'Face The Raven' Musings - Doctor Who 2005 S09E10 - SPOILERS

This is the first of a series of posts where I am inviting fellow Whovians to join in a discussion about Doctor Who episodes as they are released. If you haven't viewed the episode and don't want to be spoiled, come back later and discuss.

So we start with Rigsy calling the TARDIS about the mysterious tattoo on the back of his neck he can't remember getting. First scene takes place in his apartment.

The TARDIS lands

The next line from the Doctor reminds us how this one doesn't "get it" about humans, well, at least he plays it that way:

The Doctor gets around to his tattoo, which he considers boring, then "Oh, that's not boring", and the game is afoot!

I love how he calls Rigsy "Local Knowledge",

One of my favorite parts is where the Doctor uses the tech in the TARDIS to help figure things out. This needs to happen more often in my opinion! The TARDIS is a beautiful machine that has so much more to it than just being an interesting setting or a way to get around. This is awesome. We see lots of Gallifreyan writing and we get some "Spock" as Rose used to ask for back at the beginning of the 9th Doctor episodes. So I am going to focus on it a bit more than the rest.

Rigsy gets scanned by the Doctor.

So does his phone, and Clara's doing it!

The Doctor's Monitor Screen. "Good and Weird".

The Doctor then goes on to tell Rigsy he's had significant contact with alien life forms and he's been Retconned - a Torchwood reference!

Then the Doctor sees something else. Something bad, and the cards come out...

The Doctor then lands the TARDIS, we know they have 526 minutes, and then we go looking for an alien street somewhere, by flying the TARDIS above London and having Clara hang out, because we are looking for holes in where she sees, and we eventually end up in the Doctor Who version of Diagon alley by Rigsy accidentally defeating the misdirection circuits effects.

It was very interesting to see all the different enemies of the Doctor or other aliens in the alley.

We meet "Mayor Me" - Ashildir, who is control of the Quantum Shade, and the investigation slowly unfolds to where everyone is off doing their own thing (as usual), and Clara makes a very unfortunate choice as to how to move things along.

We find out that instead of meaning to kill Rigsy, Ashildir has made a deal with some unknown group to capture the Doctor and transport him somewhere else. They use a TARDIS key lock to assure it is the Doctor they are capturing.

Then Clara's actions are revealed, and suddenly the Doctor is (in my opinion) channeling his inner '9', and gets very angry. It is a FanTAStic scene, and Capaldi plays an angry Doctor wonderfully, and I think Clara has her best lines ever convincing the Doctor he can't be the Warrior again and must instead stay the Doctor. 

We all know what happens next, and I am not going to break everyone's hearts into a million pieces.

The Doctor returns to Ashildir and gives her quite a warning, saying he'll try not to get revenge, but then the Doctor speaks his most chilling line to Ashildir...

So, what do the rest of you think about this episode? I think it is the best of the 9th Season so far.

Anyone recognize these markings?