Down Home on the TARDIS

The forthcoming dvd for the most recent series of Doctor Who includes two extra scenes, which as it happens are also available – at least for the moment – on YouTube, so watch ’em while you can.

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy there’s a beverage dispenser on the spaceship that Douglas Adams describes this way:

When the ‘Drink’ button is pressed it makes an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject’s taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject’s metabolism, and then sends tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject’s brain to see what is likely to be well received. However, no one knows quite why it does this, because it then invariably delivers a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

Steven Moffat pretty clearly had this passage in mind when he wrote the first scene below. It takes place between “The Eleventh Hour” and “The Beast Below”:

If you’re worried about Amy’s fate at the end there, recall the opening of “The Beast Below”:

The second extra scene takes place between “Flesh and Stone” and “Vampires of Venice,” immediately after Amy’s failed attempt to seduce the Doctor: