Spoilers!
The Doctor’s Wife
Written by: Neil Gaiman
Directed by: Richard Clark
Produced by: Sanne Wohlenberg
Shooting Locations
Cemex, Taff Wells (27-29 Sept. 2010)
Tredegar House, Newport (12 Oct. 2010)
Cast
Suranne Jones (Idris); Elizabeth Berrington (Auntie); Adrian Schiller (Uncle);
Michael Scheen (The House – voice-only); Paul Kasey (Nephew).
Monster(s): The House
Plot Details
We have a few new tidbits to add to the spoilers for this episode. At Wondercom on 4/1/11, Neil Gaiman, Mark Sheppard and Toby Haynes did a "Doctor Who" panel and showed a clip from this episode:
The TARDIS is on a burnt-out planet and the Doctor’s pals are talking to a woman in ripped-up Victorian dress and a 19th century soldier. Also: a green space creature with a squid face [an Ood] and glowing green eyes. The Doctor takes an orb from him, opens it, pushes some steampunk-y looking buttons and hears a scramble of voices. He gets all spooked and says "somewhere, near by, there are Time Lords."
TimeLords? Now THAT’s exciting.
Okay, not everyone likes the TimeLords. But still. Chances are they won’t hang around long.
and then this:
The Doctor, Amy and Rory are on the spaceship graveyard planet, meeting a group of four or five people — including an Ood. Amy is alarmed by the Ood, but the Doctor tells her not to be scared. The Ood has a broken speech globe, but the Doctor repairs it — at which point, a babble of weird voices comes out until it shuts off. The Doctor is incredibly freaked out, and starts asking who else is there. Just The Room, explains the older woman in the group of natives. They’re inside the Room and standing on it — the whole planet is The Room. The Doctor can meet The Room if he likes. The Doctor is very eager to do so — and Amy asks what those voices were. "Time Lords," the Doctor explains. Near here someplace, there are "lots and lots of Time Lords."
Also during the clip, the character Auntie (Elizabeth Berrington) explains that “House” is everywhere and asks The Doctor if he’d like to meet him, which he replies, “Yes, I very much would.”
Imagine. A planet called "The House". Now that’s different. [This question begs asking: Is it a TARDIS?]
A one-line summary about this episode from the BBC Series 6 part 1 box set states: In a bubble universe at the very edge of reality, the Doctor will meet an old friend with a new face. Basically, the Doctor arrives on a junkyard planet. An homage to "76 Totter’s Lane" from the very first episode of Doctor Who, according to the author, Neil Gaiman, who said said he thought worked well since after all, Doctor Who started out in a junkyard with low budget props and a whole lot of imagination. Gaiman also says: "Amy tells Rory off for leaving the Doctor on his own. Rory says: ‘He’s a TimeLord, he’ll be fine.’ Amy then says: ‘Rory, it’s just what they’re called, it doesn’t mean he actually knows what he’s doing.’ "(Check out this great video at Wondercom).
We also recently were treated to a trailer or three from the BBC and BBC America for the upcoming season, and there were several clips shown from this episode. Look here for some screen caps from what we think are from The Doctor’s Wife from the trailers that have been released.
And here’s two official photos that have been released from the BBC. Photo1 shows Auntie and Uncle and Idris, andphoto2 is a behind-the-scenes photo of Matt, Suranne Jones (who plays Idris) and the writer Neal Gaiman. Nice!
The most controversial video clip is this one where Rory (and Amy, looks like) are in the old 9th & 10th Doctor’s coral Tardis. There is a ball of yellow light (which looks identical to regeneration energy) and whatever it is is causing Rory & Amy to hold to the sides of the TARDIS for dear life. It looks like something is inside that ball of energy, but it’s impossible to see exactly who it is. The 10th Doctor? The 11th Doctor when he regenerated? A dalek? A mystery, that’s for sure.
Also, it may be that except for the scenes on the surface of the junkyard planet, the entire episode may be filmed in the TARDIS entirely. Someone even thinks the entire episode may take place in a TARDIS.
There has been endless speculation about Idris, the mysterious woman whom the meets on the planet, being a manifestation of the TARDIS itself. Or perhaps she is Romana. Or something else entirely.
The main villian, named The House, could be a character from a classic Who episode, named Biroc. However, this could be speculation that stemmed from a listing from IMDb for the episode (not the most reliable).
Another trailer clip shows Amy grabbing her stomach and then seems to have a screamfest in one of the corridors of the TARDIS. There has been speculation that The House character (who most likely will be unseen; more of an entity that something with corporal body, but who knows?) wants Amy dead. Why? Well, some interesting photos came up on a website called tardisbuilders that show the panels from the TARDIS corridors with "Amy Die" scribbled on them. Sort of a big hint, I’d say! Look here for more.
There is also a possibility that we will get to see the "Blue Peter Console" in the this episode, since we are getting a tour of some of the inside rooms inside the TARDIS that we hear about but never see. One of the spoiler houndsactually has seen it, though whether it’s in this episode or not remains to be seen.
There is one more glorious thing from the trailers, where the Doctor is having a conversation with the entity, The House, and there is this bit of dialogue:
Entity: Fear me. I’ve killed hundreds of TimeLords.
Doctor: Fear me. I’ve killed them all.
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The Rebel Flesh and Gangers
Written by: Matthew Graham
Directed by: Julian Simpson
Produced by: Marcus Wilson
Shooting Locations
Cardiff Castle, Cardiff (24-26 Nov. 2010, 5 Jan 2011)
Caerphilly Castle, Cardiff (29 Nov.-6 Dec. 2010)
Neath Abbey (7-9 Dec. 2010)
Atlantic College, St. Donat’s (14-16 Dec 2010, 3-4 Jan 2011)
The Vicarage, Rhymney (15 Dec 2010) Unconfirmed
Senedd Building, Cardiff (7th Jan 2011)
Cast
Sarah Smart (Jennifer Lucas); Leon Vickers (Clone Worker); Marshall Lancaster (Buzzer);
Edmond Moulton (Adam); Mark Bonnar; Raquel Cassidy.
Monster(s): Clones
Plot Details
From Total Film:
Written by Matthew Graham and shot in various crumbling castles, ‘The Rebel Flesh’ centres on an acid-mining operation in a 22nd-Century monastery where the dangerous work is done by doppelgangers cloned in a ‘flesh bowl’. Matt Smith’s Doctor and newlywed co-flyers Amy and Rory gatecrash the party when a TARDIS trip to Whitby gets mysteriously slammed off-course. Then a storm hits and the whole shebang screeches off-piste.
On the back of the Series 6 Part 1 Box Set, you will find this quote which can only refer to these stories: "In a monastery on a remote island in the near future, an industrial accident will take on a terrible human shape."
In episodes five and six (the second two-parter of Series 6), the Doctor will face a thrilling and terrifying dilemma the like of which he’s never seen before. And apparently the Doctor has some flashbacks to his visit to Skaro in Genesis of the Daleks in the second half of the story.
Steven Moffat hinted this awhile back in DWM: Would you like to peek inside a cupboard that will chill your blood, or meet a workforce that will haunt your dreams? Not sure about the cupboard, but the workforce hints sound like it belongs to this episode.
One GB’er heard a rumor that these episodes are set in an office block staffed by clones, and the Doctor is one of them. The clones are a bit off. The stories also take place in the future. Also, the Doctor arrives on the scene just as they [the gangers] go wrong. [UnrealityTV]
You can see some screencaps from the BBC Series 6 trailer and get an idea of what these clones look like. Seems like it involves a mysterious purple vat [the Fleshbowl), a lot of electricity, some alien technology and voila, instant people. Did someone mention veins were in that FleshBowl? (SFX, May 2011) They also go on to mention some viscous gloop that’s inside the tanks! Sounds gruesome, but bring it on!
Here are two released photos from the BBC for this episode: photo1 and photo2.
More from Total Film:
The gangers go through stages before they become human-looking, and you see those stages," says Mark Bonnar, who plays the mining op’s second-in-command Jimmy. "They can be, er… not pretty to look at, you might say!
Perhaps the dopplegangers aren’t really clones at all, but shape-changers?
Steven Moffat commented on these episodes in DWM #433 by referring to a famous old horror movie, called "The Thing," which was about a creature, "a parasitic extraterrestrial lifeform" that assimilates other organisms and in turn imitates them. A shapeshifting alien. Moffat says: "We haven’t done really good shape-changers on Doctor Who, at least for a while, so I pitched the idea to Matthew Graham, who went with it. It’s remaking The Thing. What if the people the Thing duplicates actually think, ‘we’ve got rights too. I always wondered why they didn’t.’" So this may be an interesting moral dilemma which may show up in this episode: should the duplicated creatures actually be considered people? Or are they "almost-people"? Do they have a soul? Are they innately evil? Do they deserve to keep living? This sounds like it could be a very interesting story.
And Marshall Lancaster (who played Chris Skelton in Life on Mars/Ashes) can be seen in an orange jumpsuit in this photo. He’s a clone, apparently. His character’s name is Buzzer.
And we do know there is a big OMG moment at the end of episode six. At least that’s what Matt Smith says here. Sounds like it may be bigger than the massive cliffhanger we’ve been told to expect at the end of episode 7, according to the BBC’s Entertainment Correspondent, Lizo Mzimba.
And it’s possible we may see some Cybermen in this episode too, they certainly seem to be playing a big part in series 6.
The second episode title has been changed to The Almost People. The working title, however, was called Gangers.
The filming for these episodes starts out at the back of Cardiff Castle. Here’s another view. Here’s a few of morephotos.
At Caerphilly Castle this poster had a wander around and discovered what might be quite a sizable prop for the episodes, alternatively it might be part of a new tourist display. The poster later describes the prop as being six-feet tall and states that a lot of boxes were being carried in to the room containing the prop and the room itself isn’t adjacent to other rooms so it would be unlikely that the room was being used as a holding area for other filming. Thisposterconfirmed that the TARDIS prop was present during filming.
Since the story takes place in a monastery, filming was moving from one old castle (or monastery) to another: Cardiff Castle, Caerphilly Castle, Neath Abbey, and St. Donat’s Castle.
Here was an early report about the story of these episodes from this piece which appeared in the Daily Star. And, as always, take the following quote with a grain or three of salt:
The Doc will be cloned … by an army of enemy aliens. They make a copy of him as part of their plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile the real Doctor is still on the loose and goes to investigate. He ends up coming face to face with himself. But his companions Amy and Rory lose track of which Time Lord is real and which is fake. Source: "It’s up to them to fathom which Doctor is their Doctor. If they make the wrong choice, it’s disaster."
Now this sounds very Doctor Who. However, the Star could have made this up by reading Gallifrey Base set reports. You decide. It does sound pretty good though.
Steven says in DWM #430: that the Matthew Graham penned two-parter is set in a monastery and that particular day that the filming was cancelled should have seen the cast "dodging pools of acid and battling the rise of a new life form known only as …". Well, at least we have an idea of how the clones are made, but I guess we have to wait to find out what they are called. (btw, haven’t we seen this before? and there were Sontarans involved the last time).
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A Good Man Goes to WarWritten by: Steven Moffat
Directed by: Peter Hoar
Produced by: Marcus Wilson
Shooting Locations
Aberthaw Cement Works, Barry (11th Jan 2011)
Uskmouth Power Station, Newport (13th Jan 2011)
Millenium Stadium, Cardiff (20th Jan 2011)
Laguna Health Spa, Cardiff (20th Jan 2011)
Fillcare, Talbot Green (28th Jan 2011)
Cast
Alex Kingston (River Song); Dan Johnston (Thin Man); Charlie Baker (Fat Man); Annabel Cleare; Henry Wood; Simon Fisher-Becker (Dorium Maldavar); Dan Starkey (Strax); Danny Sapani (Colonel Manton); Joshua Hayes (Lucas); Fern Deacon; Frances Encell; Frances Barber (Kovarian); Christina Chong (Lorna Bucket), Catrin Stewart (Jenny); Neve McIntosh (Warrior), Claudio Laurini (Headless Monk).
Monsters: Sontarans; Cybermen; the Silence?
Plot Details
Radio Times (written by Steven Moffat):
Want to find the most dangerous place in the universe? Easy. Harm a hair on Amy’s head any just wait. But as the last of the Time Lords and the Lone Centurion blaze across galaxies to save the woman in both their lives, history is unfolding. In her cell, in Stormcage, River Song knows the time has come at last. She has a secret, and this is the day she tells it.
The battle of Demons Run has begun. And the Doctor’s darkest hour is now.
From the Series 6 Part 1 Box Set: "And waiting for them, at the end of all this, is the battle of Demon’s Run, and the Doctor’s darkest hour. Can even the truth about River Song save the Time Lord’s soul?" Sounds like River may possibly save the Doctor from himself.
Here’s an official BBC photo. It’s Rory facing off some nasty looking Cybermen. We believe it’s from this episode. One of them looks a bit different, and the "C" logo is no longer present.
Dorium Maldavar, that Blue Alien from Episode 12 last series, will be returning in this episode for an encore performance. You may recall that River Song purchased a Vortex Manipulator from him ("fresh off the wrist of a handsome new time agent") at the Maldovarium Bar in The Pandorica Opens. It looks like he’ll be joining River as a fellow inmate in the same prison, the StormCage Containment Facility, since he was seen emerging out of a trailer near the Millenium Stadium (the filming location used for StormCage prison in Time of Angels) wearing what looks like rather drab striped prison garb.
Alex Kingston was also observed on site at the Millenium Stadium by one of our set reporters during filming … so River’s back in prison. More than likely River is doing a long stint in jail for doing something terrible ("killing a very good man" comes to mind), and for River this all probably happened before the Pandorica incident. She’s probably been in prison for several years. Of course for everybody else, and the Doctor, it’s AFTER the Pandorica opened. Expect to see a lot more Timey-Wimey antics in this episode. One poster even hypothesizes that these scenes are from River’s past, and that this is where she meets Dorium, in the prison, and later visits him at his Space Bar [in The Pandorica Opens] to relieve him of a Vortex Manipulator. Confused? You are not alone. It will all be explained later. We hope.
Later, the Blue Guy and some mysterious military-type men with black hats were seen filming at the Laguna Health Spa in Cardiff. Apparently, Mr. Dorium is not the nicest guy. Just watch this short clip!
And don’t forget about the twin babies. Humm. The Doctor, holding twin babies. The obvious question is, who’s babies? Can’t wait to find out.
@Drwhosetreports While #Torchwood filming continues at Rhossili Bay, DW filming took place yesterday involving very young twin babys…
@poppythecat Aww! My friend says her twins did their filming for Doctor Who today and were held by Matt. Bless. She said they’ll feature strongly
@poppythecat they’re only about 15 weeks old and already tv stars!
But wait! There’s more.
The Cybermen are back. Here are some tweets about the filming:
@chuckfoster: former Loreal plant in Talbot Green have been told to expect up to 70 cast and crew tomorrow for DW filming.
@swanseagundog: Great day today. They’ve been filming for Dr Who at work so lots of cybermen around and also got to meet Karen Gillan who plays the Dr’s assistant Amy Pond. … Didn’t get to meet Arthur Darvill who plays her on screen partner Rory Williams as he was busy with the cybermen.
@HaayleyBlaahh: My dad came home and said ‘God. A group of cybermen are so intimidating!’ haha!!
So filming apparently took place somewhere on the premises of the Fillcare plant (formerly the L’Oreal plant); where Cybermen were seen by some fans. Unfortunately, there were no photos. This reliable reporter describes things, however:
Cybermen in Pontyclun! Went and got there just as they were packing up. The only Cybery thing I saw was the suits being packed away. Sadly (?) they looked like the regular Cybus ones. But, Toby Haynes did say on the Confidential for The Pandorica Opens that they were originally going to have new Cybermen in the episode, but only new heads." Paul Kasey was there in his usual Cyber-capacity.
This is also another episode which features River Song. Steven Moffat has promised that we will learn more about River Song and who she is to the Doctor, but Piers Wenger has said in an interview with Crave Online "We’re probably not finding that out quite yet. But stay tuned. I think you’ll get really great clues in the coming season."
Also, since there are actors portraying a "Thin Man" and a "Fat Man" in the cast list (above), it’s been speculated that we may see a bit of a "Laurel and Hardy" parody in this story.
Then shortly thereafter, close to the power station, another fan sees Doctor Who filming at his workplace. A lone Sontaran was seen (and photographed) at the Aberthaw Cement Works, along with some rooms in a building that were set-dressed to look like a military hospital. The photos were taken down shortly thereafter–removed by the photographer’s request; sorry, they are no longer available online. However, it looks like we definitely will have at least one Sontaran in this episode.
However, Take a look at the logo in this post (it should look familiar, we saw a bit of it in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone). An Omega symbol combined with a military/chrysler logo. Could this be the return of the Clerics? [Some fans are still speculating about the possibility of Omega returning.]
A fan tweeted about Doctor Who filming at his workplace: "Doctor who filmed at power station overnight, loads of trucks and weird looking monks." Then later (after being bombarded with questions) he replied: "Re doctor who, all I can say is monk aliens and teleporters, 16 hours set up and 9 hours filming, all done and gone."
Turns out, those "weird alien monks" that were spotted filming at the Uskmouth Power Station could well be the headless monks who found their final resting place in the Delerium Archive. Remember that place? The biggest museum ever? Where the Doctor took Amy (it was a museum where he located the Home Box for the Starliner Byzantium).
The working title was Demon’s Run, but was changed to A Good Man Goes to War instead. Another title that was under consideration was His Darkest Hour, and most likely both these titles indicate what this story is going to be about.
River Song says on one of the trailers "This is the Doctor’s darkest hour. He’ll rise higher than ever before and then fall so much further … So it looks like the Doctor is in for an incredibly rough time in this episode. She also mentions "This is the day that he finds out who I am." But do we?
Awhile back, in DWM, Steven Moffat postulated: "What would happen if the Doctor got really, really angry?"
In DWM #433, Moffat says [in reference to A Good Man Goes to War]:
Since this is the "finale" for the first half of this series, Let’s recall what Steven Moffat said a few issues back in DWM…
There is a massive massive twist coming up this series, and it’s all to do with Amy Pond. "The calamitous and, frankly, shocking events at the climax of episode seven will still be ringing in your ears when Doctor Who returns in the autumn for a further six episodes."
“You’ll see The Doctor’s life change forever. You will gasp at the true nature of his relationship with Amy and cry out in horror as Rory Williams stumbles to the brink of a tragic mistake.”
There is "The frankly appalling revelation concerning the one person in the universe the Doctor trusts the most" [note: we still don't know who that is. River? Amy? Someone else? that's up for debate.]
To reinforce the point, he added that “It is an enormous, game-changing cliffhanger for The Doctor, Amy and Rory. It’ll change everything for them.”
And also (from DWM#424 Production Notes):
You’ve seen more than you think…
The Doctor has noticed what you have not.
When the biggest jaw-dropping twist finally comes — well, the second one, you’ll realize you’ve known about it from the very beginning.
I really don’t want to give too much away, but… if you take someone like the Doctor and really piss him off, if you set yourself up to go to war with the Doctor, what would happen? Obviously you’d lose, it would be a massive, crushing defeat, but what side of the Doctor does it bring out? He’s actually quite capable of being really unpleasant to people. Of course he is. He’s a man like anyone else. If you treated Amy with extraordinary cruelty, how long would you live after that?
If this is a hint, it doesn’t sound good for Amy at all.
and he goes on to say:
If the Doctor is dealing with life forms that he’s defeated on multiple occasions, it’s not like they haven’t noticed. It’s not like they haven’t written it down. You are going to be able to stand up at Stonehenge and say "Who’s first? Look at the score sheet, and take your best shot." It’s going to happen. At the same time, he can’t keep doing that. It could be quite damaging for the show. So it’s something that I’m bring to a head, and kind of ending.
So sounds like his bluffs won’t be working any longer. No more "I’m the Doctor" and the bad guys run away. At least that’s what it sounds like.
So look for a deep, disturbing episode. We knew it was coming.
Written by: Neil Gaiman
Directed by: Richard Clark
Produced by: Sanne Wohlenberg
Shooting Locations
Cemex, Taff Wells (27-29 Sept. 2010)
Tredegar House, Newport (12 Oct. 2010)
Cast
Suranne Jones (Idris); Elizabeth Berrington (Auntie); Adrian Schiller (Uncle);
Michael Scheen (The House – voice-only); Paul Kasey (Nephew).
Monster(s): The House
Plot Details
We have a few new tidbits to add to the spoilers for this episode. At Wondercom on 4/1/11, Neil Gaiman, Mark Sheppard and Toby Haynes did a "Doctor Who" panel and showed a clip from this episode:
The TARDIS is on a burnt-out planet and the Doctor’s pals are talking to a woman in ripped-up Victorian dress and a 19th century soldier. Also: a green space creature with a squid face [an Ood] and glowing green eyes. The Doctor takes an orb from him, opens it, pushes some steampunk-y looking buttons and hears a scramble of voices. He gets all spooked and says "somewhere, near by, there are Time Lords."
TimeLords? Now THAT’s exciting.
Okay, not everyone likes the TimeLords. But still. Chances are they won’t hang around long.
and then this:
The Doctor, Amy and Rory are on the spaceship graveyard planet, meeting a group of four or five people — including an Ood. Amy is alarmed by the Ood, but the Doctor tells her not to be scared. The Ood has a broken speech globe, but the Doctor repairs it — at which point, a babble of weird voices comes out until it shuts off. The Doctor is incredibly freaked out, and starts asking who else is there. Just The Room, explains the older woman in the group of natives. They’re inside the Room and standing on it — the whole planet is The Room. The Doctor can meet The Room if he likes. The Doctor is very eager to do so — and Amy asks what those voices were. "Time Lords," the Doctor explains. Near here someplace, there are "lots and lots of Time Lords."
Also during the clip, the character Auntie (Elizabeth Berrington) explains that “House” is everywhere and asks The Doctor if he’d like to meet him, which he replies, “Yes, I very much would.”
Imagine. A planet called "The House". Now that’s different. [This question begs asking: Is it a TARDIS?]
A one-line summary about this episode from the BBC Series 6 part 1 box set states: In a bubble universe at the very edge of reality, the Doctor will meet an old friend with a new face. Basically, the Doctor arrives on a junkyard planet. An homage to "76 Totter’s Lane" from the very first episode of Doctor Who, according to the author, Neil Gaiman, who said said he thought worked well since after all, Doctor Who started out in a junkyard with low budget props and a whole lot of imagination. Gaiman also says: "Amy tells Rory off for leaving the Doctor on his own. Rory says: ‘He’s a TimeLord, he’ll be fine.’ Amy then says: ‘Rory, it’s just what they’re called, it doesn’t mean he actually knows what he’s doing.’ "(Check out this great video at Wondercom).
We also recently were treated to a trailer or three from the BBC and BBC America for the upcoming season, and there were several clips shown from this episode. Look here for some screen caps from what we think are from The Doctor’s Wife from the trailers that have been released.
And here’s two official photos that have been released from the BBC. Photo1 shows Auntie and Uncle and Idris, andphoto2 is a behind-the-scenes photo of Matt, Suranne Jones (who plays Idris) and the writer Neal Gaiman. Nice!
The most controversial video clip is this one where Rory (and Amy, looks like) are in the old 9th & 10th Doctor’s coral Tardis. There is a ball of yellow light (which looks identical to regeneration energy) and whatever it is is causing Rory & Amy to hold to the sides of the TARDIS for dear life. It looks like something is inside that ball of energy, but it’s impossible to see exactly who it is. The 10th Doctor? The 11th Doctor when he regenerated? A dalek? A mystery, that’s for sure.
Also, it may be that except for the scenes on the surface of the junkyard planet, the entire episode may be filmed in the TARDIS entirely. Someone even thinks the entire episode may take place in a TARDIS.
There has been endless speculation about Idris, the mysterious woman whom the meets on the planet, being a manifestation of the TARDIS itself. Or perhaps she is Romana. Or something else entirely.
The main villian, named The House, could be a character from a classic Who episode, named Biroc. However, this could be speculation that stemmed from a listing from IMDb for the episode (not the most reliable).
Another trailer clip shows Amy grabbing her stomach and then seems to have a screamfest in one of the corridors of the TARDIS. There has been speculation that The House character (who most likely will be unseen; more of an entity that something with corporal body, but who knows?) wants Amy dead. Why? Well, some interesting photos came up on a website called tardisbuilders that show the panels from the TARDIS corridors with "Amy Die" scribbled on them. Sort of a big hint, I’d say! Look here for more.
There is also a possibility that we will get to see the "Blue Peter Console" in the this episode, since we are getting a tour of some of the inside rooms inside the TARDIS that we hear about but never see. One of the spoiler houndsactually has seen it, though whether it’s in this episode or not remains to be seen.
There is one more glorious thing from the trailers, where the Doctor is having a conversation with the entity, The House, and there is this bit of dialogue:
Entity: Fear me. I’ve killed hundreds of TimeLords.
Doctor: Fear me. I’ve killed them all.
------------------------------------------
The Rebel Flesh and Gangers
Written by: Matthew Graham
Directed by: Julian Simpson
Produced by: Marcus Wilson
Shooting Locations
Cardiff Castle, Cardiff (24-26 Nov. 2010, 5 Jan 2011)
Caerphilly Castle, Cardiff (29 Nov.-6 Dec. 2010)
Neath Abbey (7-9 Dec. 2010)
Atlantic College, St. Donat’s (14-16 Dec 2010, 3-4 Jan 2011)
The Vicarage, Rhymney (15 Dec 2010) Unconfirmed
Senedd Building, Cardiff (7th Jan 2011)
Cast
Sarah Smart (Jennifer Lucas); Leon Vickers (Clone Worker); Marshall Lancaster (Buzzer);
Edmond Moulton (Adam); Mark Bonnar; Raquel Cassidy.
Monster(s): Clones
Plot Details
From Total Film:
Written by Matthew Graham and shot in various crumbling castles, ‘The Rebel Flesh’ centres on an acid-mining operation in a 22nd-Century monastery where the dangerous work is done by doppelgangers cloned in a ‘flesh bowl’. Matt Smith’s Doctor and newlywed co-flyers Amy and Rory gatecrash the party when a TARDIS trip to Whitby gets mysteriously slammed off-course. Then a storm hits and the whole shebang screeches off-piste.
On the back of the Series 6 Part 1 Box Set, you will find this quote which can only refer to these stories: "In a monastery on a remote island in the near future, an industrial accident will take on a terrible human shape."
In episodes five and six (the second two-parter of Series 6), the Doctor will face a thrilling and terrifying dilemma the like of which he’s never seen before. And apparently the Doctor has some flashbacks to his visit to Skaro in Genesis of the Daleks in the second half of the story.
Steven Moffat hinted this awhile back in DWM: Would you like to peek inside a cupboard that will chill your blood, or meet a workforce that will haunt your dreams? Not sure about the cupboard, but the workforce hints sound like it belongs to this episode.
One GB’er heard a rumor that these episodes are set in an office block staffed by clones, and the Doctor is one of them. The clones are a bit off. The stories also take place in the future. Also, the Doctor arrives on the scene just as they [the gangers] go wrong. [UnrealityTV]
You can see some screencaps from the BBC Series 6 trailer and get an idea of what these clones look like. Seems like it involves a mysterious purple vat [the Fleshbowl), a lot of electricity, some alien technology and voila, instant people. Did someone mention veins were in that FleshBowl? (SFX, May 2011) They also go on to mention some viscous gloop that’s inside the tanks! Sounds gruesome, but bring it on!
Here are two released photos from the BBC for this episode: photo1 and photo2.
More from Total Film:
The gangers go through stages before they become human-looking, and you see those stages," says Mark Bonnar, who plays the mining op’s second-in-command Jimmy. "They can be, er… not pretty to look at, you might say!
Perhaps the dopplegangers aren’t really clones at all, but shape-changers?
Steven Moffat commented on these episodes in DWM #433 by referring to a famous old horror movie, called "The Thing," which was about a creature, "a parasitic extraterrestrial lifeform" that assimilates other organisms and in turn imitates them. A shapeshifting alien. Moffat says: "We haven’t done really good shape-changers on Doctor Who, at least for a while, so I pitched the idea to Matthew Graham, who went with it. It’s remaking The Thing. What if the people the Thing duplicates actually think, ‘we’ve got rights too. I always wondered why they didn’t.’" So this may be an interesting moral dilemma which may show up in this episode: should the duplicated creatures actually be considered people? Or are they "almost-people"? Do they have a soul? Are they innately evil? Do they deserve to keep living? This sounds like it could be a very interesting story.
And Marshall Lancaster (who played Chris Skelton in Life on Mars/Ashes) can be seen in an orange jumpsuit in this photo. He’s a clone, apparently. His character’s name is Buzzer.
And we do know there is a big OMG moment at the end of episode six. At least that’s what Matt Smith says here. Sounds like it may be bigger than the massive cliffhanger we’ve been told to expect at the end of episode 7, according to the BBC’s Entertainment Correspondent, Lizo Mzimba.
And it’s possible we may see some Cybermen in this episode too, they certainly seem to be playing a big part in series 6.
The second episode title has been changed to The Almost People. The working title, however, was called Gangers.
The filming for these episodes starts out at the back of Cardiff Castle. Here’s another view. Here’s a few of morephotos.
At Caerphilly Castle this poster had a wander around and discovered what might be quite a sizable prop for the episodes, alternatively it might be part of a new tourist display. The poster later describes the prop as being six-feet tall and states that a lot of boxes were being carried in to the room containing the prop and the room itself isn’t adjacent to other rooms so it would be unlikely that the room was being used as a holding area for other filming. Thisposterconfirmed that the TARDIS prop was present during filming.
Since the story takes place in a monastery, filming was moving from one old castle (or monastery) to another: Cardiff Castle, Caerphilly Castle, Neath Abbey, and St. Donat’s Castle.
Here was an early report about the story of these episodes from this piece which appeared in the Daily Star. And, as always, take the following quote with a grain or three of salt:
The Doc will be cloned … by an army of enemy aliens. They make a copy of him as part of their plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile the real Doctor is still on the loose and goes to investigate. He ends up coming face to face with himself. But his companions Amy and Rory lose track of which Time Lord is real and which is fake. Source: "It’s up to them to fathom which Doctor is their Doctor. If they make the wrong choice, it’s disaster."
Now this sounds very Doctor Who. However, the Star could have made this up by reading Gallifrey Base set reports. You decide. It does sound pretty good though.
Steven says in DWM #430: that the Matthew Graham penned two-parter is set in a monastery and that particular day that the filming was cancelled should have seen the cast "dodging pools of acid and battling the rise of a new life form known only as …". Well, at least we have an idea of how the clones are made, but I guess we have to wait to find out what they are called. (btw, haven’t we seen this before? and there were Sontarans involved the last time).
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A Good Man Goes to WarWritten by: Steven Moffat
Directed by: Peter Hoar
Produced by: Marcus Wilson
Shooting Locations
Aberthaw Cement Works, Barry (11th Jan 2011)
Uskmouth Power Station, Newport (13th Jan 2011)
Millenium Stadium, Cardiff (20th Jan 2011)
Laguna Health Spa, Cardiff (20th Jan 2011)
Fillcare, Talbot Green (28th Jan 2011)
Cast
Alex Kingston (River Song); Dan Johnston (Thin Man); Charlie Baker (Fat Man); Annabel Cleare; Henry Wood; Simon Fisher-Becker (Dorium Maldavar); Dan Starkey (Strax); Danny Sapani (Colonel Manton); Joshua Hayes (Lucas); Fern Deacon; Frances Encell; Frances Barber (Kovarian); Christina Chong (Lorna Bucket), Catrin Stewart (Jenny); Neve McIntosh (Warrior), Claudio Laurini (Headless Monk).
Monsters: Sontarans; Cybermen; the Silence?
Plot Details
Radio Times (written by Steven Moffat):
Want to find the most dangerous place in the universe? Easy. Harm a hair on Amy’s head any just wait. But as the last of the Time Lords and the Lone Centurion blaze across galaxies to save the woman in both their lives, history is unfolding. In her cell, in Stormcage, River Song knows the time has come at last. She has a secret, and this is the day she tells it.
The battle of Demons Run has begun. And the Doctor’s darkest hour is now.
From the Series 6 Part 1 Box Set: "And waiting for them, at the end of all this, is the battle of Demon’s Run, and the Doctor’s darkest hour. Can even the truth about River Song save the Time Lord’s soul?" Sounds like River may possibly save the Doctor from himself.
Here’s an official BBC photo. It’s Rory facing off some nasty looking Cybermen. We believe it’s from this episode. One of them looks a bit different, and the "C" logo is no longer present.
Dorium Maldavar, that Blue Alien from Episode 12 last series, will be returning in this episode for an encore performance. You may recall that River Song purchased a Vortex Manipulator from him ("fresh off the wrist of a handsome new time agent") at the Maldovarium Bar in The Pandorica Opens. It looks like he’ll be joining River as a fellow inmate in the same prison, the StormCage Containment Facility, since he was seen emerging out of a trailer near the Millenium Stadium (the filming location used for StormCage prison in Time of Angels) wearing what looks like rather drab striped prison garb.
Alex Kingston was also observed on site at the Millenium Stadium by one of our set reporters during filming … so River’s back in prison. More than likely River is doing a long stint in jail for doing something terrible ("killing a very good man" comes to mind), and for River this all probably happened before the Pandorica incident. She’s probably been in prison for several years. Of course for everybody else, and the Doctor, it’s AFTER the Pandorica opened. Expect to see a lot more Timey-Wimey antics in this episode. One poster even hypothesizes that these scenes are from River’s past, and that this is where she meets Dorium, in the prison, and later visits him at his Space Bar [in The Pandorica Opens] to relieve him of a Vortex Manipulator. Confused? You are not alone. It will all be explained later. We hope.
Later, the Blue Guy and some mysterious military-type men with black hats were seen filming at the Laguna Health Spa in Cardiff. Apparently, Mr. Dorium is not the nicest guy. Just watch this short clip!
And don’t forget about the twin babies. Humm. The Doctor, holding twin babies. The obvious question is, who’s babies? Can’t wait to find out.
@Drwhosetreports While #Torchwood filming continues at Rhossili Bay, DW filming took place yesterday involving very young twin babys…
@poppythecat Aww! My friend says her twins did their filming for Doctor Who today and were held by Matt. Bless. She said they’ll feature strongly
@poppythecat they’re only about 15 weeks old and already tv stars!
But wait! There’s more.
The Cybermen are back. Here are some tweets about the filming:
@chuckfoster: former Loreal plant in Talbot Green have been told to expect up to 70 cast and crew tomorrow for DW filming.
@swanseagundog: Great day today. They’ve been filming for Dr Who at work so lots of cybermen around and also got to meet Karen Gillan who plays the Dr’s assistant Amy Pond. … Didn’t get to meet Arthur Darvill who plays her on screen partner Rory Williams as he was busy with the cybermen.
@HaayleyBlaahh: My dad came home and said ‘God. A group of cybermen are so intimidating!’ haha!!
So filming apparently took place somewhere on the premises of the Fillcare plant (formerly the L’Oreal plant); where Cybermen were seen by some fans. Unfortunately, there were no photos. This reliable reporter describes things, however:
Cybermen in Pontyclun! Went and got there just as they were packing up. The only Cybery thing I saw was the suits being packed away. Sadly (?) they looked like the regular Cybus ones. But, Toby Haynes did say on the Confidential for The Pandorica Opens that they were originally going to have new Cybermen in the episode, but only new heads." Paul Kasey was there in his usual Cyber-capacity.
This is also another episode which features River Song. Steven Moffat has promised that we will learn more about River Song and who she is to the Doctor, but Piers Wenger has said in an interview with Crave Online "We’re probably not finding that out quite yet. But stay tuned. I think you’ll get really great clues in the coming season."
Also, since there are actors portraying a "Thin Man" and a "Fat Man" in the cast list (above), it’s been speculated that we may see a bit of a "Laurel and Hardy" parody in this story.
Then shortly thereafter, close to the power station, another fan sees Doctor Who filming at his workplace. A lone Sontaran was seen (and photographed) at the Aberthaw Cement Works, along with some rooms in a building that were set-dressed to look like a military hospital. The photos were taken down shortly thereafter–removed by the photographer’s request; sorry, they are no longer available online. However, it looks like we definitely will have at least one Sontaran in this episode.
However, Take a look at the logo in this post (it should look familiar, we saw a bit of it in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone). An Omega symbol combined with a military/chrysler logo. Could this be the return of the Clerics? [Some fans are still speculating about the possibility of Omega returning.]
A fan tweeted about Doctor Who filming at his workplace: "Doctor who filmed at power station overnight, loads of trucks and weird looking monks." Then later (after being bombarded with questions) he replied: "Re doctor who, all I can say is monk aliens and teleporters, 16 hours set up and 9 hours filming, all done and gone."
Turns out, those "weird alien monks" that were spotted filming at the Uskmouth Power Station could well be the headless monks who found their final resting place in the Delerium Archive. Remember that place? The biggest museum ever? Where the Doctor took Amy (it was a museum where he located the Home Box for the Starliner Byzantium).
The working title was Demon’s Run, but was changed to A Good Man Goes to War instead. Another title that was under consideration was His Darkest Hour, and most likely both these titles indicate what this story is going to be about.
River Song says on one of the trailers "This is the Doctor’s darkest hour. He’ll rise higher than ever before and then fall so much further … So it looks like the Doctor is in for an incredibly rough time in this episode. She also mentions "This is the day that he finds out who I am." But do we?
Awhile back, in DWM, Steven Moffat postulated: "What would happen if the Doctor got really, really angry?"
In DWM #433, Moffat says [in reference to A Good Man Goes to War]:
Since this is the "finale" for the first half of this series, Let’s recall what Steven Moffat said a few issues back in DWM…
There is a massive massive twist coming up this series, and it’s all to do with Amy Pond. "The calamitous and, frankly, shocking events at the climax of episode seven will still be ringing in your ears when Doctor Who returns in the autumn for a further six episodes."
“You’ll see The Doctor’s life change forever. You will gasp at the true nature of his relationship with Amy and cry out in horror as Rory Williams stumbles to the brink of a tragic mistake.”
There is "The frankly appalling revelation concerning the one person in the universe the Doctor trusts the most" [note: we still don't know who that is. River? Amy? Someone else? that's up for debate.]
To reinforce the point, he added that “It is an enormous, game-changing cliffhanger for The Doctor, Amy and Rory. It’ll change everything for them.”
And also (from DWM#424 Production Notes):
You’ve seen more than you think…
The Doctor has noticed what you have not.
When the biggest jaw-dropping twist finally comes — well, the second one, you’ll realize you’ve known about it from the very beginning.
I really don’t want to give too much away, but… if you take someone like the Doctor and really piss him off, if you set yourself up to go to war with the Doctor, what would happen? Obviously you’d lose, it would be a massive, crushing defeat, but what side of the Doctor does it bring out? He’s actually quite capable of being really unpleasant to people. Of course he is. He’s a man like anyone else. If you treated Amy with extraordinary cruelty, how long would you live after that?
If this is a hint, it doesn’t sound good for Amy at all.
and he goes on to say:
If the Doctor is dealing with life forms that he’s defeated on multiple occasions, it’s not like they haven’t noticed. It’s not like they haven’t written it down. You are going to be able to stand up at Stonehenge and say "Who’s first? Look at the score sheet, and take your best shot." It’s going to happen. At the same time, he can’t keep doing that. It could be quite damaging for the show. So it’s something that I’m bring to a head, and kind of ending.
So sounds like his bluffs won’t be working any longer. No more "I’m the Doctor" and the bad guys run away. At least that’s what it sounds like.
So look for a deep, disturbing episode. We knew it was coming.
