@Rewvian   It will be interesting to see (in The Power of the Doctor) how Chibbers deals with having killed all the Daleks and Cybermen.  Though I guess it has been known for them to rebuild from next to nothing.   But – that quickly?

Re The Poison Sky, I think we all have our own set of features we’re sensitive to.   In my case, it’s physic…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent and @rewvian Thankfully not on you tube (as a private family moment) but Peter Davison joked later about his speech at the wedding, which I imagine might well have been complicated.

Cheers

Janette

@Rewvian    I got that same feeling watching the episode, that Astrid was shaping up to be a Companion.   Particularly since Martha had just left him.  Poor Doctor – lost Rose, Martha left him, lost Astrid – he had a worse success rate than me  (though all of my ex-girlfriends or never-quite-made-it girlfriends were alive when we parted  🙂

I n…[Read more]

@rewvian  I don’t think they could ever have afforded Kylie as a permanent companion but as a guest star she certainly pushed the ratings. For a long time at least this episode had the highest viewer ratings, at least in the UK where she was very popular. Now Lynda with a Y would have been an excellent companion and that was early days in her…[Read more]

@rewvian I just wasn’t overly keen on the Sontaran two parter, though was good to meet up with Martha and Wilf again. Both Doctor’s Daughter and Unicorn and the Wasp are light weight, enjoyable episodes. I found the later to be very reminiscent of the Davison story, Black Orchid which also taps into a literary tradition, is set in a country house…[Read more]

@Rewvian    The Poison Sky – I had a problem with.   Specifically, burning the gas out of the atmosphere.   (This is where my technical scepticism kicks in).   You need a certain percent of inflammable gases in air to actually burn, and for almost any gas you care to name, that concentration would be way higher than could be achieved by modified…[Read more]

@Rewvian   Smith was good.   I didn’t like him at first (too young) but within a couple of episodes I’d accepted him.   The flavour of the show did change with S5, of course the Moff took over as showrunner.    Karen Gillan was excellent as Amy.   In fact all the companions in the RTD and Moffat years were good; assertive young women who rarely…[Read more]

@rewvian   @janetteb    I seem to recall Voyage of the Damned was based on Poseidon Adventure (which I never watched, I wasn’t into blockbuster movies much).   I wasn’t a fan of Kylie Minogue as a singer, but I thought she was very sweet and appealing as Astrid Peth and I almost shed a tear when she couldn’t be retrieved.    The forkhoist…[Read more]

@rewvian    OK, I’ve never been a customer of a streaming service.   Partly because I’m always several years behind the current technology.   For example all my laptops have been second-hand IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads, at least three years old, at maybe a fifth the price of a brand new one (Thinkpads are almost indestructible.    They are eminently…[Read more]

I am glad that you have reviewed this @rewvian as looking back at my previous comment it is more than time that I amended that. A couple of years ago I included Voyage of the Damned in my annual Christmas rewatch and realised that it is far better than I thought. It has a lot of lovely moments, which you have covered a lot of filler action scenes…[Read more]

@Rewvian   I think the Angels were (and are) the best Who monster ever.   And the Village of Angels episode was the best episode of Chibnall’s tenure.    As I said somewhere, I was quite apprehensive what he might do to Moff’s creation, but I think he treated them well, at least up to the end of that episode.   (I lied in my comment on ‘Utopia’…[Read more]

@Rewvian    I believe (mostly from hearsay) oldWho used quarries quite a lot, but I haven’t seen many of the episodes.   I’ve seen B7 much more recently, in fact I was a B7 fan before nuWho turned me into a Who fan.

Since both series were made for the Beeb, I wouldn’t be surprised if they used some of the same locations, but I have no evid…[Read more]

@Rewvian     Blink is one of my favourite episodes (it also collected a raft of awards, quite rightly so).   I had to go over it several times in my mind to figure out how it all fitted together.

It had the best and scariest ‘monsters’ in all of Who, I think.   Just possibly the aliens in Alien were scarier, but in terms of bang-fo…[Read more]

@Rewvian    I’m a bit wary of depictions of historical characters too. Not so much really famous ones like Shakespear or Julius Caesar or Cleopatra – they have been the subject of so much literary speculation over the centuries that I don’t think Who can affect their reputation, either positively or negatively. So Shakespear Code didn’t bother me…[Read more]

@Rewvian    I liked Martha.   A very cool, collected character, very quick on the uptake but very different from Rose (who I loved).   The Doctor took her on because he needed a companion to fill the gap, and of course Martha fell for the Doctor (just as Rose had), but he was too preoccupied with, I guess, the memory of Rose to see it.   So Marth…[Read more]

@Rewvian This is about Girl in the Fireplace
A beautifully written episode, I think. The moment when the Doctor went to read Reinette’s mind, and found her reading his, was magic, and it emphasised what a strong-willed person Reinette was. And the device of time moving at different speeds was used by the Moff on several occasions (of course, it…[Read more]

@Rewvian    Well, the show has never been more action and gadget oriented than it is right now (I just watched Ep 2 of Srs 13 Flux).   Non-stop action, explosions everywhere, and the Sonic Screwdriver Roolz!    I think we’re about back to Star Wars level (and I don’t mean that as a compliment).  There’s even a Wookie.    The CGI’s good though.

@Rewvian   I was really impressed when Jackie turned up with that tow truck.  It wasn’t the sort of tow truck you call when your Mini breaks down, IIRC it was the sort of heavy duty truck you call when your HGV breaks down.   It made me like Jackie a lot more, because I’m sure she would be happier with Rose stuck on Earth, but she decided to help…[Read more]

@Rewvian     This was a pretty good finale double-episode for the first (new) series.    It started off as a satire on humans’ deplorable taste in TV shows and soon morphed into something much darker.    I particularly liked Jackie turning up in a honking great industrial tow truck.   Her relaxed attitude to morality obviously has its fringe bene…[Read more]

@Rewvian      That was quite a review.    ‘Rose’ was the episode that got me hooked on Who.   I’d seen some of Who when it was new – mostly Doctors 2 and 3, that’s how ancient I am – but then I lost touch.  Easy to do in the days before video recorders and DVD sets, it was catch it when it screened or never.    So I was a non-fan for about 40(?) y…[Read more]