The main inspiration for this two-parter was the inclusion of ghosts as the monster.
Doctor Who had always steered clear of the supernatural, even when it borrowed many of the visual and aural trappings. If we look at The Daemons, the story which is the closest the programme had come to traditional supernatural horror, you'll note that the Doctor explains - more than once - that it is really alien science which people are observing or experiencing.
This had always been the position taken by the series. It may look supernatural, but it's really all down to some scientific advance which the human race hasn't reached yet. (We're reminded of Clarke's Law - "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic").
Toby Whithouse had been contributing to the programme since Series 2, and was again approached to write for the latest season. He believed he would be asked for a single episode instalment and was offered a couple of scenarios to pick from, one of which was the ghosts idea.
He wanted to write a story which made full use of the dramatic opportunities afforded by time travel, and enjoyed the "timey-wimey" set-ups which Moffat often employed.
By combining the two in a single story, he realised that this would allow someone to actually meet their own ghost.
For the backdrop, it was decided to go for the traditional "base under siege" scenario, which was introduced in The Tenth Planet and proved so popular that it was frequently used throughout the Troughton era. Something of a cliché, it was seldom used in the revived series.
Another story idea Whithouse had been considering for some time was that of an alien infection, passed on through a spoken phrase and acting like a curse.
This was then added to the new storyline, and when considering the base which had to be besieged, a moonbase, a space station or an underwater complex were the options. Whithouse went for an underwater setting as this hadn't been used anything like as much as the other two locations.
An unused plot from one of his Being Human series involved a ghost hunter who captured entities in a Faraday Cage, so this was utilised here instead.
Michael Faraday had come up with this concept in 1836 - a framework or mesh which blocked electromagnetic fields.
For the underwater base (the Drum) sequences Whithouse claimed to have been inspired by the original Alien movie (1979) and John Carpenter's The Thing (1982).
The setting used for much of the second episode - the abandoned military training ground - was selected to provide a contrast with the claustrophobic, high-tech Drum.
This was inspired by the setting for 1989's The Curse of Fenric.
The cliffhanger appearance of the Doctor's ghost at the window of the Drum was inspired by Salem's Lot, the 1980's TV adaptation of Stephen King's vampire novel of 1975. The scene in question is when Danny Glick appears at the window of Mark Petrie, though Danny himself is visited by his vampirised younger brother in an earlier scene.
The 2014 sci-fi film Under the Skin was another inspiration for this sequence, as it features bodies floating slowly in darkness.
For the main alien villain of the piece, Whithouse elected to call it the Fisher King - a character from Arthurian legend. As he weakened, so too did his kingdom, as though they were psychically linked.
Looking for a planet which the Fisher King could have dominated, the obvious choice was Tivoli. The meekly acquiescing Tivolians had been created by the writer himself for The God Complex in Series 6. The new invaders who deposed the Fisher King were the Arcateenians, created by Whithouse for Torchwood's Greeks Bearing Gifts.
Whilst doing research into time travel theories, Whithouse came upon the Bootstrap Paradox a term coined by Robert A Heinlein in his 1941 short story By His Bootstraps. In this a student is encouraged by his future self to become a world leader, who has to do this in order for it to come to pass.
The Doctor uses the writing of Beethoven's 5th Symphony as his example of the paradox. This was composed between 1804 and 1808, when it was first performed. The Tenth Doctor, in The Lazarus Experiment, had stated that Beethoven had taught him how to play the organ.
The Doctor also plays on his guitar the theme tune to the world's longest running science-fiction TV series at one point, composed in 1963 by Ron Grainer and realised by Delia Derbyshire of the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop...
As the alien infection was passed orally, Whithouse needed someone who could communicate in sign language so that one of the group would remain unaffected, and this led to the inclusion of a deaf character. Whithouse recalled a writers workshop he had once attended in which it was stated that not enough disabled characters were being utilised in TV drama.
For a time, the working title for this story was "Ghost in the Machine".
Next time: Odin't it be nice to see a story in which the Doctor and Clara get Mired down in a conflict between aliens and Vikings...?
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