Category: New Series Season 07

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Doctor Who New Series Season 07

Asylum Of The Daleks

Doctor WhoOne by one, the Doctor, Amy, and Rory are abducted by the Daleks and brought to a ship housing the Dalek Parliament. Fully expecting extermination, the Doctor and his friends are shocked to hear the Daleks demanding that the Time Lord save them from an unspecified threat – namely, the Daleks’ own past. On a remote planet, the Daleks have imprisoned the most insane, battle-scarred members of their own race, sealed in with a shield. But a ship has managed to crash there, and is broadcasting a signal that could give away the planet’s secret. The Daleks have captured the Doctor and his friends to send them to deal with the crashed ship, facing an onslaught of mad Daleks along the way.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Nick Hurran
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Arthur Darvill (Rory Williams), Jenna-Louise Coleman (Oswin), Anamaria Marinca (Darla), Naomi Ryan (Cassandra), David Gyasi (Harvey), Nicholas Briggs (voice of the Daleks), Barnaby Edwards (Dalek 1), Nicholas Pegg (Dalek 2)

Doctor WhoNotes: The Daleks in the “intensive care unit” are survivors of conflicts with past Doctors; Oswin points out that they’re veterans of Spiridon (Planet Of The Daleks, 1973), Kembel (The Daleks’ Master Plan, 1965/66), Aridius (The Chase, 1965), Vulcan (Power Of The Daleks, 1966), and Exxilon (Death To The Daleks, 1974). Despite this, and despite much pre-publicity stating that nearly every style of Dalek ever seen in the original series would be seen here, the Daleks seen in this area are all the up-armored Dalek casings introduced in 2005’s Dalek. Glimpsed in the part of the asylum first visited by Rory is the Special Weapons Dalek (Remembrance Of The Daleks, 1988), a legendary major variation on the standard Dalek casing despite this being only its second on-screen appearance in the history of the series.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 07

Dinosaurs On A Spaceship

Doctor WhoWith a motley retinue of companions and helpers in tow – ranging from Amy, Rory, and Rory’s bewildered dad to a big game hunter and Queen Nefertiti of Egypt – the Doctor boards a spaceship on a collision course for 22nd century Earth, quickly discovering that it has a live cargo: dinosaurs from Earth’s past. The Doctor, Rory, and Rory’s dad find themselves in the ship’s control area, herded by strangely-behaved robots toward a meeting with the ship’s captain, while Amy and the others discover that whoever’s in charge of the ship now isn’t the one who loaded and launched it. The man in charge, a vicious space pirate named Solomon, hijacked the ship from its Silurian crew and killed them, intending to sell the specimens of the extinct dinosaur species on the black market. Solomon wants the Doctor to heal the injuries he suffered as a result, but the Doctor knows something he doesn’t: the Indian Space Agency has launched missiles toward the ship to destroy it before it collides with the planet. No matter what threats Solomon makes, the dinosaurs, along with the last Time Lord, may be facing extinction once more.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Chris Chibnall
directed by Saul Metzstein
music by Murray Gold

Doctor WhoCast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Arthur Darvill (Rory Williams), Rupert Graves (Riddell), Mark Williams (Brian Williams), David Bradley (Solomon), Riann Steele (Queen Nefertiti), Sunetra Sarker (Indira), Noel Byrne (Robot 1), Richard Garaghty (Robot 2), Richard Hope (Bleytal), Rudi Dharmalingam (ISA Worker), David Mitchell (Robot 1 voice), Robert Webb (Robot 2 voice)

Notes: Mark Williams is probably best known now for appearing as Ron Weasley’s father in the Harry Potter movies; longtime fans of British SF may also recognize him as Red Dwarf’s Swedish crewmember Petersen, or as one of the wayward alien leads of Red Dwarf co-creator Rob Grant’s short-lived SF comedy The Doctor WhoStrangerers. This is the first on-screen evidence that the Silurians were capable of space travel; the Doctor’s previous encounters with them all involved enclaves of Silurians who opted to wait out the Earth’s extinction event in underground chambers. It could be that the Silurian space ark was a more desperate, radical attempt to preserve the Earth’s species. Ironically, this also gives the Silurians – normally enemies of the human race – something in common with their foes: both species, faced with imminent extinction-level events on Earth, took to space to preserve the planet’s life forms (also see Nerva Beacon in The Ark In Space). There seems to be no indication that other Silurian ships were launched. The notion of an artificially constructed beach providing the ship with hydroelectric power matches up well with previous evidence of Earthbound Silurians utilizing geothermal power. The Doctor’s warning about messing with Egyptian queens comes from experience; this may be a reference to the Big Finish audio stories, in which the fifth Doctor traveled with Erimem, the first female Pharaoh, following an attempt on her life.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 07

A Town Called Mercy

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS brings the Doctor, Amy and Rory to the old west, where they find an entire town that seems to have walled itself in. The locals are more suspicious of the three strangers than the time travelers expect; they’re warned that stepping outside the barrier at the edge of Mercy leaves one open to the mysterious Gunslinger. Only the sheriff, Isaac, prevents the townsfolk from throwing the Doctor across the barrier and leaving him to his fate. The Doctor learns that the Gunslinger wants the locals to hand over a stranded Kahler named Jex, who has helped the people of Mercy install electricity decades ahead of time, powered by his crashed ship. But Jex doesn’t dare stray outside of Mercy, and a visit to his ship shows the Doctor why: Jex was a military surgeon performing augmentations on Kahler soldiers, and the Gunslinger was among his patients – and is one of the few who lived. The saviour of Mercy is a war criminal, and the Doctor feels an obligation to see that justice is done. Isaac dies protecting Kahler Jex from the Gunslinger’s next attack, and leaves the Doctor with the sheriff’s badge, a tough decision to make, and a slowly growing lynch mob to face.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Toby Whithouse
directed by Saul Metzstein
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Arthur Darvill (Rory Williams), Andrew Brooke (The Gunslinger), Adrian Scarborough (Kahler-Jex), Dominic Kemp (Kahler-Mab), Joanne McQuinn (Sadie), Byrd Wilkins (The Preacher), Garrick Doctor WhoHagon (Abraham), Ben Browder (Isaac), Sean Benedict (Dockery), Rob Cavazos (Walter)

Notes: American actor Ben Browder is best known for his starring role in another popular science fiction series, Farscape, and for taking on the thankless job of succeeding Richard Dean Anderson as the star of Stargate SG-1 in its final two seasons. Garrick Hagon has previously appeared in classic Doctor Who (1972’s The Mutants), a few years before being cast as Biggs Darklighter in Star Wars, and more recently in the Big Finish audio Doctor Who story Axis Of Insanity.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 07

The Power Of Three

Doctor WhoThe Doctor returns to Earth to discover that black cubes have appeared all over the planet, mystifying the entire world: is it an alien attack or some kind of viral marketing ploy? When the cubes show no sign of activity, the Doctor decides to move in with Amy and Rory to observe the cubes over time. The cubes’ inactivity – and his own – drives the Doctor to distraction. Even when Rory’s dad Brian pitches in to observe the cubes, the cubes do nothing. The Doctor is surprised when UNIT arrives to question him, led by Kate Stewart – Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart’s daughter. When they do awaken, the cubes’ behavior ranges from benign to deadly to baffling, and the attention of the entire human race is riveted – which is exactly what the mind behind the cubes wants. The slow invasion of Earth is about to speed up, and even the Doctor can’t stop it.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Chris Chibnall
directed by Douglas MacKinnon
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Arthur Darvill (Rory Williams), Mark Williams (Brian Williams), Jemma Redgrave (Kate Stewart), Steven Berkoff (Shakri), Selva Rasalingam (Ranjit), Alice O’Connell (Laura), Peter Cartwright (Arnold Underwood), David Beck (Orderly 1), Daniel Beck (Orderly 2), David Hartley (UNIT Researcher), Professor Brian Cox (himself)

Doctor WhoNotes: The character of Kate Stewart was established in the 1995 direct-to-video spinoff Downtime, on which occasion she was played by Beverley Cressman. At that point, Kate showed no interest in UNIT, though obviously her priorities changed, perhaps as a result of UNIT’s intervention in the Yeti incursion at NeWorld University in that story. (It’s entirely possible that the two iterations of Kate Stewart weren’t meant to be the same person, but for those who like a wider Doctor Who universe, nothing in either this episode or Downtime directly contradicts the other story.) It is strongly implied that Kate has reformed UNIT somewhat (previous Doctor Who and Torchwood episodes had depicted UNIT becoming more ruthlessly militaristic).

Original title: Cubed

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 07

The Angels Take Manhattan

Doctor WhoA visit to modern-day New York City takes an unexpected twist. While Rory goes for lunch, the Doctor and Amy realize that the mystery novel that the Doctor is reading was, in fact, written by River Song, and describes Rory’s sudden abduction through time into the 1920s. The Doctor and Amy follow, discovering that River has become embroiled in shady dealings with a sinister collector of statues who happen to be Weeping Angels. Even the Statue of Liberty stalks the streets of New York at night. After escaping their immediate predicament, they find Rory – in his 80s, dying in a hotel room – even though they’ve rescued the younger Rory. It seems that he is fated to die, the temporal energy from his time travels feeding the Angels of New York. Amy and Rory take drastic steps – and, the Doctor warns, very ill-advised ones – to end the Angels’ reign by creating a dangerous paradox in their personal history. But this time, even the Time Lord can’t help his friends escape their inevitable fate.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Nick Hurran
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Arthur Darvill (Rory Williams), Alex Kingston (River Song), Mike McShane (Grayle), Rob David (Sam Garner), Bently Kalu (Hood), Doctor WhoOzzie Yue (Foreman), Burnell Tucker (Old Garner), Zac Fox (Photoshoot PA)

Notes: This episode, featuring the long-anticipated, heavily-hyped exit of Rory and Amy, is the end of “Series 7A” (a term coined by the production team; following the Christmas episode, the remainder of the season aired in 2013). Location filming was done in New York, the second time a Doctor Who film crew, complete with the show’s stars, has filmed on location in the United States.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 07

The Snowmen

Doctor WhoForlorn and bitter after the unexpected departure of Amy and Rory, the Doctor has retreated into hiding in Victorian London – actually, a cloud hovering above it – refusing to lift a finger to alter the destiny of the world. The human race is on its own, at least until a barmaid named Clara draws the Doctor’s attention to snowmen that seem to appear out of nowhere, during one of the Time Lord’s infrequent visits to London. Despite encountering Strax the Sontaran and the Silurian Madame Vastra, Clara unflinchingly asks for the Doctor’s help when she learns that the snowmen are made of snow that responds to the deepest fears of those around them. The Doctor follows Clara to her second job – as a governess taking care of the children at a mansion in the heart of London – and finds that something else lurks beneath a frozen pond on the estate. The mysterious Dr. Simeon is determined to claim it for himself, and he seems to command the slowly growing army of snowmen. But who is Simeon working for – and is all of the mystery finally enough to draw the Doctor out of his melancholy?

Order the DVDwritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Saul Metzstein
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Jenna-Louise Coleman (Clara), Tom Ward (Captain Latimer), Richard E. Grant (Dr. Simeon), Catrin Stewart (Jenny), Neve McIntosh (Madame Vastra), Dan Starkey (Strax), Joseph Darcey-Alden (Digby), Ellie Darcey-Alden (Francesca), Liz White (Alice), Jim Conway (Uncle Josh), Cameron Strefford (Walter), Annabelle Dowler (Walter’s Mother), Ben Addis (Bob Chilcott), Sophie Miller-Sheen (Clara’s Friend), Daniel Hyde (Lead Workman), Ian McKellen (voice of the Great Intelligence), Juliet Cadzow (voice of the Ice Governess)

Doctor WhoNotes: The second Doctor encountered the Great Intelligence in Tibet, 1935, and again in the London Underground in the late 1960s. By showing the Intelligence a lunchbox with a map of the Underground, the eleventh Doctor could well be ensuring that the disembodied being well attempt its fateful takeover of the London subway system (an incursion which leads to the Doctor’s first meeting with Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, later promoted to Brigadier). The Intelligence’s usual minions, robotic Yeti, do not appear in this episode. A 1995 fan film, Downtime (referenced once already this season), depicts a third attempt by the Great Intelligence to gain a foothold on Earth via the Yeti. Clara first appeared in the season premiere, Asylum Of The Daleks. Doctor WhoGuest star Richard E. Grant was the ninth Doctor in an animated alternate universe in 2003’s Scream Of The Shalka (a web-based story that, while produced by the BBC’s interactive wing, has generally been relegated to the “unofficial” column), but is much better known for Withnail & I, in which he co-starred with Paul McGann. This episode debuts a new TARDIS interior (the second major rethink of the vehicle’s console room in Matt Smith’s era) and a new title sequence, only the third time in the show’s history that a new title sequence has premiered in the middle of a season (the other two occasions were the late-in-the-season transition from the fifth to sixth Doctor, and Patrick Troughton inheriting the William Hartnell titles for several episodes). The Doctor now says he is over a thousand years old, which lines up with the unofficial pre-publicity line that hundreds of years of isolation may have elapsed for him since The Angels Take Manhattan.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 07

The Rings Of Akhaten

Doctor WhoThe Doctor tries to impress upon Clara the mind-opening possibilities of travels in space and time by taking her to the festival held on an inhabited planetoid within the rings of the planet Akhaten. The ceremony, held once every thousand years, involves the selection of a “Queen of Years” to sing a song to appease the mythological Old God. But when the young Queen, befriended by Clara, is whisked away before the eyes of the assembled crowd to become a living sacrifice, the Doctor and Clara intervene, and discover that the Old God may not be as much of a myth as they thought. The planet Akhaten is alive, and demands a sacrifice of stories – and even the tales from the lives of a Time Lord aren’t enough to sate its appetite.

Order the DVDwritten by Neil Cross
directed by Farren Blackburn
music by Murray Gold
Crouch End Festival Chorus conducted by David Temple

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Jenna-Louise Coleman (Clara), Michael Dixon (Dave), Nicola Sian (Ellie), Emilia Jones (Merry), Chris Anderson (The Chorister), Aidan Cook (The Mummy), Karl Greenwood (Dor’een)

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 07

Cold War

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS arrives aboard a Soviet nuclear submarine secretly operating near the North Pole in 1983, though the sub and her crew already have problems of their own. This doesn’t stop them from blaming the new arrivals for all of these problems, however. The real problem quickly becomes apparent to the Doctor: the Soviets retrieved a large chunk of ice with something humanoid inside, and thawed it out. The humanoid is an Ice Warrior with a bad reputation: the Martian warlord Skaldak. The Doctor’s attempts to appeal to Skaldak’s feudal sense of honor are useless, since Skaldak perceives the humans’ every act as an attack upon him. Skaldak unexpectedly leaves his armor, slithering around the innards of the sub in his native Martian form, eliminating the sub’s crew one by one. When the Ice Warrior learns that the sub is armed with nuclear weapons, he sees an opportunity to avenge his indignities upon the entire human race… unless the Doctor can stop him.

Order the DVDwritten by Mark Gatiss
directed by Douglas MacKinnon
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Jenna-Louise Coleman (Clara), Liam Cunningham (Captain Zhukov), David Warner (Professor Grisenko), Tobias Menzies (Lieutenant Stepashin), Josh O’Connor (Piotr), James Norton (Onegin), Doctor WhoCharlie Anson (Belevich), Spencer Wilding (Skaldak), Nicholas Briggs (voice of Skaldak)

Notes: This is the first Ice Warrior story on television since 1974’s Monster Of Peladon, during Jon Pertwee’s last season as the third Doctor, though at least two other TV outings were planned with the Ice Warriors, Mission To Magnus (intended for the 1986 season with the sixth Doctor) and Thin Ice (a story outlined for the 1990 seventh Doctor season that never was, which also involved relations with the Soviet Union); both unfilmed television stories were later adapted for audio by Big Finish for the Lost Stories range. Big Finish has also pitted the fifth and eighth Doctors against the Ice Warriors in audio adventures. This is the first flesh-and-blood appearance in Doctor Who for actor David Warner, who has provided voices for animated episodes (Dreamland) and numerous audio adventures, even playing an alternate-timeline version of the Doctor himself in Big Finish’s Doctor Who Unbound series.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 07

Hide

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS brings the Doctor and Clara to Caliban House, a reportedly haunted mansion where a paranormal investigator and a potent psychic are trying to solve the mystery of a series of ghost sightings on the property. Claiming to be a government inspector, the Doctor elbows his way into the investigation, learning that the sightings stretch back to the first photographs ever taken at Caliban House. The Doctor is willing to bet that they go back even further than that, traveling backward and forward in time while always remaining in the same spot to prove his point. He discovers that the “ghost” is a time-distorted image of a young woman who may be the first human time travel test pilot. But something else is hot on her heels, and the Doctor risks his own life and his new psychic friend’s sanity to rescue the errant time traveler before she becomes its victim.

Order the DVDwritten by Neil Cross
directed by Jamie Payne
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Jenna-Louise Coleman (Clara), Dougray Scott (Alec Palmer), Jessica Raine (Emma Grayling), Kemi-Bo Jacobs (Hila), Aidan Cook (The Crooked Man)

Notes: In theory, the Doctor’s visit to the (long since destroyed) geographical location of Caliban House on planet Earth’s last day may mean that his ninth incarnation and Rose are Doctor Whoorbiting overhead in Station One, partying down with Cassandra, the Face of Boe, and Jabe (The End Of The World, 2005) at exactly the same time. The Doctor uses a blue crystal from Metebelis 3 (The Green Death, Planet Of The Spiders) to amplify Emma’s psychic powers. The story begins on November 25th, 1974 – eleven years and two days after the premiere of Doctor Who. Jessica Raine would go on to appear as Doctor Who creator Verity Lambert in the docudrama An Adventure In Space And Time.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 07

Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS

Doctor WhoThe Doctor tries to show Clara some of the basics of TARDIS operation, but as she makes her first attempt to fly the timeship, it’s scooped up violently by a space salvage vessel and is severely damaged. The Doctor emerges from the wreckage aboard the salvage ship and meets the van Baalen brothers, who own the ship and plan to dismantle the TARDIS. The Doctor tries to make an even better deal with them – if they can help him find Clara, they can have the TARDIS. The van Baalens are wary of the deal, leaving the Doctor with little choice but to set the TARDIS to self-destruct. Now the brothers half 30 minutes to help the Doctor find Clara… and maybe they’ll still have time to escape with their lives. But the search is complicated by distorted humanoid figures stalking the TARDIS corridors, beings whose presence even the Doctor can’t readily explain. Finding Clara won’t be easy, since she’s already hiding from these creatures – creatures whose origins are closely tied to every living being currently inside the TARDIS.

Order the DVDwritten by Steve Thompson
directed by Mat King
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Jenna-Louise Coleman (Clara), Ashley Walters (Gregor van Baalen), Mark Oliver (Bram van Baalen), Jahvel Hall (Tricky), Sarah Louise Madison (Time Zombie), Ruari Mears (Time Zombie), Paul Kasey (Time Zombie)

Notes: This is the first mention of the Eye of Harmony in the revived series, last mentioned in the 1996 TV movie starring Paul McGann and originated in the 1976 Tom Baker story The Deadly Assassin, where access to the Eye occurred through a heavily protected obelisk. The McGann movie introduced the concept that each TARDIS contained an “aspect” of the Eye, and this episode matches up very well with that addition to the mythos. Given that the Eye is depicted here as a floating ball of energy, in effect a miniature star, it could be inferred that the Eye was located just beneath the floor-mounted hemispherical vault doors sen in the McGann movie’s TARDIS cloister room. This is the first time that new TARDIS interior sets beyond mere corridors have been constructed for Doctor Who as an ongoing series since the Peter Davison era.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 07

The Crimson Horror

Doctor WhoThe Doctor is summoned to the Victorian era once again by Madame Vastra and her colleagues. People are signing up to become model residents of a walled-off, gated community promising traditional values… and then, once accepted, they are never heard from again. The Doctor and Clara pose as another perfect couple hoping to become residents of Sweetville, and their application is quickly accepted. Once inside the gates, though, the time travelers learn that residency in Sweetville carries a horrifying cost, one which puts them out of the picture. Now the fate of humanity, and the Doctor, rests with the Doctor’s unlikely trio of allies.

Order the DVDwritten by Mark Gatiss
directed by Saul Metzstein
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Jenna-Louise Coleman (Clara), Dame Diana Rigg (Mrs. Gillyflower), Rachael Stirling (Ada), Catrin Stewart (Jenny), Neve McIntosh (Madame Vastra), Dan Starkey (Strax), Eve de Leon Allen (Angie), Kassius Carey Johnson (Artie), Brendan Patricks (Edmund / Mr. Thursday), Graham Turner (Amos), Doctor WhoOlivia Vinall (Effie), Michelle Tate (Abigail), Jack Oliver Hudson (Urchin Boy)

Notes: Dame Diana Rigg is one of the most recognizable faces of British TV, having co-starred as Mrs. Peel in The Avengers with Patrick Macnee for several seasons. (Her predecessor as Steed’s sidekick, Honor Blackman, had a guest starring role in parts 9-12, a.k.a. Terror Of The Vervoids, in 1986’s The Trial Of A Time Lord.) The BAFTA, Tony, and Emmy-winning actress has also appeared in the James Bond movie On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and more recently in Game Of Thrones. Actress Rachael Stirling is Rigg’s daughter and a well-regarded actress in her own right, having appeared in Minder, Tipping The Velvet, Hotel Babylon, and Snow White & The Doctor WhoHuntsman.

The Doctor mentions traveling with an air stewardess who wanted to return to Heathrow; this is a rare reference to Tegan Jovanka, the Australian companion of the fourth and fifth Doctors. Though the character has been revived by actress Janet Fielding for the Big Finish audio adventures, this is the first mention of Tegan in the new series. (She was also mentioned in the laundry list of former TARDIS travelers and their respective outcomes in part two of the Sarah Jane Adventures story The Death Of The Doctor (2010).

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 07

Nightmare In Silver

Doctor WhoWith Clara’s babysitting charges, Artie and Angie, having discovered her travels in time, she introduces them to the Doctor, who offers to take them aboard the TARDIS for a trip to one of the universe’s most impressive amusement parks, Hedgewick’s World of Wonders. Once there, though, the park is a bit underwhelming, occupied only by Mr. Webley and – to the Doctor’s alarm – what appears to be a severely-damaged Cyberman who plays chess against anyone willing to pay. It turns out that a small man named Porridge is controlling the Cyberman, but the Doctor is still suspicious, and with good reason: Hedgewick’s World is also the home to a tomb of the Cybermen, and they’re evolving new abilities, including downsizing Cybermats into Cybermites to aid in converting unwitting humans into Cybermen. One of the Cybermites manages to gain control of the Doctor himself, and he finds himself fighting for control of his own mind with the consciousness of the Cyber Planner. Clara joins forces with a “punishment platoon” of space soldiers sentenced to patrol the run-down amusement park, but even then she may not be able to save the Doctor – or the children she’s meant to be babysitting.

Order the DVDwritten by Neil Gaiman
directed by Stephen Woolfenden
music by Murray Gold

Doctor WhoCast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Jenna-Louise Coleman (Clara), Eve de Leon Allen (Angie), Kassius Carey Johnson (Artie), Jason Watkins (Webley), Warwick Davis (Porridge), Tamzin Outhwaite (Captain), Eloise Joseph (Beauty), Will Merrick (Brains), Calvin Dean (Ha-Ha), Zahra Ahmadi (Missy), Aidan Cook (Cyebrman), Nicholas Briggs (voice of the Cybermen)

Notes: Tombs of the Cybermen have been seen in previous episodes, such as Tomb Of The Cybermen (1967) and Attack Of The Cybermen (1985). The Cyber Planner was last encountered in 1968’s The Invasion. Doctor WhoGuest star Warwick Davis (incorrectly credited on-screen as “Warwick Davies”), making his first Doctor Who appearance, is usually associated with the Star Wars franchise, having played such characters as Wicket the Ewok in 1983’s Return Of The Jedi (and two TV movie follow-ups), and a podrace spectator in The Phantom Menace, among other roles. He was also the star of another George Lucas production, the 1988 film Willow.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 07

The Name Of The Doctor

Doctor WhoThen: The Doctor, in his first incarnation, prepares to steal a TARDIS and escape Gallifrey with his grandddaughter, Susan. In the TARDIS repair docks of Gallifrey, he is greeted not by security, but by a young woman whose face and name he will not know until his eleventh incarnation. She advises him to steal a different TARDIS than the one he was planning to take.

Now: The Doctor’s friends hold a cross between a teleconference and a seance, discussing an item of immediate concern: a man who claims to know the Doctor’s true name, his greatest secret. But the gathering itself is a trap: one by one, Jenny, Strax, and Madame Vastra are abducted and taken to Trenzalore, a planet where the Doctor has been predicted to fall. Clara relays this to the Doctor, and after a moment of hesitation, he leads the charge to free his allies. On Trenzalore, he is greeted by the unlikely sight of a giant TARDIS – his TARDIS, abandoned since his future death, its exterior dimensions catching up with its interior dimensions. As soon as the Doctor and Clara enter this future iteration of the TARDIS, it’s quite obvious that it’s a trap. At the heart of the TARDIS, the former console room, the Great Intelligence lurks with a small army of whisper men. The Intelligence wants to undo the Doctor’s history once and for all, by stepping into the Time Lord’s already-paradoxical time stream and thwarting every victory in the Doctor’s history. Against the Doctor’s wishes and his express warning about the danger involved, Clara leaps into the Doctor’s time stream in her own bid to defeat the Great Intelligence at every turn. In doing this, she is splintered into many incarnations of her own, meeting all of the Doctor’s faces and assisting all of them at some point in their adventures: this is why the Doctor has met more than one Clara, and why she has always seemed to go out of her way – even sacrificing her life – to save him. The Doctor jumps into his own time stream to retrieve her once the damage to his history is reversed, finding her alone with someone she doesn’t recognize as one of the Doctor’s many faces.

But the Doctor recognizes this face. It is the face which does not call itself the Doctor. It is the face of the man who fought the final battle of the Last Great Time War.

Order the DVDwritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Saul Metzstein
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Jenna-Louise Coleman (Clara), Alex Kingston (River Song), Richard E. Grant (Dr. Simeon), Neve McIntosh (Vastra), Catrin Stewart (Jenny), Dan Starkey (Strax), Eve de Leon Allen (Angie), Kassius Carey Johnson (Artie), Nasi Voutsas (Andro), David Avery (Fabian), Michael Jenn (Clarence), Rab Affleck (Archie), Samuel Irvine (Messenger Boy), Sophie Downham (young Clara), Paul Kasey (Whisper Man), John Hurt (The Doctor), William Hartnell (The Doctor)

Notes: Via colorized B&W footage from the original series Doctor Who(and stand-ins), William Hartnell has a speaking part in an episode of Doctor Who for the first time since the prologue of 1983’s The Five Doctors. The Five Doctors is also the source of film clips of Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee. Tom Baker appears in a clip from 1977’s The Invasion Of Time, while Peter Davison appears in footage from 1983’s Arc Of Infinity. A brief clip of Sylvester McCoy from Dragonfire (1987) is also seen; Colin Baker, Paul McGann and Christopher Eccleston are represented by stand-ins wearing their costumes rather than by film or video clips.

Doctor WhoThe Great Intelligence mentions some of the Doctor’s “other names”, including “the Oncoming Storm” (the Daleks’ name for the Doctor, first revealed in the novelization of 1988’s Remembrance Of The Daleks in its original Dalek translation, Ka Faraq Gatri) and the Valeyard from The Trial Of A Time Lord, an enigmatic “future aspect” of the Doctor which was, in his only appearance in 1986, said to fall somewhere “between the Doctor’s 12th and final regeneration”.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 07

The Night Of The Doctor

Doctor WhoA young woman called Cass flees alone in a spaceship, trying to keep it from plummeting into a nearby planet. A man calling himself the Doctor inexplicably appears, offering her a chance to escape her certain doom, and to Cass this seems like a perfectly acceptable offer but for one thing: the Doctor is revealed to be a Time Lord, a race of time travelers who are laying waste to reality in their Time War with the Daleks. The Doctor is clearly not to be trusted; Cass allows the ship to crash (and allows herself to be killed). Found in the wreckage of the ship, the dying Doctor awakens in the company of the Sisterhood of Karn, whose life-extending elixir could revive him by triggering his regeneration before he dies. But the Sisters put a price tag on this salvation: the Doctor can ignore the Time War no more.

Order the DVDwritten by Steven Moffat
directed by John Hayes
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Emma Campbell-Jones (Cass), Clare Higgins (Ohila), John Hurt (The War Doctor)

Notes: This is Paul McGann’s first and only appearance as the Doctor since the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie, and would appear to mark the end of the eighth Doctor’s era. The eighth Doctor, like Doctor Whothe fourth Doctor before him, has a checkered history with the Sisterhood of Karn, previously seen on TV in the Tom Baker story The Brain Of Morbius (1976) but encountered again by McGann’s Doctor in the 2008 audio stories Sisters Of The Flame and The Vengeance Of Morbius. Furthermore, the Doctor namechecks many of his companions before his regeneration, and all of the names he mentions hail from the Big Finish eighth Doctor audio adventures: Charley is Charlotte Pollard, who traveled with the eighth Doctor from Storm Warning (2001) through The Girl Who Never Was (2007) (with a reappearance in the 2013 50th anniversary audio The Light At The End); the Doctor and Charley were joined by the Eutermesan C’rizz from Creed Of The Kromon (2004) through Absolution (2007). Lucie Miller traveled with the Doctor from 2006’s Blood Of The Daleks through To The Death in 2011, and Molly O’Sullivan became the eighth Doctor’s companion in the Dark Eyes box set released in 2012, and will presumably continue in that role in some capacity in the three further Dark Eyes sets announced late in 2013, and all of this constitutes the first unquestionable on-screen confirmation of the Big Finish audio stories as official Doctor Who.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 07

The Day Of The Doctor

Doctor WhoIn the waning days of the Time War, the Doctor tires of the constant fighting and bloodshed. He breaks into the Time Lords’ Omega Archives, containing forbidden Gallifreyan superweapons (most of which have already been unsuccessfully deployed against the Daleks). He takes the Moment, a galaxy-devouring weapon of mass destruction which has never been used because its sentient operating system has developed its own conscience, and will stand in judgement over whoever might try to use it. The Doctor abandons his TARDIS and sets off on foot to a bombed-out structure in the wastelands of outer Gallifrey, fully intending to activate the Moment and end the war. He’s puzzled when a young woman appears suddenly and refuses to leave: this is the Moment’s conscience, ready to try to dissuade its operator. It has chosen the appearance and voice of one of the Doctor’s companions, but has gotten past and future mixed up. The Moment offers to show the Doctor what will happen to him after he destroys Gallifrey…

Clara, having taken a job at Coal Hill School, gets a message from the Doctor and sets out to find the TARDIS. Moments after the time travelers are reunited, the TARDIS lurches unexpectedly, thanks to the UNIT helicopter that has grappled it and is hauling it toward the center of London. With the TARDIS now relocated to the National Gallery, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart shows the Doctor why UNIT need his expertise: a number of paintings, exhibiting an unusual three-dimensional effect, have had their glass frames broken from within; all of the paintings also once had humanoid figures in them, but those figures are now missing. Before the Doctor can investigate, a time fissure appears in mid-air in the Gallery, and he leaps through it, finding himself face-to-face with his tenth incarnation, who is dealing with a shapeshifting Zygon attempting to impersonate Queen Elizabeth I. And moments later, both Doctors are stunned – and alarmed – when another of their incarnations emerges from the fissure: an older man who does not regard himself as the Doctor. This is the incarnation of the Doctor who fought in the Time War, ending it in a pyrrhic stalemate that wiped out both the Time Lords and the Daleks, the incarnation that the later Doctors refuse to acknowledge; the Doctor’s true ninth life. The Queen orders all three of them taken away to the Tower of London.

In the modern day, the Tower is now UNIT’s headquarters, and the home of the Black Archive, a top secret repository of captured alien technology that would rival Torchwood’s collection. Kate and Clara return to the Tower, but it’s not until she is trapped in the Archive that Clara realizes that Kate has already been kidnapped and replaced by a Zygon. Grabbing a portable time manipulator that UNIT once took off of the briefly-dead body of a man named Captain Jack Harkness, Clara makes her escape, travels back to the past and rescues the three Doctors as well. The Doctors manage to thwart the Zygon invasion, but then the Doctor from the Time War vanishes. The tenth and eleventh Doctors follow him back to Gallifrey’s past – a place and time that the TARDIS shouldn’t be able to visit – and offer to help him activate the Moment so he doesn’t have to bear the consequences alone.

But the Doctor’s later incarnations, having struggled with the remorse of this act for hundreds of years, take the unprecedented decision to change history: save Gallifrey while allowing the Daleks to be destroyed, without interrupting their own timeline. But to save the Time Lords, more Doctors will be required – perhaps even Doctors who have yet to exist – and Gallifrey will have to be forcibly relocated, possibly into a parallel universe, leading to the impression that it has been destroyed. And even the Doctors’ attempt to save their home planet may still lead to its destruction.

Order the DVDwritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Nick Hurran
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), David Tennant (The Doctor), Christopher Eccleston (The Doctor), John Hurt (The Doctor), Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Colin Baker (The Doctor), Peter Davison (The Doctor), Tom Baker (The Doctor), Jon Pertwee (The Doctor), Patrick Troughton (The Doctor), William Hartnell (The Doctor), Jenna Coleman (Clara), Billie Piper (Rose), Tristan Beint (Tom), Jemma Redgrave (Kate Stewart), Ingrid Oliver (Osgood), Chris Finch (Time Lord Soldier), Peter de Jersey (Androgar), Ken Bones (The General), Philip Buck (Arcadia Father), Sophie Morgan-Price (Time Lord), Joanna Page (Elizabeth I), Orlando James (Lord Bentham), Jonjo O’Neill (McGillop), Tom Keller (Atkins), Aidan Cook (Zygon), Paul Kasey (Zygon), Nicholas Briggs (voices of the Daleks and Zygons), Barnaby Edwards (Dalek 1), Nicholas Pegg (Dalek 2), John Guilor (Voice Over Artist)

Doctor WhoNotes: The War Council shouldn’t be surprised at all that the Doctor can access the Omega Archives; his seventh incarnation was shown to be in possession of Time Lord superweapons that had presumably been with him for quite some time (Remembrance Of The Daleks‘ Hand of Omega and the living metal validium from Silver Nemesis, both aired in 1988). The Moment, first mentioned in The End Of Time Part 2 (2010), most closely resembles validium, but the Nemesis statue carved from validium had no obvious sign of a conscience, but did show signs of sentience.

The Zygons, though a popular monster in Doctor Who fandom, have only been seen in one prior television adventure, the Tom Baker era four-parter Terror Of The Zygons Doctor Who(1975), though they have reappeared in novels and numerous times in the eighth Doctor’s audio adventures, and even have their own action figure – not bad for a one-off villain.

This story seems to necessitate a reshuffling of the Doctor’s playlist: the incarnation commonly believed to be the ninth Doctor is actually the tenth, the tenth Doctor is actually the eleventh, and the current incarnation played by Matt Smith is actually the twelfth. This means that the incarnation to be portrayed by Peter Capaldi – glimpsed very briefly in the scene in which all of the Doctors rush to Gallifrey’s rescue – is the Doctor’s thirteenth and final life… unless, of course, the Doctor has somehow used up another regeneration somehow.

Asthmatic UNIT scientist Osgood may or may not be related to Sergeant Osgood, who served under Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in The Daemons (1971). UNIT’s Black Archive was Doctor Whoestablished in the Brigadier’s final televised appearance, in the Sarah Jane Adventures two-parter Enemy Of The Bane, though it was not in the Tower of London at that time, meaning that the Black Archive has either been moved, or has a decentralized series of locations. Voice artist John Guilor, who had already provided the voice of the first Doctor in bonus features for the DVD release of 1964’s Planet Of Giants, reprised that voice for the every-incarnation-of-the-Doctor climax.

Whether you consider his final appearance to have occurred in 1981’s Logopolis or the 1993 charity special Dimensions In Time, this episode marks Tom Baker’s first appearance in new footage in Doctor Whotelevised Doctor Who in a very long time; the exact nature of his character is left extremely vague.

One day after its premiere unfolded simultaneously in 94 countries, The Day Of The Doctor and its production team were awarded the Guinness World Record for the most widely watched non-news, non-sports drama presentation in the history of the medium of television.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green