@Mudlark

Reports are coming in that there are an unheard-of twenty-seven gazebos on College Green, where the press hang out during political crises. They haven’t quite reached the stage of having fist fights over the available electrical outlets, but it’s only a matter of time. If a mobile burger van turns up, the poor driver is going to be…[Read more]

@Rob
Most of the Doctors could talk the hind leg off a donkey, but one thing I suddenly realised last night was that they talked about how wonderful they were. It was, in fact, called out a couple of times, with jokes that they really needed a companion to make admiring noises.

The Whittaker Doctor, on the other hand, talks through everything,…[Read more]

SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER...

@mudlark

‘Eye for an eye’ is exactly right – but in the original sense, where the meaning was that you took no more than an eye for an eye. [As far as I know, there’s no evidence it was ever applied in practice or meant to be taken literally; it was stating a principle that any punishment or vengeance should not be harsher than the crime it was…[Read more]

SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER...

@craig

I think you could see the arc as Graham and Ryan’s grief over Grace’s death, in which case It Takes You Away would have been a good finale episode.

But I don’t think it quite is: as I say, my thoughts haven’t exactly coalesced yet, though I strongly suspect another blog is a’comin’. I think the arc is about ‘grace’ and the loss of…[Read more]

@craig

I also said last week’s episode, “It Takes You Away”, could have been made into a better season finale,

I understand what you mean, but I don’t think so. My thoughts haven’t quite coalesced yet – though I will say that this episode and The Woman Who Fell To Earth are the only episodes this series I’ve watched three times.

I think the a…[Read more]

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BBC APPROVED SPOILERS...

@blenkinsopthebrave and @Craig

Shouldn’t this discussion be in BBC Approved Spoilers?

@MissRori

I think the Thirteen was too sunny at the end given that five planets’ populations were destroyed as an indirect result of her sparing Tim Shaw’s life

I think that’s one area where the script did need a bit of editing. When you rewatch, you can see that the planets are in fact in things that look like the big stasis chambers the sup…[Read more]

@Craig
I don’t think it was trying to be that sort of finale. At least, given the jokes in there about previous overblown finales, I’d say the script was deliberately trying not to be that sort of finale.

If Chibnall had left the Earth out, then we wouldn’t have got that moment of realising that the Earth isn’t really the centre of the…[Read more]

@craig

What I meant was there was no sense (for me anyway) that everyone was going to die on Earth. It was tell, not show (apart from the CGI).

Yup, I agree completely. The difference between us is that I think the fact that everyone on Earth was going to die was – backstory.

The reason we’re not getting this is because in an RTD or Moffat…[Read more]

@arch

Clearly the compassionate thing to do is to put him out of his misery

He’s not a dog (or even a spider). He’s a self aware being who made self-aware choices. Those choices included causing death and suffering to others – effectively depriving them of their choices. The audience has seen Tim Shaw kill a harmless (if annoying) drunk, a…[Read more]

@craig

At no point did I think everyone’s gonna die

I think that’s because that wasn’t the threat. I’ve just watched the episode again – this is one seriously creepy episode, and the threat isn’t to people’s lives as such. It’s to their very selves, their souls.

Which is why it starts with the Ux doing their ‘faith’ thing, I think. Tim S…[Read more]

BBC APPROVED SPOILERS...

@arch

It was made very clear in Episode 1 that Tim Shaw was a crap monster. He was crap. He had to cheat to have a chance at succeeding in his people’s leadership test.

So he lands by accident in front of two Ux who’re thinking he’s the creator and he hijacks their powers. He’s still crap. Whatever he does, whatever powers he abuses, he’s still…[Read more]

@miapatrick

One of the things that struck me in this episode was how much the Doctor has grown. Compare the Smith Doctor and Bishop Octavian with the Whittaker Doctor and the Ux religion. Plus her spelling out her (variable) rules about weapons. Generally, anything that can be rebuilt is fine to blow up. People, on the other hand, can’t be…[Read more]

@JimTheFish

For a mid-late-series episode this would have been passable but for a finale it’s pretty damn poor.

We didn’t use to have a finale unless it was the final story of that particular Doctor – so this story was also Chris Chibnall saying that we’re not going to get the big, explosive, type of finale. In fact, I think I spotted one or t…[Read more]

Okay, that was fun.

Funnily enough, the most appropriate clip posted this week was the one about the sound of the TARDIS being the sound of hope. Because that’s very much what tonight’s episode reminded me of.

Hope.

Hope for Graham, to get past hatred and vengeance. But hope for the Doctor, as well.