Yeah. I'd held out on buying Moab (and wasn't gonna buy his upcoming book) because Fry Chronicles is so… uneventful. It's just his career going from strength to strength without anything too interesting happening other than Alexei Sayle and Robbie Coltrane thinking he's a cunt.

Her two and a half year old daughter.

I like Knapsack.

Actually, when the Second Doctor was executed the Time Lords offered him a choice of new bodies, and when the Eighth Doctor regenerated the Sisterhood of Karn took it one step further and offered him multiple identities.

It's not entirely unprecedented in Classic Who. In fact, Classic Who suggests that having more control is the norm.

The Doctor killed and tortured the fuck out of motherfuckers all the fucking time in the past and got creepy as shit dude. If we're talking lessons for kids "sometimes violence happens and it's terrible" is not a bad one.

Smith was actually really good at seeming like The Doctor in his first series (Series Five). He acted like a daft old grandfather who didn't know what to do with all this youthful energy so it was all little physical bits of business and clumsiness. I think he carried off the Old Young Man thing better than, say,…

I think that the success and relative popularity of characters like River Song and the Paternoster gang is a pretty good indication that the audience would be willing to accept an alien or non-present companion on an ongoing basis as opposed to just occasional appearances.

Well I want to do the bad thing with him, and I assume most people with sense do too, but there's been a sizeable social media backlash against him, epitomized by a video where a Scottish girl watches the reveal and then shouts "HE'S OOOOOGLEH!" and freaks the fuck out about it.

She actually does 'leave' midway through the series only to get caught back up in the Doctor's orbit for the finale… but that's not much to do with casting news.

Gonna say it

Moffat (and BBC Worldwide, on whom he is increasingly reliant for funding) are worried that such a radical change from the Smith years will put off a lot of viewers. The Paternoster Gang were a fixture of the Smith Years. They're in the episode, with Vastra didactically discussing the relationship between the show and…

Has he? the last I heard was her saying that she was only interested in taking the show one series at a time and wasn't sure about the future.

Nine's early scenes imply he's fresh. He comments on his new face and is extremely erratic and manic up until the midway point of Rose.

Well, scuttlebutt has it from the tabloid press that she's leaving this Christmas, though she insists it's undecided. So if she *does* become an interesting character… it's not going to last.

She's basically a more affectionate take on the fanbase, but I don't think she's entirely relevant for two main reasons:

He could've kept the character the same, sure. But what I mean is— relatively late in post-production they had to rewrite huge swaths of the scripts, mostly to do with Clara's character, history, and the mystery plot she's a part of. Of course that's going to turn into a a fucking hash and it's going to ravage a lot…

That violence is almost always depicted in a triumphant light. When they're not, it's in the light of the companion pulling him back, like Donna in The Runaway Bride.

It's a big risk because, well, The show's current international status has only been achieved with Smith in the role. He was super young. He flirted and all the ladies were all "Oh Matt Smith have my ladyboner babies!" Even its relatively cult success in the US was mostly under Tennant, who was also youngish and hot.

To be fair to Moffat, Clara was originally supposed to be Victorian Governess Clara and not modern Nanny Clara. This changed relatively late in preproduction. Depending on who you talk to, this was either due to BBC Worldwide's resistance to a ye olde timey character or due to Moffat freaking the fuck out about a…