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Eleven is driving a motorbike with Clara riding pillion - he looks intensely concerned, she looks excited

Doctor Who S7/2 only two weeks to go

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Eleven is driving a motorbike with Clara riding pillion - he looks intensely concerned, she looks excitedAs requested ages ago, a dedicated Doctor Who thread prior to the show’s 2013 season return.

Some screening dates for Season 7 Part 2 (Episodes 6-13):

Steven Moffat, executive producer and lead writer, said:

“It’s the 50th year of Doctor Who and look what’s going on! We’re up in the sky and under the sea! We’re running round the rings of an alien world and then a haunted house. There’s new Cybermen, new Ice Warriors and a never before attempted journey to the centre of the TARDIS. And in the finale, the Doctor’s greatest secret will at last be revealed! If this wasn’t already our most exciting year it would be anyway!”

Some titles for the 8 episodes (leaked during filming, so broadcast titles may differ) – all screencaps are taken from the DWS7Part2 trailer:

Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor and Jenna-Louise Coleman as Clara Oswin Oswald7-06 The Bells of St John
Written by Steven Moffat. Directed by Colm McCarthy.
– guest stars Celia Imrie


Jenna Louise Coleman as Clara Oswin Oswald stands in the middle of a crowd scene amongst aliens.7-07 The Rings of Akhaten (title tbc)
Written by Neil Cross. Directed by Farren Blackburn.


A man is being throttled by a oddly shaped hand/arm7-08 The Cold War (title tbc)
Written by Mark Gatiss. Directed by Douglas Mackinnon.
– set in a submarine, rumoured return of Classic-Who adversaries the Ice Warriors


A spooky distorted face and torso in what looks like a Victorian-era room7-09 The Hider in the House or Phantoms of the Hex (title tbc)
Written By Neil Cross. Directed by Jamie Payne.
– spooky, obviously.


Ashley Walters, Mark Oliver & Jahvel Hall as an intergalactic salvage team7-10 Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS
Written by Steve Thompson. Directed by Mat King.
– somehow an intergalactic salvage crew is involved


Rachael Stirling in horror mode7-11 The Crimson Horror (title tbc)
Written by Mark Gatiss. Directed by Saul Metzstein.
– this one guest-stars Dame Diana Rigg and her daughter Rachael Stirling in their first time on-screen together, and sees the return of Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax to the Doctor’s side.


Cybermen a la Gaiman - yum!7-12 The Last Cyberman
Written by Neil Gaiman. Directed by Stephen Wolfenden.
– guest-stars Tamzin Outhwaite as Captain Alice


A Sontaran warrior fires an energy weapon while running7-13 Series 7 Finale
Written by Steven Moffat. Directed by Saul Metzstein.
– full of recurring favourite characters and the Moff threatens that “I think you’ll be just a tiny bit worried where we might be going with this one”.


So, what are you most looking forward to?

58 thoughts on Doctor Who S7/2 only two weeks to go

  1. I am so excited for all of it. Complete fansquee meltdown excited. But as a obsessive Neil Gaiman fan I am obligated to tell the world his ep. will be awesome and beautiful and soul warming, etc.

  2. That is such a long time to go before we get back Vastra and Jenny! Also, I would like to see 11 interacting with Martha and Captain Jack. Also, I can not wait to see where they are taking this new companion, and will the Doctor’s clone daughter ever reappear in the verse?! And, and, and, and Neil Gaiman is writing cybermen, and, and….*swoons*

    1. Oooh yes I want Captain Jack back. Even more than the Jack + Eleven dynamic I wanna see Jack + River – they’re both totally incorrigible flirters & badasses. I think the conversations they might have might make the Doctor’s head explode.

      I miss Amy and Rory so much, though 🙁

      1. I so agree with everything you just said. Also about Amy & Rory. I loved the whole dynamic of the two of them and Eleven.

    2. I’ve been wondering about if the daughter will ever come up again as well…hmm…

      also yes yes yes to more cpt. jack and river!!!!

  4. Unfortunately, I don’t get any of those channels, so I’m waiting for it to be free on my Amazon Prime account, which probably won’t be until late summer, at least. Unless I cave and just pay for the season before that. But, by then I’ll be mostly done with the dissertation and will have the time to gorge myself on all of them at once.

  5. the Moff threatens that “I think you’ll be just a tiny bit worried where we might be going with this one”.

    After season 6, sweetie, that was pretty much a given. Thanks.

    Good fuck, but s6 sucked.

    1. It got sent before I even finished my sentence. V_V

      Anyway, I admit, with great shame, that I know nothing about Doctor Who except the old theme song.

  7. Those look like proper cybermen!!

    Huge excitement here, despite not really liking season 6 at all or the current incarnation very much. I did like the Christmas episode though, so perhaps he is growing on me, or perhaps it was the lack of Ramy.

    1. Oh thank fuck! I thought Val and I were the only people who hated s6. (Particularly River Song’s arc – talking about turning a fascinating character into another Femme Fatale Reformed >.<)

      1. I HATED what happened to River. Hated how her entire life now revolves around the Doctor, hated how very quickly she fell in love with him, hated how their marriage looked downright abusive in The Angels Take Manhattan. But I still love River. I just do some fancy rewriting for my headcanon.

        1. hated how their marriage looked downright abusive in The Angels Take Manhattan

          Dawn, I really didn’t get that impression from that episode myself… could you elaborate further?

        2. They read in the book that her wrist will be broken, and then when an angel grabs her wrist, the Doctor yells at her and leaves her to get out of it, when he probably could have helped. He’s the Doctor, he can always come up with something. He blames her and yells at her for something that was so not her fault, he’s just taking his frustration out on her, so that bit was really ugly. Also, near the end when she says you have to not let him see the damage. She’s suffering, and feels like she can’t tell him. Maybe abusive isn’t the right word, but it is worlds of unhealthy.

        3. Hmm. Well, re your first point, I always interpreted that as the Doctor being totally helpless there. He’s canonically always been unable to help someone in an Angel’s grasp – the bishop whose neck was broken in Flesh and Stone that Eleven couldn’t stop happening, etc. Also, there’s the fact that he knows River will survive, because of the book. So, since he knows she won’t die, and he couldn’t help her even if she *was* about to die, he yells at her to try and get free and then continues to try to fix the fuckery going on elsewhere. It seemed fair enough to me.

          Also, near the end when she says you have to not let him see the damage. She’s suffering, and feels like she can’t tell him. Maybe abusive isn’t the right word, but it is worlds of unhealthy.

          You’re dead right on that point, though. They’re not healthy, but then they never have been. Too much Stockholm Syndrome, too much “oh the Doctor is so amazing” shit. It’s Amy 2.0, but River doesn’t have a Rory to distract her.

          Argh i wish so badly that River Song had had ANY other relationship with him than a romantic one. ANYTHING.

        4. because of the book.

          Should have been “because of the library”. He’s seen her death, he knows she won’t die at this moment in time. Sorry, I had the book on my mind, and I slipped.

        5. Fair point about how the Doctor has always been helpless against the angels that way. It’s one of the few things that Moffatt has managed to keep consistent about the angels.

      2. I hated The Wedding of River Song.
        She was such a badass, but then they ruined her. *stomps feet*
        I’m not sure I would even enjoy an episode with her and Jack now. Not that I expect we’ll see River Song again. We’ve seen her death already, now that they’re married and her parents are out of the picture she might as well never have existed.

        1. Not that I expect we’ll see River Song again. We’ve seen her death already, now that they’re married and her parents are out of the picture she might as well never have existed.

          I will be eternally pissed off if this is the case.

      3. I need to figure out why I get so uncomfortable and sad when people say they don’t like the recent seasons & River’s arc. I think it’s because my logic-brain agrees with everything you’re saying and I can’t reconcile that with the fact that I really enjoyed most of season 6…

      4. Yeah…I really disliked the River Song arc, and it pissed me off because I thought the rest of season 6 had potential. But seriously…if you have a kid and that kid is stolen….it messes you up! You don’t go on like nothing happened! And if you discover that you know that kid and that she was brainwashed as a child and is now older than you and never got to know her….well, I can’t imagine you would act like nothing every happened. But there was NO connection between River and Amy, and Amy and Rory never seemed at all attached to Melody. So the whole arc was messed up and made no sense.
        I also get annoyed by River and the doctor being in love. To start with River is awesome, but it seems like the reason they are in love is because they meet backwards- aka the doctor first meets River after she is in love with him, so there is almost “forced teaming” there.
        And I thought the “you can’t let him see you hurt” was a bit baseless- like it was added for pure drama. There was nothing prior to this showing that River had to pretend to be perfect and unable to get hurt. And while her aging while he doesn’t could present a problem, they never even brought it up until that episode. There were so many other ways they could have played it- instead they tried to make River tragic instead of bad ass.

        AnWHo…still super excited. I love doctor who anyway. I’m especially excited for Neil Gaiman’s episode (LOVE him) and the creepy ones!

    2. I lasted all of ten minutes into S6 (if that was the one that started with Amy and Rory in the throes of divorce). I don’t like this Doctor at all and only watched his earlier series intermittently. Never liked Amy, though she had her moments, and I liked Rory well enough, but not enough to outweigh the other two.

      Agreeing totally with the people who don’t like the way River’s been changed. I loved her in Silence in the Library and hardly recognised her when she turned up again. What a waste.

  9. Rumor has it that the 50th anniversary episode (the finale, I guess?) will include all the old Doctors, which means the return of David Tennant! Wheeee!!!

    Matt Smith is awesome, and when I put on my objectivity goggles I have to begrudgingly admit that he’s a better actor. But David Tennant will always be my Doctor.

    1. when I put on my objectivity goggles I have to begrudgingly admit that he’s a better actor

      Good thing objectivity has no place in fandoms. Tennant forever!

        2. Then obviously we are mortal enemies and I will now glare menacingly through the internets.

          *glares*

        3. Okay, you know what, I know that yours is a mighty glare, but I have an unfortunate tendency to believe that icon=person (because fuck knows I can’t do faces anyway) and currently the idea of pigeon glares is cracking me up.

          I am a horrible person.

    2. I’ve heard Christopher Eccleston has said he’s never coming back. Does the rumour comment specifically on him? Because he’s forever and always my doctor and I would dearly love to see him again.

  10. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

    *deep breath*

    So. Excited.

    Also, I have to agree with those that said series 7 sucked. I feel like none of the episodes really stood out enough to make them memorable :S

    1. The only one I really liked was Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, which is primarily just because dinosaurs, space, and Egypt are like three of my favourite things, and it was really cool to see them all together. And then I geeked out trying to figure out how Nefertiti running off could fit into the chronology of the Amarna Period XD

      1. Gah that was my LEAST favorite!* It felt like a bunch of Awesome things sort of randomly thrown together. (Though to be fair my impression might be partly due to the fact that my video kept glitching and stopping every minute or so…) Also this was after Moffat had been criticized a bunch for sexist writing, and the on-purpose overt sexism (and callouts thereof) in this episode felt to me a little like “Sexist, you say? I’ll show you what’s REALLY sexist!”

        And Nefertiti running off felt… weird. Like, firstly, wow, how does a dude with entrenched sexism change his mind so quickly? Secondly, how does a woman like Nefertiti decide “oh yeah sure I’ll abandon my kingdom and go live in the desert with this dude who has shown he disrespects women, I’m sure all his sexism is gone now”? It’s supposed to be, like, a triumph of Equality and the hunter dude Accepting Nefertiti, like clearly she needs/wants his acceptance even though she already comes from a position of power.

        Plus, as someone has pointed out to me, without the TARDIS they shouldn’t be able to understand each other.

        But Nefertiti WAS a pretty awesome person to have on a spaceship with dinosaurs!

        *Actually, Asylum of the Daleks might top it, only because the five-minute divorce-and-remarriage that was apparently because this legendarily perfect couple couldn’t do BASIC COMMUNICATION pissed me off to no end.

        1. Yeah, that ending was either “love of a good woman” or “women go for the bad boys” trope.

          Probably the second, since we never see him change (at least I don’t remember it).

        2. @Beatrice

          I don’t remember the details, but I had the impression that he did change at least enough to accept Nefertiti as a strong person and hunter – I believe she emerged from the tent with a gun?

        3. And, though they never allude to it in the episode, hunter dude was one of the colonizers of Africa and was probably deeply deeply racist on top of it all. Definitely problematic on many levels. We do see him start to accept that Amy and Nefertiti are both enormously capable people during the episode, like him and Amy fighting off raptors back to back, but that would probably involve him making them exceptions to his stereotypes about women rather than becoming completely not sexist.

          But even with all that, I still liked seeing many of my favourite things on my favourite show with some grrl power thrown in, even if it was included for all the wrong reasons.

        5. @The Kittehs’ Unpaid Help

          There were definitely episodes I liked too, though! And I don’t think there’s been a single DW season without episodes I hated (except maybe season 5, but there were still ones I disliked), so this isn’t much of a change for me.

          The finale of season 6, for instance, I really loved, despite continuity fail on the subject of the weeping angels.

        6. @llamathatducks – I meant “didn’t persist with that episode” specifically (Nefertiti all over the Doctor? Whut?) but yeah, couldn’t be bothered picking up the rest of it. I think I’ll sit it out until the next Doctor comes along.

          /Jon Pertwee forever

  11. Fuckfuckfuck I just realised in a concrete sort of way what really bothers me about the way River Song’s arc went – it’s that I went from seeing her as an independent, intelligent, strong and self-possessed person in Silence of the Library, to turning her into a weirdly know-it-all, emotionally more dependent person from s5 onwards. S6 was the worst for it, s7’s been better the little she’s been in it. Now, I KNOW this is because we’re seeing her “backwards”, and yes, character development is a thing, but I just…gah. If she’s not going to turn up more over this/the next season, and if Moffat doesn’t really SHOW how she closes the distance between s6 River and s4 River, it’s going to feel, to me, like she’s been retconned from a truly amazing character to a traditional Lady Love Reformed Psycho(TM), and goddamn it that’s just a cheap brown-paper copy and gaaaaaaaaah. >.<

  12. I’m worried. Clara seems cool, but there are two big risks – firstly, that they seem to be bringing back the companion-is-in-love-with-the-Doctor thing, which I don’t like, and more importantly, that her personality will be submerged under the temporal mystery of why she exists at multiple points in the universe. Which, I’m sorry, I just don’t care about, it’ll be some timey-wimey deus ex machina which isn’t as satisfying as a good, well-rounded character. It’s the same thing with River – she was more interesting before her character got subsumed in her origin story, but at least River got to be an interesting character independent of that story for a couple of seasons, whereas Clara seems to be swallowed by it from the get-go.

    Also, it’s possible nobody else will get the reference, but when I see the Doctor’s purple suit in that image, the combination of purple suit+gearpunk aesthetic+time travel makes me think of “Indigo Prime”. Anyone…?

  13. I’m intrigued by how many people are reading the banter between Clara and The Doctor as potentially sexual. Not all flirting is sexual, in my experience. It’s often just enjoying the faffing around with someone who “gets” that aspect of one’s personality.

    Admittedly theatre/stand-up people are not quite typical in the way they relate to each other, but playful-flirty banter is part of the backstage bonding ritual, and rarely leads to any actual relationships (in fact the performers who don’t banter much with each other to pass the time tend to be the ones who end up dating).

    Anyway, to me she doesn’t necessarily read as physically attracted to him, just enjoying his unique qualities and the challenges of matching wits.

  14. Excited now! I really love this show. It’s awesome (and the latest incarnation has some really good representation of women and LGBTQ people)

    1. I quite liked it. There were a surprising number of good character moments, especially for a moffat episode. I haven’t seen the Doctor this eager to please someone since Rose. And it was intriguing that the Great Intelligence was back again. I wonder if it’s going to be some sort of overall villain in this part of the series. Though Moffat kept trying to promote this one as creepy like Blink or Silence in the Library, and it definitely didn’t live up to that.

      1. I liked it too, with some reservations. First of all, I did find it quite creepy (though admittedly less than the ones you mention), and I don’t like creepy 😛

        But also, it irks me how badass or highly skilled characters apparently always need to have their badassitude explained somehow. With River, it’s because she was actually a Time Lady and had been trained as a Doctor-assassin. Donna was briefly super-smart – because she’d been spliced with the Doctor. And now Clara is a computer genius not because she went and did the work and became awesome at it, or even because she was somehow naturally brilliant – no, it’s because some hackers gave her some computer skills. For free, with zero work of her own required.

        Like, it’s great to have brilliant female characters, but it means little if they’re only brilliant because of some alien/technological intervention.

        (Martha would be an exception to this trend – she was brilliant because she’d worked for it. If anything bugged me about Martha, it was that she was TOO perfect, that she wasn’t allowed to have any flaws.)

        I’m trying to remember now whether a similar thing happens with male characters on the show, or if they’re allowed more often to be highly skilled without any explanation necessary. I don’t know, though. I guess it’s harder to tell because the only frequently recurring highly skilled male character is the Doctor, who, well, is a Time Lord.

        But anyway, I did enjoy this episode anyway 🙂 Just watching Eleven in action makes me happy.

        Oh, but also, knowing what Twitter is is really not evidence of computer skills. I think most people Clara’s age these days know what Twitter is…

        (Also, I was so excited during the Christmas special because I thought we might finally have a non-modern-day companion! I still want that to happen…)

        1. Hmmm. From what I recall off the top of my head, Captain Jack and Wilf were badasses from the get go, but Mickey and Rory had to learn the hard way, and were actually much worse off than Rose and Amy for a good long while in terms of general badassery, until they had travelled with the Doctor for a while.

          I was also kinda bored with the whole trapping people in a computer thing, because Moffat’s neeeeever done that before coughrivercough.

          But watching Eleven be all twirly and excited and setting out flowers and his smellgasm with the jammy dodgers was just so amazing!! This episode seemed almost tactile and focused so many small moments on smell and touch, it was really cool.

          Ooh, one of my friends also pointed out that Moffat’s bitterness over his flouncing retreat from Twitter might be showing through in that joke. I mean, the man did get death threats, and that’s a totally legit reason to leave, but he also very much abused his fame to sic his followers on people who raised legitimate criticisms of his writing, and made a huge deal over how hurt he was by said criticism. I don’t really know what to think of that whole ordeal.

          Also, my thoughts are kind of all disconnected now. I used up all my productive brain power being productive at school today. Please forgive me if I’m not making much sense.

        2. Ooh, and yes, I’m getting kind of tired of all the modern companions and episodes in the modern world too. There’s too much reality in my reality, I want a little less of it in my escapism.

        3. @dawnofthenerds

          From what I recall off the top of my head, Captain Jack and Wilf were badasses from the get go, but Mickey and Rory had to learn the hard way, and were actually much worse off than Rose and Amy for a good long while in terms of general badassery, until they had travelled with the Doctor for a while.

          Yeah, Mickey and Rory and Rose and Amy all showed believable character growth from “ordinary” people to badasses. (I think the main reason Amy and Rose had a headstart on Mickey and Rory was just because they started traveling earlier.) But none of these people became the kind of Badass Genius that, for example, River and later-computer-whiz-Clara are. That’s the kind of ability that apparently needs explanation.

          Captain Jack… hmm. Yeah, I guess he is about as much of a badass as River – and that doesn’t seem to require an explanation beyond the fact that he’s been traveling around for a long time (especially after he becomes immortal, though that’s mostly in Torchwood) and also has been a Time Agent. So that’s the kind of contrast in backstories I’m talking about.

          And no worries, I thought your comments made plenty of sense!

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