While not giving away too much, they promise spills and thrills as well as satisfying nods to the programme’s 50 years. Ideal warm-up trailers for what promises to be a rollicking adventure across time and space.
Simulcast in 3D cross the world on 23 November, it’s clear that show runner Steven Moffat has pulled something special out for the Time Lord’s birthday.
You might almost forget that it’s Matt Smith’s penultimate adventure. But as the three Doctors prove, time is relative.
So, what questions do these new trailers raise about the anniversary spectacular?
The Writing’s in the Sand
First, the BBC’s familiar motif of Original British Drama is again worked into the trailers with a lot more care than other BBC dramas. But this time, it sits at the base of the TARDIS on top of footprints in the sand.
This special is all about drawing a line in the sand – and there’s bucket-loads of that – and of course, the irreversible decisions that lie beyond that line...
Clara’s Role
Clara gets her share of the action, with less airtime than any other TARDIS traveller in one of the trailers. The recently unveiled clip from the special has done more than bring back the painting-message motif from Series 5.
Following the events of Series 7, Clara knows the last of the Time Lords better than any other companion. Tellingly, it’s her who calls the Elizabethan painting “impossible”. But then, there is one version of the Time Lord she doesn’t know very well...
Hurt and Alone
Cutting a solitary figure for much of the first trailer, the maybe-sometime 9th Doctor portrayed by John Hurt will obviously play a great role in the story, and cover a lot of desert.
He seems to be asking for his future selves’ help and after some reluctance, he gets it. But will he have some unexpected help?
Rose Wolf
It looks like this Rose will be more than just a version of the character plucked from her Series 2 travels.
When we last saw her she was a dimension jumping action woman. And there’s certainly something more going on here, but is it a Rose from the past or the future?
“Bad Wolf” graffiti has been scattered around the promotional material and one glimpse of Billie Piper’s companion suggests she has more than a hint of her former time vortex invaded self.
Moffat has that said he will change the narrative of the show, but just how far will he be delving into the stories that Russell T Davies developed in the first four series of New Who? We know one story he’s tackling...
The Time War reaches Gallifrey at Last
So much of this trailer takes place around the things we know – the Time War and John Hurt’s errant Doctor by another name. The biggest and most spectacular part of the show looks like it will be the realisation of the Great Time War.
The suggestion is that it’s the very end of that conflict, with Dalek forces arriving in force at the Time Lord’s home planet. Although it looks like we’ll see conflict on more than one world.
We’ve heard murmurs about the conclusion of the Time War for years. Could that be the rumoured ten million strong Dalek fleet and the resultant "rocks and dust" they left behind?
It looks like we’ll see a lot of the conflict and that might bring surprise cameos. Even at the end, could the pepper pot’s dastardly inventor Davros pop up to snarl hello? Or perhaps there’s a certain deranged Lord President of the Time Lords waiting in the wings? There seems to be one Time Lord defiantly leading troops down a corridor...
The Moment
It’s looking ravaged, but surely the vista that John Hurt’s Time Lord wanders in the first trailer is Gallifrey. Un-time locked after the Time War? Or perhaps in utter devastation at the very end?
If that is a flashback of Hurt’s Doctor destroying his people and planet, why is Rose there? “The Moment is coming” she says. We’ve only heard snatches before, but that must be a reference to the Doctor’s discovery of "The Moment" – the item (or person?) – that helped him end The Great Time War.
Does she help him discover Rassilon's "Ultimate Sanction" and does it all come down to that jewelled lever?
The Modern Doctors
Picking up from last month’s 50th #SavetheDay trailer, this kicks off with the 11 Doctor’s monologue. But the trailer gives little away about the role that the last two versions of the Time Lord will play beyond the gentle ribbing.
The Doctors have chilled a little since their grumpier, younger selves previously met each other. There’s the mutual appreciation of clothing, dislike for the TARDIS’s new desktop wallpaper and then some satisfying console action for sure.
Many scenes of the 10th and 11th together look set in Elizabethan England or the 11th Doctor’s TARDIS... Leaving their bearded predecessor to take the fight elsewhere for part of the special.
UNIT
This is an anniversary and there were always going to be more references than what looks like a Unit scientist wearing a familiar scarf... UNIT have played a major role in Doctor Who and here it looks like they’ll do more than just lead the current Doctor to the National Gallery and a surprising message from the past.
There’s the hint that the new scientifically focussed UNIT will have their far share of action, with Jemma Redgrave’s Kate Stewart at the centre of it. London will certainly take a battering. But it’s not all about sometime allies though.
Liz I
The Doctor has met Elizabeth I several times throughout his 50 years of adventures on TV and in audio and comic book adventures. But the most tantalising part of this pairing is quite what the 10th Doctor does to earn a death sentence from her many years later (in Series Three’s the Shakespeare Code).
Gavin and Stacey’s Joanna Page bring a younger Queen Bess to life and it looks like she’ll have a key role. And of course, there’s something she’s running from that surely a dashing Doctor will swoop in to foil... But what is she running from?
Smashing Zygons
The orange big heads look lively in the trailers, smashing or perhaps bursting out of something, as we’ve seen Cybermen, Vervoids and countless other species do so many times over the last 50 years.
In their sole previous appearance, it wasn’t established that the Zygon’s advanced biological technology covered time travel, but during the Moffat tenure it’s been suggested that many monsters now do.
Could they have played a previously unknown role in the Time War? Or perhaps they are the same group that the Fourth Doctor will meet in the future.
In that tale, The 1975 serial Terror of the Zygons, it was revealed that their home planet was destroyed in a stella-explosion. Perhaps the temporal skirmish had previously unknown repercussions for their world...
Attacking Daleks
Wow. Huge Dalek battle fleets. The damaged Time Lord Citadel. Presumably thousands of Time Lord bodies flying everywhere.
Yes, Daleks will bring the fireworks just as they should.
