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@dentarthurdent I probably shouldn’t have said the Doctor didn’t babble at all in this episode. But it felt greatly minimized to me, compared to other episodes. And, let’s face it, it’s not like previous incarnations of the Doctor didn’t babble. But I always felt like there was a flow to it, a stream that I could follow. Oftentimes, Whittaker’s dialogue was written in such a way that it just felt like … well, babble.

I usually trust my first instincts. I felt then, and still do, that this was Chibnall’s finest moment on Doctor Who. I’m not as committed as you, and so I haven’t felt the need to revisit Whittaker’s Doctor. “Eve of the Daleks” was the only episode I felt was worth rewatching. Maybe someday I will review other episodes, and then perhaps I will revise my assessments of them.

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@winston I think the human companion is there to connect us to the Doctor through them and let us travel with him. I also think the human companion provides a contrast, the Doctor is a weird and strange alien and not from earth. The Doctor is also very humanoid and if not for the 2 hearts he seems a lot like us. Maybe a companion that was very alien would make the Doctor seem more human and less “other” by contrast.

I very much agree with this. My favorite human companions were those who weren’t afraid to stand up to the Doctor and remind him of the differences between him and human beings. I think that’s why I liked Donna so much. She loved the Doctor but didn’t revere him, and she was quick to point out when he fell short on human terms.

That’s what friends are for. We cherish loyalty and devotion, but we also need honesty. Sometimes the honest answer isn’t the one we want to hear, but it’s what we need to hear. Donna was a good friend to the Doctor.

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@craig Thanks so much!

One other question: This is going back over a month ago. After I posted to the On the Sofa 11 thread, the thread disappeared from the list in the General Forum. I can see my post in my Activity, and if I click on that link I can see the thread (which has a number of newer posts, including one today). Any idea how to get it restored to the General Forum? Or am I the only one who can’t see it there?

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The “BBC Remains Committed” headline sounds good. “The TARDIS is going nowhere” comment doesn’t exactly instill confidence, given that the TARDIS is usually going somewhere.

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@ps1l0v3y0u I can barely keep track of plot lines, much less timelines, so I’m a poor choice for any kind of meaningful exchange on your date theories. But bravo to you for taking that on! I could not do it.

@dentarthurdent I’m much the same as you … and getting worse by the day. I never considered your point about the inherent logical flaw in time travel. I enjoy your recollection of that Tardis exchange. Such insights are what I have always loved about Doctor Who.

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@dentarthurdent I absolutely agree with you. I thought the Weeping Angels episode was finally building toward something substantive and exciting, and then … “Whoomp! (There It Is)” … or isn’t. What a letdown. I don’t know what happened. My theory (without any proof) is that there were too many cooks in the kitchen. So how Moffat & Co. were able to hold it together as well as they did, for as long as they did, is anybody’s guess. In hindsight, I feel immense gratitude for their perseverance.

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@winston @whohar @blenkinsopthebrave Thank you for your warm Canada Day wishes! My husband decided to work and plans to take the day off later on. So it was a regular day for us. But, given recent events, I am all the more grateful to call Canada home. We celebrated Canada Day quietly, but no less gladly.

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@dentarthurdent Bond being dead. I’m trying to remember if, at the end of No Time to Die, if Bond was definitively and permanently blown up. Or did he survive by a miracle – I suppose that wouldn’t technically be a retcon. I do rather hope they don’t do a ‘young Bond growing up’ though, that sounds rather too – Disney.

My take on it is that Bond was not pining for the fjords. Yes, Bond had gotten himself out of tough spots before, but it’s hard to see how anyone could have survived that missile strike. Besides, after Bond was infected with nanobots that would kill Madeleine and Mathilde, he chose to sacrifice himself. Hence, his death on the rooftop of Safin’s nanobot factory.

I agree with you and hope that Villeneuve & Co. don’t go Disney-esque on us.

@ps1l0v3y0u So much double entendre. Thank you for reminding us! I’d forgotten about that. As you noted, the gas masks were a distraction from the hilarity of those scenes between Rose, Jack and the Doctor. I miss it.

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@dentarthurdent (Wonder how they’re going to deal with Bond being dead?)

I’m guessing retcon. I have read a fan theory elsewhere that speculates we’ll see yet another version of “young Bond‘s struggle with authority, having to find himself, and finally embracing the surrogate family he is surrounded with.” Sadly, that strikes me as being highly plausible in this day and age. I hope that Villeneuve comes up with something more imaginative.

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@whohar I love the HBO rumor! I have HBO because it’s linked with Crave in Canada, thus removing the Disney+ dilemma from my options.

@ps1l0v3y0u My take on the hostess’ sacrifice in “Midnight” is that her flight safety training was kicking in. Even though she seemed just as paranoid and accusatory as the passengers, my sense was that she finally realized the Doctor was right, saw the danger, grabbed Sky and opened the door, sacrificing herself. Though I wonder if the creature inhabiting Sky would have survived, since it was an entity prior to gaining entry to the bus.

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@translatorcircuit Well, I am going to disagree with you. “Midnight” ranks near the top of my favorite Doctor Who episodes. It’s one of the few episodes I feel compelled to watch over and over again. I love it precisely because of its claustrophobic setting. It feels like a stage play. Not something I would want for every episode, but I found the novelty refreshing.

I remember feeling a real sense of threat to the Doctor. I felt confident that he would escape this danger, somehow … but how? So there was a gnawing sense of doubt, right up until the climax.

The interplay between David Tennant and Lesley Sharp was brilliant. I was utterly convinced that Sky (or the creature that had inhabited her) was taking over the Doctor. I was sad that Sky Sylvestri and the unnamed hostess did not survive. But that’s part of what sets this episode apart. The Doctor set out on his own, leaving Donna to relax while he sought some fun and stimulation. Instead, what he and the others got was insight into the human character … much of it not pretty, revealed in the confines of a Lifeboat setting. And not everyone got out alive. One of the most haunting episodes, for me.

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@winston I am OK with a smaller budget if the story is good. It can all happen in one room if the story is engaging like Midnight.

My thoughts exactly!

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Not a good sign from either publication (Deadline article follows the Variety one):

Variety

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@winston Piggybacking on your bonkers theory, what if Rose is returning to meet No. 14? We got a reunion between Tennant Doc and Donna. It wouldn’t surprise me to see RTD reunite him with Rose, and then, same as with Gatwa Doc, do a bi-generation into No. 16.

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@whisht OMG She was the Moment for a Moment and now is actually the Doctor for a season!!

Oh, I like that!

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Somewhat related to the discussion of regenerations and Gatwa’s too-brief tenure as the Doctor:

I watched a video of all the regenerations and was reminded of how melodramatic they tend to be. On first viewing, that’s fine, but subsequent viewings don’t carry as much emotional weight for me.

I was also reminded of another even shorter tenure: Paul McGann. After having seen the TV movie in which he played the Doctor, I was grateful that it was a one-off. But then I saw “The Night of the Doctor” that set him up for John Hurt’s War Doctor, and McCann was so good that I lamented him getting such short shrift.

Of course, Hurt’s tenure as the Doctor was brief … but it was meant to be.

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A thought (and yes, I’m reading and loving all the posts … even though I am still awaiting DVDs of Ncuti’s first season). Anyway, my first thought about Billie Piper was, RTD did bring back Tennant Doc to resolve his erasure of Donna’s memories with him. And we know where we last left Rose in the parallel universe with the Meta-Crisis Doctor.

But might there have been some event between Rose and her Meta-Crisis Doctor, similar to what happened to Donna in “The End of Time”? So instead of DoctorDonna, we now have DoctorRose? And, of course, we know where we last left Tennant Doc #14. Might this be yet another loose end to tie up?

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@ps1l0v3y0u Oh. Could I make it ‘Broadchurch’ in space? A series of Intergalactic Moiders with conflicted cardboard cutouts (my fav. Pretty please?)

Had you leveled the “cardboard cutouts” complaint against Season 2, I would have been right there with you. The second season of Broadchurch was a disaster, IMO. Throw in a past murder that no viewer cares about? OK, I get it, it’s the old “cold case haunts investigator, and is finally resolved” scenario. But did anyone care? I didn’t. I cared about the characters I’d come to know in the first season … and we got precious little of them. I approached the third season with fear and trepidation, but I felt that it redeemed itself and didn’t repeat its mistake from the second season.

I realize you’re not carrying that over to Chibnall’s tenure on Doctor Who, but I did want to comment on it. I was surprised that so little of the character development I saw on Broadchurch carried over to Doctor Who. I still wonder if it was a “too many cooks in the kitchen” problem. That’s what it felt like.

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@whohar I didn’t comment on here about Chibnall’s / Whittaker’s Who run, mainly because I found it, in the main, to be witless, charmless and (often) senseless.

This is the the most concise description of their run that I’ve ever come across, and it sums up my feelings perfectly.

And yet, what is so frustrating is that clearly, Chibnall had it in him to write a good episode. Exhibit A: “Eve of the Daleks” which, IMO, had all the wit and charm I’d come to expect from Doctor Who. It didn’t completely make sense … but then, Doctor Who rarely does. The whimsy, and the fact that the Doctor took charge, with timely support from her team of companions and friends, felt like Chibnall had finally got his mojo back. And then it all fell apart again. Such a disappointment.

Having seen Jodie Whittaker in Broadchurch, I am firmly convinced that, with better scripts, she would have made a marvelous Doctor. I believe she was let down by the writing, and by a lack of direction as to who the Doctor and her companions really were. It felt to me like a “too many cooks in the kitchen” problem, with the focus on trying to out-plot RTD and Moffat … at the expense of character development.

I was a little surprised at Jodie’s admission that Chibnall had advised her not to watch any previous Docs. Since she’d worked with David Tennant, I assumed that she’d at least watched parts of his run. I even felt that, early on, she was trying to mimic his manic style. So it wouldn’t surprise me to discover that she sneaked a peek at a few Tennant Doc episodes.

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@mudlark Oh, right, Tecteun actually did show up later on. Like I said, the Flux denouement was pretty underwhelming for me, so I have forgotten a lot. Thanks for the synopsis of how that “tangled mess” (aptly put) went down.

@janetteb I have paid attention to the observations about Ruth Doc’s Tardis and how, if she preceded Hartnell Doc, the appearance of her Tardis makes no sense. Her re-entry now is puzzling. But since bi-generation has become a thing, maybe that’s the explanation?

RTD seems committed to giving fans what they want. First we got Tennant Doc and Donna resolving Donna’s memory problem (which was always a sore spot with me). Many complained that we wanted to see more of Ruth Doc. Maybe her reappearance is another case of fan service. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, and if it resolves in a satisfying way.

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I am cheerfully reading all the spoilers here, even though I must wait for my library to get Ncuti Gatwa’s first season. I feel optimistic that I’m of an age where, by the time the DVDs finally arrive, I will have forgotten most of what I have read. But this comment from @mudlark got me thinking:

The problem with trying to fit Ruth Doc into the line of Doctors 1 to 13, at least for me, is that it means not only jettisoning the Timeless Child narrative – i.e. Awsok/Tecteun was lying through her teeth, but that the Division shenanigans were were contemporary with the lives of at least some of the incarnations of the known canon and completely unknown to them, which seems a bit of a stretch given how many other secrets of the Time Lords the Doctor has managed to ferret out.

It’s been quite a while since I last watched Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor. But one of the things that stood out to me, and not in a good way, was that “The Timeless Children” saga was told to her by the Master. At the time, I was so annoyed by Chibnall’s complete disregard of the “show, don’t tell” principle of storytelling that I could barely watch.

But what if what the Master told the Doctor was all a lie? Wasn’t Ruth the one through line we got in all of that? As I recall, she worked for the Division, but did she confirm all of what the Master said? I really can’t remember. And, I don’t think that’s just a result of aging. The denouement was that unmemorable.

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As I mentioned in another thread, we just watched Wolf Hall … in the wrong order. We started with Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light that recently aired on PBS Masterpiece, not realizing that the original Wolf Hall mini-series had preceded it 10 years earlier. So yes, it did feel like something was missing, though we’ve watched enough documentaries about King Henry VIII that I didn’t feel lost. I then borrowed the original Wolf Hall DVDs from our library and got caught up.

The entire cast was superb, but the through line is Mark Rylance’s finely nuanced portrayal of Thomas Cromwell. Of course, he had a beautifully written script, based on Hilary Mantel’s novels, which fleshed out Cromwell’s character well beyond the devious “fixer” I thought I knew him to be.

I know this is fiction, but the motivations that are portrayed by Cromwell and the other characters feel believable, and very human. I was mesmerized throughout both series. Even though I knew what was coming, I didn’t know *how* it would come about. I felt as blind to it as the characters, which is quite a remarkable achievement for such a well-documented period of history.

Damian Lewis as Henry and Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn are equally mesmerizing. But I don’t think they would have worked nearly as well without Rylance’s shrewd, flawed, vulnerable Cromwell underpinning everything.

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@whohar Thanks for sharing that. Archie Panjabi looks familiar to me, and I had to think of where I’d seen her. Then it came to me. We recently watched I Know This Much Is True, and she gave a wonderful portrayal of the psychologist, Dr. Patel.

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Another good article about this: https://www.theguardian.com/global/2025/may/05/hollywood-trump-tariffs-international

Of course, movies shot in the US aren’t required to head for an Atlanta parking lot, use green-screens for exteriors, or to shoot Albany for Manhattan. There are, indeed, plenty of opportunities for visually spectacular location shoots in the United States. But shooting in other countries isn’t (always) just a matter of (only) saving money. After all, the last couple of Mission: Impossible and James Bond movies shot all over the world, and were mind-bogglingly expensive. These movies follow the rich tradition of giving audiences a look at landscapes and cities that they may not be able to visit themselves – at least not all of them, and certainly not in the span of two or three hours. Part of the reason that movies like No Time to Die or Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning feel more “real” than the average streaming action picture (which also, after all, tend to feature spies, action, big stars and so forth) is that they take place in a physical world that’s both recognizable and, to people around the world, exotic in its reach and diversity.

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@ps1l0v3y0u Apparently this is aimed squarely at the Canadian film-making industry, which certainly is no powerhouse compared to Hollywood. But tax incentives here make it appealing to use Canadian locations as stand-ins for American ones, so apparently less and less is being filmed in Los Angeles and other traditional filming locations in California. My response to that would be, “Why not improve your American incentives?” But no.

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I wonder if the BBC saw this coming: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/may/05/fears-trump-foreign-film-tariffs-wipe-out-uk-movie-industry

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@dentarthurdent I think his posting of that image of himself as the pope was done deliberately, to drive anyone who opposes him out of our minds. And, of course, he is succeeding. He cares about nothing more than further bloating his own wealth and power, and destroying those he sees as enemies. So when we protest something he’s done, he’s happy because he has accomplished exactly what he set out to do.

@winston I so agree with you about Canada’s PC party. If they were truly progressive conservatives, then I would be supportive. But no, they have turned into uppercase Conservatives, parroting much of the hatred and division they admire from south of the border.

I really wish that the Liberals had secured a majority government, but unless recounts of the close races change outcomes in the Liberals’ favor, Liberals will form a minority government, with the PCs as a powerful opposition. “Opposition” being the operative word, because that’s all they’ve been doing for the last five or so years. Canadians expect our government to get things done, now more than ever. But if the politicians dig their heels in along party lines, then we’ll be stuck … at a time when being stuck is the last thing we need.

My only hope lies in the fact that, despite protests to the contrary, Mark Carney is a very different Liberal from Justin Trudeau. Trudeau was more idealistic, while Carney is pragmatic. Given what Canada is up against, I think a pragmatist is who we need right now.

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OK, just to clarify my earlier clarification: We did just finish the second season of Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light. I was misled by the “Season 1, Episode …” descriptions we were seeing on our DVR. I think the reason they did that is because the first season of Wolf Hall was simply that. The Mirror and the Light is a continuation, but under a different name.

So, now I have to see if I can figure out how to watch Season 1!

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Just to clarify one of my earlier posts: We are currently watching the first season of Wolf Hall on PBS’s “Masterpiece” program. I thought that since others were talking about the second season, that must be the one we are watching. We’re recording it on our DVR, and I see now that the episode descriptions say Season 1, Episode (whichever one we’re on). Sorry about that!

Hello @scaryb and welcome back!

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@winston Because of where we lived, we didn’t experience that sound of trees crashing down, which you endured. But I knew people who did, and they described it much as you did.

The sad thing is that even trees that appear undamaged, or not so badly damaged, may eventually die. That was what we experienced from the 1998 ice storm. It took several years for the damage to take its toll. But I was also amazed at how, over time, the forests bounced back. I remember driving to Ottawa and becoming accustomed to that awful “stripped” look of the trees along the highway. Then, at some point, I realized that the trees looked normal. I don’t know if it’s because younger, healthy trees obscured them, or they lost their stripped branches. However it happened, I remember feeling an overwhelming sense of relief.

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@winston I am so very sorry about your garden, and the trees. I’m glad that your family and your property were spared, but I understand how it feels when a natural disaster causes such devastation. The wildfires we had here in 2023 destroyed so many trees. My heart aches still to drive by them now and see a seemingly endless stretch of charred trunks. And that’s just what I can see from the highway or road. There’s far more damage than meets the eye.

I will never forget the ice storm of January 1998. We were living in southeastern Ontario at the time. It was shocking to see the damage to trees. It was as if a giant hand had reached down and stripped each tree so that the branches pointed downward. The weight of the ice did that. Quebec’s massive hydro towers that were pulled down, again by the sheer weight of the ice, was something I never expected to see.

But, as natural disasters go, we did OK. We were without power for four and a half days, which meant that we had only limited heat and spent most of the time shivering under blankets. And, because we were on a well, we didn’t have running water. But we had a roof over our heads, food, a camp stove, and unlike many others, we had plenty of batteries and candles, so light was not an issue. Still, not an experience I wish to repeat.

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@thane16 We’re currently watching Wolf Hall … and I don’t think we realized there was a previous first season. Oh well, it’s fine because we’ve watched so many films and documentaries on Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell that we know the story without necessarily knowing this story.

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@thane16 I’m so glad that you and your family are OK. Thank you for letting us know.

@blenkinsopthebrave @winston “Elbows up” is the rallying cry now. But it’s so sad what got us here. It’s hard not to have vertigo or whiplash, with all the constant seesawing.

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@janetteb Thank you for reminding me that our weather is what others dream of. It’s easy to take it for granted.

@thane16 I second Janette’s concern for you and your family. I hope that you are safe from Cyclone Alfred.

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OK, that looks good! Still waiting for my library to get Ncuti Gatwa’s first season, but I don’t think it spoils anything to see this trailer for his second.

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@janetteb This looks like the cast I saw in the third installment of the 60th anniversary specials.

@whohar @dentarthurdent I agree that knowing who the Sun’s owner is is key to understanding the article’s slant. I do hope the end is not near. After all, I just got back on board with the specials. But, we live in uncertain times.

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@winston How lovely! We have bird feeders, but no creek nearby to produce such amazing sightings.

Here, we do not have the amount of snow that you do, though this is the first winter since 2015 that the harbour has frozen over, and we have snow cover. Typically, if we get any snow at all, we go through rapid freeze/thaw cycles and it melts quickly. Too quickly, which becomes problematic for our groundwater supply, especially in droughts. But this has been a very different winter.

Anyway, I normally like to take scenic drives to birding spots, but this winter I haven’t done that much because of the weather. And the wind! We’ve had several sustained windy periods, some of which have caused (thankfully brief) power outages. The good thing is that days are getting longer. It’s wonderful to see sunrise at a little after 7 a.m. and sunset at almost 6 p.m.!

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@janetteb Something we do for comfort viewing is the WildEarth SafariLIVE safaris from South Africa (also available on YouTube). WildEarth is among the free channels on our LG TV. I’ve been watching since 2014. Once hubby found it on our TV, he started watching, too. Their live segments are comprised simply of the naturalists and their camera crew driving around, seeing what they can see. It’s not scripted, and there’s no soundtrack (other than the ambient sounds of nature and wildlife). I find it very calming.

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@janetteb I’m trying not to doomscroll too much these days. Difficult. I too am reading a fair bit. I’m currently on Kate Atkinson’s latest Jackson Brodie installment, Death at the Sign of the Rook. It’s a good diversion.

We also seek solace in movies, and watched a lovely one last night. Minari (2021 film about a Korean family who moves to Arkansas in 1983): A poignant story about what it means to be family. The husband has started a farm that’s beset with problems. His wife wants to move the family back to California, where they can pay off their debt. But he resists, stubbornly wanting to finish what he started. There are also two children (the son has a serious heart condition), plus the wife’s aging mother, to consider.

Just when you think you know where this movie is going, it takes a different turn … then turns once more. Minari symbolizes resilience, a theme that resonates throughout the entire film.

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@blenkinsopthebrave It’s interesting that, not so long ago, television was blamed for all of society’s ills. Now it’s cellphones. But I think RTD had a good point about returning to that earlier concern. Of course, it’s a bit odd when a TV show laments the damage done by television.

I wonder if the reason RTD does so well with Tennant’s Doctor and Donna is because he knows them so well. Whereas he’s just not there yet with Gatwa’s Doctor.

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@ps1l0v3y0u Oh yeah, I’d forgotten about seeing into someone else’s living room (the fellow on his couch). So these would be terraced houses, correct? I forgot about that detail and was confused as to why, during their escape, they could see into other people’s houses. Because they’re connected, duh!

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@ps1l0v3y0u You’re right about the sonic screwdriver at Donna’s house. I had forgotten about that. It did, what? Create a kind of force field, blocking off the Wrarth Warriors but allowing the Doctor, Donna’s family and the Meep to escape?

Like you, I didn’t find the episode amazing. Many of RTD’s stories ran on timey-wimey machinations rather than logic, and this was one of them. Maybe it was nostalgia that carried the day. There was just enough of the old magic and whimsy to make me feel delighted by it all over again.

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@winston @dentarthurdent I used to watch “The Day of the Doctor” fairly regularly when Crave still carried Doctor Who in Canada. Alas, it is no more. However, I’ll bet my library has it, so I will check it out.

It was so much fun watching the three Doctors haggle with one another (himself), and then finally come together for a solution. Rose/The Moment gave a wonderful, if fleeting, emotional resonance to the scenes in the barn. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but this was the first time I felt that Clara really clicked with Matt Smith’s Doctor … even more so, I thought, with David Tennant’s Doctor. And getting all the Doctors back together (including a sneak peek of the forthcoming one’s eyebrows) was a joy to behold!

The scene at the end with “the curator” gets me every time.

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@dentarthurdent I agree with you that “Wild Blue Yonder” was the best of the three. Yet I am glad to have them all. I understand what you mean about the Disney-esque elements. I tried to overlook them. The Flux was kept to a bare minimum, so I was OK with it. Kind of like tying up loose ends, I suppose.

@winston I love your “fuzziest socks” analogy. So comfortable, and such an easy fit. As I think I mentioned before, it was as if no time at all had passed between the Doctor and Donna. Their friendship still carried such a warmth and humor, an understanding based on their shared experiences.

And I agree with you about the 50th Anniversary Special. I doubt that any other special will have the “bigger than the sum of its parts” resonance that “The Day of the Doctor” did … and still does.

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@winston That’s true about the working Tardis! Though No. 14 didn’t seems so inclined to use it, did he? Still, as others have noted, the 14th Doctor is on call if needed.

There was an echo of the Whittaker Doctor in the need to search for and create a family with his companions (though I don’t think that story was told particularly well in the Chibnall era). But here it was more convincing, that, by having a family of his own, the Doctor could heal from past traumas inflicted on him.

It was fascinating to see the Celestial Toymaker’s attempts to taunt the Doctor, in front of Donna, with the marionettes of past companions and how their time with the Doctor came to an end. And yet, as much as the Toymaker tried to undermine the Doctor’s rebuttals (“Well, that’s alright, then!”), we know that what the Doctor says is true. All is not lost.

As you say, pure escapism … very much needed these days. Now I must wait for the 15th Doctor episodes to land in my library!

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“The Giggle” was a satisfying, if, for me, an overly drawn-out, conclusion to this three-parter. It was wonderful to see Wilf again at the beginning, as well as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart later on.

Did anyone else see a startling resemblance between Neil Patrick Harris’ Celestial Toymaker and Matt Smith’s Doctor? Occasionally I had to do a double-take to remind myself of which character I was watching.

The beginning of the episode, with the puppets and Doctor and Donna lost in the corridors, was genuinely creepy. It’s the first time in quite some time that I’ve felt that in a Doctor Who episode.

For me, the highlight of this concluding episode was that the Doctor got both of his wishes. The meta-crisis Doctor ended up with Rose and her family, and this Doctor ended up with Donna and her family. Best of both worlds … literally.

The bi-generation was a rather interesting way of setting up the new Doctor. But somehow that part felt very drawn-out to me. It was a different way of introducing the new Doctor, I will give them that. And I certainly liked Ncuti Gatwa. I will look forward to seeing more of him! But I guess I’m used to regenerations being fleeting events, so it was hard to wrap my head around those extended scenes of the two Doctors together.

Ah, such reverberations with what’s happening now. If only there were a solution like eradicating a giggle to make the world sane again.

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The Newton intro was fun … and I guess it got us to the point where, thanks to time travel, mavity replaced gravity (except that there was that odd slip-up the Doctor did on the ship, saying gravity first, then correcting himself with mavity).

Anyway, this was the first seriously thrilling Doctor Who episode for me in a while. I enjoyed the fact that it was the Doctor and Donna … and the Doctor and Donna redux. Very scaled down. The tension was in each trying to figure out who the real ones were in time for the Tardis to come back and collect them. I thought Tennant and Tate were utterly convincing in their roles.

I always liked Donna for her humanity and her humanness. I thought that was why the Doctor was drawn to her. Donna was very much something that he is not, and he needed that.

It’s interesting to me that RTD decided to incorporate the Flux. He could’ve disregarded Chibnall’s change to the Doctor’s timeline, but instead decided to keep it. As long as it doesn’t become too overarching a device, I’m OK with it.

On to the third DVD!

[nerys @replies]

OK, so the 60th Anniversary Specials finally arrived at my library, and I have enjoyed my first outing with Doctor Who in quite some time. It was so wonderful to see Tennant Doc and Donna reunited, with all their old chemistry intact. It was as if they’d never been apart. I felt engaged by this episode in a way that, for whatever reason, I didn’t feel during most of the 13th Doctor’s run. It was a bit like Old Home Day.

I loved when the Doctor whipped out his psychic paper outside Shaun’s taxi, bragged about being Grand Master of the Knowledge, only to face Shaun’s correction that it said “Grand Mistress of the Knowledge.” His “Oh, catch up!” rebuttal felt so right. (It was also a nice nod to Whittaker’s Doc.) And, they’re back!

The Meep was, in the beginning, quite reminiscent of ET, right down to hiding in amongst the toys in Rose’s shed. The Meep was cute … until he wasn’t. I wasn’t expecting that!

But most of all, I was happy that Russell T. Davies finally rectified what I always felt was a terrible wrong done to Donna. She got her memory back of all the wonderful things she’d done with The Doctor. And it didn’t kill her! I really wasn’t expecting that. The solution coming through her daughter, Rose, was a bit of timey-wimey whimsy, but I rolled with it.

On to the next DVD!

[nerys @replies]

@winston Scary times, indeed. When current affairs mirror our most frightening fiction, it’s hard to remain calm. Where is Doctor Who when we need him?

[nerys @replies]

@thane16 Good to hear from you! Your hospitalization sounds serious. I hope that you are on the mend. I have not seen Severance or The Crown. The latter requires a time commitment I’m not willing to make. I don’t think I have heard of the former. Might have to do some searching around to see what it’s about.

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