Episode 1 of new Doctor Who spin-off podcast Doctor Who: Redacted launched on Sunday after the show’s adventurous Easter special, Legend of the Sea Devils.
The 10-part series will follow three university drop-outs, Cleo, Shawna and Abby, who run their own conspiracy podcast ‘The Blue Box Files.’ The trio find themselves wrapped up in their own blue box mystery: everyone who has met the Doctor is disappearing, being forgotten.
Bringing together characters and storylines from all over the Whoniverse, the first episode is filled to the brim with Easter eggs, references and exciting cameos.
Read on for a full list of all the fun references to Whostory in Doctor Who: Redacted episode 1.
Adipose Industries/Penny Carter
The first Blue Box Files episode we hear focuses on the events of Partners in Crime (2008). This Tenth Doctor adventure saw the Doctor and Donna Noble tackle Adipose Industries, a diet pill company that turned people’s fat into baby aliens called Adipose.
Cleo, Abby and Shawna discuss the events of the alien invasion and interview Penny Carter, a journalist who investigated the adipose pills at the time. During Partners in Crime, Penny’s efforts to uncover the mystery are thwarted by the Doctor and Donna on multiple occasions and she leaves the story exclaiming that she will report the time-travelling duo for ‘madness’.
While being interviewed, Penny explains that she saw aliens and a man in a blue box but the details after that are a little sketchy. This is the first character we meet who can no longer remember our favourite Time Lord at all. She just remembers one thing – he was called the Doctor.
The Powell Estate
While the Blue Box Files trio are retelling the day the adipose invaded, Cleo mentions a ‘drunk woman’ from the Powell Estate who was ‘always going on about it’. Famously home to Rose Tyler, Jackie Tyler and Mickey Smith, the Powell Estate was the centre of many Who stories during 2005 and 2006. From Autons and Slitheen to Pilot Fish and Cybermen, the TARDIS was a regular visitor at the tower block of flats. Are the residents of the Powell Estate about to forget all their memories of the Doctor and the TARDIS?
Yeti ‘person’
After meeting Penny, we hear Cleo mention she accidentally deleted a previous interview, referring to the interviewee as ‘that Yeti person’. As the podcast team are covering Earth sightings of the Doctor, it’s safe to say that this is a reference to the robot Yeti, who appeared in Second Doctor stories The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear.
The Yeti terrorised the Himalayas in 1935, created by the Great Intelligence as servants and an army. Some were reactivated and brought to London over 30 years later to haunt the London Underground railway system. Sightings of a Yeti and the TARDIS in London must have led our Blue Box Files girls on an investigation into these historic classic Who events.
Graham and Ryan
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Later in the episode, Abby overhears a news bulletin playing in a café; an appeal for information regarding the disappearance of Thirteenth Doctor companions Graham O’Brian and Ryan Sinclair. The pair travelled with the Doctor from 2018 to early 2021 but were left safely in Sheffield at the end of New Year’s special Revolution of the Daleks.
There are numerous occasions where characters forget the Doctor throughout this episode, as well as the mysterious disappearance of two of her most recent companions. Are we seeing the redaction of the Doctor in different stages?
LINDA
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The 2006 Tenth Doctor story, Love and Monsters, featured a group of people whose lives had been touched by the Doctor and were determined to find out more about the mysterious Time Lord. They formed LINDA; The London Investigation ‘N’ Detective Agency.
The gang weren’t too dissimilar to the Blue Box Files girls in their passion for discovering more about alien invasions and TARDIS sightings. Unfortunately, all but one member of LINDA were absorbed by the aptly named Absorbaloff, who joined their club in a quest to find and absorb the Doctor. Shawna wonders if Penny is ‘another blue box fruitcake from LINDA’, the legend of previous Doctor fanatics passed on.
Rani Chandra
The end of the episode features an appearance from Rani Chandra. Rani fought aliens alongside 70’s Doctor Who companion Sarah-Jane Smith in The Sarah Jane Adventures and met the Doctor on multiple occasions. Rani warns Cleo that the Doctor is killing them, leaving us on a huge cliffhanger.
Is she referring to the fact that everyone who knows the Doctor is being redacted from history; that the very act of knowing the Doctor is killing them? The cast list for Redacted features other friends of the Doctor such as Madame Vastra, Kate Stewart and Osgood – and with the Blue Box Files focussing on TARDIS sightings throughout history, we’re bound to hear from many a ghost from the Doctor’s past in episodes to come…
The first episode of Doctor Who: Redacted is available on BBC Sounds. Doctor Who will return to BBC One and BBC iPlayer later this year. All 13 series of Doctor Who are available to watch now on Prime Video – sign up for a Prime Video free trial. For more news, interviews and features, check out our dedicated Sci-Fi page or our full TV Guide.
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