I think it's less a matter of appeasement and more a dramatic choice. That Doctor was like a Matt Smith hangover— the old character persisting until the new one stabilized. Moffat's done regeneration similarly with Ten becoming Eleven and Mels becoming River.

She's been variously referred to as both "Missy" and "The Gatekeeper of the Nethersphere" in Beeb promo material, so my money's on new character.

The doctor literally genocided the Georgia O'Keefe people. He is not a good man and the show acknowledging this is probably for the best.

Missy struck me the first time I saw the episode as a sort of villainous parody of the show's fandom. She cosplays as the eleventh Doctor, acts like a gigglesquee, and I think you can draw a line between how she changes the outcomes of his stories this season and fan-fiction.

Neat! I only have The Fry Chronicles. Def. Checking that out.

Fry was accosted in the street by a Blackadder fan about the pidgeon. This dude pointed at him and screamed out some of his lines. Fry didn't hear properly and sort of briskly walked away (likely suppressing terror-farts at being called a murderer) only to be accosted by the same fan with an overlong and awkward…

Basically the scripts for the first five episodes and rough cuts of the first six were left on an unsecured drive. The first three episodes and the fifth episode have all been uploaded to various torrent sites.

Actually he's dressed like a skinhead and clashes with his young white companion's black boyfriend.

It's not great. The premiere is weak, and while everyone loves Listen, I really can't see it working because it's such a scatterdash best-hits for Moffat.

They actually… they don't try to make it a good introduction. I think it's because they're too busy being worried about people being put off by Capaldi's age. Lengthy scenes where other characters discuss his relative age in context of the character's history do not an easy entry point make.

It's… not a good one to jump in on. For several reasons.

So, this is going to turn out like Almost Human, right? Disappointing but with enough good bits that we'll be disappointed again when it fails?

Only if the computers and robot nurses are from sixties british SF

So what you're saying is that anything outside of your self-imposed ideological hugbox is valueless?

Whoa essentially everything is a social construct established for purposes of ideology or utility. Really blowing my mind hear scout.

Is Frank Miller dying? Because shit, he looks like he's gonna fucking die.

I'd argue that shakespeare is a lot less clever and interesting than Francis Beaumont but that's just me vOv

I don't really think that 'serious poetry' and 'literary fiction' are real. They're by and large constructs created by the publishing industry as part of aspirational marketing and tend to be just as juvenile and vapid as shit like Harry Potter.

But it was a goof… a goof that concealed…. what I ACTUALLY BELIEVE

It's a necessarily ideological decision, which makes it quite hard and more than a little embarrassing to talk about.