@lisa  — well, you’re onto something there (Scary Poppins the nanny), but couldn’t it also be that MissMaster is framing herself as Clara’s stronger, smarter, more connected-to-the-TL-Doctor rival for his regard?  Too soon to tell, I think.

@Arbutus   Mmmm, I agree —  it would be awfully tough to synchronize enough of the changes involved in Regeneration x 2 such that the couple involved could keep a satisfactorily balanced relationship going for more than one lifetime or two, and that’s assuming that TL’s have some conscious control over the regen process, which doesn’t seem to b…[Read more]

@JimTheFish (I think)  re Osgood’s death: “. . . it was a significant character beat for both the Doctor and the Master. It emphasised that for all her whackiness, Missy is dangerous, lethal even. And it showed the Doctor that by not taking Missy seriously enough, he ended up getting someone killed. Of course, his battles with the Master lead to…[Read more]

@JanetteB  @DenValdron  @ScaryB   I loved BG Who as a kid, but now I have a hard time watching the older shows.  They just don’t hold my attention the way they once did.  That doesn’t make them lousy, or invalidate my taste then or now; just c’est la vie, and more my loss than anything else, when I think about it.

As for S8, I liked it, part…[Read more]

@lisa  I like your take on the Missy question (well, probably because it lines up with my own!).  MissMaster is playing — playing a satirical cartoon of the femme fatale, playing the seductress, playing for power.  Being female doesn’t seem to me to have anything to do with it.  Being a *real* control freak (who is incidentally and for the tim…[Read more]

@Arbutus  — Thank you for that response!  You and your husband have made my day . . .

@IAurellie  Confusing isn’t the half of it!  I’m constantly being surprised to find

new posts and conversations here (like this one, to me) that don’t show up (?)

under the link “recent activity” — weird.  And how’d I get stuck here with double

spacing all of a sudden?  ???!!!!

Thought this was interesting– what else will the political spl…[Read more]

A great scientist, lived to be quite old, and who for other reasons reminds me of — CapDoc!  It’s the hair, people!  And maybe the eyebrows, it’s hard to tell what with the glasses and all.  But her picture startled me — an Auntie on Gallifrey?!  She also sounds like a tough lady, which she would have had to have been.  I love the way the inte…[Read more]

@JimTheFish  I agree on Gallifrey; and I have to say that I find the Doctor’s persistence in trying to find the place puzzling.  This may sound odd, but — my maternal grandparents were immigrants to the US from Austria, around the turn of the 20th c.  They left for good reasons (mostly having to do with the military draft), rattled around th…[Read more]

@gamergirlavatar  Doesn’t the Doctor have to go to some ratification board to affix a monicker on a new species?  Hmm.  Madame Vastra would make a very good Ratification Board, maybe?  I mean, somebody else could name them “The Paper Doll people” or something, and who knows, it might even catch on!

I’m particularly fond of the hand-walking Tar…[Read more]

@purofilion  Okay then, thanks!

Ichi

@purofilion   Oh damn, if that’s a spoiler I’m sorry — the net has been humming about this for some time, so I assumed — wrongly, it seems — that it was widely known that this acto was tipped for some kind of part in S9 weeks ago.  “Spoiler” as I’ve seen it used so far has meant some sort of plot-reveal, rather than ID of someone joining the c…[Read more]

Got a good one — I’m reading “H is for Hawk” by Helen MacDonald, and it’s every bit as brilliantly written and absorbing to read as promised in reviews.  There’s a nice tangential tie in with the Doctor (besides the fact that the novel is fantasy) — running commentary on T.H White (as a falconer), whose Merlin, in the fantasy novel “The Sword…[Read more]

SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER...

Ran across some new pics from S9 shooting (around the return of Osgood, or anyway some version of Osgood), and I am very relieved to see CapDoc wearing one of his more casual outfits (jumper, rather than white shirt and vest, under the now somewhat beat-up looking Crombie coat) but not those goofy tartan pants (pics from the filming of an ep with…[Read more]

@janetteB  Right, thanks — I’ll be in San Francisco for a grandchild graduation the weekend of June 13, probably won’t see Strange & Norrell then, but they tend to re-run new show debuts for several evenings during the week after one is first aired, so I watch for it.  Yeh, slog is right — I’d heard so much about the book, was very d…[Read more]

@JanetteB  “J Strange and Mr. Norrell” sounds really intriguing to me — I have to admit that I tried to read the novel and just could not get a grip on the thing, so I’m delighted that it’s coming in TV form!

@purofilion  “Top of the Lake” was shown in the states several years ago — the year after “The Killing” wound up here, I think.  Then came “The Bridge”, which I think is a US remake, and then the French zombies, and most lately “Fortitude” — all part of a whole new level of hyper-realistic-seeming material with a distinctly European flavor t…[Read more]

@purofiion    Thanks, I’ve got that series on my list — it looks very promising.

SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER...