tankgirl73

I'm quite sure he said "mortal", not "boring".

I think that's what the reminders about River were about. It took me awhile to make the connection -- I couldn't understand what the framing Missy story had to do with the simulation story, why thinking about what was said at the execution would help sim-Doctor figure out to send himself an email via the glasses. He pulled out River's diary, quoted it, and emailed himself from inside a simulation. How could he do that? The simulation was "too good", as he said, and dealing with Time Lord tech can have unforeseen consequences, where even the simulated version can have real capabilities. Just like simulated River, in her after-death virtual state. She could still reach out to the real world and communicate with him... so he thought just maybe he could do the same thing, and communicate with himself. It was very clearly answered, though it's more clear on re-watch. At the start of the episode, he gets the email in his glasses. There's a pixel-y dissolve to the credits. After the credits, it's a pixel-y dissolve again, to the scene where he's at the lecture podium and the pope comes in. This is what he is "watching" in the email he just received. The rest of the episode is what he is 'watching' from his glasses, basically we're just watching it with him -- until the end of course, when we go back to reality. He said it was a psychic recording, which is - presumably - why we could see stuff that the Doctor himself didn't... like when sim-Bill and sim-Nardole were at sim-Cern... Yes we know why he made the oath. He swore to protect the body for a thousand years (whether or not that 'body' was actually 'dead'). He used the very words "I give my oath" or "I make this oath" or whatever. That's the oath. My own question is: why would these bad guys, in making a simulation of earth/humanity as real and accurate as possible, include a book that tells the sim-humans that they're not real?

At least at one point, the computer voice thing said "average breaths". I think when they made the oxygen purchase. So that makes perfect sense. Not only will different people breathe differently under the same conditions, but one person will breathe differently under different conditions. So they talk about typical, average, usually-expected breaths. It's not intended to be an exact count, but a good estimate. There's certainly an algorithm that one standard breath = so many cc's of oxygen, but they just don't refer to it by those measurements because the breath count is more useful. Presumably if an individual has a breath usage which is quite far off the average, they'll be aware of that and adjust for that. That, I agree, is the part that didn't make sense.

That's what took me out of it. The Doctor said something like, he saw that her suit was low on energy and thus wouldn't be able to give her a strong enough zap to kill her. But energy doesn't necessarily work like that. It doesn't mean that it will continue to do all functions, but each function at lower power. It can also mean doing each function at full power, but fewer times... until it runs out completely. The suit could just as easily have given her the full power shock knowing it would run down after that sooner. Because if it actually didn't have enough power to fully zap her to death... then after it zapped her, it wouldn't have had any power left for, you know, walking itself around. Since it did have power to walk itself around, then it didn't use up all its power, thus it could have killed her. Bleah.

Yes, this. It's completely believable, she's a toddler throwing a tantrum because she doesn't have the experience and knowledge to deal with the emotion of rejection. Every emotion she's feeling is HUGE and overwhelming. I was brought to tears by her joy when she saved Mac... that feeling of having done good, someone called it nobility but it's also pride and generosity, also being welcomed and appreciated by those she loves (Fitz praising her for it) -- that rush of utter joy on her face was magnificent. So, yes, you could empathize with her. She was *trying* to be a good human. Empathy instead of fear. Regret over the pain she had caused others, and the desire to atone for that. But the raging emotions inside her, good and bad, were just too overwhelming. She was this close to the edge of insanity at every moment. If she had had a calm introduction to life as a human -- carefully controlled, gently guided through her emotions like we guide children, until she had the emotional maturity to cope on her own -- she could have become a 'good person'. The potential was there. But instead, she was thrust into this chaotic and confusing environment and forced too quickly to deal with things she wasn't ready for. And when she got shot... and shot, again and again... for a moment I thought she would actually be killed. And I started crying again, because it was a true tragedy. Gorgeous show. Amazing.

All the commenters saying "why not just send her to another Earth" etc obviously didn't watch the latest season of Sherlock. ;)

ruby24 has it right, I believe. It's NOT future flash, like, post-2024, who went crazy and turned into Savitar later. It happened after Iris' death but before Emo-flash. As explained last ep (and in Barry's eureka flashback moment tonight), flash and savitar had a big battle after her death where he created time remnants and savitar killed them all.. mostly. Thus, one of them was left alive, and -- for reasons as yet unexplained -- HE went crazy and became Savitar. So, Savitar saying he 'created himself' is true. Barry created the time remnant in order to defeat Savitar because Savitar had killed Iris. Savitar deliberately doesn't kill one of the time remnants, knowing that would become him. The time remnant becomes Savitar, and kills Iris in order to bring about the causation that makes Barry battle Savitar by creating time remnants... etc. As to what caused this time remnant to go crazy... that's where the speculation should be happening now IMO.

You're not the only one who noticed, because as they were reading off the vibed headlines to be written down, someone (I think I recall that it was HR) said "way to go, Joe!"

I mostly liked the episode, but I kept being pulled out of it by Barry's "is it possible to change the future" constant ponderings. Well duh, dude... you KNOW it is. Ever since your first experience with time travel, you've known, been told, and seen for yourself, how actions in previous times change events in future times. It's not theoretical, it's not a philosophical quandary, in your universe it's cold and hard fact, a resolved question, a known quantity. The notion of changing the future a bit at a time by changing these events that aren't directly related to the death in question? Cool. Awesome. Fine. But using them as a test to see IF it's possible to change the future? Aghhh... hasn't he been paying attention at ALL?

Completely shallow note: I could watch -- or rather, listen to -- Fitz and Radcliffe talking to each other all day long. Oh, those glorious, glorious Scottish accents!!!

My understanding was that her riddle was 30+ years old, it was a challenge for him to solve and she basically said it was a doozy. He never figured out until present day that the dates were the cypher. I don't think she planned to use it as an adult -- she wanted him to solve it right then, when they were kids... but he never did.

I'm pretty sure it's just that she used the (pre-existing) dates in order to create the cypher code for her riddle. Cumberbatch does have experience breaking unbreakable codes, after all. ;)

It's their father who was allergic to dogs. That's why they weren't allowed to have one. I think the graves had been there for ages and ages, it's one of the reasons they all loved the house. Weirdness seems to run in the family. I'm not sure that the gravestones themselves were fake, just that the dates were (deliberately, for whatever reason) wrong. But, yeah, Sherlock should have at least suspected the plane was fake. A girl that age not knowing at all where they were travelling to and from? (Okay she was traumatized but still). And many other "but how" oddities...

How did Mary know ahead of time to get that video to them exactly then? And how was it pulled off, that they wouldn't discover it until now? A fair bit of time has passed since she died. If they'd found this video when they were estranged, it wouldn't have had at all the same meaning. Who sits there and records sappy monologues like that just in case some day they die?

Oooh that actually is pretty good!