@ichabod   Does the TARDIS still not like Clara, or was that resolved after Name of the Doctor? And if the TARDIS still doesn’t like her, maybe it is connected to what Sexy knows/perceives/predicts about her fate and the Doctor’s possible attempts to avoid it? She doesn’t like him crossing his timeline, maybe preventing Clara’s death would entai…[Read more]

Some great music up here as always! Thanks to all for the mainstream, the quirky, the familiar, and the new!

@TheKrynoidMan     If you’d played me that Drake Bell song without the video and told me it was recorded in around 1979, I would have believed you. A very classic pop sound.

Here’s my favourite song tod…[Read more]

@PlainOldDave    Okay, I hadn’t seen the “Doctor Who as motorcycle” metaphor before. As Eleven would have said, “That’s new!”   🙂

@JimTheFish      But your attitude seems to be to treat this is the pinnacle of Who achievement, with everything before leading up to it and everything after a corruption of this alleged golden age. In reality, it was not just the coming together of a creative team that worked well, it was cultural flashpoint whose success lies in lots of othe…[Read more]

Oh, look, a new pub! And in Scotland, home of (half of) my forebears, with lots of surrounding humidity to remind me of home.  🙂

@Pufferfish   Oh, I’m envious of your grocery store. Years ago when we were in the south of France, we first encountered the locals walking in with their big plastic jugs, and a wall lined with taps for the plonk of…[Read more]

The question of the Doctor as romantic lead is interesting too. I think that the Doctor in all his incarnations is fundamentally a very attractive character. A lot of the qualities that seem to be basic to him are qualities which I think are generally appealing. So it seems perfectly believable to me that when he appears in a physical guise that…[Read more]

What a fascinating conversation I’ve been missing here!  🙂  I loved @nerys’s rundown of the AG Doctors and pretty much agree with all of it. The “Doctor Dances” two-parter was the absolute highlight of Series 1 for me, and that scene was Nine at his best. On the whole, Eccelston never really gelled as the Doctor for me, but there were a few mom…[Read more]

@JimTheFish     Oh, that would be really fun. It wouldn’t surprise me if Moffat were saving them especially for that fate!

@blenkinsopthebrave      Personally, I would love this. I was always sorry that they didn’t explore this a little bit more after Eleven lost Amy. Ten travelled alone for awhile after the Donna fiasco, and although I didn’t love everything about those specials, I did enjoy the flexibility that came from the lack of a permanent companion. I try to a…[Read more]

@pedant    Thanks for the Ashildr/Arya meta pointers.  🙂

@DrBen     You make a lot of really good points, particularly the one regarding Maisie Williams. I hadn’t thought of it, but you’re absolutely right, that she is really deliberately playing two different characters in this, and in that respect, she pulls it off. I agree that I also found…[Read more]

@CathAnnabel      I’m not sure. I think she must age at least a bit, because the gizmo that’s keeping her alive is “healing” her. Unless it’s healing her literally every second? It’s kind of hard to imagine how that could work, actually. But hard luck for her having been essentially frozen at such a young age, because the lack of visible aging wi…[Read more]

@Jphamlore      Good points about the shared point of view between Missy and Ashildr.

@ichabod    I had not noticed Sam Swift and the hangman at the end. I agree, though, that it is a rather charming notion. Sam clearly doesn’t hold anything against a guy just “doing his job”! And I guess the hangman’s view is, if God (as I would imagine him to…[Read more]

@FatManInABox      Oh, great. More things for me to spend my money on.  🙂

I suppose once they broke through the copyright wall to the AG series, this was going to happen sooner or later. BF seems to have no problem reeling people in to their world. Apparently, it’s the lunches.  🙂

@seeoswald    As to the three shows that you have referred to as having “Canadian influence”, well, okay, they were all filmed in Vancouver. I live there and know people in the film industry there, and I can say with certainty that the only Canadian thing about those shoes was that they used local crew and extras, they filmed in our streets, an…[Read more]

@Spider     Oh dear, I’m so sorry. I send hugs right back, in a much more Clara way as I am pretty good at them! My sweet Cima had nineteen good years, only becoming a bit wobbly and nearsighted in the last few; and he left us in the best possible way, after one difficult day and evening, falling asleep in his favourite place (on my son’s bed, ag…[Read more]

I’m interested that so many people think that Ashildr got her info on the Doctor from Missy. What makes you all think that? Clearly it’s a possibility; but it didn’t occur to me as a stronger than any others. My first thought was that she could have met people, over the centuries, who had met the Doctor, and been rescued or helped by him, and t…[Read more]

@PlainOldDave     Clara did warn this new incarnation from the start that she was a hugger and that his views didn’t enter into it. I also had a sense that the Doctor, in his sudden expression of feeling, was reacting to his experience with Ashildr and her immortality, and re-engaging with what it was he values about his companions (curr…[Read more]

@ramzeppelin     Oh boy. Or, as we in liberal Canada like to say, with a slightly confused frown, “Sorry?”

@JimTheFish, I enjoyed the episode quite a bit, but I agree that it wasn’t a patch on the preceding episode, and it was mostly the arc-related aspects that were memorable.

@winston   It’s a good point about the notion of “pets”. We automatically take that as a belittlement, and of course it is in a sense. But having just lost a cat that lived wit…[Read more]

This was fun, and interesting too. I always enjoy the Doctor sans companion; it makes a nice change in dynamic, and it’s freeing for him, in a way. I liked the easy flow of the story, characters, and dialogue. I also liked the rather quirky soundtrack.

I think we are being given a thematic arc of “Doctor’s Companion”… Missy’s remark about Clara…[Read more]