The Inforarium was a Doctor Who mini-episode made exclusively for the series 7 DVD and Blu-ray box sets. It featured a pre-Snowmen Eleventh Doctor, and actually demonstrated how he was deleting himself from history to support his faked death, as was mentioned multiple times throughout the 2012 series.
Plot
The Inforarium — the greatest source of illicit information in recorded history — is compromised. The Doctor appears in a hologram — "Who the hell are you?" He tells a guard that he will be erasing all traces of himself from their database, making everyone forget what they've heard through means he'd adapted from the Silence. He is on a mission to be left alone and is quite annoyed that the Inforarium has been selling information about him to the Daleks, Cybermen, and Sontarans, considering it "very naughty".
The Doctor continues to dismiss the guard's complacency in the Inforarium's security. Though the Doctor cannot wipe out their data banks, he can make sure that anything the guard has just learned about him is going to disappear from his mind. However, the man is simply not convinced. The proof he seeks is then given to him, but with the irony it will forever elude his memory. At the end of the message, the Doctor tells the Guard to check the data banks and the hologram shuts off. The guard completely forgets the whole ordeal. From his perspective, not a moment has passed since the alarms in the Inforarium started to squeal...
Not knowing he's trapped in an endless loop.
The guard notices the data breach alert in the core drives again. He tries to send another distress signal- and triggers the hologram. Then it replays... "Who the hell are you?" The Doctor's hologram chides him again, "How quickly they forget." The guard listens to his message from the top, not noticing he's stuck on a repetitive cycle. This may not even be his first time he's sat through a repeat, but one of many repeats in motion, with many more to come.
Cast
References
Species
- The Inforarium sells information to the Daleks, the Cybermen and the Sontarans.
- The Doctor reverse-engineered the memory-proof ability of the Silents.
Story notes
- The title of the story is given as INFORARIUM (all caps, no "The") on the box set packaging.
Continuity
- The Doctor is erasing himself from history. (TV: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe, Asylum of the Daleks, The Angels Take Manhattan, Nightmare in Silver)
- He adapted the Silence's natural defence mechanism for his own means, and uses it to make any information on him learned at the Inforarium forgotten in seconds.
- He mentions being the last of the Time Lords. (TV: The End of the World, The Long Game, Doomsday, Gridlock, Utopia, Last of the Time Lords, The End of Time, The Beast Below, Amy's Choice)
- The Doctor is wearing his tweed jacket outfit, thus making it likely this story likely takes place during his travels with Amy and Rory, or at least in between them. He undergoes a costume change in TV: The Bells of Saint John after locating Clara Oswald.
- The Inforarium's clientele, composed of the deadliest races in the universe, is the same as that of the Vess. (AUDIO: The Light at the End)
Home video releases
Complete Seventh Series DVD Cover
This mini-episode was released as part of The Complete Seventh Series on DVD and Blu-ray on September 24, 2013.
