@purofilion – Has another companion gone so completely berserk before?

Good question. I just fast-forwarded through the first 26 years (what a rush!) Strangely, I remember the BG series better than most of the AG series, despite not watching very much of the BG series during the last 10 years.

There are a few close contenders that I can…[Read more]

@idiotsavon – Thanks for the kind words. Nice to know someone enjoys the posts.

I’ve been thinking about the Doctor’s ‘grey area’ regarding the future, and trying to work out the metaphysics of time travel (according to Kill the Moon).

As far as I can tell, the Doctor never had a ‘grey area’ about post-2049 history before. I think the grey area…[Read more]

@TheBrainOfMoffat – 7. The Doctor says something about the Moon being, what, 100 million years old? The Moon is actually thought to be billions of years old, yet no one said anything about the age he said it was?!

He says the Moon’s been tagging along with our planet for 100 million years. So it can still be billions of years old, but it only…[Read more]

PS… on a bonkers theorising note: if this episode had aired last year we’d have discussed the flickering lights and the egg. Maybe all those flickering lights and eggs are still going to turn out to mean something?

I disliked this episode less on the second viewing…

In between viewings I had a chance to think about my main gripe, the increase in the Moon’s gravity. I think the increased gravity, as experienced by people standing on the Moon’s surface, could actually be explained by localised increases in the density of the matter beneath certain points on…[Read more]

@BadWulf – I agree that The Five Doctors is underrated. The best BG Doctor Who writer, Robert Holmes, had a crack at writing a 20th anniversary special that brought back all the characters it was supposed to bring back, and he couldn’t. That Terrance Dicks could bring them all together in a story that’s fun, makes sense, and also contributes some…[Read more]

@BadWulf – I always take the latest understanding in cosmology with a grain of salt, as it’s prone to change as new discoveries are made. Given the massive unknowns (dark matter, dark energy) that seem to make up much of what’s going on in the universe, and all the unknown unknowns that we don’t even know we don’t know about yet, I think the fate…[Read more]

@purofilion – I thought it was ‘sing with the orphans’. I hate to join the ranks of those who can’t understand accents outside New York/LA/received pronunciation/Australian capital cities… but I have to admit, a couple of times per episode I’m just guessing at what the Doctor’s saying. This isn’t unique to Doctor Who, though — when watching…[Read more]

It occurs to me that my posts tend to consist mostly of trivial bullet points and improbable theories. So here, for once, is something more like an actual review, with opinions and everything.

My initial reaction to this episode was that I mostly enjoyed the Doctor/Clara/Danny sequences, but found the ‘monster subplot’ pretty poor.

Even the…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave – thanks for the clip, I really need to watch that movie again. As I recall, the question of what’s really going on is left ambiguous – the ‘heaven’ we see might be real, or a result of the airman’s neurological condition.

You’ve set me thinking about a possible Powell/Pressberger influence on this season… The Life and Death…[Read more]

This might be obvious, but I felt a need to spell it out, if only for my own benefit, to crystallise my thoughts about the show: the Doctor’s sudden distaste for soldiers (since Into the Dalek), seems hypocritical and inconsistent with his friendships with soldiers in the original series. Clearly it’s part of his new self-hatred thing. He doesn’t…[Read more]

@thommck – I like the diagram. It matches my understanding of the episode.

The phone number is in a ‘Moffat loop’, as the cast and crew apparently call it. Old Karabraxos phoned the Doctor. The Doctor time-travelled into her past and gave Young Karabraxos his phone number. Young Karabraxos became Old Karabraxos and called the number.

Star Trek:…[Read more]

@janetteB – ‘why that face?’ – I’d forgotten about that, but it ties in nicely.

And re Stephen Moffat recycling ideas. You’ve reminded me of something I meant to mention in the Listen discussion: it resembles one of the best episodes of Moffat’s earlier series Press Gang: ‘Going Back to Jasper Street’.

In that episode, Lynda sees a photo of a…[Read more]

@purofilion – re whether the Doctor is keeping what he’s doing secret because he’ll have to rescue Clara in the same way.

I think not necessarily. He’s just a nice man 🙂

I think several things might have led him to start ‘rescuing’ people:

a) He’s cheated death, by getting a new set of regenerations. So he might feel more than ever that it’s…[Read more]

@purofilion – But how is it that in this episode he says pointedly, “You’re alive. You’re not dead. You’re here”

The Doctor seems genuinely surprised that Saibre and Psi aren’t dead.

He (as the architect) has engineered a situation where he (amnesiac bank robber) and his colleagues will genuinely believe anyone who escaped during the bank heis…[Read more]

@idiotsavon – (Karabraxos: “I am old, with many many regrets”. Doctor: “I’ve made many mistakes. It’s about time I did something about that”.) Yes, I think there’s a definite parallel.

@janetteB – I think here the Doctor really shows just how much he does care. I think you’re right. I’ve completely reversed my ‘sociopath’ opinion since last…[Read more]

Another thought. This episode felt less ‘dark’ than we’ve seen lately. But perhaps this is the darkest we’ve ever seen the Doctor.

This is the first time, as far as I can recall, that the Doctor has had employees. They’ve agreed to risk their lives to obtain the thing they most want. The Doctor has identified their heart’s desire, found or made…[Read more]

I didn’t really care for Stephen Thompson’s first episode (Curse of the Black Spot), but thought Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS was pretty good. If he keeps improving at this rate, he could become one of the great Doctor Who writers.

At first I couldn’t quite see how the Doctor was able to plant the suitcases prior to the heist. On second…[Read more]

@Purofilion and @thommck – thanks for the welcome back!

@raeyeth04 – Hi raeyeth04, I also assumed the young Doctor’s guardians were not his parents. I think you’re right — the reference to ‘the other boys’ strongly suggests he is in a children’s home, not among his own family.

It seemed odd to me that a frightened child would want to leave the…[Read more]

I really enjoyed that. Even more the second time.

It was also the season’s first episode with much scope for bonkers theorising.

Do we all have a hidden companion? Or were the Doctor’s interpretations of events driven by a buried childhood memory and being too long alone, and he persuaded Clara and us to share his belief for a while? I don’t…[Read more]