@miapatrick I literally just poured a glass of whiskey after getting back from a night at the theatre, so cheers & congratulations to you!

Like so many, I’ve been on the edge of tears since I woke up to the news from Manchester.  It says everything about these people that for them, pre-teen and teenage girls (& boys), giddy with excitement at a pop concert, are ‘shameless’ and ‘Crusaders’.  But it says everything about the great majority of people that the response was o…[Read more]

Well, I loved this.  A real change of mood, and lots to ponder on.  Trouble with not having watched till Tuesday night is that you’ve all been bonkerising like mad and I can’t keep up with all your brilliant ideas, so forgive me if I fail to credit anyone with their particular contribution…  The other difficulty is that we are currently en…[Read more]

@thane15 @Frobisher @Whisht et al, loving the more, shall we say, tangential Bowie refs!  I had the lyrics of Space Oddity bouncing around in my head whilst watching Oxygen – floating round the tin can, and then ‘Helmets on’ which is actually in the script although whether that qualifies as a quote being so brief and functional I don’t know.

@phaseshift @Thane15 plus any other Bowie spotters – apart from the visual references to Space Oddity (floating round the tin can, etc) I didn’t pick up anything in the script, but maybe another watch will reveal something.  I haven’t spotted anything in Thin Ice either, so unless I’ve missed that too, we have the eye thing in The Pilot, ‘we’re…[Read more]

Oh @phaseshift, I do hope you’re right. I would love to think that Bowie is there in Who, past and present.  I did think momentarily of Bowie’s eye when I saw Heather’s, but I didn’t follow the thought through.  Will be on Bowie alert from now on.

@littlehouse First, welcome!  You’ll feel right at home here.  I really like your comment on the teardrop – I hadn’t connected those two moments, but I feel sure you’re right that they are significant.

I don’t know about your other theory – there is something of a consensus that the photos with Bill’s mum were done by the doctor dashing back in t…[Read more]

Well, I (we) loved this to bits.  Bill is brilliant – funny and gorgeous in a non-bland way, something of a Rose vibe, but not just a re-working of any previous companion.  OK, she’s an orphan/semi-orphan which is a recurrent theme, but I think of that a bit like the convention in children’s fiction going back to Victorian writers whereby being o…[Read more]

https://mydonate.bt.com/events/24hourinspire2017

That link came out a bit scrambled – see if this is better…

Morning (or whatever it is where you are) Whopeople.  One last shameless plug from me for the 24 hour lecture marathon which kicks off at 17.00 today and goes on till 17.00 on Friday 31st.  Full programme, including details of how you can tune in to our pop-up radio station, if you so wish, from 15.00 t…[Read more]

Yes, Happy Buffy Day everyone!  I was browsing @jimthefish‘s superb blogs earlier.  Nicked some of my own Buffy comments on this forum for a hasty blog – https://cathannabel.wordpress.com/2017/03/10/a-slight-apocalypse/

Really really want to rewatch from the beginning but might settle for a few highlights…

Unbelievably, it is twenty years since Buffy was first broadcast.   Who and Buffy – if that was all there was, spooling endlessly on all tv channels, I’d be content.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/mar/10/buffy-the-vampire-slayer-at-20-the-thrilling-brilliant-birth-of-tv-as-art

Gosh, when one dips in and out on this Forum sometimes one finds oneself unexpectedly immersed – in profound thoughts about the nature of the universe and the meaning of life, and in narratives of personal love and loss.  This one has floored me somewhat.

I can’t remember whether I have talked on this or other threads about the charity I chair,…[Read more]

Delighted to see so much love both for Billy Bragg, my hero, and Frank Turner, my son’s hero.

@ichabod I assumed the mum thought it was Father Xmas, thus he was ‘expected’, though I agree it wasn’t followed up!

@thane15 Good to have you back!  Looking forward to your thoughts on the Special when the jet lag has passed.

Well, as is traditional with watching the Christmas special on Christmas Day, we had to contend with interruptions and distractions (the cat wanted to come in.  and then out.  and then in.  Drinks needed replenishing, Grandma had the occasional random intervention to do with watchstraps).  So I am certain I missed many of the finer points, but wha…[Read more]

@pedant Thank you for posting this.  Very apt, and very poignant.

@thane15 @whisht  Billy Bragg is a great favourite of mine – was lucky enough to see him live at Sheffield’s Tramlines festival in 2015.  Very powerful, emotional performance but also with lots of humour.  I was reduced to tears of my own when he did ‘Levi Stubbs’, and also ‘Between the Wars’ which always gets to me.   He also wrote a very inte…[Read more]

@missrori Re your last point, ‘why was he stuck in the dial so long?’ – I assumed that the time that passed for the Doctor in the dial was quite separate to the time that was passing for others outside it, so to all intents and purposes he might have just popped out for a moment, even whilst for him all of those millennia were passing.  I don’t…[Read more]

DISCUSSION ABOUT CLASS - SPOILERS...