In the dead of night (and the slightly more alive of day over the Atlantic at this year’s SDCC), the BBC released a ninety-second trailer for Doctor Who series 9.
It showed Missy, Clara, a Zygon, Maisie Williams, a creature with two faces, and Peter Capaldi’s Doctor headlining space Glastonbury or some such and wanting to kiss things to death.
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See for yourself, here:
Obviously we knew Clara, Missy and the Zygons were back, and we knew Maisie Williams was in the show but we didn’t know she was apparently ‘back’ as well. What this actually means, we can only speculate.
The trailer for the new series of Doctor Who tantalised us with a feast of monsters and new Peter Capaldi memes. Here are some images, coupled with some idle speculation.
Undersea base under siege?
This might look like a panda-eyed Abraham Lincoln, but it appears to be a monster from an episode set in an undersea base. Here’s a similar creature…
Now, the reason for the undersea base speculation is that there is definitely an undersea base…
And you can see the Doctor and Clara running down corridors away from the panda-eyed people, shortly before it cuts to the Doctor diving under a doorway in the same corridors, now somewhat flooded.
Possible Skaro
This is definitely a Dalek city. There’s no reason it has to be Skaro, except that this picture…
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And its accompanying sequence in the trailer have a certain Destiny Of The Daleks vibe to them. And is this photo of Clara and Missy from the same location?
The Master and the Daleks do have form after all (see Frontier In Space), but this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s from the opening two parter that Michelle Gomez is confirmed for. Missy is looking more perturbed and stunned than maniacal in this trailer. Time for some more character development?
Space Vikings and Other Miscellany
This looks a bit like a high budget version of Terminus. We know that David Schofield will be playing Odin in this series, so this presumably comes from that story. That door doesn’t look very futuristic, so presumably they’re temporarily displaced or it turns out Vikings from space are invading the past. Either is plausible in Doctor Who, as is this guy:
This delights me for various reasons. It looks lo-fi, almost like something out of the Muppets, and it’s just so weird. The two faces thing I can take (probably quite useful when playing cards) it’s the headgear that does it. I distantly recall a two-headed being in the pantheon of Norse gods and monsters, but search engines are yielding nothing.
This man has a stripy face and a look of scorn. He looks like he’s part of some sort of cavern-dwelling cult. The wider shot of a cavern features a woman in red robes overlooking a lake (possibly the Sisterhood of Karn at a location used in The Five Doctors – it feels familiar). There are some objects in the lake, most likely rafts, possibly Daleks.
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This inquisitive looking chap appears very briefly, standing over the Doctor in a moodily lit room with a wooden floor. He could be accompanying the Space Viking on his journeys, and I say this based solely on the fact that there’s wood in both pictures. Otherwise he looks like he’s got the skull of a Vervoid, and that somehow feels more tenuous than my previous guess.
This next image may remind some readers of The Trial of a Time Lord. If I had to guess I’d say there were from the recently announced Mark Gatiss episode (the one he said would be scary) because it just feels like the sort of thing he might do. I realise this isn’t the best logical reasoning ever but in my defence, it is just a picture of some hands.
The last monster image we have for you are these things.
These knackered AT-AT looking things are from one of the episodes directed by Ed Bazalgette, as he’s been photographed on location with them. This could be both or one of The Girl Who Died (by Steven Moffat and Jamie Mathieson) or The Woman Who Lived by Cath Treganna. At least one of these episodes is expected to feature this well known actress:
Who probably isn’t playing Arya Stark. Bluntly she could be a lot of people: Susan, a regenerated Jenny (as originally played by Georgia Moffatt), the Doctor’s hitherto unseen daughter (she does say ‘old man’)… or someone completely unmentioned before now. At any rate, the trailer’s obviously done a big tease there, fuelling a hell of a lot of speculation. It’s enough to make you giddy, so here’s a shot of a Zygon stealing a girl from Peter Harness’ two parter.
No clip of Osgood in this trailer. OR IS THERE?
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And now we finish with two images of Peter Capaldi – accompanied by no speculation whatsoever – because we want to.
Doctor Who will return to BBC One on Saturday the 19th of September.
