Dr Who 9x6 The Woman Who Lived

Quite a brilliant episode though one I rarely rewatch or find resonant. Still, its sad writer Catherine Tregenna never returned to Doctor Who. This has lots of cracking dialogue, steady pace, moving performances, a scene where... ooh! Talk about a moment where the context changes based on what you know about what's coming. No Juliette, I can't tell you! Boast fact: I twice shared a stage with Maisie Williams as fellow guests at a convention! My 15 minutes of fame overlapped with GoT se 1-2.

We're slowly coming up on one of my favorite episodes in all of Doctor Who, episode 11 of this series. Can't wait for you to get there!

The Doctors quip to Leandro, calling him 'Lenny the Lion' cracks me up every time. Lenny the Lion was ventriliquist and kids entertainer Terry Hall's puppet on kids tv in the UK from the 1950's through to the 1970's. The period Moffat and Capaldi grew up in. I also remember Lenny and when you see the puppet with its big goofy grin and think of the alien in this episode, the Doctor calling him that, its just very funny. https://televisionheaven.co.uk/reviews/the-lenny-the-lion-show Makes me wonder if it was in the original script or if it was a bit of Capaldi improv from his own childhood.

Season 8/9 have such a unique vibe to them and I think it is summed up in these 2 episodes

i love that bit of the doctor trying to save sam’s life with a comedy routine, it’s fun mixing such high stakes with dad jokes. loooooove the meditative guitar moment, the tardis really just suits that kind of music so well. also another great moment for 12 and his personal growth, i remember him fending off a hug in Listen but now his guard is down enough to hug back ❤️and tell her explicitly that he missed her! also i always laugh so hard at that scene of the doctor and Me crawling noisily around in the worst home invasion ever haha

That ending pub scene was so nice. Capaldi does such a good job of the quieter moments

Usually in this show it's us on the Doctors side as he's usually in the right one way or another but the interesting thing about Ashilda is for a lot of this episode you can argue that she's right and the doctor is kind of the villain, she's I would say absolutely right in her hatred of the doctor and in choosing the life she did, her history is quite horrendous if you think about it and you can say her giving him a dressing down is justified, the pub scene at the end is fantastic though and it kind of puts them back on level pegging but it's a great episode dealing with the theme of long life, something we only, well mostly, seen through the Doctors eyes only. Maisie Williams was brilliant in these episodes, she works fantastically with Peter and I think people would have been quite happy had the Doctor gone it was ok for her to fly away with him and join the journey in this episode.

"Me" makes an interesting foil to the Doctor, as while he's not technically immortal he's close enough as far as everyone else is concerned and they seem to have similar thoughts about having had to endure so much and how it sucks that everyone else has such short lives. However she's stuck traveling along the slow path and has to deal with everything history has thrown at her over the centuries. It's interesting that you mention the idea of an episode without a companion as there was a Fourth Doctor story that did that same after Sarah Jane first left but while it was interesting as a one off, you sorta need someone to fill the companion role, even if it's on a guest star basis like we've seen in some specials.

✨ The Thief Who Met the Doctor ✨ Whenever I watch The Woman who Lived from Peter Capaldi’s run, I can’t help but smile because I have a personal connection to that episode. One of the filming locations was St Donat’s Castle in Wales, which, as it happens, was where my brother happened to work at the time. We’ve both been lifelong Doctor Who fans, so you can imagine his excitement when the TARDIS crew turned up on his doorstep. While he was hanging about, soaking it all in instead of working, Peter Capaldi himself wandered over. Instead of waiting to be asked, Peter offered my brother a selfie. Isn’t that wonderful? I love that, the idea of being invited rather than feeling like you’re pestering someone you admire. My brother was over the moon and often tells me that Peter made sure the photo turned out perfectly, allowing him to take more than one photo. A true gent. However, not only was my brother not concentrating on work, he also turned into a thief. The staff and students at St Donat’s (it is now a college) had been told not to touch anything. But, well, temptation won. My brother “rescued” a couple of bits of the rubble you see near the end of the episode flying through the air when the castle is being attacked through the portal, one for him and one for me. Nothing flashy, just scrappy little pieces that most people would overlook. But to us, they’re genuine fragments of Doctor Who history. Shhh… don’t tell anyone.