There was a lot to like, and a lot to think about. I’ve enjoyed reading everyone’s thoughts.

It was almost but not quite entirely unlike my theories. (Well… someone became a Cyberman, so I wasn’t totally wrong). I don’t mind. It just meant there were more surprises than I was expecting. Which… I guess is what makes them surprises.

But now…[Read more]

Re various speculations about living people in the Nethersphere.

In the BG series, a living person’s brain can be connected to the Matrix. On the occasions we saw this happen, they didn’t interact with the dead people who’s minds are in the Matrix, but there was nothing to say that couldn’t happen.

So Missy, Seb, and anyone else could be outside…[Read more]

@Cathannabel – I’ve had a pretty good look at the post-it notes, and I don’t think they tell us much that we didn’t already know. They mostly seem to be ‘bullet point’ (or post-it?) summaries of the episodes this season. There seem to be a few we never get a close look at though. And there’s one that may tell us something we don’t already…[Read more]

@ScaryB –  Apart from Doctor Who, my favourite thing is books, so I love looking at people’s bookshelves, especially TV and movie characters. It’s great when someone has put some proper effort into stocking a character’s shelves, and you can see that their books match who they are.

Sadly, the Doctor’s books are mainly of a vintage that makes…[Read more]

@BadWulf – Thanks for that! Looks like I can put all my half-formed body-swapping theories back on the shelf, so to speak.

It turns out I have the 2013 Proms show on BluRay, in the 50th anniversary collection, I just haven’t watched it yet. I tend to watch them with my parents on Christmas day (when Australia’s ABC usually puts them on in the…[Read more]

I’ve been looking at Clara’s bookcase. Saw something odd, a ‘Body Swap Ticket’ (the preceding word is illegible… MIxxxSCAPE?

Presumably this is a ticket for a recreational body swapping experience.

Here’s a screen shot:

I’ve also delved into Clara’s Milton book. It’s hard to be sure, but I believe it’s a biography by Anna Beer, full title…[Read more]

And I’m done.

I didn’t realise I had so much love for Pertwee! Possibly it’s just too long since I saw his stories, and I’ve forgotten the boring bits in between the good bits I remember. The overwhelming emotion I remember while watching the episodes is wishing the stories were a lot shorter.

And I seem to be really into River. I think this is…[Read more]

@BadWulf – Oh no! There goes my afternoon! 🙂

@Apopheniac – Yes, some of what we’ve seen this year brought The Mind Robber to mind. Meeting Robin Hood, for instance, and the mythic and fairytale elements that have made the season seem less real than usual. For a while I vaguely entertained the idea that ‘Missy’ might be short for ‘Mistress of the Land of Fiction’, but then decided that Moffat…[Read more]

@Miapatrick – Yes, I’m also a Coupling fan. I found it after watching Blink and thinking it was one of the best pieces of TV I’d ever seen. I was aware of Steven Moffat already, from watching a few episodes of Press Gang when it was new, and (very) occasionally seeing him post in the old rec.arts.drwho newsgroup, but I hadn’t seen much of his…[Read more]

That was really good.

‘Don’t cremate me!’ I think being conscious inside a dead and decaying body would be so horrible I’d be thinking ‘please cremate me!’ I think the Doctor’s right, anyway: that aspect of 3W’s operations is a fake. They just want to persuade everyone to stop being cremated, so their bodies can be turned into Cybermen.

I also…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave

My final call on Missy: She’s the Doctor’s wife/girlfriend/significant other, Susan’s grandmother. She somehow hitched a ride out of the Doctor’s timestream with the Doctor and Clara. Or possibly escaped through the crack.

The evidence:

– her prior knowledge of the Doctor, with a different accent (Deep Breath)

– she refers…[Read more]

@Blenkinsopthebrave – I had mixed feelings about Danny in this episode.

I like Danny, so I was looking forward to an episode in which he’d play a bigger part, after being on the sidelines for the past few weeks. I was a bit disappointed. Although he was on-screen a lot more this week, I didn’t feel we saw any deeper into him than we’ve seen…[Read more]

I really liked the premise of this episode, and thought it was very well realised on screen. But as for the explanation and resolution…

The hardest thing to believe is that the Doctor accepts that any of this could happen. I thought Kill the Moon was a lapse in judgement on the part of the show’s makers, but now that it’s happened again I…[Read more]

I liked it.

I’m a little perplexed by complaints that the show is too much about Clara these days. The show started as the companions’ story in 1963, and only really became the Doctor’s story when Ian and Barbara left. After years of companions without ‘arcs’, it became the companion’s story again in Dragonfire (1987) and ever since. I’d say the…[Read more]

Sometimes there are no good choices. But you still have to choose. One of the great instances of this in fiction is in the Odyssey, in the Scylla and Charybdis sequence. Scylla and Charybdis are two ‘hazards to shipping’ that Odysseus has to sail between. He has to sail closer to one or the other. Whichever one he gets closer to will kill some of…[Read more]

Loved that.

So, straight to the bullet points:

– Apart from Gus the shipboard computer (a la Eddie the Shipboard Computer, in the Hitch-Hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy), there were also ‘hard light holograms’, a term coined in Red Dwarf.

– When the Doctor talks to himself I was reminded of that scene in Day of the Doctor where the Doctors argue,…[Read more]