@thane15 @missy thanks both for your congrats and good wishes.  The party is this afternoon so will coincide with the announcement of the new Doctor!  We will be briefing the DJs (who are good friends and one of them is a real Whovian) to play the theme tune and then make the announcement as soon as it’s known.

Thanks for good wishes, @jimthefish and @wolfweed.

@blenkinsopthebrave Thank you!

Oh blimey. I was kind of hoping the secret would remain a secret till the Xmas special but I guess that was naive.  On Sunday we will be celebrating my 60th birthday and our ruby wedding anniversary but I guess one or two of us [50% approx of the guests] will be checking our mobiles for news during the proceedings… Just hope it turns out to be…[Read more]

Bill Potts. You’re a cyberman. You’re part of a neural net. Can you find her.

@mudlark – I’ve just realised how ambiguous that is.  I heard it at the time as addressing an anonymous cyberman, giving Bill’s name and asking it to find her.  But it’s also possible to hear it as knowingly addressing Bill herself, who is a cyberman and thus part…[Read more]

Yay, we have a first sighting of DEM (Heather) on the Grauniad comments.  Don’t know why I look on there, really, when all the insightful, thoughtful comments are right here.

I loved that finale.  I am so glad Bill got a kind of afterlife as Bill – and we’ve all been anticipating Heather reappearing, ever since The Pilot, what with the tears a…[Read more]

Re all the science stuff. I managed to work in a Physics & Astronomy department for ten years without absorbing even the slightest understanding of what they were all on about.  I did once grasp the idea of dark matter for about 5 minutes but then it slipped through my fingers again (like long division and the offside rule).

SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER...

OK, that’s why I LOVE this place.  Marvell, Powell & Pressburger and all (and a film to add to my must-see list, Snowpiercer).  And the episode was stunning.  The suddenness of Bill’s ‘demise’ was brutal – at least Clara got to be brave, and face the raven on her own terms (kinda). I wasn’t expecting it – not like that, not so soon, not so ar…[Read more]

@pedant Thank you – it means a lot to me that you like it.

I wrote something last night about Grenfell Towers, in sorrow and anger.  You may spot an unattributed quote from the Doctor in there…

https://cathannabel.wordpress.com/2017/06/16/dark-tower/

@thane15 @pedant  I did indeed write something about I Daniel Blake immediately after seeing at the cinema.  It’s not a perfect film  but immensely powerful in its depiction of people trapped within a system that cannot and will not acknowledge them.  The Job Centre staff too are trapped – if they do try to step outside the system to offer hel…[Read more]

Here in the depths of rural Norfolk internet connection is a bit wibbly.  So will seize the moment just to say that on reflection I don’t read Bill’s invocation of her mother as a ‘love saves the day’ thing.  Those memories were created by the Doctor, they’re real because he was there when the photo was taken, but they aren’t part of ‘history’, p…[Read more]

@thane15 I saw a transcript which rendered Penny’s last words in that scene as ‘is it ok if I get an Uber?’!

The more I read your comments and ponder the more I think the events of TPatEotW (oh, that’s too cumbersome, let’s just call it Pyramid, OK?) are another simulation.  The monks playing with ideas – multiple scenarios, from WWIII to plague to terrorism, perhaps seeing how the leaders react and then changing accordingly, so they abandon the WWIII…[Read more]

@wolfweed OK that sounds entirely plausible!

@wolfweed Well I did big it up to about 300%…. But no way is Bill 11-12 stone – the numbers must be off one way or another.  I would not want to speculate about her weight either, but she’s only a wee lassie.

@wolfweed Doesn’t that say ‘Male’?  So not Bill’s stats.   I can’t read the numbers anyway…

@blenkinsopthebrave  Yes, I was unsettled by the way the whole sim thing was dropped.  Am reserving judgement till we see the next ep, because overall I did love Veritas and if I loved this slightly less there was plenty to enjoy and at least like a grea…[Read more]

@pedant @craig @thane15.  Nice article re Mozzer in the New Statesman:

The records still sound marvellous, of course. Art does not wither. The man sounds less and less marvellous with each passing day. The old pun on a Smiths song title now seems closer to home and closer to the bone than ever: that bloke isn’t funny an…

[Read more]

Interesting to see this update on the notion of a book that cannot be read.  It immediately connected for me with current Agents of Shield (no spoilers, so no more info), but both reminded me of Poe’s The Man of the Crowd which starts off:

It was well said of a certain German book that “er lasst sich nicht lesen”- it does not permit itself to be…

[Read more]