@winston   No excusing needed.   The more the merrier, I for one am perfectly happy to hear from others in the room.

Sci-fi and fantasy are adjacent genres and frequently blur into each other.   I would have rated the ‘Hitch-hiker’ series as strictly scifi but as ps1l0v3y0u pointed out, it strays into the edge of fantasy on occasion.   I used to…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave @ps1l0v3y0u

Well, old Who did sort of stray into fantasy with e.g. The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. As nuWho has done, such as Rings of Akhaten. I agree, it should try to stay on firm sci-fi ground, but it frequently strays.

The line between sci-fi and fantasy can get blurred. A favourite comparison/contrast of mine is…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u

I agree about UNIT, I was never very happy about it as a dumping ground for old Companions. (And as a supposedly elite agency, one has to wonder what special skills a randomly-chosen person who happens to become an associate of the Doctor’s, is likely to have. I suppose one could argue that there’s something about some people that…[Read more]

@janetteb    I haven’t read all the posts in this forum (but I will).    But this double-episode has so many details in it, I’m sure a re-watch (or several) will bring up all sorts of things I overlooked first time round.   Especially in the time window.

As seasons go, yes I’d rank this one as quite good.

So in the first four minutes, RTD just killed *everybody*. Like, not just impersonal universe destruction like the Flux, but all the characters get turned to dust individually.

(10 minutes later) I was wrong, Sutech’s dust of death *is* destroying the whole universe. This is going to take one hell of a Reset button.
The ‘everybody’s dead’ reminds…[Read more]

Nice to see Rose(2) again.

The rest of the cast – looks a bit like fan service. Who have we got this time? – oh yes, Mel and Kate.
I would have liked to see an Osgood though.
The Vlinx just looks so Star Wars Disney. And Junior Genius Science Officer on his Segway – why?

But hey – Mrs Flood. Did all our speculation have some grounds? But all…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u Well, I’d be okay with this episode if it wasn’t for the cringingly bad, bordering on parody, upgraded Halloween masks that the five villains wore. IF they’d just stayed in their ‘human’ disguises until the time came to inhabit another human (like the Slitheen or Family of Blood did), it would have been adequate and not inviting…[Read more]

The ball is, surprisingly, adequately entertaining (normally, this period-drama stuff gives me a big yawn). Interesting that the Doctor is not the only dark-complexioned character present, nor does anyone seem to be taking any notice of his colour.

Another thing that nobody seems to be noticing is the son et lumiere display when one of the…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u   Oh yes, of course there are titles, just 2 1/2 minutes in.   Somehow I missed them.

The carnivorous megaslugs – I seem to recall there being a suggestion that they were created by the Dot / Matrix.   (I call it that because of the parallels with The Matrix, though obviously that was even more intensively in control of its human…[Read more]

Lindy – obviously, at first, a totally shallow and unlikeable character. But as the episode progressed she seemed to be growing a little bit of a spine. This is quite common, I think, in Doctor Who stories, as we learn more about a character they become more of a person. (PLease don’t ask me for examples though). So by half-way I was expecting…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u     You said (on 25th May)    “I saw a transcription somewhere on the web but can I get it back???”

(See, I do read a lot of these threads!)

Might that have been on Chrissie’s transcripts site at  Chakoteya.net?   (It’s the only one I know of)

May I say that I really don’t care if Lindy and Cooper and the whole five-second-attention-span TikTokTwitter menagerie get eaten alive by monsters.

Is this the ultimate in telecommuting? (Actually, no, Lindy did have to walk a short distance from her living-cubicle to her work-cubicle. I’m a little surprised she wasn’t plugged into the Matrix at…[Read more]

@robink2567     Good point about the perception filter.   I’ve just realised that explains why 73 yard woman only terrorised people who Ruby had pointed her out to.   The rest just didn’t notice her (the woman) because of the filter.   I’m very slow sometimes.

I’ll take your word for it that young people (in Britain) would use metres rather th…[Read more]

Further conjecture:    Why 73 yards? Did ’73’ have any significance as a number?
219 feet, 66.7 metres (as the episode told us). 66.7512 metres, to be precise. Actually, rounding, that’d be 66.8 metres.
But I can’t make anything of it. If it was 66.6 feet it would be the ‘mark of the beast’ or somesuch but it ain’t.
So I’m sure the ’73’ must me…[Read more]

Well that was different.

First, no opening titles? Or did I just miss them? Is there any significance to this?

Second, no Doctor (for most of it). No offence to the Doctor, but the story was well enough written to keep my interest without him.

Third, what did we just watch? It was *good*, but completely baffling. Who was the woman? – future old…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u     Well, it’s my personal choice to avoid reading too much into a story, since I can get quite enough political insanity from watching the news, and I like my fiction to be escapist.   And also, I find such interpretations are frequently able to be skewed to suit the preferences/prejudices of the viewer.    (Having said that, I just …[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u     Well, I don’t think this is really the forum for political discussions, so I’ll keep my views to myself (not that I think they’d surprise anybody.)   You do have a good point, that the US and Europe was supporting Ukraine with military tech.   (Vastly to the benefit of the military/industrial complex, by the way.)    But a quite d…[Read more]

@winston   I generally agree with you.   The Space Babies were ‘cute’ on overload  (I don’t like ‘cute’, did I mention?) and their voices were young teens.   And I think a couple of times the voice didn’t quite sync with the ‘baby’ who was speaking.   So the whole thing was rather unreal.

Also, how come babies were controlling a space station?…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u    If you’re referring to current political events (like, the US elections/Ukraine/Gaza) I sympathise, they can be very – distracting.   Though I find I can usually switch off my real-life awareness and just immerse myself in the story.   Whatever happens in Real Life (TM) in the next few weeks, or four years, ‘Boom’ and the Doctor…[Read more]

Okay, this is the verbose version.   You have been warned   🙂

Phones implanted in hands, that’s new. But then, we had hand mines (and don’t tell me that idea didn’t start off as a bad pun, which duly turned horrific in Moff’s fertile imagination) in The Witch’s Familiar. Speaking of mines…

Battlefield scenes seem to be a theme with Moff. He…[Read more]