Trivia / Doctor Who S40E2 "The Devil's Chord"

• California Doubling: A street in Cardiff was made to resemble Abbey Road on the album cover, and the background was covered in a blue screen to be replaced with the digital background of the real Abbey Road.
• The Cast Show Off: The Dance Party Ending gives Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson a chance to show off their singing and dancing skills.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Downplayed; while Maestro is a godlike entity from beyond time and space and thus probably doesn't have a traditional gender, they do explicitly use they/them personal pronouns, and they're played by iconic drag queen Jinkx Monsoon. Of course, it is worth noting that the Toymaker does use he/him pronouns and Maestro is implied to have had a bad relationship with their "Daddy", so perhaps even extradimensional cosmic entities can be transphobic (though, given that it's the Toymaker we're talking about, that's not too surprising).
• Real Life Writes the Plot: The decision to have the plot revolve around the concept of music being stolen from the world was apparently inspired by licensing issues. Even with a significantly beefed up budget from Disney, the writers realized that they couldn't possibly afford the rights to use any actual Beatles songs without blowing the entire season budget, so the Maestro's plan was created as a way to explain the absence of Beatles music from an episode about the Beatles.
• Throw It In!: The final scene with The Doctor and Ruby walking back to the TARDIS, with the reference to Big was recorded on a day with torrential rain, which caused problems for continuity, as Ncuti and Millie had to bring umbrellas which had been in the musical sequence before. The crew decided that The Doctor and Ruby would keep the umbrellas from the previous sequence as a holdover that would fit as a reference to the musical sequence before.
• Writer Conflicts with Canon: An odd example, given that the same creator was responsible for both: Russell T Davies has previously suggested that the Doctor's bi-generation back in "The Giggle" could have affected his whole timeline and retroactively turned every regeneration into a bi-generation. However, in this episode, the Doctor describes bi-generation as a horrific experience that he doubts he could survive more than once, firmly establishing bi-generation as a one-time event.
• You Look Familiar:
  • Paul McCartney is played by George Caple, who previously played Alfie in "Survivors of the Flux".
  • The elderly woman that Maestro kills is played by June Hudson. She played Mrs. Linderhof in the Class episode "For Tonight We Might Die" and also designed costumes during the Tom Baker era.
  • Susan Twist, who appeared in three of the four previous episodes as different background characters, reappears here as a tea lady. Will there be a Twist at the end?

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