Llywela

RTD loves him some melodrama, but all of his companions left the TARDIS alive. Not a single one of Moffat's companions did. He found clever ways to cheat and undercut those deaths, but nonetheless every one of his companions died, in the end, in some way or other. Some of them more than once. I much prefer it when a companion's time on the show sees them learn and grow, and then they leave of their own volition, because that's what's right for them at that point in time. Which is where Chibnall scored points! Three out of four of his companions chose to leave the TARDIS, and the one that didn't still walked away alive and well. Fingers crossed for the new series. Looking forward to it, I hope it is good! Thanks for posting the trailer, @DanaK

The Hairy Bikers star Dave Myers has died aged 66. He'd been treated for cancer over the past couple of years, and recorded the last season of the show while undergoing treatment.

Former Strictly Come Dancing professional Robin Windsor has died at just 44 years of age. Cause of death not disclosed.

Well, that too, but the possibility of Amy contracting HIV from Ralph (and the truth about Ralph's sexuality subsequently coming out) is her main motive, both for keeping Amy with her and for the murders. We are told as much in the episode. She tells Amy that she has waited for years, watching for symptoms which never came, while Amy herself remained entirely ignorant and never knew the real cause of her husband's death because Honoria completely took over his care the moment he became ill.

Speaking as someone who has lived in the UK all her life, I've always heard both, interchangeably. The main distinction I was aware of as a child in the 80s was that strict churchy people preferred to say 'happy Christmas' because they associated the word 'merry' with strong drink! But a lot of people prefer to say 'merry Christmas' because they can then add 'and a happy New Year' without having to repeat the word 'happy'. I do not, however, know what the popular preference would have been in the 1940s.

Yeah, over the years there have been a few characters where different people pronounced their name differently. I think the worst is the girl named Gagan in the episode with the eclipse, John Barnaby and Jones era. Just about every single character in that episode pronounces her name differently. I find it very realistic, though, since in real life people are prone to mispronounce names and often don't pay any attention when they are told the proper pronunciation! I hadn't ever noticed that! Could be a reshoot, but wiki says the episode was filmed in February-March, which is when we often get a sudden late snowfall in these parts. I know the episodes are filmed to a very tight schedule (around 22 days per episode) so it could just be that there happened to be snow overnight while this episode was filming and they just pressed on with the schedule the next day, despite there being snow on the ground at the location being used, then by the next day again the snow was all gone - or they were at a different location which didn't get sticking snow in the first place - because that's just how snowfall works in the UK. It really does come and go as fast as that! And as localised as that.

Oh, Honoria is absolutely barking, completely off her trolley. Her main reason for wanting to hold onto Amy is because she doesn't want anyone to know her brother was bisexual and died of AIDS; she is afraid that Amy, as his wife who clearly had no suspicions about his sexuality and therefore presumably had a normal sex life with him, might eventually develop HIV and AIDS and realise she contracted it from...I think his name was Ralph, wasn't it, the husband? Anyway, Honoria's fear is that if Amy becomes HIV+ she will realise she caught it from her husband, and that might cause the truth about his sexuality to emerge, and Honoria can't allow that because she is in massive, massive denial about the whole thing, considers it shameful and can't bear the idea that anyone else might find out. I suppose Amy's blood would count if it is infected with HIV by Ralph, in Honoria's warped mind? That's the tie that binds her.

BBC radio presenter Steve Wright has died aged 69. He won't be known overseas, but was an absolute legend on this side of the Pond, enormously popular, 'the voice of the BBC on afternoon radio'. Seems to have been very sudden and unexpected.

They were meeting out of order, rather than backward, so it should vary.

I never liked River. I like Alex Kingston and think she played the character well, but I disliked the character concept - and not because I think the Doctor is unique and can never have an equal. I just wasn't sold on River's circumstances making her that equal. I think the way Moffat wrote the character tried too hard and over-egged the pudding. He wanted her to be not just equal to the Doctor but superior, so he threw in things like her complaining that the TARDIS noise is because of the Doctor 'leaving the parking brake on', as if that distinct TARDIS engine noise is a fault and not the same sound every other TARDIS we've ever seen on the show has also made. I think it should be possible to write a strong, engaging character without retconning show history just to make a snappy one-liner. I'm not sold on the concept of a human baby conceived in the TARDIS gaining Time Lord regenerative powers, that just isn't plausible to me. And I disliked the way Matt Smith's Doctor was written to act around her. It came off smarmy and even sleazy at times, and combined with other plot points I disliked to make one big mess that I just couldn't get on board with.

Dad's Army star Ian Lavender dies aged 77. He played Private Pike and was the last surviving cast member. Michael Jayston dies aged 88. The name might not be well known, but his face will be, he's been in just about everything, over the years.

It was a really powerful episode, that one. Although...I can understand why they did it, but Leo and Aaron really shouldn't have moved the body since David was already dead and had died as the result of an altercation. There was no phone signal out in the woods, but Nicolette had signal at the house. At that point, there was no rush, help could have been called. No wonder the coroner got involved so quickly - suspicious death falling off a cliff during an altercation *and* the body being moved post-mortem. Dodgy stuff!

Again, chimneys. People heated their homes with coal fires for centuries. Carbon monoxide poisoning was only a problem if there was inadequate ventilation. Chimney sweeps did an important job making sure the flues were kept clear. Yes, boilers and radiators had been invented by then, but they weren't universally adopted all at once. It was more of a piecemeal rollout. As recently as the 1980s, my grandfather did not have central heating in his house. Exactly this. Also, don't underestimate how attached people get to the way of life they are accustomed to. Not everyone wants to spend a fortune adopting new technology when they are perfectly happy with what they already have. It tends to happen bit by bit over time. The rapid pace of change in today's society is unusual. The smell (and dirt) of coal fires (which, yes, was all pervasive, especially in towns and cities - and trains, too, ran on coal, let us not forget) was normal to them then in exactly the same way that the ubiquitous smell (and dirt) of car fumes is normal to us today.

A house like Mrs Pumphrey's would have coal fires rather than wood. The British coal industry was still in its heyday going into WWII. You'd be surprised how cosy a coal fire can make a room - although granted, my grandfather's house was much smaller than Mrs Pumphrey's! And a coal fire once going lasts a good long time, far longer than wood. But no, they wouldn't have a fire lit in every room, only those that were in use - eta although being able to afford to heat multiple reception rooms even if not being actively used was an important status symbol, a sign of wealth for these big house families. Most of the reception rooms would be heated; empty bedrooms / other rooms not in use would be kept closed up (and unheated) whatever the season. Entire wings might be mothballed through the winter months, but Mrs Pumphrey wouldn't need to move out of her house to be warmer elsewhere, no. There would be some smoke in the room, yes, but nowhere near as much as you seem to think. Unless blocked, chimneys tend to work pretty efficiently.

Types of coin currently in circulation: 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, £1 and £2 I found this display of pre-decimal coinage. It isn't as scary as that poem makes it sound! And, of course, the main point is that people tend to understand what is familiar to them. We know how our decimal systems work because we use them daily - the same was true for everyone who used the pre-decimal system. (ETA - also note: some of these coins were teeny tiny)

*small voice* Makes perfect sense to me... I guess this is one of those things you need to have grown up hearing about! (I was born into a decimilised world; my parents were not.)

Half a crown was 30p, in a pre-decimal system where a pound was 240p. That's all I can tell you. If you need to understand the modern US equivalent, I recommend Googling for a currency converter. (ETA Someone up-thread talked about slang terms, so I want to stress that shilling, crown, guinea etc aren't slang terms, they were defined, official measures of currency. If a character mentions a 'bob', though, that is a slang term, referring to a shilling.)

Like I said above, a crown was two shillings and sixpence (30 pence, in a system where a pound was 240 pence).

No, this is old money, rather than our current, decimalised system. Half a crown was two shillings and sixpence. A pound was twenty shillings (240 pence). A shilling was 12 pennies. Two shillings were a florin. Five shillings were a crown. And a guinea was a pound and a shilling. As for there being snow on a farm but not in the centre of town - the town would be in the valley, a warmer location. The farms are scattered about the hillside, and it is colder at that higher elevation. There is often snow up in the hills and not down in valleys. Also a centre of population like a town will always be warmer than an isolated farm out in the countryside.

A season or two ago I'd have said covid filming restrictions, but as it is, I guess that could be a budget thing, in these times of economic hardship when everyone is feeling the pinch and there is less money to go around. Even extras cost money to employ. Whoever is running the show decided to deploy their budget on other things, I suppose.

I haven't seen the behind the scenes segments mentioned above, but I would imagine related to health, safety and the wellbeing of the animals. Times have changed a lot since the earlier adaptation was filmed in the 80s. There are lots of rules and regulations around working with animals on film sets, and a show like this only has so much budget to spare.

My ideal has always been overlapping companions, picked up from different places/periods at different times - which was what I thought we were getting way back in the first season of the revival, first with Adam and then with Captain Jack, before both got discarded along the way. There were always multiple companions at the very start of the show, all through the 60s and into the 70s. I think the idea of the solo female companion came from characters like Jo and Sarah (although both were also part of the larger UNIT cast) and then Leela and Romana. But multiple was almost always the norm in the Classic era. New Who has reversed that trend, occasionally dabbling in multiple companions, but mostly defaulting to the solo female - even when there has been more than one companion on board, the one young woman is always seen as the primary companion, with the others being less important and not really seen as counting. Just see how many people primarily list the modern companions as Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy, Clara, Bill and so on, completely ignoring the existence of Mickey, Jack, Rory and Nardole. Even with Thirteen's 'fam', Yaz was always the primary, with the menfolk largely seen by fandom as also-rans. So yeah, I like Ruby, but I would love to have a second companion alongside her, someone picked up from another place and time entirely, and who is portrayed as being every bit as important as Ruby is.

There were plenty of companions in the Classic series who weren't contemporary humans. There were times when there were no contemporary humans in the TARDIS at all. We had companions from the past, companions from the future, companions from other planets, and audiences managed to relate to them all just fine - some of them rank among the most popular companions ever, in fact. This belief that the companion must always be a contemporary human in order to be relatable is very much a New Who thing. What matters is who the character is and how they are written. Audiences are capable of relating to just about any fictional character, if they are written right. As for them usually (but not always) being British, or at least played by British actors, yes, that is because it is a British show. Just as US sci fi shows almost always have primarily American casts. That's just how the industry works. A show made in a particular country will always primarily employ actors from that country, even if the show is set in space, that's just logistics. There have been exceptions on Doctor Who, though. Captain Jack, for one. The 80s companion Peri was another - the actress was British but the character was American. My biggest bugbear, mind, is that the show has been made in Wales for almost two decades at this point, yet has never had a Welsh regular character - even Welsh guest characters have been vanishingly rare.

For the record, Romana (played first by Mary Tamm and then Lalla Ward) was a companion of the Fourth Doctor in the late 70s. She was a young, newly qualified Time Lord who was assigned to the Doctor for a mission to track down the Key to Time, who then decided that she enjoyed the freedom of his lifestyle so much that she didn't want to return to Gallifrey once the mission was complete, so went on the lam with him for a while before striking out on her own. It was the closest we've ever come, in either era, to seeing the Doctor travelling with a true equal - all she lacked was experience. She was brilliant, in both incarnations - and, of course, as a Time Lord, she can regenerate - so she is right up there on the list of characters that Classic fans would love to see again, and who we might plausibly meet again, as a key ally of the Doctor who can easily be recast into a new regeneration. The Time War would be the main hurdle to overcome - in the audios she ended up as Lord President of Gallifrey - but a good writer can easily bypass such obstacles. Romana would have recognised the Doctor's TARDIS much sooner than Mrs Flood did, though, because she travelled in it in its police box form, so one glimpse of a police box so awkwardly parked on the pavement would have tipped her off, she wouldn't have needed to see it move. (The Rani, who was also mentioned, was another renegade Time Lord, an antagonist of the Seventh Doctor.)

You can always spot the Classic viewers, because whenever there is some mysterious woman in the new series, we all pop out of the woodwork going, "Susan? Romana?? The Rani???" Mrs Flood didn't seem to know what the TARDIS was until she saw it dematerialise, which suggests that she knows what a TARDIS is, but didn't recognise the police box shape of that particular TARDIS - which probably rules out all three of the above, who would all know the peculiarities of the Doctor's TARDIS in particular. Plenty of intriguing questions to take us into the new series!