@Brewski  @bunface

 “The One Who Waits” is Susan.

Anything is possible, and in a recent Radio Times piece Carol Ann Ford was reported as saying that if the call came for her return she would be up for it, but even if the references to her so far do herald her reappearance, I doubt that it will have such a weighty significance.

In the conte…[Read more]

@jimthefish

The moon and the president’s wife. As @juniperfish noted above, this references something that Missy said in The Magicians Apprentice, when she was telling Clara how long she had known the Doctor, ‘… since he stole the moon and the President’s wife …’  I seem to remember that the Doctor later disputed this, saying that he didn’t…[Read more]

@miapatrick

Legal next of kin is generally decided by closest generic relative – or spouse/civil partner – but in cases of adoption, it’s adoptive family

True in our present day earth, and I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. But this is the whoniverse in the far future and on a distant planet, so the writer is free to make up the rules as serves the plot 😉

@whohar

Does this imply Ruby has human DNA, because the researchers would have identified any anomaly?

On a re-watch of Space Babies I paused on the image of the Tardis scan to see if I could make out any details. Under species scan it definitely said Homo Sapiens, and the DNA scan showed what appeared to be a normal double helix. What was odd was…[Read more]

@miapatrick  @cookgroom

The inability of the ambulance AI to identify Ruby’s next of kin was clearly supposed to be significant, and not simply down to the fact that she had just arrived on the planet and the information was lacking in their records. In fact, since the ambulance  was  able to identify her date of birth and calculate the years th…[Read more]

@janetteB

Yes, the first mention was in The Doctor Dances. Captain Jack used a blaster to open a locked door in the hospital. The Doctor explained to Rose that it was a ‘ Sonic blaster, 51st century, weapon factories of Villengaard’.  Jack noted that the factories were destroyed when the main reactor went critical and the Doctor then added that…[Read more]

@juniperfish

Thanks for the reminder of that poem. It has a particular resonance …

 Ruby is pulling snow, ephemeral beautiful snow, through time and space and memory.

If only RTD has the delicacy of touch to realise this emerging theme1

the problems of recreating conditions in London at that time would almost certainly have posed too many problems.

oops!  Note to self, proof read before submitting 🙄

Perhaps this wasn’t quite top tier Moffatt, but it was still very good indeed and, as was the Moff’s stated intention, generated a surprising degree of tension, notwithstanding the knowledge that the Doctor must inevitably survive. Even though I had exposed myself to multiple spoilers and had a good idea of what to expect, I was fully engaged and…[Read more]

@whohar  @scaryB

P.S.  As regards the perennial moaners, and the ARSE brigade, I sometimes get the impression that they have this Platonic ideal of Doctor Who in their minds which no episode can ever live up to.

@whohar

Occam, almost certainly.  Take the weather conditions, for example; nobody under the age of sixty will have any direct recollection of them*, and even if it occurred to the production team, the problems of recreating conditions in London at that time would almost certainly have posed too many problems. The snow in the Tardis might, at a…[Read more]

@scaryB

Having just reread the whole thread I realise that I had overlooked your comment about the poor CGI rendering of the snot monster. In the ‘Doctor Who Unleashed’ feature on the episode, which I have now watched, it showed how it was done, and it wasn’t CGI at all, just the traditional man in a costume covered with layer upon layer of gunk…[Read more]

@juniperfish

The costume anachronism is a very minor point and can easily be explained away by the fact that for Ruby 1963 is as far in the past as 1902 was for me in 1963. Faced with the Tardis’s vast wardrobe she would just have picked the style everyone tends to associate with the 60s. Or, more prosaically, that’s how the costume designers…[Read more]

@scaryB

Re the babies not developing physically, I think that was explained but I need to go back to pick up on it exactly.

The transcript of the episode is now up so I have just checked. The nearest thing to an explanation is the Doctor saying, ‘The crew went home. They abandoned ship and left you guys behind. I don’t know why, but they left the…[Read more]

@janetteB

Wondering if the Margaret Lockwood reference was meaningful but can’t see anything on her IMDB that would suggest any link. The Lady Vanishes?

I doubt it in this particular context, but it does have a certain resonance. Margaret Lockwood was indeed in the cast of Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938 IIRC), but the film the tea lady r…[Read more]

As so often, I’m late to the party, but for what it’s worth I thought this episode an improvement on the Space Babies and on the whole I enjoyed it. The basic concept had a lot of potential, but it was as if RTD, having seized on a good idea, never developed it so far as to explore all the implications. As @cookgroom   @miapatrick and @juniperfish…[Read more]

This was by no means as dire an episode as @WhoHar led me to expect – far from it – and my opinion of it improved on second viewing.  Compared with The Eleventh Hour or Rose, it was a lightweight introduction to a new season, but they set a high standard.  What carried it and raised it above average, though, were Nguti’s Doctor and Millie Gibson a…[Read more]

It seems that Ruby is to be joined by another companion in 2025

Doctor Who confirms Varada Sethu casting with first look at season 15 TARDIS trio | Radio Times

Query: does the fact that the Jinkx Monsoon character is named Maestro have significance – or is it just a piece of misdirection?

Meanwhile, not so long now until May 11th

@dentarthurdent

the diving suit exploit was – improbable (I’d guess impossible), without a support crew on the surface.

Perhaps there was more to the diving suits than was apparent. For a start, the design was anachronistic – more 1890s than 1814 – so  they were presumably supplied by the Tardis and could therefore have incorporated Time Lord tech…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave

Yes, the coronation of QEII saw a major boost in the sale of TV sets in the UK. As you may remember, this featured as a major plot device in The Idiot’s Lantern, where the Tenth Doctor and Rose inadvertently end up in London in 1953. It was also the case in Norfolk where we lived, although there was no transmitter serving the…[Read more]