Doctor Who Season 11: 10 BIg Questions After The Ghost Monument
2. Will We Be Seeing Desolation Or Epzo And Angstrom Again?
This episode was filmed mostly in South Africa, along with next week’s Rosa. It’s unlikely then that in the space of three weeks they also shot some scenes for later in the series. But Desolation does appear to have a wider significance. The TARDIS has travelled there for a reason and the 1000 years cycle suggested that we might revisit the place in an earlier time, perhaps before the planet was ‘made bad’ and with the scientists still in residence. All this could be achieved in the studio and with visual effects given that the planet would have looked quite different.
So what of Epzo and Angstrom? Steven Moffat had a habit of bringing back seemingly one off characters for his series finales (e.g Churchill and Liz Ten) but will Chibnall follow suit? Certainly the two guest characters were interesting enough, and Angstrom in particular has some unfinished business with the Stenza. It’s also possible, if unlikely, that the TARDIS crew will bump into them again at an earlier stage in their race.
What we are almost certainly going to see is some further call backs to the work of the scientists in this episode. We have seen some of the weapons of mass destruction that they had been forced to develop for the Stenza and there is a good chance that the Doctor and her friends will encounter some others in their travels.