@nerys  No worries!  It’s always nice to have backup. lol

@spider  I think it also warrants a mention that a lot of the Clara that people seem to reference is Smith’s Clara.  Last series, we saw her thrust into a lot of situations, often entirely intentional on the part of the Doctor, and at one point she actually loses it with him entirely for…[Read more]

@arbutus  @nerys   On the Daleks as one dimensional baddies — there were times when my husband and I would just look at each other (we were fans together) and say, “Oh no — Daleks!” and go off to do something else, because the Daleks were so flat that they were comical, which tended to disrupt the stories.  Now that there’s a suspicion that th…[Read more]

@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]

OK, loved it. Had a friend over for his birthday last night so we had a poker and no TV rule, watched it this morning when I was still a little drunk (there’s only really one cure for a hangover…) and with a lot of non-fans, and everyone was impressed.

@Mudlark– I liked- well I didn’t like- but its good that they showed Missy do that. It can b…[Read more]

@nerys I saw that, I went to multiple other sources afterwards, and to say that I am shocked. I mean, it’s known that Clara wasn’t the favorite companion among many Whovians, but she did play a very  important role in the show, but to leave Doctor Who? That was completely unexpected.

@purofilion   This is exactly how I feel about it. There is lots to enjoy there, but for various reasons, it is low down the list for me. To be sure, since I felt that most of Series 8 was absolutely fabulous, that is not that big a strike, really!  🙂

@nerys @lisa   I’m glad that others were able to find these things convincing, and love the…[Read more]

@Arbutus I agree with your Courtney assessment @nerys. We all saw in Courtney
a very bright girl in dire need of some positive reinforcement as apposed to the consistent
negative reinforcement she constantly got from everyone else in her life. So apparently
she was hanging around the Tardis. She observed the Doctor. She knew he was…[Read more]

@nerys   I think you are probably right about Clara. It just came off as a massively annoying moment, for me. A good example of why, despite how much I enjoy her with the Doctor, I probably wouldn’t want Clara as a friend– she would just drive me nuts. 🙂

Regarding Courtney, it wasn’t so much that I didn’t think she would want/need to be tho…[Read more]

@nerys  Yep — for me, too, Torchwood is primarily an annoying source of confusion about all things Doctor.  I watched T’swood for a while, but just couldn’t latch onto it as an interest — but let me continue this comment on the sofa, since it’s not really DiH related.

@nerys   Up the page, you said you didn’t remember John Frobisher, the bureaucrat, a descendant of Lobus C. — quite rightly, since Frobisher’s story was not DW but Torchwood, the story about the aliens who come demanding 10% of the world’s children.  The Frobisher character is the second “old” use of CapDoc’s face in the DW/Torchwood universe, L…[Read more]

@nerys  About reading more into a scene than “what was there” — I do that all the time, and I do it with pleasure because there’s *always* more “in the scene” than whatever the writer had in mind to put there.  The printed story is a machine that transfers a concept from the author’s mind to the reader’s — but the reader has to reconstruct the s…[Read more]

@nerys   RE the volcano scene:  “Even in a dream state, what is the purpose for choosing that place? Is it some echo from the past, similar to his reason for choosing that face? I still would like to see them explore that more . . . ”

Maybe we will, if the “this face” issue is addressed by an actual return to the Pompeii/Vesuvius episode.  I’d be…[Read more]

@nerys

who couldn’t even be bothered to remember his name.

No, that’s a long standing trait of the Doctor (dating back to William Hartnell having a problem remembering William Russell’s screen name). If he doesn’t like you, he’ll get your name wrong. If he doesn’t really care about you, he probably won’t remember it in the first place. C…[Read more]

@nerys   On choosing faces . . . are we sure the Doctor *does* choose his new face?  Has he always regenerated inside the Tardis?  Maybe the Tardis makes that choice for him, for reasons of “her” own — he does say in Deep Breath “I never know where the faces come from.”  They just arrive, and he’s stuck with the new one.  So could the choice of f…[Read more]

@nerys   Well, it’s a clever idea, and I like it.  But we *did* see Danny alone with Clara, where the Doctor’s viewpoint shouldn’t have had any bearing — so I’m not sure it can really be justified.  When she was with Danny, it would have been better all around (certainly better for Danny as a character) for us to have seen something more of wh…[Read more]

@nerys   That’s an interesting way to look at it — as if we’re seeing Danny through the Doctor’s prejudiced eyes all along (even when the Doctor isn’t actually present on-scene), and only come to recognize his inner goodness and courage when it’s too late . . . I like it.  Myself, I kept waiting for a few moments between Danny and the Doctor a…[Read more]

@nerys  Oh good, come and scintillate with us!  Thing about Pompeii — *did* he do the right thing?  Isn’t Lobus’s descendant John Frobisher, who is forced to make deals with devilish aliens and who then kills his family and himself, thereby “righting” an imbalance created by Lobus and *his* family having been rescued by the Doctor in Pompeii?  I…[Read more]

@Juniperfish

I really like the idea that Amelia made him real.

I do too! I’m sure that m’collegue @Rob will confirm that some of the best ideas come to you when you are stood genital deep in an exploratory trench in icy weather! This was one of them. 😀

@Juniperfish @nerys

For all sorts of reasons that Doctor-Amy-Rory dynamic is truly special…[Read more]

@nerys @Barnable

Also, Professor Albert said it was just an innocent gesture?

History is littered with men who think there gestures “innocent”. It is never innocent to place an uninvited hand on a knee (or any other party of the anatomy) especially when in a position of authority.

(There is nothing in the writing to suggest a relationship between…[Read more]

I love the suggestion as made by @DrBen and @Nerys that Santa orchestrated the entire thing to get Clara back where she needs to be, in the Tardis. However I think it is important to remember that the interpretation of the significance of the Tangerine at the end is open. I am happy to choose the “Santa saves the day” option but those who prefer a…[Read more]