Tag: The Twelfth Doctor

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Doctor Who New Series Season 07

The Time Of The Doctor

Doctor WhoThe Doctor is confronted with a mystery: a powerful signal is emanating from a backwater planet, defying any attempt to translate or decipher it, and luring ships from nearly every spacefaring race to that world. Having salvaged the severed head of a Cyberman to harness its processing power, the Doctor attaches a piece of Gallifreyan communications technology to the head, presumably capable of translating any language, much like the TARDIS herself, and “Handles” promptly identifies the planet from which the signal is transmitting as Gallifrey, though it bears no resemblance to the Doctor’s home planet. The Doctor and Clara are invited to board the first ship to have arrived here, the Papal Mainframe of the Church. The head of the Church, Tasha Lem, reveals the true name of the mystery planet: Trenzalore. The Papal Mainframe is protecting Trenzalore with a force field, but all hell will break loose the moment that the other ships realize that not only has someone been granted access to the planet, but that someone happens to be the Doctor. Upon first setting foot on Trenzalore, the Doctor and Clara find that others lie in wait, including Weeping Angels. They narrowly escape, and this time the Doctor insists on visiting Trenzalore on his terms, using the TARDIS instead of Tasha Lem’s teleport. The signal emanates from a large crack in the wall of a church tower on Trenzalore, shaped like the crack that the Doctor witnessed numerous times during his early travels with Amy and Rory. The signal is in the Gallifreyan language, repeating one question over and over: “Doctor who?” – the question that the Doctor has been warned must never be answered. Soon, the occupants of the many ships orbiting Trenzalore lose their patience, and try to invade the planet, only to find that the Doctor has given up his travels in space and time to defend it. Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Weeping Angels and others attempt to land on Trenzalore, and are either driven back into space or destroyed.

Involuntarily returned to Earth by the TARDIS, Clara tries to resume her day-to-day life, only to be visited by Tasha Lem, piloting the Doctor’s timeship. She wants Clara to return to Trenzalore. Hundreds of years after he last saw her, the Doctor is dying of old age, able to regenerate no more. Tasha Lem wants Clara to visit him because the Doctor shouldn’t have to die alone.

But yet another force in the universe seems to believe that the Doctor shouldn’t have to die at all.

Order the DVDwritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Jamie Payne
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Jenna-Louise Coleman (Clara), Orla Brady (Tasha Lem), James Buller (Dad), Elizabeth Rider (Linda), Sheila Reid (Gran), Doctor WhoMark Anthony Brighton (Colonel Albero), Rob Jarvis (Abramal), Tessa Peake-Jones (Marta), Jack Hollington (Barnable), Sonita Henry (Colonel Meme), Kayvan Novak (voice of Handles), Tom Gibbons (Young Man), Ken Bones (Voice), Aidan Cook (Cyberman), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek/Cyberman voices), Barnaby Edwards (Dalek 1), Nicholas Pegg (Dalek 2), Ross Mullan (Silent), Dan Starkey (Sontaran), Karen Madison (Weeping Angel), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Peter Capaldi (The Doctor)

Notes: Daleks, Cybermen (including a unique Cyberman made of wood, echoing the King and Queen from The Doctor, The Widow, And The Wardrobe), Sontarans and Angels are seen to attempt landing on Trenzalore; others, such as the Terileptils (seen in only one story, 1982’s The Visitation), are mentioned by name only. Silurian Ark ships (Dinosaurs On A Spaceship) are also seen besieging Trenzalore. The device the Doctor attaches to “Handles” is indeed a communications device given to the Master by the High Council of Gallifrey before venturing into the Death Zone with orders to rescue the Doctor (The Five Doctors, 1983); the significance Doctor Whoof this reference lies in what happened before the Master was given that device in The Five Doctors: he was offered “a complete new life cycle” of regenerations, something which one may infer has been granted to the Doctor by the end of this story. The Punch & Judy-style puppet show performed on Trenzalore recounts the Doctor’s misadventures with the one-eyed Monoids in The Ark (1965).

The Silence, seen throughout the eleventh Doctor’s era, are part of the Church, and stand with the Doctor to defend Trenzalore; the Silents that pestered the Doctor in seasons past (The Impossible Astronaut, Day Of The Moon, The Wedding Of River Song) were part of a rogue task group led by Madame Kovarian to prevent the Doctor from ever reaching this point; obviously that group was not successful, even when they took great pains to kidnap infant Melody Pond to program her to assassinate the Doctor. The cracks, first glimpsed in The Eleventh Hour (and, in that story, attributed to Prisoner Zero), are apparently the Time Lords attempting to signal their location to the Doctor so he can retrieve Gallifrey and return it to its proper place in reality.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 08

Deep Breath

Doctor WhoA live dinosaur in the Thames proves to be quite a spectacle, one that calls for the expertise of Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Strax. No stranger to prehistoric reptiles, Madame Vastra has just the trick for pacifying the dinosaur, but when the dinosaur coughs up a blue and apparently wooden box, Vastra and her entourage instantly know that more trouble will follow. Clara stumbles out of the TARDIS in the company of an older man wearing the Doctor’s clothes: the Doctor’s new face.

As the Doctor recovers from his recent regeneration, Clara questions whether she can continue her travels with him. Madame Vastra scolds Clara for basing her initial impressions of the Doctor’s new incarnation on physical appearance, but before the conversation can continue, the dinosaur in the Thames stirs before spontaneously combusting. The Doctor, having already awoken and gone to the scene, is angered at the creature’s death, and wonders if there have been other recent deaths by spontaneous combustion. Surprised by the question, Vastra admits that there have been. The Doctor, still behaving in an erratic manner, leaves on his own to start investigating.

A newspaper advertisement draws both Clara and the Doctor to a restaurant, each thinking that the other placed the ad, but once they arrive, they are trapped by the restaurant’s mechanical waiters. They are taken to meet the being behind the string of deaths by spontaneous combustion, a mechanical creature harvesting organs and other body parts to keep itself functional in hopes of continuing a mission that was interrupted when it was stranded on Earth. The Doctor has regained enough of his senses the challenge the robot to avoid killing… but in trying to prevent the robot from taking another life, must he take one himself?

Order the DVDwritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Ben Wheatley
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Jenna-Louise Coleman (Clara), Neve McIntosh (Madame Vastra), Catrin Stewart (Jenny Flint), Dan Starkey (Strax), Nigel Betts (Mr. Anderson), Paul Hickey (Inspector Gregson), Tony Way (Alfie), Maggie Service (Elsie), Sean Ashburn (Restaurant Droid), Peter Ferdinando (Half-Face), Michelle Gomez (Keeper of the Nethersphere), Matt Smith (The Doctor)

Doctor WhoNotes: The Doctor, in his tenth incarnation, encountered similar self-repairing robots aboard the S.S. Madame du Pompadour in The Girl In The Fireplace (2006), also written by Steven Moffat. This is the first post-regeneration story in the history of Doctor Who that features a new scene shot with the previous Doctor.

Maggie Service provided the voice of the ship’s computer in the BBC SF comedy Hyperdrive. Peter Fernandino was the Black Knight in Snow White And The Huntsman, and has also been seen in 300: The Rise Of An Empire and Hyena.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 08

Last Christmas

Doctor WhoFrom Clara’s roof, there arises such a clatter that she wakes up to investigate, finding a man dressed as Santa Claus…and two elves…and a crashed sleigh and wayward reindeer. If that scene isn’t surreal enough, the TARDIS appears, the Doctor emerges, and tells her she must do exactly as he says. They travel to a research base at the North Pole where the scientists live in fear of crab-like alien beings that attach themselves to victims’ heads and consume them; the victims are kept in a dream state, anesthetized from what’s actually happening to them. The beings attack both the base crew and the Doctor and Clara, but does everyone survive the attack, or succumb?

Order the DVDwritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Ben Wheatley
music by Murray Gold

Doctor WhoCast: Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Jenna Coleman (Clara), Nick Frost (Santa Claus), Samuel Anderson (Danny Pink), Dan Starkey (Ian), Nathan McMullen (Wolf), Faye Marsay (Shona), Natalie Gumede (Ashley), Maureen Beattie (Bellows), Michael Troughton (Professor Albert)

Doctor WhoNotes: Michael Troughton is the son of Patrick Troughton, who was the second Doctor from 1966 through 1969; Michael’s brother David appeared in the David Tennant episode Midnight. Nick Frost has co-starred with Simon Pegg (the Editor from The Long Game) in a number of movies co-written and produced by Pegg (Hot Fuzz, Shaun Of The Dead, and The World’s End), as well as co-starring in the series Spaced with Pegg.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Class Season 1

For Tonight We Might Die

ClassShadows stalk the students of Coal Hill School in Shoreditch, London. For some, it’s the shadow of loneliness, while for others, it’s the shadow of their parents’ expectations and lack of understanding. For Charlie, however, it’s a more literal threat, an alien race called the Shadow Kin who wiped out the entire species he ruled over as its prince. A soldier of a rival species, the Quill, is beholden to protect him for the rest of his life. Rescued from the last days of the Shadow Kin’s genocide against Charlie’s people by a time traveler called the Doctor, Charlie and “Mrs. Quill” are quietly dropped into Coal Hill School as enigmatic student and short-fused teacher. The Doctor believed both of them could learn much from each other, and from humanity. But when the Shadow Kin rip open a tear in the fabric of space and time, allowing them to run riot at Coal Hill on prom night, time may be up for Charlie, for Mrs. Quill, and for the entire human race unless the Doctor intervenes again.

Download this episode via Amazonwritten by Patrick Ness
directed by Ed Bazalgette
music by Blair Mowat
theme song “Up All Night” by Alex Clare

Cast: Katherine Kelly (Miss Quill), Greg Austin (Charlie), Fady Elsayed (Ram), Sophie Hopkins (April), Vivian Oparah (Tanya), Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Jordan Renzo (Matteusz), Ben ClassPeel (Coach Dawson), Shannon Murray (Jackie), Aaron Neil (Varun), Natasha Gordon (Vivian), Anna Shaffer (Rachel), Paul Marc Davis (Corakinus), Nigel Betts (Mr. Armitage), Pooja Shah (Miss Shah), Alex Leak (Kevin), Laura Jane Hudson (Mrs. Linderhof), Satnam Bhogal (Counter Clerk), Ellie James (Student 1), Moses Adejimi (Student 2), Assay Hagos (Student 3), Shalisha James-Davis (Student 4)

ClassNotes: Long-suffering Coal Hill head teacher Mr. Armitage, played as always by Nigel Betts, previously appeared in the Doctor Who episodes Into The Dalek, The Caretaker, and Dark Water. Due to a year-long hiatus in the show as a result of the changeover from Steven Moffat’s production team to that of incoming Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall, this was – apart from a specially-made trailer to introduce new companion Bill – Peter Capaldi’s only in-character appearance as the Doctor between the 2015 and 2016 Doctor Who Christmas episodes; he is not expected to be a recurring fixture of Class.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 09

The Return Of Doctor Mysterio

Doctor WhoOn the rooftop of an apartment building in New York City, the Doctor befriends a boy named Grant, entrusting him to hold onto an alien artifact for a moment. As Grant has a cold, and knows that his new friend is a doctor, he assumes the artifact is some sort of pill and swallows it, to the Doctor’s horror.

The Doctor returns years later, discovering that Grant has assumed a secret identity as the Ghost, a superhero with a habit of saving the day and then being summoned away when a device that he carries lights up. In reality, the device is a baby monitor…and Grant, in between super feats, pays the bills by working as a nanny, babysitting for a reporter he’s known (and had a crush on) since grade school. But the Doctor has also discovered a silent alien invasion of Earth, a years-long plan that’s much further along than most. And while he’s upset that Grant is drawing attention to himself rather than keeping his powers a secret, the Doctor will need the Ghost’s help to save the human race.

Order the DVDwritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Ed Bazalgette
music by Murray Gold

Doctor WhoCast: Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Matt Lucas (Nardole), Justin Chatwin (Grant), Charity Wakefield (Lucy), Tomiwa Edun (Mr. Brock), Aleksandar Jovanovic (Mr. Sim), Logan Hoffman (young Grant), Daniel Lorente (teen Grant), Sandra Teles (Reporter), Tanroh Ishida (Operator), Vaughn Johseph (Soldier)

Notes: The Doctor says that time travel is complicated in New York City, and that it’s his fault, a reference to the Doctor Whotangle of temporal energy left behind in the wake of The Angels Take Manhattan (2012). Nardole was introduced in the preceeding story, The Husbands Of River Song, which happened to be the previous year’s Christmas special, hence the Doctor’s “being away” for a long time is both a meta reference and a hint that he spent years in the company of River Song. The Doctor somehow removed Nardole from King Hydroflax and “reassembled” him (in Nardole’s words); Nardole would remain with the 12th Doctor for the duration of Capaldi’s final season.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 10

The Pilot

Doctor WhoBill Potts works in the university cafeteria, and though she’s not taking his classes, she attends lectures by a mysteriously tenured professor known only as the Doctor. He’s as likely to lecture on poetry as on physics, and seems to know a little bit about everything – a lot, actually. He’s also very observant, and knows that Bill isn’t one of his students, and offers to tutor her anyway.

Bill catches the eye of a fellow student named Heather, though their conversations never seem to go where expected. Heather is preoccupied with a puddle of standing water which has the audacity to exist in a fenced-in concrete area where there has been no rain for days. Bill relates this to the Doctor, who is suddenly very curious about the puddle, and the scorch marks surrounding it on the concrete: the telltale sign of a recently landed spacecraft. The next time Bill sees Heather, the girl is drenched in an unending torrent of water, has dead eyes, can only repeat what Bill says, and seems to be following her obsessively. Bill races into the Doctor’s office to get away from her, and the Doctor (with Nardole still in tow) whisks her away in the TARDIS. But wherever they go in time and space, whether it’s sunny Sydney or the hell of the Dalek-Movellan war, Heather follows…and won’t give up until Bill joins or rejects her.

Order the DVDDownload this episode via Amazonwritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Lawrence Gough
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Pearl Mackie (Bill), Matt Lucas (Nardole), Jennifer Hennessy (Moira), Stephanie Hyam (Heather), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek voices)

Doctor WhoNotes: This is the first (and only) screen appearance of the Movellans since their only other appearance in 1979’s Destiny Of The Daleks; they are primarily a background detail here, and not central to the plot, just like the Daleks that show up without being the central threat. The Doctor seems to have an abundance of his retired sonic screwdrivers on hand – score one product placement for Character Options and Underground Toys – and has framed photos of River Song and Susan on his desk.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 10

Smile

Doctor WhoBill wants to see Earth’s future, so the Doctor takes her to an Earth colony several centuries into that future. The odd thing is, the entire colony seems to be populated not by humans, but by two kinds of robots: flying, bee-like microbots that built, and make up the material of, the colony structures, and diminutive mobile robots who communicate only through simple facial expressions. But at the first sign that their guests are unhappy with what they’ve found – a city built for humans but devoid of humans – the robots don what could be a fatal frown. Determined to make sure that any future colonists aren’t walking into a trap, the Doctor decides to destroy the colony…until Bill discovers that the colonists are already there.

Order the DVDDownload this episode via Amazonwritten by Frank Cottrell Boyce
directed by Lawrence Gough
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Pearl Mackie (Bill), Matt Lucas (Nardole), Kiran L Dadlani (Kezzia), Mina Anwar (Goodthing),Ralf Little (Steadfast), Kalungi Ssebandeke (Nate), Kiran Shah (Emojibot), Craig Garner (Emojibot)

Doctor WhoNotes: Mina Anwar is no stranger to the universe of Doctor Who. She played Gita Chandra, the excitable mother of series regular Rani Chandra, on The Sarah Jane Adventures, though she plays a different, unrelated character here.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 10

Thin Ice

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS brings the Doctor and Bill to the last of the London Frost Fairs in 1814, a traveling carnival set up on the frozen river Thames. While the time travelers are trying to keep a low profile, something else is watching from under the ice, waiting for individuals to wander away from the crowds…so something else can drag them through the ice and consume them. When the Doctor and Bill witness this fate befalling a street urchin, Bill is shocked at the Doctor’s quiet acceptance of the child’s fate, unaware that the Doctor is already trying to think of a way to protect the rest of the street children and find out what lurks beneath the ice. When he discovers that the creature, once it is fed stray humans, is excreting something that burns hotter than coal or oil, and is being held in chains beneath the Thames, the Doctor leaves the decision to Bill: intervene in history, or live with the knowledge that a history-changing fuel could advance human achievement at the cost of enslaving an innocent being?

Order the DVDDownload this episode via Amazonwritten by Sarah Dollard
directed by Bill Anderson
music by Murray Gold

Doctor WhoCast: Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Pearl Mackie (Bill), Matt Lucas (Nardole), Nicholas Burns (Sutcliffe), Asiatu Koroma (Kitty), Peter Singh (Pie-Man), Simon Ludders (Overseer), Tomi May (Dowell), Austin Taylor (Spider), Ellie Shenker (Dot), Kishaina Thiruselvan (Harriet), Badger Skelton (Perry)

Doctor WhoNotes: The Doctor refers to the trapped aquatic creature as the Loch Ness Monster, though the story leaves nebulous whether he means it’s literally the same creature. (Doctor Who has previously revealed the identity of that legendary monster to be a Skarasen deposited in Loch Ness by the Zygons (Terror Of The Zygons, 1975), though there’s nothing explicitly contradicting this creature being the Skarasen, or a progenitor of the Skarasen seen by the Doctor’s fourth incarnation in 1975.) Thin Ice is also the title of a Big Finish Lost Stories release, adapted from a story outline for the never-made 1990 season of Doctor Who, which would have been Sylvester McCoy’s fourth and possibly final season, had the BBC not quietly cancelled Doctor Who after its 1989 season. Prior to its Big Finish release, that unfinished story had also been known as Ice Time.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 10

Knock Knock

Doctor WhoIt’s moving day for Bill and several of her fellow college students; after a lengthy and mostly fruitless search, an eccentric property owner offers his castle-like home for rent. The Doctor uses the TARDIS to help Bill move, but is fascinated by the house itself – spacious bedrooms, wood interiors, no central heat, no pets allowed, and a mysterious tower that isn’t covered in the lease. What Bill’s landlord hasn’t revealed is that the lease is good for one night only, for that’s all the time it will take for the house to consume its tenants to preserve the secret in the tower. Bill is mortified when the Doctor – who the other students know as a professor, and who she says is her grandfather – insists on hanging around the house to satisfy his curiosity. But before Bill can chase him away for embarrassing her, he too is trapped in the house – a potential bonus feast not covered in the lease.

Order the DVDDownload this episode via Amazonwritten by Mike Bartlett
directed by Bill Anderson
music by Murray Gold

Doctor WhoCast: Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Pearl Mackie (Bill), Matt Lucas (Nardole), David Suchet (Landlord), Mariah Gale (Eliza), Mandeep Dhillon (Shireen), Colin Ryan (Harry), Ben Presley (Paul), Alice Hewkin (Felicity), Bart Sauvek (Pavel), Sam Benjamin (Estate Agent), Tate Pitchie-Cooper (Young Landlord)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 10

Oxygen

Doctor WhoThe Doctor drags Bill and Nardole along to respond to a distress call which leads the TARDIS to a commercial space station. Devoid of oxygen, the station is only momentarily made safe by air from the TARDIS, and the time travelers encounter but the first of several dead bodies in space suits. The station was staffed by employees of Ganymede Systems, which pays its workers in limited amounts of oxygen; those who don’t put in a full day’s work won’t have full lungs. The Doctor, Bill and Nardole soon find themselves relying on the same pay-per-breath spacesuits as those worn by the corpses, and discover that there are living survivors aboard the station. Trapped with a handful of very suspicious people fighting for their survival, the Doctor and his friends walk a fine line between being seen as helpful and being the next targets. The dead are still moving, turning anyone they touch into the same space-suited zombies…and one of the time travelers may have to be sacrificed to them if the rest are to survive.

Doctor WhoOrder the DVDDownload this episode via Amazonwritten by Jamie Mathieson
directed by Charles Palmer
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Pearl Mackie (Bill), Matt Lucas (Nardole), Kieran Bew (Ivan), Justin Salinger (Tasker), Peter Caulfield (Dahh-Ren), Mimi Ndiweni (Abby), Katie Brayben (Ellie)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 10

Extremis

Doctor WhoLeft blind by his attempt to save Bill from exposure to hard vacuum, the Doctor has returned to Earth at Nardole’s insistence; the vault in the basement of the Doctor’s college office has been left unguarded too often, despite the Doctor having sworn an oath to watch over it for a thousand years. What the vault contains is none other than Missy – kept locked up for her own good as well as that of the universe.

The Doctor is feeling rather less than useful when the Pope himself comes to ask for his help. A document called the Veritas has been removed from the Vatican’s library of heretical texts and has been circulated via e-mail; all who read it kill themselves after learning what it contains. The Doctor, without the ability to read it, is perfectly safe from the Veritas, and he relies on Nardole to be his eyes…and also relies on Nardole not to reveal his blindness to Bill. Alien monks swarm the catacombs of the Vatican, seeking to find and conceal the Veritas, for it reveals to all who read it that this is not really Earth…but the Earth is in grave danger.

Order the DVDDownload this episode via Amazonwritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Daniel Nettheim
music by Murray Gold

Doctor WhoCast: Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Pearl Mackie (Bill), Matt Lucas (Nardole), Michelle Gomez (Missy), Francesco Martino (Piero), Alana Maria (Pentagon Woman), Laurent Maurel (Nicolas), Jamie Hill (Monk), Tim Bentinck (voice of the Monk)

Notes: The Doctor can “steal” energy from future regenerations, possibly up to the point of robbing himself of those future lives, with a Gallifreyan device that seems to operate similarly to the machine used by Mawdryn in Mawdryn Undead (1983), except that of course, this being the age of the iPhone, the Doctor’s device is much, much smaller than Doctor WhoMawdryn’s room full of equipment. The Doctor’s life has been impacted by previous attempts to execute the Master, as seen with the end of his seventh incarnation in the 1996 TV movie after the Daleks attempted to carry out the Master’s execution. Though Star Trek‘s existence as a piece of entertainment in the world of Doctor Who has long been established (The Empty Child, 2005), Nardole’s mention of the holodeck may be the first reference to Star Trek: The Next Generation.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 10

The Pyramid At The End Of The World

Doctor WhoThe Doctor is now fully aware of an impending invasion of Earth by the mysterious Monks, but it not aware that the invasion has already taken place: a 5,000-year-old pyramid has appeared in a hotly contested geopolitical area bordering on Russia and Chinese territory, and naturally, the American military and UN peacekeeping forces have involved themselves as well, leaving the world on the brink of war. The Secretary-General of the UN barges into Bill’s apartment looking for the Doctor, prepared to defer to the Time Lord during this unusual crisis. The Doctor, still relying on Nardole to help him conceal his blindness, enters the pyramid to deliver an ultimatum to the Monks, only to be told that the Monks will be waiting patiently for humanity to beg for their help. As the leaders of the world’s armies discuss surrender, the Doctor realizes that the pyramid itself is merely a distraction – the apocalypse that the Monks promise to stave off is already in motion elsewhere… if only he could see where.

Order the DVDDownload this episode via Amazonwritten by Peter Harness & Steven Moffat
directed by Daniel Nettheim
music by Murray Gold

Doctor WhoCast: Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Pearl Mackie (Bill), Matt Lucas (Nardole), Togo Igawa (Secretary General), Nigel Hastings (The Commander), Eben Young (Colonel Don Brabbit), Rachel Denning (Erica), Tony Gardner (Douglas), Andrew Byron (Ilya), Daphne Cheung (Xiaolian), Jamie Hill (Monk), Tim Bentinck (voice of the Monk)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 10

The Lie Of The Land

Doctor WhoIt’s been six months since Bill Potts made a deal with the devil – or, at the very least, the Monks – to save the Doctor’s life, surrendering control of Earth to the Monks in the process. They’ve rewritten history in their favor: the entire population of the human race now believes that the Monks have been an integral part of their history since life first evolved, and Memory Crimes task forces round up anyone who can actually remember that the Monks have been on Earth for less than a year. Anyone except Bill, though she still lives in fear of being discovered, until Nardole knocks on the door. The Doctor has been seen only in propaganda broadcasts reinforcing the Monks’ narrative, but Nardole has tracked down the source of those broadcasts – a prison ship anchored near Scotland – and he’s found a sympathetic supply ship captain who will take them to that ship to free the Doctor. But freeing the Doctor alone isn’t all the needs to happen to rid Earth of the Monks. The Doctor needs another mind as powerful as his…and that means freeing Missy from the Vault. But her first piece of advice – to kill whoever surrendered Earth to the Monks – is a non-starter for everyone…except Bill.

Order the DVDDownload this episode via Amazonwritten by Toby Whithouse
directed by Wayne Yip
music by Murray Gold

Doctor WhoCast: Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Pearl Mackie (Bill), Matt Lucas (Nardole), Michelle Gomez (Missy), Emma Handy (Bill), Beatrice Curnew (Group Commander), Stewart Wright (Alan), Solomon Israel (Richard), Jamie Hill (Monk), Rosie Jane (Bill’s Mum)

LogBook entry by Earl Green