Yeah, the proper console room was a beautiful touch. I wonder how much pull Capaldi had over using it?
On the Gallifrey thing: I got the impression that the planet had been placed in the future deliberately so it wouldn't be found, including all the Timelords who knew him. I'd have to watch it again to confirm that.
Jumping back a little to Heaven Sent, which I watched again this morning: on the whole I thought it was a really cleverly done episode, some great dialogue (see, Moff? You can do it if you try) and of course Capaldi shows again why he was born to be the Doctor. It was almost perfectly self-contained, but for a few niggling nitpicks which could have stood one more rewrite.
Other than that, I rate this as probably the best of this season (no, I won't submit to the nu-Who convention of calling it "series". It's Season 52, so there.)
On the Gallifrey thing: I got the impression that the planet had been placed in the future deliberately so it wouldn't be found, including all the Timelords who knew him. I'd have to watch it again to confirm that.
Jumping back a little to Heaven Sent, which I watched again this morning: on the whole I thought it was a really cleverly done episode, some great dialogue (see, Moff? You can do it if you try) and of course Capaldi shows again why he was born to be the Doctor. It was almost perfectly self-contained, but for a few niggling nitpicks which could have stood one more rewrite.
- I worked out early on that the castle was inside the confession dial - to be honest, it wasn't too hard. So why would the stars be an accurate indication of time? They, like everything else, were a manifestation of the dial, akin to the Matrix reality in The Deadly Assassin. Of course, the Doctor doesn't know that until he breaks out, but it was nice of Rassilon to include that feature. Oh but wait - he was expecting the Doctor to confess his knowledge of this ridiculous 'hybrid' gimmick, at which point he could just leave.
- If every room reset to its original configuration after a length of time, what about the rooms he finds in which his previous changes are still there? The writing in the sand, the burned-out skull (nice touch that they modelled each one on Capaldi's own skull), the dirty shovel, the clothes drying by the fire...
- The clothes drying by the fire. It transpires that after every reboot, the Doctor goes through the exact set of events over and over again. So where did the fry clothes come from? Did the original iteration of the Doctor go about naked after laying them out to dry? Again, how thoughtful.
- This one really is a biggie. Each iteration, the same sequence of events play out in exactly the same way. The only difference is in room 12, where he progressively buys himself a little more time to tell his story (why doesn't this room reset itself?), which I thought was a nice touch. This means that all the confessions the Doctor makes are the same ones, over and over again. In other words, he's adding no new information that the Timelords don't already know. Maybe it's a feature of the dial, that it's programmed to open only when he gives the information they want? Maybe; but it's indicated at the end that they can hear him through the dial. Again, just one nore rewrite could sew up these things. In fact...
- Why would the Doctor go through the same actions, the same thoughts, the same discoveries etc in the same order each time? Just because he gets reset doean't necessarily mean that events must repeat unvaryingly.
Other than that, I rate this as probably the best of this season (no, I won't submit to the nu-Who convention of calling it "series". It's Season 52, so there.)
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
