@whohar

The slight problem with this that I can see, is that Abena was talking out loud about this meeting with Doc 15, and his response indicated that he was aware of this event.

Yes, my memory was at fault here on this and one or two other points. Having had another look. I still think that the Fugitive Doctor we saw was meant to be an image in…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u

Yes, Ruth Doctor. RTD has evidently accepted the Chibs retcon thus far. Whether he will run with it is another matter.

Based on the T C/Division/memory wipe narrative, Gatwa Doctor should remember meeting Ruth Doc and have accepted that she was a previous incarnation of himself, but have no recollection of actually being Ruth Doc…[Read more]

@whisht  @whohar

 If he’s the storyteller of the gods then why did he need to hold people hostage and force them to tell stories?

My reading, which of course may be well off the mark, is that he began, as he said, as a mortal – a griot telling stories. To connect the stories  he gathered from all over the world he constructed a web, the Nexus,…[Read more]

BBC APPROVED SPOILERS...

A strong episode, and one which well repaid an immediate second viewing.

The Doctor once said, ‘We are all stories in the end’, and on another occasion, ‘Stories are where memories go when they are forgotten’, and here the theme continues with a narrative about the power of stories. The setting, a barber’s shop, is representative of the kinds of…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u

All of that; and villains are usually more fascinating than heroes unless the hero has a sufficiently enigmatic or tortured back story.

@blenkinsopthebrave

We have been watching this fictional show for 60 years about a population that never seems to remember the Doctor, or the carnage caused by the Daleks, the Cybermen, and umpteen others.

Yes indeed. It was just about plausible in the BG days when stories set on earth generally affected relatively small numbers of people or were…[Read more]

One tiny little nit pick:  are there really any prisons or police lock-ups in the UK where the cells still have those barred, cage type doors? But I suppose it is a conveniently universal way of indicating that it is a prison cell, which is fair enough.

@whohar  @ps1l0v3y0u

Yes, I think we have got the Doctor’s timeline sorted. Everything in the episode apart from the opening scene happens before the events in The Robot Revolution.  Seventeen years after the first encounter Conrad sees the Tardis and the Doctor for the second time, now accompanied by Ruby, and gets the idea of using her as a me…[Read more]

@winston  @whisht

Thanks. I did wonder afterwards whether I should have gone with the Dusty Springfield cover, which is a better quality recording … and it’s Dusty Springfield!  But perhaps it was best to stick with the original.

@dwnerdfrommars  @blenkinsopthebrave

Is Conrad the Master ?  If he is he must have regenerated as a child and been adopted by a human mother. His encounter with the Doctor and Belinda on New Years Eve 2007 suggests otherwise, though.  This doesn’t mean that he isn’t being co-opted by who or whatever Mrs Flood represents. As I said in a pr…[Read more]

Knowing in advance that the writer was responsible for Kerblam and Praxis, I wasn’t particularly optimistic about this episode. And what about alien predators named Shreek … who shriek?  But the Shreek were of course just the mcguffin in this story and in the event I enjoyed it, if enjoyed is the right word. In fact the more I have reflected on…[Read more]

@whohar @winston

Yes, the ongoing enigma of Mrs Flood. First the ubiquitous slightly nosey neighbour who knows more than she should, with a tendency now and again to break the fourth wall like a Greek Chorus, now she does seem to be doing a Susan Twist, popping up in different guises and in wildly different times and settings. My latest…[Read more]

@whohar  @blenkinsopthebrave

Thank you. It certainly ranks as my worst Christmas ever, and that includes the one when I had measles (aged 6 – no vaccine available in them days), the one when I had chickenpox (aged 10), and the one where I was felled by a migraine on Christmas morning – although on the latter occasion I recovered sufficiently by…[Read more]

@whohar

I agree that there are hints of something a bit odd about Belinda, as if she knows things that, on the face of it, she shouldn’t. The answer, though, may lie in a crucial incident in The Robot Revolution. When the two time-separated instances of the document registering the naming of Belinda’s star touch, Alan regresses to conception and…[Read more]

A bit late on the scene, but I may as well add my pennyworth.

As it was a very long time since I last watched Midnight I decided to watch that again before tackling this episode so that I could compare the two directly. It seemed doubtful that a return to the theme of an isolated group of people facing the unseen and inexplicable could match up…[Read more]

After watching The Robot Revolution this occurred to me as appropriate

@juniperfish

I was also struck by the similarity between Bel’s yellow 1950s dress and the pink 1950s dress worn by Rose in The Idiot’s Lantern, which was set in London in 1953 (and this episode is set in 1952 in the US).

Also I was struck by the similarity between the red-bodied robots in the first episode of this season, The Robot Revol…

[Read more]

Hello everyone, and apologies for having been so long AWOL.

As things turned out I’ve only just caught up by binge watching Joy to the World, The Robot Revolution and Lux end-to-end which I enjoyed, though with an slightly uneasy feeling that some elements of the plots didn’t quite add up. I have also caught up with the discussions, but if I’m to…[Read more]

@dwnerdfrommars

Wow, this got political (that’s okay)

Although The Winchester (pub) rather than The Sofa seems recently to have become a place for discussing general Who related topics, the description on the front page of the Forum, where it is listed under Topics, is

The latest pub on our pub crawl. A break from the sofa and Doctor Who. S…[Read more]