They attend a religious festival where the young Queen of Years, Merry Gejelh (Emilia Jones), is about to be sacrificed to the parasite of Akhaten.

"The Rings of Akhaten", as Clara's first trip to an alien world, was intended to show the wonders of the universe instead of the Doctor getting his new companion trapped somewhere less glamorous, a trend that had been observed in the history of the programme.

He finds that her parents met by a chance encounter caused by a gust of wind blowing a leaf into her father's face and discovers that her mother died while Clara was a teenager.

Clara and Merry flee back to the ceremony and the Doctor faces the creature, realising it feeds off memories, stories, and feelings.

He tries to overfeed it by offering the sum total of his Time Lord memories; Merry also leads the citizens in a song of hope, confusing Akhaten who then disappears.

The opening scene in "The Rings of Akhaten" explains this statement, showing how a mishap involving the leaf led to her parents' first meeting.

[4] In his speech to Merry Gejelh, the Doctor cites Lewis Carroll's poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter" when he mentions "...shoes and ships and sealing-wax [...] cabbages and kings...".

Executive producer Caroline Skinner, who was new with the seventh series, knew him and offered to work his schedule around writing an episode; he was willing to do it.

[9] Actor Jenna-Louise Coleman named "The Rings of Akhaten" 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".

[11] They decided to do a story set in "a world created in our studios to make you really feel you're out there", rather than having the Doctor "promise unearthly wonders to his companions, and then get them trapped in an underground tunnel".

For example, Cross recalled that producer Marcus Wilson called him and asked, "We've always wanted to have a speeder-bike like in Return of the Jedi and we know how to do it inexpensively, so can you get one into the story?

[20] When time-shifted viewers were factored in, the final rating rose to 7.45 million, making it the sixth most-watched programme of the week on BBC One.

[21] In addition, "The Rings of Akhaten" received over two million requests on the online BBC iPlayer in April, coming in first for the month on the service.

[24][25] The Guardian reviewer Dan Martin described the story as "slight and straightforward [but] told it in broad and effective strokes" with "gorgeous" visuals.

[27] Gavin Fuller of The Daily Telegraph gave the episode three and a half out of five stars and called it "a mixed bag ... but still with enough elements of uniqueness to demonstrate, almost 50 years on, just why there is still nothing like Doctor Who on television".

He wrote that the religion and singing was well-realised, but felt the "mind parasite" was too similar to the Great Intelligence which was featured the previous week, and also thought the many aliens "gave more than a hint of trying too hard and did not get things off to the best of starts".

He also claimed it seemed like "Cross hadn't seen an episode since the 1980s" and that "even the leftfield mention of the Time War feels as if it's come from a quick consult with Wikipedia."