@DenValdron  I am a professional writer, and I thank you for the kind words about my ilk.  I will, though, point out that you can be highly talented and still be a hack, when hackery pays better and the table needs food on it.  Many of my colleagues have written SF and fantasy that’s made the Nebula and the Hugo ballots while also turning out se…[Read more]

@Bluesqueakpip  Poor Clara, if that’s how it is, and I’ll certainly second the Master as the Doctor’s “stalker”, always with a thread of homoeroticism mixed in there someplace; that was certainly played in by Delgado, and played outright with Simm.  MixMaster, though?  Still only a thread in the weave or her craziness, or a big fat stripe ac…[Read more]

@Bluesqueakpip   Did they let McCoy keep his accent?  You know, it’s a long time since I’ve seen one of his episodes, and I can’t remember the voice, but of course Dunoon qualifies!  Whereabouts in Scotland is it?  If I ever knew, I’ve forgotten . . .

@pedant  Oh, you’re right!  Thanks!  I got the two series confused, maybe because I don’t watch on Netflix, so I must have seen the remake on regular TV just as I did “The Resurrected” — ?  So all 3 “versions” have run into each other in my brain like undercooked scrambled eggs.

I love it that a surprising number of our wandering Doctors have been played by Scottish actors (albeit only one with his native accent on display); it reminds me of their intrepid forebears who left their homeland as trained engineers carrying the science of the Industrial Revolution with them.  One that comes at once to mind is the fellow who…[Read more]

@Burrunjor  Thanks for the cites re MixMaster’s being acted as in some kind of twisted but sexual love with the Doctor in The Icky Kiss, and her weirdly seductive comment that her “hearts are maintained by the Doctor”.  I’d missed the first, and forgotten (!) the second.   It’s possible that she made that remark in the interview to bolster her pr…[Read more]

Damn; my say about Clara *and* about Osgood, sorry.

@purofilion  Oil on troubled waters, always good.  And yes, the device of Osgood’s death seems to work very well, more so the more a viewer is invested in Osgood — but I’ve had my say about Clara until we get some new material to think about, so no worries on that score.

The “sexual assault” comments about Missy kissing the Doctor may come f…[Read more]

@nerys   That’s an interesting way to look at it — as if we’re seeing Danny through the Doctor’s prejudiced eyes all along (even when the Doctor isn’t actually present on-scene), and only come to recognize his inner goodness and courage when it’s too late . . . I like it.  Myself, I kept waiting for a few moments between Danny and the Doctor a…[Read more]

@purofilion   I agree on the mom’s bad cooking; it was stretched out way too long, and I was drying for her to pull a great reversal on them all and sneak off to France and return as a Cordon Bleu chef and knock their socks off; but no, alas.  Not so far, anyway (I’m still mooching around at S13 or something — well, the one about the collapsed t…[Read more]

@nerys  Oh good, come and scintillate with us!  Thing about Pompeii — *did* he do the right thing?  Isn’t Lobus’s descendant John Frobisher, who is forced to make deals with devilish aliens and who then kills his family and himself, thereby “righting” an imbalance created by Lobus and *his* family having been rescued by the Doctor in Pompeii?  I…[Read more]

@Brrunjor  — Whoah — where did Ms Gomez say that Missy *wanted* to “shag” the Doctor and that’s why she assaulted him?  The incident didn’t read that way to me.  I thought of it as Delgado, more or less, playing in a ruthless, campy way with his new, female identity, using it to tease and to be physically aggressive toward the Doctor in a so…[Read more]

@burrunjor  Moffat may have called earlier writers hacks, but I betcha he hasn’t said that about anybody on his own writing team; and they are manifestly nothing of the sort, but I’m not going to waste my time arguing the redness of carrots to a blind fish.  Nobody *said* the guards were hypnotized; *I’m* saying it because it makes sense, in the t…[Read more]

@workaholic84 — There must be some good speeches and lines from Rory and Amy, don’t you think?  They’re the faithful, long term couple who stay together, unlike the Doctor and River Song, so that might be a more fruitful source.

Aye, well, it can’t be hearts and flowers and flying unicorns around here *all* the time <smirk>, can it.  I have to admit that I never got on the Osgood-love bandwagon, probably because I may have been a nerd in school but I wasn’t a *science* nerd, and besides, that was a long time ago; so she didn’t appeal to me that much that quickly.…[Read more]

@purofilion  @Bluesqueakpip  Thanks for “brilliant” — it felt good to fire a salvo back to the type of substance-less, error-ridden attack on a character that I’ve come to associate to the knee-jerk trolls on other, more negative sites.  I’ve already stood down on the subject so far as that poster is concerned.  Since you say his writing “sp…[Read more]

@bamergirlavatar  I disagree about the split among fans between those who like Clara and those who don’t (the anti-Clara’s yell the most, IMO, because they are, and know that they are, in the minority except on a few discussion boards dedicated to hating whomever), but I do take your point about the importance of Clara’s appearance at the…[Read more]

@Bumunjor  Good grief, another one!   Yep, nobody here know a single thing about story-telling.  Moffat said exactly why Osgood was sacrificed, and you either accept that it worked or you don’t think it did.  I found the sequence logistically sound: the Doctor casually invites Osgood to come join him as a companion sometime, and does so in Mis…[Read more]

@DenValdron  We’ve already had many interesting discussions of Clara; they just didn’t happen to include people serving up Clara-hater talking points, until now (lucky us!).

An observation: *all* TV characters are “collections of traits”, and Clara’s original “traits” were assigned to her per her function in the story, just as the Doctor’s…[Read more]

Somewhat tangential, but interesting, I thought:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/03/armando-iannucci-general-election-better-selves-bold-and-inclusive?CMP=ema_565