Imagine if 73 yards sent the doctor back to the Heaven sent castle and he just goes "Round 2, Have you ever heard of the sheperds boy?" 😂

My only problem with this season is:

It’s too short. 8 episodes is not enough to get explore a doctor/companion dynamic. I want more.

I've tweeted this before, but I'm going to go into more detail here. To make Ruby's mum work as a nobody, there needs to be an explanation about how the moment Ruby was abandoned was a weak moment in time, as there were Goblins, Sutekh, two Tardises and a time window all interrupting. Playing off the "time is memory" thing, every thought Ruby ever had about her mum became reality. Childhood Ruby has built out a great mystery around her mother, that she's a special robed figure who Gods fear, which brings it into reality. The only thing that's 'true' of her mum, is the point. As Ruby's stood in the time window, calling for her mum, her mother hears her. She turns to point at her daughter in the future, sensing that she will save the universe some day. You could even have her mum say "I always knew you'd be special" when they meet, implying that both their ideas of one another made them important, and that love stretched across time and space even if they'd never met

EDIT: Also the song thing could be built into this. Ruby used music to deal with her emotions, so of course the God of Music would respond to such raw emotions. It's something that could be played with more in future, as we see more of Ruby's musical side and maybe build on that 'music is powerful' idea from Devil's Chord

45:40 - Just wanna point out that the explanation for why he can't unfasten the lead is in the episode. When the rope is introduced the Doctor explains that "That hook is a molecular bond", which is a fairly explicit statement that it binds to whatever it attaches to with incredible force, like welding two objects together.

Basically, the rope still feels like a cheap ex-machina but the reason he can't remove the rope is very much explained.

... Man, you're right about Rogue. Definitely a second episode story. Or third if you count The Church on Ruby Road. Now you've pointed out that she only says she's seen space babies before, it just sticks out like a sore thumb.

Space Babies, Rogue, Boom, Dot and Bubble, either 73 Yards then The Devil's Chord or The Devil's Chord then 73 Yards. I think that should have been the running order. TDC and 73 Yards are, in my opinion, meant to be the lead up to the final, after a fun beginning which turns dark whenever you pick up on the racism in DaB.

My issue is the the episodes came out in an order that didn't work.  Rearrange the episodes and it works so much better.  It needed 1-2 more episodes to really make the arch work, but changing the order helps!

Am I the only one who believes that ruby can unknowingly warp reality? The snow appearing, “something is wrong with this creature”, basically how she created an entire reality and story for herself in 73 yards and the importance of her mother being built up enough to scare gods

Part of me wonders if it is the trickster doing things in order for Sutek to be defeated by the doctor and then it would make it so he doesn’t have any competition. With the Toymaker defeated by the doctor and give him an idea to start to trick sutek into thinking she is important by playing all these tricks and then finally after the doctor’s memory changed in the past making Sutek finally enact his plan.

As someone who had never heard of Sutekh before, I was just completely confused as to WHO Sutekh was; my instinct  even told me it was the Susan Twist character... It wasn't a frightening or tension creating revelation to me, just a weirdly animated Egypt inspired dog and a disbodied voice.The final episode didn't clear this up, and it wasn't until I watched vids on YT that I was sure who I was supposed to be daunted by. A bit of a belly flop for me in other words.

Rouge was bloody brilliant though!

(Disclaimer: I'm not located in the UK nor British so no access to BBC/previous seasons [but I've seen some New Who] and apologies for grammar and spelling mistakes)

The lack of resolution for "73 Yards" still frustrates me. But its negative impact would have been lessened had there just been more episodes!!!

One thing I really liked about Dot and Bubble was the Doctor's characterization at the end. Specifically how he still tries to save the people of Finetime even after learning that they are white supremacists. The people of Finetime are written to be very hateable especially at the end and a lot of non-racist people would probably just abandon them outright because of the racism but not the Doctor. He knows that they wouldn't survive a day without his help and he doesn't want to abandon them just because of their prejudices. So he tries his best to convince them to let him help them and it visibly frustrates and saddens him when he fails.

Really peak Doctor moment IMO even though he failed and the people he was trying to save were terrible people.

I've had struggles with loving Doctor Who over the years, but recently that love has been reignited and has been going strong since.

Learning to embrace my inner child, and being less afraid to be a person in all of its good, bad, ugly, and downright cringy glory has played a huge part in that.

"perhaps im a little fruity" and so am i, my friend

The lead on Sutekh was a callback to not just the intelligent rope from the goblin ship, but also the mavity gloves. Which also work as a molecular bond, like Rogue's trap. These things combined are the reason i don't think the ending was as bad as some people say. Because they did set those moments up. I just wish they'd had some kind of a refresher in the episode to remind us of this, because the one line of dialogue is far too subtle, as evidenced by how many people completely missed it. Doesn't make it much better. But it does explain why Sutekh was unable to stop The Doctor's plan. And i think the reason he cares is because of the unexplainable snow. BUT, maybe The Doctor DID explain it. His first thought was that the snow as a warning against going back. Maybe it wasn't Ruby making the snow. Maybe it was The Tardis. Because it knew that if The Doctor went there again, to find her identity, Sutekh will know it's deception regarding the snow, and Ruby's mother's identity. Giving him no reason to keep anyone alive. That's my theory anyway. But i think it makes sense given the events on screen. But even if i'm proven right in season 2, it wasn't well done. They could have shown this stuff on screen in a much clearer way. Especially the pointing. Because The Doctor said his memory changed. Or time itself changed. Which makes me think The Tardis had something to do with it. So overall, i don't think all of it was just made up as he went along. Because there were too many callbacks for that. I think he knew the pieces and the rough shape of it. But it didn't fit together quite the way he thought it would.

I need more Ncuti written by Moffat. With all due respect to RTD, I want him to be his own Doctor but still feel him embodie every Doctor he has been simultaneously and I don't think he is there yet. Boom gives him that old man in the young man's body vibe like Smith or if talking about 12 who is mature again after a few lifetimes and needs to redefine who the old Doctor is now

It's not a far fetched idea that Moffat will take over as showrunner again after RTD leaves again

53:15 the "real mum" line was intentional. It's meant to be shitty towards Carla. RTD has said this will be addressed in season 2.

The cycle of Doctor Who:
1. "Man, this older stuff was good."
2. "Man, this new stuff sucks."
3. "Man, looking back on it, that new stuff wasn't that bad."

Devils Chord: It's amazing. It's a fantastic Dr Who episode. Personally I didn't like the character of Maestro (even though they were portrayed fantastic by the actor), but I loved the overall narrative/concept of Maestro as we had 'just' only seen the Toymaker and having Maestro appear in episode 2 made it feel like we would be getting a whole series of these godlike villains showing up (and we kinda did... Kinda...) The inclusion of the Beatles in the episode felt like a... Well afterthought to be honest. It felt like they knew they wanted a Maestro episode and only after the fact chose to include it in an era which would feature the Beatles. As "the historical characters" in an episode, they felt irrelevant to the greater narrative as they could've been replaced with any talent from that era. The musical themes, like the actual musical piece in the end is straight up 11/10.

I was meh on Legend but loved Empire of Death.

Which is why i love this series, each episode is somebody's favourite.