@mudlark

Come on – you must surely understand that there is not a single dramatic representation of history that doesn’t take liberties to aid storytelling. It is simply not reasonable to apply documentary standards to drama (imagine how @jimthefish or I wince at almost every portrayal of a journalist ever, and neither of us do much of that…[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip

Also interesting that The Doctor engaged with James as the expert on witchcraft that he claimed to be, not as a fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist it would have been easy to go with. I think that exchange was Whittaker’s “Doctor” moment.

Mind you, after the ducking,  I wouldn’t have minded a passing reference to the respiratory…[Read more]

@jimthefish  WhitDoc . . .  seems to have forgotten a lot of life lessons. I quite like the hesitant naivete of this Doc but it sometimes seems to rely a little too much on her not having been remotely affected by the experiences of previous regenerations.

That’s my major problem with her too.  And the wide eyes and big O mouth of surprised de…[Read more]

@miapatrick

it seemed to me that all the consciousness was in the system, not individual robots.

Which seems to me be the problem. If the System is in control of the bots, then why bother with a needlessly cryptic SOS? Why not just turn off all the bots? Presumably because Charlie had hijacked the control protocols in some way. But I’m still…[Read more]

@JanetteB

I think Bradley Walsh was or is a host on a question/answer show? mum hadn’t seen it but I used to watch it. It was pretty silly. I saw it again last night and it would be a repeat: his hair was brown and he was a bit less heavy. Not that he’s a fat guy! He just seemed younger. I wasn’t sure about him either but I like him a lot. He’s…[Read more]

Still lovin this series!

As someone who has a love/hate relationship with tech in general and Amazon in particular (and don’t get me started on voice menu robots that you have to wade through when you call a business… which is where I begin conversing like a mariner, singing (badly) bleep you bleepity bleeping robots to the Hallelujah chorus,…[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip agree about the system. This seemed like a very complex and efficant entity trying to deal with human emotions, and crunching the numbers unfortunately doesn’t always work on us.

Reminds me a little of Smile, in a sense. In that case, the robots had no memory of what they’d done to the humans, but that wasn’t the whole of the…[Read more]

 most recent industrial revolution is in China; it’s noticeable how many agricultural workers were desperate to go to the terrible working conditions, long hours and separation from their families that was involved in factory work – because they were already working those kind of hours anyway, and the money was a lot better. China tried to cont…

[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip

Avoiding the obvious critique is fine but I think you have to think it through and not just do it for the sake of it. Leaving aside the plotholes which, let’s face it, have never really bothered us, this episode seems to be all over the place intellectually, with its ‘terrorism wins’ and ‘let’s define people’s self worth by their…[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip

Also, per The Doc’s “That’s robotist” crack, the biggest robot was the system that called for help. Which makes one wonder if it is constrained by Asimov’s three laws, and in particular the first:

A robot must not harm a human being, or through inaction allow a human to come to harm.

@bluesqueakpip

We’re talking apples and oranges here

To an extent we are, I suppose. I guess I was citing Oxygen as the most recent episode to take on modern capitalism before this one. But I was more thinking that if you take this whole sub-genre from The Happiness Patrol to The Sun Makers to The Green Death and beyond, Kerblamm really sticks o…[Read more]

@Bluesqueakpip

The question is whether this highly automated world is going to be like the Industrial Revolution – temporary disruption that eventually ended up in a much higher standard of living for everyone – or a permanent state of mass unemployment.

Well, that’s the thing I didn’t like so much about this episode. Nice-ish mid…[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip

There are so many lentil jokes in The Young Ones–hopefully this one won’t be blocked.

@bluesqueakpip

the opening shots in ‘we want some changes around here’

I dunno, it seems a bit early in his run for him to be demanding changes, especially as it seems that the Beeb seems to have gone out of its way to accommodate him as it is. Unless he’s angling for more money, I don’t see what else there is that he could possibly want to cha…[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip   The maddening thing is that I somehow thought that by leaving out the little knob, it would prevent the heat-based explosion from happening. Which it did. The lid didn’t come off. The soup just shot out through the hole, hit the overhanging cupboard, and rebounded downward in multiple directions. This is me being clever. I do…[Read more]

@pedant  @thane16  @JimTheFish  @KevinWho  @blenkinsopthebrave  @Bluesqueakpip

Thanks everybody. As I said, I have been through this before and it turned out OK. Been through it twice, in fact. if you count the time they thought I had ovarian cancer, although I was reasonably certain then that it was just a very large cyst. And boy, did I feel…[Read more]