Following my previous post, Chibnall has carried something over from last year, namely the dubious moral sense.

To clear the brush first: destroying Gallifrey... I like that there's something in the story arc slot, but I'm not keen on this particular choice. We've already done "Gallifrey is gone!", and it was more interesting when the Doctor had done it. Gallifrey hasn't really been back long enough to make this as big as it should be. (Oh, and it was no longer in a pocket dimension; Hell Bent revealed it now to be parked at the end of the universe. For what that's worth.) Still, I like them having something big to build the season round (big step up from Tim Shaw), and it gave Jodie Whittaker some slightly more emotionally complex material to work with (I'm thinking particularly of her last scene with the companions).

A little trivia: we first saw Gallifrey at the end of The War Games, the Second Doctor's last adventure. But we didn't learn its name until the Third Doctor's last season, in The Time Warrior. (It was originally supposed to be Galfrey.)

Back to the morality. I... am not a fan of the Doctor defeating the Master by weaponising racists. And she made a point of noting that he was going to fall afoul of their notions of racial purity. I would prefer a Doctor that is willing to fire guns and eschews firing white supremacists. (The gun stance remains incoherent, noting that she condemned steampunk guns and threw a grenade in virtually the same breath.)

The Guardian has been tracking this too, and saw fit to publish an article under the mildly hilarious title, "Doctor Who Is More Offensive Than Ever". That... is a bold call, given the show's history; but it has a point. [link]

One could certainly argue that the show has less sense of perspective than ever, by which I refer to the Doctor saying that impersonating a German soldier (German, not Nazi) was "a new low", even for the Master. I'm pretty sure his plot in The Sound of Drums, Frontier in Space, The Deadly Assassin, or indeed Logopolis would beat it. (Hell, if it's just fashion choices, there's The Keeper of Traken, where he kills the father of one of the Doctor's companions and starts wearing his body like a skinsuit.)

The last thing that stood out to me was the return of the mind-wipe. The Tenth Doctor of course used it on Donna in Journey's End, controversially as it was against her wishes.The Twelfth Doctor intended to use it on Clara in Hell Bent; at that point, the show emphatically treated it as a violation. Indeed, hard not to read it as a direct criticism of the previous era. I'm not exactly saying Chibnall made the wrong call to have her doing it again - there are different circumstances on which one can argue the point - but I'd have liked some recognition that it engaged a fraught issue from the show's past.

Still. This was fun, and reasonably assured in a way that the show often missed last season. Fingers crossed for next week.

Stan Kirsch who played Richie Ryan on Highlander died

Someone needs to explain the end of Crisis to me.

Oh man, I was going to watch Crisis! I can probably do that next week.

I was really shocked to hear about Stan Kirsch.

I forgot about Crisis and it was LoT tonight! arg. I need to watch it tomorrow. I need my Legends fix

That's so sad about Stan Kirsch.

askye, I started to watch, but it was more of the Crisis; since I wasn't feeling great, I turned off and went to bed. I THINK the whole Crisis thing is over ... although there was a bit at the beginning that had me boggled.

Yeah Legends was just the end of Crisis. It doesn't fully come back yet.

I loved that they made the final part of it more Legends flavor.

I noticed that Brandon Roth flubbed and said Cait instead of Sarah when he first saw her and they kept it.

Also I liked Mick telling his fan to call him Rebecca.

They did an ok job hiding the actress's pregnancy with the Killer Frost costume. You could tell but they didn't put something huge in front of her.

And the end was Gleek! From Superfriends. The end was supposed to he Justice League of America but Superfriends was the animated version of that.

I think this was a good way to get the various people together and have I guess new options (I'm assuming that is the implication of the new multiverse).

I don't know if this was intentional but I liked that the Legends featured were the 3 original ones who had the closest ties to Ollie.

I'm still way behind on Arrowverse (like seasons behind) but gave up on avoiding spoilers. One of the comments on AV Club mentioned that Routh's Superman has the yellow back in his costume, suggesting all his loved ones who originally died are alive again on this new Earth.