The latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine hints that there’s a scene in The Power of the Doctor that echoes the tales of Sherlock Holmes, written by Arthur Conan Doyle, specifically featuring the Doctor (played by Jodie Whittaker) and the Master (Sacha Dhawan).

Interviewer, Paul Kirkley writes:

“There’s one pivotal, jaw-dropping moment in the episode — no spoilers, but you’ll know it when you see it — that Sacha Dhawan is particularly proud of.

“When the great Terrance Dicks first proposed the character of the Master to producer Barry Letts more than half a century ago, he famously sold him as ‘the Moriarty to the Doctor’s Holmes’. So it’s fitting that Sacha’s Master and Jodie’s Doctor should face each other in their own ‘Reichenbach Falls’ moment.”

Kirkley here is describing the events of The Final Problem, a short story from the 1893 collection, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. This saw Holmes meet his nemesis, Professor Moriarty, with both plunging off the cliff by the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, seemingly to their deaths.

This has led some to question whether this will be how the Thirteenth Doctor dies and regenerates, akin to the Fourth Doctor falling to his death in Logopolis, similarly thanks to the Master.

The Master was last seen in The Timeless Children (2020), upsetting the apple cart twice: firstly, by bringing the Doctor to the wreck of Gallifrey, newly destroyed by the Master himself apparently, having turned the Time Lords into Cybermen; and secondly, by revealing that the Doctor is the Timeless Child, having been found as a youngster on Gallifrey, regenerating, then being experimented on in order to give the Time Lords their curious biology.

Dhawan first played him in Spyfall, bookending Doctor Who Series 12.

The Power of the Doctor will air in October 2022, as part of the BBC’s Centenary celebrations.