Colbert Bump: Due to popular demand, the publishers of The Beano issued a special reprint of the Summer Special the Doctor is seen reading shortly after this episode aired.
Creator's Favourite Episode: Jenna Coleman named this as one of her favourites of the second half of the seventh series, as it was the first adventure for Clara which allowed the audience to watch the story "[begin] again".
Promoted Fanboy: Neil Cross grew up watching Doctor Who, and made sure to mention the show at every BBC meeting he had for other series, until the Doctor Who crew eventually noticed him. (Not only that, he was awarded two episodes to write in Series 7.)
Prop Recycling: Most of the aliens in the bazaar are made of bits of props left over from previous Who aliens or ones from other BBC shows.
The episode originally had a different cold opening, where Clara talks to the Doctor about how she can’t come and travel with the Doctor because of her babysitting job, and Artie, the boy she takes care of, asks if the Doctor is her boyfriend. The writer Neil Cross wanted to juxtapose her regular life with the fantastical planet in this story. Steven Moffat decided that Clara would investigate through her parents.
Akhaten was once called Akhet, which stuck around through the Sun Singers of Akhet.
Word of God: States that Rezh Baphix, the temple monk, was attempting to save himself and leave the others to be eaten by the Old God when he teleported away.
Working Title: Alien Planet. Neil Cross wanted to focus on the living planet Akhaten and creating its people and culture (which he based on the Cthulhu Mythos), before making the plot around this setting.
Behind the scenes, it was a time of sadness during the episode's original broadcast: The news of the closure of the TV VFX department of The Mill, the London-based Visual Effects company that worked on Doctor Who's VFX for the entirety of the revived run of the series. The rest of the series had to make do with some fairly bad VFX. However, a new VFX house, Milk VFX, comprising of some of the founders and employees of The Mill, later made the VFX for the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special, and several episodes after that.
