The primary poster promoting the season as used by the BBC

Doctor Who: Season 49 would’ve aired between the 20th September 2014 and the 14th March 2015, consisting of 16×60 minute episodes, split into two runs of 8 episodes, the first running from the 20th September 2014 until the 8th November 2014, and the second running from the 24th January 2015 until the 14th March 2015. The two runs would’ve been dubbed “Season 49: Part One” and “Season 49: Part Two”. All together the season would have a run-time of 960 minutes, which is 60 minutes more than that of Season 48, with its 10×90 minutes format. In this post I will just be covering Season 49: Part One, and in the next post I’ll be covering Part Two.

Fourteenth Doctor actress, Samantha Bond

Season 49 would kick off the so called “Doctor Who: Chapter Four”, and as such it has an almost entirely new team in front and behind the camera. The new Doctor, Samantha Bond as the 14th Doctor, was introduced in the season finale of Panopticon, with her first full story, Doctor Who: Genesis being released the previous November, ten months before Season 49 began airing. As the Doctor was left without a companion at the end of Genesis, a new one would have been introduced in the first episode of Season 49, Montserrat Lombard as Erin Stevenson, a rebellious 19-year-old from 1977. This would give the show its first all-female TARDIS team, at least for this half of the season.

Co-Showrunner,

Ronald D. Moore

Behind the scenes, two people would step into the role of Showrunner, Ronald D. Moore and Jane Espenson. Moore and Espenson had previously worked on Panopticon, with Moore showrunning it, as Espenson worked as his Chief Staff Writer, credited as a ‘Co-Executive Producer’. However, their role on Doctor Who would be equal with both of them acting as Showrunner with the same responsibilities, however fans would see Moore as the one in charge, whether or not this was true, and dub this era of the show ‘the Moore era’. In addition, a new influx of ‘Co-Executive Producers’ or ‘Staff Writers’ would have been introduced: Toni Graphia; Bradley Thompson & David Weddle (from Panopticon, who also wrote the Fight for Survival); long time Who writer, and multitalented individual, Nicholas Briggs; Matthew B. Roberts; and returning writer Toby Whithouse, who wrote the infamous ‘The Societal Step’ from Season 40, however Moore and Espenson decided to give him another chance after the success of his BBC Three series Being Human.

Co-Showrunner,

Jane Espenson

The Executive Producers for this season would be Ronald D. Moore, Jane Espenson, incoming exec, Ken MacQuarrie (replacing Faith Penhale’s role), and Ira Steven Behr, who would’ve announced this season as his last, after working on every season since Season 41. He stayed on for this season, at Moore’s request to tie things over smoothly between Chapter 3 and 4.

Four producers would work on this series, with Brian Minchin overseeing episodes 1, 2, 4, 7 and 10; Nikki Wilson overseeing episodes 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 15 and 16; and Derek Ritchie overseeing episodes 11, 12, 13 and 14.

Production for this season would move from Wales to Scotland, being produced by BBC Scotland now. Moore’s reasoning was that for the stories he wanted to tell, he wanted the plethora of locations that Scotland could offer, and while Wales did offer locations of a similar degree, most had been exhausted by 2014, due to Doctor Who using them before. However, despite mainly being production in Scotland, other locations for this season would include, London, France, Germany, and the US (filming with the CBS crew).

This season would also feature a brand-new title sequence which featured an array of clips from across the season, with credits running over the top, for the first time in a Doctor Who title sequence, the wider ‘above the line’ production crew would be credited, and due to standard BBC rules everyone, but cast, who are credited in the opening titles should not be also credited in the closing titles. In addition, the top 3 billed Guest Stars from each episode would be given a short credit in the opening titles after the principle cast. The title sequence has a keen pace to it, set over the top of Bear McCreary’s brand-new arrangement of the Doctor Who theme tune, which takes a bold new take on the iconic theme giving us a fresh interpretation, including the removal of the iconic sting and replacing it with a drum roll… like so…. – McCreary would be the show’s new composer, scoring all 16 episodes of this season.

The new “Chapter Four” logo

Finally, this season would introduce a brand-new logo for the show, replacing the old one in use from the Movie in 2003 until Doctor Who: Genesis in 2013. This new logo would be a lot thinner and more streamlined than the old one.

So without further ado, lets delve into the 49th Season of Doctor Who…

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN

Season 49, Episode One

Written by RONALD D. MOORE

Directed by JOHN DAHL

TX Date – 20 September 2014

We open with the national anthem, “God Save the Queen” being sung by a crowd. We cut to news-reel footage of a street party in the town of East Grinstead, in Sussex, about an hour out from London. Celebrations are a roar. The voice over on the news reel tells us that it’s 7th June 1977, the date of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Celebrations. We focus in on a woman, Danielle Stevenson, standing by a house on the street looking worried, amongst all the celebrations. We cut to the real world now, out of the news reel into vivid HD, and we see Danielle look on into the distance, looking at all the balloons and celebrations and sighing.

Then hard cut to a red phone box, we hear “God Save the Queen” by the Sex Pistols play over, and we see someone spray paint ‘God Save the Queen’ over the phone box. We pull away and see that the person doing so is girl, 19, dressed in leather with hair extensions and black lipstick, Erin Stevenson. Next to her, Kyle Harrison, 23, her boyfriend. They move onto the next phone box they come along to and do the same, shouting God Save the Queen as they do so, ironically. Then they come to a police box, and they do the same, black spray paint all along its side… And then the door opens, much to Erin and Kyle’s shock, they look almost embarrassed. And then out steps, the Doctor and she looks and them and says, “Could you kindly graffiti somewhere else, she’s just been done up”. Hold on their reaction of confusion and shock – and then cut to the opening titles.

After the opening titles, we cut to an alleyway behind some terraced houses, covered in union jacks, still we the noise and celebration heard radiating around. And then, a flash, loud as hell, and a figure comes into view, appearing in the alley. A humanoid figure, covered in armour, a gun attached to the arm. He begins stomping down the alley, but a man exits his garden into it and sees the figure. Before long, the figure shoots a bolt out of the gun on his arm, killing the man with a scream.

Back outside the TARDIS, the Doctor’s head turns in an instant, as she hears the scream. She runs towards it, with Erin and Kyle running after he in curiosity. We cut back to the figure who then walks up to him, and places his hand on his body, and energy syphons up into him as his appearance changes into that of the man. The figure, gets up, now looking like the man that he’s just killed, and he walks on.

The Doctor, Erin and Kyle end up in the alleyway and they see the body of the man, but he’s unidentifiable, not quite a skeleton but stripped of all of his flesh, rotting away. Erin and Kyle are obviously shocked and horrified. The Doctor turns around to them and says, “you should better be getting home, it’s not safe”, but Kyle protests, without consulting Erin, and says that they are staying right here with her. Erin agrees with Kyle, anyway, and the Doctor says, “so be it”.

The rest of the episode focuses on the Doctor, Erin and Kyle tracking down this creature, which is revealed to be a Raston Assassin Robot, which is targeting the Queen. In the second Act, the Doctor meets Danielle and Roger, Erin’s parents, and she introduces herself under the guise as WDC Joan Smith, working for CID. We find out that Danielle and Roger are not happy with the way that Erin is going, especially this punk phase she’s going through, as they are die hard patriots, and they blame this on Kyle, who they deem a very bad influence. They trust the Doctor, as she represents the law, although Roger is unsure as he doesn’t approve of so-called “women policemen”.

In the end, with the help of Kyle and Erin they stop the Raston Assassin Robot, which takes on the disguise of many people throughout by draining their lifeforce, from assassinating the Queen, during the big coronation parade. We don’t actually have an actress playing the queen, as everything is either stock footage, or filmed from angles where we don’t actually see the Queen’s body, so we get a shot from a rooftop as the robot tries to fire at her carriage etc… In the end though, Kyle and Erin manage to ironically save the queen, someone who they very much disagreed with at the start, as part of the anti-monarchist movement.

Part way through Act Three, it’s revealed that the Doctor isn’t from CID, due to a run in with the DCI, and she reveals to Kyle and Erin who she really is, which they believe quickly due to what’s happening, as they wouldn’t ordinally believe in robots from space coming to assassinate the Queen.

At the end of the story, they reunite with Erin’s parents and attend the street party on her street. It’s there that the Doctor offers Erin and Kyle the chance to travel through space and time, with a glint in her eye as she does this, both of them initially reject this, but Kyle persuades Erin to take her up, as she has her whole life ahead of her and its time she broke free of this tiresome family life she’s stuck in, maybe punk wasn’t the thing for her but this very well could be. Erin asks why Kyle won’t go, and he says that what they just went through was too scary, and he can’t experience that all the time, that’s just not the person he is, but you are that person, I see it in you every day, he says, the adrenaline, the fun… Go out there.

Erin then runs after the Doctor, as she is about to open the TARDIS, and she simply says, take me somewhere unimaginable. The Doctor smiles and says, “Well let’s start right now shall we” and she opens the TARDIS doors. Erin’s eyes widen and she steps inside, and we get the whole usual routine. The Doctor steps up to the console and says “Past or Future, Earth or Space… Or something else… it’s your choice”, and then Erin opens her mouth to speak and we cut to the end credits.

THE DARNLEY CONSPIRACY

Season 49, Episode Two

Written by TONI GRAPHIA

Directed by METIN HUSEYIN

TX Date – 27 September 2014

The episode begins in the Scottish docks, foggy and misty. A ship arrives, and after a moment, Mary – the Queen of Scotland, steps out, and to her surprise, there is not one person in the docks there to meet her. Then the cannons on the ship fire, and people starts to gather around the docks – startled by the noise – and a man shouts out, Mary Stuart, the Queen of this noble country, has returned. The crowd then rejoice, applauding and cheering – as we go into the opening titles.

We then cut to the inside of the TARDIS and Erin simply says, “A party”, to which the Doctor looks naturally quite confused, she replies with “Any old party? There’s plenty to choose from… We could go to the disco halls of Thoros-Beta or the residence of King Edward the Sixteenth”, Erin then just asks the Doctor to take her somewhere fun, although she says that she’d probably prefer the past. The Doctor remarks that quite a few years back herself and Sandra received an invite to the wedding of Bastian Pagez, in 16th Century Scotland… She remarks that she never actually ended up going. The Doctor then tells Erin to go get changed into something a little more… regal?

We then cut to the TARDIS arriving in Edinburgh 1567, and both the Doctor and Erin get out, dressed in 16th Century clothes, looking their absolute best. We get the usual thing with Erin, as she has taken her first trip in the TARDIS, and she remarks how brilliant it all is, and how real it feels being her in the 16th century – and we get a bit of them just exploring the past and having a laugh.

The episode then sees a series of events play out, as the Doctor and Erin attend the wedding – and also meet the Queen, who is late after attending to the needs of her ill husband, Lord Darnley. It’s here that we get a series of flashbacks that show us the rocky relationship between Mary and Darnley, including how he murdered someone who Mary was rumoured to have had an affair with. They also find out, through rumour and gossip at the party that Mary is rumoured to be having an affair with the Earl of Bothwell. However, not long into the night Mary decides to leave prematurely, and only a few minutes later, an explosion is heard outside. The crowd (including the Doctor and Erin) rush outside and they find Lord Darnley dead. The Doctor runs over to the body, claiming that she’s a healer, and she tells everyone that he didn’t die in the explosion but by the looks off it from asphyxiation. At that moment, a man, Doctor Garris, laughs and says that the woman is clearly mistaken, of course Darnley died in the explosion, before kneeling down to study Darnley where he bewilderedly makes the same prognosis as the Doctor.

It’s at this point that the Doctor decides to leave, saying that they are touching on a major historical event and they must not interfere, and the Doctor and Erin head back to the TARDIS. But in the TARDIS, Erin asks what actually happened to Darnley to which the Doctor replies “Well nobody knows, some people suspected the Earl of Bothwell and even Mary herself, but it was never solved…” Erin then says, “Could we?”, the Doctor replies “absolutely not, no, no, no.” And then we smash cut to the TARDIS arriving back where it was, and a caption reads “Two months later” – the Doctor and Erin step out of the TARDIS and the Doctor says “that’s it – we are only here to try and crack this mystery. No interfering.”

They find out that a trial is being held for Bothwell, as he is the main suspect, but also that he and Mary are due to get married and to complicate things further, Mary put Bothwell in charge of the murder investigation.

In the end, the Doctor and Erin, with the help of Bastian (the person’s who’s wedding it was in the first place), find a secret base where they find the perpetrators, and they discover that this wasn’t just a murder, but a larger conspiracy involving all the people accused of his murder earlier. Those being the Earl of Moray, the Earl of Morton, William Maitland, Archibald Douglas, Lord Bothwell and Mary herself. The Doctor, Erin and Bastian, spying on them from afar, hear them reveal everything. They here that although Darnley’s death had been planned, most of the other conspirators simply helped out, including getting the gunpowder for the explosion. Bothwell admits it was he who killed Darnley by smothering him, and we also find out that in fact Douglas was the one who disposed of the body. However, Bothwell hears them, and a chase ensues, around the streets of Edinburgh. They make it back to the TARDIS, and they bid Bastian farewell, before the TARDIS dematerlises.

Bothwell catches up with Bastian, but Mary intervenes, scolding Bothwell and says that she is pleased to see Bastian – not believing Bothwell in his assertions that Bastian was in fact spying on them.

In the TARDIS, the Doctor looks up in the databanks, what happened next and Erin remarks, that this was just a bit “real” for her, and she’d like to go home. The Doctor says she understands, and Erin says, “not permanently, I still want to party in the future after all, but I just you know, want to go home for a bit.” The Doctor starts the controls and, the TARDIS heads off back towards 1977.

AT THE TIP OF YOUR FINGERS

Season 49, Episode Three

Written by DAVID WEDDLE & BRADLEY THOMPSON

Directed by RICHARD CLARK

TX Date – 4 October 2014

On Erin’s street, back home, it’s overcast, brown leaves have fallen to the ground… Summer is no more, it’s autumn, and a long time since Erin has been home. The TARDIS materialises and out step Erin and the Doctor. They walk up to Erin’s front door and knock on it, the door swings open to see Danielle standing there, dressed in a very posh dress, looking rather shocked. She exclaims ‘Erin?’, Erin smiles and says how good it is to see her. They are invited in and Danielle explains that Kyle told her that WDC Smith (the Doctor, who she remarks she’s very happy to see again), invited her to train with the police, and while she found it very odd that she never spoke to her personally, they were just happy that she was fulfilling her patriotic duty and doing something better for country than graffitiing. Roger enters at that moment and greets Erin with glee, and he tells the Doctor that she’s obviously made a profound effect on her, noting her changed appearance. The Doctor asks why they are so dressed up, and Roger tells them proudly that they are going out for a really posh “computer” conference, that Uncle Reg invited them to. Much to Roger’s displeasure however, Danielle invites the Doctor and Erin along, since she wants to spend some time with her daughter, and she says that she’s sure Uncle Reg won’t mind. Erin asks if Kyle can go, to which Roger laughs and Danielle tells her that he was arrested for vandalism a couple of weeks ago and is now on community service. Roger argues about the Doctor and Erin going and says that they don’t have anything to wear, and the Doctor says not to worry, I have some suitable clothes in my mobile Police Box.

We cut to later, and the Doctor, Erin, Danielle and Roger get out of a car, which Roger has been driving, and they arrive at a fancy conference centre, with cutting edge facilities making it feel more 1980s than 1977. They enter and it’s all very posh – everyone in black tie and dresses, waiters, violin quartet the lot. After a few minutes, a man, Dr. Carter, walks onto the stage – a thunderous applause. He gives a speech about technology and the fast-changing landscape and then he says I want to introduce something to do, something that will change the world, he then takes out a small familiar black object from his pocket, holds it up and says, “May I introduce to you – the iPhone”. On the Doctor: What??? And we cut to the opening titles.

The rest of the story plays out pretty much how you’d expect. The Doctor obviously knows that Dr. Carter can’t have invented the iPhone, but no-one believes her – even Erin thinks the Doctor might be over-reacting a bit. The episode is for the most part all set that night at the conference, and we get a lot of intresting scenes with Danielle and Roger, as they get to know the Doctor more, still believing her to work for CID (a reason why they trust her so much, and aren’t confused as to her being the one to take authority and save the day), all the while her and Erin try to save the day. The day needing saving because it turns out that Carter is in league with a race of aliens called the J’taria, who travelled from the future, and brought the designs for the iPhone, along with the relevant technology to make it, to Dr. Carter – their intention to use them to control the minds of the population of Earth – acting also as social commentary by the writers on mobile phone addiction of the modern world. With the aide of Penelope Carter, Dr. Carter’s wife, after she is revealed to have been under the influence of the mind control – and the Doctor reverses this – they stop the J’taria and set the timeline back on track, with the iPhone disappearing for the next 30 years.

Although the episode gives a slight negative view of the iPhone, Apple did give their permission for the iPhone to be used in this episode – although after its broadcast they did raise some complaints about the representation of their product in the show. As keeping with the BBC Charter, this wasn’t a matter of product placement, but simply copyright, of allowing the iPhone and its likeness to be used in the episode.

TOMAHAWK

Season 49, Episode Four

Written by NICHOLAS BRIGGS

Directed by DOUGLAS MACKINNON

TX Date – 11 October 2014

We begin in the vortex – the TARDIS whizzes past the camera. Inside the Doctor looks at a monitor at the console, and calls to Erin saying that they have trouble. Erin asks what sort, and the Doctor says “Human… trouble…”. We smash cut to Caitrin Ryan, the Director General of UNIT – it’s 2014 and she’s in the back of a SUV car, drinking a cup of tea. Before long, a voice comes through on her walkie-talkie, the muffled voice of Colonel Lafayette. “Tomahawk One, are you receiving? Over.”, and Lafayette goes onto explain that there’s been a situation back in the capital, a massive portal has appeared to have opened in the sky. Caitrin looks rather bemused, but before long the SUV turns around a corner and a giant purple portal is seen in the distance, hovering above London – and we cut to the opening titles.

Inside UNIT HQ, the TARDIS materialises, to an audience of UNIT soldiers. The door opens and the Doctor walks out shouting “Ms. Ryan, what do you think you are actually doing?”, before dead silence as the Doctor sees Colonel Lafayette in front of her. She says “Where’s Caitrin? Caitrin Ryan? I need to speak to her.” – Lafayette replies telling the Doctor that she is en route and that she’s got to deal with him for now. The Doctor then tells him to run her through the events that lead to this portal in this sky – the Doctor initially assumes it one of UNIT’s foolish endeavours, but Lafayette says that he’s at much of a loss as she is.

As the episode continues, mysterious baby like heads appear from the portal, called the Sky Heads, and Lafayette speaks to them. We find out that they want to declare Earth their new home, and while Lafayette tries to negotiate and deter them from this, one of the sky heads just kills him. The Doctor, quickly swoops in, and begins to talk to them, basically just making it up on the spot, and agreeing to letting the Sky Heads onto Earth, as long as they don’t harm the population and they help the humans with mutually beneficial tasks in the future.

When Caitrin gets back, they begin trying to work out how they are going to go about integrating them into Earth’s population – but before long more portals open up and different strange creatures begin emerging. The narrative then splits into two with the Doctor and Caitrin facing monsters called Mind leachers, and Erin and a UNIT sergeant, Wilson, split up and facing monsters called Lava Spiders. However, after this attack, they are saved by the Sky Heads, killing both monsters – and many more in the other portals.

However, while the portals now begin to close, cubes appear in the sky – Caitrin and Erin deal with these, while the Doctor and Wilson talk to the sky heads, as the other creatures are sealed into the closing portals. Caitrin orders a missile strike at one of them and from this they work out that they explode, not because of the missiles, but because of heat – and the Sky Heads proceed, with UNIT’s help, to blow low bursts of heat at them.

Wilson, then tries calling Dr. Ball – the head of the bomb department at UNIT – but he doesn’t respond – but not before long, the Doctor and Caitrin find Dr. Ball’s dead body in the warehouse where the Time Machine is being stored (the body is that of a different actor, and not Colin Baker as the Matrix illusion has worn off). However, they find an alien lurking in the warehouse, called Arunzell the leader of the Tolians, who as it turns out has been using UNIT’s equipment to not just bring these creatures from different planets, but different times as well. He has an almost mad fascination with Natural Selection and has been experimenting with using it to eradicate life. We find out that all the non-sentient creatures’ kind of leaked through his portals, and the Sky Heads just used them to their advantage after their planet was destroyed – which is revealed was also, unbeknownst to them, as a result of one of his experiments.

He is defeated, by Caitrin opening up the roof, to reveal a Sky Head above, and she tells them that Arunzell was responsible for the destruction of their planet – and they, using the same power as earlier with Lafayette, kill him. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Erin manage to close all the portals, permanently, in a technobabbly kind of way. Caitrin and the Doctor then cut a deal with the Sky Heads, to use a combination of UNIT’s time travel technology, and the power of the TARDIS to send all of them to a new planet, capable of supporting their life, that is deserted.

However, a spaceship descends on UNIT HQ, after all of this, and it’s the Tolians, Arunzell’s people, they demand extradition of Arunzell, as he’s a war criminal. The Doctor explains that he’s been killed, and the Tolians arrest the Doctor and Erin for perverting the course of justice – as we smash into the end credits.

As well as being a fun alien invasion story with UNIT, this story does also focus on Erin as she arrives in 2014 (the future) for the first time and there are plenty of humorous moments where she reacts to modern technology and other assets of the future.

THE FOOD OF LOVE

Season 49, Episode Five

Written by SIMON GUERRIER

Directed by JOHN DAHL

TX Date – 18 October 2014

We begin with a previously segment, not covering much of the last episode, but only the events leading up to the Doctor and Erin getting arrested. We cut to a holding cell on the spaceship and a Tolian Guard is presiding over the cell – after a moment of awkward silence, the Doctor quips “Are we nearly there yet?” in a deliberately annoying way. The Tolian Guard sternly says, “That’s none of your business”. The captain’s voice comes over the PA saying, “We have just exited the Time Vortex [Note: Tolia are one of the few races to hold time travel technology], please bring the Prisoners to the Bridge”. The guards then grabs hold of the Doctor and Erin and escorts them up to the bridge. Captain Maion welcomes them and tells them to sit down. The Doctor is a little confused, but the Captain informs them that the Judicial board have found them not guilty, after investigation. The Doctor annoyed asks if they can be taken back to Earth in 2014 – the Captain says, they can do in a few days’ time, but he wants to watch the Intergalactic Song Contest. The Doctor beams and says, “Oh I love the Intergalactic Song Contest, can we join you, if you have room obviously.” The Captain laughs and says “We have more than enough room, we have over 100,000 seats! Tolia won last year, we’re hosting it! Sure come along, I have seats in the VIP box!” We then cut to the ship landing, over Tolia and we track in on the arena with a giant sign saying, “Celebrating 1300 Years – The Intergalactic Song Contest – Tolia 3256!”. And we cut to the opening titles.

After the titles, we cut to the Doctor, Erin, the Captain and a group of other people walking towards the arena, with a load of other people surrounding them too. Erin asks if the Intergalactic Song Contest is similar to Eurovision, and the Doctor says that its actually the same contest that rebranded itself after the formation of the United Earth, and the Earth Empire – it spread out into the galaxy, and 1300 years after its creation – here it is on Tolia, the Doctor then jokingly warns Erin that its quite different to what she would know in 1977, even 40 years later, in Caitrin’s time, she says, – it’s a whole different animal, imagine what its like 1300 years later. We then cut to them finding their seats and the contest begins.

The contests opens with a flag parade of all the competing worlds, and we see many old faces including the Bellonsions, the Sontarans, the Ice Warriors, the Alpha Centaurians (entering a group called Green Thing, meaning we see more than one of them), obviously the Tolians and the Humans too, plus a bunch of new alien races. However, as the Human Contestant, Suzie Q, walks across the stage, the Doctor notices something strange, an orange flicker above him (that makes her feel slightly uncomfortable), she asks if Erin saw this, but she just says its probably a trick of the lights.

The rest of the story, focuses on the Doctor as she slips backstage to investigate and she sneaks into the greenroom, dressed as a Steadicam operator, and she discovers that Suzie Q is most definitely not quite herself, as she finds her in an almost hypnotic state. Also in the scene, the Doctor is made to actually become a Steadicam operator to film a link, in quite a humorous manner – she isn’t very good, and one of the Floor Assistants tells her that she’s on thin ice. It turns out that Suzie Q’s song “The Food of Love”, which is a pretty generic schlager type song, contains a secret code which will unlock a fisher in the fabric of reality to bring a swarm of something through… The Doctor ponders this with Erin, when she gets back in her seat (while the Sontaran performance is on), and she says this all seems very familiar. It turns out that its in fact the Carrionites (introduced in Season 47’s the Shakespeare Code), and they have used Suzie Q, to perform a song with lyrics which would unlock their people from the darkness, as they tried before with Shakespeare. The Doctor and Erin realise that at all costs they must stop Suzie Q from performing but as they race back to the greenroom, the Floor Assistant before is standing in the corridor with some security guards and point towards the Doctor, they then promptly arrest her and Erin. In one of the back rooms, they are held guard, and they see the contest being broadcast on a screen in the room, and its Earth’s time to perform – the Doctor and Erin try and escape as the performance starts and they manage to do so. They race back towards the stage, and from backstage they see Carrionites beginning to form up in the top of the arena – people begin to notice, ogling them see them as a special effect. The Doctor and Erin run onto stage, and they grab hold of Suzie Q, but security run up onto stage thinking them stage invaders… They grab onto the Doctor and Erin, but the Doctor manages to take the microphone and she says “I name thee, Carrionite” – and the Carrionites begin to hurtle back in pain, security stop at this point and notice, as Suzie Q wakes up from this trance. She says to security, let them go, they (pointing to the Carrionites) must be stopped. The Doctor says it isn’t enough, and she says that they need to fight them back with their own medicine. Erin then says “I think I know just the thing” and she takes the microphone and begins singing Puppet on a String by Sandie Shaw, the winner of Eurovision from 1967, this pushes the Carrionites back into the fisher, and closes it off. The audience stand in awe, confused but spellbinded and then after a pause, they applaud.

We then cut back to the spaceship and the Doctor and Erin leave, on a screen they watch a newsreport which states that TBK, the host broadcaster, are claiming that the “Sandie Shaw incident” was in fact a planned celebration of the 1300th Anniversary, that was meant to interrupt the human contestant, aptly. It also shows that in the end, the Sontaran performer was victorious, with his song “My Last Battlefield”. The Doctor chuckles and says, “I’ll tell Sandie next time I see her that her song saved the world”, Erin chuckles, as we cut to them arriving back in 2014 and getting into the TARDIS as it dematerlises, and we hear distantly in the background of the dematerialisation the last few notes of Te Duem.

This story would obviously be a fun lighthearted story, to break up the season, and it would’ve been made with the permission of the EBU. NOTE: Unlike the Audio Story in our universe, Bang Bang a Boom, which is also based on the Eurovision Song Contest, this would be less of a spoof and more of just a cheesy love letter not just to the competition but also to music in general and the power that it holds. The audience reaction was varied with some seeing it as too silly for Doctor Who, while others loved it, not just for its loving futuristic version of Eurovision but also because of the sheer amount of fan service for Doctor Who, with so many returning creatures, and the prospective of a Sontaran singing too, which is inherently funny.

FLATLINE

Season 49, Episode Six

Written by JAMIE MATHIESON

Directed by DOUGLAS MACKINNON

TX Date – 25 October 2014

The TARDIS lands back in East Grinstead, and Erin remarks how good it is to be home. She says that she’ll be back in a bit, but she just wants to see Kyle. The Doctor says not to be too long, and Erin walks off. She stops around at Kyle’s house but there’s no reply, she then walks around the village and around the back of the train station she finds Kyle, doing community service. She then remembers how her mother says he had been given community service. She hugs Kyle to greet him, and he is very happy to see her. Erin spots a mural on the wall, graffitied on, and Kyle explains that that’s what their scrubbing clean and it’s eulogising some locals that have disappeared over the past couple of weeks – but unusually he hasn’t done them, and everyone he has asked says the same, it seems like the murals appeared out of nowhere. Erin and Kyle go back to the TARDIS, but it seems to have disappeared, to which Erin fears the worse, that the Doctor has abandoned her, but Kyle spots the TARDIS, barely 8 inches tall, on the ground. He picks it up, opens the door and finds the Doctor inside, the same size, but the exterior dimensions have shrunk – the Doctor replies sarcastically that she isn’t too impressed. Erin and Kyle then bring her up to speed with whats been going on.

Erin then puts the TARDIS in her bag, and we follow her and Kyle as they investigate the missing people, with the assistance of the Doctor, over a comms device. It turns out that the people are being turned into 2-D by creatures from a 2-D universe, the Boneless, and they are experimenting on the 3-D world, trying to understand it. Erin, Kyle and the rest of his community service group end up in the train tunnels, on the run from the creatures. Meanwhile, the Doctor makes a device, the 2Dis, to restore something’s original dimensions, changing 2-D to 3-D. The Doctor then tells them that she has worked out a way to stop the creatures and return them to their home dimension, but the TARDIS doesn’t have enough power.

However, in a scuffle with the community service leader, the TARDIS is knocked over the railings and hit by a train, forcing the Doctor to put it into siege mode, to protect the TARDIS, leaving her locked out from the outside world, and with failing power.

In the end, Erin and Kyle work out that they can repower the TARDIS by painting a fake door on the back of a large poster, so that when the Boneless try and restore it to 3-D they can’t and they instead turn the TARDIS back to normal, which is placed behind the poster. When the TARDIS is restored, the Doctor walks out and gives a speech, using the excess power from the TARDIS restoration to send the Boneless back into their own dimension.

The episode ends with Erin kissing Kyle goodbye, and her and the Doctor entering the TARDIS once again for another adventure.

FIRE AND FURY

Season 49, Episode Seven

Written by JACQUELINE RAYNER

Directed by METIN HUSEYIN

TX Date – 1 November 2014

We open in Berlin 1937 – we see a raid on a Jewish shop, by Nazis. They round up and arrest the occupants and throw them into the back of a van. Stepping into the street with see a man – Obergruppenführer Sennheiser – as we cut to the titles.

After the titles we see the TARDIS land in the very same street, it’s the next morning. The Doctor and Erin walk out and see the shop, with smashed windows and derelict. They soon realise where they are, as they see Swastikas outside people’s homes, as they continue walking down the street. However, we see someone around the corner looking at them. After a few minutes, a group of brownshirts walk up to them and arrest them, the Doctor and Erin protest, but they aren’t given a reason to their arrest.

We cut to them in two separate interrogation rooms as Obergruppenführer Sennheiser interrogates both of them. He accuses them of being freaks, and Erin of being one of the degenerate youth, noting her clothes and hairstyle, he remarks that its nothing like he’s ever seen before.

As the story progresses the two are split up, Erin is taken for re-education and she finds herself (over the course of some weeks), put with a ‘ideal’ Nazi family, Sofia and Karl, along with their son Hamish. The Doctor meanwhile is subject to an extended stay in Sennheiser’s facility where they have often one on one interrogations, reminiscent of the Cordale/Gordra scenes in Panopticon Series 6. As this develops, Sennheiser gets hold of the TARDIS and he wants to use it to quite literally rewrite history for the führer, you know standard stuff. Meanwhile, Erin and her new family, take her on their trip to America onboard the new Hindenberg Airship, to which Erin is very resistant to as she knows from her own knowledge from 1977, the ill fate of the Hindenberg. The story becomes a rescue mission from the Doctor’s point of view, as she first escapes Sennheiser, and then she tries to find Erin, learning that she’s on the Hindenberg. The Doctor manages to land the TARDIS in it, which is tricky due to it being not just a moving object, but also because Sennheiser, had messed about with the controls, but its later than the Doctor expected as its literally 20 minutes before the infamous crash. A fight breaks out between the Doctor and some of the crew, as she tries to take Erin and obviously her “family” aren’t too pleased with this. The resulting fight results in the bursting of one of the hydrogen cannisters which causes the explosion – the Doctor and Erin make it out just in time on the TARDIS, but not without deep guilt and regret, as they realise that they are the reason that 36 people lost their lives. We have some time to reflect on this, as the Doctor and Erin land back in 1977 and they go and visit a memorial in New Jersey, which is where it crashed, and there they encounter an old Sofia and Karl, who they find out are two of the 62 survivors, who managed to make it out of the windows during the crash.

THOSE WHO LEAD, PART I

Season 49, Episode Eight

Written by JANE ESPENSON & JAMIE MATHIESON

Directed by RACHEL TALALAY

TX Date – 8 November 2014

The episode begins with space, and a spaceship comes into view. On the outer hull, we see two workers, Hogan Cox and Ellie Hollinder. They are having a conversation, but the comms system is faulty. Ellie examines her air tank to discover that she is running low on oxygen and is required to purchase more. From behind two figures start walking toward her, also wearing suits but without their helmets — the humans wearing the suits are obviously dead. Ellie turns to see them advancing on her and she screams, but Hogan can’t hear anything. Just as he finishes his repairs, Hogan turns to look behind him and sees the two figures along with a now dead, helmet-less Ellie advancing on him and he screams, as we cut to the opening titles.

The TARDIS materialises in a corridor on the spaceship and the Doctor and Erin step out. The Doctor expands the TARDIS air-shell so they can explore as their isn’t any oxygen on the ship. The Doctor welcomes Erin to her first space ship, and that they are sometime in the 32nd Century. As the two of them continue down the corridor, they discover a man in a suit standing in the middle of the repair bay. Upon examining him, they discover the man to be dead – just standing there. Erin finds it rather distressing that the mechanical suit is keeping the dead man propped upright. The Doctor examines the computer logs and discovers that the station was declared non-profitable after a majority of its workers were killed.

The Doctor and Erin continue further through the ship and discover a suit, without a body inside moving about. Suddenly a computer voice, states there has never been oxygen in the station and the unauthorised oxygen from the TARDIS has been detected and will be expelled. The Doctor and Erin, with haste, rush back to the TARDIS as the section begins decompressing the expanded air shell from it, but before they can get to it, the blast door in front of the corridor its in snaps shut. The Doctor and Erin are stuck, and with the oxygen draining, and fast. A comms unit engages on a nearby console, and the voice on the other end introduces herself as Captain Amanda Theodore of the Starship Forge. However, the empty suit starts advancing towards the two of them, and the Doctor works out that the Oxygen is contained in the suits and she and Erin quickly scamper into two held in the repair bay.

While escaping from the smartsuit chasing them, the Doctor and Erin stumble upon Captain Theodore, Hogan and several other members of the surviving crew. The crew tells the Doctor that the suits are the property of the company which has turned access to oxygen into profit and that the suits have received instructions to ‘deactivate their organic components’. All other crew members were killed by an electric shock to their nerve systems, rendering them zombies. The crew makes plans, now with the Doctor and Erin, to retreat across the Outer Hull of the Starship to a section of the ship that had been taken offline for repairs and as such wasn’t present in the stations mapping, at present. However, suddenly he suits break into the section where the crew are hiding and kill Tasker, one of the crew. Theodore, now down to only 2 of her crew left, Hogan and Dahh-Ren, guides them along with the Doctor and Erin to the airlock at the end of the section, telling them to all put their helmets on as they prepare themselves for the short journey in the vacuum. During the process of decompression, the suit Erin took from the repair bay begins to malfunction, deactivating her helmet of its own accord. The Doctor attempts to release Erin’s helmet from the suit’s grip, but to no avail; she warns Erin that she is about to be exposed to the vacuum and to breathe normally. We get a tense seen, shot in a high frame rate and then presented in slow motion, of the team, with Erin exposed to the vacuum making their way across the hull, Erin’s eyes begin to boil over, her skin starts to freeze and then – they make it inside. Erin has lost consciousness… The Doctor is worried and starts getting quite tetchy as she lays Erin down to rest. Captain Theodore tells Hogan and Dahh-Ren to have a look around the section, make sure its secure.

Erin awakens, with the Doctor crouched over her. The Doctor explains that her exposure to the vacuum has caused some nasty side effects… And then Erin begins to scream almost with terror, she says… Doctor, I can’t see anything… Doctor I’m blind. The Doctor looks down solemnly, the Doctor apologises heartfeltly, she feels especially bad that this has happened. Erin says it’s okay, she’s a little shaken but right now they have to stay on task and keep all 5 of them alive. The Doctor walks off and begins speaking to Captain Theodore. Hogan, meanwhile, starts speaking to Erin and they have an in-depth discussion after life in the 32nd century, and Erin speaks of her home as well in 1977. Hogan makes mention of ‘the empire’ and Earth not being too nice a place at the moment. The Doctor, speaking to Captain Theodore, makes plans to get the 5 of them out alive, but she isn’t satisfied that they Doctor will be able to achieve it, especially due to what she let happen to Erin. But at that point, the smartsuits find the section, logging it in their mapping system and storm it, killing Dahh-Ren in the process. The Doctor shouts for everyone to come together now, Hogan helps Erin up, holding her hand as they scamper.

Just before they make it to the next section, Hogan’s suit malfunctions, he gasps out, stuck to the floor. Erin is dazed, as she is no longer being guided by Hogan due to his immobility – the Doctor grabs onto Erin, helping her navigate. Knowing that the 3 others won’t be able to get to the next section with him, Hogan tells them to go ahead, and leave him behind. The Doctor, Erin and Theodore make it to Main Engineering, where the Doctor highlights on the suits’ operation being heavily established by a capitalist attitude. The Doctor claims that she is attempting to redirect the flow of water cooling the generators to convert it into oxygen, but instead connects the generators to their suit’s life signs, meaning that if they die, the generators will overheat and explode. The Doctor insists that the suits be let in, seemingly as a grand statement about the inevitable downfall of capitalism, and Theodore reluctantly agrees with the plan. As the suits advance and are about to kill them, the Doctor declares that their deaths would be expensive, and the suits stop. The suits analyse the generators and conclude that it would be a greater loss for the company if the crew were to die and the station were to explode, so the suits remove their oxygen tanks and give them to the Doctor, Erin and Captain Theodore. The Doctor also re-engages Hogan’s oxygen tank and he is revived, as his suit’s battery was too weak an electric charge to prove fatal.

Captain Theodore then orders everyone up to the bridge, and Hogan pilots the ship back to Earth. She says that she plans to go back to the Headquarters of the Mining Company their ship is a part of and make a public complaint about what had transpired. She also asks the Doctor to stay on board, as she believes that with a bit of string pulling on Earth they may be able to get Erin’s eyesight fixed. We cut to a shot of the ship travelling through space, and then we cut to a few hours later as it arrives on Earth. The ship descends down to the planet surface, and we see London but a futuristic version, all metal and full of skyscrapers – and then we begin to see flags, massive flags and banners all over the buildings and then on the comms we here “GAIAN Border Service, please give your clearance code for landing”. On the Doctor – oh no… They’re on Gaian Earth! And we cut to the end credits.

And there we have it – the first half of Season 49. What a roller-coaster ride of only half of a season really. After the broadcast of Episode 8, it would be announced that Hogan Cox, played by Bernard Cribbins, the disgruntled and grumpy engineer, would be joining the TARDIS team as a new companion in the second half of the season, but you’ll have to wait just a bit for that… as that’ll be in the next post so until then – goodbye.