Doctor Who's The Bells of Saint John. A Prequel.

TV Here we are, the week before the big day and a prequel, well, prologue, but no one says prologue any more. For it to be a prequel it would have be released after the episode went out, like the iTunes ones last year, but that seems to have been a cock-up anyway having originally been planned to go out beforehand. But look below, new Who, and unlike the iTunes ones, completely free and legally embeddabble:



Bless. The final revelation isn't that surprising given the Doctor's recent form so it's most likely to be a nod to fish fingers and custard rather than writer Steven Moffat running out of ideas. Possibly. It's beautifully played nonetheless, Matt seemingly entirely natural as he always does when talking to children. This is a tolerant Doctor who enjoys their company and their impertinent questions.  That was always one of the oddities of Tom Bakers era; off screen kids flocked to him, but on screen, because of the nature of the show, his Doctor barely spoke to them.

It's still slightly odd that when he says he's lost a friend, he's not referring to Amy but this is all part of the perpetual motion engine at the heart of the franchise, that the Doctor moves on. Eventually.  But he does look so much older.  Like all of the other Doctor actors he's aged into the role, but unlike Bill or Tom his wariness is part of the performance it's not because of ill health or disagreements with the management.  Nevertheless, it'll be interesting to see how much of that will be worked into the show ongoing, how much of it will be about his young body wearing a bit thin.

Notice Moffat does offer one clue as to how Clara fits into the universe: unless there's some extra timey-whimey, Clarke's law magic nonsense in the style of Dawn Summers, all of these Claras are born. They have mothers. Or at least this one has. Unless she was adopted. Oh, hold on, even as I'm writing this, I can see that it doesn't really help at all. Ooh.  At this point, however many potential spoilers we're seeing in the press, and all of them seem plausible, but it could plausibly be something else.  Now I'm off to watch the Doctor Who episode of Celebrity Pointless.  One week to go.