Russell T Davies had read up on Madame de Pompadour when he was preparing Casanova, and thought she would make a great guest character in a Celebrity-Historical Doctor Who story. This idea went to Steven Moffat.
The main source material for her life came from the biography written by Nancy Mitford, first published in 1954, and republished in paperback in 1995.
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson was born in December 1721. Her father was forced to flee France when she was four years old, following a scandal over unpaid debts. Her legal guardian became a man named Le Normant de Tournehem, who may well have been her biological father.
Between 5 and 9 she attended a convent school and it was after leaving this that her mother took her to a fortune teller who predicted that she would reign over the heart of a king. This led to her nickname of Reinette - little queen.
She excelled in art, literature, gardening and many other interests, and was reputedly able to memorise entire plays.
Aged 19 she married the nephew of her guardian, and four years later she became mistress to King Louis XV. She had for some time been frequenting the Paris salons, and so came within the sphere of Versailles. She and Louis met on 25th February 1744 at a masque ball, at which the King was dressed as a Yew Tree. She was Diana the Huntress.
Within a month she was established as the King's official mistress.
In 1755 she was able to influence the French court to make peaceful overtures to their old enemy Austria.
Suffering from poor health for several years, she contracted TB and died in 1764, aged 42.
Taking the character of Reinette, Moffat added elements such as the Clockwork Droids, which were inspired by the Mechanical Turk. This chess-playing clockwork automaton was constructed around 1770. It was demonstrated all over Europe and the Americas until 1854 when it was destroyed by a fire. Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin were among those whom it beat at chess.
It was later revealed to have been an elaborate hoax, having someone hidden inside the base of the machine.
The hidden accomplice could not see what his opponents' moves were, but the board was magnetic, and he could see the moves that were being made from metal pieces on its underside.
Despite its dubious background, the Turk actually led to the creation of the power loom, by Edmund Cartwright, who was inspired by its supposed mechanics. Its creator - Wolfgang Von Kempelen - wrote a book on speaking machines, inspiring Alexander Graham Bell to patent the first telephone.
The Turk has also inspired a number of horror and science-fiction tales - such as Edgar Allan Poe's Von Kempelen And His Discovery, and Ambrose Bierce's Moxon's Master.
Moffat's other big inspiration is something about which he seems particularly obsessed - The Time Travellers Wife. In May 2022 HBO screened his adaptation of Audrey Niffenneger's 2003 novel. It was previously filmed in 2009. Moffat's version has not been widely applauded. 37% on Rotten Tomatoes, and 44% on Metacritic. What people dislike about it is the very thing which attracts Moffat - the timey-wimeyness. There's clever-clever, and there's clever-smarta**e, and this is definitely clever-smarta**e.
Niffenegger heard later that Doctor Who had featured an episode based on her work, and she liked it when she saw it - so much so that she has her main characters watching it on TV in a later novel (Her Fearful Symmetry).
Moffat would later take the concept and use it again to create River Song.
The spaceship is shaped like a key, suggestive of the access points into the various stages of Reinette's life.
The revolving fireplace was a real thing - used by the wife of one of Louis' courtiers to meet her lover.
When the Doctor says that he is the thing monsters have nightmares about, this is taken from Paul Cornell's Virgin New Adventures novel Love and War. And Lance Parkin's The Dying Days. And Moffat's own short story Continuity Errors.
"I could have danced all night", sung by the Doctor, comes from the musical My Fair Lady.
The Doctor is looking for is zeus plugs. They were one of the items which the Doctor used to repair the TARDIS in The Hand of Fear when Sarah Jane Smith had to leave.
Being John Malkovitch (Spike Jonze, 1999) also has someone following the life of the titular actor waiting for him to reach a particular age.
Moffat himself described this episode as "Tom's Midnight Garden... with sex".
There is no mention of "Torchwood" in this episode - because Moffat claimed he was never asked to include it.
Next time: Parallel Earth. Parallel Cybermen. How to bring back a classic monster, without bringing back a classic monster...
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