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And I was going to comment on The Big Bang, but for some reason I was content to just watch, my commenting instincts seem to have been exhausted with ‘Pandorica’.

And Rewvian has commented at length anyway.

I do think re-watching helps, second time around you have an idea of the outline of the complicated plot to hang the details on.

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I wasn’t going to comment much on this, since Rewvian just did, but it starts so well I can’t contain myself. The first three scenes are derived straight out of previous episodes – Vincent, Churchill and Bracewell, and River in Stormcage. Lovely to see River’s hallucinogenic lipstick is still as effective as ever. And as a bonus, we get Liz 10. (I would have liked to see a lot more of her, but we didn’t. I expect Sophie had other commitments).

On previous occasions when we’ve had everybody-and-his-dog (like, The Stolen Earth) it’s always felt a bit fake to me, as if all those people were there for the sake of appearances but didn’t have much to do. Kudos to the Moff for making all this motley crew into an integral part of the story.

WHY did the Roman legionnaire (legionary?) greet the Doc as ‘Caesar’? I kept looking for psychic paper; I have only just now realised the Roman has a smear of lipstick on his face. River, of course. Who once again used her trick of leaving a message for the Doctor – this time graffiti-ing ‘the oldest cliff face in the Universe’ with space-time co-ordinates.

That was a LONG pre-title sequence.

This episode is full of lovely moments – DOCTOR: No, but if you buried the most dangerous thing in the universe, you’d want to remember where you put it. – camera pans to reveal Stonehenge. (Was Stonehenge erected to mark the Pandorica, or was the Pandorica placed under Stonehenge? Not that it matters much).

I enjoyed the little reminder of River’s random timeline –
AMY: Okay, this Pandorica thing. Last time we saw you, you warned us about it, after we climbed out of the Byzantium.
RIVER: Spoilers.
AMY: No, but you told the Doctor you’d see him again when the Pandorica opens.
RIVER: Maybe I did, but I haven’t yet. But I will have.
Oh, of course!

Umm, and –
DOCTOR: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior. A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
AMY: How did it end up in there?
DOCTOR: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
RIVER: I hate good wizards in fairy tales. They always turn out to be him.
Waaah! This is why a re-watch is so rewarding, the Moff is always scattering little clues or ‘loaded’ lines or easter eggs around!

That was a good jump scare when the Cyberman head opened and a skull dropped out. Gave me the creeps. Kudos to Amy for bashing it against the wall. And then Rory (!) spears the Cyberman. Rory?

It’s fun watching the Doctor miss the point – DOCTOR: Yes, I know that, Rory. I’m not exactly one to miss the obvious.
As River would have said (had said/would say), penny in the air…

And here is the big reveal – the Pandorica is a trap, a prison for the Doctor.

And Rory, who (on one level is an Auton, created like the other Romans by the Nestene Consciousness using Amy’s mamories of her picture book to fool the Doctor, but who has all the real Rory’s memories) shoots Amy against his wishes.

I love all the ironies in this episode. Dalek: “Only the Doctor can pilot the Tardis”. That’s what he’s always saying to River! “You will be prevented.” Presumably, therefore, if the Doctor can’t pilot the Tardis, he can’t take it to wherever it will explode and destroy the Universe.

And the Tardis explodes with River inside it, Amy has just died, and the Doctor is trapped in the Pandorica. Now that’s a real set-up for part 2.

What a cracker of an episode! I love this show!

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@rewvian   To answer your points – I think in the case of the sunflowers painting, the painting was there before, just the message is new (because they changed history just that little bit).   But of course the message had ‘always’ been there.   The same way the Krafayis quietly disappeared and had never been there.

I think the monster was blind either through age or accident, and that was probably why it couldn’t keep up and had been abandoned by its pack.

‘Vincent’ was very well cast, he looked remarkably like his self-portraits.

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Impressions of Vincent and the Doctor –

Isn’t Bill Nighy the perfect art gallery curator?

And of course the Doctor is being extra nice to Amy because she’s lost Rory – and can’t remember him. “Why are you being so nice to me? It’s suspicious”. “There’s nothing to be suspicious about.” “Okay, I was joking – why aren’t you?” She’s sharp, that girl.

But it’s rather charming to watch Amy making an immediate hit with the prickly Vincent van Gogh. (Incidentally, I’m a philistine – I don’t dislike van Gogh’s work but I prefer Turner, Monet or Sisley and their slightly more controlled style to Vincent’s wildness.)

Interesting that Vincent can see the monster but the Doctor can’t. Actually, the monster is pretty naff, but that doesn’t matter too much for this episode.

I thought Vincent’s sketch of the Krafayis was pretty good, surprised Doc’s gizmo couldn’t ID it, there was no call for Doc’s snark about Gainsborough would have been better. I would have liked to see the gizmo try a Picasso!

I always thought van Gogh lived around north-east France and Belgium. But the rough roof slates in the lane where the Doctor goes seeking the monster look more like the Alps or the south of France to me (but maybe the north-east has roofs like that, I don’t know that region). And the dry-looking country bordering the stony lane that the three walk down to get to the church looks very south-of-France to me. Google tells me that Vincent did spend much time in Arles, south of France, up until shortly before his death. So, it looks as if Doctor Who (the show) got it right. (And further Googling tells me it was shot in Trogir, Croatia, on the Adriatic coast. Okay, near enough, scenery-wise). The church in the picture, though, was at Auvers near Paris, after Vincent moved there. I guess the show is allowed to mix things up a little bit. The painting is in the Musee d’Orsay though, so they got that right too.

But it’s a charming little scene walking down the lane.

The Doctor’s gizmo is pretty useless for combat, since it only shows the monster up as a mirror image – which means the Doctor has to attack facing backwards. Vincent on the other hand, is pretty damn courageous. I felt a bit sorry for the monster when it finally died. About 12 minutes before the end, which demonstrates that the episode really wasn’t about the monster at all.

And then there’s the marvellous scene of Vincent in the Musee d’Orsay (which prompted someone to post a Youtube link on a discussion site which pulled me back into Doctor Who a decade after I lost touch with the show). Vincent looks at a couple of Monets and a Sisley before the Doctor drags him into his own exhibition. The scene with the Curator (Bill Nighy) is just lovely. As is the curator’s puzzled look as he tries to make sense of the fact that someone who looks exactly like Vincent van Gogh has just embraced him.

Sadly, against Amy’s hopes and expectations, Vincent still shot himself on the appointed date. But the Krafayis has disappeared from the painting of the church at Auvers, and the sunflowers have acquired a dedication to Amy.

This is a minor episode, I think, a bit like The Lodger that followed, but very pleasant.

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@einston Yes, I do love that the Doctor understands cat. Watching the Doctor trying to be ‘human’ is almost painful. Actually very good writing, and acting, I think – it takes some skill to make his performance subtly ‘wrong’. Like someone tone deaf trying to play an instrument.

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@janetteb I too had never heard of James Corden, or Catherine Tate (or Billy Piper for that matter). I had heard of Capaldi of course. I have to admit I instinctively disliked Donna simply because of her first appearance, crashing into the Doctor’s grief over losing Rose. Which was quite unfair to Catherine Tate, I think she could be a much more sympathetic actor than that.

I knew Bradley Walsh well from The Chase and that did get in the way of watching him play Graham on Who. I think I liked Dan better as a companion.
Bradley is fine on the Chase, which is the only game show I watch, in fact. I used to watch Pointless when it was on. The missus watches Tipping Point while I diplomatically try not to audibly question where they find these ignoramuses who know absolutely nothing of geography, history, physics or chemistry (while, I have to admit, knowing much more than me about soap actors, modern pop stars (i.e. from this century), cookery and footballers).

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@rewvian Could we ever make ships that could come into contact with the sun?

Trivial answer – sure we could, but they’d just melt fairly promptly. I’d guess a few space probes may have ended up there by now.

But I think you mean, could we make a ship that could do something useful? I think probably not (outside of sci-fi). Temperature of surface of sun 5500 deg C. Melting point of tungsten 3400 deg C. Tantalum carbide (Google says, highest known material) 3997 deg C.

Even if we could find an ‘un-meltable’ substance, there would be no way to deal with the heat, the contents would soon rise to surrounding temperature.

Incidentally, I’ve had temperatures hotter than the sun in my garage. No kidding, my little arc welder produces 6500 deg C – in the arc itself. But that’s a tiny bit of plasma, the metal it’s melting doesn’t reach more than a third of that.

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@rewvian I was wondering what to watch this evening and came across your post – so I just watched The Lodger because, why not. Your review pretty much says it all, here’s a few random comments that struck me.

The chemistry between Craig and Sophie is obvious right from the start, just they’re both too timid to admit it. And here comes the Doctor, now that will really help.

“Have some rent” – gives Craig a brown paper bag full of twenties. If I saw that I’d suspect the Doc had just robbed a bank. “They call me The Doctor” – at this point I’d start running for my life.

“CRAIG: Yeah, this is Mark’s old room. He owns the place. Moved out about a month ago. This uncle he’d never even heard of died and left a load of money in the will.” Something makes me suspect the uncle might have been known as Doctor?

I do like the little touch of the Van Gogh exhibition poster on the fridge.

So then the Doctor proceeds to dominate Craig’s pub football side like a pro. Sure way to make himself popular.

I notice that the control for the zigzag plotter (in the Tardis) is actually the gear selector gate off a preselector gearbox c.1950 vintage truck.

Craig (unlike most of humanity apparently) actually knows who the Doctor is when shown his previous personae.

The reason the timeship didn’t want Craig for a pilot is because he’s perfectly happy exactly where he is. Presumably Craig and Sophie both being oerfectly happy with each other is too much for the timeship’s circuits. Or something.

I quite like this little episode. In one aspect it’s reminiscent of Girl in the Fireplace – the lost spaceship looking for a pilot. No big monsters, just a small glitch in the machine, quietly killing people one a at time when they’re incompatible with it.

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@missy I think your recollection is correct. (And I just scanned tardis.fandom.com to prompt my memory). When they vented the fuel back to the sun, it somehow released them and the auxiliary engines started up.

But the whole episode was very – loose. The ship had been mining the sun for fuel – but how could they do that without coming into contact with the sun? The whole point of the episode was to not crash into the sun and burn up, so how could they ever have mined it? And in reality, I think any ship would get fried or vaporised by radiant heat many hours before it reached the sun’s surface.

And how could the sun ‘release’ them? Could it control its own gravity? Just trying to work out the logic of this episode raises more questions than it answers.

As Rewvian noted, those code-locked doors just scream ‘plot device’. Why did they exist?

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@rewvian It wasn’t so much that it ‘made’ me lose interest. But about that time I was gradually stopping watching series on TV anyway, since the Internet (and DVDs) had arrived and I could never remember to catch the TV at the right time anyway. Since then I don’t follow anything on TV (except the news), I get the DVD’s. And some things I do see on TV, but only because Mrs D watches TV incessantly.

So it wasn’t like the days of Blakes 7 when it was a case of ‘see it now or maybe never again’ – (that was pre-VCR’s. VCR’s were the real revolution, DVD’s just a technical improvement – they meant you could watch things at home, any time you liked, for a modest cost. Previously that was impossible.)

But anyway, when my interest was prodded (by a link to a Youtube clip of Vincent and the Louvre curator Bill Nighy) I just got the S5 DVD set. And went on from there, I liked Season 6 (episode arc and all, I love that stuff) and I liked/loved almost all of Twelve’s episodes (unlike you but that’s allowed 🙂 13 is kinda ‘umm’ for me, I probably wouldn’t have got them but for this site keeping my interest going. (Incidentally, I’ve just noticed Hungry Earth / Cold Blood were written by Chibnall – what a coincidence. Start off well but sorta fizzle in the second half.)

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Amy’s Choice – doesn’t seem to have its own thread, so like Rewvian I’ll plonk this here.

So the Tardis lands – right in Amy’s flower bed. Nice piloting, Doc. Maybe you should get River to drive you around. And has it really been five years since the last one? (Actually not, this is a dream).

So, which is the dream and which is reality? This soon becomes a really critical question – with deadly consequences if they get it wrong. Amy thinks the current dream (whichever it is) is the real one. The Doctor points out they both feel real, dreams always seem real when you’re in them. [Minor personal caveat – when I dream, a tiny part of my mind ‘knows’ I’m dreaming, so if anything bad is happening I never get really scared, the part that’s ‘monitoring’ sends a ‘don’t worry’ message.]

The Dream Lord makes me want to punch him. Smug sod.

And Mrs Poggit – since this episode I’ve never looked at old people in quite the same way again. And the creeping approach of the old – creeps is remarkably menacing. The sight of Rory whacking an old age pensioner is curiously satisfying.

And eventually Amy ‘chose’ Rory. Though how the psychic pollen managed to make them share dreams is unexplained. Was there ever any risk of anyone dying? Probably not.

Overall this episode didn’t have a major effect on the storyline, but I found it quite watchable, not least for the novelty of attack of the killer OAP’s.

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@rewvian You’re getting way ahead of me now and disappearing in the distance! However, what I remember from this episode (that, so far as I know, was never expanded on later) was a future ‘Amy and Rory’ waving from a hill in the distance.
Other than that, I found the double episode a bit disappointing. Big build-up of apparently supernatural beings in Episode 1, which turned out to be just super moles. Also, I was not happy about the way the humans behaved. It didn’t really excite me at all. It was about here that I lost touch with Doctor Who on its original screening. It wasn’t till many years later, when (on some completely unrelated Internet talk site) there was a link to Vincent and the Doctor, specifically the scene with Vincent van Gogh and the excellent Bill Nighy in the Louvre, that my interest in Who was rekindled and I bought the S5 DVD’s.

Anyway, re this double episode, I think Anonymous’s post of 6th Jan 2013 about summarises my reactions to it.

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@rewvian (re the Doctor confronting Madame Calvieri) I’m not sure I chose quite the right word (‘powerful’) to express my view of the Doctor at that moment. Certainly in every previous episode he had been dynamic and active. Warning off the Atraxi, confronting the Daleks in their own ship (though much of that was a bluff), battling the Weeping Angels. I guess the scene where he sat on the throne, he seemed authoritative and in control of the situation – maybe that’s a better way to put it.
Anyway, that’s just the effect he had on me, ymmv as they say. 🙂

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Vampires of Venice – like Rewvian, I’ll post my impressions here.

Interesting that nobody makes any comment on Isabella or her father being black, I wouldn’t have expected Venice back then to be so cosmopolitan or enlightened, but then maybe they were. Or maybe the fish people didn’t care what colour their victims were.

The Doctor popping out of the cake at Rory’s stag party – he really is ‘tone deaf’ isn’t he? I think he needs a nursemaid (and not a kissogram one).

So the alien fish people are keeping Venetians under control by rumours of plague. Not entirely new idea but it seems quite topical these days.

Rory reads the psychic paper as denoting him as Amy’s eunuch. Poor lad, lacking in self-confidence.

I like the way the Doctor immediately teams up with Guido to investigate Madame Calvieri’s establishment.

The vampire girls are certainly good-looking. “Tell me the whole plan. (One day that will work)” …and the Doctor was prophetic, one day the Chibs era will arrive and every villain will explain at length, no stopping them.

Typical Amy, wanting to sneak into enemy territory. And Rory’s reaction is predictable. The Doctor doesn’t exactly help boost confidence – “Makes you wonder what could be so bad it doesn’t mind us thinking it’s a vampire”. How convenient that Amy ends up in a room with Isabella and all the other girls leave them alone to talk. But this is a minor niggle.

Not sure what the significance is of Guido piloting Rory and Doc while wearing a “Rory’s Stag” shirt… (I just realised after scanning Revian’s comments, it’s because they swapped clothes so Rory could act his part as Amy’s ‘brother’).

Turns out Madame Calvieri knows all about psychic paper – so she’s apparently an alien of some sort.

It’s tragic that Isabella can’t tolerate the sunlight and gets caught by the alien girls at the last moment. And then fed to the aliens. That was shocking, I really liked Isabella.

And then Madame Calvieri finds the Doctor casually lounging in her throne. Nice scene. I think this is the first time this Doctor has really seemed powerful to me. And we get a nice concise description of how a perception filter works, and the non-appearance of the aliens in a mirror (because the filter doesn’t know what to display) fits so perfectly with vampire legends – neat! And once again we have mention of the Silence (or is it the Silents?) and the cracks in space-time. Madame certainly has an attraction about her, but the Doctor is immune. “I’m a Time Lord. You’re a big fish.”

Too bad the vampire girls are all now just alien fish wearing perception filters. Still, maybe that makes it less of a waste when Guido blows them all up (and, heroically, himself) – though I would have expected that much gunpowder to flatten the building.

I’m not sure how an atmospheric phenomenon like thunderclouds is going to destroy Venice – or cause earthquakes, that’s a stretch.

I do like the little touch that Carlo the sinister steward is strategically relocating with the family treasure.

And yet again the Doctor is climbing something really high in a storm.

Altogether a pretty good entertaining episode.

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The above were my impressions scribbled down watching the ep. Reading through the comments it seems I was roughly in line with the general consensus. I didn’t hate the ep, it didn’t annoy me like, say, Kill the Moon or… well, actually, KTM is the only Moff ep that I actively disliked, possibly because I was invested in the characters. With this crew my expectations are lower. So maybe this ep rates around In The Forest of the Night level.

That said, the cast were all fine, I thought Yaz and the Doctor acted their relationship stuff well, when they weren’t being sabotaged by explain-the-plot-itis. Which was contagious because Madam Ching and the Sea Devil had spasms of explaining the bleeding obvious too. The actors – Dan and Madam Ching, even Revenge Dude – were sympathetic characters I could have got to like if the script had been a little less disjointed.

And while I’m whingeing, the Doctor could have done with a bit less of obvious made-up-on-the-spot technobabble. Every alien gadget or strange phenomenon, the Doctor knows instantly what it’s called and how it works. Jargon we’ve never heard before and know that, mercifully, we never will again. Kinetic hyper-curve, exo-toxic poisoning, orbital electron stripping – none of these actually mean anything.

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@rewvian As to why River was allowed to act alone, I presume she was out “on parole”. If she had skipped then she would become a fugitive, I assume the Galactic Authority (or whoever sentenced her to Stormcage) would then attempt to recapture her. As to why she neededd to act alone, it seems likely that she would not have been invited to the party on Alistair’s ship, or been able to slip away unnoticed to snoop into the ship’s vaults, with a platoon of armed ‘clerics’ in tow.

As you say, the ‘image of an angel becomes an angel’ thing – and their consequent ability to transport over video links etc – is not incompatible with the ‘Blink’ story, it just didn’t chance to occur in that episode.

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Oh dear, no sooner have we got a good pair of companions than we make them look like idiots – Dan for dressing like a pantomime pirate and Yaz for encouraging him. This is a let-down after Eve of the Daleks.

And it’s Legend of the Black Spot again I’m afraid. Dr Who really should learn not to do 19th-century pirate stories. The pirate ship looks as unconvincing as the chatty Sea Devil.

So Dan just casually wanders off with some random dude obsessed with revenge (though I’ve seen more emotion from a Dalek) to swim out and board a pirate ship. And the Doctor and Yaz wander off in the opposite direction. Is it just me or is the writing getting a bit loose? And the purpose of the Doctor’s excursion is to find information on some treasure to bargain with Madame Ching the Pirate Queen for – what? This is getting completely unscrewed.

How Madam Ching managed to sail her ship single-handed while tying Dan and Revenge Dude up and dangling them from a convenient yardarm is – not explained.

And it seems Yaz has caught the Doctor’s annoying habit of explaining at length what we can perfectly well see for ourselves, because they’re both at it now. But I had to cheer at “No ship, Sherlock.”

The Doctor and Yaz and anyone else they swept along with them seemed to be able to jump from ship to ship with casual abandon.

There was an awful lot of jargon (as always with this Doctor), and much of the technicalities appeared to be ad hoc and didn’t make a lot of sense. The Sea Devils were pretty naff monsters. Also spectacularly useless in a sword fight. And Dan killing four Sea Devils in a row – that surprised me. The Doctor would surely have nagged him for that.

The – relationship – between Yaz and the Doctor was quite well handled, I thought.

I thought the actress who played Madame Ching was good, she deserved better lines.

Overall, the script could have used a lot of tightening up – too many loose ends and improbabilities. As a standalone episode there should have been time to fix some of that before shooting.

 

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@rewvian To go into a bit more detail – the sequence of events (as I see it) was: At some time past (in River’s timeline, but in the Doctor’s future) she killed a ‘good man’ (I think it was the Doctor). She was imprisoned in Stormcage. She was released on parole (in Bishop’s custody) to investigate Alistair, who owned the ship. She conned her way into a party on board, then stunned the guard with her hallucinogenic lipstick and found the contraband Angel in its vaults. Alistair ordered his guards to shoot her. River recorded a message on the surveillance camera asking to be picked up, the message duly reached the ship’s homing ‘black box’ which ended up in a museum (where the Doctor eventually found it 12000 years later) and ejected out of the ship to be collected by the Tardis.
The Angel then sabotaged the ship’s drive to crash on Alfava Metraxis in order to revive/rescue the stranded Angels. The Tardis followed its track and landed alongside the wreckage. River then (presumably) contacted Bishop to join them.

I did find it odd that the Angels were breaking necks instead of sending people back in time. I didn’t notice any explanation for this. But then these Angels didn’t seem to ‘freeze’ each other by looking at each other the way the ones in ‘Blink’ did. And they could ‘transmit’ themselves through an image.
Suggestions – these were a different subspecies of Angel? Maybe they’d evolved to screen out the ‘freeze’ reflex when it was just another Angel observing them?

Amy and Rory had been together for two years since the Eleventh Hour. Indications are that they were getting married more or less because they had no particular reason not to. I think Amy had some pre-marital jitters about committing to it. Then the night before the wedding, the Doctor reappeared and took her on some fantastic adventures. I think Amy’s fairly determined attempt to shag the Doctor was partly a ‘last fling’, and maybe more a reaction to having been nearly killed by Angels. Both of these are, I believe, not unusual reactions. I found it highly amusing, as was the Doctor’s bashful reaction.
But anyway, Amy and Rory’s relationship did indeed get far stronger in subsequent seasons.

Incidentally, I don’t set out to write lengthy reviews, usually something strikes me (in this case, the very first scene with the hallucinogenic lipstick, that was delightful) so I hit Pause and type a sentence on my laptop. DVD makes it easy to do.

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@oochillyo @rewvian The way I see it (unless I’ve missed something) – River was in Stormcage jail (which we never see in this episode, it wasn’t on the crashing ship, we do see it in a subsequent ep) for killing someone – I think the Doctor in his future (her past). She was released from Stormcage on parole (under the custody of the Bishop) to go undercover investigating Alistair (the owner of the ship that crashed). He had an Angel in the vault, River used her hallucinogenic lipstick to stun the guard and find that out. Alistair ordered his guards to shoot her. River recorded a message in the ship’s homing ‘black box’ to tell the Doctor where and when to pick her up, knowing that the Doctor would sooner or later find it. The Angel then caused the ship to crash in order to revive all the stranded angels.

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@nerys Well I’d agree with you that it’s Chibs best episode (so far – haven’t seen Sea Devils or Power yet). Your description of the Flux was pretty much my impression too. Too much going on. The best Flux episode IMO was the Angels one, which happened to be the most focussed one with the least complicated storyline.

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This double episode was full of interesting/dramatic things happening.   I wasn’t going to bother to make any comments but somehow I felt impelled to.   Here’s my impressions anyway.

Excellent start, with the guard wandering around a park in the sunshine – what a way to introduce River’s hypnotic lipstick.

And what a way to reintroduce River – leaving a message on the ‘black box’ in the certainty that the Doctor would find it somewhere in time and come to her rescue – what absolute faith that implies. And I love that River can fly the Tardis better than the Doctor. And I love the way River and the Doctor keep one-upping each other.

“There’s a thing in the belly of that ship that can’t ever die” – suitably ominous words.

And the diary – “Her past, my future” – this is where I read too much into it and concluded that time flowed in the opposite direction for River – which it didn’t. Any more than me flying Auckland – Hong Kong – Seoul – Vladivostok while someone else flies Vladivostok – Seoul – Hong Kong – Auckland implies that North is in different directions for us.

Bishop Octavian is a distinctly sinister-looking character at this stage. But his troops, drop-ship and all, remind me of the plot of Aliens. (Umm, Bishop – there was a character called Bishop in Aliens. The Moff is playing with us!)

“Whatever holds the image of an Angel, becomes an Angel” – a new and frightening power these things have. And this is the first time in the series that Amy has been in real direct peril. And clever Amy, to stop the tape loop on the gap so the Angel lost its power. BUT as we later find out, Amy now has an image of the Angel in her eye.

And it seems that Bishop is River’s warder and she is on temporary parole from prison. Plenty of intriguing threads going on here.

Angelo and Christian getting zapped by an Angel is good and scary. What is even more chilling is the realisation that the Aplans had two heads but all the ‘statues’ – only have one. And then we have Angel Bob talking to them, and Amy’s hand turns to stone (in her mind). Amy in peril *again* – she’s going to get tired of this before the episode is over.

Part 2 – so now we have the classic trapped-in-a-corridor scene. And the Doctor has to turn out the lights to operate the door. (I’m reminded of the campy TV series ‘Hercules’ where Herc, confronted by yet another cavern full of traps, would lament “Who dreams up these things?”)

And now the Angel in Amy’s brain is counting down…

So then we get the haunted forest, another suitably spooky setting.

Love the way the Doctor keeps tweaking Angel Bob about ‘life’.

And the crack in the Universe reappears. And the Doctor is surrounded by Angels who grab his coat. This lot don’t seem to be inhibited by looking at each other, why not?

And now we have the blind-man-in-danger routine, except this is Amy who daren’t open her eyes. I thought this scenario was a bit contrived, to be honest, though the scariest yet. I make this the third time Amy is in dire peril in this double episode. And then her guards run off to investigate the bright light. And the remaining guard has forgotten the others even existed.

And then an Angel gets Bishop, who, all in all, has quite a heroic death. But before he dies he reveals that River was in Stormcage for killimg a man – but he won’t say who. Another ongoing plot thread.

So then the time energy leaking out of the crack threatens to swallow up Amy, and she has to keep walking – with her eyes shut – but avoiding Angels using her communicator signal but pretending she can see them so they don’t zap her. Truly scary stuff, relieved only when River manages to teleport her to safety in the control room. Purely temporary safety because the Angels rock up a few seconds later. This latest peril is resolved when the ship’s power finally fails, the artificial gravity turns off, and the Angels fall into the crack. Neat.

And since the Angels have ceased to have ever existed, the one in Amy’s eye never existed either. Retrospective non-existence.

And as a coda, back in her house, Amy wants a last fling before she gets married in the morning. I got a good laugh out of the Doctor fending off Amy’s advances. The extra scene where the Doctor tries to pretend he never had any previous attractive Companions is classic – can anyone name all the Companions that the Tardis shows Amy?

The best episode so far of the 11th Doctor, IMO.

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If I may sidetrack (I think this is the forum?) – I picked up a copy of I Robot (Will Smith 2004) at the charity shop and just now watched it. I wasn’t expecting much but it was actually surprisingly good. It had a murder mystery and a plot even I could follow, the CGI / special effects and the worldbuilding were extremely good, and the story was kept tight to the few leading characters which helped to focus my attention. So it goes into my DVD collection.

Contrast that with Van Helsing which I watched last week, which has *everything* – Frankenstein and monster, Dracula and brides, vampires, a rapid-fire repeating crossbow, a ginormous CGI castle, all in a huge mish-mash and it was hard to feel anything for the characters.

Anyway, must get back to Who, Rewvian just overtook me as I expected 🙂

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@rewvian I watched this a few days ago. My impressions were pretty much the same as yours. Spitfires in Space was a bit goofy, even if they were fitted with stolen Dalek tech (at least I presume that’s where Bracewell got his ideas from). And the bit where Amy saved him was touching. Had the Daleks managed to create a human? I assume they had captured the original Bracewell and implanted his memories into their android.

And the plot device of the Daleks needing the Doctor to confirm their identity before the Progenitor would recognise them – that was very ingenious and satisfyingly ironical.

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Oh yes, and I really liked that the Daleks were the classic bronze models. Quite the most satisfying Dalek version IMO. (Even if they were upgunned with their new rotary shooters, which suited them as well as the original eggwhisk I think.)

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On reflection, my previous comment was overall a bit too negative. It was actually a really *good* episode! I just wasn’t expecting that from Chibnall, cynical sod that I am.

On reading though the comments, I see that my impressions (technical nitpicks aside of course) is pretty much in line with the general opinion of the episode. I just felt impelled to re-watch again straight away, a rarity with Chibnall’s episodes (I think the previous ones were Prisoner of the Judoon and the Master double episode – Spyfall).

The ‘romance’ between Nick and Sarah was surprisingly interesting and quite well handled. Nick managed to be awkward and a little weird without being useless.

And the trio of Doctor, Yaz and Dan is a far better grouping than the previous ‘fam’ (ugh!) which never felt like a cohesive or convincing unit, the Doctor’s protestations to the contrary. In that respect (the earlier ‘fam’) she reminded me of one of those coaches on a business team-bonding exercise, full of false enthusiasm and bonhomie. And in fact, the (as Jim the Fish said) ‘cringey rallying speech’ hasn’t changed much.

But back to the companions, I never felt that Graham and Ryan were very convincing (or maybe I just didn’t care) and Yaz had very little to do. Yaz 2.0 and Dan are much more engaging characters. It’s a pity we didn’t get them much earlier in the Chibnall years.

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First impressions:

What’s this ‘reconfiguration’ business? Where did that come from? I guess it doesn’t actually conflict with any previous canon. I’d hate to think the Tardis was running anything related to Windows Update though 🙂

A Dalek with a gatling gun – that’s new too. It seems a bit of an overkill considering how deadly effective their previous weapon was. Typical Chibbers, everything up to 11. I’m nitpicking, up to this point (the titles) the ep’s been quite effective.

And then we revert to square one. Alternate futures? Interesting. Or is it alternate pasts? But the Dalek still kills everybody. So now we’re in Groundhog Day territory. And bugger me, Dan actually says “Groundhog Day”. That’s lampshading it.

Sarah appears to be quite a gutsy resolute girl. Why the Doctor feels the need to flash her psychic paper I don’t know, maybe force of habit, because Sarah obviously doesn’t believe it and it doesn’t matter anyway, no story is going to help.

Obviously the Dalek’s rotary cannon has sacrificed accuracy for rate of fire, since it aims a sustained burst down the corridor and manages to miss every one of the five – how is that even possible?

But anyway, the diminishing time loop is quite a good plot device. And Nick successfully pulled off the oldest trick in the book, the Irish firing squad. (They stand round in a circle).

The Doctor is still making lengthy garrulous speeches.

Sarah’s mother is so annoying, if I was a Dalek I’d shoot her too.

And I don’t think a few boxes of fireworks would take out a building and Daleks. You need several tons of them to create a proper explosion. Still, that’s a relatively minor nitpick.

I had hoped the Tardis reset would include a thorough remodelling, but it’s still Crystal Cave. Too bad. I don’t think anyone ever accused this Doctor of having good taste.

Overall, this was quite good. A bottle episode, with a cast of five (plus three Dalek operators). The stakes were not a planet, or the entire universe, but just the Doctor and two companions and two bystanders, versus five Daleks. The destruction was limited to one old warehouse. And yet the suspense was just as effective as the Flux. I think maybe Chibnall’s best so far.

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@rewvian I’m not sure if there was a villain in this one. The source of the moral problem was a tragic misunderstanding that the Star Whale wouldn’t swim unless forced to. So the situation resolved itself to the Trolley Problem (or something equivalent). Liz 10 was put in an impossible position – continue the Star Whale’s captivity or kill most of the population of ‘Britain’. As it happened, Amy’s instinctive reluctance to kill the Whale solved the whole problem – but this was almost by accident.
Suppose the popular belief had been correct, and ‘Britain’ had genuinely depended for its existence on shocking the Whale – what would then be the ‘right’ thing to do? The Doctor’s solution of turning it into a zombie? Or Amy effectively destroying ‘Britain’ by releasing the Whale? Or Liz 10 continuing the Whale’s captivity (and forgetting because the knowledge was too disturbing to remember)?
Amy’s fortuitous choice seemed almost like a cop-out. But that’s the thing about real life – there are often difficult choices to make where the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are not clear cut.
Maybe that moral awkwardness is why my recollection of the episode wasn’t particularly flattering, but I actually found it better on re-watch than I expected (a bit like Rewvian’s experience). Liz 10 effectively investigating herself was a nice touch, as was the fact that there were things her ‘underlings’ were keeping from her – partly for her own protection. I’m sure that really happens today (or at least I hope it does – “Sure Mr President, the nuclear codes are in this laptop”)

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And I just watched Victory of the Daleks. Can’t find a separate thread for it so I’ll just post my odd impressions here.

Um, the flight of Stukas that was shot down by the Dalek – I’m not sure that Ju87 Stukas ever attacked London. They were more suited to pinpoint dive-bombing attacks on shipping and the like, over the Channel and South Coast ports, with their slow speed a daylight attack on London would have been suicidal, even if their limited range had permitted it. He111’s or Ju88’s were much more likely to have been used against London.

“You will help the Allied cause” (Bracewell to a Dalek) – did the “Allies” exist as such before the USA entered the war in December 1941? By that time the London Blitz was over and the Battle of Britain long since over.

But Amy not remembering the Dalek invasion is, maybe, the first sign that there’s something seriously odd about Amy’s existence. This episode was written by Mark Gatiss but that bit was pure Moffatt.

‘Churchill’ is too fat to be convincing, but I guess he was the closest they could get.

It appears Bracewell was the first Dalek ‘skin job’? I think the next one was Darla, in Asylum of the Daleks? And then Tasha, of the Papal Mainframe, in The Time of the Doctor. And then Bors in The Magician’s Apprentice. Can’t think of any others off the top of my head. I don’t know if there were any in OldWho.

The new technicolour Daleks are just too pretty (in colours, not shape) to be threatening.

It would appear that the Dalek mothership has moved from its original location behind the Moon, to Earth orbit. Does this make the attack by the souped-up Spitfires any more feasible? Not much, but I guess every little helps. What is more of a problem is that Bracewell has manufactured and equipped several Spitfires with his alien upgrade in the space of ten minutes. How is this logistically possible? This puts in the shade the minor improbabilities of how 20mm Hispano cannon or .303 Brownings could have any significant effect on a Dalek mothership, or how the Spitfires’ engines are audibly running in a vacuum, etc etc…

OK, that’s just me being geeky. Involving Churchill, and Spitfires, and recent history, is on risky ground for me because I’m likely to say “no, it didn’t work like that”. Much though I’m nitpicking, I did find the episode reasonably entertaining. Amy is definitely a force to be reckoned with.

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@rewvian I re-watched this a few days ago, so your review made interesting reading. I thought the episode was well done, on the whole. Though the newly reconstituted Doctor has appalling table manners!

It’s evident that Rory is very conventional, while Amy has a tough streak in her. Suggesting to Mr Henderson that he goes and has a coffee while she ‘borrows’ his car to interrogate the Doctor – which he meekly obeys. Or when the Doctor is changing his clothes, Rory modestly looks away while Amy – just looks. I wonder how much the Doctor’s bad timing contributes to Amy’s personality – quite a lot, judging by her account of her childhood. She kept biting her psychiatrists. Gotta love it.

(I kept writing ‘Arthur’ for Rory, for some reason. Maybe he reminds me of my namesake Arthur Dent, which I suppose would make Amy Ford Prefect.)

Of course the Atraxi are the stereotypical gung-ho galactic cops. Don’t care about collateral damage. We’ve seen that before with the Judoon on the moon, and much later again with the Judoon pursuing Doctor Ruth. And probably a few other occasions that my brain’s too lazy to think of right now.

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@nerys It is do-able. Rewvian for example is working his way through old episodes. It may be a personal thing, depending how well you can tolerate being behind everybody else without getting too frustrated.

I find I can mostly ignore spoilers – one stray mention of a future circumstance doesn’t mean much to me because I don’t have any context for it. So ‘the Doctor kills the Master in Episode 13’ doesn’t really spoil me much because, by the time I’m viewing Episode 13, I’ve probably forgotten it and anyway, as we’ve all seen, things are not always as they appear and storylines can get retconned with abandon.

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@rewvian Yes, that’s a pretty good explanation of the Master’s superpowers – due to his explosive revival. That works, thanks for that.

I just watched Part 2. I’d remembered the good bit – the final confrontation between the Doctor, the Master, and Rassilon. That was really well-staged and tense. I’d forgotten the slow bits.

The surprise of the Vinvocci – Addams and Rossiter – saving the Doctor was just that, a complete surprise. Why would they? – no idea. But it saves the Doctor so I won’t question it.

The Vinvocci ship, at 105,000 miles out – why so far? (The International Space Station is 250 miles). That’s a heck of a long-range teleport. And then, when the Doctor launches the ship towards Earth, howcome it gets there almost immediately? It must move incredibly fast. And after being pursued across the ocean by missiles, all of which get shot down (I think this was just a pretext to give Wilf something to do), it slows right down to let the Doctor jump out and fall through the roof of Mansion Naismith – which he survives, how? And then the ship lands (off screen) to disembark Wilf. The Master commands the entire Earth’s military to shoot it down yet after the missiles fail, apparently has lost all interest in the ship – howcome?

As I said, Doctor vs Master vs Rassilon was a memorable confrontation, I genuinely couldn’t guess who would shoot who and the balance of power was visibly shifting from moment to moment. I found it very satisfying when the Master chose to take out Rassilon rather than the Doctor.

Only thing is, that was 22 minutes before the end and the remainder was, as far as I’m concerned, an anti-climax. Including Wilf getting himself needlessly trapped and the Doctor having to sacrifice himself to save him. Yeah I know this was just a plot device.

It was nice to see Martha again BUT – she started as a young and capable doctor. She finished as a mercenary guerilla, married to Rose’s useless ex-boyfriend Mickey. This is not an improvement.

Seeing Rose again – before she first met the Doctor – now that was delightful and a nice nod to how the (new) series started.

Overall there were a lot of slow bits in this double episode. Particularly the Doctor having meaningful conversations with Wilf. The highlights were the appearances of the Master, and Rassilon. If it was down to me (and I was compiling a version for an audience of me) I would just edit Wilf out completely, along with the missile sequence, and tighten up a lot on some of the other slow bits. The Vinvocci could have teleported the Doctor back to Mansion Naismith, which would have got around the problem of the 105,000 miles and the Doctor’s impossible leap through the roof. The Doctor’s impending end could have come as a result of a stray shot from Rassilon’s glove. Then I’d have about a much more tightly-paced single 90-minute episode. (Of course that would not have satisfied the Beeb’s need for a double episode. Just as well I’m not the showrunner, then, isn’t it?)

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@rewvian Okay, so I just re-watched Part 1 (Part 2 tomorrow). Part 1 was – okay. I think mostly build-up for Part 2.

I do agree re the mentions of President Obama, I found them disconcerting. I’m usually uneasy about characterisations of actual people, even when they’re dead. I would rather a fictional generic US President had been used. Two episodes ahead there is, of course, Victory of the Daleks featuring Winston Churchill, and I’m a bit uneasy about that one too.

And as you noted, the Master does seem to have acquired some superpowers, I don’t know if that’s canon. But his powers don’t seem to include detecting a helicopter about to capture him (unless he knows and is playing along with it, but I see no indication of that in this episode).

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@nerys With respect, you don’t have to walk away from Doctor Who just because Disney have captured him. There’s always DVD’s (which is how I’ve followed Who for the last decade). Admittedly that may put you a year behind everyone else. I shop around on Trademe (our local NZ ‘ebay’), Ebay.com, ebay.com.au, ebay.co.uk and even Amazon to see where I can pick up episodes cheapest (and I do make sure any DVD player I buy is multizone). Even second-hand DVD’s are usually fine, unlike VHS tapes they don’t suffer wear from playing, rarely accidental scratches and the vast majority of second-hand ones I buy are in near-perfect order.

One advantage of Who is, it’s timeless. That is, an episode doesn’t lose its freshness just because it was made several years ago.

Forgive me if you knew all this already 🙂

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@rewvian Easy way to find out. One simply goes to Chrissie’s transcripts site at Chakoteya.net and does a word search in the relevant episode, and (in Part 2) here it is:

‘PARTISAN: (a woman) But we know his intention. He still possesses the Moment, and he’ll use it to destroy Daleks and Time Lords alike.’

Okay, so that’s cheating 🙂 Of course the Moment meant nothing to me at the time. Kudos to the Moff for picking up on that one.

I think Who fans are extremely lucky to have two such great resources as Tardis.fandom.com and Chakoteya.net. When I’m watching a new episode I frequently have the transcript open in my laptop, because I’m not very good at making out spoken dialogue if it’s rapid or there are other noises going on, so the transcript helps me to catch the bits I missed.

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Well, I decided (in amongst other things) to go back and re-watch from Eleventh Hour again. Because the Moff’s writing is just so enjoyable.
So I watched that yesterday and it was. Good I mean.

Watched The Beast Below today, I remember that as a fairly mediocre ep, but actually it’s darn good too. Sophie Okonedo was great as Liz 10 (only other thing I’ve seen her in was Aeon Flux, the movie – actually a movie I really like, with great production design – I believe it got some flak from fans upset that it was nothing like the cartoon series, which is understandable but in no way reflects on its quality as a SF movie). Back to The Beast Below, it offered a classic moral dilemma, both for Liz 10 and her government, and the Doctor. And there were things that Liz’s advisors weren’t telling her – for her own good? Things that she herself had decided she shouldn’t know about. I found this fascinating.

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@rewvian Oh yes, that was a pretty good episode now I recall it.
The voice-over was impressive – a very authoritative sounding voice. And the reveal of the narrator as Timothy Dalton (as Lord President) was no less impressive. I thought he was more imposing as Lord President than he was as James Bond.

I hadn’t realised that The Moment (the weapon in Day of the Doctor) originated in this episode – from Tardis.fandom.com’s synopsis: “On a devastated Gallifrey, on the last day of the Time War, the Time Lord Council reports that the Doctor still possesses “the Moment”. They have foreseen that he will use it to end the war by destroying the Daleks and Gallifrey alike.”

I thought poor mad Lucy acquitted herself well in destroying the Master at the start.

But I thought Wilf and his old folks’ intelligence network was pretty weak.

The spiky green Vinvocci were fun, specially Addams (Sinead Keenan), I loved her exasperated sarcasm. But I have ‘reality’ problems with the Vinvocci ship – if it’s 100,000 miles out in orbit, how on earth is it at risk from the Master’s earth-based missiles? And how long would it take to fly the Doctor back to Earth? I can’t help feeling the missile attack was just a pretext to give Wilf something useful to do. And the Doctor crashing back to Earth through the glass roof smack onto a stone floor – howcome he was in one piece, let alone alive, after that?

The final confrontation between the Doctor, the Master and the Time Lords was very well-staged and extremely dramatic. As was the Doctor and the Master collaborating to defeat Rassilon. Any time you have a three-way confrontation you get an interesting situation of shifting allegiances and this one was a classic.

And then, all resolved, and Wilf has to go and get himself trapped. I am not a fan of Wilf, he’s a liability not an asset. (The only times he’s been useful are weak and contrived). And in this case, a fatal liability. But also, I suppose, a necessary plot contrivance.

Anyway, pretty good episode, I think I’m going to have to jump back three eps and re-watch.

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@rewvian I’ll try to remember to remind you about Night of the Doctor.

You’re not far behind me. I just re-watched The Eleventh Hour last night. So even if you ease off the go-faster pedal a little, I think you’ll probably overtake me quite soon. But it absolutely doesn’t matter of course.

I’m happy to report that Eleventh Hour still retained its interest, even on my third viewing. I’d forgotten that the very first time the Doctor met (adult) Amy she hit him with a cricket bat.

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I just saw the news of the latest regeneration on our TV news. I wasn’t expecting *that*! They certainly managed to keep it quiet. Though on reflection, the presence of past Doctors around Who HQ probably isn’t so newsworthy, given the number of past-Doctor cameos over the years.

And yes I’m happy with that news. After reading Juniperfish’s review I’ll fork out my ill-gotten [ahem] hard-earned dollars for the DVD with a bit more enthusiasm instead of just an obsession to ‘complete the set’.

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@rewvian    I liked this episode.  Planet of the Dead because everybody who ever lived there – was dead.   Eaten by the Swarm.  For some reason I’m reminded of the exchange between Lister and Holly at the start of Red Dwarf –

“Where is everybody, Hol?”     “They’re dead, Dave.”   “Who is?” “Everybody, Dave.”    “What, Captain Hollister?”  “Everybody’s dead, Dave.”   “What, Todhunter?” “Everybody’s dead, Dave.”  ?What, Selby?”    “They’re all dead. Everybody’s dead, Dave.”   “Peterson isn’t, is he?”  “Everybody is dead, Dave.”  “Not Chen?”   “Gordon Bennett! Yes, Chen, everybody, everybody’s dead, Dave!”    “Rimmer?”    “He’s dead, Dave, everybody is dead, everybody is dead, Dave.”     “Wait. Are you trying to tell me everybody’s dead?”  “I wish I’d never let him out in the first place.”

I thought Lady Christina de Souza was great, I would have loved to see her as a regular Companion.    But I was notably pleased that at least  the Doctor connived at Lady Christina’s escape at the last minute.

I felt sad for the fly people, they acted honourably and deserved a better fate than to be eaten by the monsters.   And those monsters were horrific, probably the nastiest ones RTD ever conjured up.

I actually liked this one better than The Waters of Mars which followed.    It was lighter in tone (hard to credit when faced with a deadly enemy like the Swarm, but yes it was).

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@janetteb   I agree about the giant stompy robot, surely it would be remembered.   Doctor Who does tend to have a recurring  continuity problem with all the apocalyptic events that have happened to London and/or the world and seem to have been forgotten in later episodes.

I also tend to regard Christmas episodes as lightweight digressions, often not part of the regular Who timeline.   So my expectations of them tend to be not too high.   That said, some of them are pleasantly diverting – Last Christmas  (sarcastic elves, what’s not to love?), Doctor Mysterio was kinda fun, The Husbands of River Song…

I was just searching Youtube in a bid to find some of the ‘extras’ I’ve been recommending to Rewvian here when I tripped over a compilation of ‘best moments of Amy and the Doctor’ and it reminded me just how well-written and polished the Moff’s episodes were.   So where I’m going next is – back to Eleventh Hour and start watching through again, I think.   At some point Rewvian will overtake me, that’s okay, it’s not a race   🙂

@rewvian   When you get to The Day of the Doctor,   I strongly recommend you search out The Night of the Doctor  on Youtube first.   It sets the scene for DotD.

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@rewvian Well, I guess the most significant ‘extra’ mini-episode has to be ‘The Night of the Doctor’ which came just before Day of the Doctor. (It’s on Youtube). Not just for the Doctor’s overall storyline, but for a sight of Paul McGann as number 8. I’m sad he never got to play a regular Doctor in the TV series, I think he was perfectly cast as the Doctor.

But some of the others in Seasons 5 to 9 are well worth catching too.

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@rewvian    I took the title literally, I thought we were actually going to see the next Doctor.   Jackson Lake would have been an okay Doctor, I think.   But I would have absolutely loved to see Rosita as the next Companion, she was great!

As always, it seems, I have a minor nitpick, the Doctor going into action on a balloon.   How do you control where it goes?   (The answer of course is, you don’t).

By the way, are you catching the ‘extras’?   For example, Time Crash which came just before Voyage of the Damned.    From my recollection, there are quite a lot of assorted extra mini-episodes around the 5th to 7th seasons.    Tardis.fandom.com  has them listed in its ‘List of Doctor Who Episodes’, though not strictly in order, but it has the original airing dates which allows them to be put in order.   I think you can probably find some of them on Youtube or Vimeo or Dailymotion if you search.

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@janetteb    I’ll take note of that, see if I can pick up a copy of B5 (maybe Season 2?) to dip into.

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… and now, having read through all the comments on this page, it seems I had the same reaction as almost everybody else.   Too many story threads, too many loose ends, too much disaster going on.   There were some good stories in there, but the way they were split up made it hard to feel any emotional involvement.   Bel and Vinder, for example – perfectly good story, but at five minutes per episode, who cares?    This is one reason I never watch soaps – if there’s an interesting story thread, you only get five minutes of it interspersed with other stuff, then you have to wait a week for the next five minutes.   It’s just acutely frustrating.   And so it was in this series.

Yaz and her companions, stuck in 1904, were another sub-thread that could have been good – as a standalone episode.   (The Nepalese hermit for example, was a most amusing character).   But it all fell flat and felt hard to take seriously because it felt like an irrelevant diversion from the main story thread.

The Angels episode was by far the most satisfying of the series, partly because it was more coherent and focused (and less apocalyptic – and that is a statement that’s only valid in the context of this series!)    Possibly because it was co-written with a writer who was not Chibnall?    That sounds snarky but I mean it seriously.

The production values and the CGI were generally excellent, as we’ve come to expect these days.   (If only old Who had had one tenth the effects budget and one-tenth the image processing power).

I think, if one took all the raw footage, re-shot a few connecting scenes, and ruthlessly re-cut and re-shuffled the entire series, somebody could make six reasonably coherent linked episodes out of it.

cr

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@rewvian   I’m pretty sure there was a line of dialogue somewhere that said the Doctor and River Song met in reverse order – which somehow gave me the impression (wrongly) that River Song was travelling backwards in time – which is a logical impossibility.   (Why? – because such an impossible creature could only interact with anybody in the real world for an instant, not even a microsecond – so it’s impossible).   But this wrong impression misled me for quite a while.   What is the actuality? – that she travels forwards in time just like everybody else.   Occasionally (like the Doctor) she uses a Tardis or a vortex manipulator to jump to another time period, but once there, she’s back in normal time.

The order in which the Doctor and River meet is just chance, or Fate, or something – they could have met in any order.

At least, I think it’s like that.

cr

 

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@rewvian    I thought Midnight was a classic episode, one of RTD’s best, even though it made me uncomfortable and I didn’t find it as much fun to watch as some of the others.    But the reason for that was, that the biggest threat to the Doctor came from his fellow passengers.   It exposed one of the less creditable traits of the human species, the tendency to mob mentality.   And the Doctor’s blind spot, in that he assumed everyone would agree with him because he was the cleverest person on board.   Of course that is another human weakness, resenting anyone better than we are.

The threat was scary – hidden noises where there should be no life, always are.   (The Moff used the same trope in the base in ‘Listen’).   And I found it very dramatically effective that the person who finally saved the day was the stewardess, who was initially hostile to the Doctor.   And nobody even knew her name.

cr

 

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In the way of general rambling – it’s dawned on me that, with the end of the Flux series, I’ve finally reached the end of the long trek through nuWho that I started many months ago.   (OK there are a couple of specials still to go, but essentially this is the end of the line.  Until RTD gets going).   Makes me feel sort of lost, at a loose end.   What to watch next?    I did just try the first ten minutes of Game of Thrones (which I have never previously seen) but I found it too grim and humourless.   My idea of mediaeval is the Doctor riding into the arena on a tank.    🙂

I could re-watch Torchwood, or at least the first 3 seasons  (maybe not the two final seasons, well, did I mention I found Game of Thrones too grim?)

Battlestar Galactica, maybe, now that’s quite a saga.   (The ‘reimagining’ from 2004, not the original)   It had its moments, though I found the most interesting and sympathetic characters all turned out to be Cylon ‘skin jobs’.

cr

 

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@rewvian    I got quite confused watching this double episode about what was actually going on.   I think I eventually got it sorted out in my mind, though.

The Vashta Nerada were fortunate in a way that their forest ended up as books.   I suspect most forests end up as cardboard packaging or toilet paper.   Now that would make going to the bathroom truly scary, wouldn’t it?

River Song’s timeline caused me acute puzzlement due to a remark that she and the Doctor kept meeting in reverse order.   I thought, how is this physically or logically possible?   I resolved it to my satisfaction by reasoning that the Doctor hops around randomly in time in the Universe, for  example he might (from his point of view) first see you when you are old, then he might travel back in time to see you again when you are 10 years old.   But obviously from your point of view, you first met him when you were 10.

Similarly, River Song also hops around in time.   So the order of her encounters with the Doctor are essentially also random.   It just happens by chance (and not through some law of time travel) that their order of encounters are opposite to each other.

It’s not some strange property of  River Song’s timeline that she travels ‘backwards’, it’s just chance intersections of their timelines.    That’s the only way I can comprehend it, anyway.

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@rewvian   You would be correct that Clara and Bill didn’t have the best conclusions.  Or, maybe they did.   I’m being very cryptic here so as not to perpetrate spoilers.   Let’s say their departure was not without drama.

Even Marha, though she left the Doctor on good terms, ended up as a Unit (or was it Torchwood?) operative, I think we later got a brief glimpse of her fighting Sontarans, so her exit was not exactly peaceful.

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@rewvian   It will be interesting to see (in The Power of the Doctor) how Chibbers deals with having killed all the Daleks and Cybermen.  Though I guess it has been known for them to rebuild from next to nothing.   But – that quickly?

Re The Poison Sky, I think we all have our own set of features we’re sensitive to.   In my case, it’s physics, which is to say ‘alien tech’ is fine but Earth tech had really oughta be credible.   (Also, history, with particular reference to technological pioneers).   That’s just me.

@janetteb   I had assumed Tennant’s wedding speech was on Youtube or somewhere.   That’s not unthinkable, weddings are semi-public occasions and many people do put their weddings up on Youtube.   But I firmly believe people have an absolute right to keep their family functions as private as they want.

Rather bizarrely, at the height of Covid, some people put their funerals up on Youtube, (I damn sure wouldn’t!)  and the vagaries of the Youtube algorithm brought them up on Mrs D’s viewing list, she watched them with interest in her usual indiscriminate way.   At the moment the Algorithm is swamping us with Princess Di and Meghan Markle (yawn) and, a merciful relief, young southeast Asian women building shacks and living in the ‘bush’.

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