10 Best Doctor Who Minisodes That You Need To See

The Doctor’s Meditation is a prequel to Series 9, and provides further context to how Twelve ends up at an endless party in medieval England in The Magician’s Apprentice. One of only a few Capaldi minisodes, it tackles the Doctor’s compulsion to put off the inevitable, having received a request for help from a dying Davros that he almost certainly suspects is a trap. Despite knowing that accepting Davros’ request would be suicidal, the Doctor knows he must go, because it isn’t in his nature to deny requests for help, and there may be a slight chance, however small, that Davros is telling the truth.

This minisode finds the Doctor attempting to meditate on this, attempting to psych himself up, and failing spectacularly. He is joined by his friend, Bors (who later appears in The Magician’s Apprentice, when the Doctor arrives on a tank, playing his own theme song on an electric guitar - a scene I unashamedly love).

Unable to commit to the meditation, The Doctor jumps to the first excuse to procrastinate that he can find, complaining about the quality of the drinking water and insisting he must do something about it before he can truly meditate. So, Twelve leads small company beyond the walls of the keep on a quest to construct a well. This quest ends up taking twelve days, as the Doctor, knowingly or unknowingly, keeps choosing spots where there is no water and leading his friends on a prolonged goose chase. Eventually, The Doctor returns to his room, promising he will meditate, and that will be his last night at the keep before he departs on his suicide mission. Interestingly, The Doctor openly states here that he has ADHD, something that makes complete sense given everything we know about the Doctor but has never been acknowledged quite so directly.

Try as he might, The Doctor still tries to find reasons to postpone his meditation, before Bors tells the Doctor it just isn’t in his nature to do something like this, suggesting that, if it is to be his last night here, they should throw a big party instead. A party which, as we later discover, lasts considerably longer than a single night. Instead of finishing his meditation, The Doctor opens up to Bors, talking to his friend about the dilemma that is plaguing him, leading into the cold open of The Magician’s Apprentice as he recounts meeting a young Davros on a faraway battlefield.

This minisode feels like it plugs a very natural gap between series 8 and 9, as we discover what The Doctor has been doing, providing a lot of missing context to the slightly confusing start to series 9. It’s also a good exploration of the Doctor’s grappling between being selfish and selfless. Plus, with so few minisodes set in Twelve’s era, this little bit of extra time with his incarnation is very welcome.