Something in Jack’s warning about the cyberman which flew past me first time around registered as significant on second viewing and, on the reasonable assumption that there has been joined-up thinking in the plotting of the developing narrative arc, I have a suspicion it could have a bearing on the problem of the two Doctors and/or on the Lie,…[Read more]

@Psymon

As you say, there have been multiple instances of two or more incarnations of the Doctor and his/her Tardis assembling without obvious problems, though I think that there have occasionally been allusions to potential problems arising. What has been shown to cause a serious paradox is when the Tardis materialises inside her past or future…[Read more]

@thane16 Syzygy the younger

There seem to be several types of bread described as rye bread. Bread made entirely with whole grain rye flour results in pumpernickel – very dense and moist in texture and almost black in colour, but if the rye is mixed with other grains the result  can still be described as rye bread so long as the predominant…[Read more]

Viewed in the cold light of morning  it seems obvious Jo Martin’s Doctor cannot be a regenerated Jenny,  so scrub that hypothesis of mine. In the first place, Jenny would surely not have forgotten the existence of her parent, even if she believed that parent had not survived beyond the end of his twelfth regeneration and she decided to take on h…[Read more]

Maybe it was the input of Vinay Patel as co-writer, but this episode seemed to display a surer touch than almost any since Chibnall took over, and for me at least conveyed more of the essential  Doctor and her universe; and for the first time I had the feeling of Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor as a fully realised incarnation of her predecessors, with…[Read more]

@PeaceFrog

The Wall of Voodoo video stirred an atavistic memory, and I’ve only just realised what it was.

And I apologise in advance

and they don’t travel back to a different planet from that of their origin

That should, of course, read ‘ … and they do travel back …’ 😳

@Miapatrick

I think quite possibly somewhere else.   This still means they’ve still majorly meddled with the time line to wipe out the human development of

If that is the case, and they don’t travel back to a different planet from that of their origin and don’t thereby generate an alternative future for themselves, then I don’t see why they wo…[Read more]

Just in case there is anyone unaware of the context of the video I posted above, it is the finale of the concert Roy Orbison and Friends: a Black and White Night, an assembly of the great and the good which is well worth checking out.

@peacefrog

Watching the Orange Aberration droning about his devotion to the environment at Davos whilst knowing how his administration (if it can be dignified with that term) has gutted the departments and legislative measures set in place to protect the health of the environment in the USA, that Tom Lehrer song was what came immediately to mind 🙁

@Arbutus

As you are presumably aware how ancient I am it will probably not come as a surprise that the music which is most evocative for me is of the period roughly from the late 1950s to the early 1970s so, off the top of my head, including Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Dusty Springfield, the whole Folk revival scene, The Animals,The Kinks, The…[Read more]

@Miapatrick @Bluesqueakpip

The possibility that it involved some jiggery-pokery with time did flit across my mind but I dismissed it, perhaps over hastily, as a time-loop too far.  But then again,  why not give it a whirl.

In a possible future or alternative time line, ape-descendants on or from earth discover the principles of time travel and d…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave

As I said, there is no reason that your theory shouldn’t be feasible in the Whoniverse 🙂  The temptation to nit-pick has, however, always been my fatal and irritating flaw 😈

Consider me well and truly slapped down and contrite.

@blenkinsopthebrave

It has just occurred to me that there may be another problem with your theory. It rather depends on when, exactly, the Time Lords originated, and that seems to be difficult to pin down given their ability to manipulate time once they achieved or acquired the technology.  Modern humans date back only a few tens of thousands of…[Read more]

BBC APPROVED SPOILERS...

@blenkinsopthebrave

What if the Time Lords stole the secret of time travel from humans, at a stage of development long preceding our understanding of Earth’s history?

As a theory that is impressively bonkers and yet I could see it working in the Whoniverse. There is, however, a tiny problem from my professional point of view. History – i.e. the d…[Read more]

@peacefrog

Thanks for that; it certainly succeeded in raising a smile, although it also has the disconcerting effect of assembling the word salad into something which seems to make sense.  Normally just the sound of *that* voice brings me out in a rash, and any attempt to parse what he says gives me a headache!

As an aside, I like the moniker.…[Read more]

It is entertaining to speculate about historical persons who might have been influenced by time travellers from their futures. I particularly like the idea that Francis Bacon – the 13th century Franciscan friar aka Doctor Mirabilis, not the 17th century essayist – might have had such an encounter, he seems so much ahead of his time in his…[Read more]

@JimTheFish  @juniperfish  @Bluesqueakpip

Yes, mindwiping is a hugely problematic concept because it is an assault on the person at a very fundamental level, and the Doctor, as a moral being with high ideals, should be above that. But how many assaults on individuals or societies as a collective have been perpetrated ‘for your own good’ or ‘for t…[Read more]

@juniperfish

Not to mention a pioneer PC operating system dubbed QDOS, bought for a song, which became the foundation of a multi-billion software empire 😉