The Eight-Eleven Trilogy

"There's only one thing worse than an angry Doctor... two of them!"

- River Song

 or sometimes known as The Bridge Trilogy was a series of Doctor Who that served as a bridge between Series 6A and Series 6B. It was commissioned to mark the 15th anniversary of Paul McGann's first appearance as The Doctor, although this was not announced until after the first instalment aired.

Details
After A Good Man Goes to War aired on June 4th 2011, it was announced that while Doctor Who would return in the Autumn in Let's Kill Hitler. However, a week later, executive producer Steven Moffat announced that a surprise trio of episodes he had nicknamed The Bridge Trilogy to connect the two segments of series 6 together.

A trailer for the series aired on BBC One on June 15th 2011 and confirmed the returns of Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill and Alex Kingston alongside Matt Smith. The trailer also confirmed the return of Suranne Jones, this time as Eternity, a new humanoid version of the TARDIS.

Episode 1 of the trilogy premiered on July 2nd 2011 and ended with a shock unannounced twist, Paul McGann was returning to the show for a brief stint, along with companion Tamsin Drew played by Niky Wardley, who had previously played the character on audio. Episode 2 saw the surprise return of Derek Jacobi and the concluding episode saw the returns of Freema Agyeman, Noel Clarke, Catherine Tate, Sophie Aldred, Katy Manning and Bernard Cribbins with Sheridan Smith making a small cameo in her first on-screen appearance as Lucie Miller.

The trilogy aired to critical acclaim and fan delight, with fans praising McGann's and Jacobi's returns.

Production
It was revealed in the companion series Doctor Who Confidential that shooting for the trilogy began shortly after filming concluded on the first half of series 6. However, scripts had been written separately by Steven Moffat and Russell T Davies (who returned to the show for the first time since 2009) and the series was filmed as a separate project under the pseudonym 'November 28th' (a date formed by 3 key numbers; 2 doctors, doctor 8 and doctor 11 = 28/11) in order to avoid press attention. Filming concluded in late May.