P is for... Pritchard, Mrs

Stern, cold-hearted housekeeper of Gabriel Chase, a gloomy mansion in Perivale. The Doctor and Ace visited here in 1883 when it was in the possession of a man named Josiah Samuel Smith. Pritchard only assumed her role at night, after the day staff had left - unwilling to remain there after dark. Smith lived in the house with his ward Gwendoline, a guest named Redvers Fenn-Cooper, and a butler named Nimrod - identified by the Doctor as a Neanderthal. Fenn-Cooper had been an adventurer who had explored Africa, but now appeared to be mentally unstable.

Mrs Pritchard treated him cruelly and disliked Nimrod, but was kinder towards Gwendoline. She resented Ace's influence over the girl.

Hidden beneath the house was a spaceship belonging to an entity known as Light, which was hibernating after conducting a survey of life throughout the galaxy. It had been contact with Light's energies which had deranged Fenn-Cooper. Nimrod had been a specimen collected by it during its survey. Locked up in the ship was another creature called Control. She and Smith had been agents of Light. One would interact with the environment, allowed to be influenced by it, whilst the other remained behind as an experimental control subject.

Smith had assumed the role of an English gentleman but he sought even greater status - by having Fenn-Cooper assassinate Queen Victoria. 

It transpired that the housekeeper was actually Lady Margaret Pritchard, wife of the house's owner Sir George, and Gwendoline's mother. Smith had killed Sir George and hypnotised his wife and daughter. They recalled their true identity and were reunited, just before Light turned them both to stone to prevent them evolving. 

Played by: Sylvia Syms. Appearances: Ghost Light (1989)

• Syms was a huge star of British cinema throughout the 1950's and '60's, appearing in such classics as Ice Cold In Alex (1958) and Victim (1961). She guested in many TV series in the 1960's including The Saint (multiple times in different roles), The Baron, Danger Man, Paul Temple and The Strange Report. Latterly (she died in 2023) she was a regular in EastEnders.
• William Hartnell played her father in the drama The World Ten Times Over (1963).

P is for... Prisoner Zero

In its natural form, a huge snake-like creature with jagged fangs, it had the ability to shape-shift and take on the appearance of other beings with whom it had formed a psychic link. It derived its name from its captivity by the Atraxi in their maximum security jail. The explosion of the Doctor's TARDIS caused a crack to appear randomly across the universe, and one of these occurred in its cell - linking it to the bedroom on Earth of a girl named Amelia Pond, who lived in the village of Leadworth with her aunt. The Doctor met her there in 1996 as a child when the TARDIS crash-landed in her garden just after he had regenerated.

Prisoner Zero escaped through the crack and lived undetected in Amelia's home for 12 years, concealing itself in a bedroom whose door it hid behind a perception filter.

It was discovered by the Doctor and an adult Amelia - now Amy - in 2008. It had caused several inhabitants of the village to fall into comatose states, using their likenesses to move around unnoticed. When the Doctor opened the crack in the bedroom wall, it alerted the Atraxi to Prisoner Zero's location. They lay siege to the Earth, threatening to destroy it if their captive was not handed over. Prisoner Zero knew that this would mean certain execution.

The creature could not only assume the form of an individual but multiple beings - even of different species. The effort to maintain the illusion was great and it often revealed itself through the appearance of its fangs or by speaking through the wrong body - such as when it impersonated a man and his dog, and a mother with two children.

The Doctor eventually lured the creature to the local hospital, where Amy's fiancé Rory worked as a nurse. Here, the Atraxi recaptured it before they could destroy the Earth. Before it was taken away, it cryptically warned the Doctor to beware "the Silence"...

Voiced by: William Wilde. Played by: Olivia Colman, Edin and Merin Monteath, Marcello Magni.

Appearances: The Eleventh Hour (2010).

• William Wilde had previously played a Draconian captain in Frontier in Space (credited as Bill Wilde).
• Now one of Britain's most popular actors, Colman would go on to win an Academy Award for her portrayal of Queen Anne in The Favourite. 
• She would also play Queen Elizabeth II, in the third and fourth seasons of The Crown.
• She first came to prominence in a number of comedic roles, in Peep Show, Green Wing and the film Hot Fuzz.
• A breakout role was opposite David Tennant in Chris Chibnall's Broadchurch.
• She appears, as herself, in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, made for the 50th Anniversary.
• Marcello Magni was the voice of Pingu the Penguin in the CBBC series.

P is for... Primords

When human beings came into physical contact with a strange green slime, released from deep within the Earth's crust, a genetic mutation took place. They reverted to a primordial state - hirsute and savage. With some individuals, the process took time. First the skin would begin to turn green and they would experience a crippling ringing sound in their heads. They would crave increasing levels of heat. 

The Doctor and UNIT encountered these creatures at a drilling project - nicknamed "Inferno" - in central England. Professor Stahlman believed that a gas found only deep underground could be exploited as a new source of cheap energy and he refused to heed scientific advice in his pursuit of it. A technician named Slocum was the first to be infected by the slime, and he became homicidal. Anyone attacked who survived became infected and would begin to mutate. It took multiple bullet wounds to kill a Primord, though they were susceptible to cold temperatures.

Stahlman recklessly handled some of the slime and became infected as well, though he was able to keep the mutation in check for a time due to his obsessive nature.

As the animalistic behaviour took over and they mutated fully, victims felt compelled to make others like themselves as well as kill - deliberately exposing them to the slime. This fate befell the Sergeant Benton from an alternative Earth. Here, the professor's project was much more advanced and the Doctor encountered several fully mutated Primords.

They perished along with the planet - destroyed by the natural forces unleashed by the drilling.

The Doctor was able to return to the normal universe where only one person fully mutated - Professor Stahlman. Stunned by CO2 fire extinguishers, he was shot dead by the Brigadier.

Played by: Olaf Pooley (Stahlman), Walter Randall (Slocum), Derek Ware (Private Wyatt), Ian Fairbairn (Bromley), Dave Carter, Pat Gorman, Walter Henry, Philip Ryan, Peter Thompson. 

Appearances: Inferno (1970)

• The Primords are never named on screen. The name was given to them by producer Barry Letts - derived from "primordial".
• The script suggested ape-like creatures - a devolved version of humanity - but director Douglas Camfield opted to make them more like werewolves.
• Olaf Pooley was resistant to wearing the full Primord make-up.
• Walter Randall was one of Camfield's stock repertory of actors. After playing the priest Tonila in The Aztecs he was El Akir in The Crusade, and then Egyptian warrior Hyksos in The Daleks' Master Plan. He was also an IE guard in The Invasion, and finally one of the human overseers in Planet of the Spiders.
• Ian Fairbairn was another of the Camfield rep company - appearing in The Invasion as Gregory and The Seeds of Doom as Dr Chester. He had earlier played Questa in The Macra Terror.
• Dave Carter was, like Pat Gorman, a regular extra / monster performer in the series. He had already played the Old Silurian in Season 7, as well as a plague-infected ambulance driver in the same story.

P is for... Primitives

The somewhat derogatory name given to the inhabitants of the planet Uxarieus by a group of colonists from 25th Century Earth. Initially hostile to the newcomers, they co-existed uneasily by bartering with each other. Sometimes the Primitives would abduct a colonist and they would have to be ransomed back by providing food. 

They painted their bodies using dyes made from rocks and roots and armed themselves with spears and knives. Their city lay close to the colony, but was in ruins. Most dwelt in a nearby underground complex ruled by a diminutive priestly caste which worshipped a powerful weapon. The Primitives were the devolved survivors of a once great technological civilisation, but now they used pieces of their ancient technology to adorn their bodies.

One Primitive assisted the colony's chief engineer, Jim Holden, who discovered that they had telepathic abilities. Despite this, the Doctor was at one point able to distract one of them with a disappearing coin trick.

A man named Norton turned up one day, claiming to be a survivor of another colony. He said that the Primitives had killed most of his people, who had also come under attack by giant lizards. He murdered Holden and his Primitive assistant before sabotaging the colony's power supply - making it look like the Primitive had attacked Jim first. This was because Norton was really an agent for IMC - the Interplanetary Mining Corporation - which wanted to exploit the planet's rich mineral resources and was prepared to kill to get them.

Found tied up in the ruined city by IMC guards, the Doctor's companion Jo Grant was kidnapped by the Primitives and taken to the underground complex - to be sacrificed to the weapon and its Guardian. The Doctor went to fetch her back.

Later, he was forced to return with the Master who wanted control over the weapon. The Guardian elected to sacrifice itself rather than see the device used for evil. The Doctor tried to save the Primitives and the priests, but without the Guardian to guide them they wandered aimlessly through the complex, and were destroyed when the weapon exploded. Some may have survived on the surface.

Played by: Pat Gorman, Derek Chafer, Les Clark, John McGrath, Stewart Anderson, Emmett Hennessy, Walter Turner, Mike Stephens. Appearances: Colony in Space (1971).

• The actors playing the Primitives are clearly wearing thin body suits, but they are supposed to be naked save for a loincloth. 
• Gorman, who appeared in the series regularly as an extra / monster performer (from The Dalek Invasion of Earth in 1964 to Attack of the Cybermen in 1985) played a colonist and an IMC guard as well as a Primitive in this story.
• A number of stuntmen also portrayed Primitives for action sequences, including Terry Walsh, Alf Joint and Dinny Powell.

Episode 199: Fury From The Deep (2)

Synopsis:

Locked in the oxygen supply store, Victoria screams as she sees foam pour from a vent in the wall - with tendrils of seaweed squirming within it...

The Doctor and Jamie rush to her aid. They manage to unlock the door and pull her from the room just as Robson, Van Lutyens and the Chief Engineer arrive. Robson accuses Victoria of emptying the oxygen tanks and refuses to heed her description of the creature she had seen, thinking it her imagination. The Doctor confirms that she was locked in, from the outside. 

Van Lutyens points out that it was not oxygen filling the room when they arrived, but some other, possibly toxic, gas. The person Victoria claimed to have seen in the room - the tall thin man - must have opened the vent.

In the family quarters, Harris is visiting his wife and is concerned about her health. As she becomes agitated, he is unaware that a piece of seaweed on the patio outside is becoming animated as though responding to her state of mind, continuing to emanate foam. Harris decides to seek the Doctor's help as the ESGO medic is out on Rig D at present. After he returns to the control centre, Maggie opens the patio door and stares at the weed, a pounding heartbeat sound filling her head.

The gas flow pressure drops once again. The Doctor tells Robson and the others about the heartbeat sound he and Jamie had heard in the impeller room, and Van Lutyens reminds them that this is what the control rig had reported. Robson points out that beneath the impeller shaft is a huge gasometer which acts as an echo chamber, and this is why the same sound can be heard here at the compound and out at sea on the rigs. He blames a mechanical fault, but the Doctor claims the sound is organic in origin. He insists they shut down the flow to investigate thoroughly but Robson once again refuses. Van Lutyens warns that his stubbornness could result in a gas explosion.

Jamie and Victoria, meanwhile, are chatting to Price, who handles communications. He explains to them the process connecting the compound with the rigs, showing them an illuminated plan.

Harris arrives back from his quarters and seeks out the Doctor, telling him of Maggie's illness.

Robson reluctantly allows the Doctor to go back with him - reminding him that they are still his prisoners.

Maggie receives a pair of visitors - technicians from the control centre named Oak and Quill. The latter is the man whom Victoria saw tamper with the oxygen tanks. The shorter, portly, Mr Oak speaks for the pair, claiming they have come to inspect an issue in the kitchen. 

Van Lutyens and the Chief decide that the latest blockage must involve the impeller itself. The gas flow is coming in from the rigs - but not transferring outwards to distribution centres beyond the compound.

They notify Robson, who orders only a release of gas to reduce the pressure build-up.

Oak and Quill are working in the kitchen. They have seaweed-like growths emerging from their collars and sleeves. They open the patio door and calmly observe the mass of foam and weed, which moves towards the house. They then go to Maggie's bedroom where she is sitting at her dressing table. Seeing them in the mirror, she demands to know what they are doing there. 

They open their blackened lips and emit a toxic gas which overpowers her.

Out on the beach, the gas release seems to have solved the immediate crisis - but the impeller still needs to be inspected. Price then reports that he is unable to contact Rig C.

The Doctor arrives at the Harris home, along with his companions, and they immediately smell the toxic gas. They find Maggie unconscious and smash the window to let the fumes escape.

The impeller is almost at a standstill, and the Chief thinks that it may be jammed at the base. It then stops, and he hears the heartbeat sound coming from the shaft.

The Doctor is told by Harris that his wife reported being stung earlier that morning, after finding a piece of seaweed in a folder. Victoria then spots a piece on the floor and the Doctor warns against anyone touching it. He suggests to Harris that someone must have placed the seaweed in the folder, intending himself to be the victim.

Jamie cannot see the threat from seaweed, after all the beach by the pipeline was full of it - a thought which alarms the Doctor.

Unable to get Robson to listen to his advice, Van Lutyens tries to get the Chief on his side. He is loyal to Robson, however, having worked with him for many years. They do agree that the impeller intake is the only place where something could get into the system unnoticed by CCTV.

They both hear the heartbeat sound, and the unnerved Chief decides to approach Robson with Van Lutyens' ideas after all - no longer able to dismiss the sound as mechanical.

They fetch Robson from his cabin but argue over what to do next - until all hear the sound again.

Van Lutyens warns "It's down there, in the pipeline, in the darkness, waiting...".

Data:

Written by Victor Pemberton

Recorded: Saturday 2nd March 1968 - Lime Grove Studio D

First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 23rd March 1968

Ratings: 7.9 million / AI 55

VFX: Peter Day

Designer: Peter Kindred

Director: Hugh David

Additional cast: John Gill (Mr Oak)

Critique:

The original draft for this episode seems to suggest that Oak and Quill (then named Swan) come from outside the compound.

Maggie asks her husband to fetch the Doctor to help her when she falls ill - puzzling Harris as to how she knew about him.

When everyone later arrived at her home they believed her to be dead.

The cliff-hanger was different - with Van Lutyens accusing Robson of being a murderer when they lose contact with the rigs, and he still refuses to turn off the gas flow.

One new character was omitted altogether - the Piston Engineer. His dialogue was given to the Chief.

Derrick Sherwin subsequently rewrote several dialogue scenes, mainly those involving Van Lutyens arguing with Robson and the Chief.

Only a small amount of filming was required for this instalment. This included more VFX shots of the seaweed and foam in the patio area.

For the sequence where the excess gas was released and burnt off, a section of pipeline was set up and filmed at Denham Airfield. This took place on Monday 12th February whilst close-up shots of various characters in the helicopter's cockpit were being recorded for later instalments.

John Gill, who joined the cast from Episode 2 as Mr Oak, was an old friend of the director and had appeared in several of his productions.

Sherwin was rewriting the instalment up to the day before recording, including reworking the scenes between Harris and the Doctor and the introduction of the sinister technicians.

The attack on Maggie was originally scripted to be on film. Gill and Bill Burridge chewed charcoal biscuits just before recording, to blacken their mouth and lips. The camera zoomed in on their open mouths and the director cross-faded between them and Maggie - the sequence ending with a fade into the burning gas shot filmed at Denham. 

Gill and Burridge also had latex fronds resembling seaweed attached to their arms.

Frazer Hines smashed a prop window with a chair, and the dialogue was amended on the day to make it clear that the toxic fumes were not the natural gas viewers would have in their home. It was also made clear that Maggie had survived the attack on her.

The opening credits began over a filmed reprise of the cliff-hanger to the previous week, whilst the closing credits rolled over a close-up of the impeller shaft window following Van Lutyens' ominous words.

Two of the episodes will end on pieces of dialogue rather than visual threats / incidents - pointing to the fact that Pemberton's script was geared more for radio, as Sherwin and David had complained.

When the censor clips were recovered from Australia towards the end of 1996, courtesy of fan Damian Shanahan, included were many scenes from episodes which no longer exist. All were welcomed, but one sequence in particular stood out amongst the drowning mad scientists, murderous pirates and rampaging Yeti.

It was the scene from this episode in which Mr Oak and Mr Quill attack Maggie Harris. It was there in the soundtrack and in the telesnaps, but no-one knew just how disturbingly creepy it looked. The fact that it's one of the longest censor clips shows just how frightening the Australian censors thought the whole thing.

It's partly the fact that the technicians remain silent and seemingly benign until they open their blackened lips and hiss out the toxic gas. Their comic appearance, based as they were on Laurel & Hardy, juxtaposes with the horrific nature of their attack - the victim an ordinary housewife sitting alone in her bedroom. The close-up on the cadaverous Mr Quill's face is particularly disturbing, and I'm sure viewers were freaked out by it at the time.

This will prove to be a rare example of an "Everybody Lives" story, but the audience weren't to know that on 23rd March 1968.

Interestingly, the fan produced publication An Adventure in Space and Time, which looked at each story of the 1960's in turn, does not single out this scene in its two page review (Issue 049). It does mention that victims of the weed can exhale toxic gas from their mouths - but not this sequence in particular. Considering that reviews were mainly written by people who recalled seeing the episodes on broadcast, it's surprising that it didn't stand out in the memory more.

Apart from this sequence, it continues to be a slow build, relying on atmosphere and developing the mystery. Other than the wriggling seaweed there's still no real hint as to the nature of the threat (the expected monster). Perhaps there are too many scenes of men arguing in rooms about the same thing over and over again at present, even if they are well acted - another pointer to Pemberton's background in radio drama.

Trivia:

• The ratings begin their slide this week, though the appreciation figure remains constant.
• Competition on ITV was very mixed, with different shows in just about every region. These included cartoons and several reruns of old adventure serials, some dating back to the 1950's.
• John Gill appeared in the 1963 film This Sporting Life - which also had in its cast William Hartnell, giving a performance which would help win him the role of the Doctor.
• Later in life Gill worked with director Roman Polanski, appearing in both Tess and Pirates.
• Radio Times published a small photograph of guest artist Victor Maddern, as Robson, to accompany the listing for this episode:

Story 312: Joy to the World

In which the Doctor travels through history to deliver a ham and cheese toastie and a pumpkin latte - including the 1953 Everest Expedition, the Orient Express in 1926 and an elderly couple in war torn Manchester. No-one he approaches is the right person, however.

Meanwhile, a young woman named Joy Almondo arrives at the Sandringham Hotel in London, asking receptionist Anita for a room for the week. It is Christmas 2024. Joy notices a locked door in her room, and assumes that most hotel rooms have one of these. It opens and a Silurian in a business suit emerges, with a briefcase chained to his wrist.

The Doctor then appears with his drink and snack...

London in the year 4202, and the TARDIS materialises in the Time Hotel so that the Doctor can get some milk. He is challenged by employee Trev Simpkins after spotting a man approach the reception desk and request a room on the third floor. He has a briefcase chained to his wrist.

The hotel allows guests to visit any period in Earth's history.

The Doctor tells Trev that he is suspicious about the briefcase man as he hasn't reacted at all to anything going on around him - despite guests dressed in various historical costumes.

The Doctor has deduced that the reason hotels always have a locked door in each room is because it links to this place. He leads Trev to believe that he is a special investigator, and co-opts him onto his mission.

The man with the briefcase, meanwhile, has gone into the bar. Approaching the barman, his eyes glow and he makes a cryptic comment: "The star seed will bloom and the flesh will rise".

He passes the case to the barman, whose eyes react in the same way - the chain transferring itself to the new carrier by itself. The first man becomes confused, as though freed of some hypnotic influence. The barman tells him not to worry as he will be dead soon. He now repeats the cryptic phrase.

The barman goes outside and meets Trev, and the case is then passed on to him. The original man dies - his body disintegrating -  and then the barman perishes in the same manner.

Trev approaches the manager of the hotel, Melnak, who is a Silurian. He is looking for someone who has access to all the rooms and their various time portals. Stating the cryptic phrase, Trev passes on the briefcase to Melnak then disintegrates.

The Doctor, who had ordered a ham and cheese toastie and pumpkin latte for lunch, follows Melnak - and this is how he comes to find himself in the Sandringham Hotel facing Joy and a Silurian...

Anita walks into the room, and is surprised to see the group - though not unduly so, considering one of them is a reptile man. The Doctor attempts to question Melnak, but he will only say that if the Doctor takes the briefcase then he will learn what he wants to know.

Fed up with everyone ignoring her, Joy grabs the case - and it transfers itself to her. She now states the phrase about the star seed. 

The Doctor tries to save Melnak - hearing of how he found himself in the far future after stumbling across a doorway in a cave - but the Silurian dies like the others.

The Doctor decides to open the case, and sees inside an orb emitting an intense light. An automated message warns them to close the case within 20 seconds or its current holder will be disintegrated. The Doctor notes that Joy appears not to be too troubled about dying.

They then get a second announcement that a four digit code must be entered within the next 15 seconds or the same fate will befall Joy. The Doctor claims that he cannot use the TARDIS again as it will split the causal nexus but before they run out of time a second version of the Doctor rushes in and tells them the code - 7214. The second Doctor - who hails from the future - leads Joy away into the Time Hotel, leaving the original in 2024. 

He is told that he will have to get to his future the long way round - by spending the next year here until he can complete the time loop.

With nowhere to go, the Doctor asks Anita for a room for 12 months. As he cannot pay for it, he agrees to work at the Sandringham.

As the months go by, he and Anita become good friends. She has developed a crush on him even though she knows he cannot reciprocate. Soon Christmas comes round again and the Doctor must depart. 

The loop is completed and it is he who now turns up and takes Joy to the Time Hotel.

He tells her that he has had the time to work out what the star seed might be, and why its owners need the Time Hotel. Joy is compelled by the briefcase to find a particular door, leading to a specific time zone. The Doctor tells her that the star seed is just that - a single atom which will detonate to create a sun. Someone wishes to harness the energy of a star by creating one of their own, but to do this they need to begin the process in the distant past so that it is ready for them to exploit in the future. This can only be some very large and powerful business.

The Doctor learns that Joy has been depressed following the death of her mother at Christmas during the COVID-19 pandemic, unable to visit the hospital and say goodbye - which is why she almost allowed herself to be killed by the case.

Such strong emotions allow her to free herself from the case.

The Doctor wants answers and takes Joy and the case into a room which appears to lead to a treetop lodge, overlooking a jungle environment. He opens the case and triggers an information interface. All the carriers have had their consciousness uploaded to it, and a hologram of Melnak appears to answer their questions.

The corporation behind the star seed proves to be Villengard, the weapons manufacturers. The Doctor realises that it would take some 65 million years for the star to be ready to exploit - and they are suddenly attacked by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It swallows the case.

Trev then appears in hologram form, able to communicate with the Doctor through a psychic graft implant. He tells him that the star seed is about to detonate and must be taken off-world. 

He and Joy go to another room in which there is an ancient temple. The star seed has now found its way here The Doctor realises that he will have to use the TARDIS to throw the device into space, and so visits some of the other time zones to get equipment he can use - such as ropes from the Everest campsite. This he feeds through the Orient Express to link the case to his TARDIS.

By the time he is ready and gets back to the temple, he finds the briefcase empty.

Joy is outside, her body beginning to glow as she has absorbed the star seed into herself, along with the consciousnesses of all the people who carried it.

She reveals that she will not die - merely change - and that Villengard will not be able to get what they want. She soars into the sky and a new star is born. This is witnessed by people throughout history, including Anita and Ruby Sunday. Anita is then surprised to be approached by someone from the Time Hotel, offering her a new job.

Joy's mother also sees it from her hospital bed, before she too is absorbed into the star as she dies.

The Doctor then travels back over 2000 years to see the star shining in the sky above the city of Bethlehem...

Joy to the World was written by Steven Moffat, and first broadcast on Wednesday 25th December 2024. Festive Specials were always the work of the current showrunner, but in this case Russell T Davies was too busy writing the next series. Moffat had returned to the series to write Boom, and was approached to help with the Christmas episode.

Moffat claimed that one of his inspirations was the fact that most hotel rooms had a locked door in them. (Not in any I've ever stayed in, but then I'm more of a B&B person myself).

I'll state it now, right at the start, that this is probably my least favourite festive special. Even Chibnall gave us Daleks at New Year, but this story makes the unpardonable sin of being really rather dull.

It looks good, and is full of Moffat's clever-clever touches and timey-wimey stuff, but it's totally lacking in incident. It's noticeable that the clip used to plug it was the sequence with the dinosaur attack - and that's about the only exciting thing that happens in the entire episode.

Something which I really don't like is schmaltz, and this has it in abundance. I know it's Christmas, and non-fans are watching postprandial, but the ending to this is so saccharine I'm surprised dentists and diet-planners weren't inundated with new patients and customers straight after the hols. 

Bringing the biblical nativity story into it really was the waffer-thin mint for me.

The episode takes ages to get started and another of the issues with it is that extended sojourn at the hotel with Anita. As well as taking up a huge chunk of the running time, as though there wasn't actually enough plot for an hour long special, it made no sense. The Doctor has UNIT and lots of companions kicking around in 2024. His previous incarnation might still be hanging out at Donna Noble-Temple's house. Why not go spend the time with any of them? The idea that he honestly has nowhere to go in contemporary London for an entire year is a nonsense.

The main guest artist is Nicola Coughlan, of Derry Girls and Bridgerton fame. She plays Joy Almondo - that surname being Italian for "in the Earth" or "in the world". She also played Queen Victoria as a bit of a spoiled brat in CBBC's Dodger, which had starred Christopher Eccleston as Fagin and Billy Jenkins as the titular character.

Melnak is played by Jonathan Aris, who is best known for playing Anderson in Sherlock, but who has also featured in the Moffat / Gatiss Dracula and Good Omens. He also makes an appearance in Rogue One.

Playing Anita is Steph de Whalley, who had mostly worked in theatre up to this point. We'll see her again.

From Game of Thrones and a number of comedy shows (Plebs, Twenty Twelve, W1A and Trollied) we also have Joel Fry, who plays Trev.

Millie Gibson gets a brief cameo at the end, as Ruby Sunday.

See below for some other incidental characters.

Overall, more a Hallmark Christmas themed TV movie with sci-fi trappings than an episode of Doctor Who. 14 months after the event I still have no urge to watch this again.

Things you might like to know:

• The working title for this episode came from a song - "Christmas, Everywhere, All At Once".
• When he wrote this, Moffat hadn't read the Series 14 finale - but had already read the Series 15 one...
• One of the doors in the Time Hotel appears to belong to the Hobbits from the Lord of the Rings movies.
• Another cultural reference is the Hotel's clothes store, which supplies the guests with suitable historical outfits. It's called "Mr Benn's". The cartoon series Mr Benn (1970 - 71) featured a character who visited a fancy dress shop and ended up in whatever era matched the outfit he selected. The mysterious shopkeeper wore a fez. The Loch Ness Monster one was my favourite instalment.
• And Benn is Anita's surname.
• The Hotel bar is called DeTamble's - from the novel The Time Travellers Wife, which Moffat adapted, not terribly successfully, for the screen.
• A woman on the Orient Express is named Sylvia Trench (Niamh Marie Smith). That's the name of James Bond's lady friend in the films Dr No and From Russia With Love, played by Eunice Gayson.
• The 1953 Everest Expedition is the one which first reached the summit of the world's highest mountain, on 29th May of that year - the news getting back to Britain in time for the Coronation. Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay appear in these sequences - played by Phil Baxter and Samuel Sherpa-Moore respectively. The latter is actually the great-great-grand-nephew of Tenzing Norgay.
• Another of the Time Hotel doors is said to lead to the Fall of Troy, which would have been interesting to see as the First Doctor was there (The Myth Makers).
• You can also visit the Gunfight at the OK Corral (The Gunfighters) and the destruction of Pompeii (The Fires of Pompeii) - so lots of opportunities for the Doctor to meet an earlier incarnation.
• Guests can also take a trip with Nostalgia Tours (Delta and the Bannermen).
• That whole hotel interlude was a late addition as the script progressed. The Doctor was originally to have globe-trotted for the year - cut for budget reasons. The character of Anita was expanded from less than a dozen lines on the strength of Steph de Whalley's audition.

Inspirations: Heaven Sent

Heaven Sent was written both as a showcase for the talents of Peter Capaldi as an actor, and as a challenge to himself by Steven Moffat. He claimed it was the hardest thing he had ever written up to this point. The aim was to show the Doctor in isolation - what he does when he has no-one with him.

No-one to save or protect - or to show off to. Just his own survival.

The castle represented his grief over losing Clara in the previous episode. This proves to be a construct within his own Confession Dial - a device introduced at the start of the series in The Magician's Apprentice. 

Moffat realised that the series had seldom succeeded in presenting grief in a realistic manner. This was especially true in the case of Katrina, Sara Kingdom and Adric in the classic era. The Doctor and fellow companions tended to carry on as though nothing had happened in the very next story.

Nyssa gets over her father's death all too quickly as well - failing to react the way you would expect anytime she meets the Master who has stolen his corpse for a body.

Moffat admitted that he hadn't really managed to handle grief himself in his own series. Amy and Rory have effectively lost decades of their daughter's life when they discover she's River Song, and the Doctor soon forgets about them once the Impossible Girl shows up.

The notion of an individual being repeatedly teleported was one which Moffat had entertained for years, and even considered using for a Big Finish story. He reasoned that if you were continually teleported in this way, you could exist for as long as that technology functioned. 

Star Trek has had characters living well into the future after being saved in the transporter Pattern Buffer (such as Scotty in the ST:TNG episode "Relics"), and ST: Strange New Worlds had Dr M'Benga's daughter saved in a transporter buffer until he could find a cure for her terminal medical condition in its first season.

And Doctor Who had already used a similar idea - in a Moffat story - when Donna and others were "saved" by the Library mainframe in Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead.

For the monster, Moffat elected to make this something that the Doctor would be genuinely frightened of, and so made it a childhood nightmare. That it derives from his time on Gallifrey also helps to hint at the conclusion to the episode, where we discover the truth about the castle and who has been responsible for his incarceration.

The Doctor refers to the Brothers Grimm - Jacob (1785 - 1863) and Wilhelm (1786 - 1859) - the German folklorists and collectors of fairy tales. Their 1812 collection Kinder - und Hausmarchen (Children and Household Tales) included The Shepherd Boy.

When the Doctor sends the boy to tell the High Council he's back, he says he "came the long way round" - as the Eleventh stated he would get home in The Day of the Doctor.

After always claiming he had left his home planet due to boredom (The War Games onwards), the Doctor now confesses that he ran away as he was scared.

Next time: From one of the very best episodes ever, to one of the very worst IMHO. It's The Twin Dilemma following The Caves of Androzani all over again. Nice TARDIS though...