'The Bells of Saint John' (Story Code 7.6) by Steven Moffat

“This whole world is swimming in Wi-Fi. We’re living in a Wi-Fi soup. Suppose something got inside it. Suppose there was something living in the Wi-Fi harvesting living, minds. Extracting them. Imagine that. Human souls trapped like flies in the World Wide Web. Stuck forever, crying out for help. ” – The Doctor

Wi-Fi is now everywhere, a commonplace way for people to access the internet and communicate with other computers. But it can also be used for a far more sinister purpose... A terrified man seemingly on a webcam warns that alien symbols are appearing on Wi-Fi menus – and when people click on them something gets into their computer and them kills them in just twenty-four hours. Something is uploading people’s souls into the Wi-Fi – and the man is one of them: his face is on a screen on a wall of monitors, and as his mind clouds over, he and all the other people trapped in the Cloud cry out that they don’t know where they are…

Cumbria 1207. A monk named Paul arrives at a monastery with a message for the Abbott: the Bells of Saint John are ringing. The Abbott takes Paul to tell the stranger currently staying at the monastery, the “Mad Monk”: none other than the Doctor, dressed in a habit and pondering over a painting of the woman twice dead, the elusive Clara, captioned with her last words “Run you clever boy, and remember”. Learning of the ringing bells, the Doctor demands a horse and then sets out with Paul to a certain underground barrow…

The present: live-in nanny Clara Oswald is having problems with the Maitland family’s Wi-Fi; odd symbols have appeared in the menu – as something sinister spreads across the world’s wireless network. With Mr Maitland and his son Artie out for the night, and daughter Angie working on her homework, Clara calls the helpline number given to her by the woman in the computer shop…

Rushing inside the underground chamber, Doctor reaches his TARDIS and answers the police box’s ringing telephone. To his surprise he hears Clara, who asks for his help in connecting to the internet. Unaware that he is speaking to the object of his search, the Doctor exasperatedly instructs her to click on the Wi-Fi button. After getting the password ‘RYCBAR123’ from Angie, Clara does just that, using the mnemonic ‘Run You Clever Boy And Remember’ to recall the code’s letters. On hearing this, the Doctor finally realises who he is talking to, and he rushes inside the TARDIS. Clara gets the password wrong and clicks on the alien symbols instead – and in a huge office somewhere, Clara’s face appears on a monitor screen... Answering a frantic knocking at the front door, Clara finds the Doctor, still dressed in a monk’s habit and babbling about wanting to help her. Clara promptly closes the door on him. In the office, a cold, calculating woman called Miss Kizlet orders her employee, Alexi, to retrieve Clara’s soul; once Alexi has left to despatch a ‘Spoonhead’ server, Miss Kizlet uses her tablet PC to manipulate the mind of her assistant Mahler, removing his doubts about their questionable work for their mysterious client. Back at the Maitland’s, Clara hears a noise upstairs and is surprised to see a little girl in a pink dress walk down the stairs; after realising that the girl looks exactly the same as the child on the front of Artie’s book (‘Summer Falls’, by a certain Amelia Williams’), Clara is astonished when the girl’s head rotates to reveal a metallic dish at the back, its surface crackling with energy… Meanwhile, the Doctor returns to the TARDIS to change into a natty purple jacket and matching bow-tie; he then returns to Clara’s front door to try again, but on hearing Clara’s confused voice over the intercom asking where she is, the Time Lord sonics the door and rushes inside – to find Clara’s unconscious body on the floor, her voice emanating from an image on the Spoonhead looming over her, Clara’s face appearing on the back of its metallic skull. The Doctor immediately sonics the Spoonhead, unmasking it as a robot, a walking Wi-Fi basestation; he then grabs Clara’s laptop and uses it to reverse the upload. As Miss Kizlet, Mahler and Alexi watch his progress on their computer system, they are powerless to prevent Clara’s soul from being returned to her body – and are even more concerned when their hacker leaves a message: “Under my protection – the Doctor”. Miss Kizlet informs her client; the man he warned her about has appeared… Putting Clara safely to bed, the Doctor leaves her a drink, flowers and some jammie dodgers and then busies himself with some household chores, taking phone messages, and examining the Spoonhead. When Clara eventually awakes later that evening, she finds her new friend standing guard outside her house. Joining him outside his police box, Clara listens as he informs her that something is living inside the Wi-Fi, feasting off human minds. Just as the Doctor notices another Spoonhead watching from across the road, all the lights in the surrounding houses come on – and at the same time all the other lights across London go out, and a plane overhead changes course and dives straight at Clara’s house. Bustling Clara inside the TARDIS, the Doctor ignores her surprise at finding herself inside a dimensionally transcendental time/space ship and transports them both inside the oncoming plane. Racing past the unconscious passengers and crew, who have been ‘turned off’ by the creature in the plane’s Wi-Fi, the Doctor reaches the cabin, grabs the controls and pulls the aircraft out of its nose-dive; as the crew start to come round, the Doctor relinquishes control to the Captain, and then takes Clara for breakfast… Materialising the TARDIS on London’s South Bank, the Doctor leaves Clara to collect money from passers-by for his ‘magic box’, while he retrieves his motorbike from the ship’s garage. But as the Doctor and Clara speed off, their progress is tracked by Miss Kizlet and her employees, who are easily able to hack into the various camera-phones the duo pass. Speeding across Westminster Bridge and up the Mall, the Doctor and Clara stop off at a rooftop café near St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Shard. Thanks to being partially uploaded into the Wi-Fi, Clara now has increased knowledge of computers, and so she swipes back her laptop so that she can find the people in charge of the soul-stealing operation. Sent inside the café to get coffee, the Doctor is surprised when Miss Kizlet uses the local Wi-Fi to take over the staff and patrons and use them to speak to him; ignoring her threat to back down, the Time Lord vows to stop Miss Kizlet and her evil client. Back on the patio, Clara tracks down the baddies by hacking into the Wi-Fi, taking pictures of Miss Kizlet’s staff via their office webcams, and then using their Facebook accounts to identify their place of work as the Shard. Clara jubilantly tells the Doctor of her success when he re-joins her – except it isn’t the Doctor, it’s a Spoonhead replica that then steals Clara’s soul. When the real Doctor returns and sees Clara unconscious, he immediately sonics his facsimile and then swings into action… At the Shard, Miss Kizlet, Mahler and Alexi learn that the Doctor is on his motorbike and racing towards their offices. Miss Kizlet tries to dissuade her opponent by addressing him via another stolen body, but the Doctor is resolute – and he has a bike equipped with an anti-gravity device! After driving up the side of the Shard, the Doctor sonics the window of Miss Kizlet’s private office and then makes himself comfortable in her chair. Confronted by Miss Kizlet, the Doctor demands that she release Clara and every other victim from the data-cloud; but the cold businesswoman refuses, citing that those souls are too integrated within the Cloud to be easily returned. To provide some motivation the Doctor makes his move: the Doctor facing Miss Kizlet takes off his motorcycle helmet to reveal that he is actually the reprogrammed Spoonhead, which is being remotely-controlled by the real Doctor, who is still at the café! The Doctor uses the robot’s dish to upload Miss Kizlet into the Cloud, and out in the main office, Mahler and Alexi are astonished to see their boss’ shrieking face appear on a monitor on the main wall! When Mahler has doubts about how to releases Miss Kizlet from the Cloud, the Doctor hacks into the businesswoman’s tablet device and boosts her associate’s confidence enough to make him give the order for the mass-download. All across the world, the stolen souls are returned to their rightful bodies, including those of Miss Kizlet and Clara. At the café, the Doctor checks Clara and then leaves her to wake up alone. Back at the Shard, U.N.I.T. soldiers arrive and take charge; meanwhile Miss Kizlet informs her client of the Doctor’s success – and in response, the Great Intelligence takes its leave, releasing its thralls from its control before it departs. All around the main office, Miss Kizlet’s staff come to their senses and wonder where they are; and when the U.N.I.T. soldiers come for Miss Kizlet, they find her with the mind of a confused child, having been in service to the Great Intelligence for so very long…

Some time later, Clara sees the TARDIS parked outside the Maitland family home. Entering the ship Clara finds the Doctor sitting alone waiting for her; but when the Time Lord asks her to travel in time and space with him, Clara turns him down… but then tells him to come back the next day, when she might say yes. After Clara has left, the Doctor sets the ship’s controls – it is finally time for him to find out who Clara really is…

Matt Smith (The Doctor), Jenna-Louise Coleman (Clara Oswald), Manpreet Bachu (Nabile), Sean Knopp (Paul), James Green (The Abbott), Eve De Leon Allan (Angie), Kassius Carey Johnson (Artie), Geoff Francis (George), Celia Imrie (Miss Kizlet), Robert Whitelock (Mahler), Dan Li (Alexi Chen), Daniella Eames (Little Girl), Anthony Edridge (Pilot), Fred Pearson (Barista), Jade Anouka (Waitress), Olivia Hill (Newsreader), Matthew Earley (Man With Chips), Isabella Blake-Thomas (Child reading Comic), Richard E. Grant (Great Intelligence)

Directed by Colm McCarthy
Produced by Denise Paul
Series Producer Marcus Wilson
Executive Producers Steven Moffat and Caroline Skinner
A BBC Wales production

TX (BBC 1 & BBC 1 HD):
30th March 2013 @ 6.15 pm

Notes:
*Featuring the Eleventh Doctor, and re-re-introducing Clara

*The BBC released a two-and-a-half minute prequel to this story on 23rd March; written by Steven Moffat, it saw the Doctor take a break on Earth, despondent that he can't find Clara; wandering around in the hope that he will bump into her again, he plays on a park swing, and meets a little girl with some good advice...

*The BBC ident leading into this episode distorted and strange symbols appeared, as if hacked by the Great Intelligence…

*To tie-in with this episode, BBC Books released 'Summer Falls' (the book that was being read by Clara's charge, Artie Maitland) as an ebook, on 4th April