In a nutshell:
Long before the Time War, the Time Lords knew it was coming. Like a storm on the wind. There were many prophecies and stories. Legends before the fact. One of them was about a creature called the Hybrid: half Dalek, half Time Lord. The ultimate warrior. But whose side would it be on? Would it bring peace, or destruction? Was it real, or a fantasy?
“I confess: I know the Hybrid is real,” the Doctor proclaims. “I know where it is, and what it is. I confess: I am afraid.”
Quote Unquote:
CLARA: “Is it a sad song?”
THE DOCTOR: “Nothing’s sad till it’s over. Then everything is.”
CLARA: “What’s it called?”
THE DOCTOR: “I think it’s called Clara.”
Other bits:
- The two episodes are very different. Episode 11 is essentially one 45-minute monologue with the Doctor
- Moffat wondered “How do you break the Doctor” Would he still be a hero without witness and reward? “It’s putting the Doctor alone in hell”
- There’s a scene where the Doctor imagines a TARDIS in his head and tries to explain what’s really going on
- 11 was meant to be a money saving episode but it didn’t quite work that way. It takes place in a “rotating mechanical castle full of visual effects”
- Capaldi says there’s a “sadness, a romance, and tragedy” to episode 12
- Episode 12 begins “very much like a Western”
- Ohila and the Sisterhood of Karn are back, Moffat sees Ohila as the Doctor’s mother figure
- Director Rachel Talalay says Moffat has layered in a lot of things throughout the series which you never thought were important – “You have no clue what the series arc is, or how Clara leaves”
- The finale is the fallout of Clara sort of becoming the Doctor.
- Moffat thinks if the Doctor found Gallifrey he’d run away again. He thinks Clara is the same with Earth now. She has lost her “sense of home”
- DWM hints that Moffat may have changed something in the mythology, something Moffat was quite nervous about doing
- Episode 11 pushes the Doctor to the brink of madness, Ep 12 is what happens next “if the Doctor has lost his moral compass, if you got him really angry and gave him nothing to fight for – an angry, off the rails Doctor”