Live from Master Closet Studios, you’re listening to the only podcast on the internet that’s been recording non-stop for one million years: it’s the Noobs and the Whovian!
Welcome to Episode 102 covering the Series 7 episode 7: The Rings of Akhaten.
This is the one where the Doctor and Clara save a little girl from being eaten by a zombie by feeding a leaf to a star.
Production notes
- Story # 233
- Originally aired April 6, 2013 to 5.5 million live viewers, with a time-shifted count of 7.45 million, with an additional 2 million views on iPlayer throughout the month of April.
- Written by: Neil Cross
- Directed by: Farren Blackburn
- Did The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe
Misc Trivia
- This is the second episode in a row where the Doctor and Clara rode a moped/bike of some kind
Cast
- Dave Oswald – Michael Dixon
- Party Goer in the 2011 TV movie, Mega Python vs. Gatoroid
- Grandfather/the Mummy – Aidan Cook
- He’s a new guy-in-the-suit on Doctor Who
- Plays a Cyberman, a Zygon, and some other monsters coming up
Checklist
- Name of the episode spoken in dialogue?
- yep!
- Creature of the week
- Dor’een the barking moped saleswoman
- The Vigil – the spookiest voice on Who since Chloe Webber
- The random alien that we had to pause and debate whether it was a Hath or not. It’s not.
- Grandfather/mummy/Grandfather’s alarm clock
- Old god/Grandfather
- CGI
- Grandfather (the star) was pretty good!
- Sometimes the space moped was great, sometimes it was… not
- Amy’s reading glasses
- Check!
- Time War
- We got a straight up, old-fashioned reference to the Time War!
- Geronimo
- Running count – 11
- Jiggery Pokery
- Sonic
- A frequency-modulated acoustic lock. The key changes 10 million zillion squillion times a second. Can you open it? Technically no, but in reality, also no.
- TARDIS
- Why didn’t the TARDIS translate Dor’een’s barking?
- Sonic
- Termy-wermy
- Clara: Space-shippy thing. Timey. Spacey.
- Jammie Dodger sighting
- Running count – 4
Other stuff we noticed
- Time is NOT made of strawberries, that would be unacceptable.
- It’s… Yes, it so incredibly is!
- Psychometry, using something imprinted with psychic energy as currency
- This reminded me of Nine saying “I give you air from my lungs.”
- The soul’s made of stories, not atoms. Everything that ever happened to us. People we loved, people we lost, people we found again against all the odds.
- Forming shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings!
- That stupid leaf
Who’s Who?
- Who is Clara Oswald?
- That girl’s not possible!
- Can you pretend I’m a total space alien?
- She saved her first world.
- Looks different… Nope, same house, same city, same year.
- She’s different, not her home.
- Who is The Doctor?
- He came to Akhaten with Susan!
- There is one thing you need to know about traveling with me. Well, one thing apart from the blue box and two hearts thing. We never walk away.
- I thought there was gonna be a fight here where the Doctor says “I don’t interfere” or something.
- We don’t walk away, but when we’re holding something precious, we run. We run and run until we’re out from under the shadow.
Classic Who Connection
- The Doctor mentions visiting Akhaten with his granddaughter. That would be Susan Foreman from clear back to the First Doctor in Season one.
- The Doctor mentions, among other things, having seen the creation of the universe, creations burn, having been in universes where the laws of physics are manipulated or created by an insane person and knowing things that must never be said
- In Castrovalva with the Fifth Doctor, Adric is forced to set the TARDIS on a course for the creation of the universe. Que the cloister bell
- In Inferno the Third Doctor sees humans drilling deep into the earth to tap into a new energy source. What they find instead is a green goo that transforms people into primeval beings that crave heat and fire. In a parallel world version of this same scenario he sees the primeval beings winning.
- There are too many stories where the laws of physics are manipulated by a mad man in Classic Who, but let’s just say that most of those times can be chalked up to the workings of the Master.
- In the serial Silver Nemesis with Ace and the Seventh Doctor it is the first time that the show suggests that knowing the Doctor’s real identity and secrets could be dangerous and that there is much more to his past than he has ever shared.
Overall impressions
- Overall rating out of 10 –
- Jared – 8.5 delicious memories
- Austin – 9.5 perfect zombie teeth
- Corbin – 8.5 useless leaves
- Tripp – 10 creepy gods
- Creep Level – out of 500
- Jared – 200
- Austin – 275
- Corbin – 175
- Tripp – 195
Theories
- Tripp has nothin.
- Corbin says Clara is a ghost
Listener Input
- Thomas emailed in
- Hi guys. I just wanted to say Congrats! on 100 episodes. I started listening in 2018 or 2019 and I started from the very beginning with Rose. Your podcast is a highlight of my week, it’s brilliant, you’re all brilliant and I love it. Here’s to another 200 and beyond! Sincerely, Thomas
- We got a gift from a listener and we’ll be posting a video shortly about it. You may have already seen it before this airs. If not, check out our facebook page.
The Game Plan
- Next week, we continue with Series 7 with episode 8: Cold War.
- After episode 9, we’ll do our next Timey Wimey: Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.
- Hopefully, our plans don’t get derailed. Bill & Ted Face the Music is slated to come out on August 21, so hopefully either the theaters are back open then, or they release it to streaming like so many other movies this year have had to do.
Closing
Noobs and the Whovian is a production of Master Closet Studios, where it’s always smaller on the inside. Your Senior Producer is Austin Reason. Our Audio Engineer is Tripp Reason. Corbin Reason is our Production Editor. Special thanks to tardis.wikia.com for the trivia, and to Jared for the Classic Who Connection. Shout outs to Victor, Jared, and James for their Patreon support.
You can find us at facebook.com/noobsandthewhovian or twitter.com/noobswhovian and email us at [email protected]. Consider supporting us at https://www.patreon.com/noobsandthewhovian. Please subscribe and leave a rating wherever you found us, and share us with a friend not because we’re a great show but because we watch one.
