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Given this episode’s Eurovision connection, I fully expected to dislike it. To my surprise, I enjoyed it. I thought it was going to be a light (lightweight, lighthearted) episode, and it was anything but.

Seeing all of those people swept out of the dome into space was truly unsettling. I’m not sure how the mavity field protected them. Yes,…[Read more]

(Oops, wrong thread.)

@mudlark Excellent analysis of this episode. It helped me pull together the many ideas that were flying by. Beautifully, but still flying by. As others have noted, this impressed me as a testament to how powerful stories are in our lives, helping us to give meaning to actions and events that may seem inexplicable. And the power of forgiveness. And…[Read more]

So, immediately following “The Well” I found this one a bit of a disappointment. Millie Gibson was wonderful. It reminded me of my disappointment that she got only one season as the Doctor’s companion. I did think it was a nice callback to “Blink” in that we only saw the Doctor and Belinda together at the beginning of the episode.

However, we did…[Read more]

Oh, now we’re talkin’! I just watched “The Well” and was completely enthralled throughout. I felt that Ncuti Gatwa really came into his own as the Doctor. Now I don’t see the actor, I see the Doctor. And Varada Sethu was every bit as good as Belinda. That’s impressive, considering how early on she is in her tenure as the companion. When Bel asked…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u   I’d forgotten the exact dialogue.   That discussion of ‘variables not being equally weighted’ sounds like mumbo-jumbo to me, I’m pretty sure that with a multi-digit code like that, the ‘variables’ are exactly equally weighted, any number is exactly as probable as 9,999 others.   The Tardis (which is presumably also a super…[Read more]

BTW, I did not recognize Linus Roache as the projectionist. I recognized his voice, but couldn’t place him. I kept thinking of Stephen Colbert, though I knew full well it wasn’t him.

And, I see that others liked the trio of fans. Maybe this episode deserves a rewatch. I might enjoy them more on second viewing.

I was really into the first half of this episode. I enjoyed the creativity of a cartoon becoming real, and how that idea was executed in the cinema … er, picture show. What better force to have behind that than Disney? At least initially, Lux seemed truly scary. But then he got … annoying.

And, did we have to bring religion into it? I know…[Read more]

@nerys @dentarthurdent

This isn’t really an explanation but…

DOCTOR: ….four digits. That narrows it down to a possible 10,000 numbers. Feeling lucky?
JOY: Really not.
DOCTOR: I mean, the variables are never equally weighted. I could figure it out if I just had…
JOY: What?
DOCTOR: Time. The Time Hotel.
JOY: The what?
DOCTOR: I couldn’t use t…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent In the past, I felt that Moff created elegant (though occasionally convoluted) solutions to crucial problems, giving the audience the aha moment we craved. It just didn’t happen this time … which surprised me.

However, when I do a search, the overview we’re given suggests that your conclusion is the correct one:

The Doctor…

[Read more]

@nerys   I didn’t put any effort into making my ‘theory’ of the briefcase code work, it’s just a conclusion I came to.   I can’t say I like it very much.   But, to mangle Sherlock Holmes, ‘when you have eliminated every other possibility, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth’.

I don’t like it very much.   This is definit…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent @thane16

You made me watch The Pilot again. Really NOT a problem… indeed from the age when watching Who REALLY wasn’t a problem.

’The Pilot.’ I feel there’s story in the title…

Moff’s given another chance? ‘No no you’ll just scare the broadsheets with your saphic africs…’

Moff given a surprise extra series? ‘Chibnall is…[Read more]

Something I forgot to mention: The scene in the field hospital where Belinda discovers the X-ray blankets was one of the best moments in the episode. Charming (especially when the Doctor uses the blanket to reveal his two hearts) and illuminating, without a lot of heavy-handed preaching.

Belinda asks if Missbelindachandrakind having a second…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent I think you are correct on both counts, re: Omicron and its timing. This variant was much more infectious, yet less dangerous, so people began dropping their guard somewhat. And, frankly, I think isolation fatigue had set in.

As I recall, when the first wave of Omicron hit, Atlantic Canada escaped the brunt of it because…[Read more]

I enjoyed this episode despite the on-the-nose incel and coercive control terminology, which I felt was too much tell, not enough show (as in, “show me, don’t tell me”). Also, @blenkinsopthebrave I too found it odd that the Doctor causing a power outage in a major hospital was played for laughs. Had it happened in a shopping mall, OK. But that…[Read more]

@nerys   I guess Nova Scotia was a bit like New Zealand in respect of Covid, being relatively easy to isolate.    Omicron was, I think, way more infectious than previous variants, but probably less deadly.   Also, I think, by then people were starting to get a bit more blase about precautions.   Part of the rationale for the precautions was not…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent Re: COVID, I’m in Nova Scotia, where we were part of the Atlantic Bubble that saw very few cases in the first two years of the pandemic, compared to the rest of Canada. Then along came Omicron and its variants, and suddenly we had a surge of cases. Before Omicron, Nova Scotia was exceptional for its lack of cases, but once Omicron…[Read more]

@nerys I agree about Anita, I really liked her. I would have liked to see her as a Companion.   The Time Hotel is, of course, a species of time machine. I’m sure it generates all sorts of time paradoxes.

The just-married couple in Anita’s Sandringham Hotel honeymoon suite took the Doctor’s incursion remarkably calmly, I thought. Just a reminder t…[Read more]

Back to “Joy to the World”: Something I forgot to mention in my previous post is the exchange between Joy and the Doctor, when she realized that he’d been deliberately cruel to distract her enough to release her from the briefcase. It struck me as redundant that the Doctor felt he had to explain it to her … twice. Joy’s facial expression told me…[Read more]