I'm more excited for this episode than I have been for any episode this series. Inua Ellams is awesome and a perfect fit for Doctor Who.

Yeah, frankly I think this says more about broadcast television than about Doctor Who. It was in fourth place for the day, with News at Ten, Casualty, and Blankety Blank above it - I think it's rather clear what the demographics are for broadcast TV.

I like this chart for comparing the current series' performance to past ones, because it relies on seeing it against the wider television landscape rather than just as abstract numbers. Doctor Who may be getting lower over-the-air ratings, but everything is - its been pretty impressively stable.

I think season 4 was the only one I didn't have to push myself to like - there were lots of great bits scattered throughout the first three seasons, but the fourth is where I felt like the whole season was enjoyable and strong (particularly the last couple of episodes).

FINALLY a Cerritos!

Even just the idea of Pete McTighe as showrunner has ruined my night. Yuck.

I have never read any Juno Dawson, but as a librarian I see her books come through pretty often and I've always heard good things!

These are all great choices, except what in the world is Pete McTighe, writer of the most quietly evil Doctor Who episode ever made (and then one of the most forgettable), doing there?

Their capital city being egg-shaped buildings around a giant birdcage building was a hilarious touch.

I have definitely been proven wrong by Star Trek things that look terrible at the outset, but...this looks terrible. I mean I guess we're getting a Deltan, so that's fun? And a chameloid is a bit of a deep cut? But jesus, I could not want to see this less. I hope I'll be proven wrong!

Boims is an indoor kid

What a bizarre three ships to start with

My 8-year-old daughter loves Prodigy, and we've started dipping into Voyager (after 50,000 rewatches of every Lower Decks episode except the Billups one), and she loves it, but every time Harry Kim is on screen she lets out this teenagery exaggerated groan of annoyance (I've never connected more with another human being). I'm so hoping he shows up on Prodigy because it would be hilarious how angry she'd be.

I wish this had been addressed, but I feel like it would be easy to see Fleet Formation as a response to both the PRO and LD incidents. If you have a ship that's compromised (like the Protostar or one of the Texas class ships), Fleet Formation lets you immediately deprive that ship (or any other infected ships) of autonomy by locking it into a unidirectional control from Starbase One. If it really can override anything else, that would mean that in the event of a Living Construct or whatever, Starfleet could just lock everything in Fleet Formation and the ending of PRO would never happen. But I guess they didn't anticipate a threat coming from inside Starfleet.