This year marks the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley‘s classic novel Frankenstein, a current selection in PBS The Great American Read, which shines a spotlight on America’s 100 favorite novels. A campaign has been going on for months, where people have been voting for their favorites from the list, with the winner to be revealed on the digital series’ grand finale on October 23, 2018.

For the occasion, PBS Digital Studios has released a short, educational video called “Rethinking Frankenstein’s Monster,” hosted by Dr. Emily Zarka for the digital show Monstrum. The video explores the famous monster, who, fans of the novel already know, is a much more complex being than people realize, as well as gives a short history of Mary Shelley and her inspiration for the novel.

It begins with a knock at the TARDIS door, while still in deep space, and an important message from a long-lost Time Lord friend. The distress signal prompts the Doctor (Matt Smith), Amy Pond (Karen Gillan), and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) to literally leave the universe, and leads them to a junkyard asteroid. The matrix and power of the TARDIS is immediately drained, leaving them stranded on this odd world, where they confront a mysterious entity called the House (Michael Sheen). What secrets does the mad bitey woman known as Idris (Suranne Jones) hold for the Doctor?

During TARDISblend 26, we review the events of the long-awaited Neil Gaiman-penned episode, The Doctor’s Wife, an episode that proves to be much of the best Doctor Who has offered in a long time.

In one of perhaps the most unusual cameos to ever happen in Doctor Who ever, NBC’s Meredith Vieira from the Today show makes an appearance on one of the closing episodes of the current series. After filming her cameo, Vieira aired a segment on her morning talk show, which you can check out at the bottom of this post.

Vieira’s segment not only features some cool “in-character” interviews with The Doctor (Matt Smith) and River Song (Alex Kingston), but some spoilery revelations as well.

While I love the fact that showrunner Steven Moffat and the Doctor Who crew give out little tidbits, teasers, and clues in the lead-up to the airing of episodes; I’m extremely surprised that they let some of these spoilers slip out (and be seen!) in Vieira’s segment for the Today show.

That being said, some of the footage and discussion in the video does match up with some of the theories that we’ve recently been discussing on the TARDISblend podcast.