Uh — the US and the Trump gang?

Really? I'd better go have another look; I thought her mother died young, when Bill was still a little kid, and the Doctor went back in time to find her mother with baby Bill and take real pictures. Huh.

I like layers. Without layers, it's just a slightly-better-than-run-of-the-mill adventures in space comic book, IMO. (Not being snooty about comics — I collected the things as a kid, and had to stow them at my best friend's house because my mom wouldn't let me keep them at home — The Vault of Horror, you know, and…

Well, she would know, wouldn't she?

I did; his rationale was excellent, and very Doctor-y in tone and expression. And he must often have had such thoughts about humans, to tell the truth: he's seen enough of our folly ("and then you'll find another mistake to make" was an early taste of this).

Because there were apparently only a dozen of them. That's a lot of brainwashing that needed to happen pretty damn quick.

They didn't stumble into a random accident; they've been waiting for something like that to happen; they're opportunistic predators.

Yes; but look at his joy in realizing that he helped make that possible by not love, but simple kindness — going back in time to get photos of her mom to give her in return for her Xmas present to him. The key to the solution isn't love; love is between X and Y, or among siblings, etc. It's person-to-person bonding.…

I don't think she think that he would or could — she doesn't seem to have known him that long — but she sure as hell *hopes* he can, because there's nobody else around that can. It's a rational decision: he is her last, best hope, but she knows he's not a god (especially since she doesn't seem to know about…

Whoa a second — it's a while back now, but wasn't one of the companions captured by villains and there was an implication that she *had* been raped while in their control? I may be mis-remembering, but — ?

And also about putting that kind of decision into the hands of female humans for a change — either way, it's Maiden-mother-crone doing the deciding instead of, say — Shrub? The Doctor (as with Deep Breath) does *not* "abandon* Clara and the schoolgirl and the astronaut, but steps back out of their way and hovers…

You've told us. I, for one, don't think you're right. Pyramid is about bad choice alternatives, and political submission. Theoretically, of course there's a link to issues of consent in sexual contexts, but it's very tenuous i this case and not the primary focus of the story. Would you say that Kim Jun On (sp) is…

it's much more about strategy than "making the world moral", IMO. And she doesn't put "faith" in the Doctor: she puts her hopes on him, to wit that with his sight restored, he can rescue the Earth. It's like a General giving up a city to save his most effective weapon for a counter-attack. The monks have been…

I think that's a bit of a reach. It might be about *political* consent to bad bargains because there are too many unknown factors or actively deceptive ones (can't speak re Brexit, but I can sure speak for the case of the Orange Menace here in the US).

I'd say, more interesting writing than "Oh, yikes, another invasion — by 12 dead guys in red robes!" Bad writing makes me wander off into the kitchen in search of a snack. I was strongly involved in this one, and apparently so were a lot of viewers — strongly enough to stick around and think it through.

She chose with love — not for the Doctor, and not for the monks, but for the possibility of a future Earth freed of the monks by the Doctor. Her love is for her world, its survival, its still unrealized potentialities. The monks read "love" but think it's about the Doctor. They have neat tech, but are not very…

It was two bad choices, and only those two, which = duress. As the Doctor told Clara on the beach in S8, sometimes there are only bad choices, but you still have to choose. Bill is shown as strong and rational in making the (bad) choice that will leave the Doctor alive (and, they tell her, sighted again) to fight…

I think it's what he likes to think he exists for, because otherwise, what use is he, rattling around the universe like an eternal tourist? He has a rare gift of very long life and self-healing, and he's found a way to justify that to himself: using his lives to try to save the shorter lives of others. Apparently,…

Yes. Moffat has given CapDoc in particular more vulnerability and uncertainty, which is, IMO, a very good thing. Otherwise he might as well be just another madly muscled masked Navy Seal in boots, rubber pajamas, and a cape. Gods forbid, say I! We don't need "superheroes", which is a good thing since by and large…

Who's to say (ahem) that some of the civilizations that he's saved from invasion etc. *haven't* gone on to be destroyed later by some other disaster? Anybody's who's waiting for him to come save the day is a damn fool, and more than once it has been observed by some one that if there's no trouble around when the…