At the moment I’m doing what I…[Read more]

@denvaldron  Fortunately I’ve learned how to walk away from online arguments since my last foray into forums, Den. I’d strongly recommend it to anyone! Don’t get involved in endless back-and-forth bickering, if someone disagrees with you, that’s their prerogative, but don’t get drawn in if they provoke an argument.…[Read more]

As @wolfweed said, it would […]

Films are all too easily lost forever but it’s nice to enjoy any fragments which remain.

All I could find are Marc Sinclair’s Facebook & this […]

I’ve thought that about Steven too. You only haver to see how he sits on a chair, with a sort of swagger. *grins*

He is quite sure of his own genius and doesn’t mind showing it but I don’t care, the man is brilliant.

Finally saw the video, thank you so much ichi, loved it.

@denvaldron: Although i shall keep out of the ongoing d…[Read more]

See, if only your original post had been that concise instead of hogging a board, for which posts of that length are not well suited, like a fat man in the back seat of a Boeing 737…

You didn’t come up with a theory, you saw the face of Jesus in the smoke and wondered if it was the same face of Jesus as when the same people set a…[Read more]

Fucking hell. Writers recycle ideas, while producers and their lawyers understand intellectual property law.

Who’da thunk itzzzzzzzz…

(T’Pol, in Star Tek: Enterprise was going to be called T’Pau (Spock’s mother (grandmother? Can’t remember, don’t care) but then they realised they would have to pay a fuck off big residual…[Read more]

@Phaseshift, That uniform did indeed seem like a nod to B.5 There have been…[Read more]

I’d imagine that in the forty (or thirty) years since we last saw the Zygons, they’ve discovered how to produce lactic fluid in the lab.

More canonically, Strax claims that he’s gene-spliced himself to produce magnificent quantities of lactic fluid, so it’s reasonable to suppose that the Skarasens are now happily swimming undisturbed…[Read more]

Both are great explanations. This also makes more clear the problems that the Doctor had in The Angels Take Manhattan, where, in reading the book from the future, the Doctor was turning things into fixed points, because if he knew they would happen, he couldn’t prevent them happening.

I agree with DenValdron – the climber can be saved, but only if the Doctor hasn’t seen him die. The fall has become ‘fixed’ by the action of the Doctor seeing it.

I talked about this in my blog Wibbley Wobbly, Timey Wimey – specifically, it’s the bit where the Doctor visits Blackpool and breaks his arm – but doesn’t,…[Read more]

Is that why the audience seems to be going away? The ratings this season have been between 2/3 and 1/2 of previous seasons. I don’t think this is explained by changes in television

I invite you to make whatever point you have on ratings in a blog, setting forward whatsoever point you wish to make. Simply because it’s not the f…[Read more]

DW is ONE TV show, that went on a significant hiatus. This is why I call current programs S34 instead of S9; Jon Pertwee was the Doctor for S9.

The key word is ‘significant’. And much had happened in between, both in the world of Who and in the world of entertainment generally. It’s foolish to try and assert that it’s a case of ‘it was off air…[Read more]

The ratings this season have been between 2/3 and 1/2 of previous seasons.

Oh for heaven’s sake. Please try to understand how ratings are put together before commenting. Who’s viewership has been around the 7-8m mark since the return, other than a substantial peak during the Tennent exits specials (to around 11m).

However, in 2005…[Read more]

I’m the opposite myself.  But I recognize that the showrunners are opting for emotional and relationship payoff, and shorting rationality and coherence.   I don’t necessarily see the two as being opposed.  But I do see a prioritization of one and a rather shrifty attitude to the second.   Eh, so it goes.

I disagree; I don’t think the…[Read more]

Hmmm… yes, I agree you could see the second and third McCoy series as Absurdist in the sense of Pinter or Stoppard. There’s frequently a sense of a menace in the background that we, the audience (and our audience avatar, Ace) can sense but don’t really understand. Ghostlight is definitely a story of people trapped in an…[Read more]

Old news. It’s even on IMDB.

I am sorry to hear about your father’s death.  I hope you’re able to take some rest when and as you can.

Me too.  Too much backstory, better to move on to something new, IMO.  @denvaldron  Thanks for the Viking overview — densely packed and concise; only what, exactly, does kaput mean in this context?  A swift and somewhat catast…[Read more]

I think Robert Holmes meant the Kasterborous Sector, or System, but somehow ‘constellation’ slipped through and got thoroughly stuck in Who legend.

In Vancouver, I starting watching DW in the mid-eighties, except that it wasn’t on PBS, but on a local indy station out of Bellingham, Washington, that used to show a lot of things in syndication. They were showing late era Tom Baker at the time I discovered the show, but they ran up as far as they had (wh…[Read more]

@Juniperfish    Yes, it did seem as though the Doctor might have known or guessed what would happen to Ashildr, and I was waiting for Clara to call him out on it. As far as Clara wondering why he wouldn’t give her the chip (especially in light of their earlier conversation), he clearly does…[Read more]

My bad. The pedantry crown is still yours!

@ScaryB – oh, I did not twig the music quotes in the baby speak until you mentioned it – nice.

@DenValdron Maybe the electric eels was another music gag?

There was a punk-ish band called the Electric Eels with a Viking connection! This (from the Wikipedia page):

“Eventually the electric eels…[Read more]

No worries 🙂 Great minds and all that…

I loved your thought that we are watching Who episodes because the Doctor (or maybe one of his companions) has uploaded their live recordings of his adventures to the “Galactic Hub”. Maybe that’s why this Doc breaks the fourth wall and talks “to camera”! Very meta indeed.

@Ozitenor

Missy…

[Read more]

It’s all Donna’s fault! (Though it was great to see her again in the flashback).  Now the Doctor has to live with the consequences of “saving just one”.

So who is Ashildr going to reward/curse with the other “chip”?  Wild thought – what if she gives it to Clara? I could be (ie probably am) wrong but I thought Clara was g…[Read more]

Look at the design of the Vervoids.

Noooooo! Please. Not the Vervoids!!

😈

Looking forward to your take on the Angels* and the Silence

*Now there’s a brilliant concept for production team practicalities – dancers and actual statues

Really interested in hearing about Angels and Silence @denvaldron as I’m curious about their similarity to children’s’ games.

But as I have no kids or relations that young I have no idea idea if it worked like that (ie if kids played as Silence or…[Read more]

Yes, great comments. I’d particularly point to Jim’s point that 80s who lost some currency because those touchstone references became too distant.

When you look at the first appearance by the Daleks, they not only refer to the war Holmes, Dicks and Nation lived through, but the ultimate war to come. A…[Read more]

To be honest I’ve not thought deeply about anything in a few decades which is a shame on me. I’m actually jealous of…[Read more]

The Sea Devils were personally a very successful monster, I lived a stones throw from the sea and a monster who literally waded outof the sea was very freaky.

Not all monsters/villains/neredowells necessarily make the grade but I would theorise that most of them hit the grade with some of the audience ( exception being the liquorice…[Read more]

The hearse wasn’t Tivolian either – Prentis says it’s Arcateenian – the invaders who came after the Fisher King, who initially liberated the Tivolians then realised they were so annoying they enslaved them as well! The funeral arrangements were according to Arcateenian custom for a vanquished enemy. Prentis was just carrying out…[Read more]

Late to the party… again! But thoroughly enjoyed catching up with all your thoughts; much to ponder on.

I really enjoyed this one, I found it compelling and very creepy, though I agree with those who suggested that the Fisher King is  a bit underdeveloped. I liked the character design, especially in the shadows, beautifully…[Read more]

Seriously, I don’t actually think that Moffat sat down and asked himself, “What thematic ideas can I mine from the Tarot?” More that those underlying themes are present in lots of…[Read more]

In terms of sense, yes; in terms of the visual effect, wonderful, particularly the sly suggestion of that sort of Dickensian hypocrisy and general deceptiveness in the interests of genteel appearances.  Loved it!

@blenkinsopthebrave  the Doctor was wi…[Read more]

@arbutus  I feel the same way about this casual tossing out of possible future companions — and of perfectly inoffensive DW fans!  What gives, here?  A weird hostility vibe, or what?

@denvaldron

The reason that I mentioned the Sontarans specifically is that I watched the Bred for war boxset of all four Sontaran BG stories…[Read more]

I am not sure I would agree that the Borg were an imitation of the BG Who. If anything, I think the AG Who Cybermen were, and are increasingly, an imitation of the Borg.

Your point about the new Cybermen is correct–they want to convert you; in other words, the Borg. But beyond this, I am not sure what AG Who wants to do with…[Read more]

I’m struggling with this a little, because you seem to ne taking what makes a monster, and then mixing it with some hugely subjective stuff about legacy. How about we concentrate on first or early appearances?

Because if a monster reappeared, it was a success. What made it the success? What is our first impression of the Sontarans, say?

Like you, I think the Doctor as ‘Merlin’ ties into the Cartmel Masterplan insofar as it represented the Doctor as somehow more than he seemed.

If I’m remembering the story of Battlefield correctly (@Phaseshift??), while everyone recognised that the Doctor was the Merlin they knew, people kept saying that his face had changed. So,…[Read more]

Yes, ‘projections’ would certainly explain how we could have a Doctor-ghost without the Doctor genuinely dying.

@Juniperfish – what I think they may be harking back to is a purely Whovian reference. Battlefield, where the ‘Lady in the Lake’ was Ace. ‘Merlin’ was quite specifically referenced as the Doctor – this was the Cartmel…[Read more]

I think the scariest “monster” ever in Dr Who were the vashta nerada from Silence in the Library, completely silent, absolutely deadly and hiding in books. They could not be fought and they could not be reasoned with. It was years before our eldest would watch that two parter and I understand why. Overexposure…[Read more]