The post Doctor Who casts Neil Patrick Harris as the “greatest enemy the Doctor has ever faced” appeared first on Game News.
]]>Russell T. Davies confirmed the news on social media as filming continues in Cardiff. He hasn’t confirmed exactly who Harris will be playing in the upcoming episode, but the showrunner teased he’ll be a formidable foe for the Doctor.
“Neil Patrick Harris, welcome to Cardiff,” he wrote in the announcement on Twitter. “Playing the greatest enemy the Doctor has ever faced. Such a great actor, such a great man, it’s an honor and a hoot. Have fun!”
This will be a reunion for the showrunner and actor who previously worked together on the award-winning show It’s A Sin. Harris played Henry Coltrane in the Channel 4 series, but is also known for appearing in the sitcom How I Met Your Mother and Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.
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Harris reacted to the news on Instagram, sharing his excitement to be involved in the show. He wrote: “My current gig. Never looked more dashing. Thank you for inviting me into your Whoniverse, @russelltdavies63. I’ll try my hardest to do my worst. This Doctor has no idea what’s in store. And even if he does… Who cares? Ha ha ha HA ha-ha-ha!”
While his character has yet to be officially confirmed, some fans have been speculating he could be playing the Celestial Toymaker, based on his outfit. The villain first appeared as a foe to the First Doctor in the 1960s and has made several appearances in varying forms since.
Harris joins new Doctor Ncuti Gatwa in the anniversary special as well as Heartstopper star Yasmin Finney – who will play a character called Rose. Davies previously announced David Tennant and Catherine Tate will also be returning to the show as the Doctor and Donna Noble.
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]]>The post New Doctor Who report outlines Jodie Whittakers exit plans appeared first on Game News.
]]>The Daily Mirror (opens in new tab) has fuelled speculation that Whittaker is shortly on the outs with the BBC series after the news that a Doctor Who annual won’t be featuring the current Time Lord on the cover for the first time ever.
Sources close to the British tabloid say “she will appear in two specials next year before regenerating into the 14th Doctor.” An insider adds: “Bosses are staying tight-lipped about what they have planned, but with filming still ongoing they clearly have plans for episodes to be playing out much later into 2022 – so there’s still more to come for Jodie’s Doctor.”
With the new season currently filming, it’s likely that a 2022 release date will be followed by a special – and possibly even the traditional Christmas special. From there, a new actor will take over the sonic screwdriver.
That all sets up the 14th Doctor to take the reins ahead of the show’s 60th anniversary in 2023. The series marked its 50th anniversary with a crossover episode, titled “Day of the Doctor”, featuring then incumbent Doctor Matt Smith and his predecessor, David Tennant.
No word yet on who – if anyone – will be back for the landmark occasion. The Ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, has returned, though – as part of Big Finish’s audio series The Ninth Doctor Adventures. The company has even recently released a clip of Nine in action for the first time since Eccleston departed the show after just one series in 2005.
While speaking to sister publication SFX Magazine, former Doctor Who head writer Russell T. Davies, with tongue firmly placed in cheek, said that It’s a Sin actor Olly Alexander would be a great pick to play the next Doctor.
“Oh stop it! This’ll just be all the headlines. You just want SFX headlines everywhere,” Davies joked. “Yes, Olly would make a marvellous Doctor Who. You tart! You enormous tart! The trouble this causes!”
For now, all attention turns to the 13th Doctor’s last foray into time and space. Jodie Whittaker will be joined by usual companion Yas and newcomer Dan, played by John Bishop.
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]]>The post Doctor Who S9.09 “Sleep No More” review appeared first on Game News.
]]>What “Sleep No More” certainly isn’t, however, is Doctor Who’s first base-under-siege story. It isn’t even the first base-under-siege story this series. The claustrophobic space station setting provides a welcome change of pace after the globetrotting Zygon two-parter and couldn’t be more different from Mark Gatiss’s series eight offering “Robot Of Sherwood”. It’s straightforward fare as far as Who siege stories go – lots of running through corridors, plenty of barricading doors and slowly encroaching creatures at every turn. The episode is given an extra wrinkle by its presentation, but the found footage proves as problematic as it does innovative.
Director Justin Molotnikov (who helmed many an episode of Merlin) has a decent stab at mimicking the shaky cam format on a no-doubt-tight budget and crafts the odd effective scare out of the chaos. Having the Doctor continually address the camera in a manner that flirts with the fourth wall is quite startling but hypnotically intimate, while it’s neat that the found footage also serves a narrative purpose – rather than GoPros and CCTV it’s the sleep dust in the corner of the characters’ eyes or floating in the air that we’re viewing the action from. Most will have twigged something was amiss the moment the action cut to Clara’s perspective, long before Nagata’s clumsy revelation that the soldiers aren’t packing helmet cams.
But the experimental format comes at the expense of clarity, with the murky lighting and erratic shifts in point of view making the action a struggle to follow. It doesn’t stick to its own rules either, abandoning the desaturated CCTV effect of the “eye in the sky” footage on a whim, while the camera is frequently placed in improbable positions even for the dust – inside the Tardis as it dematerialises, for example. It lacks the necessary rigour that makes The Blair Witch Project and its ilk so effective.

Doctor Who Trivia

The Le Verrier space station is named after French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier, who predicted the existence and position of Neptune using maths alone in 1846. And you thought putting a tax return together was hard.
The Sandmen, however, are fab – those gaping mouths the stuff of nightmares, with their exceptional sound design complementing the creaks and groans of the Le Verrier (top marks to Murray Gold for his subtle scoring too, even if “Mr Sandman” is a viciously annoying earworm). The Sandmen also fit neatly into a long-standing Doctor Who tradition by transforming the ordinary into something unsettling or downright scary – in this case making sleep a safeguard against the monsters inside. At one point the Doctor shamelessly addresses the camera to hammer home the fact that if you don’t go to bed you’ll be in trouble – a helpful new bogeyman for parents with children who refuse to go to sleep at night.
After last week’s magnificent monologuing and Zygon doppelgangers Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman settle back into a comfortable groove here. Gatiss gifts the pair some solid gold dialogue but it’s the kind of material they could deliver in their sleep at this stage. The troops fail to make much of an impression, only Nagata is fleshed out beyond “blindingly obvious Redshirt” (amusingly each character is given a “survival rating” at the start of the episode). Gatiss’ League Of Gentlemen co-creator Reece Shearsmith has a bit more fun with mad scientist Rassmussen, driven insane by his own abominable creation, but it’s exactly the kind of disingenuous and skin-crawlingly creepy character you’d expect Shearsmith to play, which makes his turn to the dark side wearingly predictable.
“Sleep No More” isn’t boring or offensively bad, it’s just a little underwhelming and the risky found footage format never quite gels. It’s not the first time a Doctor Who story has failed to realise it potential, but we can’t fault it for trying.
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Rassmussen’s face furniture look familiar? His glasses resemble those worn by fellow boffin Joinson Dastari in “The Two Doctors”. Apropos of nothing, Dastari is an anagram for “A Tardis”.
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“It’s like the Silurians all over again” is a reference to the Silurian naming debacle that saw them labelled Silurians by Dr Quinn in “Doctor Who And The Silurians” despite the fact reptilian life forms didn’t exist in the Silurian period. In “The Sea Devils” the Doctor claims they should be called “Eocenes”, but clearly that didn’t stick.
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Dumping the title sequence makes sense for a found footage episode, but the wordsearch replacement is, well, a bit rubbish to be honest. At least it’s a one off.
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<strong>Nagata:</strong> “So what happened?” <strong>The Doctor:</strong> “From the beginning of time? That’s a very long story.”
Doctor Who airs on Saturday evenings on BBC One in the UK and BBC America in the US.
For more on top sci-fi TV shows like Doctor Who, subscribe to SFX.
Mark Gatiss
Justin Molotnikov
The Doctor and Clara find themselves aboard the Le Verrier in the 38th Century (on a Tuesday), where a machine which compresses a nights sleep into five minutes has created monsters made out of the goop in the corner of your eye.
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]]>The post Doctor Who S9.06 “The Woman Who Lived” review appeared first on Game News.
]]>It is a striking episode in many ways. For it’s first half “The Woman Who Lived” is almost a two-hander, with long scenes featuring just Capaldi and Williams talking. And it’s a dark episode in a very literal sense – a huge portion of its running time takes place in the woods at night or in candle-lit gloom. It’s hugely evocative and a daring change of pace after last week’s romp.
The meat of the episode is about exploring the ramifications of the Doctor’s decision to resurrect Ashildr last week. Immortality, it seems, is both a blessing and a curse (did no one listen to Rassilon?!) and the scene where we learn that our woman who lived has lost several children is deeply affecting and sensitively played. The idea that, even though she has now lived for centuries, she only has the memory capacity of a normal human is also a clever touch. The result is that she has become a cold, dangerous figure – and a dark reflection of the 12th Doctor himself.
Or rather, the old 12th Doctor, because this episode continued his journey to full on heroism and Ashildr just showed how far he’s come. He was on his way at the start of the season, but these two episodes have been quite transformative. He’s compassionate and wise now, but not a slave to his emotions as he was at the climax of “The Girl Who Died”. Throughout the episode Ashildr begs him to take her away in the TARDIS, but he refuses because he can see that she needs to be reminded of the important things in life by living among the human “mayflies”. Without them she could be very dangerous indeed – and I wonder if that is something we might see further down the line…

One such mayfly is Rufus Hound’s rougueish Sam Swift. There was an unfair assumption from many quarters (including, I’ll admit, this one) that Hound might ham the role up, but as with Frank Skinner’s Perkins last year, he was surprisingly grounded – a flawed example of the everyday humanity that Ashildr needs to spend time with. Making him the recipient of the second immortality widget is also a neat twist – how many of you thought that one was going to end up inside Clara?
Speaking of the impossible girl, she was noticeable by her near-complete absence. The episode is stronger for its complete focus on the Doctor and Ashildr, but it’s a bit of a shame to lose precious screen time with Coleman. There’s only a few episodes left and we’re going to miss her. That final scene between Clara and the Doctor is extremely touching.
There are, of course, a few quibbles. The climactic alien attack felt more than usually throwaway, even for Doctor Who. Ashildr suddenly growing a moral compass is also a little too rushed (or Swift, if you prefer), though there is still some nice ambiguity at the end regarding her relationship with the Doctor. And Lion-O from Thundercats‘ betrayal couldn’t have been more telegraphed.
Still, it’s the strongest episode so far this season, and a wonderful Doctor Who debut from Catherine Tregenna. I’d lay money on Ashildr being back before season’s end which, given the rapport between Capaldi and Williams, would be very pleasing indeed.
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There’s a hilarious shout out to Captain Jack (“he’ll get around to you eventually”) and Peter Davison adventure “The Visitation” when the Terileptils are mentioned.
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“Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.” Hmm. Well we know that’s not true. Every episode so far this season has riffed on Clara’s departure. Will she die? That’s certainly the ending the show keeps hinting at, but we’re not convinced it will stick.
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The relationship between the Doctor and Ashildr recalled issue 13 of Neil Gaiman’s <em>Sandman</em>, “Men of Good Fortune”, which revolved around the meetings through the centuries between Dream of the Endless and the immortal everyman, Hob Gadling.
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“I just want you to attack first and then my conscience is clear.” He may have softened, but this Doctor is still a hard-ass when he needs to be.
Doctor Who airs on Saturday evenings on BBC One in the UK and BBC America in the US.
For more on top sci-fi TV shows like Doctor Who, subscribe to SFX.
Catherine Tregenna
Ed Bazalgette
The Doctor is reunited with Ashildr in 1651… and doesn’t like the woman she has become.
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]]>The post Doctor Who S9.03 “Under The Lake” review appeared first on Game News.
]]>Toby Whithouse’s fifth script for the show might be full of doom but it’s also very funny at times. The scene where Clara brings out a selection of cards featuring apologies for the Doctor to make after he’s inevitably offended someone is hilarious, as is his clumsy attempt at reading one out (“I’m very sorry for your loss, I’ll do all I can to save your friend slash family member slash pet…”), and a neat way of lighting (and lightening) his character. Also rib-tickling is his: “…two weeks of ‘Mysterious Girl’ by Peter Andre. I was begging for the brush of death’s merciful hand”.
Scary is the order of the day, though, when the chatter has intermittently died down. Particularly spooky is Pritchard turning round and revealing a lack of eyes, but also effective is the end of the pre-titles sequence where Prentis (a mute-for-now Paul Kaye) strides forward accompanied by a scream.
“Under The Lake” is a pretty traditional Who adventure – you could say routine. Doctor and companion land somewhere, there’s a group of people, there’s trouble afoot, the Doctor tries to put things right. Corridors are run down, then run down some more. Many past tales come to mind, especially excellent Tennant episode “The Waters Of Mars”, but the fact that this is the first of a two-parter means there’s no wrap-up to build towards. What it does have, though, is a strong visual cliffhanger – the Doctor is a ghost! It tantalisingly sets up next week’s intrigue.

TIME LORD TRIVIA

This is episode number 27 for Jenna Coleman as Clara – by series end she’ll have done 36, one more than either Billie Piper or Karen Gillan.
Talking of ghosts, isn’t the Time Lord a bit quick to believe that this is what these spectral images are? (“These people are literally, actually dead.”) They could be a thousand other things, and obviously will turn out to be so. Also, in a series where death, particularly in recent years, has been downgraded to be near meaningless, the “ghosts” and the Doctor’s “death” have minor impact. What is good to see is that the Doctor’s more commanding this series, more sure of himself: he bosses this (immaculately diverse) crew with aplomb. Much of it is an example of what Steven Moffat has called the challenge of writing the Doctor as the cleverest person in the room.
This episode finished airing at 9.10pm. That’s pretty late. Too late. But like most of the previous season it’s more or less justified considering the unsettling, grim nature of the story. The question remains though: is Doctor Who living dangerously by choosing not to appeal to the young, the show’s traditional cheerleaders?
“Under The Lake” was a competent episode but somewhat heavy going, and it’ll be good to see things opened up in concluding part “Before The Flood”. Deep breaths, all.
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Sophie Stone, who plays Cass, is a deaf actress who won an acting talent competition which led to a year’s TV contract; she went on to do three years at RADA.
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Peter Capaldi says of this episode: “We’re not confronted by fish people, much as I’d love to be.” <em>We</em> will be, when Troughton story “The Underwater Menace” finally comes to DVD on 26 October.
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So we learn that the Doctor has also met Shirley Bassey. Dame Shirley Bassey, from Tiger Bay, Cardiff, Wales, of course, current home of <em>Doctor Who</em>.
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Good to see that in 2119 these chunky 1970s telephones are still in use. Well, why mess with a classic?
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The pick of the Doctor’s notes has to be this one: “It was my fault, I should have known you didn’t live in Aberdeen.”
Doctor Who airs on Saturday evenings on BBC One in the UK and BBC America in the US.
For more on top sci-fi TV shows like Doctor Who, subscribe to SFX. You can read an exclusive interview with Peter Capaldi in the current issue.
Toby Whithouse
Daniel O’Hara
The crew of an underwater base in the 22nd century are being terrorised by what appears to be the ghost of their dead captain.
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]]>The post Doctor Who S8.01 – Deep Breath Review appeared first on Game News.
]]>Not that you’d know it from the opening scene. A marauding T-Rex spitting the TARDIS past Big Ben is the kind of deranged visual you once imagined could never exist outside of a Doctor Who Weekly comic strip. And now here it is, delivering the new Doctor into the heart of Saturday night event television. Score one for unfettered imagination.
Special guest helmer Ben Wheatley studs “Deep Breath” with moments of equal pulp poetry: a dinosaur in flames against a Victorian skyline; the lamp-lit figure of a steampunk Jack the Ripper; a restaurant populated by clockwork patrons, betrayed by their malevolent whirrs and clicks… It’s a less idiosyncratic offering than you may have expected from the director of A Field In England but, loyally keeping within the lines of the BBC Wales house style, Wheatley does Doctor Who very well indeed.

It’s an episode that’s not shy about its influences. The script tells us it’s “Sweeney Todd without the pies” seconds after we’ve made the same connection. “Burke and Hare from space,” adds Clara, stealing smart lines before reviewers can write them. More crucially, the Doctor disarms any snark that this story’s simply recycling the threat from “The Girl In The Fireplace” with the knowing aside “Droids harvesting spare parts, that rings a bell!” The droids of the SS Marie Antoinette don’t quite have the iconic shiver of their Venetian-masked counterparts – the “Fireplace” originals felt genuinely torn from a child’s nightmares while these have the agreeable shudder of the Chamber of Horrors – but they’re a good, fresh spin on the concept. There’s a marvelously creepy blankness to Peter Ferdinando’s Half-Faced Man, all broken fairground menace.
There’s a sense in which this feels like a restatement for Doctor Who, a return to earlier principles, to the dark teatime shudder of the early Tom Baker era. The gaslit Victoriana helps, of course – hello, “The Talons Of Weng-Chiang” – but there’s a newfound edge to the threat, a blood and thunder sincerity powering this ripping yarn. It dials down the glib, as Steven Moffat promised. It’s especially startling to see the Half-Faced Man threaten Clara with a blowtorch hand. Elsewhere Wheatley lingers on the gruesome, focusing on a corpse’s slimy eyeball as if baiting the vigilant ghost of Mary Whitehouse.
Above all Peter Capaldi’s first episode fights tirelessly to convince a 21st century audience that a craggy fiftysomething with the look of a Presbyterian minister is as much the Doctor as the cheeky, telegenic boys that preceded him. Matt Smith’s debut in “The Eleventh Hour” was an A-bomb of charm exploding in your general direction; this one’s more of a stealth campaign, acknowledging modern expectations of who the Doctor should be – as well as wider expectations of prime time Saturday night stardom – and quietly rewiring them. “Why’s it got lines on it?” asks Clara of the Time Lord’s new face, and even the Eleventh Doctor shudders at the prospect (“Tell me I didn’t get old, anything but old…”). The Matt Smith cameo is touching but ultimately unnecessary, a reassurance too far, perhaps: belt, braces and bow-tie.
So what are we to make of this new Doctor? It’s a compelling, surprising, wonderfully dangerous debut. Sure, there are familiar echoes – Capaldi fixes Strax with a loon stare worthy of Tom Baker and handles the post-regenerative comedy schtick superbly (“Who invented this room?”). But there are strange new flavours, too. A fire in that tightly coiled grasshopper body with its lean, expressive hands. “You’re out of your depth, son,” he tells a droid, with the simmer of a Glasgow hard man. Soon after he pours a glass and says “I have a horrible feeling I’m about to kill you. I thought you’d appreciate a drink first. I know I would.” It feels like Daniel Craig’s Bond at his darkest, or Edward Woodward’s turn as the melancholy assassin in Callan. This is a Doctor who can disturb us.
Most telling of all is the moment the Twelfth watches his enemy perish. Capaldi’s eyelids flicker then snap wide, startling but inscrutable. It’s then that you realise, with a jolt, that you have absolutely no idea what the Doctor is thinking. And that’s new and unnerving.
I missed the semi-traditional scene of the Doctor rummaging through the TARDIS dressing-up box, choosing an identity. But then this dark, dapper Doctor seems to know exactly who he is. Clearly it’s up to the rest of us to catch up.
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All eyes are on Capaldi, of course, but “Deep Breath” may just be Jenna Coleman’s finest moment in <em>Doctor Who</em>. It helps that Clara’s written as a stronger, truer character here – heroically calling her captor’s bluff while admitting that yes, she’s crying; holding her breath as she walks past the waiting droids; dealing with the Doctor’s change of face – and Coleman leaps on this meatier characterisation to make Clara feel brave and real. She also proves to have a great comic chemistry with Capaldi. Just watch them in the restaurant scene, trading barbs and exasperation, perfectly in synch with the funny. There are times, too, when she seems to be the utter reincarnation of Sarah Jane Smith.
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“Where did he get that face?” While other Doctor debuts have launched their rebooted heroes with a minimum of awkward questions, “Deep Breath” frets over the finer details of the regeneration process. “I never know where the faces come from,” the Doctor tells us, rather spoiling the fan theory that the Fifth Doctor opted for Colin Baker’s physog after seeing Commander Maxil modelling it in “Arc Of Infinity” (Romana, of course, had absolute mastery over the process in “Destiny Of The Daleks”, rummaging through new bodies like a crazed fashion spree in the DNA department of Primark). It also addresses how some of the Doctor’s earlier faces had a tendency to arrive pre-loved: “It’s covered in lines, but I didn’t do the frowning…” We’ve now seen Peter Capaldi play three distinctly different characters in the Whoniverse. Clearly this is a mystery being seeded.
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The new title sequence is inspired by a proof-of-concept created by Billy Hanshaw and uploaded to YouTube last year. It retains the clock motif – fitting that it’s introduced in a story about a clockwork menace – but adds significantly more attack eyebrows.
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The tramp is played by Brian Miller, the widower of Elisabeth Sladen. He’s been in <em>Doctor Who</em> before – he was Dugdale in 1983’s “Snakedance” and voiced a Dalek in 1988’s “Remembrance Of The Daleks”.
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“The game is afoot,” declares Vastra, quoting Sherlock Holmes – or possibly inspiring him, if the events of “The Snowmen” are to be believed – but that’s not the only nod to Baker Street’s finest smuggled into this episode. “Deep Breath” also homages two of Conan Doyle’s intriguing hints at untold adventures in the Holmes canon: the Camberwell poisoning case (mentioned in “The Adventure Of The Five Orange Pips”) and the Conk-Singleton forgery case (from “The Adventure Of The Five Orange Pips”). The Paternoster Irregulars, meanwhile, are clearly a close relation of the Baker Street Irregulars, Holmes’ army of inquisitive street scruffs.
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“You’ve redcorated… I don’t like it,” says Clara, riffing on a line made famous by Patrick Troughton in “The Three Doctors” and “The Five Doctors” and resurrected by David Tennant in “The Day Of The Doctor”. Personally I do like the bibliophile makeover for the console room – you can always judge a man by the state of his shelves.
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Yet another piece of self-referentiality from the Moffat keyboard: Vastra says “Well, here we go again,” the very words used by the Brigadier as Jon Pertwee swapped mighty conks with Tom Baker in “Planet Of The Spiders”.
Doctor Who is on Saturdays on BBC One.
Steven Moffat
Ben Wheatley
Theres an unhappy tyrannosaurus in Victorian London, an old enemy with a fetish for body parts and something exceedingly nasty on the menu. And as for the Doctor
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