It’s been going downhill since a really interesting 1960s kitchen sink drama about two teachers trying to help a socially awkward student apparently being bullied by her dominating grandfather turned really weird after they went inside a phone booth that turned out to have a room inside it or something, I kept losing…

Huh, I’d forgotten that Davies wrote Midnight, which is unquestionably excellent. How you can write that and then turn around and write dreck like Aliens of London and Love and Monsters? 

By no means is it the general consensus. Large chunks of the fanbase love Seasons 5, 9, and 10, and you’ll find plenty of defenders of 6 and 8 too. At least we can all agree, no matter who you prefer, RTD or Moffat.....Series 7 sucked.

I got into the show with Moffat/Smith and then went back and watched the RTD era, which I pretty much hated and only finished out of obligation. It’s simultaneously too campy, too melodramatic, and too grotesque for me. The farting aliens, the blowjob tile, the two successive companions whose primary character trait…

It’s all been downhill since Series 1!

Is there a general consensus? I feel like opinions are so varied at this point that there’s not a whole lot everyone agrees on.

I can’t agree.

I thought it was pretty clear, but I also tend to focus on the details of a show more than the bigger picture... Certainly in this episode, they were more explicit about the war being against ‘The Authority and all those who do evil deeds in it’s name’, which came across as ‘God and his Priests’ to me.

this whole thread is wild. how could the magisterium be more like the church, both aesthetically and in their manner of speaking and behaving? with character saying things like “heresy!” and “pray to the authority”... isn’t it obvious? :/ 

Lin-Manuel’s performance, but I thought he was totally miscast.

I find it deeply unfair to equal John’s story to one of abandonment. It’s okay and realistic from Will’s point of view to feel that way (the way a young person would also feel “betrayed” if a parent died), but John left home simply to do his job, ended up dimensionally misplaced, and then spent the rest of his life…

Interesting that the show doesn’t highlight John Parry’s betrayal of Lee when he finds Will the way the books do.

It’s particularly weird that Will’s dad says “The Authority” to his son, rather than “God”, a term he’d know his son would be familiar with unlike the term from Lyra's world which he'd have little reason to assume Will would know. Show shying away a bit from the theological implications, perhaps?

The Cardinal is on the airship. Coulter and Lyra are on the steamboat.

Do you think people commenting on AV Club are in on any part of the decision making on how politicians get punished. This is acceptance of what will probably happen and how it will still kill him instead and make him angry despite the fact that he deserves so much worse. We fucking know he deserves so much worse for…

No, this right here isn’t the problem with the left. People who can't understand how politics work might be though.

For fuck’s sake, I can’t put Donald Trump in prison!!! Just let people fucking enjoy this, Karen!

It’s so sad we consider it a punishment for this rich man to retire to his personal golf course as a punishment. Any punishment for Trump that doesn’t include prison and losing all his money is a win for him.

No, he really did lose them, or parts of them.

RIP Carlo Boreal. He went to the great private collection in the sky, where he can play with his trinkets and watch supercuts of the sexiest scenes from The Affair all day, and nobody ever tells him he’s irrelevant.