Doctor Who

Season 11

The Woman Who Fell to Earth

1. A few notes of the Doctor Who theme played on an electric guitar are heard when the Thirteenth Doctor appears for the first time.
2. The title is a reference to The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) starring David Bowie. Bowie was a major inspiration for the Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi).
3. Jodie Whitaker states "these legs used to be longer." Peter Capaldi was 6 feet tall, whereas she is 5 feet 5and 3 quarter inches tall. This makes her the shortest actor to play the Doctor.
4. The character listed in the credits as "Tim Shaw" (because that's all The Doctor ever calls him) actually identifies himself several times as "T'zim Sha".
5. The alien bombs that melt all the body's DNA have real-world analogs. Very high doses of gamma radiation or the chemotherapy agent doxorubicin will also irreversibly damage DNA. Destroying angel/death cap mushrooms, which contain amatoxin, will effectively neutralize DNA too. This toxin prevents messenger RNA from being synthesized, rendering all the DNA in the body useless.In each case, the person will have a latent period of several hours with no symptoms, then the fastest replicating cells will die (stomach lining and bone marrow), then they will have systemic infections and organ failure, followed by death.
6. Sharon D. Clarke plays the grandmother of Tosin Cole despite only being 26 years older than him. Cole is also actually ten years older than his character is supposed to be.
7. There are no opening titles or credits of any kind, very unusual for the series except for Doctor Who: Sleep No More (2015). All credits are seen only at the end, and the title "Doctor Who" is not displayed at all, at least not in its original airing on 7 October 2018.
8. Jodie Whittaker wore the exact same outfit that Peter Capaldi wore in the previous episode Doctor Who: Twice Upon a Time (2017). Costume designer Ray Holman only had to buy boots in Whittaker's size, for health and safety reasons, as a lot of stunts and running were involved in this episode.
9. Discounting the Christmas specials Doctor Who: The Christmas Invasion (2005) and Doctor Who: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe (2011), this is the first episode of the series to air on a Sunday. Furthermore, it is the first regular episode of "Doctor Who" to air on a day other than Saturday since Doctor Who: Survival: Part Three (1989) on Wednesday December 6, 1989.
10. With this episode the BBC and other promotional sources ceased the long-running practice of using the term "companions", instead promoting the supporting cast as "The Doctor's friends".
11. The premiere broadcast on BBC America on 7 October 2018 did not include opening credits, and the closing credits were delayed until after an interview segment aired after the episode.
12. Incorrectly regarded as goof: The Doctor says that she never goes anywhere that's "just initials." But the term "TARDIS" originated from the initials of "Time And Relative Dimension In Space" as stated by Susan in Doctor Who: An Unearthly Child (1963). Later on, "Dimension" was changed to "Dimensions". However, TARDIS is an acronym. Not an initialism.
13. This is Jodie Whittaker's first full-length episode as the Doctor.
14. Second regeneration episode where a lady in a police uniform appears a few minutes in (first was Doctor Who: The Eleventh Hour (2010)). Amy Pond(Karen Gillan) when Matt Smith became the Doctor aka the raggedy man.
15. Bradley Walsh had previously appeared in the Dr Who Universe as OddBob in the Sarah Jane Chronicles-Day of the Clown.
16. The Thirteenth Doctor's new sonic has a Sheffield steel mark from one of the spoons used to forge it.
17. The Doctor constructs a new sonic screwdriver out of materials found in a Sheffield machine shop. This is the first time we see a sonic screwdriver being constructed. It was previously established that the TARDIS was capable of constructing new sonic screwdrivers whenever they needed replacing. In Day of the Doctor, it's also established that the software that runs the screwdriver is essentially transferred from one to the next, so that it is essentially the same screwdriver on a software level. This new version, however, would not have access to the inherited software and is therefore a completely new device.
18. In Logopolis, Tom Baker as The Doctor faced off against his arch nemesis The Master. The Doctor (Baker) fell to Earth from off a radio telescope and died. He regenerated into the fifth Doctor (Peter Davidson). In The Woman Who Fell to Earth, Whittaker's Doctor, who was last seen hurtling out of the Tardis in the last Christmas special, crashed onto a public train car so hard she broke through the roof and landed inside. Since this happened after the regeneration was already started (unlike with Baker), she was unharmed due to the earlier established fact that a Time Lord, within the first few hours of their regeneration, can heal traumatic wounds almost instantly. This previously happened when the Tenth Doctor regrew a severed limb, and when River Song survived a hail of bullets shortly after regeneration.
19. This is the second time (at least since the 2005 renewal) that the TARDIS does not appear in any way, shape or form throughout an entire episode, not even during credits (after Midnight).
20. Ryan's opening and closing monologues are reminiscent of Amy's opening lines in "A Good Man Goes to War". In both instances, the words seem to refer to the Doctor, but in reality the speaker is talking about one of the Doctor's allies.
21. There are a few subtle references to previous Doctors hidden throughout the story. The Twelfth Doctor is referred to by the line about being a "white haired Scotsman", by the Thirteenth Doctor's realizing that her limbs used to be longer, and by the set of spoons she melts to build her sonic screwdriver. A woman is seen wearing a colorful striped scarf, and the Doctor nearly falls from a crane, referencing the Fourth Doctor, who regenerated after falling from a similar structure. The Thirteenth collapses and expels regenerative energy while sleeping, as did the Tenth Doctor after his regeneration. Post-regenerative amnesia was first experienced by the Seventh Doctor, and most profoundly experienced by the Eighth Doctor.

The Ghost Monument

1. The green police box mentioned towards the end actually exists and is on Surrey street in Sheffield, as said.
2. The custard cream dispenser was described as a little gift for Jodie Whittaker from the set designers. The head Art Designer, Arwel Jones, asked Whittaker what her favorite biscuit was and installed the dispenser as a surprise for her.
3. Epzo tells Angstrom she's "nothing". The angstrom (properly spelled "ångström" but in English the special characters are often left off) is an incredibly tiny unit of length, 0.1 billionths of a meter, which is almost nothing. The distance between the two carbon atoms in acetylene is 1.2 angstroms and each carbon-hydrogen distance is about one angstrom.
4. Someone has said "Don't panic!" in each episode this season. This is the tagline of the Douglas Adams book and dramatizations "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Adams was a writer and script editor on the original Doctor Who (1963).
5. During a confrontation between Angstrom and Epzo, The Doctor uses a 'Venusian Akido' technique to paralyze Epzo. This is a call back to the fictional martial art first mentioned and used during the third Doctor's ( Jon Pertwee ) tenure and subsequent episodes since, such as Doctor Who: Robot of Sherwood (2014) and Doctor Who: World Enough and Time (2017).
6. The biscuit that the Doctor eats is a "custard cream" and is a sandwich cookie with a creamy filling between two flat layers.
7. Jodie Whittaker (The Doctor) and Shaun Dooley (Epzo) previously appeared together in Broadchurch (2013).
8. The building seen at approximately the 25 minute mark is the Macassar Beach Pavilion, near Cape Town, South Africa. This is the same building which appears in Bulletproof, series 3, episode 3, (also known as Bulletproof: South Africa, episode 3) at approximately the 37 minute mark.
9. First appearance of the new TARDIS.
10. Like Doctor Who: Planet of the Dead (2009) The Doctor is again accidentally stranded on a desert, seemingly uninhabited planet with a group of other stranded individuals who need help getting off said planet.
11. The new entryway to the TARDIS is framed by the front and sides of the Police box shell, instead of the doors opening directly into the interior. This is somewhat similar to the classic series, where passengers would go through the Police Box to a set of inner doors at the back before entering the console room. The new TARDIS is similar in design to the ones from the classic series: it is smaller in size, the cover to the phone cubby is black with white lettering, it's painted a different shade of blue, and the wooden frame is more obvious in close-ups.
12. When the Doctor sees the TARDIS interior for the first time, she says "You've redecorated....I really like it!", a reversal of the line "You've redecorated...I don't like it!", usually spoken in crossover episodes when a previous Doctor sees the TARDIS of the incumbent.
13. The strangling fabric monsters are called The Remnants. In sewing and tailoring, remnants are the small pieces of fabric that are discarded after the cloth has been cut.
14. The first reference to the highly divisive "Timeless Child" concept is made. The full explanation would not come until the finale of the next series.
15. The Doctor is able to pilot the TARDIS despite the change in the console design. This ability has been shown in episodes where previous Doctors have appeared. In "Day of the Doctor", the Tenth and War Doctors are shown flying the TARDIS when the Eleventh is making a phone call; and in a Children in Need special, the Fifth Doctor operates the controls of the Tenth Doctor's TARDIS, seemingly unaware that they have even changed.

Rosa

1. Rosa's exchange with Blake ("You may do that.") is exactly the way it happened in real life.
2. The bus shown in this episode is a detailed replica of the one where the real Rosa Parks was arrested. The original bus still exists and is now exhibited in the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan, USA.
3. Rosa Parks wasn't the first woman arrested for refusing to give up her seat. Nine months prior to the events of this episode, a black teenager named Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white passenger. Because she was underage and believed to be pregnant by a much older married man (this was later found to be false), it was decided that she was not suitable to be the face of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Since Rosa Parks' case could take considerable time to make its way through lower-level courts, Colvin's case (along with other plaintiffs) was used as the basis for challenging the constitutional legitimacy of the segregated bus laws. The case (Browder v. Gayle) eventually made it to the U.S. Supreme Court where they affirmed that bus segregation is unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment.
4. The interaction between Ryan and the waitress was based off an actual event. While playing in the minors, baseball player Vic Power, a black man from Puerto Rico, entered a segregated restaurant in Florida and was told by the waitress that they "didn't serve Negroes." Power responded "Good, I don't eat them!"
5. Vinette Robinson (Rosa Parks) previously played Abi Lerner in an earlier episode of Doctor Who: 42 (2007), which was also written by Chris Chibnall.
6. With 8.41 million viewers, this is the most watched episode of the 11th season.
7. One of few episodes that does not end with the series' closing theme.
8. This episode takes place in Montgomery, Alabama in 1943 and from November 30 to December 1, 1955.
9. Josh Bowman (Krasko) previously played another time traveller, Dr. John Stephenson / Jack the Ripper, in Time After Time (2017).
10. Morgan Deare (Arthur) previously played Hawk in the Doctor Who (1963) serial Delta and the Bannermen in 1987.
11. When the Doctor first confronts Krasko, she identifies a prison tattoo on his wrist as being from the Stormcage Containment Facility. This is the same facility where River Song was imprisoned for the murder of the Doctor.
12. The Doctor calls in a favour from Frank Sinatra in this episode. The Eleventh Doctor once went to a Christmas party thrown by Sinatra, where he not only sang a duet with him, but may or may not have gotten married to Marilyn Monroe.
13. The asteroid 284996 Rosaparks does exist. It was discovered on June 9, 2010.
14. Mandip Gill revealed that filming the bus scene at the end was so intense to her that she couldn't stop crying.

Arachnids in the UK

1. The Third Doctor previously faced giant spiders in the season 11 final story "Planet of the Spiders". Doctor Who: Planet of the Spiders: Part One (1974) through Doctor Who: Planet of the Spiders: Part Six (1974).
2. The Doctor says 'dude' and is excited about using that word. Previously the Twelfth Doctor got a medieval audience to say 'dude' in Doctor Who: The Magician's Apprentice (2015).
3. All of the exterior hotel shots and some of the interior where shot at the Celtic Manor hotel, near Newport, Wales.
4. This story shares similarities with two different Third Doctor stories: Planet of the Spiders (the Third Doctor's final story, in which he faced the Spider Queen of Metabellis III) and The Green Death (final story of companion Jo Grant, which featured mutated, giant maggots in a Welsh mine). Oddly, despite expectations, no reference is made to either of these stories.
5. Chris Noth (Jack Robertson) played Detective Mike Logan in Law & Order (1990) while Bradley Walsh (Graham O'Brien) played Detective Sergeant Ronnie Brooks in Law & Order: UK (2009).
6. The Doctor's cheerful attempt to make small talk about having a flat is in contrast to the heart-to-heart he had with Rose in Doctor Who: The Impossible Planet (2006), when he thought he'd lost the TARDIS and would have to now settle down in a house or something with a mortgage.
7. The title was announced on October 14, 2018.

The Tsuranga Conundrum

1. Ronan never blinks.
2. Writer Tim Price had worked in the writer's room early in series 11's development. The team loved the 'brilliant and unusual' name devised by Price for the alien species Pting, and kept it for the episode. He was unavailable to work on the series but Price was listed as the creature's creator in the end credits, which was ultimately written by head writer Chris Chibnall.
3. The strongest threat level the ship's computer has is "Chalice". In Quebec French, that word ("câlice") is used as an incredibly strong profanity word.
4. The Doctor says she should have known she was on a space ship because there were vibrations. As well, the space ship scenes three episodes prior, Doctor Who: The Ghost Monument (2018), had a shaky cam effect added. In the real world, vessels are not prone to vibrate when in space - there are no sources of vibration outside the vessel, and the vessel itself needs less propulsion from engines than it does in an atmosphere.
5. Jodie Whittaker and Brett Goldstein previously appeared together in Adult Life Skills (2016).
6. Ronan, whose job was to serve and protect his General, said he will be shut down now that the General is dead. In Tokugawa Japan a Samurai was sworn to serve and protect his feudal lord (daimyo) and was expected to die defending his lord. If a samurai outlived his master then he had failed in his duties and was expected to commit ritual suicide. If the samurai dishonorably stayed alive then he became a disgraced "ronin", a wandering swordsman.
7. According to the TARDIS Data Core from The Doctor Who Wiki: Pilot's Heart was a disease common among Neuro Pilots in the 67th century. It primarily caused heart failure when under stress, due to adrenaline building up around the heart, hence its name. The only way to prevent that was constant injections of adrenaline blockers, though one had to increase the number of injections the longer they had the disease.

Demons of the Punjab

1. The 150th full-length episode of the Doctor Who (2005) revival.
2. The Doctor's request for a long list of items with a biscuit added at the end just because she loves biscuits is reminiscent of the Eleventh Doctor's request to Canton Everett Delaware III in Doctor Who: The Impossible Astronaut (2011) for a long list of items ending with "twelve Jammie Dodgers and a fez."

Kerblam!

1. Bubble wrap was originally a 3D wallpaper. Only after this turned out unsuccessful was it marketed as a packing material.
2. The Doctor jokingly refers to someone as being "robophobic". There is a Big Finish audio (a full-cast audio play featuring original cast members of the show, produced by Big Finish Productions), called Robophobia, featuring Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor. This in itself is a sequel to the classic Doctor Who story, The Robots of Death, featuring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor.
3. The Doctor gets a fez delivered to the Tardis,which is a callback to the Matt Smith era.
4. The Doctor makes reference to "The Unicorn and the Wasp" episode when she met Agatha Christie and battled a giant alien wasp.
5. Julie Hesmondhalgh and Jodie Whittaker previously co-starred in the 3rd season of Broadchurch, as did Mathew Gravelle (Kerblam), who played Joe Miller.
6. Graham's comment to Judy that he has no idea what the Doctor is talking about but, "she normally explains in the end," is a good summary of the role of the Doctor's friends in the structure of the show. They provide a venue for the Doctor to explain the plot, and by correspondence for her to explain the plot to the viewing audience.
7. Once again, someone has said "Don't panic!" in the episode (this time it's the Doctor). This is the tagline of the Douglas Adams book and dramatizations "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Adams was a writer and script editor on the original Doctor Who (1963).
8. The title of (#11.7) foreshadows the explosive bubble wrap. The word 'kablam' means the sound of a loud explosion.

The Witchfinders

1. As she steps into the TARDIS, the Doctor tells the King, "A brilliant man once said, 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.'" She is referring to the science fiction and science writer Arthur C. Clarke (Though the correct tense would have been "will say" as Clarke hasn't yet been born at the time of King James.
2. The Order of the Garter dates from 1348, and James was made a member in 1590. The motto ("Honi soit qui mal y pense") is displayed on a small belt ("garter") around the left calf as an insignia of office. As of 2018, over a thousand men and women have been made members and the order is still active.
3. The word "Satan" is spoken 39 times during this episode. In comparison, Series 2's "The Satan Pit" only uses the word once (excluding the title).
4. The episode gets this form of trial by ordeal a bit wrong by showing the person tied in a chair. In trial by water, the person accused of being a witch was stripped, bound and thrown into a body of water. It was thought that if the person was a witch who rejected baptism, the water would reject them and they would float. If they sank, they were considered innocent. Usually a rope was tied around their waist to pull them out. But some did drown.

It Takes You Away

1. Ellie Wallwork (Hanne) is blind in real life.
2. At one point, Yasmin suggest Reversing the Polarity to fix a problem. This term, which was first used in the War of the Worlds sequel, Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss in 1898, it was later popularized as a classic Doctor Who trope first utilized by the 3rd Doctor Jon Pertwee.
3. The two Norwegian characters, Hanne and Erik, are daughter and father. They have the same names as the daughter - father characters from the action film "Hanna", who are hiding from the CIA in rural Norway at the beginning of that film.
4. Kevin Eldon previously appeared in the 2001 Doctor Who webcast Death Comes To Time where he played Antimony, Who was revealed to be an android companion to Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor.
5. The doctor mentions having had seven grandmothers, stating that 'Granny 5' was her favorite.
6. Scenes with a creature called 'The Spindleman', which made an appearance in the cave, were filmed but later cut from the finished episode.
7. At one point, The Doctor states that Granny 5 suspected Granny 2 was a secret agent for the Zygons, although it's inferred Granny 5 may have been exaggerating.
8. Coincidentally, Ellie Wallwork, who plays a Skandinavian character, has indeed Skandinavian ancestry, as her grandmother was born in Sweden.
9. Ed Hime's first credit as a television screenwriter since Skins in 2011.
10. After The Doctor and her companions go through the mirror, everything is reversed (mirror image). Hanne's father's Slayer t-shirt is flipped. The Doctor's and Graham's hair partings are on the opposite side, The Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver in her left hand. Hanne's partially closed eye, which in the real world is her right eye, became her left eye.
11. In the mirror universe fjord, the Doctor is told that her "friend" is there. The Doctor has previously left a friend (Rose Tyler) in a fjord in an alternate reality (Dårlig Ulv Stranden, "Bad Wolf Bay") in Doctor Who: Doomsday (2006).

The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos

1. The idea of compressed planets was previously used in the Doctor Who (1963) serial Doctor Who: The Pirate Planet: Part One (1978).
2. The four beat rhythm of the Timelord's hearts can be heard frequently throughout the background soundtrack.
3. The Doctor mentions that the TARDIS had once "turned a Slitheen into an egg" and "towed earth across the galaxy", both references to the episodes "Boom Town" (2005) and "Journey's End" (2008), respectively.

Resolution

1. Given that rels are established to be 1.2 seconds in "Evolution of the Daleks," the 9376 rels mentioned in this episode are approximately equivalent to 3 hours, 7 minutes and 31 seconds, answering the Doctor's question.
2. The second New Year's special, with the first being "The End of Time part 2", which aired on January 1, 2010.
3. In common with the season opener, "The Woman Who Fell To Earth", this episode had no opening credits or title sequence.
4. Titled "Resolution" as a reference to the fact it is a New Year's special, rather than the traditional Christmas special.
5. To keep its appearance a secret and to avoid any leaks, the Dalek was given the codename "Kevin".
6. The breakup of UNIT is attributed to disputes and withdrawal of funding by the UK's international partners. This is a reference to the real world "Brexit" controversy, where the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union.
7. The handle of the Dalek weapon that Lin holds looks like a shortened fencing sword (epee) bell guard and grip with added decoration. The end of the cylindrical pommel nut at the end of the grip is visible in the close-ups.
8. In the series premiere, Ryan's Dad, Aaron, is alluded to. And separately, the Doctor uses a lot of technology, primarily featuring a microwave, to beam herself and her companions off earth. In this series finale, Aaron is introduced having co-created a "microwave and full oven." The Doctor uses Aaron's microwave and a lot of other technology, to blast the Dalek's casing.