@whohar

On behalf of RTD…

Ouch!

😂

I suppose I’m still reading this as a series that discusses (if that’s not too generous a term!) the interplay of ‘fantasy’ and ‘reality’, or ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’ across every episode. Except that I think there wasn’t time to bring it together, to expand it enough, to realise a full villain, so we ended up with a botched oh that…[Read more]

I’m actually feeling so upset/angry I couldn’t speak yesterday. Thanks to everyone for eloquently expressing what I’m feeling! Even now I can’t really think. But a few people puzzled about the pointing…[Read more]

@juniperfish

Also to Robot of Sherwood?

Why could Ruby physically make it snow through the power of memory?

Why were her memories able to physically manifest a “Memory TARDIS” (with the help of the Time Window and then the Memory TARDIS’s own memories of herself)? It was a bit of a “death trap” as the Doctor said, sure, but it could actually fly?

I thought the Doctor sa…[Read more]

That is pretty much what happened in the end. So someone got something right!👍

Also, happy that Ruby is gone. Her departure moved me not a jot. I never got a sense of her so it was like ‘go on, get out…[Read more]

Things that most hurt:

Death plus death = life. Is that like two wrongs making a right?! Uh-uh.

Gatwa still so half-powered. I know it can’t stay the same forever but compared with the i…[Read more]

Et al

So… Daleks. Someone said that ages ago.

Will a recorder do? You mean, play an A?

Intrigued. But slightly worried that you’re actually the Trickster and that if I do this I’ll somehow end up stuck in a time window being followed (at a 73 yard distance) by rats with several pairs of red eyes…

The rest of the Pantheon??? I doubt if all is at it seems. Sutekh may be a front for someone else. The whole thing may be virtual with, on the one hand, the multiplicity of baddies representing significant people in the Doctor’s past. How else is Susan Triad everywhere?

If so I doubt if this will be resolved in one 4…[Read more]

Absolutely love your last paragraph.

I know nothing about music theory but I draw, whilst listening to classical radio all day; you make perfect sense.

Fantastic backatcha (in 9s voice?!)

@mudlark

Ooohh, no, not really! It’s just that my brain doesn’t work that way so I’m agog!

But thanks for the context. Knowing you are/were an archaeologist (?) makes your approach clear for me. And less ‘scary’ 🙃

I love that you see it from such a different angle, that you read with a different method t…[Read more]

Mrs Flood theories (not mine, but..)

If Ruby is the Sun, then why not

Moon River, wider than a mile…

👹

Psychic manifestation, I’d say absolutely. In the trailer for this ep STriad was all “they’re using my face”,  which must be a line in part 2 seeing as it wasn’t in The Legend.

All part of the AI theme: face hacking, deepfakery, identity theft.

Which leads me into more Doctor musing!

Interested in the orange connection…[Read more]

Remember, when 15 first appeared the other guy got the trousers…

Gatwa told Graham Norton that was Tennant getting to costume first! Leg insecurity/envy.

I don’t think 15 is a coward per se, just a bit half-cooked as it were, not quite the full enchilada. Hardly surprising.

Referring rather to the noble act by Nine of refusing to b…[Read more]

@mudlark

Haha. Only unless you agree with my puppet theory you’re surely attributing a power where there is none!

Exactly, that’s my point – it looks just like the standard Whomonster, so something we’re all used to and will believe in, even against our better judgement, against our own eyes. But maybe this time, we shouldn’t.

Yes, expecting the OTT, as in big Toymaker puppethouse everything falls apart showtrick. And didn’t RTD advise watching…[Read more]

Not to mention the Theresa May Dancing Queen impression. Now there was a puppet pm if ever there was one!

Not the first thing to disappear this series… I blame the Pantheon!

(Which would be really spooky!)

Same! Good work @juniperfish. The end of the world (which world??!) is nigh! Again…

Oh yes, me too, I love the dialogue with the audience and the fans especially. I think there’s been a lot of it and now (see my puppet post) I believe it’s actually crucial to the whole ending!

We’ll see! I think now I’m gonna stop overthinking and just wait for Saturday, like in the old days! 🙃

I’m intrigued by the way the jukebox has had plenty of mentions, though, but doesn’t perform? Or did I miss it?

In fact, the whole, very blank TARDIS interior now feels like it might be a construct of sorts? With a Maestro touch…[Read more]

so many interesting ideas about Egyptian mythology everyone’s running with, complex alt world theories, refs to previous episodes. Again, it’s as though someone fed a lot of Dr Who into a computer and AI tech went into overloading overdrive!

BUT

Did anyone else get a bit of a jolt when Sutekh finally appeared, and was it just me…[Read more]

think RTD may have suggested that 14’s run has effectively ended -as Tom’s Doctor is a curator, so David’s Doctor is pottering in Donna’s garden…However like Moffat and the Doctor, I’m sure RTD fibs too. He could indeed return but it would be well hidden from audiences until a proper reveal.

Oh well, I had fun imagining it. And who’s a…[Read more]

Aww, @vickymallard, that’s both lovely and awful! But so true…

A ghostly TARDIS is right, though, for what’s coming…

@juniperfish

Well, I think if RTD hasn’t thought of that, he jolly well should.

Only it’s a bit like a sourdough starter, where it’s essentially the same…[Read more]

👍

Agree with blenkinsop, a cracking post! 💫Totally won over by your good/bad divergence theory. Everything has been doubled, tripled multiplied… It has to be.

Incidentally, it’s Ruby who walks back into the room immediately after Kate’s line “A chrysalis doesn’t know it’s a butterfly. A phoenix is just a bird until it burns” an…[Read more]

Just rewatching… What about Kate testing DNA and saying ‘Just because Susan Triad is nice, doesn’t mean she can’t change. A chrysalis doesn’t know it’s a butterfly. A phoenix is just a bird until it burns.’

Is that a hint… As you said, baaaad Doctor?

I agree that the demonstration of civility and warmth is a definite part of the RTD project – and I’d say both Tennant and Eccleston showed some of the same, in ways that were more of their time just as Gatwa’s style belongs to Gen Z sensibilities. But I also think RTD obviously hasn’t lost his fascination with the moral dilemmas raised…[Read more]

So rather than the Doctor turning the tears on, for whatever purpose (cf @bunface), could they be an involuntary response to something he knows but doesn’t know he knows (presumably relating to the Toymaker and his machinations)? 

Oh yes, I like that. Makes me want to review all the crying to see whether he looks like he doesn’t kno…[Read more]

@juniperfish

Have only ever seen the film, would love to see a stage version, and yes, Cumming and also Redmayne… and anyone really!

@juniperfish

Oh blimey not sure but I’m now thinking that the Doctor may be turning them on.

Really convinced he’s performing. What about that line about 600 years being a good long time for the shapeshifters to ‘suffer’ once he’d exacted revenge? Shades of the mercilessness we saw with Ten…[Read more]

Is the Doctor unaware of the Games Master? Or has he caught on, and he’s already playing (but can’t let on to Ruby, in case she’s been placed with him as part of it)?

Love your ‘knows what the Doctor likes’ line – exactly! The refs and reiterations are coming thick and fast, like AI has watched Doctor Who and is writing a new story…[Read more]

Outraged anti-gays and traditionalists (whatever that means) aside, I would think there are an awful lot of Whovians who are simultaneously charmed and hurt by the pretty savage satire on cosplay and wannabeism that was finally sent down a…[Read more]

Really? Why is it a white saviour then? Where does your definition come from? Any definition I see refers to white colonialism etc etc.

Isn’t it the point on this episode that yes the Doctor tries to save the group, but without judging them, and that can’t happen because he doesn’t fit the saviour mould as saviours can only be white?

Yessssss – and therefore only “real” in the “mavity” universe, and so when the Doctor has to restore the timeline, and undo what he unleashed with the salt line at the edge of the universe, Ruby will have to vanish, like the changeling she is – back into faerieland…

Hmmm, liking it. Which suggests that nothing will be resolved unti…[Read more]

Yes, you’re right, and the race issue bound up with the Doctor as saviour is also made explicit in this episode because he actually offers to save them all/save the world, but as he’s not a white saviour he isn’t eligible.

All we can say is hooray that the dwindling group that only puts their faith in white saviours is doomed!

I get you, I’m still finding this series uneven, but maybe our expectations are always sky high anyway? No series has been 100% brilliant, has it?

See above for a quote I posted from RTD, though, about wanting to move away from the Doctor as a superhero (which is what the Tennant years explored and the Smith ones continued). It feels…[Read more]

(Interesting that a number of comments in t’other place (tho there’s a lot of positive reaction too) say that they don’t have a problem with Ncuti being black but they don’t like the scripts/don’t think he’s playing it right/doesn’t feel like the Doctor for them etc etc – micro-aggressions in action).

I only read this forum as it’s r…[Read more]

I love the Yeats connection, and you know I’m into the whole faery context, but whether the Doctor’s tears are significant beyond a new kind of iteration, not sure. Of course nothing anyone explains can be taken as the be all and end all, but Wikipedia has this:

I was thinking about what a terrible world it is now, and how many…

[Read more]

Honestly, there’s just no commitment any more!

And as you point out, he makes you feel it here, like a punch in the tum, which is ever more effective.

And the funny thing is that people will be complaining about this ep on their socials, completely oblivious…

But yeah, do people feel stuff anymore? Unless, like Lindy, the…[Read more]

@whohar I guess for cover, as a diversion? Otherwise people would be bubbling down asap and the idea would be to maintain control.

And it was only at that point that I realised all of Lindy’s friends and socials were white. And then it all made sense. Brilliant.

I don’t know if that says something about me th…[Read more]

Reminded me of Mrs Flood’s knowing/dark looks, the kind Missy would give. That kind of thing…

It would be good to see a getaway from the young woman companions, I agree, so maybe the fact Ruby Sunday (I mean,…[Read more]