Jemma Redgrave’s Kate Lethbridge Stewart continues to be very believable. You just know she comes from a family with an aga and the smell of wet dog in the kitchen in the morning.

The least believable bit is having a sane and functioning…[Read more]

On yours and @Whohar ‘s mention of “hasty rewrites” – yes, when you think about the first Gatwa series and how much it focussed on the Doctor and Ruby both being abandoned and adopted children, I wonder if Poppy was planned out, at the…[Read more]

I liked this more emotional Doctor, but I wanted his weeping to be addressed as having some meaning, seeing as he cried in almost every episode, beyond – eh, this incarnation is just more emotional.

On the other hand, I have not…[Read more]

Your cinema experience sounds fab @ScaryB .

That was a true emotional rollercoaster, and RTD totally pulled off the surprise, for me at least!!!

I spent the first part of the episode thinking – jeez this is a LOT of exposition, but hey, I’m in love with Archie Panjabi’s Rani.

I wasn’t a fan of Mad God Omega or the Bone Beasts -…[Read more]

@Mudlark I love the catch about the Rani turning the 7th son of a 7th son of a 7th son’s Mum into flowers and his Dad into an owl, a la Blodeuwedd. That’s another duality (like the bigeneration) as Blodeuwedd has the dual form of owls/ flowers. Hers is also a very…[Read more]

Both are young men filled with deep feelings of inadequacy who use AI and social media respectively to try and make themselves look and seem important – RTD is truly savaging the Silicon Valley tech-bros this season. I wonder if…[Read more]

https://people.com/movies/disneys-1991-beauty-and-the-beast-fun-facts/

Could the fact Belinda Chandra is called “Bel” for short, and Belle is the name of the heroine in Beauty and the…[Read more]

I loved it, but my brain is completely tied in knots with all the meta bits! 😛 (In a good way).

The Doctor and Mr Ring A Ding have lots of visual (and other) parallels – bow ties anyone? Blue suit? Picking up a (simpering, Betty Boop-alike) female companion (in a yellow dress!) as he starts an adventure…

I think I n…

[Read more]

In fact, I really dislike the death of the long-form television show, where you could fall in love with characters over 5, 6 or 7 years.

I’d barely begun to know and love Millie Gibson/ Ruby Sunday before she was gone.

Gatwa continues to be an…[Read more]

RTD must have been so…[Read more]

Eeek – I know there’s a new season of The Boys out – I could barely deal with the gross factor previously (and struggle with its “ironic” sexism) and I hear this one is even more revolting – will wait for a strong-stomach day. Anthony Starr is…[Read more]

I won’t post anything too spoilery about it, because it’s really worth watching pre-spoilers.

But episode 3 in particular was heart-in-mouth gripping. Karen Gillan…[Read more]

 I suspect that many of us feel that to some extent, we have been “played” and are left clutching at straws (or the one remaining straw–Mrs Flood)… Am I being too harsh?

In one sense, that’s fair – and interestingly, the final season of Moffat and Gatiss’ BBC Sherlock did the same thing. Created a puzzle it did not cash,…[Read more]

https://tvline.com/features/doctor-who-star-wars-the-last-jedi-ruby-mother-reveal-season-2-companions-1235270336/

The problem, for me at least, was that after all the previous build up which misled us into thinking Ruby must be special in an extraordinary, possibly timey or extra-terrestrial way, and overpowered by the apocalyptic events earlier in the episode, it fell rather flat.

Yes, I did think it would have been awesome if Ruby’s eyes had turned…[Read more]

So my guess is – yes, it’s true that Ruby is an ordinary person with ordinary parents which fits with RTD’s very wonderful recurring message for Doctor Who about how every ordinary person is valuable and meaningful.

However, it’s also going to be the case…[Read more]

The arc is VR. The VR is created by someone who knows The Doctor as well as they know themself…

Why does Ruby snow? The VR snows…

I really like this theory – which might lead to the Great Intelligence, as others have previously theorised, given the snow connection. Or alternatively to a Time Lord using a grand-scale version of The…[Read more]

The Tempest has been ripe for modern discussion in the context of colonialism – Prospero seems like a cool magician aristocrat but he sets about enslaving the spirits of the island he and his…[Read more]

Thanos vs Sutekh – Sutekh would presumably win, as Thanos *only* wanted to depopulate the universe by half, not slaughter everyone.

It also made me think about Torchwood: Miracle Day when Jack Harkness’ blood is used to abolish death on earth (with p…[Read more]

https://x.com/aljeensane/status/1804499553254850592

I’m tickled my suggestion that Sutekh had been travelling in shadow-form with the TARDIS ever since The Pyramids of Mars panned out though, at least. I do really, really appreciate having, in RTD2, a fan of the classic series.

Like others, I was also disappointed in The Empire o…[Read more]

@thane16

If the Tardis was infected when the Doctor saved baby Ruby from the goblin dinner then do we account for his tears, at other times, because part of him, perhaps due to his connection with the Tardis, is aware that something is deeply w…

[Read more]

Thanks yes, blank post, I was trying to include an image of the jukebox with Rose but failed in my efforts!

Seems like a gloating song from Lord Sutekh – he’s got control of the TARDIS (/alternative Red TARDIS – let’s see) so can presumably spread his dominion of death throughout time and space:

“Roam if you want to

Roam around the world

Roam if you want to

Without wings, without wheels”

@bunface @Blenkinsopthebrave @thane16

I wonder if Gatwa Doctor’s frequent tears are because, on some deep level, he recognises that there is a Red Doctor/ Sutekh-possessed Red TARDIS out there in the crossed…[Read more]

@bunface @thane16

Just rewatching… What about Kate testing DNA and saying ‘Just because Susan Triad is nice, doesn’t mean she can’t change. A chrysalis doesn’t know it’s a butterfly. A phoenix is just a bird until it burns.’

Is that a hint… As you said, baaaad Doctor?

I re-watched The Pyramids of Mars…[Read more]

To your “What needs clearing up” list I’d add:

8. Who is the Meep’s boss and is that the same as Rogue’s new boss?

9. To whom did the mysterious red-finger-nailed hand belong, which picked up the gold tooth the Master is supposedly trapped in?

10. Why could Maestro sense that the oldest of the Toymaker’s Pantheon was…[Read more]

“We travelled together, we had fun, and then one day a day came along, and at the end of that day, I lost them.”

I love that line – it captures the shock and the banality, the unexpected finality of loss. We know death is coming,…[Read more]

He promises to take Rogue to Gallifrey. Does that mean that Gallfirey still exists?

Yes I noticed that and I was happy, as I was not a fan of the re-genociding of Gallifrey by the Dhawan Master. It detracted IMHO from the fact that the War Doctor was responsible/ the 9th and 10th and 11th Doctors believed he was responsible for the…[Read more]

Not only that, but Austen lived in Bath for a bit, and at an address in Gay Street no less. Two of her novels were set there too, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

Rogue is certainly about pride and prejudice, given the Doctor’s…[Read more]

Noticed second time that Varma’s bird form entered the room to announce the wedding saying ‘wilkommen, bienvenue’ like the Emcee in Cabaret. A film all about masquerade and queerness in the face of a very dark threat.

Ooh – I missed that – more masquerade – love it… I am forever a fan of Alan Cumming’s version of Cabaret.

Has anyone read John Fowles’ The Magus? I read it when I was far too young, which is of course, exactly the right age (my parents had excellent inappropriate bookshelves in the hallways) and as such it was absolutely…[Read more]

“queering” of the Doctor. (Not delved into the nether regions of Twitter tho, or BTL comments). But this old school DW veteran is very happy.

Me too – I’m delighted. I may have let out an undignified squeal once Gatwa Doc starting getting his flirt on with Rogue.

@Miapatrick I feel the need for a rainbow TARDIS mug with Gatwa-Doc lea…[Read more]

so maybe the fact Ruby Sunday (I mean, the name!) is so very reminiscent of Rose/Amy/Clara is because she’s full on alien, even in the world of Who. That is, she isn’t just alien, she’s a supernatural/fairy tale/Disney character.

Which makes me wonder, is she even real to the Doctor, only he doesn’t know it yet?

Yessssss – and therefor…[Read more]

which makes me sad that Whitaker got such a raw deal with both the quality of scripts and stories, and the pandemic disrupting her run

Yes a discussion for another thread, but heartily agree (I think there were some banger one-off scripts but a timidity about the first female Doctor when there should have been a swagger – if…[Read more]

re mrs flood being Ruby, someone mentioned a few weeks ago, that mrs Flood didn’t recognise the Tardis when it appeared, but realised it was a type of tardis when it dematerialised.

Hmmm – perhaps in the time-line Mrs. Flood (as a version of Old Ruby) is from, the Doctor’s TARDIS never got stuck as a 1960s Earth Police Box? &…[Read more]

Ruby has been followed around time and space by three old women now:

1) Mrs. Flood, posing as her next door neighbour in The Church on Ruby Road who knows what a TARDIS is, and prompts her to get on board;

2) Old Witchy Ruby in 73 Yards  who haunts her younger self in order to, eventually, prompt…[Read more]

Dot and bubble – the dot-com bubble – a metaphor for the way ‘civilisations’ fall through myopia, and the how the rich, despite their supremacist fantasy beliefs, simply cannot insulate themselves from such civilisational collapse.

It immediately put me in mind of Douglas Rushkof…[Read more]

 …trust me, I’m an archaeologist

If I were an archeologist I would definitely have a sign/ bumper sticker somewhere with River’s immortal line from The Husbands of River Song, “I’m an archaologist from the future, I dug you up”.

As for Ruby giving birth to herself, she’d have to have boffed her own Dad to do it, and I really don’t se…[Read more]

@thane16 @blenkinsopthebrave @mudlark  – loving the speculation that Ruby could be her own mother.

However, whilst I can see someone being their own father as theoretically possible (Back to the Future gone full Oedipus) wouldn’t being your own mother create an immediate temporal paradox of the kind that, in…[Read more]

@mudlark I love your several generations of women ring.

Your suggestion that Old Witchy Ruby is “our” timeline Ruby from the future is a good one.

But my head still hurts, because young Ruby at the…[Read more]

I always get my left and right mixed up – bit dyspraxic!

I remember you posting your wife’s picture before, but just to say again how lovely she looks. Russell T Davies gave an…[Read more]

…the older Ruby appeared no older than younger Ruby. I assume this was deliberate, rather than lazy makeup choices.

Yes, I’ve been thinking about that – an indication of additional genetic longevity linked to Ruby’s mysterious parentage?

Something else I noticed is that Old Witchy Ruby is wearing a wedding ring in the final shot from…[Read more]

Wasn’t sure if I missed something about Marti?… why was she scared of him (and why did she stay?)

I think the implication is that ap Gwillam sexually coerced/ abused Marti Bridges. He creepily insisted she (a mere volunteer in the hierarchy – so a massive power gap between them) be invited to his celebration party (but no other “low lev…[Read more]

Glyngatwg means “Valley of the Cat” apparently:

https://x.com/DoctorWhoPN/status/1792615329429917783

I wonder if the pub name, Y Pren Marw, which means “The Dead Wood” according to Martin Bellam on T’Other Place, together with “The Valley of the Cat” are both tributes to stories by that master of weird folk horror Algernon…[Read more]

Firstly, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart confirms that we are in a universe where fantasy is bleeding into reality, when she says: to Ruby; “We’re the Unified Intelligence Taskforce, created to investigate the extraterrestrial and, more and more, the supernatural. Things…[Read more]

@bunface – hmmm your avatar has recalled Stooky Sue from The Giggle for me, in relation to all three of your speculations about the return of the Doctor’s granddaughter.

Stooky Sue = Susan foreshadowing?

Stooky Sue had three Stooky babbies – so it seems the Doctor’s progeny is definitely a thread to pull on.