@matthias  You ask if the Nethersphere is still active.  All the indications are that the answer is yes, as I noted in my post #35134 above.  If Missy had a duplicate bracelet or other means of escaping being pulverised by the cyber Brigadier (and like many others here, I think she did escape), she might have sneaked back there and, if so, she co…[Read more]

Such a lot to unpack in this episode that I scarcely feel up to commenting, even after a second viewing this morning.  I was slightly worried that it might end up a bit OTT, in the manner of an R T D finale, but no, in my  judgement it wasn’t.  The balance between the personal – individuals forced by moral dilemmas to examine themselves and inter…[Read more]

@Barnable

Apologies if my response to your ideas yesterday seemed disproportionate.  I did rather bring out the heavy artillery, didn’t I ?   I just enjoy debate and I suppose the old academic reflexes kicked in 🙂

And I did and do appreciate the fact that you concede the strength of my arguments.

Anyway, it is not long now before we get some…[Read more]

Slightly off topic, but continuing from my previous post:  final words from ‘The Stones of Blood’.

Professor Rumford (archaeologist), having just seen the Tardis dematerialise:  ‘I do have my academic reputation to consider’.  

Is there something I should be picking up on here? 🙂

Apropos of superimposed dimensions, and with an element of serendipity, I have just watched episode 3 of Stones of Blood, shown earlier today on the Horror channel and recorded.  It involves a ship in hyperspace superimposed on a prehistoric stone circle in normal space in England.  Koestler coincidence, or what?

The story also involves s…[Read more]

@ABXY   Re ‘Danny Boy’.   When I lived in Northern Ireland I was informed by my friends there that the words are meant to be those of a father to his son who is going off to war, not a woman, and since the song originated in Ireland I assumed that they knew what they were talking about.  In practically any pub at the weekend there would be someon…[Read more]

@BadWulf    Good point!  I was forgetting the recursion problem.  Ah well, I’ll have to fall back on the alternative dimension solution.  The one idea I balk at is the idea that St Paul’s has somehow been replaced: people would have noticed 🙂

@pedant

The masters Tardis does not need to be superimposed, it just needs to be inside the door (or indeed disguised as the door, since his chameleon circuit works.

This is pretty much my preferred explanation also, since it is the simplest and neatest, although perhaps I did not make it entirely clear.  The Nethersphere is inside the mausoleum w…[Read more]

@ScaryB

you can’t make a call on what’s happening unless you see the whole picture

…but that should on no account be allowed to inhibit bonkers theorising 🙂 .

@Barnable

You argue that the Heaven/afterlife in which HFM, Gretchen, the PC and Danny find themselves might be real because

We have seen Missy, Seb and PCSO all in the same place at the same time

But that argument is easily countered. Missy is an avatar projected into the virtual world, Seb is either another such avatar or a virtual const…[Read more]

@Barnable

I was just trying to think of what would happen if the baby was born in the Nethersphere.

I think the Doctor and Clara are real and alive since they arrived in the Nethersphere using the TARDIS. So if Clara is alive with her real body, then the baby should be real with a real body too.

My understanding, as outlined in post #34524, is…[Read more]

@Katharine

as if she were passing him a code to remember, perhaps? – providing another reason for his refusal to say anything else on the phone to her from the Nethersphere.

This possibility dawned on me earlier this morning, but you beat me to it.   The implications are deliciously timey-wimey 🙂

@Arbutus  It’s not so much that bits end up in museums (these days, in the UK at least, any human remains excavated have to be re-interred with suitable ceremony once they have been studied for pathology and demographic information); but when a graveyard was in constant use for many centuries every bit of it will have been dug over by the sex…[Read more]

@BadWulf

Does that include sneaking around Egyptian tombs, wearing a gas mask and asking “Are you my mummy?”

So that’s why I am addicted to Doctor Who!  I always wondered.

@BadWulf   😆

Well, with all the names of other authorities being bandied about, why not Shakespeare as well?  (and for that matter it is perfectly possible that he did know, at least in a general sense, that his hunchbacked arch villain had been buried in Grey Friar’s church in Leicester, since it was a matter of public record).

The ref…[Read more]

@Apopheniac

I am flattered, but I can’t claim anything like the extensive knowledge of Doctor Who history and lore that many others here possess.  I am sufficiently advanced in years to have been around since the beginning of the show and watching on and off, but during the sixties and early seventies there were quite long stretches where I did n…[Read more]

@BadWulf  In skimming through yesterday’s contributions just now (to refresh my memory) I noticed that my post #34529 in response to you was incorrectly addressed; my apologies.   I didn’t notice at the time because there is someone registered with the user name badwolf – which must have caused confusion if they were alerted.

The response was, of…[Read more]

@Arbutus

Lovely! Thank you.  I have only ever seen Gluck’s Orfeo in a televised production, and that a very long time ago, but Che faro is one of my favourite arias.

@Badwolf

your so-called archaeological remains could easily be faked

I have excavated – and seen the analyses – of too many Saxon and medieval burials to be convinced by that assertion.  Prove it, I say!  (And, just for the record, the gravedigger scene in Hamlet is exactly true to life/death).

As for the moon egg, I thought I had provided a ver…[Read more]

Re Dr Skarosa, I see that while I was composing the lengthy comment above  @lewis97 got there before me, so a tip of the hat and an acknowledgement are due.