@arbutus  @thane16  But to me, the baddie was the solitract: luring people with promises of “forever.”  Or not even the solitract, but the refusal to accept reality, let go of the past, and let the dead rest.

Oh, yes; it is our clinging to the past that can never be authentically re-created again for us in the present, that is what’s being declin…[Read more]

@mirime  ‘Timeless Child’ is interesting. I’m torn between wanting to know more and thinking it should just be left as a mystery. There’s such a risk of disappointment and I’m not confident in Chibnall’s abilities yet.

Me too; I’d love to see that bloom into something gripping, something to help anchor this Doctor to her own deep past maybe,…[Read more]

@thane16  She’s completely a new person but she still has, deep inside, those memories, that sadness and that loss. It isn’t front and centre. This world is not just about the Doctor anymore. It’s like she steps back to serve. Or, almost, like she’s an idiot in a box, stepping in and out to help when she can.

Agreed — that’s clearly the intentio…[Read more]

@arbutus    I’d like to think that the Doctor’s offer was more of a “take me instead”, spur of the moment attempt to save Erik, and that she only realized afterward that she wouldn’t be able to stay.

I like that better, too.  What I missed, though, was some — sense of connection between Doctor and the Solitract — it’s a being from an old Gallif…[Read more]

@notime   It didnt even try to trick the Doctor or Jaz with memories

Wonder why it didn’t try to draw Ryan in, maybe with a double of his father . . . ?  Or does it have to be a siren — female, singing to men of assured and deathless love?

@thane16  @ichabod I think you might like this one?

You’re right; for me, this story had a pleasingly disconnected feeling that I think came with the “through the looking glass” echo — first time I felt that they dared to take off without a clear flight path to an expected landing place (except that a sort of resolution between Ryan and Graham…[Read more]

@thane16  Happy birthday!

Enjoyed it, might watch again because the ending was so rushed that I can’t sort it out clearly in my head.

I did wonder, though, if the Morax thing would say “imprisoned in the hill or war crimes”.  What, no denial, no self-justification?  Odd.  And I wondered why the Doctor didn’t have some reaction to the high-handedness some deep space Nu…[Read more]

@pedant   At last, a much needed public service to all DW fans some of the time and some DW fans all of the time!  Thanks for the giggle; I needed it!  Well, we all need it some of the time . . .

@pedant  Thanks for the link.  We’re not losing pubs (well, bars) around here; we’re gaining lots of little independent breweries, which seem to be blossoming in every US city with a halfway decent economy.  We’ve also got a massive alcoholism problem that’s been going on for a while under the radar because our opioid epidemic has taken the sp…[Read more]

@pedant  @mudlark  Jesus H Christ On A Bike, ichabod. That you even gave such transparent horse shit credence does not reflect well on you.

Don’t be daft!  Who says I gave it credence?  I said I’ve seen pub closures attributed to this “cause”, and am pleased to read comments on it here that throw more light on the subject from folks who’d kno…[Read more]

@mudlark  Thanks for that encouraging news about the village that has found ways to save itself — it does seem as though real, positive change in this particular environment of a labor market on the brink of collapsing (into something else, largely automated and on-line based).  I can’t think of any successful news like that about dying US t…[Read more]

@mudlark  Oh, it’s going to take a good long time to come up with some better solutions, and it will be very uneven as well — after all, we still have actual slavery going on in the “Kingdom of Saud” while the ISS whizzes around its orbit above Earth.  Some problems don’t really get solved at all, they just evolve into something else . . . The c…[Read more]