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@phaseshift – my memory of Stephen Moore is him playing Peer Gynt. He has an amazing voice; does a lot of stage work.

I thought I recognised Adams in the animation. But does anyone else think that Wikipedia really ought to have ‘Don’t Panic!’ on their home page? The more I’m reminded of the content of the Guide, the more I think ‘this is Wikipedia!’ But even at the time, I remember thinking that the head was crap – though it was a very early experiment in animatronics.

A chemist is an asset to any party. 😉

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Anyway, now that @phaseshift and I have finished our verbal jousting (crawling accepted 😉 ), some comments on the actual episode.

@wolfweed – It is quite funny that the sonic has a bit of a moment when trying to tackle the wooden door – before Duggan thumps it and it goes for the metal lock instead. And that randomiser seems to be switched on at random moments, never mind taking them to random places. Though I have always noticed that the TARDIS seems to develop a pin-point accuracy when she knows she really, really needs to.

Romana’s expression as she gets assigned ‘babysit Duggan’ is a joy. Just a flick of the eyes from Lalla Ward, but it’s enough. And yeah, Duggan does rather give the impression that he got fired from the Met for being too violent.

I remember watching this on first broadcast and thinking ‘Huh? How did he get here?’ My incipient bonkers theorising led me to think at the time that Kerensky had succeeded in his time travel experiments.

@thekrynoidman – Rory wasn’t dim. Rory was merely the ‘only sane man’ in Team TARDIS. His life up to the point he met the Doctor hadn’t really prepared him for pretending to be a gondolier in Sixteenth Century Venice so that he could get his fiancee into a boarding school for trainee vampires who turned out to be alien fish people with mad fencing skillz.

Since this turned out to be a normal day in the TARDIS, he was at somewhat of a disadvantage…

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@juniperfish – I think the War Doctor’s catch phrase was ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ 😉

Hopefully we’re not having one, unless one develops organically (like Matt’s ‘come along Pond’). Nice to see you back.

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Incidentally, is this episode the source of the famous ‘wobbly sets’ meme? Given that over 14 million people saw Tom Chadbon nearly shake the set apart as he tried to shoulder the door open.

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@phaseshift – Oy! Are you calling me cruel and venal? 😉

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@phaseshift

The Chicken or the egg question? Simple. If you are a creationist – you think the chicken came first (God created the animals, etc). If you are anyone else, and follow Darwin, the egg came first, being laid by a flightless bird that was similar, but not genetically exact to a Chicken.

Actually, no, because if you are a Hindu creationist, you would argue that the state of pure consciousness came first, if you’re a Progressive creationist you’d argue that God might have directly intervened to create the chicken in the middle of the evolutionary process and if you are a Buddhist you’d argue that both chicken and egg are, in fact, an illusion.

And if you are a certain type of philosopher, you would discuss very seriously how exactly to define the terms ‘chicken’ and ‘egg’ before you could make any decisions whatsoever. 😈

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Ah, the end of the universe. It looks remarkably like a Welsh quarry. 🙂 Poor old Martha, can’t even get away from Rose at the end of the bloody universe.

Good, RTD’s read his SF. Without a sun they should all be frozen. Atmospheric shell with heat shield – or possibly central heating.

The little lad playing Creet – John Bell, the Blue Peter contest winner – is still getting parts. He’s playing Bain son of Bard in the last two Hobbit films.

The Futurekind, it’s rumoured, were recruited from such terrifyingly tough extras that no acting was required in the chase scenes. There was no way the regular cast wanted that bunch to actually catch them. 😉

I have to say that I do find RTD’s perpetual pessimism bloody depressing when seen weekly. Spaced out amongst other writers’ episodes, it gets balanced by the ‘everybody lives!’ stories. In one continuous lump you realise just how many downbeat endings there are – and how many of the Doctor’s successes/errors get twisted by later stories into giant disasters.

This story was the reason for my violent allergy to spoilers. I got spoiled (on a board with a no-spoilers policy) about Derek Jacobi being the Master and then changing into John Simm. It meant I spent Jacobi’s entire, excellent performance looking for the ‘tells’. Which are there; he’s that good. But it’s a different experience from letting an actor lead you neatly up the garden path.

Seriously, that spacesuit should start getting its own fan club. Or at least a credit. How many episodes has it appeared in?

I think Series 3 was the series where everyone knew what they were doing. The series was a success, David Tennant had been a hit. They knew what worked and they could do some of the older ‘gap’ stories; the ones that didn’t have the opportunity to be made into episodes.

But why does Martha know that voice?

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@rob – Since you are Sir Rob, I’d go for ‘Broadsword’ myself. 🙂 Good luck on the walk!

@TrauMorgus – you’ve found the pub. The Rose & Crown is where ‘off-topic’ is, errr, ‘on-topic’. Speculation about the upcoming series is in Series 8 Speculation/Wishlist. There isn’t that much – partly because our main bonkers theory as at the end of The Time of The Doctor was that Moffat had cleared the decks, ready for the next fifty years. 🙂

If you’re wondering why we haven’t said loads about Series 6, that’s because this is a relatively young forum. Most of the original contributors used to hang out at the Doctor Who blogs written by Dan Martin at The Guardian newspaper. Facing a long gap between blogs, our Emperor @craig generously offered us a home. Complete with pub and sofa. 😀

There are conversations about the Smith Doctor’s earlier episodes , but they tend to start off with a link to the original blog comments.

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@phaseshift and @blenkinsopthebrave

The Bed Sitting Room. Of course! Phaseshift, you and I probably watched it during the same Channel 4 season. It was weird.

Yes, I was thinking of 28 Days later – I have no idea why I always think of that film as ‘9 Days Later’.

I thought the gathering clouds was the weather control bit from The Avengers?

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@janetteb – I identified quite a few, but certainly not all. The ones I spotted were:

Day of the Triffids (TV)
The Prisoner (TV)
1984 (B&W TV)
V for Vendetta
Harry Potter (I think it was Deathly Hallows)
Possibly 9 Days Later (haven’t seen that one)
An American Werewolf in London
The Avengers (the British one, not the Marvel Superheroes)
Possibly Whoops Apocalypse.

Anyone else got some other spots?

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I hesitated between The Sofa and The Pub for quite some time before deciding that – as an SF convention, Loncon 3 (August 14th to 18th, Excel Centre) really belonged here.

But you can have quite a lot of fun playing ‘spot the Doctor Who clip’. 🙂

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@janetteb – yes, but if you go by the frequent ‘only passed on the second attempt’ comments, that keep getting made by other Gallifreyans, he is indeed a D. The U.K.’s pass grade is traditionally a C.

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@arbutus

is more concerned with proving the idiocy of God’s followers!

Yes. It must be so embarrassing when these blasted religious believers get a better degree class than he got. 😆

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The Macra, for those who are wondering, were celebrating their 40th Anniversary. They appeared from 11th March to 1st April 1967, and Gridlock was first broadcast on 14th April 2007.

I agree wholeheartedly with @phaseshift – Gridlock is a joy, a very sharp and funny episode with some excellent prosthetics and cracking performances from the guest cast. I thoroughly enjoyed rewatching it.

Yeah, the religion thing is interesting. I always do feel that RTD gets his religion wrong – he wants to discuss it, but it’s like he doesn’t understand it at a very fundamental level. Unlike Moffat (and, indeed, Terry Pratchett) I always feel that his critiques are based on his own idea of what religion is, rather than what religion actually is.

David Tennant certainly felt that the portrayal of the car drivers was that they were wrong; too passive, too much waiting for someone to come save them. RTD says his intention when he wrote that script was to show religion in a good light – community builder, hope builder. But he failed; his real opinion bled through.

The hymns were good though, with some moving performances by the actors. 😉 And the end point is, indeed, beautifully played.

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Ooh, look, a seemingly alien planet and a definitely alien spaceship. Plus a warp drive malfunction. Whee!

And now we’re in Paris in the Springtime! Le Eiffel Tower! Le Metro! Le-definitely-not-taking-Romana-on-a-date, honestly. It was the randomiser. Really, it was the randomiser.

The Doctor is so taking Romana on a date. She, meanwhile, seems very happy to be taken on a date. With bouillabaisse. Yum, yum.

There are indeed a lot of establishing shots, but since this was the first time Doctor Who had been allowed to film in a foreign location, that can be excused. Having managed to persuade the BBC that everyone knew the chalk pit and other regular locations all too well, Graham Williams must have told Michael Hayes to make sure the money showed on screen. It looks great, and it is a perfect location for Tom Baker’s bohemian Doctor. I do like the ‘paint’ badge he’s wearing. Romana’s got a matching style of badge, but hers is ‘sweets’.

The dialogue really does show off Douglas Adams’ work: “I appreciate walks in the country, I appreciate sleep, I appreciate regular meals.” Mind you, it’s a pity they couldn’t get a better copy of the Mona Lisa.

Is that cafe a regular spot for little-chats-with-guns? There’s a lovely little shrug from one of the extras as the Countess’ tough nuts exit. Its a sort of ‘who is this strange man, and why do people keep pointing guns at him? And where are my escargots?’ shrug.

Much use of the transparent coloured plastics that were just coming in for Scarlioni’s alien tech. The bracelet and the mysterious machine the Professor’s working on both have those bright neon colours. And how many aliens are there on Earth with zips in their foreheads?

@phaseshift – I believe the Count and Countess’ sex life was the subject of discussion amongst the cast. Julian Glover concluded in an interview that it was probably best not to think about it too much. 😈

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@wolfweed – ever thought of doing a blog about all these incredibly awful gadgets?

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You KNOW that makes sense.

@phaseshift and @thekrynoidman – besides, I’ve gone and bought the DVD now. 😈

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And the Great Mumbling Debate … err… mumbles onward? Was anyone watching Quirke?

I say watching, because listening was seemingly a bit of a problem. Not as big a problem as with Sean Harris’ Method Mumble, but still.

I’ve never had a problem with Jenna Coleman, but I hope Peter Capaldi’s Doctor has nice, clear Scottish diction. 😀

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@stormy72 – yeah, the hammer thing has occurred to other people. The answer is in Time of Angels – and to some extent in Angels Take Manhattan. In both cases, it’s shown, not told. 😉

You see, you can successfully smash them – but if they have sufficient energy left, they can reform. What you are then left with is a very, very angry Angel, just waiting for you to blink…

Sweet dreams. 😀

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@tbird7702 – if your theories are about the upcoming series (Series 8), then you post them in the Series 8 speculation forum.

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@arbutus – yes, a glass of wine does help with these things. 🙂

As to what caused events – I think this paradox is also like the fez paradox, that I refer to in my blog post on Day of the Doctor

That is, it’s a closed loop (which is why I think the guerrilla’s Earth never does get beyond that historical point). It causes itself, but (because of time travel) it technically exists before it causes itself.

More wine? 😈

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I’ll just add my praises to the chorus for Aubrey Woods. Day of the Daleks really is (almost) his story; he’s the one character who changes and develops throughout. It’s a tribute to Woods’ acting that the development is both subtle and believable. From the smug little functionary to arguing with the Daleks to threatening the Manager in a way that might keep him alive. You can see someone fooling himself that he’s doing some good, that if it wasn’t a decent man like him it’d be someone like the Senior Guard.

I think the reason the Doctor saves his life is that ‘I am the third generation of my family…’ line. Because that puts the Controller in a slightly different light; he’s not someone who’s chosen to run things for the Daleks, he’s someone who’s been brought up to believe that’s the right thing to do. All the lines he’s repeating about resisting the Daleks being hopeless become something he’s been taught since babyhood.

Until, finally, that confrontation with the Doctor brings him to the realisation that the tightrope he’s been walking doesn’t exist; the only choice is between serving the Daleks or fighting them.

And he chooses to fight. And dies knowing that he might just have won…

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Aaand it’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for!

Or possibly looking around nervously for, whispering ‘she’s going to do one of those bloody diagrams, isn’t she?’ 😈

::Ahem::

Basically, it’s another ‘two time-streams’ thingy.

The explosion at Auderley House always happens, but it has two possible outcomes. In the outcome which causes the time-line of the Controller, the guerillas and the Dalek invasion, the delegates are killed.

In the outcome which causes the main time-stream, the one the Doctor knows about, the Daleks are killed. I say the one the Doctor knows about – a few people remarked how very calm the Doctor is in the first episode compared to all the humans running about like headless chickens. The Doctor, of course, knows that World War III isn’t going to happen. He can’t say that, in case he influences events, but he’s been to Earth’s future quite a few times. He knows this crisis blows over.

But he doesn’t know about the events at Auderley House. As carefully pointed out in Episode 4, history books are sometimes wrong.

Now, the time-stream of the guerillas, I would guess, never does get beyond the events seen in Day of the Daleks. It has to exist: without the guerillas, the Doctor would never come to Auderley House in the first place and never know that he has to change time.

Quantum again. The path is as follows: Shura arrives from the future, blows up the delegates and causes his own history (Closed Loop Paradox). This closed loop will potentially go on forever – until the Doctor (the time traveller from outside the loop) turns up to change the outcome of the explosion and re-establish the main universal time line.

With the Doctor, the loop only needs to cycle through once. The explosion has two outcomes: the killing of the delegates comes first. Then the lessons learnt from those events cause the Doctor to change time. The second version of the explosion kills the Daleks.

Time can be changed. And it is. 😉

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So, the Doctor had a brother?

@wolfweed I’ve got a vague memory that the Third Doctor also mentions a brother. He goes climbing up the mountain near his house (on Gallifrey) with his brother.

There’s definitely a brother in the New Adventures; he has a very active life. 😉

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@thekrynoidman – is that something you’ve been told, or you’ve tried a Special Edition and didn’t like it?

As @janetteb says, the Special Edition is worth it for this episode alone – and amazingly, those extra Daleks aren’t CGI. They’re one new live-action Dalek, one extra Ogron, some good editing and some split screen work to make it look like more than one Dalek has been added.

The ‘obvious CGI’ effects are the laser beams for the guns, the killed actors blowing up rather than a simple vanish, and the ‘skeleton effect’ upon extermination. They deliberately tried to make the added CGI look like something possible in the Seventies rather than very modern.

Okay, possible on a massive movie budget, but still – possible.

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I don’t know why so many people make this mistake.

@thekrynoidman – basically, because Noel Clarke never had ‘title credits’ status. He was a promoted supporting character, but that lack of title credits meant that lot of the newspapers never noticed he was a ‘companion’, even though he did end his regular run as a companion travelling with the Doctor.

They didn’t make that mistake with Arthur Darvill, who had ‘title credits’ status from A Christmas Carol onwards.

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Okay, Smith and Jones. I have to say, I really liked Freema Agyeman as a companion; I would’ve been very happy if she’d stayed more than one series. Unfortunately, she was cast as ‘rebound girl’. The Doctor doesn’t really want Martha. He wants Rose, Mk. 2. In fact, he doesn’t really want Rose, Mk. 2. He wants Rose.

I suspect that a lot of the dislike of Rose comes not from the two series where she actually appeared, but from RTD’s insistence, after she’d left, that Rose was the Most Important Companion Ever. In which view, he does have a point.

Billie Piper made a huge contribution to the successful revival of the series; not only did she play the audience viewpoint character brilliantly through Series 1, she then stayed on to provide a reassuring sense of continuity as a new generation were taken through their first regeneration. So it’s reasonable in-story that the Doctor should feel that Rose is the person who effectively saved him. It was equally right that Billie Piper, the actress, should be part of the 50th Anniversary Special.

But by Smith and Jones the Doctor has been through the break-up, been properly grief-stricken through the following story, asked Donna to be the new girl, and been turned down. By all the rules of the BG series, he should have now have got over Rose.

We saw how that works in The Snowmen, where the Doctor’s genuine and deep grief for his family is dealt with within the story. By the time the story finishes, the Doctor is concentrating on the new companion and his beloved River and Amy aren’t mentioned again – except in the episodes where they re-appear.

Here, the Doctor spends most of Series 3 grieving for Rose. That was certainly realistic; that’s the way normal people work. But it didn’t feel right for the Doctor.

But the episode itself doesn’t start like that; it starts promisingly. Martha has the sort of family anyone would step into a TARDIS to escape from. They’re loving, they love her, but they’re in the middle of a messy divorce between the parents and divided loyalties for the kids. Martha, poor soul, is the family member who everyone looks to as the family peace-keeper.

And then the Doctor steps out in front of her and takes his tie off.

Martha’s fairly obvious companion material. First, she noticed something a bit odd about the motorbike helmet guys. Second, she acknowledges the impossible straight away. The hospital has been taken to the Moon. Third, she constantly makes sensible decisions in the face of unprecedented circumstances and finally, she has a sense of wonder even when in extreme danger. Can we just get her in the TARDIS?

Well, no, because it’s on Earth, and the hospital is on the Moon. Bit of a problem, really, especially when the air is running out. There’s a lot of dramatic running about and screaming, even after most people would probably have calmed down, which seems to be mainly there to a) add drama and b) point up how very sensible and practical Martha is.

Meanwhile Anne Reid is having fun as the villain-of-the-week and the source of all these problems. She’s even brought a straw. Poor Mr Stoker (was his first name ‘Bram’, by the way?).

Meantime, the Doctor has a problem; the Judoon are looking for an alien, and he’s an alien. The Judoon are also very, very thick. Oh, and he has to kiss Martha. Who, instead of giving him a smack on the face, promptly falls for him. The Doctor is clearly a great kisser – maybe he took some tips from Casanova? 😉

But anyway – there is a plan, and that plan is definitely not a Deus Ex Machina in any way. That the plasmavore assimilates blood has been set up, that the Judoon can’t tell which alien they want has been set up, and that Martha knows the Doctor’s an alien with two hearts has now been set up. Anne Reid gets executed in a burst of special effects, and the Doctor revives in time to do something about the exploding MRI scanner.

I pause to note that the make up and acting for the revived Doctor are both really nice. He looks incredibly ill.

Anyway, having got the monster-of-the-week out of the way, the hospital returned (the Judoon are rule-bound and thick, not actual villains), the Doctor takes off in his TARDIS. Only to return when Martha is at her brother’s disastrous 21st birthday party, with (as in all good family get-togethers) a full scale nuclear meltdown in full progress.

She can’t go joyriding with him, of course. She’s got exams. Rent to pay. A real life, just waiting to happen.

Except that he’s got a time machine. Off we go!

But who is that Mr Saxon that everyone keeps talking about? 😉

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Official article, linking to a clip from the Moffat interview. Don’t worry, there are no actual spoilers either in the interview or visible on the pages linked to.

As ever, stay away from other pages on the Official Site if you don’t want to see the official casting information for Series 8.

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@fatmaninabox – yeah, I’ve noticed that. You’d think a fast win would be a high score, but no. 😉

It only seems possible to get a really high score if something goes horribly wrong and you manage to recover and win.

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@phaseshift – I think it’s a ‘well, yeah?’ RTD’s first Companion was Rose. Of her two Significant Others, her Mum got the most screen time. They had a loving, but difficult relationship. Then his second Companion was Martha, and her Significant Other with the most screen time was her Mum.  They had a loving, but difficult relationship. The third and final regular Companion was Donna, whose most Significant Other was her Granddad – but who had a loving but fairly difficult relationship with her … hmm, am I noticing a pattern here? 😈

Moffat moved the Significant Other onto the TARDIS, eventually giving the Doctor a married couple as Companions. It’s not that Moffat doesn’t have any female guest leads, he does. But Moffat’s general preference is to have a male-female pairing. Rory would talk with the female guest leads, Amy with the males. That’s inevitably going to fail the Bechdel Test, which is that two women in the cast need to talk to each other, about something other than a man (ideally for more than three lines). If there is only one Companion, and that Companion is female, the number of episodes passing the Bechdel Test will be higher. She’ll be doing a lot of the talking to any female guest leads, and if the monster-of-the-week isn’t male, Bobbie’s your aunty. 🙂

Another point is that if you do decide to have a male-female Companion team, the percentage of lines given to women is inevitably going to drop – because all those ‘explain the plot to me, Doctor?’ moments are now shared. With a male actor. Who ought to be given lines, because gawd knows we’re paying him enough. 😉

Finally, Doctor Who is always going to be playing catch-up with the Bechdel Test, because it’s the inheritor of thirty seven years of unconscious (mostly) sexism – not only does it have a male lead –  Most of the monsters are male. Technically, two women discussing how to defeat the Daleks fails the Bechdel Test. Equally, two women discussing how to rescue the Doctor will also fail.

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@fatmaninabox – you know that mate of yours who got over 25000?

No Photoshop involved.

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I also had something – though Kapersky defined it as adware rather than a trojan – so personally, I’d upgrade ‘might be worth running a full virus check’ to ‘strongly recommend people run a full virus check’. 🙁

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@whisht – I sync to my Walkman. Also, stuff I’ve bought from the Dalek Empire (aka Amazon) is in their cloud, and stuff I haven’t is usually on CD.

There’s some weird law that says you hard drive and your back-up hardrive will always fail at the same time. Back when I was studying Computer Science, I was taught that three backups was the way to go.

Keep drinking the wine. It doesn’t make the transfer go any faster, but it makes it seem so much more fun. 🙂

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@stickfiddler – hi, and welcome. But you’ve posted this in the wrong place! @fatmaninabox, @jimthefish, @phaseshift, or @craig could you move the post to Spoilers? Ta.

On this site we have one forum especially for spoilers, and they live there and only there.

By the way, have you checked out Royal Mail’s online services? I dunno if they sell overseas, but it wouldn’t surprise me. They do perfectly normal books of stamps as well as the collectors sheets I linked to.

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@fatmaninabox – given how nervy TV execs often are (‘The star’s leaving! OMG, we need a star! What d’you mean we haven’t got a star! We NEED a star!’), I can easily imagine a few panic stricken emails. Equally, I can easily imagine RTD telling them that David wasn’t a star when he started in the role and that Doctor Who was considerably bigger than David Tennant. (In which thought, David Tennant would undoubtedly agree.)

I suspect the plans were to give Moffat his first year with Smith and see how it went.

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Catherine Tate was great in this, and equally great when she had to tone it down later as a long-running companion. She and David Tennant had a great chemistry together. This is an excellent story, all told (though every time I watch an RTD Christmas Special, I wonder why on earth he hates Christmas so much…)

Most of what I’d like to say has been said, so I’ll just add a couple of things. This is one of the stories where you can see RTD’s ‘greatest good of the greatest number’ morality in full flow. It’s kind of like he found his solution to the ‘monster of the week’ problem – and then later had people point out that he’d just had the Doctor kill 2.47 billion baby spiders… sentient baby spiders, who hadn’t actually done anything wrong.

He sorts it out a bit in Partners in Crime and Turn Left, both of which we’ll see later. Moffat adds to it: the War Doctor who thinks he’s killed 2.47 billion of his own people’s children isn’t going to shrink at killing the children of the Racnoss. ‘The Doctor’ is going to have to learn to change his mind about that.

In the meantime, The Day of The Doctor adds to that scene in The Runaway Bride. As he makes his decision and carries it out, David Tennant gives a great performance of terrible isolation; Moffat’s later script gives you the reason The Doctor is both so terrible and so isolated.

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Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – available from the publishing companies of Ursa Minor but currently slightly cheaper at the BBC Shop (£5.99). 😉

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@janetteb

My partner’s comment on this was “a bit of overacting from the spider.”

I don’t think Sarah Parish could’ve done anything else. Between that script and that costume, any actor worth their salt would’ve gone “Pass the mustard, I have scenery to chew.” 🙂

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Good, fast paced episode with lots happening. UNIT basically had a week off while the Doctor and Jo visit the guest cast, 200 years in the future. And we start to realise that the guerillas really do have a point – in case you hadn’t guessed from the mere existence of Daleks, the future is not a nice place to live.

@scaryb – yes, the tricycle chase is definitely a bit contrived. It looks a bit like the Doctor’s nicked what he thought was a fast getaway vehicle, only to discover it could barely get above a jogging pace. Downhill. 🙂

I agree that the Special Edition removes the visual weaknesses – for example, the humans are no longer being enslaved in a block of 1960’s flats. Though, come to think of it, that might not’ve been intended as a visual weakness.

@thekrynoidman -The ‘infamous glimpse of Jo Grant’s knickers’ (which the SE didn’t remove) suggests to me that Doctor Who fans were early adopters of the freeze frame. We saw considerably more of Zoe…

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@blenkinsopthebrave – yes, thinking about it, it is a bit of a hint for people who don’t know Peter Capaldi’s previous work.

Personally, the first time he got ‘name’ status for me was when he played The Angel Islington, so I’m not exactly expecting him to be a ‘fish fingers and custard’ Doctor. 😈

But since my middle name is pedantic (okay, my middle name is ‘squeak’, but anyway…), I must point out that the first image we saw of Peter Capaldi’s Doctor was a pair of very angry eyes. 🙂

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@blenkinsopthebrave – does that win the BAFTA for Most Spoiler Free Teaser of 2014?

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I’d agree with ‘avoid Genesis of the Daleks’. Everyone always does Genesis of the Daleks. Genesis of the Daleks practically has Set Text status amongst Whovians. 😀

Pyramids of Mars versus City of Death. Pyramids has giant mummies-of-death, timey-wimey and Sarah Jane. City of Death has timey-wimey, Romana in her Lalla Ward regeneration, and a Douglas Adams script.

So Pyramids is ‘Classic Tom Baker’, City of Death is ‘Late Tom Baker’. Given that we’ve already watched a ‘Classic Tom Baker’ with Talons of Weng-Chiang, I’d go for ‘City of Death’. It is, like Day of the Daleks, a story where you can see quite clearly that AG Who is the same programme as BG Who – just with more money and considerable advances in special effects.

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@phaseshift – I didn’t mean they’d air it first Worldwide, I meant BBC America would air it first in the US. Given the time difference, even a same-day airdate would still mean the US got it five hours later than us.

After the success of the simulcast, I don’t think anyone can complain about Doctor Who showing on the same day worldwide. 🙂

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@max.nash247 – it would be surprising if it didn’t, it’s one of BBC America’s top-rated shows.

Plus, they have a Capaldi photo gallery up, so they’re clearly expecting to air it first.

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@wolfweed

Hmmm… if I were a Dalek, I’d be hiding behind the sofa about now.

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Sherlock, apparently.

I may not do monographs on 128 types of soil, but by golly I can do one on the 128 different time paradoxes.

With diagrams. 😈

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what’s the point of putting David Tennant in it with his bizarre not-really-there-yet accent?

@jimthefish I’m not terribly sure that’ll worry the average American. They’re used to people with strange mixes of the US accent and their immigrant parents’ accents.

Even when I was working over there, with my strong British accent, I was sometimes asked ‘are you a Citizen?’ by people who weren’t sure whether I’d immigrated.

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Well, I valiantly watched the original in all its wobbly glory – then rewatched with the Special Edition.

@phaseshift – Anat’s the leader, yeah, but I did wonder about her passing the newspaper to Shura. Was it that she wanted to keep her eyes on the Doctor, or was it that she can’t read? I can certainly imagine Daleks only allowing humans to learn to read if they need it for their work.

The new disintegration effect is indeed much more brutal. Bits flying everywhere… but the Dalek voices are such a huge improvement. There’s a very short documentary on the making of the Special Edition on the DVD, in which everyone is doing a variation on ‘the voices were utter crap’. The theory seems to be that the director didn’t know what a Dalek should sound like. (Nick Briggs actually says that he feels sorry for the two voice actors. )

I do get the impression that – while this is the first appearance of the Ogrons – the Doctor has met them before. He seems to imply as much when he tells the Brigadier that he’ll explain them later. Of course, if he knows they work for the Daleks, that would explain why he’s so trigger happy with them.

Yup. Variant of the Grandfather Paradox, a sort of Sir Reginald Styles Paradox. It gets even better – this story really does use ‘time travel’ as a major part of the plot instead of ‘we use time travel to get to where the plot will happen’.

@confusedpolarity – according to the documentary, the BG Daleks were generally a lot less insane than the AG Daleks are. Nick Briggs was asked to take it a bit lower. Mind you, I tend to rate any differences between BG and AG as ‘Time War, dear boy’. 😉

We, the audience, know that Jo is making a terrible mistake. It’s dramatic irony. As @scaryb says, as far as Jo’s concerned, she’s just escaped from a bunch of nutters with guns into what looks like some sort of Time Police control room. Why shouldn’t she help the nice policeman catch the obvious criminals?

@nick – I now have an image of Dalek Fred in his off-duty hours playing Invasion Earth, Reality Destruction, and Kill The Doctor. He’s probably complaining to Dalek Hans that he can’t get past Level Nine without being exterminated by the War Doctor’s TARDIS…

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@jimthefish

I think Skinner might work

I’d point out that he was fine as one of the three Dalek operators in The Five (ish) Doctors Reboot. Which might easily be why Moffat decided to cast him.

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@wolfweed

Stephen Moffat’s comment on Frank Skinner’s casting:

“Hopefully he’ll get out of my garden now.”

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