I don't disagree with that... I guess limited character growth is one of the disappointing outcomes for any prequel media.

This was a very creepy episode, and as a standalone sci fi fantasy horror piece it works well. But it doesn't feel trek. Here's my conspiracy: With the dramatic different in tone, direction, the repeated references to section 12, this is a Poorly Disguised Pilot that the producers were using to test the waters for an x-files like section 12 spinoff.

Overall, I did not enjoy it. I don't seek out this kind of film normally, and I might have enjoyed it if it had led to anything interesting happening, but ultimately it has not left them with any further progress. All the dramatic moments between the away team and the "others" they hallucinated were basically "then they woke up and it was all a dream", so no relationship progress there. And within themselves, aside from more unresolved trauma, Spock seems no closer to aligning his human and vulcan selves, La'an hasn't really learned anything new about her violent tendencies she didn't already know from the last episode, and Kirk never even got to have the chat with his family because the network apparently cut out.

Agreed about Rose's jealousy.

On Rose and Mickey get along really well - it felt a bit too quick after her pouting at the end of last time. Given what I remember happening over the course of the remaining episodes, they should have done a bit more to cement Mickey's place on the team, rather than it feeling like he's just there for a little bit. That Cleopatra episode sounds like it would make a nice story of its own.

Doctor as the "Romantic Hero" does work well. On the actual romance itself, I tried to ignore the whole "I met you as a 10-year old just as many minutes ago".

This was a pretty good episode. The humour of this one feels very 2000s, in a good way, almost Scooby-do esque sneaking around. The contrasting ship and castle set design is nice, and for once the show doesn't simply use time travel to jump to somewhere, it plays an integral part of the episode's plot.

The clockwork robots is a great idea. The ticking broken click is a fantastic way of building tension, it easily gets in your head as some of Moffat's other monsters have. The inclusion of an AI that goes off the rails because of improperly bounded instructions is very timely, and that remark about the meatship smelling like nice bbq is perfect dark humour, and fits the whole body horror theme going on in this series.

The kid version of Mme Pompadour is not great at acting, but her adult counterpart played the role really well. This episode is a nice follow-on from the previous episode where the Doctor spins out a bit thinking about grief and ageing companions - this time much accelerated. I hadn't made the connection before, but this whole story feels like a protoype for Amy Pond's introduction.

While the Tardis is "locked in events", once the link is fully broken, I think at that point they could easily have pre-programmed the Tardis to go back in time and pick him back up, rather than needing to use the fireplace, but then we wouldn't have had the tragic ending. The final scene is a nice way to loop back around and tie everything together, it leaves me wanting to know more.

Overall, this is a good self-contained monster of the week show, and has some important messages about mortality and stop making stupid AI!.

Random things I noticed:

• Noel Clarke didn't get an intro credit. He's just tagging along, not part of the main cast, I guess.
• The weird gallifrey mind meld is back!
• It looks like the outdoor scenes are filmed in the same place as the end of last episode. A nice way to save on production costs.
• We got a "but… doctor who?". ding ding ding. Again, an idea that Moffat ends up developing a bit more in his series later on.

Sugars and additives are in nearly all foods, maybe we should stop asking manufacturers to disclose it on the ingredients list.

I\ don\'t\ know\ what\ you\ mean,\ I\'ve\ never\ encountered\ any\ annoyances.

The article is saying the petition is targeting steam, but the actual linked petition is addressing credit card companies. The text of the petition doesn't mention steam or valve. I don't know what the author of the article thinks is happening here, and they've explained it very badly.

They haven't blocked the windows feature, they're using DRM to interfere with it. Microsoft could easily change how the DRM works any time they want, rendering all these hacks useless.

This is a real pet annoyance of mine, and I have seeing apologist posts on the internet about it.

If the actors cant enunciate properly except when they're shouting, that's not adding realism, they're doing bad acting.

If the sound engineers can't get a good audio balance for anything except the loudest moment in a film, that's not a limitation of technology/sound physics, they're bad at mixing.

If the director can't keep all of this in check and make a film that people can actually enjoy, that's not artistic choice, they've made a bad film.

You can't misgender a brand. You can't deadname a brand. You can't befriend a brand.

Answer wrong. The more of us humans that answer wrong, the less accurate we need to be to get past these stupid things. If google want me to do work for them, they can pay me.

French and Portuguese at the convention, their arms open.