I also think you should recognise when you have picked up offence when absolutely none was intended

The intention of offence is immaterial.  People used to say ‘nigger’ and intend no offence.  […]

How condescending.  But thank you for your precis of cultural references – that added so much to my comprehension of the original blog.

I haven’t seen many of your posts, but the ones I’ve […]

The word ‘mong’ has been in the vernacular here in the UK far longer than that execrable Ricky Gervais ‘sitcom’.  He merely publicised it, on the back of his success with The Office and […]

Sorry, I didn’t see your response before I typed mine.  If RTD used ‘ming-mong’ that still doesn’t make it an acceptable term.  I must stand firm on this.  Terms which are pointlessly […]

Sorry, I got home from work last night feeling like @Arbutus‘s ROUSs had trampled me.  @JimTheFish, ‘ming-mong’ struck a nerve because I work in the mental health sector and phrases like that […]

I’m guessing from your name that you might not have access to BBC I-player.  But Natalie Gumede, who is briefly pictured in the Christmas special * clip, is also currently available to watch in […]

BTL = Bacon Tomato Lettuce.  On a soft bread roll, it’s the most excellent sandwich *, with a bit a chilli sauce.

* except for a mutton lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean, and the tomato is ripe and perky …

Kidding aside, BTL = Below The Line.  Where we unwashed leave our comments.  ATL = Above Th…[Read more]

That’s it, they’ve gone too far!! I’m never watching it again!!!

We always had tangerines in the toes of our stockings at Christmas, too.  I grew up with a severe allergy to oranges but tangerines […]

I woke up, and wanted to know what happened.

That’s a wonderful sentiment about a dream.

Hello @PaperMoon and @purofilion

I have friends in River Downs, outside of Brisbane.  Do you know it?  It’s fantastic to see people congregating here from so many places around the globe.

Hello @BadWulf

I w…[Read more]

I’ve never heard of Regina Carter.  That’s a really blues-y piece and both uplifting and calming at the same time.  Thanks for sharing.

Hello @scaryb

Is ‘Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep’ your soundtrack for the Death in Heaven ep?

Hello @arbutus

Ahhh, Louis Armstrong!  Nice riff on the Santa teaser in the DiH credits.  You int…[Read more]

Give Me Water – John Forte & Valerie June

There are so many good songs on this thread!  I keep seeing it in the Activity stream and meaning to visit.  With no new Who for several weeks, I might instead spend my time scoffing the choices here.   Really eclectic and wonderful tunes, everyone.

PS [Read more]

Ya ochen rad vyed ya nakonyets, Vozvrashchyayoos domoy

I interpreted this as the Master creating an army for the Doctor using “volunteers”, as the Doctor would probably have had more difficulty taking ownership of a conscript army.

Interesting idea.  I hadn’t considered that – I went for ‘The Master is so cold-heartedly evil she laughs at making humans delete their emotions.’  OTOH,…[Read more]

Sorry, I forgot to @ you in my previous comment, regarding the scene with Danny and Clara in the restaurant.  (First date jitters, not just his first date with Clara, but perhaps his first in a very long time?)

And I keep forgetting to bring up Courtney, so I’m glad you did.  She just dropped off the planet so to speak.  :-…[Read more]

It was only in this ep Death in Heaven that Jenna was billed above Peter (and we saw her eyes), and only at the beginning.  In the end credits, The Doctor was billed first as usual.  This was, I think we all believe, just a cheeky wink from Moffat to the audience since the trailers included Clara saying ‘Clara O…[Read more]

I think it was all a con about the-dead-feeling-cremation, just to get them to press the delete button and erase their feelings, so Danny (or others) wouldn’t ruin Missy’s plans

I agree with @pedant, we cannot trust anything Seb or Chang said.  On a philosophical note … why was it so i…[Read more]

You rogue you!  I have watched that 3 times now, and it gets funnier every time.   🙂

If you’re new to this site, the amount of comments to read can be quite daunting.  However, there is a Search function.  At the top right where it says ‘Search Forums’, try Master.  The results are returned in reverse chronological order, so you’ll see the newest comments first.  I’d also suggest searching on ‘pr…[Read more]

Just never bring up Justin Bieber again, please?!  😉

Now, I’ve made my morning break last a half hour so lunch will be similarly curtailed – must off back to the trenches.  See youse later.

I suppose I am old school enough that it didn’t occur to me to worry about the companion needing to sustain a story arc. And in fact, even in AG Who, it hasn’t always been that way.

Sorry, I used ‘arc’ when I could just have easily used ‘development’.  Each of the RTD companions (what is ‘AG Who’?) had a clear development of char…[Read more]

I’m glad you went through each of those Danny Pink ‘issues’ in detail.  Fwiw, I had no problem with Danny’s character at all.

1.  The first thing we learn about him is how all the other females at school are drooling over him, so why shouldn’t Clara, too?

2.  Far from controlling, I thought Danny was bending over backwards to ac…[Read more]

Regarding John Simm’s Master, you have a better memory than I do so I had to revert to the Tardis Data Core.

Hypnotism was clearly defined as at work through the Archangel Network in Sound of Drums; Martha says that everyone likes Saxon and there’s the fact that no-one worries about his obviously forged biography.  I’d…[Read more]

I think Oswald would be a great companion. Yes, she is very bright and “sciencey”, but also timid and insecure, probably idealistic as well. She would have lots to learn from experiences with the Doctor.

My own opinion is, that might not sustain a whole series’ arc.  We saw a bit of that in her scene with Missy.  Now that @Bluesqueak…[Read more]

How could we have two gingers on screen interacting – if the actors are within ten yards of each other, the static electricity interferes with the studio equipment.

Well, you and I are here sequentially on the same thread, and the DWF servers haven’t blown …. yet …. 😀

On second thought, DiH’s mid end-credit scene with Santa was equivalent to 11 seeing Donna-in-a-wedding-dress materialise in the Tardis.  That ep’s bolt-on scene, however, was inserted as the actual end of the ep.

Inserting this one into the end credits of DiH made it feel like a ‘coming-next…[Read more]

Thank-you for the links to Terror of the Autons comments.  Reading down on Part 1, I found this paragraph in your 1st comment:

It’s interesting how many different ways they find to play the companion. Liz was definitely felt to have not worked – not because of the actress, but because she was also a scientist. Worse, she was…

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as I said on the Graun, the Master historically has hypnotic powers

Sorry, I’ve never read all the comments there.  I only went back to look (at the last page) because of JimTheFish’s comment here.

Apologies for making you say something again, you’re obviously frustrated about that.

Also, I’ve never seen a Delgado Master…[Read more]

Why read The Guardian BTL?  (except for the laughs at the same names coming on every week to say they’ll never watch again)

I have a problem with Missy’s guards in this ep.  They obviously didn’t notice her get out of her handcuffs, they didn’t care that Missy said she was about to kill Osgood, but most of all:  they were sw…[Read more]

Your point in comment 35090 is a very good one, re Les Revenants and how the Afghani boy’s parents will react to having a son return from the dead many years later but at the same age as he died.  Many people everywhere (mostly not here, though) have complained how dark it was in Dark Water to posit that the dead can feel pain.  B…[Read more]

Moffet played it really fair.

Oh no he didn’t!  I can forgive him character and series arcs I don’t like.  (not many)  But I will never forgive him pissing on the spoilerphobe fans by inserting the Christmas preview in the middle of the closing credits.  I could just imagine the evil cackling he was doing when he agreed tha…[Read more]

even if it were possible to miniaturise someone to the extent that they could be inserted into a computer hard drive, all they would be able to perceive would be the hardware; they would not be able to read or make use of the information stored on it. The miniature people exploring the interior of the Dalek were in the Dalek…

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Another thought, the Nethersphere even looks like a Toclafane. Small floaty sphere thing. Hmmmm

In response to that comment and your previous one, tying the similarities between what we see physically of The Nethersphere and the plot of Utopia (v good btw!), I had a search because I thought I had said something…[Read more]

Interesting thoughts about self-sacrifice and suicide, and The Master.  Even more interesting when it is put in context of what the original theories were about HFM and Gretchen, and how/why they were scooped up by Missy:   Because they sacrificed themselves for the sake of The Doctor.

If any of this is true, it could be s…[Read more]

“Three months” (like on the post-its) is invocative of pregnancy, when its safe to tell about it.  But Clara didnt tell Danny she was pr…[Read more]

The Master is now female.  This is testing-the-waters time for a future female D…

[Read more]

You see, they dont want us to find a way out, only a way in.

Im probably doing too much of my namesake but I still think that there are stellar comparisons between The Mind Robber and the entirety of this Peter Capaldi series.  Its all been about the way…[Read more]

ARE YOU A FAMILY LIVING WITH SEVERAL GENERATIONS ALL UNDER ONE ROOF?

Some people with new avatars appear to have several people living all under one skull.

@FatManInABox – LOL at Conchita Wurst!

You two seem to be very knowledgeable about the whole of Doctor Who history.

Im re-watching The Mind Robber this evening and I thought I saw some parallels with this series, and its arc and details.  Obviously, that there is a (potential) dream world, and that people see what they want to see / what they expect to see.  O…[Read more]

Ive said before I think this series is suitable for a SJA reboot (ducking potential…[Read more]

I also suspect much of what Danny and, presumably, other dead people are being told is a lie, intended to persuade them to allow their personalities to be deleted.

Your post is one of the reasons why I think this site is so wonderful.  Deeply thoughtful, contextual (bringing in PK Dicks “Ubik” and also SMs “Coupling” is…[Read more]

Do you have specific episode-related issues about Clara in Da…[Read more]

Before all of that … before all of the stuff that I did wrong

@janetteB and @miapatrick

Thats the dialogue key to @miapatrick‘s theory, I believe.  Clara is going to do something “wrong” next week, something which endangers Danny instead of saving him.  And she’s calling him from the future, seemingly wracked with guilt.  Which means, of co…[Read more]

Now that the season plot arc seems to be all about stealing souls to power Cybermen

Hello @BadWulf – but wasnt the point of the dark water that it contained/only showed actual organic material?  The bones, bodies – but not souls.  So I agree with people who think that Danny isnt dead, and that the Nethersphere contains people who arent actually d…[Read more]

It seemed to go against the Doctor’s past philosophy (that immorality was for fruitloops, and self interested people) full stop.

Is that “immortality”?

Although immorality being for fruitloops and self interested people is also a good reading.  😉

The monsters were rubbish (in The Caretaker, they were Silurians On Badly Drawn Wheels; here, they were spiders which all children fear).  The tension factor just wasnt there in either ep for me.  It was nice to see Clara facing off against the D…[Read more]

Did anyone notice an anti-abortion vibe to that episode, or am I imagining things?

Interesting.  No, I didnt, but Im thinking Clara and Danny have got more jiggy than the programme has let us into, and Clara is seriously worried / thinking about her [potential] children.

But thats just on first watch.  Have to watch again, natch.  Off to the Re…[Read more]

Clara did have her memory wiped in another Stephen Thompson script – Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

I wondered why Clara was so moved by Psi saying he had no family or friends to remember, and how he had deleted them for their own safety.  I need to go to bed and re…[Read more]