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4 February 2026 at 03:51 #78518
@nerys @whohar
@ps1l0v3y0u Avon was definitely a criminal, and a computer genius – I believe he hacked the Federation banking system of millions of credits. They were all criminals except Blake, who was a dissident.
The Liberator was absolutely *not* a problem. It was a product of advanced alien tech. How many of the spaceships on Doctor Who are completely alien tech? Almost all of them, in fact. I wouldn’t describe Avon as sleazy or unpleasant. Calculating, cunning, the smiling assassin type, but never needlessly offensive. And Servalan was imperious, haughty, I’d never say a ‘stuffed shirt’.
Your impressions are almost the antithesis of mine.
By the way – Zen, the computer that controlled Liberator. Similar to HAL in 2001, though IIRC Zen never went mad.
Orac – the genius supercomputer in a plastic box.
Slave – the cringingly obsequious computer that controlled Scorpio, the ship they acquired after losing Liberator.@janetteb They couldn’t ‘find’ the Liberator, it disintegrated with Servalan on board. After running through a clump of integralactic fungus that ate it. Incidentally, that was one big plot booboo – there was fungus and rust popping out of all the joints in the wall cladding and neither Avon’s crew nor Servalan noticed it. However, I guess Liberator had sister ships that a reboot could acquire, I agree it was too awesome a ship to dispense with. But any remake would absolutely have to have an Avon. Blake or his replacement Tarrant (ever notice how similar they were? – compared to Avon’s suave ruthlessness) were, I think, less integral to the series. Incidentally, how many of the original ‘seven’ made it all the way through every episode? I think, only Avon and Vila. I used to be able to name them all, and roughly when they arrived and departed. Gan was the first casualty. Then Cally the telepath I think. Then Jenna the pirate and Blake. Then Tarrant arrived, then Dayna the hunter, then Soolin the assassin. Anyone I missed?
I never watched Babylon 5, didn’t know it was partly inspired by B7. Another one I think probably owed something to B7 was Farscape – a crew of fugitives, being hunted by a military power, in a huge alien ship (Moya), having adventures along the way. I suspect though, that trope is quite common in sci-fi. It does lend itself to changing cast members on occasion as actors drop out or join. Farscape, by the way, was notable for wild plot twists, as some of their fiercest enemies in the Peacekeepers were deposed and sought refuge on Moya. (‘Peacekeepers’ – what a lovely name for a ruthless militaristic mercenary culture. Some cynic dreamed that up. A bit like the Colt .45 ‘Peacemaker’ – all very peaceful when you’ve killed all the opposition. I won’t even get started on the FIFA/Nobel Peace Prize… 🙂
3 February 2026 at 06:45 #78514@ps1l0v3y0u Which ‘rubbish’ computer do you mean? Zen, Orac or Slave? Probably the most interesting one was Orac, with the sarcastic temperament. Zen (shades of Hal from 2001) was taciturn. Slave was painfully obsequious.
@whohar @janetteb As for a reboot, I do hope it is a ‘re-imagining’ along the lines of Battlestar Galactica 2. (Which apparently old fans hated, calling it GINO – Galactica in Name Only. I never watched the old series, so I didn’t care). I think the original Blakes 7 was much constrained – even in its plotting – by budget and effects.
The relationship between Avon and Sevalan could certainly be – more developed. Back when B7 was made, just like with Who, any hint of s*x or strong romantic attraction was considered suspect. I’m absolutely not saying the ‘new’ series should have Avon explicitly leaping into bed with Servalan, an implication would be enough, or just a suggestion of mutual attraction; it was there in the original, I think, but buried so deep you’d need a metal detector to find it. It could, I think, be rather more along the lines of the relation between Holmes and Irene Adler in ‘Sherlock’.
As for who played Servalan, she would need to be a strong character, with considerable screen presence and sophistication and a hint of humour. After all, she did rise to the top of the (unseen) power struggle in the Federation. And mature enough to be convincing. Like Missie (no, I’m not necessarily suggesting Michelle Gomez for the role). Come to think of it, Lara Pulver (Irene Adler) could do it.
As for Avon – can’t reincarnate Paul Darrow? 🙂 Not sure who to nominate there. Blake would be easier, any action star would do. Interchangeable with Tarrant, I think.
I do agree with Janetteb that models probably hold up better than early CGI. Still, some of the early FX were a little painful – I’m thinking of the neutron blasters in B7, or the energy bolts from the Gods of Ragnarok in Greatest Show in the Galaxy. In the way of weapons, B7 was probably the worst off, they had some singularly unconvincing guns (surely it would have been easy and cheap to manufacture better, just take an existing real gun and stick a few extra bits on it); Dr Who (or so I think from a very tiny sample) tended to use real guns which stood up much better, I recall one ep where the enemy were using broomhandle Mausers with stocks fitted which looked quite futuristic in their original form. As for creatures and costumes, K9 was always painful, and the Cybermats were all too obviously little props being pulled along on bits of fishing line. I was going to include the early Cybermen in the painfully unconvincing category, all too obviously extras in silver overalls with boxes stuck on and humans inside, I would have thought that nothing could salvage them until the Moff’s genius made that very fact horrifyingly convincing (World Enough and Time).
30 January 2026 at 06:05 #78508@ps1l0v3y0u @whohar (Delurking suddenly) I’m on the fence about a reboot of Blakes 7. And I say that as a past addict. I used to get dirty looks from my boss when I shot out the door at 4-30, I couldn’t muster the courage to point out it was only on Thursdays and it was so I could get home in time to catch a B7 re-run (first time for me) at 5.30. (This was before VCR’s became universal). Incidentally, the final episode was screened several weeks late and in a late timeslot, apparently killing a few people or having them go missing was okay but (spoilers!) killing them all was too much.
Anyway, if there is a reboot, I rather hope it’s completely different from the original, rather than just recycling old stories with better FX. Though frankly, the ‘better FX’ wouldn’t be difficult, I think B7 had the most painfully unconvincing guns of anything on television. And its model spaceships were fairly obviously just that, I think even Red Dwarf had better FX; what a difference a decade makes!
I have a theorem that up to a certain point, better FX really do help the story; beyond that point, they tend to take over and weaken it. B7 was definitely on the left-hand side of the bell curve in that respect.
I watched mainly for Kerr Avon, okay he was as ‘stagey’ as all hell, but Paul Darrow could carry it off. And there was some killer dialogue, I’m a sucker for sarcasm, irony and black humour. (I was also quite intrigued by the irony that, most of the time, there weren’t seven of them, and for half the run Blake wasn’t in them either. One could argue they weren’t even really Blake’s after the first few episodes, the rivalry with Avon lent a certain ‘edge’ to the saga.) It was a shade darker than contemporary Doctor Who, I think.
I’d forgotten it was invented by Terry Nation! The name I remember most in connection with B7 is Chris Boucher. (Um, the reboot is being proposed by a Matthew Bouch. Odd coincidence).
I’d say it will be interesting to see the results, if they get it done while I’m still around to see it. 🙂
9 January 2026 at 11:30 #784714 January 2026 at 07:31 #78466@nerys I was joking about the VHS. I can’t see it ever coming back into fashion, for several reasons: Compared with DVD’s, or other electronic storage, it’s much lower quality, much bulkier, VHS players are mechanically highly complicated, the tape wears with each playing, jumping to a specific place on a track requires the whole tape to be rewound, so is very slow; and DVD’s can offer many extra tracks such as ‘commentaries’ and language options. Our local charity shops won’t accept VHS any more because nobody buys them. Though some are for sale on Trademe (our Ebay equivalent) so I might advertise mine for a couple of bucks in case ‘somebody’ wants them still.
Hopefully your VHS’s were sufficiently long ago that people did buy them.
3 January 2026 at 01:28 #78464@nerys That happy circumstance happened to me just once. Decades ago I had a turntable and a couple of dozen LP’s. When cassette tapes came along, they were so much more handy (even though of doubtful sound quality) that I never listened to records any more. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of my LPs in their artistic sleeves. Then CD’s came along, as convenient as cassettes and as good quality as LP’s (better, in fact, because they were immune to dust and scratches).
So several decades later I finally bit the bullet and found, to my surprise, that ‘vinyl’ is now ‘collectable.’ Sold them all, except for Dark Side of the Moon, which I kept for its iconic** cover.
(**Badly overused word, but in this case it fits so I use it, reluctantly.)
And my turntable, which was a nice belt-drive Yamaha (yes, that old) in a nice wooden enclosure (yes, that old) – well, it was too nice to throw away even though it took up a lot of space and its belt was slipping badly, but I found that I could actually get a new belt for it. Which I did. And then I found that it too was collectible, got $400 for it.
Now I’m waiting for VHS to come back into fashion 😉
1 January 2026 at 10:29 #78459@janetteb If I don’t have my camera on me, I also use a cellphone. They have become remarkably good for what they are. My 150-dollar Android phone will take perfactly good photos and videos in a good light. But I think dedicated cameras will always be a step ahead, for simple reasons of physics – there are only so many photons per square centimetre per second, so a big lens will always be better, particularly for short exposures and/or in a dim light. That’s something phones can’t do anything about, it is physically impossible to fit a large lens into the thickness of a cellphone.
I just Googled and Panasonic don’t own Leica. That was a guess on my part from the prevalence of Leica lenses on Panasonic cameras. Pleased to hear your father’s Leicas were ‘collectable’, it’s nice when that happens.
31 December 2025 at 07:55 #78453@nerys f/2.8 Wow. That’s pretty nice. The TZ80 is f/3.3 to 6.4. I’m – almost – tempted to consider and FZ, but the same argument applies as did to my Konica (though obviously less cogently) – I can’t take photos if my camera isn’t on me, and the TZ is small and light enough to just carry as a matter of habit. TZ has a Leica lens too, I assume Panasonic probably bought them at some time.
@ps1l0v3y0u That’s true about the droplets, so maybe that is the actual heavier-than-air weight. Of course if the latent heat of condensation is enough to produce strong enough updraughts (thunderstorm) to keep the droplets aloft long enough to coalesce into ice – they become hailstones and really not very gentle at all. 🙂
27 December 2025 at 14:20 #78449@thane16 syzygy And a merry Christmas to you, thankyou. So a cloud weighs 500 tons (or tonnes – pretty much the same thing). Does that include the weight of the air in it, or is that the additional weight of the water vapour? (Is water vapour heavier than air?) That would imply 500 cubic metres of liquid water. But (Googles) water vapour is lighter than air – of course, which is why steam rises. So it must just be the weight of the cloud, air included, I guess.
Sorry for being such a geek. As you could guess, Kill the Moon caused me acute distress.I do love quirky ‘fun facts’. I’m a fan of the Monty Hall problem, which seems incredibly simple yet so deceptive that professors of mathematics have gone into print with the wrong answer.
27 December 2025 at 12:59 #78448@nerys Your FZ’s are a step above mine, in lens size certainly. I did love the light-gathering capability of my Konica film cameras with great big hunks of glass, but when I went digital I wanted something more portable. I also wanted a wide angle – 35mm or even 28mm, it was surprising how difficult that was to find in those early compact digitals. My first decent digital was a Panasonic TZ2 and I’ve stuck with TZs ever since, currently a TZ80. Which is just a ‘pocket camera’ size if your pockets are large. I guess at 24-720mm it’s a ‘superzoom’, though maximum zoom is only useable because it’s got OIS (Optical Image Stabilisation) which really does make a difference, essential on a small light camera. The steadying influence of a great big 200mm f3.5 lens on a 35mm SLR was something you only really appreciate when you don’t have it 🙂 In dim light it can’t quite match a full-size SLR, but almost, and it’s way ahead of anything I’ve had on a phone, as one would expect. As always with anything digital, it’s got 57 modes of which I’ve only ever used three or four.
I don’t use ‘the cloud’ for backups, like you I prefer to have my stuff in my possession. Except maybe texts on my phone.
25 December 2025 at 14:57 #78441@nerys As you say, extra shots in digital cost virtually nothing. Great, compared with 50c-a-shot film, but it can be a problem. I don’t weed out nearly as many as I should. Ones that are out of focus or accidental shots of my feet are obvious candidates for deletion. Deciding which of several similar okay shots is the best is just too time-consuming so I tend to keep them all. I don’t get completely swamped, only because terabyte hard drives are affordable these days, and I have four in my computer downstairs. (I do backups by copying everything to a different hard drive).
25 December 2025 at 14:41 #78440@janetteb I’m not sure if the word is ‘dedication’ or ‘geeky obsession’. When I first went digital, c.2004, I saved the results on DVD’s, which naturally prompted me to put an index on each DVD. My first digital camera was a dreadful little thing, best forgotten, in 2005 I upgraded to a Fuji which gave adequate images. Then my first ‘good’ digital, a Panasonic TZ2, in 2007.
Up until that time, I used a film camera – a Konica T3 and a TC, with an impressive selection of lenses, the digitals were just for convenient carrying when I didn’t want to lug around a big camera bag. But the TZ2 made my nice Konicas obsolete overnight. Sad, in a way, they were beautiful pieces of tech.Anyway, aside from all my digital photos, next job is to scan the prints of all 450 films I took with the Konica and index them. 🙂 I did say I was obsessive, didn’t I? They do all have details written on the back.
You were much more adventurous in your Trans Siberian trip than me – I did it in 2017, when Russia was quite tame. Coincidentally, my camera developed a random fault – I think the optical image stabilisation lens came loose – which meant about half the photos were distorted round the edges. Cropping them on my computer helped. I’ve also once lost a whole batch – in 2008 I followed the Silver Fern (car) Rally round South Island and I lost a SD card. Ouch! More recently, last year in France, when I put my rental car on its roof, I got the paramedic to snap a couple of photos on my phone, which then got pickpocketed in Paris. Luckily all my other photos were on my camera. When I got home, at a friend’s suggestion, I wrote an email to the local Chief of Police asking if they had any photos they could kindly share with me, and by return I got a most courteous reply from the Brigadier (?) with four good photos.
25 December 2025 at 02:28 #78437@nerys Sorry if it looks like I’m bragging. But its just so nice to be able to go and swim every day (and this year Summer seems to have arrived early, at least up this end of the country). What I also love about summer are the long evenings, it doesn’t get dark until 10pm or so (of course anyone in the mid-latitudes can say the same). It always catches me by surprise how suddenly the long evenings arrive, and also how rapidly they decay at the other end of the year. Guess I’m just slow on the uptake.
But anyway, I’d feel I was somehow selling my good fortune (in living here) short if I didn’t at least mention it.
Minuses – well, the biggest minus is, we’re 1200 miles from anywhere (‘anywhere’ being Sydney, Australia). I do so envy Poms (i.e. ‘Brits’) who can just pop across to France or Spain or Norway for the weekend. By car, ship or train if they don’t want the hassle of flying. From here, it involves a 20-hour-plus flight with all the accompanying complications so it’s something we can only afford to do – in terms of cost and time – every few years at best.
Cataloguing photos – it’s taken months, on and off, since I re-started. I was more-or-less up to date until 2017, when I did my big trip via the Trans-Siberian to Europe (Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, UK) and came back with about 20,000 photos. Admittedly only about 10% were worth keeping. But whenever I drove somewhere obscure – like English country lanes which I prefer to main roads – I took a snap of the signs at road junctions so I could later retrace my route on the map or Streetview (I’m also obsessive about maps and knowing exactly where I am, or was). Much quicker than noting it at the time. I have no photos labelled ‘somewhere in Cornwall’, they’re all ‘Tolcarne village heading west’ or something like that. Maybe I’m weird. I just note them all down in order in a large plain text file, I can just do a word search in any editor to locate the ones of interest.
After 2017, I let it all lapse until a couple of months ago when I decided I really had to break the logjam and catalogue that trip. So now I’ve broken free of that and just have a few evening’s worth left. But it’s quite pleasant ‘work’, and every now and then I come across a photo that’s good enough (at least in my optimistic imagination) to make it worth the effort.
24 December 2025 at 12:39 #78435Merry Christmas / New Year / solstice.
I’ve been absent [minded] for a while, time always sneaks past when I’m not looking. Been swimming every day, here (water’s warm!) And also indexing all my digital photos, of which I have literally tens of thousands, I tend to binge on shots. A luxury I could never afford with film, but with digital it’s virtually free. The downside is extricating the decent shots from the so-so ones (the really bad shots are easy, make like a Cyberman and Delete). I’m currently up to 2018, not too far to go. But it’s a huge time sink, which is why Who has temporarily taken a back seat. It’s temporarily stalled at ‘Dot and Bubble’. Hope to resume shortly.
3 December 2025 at 05:33 #78415@winston @nerys I think a lot of the anti-society attitude stems from the myth of the hardy pioneering individual who did everything for himself and was beholden to no man. So that, reinforced by the successful American Revolution (which was really a rebellion), morphed into the ‘all government is a threat to my freedom’ frame of mind. (If anyone really, truly wants to be totally self-sufficient and beholden to nobody, there’s plenty of space in Alaska, the Yukon, or eastern Siberia available).
It also led, I think, to the gun-lovers of America’s favourite argument that the ‘right to bear arms’ was a vital safeguard against a dictatorial government. So now their great chance to prove it has come. I’m waiting…
Oh dear I’m getting political.
On a non-political note, AI-generated video is getting alarmingly good. Youtube is choking with trashy patently fake videos with stunningly good graphics and puerile plots. Any Who producer of the past would have wept at the quality of the graphics. They would have wept even harder at the ‘plots’. (These aren’t political, just clickbait. Occasionally the AI gets it laughably wrong, like, say, a beautifully rendered giant python – with legs.) Unfortunately Mrs D watches a lot of them.
1 December 2025 at 13:15 #78409@nerys Unfortunately Covid was a breeding ground for anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists and bloody-minded obstinate people of all types who thought their individual rights trumped everyone else’s. In fact, thought that they weren’t properly exercising their rights unless they trampled on somebody else. The sort of mentality that thinks the Government must automatically be evil because it makes laws that infringe their ‘freedom’ (except of course when the laws favour them personally).
If there was some thing that needed to be done, which was obviously sensible and the only rational course of action, and would benefit everybody, you can guarantee that there would be at least one individual who sabotaged it out of sheer perversity.
30 November 2025 at 02:35 #78406@nerys Has Donald Trump sued the CBC for a billion dollars yet?
We know why he hates the BBC.
Given that Trump is the most loathsome excrescence ever to crawl on the face of the earth, with all the appeal of a Dot-and-Bubble slug [five paragraphs of vitriol omitted], and lies brazenly and continually, any news organisation that reports his doings remotely fairly or factually is automatically his enemy.
I imagine the CBC must inevitably have reported on him in less than glowing obsequious terms, I’d be willing to bet that tRump or his minions are giving support to any ‘Defund the CBC’ movement, in exactly the same way they promote the far Right in Europe and badmouth the NHS.
Elbows up!
(Thais has been a party political broadcast on behalf of sanity and rationality 🙂
30 November 2025 at 02:24 #78405@nerys I know the slugs ignored Lindy because they were working through in alphabetical order.
(As an aside, had the AI read the ‘Hitchiker’s Guide’ quintet, wherein Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, being immortal and bored, set out to insult every living thing in the Universe *in alphabetical order*?)But, why do it that way. And why ‘build’ the slugs. I think it might be much more efficient, plot-wise, if the slugs were an existing species. The AI could have just decided to drop the defences and let them into the city. As for the alphabetical order, the AI could have modified the Slugs to obey its commands (much easier than creating a whole new species from scratch) in the same way that Man ‘created’ terriers and Pekinese and Alsatians. Could be that was what the Doc meant by ‘created’? 🙂 This would be consistent with the episode as screened.
An even easier way, though a lot less horrific, would be to just have everyone’s Dots zap them the way one zapped Ricky. Or even have their Bubbles guide them off a tall building.
My most-favoured way (and requiring least effort by the AI) would just be to have their Bubbles guide them into a Slug when their turn came up. Now that might lead to a few getting accidentally munched out of sequence but probably statistically insignicant. It would just require a small change in the script, though.
And finally, why bother with the Slugs? To inflict the maximum terror on the population? Okay, I can go with that, except – why hide the Slugs away from the average moron like Lindy in their Bubbles, why not let them know what was going to happen to them? And, even more, if bothering to do it in alphabetical order, WHY hide that from the victims? Wouldn’t it be far more terrifying if they knew their number was coming up?
So, my optimum woud be: the Slugs were a natural secies, the AI let them in, it shielded people in their Bubbles (but let them know their number was coming up so, nameless terror), when the time came their Bubble just guided them into the nearest Slug and dropped at the last moment to let them see what was happening to them.
So why on earth would the AI go that tortuous route in the episode to enact its hideous vengeance? Maybe it was just, like Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolongued, terminally bored.
I still love the ep. And those logical queries only arise on reflection, they don’t slap you repeatedly and continually in the face like, say, Kill the Moon.
@janetteb Agreed, RTD at his best.
27 November 2025 at 12:16 #78392@nerys I wrote a page, but most of it was just repetitive of my comments almost exactly a year ago. So I won’t post them again.
I found it a very strong episode, even on repeat viewing. I still think the Slugs evolved naturally on Finetime (or were already there, in the jungle, in which case of course the boatload of Finetime refugees is totally doomed). The Dot/Bubble AI just co-opted them. And I think my theory in my post of 18th November 2024 was a good one – that the AI just guided people into the slugs (in alphabetical order) by using their Bubbles. Very simple, very easy, requires no super-advanced genetic manipulation. I *know* the Doc says the AI ‘designed’ them, but then that was his deduction, the Doc isn’t infallible.
Oh, but then the Slugs actually ignored Lindy. Bugger. Another lovely theory bites the dust. Okay, modified theory – the Slugs were an existing lifeform that the AI just modified so it had psychic control of them. All it would need to do would be broadcast some ‘attack/retreat’ signal to specific Slugs that Lindy encountered.
How the slugs got to Homeworld we don’t know. Maybe a Slug stowed away on one of the shuttles that brought entitled teenagers to Finetime and took 28-year-olds back. Or we don’t know their life-cycle, maybe they didn’t eat quite all their victims, maybe they just planted an egg in some of them like the Aliens in Alien. What happened to people who died on Finetime? – there must have been the occasional accident. Presumably the bodies were shipped back to Homeworld for burial – and hatching.
The Slugs also reminded me a bit of The Day of the Triffids, that early sci-fi classic. The Triffids were clumsy, slow-moving sentient plants, they could only catch humans because most of the population had been blinded (just like Finetimers in their Bubbles?)
27 November 2025 at 07:58 #78390@nerys It was awful, but relatively brief, and left a lasting impression but no lasting scars. Far worse things have happened.
As a further aside, five years ago next Monday I was walking on a bush track near the beach and I came on a young dead woman hanging from a tree. It was a lovely morning and a beautiful spot, and she had friends who were looking for her, I just couldn’t imagine why anyone in apparently good health would want to do that. I’m ashamed to say I was inclined to the ‘just get over it’ sceptical school of thought about depression.Well, since my little ‘episode’, I think I can now understand. If that feeling of hopeless, nameless dread that I briefly experienced was to persist, I’m not sure what I might do. (I assume she was depressed). It is not a rational state of mind – as I said, I had no reason at all to be sad about anything, and I told myself that repeatedly, to no avail.
Didn’t Doctor Who do an episode about that?
@devilishrobby I think the alternate universe (or alternative future) is probably correct. That ‘Tardis perception filter’ idea has some credence, except I think it must have gone wrong and instead of protecting Ruby, it just warned off anybody who got too close to her. Umm, that could work, an over-protective defence mechanism. “You will be protected whether you like it or not.”
So many unknowns in this episode (which is not always a bad thing).26 November 2025 at 10:39 #78387@nerys Well yes, Ruby was on the football pitch precisely in order to ‘target’ (or terrify) Roger ap H-bomb. She actually got too close and had to back away to exactly 73 yards, and she knew her ‘follower’ would do the necessary. Exactly what her follower could possibly say to get that result, I don’t know. Possibly it wasn’t just words, maybe it also induced a psychic state akin to a ‘panic attack’. (I – just once – experienced a panic attack, or maybe a brief intense depression. It lasted a couple of hours and it was terrifying. A feeling of being trapped and helpless. All this, despite the fact that I knew I was in no danger, and the circumstances were all positive – weather was fine, I was staying with our daughter who I get on well with – there was absolutely no reason to feel depressed and that, in a way, made it worse, I was terrified that it might be permanent. Eventually managed a short sleep and when I woke up the fear was gone and it was a lovely day.) So maybe Ruby’s ‘follower’ had the power to induce that mental state in people.
26 November 2025 at 10:19 #78386Yowza! That was some episode. I think this time round I could follow the plot better, or at least understand what was going on. But I’m still completely baffled as to why, and how.
Was the 73-yard woman Ruby all along? Or a holographic projection? And what could she possibly have said to make people run in terror, and keep (effectively) running, like Roger ap William?
And was the episode end just ‘reset button’? Alternative future?Anyway – cracking good episode. Now I think I’ll read some of the other comments and see if I can get a clue.
25 November 2025 at 01:08 #78384@nerys @whohar I’ve quite intentionally never owned a DVD player that wasn’t multi-zone or region-free. It allows me to buy DVD’s on Ebay without worrying what region they are (Region 1 is US, Region 2 is UK). We’re Region 4 in Aust/NZ. But obviously the potential selection is far wider if I’m not limited to Region 4, particularly for more obscure or rarer DVD’s (though many of those are released as Region 0 i.e. region free). Multizone players used to be twice the price (here in NZ) but the premium has steadily dropped (as it should, since mechanically they’re identical and I *think* that, firmware-wise, it’s actually just a matter of leaving out the region-checking code. I could easily be worng about that though).
These days Blu-ray is becoming almost the standard and DVD’s harder to get, which is very annoying since Blu-ray is harder to ‘hack’ my laptop to play, even with a Blu-ray drive fitted. So I do have one standalone multi-zone Blu-ray player. I still buy DVD where possible, but the latest Dr Who series was only available in Blu-Ray last time I looked.
25 November 2025 at 00:50 #78383@nerys It just occurred to me that King Goblin (aka Jabba) was an acute case of ‘fat-shaming’. 🙂
‘Boom’ also had a song (though mercifully no dancing, what with landmines around and all…)
I’m pretty sure Who had songs on occasion before. There was the Dickensian Christmas one with the shark. And Rings of Akhaten. And probably many others that I can’t bring to mind.
24 November 2025 at 12:01 #78377@whohar Oh, thanks for reminding me of that. It was of course under RTD’s oversight, but how could I have forgotten?
24 November 2025 at 11:00 #78375@nerys I finally got to it. And it was as good as I remembered.
Moff was back with a vengeance, no-holds-barred, and taking aim at (in no particular order) the military-industrial complex, unchecked capitalism, holy wars, blind faith, mealy-mouthed corporate-speak, and making all decisions on a totally commercial basis (there must be a word for that but I can’t recall it). Even commercial profit-driven healthcare refusing coverage got an implied sideswipe.
I may have missed something. He did relent slightly at the end when he conceded that faith could have its merits in some situations.
He also invented intelligent, migrating land mines. A step up from the ‘hand mines’ of – was it Sorcerer’s Apprentice?
Also, he kept piling on the tension as every factor – the mine, Splice’s arrival, Vater’s hologram triggered by Splice, Mundy’s arrival, Canto shooting Ruby – added further complications to his predicament. Just as he looks to be surmounting one obstacle another appears.
I’ll bet that when RTD invented the Villengard arms factories (in The Doctor Dances) he had no inkling of where the Moff would go with it.
Excellent stuff.
23 November 2025 at 13:24 #78361@nerys Every long-running series does a song and dance number, just as they all do a Western. Eventually.
So, when Ruby was playing the piano on the rooftop, where did the string accompaniment come from? Inquiring nitpicky little minds want to know.
Maestro didn’t do anything for me, as a villain. Just got no charisma. If the character was supposed to be quite devoid of any interesting qualities, maybe that fitted. And I found the magic chords a little – unconvincing. Also, they must often have been invoked, quite by chance.
There was *much* better music than anything featured in this episode, even in 1963. Though, to be fair, not pop music, that didn’t start to get really good for several years, under the influence of the Beatles. (In, of course, my expert opinion). But plenty of catchy light classical or even folk music. Gilbert & Sullivan for instance.
Never mind. Boom is next.
21 November 2025 at 07:50 #78343@nerys @ps1l0v3y0u Space Babies (the title sort of says it all, doesn’t it?) Damn, do I *have* to watch it? Well, maybe I’ll just skip-watch to see if there were any developments in the long-term story.
OK, I liked the little joke about the Butterfly Effect. (Did they have butterflies in the Jurassic? Does it even matter?)
Um, snot monsters and talking babies running a spaceship. I’m outta here. Long-term developments be damned, I can skim Tardis.fandom.com for that. What’s next – The Lost Chord. That’ll do.
21 November 2025 at 07:20 #78342@nerys Whoo! You’re racing through the DVD’s, aren’t you? Up to the Sutekh thing already.
I’ve been out of action (and mostly, contact) the last few days, since I munged my main laptop, the one with the DVD drive and my email client configured. I’m just sorting a newer one (but I still have to configure the email, for now I just have to use my ISP’s webmail so I’m pretty out of touch). Plus the water here is lovely (which is insane for November!) so I’m kinda busy. But I did see a comment from you about 73 yards, so I resolved to binge-watch Season 14 and catch up. But as you’re up to Sutekh, no chance. Never mind, I can try to follow closely enough to follow your comments.
Yes, the song-and-dance was bizarre and incongruous. I did find the change in Carla after Ruby disappeared, very disconcerting. Overall, I didn’t hate the ep, didn’t love it, there was enough to keep me watching.
Herewith my brief comments –
That Christmas tree that lands on Davina reminds me of the berserk one that menaced Rose’s mum in an early nuWho episode. (Wasn’t that the one with the killer Santas?)
And baby getting abducted by goblins – this is straight out of ‘Labyrinth’. And the flying ship was reminiscent of Captain Shakespear’s lightning-catching schooner cutter in Stardust (though with a far less attractive crew).
I found the song a bit ‘off’. Also bizarrely incongruous (if that has any meaning in an episode like this). Of course the goblin song-and-dance is also out of Labyrinth, but nobody here has the charisma of David Bowie. So then they sing to Jabba and the goblins sing along and they escape on a convenient rope.
Back in the flat – incredibly slow to notice that Ruby has disappeared. This Doctor is not really very sharp, is he? And it seems somehow Ruby has vanished from existence, could the goblins do that?
So the Doctor zaps back in time to rescue baby Ruby, and his gloves give him the weight to pull the goblin ship down? How? All they do is transfer his weight into one (or two) gloves, he said so. And then after Jabba gets the jab and the ship disintegrates, the Doctor falls at least 50 feet and lands on his feet, without breaking anything. This is Kill the Moon levels of physical absurdity.
Anyway, we get the classic look-inside-then-walk-all-round the Tardis, just like Rose did. So, happy ending (probably obligatory at Christmas, but I didn’t mind that).
18 November 2025 at 10:17 #78326@janetteb @ps1l0v3y0u @whohar @janetteb Like Janetteb, I found Chibs’s rewriting of the whole Who timeline too much to take. ‘Future’ events (by which I mean ones the Doctor’s timeline hasn’t reached yet) can do what they like, but ‘past’ events had better fit into the sequence or they just confuse and annoy me. Which am I supposed to believe, what I ‘knew’ before or the incompatible version I’ve just been presented with? I contrast the way Moff eased the War Doctor into the sequence without breaking anything, with Doctor Ruth (Fugitive of the Judoon). Like, that was an intriguing story (if reminiscent in some ways of The Family of Blood) and I liked Ruth, not least for her ruthlessness (you are permitted to groan), but she should never have happened.
So currently I’m trying to find a rational way to believe that most of Chibz ‘didn’t happen’. I’ll let you know when I’ve succeeded. 🙂
Whohar – I think the reason Chibz gets a ‘free pass’ from other showrunners is just politeness or ‘professional courtesy’. You don’t badmouth your fellow workers even if you think they’re crap.
Timeless Child could have been about some other character altogether. We all know Time Lords are ruthless, as was well established in [the episode with Timothy Dalton] and in Hell Bent. (In fact, in that one, the Doctor was pretty unforgiving to the – Lord President, was it? But since the LP had just tried to kill the Doctor as many times as necessary (‘I’ve got all day’) I guess that was understandable). But anyway, as I said, the Timeless Child didn’t have to be Doctor Who. Heck, the Doctor could even have gone back and rescued TTC from Tecteun – which would have made a nice anomaly to sort out, but could have been done. (Apologies if I’ve got any wires crossed there, my usual laptop with its stash of Who data is – unavailable for reference. Which is to say, I installed a new version of Debian on it and now it won’t boot off the hard drive. All my data is still there, I can boot off a USB key and see it, so the hard drive’s okay, maybe I screwed something in the BIOS or maybe it’s the zombie ghost of Windows resurrecting itself. So I’m on a backup laptop and some serious geeky hacking is in the offing. The Church on Ruby Road will just have to wait.)
17 November 2025 at 10:09 #78317@translatorcircuit By a ‘small’ episode I mean any that doesn’t have a cast of thousands and where the peril is focussed on the Doctor or a small group, not some universe-ending threat. Far more credible
What do you mean, “of course Midnight was total crap”? Where did the ‘of course’ come from? Your opinion does not constitute a universal truth. And for my money, the ‘Timeless Child’ storyline was just Chibs crapping all over continuity, it certainly didn’t revitalise Who. But that’s just my opinion.
By ‘The Wire’ I meant of course The Idiot’s Lantern, which I found very ho-hum. And of course when I said ‘Moonlight’ I meant ‘Midnight’, I could blame autocorrect except that my laptop doesn’t have it.
It would seem our tastes are fundamentally opposed.
17 November 2025 at 09:52 #78316@nerys (I’m just coming up to a re-watch of this – after I do The Church on Ruby Road).
The Babies reminded me quite strongly of the goblins in Labyrinth, except not so well done and they didn’t have David Bowie to give it some class. Or maybe evil Muppets.
Oh, hang on, is this the right episode I’m thinking of? (Quick frantic google for Tardis.Fandom.com). Oh, it is The Church on Ruby Road I’m thinking of. Kinda shows how much impact Space Babies had on my mind. Sadly.
@ps1l0v3y0u Um, well after Space Bubbies came The Devil’s Chord which – if my flaky memory is even remotely to be trusted – was another ho-hum episode (or maybe just not to my idiosyncratic tastes). But then – Boom! I mean, literally, the episode Boom. Explosively better. Could it – just possibly – be the fact that it was written by Moff have something to do with it?
8 November 2025 at 11:48 #78298@ps1l0v3y0u The Toymaker’s pseudo-German was really annoying at first. I think he dropped it later in the episode (thankfully). What made the Toymaker so hard to combat, I think, was that he didn’t have plans for world domination or any particular motive, he was just having malicious fun.
Mitchell & Webb had some classics, my favourite is ‘Brain Surgeon’, not least because it stands one convention on its head: In most sketches, much of the humour comes from an unexpected punchline that inverts everything. In Brain Surgeon, you know exactly what the punchline is going to be, to the point where you’d be really frustrated if it didn’t happen, yet when it does it’s still funny and immensely satisfying.
That gold tooth that was left behind when the Toymaker blinked out of existence – very reminiscent of the Master’s signet ring from Last of the Time Lords. Which implies that he will be back, some time, somehow.
7 November 2025 at 12:37 #78294@janetteb I thoroughly agree about the ‘small’ episodes being some of the best. (Blink, Moonlight, Listen, the Van Gogh one, The Doctor’s Wife, Boom, even Fugitive of the Judoon). There were many ho-hum small episodes too, of course (The Wire, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship). But I think being small gives more opportunity to make the characters interesting and the story ‘relatable’. Opening it up to universe-ending threats loses the personal touch and the threat overshadows the story, and when the ‘good guys’ succeed there’s a certain credibility gap – how could the Doctor and a few friends overcome such a massive threat?
Certainly, if there’s a new showrunner, I would like to see RTD writing a few episodes and I’d love to see Moff doing so.
For the future, I do hope Billie Piper has a decent role to play. With some (most) of the pre-Gap companions who have had cameos, it feels like they’re only there for fan service. Even Ace, who I hugely like in her old episodes with Seven. But Billie is still a lot younger so she fits the part better. (I know I’m being shockingly age-ist there, I think at my age I’m entitled to be 🙂
7 November 2025 at 12:06 #78293@ps1l0v3y0u Did you get to re-watch this as you threatened? 🙂
I just managed it. Not a lot of comments. The Toymaker is so annoying I want to slap him.
The Vlinx is absurd, a Disney creature? Never satisfactorily explained.
The Toymaker talked of doubling the Doctor again and again. Reminds me of a Farscape ep where the villain-of-the-week was on an abandoned Leviathan where he kept doubling the crew so he could sustain his supply of brains to eat. (Anyone who thought Farscape was for kiddies because the aliens were done by Henson of Muppet fame were – sadly misled). So he doubled the hero Crichton into two individuals who both thought they were the original. Episode ended with the two Crichtons sitting with their favourite gun on the table between them, grimly playing Rock-Paper-Scissors – and tying, every time. (Because of course they would). The Ncuti-doctor and the Tennant-doctor seem to be getting on better than that, but there’s a certain awkwardness and a hint of future clashes in the scene in their Tardis. So then Ncuti clones the Tardis (I’d forgotten that). Nice solution to the problem.
Don’t know if any other Who episode dealt with the issue of cloning. Oh yes of course, the Zygon episodes. Particularly, of course, Osgood. Except that one Osgood was a human and the other a Zygon, and they knew which (though they weren’t telling). How far Zygon-Osgood became humanoid by a sort of habituation over time, we don’t know.
And of course Bill, who was replicated by the puddle at the end of The Doctor Falls – which the Toymaker mentioned.
And a number of Dalek ‘skin jobs’ (a term I borrow from Battlestar Galactica), such as Darla (Asylum of the Daleks) and Tasha Lem (The Time of the Doctor).
The final scene is kinda sappy (Disney?!) but kinda nice. I most certainly did like it that the Doc had been giving Rose (2) the odd trip in the Tardis. So this Doctor seems to have retired. Will he die of old age eventually? Does bigeneration preclude him from future regenerations? Don’t know.
2 November 2025 at 10:29 #78285@janetteb When I was six or seven I used to walk a mile to school, half of it on a path across a ‘common’ – a patch of uncultivated land covered in bushes and trees. (I went back last year and it’s all still there). From about ten I used to bike across a different common to the station to catch the school train. Once I rode to Salisbury – about 30 miles each way – through minor roads using an Ordnance Survey 1″ map to find my way.
About 11, I went for a hiking holiday in the Peak District, in a small organised group – which involved my parents putting me on the train at Bournemouth West for Derby. I had to find my own way to the hostel in Derby for the start. And back, from Sheffield. I suppose the locals must have talked with a Whitdoc accent (hey, I just managed to work in a Who reference, didja notice? 🙂 but they seemed normal to me. And the following year, to the Rhine valley.
My parents were okay with all this, they may have had misgivings but they probably thought it was normal – as it was, for the time. In fact they suggested the hiking tours.
I don’t know if it’s different these days, either the world has become a much more dangerous place or (apparently) parents are much more paranoid.
By the way, global warming is definitely a thing around here. Today I went for good a walk on the beach at low tide down by the harbour and the water was almost warm – I eventually managed to find a spot where the mud was not too oozy and went in for five minutes without undue suffering. (I like the water, but not the cold variety). Normal years, I never go in before December at the earliest, often not before Christmas.
1 November 2025 at 10:00 #78282@ps1l0v3y0u That Winter Palace / 1916 scenario could have been developed into quite a good episode all on its own. They certainly spent enough on the impressive and elegant set ( /CGI?) But as it turned out, it was just a convenient location for the Doctor’s involvement to happen. None of the (historical) events of 1916 even got a mention.
I did notice the Dalek and the Cyberman exchanging a look. I know how they felt.
The Qurunx on the dead (?) planet could also have made the foundation for a complete episode. But I have the feeling Chibs has more ideas than he knows how to deal with.
Well I think I’ve contributed enough column-inches on this (if you look up-thread).
30 October 2025 at 08:18 #78270@translatorcircuit I tend to agree with you that goblins and babies are better left to fantasy.
But ’73 yards’? Lighten up. I assume you’re in the UK (correct me if I’m wrong) but don’t they still use Miles? I’m in New Zealand, we went metric 40 years ago but I’m still bilingual (or should that be binumeral?). The US and Canada still use feet and miles, aviation still universally uses altitude in thousands of feet, and knots ffs, what is the point in being deliberately obscurantist about units a substantial part of the world uses?
(The one unit I will not use is that one beloved of TV reporters, ‘football fields’, and its volumetric equivalent ‘Olympic swimming pools’. So far as I know those have never been properly defined and since I never watch either football (of any sort) or swimming races, they leave me completely clueless as to the unit being referred to. A ‘cricket pitch’, on the other hand, I know is 22 yards or 66 feet or a chain, so I’m OK with that, but I still feel that’s a bad unit as many people don’t follow cricket. Just as well they never use cricket grounds).
29 October 2025 at 03:54 #78263@camdudetenger2018 Yeah, see the link in Translatorcircuit’s post.
@translatorcircuit @ps1l0v3y0u @whohar
“However, Kate Phillips, chief content officer at the BBC, previously said the show will continue on the BBC “with or without” Disney. She said at this year’s Edinburgh TV Festival: “Any Whovians out there, rest assured – Doctor Who is going nowhere.”
‘Going nowhere’ – what a curiously ambiguous turn of phrase 🙂
29 October 2025 at 03:47 #78262@ps1l0v3y0u I know Chris Boucher mainly from Blakes 7. I remember that series mainly for quarries, sets that were reasonably convincing, weapons that weren’t, and some delightful dialogue, often featuring Avon. But the line I best remember is down to Servalan: “And, I want a gun.” Avon: “We only have one gun.” Servalan (patiently): “I only *want* one.”
27 October 2025 at 10:56 #78245@ps1l0v3y0u Still a bizarre selection of venues. Shrewsbury, Dorking, Crawley and Winchester. (I had to look up where Crawley was, I had an idea it was somewhere near Woking 🙂 Maybe it’s where theatres can be hired at a reasonable price.
Umm, Crawley. Name rings a bell. He was the demon in Neil Gaiman’s ‘Good Omens’, played on TV by none other than – David Tennant. Coincidences keep happening…
25 October 2025 at 14:49 #78240Well, I just rewatched it. Didn’t make notes this time, just enjoyed the episode.
The ship was absolutely beautiful (I know I said that before, but it still is awesome, even on repeat viewing). CGI well done, and very convincing. Nice contrast with the rusty old robot. Don’t know why it had to reconfigure, maybe to maximise the self-destruct effect, but it looked amazing so I’m not quibbling.
And the walking through corridors was genuinely scary. Maybe not quite as scary as the moonbase in ‘Listen’, but I could still feel the hairs rising on the back of my neck.
And a good puzzle to go along with it. I couldn’t tell who was who at times.
Those – things – remind me of the creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions in Discworld, half-formed shapeless things trying to claw their way into this reality.
The highlight of recent seasons, as far as I’m concerned, up there with Boom and Dot and Bubble.
24 October 2025 at 05:16 #78238Yes I did wonder about the Daily Star. Would it be unkind to compare it to those well-known organs the Weekly World News and the Onion?
I did wonder a bit about performing a ‘radio play’ on stage, maybe it was some sort of misquote and the play is about three actors voicing a radio play? And I also wondered about the slightly bizarre selection of venues. Dorking? Seriously?
Anyway, I quoted it because it mentions two Doctors. I note that Radio Times’ version of the same article doesn’t mention them. I’m guessing that some freelance journalist (or maybe Peter Purves) conducted a longer interview and then sold it to as many outlets as he could, or is that not how journalism works? (I really don’t know).
23 October 2025 at 14:15 #78235@janetteb @whohar @ps1l0v3y0u Just what is the relevance of Peter Purves? (Aside from being a ‘Doctor Who legend’ according to the article). The world is full of guys who worked on [something] x decades ago, who would love to cash in on their past association. Here’s the link Radio Times gave, by the way:
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/showbiz/doctor-who-legend-doesnt-like-36085688
The world is also full of journalists who want to make a sensation out of anything. As janetteb said, clickbait.
“When Doctor Who started it was a children’s programme, we had a weekly cliffhanger and it was simple.” Well yes, and if it had stayed that way I doubt if any of us would be here. The world is also full of people – including fans – who want the next series to be ‘just like the last one, but new’.
(I wonder if I could ring up some journalist on some dull news day and get a headline “Dentarthurdent doesn’t like Star Trek”?)
According to the Daily Star (is that a real paper? I’ve never heard of it) “Peter is teaming up with fellow Doctor Who legends Colin Baker and Tom Baker for his next project. The trio are starring together in a production of A Christmas Carol. It’s a radio play that sees Peter play Charles Dickens while Colin is Ebenezer Scrooge and Tom is Jacob Marley. They’re touring the country from November 7 with shows in Shrewsbury, Dorking, Crawley and Winchester.”
The article ends with ‘And he is even up for returning to Doctor Who for a cameo if he’s asked. He said: “I would love a cameo. But it won’t happen.”’ I think he might be right about that, now.
[/rant]
18 October 2025 at 14:31 #78227Oh well, here I am, back again in the age of RTD2.
And here we go, retconning Donna. I guess if we can retcon Rose, we can retcon Donna. Way back when I watched ‘Xena’, it was a standing joke that nobody ever stayed dead in that series. I guess modern Who is pretty much the same. I don’t mind.
I guess Donna was never actually dead, just lost her memory.
You know, I’m surprised but it was almost a relief to be watching David Tennant again, and not subconsciously ‘making allowances’ for the Doctor. To be fair, for a long while I disliked Donna, based entirely on her first appearance (who says first impressions don’t matter?) when she berated a grieving Doctor who had just lost Rose. But now I don’t mind her at all. Oh, and directed by Rachel Talalay. The old firm’s back. 🙂
And this is quite an ingenious tweak, the Doctor recognises Donna (but Donna of course doesn’t know him) and the name ‘Rose’ stuns him but of course it’s a different Rose.
The rocket (and the monsters) look really comic-book. Was this RTD gently taking a poke at the ‘Disney’ connection (or at the fans who feared it?) I do have to say Henson’s Creature Shop produced rather more convincing aliens for Farscape. Still, the Meep is rather insufferably cute. So it was a nice moment when it turned into a savage villain. Farscape would have approved.
I’m going to be politically incorrect here and say that UNIT’s scientific advisor – in a wheelchair in a disaster zone – really strains credulity. It drops me out of the story. Only slightly mitigated when her wheelchair turns out to be armed. But it would have been more convincing if they’d given it a bit more bulk to hide the weapons.
The aliens speak English. Was this a side-effect of the Tardis being parked nearby?
I very much like the way the Sonic Screwdriver creates a virtual flat touchscreen for the Doctor to view. Oh, and it’s a proper techy gadget now, not a thing that looks like a crudely made sex toy. It can also generate a bulletproof portable blast screen. Handy gadget.
Howcome the UNIT troops never seem to notice the Doctor? Does he come with his own ‘somebody else’s problem’ field?
‘Brandish the gravity stanchions’. Ouch!
I have to say all those burning cracks radiating out from the steelworks were way OTT. That was a case where less would have been more – credible. (A steelworks? In London? Where?)
Oh dear, and Donna and the Doctor in the spaceship are now gabbling more technobabble than Whitdoc ever produced in her lifetime. Aaargh! All credit to Tennant and Tate for not bursting out laughing in the middle of this nonsense. And then all the cracks close up. Seriously?
And oh dear, Rose is technobabbling a little too. Pity, I liked Rose.
So somehow Donna was saved by sharing the power overload with her daughter. This is the lamest retcon ever. I’ll kind of overlook it because I like the characters – even Donna. And even Sylvia now looks favourably on the Doctor – this is probably the wildest retcon in the episode… And then Donna and Rose can just choose to let all that power go, just like that – howcome Donna couldn’t have done that all by herself decades ago? (With a bit of snark about the Doc being thick ‘cos he’s a man – I can see why that annoyed some people).
I still reckon it was mean of Donna to go off with the Doctor and not even let Rose see the Tardis. So then Donna gets to see the new Tardis interior but Rose doesn’t? Incidentally, it’s a thousand times better than Whitdoc’s Crystal Grotto of Schlock. Though (IMO) not as good as Capaldi’s. But a lot bigger (the budget has gone up). Another minor quibble – howcome the Doctor is seeing it for the first time? Did it wait until he was out in London before redecorating?
And the moment the Doctor finds the coffee machine we KNOW what Donna is going to do.
Well, that was reasonably entertaining. I suspect it had as many faults as a Chibz episode, and even more technobabble. It will never make my top 20 episodes (maybe not my top 100) but it was okay in a sort of Aliens of London way. And I did like Rose.
16 October 2025 at 12:58 #78221Looking at the next ep – Power of the Doctor – the Daleks were going to flood the Earth with lava, and even more improbable scenario. They had a big drill in a volcano and were going to let the lava out 🙂 Of course, if they *had* managed to cause a few massive volcanic eruptions, it’s possible the dust clouds in the atmosphere might have wiped out all life on Earth by freezing, that would be a much more credible doomsday scenario.
But anyway, they were defeated by Ace and her baseball bat (and also her Nitro-9)
16 October 2025 at 12:53 #78220@whohar World Enough and Time was a genius move from Moff as far as Cybermen went. As far as I was concerned , the earliest Cybermen (way back in old Who) were the lamest most unconvincing monsters ever – all too painfully obviously just extras in suits. It took Moff’s genius to turn that liability into a horrific ‘reality’ – that the earliest Cybermen *were* in fact just slightly modified people in suits. Like, I guess that was implicit all along, but whether it was the build-up that Moff gave us, or whether the costumes in World Enough were subtly but significantly better, or a bit of both, I’m not sure.
There was a BBC comedy special which included Jonathan Pryce (as the Master) and Rowan Atkinson and Joanna Lumley (the first female Doctor?) that riffed on that going-back-and-change-things, as each one went back further than the other to ‘fix’ things. Except that something went wrong for the Master each time and he had to come back the ‘long way round’. Or something like that, I’m a bit hazy on the details.
I am absolutely sure, in NewWho, there was one occasion when the Doctor timed his arrival to within minutes if not seconds. Presumably on that occasion the Tardis concurred. But I can’t bring it to mind, not even which Doctor it was.
16 October 2025 at 05:52 #78217@whohar @janetteb Acutely observed, Whohar. Usually the Tardis has just been transport to where (or when!) the story is going to happen. It’s a lot simpler to write that way. (More conventional stories occasionally have ‘flashbacks’ to show us what happened previously, but of course the characters in ‘then’ have no foreknowledge of what is going to happen ‘now’).
There is a fundamental incompatibility between possessing a time machine and linear storytelling. Which is, if the hero walks into an ambush ‘now’, WHY doesn’t he just hop into his time machine and go back to yesterday and warn himself. Of course this introduces a massive problem to do with causation and the nature of reality, which is why most writers tend to rule it out with ‘not crossing the timelines’ or such. Only Moff has cared to tackle that head-on, sometimes by sweeping the paradox under the carpet. I think he managed to adroitly avoid the paradox in Blink.
And he addressed the phenomenon of time dilation in a strong gravitational field head-on, in World Enough and Time. I was baffled by the timeline at first, only on subsequent viewings did I realise it was accurate. For that, I can almost forgive him the sight of Cybermen crashing through steel floors.
15 October 2025 at 11:50 #78212@ps1l0v3y0u Just noticed your comment in the ‘Sea Devils’ thread, re Larry and Sally. I think their relationship was handled very well and subtly. It was obvious they got on well together, there was a good chance they were a couple, but that’s all it needed. I can quite happily imagine a romantic attraction there without needing it to be spelled out in words of one syllable.
15 October 2025 at 11:43 #78211@ps1l0v3y0u Well, the story has so many plot holes it would sink faster than a rowing boat in a hurricane. (And yes I’d picked up on the magnetic poles thing. The Earth has had the poles flip within recent (geological) times, and I don’t think there’s any geological evidence of the entire Earth being flooded. Why am I more tolerant of this than Kill the Moon? Probably because this is nearer to fantasy (pirates and seamonsters) while KTM tried to pretend to be based on hard science and technology (in every respect except the egg of course) and failed hideously at ever turn. Also, because the characters (in Sea Devils) were likeable, in distinct contrast to Lundvik and the appalling Courtney. And Doctor 12’s totally out-of-character behaviour.) Actually, I’m not sure there would be any way to ‘flood the Earth’ other than reducing all the land to a perfectly round sphere. Which I don’t think has happened in all of geological history.
So, back to the episode. I suppose I could rate it (in quality) roughly equal to Curse of the Black Spot. With the difference that this was one of Chibz’ better episodes and Black Spot was one of Moff’s poorer ones.
I think Sea Devils was rescued by the director and the cast – the very atmospheric opening scene for example, and the cast were easy to like.
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