This deep into the season, one would expect that there wouldn’t be any new casting news coming out for this year. Well, there are still a couple of surprises in store for Doctor Who.
With one more episode in Series Nine, and the upcoming Christmas special, one would have thought that all the casting news for 2015 would have long since ended. After all, everything has been filmed, and thoughts are already set towards how Series Ten will unfold. How could any casting news affect this season?
As it turns out, there was still news waiting to be announced in regards to the Christmas special. Yesterday, it was revealed that Matt Lucas and Greg Davies will be among the cast. Lucas, of Little Britain and Bridesmaids fame, will be playing a character named Nardole. Davies, who stars on The Inbetweeners, will be playing King Hydroflax, whose anger and robot bodyguard threaten River Song and the Doctor.
The news of their casting also included a bit of a spoiler as to what the special will entail. As Steven Moffat states, there will not be a lot of Christmas involved in the episode, but it should be quite the excellent adventure regardless. As the Doctor will be meeting with River for the first time, and will involve a “starliner full of galactic super-villains and a destination the Doctor has been avoiding for a very long time,” the fundamental changes promised in Series Ten may begin here.
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Aside from the statement that King Hydroflax is angered about some event, not much information about the two characters has been provided. At this point, we are left to wonder what provoked Hydroflax to his annoyance, leaving the Doctor and River to face his ‘out of control’ giant robots. Likewise, what type of role will Nardole have, and, well, what he is, are left to our imagination at this point.
Then there is the part about the starliner full of galactic super-villains. This conjurers up thoughts of the 50th Anniversary book Ten Little Aliens, featuring the First Doctor. The corpses of the ten most wanted terrorists in the galaxy had been frozen in suspended animation, waiting to be given life anew, in the midst of small planetoid. That planetoid ended up being a spaceship in its own right, heading into the Morphiean Quadrant.
Perhaps this special will carry a few faint echoes from that novel. If nothing else, it promises to be an interesting story to end our holiday evening.