@ichabod

‘Timescape’ is one of those novels which has stuck with me, too; much exposition and not a word wasted.  Those in the doomed present who send the messages back to their counterparts in the past cannot avert their own fate but, though they will never know it, they succeed in creating an alternative future for those who receive the…[Read more]

@Steffstaff @pedant @bendubz11

What I found anomalous about the Pope Benedict IX as female diversion was the portrait.  The style of the painting bore no resemblance to any depiction which might have dated from the 11th century, but that is not in itself a problem, since there are plenty of representations of historical persons painted long afte…[Read more]

@Miapatrick

The Master seems a little like Spike in Buffy in a way: evil plan, evil plan, evil plain, wait, I don’t actually want to live in a hell dimension, quick side switch. I’m sure I remember a pre gap episode where he suddenly switches.

The point at which the Master switches is usually the point where he* realises that there is a mas…[Read more]

@thane15

I’m pretty sure Prof Cox is a Who fan!

As you may recall, he did make a very brief appearance in The Power of Three 🙂

@thane15

philosophers or social morays

Why do I get this mental picture of a tangle of eels gossiping over morning coffee and cake, while a group of bearded, himation-clad gents look on disapprovingly 🙂   Vanitas and Veritas: illusion and truth – or vice versa

The mention of the confession dial by @AlexWho reminded me of the reference to the…[Read more]

Having shown that he and his c0-writers can do old-style Doctor Who in fine style, and in the process provided ample scope for Bill to establish herself in relation to  Doctor, and for Capalidi’s Doctor to establish himself as more grounded than we have seen so far – in a literal as well as metaphorical sense, we are now presented with the op…[Read more]

@Missy

we watched a film/series a few years ago (can’t remember what) where a women barged into a house accompanied by several uniformed men. She told the occupants not to worry ‘the dogs’ would clear things up, it was time  they got an outing- or words to that affect.

Was it by any chance this you were thinking of?

KATE: All these muscle…[Read more]

@MissRori  (and others)

The Doctor is blind, but I have wondered whether he was telling Nardole the whole truth, given the signs of their somewhat edgy relationship.  Although I didn’t spell it out in my post on Saturday evening, my assumption has been that he had reverted to wearing the sonic glasses because he could use them to help overcome hi…[Read more]

Among all the other incidental details which appealed to me was the Doctor, as he lectured on the dangers to life in the vacuum of space instead of crop rotation, drawing a series of curving lines on the star chart on the chalk board, seemingly random until the camera pulled back to reveal the join-the-stars image of a skull. Such are the details…[Read more]

Zombie space suits, nail-biting tension and snappy, sparking dialogue, supported by excellent production values: old style Who done to near perfection, and it just keeps getting better, quite apart from the fact that this episode was uncannily topical, as if Mathieson and Moffat had used the Tardis to take a sneak preview of the date of trans…[Read more]

Post script to a completely irrelevant footnote.  On reflection I think that the weasel in Pop Goes the Weasel might be Cockney rhyming slang: weasel and stoat = coat, which would better fit the once common practice among the perennially cash-strapped of pawning their Sunday-best clothes on a Monday and redeeming them the following weekend af…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave

I wonder if we really need a sequel, if you know what I mean.

My first reaction also.  The original set the standard by which I judge all subsequent SF films and it isn’t often that sequels live up to the original.  On the other hand @Craig is right: with the people involved it is unlikely to be a complete dud, and judging by t…[Read more]

@Arch

Im still pretty convinced, that whatevers in the vault is a child,

This would certainly fit with what we saw, or rather heard. Fur Elise is a relatively simple piece for a child to master and, when interest is sparked in the prospect of a new story involving children being eaten, we get the jaunty ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’. *   Some children ar…[Read more]

@thane15

Very good.  If you like intriguing, suspenseful and well constructed  police procedurals with unexpected, sometimes shocking twists. then I would thoroughly recommend it.  Mercurio takes some liberties as regards actual police procedure and strict plausibility, but the interrogations scenes, which are said to conform to strict proc…[Read more]

@Mirime

Didn’t the landlord say something to the Doctor along the lines of ‘you’re old, you have less energy so you won’t last long’, the implication being it wasn’t an instant death.

Yes. The implication was that the life-energy of the people taken into the woodwork was absorbed very slowly; hence it was necessary to find a new set of tenants onl…[Read more]

@Whisht

Obviously nods towards First Doctor and Susan again (leaving one’s charge behind…).

And not just Susan, if you think of all the others who have travelled with him and whom he has left behind, whether freely or reluctantly or unwillingly, to continue on their own way without him.  Maybe I am reading too much into the Doctor’s subdued…[Read more]

After this I feel that I will need to inspect the woodlice in my garden very carefully, to see if any of them have glowing tips to their antennae.  Perhaps I should be reassured by the fact that other inhabitants of the garden include woodlouse spiders (Dysdera Crocata) so named because they specialise in eating woodlice, but the spiders look fai…[Read more]

@thane15

Let’s play the damn parts! That’s fun.

It is! We read a great deal of Shakespeare in Eng. Lit. when I was at school, possibly because the head of the English Department was a fan. When I look back it sometimes feels as if we did little else, though that was not really the case.  We did read them as plays, different members of the class r…[Read more]

@ichabod  @janetteB @Nick  @Redlemons

Companion seems to me the most exact term for those who travel with the Doctor because to me it denotes above all a close relationship based on something shared: companion, from the Latin roots cum (with) panis (bread), so someone with whom you break bread; hence a companion on the road, a companion in adv…[Read more]