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]

@dentarthurdent

Yes, the first-past-the-post system here is grossly unrepresentative and urgently needs to be reformed.  Happy though I am with the result this time round, it is absurd that a party with little more than a third of the vote should gain a landslide victory. In fact the only party whose share of the vote this time has been at all…[Read more]

I’ve also been following events in the USA fairly closely and am appalled by the fact that Trump has a realistic chance of being elected. The prospect of another Trump presidency is frankly terrifying, especially now that the Supreme Court has granted him, at least as he sees it, carte blanche to do whatever he wants without any legal…[Read more]

Beige is fine as far as I’m concerned; Attlee was hardly a charismatic figure, and look what his government achieved! For the moment I’m just relieved that the grown-ups are now in charge, and I certainly don’t expect miracles, given the disaster area that Starmer’s government have inherited. What worries me for the future is the extent to which…[Read more]

Many thanks  @whohar  @winston  @blenkinsopthebrave  @janetteB  for the good wishes.  The polling station for my area is only 15 minutes walk from where I live and is on my route into the city centre, so I voted on my way to do my weekly food shopping, Voting seemed pretty brisk for mid afternoon, with a steady stream of people coming in, but e…[Read more]