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Central Premise Recycled From: The
Stone Tape.
Moffat
Autorecycling: Alien that 's
Not Bad, Just Misunderstood. Girl caught in timey-wimey phenomenon,
people living at different speeds, “everybody lives!” type
ending, Scottishness.
Recycling
Other People: Multiple
references to Quatermass, for reasons to be detailed below. Sapphire
and Steel, that episode of Sarah Jane Adventures which also rips off
The Stone Tape, The Omega Factor (creepy psychic phenomena in
Scotland). “Battlefield” (chalk circle). The Haunting. “The End
of the World”. “Planet of the Spiders” (well, not much, but
that damned Metebelis Crystal has had so much press it has to be
mentioned). That bit in “The Robots of Death” where the Doctor
explains a complicated space-time phenomenon using a pair of boxes of
different sizes, as here
where he explains pocket universes using a pair of balloons of
different colours. “The
Parting of the Ways”.
Evil
Household Objects: Just the
usual psychic-phenomena stuff like candles that blow out,
temperatures that drop, and so on.
Doctor
Who!: Sort of: “Doctor
What?” “If you like”
Outfits!:
The Doctor just had to remind
us that “The Satan Pit” exists, didn't he?
Small
Child!: Mercifully, no.
Murray
Gold's Top Ten: Shrilling
minor-key horror-film incidentals this week.
Clara
Dies Due To: Nothing, but she
does get to see her own doppelganger.
Clara's
Job of the Week: Holder of
candelabras.
“Run,
you clever boy, and remember”: Again,
no.
Topical
Reference to Puzzle Future Generations: Ghostbusters,
possibly.
Continuity
Frakup of the Week: Others
have pointed it out, but it's worth repeating that Professor Palmer
is way too young for his backstory; the actor is 49, meaning he'd've
been 19 in 1944, making him rather young for covert ops. The
explanation is allegedly that the writer had wanted to make the
character Professor Quatermass and set the story in the Fifties, but
that would have raised an equal number of continuity issues (Nigel
Kneale's own idea of the character's war record was rather more
ambiguous and less heroic, and Quatermass, leaving
aside the fact that he was married and father of a grown daughter in
the 1950s, was never one to
fancy younger women). Also,
who took the photo of the Doctor that Palmer is developing?
Nostalgia
UK: And now we're in the
Seventies, so we get to feast our eyes on lots of pretty earth-tone
knitwear, wallpaper, shearling coats and Cadbury's tins, plus lovely
old tech like Westclox alarm clocks and Kodak slide projectors.
Item
Most Likely to Wind Up as a Toy: Nothing
toy-worthy this week; for once I'm actually glad Character Options
don't go in for cosplay accessories, or they'd probably give us a
blue crystal headband.
