Australis13

This is one case where I think Windows is appropriately designed for its target audience.

Hell no. Do not give machines the ability to lie. We already have enough trouble with people using technology to deceive without it choosing to be deceptive on its own.

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Faction Paradox was an interesting concept. Be aware that some of the Eighth Doctor BBC books are a real slog to get through (Interference comes to mind - there just isn't enough plot for it to be two books). The main thing I didn't like about the wilderness years books (Virgin & BBC) was that they were distinctly more adult than the show, which I found jarring.

I do wonder what we would have gotten had Moffat left with Smith as he originally wanted. From what I heard, it sounded like he was stuck in the same situation JNT was in the mid 80s - if he wanted the show to continue, he had to run it. Unfortunately in both cases this corresponded to a decline in the show's quality (Colin Baker really shines in his Big Finish audios, but a lot of his TV episodes are terrible due to the writing; Sylvester McCoy fared slightly better, but still had stories like "The Happiness Patrol").

I haven't actually seen any of the Whittaker episodes apart from part of "The Power of the Doctor" (which my wife watched in its entirety and thought it came across as bad fanfic), but after I heard about the whole Timeless Child arc (which apparently Chibnall came up with as a kid watching the Seventh Doctor), I was not impressed. It felt like there was no respect for the show or its continuity. The Whittaker era might have been okay by itself, but as the part of the larger universe, it really grates on me.

We work in protoduction.

Eight is one of my favourite Doctors, so I was really pleased with the references in "The Night of the Doctor". You are probably right that given the common contributors to both the Big Finish and BBC productions (e.g. Nick Briggs), Moffat couldn't ignore it. The fact that Sam and the others from the books aren't name-checked, though, was an interesting point and suggested that the BBC had rejected that continuity (especially since the new series destroyed Gallifrey all over again, not to mention much of the Cartmel Masterplan -- which I personally am glad never made it to TV -- that manifested through the Virgin Publishing series and which was implicitly accepted by the BBC Books, since many authors worked for both publishers).

Fair point about Jenny, although the Doctor certainly treats her as his daughter in the episode. In either case, though, I think the stronger argument is that Fifteen's comment simply indicates that he (in that incarnation) has not had children.

As for abandoning the show in the Capaldi era... The writing of the show was on a steady decline since 2010, with each season weaker than the previous. "The Time of the Doctor" was one of the worst regeneration stories and proved once and for all that Moffat is simply incapable of resolving plot arcs satisfactorily -- the whole Silence arc from 2010-2011 is explained away in basically a few sentences, plus "The Time of the Doctor" makes the resolution of "The Day of the Doctor" feel like a plot device just to provide an easy out for Moffat to resolve the issue of Eleven being the last incarnation of the 13-long cycle.

I think Capaldi would have made a fine Doctor (and the clips I saw of him later on supported that), but he was given rubbish to work with a lot of the time. Moffat only knows how to write one female character and too easily falls back on tropes (his favourite being "all the enemies at the same time", which worked really well in "The Pandorica Opens" because it was such a rare thing). I could go on, but from what I have seen and heard, the show has basically been unwatchable since 2014.

The closest we get to an "in-universe" explanation for the Shalka Doctor is actually in The Gallifrey Chronicles, the final BBC Eighth Doctor book, where one of the surviving Time Lords (from the pre Time War BBC Books arc where Gallifrey is destroyed) notes that Eight's timeline is an utter mess and he has at least three separate "Ninth" incarnations. At the time, this was intended to cover both the Shalka Doctor and Eccleston's (although post "The Name of the Doctor", that would have been retconned to the War Doctor; in either case, one of them was meant to be the Time War incarnation). My personal view is that "Scream of the Shalka" is the timeline prior to the changes caused by the Time War.

Of course, "The Night of the Doctor" then seems to establish that Big Finish's Eighth Doctor continuity is the accepted one, rather than the BBC books, as Eight name-checks companions from the BF series rather than the BBC book series. Regardless of which continuity you accept, Eight's timeline is very convoluted in both cases (and probably the most complex of all Doctors).

I stopped watching after Capaldi's first season (as far as I'm concerned, the show ended with "The Day of the Doctor"), but the most obvious explanation for Fifteen's comment in "The Legend of Ruby Sunday" is that that incarnation hasn't had children. The implication was always that Susan was the First Doctor's biological grandchild, plus Ten not only mentioned having a family at one point but there was also Jenny (from "The Doctor's Daughter"), who one could argue was Ten's biological offspring.

Oh, that's painful.

Unfortunately most of the world isn't even taking it seriously anymore. People treat it like it's a mild flu or common cold.

The virus is still producing waves of infection consistent with the pandemic phase of spread rather than the endemic phase and has not moved into a seasonal pattern like the flu or colds. It's just not publicised in the media. Scientific studies show that Omicron was just as lethal as the original Wuhan strain and the current Omicron subvariants are similar - the virus has not actually gotten less severe as hoped (and in the case of Delta, it actually got more severe; thankfully that lineage did not give rise to the variants we now face).

The only difference between 2020 and now is that we have vaccines, but people need to keep up to date with the boosters. The efficacy of vaccines to prevent severe illness and hospitalisation wanes quickly, with a recent study showing it can be as low as 50% after four months.

We also know that the risk of long COVID is cumulative - i.e. it goes up with each infection and the increase in likelihood depends on whether you're up-to-date with the vaccine (having the most recent booster roughly halves the increase in risk from an infection). A recent study estimated that 400 million people now suffer from long COVID at an annual cost of $1 trillion to the global economy. This will only continue to get worse if people continue to catch COVID every year or two.

Not surprising to me. Politicians everywhere want COVID to be over, but it isn't.

Agreed. I think we'll still see "The Collection" Bluray range completed, but I have to wonder what will happen with the remaining incomplete/missing stories. Will the animations be in the Bluray boxsets, or will future ones (especially if Disney is involved) be limited to their streaming service?

100% cotton.

I find wool to be incredibly itchy and hate the coarse texture of jeans.