The latest season of Doctor Who's longform story of the Flux may be over, but the impact of the blast that ate the universe is still being felt. Is the damage still there? Did half the universe really get wiped out? Is Dan’s house gone for good?
Well, these are not the questions this collection of interesting facts aims to answer. What we’ve got here are some of the deeper contextual points, Easter egg-style references and hidden gems of info that you can have ready in your brain, the next time you watch this epic season premiere.
1. “The Halloween Apocalypse” is one of only five Doctor Who episodes to be set on the same day it was broadcast, in this case October 31, 2021. The other four are “The End of Time” (December 25, 2009), “The Big Bang” (June 26, 2010), “The Impossible Astronaut” (April 22, 2011) and “Resolution” (January 1, 2019).
2. The Doctor describes the explosive “Nitro 9” as being “very temperamental,” and she should know. Ace, the companion to her Seventh Incarnation, invented the stuff when she was an urban guerrilla in Perivale in the mid-1980s. She used it to blow up part of her school.
3. If you’re looking at Claire Brown and thinking she would make an excellent companion for the Doctor, you’re right. Annabel Scholey, who also played a key role in the BBC supernatural series Being Human, has screen tested twice for companion roles. Once for the part of Amy Pond, and then again for Clara Oswald.
4. Dan’s reply to Diane saying he’s not an official at the museum is “I am official. Official Scouse,” using the colloquial term for a born-and-bred Liverpudlian: a scouser. The word scouse is thought to derive from lobscouse, a stew made with meat, potatoes and onions.
Scouse, a form of what is also known as Irish stew, was particularly popular among Liverpool’s dock-workers and seamen – many of whom will have had family roots going back to Ireland. This lead to a conflation of the stew with the people who ate it – an association that only intensified during the Second World War as friendly nicknames were being handed out by soldiers and sailors – and the term scouse became a badge of pride for native Liverpudlians, especially those far from home.
5. The Doctor manages to deactivate Karvanista’s ship using hopper virus particles, which were left over in her pocket from the events in “Orphan 55.”
6. There’s a lot to unpick in the Doctor’s first declaration of location on arrival in Liverpool: “Liverpool. Anfield. Klopp era. Classic. Ooh, Yaz, maybe we could take in a game.”
Anfield is a region in Liverpool, but it is also the name of the Liverpool soccer team’s stadium, the seventh largest in England. It is considered to be hallowed turf by Liverpool fans. Jürgen Klopp is the much-loved (by those same fans at least) and highly regarded (by everyone else) German manager of Liverpool F.C.
7. Similarly, when the Doctor goes on to say, “I've seen the Barcelona match nine times. I was a ball boy for Trent, once,” she’s referring to a match between Liverpool and FC Barcelona on May 7, 2019. Trent Alexander-Arnold, a right back for Liverpool, was preparing to take a corner when a ball boy named Oakley Cannonier alerted him to the fact that the Barcelona defense players were not ready. He quickly put the ball in play, and Liverpool scored.
8. Dan’s view that Sheffield is “too near Leeds” for his comfort comes partly from the entrenched rivalry between Lancashire – the county Liverpool used to be in – and Yorkshire, home of both Sheffield and Leeds. It’s also a nod to a long-held grudge between the Liverpool and Leeds soccer teams.
9. Did anyone else notice that during the section where the Doctor and Yaz meet Dan and escape from Karvanista, the Doctor yells, “nice to meet you, Dan. Run for your life!” in an echo of her ninth incarnation’s earliest words to Rose Tyler?
10. In case you thought it was all the fevered imagining of Chris Chibnall, the Williamson tunnels are a real thing. There’s a network of excavations, with high stone or brick ceilings, in the Edge Hill district of Liverpool. They’ve been there since the early 1800s, supposedly dug out under the express instruction of the tobacco merchant and landowner Joseph Williamson. But, as we see in the story, no one actually knows why they were created. It could be some form of quarrying, or just a job creation scheme for local workers.
Whatever their intended purpose, the tunnels were left unfinished, and partially filled in in the years between 1840 and 1995. But volunteers and archaeologists have since excavated them, and built a heritage centre and even offer guided tours.
This is part of a long tradition within Doctor Who stories, seeking to explain ancient mysteries using the residents of the TARDIS. Other examples include the extinction of the dinosaurs (“Earthshock”), the Great Fire of Rome (“The Romans”), the mysterious abandonment of the Mary Celeste by its crew and passengers (“The Chase”) and the 11-day disappearance of Agatha Christie in December 1926 (“The Unicorn and the Wasp”).
What's your favorite moment from "The Halloween Apocalypse"?