This show is quickly becoming my new 'Heroes'. A promising first season that quickly skidded off the rails, a Big Bad who started off menacing and now just comes off as pathetic (Sylar/Horseman), and showrunners who continuously write themselves into corners only to invent some fresh nonsense to awkwardly crawl out of…

Would have been far more interesting if it was Monroe who had to drink the potion and then sleep with Nick. Jus'sayin'.

Phenomenal episode for so many of the reasons listed below. The only bit that troubles me is the (unintentional?) juxtaposition of Missy's "I'm bananas!" with the Doctor's "I'm an idiot!" Both seem like cheap dodges to deny any responsibility on their parts: and while the Doctor may rarely stick around to face the…

Totally agree. Would have been much stronger from a story and symbolic perspective to crucify Athelstan upside-down: not only referencing the punishment given to St. Peter for denying Jesus three times, but also Wotan's own trial of being hung upside-down from Yggdrasil. Big missed opportunity.

Another important milestone we've reached - these two bring us up to 30 straight episodes since Juliet last went to her "job".

Just for clarity's sake - we're all agreed that Juliette is still a vet the way Homer Simpson is still a nuclear safety inspector, yes?

"While I’ve learned from other procedurals that drug trials are a high stakes business that could serve as a motive for murder…"

I assumed that the 11th Doctor just had the 1st plant a program in the TARDIS that started working on the calculations, so they'd be ready later. Moffat probably intended the parallel when he had the War Doctor's sonic screwdriver begin a calculation that the 11th's had completed.

I totally agree, and it occurred to me while rewatching these Eccleston episodes after the 50th special that poor miserable Nine had to have had at least a few moments at the climax where he knew he and the other Doctors had saved Gallifrey after all, and how deliriously happy he must have been for that brief time.

Seems he's merely saying that you should have the decency, not that you do.

I think you've rather missed the point, which is that there is a difference between how things "really happened" and how we perceive those things, and it's the latter that is really important when it comes to characters (some theorists would argue that the former is an unrecoverable construct anyway).

If you can honestly conceive of Amy Pond, Madame Vastra & Jenny, or Catherine Lethbridge-Stewart as nothing more than plot devices, then you simply haven't been paying attention.

Oh heavens to murgatroyd. By this criteria, the show is ageist because two of the three Doctors were young and the other's schtick was classic "cranky grandpa."

Ok then, so talk about sexism if that's what you're seeing - which means actually offering some specific citations or observations of the sexism in this episode, rather than just tossing "this show is sexist" into the middle of the room and watching the scrum.

I know it wasn't intended by that scene, but I like the idea that Eccleston's Doctor had a few minutes where he knew that he'd saved Gallifrey after all, even if the Moment did reverse the polarity of his brain's neutron flow right after. The look on his face would have been… well, whatever you call catharsis when…

I think we're using fundamentally different criteria for what we consider interesting from a story perspective. You seem to need a concrete grasp on certain events and how they happened. I'm more interested in how characters react to their perception of events.

They specifically addressed this when John Hurt waxes proud over what the memory of destroying Gallifrey did to his future incarnations - made them kinder, wiser, and absolutely committed to the idea of "never again." It made a Doctor who could sit Zygons and humans down at a table to hash out a peace treaty.

I know! I couldn't believe it when Moffat took the Master's death scene in 'Last of the Time Lords' and COMPLETELY undermined it with the electro-resurrection in 'End of Time.'

Purely speculative, but I suspect that when your billion-year-old civilization is under siege, and your High Council is nattering on about possibly ending the universe, the command structure gets a bit fragmented.

Well. Except spending 400 years (1/3 of his life to-date) thinking he was an galactic mass murderer.