Except both Downey's Holmes and the movies in which he appears are poor on their own, let alone by comparison

nowlo: I find your comment plausible, and I am glad you are able to enjoy it, but I suspect it is more a flaw in RTD's writing than deliberate nuance (which means I don't find it enjoyable). I don't find it crafted well enough to be characterizing the Doctor as a hypocrite; I think it more likely that it has to do…

Giving this a 'B' is grade inflation; a "gentleman's C" is the best this could hope for. The stupid Christmas tree; the doctor's hypocrisy, bloviating, and grandstanding; the Harriet Jones thing… Tennant's final few seconds at the end of "The Parting of the Ways" were better than everything in this combined.

Isn't the conventional view that Davison was the "reckless innocent" who would occasionally lose? Baker was so alien and magisterial that a younger man who was very human and could occasionally be vulnerable was a necessary counterpoint?

Great post. RTD seemed to have carelessly woven hypocrisy into the character of the Doctor.

I was with you until the "legalize sea food" remark. Is it a Legal Sea Foods joke? Or a typo and you meant "make sea food illegal"?

I'd root against the 49ers based on Harbaugh alone

I'm not from Seattle but I hate the Steelers and the Seahawks QB that year, Matt Hasselbeck, went to my alma mater, BC. I'm still peeved over that game, particularly the penalty they called on Hasselbeck for talking a Steeler.

A Mann Batman film is an interesting thought.

there's no arguing with that

"Let me tell you about that old time group, the god damn Beatles…"

"showing off Sarah Sutton's strengths just a little late in the day."
-My adolescent self couldn't agree more

Points for the judicious use of "relatively." Here is flirted with the line between drama and melodrama, but he rarely looked back after that. That season finale where Martha traveled the earth as a kind of evangelist building a psychic friends network who could pray Doctor Yoda Jesus back to life… I almost never…

I love the E-Space trilogy (especially Warrior's Gate, the guilty party with regard to dwarf star alloy), the sci-fi fairy tale Keeper of Traken, and the fusing of mathematics and monkish religion in Logopolis (cloister bell, anyone). I think that was a great final run for Baker and maybe the best stretch during JNT's…

It's a treat for fans

RK—it is fairly cardboard and DW by-the-numbers (essentially an Agatha Christie locked room murder mystery, with the suspects narrowed as the passengers/occupants are murdered one-by-one applied to sci-fi) my favorite portion of Trial of a Time Lord is episode 9-12, "Terror of the Vervoids." In fact, in that sense it…

I like the 80's Cybermen design, too; and the fact that they use tall actors, but are different sizes, perfectly fits the idea that they are humanoids who have been converted. I also like the deep voices—the only problem is when the slip into using inflections (or fist-pumping and declaring "excellent!") it belies the…

that's not the plunger, that's the eye stalk

"I have no idea where he picks that stuff up" alone was worth the price of admission.

I kept expecting him to declare "everybody lives" as a callback to that.