SpaceScotsman

A true "Thanks Obama" for modern times

I really enjoyed that. Going into it blind, it was very fun to watch. Not quite as good as Midnight, but then sequels rarely are. But I think it was a good choice to revisit it - if the humans have vanished, then the doctor wouldn't have been able to go to midnight and play a part in defeating the monster first time around, so it would still be there. The final ending scene was a bit cliched though, the episode would have been better to just end with the Tardis dematerialising.

The inclusion of a deaf character was done well, and the use of live subtitlers is a really great "future gadget" to invent and then explore in a sci-fi context, from how it can offer help, and how it can be used to exclude people easily.

The idea that civil servants that interact with the public must know a sign language makes sense to me - it might indicate that something about the Lombardy population has a high population of deaf people. Maybe a side effect of the war. That would also explain why they were all equipped with subtitlers available as a backup for everyone else. SLs are not universal though, so I guess the translation matrix can help "translate" gestures as appropriate to the local context just as it does text and speech (and BSL to us watching). A side effect of this is it would have been illegible to any American signers watching.

Exploring the wider plot about how humanity is gone makes me think we're facing a planet out of time situation, as we saw in season 4 (another callback?). Though if the lombardy are that similar to humans, they must be related in some way. I guess whatever that link is would have to come pre-2025, because we're not out in space yet, and we won't have any time to do so afterwards.

I really enjoyed this episode, this season is going very well.

Would be so tempting to take some white paint between the r and the n

Loved it.

First off, the premise is great. It's a trope that's been done quite a lot now (childhood toy/show/experience gone wrong), but it still works well. Great animation and voice acting on the cartoon characters, including the Doctor and the Nurse when they as they went from 2D out to 4th wall-busting characters.

A thought occurred to me while watching - right now the BBC is partnered with Disney. If they had partnered with HBO instead like they have on other dramas... we would have had an episode full of bugs bunny and "What's up doc", a la Space Jam. I'm not sure if that would have been better or worse. :)

Breaking the 4th wall and going meta can be difficult, but I think it paid off. The "real" fans poking fun at the show's nonsense was self aware which helps. All the fans saying "Blink", an episode the Doctor was hardly even in, was hilarious.

I am glad they did keep follow on with Belinda really wanting to go home and not mess around in an abandoned building for at least one more episode.

I still have no clue what's going on with the larger plot about Mrs Flood.

• No job, grind away the entire waking day with a low paying zero hours contract while filing job applications, No videogames, no relaxation, more stress, costs healthcare providers more

• No job, spend some of the day working while filing job applications, Yes Videogames, relaxation, lower stress, costs healthcare providers less

Yet another case where if the politician seriously thought about the issue for just half a minute they'd realise their attitude makes no sense.

I'm not sure if centre-right is a characterisation you can make of ferengi politics in this way.

I usually associate the left/right distinction as an indicator of mainly economic policy. We know that things like unions, worker rights, etc (leftist economic ideals) have never been big on fereginar. I don't think there's been that big a shift even with union man Rom at the helm.

I think that attitudes towards social issues like women's rights are completely orthogonal to economic ones. It's easy looking at current human political tribalism to group everyone on a left/right binary, but consider that during DS9 Rom, the economic leftist, did not at all like his mother wearing clothes and being open. If anything, the economically right leaning quark was less bothered by it.

The time loop has left me confused. I'm not entirely sure what happened there. I guess this is one of those paradoxy things that doesn't have a beginning, but that whole plot point was quite unsatisfying.

Poking fun at those fake "buy a plot of land on the moon", "name a star after you" deeds is great. I never understood them.

AI/AL generator just seemed a wee bit too on the nose for "things in the zeitgeist right now", but the reveal did get a chuckle out of me. Definite cyberman vibes here, and at one point he/it used the word "conversion", I wonder if some draft had cybermen in it or if that's just doctor who script language leaking through. I like the design of the armed robots: they look a bit childish and gamey like giant toys, but it fits thematically if ultimately they were designed by an incel manboy.

Interesting idea behind the brain-computer interface being buggy - computers think in powers of 2, 8 is a common grouping, and it's easy to make an off-by-one bug. If someone has managed to grab a subtitle track, it would be great to scan through and check every ninth word for the whole episode, and see if there are more hidden messages. I love when shows do that.

A minor logic issue around the names used - We're not called sunkind, nor do we live on planet human, so I'm not sure why everything was missbelindachandra-xyz, but logic aside it was amusing. Also, I guess Sasha 55 was a clone? That's usually what name-number means in sci-fi, but we never got a real explanation of that. For the rest of the season if they decide to just keep going by "the Nurse" and "the Doctor", I would love that.

Given what's been in the news lately about companies like 23andme, and the privacy associated with DNA, when the doctor scanned her, my first reaction was "oh, that's a bit weird, does he really just DNA-scan everyone he comes across?", so for her to immediately call him out on it was fantastic.

I like that the Nurse's character is wary of men, given her previous bad relationship, and it's good to have a character willing to call the Doctor on his BS. Even acting with the best of intentions, a man in a position of power over a woman can't be doing things that make her feel uncomfortable, like basically kidnapping her. I really hope that in the next episode she keeps this up and doesn't immediately forgive and forget.

On disintegrating that poor cat: Don't hurt the cat. I hate it when animals get hurt even in fiction. Wreck the humans and bots all you want, fine, but not the poor animals. I am annoyed that there wasn't some sort of timey wimey explanation that fixes it and brings it back to life, it just gets played off for laughs with a "went to live on a farm".

Some issues, but a pretty good opener. 7/10

https://jisho.org/word/%E5%8F%AF%E6%84%9B%E3%81%84

those kanji in that order are read as "kawaii"

OK, but all the ticks can go die in a fire

Absolutely all foreigners - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly67j35y99o

ahem, that's PROFESSOR Hanks, thank you very much

This clever pricing system is only available on Itch.io, [...] It is also on sale on Steam until March 7, but that price doesn't fluctuate.

I thought steam had some sort of t&c agreement where you had to price all copies of a game the same no matter the store they were on. surely this would violate those rules. or am I misremembering that?