Inspirations: A Good Man Goes To War

By splitting Series 6 in two, Steven Moffat was afforded the opportunity of having two season finales in the one year. A Good Man Goes To War marks the end of the first half, so it partially ties up some of the story arc strands, but also sets up a cliff-hanger to bring viewers back for the second half.

The mystery of the astronaut and the Doctor's apparent death on the shores of Lake Silencio will have to wait until later, but Moffat decides that it is finally time to reveal just who River Song is - something which has been left dangling since Series 4 when she was first introduced.

The episode also has to act as the resolution to the cliff-hanger from the previous story, when we learned that Amy had been abducted at some point and replaced with a Flesh avatar.

The Flesh carries on over to this story as we see that the baby is another copy.

The rapidity of Amy's pregnancy was originally going to be due to some form of temporal compression, but then Moffat hit on the idea of her having been kidnapped and replaced.

As the first married couple in the TARDIS, them having a child seemed the next logical step.

For villains, the mysterious "Eye-Patch Lady" had already been threaded through the season, and Moffat looked to his Series 5 episode Time of the Angels for the Headless Monks.

The museum in which the Byzantium's flight recorder had been found belonged to them.

Warrior Monks were inspired by the time of the Crusades, such as the Knights of St John and the Templars, and soldier-clerics had already been introduced in the same story.

The Monks would be like an elite force, above and beyond the Clerics.

To show that the stakes had been raised, and the Doctor would do anything to get Amy back, he would be seen to call in favours from a diverse range of friends.

Sadly, this group would comprise characters we had never seen the Doctor meet before. There had been some thoughts as to having Captain Jack feature, however.

Neve McIntosh had already played two Silurians in Series 5's The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood, so agreed to return as another of the same genetic clan.

Sontarans were single-minded soldiers, and the idea of one being a nurse was simply a jokey thing to do. Moffat claimed he always found them comical. Strax actually originated as another Sontaran - Skorm - in an unused Series 5 script by Gareth Roberts ("Death to the Doctor").

Dorium had already been seen briefly, with River Song, in The Pandorica Opens.

Giving each of the characters an introductory scene allowed for a bit of variety - with a fog-bound Victorian London and an alien battle zone.

The opening section also, memorably, features a cameo by the Cybermen. Their appearance shows that there are Cybus design Cybermen in our universe, as they do not have the "C" logo on their chests.

They are seen to have spaceships of the design first seen in The Invasion, as we also saw in The Pandorica Opens.

The Doctor's army features a lot of Silurians, though we don't know if they've been taken out of hibernation, come from prehistoric times, or originate from a future time when they co-exist with humans.

There is also a Platoon of Judoon - first seen in Smith and Jones.

Demon's Run comes under attack by a space-going spitfire - from Victory of the Daleks - and from earlier this series we have Captain Avery and his son Toby from Curse of the Black Spot.

In his script, Moffat described the interior of Demon's Run as being a combination of M*A*S*H and Battlestar Galactica.

Originally a 1970 movie by Robert Altman starring Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould, M*A*S*H was developed into a hugely popular and long-running TV series (1972 - 83). It revolved around a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War.

It was the 2004 reimagining of Battlestar Galactica which Moffat was thinking of, rather than the original 1978 TV series by Glen A Larson.

We get to see a bit more of the Maldovarium, which was inspired by Rick's Bar in Casablanca (1942).

Next time: a provocative title. No-one actually kills Hitler, but we do get to see Rory punch him in the face...