Inspirations: The Husbands of River Song

Having penned a story called The Wedding of River Song, it was only natural that Steven Moffat would come up with a title such as this. It is Husbands, plural, as we get to see three other spouses as well as the Doctor. Two elements are introduced which will reappear later - the character of Nardole and the "Shoal" - humanoid in appearance, but who are able to open up their heads, and have a scar running diagonally across their face.

This was to have been Moffat's final episode as showrunner - though he had planned to leave much earlier. Originally he meant to hand over to someone else after three years, ending his run with the 50th Anniversary celebrations. The new showrunner would then have introduced their own Twelfth Doctor at the end of the 2013 Christmas Special. However, he had been unhappy some aspects of his own work on Series 7 and wished to bow out on a more satisfying note. Then, at the end of Series 8, Jenna Coleman decided that she wanted to stay on longer. Moffat wanted to round off her story himself, so this led to Series 9.

Rather than saddle a new showrunner with a companion created by himself, he decided on a one-off companion figure for what he thought would be his final episode.

Russell T Davies had been encouraging him to pair the Twelfth Doctor with River, so he decided that there was one more story of hers to tell.

The idea that she would encounter a Doctor she didn't recognise appealed to him. The Doctor would be able to see what she was like when he was not around (as far as she was aware).

Believing that The Name of the Doctor had been her final appearance, Alex Kingston was more than happy to be invited back.

It had always been known that the final meeting between River and the Doctor would be at the Singing Towers of Darillium, and so this was an obvious setting for this episode. This location had first been mentioned by River in Forest of the Dead back in 2008. This was their last date before her death in the Library. Knowing this, the Doctor had been avoiding taking her there in the special mini-episodes recorded for the Series 6 box-set (First Night / Last Night).

As the Series 4 two-parter had been his last scripts before becoming showrunner, setting a story at the Singing Towers would bring Moffat's own story with Doctor Who full circle.

The person deemed best fit to take over from Moffat was Chris Chibnall. A known fan of the series who had also written for it, as well as co-producing Torchwood, he had raised his profile significantly in the industry with crime drama Broadchurch. Moffat took him out to lunch to sound him out about taking over - only to learn that he was heavily involved with the third season of Broadchurch as well as the launch of a US version. Moffat decided not to even mention the idea of him taking over Doctor Who, and realised that he would probably have to stay on for another year, when Chibnall could potentially be in a better position to succeed him.

This late change of plans, plus his commitments on Sherlock, is the reason why we were about to get another gap year.

Before the Doctor and River got to the Singing Towers, Moffat wanted a yuletide romp inspired by the screwball comedies of Hollywood's golden age. In these, a man and woman were thrown together by a particular set of circumstances and, despite having opposing personalities, had to work together to overcome these - usually disliking each other at first but becoming romantically involved as they got to know each other better.

An early idea was for River to steal the TARDIS, with the Doctor an apparently unwilling companion for her. He would pretend not to know about the ship and act all surprised at what he saw inside. This, of course, made it through to the broadcast episode, and is one of its highlights.

The villain of the piece would be a big, overblown character who wasn't actually all that much of a threat, despite their bluster.

The idea that he had a robot body, with interchangeable heads, was an early one.

Hydroflax is known as the "Butcher of the Bone Meadows". This was another location mentioned by River as appearing in her diary.

For his spaceship, the director looked to old sci-fi movies, especially the saucer which appears in Forbidden Planet (1956). It was designed to also resemble a Christmas tree bauble.

Ramone and Nardole were deliberately cast as being very dissimilar in looks to emphasise River's wide-ranging tastes in men - which included different incarnations of the Doctor.

She said she knew all the Doctor's faces in The Time of Angels, and here we see a folding wallet with photos of the first eleven incarnations.

When the Doctor comments on River's numerous husbands, she counters by pointing out his marriage history - Queen Elizabeth I, Cleopatra and Marylin Monroe as well as herself.

For his date with River, the Doctor wears the suit he had worn on the space-going Orient Express - which was supposed to be his final trip with Clara.

The street in which we first see the TARDIS is very clearly a reused set - the Trap Street from Face The Raven.

When River states that "one should always have something sensational to read on a spaceship" she is paraphrasing Gwendolen in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, where it is on a train.

Next time: A boy wonder grows up to be a super man, whilst the villains need their heads examining...

Inspirations: Hell Bent

Hell Bent closes the ninth series of the revived Doctor Who, and has the main job of trying to tie up various story arc points - and of writing out Clara Oswald as the companion.

The arc this season has been the issue of "the Hybrid" with a number of candidates put forward - the Doctor himself, the Doctor / Clara, Davros, Time Lords / Daleks, Ashildr, Zygon Osgood...

Steven Moffat also wanted the Doctor to return to Gallifrey to explore some of its mythos - including that of regeneration. He would arrive there as a man out of control - out for revenge for what the Time Lords had done to him in the previous episode, and for what had happened to Clara, even though she had died through her own misadventure and had specifically asked him not to hold anyone but herself responsible for her fate.

One inspiration Moffat had for the Doctor at this time was the character Shane, as played by Alan Ladd in the 1953 Western.

This in turn inspired the director to give the opening sequences at the barn-like building (first seen in The Day of the Doctor and later shown to be a childhood haunt of the young Doctor in Listen) a Spaghetti Western feel.

As well as these elements, Moffat also wanted to conclude Ashildr's story - showing her still living at the end of the universe and therefore older, and somewhat wiser, than the Doctor himself - someone whom he would now listen to.

When it came to looking at regeneration, Moffat had noted that a number of Time Lords had properly died after being fatally injured instead of regenerating, such as the War Chief, Morbius and incidental characters in The Deadly Assassin and Arc of Infinity.

Moffat wrote a sequence in which the Doctor would deliberately 'kill' a Time Lord - though first checking that they were not in their final incarnation. This scene is contentious to say the least, as the Doctor is (a) seen to wield a gun and (b) has zero justification for shooting the General - who regenerates into female form (and a different ethnicity), and who suggests that they have usually been female throughout their existence.

The General, as played by Ken Bones, had been introduced in The Day of the Doctor.

Ohila of the Sisterhood of Karn appears on Gallifrey, having been seen earlier in the opening episode of the series, but first introduced in the 50th Anniversary prequel mini-episode Night of the Doctor. 

The Brain of Morbius had previously stated that Karn was in the same region of space as Gallifrey and there were ancient ties between the Sisterhood and the Time Lords. (Though for her to be here, when Gallifrey is time-locked in a pocket universe at the end of Time, she must have been there on the last day of the Time War - except she's on Karn in The Magician's Apprentice...).

Rassilon also returns, though in regenerated form. (Timothy Dalton was busy making Penny Dreadful in Ireland at the time and unavailable to reprise the role so it went to Donald Sumpter, who had previously appeared in The Wheel in Space, The Sea Devils and SJA: The Eternity Trap).

After banishing Rassilon,  the Doctor assumes the Presidency of the High Council of Time Lords - a role he previously adopted in The Invasion of Time, and which was offered to him again in The Five Doctors. By Trial of a Time Lord we learned that he had been deposed, though the Inquisitor offered the role to him once again - only for him to suggest she take it up herself.

Moffat wanted the original TARDIS console room design to be seen at some stage in the story. One had been recreated for the 2013 drama An Adventure in Space and Time, and this was currently on display at the Doctor Who Experience a short distance from the BBC studios. With the Doctor arriving on Gallifrey via the confession dial, leaving his own TARDIS behind, it was easy enough for a different one to be included as he would require it to get back to his own, left behind in present day London.

The implication is that this is the default interior design for all TARDISes. 

This one has a white console, whereas the Doctor's was seen to be pale green in the Pertwee era, however. (Painted this colour to appear white in B&W of course).

That TARDISes appear to be metal cylinders in outward appearance matches the scene in The Name of the Doctor where we saw the Doctor and Susan first steal the ship. The ones seen in Part 10 of The War Games were more box-like, as was the Master's in The Claws of Axos.

Moffat's decision on Clara's ultimate fate was that she would become a traveller in space and time just like the Doctor whom she sought to emulate - and so this TARDIS could then be given to her.

Moffat never intended Clara to stay dead - a trope of his going back to the many deaths of Rory Williams. (Unfortunately this simply undermines the conclusion to Face The Raven and much of Heaven Sent, which is why so many fans dislike the episode).

The diner is the same one seen in The Impossible Astronaut - really a venue located on Cardiff Bay - with its distinctive Elvis painting on the restroom door.

Making cameo appearances are a Dalek, Cyberman and Weeping Angel in the Cloisters, plus one of the Cherub angels introduced in The Angels Take Manhattan.

Next time: four weddings, but no funeral...

Inspirations: Heaven Sent

Heaven Sent was written both as a showcase for the talents of Peter Capaldi as an actor, and as a challenge to himself by Steven Moffat. He claimed it was the hardest thing he had ever written up to this point. The aim was to show the Doctor in isolation - what he does when he has no-one with him.

No-one to save or protect - or to show off to. Just his own survival.

The castle represented his grief over losing Clara in the previous episode. This proves to be a construct within his own Confession Dial - a device introduced at the start of the series in The Magician's Apprentice. 

Moffat realised that the series had seldom succeeded in presenting grief in a realistic manner. This was especially true in the case of Katrina, Sara Kingdom and Adric in the classic era. The Doctor and fellow companions tended to carry on as though nothing had happened in the very next story.

Nyssa gets over her father's death all too quickly as well - failing to react the way you would expect anytime she meets the Master who has stolen his corpse for a body.

Moffat admitted that he hadn't really managed to handle grief himself in his own series. Amy and Rory have effectively lost decades of their daughter's life when they discover she's River Song, and the Doctor soon forgets about them once the Impossible Girl shows up.

The notion of an individual being repeatedly teleported was one which Moffat had entertained for years, and even considered using for a Big Finish story. He reasoned that if you were continually teleported in this way, you could exist for as long as that technology functioned. 

Star Trek has had characters living well into the future after being saved in the transporter Pattern Buffer (such as Scotty in the ST:TNG episode "Relics"), and ST: Strange New Worlds had Dr M'Benga's daughter saved in a transporter buffer until he could find a cure for her terminal medical condition in its first season.

And Doctor Who had already used a similar idea - in a Moffat story - when Donna and others were "saved" by the Library mainframe in Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead.

For the monster, Moffat elected to make this something that the Doctor would be genuinely frightened of, and so made it a childhood nightmare. That it derives from his time on Gallifrey also helps to hint at the conclusion to the episode, where we discover the truth about the castle and who has been responsible for his incarceration.

The Doctor refers to the Brothers Grimm - Jacob (1785 - 1863) and Wilhelm (1786 - 1859) - the German folklorists and collectors of fairy tales. Their 1812 collection Kinder - und Hausmarchen (Children and Household Tales) included The Shepherd Boy.

When the Doctor sends the boy to tell the High Council he's back, he says he "came the long way round" - as the Eleventh stated he would get home in The Day of the Doctor.

After always claiming he had left his home planet due to boredom (The War Games onwards), the Doctor now confesses that he ran away as he was scared.

Next time: From one of the very best episodes ever, to one of the very worst IMHO. It's The Twin Dilemma following The Caves of Androzani all over again. Nice TARDIS though...

Inspirations: Face The Raven

Sarah Dollard was a Melbourne-based fan of Doctor Who who had written for Neighbours and other Australian series, before contributing to the BBC fantasy dramas Merlin and Being Human.

Her inspiration for this story began when a friend explained to her about Trap Streets. These were small non-existent thoroughfares added to maps by their makers to catch out cartographical copyists - as the only way the street could appear on any other map was if it had been plagiarised.

Dollard envisioned these streets as being real, but unknown to the general public. As such they could offer sanctuary to a group of people. It was Steven Moffat who suggested that these may be alien refugees. The idea that the Doctor and Clara might investigate a murder in one of these zones also came from the showrunner.

In order to get the Doctor and Clara into the mystery quickly, the script editor suggested reusing an established character, and graffiti artist Rigsy from Flatline was hit upon. In that story he had mentioned a mother living in London so it was decided that he had located there from Bristol, and he would be accused of a crime he did not commit - providing the motive for the TARDIS pair to get involved. The episode would therefore become a whodunnit.

Dollard then developed the idea that the isolating community had their own unique mode of dispensing justice - a creature which would be released from a cage to kill an individual who had been marked for execution.

This provided a countdown and a fixed timescale in which the Doctor had to come up with the real killer, so a race against time.

The entrance to the Trap Street was originally going to be through the door of a mural Rigsy had painted of the TARDIS. The Mayor was going to be a beetle-like alien, whose deputy was a Sontaran.

Once the episode was moved to tenth position in the series, leading into the finale, it was later decided to introduce the new character Ashildr / Me into Dollard's story as she played a role in the final episode. She then took on the role of Mayor.

Having already stayed on much longer than anticipated, this would be Jenna Coleman's last series. Moffat debated with himself having her leave in the finale or - for shock value - having her killed off earlier. (In the end, he would manage both).

It would be made clear that her death wasn't some form of self-sacrifice. Rather, she died due to her over-confidence and increasing lust for danger and excitement - a belief that she could match the Doctor's abilities. Me would not be held responsible and the Doctor would not be vengeful.

The raven features in many mythologies. 

Odin is also known as the Raven God. He had two pet birds which gathered intelligence for him and acted as spies.

In the indigenous cultures of the Pacific Northwest the bird is both a trickster and a bringer of light to the world.

Celtic mythology has them birds of ill omen, especially when it comes to battle.

The ancient Greeks held that they were servants of Apollo, and were originally white. Apollo singed them in a rage after they brought him bad news.

The design of the Trap Street was based on narrow lanes off Oxford Street in London, and The Shambles in York. Many have noted a similarity to Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter films though Dollard has said that this wasn't intentional.

Among the aliens we see in the street are a Cyberman, Ood and Sontaran.

Among returning guest artists are Robin Soans as "Chronolock Guy". He had played Consul Luvic in The Keeper of Traken. Me's deputy, Rump, is Simon Paisley Day who, as Simon Day, played the Steward on Platform One in The End of the World.

Next time: the Doctor gets caught up in the works and takes a very long time to extricate himself, in what many regard as one of the greatest Doctor Who episodes of all time...

Inspirations: Sleep No More

The episode title comes from Shakespeare - Macbeth Act 2 Scene 2: "Sleep No more / Macbeth does murder sleep".

Mark Gatiss had first thought about a story revolving around sleep in 2010, after suffering a bout of insomnia. The substance we call "sleep" - medically rheum - is a collection of organic material, including dust, skin, mucus and oil, which is produced by way of the eye cleansing itself overnight.

Gatiss was later shown an article about compressed sleep - becoming popular in the business world. Workers were reducing the amount of sleep they took to increase the number of hours they could use for work. The intention was to increase productivity but, of course, led to reduced efficiency through tiredness.

Gatiss thought of a future in which sleep could be artificially compressed so workers could be employed for all but a few minutes each day.

Knowing that Steven Moffat was looking to have more two-parters in Series 9, Gatiss' original idea was in this format, and included conflict between two factions - one which promoted this process and the other which argued for the natural way of things. They were known as the 'Wideys' - for Wide Awake - and the 'Rips' - for Rip Van Winkle.

Rip Van Winkle was the protagonist of an 1819 Washington Irving tale a Dutch-American who fell asleep for 20 years. He returns home to find his wife now dead, his daughter grown, and the old colonial America overtaken by the Revolution.

The process by which sleep was compressed would lead to the rapid growth of the creatures made from rheum, which Gatiss named Sandmen. The Sandman derives from German and Scandinavian folklore - a figure who sprinkles magical sand on the eyes of children to induce sleep and dreams. Rheum is a sign that you had been visited by him. Generally regarded as a benevolent character, ETA Hoffmann wrote a tale in which they were a more sinister figure (Der Sandmann, 1816).

The Doctor objects to Clara naming the creatures Sandmen, claiming "It's the Silurians all over again" - a reference to humans misnaming creatures.

The 1954 release of the song Mr Sandman by The Chordettes features in the episode as the jingle played by the Morpheus Pods. Morpheus was the Greek god of dreams, son of the sleep god Hypnos.

A working title for the episode was "The Arms of Morpheus".

This particular version of the song was originally going to feature as the alien "earworm" in an earlier Gatiss story - the one which eventually developed into The Idiot's Lantern.

Gatiss was happy to have a futuristic setting, as his earlier contributions to the series had tended to be historical in nature. The setting is a space station orbiting the planet Neptune. This had never featured in the series before, and its inclusion was inspired by a Horizon programme Gatiss had watched about the Voyager mission.

The station is named the Le Verrier. Urbain Le Verrier (1811 - 1877) was the French astronomer and mathematician who in 1846 correctly predicted the existence and location of Neptune purely through mathematics, explaining a discrepancy in the orbit of Uranus.

The role of Rassmussen was written specifically for Reece Shearsmith. He was one of The League of Gentlemen, along with Gatiss and Steve Pemberton, who had already appeared in Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead. He had appeared briefly as Patrick Troughton in Gatiss' An Adventure in Space and Time in 2013.

In the episode, Japan and India have formed a new superpower following "The Great Catastrophe". Gatiss had recently visited both countries, and the latter is a reference to the 1984 story Frontios.

In terms of how the story is presented, as opposed to the plot, then this is Doctor Who's attempt at the "found-footage" style. This became all the rage, especially in the Horror genre, following the success of The Blair Witch Project. This 1999 movie was presented as though it were genuine camcorder footage from a party of three film school students making a documentary about the Blair Witch. They travel to rural Maryland in search of the story, learning of a local 1941 serial killer on their travels.

The entire film consists of their raw documentary recordings, supposedly found after they vanished in the area.

The style became hugely popular with low budget film-makers, though a big sci-fi blockbuster also employed it - JJ Abrams' Cloverfield (2008), directed by Matt Reeves. This depicted the attack on New York by a massive monster (plus some smaller creatures in the subway tunnels).

The problem with the style is that it became overused - especially by those cheap productions. The other problem is how unrealistic they are, despite the whole point being that they're supposed to look as if they are genuine recordings. People running for their lives simply would not keep filming monsters or zombies snapping at their heels.

By the time this story came along the style had fallen out of fashion, replaced by the more static CCTV / home security camera set-up, as seen in the Paranormal Activity franchise.

The ending is odd for Doctor Who at this time, with the Doctor never actually neutralising the threat. This had happened in the programme in some of the historical stories of its earlier days, when the Doctor and companions simply fled the setting in the TARDIS, leaving events to unfold and with some villains undefeated (most notably Tlotoxl in The Aztecs).

Things were left open-ended here purely because a sequel was planned. However, the episode proved unpopular and Moffat was planning his exit from the series anyway - and Gatiss intended to step away from it with him. He wrote Empress of Mars instead - a story he wanted to write whilst he still had the chance.

Next time: The Doctor gets caught in a trap within a Trap, and Clara gets the bird...

Inspirations: The Zygon Invasion / The Zygon Inversion

Another proper two-part story for Series 9, this acts as a direct sequel to the 50th Anniversary story The Day of the Doctor. Indeed, the first episode begins with a recap of events in that story, in which Zygon refugees are forced into an uneasy truce with UNIT thanks to the combined efforts of three incarnations of the Doctor.

As the whole 'Zygons seeking a new home' plot had first been mentioned in Terror of the Zygons, it can be argued that it is a sequel to that 1975 story also.

The 50th Anniversary story had told how the Zygons had arrived in Tudor times (even though Broton had stated that it would take time for their fleet to reach Earth, and he was saying this in the late 20th Century). The Zygons had used stasis cubes to hide themselves in a number of artworks which ended up in the National Gallery. On emerging in 2013 they attempted to take over but the Doctors forced them to negotiate a truce with Kate Stewart of UNIT, whereby they could live in peace on Earth in human form, they being shape-shifters of course.

This new story picks up some time later, when a radical faction of young Zygons are rebelling against the current arrangement. They wish to live as Zygons and not hide, even though both species have co-existed happily for a couple of years.

This radicalisation points to one of the main inspirations for the story. Issues of immigration, integration and the status of refugees also background the episodes.

Interestingly, Steven Moffat always intended to revisit these themes with a global political thriller following The Day of the Doctor - so the Zygon element was always intended as a sort of prequel to a story which would come later, with the Twelfth Doctor following up on something initiated by his predecessor.

The title of the first episode might feature the word "Invasion", but Moffat and writer Peter Harness sought to look at how conflicts started, growing out of dissent from within a community - be it the power vacuum resulting from regime change in countries such as Iraq, or popular revolutions such as the Arab Spring movement.

In recent years we had seen the rise of Islamic State, which had already had an impact on Doctor Who when changes were made to the ending of Robot of Sherwood. Hundreds of young Westerners had flocked to the Middle East to join the movement, and the UK and other European countries had seen a rise in domestic terrorism.

As mentioned, Zygons are shape-shifters, and so Harness was also inspired by that 1950's classic piece of anti-communism paranoia Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Anyone could be a Zygon duplicate.

Kate visits the town of Truth or Consequences in New Mexico. This used to be called Hot Springs but changed its name in 1950 to that of a popular radio game show. The presenter, Ralph Edwards, had announced that the forthcoming 10th anniversary show would be broadcast from the first town to change its name. Once renamed, it never changed back.

Harness originally set part of the story in Azerbaijan, but this became the fictional Turmezistan.

In draft scripts UNIT had characters named Bell and Bambera, but there was no indication that they would have anything to do with previously established UNIT staff Corporal Bell and Brigadier Bambera, so may simply have been placeholder names.

Complaining of shortages, Kate mentioned Sergeant Benton as one of "only about 6 men" her father had to command in his day. (Many of us much preferred the "Brig's Army" to the version of UNIT seen these days).

Once again the Doctor finds himself acting President of Earth, with a special aircraft at his disposal (as in Death in Heaven. Once again it contains a portrait of the Brigadier - based on a publicity photo from Battlefield. And once again, the 'plane is brought down.

The Union Jack parachute is clearly inspired by Bond's in the precredit sequence of The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).

The Doctor mentions having once snogged a Zygon - referring to the one which copied Queen Elizabeth in The Day of the Doctor.

The two boxes in the Black Archive are said to be work of Harry Sullivan. His last story as a regular companion was Terror of the Zygons, and he was said to be working at Porton Down (the UK Government's biological research establishment) in Mawdryn Undead.

One of this series' story arcs has revolved around the notion of a hybrid. The Doctor describes Osgood as a hybrid, in that no-one knows if she was human or Zygon.

Kate orders "five rounds rapid" against a Zygon - part of the famous quote from her father in The Daemons.

Next time: Deadly slumbers. Doctor Who finally does "Found Footage", only 16 years after it became popular, and it is the audience who were mostly asleep during this one...

Inspirations: The Woman Who Lived

The Woman Who Lived is not so much the second part of The Girl Who Died, despite the title structure, as a sequel - showing what happened to Ashildr after the Viking episode.

In order to save her life alien medical technology has been used, which has rendered her immortal. The Doctor had at least left her a second Mire device, if she wished to provide herself with a fellow immortal to act as a partner.

After a scene-setting sequence in the 17th Century, where the Doctor seeks an alien artefact in England only to find it being stolen by a highwayman, we get to see how Ashildr lived her life up to this point - for the Highwayman is a highwaywoman. Ashildr is now local aristocracy - Lady Me - but has turned to crime for a bit of excitement.

One of the things which the production team wanted from this episode was to show someone travelling through time by the "slow road", comparing it with the Doctor's jackdaw meanderings through history.

This was also designed to be a companion-lite episode as it's about the relationship between the Doctor and Me, so Clara only features at the start and at the end.

We see her in medieval times as she fights at the Battle of Agincourt with Henry V (25th October 1415). She did settle down with a husband and had children at one point, but they all died of the plague. As this episode is set in 1651 it can't be the Great Plague of London, so is probably the Black Death, which arrived in England in June 1348. By December when it abated it had killed between 40 - 60% of the population.

We also see her being accused of witchcraft, presumably because she has taken on the role of wise woman in a small rural community. The ducking stool was in use in England over a very long period, going back to Saxon times. This episode can't relate to the notorious campaign in eastern counties by Matthew Hopkins as that was in the mid 1640's, and she is already an aristocrat by 1651. There was a peak of witchcraft trials after 1562 when new legislation came in, so presumably this event can be placed in that period.

It was writer Catherine Tregenna (the first female writer on the series since 2008's The Poison Sky) who decided on the main historical setting.

1651 saw the climax of the Third Civil War, with the Royalist defeat at hands of the Roundheads at the Battle of Worcester that September, following which Oliver Cromwell established the Protectorate in place of the Monarchy. It was a lawless time and highway robbery and other property crimes flourished.

Lady Me's home is said to be at Hounslow, to the west of London, and Hounslow Heath was notorious for highwaymen as two major roads to the south west of England crossed it.

The most famous fictional female highway robber (apart from Barbara Windsor in Carry On Dick, of course) is also a thrill-seeking aristocrat - Lady Skelton in The Wicked Lady (1945), as played by Margaret Lockwood. This was remade in 1983 with Faye Dunaway in the lead role. It is reputedly based on the life of Katherine Ferrers (1634 - 1660), who terrorised Hertfordshire and was shot dead during one of her robberies.

One female highway robber who is said to exist was Susan Higges, who is mentioned in a ballad from 1640 and is reputed to have had a criminal career spanning two decades. She dressed as a man to commit her robberies in Buckinghamshire. She was the inspiration for Renegade Nell  - the character depicted in the recent Disney+ series. Her career of crime came to end when she murdered a woman who was able to identify her before dying, and she ended her life on the gallows.

Talking of which, Sam Swift is due to meet his end at Tyburn. This was the site of a famous place of execution, close to where Marble Arch stands today at the bottom of the Edgeware Road. Public executions took place here from the 12th to the 18th Centuries, until they moved to the vicinity of prisons such as Newgate. It was from Newgate that many of the condemned would travel to Tyburn, stopping off for the odd flagon of ale as they progressed along Oxford Street. At one point the gallows - the "Tyburn Tree" - comprised a large tripod affair that could accommodate a dozen or so people at a time.

The alien of the episode is Leandro - a leonine being who just happens to come from the planet Delta Leonis. The Latin name for the lion is Panthera Leo. The constellation of Leo derives its name from the Nemean Lion - a mythical beast slain by Hercules as one of his 12 labours. And of course we have the zodiac sign of Leo the Lion (July 23rd - August 22nd). Leos are said to be natural born leaders, but can also be arrogant and stubborn.

The Doctor calls Leandro "Lenny the Lion", referring to the ventriloquist dummy used by British entertainer Terry Hall from 1954 through to the 1980's.

Next time: Clara is beside herself as UNIT and the Zygons play Truth or Dare, in a sequel to the 50th Anniversary story...

Inspirations: The Girl Who Died...

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...

Inspirations: Under the Lake / Before the Flood

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...?

Inspirations: The Magician's Apprentice / The Witch's Familiar

In planning the next series of Doctor Who, Steven Moffat decided to revisit the two-parter format. He had been generally dissatisfied with these, feeling that the only way to do them was to have the second half going off in a new direction - sometimes having little bearing on what went before. He had recently cut back on these, ending Series 6 and 7 with single episode finales.

For this series he thought that they might try some big two-parters which could act as a selling point, as they allowed him to tell bigger stories that might not fit a 45 minute timeframe. How these worked might be different, however, and he was keen to see them used as more than simply two halves of a single storyline.

Rather than end the series on a blockbuster, Moffat also decided to kick the series off with one.

He hadn't written a substantial Dalek story by himself since Asylum of the Daleks, and saw this as the ideal opportunity to have another go. He was keen to experiment further with the notion of Daleks assembling from different eras of the series' history. This led to the setting of Skaro.

Looking back, his favourite Dalek story had been Genesis of the Daleks. Indeed, he thought it one of the best Doctor Who stories ever.

This led him to include Davros in his new story - not seen since Series 4's Journey's End - and he considered a certain sequence in the 1975 story as a powerful inspiration. This is the scene where the Doctor anguishes over destroying the Dalek nursery, and asks his companions if they could kill a child, even knowing it would grow up to be an evil dictator.

This led to the Doctor having the opportunity to kill Davros as a child. Moffat looked back at all the Davros stories and saw how the big confrontations between him and the Doctor worked really well - with the narrative gradually building towards them. He envisaged scenes of the pair debating their respective moral values.

Missy's inclusion did not feature in the initial plans for the story, but Moffat wanted to develop the character further. The Master had worked with the Daleks in the past - in Frontier in Space - so had their own history with them.

The Magician's Apprentice / The Witch's Familiar had two prologues. The one showing the Doctor living with Medieval  characters, constructing a well, was the intended one. The other - in which the Doctor is seen hiding on Karn as Colony Sarff comes looking for him, was actually supposed to be part of the first episode, but was shifted to form a stand-alone prequel.

Sarff is Welsh for "serpent", hinting at his true nature.

Karn was first seen in The Brain of Morbius - a bleak planet  in the same region of the universe as Gallifrey and home to the mystical Sisterhood, who had historic links with the Time Lords. The planet had been revisited briefly in another prequel - Night of the Doctor. Leader of the Sisterhood, Ohila, had also been seen in this.

UNIT use temporal paradoxes to help look for the missing Doctor across Earth's history. They identify a trio of these surrounding Atlantis. This is reference to the three different versions of the fall of the city state, as seen in The Underwater Menace and The Time Monster, and mentioned by Azal in The Daemons. Other locations mentioned include 15th Century San Martino (The Masque of Mandragora) and Troy (The Myth Makers).

Peter Capaldi sent Moffat an email following Series 8, suggesting certain things he'd like to see the Doctor do in the next season. One of these was him playing an electric guitar, and he was surprised Moffat agreed to it.

The Dalek slaves like Bors (a name first used in The Daleks' Master Plan) were introduced in Asylum of the Daleks.

The action moves from Medieval England to Skaro, and we see a city whose design was inspired by the one which featured in The Daleks. The first sight of a Dalek here has the general silver / blue livery of the ones seen in that story, as we know from colour photographs of its production.

Inside are a number of Daleks with different colour schemes, including black domed ones seen in The Evil of the Daleks and gunmetal grey ones first introduced in Day of the Daleks.

In charge is the red / gold Supreme first introduced in The Stolen Earth.

Also present is the Special Weapons Dalek, introduced in Remembrance of the Daleks.

Skaro was said to have been destroyed in Remembrance of the Daleks, but was present in the 1996 TV Movie. The city was last seen, in ruins, in Asylum of the Daleks. It is claimed that the Daleks simply rebuild what they lose, to get round these inconsistencies.

Friends of the Doctor hiding in Dalek casings have been seen in The Daleks and The Planet of the Daleks, and the Doctor himself hid in one in The Space Museum.

The episode titles are a reference to The Sorcerer's Apprentice - the 1897 classical composition by Paul Dukas. This is best known for its inclusion in Disney's Fantasia (1940) - originally intended as a stand-alone piece for Mickey Mouse.

Sarff's search for the Doctor takes in a number of locations seen in the series before - the Maldovarium (The Pandorica Opens) and the Shadow Proclamation (The Stolen Earth). The latter sees the same actress - Kelly Hunter - playing the Shadow Architect, and Judoon are present as before.

In a Star Wars cantina-style bar we see a Sycorax, an Ood, a Hath, a Khaler, a Skullion (from the last of The Sarah Jane Adventures, The Man Who Wasn't There) and a Blowfish (first seen in Torchwood's Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang).

A cultural reference which younger people, and those from outside the UK, would have missed was Missy's declaration that she would speak to UNIT "through the square window". This comes from the classic pre-school children's series Play School (1964 - 1988). Each week viewers were asked to guess through which window - square, round or arched - the next filmed item would appear.

Musical references include Missy's "Oh Missy you so fine..." paraphrased from Toni Basil's 1982 hit Mickey and Mott the Hoople's All The Young Dudes (1972).

Next time: Timey-wimey ghostly goings-on, at the bottom of a lake...

Story 264: The Husbands of River Song

In which the Doctor is visiting the Earth colony on the planet Mendorax Dellora. It is Christmas Day, 5343. He is annoyed at the TARDIS trying to cheer him up, as well as being disturbed by someone knocking on the TARDIS door - a man named Nardole. He has been sent to fetch a medical doctor from this street, and mistakes the Doctor for him. He in turn thinks that Nardole knows who he is and it is him he is looking for.

After they have left, an old man with a surgical bag wanders past, somewhat lost.

They walk to the edge of the village and come across a saucer-like spacecraft half buried in the snow. Nardole's employer descends a ramp, and the Doctor is pleased to see that it is River Song. However, she is unfamiliar with this incarnation and fails to recognise him - also believing him to be a medic who she has contracted.

Inside the spacecraft he discovers that Nardole is actually River's husband - or rather one of them. Another is the bloodthirsty King Hydroflax, Butcher of the Bone Meadows who is said to eat the bodies of his enemies, who is here onboard. It is he who needs the medical assistance. Over the years he has been injured in battle so often that only his head remains of him - housed in a large red robotic body. This has its own artificial intelligence and can function independently. River shows the Doctor a scan of Hydroflax's head, which reveals a gemstone buried within it. This got there when Hydroflax was caught in a blast whilst trying to seize it. It is the Halassi Androvar - the most valuable diamond in the universe.

It transpires that River cares nothing for this particular husband - it is the diamond she is after. Should he die, all the better actually. The Doctor is alarmed at how murderous River can be away from his influence.

However, Nardole reveals that the King's millions of followers will be observing the operation.

As River attempts to explain her plan to the Doctor, they are unaware that the King is standing close by and has heard everything she has proposed. River reveals that she has been employed by the owners of the diamond to return it to them. She contacts another husband - a man named Ramone - and asks him to teleport them both to safety as Hydroflax bears down on them. They steal his head and make off with it.

The robot sets out to find its head and does so by decapitating Nardole to use his - learning the location of the TARDIS landing site. At the TARDIS, the Doctor discovers that River has been borrowing it behind his back. He has to pretend that he has never been inside before and feigns amazement at the greater size inside than out. River finds that the TARDIS will not dematerialise. She hears Ramone at the door and lets him in - only to find that he too has fallen victim to the robot body, and his head has joined its collection. The reason the TARDIS would not dematerialise was that it was registering someone as being both inside and outside the ship at the same time - Hydroflax's head and body - so a safety measure kicked in.

Once both parts are inside, the ship travels to a massive luxury space-liner - the Harmony and Redemption. They lock the robot in a vault, whilst River goes to meet the people she has arranged to give the diamond to, taking the King's head with her.

The blue-skinned insectoid Maitre'D, Flemming, takes them to the dining room. River explains that the passengers on this ship have two things in common. They are all fabulously rich, and they are all responsible for millions of deaths, being dictators, war criminals and arms dealers.

River's contact is a man named Scratch, who has a livid scar running across his face. He is a member of a group known as the Shoal of the Winter Harmony. 

Just as River is about to hand over the head, Scratch reveals that his group worship King Hydroflax as a god, and they want the diamond to please him. Not only that - all of the other diners in the room turn out to have the same scar on their faces. They are able to open their heads up and conceal objects within - such as the credits they are going to pay to River for the diamond.

Flemming, meanwhile, has been forced to open the vault and release the robot. When it threatens to take his head, he offers it the Doctor's instead. He is unaware that he is already on board, but knows that River can summon him.

The Doctor and River attempt to flee but are stopped by Flemming and the robot. It scans the King's head and notes that it is medically no longer viable, and so reduces it to dust.

With no-one realising yet who he really is, Flemming suggests threatening the Doctor in order to make River call on the Time Lord to come - so that his head can grace the robot. It is only now that River finally realises that she has been with the Doctor all along. They manage to escape the room and make for the bridge. They are passing the planet of Darillium. River selected this day for the transaction as she knows that this is the date when this spaceship will be struck by meteoroids - just in case anything went wrong. 

The crashing spaceship heads for the planet, and the Doctor gets River into the TARDIS just before it hits. They are both knocked down, with River rendered unconscious. The Doctor goes outside to see the famous Singing Towers - a pair of rock formations which make sounds as the wind blows over them. Everyone on the ship perished and the Doctor meets one of the local rescue crew. He gives him the Halassi Androvar, and suggests that this might be a good location for an exclusive restaurant. The Doctor then travels forward a few years to find it up and running - but with a lengthy waiting list for a table. He makes the booking and travels forward to the date in question, as River wakes up in the TARDIS.

The robot survived the crash and is working here now, still containing the heads of Nardole and Ramone.

The Doctor has always known that this would be the last time he sees River before her death in the Library, and she is aware of this. They have one more night together - but the Doctor points out that a night on Darillium lasts 24 years...

The Husbands of River Song was written by Steven Moffat, and was first broadcast on 25th December, 2015 - making it that year's Christmas Special. It marks the final time that River Song has featured in the series (to date), and introduces the character of Nardole, who will go on to become a series regular. That would have to wait, however, as it had been announced that there would be no new series in 2016. The next Doctor Who episode would be the following year's Christmas Special.

Allegedly, this was mainly due to the heavy work commitments Moffat had on Sherlock - despite it only comprising three episodes every couple of years and had a co-writer in Mark Gatiss. The BBC were also undergoing one of their periodic shortages of money at the time.

As it was, the 52 week gap would be partially filled by a new spin-off series set in and around Coal Hill School - Class.

Husbands is basically a crime caper with screwball comedy trappings, of the sort Hollywood produced in the 1930's onwards. These invariably threw two characters together who were initially antagonistic towards each other, usually in a situation over which they have little or no control, but by the end of the piece the pair are romantically involved.

Moffat could have simply had the Doctor and River knowing each other as before, but he mixes things up by having her not know who he is, and he goes along with this just to see where it will lead.

We discover that River often takes the TARDIS when he isn't looking, and has even made adjustments to it behind his back (such as the addition of a drinks cabinet behind one of the roundels).

This provides one of the highlights of the episode, as the Doctor has to pretend that he is amazed by the TARDIS interior dimensions.

The conclusion also allows for a bit of timey-wimey-ness as the Doctor shifts the TARDIS forward a few years at a time to set up the restaurant, book a table once it's built, then arrive on the night of the booking, all within a few minutes.

It's all played for comedy. The only people who get killed are the ones who all deserve it anyway. Both Nardole and Ramone may lose their heads, but get to live on as part of the robot.

The guest cast is led, naturally enough, by Alex Kingston as River. Chris Chibnall obviously missed a trick by not having her encounter the Thirteenth Doctor. That would have made for an interesting meeting.

Joining her as Nardole is Matt Lucas, famous for Little Britain and other comedy series. His Little Britain partner David Walliams had already guested in The God Complex as Gibbis.

The other husband, Ramone, is played by Phillip Rhys. He has appeared in a number of US series such as NCIS, Bones and 24.

The main guest star, playing King Hydroflax, is another comic actor - Greg Davies. Star of the sitcoms Cuckoo and Man Down, he has recently been chairing the popular Taskmaster. He has to spend all of the episode either encased in the robot costume, or sitting under things with his head poking through, including a fake TARDIS console panel.

The villainous Flemming is Rowan Polonski, in a make-up reminiscent of Chantho in Utopia.

Scratch is Robert Curtis. We will be seeing more of his kind in the next festive special.

He had previously appeared in The Sarah Jane Adventures as a security guard in Prisoner of the Judoon.

Scratch is Robert Curtis. We will be seeing more of his kind in the next festive special.

The rescue worker who is given the diamond is a character named Alphonse, and he's played by Chris Lew Kum Hoi. He featured in Russell T Davies' adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Finally, the robot has its own voice - that of actor Nonso Anozie. You may have seen him playing Oberon in that RTD adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream, opposite Matt Lucas and the late great Bernard Cribbins amongst many others.

Overall, a perfect festive adventure. A bit of excitement and a lot of humour, as well as providing a nice coda to the story of River Song. Maybe this was the right place to end it.

Things you might like to know:

• The street where Nardole encounters the TARDIS is rather too obviously the Trap Street set from Face the Raven, redressed.
• In this story we finally get to see the Singing Towers of Darillium, and the Doctor gives River her sonic screwdriver, knowing she will be heading for the Library after this.
• River is aware that her life may be ending soon as her diary is almost full - and she knows that the Doctor would have known how many pages she would need.
• She has a wallet containing images of all the previous 12 Doctors, hinting that she has met the earlier ones as well as the ones we've seen on screen. There are 12 images as the list includes the War Doctor. In Time of the Angels she had claimed to have pictures of all his faces.
• First Night / Last Night - the mini episodes contained on the Series 6 DVD / Blu-ray box sets - are referenced, when River talks about meeting two different versions of the Eleventh Doctor, and he had cancelled a visit to the Singing Towers.
• This is the eleventh Christmas Special - but the first not to feature any action on Earth.

Story 263: Hell Bent

In which an amnesiac Doctor finds himself at a lonely diner, situated in the middle of the Nevada Desert. The waitress is Clara - but he does not recognise her. He tells her what he thinks is just a story...

On Gallifrey, the Doctor makes for the isolated barn where he spent time as a child. In the Capitol, the Cloister Bells are ringing constantly. President Rassilon wonders why he has not come directly to see him. The Time Lords are being visited by Ohila, leader of the Sisterhood of Karn, who attempts to advise him on how to handle the Doctor. He, meanwhile, has befriended the local people, but still won't go to the Capitol. Rassilon orders his General to send Chancellery Guards to fetch him. The Doctor refuses to go, and the Guard Captain, Gastron, refuses to use force against him, so Rassilon then sends representatives of the High Council. Again, the Doctor silently ignores them.

The President and the General then go to see him in person. Rassilon attempts to use force, but finds his troops disobeying him. The Doctor is regarded as a hero of the Time War to them. The General also refuses to follow the President.

Soon after, the Doctor is back in the Capitol, in the chambers of the High Council. They, meanwhile, have been forced into exile with Rassilon.

The General informs the Doctor that all of the Matrix prophesies warn of the coming of the Hybrid, which will signal the destruction of Gallifrey. The Doctor orders him to take him to an extraction chamber, which he uses to pinpoint the exact moment Clara was killed. Ohila joins them. He removes Clara from time in the split second before the Raven / Chronolock attacked. Clara is therefore still alive, but existing only in this single moment of time. This falls between heartbeats, as she discovers when she realises that she does not have any. When the General realises that the Doctor has no intention of returning her to the Trap Street to allow history to take its course, the Doctor snatches a gun from one of the guards. Confirming first that he is not in his final regeneration, the Doctor shoots the General and flees the chamber with Clara. The General regenerates into a younger female body.

The Doctor and Clara make for the Cloisters beneath the Capitol. Here they find a number of alien species - Daleks, Cybermen and Weeping Angels - which have previously attempted to infiltrate the Matrix. They have been captured and integrated into the Time Lord database. Also here are the "ghosts" of deceased Time Lords who have become part of the Matrix on their demise, via the APC Net. These are known as "Cloister Wraiths".

The General and Ohila are on their way down with Gastron to arrest them. Ohila knows that the Doctor has visited the Cloister once before as a boy - one of the only people to do so and emerge unscathed. 

He tells Clara he knows of a secret way out of the area, which the Wraiths had told him about. They had also told him about the Hybrid, but not who or what it was.

Clara is shocked by the Doctor's actions - unhappy that he has resorted to violence.

He finds a maintenance hatch as the General, Ohila and Gastron arrive. They are unable - and unwilling - to enter the Cloister and can only address the Doctor from the entrance.

On hearing of the Doctor's billions of years trapped in his own Confession Dial, Clara loses sympathy with them, accusing them of being monsters.

The Doctor disappears through the hatch and returns minutes later with a stolen TARDIS. Clara joins him inside and they dematerialise. 

This TARDIS is in its default form, appearing as a plain metal cylinder, and the interior is of the design which the Doctor had employed in his earliest incarnations. They have left the time zone in which Gallifrey is located, and the Doctor thinks that Clara should now have her heartbeat back again. He is unhappy to learn that she hasn't. He thinks the problem will be remedied as they move further from Gallifreyan time, but the Chronolock tattoo remains on her neck. They have arrived at the very end of the universe. Both are surprised to hear a knock at the TARDIS doors. Ordering Clara to remain in the ship, the Doctor goes outside. He finds himself in the crumbling ruins of the Cloisters, with the stars breaking up all around them. Sitting on a chair, watching the spectacle, is Me - the last survivor of the decaying cosmos. She has protected herself in a gravity bubble.

Clara uses the Doctor's sonic sunglasses to switch on the scanner to see what he is up to. The Doctor and Me discuss the Hybrid. He believes that it is her - the combination of human with Mire technology. She in turn thinks it is him - possibly half-human, which explains his preoccupation with Earth. She then tells him her real theory - that the Hybrid is not a single individual but two people, inextricably joined: a powerful Time Lord, and his human companion, who acts as his moral compass. Together, their recklessness is dangerous. She thinks this is why Missy had first brought the Doctor and Clara together. Me warns him of what harm the two of them may do next. The Doctor tells her that he is going to erase Clara's memories of him, not only to destroy the Hybrid but to prevent the Time Lords from tracing them. He is unaware that Clara is listening to all this in the TARDIS.

She quickly turns off the scanner as the Doctor brings Me into the ship. 

The Doctor tells Clara of what he plans to do, as he thinks she has the right to know. She is unhappy at this. She warns that she has reversed the polarity of the neural block device which will erase her memories - so that it is he who will be affected. The Doctor doubts this is possible. Me watches as they use the device. It transpires that Clara was right, and it is the Doctor who collapses, his memories of her being taken away.

They take him to Earth and leave him in the desert to be picked up as a hitchhiker - taken by a truck driver to the diner where Clara is posing as the waitress. The Doctor is aware of a gap in his memories. He knows of a person named Clara, but not what she looks like. She goes through the back doors of the diner - into the TARDIS console room. The Doctor finds the diner dematerialising around him, leaving him alone in the middle of the desert. He then sees his own ship, its exterior still covered in Rigsy's painting. He notices the portrait of the woman from the diner - still unaware that it is Clara. 

Inside, the console issues him with a new Sonic Screwdriver. The TARDIS leaves.

The other ship, piloted by Clara and Me, sets out to explore the universe. Clara knows that she will have to return to Gallifrey eventually, to allow history to resume its course, but they are in no hurry to do this any time soon...

Hell Bent was written by Steven Moffat, and was first broadcast on Saturday 5th December, 2015.

It brings Series 9 to a conclusion, and rounds off the Hybrid story arc. It marks the final appearance of Jenna Coleman as Clara, beyond a quick cameo in Capaldi's final episode, as well as Maisie Williams as Me / Ashildr - though the door is open for one or both to return.

It's the first time we have seen the original Brachaki TARDIS interior design in the revived series, though one was recreated for the 50th Anniversary drama An Adventure In Space And Time. Fans had been hoping to see this again, but it actually comes across as very cold and clinical, and would no longer work as a full-time design. 

For the first time we see a Time Lord change both gender and ethnicity on screen. Missy had already shown that they could change gender, and it had been said that the Corsair had been both male and female. The General actually states that her usual form has always been female.

Unfortunately the episode undermines the conclusion of Face the Raven, and is a very poor follow-up to the excellent Heaven Sent. It really is a case of going 'from the sublime to the ridiculous'.

It is annoying that the series rediscovers Gallifrey so soon after getting rid of it. The Doctor's quest to find it could have been something which it could have developed further, and we are left wondering why Moffat bothered in the first place.

The Doctor is seen to shoot down the General for no real reason. Checking what regeneration he is on is immaterial - he has still taken a life. We're supposed to think that this shows the depth of the Doctor's feelings for Clara and the extreme measures he will go to to save her, but as viewers we simply note how far the series has degenerated with its obsession with this particular companion. It may have worked had we cared about her - but we really don't.

With Timothy Dalton busy filming the final season of Penny Dreadful in Dublin, it was necessary to recast the character of Rassilon, last seen in The End of Time. The actor chosen is Donald Sumpter, who had featured twice before in the series, back in the 1960's (The Wheel in Space) and the 1970's (The Sea Devils).

Clare Higgins returns as Ohila, leader of the Sisterhood of Karn. She had previously been seen in The Night of the Doctor, the on-line prequel to The Day of the Doctor featuring Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor, as well as in the prologue to The Magician's Apprentice at the beginning of this series.

From the 50th Anniversary story Ken Bones returns as the General, and he regenerates into T'Nia Miller.

Gastron is played by Malachi Kirby. He had been a recurring character in EastEnders for a time, and went on to play Kunta Kinte in the 2016 remake of Roots.

Jami Reid-Quarrell, who had previously played Colony Sarff and the Veil, features as one of the Cloister Wraiths, once again making use of his hoverboard to glide around.

Whilst we see Me at the end of the universe, there is no sign of Captain Jack Harkness - so perhaps he really was the Face of Boe after all.

Overall, a dog's dinner of an episode which trashes the good work of the previous two instalments. We were all sick to death of Clara by this time, and Moffat deludes himself that anyone wanted her death reversed. Maybe any episode which had to follow Heaven Sent was doomed to look weak, but this manages to be terribly disappointing all by itself. I can't wait for the DWM 60th Anniversary poll to give this a 1 out of 10.

Things you might like to know:

• Me knocks four times on the TARDIS door - reminding the Doctor of the prophesy that foresaw the end of his Tenth incarnation.
• The diner was filmed in Eddie's Diner at Mermaid Quay in Cardiff Bay, and was the same venue seen in The Impossible Astronaut. The full size Elvis painting on the door is a dead giveaway.
• Could it be that this was actually Clara's TARDIS back then? It is stated that the ship operated by her and Me also has a dodgy Chameleon Circuit, and may be stuck in diner form like the Doctor's ship is a Police Box.
• There is mention of an animated scarecrow existing in the Matrix in the past. This may be a reference to the final Second Doctor strip in TV Comic - where the Time Lords send scarecrows to capture him to complete his forced regeneration and exile to Earth.
• References to other earlier stories include the barn seen in The Day of the Doctor and in Listen, as well as the jukebox in the diner playing Queen's Don't Stop Me Now - as heard in Mummy on the Orient Express.
• The Doctor plays Clara's Theme on his guitar - another example of Murray Gold's incidental music featuring within the fiction of an episode.
• Before collapsing, the Doctor gives Clara advice never to be "cruel or cowardly" - a description of the Doctor himself from the works of Terrance Dicks.
• Ordered by Gastron to drop his weapons, the Doctor discards his spoon - a reference to his using this utensil to fence with Robin Hood in Robots of Sherwood.
• The Doctor uses a device called a neural block to delete memories, but mentions how he once did this telepathically - a reference to Donna Noble's fate at the end of Journey's End. The Thirteenth Doctor would later delete memories without recourse to technology, such as in Spyfall Part II.
• After deposing Rassilon and the High Council, the Doctor once again adopts the Presidency. He then runs away in a stolen TARDIS - referencing the series' earliest days, as well as events of The Five Doctors.
• What was the ultimate fate of Rassilon and his colleagues? If they were still absent from Gallifrey they would have been spared destruction by the Master, and so are still out there somewhere...