The Web of Fear and The Enemy of the World Found

The results of today's press conference are still embargoed until midnight, but the Northern Echo has leaked the results (and subsequently pulled them). Apparently all of The Enemy of the World and part of The Web of Fear have been found in an archive in Nigeria. Apparently part three of The Web of Fear is still missing.

Both Patrick Troughton stories were uncovered by Philip Morris, director of Television International Enterprises Archive. They include the introduction of then-Colonel Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart (better known as the Brigadier). The Web of Fear also includes the villainous Great Intelligence, recently brought back by Steven Moffat for Series 7. Both stories will be made available on iTunes and DVD.

FOUR decades ago, Dr Who’s encounter with the mythical Yeti left a generation of children terrified and enthralled. The six part serial Web of Fear became one of the best-loved serials of the Patrick Troughton era. Sadly, in the 1970s the well-travelled time lord faced an enemy far deadlier than the Daleks – BBC beancounters.

In an effort to save money, tapes of classic shows were wiped and recorded over. In a matter of months some of the Doctor’s greatest adventures were lost… seemingly forever. The Web of Fear is one of the most missed serials, along with another Troughton era adventure, The Power of the Daleks. But now all six missing episodes have been found – in a dusty storeroom in Nigeria.

The previously lost nine shows were among 11 traced to a television relay station and the find brings back to life an entire six-episode story, while another is almost complete. The newly found programmes – which introduce the character of Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, better known to audiences as The Brigadier – will be available on iTunes from today and will later come out on DVD.

Phillip Morris, the director of Television International Enterprises Archive, unearthed the programmes by looking up the records of overseas shipments of tapes made by the BBC.

The stories, The Enemy Of The World (1967) and The Web Of Fear (1968) and both starring Patrick Troughton as the second Doctor, have now been remastered by BBC Worldwide, the corporation’s commercial arm.

Mr Morris said: ‘‘I remember wiping the dust off the masking tape on the canisters and my heart missed a beat as I saw the words Doctor Who. When I read the story code, I realised I’d found something pretty special.’’

Only one episode of The Enemy Of The World – which featured Deborah Watling as companion Victoria and Frazer Hines, later to find fame in Emmerdale as Jamie – had remained in the archives, so the addition of programmes one, two, four, five and six have completed the story.

Fiona Eastwood, director of consumer products, BBC Worldwide, said: ‘‘We are thrilled with the recent discovery of The Web Of Fear and The Enemy Of The World and we’re very happy to be launching re-mastered versions of these treasured episodes to fans as we celebrate the 50th year of Doctor Who.’’

The BBC still had the first edition in the Web Of Fear story, and the new finds mean only number three is missing. The tale introduced Nicholas Courtney as Lethbridge-Stewart, who began with the rank of Colonel but later became Brigadier.

The missing episode has been recreated using 37 still images which were available and the original audio which survived.

The Name of the Doctor Review

Honestly, I was hoping for something a bit longer. I like season finales the way Davies did them: big, long epic adventures. Moffat's last two finales haven't quite been up to snuff. He could have at least made it a bit longer, but with this plot line, I'm not sure how much more he could have added. I really hope next season we have more two-parters (perhaps have a season of all two-parters plus a three-part finale?).

I was never actually expecting the conference call promised in the synopsis to be over the telephone line. I knew it was going to be some sort of telepathic thing, though I was expecting some sort of weird virtual space with faces floating all around. Either that, or the subwave network (though that was destroyed in Children of Earth). I wasn't expecting a dreamspace with people sitting at a table, that's more of a conference than a conference call.

It's rather weird that the Silence didn't try to intervene in Trenzalore. I was always expecting them to try to take out whoever asked the Question. There are a number of possible reasons why we didn't see this happen. Perhaps the Silence viewed the Doctor as more of a threat than the Great Intelligence. Or maybe they found it too difficult to kill a disembodied mind. Either that, or killing the Great Intelligence was always a back-up plan and they thought they killed the Doctor, and therefore saw no reason to go after the GI.

Apparently when Moffat said that nobody figured out Clara's mystery, he was lying. Several people had theorized that she was somehow splintered in time, which turned out to be the correct explanation. I think either they failed to figure out how, or Rule 1: Moffat lies. I figured it out as soon as I heard the radio trailer last Friday and realized from the trailer the Saturday before that she was going to step into the lighty thingy. I had no idea that was the Doctor's timestream, I thought the console had just been removed and that was what's left. Moffat had been dropping hints since March that companion Clara was a perfectly ordinary girl. I think we were supposed to take from that that she was the original and something was going to happen to her. Moffat probably lied when he said nobody had figured it out, because if he did admit someone was right, the fans would stop speculating and turn inward on each other and start fighting over who was right. I think he wanted a happy discussion and speculation and knew some fans would argue about whose theory was best. That, and he would be constantly hounded to give up whose theory was right and the fans would never leave him alone.

I honestly did not see the bit with John Hurt coming. I thought we wouldn't see him until November. Well actually, to be honest I did give up and start reading spoilers the night before the episode and I did read about this. I thought it was a fake spoiler, but the screenshot should have been a dead giveaway. But if it hadn't been for that, I never would have guessed that John Hurt was in the finale, so good job to Moffat for keeping that secret. You can read my speculation about him here.

The only thing I'm left wondering is how the Doctor and Clara are going to get out of there. The timestream appears to have closed behind the Doctor and it looks suspiciously like he's trapped there. On the other hand, the area they're trapped in looks suspiciously like the graveyard, so they might just be right outside. Oh, and how did the catacombs they were in lead into the TARDIS? How do underground passages lead into another dimension?

Ultimate Jenna Theory - Revision 4

I'm Clara Oswald, I was born to save the Doctor.

So it looks like I was right in my last post, Clara does have something to do with Trenzalore. Only it sounds like she is going to save his life. Perhaps the Fall of the Eleventh does refer to the Doctor's death and is meant to happen at Trenzalore. Maybe she was created by someone to ensure that this doesn't go down.

Whether it was the Silence, the Great Intelligence, or the Whisper Men, is hard to tell. The Silence seem pretty intent on making sure the prophecy doesn't happen, though they don't seem to care when the Doctor dies, they just want the Question averted. The Great Intelligence is an enemy of the Doctor, so I can't see why it would want him alive, unless it still needs him for something. I still don't know what the Whisper Men want, so that makes it hard to guess for them, but it seems likely.

In the trailers, the Whisper Men seem to appear in a lot of the same scenes as Dr. Simeon and are wearing similar outfits. They may not be separate entities, but part of the Great Intelligence. They may be the new beasty boys to replace the snowmen, Spoonheads, and Yeti. I'm guessing they're a half-failed attempt to replicate Dr. Simeon, so they're him/the GI only with a sort of half-life.

Clara may also have been created by someone else entirely. The Doctor may not find out until the very end of the episode who she is or how she managed to save him. Then there's some big reveal and the Doctor rushes off to meet whoever it is and we pick up in the 50th Anniversary.

I like the idea that someone created an infinite series of Claras across time. They wanted her to meet the Doctor so one of them could save her, but they couldn't be sure the Doctor would actually be able to find her, so they created a near-infinite number of Claras and placed them across the entirety of human history. Inevitably, the Doctor did meet some of them, but he met most of them long in his past before he was meant to and forgot about them. He just happened to meet three of them within a short string of time and therefore remembered and it sparked his curiosity.

That would explain Jenna's recent comment about how the Doctor "hasn't just met Clara three times before." If the other times were long long ago, he might not remember them, so he only knows about the most recent ones.

Given the recent pic of the Citadel of the Time Lords labelled "Gallifrey, a long time ago" and someone saying that the finale is going to mess with classic fans, Clara being created by the Time Lords seems very likely. The Time Lords may have foreseen something far in the Doctor's future and created her to intervene in his timeline. Why they created so many of her, I don't know. Maybe she was created to police the Doctor and act as a check on his power or to prevent him from intervening at certain key points. Or maybe she was created to save the Doctor at certain key points, though I don't know why the Time Lords would ever intervene in history like that.

Jenna-Louise Coleman on The Name of the Doctor

Jenna spoke about the finale in today's issue of the Radio Times. She teased that

In the beginning we see a Clara in the 60s, 70s and the 80s so there are a lot of costume changes, which I love. Always one for a bit of dressing up, me. Love a red carpet.

Richard E Grant is back with his evil Great Intelligence, the Doctor’s greatest secret is revealed, all of his friends rally round to protect him and we finally understand why the Doctor has met Clara so many different times.

Ultimate Jenna Theory - Revision 3

So Moffat said in a recent interview that so far, no one has gotten right the explanation for Clara's multiple appearances. That means I'm throwing out the Bad Wolf explanation. I doubt Moffat has seen my Guardian theory, but I'm going to assume that he has and throw that one out as well.

Clara's identity has got to be linked to the finale in some way. Since the finale is Trenzalore, she's got be related to the Doctor's name. About the only explanations are that she was created to either prevent the Doctor from revealing his name or to trick him into doing so. The only people who seem to be involved in Trenzalore other than the Doctor and friends are the Silence, the Whisper Men, and the Great Intelligence. The Great Intelligence seems to be heavily involved in Series 7 so that seems likely, but Moffat could just be reintroducing it as a villain before its appearance in the finale.

It's really hard to guess which of the three it is when we only know the Silence's intentions regarding the Doctor's name. Without more information on the other two's intents, it's haphazard to guess. Even if I knew just one of the others, I could posit a reasonable guess.

Jenna said recently that Clara "hasn't just met the Doctor three times before." This could mean any number of things. More than likely, we haven't seen those other times. I doubt she means the Prequel to the Bells of Saint John and The Rings of Akhaten, that would be too obvious. There's probably going to be some sort of flashback sequence in the finale, where the Doctor suddenly remembers all the other times he's met her.

The Great Intelligence's MO

All of the Great Intelligence stories (I haven't seen the classic series ones, but I've read the Wikipedia articles, so please forgive me) have certain elements in common. Be warned, some of this may be spoilery if you haven't seen The Bells of Saint John yet.

The mirroring multi-nuclear host: In each story, the Great Intelligence has a multi-nuclear (that means it has more than one nucleus, or center) host that it possesses. In the classic series stories, it was those metal balls. In The Snowmen, it was the telepathic snow, each snowflake a nucleus. The snow actually had nothing to do with the Great Intelligence, it just happened, and the Great Intelligence took advantage of it. In The Bells of Saint John, it was the wireless routers and the Spoonheads. Both the snow and the Spoonheads appeared to be able to mirror people's thoughts back at them. It would soak up images and words from the surrounding people (like the girl on the book, the Doctor, the snowmen, and "that's the way to do it!") and copy them.

The beasts/foot soldiers: There were also the creatures that the Great Intelligence controlled to do its bidding. In the classic series these were the Yeti, while in the new series they were the snowmen and the Spoonheads. The Yeti were simply animals that the Great Intelligence was controlling telepathically, though they later turned into robots. The snowmen were controlled by the Great Intelligence because they were made of the telepathic snow that the Great Intelligence was already in control of. The snow was able to remember the shape of Dr. Simeon's snowman as a child. The Spoonheads were manufactured specifically for their purpose by Ms. Kizlet's company. They were controlled by the Great Intelligence simply because they were Wi-Fi connected, and the Great Intelligence was living inside the Wi-Fi.

The boss: This was the person that the Great Intelligence had contacted as a child and was connected to telepathically. I don't know who it was in the classic series episodes (I think there was something about a monk or a professor in one of the episodes), but in The Snowmen, it was Dr. Simeon, while in The Bells of Saint John, it was Ms. Kizlet. Each of these people became telepathically linked to the Intelligence as a child. Both of them felt very alone (Simeon didn't like the other children and Kizlet's parents had disappeared) and the Intelligence used this to befriend them and use them for its own purposes.

The Bells of Saint John Spoiler Summary

The following is a summary of all the information I could get my hands on about tomorrow's episode, The Bells of Saint John, which is written by Steven Moffat and directed by Colm McCarthy.

Clip 1

Clip 2

Prequel

Trailer

Clip 3

Clip 4

Clip 5

Teaser

There are also trailers for Series 7 here and here.

The Doctor somehow finds Clara after spending time at a monastery in 1207 Cumbria. He meets her, she's suspicious of him, yada yada yada, they get in the TARDIS, bigger on the inside, etc etc. Anyway, a company run by Ms. Kizlet (Celia Imrie) is using software to take people's minds and upload them onto the internet. The people's minds are taken when they click on some alien symbols in their wireless network list.

<mega spoiler>Her client is the Great Intelligence, played by Richard E. Grant.</mega spoiler>

<speculation>After people's minds are uploaded, evil bad guy (see mega spoiler, if you dare) is going either use them to increase his own powers or take over their bodies and use them as hosts.</speculation>

The Great Intelligence Returns!

Spoilerphobes beware!

The BBC has released the full cast list for The Bells of Saint John and it includes Richard E. Grant as the Great Intelligence, which is very curious, since he technically played Dr. Simeon. The Intelligence was voiced by Ian McKellan. Perhaps it has found corporeal form, or perhaps this is just a mistake.

Cast list: (courtesy of Doctor Who TV)

• The Doctor – Matt Smith
• Clara – Jenna-Louise Coleman
• Miss Kizlet – Celia Imrie
• Mahler – Robert Whitlock
• Alexei- Dan Li
• Nabile – Manpreet Bachu
• Paul – Sean Knopp
• The Abbott – James Greene
• George – Geff Francis
• Angie – Eve de Leon Allen
• Artie Kassius – Carey Johnson
• Little Girl – Danielle Eames
• Barista – Fred Pearson
• Waitress – Jade Anouka
• Newsreader – Olivia Hill
• Child Reading with Comic – Isabella Blake-Thomas
• Man with Chips – Matthew Earley
• Pilot – Antony Edridge
• The Great Intelligence – Richard E. Grant

This does confirm what I've been thinking for some time now that the Great Intelligence is behind the events of this episode. I mean, it fits its MO (Method of Operations). It's a disembodied mind, floating in some host (in this case, the Wi-Fi), draining people of their mind, then taking them over.

UPDATE: The BBC have since removed the offending spoiler from their page.