@missy Who is employing the Monks? I dare say we shall find out.  Perhaps the Time Lords? No, that’s too bonkers. Daleks?

That’s a good reminder to never forget the Daleks! They do seem to be at least trying to keep tabs on the Doctor, and  told Missy the Doctor had been on Darillium.

@kharis  The Monks. Excellent suggestions. Even if they don’t work for the Monks, perhaps they’ll work later.  The line in Extremis , as I understand, it is that the Monks are an alien race with, presumably, a Head Monk or Head Monks calling the shots.  The Doctor will likely see them off in short order, and if so, what’s the ‘extremely big thing…[Read more]

Bang goes the soft reboot. That was the full Moffat and nothing but the Moffat. I’m going to miss his audacity.

But who or what what is directing the monks?? I didn’t see any clues to that.

@ichabod   Agh.  My heart sinks . . .

Yes, indeed! Talent over chums anyday.

Oops, bungled `Edit’ and have two posts…

Like @Whisht, I’ve pretty much thrown in the towel and I’m now inclining to Missy or the Master in the Vault. Perhaps this was pointed out earlier and I missed it, but a late thought from Knock, Knock,' was it an accident that the being/thing in the Vault was playingFur Elise’ when the Doctor was outside…[Read more]

@ MissRori   Mathieson has already gone on record as saying he hasn’t been asked to come back for Series 11, as yet, and doubts he will be.  According to him “My understanding is that Chris is sticking with a team he’s got used to working with on Broadchurch.”  

What a pity! Thanks very much for passing this on.

A terrific episode. Like @tardigrade, I wondered if if the play on killer suits was the jumping-off point for Jamie Mathieson’s script. He should be taken under Chris Chibnall’s wing so he can be the next showrunner! All of his episodes have struck me as least excellent, with Flatline and Oxygen brilliant.

Nardole is now looking more su…[Read more]

@arbutus   Am I imagining things, or did Roger Delgado’s master once play the organ?

I don’t recall the Master ever playing the organ, but the Doctor has at least a couple of times, perhaps more. The occasions I can remember are in The Lazarus Experiment and the 6th Doctor story Attack of the Cybermen, in which the Doctor actually fixed the cha…[Read more]

@geoffers  if bill lost all her friends like that, she may not have wanted to continue on with traveling with the doctor. she was already a bit leery of his “can’t save everyone” attitude last week… 

Agreed. I thought it was dramatically a bit weak for all of them to escape.

@mudlark The same applies to Susan so I would be equally surprised…[Read more]

Some initial thoughts on a first viewing…

Have we had two examples this series of a variation of a base under attack? In Smile and Knock, Knock it was the base that did the attacking.

David Suchet would have made a marvellous Master!

Bill called the Doctor “grandad.” The Doctor insisted on “grandfather.” I think @thane15 and @blenkinsopthebrav…[Read more]

@ichabod     And — how ultimately there’s only “room” for one Doctor in the Tardis, as CapDoc said in S8.  We can have an uneasy and demanding team of (more or less) two Docs for a bit, but not, it seems, in the long run.

Yes. And who but a Doctor travels through space and time with a stolen Type 40 Tardis and a companion?

@fivefaces   [Read more]

@Nick  @ichabod   Oops. On travel, and working off a crummy wifi link so I at first missed Nick’s later posting on Bell with the correction that the second Doctor claimed he’d studied under Joseph Lister. Maybe the Doctor studied under both; certainly the 10th Doctor claimed he’d studied under Bell (the Bell, I think we are meant to understand).

@thane15  @janetteB  The paintings I’ve used for various purposes I can spot, but once outside that realm it’s another matter! I very much agree that the Coalbookdale image is striking indeed.

@mudlark  Paintings can matter, witness the 50th Anniversary episode. But I’m also inclined to agree that by this point the paintings in this series are th…[Read more]

@jimthefish    Much as I hate to torpedo a fine bit of bonkerising, I think the reference is to the Pertwee story The Time Warrior. As to other oaths, I’m not sure. Depending on what kind of Doctor he actually is, he might have taken the Hippocratic one?

Always a sad moment to watch a bonkers theory slip sedately beneath the waves….

In Tooth an…[Read more]

@jimthefish  

I’d argue against it purely by mentioning his reasoning for doing so and the fact that Bill considers his reasons before agreeing. In other words, she makes a choice to let the Doctor take the lead. This is a considerable step up from say the Pertwee days when the Doctor would just arrogantly assume the lead and Jo/Sarah would be ex…[Read more]

Four knocks on the soundtrack at the very end of the episode after we’d had a sequence of three knocks suggests that the bonkerising on what’s inside the vault would seem to be over. But it’s surely way too early in the series for us to be handed the answer in such a simple manner, so what’s going on??

Another visually very impressive and I…[Read more]

@mudlark  Great spot on the Raft of the Medusa! To follow-up @pedant‘s suggestion, has anyone established if it is the cyberman version?? I spent five minutes on my hands and knees in front of the tv trying to decide, but with no success. The cybermen in the painting in the Under Gallery look to be modern versions, well beyond the Mondasian…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave  Still waiting for my own copy of DW Magazine to make it here (also in Canada but not such a remote part I suspect) but Dan Martin quoted a section of the interview in his Guardian review of the episode. Here it is: “I love watching what happens with emojis, how people use them for different things, and the change of meaning…[Read more]

Agree with the various up-thread comments on the `old school’ feel to this one. Aberdeen clearly plays on the Doctor’s mind. And was that a bust of Nefertiti in the Erewhon?

Like @craig, I thought Smile was much stronger than Cottrell-Boyce’s In The Forest Of The Night. Overall, the episode struck me as very good with Bill stellar again, but my o…[Read more]

Rembrandt: In the classic Who story The Time Warrior (Sarah Jane’s first story), the third Doctor announced he wanted to study under Rembrandt.

DOCTOR: You know, I was never much of a hand with a paint brush myself.
SARAH: No?
DOCTOR: No. Nor a palette knife for that matter. But I’d like to study under one of the masters one day. Rembrandt,…[Read more]