Review: Lights Out by Holly Black

An e-short was published last year, one for each Doctor so now that we have a Twelfth Doctor played by the wonderful Peter Capaldi there's an e-short for him too. This one is written by Spiderwick Chronicles author Holly Black. 

The story is set between the first two episodes of Series 8, Deep Breath and Into the Dalek and sees the recently re-generated Twelfth Doctor go to an intergalactic coffee house to get some coffee for Clara. When bodies start appearing he grabs the story's narrator "Fifty-One" to help him investigate. 

In my mind this is just as good as the best of the other e-shorts. It's very dark and manages to contain a real surprise in it. The tone fits in with that of Series 8 really well and Black manages to capture the Twelfth Doctor's character well too, which is impressive given how little of the incarnation she must have seen when she wrote the story. 

As ever there are some continuity nods, mostly in the form of cameos and mentions from various Doctor Who races. I'm pretty sure Black must have set a record for number of Doctor Who alien species mentioned in a short story. 

A short but fantastic story which fans of the new Doctor will love.

Foxes performs "Don't Stop Me Now"

This is the full performance from Foxes of the Queen song "Don't Stop Me Now" from Mummy on the Orient Express. It also contains scenes from the rest of Series 8.

Doctor Who Unlocked: Mummy on the Orient Express

Every episode of Doctor Who has much more than meets the eye so I like to put together a little post exploring links to the past and other things you might not have known about! 

WARNING: Contains Spoilers

The Doctor tells Clara that there have been many attempts to entice him to the train and says “He even phoned the TARDIS once”. This happened at the very end of The Big Bang (2010) when the TARDIS phone rang and the Eleventh Doctor can be heard saying “An Egyptian goddess loose on the Orient Express, in space? We’re on our way!”.

The Doctor inevitably says to the Foretold “Are you my Mummy?”. He is of course referenced what the reanimated Jamie says in The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances (2005). The Tenth Doctor also says the phrase when wearing a gasmask in The Poison Sky (2008).

Comedian Frank Skinner plays Perkins in the episode. Skinner is a huge Doctor Who fan and made a cameo appearance in The Five Doctors (Reboot). You can see visible joy on his face when Peter Capaldi introduces himself as the Doctor.

Professor Moorhouse is played by Christopher Villers and has been in Doctor Who before, as Hugh Fitzwilliam in Fifth Doctor story The King’s Demons (1984). Janet Henfrey, who plays Mrs Pitt, is also a returning actor having played Miss Hardraker in The Curse of Fenric (1989).

The singer is played by grammy-award winning singer Foxes (aka Louisa Rose Allen). The full version of the song, complete with accompanying clips from Series 8, can be seen here.

The fact that she sings Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” continues something of a running joke where people in the future completely mess up when selecting songs from the past. Don’t Stop Me Now was released much later than the original Orient Express was around in the same way that few would consider Britney Spears “Toxic” a classic like it is described in The End of the World (2005).

It is not the first time a mummy has appeared in Doctor Who. In The Pyramids of Mars (1975) the Fourth Doctor faced robots disguised as mummies and the Eleventh Doctor more recently faced a mummy-like creature in The Rings of Akhaten (2013).

The Doctor offers Moorhouse a jelly baby, something he has done regularly since 1967’s The Dominators. The Fourth Doctor offered jelly babies many times but most of the Doctor’s incarnations have offered the sweet at some point. 

Doctor Who Unlocked: Kill the Moon

Every episode of Doctor Who has much more than meets the eye so I like to put together a little post exploring links to the past and other things you might not have known about! 

WARNING: Contains Spoilers

The Doctor says that Courtney will marry a feller called Blinovitch. The Blinovitch Limitation Effect refers to at least one principle of time travel and was introduced in Day of the Daleks (1972) and mentioned again in Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974) and Mawdryn Undead (1983).

This is not the first time the Doctor has used a yo-yo to test local gravity- he did the very same thing in his fourth incarnation in The Ark in Space (1975). The Fourth Doctor then regularly used for fun.

The Doctor says that “the Earth isn’t my home”. He used those exact words in The Pyramids of Mars (1975).

Tony Osoba plays Duke and has previously appeared in Doctor Who as Lan in Destiny of the Daleks (1979) and as Kracauer in Dragonfire (1987).

Filming for the episode took place on the Canary Island of Lanzarote. It is the second time Doctor Who has filmed there- the first was in 1984 when it doubled for the planet Sarn in Planet of Fire. 

Vortex manipulators are mentioned in the episode. These are wrist-straps from the future of Earth which allow the user to travel through time. Both Captain Jack Harkness and River Song have used them but the Doctor disproved of them, called them space hoppers compared to his sports car.

The Doctor mentions how humans will still be around at the end of the universe, something we saw evidence of in Utopia (2007).