@pedant

All good points! (I have the box set of Buffy, but I’ve only got as far as the middle of season 2 – I presume it is worth continuing with?

I have found that many newer TV shows work better and feel more coherent when I can binge watch them. Doctor Who is really the only thing I watch on TV now as it airs (aside from Strictly, which Ms…[Read more]

@beancounter Well, I don’t have time to respond to everyone, but I think you all understand that primates are generally considered “lower life forms”, relative to humans, and that’s where the bashing comes in. But you can view things from a certain perspective to fit your own internal narrative…so we are not going to agree.

Also, that was not t…

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@FatManInABox

Surely you mean T2? T3 was horrid!

@beancounter To me that statement is rather direct and obvious man bashing. Apes are generally considered less intelligent than humans and brutish. Therefore comparing men to apes is an intentional insult pretending to be a good natured jab. Clearly you disagree, so please explain why.

All men *are* apes, it is an indisputable fact.

Given that…[Read more]

@beancounter It was just an unintentional typo, hardly a crime.

Indeed – I was simply drawing your attention to it, because it was making it tricky to actually respond to you, as the autolinks were not working.

@TheCrackIntheWall Is it multiplayer? I tend to avoid multiplayer, as I much prefer the immersion involved in single player campaigns. There’s only so much being dubbed a “n00b” and being “pwned” that I can take before losing interest!

I was comparing Halo to Larry Niven’s Ringworld (a novel) because AFAIK both of them involve megastructures in…[Read more]

@beancounter And then there is the subtle man-bashing. Remember the first episode of the season? “All men are apes”

How is the statement in quotes incorrect? I see no man-bashing, subtle or otherwise.

Also, your username is spelt incorrectly and doesn’t match your profile name.

@Melloyello I watch quite a few movies, but usually don’t mind when they came out. In fact I quite recently watched André Øvredal’s Trolljegeren, which is an absolutely hilarious blend of the found-footage, monster and fantasy genres from 2010. I would recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it. Otto Jesperson’s catchphrase had me in stitches! (I…[Read more]

@TheCrackIntheWall

I’ve never played Halo or its sequels. I was given to understand that it was kind of like Larry Niven’s Ringworld crossed with Unreal Tournament – is that a fair assessment?

I’ve tended to be disappointed with novels based on video games – the main example I can think of are Drew Karpshyn’s Star Wars: The Old Republic and Darth…[Read more]

What’s to prevent even the toy soldier being a TARDIS, if size and mass considerations can be disregarded?

@Rob Really interesting,  take it you’re a River fan too, or did that surprise you too.

I do rather like River, but, yes, I was also surprised that the episodes with her in were ones that I consistently appreciated much more highly than average.

@blenkinsopthebrave @DrBen @thommck In other news – I have now emailed the spreadsheet to @Craig, so…[Read more]

@purofilion @Arbutus  and @Bobbyfat yes I thought that too! The idea that someone could be rattling around the TARDIS with the Dr -I didn’t say the crucial “another TARDIS inside a TARDIS’ though! Great idea.

It has been suggested before! In post #33840 on the Flatline thread. (I may not have been the first to suggest it, though!)

Given that TARD…[Read more]

@PhaseShift I can’t particularly fault the message of this one. Trees are about the most useful thing on the planet.

Agreed – it made the story much more palatable than “risk the entire human race on the off chance a spacebaby is harmless”.

As far as the science goes – it’s exaggerated, but the points are very, very real. Deforestation direct…

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@Spider – has the disappointment affected your spider-signature?

Oh and another thing i forgot to say, the girl sister of child-i-have-forgotten-name-of who appears from the bushes in a haze of golden flashes and gives a lovely smile? My immediate thought was ‘future companion’ 

I thought – “Hmm, this is someone who has returned from the dead…”

@Bluesqueakpip In fairness to the writer, the magic trees had the ability to produce or withhold oxygen. The Doctor, in fact, said they were withholding oxygen, that was what made them fireproof – you can’t have fire without oxygen. I think Boyce had some vague idea that the magic trees basically reversed the gas exchange and exhaled a cloud of CO…

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Re: Danny Pink

@Bluesqueakpip … and he probably didn’t. 

That would fit in to the bonkers arc we have been theorizing for him.

Still, today I found Danny in a much more mellow, yet “with it” mode. He seemed less like a restless ghost with unresolved issues in his past, and more like a man who has made his peace, and is now just trying to do some…[Read more]

@TheKrynoidMan True, but that was resolved pretty quickly.

A quick resolution does not necessarily mean an automatic resolution – the Doctor still needed to intervene. I can see your point about the anticlimax, though!

I was sufficiently bought into the smaller story of resolving Maeve’s problems to not care overmuch about the world threat. One…[Read more]

@Devilishrobby Agreed re: Danny as red herring – that would be typical Moff sleight of, erm, character.

Regarding the science – I understand the need for suspension of disbelief, but it can do real harm to a story if the science is done poorly when it is unnecessary to the story. Here, the magic trees made oxygen, which apparently protected the…[Read more]

@TheKrynoidMan I also felt that the ending was also an anti-climax since the problem seemed to just resolve itself and The Doctor didn’t seem to do all that much.

I’m not so sure. The Doctor’s intervention was to prevent humanity using the defoliants that would have stripped the Earth of its magical tree protection.

Well – that was certainly a fun episode, if a little lightweight!

The story was interesting, and the awful science wasn’t as egregious as in Kill the Moon, although it was still pretty terrible. I have no problem with magic forests, but magic forests that increase the O2 level to reduce the inflammability of something need to go back and study…[Read more]