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.

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.

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

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

“Key franchises”? And they don’t think WW is a key franchise? Out of all their films from the past few years, the WW ones have been some of the best. If they don’t want to do anything with it, they don’t deserve the IP.

Just use PCGW for that https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Avowed#Game_data

To all the people saying they should release server source code: You don’t even need to do that (as nice as it would be). At the very basic level all that is needed is:

• remove DRM (which probably cost more effort to add in the first place)
• a description of the API for any online components (which any decent dev team will already have internally documented)

In fairness, cheese from france is probably safer raw because they don’t have as many superfarms that are as prone to spreading diseases like bird flu

I thought elvish meant someone who likes rock and roll music

I misread that as prefix and, honestly, forthwhence doesn’t sound half bad.

What option do I need to use to get support for Heptapod B?

If you use Organic Maps you may be interested in https://streetcomplete.app to help fill out the map

It does matter. It’s safer for everyone if cyclists travel side by side in one lane because then the car driver has to spend less time in the oncoming lane to complete the overtake. A long string of bikes takes more time to safely pass.

At this point the web is about as complex as an operating system in terms of complexity. That needs really strong specific standards in order for it to work, and in turn projects like web browsers are huge and complex.

If someone wanted to build a web browser that only followed the simpler parts of the specifications, it wouldn’t work for many websites* and people would not use that browser.

*Whether or not sites need to be so complex is another question entirely, but the reality right now is that they are

Answer wrong. The more of us humans that answer wrong, the less accurate we need to be to get past these stupid things. If google want me to do work for them, they can pay me.

To be honest, I could get behind fines for overrunning street works. Hell, go further: fines for any overrunning, underdelivering or overbudget public contracts. That would quickly resolve the mess that the torys have made giving out dodgy contracts to their mates.

I’ve found it easier to use KDE to switch from windows as it feels like a more complete ecosystem that I’m familiar with. And it is pretty great, until I install one bad graphics driver and then I’m stuck in a terminal only session until I can fix it. At least windows has safe mode.