Trailers: The Doctor Who Christmas Special 2013

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The first trailer for the Christmas special 2013 has been released. Watch it and discuss it here. If there are future trailers they will also be posted here.

Extended BBC America trailer


89 comments

  1. @Graig – This reminds me of Superman again – that film where Superman is given Kryptonite with a hint of Tobbaco and turns evil, waging destruction across the world…

    Will there be a Dr vs Dr fight?

  2. @woolweed or is that @wolfweed

    Are you suggessting I might be on to something? That Moffat is more of a Superman fan than a Doctor Who fan. Hmm, … and the Doctor doesn’t actually need to wear the “brainy specs”.

    Capaldi’s new outfit, I’m calling it now. Underpants on the outside!

  3. Ooh, what a nice trailer!

    Is the Doctor working with the Silence? That seems out of type, as the Silence are a religious order, and I find it hard to believe the Doctor would ally himself to a religious order.

    Are we seeing another version of Madame Kovarian’s religious army?  (separate to the Silence)

    Two religious orders?

    Who Clara is talking to? And are those the children’s drawings (including the cot) on the wall behind Clara? Who has the ability to change the Doctor’s future? Can I get my hopes up that it be…River?

  4. I’m going to be grumpy.  I don’t like the trailer.  It’s too….. explodey and blowy-upy.  🙁

    Am I experiencing post-50th let down?  Might this be a new disorder??

  5. @ardaraith To be fair, the trailer for the 50th could have just been 2 minutes of Gallifrey being blown up by Daleks. 2 minutes doesn’t give you a real impression of the whole story.

    I said on the Spoilers thread that the thing that really jumps out to me from the trailer is the Daleks saying “The Doctor is regenerating” which makes me think it doesn’t happen after everything has concluded. We may see more of Capaldi than just the final few minutes.

  6. @ardaraith, @blenkinsopthebrave (I love your theories, BTW!), I noticed too (@thommck) that Clara had a sonic. I think it is “blowey up-ey”  perhaps because Moff theorised the 50th was going to be a bit more cerebral than Time War clash-bash?

    The drawings have everything from the 11th hour -Prisoner Zero, Dalek in 1940s London..Also, I think there are some more clerics? Love a cleric. My concern is there’s so much happening! The Silence (great) but the Weeping Angels!? I love an Angel but is it a ‘lone ranger angel’ in on the kill along with Madame Kovarian/The Silence? She was killed in an alternate time stream? Does that mean she still lurketh? Maybe so. I’d agree that DrSmith looks very pissed off and aged.

    Kindest, purofilion

  7. Is everyone OK to talk about the released screenshots in his blog?
    There is an interesting painting in this picture of the Daleks
    http://cdn.screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Time-of-the-Doctor-More-Daleks.jpg

    It seems like this “quiet backwater planet” seems to revolve around the Doctor’s history. The children draw pictures of his stories in school, they are entertained by puppets of the Doctor.

    Instead of the lonely God, is the Doctor the second coming? Is this a Nativity or a resurrection?

  8. It always hard to be sure from a 36 second trailer, but it does look, at least, as though a lot of loose ends are going to be tied up- Trensalore, re-appearance of old enemies. @blenkinsopthebrave– I have to say, if there is one person who could help the Doctor change the future and would be willing to, it’s River. (well she does take after her parents, TGWW)

    @thommak- any chance that this “quiet backwater planet” is the Gamma forests?

  9. I’m also intrigued by the emphasis on the traditional numbering- eleven- in the trailer. It seems almost pointed, since Smith Doctor is the Doctor who knows that the Hurt Doctor really was worthy of the name Doctor, and therefore he is in fact twelve. We have literally just learned that. Since so much of recent Who has been about what various people do and do not know and remember- could this be a way out? (the fall of the eleventh…)

  10. @The Krynoid Man – I was indeed speaking of Superman 3 (or the one with Richard Pryor as it’s otherwise known).x

     

    What has aged the Dr? (Or is that a ‘Bizarro’ Dr?)

    Does the dark Dr prefer being called Valeyard or Beast?

    Who is this war between?

    Will Twelve’s self be partial to elevenses?
    z

  11. You got me again. Just have to pop in and say: Clara is talking to the Silence. She is begging the Silence to interfere. I’ve got my money on that.

  12. Clara is reciting something like she knew it beforehand. Just as River always did. I’d like to point that out!
    Tick, tock, goes the clock, River’s killed the Doctor. Tick, tock, goes the clock, now prison waits for River.

    Demons run when a good man goes to war
    Night will fall and drown the sun
    When a good man goes to war

    Friendship dies and true love lies
    Night will fall and the dark will rise
    When a good man goes to war

    Demons run, but count the cost
    The battle’s won, but the child is lost
    When a good man goes to war

    And now Clara recited something as well. Anyone finds that interesting?

  13. I find it impressive how much anticipation can be built up within a 30-second trailer. They haven’t given much away, but still given us lots to think about.

    @Timeloop

    Good point. Interesting that the Eleventh Doctor’s era has been remarkably poetry-prone. Perhaps a reference to the idea of The Doctor as mythology? This has been hinted at in other ways during the Moffat era, leading up to the whole “Doctor erases himself from history” idea.

  14. Looking at the kids paintings – the other thought that occurred to me is River.

    Not River personally, of course. But the virtual children she adopted; Cal, Josh and the little girl. They were being told bedtime stories about the Doctor.

  15. @Bluesqueakpip – in the “more daleks” picture, the big painting on the wall, to the right of the daleks (viewer’s left). not to be confused with the child’s drawings in other posts (though maybe those are in a different forum)…

  16. I found myself lying awake last night focussed on the child’s drawings (and yes, the word “obsessive” did cross my mind).

    My initial thought about who Clara was talking to was that it was River, on the basis that she had the power to change the Doctor’s future, but then I started thinking about the drawings. Who could have done them?

    As we know that Madam Kovarian kidnapped Amy’s baby and River was raised to be an assassin, could the person Clara is talking to be the same person who did the drawings…little Melody Pond?

     

  17. @Bluesqueakpip

    i think/wonder, the memory filter thingy that the silence use, is it “on” all the time? or just if/when they need it to be? (like animals that can camouflage themselves, when they’re not threatened, they don’t necessarily always blend in with their surroundings.) i tend to think they can control it, so that they can interact with other races, if need arises. the kovarian eye-patch solution might have just been to insure that the human/silence alliance couldn’t be easily subverted by them?

    none of the pictures i’ve seen reveal anyone to be wearing those eye-patches. of course, where cybermen and daleks are concerned (and weeping angels), they wouldn’t be needed. but in one of the pics, matt surely knows they’re there. maybe he trained himself, somehow, to always see them (since the previous encounter), or (more probably) they want to be seen?…

  18. @blenkinsopthebrave Yes I thought about Melody Pond, too. Who knows maybe we get to see her last regeneration before she gets raised by her parents.

    And we have seen the same kinds of drawings in that train  in The wedding of River Song. Amy painted them to remind herself of the different timeline.

     

  19. @Arbutus I think  they give away massive chunks of information. If only the episodes were longer.

    “The Doctor as mythology” Could you expand on that one? I don’t think I remember.

    @Tennantmarsters2013 Yes, a similarity indeed. When I tried to write down all of them and rewatched every episodes with River they kinda blurred though. They are easiest to spot when there is a fresh new impression.

    Sorry if something I wrote didn’t make sense. I had only three and a half hours of sleep in the last 2 days (I take taking energy drinks seriously)

  20. @timeloop

     

    i now think its obviously a child so it’s probably melody pond (river) or a younger Clara.

    It could even be amy…god this is confusing!!

     

    i also now think the silence is deffinate lay working with the doctor as you see one shooting at a Dalek in the trailer

  21. @Timeloop

    I guess it depends on what you think about what you’ve been shown. I tend to be a little skeptical about two-second snippets, because taken out of context they can mean a lot of different things. But the idea is to get us speculating, and so we are.

    Regarding the “mythology” comment, it’s probably not so much a deliberate reference, as the continuation of a story-telling style that has been present during the Smith/Moffat era. From the very beginning, when the Doctor becomes a story that little Amy tells to her friends, to “The Pandorica Opens”, where the Doctor has become almost bigger than life, as all of his enemies band together against him, and in “The Big Bang”, when the doctor helps Amy to remember him as a story, and so she brings him back.

    I also have this feeling, a bit, from “The Beast Below” (something, I think, about Amy’s story-like description of the Doctor when comparing him to the space whale) and “A Good Man Goes to War”, at the beginning when the Doctor is collecting his allies. There is also River’s statement at the end, about how his name has taken on meaning throughout the universe. In “The Wedding of River Song”, the Doctor acknowledges the size of his own myth, his belief that it has grown too big. “The Angels Take Manhattan” has a novel as one of its central plot points, and Amy’s goodbye to the Doctor comes at the end of it.

    So not really a theory, more like a collection of images that seem very strong to me. And the reciting of poetry, which as various people have said, returns throughout the Moffat era, links up with this for me. It’s as if the Doctor’s story has become an epic, and poems are one of the ways that epics are transmitted.

    I hope that this made some kind of sense! First thing in the morning, after only one cup of tea, and I am being made to support my statements.  🙂  I can only salute you in awe at the thought of 3 1/2 hours of sleep in two days.

     

  22. @Arbutus Thanks for the salute 😉 Unfortunately I’ve had 5 hours of sleep now and am super awake at the moment. At around midnight….

    Wow. That is really something I have not considered before but makes absolutely sense to me. I like it very much. The Doctor himself has become a story. We are alll stories at the end. On a meta-level every time we watch a new episode we are being told a story as well. A story about stories so to speak.

    If we have discussed this theme of Doctor Who in this forum before I must have missed it. A whole new perspective, thank you very much.

    @tennantmarsters2013 I think we should spend some time on the eye-line of Clara. She is not looking down like she would when a child is in front of her. It is more somebody is standing at some distance ( that would suggest the silence). Otherwise the person might be sitting down?

    I am going with the Silence. Oh! What if the Doctor has not found River yet? He said he would find her in! A good man goes to war” and we know who she is to become. BUT we have not really seen if that little girl in New York was captured again? If she then was brought to Trenzalore to raise her because the Silence knew this would be the one place the Doctor won’t look?
    They could use any child, as we did not see Rivers full regeneration. River said he will find her and something along the lines of he will care for her whatever it takes?

    Is anyone intrigued by the  use of tenses? ” The siege of Trenzalore is now begun.” Shouldn’t it be “has”? Is it a hint, or am I making a mistake?

    And now it’s time for one last bow,
    like all your other selves,
    eleventh’s hours is over now
    the clock is striking twice

    Striking twice? Why twice? What about three times is the charm? Does Clara really say twice?

    Keep the good ideas coming! 🙂

     

  23. im preety sure she says “the clock is striking twelves “. very intresting comments about the poetry etc. I think clara cld have some timelord aspect to her as in TDOTD she cliks her fingers and the tardis door shuts, also her intrest in susans picture  at the tower of london .

  24. @purofilion

    I love your theories, BTW

    Too kind! <blenkinsop goes red from embarrassment…or is it the shiraz?>

    I agree with you about the drawings. They are from the 5th and 6th seasons. Interestingly, I cannot spot any drawings from Clara’s period. This doesn’t necessarily mean that River, or Amy, or Rory will make an appearance, but it might mean that the Christmas special will overtly refer to the Doctor’s years with Amy. My gut feeling is that it might go back to the 11th hour.

    Given how wrong we all were about what was going to happen in TDOTD (although our theories really were more insane that what actually happened!) I suspect that Moffat has lots of surprises in store for us!

  25. @Timeloop

    Is anyone intrigued by the  use of tenses? ” The siege of Trenzalore is now begun.” Shouldn’t it be “has”?

    That construct is an old-fashioned one that you sometimes see in older writing or poetry. It sounds declamatory to me, like a formal declaration of war, perhaps. As a bit of a grammar geek, I’d say that it treats “begun” as an adjective rather than a verb. I think that there’s a proper name for that, but I can’t remember it. Some of the clever literary people on the forum might know!

  26. Lots of good comments.

    Agree re the drawings seeming to be a callback to Amy’s drawings in Eleventh Hour and Pandorica/Big Bang. In fact, more than anything the run up to this episode reminds me of Pandorica, with all the Doctor’s enemies ganging up.

    eleventh’s hour is over now

    But which eleventh? According to DotD, Hurt is now ensconced in the run of Doctors, so Tennant becomes eleven… A sideways thought – Tennant was the one who didn’t want to regenerate. Maybe Smith’s the one who does want to. He’s lived longer than most of his other incarnations; in some ways his work is done in having faced his past in Hurt, and resolved it. Maybe he feels a change off face/growing up a bit would be right for his new quest.

    @Blenkinsopthebrave

    We didn’t get everything completely wrong, we got a couple of things vaguely in the right direction – there was a breaking the fourth wall moment if you caught it in the cinema (you), @Juniperfish was in the right direction with dual timestreams (and may yet be proved right with doppelganger Doctors), @Bluesqueakpip called that it would be about rescuing the children of Gallifrey, and we had general agreement (I think) on something timeywimey/crossing of own timestreams a la Day of the Daleks (me, and others).  And @Timeloop hit the button with the Moment.

     

  27. @ScaryB

    We didn’t get everything completely wrong, we got a couple of things vaguely in the right direction

    Yes, you are, of course, right. @Timeloop, @bluesqueakpip, @Juniperfish, and of course you(!) were all brilliant in your predictions.

    But me? I think not. I am never right! I don’t want my record card spoilt!

    But I must ask, since I did not see it in the cinema–what fourth wall moment?

  28. Slightly bonkers thought occurred to me: could Clara be asking the future Doctor (either Baker or Capaldi) to help the Smith Doctor change the future?

    After all, she’s just seen the Smith Doctor change the War Doctor’s future…

  29. @bluesqueakpip now that’s an interesting thought the future doctor ensuring he come about something of a causal timeloop so to speak.
    Awwww heck what do I know by the way was that general runaway we saw in the background in the trailer behind Tasha Lem or was that my imagination,because Lems supposed to be a friend of the doctor.

  30. @ Timeloop and @Arbutus, yes indeed, there’s a definite inclination to mythology in the Doctor; his companions; the whispermen as Greek chorus; Madame Vastra, Strax and Jenny as the helpful Homeric/Attic Greek trio all very suggestive of different aspects of class/life. The use of ‘is’, as you said, is part of arcane speech and is a declamation in Ancient chorus’, again supporting the mythology concept. The ‘begun’ is likened to the intransitive verb or past participle, but that’s up for debate – in Australia, all grammar stopped being taught in 1982 and that was when I really needed it 🙂

    @Blenkinsopthebrave, I also haven’t understood the 4th wall reference -and I was here!. Still scratching my head on that one m’self.

    ScaryB, I am wondering about the references to 11th/12th, too. I think that most people (even Moff) are referring to Mat as 11 still, so as for his clock striking ’12’; not sure? Others have said that there’s references everywhere in those drawings to the ’11th hour’ – is his entire journey encapsulated in that one hour from 11 to 12?

    If it’s striking ‘twelves’, then the 12th’s hour (PC) is upon us. As you’ve all said, is Clara begging the Silence (someone else) or the new doctor who has somehow appeared from around a ‘corner’. Wouldn’t it be funny if one of the doctors returned to collect Peter Capaldi and his wife and family from ‘Vulcan’/volcano, took them for a ride in space and time, ended up in trenzalore and during the regeneration process was too close to the doctor and the two merged creating the new Time Lord with the face of Capaldi! Crazy 🙂 I’ll have a cup of tannin to calm down the brain processes.

    Kindest,

    purofilion

  31. @Purofilion – I’ve got a blog post about the possible meta-meaning of The Eleventh Hour here.

    I’m wondering about the insistence on the numbering – especially since Moffat’s been protesting vigorously that the Doctor doesn’t count his faces and would probably have to reckon them up on his fingers to figure out which ‘number’ he is. Moffat doth protest too much?

    But it could be something as simple as Peter Capaldi preferring to be 12a rather than 13. 🙂

    Or it could be more symbolic – as we hit 12, the clock begins a new cycle.

  32. @Bluequeakpip thank you for directing me to your blog about ‘eleven’. I’m amazed; there’s so  much there! I’m going to put a ‘post-it’ on that blog and re-refer: brilliant. The idea of ‘petrichor’; the drought before the return; the clock turning as Rory waited when, initially, he was sceptical -but never sceptical of his one true love. Kindest, purofilion

  33. @Blenkinsopthebrave @Purofilion

    I’ve probably got it wrong but I thought the 4th wall-breaking moment was when The Doctor was reading the physics book. When he looked up, it seemed to me that he looked directly at (or through) the camera and there was something about the expression on his face that suggested he was aware that we, the viewers, would find the notion of him reading a tuition book about Quantum Physics amusing.

    Additionally, if Osgood, as some have speculated, was supposed to be a representation of ‘the fans’ then I suppose that’d count as well.

    Finally, in the Under Gallery, there was a puffer fish in a glass case – which I said on another thread (can’t quite remember which one) must surely be a reference to ‘The Doctor Who Forum’ in the form of our very own @pufferfish 😀  Unless, of course, it was the pickled remains of @JimTheFish 🙂

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