@JimTheFish @arbutus @pedant @Juniperfish

There is an old Irish joke (that is to say, a joke of Irish origin) about an Englishman lost in a rural area of Ireland, who ask a farmer for directions. The farmer thinks for a moment and says: “Well, I wouldn’t start from here if I were you.”  (I am fairly sure that Dave Allen was the first I heard tel…[Read more]

@arbutus

I have been thinking for awhile that in the new year, I want to attempt a rewatch of the entire series from Rose onward, partly to revisit old episodes that I enjoyed and partly to get a look at the older in relation to the newer, and see what I think about it all and how it has changed.

funny you should say this as i also decided to do…[Read more]

@Arbutus the second paragraph was a response to your post. Sorry forgot to acknowledge.

Cheers

Janette

@arbutus  see the Hybrid as the Doctor become Clara-obsessed, Clara-addicted. She gets in your mind and stays there. This allows the Hybrid arc to tie in with the Clara’s death arc

Interesting, that this had to be spelled out.  I think many fans had no trouble seeing Clara as unhealthily egotistical, especially in S8 (that’s what Moffat gets for…[Read more]

@juniperfish @puroandson @tardigrade

Gosh, it’s hard to know where to start (which is pretty much the point of po-mo), so let’s start with @Arbutus who  nails it in two sentences.

The problem with having presented the Doctor in the past as the “man with the plan”, as in “I knew it all along and was ready for you”, the Doctor lies, etc., is that…

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Well, I’m jumping back in after another working week filled to the brim!

@Arbutus and @ichabod

I appreciate your writerly perspectives very much and celebrate you both for being able to allow the next layer of creatives; actors and readers, to add their layers to the creative cake without needing to drag everyone, screaming and kicking, back t…[Read more]

@puroandson  Son of Puro:  He already broke all his hearts and that’s not natural. We are not islands but we can’t all be sea either.

No; not while we’re still inhabiting bodies, anyway.  Nicely put; have you come across the concept of the “oceanic feeling” that deep meditation is supposed to (sometimes) produce?  I’ve touched it from time to…[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip  There is going to come some point, Moffat is saying, where even the Sisterhood, and Clara, and the Doctor, and all the other immortals of the Whoniverse – will decide that it’s time to be gone.

Yeah, you don’t get to unfix a fixed point, do you — not even by taking the long way round.  For me, this is why the whole DW serie…[Read more]

@Pedant

Thanks – re the Graun posts. I think @Arbutus was kind enough to mention them up-thread as well, and request a re-post here. I was just spit-balling about Moff’s take on time and emotion.

You’re right, he did kill Danny Pink. Although, given that we met Danny’s ancestor at the end of time, and he had the toy solider from Clara’s TARDIS…[Read more]

@Arbutus

So Raiders of the Lost Ark supplies cred for archaeologists 😯

Well, if I had taken Indiana Jones or River for role models*, my career would certainly have taken a very different course 🙂

* I would have needed a Tardis or a vortex manipulator to do so, or else uncanny foresight, but that is a minor detail.

BBC APPROVED SPOILERS...

@Arbutus

Perhaps it was the General communicating through the crack at

Trenzalore?

It was definitely Ken Bones doing the voice-over. So either ‘keep hiding’ is The General’s plan, or he took the Doctor’s and Clara’s flat refusal to say his name as an instruction from the Doctor to keep hiding.

[later addition]

The idea that Rassillon might…[Read more]

Well!

I’m a bit late to the party and don’t think I can add anything new to what all of you have so eloquently expressed.

I was a day late watching, by which time you were up to page 4, time has been very limited so a rewatch late last night – and now you’re on page 7!!

Its great to rewatch bearing in mind all the wonderful comments, theories…[Read more]

@mudlark  The inner eye of memory is no longer capable of *seeing* her there, nor can he recall how it felt to be in her company; and crucially as @Arbutus and @tardigrade observed, the emotional connection which bound them together so tightly has gone.

@bluesqueakpip  After all, if the idea is to protect Clara from ever being traced through t…[Read more]

@Arbutus @ichabod    .

Did anyone notice that the Doctor, on being ordered to “lay down your weapons”, dropped his spoon to the table?

Me too 🙂  that was a detail which leapt out at me on first viewing, and I grinned. Even Robot of Sherwood has its resonances.

Before that, I also enjoyed the double meaning of his response to Clara in the din…[Read more]

@arbutus @bluesqueakpip @puroandson

Thank you for your kind and wise replies. For the last few days I’ve been thinking very intensely about the question of Doctor Who and politics. I know that every episode has its more or less correct interpretation. Thank you for pointing me out what is the correct interpretation of the Zygon Inversion. But…[Read more]

@CountScarlioni

Once the Doctor, assuming he truly did not remember Clara in the diner scene, got back into his own Tardis, would he not immediately search the Tardis’s data banks for “Clara” and recover at least some of the lost memories? For him, it’s surely only a temporary loss of some memories. Have I missed something? Is there somethi…

[Read more]

@Arbutus

Not that I would ever have the cojones to take sides in a debate between that formidable pair, @bluesqueakpipand @pedant,

There are no sides, only perspectives.

but this:      the title of the first episode in Series 9 is ‘The Magician’s Apprentice’ and then in the final episode of Series 9 we see Clara flying off in a Type 40 TARDIS (wi…

[Read more]

@arbutus  Did anyone notice that the Doctor, on being ordered to “lay down your weapons”, dropped his spoon to the table?

Yes!  Loved it, and a call back to what he’s come to get paid for by the instigators of the Dial ordeal: eating soup in the castle, asking himself if he’ll have to stay there . . . forever?  And the spoon slips out of his ha…[Read more]

@rob

Also during Rasillon’s visit to the barn he stated…..

How many regenerations did we give you, I’ve got all day

Strongly suggesting a more than just another full set

Or possibly less. The terminology used at the time was giving him a new cycle of regenerations, from which you’d initially think 12. But if you remember the circums…[Read more]