@Nick

Yep, saw that earlier. I thought it very affecting, even if the presentation was a little bit Tame Craig Charles.

@cathannabel @craig @thane15 @whisht

I was with them all the way up to “the songs still sound marvellous”. The emperor never had any clothes, he just hid his self-pity behind Johnny Marrs’s fig leaf.

Ugh. I feel the need for…[Read more]

@nick:

Thank you, I shall keep my eyes peeled. Sad about River not making it for a second series, it’s good. I didn’t care for Anne of green Gables when younger or Alice in Wonderland, for that matter. But I’ll have a look should it come over here.

@janetteb:

The Halcyon wasn’t a soap opera. I asked my OH what he thought. He thinks that if it h…[Read more]

@nick Oh yes, been loving it. It is kinda almost as rambling as the book but I’m liking it so far. I posted the trailer a while back before it started. Can’t wait to see how they develop it. But I think the casting is brilliant. I couldn’t think who I would cast for Shadow but they’ve done a fantastic job choosing Ricky Whittle. And Mr Wednesday,…[Read more]

@nick @thane15

“The denouement of the Impossible Girl arc was one of the most frustrating things SM has done, so far as I’m concern. Nothing was that clear, but the inference (as I saw it) was that the Intelligence interfered across his time line – to kill him in the most painful way – but Clara acted to reverse this, by showing the Doctor a diffe…

[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip

My commiserations on your workload. I find myself in a similar position as you can probably guess. It’s frustrating as I would have liked more time to talk through Moffat s last full series as showrunner.

& @nick

Thanks both for the comments, and I agree. One of the things I was going to mention was that the stories s…[Read more]

@Nick

The inference being No Clara no Doctor.

My bonkers theory: Clara was the avatar of the Production Team. 🙂 It was, after all, the 50th Anniversary Season. At the time I remember going through each episode in the Clara section and pointing out that you could summarise each plot by a summary of a period in the history of Doctor Who, the…[Read more]

@thane15

The labour vote is successful where you are?

Unfortunately it was a complete bloodbath everywhere else. Alas it is too late to get rid of that beardy twat in time for the general election.

Just skimming back and @nick, the point seems to have gone flying over your head.

Clara jumped into the time stream to repair the damage done by the…[Read more]

@nick I don’t think Gallifrey is a democracy in Moffat’s version either though being alien and supposedly a very old civilisation perhaps they have come up with a better system of governance, something we haven’t thought of yet. My impression is however that Gallifrey is a highly rigid, classist society ruled by a upper class elite who don’t die…[Read more]

@nick

Average life expectancy was 51 for a male, 55 for a female.

Bear in mind that this is skewed by high infant mortality. If you made it to adulthood you had a good chance of living into your sixties (which is why, eventually, the retirement age was eventually set at 65. No cynicism there at all).

@whisht

I warned you.

I WARNED YOU!!

@Nick  @ichabod   Oops. On travel, and working off a crummy wifi link so I at first missed Nick’s later posting on Bell with the correction that the second Doctor claimed he’d studied under Joseph Lister. Maybe the Doctor studied under both; certainly the 10th Doctor claimed he’d studied under Bell (the Bell, I think we are meant to understand).

@thane15  @janetteB  The paintings I’ve used for various purposes I can spot, but once outside that realm it’s another matter! I very much agree that the Coalbookdale image is striking indeed.

@mudlark  Paintings can matter, witness the 50th Anniversary episode. But I’m also inclined to agree that by this point the paintings in this series are th…[Read more]

@ichabod  @janetteB @Nick  @Redlemons

Companion seems to me the most exact term for those who travel with the Doctor because to me it denotes above all a close relationship based on something shared: companion, from the Latin roots cum (with) panis (bread), so someone with whom you break bread; hence a companion on the road, a companion in adv…[Read more]

@nick  Do people even have companions today ? I can’t recall it being used in real life speech.

I think it faded out when it became associated with closeted gay men living together (Liberace and his long-time companion, Rock Hudson and his long-time companion, etc).  I think it still works in DW because it’s always carried the sense of “tr…[Read more]

@Nick

They weren’t older ladies in 1938 (the respondent would have been in her late teens/ early 20s then).

It was something that even 45 years later caused hesitation. I don’t think two women of whatever age living together to save rent would have caused that.

@Nick @ichabod @janetteB

When I was doing my undergrad work we went to a teeny tiny village in Gloucestershire to do “retrospective interviews” – essentially, having a copy of the 1938 electoral register and finding the oldest people we could to see if they could remember those on the list.

Everyone we spoke to was sharp as a button. Lovely…[Read more]

@nick — Gosh, yes, and rightly so.  Revolutionary medicine . . .

@nick  The Doctor studied under Dr. Bell?  Bell, the model Conan Doyle used for Sherlock Holmes?!  OMG, what a gas!

Companion v. assistant v. — ?  I like “companion” because it’s nice and broad and allows for variation.  Suppose Missy traveled with him for a season?  She’s not exactly a friend, and would die rather than be thought of as an assis…[Read more]