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@ichabod

Good comment, and I completely agree with you re the subtlety of PC’s performance.  As @janetteb says, topics don’t get closed around here, but you might find this blogpost has more up to date thoughts on Series 8. Several people make the point that Series 8 arcs also included Twelve’s post regeneration trauma; his character evolves from grumpy and confused to the sheer joy of the sleigh ride.   But feel free to post wherever. (Note for posting on blogs (as opposed to comments threads) – there’s no “edit window” – once it’s posted, that’s it!)

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@janetteb

Glad you’re out of the direct line of fire (so to speak), hope your friend stays safe too.

Extremes of weather at both ends are awful. I should be grateful for the UK’s tendecy towards a homogenous grey dampness (not all the time, but we don’t get the real differentiation of the seasons so much). And for not living at the bottom of a hill 🙂

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@ichabod

And welcome (again!). You can be who/whatever you like in here, up to you 🙂

@arbutus and @Purofilion in particular are pretty hot on the technical side of music stuff, but you’ll find a pretty wide range of interests and angles in here, so post away.

@lisa

Daleks seemed to of been better on the cohesive team work thing which is sort of significant

Y’know, that might be the most insightful sentence ever about why the TLs found themselves on the back foot and sinking fast by the time of Day of the Doctor!

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Oops 😳

Double posted by mistake.

Any passing mods – please feel free to delete this one 🙂

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@whisht @bluesqueakpip

2015 is the year of the Green Wooden Sheep 

Love it!

So long as it’s not “MEH” that’ll do me!!

<ducks>

@barbaralefty You owe me a new keyboard!! 😉

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!

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@juniperfish – you seem to have got the hang of it OK 🙂

And thanks for posting – great song from one of my fave bands.

This popped up when I was watching it – 3/5 mile in 10 Seconds

Live at Woodstock – amazing live band; Grace Slick had one of THE great rock voices.

Also found this short interview with her (fairly recent, from 2008) – still feisty and very much her own woman by the sound of it – talks about  rabbits and planning to spike Nixon’s tea with acid.  (Glad she’s (presumably) got past the alcohol problems that meant she bailed from the tour I had tickets  for)

 

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Thanks to @blenkinsopthebrave, beautiful toast. (#36737)

To new friends, old ones, lost ones and those who are just temporarily AWOL

Special thanks to our mighty Emperor @craig and the mods @jimthefish, @fatmaninabox and @phaseshift (I’m with you on 2014, it started off OK but I’m not sorry to see the back of it! (Loved your snow pic from last week btw, just gorgeous)) – it’s not just the troll bashing and repelling of monsters at the gates, it’s also about the little things – the fixing of nonsensical* posts/embarrassing errors when some of us miss the editing window or are just plain useless at embedding stuff 😉

Thanks so much to everyone who contributes and lurks on here. Hard to believe our little forum is now 2 years old. We’re nearly a toddler!  Looking forward to exchanging theories and Who chats with you in 2015.  I’m not going to list everyone I interact with regularly cos I’m bound to forget someone, but you know who you are and I love you all!

Special shout out for @Juniperfish tho – get well soon fishy friend and thanks for all the glitter;  also to @bluesqueakpip, Queen of Timey wimey diagrams and @pedant, Troll Baiter in Chief. I hope some of the missing will come back to us inc @wolfweed (must be time to burn another planet!), @timeloop @whohar (that bath MUST be finished by now!) and @chickenelly and her Scottish granny.

<looks around and sees the barkeep has put free champagne on tap> Cheers everyone!

Happy New Year when it comes. Lang may yer lums reek 🙂

 

*ie the late night drunken midnight rambles 😉

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And still on a dream-theme, another Roy. Buchanan this time. Not so dark, but infinitely wistful. His guitar playing is so expressive, who needs a vocal. And there’s some nice trippy psychedelic visuals to go along with it.

Sweet dreams everyone 😉

 

 

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Laughed at the Jagger/Warhol link @arbutus, thanks for posting.

Thanks for the Mama Cass link @whisht, excellent.

Roy understood the darkness of dreams 😈

 

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@craig

You are a star! Thank you.

Glad you had a good night.  Odd alcoholic drinks are great… now where was that 50th anniversary blog-list of Doctor cocktails…? I feel a theme coming on for tomorrow night/tonight.

G’night all. Sweet dreams 😈

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@bluesqueakpip

Lovely news about John Hurt’s knighthood, well deserved. Thanks for sharing.

“Sir Doctor of TARDIS” has a nice ring to it.

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Thank you @fatmaninabox 🙂

@juniperfish – A 2015 Who Wishlist? Great idea

I second @blenkinsopthebrave‘s suggestions –

1. An appearence by William Russell (that more than anything).

2. The return of River Song.

And hi fives to @Whisht for a January special – I think that’s probably being greedy, but we deserve it haha. An extra couple of months worth of episodes wouldn’t go amiss either. (I miss the Hartnell/Troughton days of 48 weeks a year… but I don’t suppose they could keep up that pace these days.  Pa! youngsters, eh?). Maybe a couple of minisodes then…?

Would also love to see the return of  the Paternoster Gang. And Clara travelling as a full time companion. Just for a change.

6. The return of Orson Pink (if only to see the G board go into meltdown 😉 )

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@Purofilion Glad you’re enjoying Buffy. Season 3 is great. (And remind me never to get on your wrong side, haha)

@juniperfish Yup, everyone should have a Giles 🙂

 

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@whisht

You ARE special 😉

(And don’t confuse avatars with real people – they’re not always an accurate representation! Beware of dream crabs and perception filters!!)

(If @craig‘s not around, maybe 1 of the other mods can deal with it? @phaseshift, @jimthefish,@FatmaninaBox?)

@juniperfish Squashed chocolate treats – I thought I’d found all of those, very yummy

*scatters some more glitter on the sofa”

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@bluesqueakpip Thank you for that 🙂

@lisa There would indeed appear to be one dream crab still out there. That we know of!  Who’s to say there aren’t more. Or that we (and this board) aren’t all asleep and deeply dreaming? 😈 (in which case I thank you all for being excellent telepathic/dream companions)

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@jennylve

Sorry, I don’t do PMs from people I don’t know. Please discuss out front on the boards or not at all.

(@Craig )

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I’m a bit grumpy at the moment as Last Christmas STILL hasn’t appeared on Catch Up TV or iplayer on my TV, so limited options to rewatch. Grr! (how do they expect the ratings to go up if they don’t have it avaialble for rewatch?! 😉 )

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@mudlark

Great comment.  (I liked the Rudolph’s nose bit). I hadn’t noticed the similarities between the polar base and Clara’s rooftop. Interesting. But also – the door on to the roof also looks very like the TARDIS door. I thought the TARDIS was right behind her at first, then realised it was the house door.

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Also wanted to add – the extended version on the DVD is well worth a watch. Extra footage is about 12 minutes in total, and includes eg a scene showing that the Doctor and Ace have indeed been spotted when they first materialise in the camp, and are being tracked from a distance.

And in the random way of these things, Tomek Borkowey, the actor who played Sorin, now lives in Edinburgh and runs a Fringe venue and an arts production company. He’s still friendly with McCoy and proud of having been part of Dr Who.

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Thanks @phaseshift and @jimthefish

Great summing up.  The thing with Fenric, is that it was much bigger than it appeared from the outside!

@arbutus Loved your comment – “you could almost imagine the Doctor thinking that his last few companions weren’t bright enough for it to have made a difference”   I was glad I came across Fenric when it was broadcast tho, more by accident than anything. I’d more or less stopped watching by this time. Although some of the script can be a bit heavy handed – the repeated question about who are the real monsters for example – the ideas in it, and the multiple layers, are great.

The stockpiling of chemical weapons, the long timescale it incorporates, including Ace’s full back story since she first appeared, Fenric’s long lifespan, the DNA planted so long ago in Fenric’s “wolves” – including Sorin and Ace, the suggestion (as highlighted by @jimthefish) that all wars are influenced/caused by Fenric’s masterplan, the timeywimey solution of the Ancient One (who actually isn’t even born in this time) taking his future/destiny into his own hands – a very Doctor Who characteristic of the monsters not always being what they appear. And the concept of faith as a protective force.

No problem with the mystical power of a chess board – of course the game has to be played and of course the board catches fire when the game is over! Chess is like that. See Bergman’s brilliant Seventh Seal (which I presume is an influence). And of course was revisited by 11, in Wedding of River Song and Nightmare in Silver.   There were a few (oversized) chess pieces spotted around Coal Hill School in series 8.  I liked Fenric’s line that the doctor “pulled bones from the desert sands and fashioned them into chess pieces”.

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(Sorry, very late to the discussion)

Not a lot to add to the comments above, which cover the points well.  There was a lot of set up in the first 2 episodes which now starts to pay off.  Like @phaseshift I laughed at the opening. Poor Perkins.  (Hmmm… another Perkins, eh?!)

The script is a bit dense at times, with references to (presumably) mythical objects, wolves and prophesies (maybe also the difference in pacing between 1980s and current programme making) but mostly it’s well carried off by a great main cast. Nicholas Parsons astonished me (in a good way) – you really feel for his vicar who can’t quite overcome his corner of doubt (possibly brought on by the haemovores, possibly also by the effects of war).  Millingdon is completely batshit by now (and I thought he as borderline before when we first see his “nazi” office (then someone mentioned that as based on a real person) and I had my money on him being the bad guy.

Sophie really comes into her own in her scenes with McCoy. They have great chemistry and he knocks it out the park – he can be bombastic, devious, subtle, eccentric, hilarious… all in the same line. But has been said, this is DW moving into different territory, with more under-story for the Doctor and the companion – and it’s the better for it I reckon. Especially as you can see Ace is growing up as she travels with him. The fact she takes some time out to bond with the baby and her mum – that line about not being married was a great, and economical, way of setting up cultural difference in different eras.

Sorin really starts to come into his own. He loses one of his best friends early on, but still looks out for his men while having a driving need to fulfil his mission. And rescue the damsel in distress in the passing.  And yes, it does rather look like they’re setting him up with Ace. (I had a wee laugh at her seduction technique on the soldier, but I am hugely envious of her bag. That has to be a TARDIS in disguise – she’s got everything in there – inc a rope ladder and explosives. Every girl should have one!)

Location filming is great but maybe a bit more strategic light and shadow would have helped with the haemovore costumes. (Tho if the actors already couldn’t see  as @bluesqueakpip mentioned, that might have been disastrous. Presumably it was beyond the budget anyway).  I like that it was done with costumes rather than an attempt at CGI.  That’s one helluva manicure you get when you change tho! I like @arbutus‘s comment about them looking like Goths – middle England’s worst nightmare!

Great final scene. I liked the glowy eyes, but it’s Landen’s understated delivery of the line “so we meet again… Timelord” that really sells it. Oooh! Shivers!! There’s obviously a LOT the Doctor’s not been telling us.

(Good spot Mr Phaseshift on what the Doctor has faith in, I couldn’t make it out properly. That’s lovely)

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It’s a massive gap coming up!! 🙁  Good suggestions re communal viewings (tho I failed miserably at the last one; only just caught up with Fenric, and had to binge on the last couple. I promise to try to be better next time!)

Hartnell and Troughton would be good if people are OK with incomplete stories. Also a T Baker retrospective cos I missed a lot of them (being TV-less at the time), and there are many Baker experts on this forum.

@janetteb @bluesqueakpip @miapatrick (Glad you have new home set up, sounds great) @rob

Campfires – love em 🙂 (in fact, open fires of any kind, lovely and primeval 😈 )

with @rob‘s mead – sounds perfect – do you get special council dispensation to light fires/carouse because you’re a historical society?

 

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@pedant @spider

😆

*falls off the sofa. Again*

@purofilion Hope you had a great Christmas – was Mr I home? And that 2015 brings you proper karmic balance for 2014

Cheers… hic!

😳

Cheers everyone… off for a re-watch

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It also strikes me that this episode is the resolution to the Doctor’s story so far, the end of Twelve’s regeneration trauma. As @juniperfish and @bluesqueakpip (and others) have theorised many times on these boards, Eleven in Time of the Doctor is expecting to die (properly) by the slow road when he is unexpectedly, and literally, given a new lease of life… well, lives. But by whom, and does he deserve it? The end of this episode I think calls back to that – When the Doctor acknowledges that you/he doesn’t usually get second chances and doesn’t know who to thank.  But this time he accepts that actually, he’s OK, even an “idiot with a box” deserves a second chance sometimes.

And there’s still Santa’s dangling line about his sleigh “it’s bigger on the inside…”

Is that just the Doctor’s dream-logic/wishful thinking, or is Santa a timelord of some sort?

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Haven’t got past page 1 yet!

Brilliant comments as ever everyone!

@bluesqueakpip – post 36383 – genius summing up of how the Doctor “sees” people, and why.

@phaseshift I agree, this episode really defined Clara/Capaldi Dr relationship.  Great chemistry (kudos to JLC’s acting skills in making it work in 2 different ways with 2 different Doctors). But I think the key to it is in Capaldi’s line in Dark Water when he challenges Clara – “Did you really think I cared so little that betraying me would make a difference?”

That’s not a lover or a friend’s attitude. That’s a parent’s attitude. (@Juniperfish or a (great great… etc) grandparent)

I find it hard to decide my fave Christmas episode between Christmas Carol and the Snowmen, but I think my fave 2  list has now become a top 3!

That was so emotional. The brilliant scene, including the massive pause, as the Doctor and Clara digest how much they’ve lied to each other and how stupid that is *gulp*.  Broken by “So we’re going to die then” – what a line for the role of light relief! And they both pounce on it rather than deal with the emotional implications of what they’ve just been talking about! 🙂 .  I was in floods of tears (matts the fur something awful 😥 ) when Clara has the choice of staying in a world with a perfect fantasy Danny or waking up to a world where he’s dead. (With reminders of Amy’s Choice and Donna in Forest of the Dead).

And scary. Monsters that only exist when you think about them! We’ve had don’t breathe, don’t blink… now don’t think! MOFFAT!!!!!! 😯 😉

So… if the Doctor is (presumably) awake at the volcano where Clara chucked away the TARDIS keys… does that mean Master as Missy is also part of the Doctor’s dream?  Where do the dream crabs start from? All of series 8…?!!  Oooh, all very Philip K Dick 😀

So… what’s the concensus on whether they’ve wakened up yet…?!!!

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Oh my giddy aunt!

Finally caught up – deferred gratification, but not too long, and completely gratified!

In fact, I’m just a big bowl of gooey, happy, Who-ey mushy heaven 😀

Off to catch up with everyone’s thoughts then I’ll come back if* I’ve anything to add.

Merry Christmas and a hearty Ho Ho Ho! to you all

😉

*if… well it’s always possible (in your wildest dreams) that I might not!!

 

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@craig

Great link to Tim Minchin song. I’m sure this one’s been posted already (but it was ages ago, on a parallel thread so lost in the mists of time), but it’s Christmas (any excuse!)  He’s brilliant live, seen him in massive venue and small space, great in both.

(Happy trails to Scotland btw)

And thanks to everyone for the alt Christmas songs. Will enjoy browsing through them later today.

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@fatmaninabox I heard a rumour about a phantom midnight tree pruner in Birmingham. Wondered if that was you!! (sounds like everything’s going great – well done).

@juniperfish has just said everything (in post #36342) I wanted to say, and much more eloquently. So just to second that and raise a glass to you all. Thanks everyone for making this space such a great place to come to!

Cheers/Slainte/Skol/Proost/sante n all that!

And a particular shout out to absent friend @wolfweed Hope you can melt a planet and get some festive internet soon sweetie 😉

 

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Thanks for the quiz post @jimthefish, which I did in a timeywimey catchup fashion. Very happy getting Tom, so travelling with @whisht, @arbutus  and @lisa (love your dalek/Mayan apocalypse theory!) 🙂  (Tho I tend to side with @craig – I’d rather be the doctor than the companion (which thanks to Moffat  is now that bit easier to incorporate into my fantasy life 😉 )).

@miapatrick – Glad you’ll not be homeless for too much longer. (Loved your “All I want for Christmas is my stuff out of storage, and a battery controlled butter dish.”  May your wish come true soon)

@mudlark Labradoodles are great! (And thank goodness for timeshifting and iplayer – me too)

Meanwhile I hope everyone’s Xmas/solstice/holiday preparations are going well –

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Ah, long time since I lounged on the sofa… time for a glitter refresh I think… oh and some fish scales too I see 😉 (thanks @juniperfish)

@pedant Great video (707 episodes in 1) – my brain’s boggled – that’s a decidely bigger on the inside creation 🙂  And as folk have said it’s an interesting way to view, for general impressions of speed, talking heads etc.

Joining in the general chorus of despising What Culture (Sorry @janetteb I didn’t go past the first page – what was item 2?).  It’s also been interesting to note a number of newspaper articles recently picking up on the possible casting of a female Doctor. Moffat’s quoted statement of it being established that it’s now in canon as a possibility and that timelord gender is “fluid” (and repeating that it’s about the actor, not the gender) has several times been reported as “it’s going to happen! next regeneration!!”  Usually the same articles then add something along the lines of Moffat finally bowing to pressure (conveniently ignoring the fact that it’s SM who has been gradually seeding it in) before bashing him again for not bringing in new writers/directors/proper daleks etc etc.

Press/media, huh! Grr <sigh> Any jammy dodgers about?

Quick wave to @barbaralefty – love the new avatar 🙂

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Woohoo!

Been AWOL for a week due to sick internet (traumatic but probably rates about a 1 on the @Purofilion trauma scale 😉 ) and here you all are on a pub crawl – watching (great) TV, sniffing booze, and ritual sacrifices!

Great stuff 😀

@janetteb It’s ALWAYS the Mum’s fault – it’s what we’re for 😉 (Your vintage car sounds like my normal one! (Not saying too much about her, as she’ll be 20 next year (that’s about 102 in cat years), and not wanting to tempt anything into falling off)

@barbaralefty Your description of Islay air made me want to head straight there. NOW. (But I’ll prob’ly just stay in the pub for a bit now I’ve found you all)

@laurellie welcome… you’ll get the hang of it I’m sure 🙂

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Now here’s a bit of good news to start the week, for anyone who likes to worry about DW’s continuing ratings crisis (to paraphrase @bluesqueakpip). This includes all the figs – overnights, repears, timeshifted and iplayer for 7 days after broadcast, averaging to a pretty consistent 8m+/episode.  That should put a deserved smile on the faces of the DW team, I hope.

And there’s a very pretty chart as well.

http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2014/11/series-8-live7-figures.html

 

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@pedant Well spotted. But W*therspoons is even more evil than shipping 😉 I always pictured us as more of a Leaky Cauldron, with a hint of the Bronze on special celebration nights.

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Oooh… a Buffy fest… that’d get my vote. It’s a long long way between Christmas and (presumably) late August.

😀

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@pedant

Thanks for the blog links.  Interesting reads as always.

The technical term for people who think climate change is a scientists’ conspiracy is ‘moron’.

or “banker”

😉

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@phaseshift

That’s a depressingly spot on analysis. Stores are desperate for trade, but with Black Friday they seem to be selling their souls to the devil to get it (so long as he has a valid credit card). Especially since shoppers seem to have wised up to the inevitable post Christmas sales, some of which start on Boxing Day, even before the Xmas dinner hangover/indigestion has had a chance to kick in. The same thing happened to Hallowe’en (tho that is at least a “day” in its own right). But the thing I used to love about it was its very uncommerciality, home made costumes, the general messiness and spookiness. It marked the end of autumn and the beginning of the headlong rush into the dark days of winter, with Christmas as a sparkly shiny beacon in the distance marking “halfway out of the dark”.  And the start  of the tangerine season 😉

Resistance is not futile tho.  Just acquire yourself an empty cyber-head or similar sensory deprivation device for whenever you go out, then celebrate in your own way.

But at least “they” can’t touch your birthday. Sounds like you had a good day. Liquid breakfast at 8am indeed!  And you’re back in the pub on Saturday morning. Oh I spose I’d better get you a pint then 🙂

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@Purofilion

Me neither. But yes – “shop to the death” seems to be about it, haha.  A pre-Christmas feeding frenzy. Whatever rocks your boat I suppose but seems pretty bonkers to me.

http://news.sky.com/story/1381823/black-friday-police-anger-amid-retail-frenzy

Maybe it’s all a dastardly Missy plot, a compulsion spread by nanobots, LOL.

(48 HOURS??!!!!! 😯 They just don’t appreciate it, do they 😉 )

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@Purofilion

The pics on various websites were impressive – and it always brings it home more when you know someone in the affected areas. The general predictions for global warming are for more extremes of weather. The stats I’ve seen seem to bear that out, with more instances of hottest, wettest years (in UK) being since 2000. Us Scots seem to have drawn the short straw of more wetness in summer.  And less snow to play with in the winter.

Ah, but it’s the weekend. And we’re in the pub. And there’s a drink of your chosing behind the bar for when you get finished mopping up. And adolescent b’day parties! Cheers 🙂

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@blenkinsopthebrave @Purofilion (Happy 13th to Boy Ilion – that sounds like Moffat-standard secret-keeping, impressive)

Must be the Black Friday effect – everyone’s off shopping!

*watches the tumbleweed blowing past*

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*waves @danmartinuk*

You’re a very brave man!!! (Hi fives!)

😀

(off to check it out – it better not be spoilery!)

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I have  a big soft spot for Fenric. It was one that I  caught first time round by accident (I’d pretty much given up on Dr Who by then) and it sucked me in from the first episode, mainly due to the chemistry between 7 and Ace, and the location shooting, especially the underwater shots – gotta love an underwater viking longship 😯

I agree with @blenkinsopthebrave that the view of the soldiers (both sides) is “filtered through the perceptions of the 80s” –  but that’s only to be expected really. I’d argue that it’s a view of the 40s seen thro an 80’s perspective. WW2 was not so close in living memory as it was in the 60s when DW started and Nation could riff on the Nazis in creating the Daleks. WW2 was more known through TV programmes like Dad’s Army, The Secret Army (and it’s spoof Allo Allo), Colditz and the like.  There’s a certain naivity in the depiction of security measures (and not a bit of psychic paper in sight) but I wouldn’t say it was  disrespectful in its portrayal of the soldiers – either Russian or British. That the Russians are given equal respect wasn’t so common back then as I remember.

 

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*Waves @Purofilion*

Just noticed reports of Brisbane mega-storm, with impressive pics of monster hailstones – good to hear you are OK. (And hope Mr Ilion’s doing OK in his “hotel”. Sounds like a much better option to his school at the mo).

 

 

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Greetings @blenkinsopthebrave. How are the Canadian cellars these days…?!

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@mudlark

Rules are made to be broken 😉

Although “hypothetical future Doctor who is vertically challenged (5′ 1″ and shrinking), with longish, straight hair which, if not exactly full-on ginger, does have a slightly sandy tinge” does sound like it’s got a 5-ish bent to it.

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@craig

Massive quiff huh?

Like this…?

Leningrad Cowboys are surely the Kings of the Quiff! (Not to mention the pointy shoe)

(In pleading the above clip’s relevance, I note a callout to 10 for the (front!) of the suits and 2 timestreams for the audio (not sure that totally works though). Not to mention the title which surely looks back at Missy)

And now for a double dose of Fenric since I missed last week’s. (And I have the DVD as well, so feeling ultra smug!)

🙂

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@phaseshift and @fatmaninabox – Thanks for the heads up on the BBC programme, Tomorrow’s Worlds: The Unearthly History of Science Fiction. That looks really good.

@juniperfish Which Doctor for me? Would have to be Hartnell, I love the frock coat style, and it’s black! There again I do love hats and I’ve already got a Tom Baker scarf (extra long) 😉 I agree with you – @mudlark should definitely go for a River reinterpretation. What about you  – which Doctor tickles your fishy style-guru fins?

@craig Thundering bellends!! (Love your Katy Manning pics btw)

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@pedant

“Thundering bellend” is my current favourite pair of words!

(belated) thank you

XD

(@Purofilion the XD was with you in mind btw!! You can learn so much on this Forum 😉 Personally, I doubt I’d ever have come across such things as shipping, slash fiction or even the joys of cosplay if it hadn’t been for here!! 😉 (Looking at you Ms @juniperfish! (Hope you’re feeling better btw))

And good to see there’s still some glitter on the sofa that @fatmaninabox hasn’t managed to dust away!  It’s coming up for Christmas and us northern hemisphere types need some sparkle  in these dull, dreich, drawing-in nights!

Oooh! jellybabies!! (slightly sparkly!) Yum 🙂 Anyone want some?

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@nerys @janetteb

A few people have wondered if all the people who died in this episode were uploaded to Missy’s Heaven. The implication is that they would be. Or maybe the automatic process stopped once all the minds were downloaded.

I thought that people who were cremated still had their minds uploaded, but that it would be problematic for them to find a body  to download to. Or maybe the cremation process deleted the uploaded mind as well. That’s still up for debate. As @mudlark and others have pointed out, not all the uploads would have bodies to go back to, as some of the very old ones would have disintegrated completely. It was pointed out in-espisode that the cyber-rain was only falling on the graveyards, so maybe Missy just accepted that there would be a whole lot of minds left over.

Poor Osgood. I liked that the Doctor noticed her glasses (impressively impervious to Missy’s “death ray”) and reacts as you would expect the Doctor to, with compassion and anger.

@bfinch I think one of the questions running through this series is about the nature of “being good”. What does it mean to be a good person? It’s a word that gets thrown about a lot.  Good at being something eg a good Dalek or a good Doctor, is not the same as the moral quality of “being good”.  The Doctor resolves this for himself by realising that the best thing he can do is to accept himself for who he is. He can strive to make the right decisions, but there’s a recognition that he can’t be right all the time for everyone.

He clearly cares very deeply for Clara – to the point that he thinks it’s so basic/obvious that he doesn’t think it even needs to be said. That goes for a lot of how he behaves this series, and why Clara is sometimes confused about how he feels, and hence her uncertainty about his motives sometimes, when he doesn’t explain. But she clearly still has enormous respect/admiration for him and will go anywhere with him.  Danny’s death is a chilling moment when RL suddenly blasts in on her. She’s used to being in control, being the one who fixes everything. Even her “idiot in a box” can’t fix death. Tho he’s prepared to try for her.

[ScaryB @replies]

@pedant Thanks for posting the Autumn depping for Linda Lee review 🙂 (@Juniperfish – did you see that?)

So, I’m guessing Autumn is about 3/4 (if her sister is about 6). Her reaction is very interesting with ref to the “is Dr Who too scary/dark for kids?” question.  The bodies feeling stuff after death goes completely over her head – it’s the cybermen (and the skeletons) that she reacts to. And Missy. Oh and she’s a TimeLady now – no prob!

Poor LindaLee, hope she gets better soon.

[ScaryB @replies]

@Purofilion

That was my bonkers response to ‘Graun’. I liked that theory….

Haha – I just rolled off the sofa. Love it – that’s brilliant 😀

And yes it’s ironic re the invective directed at Rachel Tallalay, given that the people that are doing it are generally the same ones who have been screaming about the perceived gender imbalance in the Who production team.  (There’s probably a jargon name for that kind of trolling (and it is a species of troll) – @pedant will know 😉 )

But the only way to deal with it is to be better than they are (as a certain Doctor says).

(And yes it’s also very late here, so I’m off to zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz G’night 🙂 )

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