I remember watching Flesh and Stone for the first time and calling out the "continuity error" of the Doctor no longer wearing his jacket. The finale blew me away!

for the many flaws of Moffat's era, especially with the 11th Doctor, I adore how much his stories incorporated Time Travel! it's not just the setting, it's part of the storytelling itself, usually in very clever ways

i actually do like how amy coming on to the doctor is a sort of redemption for him with what he did to rose and mickey. with those two he just showed up, ruined a relationship than fucked off. with 11 amy tries it and he immediately goes "nope! this is wrong, im bringing rory with us from now on"

The reason I adore 'Vincent and the Doctor' is because as a person whos struggled with depression it potrays accurately while sending a bopeful message. It tells people who know people with depression that while they cant make it go away overnight or even guarantee that they’ll save the person but just simply being a good and kind person to someone with depression is on its own a good thing snd worth while to do even if the person looses to their illness

I love how this series felt so fairytale but was still grounded in science and reality, this is what I was hoping R2D was gonna be like, but alas 😂

11 is my Doctor. He warms my heart and uplifts me. While I think all Doctors have the values of anything is possible and everyone is accepted here (something I struggle to feel in life as I am queer), I feel it the most in 11. Watching his episodes feel like a friend bringing me up and comforting me with whatever I'm going through. His quotes have so much love. He is the optimist, as he says. I love all the Doctors and I believe they are all the same person. But 11 speaks to me in the way I need. He's fictional, but he's my hero.

12 has a strong vision of kindness. 10 also pledges to be the best person he can, almost letting it get to his head in Time Lord Victorious. But 11 actually embodies the "am i good man or a bad man?" arch that 12 goes through. 11 is content in that he doesn't know. He doesn't claim to be good, he's just himself and acts with love. He's really just a "Madman in a box." Every so often his dark side comes out and he is not apologetic of it. He's a flawed, nuanced person who accepts himself.  While 10 "doesn't want to go" and 12 takes 2 episodes to accept regeneration, 11 embraces regeneration and accepts change. Honoring himself, he says, "I will always remember when the Doctor was me."

In a day when many people are favoring 12 (who I love, season 8 is my favorite season of all time), I'm proud to say 11 is still my Doctor.

Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue may be a writer being so damn proud of himself, but fuck me of it isn't just fantastic writing which I love.

I know we’re at beginning of 11’s run with five, but my favourite little thing Moffat added down the line was that the doctor was so attached to Amy which as he says in Time of the Doctor is that she is the first face this face saw. Something that I think even carries over to 12 and his love towards and relationship with Clara.

I remember as a kid always finding elements of the Crack in Time story arc so creepy, and I think it's a tone that is deliberately played with surrounding the crack: It almost seeming unstopable in killing Rory and the doctor being powerless, the way it has deleted the events of past series (something that is built up as a mystery and is so creepy and plays on what the audience remembers), and of course so much of The Pandorica Opens is played with that tone - that it's all a trap, that everything has been leading there, and the audience knowing that it is a trap while the doctor is failing to fully realise it by virtue of his ego.

When I was a teenager suffering with depression and undiagnosed bipolar disorder, I really really loved Vincent and the Doctor. As an adult who has learned to manage my conditions and gained a lot of perspective on the trauma of going through all that, the episode feels a bit reductive and saccharine. I’m still grateful for it, and frankly I think they had to be emotionally bc heavy-handed at points in order to tackle the issues raised without being actively harmful.

I do think it would’ve been a great opportunity to give us (i think?) the first monster-free episode of NuWho. It could’ve actually been really beautiful for a ‘monster’ which only existed in Vincent’s mind to be considered deserving of as much care as any earth-threatening alien. Again, it would have to be done with a lot of sensitivity, but it might have felt less like a cheap plot device than the creature we got

The 11th hour honestly was the best clean slate episode for anyone coming aboard with this doctor. It's also the best 1st adventure of a new doctor to me at least.

I do agree about seeing the Angels move. My big problem was in the initial episode the Doctors description (at least to me) implied that the statues and the wings were not their true form, they would be something else entirely but we would never know or see because to see them makes them statues. Unfortunately this was a moment where my imagination filled in the blanks that weren’t there.

Titling a chapter "Please Forgive Me" for having a thoroughly lukewarm take on the episode is hysterical.

14:54 Okay, so, about the Weeping Angels moving... I just have to passionately rant about this because the singular decision. The friends I've gotten into Doctor Who will sometimes tease me for having such a strong indignant fury towards this scene because there's so much else in the show's tenure to get mad about and THIS is what I laser-focus on, but here's why. Blink made the Weeping Angels my favorite Doctor Who antagonist. As I imagine it did for a lot of other people. And then The Time of Angels showing them moving completely nuked any chance of me ever finding them terrifying again

What made the Weeping Angels work for me was how much of a fear of the unknown there was with them. Sometimes the best horror is your mind filling in the gaps we don't see, which fits the Angels literally to a tee. We only know what they're like when we can see them. And I DO mean WE. We really don't have a good base case for how fast they normally move (Unless you're particularly nerdy and can count the amount of milliseconds it took for an angel to get from point A to point B). The Doctor implies that the Angels might not even LOOK like Angels as we see them, he just says they freeze into rock when being observed. Which makes them ten times more terrifying because, what do these incredibly fast creatures even look like when you're not seeing them? Hell, how do they MOVE when you can't see them? Do they shamble? Do they sprint? Are they animalistic in their movements? And last but certainly not least, normally I'd say a monster in a show like this breaking the fourth wall would ruin the immersion, but if anything, I don't think I'm alone in saying that the decision in Blink to have the Angels stay frozen when the EPISODE'S CAMERA ITSELF was looking at them was nothing short of genius. It's not like it's unprecedented either; they are quantum-locked, and that's just vague and sci-fi-y enough to imply that even through the eyes of an external being like a viewer, they freeze. Not to mention how much it actually enhances the newer lore of any image of an angel becoming itself an angel when you think about it. It makes it feel like the audience is included in not wanting to blink whenever an Angel shows up on-screen, because there's precedent in Blink that the audience seeing the Weeping Angel matters as well (Even though we realistically know that we have zero impact on it, it's a TV show, but the immersion still at least makes me compelled whenever I rewatch Blink to try and keep my eyes open)

That singular scene of the Weeping Angels moving in The Time of Angels systematically nukes all of those things I mentioned in that giant paragraph that made them such a terrifying threat. Like, EVERY single thing. That fear of the unknown, not being able to comprehend the Angels in their unfrozen state because we literally will never have an opportunity to see them when they're not being observed, because by definition, us seeing them means they are being observed? NAH, screw that, just forget including the audience in the little fourth-wall-breaking game of trying to keep your eyes open, have them move. But if that wasn't bad enough... the slowness of their movements, and just how... normal(?) they move as well... (Yes, I know there's justification for why they move more slowly, but if you're GOING to show this threat moving, at the very least find some way to make them fast, because some audience members are just going to assign that to all Weeping Angels) every subsequent Weeping Angel episode, I will ALWAYS have this stupid scene resting in the back of my head. No matter how scary they try and make them, that doesn't work anymore, the source of fear they provided is almost entirely gone because of one bad directing choice.

Can you tell I'm passionate about the Weeping Angels

The Series 4 and 5 double whammy is definitely the peak of the show for me which is quite fascinating considering how different in tone they are. The quality of individual episodes in Series 5 is a bit weaker than Series 4 but I think its story arc just works so well as a package. All the Moffat-esque teasing actually works and all the threads get paid off in the finale (except "Silence will fall" but he dropped the ball on that later). Also, you had to be there to appreciate it but the fact that the date that gets teased throughout the episode, the date of Amy's wedding, was the literal date when the finale aired on TV was so cool. Cheesy, I suppose, but so cool.

I love the Vincent Van Gogh episode! First because I love Van Gogh's paintings and I love how they integrated his art into the story, secondly because the depression is well portrayed and it's never a "you'll be fine if you want to" sort of thing that is so common on media. I like the bittersweet ending. It's a mature way to portray the conflicting feelings of those around someone suffering from depression. You want to do your best, you want to make a difference, but the end might not be what you wanted. It was too easy to give it a happy ending and say the Doctor & his companion saved the day. Instead they went for the most realistic  "we did our best, we hopefully made him understand he's loved & appreciated, and that's already great". The conflicted feelings, the sadness and the realisation they have to let go because you can't save everyone . That moment when Amy goes to the museum and she's certain everything will be different and Van Gogh's life was stellar after meeting them. And then she can see it didn't. Depression won in the end, and that's a sad reality. I liked that.

The Eleventh Hour is the best season opener the show has had to date. Entertaining from start to finish,

Didn’t need to sleep anyways

I was 6 when this series came out and I vividly remember watching each episode as they came out. The nostalgia I feel watching each of the episodes is unreal. The finale is one of my ultimate comfort stories. I just love series 5 to death. Easily my favourite series of dr who ever despite preferring classic who overall

Your segment about how tonally and thematically consistent series 5 is really encapsulates why this is my favorite series. Yes, I'm a sucker for the fairy tale tone, but the way that tone is baked into every aspect of the series — writing, acting, direct, set design, music — really makes series 5 feel like one big story despite the show's semi-anthology style of storytelling.

Also, 11's TARDIS interior is so perfect for this season and for the character, and it's my favorite TARDIS