The Who Wars Podcast #006 (8 October, 2014)

00:00 The Who Wars Podcast Theme

00:30 Introduction to the show; Rob @WhoWars Lex @Lexerness and Kate @Kamiduu give their brief thoughts on going into Series 8 of Doctor Who before talking about each episode of the series individually.

02:25 Deep Breath - When a dinosaur materialises alongside the Houses of Parliament in Victorian London, the Doctor's old friends the Paternoster Gang are relieved when he arrives, seemingly to deal with the creature. However, they soon realise that the Doctor is the one in need of help; newly regenerated, extremely volatile and questioning his self-worth, this is a very different man from the one they last saw. The only person that may be able to help him is Clara, and she is still grappling with losing the Doctor she knew and loved. After the spontaneous combustion of the dinosaur, the Doctor takes on the case of whoever killed the time-travelling beast. The Doctor has an internal battle with himself, pondering where his new face came from. The Doctor and Clara are called to a restaurant, only to find out all the other customers are androids. After discovering the robots' hidden spaceship, and their long-term goal of reaching a "promised land", the Doctor confronts their leader, who falls to its death from an airship, though it is unclear whether he fell as part of a self-destruct mechanism or if the Doctor pushed him. Clara receives a phone call from the previous Doctor, and is convinced to join the Twelfth Doctor on his journeys. Meanwhile, the Half-Face Man awakes in a mysterious place, greeted by an equally-curious woman named Missy.

08:45 Into the Dalek - The Doctor saves Journey Blue, a rebel fighter, from her space shuttle, which is under attack by Daleks, but is unable to save her brother. Upon returning her to her rebel ship, The Doctor then drags Clara away from a potential date with Danny Pink, her new colleague at Coal Hill School, and is thrown into the most dangerous place into the universe: the inside of a Dalek. The Doctor and Clara, along with a team of rebels aboard the Aristotle, a military station in space, are miniaturized and sent into "Rusty", a Dalek that has turned good. At the Dalek's power center, the Doctor discovers a large crack, which he deduces is causing the malfunction within the Dalek. He uses his sonic screwdriver to seal the crack, but their meddling has a terrible outcome, causing the Dalek to realize its true cause again. It sends a message to the rest of the Daleks, giving them the base's location. The mysterious Missy and "Heaven" once more make an appearance after Gretchen sacrifices herself to allow Clara and Journey access to the mind of Rusty. In an attempt to show Rusty the beauty of the universe, the Doctor connects his mind with that of the Dalek's. Rusty, however, sees the Doctor's hatred for the Daleks and is inspired by this instead, deciding to exterminate his own race. After the battle, Rusty calls the Doctor a "good Dalek", and the Doctor and Clara leave, with Clara returning to her date.

14:25 Robot of Sherwood - Treating Clara to an expedition of her choice, the Doctor takes her to the twelfth century to prove that her childhood hero, Robin Hood, doesn't exist. He is stunned when he stumbles upon a gang of outlaws, led by a man claimed to be the great hero himself. The Doctor duels with Robin Hood with a spoon, and remains in disbelief even as Robin takes the two to meet his band of Merry Men. Robin takes part in an archery contest against the Sheriff of Nottingham, splitting the arrow to claim a prize of a golden arrow. The Doctor challenges Robin before impatiently blowing up the target, causing the Sheriff to order his arrest. Robin defends the Doctor, but after slicing the arm off of one of the guards, it is revealed that they are robots. After the capture of the Doctor, Clara and Robin, Clara is taken to the Sheriff to act as the trio's leader, where she finds out that the Sheriff witnessed a spaceship crash and has been trying to repair it by collecting all the gold in the nearby land, so that he can use it to travel to London and take over the kingdom. The Doctor and Robin escape their prison, where Robin demands that Clara reveal who exactly The Doctor is. Robin Hood defeats the Sheriff in a sword fight, and after allowing the robots' spaceship to detonate harmlessly in the atmosphere, the Doctor and Robin Hood part ways, after which Maid Marian is reunited with Robin.

23:40 Listen - After a failed date with Danny Pink, Clara returns to her home to find The Doctor awaiting her. He seeks a creature he believes to have perfected its ability to hide, that stalks humankind and is responsible for a dream common to all humans. Using the TARDIS' telepathic circuit, the duo end up in the mid-1990s, where Clara meets Danny Pink as a boy. The Doctor and Clara comfort Danny from his fear when an unknown entity enters the boy's room. After returning to her date with Danny and failing a second time, Clara returns to the TARDIS and meets Orson Pink, a distance descendant of Danny Pink, one of Earth's first time travelers stranded at the end of the universe. After a brief moment with the entity, Clara triggers the TARDIS' departure to an unknown barn, where she finds a crying child. Hiding beneath the bed, she realizes that the child is The Doctor in his younger years. When the boy gets out of the bed, Clara accidentally grabs his leg, and she realizes that she is the monster under the bed. She comforts him with the notion of fear being a constant companion that can bring out the good in him, where one day he'll return to the barn during the moment of his greatest fear. Clara leaves, forcing The Doctor to not see where they had been. Clara and Danny reconcile, and The Doctor rejects the notion of the unknown entity ever existing.

35:00 Time Heist - The TARDIS' phone rings in Clara's apartment, and The Doctor and Clara find themselves in a strange chamber suffering from memory loss along with Psi the augmented human and Saibra the mutant human. They have been recruited by 'The Architect' to rob the Bank of Karabraxos, the most impregnable bank vault in the universe. The quartet collect the tools required for their heist, before witnessing a mysterious alien named The Teller turn the brain of a criminal to 'soup' with its psychic abilities. Saibra is later caught by the Teller, and activates an atomic disintegrater to avoid the pain of the Teller's brain scan. Psi soon follows when caught by the Teller, and Clara and The Doctor gain access to the vaults of the bank. They gain the rewards of their heist from the vault, and proceed to the Private Vault, but not before regaining contact with Psi and Saibra who were teleported instead of disintegrated. The four find that the private vault is home to Director Karabraxos, and The Doctor gives her his number before she leaves the bank as it is destroyed by the solar storm. The Doctor regains his lost memories back from the Teller, revealing himself as The Architect, and unveiling the goal of the heist – to rejoin the Teller with the only other one of its species. The Doctor takes the two aliens away to live out their lives, and returns Saibra and Psi to their homeworlds, and Clara to her flat for her date.

43:40 The Caretaker - Clara is trying to maintain two separate lives: one as the Doctor's companion, and the other as a school teacher in a romantic relationship with Danny Pink. The Doctor tells her that he's going deep undercover, disguising himself as a temporary caretaker at her school (Coal Hill). Tracking a Skovox Blitzer, which vaporised a police officer and is one of the deadliest machines created, he plans to displace it a billion years into the future where nothing else can be harmed. The Doctor meets Danny without realising he's Clara's partner, treating him with disdain because he was a soldier. Suspicious of the Doctor, Danny accidentally tampers with his trap, and the Skovox Blitzer is only sent seventy four hours into the future. The Doctor learns of Danny's relationship with Clara, and Danny about Clara's double life, leading them to argue. When the Skovox Blitzer rematerialises, the three work together to trick it in to deactivating itself. Danny warns Clara about the Doctor pushing her into reckless and dangerous actions. The vaporised police officer awakens in the Promised Land.

52:20 Summary; Rob @WhoWars Lex @Lexerness and Kate @Kamiduu give their thoughts on Series 8 of Doctor Who at its halfway point and consider where it might be going.

57:50 The Who Wars Podcast Credits (including how to get in touch with the show)

58:35 Bloopers. Shhh... ;)