Moffat explains Wooden King

The Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver is a ridiculously powerful tool but one problem is the fact it “doesn’t do wood”. With the Doctor set to go up against wooden monsters, the Wooden King (and Queen), in The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe, could the Time Lord be in some serious trouble?

“Aliens made of wood. It was always going to happen,” Moffat teases in the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine. “What if he meets wooden monsters? That would be bad. Wouldn’t it?”

However, Moffat explained that the inspiration for the monster actually came from another of his childhood fears: “It was an old, old nightmare. When I was a little boy, I used to have an obsession that if I fell asleep facing the wall, as opposed to facing the door of my room, something dreadful would happen to me. I had all sorts of safeguards in case I ever fell asleep facing the wrong way. But one time, I woke up… and I was facing the wall. I was horrified! I spun round, and I was so transported by fear that, for a moment, I saw a seated, wooden king in front of my bedroom door, saying, ‘Well, you got that wrong, didn’t you?’ And I freaked.

“Obviously, it was just my imagination; there wasn’t actually a wooden king. At least, I hope there wasn’t. But that is the Wooden King in this episode, seated and looking like wood, but with a mobile face… Have you seen it blink? It’s terrifying. It’s that wonderful, counter-intuitive thing of wood behaving like flesh, and being fluid. It feels so wrong, and therefore so Doctor Who.”