@janetteb Um driving lessons. Did the Doctor ever give driving lessons in anything but the Tardis? (And Mattdoc, I think, always left the handbrake on).
I can probably safely tell this now – when I first worked for Ministry of Works in Rarotonga, my girlfriend (now Mrs D) and I only had bikes. There was a visiting engineer due in on the…[Read more]

@janetteb I meant, a spoiler has to undercut an element of surprise. Not literally what I said. The opposite in fact. What a surprise 🙂

@janetteb I’m fairly certain the identity of the writer can’t be a spoiler. I think a spoiler has to disclose an unexpected character or event in the plot of the episode itself, thus generating an element of surprise. Take the episode I’ve just watched, ‘Fugitive of the Judoon’ – I don’t think ‘It takes place in Gloucester’ could be a…[Read more]

@janetteb The Master was definitely in the very last story of Seven and Ace, Survival.

Do I take it from your previous post that Moff is doing the Christmas special? Or am I reading too much into it?

@ps1l0v3y0u I think that’s quite a good summary. Voyage of the Damned – I though Kylie Minogue made that episode. There was something refreshing about Astrid Peth’s slightly naive enthusiasm, and she managed to not be annoying (which is always an occupational hazard with such characters).
Christmas Carol was, as you say, made by Michael…[Read more]

@janetteb I think The End of Time deserves a second chance. It has a lot of good things in it – the climax was the sort of three-way duel between the Doctor, John Sim’s Master and Rassilon, where we’re not sure which way they’re going to jump. Sarcastic spiky green people. The Master turning all of humanity into replicas of himself. And…[Read more]

@janetteb I wouldn’t say The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe is a _bad_ episode. It just didn’t do anything much for me – I guess that’s a matter of personal taste.
In general those vaguely Dickensian ones (Lewisian ones?) don’t appeal to me. One that I did really like – which surprised me – was A Christmas Carol.

Of the specials, I…[Read more]

@janetteb Interesting list. We seem to broadly agree on most, but far from all – which is as it should be.

Was The Beast Below Moffat’s worst? – probably. I can’t think of any worse ones. Um, how about The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe (checks – yep that was the Moff’s). I’d say that was his least good in the sense of, just not…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u @winston @janetteb @nerys

I can’t resist a list like that, or rather, making my own.

Best non-Moff eps. (By the way, was there any season to which the Moff contributed in which the best ep of the season was NOT one of his?)

Season 1 – The End of the World was fun, visually, and satisfied the classic sci-fi trope of space…[Read more]

Started to watch Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror, got about ten minutes in and got totally impatient with the contra-historicness of it.

So I skipped on to Fugitive of the Judoon. Now that is a much more promising episode. Can’t help feeling that Ruth’s job as a tour guide in Gloucester is probably hard work (could have been much worse, could…[Read more]

@winston @janetteb The Doctor’s Wife is a favourite of mine, too. Just makes me wish Neil Gaiman had taken over as showrunner when the Moff retired.

Anyway, I’ve been very spasmodically working through the Chibz years, which is to say, just watching the episodes that really appeal to me, which amount to about three per season :)…[Read more]

Oh dear, this is not going to be good.

The Doctor is still talking too much, in this case to herself. Why did Chibbers make her so talkative? It’s as if her brain won’t work unless her mouth is moving. 🙂 And her talking (on a recording) to Ryan and Graham and anticipating what they’ll say is really annoying. It’s a feeble echo of the…[Read more]

@janetteb I’d never seen Sacha Dhawan before that episode. But I agree he would have made a great Doctor. He’s got personality.
One thing that did ring false to me, was the Master’s glee at the prospect of instantly disposing of the Doctor. That’s not how the Master operated at all. Ultimately, he always wanted to beat the Doctor,…[Read more]

Okay, I just watched Spyfall again 2 years later. So my impressions are almost fresh. I think it holds up well.

– Spyfall starts off really well and quite intriguing. Then the Doctor gets all annoying and patronising with ‘C’ to the point where I want to shout at her.

I do like “O” (the Master), he’s got some personality. The Doctor…[Read more]

@robertcaligari I am NOT saying FX are more important than other factors, in fact they can’t compensate for inadequacies elsewhere (though some producers try). I don’t disagree with you. If it doesn’t need FX then it doesn’t.

Army of Darkness was a product of Sam Raimi, who, along with Rob Tapert, founded Renaissance Pictures which for five…[Read more]

@nerys I’m sorry I missed your reply, I wasn’t ignoring you 🙂 Just semi-sentient recovering from my trip. Like you, I’ve been ‘woke’ (ugh!) on climate change for a long time. The world can’t keep absorbing more people with a higher standard of living (and hence energy and materials consumption) forever. The old traditional methods of…[Read more]

@devilishrobby Well, I only know Whitaker from Doctor Who, so to me she’s an awfully hammy actress. Everyone who’s seen her in other productions says she’s good, so I’ll just conclude that she was possibly slightly mis-cast (I think a ‘darker’ character would have done better) and certainly mis-directed and had some awful scripts. (“I’m the…[Read more]

@robertcaligari Sarcastic but a fairly valid generalisation, I fear. And as CGI gets better, there’s even more temptation to just ‘blow stuff up.’ Of course most of Who, most of it’s life, has suffered from pathetic special effects and rubber monsters. The recent ep with Tennant and Donna in the blue spaceship was a magnificent exception…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u   I will address just one comment – your last.   It is formally rejected (grin).   These days I wear sandals if catching a bus or a train (because bare feet for some reason make operators nervous) or – usually but not always – at the supermarket.    But not otherwise.   I used to have to wear shoes to the office but now I’m retired,…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u   @nerys    I would take any comment by tRump as the exact opposite of its face value.   That is, if he thinks Kamala is ‘very, very nasty and disrespectful’ I’d regard that as high praise for Kamala.   Only slightly diminished by that fact that almost *everybody* is ‘nasty and disrespectful’ to the narcissistic, malignant tumour…[Read more]