The Caretaker (TV story)
The Caretaker was the sixth episode of the eighth series of Doctor Who produced by BBC Wales. It had the Twelfth Doctor and Clara Oswald deal with an alien threat to Coal Hill School, leading to both Danny Pink and Courtney meeting the Doctor and subsequently discovering his true nature.
It also contributed to the "Promised Land" arc by introducing an underling of Missy, giving her location a new name, the Nethersphere.
Building on the experience of writing The Lodger and Closing Time, Gareth Roberts and Steven Moffat tried to match the former for threat, feeling there was an excessive amount in Closing Time, which had included back-story for the antagonists at the expense of other themes. For this reason, it was decided that the first draft had the right amount of threat and that it would be unnecessary to add more later. (DWM 478)
Synopsis
The Doctor's decision to use Clara's school at the centre of a trap results in revelations in her personal life. Meanwhile, a Skovox Blitzer, powerful enough to destroy the planet, is loose in the corridors...
Plot
The episode begins with a montage of Clara balancing adventures in the TARDIS and her relationship with Danny. After an adventure on a desert planet, Danny notices she’s developed a tan since he last saw her, while an encounter with fish people leaves seaweed in her hair during a date. These two lives collide when the Doctor starts working at Coal Hill School as caretaker John Smith.
Meanwhile, SCO Matthew investigates a mysterious noise coming from a rundown building, caused by the Skovox Blitzer, which disintegrates him on sight.
When working on a substation, Danny and the Doctor conflict over what Danny teaches. Danny claims to have been a soldier who now teaches maths, while the Doctor instead thinks he teaches PE, as this would make more sense due to him being a soldier. But the Doctor doesn’t realise Danny is Clara’s boyfriend, instead thinking this is Adrian, who resembles his previous incarnation. The students are aware of their relationship, evidenced by graffiti mocking it.
Later, the Doctor is working in the caretaker’s room, when student Courtney Woods finds him and the TARDIS. She too conflicts with the Doctor, and on her way out makes a remark to Clara about Danny. Here, the Doctor shows Clara a hologram of the Skovox Blitzer. Knowing it will eventually attack to destroy Earth, he aims to send it away from the planet.
One of the tools he’ll use to do this is by using an invisibility watch to prevent the Blitzer scanning him as he uses non-threatening alien technology, chronodyne generators, to alert it, lead it to him and send it billions of years into the future through a vortex.
After leaving the TARDIS, Clara and Danny make plans for after parents’ evening in a few days, while the Doctor follows the Blitzer’s signal. He and it meet in the hall, where the generators have been turned from green to red at Danny’s interference. While the Blitzer is sent through a vortex into the future, Danny’s intervention means this is only three days. After the chaos, Danny realises Clara’s lived a lie to him. She tells him the truth: she’s Human, but the Doctor’s an alien. They travel through time and space in a TARDIS, which is disguised as a police box, but is bigger on the inside. The Doctor shows Danny the inside of the TARDIS, and Clara takes him home to deal with the shock.
Danny recaps what Clara’s told him: the Doctor used to resemble Adrian, but now is a Scottish caretaker who travels with Clara in-between her relationship, though Danny struggles to accept whether Clara loves the Doctor romantically.
Parents’ evening arrives, and Clara gives Danny the invisibility watch, then meets the Doctor in the TARDIS, who’s nearly finished building a weapon to fight the Blitzer. Danny uses the watch to hide in the TARDIS during their conversation, discovering the Doctor’s a Time Lord. Seeing him as aristocracy, he responds to the Doctor’s demand to leave the TARDIS like a soldier taking an order, which brings out the militant side of the Doctor. Courtney sees Clara and Danny leave and asks the Doctor what’s really in the police box, which he shows her.
As the parents arrive, the Blitzer unexpectedly returns from the vortex one day early, as detected by the Doctor’s weapon. The Doctor summons Clara and Danny through the door, prompting them both to leave - and Courtney’s parents to suspect she was right about their relationship. They prepare their plan: Clara attracts the Blitzer with the sonic screwdriver, and it chases her to the caretaker’s room, where the Doctor speaks to it through the weapon he’s built: a communication device that makes the Blitzer think the Doctor is its superior. After instructing it to deactivate, he realises he’s forgotten the final order, but he is assisted by Danny, who jumps over it as it fires its lasers at him. Together, they stop the Blitzer and Danny reveals to Clara he was following her with the watch and vows to protect her to prove he’s worthy of Clara, believing the Doctor to be suspicious of his intentions with her.
The Doctor takes the Blitzer into space and ejects it from the TARDIS, taking Courtney on her first trip. Unfortunately, Courtney is unable to cope with the immensity of the universe and finds herself feeling rather ill — whereupon she rushes back inside and is sick. Clara and Danny think things over, and Danny reveals the Doctor reminds him of his previous commanders, who push their soldiers too far. Clara obeyed the Doctor without being scared, and insists Clara tell him if he ever pushes her too far, and to tell him the whole truth to allow him to protect her.
CSO Matthew appears in a long white office corridor with many doors on either side of the hallway. He doesn't realise that he has been killed, and is talking to a person named Seb at an information desk. Seb tries to break the news gently, having encountered many new patrons to the afterlife because of the Skovox Blitzers. Matthew is welcomed to the place Missy once called a Promised Land, which is a realm for the departed that goes by many different names. Seb calls it by the one he is most familiar with — "the Nethersphere", before noticing Missy passing through the corridor, who gives him a stone-faced glance. He tells Matthew that Missy is quite busy at the moment before asking him if he has any questions about his new existence in the Nethersphere.
Cast
- The Doctor - Peter Capaldi
- Clara - Jenna Coleman
- Danny - Samuel Anderson
- Courtney Woods - Ellis George
- Mr Armitage - Nigel Betts
- Adrian - Edward Harrison
- CSO Matthew - Andy Gillies
- Noah - Nanya Campbell
- Yashe - Joshua Warner-Campbell
- Kelvin - Oliver Barry-Brook
- Tobias - Ramone Morgan
- Mr Woods - Winston Ellis
- Mrs Woods - Gracy Goldman
- Mrs Christopholou - Diana Katis
- Skovox Blitzer - Jimmy Vee
- Seb - Chris Addison
Uncredited
Crew
| Executive Producers Steven Moffat and Brian Minchin |
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| Not every person who worked on this adventure was credited. The absence of a credit for a position doesn't necessarily mean the job wasn't required. The information above is based solely on observations of the actual end credits of the episodes as broadcast, and does not relay information from IMDB or other sources. |
References
Individuals
- The Doctor spent a month living among otters after he and River Song had a fight that caused him to sulk.
- He likes the school subject maths, but doesn't respect PE.
- Clara wonders if the Doctor's previous companions allowed him to do whatever he wanted.
- After correcting Clara on when Pride and Prejudice was written, she assumes the Doctor is going to "name drop" about meeting Jane Austen. The Doctor says he knows the year because he read her bio at the back of a copy of the book.
Cultural references from the real world
- The Doctor whistles the introduction to Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2) by Pink Floyd.
- Clara is doing a lesson about Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. She and the Doctor argue over whether it was written in 1796 or 1797. In the real world, Austen started writing it in 1796 and finished in 1797.
- Adrian refers to The Tempest not being finished. It was written by William Shakespeare, who appeared in TV: The Shakespeare Code, also written by Roberts.
Technology
- The Doctor asks Clara for his vibro-cutters.
- The Doctor (and later Danny) uses an invisibility watch.
- The Doctor uses chronodyne generators to project the Skovox Blitzer into the future.
Story notes
- Missy reappears after a three-episode absence. Her episodes of absence were previously Robot of Sherwood, Listen, and Time Heist.
- With this episode, Series 8 now has exactly half its episodes split between capitalisation and non-capitalisation. This episode capitalises its title, as do TV: Time Heist and TV: Robot of Sherwood, while TV: Listen, TV: Into the Dalek and TV: Deep Breath don't.
Ratings
to be added
Filming locations
Stryd Bute, Cardiff
Lloyd George Ave., Cardiff
The Maltings, E Tyndall St.
St Illtyd's Catholic High School, Newport Rd.
Holton Primary School, Barry
Production errors
- When The Doctor meets Courtney Woods in the Caretaker's shed, he hands the package of paper towels to her, but they reappear in his hand, and she walks off empty-handed.
- When Courtney looks into the TARDIS, the Doctor's work bench, which he was sitting at just a few minutes ago, is no longer in the room. It returns later on.
- When Clara leads Danny down the stairs and away from the TARDIS she is standing behind him and to his right in the closeup shot, but in the wide shot she is behind him to his left.
Continuity
- The Doctor previously went undercover in a school while in his tenth incarnation. (TV: School Reunion)
- Clara mentions Danny's future descendant, Orson Pink, to the Doctor. (TV: Listen)
- The Twelfth Doctor continues to be uncomfortable with the military and soldiers (TV: Into the Dalek), as he has in prior incarnations as well. (TV: Doctor Who and the Silurians , The Poison Sky, etc)
- The Doctor invites Clara to meet fish people. He previously met fish people in his second incarnation. (TV: The Underwater Menace)
- After being killed by the Skovox Blitzer, CSO Matthew arrives in the Promised Land. (TV: Deep Breath, Into the Dalek, Robot of Sherwood)
- The Doctor says many times that a soldier can't be a maths teacher. The Brigadier became a maths teacher after retiring from the military, much to the Fifth Doctor's surprise. (TV: Mawdryn Undead)
- The Doctor tells Clara that he had a teacher like her once, possibly referring to another Coal Hill School teacher such as Barbara Wright (TV: An Unearthly Child, etc.), or possibly to one of his teachers at the Academy, such as Borusa. (TV: The Deadly Assassin, etc.)
- The Seventh Doctor was previously asked if he was applying for the position of Coal Hill School's caretaker, in 1963. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
- The Doctor asks, "Have I impressed you yet, Courtney?" The Eleventh Doctor previously asked the same thing to Amy Pond. (TV: The Time of Angels)
- The Doctor and Clara open and close the TARDIS doors by snapping their fingers. (TV: Forest of the Dead, The Eleventh Hour, Day of the Moon, The Day of the Doctor)
- Upon entering the junkyard, The Doctor says "Home, Sweet Home." His first incarnation parked the TARDIS in a junkyard near Coal Hill. (TV: An Unearthly Child)
- The Doctor mentions Clara eating two meals. She recently ate Chinese with Psi and Saibra before a dinner date with Danny. (TV: Time Heist)
- It has apparently been at least a year in "real" time since the Doctor's regeneration, as Courtney's mother mentioned that she talked to Danny last year about her daughter. Danny had started working at Coal Hill School shortly after the Doctor regenerated. (TV: Into the Dalek)
- The Doctor pretends to be a caretaker. The Eleventh Doctor previously pretended to be a caretaker to make Madge Arwell and her children's Christmas special and in fact had Madge and her children call him "the Caretaker" instead of "the Doctor". (TV: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe)
- Artron emissions appear to have attracted the Skovox Blitzer to the area nearby to Coal Hill School, the Doctor commenting that there have been a lot of them over the years. (TV: An Unearthly Child, Attack of the Cybermen, Remembrance of the Daleks; Into the Dalek onwards)
- The same "Break the Silence" poster about school bullying that appeared outside the headmaster's office in Leadworth also appears in the teachers' room at Coal Hill. (TV: Let's Kill Hitler)
- Adrian bears a resemblance to the Doctor's previous incarnation, as commented on by both him and Clara. (TV: The Bells of Saint John, etc.)
- The Doctor purposely calls Danny "PE" in derogatory fashion due to an acquired dislike towards him. The Ninth Doctor previously called Mickey Smith "Mickey the Idiot" and "Ricky" to annoy him, also the then-boyfriend of his female companion at the time, Rose Tyler. (TV: Aliens of London)
Home video releases
DVD releases
Blu-ray releases
to be added
External links
to be added
