Correct, the actor is not younger — but it’s been a bit of a running gag that 12 thinks he looks like a young man. For instance, he took offense when Danny assumed he was Clara’s father, saying, “Oh, how can you think I’m her dad when we look exactly the same age?” :-D

Nope - Del Toro didn’t “give up 90% through planning.” He was unwilling to hang around in Wellington with his family, basically putting his entire life (and other projects) on hold, until The Hobbit could get clear enough of MGM’s bankruptcy for Jackson to give him firm dates for principal photography and…

The difference is, though, Doctor Who has leaned in hard on the utter absurdity of nobody remembering London being ground zero for alien shenanigans with surreal regularity. If your suspension of disbelief is holding after fifty-plus years, great.

Marvel is trying to have its murder cake and eat it too. The problem is, you can do it but you still get fat.

Oh, and does anyone remember Voyager where Captain Janeway puts honest to blog terrorists into command positions on her ship with remarkable ease and a rather implausible lack of oversight?

Sure - just as it would have been really nice if Voyager had been about a Starfleet captain and the terrorists (and her mole first officer) she’d been sent to capture learning to trust each other, rather than being forced to work together out of sheer necessity. Wouldn’t it be nice if that had been earned, rather…

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” ~Maya Angelou.

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” ~Maya Angelou.

I think the more basic consideration is putting Jodie Whittaker in a costume she’ll be comfortable and able to function in basically eighteen hours a day for nine months of the year. No disrespect to Michelle Gomez— who works the whole psychotic Mary Poppins aesthetic like a supermodel — but The Doctor does less…

Indeed.

Indeed. If The Walking Dead keeps being a cash cow for AMC they’re going to milk that undead cow until middle-aged Judith Grimes is incompetently leading a whole new generation to their gross and needless doom.

Editors and proof-readers.

Uh, OK... I’d note that on the other side of the Atlantic, a show called Coronation Street debuted on December 9, 1960 to a tepid critical reception and OK-but-not-great viewing figures. Nobody involved expected it would run beyond the initial order of thirteen episodes.

PORG: Aaaaargh! (Daddy?)

PORG: Aaaaargh! (Daddy?)

Sadly, nope. It was a straight-up irreconcilable scheduling conflict, Which, to be fair to Marvel Studios, isn’t exactly unheard of and if they were just bringing Sif back to kill her off I get why it would be simpler to leave that plot thread dangling to (perhaps) be picked up later.

SPOILER WARNING AHEAD

Oh, yes... It’s not just that Monae is an astonishingly beautiful woman she has, for want of a better word, presence. Moonlight and Hidden Figures are very different movies, but she more than held her own with much more experienced actors, because she has... I don’t know how to put it, this indefinable grace and…

Possibly - but I suspect the more pressing issue is just trying to get this noticed at all. I don’t envy anyone trying to boost their signal enough to cut through the noise. There’s an awful lot of it around, and it’s not going to quiet down anytime soon.

I did, but it still bears repeating. IDK, if you want to talk about “weird” I find K.’s flying Peugeot a lot less distracting than [very mild spoilers ahead] being repeatedly told The Blackout destroyed all electronic records... expect, what seems like everything concerning Rachel.