because you'll forget about reliving them once you're done. 

Kovarian (Series 6 arc) was head of a schismatic breakaway faction who wanted to prevent the Doctor giving his name on Trenzalore, because it was claimed that silence would fall if he did (i.e. the Time War would start up again as there are Cybermen, Daleks etc waiting to either prevent this or recommence hostilities). One of her schemes was the destruction of the TARDIS (Series 5 arc).

As well as them, we also see Sontarans and Weeping Angels (despite the Sontarans never having been involved in the War, as clearly stated in The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky). Other aliens get name-checked and we recognise some of the spaceships such as Judoon and Silurian.

These enemies are all there basically to provide cameos for Smith's finale.

Nods to the classic era include the Doctor using the Seal of Rassilon (confiscated from the Master by his third incarnation in The Five Doctors) to translate a message emanating from the crack.

The whole fixed regeneration idea introduced by Robert Holmes in The Deadly Assassin is addressed her. Pre-Timeless Child, there is a 13 lives limit, and thanks to the War Doctor and a controlled regeneration by Ten, the Eleventh is actually the Thirteenth.

It turns out at the conclusion that Time Lords can issue a new regeneration cycle (as offered to the Master in The Five Doctors), but Moffat wisely declines to let us know how many new lives the Doctor has. We assume at this point that it's another 13, which should keep the series going for another 50 years (or 39, if actors keep quitting after 3 series).

One of the entertainments which the Doctor lays on for the children of Christmas is a puppet show, and one of these is modelled on a Monoid, from The Ark. He has obviously recounted many of his adventures as the kids have made lots of drawings, and we see creatures from both era of the series.

All of the aliens get beaten until only the Daleks are left. They employ converted human drones as introduced in Asylum of the Daleks.

When he first goes aboard their spaceship, the Doctor is dressed in a cloak - a reference to the Harry Potter franchise.

Karen Gillan makes a cameo appearance just before the regeneration. Interestingly, both she and Smith are wearing wigs thanks to filming on movie projects (Gillan shaved her head for her role as Nebula in a Guardians of the Galaxy outing). We don't get to see Caitlin Blackwood as Amelia, as the actress had grown too old and no longer resembled her younger self.

Drawings in the TARDIS are of creatures from Amy specific stories, like Saturnynes.

Clara sees the TARDIS phone dangling  - which we'll learn about next time.

That will be when we take a deep breath and launch into the adventures of the Twelfth Doctor and the second half of the Moffat era...

Inspirations: The Name of the Doctor

Nurse: "Knock, knock..."

Costard: "Who goeth without?"

Nurse: "Doctor"

Costard: "Doctor who?"

Nurse: "Verily, yea!"

Costard: "I doth not get it. Get thee to a nunnery!"

Exeunt, pursued by camelopards.

Source: Loves Labours Won, Act III, Scene V (1599) - the earliest known example of the Doctor Who "Knock, Knock" joke (probably).

It's a question that certainly goes right back to 30th November 1963 - Doctor Who? (though the "Knock, Knock" joke certainly feels as if it's been around since Homer was a lad).

In the episode The Cave of Skulls we have the following exchanges:

Ian: "Just open the doors, Dr Foreman".

Doctor: "Eh? Doctor who?..."

And when Barbara also refers to him as Dr Foreman Ian responds: "That's not his name. Who is he? Doctor who?...".

Later stories played with the question in a jokey fashion, such as in The Curse of Peladon and of The Mutants. In three Gerry Davis era stories it is even assumed that "Doctor Who" really is his name.

Most producers took great pains to stress that it wasn't, and pointed out that there was no question mark at the end of the title, though JNT stupidly plastered his Doctors with the "?" motif.

The climax to Series 6 had seen Dorium Maldovar speak of "the Battle of Trenzalore", and the final lines of dialogue are:

Dorium: "The first question. The question that must never be answered, hidden in plain sight. The question you've been running from all your life. Doctor who? Doctor who? Doctor Who".

At the same time that the Doctor was trying to discover just who the Impossible Girl was, Clara was also trying to find out more about him. She would have seen his name in the book on The Time War, in the TARDIS library - but time was reset and this would have been forgotten.

Choosing for a title The Name of the Doctor for his latest finale, Steven Moffat was very much indulging in what's known as "click-bait". Those are the sensationalist on-line headlines designed to make you click on a link (generally leading to an advert or a story that is actually far from sensational, but you've given it a page view to add to their total anyway.

Fans got worked up about the title, either happily expecting that we would finally know the name, or arguing that it should never, ever be revealed. Of course, most of us recognised it for what it was, and knew that we would be none the wiser come the end of the episode.

It transpired that the Doctor was obliged to speak his name to act as a password to open his tomb, and he would be forced to do this by the Great Intelligence. (The tomb is the TARDIS, but its dimensions are leaching out and it has grown to the size of skyscraper).

Way back when we first met River Song, in Series 4, we saw that she knew his name, and he claimed she could only know this if... The implication being that they were married at some point. We saw a ceremony take place - albeit in an alternate timeline - in that Series 6 finale, the one in which Dorium raised the question.

When the moment comes in this episode, Moffat cheats by having River claim that she's already said the name, off camera. 

It should be noted that this is an already dead River, but Moffat needed her for the episode to get round this whole name issue, so she's a sort of data ghost.

This story marks the conclusion of a brief Great Intelligence trilogy, though it's only a cameo appearance in the middle story - The Bells of Saint John - when revealed as the villain working behind the scenes.

Richard E Grant plays the being once again, and it has new servants which it animates. After robot Yeti and living snowmen, we now have the Whisper Men - Moffat's latest attempt at a creepy monster.

Also returning are the Paternoster Gang. We get to see what Strax does on his days off - indulging in fist fights in Glasgow.

The other principal task of The Name of the Doctor is to finally tell us just who Clara is - in terms of the two people who looked and acted like her in different time zones. There had been futuristic Dalek-convert Oswin in Asylum of the Daleks, and Victorian barmaid / governess Clara in The Snowmen.

The Great Intelligence wants to destroy the Doctor from within his own timestream - entering the temporal scar his death leaves and travelling back to undo all the good he has done. To stop him, Clara follows him into the scar to correct these interventions. We are treated to the sight of both Clara and the Great Intelligence appearing in clips from old classic era stories, encountering past Doctors. We see the Second Doctor running across a Californian beach - the Troughton footage edited in from The Five Doctors. From this story we also see Third Doctor Jon Pertwee in "Bessie". Both clips come from scenes in which the Doctor is about to be captured by the Death Zone Time Scoop. Tom Baker is seen on Gallifrey, in a clip from The Invasion of Time. The Davison clip is from another Gallifrey story - Arc of Infinity. The Colin Baker encounter is newly filmed with an extra in clown costume, whilst McCoy is seen dangling by his umbrella in Dragonfire.

The Hartnell clip comes from The Aztecs, but is edited into a new scene set on Gallifrey "a long time ago" - the First Doctor's initial departure in a stolen TARDIS with Susan. It turns out that it was Clara who diverted them away from a fully operational TT capsule, as it will be more fun. This rather contradicts The Doctor's Wife (another click-bait title if ever there was one). (No sign of the Fugitive Doctor, so stick that in your pipe, Chibnall).

We will later see other Doctors running around a hellish landscape, but these are just extras dressed up.

And then we see someone else - but we'll talk about him next time...

Inspirations: Nightmare in Silver

After his highly successful contribution to Series 6 - The Doctor's Wife - it was only natural that Neil Gaiman would be invited back. Steven Moffat asked him the question: "... would you like to make the Cybermen scary?".

Gaiman took the bait, as he was a big fan of the Cybermen, favouring them over the Daleks. He could recall having watched The Moonbase as a child - especially the Cybermen kidnapping people from the sickbay, which he had found creepy. This is what he wanted to bring to a new story.

The writer discussed ideas with a friend and one of these included a setting of the Cyrrhenic Alliance - previously mentioned in The Ribos Operation.

Moffat decided that the time was right to have the Cybermen undergo a change of design. They were well-known for this throughout their history, with constant redesigns from story to story - sometimes minor, like footwear, sometimes major, like the addition of the "earmuffs" in The Invasion or the radical changes seen in Earthshock.

Gaiman thought that the Cybus versions might have interacted with the Cybermen from this universe and swapped technology. He and Moffat also looked at the way technology was evolving rapidly, symbolised by the mobile phone.

There were concerns that the RTD versions were too slow-moving and noisy. The new ones were to be capable of stealth and speed.

The Cybermats, first introduced in Tomb of the Cybermen, were the inspiration behind the Cybermites.

Cyber-Planners (or Directors) had been seen in The Wheel in Space and The Invasion, and Gaiman wanted to bring this concept back.

A 1950's fairground setting was considered, and Gaiman had an image of thousands of Cybermen emerging from the ocean and marching up a beach.

The "freak show" would house beings who were actually aliens. This was the group threatened by the Cybermen, which morphed into a military unit, which in turn became the punishment unit - meaning that these were people not really suited to dealing with a Cyberman army.

This then became the story of a small human outpost under threat, but the funfair element persisted.

Early drafts (when the story was called "The Last of the Cybermen") featured the character Beryl, a Victorian governess who would later evolve into Clara. As a child-minder, this introduced the idea that her young charges would be involved in the episode.

Worried that he hadn't got much for the Doctor to do, Gaiman came up with the idea of him competing against himself as the embodiment of the Cyber-Planner after he is partially converted.

The Doctor had previously claimed that Time Lords couldn't be converted in Closing Time, but part of their upgrade is that they can now use any species.

Design wise, their Valkyrie (named from Norse Mythology / Wagnerian opera) owes a lot to Tomb of the Cybermen. Just look at the half-moon shaped hand and foot holds.

The Cyberman playing chess was inspired by "The Turk" - an automaton created by Wolfgang von Kempelen in 1770 for the Empress of Austria. It turned out to be fake, with someone hiding underneath.

Chess as a motif was to run through the story, with the Doctor later playing a game against the Cyber-Planner.

"Natty Longshoe" got her name from Pippi Longstocking, from Swedish children's stories written by Astrid Lindgren from 1945.

Next time: Call me by my name...

Inspirations: The Crimson Horror

It helps to know what interests Mark Gatiss when considering the inspirations behind this story. 

He loves Dickens, and Victoriana in general. He loves horror movies - especially the old Universal Monsters and Hammer Horrors. He loves classic supernatural fiction, of the likes of M R James, Bram Stoker and E F Benson. He loves the Gothic. He loves Sherlock Holmes. And he's a big Pertwee era fan.

In recent years he has been the instigator of the annual "A Ghost Story for Christmas" strand on the BBC. He has presented a pair of documentaries for BBC Four on the horror movie genre - a general one and a specifically European one. He has presented another BBC Four documentary on Dracula.

He adapted Dickens' A Christmas Carol for the stage a couple of years ago, in which he played the part of Jacob Marley's ghost.

He and Steven Moffat sang the praises of the Third Doctor era in a special documentary for one of the Collection Blu-ray sets.

And of course his very first contribution to the series was 2005's The Unquiet Dead, which was inspired by a lot of the above.

Why the mention of the Pertwee era? Think about another story set in a small industrial community, in which people turn up dead with their skin a bright shade of a colour it most certainly ought not to be...

Gatiss toyed with the idea of calling this "The Red Death", in tribute to The Green Death (and possibly as a nod to Poe, Vincent Price and Roger Corman).

It's this which then led to the final title of The Crimson Horror - the word "Horror" having often been used to describe a particularly lurid and bloodthirsty event by the popular press. Newspapers in 1888 had referred to the "Whitechapel Horror" in relation to the Jack the Ripper killings. The Penny Dreadfuls - cheap mass produced books which generally dealt with shocking material - knew that the word on the cover would attract readers of a more morbid fascination.

In The Wedding of River Song Gatiss had played, under a pseudonym, the character of Gantok. The alias he used was Rondo Haxton - a tribute to the actor Rondo Hatton who appeared in a Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes film as the "Hoxton Creeper". Hatton featured in a couple of horror films as well, in one of which he reprised the "Creeper". Madam Vastra, of the Paternoster Gang, is a consulting detective akin to Sherlock Holmes - the subject of Gatiss & Moffat's big TV hit.

Gatiss also toyed with the idea of making this Celebrity Historical by having the Doctor meet Arthur Conan Doyle. He had studied medicine and qualified as an ophthalmic surgeon - which led to the idea of people seeing the image of the last thing they saw on the eye. This is known as an optogram. It's generally regarded as folk myth though a 19th Century scientist discovered that there is a chemical in the eye which can act like developing solution used by photographers. The Doctor had talked about this in The Ark in Space.

The Holmes story The Adventure of the Gold Pince-Nez mentions "the repulsive tale of the red leech" - one of those unwritten tales, like the Giant rat of Sumatra.

The ghoulish mortuary attendant is clearly based on the one played by Roy Hudd in The Blood Beast Terror (1968). It's the film Peter Cushing once described as his worst, and features Doctor Who alumni Wanda Ventham and Kevin Stoney amongst its cast.

The way Matt Smith plays the "rouged" Doctor, and the friendship which forms between him and Ada is surely inspired by the Frankenstein Monster. You'll recall that he makes friends with a blind hermit, and she even calls the Doctor her "monster".

We ought to repeat the "Red Death" thing, as The Masque of the Red Death is regarded as the best of the Vincent Price / Roger Corman AIP horrors, based (loosely) on one of Edgar Allen Poe's most famous works.

Gatiss' interests overlap so much with those of Robert Holmes (dark deeds in Victorian times, based on horror films / book). It's noticeable that the two most (only?) popular Gatiss Doctor Who stories are the ones which delve into these genres. The rest, for me, are pretty poor. 

(If you come back, Mark, stick to Holmesian territory - be it Sherlock or Robert...).

An earlier idea Gatiss had for a story was titled "Mother's Ruin" - a nickname for gin, which used to be drunk like water in Georgian and early Victorian times (because it was cheap and usually healthier than the water supply). There were riots when taxes were increased and prices rose. Hogarth produced a famous engraving called "Gin Alley", which showed many of the hazards of drunkenness amongst the lower classes, like a woman dropping her baby and hardly noticing.

This led to thoughts of the Victorian Temperance Movement, which was to manifest itself in Mrs Gillyflower's moral crusade.

The Salvation Army, founded by William Booth in July 1865, would appear to be another influence here.

(It should be noted that the hymn - Jerusalem - sung in the episode at the gathering is anachronistic. That musical arrangement of Blake's words came later).

Getting Dame Diana Rigg and her daughter Rachel Stirling together to play Gillyflower mere et fille arose from Gatiss acting in a play with the former Avenger.

It should be noted that, once again, Jenny is presented in a very Emma Peel manner when it comes to a fight.

Mr Sweet was named after Gatiss' friend Matthew Sweet - he of the excellent in-depth interviews on the Blu-ray sets.

The model village "Sweetville" was inspired by Saltaire, near Bradford in Yorkshire. This was founded in 1851 by industrialist Titus Salt - and salt just happens to be what Mrs Gillyflower feeds to her parasite friend.

One of the best jokes in modern Doctor Who is the little boy by the name of Thomas Thomas giving precise directions to Strax - Tom-Tom being a GPS sat-nav system. I laughed.

The Doctor mentions once having to get a gobby Australian to Heathrow Airport - a reference to Tegan Jovanka. At one point he says "Brave heart, Clara".

Finally, Clara gets home to find that the kids have managed to find lots of photographs of her from earlier stories. That's definitely one for the "What's Wrong With..." post for this story.

Next time: If you thought that Gareth Roberts was the author of the worst ever Cyberman story, think again. Neil Gaiman (if we're still allowed to mention him) proves that he is just as capable of writing garbage as the next person...

Inspirations: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

Steven Moffat wanted the longest ever story title, and the story could be any old rubbish as it didn't really matter.

Alternatively... 

The interior of the TARDIS had hardly been touched since the series was revived apart from the odd bit of dialogue about swimming pools and wardrobes. The Christmas Invasion had shown the Tenth Doctor selecting his new outfit - but it was clearly recorded on the usual standing console room set.

Apart from bland corridors and a handful of rooms (Zero Room, Power Room, bedroom / sleeping areas, boot room...), the classic iteration of the series hadn't shown much either.

That was apart from The Invasion of Time - but that had proven to be a major disappointment.

Action in this 1978 story moved inside the ship for much of the final 40 minutes, and many of these scenes were scheduled for the studio. However, industrial action meant the loss of studio time and, to save the story from outright scrapping, they were shifted to location - external filming being unaffected by the strike action.

The location chosen was a decommissioned mental hospital in Surrey - so the TARDIS appears to have lots of corridors designed along the lines of the old Victorian institutions. We did actually get to see the swimming pool for a change - filmed at a business property in Hammersmith.

All that brickwork, and the all too obvious location filming, disappointed everyone who saw it.

This was one of the things Moffat wanted to redress when it came to the 50th Anniversary year, though he opted not to write the story himself. That dubious pleasure went to Stephen Thompson, who had previously written the underwhelming Curse of the Black Spot. (Quite how you can write a boring pirate story, no-one knows). Thompson was working with Moffat and Gatiss on Sherlock.

His own idea for a submission was actually a prequel to Robots of Death, delving into Taren Capel's childhood.

His first idea once he'd accepted Moffat's brief was that the TARDIS would collide and meld with another space / time machine - creating a set of weird, surreal interfaces. The pilot of the other vessel was actually wanting to steal the TARDIS. The second idea was a collision with a school trip in space, and the TARDIS would be overrun by teenagers - so this could have been an awful lot worse.

Luckily Moffat hated the idea.

The ship being captured by a salvage team who only could only see the value of its components was Thompson's third idea.

The story title obviously derives from Jules Verne's 1864 novel Journey to the Centre of the Earth, most memorably adapted for cinema in 1959 with James Mason and Pat Boone.

It was Moffat who suggested the image of the TARDIS engines exploding but frozen in mid-blast, after seeing Rebecca Horn's art installation "Concert for Anarchy" at the Tate. This involved an exploding piano.

Matt Smith suggested that the Doctor's bedroom be shown for the very first time, but this wasn't picked up.

References to old stories abound.

Components which the salvagers detect include dynomorphic generators (Time-Flight), a beam synthesiser (The Curse of Peladon) and a conceptual geometer (The Horns of Nimon).

The Doctor threatens to self-destruct the TARDIS, as he previously did in Attack of the Cybermen - though he claimed he'd made the self-destruct up in Victory of the Daleks.

Some more recent props such as the Doctor's cot and some model TARDISes made by Amelia Pond are seen as Clara wanders about the ship.

An astronomical observatory is seen, which has a telescope very similar to the one from Torchwood House (Tooth and Claw).

The Cloister Bell sounds (first heard in Logopolis). This story had also first mentioned the architectural configuration system. Once simply a function of the console, it's now a big tree-like thing.

We get to see the Eye of Harmony - initially something only to be found on Gallifrey (The Deadly Assassin) but then apparently a feature of all TARDISes (The Movie).

We hear snatches of speech in the library - some of Timothy Dalton's dialogue lifted from The End of Time Part 1.

As for the Series 7 story arcs, Clara sees a book entitled "The History of the Time War," which features the Doctor - presumably named. And the Doctor finally confronts her about her true nature.

Time gets reset, however, so both these things get forgotten.

Next time: The Flask of the Red Death...

Inspirations: Hide

Hide is, basically, Nu-Who's attempt at a haunted house story. All the trappings of a good ghost story are present:

• the setting is a big old rambling house,
• it's night-time,
• there's a storm in full blast, with rain, thunder and lightning,
• the house is empty but for only a couple of people,
• despite the late 20th Century setting, much of the house has no electricity so people have to wander about in the dark with candles,
• there's a weird cold spot,
• a figure is fleetingly glimpsed scuttling about in the darkened corridors,
• another is a white shape with a skull-like countenance,
• someone holds another's hand - only to discover that it was not that of their companion...

The Doctor has come specifically because he has heard of the "Caliburn Ghast" - an archaic word for an evil spirit, and presumably where we get "ghastly" from.

We get to see the Ghast, and it looks like a ghost. It is white, has what looks like a screaming, skull-like visage, and is only glimpsed in flashes of lightning.

It turns out that, unlike most ghosts, this one doesn't mind having its photograph taken, and the scientist who has purchased the house in order to investigate the haunting, has many images of it, from different parts of the house.

Apparently the works of authors Susan Hill and Shirley Jackson were major inspirations. The former is the writer behind The Woman in Black (1983) which was subsequently adapted for TV by Nigel Kneale (more of him shortly), then made into a movie by Hammer. The latter wrote The Haunting of Hill House (1959) which was filmed in 1963, retitled simply as The Haunting.

Susan Hill also wrote the ghost story The Small Hand in 2010.

The last time the Doctor and his companion went ghost hunting in a big old house was in Day of the Daleks, and this story has other links with the Pertwee era. The setting is 1974 - year of the Third Doctor's final season, and the Doctor produces a blue Metebelis crystal. How this relates to the ones we saw in The Planet of the Spiders (1974 again) isn't explained. They all seemed to get blown to bits when the Great One popped her (8) clogs.

This being Doctor Who, our hero knows that this is nothing to do with the supernatural so there has to be some sort of sci-fi explanation to events. He dons the orangey-red spacesuit he took from Sanctuary Base 6 back in The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit and travels to the site of the house through the entirety of Earth's history, taking pictures as he goes. Sure enough, the ghast is present throughout and it turns out it's all to do with a bubble universe and time travel.

The episode actually shifts from being a ghost story to a romance. Not only do we have the relationship between the scientist - Prof Alec Palmer - and his helper, Emma Grayling (whose role in events has parallels with the psychic Theodora in The Haunting) but we also have two crooked-looking aliens who have been accidentally separated.

Palmer was originally going to Professor Bernard Quatermass, created by Kneale. The Manx writer often bemoaned the fact that for years Doctor Who had "borrowed" his ideas, and the Pertwee era isn't short of material that is ever so slightly close to the Quatermass serials.

Another inspiration for Hide is clearly Kneale's The Stone Tape, in the way that the ghast is inextricably anchored to the site of Caliburn House - even before it was built, and long after it was demolished.

Links between Doctor Who and Quatermass were hinted at in Remembrance of the Daleks, with reference to the British Rocket Group and "Bernard".

The Clara story arc is continued with the TARDIS taking a dislike to her and locking her out. This will be built on in the mini-episode in which she can never find her bedroom, and encounters multiple versions of herself, lost every night - all the work of the ship.

Next time: a Jules Verne-inspired title accompanies an effort to improve on the final two episodes of The Invasion of Time...

Inspirations: Cold War

A fairly straightforward one this - one of the most derivative Doctor Who stories ever. Not that Mr Gatiss hid the fact - he mentioned everything in interviews at the time.

Not only do a number of movies inspire Cold War, but earlier Doctor Who stories as well - primarily Troughton era ones.

Once one of the "Big Three" monsters, it looked for a time like the Ice Warriors were never going to make it into the new series. Steven Moffat himself was not impressed by them, regarding them as lumbering green giants which were difficult to make threatening to modern audiences. he worried that there might be little you could do with them that was original - and this story would have done nothing to change his mind on that score.

It was only at the insistence of Gatiss that Moffat agreed to bring them back. They are revamped, design-wise, but only slightly. Instead, Gatiss opts to look more at their background, inspired no doubt by their inclusion in a number of spin-offs (DWM comic strip and New Adventures novels especially).

One issue of contention is Gatiss' decision to show that the Ice Warriors are actually just wearing armour - as this was the opposite of what their designer, Martin Baugh, intended, and he ought to know. As a Grand Marshal, Skaldak really ought to have looked like the so-called "Ice Lords" seen between The Seeds of Death and The Monster of Peladon. We saw an actual Grand Marshal in the first of those stories, played by Graham Leaman.

The idea that they are skinny beings with claws that fail to match their pincer-like hands and with poorly rendered CGI faces is a great disappointment...

The starting point for Cold War is their very first story - The Ice Warriors. It took the whole of its first episode for the Martian to wake up but here, in the rushed 45 minute format, we learn that the creature has been found entombed in the ice in the Arctic and it is up and about before the opening credits have rolled.

Varga had also been found entombed in ice for many centuries, and was found by a group tasked with something else but which included a scientist with a secondary interest. Varga was found by an scientist with an archaeological background - Arden - when setting up seismic detectors, whilst Skaldak is found by the Russian military on an oil-seeking expedition, but which includes a civilian scientist - Grisenko.

Both Varga and Skaldak are awakened prematurely, and are at first thought to be of ancient terrestrial origins.

In both cases, the Ice Warrior finds themselves cut adrift from their own time and so desperately seeks to exploit their new-found situation to their advantage to get back in touch with their own kind.

Their actions escalate to threaten the whole Earth - Varga by wrecking the ionisation programme and Skaldak by triggering nuclear war - which brings us to the story title.

The Cold War is the period which lasted from the fall of Berlin in May 1945 through to Glasnost and Perestroika in the late 1980's - symbolised by the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. The period was defined by war by proxy, with a number of global conflicts behind which lay the US and USSR, though they never dirtied their own hands publicly.

If a conflict with actual fighting was a "hot war", then one played out through "diplomacy" and string-pulling was therefore a "cold" one.

Gatiss elected to set his story during the 1980's, when the Cold War was hotting up again thanks to the sabre-rattling of Ronald Reagan and Mrs Thatcher, coinciding with a series of short-lived hawks in charge at the Kremlin.

This '80's setting is reinforced by Grishenko's love of music of the period - Duran Duran and Ultravox being specifically referenced.

The other big inspiration for Cold War is the submarine genre (sub-genre, anyone?). Gatiss specifically mentioned films like The Hunt for Red October (1990) which is set in the same period. Other sub-based films of recent years include Crimson Tide (1995), or the earlier Gray Lady Down (1978). Bond's The World Is Not Enough (1999) and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) feature submarines prominently. Gatiss also mentioned the splendid German miniseries Das Boot (1981). War films like The Enemy Below (1957) and Run Silent, Run Deep (1958) had inspired the classic Star Trek episode "Balance of Terror", which first introduced the Romulans.

The submarine we see here is no CGI construct. It's a good old-fashioned model courtesy of Mike Tucker's Model Unit. We last saw a model submarine in the show in The Sea Devils, and the filming techniques - all done in the dry - are virtually the same.

This is Clara's turn to ask why she can understand foreign languages - something which each new companion goes through these days. This had always been glossed over by the programme, until Sarah brought it up in The Masque of Mandragora. In Rose it was confirmed that it was a function of the TARDIS.

Another Troughton nod is the manner in which the Doctor is conveniently separated from the TARDIS. This is said to be the fault of the HADS, the Hostile Action Displacement System which we first heard about in The Krotons.

The Pertwee era Peladon stories are also referenced as the Doctor describes himself once being an Earth Ambassador, and when he tells Skaldak of his people's achievements in the future.

Next time: I won't get the order of stories mixed up... This time it really will be a ghost story / romance mash-up.

Inspirations: The Rings of Akhaten

The episode opens with a lengthy sequence in which the Doctor rummages around in Clara's personal history. We see how her mother and father first came together, all the way up to her mother's death - but there's nothing to explain the "Impossible Girl".

As RTD used to do, new companions tend to get a contemporary story, with their second usually their first trip in the TARDIS. The second and third stories take in both past and future / alien planet.

Clara gets to go to an alien planet (having already had a jaunt in the TARDIS in her first adventure).

It is to a planet which the Doctor tells her he has been to before. Not only that, but we know when this was as he mentions having been here with his grand-daughter - so probably one of those pre-Totters Lane outings which the First Doctor and Susan used to tell Ian and Barbara about.

The production team were quite open about the inspiration for the market overlooking the titular Rings - it was their chance to have a "Star Wars Cantina" moment.

One of the highlights of the first Star Wars movie was the sequence set in a bar in Mos Eisley, where Ben and Luke go in search of a pilot to take them off Tatooine. As well as a jaunty John Williams swing-style score, this featured a whole host of alien creatures, whereas the rest of the film mainly features humanoid characters.

Almost all of the subsequent "homages" included a similar sequence.

The producer and writer also discussed the speeder chase which featured in Return of the Jedi - which led to the appearance of the bike-like vehicles here.

Of the aliens which feature at the market, some had been seen before in the series only as background figures - in the Maldovarium for example. Others were designs created by Neil Gorton for other projects.

Talk of John Williams leads us on to another aspect of this story - its emphasis on music. This story allowed regular composer Murray Gold to showcase his talents, instead of merely providing the incidentals and theme.

Cast as Merry was Emilia Jones - daughter of singer and presenter Aled Jones, who came to fame singing the The Snowman song - Walking in the Air.

The planet having a face was inspired by the "Man in the Moon" figure seen in George Méliès' A Trip to the Moon (1902) - which has been parodied many times (e.g. by The Mighty Boosh).

Next time: pocket universes, haunted houses, and Quatermass...

Inspirations: The Bells of Saint John

Three story arcs in play, two of which (spoilers) will merge at the end of this series. The third will take another year to materialise.

The first is Clara. We've seen Jenna Coleman, as she was then, twice so far - with similar names but in quite different time zones and on different planets. The last was a Victorian governess, who moonlighted as a barmaid (or a barmaid who moonlighted as a governess), and this new Clara is a childminder - so there might be a connection there. A barmaid could be said to work in Hospitality, and the first "Clara" we met was an entertainments officer on a spaceship, so Hospitality again.

The second arc is that of the Great Intelligence, last seen in a prequel to the Edward Travers arc of The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear.

That third arc, which won't play out until Series 8, is the woman who gives Clara the phone number for the TARDIS (for the title of this episode refers to the ship's telephone, a Police Box also having a St John's Ambulance badge to indicate that it contains a first aid kit).

I'm sure a lot of people thought that this mysterious woman might be River Song, whilst every female villain is always going be the Rani. (It's been said that the villain of Series 15 is a woman, so might the Rani finally be coming back? A bit redundant after Missy, but you never know).

As with the Troughton stories and The Snowmen, the Intelligence makes use of something 'local' to act as its weapons - Yeti in Tibet and snowmen in a Victorian London winter.

In the first quarter of the 21st Century it's all about digital technology, and everyone is transferring from the old wired connections to Wi-Fi. The latest weapons are therefore mobile Wi-Fi hotspots - dubbed "Spoonheads" due to the concave shape of the back of the head.

Moffat stated that he deliberately wanted to use something everyone used in day to day life as a threat - something he's done often enough before and since.

Quite what the Intelligence wanted with the Earth we never knew. In its first outing it looked as though it was going to physically consume the planet, so perhaps feeding on natural energies of some kind.

It never looked as if it wanted human beings for any purpose, other than to have a single individual to act as its agent - Padmasambhava, Sgt. Arnold, Dr Simeon and now Miss Kizlet.

Here the Intelligence appears to be harvesting - what? Souls? Mental energy? Is it psychically eating people, or just enslaving them? It isn't entirely clear what its goal is.

London landmarks have played a part in Doctor Who's Earth invasions ever since Daleks were photographed on Westminster Bridge. After that we've had St Pauls (Cybermen), the Tower of London (UNIT), the London Eye (Nestenes), Big Ben (Slitheen), Gherkin (Sycorax), Thames Barrier (Racnoss), and Canary Wharf (Torchwood). 

Now the Shard is used.

This story is also the latest to feature a duplicate of the Doctor, companion or both - a feature of the series ever since the Daleks made an android Doctor in The Chase. It almost started even earlier, as the abandoned third story of Season One, "The Hidden Planet" by Malcolm Hulke, was to have featured a double of Barbara. Here, both the Doctor and Clara are copied by Spoonheads.

The story opens with the Doctor continuing his self-imposed exile, initiated by the loss of Amy and Rory. Hiding out in the same city and time zone as the Paternoster Gang probably wasn't a clever idea if you want to avoid adventurous entanglements, so the Doctor has relocated to a monastery in medieval Cumbria. No longer dwelling on the loss of Amy, he's now becoming obsessed with the Impossible Girl.

Once his interest is piqued and he returns to the fray, he abandons old habits (literally) and dons a new outfit. 

We see him admire a bow-tie in a box - one once worn by Patrick Troughton.

There's a topical reference to the London Riots of 2011, and mention of a mix-up at Earl's Court - a reference to the fact that there's a Police Box outside the Underground Station.

Next time: the Doctor faces the music, whilst Clara takes a leaf out of her mother's book...

Inspirations: The Snowmen

Before we get into the actual episode itself, a word about the two prologue mini-episodes. One shows Madam Vastra wrapping up one of her criminal investigations - a convoluted tale which is clearly inspired by one of the more complex Sherlock Holmes stories, or more likely one of Dupin's (Edgar Allan Poe's detective from The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) and others).

The other is the one where the Paternoster Gang attempt to lure the Doctor out of his self-imposed exile.

They each tell him about a potential threat which might pique his interest. These are all inspired by the fantasy works of Jules Verne / HG Wells / Edgar Rice Burroughs / Arthur Conan Doyle.

Strax talks about the "Moonites" - as in the Selenites from The First Men in the Moon (Wells, 1901), or George Melies' film A Trip to the Moon (1902), based on Verne.

Vastra mentions a meteorite shower, hinting at possible UFO activity - Wells' War of the Worlds (1898).

And Jenny warns of a scientist who is going to drill into the centre of the world and possibly split it apart. As well as a nod to Prof. Zaroff of The Underwater Menace, this also points towards At The Earth's Core (Burroughs, 1914), or When The World Screamed (Conan Doyle, 1928) - in which Professor Challenger attempts to drill into the Earth but wakes up a vast monster dwelling deep beneath the surface. 

Jenny also mentions a man in Praed Street who has an invisible wife - referencing Wells' The Invisible Man (1897).

The obvious starting point for The Snowmen is that this is a sequel to two highly regarded stories of the Patrick Troughton era - though it come in the form of a prequel.

In Season 5 of Doctor Who we were introduced to the Great Intelligence - a malignant, disembodied entity which sought to build a bridgehead in a remote part of the globe (Tibet). It psychically possessed a human being to act as its agent on Earth, and used deadly robot copies of local wildlife to keep anyone who might interfere away - or indeed to dispose of them all together.

These creatures were the Yeti, who became known in the West as "Abominable Snowmen" purely thanks to a mistranslation by a journalist.

So pleased were the production team with The Abominable Snowmen that they commissioned a sequel before the initial story had even broadcast. This moved the Intelligence to present day London, where it used the Underground system as part of its plan to create a new, isolated bridgehead.

This story was The Web of Fear.

In the early days of fandom, monsters were ranked - by appearances rather than popularity, though there was an element of that as well. The first Target Doctor Who Monster Book was laid out: Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors, Yeti, then Autons and Sontarans -  the latter three having featured twice in the series, but the Yeti were first to achieve that. (Of course this was published before the Sontarans made their third appearance in Season 15).

When it came to bringing back the old monsters in the revived series, a lot of people hoped to see the Yeti / Intelligence revisited. It took until Christmas 2012 to do it - and then only the Great Intelligence made it back into the series.

You might have thought that a monster with "Snowmen" in their title might have been an obvious choice for a festive special - and Steven Moffat did bemoan the fact that there were no Xmas traditions left to subvert, in a Doctor Who sense - but the writer opted to go with actual Snowmen. 

Men, made with snow.

The original Yeti had been a problematic costume - many children finding them cuddly rather than scary.

This is why director Douglas Camfield redesigned them with sleeker bodies, glowing eyes and guns, and transplanted them into the darkness of the Tube.

This was probably what was at the back of Moffat's mind in deciding not to resurrect them.

By making this a prequel to the first Great Intelligence story - set supposedly circa 1935 - there was no reason to have the big shaggy creatures anyway. The Yeti robots were created specifically to scare people away from Tibet.

The Snowmen is set in Victorian England, so why would the GI make Yeti?

Whenever it snows, everyone - young and old - makes a snowman. They are very easy to create - balls of snow, placed one on top of the other (three spheres if you're American, just the two if British). A carrot for a nose and small stones or bits of coal to make the eyes and mouth. Sticks for arms, and perhaps a real hat and scarf. 

The first written record of a snowman hails (no pun intended) from the Netherlands in 1380. He might be better known as one of the greatest genii of the Renaissance, but Michelangelo was also asked to create one for the Medici in 1494.

In 1511 the city fathers of Brussels launched a snowman contest, to distract the populace from a winter food shortage. They were not best pleased when everyone made pornographic snow sculptures. 

Don't say you never learn things on this blog.

With The Snowmen, as an alternative to Yeti, Moffat gave us scary looking title monsters - with Hallowe'en pumpkin-style evil-looking features.

The episode instead concentrates on the Great Intelligence, and it uses snow as a physical medium with which to give it corporeal substance. This can fashion itself into the Snowmen, the first of which latches psychically onto a lonely little boy. He grows up to be Richard E Grant - an actor who had actually played two different incarnations of the Doctor previously, one of which RTD2 has attempted to canonise recently.

He's the forerunner to Padmasambhava and Sergeant Arnold - the human puppets from the Troughton stories.

Another link back to The Web of Fear is the lunch box which the Doctor uses to smuggle the Memory Worm into the Institute. This is a souvenir of the London Underground and the Doctor gives its date as 1967 - actually the year of the first Yeti story, though production on its sequel fell into that year.

The Doctor is basically giving the Great Intelligence the idea to exploit the Tube as a potential weakness for the city.

The other big thing about this story is the return of Clara. However, like the first appearance in the series of Jenna-Louise Coleman (as was) this is a false start. She's not the person who is going to become his new companion (sort of, it gets complicated) and is a guest character only, who once again gets killed off.

One of the children she looks after is called Digby, which has prompted fandom to think that he grows up to be the absentee owner of the big country house in which last year's Christmas Special was partly set.

Next time: the Doctor and Clara, spooning at the Shard...

Inspirations: The Angels Take Manhattan

The title probably derives from the Rogers & Hart song Manhattan, written in 1925. The original lyric read "We'll have Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island too..." but this was later amended to "I'll take Manhattan..." by some singers, such as Sinatra, and has sort of stuck.

To "take" a city means simply to become a success there - e.g. to become the most popular business. To take Broadway, for instance, meant to become its biggest star or to produce the top box office hit.

In 1987 Leonard Cohen released the song First We Take Manhattan, and the same year saw a soapy mini-series called I'll Take Manhattan.

The 1980's saw movies The Muppets Take Manhattan, and Friday 13th VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, so it was definitely a relatively well known phrase by then.

Also, in 2011, Karen Gillan had starred as model Jean Shrimpton in the BBC4 biographical drama We'll Take Manhattan.

The episode was originally going to be the last of four new stories which would comprise the first half of Series 7, and see out Amy and Rory as companions.

Gillan was the first to inform Moffat that she wished to leave, but it transpired that Arthur Darvill was thinking along the same lines. They met with Moffat and planned when best to organise their final story. They both wished to leave in a manner which would preclude them coming back again later - so a clean break. neither wanted to come back, even in a cameo appearance (though Gillan did eventually record one scene for Matt Smith's final story). The writer had a year to plan their departure.

Inextricably linked to the Ponds, the story would definitely involve River Song.

Moffat later claimed that he rewrote the ending 20 times, unsure whether or not to actually kill the couple off.

One of his starting points was J M Barrie's Peter Pan - in that whilst Peter remained youthful, the people he knew would grew up. This had been addressed before by RTD in episodes such as School Reunion, when the Doctor had to explain what stopped him having a relationship with a human being.

The New York setting was inspired by a holiday there, during which Moffat and his family became snowbound. He and the regulars had enjoyed the city on promotional visits, and Darvill would later enjoy a successful Broadway stint.

The city was very much geared up to support filming for TV and cinema, and the production team were helped out by the US line producer who had assisted with the Utah shoot for Series 6.

Keen to use the Weeping Angels again in a big story, Moffat saw photographs of the Bethesda Fountain in Central park, which included cherubs - baby angels.

The fountain would feature in the episode itself, instrumental in Rory's temporal abduction to 1938.

(It also plays an iconic role in the 2003 HBO adaptation of Angels in America, based on the play by Tony Kushner).

The 1930's setting for the bulk of the story came from a love of film noir, with River's alter ego, Melody Malone, inspired by the "hard-boiled" private detective genre. 

Grayle was named after a character in Raymond Chandler's Farewell My Lovely (1940). He was inspired by Sydney Greenstreet - the "Fat Man" in The Maltese Falcon (1941).

Sam Garner's name hints at Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade (played by Bogart in the above film), and actor James Garner (famed for portraying down-at-heel PI Jim Rockford).

Battery Park was an obvious choice for the location of the apartment block Winter Quay - as the building was being used by the Angels as a battery / storage unit for the potential energy of its captives.

In his script, Moffat stated that the gothic building should be like something out of Charles Addams (creator of The Addams Family), crossed with something from a David Lynch movie.

Despite being made of metal rather than stone, the Statue of Liberty is the most famous statue in the city - so it was inevitable that it would become a Weeping Angel.

It doesn't actually do anything, and the idea that it can cross the city seemingly unnoticed is daft, so its inclusion was purely to provide some iconic imagery for the episode.

The ancient Chinese sequence is set in the year 221 BC - a Sherlock Holmes in-joke. And the first chapter of the Melody Malone novel is "The Dying Detective" - another Holmes reference.

Next time: Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

Inspirations: The Power of Three

It was originally intended that the first half of Series 7 would only comprise four episodes, and this story was actually a late addition. Chris Chibnall was given the job as the production team were happy with his dinosaur script. He hadn't written a big invasion story, and Moffat had asked for a storyline that spanned a whole year.

As a starting point, the writer recalled a story about a container ship caught in a storm off the coast of Devon. Some of the containers were washed overboard and came to shore - and the local populace had a field day raiding them for their contents. This led to the idea of people being presented with something for free and how they would react to it. The stages to go through would be initial excitement, then growing complacency, before the objects suddenly turned on them.

An Earth invasion prompted thoughts of bringing back UNIT, Chibnall being a big fan of the Pertwee era as could be seen in his Series 5 Silurian story.

With Nicholas Courtney now passed, it was felt to be a good idea to keep the family connection with the Brigadier. Spin-off media, such as the video production Downtime, had given him a daughter named Kate.

Novels had her the daughter from his first marriage, whilst Chibnall himself thought of her as the child of the Brigadier and Doris.

Chibnall was also able to bring back Brian Williams, Rory's dad, having introduced him in his earlier story.

The Doctor at one point speaks to him about keeping his companions safe, admitting that it has not always been possible - referencing Katarina, Sara Kingdom and Adric.

For a time, this story was going to be called "Cubed", and mathematically a number (N) cubed means that it is multiplied to the power of three - i.e. N x N x N.

The Power of Three therefore alludes both to the mysterious cubes which appear on Earth, and the idea that the Doctor at this particular time generally triumphs when backed by his two companions.

Prior to the beginning of Series 7, Chibnall had given us the mini-series Pond Life. This comprised short episodes illustrating what the Doctor was getting up to, now that Amy and Rory no longer travelled full-time in the TARDIS, and - more importantly - how they lived their life day-to-day in settled domesticity in his absence.

Steven Moffat described it in terms of the Doctor's impact on the couple as being akin to the movie The Man Who Came To Dinner (1942).

The Power of Three feels like a continuation of minisodes. There is the over-arching mystery of the black cubes, but for the most part it has an episodic feel. Like Pond Life, we dip into the lives of the couple over the twelve months, seeing brief adventures such as Zygons in late Victorian London, as we go.

Next time: Angels in America...

Inspirations: A Town Called Mercy

Doctor Who had tackled the Western genre once before - and it had been widely regarded as a failure. That was The Gunfighters, back in 1966, which was based on the historical events at Tombstone's OK Corral. Other stories had borrowed heavily from the genre, but adapted plots for a futuristic sci-fi setting. 

The Space Pirates is basically the story of Gold Rush miners and claim jumpers. Colony in Space is the story of the big company - the railway, say - using dirty tricks to force farmers off their land, with the Primitives standing in for North America's indigenous peoples. It's actually their land the other two groups are fighting over.

Looking for big cinematic adventures for the first half of the series which would lead up to the 50th Anniversary, Steven Moffat decided on a new Western story, and this time it would be more along the lines of the pseudo-historical - 19th Century US setting, with aliens.

Many of cinema's most iconic Westerns were filmed not in Monument Valley or similar, but in Southern Europe - the so-called "Spaghetti-Western" which gave us Clint Eastwood's 'Man With No Name' and the soundtracks of Ennio Morricone.

Some of the locations for these movies still existed, one of which was located at Fort Bravo in Spain. "Mini Hollywood" - the Oasys Theme Park at Tabernas - and the desert environs of Almeria were also to be used.

The European location meant that it would cost a lot less than to revisit the USA, as the series had done the previous year. Another production for Series 7 was scheduled to visit New York anyway.

The writer chosen to handle this project was Toby Whithouse, who had been contributing annually to the series since Moffat took over. 

He naturally looked at various genre stereotypes from old movies, such as the enigmatic lone gunslinger and the town lynch mob. The Gunfighters had also featured a scene in which a lynch mob wanted the lawman to hand over someone who was locked in the jailhouse. Then, it was the Doctor they were after. Here, he's the lawman.

Knowing the earlier story's poor reputation, Whithouse opted not to view a copy of the Hartnell adventure in preparing his story.

The story sees a midday deadline, as in High Noon (1952). This classic Western had been the basis of another sci-fi adaptation - Sean Connery's Outland, in 1981. 

1955's Bad Day At Black Rock (a film-noir Western) is also an inspiration. In this a stranger arrives in a small town that harbours secrets.

The Doctor's attempts to trick the Gunslinger at the climax are reminiscent of Eastwood's High Plains Drifter (1973).

Whithouse claimed that he had been impressed with the HBO series Deadwood (2004 - 6) which presented a realistic view of the West, so presumably some of the feel and look of that series fed into this.

The cyborg Gunslinger itself was inspired by the Frankenstein Monster, in that it was supposed to inspire sympathy as much as horror. It was originally going to be purely robotic.

The Terminator is another obvious antecedent, with its unstoppable killing machine determined to hunt someone down.

The background to Jex and the Gunslinger take us into war crimes territory, and the concept of the military developing a super-army can be seen in many sci-fi movies such as the Universal Soldier franchise. Alien super-soldiers had been a feature of The X-Files as well, in its latter seasons.

Next time: Cubular hells...

Inspirations: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

This was one of those stories where the title came first - inspired by the 2006 movie Snakes on a Plane - and the story was then built around it.

The writer handed this brief was Chris Chibnall, who had been responsible for the first two seasons of Torchwood and had written 42 under the RTD regime. For Moffat he had written the two part Silurian story for the previous series, and most recently had been the writer on the five mini-episodes which comprised Pond Life. Having been a lead writer on Torchwood, and run his own series - Camelot and Law & Order UK - he was given a pair of episodes to work on for this series, whilst Moffat was busy juggling Sherlock and Doctor Who.

As well as the title coming from a movie, the story also owed its origins to a discussion between the producers and the VFX company about what they might be able to achieve for the programme. 

The technology to create convincing dinosaurs on a TV budget had been proven a while back, with the landmark series Walking With Dinosaurs. This had led to shows like ITV's Primeval becoming possible, which had a heavy reliance on the creatures in a range of settings.

To make the story as exciting as possible, the spaceship of the title would be on a collision course with Earth - adding additional peril. At the same time, the producer - Marcus Wilson - suggested the use of some large, expensive robot costumes which had only ever been seen on the CBBC series Mission: 2110. Their exposure had, therefore, been limited, and it was felt that they could be included somewhere in the story.

When it came to populating the story with additional characters, Chibnall decided on two things - a look at Rory's family background, and the idea of the Doctor putting together an eclectic gang from his various travels to assist him. The latter had already proved successful in A Good Man Goes To War, which brought together what would later become known as the Paternoster Gang.

The Big Bang had shown Amy's parents, but we hadn't seen anyone from Rory's family. It was decided to incorporate his father into this gang. 

The gang would therefore have a mix of contemporary and historical people - both fictional and factual.

The latter was represented by Queen Nefertiti (c.1370 - c.1330 BC). She had famously vanished from history, her burial place still undiscovered, so any story could be made up about her. She also had a distinctive appearance. thanks to the antique famous bust in the Neues Museum in Berlin.

The fictional figure from the past was a big game hunter named John Riddell. He was based on similar characters from a host of old adventure series set in Africa (such as the Tarzan movies), and Alan Quatermain of H Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines (1885). One particular forebear is the character John Roxton, as played by Michael Rennie in George Pal's 1960 adaptation of The Lost World - another big game hunter confronted by dinosaurs.

This character was added later as he was originally going to be a cowboy, named Buffalo Jones. This idea was dropped when it was decided that a full-blown Western was going to be one of this series' stories.

The villain of the piece - Solomon - was inspired by the Somali pirates who were in the news plaguing shipping in the Indian Ocean, and subject of the 2013 Tom Hanks movie Captain Phillips.

Having reintroduced the Silurians to the series, Chibnall saw that it made sense to have them involved. As well as building subterranean shelters to avoid the expected disaster in prehistoric times, first mentioned in The Silurians, some had built a space ark to preserve more of their larger wildlife.

However, this went against established history for the creatures, who had never shown any space-going abilities. You have to ask why they simply didn't relocate their entire civilisation to another planet.

To play the lone representative, seen in ancient recordings, actor Richard Hope was cast. He had previously portrayed Malokeh in The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood, and The Wedding of River Song. Here he plays a character named Bleytal. This continued the trend that Silurians have genetic groupings where multi-generational members are identical in appearance.

(Malokeh's name had been derived from that of their creator, Malcolm Hulke).

At one point the Doctor claims to be a Sagittarian. This is the astrological star sign which covers 23rd November - birthdate of the series.

Next time: The Good, The Bad and the Cyborg...

Inspirations: Asylum of the Daleks

"Die Hard on the planet of the Daleks", is how Steven Moffat sold this story to his fellow producers.

The Daleks had been rested following the controversial introduction of the New Paradigm design. After Victory of the Daleks in Series 5, they had only made a few cameo appearances in the programme.

The seventh series of the revived programme was going to be split in a similar fashion to the sixth but, instead of a relatively short summer break, the first batch of episodes would be broadcast in Spring 2012, with the remainder not screening until the Spring of the following year.

The season would also see the departure of Amy and Rory in the first half, with new companion Clara taking over for the second.

Their relationship would be developed prior to their departure, made more interesting by having them actually split up - seen in the last of the short Pond Life mini-episodes.

The new episodes would show that once you left the TARDIS, the Doctor didn't necessarily abandon his companions. He would still have an impact on their lives.

Moffat decided that each of the first batch of episodes should be cinematic in scope, and gave them movie-style posters.

He actually considered double episode stories, until told that these weren't necessarily cheaper to produce.

Bringing the Daleks back for their first full appearance for a while, and in keeping with his big scale plans, Moffat decided that viewers would see more Daleks than ever before - and the story would include some classic designs from the original series. The episode would also see the biggest ever set to date.

The other thing to remember is that up until now, Moffat had never written a Dalek story. He had been forced to drop out of the 1930's Manhattan story, and Mark Gatiss had written the Series 5 story.

Unfortunately, the way the episode was directed and edited, the inclusion of classic models of Dalek barely came across on screen. The bronze Time War Daleks are front and centre for much of the time - even in the "Intensive Care Unit" sequence which was supposed to actually feature the survivors of those earlier stories.

As it is, the classic Daleks - which include a grey 1970's replica owned by Russell T Davies - are stuck in the background. The only distinctive classic model, purely due to its unique shape, is the Special Weapons Dalek from Remembrance of the Daleks.

Specific stories mentioned for the ICU occupants, via their locations, are The Chase (Aridius), The Daleks' Master Plan (Kembel), Power of the Daleks (Vulcan), Planet of the Daleks (Spiridon) and Death to the Daleks (Exxilon).

A black-domed Imperial Dalek from Evil of the Daleks was photographed, with Smith and Gillan, but not properly seen on screen.

Of course, the odd thing about the ICU sequence is that there were no Dalek survivors in most of their stories - so how could they come to be here?

The Doctor briefly visits Skaro, which also features in the episode's mini-episode prologue, and the design of the Dalek city was based loosely on that seen in The Daleks and in the "City of the Daleks" computer game.

The Daleks have frequently used other beings as soldiers / slaves - such as Ogrons, Pig Slaves, human collaborators and Lytton's mercenaries. 

This led to them having disguised human servants here - with Dalek eye-stalks hidden in their foreheads and weapons in their hands.

As well as introducing the concept of the asylum, Moffat gave them a parliament, headed by a Prime Minister. This included some of the New Paradigm models, given new metallic red and blue paint-jobs. The white Supreme was also shown.

In an isolation area next to the ICU is one Dalek which has to be chained down, because it contains an occupant - previously a human from Earth - who they have been unable to mentally condition. She still retains her human memories and personality. This provided a surprise for the audience as the actress playing this role was to become the new companion for the second half of the series - Jenna Louise Coleman, as she was then known, who would be playing Clara. The press were asked not to spoil this appearance, and - for once - went along with it.

It turns out that this isn't the Clara, however, and we'll have to wait until the Christmas Special to find out that there is more to this character than meets the eye.

The Asylum planet is a frozen one, and this came about purely by chance. The series was filming in Spain for the following Western episode, and it was realised that they could make a brief trip to the nearby mountains to film a few shots. To minimise personnel, only Smith and Gillan attended, which is why Rory materialises inside the Asylum instead of on the surface.

Next time: Jurassic Ark...

Story 241 - The Day of the Doctor

 

In which the Doctor revisits events at the conclusion of the Last Great Time War.

Clara is now working as a teacher at Coal Hill School. She goes to visit the Doctor in the TARDIS, which is parked outside London. The Doctor receives a call from Kate Stewart of UNIT, seeking his help. Suddenly the TARDIS is picked up by a helicopter and flown towards the city. Kate explains that she thought the ship was empty. The Doctor accidentally falls out of the doors but hangs on as they arrive at Trafalgar Square. Kate is waiting to meet him, along with Osgood - UNIT's latest Scientific Adviser, who is another great fan of the Doctor's exploits - even wearing a long multi-coloured scarf.

The reason the TARDIS has been brought to Trafalgar Square is because of something to be found in the National Gallery, which looks onto the Square. This building has a secret under-gallery, which can be accessed behind a huge double portrait of Queen Elizabeth I and the Tenth Doctor. 

A number of paintings in this under-gallery have had their glass smashed, and a number of statues appear to have been broken as well. The paintings are all landscapes - but the Doctor is told by Kate that they used to have figures in them - and the glass has been broken from the inside outwards. Something has escaped from the pictures. 

The Doctor notes a large 3-D image of Gallifrey under attack during the Time War. It is known by two titles - "No More" and "Gallifrey Falls". The Doctor recognises the events depicted as the fall of Arcadia, the planet's second city. It was on this day that he decided to end the War - by destroying both sides. He had broken into the Time Lord arsenal and stolen the Moment. This was an immensely powerful weapon, but one with a sentient interface. This would try to ensure that the operator fully understood and accepted their actions in using it - forcing them to examine their conscience. The Doctor was in his ninth incarnation at this time, having regenerated on the planet Karn with the help of the Sisterhood. This was an incarnation which the Doctor had elected to forget, believing him not worthy of the name due to his actions in the War. He took the Moment to a childhood haunt of his, an old barn, on Gallifrey, and the Moment manifested itself to him as a young, blonde-haired woman, who went by the name "Bad Wolf". This was an image of Rose Tyler, taken from his future. She will show him part of that future, before he decides to use the weapon.

At the under-gallery, a temporal anomaly opens. The Doctor decides to enter it, and finds himself in Tudor England. His tenth incarnation is here, on a picnic with Queen Elizabeth. However, he is secretly on the trail of a Zygon. It disguises itself as a horse, and then as the Queen herself. The temporal anomaly has also appeared in the barn of Gallifrey, and the Time War Doctor also enters it - arriving at the same location as his two future selves. Soldiers arrive and they pretend to be sorcerers to hold them at bay. Elizabeth then appears and informs them that she has killed the Zygon duplicate, and they find themselves captured and sent to the Tower of London. The three Doctors discuss the Time War, and the destruction of Gallifrey, as they look for a way to escape. Clara has followed the Doctor to 1562 using Captain Jack Harkness' vortex manipulator - given to her by Kate. Clara discovers that Kate has been replaced by a Zygon duplicate, but she escapes using the manipulator. (The Doctor had left the co-ordinates and operation code scratched on the cell wall for Clara to find in 450 years time). Clara releases the Doctors from their cell.

They discover that there are more Zygons in the Tower. Elizabeth is impersonating the Zygon commander to discover their scheme. They are refugees who have arrived from their dead homeworld in search of a new home. As the time is not right, they are going to use Time Lord technology, stasis cubes, to hide themselves in a number of paintings - to emerge in a few centuries' time, when the planet will be less primitive. They emerged from the paintings in 2013 - hence the glass breaking outwards - and then hid under the covers which were draped on the statues, smashing the statues first. They have overpowered Kate and Osgood in order to gain access to the Tower, and UNIT's Black Archive.

The Doctors must return to 2013 to stop the Zygons, but first the Tenth Doctor weds Elizabeth - honouring a promise he had made. They take to the Tenth Doctor's TARDIS, and the console room layout struggles to compensate for the presence of three Doctors.

In order to get into the Black Archive. the Doctors hide within the "Gallifrey Falls" painting, which they then arrange to have transported into the complex. Kate and Osgood have arrived, but the Archive has a gas defence - a substance which causes amnesia. The Doctors confuse both human and Zygon by ensuring neither knows which side is really which. The Doctors force them to forge a treaty.

The stasis cubes have given the Doctors an idea for resolving the Time War without destroying Gallifrey. Their combined TARDISes, with this technology, may be able to place the whole planet in stasis - only appearing to have been destroyed.

All of the Doctor's incarnations respond to this plan - including a future, twelfth Doctor.

Gallifrey vanishes, and the Dalek fleet destroys itself in the crossfire. 

The War Doctor has been rehabilitated - now worthy of being called a Doctor. He and the Tenth Doctor won't remember these events, and the Eleventh Doctor does not know the new location of Gallifrey. The War Doctor returns to his TARDIS and begins to regenerate. After the Tenth Doctor has departed - soon to regenerate himself - the current Doctor meets an old man, who claims to be the curator of the under-gallery. He looks and sounds just like his fourth incarnation. The old man reveals that the title of the Arcadia painting is really "Gallifrey Falls No More".

Later, the Doctor dreams of rediscovering his lost homeworld.

The Day of the Doctor was written by Steven Moffat, and first broadcast on 23rd November 2013. It marked the 50th Anniversary of the series. It was simulcast globally, and also enjoyed a number of cinema outings. It was available in 3-D.

Moffat's original plan had been for a new The Three Doctors - the 10th Anniversary story - featuring the last three Doctors rather than the first trio. After an initial interest, Christopher Eccleston elected not to participate - which is how Moffat came to create the previously unknown War Doctor, as played by John Hurt and seen at the conclusion of The Name of the Doctor.

One of the earlier Doctors did make a new appearance - Tom Baker, in the role of the enigmatic Curator, who may be a future incarnation of the Doctor revisiting an old form. All the Doctors have a couple of cameos - first of all piloting their TARDISes to save Gallifrey (using footage from various episodes), and then in the final dream scene where the Doctor is flanked by all his predecessors.

Peter Capaldi made a surprise appearance - only his eyes being seen in close-up - a whole month before he was due to make his debut.

Being an anniversary story, there are many nods to the past. The story opens in black & white, with a policeman at the gates of the junkyard at 76 Totter's Lane. This turns out to be just around the corner from Coal Hill School, and the school sign states that Ian Chesterton is now Chairman of the Board of Governors, and W Coburn is headmaster. This all relates back to An Unearthly Child.

As the story concerns the Time War, the Daleks naturally appear - shown beating the Time Lords as they attack Arcadia, another domed city on Gallifrey. We see the head of Gallifrey's armed forces - the General - but reference is made to the politicians debating elsewhere (Rassilon and his council, as seen in The End of Time Parts 1 & 2).

From Tom Baker's era we have the man himself, but also Osgood's wearing of his scarf. The guest aliens are from his era. Ever since the series returned in 2005, fans had been clamouring for the return of the Zygons. They had only ever featured in one story - Terror of the Zygons - but this is regarded as a classic, and the creatures are a superb design (courtesy of James Acheson and John Friedlander).

Fortunately, the design isn't messed with, yet they are still somehow inferior to the originals.

The War Doctor is used to comment on the new series, as though he were a representative of the Classic Era. He bemoans the fact that Doctors seem so young these days, and enquires about the amount of kissing which goes on.

Moffat had asked for the previous TARDIS console room to be retained - it had a new home at the Doctor Who Experience - and this was used by the Tenth Doctor. The TARDIS for the War Doctor utilised the same console and pylons, but added more traditional white roundeled walls, as a nod to the Classic Era ship. The exterior of the War Doctor's TARDIS was a smaller copy of a Classic Era Police Box.

Of the new guest cast, Elizabeth I was played by Gavin & Stacey's Joanna Page. The General was played by Ken Bones, and his deputy, Androgar, by Peter De Jersey, who had featured alongside David Tennant in the RSC's recent production of Hamlet. 

Jemma Redgrave returned as Kate Stewart, and Osgood was played by Ingrid Oliver.

Billie Piper appears throughout as the manifestation of the Moment's interface.

Overall, an excellent way to celebrate an anniversary - with a brand new adventure which could stand on its own two feet, but loaded with fan-pleasing nods to the past.

Things you might like to know:

• The working title was "The Time War". Until contracts were signed, Moffat also referred to it as "The No Doctors".
• Shots of the Doctors in their TARDISes come from the following episodes: Hartnell (The Daleks - the voice sounds nothing like him); Troughton (Tomb of the Cybermen and The Mind Robber, audio from The Seeds of Death); Pertwee (Colony in Space, audio from The Green Death); Tom Baker (Planet of Evil); Davison (Frontios, audio from The Five Doctors); Colin Baker (Attack of the Cybermen), McCoy (Battlefield and The Movie); McGann (The Movie), Eccleston (Rose and Aliens of London, audio from Parting of the Ways). McCoy looks very different in his two clips.
• The operating code for Captain Jack's vortex manipulator is 1716231163 - which derives from 17:16 23/11/63 - the time and date of the broadcast of the very first episode.
• UNIT's Black Archive was previously seen as a separate building in the countryside in The Sarah Jane Adventures. It may have been moved after Sarah successfully broke into it.
• The Archive was going to include a poster for the first peter Cushing Dalek movie. In his novelisation of this story, Moffat had these films as movie versions of the real Doctor's actual adventures.
• What is seen in the Archive is a board covered in photographs of various companions, in very odd combinations - to suggest a huge number of unseen adventures.

• UNIT has a file codenamed "Cromer" - a reference to the Brigadier's belief that an alternative anti-matter universe was really the Norfolk coast (The Three Doctors).
• Kate mentions contacting Malcolm - presumably Malcolm Taylor, a previous Scientific Adviser seen in Planet of the Dead.
• It is said that the Zygon homeworld was destroyed at the beginning of the Time War, yet it was already said to have been destroyed long before the Time War in Terror of the Zygons. This story also claimed that it would take centuries after the 20th for the refugee fleet to arrive on Earth - yet they are already here in the 16th Century. 
• Capaldi filmed his scene alongside his regeneration at the conclusion of The Time of the Doctor.
• Some items contained in the Black Archive include River Song's red high heel shoes; a Cyberman head; a Dalek dome; the Space-Time Telegraph from Terror of the Zygons; Dalek tommy guns and Sontaran rifles.
• There are many verbal references to older stories throughout - including the War Doctor stating that his old body was wearing a bit thin (as the First Doctor said in The Tenth Planet); and the Tenth Doctor tells the Eleventh that he doesn't like the redecoration of the TARDIS (as Troughton did in The Three Doctors, and said about UNIT HQ in The Five Doctors).
• The episode was followed on BBC 3 by a live event known as The After Party. This brought together many Doctor and companion actors, who had assembled at the BFI on London's South bank to watch the story go out. It was a ramshackle affair, which came across as amateurish.
• Far better was the comic The Five-ish Doctors Reboot, which was written by Peter Davison and produced by his daughter Georgia Tennant. This told of Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy attempting to get involved in The Day of the Doctor. This was on the Red Button digital platform only, and has never had a commercial release (other than as an extra on a very limited - and expensive - special edition). It was full of cameo appearances by Doctor Who actors and production personnel. They finally do get to appear, but hidden under dust sheets in the under-gallery. However, in the actual TV episode it is extras who fill these places.