@janetteB — I’m afraid I’m rather of the Tim Bisley camp with Babylon 5 but I look forward to your trying to change my mind on the subject.  It was a bit too densely space-opera-ish for me at times (I have the same problem with DS9 which I enjoy but don’t love for the same reasons.)

Actually I was also thinking of Blake’s 7 too when I made the…[Read more]

@wordmuse — let me once again dispute with you (it’s nothing personal, I’m just enjoying the conversation, and it beats packing boxes)…

With regards to Clara lying, there might not be a cosmic over-arching need for her to do so but it’s clear that she thinks there is and it’s just getting her in deeper and deeper. It started off being played…[Read more]

@wordmuse — nice summation of the companion dynamics, although I’d argue that it’s not completely accurate. I’d argue that all the central characters — Rose, Amy, River and even the Doctor have been guilty of what you call “insular singular self-interest”. But that’s OK. That’s the very nature of the interesting character stuff. When you get…[Read more]

@wordmuse — Oh, definitely debate away. That’s what we’re here for. And I don’t think anyone on here would say that the show should be immune from criticism. I’d just argue that SM made it quite clear from the off that he was taking the show into a more mythic, fairytale realm, and the moon egg is just an extreme example of it. Like…[Read more]

@wordmuse — @bluesqueakpip is probably really the one to ask but I think you’re overestimating a) the time factor and b) the staffing levels involved in putting an episode of New Who together. But Moffatt and Harkness are far from idiots and I’d imagine that they probably just decided that it didn’t really matter that much to the narrative core…[Read more]

@Phaseshift — I can’t believe we’re talking about the end of Series 8 already. But let the chains of Fenric shatter. It’ll certainly be an interesting one to watch in the light of Capaldi’s first season too, I reckon.

With regards to myth and faith, I’d say there’s whole swathes of Series 6 you could put in there too, with the whole myth of the…[Read more]

@juniperfish — agree totally. He hit the ball out the park almost from the off. To be fair, so did Smithy but I think Capaldi has the edge because he’s playing a much more tricky Doc. I’ve been blown away by him. Agree re. Tennant also. A strong start but he did seem to run out of steam by the end of his run….

@bluesqueakpip and @brewski —

Moffatt has gone on record as saying he considers the Doctor to be the same character anyway, despite regeneration. But personally I think it’s been less pronounced than in Matt’s first series, where for the first good few episodes he was still very Tennant-ey in terms of character.

Despite the occasional…[Read more]

@oblique — the title is part of the joke. It’s a call-out to the phone call that the Doctor gets at the end of The Big Bang (I think) and which is referenced in the episode.

Similarly Dinosaurs on a Spaceship was a meta title as well — referencing the Samuel L Jackson movie. Also a huge misdirect as the real meat of the episode wasn’t really…[Read more]

@geoffers—

 i think he stopped travelling the universe, in that case, simply because of the threat of the time war breaking out again

I’m with @bluesqueakpip on this one. It doesn’t really matter why the Doctor stopped travelling but the fact is that he did (and therefore could). It’s Clara that has the addiction because it’s now been shown that…[Read more]

A cracker of an episode I thought and as @phaseshift says highly reminiscent of a Christmas special, but I think better than most of them. Jamie Mathieson is to be commended — he’s managed to out-Gatiss Gatiss with this one with a superb piece of genre mashing. I was never a massive fan of Being Human, but this was a cracking little script.

As…[Read more]

waves at @bluesqueakpip— good points about the production difficulties re. Courtney btw. Presumably this would continue to be an issue if she were to become a more regular companion too.

RE. the whole pregnant thing. I’m afraid I’m not convinced, and actually nor do I want to be. One of the major aspects of the Pond arc was that it took great…[Read more]

It also struck me odd that there’s such a negative response on the Graun. Normally they’re up in arms about deus ex machina (that aren’t really) and everything getting neatly tied up and possibly over-simplistic ways. Now they get a story that doesn’t give them that, that shows the fall-out of tricky moral decisions, that shows heroes changed and…[Read more]

@phaseshift, @scaryb, @barnable, @juniperfish — thanks for the welcomes back. What can I say? I just couldn’t stay away, although I will be flitting in and out for the next few weeks as I’m once again the throes of moving house on top of other stuff….

@barnable — feel free to argue away. That’s what we’re all here for. I’d also urge you to…[Read more]

waves at @scaryb

I have a new rule. Any episode that features the main cast in orange spacesuits for more than five minutes is one that I’m not going to like. And I didn’t really love this one. Probably my least favourite of this series.

But it’s not the the science — which I see is what’s exercising the finest minds BTL over at the Graun. Doctor Who is not…[Read more]