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@oochillyo   I watched I Robot recently.   Picked up the DVD for a dollar in the local charity shop  (my main source of DVD’s these days).   I wasn’t expecting much.   (A while before that I watched the re-make of Total Recall, the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie – the original was quite good.   Well the re-make was on Blu-Ray, the special effects were quite awe-inspiring, but – it left me cold.   It didn’t have the black humour or the Ahnold one-liners of the original).    SO,  I wasn’t expecting much of I, Robot.   But, rather to my surprise, I found it really good.

My favourite sci-fi movie of recent times (‘recent’ in my case means anything since 2000!)  is The Fifth Element  (okay, that was 1997, which just shows how far behind the times I am).   With Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich and Gary Oldman.   Highly entertaining from start to finish, and all the aliens were fantastically weird.   If I had to name a movie that I could watch again and again just for entertainment, it’d probably be that.

 

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@winston    Yes, we’re lucky with the climate (once we get used to the vagaries of Auckland weather).   We hardly ever have frosts, I’ve only once seen ice on the puddles,  so the dahlias just stay in the ground, though Mrs D occasionally digs a few up and plants a few more just, I think, for the sake of doing something.

We have a mint bush (growing vigorously) and the bumblebees just love it.   Our daughter in Christchurch has a row of – mint or heather, I can’t remember which, but I counted forty big fat bumblebees hovering around it.    Gardens are very soothing places.

Companions – yes I liked Martha.  Exactly what you said.   Also one of the few companions to leave the Doctor of her own accord.  For some reason Martha tends to be overlooked in the list of companions – maybe because she only did one year, maybe because Rose was a hard act to follow, both story-wise and dramatically.

Smith and Jones had a couple of quite clever plot twists in it.    Also introduced the Judoon as rather clumsy Galactic cops (or should the be mercenaries?)   Bureaucratic, ruthless (in that they didn’t care about collateral damage), unimaginative, altogether not much better than Vogons.

Talking of Companions, just caught a recent interview with Sophie Aldred (Ace) about her appearance along with Sylvester McCoy in the latest episode (Power of the Doctor).   Sophie seemed thrilled to be in a TV episode of Who again (though apparently she’s been doing Big Finish for years).   I’m just going to have to buy the DVD now (even though one-off specials are, to my mind, a bit of a rip-off, they cost almost as much as a full season and sometimes get included in the next season set anyway).   But anyway, Sophie was very complimentary about Jodie Whittaker, I think it was genuine rather than just PR, maybe I’ll have to reassess my opinion of Jodie, though I really can’t get over the Doctor’s Yorkshire accent and dithery delivery.   At one point in the interview Sophie did a very convincing ‘Jodie’ accent, apparently she has voiced 13 in the audio books but she didn’t tell Jodie that.

 

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@winston   Your garden sounds glorious.

Ours tends to be dominated by Mrs D’s dahlias, which run rampant.   A glorious display they make, too.   The Auckland climate tends to be all over the shop on any given day, but it averages out at warm and wet, so stuff grows extremely well whether we want it to or not (e.g. weeds).    I must confess to doing slightly more than I admitted before, I also stake Mrs D’s dahlias when they grow to enough height.  And grow enthusiastically they do.

There are trees all round the edges of our garden which help to give us the illusion of privacy even though we’re surrounded by houses.   And for example, a fruit salad plant aka  swiss cheese plant aka monstera deliciosa  which was growing by the front door steps when we moved in, Mrs D disapproved and uprooted it and tossed it on the heap in the corner of the garden by the driveway, where it took root and is now eight feet high and twelve feet long.   I’m especially fond of plants that just go ahead and grow by themselves with no work required from me.

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@winston   Great to hear from you, and delighted you liked the interviews.   The credit for those clips must lie with the mysterious Youtube algorithm that served them up to me.   (And of course the organisers and the Youtube channel that posted them and Billie Piper and Chris Eccleston and I’m starting to sound like one of those award winners who thank the whole laundry list aren’t I?)  It was certainly Billie and Chris who got me hooked on Who.   By coincidence I also have exactly one rose bush – also produces lovely pink roses – it must be 50 years old by now, it was in the garden when we bought the house and I’ve sort of de facto adopted it – Mrs D has her dahlias, I just keep the rose bush pruned.   I have no idea what it’s called, maybe I’ll just name it ‘Rose.’

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Hi @oochillyo    Um, favourite authors.    Well, I like authors that have an interesting style of writing and a nice turn of phrase.   Doesn’t really matter what the subject is, if the writer is good at his craft.

In fantasy / sci fi, I guess I’d include Terry Pratchett, Doug Adams, Arthur C Clarke (whose short stories usually had a twist at the end).   Older writers – Arthur Conan Doyle, who didn’t write just Sherlock Holmes, he wrote historical novels and science fiction as well.   (I’m pretty sure the idea for ‘Jurassic Park’ was based on Doyle’s ‘The Lost World.’)

I used to read crime/spy/adventure novels too.   Such as Victor Canning, who wrote everything from historical to crime dramas.   And Gavin Lyall, whose ‘heros’ were always rather shady types flying clapped-out aeroplanes or gun-running or art smuggling on the edges of the law.

But I rarely read modern blockbusters, those 2″ thick things that crowd the shelves of bookstores, that I reckon are at least 50% padding.   I tried reading something by Arthur Hailey once, and decided it read more like a police report than a novel, and gave up.   I thought ‘The Bourne Identity’ was an excellent gripping movie, so I got the original novel, got about 20 pages into it and gave that up too because the author was the opposite of Arthur Hailey, kept describing incidental characters who had nothing to do with the plot.

I used to read a lot of non-fiction.   David Attenborough is always interesting, excellent writer.    (Everybody likes natural history anyway).   Books about climbing and mountaineering (though I get vertigo at the top of a stepladder), railways (I’m a railway enthusiast), engineering (like big bridges), physics and astronomy, and ‘secret war’ stuff like Enigma and the uses of deception (like dummy tanks and fake radio messages).   Not much history, though I’m sure there are an infinite number of fascinating stories to be told.

But for yourself – find a topic that interests you and (if you’re lucky) an author with the knack of making you want to know more and keep you turning the pages.    (And it is a knack, like teaching is.   At school, I was lucky enough to have an excellent teacher for physics and maths – he made you want to know more.   About maths, possibly the driest subject ever.   I don’t know how he did it but he did.   Well some authors have that knack – and some don’t.)

As you say, anything could be gold dust – if it’s interestingly written.

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@oochillyo

Hi Declan    Reading is a good habit to have.   I was a late starter reading but when I found I could actually do it, there was no stopping me.   I became a compulsive reader – books, notices on packaging, ingredients, instruction leaflets – I eventually had to make a rule that if I had time to read the stuff on the backs of cereal packets I had time to go and pick up a ‘proper’ book.   I found short stories were often easier to get into than full-length novels.    Back in my day (about the time Titanic sank) there were short story magazines like Argosy – I think maybe they’ve all folded or gone on-line now.    But science-fiction writers like Arthur C Clarke used to write a lot of short stories, often with a sting in the tail.

You may be able to pick up English language books fairly cheaply on Amazon or Ebay (Amazon tend to charge $$$stupid for shipping though, with luck some Ebay sellers are a bit more reasonable).   Can be handy if you’ve found an author whose style suits you.

Anyway, good luck!

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By the way, I love trains too.   I managed one item on my ‘bucket list’ 5 years ago – the Trans-Siberian.   I’d wanted to do it for many years but all the travel agents were advertising $5000 for an all-inclusive tour – too much for me.   Then I found one can book direct on RzD’s website, a second-class ticket on Train 001 (the ‘Rossiya’ – it would be the Trans-Siberian Express if there was such a thing) from Vladivostok to Moscow cost me just $600.   6000 miles, six days.   That’s for one bunk in a 4-berth apartment in a huge carriage with masses of space and headroom.   I flew up to Vladivostok, train to Moscow, then on to Berlin and Paris and (just because I could) on via Irun and the Talgo ‘Trenhotel’ to Lisbon Oriente (was struck by Calatrava’s amazing architecture*) and took a suburban train to Sintra, which is as far west as the rails go in Europe (beyond that you’re in the Atlantic)**.    The Internet is absolutely great for travel and booking things.   No snow though, this was in June so just saw a couple of patches in Siberia.

*Vague Dr Who connection – Calatrava designed the fantastic City of Arts & Sciences in Valencia, which was used in the episode Smile!

(**Okay, I tell a lie.   Cascais is a couple of miles further west.   But I had a night in Sintra, which is a magic place, then I caught the bus from Sintra via Cabo da Roca to Cascais and the train back into Lisbon, so I sorta did the furthest west  🙂    And the bus went right past the electric tram from Sintra to Praia das Macas, so I missed a trick there.   Not sure if it counts because it’s not connected to the railway system.   Anyway I am not going to travel the length of Asia and Europe again just to  fix that little mistake!)

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And here goes, further comments 2 years later. (Has it taken me that long?)
The pre-credits sequence is almost whimsical.
For someone who is a bit of a control freak, Clara seems to be quite ready to acknowledge Missy’s command of the situation. Which is actually being realistic, I guess. Particularly since Missy just took the trouble to save her life. Though that shouldn’t be taken for granted, as Missy demonstrates by using Clara as a sounding weight.

Hey, the Special Weapons Dalek! Don’t often see that one.

And it’s Doctor Dalek Dodgem time! He certainly seems to be enjoying Davros’s chair. But he is suitably furious. “Who’s going to tell me that Clara Oswald is really dead?” I don’t think Daleks can lie. The best they can manage is “Clara Oswald is not alive.”

The Dalek sewer is a fairly disgusting place. It seems old decomposed Daleks hate the still-living ones, how convenient. Fortunately Missy isn’t squeamish in how she kills Daleks. Clara might be squeamish but she doesn’t have much say in the matter. Missy fishing the dead Kaled out of the Dalek tank and telling Clara to get in is really rather horrific. But we’re getting to see how the Dalek is controlled, as Missy attaches electrodes to Clara’s head. “There’s loads of nano-tech repairing any damage as the feed goes in.” “What about when it comes out?” “No idea. Nobody knows.” Charming! The way the Dalek opens and shuts is really neat and well-engineered. And the way it translates everything its occupant says – usually into ‘Exterminate’ – is fascinating. One would have thought, after Into the Dalek, that there was no more to be learned about the psychotic tanks, but Moff always manages to surprise us. Missy laughing as she dodges ricochets – she’s as crazy as the Daleks. But in a much more entertaining way. She has the nerve to walk into the Dalek control room (where they had vaporised her a short while earlier) and lay down terms to the Dalek Supreme.

Meanwhile we have some heavy stuff going on with Davros and the Doctor. Every Dalek is linked to Davros and their life force (?) keeps him alive. Interesting. “Compassion. It grows strong and fierce in you, like a cancer.” Davros has a way with words. Davros and the Doctor are having a heart-to-heart. It’s – almost touching. Davros even cracks a joke and the Doctor laughs at it. (Both of them are faking it but that only becomes apparent later). So while they’re being all touchy-feely the Doctor donates some regeneration energy to let Davros see his last sunrise – and Colony Sarff jumps in and feeds the lot to the Daleks. Davros was faking. (And the Moff teases us a bit more about the Hybrid).

The first effect of the regen energy is to knock the Daleks out, Missy takes advantage of the situation to grab a Dalek gun and blow the door to Davros’ cell and shoot Colony Sarff, freeing the Doctor. Missy really does care about the Doctor. She doesn’t care about Clara though.

And, the Doctor knew all along, and knew that the regeneration energy would revive all the zombie Daleks in the sewers. But of course it would. It’s obvious when you think of it. Missy takes the opportunity to poke Davros in the eye and grab the Dalek gun. Clara is desperately trying to overcome the tank’s translation circuit and tell the Doctor who she is, Missy’s evil side comes through and she tries to persuade the Doctor to kill the Clarek. Which luckily Clara manages to forestall with ‘Mercy’ which no Dalek should be able to say.

So they escape in the Tardis which reassembles itself, under the control of the Sonic Sunglasses (are those new?) Leaving Missy in the Dalek headquarters surrounded by hostile Daleks. “You know what? I’ve just had a very clever idea.” And that is the last we see of Missy for several episodes.

And there is a nice scene with Clara and the Doctor overlooking Skaro city (Tenerife?)

And we get the scene we saw in the ‘Next Time’ of the previous episode, where it was utterly misleading – the Doctor appears to the young Davros, pointing the Dalek gun at him, and – shoots the hand mines. And they walk off together, young Davros holding the sonic screwdriver and the Doctor holding a Dalek gun. Not sure if there’s something symbolic in that.

What a cracker of a double episode!

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Labyrinth?   Was that the Henson one with David Bowie?    I thought that was pretty good.   Very watchable.  And Bowie was good in it too.   I’ve got it in my DVD collection.   Must give it a re-watch.

Of course Henson also did a hard sci-fi – Farscape.   Anyone who thought Muppets were always warm and fuzzy would have got a rude shock on encountering Rygel.   Farscape was made in Oz and some of that earthy Aussie humour seeped in, not all that different from the British working-class humour of Red Dwarf.

I’d never heard of Snowpiercer, just had to google it.   It sounds a bit darker than Mummy on the Orient Express.   Part of me wonders how a train could circumnavigate the globe (a couple of oceans might get in the way).   But this is sci fi, right?

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@janetteb Apologies for disrupting your day. My life seems to be a succession of Youtube rabbit holes. Or, as a tagline (remember them?) I once saw said, ‘A life? Where can I download that?’

Back to Rose, er Billie. I notice she was quite enthusiastic about a possible reappearance of Rose (RTD permitting). And she could certainly still play the part. Her dark hair hid that a bit but as soon as she started speaking – that was Rose. Her looks, voice and mannerisms are quite distinctive, all it needs is the blonde hair. And I thought she was great as The Moment (‘no more.’) Even though she was not from the War Doctor’s past – confusing events in the timeline seems to be a trait The Moment shared with the Tardis.

Ecclestone has dry humour that I find great, can’t help wondering if some of it was lost on some of the audience. It’s good to see that he’s got over whatever-it-was that led him into the wilderness. I think it is a pity that he didn’t play the Doctor for longer, whatever problems he was having, they certainly didn’t show in his performance.

Incidentally, neither of them knew much about Who before they got the job. Though that’s understandable, it had been off the air for 16 years.

I’ve never followed Big Finish, I tend to regard TV, audio and books as very different mediums, and things don’t necessarily translate very well. And also I regard only the TV episodes as ‘canon’, not books, not fanfic. For example I have the book of The Day of the Doctor but I find, my mind expects it to be ‘just like the episode’ which is obviously daft, what’s the point? So the memory of the episode actually distracts from my enjoyment of the book. Best to forget the TV episode when I read the book. But since the Big Finish episodes are apparently separate stories, hopefully that problem wouldn’t arise and maybe I should give it a go.

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Just a heads-up,  The Algorithm has just offered me two con interviews with Billie Piper and Chris Eccleston

at Awesome Con 2023

Billie now has dark hair but still looks exactly like Rose (to me anyway)

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Sorry to hear that.   Wish I could suggest something other than, just put on something you like watching and relax.   Sometimes works for me.

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I did a review before, but there’s so much delightful goodness in this ep I can’t resist babbling about it again.

The prologue, on Karn – memorable for the exchange between Ohila and the Doctor. “Why do you always lie?” “Why do you always assume I’m lying?” “It saves time.” Ooh, brutal (as Wolf would say).

These prequels are just so much more entertaining and intriguing than the usual cobbled-together trailer.

The Doctor’s Meditation was just a bit of light comedy, though why they didn’t drop the Doctor down the thirteenth well in sheer frustration I can’t imagine. But it also served as a prequel to the most memorable scene of all (which we’ll come to later).

Which led into the episode itself – the battlefield was anachronistic (biplanes and bows and arrows) and truly creepy – handmines – what warped imagination could come up with a horrific pun like that? Maybe just as well we never saw what the clam drones were. And it seems that, in his fear and loathing of Davros and the Daleks, the Doctor abandoned young Davros, which presumably scarred him mentally so much that he went on to create the Daleks… so is it all on the Doctor?

Cut to titles. The Moff is determined to entertain us with a series of snapshots – the Maldovarium, always reminds me of the bar in Star Wars, with weird critters. But Colony Sarff is a new one, and as creepy as any. The Shadow Proclamation – have we seen that before? (Suicide moons – what a concept for a throwaway line!)
And Karn – “If you do not leave our world immediately, we will take your skin.” I believe they would, too. Karn is beautifully lit and staged, best use ever of a quarry set. And this (as Chrissie so perceptively remarks on her website) is where the Prologue fits – perfectly. I had never made the connection, silly me. I wonder now if the Prologue was shot specially, or if it was just another scene cut for time that was too good to throw away – if so, it was genius to use it in that fashion.

Davros looks a real wreck, but he’s got a sonic screwdriver. He sends Colony Sarff off to find the Doctor’s friends – but it isn’t Sarff who finds them first…

Abrupt cut to Clara who notices ‘the planes have stopped’. (Nice still of KLM 747 coming in over the beach at Sint Maarten by the way). “No, don’t send a helicopter. Think it through.” It has not escaped my attention that Clara (by virtue of her association with the Doctor) now wields enormous influence with Unit. And Missy – the effrontery of the woman – has stopped every airliner worldwide just to summon Clara. Missy is undoubtedly the most entertaining combination of whimsy, ruthlessness, ice-cold nerve and overkill ever written. And Missy has been given the Doctor’s Confession Dial, as his closest friend. “Since always. Since the Cloister Wars. Since the night he stole the moon and the President’s wife. Since he was a little girl. One of those was a lie. Can you guess which one?” Moffat tweaking us again.

And then Moff gives us a mystery – where (on his last night) would the Doctor go? This hangs together quite well – Missy actually needs Clara and Unit to find the Doctor for her.

“The Doctor makes a lot of noise, and he loves to make an entrance.” And – anachronisms. This has to be the best Doctor-apparition of all time – riding on a tank, playing an electric guitar, in a mediaeval castle. Moffat and Capaldi are enjoying themsleves altogether too much, and it’s brilliant. The Doctor introducing his friends Clara and Missy is actually quite sweet.

Colony Sarff is not just creepy but brilliant CGI. And the Doctor agrees to go and see Davros, and Clara and Missy demand to go too. It looks as if Missy genuinely is the Doctor’s friend (as well as his arch-enemy). Conveniently Bors turns out to be a Dalek ‘skin job’ and locates the Tardis which the Daleks transport to Skaro. (That solved the question that had just started to arise in my brain – Missy and Clara got to the castle using vortex manipulators, the Doc with his Tardis, how were they going to get off Skaro eventually? That neatly answered it).

“Gravity.” “I know.” The Doctor and Missy subtly reminding us that they have abilities rather greater than our Clara.

The scene where they step out of the air lock is dizzying and alarming, then rather beautiful. Very impressive the way Skaro fades into view. I like the look of Skaro, sand flats, ricky hills, and those knobbly Dalek (CGI) buildings.

Love the swarm of Daleks in the control room. Only missy would be so cheeky as to tickle a Dalek. But what has she got up her sleeve? Don’t know becasue the Daleks blast her. And Clara. And the Tardis.

The episode ends with Davros in the handminefield, the Doctor reappears with a Dalek gun aimed squarely at Davros. I notice the ‘Next week’ preview has no sign of Clara, Missy or the Tardis. Are they really dead and gone?

Another cracker of an episode.

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@janetteb   You’re probably right about ‘the woman in the shop’.    Speculating (isn’t that what this site is for?) – it may have just been a convenient way to introduce a new Companion and get the Doctor to connect with her.

What I probably forgot to mention about Last Christmas is, even if you forget about the logic of the story and just go with the flow, it’s just a delightful whimsical episode to watch.   And Moffat is playing with his audience I think – (I love it when he does that)  – with Santa and his sarcastic elves pointing out how impossible they are and we still believe they exist!

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Afterthought – reading back through comments, I’m reminded that Santa appeared briefly to the Doc at the end of Death in Heaven – which implies that the Doc was already possessed by a Crab.   Now it could just be that it was put in as a ‘teaser’ without any great significance, but I don’t think the Moff is usually that sloppy.   The implication is that a Crab had got the Doc, and he then went to the rescue of Clara.   Now it has to be more than just coincidence that Crabs got them both at about the same time, surely.   So how would the sequence of events play out?

Unless that was the Spirit of Christmas who alerted the Doc, and that led to Santa being incorporated into the group dream.   But that would be a fantasy element, in contrast to the hard sci-fi of Santa in Last Christmas as a construct of the group dream.

So I dunno.

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Re-watching again after 18 months – this time through (about the 4th time I’ve watched it) I’m finally familiar enough to be able to follow the plot and the dream levels without getting confused. And the role of Santa as a dream construct is now clearer. As is his sarcasm – drawing attention to the absurdity of his existence. It was all explained in the dialogue, but there’s so much information to grasp that I missed much of it, first couple of times through. But I think it all holds together logically.

As to how the Doctor and Clara came to share the dream (the other were all random strangers brought together by the Dream Crabs psychic link) I’m guessing the Doc came looking for Clara, found her the victim of a Crab, so tracked down another Crab and let it ‘bite’ him to join in her dream group.   That’s a guess, I could be missing something.

Did the Crabs target people who were depressed?   Clara had just lost Danny, Shona had had a tiff with her boyfriend Dave, I don’t know about the others.

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And now I’m on to Last Christmas.   There are five classic Moffat episodes in a row – Dark Water, Death in Heaven, Last Christmas, Magician’s Apprentice, Witch’s Familiar – maybe the best run of Who episodes ever.   I think Season 9 must be my favourite – Last Christmas (it’s in the S9 boxset anyway), Magician’s Apprentice, Witch’s Familiar, the Zygon Invasion / Inversion, Face the Raven, Heaven Sent and Hell Bent, all absolute classics.    And the other eps mostly hold up well – Under the Lake, Before the Flood, The Girl who Died, The Woman who Lived, and The Husbands of River Song.   Sleep no More was the only weak one.   Quite a season!

I have a couple of specific observations of Last Christmas that I stuck in the episode forum.

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Hi @janetteb     That is uncanny.   If someone changed the name on your post to mine, and I came across it in a month or two, I would unhesitatingly accept that I’d written it, you’ve summarised exactly what I feel about this episode!  Though rather better written than I would manage.

The only tiny difference I would make is that the golden arrow in Robot of Sherwood, while I find it disconcerting and unconvincing, doesn’t crash me out of the story in the way that KTM does, I can overlook one impossibility for the sake of the story.

Could ‘In the Forest of the Night’ be more credibly explained?   As I said, the setup was intriguing, it would be nice to imagine a more logically satisfactory resolution, but I really can’t.   These are terrestrial trees, not alien, so one easy explanation goes out the window.

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Just watched Dark Water / Death in Heaven.   What a marvellous double-episode series finale.   I didn’t bother writing my impressions because they pretty much reflect what I put down 18 months ago.   It was full of surprises – Danny’s death, Clara’s attempt to blackmail the Doctor (and his neutralisation  of it), Missy the ‘welcome droid’, the Cybermen, UNIT’s ambush of the cybermen, Clara’s impersonation of the Doctor, Cyberdanny’s rescue of Clara, Missy giving control of the cyber-army to the Doctor, the Brigadier shooting Missy – all those things caught me by surprise.   As did Clara and the Doc lying to each other (with the very best of motives but the saddest result) at the end.    Such bitter-sweet irony.

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Hi @rule1    You’ll find it pretty quiet when episodes aren’t actually going on, then (judging from existing forums – or should that be ‘fora’) it will explode into activity.    I’m looking forward to seeing RTD back, but I hope he keeps it light (by that I don’t mean trivial like some of OldWho) – I hope he doesn’t go doom-and-gloom like Torchwood eventually went.

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I was always impressed by Glenda Jackson, though I haven’t seen her in as many  things as blenkinsopthebrave.   As he says, Vale, Glenda.

I have just re-watched In the Forest of the Night, which impels me to move on to Dark Water pretty quickly.

I’ve also just finished watching ‘Allo ‘Allo (all 86 episodes!), I have to say I was unexpectedly slightly emotional when Rene finally eloped with his waitress Yvette right at the very end.    Anyway, that left a gap but I stumbled across a Youtube review of Blakes 7 and a couple of clips of Avon being sarcastic/sardonic in his inimitable fashion decided me on what to watch next (in tandem with Who of course).

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Well, I just wrote a long rant about this ep. And now I find that the last person who ranted about this ep was – me. So I won’t repeat it all again (much to everybody’s relief, I should think). So this is just some thoughts additional to what I said last time.

Top marks to Doc for ‘The brand new forest. It’s like the New Forest except even newer.’ Which isn’t difficult since the New Forest was officially proclaimed in 1079 by William of Normandy and I grew up there so of course I love the reference.

Mention of Cromwell Road – so it was the Natural History Museum. I do like the touch of the traffic light in the trees in the background. Oh, here’s the museum sign – top marks to the props department, the sign is a pretty good copy of the actual sign (visible on Streetview) on the corner of Cromwell Road and Exhibition Road, and there is an UndergrounD sign close beside it (indicating a long foot tunnel to South Kensington station).

If you break a small branch off a tree (as Ruby did), the end isn’t clean-cut, it’s splintery. Props goofed there.

“The forest. It’s in all the stories that kept you awake at night. The forest is mankind’s nightmare.” Not really. I like forests. But I’ll admit, I’ve been in a pine forest in a strong wind and it’s quite creepy. There are sporadic creakings and sharp bangings coming apparently from nowhere – they’re actually the tops of the trees hitting together. If you look straight up you can see them but at your level, nothing is moving. You can’t hear the wind because it’s in the tops of the trees 50 feet above, so at ground level it’s just a vague backround sussuration.

Why Maebh is running away and leaving a trail of personal items I don’t know. And it wouldn’t work that way, you need a marker every 20 feet or so to follow a ‘trail’ in a forest.

There is a nice moment where Clara sends the Doctor off to save himself. When he asks her why she doesn’t come I was expecting ‘because she loves Danny’ which would have been cringe, instead she doesn’t want to be the last of her kind which I can respect.

The effect of governments trying to send out teams with defoliant chemicals would be insignificant short-term. There are (in this scenario) just too many trees everywhere. And Maebh convincing everyone to stop it is equally unlikely. I’m a greenie and a tree hugger, I think “Leave the trees alone!” is a lovely slogan. However I just can’t believe this episode.
Also, how did the trees all grow overnight? And then all the trees just – evaporate? Seriously? How? This is Kill the Moon levels of nonsense.
And then Maebh’s long-lost sister Annabel – rematerialises?

This episode divides neatly into two halves. The first half is intriguing and quite promising setup. The second half is increasingly nonsensical – nonsense.

 

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That’s – an interesting theory.   Think I’d need to re-watch the episode to form an opinion on it.   (I should get to it in a week or two).

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@nerys and @winston    I’m pleased the fires have missed you and I hope you continue to be safe from them (and your daughter, winston).   Sorry for my mangled syntax but you know what I mean.

I’m sure we’re pleased to help.    The extent of the fires seems staggering, also surprising, I think we have a mental image of Canada as a cool climate, unlike Southern California or Australia.

It also makes sense for us to send some firefighters, it means they can keep in practice during the slack season.   It’s helpful that ‘Fire Season’ in Australia and NZ is six months apart from fire season in North America and Europe.   And of course during our and more particularly Australia’s fire season, firefighters from North America can come down to assist in return.    It makes for more efficient use of available resources, rather than every country having to maintain an organisation big enough to fight its worst-case events which only happen rarely.

(I say more particularly Australia’s fire season because I’m not sure if we’ve had a fire big enough to need international assistance, but I know it would be there if needed.   After the Christchurch earthquake we had emergency teams from Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, the US and Britain, so it’s not just fires).

International Rescue is a thing and not just Gerry Anderson’s fantasy.   It does give some cause for optimism among the very many political worries at the moment.

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@nerys    Good to hear the fires missed your house.

@janetteb    Into the Dalek is a good one.   My next one (if I stay in sequence) is In the Forest of the Night, I think the best thing about that episode is the title, sadly, so I haven’t been in any hurry to re-watch it.   As I recall, it had a bit of mysterious New Age-iness in it that wasn’t quite Kill The Moon level, but still sent my woo-ometer into the red.   But I’ll see…

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@janetteb   Further thought – of course the Moff really lampshaded that in ‘The Lie of the Land’ where the History Monks erased themselves from history when they left.   That was a very ‘1984’ episode.    But surely someone would wonder about the big square of waste land in the middle of London where their pyramid was.

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@janetteb   I have a much more positive view of Churchill than you do.   But my reservations about Victory of the Daleks are, partly because it does mess with history (I think you share that) and also, like you, Spitfires in Space?   How much effect does anyone think 20mm Hispano cannons would have on a Dalek ship?

Personally, whether I approve or otherwise of a historical person doesn’t really affect my reaction to seeing them in an episode.   I thought Nixon was an appallingly bad President at the time, but I didn’t mind him in The Impossible Astronaut (even though he was treated quite sympathetically).   Ditto Hitler.    I do get geekily annoyed when Tesla gets credited with stuff that rightly belongs to Marconi and Westinghouse though.

I agree about the giant robot in The Next Doctor being very awkward.   There are a number of other events that surely we would remember – the Sycorax ship in Christmas Invasion, the Cybermen invasion in Army of Ghosts, the hospital on the moon in Smith and Jones, the Master’s dictatorship in Last of the Time Lords, the gas attack in Sontaran Stratagem to name just a few.   They tend to leave loose ends in that we ‘should’ remember them but don’t.   This is quite significant if the series wants to deal with real recent historical events.    As I remember the dinosaur in Deep Breath was forgotten on fairly flimsy grounds.   Rather akin to Doug Adams’ “somebody else’s problem” field – people see what they expect to see.

So I share your preference for stories that ‘tread lightly’.   Robot of Sherwood was one such.   And the Silents would have been ‘the perfect self-cleaning con’ if the Doctor hadn’t piggybacked on the Moon landing to make people remember them.   But maybe people only remembered to kill them when they were actually in view.   See a Silent, shoot the Silent, “Who was that guy we shot?” “What guy?” “The dead one”  “Who?”

 

 

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@blenkinsopthebrave   I’m not very familiar with JNT.   I did just read about the Cartmel ‘Master Plan’ (on Tardis.fandom.com) which sounds as if it could have been very much more interesting.   Of course whether it would have worked that way in realisation is one of those things we’ll never know.

I agree about the importance of show runners in setting the direction and flavour of the show.   I’m hoping RTD revives the prestige or spirit (or whatever one calls it) of the show.

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@janetteb    Obviously I entirely agree with you about the heavy-handed bit.   For example, the ‘plastics pollution’ episode (‘Praxeus’ was it?) turned me off – and I’m a greenie and a leftie!    Actually I’m a cynic when it comes to a Message – any time I’m ‘explaining’ things to a meeting the sceptical streak in my mind is thinking ‘are these people really swallowing this?’ *even when, so far as I know, what I’m saying is accurate*.    That’s why I really liked A Town Called Mercy which showed a much more nuanced approach to good and bad.

Rosa I can’t comment on because – I’m slightly embarrassed to admit – I’ve only watched the first five minutes.   The only NuWho ep (aside from Power of the Doctor which I haven’t got yet) that I haven’t watched right through.   I get slightly wary about ‘messing with history’ anyway, I know very sketchily who Rosa Parks was, and when, five minutes in, we have Ryan who is black and a bit of a klutz in 1960’s Mississippi or Alabama or whatever, I decided ‘this isn’t going to be my idea of a fun episode’ and skipped the rest.    Maybe I was in a grouchy mood, I probably should watch it just so I can say I have.   Maybe when I get up to it again in a couple of months.

Re ‘messing with history’, for example I’m not very happy with ‘Churchill’ in Victory of the Daleks, it’s too close to home.   Whereas the same ‘Churchill’ in the completely fantastical  The Wedding of River Song was fine with me because it’s well removed from reality.    And I was fine with ‘Nixon’ in Impossible Astronaut because it didn’t have a political axe to grind.

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@janetteb   Yes, I did like Rigsy as a character.   This greatly helps in Face the Raven to justify Clara taking such a risk to save him – I would have been much more impatient with that if he had been unlikeable.   (I know that feeling is morally unjustifiable but I think it’s natural).    And it made for even more pathos in the final scene with Rigsy sadly tagging the abandoned Tardis as a memorial.   In fact all the ‘chain gang’ were decent characters with the exception, of course, of their boss Fenton.   Though they even gave him a couple of decent lines – RIGSY: “Everyone’s out to get you, aren’t they?”
FENTON: “In this case, they kind of are.”    Have to admit, he was right about that.

And I firmly agree with you about excessive moralising, it makes me cringe even on occasions when I agree with the message.    There used to be some Western (can’t remember which) in which, at the end of every episode, the hero would sum up the moral of the story in a few well-chosen words – I stopped watching that series quite quickly.   Show not tell…

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Well, McGoohan’s ‘Danger Man’ (Secret Agent in the US) was a spy series that occasionally featured technological gadgetry (this was just before the James Bond movies went all-out in that direction).   The other thing about DM was that, just sometimes, there would be a plot where the ‘villains’ weren’t really villains at all but innocent civilians – this was a disconcerting twist from our usual goodies-vs-baddies fare.   (And before ‘Callan’ and the like made subverting the Intelligence services fashionable).   But anyway, Danger Man was of course followed by The Prisoner which went full science fiction.   I think the idea of a sort of open prison where nobody was sure who was warders and who was prisoners, and where all the coercion was psychological, was maybe unique in TV at the time.   Very much character-driven with a strong lead actor (No 6) who could impart weight to anything he said.   And of course it benefited from the unique self-contained setting of Portmeirion with its quirky architecture.     And a degree of subtlety and moral ambiguity in that some individuals might be allies or enemies, not always sure which.   And in what other show could someone putting three lumps of sugar in their tea be an act of defiance?

Blakes 7 which came a decade later was in some ways similar – the lead actor (Avon) and the moral ambiguity in particular.   And it shared with Who the famous wobbly sets and the universal quarry landscape.

Avengers was much lighter in tone, closer to Man From Uncle or, in fact, Roger Moore James Bond, I felt.   But I did enjoy watching it.   Early Roger Moore 007’s got just too silly.   (I also watched Get Smart but – I hasten to add – only because of Agent 99 🙂

(Re the kidney stone, they left in place a stent which made things quite painful so I didn’t do much but mope for 3 days.   Took it out as instructed Thursday morning – instant relief!   Trotted happily off to watch Flatline.   99% recovered, thanks)

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Random thoughts on re-watching ‘Flatline’ – I see the last post was also by me, so I’ve edited out most of the repetition.

The Doctor hacking into Clara’s optic nerve and giving her an earpiece is a really clever way to keep him involved, and a fount of many witty moments. I absolutely *love* the way Clara uses the mirror on the wall to give the Doctor a ‘what did I tell you?’ look. Nice acting.

And I do like Rigsy. Appealing personality, well cast.

The scene in the flat is a bit reminiscent of Sapphire and Steel type spookiness (prompted by the music also). The flattened door handle is when it gets really scary.

The weakness of psychic paper is that it needs a mental ability exceeding that of cabbage (or the braindead loathsome Fenton) to have any effect.

The audio-visual link gives a good opportunity for coaching Clara on ‘how to be a Doctor’. The Doctor at this stage assumes the 2-D things are not (intentionally) malevolent. That didn’t last long. I’d forgotten how scary it was with George getting flattened, and then 3-D ‘people’ erupting out of the floor. These 3-D monsters are learning fast.

And I would happily kill Fenton, was there ever anyone you would wish less to share a lifeboat with?

Of course Rigsy would know how to drive a train (and I’m not being facetious there). I have minor physical quibbles with the train scene (to do with speed and acceleration) but nothing too serious. What I find more puzzling is, there are two trains involved, with headcodes A113 and 2M65 – the first nearly runs over the Tardis, the second is hijacked by Rigsy and Clara. What is supposed to have happened there? Did something get too tightly edited?

Then Clara has a genius idea that lets her and Rigsy save the day. I have to say this is much better done than the usual contrived ‘minor character X’s unique ability saves the day’ trope.

Nobody does “I AM THE DOCTOR!” more magnificently than Capaldi.

And the whole end sequence with the Doctor and Clara is beautifully written. “Why can’t you say it? 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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@nerys    Can I add my hopes that you are safe.   This year the climate seems to have gone berserk – here, it’s floods.

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@blenkinsopthebrave    I have to admit, I find many older TV episodes somewhat lacking in conviction.   I think it’s partly due to better production values these days.   I emphatically don’t think heaps of over-the-top whizz-bang is a substitute for a good story and acting, but I have to admit that insufficient or inadequate props (like some of the old Who monsters) were sufficiently rudimentary to involuntarily engage my sense of the absurd and drop me out of the story.  Daleks, though, are fairly immune to this effect.

Even  The Prisoner suffers slightly from that – not to the point of spoiling my interest, the effects still hold up just adequately, but the sense of spookiness and mystery that struck me when Six’s cottage door opened by itself or a statue turned round to scan him (and I can still remember that feeling even if I can’t re-experience it), has evaporated in these days when every shop has automatic doors and CCTV is everywhere.     Blakes Seven I have to regard with a very tolerant eye and try to immerse myself in the characters before it works for me.

As a total aside, I had a kidney stone ‘removed’ on Monday – what they do now is, they shatter it with a laser.   Just think of that – a laser powerful enough to blow apart a little soft rock that can fit way up ones insides – is that science fiction or what?    Into the Dalek stuff…

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Oh yes, I’d forgotten about Journey Blue.   I liked her and I thought the Doctor was too hasty in rejecting her because she was a soldier.    Of course in previous series Rory was a Roman soldier for millennia (though it could be argued that was through force of circumstances rather than choice).

The Mummy I also felt sorry for.    A bit like Cybermen (though Jamie Mathieson skilfully disguised the resemblance so it has only just now occurred to me).   An old soldier zombified by alien tech, not acting out of malice but because he couldn’t stop.

Danny, now, was being deliberately offensive when he called the Doctor ‘Sir’.   This Doctor is extremely averse to anything military, I think previous incarnations of the Doctor were much more at home with military organisations like UNIT.   (Could be wrong about that though, I’m no expert on OldWho).

 

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@janetteb   “I feel that Danny is better written in Moffat’s head than he is on the screen.”     Yes you’re probably right.   Of course, also, characters sometimes suffer from inconsistency due to different writers doing different episodes.

Jamie Mathieson, who wrote Mummy on the Orient Express, also wrote the excellent Flatline (up next), The Girl Who Died and Oxygen.   Incidentally, he has a website  https://www.jamiemathieson.com/doctor-who   in which he talks about his scripts for those episodes.    Interestingly, he considered having the villain Gus return for Oxygen.   Could have been intriguing.

If you have time to disappear down an Internet rabbit hole, he’s got the whole first draft and the (significantly different) shooting script of Mummy up on his website.    That’s my next few hours booked!    (Ten minutes later:   In fact he’s got the same for Flatline and Oxygen.   That’s my next few days booked…)

Back to inconsistent characterisation (which I feel was particularly evident with the Doctor in Kill The Moon), I could blame Peter Harness who wrote it, but then he also wrote The Zygon Invasion / Inversion (the second half co-written with Moffat), which I really like.   So I dunno.

Yes it did occur to me that Danny has PTSD or if you prefer PSTD (Post Seeing-Tardis Disorder?).   This does raise the question of how much people with unfortunate character defects are responsible for their own problems, and how much allowance we should make for them.   I’m ambivalent on that.    And the standards by which I judge fictional characters are different from those I use for real people.

Anyway, off to Jamiemathieson.com, see you later…

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Further thoughts on re-watching Mummy on the Orient Express.

The Mummy looks sufficiently dilapidated and horrifying. But it’s nice to find a story where the danger is finite and not cataclysmic.

“Your train awaits, milady” “Wonderful” “The baggage car. But thanks for lying”

The locomotive looks typically French, which is quite appropriate for this train. Nice to see the designers did their homework (and so, of course, did the Who set designers).

This is a reconciliation after the events of the Kill The Moonlike Thing. Or, as it soon becomes apparent, a last hurrah. This adds an air of melancholy to the episode which is not displeasing.

Danny, however, seems to have become resigned to the fact that Clara may travel with the Doctor occasionally, even urging her not to be too hasty in writing him off. That is remarkably conciliatory of him. Or maybe he’s just hedging his bets against any later accusations of prejudice. It’s what I’d do.

Perkins manages to look really sinister until he turns into an ally. The Doctor is showing an unusual (for him) degree of ‘people skills’ as he talks to Perkins and then the professor (?) Moorhouse.

The countdown timer is a really neat touch. It’s accurate, by the way, guess how I know. [/geek mode]

“I’m your worst nightmare” “A mystery shopper. Oh, great”. I really wasn’t expecting that.

As in any good mystery whodunnit, there are a number of red herrings for the Doctor to suspect. The obliging Perkins, the alien mythology expert Moorehouse, the chef de train Quell.

Then, with the third death, the Doctor deduces that the whole passenger complement have been carefully selected to investigate the Foretold and the whole episode moves up a level. Nicely symbolised by the transformation of the carriage interior. And Gus shows his hand. (Gus reminds me quite strongly of Max Capricorn from Voyage of the Damned)

Full credit to Moorehouse for calmly describing the Mummy the moment it appears. Even if he got a bit agitated moments later. But he was right – there were magic words which would stop it.

And Clara (and Maisie) have been doing some good detective work in the baggage car. Gus really, really doesn’t want them to spill the beans of his M.O. to the Doctor, does he?

I was rather pleased that Quell conducted himself with honour at the end. The Foretold’s hand emerging from the Doctor’s face is, I think, the most horrific effect I’ve ever seen. By the way, Quell’s pistol looks passably like a 20’s-vintage automatic of the Luger style (with a bit of extra tinware added to give a touch of the Flash Gordons).

Perkins turns out to be remarkably competent. The bit about taking people out of phase so it can drain their energy is pure gobbledegook, but I don’t mind it for the sake of the story.

Then the Doctor deduces that Maisie is next. And he coerces Clara into lying to Maisie to bring her to the laboratory car, suggesting that the Doctor can save her. And (I’m guessing) Gus allows the strongroom door to open and release them because it’s now in his own interests – more data on the Foretold. But it’s an interesting moral conundrum – are ‘white lies’ justified. The Doctor certainly redeems this one ex post facto by taking on Maisie’s phobias, making him the next target.

“Are you my Mummy” (and a thousand fans went “Yay!”) And I love the asides from the Doctor to Maisie – “By the way, you weren’t being paranoid. She really did poison your pony. Oh, and your father. Sorry.” (How does he know? Nevermind)

And brilliantly, the Doctor deduces that the Foretold is a zombie, kept going by military tech, and surrendering will permit it to stop.

So of course Gus, having no more use for them, just leaves them to die without air. Which the Doctor foils. And manages to save everybody. And tries to back-track Gus who just blows up the train. So we never did find out who Gus is.

I like the little post-mortem with Clara on the beach. And the Doctor explains his white lie to Clara and Maisie. This is a very different Doctor from the one who buggered off in KTM and left Clara and Courtney holding the (nuclear) baby.

I thought Perkins was going to become a companion, there.

And there’s a lovely, telling dialogue right at the end, where Clara asks the Doctor if the danger is like an addiction. And then she lies like a bastard in telling the Doc that Danny’s fine with her travelling. The Doc isn’t the one with the addiction.

I like this one even better on re-watch.   All the characters are sympathetically handled, as is the slightly fragile relationship between Clara and the Doctor.

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@janetteb    I don’t think you’re missing anything (not watching KTM again, that is).   Never mind, Mummy on the Orient Express next.

I know the feeling of ‘which version is best’, it plagues me too.

I think you’re right about subconscious memory.   Prompting it (by re-watching the same thing) probably evokes very similar thoughts and reactions and that, I think, may trigger the subconscious memory to produce the same phrasing.

In the 1980’s I had a cassette tape of Pussycat (a Dutch group) that was a favourite of ours.   Then I lost the tape and never heard them again till I tripped over them last month on Youtube, so I downloaded a couple of their songs and stuck them on my MP3 player.   Now I could not have remembered *any* of the words of those songs, if asked.   But yesterday I was out walking (with headphones) when one of them came up – first time I’d heard it in 30 years – and I found that I knew exactly what the next few words were going to be a few seconds in advance, right through the song.   The music was prompting my long-faded memory.

In a similar vein, I’ve read that often divers, when they surface, can’t remember what they observed ‘down below’.   They dive again and it all comes back to them.   I’ve done this frequently – (not diving but) I decide to fetch something from the basement, trot downstairs and can’t remember what I was looking for.   So I just trudge back upstairs to repeat exactly what I was doing and then I remember what I went to fetch.   I think this is probably how hypnosis works in recovering ‘forgotten’ memories – or it is said to, I’ve never tried it.

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Well, I just re-watched Kill The Moon, in case it seemed better to me second time around.   Sometimes this happens – I felt a bit more positive about The Caretaker – but with KTM, suffice to say it didn’t.   I ended up writing a lengthy screed which was remarkably close to what I posted a year and a half ago.   Either my subconscious remembered exactly what I wrote (which seems unlikely) or, given the exact same input, I ‘processed’ it very consistently.   I’m not sure that’s a good thing.   Anyway I won’t post another chunk of negativity, I’ll just pretend my rant from six posts back is current (which it pretty much is).

I just noticed two more quibbles – first, the spiders are NOT “a prokaryotic unicellular life form, with non-chromosomal DNA.” And I know this how? Because a thing that looks like a giant spider crab is absolutely not, and never could be, ‘unicellular.’ Did the writers get that out of a science dictionary or something.   They were so desperate to call them ‘germs’.   But why?   The crabs could fulfil the functions of bacteria (germs) without being biologically identical.   Never heard of convergent evolution?

And the other thing that struck me as odd, “Listen, we went to dinner in Berlin in 1937, right? We didn’t nip out after pudding and kill Hitler. I’ve never killed Hitler. And you wouldn’t expect me to kill Hitler. The future is no more malleable than the past.” What? That sounds like a reference to ‘Lets Kill Hitler’ but that wasn’t Clara, that was Amy and River. Or is this a reference to something the Doctor and Clara are supposed to have done offscreen? I’m confused.

 

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@winston   Yes I felt bad for the policeman.   The reception desk in the Nethersphere was intriguing, I thought Seb was perfectly cast, by the way.   (Lots of foreshadowing for Dark Water).

I agree entirely about Danny.    Aside from my natural bias for the Doctor and Clara (and therefore Danny should have been more impressed) – well, he *should* have been more impressed by the Tardis.   Instead he let his dislike of the Doctor blind him to it.   And he should have accepted Clara on her own terms.   Or just broken it off.   He really managed to make questions sound like accusations.   I agree with you about ultimatums – my natural reaction to ‘are you with us or against us?’ is ‘against, automatically.’    Actually, he comes across as a rather weak and insecure character (to me at least), I guess his controlling streak comes from that.

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Well, The Caretaker certainly started off in promising fashion. “There’s no way out of this, we’re going to die here.”
I respectfully submit that cutting to Danny in the restaurant querying Clara’s tan is cheating, I WANT TO KNOW HOW THEY ESCAPED.

But the opening sequence is just establishing that Clara is getting quite addicted to her daily trips with the Doctor. And the Tardis is getting used to her – as when the Doctor snaps his fingers to open the doors, and Clara closes them again with a snap of her fingers.

“Undercover. Deep cover.” “Can you do deep cover?” “What do you mean?” “Have you seen you?” And I have to say, I found the caretaker unconvincing. I kept expecting someone to expose him as a fraud. ‘John Smith’ indeed.

I think this is the first sight of Courtney. A seriously annoying brat with no charm at all, I’m afraid.

Not really surprising that Danny was suspicious, but that didn’t endear him to me. He comes across as too controlling.

The Blitzer is a gneuinely nasty monster, but episodes in schools generally don’t inspire me. On the whole I liked School Reunion better, with the carnivorous Krilitanes, or Human Nature/Family of Blood.

There is some comedy value in Clara trying to cope with the Doctor’s weirdness, but he seems far too weird in this episode. Having trouble accepting that Danny is a maths teacher, for example. I do like the Doctor’s idea of a ‘Keep Out’ sign though – Go Away Humans.

I have to admit some of the Doctor’s exchanges with Clara are quite witty. “Why do I keep you around?” “Because the alternative would be developing a conscience of your own.”
“I used to have a teacher exactly like you once.” “You still do.” – Clara isn’t unduly modest about her importance.

Why the Doctor’s time beacons have to beep and blink I have no idea. If you want some device to remain unobtrusive you don’t put a flashing light and a beeper on it. But Danny messing about with devices he doesn’t understand is unforgiveable (in my book, but then I’m biassed. And obviously in the Doctor’s, too.) I think Danny deserved the rude awakening he got when he burst into the hall to encounter the Blitzer. I did like the way he contemplated the burning hole in the wall behind him.

No points to Clara for trying to explain away the Doctor and the Blitzer to Danny. “It’s a play” – just not going to wash, is it?
But absolutely zero points to Danny for not being suitably impressed by the Tardis.

And Danny scores minus infinity for being so judgemental and snotty about the whole thing. He makes Rose’s Mickey look like a paragon of wisdom by comparison. And I hate that Clara feels obliged to put up with that. She should be, “That’s the way it is, that’s the way I am, and you can accept it or not.”

Then Danny gets thoroughly obnoxious about the Doctor, he’s got a chip on his shoulder a mile wide. And then the Doctor has been unsettled enough by Danny to let the annoying Courtney into the secret of the Tardis. This episode is going downhill rapidly.

Okay, so Danny came good at the very end, and he and the Doctor acquired a modicum of mutual respect.

And the Doctor dumped the inert Blitzer in deep space, accompanied by (ugh) Courtney, who has the soul of a cabbage.

DANNY: I know men like him. They push you and make you stronger, till you’re doing things you never thought you could. I saw you tonight. You did exactly what he told you. You weren’t even scared. And you should have been. – Wrong, Danny. That wasn’t down to the Doctor, that was all Clara.

Overall, I enjoyed some bits more than I expected this time around (mostly Doctor-Clara exchanges), but the Clara-Danny relationship was tedious. I just can’t see the attraction.

And as a final minor irritation, on the DVD set, Listen and Time Heist didn’t get DVD commentaries, The Undertaker and Kill The Moon did.

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@janetteb    That guy’s head collapsing was horrific.   And yes it had occurred to me also that it wouldn’t happen that way.   Very good CGI though.    Actually I don’t think ‘scrambling’ his brain by sucking all the thoughts out would reduce its volume.   But I find it curious the way *some* things cause us to have – what can I call it – ‘realism-based’ objections, and not others.   It’s quite arbitrary and personal/individual, specially in a scifi/fantasy show.

For example, what about the ‘spoonheads’ in The Bells of St John?   After a monetary twinge, I just accepted them as scifi.

Before the Flood bothered me for the same reason as it did you, I think.   It caused me some geographical confusion.   Was the village below the dam flooded rather than being washed away by the dam breaking?   I agree, I can’t envisage any topography that would cause or permit that.

And, um, riding the dinosaur to escape in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.     Wouldn’t it be much quicker to just run?    And the size of the T Rex in Deep Breath – way too big.   And the golden arrow shot at the end of Robot of Sherwood.

Curiously enough, the really huge impossibilities – time travel, teleports, the ‘sonic screwdriver’, thought control by wireless – don’t bother me at all.   They’re sufficiently far removed from reality to be ‘just sci fi’.   It’s the merely mechanical/physical, almost-reality things that set me off.   (Or, ‘where does she get the milk?’   Moff you bastard, you lampshaded that and I still missed it!    I love it when he does that.   Also the thought that a couple of planks nailed across a doorway weren’t going to stop a Dalek – my mind raised that and I just dismissed it as a minor inconsistency.)

 

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@blenkinsopthebrave The ‘new’ Doctor of which you speak, in connection with Regency clothes, is that Ten(nant) (or should that be 14? Or 10(c)? All highly confusing), or Ncuti Gatwa who I suppose is 15. Probably. Or 14 if Ten(nant) Mk III doesn’t get a new number. I give up.
OK, according to the Beeb, Tennant is 14, Gatwa is 15. OK.
Quite like Gatwa’s clothes in general (though the blue pinstripe is totally Miami Vice gangsta, he just needs to be holding a MAC-10 to complete the picture).

And – in the specials – I like Tennant’s young companion, she looks quite intelligent.

Hey, I’m actually looking forward to new episodes again.

@devilishrobby I would assume the three specials would have to be broadcast fairly close together since they’re already shooting the following series. But I’m speculating from a position of substantial ignorance (which never stopped anybody yet…)

@janetteb Thankyou for kindly calling them ‘reviews’, I’d say more like ‘random impressions’. But anyway I’ve just posted my impressions in the Time Heist thread.

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I think I may have posted my impressions previously, but obviously not in the Time Heist thread.
Quite an intriguing episode, though tends to be overshadowed by ‘Listen’ which preceded it. The intro certainly grabs you, with the instantaneous jump from Clara’s flat to the conspiratorial hidey-hole in the bank. “It’s just a phone Clara. Nothing happens when you answer the phone.” Famous last words. And the Moff has found a serious use for the Memory Worm. It was purely comedic in The Snowmen, I think? (Or does my memory deceive me).

(Incidentally, I can confirm that when you lose a bit of memory, there is no discernible ‘gap’ in your memory – ‘before’ and ‘after’ the gap just flow together without a blip, just like in the episode. This, from the time I fell over and hit my head on the way down – one moment I was standing on a pipe, next I was lying on the ground, it was a smooth cut without any jolt or blip. I would have sworn on oath there was no gap in my memory, except obviously I lost about ten seconds.)

The recorded message, which ends “A team will have been dispatched to terminate you” – so, not wasting time! The usual stock sequence that used to take up ten minutes of screen time in those old ‘action’ clunkers like “The A team”, here takes 30 seconds.

“This is bank security. Open up, and you will be humanely disposed of.” “Please stand away from the door. We do not wish to hurt you before incineration.” I do love hearing deadly threats wrapped in pseudo-PC jargon.

Gotta love the classic heist-movie-style slow-mo shots of them striding in formation through the courtyard. All very Oceans 11. But the Teller is terrifying. And – how do you think of nothing?

DOCTOR: Oh, don’t be so pessimistic. It’ll affect team morale.
SAIBRA: What, and getting us blown up won’t?
DOCTOR: Well, only very, very briefly.
He’s such a cynic.

PSI: Still don’t understand why you’re in charge.
DOCTOR: Basically, it’s the eyebrows.

Interesting collection of crims that Psi projects to distract the Teller from Clara – I can see the Gunslinger, an Ice Warrior, a Slitheen, a Silurian, doubtless others.

It was a pleasant surprise that Psi and Saibra weren’t dead, just teleported. And I never, ever, suspected they were going to be rescuing the Teller. That was a twist.

Is this the first episode where the Doctor deliberately involves Clara in a highly hazardous adventure? (Rather than the adventure creeping up on them?) Never mind that Clara is ‘up for it’, I do rather have to question the Doctor’s judgement. Not complaining mind you.

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@winston @janetteb   Pretty cold and dreary here too.   The weather has stayed quite warm (notwithstanding the occasional record rainstorm and flooding) up until a couple of weeks ago, when it suddenly fell off its perch so to speak.   So now we’re into winter.   It managed to be quite pleasant for a couple of hours this afternoon, I went for a walk round the block and the ground was warm enough for bare feet though the grass was all pretty soggy, but this only lasts for a few hours in the afternoon until the sun starts to go down.   And of course mosquitos if you stand still too long in the shade.   Watched Time Heist the other night, next ep is The Caretaker which is not one of the greatest.

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Sophie Okonedo rocks!

(Why couldn’t she have been the first female Doctor?    If Capaldi could do it why not Sophie?   Maybe because Liz10 was far more memorable than some snotty Pompeiian aristocrat.)

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Is ‘On The Sofa’ back?   I thought it had sunk without trace.

Anyway, @blenkinsopthebrave, I took a look at Waris’s diary and now I’m hooked, down the rabbit hole we go again…

Thanks for the link!

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@janetteb It’s perfectly all right (but interesting) that we disagree!

In the case of Whittaker’s costume, it’s those braces! Braces (IMO) NEVER look good, whoever’s wearing them, instant dweeb. Plus the horizontal stripe across the midriff. And those slightly baggy trousers that end just below the knee, which is never a good place for trousers to end. (IMO of course). (See if this upload works:)

https://cdn.newsbook.com.mt/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Doctor-Who.jpg

Capaldi’s costume was uninspiring but I felt suited his age. In other words it didn’t do a lot for him (but he didn’t need it to) and it didn’t take away anything either. His slight weirdness came from his acting and his slightly alien viewpoint, a quirky costume would have been over-egging it. (IMO!)

Peter Davison was pure 100% cricket umpire. Maybe he was under the influence of the Tardis chameleon circuit. I think it’s a perfectly good costume, whether it ‘works’ depends entirely on whether it matches his character (and I haven’t seen enough of his series to judge that).

Jon Pertwee’s costume, I thought suited his personality fine. Along with his magnificent mop of white hair. A Victorian (?) dandy with just a touch of the Draculas.

@winston Swap the jeans for shorts and let the ‘appropriate’ footwear frequently include bare feet and I think we would be very similar. In fact if I lived in your climate we would probably be similarer. (Is that a word? It is now.) When I was working I had to wear a shirt and trousers to the office (and, of course, shoes) but I managed never to wear a tie. So I think our non-credentials as fashion critics match.

Cheers, cr

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@janetteb    Ah well, your list is pretty well the opposite of my list.   Just as well our mutual appreciation of Dr Who isn’t predicated on agreeing on his sartorial predilections, isn’t it?    🙂

As an aside, I’ve just watched Listen, and it blew me away even more than the first time. There’s so much in it, for a simple episode. (I stuck my impressions in that forum).

I’ve returned (so to speak) from a couple of evenings of watching ‘reaction’ videos on Youtube (i.e. [some unknown Youtuber] ‘reacts’ to [some video performance]). I’d always dismissed those because I can make up my own mind, what do I care what other people think? But I’ve just realised they’re not that dissimilar to what brings me here – I’ve discovered something I like (Dr Who) so it’s nice to see others appreciating it also. Some of those are peoples’ ‘first watch’ videos, of youngsters who have never seen e.g. Pink Floyd or Les Miserables, and it’s great to see their expressions when Dave Gilmour goes into the first guitar solo on ‘Comfortably Numb’ or Lea Salonga really turns up the power halfway through ‘On My Own’. To name just two of my absolute favourite performances, sorry for the digression.

I don’t know if anyone else here is into that, but the existence of the Internet and Youtube has expanded the availability of arts and music beyond all imagining.

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@devilishrobby   Very probably those Doctors you mention had the odd question mark.   I think in Seven’s case (McCoy) it got out of control.   I seem to recall reading that he wasn’t happy about it and eventually managed to get them to tone it down a bit.

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