@ichabod

urchins with a business sense

A very apt definition of a mudlark 😀   though I have to admit that as regard the business sense the moniker doesn’t really suit me

@Missy

I’m pretty sure that I didn’t reply to your comments on technology. I can usually sort out problems with my computer, but setting up a WiFi connection between my new printer and the computer probably marks the limit of my current technical expertise so I’m not the best person to give advice on matters of that sort. I don’t even have a…[Read more]

@pedant

I wonder what he is teaching – pretty sure it’s not PPE.

Life, the Universe and Everything, of course, from an entirely unorthodox perspective 🙂 (and I’ll bet that the answer isn’t 42)

The Doctor says, ‘I am your teacher’, and I see him in his relationship with Bill as mentor and guide; not fatherly, grandfatherly or avuncular, but a te…[Read more]

@Missy

No, you don’t have to pay the license fee for every TV in the house. One license covers the entire household, whether they have only one TV set or one in every room in the building. It also covers the use of computers to view BBC programmes on iPlayer, so even if you don’t have a TV set at all, and watch all TV programmes on a computer, yo…[Read more]

@thane15

Bless your sharp trained ears, puro.  I had nearly got to the point of wondering whether I was suffering from aural hallucinations. The only other thing I could think of, after all other possibilities had been ruled out, was that there might have been a very tiny glitch in the cable transmission which had slurred the sound of…[Read more]

@wolfweed

As I commented earlier, it seems very appropriate that the Doctor would choose Struwelpeter as bed-time reading for Kitty’s little band of urchins, and if not that, but for the matter of copyright, I suspect that it would have been something pleasantly disgusting from Roald Dahl’s oeuvre.

It seems to me that the attraction to the mac…[Read more]

@Whisht

Now you’ve made me blush (insert appropriate emoji), and no need for the ‘sorry’; I have no difficulty whatsoever in accepting that everyone heard ‘Bill’ – and so did I, quite clearly, when I watched that sequence on iPlayer. But I must have watched that particular bit on my recording more than half a dozen times now, and try as I may to…[Read more]

@craig

I wish that I could follow your suggestion, but I can’t think of a means of doing so, unless someone more technically competent can suggest a way.  My only computer is a fairly massive all-in-one desk-top almost as big and heavy as my flat screen TV set, and is in my study on the opposite side of my flat to the living room containing th…[Read more]

@pedant @thane15

Strange, because I assure you that I am not delusional and nor is my hearing impaired.  On Sunday morning I did begin to wonder whether I was mistaken, and since I happened to be at my desk I watched again on iPlayer via my computer and on that, yes, he unmistakeably says ‘Bill … Miss Potts’, which led me at once to go back…[Read more]

@tardigrade

You are right. If, in the version you saw, you could clearly lip-read ‘Bill’, then they are certainly different takes.  I have just checked (by fast-forwarding through the UK broadcast version which I recorded), and in that Capaldi is three quarter turned to camera, and one can equally clearly lip read ‘River …’ – two syll…[Read more]

@ichabod

Yes, the design of the diving suits is quite elegant – for a diving suit of that type – but, as I said,  it is a bit advanced for the period – much closer to the kind that was developed towards the end of the 19th century.*

@janetteB

I don’t know if Bill’s clothes were right for the exact year, but if the details were a year or so out t…

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@pedant  @thane15 (puro)

Looking back to what I wrote yesterday, I’m not sure that my explanation was entirely clear. Whether the Doctor said ‘River’ or ‘Bill’ seems to depend on which version you saw.

In the BBC 1 broadcast on Saturday evening, which I watched while simultaneously recording, it was quite clearly ‘River … Miss Potts … ; the…[Read more]

@janetteB

The woman in the print on the wall to the right of the fireplace is also Emma Hamilton. It’s from one of the portraits of her by Romney. She must have had more portraits painted of her than any woman in history.

Did he met her at some point, even enjoy a brief dalliance with her ? – it would have been in character for the tenth…[Read more]

@toinfinityandbepond

I would certainly be prepared to stump up a good deal more than that for the license fee.  The problem is that if a household owns a TV set or sets the license fee has to be paid, whatever their financial circumstances and whether or not anyone in the household watches BBC programmes, and there are a good many vociferous pe…[Read more]

@Missy

Do you still need a licence?

Yes we do. Currently it is £145.50 a year, which in my view is stonkingly good value for the range of services and the variety of programmes the BBC provides.

@Mirime @Nick

This is straying a long way of topic, but no, I find it hard to believe that anyone could mistake a Welsh accent for that of Lincolnshire 🙂  Nor, for that matter, is the Norfolk accent, rural or urban, anything like the Cheshire accent.  The fact that I seem to have inherited traces of the latter is entirely down to my mother an…[Read more]

@thane15

I would hear “I et lunch” (spelled eat pronounced ‘et’). Does anyone know about this? Common in the UK?

Fairly common, I think, but it depends on where you are in the UK.  There is, as you are doubtless aware, a huge variation in regional accents, so much so that, for example, someone with an acute ear can pinpoint accurately w…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave

And that is why we see so many black characters on the streets and on the ice–to draw our attention to the whole question of slavery … It is not supposed to be a documentary on the actual demographics of London in 1814.

The theme of slavery in one form or another was certainly a thread in the narrative, but the setting was…[Read more]

@Nick

I agree that the story was relatively slight, if pared down to the discovery and subsequent resolution of the threat to London. It was, though, a sufficiently substantial and sturdy frame to support what I saw as the real substance of the episode; the widening of Bill’s horizons, with the Doctor as her sometimes unreliable guide and…[Read more]

That was another highly entertaining and very satisfying episode – a pudding with nicely balanced ingredients and richly studded with plums. Once again the real monster wasn’t Tiny, the loch-less monster, the gigantic creature beneath the water which, whether of alien or terrestrial origin, was only hungry, tormented and acting according to its na…[Read more]