Moffat’s 5 Teaser Words for Series 9 & More

The latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine (#490) features a preview of Series 9 and Steven Moffat reveals some more hints and details.

Here’s some highlights:

Note: Nothing too spoilery is revealed. The following should be safe for spoilerphobes.

• 5 teaser words – “Cards”, “Hybrid”, “Cobbles”, “Solo”, “Dead” (mostly in order, one will make you laugh, the other cry)
• Reason for more multi-part stories is about recapturing mystery and atmosphere – more creeping menace and character moments
• Missy had the “Least convincing death in history”. But her quick return wasn’t originally planned for the opener, she just fit the theme – “friends within enemies”.
• Concept for episodes 3 & 4 was “ghosts plus time travel” – what if you could meet your own ghost?
• Guest star Sophie Stone’s character will only speak through sign language in 3 & 4
• Maisie Williams plays a very important character in 5 & 6… Is she “The Girl Who Died”? “Maybe, but it won’t be as simple as that”
• “The Women Who Lived” is “heartfelt, eloquent and clever”. Both 5 & 6 are obviously connected
• Moffat had the idea for the Zygon two-parter before the 50th. The Zygon plot strand in that was a prequel to this year
• Moffat has in fact co-written episode 8 with Peter Harness
• Zygons are living among us, what do we do about it? Could it be these monsters aren’t monsters at all and are just like us?
• Episode 9 is a tough one to pull off and very different to Gatiss’ other scripts, still unmistakably in his in style and tone but nothing like Robot of Sherwood
• With Episode 10, Moffat thought “why haven’t we done that before?”
• In 10 “every scene ends on a cliffhanger, Clara’s funny and the Doctor is outrageous”
• Episode 10 was pushed up to lead us into the final two episodes
• Episode 11 is one of the strangest Doctor Who episodes ever made – “It’s as ‘out-there’ as we can get” and was a “shockingly hard script to write”
• Episode 12 is “more in the finale tradition. It’s all about… well, you’ll see”

Catch the full preview in the magazine out this Thursday.