Story 248 - The Caretaker

 

In which Clara is introduced to the new temporary janitor of Coal Hill School - and discovers that it is the Doctor...

They have been travelling together a lot recently, and she is finding it hard to juggle life with the Doctor against her career and blossoming romance with fellow teacher Danny Pink. So far she has been able to keep her other life secret from him, whilst the Doctor has yet to meet Danny. She knows that he dislikes soldiers, and Danny once served in the army.

The Doctor is working undercover at the school after identifying an alien presence in the area.

A police officer, CSO Matthews, is investigating a derelict building nearby where truanting pupils from the school hang out. He encounters a robotic creature which kills him.

The Doctor goes round the school, concealing small electronic devices as he goes. His behaviour attracts the attention of Danny, as well as a pupil named Courtney Woods. The latter has a reputation as being one of the more disruptive pupils at the school.

Knowing that Clara is going out with a fellow teacher, the Doctor attempts to work out which one. He spots a young man named Adrian who sports a bow-tie, and automatically assumes that he is Clara's boyfriend - she finding him attractive due to his similarity to his previous incarnation.

When he meets Danny he is not so impressed, assuming that he must be a PE teacher if he once served in the army.

The suspicious Danny removes one of the electronic devices which the Doctor had been placing around the school. That evening as he is about to go home he witnesses the arrival of a squat, heavily armed robot in the school hall. The Doctor had lured it here from the derelict building. He activates his devices - chronodyne generators - which should safely project the robot through a vortex into the far future. However, Danny's tampering means that it only vanishes a short distance into the future. It will reappear in the same vicinity in a couple of days.

Danny now learns all about the Doctor and about Clara's travels with him.

The Doctor must devise a new plan, as the robot - a Skovox Blitzer - will be forewarned to look for traps. It had come to Earth, and this specific location, due to the heavy concentration of artron energy to be found here - the result of frequent TARDIS visits.

The Doctor will hide himself using an invisibility device, fitted into a wrist watch. He also builds a portable device which should deactivate the Blitzer.

Clara has Danny use the invisibility shield whilst she attempts to talk to the Doctor about him. However, the Doctor detects his presence. He is annoyed when Danny points out that the Doctor acts like a soldier himself and his attitude towards humans is like an officer to their men.

The Blitzer reappears on the evening of the school Parents Evening. The Doctor manages to confine it to the hall where Danny saves Clara when she comes under attack. The Doctor pretends to be the robot's commanding officer, fooling it into shutting itself down.

Danny works out that the Doctor will remain belligerent towards him until he can prove that he is worthy of being Clara's boyfriend.

The Doctor later takes the Blitzer into deep space in the TARDIS, where it can be dumped. He allows Courtney to accompany him, but she proves to be prone to travel sickness.

Officer Matthews, who had earlier been killed by the Blitzer, suddenly finds himself in a long white corridor flanked with doors, where a young man named Seb confirms to him that he was killed and this is the afterlife - also known as the Promised Land or the Nethersphere. They see a woman dressed in Edwardian garb emerge from one of the doors - the woman who had previously welcomed the Half-Face Man and the soldiers killed inside Rusty the Dalek to a beautiful house and garden...

The Caretaker was written by Gareth Roberts, and was first broadcast on Saturday 27th August, 2014.

Roberts had previously written a story in which the Doctor had to spend time living as an ordinary person sharing a flat, including having a job. He followed this with a sequel in which the Doctor also had to hold down a job. Here he follows things up with a story in which the Doctor has to hold down another job. It was starting to look as if Roberts only had one big idea, which he just reused with different trappings. (His previous trick had been to write stories around a famous literary figure, then pepper the script with references to their works).

Roberts also worked a lot on The Sarah Jane Adventures (the Trickster stories / ones with Sarah Jane Smith" in the title). he hasn't contributed to the series since The Caretaker, and is unlikely to do so owing to a controversy over comments he made which were deemed transphobic.

As with his previous stories, having the Doctor in unusual situations allows for a lot of humour. The episode also serves to bring about the meeting between the Doctor and Danny Pink (Samuel Anderson). Danny was introduced in Deep Breath and has featured briefly in subsequent episodes. In Listen Anderson plays both Danny and his descendant Orson. The two halves of Clara's life had been kept separate up to now, but here the school setting allows the two worlds to collide.

Unlike Rory Williams, the last companion's companion, Danny maintains his distance from the Doctor and never becomes a TARDIS traveller.

Another character from Deep Breath who makes a return here is schoolgirl Courtney, who is played by Ellis George. Then she had merely featured in a brief flashback sequence, but now she is being set up for a more substantial role to play in Kill The Moon.

Once again Michelle Gomez's Missy makes an appearance, as does her assistant Seb (Chris Addison who had been Peter Capaldi's co-star in The Thick Of It).

The Coal Hill School headmaster is Mr Armitage, who is played by Nigel Betts. He features elsewhere in the series, before transferring over to the spin-off series Class.

Teacher Adrian is Edward Harrison. Andy Gillies plays the policeman.

The Skovox Blitzer is operated by Jimmy Vee, who had been working on the series since the very first day of recording on Series 1, when he had played the Space Pig on Christopher Eccleston's first scenes as the Doctor. He had since played Slitheen and the Moxx of Balhoon, as well as chatting up Kylie Minogue.

We learn a little more about the domain where Missy is to be found. It is a version of heaven, that goes by various names such as Nethersphere.

Overall, a fun way of setting up some serious things like the tensions of the Doctor-Clara-Danny triangle.

Things you might like to know:

• There is a montage sequence at the start of the episode, used to illustrate the double life of Clara. We see her and the Doctor chained up on some desert planet threatened by sand piranhas, and them being chased by unknown soldiers who are firing at them. The Doctor offers to take Clara to see some fish people -which might well be a reference to the Fish people who appeared in The Underwater Menace, back in 1967.
• Three previous stories have seen the TARDIS materialise in the Coal Hill district, hence the raised artron energy levels - An Unearthly Child, Attack of the Cybermen and Remembrance of the Daleks. This will be used as the starting point for spin-off series Class, where we learn that all this activity has actually damaged local space / time.
• A previous headmaster thought that the Seventh Doctor was applying to be caretaker of Coal Hill School (Remembrance of the Daleks).
• The Doctor rudely claims that ex-army people can't teach something like maths - conveniently forgetting that this was the subject taught by the Brigadier in Mawdryn Undead.
• The Doctor and Clara argue about the writing of Pride and Prejudice - 1796 or 1797. Jane Austen wrote the novel between October 1796 and August 1797. Jenna Coleman had earlier featured in a TV adaptation of Death Comes to Pemberly - a modern sequel to Austen's work.
• As well as the Coal Hill School setting, a reference to the early days of the series is a banner proclaiming "A Spirit Of Adventure". This refers to the First Doctor's description of their travels to Ian and Barbara as "a great spirit of adventure" since they left Totters' Lane.
• Most of an academic year must have passed since Deep Breath. Then, Danny was new to the school but in this Courtney's dad refers to them talking about his daughter "last year".
• Peter Capaldi hadn't been cast when Roberts began writing this episode. Steven Moffat advised he should write for "early Tom Baker".
• At one point the Doctor whistles the opening bars of Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall, a song which deals with teachers and education.