Next week's episode looks like another "filler" episode. I don't mean that as a negative thing, it just doesn't appear to be like an important episode to the season.
I dunno, hard to tell. It certainly seems to do more than previous episodes on the whole Clara/Danny thing, which seems to be a big part of the arc (having met Orson as well). As is often the case with Moffat, we won't really know until the end of the season!
Oh right, the Danny Pink thing! Moffat has a writing credit on it too. The Doctor currently knows very little of Clara's latest love interest, so things will likely progress there. I was only thinking of the monster itself, so it doesn't seem to be a really pivotal episode.
But even then, we may still see more of Missy and the promised land. This week looks to be another robot, and we've already had a few other robots involved with that story line. Coincidence? Maybe, but I'm all for more robots.
Actually from what I've heard, there's another character besides Danny that appears in The Caretaker that carries over to the following episode, Kill the Moon, which seems to set up the rest of the season.
What's so special about Kill The Moon?
Well, for starters, the writer of the episode (Peter Harness) was instructed by Steven Moffat to "Hinchcliffe the shit out of the first half of the episode." Furthermore, apparently the last scene in the episode is Moffat's favorite moment in the entire season.
Here's the official plot summary that was announced:
"In the near future, the Doctor and Clara arrive on a decrepit shuttle making a suicide mission to the Moon. Crashing on the lunar surface, they find a mining base full of eviscerated corpses, spider-like creatures scuttling about in the dark, and a terrible dilemma."