Space witches, spells formed at the Globe, and Shakespeare macking on Martha. What more can you ask for? Oh, yeah...a friggin' teaser for "Gridlock." Thanks a load, Sci Fi.

Usual amount of fun to be had on a Friday night. It's similiar to "The Unquiet Dead," except Martha was quicker on the uptake of questions than Rose, but the Doctor had to use pop culture to make the "the future can end right here and now" point. Plus: we get to imagine if the Doctor would tool around in a DeLorean if it was bigger on the inside.

As far as the "Unquiet Dead" parallels go, Shakespeare is more fun to watch than aging and fading Dickens. Of course, Willy is so slick, he can see through the psychic paper. Was he that ribald in real life? And as far as running gags go, "I want to use that!" was pretty funny. Also funny: another Queen pissed off at the Doctor, and he doesn't even know why this time. Sadly, he's still using the "R-word" around Martha.

Question that's been gnawing at my mind...do Time Lords sleep? Or is the Doctor up 24/7/infinity? That would explain the manic behavior.

A very fun episode. Although, I was kind of disappointed they weren't really witches.

The Doctor likes Harry Potter! I'll be in my bunk.

52 academics just pumped their fists! Gotta love DW embracing that.

Hell yeah! That plus Harry Potter - one happy English nerd.

I'm getting a bit tired of the Doctor pinning for Rose.

From what I can remember about Shakes from my theatre class is that nobody really knows that much about him. My guess, though, is that he was smart enough, a good investor (he owned part of the Globe for gosh sakes) but he was no Socrates or anything. Eh, but I enjoyed the ep enough to not let this interfere with my suspension of disbelief :).

"Wait until you've read Book 7. I cried." Bwah! The kids & I were rolling off the sofa laughing. Plus expelleramus! - hilarious. Oh, and I guess it's the spring of 2007 or so in Martha-time, then?

I enjoyed how in love with Will The Doctor was, from the moment he failed to be swayed by the psychic paper. I suppose I'm not enough of a genius to go around telling other brilliant people I meet how delighted I am to spend time with them and their swift brains instead of the usual calibre of fools with which I am surrounded.

Martha had another good showing - Excellent Questions everywhere, rolling with the adventure, quick on her feet, didn't pout or seem to dwell when "It's staring me right in the face. Oh, Rose would know," threw cold water over her snuggly aspirations. Told Shakespeare he had bad breath (and brushed her teeth before bed, too! Guess you don't get gorgeous teeth like hers growing up with Brit dentistry unless you pay a lot of attention to oral hygiene on your own.) (Nothing against UK dentists. Except for the massive dental bills we've had to pay since importing mr.daki and his teeth from thereabouts, that is.)

If I was more caught up in The Doctor's relationship with Rose I'd be well-pleased with his reaction when the not-a-witch (hmm, looked to me like she weighed the same as a duck) used Rose's name, and ended up firing him up instead of stopping him cold. As it is, I'm fine with it but still, just a little ready for him to get over it a bit more so we can all go have some lovely Who-vian adventures without a lot of moping about interrupting it all.

The power of words, the magic of putting everything in the right order and projecting it, how it can change people's minds, change who they are, what they can see. Love.

Eegah, I was looking for that, too - it would have been fun. But Sycorax was a great touch, I enjoyed it. The "that's a good line" banter was entertaining.

Shakespeare - I've always assumed, given how ribald the comedies are, that he was a bit of a horndog himself. Plus all of those lusty sonnets! I know the wife was off in Stratford-upon-Avon, but it's not like there was a shortage of lusty wenches in London for the famous Will, was there?

Was anyone else expecting Shakespeare to say "What the Socrates" or something, as a callback to Dickens' "What the Shakespeare?" A bit disappointed that we didn't get it.

Pretty neat how Davies poached a word from The Tempest as the bad guys of an episode, then turned around and have the Doctor provide Shakespeare with the word Sycorax here.

Shakespeare+Doctor Who+Harry Potter=awesome. I really, really liked that episode. Happy, excited, fanboy Doctor, useful Martha, Shakespeare! (hi, I'm monkeypants, and I'm a theatre nerd), and a smart, well-fleshed out villain with a cool plan that actually fits in with history that I know something about!

Why didn't he make Martha change her clothes? It seems directly contradictory to "The Unquiet Dead"--unless they were going to make it a plot point, which they didn't. There was a throwaway line, but otherwise...huh. I suppose it would have taken up more time and been sort of a pointless scene if they weren't making the clothes-changing a plot point but making it so important in the first season and then totally contradicting it here just seems weird. Oh well. I suppose it fed into Shakespeare's flirting, and his eventual figuring out of their true identities, but I don't think putting her into period dress would have necessarily killed that.

Also, I love the Globe, a whole lot, and it makes me totally happy that I've been somewhere that DW has filmed. (Er, they did actually film at the Globe, right?)

PS What the effing eff, Sci-Fi? Way to not even show the end credits of the show, let alone show us a lovely trailer for Gridlock!

Did the Doctor make Rose change? I thought she chose to.

I heard that TPTB after The Unquiet Dead didn't want Billie dressing to the period, which might explain why Martha didn't change.

Ooh! I wasn't sure for a second so I checked the recap:


Not crazy! Yeah, riot-causing and such. And Martha's tank top is much skimpier than what Rose was wearing, I think. Though, I don't quite remember what Rose was wearing. Though once she puts on her (totally awesome, I *want*) jacket, it's not really so bad. Though, I think the whole riot-causing issue is probably worse in Dickens' time than Shakespeare's as long as you're not in front of the queen. Really, I think Nine would care more than Ten. Though truthfully I think it's more about the structure of the episode than actual conventions of the time. Or, like you said, whether they wanted to see her in period dress.

Freedonia--land of the brave and free! DW gives a shout out to The Marx Brothers.

I loved it. When I heard three withches, I thought there would be a MacB tie-in. And yes, monkeypants, they did film at The Globe. I got a little fanboy when Ten stood where I had in front of the stage. And, Sci-Fi you couldn't run two less promos for that fucking monster croc movie you've got on tomorrow night so I could see the damn credits and next week's promo? Morons!

Not only was there no Gridlock teaser, we didn't get any closing credits at all! Not even squeezed to one side and scrolled through double time. That's just disrespectful. On the other hand, at least we did get the episode title shown in the opening credits this week, hopefully the absence of the title card in Smith & Jones was just a one time aberration.

And for anyone who might be interested, I also counted two times when the beginings of scenes were edited out: the Bedlam scene, where the keeper offers to whip some of the inmates for the entertainment of the Doctor, Martha & Willie, and the first parts of the performance of Love's Labor's Won.



Weird how that winds up being perfectly timed to promote book 7 in the US. But Martha's timeline was a point of much contention for most of the season in the UK thread, and this reference in particular was troublesome. It seems that the show itself couldn't quite make up its mind if she was from 2007 or 2008, but eventually, by the end of the season, they seem to have decided that she was from 2008 (later on there's an offhand mention of the Racnos ship attacking London from The Runaway Bride as happening "last Christmas", and TRB definitely takes place in Christmas 2007). That would make the line about book seven here either A)an assumption by the Doctor that Martha hasn't had time to read last year's best seller yet because she's been too busy being an almost Doctor B) a suggestion that in the Whoniverse J.K. Rowling is a year behind on her writing, what with all the distractions from being invaded by Cybermen & Spider creatures & whatnot. or C) a screw up.



Yes, I thought "What the Chaucer?" would have had quite a nice ring to it myself.

What I liked about this episode is Martha getting such a kick out of her first trip through time, everything's new to her, not knowing exactly how all the paradox stuff works. I don't have any real problem with Rose mentions in theory at this point, but I thought they sounded particularly awkward and rang false here. One thing I really didn't like was when they did that thing that fanciful Sci-Fi shows so often do, say "oh, no, that's not fairytale magic, it's just some kind of alien science that happens to perfectly mimic fairytale magic". I'd much rather they just have good 'ol fashioned witches & magic as we know them exist. The explanation they tried to come up with here; -we base our science on numbers & math, they use "the power of words" as the basis of a completely different, but equally valid "science"- is just plain idiotic. Just let the magic words be magic words, let the magic of the theater & the words of a genius author be the actual "magic" that they are, not some half-assed "science" that does nothing but make the term "science" absolutely meaningless.

D'oh! That's why this thread is active...Sci Fi showed it tonight.

I'm a bit thick, me. :)

I was expecting MacBeth also. But since MacBeth was written serveral years after the setting of this play, I guess we're left to assume that they inspired it. :)

Did previous Doctors pine over their companions when changing to new ones? I know at this point he's thinking short-term with Martha, but it was quite careless of him to throw Rose's name around without considering how it affected Martha.

It was nice to see Shakespeare so accepting of technologies and theories he didn't understand. Was it Arthur C. Clarke who said something like, to a primitive society, any technologically advanced science would seem like magic? I'm glad the writers didn't take that route with Will, and gave him such an open mind instead.

No, they didn't. About the only time I can think of the Doctor mentioning a previous companion to someone that they didn't travel with was in Pyramids of Mars when Sarah Jane puts on a dress that used to belong to Victoria.

Well, that and when Six kept calling Peri by the wrong name. But he was still getting over a rather nasty regeneration at that stage and he wasn't so much bringing up old companions as having trouble remembering her name (Though, you almost wonder if he didn't call her Jamie just to piss her off. ;) )

I have to disagree about her not pouting. She rolled over in such a scorned little huff when he pointed out that Rose would have known exactly what to say. Man, have I been there!

Overall, I liked the episode. And not only because Shakespeare left me a little drooly. He must have had some AWFUL breath for Martha to have resisted him so easily!

I'm wondering if there was more to the very ending other than the Doctor saying that he didn't even know what he had done to the Queen. I was watching on DVR just a few minutes behind real time, and somehow it lost about 30seconds between him saying he can't wait to find out and the start of the next show. Anything more? Any hint of where they might be going next? (I'm feeling Quantum Leapy, I suppose. I always liked that he would leap into the next episode just long enough to say "Oh Boy.")

Oh yea- I was also wondering about Martha's costuming. I like that she had the good sense to cover herself up with the jacket at least. And really, she wasn't showing any more cleavage than any of the other women. What was revealing (By Olde Tymey standards) were her fitted jeans!

RTD said in the Confidential that that was one reason they decided to do Shakespeare: nobody knows enough about him to get pissed off at them getting things wrong. But they all knew that his plays were bit hits at a time when there was no other venue for popular culture and entertainment--no recorded music, most people couldn't read and anyway books were expensive, no movies or TV--and went with the idea that he'd be in a position comparable to a rock star today. And didn't the actor who played Shakespeare pull that aspect off well? He really had a lot of charisma.

And not only did they film parts of it in the Globe, they went to a town* where there's still an actual Elizabethan courtyard inn standing and in decent shape to film the scenes where Shakespeare lived and drank. Which seems to go above and beyond the call of duty when you have to worry about budgeting such things as spaceships and foreign planets elsewhere in the season.

As for Martha: I wonder if one reason he didn't have her change clothes was that they were in London instead of Cardiff? Much more of a melting pot, much more cosmopolitan, much more likely that people would have seen strange-looking people in strange-looking outfits walking down the street, even in 1599 (or maybe especially in 1599). I loved her Excellent Questions, especially asking how time travel worked and not getting a decent answer. And I loved the way she came up with Excellent Answers, like the fact that a sonnet has fourteen lines just like the Globe had (has?) fourteen sides. I thought, "Betcha Rose wouldn't have come up with THAT one, Doc!"

*Not Chester or York or any of the other places I would have guessed, either.

So obviously, the Doctor is still Ten when he does whatever to piss off Elizabeth I. Which means if Tennant decides to leave before they answer this one, they're totally screwed. I imagine they'll want to do it pretty soon, then, though I don't get the feeling it'll be this season. Probably next one, though.

One other bit got cut out as well, when Lilith returns to her mothers at the Globe to say she dealt with the Doctor.

My take on Martha not changing clothes was that Ten really initially wanted to stick to "one quick trip". Costume changing can be misconstrued as "intimate".

Though, given that Martha leaves at the end of S3, the "It's staring me right in the face" line has a bit of the ironic touch to it...

While I'd absolutely love to find out what he did to piss off Queen Elizabeth, they can always pass it off (if questioned) as a trip that went on between episodes, like all the books are supposed to be. Though I'd like to think that it's something important that we'll find out about. Because yay, Queen Elizabeth. Especially if it's young Elizabeth.

Also? Why thank you, Sci-Fi, for showing the credits and the Gridlock trailer after the 11 o'clock repeat. I do appreciate being able to see it, but c'mon, I really don't think between the two, that was the right choice. Because making Painkiller Jane start early was oh so important.

Just a side note - SciFi's repeat at 11 had both end credits and teaser for "Gridlock".

Some good lines for Martha in this one, and fun. :)

A very cute episode. I'm not sure if they were going for fun and light, but it came across that way. I thought I'd be annoyed with all the HP references, but I found that they really added to the silliness of the episode.
I loved the bit at the end with Elizabeth I. I hope that they come back to that at some point.

I got a Gridlock teaser (It's gonna be excellent) and end credits during the second showing.

On the 11pm ET repeat, SciFi made it through to the end credits and the preview for next week, so there must have been some sort of technical glich in there on the earllier airing.

The episode itself -- quite enjoyable. I really like DT as the Doctor, he's been growing on me.

(And with the Harry Potter reference, I can't resist mentioning that in some ways Daniel Radcliffe really looks a bit like a younger DT. Or is that just me imaging things?)

Not really. Fans will just chalk it up to an untelevised adventure...And then 15 years from now DT can do an audio of Ten's meeting Elizabeth the first, and everyone will go nuts to buy it. :D

I liked how "boyhood hero"-ish the Doctor acted towards Shakespeare. It was refreshing to see that there is someone in the universe and time that he can revere more than Rose. I loved how they kept on alluding to famous lines a la Shakespeare and I cringed when the Doctor mentioned Rose, especially during the bed scene. All that moping and "Rose would know, you're just a novice" sighing-I was half expecting her to haul off, but that is Catherine Tate's job, I suppose..

I also found it interesting how Martha's race was addressed, first with her asking the Doctor if she would be alright in this time period and then with Shakespeare and his "Queen of Afric, Ethiop" bit- it adds another dimension to the character because she's not just out of time, she's of a different race (Earth-wise) and out of time, in this case.

Also, why didn't the Doctor give Martha props for that "expelliamus" that essentially saved the day? I see a pattern emerging...

Well actually, she got mad when the Doctor pointed out that he was taking her home the next day. It was the "temporary companion" thing that irked her, not the Rose angst. She actually had a look of empathy when he mentioned Rose but the Doctor isn't even giving her a chance to be a friend or assistant/companion.

Please, Please, our UK friends, tell me that he stops this Rose-Pining soon. I grew to hate Rose with the passion of a thousand fiery suns and to hear The Doctor mentioning her in that way causes my head to feel as if it is going to explode. No other companions ever got more than a passing mention, if that, and now we are supposed to believe that The Doctor fell in love with Rose? I think he loved all of his companions but he wasn't in love with any (except maybe Romana, but she wasn't human). I guess, I just feel that RTD is being disrespectful of the history of the Doctor and his former companions.
And, by the way, Doctor--no, Rose would not have known what it was that was 'staring you right in the face.' Even the husband, who actually liked Rose, snorted in disdain at that line.
Hmm..we need a Bitterness Thread. ;-)
However, apart from the Rose whinging, I loved this episode. It was so much better than the Dickens episode, in my opinion. The Bard was funny, intelligent and charming. The pacing was fantastic and the younger witch was adorable. Evil, yeah, but still, I enjoyed the way the actress portrayed her.

Two brief, minor quibbles for me:
1. As mentioned, Martha's jeans would have caused some interest from the locals.
2. Martha should have known or guessed "Bedlam" in context of its current meaning - it was a long-time and well known hospital for lunatics. I suspect the writer didn't think the audience would know it, but I'm not a doctor, nor a Londoner, and I knew that "bedlam" was derived from the name of a famous lunatic asylum. (Or maybe I'm special?)

Loved the Harry Potter shout out!

So, my mom thinks Martha is absolutely amazing. She said it was wonderful to see (and these are her words exactly), "An African-American woman using a nice British accent instead of a ghetto one." Then I explained to her that Freema is British and she realized she was enjoying something that I enjoy (which she refuses to do). But, she still watched it and loved the Shakespeare quotes and Will saying, "I might use that." My dad liked the HP references.

So, if my parents liked it, it means it was really good.

I loved Ten in the Bethlam scene - so caring and comforting. Allowing the architect to keep the memories but live them through someone else as a story was very touching and endearing. That was such a way to free him. I had to explain to Mom the Gallifreyan mind-meld thing that he was doing though, which kind of ruined the scene then for me.

I agree with your two points WanderFree, and that's what bugged me most about this episode. That and the way the Puppet!Shakespeare scene was acted. And I questioned the Harry Potter references, but it was well-timed here in the US (as opposed to the UK release of the ep).

Best lines?
Martha: Let me out! Let me out!
Ten: It's not like the rest of the building is shouting that.

Having helped my wife study Shakespeare's sonnets for one of her college courses (and having helped her come up with an explanation for them that is, so far as we can tell, completely original), I was amused at the writer's explanation for the start of the Dark Lady sonnets. Which, I guess, means her comment about his breath rankled Will something awful later - the later Dark Lady sonnets aren't really terribly complimentary...

Looking at this episode twice - one nice thing about the SciFi repeats, even if they glitch on the start and the end - I caught, on later viewing, the Old Who feel to it, all nicely braided in with the good New Who things that I love. The excitement and giddiness wasn't just in Tennant's performance; it was all through the story line; the little jokes, which I thought were incredibly obvious (Old Who), and gleefully so (New Who), the witches (Old), the intellectual fun of looking at words as formulae (New), the cheesiness (Old), the cheesiness (New). Heh.

BlueOwl, I understand your point. I've just always been a sucker for the idea that science is magic. Particularly math, which got twinned with philosophy by the Greeks. I've often thought that pure math (which I love because of what it is, but don't understand worth a good goddamn because I started getting confused at division, and it was all downhill from there) can be called the building blocks of the universe precisely because it provides both the building blocks of the actual and the building blocks of the irrational or the numinous. So, yeah, words and numbers sharing the same powers? An irresistible draw to me, even when the theory's cackled by gals in bad makeup.

I didn't think Ten was mooshing over Rose, in the bed scene, but he was being obnoxiously, (almost heroically obnoxiously) blind and insensitive. Which is, bless him, to be expected. He was thinking aloud about Rose, yes, but less about Rose being lost to him, and more about the way they used to operate. There's a slight, but definite, difference between the two. And the writing was also built - this I noticed on the second go-round - to emphasize that he was, quite inadvertently, talking about Martha. Who was, after all, staring him right in the face, and he didn't even notice it. And, bless her, she had every reason to get ticked off. At this point, I think she was less hurt than insulted.

Also, Eegah:

Damn. I feel like a lummox (someone go get me one)...I hadn't caught the Tempest thing. See? You learn so much with Who.

And, yessss "Fifty Seven Academics Just Pumped Their Fists!" Wait. Fifty Seven? Or Fifty Two? I'm confused.

See, I was under the impression that he had used several of his sonnets to repeatedly woo women to his bed, the one from tonight included.

Thank you! (relieved sigh). When he said that my mind was grasping around for the reference and kept coming up blank *as usual*. I loved the one and only Dark Lady Sonnet I read. Hilarious and, yes, not very flattering.
This episode is better and better. I can barely wait to watch it again.
I think that Martha and Ten have a much better 'feel' to their relationship than Rose and Ten. Rose was fantastic with Nine but it always seemed so giddy and weird with Ten. Last season, I don't think I watched any of the episodes more than once; so far I have watched all three of these at least twice and, unless something drastic happens, I don't see that trend ending soon. (Well, too many more Rose mentions might do it).

A bunch of people commented on that when this episode first aired in Britain. I've got to say, though, that I'm not sure he was mind-melding. All I really have to compare it to is the method he used with Reinnette, but there he held her head in his hands throughout and closed his eyes, as if he needed the physical contact to make the connection and the closed eyes to concentrate. Tonight wasn't like that. What I do think he did was treat the builder with more kindness than he had gotten in ages, and included sympathetic touch as part of that kindness. There may have been a little psychic work in calming him down, but I think it was at least as much the "human" contact that did it. It wasn't like he suddenly became sane and rational. It was more like the voices in his head briefly quieted down enough that he could hear his own thoughts and memories.

Actually it was "57 academics just punched the air," wasn't it? Effectively the same thing though, I think.

That line bugged me because, as funny as it was, it was out-of-character for the Doctor IMO (I'm an old-school Whovian). The Doctor never used to take that much notice of human sexuality. But then, that's a result of the original show never taking much notice of human sexuality (or any sexuality). Still, I suppose I can't complain much, because there are nifty references to the original series here, and in many spots it felt like an old episode. I liked the shout-out to the Eternals -- 1983's "Enlightenment" was a favorite.
I agree here. Unfortunately, New Who feels the need to stuff romance and UST (unresolved sexual tension) -- the bane of the lazy TV writer -- into numerous nooks and crannies. The old DW was one of the few shows in existence not plagued by that. Heck, even the Doctor and Romana didn't display that much UST (as far as I noticed anyway) and she was a frakkin' Time Lady. On the other hand, not giving other previous companions more than a passing mention in the old days was kind of rude in a way, and I like to see the show acknowledge its own history. Some have fanwanked that the Doctor is more emotionally fragile since the Time War.

ETA: Good point BlueOwl... it didn't occur to me that RTD intended it that way -- to make the Doctor fragile so that he could become more attached to companions. If so then that was a very clever way for RTD to open the show up to romantic/near-romantic relationships. Heck I just figured it was a nice mysterious backstory.

Is there anything in the Dark Lady sonnets about skin-tight jeans-type clothing? Heh.

I think in this particular case, it would have been nice to see both the Doctor & Martha dress for the times for a couple of reasons: (1 It's Martha's first adventure, her first time travel experience, and struggling with getting all duded up in period dress would have been nice as part of the whole new experience for her. (2 It's a pretty fun, light hearted episode, and playing dress up would have fit with that vibe, especially in this case since 3) Elizabethan England is the period of the most utterly ridiculous, stupid looking clothing in human history (with the possible exception of the 1970's).



There was nothing more on his future encounter with Queen Elizabeth in this episode. Both the BBC and Sci Fi channel have (different) traditional "Next time on Doctor Who" trailers they play over the closing credits, but Who generally doesn't do "Quantum Leap" style segways right into the beginning of the next ep. except for the 2nd season season finale which ran right into the opening of The Runaway Bride Christmas special (and the gimick was repeated with the 3rd season finale running right into the next upcomming Christmas special).

But you do have to kind of wonder what little game the Doctor is playing with Martha with his "one trip only" business. It's hardly a spoiler to say we all know damm well that the Doctor has no intention of dumping her at the side of the road next week. He didn't really decide to come back at the end of Smith & Jones just to give Martha one free ride as "thanks" like he said, he had clearly sized her up as a companion, and had even picked a moment, when her family had just made her crazy and desperately wishing she could go off & escape somewhere, when she would be the most amenable to agreeing to go with him. If you think about it that way, his antics when lying in bed with her start to seem less clueless and very deliberate. It seems likely he can, in fact, see that Martha's coming on to him, but he's setting up a series of walls between them in a very methodical way. First he flat out tells he that he doesn't even recognize her crush staring him right in the face, then he dredges up Rose and deliberately sticks her between them (and really, would Rose really know just what to say at that point to make the Doctor realize what about this situation with the witches he's been missing? Seems to me the Doctor deliberately trying to make Martha feel inferior by claiming that Rose had powers of intuition & insight that we never really saw), then he reminds Martha she's a "novice" and that he's going to "take her back home tomorrow", even though we know damm well he has no intention of doing so.

It strikes me as very manipulative and cruel, and I suspect it's a power thing; I think at this stage he doesn't want Martha to know how much he actually needs her, or at least needs someone. He wants her to think she's always on the verge of being dumped at the side of the road, that she's going to have to be impossibly brilliant for him to tolerate her hanging around him (meanwhile, he's the guy who practically begged *Donna* to come with him at the end of TRB). Way back in Father's Day, Nine had already found himself in many ways wrapped around Rose's finger: He readily, cheerfully agreed to take Rose back to see her dead father even though he should have known even this was not a good idea, he then took her to witness the moment of his death which any fool could plainly see was just asking for trouble, and he even took her back to that same moment a second time which is *absolutely* forbidden, the all time #1 Time Lord no-no. He was absolute putty in her hands, and later when he tries to threaten leaving her she just said that he won't, "I know how much you hurt" I think at this point he doesn't want to let anyone else ever get that close again, especially not after the way he ultimately lost Rose. Not a very flattering picture of the Doctor, but I just don't know if I buy him being as completely clueless here as he seems.

ETA:


I don't think that's a fanwank, I think that's the central idea behind RTD killing off the Time Lords and making the Doctor the only survivor.

Is there any place I can check out the cut scenes? It seems that we're destined to be denied any whip-related footage (see: "Girl In The Fireplace, The").

As for the Rose/Martha parallels...funny how Martha immediately went for Ye Olden English Accent, just like Rose went Scottish in "Tooth & Claw." Also funny that the Doctor had to step in and chide his companion both times.

I'm not a Shakespeare geek, but I didn't feel too lost. I did know about Hamnet from Neil Gaiman's award-winning story from The Sandman, "A Midsummer Night's Dream," so that didn't surprise me.

Feh. I watch baseball before Doctor Who, and somebody beats me to the "it's just one trip, don't bother to change your clothes" explanation.

I'm of two minds about the continuing Rose obsession. On the one hand: annoying and not in keeping with old Who. On the other hand: She was THE Companion for anyone who only knows the new series, so I can see a sort of sense in acknowledging how major a change it is for those viewers. And he specifically told her he wouldn't cast her aside, that she was different from all the others; more than just being more emotionally fragile since the Time War and latching on to any anchor, he may well have convinced himself as well as her that he could have a different sort of relationship with a Companion, and he's not handling waking from that dream as well as he might.

BlueOwl, I saw your latest post after I wrote the above, so: yeah, that, only you said it better. As for the science/magic thing, though, I think it's the case that the show has consistently said all along that it's always science, never magic, if not always a known sort of science. I happen to like that approach myself anyway, so my memory might be a bit skewed in that respect.

Martha so far is quite satisfying -- she's trying to get it right and she's using her brain. As I recall, the show tried to have an intelligent female character back in the Pertwee days, I think, Dr. Liz maybe, but they found it didn't work. I like the thought that we've advanced to the point that a secondary character can pose the necessary Excellent Questions without having to be effectively "dumb".

I have to say, when Will saw through the psychic paper (which he got back when, exactly? -- or has multiple copies of?), I thought he was going to turn out to be an alien or time-traveler himself. Darn, I'll have to watch the episode again to follow what was really happening.

As for the mind-melding, it looked to me like a psychic-powers accelerated hypnosis session. The language was very similar to that of recall hypnosis -- at least the kind that shows up in police procedurals. "You're at the bottom of the stairs ... you see a movie playing on the screen but it's just a movie ...."

I almost extended my recording settings for security, and then I almost recorded the second showing just in case the first one screwed up, but then I thought, why bother, SciFi hasn't had any problems with the starts/ends of this particular show before. Clearly, I am a fool. I'm lucky that the last five minutes of the second airing were still in my "live" buffer; I only missed the arrow into the door with the first airing, but if I hadn't seen it I would have been certain I had missed much more. (It would kill them to air a repeat on a different day?) Every week brings me that little bit closer to buying a region-2 player and the UK DVD release ....

And finally, thank the stars they didn't go for the dreadful "what the (not-Dickens not-Shakespeare) ..." pun!

That original scene in Tooth & Claw was an inside joke; Tennant was allowed to use his natural Scottish accent for the first part of that ep (or at least an actual Scottish accent that is perhaps stronger than his own), and that scene was basically a Scotsman wincing at how their accent is commonly butchered by outsiders trying to imitate it, much like how Southerners in the US groan when so many US actors use a Georgia accent for someone from New Orleans. I originally thought the callback in this episode suffered from the lack of that "inside" element, but it turns out Tennant has also done a fair bit of Shakespeare, and this could be interpreted as another inside jab at bad Shakespearian actors or even writers who write in cheesy pseudo-Elizabethan dialog.

I definitely got the vibe that in reciting that particular sonnet Willie was just in effect using a line on Martha that had no doubt worked very well for him many times before. In fact, since we learn soon after that he'd already worked out that she was from the future and she seems to be familiar with his work, I think he was deliberately trying to con Martha into thinking that what he probably already knows will become one of his most famous sonnets (based on the amount of tail it gets him) was actually written for her.

Excellent episode! Loved it.

The running "I should use that/you can use that" jokes were great. I especially (as others have said) loved that it was the Doctor who "invented" the word Sycorax.

I about died when Martha suggested "Expelliarmus!" Heeeee. Great timing on that for us US viewers. I hope JKR was pleased to have her work in DW. I know I would be. :-)

One question: what did the Doctor say after Shakespeare replied suggestively to him saying "Flirting later!" or whatever? I missed that because the laughter of our audience covered it. Heh.

Ooh, one more thing: the Doctor's poor hearts have had it rough recently. They both stopped dead just a day or so before one getting stopped again!

Another fun, fascinating episode that I can't wait to watch again! (Again, I will just say that I'm so very happy to have this show back!)

Let's see... where to start? Shakespeare was very cool, and pretty much seemed in character for how I've imagined him, as far as that goes. Loved the consistency of the Doctor's character, getting all fanboy geeky at meeting another of his literary heroes. Loved the Harry Potter references - laughed a *lot* at both of them. Still quite liking Martha.

I'm glad that Martha didn't have to give the Doctor CPR again this ep - that would've been too much. The scene with her restarting one of his hearts was amusing, though.

Still enjoying (well, for the most part) seeing all the parallels to s1 and 2.

This is paraphrasing a bit, but:

Doctor: C'mon! You can flirt later!
Shakespeare: (Teasingly) Promise, Doctor?
Doctor: (Looks like he's actually considering it.) Oh, 57 academics just punched the air.

Oh, okay! I see. Thanks, DC.

When I first saw it I was getting the same vibe and was quite relieved that they didn't go there. I'm all for having some historical figures turn out to be aliens (particularly the really eccentric/outrageous/unearthly/improbable ones like Rasputin), but someone like Shakespeare, the most towering literary genius the world's ever produced? C'mon, throw a bone to humanity, let him actually be one of us.

I'm not really sure, but the way it works on this show seems to be that to the great teeming mass of humanity (or even many alien life forms) the Doctor can pass through pretty much unnoticed, be it because of some low-level psychic field produced by the TARDIS or the Doctor himself or dramatic convention, any sort of hand-waving non-explanation of "Oh, I'm just passing through" seems to be good enough and people seem to overlook how very much he doesn't belong. But more often than not it seems there are people who are "special", who have a bit more on the ball, who will look him straight in the eye and say "Just where exactly do you come from, Doctor"? and who are clearly aware that he does not answer the question (these tend to be the same people who don't buy the line that the Cyberman invasion was all some sort of mass hallucination). Sometimes these people are full-on psychic and can actually see visions of the future in the companions, like Gweneth in The Unquiet Dead or Tim in HN/FOB, who I would unhesitatingly assert must be Gweneth's grandson were it not that Gweneth seemed to have died a virgin. Sometimes they're just really bright people who deep down seem to have some vague sense of what the doctor is, but they also know that they'll never really understand it and all they can do is accept that there's something very special about him. And apparently a very rare few truly remarkable people with the temperament to accept such things are actually able to work out the truth. Aside from Shakespeare the major example of this last category would be Pete Tyler in Father's Day, who was actually able to understand exactly what was going on and accept what needed to be done before the Doctor, even.

I think he chooses to be clueless when it comes to Martha crushing on him. He still reeling from the hurt of being on the human side of the scale and is now shifting to the God side of the scale. One of the biggest pro and con to being human is the emotion of love. He felt it with Rose and look what happened. If he detaches that human aspect from his understanding of people, he can see Martha as a smart person who has potential to be a good Assistant as opposed to Rose who was a Companion. All the while choosing not to see the doe eyes she gives him, or the subtle innuendo/flirting she tosses his way.

That being said, I too am tired with all the Rose mentions and Rose angst.

I don't think the Doctor is aware of how Martha feels about him. I don't think he's being cruel, manipulative or even wilfully blind - I think he just doesn't notice. You could argue that he should notice, and that Martha has made her feelings obvious, but even if this is true, I think subconsciously he's not prepared to confront her feelings for him. Whether you accept that he loved Rose as she loved him (and I don't think he did, because I don't think he's capable of loving a human in that way) or not, she was the centre of his world. He needed her to make him feel again. The pain of losing her is real and it doesn't have to be proof of romantic love, but rather proof of the Doctor's intense loneliness.

Oh, I just loved it. I was a theatre major in college, and I completely geeked out at seeing the Power of the Theatre writ large. All the little Shakespeare touches thrilled me to my geeky soul (too many to be recounted, but above all the way the three witches were played exactly the way the weird sisters are almost inevitably played in productions of Macbeth, the better to inspire Will to write them that way).

Random positive thoughts:

- Casting Cassie from HEX as a witch was inspired.

- As usual, the throwaway lines were just about the best thing - many have already been mentioned, but also: "You never know, the queen might turn up.... As if - she never does," and, "Love's Labours Won" - I don't think much of sequels - they're never as good as the original." Also the fact that the actors freely admit they don't always understand Will's writing. Hee.

- If we accept that certain geniuses can see/accept the Doctor and his reality, perhaps Queen Elizabeth I is another such (a political genius as opposed to an artistic one)? That might preclude her having to meet up again(before) with Ten as such. (That being said, I'll take as much TENnant as I can get).

- I thought Freema was playing the fine line between feeling flattered by Will's attentions and needing to hold him at arm's length very nicely.

- Despite his Rose references (which didn't bother me as much as the complete amnesia with regard to former companions in old Who), I liked the way he took fire at so many of Martha's ideas (e.g. the connection between the Globe and the TARDIS, "expelliarmus," etc.).

One minor negative:

- I know the writer might need to explain "Bedlam" to some viewers, but I don't necessarily buy that Martha the medical student didn't know what it was.

ETA:



maoife, I think you've got something there.

I didn't think the Doctor was that awful in the bed scene. Yes, he was oblivious (or he seemed to be) and the "Rose would have known" was tacked-on and annoying, but apart from that, I don't know how he was supposed to act while she seemed to expect something sexeee to happen. Just a couple of hours before, when they took off, he told her in no incertain terms that the kiss in the hospital didn't mean anything and quite firmly asked her to stop flirting. (IIRC, the words "Don't" and "Stop it!" figured in there.)

She apparently got the message, but once they find themselves in a bedroom, she seems to have completely forgotten that conversation and seems to be in the expectation of something intimate. What is he supposed to do? Repeat the "Don't get any ideas." conversation? That would be even more obnoxious and insulting. Yes, maybe he's not ready to confront her feelings, or just maybe he likes her a lot but he's simply not interested in her in that way. In which case the best thing to do is to be just friendly, try not to encourage her, ignore her crush and hope it will go away in time.

So I think that either he was completely oblivious (he can be), or he wasn't, but he wasn't being cruel and manipulative, he was simply sending her another "not interested" message. As for Martha, I understood perfectly why she was pissed off, but she seems to be doing that thing where she ignores all the negative messages (their conversation in the TARDIS just a couple of hours before) and interprets every smile and sign of interest (see the way she beams when he tells her "I like you, Martha Jones.") as a sign that things might get romantic.

So they were both a bit annoying in that scene: Ten was (as usual), and she was, because why get hopeful about sharing a bed (or having an intimate conversation) when the guy just told you that this wasn't a date and that he wasn't interested? That said, I found the scene amusing. But mostly, I was very distracted by the toothbrush. She asked for it, held it for a while, and jumped in bed with him without using it, and I kept wanting to tell her "Dude, go brush your teeth!"

I can buy that Shakespeare might get some of his best lines from a time traveler, and even come up with words that would repel an alien threat; but Shakespeare saying "As if..." ???

My favorite throwaway line was after they watched "Love's Labours Lost" and Martha commented on how it was worth dealing with the stench. This coincides with her giddiness over time travel being punctuated by a dumped chamber pot and avoiding being hit on by Shakespeare due to his incredibly bad breath. Most science fiction tends to gloss over how stinky time travel would be. From a hygienic standpoint, time travel would be incredibly gross.

I'm also kind of rolling my eyes at Martha following the Doctor in a perpetual case of blue ovaries, but in her defense, someone who looks like Freema Agyeman probably isn't used to men being oblivious.