Oh dear. Another late one for me, come in for some light conversation to cheer me up. Something to get me even more excited for the finale.

Perhaps not.

@pedant @thecrackinthewall

I strongly urge you to take a step back from your keyboards at this point. In fact, I’m going to insist on it. The exchange remains, and I’ll look at it again…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave

Excellent idea to gather musings on the finale. I’m sticking with my wish for Missy to be the idea of Death, or rather the Guardian of Life and Death. I think it fits in well with the series as a whole, and I can’t help thinking that the consequences of that new surge of life in Time of the Doctor would make an excellent sto…[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip

‘We are the Life that Prevails’, fitting in with Dalek Rusty’s Road-to-Damascus moment of ‘Life … prevails.’

Absolutely – I think Rusty’s revelation may have been SM writing the mission statement for this series. While I’ve dwelled on Missy being Death, most of the stories are about life and the desire for it – in some cases unlike…[Read more]

Massive apologies – The thing about my work-life balance at the moment is it seems loaded against internet comments. Which is unfortunate. I’ve had another rewatch of the episode tonight, and I came away liking it an awful lot more.

I think there is an immediacy about certain episodes – they play to your expectations. I think the last two defin…[Read more]

@Oblique

..But as I didn’t watch anything beyond Clara’s debut..

But here you are, boring me already. Go away…watch this series, the one you’ve been commenting on, the ONE WITH CLARA, and then report back.

Christ. Possibly on a bike. Tell you what. Stop attempting to bait people – come and PM me direct, and explain that last comment in you…[Read more]

@wolfweed

Glad to see you, if only for a little while. I’m sure you are aware you are always welcome in this peculiar “Promised Land”. PM me if you have any problems.

All the best.

Only one choice for me, and an old favourite (it’s bound to be somewhere on the previous pages.

“Come closer and see,
See into the trees…”

With lots of nice pictures of trees. The Cure always finish a concert with this track, and it always changes from year to year and between actual performances. A bit like a real forest, it’s never quite…[Read more]

As far as the science goes – it’s exaggerated, but the points are very, very real. Deforestation directly reduces the biosphere’s capacity to absorb, reflect and convert heat. If you want to survive a devastating blast, the inside of a forest is where you want to be – plant tissue can act as a highly efficient absorbent – the Tunguska reference…[Read more]

I really want to watch that again. Initially there was a sense of disappointment, because – has there ever been an episode without that much obvious menace? I possibly felt like Philip Hinchliffe being delivered the first draft of Deadly Assassin (where the Master wasn’t a Monster) – “All this politics is all well and good, Bob, but where the h…[Read more]

@Ixion

Welcome. @idiotsavon made a link to numbers occurring throughout the series which are multiples of 11, and 22 and 55 are more examples.

I think it’s interesting, and may play into the fact that the soldier motif is leading us to the end of the series just before Remembrance Sunday. The armistice for the First World War occurred at the e…[Read more]

@thommck

I’ll echo others and say there were some great links there. Mathiesons blog is very entertaining, and I love a couple of the stories – his joy about Janet being his first “Doctor Who kill”, because he loved her work in The Singing Detective, for example.

@mudlark @blenkinsopthebrave

On the TARDIS weight, the only time I can remembe…[Read more]

As we’ve been discussing Series 8, we’ve had a few mentions of how difficult it must be for writers to anticipate how the new Doctor will work. I guess that doesn’t just go for TV as this Guardian interview with writer Holly Black reveals.

Her Book – Lights out, is an addition to the eleven doctor short stories by famous writers released last ye…[Read more]

It’s an obvious one for flatline, dealing with 2-d creatures coming into our world:

Can I just say – I really didnt rate this track by AHA on release. I nightly sit through a marathon on current “hits” on commericial radio. This came on as an outlier at the end of the hour two days agom and I almost…[Read more]

You know – since Steve Moffat took over Doctor Who this is only the second officially Doctor lite episode they’ve done?

I think that this facr could be lost is down to both the script and the performances by Jenna and Peter. A confection that knocked thoughts of what was arbitrarily a similar story to the horrid Fear Her into a cocked hat. The…[Read more]

@JimTheFish

Sorry – lots of posts followed and I had limited time.

I agree, in that I think when you look at the writers who came out of soap, you get the feeling they were almost programmed for arcs, development, social relevance, and so the list of writers and what they went onto (Jimmy McGovern! Russell T, !) shouldn’t surprise, but alw…[Read more]

@GothamCelt

I’d rather be more impressed by the flounce if you had made a previous issue of the kiss. You never have. I’d see this as creating a problem for effect, because you didn’t like my comment to you earlier.

Feel free to do whatsoever you wish.

@idiotsavon

I agree with @janetteB. In some ways, distancing the story from the real world can make it easier to make difficult points about the world.

Star Trek, I think, made a number of decisions in it’s initial run that did resonate. The kiss between Kirk and Uhura is an obvious one. Having a Russian crewmate (with hilarious accent) in t…[Read more]