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This is the kind of ep I like. Mystery, WTF, action, pathos.

I suppose you all have covered all the possibilities. The connection between Jack’s condition and Brendan’s is an obvious thought but I don’t think it is hereditary. Sadly we know that Jack’s descendants can be killed…

Are Bren’s guardians Time Lords? Is the master stocking Gallifrey with refugees? Is Ko Sharmus Rassilon?

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(Rewatching all of post-gap Who with my 11 year old son, continued: 1×11 to 1×13)

Boom Town is not among my favourite episodes, and the Slitheen aren’t my favourite aliens… but this episode does some important setting up. We’re re-introduced to the importance of the Rift mentioned in The Unquiet Dead, we’re shown some of the power of looking into the heart of the TARDIS. Perhaps my favourite part of the episode is the restaurant conversation between The Doctor and Blon Fel-Fotch: “You’re pleading for mercy out of a dead woman’s lips.”

One thing I did pick up from watching Boom Town, Bad Wolf and The Parting Of The Ways in succession is that Blon was dead right about The Doctor:

Blon: I spared her life.
The Doctor: You let one of them go, but that’s nothing new. Every now and then, a little victim’s spared because she smiled, because he’s got freckles, because they begged. And that’s how you live with yourself. That’s how you slaughter millions. Because once in a while, on a whim, if the wind’s in the right direction, you happen to be kind.
Blon: Only a killer would know that. Is that right? From what I’ve seen, your funny little happy go lucky little life leaves devastation in its wake. Always moving on because you dare not look back. Playing with so many peoples lives, you might as well be a god. And you’re right, Doctor. You’re absolutely right. Sometimes you let one go. Let me go.

And sure enough in Parting Of The Ways, The Doctor burns through a lot of lives to protect himself while he works on the weapon, even lying to the volunteers that their shells would be effective against the Daleks. But one, just one, he decides to spare: Rose, perversely because he knew she’d never ask to leave his side. In the end, he can’t go through with his plan (to commit double-genocide … again.)

God how I wish RTD had not gone with the Reality TV parody angle in Bad Wolf. He could have come up with TV shows that hinted at that cultural phenomenon without referencing specific shows. Embarrassing, it is: monumental Zeerust. I never watched Big Brother or What Not To Wear but I did watch Weakest Link back in the day. Fortunately my son’s never heard of those shows so for him it was just random whatever.

The horrific story of The Controller gave the new audience a bit more reason to hate the Daleks: they’re not just combatants on one side of a war; they do things no creatures with morals would do.

In Parting Of The Ways, I have to say the Daleks’ plan seemed somewhat convoluted. They could probably have just put all their efforts into building the army rather than running some bizarro TV network. Slowing down development might not have helped them much. Interesting that these Daleks are human hybrids. There’s another human-dalek hybrid, of a sort, in Daleks In Manhattan. But in Heaven Sent, The Doctor says, “Nothing is half Dalek. The Daleks would never allow that.” (shrugs)

The Doctor sets the tone for the whole of new Who by giving up a regeneration to save Rose.

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Hi, @beemartha. I was a fan as a very young lad in the late 1970s. The Pertwee and Tom Baker episodes were on regular repeat where I grew up, even into the early 1980s. (The Hartnell and Troughton era episodes were not shown during that time, presumably because no one wanted to watch black and white any more.) In my teenage years we got Davison, Colin Baker and McCoy, but 3 and 4 were still my favourites: Pertwee nerdy, cantakerous and kind, Baker otherworldly and somewhat pompous.

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(Rewatching all of post-gap Who with my 11 year old son, continued: 1×09 to 1×10)

I forgot to mention the nice choice of background radio music in Father’s Day: “Never Gonna Give You Up” and “Never Can Say Goodbye”.

Fair to say that The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances are my favourite Series 1 episodes, and also those of my boy. The concept is great, the story well written: the humour of Jack’s dialogue with The Doctor is always pleasing. My son incorrectly guessed that Jack was going to be another Time Lord.

One of my favourite exchanges in DW:

Rose: Doctor, that bomb.
Doctor: Taken care of it.
Rose: How?
Doctor: Psychology.

Also, seemingly one of the lewdest lines:
Jack: Much bigger on the inside.
Doctor: You’d better be.

The audience is further introduced to the Doctor’s motivations, by way of descriptions of other characters.

Doctor: (about Nancy) The way you look after all those kids. It’s because you lost somebody, isn’t it? You’re doing all this to make up for it.
—
Constantine: Before this war began, I was a father and a grandfather. Now I am neither. But I’m still a doctor.
Doctor: Yeah. I know the feeling.
—

That woman who complains to Dr Constantine (Richard Wilson) that her leg has grown back … I suppose previously she had one foot in the grave.

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Chibnall wrote all of Broadchurch. The man knows how to write pieces set in the modern era…

 

Getting the tone right for Doctor Who must be a bit of a balancing act.

 

@blenkinsopthebrave Are you suggesting Graham’s bladder is bigger on the inside?

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@unclewalter
Theta Sigma appears to have been a college nickname for the Doctor.

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(Rewatching all of post-gap Who with my 11 year old son, continued: 1×06 to 1×08)

There is something of a thematic continuity between “Dalek” and “The Long Game”. In the first, Henry van Statten owns the Internet and controls the world. In the second, Jagrafress has controlled the news for 90 years, holding humanity back. The message in “The Long Game” is a little heavy handed…

They made an interesting choice in “Dalek” to have the first Dalek episode show the beast in a somewhat sympathetic light, to the extent that the audience could almost feel sorry for it. This ep also opened the door to the various comparisons between The Doc and The Daleks.

Father’s Day remains one of my favourite stories of Series 1. It’s very relatable and a satisfying time-related tale. I’d quite forgotten that Mickey appears in it, and also had forgotten the tragic way the matter is resolved. My son was crying a bit.

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Some responses to the comments of others:

“Doctors”: is this show good? It seems as though every second Doctor Who cast member has been on it.

@psymon
“they are annoyingly inconsistent this season about fixed points, multi-verse theory, cause and effect, butterfly effects”

Mmm. Although the new Who has not strictly stuck to a plan, several times it has been shown that small changes are okay because they tend to get smoothed over, but you’re unable to just change the past willy-nilly because paradoxical timelines are erased. Something like this happens in Journey To The Heart Of The TARDIS, and (sort of) in Angels Take Manhattan. In Dark Water, the Doctor highlights this problem: things have to be done delicately, because if he just goes back and saves Danny, then Clara won’t have come to him telling him to save Danny. You have to _trick_ the universe: undo things in such a way that the macro effects don’t mess up the causality. Examples of making the changes delicately occur in The Wedding Of River Song and in The Day Of The Doctor: go back and fix things but leave the appearance the same. Obviously there have been exceptions: the cracks in the universe caused major shifts, and TLGTW messed up everything, but you can’t generally go back and change stuff in the wibbly wobbly ball and expect the changes to _stick_.

“Doc-Martin”

Love it. 🙂

@jimthefish
“I thought BF was canon now. ”
I was given to understand that there is no official canon or continuity. Some of the BF material has been referenced in the TV show but other parts don’t quite marry.
Having said that…
Because of the nature of the DWU, we expect that there can be any number of different external continuities that The Doctor exists in. e.g. The Doctor has observed a few different “first encounters” between humans and aliens, and we can explain this by saying that things have become changed by her own actions or those of other time travellers. On the other hand, we expect that the narrative we are shown is from the single personal continuity of The Doctor. If something happened in _her_ personal past, and she doesn’t remember it, then there ought to be some “explanation”. The most common such explanation comes from the Multi-Doc stories in which only the most recent Doc remembers their shared events. (cough except Capaldi was the most recent in TDOTD cough). Now, nothing the Doctor says in this episode strongly implies that this is the first time she (in her continuity) has met Mary. On the other hand, the Big Finish stories show a relationship between Mary and Eight all through this period. Solution: this Mary is in a different continuity from the one who dealt with the Eighth Doctor. The Time War or the Cracks shifted things about and so _this_ Mary meets The Doctor for the first (and maybe only time) when she encounters the Thirteenth.

@lisa
” So I won’t be surprised if one of them chooses to ignore her and does something which will turn them into cybermen.”
I hope it’s not that. We’ve seen that with Danny and Bill, and PW-Jackie. Surely they can think of something new and shocking.
On the face of it, you’d have to think that if someone is going to go out because of disobeying the Doc that way, it is going to be Yaz.

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This season has had its ups and downs but I loved this episode.

 

The portrayals of Byron, the Shelleys and Polidori were lovely: a little harsh on Byron but he was reputed to be quite vain. The little tie-in with Spyfall Part 2 was serendipitous but pleasing.

The presentation of The Doctor was spot on: personalities change but the reality of the situation doesn’t. The loneliness of her position is a fact, something reflected on by all of the post-gap versions. She can gesture towards inclusion and democracy, but who has the power? Who can take the responsibility? Just her.

The companions were well used and their distinct characteristics highlighted. One of the few times I’ve liked Ryan’s contribution to the fam.

It was clever to make Polidori’s sleepwalking the key to breaking the illusion. That’s what I want to see: something I haven’t seen before. (IRL Polidori wrote about somnambulism but I don’t know whether he was a sufferer.)

 

It was also a good choice to make the cyberman only half-converted: cybermen are horrifying in concept but a half-converted cyberman without an inhibitor chip is much more unnerving. Seeing a cyberman cradling a baby: yikes. I think there is more of Ashad’s backstory to come: why, how, could a non-inhibited cyberman slit his own children’s throats? I think that was probably a lie.

The bogus geometry of the trap reminded me of Castrovalva, which initially led me to believe O might be involved…

I’ve heard a lot of reviews and comments saying that the promotional material ruined the surprise. Well sux2bu because I never look at the promotional material: no trailers, announcements, rumours. I skip the preview at the end of the episode. I just watch the show, so I had zero expectation of seeing the Lone Cyberman in this episode. This makes for it a nice stealth three-parter, like the ends of series 3 and series 9.

 

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I just posted in the On The Sofa (10) thread: it doesn’t appear in the General Forum list (whereas On The Sofa (9) and On The Sofa (8) do). Perhaps this is a fault, or perhaps I’m doing something wrong.

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I’m rewatching all of post-gap Who with my 11 year old son. Although I’ve probably seen every episode at least twice already, this will be the first time I’ve gone through the lot in order since it first came out. My boy has seen quite a few episodes as well a few years back but I suspect he was too young to really follow it. I’m going to post some various notes here, basically things that I hadn’t noticed on previous viewings, or whatever.

We’re five eps in now. I’d forgotten how many references to the Time War there were in the early part of Season 9: the Nestene Consciousness in “Rose” and the Gelth in “The Unquiet Dead” were both fugitives of the war, in a sense.
In “Rose”, the 9th Doctor sees his reflection for the first time. The 9th’s manic avoidance of discussion of his home is fitting, but it occurred to me that he got a fair bit done before checking his appearance out: seeing JFK’s assassination, the eruption of Krakatoa, the sinking of the Titanic. Maybe this could be explained by a mad rush to help as many people as he could after the events of TDOTD…
I’ve never been a huge fan of “Aliens of London”/”World War Three”, but having seen them again they play a a role in terms of the players’ relationships: Mickey starts to prove himself, Jackie resent the Doctor, we gather that the Doctor just accepts that he is endangering Rose’s life. My son wants to know why the Doctor calls Mickey an idiot: he thinks it’s unfair. (Then again, new-Who Doctor shows at least some contempt to all Earthling males, at least until the 13th shows up).

Gwyneth in “The Unquiet Dead” is played by Eve Myles, and I do recall the resemblance of this character to Gwen is commented on by the 10th Doctor in Season 4. What I did forget is that Toshiko Sato from Torchwood (played by Naoko Mori) appears in “Aliens of London”.

(By the by: Harriet Jones and Mickey Smith. Goddamn it … I know Smith and Jones are common names but there are statistically unlikely number of Smiths and Joneses among the main characters of Doctor Who, at least the ones I care about. Jo Grant became Jo Jones after marriage, Sarah Jane Smith (and her family). Mickey Smith, Martha Jones (and her family), Ianto Jones, Harriet Jones. The Doctor’s fake name was John Smith. Then again I suppose there are a few real life folks of those names involved in the DWU: Matt Smith, John Smith was CEO of BBC Worldwide through much of the new era, Finn Jones played Santiago Jones etc. )

One tidy call-forward, perhaps accidental, from “The Unquiet Dead” is when Dickens says he is “condemned to repeat myself for all eternity”. It made me think of Dickens stuck at two minutes past five in “The Wedding of River Song”: “Well, all I can say now is that it involves ghosts, and the past, the present and future, all at the same time”.

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Thanks for those answers.

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This isn’t really news but I wasn’t sure where else to put this.

I’m rewatching all of post-gap Who with my 11 year old son. Although I’ve probably seen every episode at least twice already, this will be the first time I’ve gone through the lot in order since it first came out. My boy has seen quite a few episodes as well a few years back but I suspect he was too young to really follow it.

I wanted to share our responses as we go through it all. The simplest way would be to post comments on each of the individual episode threads but I thought it might be nice to put it all in one place. Would there be a way to have a thread or blog for that purpose on this forum, or is that not really within the scope or ethos here?

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I think the biggest issue I have this season and the last for that matter is 3 companions is too many. The Dr usually runs with 1 or 2 but 3 just doesn’t give enough screen time to the Dr herself or indeed the companions. I think it’s been handled well generally but it often feels like things are rushed as a result of just having too many characters. Add to this the usual list of extras each episode and the soup is just too watered down to be tasty.

Yeah … I mean 1 companion works perfectly well. It was okay with Rory and Amy because they were a set…

Darn me if I’m wrong but I think this is the first time there have been three regular <i>human</i> companions.

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Wait, did I get the wrong end of the stick? Did they say in episode that Zellin and Rakaya are Eternals or did I just imagine that?

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@charlie-cook I don’t think this is the kind of place where people get attacked for minority opinions…
I mean what are we? Trekkies? 😉

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I was so busy being grumpy that I forgot to mention what I liked about the ep.

The 14th century Aleppo setting was nice and fresh, and a little bit of real historical knowledge was imparted. The first hospitals, in any meaningful sense, were set up in the Islamic golden age, and in particular the Mamluk Sultanate effectively had a form of universal healthcare, where the sick were treated at public expense. I liked Tahira as well.

When I first got a look at Zellin, I thought of the Black Guardian from the Fifth Doctor era. I was a bit off the mark. The Black Guardian was in league with some of the Eternals. There was another story involving an Eternal and the Seventh Doctor. They’ve been mentioned a few times in the new-Who era but this is their first on-screen appearance. So for me the reference to The Guardians was apt but the Toymaker, not so much.

Ian Gelder, who played Zellin, also played Dekker in Torchwood: Children of Earth (“That child’s going to fry”), so he’s got some experience at being unnerving. Once Zellin and Rakaya got together, their energy seemed to drop, which seemed weird for a baddy released from captivity… wouldn’t she be mad keen to start doing some damage?

The floating nightmare-fingers were an original idea and sufficiently creepy. And I’ll admit, they caught me napping with regard to the twist. In and of themselves, the personal stories and fears of Yaz, Ryan, Graham and Tibo felt real, relatable, and I don’t object to DW doing some real-world good as long as it is not too clunky. Interesting The Doctor fears is the Timeless Child: did you all get any context clues from the Child’s location or appearance?

As to the Doctor’s inability to comfort Graham: that felt right. In character. Yeah, 9 and 10 were better at that kind of thing, but “New Mouth, New Rules”. Even good people have weaknesses, flaws.

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I didn’t dislike this episode but it certainly had an odd structure. Half MOTW with a twist, half Community Service Announcement about mental health.

There was more of a contribution from Ryan in this episode, but overall I’m still not content. Maybe they needed to cast someone closer to the character’s age: he doesn’t have the energy of a very young man, and he’s just not enthusiastic about the material. Same can be said for Yasmin. We were reminded again in her conversation with the policewoman that she is 21 (3 years ago, she was in school), but Mandip Gill is 32, and she looks and moves like a 32 year old, she bears the emotional weight of a 32 year old.

For whatever reason, I’m just not emotionally connecting with these companions in the way I did with Rose, Martha, Jack, Donna, Rory, Amy, Clara, Bill, even Nardole, or even some of the characters with fewer appearances like River, Jackie, Pete, Kate Stewart, Osgood, Wilf. They are still very blah to me, and after 17 episodes that shouldn’t be the case. I don’t know whether it is down to the directing or writing choices or what.

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@mudlark
“It looks as if your memory is playing tricks on you”

Seems so. Thanks for the correction.

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Restored Ruth didn’t seem very cut up about her companion’s death… didn’t even mention it.

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“Brains” is in any case a fairly common term for brain.

I did like this episode. Fun, a few twists, a bit informative.

It has been found in real life that thousands of microplastic fragments exist in the human gastrointestinal tract, though they have not been found to cause any specific harm. (Philipp Schwabl et al).

There were some weaknesses. Is there anyone who really doesn’t at least have an idea what “pathogen” means? Especially someone who was married to a nurse, and who provided medical care to that nurse when she succumbed to cancer.

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@mudlark

“Could it be that there are means other than a chameleon arch to convincingly mask a Gallifreyan as human without the amnesiac effect?”

For all I know, sure.
For that matter I suppose it is possible he is neither a human nor a Gallifreyan but some third humanoid species.
But given all your points I suppose it is implied that he is Gallifreyan.

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@mudlark
“Everything points to Lee also being a Time Lord, as you say, and presumably also chameleon arched, since he registered as human in the Judoon’s scanner.”

Mmm, but so far the three times we’ve seen a chameleon arch being used (D10, JacobiMaster, Ruth), the subject (while arched) does not remember their true form or history. Lee appears to know what is going on: he’s Ruth’s Martha.

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Ruth’s combat style reminded me of Pertwee’s…

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Damn, I’m seeing some very negative reactions from my regulars on Youtube, eg Jay Exci.  Others such as WhatCulture are okay with the episode but expect CC not to be able to manage the plot.

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Well now then.

I was pleased enough that the Judoon were back but the title buried the lead somewhat. Captain Jack! Cybermen! Unknown Doctor! Fair to say I didn’t see any of that coming. Once I saw the Break Glass device I said aloud, “I know what his is!” But I still wasn’t expecting Ruth to be TD. They did a great job keeping all this quiet.

It’s a pity Jack didn’t play a more significant role: basically just stored the Fam so they weren’t in the way of the main story.

It seems there might be three realities at work: Normal, Cyberman Empire and Galifrey Empire.

I don’t have any favourite theory about Ruth, but one way or another she’s not part of D13’s future or past, or has forgotten, or has _been_ forgotten. A few fans about the place suggest she is D2.5: the Bitch from 6B. The old school Tardis decor supports this, I suppose.

I wonder what we’ll even call the Ruth Doctor, when the dust settles?

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@pedant

And, of course, we know where Sacha Dahwan met the Doctor before…

Mmm, could’ve be in Wired … 😉

At the time, I thought they missed a quip when the Doctor rumbled O’s game:

DOCTOR: No, no, no. I read your file. You were a champion sprinter.
O: Mmm. Got me. Well done.

O should have added, “YOU were always the expert on running.”

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Prior to Season 10, there were only two episodes that I would seriously tell people to skip: “Love and Monsters” and “Sleep No More”.

“Gridlock” was pretty dire but it did provide some new details on Gallifrey, and the message from the Face of Boe, so you can’t really ignore it completely.

I thought Season 9 was mostly pretty solid. D12, Clara, Missy, Zygons, Ashildr … the dynamics worked for me. Final three eps were a pleasing set. On the other hand, I felt that ending the grand arc, resolving the Gallifrey question, would probably leave Who floundering. There was not much mystery left. They needed a new arc.

I wasn’t impressed by about half of the Season 10 episodes. To me it felt as though they were somewhat hurrying towards the conclusion of the Capaldi era. World and Time Enough and The Doctor Falls were tidy, and the novelty of seeing D1 in Twice Upon A Time carried that over the line for me, but much of the season seemed undercooked.

Between production of Season 10 and that of Season 11, there was a big break in filming, so it’s not as though they rushed things: had plenty of time to get the writing just right, but despite this much of it was a bit flat. It was nice that they ran three Real History episodes, but a lot of the actual sci-fi wasn’t … clever enough? Some of it was fairly basic, perfunctory, Monster of the Week stuff. They made some stylistic changes that I didn’t mind, but they also appeared to make a conscious effort to eschew callbacks, continuity, nostalgia. Those things can, in excess, be cloying, but there’s nothing wrong with a smidge.

I’m not really sure why this happened. Chibnall’s previous DW work was nice enough, and his writing for Torchwood, Life on Mars, and Broadchurch was lovely. As creator of Broadchurch, he showed he could manage a story based on short tales, long arcs, and the dripfeed of information, which is exactly what a DW showrunner needs to do. I’ve liked Whittaker’s take on The Doctor. Walsh and Gill have also slipped well into companion roles, but I dunno about Cole: some of the time he does not seem to be into it.

There was, again, a <i>big</i> gap in production between S11 and S12, presumably while they were sorting out the direction of the show.
Season 12 is, to my mind, off to a decent start. Hard to dislike Lenny Henry and Stephen Fry in Spyfall, and Dhawan is shaping up nicely. (I do wish Fry was a continuing character, though!) And now we have a hint of an arc that will hopefully persist for a few seasons.

Orphan 55, for me, was not great, not terrible. Obviously this is not the most original premise in science fiction, and it was a little heavy handed at the end, but there were good points. (I was glad that they avoided the overused trope that the Dregs were individual humans who had mutated: it’s a silly idea even by the standards of the genre.  I thought they were heading towards that when Benni asked to be shot. But instead they are just mutated <i>descendants</i> of humans.)

The audience reaction scores for Orphan 55 are comparable to those for Love and Monsters or Sleep No More. I didn’t think it was <i>that</i> bad. Middling, not tiresome.

 

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Sorry for all these postscripts…

Not at all displeased to see Nick Frost there. It was only a matter of time, as the rest of the cast of Spaced has already been in Doctor Who (Bailey, Pegg and Hynes).

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@coly: yes, I thought about Orson too.

But, Time Can Be Rewritten.

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Oh yeah, and the symbol for3W reminded me of a representation of a pocket universe…

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Surprising and impressive pair of episodes. I would not have expected any of that, basically. (Though I suppose we had already guessed the Master thing).

Shame to see the last of Danny but I am glad they didn’t hold back on the tragedy.

 

BTW I wish they would not give so much away in the previews during the closing credits: in the Forests of the Night credits they showed cybermen, and I would prefer to have been surprised as I had studiously avoided spoilers.

 

 

 

 

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Straight

Link to the Cheezburger page for this poster

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Eh Oop, I’ll begin placing the images for my little posters here. Most of them are yonkoma-ish. Beneath each image I’ll put the link to the Cheezburger page in case you want to up-, or for that matter down-, vote.

Cheezburger page for this poster

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Not quite a non-speaking role: he says “Hello, who’s there?”

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Ah yes. Thanks, ScaryB.

 

The boy who plays the Doctor is uncredited, I wonder who it was.

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The Doctor tries to share his burden by making Clara take some of his responsibilities. She doesn’t like it.

 

The “fantasy” part of this science fantasy is a bit too strong for me: the moon as egg idea is too ridiculous. And why were the Nasa astronauts _all_ British? Or did the British Space Agency just happen to buy the Space Shuttle and Nasa’s leftover spacesuits?

 

The final conversation between Clara and Danny reinforces how much similarity there is between the Doctor and Danny. I hope we get to see Danny’s war story this series.

 

 

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Looks as though “It’s a rollercoaster with you” might be 12’s catch phrase as he said it in The Caretaker and also in Into The Dalek.

 

Mind you, 11 said something similar in “The Time Of The Doctor”.

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I hope there is some proper explanation for Danny as an adult not remembering meeting The Doctor or Clara as a child.

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Nice episode, cute idea. Furthered his efforts to make Clara more Doctor-like.

He seems to tacitly accept that he was an officer as he _dismissed_ the soldier. When he says “Ancient soldier being driven by malfunctioning tech…” he might as well be talking about himself.
“You knew this would be dangerous”

“I didn’t know. I certainly hoped.”

 

I loved the Tom Baker references (jelly babies and the voice-alike). Also, “Are you my mummy?”

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Absolute gem of an episode. Great original concept, funny Tardis-related humour, genuinely scary for the younguns, and nice further development of the Clara-as-trainee theme. She seems to be warming to it. Shame she lied to Danny, that’s not going to go well. So why is he trying to make Clara take his responsibilities? Obv, Missy is involved.

The Doctor began the series by asking her “Am I a good man?”

Clara now says “I was the Doctor, and I was good.”

“You were an exceptional Doctor, Clara: goodness had nothing to do with it.”

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Also, is it really possible The Doctor doesn’t realise Rupert=Danny and Orson is near identical to Danny? If he doesn’t, he really must be getting old…if he does, then what is his game?

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I didn’t really love this story: the alien element was perfunctory and I really didn’t like the snobby dismissive vibe from The Doctor. The anti-soldier vibe is too over the top. He was a soldier: he basically _is_ a soldier whether he likes it or not.

Can’t imagine any of the previous Doctors being so contemptuous: well, maybe the 6th. Didn’t even like that crack about shoplifting.

There’s something not quite right about the show since TDOTD: individual episodes have been good but in terms of development, it’s awry. In TDOTD he found out that he was not after all (probably) guilty of the genocide of his own people: this should have been liberating, revolutionary, focussing.

Instead he got involved in an intrigue that kept him tied up for hundreds of years expecting not to the regenerate, finally does regenerate, but the new man is bitter, still full of self-loathing, still very dark on himself because of his time as the War Doctor.

 

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The question of how many regenerations River experienced remains open. We don’t even really know whether the regeneration at the end of The Day Of The Moon is her first.

Probably seems likely there were regenerations between The Day Of The Moon and the start of Let’s Kill Hitler, for reasons others have discussed in this thread: she needs to be a friend of roughly the same age as Rory and Amy in the 1980s and 1990s.

But note that in Let’s Kill Hitler, River implies she can reverse her ageing: “might take the age down a little, just gradually, to freak people out.” So perhaps she just held a young physiological age until it was an appropriate time to enter R&A’s life.

 

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Any possibility at all that The Doctor recognises the face as that of John Frobisher? I suppose we don’t _know_ that The Doctor has encountered Frobisher but he does generally keep tabs on major events on Earth. (Where the hell was he that week anyway?) Because there would be _plenty_ of important reminders that The Doctor would be sending himself via Frobisher’s face.

 

But, if it is Caecilius’s face that he has stolen, perhaps he is just reminding himself of the events of The Fires of Pompeii, so that he remember there are limits to what good he can do, but that it is still important to do what he can.

[Davros @replies]

Alrighty … Basically I wanted to make comments on specific Classic stories such as The Five Doctors, The Dalek Invasion of Earth etc.

[Davros @replies]

I sometimes throw Who-related material up on cheezburger: would it be appropriate to share those links here?

[Davros @replies]

The thing under the blanket could have been another child playing a joke. The banging noises at the door could indeed have had natural/mechanical explanations as The Doctor indicated. Who wrote “Listen”? Maybe The Doctor did and just forgot (he’s getting on in years…), or maybe at some future he comes back and writes it. The episode is consistent with the idea that there really was nothing mysterious…

Fantastic to see a snippet of The Doctor’s childhood, obviously it is massive that Clara gave him the gunless soldier (did he lose it, does he still have it somewhere) AND his motto. This scene, I suppose, is meant to relate to what the 3rd Doctor was talking about during his little Daisiest Daisy monologue in The Time Monster: I did have an idea for a fan video based around that but this Listen episode rather crunches that.

Sometimes previously, Time Lord has been synonymous with Gallifreyan, ie it has the whole race, the whole species.</span> Other times, it appears as some special class of Gallifreyan, or even as a profession or title. In Listen, the male says that The Doctor won’t be taken by the academy, that he will never be a Time Lord, implying that it is some kind of title or attainment.

 

I’m not the first to point out that 3-4-5-6 resembles 9-10-11-12. The action man, the massively popular one, the very young one, then the older irascible, prickly one: but one trait that 12 does share with 6 is making quite unfair and unkind comments about his companion’s face and body.

[Davros @replies]

Hi, I just joined.

Is there any way for me to start new threads?

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