@Bluesqueakpip

If we take the tradition of ‘closest friend’ as genuine, that suggests Missy’s next line:

Well, of course it was sent to me. What have you got to do with it? I’m his friend, you’re just…

could suggest that Missy was about to reveal what, exactly Clara is – but stopped herself in time

A very good point.  Cue another re-watch methi…[Read more]

@lisa  @purofilion  @Ichabod

Re the CD (of Rassilon):  I paused that scene to have a good look at the object, and I’m not sure that the black segment represents a missing piece.  The design on the surface consists of two concentric circles crossed by lines radiating in the manner of the lines on a sundial.  The black segment extends only to the…[Read more]

This isn’t about a TV show in the sense of a series, but this seems the best place to comment on a short programme  shown on Sunday on the art of Escher, presented by Sir Roger Penrose, the mathematician and cosmologist.  I recorded it for later viewing and have just finished watching it.

We were discussing a short while ago the purpose of art a…[Read more]

@lisa  And Delgardo Master watched the Clangers (and was beguiled into thinking that they were a fascinating, and genuine alien species).

@purofilion   All power to you and all those here who brave the zoo that is the Guardian blog BT and have the fortitude to engage with the small minded, the obtuse and the haters.  I generally find it too depressing to wade through more that a page or two – and tend, even so, to end up feeling more than a touch misanthropic.

This time, at least…[Read more]

@janetteB

I agree that Missy and Clara are most likely dead as is the Tardis.

Missy and Clara possibly. As I said a while back, the fact that their skeletons showed briefly as they disappeared suggests that they may have been caught in the Dalek fire, whether or not they were using the vortex manipulators to shift themselves.  The Tardis is…[Read more]

Thinking about the Tardis and its ‘infinite’ interior dimension, I was suddenly reminded of the asteroid in Greg Bear’s Eon.  Externally just a large, potato-shaped lump of rock, but in the hollowed out interior, a series of compartments containing habitats, the furthest of which has no end and continues indefinitely.

@ichabod

Hmm; but he could be lying about “recent”.

A Timelord’s idea of ‘recent’ might not be ours, but the Doctor who deserted the child Davros was the current incarnation, and I am pretty sure that once he had had time to recover his wits and think things through, he would immediately have started to feel guilty about his failure to live up to…[Read more]

@JimboMcMaster   Hmmm…   Missy and Clara: wave forms ready to collapse when observed by the Doctor or by Davros.  I like it  🙂

@Bluesqueakpip  @Supernumerary

faced with a frightened child, he leaves him to die. Never mind that the child is Davros. That little boy hadn’t yet done anything, anything to deserve being left alone in a minefield. ‘The Doctor’ was cowardly, he gave up, he gave in.

In mitigation, he had arrived on the scene completely unaware and unprepa…[Read more]

@Bluesqueakpip   Exactly! I can just imagine it.

@Supernumerary   The shifts in mood between light, serious and dark are to my mind very much a part of what Doctor Who has been since almost the beginning, with the segueing from sheer, frivolous fun to the contemplation of serious moral questions, and to me the balance here seemed nicely judg…[Read more]

@Geoffers  @pedant   Given the preamble, it doesn’t look as if the Daleks knew where and when the Doctor was prior to Unit tracing him.  For a start, we don’t know when Bors was dalekised.  Colony Sarff might have been primed to ‘convert’ any suitable person once it/they had located the Doctor, and given the means to do so.  Alternatively, but m…[Read more]

‘How is a Time Lord supposed to die?’ asks Clara; to which Missy answers ‘Meditation, repentance, and acceptance. Contemplation of the Absolute’.   But we have seen how rubbish the Doctor is at meditation (repentance is another matter), and Clara knows him well enough to realise this.  “Do not go gentle into that good night” quotes the English tea…[Read more]

On second viewing this morning, with time to savour all the details and incidental references, I enjoyed it all the more; and there is so much worthy of comment that I am at a loss as to where to begin.  Perhaps the best place is with the heart of the story; the Doctor’s dilemma revisited.  In Genesis of the Daleks, however, he came into the si…[Read more]

That was well worth the long wait and all the teasing.  I had worked out that it was Davros who was seeking the Doctor, but the twist was unforeseen.  And this is a Davros who, dying, is dialled back to something more like he was in the beginning but now, at the end, a touch philosophical and ready to acknowledge with resignation that he no lon…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave

The Falco novels are great fun.  Lindsey Davis is a classicist and, although she wears her learning lightly and the style of the narrative is irreverent and colloquial, the background details can generally be assumed to be accurate.

For those who like this kind of thing, many of the clues in the Guardian cryptic crossword today are Doctor Who themed.  Something to while away an hour or so and distract the mind while waiting for tomorrow evening.

@blenkinsopthebrave     😀

I wonder how many viewers realised that the original inspiration for ‘UpPompeii’ was the comedies of Plautus, right down to the prologue (to help a dim Roman audience follow the plot).  And Plautus in turn was drawing on the Greek comedies of such as Menander.  In both, the clever and wily slave was a stock charac…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave   Put like that, yes, it does have a certain appeal.  What occurred to me, though, was that Lurcio never, ever got to deliver his prologue properly, and we never learned what tale or drama he had in mind because, invariably, he would be interrupted and called away to deal with some farcical imbroglio in which one or more membe…[Read more]

@toinfinityandbepond    I sincerely hope not. If it is an ‘Up Pompeii’ type prologue, then there will be an interruption as soon as Saturday’s episode starts, and we will never learn what the story was supposed to be about   😉