Llywela

Tales of the TARDIS - just noting here for the record that every single one of these made me cry. Jamie and Zoe! Steven and Vicki! Five and Tegan! Six and Peri! Seven and Ace! Jo and Clyde. Reunited to share their stories one last time. Beautiful. Now that's how to celebrate an anniversary.

I did swing by the shoot location on my way home but didn't see much and then had to run for my bus. Ah well.

Hang on, it says they're on St Mary Street? Today? That's less than a mile from where I'm sitting right now! I will go for a wander in that direction when I escape from work in an hour! ETA - guys, guys, 'The Whoniverse' is up on iPlayer today, and it is glorious to see!

Oh, for heaven's sake, what's the point of that? This isn't the start of another new reboot, it's the continuation of an ongoing show. How many times are they going to start counting again from scratch? It's all the same show still. Gatwa's first season is Gatwa's first season but it is very much not season one of Doctor Who!

No one else is posting so I'm back again to say that I'd forgotten about Jones making a return appearance so early in Winter's run, but having rewatched it is now right up there among my favourite episodes. So much fun - Barnaby's face when he first lays eyes on him and has to swallow his shock to avoid breaking Jones's cover, Jones being all "Call me Jack," knowing full well how awkward the situation is but unable at first to say anything about his undercover role, Winter giving them both epic side eyes, so suspicious at first and then embarrassed about it later. The face journeys and the snark - glorious. And it is nice to see Barnaby and Jones interacting more or less as peers, no longer boss and subordinate, plus Sarah being so happy to see Jones, learning that he is Betty's godfather - this show doesn't have a huge amount of obvious continuity, but details like that, and the little thread of Kate Wilding having moved to Brighton and still being friends with Jones there (which we'd first learned back in the Nelson era), it does a lot to add a sense of at least some kind of continuity. Watching little Betty grow up is also a nice throughline through these later seasons, so I'm glad they wrote Fiona Dolman's real life pregnancy into the show the way they did. Plus, making John and Sarah first time parents in their 40s and then showing them parenting a small child provides a strong contrast with Tom and Joyce, empty nesters with an adult child popping in and out to visit. Winter definitely works better than Nelson as a Midsomer Murders DS. I dunno, maybe cocky and brash just fits the format better than quietly earnest did, makes the role a bit less one-note - or maybe it's just my own personal preference! (It is also amusing me that we are told Nelson left Midsomer to train for undercover roles, but of all the Midsomer sergeants, Jones is the one we see going undercover on multiple occasions, not Nelson)

Welsh doesn't 'pop up' in Arthurian legend. Arthur is a Welsh legend, appropriated and distorted by the wider world but still Welsh at its core. And it doesn't pop up in Tolkien either, he invented a language of his own (he used Welsh and Finnish as templates, sure, but the language in his work is invented). And yes, I know a lot of fantasy writers like to use Welsh as a magical, mystical fantasy language, that's my entire point. It isn't. It is a real language spoken by real people, not a plaything for other peoples' fantasies. Just because a lot of people do it doesn't make it okay. On topic: I am intrigued to see how all this new content turns out!

I know this is meant as a joke, but honestly - why do so many people read Welsh names as fantastical? They pop up as 'fantasy' names in fiction often enough that it riles me, so forgive me for not being amused. Wales is a real country with a real history and a real language, which is not a toybox for fantasy writers to pull from. Carmarthen (Caerfyrddin) is a very real place, a market town west of Swansea, just off the end of the M4 motorway. There is nothing 'alien' about its name. (Unless it's a planet founded by Welsh settlers, of course, named for the original Carmarthen. That would work!)

And now my ongoing rewatch has come to the end of Nelson and the start of Winter, so I'm almost back up-to-date again. Nelson is a curious one, to me. I don't want to call him bland, because 'quiet and earnest' is a completely valid personality for a character to have, and I do like Nelson a lot, he's a very sweet character. But, as a Detective Sergeant in Midsomer Murders, he has the misfortune of both coming on the heels of three much more colourful characters and featuring in an era of the show that doesn't have quite the same zest and whimsy as it once did, that feels rather more of a generic murder mystery. They could probably have got away with a DS whose primary personality trait was 'quiet competence' if the cases were more colourful, and they could probably have got away with less entertaining cases if the characterisation were more dynamic, but the combination of the two does Nelson no favours. As a character he feels quite rootless - he sticks around longer than Scott did, but he spends the whole of his three seasons with the show either lodging in Kate Wilding's boxroom or living out of a B&B, so in a sense he always feels as if he is just marking time rather than in for the long haul. In three full seasons we learn next to nothing about him as a person. I've just watched all his episodes in the last two weeks, and all I can tell you about him as a person is that he liked magic tricks as a child and is overly competitive with Kam. More than any of the other sergeants, he feels like a placeholder, someone who exists purely to fill the role of the DS - someone to provide exposition on evidence he's unearthed, someone to tag along with Barnaby, someone for Barnaby to think out loud at, someone to break down doors and chase after suspects so Barnaby doesn't have to, etc. The previous sergeants all filled exactly the same narrative role, but had enough personality that it wasn't quite as obvious, there was always a bit more to them. Nelson is probably the most competent DS of the lot, he never seems to make any mistakes, but there just isn't much else to him beyond that. A few imperfections, a few more facets to his personality would have done wonders. I feel bad criticising him, though, because he is very sweet, and Gwilym Lee does his best with the material he is given. Winter makes more of an impression in his first episode alone, however. He chatters, he makes mistakes, he thinks out loud, he gets things wrong, he's enthusiastic, he doesn't always do as he is told (because saving the boss is more important, good boy). And, in keeping with the tradition of the show, he makes a marked contrast to Nelson - where Nelson dressed fairly casually, Winter is always very smartly buttoned up, very much a fast-tracked public school boy. On another note entirely, I don't know if readers here are interested in Midsomer Murders actors in other roles, but if so, for Jones fans I recommend checking out season one of The Pact, if you get the chance - I've just rewatched it this week and reminded myself how lovely Jason Hughes is in it as the husband of the main character. He plays a police officer again - the character changed career to join the police in his 40s, which means we get to see him plucked out of patrol to join CID on a murder case all over again! His character, Max Price, is a genuinely lovely guy (and a very good detective) who finds his loyalties tested to the limit when his wife is implicated in the death of her boss. It's a great performance by Hughes, very different from Ben Jones, and I thoroughly recommend it. Only six episodes, but I don't know how available it is outside of the UK.

Yes, they'd have known while making this season that the Christmas episode would be their last, therefore I would expect the big goodbye to happen in that episode, rather than this. And obviously we will also get the birth of Alison's baby in that episode. To be honest, though, I doubt we'll see many if any of the ghosts moving on at Christmas. The show has made it clear from the start that it is relatively normal for ghosts to happen - in the early episodes, Alison kept seeing them everywhere she went. The main focus of the show has always been found family, the weird housemate setup of living with ghosts, so I would expect the last episode to underline that rather than dissolve it.

Yeah, there is a huge divide between the north and south of England, both cultural and economic (this divide is traditionally felt to start at the Watford Gap, although Watford isn't far north at all). Pat is a northerner, Julian is a southerner.

I went out for a walk yesterday evening and almost immediately saw all the BBC lighting and prop trucks parked along the road just around the corner of my house. I didn't think Doctor Who was in production currently, so assumed it was something else - they film a few shows in these parts. But then I came home and saw this, so now I'm not so sure. Maybe it was Doctor Who after all!

And that's the final season - just one episode to go, the final Christmas special. Some lovely moments in this season. Plus - cause of death for Kitty and Cap! Cap has a name! I'm going to miss this show, but for now looking forward to that last Christmas episode.

English actress Haydn Gwynne has died of cancer aged 66. I don't know how well known she is or isn't outside of the UK, but I gasped out loud when I saw the headline. She was brilliant in everything I've ever seen her in.

Alan Fletcher has taken regular breaks from the show for years. In the past, these were usually written as trips to London to spend time with Holly, but since Holly lives with him now they had to find a new excuse for him to disappear for a bit! (Funny how Holly and Byron both grew up in the UK, yet both have Australian accents...)

Oh, I adore Paul McGann and would have absolutely loved to see him in this episode. He's a wonderful actor. I think he'd have absolutely killed it in that War Doctor role. But I also really enjoyed John Hurt in that episode and love that we got to see him playing the Doctor.

My understanding was that Moffat wanted a bigger name. Plus he had his eye on the regeneration limit. Inserting another Doctor we hadn't known about into the mix brought that limit closer, allowed Moffat to be the one to address it. He wouldn't have been able to do that if he hadn't created the War Doctor. It might also be true though that McGann's availability was limited. I'm another one that likes his minisode much better than I like the actual anniversary episode!

I'm with @Daisy on this. It's not that we don't understand the emotional arc that was bolted onto the Doctor for external narrative reasons when the show was brought back, it's that this was a narrative choice we don't personally support. RTD wrote the Doctor-Rose relationship as a romance - specifically because he saw potential parallels with the Buffy-Angel relationship in BtVS and wanted to tap into a similar audience - but because it was the first Doctor-companion relationship of the revived show, framing it as a romance set an unfortunate precedent that the show has been struggling with ever since. And it also creates an unecessary divide between the new and classic versions of the show. For me, the Doctor works best when he is written as a mentor, a catalyst for the companion's adventures, rather than as a romantic hero. And the relationships he builds with his companions are always stronger, for me, when he is drawn as a mentor/father figure rather than as a romantic partner in a relationship that can never, ever be equal in any way. Trying to force him into that role throws everything off-kilter. But, mileage obviously varies on this point.

Okay, so my ongoing in-order rewatch has now brought me to the end of the Jones era and on to Nelson. I have to admit, I am more bereft over losing Jones than I was over Tom and co, but it helps that I do also like Nelson, on the whole, although he isn't as entertaining as Jones was, with his snark and his bad jokes. Nelson is much more earnest – slightly scruffier, as well, I note, with his stubble and smart-casual dress style, continuing the general theme wherein every time a basic character archetype is replaced on this show (DCI, wife, DS, pathologist), the new one is always a very definite contrast to the old. The way Nelson is styled is really striking me, this time around, as he's the first DS we've seen that is John's alone. Jones was inherited from Tom, who was an old school copper. Practically the first thing Tom said to Jones, when he pulled him out of uniform to be his new right-hand man, was to change into a suit, and Jones clearly took that to heart as we very rarely saw him wearing anything else ever again. I seem to recall Tom having a go at Scott, as well, for not wearing a tie. He was an old-fashioned copper with set ideas about how a detective should dress and comport himself, and he expected his sergeants to follow his lead in that. John is also a suit and tie man, but once he has Nelson, who isn't, he isn't the slightest bit concerned about it – whereas Tom would have had the newbie change into a shirt and tie the moment he laid eyes on him! And…I dunno, that contrast in style is really striking me, in this rewatch. Something else I've realised on this rewatch is that I actually really do appreciate the way this show – like Doctor Who, in a sense – refreshes itself from time to time. Given that the general formula is always the same, it helps that the relationships and dynamics get freshened up now and then, so that the characters bounce off one another in different ways even while treading the hamster wheel of endless murder investigations. It also allows the characters to progress as the seasons go by – retiring, getting promoted, transferring in and out, etc – in a way that feels real, inasmuch as the very unreal world of Midsomer is capable of feeling real. That progression is about as close to continuity as this show gets! I think of all the sergeants, Jones has the strongest 'arc', for want of a better word, with Troy a close second – no coincidence that they are the two longest serving. But Jones wins because Troy was already a DS when we first met him, whereas with Jones we get to see him progress from a cheeky constable through the steep learning curve of joining CID and securing his promotion to sergeant, through the rocky transition of Tom's retirement and building a partnership with the new DCI he was initially so wary of, through to becoming the confident, competent detective on display in his final episodes. He doesn't get a farewell episode like Troy did, but it comes as no surprise in season 16 to learn that he's been promoted and moved on, because he was clearly ready for it by the end of season 15. (Also, for those who stop watching after Tom's retirement and have never seen the John years, you are missing out on both Jones undercover and Jones dressed as a nun, both well worth the price of admission!) I don't think, to be honest, that I've ever seen all of the Nelson-Winter eras through in order before, because I was only watching intermittently when these episodes aired and ITV's airing of Midsomer Murders has always been a bit disjointed, easy to not realise when a new episode is on, so that most of my viewing of these later seasons has been via reruns, which tend to be random episodes aired in no particular order at all. So I'm interested to see how it all plays out in order, as this rewatch slowly works its way toward being all caught up.

November 23 is a Thursday this year and Doctor Who has always been a weekend show, so it doesn't surprise me that there won't be an episode on that date. November 1 for the release of more old episodes on iPlayer is correct, I'm sure I've seen that announcement already. And a Who sketch or some other content for Children in Need does seem likely.

For me, although I miss Stevens, losing her isn't a deal-breaker. I don't actually know the reason she disappears, whether it was the actress wanting to move on or the production team deciding to revert to the original formula of lead detective plus sidekick. I do think that it would have strengthened the show to keep her around, especially during the transitional period, when Jones's character in particular would have benefitted from having a trusted colleague to bounce off as he adjusted to the new boss. I think that having Stevens in that recurring role added value to the show, while it lasted, lending versatility to the storytelling and character dynamics. But like I said, it isn't a deal-breaker for me. I miss Stevens once she is gone, but she isn't essential to my enjoyment of the show. My rewatch is now nearing the end of John Barnaby's first season and I already feel like he's been there forever, which is interesting, because I know it took longer than that to adjust to him first time around. I remember finding all the changes quite off-putting back then, and still feel that his very first episode (as the lead) is quite poor, quite jarring, which is unfortunate as he really needed to get off to a strong start. A lot of people were probably put off by the weak writing during the transitional episodes and may not have stuck around past that. But this is the first time I've rewatched every episode in order since they originally aired, although I've caught most of them multiple times in re-runs here and there over the years, and my honest appraisal, this time around, is that the new era settles into a rhythm much faster than I'd realised or remembered. And once it settles, it really isn't all that different than the earlier era and is just as much fun to watch. By the end of John's first season, he and Jones have developed a really strong rapport (it probably helps that Jones gets to save John's life multiple times in those first few episodes), new pathologist Kate Wilding is off to a good start, and Sarah is fantastic - I love what a contrast she makes to Joyce. Where Joyce, being a generation older, was a stay-at-home mother turned empty-nester always trying different hobbies and activities to keep herself occupied, Sarah has a career of her own to focus on and pursue, while still taking an interest in her husband's work. It makes for a completely different energy, a completely different relationship dynamic, which was needed, just as John's more cerebral approach, as a psychology graduate, needed to be different from Tom's old school policing style. I dunno. It all works for me. I am enjoying this rewatch through the John era just as much as I enjoyed rewatching the Tom era.

I'm also getting a strong sense of doom from Mike and Jane's storyline - which I'm finding very bittersweet overall, because I remember them from first time around when I was very young, and they are (mostly) really lovely together, I'm enjoying Mike's bumbling awkwardness, it makes me want to keep him...but I know we can't, and I worry about what is to come.

Whereas to us Brits the difference between English and Welsh accents is glaring, they are two different countries in just the same way that England and Scotland are two different countries. Americans not being able to distinguish the Welsh accent is probably mostly down to lack of exposure. Jones's accent is very South Wales Welsh, similar to mine (although he's more westerly than me - and yes, our ears can pinpoint accents on an intensely local basis like that!). Midsomer seems to move around a bit, being fictional, but is mostly located somewhere near Oxfordshire, within the London commuter belt - that's very garden of England, which is a very specific accent, what you might call 'neutral' RP English. Basically, Jones having a Welsh accent when he supposedly grew up in Midsomer is as glaring as if he had a Scottish accent, having supposedly grown up in Midsomer. It's a discrepancy in the character background that jumps out at me every time they tell us he's a local or talk about his primary school friends in some obscure Midsomer village, or whatever. Especially since the show also repeatedly admits that he is Welsh - can't have it both ways! (It's kind of like if a show set in New York had a character who had supposedly lived in New York most of their life from early childhood on, yet spoke with a pronounced Texas accent.) He's still great, though. My favourite of the sergeants. He's observant and snarky and has slightly more brains than most of his peers. Slightly. And his intensely down-to-earth nature makes a really good foil for John Barnaby, who tends to be quite cerebral. ETA - being a Brit, I always notice the regional accents of the guest characters, especially those claiming to be Midsomer natives - a lot are fairly RP English, but some are distinctly regional, the northern ones tend to be every bit as glaring as Jones! Okay, so the answer to this question is: the end of his second episode. The first is a rocky start to the character and I can see why viewers are wary of him - aided and abetted by Jones and Bullard also being wary of him. In that first episode especially the writers seem to be struggling to know how to integrate this very different personality into the Midsomer formula and don't quite get the balance right. But by the end of his second episode, wife Sarah has arrived (I really like Sarah), he's getting on better with Jones, and I'm not missing Tom, Joyce or Cully at all any more. I know it took longer than that to get used to him first time around, but I've watched and re-watched his episodes many times since then, at random, which is making the transition easier now that I'm doing this complete in-order re-watch of the entire show. I enjoy seeing how the dynamics change, with a new DCI. Tom and George Bullard were old friends from way back, and Bullard flounders a bit with a new DCI to bounce off, one he doesn't know at all, it pushes him out of his comfort zone. Easy to see why he so quickly follows Tom into retirement. Whereas Jones, once he gets over the awkwardness of having a new boss and wanting to impress, he has a more equal relationship with John than he had with Tom. Tom was that much older, more the elder statesman, the one who plucked Jones out of uniform and promoted him to detective, whereas John is nearer to his own age and they first meet as fellow detectives. There is still a difference in rank, and the relationship is still a bit combative in these early episodes, but it is much nearer to a partnership of equals than it ever could have been with Tom - which is something John never has again, iirc, once Jones moves on and he starts to get keen new young detectives coming through. Last thought on the dawn of the John Barnaby era: I miss Gail Stevens. I know the show was originally conceived as a duo and that's the classic standard, but I felt that having another regular detective in the team added a lot to the show and I miss that once it is gone.

My ongoing complete series re-watch via ITV Hub has come to the end of the Tom Barnaby years. *sob* I'm gonna miss him all over again, John Nettles was so perfectly cast in the role. On to the John Barnaby years. Now, I like John and his family, they've grown on me enormously over the years. But he does get off to a shaky start. His first episode is very weak. I can see what the writers were aiming for. They foresaw how wary their audience would be of this newbie in their comfort show and tried to incorporate predicted viewer concerns into the story in order to address them head-on - trouble is, I think they went a bit too far and were too heavy-handed about it, so that they ended up playing into those doubts instead of allaying them. They wanted to show John's detective skills in a good light, but made the mistake of throwing the established, audience-favourite character of Jones under the bus a bit so that John would shine in comparison - never a good move, in any show (and too many of them do it). Also, this episode goes a bit over the top with the whole 'Jones is a Midsomer native' theme, which was always a slightly dicey character note at the best of times. If they wanted the character to be a Midsomer native, they really shouldn't have cast a Welsh actor with a pronounced Welsh accent! If Jones had spent as much of his upbringing in Midsomer as the show wants us to believe, he would not have a Welsh accent, he just wouldn't - Midsomer's fictional location is within the London commuter belt. This was an area where the show always wanted to have its cake and eat it too: Jones's Welshness is acknowledged on the one hand, but really can't be reconciled with his 'raised in Midsomer' character background that the writers found so useful as a narrative tool. Anyway, I want to be positive about the start of the John Barnaby era, so I shall say about his first episode that the show succeeds in establishing him as being just as capable a detective as his cousin while also being cut from a different cloth entirely: Tom was very much an old-school copper who'd risen through the ranks, while John is university-educated, the kind who'd have gone straight in as a detective without working the beat first. And he is quirky in a way that is perfectly Midsomer. I'm interested to see on this in-order re-watch how long it takes before I feel like John has really found his place in the show. From memory, I feel like I'd fully accepted him by the time Betty was born but it remained rocky up till about that time. It'll be interesting to see if I feel the same way this time around.

Because men who enlisted were, for the most part, not deployed according to their qualifications but according to strategic need. The individual did not get to pick and choose, they simply signed up and were assigned to a branch of the armed forces according to the criteria of the recruiting board (X spots to fill in the RAF, Y spots to fill in the Navy, Z spots to fill in the Army) and from there to a regiment that had spaces to fill. In wartime, all that really matters is getting boots on the ground. There were particular specialist skills that would have been looked out for, but the need for veterinarian officers was less in WWII than WWII, so a vet signing up was mostly just another warm body to fill the ranks rather than a specialist skill to be assigned a particular role.

For the record, season four kicks off in the UK next Thursday, so if you aren't able to see it until the US airdate in January, beware spoilers in this thread over the coming weeks.