It’s all about the Eleventh Doctor again this week, folks. They invited us to ‘Knock Knock’ – and we did, but when the door opened it revealed not an army of carnivorous insects but a plethora of secrets and revelations about the hidden details in this week’s episodes. Let’s unpack them, shall we?
Consider this view of the second property Bill and her friends visit:
The three visible towers refer explicitly to the trilateral Time Lord group formed at the conclusion of ‘Journey’s End’, whereby the Doctor, the Human Doctor and the Doctor-Donna work together to defeat the Daleks. (The one at the back is Jack, but I really can’t tell you what he’s thinking right now.)
However, there are numerous references to the Eleventh Doctor. Note the fez-coloured comfy chair that sits in front of the skip, as well as the two upturned traffic cones, a CLEAR AND UNAMBIGUOUS REFERENCE to ‘The Lodger’ – an episode already referenced earlier with the undersized house that Bill’s posse rejects earlier in the opening montage. Lastly note the partially visible ‘TO LET’ sign, bottom left: read backwards, ‘TELO’ clearly translates into ‘The ELeventh hOur’.
Let’s move on and examine the kitchen.
There are eleven visible plates: note, however, that the last one is only partially shown. Hence it does not apply to the Eleventh Doctor, but rather the half-human metacrisis Doctor mentioned earlier. Meanwhile, the teacups hanging above refer to UNIT: the group of three collected together recalls the scene at the end of ‘Day of the Doctor’ where the three Doctors (and Clara, just off to the right) gather in the Under-Gallery for a cup of tea before disappearing in their respective TARDISes; note, however, that they are situated between the second and fourth mugs, thereby referring to the period of the show in which UNIT played its biggest role.
Things get even more interesting when we look at Harry’s T-shirt: it’s already well-documented that he is the grandson of UNIT doctor Harry Sullivan (although the explicitness of the connection was deleted from the episode), but it is clear that the black patch on his t-shirt refers to the Black Archive, while the silver around his neck refers to the failed Cyber invasion of 1968. But the Cybermen references are more specific than this: the silver hangs equidistant between Harry’s blue and black wristbands, which stand as a reference to this news story from early 2015:
The colour of the dress was, you will recall, frequently mistaken for white and gold, thus referring both to the snow featured in the Cybermen’s first story and the allergy to gold that would kill them later. You can’t argue with the facts – it’s there in black and white / gold / blue.
You’re all good at counting shadows: count the woodlice.
There are 24, all told – a number bathed in significance, given that it’s 11 (11!) shy of the 35 species native to the British Isles. However, the question of whether there are 24 is actually rather ambiguous: a second count reveals 23, and it’s then that things become interesting. In order to explain why, we need to examine taxonomy: specifically, the taxonomy of Trichoniscoides saeroeensis in 1923 – a distinctively coloured woodlouse distributed around the British and Irish coasts (although it may also be found in France and parts of Scandinavia). Crucially, Trichoniscoides saeroeensis can be rearranged to form ‘ethions ironside accessories’, WHICH CLEARLY REFERS TO ‘VICTORY OF THE DALEKS’.
Also note the use of a Polaroid camera: ‘The Tenth Planet’, the first story to feature the Cybermen, was set at the South Pole. The Doctor can be seen to be gripping the picture with the index fingers of both hands, but note that the middle finger on his left hand is centred on the exact middle, implying an initial split and eventual reconciliation of…two poles? No, two planets – specifically Mondas, Earth’s twin, the imminent reappearance of which was a key theme of ‘The Tenth Planet’. If you think this is too much of a stretch, consider the facts: Polaroid was founded by Edwin H. Land, born in Bridgeport, Connecticut (both words synonymous with joining together), and was the son of a scrap metal merchant named Harry.
We move next to this shot of the exterior of the Estate Agent.
Geography is the thing here. Redcliffe Lettings is the name of the company that Bill and her friends visit – but the scene was actually filmed at Moginie James, 12 Sneyd Street, Cardiff CF11 9DL. From this we derive the Twelfth Doctor (address), who will shortly be joining forces with the Eleventh (postcode). The clue for this is in the letters DL, which stand for Dimension Lengthwise – an ISO paper size that is typically used for envelopes, but which in this instance involves the Doctor travelling backwards along his own timeline (or forwards, depending on where you start).
A history lesson: Tunstall is a parish in Shropshire, and it was from the nearby hamlet of Sneyd that the family Sneyd took its name. Doctor Who was filmed in Shropshire in 1985’s ‘The Mark of the Rani’, which saw the Master and Rani team up for the first time. Conclusions? MISSY IS NOT THE MASTER, AND SHE WILL BE TEAMING UP WITH JOHN SIMM IN A STORY ABOUT CO-PARENTING A BABY DINOSAUR.
Oh, and just as an aside? Moginie James can be arranged to form ‘JEAN, MI EGOISM’, which is as straight up a reference to John Simm’s Master as you’re likely to get in mangled French.
But there’s more. The use of this location is actually a reference to stars and constellations – a key theme both of the aforementioned human metacrisis episodes (‘The Stolen Earth’, in which they were going out) and an important story for the Eleventh Doctor (‘The Big Bang’, in which they supposedly never existed). Hence we can UNAMBIGUOUSLY CONCLUDE that stars will be the theme of this year’s series finale.
To explain this we must look at another t-shirt, Bill’s this time – which, as you’ll see (scroll up. I’ll wait), has French fries on the front. In order to obtain French Fries, one must visit McDonald’s (other fast food outlets are available, but McDonald’s is Scottish, as is Peter Capaldi) – and there are two optimum routes to the nearest McDonald’s, marked on this map:
Et voila.
See you next week, folks. Count the woodlice.
Brian of Morbius 