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@ps1l0v3y0u With respect, could you sometimes be a little more specific in your references to past episodes? Sometimes I’m not on the same wavelength and have trouble placing your references. For example, Russ’ Legend and Empire – I first thought of Legend of the Sea Devils, had to refer to the episode list to realise it was Legend of Ruby Sunday and Empire of Death.

But yes, they were a bit clunker. Like many of RTD’s finales, they had everything but the kitchen sink – UNIT, old Companions brought back, a universe-sized mega-threat – too much already. Not that I objected to seeing them, but not all at once.

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@winston Well, as I’ve already said, Season 5 at first ‘lost’ me to Who, probably because I was still recovering from Tennant withdrawal. (I now like Smith and Capaldi just as much as Tennant. I guess I’m a bit slow to accept change). On later re-viewing, I’ve enjoyed those episodes more. I still find S5 middling good, best episodes (for me) were the Pandorica Opens / Big Bang. I thought Season 6 was better. But (looking quickly over the episode list, and taking seasons as a whole) I think Season 9 would be my favourite season. Obviously we all have our personal favourites.

@thane16 I liked Planet of the Dead best of the three specials. Lady Sousa was great, I was sure she was going to become a Companion. Apparently they had much difficulty in filming it, including that the bus got seriously bent on the ship on the journey out and they had to work around it.

Hungry Earth – Amy & the Doc on the hill was supposed to emphasise (or tease) the absence of Rory? But I still don’t get the rationale for them being there, unless they’d gone there deliberately to catch a last glimpse of Rory – but why, if Amy couldn’t remember him? I’m probably missing something.
The reappearance of Rory as an Auton, who then sort of decided he was going to become a human (or as good as), was a welcome surprise. Though I have to say, I’m never very enthused with Companions’ Significant Others – Mickey, Rory or Danny. Probably partly influenced by the fact that they were all to some degree disapproving of the Doctor. (The same went for most of their mothers, come to that).

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@thane16 Moff *is* clever, in fact I think he’s a genius at writing dialogue that is witty, ironic and surprising. (I’m a sucker for interesting, original turns of phrase, whether in book fiction or in TV drama). I think Moff’s era was the best of Who. RTD’s first era was very good too (I don’t know enough about his current one to judge it).

To be honest, I wasn’t that enthused by Hungry Earth / Cold Blood (and that was before I knew who the writer was). I was intrigued by the brief scene of the Doctor and Amy watching from the distant hillside, but that was never followed up or explained so far as I know? (Chibs planting the seed of a future story thread?)

@whohar One point from your list – Zygon Inversion was credited as Peter Harness / Stephen Moffat. (As an aside, although I really like the Zygon eps, Peter Harness also wrote Kill the Moon which is the absolute worst ep of NuWho – in my estimation).

But I’m not surprised writers other than Moff and RTD wrote some excellent eps, there are many other good writers out there. Toby Whithouse, Jamie Mathieson and Neil Gaiman come to mind. Though whether Moff (as showrunner) had any hand in reviewing or ‘polishing’ some of the other stories, I don’t know. I’d be surprised if he didn’t have some input into some of those (ditto RTD in the first 4 seasons).

@ps1l0v3y0u Series 7 was excellent – and for me that includes the whole of the series, not just the second half. Asylum of the Daleks I love, especially the hidden-in-plain-sight trick Moff played on us over Souffle Girl (where does she get the milk?) He got away with it because Jenna can do ‘upbeat’ so well. Unlike some viewers, I absolutely love it when a writer does that. And A Town Called Mercy (Toby Whithouse) – I thought that was great. Dinosaurs on a Spaceship was a clunker (oh, written by Chibs), and The Power of Three started out really well with the enigmatic cubes but fell flat in the finale (also Chibs – maybe he’s better at thinking up intriguing plotlines than he is at resolving them).

While I’m at it, The Girl Who Waited was a classic with a tragic moral dilemma – which Amy should Rory save. (Also, the Doctor lies like a bastard when necessary). I think I cried at the ending.
I liked The Wedding of River Song too – both in A Town Called Mercy, Wedding, and Angels Take Manhattan, Amy had turned into a formidable character. (In Wedding, I must admit I cheered when Amy left Madame Kovarian to be zapped – “River Song didn’t get it all from you, sweetie.”)

@blenkinsopthebrave Vincent and the Doctor was what got me back into Who. I have to admit that I was captivated by Tennant, so when we had lost Rose, and Martha had left, and Tennant regenerated, Smith’s early debut left me cold. So I lost touch with watching it on TV, besides the randomness of me remembering when to turn the TV on. Some time later, on a quite unrelated website, someone mentioned Bill Nighy’s excellent ‘Curator’ and that prompted me (I think) to start renting series DVD’s and I got back into it. I appreciate 11th Hour better now, having got used to the characters.

 

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@ps1l0v3y0u   Oh yes, re Daleks, Moff made major forays into Dalek history.   Chibs used them as villain of the week – nothing wrong with that, you can write a perfectly good ep with that format.   Considering what he did to the Time Lords, the Daleks were probably lucky he didn’t give them his undivided attention  [/snark]

 

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@ps1l0v3y0u   Of course, Twice Upon a Time!   I’d forgotten about Rusty.

Chibs had two Dalek episodes, IIRC, Resolution (which was one of his better episodes) and Eve of the Daleks which was his best  (and I say that as a non-Chibnall-enthusiast).

I liked Ace, but I think Sophie Aldred is a bit too old now to play that part.   Yes I *know* they brought her back in The Power of the Doctor,  Chibs’ final episode and (as I recall) also a not-bad episode, but doing a cameo role in one ep is far different from playing a major continuing role.

Maxil – I thought you meant he was Capaldi, but Google tells me it was Colin Baker.   OK, I get the point.   I think you can usually get away with it.   Thinking on Monty Python’s Life of Brian, I never had any problem with John Cleese playing about six different roles *in the same movie*, in fact I hardly even noticed.   Maybe I was laughing too hard.  (As an aside, in New Zealand where the pool of actors is quite small, even if you include part-time extras, when ‘Hercules’ and ‘Xena’ were making one episode a week, we got quite accustomed to seeing the same dozen beefy guys as outlaw thugs one week, Roman legionaries the next, and barbarian hordes the week after).

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@ps1l0v3y0u    Well, Ruth is quite unlike Rose, physically (though of course regeneration could be used to account for that).   I would very much hope Billie is the new Doctor.   As for the fact that she’s already been a major character – well, Capaldi was also a Doctor who had previously appeared as an incidental character.   And, Rose had also looked into the time vortex powering the Tardis, which might have had some lasting effect on her.

As to the Moment (or its interface), according to the episode, The Moment simply chose Rose as a character from the Doctor’s past which should be pleasing to the Doctor.   (It confused past and future, but that’s just one of those things that happens).   Whether the Interface turns out to have any deeper connection with the Doctor – well, we’ll see.

By the way, I don’t think the Daleks were in World Enough and Time, that was Cybermen.   Daleks did appear in at least two of Chibs’ episodes.

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@ps1l0v3y0u      Billie Piper as the Doctor?    Wow, I’m right back into it.   My enthusiasm has been revived.   I *love* Billie Piper.

Hopefully she’ll be the Doctor, or at least in Who, for quite a while.   She certainly seems to be well disposed towards the series, judging by the several times she reappeared after Rose’s demise.   Most notably as The Moment in Day of the Doctor.

I think it’s time I rewatched from The Star Beast onwards and picked up the last season DVD set.

 

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@ps1l0v3y0u    That passage I quoted – I think Ohila may very well have been there for a quick readthrough, since it was only the prologue (released before the ep itself I think) with just the two speaking characters.

Agreed that talented actors can contribute much to the episode if allowed, though  they’re probably a headache for the writers who have to rewrite lines.

Re your hypothesis, which is (I think) roughly that Chibs was trying too hard to be quite different from Moff’s episodes – well, maybe.   But I also think he just lacked the talent to match those.   His best episode was probably ‘Eve of the Daleks’ which (IMO!) would rate as middling good in a Moff season.

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@whohar I have no objection to the episode focussing on Tesla. But suggesting that the competition of AC vs DC was between Tesla and Edison, as the episode goes out of its way to imply, is wildly misrepresenting the reality. The principal players in the ‘War of the Currents’ were Edison and Westinghouse (the Wikipedia article, a detailed account which runs to many pages, mentions Tesla just twice in the text). In fact George Westinghouse bought Tesla’s patents (among many others). It is in fact a fascinating story, but possibbly too complicated and mundane to make a good Who episode 🙂

@ps1l0v3y0u I was just using the example of the nuWho docs, i.e. the ones I know about, for checking previous incarnations. I’m not so familiar with the BG ones (though obviously I know who they are).
Whether the script read-throughs helped Moff to sharpen the dialogue, I don’t know. (I genuinely don’t know, I’m not being cynical about it). But either way, I think Moff had a gift for engaging dialogue. I think my favourite passage in all of Who is the Doctor’s verbal fencing match with Ohila (of the Sisters of Karn) in the prologue to Magician’s Apprentice:

OHILA: He has asked to see you. His servants seek you everywhere. Will you go?
DOCTOR: No.
OHILA: Why do you always lie?
DOCTOR: Why do you always assume I’m lying?
OHILA: It saves time. The truth – will you go?
DOCTOR: No.
OHILA: When?
DOCTOR: Soon.
OHILA: Why? Did something happen?
DOCTOR: No.
OHILA: Was it recent?
DOCTOR: Yes.
OHILA: Whatever it was, you owe that creature nothing.
DOCTOR: He and I’ve known each other a long time.
OHILA: You’ve been enemies for all of it.
DOCTOR: An enemy’s just a friend you don’t really know yet. Sorry. What, was that me being cynical again?
OHILA: Aren’t we friends, Doctor?
DOCTOR: That’s different. I don’t like you!

I love the way the Doc lies continuously and Ohila just cuts straight through his lies, without animosity.

 

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@pufferfish @devilishrobby @mudlark
Yet more American interference in British institutions! First it was Trump and Musk, now it’s The Onion. How dare they!
(OK, to be serious for a moment, I got a good laugh out of it. Well done Onion.)

Actually, I think the full text of The Onion’s incvestigative journalism is worthy of reproduction here:
MOSCOW—Explaining that Russia’s patience on the matter had finally reached a breaking point, officials in Moscow confirmed Friday they had expelled six British diplomats who would not shut up about Doctor Who. “London must realize that their diplomats’ incessant jabbering about Time Lord physiology and whether Daleks or Cybermen are stronger can only go on so long before it requires a response,” a Kremlin spokesperson said via state media, adding with visible annoyance that whenever Russian officials had tried to discuss serious diplomatic issues with the six self-described Whovians, they would invariably steer the conversation back around to whether the worst Doctor had been Paul McGann or Colin Baker. “Even when we tried dosing them with nerve agent to get a little peace and quiet, these dorks would just keep on speculating about whether one TARDIS could canonically materialize inside of another TARDIS. With their expulsion, our message to the West is unequivocal: We do not care who the Doctor is. We do not care who the Master is. We absolutely do not care about whatever the fuck that big skin creature is. And so long as the Kremlin stands, we will never watch your dumb little TV show for children.” At press time, Moscow suggested that they would potentially readmit the diplomats if they got into some real sci-fi like Battlestar Galactica.

(Who was that ‘big skin creature’? Absorbaloff? A Slitheen? I don’t know.)

@nerys @whohar
I agree that Eve of the Daleks, Fugitive and Villa Diodati were well written.

Villa Diodati runs into one thing I’m a bit queasy about, incorporating real recent-historical figures into the story and often misrepresenting the actual facts as a consequence. Deodati runs into that, I suspect some of the behaviour of Byron and his associates was slanted, though I’m not sufficently expert to confirm that. Chibnall’s episodes were really prone to that, considering the number of recent historical figures that got written into the stories. Worst example (to me) was the one about Tesla though, it really screws around with the recorded facts of the ‘War of the Currents’ between Edison and Westinghouse, in which Tesla was an incidental player – and Westinghouse never got a mention.

Chibnall did have the ability to create some likeable (fictional) characters. Some of that may have been down to casting naturally sympathetic actors, but I think his character creation abilities were better than his dialogue or his plotting abilities.

Eve, and Fugitive, on the other hand, don’t do any violence to historical figures, so I’m fine by them in that respect. As Nerys said, Eve of the Daleks didn’t always make sense, BUT it was no worse than a typical Who episode. I think one had to be quite critical to find the inconsistencies and they were fairly easy to ignore – as in most Who episodes. I don’t think Chibs ever wrote an episode as chock-full of blatant impossibilities as Kill The Moon.

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@everybody 🙂 Well we all seem to be broadly unanimous about Chibs’s tenure.

Re @ps1l0v3y0u ‘s comment ‘The theory that a Ladydoc shouldn’t in anyway ape a ‘blokedoc’ is not necessarily unsound.’ Decoding that (with respect, sometimes your comments are a little – cryptic or convoluted) – I agree – as far as that goes. Going further, each Doctor should be their own character. Ecclestone, Tennant, Smith, Capaldi were all perfectly distinct characters in themselves, they didn’t need to copy previous Doctors to appear ‘Doctorish.’ So in that respect, Whittaker shouldn’t ‘ape’ any previous Doctor. However, IMO Chibs carried that too far. Though the male Doctors I just named didn’t consciously copy their predecessors, they had all watched the show and were familiar with what a ‘Doctor’ would and wouldn’t do. A quality I can’t define but ‘I know it when I see it.’ And Whittaker hadn’t watched the show. I still think she was mis-cast but I’m sure being unfamiliar with previous Doctors minimised her chances of being credibly Doctor-ish. I guess we’ve all read of instances where actors have taken an interest in ‘protecting’ their recurring characters, as in ‘XX (my character) wouldn’t do that.’ I think it often helps to keep a series with episodes penned by various writers on the rails, much though it may annoy writers and directors, but again, Whittaker had no way of knowing what to ‘protect.’

@janetteb   I agree about RTD’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink series endings. Sometimes bigger is not better. It gets too apocalyptic and actually diffuses the threat. It also makes the heroes’ position seem utterly hopeless (which is slightly depressing) and consequently detracts from the credibility of the final last-minute triumph.    Most of the episodes I remember as outstanding actually involved a few principal characters and a finite threat.

 

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@mudlark That’s roughly what I do if I’m embarking on a long post. Well, actually I compose my message in a text editor, then copy the finished message into the Who webpage editor.
Also good insurance against hitting ‘Submit’ by mistake halfway through, or when I have afterthoughts.

For the rest, I agree with all of your comments.

@janetteb I believe JW herself said that Chibs had discouraged her from watching previous episodes. It seems extraordinary to me, that a serial character wouldn’t wish – and be expected – to see what character he/she was being asked to emulate. Oh, here it is: https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/jodie-whittaker-i-was-told-not-to-watch-doctor-who-before-my-audition/
In other words, JW did propose watching them and Chibs told her not to bother. Huge mistake IMO, even if he wanted a ‘fresh perspective’, I think watching a few of them would have given her an idea of how to approach the role. For starters, she might have been less annoyingly daffy and dithering, which (I’m guessing) she might have thought was strange and alien. And yes, I think it was miscast as well. I have a suspicion Chibs disliked Moff’s Capaldi episodes and was trying to distance himself from them, and trying a bit too hard.

 

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(De-lurking.   I’m still here, just I haven’t had occasion to comment recently).

@janetteb   Interesting post, and I agree with all that.   Except, I wouldn’t even give Chibs much credit for establishing a lady Doctor (I’m mean!)   Missy had already established that Time Lords can be female, and so did the general in Hell Bent who regenerated as a female when Capdoc shot him.    It was about time for a female Doctor.   Actually, I think Chibs royally stuffed it up and did the concept of a female Doctor a disservice.   I was absolutely prepared for a female Doctor, but the writing – and the dramatic interpretation – of Jodie Whittaker’s doctor was so ‘off’ that after the first few minutes of The Woman Who Fell to Earth,  I said to myself ‘that’s NOT the Doctor!’   She was more like one of those annoying sidekicks who one wishes would run into a Dalek.    Doctor Ruth would have been immeasurably better, or Liz 10 just for example (yes I know being Liz 10 would probably disqualify her from being a Doctor, but stranger things have happened).   Or for that matter, Grace (Graham’s wife) who got so needlessly killed off in the first episode.

Jodie Whittaker slowly improved over the years, but that awful initial introduction biassed me against her.   Initial impressions are very powerful.   (It took about ten years for my opinion of Donna to mellow after her shockingly brash first incursion in Runaway Bride, I only finally accepted her as a likeable character in the recent episodes with Tennant Mk 2.)

I too found Graeme rather tiresome, and his relationship with on-and-off dyspraxic Ryan tedious and uninteresting.  Nothing against Bradley Walsh, who I think did the best he could with some terrible lines.    The last three specials, with Dan in place of Graham, and Yaz finally being given some better writing, were almost acceptable.

I’m not a fiend for continuity, but where Doctor Ruth fits in does bother me.  Though I do appreciate the visually dramatic reasons for digging up a Tardis police box.   What bothers me more is the way Chibs completely trashed the Doctor’s timeline.   And the Flux episodes completely jumped the shark, and I’m not sure any amount of retconning could fix it.   I deal with it by mentally ignoring that whole chapter in Doctor Who.

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@nerys  @ps1l0v3y0u      It also threatens the New Zealand movie industry,  depending on the details of exactly what is going to be sanctioned, er, tariffed.    Probably tRump has no idea how he’s going to implement it.   Typical tRump, misses the target but causes the maximum collateral damage all over the place.

Short term it will harm the film industries of a number of countries which depend on Hollywood outsourcing productions.   Longer term it could mean the end of Hollywood as the centre of the global movie industry as other countries develop their own movie industries.    I don’t think that would be a bad thing.

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@janetteb  @winston    That’s TWO good results we have to ‘thank’ Trump for!    Mainly for the exact opposite result from what Trump demanded, so I’m not sure thanks are warranted.   More like schadenfreude.

At this point I can’t think of any country whose voters are so ignorant, that an endorsement from Trump or his gang members wouldn’t be electoral poison.   Apparently the deranged idiot is so delusional he’s released a picture of him as the Pope.   Is there anyone left on Earth that he hasn’t offended or insulted?   It would be hysterical if he didn’t have the power to destroy economies and ruin lives.

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@ps1l0v3y0u   I hadn’t known that about DSotM.    Or if I did, I’d forgotten it.

I suspect Thorgerson came up with the Newton’s Prism idea first (and all the Floyd immediately said ‘that one!’ according to, I think, Dave Gilmour).   And so the pyramid link was merely inspired by similarity of shape.  But that’s just my guess.

Also, of course, pyramids and supernatural / astrological / ‘space’ themes have long gone hand in hand.   Numerology loves the Great Pyramid.

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@ps1l0v3y0u   I do realise that Sarah did hit the gelignite, and Sutekh suppressed the explosion, though not for long enough.   As Derek Lowe said in one of his brief but entertaining essays, Nitrogen atoms really do want to be free.   Though nitroglycerine is notoriously fickle.

It wasn’t Sarah’s marksmanship I was doubting, but whether she’d ever get the opportunity, or would some robot loom from behind her before she could fire.

Re production values, I couldn’t help noticing that the Beeb’s 11-minute ‘summary’ was far crisper and had bolder colour than the episodes on Dailymotion.   Was that the Beeb doing some remarkable digital resoration/enhancement, or that Dailymotion had lowered the definition for bandwidth reasons?

P.S.   Pink Floyd – was that a pyramid on their poster to which you refer, or simply the famous Newton’s prism from DSoTM?   (I’ve got that album, and it’s noteworthy that nowhere on the outer cover does the title or any other words appear.  The Floyd obviously thought it was sufficiently striking and distinctive to be instantly recognisable.  They were right).

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Thanks Craig for posting that! I just watched the whole two hours.

Random thoughts –

The fez guy has strong undertones of Dr Phibes, doesn’t he? (That probably wasn’t original with Phibes, either, of course).

“He must be building a rocket.” Because of course rockets must be involved in any devilry.

Nice to hear the Dr Who music v1.0 again.

Did Tom Baker’s scarf get ever longer over time?

I was really on tenterhooks about whether Sarah was ever going to get that shot off and hit the gelignite.

That thing with the two guardians, one always lies and one never does, is a really really old one. I suppose it was necessary for the Doctor to explain it, since some viewer in Outer Mongolia might not have heard of it. 🙂

It was actually quite watchable, though I think most episodes of NuWho have more zing.

 

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@winston   There probably are sharks but they never come inside the reef, it’s too confined for them.   The only thing people-sized organisms have to worry about is stepping on a stonefish – rare, but very nasty I believe – but any form of rubber-soled ‘reef shoes’ are a protection.   Oh, and the coral has the sharpness of coarse sandpaper if you brush against it.   There are poisonous sea snakes but they’re very timid, I’ve only ever seen one and it was running away.

The only other thing to ever attack me were triggerfish – up to six inches long, they normally behave themselves, like any other lagoon fish but at some particular time they get all territorial and will attack anything, leaving a hairline circular bite mark on your ankles a few millimetres across.   Annoying like mosquitoes are annoying, little sods.   But this isn’t that time of year.

Thanks for the good wishes about our house.

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@scaryb     – but someone’s gotta do it.   🙂

Meanwhile back in Auckland they’ve had the remains of another tropical storm, with high wind and rain warnings.   Hope our house (and garden) is undamaged when we get back in 1.5 weeks.   Nothing I can do about it here, so it’s fairly easy to not worry about it.   Just go and look at some more fish.

cr

 

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On a lighter note, totally unrelated to Who but the animal lovers might find this amusing. I was snorkelling around in the ‘lagoon’ (which in Rarotonga is just a pool amidst the coral, extends to the inside of the solid flat reef), looking at the small tropical fish, when, rounding a coral head, something huge and dark flashed past my mask. Whooa! Startled the heck out of me.   I looked round and – it was a dog, swimming extremely fast. He carried on to the far edge of the pool, fully 120 yards from shore, turned round and swam back. No sign of his owner, or any other reason, I can only assume he does it because he just likes swimming.

I can’t make any Who connection, just found it sufficiently odd and quaint that i wanted to share it.   🙂

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@winston I guess we all understand, and if you can’t talk to us who can you talk to? An ice storm is certainly an odd one in the way of natural disasters, but no less serious for that. I’m afraid I’d go spare if I was without power for a day, let alone ten. Pleased to hear your house at least is undamaged, but I sympathise with your feelings for your garden and trees. I hate it when a tree gets cut down (I’m an unashamed treehugger). We had a 50-foot wattle tree in our garden that leaned over our house and I was nervous any time strong winds were forecast, for our house or the neighbours, so eventually I regretfully had that cut down. The lemonwoods (pittisporums) I planted to replace it are now a non-threatening 20 feet. I know it seems easy to say, but your garden will grow back, in time.

We had our disaster in January 2023, when there was unprecented rainfall in Auckland – one spot recorded three times the previous all-time record. Large areas flooded, many slips on the steeper hillsides. A few roads are still closed now. I went outside at midnight and watched a shallow sheet of water flowing rapidly across our back lawn – but we were very lucky, our house was above flood level. It was very ‘patchy’, some areas badly hit, some escaped. Then two weeks later Cyclone Gabrielle came through and hit some of the areas that the previous storm had missed. There are many pleasant places that are now – not quite so pleasant, and will take years to recover.

I think many others here have had their own disasters.

When I was younger I thought that all those Biblical disasters were a thing of the past, but it seems Nature will do its thing and we’re provoking it into doing it more often. And, I think, parts of Nature just keep on having wild events, then Man came along and tamed it and expected his solutions to be permanent, where all they’ve done is hold the minor disturbance back until it becomes a major one. Don’t I sound apocalyptic? Probably a result of watching ‘Good Omens’.

I’d happily send you some nice warm water, sand and sun – in fact you can have the sunshine, too much of it for me, I’m taking amiodarone to keep my pulse regular after a period of atrial fibrillation and a zap – which worked – but one of its many side effects is, I have little protection from sunburn, so I’m having to slap on liberal quantities of SPF 50 including the shiny patch on top of my head. First world problems. 🙂

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Hi all @nerys @janetteb @blenkinsopthebrave and @thane16
Just de-lurking from Rarotonga where I’ve been for 4 days; another 3 weeks to go. (Weather’s been OK, typical Raro which is to say unpredictable but generally warm. Lagoon’s great for swimming and snorkling and bothering the fish, not that they seem to be very bothered.) I’m watching a DVD because Cook Islands television is about what you might expect on a remote Pacific island (think, like a country district c. 1960, i.e. virtually unwatchable), and Internet is – limited and expensive, so Youtube is right out. So I took the precaution of bringing a dozen assorted DVD’s with me. (I’m at an age when going out and partying all evening is no longer optimal, and also Mrs D is now scarcely mobile, with the aid of a stick, poor dear).

My 2c worth (he says, finally getting to the point), I’m re-watching ‘Good Omens’, with Michael Sheen and David Tennant, and finding it just as quirky and delightful as the first time. I love the banter between Crowley the demon (Tennant) and Aziraphael the angel (Sheen). Excellently adapted by Neil Gaiman from his and Terry Pratchett’s book. There are just so many nice little blink-and-you-missed-it touches. I get the impression that Tennant / Sheen / Gaiman were having fun when they filmed it. And I loved the hidden-in-plain-sight tweak at the end.
I’ve also got in my little stack, Neil Gaiman’s ‘Neverwhere’, a similarly quirky series, incidentally featuring Peter Capaldi as the angel Islington, who turns out to be [no I won’t – spoilers!]

Sorry to be mentioning stuff y’all saw years ago, but I’ve always been well behind the times. Not sure when I’ll get the new series of Dr Who.

 

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With all due respect, and I noted your caveat –

Who owns the Sun?   (Googles)    Rupert Murdoch.   Thought so.

Says it all, really.    🙂

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@winston   I wrote a short comment but it seems to have disappeared.  I think I edited something – it seems to happen when I edit a comment.

Anyway, to keep this short, I think Day of the Doctor is the best ‘special’ by far, it’s brilliant.    For more, see my long comment about five up in this list, I’ll spare Craig the bandwith of posting similar remarks again   🙂

 

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@winston    So  The Star Beast / Wild Blue Yonder / The Giggle  were supposed to be the 60th anniversary special.   Didn’t feel much like a special to me, even though I rate WBY highly as an episode.

The finale double-ep of the following season,  The Legend of Ruby Sunday / Empire of Death, had more of that ‘special’ feel to them, mostly in bringing back old characters, but for me, more – things – does not always have more impact.   The whole thing fell a little bit flat.   Too many people with not much for each one to do.

@janetteb   I so agree with you about the 50th,  Day of the Doctor.   It had the feeling that each character present (including all three Doctors) was necessary to the plot.   It’s certainly the top special in my list  (unless there’s one I’ve forgotten about, but I don’t think so).

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@nerys    Wild Blue Yonder was the peak of the Tennant revival for me.   The episodes before and after were a bit too Disney for my liking.   But WBY I would add into my list of top episodes from any season.

I have been known to rant that CGI and special effects are no substitute for good characters or plot, but I have to admit the CGI in WBY was so good, it substantially contributes to my liking of the ep.

I wish RTD had left the Flux out of it though.   I was doing my best to forget it.

But I won’t repeat (again) all my comments that I made in the posts above.   I’m pleased you liked it.

 

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@ps1l0v3y0u    I think Trump has a very simplistic view of the world.   He sees every transaction as a zero-sum game – for one party to win, the other has to lose.   (The concept of ‘win-win’ is beyond him, if he ever heard of it he probably dismissed it as woke nonsense).   I think this explains why he is so gratuitously obnoxious – the more he offends or annoys people, the more he wins.    It also explains his perversity – if there are two candidates for a job, one of which is eminently qualified and an obvious (and uncontroversial) pick, and the other is blatantly unsuitable and has no qualifications whatever, he will obviously pick Candidate B because (a) it will outrage everybody and (b) because he can.    The idea that Candidate A will be good for the general welfare doesn’t enter his thoughts for a moment.

I really think he is that shallow.

@nerys   That beach looks lovely in the photos.   Pity the water isn’t a more welcoming temperature.

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@winston   @nerys    The way I see it, tRump’s proposed invasions of Canada, Greenland and Panama are just diversions to distract from his less-than-stellar appointments to senior government positions.    It’s not like they’re policies that anybody else wants, so in a few weeks he can quietly forget about them and nobody will object or scream about ‘broken promises’ (and if anybody does bring it up, he can always blame Denmark, Canadian lib’ruls and Latino criminals and his MAGA base will lap it up).

Tax returns – I’ve heard about that.   The only other country that does that is Eritrea or Ethiopia or somewhere in that region IIRC.   The relevant law/regulation is called FATCA.   It imposes reporting obligations on any bank which has a victim, I mean American citizen, as a customer, which is why many financial institutions simply refuse to accept Americans as clients.

I used to find doing tax returns a real pain, but since I’m retired I literally never think about it.   Our Inland Revenue seems to take the approach that paying taxes should be as painless and trouble-free as possible, which is why we generally don’t see the tax man as the enemy.   I have two income sources, NZ universal superannuation and interest into my Kiwisaver account.   Both taxable, but the super is taxed by an estimated amount before it ever gets into my bank account, and Kiwisaver ‘earnings’ are taxed at source.   So once a year the IRD sends me a one-page tax notice which lists my annual earnings, tax payable on the total, tax already deducted, and the outstanding balance which is usually a few dollars which they duly write off.   I usually look at the last line which says ‘Balance due:  $0.00’ and file it away.

@nerys

I just Googled Crows Neck Beach, it certainly looks like a remote countryside, even the Googlebot (aka Streetview) hasn’t been there. You’re not far from the Bay of Fundy with its famous tides.

I have a liking for deserted beaches too. Actually, the north shore of the Manukau Harbour between Hillsborough and Titirangi (about a six-mile stretch) is bordered by roughly hundred-foot cliffs, interrupted at intervals by tiny bays, with the suburbs of Auckland sitting on top of the cliffs. But because it’s generally only walkable at low tide, in between the occasional bays there is, often, nobody at all, and the big city on top of the cliffs is invisible. So you can be on a deserted rocky beach without a person in sight and not a hint that there are houses a hundred yards above you. I kinda like the incongruity of it.

But, for properly empty beaches, I just head to the west coast. From Karekare (just south of my old swimming spot at Piha) down to the Manukau Harbour entrance at Whatipu is five miles of deserted ocean beach. Whatipu is at the end of a little-used winding gravel road with a small car park for fishermen and beachgoers, usually near-deserted except summer weekends. There’s a walking track from Whatipu over the cliff tops, then it joins the beach for the last mile to Karekare. Just once I parked at Whatipu, walked over the track to Karekare, then back down the beach and for the entire distance on the beach I saw – no-one. No footsteps, no sign of life, nothing but sand. I got horribly sunburned ankles, for a curious reason – I always use sunscreen on my arms, but my knees and ankles have never (previously) got burned. And I worked out that this is because normally I’m walking in the ‘bush’ or scrub and there’s usually plenty of shade for my lower half – but not on the beach. But the sheer isolation of an empty beach is a strange but not unpleasant feeling. I wanted to swim but, not knowing the conditions, I waited till I got to Whatipu where there’s a bay in the harbour entrance sheltered from the open surf so probably safer from potential undertow, I guess.

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@winston   Actually we’ve had pretty much a perfect week.   The high tides have been the right times (late morning to mid-afternoon), the right height (near the top of their range), and the wind has been from south-west so the beach (Blockhouse Bay) has been sheltered behind a ridge.   Next week – not so good with the times or the depths.   Unless I trek 20+ miles to Piha on the west coast.   But since Mrs D is banned from driving I try to keep the occasions when I leave her stuck in the house for the day to a minimum.

@nerys   I had a brief swim in the Atlantic in July, in Cornwall.  When I say ‘brief’ I mean about two minutes.   There’s supposed to be this thing called the Gulf Stream, bringing lots of warm water to keep Britain from freezing, well all I can say is, it wasn’t working that day.   🙂   And the water looked so tempting too…     But regardless of that, beaches are always the most interesting scenery, in calm or stormy weather.

Thinking back, all my life (except for six months or so) I’ve lived within a couple of miles of a beach.   I can’t imagine living out of easy reach of one.   I guess I’ve been fortunate that way.

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@nerys    A new beach?    Always an exciting experience, I think.   Though I imagine, in your half of the planet, you wouldn’t be swimming this time of year.   🙂

I wish you luck with the Who DVD’s.    It may well be a licensing thing to do with the change of franchise, it’s always frustrating when I try e.g. a Youtube video and get ‘The uploader has not made this available in your area.’    And of course I get the same with BBC iPlayer, I haven’t bothered to try and cheat it by getting a VPN, I would if I really wanted something and couldn’t get it some other way.   I guess just laziness and inertia stops me.

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Well a Happy New Year to all.

Last night we watched on a Youtube channel the fireworks lanched from the Sky Tower in Auckland. Then a couple of hours later the display from Sydney, which made ours look like a damp squib. It always does, Sydney Harbour is the perfect site for a spectacular fireworks display and they never disappoint.

Today (New Years) it was mostly sunny here in Auckland, with a good high tide, so I went down to Blockhouse Bay for a swim. There was a Japanese-looking gent sitting on a camp chair on the little patch of grass by the car park, with a large telescope pointing at the sun and a monitor on a folding table beside it. He explained that he was waiting to catch the ISS (International Space Station) crossing the Sun, and the location is quite critical – a quarter mile either way off the line and he’d miss it. The transit would only take a second or so but he hoped to catch it on high-speed video. I think the occasional clouds cleared away for him, I hope so.
Not far away was a young guy pumping up an inflatable paddle board – like a giant surf board, ten feet long and a couple of feet wide, I’ve seen paddleboards before but I never knew inflatable roll-up-into-a-backpack ones existed. It was his first attempt with it, as became apparent when he launched it. He had been recommended to try the bay as it was sheltered – good advice. The swell in the main harbour was a foot high, in the bay – which is almost perfectly sheltered from the prevailing stiff southwest breeze by a steep-sided narrow ridge – it was calm.   So he was okay when he fell off, as he did – several times.
And then there was the gentleman who regularly brings a guitar and portable amplifier and sets up in a sheltered alcove to practise, and sends music by Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin wafting across the water – fortunately he’s good enough to sustain it.

So it was just a very pleasant day, with people enjoying themselves doing happy things. I hope everyone here had a similarly pleasant and interesting day.

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@ps1l0v3y0u

Well, I don’t know if there’s any official definition, but fantasy seems to range from Harry Potter to Alice in Wonderland to those curious pseudo-mediaeval novels that start ‘Sir Edric sat pensively on his mighty charger as he surveyed the broad sweep of the Homelands, and pondered when the marauding hordes of the Hilldwellers would come storming over the dread and forbidding ramparts of the Eastern Gate’ – that sort of thing, is there a name for it? Fwiw I adore Alice, also Pratchett; Harry Potter and Sir Edric I give a miss to.

Hard sci-fi? I suppose space travel is hard sci-fi, as are alien civilisations, and I presume future societies like ‘Brave New world’ or ‘1984’ are too? My favourite early authors were John Wyndham (Day of the Triffids) and Arthur C Clarke, who I would have classed as strictly sci-fi but then, Clarke verges into mystical on occasion. (As an aside, I picked up a volume of Clarke short stories “l’Etoile” in Paris, the cover artist clearly hadn’t read them as the cover features a magnificent and scantily clad young lady on an equally magnificent winged horse, weilding a scimitar, which I don’t recall in any Clarke story and certainly not ‘The Star’. I’m delighted by the incongruity. And she is very… photogenic). Oh, and Robert Sheckley.

I agree that hard sci-fi is often more about concepts than characters. Bringing in individuals with their own interests and motives tends to obscure and distort the concept, even if their personal involvement adds more impact to it. For example the deadly profit-driven accounting in Oxygen or Boom.

Who often deviates far from hard sci-fi in that the characters often become the most important feature of the story. This is probably a consequence of the TV visual medium and the same characters recurring in successive episodes, if the actors have any charisma we start to identify with them.

I found most of Lord of the Rings film trilogy unsatisfying (I never read Tolkien btw). I think partly because there were too many characters and what makes a good novel does not necessarily make a good movie, Peter Jackson reportedly stayed fairly faithful to the books and this was probably a mistake. Though he would surely have been roasted by Tolkien fans if he had dared re-write it too much.

Back to Who – I hope RTD reins in the apocalyptic stuff, we already had too much of that with the Flux. Who is at its best on a personal, manageable level – Boom, 73 Yards, Dot and Bubble…

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@winston   No excusing needed.   The more the merrier, I for one am perfectly happy to hear from others in the room.

Sci-fi and fantasy are adjacent genres and frequently blur into each other.   I would have rated the ‘Hitch-hiker’ series as strictly scifi but as ps1l0v3y0u pointed out, it strays into the edge of fantasy on occasion.   I used to be a sci-fi hard-liner, that was before I encountered Terry Pratchett’s ‘Discworld’ and had to admit that fantasy had its merits if well enough written.   I still don’t rate Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings though.

@ps1l0v3y0u   Rose and Donna were perfectly ordinary humans until after they met the Doctor.   Martha was always Ordinary Human I think.   Not sure about Amy.    Clara was very definitely different, right from square one as Souffle Girl.

Akhaten – always made me conceptually uneasy with an atmosphere in space – how did that work?   That episode was, as you put it, pretty ‘squidgy’.   How much fantasy and metaphor I can accept varies with the tone of the story.   The Doctor’s Wife was moderately fantastic and I loved it.   Kill the Moon started out as very much hard sci-fi – the Space Shuttle, nuclear bombs etc – and then went and ostentatiously and gratuitously broke every basic law of mechanics and physics, I think it’s still my most hated episode.

I loved Asylum of the Daleks, and the clues that Moff gave us (‘where does she get the milk?’) which my brain ignored because I so wanted Souffle Girl to be real.   Contrast that with the very first Space Shuttle scene in Kill the Moon where the Doctor says “Where’s the gravity coming from?” – a good question with no possible answer – which by analogy should indicate that the Space Shuttle and indeed the whole episode is fake.   (Even before that – they could breathe.   The Space Shuttle does NOT have a pressurised cargo hold, and in fact the Space Shuttle can only reach Earth orbit, NOT the Moon I’ll stop now before I cover the whole page with a list of the absurdities in this wretched episode.)

What is Ruby – as you said, unanswered in this ep.   And in the next (SPOILERS) it appears she was a perfectly ordinary person, unless I missed something.   (I’m sure I’ll be told if I did).   So all the pointers in various episodes to something mysterious going on were red herrings?

I have to agree with @blenkinsopthebrave, this season was – mixed.   Half the eps were good.

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@blenkinsopthebrave @ps1l0v3y0u

Well, old Who did sort of stray into fantasy with e.g. The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. As nuWho has done, such as Rings of Akhaten. I agree, it should try to stay on firm sci-fi ground, but it frequently strays.

The line between sci-fi and fantasy can get blurred. A favourite comparison/contrast of mine is between DNA’s Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. Hitch-Hiker is rock solid sci-fi, while Discworld is as fantasy as it gets, but both of them, in being suffused with comedy and satire, and in shining a light on our current reality, often end up remarkably similar in tone.

Time travel seems to be one of those themes that is conducive to fantasy, I think.

I notice that RTD seems to have taken a leaf out of Moff’s book with his companion. RTD’s first-run companions – Rose, Martha, Donna – were perfectly ordinary people. Moff’s companions were a little more exotic, and Clara was most certainly an extraordinary individual (notwithstanding Moff’s insistence she was perfectly ordinary). And Ruby resembles Clara in that regard.

 

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@ps1l0v3y0u

I agree about UNIT, I was never very happy about it as a dumping ground for old Companions. (And as a supposedly elite agency, one has to wonder what special skills a randomly-chosen person who happens to become an associate of the Doctor’s, is likely to have. I suppose one could argue that there’s something about some people that makes the Doctor more likely to have chosen them – like Martha, or Clara, or Bill – but then Clara and Bill never subsequently worked for UNIT, so that falls flat.)

I wasn’t around (at least, not watching Who) for the first iteration of Mel, but she’s not may favourite companion either.

Mrs Flood – if she had a mystery, it’s still unresolved. Presumably it will be revealed in some future episode.

It became rapidly apparent that we were going to need a humongous Reset button. But RTD’s was way too mystical/metaphorical for my liking. The opposite of Death is life, so killing Death restores everybody? Seriously? The opposite of an opposite isn’t always identical with the thing you started with. Some things are irreversible.

So unlike many seasons of many, many fictional series, where the opening episodes and the finales are impressive and they go flat in the middle – this one was pretty much the opposite.

 

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@janetteb    I haven’t read all the posts in this forum (but I will).    But this double-episode has so many details in it, I’m sure a re-watch (or several) will bring up all sorts of things I overlooked first time round.   Especially in the time window.

As seasons go, yes I’d rank this one as quite good.

 

 

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So in the first four minutes, RTD just killed *everybody*. Like, not just impersonal universe destruction like the Flux, but all the characters get turned to dust individually.

(10 minutes later) I was wrong, Sutech’s dust of death *is* destroying the whole universe. This is going to take one hell of a Reset button.
The ‘everybody’s dead’ reminds me of Red Dwarf Episode 1 –
LISTER: Where is everybody, Hol?
HOLLY: They’re dead, Dave.
LISTER: Who is?
HOLLY: Everybody, Dave. (and so on)

We do get an explanation of ’73 yards’ – it’s a perception filter (aka the Somebody Else’s Problem field?)

I have to admit, this whole story has got me intrigued, even though I understand very little of it.

I have to say the piles of dust remind me even more strongly of Episode 1 of Red Dwarf. As in:
LISTER: Oh, this is terrible. And why is it so dirty around here, Hol? What is this stuff?
(dips his finger in another pile and tastes it.)
HOLLY: That is Catering Officer Olaf Petersen.

 

Okay, I have to admit I did love the way they trapped Sutech, corny though it was.

And that was one hell of a Reset button.

Ruby’s encounter with Louise – I’m all intrigued to see how RTD handles this. Moff would have handled it brilliantly (IMO), let’s see how RTD does 🙂
Okay, he did all right.

So, happy ending after all. And Mrs Flood remains a mysterious character.

So, as final (double) episodes go, it was – middling.   Not terrible, not outstanding.

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Nice to see Rose(2) again.

The rest of the cast – looks a bit like fan service. Who have we got this time? – oh yes, Mel and Kate.
I would have liked to see an Osgood though.
The Vlinx just looks so Star Wars Disney. And Junior Genius Science Officer on his Segway – why?

But hey – Mrs Flood. Did all our speculation have some grounds? But all she’s doing is babysitting Ruby’s granny. Will she do more in part 2?

VHS tape – wouldn’t it have degraded over the years? Does anyone have a VHS machine that still works? (I suppose Unit would have, along with a teleprinter and a wirephoto machine and a gramophone turntable…)
I have to say, the whole time-window sequence didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Or maybe I’m too mentally lazy to figure it out.

The black tornado thing – naming all those heathen gods, I was waiting for Cthulhu to make an appearance. But actually, it looks more like Zuul.

Well the title was a bit misleading, nothing to indicate why Ruby should be a ‘legend’, nor anything to solve her mystery. Maybe the next episode will throw some light on it.

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@ps1l0v3y0u Well, I’d be okay with this episode if it wasn’t for the cringingly bad, bordering on parody, upgraded Halloween masks that the five villains wore. IF they’d just stayed in their ‘human’ disguises until the time came to inhabit another human (like the Slitheen or Family of Blood did), it would have been adequate and not inviting disbelief/absurdity. Did no-one in the production team burst out laughing and say ‘they look like sh*t’?

(As an aside, somehow when a naff alien monster is a puppet or a stuntie in a full suit, like the Meep or the Wrarth Warriors, or the goblins, I find that just acceptable. But those feather-headed actors were over the limit for me).

Even absent that, I wouldn’t call it a ‘romp’ though. I’m trying to think of an episode that would qualify as a ‘romp’. Last Christmas, possibly (sarcastic Santa and his elves, but the serious peril of the Dream Crabs meant it wasn’t a full ‘romp’). Possibly The Husbands of River Song. Robin of Sherwood? The Power of Three with its absurdly enigmatic cubes? The Bells of St John? Dr Mysterio?

I did freeze-frame the Scan, somehow the faces had been slightly perspective-distorted which made it a little difficult to identify some of them, and I couple I didn’t know.

By the way, I personally am perfectly happy if future writers/showrunners never mention the Chibnall era ever again. Like Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, it ‘happened’, we all survived, now can we please get on with Who?

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The ball is, surprisingly, adequately entertaining (normally, this period-drama stuff gives me a big yawn). Interesting that the Doctor is not the only dark-complexioned character present, nor does anyone seem to be taking any notice of his colour.

Another thing that nobody seems to be noticing is the son et lumiere display when one of the impostors changes bodies.

By the way, the astronomer de Lacaille is a correct reference (I Googled).

Gotta love Rogue’s ‘ship’. Rogue is vaguely reminiscent of Captain Jack Harkness, by the way. And I have never watched Bridgerton (or Downton Abbey), nor will I.

But it all falls apart when the Chuldur reveal themselves. They really are the most naff monsters ever. A watered-down Family of Blood with cringey Halloween masks. Worse than the Slitheen.

Oh, and the Doctor and Rogue seem to be deeply in love. I expect someone somewhere is fuming over their keyboard, but I honestly don’t care either way.

I do have to admit, just when I thought Emily and Ruby were going to have a gay flirtation, Emily turning into a Chuldur took me completely by surprise. That fact alone rescued this episode from Worst of Season to passable. As did Rogue rescuing Ruby from the trap at the cost of his own imprisonment. (Will he ever turn up again?)

(Didn’t they ought to collect the three trap corner gadgets in case they malfunction later and catch someone by accident?)

‘Don’t even know his real name.’ I sense a parallel with the stewardess in Midnight.

Now to see what everyone else thought.

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@ps1l0v3y0u   Oh yes, of course there are titles, just 2 1/2 minutes in.   Somehow I missed them.

The carnivorous megaslugs – I seem to recall there being a suggestion that they were created by the Dot / Matrix.   (I call it that because of the parallels with The Matrix, though obviously that was even more intensively in control of its humanoids).

I’m not so much in favour of the theory that the Dot / Matrix created the slugs.   It would require a whole next-level command of technology to do so.   And it doesn’t seem to have tried modifying any of the FineTimers.   So my theory is that the Slugs were an existing species in the Wild Wood, that somehow infiltrated the dome (or possibly the Matrix let them in).   But then, why were they eating the Finetimers in alphabetical order?   How did the Matrix control them?   I don’t think it did, or needed to.   We could see how slow they were, easily avoided by a human.   All the Matrix had to do was arrange for each Finetimer’s dot to make them avoid the Slugs – until their number was up, then steer them into one.   If, by pure random chance, the occasional Finetimer walked into a Slug before their appointed time, it really wouldn’t matter, it wouldn’t nullify the algorithm.

As to why the Matrix did it in alphabetical order? – possibly it was bored.   Remember Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, who had decided to relieve the boredom of immortality by insulting every creature in the universe – in alphabetical order.

I thought the satire in this episode was extremely well done.    I have never had an account on Tiktok or Twitter, my Facebook account is dormant, I have participated in half-a-dozen Zoom meetings; I watch a lot of Youtube.   But still,  by osmosis, I have absorbed quite a lot of what ‘social media’ looks like, and I think the shallowness of ‘influencers’ is a legitimate target.    (As it happens, the Youboob algorithm keeps showing me videos of Tiktok ‘livestreamers’ doing stupid and offensive ‘stunts’ for clicks and reaping instant karma.   Shallow as they are, none of the Finetimers are as obnoxious as that, although they do reap a far worse fate.)

 

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Lindy – obviously, at first, a totally shallow and unlikeable character. But as the episode progressed she seemed to be growing a little bit of a spine. This is quite common, I think, in Doctor Who stories, as we learn more about a character they become more of a person. (PLease don’t ask me for examples though). So by half-way I was expecting Lindy to be saved at the end by Ricky, and for Ruby and the Doctor to save everyone, or at least all the survivors, as they almost always do. And then of course, RTD bushwhacks us with Lindy’s abject betrayal of Ricky, and the Finetimers bigoted rejection of the Doctor.

The only thing that makes this less emotionally shocking and bitter, is that the Finetimers – Lindy in particular, but the rest of them in general – thoroughly deserve their fate. Well, they chose it.

But I can’t think of another episode in NuWho where the Doctor has failed so completely (through no fault of his own).

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@ps1l0v3y0u     You said (on 25th May)    “I saw a transcription somewhere on the web but can I get it back???”

(See, I do read a lot of these threads!)

Might that have been on Chrissie’s transcripts site at  Chakoteya.net?   (It’s the only one I know of)

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May I say that I really don’t care if Lindy and Cooper and the whole five-second-attention-span TikTokTwitter menagerie get eaten alive by monsters.

Is this the ultimate in telecommuting? (Actually, no, Lindy did have to walk a short distance from her living-cubicle to her work-cubicle. I’m a little surprised she wasn’t plugged into the Matrix at home, but I guess the plot needed an office). Never mind, RTD has devastatingly echoed the shallowness of ‘social media’.

These monsters are right up there with the most horrific creations of Who. CGI well utilised.

And we’re 16 minutes in and still no title sequence, this is getting to be a habit with RTD isn’t it?

I was appalled when Lindy betrayed Ricky September to the Dot.

And somewhat morbidly satisfied when Lindy and the other Eloi sailed off down the river in their boat, all their skills will be as much use as an umbrella in a hurricane. As Chrissie noted**,  ‘..hopefully to fall down a waterfall or crash into a grille or vanish when it gets to the edge of the dome because it is a hologram or something. Because.’

(**At the end of her transcript on Chakoteya.net)

This episode was – disconcerting. And it – very loosely – echoes the future generation in H G Wells’ The Time Machine, with the ‘beautiful people’ (the Eloi) living in luxury sustained by the ‘sub-human’ Morlocks.

Another top-notch episode.

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@robink2567     Good point about the perception filter.   I’ve just realised that explains why 73 yard woman only terrorised people who Ruby had pointed her out to.   The rest just didn’t notice her (the woman) because of the filter.   I’m very slow sometimes.

I’ll take your word for it that young people (in Britain) would use metres rather than yards, I can’t judge as I live in New Zealand.   But I know that, for greater distances, it’s miles, as every road sign will confirm.   🙂

The perception filter being attached to Ruby’s Tardis key (and malfunctioning) – that works.    I wondered if 73 Yard woman was just a hologram generated by [something attached to] Ruby e.g. the perception filter.   And the filter would have been pre-programmed by the mystical forces of the broken fairy ring to target Roger ap H-bomb.

OR, she could be the Doctor, trapped by the mystical powers of the fairy ring and unable to do anything but watch (until his chance came to terrorise Roger ap H-bomb, which would be entirely consistent with his history of saving the Earth from itself).   But I don’t think the Doctor would deliberately cause a split between Ruby and her mother, so I think that theory is ruled out.

Probably all this has been exhaustively discussed in this thread, which I’ve only just skimmed through.

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Further conjecture:    Why 73 yards? Did ’73’ have any significance as a number?
219 feet, 66.7 metres (as the episode told us). 66.7512 metres, to be precise. Actually, rounding, that’d be 66.8 metres.
But I can’t make anything of it. If it was 66.6 feet it would be the ‘mark of the beast’ or somesuch but it ain’t.
So I’m sure the ’73’ must mean something but I can’t guess what. It’s prime, but so are (mumble mumble) 23 other numbers under 100. So I dunno.
And (contra TranslatorCircuit) I can’t see any significance in using yards rather than metres either. Britain still uses miles and mph for large distances, metres and millimetres and feet and inches for short ones. Also, buying petrol in litres but the trip computer in my little Toyota Aygo rental proudly showed 56 miles per gallon. It’s somehow gloriously British to be using two incompatible systems at one and the same time.

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Well that was different.

First, no opening titles? Or did I just miss them? Is there any significance to this?

Second, no Doctor (for most of it). No offence to the Doctor, but the story was well enough written to keep my interest without him.

Third, what did we just watch? It was *good*, but completely baffling. Who was the woman? – future old Ruby frozen in time? Don’t know. And possibly more significant – *what* did she say to everyone that made them run away from Ruby in terror (except Roger ap H-bomb who just – resigned)? Why was his reaction different?

And of course there was a bloody huge Reset button at the end.

So many questions, so much unexplained. Normally the number of unexplained bits would really bother me (see my comments on Kill the Moon for just how much gratuitously breaking physical laws wholesale bugs me!), but somehow in this – more mystical – story, it didn’t matter.

Tough luck on Ruby, who had to live a solitary life – not without romance, but without any permanent attachments because the 73 yard woman was so distracting.    I have noticed (in retrospect) that 73 yard woman only gave the horror treatment to people who Ruby had pointed her out to.   She left Ruby’s other acquaintances and passing romances alone.

I’d rank this up with Boom.   A vast improvement on earlier episodes, and (I hope) promising for the rest of the season.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u     Well, it’s my personal choice to avoid reading too much into a story, since I can get quite enough political insanity from watching the news, and I like my fiction to be escapist.   And also, I find such interpretations are frequently able to be skewed to suit the preferences/prejudices of the viewer.    (Having said that, I just  watched  ’73 yards’ and the similarities between Roger ap Gwilliam  and a certain orange idiot were unmistakeable (and I’m not talking about Bojo)).

I can’t see that October 5th has any great significance, and I think – in general – the screening dates of various Who episodes are too obscure to be a plot point.    Google tells me that on that date  ‘Dr No’ (the movie) was released, also Monty Python’s Flying Circus first aired.   Not sure if they had any significance, but since there were no references to ‘joined the choir invisible’ or ‘nobody expects…’, probably not.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u     Well, I don’t think this is really the forum for political discussions, so I’ll keep my views to myself (not that I think they’d surprise anybody.)   You do have a good point, that the US and Europe was supporting Ukraine with military tech.   (Vastly to the benefit of the military/industrial complex, by the way.)    But a quite different circumstance, I think, from the situation in ‘Boom’, where there was no local population resisting.   That’s part of why I’m leery of reading too much ‘message’ (other than the vaguest generalisations) into specific sci-fi episodes.

I’m not sure of the significance of October 5th?

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