Inspirations: Dark Water / Death in Heaven

Dark Water / Death in Heaven formed the two-part finale to Peter Capaldi's first season, and reintroduced the Master in a new incarnation.

Interestingly, RTD had first retooled the Daleks when he took over, then the Cybermen and then the Master over the course of time - and now Moffat has done the same during his few series in charge: the New Paradigm Daleks in Series 5, the "Iron Man" Cybermen in Series 7, and now a female Master in Series 8.

Those new Cybermen also appear in this. This makes it the fifth time they've turned up in the penultimate episode of a series.

The episode begins with a bit of a shock as semi-regular Danny Pink is killed in a road traffic accident. Clara wants the Doctor to intervene and save him - something which takes us right back to the origins of the series. In The Aztecs, the Doctor tells Barbara that they cannot change history - "not one line!". He doesn't elaborate on why this should be, but does state "believe me, I know" - suggesting he has tried and failed to change something himself, or it is something which was explained to him back on his home planet. There appears to be some sort of law, but whether it is natural or manufactured and imposed isn't explained.

When we get to The Reign of Terror just a couple of months later, we learn that it does indeed seem to be some natural force - as though "Time" itself can intervene. There's talk of how trying to shoot Napoleon would inevitably see every attempt fail. This, of course, contradicts The Aztecs, where the Doctor fears that Barbara really could alter history.

When it comes to the deaths of Katarina and Sara Kingdom, the idea of using the TARDIS to somehow save them isn't even considered.

The next companion death isn't until Adric's in Earthshock and here the Doctor specifically states that he cannot (or will not) change what has happened. (Might just be he's glad to see the back of him, mind you...). Tegan and Nyssa ask him to intervene, and he angrily tells them never to ask him to do anything like that again.

The "deaths" of Amy and Rory are different. Here they have gone back in time and died natural deaths, and there's some business about the TARDIS being unable to visit New York due to all the temporal paradoxes. (What was to stop the Doctor simply landing somewhere else that year and fetching them back by train, car, steamship etc is never explained).

In this story, Clara tries blackmailing the Doctor into changing Danny's fate, and he refuses - though only to see how far she will go to force him. He doesn't try using the TARDIS to go back and stop Danny being run over, however. Instead he decides to use Clara's link to the telepathic circuits to bring the ship to where he now is, which he believes is the Afterlife. 

Which is a long-winded way of getting us to the first big inspiration on show - the myth of Orpheus in the Underworld. Greek myths had formed the basis of Doctor Who stories in the past - especially if Anthony Read was involved. He had script-edited Underworld and written The Horns of Nimon. A Gorgon had also featured in The Mind Robber, as had a Minotaur - creatures which have popped up a few times in the series over the years.

Musician Orpheus is wed to Eurydice, a wood nymph, and one day she is bitten by a viper and dies. He uses his skills to charm Cerberus to get into the Underworld to find her and bring her back. Hades allows this - on the condition that he does not look back but trusts her to follow him. He can't resist a peek just as they are about to leave the domain, and so he loses her forever.

Here, Clara fulfils the Orpheus role - going in search of her lost love. As with the Greek myth, they are reunited only for her to ultimately lose him - Danny electing to free another "soul" from the Afterlife in his place. This is a boy whom he inadvertently killed whilst on active service, and it has been hinted throughout the series that he was suffering from some form of PTSD relating to is time in the army.

It turns out that the Afterlife isn't any sort of spiritual domain, but an artificial one - Gallifreyan technology based on the Matrix (first introduced in The Deadly Assassin, in which the villain is also the Master in a new form). 

Many fans guessed the identity of the mysterious woman who had been turning up throughout the series. Moffat was originally going to call her Misty.

A potential deflection was naming the founder of the 3W institute Dr Skarosa (suggesting a Dalek connection)

Moffat claimed that he had always wanted to write a Cyberman story (the previous ones during his tenure having been written by Gareth Roberts and Neil Gaiman) as they were his favourite monsters.

The image of the Cybermen in their tanks derived from memories of them in their niches on Telos in The Tomb of the Cybermen. 

He wanted a big cinematic story, so a series finale was the obvious choice. He also recognised the fact that these tended to be weak in the second half following a great opener and so decided that the cliff-hanger should see the story go off in a new direction (even though this was often the reason for the failings in the past).

Michelle Gomez had been offered the role of Miss Delphox in Time Heist but had been unavailable, but expressed an interest should anything else come up. Moffat saw the opportunity of matching the Glaswegian Doctor with a Glaswegian Master too good to miss, but elected to do something different with his arch-enemy. He claimed to have struggled to write for a female Master, until Gomez was cast.

It had already been suggested in dialogue that Time Lords could change gender (e.g. the Corsair in The Doctor's Wife) so the Master became the Mistress, or Missy for short.

Doctor Who references abound. 

The main one is the nod to the classic story The Invasion, in which UNIT had battled the Cybermen, with iconic scenes filmed next to St Paul's Cathedral. Kate Stewart even produces a damaged Cyberman helmet from this story.

The institute's name - 3W - might just possibly be a nod to The Wheel in Space, another Cyberman story. The Wheel's call sign begins W3. No? Attentive viewers would have recognised 3W's overlapping big circle / small circle motif as a Cyberman's teardrop eye design. This was first introduced in The Wheel in Space.

We learn that Missy was the woman who gave Clara the Doctor's phone number way back in The Bells of St John.

Clara's birthday is given as 23rd November - the series anniversary.

She has post-it notes on her fridge with "Blinovitch" (which would have referred back to Kill The Moon as Courtney was originally going to be the future Mrs Blinovitch), "Psi", "Vastra", "Saibra", "Robin Hood" and "Dinosaur in London" - all references to Series 8 episodes.

She also has the Hyperspace Body Swap ticket - which had featured in the Doctor Who Prom in 2013.

Pretending to be the Doctor, Clara claims to have been married four times. This would be to River Song, Elizabeth I, Marylin Monroe, and to the grandmother of Susan. (Missy sings "Happy Birthday, Mr President" in the same manner in which Monroe sang to JFK).

The funeral parlour where Danny's body lies is called Chaplet's - as in the surname of the First Doctor's companion Dodo.

Missy gives the co-ordinates of Gallifrey as first stated in Pyramids of Mars (10-0-11-00 by 02, in the constellation of Kasterborous).

Other references include the Cyberman attack on the UNIT aircraft, which comes from the classic 1963 Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet".

The Cybermen emerging from their graves was a direct nod to George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968).

Missy descends from the sky holding a parasol - as in Disney's Mary Poppins (1964), and her dress mirrors the magical nanny's.

Missy calls out "Bring out your dead" - which was the cry heard around the streets of London during the Plague of 1665.

Colonel Ahmed and Osgood discuss the similarity of the Valiant to Cloudbase, which featured in Gerry Anderson's Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, and mention how this is sometimes confused with Thunderbirds.

Next time: The Thing meets Alien meets Miracle on 34th Street meets Santa Claus Conquers the Martians...

Inspirations: In The Forest Of The Night

Writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce had been a fan of Doctor Who for many years, his favourite era being that of the Third Doctor when accompanied by Jo Grant. He liked Earthbound stories where familiar surroundings were invaded by some alien presence.

He once worked with Russell T Davies and had spent some years writing for UK soaps, but his big break came when he was chosen to write the opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympic Games. Davies recommended him to Steven Moffat and he was asked to submit a story idea for Series 8.

He looked back to the Pertwee era and decided that his episode would see London invaded, but in an unusual way. He opted to have it overrun by trees, as these could neither be dealt with through technology or through negotiation. They were simply wood, which even the sonic screwdriver had no effect on.

The Doctor would be placed in an almost impossible situation as to how to resolve the crisis.

A father of seven and a writer of children's books as well as TV scripts, Cottrell-Boyce decided that kids would play a prominent part - feeling he knew their language well.

A school-trip sleepover seemed like a good starting point.

He also began looking at the forest in fairy tales, where it is often a scary place wherein wolves and witches lurk. Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood, for instance, see children threatened in seemingly idyllic forest settings.

(Note how Maebh wears a red coat with a hood).

On waking, Clara initially thinks that the group must have been asleep for 100 years, just like in the original Sleeping Beauty tale La Belle Au Bois Dormant.

The principal child character - Maebh Arden - derives her surname from the Forest of Arden in Warwickshire, close to Shakespeare's home and an inspiration for some of his works such as A Midsummer Night's Dream and the actual setting for As You Like It.

Her first name is Irish, deriving from an ancient warrior queen named Medb. It can mean "she who rules" or "she who intoxicates", as it is related to the word mead - the drink enjoyed by the Doctor in The Time Meddler.

Schoolgirl Ruby was named thus as she was the person who spotted the bright red tree-ring in the museum, alerting the Doctor to the fact that this had happened before.

The episode title comes from William Blakes's 1794 poem The Tyger. The opening lines are "Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night..." - an allusion to the animal's fiery orange coat.

It was only natural that Cottrell-Boyce would then place a tiger in his narrative. With London overrun by trees the cages of the zoo at Regents Park might well have been breached, allowing the animals to escape.

The school sleep-over takes place at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, and at one point we see Danny, Clara and the children passing a stuffed tiger. Early drafts used the Science Museum as the opening setting.

The other main location is Trafalgar Square, as Nelson's Column provided a tall landmark for characters to aim for and it is regarded as a central point for the city - as well as being useful shorthand for London. The Column rising above the trees reminds us of an image Bob Baker & Dave Martin wished to include in The Sontaran Experiment - itself inspired by astronaut Taylor's finding of the Statue of Liberty at the conclusion of The Planet of the Apes (1968).

At one point the script was going to have Maebh pass on to the Doctor a message from the Here - the little light creatures. This was "You are not alone" - signposting the imminent return of the Master in another incarnation, having first been spoken by the Face of Boe in New Earth.

Moffat decided the reference was too obvious and dropped it. We do see the mysterious woman who has been popping up all series once again - watching the solar flare being deflected by the forests on her tablet.

Next time: UNIT and Cybermen at St Paul's Cathedral - but it's not The Invasion. And yes, the Doctor will discover, once again, that he is not alone...

Inspirations: Flatline

As mentioned last time, this was the first story to be written by Jamie Mathieson, although screened second of his back-to-back episodes. It was because Flatline was developing so nicely that he was then offered the chance to write a story involving a Mummy on the Orient Express - in space.

Going right back to the earliest days of Doctor Who, it had been intended that there would be three types of story - historical, futuristic / alien, and alternate states - of being, of matter or of dimension.

Flatline could be said to be a descendent of the latter type - a story form which was never properly explored. Only The Edge of Destruction, Planet of Giants and The Space Museum could really be said to have gone there, with The Celestial Toymaker and The Mind Robber following along later.

Mathieson had come to meet Steven Moffat prepared with a number of ideas, after a previous approach had not led to anything. He had run these ideas past Toby Hadoke to confirm that they hadn't featured in the series before. Moffat selected the 2-D monster notion as this fitted with his liking of making the safe and mundane feel dangerous for children - the monster might be in your bedroom wall.

It was initially intended that the Boneless would gain 3-Dimensionality by enveloping their victims.

A number of inspirations were cited by Mathieson, including a well known painting, a TV programme, a children's book and a Victorian satire.

The painting was the 1533 double portrait known as The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger, which hangs in the National Gallery in London. This features what at first appears to be a long grey / white streak across the bottom - but when viewed from a particular angle proves to be the image of a skull. This is a process known as anamorphosis, and it is believed that rather than view from the side, a reflective glass tube was originally employed.

The TV programme is Sapphire & Steel - specifically "Adventure 4", the one with the being who appears in every photograph ever taken and who has the power to turn people 2-D.

The children's book is Flat Stanley, written by Jeff Brown and published in 1964. Stanley gets squashed flat by a falling board but is otherwise unharmed, and decides to exploit his new 2-D existence. He can slide under doors, be used as a kite, and go on holiday by posting himself. He gets fed up eventually and a bicycle pump returns him to normal, though a further series of books followed several years later.

The Victorian satire is the 1884 novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, written by Edwin A Abbott. The book was intended to satirise class and gender distinctions in Victorian society.

One further inspiration was the Looney Tunes Roadrunner cartoons. In these, the Roadrunner and / or Wile E. Coyote could paint 2-D images which then took on substance, or vice versa - the most famous example being the tunnel painted on a rockface which the Roadrunner can run through, whereas Wile slams into it, or a truck or train emerges and runs him over.

Visually, the Boneless were said to resemble portraits by artist Francis Bacon after taking on 3-D form - as in having nightmarish, misshapen features.

The inclusion of a graffiti artist was due to the growing fame of Banksy, the anonymous street artist whose works command huge prices - so much so that people have actually damaged people's homes to remove pieces from their walls. 

He is a native of Bristol, where this episode is set, and the city was where his work first began appearing.

Rigsy fulfils the Companion role in the episode, as the Doctor is stranded in the TARDIS, forcing Clara to take on his role.

The image of the Doctor's hand emerging from the shrunken TARDIS to move it out of danger was a deliberate nod to "Thing", the disembodied hand in The Addams Family.

The Doctor's iconic speech about being "the man who stops the monsters" was inspired by Babylon 5. Captain Sheridan ends the Shadow War by basically kicking both they and the Vorlons out of this universe in the episode "Into The Fire".

The Doctor was trapped inside a shrinking TARDIS on one other occasion in the past - after the Master's meddling on the planet Logopolis.

2-D images coming to life had previously been seen in 2006's Fear Her.

In terms of this year's story arc, Clara is lying to the Doctor about Danny being happy with her continuing to travel with him, and the inclusion of a cameo by Missy was a late addition, with her commenting that with Clara she had chosen well...

Next time: Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright...

Inspirations: Mummy on the Orient Express

This story had its origins in a seemingly throwaway line in the closing seconds of The Big Bang, the Series 5 finale. The Doctor took a phone call from someone asking him to help out with "an Egyptian goddess loose on the Orient Express - in space".

Writer Jamie Mathieson was already working on his Flatline submission when the title of this episode was handed to him, so impressed was Steven Moffat with the way the other script was developing. Mathieson had contributed to supernatural series Being Human and Dirk Gently.

The title is obviously a play on the Agatha Christie classic Murder on the Orient Express, published in 1933. It was filmed in 1974 with an all-star cast, including Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot. David Suchet gave his (definitive) version of the Belgian detective in a 2010 ITV adaptation, and Kenneth Brannagh has since also featured as Poirot in a 2017 movie adaptation.

Christie also gave us the idea that this space-going Orient Express was visiting the Seven Wonders of the Galaxy, lifted from Death on the Nile. The same idea had previously been used in the 2000AD comic in 1980.

Mathieson was initially concerned that the Mummy was not as versatile a creature as the vampire or werewolf, both of which could hide in plain sight. He worried how something like a Mummy could stay hidden in such an enclosed space as a train - so came up with the idea that it only became visible to its victims just before it killed them.

Initially the Mummy's wrapping were to have had a life of their own, able to sneak under doors etc, and the victims would be mummified themselves.

At one stage it was also envisaged that the Mummy would teleport onto the train in order to kill, residing in a stone tomb the rest of the time, and Clara and Maisie would be transported there for a time instead of being stuck in the baggage car.

(This scene is a prime example of the Bechdel Test in which, in fiction, two women can't hold a conversation without talking about men - the narrative defining them by their relationship to men).

Not quite as popular as vampires or wolfmen, there have been a number of stories and movies about the creatures over the years. The best known cinematic appearances are the Universal and Hammer ones. The first of these - 1932's The Mummy, starring Boris Karloff - isn't actually connected to the subsequent 1940's four film cycle, though they used footage from it for their flashback sequences. Hammer also delivered four Mummy movies, starting with the 1959 film starring Lee and Cushing, and ending with Blood From the Mummy's Tomb in 1971, an adaptation of Bram Stoker's Jewel of the Seven Stars.

The biggest Mummy movies were those starring Brendan Fraser, the first of which was released in 1999. The least said about the execrable Tom Cruise film, the better. It effectively derailed the whole "Universal Dark Universe" franchise before it had really gotten off the ground.

A couple of other early literary works include The Mummy: A Tale of the Twenty Second Century, by Jane Webb (1827), and The Beetle by Richard Marsh (1897).

It was decided that this episode would be double-banked with Mathieson's other story - making it more sense to have the same writer for both - and this meant that Clara had to take more of a back seat here, since Flatline confined Peter Capaldi to the TARDIS and left Jenna Coleman with the lion's share of the plot.

The casting of pop star Foxes came about after she participated in a BBC Showcase event in Liverpool, which Moffat had attended.

Frank Skinner had watched Doctor Who since the very first episode and was a DWM subscriber. He had already featured on a Big Finish audio, and mentioned a desire to appear in the series during several TV interviews.

The first victim, Mrs Pitt, is played by Janet Henfrey - the latest actor to have featured in both the classic series and its revival, having played Miss Hardaker in The Curse of Fenric. Former Doctor Who costume designer June Hudson was also in the running for this part).

Christopher Villiers was another returnee, having played Sir Hugh in The King's Demons.

The Doctor cracks the "Are you my mummy?" joke (The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances) for the second time - having earlier used it to confront gas-masked UNIT soldiers in The Poison Sky.

Among the other Seven Wonders were the Diamond Falls - a reference to Midnight.

Next time: the Doctor's experiencing reduced circumstances so Clara has to play detective to get to the bottom of things, before the situation flattens out completely. Luckily Banksy isn't the only street artist active in Bristol...

Inspirations: Kill The Moon

"As far as the science goes, that's not something I worry about"... So said Peter Harness of his first submission for Series 8, and never were truer words ever spoken as far as Doctor Who is concerned - at least not until RTD2 returned.

The main inspiration for this story was Moffat's idea of a situation which would see Clara's relationship with the new Doctor challenged, such that she would come to question if she really wanted to be around him. Harness had contributed a story titled "When We Weren't There", but when this was rejected it was he who came up with the absurd notion that the Moon was really a gigantic egg that was about to hatch.

After broadcast, many thought this episode an allegory about abortion, but Harness denied that this was thought of at the time. He said that if he wanted to write about that subject then he would have covered it as a proper contemporary drama.

The story was originally planned for Matt Smith's Doctor, with the then intended companion being a Victorian governess. She would be accompanied by one of her young charges - which is why we have Courtney from Coal Hill School instead.

It was intended from the start to begin as a base-under-siege horror story, and the writer was concerned it might be too scary for a family audience - but Moffat advised him to "Hinchcliffe" it to the maximum.

The Philip Hinchcliffe era is characterised for its Gothic horror trappings, thanks in part to the script editorship of Robert Holmes.

Giant spiders were chosen as the monster as so many people are arachnophobes. 

The episode would then concentrate more on the relationship between the Doctor and Clara. Moffat wanted this to be damaged by events, with no reconciliation between the pair at the conclusion.

At a crucial point in the narrative, the Doctor was to abandon Clara to make a decision on her own. Harness and Moffat were considering the more alien natures of the First and Fourth Doctors - the two they felt often exhibited the least empathy with human beings. The First took a very long time to warm to Ian and Barbara, and often insisted on getting back to the TARDIS and leaving others to sort out their own problems, and the Fourth could also act this way - such as when he insisted that the Antarctic base personnel carried out the surgery needed to save their colleague from becoming a Krynoid in The Seeds of Doom - "You must help yourselves".

At one point in this story the Doctor states that Earth isn't his home - just as he had told Sarah in The Pyramids of Mars.

The Blinovitch Limitation Effect (introduced by Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks in the era of the Third Doctor to get round potential temporal paradoxes) was going to be a big element of the story originally. Courtney was to have changed her ways following the events on the Moon and would go on to marry the scientist Blinovitch, after first meeting her future self. The future Mrs Blinovitch would cause Courtney to become the future Mrs Blinovitch.

On deciding to film the Moon surface material in the volcanic landscape of Lanzarote, a draft title of "Return to Sarn" was concocted, making fans think this a sequel to Planet of Fire, which had also been filmed there.

The story is set in the year 2049. It had to be before the year 2070 so that Courtney could become the first female to set foot on the Moon - as Polly was there in 2070 in The Moonbase.

This episode means that all of the lunar-set stories like that and The Seeds of Death have to now be set on the new Moon left behind at the conclusion of this story.

In that Ice Warrior story, the human race had virtually given up on space travel - which is what is also happening here - though it's generally accepted that the events of The Seeds of Death come later than those of The Moonbase.

The Doctor gives Courtney one of his rules as "no hanky-panky in the TARDIS" - a phrase often used by producer JNT regarding the younger Fifth Doctor travelling with two young women (Tegan and Nyssa).

Peter Capaldi asked for a yo-yo identical to the one Tom Baker had used - such as when he tested the gravity in The Ark in Space. (His daughter's boyfriend showed him how to use it).

The Doctor spots a primitive Bennett Oscillator - first mentioned in that same Tom Baker story, named after its director Rodney Bennett.

The Doctor got his Sanctuary Base 6 spacesuit in The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit, but it is never explained where he got another pair of identical suits - considering that the base was subsequently sucked into a Black Hole.

Next time: Agatha Christie meets Hammer Horror, in a story which has its origins in a throwaway line from The Big Bang...

Inspirations: The Caretaker

Writer Gareth Roberts tended to be a two-trick pony when it came to his stories for Doctor Who. His first contributions revolved around a famous literary figure and peppered the dialogue with references to their work. 

His other gimmick was to have the Doctor placed into what was for him an unfamiliar domestic setting to see how he would cope. First he used an old DWM comic strip idea and had the Doctor forced to share a flat with someone in The Lodger. In this the Doctor also temporarily held down a job - covering for Craig Owens when he fell ill. Then he gave us a sequel to that story - Closing Time - but concentrated more on the Doctor-gets-a-job angle by having him gain a position at a department store.

Here, he gives us another Doctor-gets-a-job scenario, but this time it's complicated by being at the same place where his companion works - Coal Hill School - and she's started a romance with a colleague there.

The Doctor has gone undercover in a school once before, in order to investigate alien activity, in 2006's School Reunion.

Coal Hill School was the second location seen in the series back on 23rd November 1963, in An Unearthly Child. It was where the Doctor's granddaughter Susan was a pupil, who aroused the curiosity of teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright.

(An earlier idea for the very first story would have been set entirely within the school, with the Doctor and companions shrunk to an inch in height).

Coal Hill School later became a base of operations for the Imperial faction of Daleks as they sought the Hand of Omega, in Remembrance of the Daleks. (The Doctor was mistaken for a potential caretaker in that story).

Missing two years of work did not seen to harm Ian's job prospects as by 2013 he was Chairman of the Board of Governors of the school, as we see in The Day of the Doctor. This was also when we learned that Clara Oswald was now working there as a teacher.

Following Series 9, the school would actually form the principal location for an entire spin-off series - Class. The Twelfth Doctor made an appearance in the opening episode, and it was explained that all that time travel activity back in 1963 had created a weak point in space and time, a bit like the Cardiff Rift, that allowed alien menaces to slip through. By this time the Board of Governors were actually villains, so presumably Ian had by now retired. 

The events of Attack of the Cybermen in the district had added to this phenomenon.

Series 8 features a few visits to the school, but only this episode really concentrates on it. Danny Pink was first introduced in Into The Dalek, and developed as a semi-regular character designed to highlight the conflicting pressures on Clara - a stable home life with a partner, as opposed to the excitement and danger of travelling in the TARDIS with the Doctor.

She attempted to keep these two lives separate - especially when she learned that the Doctor hated soldiers (Danny being ex-army). The Caretaker sees the Doctor and he finding out the truth about each other.

A whole year has passed since the Dalek episode, as Danny was new to the school then, but a parent talks of him here as having been in post since the previous year.

Another significant character in this episode is Courtney Woods, a disruptive schoolgirl first introduced in a flashback sequence in Deep Breath, where she was seen to be the bane of Clara's professional life.

She is there mainly for some comic relief scenes with the Doctor.

When the Doctor discovers from her that that Clara has a boyfriend amongst the teachers, he automatically assumes it is Adrian, the one who wears a bow tie - as his previous incarnation was wont to do.

We also get another appearance by the strange woman seemingly welcoming the recently deceased into some sort of Afterlife - in this instance a policeman who has been killed by the Skovox Blitzer.

The design of this robot was based on Babyface, from Toy Story (1995). This had the head of a doll on a spider-like mechanical body.

The Doctor is heard to whistle part of the Pink Floyd song Another Brick in the Wall (1979), its lyrics tying in with the school setting -  "We don't need no education... / Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone..." etc.

The Doctor and Clara argue over the dating of Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice. They are both right as she wrote it over the course of 1796 - 1797. (Coincidentally, Jenna Coleman would be seen on TV a few days after this was broadcast in an adaptation of Death Comes To Pemberley - a sequel to Austin's book).

The Head of the school was going to be female - a Miss Coburn, named after Anthony Coburn who wrote the episode which introduced the location. It was then decided to reuse the character already seen in Into The Dalek, Mr Armitage.

At one point the Doctor offers to take Clara to see some Fish People - potentially the Atlanteans ones from The Underwater Menace.

He also offers to take her to the 1814 Frost Fair on the Thames. We'll see him get there in Thin Ice, but River Song had also mentioned being taken to it by the Eleventh Doctor, where she got to see Stevie Wonder perform.

The Doctor had previously assumed the job - and title - of Caretaker in The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe.

Next time: David Niven named his 1971 memoir The Moon's A Balloon. He was wrong. It's an egg...

Inspirations: Time Heist

This one is relatively straightforward. The writer, Steve Thompson, thought that a bank robbery involving time travel might make for a good storyline, and Steven Moffat agreed. It transpired that he had been thinking along the same lines, but was just waiting to develop the idea.

The heist would be made more complicated by the fact that, as well as the usual forms of security, this bank would employ telepaths who could detect guilty thoughts as soon as you walked through the door - so anyone planning to rob the place would be spotted immediately before they even had a chance to carry out any crime.

The telepaths idea would become a specific creature - the Teller - which not only detected guilt but could do something nasty about it. Thompson specifically wanted a real physical effects creature as he knew from previous stories he'd written that CGI used up too much of the budget.

Films and TV series about bank robberies have been around since the media were created, and have featured in many genres of story-telling. It's such an adaptable plot structure. A lot of Westerns revolve around bank or train robberies, as do comedies, science fiction films, and even swashbucklers like the Robin Hood movies that would see elaborate plans made to steal from the rich.

Indeed, quite often the robbers have been the heroes of the movie, despite engaging in criminal activity. Generally, in these cases, the people being robbed are usually presented as deserving to be robbed - either because they're so rich they won't miss it, or because they are even bigger criminals than our gang.

Classic heist movies are too many to mention, but a few I'd recommend are the original Oceans 11 (1960), where it's a luxury liner that's being targeted; The League of Gentlemen (also 1960) in which the gang are all British ex-servicemen who have fallen on hard times since leaving the army; The Killing (1956), in which it's a race track that is to be robbed, or The Italian Job (1969).

In terms of comedies, you can't do better than the Ealing movies The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955).

(Golden rule: always watch the originals, not the lacklustre remakes).

Often with these films, especially pre-1960's, it was felt that criminals shouldn't be seen to get away with it, no matter how personable they come across, so they can end up either with the heist going wrong or the gang members end up in handcuffs - assuming they don't wind up dead.

Another inspiration is the close cousin of the heist story - the con artist tale. The BBC TV series Hustle showed a loveable gang pull off seemingly impossible jobs - always against someone who thoroughly deserves it - and we have to wait to a flashback sequence at the end to see just how they managed it.

Time Heist has to see the Doctor and his gang commit their crime for a morally justifiable reason. They can't possibly be doing it for wealth, so it turns out to be a rescue mission - to save the Teller's mate as they're the last of their kind. Each of the gang members also has to be participating for some personal reason - Psi to get his memories back, Saibra to get a drug which will help with her condition.

In the initial drafts for the story, Saibra was going to be a half human / half Zygon, hence her ability to shape-shift.

The story is remembered for the cameo appearances of some old monsters, some of which are a little odd as choices. We know that the Sensorite society can produce wrong 'uns like the City Administrator, but you don't really think of them first when it comes to criminals. Weevils are savage creatures of pure instinct, so also not the obvious candidates for master criminals. Other characters include Captain John Hart, Androvax, a Terileptil, the Trickster, an Ice Warrior, Kahler-Tek and the Slitheen. It looks like they just picked a bunch of characters from random episodes across the parent series and its spin-offs, with no real thought as to their appropriateness. Oddest of all is Absalom Daak, who has only ever featured in comic book form - and he's a comic book character here as well. Couldn't they have got someone to dress up as him?

In order that the Doctor's gang can't be detected by the Teller, they employ Memory Worms to forget their ultimate intention. These were first introduced in The Snowmen.

Michelle Gomez was initially offered the role of Madame Karabraxos / Miss Delphox, but was unable to attend the audition, so asked Moffat to consider her for any other villainous roles...

Next time: First he gave you an episode in which the Doctor got a flat. Then he gave you a story in which the Doctor got a job. Now Gareth Roberts gives you a story in which the Doctor gets, er, a different job...

Inspirations: Listen

This story originated with a conversation between Steven Moffat and one of the producers, in which the writer said that he wanted to do something with sound effects, and the idea of a monster which you never actually got to see. He described the episode as a "chamber piece", with only a minimal guest cast, concentrating on character rather than spectacle.

Apart from the children's home supervisor, Reg, and little Rupert Pink, the episode is held together by only Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman and Samuel Anderson.

A chamber piece, using sound to its full advantage, and a monster you never get to see? Yes, this is Moffat's Midnight.

After the children's home section, it's the scenes on Orson's spaceship which mirror the earlier RTD story the most. We even have shots of the exterior in which we think that - just maybe - we glimpsed the monster.

After brief appearances, this episode also helps to establish Anderson / Danny Pink in his role as a series semi-regular, just like the various companion relatives / ex-boyfriends / fiancés who have populated the show since 2005.

As well as future time-traveller Orson Pink, we get the sequences between Clara and Danny in the restaurant.

A running theme through this season will be Clara's attempts to juggle her relationship with him and her TARDIS travels - which will lead to us learning that she is actually addicted to the latter, but wants the best of both worlds.

In the same way that Blink had originated in a story Moffat had contributed to a publication, so this owes its origins to Corner of the Eye, a short story he wrote for 2007 Doctor Who Storybook. In this the Tenth Doctor was involved with a creature known as a Floof, which was invisible and which latched onto individual and plagued their life.

Once again, Moffat wanted to play on things often associated with children's fears - especially the idea that there is something lurking under the bed. He had previously used this in The Girl and the Fireplace.

The TARDIS telepathic circuits come into play once again - first introduced in The Time Monster. Once a pair of discs on the console, they now take up a whole segment of the console and appear organic in nature. They can take the TARDIS to wherever, or whoever, the user is concentrating on - in this case a future relative of Danny's. He is stuck at the end of the Universe, and that's where the Doctor wants to go anyway as he believes that the ultimate in evolution should outlive every other creature, and he wants to see what it is like.

After the Doctor gets knocked out, the TARDIS takes Clara into his past - when he was an isolated child sleeping in a barn in outer Gallifrey. She then, inadvertently, becomes responsible for his own fear of the thing under the bed.

The barn is the one where the War Doctor took The Moment in The Day of the Doctor, and we get a glimpse of John Hurt from that story - thus explaining why he chose the location.

Commenting on the silence in Rupert's bedroom, the Doctor says "not a click nor a tick". He had previously used this term to describe the silent TARDIS in Death to the Daleks.

On waking up, the Doctor exclaims: "Sontarans! Perverting the course of human history!" - which is what the Fourth Doctor said moments after regenerating in Robot, and it refers to the events of The Time Warrior.

Putting the boy to sleep by simply touching his temples was a trick the Doctor first used in Survival.

Orson's spacesuit is specifically a Sanctuary Base 6 one, as it has the SB6 logo on it. The Doctor obtained one of these in The Impossible Planet.

Next time: Docs and Robbers...

Inspirations: Robot of Sherwood

The clue is in the title. There have been many, many adaptations of the Robin Hood story - either on the big screen or the small. 

According to Wikipedia, there are some 20 movies, not counting early silent shorts, and 10 TV series.

One of the best of the small screen versions was the HTV series Robin of Sherwood, which debuted in 1984. The first series starred Michael Praed as Robin. He was lured to Hollywood to appear in Dynasty and his character actually killed off, so a second Wolfshead was introduced for Series 2, played by Jason Connery. He played a different person altogether, named Robert rather than Robin, but the role was the same.

The mystical Herne the Hunter (John Abineri) was a significant character in the series, and early drafts of this Doctor Who story included him. We should also note that Season 22 of Doctor Who suffered badly against Robin of Sherwood.

The most famous screen version - and the one which influenced the writer the most - is undoubtedly 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn in the title role and with Basil Rathbone as the wicked Guy of Gisbourne, but other popular iterations include the 1955 TV series starring Richard Greene (in which The Daleks' Alan Wheatley played the Sheriff of Nottingham), BBC adaptations in 1975 and 2006, and more recent cinema outings starring Kevin Costner, Russell Crowe and Taron Egerton. Disney delivered an anthropomorphic animated version in 1973, with Robin as a fox, and Mel Brooks made his spoof version (Robin Hood: Men In Tights) in 1993 - as much a spoof of the Costner movie specifically as of the old legend.

In addition to films and series specifically about Robin, the character has also popped up in other guises, in other series, including an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The earliest British TV series about the outlaw of Sherwood Forest was another BBC adaptation. On screens in 1953, it starred future Second Doctor Patrick Troughton as Robin.

This, and the Errol Flynn iteration, can be seen in this Doctor Who episode when the Doctor accesses the robots' database.

Thanks to these many versions, a number of plot elements have become standardised across the majority of them - and some of these make it into Mark Gatiss' script. He has basically made this a bit of a Robin Hood Greatest Hits. A fight on a narrow bridge over a stream is usually between Robin and Little John, when they first meet each other. The Sheriff hosting an archery contest which Robin enters incognito is another staple of the legend.

The episode was going to end with the arrival of King Richard I. Sean Connery, who had played an older Robin in 1976's Robin and Marian, had a famous cameo as Richard in the Kevin Costner film.

Gatiss intended his episode as a more "frivolous" episode from the start, though not necessarily an outright comedy.

Robot of Sherwood sees Clara wishing to meet Robin, believing him to have been a real character, or at least based on an historical figure who held his same values of fighting oppression and robbing the rich to give to the poor. The Doctor, however, dismisses him as an entirely fictional character.

Robin does first appear in literature in the 1370's, featuring in the poem Piers Plowman, and an early 15th Century proverb mentions him in a way that suggests he was already a well-known figure in popular folklore.

The Doctor persists with his belief that Robin is not real, even after encountering him - Robin firing an arrow into the TARDIS. We previously saw an arrow embedded in the Police Box in Silver Nemesis and at the conclusion to The Shakespeare Code. This leads into the fight above the stream which is usually reserved for Little John in most versions.

The Doctor later believes the Merry Men to be androids or Auton replicas, and that this is all part of an amusement park - or they are trapped inside a Miniscope, as in Carnival of Monsters.

Only later does he find out that there are indeed robots about, but it's the villains who aren't all they seem.

The ending was changed significantly very late in the day due to current affairs. A pair of British hostages had been beheaded by the ISIS group shortly before broadcast and it was felt that it would be wrong to show a similar fate happening to the Sheriff, perhaps upsetting to relatives. The Sheriff was to have been shown having his head cut off by Robin - only to reveal that he was also a robot, but instead we simply get him falling into a vat of molten gold.

The script was one of three leaked prior to broadcast, as was a rough B&W copy which contained the deleted scenes.

The idea of including Robin Hood in Doctor Who goes right back to Season 16, as an abandoned Key to Time storyline by Ted Lewis ("The Shield of Zarak") might have seen the Doctor encounter Robin, only to discover that he was the exact opposite to his legend.

Next time: Listen up...

Inspirations: Into the Dalek

Into the Dalek is the second story to have as a major inspiration the 1966 sci-fi movie Fantastic Voyage. Back in Season 15 we saw the Doctor and Leela miniaturised (or clones of them at least) and injected into the real Doctor's body. This time, the Doctor and companion are miniaturised and injected into one of his deadliest foes.

In each instance - in the series as well as in the movie - it's all done for medical reasons.

As a Doctor Who story, the idea of the Doctor being shrunk and injected into a Dalek originated during the Matt Smith era - but not as a TV episode.

It was actually considered as a scenario for one of the computer games - The Adventure Games.

There were five of these, released between June and December 2010, and the first of them was a Dalek adventure ("City of the Daleks") written by Phil Ford - so it's no coincidence that he is the co-writer of this story. Presumably the idea was left on the back-burner for possible later development by Ford and Steven Moffat - one of those "too good to use here" ideas.

(Coincidentally, this is the first co-written story since The Waters of Mars - Phil Ford again).

Having the new Doctor meet the Daleks so soon into their tenure was thought by more than one critic as another sign that Moffat lacked confidence that the public would take to an older incarnation - following the telephone call from Eleven to Clara in the last episode.

The episode opens with the Doctor questioning if he is "a good man", which is a running theme through Capaldi's first series. He is trying to work out what sort of Doctor he is, after the revelations of the War Doctor and his new lease of life courtesy of the Time Lords.

He asks Clara, but the best person to really tell him is one of his oldest enemies, which is why we get the set up of the Doctor confronting one of the Daleks face to face.

This Dalek, nicknamed "Rusty" as it's battle-scarred, just happens to hate its own kind, so the Doctor needs to find out why - hence the whole shrinking / injection thing.

Before he gets to the mutant itself, the inside of the Dalek has lots of dangers - mainly in the form of "antibodies" - exactly like we saw in both Fantastic Voyage and The Invisible Enemy.

Along the way the issue of what Daleks eat - if they eat at all - is covered. This has been one of those things which fans with no life have sometimes discussed.

Problem is we don't really get an answer. If it's just people who have been miniaturised and injected into them being killed by antibodies then they can't feed very often.

But the confrontation with the mutant is the key to the episode. The Doctor wants to know if he's a good man, and he's confronted by a seemingly good Dalek - but we learn that it isn't really that good (it's been poisoned by leaking radiation, and believes it's on the side of right as it has seen the Doctor crusade against it's own kind). It's all about comparing him to it. Which of them is really, genuinely, the good person?

The 2005 episode Dalek obviously comes into play, as once again the Doctor is told by one of the creatures that he is just like it in a lot of ways.

There are other similarities in the way the Doctor is presented with a captured Dalek and has to argue / reason with it and is told an inconvenient truth that they aren't all that far apart.

We also see the Dalek free itself and go on a rampage, though here it kills other Daleks as well as humans.

We actually see a clip from Dalek during the confrontation, as well as the climax to Journey's End (where the meta-crisis Doctor appears to commit genocide against the Daleks).

The Doctor also refers to his very first encounter with them on Skaro in The Daleks.

Apparently an initial draft saw Rusty self destruct after being captured by the other Daleks, wiping them out along with their spaceship. It was decided to reprieve him for possible re-use later - which is exactly what happened.

The other thing which runs through this first Capaldi season is his dislike of the military - ramped up from the more minor irritation he expresses in earlier incarnations, usually with UNIT in its pre-Kate Stewart version.

Here he saves soldier Journey Blue and seemingly gets on okay with her - only for him to refuse point blank to consider her for a companion-type role come the conclusion.

The anti-military thing is set up because Clara now has a boyfriend who used to be a soldier - another story arc for the season.

We again see the mysterious woman in Edwardian dress, welcoming a fatality of the story into some sort of afterlife.

Next time: never meet your heroes?

Inspirations: Deep Breath

Deep Breath's principal role is to introduce a new Doctor. Peter Capaldi's Twelft Doctor had actually been glimpsed earlier - when his "attack eyebrows" were seen as the various Doctors saved Gallifrey from the Daleks. We had also seen the actor in the series prior to this, as he was the second person to have been cast as Doctor despite appearing in another role - Colin Baker as Commander Maxil being the first.

Fans have often speculated about the latter, whilst JNT and Eric Saward simply glossed over the fact that the actor was being recast as the Sixth Doctor.

Fandom theories ranged from Time Lords only having a limited number of faces to call upon when regenerating, to the trauma of being shot by Maxil somehow influencing the Doctor's next regeneration.

Steven Moffat decides to make a thing of the fact that the new Doctor looks like the Pompeiian marble merchant Caecilius - and its related to that fan trauma theory.

The Doctor's encounter with the Roman pater familias has left an impression, which finally comes to the fore here.

As Pompeii fell, Donna Noble talked him into setting aside his "fixed moments in time" stance by saving someone - Caecilius' and his family.

The new Doctor comes into being not sure of who or what he is, in terms of purpose and morality, and this face will remind him of the sort of man he ought to be - as we'll see confirmed in a later episode.

Capaldi opts to use his native Glaswegian accent as the Doctor, and this is also made part of the new Doctor's make-up. He doesn't just sound Scottish, he sometimes acts Scottish.

Moffat shows some concern about casting the first older Doctor in the role, after Eccleston, Tennant and Smith. Younger fans who had only ever watched the revived series might have problems relating to an older person (Capaldi being the same age as Hartnell when he played a grandfatherly figure).

To help new fans accept him, Moffat does a couple of things. The first is to have the Eleventh Doctor call up Clara from her past to ask her to accept his new persona. This scene explains her noticing the TARDIS phone dangling off the hook in The Time of the Doctor.

This will prove to be darker Doctor than previous incarnations - basically it will be the Sixth Doctor, but done properly. (The Sixth Doctor was blamed for some violent stuff - but nothing as bad as "murdering" his opponent).

Clara's difficulty accepting the new Doctor is there to mirror the viewer's, and hopefully  - like her - they will decide to give him a chance.

The other thing Moffat does is use elements from the series' recent past, to show that this is a continuation of the same programme they were watching when Matt Smith was Doctor.

We have the Doctor and Clara reunited with the Paternoster Gang, partly because he has some fighting planned but mainly because they are familiar and popular figures.

Then we have the Half-Face Man and his kin. These are robots who use human (and other animal) body parts to achieve a particular goal - just as the Clockwork Droids did on the SS Madame de Pompadour in The Girl in the Fireplace. And guess what - these are robot cousins from a sister ship - the SS Marie Antoinette. The Clockwork Droids simply wanted to repair their ship, whilst the Half-Face Man wants his kin to become human.

The way that he goes about obtaining body parts, in this Victorian setting, naturally reminds us of Jack the Ripper, who removed body parts from his victims.

It should also be noted that the TARDIS is given only a cosmetic make-over, to make it a warmer, lived-in space. It hasn't blown up this time and necessitated a drastic redesign.

The TARDIS did crash following the regeneration, but was eaten by a T-Rex instead of blowing up. The dinosaur's inclusion is pretty much there of the visual imagery and provide a startling opening to the story. Its apparent spontaneous combustion is a nod to Charles Dickens. The character Krook in Bleak House perishes by this means.

At the episode's end, we have a strange little coda. The Half-Face Man arrives in what appears to be heaven, suggesting that he did finally achieve his desire to be human. The woman who greets him will prove to be key to this year's story arc, as will this domain.

Next time: the Doctor and Clara take a fantastic voyage into the heart (and soul) of one of his oldest foes...

Story 255: The Magician's Apprentice / The Witch's Familiar

 

In which the Doctor arrives in the middle of a battlefield, and attempts to save the life of a boy who is trapped in the centre of a minefield. These particular mines are Handmines, which pull their victims under the ground to suffocate. The Doctor is horrified to learn that this is the planet Skaro, and the boy is named Davros...

Later, the Doctor has gone into hiding. A mysterious figure named Colony Sarff begins hunting for him across the galaxy, from the Shadow Proclamation to Karn. He tells Ohila, leader of the Sisterhood, that she should let the Doctor know that Davros wants to speak with him, for he has remembered.

On Earth Clara is in the middle of teaching a class when she spots that an aircraft appears to be frozen in the sky. Checking the internet she finds that this has happened all over the planet. She goes to UNIT HQ and meets with Kate Stewart. They use a computer algorithm to try to trace the Doctor - looking for temporal anomalies. Missy suddenly intervenes. She is in Spain, and she is responsible for freezing the aircraft, purely to catch their attention. She wants to speak with Clara.

Clara is taken there by Kate, and Missy reveals that she is also looking for the Doctor. She has the metal disc which the Doctor had asked Ohila to pass on to her. It is a Confession Dial - something which a Time Lord uses when they are facing death. Clara helps to trace the Doctor to Medieval England, and Missy uses a Vortex Manipulator to take them both to an Essex castle in 1138. The Doctor has been here for some time, preparing for what he thinks will be his death. Colony Sarff arrives and captures him, intent on taking him to Davros. He is actually a gestalt being - a mass of snakes which can take on humanoid form - and he acts as Davros' bodyguard. Missy and Clara insist on accompanying them. The TARDIS is found by the Doctor's friend Bors, who is really a Dalek slave. It is transported with them.

They rendezvous with a vessel in deep space which Sarff claims is a hospital unit. Davros is here, and the Doctor is taken to meet him. The Kaled scientist is in a weakened state, apparently dying.

Missy is suspicious of their surroundings. After breaking out of their cell she finds that this is not a spacecraft at all, but a building on a planet which has been hidden from view. Once the illusion is broken, she is shocked to find that they are on Skaro, on the edge of the Dalek city.

They are captured and taken to the Dalek Supreme. In the infirmary the Doctor learns of their capture and asks Davros to have them set free. Davros explains that he is a virtual prisoner of his own creations. They will not take orders from him. On a monitor the Doctor sees the Daleks first destroy the TARDIS, and then shoot dead Clara and Missy, disintegrating them...

All is not as it seems, however, as Missy has employed a transmat device to send them both into the wastelands close to the city. Missy tells her a story about the Doctor, when he did something extremely clever to get out of a similar, seemingly fatal, situation.

They will return to the Dalek city to find the Doctor, but in secret via a subterranean cave system.

The Doctor still believes his friends to have been killed. The Dalek Supreme is surprised to find that monitors show that Davros has left the infirmary and is on his way to the council chamber.

When the doors open, it is the Doctor in the chair instead. Davros has been pulled out of his chair and left on the floor of the infirmary where he calls for help.

The Doctor is armed with one of their weapons as he threatens the Daleks for what they have done. Attempts to shoot him fail - as Davros has built a protective force-field into his chair in case of further treachery from his creations.

The Doctor hasn't bargained on Colony Sarff, however, as the chair is full of snakes which overwhelm him. Captured once more, he is returned to the infirmary.

Outside, in the cave system, Missy explains that these are actually Dalek sewers. The creatures can be destroyed, but do not die of old age. They simply deteriorate physically into a shapeless form, which is then dumped down here. The tunnels are covered in a dark slime which is actually still-living Dalek genetic material. These discarded Daleks hate their healthier kind for what they have done to them.

Missy deliberately lures a sentinel into the caves to capture them, using Clara as bait. It is attacked by the slime and killed. Missy's plan is to use the empty shell to infiltrate the city - and it is Clara who is to occupy it.

In the infirmary, the Doctor and Davros have been talking and have come to a strange understanding of each other. They may actually have more in common than they first realised, and they do have a long history together. The Doctor discovers that Davros is only remaining alive by drawing off some life-force from the Daleks. Were they to be destroyed, he would perish with them. As their creator, they have a form of respect for him and so are content to keep him alive. The scientist is now dying, however, and does not expect to see the next dawn. He would like to see this with his own eyes, which he still has.

The Doctor decides to help him, sacrificing some of his regeneration energy by siphoning it into Davros' life support system. He is unaware that Colony Sarff has integrated himself into the system as well.

Davros' ploy is to use the Doctor's energy to feed to the Daleks, giving them the power of regeneration.

However, the Doctor has suspected a trick all along. The energy doesn't just go to the active Daleks in the city, but to all the discarded ones in the sewers beneath. They rise up and attack the Daleks in the city. Missy arrives in the infirmary and kills Colony Sarff with the Dalek gun. She then tries to dupe the Doctor into destroying the Dalek containing Clara, which she claims is the one who killed his companion. Its use of the word "mercy" lets him know he is being fooled and Clara is released. It transpires that the TARDIS was never destroyed, but entered a dematerialisation phase as a form of defence. It reconstitutes around the Doctor and Clara.

Missy is left to try to make a deal with the Daleks as the Doctor and Clara escape and watch the destruction of the city.

The Doctor recalls the events with the young Davros in the minefield. He had a chance to abandon him and so prevent the Daleks ever being created, but chose to have pity and rescue him. In saving him, the Doctor actually changes the future of the Daleks as their creator will give them the concept of "mercy"

The Magician's Apprentice / The Witch's Familiar were written by Steven Moffat, and first broadcast on 19th and 26th September, 2015. They mark the opening adventure of Series 8. 

The structure of this series differed from other Moffat ones in that it had a large number of two-parters - though Moffat explained that these might be only very loosely connected.

The title of the first instalment derives from the fact that this Doctor has been described as looking like a magician (Time Heist and Last Christmas, as well as the prequel The Doctor's Meditation).

It is also a play on the fable of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. This 1797 poem by Goethe tells of a sorcerer's young apprentice who decides to use magic to do the cleaning up, only to lose control through his inexperience. It was famously used in the 1940 Walt Disney animation Fantasia, where the apprentice is Mickey Mouse.

If the Doctor is the magician, then Missy is obviously the witch. Clara fulfils the role of apprentice to one, and familiar to the other, as she becomes Missy's companion for a time.

The series had a very low key opening in terms of publicity. There was hardly any, especially compared to the "World Tour" of the year before, and what there was was badly judged. We saw the Doctor and Clara in the TARDIS, saying that things were going to be the same as usual for them. The publicists might have thought this meant more adventure and excitement, but to the casual viewer it said "nothing new to see here". Davros and the Daleks didn't even feature. Things were not helped by the BBCs decision to move the show around the evening schedule, often showing it in slots which were the latest it had ever held - so the few remaining kids who had stuck with it so far finally gave up on it.

As far as Daleks and Davros go, the story seems to be referencing several older ones.

This is a sequel to all the previous Davros stories, especially Genesis of the Daleks. These links are made explicit by having Davros view clips on a screen in the infirmary. The Doctor's moral dilemma of potentially killing Davros before he can ever create the Daleks is supposed to mirror the Fourth Doctor's similar dilemma about destroying the Dalek nurseries. The fog-shrouded battlefield setting is also reminiscent of this story.

The Daleks and Planet of the Daleks both featured a friend of the Doctor hiding in a Dalek shell. The fact that it is Clara reminds us of Oswin in Asylum of the Daleks.

The mix of Daleks from all eras is similar to that story.

The Doctor and Clara watching the destruction of the city is a repeat of the conclusion to Evil of the Daleks.

It is stated that Skaro has been rebuilt by the Daleks. This would explain how it can have featured after its destruction in Remembrance of the Daleks.

In the opening section Colony Sarff goes looking for the Doctor, taking in Karn (The Brain of Morbius and Night of the Doctor), the Shadow Proclamation (The Stolen Earth) and the Maldovarium (first seen in The Pandorica Opens).

Along the way we see old aliens like Sycorax, Hath, Kahler, Blowfish and Skullions. The latter featured in the very last episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures.

There are also Judoon at the Shadow Proclamation.

As with previous stories, Missy is played by Michelle Gomez, and Kate Stewart of UNIT by Jemma Redgrave. She is joined by Jaye Griffiths as Jac, who will be back later in the series.

Julian Bleach once again portrays Davros. We actually get to see the character out of his wheelchair, and see that he has no lower body at all. Very odd is the fact that he has had working eyes all this time. The reason for never using them is never given.

To keep his identity secret, Joey Price - playing the young Davros - was simply credited as "Boy".

Colony Sarff is played by Jami Reid-Quarrell, who will also be back later this year. 

Already seen in the prologue was Clare Higgins as Ohila (first seen in Night of the Doctor), and from The Doctor's Meditation we get Daniel Hoffmann-Gill playing Bors once more. I am going to assume that this character was named after the one played by Dallas Cavell in Devil's Planet, the third instalment of The Daleks' Master Plan.

The Shadow Architect is once again played by Kelly Hunter.

As far as this series' story arc goes, we only have the notion that the Doctor left Gallifrey for reasons that aren't quite as he had claimed them to be in the past. He was afraid of something, which made him run. Missy also mentions a "hybrid", which she claims was half-Dalek, half-Time Lord.

Overall, another none too bad Dalek story - apart from the ending. The idea that Daleks are somehow immortal barring accidents, that they get dumped into sewers whilst still sentient, and are so pissed off that they are prepared to wreck their own race - it all just seems stupid. You are left with the feeling that Moffat simply didn't know how to conclude this story. He has bad form with two-parters after all.

Things you might like to know:

• Moffat really wanted Russell T Davies to write this story. The proposal he put forward to him was for Davros to be standing trial by his creations, with the Doctor as a witness.
• This story marks the debut of the sonic sunglasses, which will be around for the remainder of the Capaldi era.
• In the same way that a Dutch audience might have worked out who Darth Vader was to Luke Skywalker, Welsh speakers might have guessed the true nature of Davros' chief of security - "sarff" being Welsh for snake.
• To portray the character's gliding motion Reid-Quarrell mastered a hoverboard, hidden by his robes.
• There are a couple of references to The Curse of Fatal Death - with the Master / Missy spending time in a sewer system, and talk of why there would be chairs on Skaro.
• In searching for the Doctor UNIT use an algorithm which seeks out temporal anomalies. A couple of other earlier stories get referenced at this point. San Martino is mentioned - location for The Masque of Mandragora, Troy (The Myth Makers) and New York (a temporal minefield ever since The Angels Take Manhattan, but also another reference point for Daleks in The Chase and Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks). For serious fans, however, the most important reference is to Atlantis. The classic series contradicted itself with this fabled city state, giving three different possible fates - two by the same writers only a year apart. It was first seen in The Underwater Menace, where it was suggested that it had sunk through some natural disaster - being located beneath a volcanic mountain. The Daemons then claimed it had been destroyed by Azal or others of his kind as a failed experiment. Robert Sloman and Barry Letts then had it appear in The Time Monster exactly one year later, where it was destroyed by the Chronovore Kronos. In The Magician's Apprentice this controversy is laid to rest, as Jac explains that there are simply three different versions of the city existing simultaneously.
• The originators of the various aliens seen in the opening section got an on screen credit.
• Among the Daleks we see is the Special Weapons Dalek from Remembrance of the Daleks. One was also seen in their asylum. Here, it actually speaks for the first time. Without dome lights, it flashes just below the main weapon. Fans had always assumed that it lacked the intelligence of its fellows.
• Things which Missy mentions but we don't know which - if any - are true: that she had a daughter, that the Doctor stole the moon, and that the Doctor stole the President's wife. She also tells Clara a story about one of the Doctor's adventures, involving robot assassins and vampire monkeys. As this is told to illustrate a point, it is probably apocryphal. Unsure which incarnation of the Doctor was involved, we see both the First and the Fourth before settling on the Capaldi version.

Story 255: Prologue / The Doctor's Meditation

Prologue:

On the planet Karn, home to the Sisterhood, the Doctor has come to meet their leader Ohila. He tells her that he has been offered an invite from a very old acquaintance - who is also a very old enemy...

He does not want to go, but Ohila does not believe him.

He changes his mind  and agrees to go - but not yet. The Doctor then hands Ohila a small circular object made of metal - a Confession Dial. She will know who to give it to.

He tells her that he is going to go and meditate, then departs.

The Doctor's Meditation:

The Doctor is visiting the county of Essex in England, in the year 1138. He is staying at a castle where he has befriended a man named Bors. He must remain here during his lengthy period of meditation. After a time he is surprised to learn that he has only been there some three hours.

Unhappy with the taste of the water, the Doctor decides to dig a well. He takes ages to locate the correct spot. Over the next few days, the Doctor changes his mind and several wells are begun then scrapped.

After the well is eventually dug, the Doctor grows bored with it. He takes up magic tricks instead, and decides to have a new throne built. Several more weeks pass.

Bors questions why he is really here. The Doctor is procrastinating - dragging out his meditations as he does not want to face up to the meeting he must inevitably attend.

After arranging a joust with Bors, he tells him that he recently let someone down very badly, on a distant battlefield...

The Prologue to The Magician's Apprentice, and The Doctor's Meditation were both written by Steven Moffat.

The former was released on-line on 11th September 2015. It was originally intended to form part of the opening sequence of the episode but was removed in the editing stage for timing reasons.

Despite being seen earlier, it actually fits into the middle of the opening section of the episode, during the sequence when Colony Sarff travels the galaxy in search of the Doctor, including a visit to the Sisterhood of Karn - last seen in the 50th Anniversary prequel Night of the Doctor.

As then, the Sisterhood are led by Ohila, played by Clare Higgins. 

At one point the Doctor asks Ohila to look after the Universe, as he has put a lot of work into it. This line is lifted from Moffat's Comic Relief piece "The Curse of Fatal Death".

The Doctor's Meditation was the prequel proper, released initially in cinemas alongside the 3-D screenings of Dark Water / Death in Heaven. These screenings commenced 15th September in the US and Canada. It was then shown in the UK on Facebook on the 17th September, and on TV in Australia.

The prequel ends with a shot of the battlefield which is the opening setting of The Magician's Apprentice.

The working title for the piece was "The Knight's Disciple"- giving it the same title structure as the two episodes which were to follow.

As with the Prologue, it actually fits within the opening section of the main episode.

Bors is played by Daniel Hoffmann-Gill.

The castle location is Caerphilly, only a few miles north of Cardiff, should you wish to visit it. You can visit Karn on the way - filmed in Taffs Well Quarry.