@Miapatrick I’m not s scientist, so genuine question: would exploding 100 nuclear bombs on the moon definitely not have a harmful impact on the earth?

I’m not a scientist either, but we can do some back of the envelope calculations! Not all nuclear bombs are made equal, so to be fair, we should use the most powerful human built bomb, the Tsar Bo…[Read more]

@Miapatrick I think it came OK at the end. Clara was angry because the world made the ‘wrong choice’, she nearly made the ‘wrong choice’ and he didn’t know for a fact at the time that it was the wrong choice. And because the Doctor said it was ‘their moon’.

I’m glad you used the inverted commas around ‘wrong choice’, because from where I’m sitt…[Read more]

@Spider Now I’ll never be able to look at the moon in the same way!

I just went out into the garden with the dog, and was looking up at the moon thinking about this episode. It is a beautiful starry night with a gibbous moon right now (I don’t know if it’s waxing or waning, though!)

The thing about Courtney in this episode was, the Doctor took he…[Read more]

@Devilishrobby Oops!

Yes I’m still trying to marshal my thoughts about this one because I found it to be so awful, and yet others have said it was great. I’ve not even dared to look at the Graun’s blog, but my wife said that Den of Geek loved it.

I am so disappointed. There were so many things horribly horribly wrong with this episode’s story that I feel quite saddened.

1) All of the science was garbage. All of it.

2) The idea of letting humanity vote, and then overriding the vote, just because. (And only letting Europe and North America vote, apparently)

3) The Doctor abdicating all…[Read more]

Did anyone notice an anti-abortion vibe to that episode, or am I imagining things?

@Mudlark What is the name of that Ian McDonald short story? It sounds very similar in world-premise to Tad Williams’ Otherland quartet of novels (which I thought were excellent.)

Unfortunately, my only experience of reading Ian McDonald novels was The Dervish House, which was atrociously dull. Set in Istanbul of the near future, it separately fo…[Read more]

@PhileasF – Not forgetting the Time Scoop – which is one of my pet bonkers theories about how Missy is populating the Nethersphere.

@PhaseShift To really admire it I’ve found it beneficial to stop a safe distance away from it. Yorkshire is perfect.

Too true! I lived in West Yorkshire for five years – and it is certainly civilised in a different way to London. Never lived in London, though – I don’t really understand the Time Lord’s constant interest in it. Just have to tra…[Read more]

@PhaseShift He was right, mist descending as I wound my way home, and the apple trees branches are straining. Lots of red about. It feels good to be alive!

I guess you’re not stuck on a miserable commuter train out of London in the clammy drizzle then! Autumn’s my favourite season, but London and the palaver of getting in and out is never…[Read more]

@janetteB Please what story is that image above from.  That looks like the White Man who gave me nightmares for years as a child. I am assuming that it is from a Troughten era story.

It’s from the 20th Anniversary special feature length episode “The Five Doctors” – a criminally underrated entry in the canon.

I find it most notable for having a d…[Read more]

@thommck I finally managed to watch the episode last night. It felt very much like an episode of the Sarah Jane Adventures

Exactly! I knew there was something about the episode that I couldn’t put my finger on. The Skovox Blitzer now reminds me of the robots from the SJA episodes The Empty Planet.

Re: the Skovox Blitzer being attracted by artron…[Read more]

@Mudlark All I intended to convey was that, in a different story, told in a different way, the Skovox Blitzer could have been developed into a much scarier monster.

Agreed. As a maguffin it was perfectly adequate, but it does have the potential to have been more.

For me, in terms of one-shot adversaries it is a bit like the Raston Warrior Rob…[Read more]

@lisa I was just reading your link to Wikipedia regarding the matrix, and it mentioned Romana. That led me thinking into another bonkers direction: perhaps Missy is in E-space, and is a regeneration of Romana. True, we haven’t seen her with a tin dog, but her referring to the Doctor as her boyfriend is certainly suggestive.

@Bluesqueakpip Well, that’s physicists for you. If you want anything practical doing about the heat-death of everything, you’ll need to ask an engineer. 😉

Perhaps an engineer will be able to reverse the polarity of the universe, and that will cause a Big Crunch?

@PhileasF There is a theory, the reputation of which stands somewhere between semi-respectable and totally mad, called the Omega Point. Google will explain much. In a nutshell, the theory is this:

• Unless someone stops it, the universe will eventually collapse in a ‘big crunch’.

Alas for the Omega Point theory, current observations of the univ…[Read more]

@Mudlark @purofilion   Interesting that you describe the Skovox Blitzer as a clever and scary monster when the majority of us who have commented on it at thought otherwise.  I agree with @serahni that it could have been different if the monster had been the focus of the story; a robot soldier capable of destroying planets, whose apparent defaul…

[Read more]

@Mudlark I forgot to add that I am amongst those for whom Capaldi is now 100% The Doctor

I would like to add my name to that list, too! It doesn’t take me long to accept the new guy as the Doctor, usually. In fact, it was probably Sylvester McCoy whom I took longest to warm to. It wasn’t until Remembrance of the Daleks that I felt he was the D…[Read more]

@Cath Annabel I just read through the Guardian blog, and the ranting about atheist subtexts was getting rather tedious. The worst of it all was the fact that I couldn’t understand what point the poster was trying to make. It was all about nihilism leading to series cancellation or somesuch.

Anyway – new bonkers theory: Missy is Rassilon…[Read more]

Don’t know if anyone has mentioned this before, but could the references to “Mr. Pink” be an homage to Reservoir Dogs? And if so, could that give us a window into his character history, as the sole survivor of a mission that was compromised by a traitor?