Foreshadowing / Doctor Who

Doctor Who stretches all across time and space, so moments hinting at the characters' futures are only to be expected.

Expect spoilers! Only examples from Series 12, 13 and the 60th Anniversary Specials will be whited out.

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In General

• In general for the revival, it always foreshadows its season finale as early as the second episode of the season. It uses, however, very (very, oh so very) cryptic foreshadows like "Bad Wolf" or "Doctor-Donna". Whenever psychics are in, expect to hear a lot of complete nonsense that will finally be put together in the final episode.

Classic Series

• Although the classic series wasn't done in the same cinematic style as the new series, there is subtle foreshadowing to be found (some of it may be unintentional though).
• "Planet of the Spiders":
  • The Third Doctor's regeneration may have been foreshadowed by Sarah Jane in "The Monster of Peladon". In one scene she says, "The Doctor always says that while there's life, there's..." She trails off, letting the sentence hang in midair, the word "hope" left unspoken. In the very next story, "Planet of the Spiders", the Doctor's final words to her are, "While there's life, there's..." He loses consciousness just then and never finishes the sentence. He regenerates a moment later, making those his last words before his "death".
  • A Time Lord has an assistant that turns out to be a projection from his mind. When he is fatally injured, the assistant vanishes, and the Time Lord regenerates into his likeness. Come Tom Baker's final story, the team are helped by a mysterious white-cloaked figure. Well, guess what his purpose turns out to be?
• "Earthshock": Early in the story, an argument erupts between the Doctor and Adric when the latter says he wants to return to E-Space, only to be told it is too dangerous to attempt the journey. At one point, an exasperated Doctor tells Adric "I'm not hanging around while you plot the course to your own destruction!" To prove it is possible to plot a safe course into E-Space, Adric sets to work on the calculations, but when the Doctor (who has now cooled down) offers to take him home, Adric says he has changed his mind, prompting the Doctor to jokingly berate him for "doing all these calculations for nothing." In the final episode, Adric sets himself the task of diverting a space freighter which the Cybermen have hijacked away from Earth by solving the logic codes the Cybermen have used to lock the freighter on a collision course with the planet. Before Adric can finish inputting the final code, a Cyberman destroys the freighter's onboard computer, leaving Adric unable to save himself as the freighter crashes into the prehistoric Earth and explodes.
• "Dragonfire": Ace, a lonely and disaffected human teenager who dreams of seeing the stars, is sorely tempted to accept Kane's offer to join his mercenaries when he offers to show her the universe but ultimately rejects him. She has no such hesitation in accepting the Doctor's offer to show her the universe at the end of the episode.

Series 1

• "Rose": The Doctor checking his appearance in the mirror and making remarks about it implies that he may have recently regenerated.
• "The End of the World":
  • The big reveal of the Doctor being the Last of His Kind is set up early, first when Jabe tries analysing the Doctor's species, and refuses to believe it, and second when they're alone and she tells him it's a miracle he even exists.
  • Followed up on when the Doctor gets very upset while Rose probes him about his past and his planet.
  • The Doctor doesn't answer when Rose asks him who the Time Lords fought a war with.
• "The Unquiet Dead": The Doctor and Dickens talking about The Signal-man and A Christmas Carol.
• "World War Three": The Doctor swears he's heard of Harriet Jones^*MP, Flydale North somewhere, and asks her if she's famous. She dryly notes that she isn't in the slightest. After she takes charge of the situation, the Doctor remembers that in the future, she is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• "Dalek": One of the techs mentions that the last person to touch the "Metaltron" burst into flames. When Rose touches the Dalek, because she's a time traveller it feeds from her and draws enough power to free itself.
• "The Long Game":
  • The Editor's line to Suki/Eva about the Jagrafess having "always been [her] boss", given where a similar line of dialogue was last seen, and what the season finale reveals about who's really behind all this...
  • The Doctor says of Cathica's information chip, "She wouldn't remember any. There's too much, her head would blow up."
• "Father's Day": Two of them hint at Pete's Heroic Suicide, where he lets himself be hit by the car that was meant to kill him.
  • After Rose saves Pete, she says the car was going to kill him. His response?
  Pete: Gimme some credit, I wasn't gonna walk under it, was I?
  • When the Reapers are striking the stained-glass windows of the church, several times their shadows are seen pressed against the image of Jesus Christ's crucifixion: one man who died to save the world from the mistakes of others in the past.
• "The Doctor Dances":
  • The room where Jamie was kept was covered with crude drawings of him and his mother. Noticeably, there is no sign of his "older sister" in them.
  • Jack's ship can call anything with a speaker grill... just like the Child.
  • Locked in a room with a panicked infected soldier, Nancy is able to calm him down and put him to sleep by singing lullabies, as a mother would do for her child.
• "Boom Town":
  • Three seasons in advance, at the end of Jack's story.
    Mickey: I knew we should've turned left!
  • The Heart of the TARDIS is quite important to the finale.
• "Bad Wolf":
  • Check out the artwork next to the Doctor when he staggers out of the Big Brother house's transmat closet. It's a series of three paintings, horizontal bars covered in evenly spaced circles shaded to look 3D... like the spheres on the case of a Dalek.
  • Parts of the Daleks' leitmotif is heard, Trine-E and Zu-Zana glide round like the Daleks, the Anne-Droid's Disintegrator Ray is positioned similarly to a Dalek's ray gun, Dalek bumps are seen in the Big Brother house, and Rose wakes up to the trademark electronic "heartbeat" of the Dalek control rooms.
  • The set of the fashion show Jack's stuck in is one of the sets from "The Long Game", foreshadowing that the Gamestation is actually Satellite Five.
  • "Torchwood", the Arc Word of Series 2, is an answer to one of the questions in The Weakest Link.
  • During Rose's flashback to all the times Bad Wolf Cropped up, the footage is overlain over footage of the Time Vortex, alluding to the Bad Wolf being created when Rose looks into the Heart of the TARDIS.
• "The Parting of the Ways": The Doctor hologram says he's about to die, and he hopes it's a good death. He does die and regenerate at the end of the episode.

Series 2

• "Doctor Who: Children in Need": The Doctor notes that his right wrist is bothering him. The next episode would see it cut off by the Sycorax leader in a sword fight.
• "New Earth":
  • Cassandra calls attention to the film projection of her past human self at an extravagant drinks party as "the last time anyone told me I was beautiful". A couple of scenes later, as a Cassandra-possessed Rose tests out her new body in front of the reflector, Chip praises his mistress as "beautiful!", seeding his (and Cassandra's) role at the end of the episode.
  • As the Doctor prepares to distribute his concoction of cures via the disinfectant lifts to save the day, he tells Rose/Cassandra to pull a lever and "hold on to it with everything you've got".
• "The Girl in the Fireplace":
  • When Repair Droid 8 says the robots require one more part for the ship, the reply as to why they need Reinette is "We are the same", an early clue as to The Reveal at the end.
  • This line from Reinette.
    "Doctor who? It's more than just a secret, isn't it?"
• "Rise of the Cybermen":
  • The Doctor tells Mickey they'll meet up again in 24 hours. "If I haven't found something better," replies Mickey.
  • During the scene in which she argues with Pete about her birthday banner displaying her true age (40), she called out to Rose, however her tone of voice is more the kind used on a pet, not a 20 year old woman, later in the episode it turns out that in this universe, Pete and Jackie did not have a child, but did have a pet dog called Rose.
• "The Impossible Planet": Among the possessed Ood's statements is that the Beast has "woven himself into the fabric of your lives". The next episode expounds on that statement.
• "The Satan Pit": The Beast claims that Rose will die in battle. The statement disturbs her and leads her to ask the Doctor about it; he quickly dismisses it, saying that the Beast was lying.
• "Love & Monsters":
  • The elemental shade that killed Elton's mother was from "the Howling Halls", which sounds awfully close to the Eternals' name for the Void.
  • One newspaper headline reads "SAXON LEADS IN POLLS".
• "Army of Ghosts":
  • The Doctor thinks the idea of loved ones coming back to life is horrific. We don't learn why until the Tenth Doctor's very last episode.
  • For Big Finish fans, the name "Yvonne Hartman" was a rather clever bit of foreshadowing for the arrival of the Cybermen: her name is a nod to Yvonne Hartley from "Spare Parts".
  • The Bluetooth earpieces that all of Torchwood's personnel have. The last time we saw people wearing earpieces was in "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel".
  • The news announcer talking on the Ghostwatch segment mentions the regular gatherings of ghosts around Westminster Bridge, almost like a military display... that's because it is.
  • When the Doctor talks about the Void Ship, the foreboding music is the same piece used for the scenes with the Controller and the Dalek Emperor in "Bad Wolf"/"The Parting of the Ways", but without the chanting. It's a big hint that whatever's in there is Dalek-related.
  • When the Doctor explains the Void Ship to the Torchwood staff, he mentions that he's never actually seen one before and that he always assumed it was just a theory. A savvy viewer will know that the version of the Cybermen appearing in this episode are in their infancy, barely above humans in terms of technology, a subtle hint that whoever built the Void Ship is on a similar technological level to the Time Lords, something the Cybermen most certainly aren't.
  • For that matter, the appearance of the Void Ship is a large golden sphere... not dissimilar in appearance to the hemispheres lining the skirts of the Time War era Daleks.
• "Doomsday": The Doctor mocks the Daleks for their inability to touch because they spend their lives locked up in their Powered Armour. It also seemed to hit a nerve with Sec, who's become obsessed with leaving his casing the next time we see him.

Series 3

• "The Runaway Bride":
  • A simple re-watch and some critical thinking (or someone who's just paying real close attention on their first viewing) will reveal that, for a man who's apparently never been down to the hidden depths of the abandoned Torchwood facility beneath the Thames, Lance sure knows the quickest way to leave the lab, circle around and up, and make his way to the Empress in record time. This is a big clue, but relatively easy-to-miss in the heat of the moment and quick run of the sequence of shots, that he knows more than he lets on about the facility and its general layout.
  • Donna explains that she first met Lance when he offered her a cup of coffee. It's later revealed that huon particles are best stored in water...
  • Also, for a large company like H.C. Clements, it would be considered unethical for the head of HR, like Lance, to have a relationship with a temp like Donna. This hints that maybe Lance has an ulterior motive for taking such a risk...
  • The soldiers in the tanks that shoot down the Webstar get their orders to fire from Mr. Saxon.
• "Smith and Jones": The Plasmavore in this episode is masking her biological species to evade detection. Later in the same season, both the Doctor (in "Human Nature") and the Master (in "Utopia") also do this.
• "The Shakespeare Code":
  • Martha's concerns about old-timey racism turn out to be rightly founded later on.
  • This is not the last time this season that the power of words will be instrumental in defeating a villain.
  • On top of that, the conversation about the Grandfather Paradox will also be important in the season finale.
• "Gridlock": The Face of Boe's last words:^note foreshadowing both the return of the Master and, much more indirectly, that the Face is Captain Jack in the future.
  "I must. But know this, Time Lord: You Are Not Alone."
• "Daleks in Manhattan"/"Evolution of the Daleks":
  • When speaking to Diagoras, Dalek Caan has some rather un-Dalek-like musings that humans are prospering while Daleks have nearly been wiped out. It doesn't have a payoff in this story, but the next time we see him...
  • While telling Martha about her boyfriend's disappearance, Tallulah says "I know some guys are just pigs, but not my Laszlo." It turns out that Laszlo has been partly turned into one of the Daleks' pig-slaves, having managed to escape halfway through the process.
  • Tallulah's musical routine, featuring the specially-written song "My Angel Put the Devil In Me". The lyrics very clearly describe the relationship between Lucy and the Master in the season's finale "Utopia"/"The Sound of Drums"/"Last of the Time Lords".
    ♫ You lured me in with your cold grey eyes
    Your simple smile, your bewitching lies
    One and one and one is three
    My bad, bad Angel, the Devil in me! ♫
  • "I am Dalek Sec, and you will obey me!" Now, who else has been known to say a similar phrase?
  • For the season as a whole, Dalek Sec points out that humans are the great survivors. All the way to the end of time, Dalek Sec.
• "The Lazarus Experiment":
  • Lazarus talks about hiding in the church during the Blitz, "The living, cowering among the dead". Not only does he die there, but he has inverted that with himself, he is now the dead hiding within the living.
  • The mysterious Mr. Saxon is a backer of Lazarus Labs, and a man who works for him gives Francine Jones information about the Doctor that makes her apprehensive of him...
• "42":
  • Mr. Saxon sent people to listen to Martha's mother's phone. The woman's computer used for said surveillance has an Archangel Network symbol on its back, with this system being key to the finale.
  • This episode also marks the first appearance of the Master's Leitmotif and the drumbeat.
• "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood":
  • The Chameleon Arch and the phrase "You are not alone" will gain renewed importance later in the season.
  • In-universe, with the Family's meteor-bombs falling on the school and the flashforward to what appears to be Tim's death by artillery strike. It makes the actual WWI scenes all the more horrible.
  • When Tim uses the Chameleon Arch to stun Daughter of Mine, we are treated to a series of rapid-fire images of the Doctor, all of which imply that when provoked, he is terrifying to behold.
  • This won't be the last time the Doctor equates a personality change with dying.
  • The premise of the Doctor, backed into a corner, having to turn into someone else, someone shown to be willing to kill.
  • Throughout this two-parter, the song "He Who Would Valiant Be" is sung. One of the lines from this song is "Follow the master".
• "Blink": During his video telling Sally and Larry about the Weeping Angels, he warns them that should they get a hold of the time energy in the TARDIS, the damage they do could "switch off the sun". On the surface, it seems like they'll somehow use their time-stealing ability on the sun. Later, when Larry is wondering why the fourth Angel is pointing at the light bulb, he realizes it's not pointing: it's absorbing the light, revealing this to be among the Angels' dangerous abilities.
• "Utopia":
  • Creet, the kid with the clipboard, says that in Utopia, the skies are made of diamonds. That sounds familiar...
  • A great deal of Professor Yana's personality traits, the presence of a devoted and adorable female assistant, and even his style of dress, are reminiscent of the Doctor. And, by Word of God, the computers in his lab are supposed to resemble half-disassembled TARDIS consoles...
  • The Doctor's panic when Martha tells him about Yana's fob watch could be interpreted as him being afraid that it's the Master, but maybe the Master isn't the only Time Lord the Doctor's frightened of...
  • When the Master awakens after regenerating, the music is the same as played at the end of "42" when Mr. Saxon's goons were talking with Mrs. Jones. Furthermore, Martha recognizes the new Master's voice...
  • Even better, the 2006 annual has this:
    And far away, across the universe, on the planet Crafe Tec Hydra, one side of a mountain carries carvings and hieroglyphs, crude representations of an invisible War. The artwork shows two races clashing, one flesh, one metal; a fearsome explosion; and a solitary survivor walking from the wreckage. Solitary? Perhaps not. Under this figure, a phrase has been scratched in stone, which translates as: You Are Not Alone...
• "The Sound of Drums":
  • The Doctor offhandedly mentions that Gallifrey was only perfect to look at.
  • The effect used when the Toclafane disintegrate President Winters is the same as the disintegration by stet radiation in the previous episode.
  • The Master tells the Doctor that if he knew what the Toclafane were, "[his] hearts would break".
  • The theme that plays when Martha teleports away to witness the Toclafane ravaging London is a more dramatic version of the music that plays in "Utopia" when the Doctor talks about humanity's "indomitable" nature.
• "Last of the Time Lords":
  • The Master mentions that the Doctor single-handedly sealed the Rift at the Medusa Cascade.
  • Martha tells Docherty "That's why I came to see you; know your enemy." She was right, though not in the way Docherty expected, because her plan hinged on Docherty telling the Master where to find Martha, since she met her.
  • At the end, the Doctor suggests to Martha that they visit Agatha Christie.

Series 4 and the 2009 Specials

• "Voyage of the Damned":
  • A very subtle one. When the tourists of the Titanic teleport down to Earth for a brief visit, the temporary companion for the episode, Astrid, exclaims that there are no stars in the sky! Series 4's season long story arc centres around the stars disappearing in the sky. Russell T. Davies, we never knew you had it in you.
  • It's stated early on that Max Capricorn is the one who chose the Titanic's name. He later turns out to be the one trying to sink it. Presumably the reason he decided on that name for the ship he was planning on sinking was as a twisted Historical In-Joke.
  • At the end, Mr. Copper says if the Doctor could choose who lives and dies, he'd be a monster. A while down the line, the Doctor does try to choose who lives and dies...
• "Partners in Crime":
  • The taxi which tries to pick up Stacey Campbell has an ATMOS sticker, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it piece of foreshadowing to "The Sontaran Stratagem".
  • The Shadow Proclamation, last mentioned in "Fear Her", is mentioned again in this episode.
  • Rose's appearance at the end of the episode. She's supposed to be in an alternate universe.
  • Planet Adipose III having been "lost".
  • Donna mentions the bees disappearing.
• "The Fires of Pompeii": During the "seer showdown" scene, Lucius Petrus, while under prophetic influence, informs Donna that "there is something on your back" and tells the Doctor that "she is returning."
• "Planet of the Ood":
  • Mr. Halpen suspects that the Doctor and Donna are from the Friends of the Ood activist group. Dr. Ryder reveals himself as one in the climax.
  • The Ood refer to the Doctor and Donna collectively as the Doctor-Donna. It takes the rest of the series for the Doctor to figure it out, but when he does, he thinks it's all quite clever. Partly because of the way he introduced them to the Ood in the first place. Truly an example of Fridge Brilliance.
• "The Sontaran Stratagem":
  • The ATMOS satnav repeatedly says "turn left".
  • There's a cloned copy of a person animated by the still-living person's memories.
• "The Poison Sky":
  • Brilliant but unnoticeable:
    Donna: [to Martha, who's wearing the Doctor's coat over her hospital-type gown] You know, that coat sort of works.
    Martha: Feel like a kid in my dad's clothes.
    Donna: Oh, well if you're calling him dad you're definitely getting over him.
  • For a fraction of a second, Rose Tyler appears on the TARDIS screen when the Doctor sends his message to the Sontarans.
• "The Doctor's Daughter": Donna echoes Rose by saying she'll be with the Doctor forever — and we all know what happened to Rose, don't we?
• "The Unicorn and the Wasp":
  • Golightly's interrogation flashback is the only one that matches up with his words, a clue in hindsight that he's the murderer.
  • Donna is upset that Agatha Christie would never know of the impact her writing would have for years to come, to which the Doctor replies "Well, no one knows how they're gonna be remembered. All we can do is hope for the best." Later on, Agatha gets Wistful Amnesia of the episode's events. Both of these become relevant to Donna's story in the season finale.
• "Silence in the Library":
  • The Doctor makes a point of mentioning that the books are all new editions printed specially for the Library.
  • A throwaway line from River foreshadows her first adventure with the Eleventh Doctor in Series 5 (and presumably a few more).
    "Okay, shall we do diaries, then? Where are we this time? Er, going by your face, I'd say it's early days for you, yeah? So, er, crash of the Byzantium, have we done that yet?"
  • She also mentions that the Doctor created some rules for their relationship — one of which is "No peeking in River's diary".
  • "4022 people saved."
  • River's reaction when she discovers Donna's identity, and Donna's sense of alarm that River is from the Doctor's future but hadn't met her. Because by the time the Doctor meets River again, Amelia Pond is his companion.
  • Proper Dave flinches visibly when the Doctor describes the Vashta Nerada's feeding habits. Guess who's next on the menu?
  • River's controlled anger when she says she'd like to meet the thing that killed Miss Evangelista, hinting that she is a Good Is Not Soft Action Girl.
• "Forest of the Dead":
  • Dr. Moon maintains the dream-world's integrity at several points, but it doesn't dawn what he represents until the Doctor is told that the moon that's rising in the sky isn't real, but an artificial doctor moon, which maintains the library database. He's the virus checker; a therapist for a computer.
  • Lux accuses the Doctor and River of arguing Like an Old Married Couple.
  • When River's about to make her Heroic Sacrifice, there's this exchange. Think about it very carefully.
    The Doctor: I'd have a chance! You don't have any!
    River: You wouldn't have a chance and neither do I!
  • As River is describing the last time she encountered the Doctor before coming to the library, she says "the real you", before correcting herself to "the future you", signalling that it's a different Doctor who gets to know River better and who gets to say the last goodbye.
• "Midnight":
  • Professor Hobbes and Jethro's parents show off jerkass qualities early on that become a major problem when everything goes to hell.
  • At some point while Biff is recounting a story to the Doctor, his son Jethro rolls his eyes and echos the line in the presumably oft-retold story in perfect synchronisation with his father, an extremely uncomfortable preview of what’s to come.
  • Dee Dee mentions the lost moon of Poosh.
  • When the Doctor knocks on the door, and the creature knocks back, count the number of knocks. Even the closed-captioning calls attention to this one.
• "Turn Left": Donna knows it's time to go with Rose when, while stargazing with her grandfather, they see that The Stars Are Going Out. It's not until two episodes later that we learn the cause.
• "The Stolen Earth": Martha, before escaping from a UNIT facility under attack by the Daleks, is given something called the Osterhagen Key. When Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister^*Yes, we know who she is., finds out Martha has it, she immediately gets angry and orders her not to use it. The revelation of what it's for in the second part explains the reaction quite well.
• "Journey's End": Dalek Caan's declaration of NO MORE!! after having plunged through the Time War would be revisited much later during the 50th Anniversary Special.
• "The Next Doctor":
  • The mere fact that Ten and Jackson don't start bickering from the moment they set eyes on each other is an early clue, for viewers familiar with multi-Doctor stories, that the latter isn't really the Doctor.
  • Jackson Lake's wardrobe and, at times, haircut, resembles the Eleventh Doctor's.
• "Planet of the Dead":
  • Christina says to the Doctor while going through the tunnel that a way out would come in handy, and wonders sarcastically if he can detect one for her. She gets two: the wormhole, which the bus goes through seconds later, and the bus itself, as she uses it to escape at the end.
  • The Doctor remarks early on that the sand contains traces of something else when he examines it. It turns out to contain the remnants of the population, wildlife, mountains and everything on San Helios that got eaten by the stingrays.
  • When attempting to phone UNIT, the Doctor accidentally dials Pizza Geronimo instead.
  • This is the first time in the revival that the Doctor admits he stole the TARDIS. After years of the Doctor acting nostalgic about Gallifrey due to being the Last of His Kind, RTD needed to reestablish that he didn't always agree with the other Time Lords. It's about to become very important...
  • Virtually everything Carmen says, given that she's psychic. Especially when she gives an ominous warning to the Doctor at the episode's end.
    Carmen: But you be careful, because your song is ending, sir.
    The Doctor: What do you mean?
    Carmen: It is returning, it is returning through the dark. And then Doctor... oh, but then... he will knock four times.
• "The Waters of Mars":
  • During his A God Am I stage, the Doctor starts acting like the Time Lords who appear two episodes later (same Screw the Rules, I Make Them! personality). He also uses some of the Master's quotes. Guess who also shows up in the next episode?
  • When Adelaide heads into her house, we see her draw her pistol. Had the Doctor been paying attention to her instead of ranting to himself, he might have stopped her from killing herself. Then again, if he had been paying attention to her at all he would have realised how distraught she was and possibly got the idea that going A God Am I on her was a bad idea.
• "The End of Time":
  • One for "The Day of the Doctor": "The Doctor still possesses the Moment, and he'll use it to wipe out Daleks and Time Lords alike."
  • "He will knock four times." Yes, he did, and the Doctor finally accepted his fate. Now replace "knock" with "offer you his gun".
  • The new Doctor is not a girl and isn't ginger. His next companion is.
  • The Eleventh Doctor exclaiming "I'm a girl!" marks the first time Gender Bender regenerations are confirmed to be canon. The Twelfth Doctor would come up against a female Master and regenerate into the first female Doctor.

Series 5

• "The Eleventh Hour":
  • Amelia tells the Doctor she doesn't have any parents, but remembers her mum carving faces into apples.
  • The Doctor and Amy's conversation about the duckpond in Leadworth's village green, specifically the fact that it's called a duckpond despite there not being any ducks.
  • The meaning behind the phrase "Silence Will Fall" will be explored throughout Eleven's lifetime, and its origins revealed in "The Time of the Doctor".
  • In a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, when the Doctor invites Amy inside the TARDIS, one of the background monitors is showing a shape◊ similar to the crack on Amelia's wall.
• "The Beast Below":
  • The rhyme recited by the girl on the Vator video-screen starts out with "A horse and a man, above, below". What do people use horses for? Carrying people and/or pulling vehicles.
  • The Eleventh Doctor states that if he kills the Star Whale, he'll no longer be able to call himself the Doctor. Hinting at another regeneration who gave up the name of the Doctor for a similar act...
• "The Time of Angels":
  • At the beginning, the Doctor and Amy visit the Delirium Archive, an asteroid base said to be the final resting place of the Headless Monks.
  • When Amy asks how River can fly the TARDIS, this exchange happens:
    River: Oh, I learned from the very best.
    The Doctor: Well...
    River: Shame you were busy that day!
  • Octavian briefly looks surprised and a little taken aback when River introduces the Doctor to him.
  • Bob the cleric is introduced having shot at one of the statues in the Maze of the Dead because he thought it was looking at him. Octavian promptly tells him off for shooting at the décor, but it later turns out that all of the statues in the maze are Weeping Angels.
  • In the maze, Octavian pulls River aside and they have a conversation where he points out that the Doctor clearly doesn't know who River is yet, and tells River if he loses any more men he might just tell the Doctor what her secret is.
• "Flesh and Stone":
  • Amy and the Doctor's conversation about the Artificial Gravity at the beginning foreshadows the Angels' fate: falling to their doom when the power goes out.
  • After Amy is left behind, guarded by clerics, when the Doctor heads off to the main control room, he comes back briefly — except he's wearing his jacket that he lost earlier, and he's noticeably nicer to Amy than he was when he was leaving just moments ago.
  • River Song is serving a prison sentence for killing a "good man". Her Facial Dialogue — and the specific way Octavian refuses to answer the Doctor's questions about it — gives a pretty good indication to the audience as to who this man was.
  • This exchange:
    The Doctor: River Song, I could bloody kiss you.
    River: Ah, well, maybe when you're older.
• "The Vampires of Venice":
  • After Isabella's execution, when Rosanna kneels by the edge of the water, Francesco warns her that she should change her form or else his brother will eat her because they'll think she's human. She commits suicide in exactly that fashion at the end.
  • At the end, Rosanna tells the Doctor to dream of her and her race, a subtle foreshadow of what the next episode is about.
• "Amy's Choice":
  • After the Doctor says "I've crushed your flowers", Rory replies "Oh, Amy will kill you." Later on Amy and the Doctor commit suicide to get out of the dream, with Amy driving the car into the house at high speed.
  • The two realities are the same choice the Doctor offered Amy early in "The Beast Below": Travelling in the TARDIS or Leadworth.
  • In the first TARDIS dream, as the Doctor gets up after Rory's "we were married" line, you can see his breath, hinting at the presence of the freezing star they're drifting towards.
  • "You could be giving birth right now. This could be the dream, I told you."
  • How does the Doctor know who the Dream Lord is? Because "There's only one person in the universe who hates me as much as you do."
  • The Dream Lord's regular outfit is similar to the Doctor's, as well as the fact that he chooses to call himself that because the Doctor's a Time Lord. Also, when he first appears in the Leadworth reality, he's posing as a doctor, carrying X-ray film and saying to "Take two, and call me in the morning."
  • The Doctor gets himself and his friends out of the second dream by blowing up the TARDIS — the cause of the cracks in time running rampant through the season, and which the Legion of Doom believes him to be responsible for.
• "The Hungry Earth"/"Cold Blood":
  • Rory goes to put Amy's engagement ring back in the TARDIS for safekeeping, saying "Go on, I'll catch you both up". At the end of the double episode, Rory is killed. By "The Pandorica Opens", however, he's been resurrected as a Nestene duplicate, thus "catching up" to the Doctor and Amy later in their timestreams; also, in "The Big Bang" he then waits for nearly two thousand years beside Amy's stasis-locked corpse for the Doctor and Amy's younger self to show up and reanimate her. He caught up with them twice!
  • Ambrose is the one who has the idea of stockpiling weapons. Later on, she ends up killing Alaya with one of those weapons after the Silurian warrior goads her, distraught at the abductions of her husband and son and poisoning of her father, into doing so.
  • Rory has been erased from existence, and Amy has completely forgotten about him. Yet, as she gets in the TARDIS at the end, she says "You boys and your locksmithery" to the Doctor about his having trouble opening the door...
• "Vincent and the Doctor":
  • At the beginning, the Doctor overhears two students discussing a painting of a doctor who took care of van Gogh. At the end, Vincent says that the Doctor is the only doctor he's met to make a difference in his life.
  • The spiked legs of Vincent's easel are deliberately shown as he's setting up to paint the church.
• "The Lodger":
  • In a rather subtle Rewatch Bonus, there are several points where Amy, alone in the TARDIS, appears to be reacting to someone she sees just offscreen, only to ignore it and not say anything to the Doctor; most obviously when she contacts him after the football match. Series 6 would introduce a group of creatures that people forget about as soon as they look away...
  • Similarly, upon bursting into the time engine, the Doctor sees a four-fingered corpse on the floor, only to again say nothing about it after he looks away...
• "The Pandorica Opens":
  • The Doctor notices something's oddly coincidental when he learns that the legend of Pandora's Box was Amy's favourite book as a kid, and that Roman Britain was her favourite school subject... when they're dealing with a box called the Pandorica that holds a Sealed Evil in a Can, which is beginning to open in Roman Britain…
  • The half-disassembled Cyberman attacks Amy and the Doctor in an attempt to assimilate them for new organic parts, but never bothered doing so to any of the legion of Roman soldiers camped nearby, is an early hint that those Romans may not be who they seem to be...

Series 6

• "A Christmas Carol": When the Doctor first notices some tiny fish flying around a street light, he questions why people would be afraid of them as they fly away - as the camera turns away from the fish you can just make out the silhouette of the shark behind the Doctor.
• "The Impossible Astronaut":
  • The Doctor's comment about "More happening in 1969 than anyone remembers." This is because the Silence (the aliens) make you forget their existence the moment you look away.
  • You can only remember things about the Silence when you see them, including past encounters. When River finds them underground right after they get to the warehouse, she looks terrified.
  • There's lots of foreshadowing to Amy being pregnant. The Doctor says she's gained weight, Amy explains away one bout of Silence-induced memory loss as being sick (probably chalking it up to morning sickness), and at one point The Doctor tells Amy and Rory to go home and make babies.
• "Day of the Moon": When Amy and the Doctor talk about the fact that she thought she was pregnant, she says that one of the reasons she didn't tell Rory was because she thought that the baby might have been affected by their travelling on the TARDIS.
  Amy: I didn't want to tell Rory his kid might have a time head or something.
• "The Curse of the Black Spot":
  • Toby's hero worship of his father figure is steadily broken down over the course of the episode, as he becomes aware of the man's uglier faults and is eventually almost killed because of them. However, with Avery resolving to change his ways, the boy's relationship with his distant father is eventually rebuilt into something far more realistic and genuine. The Doctor and Amy will have their own ugly period of Trauma Conga Lines and disillusionment later in the season ("A Good Man Goes To War", "The Girl Who Waited", "The God Complex"), where the Doctor is confronted with the worst parts of himself and Amy's starry-eyed view of her Raggedy Doctor is chipped away and eventually replaced with a far more healthy and realistic view of her best friend / father figure / imaginary friend, allowing their relationship to noticeably improve in the future.
  • Amy wields a cutlass to fend off the pirates and protect her boys from walking the plank. While she's quite rubbish at using it, she highly enjoyed the experience. A home-made sword would become Amy's weapon of choice when she's left to fend for herself for years in "The Girl Who Waited".
• "The Doctor's Wife": Lampshaded in the extent that Sexy talks about things that the Doctor and the crew have not yet experienced. They all are revealed to be true, in time...
  • The first thing Sexy does upon seeing the Doctor is call him "Thief". As we find out later, she really thinks of the Doctor as her thief.
  • "The only water in the forest is the river", which the TARDIS said this as her body was dying. It was a gigantic hint towards the identity of Amy's baby, who was named Melody Pond by her mother. But, the Gamma Forests' language uses the word "River" instead of "Pond", because the TARDIS' hint was actually true. And a synonym for "Melody" is "Song". So, the baby's real name is River Song!
  • Sexy's attraction to Rory, AKA "the Pretty One".
  • In a long-term sense, the fact the TARDIS has at least 17 console rooms archived that the Doctor hasn't himself created yet, suggests she and the Doctor still have many adventures to come (this in itself foreshadows the Doctor getting a new regeneration cycle).
  • The Doctor offhandedly mentioning the Corsair's Gender Bender regeneration was the first explicitly canon acknowledgement that such a thing was possible in the TV series, paving the way for the eventual casting of both Missy and the Thirteenth Doctor.
• "The Almost People":
  • Amy, in this episode, is worried she and Rory are growing apart, and doesn't like being separated from him. Turns out, they've been apart all along.
  • During the first conversation between the Doctor and his Ganger, one asks about Cybermats. Guess what's returning later in the series?
  • The Doctor and his Ganger both tell Amy to "breathe" several times. By the end of the episode, the real Amy Pond is giving birth in an unknown place, and her kidnapper, Madame Kovarian, urges her to do the same thing.
• "A Good Man Goes to War":
  • A meta-example from the BBC website, perfectly encapsulating the unexpected victory from the villains of this episode.
    River Song: Demons run when a good man goes to war. Night will fall and drown the sun, when a good man goes to war. Friendship dies and true love lies, night will fall and the dark will rise... when a good man goes to war.
  • The poem has two more lines in the episode.
    "Demons run but count the cost. The battle's won but the child is lost."
  • When Rory asks River for help, she explains to him that it's her birthday. Considering that Melody has just been born, could this be setting up the reveal of who River is?
  • "'Melody Williams' is a geography teacher, 'Melody Pond' is a superhero." Yes, actually, she is.
  • The heroes celebrate a bloodless victory partway through the episode, but overlook that the gay soldiers have both died. The heroes are wrong about their victory, too.
• "Let's Kill Hitler":
  • The Doctor encouraging Mels, "If you stay alive, I'll marry you." He does.
  • The Doctor says to himself that he'll regenerate. The TARDIS tells him that his regenerative abilities are disabled. The TARDIS never claims it's due to the poison. The viewer would assume this, but down the line we find out the Doctor is out of lives at this point.
• "The Girl Who Waited":
  • "Sometimes knowing your own future is what allows you to change it, especially when you're bloody-minded, contradictory and completely unpredictable." River does exactly that by the finale, when faced with the prospect of shooting the Doctor at Utah.
  • The Doctor says that the plague would kill him, and there would be "no regeneration". It would later be revealed that he was telling the truth at that time.
• "The God Complex":
  • "Amy, with regret, you're fired". At the end of the episode, the Doctor does leave Amy to have a normal life.
  • Rory immediately begins to fear for Rita's health when she makes friends with the Doctor. Minutes later, he's tragically proven correct.
  • At the end, the Doctor tries to part with Amy and Rory before their luck runs out. When Amy protests, he retorts "What's the alternative? Me standing over your grave?" Yes.
• "The Wedding of River Song": There is some dialogue that serves as a portent of Eleven's final hour, where that episode reveals Madame Kovarian and the Silence were attempting to kill the Doctor in order to prevent his arrival on Trenzalore.
  Dorium Maldovar: On the Fields of Trenzalore, on the Fall of the Eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a question will be asked. A question that must never ever be answered.
  The Doctor: "Silence will fall when the question is asked."
  Dorium Maldovar: "Silence must fall" would be a better translation. The Silence are determined that the question will never be answered. That the Doctor will never reach Trenzalore.

Series 7 and the 2013 Specials

• "Asylum of the Daleks":
  • "Eggs."
  • Oswin being able to hack Dalek technology, and the fact that some of her hacking is obvious Hollywood Hacking and button mashing.
  • "Where do you get the milk for the soufflés?"
  • "Make them remember you."
  • Somebody else seems to have climbed out of the escape pod already.
  • There's a ballerina figurine in Oswin's "escape pod".
  • Oswin's escape pod looks vaguely like a Dalek on the scanners.
  • Carmen. It's a tragic story, as Carmen dies at the end.
    • Also from Carmen, the Habanera aria, the song Oswin plays in every appearance and what the Daleks pick up. The translation of the lyric "Prends garde à toi!" is "You best beware!" In the whole song, Carmen warns the onlookers she is like smoke, untouchable and unattainable. Just like Oswin.
  • The Doctor mentions that Amy will be there at his end.
  • An unintentional (at the time) non-diegetic example. When Oswin says "Run you clever boy, and remember" listen to the music playing. This is the first appearance of Clara's Leitmotif, which takes on an entirely new significance three seasons later once one sees Clara's final episode, "Hell Bent". As a result, every use of this piece of music from here on out is foreshadowing.
  • Two soundtrack examples. In addition to "Clara's Theme", which recurs throughout the second half of series 7, "Together or Not at All" also makes a subtle appearance during Amy's hallucinatory scene. The latter will eventually be heard in "The Angels Take Manhattan", at a very pivotal moment.
• "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship":
  • There is more build-up to the Ponds leaving the show, when the Doctor states that he's not really trying to wean them off him or anything. Honestly.
  • It's the second time this season that the villain of the episode can't identify the Doctor.
• "A Town Called Mercy": "Make peace with your gods." It's Jex's perceived inability to do this and fear of the afterlife that keeps him running from the Gunslinger.
• "The Power of Three":
  • At the very start of the episode, you can hear a voice message saying how a pair of reading glasses were ready to be picked up. Guess what Amy is wearing in the next episode?
  • Kate Stewart mentions UNIT having "ravens of death".
• "The Angels Take Manhattan":
  • The headstone in the graveyard.
    The Doctor: Once you read it, it's written in stone.
  • River teases an arc about the Doctor being forgotten.
  • River claims to have escaped the Angel without needing to break her wrist, but she is holding both her book and her computer in one hand, while her "unbroken" wrist hangs limply at her side.
  • Rory leaves himself vulnerable to attack by a Weeping Angel when he's momentarily distracted by a tombstone with his name on it. This foreshadows the finale, "The Name of the Doctor", in which the Doctor says that the one place a time traveller must never visit is their own grave, which the Doctor is forced to do that episode.
• "The Snowmen":
  • Clara also violated that one rule mentioned in the previous entry, before she was even a permanent companion: the first time we see present-day Clara, she is standing by the tombstone of her Victorian version.
  • Clara can effectively fight the parasite simply by thinking hard. The reason why is finally revealed in the season finale.
  • The entire episode is loaded with foreshadowing of "Hell Bent", including (but not limited to): "Clara who?"; Clara demonstrating her ability to think like the Doctor; the Doctor planning to erase Clara's memory against her will; and "Clara's Theme" is heard in full for the first time. Plus, we see Eleven start to regain his love for life; it'll be made clear by the time Clara leaves the Doctor for good that he had fallen hard for her and vice versa.
• "The Bells of Saint John":
  • A "woman in the shop" gave Clara the Doctor's phone number...
  • The Spoonheads use memories of those they attack to shape their appearance and their dialogue mostly consists of repeating what others say, calling back to the snow-constructs in the previous episode and foreshadowing the appearance of the Great Intelligence.
  • Various employees say their "conscience" is telling them to do something, hinting that "the client" has been whispering into their minds.
  • So we have an old enemy of the Doctor's who hasn't been seen in a while setting up a secret base in a London landmark where unwitting human employees upload human minds to a data cloud for nefarious purposes. Is that this episode, or the Myth Arc of Series 8?
  • The mere fact that Clara is wearing a necklace in the form of a raven, as well as the fact that her mother's maiden name was Ravenwood.
• "Hide":
  • Early on, Clara observes that the Professor's photographs all have identical images of the ghost, no matter the angle or location. This is because, for the ghost, it's barely been a moment between them.
  • When the Doctor takes Clara on an abridged journey through the Earth's entire life cycle "birth to death", Clara looks out over the ruins of the dead Earth and wonders if her long-decayed remains are buried there, somewhere. The Doctor solemnly notes that this is probably the case. Four episodes later, the Doctor will state that a time traveller should never visit their own grave.
  • Clara asks the Doctor if everyone he meets is just a ghost to him, since everyone's already dead from his perspective as a time traveller. His reluctance to answer in that episode was because of her impossible nature, but as this episode reveals, it's not in the least because he sees himself as a ghost as well for that reason.
• "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS":
  • The song the Doctor and Clara are listening to at the beginning is "Fire Woman" by The Cult. Seeing what happens to Clara later on...
  • Clara picks up a cylinder which burns her hands, and she drops it. The Doctor later identifies an identical cylinder in the possession of the Salvage Pirates. But if it's theirs, why was it on the TARDIS earlier?
  • Clara (temporarily) learns the Doctor's name, playing into this series' plot arc.
• "Nightmare in Silver": The Captain definitely twigs onto Angie's mention of Porridge, and takes her aside saying they need to talk. On first watch, it seems that the Captain wants to know about squatters living on the planet, but after The Reveal that a) She was previously part of the Emperor's guard detail and b) that Porridge is the Emperor, the reason for her reaction becomes far more clear.
• "The Name of the Doctor": The Great Intelligence mentions the Valeyard. This the first clue that the tomb at Trenzalore isn't Eleven's final fate, as it if were the Valeyard would never come to pass.
• "The Day of the Doctor":
  • Osgood spends most of the episode wearing a long multi-coloured scarf. The end of the episode features a cameo by Tom Baker.
  • Queen Elizabeth names Ten as the Curator of the Undergallery. Then a familiar man appears in the end, calling himself "The Curator".
  • The General's line "To hell with the High Council" foreshadows the Gallifreyan army's mutiny in "Hell Bent".
  • The Doctors, locked in a cell in the Tower of London, come up with an idea to have the War Doctor's screwdriver start calculating how to disintegrate the door so that Eleven's screwdriver will have the solution, since the screwdriver will take centuries to perform the calculations and there are multiple incarnations present. Although Clara's arrival soon after reveals the door to be unlocked, this is how the Doctor(s) save Gallifrey in the climax.
  • The War Doctor jokes how he hopes he becomes half the "man" Clara is. The subplot of Clara becoming the Doctor's Distaff Counterpart is already well under way at this point, but accelerates in Series 8.
  • The 12^th Doctor appears in the climax to save Gallifrey.
    Time Lord General: I didn't know when I was well off. All twelve of them!
    Androgar: No, sir. All thirteen!
• "The Time of the Doctor":
  • This special, the Eleventh Doctor's regeneration episode, reveals that his entire tenure as the Doctor had been rife with foreshadowing, literally from day one: the crack in Amy's wall turned out to be caused by the Time Lords trying to get back to our universe. Or, more accurately, caused by the Silence blowing up the TARDIS to try and stop the Doctor from bringing the Time Lords back to our universe, inadvertently giving them the very passage they needed.
  • The Doctor having the Seal of the High Council, which he took from the Master when the Master was performing a mission for which he had been offered a new regeneration cycle. At the end, the Doctor is given a new regeneration cycle by the Time Lords.

Series 8

• "Deep Breath":
  • Jenny warns Clara early on not to go into the larder since Vastra will be "having someone for dinner". This is more or less what is happening in the restaurant basement, which the Doctor refers to as the larder.
  • Strax's medical scan of Clara's internal organs is a Played for Laughs precursor to the more menacing one performed by the clockwork waiter.
  • The Doctor describes whoever put the ad in the paper as an "egomaniac, needy, game-player". Clara is offended, but it turns out that the person who actually placed it fits the description far better than Clara ever could. Near the end, the Doctor also brings up the woman who gave Clara his phone number when discussing the mystery ad, and it turns out the same person was responsible.
• "Into the Dalek":
  • "Nobody guards the dead."
  • Danny's reaction when asked if he'd ever killed anyone who wasn't a soldier.
• "Listen":
  • Clara asks Rupert what's under his bed, then says it's "Me!" and crawls underneath it. It later turns out that the Doctor's obsession with the notion of monsters under the bed is rooted in Clara having hidden under his when he was a child.
  • The Doctor looking for Wally in what turns out to not be a Where's Wally? book parallels his search for the perfect hider and foreshadows the possibility that there isn't anything there to be found.
• "The Caretaker":
  • Danny describes the Doctor (over his strong objections) as "an officer". At the climax of the episode the Doctor disarms the Skovox Blitzer by impersonating its superior officer, a Skovox Artificer.
  • Danny asks Clara to tell him if the Doctor pushes her too far. This happens in the very next episode.
• "Kill the Moon": The Doctor remarks that even everyday activities such as crossing the road can be dangerous. Four episodes later, Danny neglects to Look Both Ways and gets run over by a car.
• "Mummy on the Orient Express":
  • Mrs. Pitt, the first victim, was being kept alive by an artificial life-support system. So, the Doctor eventually discovers, is the Foretold.
  • When Professor Moorhouse mentions "The right word could save your life", the Doctor thinks it's nonsense at first. In the end, he manages to disable the Foretold by saying "WE SURRENDER!"
  • When the Foretold attacks him, Captain Quell acts like he's facing an enemy soldier in battle, which turns out to be what the Foretold is, at least in its own mind.
  • Gus jettisons an entire compartment of the train to get the Doctor to stop talking with Clara, who is reading through reports of previous test groups and was about to find out that Gus had killed them when they failed to be useful.
  • Perkins ironically suggests they'll be Thrown Out the Airlock if they don't cooperate with Gus. Which is exactly what happens, except Gus airlocks other people until the Doctor cooperates.
• "Flatline": The theme of Clara becoming more like the Doctor continues, with her outright taking up the sonic screwdriver and pretending to be him when he's stuck in the shrunken TARDIS.
• "In the Forest of the Night":
  • The stuffed wolves and tiger at the museum where the Coal Hill students' overnighter took place, which hint at the upcoming animal encounters.
  • The Doctor self-deprecatingly calls himself an idiot, which comes back in two episodes.
• "Dark Water":
  • When Clara appears to be throwing away the TARDIS keys, the Doctor insists that he is in control of the situation, despite his apparent helplessness. Turns out he is literally in control of their situation.
  • Missy lets the Doctor feel her heart. He doesn't say what he feels but is clearly troubled. This suggests that something about her heartbeat is unusual — for example, that she has two of them.
  • The Doctor walks out of the room wondering who is behind this. The doors that close behind him resembles Cyberman eyes — and their Leitmotif is heard.
  • The Cyberman eye emblem is foreshadowed throughout the building — it's the underlying shape for the 3W emblem.
  • When the camera pans over the skeletons in the tank before settling on Missy and the sphere, the music strongly resembles the Master's theme.

Series 9

• "Last Christmas": In the opening shot, as the camera pans through Clara's house and upstairs to her bedroom, eagle-eyed viewers will notice that there is a track for a stairlift running up the length of the staircase. This foreshadows the false ending where the Doctor arrives to save Clara from the dream crab, only to discover that it's 62 years since they last saw each other and she is now an old woman. Fortunately this turns out to be yet another dream.
• "The Magician's Apprentice": Missy's description of her relationship with the Doctor sounds like a good description of what Clara's relationship with the Doctor will be by the Season Finale. "A friendship older than your civilization, and infinitely more complex."
• "The Witch's Familiar": The Doctor warns his enemies that there's no telling what he'll do if he finds out that Clara Oswald really is dead; as Missy and Clara overhear this the former marvels that this is what it's like when the Doctor has no hope — that he's capable of destroying everything, even them. In "Face the Raven", Clara is Killed Off for Real and in her Final Speech she orders him not to go down the path of destruction, knowing he can't handle being alone. Alas, it doesn't take — thanks to the horrors visited upon him in "Heaven Sent" exacerbating his anguish, he temporarily becomes a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, willing to risk the universe's safety to bring her back from the grave in the Season Finale "Hell Bent".
• "Under the Lake" twice directly foreshadows a tragic event later in the season. First, as the Doctor says one of the questions he'd like to ask the ghosts is whether death hurt, there is a close-up on Clara. Later, the Doctor says to Clara, "You live and you die. That's it." Again, we get a close-up of Clara as he says this. Both foreshadow Clara's painful death in "Face the Raven".
• "Before the Flood":
  • The first of the historical events involving the Doctor that O'Donnell brings up is "Mr. Saxon", the alias used by the incarnation of the Master played by John Simm, who would return in the Series 10 finale to team up with his successor Missy.
  • When O'Donnell talks about the Doctor's past companions, she neglects to mention Clara and Donna Noble, the two companions impacted by memory wipes, though in the latter case the Doctor loses his memory of her.
  • The Doctor's "damn the rules" attitude towards saving Clara directly anticipates events later in the season. Indeed, there are so many plot beats and even dialogue in this episode that directly anticipate "Hell Bent" that "Under the Lake"/"Before the Flood" could almost be considered a prologue to the trilogy that ends the season. Examples include the quote "I'm changing history to save Clara"; "If you love me in any way, you'll come back" (it takes 4.5 billion years for him to do so this time, not 150 years); Clara having part of her memory erased by the Doctor; the Doctor trying to create a bootstrap paradox by preventing Clara's death (even though Clara's death is what made him try to prevent Clara's death, which is why it doesn't work); and the Cloister conversation has parallels to Cass and Lunn being told they needed to say things to one another before it was too late. As well, the Doctor's climactic speech to the Big Bad, the Fisher King, in "Before the Flood" condemned him for breaking the rules of life and death by killing innocents and trapping them as ghosts for his own ends. But the Doctor broke said rules in "The Girl Who Died" by saving Ashildr's life in a way that turned her into an immortal; while this was a To Be Lawful or Good Sadistic Choice, it set the stage for him losing Clara — and his response to that is breaking the rules again by pulling her out of time. He means no harm to either of them, but they end up unhappy. Worse, Clara was already Deader than Dead; he didn't have a legitimate-if-flawed chance to save her the way he did with Ashildr, and Clara ordered him to accept that and move on. Instead, he violates his duty of care to the universe purely because he is unhappy. He has become a Villain Protagonist who, like the Fisher King, must be stopped. The good news is that the Doctor is redeemable and once he realizes he's actually hurting Clara, he pulls back from the brink.
• "The Girl Who Died": The interactions between the Doctor, Clara and Ashildr hint at the events of the season finale. Of particular note is the Doctor's feeling of déjà vu when he first sees her, and the scene where Ashildr tells the Doctor she has no desire to ever leave her village because the people there love and accept her.
• "The Woman Who Lived":
  • Ashildr warns the Doctor that Clara will "blow away like smoke".
  • When Clara returns to the TARDIS, the Doctor jokes, "Who are you?"
  • And Clara is wearing the raven necklace from "The Bells of Saint John".
• "The Zygon Invasion": After the events of "Terror of the Zygons", UNIT developed a nerve gas that can easily wipe out the aliens — but "someone with a TARDIS" stole it (i.e. the Doctor, who doesn't care for genocide to put it mildly). Kate describes the gas as able to effectively turn Zygons inside-out... inverting them. Now, what's the title of the next episode?
• "The Zygon Inversion":
  • The earliest hint that Clara is in a dream is when the time on the digital clock changes each time she looks at it. Checking a clock repeatedly is a common way for lucid dreamers to train themselves to realise they're dreaming, as writing changes every time it is looked at in a dream, a fact referenced in "Last Christmas".
  • The Doctor's nickname for Bonnie actually foreshadows her eventual fate: "Zygella" becomes the new second Petronella Osgood.
  • Clara's apparent death, and the Doctor's reaction, foreshadow events coming in the end of Series 9.
• "Sleep No More":
  • In the beginning, each of the team members has a status screen which lists, among other things, their survival rating. With the exception of 474, the expendable grunt, these numbers indicate the order of their deaths (or lack thereof, in Nagata's case).
  • After she gets yanked into a Morpheus pod, Clara's POV is added to the footage. As she definitely has nothing to transmit that with, it hints at the true nature of the camera before it's revealed.
• "Face the Raven":
  • Clara forcefully objects to to having her memory wiped.
  • The Doctor and Clara watch an elderly husband and wife share a last, tearful goodbye before the former faces the raven for stealing medical supplies. The wife tries to convince him to confer the death sentence on her, but can't, and since it has to be given willingly by the bearer she can't take it herself. At the end of the episode, the Doctor and Clara are in a similar last goodbye situation. (This is probably why the Doctor doesn't volunteer to take the sentence upon himself: he knows Clara would never allow him to die in her place.)
• "Heaven Sent": There are tons of small details throughout the episode hinting towards the Doctor's final actions:
  • There's a quick shot of a burned hand disappearing into the sand just before the Doctor teleports in the "first" time.
  • The sea of skulls — and the one that the Doctor finds hooked up the teleporter. It later gets dropped into the ocean with the rest of them.
    • Later, a fade between the Doctor's face and skull provides another clue that the skulls are indeed his own.
  • The identical hung-up clothes and shoes that the Doctor finds near the fireplace. Notice how he takes care to place his wet clothes in the same arrangement as the ones he took.
• "Hell Bent": When the camera pulls back to allow Clara and the Doctor privacy in the Cloisters, we hear Clara's theme music; later, it is revealed that the Doctor composes this tune as a subconscious representation of whatever it is she tells him, retroactively providing foreshadowing from the very beginning of Series 7 towards now.
• "The Husbands of River Song": At the start of the episode, the Doctor is brought to River's doorstep, sporting a haircut and suit. This foreshadows the eventual journey to Darillium.

Series 10

• "The Pilot":
  • When Bill and Heather first meet, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is playing in the background.
  • Bill's mother died when she was a baby, yet Bill thinks up imaginary sayings from her. In "The Lie of the Land", Bill uses her mother as an Imaginary Friend, and is the key to breaking the Monks' lie over the entire human population.
• "Smile": When they first enter the deserted city, Bill asks if everyone is still in bed. It turns out the colonists are still in suspended animation.
• "Thin Ice":
  • Street urchin Spider, who pickpockets the sonic screwdriver, fiddles with it and is promptly targeted and sucked underwater, hinting that the screwdriver's noise can get people targeted by the fish that help feed the serpent.
  • Bill asks the Doctor if he has "magical alien powers". He doesn't answer, or even give any indication he heard her. The audience, meanwhile, knows the answer is yes.
• "Knock Knock":
  • The Doctor mentions regeneration to Bill, but doesn't explain what it is. He seems particularly haunted by the subject, as he tends to be when he's nearing the end of one of his lives...
  • One of the students mentions it's the sort of house where you'd expect to find a Bookcase Passage. Sure enough, there is one.
• "Oxygen":
  • The Doctor pops the head off the robot suit without alerting his companions what he's about to do. Later he also fails to fill them in on his plans, but this time he has a good reason.
  • When Bill comes to after the trip outside the station, she's told that the Doctor gave her his helmet, and that he paid the price for it. The ominous tone comes off as if the Doctor had to regenerate as a result, although that turns out not to be the case. And when Bill learns he was blinded as a result, he says he needs to get back to the TARDIS because there's stuff in there that can fix it — and the TARDIS is where he usually regenerates...
  • During his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the Doctor at the end, Nardole says that if the Doctor came back injured, the prisoner in the Vault would be able to detect it. Then the Doctor reveals he's still blind...
• "Extremis":
  • At the end of the teaser, the Doctor sits in front of the Vault and receives an email on his glasses. Then, as the title sequence starts, the screen gets all glitchy. When the screen gets glitchy again near the end of the episode, it becomes apparent that these mark the beginning and end of a recording contained in the email.
  • When the Doctor first "sees" a Prophet in the portal open in the wall, his sunglasses can't register its species, gender, or age, unlike everyone else seen so far in the episode.
  • When the Doctor is confronted by the Prophets of Truth in the Haereticum, they taunt him by saying "This is a game."
  • In that same scene, when the Doctor switches off the lights to escape, a Prophet is able to turn them back on moments later.
  • Throughout the episode, there are a series of glitches that one might mistake as bad feed from a cable or satellite hook up. It's actually Stylistic Suck meant to foreshadow the simulated environment.
• "World Enough and Time":
  • When we first see the lift approaching the flight deck, the numbers on the indicator are moving really fast, but start to slow considerably as they near the top of the ship. It isn't decelerating, at least not in the conventional sense. It's a hint to the Time Dilation.
  • The creepy surgeon tells Bill that she's not ready for "the full upgrade" right after she arrives.
  • Razor mentions an expedition to the solar farms on Floor 507 that never returned. We find out what happened to them in the next episode.
  • Mr. Razor tells Bill that the patients aren't in any pain, which Bill quickly contests, at which point he concedes that it was "a clever lie". The last time we heard those words, they were spoken by the Eleventh Doctor in "Let's Kill Hitler", hinting that Mr. Razor has a connection to the Doctor.
  • In telling Bill that the proto-Cybermen are (or were) human, Mr. Razor gets stuck on the word "people", repeating it in a rapid-fire manner that's very similar to how the Horror Hunger-ridden Saxon Master ranted about food in "The End of Time".
  • The first time we hear the modified voices of a "converted" patient calling out about pain, the voice, though unlike modern Cybermen, harkens back to how they sounded in "The Tomb of the Cybermen".
  • Bill's fellow "patients" have cloth covering their faces and speak in a robotic tone, an early indicator of what is in store for her.
  • When Mr. Razor is thanked by the Surgeon for tricking Bill into the Operation Theatre, he comments (while wearing a burglar mask) "You saw through my disguise..." It turns out that he is actually the Harold Saxon Master wearing a Latex Perfection disguise.
• "The Doctor Falls":
  • Missy tells the Saxon-Master that she doesn't really remember her regeneration into her current form. The Saxon-Master later remarks that it's weird she doesn't remember any of the current events, and she points out that due to both of them being present, the "timelines are out of sync", meaning that he won't be able to retain his memories of whatever happens, so she doesn't have them. This clues in the savvy viewer that the Saxon-Master's regeneration into Missy will happen during these events.
  • Missy asks the Doctor if he's ever felt the blade when debating with the Saxon Master on how to kill him (the Doctor, that is).
  • The Saxon-Master uses the phrase "I'd rather die" than be kind to the Doctor.
  • When the Saxon Master gripes about the future being "all girl" in reaction to the fact that he will regenerate into Missy, the Doctor retorts that he hopes that's the case. The Doctor will regenerate into his first female incarnation in the very next episode.
  • When Bill says she'd rather die than not be able to be herself, she asks if the Doctor understands. He does, as seen when he screams "I. WILL NOT. CHANGE!" while attempting to stop his regeneration at the episode's end.
  • The farmhouse, a normal-looking structure surrounded by a gray (stone) exterior, parallels Bill, who sees her inner self as "normal", but has a gray (metal) exterior as a Cyberman.
  • The second time we see the Doctor about to regenerate, his fists reaches into the grassy soil. When he does end up regenerating in the snowy wasteland seen in "World Enough and Time"'s Flash Forward, he rams his fists into the snowy ground, effectively postponing his regeneration for now.

Series 11

• "The Woman Who Fell to Earth":
  • The first indication that the electrical entity that attacked the train and the pod Ryan encountered in the woods have the same origin comes when the tracker the Doctor rigged to locate the electrical entity instead leads everyone to the garage where the pod was taken, which an alien warrior has emerged from.
  • Dennis, the security guard at the construction site, is seen talking to his granddaughter over a video call, and then getting killed by Tzim-Sha. At the climax, Ryan's grandmother Grace dies by falling from a crane while trying to subdue Tzim-Sha's data coil.
• "The Ghost Monument":
  • At the beginning, our heroes are rescued from the vacuum of space by two racers, Angstrom and Epzo, finalists in a gruelling race. Conversation reveals that both racers are thrown off because their destination, the last planet in the race, has been knocked out of orbit somehow. It turns out that the Doctor's teleporter, intended to send her after the missing TARDIS, didn't actually malfunction when it dropped her and her friends into deep space. The last planet, Desolation, is in fact where the TARDIS can be found, and they were dropped in deep space because of its recent change in position.
  • When the group is attacked by the Remnants, the creatures read the Doctor's mind and mention something called the "Timeless Child", a term she doesn't recognize. The creatures claim that the phrase is connected to a secret buried so deeply in her mind that she doesn't know she knows it.
• "Rosa":
  • When the Doctor confiscates Krasko's time-displacement weapon and brings it back to the motel, Ryan expresses interest in it and asks what it is. When Ryan later encounters Krasko while trying to remove the obstacles he's put in place to disrupt the course of history, Ryan eventually reveals that he's swiped the weapon and uses it to send Krasko to the distant past.
  • When Ryan confronts Krasko, Krasko boasts that he's already won because, even if Ryan moves his car so the bus will remain on schedule, it will be three white passengers short of the number required for the bus driver to ask Rosa Parks to move. There are currently three passengers in the white section who shouldn't be there: the Doctor, Graham and Yaz.
• "The Tsuranga Conundrum": Ryan tells Yaz about his mother's death of a heart attack, and how it strained his relationship with his father. This foreshadows General Cicero's death from her heart condition while piloting the ship to safety, and how Yoss is reluctant about raising a child.
• "Demons of the Punjab":
  • Prem's younger brother Manish is shown from the start as being something of a Hindu fanatic, supporting the Partition and opposing Prem and Umbreen's marriage. It's not surprising when he turns out to have a hand in ending it.
  • The Doctor, scanning the holy man's body, notes that the mystery powder the alien "demons" put on him isn't poisonous. Because they didn't actually kill him.
  • When the Doctor steals the Thijarians' canister of dust, they claim that she's profaned a holy place. That dust symbolizes why they aren't assassins anymore, and hints at their mission.
• "Kerblam!":
  • Ryan removes the bubble wrap from the Doctor's package and immediately pops some of the bubbles. This is how the villain intends to kill thousands of Kerblam! customers, via explosive bubble wrap.
  • The Doctor, trying to find out where the message for help came from, sonics her and Graham's ankle bracelets to switch their work assignments after learning that the workers in the purple section are closest to where the packing slips are printed, leaving Graham to work in maintenance with the other janitor, Charlie. Since Charlie is the villain and the computer itself sent the message, it's clear that it was trying to help the Doctor by directing her to the bad guy as quickly as possible.
  • It's stated that human employees aren't allowed in the lower levels of the Kerblam! warehouse, where products are dispatched from, and have no access to the printing system for the packing slips. It turns out that it was the company's computer system itself, and not any of the human employees, that sent the message for help.
  • Dan, when showing Yaz his pendant, says that it's made of arcadium and will be around long after he's gone. He's later abducted and killed, and it becomes a Tragic Keepsake.
  • The Doctor tells Graham that, as a janitor, he has access everywhere, and Charlie later mentions that he has all of the access codes when he and Graham are taking the historical blueprints. This is exactly how Charlie was able to carry out his plot.
  • During the total system blackout, the one robot left operational immediately attacks Charlie when he approaches it. The system is trying to kill Charlie so his plan doesn't succeed.
• "The Witchfinders":
  • Graham tells the Doctor that he once went on a "witch tour", but has never heard of Bilehurst Cragg, the village where the episode is set. At the end, King James decides to unperson the village to cover up what happened there.
  • Searching Becka Savage's room, the Doctor finds a large number of handkerchiefs and an empty medicine bottle. Becka is possessed by an alien lifeform, and trying desperately to cover it up, hence her witch hunts.
• "It Takes You Away":
  • When the roars of the mysterious creature are first heard, Hanne mentions that it comes at the exact same time every day. The roars are actually a recording set to play on a loop.
  • When Graham tries to find out if the Alternate Universe Grace is real, he asks her to tell him about his frog necklace — she tells him exactly everything about it, including that he's wearing it to keep her close. While this initially seems like something she's intuited, it's actually because everything about this version of Grace comes from Graham's own mind.
• "Resolution": The villain goes to a facility run by a company called MDZ to steal pieces of alien technology. The fact that this is a private company, and the less-than-stellar security there, hints at the later reveal that UNIT operations have been suspended pending a budgetary review, which is bad news for planet Earth.

Series 12

• "Spyfall": There are multiple hints at The Reveal that O is actually the Master:
  • The lasers that kill the driver and C are distinctly orange, resembling the beam from the Saxon Master's laser screwdriver.
  • When the Doctor first mentions "Horizon Watcher", she says he's a friend but then backs down a bit and says he might be a friend because she's only met him once in person.
  • C's last words — he suggests that Barton may be a double or triple agent for someone, and is shot after being asked who he might be an agent for. His surprised reaction? "Oh."
  • When O introduces himself, he claims he took the codename because C used to react with an "Oh, god" whenever he came into his office. It turns out that that exact reaction of surprise or fear is precisely why he took that identity.
  • O's technology, which he explains having as being Properly Paranoid, manages to hold off the glowing creatures when one nearly got through the TARDIS' doors and the Doctor herself hasn't been able to get a reading off them.
  • O mentions how unlikely it would be for Barton's identity to be fake given how many pictures there are of him at various ages on the Internet. The Master had done this before as Harold Saxon (he didn't do it as O, instead assuming someone else's identity and then going off-grid).
  • The alien data stolen from Barton's computer is encrypted using the same technique that O used on the picture he sent to the Doctor.
  • O offers Graham information on the Doctor in a fashion implying that he may be trying to erode his trust in her.
  • Later, he tells the Doctor she should be looking for the "spymaster" behind the conspiracy.
  • There is a shot of a house outside the airplane that brings to mind The Wizard of Oz. Guess who used to call themselves the Wicked Witch?
• "Orphan 55":
  • Bella is introduced recovering from a hopper virus infection. The Doctor later comments that the Dregs are not capable of having introduced the hopper viruses, indicating that someone planted them to make Tranquillity Spa vulnerable.
  • One of the Dregs drags its claw along metal, making a squealing sound, to taunt its intended victims. Few animals would do this, indicating that the Dregs are smarter than they look.
  • Telling Ryan about her parents, Bella says that her (allegedly) late mother made Nevi look like a perfect parent.
• "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror": The attacker on the train is carrying a Silurian blaster. It is eventually revealed that the Skithra are a species of scavengers who operate solely on stolen technology that they can't repair, which is why they want an engineer like Tesla.
• "Fugitive of the Judoon":
  • The episode opens with a close-up shot of Ruth Clayton's watch. What form do Chameleon Arches normally take?
  • Ruth's flat has windows with the same six-pane layout as those of the TARDIS, and her mirror is hexagonal, a shape that has turned up in most versions of the console room.
  • Ruth works as a tour guide because she wants to show people the wonders of her city. Just as the Doctor wants to show their companions the wonders of the universe.
  • Before she kills him, Gat calls Lee the "faithful companion". So if he's the companion, then who is his wife Ruth?
  • When the Doctor presses Ruth for more information about the lighthouse she grew up in, Ruth comments that she hasn't even thought about that place in many years. Repressed childhood memories... or a perception filter at work keeping her from remembering what's inside?
• "Praxeus":
  • When Yaz and Gabriela examine the device in the room in Hong Kong where Adam was being held, they note that it seems to be transmitting to two other locations, one of which is in Madagascar. In Madagascar, the Doctor notes how very well-equipped Suki's lab is despite its out-of-the-way location. This is all because Suki is actually a member of a group of Human Alien scientists who infected Earth with Praxeus and are attempting to find a cure for their species.
  • While prepping the shuttle to launch so they can distribute the Praxeus cure into the atmosphere, Jake points out the flight controls to the Doctor and asks for an explanation. When the damaged autopilot fails, he stays behind to fly it himself, nearly dying before the Doctor is able to save him.
• "Can You Hear Me?":
  • Tahira is aware of the monsters that gather to attack the hospital when no one else is, and they don't attack her or take her away like the other people there. The Chagaskas were created from her nightmares, so they're technically part of her, and she is able to control the last one after the Doctor helps her realize this.
  • Zellin makes his first appearance materializing inside the TARDIS while the Doctor is unaware of his presence, and smiling to himself as the TARDIS picks up screams from medieval Aleppo, leading to her decision to go there. It turns out he's luring her into a trap, and making sure she went to Aleppo was the first part of it.
  • When the Doctor arrives at the hospital, the last Chagaska doesn't attack her but instead brushes past her before leaving. At this point, it's under Zellin's control, and he's setting up a Batman Gambit to lure her into a trap.
• "Revolution of the Daleks": Early in the episode, Graham comments it would probably help the Fam's investigation if they had psychic paper, like the Doctor. When Ryan & Graham choose to stay to look after Earth, the Doctor gives both of them psychic paper.

Series 13 and the 2022 Specials

• "Once, Upon Time":
  • During the Doctor's scenes, one of the Division agents refers to "Dan" as a dog, which he takes offense at; this leads up to the reveal near the end of the episode that the agent the Doctor perceives as Dan is actually Karvanista.
  • While talking to Diane while hidden in his timestream, Dan notices Passenger standing ominously at the bottom of the stairs, and turns to find Diane has disappeared.
  • The Grand Serpent reacts with hostility to Vinder speaking out of turn when they meet.
• "Eve of the Daleks": The Daleks note early on that they're adapting to the loop and it will eventually collapse, which hints that they didn't engineer it. Even the Doctor only learns this herself after asking them directly.

60th Anniversary Specials

• "The Star Beast":
  • The Wrarth Warriors make no attempt to harm Fudge when he runs into them early on, very much unlike the typical Monster of the Week.
  • The Doctor uses his new sonic screwdriver to create a transparent screen hovering in mid-air which is solid enough to touch. Later, he makes a couple of bigger versions, which turn out to be solid enough to block shots from both sides long enough to allow them to escape up the stairs.
  • Rose telling the Meep that she doesn't feel like she belongs on Earth. It's later revealed that she inherited some of the Meta-Crisis Doctor's consciousness from Donna.
  • UNIT's rounds are shown physically piercing and eventually shattering the Sonic-generated forcefields while the Wrarth Warriors' weapons seemingly have no effect, foreshadowing the true pro-antagonist dynamic in the story.
  • At the end of the episode, Donna asks the Doctor why everything seems to be one last adventure for him, suggesting that he visit her family for "tea, dinner and a laugh". He gets to do this two episodes later, thanks to a bigeneration that allows his future self to split from his body and ensure himself a peaceful retirement.
• "Wild Blue Yonder":
  • Early on, the Doctor briefly posits that the untranslated speech coming through the loudspeakers could be a countdown. That's because it is.
  • Not-Doctor complains that the arms are the hardest for them to replicate perfectly. Despite having otherwise perfected copying her counterpart, Not-Donna is exposed in the TARDIS because her wrists were less than a millimeter longer than they're supposed to be.

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