Vamp

I've seen that argument before and don't really seem much logic behind it. I know that's what Moffat says but since Matt Smith has taken the role there's been a direct reference to him having slept with the Virgin Queen (far more so than RTD' previous joke about the same matter), he's got married, referred to the evening as being his and River's business, very openly snogged women for no other reason than he wants to snog them, has openly enjoyed women flirting with him, been directly look upon as a sex object far more than Tennant was (where the love was a bit more plutonic) and admired Clara as a woman. Moffat's Doctor is directly acknolwedged not just as a romantic lead but as someone to be admired sexually, and was from the very start and bar the embarrasment over Rory and Amy (in which he acknowledged, admittedly it took a while, that two adults left to their own devices on their wedding night would have sex) there's been far more of an acknowledgment of sex, not just some kind of chaste love, with Matt Smith's Doctor. Which I can only see as a continuation of it coming in with Tennant. I don't buy for a second that Matt is less of a sexualised than Tennant. Rose and Martha had crushes/were in love with the Doctor in a far less sexual way than Amy, who directly wanted sex with this Doctor. The Doctor's awkwardabout it in the manner that teenage boys are awkrawd with women, but they're not sexless. He's excited in Day of the Moon at a woman actually flirting with him.

You don't think the youthful fairly handsome men running around kissing women is designed with a certain sex appeal that would be different to the sex appeal of an older actor? The Doctor has become a romantic lead, Matt Smith even more than Tennant. And fandom of both Tennant and Smith has shown a pattern for an audience that enjoys them as young, attractive men. I'm not disputing that Capaldi's not sexy but it is undoubtedly a different type of sex appeal to the one that's marketed through Tennant and Smith. Sadly the female Doctor thing is controversial. I don't find it to be personally, I don't see why you can't have whoever in the role, but there's certainly sections of the fan base who are against it. not entirely for Benji's dismissive reason of misogyny either, although that's a part of it. There's even a young lady on my Facebook who's a Who fan who seems to strongly dislike the idea on the basis of "but he's a man." I've not know her to by misogynist. I'd be interested in how Moffat scripts the dialogue for a female Doctor more than anything. He gets stick for his women all sounding the same, but I think it's more that he just has a style of dialogue that he likes for the show. I'm not sure I see much worth in making the Doctor turning into a female into a big overarching plot. I think that the weakest bit of Moffat's era, besides the fact that series don't seem to have that much balance between connected stories and individual stories, has been the arcs. It's a personal opinion, but at this point I think I'd rather "ooh, I'm a woman" and then just getting to the adventures. I'd like to see them explore how people react to the Doctor's authority as a woman, as they've done before when people saw the Doctor as a young bloke or a bit of a clown, but beyond that I'd rather not get too bogged down with it all. The answer to "why is the Doctor a female this time" is because he's regenerated and has no control over it. Done. That's not very interesting as a plot. You could do the whole "he's disguised himself" as a woman thing I guess, but what's that? A line of dialogue in a confrontation maybe? I don't find there's much of a satisfying dramatic conclusion to it. How does the Doctor's experiences differ as a woman is more interesting. But that comes in as you just tell stories about a mad woman running about the universe. The past two arcs we've had around the Doctor have been "the Doctor's definitely gonna die, oh, wait, no didn't" and "what's the name of the Doctor? Umm, actually, that's not the question." I'd rather not a "why's the Doctor a woman? Because he is," arc.

To be fair the Doctor's kissed quite a few people since coming back in 2005. He certainly gave Jenny quite a snog in the Crimson Horror. Writing a female Doctor would be a huge opportunity for Moffat to write back to those complaints that he can't write women very well. Not that it would be a reason to cast a woman Doctor, nor would they do it for that reason, but it'd be interesting to see how he would write it. Personally I don't see any reason not to cast a woman. I can get the controversy though. Casting either an olderman or a woman is quite a change to the show really. Both Tennant and Smith have been sold, at least partly, on their sex appeal. Not that older men and women can't be sexy too, but it'd be interesting to see the response to either one.

I hope its full of swerves, like David Tennant walking in and going "no, no, its not me, I've already done it" and then other random actors walk into the studio with increasingly lame excuses "oh, sorry, wrong studio" and so on. And then it turns out that the new Doctor was sitting in the audience dressed in a lame cyberman costume all along and then pulls off his mask to say "It was me guys, it was me all along." That's the way I'd book it anyway... In terms of actual casting decisions, given this show was originally advertised as a celebration of Doctor Who's past and said about the audience coming along dressed as characters from the show, I'm expecting the audience to be pretty full of hardcore Whovians, and as such them revealing its a woman could be an interesting moment. Personally I don't see what the problem is with it but there's no way you could edit out any negative responses you might get. Hopefully you wouldn't anyway.

They sure had an uncrackable code name... Ah, it actually looks like the codename was 'Houdini'. I did think putting a pun in your secret codename was a bit rubbish.

Is Mass Effect 1 on the PS3? I thought it was an xbox exclusive.

Nah, don't think so, they're on Sylvester now. I think it might be something to do with the convention maybe. Or boxset or something. But you never know.

The Doctor Who facebook page thing is teasing something to do with the Fourth Doctor. Its just a trail and a trend thing right now. I figure its probably just announcing him as a guest at their convention thing, but you never know.

You're not one of those "its a really fun game and then suddenly zombies pop up out of nowhere and its shit" people are you? My mate swears the games are like that, ignoring the fact that the monsters are built up from the very beginning, are very much a part of the genre that the games belong to and actually provide some variety. But, you know, he's wrong.

yeah, I'm talking about the odd episodes in serials where the Doctor features for a few minutes and that's about it. I'm not saying it did affect the overall serial, just that looking back at those episodes tends to be a bit boring.

I think the reason I pick Turn Left over Blink is mostly because I rewatched Blink once and didn't get much out of it (it wasn't my choice to watch it the second time) where as I've rewatched Turn Left a couple of times and still found it to be really enjoyable. And I enjoyed both on their first watch so yeah. I'd agree that a season for a companion (besides changing Doctors) is probably the ideal length. But other than Rose I suppose its really only the Ponds that have more than one season (and soon Clara).

I liked Donna, possibly more than any other New Who companion actually (bar maybe Rory, or Wilf if he counts but he probably doesn't). Partly because sh doesn't come over all goggle eyed for the Doctor and they're simply mates and partly because Catherine Tate proved quite a lot of naysayers wrong about that time by proving herself as a very good actress. She really helps sell the scene at the madjusa cascade for me, something which in every other way seemed to be let down, with the delivery of her "but you never give up" line. There's a mixture of anger and being abolustely crushed by the friend that she's believed in so much being flappable and its a shame that its not something that's made more of in the episode and instead they whizz off to the next thing. She's also in the superb Turn Left which might be one of the best episodes of Who. Certainly the best 'non-Doctor' (as it were) episodes of New Who (and most of the Old Who episode that didn't feature the Doctor tend to be rather dull affairs). It probably helps that she's got the tightest character arc of any of the companions. And there's something very astute in the way her life goes in the End of Time and the acknowledgement that she's just settling for what she has. There's some real cynicism in that double parter anyway but to have a fantasy show about a character who constantly runs from things despite being impossibly old and to have another character who can't live that life anymore (and doesn't even know its an option) simply settle for her lot in life is something that feels quite dark to me. In fact I entirely wish it could have been her that came back for the 50th instead of Rose, even though I understand why they chose Rose. I think a Donna/Eleven interaction would have been pretty grand.

I've been interested yet hesitant in the lego movie for a while but that was fantastic. Definately not what I feared.

I didn't say I didn't want it to look good. I said I don't care how it looks. It sits on a shelf on my TV stand barely getting looked at. Its not a car. I still don't get it, but it seems I just have different requirements from my console. I'm not standing it proudly on display so I don't give a toss. Maybe other people do have it on display. As far as I'm concerned I'm not spending hundreds of quid on the look of the things, so if it looks nice its kind of a bonus I guess, but its nto want I'm paying for or even looking for. No its not. Maybe its a big thing to other people's consoles but it's sure not for mine. Its the thing that's there till my game or whatever loads. Games load automatically when I put them in the desk drive, I know where i-player is and YouTube (the YouTube XL is a bit shit but I figure that's not console specific) and the PS Network's pretty easy to find stuff. I can see why people might pay attention to these things for the first week maybe, but after that? Nah. But like I said, different people want different things from their consoles, I genuinely don't give a shit about looks but cheers for trying to explain. I just wanted to know why people did.

Ignoring the conversation about what's better, do people actually care about these things? This isn't a dismissal of your criticisms of the PS4 but I can't get my head around the fact that soembody would actually care about either of these things. I couldn't even draw you a picture of my PS3 looks like. Its black and bulky, that's about all I could remember about how it looks without looking at it. The dash/home screen is just there until my film/game/i-player loads up and has whatever theme/wallpaper I downloaded for it. It was Life on Mars at one stage, now I think its Sackboy Christmas. My console requirements (not in any particular order) are: Affordable price, let's me play pre-owned games, I can play games whenever I want (i.e. problems with my internet connection won't stop me playing), has games that I'd like to play. Everybody's going to have their own criteria, but do people genuinely look at their console and worry about it being ugly? Its not like wearing a shit shirt out in public. I just find it a strange thing to pick up on. Maybe that's just me though.

Its more than that though, they're trying to take away something from gamers that has been a staple of people's purchasing habit for years, from games to cars.

Surely that's a compliment to the show? It proves how much people have invested into the characters. That ending was shocking, I'm just glad that Arya didn't go in and see the bodies, that would have been devastating to watch. I also keep waiting for more of Westeros to be populated by more and more Skins characters.

I think it'd be one of those times where its justifiable. If he didn't find out the answer he wouldn't know how many regeneration he has left or if it was a one off, from a dramatic standpoint that just seems more interesting than him knowing. There's a difference between a mystery like that and a mystery like who blew up the TARDIS (only Who example that immediately came to mind). Partly because they've come up with so many ideas that fans have taken as extending his regeneration cycle. Plus it'd be a bit lame if the answer to why he's still regenerating was "it's like I said flippantly in the spinoff series one time" or flashbacking to however many years ago for that scene of River possibly giving him her regenerations.

Except I suggested an overarching mystery in the post you quoted. I just said I didn't think it was one they should answer and he should have some fun adventures instead. They can get back to it before the end of that guys run but it'd be silly to introduce a guy and go straight into a heavy arc like that, you want to give them time to develop as a Doctor. I don't have a problem with overarching storylines actually, unless they're heavy handed and executed like series six. You voiced your opinion of what you thought they should do, I voiced mine, just because I like the show for different reasons than you doesn't mean I can't also voice what I'd like them to do. People enjoy Who for different reasons. But instead why not point out that I have a consistent opinion of how I like Doctor Who in a really sarcastic comment which really adds to the conversation far more than me suggesting an idea of how I'd do it/what I'd like to happen. Edit: Ah that's bitchy. Sorry. Stressful evening. I was just voicing an opinion, sorry it annoyed you.

I still think they should just have him regenerate an extra time, he goes all "why am I still alive?" and wonders off into the universe to try and understand why and wonders if he'll keep on regenerating. He never finds out the answer to either and goes on having fun wacky adventures.

I prefer to see it as what it was. A joke.

Unfortunately I think you're right. Although it really doesn't need to be that way. A couple of gags after the regeneration and move on would be the best way of dealing with it. Amusingly a feminist friend of mine remarked that she'd rather they didn't cast a woman because she didn't want to see what Moffat would do with that. Which is a different view of things, and not one I really agree with. I'd actually quite like to see what Moffat does with a female Doctor. So often the women he writes end up revolving around the leads of the show or needing to be saved by them (mostly because of the shows he's writing for, Irene Adler notwithstanding), it'd be interesting to see a woman character who doesn't so much. Edit: Also I know Moffat's stuff about not knowing how long the 50th special is despite having filmed it is probably just teasing but it does come across a bit like they've filmed the special without even knowing how long they're trying to make the episode.

I tend to think of Hugh Laurie as a great missed Doctor actually. Not for him, obviously, he had more success with House, but I'd have loved to have seen have him as Doctor Who too. John Hurt being in the anniversary tends to make me think it won't be an older actor taking over Smith, although really that's silly because it still could easily be. I. wonder how long till they announce who ever they've cast. I guess it'll depend when they start getting ready for the next series more than anything.

The BBC News Reporter speculated on Judi Dench. Yup. And Olivia Coleman who's name is going to come up a hell of a lot in the next few months.

Pretty gutted about this. He's been pretty great, and at times when the material's been a little off for whatever reason he's carried on knocking it out of the park. But its been obvious for a while now that he's kinda surpassed the show, I don't really mean that as a knock to the show, but he's become so great, started getting the movie attention, its been coming. Let the speculation begin. How long will the rumours last that the new Doctor is John Hurt before they announce another relative unknown?