SpaceScotsman

Adjusted to the initial sale value of the car - Less easy to cheat by not declaring income, and bigger cars (likely more expensive) that take up more space, pay more.

This episode contains a very powerful and pointed message, but as the episode reveals at the end, it will be lost on those who need to hear it most. Some people are too far gone and will refute the obvious, even when they on some level know it is true, and I struggle to fit myself into their mindset to understand that. Clearly a stab at conspiracy peddlers, toxic masculinity influencers, the press and politicians that use scapegoats, and all the others that prey on insecure people's worries and fear. They probably don't watch DW and wouldn't understand the point made here if they did, one can only hope this helps to immunise any kids watching against falling into these traps as they grow up.

Now, my thoughts on the plot here are not super positive.

First, Kate, what the hell? If Ruby needs to talk to someone, Kate needs to as well. The head of a global security org can't behave like that, even if it is part of some calculated effort to undo the damage done by a conspiracy peddler. The public reaction to "the person we think is making stuff up to control us and out us in harms way is actually willing to put us all in harms way and she's vindictive as hell, she just let that guy get his arm mauled off" being livestreamed should have gone the other way and made the whole situation and public attitudes to UNIT worse. At one point she says to tap the CCTV feeds into his livestream - if I understood that correctly, that means they could have just shut his feed down remotely from the beginning, and avoided this whole mess, if they'd just been a bit more proactive. Which brings me to my next grumble...

I really don't like the writing trope of "here's a super powerful group that exists to protect the world, only they have terrible OpSec so it's easy for people to infiltrate them". No-one, even the analysts (or was he a receptionist? I'm unclear what his job was) at UNIT would have access to all their staff's names and addresses, and any looking into that would necessarily have to be done with more than one person, just to be sure there was no ill intent. They certainly shouldn't be bale to remotely control the building's door locks. And if UNIT can screen out applicants like Conrad for being untrustworthy, how did they let someone who's into conspiracy sites in to begin with?

Now, positives:

I really enjoyed Gatwa's performance here. He was hardly in this episode, but that bit at the end really shows his range. He can go from happy and carefree to deadly serious in an instant.

Our monster of the week, the shreek, is an interesting idea. The exist out of our dimension and can pop in to attack those they've previously marked. I'm kind of getting Predator vibes from it's behaviour and looks. It does sort of beg the question why they wouldn't just attack and kill their victims right away. Waiting a year to juice up the taste of fear hormones can't have that much pay off, unless they live in a timestream that means they're not actually waiting that long.

I enjoyed seeing ruby again, following along Doctor's prior companions after they've left the Tardis is always nice. Seeing her breakdown and admit the need for help is refreshing, and honestly that should be more commonplace. I'm glad to see Ruby's family is staying strong, they can be there to support her. Though I suspect they might be even more dangerous to Conrad than Kate was if they ever got close to him.

Assorted notes:

• The prison below(?) the building reminds me of Torchwood a bit, they had one of those if I'm remembering right.
• Mrs Flood is a prison governess. A woman of many talents. I wonder if she dodges tax with all her paychecks.
• If the Doctor can land on planet earth, why couldn't he just find a spot and sort of "fast-forward" with the brakes on for a few years until 2025... I'm sure there's a timey wimey reason why that wouldn't work.
• It's been a long time since we've seen Trinity Wells presenting the news (I had to look that name up)
• UNIT using a cargo heli to move a dangerous alien that can disrupt electronics across London via the sky? No. Just... no. That's screaming "what could go wrong" :)

You've actually seen trans people, in person, threaten to burn down a surgery building? I doubt this.

As for people being suicidal, that's a known problem which happens as a result of being trans in a country that wants to deny them support, which is exactly why trans people are trying to get recognition in the first place. Denying that isn't exactly going to make their mental health any better, and they can't be blamed for that.

(aside: I keep messing up with parsing the acronyms ECHR and EHRC.)

I doubt this will lead to anything positive, possibly even starmer aping conservative's desire to leave human rights bodies altogether, but I wish them luck all the same.

Absolutely. Screenshots of 3d desktop cube on ubuntu more than a decade ago is what taught me linux existed. It's an absolutely terrible and inefficient way to run desktop workspaces, but it hooked me all the same.

Users need to know what this dot means, and some like children or the elderly will likely not understand the ramifications

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.