But not The Woman Who Lived...
Steven Moffat said that he was going to change the way viewers thought about two-parters this series, and here we have an example of what he was talking about. Many see this and the following episode as two halves of a single storyline - how Ashildr becomes immortal and what happens when the Doctor has to then confront the consequences of his actions in making her so.
However, the actual narratives within each episode - the background / plot - have absolutely nothing to do with each other, and the Doctor could have had his follow-up meeting with her - now known as Lady Me - at any point later in the series. Indeed, I said in my review at the time that this might have been preferable. There's no reason whatsoever to follow up on her in the very next episode.
There is also the obvious fact that both of these episodes are written by different people.
This is why I'm going to look at the two separately.
Jamie Mathieson had come up with a number of story ideas - but unfortunately every one of them was already an idea being developed by someone else this year. He was therefore given the starting point of "the Doctor meets Vikings" by Moffat.
His first idea began with the Doctor and Clara already captured by Vikings after a school trip to the island of Lindisfarne, off the Northumbrian coast. With them would be a number of other woman taken from the island. The Valkyrie would descend - female warriors on winged horses - and take all the women on Odin's orders. At the floating city of Valhalla, the female captives - who included Ashildr - would be forced to fight gladiatorial combats. In this version it was women whom the aliens wanted, as part of a breeding experiment to create a hybrid species.
The Doctor captured one of the Valkyrie and discovered that they used alien tech. Odin retaliated by sending the Leviathan to attack the Viking village. Part of the Doctor's plan to defeat the aliens was to tamper with one of the Valkyrie helmets.
Only one or two of these ideas / images would make it through to the episode as broadcast.
Leviathan became the wooden dragon used to frighten the Mire, and the tampering with the helmet is what helps feed the Doctor's imagery through the aliens' psychic link and is manipulated by Ashildr - leading to her death.
Moffat liked the notion that the Doctor had to train a second-class band of Vikings to become an effective defensive force. In this he was inspired by Dad's Army - the much-loved BBC sit-com about the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard, broadcast between 1968 - 1977. This even led to a working title of "The All Father's Army" - 'All-father' deriving from Norse mythology, another name for their supreme god.
The Doctor would also have to furnish his Viking band with weapons derived from the only available resources and technology - an idea exemplified by US action series such as The A-Team and MacGyver.
Another very obvious inspiration is The Magnificent Seven (1960), which was a Western version of 1954's Seven Samurai. In these a small group of ill-prepared locals have to defend their community against a larger, more organised force, making use of the advice and support of outsiders.
Moffat was quick to point out that he knew that Vikings did not go around in horned helmets all the time. Horned, or winged, helmets were worn only on ceremonial occasions - but were popularised in the 19th Century through productions of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen.
However, he thought that the general viewing public would expect to see them and they were a good visual shorthand for "Viking".
The Mire were originally intended to be humanoid in appearance, wearing helmets akin to the famous Sutton Hoo one. At one point Vikings were to have been inspired to add horns to their helmets because the Mire wore them on theirs.
Vikings had appeared in the series once before - in The Time Meddler - and John Lucarotti had attempted to contribute another story involving Eric the Red's discovery of the Americas. The Vanir in Terminus are based around Norse mythology, which also feeds into The Curse of Fenric and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. A later working title for this episode would be "Ragnarok".
Odin was the All-father, or king of the Norse pantheon. He is generally depicted as an older, bearded man with only one eye - having sacrificed the other in order to drink from the Well of Mimir, which gave him great wisdom.
The role, here played by David Schofield, was originally intended for Brian Blessed, who had played the blustering King Yrcanos in Mindwarp, but he had to drop out after taking ill.
This episode takes the time to explain why the Doctor looks exactly like someone he met in a previous incarnation - namely the Pompeiian marble merchant Caecilius. In The Fires of Pompeii, the Doctor had been convinced by Donna Noble to save Caecilius and his family, and here he realises having his features is a sign that he is expected to save others. The Doctor had questioned the familiarity of his new appearance in Deep Breath.
The Doctor demonstrates his skill in communicating with babies once again, having been seen in A Good Man Goes To War and Closing Time.
He is also seen playing with a yo-yo, a toy he has used since The Ark in Space, often for the serious purpose of judging local gravity.
In one of the drafts of this episode, the Doctor was to have taken Ashildr's body to the Sisterhood of Karn to be saved using the Elixir of Life - first introduced in The Brain of Morbius.
At one point the Doctor talks of how he could "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow" - the classic Third Doctor line only ever spoken in full in The Sea Devils, with a later cameo by Pertwee in The Five Doctors. However here the Doctor claims not to know what it actually means.
The Doctor also refers to his 2000 Year Diary. He was earlier seen to have a 500 Year version from The Power of the Daleks onwards.
Next time: a quick jaunt through European medieval and early-modern history, and the Doctor is forced to stand and deliver...
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