Doctor Who (36) 10.10 The Eaters of Light

[pambaddeley]

Sorry, I agree with TDZ, best episode I've seen in years (and I'd stopped watching for a while.) Loved the Crows. Loved all the quotes already given.

As for the Master, it always struck me that in classic 'Who' the Master was just a two-dimensional evil bad guy. Missy is quite different. Now that we know that the Doctor and the Master were two little boys in Time Lord school together, you have to ask why they grew up so different. The Doctor is far too sentimental regarding Earth, as wonderfully demonstrated in this episode. Missy may have just been given a bad rap, or did she? I don't watch trailers (trailers are authorised spoilers) and so I can only speculate on what is coming next from this episode. Clearly, we need Missy to continue to be the antithesis of the Doctor, for the story's sake, but the Doctor's character has many dimensions, so why not Missy too?

We've known about the master and doctor being at school together since Jon Pertwee's era. Also, a flashback in the Tennant episode 'The Sound of Drums' suggested that the Master went mad after looking into the time vortex at the age of eight.

 

[AlexH]

but Brian's complaint regarding "veteran roman soldiers" - I took them to be only the younger members who had run away, so that they really were only kids - and that the adults in both the tribe and legion had all been killed. Thinking on it more now, that was not made clear at all, if it really was the point.

I took it as the youngest running away. The eldest of them was called "grandad" as that was the name given to the eldest in the legion - and at 18, he was the eldest left.

I've been on holiday and had 4 or 5 episodes to catch up on by the time I got around to it. I wasn't too enthused at first, but I'm glad I have as I've enjoyed all the episodes (one more to go) - though there has been at least one thing in every episode that has annoyed me enough not to rate any episodes amongst my favourites.

I've also noticed the music on a few occasions - in a bad way - like it isn't as good as previous series? I haven't figured out why - but maybe it needs to be subtler at times, or just doesn't fit Doctor Who.