@juniperfish

A scavenger race like the Scythra are a bit of a puzzle, because surely, they’re intelligent, so why not tinker about the high-tech stuff they filch and figure some of it out? The tech they had which could disguise them as re-eyed humans was particularly impressive.

But who’s to say whether that technology was not also ‘borrowed’ ?…[Read more]

This was certainly an improvement on last week’s episode, and it is good to see Tesla take centre stage, with references to pretty much every visionary project on which  he worked  – and mostly failed to profit from or even be given the credit for until long after his death. In that context the Niagara generator might seem a bit of an i…[Read more]

As I don’t subscribe to Amazon Prime and so didn’t watch Good Omens when first shown, it has been one of the more cheering discoveries of the post-Christmas season to find Good Omens being shown on BBC. Enough, along with the new series of Doctor Who of course,  to rouse me temporally from my seasonal dormouse syndrome torpor at any rate.

@thane16 @bluesqueakpip

‘Qu’ils mangent de la brioche’* certainly shouldn’t be attributed to Marie Antoinette, since it was originally quoted in the autobiography of Jean-Jacques Rousseau where it is attributed only to ‘a great princess’, and this was written before Marie Antoinette even arrived in France. It has been suggested that it was in…[Read more]

@peacefrog

Meanwhile on this side of the Pond, with Brexit looming and our very own irresponsible mophead and his crew in charge, this comes to mind.

Not that I dislike my home city (where, for what it’s worth, a clear majority voted to remain in the EU), but if I were younger and had the opportunity ….

@peacefrog

Either way, as the slogan for a certain UK cell phone network proclaimed a few years ago, ‘The future’s bright, the future’s Orange’ , but I’m thinking heavily smoked glass rather than shades 🙂

@peacefrog

Not sure what happened there, but the video didn’t embed. Try again

@peacefrog

Let us hope that the Mango Mussolini may at least be distracted from pressing the Button (no, not the one to summon his Diet Cokes) or

@Bluesqueakpip

how do people expect anyone to be convinced about the science of climate change when the production team are apparently unaware that fire needs oxygen and the writer knows so little science they don’t realise an apex predator is at the top of a food chain?

Excellent point.  As I wrote above, strict scientific plausibility is not es…[Read more]

@DrWhoOpinion

about eight years ago I attained* an external hard drive with every Dr Who Show ever shown up until that point.

If so, the BBC, not to mention myriads of fans, would be delighted to know, because BBC practice during the 1960s was to wipe recordings and reuse the tapes, and there are a great many Doctor Who episodes from that period…[Read more]

@peter3110

Doctor Who … did give me an interest in history and science which got me to read a lot more.

And if it did that it achieved exactly what it was meant to do in the original conception. It wasn’t intended to instruct in didactic fashion, it was intended to inspire.

Have you seen An Adventure in Time and Space, the drama about the shows o…[Read more]

@Bluesqueakpip

Doctor Who may be allowed considerable latitude with regard to strict scientific plausibility but, yes, from the most remotely scientific viewpoint this episode was cringe inducing. Even the ‘science’ of Kill The Moon could be rationalised up to a point, and was in any case less critical to the theme of the episode as a whole.…[Read more]

@juniperfish

… she also recognised that people reacted to her superficially because of her looks, so her sense of self-worth was actually quite disturbed,

Yes to that. I have the impression that our reading of Lucy is not in fact very different; it’s just our understanding of the meaning of ‘depressed’. To me that word denotes clinical d…[Read more]

@JimTheFish

Wholly in agreement on the BBC’s radical adaptation of A Christmas Carol. I was out of the country during Christmas week, but recorded this, Dracula and more and came back to a televisual feast.

His Dark Materials was also something to be savoured, the more so because it led me to re-read the books with far greater enjoyment and…[Read more]

@Juniperfish

It wasn’t just Planet of the Apes which came to mind; there was more than a hint of Alien in the editing of the first appearance of the Dregs as they invaded the dome, before they were revealed as humanoid in body.

… only this time it’s environmental apocalypse rather than nuclear apocalypse

It was shown to be both, I think.  Envi…[Read more]

@juniperfish  @nerys

You know, all this talk about The Timeless Child, and children, makes we wonder whether the Master and the Doctor had a child together, somewhere deep in their history.

And, might that be the big lie? Was something done to that child to steal him/her away?

I still very much doubt whether this has anything to do with any…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave

Spellcheck or autocorrupt.  Sometimes it is best just to disable them and resort to an old fashioned dictionary printed on dead trees 🙂

@thane16

What if the Child is effectively physically harnessed to all Time Lords  -their very ability to be TLs contingent upon the role of the Child to exist across all dimensions & eternally?

I really like that idea, not least because it is compatible with my theory and also with the idea that the Time Lords are the result of radical genetic…[Read more]

@thane16 @Bluesqueakpip @Juniperfish and anyone else who has been speculating about the Timeless Child and whom I may have overlooked.

Given the context of the references and the hints dropped, and after mulling over the question in what passes for my mind these days, I have ended up with a strong sense that the Timeless Child is/was  some kind…[Read more]

@PhaseShift

Good to see you back again, and commiserations over the dysfunctional kidneys – quite enough to make life miserable, I know, and to explain your absence from the Forum. I hope that your reappearance means that they are now working as they should or are at least under control, and that you are feeling better.

Yes, Dracula is…[Read more]