@Lisa, it was a great twist on that story. I didn’t quite like the emotional blackmail element of the film, or the idea of putting this greater value on his life. Theoretically, would someone less special just be left to jump?

In this episode there was an element of Turn Right, what if One…[Read more]

I should have put ‘villain’ in inverted commas. I meant Inverted commas. Blasted Internet… 🙂

@Mersey

Jodie Whittaker’s natural accent is from Skelmanthorpe, West Yorkshire, which is a fairly strong accent even by Yorkshire standards. Most people in the UK ‘hear’ a Yorkshire accent as friendly, honest and somewhat bloody-minded.…[Read more]

@mersey and a few other members have a lot of interesting ideas surrounding that.

Peter Capaldi Mark 2 in the vault – I would love that.

The Valeyard is also a strong possibility for me, if only because Moffat maybe needs to get…[Read more]

@pedant, Of course another reason it’s probably not Clara in the vault is that having her be key to the…[Read more]

@mudlark  Paintings can matter, witness the 50th Anniversary episode. But I’m also inclined to agree that by this point the paintings in this series are th…[Read more]

I don’t think anyone is saying that any criticism of Capaldi or Coleman stemmed from ageism or sexism but that some of it apparently did.

But I think a time-out in this particular […]

I was reffering to the words of pedant ‘Capaldi and Coleman suffered from the unmistakeable stench of ageism and sexism, respectively’.

And as I said, if you are blind to it, then I can’t help […]

And it’s really unfair to mark those who doesn’t like Clara as sexists.

Eh? Don’t think anyone has ever done that. (Personally I think Clara did stay slightly too long and was hobbled initially by having a rather McGuffin backstory. And I generally preferred Amy as a character.) And that’s just different strokes for different folks –…[Read more]

Oh I know!  When I would make my mom mad at me she used to count to 10.  And THEN I was dead!

@mersey Please show me a companion who wasn’t slim and pretty?

Well I was going to say Jamie McCrimmon.  But come to think of it he was both, too.

If you are going to be wilfully blind to the crass sexism that spewed across the Graun’s BTL comments, then I – and I suspect @jimthefish – can’t help you.

Well spotted. Still, I have been known to repeat jokes. I think we all have. If they work well the first time…

I suppose thinking about it, the writer needed a first victim who could disappear without causing any ripples among the people at the frost fair. A drunk vagrant would tick that box. My first thought was that he’d been selected as the sort of pers…[Read more]

@mersey I’ve been thinking along the same lines.

As viewers, of course we’re rooting for our heroes and central or sympathetically portrayed characters. We can’t get too hung up about the deaths of baddies and peripheral individuals, or the show couldn’t work. And writers tend to make it easy for us to “move on” from the dea…[Read more]

@nick Castrovalva for me, I was four and a half. Anything before that I don’t remember any stories just the…[Read more]

Funny thing that when the boy died under the ice Bill was devastated but when Doctor practically killed the guy with tattoo (made him died under the water) it was all fine. I can see the difference, but it was still human life. And Doctor was merciless.

Yes, he was rather. Although you could argue that he was in fact trying to save him…[Read more]

So far this season lacks characters, interesting and memorable people whom Doctor meet, who help him or quite the opposite, who oppose him. It’s two or three characters show right now

Well, there’s a clear and deliberate decision to keep the focus on the Doctor and Bill for these early episodes, presumably to strengthen and firmly e…[Read more]

Just as a contribution on the tricky question of clues and our interpretation of them, my own particular take on them is this:

A lot of what we talk about is invariably a construct we propose and then test. The one thing I’ve always liked about this forum and the group of people who p…[Read more]

@missy What if you…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave I too think that the promise the Doctor made to Susan is going to be significant this series. One of the themes of Pilot was promises, those that must be kept and those that are best broken,…[Read more]

When an artist says (or thinks) “I hope my work survives for a decade or two after I’m gone”, he or she is usually talking about hoping that the work has…[Read more]

I wouldn’t overstate the strong position of the Beeb. It’s been on the ropes politically for a decade now and if the next general election goes the way it’s looking it’s going to get worse. But Who is one of its strongest properties, that’s for sure. I think it will definitely become a streaming property at some point — it’s…[Read more]

Some of the clues we perceive no doubt exist only in our overactive imaginations, but some do prove eventually to have significance within the narrative. On the other hand, one of the examples you cited, the toy soldier in Listen, is a clue in the strict Ariadne sense, because it was one of the tangible links in the somewhat conv…[Read more]

The “meaningless clues” vs “extra level of detail” debate re Moffat and teams’ work (on Who and Sherlock) does get to the heart of one of the elements of his work which can be both wonderful and infuriating.

Sometimes the clues have really gone somewhere, narratively speakng, like the build up to ganger Amy – first…[Read more]

Last week I thought the presenter was rather silly and not a true DW fan. He was just doing a job. That was my impression anyway

Think that’s a bit unfair. Christel Dee is a long-term YouTuber with serious Who tendencies and was doing really rather good fan vlogs for quite some time now. That the BBC has taken on her show as the…[Read more]

Great catch @Pedant @Mudlark and everyone on the Vada as proto Vashta Nerada.

@Mersey now that is interesting – second self portrait. I wonder if the Doctor’s 13th incarnation (The Valeyard) is locked in that vault?! Which…[Read more]

EARTHLING: … I’ll be in trouble back home.

DOCTOR: Oh?

EARTHLING: I told the wife I’d be in from work in twenty minutes.

DOCTOR: Well, don’t worry about that. We can get you back before you leave.

Rosemary was considered sacred to the ancient Egyptians…

Perhaps…[Read more]

(I am reading up at the moment…[Read more]

Re the bird on the Doctor’s desk; if it is meant to be a raven it was modelled by somebody who had never looked at one.  The size appears about right as far as I could tell, and it appeared to have a heavy beak similar to that of a corvid, but the legs and the neck are much too long, the body insufficiently chunky, and the ov…[Read more]

To follow up @wolfweed on Shada echoes, the Doctor tells the students in his lecture “time is an illusion,” which is the first part of the Douglas Adams…[Read more]

LOTS of great comments – and far to many names to @ back to but really loved reading all your thoughts.

I’ve only seen it the once (last night) and will re-watch now that I’m armed with what you’ve all seen, but some thoughts…

If my memory from last night is not faulty… I loved how Bill got into danger in the end, ignored the…[Read more]

And in one sense I’m in a similar situation to hers — I’ve bought S10 through iTunes, downloaded it today, and got — only the s…[Read more]

Now I am looking up all kinds of things about Rembrandt.  Very interesting guy.

The bust is Shakespeare.

This is the picture but it seems to be altered in the show to make the circles recesses…

Very interesting.

@nerys The reviews are always so far off base.  It makes you realize how vastly different people are.  Seriously, I often find myself wondering if they even watched it they are so far off from my personal feelings on an episode.

Yes, McCoy is — and I suspect always will be — a highly underrated Doctor. There are definite hints of the direction that both the Virgin New Adventures and Big Finish took his Doctor in, most notably in (as @Mudlark says) Remembrance of the Daleks, Ghost Light and Curse of Fenric.

And I know what you mean about his regeneration,…[Read more]

The Movie Which We Do Not Name is no way to have been introduced to any manifestation of the Doctor, so your original reaction to the seventh Doctor is entirely understandable.  I have to admit that I, too, underestimated McCoy in the role until fairly recently.  I had stopped watching entirely not long after Colin Baker took over, beca…[Read more]

I’ll admit that my interest in Who waned around that time, but it wasn’t McCoy’s fault (it was as much to do with my changing interests and age).

I think that actually McCoy has or will have the ‘most under-appreciated’ tag…[Read more]

I agree that the current format of Gardener’s world tends to seem cramped and am glad that in this 50th anniversary year we have been promised more one-hour episodes.  The Chelsea Flower show is next month and the BBC generally devote at least an hour and a half a day to that during the week it is on. I don’t know whether you get any acc…[Read more]

Beth Chatto’s garden is wonderful and I just wish that they could have devoted more time in the programme to it and the interview with her.  The garden is only about 60 miles from where I live, but it is a long time since I last visited it and I really must do so again soon. At one time the format of Gardener’s World was such that they…[Read more]

Nobody here would dispute this statement:

Sexuality shouldn’t be discuss as something sensational.

In fact that is exactly what Moffat said.

But he knows the British tabloids and their willingness to use any stick to beat the BBC with. It is not just The Sun or The Mirror, but the Daily Mail, one of the most hateful publications a…[Read more]

Thank you. I should like to stress that because I make a statement it doesn’t mean I’m right. I might think I am, but I could be wrong too. There have  been very, very rare occasions when I have been swayed. If  a thing sounds logical to me, I’ll accept it.

I really, really don’t like gardening! *grins*

Has anyone looked at the Video p…[Read more]