This was one of the most "Doctor Who" episodes in a long time. It felt like something right out of the classic series or Big Finish, while at the same time telling a good emotional story about the Doctor and Clara. Depending on how good next week's is, I may have a new favorite for next showrunner.

Isn't this really more of a Tom Haverford impression than an Aziz Ansari one? I mean, obviously there's some overlap, but most of those mannerisms I've only seen him do on Parks and not in his stand-up or on talk shows.

I'd need to watch it again, but I remember there being a lot of really slow footage of Cyberman starting up Cybermats that could have been trimmed.

Honestly, and I know this is a classic, but the serial that gave me the idea was "Tomb of the Cybermen", because that's a story that could do with some trimming. There's a lot of shots that go on too long/don't need to exist.

I wonder if he might work best with someone like Ace, a young punk with the same amount of anger as him but without all the experience.

I agree, but I actually thought that was what made her interesting.

Other than "Time Heist", next week's is the episode from this series that I was worried about the most when I heard about it. And "Time Heist" turned out to be a lot better than I thought it would be, so there's hope.

Basically there's an inverse relationship between how well the pure narrative aspects of a story work and how important the science and world-building are. And since the former is always going to be subjective, the latter is always going to be too.

It's a weird thing because, obviously at the time that they were doing the Charley/Eight romance stuff, the new series didn't exist and the idea of exploring a Doctor/companion romance was new. But listening to it now, it almost plays like a deconstruction of the Doctor/companion romance stuff from the new series.

As someone whose favorite Doctors are on the Troughton continuum (as you've so well put it), I'm kind of surprised how much I'm digging Twelve. His take feels fresh, even if its antecedents are obvious.

Her argument wasn't just that he made her take responsibility. Her argument was that he put the responsibility totally in her hands while at the same time withholding information that could have been useful. (The Doctor admits that he didn't think that the egg hatching would harm the Earth. Clara had no way of…

Why on Earth (or the moon or Gallifrey or what have you) should the Doctor be above judgment? If anything, considering the amount of power that he has at his disposal, he needs to be judged more harshly when he doesn't use it wisely.

This is something that never even occurred to me as I was watching it, but I can't deny that the subtext is there. Still, it seems to me to be kind of funny that pro-lifers would be praising an episode that's all about someone making a choice.

I switched from being a science nerd to a literary nerd halfway through the episode. The first half had me really confused because the plot made absolutely no sense in terms of how physics actually works, but then the second half had me completely sucked in because it made complete sense in terms of how people…

I'm betting that, in order to get a full series out at once, the show's returning to the Doctor-lite/Companion-lite formula from series four. Next week's gonna be a solo Doctor joint followed by a solo Clara outing.

While there were definitely shades of the Third Doctor in his first few episodes, these last two have made me realize that the Doctor that Capaldi's performance resonates with the most is the First. Capaldi's Doctor feels dangerous in the same way that Hartnell's did early on. I'd love to see him read some early…

Question: I've generally avoided Five's audios because he's not my favorite Doctor and his audio stories tend to be the most traditional. However, I've heard good things about Erimem. Is her character worth diving into those audios more?

At the beginning, Charley was painfully generic. But the further along she goes, the more I appreciate her. I feel like Charley and the Doctor's arc is like a much better version of Rose and the Doctor's.

Having this review on the same day as the new series review is awkward, because it means that it kind of turns the comments section of this review into a waiting room for the comments section of that one.

What I really find interesting about those audios is how they really drive home how much Ace becomes like the Doctor. Big Finish Ace is probably the companion who mirrors the Doctor the most.