Brief synopses issued today for the final two episodes of Series 11, plus news about the festive story.
Episode 9 is called It Takes You Away, and it is set in present day Norway. The Doctor and her companions come across a boarded-up cottage in the woods by a fjord, and encounter a girl named Hanne who needs their help. There is reference to a monster lurking in the forest.
Norse mythology has lots of monsters which this story might choose to play with - having already done so with stories like Terminus, The Curse of Fenric and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. The other obvious local monsters are Trolls. The writer is Ed Hime, and Kevin Eldon is among the guest cast. He's best known for comedic roles.
The final episode of the season is called The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos, and it is written by Chibnall, as you would expect. Ranskoor Av Kolos is a planet where a terrible battle has been fought. There is mention of a commander who has lost his memory (probably Mark Addy's character). The Doctor and companions receive 9 separate distress calls to come to this place (something from each of the 9 preceding episodes perchance?). Mention is made of something lying beyond the mists, and the TARDIS crew facing a "deadly reckoning". I would hazard a guess that this might relate to the loss of Grace, so the Stenza may feature. We know that they were responsible for Desolation and the invasion of Angstrom's planet, and there is a theory doing the rounds that it was they who destroyed the Thijarians' homeworld as well.
The big news about this year's Christmas Special is that there is no Christmas Special...
Doctor Who will be shown on the evening of New Year's Day instead. Last year, Steven Moffat had intended to end the 12th Doctor's run with The Doctor Falls - expecting Chibnall to want to launch his new Doctor in a Christmas Special. When Chibnall said no, Moffat hurriedly changed the ending to the Series 10 finale and then wrote Twice Upon A Time - just so that the programme would not lose the prestigious Christmas Day slot. His efforts seem to have been wasted, as Chibnall appears to have just given it away. It is claimed that the BBC are saying they (i.e. the writers, i.e. Chibnall) have run out of Christmas themes to exploit. That may well be the case, but who says the episode has to have Christmas themes? A story only has to be set at Christmas. It doesn't have to have killer trees or robot Santas. Many are saying that this latest change shows that the BBC no longer see the programme as the flagship which it once was.
This change was predicted by one of the UK's tabloid newspapers weeks ago. The same story also claimed that there would not be a full series in 2019, so here's hoping they were only half right...
I'm looking forward to seeing how they tie it all together.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I've seen noted is that Graham has twice now talked to others about why people might want to keep secrets (in both the Pting and Partition episodes), and that this might indicate he's keeping a secret of his own.
In light of the good medical once-over he had at the start of The Ghost Monument, a latent health problem might have continuity problems. But I'm still thinking something might be going wrong for Graham.
I read the other day that Bradley Walsh has signed up to do a chat show, on top of his commitment to The Chase. The latter has already posed problems for him filming Doctor Who, so doing both probably means he won't be able to take part in another series. This might just mean that he leaves in Ep. 10, or at New Year. Perhaps his cancer is no longer in remission?
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