To assuage the impatience of all of us who are still burning to discuss the Doctor Who finale, this is the place. Or, at least, the comments thread is the place.

But be warned: here be spoilers.

If you haven’t seen the episode and don’t want to spoil yourself (and I recommend not spoiling yourself in advance), don’t go near the castle. I mean, the comments.

I’m running a little late on this live-blogging, thanks to a slightly delayed dinner (leftover salads and sliced meats with pita bread—yummy! I would have pavlova for dessert, but I had it for breakfast. I do like my unusual breakfast foods, and there’s only so long I can resist pavlova for.)

So I’m not live-blogging the weather this time, and actually have no idea what the temperature is supposed to be. I suppose I’ll find out tomorrow.

Ah, here we go—creepy Ood advertising campaign. The Ood themselves are creepy—and fifty credits seems very low for a slave. I do like the Andy Warhol-style Ood pictures on the wall behind this man . . . who’s just been killed by a red-eyed Ood. Whoops.

Also, I keep typing “Ood” as “Oood,” which is annoying, because my spellchecker doesn’t recognise either spelling.

Mystery tour? I’m not sure that’s a great idea.

Oh, poor Donna—she’s so excited. And now the Doctor’s excited about the snow—the first time in years he’s seen snow that isn’t actually the detritus of a spaceship and its dead occupants.

This reminds me of the opening of “Seeds of Doom,” where Sarah Jane was promised the beach and popped out of the TARDIS in a polka-dot bikini.

Ah, Tim Mcinerny (don’t correct my spelling!)

And I missed the dialogue about the TARDIS versus that lovely retro-styled rocket that had Nick salivating.

Oh, dying Ood in the snow. I can buy not calling the Ood an “it,” but how does the Doctor know it’s male? Are all Ood male? Or does he have some distinguishing feature that reveals his gender.

Oh, well—he’s dead now, poor bloke.

Donna’s so sweet, really. This first encounter with an alien species (apart from the Rachnos and the Adipose, and she doesn’t get close to the latter) is touching, even if they do leave him sprawled in the snow.

I do get a little bored with the repeated “We’re not married” refrain, but Donna, to me, is the closest to an old-school companion that we’ve ever had (in my opinion, which I’m not asserting is humble.)

Oood hunt: this is creepy, especially since this Ood doesn’t just have red eye but is also rabid—and in conjunction with the sales pitch about “if your Ood is happy, you’ll be happy” is becomes truly disturbing.

Oh, poor bald Tim Mcinerney. Never mind: let us sit upon the floor and tell sad stories, shall we?

The comedy Ood voice is so sad—hey, for five extra credits, would you like to humiliate your slave? But the sexy female voice: I don’t even want to think what kind of fetish prompted that as a viable sales pitch.

Oh, are the bees disappearing? I wonder if that will be important later.

They drop a lot of these early Donna mannerisms—she’s just responded to an Ood calling her “Miss” by saying “Do I look single?” Well, Donna, you are single. You get quite cranky if people assume you’re married to the Doctor—by the later episodes, and I’m glad of it.

Ew, slavering rabid Ood. I’m not a big fan of slavering on television: it’s a good thing I’ve finished my dinner.

And now the guards have whips. Charming.

It’s true: the Doctor didn’t question the Oods’ status in the last two-parter. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but that really isn’t like the Doctor.

Ah, mysterious warehouse bathed in red light. I’m not good at delayed gratification: I want to see what’s in the pit now. And I’ve just noticed that the mysterious song that we heard around the dying Ood has started up again now we’re in the warehouse.

Ah, evil executive who also taunts his enslaved workers? I wonder if we’re supposed to sympathise with him?

Donna’s a Hammers fan? Cool. I think it’s a shame we never get a rousing chorus of “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.”

Oods in shipping containers: this series hits quite hard with the social commentary at times. The hardest one to watch I think is still “Turn Left,” which we don’t hit for another couple of months, but this warehouse full of silent queues of slaves is hard to watch.

Oh dear: the head of Security is a bloodthirsty psychopath. I didn’t see that coming. Still, this scene with the Dcotor being chased by the giant hook is well done.

Hang on: the Ood that Donna’s trapped with have red eye.

DONNA: Oh no you don’t.
NICK (as Eric Cartman): Pink eye!

So the Ood aren’t locked into these containers? They’re standing there in ranks? Man, that’s depressing. It’s also looking a bit silly, now they’ve all got red eye.

The Doctor seriously misreads that PR woman’s sympathies. Of course she agrees with what they’re doing—she knows exactly how they’re being treated, so why would she suddenly think, “Hey, you’re right! This isn’t cool!”

More Ood song—it’s hard to judge this, but . . . the Doctor can hear the song because Timelords, like the Ood, are telepathic. But Donna can’t hear it, because she’s isn’t. But we can hear the song—as part of the soundtrack, but as diagetic music not extradiagetic music. But then when the Doctor enables Donna to hear it, it becomes different, more prominent. So am I misreading the earlier examples of music, as when the Doctor comments on the song of the dying Ood? Is that not Ood song? And if it is, should we be able to hear it, when we’re not psychic?

Anyway, these poor sad Oods have their brains in their hands. Well, their hindbrains.

NICK: This is completely daft, though.

It doesn’t seem as though this is a practical evolutionary decision. I can see why it’s what breaks Donna, though—this idea of lobotomising them to make slaves is grotesque.

I like Donna’s insistence that a creature with its brain in its hands would have trust anyone it meets: it’s a neat argument, but I still don’t think that it’s a sensible step for evolution to make, even on a planet where the Ood seem to be the only lifeforms.

Oops, the Ood in the salesrooms all have red eye, now.

I’ve lost any sympathy I might have had for that PR woman—hang on, she was killed by an Ood while I was typing.

I think I’d find this factory setting more alienating and frightening if it didn’t look exactly like the back of the engineering buildings at university.

See, now the evolutionary system is just becoming more disturbing: if a creature with a separate hindbrain and forebrain would be at constant war with itself, why would evolution take that particular step?

Oh, never mind.

Now Donna and the Doctor are being menaced by red-eyed Ood.

The fact that the Ood can turn the red eye on and off, apparently at will, is the creepiest part of this episode, I think.

And now everyone is converging on Warehouse 15, for the final showdown. That means we finally get to see what’s in the big, eerily glowing, red pit.

Ah! Giant brain! Ew.

Of course, looking at the episode again, I should have guessed that it would have been some kind of brain, but I don’t think I did guess the first time around.

So, hang on—Tim Mcinerney was saying earlier that they Ood roamed the ice like animals, when they found them. But then they found a giant brain?

(Oh, ew—some guy’s just been thrown into a giant brain. That can’t be good for the brain. Or the guy.)

So, they found a giant brain. And they applied a damper to lower the telepathic field? So they knew that the Ood had a sophisticated way of communication? So, were they animals? Or not? Or was Mcinerney lying when he said they found them as animals?

Nick won’t watch this next bit. It is rather disturbing, when he peels his own scalp off. What gets me, though, is when he vomits up the tentacles. That’s revolting.

Ew, and then he vomits out his hindbrain. I’d completely forgotten that bit.

Donna’s point that her established moral code is crumbling under the new experiences to which the Doctor is exposing her is an interesting one: the Doctor’s claim that not knowing right from wrong is “easier” is just lazy.

The music for this episode is rather lovely, I think—but then I’m partial to choral music.

The Ood are thanking the Doctor and Donna and promising to sing of them forever—but they didn’t really do much, did they? The Ood pretty much had it under control.

And that’s “Planet of the Ood”!

Next week, Martha! Martha! Martha! And Mike from The Young Ones as a Sontaran.

Cool.

In no particular order of importance:

I’ve always enjoyed Mars advertisements, but this new one, with the people sprouting dragons’ or bats’ wings, isn’t a patch on the old one with the aliens at the low-gravity pool party. That filled me with a deep sense of envy.

On a different note, though: you really shouldn’t fold your girlfriend up and stick her in your front pocket. That’s . . . in fact, that’s not a girlfriend: that’s an aid. Or a toy, if you prefer.

I also don’t understand the new QUT advertisement: it makes sense that they’re trying to promote the idea that attending university will give you direction, but the image of the boy pushing the trolleys? I don’t understand what they’re trying to suggest with that. Are the trolleys emblematic of your career, and his sharp control of them—mainly, his ability to stop them scraping the car—indicative of the skills that he will learn at university? Or is it a suggestion that if you don’t attend university, you’ll end up pushing trolleys for a living?

I think the strangest advertisement I’ve seen recently, though, is the ad. for V with the tortoise that works as a lifeguard. I assume it’s an American ad., based on the female lifeguards’ red swimming costumes. But I’m not entirely certain what it’s trying to suggest: that drinking V will somehow negate a large body mass and physical awkwardness? Actually, that could be useful. Still, if I’m ever in trouble in the surf (impossible: too many sharks), I hope I don’t need to rely on the services of a tortoise.

Time for the second episode of season four, with special guest stars my parents. Mind, they won’t be making an appearance during this live-blogging unless they say something extremely funny.

But it’s been a convivial day: we went to see the Picasso exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art—I’m not saying it was poorly curated, because I don’t think it was, but it was intensely crowded, which made it remarkably difficult to get close to the smaller, more delicate pieces, such as the Degas . . . engravings, I think they were. But they could have been pencil drawings, or charcoal, because I couldn’t get close enough to read the labels.

Then we had a lovely, slightly boozy lunch to celebrate the positive reports on my Ph.D. thesis.

And, of course, then we boozed a little more over our leftover roast-beef sandwiches for dinner.

So convivial is, I think, the best word.

In fact, take this earlier conversation as emblematic:

DAD: What’s that noise?
ME: Fruitbats.
NICK: It’s best not to ask what they’re doing.
ME: They’re fighting. Definitely fighting.
NICK: Well, something starting with “f.”

He later claimed that he meant “fraternising,” but I’m not sure that’s better.

Of course, when I started this, I thought we were closer to the start of Doctor Who than we are, because I always forget that the sports broadcast (or “braidcast,” according to my keyboard) starts at quarter past the hour these days.

But we’re up to the weather now, and while I never intended to live-blog the weather, that means we can’t be far off actual Doctor Who now.

In the interim, apparently there are isolated showers around the coast. Of course, that’s only relevant if you’re in Queensland, so make of that what you will.

My spell-checker doesn’t recognise the word “Queensland.” And we’re supposed to be the Smart State.

If Doctor Who doesn’t start soon, this will be the most boring blog post in history.

Ooh, we’ve started! I was distracted.

We’re in “ancient Rome.” I’d like to go to ancient Rome. (Should that have a capital letter?)

This was the first episode where I really liked Donna. And I do love the geeky Latin jokes, but it’s been a while since I’ve been able to say “veni, vidi, vici” after the football.

The make-up on these seers (spoiler!) really creeps me out, especially the eyes on their hands. Whoops, spoilers again.

Pompeii on Volcano Day—that’s a Captain Jack reference, surely? The Doctor only borrowed it from him.

My mother’s very confused about why the Latin that Donna’s speaking wouldn’t actually come out as Latin. That seems a good point: perhaps the TARDIS’s translation circuits aren’t very good?

You’d think he’d have some sort of bicycle lock—or something—for the TARDIS: it’s always going missing. Mind, I wish this man hadn’t bought the TARDIS as modern art, because it’s only likely to rekindle Nick’s desire to actually have a TARDIS in the corner of our living room—and we really don’t have room for one.

Ooh, cavorting with Etruscans. Sounds funs.

Unlike being a seer: that doesn’t seem as though it’s fun at all. Especially not if all you have to do is breathe in hot smoke all the time.

Dad’s slightly alarmed by the stone creature under the house. He’s a vocal TV watcher: he tends to respond to programmes with little muttered comments like “oh god, what’s that?”

Ah, hands on eyes. And eyes on hands. Simultaneously. That creeps me out, but I’m not entirely sure why. There have been many more disturbing things in Doctor Who over the years.

One of the things that I like about Donna is that she’s stroppy. We’ve had stroppy companions before, but I’ve always liked them. Like Ace.

Is it wrong that I find that Spartacus joke so funny that I just snorted out loud? (I mean, obviously the snorting out loud is wrong, but it was involuntary.)

The Romans don’t have a word for “volcano”? Is that true? (Tim, you’d know that, wouldn’t you? Because I can’t be bothered getting up and fetching the OED.)

The exchange of prophecies is hilarious, especially since three-quarters of what the Doctor says doesn’t make sense. Do you know, I really like this writer? His episode of Torchwood was devastating, but this one is so funny: he manages to make the Spartacus joke and the “she’s from Barcelona” line work in an ahistorical context.

I’d forgotten the “there’s something on your back” line Lucius directs to Donna. That’s interesting. Or it will be in about two months.

Of course, my dad wants to know now, because he’s impatient, but he’ll just have to wait.

This Doctor’s like a puppy: he’s constantly inquisitive—he’s looking at the pit the vapours come out of, at the moment—and always looking to see who he can make friends with. It’s one of the aspects that I think Tennant has brought to the role—the Doctor’s usually had high social skills, but this puppy-friendliness is new—and one of the aspects that I like most about the character. That and the fact that he’s completely mad, in a rather Tom Baker fashion.

Now the Doctor’s breaking into Lucius’s house. Really, would you want a great steaming pit in the middle of your living room? Although, I wouldn’t mind a fountain, especially in Brisbane in the summer. I could have goldfish. And lilies.

Donna’s toga is a little low-cut, isn’t it? And did women wear togas? Or was that purely a man’s costume: were the women’s dresses called something else?

Ah, Donna’s about to put her foot in it. I can see why she does it, and it’s a good thing—it’s an inevitable thing, really, for a novice time traveller—but she’ll regret that when the Sibylline Sisterhood get their hands on her.

Hey, my computer recognises “Sibylline” as a word, where it doesn’t recognise “Queensland.” Or “Spartacus.” I find that remarkably odd.

Go on, pull his arm off! That’s not as escape plan that’s likely to work very often, I wouldn’t have thought. But it works here, and that’s the important thing.

Ooh, “allons y” again . . . I’ll say again, keep an eye out for that in a couple of months’ time.

If you have to be followed by something, I suspect that an enormous, glowing, stone man who can breathe fire would be at the bottom of my list of favourites. No, not the bottom: sharks would be lower. But very near the bottom of the list. Unless I happened to have a bucket of water handy, and how often does that happen?

Ooh, Donna was kidnapped while I wasn’t looking. But I like a companion who, tied to a table and threatened with a knife, responds “Don’t you dare!” She’s brilliant, Donna.

The Doctor met a sybil who could dance the tarantella? Sometimes I want to see some of these back stories. But you couldn’t make an entire episode out of them.

How on earth could you even think that turning into stone is a blessing? I mean, I know these seers are all mad, with the inhaling of red-hot stone dust and so forth, but how could you even assume that that was a good thing? I suppose it would cut down on medical bills—and if you’re not driven nuts by all the chanting and the rocking that the members of the sisterhood think is necessary, then you must be a fairly even-tempered person. I’d go nuts with all the repetition: it’s like fifteen toddlers.

No way, yes way, Appian Way? It made me laugh, anyway. And is that a Bill and Ted joke? There’s nothing I like more than a Bill and Ted joke.

That fact that the Doctor can see time—I suppose rather like the Tralfalmadorians (don’t correct my spelling) in Slaughterhouse Five, who can see all of time like a mountain range—then that might explain why he’s slightly mad, now. Especially since, as he says, he’s the only one left, so he can’t—as he’s done for years—ignore the responsibility.

Lucius really is rather shrill and annoying, isn’t he?

That water pistol must have an enormous reservoir. That’s convenient.

Oh, Pyrovillia (don’t correct my spelling!) has gone, has it? That’s also interesting. (I’m really enjoying the long-term plotting in this season. It seems to be rather more subtle than the “Bad Wolf” seeding in season one of the new series or—what was it in season two? I’ve forgotten now. Or even Harold Saxon in season three: ah, Master? You’re not dead, are you? Or, at least, you’ll regenerate, won’t you? Please come back!)

The Doctor’s about to make Vesuvius erupt, by the way. I got a bit carried away and forgot to mention any of the narrative developments.

Oh, dear: Lucius is dead. But then so are most of the inhabitants of Pompeii, now. And also Pliny the Elder. Or was it Pliny the Younger? No, it was the father, wasn’t it?

(Honestly: I’ve seen this episode before. I should do my Googling in advance, so I can look really clever.)

I’ll buy that the Pyrovillians’ spaceship could survive the exploding of a volcano—but not that they can outrun an explosion of super-heated gas.

The destruction of Pompeii is rather disturbing to watch: I suppose it’s because we’ve all seen the photographs of the bodies and the preserved houses, and the despairing poses here are just a little too evocative.

I don’t mind that the Doctor goes back for the family, here. (And, Doctor, just because you can’t save Gallifrey doesn’t mean you should never go back, ever.) But, as I was saying, I don’t mind that he goes back for this family. I’m a sucker for a happy ending, and this family were rather charming.

(I wish he’d said “Come with me if you want to live,” though. That would have been hilariously anachronistic. But, given the lack of sophistication in my sense of humour, it was probably in an early draft and removed as too unsubtle. I’ll just chuckle quietly over the possibility in my own head.)

But, even though I like the fact that at least one family were saved, I think the final visual joke is a bit over the top for me. But we’re not up to that yet.

So does “volcano” derive from Vulcan? It would, wouldn’t it? (Tim, you’d know that. My dictionary is still too far away.)

Donna is good for the Doctor, you know. She doesn’t take any rubbish from anyone, and the Doctor does need that, because he’s been too prone to having his own way.

Ah, there’s the visual joke that’s a bit much for me. And wouldn’t devout Romans still at least have ancestral masks?

Oh, that’s not important. That was a lovely, funny episode—except for the moments when all the Pompeiians were dying—and prefigures some of the other humorous episodes, like the Agatha Christie one.

Hey, it was filmed in Italy? No—I’d best not blog Doctor Who Confidential or else I’ll be here all night.

Next week, Ood. Creepy, creepy Ood.

When was the last time that Eddie Murphy starred in a movie with anyone other than Eddie Murphy?

Don’t get me wrong: the more Eddie Murphies there are in a movie, the happier I feel about not going to see it.

But is this not the ultimate in narcissism?

I’ve commented on more than one occasion about the pit of sheer, unremitting horror that is Lynx’s advertising department’s gender politics.

It’s only fair that I redress the balance, since I’ve just seen the follow up to AAMI’s awful new advertising campaign.

When Nick and I saw the first one—with the woman directing a passive-aggressive appeal to her boyfriend to take out a personal loan so he could buy an expensive engagement ring and propose to her—we were . . . well, gob-smacked, I think is the only word.

I’ve never had any patience with the “I must be married to anyone, anywhere, it doesn’t really matter, as long as I’m married” attitude that so much chick-lit (and chick-TV and rom coms) seem to feel is the appropriate attitude for women . . . and I have even less patience now that I’m in my thirties and people keep asking me when I’m getting married.

Don’t get me wrong; plenty of people marry because they are in love, and that’s a different issue. I’m not mocking that. But I don’t know anyone who ever went into a jewellry store and recorded a message demanding that their significant other propose and, by the way, here’s the ring I want you to buy me.

But, now, I’ve just seen the follow-up ad. where she’s now “the new Mrs Todd,” but apparently the honeymoon wasn’t up to her standards, so could he take out another loan—but a bigger one, this time, because she’d like to go to Paris.

I don’t think I’ve been too hard on Lynx, frankly. But these ads—these are almost the girly equivalent of the Lynx ads.

If the idea that men will do absolutely anything—including transform sentient beings into automatons—in the pursuit of the opposite sex is the most degrading way of depicting men, then this is the equivalent for women.

Dear AAMI,

You insure my car. Thank you. But this ad. campaign is grotesque. Not all women are passive-aggressive harridans, you know. And, you know what? The marriage angle wouldn’t even bother me—this ad. would be awful under any circumstances—if it weren’t for the media’s increasing obsession with bridal porn, with the trappings of the wedding instead of the ceremony itself.

Dear Woman in the AAMI Ad.,

You might want to consider whether you should have brought up your honeymoon concerns prior to, I don’t know, maybe the honeymoon? Because at this stage, I’m assuming that the next ad. will be you suggesting that Todd takes out a loan because your alimony payments aren’t high enough.

So this is the first episode of season four of the new Doctor Who. I’ve seen this one a couple of times already, and I’ve never been entirely convinced by the aliens. But I’ll get to that when the episode actually starts—at the moment, we’re on ABC News’s weather report. More rain, apparently. But a nice cold night.

In other news, I’ve never quite become used to the way this armchair wobbles when I type. I think it’s all right, but who knows?

Hey, it was International Tartan Day, celebrating all things Scottish! I’m Scottish, technically. Why didn’t I know about this? Oh, well: I never identify as Scottish unless Nick’s irritating me by faking a Scottish accent.

Speaking of Nick, he has his iPhone out, despite the fact that his favourite show is about to start. I suspect he’s actually physically joined to that thing.

Ah, theme music. Here we go!

This opening scenes is so reminiscent of the opening scenes of “Smith and Jones”—I can only assume that that’s deliberate.

I know this Adipose CEO woman is from Rose and Mahoney, but I’ve never seen her in anything—I’ve never knowingly watched that other show—but she’s very good in this role. Creepy and patronising, exactly like a bad kindergarten teacher. (Spoiler! Sort of.)

Whatever difficulties I might be finding right now in getting a job, I’m so pleased I don’t have a telemarketing job. This looks intensely dull.

Ah, the two heads popping up sequentially. They could have badly over-played this near-miss angle, but I don’t think that they did.

I like the detective-fiction angle to these opening scenes, too—it’s always been a sub-text in Doctor Who, but I like it when it comes to the surface.

Nick’s live-Twittering, apparently. I’m not sure why he’s trying to steal my audience, but such is life.

Kidding, honey!

Ah, poor Stacey. It irritates me that she has the whole “I can do better, now” attitude, but she doesn’t deserve the fate that she’s about to meet.

Okay, the Doctor’s “the fat just walks away” line is genuinely creepy.

Are we supposed to assume that Donna is actually implicit in Stacey’s death? That her fiddling with the necklace sets off the unscheduled parthenogenesis? That’s rather what it looks like. But the CEO is ultimately responsible for the full parthenogenesis.

The Adipose! Sounds like a good diet plan to me. But I don’t find them entirely convincing—they remind me rather of very old-school cartoons, when you could tell which bits of set dressing were going to become relevant, because they looked different. I can’t explain it better than that—the Adipose just don’t quite seem to fit into the background.

According to Nick, it’s been a matter of some debate since the advent of the Slitheen as to whether or not Russell T. Davis hates fat people. I hope not, Russell. I love you!

I have to admit, the Adipose do look as though they’re enjoying themselves, and that’s something.

Now that near miss, with the two of them on separate roads—that worked well for me. Partly because it’s just such a lovely overhead shot.

Donna’s home life. This is a strangely depressing sequence, Donna being harangued by her mother. The mother (minor, undetailed spoiler) becomes rather an interesting character later in the season, or at least a more nuanced character, but here she’s so depressing and frustrating.

I’d never realised that Venus was the only planet in the Solar System named after a woman. (Well, a goddess, technically, Donna’s grandfather, but still.) I’d never thought about it, but, of course, he’s right. Plenty of moons with women’s names, but that’s just typical, isn’t it?

While Donna’s talking with her grandfather, which is a sweet scene, I’ll just mention that I wasn’t at all sure about Catherine Tate as a companion—she’s funny, but I wasn’t sure how she’d fit into the Doctor Who universe, and I felt her acting was slightly too mannered in this episode. It kept me from responding to her as a person, kept reinforcing the idea that she was a character. But I warmed to her fairly quickly.

I think I’ve read too many detective novels, but I quite liked this scene of Donna waiting in the toilets. Whenever I go into an interesting building, part of me always thinks, “Hmm, I wonder if I could successfully hide in these toilets?” I haven’t the faintest idea where I first saw someone hiding in the toilets, but it obviously made a powerful impression on me.

That probably explains why I found this scene of the men kicking the toilet doors in quite disturbing.

(Of course, I mainly wanted to hide in the toilets in the museum to see if the exhibits came alive at night—long, long before I saw Night in the Museum—but that’s a whole ‘nother story.)

Ah, the revelation of the villain’s true purpose. This villain seems to think she’s more comprehensible than she actually is.

Case in point: arguing that she chose her name well. “Foster: as in foster mother.” That’s not at all the kind of leap that you’d expect someone to make—and a nanny isn’t at all a foster mother.

I love this silent miming scene between Donna and the Doctor. It’s so strangely comprehensible—and you can believe that they’d get caught up in it and completely forget where they were. She’s a lovely physical comedian, Catherine Tate—and so is David Tennant, actually.

I think I have to give up my ambition of being a companion—there’s no way on Earth I could ever manage all the running.

Ha! Sonic pen. Much more useful than a sonic screwdriver. Well, unless you suddenly need to put up a lot of shelves.

This episode—this scene, in fact—thoroughly reinforced my fear of those little cage thingies that people use to clean windows. How do people ever manage to steel themselves to get in those things?

This woman is evil, though. I wonder what the actual Adipose are like. We never find out. And do they train their childcare workers to employ these insanely ruthless methods? Or is she working entirely alone? I know the Adipose repudiate her methods in the end, but that’s only because they think the Shadow Proclamation has been alerted, isn’t it?

Now the Doctor is calling her a wet nurse. That’s not the same as a foster mother or a nanny, it really isn’t. Unless she’s breastfeeding these Adipose children personally, or doing the Adiposian equivalent, then she’s not a wet nurse.

Ah, Donna stops the Doctor from revelling in his own cleverness. She’s very good at that; Martha was, as well—to an extent—but Donna’s better. At that aspect.

I love you, Martha Jones! Please come back!

The first time I saw that scene, I thought the Doctor had actually killed the two guards that he electrocuted—I didn’t hear him say, “Just enough to stun them.” Nick’s apparently only just heard that this time—this must be the third or fourth time he’s seen this one, too.

Ah, Donna. There’s a kind of desperation to this character that’s heartbreaking—this desire to break out of her ordinary life and do something extraordinary. It’s no surprise that here we have a character who has been actively searching for the Doctor. I don’t think we’ve seen that with a companion before, have we? Except perhaps Turlough, and that was slightly different.

So if one pill means one Adipose baby—which is the impression we’re given through the rate of weight loss, in the early scenes—how is it that she’s managing to generate all those extra babies? Does the body not metabolise the contents of the capsules, so that it can be re-triggered any time?

I know this is “emergency parthenogenesis,” but I still wonder how this is possible. Or are they not responding to the drugs, at all? Is that it? The capsule is a placebo, and it’s the necklace that triggers things? But, then, that would rely on everyone twiddling with their necklace at least once a day, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, the Doctor manages to prevent one million people disintegrating into creepy, little, marshmallow babies, so I suppose that’s a plus.

DONNA’S MOTHER: Oh, what is it now?
NICK: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I believe.

It’s rather cruel, to deny Donna’s grandfather the sight of the spaceships.

Nick thinks this scene with the Adipose children is excellent use of the Massive software. They are adorable.

The villain insists that the children need her, but the Adipose ships clearly disagree—which really reinforces the fact that she’s not a wet nurse.

You know what I really like about Donna—whoops, the space nanny is about to meet her nasty end—what I really like about Donna is that she doesn’t fancy the Doctor. It’s refreshing. She loves him, sure, but not at all in a romantic sense. She’s never jealous, never seeks to supplant Rose or Martha. I like that.

(I don’t think the definition of “nanny” is any more accurate than that of “wet nurse.” The idea that Mum and Dad have the kids, so they don’t need the nanny any more—that doesn’t make sense. Nannies normally worked in conjunction with parents, not exclusively in their absence. Oh, never mind.)

I’m not touching the “I just want a mate” line. Great back and forth, but I’ll leave it to speak for itself.

He’s like a puppy, this Doctor. Always looking to see who he can makes friends with.

I hope no one ever leaves my car keys in a bin.

Oooh, blonde woman. Suspicious. Yep, it’s Rose. I did not see that coming the first time I watched this episode.

Ha! I like this scene of Donna, waving to her grandfather from the TARDIS. The relationship between these two is so lovely.

And that’s the episode.

Next week: The Fires of Pompeii. “The prophecies of women are limited and dull”—ooh, you’re going to regret that when Donna gets her hands on you, mate.

Ah, memorial for the man who played Donna’s father—vale. And they’re playing Doctor Who Confidential; I’m not blogging that, but she’s a lot more soft spoken in real life, Catherine Tate, than any of her characters.

But for now, typing cramp!

(Well, my “minimal spoilers, and if that’s not possible, at least warn people” policy, but that doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue.)

Because I have, of course, just seen the season finale for Doctor Who and I’m burning to post something about it.

But I won’t, except to deliver an oblique warning: if you haven’t spoiled yourself for this episode, don’t. It’s well worth watching unspoiled, and most of you (as far as I can tell from my visitor logs) only have to wait another fortnight.

If I can’t post about it now, though, I suppose I’ll have to wait until I get up to it in my season 4 live-blogging extravaganza—but that won’t be for another three months.

I hope I haven’t forgotten all the interesting things I want to say by the time that rolls around.

Well, I’m not live-blogging it yet; I’m sitting on the back verandah, having a quick cigarette while ABC News runs through endless updates on tennis (seriously: most boring sport ever? Assuming golf doesn’t qualify as a sport?).

But I intend to live-blog all the episodes in this fourth season, barring catastrophe.

Live-blogging is now my favourite pastime; it puts inordinate stresses on the writing process, which I find refreshing.

But I’m not doing it with a bottle of vodka at my side any more.

Right, now I’m back in the living room—of course, I wonder whether there’s much point live-blogging if I can’t be sure that people will be reading at the same time. But, really, if I wrote the blog under those circumstances, I’d never get anything written.

They’re really pushing the Kylie Minogue angle—but I can’t really blame them.

Ooh, my spell checker doesn’t recognise either “Kylie” or “Minogue”—but it did take her a while to break into the U. S. market.

What? The Peter Serofinovich (near enough) Show? I’ve never heard of that. But I love him—thanks to Star Wars (embarrassingly) and Black Books and Shaun of the Dead, so I’ll probably watch that.

Low-level violence? I don’t remember that. But here we go—the Titanic improbably crashes through the TARDIS.

I wish they’d played the Children in Need special first, though—that was delightful.

NICK: New Zealand!
ME: What?
NICK: New Zealand Shipping Co. Ltd.

Right you are, then.

Ooh, the creepy robots; I like them. They remind me of the gorgeous deco robots in “Robots of Death”—they were stunning.

Ah, the revelation that it’s the space Titanic—and then the theme music. It’s new theme music, I think—hang on.

No, Nick says it was re-recorded after this. But then he tells me it is in fact a new mix for this, so I think he’s lying to me to make me look silly.

Geoffrey Palmer! Hey, Geoffrey! I love you! Don’t be evil!

Oh, you silly midshipman—leave the bridge, regardless of regulations. He’s sent everyone off for a reason, and you’ll regret this.

Oh, Palmer’s definitely evil. (Of course, I’ve seen this before—but that’s not the point. I can still tell he’s evil.)

Have we ever seen the Doctor in a tuxedo before?

Nick hates soft-rock carols—and I’m absolutely with him. I love real Christmas carols, but these things . . . no.

I’d never noticed before that the Doctor is imitating the robot’s head movements as it breaks down. Apparently it’s worse when the robots break down in first class—that’s a bit disturbing, given the conditions of the real Titanic’s sinking.

Ooh, Kylie! Hello, Kylie! Gee, she’s tiny.

She’s kind of adorable, though—especially when she grins. “Astrid” is an anagram for “TARDIS”, but I don’t know if that’s intentional. Kylie’s not lost her accent, though, at least not on the vowels. I do like hearing a genuine Australian accent on telly; it doesn’t happen enough, and it seems to be an extraordinarily difficult accent to counterfeit, for some reason.

Ah, the working-class passengers who are being mocked by the people in first class. But the Doctor gets revenge—petty, but amusing.

Uh oh, back to Geoffrey Palmer.

NICK: And in Davies’s scripts, there’s always someone saying “Doctor” as in medical doctor. Interesting. I don’t know what to make of it.

Make of that what you will—I’d be interested to hear opinions.

Ooh, Clive Swift. Apparently, there’s an excruciating interview with him in Doctor Who Magazine—according to Nick, from whom I got this information, Clive Swift made the whole thing very difficult for the interviewer. That’s a shame, because I’ve always found him amusing.

DOCTOR: The pyramids are beautiful. And New Zealand.
NICK: Yay!

Hey! It’s (spoiler!) Donna’s grandfather! I love you, you adorable old man.

Ah, the Queen’s staying in London. A lesson learned from her mother: “The King won’t leave the people, and I won’t leave the King.”

(Should those nouns be capitalised? I can’t tell at this stage, and I can’t be bothered looking it up. But I’m talking about specific monarchs, so I’ll leave them as is.)

Uh oh, Geoffrey Palmer again. This can’t be good. And do those meteors have engines? How are they turning on that sharp angle, otherwise?

Ha! The Doctor’s put his glasses on. That’s usually the sign for me to get whacked by an excitable friend when we watch these in groups, but Nick’s not susceptible to David Tennant’s charms. That I know of.

Oh, you poor midshipman. Geoffrey shows his true colours. He was a villain in the last Doctor Who story he was in, wasn’t he? Or at least a stooge? I’ll ask Nick in a moment.

Uh oh! Tiny asteroid.

NICK: Ha! It’s a gigantic Ferrero Rocher!

Oh, Geoffrey! I know you’re dying, but this is evil. You know that, don’t you? Although I’ll admit that that lugubrious face works well with this kind of character. I love you, Geoffrey! I’m sorry you’re dead. Or almost. No, actually dead now.

The screaming and the death gives me a good opportunity to ask Nick my question: apparently, Geoffrey wasn’t evil or a stooge in the last story, just a misguided beaurocrat. Also, Geoffrey—I’m sorry I’m calling you by your first name when we haven’t been formally introduced—I blame the exigencies of live-blogging. Oddly, “Geoffrey” is easier to type then “Mr Palmer.”

Man, this episode has a high body count—we’re up the steward being sucked out of the ship, if I haven’t been making the narrative absolutely clear, which I suspect I haven’t. But I don’t think I’ve seen this bloody an episode since “Horror of Fang Rock”—and that had a fairly small cast of characters from which to work. But this reminds me of classic episodes such as “Warriors of the Deep” and “Robots of Death,” naturally.

Slight pause while I figure out why the page just went really strange and then realise that I hit the “html” button accidentally. But that’s fine—we’re all here again.

The Heavenly Host have gone evil, by the way. Ah, evil robots. Have any Doctor Who episodes involving robots ever been bad?

The Doctor’s claiming to be 903 years old—is he lying about his age, again?

No! Don’t bring that robot back to life! You’re really going to regret that.

NICK: Hang on, Rich Chappy knew the Host said “You’re all going to die.” So he should know mending it is a bad idea. Bit of a plot hole, there. Mind, it’s the first time I’ve noticed it, in four times of watching.

Ah, “allons-y”—or something along those lines. (I think I can confidently say ‘Excuse my French’—it really is non-existent.) The Doctor’s habit of saying that is going to pay off in a really disturbing fashion in a devastating episode later in the season. (Spoiler!) Kind of.

The anti-cyborg attitude behind this episode is one of the more interesting aspects of the world-building: it’s a shame there isn’t more room to develop it further.

Ah, the disappearing life signs—that reminds me of something. Is it another Doctor Who episode? I can’t remember now.

Killer robots! Why oh why do people trust robots? It’s never a good idea. At least not in Doctor Who.

NICK: You’re supposed to be a helper robot! Why aren’t you helping?

Never mind, he’s been squished under a giant block.

NICK: In death, they’re extraordinarily unrealistic.

Nick thinks the last instance of the disappearing life signs was “Earthshock,” when the Cybermen’s android was slaughtering troopers. He could be right—I’ve blocked a lot of “Earthshock” out of my head, because it was a bit silly.

NICK: Well, it’s more reputable than a degree from Bond University. And you can quote me on that.

Can you guess which comment he’s responding to?

This whole episode is so The Poseidon Adventure—although now we appear to be crossing the bridge of Kazak Dhum (don’t check my spelling).

Nick was very unimpressed that the Afro-Caribbean man was the first to die. He’s just said so again—about the fifteenth time he’s said that. But he feels it is pandering too much to the conventions of the disaster movie.

(I agree, but I still laughed and laughed when Samuel L. Jackson was eaten by that giant shark in Deep Blue Sea—a movie so cliched that my father, who’s seen about fifteen movies since the late 1960s, was able to spot the plot developments before they happened, including the bit where the shark turned an oven on with its nose.)

Nick’s right—this scene is is beautifully lit. See, killer robots who can also fly is just cheating. What are you supposed to do about that? And it’s all very well to hit their haloes away with lead pipes, but what if you’re like me? I’m far more likely to whack myself on the back of the head and just make the whole thing easier for them.

Oops, second man down—little, spiky, red dude. I have no chance on Earth of spelling his name correctly, so we’ll just leave it at that.

Ah, about to be third man down.

But first, a Douglas Adams joke. I wish Douglas Adams were still writing for the programme. Of course, I wish Douglas Adams were still alive, and writing anything.

Now that’s the third man down. That’s a shame; I rather warmed to her.

Now the Doctor’s angry—this Doctor spends most of his time angry, it seems. Who was the last genuinely angry Doctor? The sixth regeneration was pretty cranky most of the time, but it wasn’t this kind of white-hot anger. Ah, but Sylvester McCoy was capable of this—remember “The Happiness Patrol”? That is the one I’m thinking of, right?

Ah, the point where the Doctor kisses the latest girl. Call me old fashioned, but I do think there’s too much kissing in this new incarnation. I preferred the original series in that respect. (And other respects, although I do love this new version.)

I think there’s a logical flaw in the “survivors must equal passengers or staff” argument that the Doctor sets up. Surely, survivors simply equal anyone who survives the crash, by definition. But, he might be talking about an assumption that the Host have been specifically programmed with a list of people who have survived and need to be hunted down. But surely that’s nonsensical—wouldn’t they just kill anyone human, regardless of their standing?

Oh, never mind.

In the interim, the Doctor is working up to a confrontation with the big boss, and Astrid is following him.

I’m not sure I want to be a disembodied head on some kind of hydraulic cart—that really doesn’t seem as though it would be a satisfactory life. Still, at least they seeded the necessary backstory for this with little, red, spiky man—I would like to know more about why Stow (is that right? We’ll leave it as is) despises cyborgs.

The head/cart thing is really creepy, though. And I do like a good revenge plan. I don’t care how fond the “ladies” are “of metal”—what can they do when you’re just a head on a cart?

Actually, seriously, don’t answer that. I have a feeling I could work out the answer with a bit of quick Googling—but I don’t think I want to.

Let’s just forget that bit ever happened, shall we?

Oh, dear, Astrid is making her move. Nick’s not sure why the robots don’t just kill the Doctor, anyway, but let’s be glad they don’t.

Whoops, slow motion—never a good sign.

Oh, that’s a shame. She would have driven me mad as a companion—but what about this nice young midshipman? We haven’t had a proper male companion in ages?—but I rather liked her.

Ah, a hero-shot of the Doctor, framed against fire. And about to play with all those Messianic overtones that this new series has been overtly seeding into the show. (I spelt that “dhow,” which would have been an entirely different point.)

This hero-shot reminds me of the scene at the end of “The Runaway Bride”—I assume it’s deliberate—where he’s killing the Rachnos (seriously, it’s close enough, spelling-wise) babies.

(By the way, the Titanic is falling on Buckingham Palace, and we’re about to have queen-related hi-jinks.)

With the scene in “The Runaway Bride,” I felt that this Doctor was cruising for a bruising, so to speak. He was so implacable, and in a way that was entirely foreign to an old-school fan of the series.

(Ah, queen-related hi-jinks. Is there any surer form of humour?)

Anyway, back to the main point—I could deal with implacable Doctor—but I felt he needed to get his comeuppance at some point. He needed to be brought to a sense of how extreme his behaviour was. And I’m not sure that’s ever happened to him, yet. I sort of hope it does.

Poor Astrid. I’m not sure I want to spend my life floating around the galaxy as atoms. And “the ghost of consciousness”? Does that mean she’s still sentient? What if the atoms are scattered at some point?

Man, she’s tiny.

There’s a fine line between falling and flying—at least as long as the ground is a reasonable distance away.

Nick thinks there are shades of this in the Steven Moffat two-parter—still to come in our Doctor Who season 4 live-blogging extravaganza—but we’ll come to that when we come to those episodes.

Why does the jerk always survive in these episodes? Why?

I wonder if it would have been possible for me to make fewer references to the actual narrative? I’ll see how I do next week.

This really does have an enormously high body count. How many people were on that ship? And only four survived? Well, technically two, since Mr Copper went AWOL and the Doctor was a stowaway.

Oh, the Doctor is so English. I wonder if I could make something out of that about nationalism and consciousness of the foreign on the part of immigrants—but I can’t really be bothered.

(Spoiler coming up. Seriously, a spoiler. A minor spoiler, but still a spoiler. Is that enough warning? Have you skipped down to the next paragraph? Good. This Mr Copper character is going to pay off in an interesting if minor way later in the season. Keep an eye out.)

And there goes that TARDIS.

Oh, Verity Lambert. Vale, Verity Lambert.

And that’s “The Voyage of the Damned.” Next week: creepy little aliens and Catherine Tate. I wasn’t sure about her, but I’ve warmed to her.

And a preview for the first half of the season. Some good episodes coming up. Any season that includes Agatha Christie is a good season.

I saw an advertisement for the new Mazda 6 earlier tonight and, while I have next to no interest in car advertisements, something struck me as a little odd.

Then, when I saw it again a moment ago, I realised what it was: they were quoting a magazine review that apparently read “Most cars have a fatal flaw, but not this one.”

A fatal flaw?

Most cars have a fatal flaw?

I know mine gets a little tetchy with me if I leave the air conditioning running for too long, but the situation’s never proven fatal.

The only way this would reassure me if they meant fatal flaw as it’s used to describe Shakespeare’s tragic heroes.

It’s a noble ambition in a car manufacturer, to work so hard to remove the hubris, jealousy, and ambition from their vehicles.

So Dexter is coming to Channel 10. Dexter Uncut, according to the ad. we just saw.

(Just saw, that is, while we’re still desperately waiting for Rove to finish so we can watch Supernatural. Don’t get me wrong; there’s something charming about Rove as a person, but I have absolutely no interest in his programme. Plus, the ad. for Supernatural promised me an answer to an important question: will Dean kill someone to save his own life? My feeling is that the answer lies somewhere between “Yes” and “You just completely made that dilemma up for the purposes of advertising, didn’t you, Channel 10? I really wish you’d stop doing that.” But I still want to know the answer.)

Where was I?

Oh, right. Dexter.

We’ve already seen the first two seasons of Dexter—and loved it. It’s not easy to watch, and I wonder how it will do on Channel 10.

But what interested me in the Channel 10 ad. was the way they positioned Dexter as asking a series of questions: “Killer? Cop? Good? Evil?”

I turned to Nick and said, “Well, he’s not a cop.”

Look, I know I’ve said this before, but—futile though it may be—I’m going to keep saying it.

These days—and I know this is a shock, but bear with me—these days, lots of people are women.

I know! But it’s true.

And—brace yourself, now—we actually have the franchise.

Some of us are even allowed to have money, and thus to exercise some degree of influence over the country’s economy.

So, bearing those points in mind, do you think maybe these factors—now that you’re aware of them, that is—might perhaps shift the way that you approach television advertising?

That would be great.

And if you could speak specifically to the people who are responsible for Mark Loves Sharon—whatever that is—I’d be really grateful.

Because I can’t even articulate the ways in which getting your kicks out of keeping bikini-clad women in otter enclosures is wrong.

TELEVISION ADVERTISEMENT FOR CSI: A crime so shocking, so mystifying . . . is this a case for the Mythbusters?
(Caption: Special Guest Stars: The Mythbusters)
ME: What?
NICK: What?
TELEVISION ADVERTISEMENT FOR CSI (sotto voce): Hang on, what did I just say?

Seriously—I realise that, as a good nineteenth-century scholar, I should be watching the BBC’s adaptation of Northanger Abbey. (I am going to watch it, but I was a bit scarred by an earlier adaptation that was apparently scripted by someone who has no understanding of the concept of irony.)

Perhaps my current confusion is a fair return for my decision to record Austen and watch CSI and Supernatural instead.

But I seriously think this belongs on my list of the most perplexing things I’ve ever seen on television—and I’ve seen at least one episode of Mutant X.

One of the advantages of being Generation X—which almost outweighs the fact that you have to call yourself Generation X—is that the people moving into writing and directing positions now are often our age, and are mining our childhoods for reference material.

That’s one of the reasons why Nick and I so enjoy Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law and find it amusing when Unicef bombs the Smurf village.

So we’re already conditioned into looking for and delighting in intertextual references.

But that doesn’t quite explain the strange kind of madness that overtook us when we were watching Press Gang and realised that it uses an enormous number of actors who also appeared in Doctor Who.

This wouldn’t have concerned us, if it weren’t for the Steven Moffat connection.

Let’s face it: Nick and I are geeks.

We converse—not quite exclusively, but largely—in quotations from various books, movies, and video games, up to and including lines from WarCraft 2 (largely “Stop poking me!” and “Hi-ho, matey!”).

(Nick has, in fact, just been speaking in an appalling ‘European’ accent, and ended up by saying, “I don’t know why I’m trying to sound like Gunther, the Eurotrash vampire, but Sam and Max is a great game.”)

We’re prone to saying, when faced by events in the real world, “You know, that reminds me of [random episode of random show].”

I could go on, but that would just lead to me explaining how I once said “The geek shall inherit the earth” while I was giving a class on punctuation, and we all know how that story ends.

But the point is that we know how geeks think—which is why we’re not sure that this influx of former Doctor Who actors into a Steven Moffat—run show is entirely coincidental.

Of course, few of the major Press Gang characters have appeared in Doctor Who, if you don’t count Julia Sawalha’s appearance as the companion in the Comic Relief special “The Curse of Fatal Death”—and, since that was written by Moffat, I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

Apart from Sawalha, there are only two exceptions: Lucy Benjamin, who played Julie Craig—once Head of Graphics, later Deputy Editor—also played the young Nyssa in “Mawdryn Undead” and Angela Bruce—Chrissy Stuart in the first two seasons of Press Gang—was, of course, Brigadier Winifred Bambera in “Battlefield.”

But consider the following list of guest stars, compiled by someone who has finished one major project and not started the next, and therefore has a lot of spare research energy floating around (or, at least, knows the URL for imdb.com).

Michael Jayston, who appeared as Colonel X/John England in “UnXpected”—an episode about a children’s television show that was a strange hybrid of Prisoner and Doctor Who, with a touch of Bond—also played The Valeyard, a shadowy semi-regeneration from between The Doctor’s twelfth and thirteenth regenerations, in “The Trial of a Time Lord.”

Also in “UnXpected,” were Eric Dodson, as Sir Edward, who played the Headman in “The Visitation,” and Brian Glover, as Dr Threeways, who played Griffiths in “Attack of the Cybermen.”

But it gets better, because in the same episode, as the psychiatrist Dr Clipstone, was perhaps the coolest guest star of all time: Michael Sheard. Not only did Sheard play the evil Mr Bronson in Grange Hill as well as once being choked the death by Darth Vader in the best of the three films (what prequels?), The Empire Strikes Back, but he was also in no fewer than six different Doctor Who stories, going back as far as 1966: as the headmaster of Coal Hill High School in “Remembrance of the Daleks,” Margrave in “Castrovalva,” Supervisor Lowe in “The Invisible Enemy,” Laurence Scarman in “Pyramids of Mars,” Dr Summers in “The Mind of Evil,” and Rhos in “The Arc.”

Or perhaps the coolest guest star was David Collings, who appeared in Press Gang as Mr Winters. He doesn’t have quite the Doctor Who credits on his CV that Sheard has, but he was in three episodes: as Vorus in “Revenge of the Cybermen,” as Poul in “Robots of Death,” and as Mawdryn in “Mawdryn Undead.”

Of course, while he was never choked to death by Vader, he was Silver in Sapphire and Steel, which is another degree of geek cool.

Also in “The Invisible Enemy,” as an opthamologist, was Jim McManus, who played Station Master Dutton in the Press Gang episode “Friends Like These.”

And “The Trial of a Time Lord” didn’t just have Michael Jayston—Sam Howard, who appeared as an unnamed “Teacher” in three Press Gang episodes, played Asta in that story.

Even the minor characters frequently appeared in Doctor Who episodes.

Peter Childs, playing the proprietor of a cafe, was also Jack Ward in “The Mark of the Rani.”

Tessa Shaw, who was a librarian in “Picking Up The Pieces,” was a UNIT Officer in “Spearhead from Space.”

Sharon Duce, who played Katherine Hill, was also Control in “Ghost Light”.

Paul Jerrico, a “TV policeman” in “Windfall,” was The Castellan in “Arc of Infinity”—“No, not the mind probe!”

Kevork Malikyan, who was Fahid in “Day Dreams,” was also Kemel Rudkin in “The Wheel in Space.”

Even the younger actors—the ones who haven’t been jobbing in the industry for twenty years—appear in Doctor Who episodes.

Christien Anholt, who was the tragic Donald Cooper in the two-part “The Last Word,” had previously played Perkins in the wonderful “Curse of Fenric.”

And, of course, Gian Sammarco—playing Benjamin Drexil in “Something Terrible,” a train-spotter who wanted a new image but didn’t think to mention that he was a black belt in judo and an accomplished mime—had followed up his role as Adrian Mole with the part of Whizzkid in “The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.”

It’s even moving in the other direction, now—Raymond Sawyer, who played Councillor Peter Mayhew in “Breakfast at Czar’s,” recently played the desk sergeant in Moffat’s new-series episode “Blink.”

(And do you think that character name is a coincidence? Or are we supposed to think of Chewbacca?)

But is there any more to this than a strong indication that giving me a blog was not necessarily the wisest move?

Probably not.

But I would like to think that it’s not just coincidence—that, on some level, Steven Moffat is thinking, “Now, who can we get to play this role? I know, there was that guy on Doctor Who once!”

I was perhaps a little hard on CSI: New York when I said they were pushing the grotesquery angle too far this season.

Because now I’m watching Bones.

Just in case, and it’s possible, you’re not actually watching Bones, this is an episode in which they find a woman’s body, in a trunk, with the bones removed.

Which is a little odd, the lack of bones, given that the show is called Bones, but I think that’s designed to allow Bones to work out the personal relationship she’s been exploring for the past three or four episodes . . . or something.

I forget.

I get bored with that angle.

But, be that as it may, the body stripped of bones and then stitched back up was bad enough.

Then they said that the body had been boiled first.

Bear in mind that we’d seen the body from at least four or five different angles at this point.

ME: Boiled? Did they actually say boiled?
NICK: Boiled?
SEELEY BOOTH: Boiled?

Yep, we were all pretty much uncomfortable with that, even the character paid to read the lines.

Then, it got worse.

They tried to recreate the dead woman’s face by . . . you know, I don’t want to go into details.

(A football bladder was involved.)

But we had to watch it: in fact, we had to watch it inflate and then deflate.

I honestly don’t think I’ve seen anything more revolting.

You know, Bones, I will keep watching you. I have enough residual affection for David Boreanaz, thanks to Angel, to watch almost anything except Valentine or . . . well, any movie he might make, actually.

But I would really, really appreciate it if you would avoid boiled bodies with their bones removed and, especially, anything to do with footballs.

Especially the footballs.