Adore Bill, but how could a person not adore Bill?  She’s original and absolutely endearing.

@MissRori, @mudlark @juniperfish @phaseshift @pedant @miapatrick @jimthefish Agree, agree, agree.

Peter Capaldi has been my favorite Doctor since season 9 (not feeling it in season 8, plus still loyal to Doctor 11) but this episode reminded me why he is…[Read more]

Adore Bill, but how could a person not adore Bill?  She’s original and absolutely endearing.

@MissRori, @mudlark @juniperfish @phaseshift @pedant @miapatrick @jimthefish Agree, agree, agree.

Peter Capaldi has been my favorite Doctor since season 9 (not feeling it in season 8, plus still loyal to Doctor 11) but this episode reminded me why he is…[Read more]

@juniperfish

Oh, and what the frilly heck is in that vault?

Yes, indeed; and the Doctor ‘has promises to keep’, for the purpose of which he has been in place for fifty, -or is it seventy? – years and counting. No doubt we will find out in the coming weeks, but it is a tantalising and hugely promising start to the season.

I am still gasping at ho…[Read more]

@Juniperfish @thane15 @ichabod Yes, sadly I arrived back in the UK on Monday to hear the news about Steve Hewlett. Eddie Mair did a lovely tribute, I thought. I’m told there is a special award waiting in the wings for what has been an extra special piece of radio.

@missy thank you, but no need to be sad for me. She was wonderful and made my life…[Read more]

@juniperfish @theconsultingdoctor @thane15

Just on your mediations on memory in Series 4, can I suggest when you rewatch from the start of series 1 you listen out for references to memory. They are many and varied, and when Moffat repeats something in a long game it is usually relevant.

As well as memory, you’ll find references to traumatic…[Read more]

@juniperfish

Yes, I think Moffat was having more than a little inter-textual fun with Who/ Sherlock this year.

Thanks for responding to the hypertext query. Probably my faulty understanding of the Wikipedia entry:

Hypotext is an earlier text which serves as the source of a subsequent piece of literature, or hypertext. For example, Homer’s…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave @thane15 @craig @juniperfish

Many thanks for the kind welcome and best wishes. Much appreciated. I hope you’ll forgive me when I have to drop out of conversation though. Things are still difficult and I’m really hoping that they’ll be better by the time the good Doctor returns in April. And hugs are always welcome Craig.

@thane15  Yes, just checking — we’re more or less on the same page about Time’s Arrow.  I’ve just started a book called “Why Time Flies” by a man named Burdick, very new, and was a finalist for the National Book Award, so I might have some good Time tidbits to bring to the table.

Meditation is good for relieving stress, provided that it’s a t…[Read more]

Did you miss me? 😉

Firstly, a question to all the writers on the forum (of which we have an embarrassment of riches). If we consider the intertextuality of Sherlock and Doctor Who (the deliberate and pointed exchange of ideas between the two) does the fact that they are written in parallel preclude them being considered hypertexts? Is there a…[Read more]

@juniperfish   The historians of the future, if there is a future and it contains actual historians, often come to mind, and my first thought is, how in the hell are they ever going to disentangle the immense amounts of lying, “disinformation”, lying advertising, trolling and fake news fabrications, puffed-up “biographies” written by paid ghosts…[Read more]

@juniperfish  Yes, I’ve been more or less aware of the carryings-on you speak of — one of my husband’s law partners was a longstanding member of a chapter of the Baker Street Irregulars in Santa Fe (a smart, charming fellow I can’t speak with any more, because of political differences, or I’d be chatting with him about this).

@juniperfish  “The Lost Special” — amazing, how Moffat and Gatiss keep creating fannish myths (some of which come true — !)  I love it.

@juniperfish   Heart-breaking news, certainly.  I was hoping for four years at least . . . But there you are.

@pedant  Probably watched Broadchurch 2 and thought “Noooooo!”

I sure did.  Awful stuff.  Capaldi is probably well out of it, especially of BBC goes back to Teen Romance tropes for the Doctor.  Besides, nobody grows younger, and the p…[Read more]

@chickenelly and@blenkinsopthebrave:

You are entitled to your opinions like the rest of us.

It was meant as a romp and it was.

@juniperfish; I’ve just posted that on the NEWS thread.

OK, have now re-watched The Final Problem, and have decided that…the story Gatiss and Moffat show is the story they intend us to see. I still think that the theory of @juniperfish and @theconsultingdoctor is a truly great bonkers theory, but if Sherlock the show does come back, I don’t expect it to turn everything we watched in S4 on its head.…[Read more]

More post morning coffee ruminations. After re-watching The Lying Detective with the knowledge of what happens in the Final Problem, I may have been too hasty in accepting the story as presented, because, for instance, if Eurus was locked up since childhood, how did she acquire social graces like “how to be coquettish at a bus stop”?

If this is…[Read more]

OK. Reflections on a second viewing in light of the truly bonkers theories of @juniperfish and @theconsultingdoctor.

The beginning. I had somehow not really registered the gun on first viewing, but it definitely plays to the bonkers theory. First the gun, then John lying in bed. Is the tale told in John’s mind at the point of imminent death?…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave   Tea’s good, too, isn’t it?  (I’m on wine, myself, at the rather late moment).  I do hope you and @juniperfish and there IS a fourth installment.  That would be so god damn cool — and sly, and really, really, clever.

And bonkers!  Yes, and hurrah!

@juniperfish

Who knows, maybe the line “everyone stops counting at three” was actually referring to the episodes!

But as much as I like the sheer audacity of the idea, I’m not really sure. And the reason is the scene with the Holmes parents, watching Eurus and Sherlock playing the violin as the mother smiles and holds Mycroft’s hand. That does…[Read more]

@juniperfish

After reading your first post I started to wonder if you were right; ie, that there is another episode out there(!) that provides an alternative reading of S4. Now after reading your second post, I am more inclined to believe that something like that might actually be going on.

It’s clear that the whole tone of S4 felt different to…[Read more]