The Bells of Saint John (TV story)

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The Bells of Saint John was the sixth regular episode of the seventh series of Doctor Who produced by BBC Wales. It introduced a new companion to the show, although she had, in different forms, previously appeared in both TV: Asylum of the Daleks and The Snowmen.

Synopsis

London, 2013. "Danger. This is a warning. A warning to the whole world. You're looking for Wi-Fi. Sometimes you see something, a bit like this. Don't click it. Do not click it. Once you've clicked it, they're in your computer. They can see you. If they can see you, they might choose you. And if they do... you die."

When Clara Oswald has problems with her Internet, she's given a telephone number: the number of "the best help line in the universe." When the Eleventh Doctor answers at the other end, Clara is pulled into a life of adventure and mystery. But danger is lurking in the signals, picking off minds and imprisoning them. "It's like immortality, only fatal." But can the Doctor save Clara before she also is saying, "I don't know where I am."

Plot

Nabile warns anyone listening about the dangers of the Wi-Fi. He shows a placard with some odd symbols, and warns not to connect to any networks with writing like this. If you do, you'll get chosen. And people who get chosen die within 24 hours. At least temporarily — their souls live on, trapped. Sometimes you can hear their cries, "I don't know where I am," on the radio, on the telly, or on the net. Nabile says that he knows this because, "I don't know where I am." He's trapped in a screen, surrounded by a wall of other victims who are all calling out in fear and confusion, "I don't know where I am."

In Cumbria, 1207, a monk named Paul pounds on a set of impressive doors, calling to wake the Abbot, as the bells of Saint John are ringing. As the head into a cave, Paul asks The Abbot if they call him the Mad Monk. The Abbot informs him that he is no monk. They give their message to the Eleventh Doctor, who asks for a horse. As he goes to prepare, the monks discuss the painting in his room of the Woman Twice Dead, and her last message, "RUN, YOU CLEVER BOY, AND REMEMBER". The Abbot observes that if the Doctor is mad, that is his madness.

Meanwhile, in London 2013, it is 3:30pm and Clara Oswald is having trouble with connecting her computer to the internet. She tells Angie that she's been ringing the help line but they don't answer. George comes through on his way out, saying that the adverts to replace Clara are in. Clara catches sight of the book that Artie has, Summer Falls, by Amelia Williams. He tells her he's on chapter 10. She replies that "Eleven is the best. You'll cry your eyes out." They head out, and Clara chants "pick it up pick it up" as she goes upstairs to her computer and continues to try the help line.

Back in 1207, the Doctor and the monks arrive to find the TARDIS police box telephone (which is next to a St Johns Ambulance sticker), is ringing. A very confused Doctor picks up the phone, to be told that the caller can't find the Internet. The Doctor slowly realises that the caller is in modern-day London. Clara was given his number, and told that "it's the best helpline out there. In the universe, she said." The Doctor starts to explain he's not actually a help line, but gives up and asks if she's tried clicking on the Wi-Fi button. She first tries the Maitland_Family link, but needs the password from Angie, who gives her a mnemonic to remember it. She mutters the phrase aloud on the phone as she enters it. "Run you clever boy and remember." The Doctor recognises her voice and the phrase, and shouts, spoiling her concentration. She puts in the wrong password. She goes back to the screen this time choosing the open network with the strange symbols.

Other lines of symbols appear on her computer, and Clara's room appears in a wall of little screens showing people. Clara runs out of screen to answer her frantically ringing doorbell. The Doctor, still in his Monk's robes, greets her in excitement. "Clara Oswin Oswald?"

Revealing that Oswin's not part of her name, Clara states that she doesn't remember him. "Doctor who?" He asks her to repeat herself, twice, and tells her how much he enjoyed hearing that said out loud. Clara takes that moment to close the door on him, locking it. She pauses on the stairs as he continues to pound on the door.

The wall of little screens is in a dark room full of computers and people, where an analyst approaches his superior. Alexei calls Clara borderline, meaning she's "very clever, but no computer skills." Miss Kizlet tells him to 'upload' her anyway, and 'splice' her a computer skills package. He responds that he'll activate the Spoonheads, which Kizlet complained were called 'servants'. As she returns to her office, Kizlet discusses him with Mahler, then decides that they should probably kill him, but only after he gets back from holiday — "let's not be unreasonable."

Mahler is worried that they're uploading too many people, too quickly, that they'll get noticed. She tries to comfort him, calling this "immortality, only fatal." She then picks up a tablet which shows his name and picture, and sliders marked conscience, paranoia, obedience and IQ. She lowers the conscience slider, and he backs down. She raises the paranoia slider, and he asks if she's hacked him. She coolly asks, "Because you changed your mind?" and lowers the paranoia until he's walked out of the office.

Back with Clara, the Doctor begs to be let in. Clara continues ignoring it. But, then, suddenly, footsteps can be heard upstairs. Angie? No response. A little girl walks down the stairs. Clara asks if she's a friend of Angie's, and the girl repeats just that. When asked what she was doing upstairs, the girl replies that she was upstairs. Clara thinks she recognises her — and the girl repeats, "You know me, don't you?"

Clara realises that the girl is from the cover of Summer Falls, the book that Artie had. The girl's head turns — all the way around, 180 degrees — revealing a spoon-like indentation in the back of her head. Clara backs away, scared.

In the TARDIS, the Doctor decides that a change of clothes is in order, since "Monks are not cool." He tries on a fez, then drops a tweed jacket, in favour of a new one. With new clothes on, the Doctor opens up a compartment below the control room, and takes out a box with a bow tie in it.

He walks out of the TARDIS, excited to make a better impression. He asks her to let him in through the intercom, and she responds with, "I don't know where I am", clearly upset as she continues. Using his sonic screwdriver, the Doctor enters the house, and finds Clara lying on the floor, unconscious. She's not moving but he can still hear her cries. Looking up, he realises that her voice is coming from the Spoonhead, which still looks like the little girl. Clara's face can now be seen in the indentation. He uses his screwdriver on the little girl and it reveals the true form of the Spoonhead, a walking robotic 'base station'. The upload halts and the Doctor thinks aloud that it is "hoovering up data. Hoovering up people." It used a camouflage based on its victim's thoughts. He quickly scans with the screwdriver, and finds Clara's laptop upstairs. He grabs it and brings it back downstairs. He begins to reverse the upload, typing rapidly.

At the secret base, Alexei is working on Clara's acquisition when an alarm goes off. He, Mahler, and Ms Kizlet find that the download metre for Clara has halted and is going down rapidly. They marvel and Mahler reveals that such a reverse is possible, in theory. Alexei is typing rapidly, apparently attempting to block the reversal, but the Doctor prevails and the bar goes all the way down to zero. A pause, and then the Spoonhead transmits a pillar of light that returns to Clara. The Doctor checks her pulse.

At Kizlet's office, they find that their hacker has left a message: "UNDER MY PROTECTION - The Doctor." She shoos Mahler out, to contact her client. "Sir. The one you told me about. He's here. The Doctor is here."

In Clara's room, the Doctor is tidying up. He takes out Jammie Dodgers, half-eating one and leaving it on the plate. He then leaves the room. Waking up from her sleep, she pokes out the window, and the Doctor, outside guarding her, recounts everything that she'd missed. Clara reveals that she is a friend of the family who live in the house, and she looks after the children - a "governess", as the previous version of Clara that the Doctor met had been.

They realise that Clara has gained greater knowledge of computers as a result of being partially uploaded. The duo spot another Spoonhead, sent to re-upload Clara, before all the lights in the neighbourhood switch on, the residents being compelled to do so via the Wi-Fi. The lights in the rest of London go off, and the Doctor and Clara sight an aeroplane that is plummeting towards them. They travel aboard the plane in the TARDIS, and the Doctor manages to pull the plane out of its dive and revive the crew and passengers, who had been rendered unconscious via the Wi-Fi.

The Doctor and Clara travel forward to the next morning, and travel on a motorbike to a local café, where Clara uses her laptop to hack into the unknown organisation's webcams. She then searches for the staff on social network sites, where they have all detailed their work location — the Shard. In the café, the Doctor talks to several people who are being controlled remotely by Kizlet while Clara is re-uploaded by a Spoonhead replica of the Doctor. Upon realising what occured, the Doctor sets off for the Shard on his motorbike and uses its anti-gravity setting to scale the building and crashes into Kizlet's office. He tells her to download Clara from the cloud. Kizlet states this is only possible if everyone else in the cloud is downloaded too. He says he knows, and tells her to download everyone. She refuses, and the Doctor states that he intends to motivate her. As his head spins around, Kizlet realises that this is not the Doctor, but a Spoonhead.

It is then revealed that the real Doctor is still at the café and has reprogrammed the Spoonhead. The Spoonhead uploads Kizlet. Experiencing the fear that her prior victims felt, she then from a TV screen orders her subordinates to download everyone. They initially do not, but the Doctor has the Spoonhead hack into one of her subordinates to make him susceptible to her instructions. They download everybody from the cloud. Later, as UNIT troops begin to take over the base, Kizlet reports a failure to the organisation's leader, revealed to be the Great Intelligence. He identifies UNIT as "old friends" of the Doctor, and orders her to restore the members of the organisation to their "factory settings". As a result, all the organisation members' memories after being inducted are wiped, with Miss Kizlet revealed to have been aiding the Great Intelligence for most of her life, as she now has the mentality of a scared child. Clara and the Doctor then talk inside the TARDIS, where the Doctor invites her to travel with him. She declines, but tells him to come back the next day to ask her again.

Cast

Crew

General production staff

Script department

Camera and lighting department

Art department

Costume department

Make-up and prosthetics

Movement

Casting

General post-production staff

Special and visual effects

Sound



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

Buildings

Communication technology

TARDIS

Time Lords

Vehicles

Other

  • George, Artie, and Angie's household Wi-Fi network is named "Maitland_Family".
  • Clara has skipped ages 16 and 23 in the list of ages on the inside cover of her book. She also mistypes the password for the Maitland_Family Wi-Fi, swapping RYCBAR123 for RYCBAR124.
  • When Clara is sucked into to Wi-Fi, she asks "Where am I?" - the exact same question Oswin Oswald asks in TV: Asylum of the Daleks when she realizes she is a Dalek.

Story notes

  • This story takes a lot of the directing tropes of the BBC television series Sherlock, a show written and created by Doctor Who show runner Steven Moffat and writer Mark Gatiss, with two episodes at the time of broadcast written by Steve Thompson. A prime example of this is formulas and words appearing on-screen.
  • The title of this episode is a reference to the phone incorporated into the TARDIS police box disguise, and to the "St. John Ambulance" logo on the door of this version of the TARDIS. The "Bells" part is referring to the police box phone ringing.
File:Bells Saint John Logo.png
The unique Doctor Who logo for The Bells of Saint John.
  • As with all of the Series 7 episodes, this episode has individually stylized opening credits: the Doctor Who logo sports a weathered metallic texture, much like that of an old spoon, alluding to the Spoonheads of this story.
  • To keep the reappearance of the Great Intelligence a surprise, Richard E. Grant was not credited in Radio Times.

Ratings

to be added

Filming locations

  • The Shard
  • Westminister Bridge

Production errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.
  • Before the motorcycle scene, the TARDIS's doors are open when the Doctor comes forward but then, when he starts riding, they are shown closed and apparently he did not remotely control them.
  • During the motorcycle scene, a crew member and camera can be seen reflected in the Doctor's helmet.
  • During the same scene, Clara's hands go back and forth between the Doctor's belly and his shoulder on each cut, sometimes in the middle of a line.
  • When Clara is entering the the Doctor's TARDIS, her mug shakes several times, which would cause it to spill, yet it doesn't. Later, on the Aeroplane, she starts to take a sip but is pulled away by the Doctor, and it still doesn't spill. However, when she returns to the TARDIS, she takes a sip, proving once and for all that it wasn't empty and that it should have spilled several times.
  • When the Doctor and Clara are talking after she wakes up, he sets the laptop on the ground and the monitor is upright, however, after the camera switches back to him from Clara, the screen is bent back.
  • While in the aeroplane, you can't see the city below through the open windows.
  • When the TARDIS has travelled to the aeroplane, just before the Doctor gets out, a scene change is visible and the wall position changes.

Continuity

Home video releases

to be added

External links

to be added

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