Nice - looks like they also make a root beer and some varieties of iced tea!

Where’d you find it?

Toews is a relatively legendary player with a proven record…who’s pushing 40 and hasn’t played in about three years.

It’s a bit of a gamble, but there’s a lot of potential, and a one-year contract isn’t too risky.

I’d like to know more about the ruling than what’s presented in the article. And I guess I’d need to know more about Canadian defamation law.

Not reading the book is unfortunate (sort of)…but it seems like a person could form a sincerely-held beliefs about a book without reading the thing cover to cover.

I didn’t have any problem with Omega’s appearance - his whole deal was that he could reshape his universe at will, so…sure, giant bone monster, why not?

How easily he was dispatched is another matter. It’s sort of what I expected from the episode, but still not exactly satisfying.

“There was plenty of fuss made about Winston Churchill being in Doctor Who, when there’s plenty of history to suggest he wasn’t such a good guy. And that’s always the way.”

He added: "Our history of slavery, our way of walking through the world is constantly being re-analysed. So I like to think it’s the same on Gallifrey… Omega has been re-contextualised, and the story gets bolder and changes over time.

“We don’t want to repeat the past, we want to push it forward.”

This seems like a very odd train of thought, though.

The SNW Gorn literally pulled the classic sitcom “stay on your side of the line” routine - basically the same motivation as “Arena”.

I know just the anomaly.

I prefer the goofy-badass-Gorn over the scary-quick-incubatin’-Gorn.

They’re iconic for a reason.

The recon is to the timeline and initial encounter with the species

Fair enough - I’ll backtrack slightly and say that if there’s a retcon, that’s where it is, rather than in the Gorn’s behaviour.

But there is a bit of wiggle room in “Arena”, I think. Kirk certainly seems unfamiliar with the Gorn, but they never really say it’s the first contact, and Spock doesn’t really say anything one way or the other (a very Spock-like thing to do in any situation).

They definitely have massaged that canon, but I don’t think they’ve really contradicted it.

It’s really none of our business…but are they?

“What I loved about the Gorn was it was an opportunity to retcon something into a real monster. What we do in Star Trek—and you’ll see we’ll even do it with the Gorn—is we start by seeing the other and often we end by engaging our empathy and understanding common ground. And that’s great, and it doesn’t mean that there isn’t real evil in the world. And so what we wanted to do with the Gorn was to give you a monster, and a monster that at least at first, seemed irredeemable.”

I find this statement a little aggravating, because in my opinion they really haven’t retconned the Gorn. In “Arena”, they slaughtered the entire Cestus colony, and the Gorn captain is utterly merciless.

“Arena” is about mercy, but the Gorn didn’t really earn it in the episode, which was really kind of the point.

Stories included have not only been written by Tennant, Capaldi and Whittaker, but also by Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Chris Chibnall, Steven Moffat and Hugh Bonneville. In fact, there are more than 50 contributors.

Jump 900 years into the past and do a period costume drama.

I always figured TAS was the final two years of the five-year mission…

I think Goldsman’s actual statement is pretty vague - he could easily mean a spinoff with the non-TOS cast. Just redress the sets and you’re off to the races.

He could also mean a movie, or…some third thing.

And in any case, he’s moving on with his career.

It’s cool that they’re excited about possibilities, but I remain very skeptical that there’s any actual traction there.

The pass, which launches on Friday, doesn’t require registration or a physical card. Instead, the benefits will be available upon arrival at parks, national museums and when booking train tickets. Canadians and foreign tourists are eligible.

It’s not really a “pass” then, but cool.

Okay, this is kind of a nothing story, but…what an interesting “what if”…

All that money for “the Doctor walks through some fan blades”.

Heck, it was pretty much Goldsman’s pitch:

In the first pitch document that we sent to the network… we opened with a question asking, “What if we just did Star Trek?” And they said, “Okay.” Every day in the writers’ room, we try to imagine how would Gene Roddenberry and his team make The Original Series if they were doing it today?

I…don’t really think this one is all that good?

I’m going to jump straight into something that I forgot to talk about last week: the Ninth Doctor himself. I’ve been trying to put my finger on what sets him apart from the others, and…for me, it’s his goofy aloofness. He’s at once extremely enthusiastic and slightly contemptuous of those around him, with an edge that definitely doesn’t carry forward to his successors. He certainly throws Rose into the deep end in this episode, dropping her far into the future, well after everyone she knows is dead and gone, just in time to (almost) watch her planet get destroyed by the sun.

There are really nice character bits throughout, like Raffalo the plumber and of course Jabe the tree lady. Lady Cassandra certainly is memorable.

The Doctor lets Cassandra dry out until she explodes in the end. Remember kids, the Doctor never does cruel things, and the more recent seasons have ruined everything!

Not the worst episode ever, but hardly the best. It continues to focus on Rose’s journey, and her reaction to exactly what it means to travel through time and space. It also continues to lay out the Doctor’s backstory in small drips.

Edit: Oh, and it’s sort of weird that they didn’t tie the Adherents of the Repeated Meme more directly into the Bad Wolf nonsense.