Re @Blenkinsopthebrave‘s comment

Missy’s rather cruel jibe to Clara about Danny: “still dead is he?”. Why put this in?

I agree with @Pedant‘s post that it’s there to demonstrate how nasty Missy is. There may be a veneer of being on the Doctor’s side for now, but you can be sure it’s only for precisely as long as it suits her.

I thought the Docto…[Read more]

@ichabod

Hmm; but he could be lying about “recent”.

A Timelord’s idea of ‘recent’ might not be ours, but the Doctor who deserted the child Davros was the current incarnation, and I am pretty sure that once he had had time to recover his wits and think things through, he would immediately have started to feel guilty about his failure to live up to…[Read more]

Of course, we’ve only seen half the story. It’s hard with two-parters, to remember to treat them the same way we treat the BG serials that we’ve been watching for our retro-Doctor discussions. Because with the modern show, we’ve gotten used to the vast majority being self-contained, snappy episodes without a lot of room for extras.…[Read more]

@denvaldron

the Doctor makes reference to ‘saving his friends’

@spider

(now does he say friend or friends here? – need to go rewatch)

Actually, in the final scene boy Davros says: “Are you going to save me?” and the Doctor replies: “I’m going to save my friend”.

Friend-in the singular.

Now that opens up a whole heap of possibilities. Which frien…[Read more]

@ichabod yeah I used the wrong phrase here, Clara being ‘dumbed down’  isn’t really what I meant. It was more she was ‘put in her place’ by Missy (I think you used the world ‘outclassed’ which I very much agree with). I loved seeing her be all super-confident Clara with UNIT and bossing them about, but she (and us) are very much dragged back to…[Read more]

@DenValdron “Davros is actually kind of buff” lol!! Yeah well I have to agree. He
definitely had more spunk than the last time he visited the series. But seems to me
that this is earlier in the time line than that last Davros we saw. And really, Davros
is always at deaths door. He exists on the threshold of that door. But my impression
is…[Read more]

@DenValdron and @purofilion

Yes, I do tend to stat-crunch. 😉

Currently, we know the overnight numbers. We don’t know their significance. Their significance will become more obvious as the ‘Final figures’and the newer ‘L+7’ come in. Some viewers will undoubtedly have been lost from E1S8, because the first episode was also Peter Capaldi’s first…[Read more]

@denvaldron   On ratings — I’d be curious to see how much of the drop (from Ep 1 S8 to Ep 1 S9) was in US viewership, because S8 came to us without adverts, but S9 ep 1 was chopped to bits so ads could be added — 21 minutes of ads, to be exact, vs. 45 minutes of show.  This idiocy made a very complex and grandly expansive episode very d…[Read more]

<span class=”useratname”>@denvaldron</span>

Thanks for the info, but, um, Pat Troughton was menaced in Power of the Daleks.

@Craig  Wow, that timeline page is great — the one for LOTR is *beautiful*!   I think I saw “Primer” at my local teensy weird film house, and those are *exactly* the kinds of stories that blank my mind so completely that I steer away from time travel stories in general — I *always* miss a lot no matter how many times I watch.  Exceptions, si…[Read more]

@DenValdron Cheers (as we say in the UK, my US colleagues tell me they find it a bit awkward but I feel it has more resonance than just a thanks). I Went to see ‘Dark City’ in the cinema and thought it very imaginative, almost Gilliam-esque. I’d worked on a low budget film with Rufus Sewell a few years before, was keeping any eye on what he got up…[Read more]

@DenValdron I know, I don’t know how I missed it. Haven’t looked up what sort of release, or even reviews, it got in in the UK though. On the other hand, I seem to recall being rather busy around 2004 and I’ve settled down a bit now so that may have something to do with it.

I’ve almost finished watching it a second time tonight (as it’s quite…[Read more]

@DenValdron   Oh, yes, there are real-life examples of the outsider succeeding in a new cultural environment.  How often in reality is the outsider-success a success specifically in the skills (previously unknown to him) of the culture he has joined?  If he succeeds *by virtue of* his position of marginality in his new culture (or, upon return “h…[Read more]

@DenValdron  Yes, “Lord of Light” is wonderful, and was a huge hit at the time.  I don’t think I ever read Piserchia, or that particular book of hers, anyway — good reminder, thanks.  We have a good SF used bookstore in town, and I should be able to lay hands on a copy.  To tell the truth, I never read much Burroughs except a couple of Tarzan boo…[Read more]

bluesqueakpip        I reserve the right to be completely wrong about Baby Moon Dragons if Europa suddenly bursts open and a dragon flies out – but I’m fairly sure the Moon isn’t an egg.

“Fairly sure” represents a nicely open mind that the true scientist ought to appreciate.  🙂

@purofilion    Yay, Meatloaf!!   🙂

Seriously, I’ve been fo…[Read more]

@ichabod, @bluesqueakpip @denvaldron—

I don’t believe that the episode is consistent with its own logic.  It sets up its rules, and then it breaks them.  That’s just bad storytelling.

No, it isn’t. Not in this instance. First off, Peter Harness is a seriously established writer who knows what the hell he’s doing. He’s got several episodes of th…[Read more]

@janetteB

Personally I don’t think the Doctor’s “abandonment” of Clara was reprehensible. It simply was the right thing to do in the circumstance. It was up to the humans to make the decision which affected the fate of their world. The decision is not his to make.

I think the leaving such a huge decision about Earth’s (possible) fate to not jus…[Read more]

@JimTheFish  It’s the character arc(s), taking regen shock (at the beginning of a partial re-set to a whole new sequence of future regenerations) seriously enough to use all of S8 to tell that story in an erratic series of very differing episodes, that’s the boldest throw of S8.  I admire the audacity, and the achievement (which I think is c…[Read more]