The Rings of Akhaten is the seventh episode of the seventh series of Doctor Who. It was written by Neil Cross, directed by Farren Blackburn and featured Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor & Jenna-Louise Coleman as Clara Oswald.
Overview[]
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Synopsis[]
Still not quite able to explain just who she is, the Doctor and Clara set off on their first adventure. He takes her to see the Rings of Akhaten and its famous pyramid. The residents of the several planets rotating around the same sun all believe the pyramid is the source of all life in the universe. There are quite a few visitors there for the Festival of Offerings and Clara and helps a young girl, Merry, to have the confidence to perform an important ceremony to sooth and keep the Old God asleep. When Merry is drawn into the pyramid the Doctor and Clara go after her. When the Old God awakens, it's no match for the Doctor... or for Clara for that matter.
Plot[]
London, 1981, Dave Oswald is walking alone trying to unfurl a newspaper when a leaf is plucked from a treee by the wind and strikes him in the face, momentarily blinding him and sending him spralling into the road to be nearly hit by a car before he is pulled clear by Ellie Ravenwood. Unbeknowst to them, this congruous meeting was observed from afar by the Doctor. In the following years, Dave and Ellie fall in love, marry and have a daughter, Clara Oswald, key events also being watched by the Doctor.
After speaking with them firsthand and jumping ahead to watch over Clara and Dave at Ellie's funeral premature death, he returned to his TARDIS, still none the wiser as to who Clara is or how he could have met her and watched her die twice before. Returning to an adult Clara the following day to her previous adventure, the Doctor invites Clara to choose their destination while she rattles off a number of inane questions about how the TARDIS works before she requests for him to show her "something awesome".
Obliging her request, the Doctor lands the TARDIS on the outskirts of the Rings of Akhaten, a belt of inhabited asteroids orbitting a planet which, according to some stories, was were all life in the universe originated. A golden pyramid in the distance comes into view, a holy site for the Sun-singers of Akhet. Clara asks to observe closer and the Doctor makes a short jump onto the nearest asteroid, into a bustling street market occupied left, right and center with life forms of every shape and size, leaving Clara further awestruck.
The Doctor explains to Clara that the inhabitants are here for the Festival of Offerings, a religious ceremony dedicated to a sleeping god in the pyramid wherein multitudes of races would come and make offerings to it. Clara wanders into a moped saleswoman named Dor'een whom (through barks that the Doctor has to translate) attempts to offer her a vehicle for something of value of her, the traditional form of exchange on the rings. After the Doctor wanders off, Clara notices a frightened girl cowering in the crowd and follows her to a secluded area where she explains she is trying to hide.
From out of the dark, three faceless individuals materialise looking for her; Clara earns the girl's favour by offering to take her to somewhere of safety and discreetly leads her back to where the TARDIS landed but finds herself unable to enter, which she takes to mean it doesn't like her. The girl, Merry, hides behind the TARDIS and Clara joins her and learns that she is the designated Queen of Years, selected upon the death of her predecessor, who holds every story and song of her people within her and is supposed to sing a lullaby to the sleeping Old God at the time of festival; Merry confesses she ran because she feared performing it wrong.
Clara tries to bolster Merry's confidence by telling her a story of when she was faced with her greatest fear of getting lost as a child before she was rescued by her mum and told a story that whatever happened, she'd always come for her and assures Merry that she won't get the song wrong and incite 'Grandfather's' anger. Her confidence restored, Merry reveals herself to the other diciples and they escort her to her position. The Doctor reappears and the head in the direction of the ceremony site. In the pyramid, a Chorister kneels before the desicated body of the old god singing to it's slumbering form before his place is taken by another. While the Doctor and Clara take their seats at the ceremony, Merry is lead into position of a pedistal overlooking the pyramid from afar.
The ceremony commences at Merry begins singing the Long Song, a lullaby without end sung in perpetuity to keep the Old God fed and slumbering, in tandem with the Chorister in the pyramid all the while the onlookers present their offerings. All seems to be going well until a sudden rumble echoes out and the song stops, the Chorister's tone turning feaful and sullen. The crowd is silenced when Merry, on her pedistal is lifted into the air by a tractor beam and dragged through the asteroids towards the pyramid. Since nobody appears to offer assistance, the Doctor dashes off out back while Clara protests to him that they can't just walk away and that she's responsible for Merry's partaking at all; the Doctor, however, insists that a key aspect of travelling with him is that they don't walk away.
Returning to Doreen, the Doctor tells Clara he's gone nothing of value to trade sans his sonic screwdriver, which he insists he can't part with for utility purposes, meaning that Clara must offer up her mother's ring, which she wears herself, in exchange for the moped instead. Forlornly, Clara surrenders her ring and they use the moped to chase Merry through the rings trying to catch her and pull her clear but they lose pace and Merry is pulled into the pyramid. As the moped lands, the Doctor tries multiple means of entry through the locked door. Inside, Merry walks up to the mummy in the cell when it's eyes glow and frighten her; the Doctor uses the sonic to trip the frequency lock on the door and lifts it open.
Clara tries to convince Merry to leave with them but she refuses, thinking Clara was lying when she'd told her she wouldn't get it wrong and tells them they have to leave before the Old God up and 'eats their souls'. The Old God doesn't flinch when Merry pins Clara to the glass cage with telepathy and she insists that she's the one he wants, telling them they must leave or die as well; the Doctor, however, instead lets the door drop and locks them inside with it. He notices the Chorister trying to lull the Old God back to sleep again and informs him that it's not going to work; Grandfather is waking up with or without the continuation of the Long Song. Declaring the song finally over, the Chorister teleports out and the Doctor wakes the mummy with the sonic, explaining that he's not waking because of anything Merry's done but because it's time for it to wake.
The Doctor turns to Merry and attempts to convince her not to surrender her soul, or story, to a false god, telling her his own story about how the universe was formed from the Big Bang and the progression of creation across the universe eventually culminating in the creation of the one and only Merry Gajelh; he implores her that forfeiting that is no sacrifice, but a waste. From this, Merry places her trust in the Doctor and releases Clara as the mummy starts to break out. At the same time, the mummy's shadowy servants, the Vigil, appear to give Merry to it as a contingency is the Queen of Years refused to give herself over. They disable the Doctor and Clara and surround Merry, preparing her for Grandfather.
The Doctor regains his composure and fends the Vigil off with the sonic while Clara has Merry open a secondary door with harmonic vocalising and they escape, followed quickly by the Doctor. Once outside, the mummy breaks out of the cage and the Vigil vanish. However, the Doctor realises too late that the Old God and Gradfather, both of who he took to be the mummy, aren't one and the same and that the mummy was just the wake-up call for the real Old God. Up above them, in the center of the rings, the planet itself ripples with energy that forms itself into a face. The Doctor, without a plan, instructs Clara to get Merry to safety while he stays to confront the Old God.
Taking the moped back, Clara, Merry and the amassed alien onlookers watch the Doctor from the distance; Merry, wanting to help, starts to perform a new rendition of the Long Song, now one inviting the Old God's awakening and the crowd starts to join in too. The Doctor hears the chorus from the pyramid and decides to glut the Old God with his own story. As the music continues, the Doctor tells the gargantuan creature about everything he's seen and lost, watching the birth and death of the universe, fighting in the Last Great Time War and emerging the only survivor of the Time Lords. He baits the Old God into feeding from him as he tells his story in the hope that his experiences and memories will overfeed Grandfather and stop it.
However, even after all it's fed on, it rises again for more with the Doctor too weakened to feed it further. Clara returns to the pyramid on the moped, brandishing her 1000 Places to See book that she'd been carrying since arriving and draws from it the leaf that blew into her father's face and caused his meeting with her mother, a leaf representing not only the life Ellie lead with Dave and herself but all the days that she was robbed of in death, the limitless number of days she never got to live with all the potential those unlived days harboured. Presenting it as an offering, the Old God starts to absorb the leaf and recoils. Unlike the value of the past it had previously consumed, the boundless possibilities of a future is eternally greater in power and the Old God collapses on itself.
The Doctor takes Clara back to the Maitlands the same day she left when she remembers seeing the Doctor watching her and Dave at Ellie's grave and asks him why he was there. Unsure of what to tell her, the Doctor tells her she reminds him of a person he'd lost, someone who died, when Clara insists that whoever he's alluding to, she's different and she's not going to be a stand-in for a dead woman, an assertion that the Doctor immediately disuades her of, to her relief. She steps out of the TARDIS and heads back to the house, while the Doctor looks out after her scowling, no closer to knowing who or what Clara really is.
Cast[]
- The Doctor - Matt Smith
- Clara - Jenna-Louise Coleman
- Dave - Michael Dixon
- Ellie - Nicola Sian
- Merry - Emilia Jones
- The Chorister - Chris Anderson
- The Mummy - Aidan Cook
- Dor'een - Karl Greenwood
Crew[]
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References[]
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Story Notes[]
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Continuity []
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Home video and audio releases []
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External Links []
- Official The Rings of Akhaten page on Doctor Who Website