DWO’s Spoiler-Free Preview of episode 9.11: Heaven Sent;

Doctor Who has never been afraid to try out something new from time to time. We’ve had episodes that range from high comedy to full-on drama. We’ve had episodes told in real time, and just a few weeks ago the programme gave us its own unique take on the ‘found footage’ genre. It’s often quite special when Doctor Who tries to do something different with a format, and it’s fair to say that Heaven Sent ranks rather highly on the ‘different’ stakes.

For the most part, it’s 53 minutes of Peter Capaldi… and only Peter Capaldi. Oh, sure he’s being stalked by a rather nightmarish vision from the pits of his memory, but it’s not a particularly talkative nightmare, meaning that it’s up to Peter alone to carry the weight of the episode, and it’s to his great credit that you never once find yourself longing for someone else to show up and take some of the burden.

Steven Moffat’s script is filled with things to keep Capaldi chewing over - from the moments of darkness that he does so well, to showing off and having a ball. The Doctor is really put through the wringer in this one - repeatedly - and by the time the episode is finished, you’ll feel that you’ve been on a fairly similar journey yourself.

It’s the closest that Doctor Who has ever come to producing its own art house movie, and while it may risk feeling out of place on BBC One on a Saturday night, it’s a refreshing change of pace, and one which allows us to get a handle on the Doctor as a character - and this incarnation in particular - more than ever before.

The whole episode is really lifted by the return of Rachel Talalay to the director’s chair (having also helmed last year’s finale, Dark Water / Death in Heaven). In the hands of a less competent director, the story could run the risk of becoming formulaic and dull, but Talalay injects every shot with something of interest. Particularly of note is the way in which the TARDIS is shot here - the current console room has never looked better, and never looked bigger.

And at the end of it all, finally overcoming all the turmoil and the pain, the stage is truly set for an explosive finale.

Five things to look out for;

1) “As you come in to this world… something else is also born….”
2) The Brother’s Grimm.
3) “Don’t you want to know how I survived? Go on, ask me!”
4) Just how old is the Doctor, these days?
5) “Personally, I think that’s a hell of a bird.”

[Sources: DWO, Will Brooks]

  

The BBC have unveiled the official synopsis for the, as-yet untitled, 2015 Doctor Who Christmas Special.

“It’s Christmas Day on a remote human colony and the Doctor is hiding from Christmas Carols and Comedy Antlers. But when a crashed spaceship calls upon the Doctor for help, he finds himself recruited into River Song’s squad and hurled into a fast and frantic chase across the galaxy.

King Hydroflax (Greg Davies) is furious, and his giant Robot bodyguard is out-of-control and coming for them all! Will Nardole (Matt Lucas) survive? And when will River Song work out who the Doctor is?

All will be revealed on a starliner full of galactic super-villains and a destination the Doctor has been avoiding for a very long time.”

[Source: BBC]

DWO’s Spoiler-Free Preview of Episode 9.10: Face the Raven:

It’s all been building to this. In many ways, Face the Raven is the first third of a three-part finale, and the events of this week’s episode really do serve as a kick-start to one of the Doctor’s most important journeys. But forget about all that! Forget where the Doctor might be headed in the weeks to come, and who might be standing alongside him, first we need to head to a hidden part of London that you’ve never noticed before, and share in an adventure with some unexpected friends.

Before being elevated to part of this season’s epic finale, new-to-Who writer Sarah Dollard pitched this episode as a standalone adventure, and it’s certainly not hard to see how it would have held up on its own as a great episode. The basic tale itself - imagine a part of the city you know that’s so ordinary that your eyes skirt right over it, missing the fact that there’s a whole unseen world inside it - fit’s so perfectly into the Doctor’s world that you almost wonder how it’s never come up before over the last 50 years.

And that’s certainly not the only great concept Dollard has brought to the table. There’s returns for old friends and enemies (you may think you know all of them, via trailers and preview clips but believe us when we say you don’t), including Joivan Wade (Rigsy, from last year’s acclaimed Flatline) and Maisie Williams, who returns for her third episode this season, and allows us a glimpse into how another half-millennium has evolved her immortal character. That is, perhaps, one of the most interesting parts of the tale - Doctor Who has given us immortal characters before, but we’ve never been able to check in on them quite the way we have with Williams, and her story isn’t done yet…

Perhaps the real heart of the episode, though, is the interactions between Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman. They’ve grown to be one of those Doctor/Companion pairings which will be remembered as among the greats, and watching them here, when they’re both aware that one or both of them won’t be leaving this street ever again is absolutely heartbreaking.

Have the tissues ready, you need to be brave.

5 things to look out for:

1) “You think a Cyberman fears a merciful death?”
2) Some Torchwood tech has made it out of the Hub and into the hands of the Doctor’s greatest enemies…
3)“Name, species, and case for asylum quick as you like.”
4) “He’s got this whole secret room in the TARDIS.” 
5) “Who said you could give someone my number?”
 
[Sources: DWO, Will Brooks]

 

DWO’s Spoiler-Free preview of episode 9.9: Sleep No More:

When you’re whizzing up and down the time vortex fighting Daleks, and Ghosts, Fisher Kings and Zygons, you must get pretty worn out. Frankly, here at DWO we’re shattered after a walk to the shops, so Clara and the Doctor must be full-on exhausted. It’s all right, though, because we can always settle down and catch up on some sleep. Rest and refuel our bodies.

Oh, but what if you didn’t have to sleep? What if you could pop into a pod once a month, and come out fully rested for the next thirty days. Think of all the adventures you could have then, without having to collapse into a pesky old bed at the end of each day! Great, lovely! Now think of what an adventure sleep could actually be. Not just the dreams you’re off having in your head, but the very real battle against the monsters your sleeping body is fighting while you’re off in dreamland.

The big thing that everyone is going to be discussing when it comes to Sleep No More is the format. Doctor Who is no stranger to playing with different ideas (In the last decade, 42 gave us a real-time story, and in just a few weeks time we’ll be seeing an episode starring just the one character), and Sleep No More continues the trend by giving us a Doctor Who take on the ‘found footage’ genre that’s been popping up in movies for some time now.

Of course, though, it’s not just any old found footage story - and the ‘footage’ may not be ‘found’ quite where you expect it to. In proper Doctor Who tradition, there’s a lovely little subversion of the genre, putting a different spin on the expected tropes. Count the eyes.

With a small guest cast headed by the great Reece Shearsmith, there’s a danger of the episode feeling a tad lightweight after four linked stories on the trot, but Sleep No More serves as a decent slice of Doctor Who before we plunge head-first into an extended finale.

Five things to look out for:

1) “Pay close attention, your lives might depend on this…”
2) Terms and Conditions apply.
3) “Not just Space Pirates!”
4) Sleep is more than just a function.
5) “It’s like the Silurians all over again…”

[Sources: DWO, Will Brooks]

Ahead of tonight's episode of Doctor Who, DWO interviewed Writer, Peter Harness, who penned this season's Zygon two-parter: 9.7: The Zygon Invasion & 9.8: The Zygon Inversion.

What was your earliest memory of Doctor Who?

My earliest memory of Doctor Who is “Destiny of the Daleks”, when I would’ve been three years old - which, in retrospect, strikes me as being a bit young for it! I remember a lot about the opening episode of that series, so it must’ve had quite an effect on me. The slaves, the rockfalls, Davros coming back to life. I still find it all a bit scary now. And I remember bits and pieces from every Doctor Who story since. 

Do you have a particular favourite episode from the Classic Series and the New Series?

It’s very hard to say, really. I think we all have personal favourites which we turn to, for various reasons, ahead of the real classics. And for me, they can vary depending on which mood I’m in. Having said that, I love “State of Decay” pretty faithfully. “Seeds of Doom”, maybe. “Kinda”. Don’t get me started, basically. We could be here all day. …As far as the new series goes, um - I’m a sucker for the Eccleston series, and I love Peter Capaldi’s first series, so take your pick from in amongst those.

Your Series 9 two-parter was quite epic in terms of story, setting and pace. It has arguably one of the best cliffhangers we’ve had to date for Capaldi’s Doctor, and we once again have another example of just how successful the Zygons are as a Doctor Who villain. As a writer, how difficult was it to get the right balance, and what was the hardest part to write of the entire story?

Well, it was a tough one to write. But they all are, usually for completely different reasons. I think the hardest part of the Zygon story was working out how to present the world of it in a coherent and interesting way. There were so many different ways for the story to go, and such a lot of backstory that I came up with and is never shown on screen (like how the Zygons were resettled, why Bonnie is called Bonnie, what really happened with the murders in Truth or Consequences, and - here’s one out of left field - how Courtney from “Kill The Moon” ends up as President of the USA), that it was hard to sift through all of that and streamline it into the narrative that you see on screen. But that’s how I like to do things - I like to play around, and explore the world and the characters, and their various possibilities, before I settle on what I think’s the best way of getting them through the plot. I think the hardest part to write was the concluding part, mainly, again, because there were so many different ways the story could have gone. I like what we settled on, though, although it hasn’t come out yet, and I’m still very nervous. 

Can we expect to see you writing for Series 10, and if so, can you give us any (spoiler-free) teasers as to what we might expect? Do you have any upcoming TV projects we can look forward to?

Hah! Well, I would love to write for series 10. And they know I’ll always do a Doctor Who, whether I have the time for it or not. So we’ll see. …As far as upcoming projects, there’s the final series of Wallander coming up, which I wrote and showran. I think there’s some lovely, sad stuff in there. But otherwise, I’m just going to get my head down and crack on with a couple of different things I’ve got in the pipeline. An adaptation or two, maybe, and a bit of original stuff at last. But as usual with these things, I’m not allowed to say very much. 

If you could take a round trip in the TARDIS, anywhere in time and space, where would you go and why?

I think I’d be rather afraid to go into the future, because I’m a bit of a pessimist. But I’d probably get drunk one evening and decide to go and look at how things turned out, in the hope that things work out okay.  

+  9.8: The Zygon Inversion airs Tonight at 8:00pm on BBC One. 

[Source: DWO]

DWO’s Spoiler-Free preview of episode 9.8: The Zygon Inversion:

There’s always a worry in the back of your mind with a two-part story; will the second half live up to the promise of the first? It’s fair to say that last week’s The Zygon Invasion was met with near universal praise, and we’re glad to say that The Zygon Inversion doesn’t… um… invert that.

If last week’s episode was all about showing us the action of the Zygon revolution, with lots of death and destruction, this week focuses more on the individuals caught in the crossfire. We get to see some very real arguments both for an against the Zygon cause, and they come from a range of sources. People complaining that the Doctor keeps bringing up the ‘good’ Zygons without presenting any as evidence should be pleased to find that we get to check in with some of the less extreme viewpoints of our alien neighbours.

Peter Harness has crafted a story in these two episodes that follows in the footsteps of a great Doctor Who tradition; shining a light on current political issues, and refracting them through the eyes of the Doctor and those who travel with them. Many recent events are touched upon in this week’s episode, and it’s fair to say that it’s presented as a balanced view, giving us one of the finest scripts to come out of the programme for a very long time. In many ways, this feels like a throwback to the Russell T. Davies era of the programme, with a large-scale alien threat to modern-day Earth, yet with characters put front and centre against that backdrop of the end of the world.

It’s held up by some fantastic central performances at the heart of the story. Peter Capaldi gets what many seem to be describing as his ‘Doctor moment’, in a scene that really opens up the part for him, and allows him the chance to show us what he’s made of. It’s perhaps the most emotion that this incarnation has been allowed to show to date, and it’s because of that the the entire sequence is very moving and very raw. Praise should also be given to Jenna Coleman, who manages to make her Zygon duplicate a distinct enough character in their own right, to the point that on a second watch, I completely forgot she was even a regular - it’s one of the finest guest turns we’ve seen in a while!

And then, of course, you’ve got the fate of the Osgoods, but did you ever really think it was going to be that simple?

Five things to look out for:

1) "We will die in the fire instead of living in chains"
2) We find out the names of two important characters.
3)"Nobody wins for long"
4) Count your Osgoods.
5) This is toothpaste.

[Sources: DWO, Will Brooks]