Well I did find the shaky-camera “found footage” style disorienting.

As much as I like the “monsters on a claustrophobic space station” trope, I feel it has been a bit over-used.

I’d missed the Babylon 5 tribute @Phaseshift but I did pick up on the Gaiman Sandman reference, and felt this also owed something to The Ring (US version)/ Ring…[Read more]

@Jphamlore

The hybrid is humans as hosts for Time Lord souls, vessels from which the Time Lords can once again rule space and time.

Well that’s a bit chilling, before breakfast! Thing is, River is/ was already a human/ Time Lord hybrid and she was trained as an assassin, a weapon. So perhaps Davros’ prophecy was actually about River. And if River…[Read more]

Well – that was super.

Peter Capaldi’s great speech over the two boxes caused a random fly to get into my eye.

And the part when the Doctor said he’d already had to go through this fourteen times, erasing human and Zygon memories each time give me legitimate chills – the power and the burden of being a Time Lord.  How fragile peace is. And what…[Read more]

@Phaseshift

I read your impassioned plea in the pub just before the episode, and really smiled afterwards – crikey you must be psychic 🙂

Meanwhile, The Times should get a grip, the lines about bombing not being a solution because it radicalises could apply to Blair as much to the recent Tory ordered British drone strikes in Syria.

The Zygon…[Read more]

@JimtheFish

Hello old fish friend.

Glad you are on board with the tarot theme. It was @kharis who first spotted it on here in relation to this series, although @Phaseshift had been talking about Who and the tarot in the previous one, but, I am a believer.

As you say, there may not be a supreme coherence to it, it’s just a piece of symbolic…[Read more]

Give it up for Catherine Tregenna, the first woman to get to write a script for Who in quite some time. Given her Torchwood history, I too was pleased to get a Captain Jack mention!

I’m still not a fan of the historical earth-history settings for Who, but the Dick Turpin-esque scenario made for some pretty natty costumery.

This was, of course,…[Read more]

@plainolddave

US season = UK series (but, to be fair, we do also use “season” sometimes, esp for the US shows we watch).

US series = UK television show

So, in Brit, Doctor Who is a television show and we are currently watching series nine, of New Who (since the Russel T Davies revival).

The corporation issue is interesting, because I think it…[Read more]

Well, it’s not really Doctor Who news, but it’s Peter Capaldi news.

Shell just (temporarily at least) surrendered their plans to drill for oil in the Arctic and Greenpeace have released a video detailing the three year global campaign to stop them, narrated by…. our own Peter…[Read more]

@pedant

My bad. The pedantry crown is still yours!

@ScaryB – oh, I did not twig the music quotes in the baby speak until you mentioned it – nice.

@DenValdron Maybe the electric eels was another music gag?

There was a punk-ish band called the Electric Eels with a Viking connection! This (from the Wikipedia page):

“Eventually the electric eels…[Read more]

@ScaryB

No worries 🙂 Great minds and all that…

I loved your thought that we are watching Who episodes because the Doctor (or maybe one of his companions) has uploaded their live recordings of his adventures to the “Galactic Hub”. Maybe that’s why this Doc breaks the fourth wall and talks “to camera”! Very meta indeed.

@Ozitenor

Missy…

[Read more]

On another note – I forgot to look for Tarot cards whilst watching, but now I think about it, we had a one of swords/ a two of swords. The Doctor and Clara were the only ones to put their hands up when he was asking the remaining, un-harvested villagers, who among them had ever fought with a sword.

Two of swords is a card of choice – the Rider…[Read more]

@Phaseshift

Good thinking Batman.

Being hybridised with a species as war-hungry as the Mire doesn’t seem like a good idea at all.

The Doctor pondering hybrids made me wonder, again, about Clara’s parentage. River was a hybrid, as being conceived in the TARDIS added some Time Lord to her DNA.

I realise I will not let go of this 🙂 The truth is…[Read more]

The earth history-trips are never my favourites, it must be said. I prefer being off-world!

I liked Capaldi’s outfit however, with the checkered trousers – a sort of classic Who look mixed with a grubby punkish T-shirt. It suited him.

My sense was, that the Doctor wasn’t in the least surprised when Maisie William’s character died after her…[Read more]

Wow good sofa talk going on!

@spud – I too wondered if Malcolm Tucker would get in the way of the connection _ but after the script nod (child friendly version – of shuttity up up up in the Robin of Sherwood episode I think – they let it lie. I did enjoy some of the pre show mashups of the Doc telling dalek’s to F off tho 🙂

<span…[Read more]

For River Song fans – she’s getting some adventures of her own on Big Finish – yay!

I think I’ll have to acquire them:

http://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/the-diary-of-river-song-1313?range=113

@mudlark

Yes, you’re right  (re “on” rather than “in”) the tomb.

That doesn’t disrupt the narrative parallel though – the Doctor is positioned in the place of the Fisher King.

There is no reason for calling the warrior-beastie “The Fisher King” other than the (Arthurian) resonances it has a mirror/ parallel for the Doctor.

@thebrainofmoffat…[Read more]

@Phaseshift <waves>

Ah well, I’m sure @kharis can say more, but Jesse Weston in her book From Ritual to Romance apparently made a link between the myth of the Fisher King and the Tarot.

This book influenced T.S. Eliot, who used the Fisher King theme and Tarot images in The Wasteland (his own notes to the poem explicated somewhat) in the passage…[Read more]

Thinking about it – the Doctor and the Fisher King are very much paralleled in the episode – explicitly so because they both occupy the tomb.

The Fisher King is lost and trying to send a signal to its people, so they can come (back) into this part of the universe and enslave things.

This is the Doctor’s dilemma, and the reason he’s taking the…[Read more]

Well done to all who spotted the Tivoli last week and to all who concluded the Doc himself would be in the tomb.

The Fisher King itself was quite a nice concoction of bone and hoof. It knew the Doctor was a Time Lord and more specifically, who the Doctor was himself, apparently. Presumably because that alien race have a psychic ability? It looked…[Read more]

@JimmytheTulip

By all means post away re your theory that Clara is the chamelion-arched Master/ Missy!

I think Missy’s behaviour towards Clara (calling her a puppy) rather belies that. Although I do think that Clara may well have Time Lord blood (esp be a descendant of the Doctor/ River).

@Phaseshift

That Wetherspoons beer is clearly putting…[Read more]