Ah, very clever! I wonder how many other references to the classic series there are scattered amongst Moffat's other episodes?
Folk on the internet reckon Clara being called Clara and not Jasmine, as was the original intention when Moffat originally planned for the character to just be a Victorian governess, was a tribute to Elisabeth Sladen, whose middle name was Clara. And obviously, her working at Coal Hill school harks back to the very beginnings of the show.
But I dunno, I think Moffat is just so good at chucking seemingly incidental lines of dialogue in, and then get expanding on them at a later date, to totally flip whatever meaning something originally had on its head (12th DOCTOR to CLARA: You look at me and you can't see me... Have you any idea what that's like?), that I'm sure he's worked backwards before now (and not just when writing for River) and probably written whole scenes based off one throwaway line in some obscure Patrick Troughton episode from 1967 or something. 



RE Chibnall taking over: I'm sure he'll make a great showrunner, but I wouldn't be surprised if the show takes a little while to find its feet again, when that safety net that is the guarantee of every year getting something utterly brilliant in from Moffat is no longer there.
I mean, as much as those miserable sods on social media might like to trot out the old "Capaldi's been let down by the writers" shite (just as they did when Smith was the incumbent, and probably when Tennant was acting out RTD's scripts as well), for him to have written Listen and Heaven Sent, after having been at this lark for over a decade now, is bloody impressive.

And so my ideal scenario for the show going forwards, would be for Capaldi to stay on under Chibnall (because a) he's ace and he needn't make the mistake of leaving too soon like (in my opinion) Smith did, for fear of being typecast, because he's already an established actor; and b) as sterling as the work Moffat and Co. have put into series 8 and 9 has been, you do get the sense the show's creative team could do with a freshening up - and I'd love to see Capaldi at the helm for a series of Who that felt totally new and revitalised), with Moffat popping up every now and then to inject some of his customary twisted romance into proceedings   
Maybe he could even write Capaldi's regeneration episode. He's put so much development into 12's character, it would be a shame if he didn't have some say in how that particular story ends... 

Interesting - thanks for posting! This is definitely one of the most sought-after missing stories. The BBC have done something similar for stories where only odd episodes survive, but this would be the first fully-animated reconstruction.

The amazing thing is that back in the 60s several fans were dedicated enough to make their own audio recordings of all the episodes as they were broadcast.

Some placed a microphone next to the TV speaker, whilst others got better sound quality by connecting their tape deck directly to the set’s audio circuitry. These recordings have since been digitally restored by Mark Ayres, and released on CD with new linking narration.

Many of the missing Doctor Who episodes are also represented by off-screen photographs (known as TeleSnaps), which were taken during the original broadcast by a guy called John Cura.

In the days before home video he ran a business selling photographs of TV programmes to their producers and directors, giving them a permanent record of their productions. When scanned and synchronized with the off-air soundtracks, they can be used to help restore the missing episodes.

I like that Capaldi seems to treat being the Doctor as a sort of public service. You see him do this kind of thing quite a lot. And then there's the pictures on Twitter, of him with the same couple of fanatics who track them down to wherever the crew sets up to film in that particular week, and demand he take pictures with them over and over and over again.
It can't be easy, what with all the hours he loses from his days just from filming (and then going all around the world to promote what they've filmed), but he seems to have inexhaustible patience for the fans. Probably helps he was such a fanboy himself in his formative years...
Anyway, he's a good egg is what I'm saying. 

I love this, from the script for 'Hell Bent':

 




Capaldi was a punk and he loves Bowie. Matt Smith is a big fan of both Radiohead and Oasis. 

I'm just saying...

Something random I never knew from Supersonic -Guigsy is a Doctor Who fan.

I think Noel's comment was along the lines that Guigs is a stoner obsessed with cricket, reggae, Doctor Who... and then Oasis came some way further down his list of priorities

^

Eccleston still looking cool!

53 years ago today we first heard the Doctor Who theme, which was composed by Ron Grainer and realised electronically by Delia Derbyshire at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Musical genius.



Mark Ayres has documented the creation of the Doctor Who theme in an in-depth article for the Effectrode website. Great, long read: www.effectrode.com/making-of-the-doctor-who-theme-music/

Here's a link to something I've been working on. Oscillate Wildly is my new site about musical pioneer Delia Derbyshire...



(Note - site navigation via Android devices is tricky at the moment, due to an issue with Wordpress (same as on Oasis Recording Info); I'm working on fixing this for both sites as soon as possible). With that in mind, here are direct links to the articles added so far. Just a few pages to begin with, but I hope you like them. More to follow in the new year. 

Interviewer: You've even got the likes of the Prime Minister, who says, you know, she's really looking forward to seeing [the Christmas special]... I mean, you've got plenty of famous fans, no doubt?
Peter Capaldi: Yes. That was quite a surprise [to learn] that she was so keen on it. So I hope she takes his message of tolerance and kindness and compassion to heart. 

Doctor Who's constant fits and starts has been incredibly irritating since Cipaldi began. Wonder if he finally got fed-up. Having two episodes and waiting 6+ months for more is incompetent.