I think your last point is why this episode instantly won points with me :-)

I like Bill but up until this episode I haven't really enjoyed any of the plots and thought the show was showing some signs of creative exhaustion.

That seems like a skewed idea of what the episode is about. A lot of people would find it weird for an authority/parental figure to show up like the Doctor does here and refuse to leave or more universally I thought it spoke to how we can be different with different people. Bill's conscious of how she might come…

This was my favourite episode of the bunch so far. I liked the glimpse into Bill's more normal life and her unease at having 12 around and I thought Eliza and the Landlord were suitably sad and creepy.

Coincidentally The Next Picture Show (film podcast by a lot of former AV Club writers including Scott, Keith, Genevieve and Tasha) just did a couple of podcasts about The Matrix and Ghost in the Shell that were a good listen.

Who doesn't? :-)

And to be fair I'm pretty sure I originally said they just looked alike ;-)

Oh no…

Yeah I get his unease with the situation because it sounds like she basically wants to have an affair with one specific guy without the hassle of having to hide it.

Yeah the other one has more emotional heft but you missed another similarity. The Doctor describes both as a sort of paradise to his companion but the place turns out to be deadly.

I really liked Ritter in the first season of the show so I'm hoping S2 will be good and the show won't feel the loss of Tennant too much. I thought he figured slightly too prominently in S1. I would have liked it if he'd reappeared later in the season and they'd been able to do away with some of the wheel spinning…

I'm not wedded to the idea of "canon" and never changing things across the board, it's just I've watched so many sci-fi and supernatural shows where the writers want to have their cake (big emotional death scene…..) and eat it (….with no lasting consequences) in a way that is detrimental to the show in the long-term.

Actually I agree that the last character beat for Clara was an interesting one and not something they've done a lot with companions (or not that explicitly).

Yeah they would have had to rejig the story slightly but it would have been worth it. I think if your main character is a genius Timelord, it's not good to see him spend thirty to forty minutes trying to work out what's going on.

I'm sorry I don't understand the question.

The broken Maths badge was a bit much, I thought ;-) Savage writers they had back in the day. "Hey look Adric's badge is in tiny bits, just like Adric!"

No, the main arc is going to be to do with the arc words about the Doctor running "like a penguin with his arse on fire". It sounds like a joke but there's going to be a whole timey-wimey plot built on it ;-)

The Bill/12 stuff has been the best bit of the first two episodes. I'm hoping next week is the week the plot of the episode is interesting and/or works better.

And then she came back in a plot that undermined the two best episodes of the season. I liked that Clara went out with some sort of acceptance and dignity in Face the Raven and Hell Bent sadly ruins Heaven Sent a little bit.

The fact the setting was a bit similar to the infinitely superior The Girl Who Waited didn't help.