@Mersey @purofilion

Difficult to pin down, but:

“Once Clara’s in your head she never leaves”.

ISTRM that we’ve been hit with that cluestick a couple of times.

@mersey —

You absolutely shouldn’t feel ashamed. Your misgivings are absolutely valid. That some don’t share them, or at least not to same level, is neither here nor there really….

The important thing is that we all feel able to talk about them.

@Mersey   To add to what @Bluesqueakpip has just said, I lived in Belfast, in Northern Ireland, for nearly three years in the early 1970s, when terrorist bomb explosions were a daily occurrence, some of which I witnessed at close range.  I was fortunate in that neither I nor any of my close friends was harmed, but it was always a pos…[Read more]

@pedant

Art is informed by the real world (and, when things are working properly, vice versa). And it must always be fearless, or it fails.

Seconded, with emphasis.

@Mersey  Please, I beg you, do not assume that because we disagree to some extent on what is or is not an appropriate subject to be referenced in a show such as Doctor Who, that we…[Read more]

@Mersey

MH17 flew over my country and crashed on the territory of my neighbour.

And I have stood in the kitchen of my home and seen a terrorist bomb explode. I’m not talking on television; I mean in real life. I’ve had my parents’ friends murdered by terrorists. I do understand that watching fictionalised versions of these events can be a…[Read more]

@Mersey

 This case is not yet closed as 9/11. And what is really painful everyone knows who is responsible for that but probably no one will be punished.

Sorry – missed this.

Perfectly true, but not the point. The use of imagery is the issue.

The image of the anti-aircraft missile vs the image of The Wall of The Missing

The image of the…[Read more]

@Mersey @purofilion

“One slip, one word in the wrong sentence, and the family next door would be gone the next morning and all the neighbours would act as if nothing had happened”.

So you think I’m a cowardly inferior from eastern Europe. I’m not sure whether my czech and slovak neighbours would be glad if they knew that they’re cowards and the b…

[Read more]

@Mersey   I grew up during the seventies, and in those days, serious and divisive issues were addressed in television comedy all the time. MASH was one well-known example of these, as were the excellent Norman Lear programs such as All In the Family. So this doesn’t seem in any way inappropriate to me!

@Mersey

And lest you doubt @JimTheFish on the real risk of nuclear war when the Daleks came along, there’s this. Indeed treating such serious material seriously seems very timely:

http://video.pbs.org/video/2295274962/

“27 October at 12:25

53 years ago today, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, second-in-command Vasili Arkhipov of the…

[Read more]

@Mersey —

I’d imagine that most people on this site are familiar with the MH17 incident and this weekend’s events in Egypt. However, I personally don’t see it as particularly offensive or in poor taste. This episode was in the can months ago and Steven Moffatt can’t be expected to predict what world events are going to be at the time of…[Read more]

@Mersey

This is still tv series about funny alien.

If that were all it was, I doubt whether I would still be watching after all these years.

I understand your point of view, but I do not see why serious issues should not be addressed in a popular show which reaches a varied audience with a wide age range, because this can, if handled…[Read more]

@Mersey

I think it’s too serious issue to make of it family entertaintment even with such strong message.

I disagree. I live in an area where children are being groomed by terrorists. This is too serious an issue to NOT make it family entertainment, because families need to find a way of talking about this. Before their fifteen year old c…[Read more]

@purofilion

We could argue about ‘true love’ but as Missy says “can you humans understand the meaning of real friendship?” This is true love – as true as any sexual love, and as some Greeks would have it, truer and longer lasting than most other forms which flit and fly by on the ether.

Fully agree. Or perhaps along the lines of a…[Read more]

@Mersey  I was simply picking up on something others had discussed earlier.  My tongue was firmly in my cheek 🙂

@mersey  Crazy Man Michael makes a terrible mistake, kills the raven, and so kills his own true love. Given the great play in the series so far on the problems of separating friends from enemies, and the pre-season promise from Peter Capaldi (as far as I can tell, unlike SM, Capaldi might be economical with the truth but does not lie) that the…[Read more]

@mersey

“Doctor already lost Amy and governess-Clara. And he was really devastated by their deaths. I don’t know if Moffat want to stake on the same card. But maybe 12th can cope with her loss much more better than 11th. He is a very ambiguous charater in case of feelings. He couldn’t understand the feelings of the crew who lost their friends (ca…[Read more]

@mersey  Clara certainly doesn’t spend much time (that we see) mourning or even thinking about her mother in S8-S9 so far.  That’s why I forgot . . . and I bet I’m not the only one!  I think the idea that her mother’s early death drives Clara is a good one and could make better sense of some aspects of her character — but that hasn’t been su…[Read more]

@mersey  @bluesqeakpip

S8 and S9 so far have, I think, neglected that early maternal loss, which I’d forgotten by this time to tell the truth.  When you add it back in as pip has done here, Clara’s intensity around the prospects (and facts) of death and loss is  strengthened and connected up with her current story-line much more effectively.  I…[Read more]

@Mersey

Look at her perfect parents.

One of whom is dead.

Sorry, you don’t get away with that by a bit of handwavium ‘that’s just a plot point’. In the less-than-perfect childhood stakes, being orphaned (or, in Clara’s case, half-orphaned) comes pretty high up. Her family is completely happy? Yeah, apart from the whole standing-by-mum’s-grave…[Read more]

@mersey  Clara at the beginning was really undeveloped and that’s why I didn’t like her.

Same here; in an early pre-S8 interview, Moffat said it outright: that Clara was originally conceived of as a plot-mule, not a full-fledged character, and she pretty much remained that, IMO, until S8 began.  At that point, of course, lots of fans compl…[Read more]