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I never really counted Adam as a companion, so the ‘companion doesn’t cut the mustard’ didn’t work at all for me. For one thing, they had Mickey, who started out not cutting the mustard and then slowly grew up into someone who was capable of being a companion.

For another, it’s obvious at the beginning of the episode (when Adam faints) that this isn’t going to work. Not nowadays, not when the Doctor can control the TARDIS well enough to take Adam back home.

But again, we have to remember that this is Series 1 of the reboot; I suppose we needed a demonstration for all those very new viewers of ‘the Doctor doesn’t just take anyone’.

The special effect for the datastream; now very reminiscent of the dalekised humanoids, with the eye coming out of their foreheads.

Nice makeup for Simon Pegg; very creepy. All white and red, like a reanimated corpse.

It’s interesting that RTD’s original idea for Adam was that he’d have a decent motive for stealing this information. But they were right to drop it; it wouldn’t have worked. This early on, everyone would simply have expected the Doctor to cure Adam’s Dad.

As it is though, Adam comes across so badly in this episode. I think that was why he never registered as ‘companion’ in my mind. He was manipulative, he lacked physical courage, he was quite happy to freeload and he wasn’t even naturally adventurous. There was never anything about him that said ‘companion’.

The closest equivalent to Adam was, I think, Turlough. And even Turlough had a reasonable justification for being a treacherous git.

No, Adam didn’t so much not cut the mustard as never had the mustard passed to him in the first place. He probably doesn’t even like mustard. 😉

Getting back to the plot, why the hell would a space station need to channel heat downwards? Wouldn’t a loop cooling system be better? @phaseshift, any idea?

Christopher Eccleston is so much better when he’s being serious, I’m beginning to like his Doctor when he’s serious. Ooh, I can start saying I like Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor, even if only sometimes. That’s a vast improvement for me. Yay, @fatmaninabox, for insisting on the RTD retrospective. 😀

Oh, dear, those manacles. The rest of the set design is very nice, but those manacles are almost as embarrassing to wear as the optical brain-reading thingy in Quatermass and the Pit.

Yup, fairly straightforward denoument. As soon as you know Max needs to be kept cool, you know how to kill him. And given that he’s in the middle of a room full of zombie corpses, the Doctor’s probably not feeling like negotiating.

But PhaseShift is right – the whole story – especially the Adam part – seems really rushed. Series 5 did this sort of thing much better, giving us several episodes to get used to Rory before he was abruptly removed from the scene. Then we had another set of episodes to get used to him not being there.

But Series 5 had the luxury of time. By then, they knew that – even if Matt Smith, or Karen Gillan or Arthur Darville hadn’t worked out – the success of Eccleston and Piper and Tennant meant that the BBC could simply have replaced the actor concerned. Moffat knew he had three series to set up his long game for the Fiftieth.

Here, there’s an undercurrent of ‘we have to rush, we have to try everything – because we may never get another chance.’ They barely made it to episode 13, and that because RTD wrote eight of the episodes himself.

Okay, next up is Boom Town, which I also didn’t watch on broadcast. I probably thought something along the lines of ‘Not more farting aliens!’. 😈

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That really must have been one heck of a cliffhanger at the end of this episode, when people were watching it for the first time. Welcome to the Whoniverse! 😀

Going back to the beginning of the episode – Vicki’s bright, isn’t she? Faced with a locked room mystery, she simply starts looking for the secret passage.

The exit via the (very long) tunnel does seem a bit of a plot filler.

Yes, he’s an odd fellow, this monk. On the one hand he seems to enjoy having power over the Doctor (until he finds that he hasn’t). On the other hand, he gives Eldred penicillin and uses antiseptic – which he had absolutely no need to do. Wulnoth would’ve been unsurprised if Eldred had died from an infected wound.

Nice to see that Edith is somewhat recovered, if still obviously shaken up. For such a tiny village, she’s also remarkably well informed about national and international politics – but possibly our monk had been a bit too chatty one night. 😉

Oh, lord, for a mobile phone as everyone trots around the forest just missing each other. It’s like As You Like It or A Midsummer Night’s Dream – ‘meanwhile, in another part of the forest…’

I think these Vikings may have had one too many knocks to the head, especially Sven. See what comes of not wearing your helmet in battle?

Oh, I love the progress chart. Wasn’t this later parodied in Buffy (or possibly they just had the same idea)? The Mayor’s ‘To Do’ list: Plumbers Union Reschedule, Meet With PTA, Become Invincible, and Haircut. The Monk’s: Arrival in Northumbria, Position atomic cannon, Sight Vikings, Light beacon fires, Destroy Viking fleet…

They do play the Monk and the Doctor as very similar, yes. I certainly thought (when the Doctor tricks the Monk in believing that he’s got a gun) that the Doctor ‘recognises’ the Monk now. He might not know exactly who the Monk is, but he knows where he’s from.

And Peter Butterworth and William Hartnell are both playing this as a game between equals. They’re enjoying themselves, and they’re playing the characters as enjoying themselves.

Was it Terry Pratchett who said ‘never build a cell you can’t get out of?’ The former monks of this monastery certainly followed that principle. The one obviously lockable cell just happens to have a secret passage. 🙂

Which the Doctor uses to trick Sven. When he finally figures out something is wrong, that is.

Wulnoth is rather obviously suspicious. So he should be. Beacon fires? When invading Vikings are around?

Meanwhile, Peter and Vicki are in Another Part Of The Monastery. Did I mention mobiles? Certainly come in handy in this episode. But they do at least spend the time that they’re using to carefully avoid one Viking, an injured man, the Monk and the Doctor in a useful manner. They go exploring. And find something, underneath the old sarcophagus.

Aaannnddd it’s a …

No. Go watch.

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Just a heads up that the BBC’s new comedy W1A might be worth watching. It’s the Twenty Twelve approach applied to the BBC itself.

The character of Tracey Pritchard sounds suspiciously like Julie Gardner….

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@wolfweed – do I see a Crazy Captions picture here?

Scary B’s post at #26469.

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@wolfweed

Was the Monk snorting snuff, or something less innocuous? Psychic pollen from the candle meadows of Karass Don Slava, perhaps?

It’s snuff, officer, I swear. I have absolutely no idea how it could possibly have ended up in my snuff box. As to heating it up inside a TARDIS rotor…

😉

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@thekrynoidman – sure. If someone mutters they’re speaking in a low/quiet voice, and in the UK (for some reason I thought you were from the UK) it usually means they’re complaining.

If someone says something darkly, they’re saying something ominous.

So if you’re muttering darkly about the bad writing, it means I think you’re not only complaining about the bad writing in this episode, you’re hinting that you think there’s more bad writing to come… 😈

I’m okay with Love and Monsters, myself. I mean, it didn’t work. I’m not sure I’ll enjoy re-watching it.

But it didn’t work in a good way. By which I mean that it didn’t work because they were trying something for the first time and didn’t really know how to make it work – a Doctor-lite story where we see the Doctor’s adventures from the outsider’s perspective. From Blink onwards they know how to do the Doctor-lites.

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@thekrynoidman

humiliated by bad writing.

You keep muttering darkly about the bad writing – and I think we’re all agreed that this was not the best of Russell’s scripts. Actually, I’m wondering if there were worse ones? By Russell, I mean – I think we could come up with worse episodes.

However, there’s a motto about scripts in the entertainment business. It goes: “I don’t want it good. I want it Tuesday.”

I suspect this script may have come under the ‘Tuesday’ category. It was the best Russell could come up with by the point where the set designers/director/special effects people had to have a script. Not to mention the poor bloody actors, who – while they can improvise – prefer not to. 🙂

That would also explain why the director was rewriting scenes on-set.

‘Tuesday’ always trumps good. Every time. Because you can work with a bad script – but you can’t work with no script.

@fatmaninabox – don’t worry, I ended up ‘watching’ World War Three while doing some cooking. Couldn’t face it either. 😉 And yes, I think the fart jokes got toned down considerably in SJA.

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@thekrynoidman

First and third. Plus cameos in other episodes of both SJA and Doctor Who.

Technically the Slitheen in Series 3 of SJA were the Blatheen, but I’m not even going to attempt to spell the name of their race, rather than their family. 🙂 Russell T. has a love of long, convoluted alien names.

If you want to look for the seriously self-centred git in Series 1, it’s easy. He’s the one flying the TARDIS. 😈

He does, however, still have the capacity to make oblique apologies. As at the end of World War Three, when he both offers Mickey a place on the TARDIS and later covers for him in front of Rose.

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Definitely not one of RTD’s best. So far I’ve got through Aliens of London – I’ll comment on World War Three when I have time. I will say that I partly blame this two-parter for my not watching Dalek or The Long Game on broadcast – but the other part was not liking Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor. He’s great at the angst; but he’s not got a very light touch with comedy.

As someone who’s spent quite a bit of time around politicians, I’d agree that Russell can’t write them – he not only has no idea how politics works, he hasn’t a clue what politicians are like. 😉 [I found this particularly noticeable in Torchwood: Children of Earth.] Considering how deftly he navigates round the BBC’s internal politics, it’s quite strange.

@thekrynoidman – I realise that you don’t like the character of Rose, but you’re being unfair to her in this. She isn’t a horrible person at all. Firstly, she hasn’t disappeared for a year without a word. She’s gone off for a few days, and has phoned her mum in that few days. We saw her phone her mum.

It isn’t her fault that a) the phone call was redirected to a time before she left with the Doctor and b) the Doctor then also mucked up the landing and made it twelve months instead of twelve hours after the take-off.

She shows sympathy towards her mum – we see her crying that she’s upset her so much – and sympathy towards Mickey. But the person who’s really upset Jackie and Mickey is the Doctor. They know it; that’s why Jackie slaps him. Hard.

And then Rose goes off travelling with the Doctor again because, y’know, she’s grown up now. She’s nineteen years old – and you don’t not live the life you want to live because your mum will worry. Being gay might make your mum cry – but that can’t stop you being gay, or leaving to live with your boyfriend/girlfriend. Equally, announcing that you’ve joined the army might make your mum cry – but it’s not going to stop you going off to a war zone.

Rose has an opportunity to see the universe outside her council estate; she’s going to take it. Young adults, in fact, have to deal with Rose’s dilemma all the time; it’s just been dressed up in science-fiction clothing.

Much as I personally dislike the farting aliens, the Slitheen had a long and happy career on the Sarah Jane Adventures. They really did turn out to be ‘one for the kiddies’. 😉

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@thekrynoidman – McCoy’s self-description of himself in the early Seventies:

a hippie who could count

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Good stuff, this episode. Forty eight years old, and it kept me pretty gripped.

Yes, the toaster screams ‘not 11th Century’ for the Monk. He’s also being pretty generous on the breakfast; sausages, eggs and toast. I like the way the pre-recorded voice over fools you into thinking William Hartnell will be in the episode. What with all the exciting stuff happening, it wasn’t until the final scene that I suddenly twigged he’d never appeared. This was most unlike the equivalent episode in The Web of Fear, when I was very aware Patrick Troughton wasn’t around.

Our very low budget Saxon hamlet (pop. 6, as far as I can work out) seems to have some highly skilled trackers in it. The men are considerably less polite than Edith, but possibly that’s because the Doctor appears old enough (once Edith got a good look at him) to be ‘harmless old man’, whereas Steven is the right age for a warrior.

Ooh, invading Vikings! Five invading Vikings. Okay, a budget-invasion. But the Viking costumes look very good, like the costume designer found some lovely hire stuff in Bermans or Angels that was left over from a big budget movie.

Hmm… Edith seems terribly traumatised. Are they trying to hint ‘rape’ as well as the visible evidence of ‘pillage’?

Okay, that was possibly the Worst. Fight Arranging. Ever. Did someone have the nerve to claim a credit for that? Yes, they did.

There’s a bit of a battle of wits going on – that Monk is clever. One jump ahead of Steven and Vicki. His plan is to trap them the same way he did the Doctor; let them investigate, then spring the trap when they find the gramophone. But because he gets the wounded villagers turning up at the monastery expecting help, it doesn’t work. Hoist by his own cover story.

And the Doctor’s pulled the ‘furs under the cover’ trick. So how did he get out? Presumably we’re going to find out next week, possibly with the reason a fake monk is hanging around a tiny village that’s being invaded by Vikings. 🙂

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Only tenuously connected to Doctor Who, which is why it’s in the pub.

The European Space Agency invites citizens and residents of the ESA’s member states to name Tim Peake’s space mission to the ISS. As is normal for the ESA, the mission name should connect with the astronaut’s nationality.

Nothing copyright is allowed – so however much we might want ‘TARDIS’, it ain’t gonna happen. 😀

My personal bet is on ‘Newton’, but anyone got any other ideas?

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@phaseshift – well, if they’re counting the Eighth Doctor’s Big Finish adventures as canon, Susan will be extremely conflicted by now. Possibly considering axe-murder, in fact. 🙂

I agree that one of my thoughts was ‘when have we had a big bad of the series’? The closest was Mme Kovarian and the Silence in S6.

On the other hand, it could tie in to all the Pertwee refs in Capaldi’s costume.

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Another guest star for Series 8 is announced.

It’s on the official site, so not a spoiler, but here’s the link in case you’re hiding out on Trenzalore until Episode 1. 🙂

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@wolfweed – well, it would certainly explain why he’s a bit giggly in The Time Meddler…
🙂

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a speck of psychic pollen from the candle meadows of Karass Don Slava fell into the console and heated up.

[Amy’s Choice]

An excuse which is right up there with “It must be my ex-boyfriend’s” and “I thought it was Oregano”. 🙂

Any theories on which Doctor was doing the psychic pollen from the candle meadows of Karass Don Slava?

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@phaseshift – if it wasn’t for the fact that Jabe said her ancestors were from the rainforests, I’d have wondered if she was a eucalyptus. They’re extremely flammable.

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@thekrynoidman – well, I think it did have some element of mystery to it – if you were eight. 😉

That’s what I mean (I think I said it in Rose) about RTD not yet knowing where his audience was. The answer turned out to be ‘everywhere’, but at this point he didn’t know if he was writing primarily for kids, with the adults watching on sufferance. Or was he writing primarily for adults, people who’d watched it when they were kids?

The ‘mystery’ sub-plot is aimed fairly and squarely at the kids, I think. If you think about it, villains in kid’s movies generally do have the equivalent of big arrows pointing at their heads saying ‘suspect ME!’

I personally suspect that in RTD’s mind, the Doctor had figured out who was behind it long before that ‘reveal’ – he was just making sure.

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@thekrynoidman – I’d agree with everyone else that the ‘mystery’ was a sub-plot. Doctor Who may sometimes decide to have a bit of a mystery, but this episode was really a ‘save the day’ story. The first three episodes of the new series are introducing us (through Rose) to the world of Doctor Who. Mostly, during the RTD era, this involves the Doctor saving people, planets and reality itself. 🙂

So – alien invasions in which the Doctor-plus-Rose save the day! (Episode 1). Adventures on space stations – with aliens – in which the Doctor saves the day! (Episode 2). Adventures in history, meeting famous people (Episode 3) – in which … well, you get my point.

And we have a budget!!! No more being expected to make an alien world out of a collection of loo rolls, some old shampoo bottles, cornflake packets and a piece of sticky-backed plastic…

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I keep thinking how much I enjoyed Day of The Doctor. AG Series One makes so much more sense now. 🙂

But it does make more sense – it explains visually what RTD clearly had in his head; Gallifrey is gone, burnt. And so the Ninth Doctor is pissed off at humans (‘stupid apes’) even though he loves them. He drags Rose off to see her planet burn, possibly not even realising why he’s doing it.

The humans lived. The Time Lords – didn’t.

I can appreciate Eccleston’s performance a lot more now that I’ve seen what came ‘before’. It’s a very good portrayal of someone who is as traumatised as hell.

Anyway, going back to End of the World. It certainly has a budget; lots and lots of good quality CGI. The aliens don’t look human (well, apart from the Time Lord). Even the human doesn’t look human. 😉

I’d rate the story itself as largely ‘one for the kids’. It has lots of aliens, a simple moral about racism, and is generally a good little adventure story. Remembering that RTD was having to re-introduce Doctor Who to a new generation, it also demonstrates what Doctor Who is about. Exciting adventures in far-future space stations, people getting horribly killed, and explosions. 😛

Next week we go to Victorian … err, Cardiff. Kids, this is a time machine. Not just a spaceship. 🙂

I agree with @monochromedimension that destroying Gallifrey felt wrong, somehow. I understand entirely why RTD did it – he needed a compelling backstory and he needed to not start the new series with several decades of baggage. Destroying Gallifrey gave him both – it really did draw a line between BG and AG. Same Doctor, many of the same aliens, but – we start here. There is no need to know anything of the series before ‘Rose’. Do not worry about strange men with scarves (unless you want to).

@fatmaninabox – I’ll see you the Temple of Peace and raise you the Millenium Stadium. Presumably the service corridors under the Stadium represent a peak of architectural efficiency, because civilisations across the universe seem to have copied them.

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@confusedpolarity

it seems to me the perfect example of an actor taking on the role to escape typecasting rather than taking it in fear of it.

Definitely what I think. To use David Tennant’s obituary joke, Peter Capaldi probably doesn’t want the first line of his obituary to be ‘famous for playing Malcolm Tucker’. And he’s just taken one of the very few parts in British television that has the potential to eclipse Malcolm Tucker in the public mind.

@Purofilion – Steven Moffat has gone public in saying that he’s now closer to the end of his run than he is to the beginning – but since he said that in the middle of Series 7, that could apply as much to ‘I plan to leave at the end of Series 9’ as to Series 8.

RTD stayed for four series and a year of Specials. But I think the year of Specials was partly because the incoming producer had that ‘clear decks’ handover – and David Tennant had done three full years and was knackered; if they’re taking on a continuing Doctor/set/writing team, and the Doctor’s only just finished Year 2, it’s not so much of a problem.

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@blenkinsopthebrave – McCoy is never counted as one of the ‘less than three years’ Doctors because he reprised the role several times. Equally, Hartnell and Troughton aren’t normally counted as ‘short’ Doctors because – like McCoy – they did three full series each. The Seventh Doctor appeared (as the current Doctor) in a 1990 episode of Search Out Science, the best-forgotten ‘Dimensions In Time’ (1993) and canonically in the TV movie (1996).

McCoy is a lot like Paul McGann; both have the odd position of being ‘one of the longest serving’ while not actually being on telly for most of their tenure. McCoy was the current Doctor from 1987 to 1996, then McGann was the current Doctor from 1996 to 2005.

McGann’s got a couple of months on McCoy, so gets the ‘longest serving’ title.

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I’ve seen Episode 1 before, possibly in the States. But I’m pretty sure I didn’t see any later episodes for this story, so I don’t know any spoilers.

Yes, the history is a bit dodgy. We can forgive the production team for the horned helmets – I think it wasn’t very widely known in the 1960’s that Vikings didn’t have horned helmets. Edith appearing with loose hair in front of a strange man may also be the influence of Mid-20th costume design (which seemed to have an odd belief that the Anglo-Saxons lacked combs); it’s certainly not historical.

@fatmaninabox – I recognised ‘Edith’ as well. Sadly, Alethea Charlton died quite young

You can indeed see the humanising effect of Ian and Barbara by this point. The Doctor is far more relaxed, more mischievous and very much the ‘Grandfather’ to the orphaned Vicki. Those who insist that Susan isn’t the Doctor’s biological granddaughter should note that nobody else is ever allowed to call him ‘Grandfather’, even if he’s effectively playing a parental role.

@phaseshift – the manic laughter on the end certainly tells us that this mysterious monk is a bit of a nutcase (as well as obviously not from this time period). And young Steven seems a bit of a liability, what with leaping on innocent villagers and nicking watches from them. The prison cell does seem a bit like the monk’s just built it; I suspect the record skipping wasn’t an accident.

Nice story so far. Hopefully the DVD will arrive by next week. 🙂

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@blenkinsopthebrave

What if…the internet rumours about Capaldi being a one-season Doctor are true?

Thing is… do you remember the enormous fuss there was when Christopher Eccleston left after one series?

Did you notice how very, very careful Russell T Davies was to ask Freema Agyeman to reprise Martha, to try and make it obvious that she hadn’t been fired? Or how Catherine Tate reprised Donna – to make it obvious that she’d enjoyed her time on the show?

Then there was Steven Moffat, having to come in as show runner with: no Doctor, no Companion, no set – and no pressure. 😈

And Moffat’s planning to leave the next producers in the same situation? With the additional problem that some tabloid will make something up along the lines of ‘Peter Capaldi left because he didn’t want to work with [name of new show runner here]. Because they would; Doctors traditionally stay for three or more years. We’ve had exactly two who didn’t; one was fired and one is strongly rumoured to have left because he wasn’t happy.

So, no. I think Capaldi, the producers and the BBC may have planned an emergency exit strategy (by mutual agreement), but not because they’re planning to use it. Capaldi’s not setting up a new direction – he is the new direction. And they need something planned in case it doesn’t work. Just as they had something planned in case Matt Smith didn’t work out.

The clock’s struck Twelve, remember? It’s a new turn of the dial. 🙂

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@tomsscarf

some actors take on such roles and then spend the rest of their careers trying to distance themselves from it.

Actors take on a lot of roles. I once had to fill in one of those forms which ask you to list every single job you’ve had since leaving school. With dates. Since by that point I’d been a professional actor for twenty years, my response was along the lines of: ‘You have got to be kidding me!’

Anyway, the point is that actors take on a lot of roles and never know if any of them will suddenly become ‘the’ role, the one the general public thinks of when they hear that actor’s name or see their photo.

And sometimes, to their horror, ‘the’ role is the one they didn’t like. Either they had a rotten time on-set, so don’t want to remember it. Or they thought the script was shite and that they just did their best with it. Or even that they just did that particular job for the money and were a bit ashamed of it at the time … and now everyone prefers it to the jobs they’re really proud of.

And at every opportunity, people bring ‘the’ role up. They want to discuss it, they want you to come and give a talk about it, they want it to be the first line of your obituary…

… and then people get pissed off that the actor concerned would really rather not talk about ‘the’ role and would rather talk about all their other work. Any other work. For God’s sake, I hated that part! Why do you all want me to talk about it!

It’s like that. 😉

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@devilishrobby – yes, I’m sure we’d have had a great two series with a deeply unhappy Eccleston being contractually trapped in the role. Much better David Tennant; a lot of his charm was how visibly delighted he was to be playing the Doctor.

And given the amount of money the actors can get on the conference circuit, I’d say Christopher Eccleston really doesn’t want to go to a Who conference. So why make him?

He’s an actor who did a job; because he was the first Doctor of the reboot (and hadn’t been a fan) he didn’t realise that The Doctor is a role for life, not just for the few years you’re playing it on the telly. He obviously didn’t enjoy his time on Who, and now he wants to move on.

Thing is, people won’t let him.

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@scaryb – I think it was me. It’s most obvious in Matt Smith’s first series – but his age and inexperience as a leading man means that the BBC higher ups probably insisted on a planned, scripted exit strategy.

For David Tennant’s first series, it seems to be more that the Battle of Canary Wharf could have been re-scripted to either force the Doctor to regenerate, or give a ‘wrap-up’ to the series (on cancellation, obviously) – with both the Doctor and Rose trapped in the alternate universe.

Anyway must dash, as I have to go explain Faustus’ state of mind in Act Two … 😉

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@phaseshift – personally, I would have thought that the last reason Steven Moffat would ever engage someone as a ‘one-series Doctor’ was that he’d be stepping down himself at the same time. If Steven Moffat is planning to leave at the end of Series Eight, he’s probably asked Peter Capaldi to at least stay until the end of Series Nine – and yeah, the future showrunner may have been consulted.

In the unlikely event that Peter Capaldi has been asked to take the role for one year only, Moffat is staying on for Series Nine. 🙂

I can guess where the rumours started: it’s obvious from the speed and ease with which Capaldi was able to leave his role in The Musketeers that he prefers contracts which only commit him for a year at a time. One-year contracts have several advantages – especially if the actor then becomes a massive success in the role. They certainly don’t mean that an actor won’t stay for several years, renewing their contract a year at a time.

Probably renegotiating their pay (upwards) each time, as well. 😈

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@missshannonkent and @phaseshift

It will send me screaming from my computer screen.

Besides, it’s more than a little impolite to start talking about an actor’s replacement when the poor bugger’s barely had a chance to get three lines out. 😉

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@monochromedimension

You know what I want to watch? ‘The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End’, I haven’t watched it properly since transmission

Well, it’s one that RTD wrote, so we should get round to it during the rewatch. 🙂

Forgot to say that the hat and sweater look really good.

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@Recky – to keep it brief: it’s apparent that he didn’t have a very happy time during Series 1 of Doctor Who. Nothing to do with being typecast – he just seems to not want to revisit that period.

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@faegrl

I think the most weird judgment I’ve gotten for my love of Who is that it’s “nerdy”.

That’s certainly something that’s different between the US and the UK. Being an obsessed Whovian (who, me?) is more than a bit nerdy. But loving Doctor Who is not. Over one-fifth of the UK population watched The Day of The Doctor.

Being able to discuss the relative merits of Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant and Matt Smith does not a nerd make – in the UK. 🙂

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@confusedpolarity

Nine is the one who really doesn’t tick “The Doctor” boxes for me.

He doesn’t for me, either. Series 1 remains the only AG series to date where I wasn’t bothered if I missed an episode. At the time, I thought I’d just grown out of Doctor Who; it wasn’t until David Tennant that I realised I just hadn’t liked Christopher Eccleston in the role.

But he should take a lot of credit; he took the role on at a point where it needed the level of credibility he gave it. He sent a signal out that the part was one that could be played by ‘serious’ actors. He brought millions of kids back to Doctor Who – and they didn’t care that he didn’t seem like ‘The Doctor’, because they’d never seen any other Doctor.

I’m actually a lot happier with Christopher Eccleston’s performance after The Day of The Doctor; the story there meant that his ‘that isn’t the Doctor’ performance now makes more sense to me. The Ninth Doctor wasn’t the Doctor – he was someone desperately struggling to deserve that name again. By the time he regenerated, he’d managed it.

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@purofilion – nope, no pregnancies outside of Torchwood. And Amy and Rory, of course. While many characters have had children mentioned, Baby Melody is supposed to be the first ever pregnancy shown on-screen on Doctor Who. It was also pretty obvious that the tone meetings had decided that they had to avoid the word ‘conception’. 😈

Madame Vastra had quite some difficulty asking the Doctor if he’d been sleeping with Amy – without using the words or phrases ‘sex’, ‘conception’ ‘sleeping with’ or ‘are you all in a threesome?’ 😈

Presumably this was on the grounds that ‘Rory and Amy are married and now they’re having a baby’ is understandable to all small children, but ‘Mummy/Daddy, what’s conception mean?’ is likely to lead to impromptu sex education sessions. 😉

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@Recky – he’s very well known in Britain, yes. He has ‘name’ recognition, especially as the Machiavellian spin doctor Malcolm Tucker in the comedy programme ‘The Thick of It’.

He’s also done a number of films; Local Hero, In The Loop, Dangerous Liasons, Lair of the White Worm. And he’s won two British Academy of Film and Television Awards – Best Short Film (he also writes and directs) and Best Comedy Actor.

He’s also a Doctor Who fan. Which is quite possibly why this extremely successful actor gave up another prime-time role (Cardinal Richlieu in The Musketeers) to play The Doctor. 😉

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Diddley-dum, diddley-dum, diddley-dum, diddley-dum. Waaah WAAAH!

I still get a big grin on my face when I watch those opening credits. And hear that theme tune, with the diddley-dums suddenly being supported by a big orchestra. Sign of the times – we’rrre back! And we have a budget!

The episode is called ‘Rose’, and the first montage is all about establishing Rose. This was Doctor Who for a generation who’d never watched it, so the person we were introduced to was our viewpoint character. An ordinary Londoner, with a job in a shop, a boyfriend and a mum. Rose. Rose Tyler.

Ooh, the creep factor for kids who didn’t know about Autons when that first dummy begins to move. In fact, you can almost hear the parents start to explain… Rose doesn’t know anything about Autons either. She thinks it’s a practical joke.

And the Doctor grabs her hand and shouts ‘Run!’

Seriously, there’s an outrageous amount of running involved.

(Donna Noble)

This was our first sight of the new style of Doctor. We didn’t know, yet, why he’d chosen a completely new style, but here he was. Short hair, leather jacket, sweater. Every BG Doctor had something strange about his clothing – this Doctor was utterly early 21st Century; you could walk past him in the street. He might have been a detective, or a soldier in civvies.

And while he wanted to save Rose’s life, he didn’t want to have her stick with him. He gives a motor mouthed explanation of the Autons – living plastic, controlled by a relay station on the roof – then goes to blow up the entire store.

Funny – was that a 1960’s police box Rose just ran past?

I mentioned earlier that Russell T. was trying to find an audience. We had seen families in Doctor Who before (in fact, we saw one in Terror of the Autons), but no one knew at this point how important Jackie and Micky would prove to be – or how much their characters would develop.

But you can see why Rose would want to fly off with the Doctor. Mickey’s sweet, but he’s not a great boyfriend – Rose has nearly been killed and he’s off to the pub. There’s a match on. Her life is okay – a mum, a job, a boyfriend – but nothing very interesting. It’s the same life as everyone around her, but she knows perfectly well she’s capable of more.

If Rose hadn’t accidentally kept hold of that arm, she’d never have seen the Doctor again. But she does, and he turns up. Through the cat flap. Checking whether Rose is plastic, turning down Jackie’s ‘offer’, speed reading a novel and examining his ears.

Ooh, that’s interesting. I’d forgotten that staircase. Clara’s working at Ian and Barbara’s old school and living in Rose’s old flat???

You can see why, after all the horrors of the Time War and the destruction of Gallifrey, the Doctor would like Rose. She makes him laugh. And if there was one type of person he needed right then, it would be someone who could do that.

But instead he walks away and tells her to forget him. He’s clinging to the skin of the planet, trying not to fall off.

Again, this is a superb introduction if you don’t know anything about Doctor Who. There was a police box. Now it’s in another place – and now we hear a strange whooshing noise and that odd blue box has just vanished.

Rose, despite her failure to stay on at school and take A levels, is smart. She uses definitely-not-Google and finds someone obsessed with Doctor Who to fill her in. Clive’s a riff on the obsessed fan, right down to his wife’s total astonishment that anyone who’s a ‘she’ can be interested in Doctor Who. 😀

Clive (Mark Benton) completes the job of explaining the Doctor to the brand-new audience. He’s seen throughout history. He appears when there are strange events, disasters, pivotal moments. His constant companion is death.

Rose, by now, is convinced that Clive is a complete nutter. Mickey, meanwhile, is puzzled by the moving wastebin. Which promptly swallows him.

Still working on the special effects at this point, though on a rewatch, Noel Clark does a really good job with PlasticMickey. There’s also another hint on just how quick witted Rose is – she thinks to hit the fire alarm and get everyone to evacuate.

First real view of the TARDIS. Rose rushes in. Promptly rushes out. Goes round the entire box. Yup, it’s a box. A wooden box, just big enough for four people if they know each other really well. You can walk right round it.

And its bigger on the inside. A new look, even if you watched BG Who. This new TARDIS interior was very organic, almost grown. The one thing I regret about HD is that the level of detail shows up pre-HD sets. They weren’t designed to be seen at that level – you can see that the ‘coral’ columns are fibre-glass and that the round things (I love the round things) are Fresnel lenses.

The console still looks great, though. 😉

Christopher Eccleston wanted to show charming. I’m sure he thought the big goofy grin would do it, but it’s more when he’s completely and utterly clueless…

First hint about the Time War – the Nestene Consciousness sees a TARDIS and is terrified. The Doctor having the anti-plastic in his jacket probably didn’t help, either. 😉 So the Autons start attacking everyone.

Hands up all BG Who viewers who fully expected Mickey and Jackie to be dead by the end of Episode 1? (It doesn’t count if you were reading spoilers and knew they were booked for the series). But Rose saves the day; she starts her adventures with the Doctor by saving his life. He’d be dead if it wasn’t for her – something that’s true in so many ways.

But she has a moment of hesitation when he asks her to come with him. He’s alien, it’s strange, she’s got people to take care of. (You can see in Christopher Eccleston’s eyes that that refusal really hurts.)

So, for the first time, we see a full TARDIS dematerialisation. A traditional one, with the original sound effect. And then a re-materialisation.

The Doctor: By the way, did I mention that it also travels in time?

And the last shot of the episode is Rose, our viewpoint character, running into the TARDIS.

We’re off!

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@monochromedimension – I think Colin Baker has turned in some very good performances. In fact, he could have been a terrific Master.

I just think he was woefully miscast as the Doctor – something that isn’t his fault.

Of course, he was also landed with some of the worst scripts in the entire history of Doctor Who, scripts that manage to make the deadliest disasters of AG Who look like something out of Shakespeare. Okay, thinking about it, Shakespeare having one of his rare off days. But still.

Oh, well. As long as you don’t make me watch The Twin Dilemma. Once was enough for a lifetime. 🙄

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@monochromedimension

the Seventh Doctor looks great in that coat as well;

Sylvester McCoy had the advantage of having played a number of actual clowns – appearing confident in something that made him look like a Fool was no problem. 😉

I’m sure you’ve seen him as Radagast – this is a guy who can carry off bird poop. 😀

That was the irony, really. The actor who usually played the dark characters, and wanted a sombre costume, got stuck in something that looked like a car crash in a clothing factory. The actor who usually played the professional fools ended up in something fairly sensible.

I have said it before somewhere on this forum: I think Sylvester McCoy was not only a better actor than Colin Baker, he was a braver one. When his interpretation in his first series wasn’t working, he was both able to realise it and brave enough to change it. He is, quite definitely, ‘my’ Doctor – I thought he absolutely nailed it in his second and third series.

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@fatmaninabox – well, The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith was quite fun – so I have no objection to including it. It would come between Planet of the Dead and Waters of Mars.

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The final episode.

Ah, the 1950’s. There’s just been a fatal accident in the Pit. Oh, well, never mind. Somebody get an ambulance while we switch the generators back on… it’s times like this that you feel really grateful for the Health & Safety at Work Act. 😉

In this final episode, you start to wonder. Is Breen entirely ‘himself’ when he sets things up so that the hull has the maximum amount of electrical energy and is surrounded by people? Is it stupidity; or a compulsion he doesn’t understand?

Whichever it is, preparations for the press conference (later to be homaged by the Third Doctor story The Daemons) go on. The breakdown of the conference as the hull awakens is shown entirely on television. My guess is that the ‘TV’ is being used as an output monitor for a fixed camera on the live ‘Pit’ set. That way they can get the impression of absolute chaos with just a few extras running frantically past the camera.

If you look at the TV output, it’s one camera on a tiny corner of set. When we cut from the pub to the pre-filmed Pit there’s a much wider set and much more fluid camera work with several cameras.

So from Sladden and Barbara Judd apparently being the only ones affected, we’re starting to see a sliding scale. Breen is badly affected, hypnotised by the hull. Quatermass is able to concentrate on rescuing people at first, but struggles. Potter is barely affected (he later says he feels a bit sick) and Fullalove doesn’t seem to notice any effect at all.

The budget for the filmed inserts is used to good effect here; it allows something very rare for 1950’s TV – screaming crowds and a near riot. Careful positioning of vehicles means that it looks like they have far more extras than they do – the extras are generally fighting their way through a bottleneck, except for the final street scene.

The pre-filmed scenes are then carefully combined with the interior scenes that could be done live. So we see the effect of the events outside by their impact on the pub-goers. As the terrifying compulsion reaches them they rush out into the pre-filmed insert.

Meanwhile, we find that another person is unaffected. Roney. I remember when we first mooted this rewatch, @blenkinsopthebrave mentioned that he thought Cec Linder’s portrayal of Roney was out of place, somehow. And I had to button my lip very firmly – because Roney is a bit out of place. He’s supposed to be out of place. Like Potter (the officer with the regional accent) and the Vicar, Rev. Gilpin, he’s supposed to be not-one-of-us. He’s not a ‘Martian’. And because he’s not a ‘Martian’, he’s able to rescue Quatermass.

Quatermass, in this final episode, is playing us. We all (except for a few rare souls) have racist impulses; we all should try to fight them. We don’t have to take part in the race riots.

Talking about Quatermass, you can see why everyone remembers Andre Morell as Quatermass. He’s pitch perfect in this scene, his ‘were they people?’ genuinely terrifying. You know he doesn’t know if they were. If he still is.

You can see the terror in his eyes.

The scene with the Newspaper editor always feels to me as if they needed more time than the filmed insert gave them to set up the next ‘live’ scene. Admittedly it reminds us of Fullalove, but it still seems a bit ‘yup, they’re still rioting out there’. Perhaps, rather than needing the actors to run to the next set, they needed the techies to run between the special effects.

The derelict house next to the ‘Pit’? Another Chekhov’s gun, as Potter and Barbara Judd use it to hide in. We also see, now, how effective the compulsion is. Barbara Judd and Captain Potter have been having a quiet, understated romance. The sort that suggests Miss Judd will shortly become Mrs Potter (it’s the Fifties!). But here, she’s trying to kill him. Again, nice acting by Christine Finn – you can see she can no longer see ‘who’ he is. Just that he’s not-a-Martian.

However, one of the disadvantages of live TV is that when the fight goes wrong, you just have to go with it. I have no idea how a blow to the back (I imagine it was meant to be the neck) will knock someone out, but let’s just imagine it was Venusian Akido. 😀

We’ve seen Quatermass struggle to recognise Roney, we’ve seen Barbara try to kill Captain Potter – now we see the death of one of our regular characters. Fullalove isn’t affected; but in this case that’s a problem. Because he isn’t affected he has no idea he’s in danger from Colonel Breen and the two other men left in the Pit. He keeps taking photos, still doing his job – at the moment when the compulsion changes to ‘kill’.

So the ‘Martians’ kill him by telekinesis, stoning him to death. Remember that this was the second Quatermass story for the character of Fullalove; it must have been completely shocking to the audience. Regularly recurring characters don’t die – except that here, they do.

Having just killed off a recurring character, Quatermass tries to kill Roney. Given that the audience were probably just completely off-kilter through Fullalove’s death, there must have been a real moment of ‘they’re not going to … he’s not going to … they wouldn’t have Quatermass kill someone? Would they?’

Fortunately that’s not the moral. As I said, Quatermass is us. If he kills Roney, Kneale is saying that our violent impulses, our hatred of the other, are something uncontrollable. But that’s not what he wants to say; instead Quatermass fights back, with the help of his friend. He concentrates on his human memories, his memory that this man is a man, is his good friend.

And now we’ve seen it in person, the ‘off-stage’ effects become utterly terrifying. We know that these scenes are being repeated across London as people start to destroy anything ‘UnMartian’, even down to harmless pets.

Another ‘set move’ scene as Roney and Quatermass gallop over to the derelict house set. But the newsreader and airplane scene serve another purpose; they set up the imaginative use of genuine Blitz footage of London from the air and on the ground, a London burning and destroyed. When this was broadcast, that would have been a living memory to most of the audience.

The hull is giving off so much energy it’s nearly melted (a wax model) and a glowing image of a Martian (the horned devil) is now hovering over London. Captain Potter is busy opening a hole between the derelict house and the Pit. Quite what his plan is, we don’t know – but Roney’s knowledge of myths and legends comes into play. The enemy of the devil is iron and water.

The harmless pets; the blind man, our friends, the people we love. People and creatures that we ought to protect, being murdered by the mob. It’s never answered – but you wonder what happened to Mr Chilcott, the old man with dementia, whom we saw in Episodes 1 and 2. His wife loved him – but did she end up killing him? I always hope not; that perhaps they’d decided, what with all the problems, to stay with relatives in the country for a bit.

Quatermass is willing to try throwing the iron into the fireball. The final part of the action in the Pit switches to a pre-filmed insert. This allows them to open out the action again into a much larger set, climbing over the hut roof, struggling in the mud. It also gives the ‘live’ cast time to change costumes for the final scene.

Quatermass, watched by Roney and Potter gets as close to the ‘demon’ as he can – not far enough. It’s true that he can get close undetected because he’s one of those affected. But that also means that the closer he gets, the more he comes under the compulsion that – we see – has now absorbed all the living energy from Breen and the other two men. So Roney comes down, quickly takes the chain, and throws it into the apparition.

If Cec Linder looks like he’s staggering wildly towards the apparition and seems very keen to keep his arm over his eyes, that’s because he is. The amount of ‘flash’ needed (about a pound, or half a kilo) to create the effect meant that they needed him between the camera and the explosion – or the camera would burn out.

On the other hand, that amount of ‘flash’ also meant that if he looked straight at it, he would damage his eyes, possibly to the extent of being permanently blinded. Nowadays this would be handed over to a professional stunt man. Then, he did the stunt himself. He’s been given a fireproof coat, had his hair doused in water, and has padding to cover his eyes. But that means he has to head towards a rather large amount of explosive while, basically, completely blind.

They then shot him from the front with no explosion and his eyes open so that they could intercut the two shots; the one with the effect, the one with him acting.

Again, lovely acting from Andre Morell. The first two shouts of ‘Roney’ when he expects to find him. The last two when he knows that he won’t.

In the final scene, when Quatermass gives a speech that Kneale really had to fight to keep in, we see the survivors. Sladden, Rev. Gilpin, Captain Potter, Barbara Judd. The Police Inspector. The affected and the unaffected.

Last week we saw that the Vicar was also either able to fight this thing off, or is one of those not affected. As @craig said last week, the portrayal of science vs religion in Quatermass isn’t black and white. Rev. Gilpin has no part to play in this week’s story; but the religious worldview of evil forces and demonic attack does. So he’s there, in a position that implies that he kept Sladden safe when the ‘Wild Hunt’ raged. ‘Religion’, in the Fifties, was seen as one of the defences against evil. Within the story, it can be seen that the Vicar’s worldview would both allow him to easily conceptualise the compulsion as ‘evil’ and give him the tools to hand to fight it.

It’s no one ‘type’. The engineer, the scientist, the reporter, the priest. All of them were the people who’d outgrown the Martian compulsion to kill anyone different. All of them tried to protect the people who hadn’t – more than protect them, stop them. One of them died trying.

Every war-crisis, witch-hunt, race riot, purge, is a reminder and a warning. We are the Martians. If we cannot control the inheritance within us this will be their second dead planet.

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Every. Single. One.

Even if they include farting aliens. Okay? 😉

I dunno if we’re going to include his one two-part script for Matt Smith, since strictly speaking it was part of the Sarah Jane Adventures. If we do, we’ll need to include The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith.

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@monochromedimension – yup. We’ve already done a Steven Moffat Retrospective.

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@lucig4 – you may not think so, but your post is contradicting itself.

If the Doctor’s death is a fixed point, then he was regenerating in The Impossible Astronaut. We see the regeneration light show.

However, he can’t regenerate any more (The Time of The Doctor). That’s the contradiction.

The simple solution is that he always was inside the Tessalector – and the light show always was a light show. The fixed point in time was that he was believed to have died at Lake Silencio. River had to shoot him, even though that shooting didn’t actually kill him.

Incidentally, the fact that something is known by the Daleks doesn’t make it ‘public knowledge’ (unless you’re a Dalek). Everyone else in the universe would count up the Doctor’s incarnations and conclude that – as the Eleventh Doctor – he had one, maybe two left. The only people who know about ‘Captain Grumpy’ being the same person as ‘The Doctor’ are the Daleks. They also know about the Tennant Doctor needing to regenerate after being shot, owing to it being Dalek Fred who shot him. 🙂

The Time Lords know about Captain Grumpy but they don’t, for example, know about the Tennant Doctor using up a regeneration to stay in the same incarnation. The Doctor’s friends and companions know about the mid-point regeneration – but they don’t know about Captain Grumpy.

Remember, The War Doctor didn’t call himself ‘The Doctor’ during his ninth incarnation. As far as the rest of the universe (i.e. us) is concerned, ‘The Doctor’ vanishes at some point during his Eighth incarnation, and turns up on Earth to meet Rose. Everyone thinks that ‘The Doctor’ who turns up on Earth is ‘The Ninth Doctor’. He is – but he’s the tenth incarnation.

Which means the entire universe (except the Daleks, who knew exactly who The War Doctor was) has miscounted the number of regenerations… and since the entire universe has miscounted, the Doctor lets them go on thinking he can regenerate. In fact, there’s a certain amount of suspicion that he’d not kept count himself.

::shakes fist:: Moffat!

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@thebrotherofthewhovian

That’s not a flaw, sorry. 🙂

All Kathy knew was that Sally didn’t get sent back to the time she was in. She never met the Doctor (as far as we know), so she has no explanation of how the Angels work.

Since neither Kathy or Sally have any idea how the Angels work, they have no idea that being touched by the same Angel will send you back to the same temporal area.

That’s why Kathy instructs her grandson to turn up at the same moment she is being displaced in time. She now doesn’t know what happened to Sally – all she can do is hope that the warning she’s about to give via her grandson will help Sally.

Since, if it does help, Sally and Lawrence will need to know what happened to Kathy, she includes all those details. Yeah, I vanished. Yeah, I’m already dead. But in the end, I made a pretty good life for myself, so don’t grieve too much.

The next person Sally sees getting displaced in time is Billy. He gets sent to the sixties, whereas Kathy got sent back much earlier. So Sally has no way of knowing whether she’ll get sent back in time or not by the end of the episode. All she knows is that she and Lawrence don’t end up in either Kathy’s time or Billy’s time. But there’s nothing to stop them, say, ending up as Victorians…

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@phaseshift – the discussion starts here On The Sofa.

To warn you in advance, it also includes a suggestion for Vengeance on Varos from @monochromedimension.

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@devilishrobby – your spelling is fine. 😉

Regarding Sarah Jane Smith and the Fourth Doctor, from what Liz Sladen said, it was a mutual attraction. She joked that she and Tom felt the Doctor and Sarah Jane were probably dragging each other behind the TARDIS pillars at every off-screen opportunity. 🙂

It is a change that any romance on the part of the Doctor is now on-screen, rather than something the actors decide for themselves as a subtext. That was a very deliberate decision by RTD. It’s sometimes difficult to remember that everyone went into Series 1 of AG Who knowing that there might only be a Series 1.

So the writers weren’t proud – they threw everything bar the kitchen sink at Series 1 (ah, if only BG Who had included a kitchen-sink-monster). Russell T knew all the soap opera tricks; they’re designed to keep the audience hooked, keep them tuning in and he used them all. Rose had a family and a boyfriend – through the series we saw how her growing love for the Doctor impacted on those people.

So Series 1 had something for each section of that audience it desperately needed. The kids, generally, will like the farting monsters, the scary gas-mask child, the Daleks. The Whovians will watch if you make sure enough BG elements are included. The non-Whovian Dads watching with their kids will have Billie Piper to keep their attention. And the non-Whovian Mums (also watching with their kids) will now have a family saga/romance to follow. Because, stereotypical or not, women like a strong emotional storyline.

And by golly, did it work. When @scaryb and I went round the 50th Celebration, one of the very noticeable things was that the fandom was now equally split between men and women. It was no longer 90% male.

Some of that is undoubtedly due to the ‘David Tennant effect’ (that guy is hot). Followed by Matt Smith, who has his own brand of geek
charm. 😉

But I think a lot of that more balanced fandom is that Doctor Who now pays a lot more attention to the emotional fallout – which is the likely result of travelling around space and time with an attractive bloke. With a cool ‘car’. And who is effectively possessed of an independent income.

After all,

it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a used TARDIS, must be in want of a wife.

😈

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@craig, @fatmaninabox, @phaseshift and @jimthefish

So, so, so (she says, bouncing up and down excitedly), what are we having for our retrospective? RTD part one, or Gattis? Because today is Quatermass’s last episode.

And the BG Series? It was suggested that we could run both – we did before the 50th.

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@lucig4 – he’s inside the Tessalector. The ‘regeneration’ is a light show created by the Tessalector so that it looks as if the real Doctor is really regenerating.

There’s a forum for The Impossible Astronaut – though we don’t really discuss the regeneration effect, because we were doing a retrospective rather than watching it for the first time.

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@Purofilion – I seem to be suffering from insomnia tonight. Must go to bed…

Anyway, when we were discussing the Sixth Doctor, the general conclusion was that we didn’t like him because he had no charm. The Doctor can often be a bit of a git, but the Sixth was, too often, a charmless git. Possibly it was a side effect of the Spectrox poisoning. 😉

Because one consistent characteristic of the Doctor is that he’s charming. You can see it very clearly in John Hurt’s War Doctor; he’s got exactly one performance to get his Doctor right – and he pours on the charm in buckets. He’s charming to the ‘boys’ (until he finds out they’re him), he’s charming to Clara, he’s even quite charming to the bloke who wants to behead the Doctor. (“This has all the makings of your lucky day”)

Judging by @wolfweed‘s lovely set of photos, Peter Capaldi has already figured that out that part of the Doctor’s personality. 😀

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@missshannonkent and @Purofillon – I’m answering this one in ‘The Next Doctor’ forum, because it seems to belong there much more than the sofa.

Clara fancies the Doctor. She says so, under the influence of the truth field. She also loves him.

But is she ‘in love’ with him? Doubtful. The entire ‘boyfriend’ thing in The Time of The Doctor is set up to show that Clara doesn’t want the Doctor as her boyfriend. In adult terms; not only have they never slept together, Clara doesn’t want that kind of relationship with the Doctor. She says so – as clearly as is possible in a family-friendly show.

And, given the speed with which the Doctor agrees to being her boyfriend – it’s pretty clear that he fancies her. He is, however, also okay with just being good friends.

Anyway, Moffat’s taken the Doctor through the pre-Hartnell backstory. He’s got married, he’s lost his parents, he’s become a widower. He’s an exile – but now he’s not running away from Gallifrey, he’s trying to find it. He is, it appears, about to travel with two teachers from Coal Hill School. Whether Danny Pink is about to be introduced as Clara’s boyfriend or whether he’s about to revive the fine old tradition of Companions accidentally wandering into the TARDIS (just before it takes off) remains to be seen. 🙂

The elephant in the room, subtly pointed at in The Day of the Doctor, is the missing granddaughter. We’ve got everything set up for An Unearthly Child – except for the Unearthly Child. 😉

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