Any return reviewing appearances will be handled by a combination of stock footage and Richard Hurndall, thanks.

I mean, it *could*, but again… you have to pretty strongly read against multiple lines in the script that indicate it's Simm to Gomez. Which I realize is fun and harmless and all that, but I think it's worth acknowledging the episode seemed to go out of its way to remove space to maneuver here.

He never totally forgot her, I don't think, though it would have been kind of awesome and hilarious if they had blurred her face and modulated her voice for that moment.

Big Finish had a go at giving the 6th Doctor's death a bit more meaning and tying it in with the Valeyard. It was pretty all right. I'm kinda prepared to argue there was some ironic poetry to a master planner and schemer like the 7th Doctor dying because of such random happenstance, but yeah it isn't amazing.

Sorry to be hideously pedantic, but it wouldn't be Mondas anyway — the Doctor's adventures (and indeed pretty much everything we see) in "The Tenth Planet" is set in and around an Antarctic base, so that's theoretically where they are if they're meeting then.

Fair enough, I guess, but I'd still say it's way easier and cleaner just to have a post-Gomez Master and be done with it.

I hear you, but I'm mostly looking at this from a Doylist perspective instead of a Watsonian one: If Moffat wanted to leave open any ambiguity about there being incarnations between Simm and Gomez, it would have been the easiest thing to just delete those lines. That he included multiple lines to that effect suggests…

If they *really* want to bring Simm's Master back, it'd probably be easier just to have him turn up at a point between "The End of Time" and "World Enough And Time." There's no particular reason Time Lords have to meet each other in sequence, so it wouldn't be the hardest thing for the 13th (or 14th, or whatever)…

I wouldn't say it's automatic at all, though a lot of people are assuming it, and certainly it makes a lot of sense for one Doctor on the brink of regeneration after battling Mondasian Cybermen to be brought by the TARDIS to another Doctor on the brink of regeneration after battling Mondasian Cybermen.

It's actually very close to confirmed that the Master regenerates into Missy: The Master snarls that he is about to "regenerate into *you*", to which Missy responds, "Welcome to the sisterhood." Sure, the Master could be wrong and/or Missy could be lying, but the episode removes a lot of potential ambiguity about…

I loved that photo Sean Pertwee tweeted out of him in the costume for Halloween, but I remain deeply, deeply ambivalent about that idea. I think I'd only be okay with it if he specifically approached the Doctor Who team asking to do it, but that's not at all how these things tend to work.

So, we clearly disagree on quite a bit here, which is fine, but just to clarify: The point I was making in the sentence you quoted was more about how Simm's presence made it easier to buy Gomez's turn as something other than a trick. Given that the Master/Missy is all about endless betrayals, it feels like it would be…

My take is more or less this: As a general rule, I don't think you should recast old incarnations. But, as you say, "The Five Doctors" already broke the seal by having Richard Hurndall play the 1st Doctor, so that particular incarnation feels like a special case. And, if you're going to bring an old Doctor back, there…

I mean, I guess, but he was such a comic relief character in "Husbands" that it doesn't really scan for me properly.

Will need to rewatch for that. It definitely wouldn't shock me. It just occurred to me that the show has previously established his Doctor sees people in ways that don't necessarily line up with reality, so it was at least a possibility.

Since they're filming the Christmas special now, I bet the announcement will come in the next week or two. I'm guessing they just wanted to keep it quiet until Capaldi finished out the season. I'm seriously impressed they managed it.

I vaguely recalled he'd written a pre-nuWho short story — and let's also not forget the five additional non-canonical Doctors in The Curse of Fatal Death — but I was kinda limiting it to onscreen Doctors. Either way though, Moffat's record isn't likely getting beaten anytime soon.

I really don't recall the Nardole of "Husbands" being the sort who would start a black market as soon as he's in a room with three people, and a quick check of the episode transcript seems to fit that. But maybe I'm forgetting something.

When did he say that? I found a diplomatic/noncommital answer he said about not wanting the casting to be a gimmick back in February, but that just reads as "I haven't started the process yet and don't want to commit myself to anything."

Well, I hadn't planned on it, but now it would feel weird if I didn't…