@arbutus  I didn’t at the time equate this with the kind of male dominated situation that I know understand was a thing in the science fiction world, because having been raised by a feminist single mom and being a bit of a dreamy, isolated sort, I had the rather naive belief that gender was no longer an issue. 🙂

Oh, yes; still is, if you fo…[Read more]

SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER...

@winston   I also have a feeling that there is no original Clara just Claracles and the Doctor knows that. But I am usually wrong.

Or not . . . good grief, can you imagine finding out that you are a bootstrap paradox and have not beginning and no end?  WHAT?!!!!

@purofilion   It was such an internalised piece, made into external reflection wi…[Read more]

@nerys  Ashildr is still quite young. So mightn’t that be a problem, having someone who is immortal, but equipped with the emotional intelligence and self-awareness of a teen? If he thinks his emotions cause him to do irrational and/or unwise things, what of hers?

Mmm, that’s very nice — promising for when they meet again, next Sa…[Read more]

@lisa  Must say though that Ashildr an Arya from Game of T. are extremely close in the types of characters to me so far.

Let’s see — daughter of a warrior culture, dad a reasonably high status leader (of his village, though not, apparently, of actual raids like the one that return with the two prisoners), could become a warrior herself (a s…[Read more]

@arbutus  Oh, wonderful!  Thanks!

@spacedmunkee  Is it just me or was Odin’s appearance in the sky very Pythonesque. I was half expecting him to send the Doctor on a quest to seek the Holy Grail.    Or a huge foot come stamping down . . . !

Would this Doctor consider changing other events from his own timeline. <insert bonkers River theory here>.

Well, now that he’s deli…[Read more]

@starla    This might account (potentially) for why the Doctor couldn’t use the Mire’s healing device on her – maybe it’s not compatible with dalek tech?  . . . I’m still hearing the occasional oddity from Clara that makes me think of Daleks – e.g the very start of this episode when she says ‘Explain’ on a fairly curt voice to the Doctor.

Oh, v…[Read more]

@jphamlore  In last season’s Time Heist we have seen there is a thriving market in all sorts of tech. So how exactly would the knowledge of this immortality chip be kept secret?

That was definitely done too hastily, but my impression is that this was tech held by the Mire exclusively, and that as they’re such fearsome warriors, nobody had yet da…[Read more]

@purofilion  I wonder @Ichabod if there were DW meetings or ‘chapters’ where you were in the States?

Probably, but I didn’t know anything about it if so.  All I knew about DW fandom at the time was that when DW fans showed up at the SF conventions I went to from ’76 on, they dressed weird, hung out together and didn’t talk to anybody else, and h…[Read more]

SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER...

@bluesqueakpip  Who else gave a drunken cheer at “reverse the polarity of the neutron flow”?

Me!  I absolutely whooped with delight . . . I loved this, thought it was a wonderful rush of energy and ideas.  The playfulness here worked beautifully with/against the on-going problem of Clara and the Doctor’s absolutely necessary loss of her and v.…[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip   But in the 5063 revival, they’ll have a *real* alien playing the Doctor.

@purofilion  I still think (when I get a little depressed about some eps in S8) that there’s a reason we had interesting little biopics into Sherwood Forest, the Moon (with its odd lego-like spiders) and bizarro London -it all meant something. Something huge. But possibly, it didn’t: “it is what it is.”  And yet….Orson, the thing under the blanket…[Read more]

@purofilion  Boy Ilion has his ‘big trial’ for the national leagues on Monday: about 30 show up on Day 1 and 15 are chucked in the first stage.

Best luck and celebrations, I hope!

@jphamlore, re Clara +  I wonder if there has been a decision to not go down the direction of an incredibly convoluted history or to not give what are in effect superpowers to the next companion.

I sure hope so.  Clara has just about exhausted that path for now, I think, as a kind of capstone to the super-companion build-up that I associate m…[Read more]

@lisa   Well, he flouts TL rules, or bends them, or challenges them openly, like trying to use the Tardis to take him to the future he mustn’t return to yet in BtF, but he’s forced to find another way (presumably the “right” way) back.  And at other times, “I can’t do that.”  “I know when I can, I know when I can’t,” pretty much depending on th…[Read more]

@purofilion  Cruise, a dark haired, dark eyed, fairly short man is playing the 6 foot 5″ Jack Reacher- Scandinavian in looks, by the books – is an odd choice.

Money choice.  Like Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut, but nothing since.  It’s all the blowhard macho crap that a) drives me nuts and b), when I’m tired of being nuts, puts me to sleep.  He seems s…[Read more]

@pedant  [Clara] could be a single entity living in four dimensional space, but human reasoning skills are not really designed to see the universe that way . . . She doesn’t travel through time – she is temporal (back to the tesseract idea)  It has been suggested many times, however, that this is exactly how TLs see the universe.

Which sounds…[Read more]

@drben  Wow!  What a handsome line-up of tarot and S9!  That’s a teensy work of art all by itself.  Now let’s see what happens — S9 is delightful so far, IMO.

@jphamlore  Kate Stewart could be the victim of office politics at some point. That would give her time to have an adventure or two as the Doctor’s temporary companion.

I would so like t…[Read more]