As I said - I haven't seen any of Capaldi's episodes - I need to catch up. Perhaps a TV binge candidate...

Meh, that was just the live viewing numbers.
It would be interesting to see what the consolidated numbers look like once you've got on-demand viewing factored in.

From a gaming journo/screenwriter and who knows what else...

Donna Noble fitted the 'snarky, and sarcastic, and spout one-liners, and flirt relentlessly' role for quite a while until they gave the character some development. And I couldn't give you any description of Rose Tyler's actual character at all, her role seemed more or less to consist of 'damsel in peril' and to make doe-eyes at David Tennant.

I think the opinion betrays a misconception about that sort of TV Doctor Who is (which has maybe been exacerbated by the way the BBC have been selling it). The BBC have been selling Who as part of it's 'serious drama' line up, when in fact it's a fundamentally different show to Luther or a literary adaption of War & Peace. Who is fantasy, who is TV's idle daydream of what it would be like to fly like a bird. Who does not need an 'everyman' figure for us to feel comfortable being in the shoes of. People watch Who not because they want it to relate to their normal lives, they watch it so that for 45 minutes or whatever they can imagine a world they don't live in. It doesn't need a link to the real world. Who is escapism, pure and simple. Who no more needs an 'associateable' character than The Avengers or Star Wars does.

Not that Who couldn't benefit from more interesting characters in terms of the more minor players, but the justification for asking for that seems arse-backwards to me.

Jon

Who is, primarily, a children's programme. The fact that it can be enjoyed by people of all ages is, frankly, a feat that few can pull off.

The problem is that children really don't like the soppy stuff. They want scary monsters, the Doctor being clever and winning.

Doctor Who, Genesis Of The Daleks and ethics | Den of Geek
http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/doctor-who/ ... and-ethics

Interested article. Of course, it's one of those paradox issues. If he kills my namesake he'll never have to deal with him or his creations in the future so how would he know he was evil yada yada yada.

I don't think that argument really holds up for The Doctor.
With the way that he has lived his life in the timeline of everything, I don't think if he wiped out your namesake the no-longer future actions would be wiped from his memory.

Mark

Why Peter Capaldi Said No To Extra Doctor Who
http://www.cinemablend.com/television/W ... 88807.html

BBC's Who Twitter account teasing a huge announcement. One Tweet talks about the announcement being a matter of hours not days (it seems a deliberate choice of words), which leads me to think about the possibility of a key Star Trek name being in an episode. Is Shatner involved, or did Nimoy film something before his death? After all, he was the one who delivered the "hours may seem like days" line in The Wrath of Khan. Who knows. Announcement soon, apparently.

I suspect the Twitter teaser mentioned above by Paul, was that there is going to be a new spin-off.

Mark

That would be the one. Not really energised by the idea, but we'll see.

BBC Announces New ‘Doctor Who’ Spin Off Series 'Class'
http://sciencefiction.com/2015/10/01/bb ... ies-class/

This was a really good episode I thought, but there's a couple of niggles I have ...
Clara lacked her usual control over The Doctor in this episode.
So far, the show has gone to great lengths to show us that Clara is the moral figure of the show, tempering The Doctor's recklessness that he so frequently displays.
In this ep., aside from one cue-card moment, that never happened.
She stepped out of the TARDIS with such a desire to go on an adventure, that she lost sight of how dangerous The Doctor can be when left to his own devices, which we evidenced by the scene where The Doctor convinces the bases crew to stay, placing them all in mortal danger.
Any other episode, and Clara would've been all over that, but this time she (almost gleefully) went along with him.
I understand that her character arc of becoming more and more like The Doctor is starting to become much more of a central issue - The Doctor even tried to temper HER during the speech he gave her in the TARDIS - but The Doctor was firmly in control in this episode, and Clara failed to live up to that moral standard that was placed in her from the start.
Perhaps this was deliberate, but if so, it's not been an organic shift.

The other issue being the very end of the ep., but I can't really address this as it's a two-parter but I'll put it out there anyway ... would The Doctor really allow himself to be killed just to try and solve a mystery?
A human death, while regrettable, would certainly be acceptable for the character to bear - especially just a bit-part character.
This probably has something to do with him not regenerating, and thus there being some sort of get-out-of-jail-free card in relation to him returing to his own body, but that's just speculation that'll be resolved by this time next week anyway.

Mark