History Recap / DoctorWhoS26E1Battlefield

* DrowingPit: Inside the spaceship holding Arthur's body, Ace triggers a defence mechanism. When she enters an alcove, a door closes, and the alcove starts to fill with water.

Two great British institutions meet at last, as ''Series/DoctorWho'' delves into the KingArthur stories to begin the final season.

* VanityLicensePlate: Bessie now has WHO 7 numberplates.

* CasualKink: Implied in a GettingCrapPastTheRadar kind of way with Brigadier Bambera and Sir Ancelyn. Unless you think there's some other interpretation to be put on him asking if she's single the day after their first meeting involved her beating him up and manacling him.

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar / GoshDangItToHeck: Brigadier Bambera's habit of saying "Oh, sh... ame" could arguably count as this. See also the CasualKink example above.

* NextSundayAD: The story takes place some time in Ace's future (which actually includes the broadcast date, oddly enough), but was most likely meant to take place in the early 1990s. (This was obviously due to the UNIT dating problems). This ends up being an epic fail, though, when England's king is mentioned, which pushes the story farther and farther into the future, where people start dressing as if it were 1988.

Then Pat the innkeeper hears his microbrewery go boom, and the crew rushes to investigate, where they find... a knight in armor. Who looks up at the Doctor and goes "Merlin!"

* CrazyPrepared: UNIT packs all sorts of ammunition due to their encounters with strange things -- high explosives for Yetis, armor piercing for robots, even gold-tipped bullets for "you-know-what". When the Doctor asks if they have silver bullets "just in case" (possibly recalling Mags the werewolf), the Brigadier asks his personnel about that, too. They certainly do, and it ends up saving the day.

* SpikesOfVillainy: The evil knights have spiky decorations on their armor; the heroic Ancelyn doesn't. (This does help in keeping track of who's who when they're fighting with their visors down.)

* WarMemorial: Carbury has a memorial to the townspeople killed in the World Wars. When Morgaine and her men encounter it, they stop to pay tribute to the warrior dead, and Morgaine gives Mordred a dressing-down for having assumed their opponents to be savages with no concept of honor.

* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: This story is set at an unspecified point in the near future, when the UK has a King as monarch and the five pound note has been replaced by a coin, neither of which has actually happened yet. [[note]]While [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_pounds_%28British_coin%29 officially minted £5 coins]] do exist, they're collectors' pieces not intended for general circulation.[[/note]]

* AlternateUniverse: In which the Arthurian legends actually exist. Quite possibly [-IN SPACE!-]

* AlternateUniverse

* TheMissusAndTheEx: Neither one is anything close to a love interest, but a couple of deleted scenes from provide an example of the companion not warming up to an older one right away: TheBrigadier manages to offend Ace by referring to her as "the latest one," and a line about how looking after the Professor is her job reveals that she may feel a bit threatened. By the end of the serial the Brig has managed to prove that he can be trusted to take care of the Doctor and the two bond over a nice big explosion. In the Brig's case, at least, it's less "mutual hostility" on his part and more "old-fashioned stuffy social awkwardness":

* PercussiveHeroism: The Brigadier one-punches the Doctor and faces the Destroyer on his own.

# lets evil witch Morgaine enter our universe from a parallel dimension where the Arthurian legends are a bit real.

* GenreSavvy: The Brigadier plays this trope straight as one of the knight's swords: He's got various kinds of ammo for different monsters, and when he sees a strangely-dressed man lying on the floor of an alien spaceship, he immediately recognizes the Doctor.

* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Morgaine. Her big PetTheDog and KickTheDog moments occur back-to-back without her giving either a second thought.

* CasualKink: Ancelyn asking Bambera if she's single the day after their first meeting involved her beating him up and manacling him.

* OutsideContextProblem:

* LookBehindYou: When the Doctor was preparing to face Morgaine (who would very likely kill him), the Brigadier suddenly shouts, "My God, it's a flying saucer!" When the Doctor turns to look, the Brigadier punches him out, then says, "Sorry, Doctor, but ImMoreExpendableThanYou now!"

* YouCanPanicNow: When Ace triggers an alarm in the underwater spaceship that sees them attacked by an energy creature, the Doctor tells her This is NoTimeToPanic. He is promptly knocked off his feet by the creature and amends it to "''Now'' we panic!"