Doctor Who: 13 Cool Details Steven Moffat Just Revealed About The Girl In The Fireplace

10. This Is How The Doctor Could Tell The Clockwork Droids Were Scanning Reinette's Brain

Doctor Who The Girl in the Fireplace Reinette David Tennant
BBC/Twitter: @StevenWMoffat

Just after that shot of Paris, the Doctor has his first run-in with a clockwork droid, before discovering that the villains have been "scanning" Reinette's brain.

When you watch the episode normally, it's not really clear how the Doctor knows about the brain scanning thing - he just grabs her head, looks at her for a second, and then makes that assertion.

As Doctor Who fans, we're used to explaining unusual things by saying "well... it's because the Doctor is really clever!" but in this case, we have more of an explanation than that.

According to Moffat, the Doctor knows that Reinette's brain is being scanned because of her irises. Presumably, they look different in some way, and he's able to use this information to deduce what the droids have been doing.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!