That demented Scottish woman from Green Wing…one second…Michelle Gomez.

So, we'll soon be back to a moody Carl bitching about his dad while eating pudding?

"Hate watching" implies that one gets off on how much the show sucks. I hate it when the show (sometimes) sucks, and wish it was (consistently) better. But tonight's was very good: no complaints.

Didn't like this one much. These recent episodes have earned high marks for complicating the Doctor/companion relationship, but the complications seem a little incoherent to me, not interesting or clever. Not sure where they can go with the idea that the Doctor might be "addicted" to danger or adventure. It's like…

Did you ever watch the Barbapapas? (That's the only European cartoon I ever saw as a kid…that was some trippy shit.)

I like the simpler, broader questions because I have a real answer to them. Sometimes the weirdly specific questions don't make sense to me ("what pop culture made you cry at an inopportune time?" what does that even mean?).

Highlander or Willie Wonka

You're allowed to have shitty taste when you're a kid. No one has ever said to a six-year-old, "you've got a killer CD collection there…can I borrow that?" (At least I hope not.)

There was a time when our family only got PBS and ABC…sometimes they had cool stuff that a kid would want to see (Automan!), sometimes not (Hotel!), but I'd watch whatever was on.

My earliest TV memories are from Doctor Who. Sarah Jane chanting "Eldrad Must Live!" in a creepy voice, with the disembodied hand wriggling around on the ground. Tom Baker with his leg caught in railroad tracks, being chased by a spooky dude in a gas mask. I was really little (probably still watching Mr. Rogers…

On the one hand, I don't see how this could possibly work, as a business model or as a technology. How does the system tell the difference between laughing and talking or chewing or whatever? Do I have to sit in my seat the whole time, in a particular position, like a visit to the dentist? What if I want to move…

As I recall, the census story in Luke is a retcon that explains how Jesus could be born in Bethlehem (= the place where the messiah was supposed to come from), when he was known to be from Nazareth.

To be clear: I don't mind the Doctor as a grumpy jerk, a la Hartnell. (I sort of want more of that, given Capaldi's gift for angrily tearing into people.) But I could do without the story of a grumpy jerk becoming more lovable and sensitive, which is what we seem to be getting.

Jews are revolting.
-Guy Incognito II

In the final Matt Smith episodes, the Doctor was represented almost like Santa Claus, a wise, benevolent being who loves and protects us all. (That was kind of weird, actually…maybe they went too far in that direction.) Now it's the opposite, as the Doctor's becoming like Jack Nicholson from As Good As It Gets, a…

You seem confused about the difference between text and subtext. The text you've just quoted plainly pertains to the women's choice to blow up the moon. If you read "choice" as pertaining to something else, like a woman's choice to have an abortion, then you're hypothesizing a subtext. Is abortion the subtext here?…

1) I just fast-forwarded through the episode, to find the "Abort" bit. Around 35 minutes into the episode, there's a closeup of a control panel, where we can read the words "Deactivate," "Armed," and "100 Devices in Range." That control panel is just as prominently displayed as the "Aborted" readout. What does it…

Did you happen to notice what any of the other buttons said? Have we established a rule from previous episodes that Doctor Who announces its theme for the week on the buttons? As far as women being the decision makers, there are just a handful of options: men making decisions, women making decisions, and men/women…

It's the free association school of criticism. "This episode made me think about abortion for two seconds, ergo, that is completely and undeniably what it's all about."

For every instance of the Doctor being wrong, we can find 100 instances where he's right. In a typical Who episode, the Doctor is our only hope against the monsters, the only one who knows what to do. That's inscribed into his character, even if we can point to cases where we would have made a different choice.