@ps1l0v3y0u     Re Moff:

I like clever writers, whether book or script.   No such thing as ‘too clever’, in my view.

(I’ll qualify that:   I don’t like writers who show off their ‘cleverness’ by deliberately using incomprehensible words or phrases, that’s just egocentrism in my view.   But that’s more likely to happen in text than in a script).…[Read more]

@nerys    I think the Doctor babbled very little in this episode, compared with previous Chibz episodes.   But I came to it after watching RTD/Gatwa’s seasons, so probably the technobabble was more noticeable.

I know there was previous technobabble in Who, but usually it was restrained, used only when necessary for the furtherance of the plot…[Read more]

[A year later:]

Legend of the Sea Devils

Starts off really well. Very atmospheric, very sinister, very Xena. Madam Ching really has some presence. I really like the actress, by the way.

The mood is kinda spoilt by Dan wearing the cartoon comedy pirate clobber. And Mr Carnival-mask Sea Devil. Looks a bit like a dyspeptic mutant Chihuahua with a…[Read more]

@whohar Well, if the 12th Doctor had been Whittaker, it would have been interesting to see how well she did with, errm, better direction. 🙂 Though by the nature of it, we wouldn’t then have seen her actual Chibz-directed performance so we would never be able to make comparisons. (But that’s a hypothetical, to my mind Capaldi + Moff = the Best Doc…[Read more]

Well I finally got my re-watch started, at Eve of the Daleks.

The idea of an ever-shortening time loop is quite a good plot device. In one way it faintly resembles CapaldiDoc’s repeated death in Heaven Sent, though the details are of course very different and this only lasts 50 minutes, not billions of years.

I’m not too sure *why* it resets on…[Read more]

@janetteb   I wouldn’t worry about ‘not keeping up.’    I used to comment on episodes as I got them then and then found that the previous comments I was ‘replying’ to were made two years before…   One of the hazards of ‘catching up’ with DVD’s.

But I don’t recall anyone ever being put out about it.

Having watched the movie recently, I can se…[Read more]

@winston     Rose was an excellent way to (re)start a series.   I think by then, production values (and special FX) had got ‘good enough’ (without the rather charitable allowances we have to make even for the last of OldWho).  Even Mickey’s sticky encounter with the bin was – okay.

I would say the Companion has been as prominent and as import…[Read more]

@craig     Thank you, Emperor.   🙂

@craig  –   just to let you know, some pest calling itself Dylan joined a few days ago and immediately spammed half a dozen forums with links to  ??American baseball jerseys???  (together with some bland AI-generated ‘ ‘nice post’ comments)

@winston  @ps1l0v3y0u   The Moment is definitely and memorably in the cell in the Tower, in the TV episode.  I remember the phrase ‘different case, same software’ and probably said by her.

BUT in the book, that was an internal thought of the Doctor (probably 11) – “The case was new, but the drives and software were the same as the old boy…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u    I should be able to answer your ‘little nit picks’, having just read the book.   But I can’t, quite.   So now I’m just going to *have* to watch the episode again**.   As for the witch/well discussion, as I recall  (dashes off to get the book – damn Moff’s non-sequential chapter numbering…)   Elizabeth ordered them to be taken to…[Read more]

@WhoHar    I think Steven Moffat sums up the Doctor really well.   There is something subtly – odd – about the Doctor’s view of life.   Moff could do that supremely well.   Oh, and your addition (humanlike but otherworldly)  – yes I agree.

I think Chibs tried to do the same slight oddness on occasion, but it requires a delicate touch and (mayb…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u    I think Day of the Doctor is the only Who novelisation I’ve read.

Getting a bit further in the book, I’ve notice that the Moment (Rose) doesn’t seem to feature at all in the dungeon in the Tower of London.   I distinctly remember, from the TV episode, her leaning against the wall in the background, invisible to the two later Doct…[Read more]

I’m just re-reading Moffat’s The Day of the Doctor. (That was one of my top TV episodes ever). When I first read the book, I think my experience was somewhat impaired by having recently watched the episode. The written word can never match the ‘personality’ that actors bring to the screen. (Can’t think of a better way to put it). So I missed that.…[Read more]

@translatorcircuit  @ps1l0v3y0u

Memory can be very misleading.   Things get conflated, or attributed to the wrong person.   I once attended a party where the host had a huge Union Jack as a bedspread.   Years later I met him on a bus and he invited me to his wedding reception in a couple of weeks.  I reminded him that last time I saw him he was…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u

I’d like to comment but I’m afraid I’m hopeless about dates.   I can remember 1066,1588,1805,1812,1815,1914-18 and 1939-45 and that’s about it.   Also 1923 (when the british railways were ‘grouped’ into the ‘big four’) and 1948 when they were all nationalised as BR (‘cos I’m a train nut) – and that’s it.

If you told me an ast…[Read more]

Hi @janetteb   Nice to hear from you.    I was planning to re-watch from the three final Chibs ‘specials’ up to current, but I might push my start point back to this episode, and see if the subsequent Fluxisodes make any more sense to me than first time around.   But that will be in a couple of weeks time, I’m currently watching Red Dwarf season…[Read more]

Hi @janetteb    Great to hear from you.

Obviously, I agree with you.   Of the JW seasons, I think I found the Flux most disconcerting – partly because I lost the plot  🙂    and partly because universe-wide total destruction I always find depressing, rather than scary.   I most identify with the characters when the danger is individual and person…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u    ‘Apple-converted-space’ – does that mean that Apple’s ‘walled garden’ has now expanded to include substantial chunks of the Universe?    😉

I think part of my failure to appreciate the Flux came from impatience – we knew the season was supposed to be a six-parter, so when successive episodes seemed to relate to some compl…[Read more]

Well now, re-reading *all* the comments, it seems most people found it an improvement on the previous episode.   With the occasional fractious nitpicker such as – me (Hi everybody 🙂  who found the plotholes more easily than following the plot.   Frequently Chibs is sadly predictable in the PC-ness of his stereotypes – the stupid British gene…[Read more]