@ichabod    I should have re-read your post #51198 before pressing *submit*, as I had failed to register that you were enquiring about the ordinary DVD boxed set, not the blu ray.   The release date is the same, though, and I think that all the extras are included in both.

@ichabod    Delighted that you are back and that all is going well with your eye; eyesight is so precious. So add my <hug> to the rest.

The S9 full series blu ray boxed set is due for release tomorrow (Monday) in the UK and April 5th in the US and Canada.  I don’t usually buy boxed sets of TV shows, but I am making an exception in this case, and…[Read more]

@puroandson  @JimTheFish

Related fact of very little importance.  Yaffle is an old name for the  Green Woodpecker, the bird on which Professor Yaffle was based.  The favourite food of the bird is ants, and the name comes from it’s ‘laughing’ call.

@Kbranagh  @puroandson

I don’t think that the Doctor who threw the screwdriver to the child Davros was an earlier incarnation. It is the same incarnation operating in a temporal loop.  The sequence as I read it is as follows:

The Doctor, looking for a bookshop, accidentally ends up in a battlefield in the war on Skaro. Or maybe the Tardis, who d…[Read more]

@puroandson

are you a detective?

Well, google has its uses – which is not to say that there are not some points of resemblance between archaeological research and police detective work.  It is a bit early in the day here for gargleblasters, but I might help myself to a lunchtime beer. Not ‘warm’ though; cask conditioned ale should be served at c…[Read more]

@puroandson

I’ve moved the discussion of the George Gently review to the pub, since it seems a more appropriate venue.

As you may have gathered, I was intrigued by your description of the ‘review’, so I have been doing a bit of digging. I couldn’t find any such review of the episode ‘The Lost Child’ in the British press, and it certainly wasn’t…[Read more]

@puroandson

Where was this review?  I ask because the terminology  ‘liberals and therefore Communists’  sounds more like the US than the UK, where ‘liberal’ has a rather different meaning.  On the other hand, it is the Right Wing in the US who ‘sneer at all things government’.  As @pendant says,  the people who spout this kind of thing are rathe…[Read more]

This is the first time that I have watched 42 since it originally aired. Beforehand, the fact that I could recall very little about the episode and had never previously bothered to re-watch it seemed ominous, but in the event I was pleasantly surprised – which I suppose is the right order of things ;  ‘Blessed are they who expect nothing’  and so…[Read more]

Good wishes to everyone for the new year.  And since I happen to have a glass in my hand, a toast to the forum and all who post here.

@pedant   Or, as someone I knew once observed, ‘Security is the feeling of knowing that one’s trowel is tucked firmly into the back pocket of one’s jeans’.

Even more comforting than knowing where one’s towel is.

You were right, @puroandson , there is something that I needed throughout my professional life without ever realising the lack. Forget my trusty WHS forged steel 4″ trowels;* so much labour could have been saved with a trowel that was sonic 🙂  I’m not sure about the design of River’s trowel, though – far too baroque.  What was with the blunt, w…[Read more]

Maybe it was the liberal infusion of Christmas spirit*, but I thoroughly enjoyed that, and will no doubt appreciate the nuances all the more when I view it again tomorrow, sober.

I’m an archaeologist from the future. I dug you up’.

In my dreams …..

* Well, a decidedly palatable Saint-Emilion.

Just dropping in to wish you all a Very Happy and Peaceful Christmas, with much good cheer and an entertaining and enjoyable Christmas Who.

For those of us in the UK who fancy some post-Christmas Tom Baker, The Face of Evil is on BBC4, two episodes at a time on, December 28th and 29th at 7 pm.

@ichabod

So if he remembers the events of that period but not the attachment to Clara, the person, how will what he remembers make sense to him? If he thinks of *her* as an empty outline of an unknown person, inscrutable as to feelings or motives, he would have to see *himself* (in his past) the same way — like a game piece, with no u…

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Back briefly

@Morpho

Is this the only time one of the Master’s ridiculously overcomplicated plans ever actually worked?!?

Certainly a thought worth pondering 🙂

@puroandson  (son)

This is straying a little bit off topic, but I find it interesting that you associated the scenes with the Doctor at the barn with  Shane, whereas the Western film connection I first thought of was High Noon.  Both are films which made a big impression on me when I was around your age. We didn’t see all that many films, bec…[Read more]

@Juniperfish

Watching the lovely acting tics of Capaldi, such as the slow way he raises his eyes to Clara’s face in the diner – it all leaves room for still waters running deep and yet deeper

Agreed. The directions in the script which @pedant linked to leave little room for doubt about what the writer intended, but I still maintain that the bare…[Read more]

@jphamlore

the Matrix …  It needs an agent to go out there and explore. It needs a Doctor

Interesting idea. The Doctor did tell Clara that the Sliders talked to him when he went into it as Matrix in his youth, though he was referring to himself in the third person when he did so, and spoke as if it was a matter of hearsay.

@Bluesqueakpip

the Ti…

[Read more]

@soundworld

I presume (uh-oh!) they’ve been exiled without access t0 time-machines (since they’re safely stored on Gallifrey, right?

There is always the possibility that Rassilon has an ally or two still on Gallifrey – people who managed to keep their heads down and avoid notice, so that they escaped being evicted.  Such an ally might be able t…[Read more]