Series 10, Episode 10 | 1 part | First broadcast: 17 June 2017 | Writer: Rona Munro | Director: Charles Palmer
Cast
- Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor
- Pearl Mackie as Bill Potts
- Matt Lucas as Nardole
- Michelle Gomez as Missy
- Rebecca Benson as Kar
- Brian Vernel as Lucius
- Ben Hunter as Thracius
Summary
Settling a friendly dispute over the historical fate of Rome’s vanished Ninth Legion, the Doctor takes Bill and Nardole to second-century Scotland, where Bill finds surviving Roman soldiers hiding underground from a light-devouring creature from another dimension, while the Doctor and Nardole discover the bones of the rest of the legion and encounter a Pictish tribe guarding an ancient portal, or “gate,” to that dimension. The gate’s young guardian, Kar, admits she let one of the light-eating creatures escape into their world to help fight off the invading Romans, and the Doctor realises that unless the gate is resealed, an entire swarm will pour through and consume the sun and every star in the universe. When the Doctor volunteers his own near-immortal Time Lord physiology to guard the gate indefinitely, Bill physically stops him, and instead Kar and the surviving Roman soldiers choose to make the sacrifice together, sealing themselves inside to hold the creatures back — their memory preserved ever since in Pictish standing stones and in crows taught to call out Kar’s name.
Interesting Facts
- Writer Rona Munro previously wrote “Survival,” the final serial of the original 1963–1989 run of Doctor Who, making her the only writer in the show’s history to contribute scripts to both the classic and revived eras.
- The episode dramatizes one real historical mystery, the unexplained disappearance of the Roman Ninth Legion, blending it with Pictish folklore about interdimensional “gates.”
- Bill’s discovery that the TARDIS translation circuits let her converse fluently with the ancient Picts and Romans becomes a running thread of wonder in the episode, alongside a notably frank, matter-of-fact conversation about sexuality with the Roman soldier Lucius.
- The episode drew what was then the lowest overnight and overall viewing figures in the modern show’s history, a decline attributed to strong competing broadcasts and later scheduling.
- Missy’s continued presence in the TARDIS at episode’s end, now trusted enough to be left effectively unsupervised, marks a significant escalation of her rehabilitation arc heading into the finale.
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