Series 12 - The Trailer

First of all, Happy Doctor Who Day. I've been watching the series since the tail end of the 1960's, and I didn't even know that was a thing, but have a happy one anyway.
Today we finally got to see a proper glimpse of the forthcoming series - glimpse being the operative word as what we have is a rather frantically paced trailer. If previous series are anything to go by, several of these clips will have come from the same few stories, usually from the start of the run.
We have had confirmation of the return of the Cybermen, redesigned once again (see above for the only shot we had of them). The participation of Stephen Fry had been confirmed a couple of days ago - along with the involvement of Lenny Henry, and both feature in the trailer. Both may well be appearing in the same story, which I suspect will be the one which debuts on New Year's Day. This is the epic James Bond-ish one (TARDIS crew in tuxedos, etc).

Two other guest artists were announced yesterday, and one of them - Goran Visnjic - was spotted in the trailer, in a story which appears to have a 19th Century setting. Might this be the Mary Shelley one that's been rumoured? (Update: no it isn't. Having rewatched the trailer the costumes are too late, and I'm hearing that Visnjic might be playing Nikola Tesla). I didn't spot Robert Glenister (making a return to the show after appearing in The Caves of Androzani).
There was one clip of a Judoon, and the 1943 Occupied Paris story was also confirmed - so we definitely have two stories with historical settings.
A few new monsters were to be seen - including something that looked a bit like the Racnoss Queen, something which is able to break into the TARDIS, a giant scorpion-like creature, and a flock of black bird-like things which can swarm out of nowhere. (Update: the Racnoss-like creature is more scorpion-like, and it's Anjli Mohindra - Rani from SJA. So this is from the possible Tesla story).
Dialogue-wise, the significant thing seems to be the Doctor fearing that something is coming after her.
A word of caution: some previous trailers have included scenes which never actually made it into the broadcast episodes.
So, what do we think? Well, I was totally underwhelmed by the advance publicity for Series 11. The trailer told us they had been abroad, and had some fancy new cameras, but little else. We then got a trailer of sorts at the end of the first episode which laboured under the delusion that we might be interested in seeing the guest artists who would be appearing - many of whom we'd never heard of. There was no sense of adventure. Nothing to excite. I remember saying at the time: why can't we have some spaceships and explosions? This trailer does make Series 12 look exciting, with proper jeopardy. And there's spaceships and explosions! The general public might actually be interested to watch this - something which Series 11 publicity failed to do. The aliens look like they might be the point of the story, not just window dressing. Hopefully things might actually be a little darker as well.
We've had a look at what Series 12 might look like, and who will be appearing in it, now we just have to see what the calibre of the storytelling is going to be - and for that we have to wait until early next year. I'm a bit more excited to find out.