@scaryb and @winston

Sorry to hear about your Covid encounters and that you’re all safe, well and on the mend…

And all the best to all the bonkerising crew for ’22.

Well, I quite enjoyed that. It’s usually best to go into the festive episodes with low expectations but I thought that was a pretty solid, if not exactly mind-blowing, bit of Who. It was basically Who does Russian Doll, wasn’t it? The concept was cool, the guest stars engaging and created characters that I was actually concerned about for once and…[Read more]

SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER...

SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER...

Just to say to @blenkinsopthebrave that the blog is an excellent idea. Flux has given much to chew over (albeit in a gristly rawhide kind of way). I’ll look forward to reading it.

Well, it’s been a couple of days and I still don’t quite know how I feel about that. But first of all, massive props to the extreme Hartnell-ness of the actual title. Chibs deserves kudos for that, at least.

I’d said before that the overall success of Flux would depend on Chibs being able to stick the landing and needless to say he didn’t manage…[Read more]

@miapatrick and @scaryb

Yes, I think we’re looking at a reset canon going forward and the Doc as cosmic adoptee too and I’m fairly happy with both ideas. RE. RuthDoc, yep, I think we’re definitely going to see her again. It occurs to me that the holy grail of unexpected reveals for Chibs will be a surprise regeneration and I wouldn’t be surprised…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave

 I must make my posts more focussed…

Oh, I was referring to the news article. Your posts are always irreproachably erudite and concise.

They certainly allowed RTD, Moffat and Chibnall to do things in their own radically different ways

True but I always got the impression that they were there for the creative vision but that th…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave

An interesting, if vague, read. Presumably ‘commercial revenue’ means that the BBC is holding onto licensing and/or merchandising rights but I wonder just how much of that filtered back into production budgets anyway. And as Bad Wolf has just hitched its wagon to Sony anyway, I’m not sure they’re going to want for money too…[Read more]

@miapatrick

I’m not saying it’s probable, but it’s possible so far.

Oh, I think it’s both and as a theory I like it a lot. And if it brings a sense of closure to the Doc’s past going forward, as you suggest, then I think that can only be a good thing. And I do love the idea of bringing Eight’s backstory into the general mythos a lot. If there…[Read more]

@juniperfish and @miapatrick

So are witnessing the death and rebirth of the universe and the death and birth (rebirth) of the Doctor simultaneosly?

Ooh, I do like this idea quite a lot. I do wonder if the Doc and Vinder wouldn’t have felt some kind of bond when they met though — although I guess not, given we’re talking many, many regenerations…[Read more]

First of all, it’s so nice to see so many familiar names back. It’s almost like old times. A special wave to @scaryb — good to see you with us again, my furry friend…

One the episode itself, I’m a bit more meh about this one. Still a vast improvement on the last couple of years but this defaulted once again to an entire episode of the Doctor…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave

Chibnall even references it with brief shot of what appears to be Lungbarrow

Yes, that struck me too. Chibs will have serious stones on him if he brings Lungbarrow into TV canon. But then he’s already shown himself capable of that with the whole Timeless Child thing anyway.

@mudlark

Well, bonkers is what we do here, so why…[Read more]

@mudlark

What happened to ‘just a madman in a box’?

I must admit that I have to agree and this Doc as Chosen One narrative runs a bit counter to the spirit of the show for me. I like to think of the Doc as an irritating, unremarkable yet vital dilettante within the context of Time Lord society but I look on this Captain Marvelfication of her as…[Read more]

Well, I thought this was an absolute cracker. I don’t know what they’ve been putting in Chibs’s Weetabix but I heartily approve.

As someone said above, it had definite Daemons vibes but I was also reminded of Hide in the first part of the episode. Certainly it has that distinctive English folk horror vibe that Who can tap into so well. And the…[Read more]

@oochillyo

It depends where you are, of course, but BritBox has all the Sarah Jane Adventures (plus pretty much all of Classic Who and a number of other cultish goodies too…)

@craig

I’ll just add my voice to the eloquent appeals above. I felt much the same way as you a year ago. I thought, I’ve finally gone past this (it only took 40-odd years) and that I was done. I was struggling to get through more than 10 minutes of a Chibs episode without my attention wandering. But this year, while it’s still far from perfect…[Read more]

@davidwho —

Those are some excellent points which I fear you’ll never get the answer to. There is, however, an excellent novelisation by Steven Moffat himself which is well worth checking out. It does fill in a lot of the background around the story, although I fear that rather than answering your questions, it will present you with a load of new ones.

Well, looking at t’Other Place and the hellsite that is Twitter, it looks like the reception to this episode has been surprisingly muted. Even this thread is a bit quieter than those for the previous eps. And to be honest, I’ve been holding off on posting because I’m not sure how I feel about it myself.

It’s certainly the weakest of the three…[Read more]