Hi, @Craig

Spammer on the BBC Approved Spoilers forum. @blair2019 is the ID.

BBC APPROVED SPOILERS...

@tardigrade

The Doctor could apparently easily keep them in contact by jazzing up their phones, but for some reason has chosen not to.

That’s because mobile phones are a plot killer. From the days of Star Trek onwards, when practically the first thing every writer would do was have Kirk’s communicator damaged or stolen. Killer of Plots – you…[Read more]

@pedant

I would class it as ‘people wanting something to moan about,’ and I suspect that in some cases, it definitely is. One poster on T’Other Place was, for example, insisting that it was an example of ‘lazy writing’ even when I’d pointed out that the decision to NOT dress Team TARDIS in period costume had to get past the Director, the Costume…[Read more]

@mudlark

Mist Over Pendle is a brilliant novel.

I understand there have been quite a few local jokes over the episode. My favourite is the comment by Pendle Hill Landscape Partnership that there are NO mud aliens beneath the hill – followed by a number of replies along the lines of ‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’

My second favourite…[Read more]

Okay, I’ve now watched this again. Broadly, this series has had six episodes out of eight that I actively wanted to watch again – the two that I didn’t were The Ghost Monument and Anarchids in the UK.

This was one of the ‘ooh, I want to rewatch now‘ episodes. It fits nicely into the developing ‘the most dangerous monster is ourselves’ theme.…[Read more]

@tardisprototype94

Social Messages are everywhere

I believe tin foil is very efficacious.

They got the hanging right! They got witches in England being hanged right!

@pedant I agree that Alan Cummings’ James VI and I was one of the highlights. But there were so many highlights. The Doctor being ducked as a witch was one of those things that was just going to happen when she regenerated as female, the monsters were suitably monstrous,…[Read more]

Something else no-one so far seems to have commented on – we’re now up to three deaths where the Doctor accepted the need to be responsible for the emotional clean up. In one series.

Grace, where she attended the funeral. Standing at the back and not joining in, but there. She also supported Ryan before the funeral itself. Then the General,…[Read more]

@pedant

Yes, I agree absolutely about Charlie. This was no union man, concerned about keeping humans in the workforce. He was, if you like, a ‘Human Rights’ terrorist. Kid brother to the mass murdering racist in Rosa.

I agree that The System was completely wrong to kill Kira in order to get Charlie to see that what he was doing was wrong, but…[Read more]

@JimTheFish

this incarnation seems to be in no way affected by her previous experiences prior to this story

Quite. Which is, in itself, a stonking great clue – because the delivery package itself refers to her previous incarnations and she mentions another event later.

And yet, her reaction to the Kerblam man is ‘Yippee, this is a package and…[Read more]

@mudlark

I think they’ve said that the walls of the TARDIS set are movable – so I hope they move them. This set really doesn’t seem to be working; for one thing there isn’t anything for the actors who aren’t Jodie Whittaker to do apart from hang around the console and try not to get a crystal up their backside. I noticed the director last week…[Read more]

@Juniperfish

The economic history of the Industrial Revolution isn’t my specialist period, but I will say one thing. Agriculture is, generally, over-romanticised. My great-grandfather had a smallholding in the hills; it’s not something I’d ever want to do.

The most recent industrial revolution is in China; it’s noticeable how many agricultural…[Read more]

@Juniperfish and @JimTheFish

Politically, for me, this one pulled its punches in a way Rosa and Demons in the Punjab did not.

I actually think it did something very daring: it chose not to make the obvious critique. Writers and artists, at the moment, tend to be left of centre – as you say, this particular episode looks conservative compared to…[Read more]

@Juniperfish

Charlie’s another fanatic. We’re racking up quite a lot of fanatics so far, with often very different beliefs – some of them reasonable, some not.

But the point I picked up was that Charlie wasn’t a Luddite as such, because he wasn’t really one of the warehouse workers who were doing jobs that could have been perfectly well done by…[Read more]

@arbutus

The bit where you leave out the little knob thing in the middle isn’t half as annoying as the bit where you remember said little knob thing AND put the lid on and the madly vibrating blender still somehow makes the lid (and accompanying soup) fly upwards and then deposit said lid (and soup) all over the kitchen.…[Read more]

@mudlark

I know the feeling. The medics have recently been staring suspiciously at a red/black mark on my toe – but so far, it looks like it’s on the toenail and can be expected to remove itself.

Hope the evil-mole removal goes well and that the resulting hole isn’t too big.