It definitely would have helped to clarify the rules of the raven… From what I can tell, Clara broke the rules of the contract by shifting the sentence so the raven / death sentence wouldn't "listen" if they tried to shift it again (or if Ashildr tried to undo it.)

Well, she might not recognize Capaldi *as* the Doctor, but as we saw in season 6 she's always known who the Doctor is in general. I imagine it won't take long for her to put together that this is just a new face of his that she hasn't seen before.

I'm actually perfectly happy with Rose and River being the Doctor's romantic interests, and even the basic idea behind Martha's storyline (though it could have been handled better.) But with Amy and Clara it just felt unnecessary. And eve between those two, with Amy it was more or less played for laughs and undone by…

Or alternately, actually have the Doctor actually regenerate after being shot the moment he lays eyes on her in "The Stolen Earth."

I hadn't thought of that, actually "facing" the raven. That said, it seems unlikely to undo her death considering we know Jenna Coleman is leaving the show. I'm wondering if we'll get some sort of scene akin to Danny Pink's bit in "Last Christmas" where we'll get some clarification that she's at peace (possibly with…

I don't disagree, but a part of me feels like it doesn't matter… The show exists in a fictional world created by writers who chose to plant the seeds for a new romance. Because this is tv! People kiss on tv.

Ugh the Eleventh / Clara sexual tension was the worst. Especially coming so close on the heels of his relationship (marriage!) with River. He belonged to her as much as Ten did to Rose.

I feel like that's splitting hairs. I mean, to us and the Doctor Rose might as well have been dead after season 2 (until they undid it in season 4) but she wasn't dead. Being tragically separated from the Doctor, while sad, is not the same as being dead.

Ah true. Though if I remember correctly, he was more flirted on as opposed to being an active participant.

Moffat hasn't killed any of his companions until tonight. Amy and Rory lived full lives, just outside of the reach of the Doctor for the last 50 years or so. River is the closest to a dead Moffat companion, and that was done before she really was a companion, plus her consciousness is saved.

Just one thing I found really weird: One of the last interactions between the Doctor and Clara here she says something like "There's nothing you can say now that I don't already know. We've had enough bad timing." Did anyone else feel like that line had a strange romantic undercurrent?

The prequels have the bones of a decent film series and could potentially be salvaged (starting with page 1 rewrites)… but the fact that I was supposedly in the prime demographic of that trilogy and it still failed to catch me just goes to show it doesn't have the lasting appeal of the originals. I was nine when…

"But in the case of the Moment and the Delta Wave, the Doctor actually came up with an alternate solution to the problem."

After spending some more time thinking about what specifically it is I don't like about this episode, I realized: This episode feels a lot like a series 7 story to me. It shoots for (and hits with some success) a very specific visual style and feeling, drawing on a mishmash of films for inspiration. But to do so it…

You didn't miss anything, the ending was intentionally open to the idea that the Doctor got bamboozled. I've heard that Gatiss has a sequel planned for season 10 but considering the quality of this one, I'd be okay if it never makes the cut and we're just left with this one. I think the episode posits that the…

Clara doesn't flip a coin, she makes a choice. Basically even though the Doctor leaves the situation (yes, he leaves, there's not really any denying that bit) Clara still makes her decision based on what he would do. Clara, as well as we the audience, know that the Doctor would never kill something that hasn't proven…

"Meh" and "pretty pedestrian" tend to be my general reactions to Gatiss episodes. It really stands out in a season as strong as this one has been (much as "Victory of the Daleks" did in season 5.)

I know I'll never convince anyone ha… but my final word on the matter: See, I think that by virtue of the established morality of the show we the audience *were* expected to know that killing the egg was wrong, just as the Doctor expected Clara to know the same in-universe. Regardless of real world reasoning, within…

Well, to answer as briefly as I can, I think series 8 set up a very different Doctor than we had seen since Christopher Eccleston's turn in the Tardis. The Doctor abandoned the situation because he was testing (and pushing) Clara in a situation where he was pretty sure he was right. It was an emotionally cold and…

Five of those seven are amazing, the other two are entertaining.