Always recycle Usenet… TO THE EXTREEEEEME!

The theme with electric guitar reminds me of the Peter Howell version from the Fifth Doctor era. I think that was actually played on a synthesizer, but it had a similar rock-like sound, and I've always thought that, while not quite as good as Delia Derbyshire's arrangement, it was also worthy.

Then there was the weird variant used in the 1990s TV movie, that turned it inside out and started with the middle eight!

I was thinking Destiny. It's some previously unseen Hive variant, only his weapon looked more like Fallen tech.

Especially considering that there have been pseudo-ghosts several times already: the Gelth in "The Unquiet Dead", the spectral Cybermen in "Army of Ghosts", arguably the afterlife people/Cybermen again in "Dark Water".

Chemical feedstock. Burning oil is probably the dumbest thing to do with it.

My daughter (age 9) immediately predicted this. (In fact, she predicted this kind of comeuppance was going to happen to some character even before it was clear which one it was, and then he came out with the tells she was waiting for a few seconds later.)

A derelict spaceship beneath the surface with strange inscriptions carved into the inside! It's Quatermass and the Pit.

I think they're setting up Clara's departure: she's going to leave to become an independent adventurer, somewhat like Bernice Summerfield in the book and audio worlds. We know she's not going back to Coal Hill School.

I've been thinking of these two-parters as having almost exactly the same amount of content as a typical old Doctor Who serial, but fewer cliffhangers. Leaning heavily on them for a season is an interesting, old-school choice.

The weirdest thing is, that was all apparently the abandoned plan for the TV show continuity.

I remember thinking that Rose and Mickey had kind of a cool dynamic going in the Madame de Pompadour episode, and I would have liked to see more of that. But I recall hearing that the sole reason they were written that way was a communication breakdown between RTD and Moffat concerning how the characters were supposed…

I've been wondering about the significance of the titles of this two-parter. In hindsight, it seems to me that both titles refer to Clara, but they seem disconnected enough from the content of the episodes that that could be wrong.

In the original series, I thought the Daleks were more menacing without Davros than with him.

Always recycle, kids! TO THE EXTREEEEEME!!

He solved that puzzle from the Infocom Hitchhiker's Guide game.

Or she could have been lying. You know, the Master.

There was the non-canonical one implied by the Doctor Who pinball machine.

God, yes. Suddenly the Doctor and Rose were the two cool kids having a private joke at the expense of everyone else. And their relationship was the SPECIALEST EVER. Rose had been a great companion during the Eccleston year!

My first exposure to Doctor Who was around when the Pertwee episodes started airing on PBS stations in the US in the 1970s. The show wasn't well-known here yet (it became a cult hit when they started airing the Tom Baker years), and I had no idea what it was, but I came across it when flipping channels.