Great points and thoughts here as always. Some replies.

@Juniperfish    Yes, it did seem as though the Doctor might have known or guessed what would happen to Ashildr, and I was waiting for Clara to call him out on it. As far as Clara wondering why he wouldn’t give her the chip (especially in light of their earlier conversation), he clearly does…[Read more]

Well, I’m starting to get a better sense of this series now. Something I liked about Series 8 was the way we had various memes about which to wonder– Missy, Paradise, soldiers, stories, “Am I a good man?”. Some contributed to the series arc in a specific way, some acted more as connective tissue in a sense, but they helped the series hang togethe…[Read more]

@purofilion      Life does go on when these things are over. But for our children, they matter so, so much, that it tears our hearts apart watching them navigate their hopes and anxieties. And music can be just as stressful! Last spring, my boy did his audition for the elite senior vocal jazz choir at his school. Thankfully, he got on, but he felt…[Read more]

@pedant @purofilion

Well, this is why it’s great to have a pedant around.  🙂  I had no idea where the term “soccer” came from. Makes perfect sense now that I’ve been told.

Increasingly, a lot of teams in North America (both pro and youth) are using “FC” as part of their name. But the game is just about always referred to as “soccer”, because w…[Read more]

@ichabod  @purofilion       The thing is that the Doctor was never especially interested in returning to Gallifrey when it was there. So his desire to find it again now suggests to me a bit of the “don’t really want to go home again, but I like knowing it’s there” thing. Also, I do wonder if the Doctor, in order to be a rebel, needs someone to reb…[Read more]

@winston    That’s exactly what I think. We had PTSD Doctor, followed by the “one who regrets” and the “one who forgets”, in the great words of The Moment. They had guilt, and loneliness, and no home in the universe other than Earth, which they tried to make their own. I have always thought that Doctors Ten and Eleven tried, in different ways, to…[Read more]

@purofilion    And its sequel, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, has Norse gods. Also pretty funny.

@DrBen      I absolutely love that book, almost more than Hitchhiker’s Guide in many ways. It’s hugely quirky and clever. The thing about Bach there, as I recall, was that it came from the alien ship, and was saved, taken to the 18th century, and given in some way to Bach, and only after that did it exist in the future. It hadn’t actually exis…[Read more]

@Craig   That’s a great story, and how terrific that the video survives. The seventies, weren’t those the days?

@purofilion     Nerves are flying. Moods are changing. Tempers rising.  Of course they are, there’s a teenage boy in the house, right? 🙂

Seriously, how exciting. Good luck to Boy Ilion from another soccer mom. You can assure him tha…[Read more]

@whofangirl-73  @janetteB   When Four regenerated into Five, I was shocked and quite unaccepting. I eventually came to appreciate Five, but he was so much “kinder and gentler” than the Doctor I was used to, that I was actually a bit relieved when C. Baker came on the scene! Watching overseas, I had no idea for years that he was so disliked. He was…[Read more]

@Ichabod, I loved your post and agreed with every word. Agree also with @Mirime that I can’t understand the people who find Capaldi’s Doctor, to varying degrees, cold or unpleasant. What I see is the emotional detachment that was almost always a part of the Doctor in BG days, and even in Nine. It was much less evident in Ten and Eleven. (As an…[Read more]

@lisa     Lots of theories are good. It increases the odds of one of them being right. Then, as discussed yesterday, you get bragging rights.  🙂

@Jphamlore    @ScaryB    The question of the ghosts and when they showed up is a good one. I’m adding it my list of things to think about as I watch through both episodes with fresh eyes. There’s a…[Read more]

@purofilion  @TheBrainOfMoffat      Here’s the thing. When someone new joins the Forum, they most often start out by saying something like, “Hi, new poster here. Looking forward to lots of cool DW discussion!” Sometimes they show up on the Sofa to tell us a little about themselves. They almost always mention how long they’ve been a fan. What they…[Read more]

@purofilion   Reading your post and remembering @supernumerary‘s suggestion that the 5th was an overused choice, it has occurred to me… wouldn’t the opening of the Waldstein sound fabulous as performed by Capaldi’s electric guitar?      🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xl7VcMfj-g

@lisa  @GothamCelt   Does anyone know why the groups of black birds might be given such interesting names (Conspiracy of Ravens, Murder of Crows)? There must be a reason, historically, presumably something to do with the negative image of those birds. But it would be interesting to know more about how it came about.

@Mirime     Yes, same here…[Read more]

@mudlark   Well, yes, exactly. And, currently, a Scottish accent.  🙂

Seriously, there is a possibly surprising number of people who played in rock bands and then went on to science careers (the lovely Brian Cox comes to mind, but I have encountered others, recently). Brian May skewed the other direction, but music and physics don’t seem to li…[Read more]

@Supernumerary     While it might be considered a cliché, I think that if something is presented for a purpose within the narrative, that shouldn’t negate using it anyway. In this case, of course, to draw our attention to Clara’s situation.

@janetteB  @juniperfish   I would have to agree that, if Gallifrey is to be brought back, it would only…[Read more]

@JimTheFish    There seem to be two types of whiner on the other site. There are those who have liked no Doctor Who since RTD, and there are those who have liked no DW since 1989. I suspect that the majority of those complaining now still prefer the RTD era show, which to be fair had quite a different feel than Moffat’s less blockbuster, more time…[Read more]

@Bluesqueakpip     Okay, I hadn’t read your most recent posts before writing the one above.  🙂  I very much like the idea that Clara might end up leaving Earth and staying on someplace else where she is needed, as Romana did. I quite liked it in Last Christmas, when I briefly believed that Clara had gone on to live a full life to its concl…[Read more]

@Bluesqueakpip   It also fits thematically into the larger story    Exactly. Both times they have used it, in my opinion, worked really well within the bigger picture, the second time particularly, as I thought that the whole “breaking the 4th wall” scene was really atmospheric and fun.

And this:   Thematically: using Capaldi’s guitar skill…[Read more]