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]

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]

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

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]

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]

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]

‘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]

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]

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]

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]

My favourite theory is that the Doctor established (or will establish) the ‘nethersphere’, and Missy is managing it on his behalf.

The evidence, such as 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

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]

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]

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]

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]

@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]

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]

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

@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]

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]

I was moved.

I’ve long had this idea of how the Doctor should regenerate – about what constitutes a suitably heroic end. The suitably heroic self-sacrifice, where the Doctor knowingly gives up his life to save the world or one person. The series hasn’t followed my strict requirements very often. Pretty much only in Plane…[Read more]

There’s no way this could have been kept quiet in the age of the […]

So here […]

In the Doctor’s timestream, Clara saw many things she didn’t understand.

I think most of my interpretations still make sense though.

The man who lies will lie no more
When he lies at Trenzalore.

Here’s […]

I was attempting to express the idea that River, despite being ‘only a copy’, still seemed fully real […]

It isn’t so […]

This has been discussed since the original series, when it was established that […]