@missy  Oh, you’re very welcome!  I recall him mentioning somewhere in an interview that he had a bad time at school himself, socially at least — fat kid being bullied (his own kid, the one who did that interview with him, is very round); fat, *clever* kid, all the worse.  So maybe there’s a bit of getting his own back and (however subtly and in…[Read more]

@missy   the really good looking actors seem to coarsen with age

Yes, but then the standard of male “really good looks” in the US is always been (I think) a sort of square-jawed face, like Rock Hudson, Burt Lancaster, Clark Gable, Brando, Matt Dillon, et al, and that tends to soften and squash out laterally with age, as musculature succumbs to…[Read more]

@thane  Might as well study anthropology (and sociology, and psychology); you’ll be living in it all your life anyway, unless you go off by yourself to study scorpions in the desert or something (maybe those weird little cats that hang out in the territory of snow leopards and look like bristly little chunks of granite when still — good show on…[Read more]

@arbutus   As for “being the Doctor”, I don’t think that’s something that he can choose. We saw Eleven try it after losing Amy and Rory, and it didn’t work out terribly well for him then.

Mmm, yes; it’s that identity that he occasionally drops, so that we can see him pick it up again, like a sword and shield, and move into purposeful action agai…[Read more]

@missrori  Nobody’s there for him in his dark time in the confession dial. Ergo, nobody truly loves him.  

At that moment, nobody’s there to show him love, but remember those 24 yrs on Derillium (or however the heck you spell it) with River?  There are moments of love and gratitude all through the Doctor’s saga, and maybe more importantly, mome…[Read more]

This happened for me somewhere relatively early in “Downton Abbey”.  I was bored, hardly really watching, and said to myself, “Why do I care what these rich twits and their servants are doing?  Oh.  I don’t.”  Turned it off and never went back.  I should have quit for good after the original “Upstairs, Downstairs” series, which I loved, beca…[Read more]

@missy   I know the feeling; although I’m one of the mob that was charmed and delighted by Tom Baker.  The rest I could take or leave, until Peter Capaldi came on the scene.  Holy moly, I was a gone goose in no time — though I’d checked out TToI (once we knew he was the oncoming Doctor), so I was pleasantly anticipating interesting work from hi…[Read more]

Goodness, here’s something new to me — Matt Smith’s new venture:

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20161031-ten-tv-shows-to-watch-in-november

He does clean up nice, doesn’t he?  My, my.  And look at that posture and bearing — Bye bye Gyrating Giraffe Boy!  I will certainly look in on this — Netflix is proving an ongoing spring of sweet wa…[Read more]

@missy  It’s sometimes pretty hard to catch up around here — but always worth the effort!

@pedant  Thank you!  Now if I ever *do* remember that moment, I’ll know what the cookie was.

As for the assault on cleverness, that’s a good part of what’s driving the candidacy of Drumpf.  Brexit for him and his followers is probably the proposed walling off of Mexico (and no doubt Canada too, the Creature from the Orange Lagoon gets in).  H…[Read more]

@janetteb  Ha!  I wish we had that kind of thing here (DW music in the supermarket — not so sure about something called “Jammy Dodgers”  — sounds like some street hooligan to me).

Poor Moffat — part of his problem is that he so obviously *enjoys* his own cleverness (which many of his detractors simply cannot forgive).  When you watch him liv…[Read more]

@arbutus  Thanks for Weird Al, good giggles!

@puroandson  re Trumpenstein — it’s all very stressful and strange.  One unforeseen effect is that people are voting early in impressive numbers, Democrats probably more than Republicans, in part to avoid becoming embroiled in, well, thuggish embroilments at crowded polling places on Nov. 8.  I dou…[Read more]

Some chat from Moffat, for them as hasn’t seen this but are interested:

Production Notes (Steven Moffat Q&A) for Doctor Who Magazine #505: "The Doctor’s favourite alcoholic drink is lemonade." from gallifrey

Clever clogs; sometimes you just want to smack him . . .

@puroandson  Solo — yikes, thanks!  So when I come across things like the Comicon panel I just linked to, from New York last month, should that go to Spoilers also?  Probably yes, so sorry if I miss-stepped there, and can someone who knows how to do this please take that link off the new pub discussion and shove it over to Spoilers instead?

Just mooching around tonight, came across this — some charming and funny bits, and in general, I come away feeling very cheered about S10.

Hey, just popped in at NW news and found a trailer for “Class”!

http://www.doctorwhonews.net

@Puroandson  And then writing “they have nothing else to do”

Thanks, Puros; that part I really didn’t trust myself to answer without ranting.

@craig  Thank you; nice to have you back!

@missy  Why, oh why, do some people carry on about racism?

Well, either you see why, or you don’t; if you don’t, you don’t.  But once you do, you can never “unsee” it again, which IMO is a very, very good and long-overdue thing.

Let me be clear: I didn’t mean, above, that I disapprove of raising race issues about our entertainment (in this c…[Read more]

@missy  A natural — swearer?!  Now *I’ve* got the giggles, remembering bits from that film.  He’s said that he picked up swearing from being around Burt Lancaster while they were filming “Local Hero”, way back when, but I must say I have my doubts — could he seriously mean that as a boy growing up in Glasgow, he’d rarely heard or used foul la…[Read more]