@Ozitenor

For what it’s worth, my take on the issues raised in your post #48938 points 3 and 4. is as follows.  I read the initial sequence of events as you did: when the Doctor regained consciousness he was in a very confused state – waking up in the desert with no idea how he got there would be enough to ensure that, even without the after ef…[Read more]

@puroandson

if the pulse isn’t working then her heart’s not working then how does anything happen.

The answer to that seems to be that she is existing in a kind of personal time-bubble, and the time within it is a single instant of her life, indefinitely sustained.  Since she can interact with people and things in normal time and space, she could…[Read more]

@Arbutus   Pan galactic gargle blasters it is (hic!), and I’m perfectly happy to drink mine here rather than trek over to the pub.  It will do very nicely as a nightcap 🙂   Funnily enough, after reading through the posts as of this morning, my coffee, like your tea, was cold. In fact I think at some point I had re-heated it in the micro…[Read more]

@Arbutus  Thank you for those appreciative words.   I’m afraid I tend to get carried away, and my initial posts can be over-long as a result. I imagine that there are more than a few here who take one look at those great wodges of text, roll their eyes and skip to the next, and who can blame them  🙂

Would it be boasting immoderately to point out that my theorising about the nature of the Cloister Wraiths/Sliders on the Spoilers thread was pretty accurate?  And I wasn’t all that far wrong about the intended purpose of the Confession Dial, either.  The Doctor’s explanation in the this episode chimed very much with my ideas on the subject, wh…[Read more]

@DoctorDalek17   Interesting point.  Even if the Time Lords had been in stasis, it is clear that they no longer were so by the time of the events in Time of the Doctor, since they were communicating through the crack in the universe. That doesn’t mean that either of my suggested scenarios is necessarily wrong – they could have been trying to get…[Read more]

@puroandson  (son)

I don’t like it when tv patronises me all the time. I can think for myself and I like to. So, maybe that is what the writer was suggesting? That we need to conclude for ourselves and also to listen really carefully

Very well said!  A good writer does not condescend or ‘write down’ to his/her readership, whatever their age, and…[Read more]

@TheBrainOfMoffat

And then there’s Gallifrey, which is, somehow, back in our universe. Frozen in time, but then not, by the machinations of the people frozen in time?!

The subject of how it returned was raised, but skated over by the Doctor. I would have to check his actual words, but I got the impression that though the Time Lords thought that th…[Read more]

I’m a bit bemused by the fact that some here seem to have taken it that the Doctor has completely forgotten Clara, but his situation is not an exact parallel with that of Donna, who truly did remember nothing. I think it was @spider who was the first to point out that on some level he has clearly not forgotten, as is evident in the fact that it i…[Read more]

This episode may not quite have reached the heights of Heaven Sent, but it wasn’t far behind, and very neatly packaged as a story, book-ended by the scenes in the diner where the Doctor tells it.

The events of Face the Raven remain unchanged, and for her family, friends and the pupils at Coal Hill School Clara is and remains dead. But she,…[Read more]

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@todeledo   I can think of several possible answers to your question.

Bone does not last all that long in the sea unless it is buried in the sand or silt of the sea floor, and if the passage of time was objectively two billion years, rather than being a simulation within the Confession Dial and so something experienced only subjectively by the D…[Read more]

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@spacedmunkee

The person in the dial chooses their own hell/torture/purgatory

Ooh, I like that idea!  It ties in very well with the concept of the Dials as full records of a Time Lords inner life. So it could be that, over his or her successive lifetimes, each Time Lord’s purgatory is created within their personal Dial  out of the record of th…[Read more]

@Morpho

an unphysical interpretation leads to a lot of physical metaphors for unphysical things (the stars, clockwork, erosion, gravity, combustion, etc.) that are so vital for the plot.

True, but then it is highly likely that a technology so advanced that it could create a space/time vehicle which is bigger on the inside – seemingly almost…[Read more]

@puroandson  Son of Puro   Re the hybrid.

Interesting question. As you probably know, a hybrid, in the sense we normally use the term is indeed a cross between two different species, plant or animal.  In theory either or both parents could themselves by hybrids but, since hybrids tend to be infertile, this is unlikely unless genetic engine…[Read more]

@Mersey

Thank you.  I often feel hesitant about posts such as these, which have a tendency to stray way off topic, so it always good to know that there are people how have found them interesting.