In the Prequel, the Doctor is sitting on a swing in a children’s playground and meets a little girl. They talk about losing things and he says he has lost someone twice and hopes to find her again. She says that she goes to a quiet place when she has lost something, and sometimes she remembers where it was. As she leaves, it is revealed that she is Clara Oswald.
The Doctor (Matt Smith) is in a monastery in Cumbria in 1207, contemplating the mystery of Clara Oswald (Jenna-Louise Colman). He has met her twice, but she died both times. The outside phone of the TARDIS rings, though it is not connected. It is Clara herself who believes the phone number is a computer helpline. He sets out to meet her.
In present-Day London, the Doctor finds Clara being uploaded via a mobile robotic server disguised as a young girl. He stops the procedure and puts Clara under his protection. Such uploadings are going on all over Earth. This causes a plane to go into a dive above them, but the Doctor and Clara board the TARDIS and stop it from crashing.
They move to a café, where Clara uses her computer skills to track the uploaders to their base at the London structure called the Shard. The Doctor encounters people under the control of Miss Kislet (Celia Imrie), who distracts the Doctor long enough for an uploader disguised as the Doctor to upload Clara. The angry Doctor reprograms the server and sets out to Miss Kislet’s office in the Shard. She refuses to release her captives, so the Doctor uploads her to the network herself.
The only way she can obtain release is to release everyone, which she does. She reports to her client, the Great Intelligence (Richard E. Grant) that she has failed, and he resets everyone back to normal. The Doctor asks Clara to travel with him, but she tells him to come back in the morning.
A book entitled Summer Falls appears, written by Amelia Williams, who is Amy Pond. The Bells of Saint John refers to the Saint Johns Ambulance blue box. The episode was praised for the chemistry between Clara and the Doctor but criticized for the plot. It was designed to be a fast-paced adventure like James Bond or the Bourne Identity. Steven Moffat wanted to create a ubiquitous villain and chose the Internet. There is a new theme and a new opening logo.