@Brewski Did I imagine it? Seems to me when Courtney was alone on the Tardis, she fiddled with a button and a second later a wisp of smoke appeared from under the console….?

I saw the same thing, and dismissed it as a humorous touch to indicate that Courtney is a disruptive influence wherever she goes!

Perhaps it was a subtle indication of so…[Read more]

@idiotsavon @pedant – had never heard of the rule of cool before today. I love it!

I’m not sure if it was coined there, but it is one of the many joys to be found on the TVTropes website: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage

They even have a Doctor Who page: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/DoctorWho

@janeteB I too hope to see Danny in the Tardis but I have a feeling it might be without Clara because I have a sneaking suspicion, maybe triggered by all the mystery surrounding her continued tenure in the Tardis that something nasty is about to happen to her and he and the Doctor might have to team up to go on the rescue.

Hmm – I think you may…[Read more]

@Goldmember It is just a bit of bonkers theorising – I’ve never been right before, so I don’t expect to be right this time. My mind just does not work in the same way as the Moff, or even RTD. (Or JNT, thankfully!)

@Goldmember I still want to know why Pink had a bad day.  I’m reading something into that, I don’t know what though.

I think he has been out doing missions for Missy, because I’ll bet he died in the cause of duty

@purofilion @JanetteB

Cockies?

New bonkers theory: The Doctor didn’t want the Moon Dragon dead, because he didn’t want Missy getting her hands on it

@Bluesqueakpip The universe of Doctor Who? It has time travel. And faster than light travel. And teleportation (which has already been used to bring people back from the dead). All of which are completely friggin’ impossible …

… as far as we currently know.

True – although these breakings of the laws of physics are usually engaged in order…[Read more]

@pedant If the moon is a giant space egg, then why isn’t it egg-shaped? 🙂

Nintendo knows the score on egg shaped celestial bodies:

@purofilion I speculated about the possibility of everything occurring in some other ‘place’.

Perhaps the Doctor was taken into the Matrix on Gallifrey at the end of The Time of the Doctor instead of being actually given a new set of regenerations, and this entire season is like a set of virtual Tasks of Hercules to see whether he deserves to ac…[Read more]

@Dickiebow I liked this episode a lot because I feel like it built up tension in the beginning and the doctor’s little monologue about humanity spreading across the universe at the end was Peter’s first really great doctor moment for me.

I wanted to like this episode, because it had interesting things to say about the dynamic between the main char…[Read more]

@lisa Hi all — So this was partly a pro-life argument and also pro-space exploration argument episode

I would agree with you there – although I’m not entirely sure how intentional the pro-life angle was on the part of the production team.

Here’s something a bit on/off topic I recently saw a vid on you tube

It definitely makes a change from the sil…[Read more]

Actually, my maths in post #32995 is totally bogus!

I’ve had a little think about it, and I think it should be:

1) Assuming the Trolley impact is always fatal:
If you do nothing, then the survival rate is 17%
If you sacrifice the fatman, the survival rate is 83%

2) Assuming the Trolley impact is fatal 25% of the time:
If you do nothing, then…[Read more]

@purofilion

Basically, the Trolley problem seeks to explore whether people instinctively agree with Spock’s axiom “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.”

In short, do you flip the switch on a runaway train so that it only hits one person on a siding, instead of letting it run over five people on the mainline.

It pits…[Read more]

@purofilion  Is it too late (must be quite late where you live?) to put my hand up about tense?

It’s never too late to talk about tenses! Especially when the talk is from someone who is as knowledgeable about literature as you are!

When it comes to literature, I only know what I tend to like, and what I tend to dislike. And I have found out (to m…[Read more]

@MTGradwell Then, the crew enters an abandoned/derelict base, they restore the power, the lights come on and INSTANTLY it’s safe for them to remove their helmets. As if it wouldn’t take time to get the air pressure and temperature back to something tolerable. Again I can see why they did it, but…

That’s one I didn’t pick up on! And yes, it is ano…[Read more]

I’m enjoying this, because the Trolley problem always causes me horrid cognitive dissonance (a bit like the death penalty – I feel that *even* if the death penalty can be demonstrated to have a deterrent effect, it is still a moral line that a government should not be allowed to cross.)

@Bluesqueakpip

Our little Moon Dragon isn’t the Trolley P…

[Read more]

@Bluesqueakpip  Yup. In no particular order: Robin Hood exists, there’s a dragon in the Moon, dinosaurs were much bigger than we think they were, Daleks can become aware of their own evil, there appears to be life after death and bankers can repent of their misdeeds.

Am I spotting a pattern here? 

I think you’re on to something, although the not…[Read more]

@pedant Very large single cell thing has precedent from a Tom Baker story – can’t recall which;

Could that be the Nucleus of the Swarm from the story The Invisible Enemy? Most notable for the first appearance of K-9?

@Bluesqueakpip Which is why rationality is a terrible way to make life or death moral decisions.

I disagree. In fact, to analogise, an organisation such as NICE needs to do this all the time in order to ensure that it maximises the patient benefit of its resource expenditure.

In fact, I think that the issue is simply a variation of the Trolley Pr…[Read more]