The “ghosts” are a neat concept, but sort of a bad fit for Cybermen, since they’re the one villain that have a very distinct way of moving, and the ghosts aren’t like that.

I wonder if at some point during the plot’s development the “ghosts” were meant to have whatever was left of the alt-universe people post-conversion reaching out. There’s a lot more they could have done with the ghosts here.

It’s a decent start to the finale. Rose’s monologue at the start is okay, but it’s a bit of a reverse rug pull, given she never actually “dies”, unless I am misremembering something. At the start there’s a bunch of TV spots, which are cringey to watch, but pretty spot on for british daytime TV. I guess they would have been social media spots now. The ghosts as a whole are a nice “monster of the week” idea, but they’re not really used much beyond a setup for cybermen. It’s a very RTD thing to include people getting used to them because of the desire to want to hold on to loved ones. I enjoyed Jackie in this. Her explaining the ghosts to the Doctor, her whole back-and-forth about knowing more than he does. I do think 10 was a bit mean to her, probably still feeling that slap a few years ago.

This incarnation of torchwood is a nice side effect of the doctor’s meddling centuries ago, a kind of butterfly effect, and it feels a bit more impactful across this series than a random phrase like “bad wolf”. Torchwood here gives everyone psychic training, and I love it, a proper approach to operational security - See a problem, immediately call it in. Which makes the pointless digitally controlled Levers in the room literally signposted as “LEVER ROOM ->” all the more annoying. But seeing the doctor and co wandering around Torchwood and all the banter therein is fun. I like the idea of a void ship being a way to reintroduce Daleks even if it’s a bit out of nowhere, and the doctor’s metaphor illustrated by the cracking glass was some nice sci-fi theory.

There’s a lot of continuity stuff in this episode. I noticed Rose and the Tardis were parked up next to a sarcophagus, a nice reference to a past adventure. When the cybermen appear they cut through plastic, again a nice reference to classic doctor who stories. I had forgotten completely that Freema Agyeman was in this episode, that was a pleasant surprise.

Random back of the envelope maths fact: The energy coming through the rift is stated at “5TW” I guess about an hour, give or take, for a “shift”. Given e=mc^2 that gives a mass passing through the rift of around only 200 grams. Which seems like not a lot for a bunch of invading cybermen.

I don’t have much to say on this one. It was alright. Nice to see La’an make some forward progress in her own issues. When I saw the flat planet going through space I thought for a brief moment we were going to get a Discworld parody/crossover. I didn’t mind this diversion so much, given that it was grounded in some kind of reality, and continued the story we had already started much earlier in the series. I do think everyone should have caught imposter pike much earlier on.

This is an odd episode. It’s another one that seems to want to mix humour in - with an opening joke about lowercase d-doctors, references to the cat nuns, and the “right angle parking” of the tardis bit. But it also goes into some dark topics - missing children, abusive parental relationships, loneliness. But none of it really comes together. The acting doesn’t help - the kid actor is pretty bad, even by kid actor standards, and the dialogue on the TV news sequences is awkward. I’m also at a loss of what the story is even about - the aliens spend an eternal childhood in space, so they makeup their own imaginary worlds, which doesn’t at all mesh with the SCP-085 plotline. The sequence with the doctor racing with the olympic flame is maximum cheese, and would be a great ending if it had been a “fun” episode all along instead of trying to also be serious. The ending feels pointlessly enigmatic, as if to telegraph “oh but travelling with the doctor is always a risk”, but that was the whole point of the previous episode too so the writers are repeating themselves a bit.

Random note: It’s supposed to be in summer for the olympics, but at times you can actually see their cold breath because they filmed in winter. They had doctor and rose comment on how cold things are to try and cover for this.

Maybe she was an undercover romulan, sent to report if enterprise go too close to finding the cloaked ship, and now that Reeger is likely no longer a threat, and enterprise probably isn’t going to want to follow up, her job’s done so she’s off.

M’Benga covering for Kirk is really good, I like that the setup for this was laid a couple of episodes ago. Kirk fighting on behalf of the crew to keep them from doing war crimes - it shows the level of camaraderie this crew has, which admiral reeger likely never experienced, and helps continue to cement Kirk as a member of the enterprise.

I really enjoyed this one. The core moral dilemma of orders versus morals, captured in a strong A story and a decent B story. Genuine character growth, and an out for M’Benga that made sense, was in character, and felt justified. The direction was really nice, it captured the tense nature of the episode. The treknobabble for the A plot was pretty decent, and in the B plot I enjoyed the cave set - it felt used and full, not bare like they sometimes do. I really enjoyed the acting here - the Andorian leader gave me a hint of cardassian in his analytical takedown of humans, and the badmiral was really enjoyable from his upbeat arrival to steady decline into madness. The two Kirks getting along really well was enjoyable, and the synchronised walk and talk at the end was a nice way to wrap up the episode.

From this season’s approach, I’m guessing this episode drawing from old war films, in particular I am getting flavours of submarine hunts, chasing after wakes, and handling big questions of WMDs, the sanity of the chain of command. This is exactly the way I like those references embedded, allowing the trek to shine through, rather than the gimmick taking over.

My only immediate quibble in this episode was when Uhura went Rambo in the caves, it did feel like the Andorians went down a little easy, but I wasn’t that bothered by it. A’Sha leaving is fine, I guess, she didn’t feel very present throughout the season anyway.

Please, more of this type of episode.

Human infested cities. Cat infested cafés. Cattle infested farms.

The characters are definitely the stand-out of this episode. It’s interesting as RTD explores the idea of fans-in-the-plot in the recent episode “Lux”, but it was done a lot better here. The Linda portions of the episode are far better than I remember them.

I am not a fan of this episode. It starts off feeling like a clip show, develops into something of a comedy episode with ok jokes, before ending on some dark drama. The direction kind of feels all over the place - found footage, clip show, musical, or traditional episode. And I’m not sure who Elton was actually recording his video for. Is it his own therapy? Breaking the 4th wall? Or is he intending to share it online?

The ultimate message of this episode is that the doctor is dangerous, and being around him is dangerous. The takeaway seems intended to set up the fact that there are consequences and that not everything turns out alright in the end for the doctor. This doesn’t add anything to the series as we’ve already seen this happen plenty of times.

I did enjoy Peter Kay as the monster, he carries this over the top energy that sells him as the kind of man who could just walk in to a place and take charge. All the existing Linda members feel real and grounded, and there’s some good acting. Seeing the whole group grow from the conspiracy minded folk that we saw one instance of in the very first episode of the DW reboot to this community that makes art and music is really nice. The domestic aspect of Jackie’s life sans Rose was nice to see, and if there’s one big takeaway from this episode that means anything, it’s her becoming a bit more three dimensional.

I won’t comment on the conclusion, because the conclusion is stupid. Overall, I think this episode failed for me mostly from the direction and lack of a clear justification for the plot.

Random extra thoughts:

• The doctor has to deal with a shadow in elton’s house. Shadows like in the library?
• Jackie’s flirting is awkward and cringy but by the end I think it was actually a good choice for her character
• The absorbaloff is a silly monster, and seeing it run around some back alleys in its underwear is peak silly. Perhaps if this had been a purely comedic episode, with the scooby doo homage at the start, it might have worked better

I agree that Pike’s retrospective of his alternate life was a good idea to explore - its the kind of thing that older trek series would quickly shuffle on after that week’s episode (like O’briens stint in virtual jail). Pike has done a lot of thinking about coming to terms with his vision of his own future, so thinking about his alternate future was a necessary next step.

I just wish it had been given a better story in which to bubble about. If it’s a serious character point, let it be told in a serious story. Let us see his job as a captain of a discovery-science-diplomacy ship lead him down that path of self reflection. Adding a comedic glamour filter on top of everything, in my opinion, cheapens the end result. It bugs me that so far we had erica/scotty needing to be drunk to learn to get along, spock needing to be dreaming / nightmaring, and now pike and co. stuck in a Q game in order to grow as people.

I actually had no idea who Deidre Hall was, though from the visual language I got the impression she was meant to be “someone important”. I assumed they had picked a random actress and were making a meta-joke about guest actors on TV shows. I was half expecting her to vanish at the very end.

One of the things I love about Star Trek is when it allows us to see the best of humanity when faced with hard sci fi, working together despite adverse circumstances. TNG exemplified the utopian vision of humanity struggling against the odds but working together to get by. Voyager took aliens-of-the-week to an extreme yet still kept space for good character interactions alongside the sci-fi. Even DS9, which in its conception is closest to a soap opera, managed to mix family dynamics with spacefaring adventure. I will accept these older series had their fair share of stinkers, but all of these series were able to blend pastiches of classic film and stories into their episodes without it being hammy and grating.

Now, this episode. The key line is “Space adventures leave little time for humans to deal with their inner struggles”. This line is important because it is wrong.

1. We’ve barely had any space adventures
2. The best star trek does allow time for humans to deal with inner struggles

I enjoy Rhys Darby but not in this one. I’m glad they didn’t make this one be all a dream in the end and I like that the final scenes show some real character moments, but Uhura and M’Benga (and possibly also Pike) could have had their conversations in amongst non-gimmicked episodes. Also, the ship has a counsellor? Either they’re new, or haven’t been doing their job very well. How many times has Spock broken up with someone now? Didn’t care for the gimmick this episode. I fast forwarded through parts of it.

I agree about Doctor and Ida chatting. As with episodes like “midnight”, when the doctor gets to talk, within a confined space, trying to figure out a problem, with good writing and direction behind it, it makes for some of the best episodes.

I enjoyed this second episode, not as much as the first. The A plot opens with the captain taking the bolt gun and reacts that it only has one bullet - putting a suicide gun in doctor who is a dark choice, I like it. There’s a lot of scuttling about ducts, maybe too much. But the tension and sacrifice from Jefferson helped humanise his otherwise aggressive character. The “nice view” jokes in the ducts were unnecessary. Ditto the scooby do esque reveal that the beast was still among them.

Throughout the B plot we get a discussions about belief systems, and this is the highlight of the episode for me. I enjoyed these and the doctor living out a death wish by cutting his rope in the pit. The big let down for me was seeing the actual beast at the end - like any good lovecraftian outsider monster, the mind can conjure a scarier monster, and once you present it, it was a bit of a let down. Doctor says the beast can’t speak, as it’s intelligence has moved somewhere else, yet as it is animated it still seems to have intelligence. The grin and laugh particularly doesn’t work for me, Toby was already laughing in it’s stead. Animators and live action not quite meshing well.

By the end I am confused about the scale of the planet’s size, how the tardis got into the pit when the door was sealed, and why “strategy 9” exists and they didn’t use it earlier. The ood plotlines went nowhere, highlighting this was maybe not the best story in which to bring up the whole slave race plotline, though the now-released ood huddling in fear at the end was a nice addition. The resolution is decent, and I enjoyed Rose and Doctor reuniting, the discussions and emotions they had have moved them forward a bit now.

One big thing you need to think about is accessibility. This is something that came up in a conversation with a local representative in the UK - for children in public schools it is a requirements that any technology have good accessibility and not leave anyone behind. And accessibility tools on linux are, suffice to say, not great. Especially when compared with those on other closed systems. My local government ended up going with iPads for kids in schools, and the accessibility tooling on these was a factor in that choice.

I was wondering if this was meant to be the “origin story” of the dermal regenerator.

For a moment I did wonder if pelia was going to be the one who goes out to take the readings, and it would be her going out with a bang.

This one felt like we were halfway towards a proper episode. The plot had a big ethical decision, it had opportunity for growth, a decent if treknobabbly sci fi threat. But this episode really suffered from prequelitis - it never really felt that Chapel was going to do anything other than try to save Mbenga, we know mbenga survives in some capacity anyway, and Chapel’s decision is made within seconds with little room to explore “when should you let a patient go”. Ditto Spock’s grand sacrifice going out into the radiation, and a lack of tension around the pod being ejected. There was a lot going on here, possibly too much. The clear stand outs here are Scotty getting his drive and motivation to own engineering on enterprise, and nurse chapel getting the push to likewise take more agency of her life on enterprise.

I guess this is meant to be borrowing from the 24 style of show - the only 24 I’ve ever seen was when the Simpsons parodied it. Overall I didn’t really like that particular style of direction / editing, but it wasn’t terrible. It kind of bugged me that we only learnt what the threat we were counting down to was half way through the episode. This episode would probably have worked just as well without the counter, it didn’t add anything for me.

Random notes:

• The reference to the lift sketch was amusing
• Getting a bit more scortegas friendshipping is cute
• Good we managed to avoid some lizard space babies at warp limit
• Once again our Vulcan cadet comes up with a line that sounds superficially vulcan but which under scrutiny makes no sense (“I’m a vegetarian, therefore the thing you said about meat is illogical”).
• Lastly, this is probably one of the first instances where the crew acknowledge that starfleet ships apparently do not having proper electrical wiring and grounding on the control panels. That got a laugh out of me. They should fix that.

Indie games are good, but if privacy is a concern be careful of any game developed in a big engine like unity. My firewall pings a warning every time I launch a unity game because they all send analytics data back to unity. If it’s single player and you block all outgoing connections by default, you’re fine though.

I hadn’t made the connection about Sutekh, that’s neat