Time Travelers

I have just watched parts of Peter Capaldi's first performance as the Doctor: not as bad as I feared from the Radio Times plot summary and earlier series. To everyone who watches Doctor Who, I say, "Read The Time Machine and The Time Patrol. The Time Traveler is the original and Manson Everard is a better series character."

The Doctor, his assistant, Clara, and a dinosaur are in Victorian England so we recognize several time travel themes and periods coming together. Nowadays, the script writers occasionally exploit the subtleties of time travel. In this case, the Doctor has regenerated so Clara is not sure whether he is the same person but they travel to a time before this latest regeneration and the earlier Doctor, knowing that they are there, phones Clara and reassures her. (Guest appearance by the previous actor.) The regenerated Doctor sees Clara on the phone and knows who is speaking to her.

Everard does not regenerate but does potentially live for centuries or millennia so that, like "immortals" in other works by Anderson, he must have some way of coping with the problem of accumulating memory.