May 3, 2017

@TinDogPodcast review 

The Doctor and Bill find they have arrived in London in 1814, in the midst of a frost fair on the frozen Thames. After dressing in period garments, they take to explore it, unaware the TARDIS sensors have identified a large life form, a kilometer long, under the ice.

The Doctor's sonic screwdriver is nicked by Spider, one of several orphan pickpockets led by Kitty. The Doctor and Bill chase down Spider and Kitty away from the fair. There, glowing lights under the ice encircle Spider's feet and before the Doctor can save him, Spider is pulled through the ice. Bill is troubled by the Doctor's lack of remorse for Spider's death. They track down Kitty and learn they have been paid to bring more people to the fair, with some having gone missing.

The Doctor and Bill get into diving suits and purposely let the lights take them; the lights belong to strange fish, and they find a giant sea creature ensnared by chains, which has eaten Spider and others. Returning to land, they learn from Kitty that their benefactor is the wealthy Lord Sutcliffe. Sutcliffe affirms his family has used the creature to amass a fortune by feeding it victims then collecting and selling its waste as a super powerful replacement for coal. Fearing the Doctor knows too much, Sutcliffe sends the Doctor and Bill to be eaten, while he rigs a bomb to cause the ice to shatter with maximum possible casualties for fish food.

The Doctor and Bill escape, and while Bill works with Kitty and the other orphans to clear people off the ice, the Doctor takes the bomb and places it on the creature's chains. When Sutcliffe sets off the bomb, the creature is able to swim free and Sutcliffe is lost in the freezing water. The Doctor rewrites the deed to the Sutcliffe mansion and its staff to the orphans, allowing them to live there as long as they want.

They return to the present, where Nardole scolds the Doctor for breaking his oath to stay on Earth. Bill finds from old newspapers that the orphans lived a fulfilling life, though surprised there was no mention of the sea creature. Nardole, while checking the Vault beneath the University, hears something behind it knock repeatedly and says he will only let it out with a proper request from the Doctor.

Continuity
The Doctor mentions that he has attended Frost Fairs before. In "A Good Man Goes to War", River Song says that the Eleventh Doctor took her to the 1814 Fair for her birthday, where they were serenaded by Stevie Wonder. The First Doctor took Vicki and Steven to the 1814 fair in Frostfire, where they encounter Jane Austen. The Twelfth Doctor also took Clara Oswald to the 1814 Fair in the novel Silhouette, after promising to take her in "The Caretaker".

"Doctor Disco" is the same name the Doctor used when leaving Clara a voice message in "The Zygon Invasion".

The Seventh Doctor tells Ace in Remembrance of the Daleks that "your species has the most amazing capacity for self-deception", since there is no record of "the Zygon gambit with the Loch Ness Monster" or "the Yetis in the Underground". In "In the Forest of the Night", the Twelfth Doctor tells Clara that "the human superpower (is) forgetting" extraordinary events.[1]

Outside references

The Frost Fair of 1814, by Luke Clenell
The episode features a visit to the 1814 frost fair, the last one to be held at the Old London Bridge (replaced in 1831), which caused the water flow in the Thames to slow enough to allow it to freeze. As part of a stunt during that fair, replicated in this episode, an elephant was led across the frozen Thames.[4]

During one scene with the orphans, the Doctor reads them "The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb" from Heinrich Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter, which would not actually be published until 1845.[4]