Intriguing Series 7 Part 2 Details

The latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine (#458) contains a few intriguing new details and hints on the second half of Series 7. Here’s some highlights:

The Bells of St John

Synopsis:

Earth, 2013. A whole world swimming in Wi-Fi. A Wi-Fi soup! Suppose something got inside it. Suppose there was something living in the Wi-Fi, harvesting human minds. Something that loves and cares for humanity so much it can’t get enough of it…

Titbits:

• Set squarely in London
• Moffat says: “If something did get in Wi-Fi, we’d be kind of screwed. It’s time to make kids frightened of Wi-Fi!”
• There are nods to the 2011 UK riots, the Shard skyscraper, the Olympics (the 2074 Anti-Grav Olympics), and the police box at Earl’s Court
• Big set pieces include: the Doctor and Clara piloting a passenger jet over the city, the Doctor riding a motorbike over Westminster Bridge and performing an “improbable stunt”
• Moffat says there are three Claras – Oswin, Victorian Clara, and modern-day Clara. They are “each the same person for reasons that will become evident. Each is an emphasis on a different bit: one’s the computer genius, one’s the nanny… but the strands are fundamentally the same”
• The modern-day Clara is a more “realistic version” and there’s still plenty to discover about her
• The mystery of Clara is a lighter story arc

Episode quotes:

THE DOCTOR: “I don’t know who Clara is. I don’t understand her. I met her three times. Twice she died. The same woman, three times. Not possible.”

THE DOCTOR: “You’re a nanny, Isn’t that a bit… Victorian?”
CLARA: “Victorian?” _
THE DOCTOR: “Well you’re young. Shouldn’t you be doing, you know… young things? With young people?
CLARA: “What you mean like you, for instance? Down boy!”

Series 7 Part 2

• Neil Cross’ alien episode set out to be “as big, and grand, and running-round-y, and alien as possible. A really, properly alien planet”
• The Ice Warriors are very intimidating and very powerful. The story respects the source but there are huge gaps in which you can invent
• In the opening shot of Neil Cross’ ghost story, Jessica Raine’s character, Emma Grayling, is talking to a… something, possibly a ghost, and she disappears into a dark room
• Neil Gaiman set out to scare with his Cybermen episode. He also wanted to create an “emotional reaction to the Cybermen” that was similar to how he felt when he saw them on the Moon [The Moonbase]”
• Moffat says there might be “a certain villain popping up again, but really I couldn’t tell you who”