 The director for this story is Andrew Gunn. This is his first Director credit on Doctor Who. Andrew Gunn’s previous directing credits include episodes of ITV‘s long-running police drama The Bill in 2006, two episodes of BBC One’s Life on Mars in 2007, two episodes of ITV’s Primeval in 2008 and two episodes of BBC One’s Survivors in 2008.
The cast include Terrence Hardiman (The Demon Headmaster) as Hawthorne, Alfie Field (Claude) as Timmy, Christopher Good (The Famous Five) as Morgan, David Ajala (Dream Team) as Peter, and Jonathan Battersby (Taggart) as the sinister Smilers.
Amy spends the whole of this story in her nightie. This parallels the Tenth Doctor's spending most of his first story ("The Christmas Invasion") in his pyjamas. Steven Moffatt likened the character of Amy to that of Wendy in Peter Pan - as a girl who refused to grow up and went off in a spaceship before her wedding.
This is not the first time The Doctor has taken a new companion, for their first trip in the TARDIS, to the distant future. The Ninth Doctor took Rose to a similar time period in the 2005 story "The End of the World".
The Doctor is heard telling Amy about some of the events that happened in "The End of Time" – namely how he is coping with the fact that he is the last of the Time Lords since all the others were taken back to the day Gallifrey was destroyed - much like he did with Rose, Martha, and Donna shortly after they joined him.
Mandy is a little girl in a red cardigan, just as Amelia was a little girl in a red cardigan in the previous story "The Eleventh Hour".
The Doctor and Amy's exchange ‘You look human/You look Time Lord’ mirrors a similar conversation between his previous incarnation and Lady Christina de Souza in "Planet of the Dead".
Look out for the scene with the workman's tent investigated by Amy. It is situated in front of a shop called ‘Magpie Electricals’. This shop was first featured in the 2006 Tenth Doctor story "The Idiot's Lantern".
The Doctor's mention of colony ships and solar flares refers the advent of the Earth being rendered uninhabitable by solar flares not long before the 30th century in the 1975 Fourth Doctor stories "The Ark in Space" and "The Sontaran Experiment".
STARSHIP UK consist of a number of skyscrapers some of which bear the names of the counties of England such as ‘Devon’, 'Essex', ‘Kent’, ‘Surrey’ and ‘Yorkshire’. Reference is also made to ‘London’ and the London Undeground symbol is seen on the lifts – which include ‘Mind the Doors’ warning notices (instead of the usual ‘Mind the Gap’ used in the real underground).
Liz 10, the Queen of STARSHIP UK, is heard to mention The Doctor's previous encounters with members of the royal family in his travels. She mentions Queen Victoria who knighted then exiled The Doctor in "Tooth and Claw" and his relationship with the ‘Virgin Queen’ ("The End of Time"), as well as Henry XVII and Liz 2. His relationship with the "Virgin Queen" led into the ending of "The Shakespeare Code". Additionally we saw Queen Elizabeth I in the First Doctor adventure "The Chase" and the Seventh Doctor spots Queen Elizabeth II in "Silver Nemesis".
The logos for STARSHIP UK are based on the appearance of BBC television logos from the early 1960s, including the same slanted black capital sans-serif lettering in white parallelogram-shaped boxes. A logo in front of a map of the United Kingdom within a circle is also shown, similar to that for BBC Television shown in the 1988 Seventh Doctor story "Remembrance of the Daleks".
The Star Whale's exposed brain being restrained by humans is similar to the Ood Brain in the Tenth Doctor story "Planet of the Ood". Just as in that story, the brain was released in the end, and the restrained creature was freed. Similarly, The Doctor allows the beast's screams to be heard, just as The Doctor allowed Donna to listen to the Ood Song.
Nobody is killed in this story, as with previous Steven Moffat stories (which only feature deaths from natural causes on screen and sometimes have nobody die at all), this is unusual for the show.
Including the flashback sequence in the previous story, this is the first story not to show the Tenth Doctor since the 2005 Ninth Doctor story "Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways".
This story leads directly into the next story, "Victory of the Daleks" - with the appearance Winston Churchill, who calls The Doctor, and the shadow of a Dalek is seen on the office wall.
The role of Winston Churchill is played by Ian McNeice. One of his biggest film roles came was the 1994 comedy, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. This film also co-starred Sophie Okonedo, who plays Liz 10 in this story, and Simon Callow, who portrayed Charles Dickens in the 2005 Ninth Doctor story "The Unquiet Dead".
The crack, previously seen on Amelia's wall and the TARDIS' monitor in "The Eleventh Hour" is seen again at the very end of this story on the side of STARSHIP UK. So continuing the theme of cracks appearing throughout the universe.
This is the first average length Doctor Who episode since the first episode of the 2008 Tenth Doctor story "The Stolen Earth/Journey's End". All stories shown since then have all been specials or have had episodes extended beyond the average 45 minutes.
Following on immediately after this story, on BBC3, was the second chapter of the fifth series of Doctor Who Confidential. Titled "All About the Girl" which looked into the making of this story and the introduction of new companion Amy Pond. It was presented by Alex Price.
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The Firsts:
Amy Pond's first trip in the TARDIS and her first trip to the future.
The first average length Doctor Who episode since the first episode of the 2008 Tenth Doctor story "The Stolen Earth/Journey's End".
The first story not to show the Tenth Doctor since the 2005 Ninth Doctor story "Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways".
The first Doctor Who story to be produced by Peter Bennett.
The first Doctor Who story to be directed by Andrew Gunn.
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(Position = 9 out of 10)
(Position = 186 out of 241)
