That shrill noise you can hear is the excited shrieking of Doctor Who fans. Wednesday night saw the debut of the new trailer for the forthcoming series nine (or 35 if you’re including the show’s original run) of the BBC’s sci-fi series. And we got to see quite a bit more than in the recent Comic-Con teaser; with Dalek cities, vikings and tantalising new monsters all featuring. We take a fanatical frame-by-frame look at it, so you don’t have to.
Has the mystery of Maisie been solved?
This trailer squeezes more fun out of Maisie Williams’ mysterious guest role. The shoot for her two episodes, The Girl Who Died and The Woman Who Lived apparently already caused a fan-person pile-up, with Peter Capaldi apparently pressing her for Game of Thrones spoilers. And there’s just as much intrigue surrounding her Who character. We’ve already seen her clambering out of a spacesuit. Now here she is clad in a medieval tunic, and then dressed exactly like Missy. Now, she can’t possibly be a young Missy, because when Missy was young, she was a boy ... can she?
The universe will risk its final end with a fangasm to melt them all
Talking of Missy, Michelle Gomez’s incarnation of the Doctor’s murderous frenemy certainly has a better taste in footsoldier than those who have come before her. Last year’s audacious scheme already saw her in league with the Cybermen. Here, she’s trying her luck with the Daleks - or at the very least, seen cackling maniacally into the eyestalk of one of Skaro’s finest, which is about as close as she gets to an alliance. There is form here; Roger Delgado’s Master teamed up with them in 1973 story Frontier in Space.
And ooh look, it’s the Supreme Red Dalek
We already know that there are Daleks – a whole city of Daleks – and amen to that, because a series of Who without them would just look silly. But what we also glimpse here as Clara stands, surrounded by eyestalks, is the Supreme Dalek from 2008’s The Stolen Earth. And, unless we’re mistaken, some old fashioned pale-blue-on-grey models, like from the 60s. We suspect there’s more going on here than the “let’s-use-every-model-we’ve-got-lying-around” approach from Asylum of the Daleks, and that some full-on Dalek politicking is afoot.
Clara is tooling up
Not to get all sidebar of shame about things, but Ms Oswald’s new wardrobe – sixties-style/biker-chic is a marked improvement on all those teachery blouses last year. But it’s Clara’s choice of accessories that look to be turning heads this season; here she isglimpsed both brandishing a knife at Missy and getting handy with a rocket launcher. The Doctor has long been called out for “turning his friends into weapons”. But it looks like Clara’s about to start taking Ofsted guidelines on classroom discipline to dangerous new levels.
Missy has a Tardis and the chameleon circuit works (or doesn’t work, or possibly is just a little bit broken)
A very tricky one. We know what an original Type 40 Tardis looks like without its chameleon circuit turned on – we saw one of those last in The Name of the Doctor. But the thing in the trailer looks for all the world like the ones that the Silence and Madame Kovarian were growing in James Corden’s basement, way back in The Lodger. Not that we can envisage Corden’s Craig popping up again here, because he’s busy hosting talkshows in America, and anyway what would be the point?
It’s all about the things we can’t see
Which brings us neatly to the rest of this year’s impressive raft of guest stars. Plenty of old friends return this year, but the only one we glimpse up close here is Jovian Wade, as kindly inner city graffiti artist Rigsy, who fought off the geometrically challenged enemies the Boneless in last year’s Flatline. There’s no sign of Jemma Redgrave as Unit boss Kate Stewart, but perhaps more puzzlingly, nothing of the widely-trumpeted return of Ingrid Oliver as Unit-scientist and ultimate fangirl Osgood who was apparently violently murdered last year, but who will definitely make an appearance this time around.
Zombified hands with eyeballs in them are really very scary indeed
Especially if they’re clambering up out of graves or whatnot. As are serpents, and fire-breathing lion-people. And even if those unwieldy robotic dreadnought things look a little bit more adorable than terrifying at this early stage, this year promises to be a strong one for new monsters, returning Zygons or not.
They weren’t lying about the roundels
As mentioned before, Steven Moffat has made the audacious move this year of placating every superfan who has ever turned on him over his running of the show, by restoring the iconic roundels to the Tardis interior. And here they are, in all their glorious roundness. Don’t try and say the producers don’t take fandom seriously.
‘He doesn’t have a plan yet ...’
“...but he will have, and it’ll be spectacular.” Just like trailers are there to do, this stokes the fires of anticipation, with revealing pretty much absolutely nothing. But like the Doctor’s psychologically-circumspect “kiss it to death” line from last time, this does hint that he’s over his whole “am I a good man?” male crisis of last season, and happy to get on with trotting round the universe having adventures with his best mate. “Same old, same old, just the Doctor and Clara Oswald, in the Tardis.” Which, as we know, never goes wrong ...
Bonus ball: the Mark Gatiss episode doesn’t feature because it’s still filming, but …
I do actually know something very big about episode nine, scripted by Gatiss. As it is, this information is under such watertight embargo that were I to even hint at any detail, BBC Wales would surely set Missy on me. Nevertheless, what we can say about this one is thrilling enough. Not only does the episode bring Gatiss’s League of Gentleman colleague Reece Shearsmith into the Who fold (having cameo-d as Patrick Troughton in the 50th-anniversary biopic), it boasts among its guest cast one Bethany Black. The talented Mancunian stand-up made minor waves when, appearing in Russell T Davies’s Cucumber and Banana, she became the first transgender actor to portray a transgender character in a UK drama. No word yet on who Bethany is set to play here, though she has confirmed that the character won’t be trans, which itself seems like it might be a powerful first. In any case, bravo to the talented Ms Black, who described appearing in the show as “the gig of a lifetime”. Not long to wait now ...
