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@nerys   Unfortunately  Covid was a breeding ground for  anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists  and  bloody-minded obstinate people of all types who thought their individual rights trumped everyone else’s.   In fact, thought that they weren’t properly exercising their rights unless they trampled on somebody else.   The sort of mentality that thinks the Government must automatically be evil because it makes laws that infringe their ‘freedom’  (except of course when the laws favour them personally).

If there was some thing that needed to be done, which was obviously sensible and the only rational course of action, and would benefit everybody, you can guarantee that there would be at least one individual who sabotaged it out of sheer perversity.

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@nerys    Has Donald Trump sued the CBC for a billion dollars yet?

We know why he hates the BBC.

Given that Trump is the most loathsome excrescence ever to crawl on the face of the earth, with all the appeal of a Dot-and-Bubble slug  [five paragraphs of vitriol omitted], and lies brazenly and continually, any news organisation that reports his doings remotely fairly or factually is automatically his enemy.

I imagine the CBC must inevitably have reported on him in less than glowing obsequious terms, I’d be willing to bet that tRump or his minions are giving support to any ‘Defund the CBC’ movement, in exactly the same way they promote the far Right in Europe and badmouth the NHS.

Elbows up!

(Thais has been a party political broadcast on behalf of sanity and rationality   🙂

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@nerys I know the slugs ignored Lindy because they were working through in alphabetical order.
(As an aside, had the AI read the ‘Hitchiker’s Guide’ quintet, wherein Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, being immortal and bored, set out to insult every living thing in the Universe *in alphabetical order*?)

But, why do it that way. And why ‘build’ the slugs. I think it might be much more efficient, plot-wise, if the slugs were an existing species. The AI could have just decided to drop the defences and let them into the city. As for the alphabetical order, the AI could have modified the Slugs to obey its commands (much easier than creating a whole new species from scratch) in the same way that Man ‘created’ terriers and Pekinese and Alsatians. Could be that was what the Doc meant by ‘created’? 🙂 This would be consistent with the episode as screened.

An even easier way, though a lot less horrific, would be to just have everyone’s Dots zap them the way one zapped Ricky. Or even have their Bubbles guide them off a tall building.

My most-favoured way (and requiring least effort by the AI) would just be to have their Bubbles guide them into a Slug when their turn came up. Now that might lead to a few getting accidentally munched out of sequence but probably statistically insignicant. It would just require a small change in the script, though.

And finally, why bother with the Slugs? To inflict the maximum terror on the population? Okay, I can go with that, except – why hide the Slugs away from the average moron like Lindy in their Bubbles, why not let them know what was going to happen to them? And, even more, if bothering to do it in alphabetical order, WHY hide that from the victims? Wouldn’t it be far more terrifying if they knew their number was coming up?

So, my optimum woud be: the Slugs were a natural secies, the AI let them in, it shielded people in their Bubbles (but let them know their number was coming up so, nameless terror), when the time came their Bubble just guided them into the nearest Slug and dropped at the last moment to let them see what was happening to them.

So why on earth would the AI go that tortuous route in the episode to enact its hideous vengeance? Maybe it was just, like Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolongued, terminally bored.

I still love the ep. And those logical queries only arise on reflection, they don’t slap you repeatedly and continually in the face like, say, Kill the Moon.

@janetteb Agreed, RTD at his best.

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@nerys    I wrote a page, but most of it was just repetitive of my comments almost exactly a year ago.   So I won’t post them again.

I found it a very strong episode, even on repeat viewing.    I still think the Slugs evolved naturally on Finetime (or were already there, in the jungle, in which case of course the boatload of Finetime refugees is totally doomed).    The  Dot/Bubble  AI just co-opted them.   And I think my theory in my post of 18th November 2024 was a good one – that the AI just guided people into the slugs (in alphabetical order) by using their Bubbles.   Very simple, very easy, requires no super-advanced genetic manipulation.   I *know* the Doc says the AI ‘designed’ them, but then that was his deduction, the Doc isn’t infallible.

Oh, but then the Slugs actually ignored Lindy.   Bugger.  Another lovely theory bites the dust.   Okay, modified theory – the Slugs were an existing lifeform that the AI just modified so it had psychic control of them.   All it would need to do would be broadcast some ‘attack/retreat’ signal to specific Slugs that Lindy encountered.

How the slugs got to Homeworld we don’t know.   Maybe a Slug stowed away on one of the shuttles that brought entitled teenagers to Finetime and took 28-year-olds back.   Or we don’t know their life-cycle, maybe they didn’t eat quite all their victims, maybe they just planted an egg in some of them like the Aliens in Alien.   What happened to people who died on Finetime? – there must have been the occasional accident.   Presumably the bodies were shipped back to Homeworld for burial – and hatching.

The Slugs also reminded me a bit of The Day of the Triffids, that early sci-fi classic.    The Triffids were clumsy, slow-moving sentient plants, they could only catch humans because most of the population had been blinded (just like Finetimers in their Bubbles?)

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@nerys It was awful, but relatively brief, and left a lasting impression but no lasting scars. Far worse things have happened.
As a further aside, five years ago next Monday I was walking on a bush track near the beach and I came on a young dead woman hanging from a tree. It was a lovely morning and a beautiful spot, and she had friends who were looking for her, I just couldn’t imagine why anyone in apparently good health would want to do that. I’m ashamed to say I was inclined to the ‘just get over it’ sceptical school of thought about depression.

Well, since my little ‘episode’, I think I can now understand. If that feeling of hopeless, nameless dread that I briefly experienced was to persist, I’m not sure what I might do.  (I assume she was depressed). It is not a rational state of mind – as I said, I had no reason at all to be sad about anything, and I told myself that repeatedly, to no avail.

Didn’t Doctor Who do an episode about that?

@devilishrobby I think the alternate universe (or alternative future) is probably correct. That ‘Tardis perception filter’ idea has some credence, except I think it must have gone wrong and instead of protecting Ruby, it just warned off anybody who got too close to her. Umm, that could work, an over-protective defence mechanism. “You will be protected whether you like it or not.”
So many unknowns in this episode (which is not always a bad thing).

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@nerys    Well yes, Ruby was on the football pitch precisely in order to ‘target’ (or terrify) Roger ap H-bomb.   She actually got too close and had to back away to exactly 73 yards, and she knew her ‘follower’ would do the necessary.   Exactly what her follower could possibly say to get that result, I don’t know.   Possibly it wasn’t just words, maybe it also induced a psychic state akin to a ‘panic attack’.     (I – just once – experienced a panic attack, or maybe a brief intense depression.   It lasted a couple of hours and it was terrifying.   A feeling of being trapped and helpless.   All this, despite the fact that I knew I was in no danger, and the circumstances were all positive – weather was fine, I was staying with our daughter who I get on well with – there was absolutely no reason to feel depressed and that, in a way, made it worse, I was terrified that it might be permanent.   Eventually managed a short sleep and when I woke up the fear was gone and it was a lovely day.)    So maybe Ruby’s ‘follower’ had the power to induce that mental state in people.

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Yowza! That was some episode. I think this time round I could follow the plot better, or at least understand what was going on. But I’m still completely baffled as to why, and how.
Was the 73-yard woman Ruby all along? Or a holographic projection? And what could she possibly have said to make people run in terror, and keep (effectively) running, like Roger ap William?
And was the episode  end just ‘reset button’? Alternative future?

Anyway – cracking good episode. Now I think I’ll read some of the other comments and see if I can get a clue.

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@nerys   @whohar   I’ve quite intentionally never owned a DVD player that wasn’t multi-zone or region-free.   It allows me to buy DVD’s on Ebay without worrying what region they are (Region 1 is US, Region 2 is UK).   We’re Region 4 in Aust/NZ.   But obviously the potential selection is far wider if I’m not limited to Region 4, particularly for more obscure or rarer DVD’s  (though many of those are released as Region 0 i.e. region free).   Multizone players used to be twice the price (here in NZ) but the premium has steadily dropped (as it should, since mechanically they’re identical and I *think* that, firmware-wise, it’s actually just a matter of leaving out the region-checking code.   I could easily be worng about that though).

These days Blu-ray is becoming almost the standard and DVD’s harder to get, which is very annoying since Blu-ray is harder to ‘hack’ my laptop to play, even with a Blu-ray drive fitted.   So I do have one standalone multi-zone Blu-ray player.   I still buy DVD where possible, but the latest Dr Who series was only available in Blu-Ray last time I looked.

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@nerys     It just occurred to me that King Goblin (aka Jabba) was an acute case of ‘fat-shaming’.    🙂

‘Boom’ also had a song (though mercifully no dancing, what with landmines around and all…)

I’m pretty sure Who had songs on occasion before.    There was the Dickensian Christmas one with the shark.   And Rings of Akhaten.    And probably many others that I can’t bring to mind.

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@whohar    Oh, thanks for reminding me of that.   It was of course under RTD’s oversight, but how could I have forgotten?

 

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@nerys   I finally got to it.   And it was as good as I remembered.

Moff was back with a vengeance, no-holds-barred, and taking aim at (in no particular order)  the military-industrial complex, unchecked capitalism, holy wars, blind faith, mealy-mouthed corporate-speak, and making all decisions on a totally commercial basis (there must be a word for that but I can’t recall it).    Even commercial profit-driven healthcare refusing coverage got an implied sideswipe.

I may have missed something.   He did relent slightly at the end when he conceded that faith could have its merits in some situations.

He also invented intelligent, migrating land mines.   A step up from the ‘hand mines’ of – was it Sorcerer’s Apprentice?

Also, he kept piling on the tension as every factor – the mine, Splice’s arrival, Vater’s hologram triggered by Splice, Mundy’s arrival, Canto shooting Ruby – added further complications to his predicament.   Just as he looks to be surmounting one obstacle another appears.

I’ll bet that when RTD invented the Villengard arms factories (in The Doctor Dances) he had no inkling of where the Moff would go with it.

Excellent stuff.

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@nerys    Every long-running series does a song and dance number, just as they all do a Western. Eventually.

So, when Ruby was playing the piano on the rooftop, where did the string accompaniment come from? Inquiring nitpicky little minds want to know.

Maestro didn’t do anything for me, as a villain. Just got no charisma. If the character was supposed to be quite devoid of any interesting qualities, maybe that fitted.    And I found the magic chords a little – unconvincing.   Also, they must often have been invoked, quite by chance.

There was *much* better music than anything featured in this episode, even in 1963. Though, to be fair, not pop music, that didn’t start to get really good for several years, under the influence of the Beatles. (In, of course, my expert opinion). But plenty of catchy light classical or even folk music. Gilbert & Sullivan for instance.

Never mind. Boom is next.

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@nerys @ps1l0v3y0u Space Babies (the title sort of says it all, doesn’t it?) Damn, do I *have* to watch it? Well, maybe I’ll just skip-watch to see if there were any developments in the long-term story.

OK, I liked the little joke about the Butterfly Effect. (Did they have butterflies in the Jurassic? Does it even matter?)

Um, snot monsters and talking babies running a spaceship. I’m outta here. Long-term developments be damned, I can skim Tardis.fandom.com for that.    What’s next – The Lost Chord.    That’ll do.

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@nerys   Whoo!   You’re racing through the DVD’s, aren’t you?  Up to the Sutekh thing already.

I’ve been out of action (and mostly, contact) the last few days, since I munged my main laptop, the one with the DVD drive and my email client configured.   I’m just sorting a newer one (but I still have to configure the email, for now I just have to use my ISP’s webmail so I’m pretty out of touch).   Plus the water here is lovely (which is insane for November!) so I’m kinda busy.   But I did see a comment from you about 73 yards, so I resolved to binge-watch Season 14 and catch up.   But as you’re up to Sutekh, no chance.   Never mind, I can try to follow closely enough to follow your comments.

Yes, the song-and-dance was bizarre and incongruous.   I did find the change in Carla after Ruby disappeared, very disconcerting.   Overall, I didn’t hate the ep, didn’t love it, there was enough to keep me watching.

Herewith my brief comments –

That Christmas tree that lands on Davina reminds me of the berserk one that menaced Rose’s mum in an early nuWho episode. (Wasn’t that the one with the killer Santas?)

And baby getting abducted by goblins – this is straight out of ‘Labyrinth’. And the flying ship was reminiscent of Captain Shakespear’s lightning-catching schooner cutter in Stardust (though with a far less attractive crew).

I found the song a bit ‘off’. Also bizarrely incongruous (if that has any meaning in an episode like this). Of course the goblin song-and-dance is also out of Labyrinth, but nobody here has the charisma of David Bowie.    So then they sing to Jabba and the goblins sing along and they escape on a convenient rope.

Back in the flat – incredibly slow to notice that Ruby has disappeared. This Doctor is not really very sharp, is he? And it seems somehow Ruby has vanished from existence, could the goblins do that?

So the Doctor zaps back in time to rescue baby Ruby, and his gloves give him the weight to pull the goblin ship down? How? All they do is transfer his weight into one (or two) gloves, he said so.  And then after Jabba gets the jab and the ship disintegrates, the Doctor falls at least 50 feet and lands on his feet, without breaking anything. This is Kill the Moon levels of physical absurdity.

Anyway, we get the classic look-inside-then-walk-all-round the Tardis, just like Rose did.   So, happy ending (probably obligatory at Christmas, but I didn’t mind that).

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@janetteb   @ps1l0v3y0u  @whohar    @janetteb     Like Janetteb, I found Chibs’s rewriting of the whole Who timeline too much to take.   ‘Future’ events (by which I mean ones the Doctor’s timeline hasn’t reached yet) can do what they like, but ‘past’ events had better fit into the sequence or they just confuse and annoy me.   Which am I supposed to believe, what I ‘knew’ before or the incompatible version I’ve just been presented with?  I contrast the way Moff eased the War Doctor into the sequence without breaking anything, with Doctor Ruth (Fugitive of the Judoon).  Like, that was an intriguing story (if reminiscent in some ways of The Family of Blood) and I liked Ruth, not least for her ruthlessness (you are permitted to groan), but she should never have happened.

So currently I’m trying to find a rational way to believe that most of Chibz ‘didn’t happen’.    I’ll let you know when I’ve succeeded.   🙂

Whohar – I think the reason Chibz gets a ‘free pass’ from other showrunners is just politeness or ‘professional courtesy’.   You don’t badmouth your fellow workers even if you think they’re crap.

Timeless Child could have been about some other character altogether.  We all know Time Lords are ruthless, as was well established in [the episode with Timothy Dalton] and in Hell Bent.   (In fact, in that one, the Doctor was pretty unforgiving to the – Lord President, was it?   But since the LP had just tried to kill the Doctor as many times as necessary (‘I’ve got all day’) I guess that was understandable).   But anyway, as I said, the Timeless Child didn’t have to be Doctor Who.   Heck, the Doctor could even have gone back and rescued TTC from Tecteun – which would have made a nice anomaly to sort out, but could have been done.    (Apologies if I’ve got any wires crossed there, my usual laptop with its stash of Who data is – unavailable for reference.  Which is to say, I installed a new version of Debian on it and now it won’t boot off the hard drive.   All my data is still there, I can boot off a USB key and see it, so the hard drive’s okay, maybe I screwed something in the BIOS or maybe it’s the zombie ghost of Windows resurrecting itself.   So I’m on a backup laptop and some serious geeky hacking is in the offing.   The Church on Ruby Road will just have to wait.)

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@translatorcircuit    By a ‘small’ episode I mean any that doesn’t have a cast of thousands and where the peril is focussed on the Doctor or a small group, not some universe-ending threat.   Far more credible

What do you mean, “of course Midnight was total crap”?   Where did the ‘of course’ come from?   Your opinion does not constitute a universal truth.   And for my money, the ‘Timeless Child’ storyline was just Chibs crapping all over continuity, it certainly didn’t revitalise Who.   But that’s just my opinion.

By ‘The Wire’ I meant of course The Idiot’s Lantern, which I found very ho-hum.   And of course when I said ‘Moonlight’ I meant ‘Midnight’, I could blame autocorrect except that my laptop doesn’t have it.

It would seem our tastes are fundamentally opposed.

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@nerys   (I’m just coming up to a re-watch of this – after I do The Church on Ruby Road).

The Babies reminded me quite strongly of the goblins in Labyrinth, except not so well done and they didn’t have David Bowie to give it some class.   Or maybe evil Muppets.

Oh, hang on, is this the right episode I’m thinking of?   (Quick frantic google for Tardis.Fandom.com).   Oh, it is The Church on Ruby Road I’m thinking of.   Kinda shows how much impact Space Babies had on my mind.   Sadly.

@ps1l0v3y0u   Um, well after Space Bubbies came The Devil’s Chord which – if my flaky memory is even remotely to be trusted – was another ho-hum episode (or maybe just not to my idiosyncratic tastes).   But then – Boom!   I mean, literally, the episode Boom.   Explosively better.   Could it – just possibly  – be the fact that it was written by Moff have something to do with it?

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@ps1l0v3y0u     The Toymaker’s pseudo-German was really annoying at first.   I think he dropped it later in the episode (thankfully).      What made the Toymaker so hard to combat, I think, was that he didn’t have plans for world domination or any particular motive, he was just having malicious fun.

Mitchell & Webb had some classics, my favourite is ‘Brain Surgeon’, not least because it stands one convention on its head:     In most sketches, much of the humour comes from an unexpected punchline that inverts everything.   In Brain Surgeon, you know exactly what the punchline is going to be, to the point where you’d be really frustrated if it didn’t happen, yet when it does it’s still funny and immensely satisfying.

That gold tooth that was left behind when the Toymaker blinked out of existence – very reminiscent of the Master’s signet ring from Last of the Time Lords.   Which implies that he will be back, some time, somehow.

 

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@janetteb    I thoroughly agree about the ‘small’ episodes being some of the best.   (Blink, Moonlight, Listen, the Van Gogh one, The Doctor’s Wife, Boom, even Fugitive of the Judoon).   There were many ho-hum small episodes too, of course (The Wire, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship).   But I think being small gives more opportunity to make the characters interesting and the story ‘relatable’.    Opening it up to universe-ending threats loses the personal touch and the threat overshadows the story, and when the ‘good guys’ succeed there’s a certain credibility gap – how could the Doctor and a few friends overcome such a massive threat?

Certainly, if there’s a new showrunner, I would like to see RTD writing a few episodes and I’d love to see Moff doing so.

For the future, I do hope Billie Piper has a decent role to play.   With some (most) of the pre-Gap companions who have had cameos, it feels like they’re only there for fan service.   Even Ace, who I hugely like in her old episodes with Seven.   But Billie is still a lot younger so she fits the part better.   (I know I’m being shockingly age-ist there, I think at my age I’m entitled to be  🙂

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@ps1l0v3y0u   Did you get to re-watch this as you threatened?   🙂

I just managed it.   Not a lot of comments.   The Toymaker is so annoying I want to slap him.

The Vlinx is absurd, a Disney creature?   Never satisfactorily explained.

The Toymaker talked of doubling the Doctor again and again.   Reminds me of a Farscape ep where the villain-of-the-week was on an abandoned Leviathan where he kept doubling the crew so he could sustain his supply of brains to eat.   (Anyone who thought Farscape was for kiddies because the aliens were done by Henson of Muppet fame were – sadly misled).   So he doubled the hero Crichton into two individuals who both thought they were the original.   Episode ended with the two Crichtons sitting with their favourite gun on the table between them, grimly playing Rock-Paper-Scissors – and tying, every time.   (Because of course they would).      The Ncuti-doctor and the Tennant-doctor seem to be getting on better than that, but there’s a certain awkwardness and a hint of future clashes in the scene in their Tardis.   So then Ncuti clones the Tardis  (I’d forgotten that).   Nice solution to the problem.

Don’t know if any other Who episode dealt with the issue of cloning.   Oh yes of course, the Zygon episodes.   Particularly, of course, Osgood.   Except that one Osgood was a human and the other a Zygon, and they knew which (though they weren’t telling).   How far Zygon-Osgood became humanoid by a sort of habituation over time, we don’t know.

And of course Bill, who was replicated by the puddle at the end of The Doctor Falls – which the Toymaker mentioned.

And a number of Dalek ‘skin jobs’ (a term I borrow from Battlestar Galactica), such as Darla (Asylum of the Daleks) and Tasha Lem  (The Time of the Doctor).

The final scene is kinda sappy (Disney?!) but kinda nice.   I most certainly did like it that the Doc had been giving Rose (2) the odd trip in the Tardis.    So this Doctor seems to have retired.   Will he die of old age eventually?   Does bigeneration preclude him from future regenerations?   Don’t know.

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@janetteb When I was six or seven I used to walk a mile to school, half of it on a path across a ‘common’ – a patch of uncultivated land covered in bushes and trees. (I went back last year and it’s all still there). From about ten I used to bike across a different common to the station to catch the school train. Once I rode to Salisbury – about 30 miles each way – through minor roads using an Ordnance Survey 1″ map to find my way.

About 11, I went for a hiking holiday in the Peak District, in a small organised group – which involved my parents putting me on the train at Bournemouth West for Derby. I had to find my own way to the hostel in Derby for the start. And back, from Sheffield. I suppose the locals must have talked with a Whitdoc accent (hey, I just managed to work in a Who reference, didja notice? 🙂 but they seemed normal to me. And the following year, to the Rhine valley.

My parents were okay with all this, they may have had misgivings but they probably thought it was normal – as it was, for the time. In fact they suggested the hiking tours.

I don’t know if it’s different these days, either the world has become a much more dangerous place or (apparently) parents are much more paranoid.

By the way, global warming is definitely a thing around here. Today I went for good a walk on the beach at low tide down by the harbour and the water was almost warm – I eventually managed to find a spot where the mud was not too oozy and went in for five minutes without undue suffering. (I like the water, but not the cold variety). Normal years, I never go in before December at the earliest, often not before Christmas.

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@ps1l0v3y0u   That Winter Palace / 1916 scenario could have been developed into quite a good episode all on its own.   They certainly spent enough on the impressive and elegant set ( /CGI?)    But as it turned out, it was just a convenient location for the Doctor’s involvement to happen.   None of the (historical) events of 1916 even got a mention.

I did notice the Dalek and the Cyberman exchanging a look.   I know how they felt.

The Qurunx on the dead (?) planet could also have made the foundation for a complete episode.   But I have the feeling Chibs has more ideas than he knows how to deal with.

Well I think I’ve contributed enough column-inches on this (if you look up-thread).

 

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@translatorcircuit    I tend to agree with you that goblins and babies are better left to fantasy.

But ’73 yards’?   Lighten up.  I assume you’re in the UK (correct me if I’m wrong) but don’t they still use Miles?   I’m in New Zealand, we went metric 40 years ago but I’m still bilingual (or should that be binumeral?).   The US and Canada still use feet and miles, aviation still universally uses altitude in thousands of feet, and knots ffs, what is the point in being deliberately obscurantist about units a substantial part of the world uses?

(The one unit I will not use is that one beloved of TV reporters, ‘football fields’, and its volumetric equivalent ‘Olympic swimming pools’.   So far as I know those have never been properly defined and since I never watch either football (of any sort) or swimming races, they leave me completely clueless as to the unit being referred to.   A ‘cricket pitch’, on the other hand, I know is 22 yards or 66 feet or a chain, so I’m OK with that, but I still feel that’s a bad unit as many people don’t follow cricket.   Just as well they never use cricket grounds).

 

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@camdudetenger2018    Yeah, see the link in Translatorcircuit’s post.

@translatorcircuit  @ps1l0v3y0u  @whohar

“However, Kate Phillips, chief content officer at the BBC, previously said the show will continue on the BBC “with or without” Disney.   She said at this year’s Edinburgh TV Festival: “Any Whovians out there, rest assured – Doctor Who is going nowhere.”

‘Going nowhere’ – what a curiously ambiguous turn of phrase  🙂

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@ps1l0v3y0u   I know Chris Boucher mainly from Blakes 7.   I remember that series mainly for quarries, sets that were reasonably convincing, weapons that weren’t, and some delightful dialogue, often featuring Avon.   But the line I best remember is down to Servalan:   “And, I want a gun.”  Avon:  “We only have one gun.”  Servalan (patiently):   “I only *want* one.”

 

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@ps1l0v3y0u     Still a bizarre selection of venues.   Shrewsbury, Dorking, Crawley and Winchester.   (I had to look up where Crawley was, I had an idea it was somewhere near Woking  🙂    Maybe it’s where theatres can be hired at a reasonable price.

Umm, Crawley.   Name rings a bell.   He was the demon in Neil Gaiman’s ‘Good Omens’, played on TV by none other than – David Tennant.   Coincidences keep happening…

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Well, I just rewatched it.   Didn’t make notes this time, just enjoyed the episode.

The ship was absolutely beautiful (I know I said that before, but it still is awesome, even on repeat viewing).   CGI well done, and very convincing.   Nice contrast with the rusty old robot.   Don’t know why it had to reconfigure, maybe to maximise the self-destruct effect, but it looked amazing so I’m not quibbling.

And the walking through corridors was genuinely scary.   Maybe not quite as scary as the moonbase in ‘Listen’, but I could still feel the hairs rising on the back of my neck.

And a good puzzle to go along with it.   I couldn’t tell who was who at times.

Those – things – remind me of the creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions in Discworld, half-formed shapeless things trying to claw their way into this reality.

The highlight of recent seasons, as far as I’m concerned, up there with Boom and  Dot and Bubble.

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@ps1l0v3y0u    @janetteb   @whohar

Yes I did wonder about the Daily Star.   Would it be unkind to compare it to those well-known organs the Weekly World News and the Onion?

I did wonder a bit about performing a ‘radio play’ on stage, maybe it was some sort of misquote and the play is about three actors voicing a radio play?   And I also wondered about the slightly bizarre selection of venues.  Dorking?  Seriously?

Anyway, I quoted it because it mentions two Doctors.   I note that Radio Times’ version of the same article doesn’t mention them.   I’m guessing that some freelance journalist (or maybe Peter Purves) conducted a longer interview and then sold it to as many outlets as he could, or is that not how journalism works?   (I really don’t know).

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@janetteb  @whohar  @ps1l0v3y0u    Just what is the relevance of Peter Purves?   (Aside from being a ‘Doctor Who legend’ according to the article).   The world is full of guys who worked on [something]   x decades ago, who would love to cash in on their past association.       Here’s the link Radio Times gave, by the way:

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/showbiz/doctor-who-legend-doesnt-like-36085688

The world is also full of journalists who want to make a sensation out of anything.   As janetteb said, clickbait.

“When Doctor Who started it was a children’s programme, we had a weekly cliffhanger and it was simple.”   Well yes, and if it had stayed that way I doubt if any of us would be here.   The world is also full of people – including fans – who want the next series to be ‘just like the last one, but new’.

(I wonder if I could ring up some journalist on some dull news day and get a headline  “Dentarthurdent doesn’t like Star Trek”?)

According to the Daily Star  (is that a real paper?   I’ve never heard of it)  “Peter is teaming up with fellow Doctor Who legends Colin Baker and Tom Baker for his next project. The trio are starring together in a production of A Christmas Carol.  It’s a radio play that sees Peter play Charles Dickens while Colin is Ebenezer Scrooge and Tom is Jacob Marley. They’re touring the country from November 7 with shows in Shrewsbury, Dorking, Crawley and Winchester.”

The article ends with ‘And he is even up for returning to Doctor Who for a cameo if he’s asked. He said: “I would love a cameo. But it won’t happen.”’     I think he might be right about that, now.

[/rant]

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Oh well, here I am, back again in the age of RTD2.

And here we go, retconning Donna. I guess if we can retcon Rose, we can retcon Donna. Way back when I watched ‘Xena’, it was a standing joke that nobody ever stayed dead in that series. I guess modern Who is pretty much the same. I don’t mind.

I guess Donna was never actually dead, just lost her memory.

You know, I’m surprised but it was almost a relief to be watching David Tennant again, and not subconsciously ‘making allowances’ for the Doctor. To be fair, for a long while I disliked Donna, based entirely on her first appearance (who says first impressions don’t matter?) when she berated a grieving Doctor who had just lost Rose. But now I don’t mind her at all. Oh, and directed by Rachel Talalay. The old firm’s back. 🙂

And this is quite an ingenious tweak, the Doctor recognises Donna (but Donna of course doesn’t know him) and the name ‘Rose’ stuns him but of course it’s a different Rose.

The rocket (and the monsters) look really comic-book. Was this RTD gently taking a poke at the ‘Disney’ connection (or at the fans who feared it?) I do have to say Henson’s Creature Shop produced rather more convincing aliens for Farscape. Still, the Meep is rather insufferably cute. So it was a nice moment when it turned into a savage villain. Farscape would have approved.

I’m going to be politically incorrect here and say that UNIT’s scientific advisor – in a wheelchair in a disaster zone – really strains credulity. It drops me out of the story. Only slightly mitigated when her wheelchair turns out to be armed. But it would have been more convincing if they’d given it a bit more bulk to hide the weapons.

The aliens speak English. Was this a side-effect of the Tardis being parked nearby?

I very much like the way the Sonic Screwdriver creates a virtual flat touchscreen for the Doctor to view. Oh, and it’s a proper techy gadget now, not a thing that looks like a crudely made sex toy. It can also generate a bulletproof portable blast screen. Handy gadget.

Howcome the UNIT troops never seem to notice the Doctor? Does he come with his own ‘somebody else’s problem’ field?

‘Brandish the gravity stanchions’. Ouch!

I have to say all those burning cracks radiating out from the steelworks were way OTT. That was a case where less would have been more – credible. (A steelworks? In London? Where?)

Oh dear, and Donna and the Doctor in the spaceship are now gabbling more technobabble than Whitdoc ever produced in her lifetime. Aaargh! All credit to Tennant and Tate for not bursting out laughing in the middle of this nonsense. And then all the cracks close up. Seriously?

And oh dear, Rose is technobabbling a little too. Pity, I liked Rose.

So somehow Donna was saved by sharing the power overload with her daughter. This is the lamest retcon ever. I’ll kind of overlook it because I like the characters – even Donna. And even Sylvia now looks favourably on the Doctor – this is probably the wildest retcon in the episode… And then Donna and Rose can just choose to let all that power go, just like that – howcome Donna couldn’t have done that all by herself decades ago? (With a bit of snark about the Doc being thick ‘cos he’s a man – I can see why that annoyed some people).

I still reckon it was mean of Donna to go off with the Doctor and not even let Rose see the Tardis. So then Donna gets to see the new Tardis interior but Rose doesn’t? Incidentally, it’s a thousand times better than Whitdoc’s Crystal Grotto of Schlock. Though (IMO) not as good as Capaldi’s. But a lot bigger (the budget has gone up). Another minor quibble – howcome the Doctor is seeing it for the first time? Did it wait until he was out in London before redecorating?

And the moment the Doctor finds the coffee machine we KNOW what Donna is going to do.

Well, that was reasonably entertaining. I suspect it had as many faults as a Chibz episode, and even more technobabble. It will never make my top 20 episodes (maybe not my top 100) but it was okay in a sort of Aliens of London way.    And I did like Rose.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Looking at the next ep – Power of the Doctor – the Daleks were going to flood the Earth with lava, and even more improbable scenario.   They had a big drill in a volcano and were going to let the lava out   🙂     Of course, if they *had* managed to cause a few massive volcanic eruptions, it’s possible the dust clouds in the atmosphere might have wiped out all life on Earth by freezing, that would be a much more credible doomsday scenario.

But anyway, they were defeated by Ace and her baseball bat (and also her Nitro-9)

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@whohar   World Enough and Time was a genius move from Moff as far as Cybermen went.  As far as I was concerned , the earliest Cybermen (way back in old Who) were the lamest most unconvincing monsters ever – all too painfully obviously just extras in suits.   It took Moff’s genius to turn that liability into a horrific ‘reality’ – that the earliest Cybermen *were* in fact just slightly modified people in suits.   Like, I guess that was implicit all along, but whether it was the build-up that Moff gave us, or whether the costumes in World Enough were subtly but significantly better, or a bit of both, I’m not sure.

There was a BBC comedy special which included Jonathan Pryce (as the Master) and Rowan Atkinson and Joanna Lumley (the first female Doctor?) that riffed on that going-back-and-change-things, as each one went back further than the other to ‘fix’ things.   Except that something went wrong for the Master each time and he had to come back the ‘long way round’.  Or something like that, I’m a bit hazy on the details.

I am absolutely sure, in NewWho, there was one occasion when the Doctor timed his arrival to within minutes if not seconds.   Presumably on that occasion the Tardis concurred.   But I can’t bring it to mind, not even which Doctor it was.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@whohar   @janetteb    Acutely observed, Whohar.   Usually the Tardis has just been transport to where (or when!)  the story is going to happen.   It’s a lot simpler to write that way.   (More conventional stories occasionally have ‘flashbacks’ to show us what happened previously, but of course the characters in ‘then’ have no foreknowledge of what is going to happen ‘now’).

There is a fundamental incompatibility between possessing a time machine and linear storytelling.   Which is, if the hero walks into an ambush ‘now’, WHY doesn’t he just hop into his time machine and go back to yesterday and warn himself.   Of course this introduces a massive problem to do with causation and the nature of reality, which is why most writers tend to rule it out with ‘not crossing the timelines’ or such.   Only Moff has cared to tackle that head-on, sometimes by sweeping the paradox under the carpet.   I think he managed to adroitly avoid the paradox in Blink.

And he addressed the phenomenon of time dilation in a strong gravitational field head-on, in World Enough and Time.   I was baffled by the timeline at first, only on subsequent viewings did I realise it was accurate.   For that, I can almost forgive him the sight of Cybermen crashing through steel floors.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u      Just noticed your comment in the  ‘Sea Devils’ thread, re Larry and Sally.   I think their relationship was handled very well and subtly.   It was obvious they got on well together, there was a good chance they were a couple, but that’s all it needed.   I can quite happily imagine a romantic attraction there without needing it to be spelled out in words of one syllable.

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@ps1l0v3y0u    Well, the story has so many plot holes it would sink faster than a rowing boat in a hurricane.   (And yes I’d picked up on the magnetic poles thing.   The Earth has had the poles flip within recent (geological) times, and I don’t think there’s any geological evidence of the entire Earth being flooded.   Why am I more tolerant of this than Kill the Moon?   Probably because this is nearer to fantasy  (pirates and seamonsters) while KTM tried to pretend to be based on hard science and technology (in every respect except the egg of course) and failed hideously at ever turn.   Also, because the characters (in Sea Devils) were likeable, in distinct contrast to Lundvik and the appalling Courtney.   And Doctor 12’s totally out-of-character behaviour.)   Actually, I’m not sure there would be any way to ‘flood the Earth’ other than reducing all the land to a perfectly round sphere.   Which I don’t think has happened in all of geological history.

So, back to the episode.  I suppose I could rate it (in quality) roughly equal to Curse of the Black Spot.   With the difference that this was one of Chibz’ better episodes and Black Spot was one of Moff’s poorer ones.

I think Sea Devils was rescued by the director and the cast – the very atmospheric opening scene for example, and the cast were easy to like.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u    Of course!   Billy got her phone number when he was young and cheeky.   Calling her ‘Gorgeous girl’ evidently worked.    As he said, “It was raining when I met you” and she said “It’s the same rain.”  (And she was quite literally correct).

For some reason I always choke up when I hear that line.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@nerys   You’re probably right about the Doctor saving Caecilius.   My memory of that episode isn’t precise.   It was not a terribly convincing reason, but I suppose Moff needed something to explain why Capaldi reappeared.

I don’t think Karen Gillan’s reappearance was ever ‘explained’, though.

Freema Agyeman’s cousin was in UNIT (?) in ?Doomsday, if I recall correctly.

Are there any other minor characters who later took prominent roles and had to be ‘explained’ away?

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u      I thought I had the timeline of Blink! straight in my mind, but now I’m not so sure.   I’m pretty sure the Doctor went to Wester Drumlins because it was dangerous and because he’s the Doctor.    Where he and Martha got zapped by an Angel, and the cops discovered the Tardis and towed it away.   (Maybe they thought it was one of theirs that had been stolen).

How did Sally know to go and see old Billy in hospital?   I’m sure it was covered but I can’t remember how.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Well, I just re-watched this episode again, a year later.   I wrote down my lengthy comments on it, but reading this page, they’re almost exactly like what I said a year ago, so I won’t post them.   Just a couple of points that I didn’t mention before.

The Qurunx is new, and quite cool.  But *of course* the Doctor knows exactly what it is, as with every new monster.

“Have you any idea what’s going on in outer space in 1916 right now?” The Doctor seems to have no idea how self-contradictory that is. When you have a time machine, ‘right now’ is meaningless.

Umm, so the Daleks are going to drill a hole under a Bolivian volcano and ‘flood the world with lava’? That’s almost Kill-the-Moon bad. I mean, scientifically bad. One small hole isn’t going to do a thing. The Deccan Traps (largest lava flow I can think of) took a million years to form. And, trying to stop a volcano erupting by solidifying its lava outpouring is how you get Krakatoa.

As I noted before, it’s just like the most cringily unconvincing scene from Journey’s End, how to fly the Tardis by committee. Aka ‘give everybody a turn’. Why, when Yaz was recently managing to fly it by herself? And in the very next scene, Yaz is again flying it by herself.

So there we are, that’s a few nits.   And there were a lot of nits to pick.   There were also quite a collection of good bits, though some of them seemed more chosen for effect than narrative necessities.   The Winter Palace in 1916 – why??

There was probably enough there for several episodes.   If someone had edited Chibz’ script – hard – probably two or three quite good episodes might have emerged.

Oh, and somebody please whack Chibz over the knuckles with a ruler every time he starts to type the word ‘Cyber…’

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u    Oops!  For ‘Laura’ read ‘Sarah’.   Dunno where I got that from.

I’m not querying the Doctor’s presence at Wester Drumlins, he may have been in pursuit of the Angels.   Just, how he knew to write ‘Duck’ on the wall – and then paper over it, unless some subsequent tenant did it? – and that Sally would uncover it just in time to save herself.   That may have been one of the few instances of Moff sacrificing causality for dramatic effect.

It didn’t even occur to me that Sally might have thought Larry was Kathy’s boyfriend.   That might have been a reasonable inference, but I think it became apparent quite quickly he was her brother?   Anyway, all guys are likely to wander around naked if they have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and there’s no strangers in the house, don’t they?   So not particularly weird.   Whereas Nick was truly strange.

Yes Blink was genius level.

I don’t think Sally was ever a rejected Companion, I don’t think she was ever a candidate.   She only met him the once, right at the end of the episode.   Having got zapped back to ?? by the Angels, without their Tardis, all the Doctor (and Martha) could do was give Billy a message to put on DVD’s (like a message in a bottle) in the hope that someone would find the Tardis and send it back to them.   Which Sally and Larry did.

The Ravagers – were they two of the Flux villains?, I forget.   If they’re the pair I’m thinking of, and the Shakri was the Power of Three villain, then yes they do feel similar in my mind.

The Silurian two parter was very slow, could indeed have been better as one ep.   I kept waiting for some consequence of the Doctor and Amy watching themselves from a distance, but I’m not sure it was ever referred to again?   But yes, the Silurians were much better modelled than the Sea Devils.   And Dinosaurs – what peeved me most was Nefertiti meekly going off with Great White Hunter in the end  (and I’m probably as close to Male Chauvinist Pig as I am to ‘woke’, but that got up my nose).

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@thane16  syzygy   I’d agree, soaps are likely very difficult to write well.   Not least because they come out every night (some of ’em, at least).  How can anyone keep coming up with fresh original dialogue on that schedule?

And then, each of the half-dozen storylines gets cut up into 5-minute chunks which get screened intercut with the other 5-minute storyline chunks, once per episode.   How can any viewer become engrossed in the story under those conditions?

And the format then inescapably leads to the story becoming, either melodramatic, or banal.   Since there isn’t time to develop any real ‘atmosphere’ around each 5-minute chunk of story.

That’s my 10c anyway.  I could be all wrong about soaps since I ‘never’ watch them.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u   Well I’m perfectly happy at the prospect of a Billie Doc.   And, as you say, she’s older – which is a good thing in my estimation.   A bit of maturity helps to enhance the Doctor’s credibility, as far as I’m concerned.  20-something Billie was great as Rose.   I think she would have been much too young to be the Doctor at that age.

But we shall see.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@whohar    I don’t think it matters in the slightest that we don’t know who the ‘current’ Doctor is.   He’s a time traveller, can there even be said to be a ‘current’ Doctor?   As you said, the non-TV material is free to use any incarnation they wish.

Obviously, my viewpoint is totally different to yours.   But then, I was always an asynchronous Who fan, by which I mean I was watching the stories months or even years behind the current latest.   Doesn’t matter.   It might matter if they’re out of sequence, but Who was never a current-events show.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@pa1l0v3y0u   I agree that some Who eps are plotted with perfect logic.   (I’ve never tried to analyse it episode by episode, I hope there would be a large number that do hold up).   As an example of excellence, Blink – in spite of its complications – fitted exactly.   (Well,  I’ve only found one loose end – when Sally Sparrow uncovers the Doctor’s message ‘Duck’ under the wallpaper.   How could the Doctor predict the timing of that?)   But in all other respects, by the third time I watched it and got things straight in my mind, everything in the jigsaw fitted perfectly.   But I would still have been very tolerant of loose ends, it just felt good.

As for the romantic couple, Sally Sparrow was immediately appealing (all credit to Carey Mulligan), and Larry is quite passable (notwithstanding that the first time we encounter him he has no trousers).   Quite credible that Sally and Larry might take over the DVD shop.   In contrast, Laura was okay, nothing remarkable (except, living a rather sad existence), but Nick was truly weird.   Living in a  storage unit with mementos of past short-term girlfriends (but which of the one-night stands bequeathed him a roomful of stuffed animals?).   The only thing Laura and Nick had in common was, they seemed to have no life.   (Oh, and how was Laura’s business surviving if Nick was her only customer?).   Hope she had good insurance on the building that wasn’t nullified by Nick storing dangerous goods in it.

42 was – passable, nothing really exceptional.  Running through corridors against a deadline.  The sentient sun thing was a bit of nonsense though.

Power of Three had a really good premise – mysterious cubes appearing everywhere which did weird things.   Good comedy material.   (Remember the Doug Adams trope about the mice being the projection in our dimension of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings, and Dentarthurdent protesting that mice were just animals that scientists made run through mazes and so.   And Slartibartfast (IIRC) saying ‘one has to admire the ingenuity’).

Well, I thought the enigmatic cubes were there to experiment on human psychology and reactions to facilitate an alien takeover.   But no, they were just there to kill humans – not all humans, just a third of them.   I found that ridiculous.  Given the technological power needed to create the impervious-to-all-attack cubes, surely the villain could have killed the requisite number of humans with  a far simpler method, a few nukes would do it, or a series of neutron bombs if he wanted to leave infrastructure intact.   And if the cubes were just killer devices, why did they have to ‘do stuff’?, why did they need to be anything more than cute paperweights?   Also, the villain was naff, and the resolution was absurdly simplistic.   Even extending to everyone who had just died coming back to life.   Heart attacks don’t work like that.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@whohar   @janetteb   I don’t find the doctor’s revival as a Rose lookalike creepy at all.   It might possibly be so if the Doctor had deliberately chosen that appearance.  But do we know how the regeneration process decides on the look of the next iteration?  Does it randomly fish something out of the subject’s subconscious?   The Moment chose a character from the Doctor’s timeline (got it back to front, of course).   Twelve came out looking like a significant figure from his past that he had failed to save.   Fourteen came out looking like Ten.   And of course the Zygons were impersonating other people wholesale.

I’m sure there have been other occasions in sci-fi/fantasy where some entity has chosen to manifest itself in a form that was ‘pleasing’ to the protagonist, though I can’t put my finger on any specific cases off the top of my head.

And I don’t think it muddies the waters in the broader Whoniverse, whatever that means.   I regard the TV series as canon, all the rest is derivative or symbiotic entities.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u     All those are valid points.   I have to admit I was unconvinced by the rapid romance between Sarah and weirdo can’t-ever-keep-a-girlfriend Nick.   I just didn’t poke at it too much.   Like a lot of things in this episode, it all starts to unravel if you start pulling at dangling threads.   (Same could be said of many episodes, of course).   As @nerys said, enjoyable enough if one doesn’t scrutinise the details too closely.

I rather think Legend of the Sea Devils would fall apart even quicker, given that treatment.

I must admit to being influenced by ‘feelz’.   If the characters don’t appeal to me, I’m that much more likely to notice inconsistencies or anomalies.   If I like the characters (which may just hinge on a casting decision) then I’m more likely to give the plot logic a bit of slack.     Nowhere was that more evident than Asylum of the Daleks, where I subconsciously wanted to believe in Souffle Girl (because she was so well written and Jenna Coleman conveyed the character so well) even while Moff was figuratively waving red flags in front of our eyes.   (Where did she get the milk?).   My brain just did not want to consider the possibility that she might be a Dalek, even though her ‘mother’ Darla had just turned out to be one.    Nice work, Moff!     Now in that case, of course, the anomalies were deliberate.

Also, maybe I’m more tolerant of Eve of the Daleks (and Legend of the Sea Devils) because of low expectations, stemming from some of Chibz’ previous episodes.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u     Re Moff:

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

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

I do like original dialogue, and I love irony.   One of my favourite scenes is the American Diner in Hell Bent, with the Doctor and Clara, where it becomes apparent that one of them can’t remember the other, but we don’t know which one until the end.  And this is the really clever bit:   The dialogue works equally well both ways.  It’s also sad, and sweet, and poignant.

Probably the best example of clever, witty dialogue anywhere is Yes, Prime Minister – all of it.  It takes a lot of talent to keep that up for a whole series.

I’ll stick my neck way out and contend that Moff was writing for all genders, women as well as men.   Of course I’m going way beyond my limits there, since I ain’t a woman.   But to me, the Companion was just as important in Who as the Doctor, right from Rose onwards, and of course the companion was always a woman.   Oh, I’ve just realised, you don’t mean ‘writing episodes to appeal to women’, you mean ‘writing women characters’.   Well (adopts Strax voice), they all seemed perfectly normal to me.

Except maybe River Song, who was more a villain than a woman.

Candidates for a female Doctor 12?   Well, Missy springs to mind  (there would have to be some complicated mindswap/regeneration thing going on there of course, but who says Moff couldn’t pull it off?   Michelle Gomez certainly could have).

Since you mention Martha – maybe.   A little young for the Doctor, possibly?   (Yes, I know, Rose is now the Doctor (probably) but this is ten years later).    Tasha Lem – oh yes, absolutely.   (I thought of her in this connection previously).    My other pick was Liz 10  (Sophie Okonedo) but she was probably (I’m speculating) too busy to want to be tied down to several seasons of Who.  Would’ve been interesting to watch the reactions from – some quarters.

(Afterthought – I think I was mistaken, there wouldn’t have been any complications with Michelle Gomez, since Missy first appeared after the 12th Doctor did.)

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

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

I know there was previous technobabble in Who, but usually it was restrained, used only when necessary for the furtherance of the plot.    With Chibz’ Doctor, one got the impression it was there simply to make it ‘sound sciencey’ or maybe make up for something that should have been better plotted.

I did think it was Chibz’ best episode.  Probably still is, though I’ve acquired a quite unreasonable fondness for Legend of the Sea Devils.   I was also quite fond of Love & Monsters.   I don’t know if that proves something.

As for being committed, you’ll notice that I started my re-watch with this ep, i.e. three episodes from the end of Chibz’ tenure.   I’m only mildly committed, I’m not fanatical   🙂

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

[A year later:]

Legend of the Sea Devils

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

The mood is kinda spoilt by Dan wearing the cartoon comedy pirate clobber. And Mr Carnival-mask Sea Devil. Looks a bit like a dyspeptic mutant Chihuahua with a beak. I really want to like this episode if the costume department would let me.

Oh gods, and the Doctor *immediately* knows who Madame Ching is.    She does that all the time.   Does anyone find that a bit – odd?

Then Dan goes off with the Chinese guy for no apparent reason at all. His credibility seems to have declined since the last ep. And they [somehow] get on board Madam Ching’s ship (come to that, how did she get there – I didn’t see a rowing boat). And she [somehow] ties both of them up, single-handed. Never mind.

“No ship, Sherlock.” Ohhhhhh. That’s one of those lines where you groan then can’t stop yourself laughing.

Really nice of Chihuahua Boy to show the Doctor and Yaz his setup and explain everything. A bit like the habit of James Bond villains who famously could not resist telling an enemy agent all their most secret plans. “Do not make the mistake of thinking I wish to keep you alive.” Oh that’s a nice menacing Bond-villain line. Incidentally, parts of this are very James Bond, like the secret underwater dock.

Again, not quite sure how they got Ji-Hun out of his stasis cage and escaped the attentions of the Sea Devils to jump onto Madame Ching’s ship. Or how they manage to leap back onto the Sea Devil ship. Never mind, logistics is not the strength of this episode.

“Dan, I need you to supervise Ji-Hun and Madame Ching.” Like that’s gonna happen.

I have to say, the – relationship – between the Doctor and Yaz is quite well and sensitively handled in this episode. Actually the Doctor is quite tolerable, when she isn’t spouting technobabble (which of course is a Chibz problem not a Whittaker one).

Hey! I actually liked this episode. (And I could follow the events much more easily second time round, which is often the case). And I found the characters – at least the ones I was supposed to like – actually likeable, which is not always the case.

(I think there were probably as many physical-technical impossibilities in this as in Kill The Moon, which I loathe. Why the difference? – I think because this ep is fantasy, where the ‘rules’ can be quite relaxed, whereas KTM felt like hard sci-fi where things should follow logically. It’s a matter of tone.)

[And the last four posts are by – me.  Ouch.   I see I said this time – well, pretty much the same as I said last time.   Is that because that commentary was lurking in my subconscious, or just because certain things resonate with my psyche?   I don’t know.   It would be interesting to give me a memory wipe – like Kryten (thanks Janetteb for the reference)  and then see how my comments changed.  Or not.]

Judging by the small number of posts and the lukewarm comments, I think this episode is actually under-rated.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

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

As for “Moff can’t write women”, I’d like to see which Who writers could claim to write women better. I thought his female characters, most notably Amy, Clara and Bill, were very well-written. (Disclaimer: I don’t claim to be an expert on women 🙂

@winston @janetteb Yes, I’d love to see Billie Piper as the Doctor. And, considering the role she played in re-launching the series, I can’t think of anyone who deserves the chance better. (Also, she’s now 20 years older (doesn’t time fly?!) and more mature, which I think suits the Doctor better. (I took a while to get used to Matt Smith because he looked too young. Similarly I could never quite credit Roger Moore as James Bond until his last couple of films).

Winston, you’re heading into winter (I think), we’re heading out of it. Our seasons run late, normally I don’t swim before Christmas, or the start of December at the earliest ever. And thereby hangs an odd tale – two weeks ago I went down to the beach for a walk. It was half tide and two kids were sitting in the water, so I tried it, and the edge was warm (from the sun). So I went in, by the time I’d gone 100 yards and in two feet of water (very flat beach) it was cool but not freezing, so I sat down and chilled (!) for five minutes. I’ve known it colder in December! (Northern Hemisphereans think: June 🙂 I must try again and see if that was just a freak event.

By the way, I just watched Eve of the Daleks (comments in that forum). I did find the timeline easier to follow on a re-watch, as often happens. That particularly applies to time-travel episodes like Blink. It might even apply to the Flux, but I’m not going to try that this time round.

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