truther

Yep. Borrowing from Swingers, here's how I'd like to see Psi and Salbra reappear: Doctor (in the Tardis, talking to Clara on the phone): "I want to show you a new galaxy being formed. Come on, it'll be great!" Clara (at home, getting dressed, whining): "I don't know, I have a date tonight and I need to pick my shoes, do my hair . . . . I can go for a little bit, but you have to promise I'm home by seven." (The Doctor's phone beeps.) Doctor: "Hang on, call waiting." (Doctor clicks to the other line.) "Hello?" Psi (calling from a jailhouse payphone): "Doctor, hi! They gave me and Salbra one phone call. Is it really wrong to steal nuclear launch codes from NORAD and put them in a children's book?" Doctor: "What? Hang on a second." (Clicks over the call waiting.) "Clara?" Clara: "Doctor, pick me up in five minutes and we can --" Doctor: "--whatever. Bye." (Hangs up.) Exeunt Clara.

I'm 6'4". Height and floor plan have nothing to do with each other. It's like saying you need a south-facing room because you're left-handed.

I was getting a Capt. Jack Harkness vibe from Salbra and Psi. I don't want them to be companions so much as recurring colorful characters who pop in from time to time to liven up the Doctor's universe.

How did Madam Karabraxos meet the Doctor in the first place? Yeah he was in her office and gave her his card, and told her to call him if she ever gets old and has any regrets, and she does so. But how did this time-travel loop start? How do you know to go back in time and tell someone to do something in the future that will then cause you to go back in time? Isn't that a paradox or did I miss something?

Ding ding ding, we have a winner. It wasn't even plausible that they were going to buy one of the other houses. I mean seriously, a $3.2 million house that isn't officially on the market and the prospective buyers can't even look at an entire wing of it because the floors are being redone?!? Plus all the husband did was talk about how much he loved it and how it was exactly what he wanted. Of course you're right, coolmom, about people selling homes that they started to renovate but couldn't complete the process. But the NOLA realtor, IIRC, was talking about the "current owner" doing ongoing renovations -- that you'd be buying a property that was in the middle of being gutted and renovated. That simply makes no sense. Either sell it as-is and let the new owners rehab it however they want (with their money rather than yours), or renovate it and then sell it at the higher price and get your investment back. I thought the Pacific Palisades homes were generally unimpressive, especially for the price, but that's the thing about location. It's called "Pacific Palisades" for a reason. What an equivalent home would cost in Georgia is neither here nor there because you can't get a cliffside ocean view in Georgia. It's like somebody in their waterfront cabana in Tahiti saying that you could stay in the same sized place in Nebraska for a tenth the price. So what? There are no tropical beaches in Nebraska, last I checked. If the wife wanted a mansion in Georgia she shouldn't have married some dude who wears lip gloss and has a boatload of cash.

That first house looked great on the inside. For not a lot of square footage they put in some lovely little spaces, including that sunny office down the back. The guy's complaint about the small bedroom window had me shaking my head. The reveal was probably the most mailed-in reveal I've ever seen on this show. Who looks at a house that's already in mid-renovation?!? When they went back "three months later" the exact same door frames were stacked up in the exact same way in the middle of their gutted new kitchen.

That's what I remember, Junebugg, though I can't recall the specifics. They were in Italy for religious reasons and by the time the episode even aired they were already in Albania or Ukraine or somewhere like that.

See, for me it has the opposite effect. Being the Doctor's companion is something you're either all-in for or not at all. I can't relate to somebody who has the opportunity to travel virtually anywhere in time and space and decides to balance that with her personal life as though being the companion were some kind of work study job she got so she could afford tuition at school. Whenever she uses the Tardis to get to a date on time or whatever, it's like a record needle scratching. I want to see Donna Noble agape with wonder. If it's not engaging enough for Clara to even devote her full attention -- if picking the right cocktail dress is more important -- then why should I bother watching?

Isn't that the show in a nutshell? It's not just the parents (though they're the worst). It's everyone on these shows. People who can't comprehend using rooms for any reason other than for what they're called. People who can't envision painting a room, or installing curtains, or walking 10' down the hall to the bathroom. You'll see a childless, twentysomething couple look at a 5 BR mcmansion and complain about the master suite's small closets, seemingly incapable of realizing that the extra bedroom right next to it would make a perfect place to store clothes.

My thoughts exactly. It makes everything so much smaller if it's all down to just a handful of people or even a single person behind the scenes. The Doctor isn't supposed to be small.

Seriously. How would you even know? (Well, unless it was disclosed by law.) This is truly a case of what you don't know won't hurt you -- and even if you do know, so what? -- so just don't ask. Problem solved. It's like renting a car and then demanding to know whether any previous driver has farted in it. Why make problems for yourself?

You're totally right. The 212 is the best example but 312 is the same thing. (I actually once yelled "708" at someone driving badly down the street in Chicago. Yes, I'm a jerk.) Area codes are actually pretty cool. They were designed with rotary phones in mind, so you can see what were the most- and least-phoned places in America 75 years ago based on the area code it got. NYC got the shortest. Then LA and Chicago got the equivalent 312 and 213. And so on. On the Atlanta people, I'm ashamed (as a dog owner) I didn't catch the dog's obvious phobia. In retrospect you guys are right. It was a terrible choice. But during the episode itself all I was thinking was I would love to give that Fabio guy a cuddle! (And I'm a dude.)

Chicago is a city of neighborhoods (eg, East Garfield Park) surrounded by enormous, sprawling suburbs, so there is no cache simply to having a Chicago address. Some Chicago neighborhoods are nice, some are not. Some suburbs are nice, some are not. As with any city, there is some prestige to having an address in certain areas of Chicago. People will notice if you live on Astor Place or in the 60610 zip code or whatnot. However there are also very affluent suburbs that if you tell people from the rest of Chicagoland you live there they'll assume you're doing very well. Moreover, people from those suburbs often (in my experience) tend to look down on people from the city a bit. Probably less so now than in years past, but there are lots of suburbanites around Chicago (as there are in most metro areas) who think the city is full of criminals, drug addicts and welfare queens. So somebody who thinks that being from "Chicago" necessarily makes them look better than being from anywhere else in the area is like somebody who names their daughter "Champagne" so she'll have a classy name.

Delurking to say that I agree with a lot of the criticisms about Twelve/Capaldi/Season 8 -- however you want to characterize it. The way Twelve's been written so far just doesn't quite work for me. I don't like what he says or what he does. However, it's also (for me, anyways) been partly the fault of Capaldi himself. He comes across as a stand-in. Watching him play the Doctor has been like watching an outtake where the director, say, has been playing the role just to show the other actors how to react. Too strident, too awkward in his physical movements, too coarse. Hopefully that's just a new actor growing into the role. In this episode it meant that the Doctor went totally overboard in his hostility to Robin Hood. I kept wondering why he was so damn angry about everything. It didn't help that the underlying story was pretty weak. Though at least it was better than having somebody tell me that wanting to exterminate a race of mercilessly genocidal machines makes you no better than the genocidal machines themselves.