@blenkinsopthebrave

Oh, I think the clock has a meaning and I don’t think you’re grasping at straws. The camera focus on the clock wasn’t casual – the actor placed it quite deliberately for its very own close-up and that close-up was long enough to have made a real live actor a very happy bunny.

But I think its significance is as a symbol of tim…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave

I had a good look at a freeze-frame of the clock and I’d say it’s an ordinary carriage clock with Roman numerals.

The only odd thing about it is that the Roman numerals look a bit funny – at first I thought they were in the wrong places, but it’s just that the right hand stroke of the X is really thin and difficult to see.

@blenkinsopthebrave and @mudlark

Or maybe they were entities who simply assumed the appearance of the father and the senior policeman.

I noticed the different reactions when I rewatched as well. I think you’re probably right, Mudlark – the minders assumed the appearance of the two people that Brendan would trust most in all the world. His…[Read more]

Oh, and an Irish Brendan is almost certainly named after St Brendan the Navigator, or sometimes St Brendan the Voyager. He sets off with a bunch of companions and has many exciting adventures, finally finding the Blessed Isle, or the Isle of St Brendan.

Remind you of anyone? Especially considering the long-running fan joke (repeated by RTD in…[Read more]

Okay, so I had a chance to rewatch this episode – some thoughts on that.

Firstly, while I’m going to wait and see what next week’s like, I think I may have to apologise to CC for saying his ‘future-set’ episodes aren’t that good. Given the massive amount of information that had to be given to the audience, this was a very well paced first…[Read more]

Anyway, my bet is that Brendan IS the Timeless Child, and his ‘minders’ are responsible for wiping his memory at the end of every ‘life’.

@jomomentor

Yeah, I thought Captain Jack as well. Captain Jack became immortal as a by-product of the Time Vortex, so if Brendan is a similar type of immortal there’s a fair chance that he’s the Timeless Child or something related to the Time Lords.

But that explains why Captain Jack had a scene in Fugitive from the Judoon.

SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER...

@unclewalter

Mary Tamm and Lalla Ward haven’t gone missing – we simply haven’t got to them yet.

@Davros

“Doctors”: is this show good? It seems as though every second Doctor Who cast member has been on it.

The BBC considers it as one of its ‘rep’ training-ground soap series for baby TV actors and writers – so its quality can be a bit variable, ranging from ‘superb’ to ‘we have to broadcast this, it’s Tuesday’. But that’s why almost eve…[Read more]

@davros

why, how, could a non-inhibited cyberman slit his own children’s throats? I think that was probably a lie.

Yes, I get the feeling that something about it was a lie. It’s possible he’s not got an inhibitor because he’s a fanatic about the joys of Cyberisation, but he was certainly lying about the baby – he may have seen the baby as a f…[Read more]

@mudlark

I’m not sure that’s entirely fair – as I said a couple of weeks back, it’s really difficult to do an arc that may involve the Doctor’s past without going back into the Doctor’s past. I’d agree Chibnall didn’t have a ‘winner’ like the Weeping Angels when he tried a series of entirely new monsters – and it may well be that he’s got the…[Read more]

@jimthefish

Well, ghosts in the Whoniverse are often the sign of a time distortion. So maybe the ‘conflict’ with the Big Finish audio (haven’t heard it) is a subtle signal that the time distortion caused by sending the Cyberium back (followed by the Lone Cyberman) is more dangerous than we think?

The Big Finish set with Mary Shelley then becomes…[Read more]

@Lisa

I’m going to say no, just because it’d be too like Death in Heaven. Instead I’m going to suggest that the Doctor will make some terrible mistake because she’s trying to stop one of the fam being Cyberised.

@miapatrick

Yes, I only knew it because I was in a play about the mad foursome a couple of decades back.

It can be referenced in The Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices of His Life, which is on Google Books.

@mudlark

Yes, I was thinking Castrovalva and Logopolis. So much so, in fact, that I kept expecting the Master to pop up out of the woodwork. So, another callback to BG era Who, but not an obvious one. The genetic theme is cyberised – could this be the connection with the Scorpion-aliens? They were scavengers, and this variety of Cyberman…[Read more]

@miapatrick

I didn’t much like (this is actually possibly the number one complaint on t’other place which is delightfully positive so far) the implication of cowardice in Byron.

A sign that the writer’s done her research. He certainly wasn’t a coward, as such, but he had what you might call fits of nerves when he acted like one. Con…[Read more]

@craig

Clearly this is going to be one of those days. A Caitlin Gosling has joined and her first post consists entirely of one link. In the Peter Capaldi as Twelfth Doctor forum.

@craig

We seem to have a spammer. Name of Johnson, though I don’t know if they have a blond mop-top.

Oh, yeah, and I forgot the obvious theme: everything we think we know is a lie.

Spyfall – the man we think is an agent on our side (O) is actually the Master.
Orphan 55 – the holiday resort planet is just a dome, the ‘alien’ planet is our own Earth.
Fugitive of the Judoon – the human tour guide is really The Doctor.
Praxeus – the helpful…[Read more]