@JanetteB     What is wrong with the world?  Fear; fear of losing what we have (however little that may be), to change.  Fear may make companions of us all, but it most often makes us companions in selfishness, idiocy, and destructiveness.  Scared people run, resist the irresistible, or shut their eyes and pretend nothing is happening.   Enorm…[Read more]

@DenValdron  Oh, I agree — Frobisher is irrelevant to CapDoc’s face-choice unless there’s some deliberate manipulation going on behind the scenes that *made* him relevant but in a hidden way.  Many fans, though, seem to have no problem bracketing Lobus and Frobisher together as being part what needs to be explained in S9.  I think that’s a pr…[Read more]

So, following up on the discussion about Torchwood vs/and DW universe via John Frobisher’s Capaldi-face, are there T’wood fans here?  I tried, I really did, but I remember the show as having a campy vibe that mostly showed up as a sort of feverish overwroughtness (a much heavier does of which led me to abandon “True Blood” early on).  This i…[Read more]

@nerys  Yep — for me, too, Torchwood is primarily an annoying source of confusion about all things Doctor.  I watched T’swood for a while, but just couldn’t latch onto it as an interest — but let me continue this comment on the sofa, since it’s not really DiH related.

@DenValdron Thanks for working these things out. I’ve generally thought of the two previous Capaldi roles together (that is, as both “needing” an explanation (if you’re the sort who needs one — I’m not, but it does keep cropping up). This comes from the many articles and interviews in which both doppelgängers* are raised as if they are the same…[Read more]

@nerys   Up the page, you said you didn’t remember John Frobisher, the bureaucrat, a descendant of Lobus C. — quite rightly, since Frobisher’s story was not DW but Torchwood, the story about the aliens who come demanding 10% of the world’s children.  The Frobisher character is the second “old” use of CapDoc’s face in the DW/Torchwood universe, L…[Read more]

@janetteB   Lucky you Ozzies!  On a similar note, the great big symphonic DW music show is coming to New York, or rather to Brooklyn, in October — I’m tempted, but gigantic public events and a city stuffed to the brim with excited fans aren’t really my thing, so I probably won’t go . . . I got some very nice speakers on sale, that are now h…[Read more]

@nerys  About reading more into a scene than “what was there” — I do that all the time, and I do it with pleasure because there’s *always* more “in the scene” than whatever the writer had in mind to put there.  The printed story is a machine that transfers a concept from the author’s mind to the reader’s — but the reader has to reconstruct the s…[Read more]

@nerys   RE the volcano scene:  “Even in a dream state, what is the purpose for choosing that place? Is it some echo from the past, similar to his reason for choosing that face? I still would like to see them explore that more . . . ”

Maybe we will, if the “this face” issue is addressed by an actual return to the Pompeii/Vesuvius episode.  I’d be…[Read more]

@IAmNotAFish    You know, the political part was just as much a turn-off for me as the lawyer part.  I’ve been steering clear of politics for a while now.  Pressures at home and watching the apparently unstoppable decline of my nation (“a republic, if you can keep it” but apparently we can’t) has been wearing me down, and I’m supposed to be min…[Read more]

@Craig   Timely reminder much appreciated; thank you.

@jphamlore  — well, interesting, or having a secret, or something, yes, I think there was some comment to that effect about the attractiveness of Danny.  But can Clara have sensed that about him and have been attracted by it at the same time that she’s so obviously set him up in her mind as the “normal domesticity” polarity, while the Doctor — w…[Read more]

@nerys   On choosing faces . . . are we sure the Doctor *does* choose his new face?  Has he always regenerated inside the Tardis?  Maybe the Tardis makes that choice for him, for reasons of “her” own — he does say in Deep Breath “I never know where the faces come from.”  They just arrive, and he’s stuck with the new one.  So could the choice of f…[Read more]

@jphamlore  On technically competent people not being as good as non-techs like Clara, because non-techs have to stretch farther to prove worthiness as companions: well, it would be interesting to see what kind of other attributes an Osgood or a Perkins would have to develop as companions to become vital to the Doctor, since he seems to have a…[Read more]

@nerys   Well, it’s a clever idea, and I like it.  But we *did* see Danny alone with Clara, where the Doctor’s viewpoint shouldn’t have had any bearing — so I’m not sure it can really be justified.  When she was with Danny, it would have been better all around (certainly better for Danny as a character) for us to have seen something more of wh…[Read more]

@lisa  Oh, she *absolutely* is, I’m sure of it!  The whole costume and noting but the costume, a vital part of playing the role!  And your no more bananas than anybody else around here . . . “bonkers” is just another word for “bananas”, isn’t it?

@DenValdron  I think I am acquainted with that particular black dog of rage, as are so many people who struggle with their chosen art and their circumstances (or the art and circumstances that have chosen them).  Which Greek philosopher was the one who said this: “Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle”?  Words to live by, but so mu…[Read more]

@PhaseShift  Good Heavens, Dickens!  How could I have forgotten Dickens, one of the most successful hacks of all time?!  Maybe we’re talking about the confusion that has succeeded the time-honored division of fiction writers into “gentleman authors” who *could* write fiction because they had other sources of income, and pen-pushers (another te…[Read more]

@DenValdron  Re “hack”, I take your point.  It’s a well reasoned position.

Congratulations on the acceptance of your novel.

From Burrunjor, who has since left the building — but still, this disturbs me:  “He had her want to shag the Doctor just because she was a woman. I mean how sexist is that? Just because the Master is now a woman he wants to shag his mortal enemy LOL. Plus there is also the fact that she called herself Missy just because she was a woman I mean…[Read more]