page_title: The Rings of Akhaten
section_title: Synopsis
hierarchical_section_title: The Rings of Akhaten / Plot / Synopsis
caption_attribution_description: Doctor Who 50th Celebration Doctor Who Experience
context_page_description: "The Rings of Akhaten" is the seventh episode of the seventh series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, first broadcast on BBC One on 6 April 2013. It was written by Neil Cross and directed by Farren Blackburn.
  In the episode, alien time traveller the Doctor takes his new companion Clara Oswald to the Rings of Akhaten, where several planetoids in a ring system are orbiting a larger planet. They attend a religious festival where the young Queen of Years, Merry Gejelh, is about to be sacrificed to the parasite of Akhaten.
  Cross was asked to write the episode after the success of scripting and shooting "Hide", a later episode. "The Rings of Akhaten", as Clara's first trip to an alien world, was intended to show the wonders of the universe instead of the Doctor getting his new companion trapped somewhere less glamorous, a trend that had been observed in the history of the programme. The episode also explores Clara's backstory. Filmed entirely in-studio in late October 2012, pre-made moulds were utilised for the many different aliens to save money.
context_section_description: The Eleventh Doctor, having seen Clara die twice before, decides to learn more about his new companion and travels into her past to observe her. He finds that her parents met by a chance encounter caused by a gust of wind blowing a leaf into her father's face and discovers that her mother died while Clara was a teenager. The Doctor goes back to the present and collects Clara, then takes her to the Rings of Akhaten, where they observe a series of planetoids in a ring system orbiting a planet, with a shining pyramid on one planetoid. The Doctor takes Clara to a giant alien marketplace where the currency is items of sentimental value. Clara then encounters a girl called Merry Gejelh, the Queen of Years. Merry tells Clara that she is hiding because she is supposed to sing a song at a ceremony and she is afraid to get it wrong. Clara reassures her by telling her what her mother once said, and Merry heads to the ceremony.
  The Doctor and Clara attend the ceremony, where the Doctor explains that since the Rings were settled there has been a constant song sung to keep the Old God of Akhaten asleep. Merry begins singing, joined by a chorister at the pyramid. During the song, a beam of light from the pyramid envelops Merry, and she is pulled toward the pyramid to have her soul sacrificed to Akhaten. The Doctor and Clara rent a space bike which they ride to the pyramid. The Doctor promises Merry that she does not have to sacrifice herself and that he will stop Akhaten. The Doctor lets Clara and Merry escape from the pyramid, but Akhaten, a planet-sized parasitic creature, awakens.
  Clara and Merry flee back to the ceremony and the Doctor faces the creature, realising it feeds off memories, stories, and feelings. He tries to overfeed it by offering the sum total of his Time Lord memories; Merry also leads the citizens in a song of hope, confusing Akhaten who then disappears. However, the Doctor's memories are not enough to sate the creature and Akhaten reappears. Clara returns to help, offering Akhaten the leaf that blew into her father's face on the day he met her mother, which contains an infinite amount of untold potential that Clara's mother never saw because she died early. Akhaten implodes on itself and the Rings are saved.
caption: The Vigil as they appeared at a Doctor Who exhibition.
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