@Juniperfish  Very sorry to see that you are still unwell.

Which Doctor do you fancy dressing up as for the Doctor Who Forum calendar?

I know this wasn’t addressed to me, but I have nevertheless given the matter some thought.  I don’t see myself as any of the Doctors but, given my erstwhile profession I ought to appear as River.  Trouble is, al…[Read more]

@Rob @BadWulf    To those of us born during the war, it seems even odder to think of it being taught in GCSE and ‘A’ level history  courses.  I have to remind myself that for someone sitting those exams today, the events are slightly more distant in time than the Boer war was for me and my contemporaries when we studied history for GCE ‘O’ and ‘…[Read more]

@JanetteB  Yes, it does seem highly improbable that a woman with a baby would have been allowed to remain in the armed forces, however essential her role;  for that matter it would have been unusual for any woman in such circumstances to have continued working, whatever the type of employment.  Even after conscription of women was introduced (th…[Read more]

@purofilion  I agree that the acting of the two girls did leave something to be desired, but the acting in BG Who strikes me as often pretty variable and, by comparison with the acting on television now, can sometimes seem mannered or a bit exaggerated.  When I watch these episodes now I tend to allow for this and it does not bother me much.

@purofilion

what’s going on with her hair?

Ace’s hairstyle is a pretty accurate reproduction of the kind of hairstyles worn by women in England during the war, as are the hairstyles of the other female characters.  In Britain at that time almost everything, not just food, was either strictly rationed or in short supply, and that included mat…[Read more]

@stormintheheartofthesun

  I thought Missy said that was going to kill the living humans and turn them into cybermen

You are right, and my memory was at fault.  I have just watched that bit again and, although it wasn’t spelled out explicitly, the implications of her words were pretty clear – the rain would fall again and everyone on earth would d…[Read more]

@DanMartin  May I join with those who have already expressed appreciation of and thanks for your blog in the Guardian.  I always read it with interest, although I have never ventured to comment and, these days, seldom venture to continue BTL, for the all the reasons that others here have expressed.   The way you have been able to carry on with…[Read more]

@ScaryB  (also @Arbutus )

You could see DW/DiH as suggesting that the Master could  have reformed, that she seriously just wants to be the Doctor’s friend again and to be “understood”. (Do I believe a word of that? Not flaming likely!

Of course she doesn’t want to reform; the idea would not even occur to her! She’s a complete psychopath with a si…[Read more]

@lisa  @ScaryB   you were discussing the difference between the cybermen in the mausoleum and those manufactured in the graveyards.  My understanding was that the cybermen in the mausoleum were the ultra rich who had been conned into financing 3W and who had knowingly elected to have their remains preserved in the mausoleum and their min…[Read more]

@Spider   My take on the heat sensor problem (other than that UNIT probably had access to gadgetry more highly advanced than the rest of humanity) was this.   According to what we were told, the ‘pollen’ which rained down on the graveyards, penetrating the earth and locking on to the organic remains in the graves, consisted of nanobots. These…[Read more]

@macphisto96   I agree; I don’t think Missy was lying, although I suspect that she was being a little bit economical with the truth in order to mislead the Doctor, and the Doctor, in his eagerness to learn the whereabouts of Gallifrey, failed to register what she was actually saying: that Gallifrey is in exactly the same place as it always was, b…[Read more]

@Arbutus  I did not have time to respond to your post #3519 yesterday, but returning to the discussion of whether or not Missy’s ‘choosing’ of  Clara involved a paradox loop: you said

 I wonder if Missy somehow avoided ending up in the Time-Locked Gallifrey? Possibly dying and regenerating in the process?

That would certainly resolve the pa…[Read more]

@ScaryB  Re the temporal loop.  The time factor is not, in itself, necessarily a problem since, as you say, Missy clearly has a Tardis or some other method of getting around in time.  It was the paradoxical nature of the loop which bothered me.  Missy could not have escaped from the time locked time war without events requiring the int…[Read more]

@Arbutus

 I had the impression that Clara was about to tell that Doctor that she couldn’t travel anymore because she had adopted the boy

That thought crossed my mind, also.  After all, the chances of her being able to locate the boy’s parents, even if they were still living, would be fairly slim.  But I have a feeling that there is more to it,…[Read more]

When I watched yesterday evening I was completely engrossed in the story, disbelief not so much suspended as tied up and gagged in another room, so the annoying little inner critic who sometimes interrupts to point out the implausible or illogical was silent (the anaesthetic effect of a generous infusion of Cotes-du-Rhone probably helped also to…[Read more]