Doctor Who: 10 Things You Never Knew About The Day Of The Doctor

5. The End Of The Shakespeare Code Explained

Way back in Series 3, the Tenth Doctor and Martha paid a visit to William Shakespeare and had a brief encounter with Queen Elizabeth I - a very brief encounter. In fact, within seconds she ordered her guards to execute the Doctor as soon as she laid eyes on him. Before retreating into the safety of the TARDIS, the Doctor remarked that he couldn't wait to find out what her outbreak was all about. When the Doctor arrived on the Oodsphere in The End of Time, he told Ood Sigma that one thing he had done on his way to answer the Oods' summons was get married... to none other than Good Queen Bess herself. The Doctor also admitted that this particular adventure had been a mistake. The Day of the Doctor showed us what precisely happened with that adventure that led to the Doctor having some unpleasant memories. He had been wooing Elizabeth while investigating a possible Zygon invasion; his chief suspicion was that the Zygons had replaced the monarch with a duplicate. Unfortunately for him, it was the real queen all along, and she had fallen in love with the Doctor... something, as always, he had not foreseen. Not many people had expected the Elizabethan time loop from The Shakespeare Code to be closed, especially in the 50th anniversary, so to have it included was a nice treat.