Spoilers for “Lucky Day.”

When the writers for this season of Doctor Who were announced, one name in the roster put me instantly on edge. Pete McTighe may have a distinguished filmography but, in this house, he’s known as the person who wrote “Kerblam.” That’s the Chibnall-era episode summed up as “Space Amazon is great and the people protesting poor working conditions and mass-layoffs are the real villains.” Imagine then, my delighted surprise when “Lucky Day” doesn’t just get its politics right, but it does so with molotov cocktails in hand.

It’s 2007 and the Doctor and Belinda land in London as the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Day. The Doctor, Vindicator in hand, gets another set of coordinates before realizing a small boy, Conrad Clack, saw the TARDIS land. He hands Conrad a 50 pence piece and tells him it’s his “lucky day,” before the boy sprints back to his mother. But she’s not interested in his story about a magical blue box, striking the boy and saying she’s had enough of his lies.

Conrad next encounters the TARDIS 17 years later when he spots it parked down a dark alley. There’s a nearby door with …read more

Apple is planning to shuffle its iPhone release schedule next year as it releases the first foldable iPhone to make things more manageable, reports The Information. The plan is for the foldable to come out with the iPhone 18 Pro and “Air” models, while the standard iPhone 18 gets shunted back to the spring of 2027, releasing alongside an iPhone 16E follow-up, according to the outlet.

With the slimmer model in the lineup and a foldable expected in 2026, The Information says Apple needs to shuffle things around to keep a ballooning six-iPhone lineup manageable. As for what the foldable will look like, the outlet writes that Apple is going with a book-style form factor, rather than clamshell, with a 5.7-inch screen when closed and a just-under-8-inch display when open. Supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has previously suggested it will be 4.5–4.8mm thick when unfolded and will use Face ID, rather than Touch ID.

The report includes other tidbits, like that Apple will introduce a new battery case for the iPhone 17 Air, as its testing has apparently shown that, on its own, the phone’s battery life “will fall short of that of previous iPhones.” Also, …read more

The Trump administration has released a proposal to cut about a quarter of NASA’s 2026 budget, slashing both International Space Station crew sizes and the amount of research done there. At the same time, it sets up new funding that would likely benefit Elon Musk’s SpaceX by prioritizing human missions to Mars, and refocuses on “beating China back to the Moon.”

The suggested cuts are part of President Trump’s budget proposal for next year. It would slash $508 million from the ISS, cutting its crew size and focusing its “reduced research capacity … on efforts critical to the Moon and Mars exploration programs.” It also cuts $2.265 billion from space science missions, and includes terminating things like the Mars Sample Return mission, the objectives of which it says would be achieved by human flights to the red planet.

At the same time, the proposal offers $1 billion in spending on “Mars-focused programs,” with no specifics about where that money would go. As The New York Times writes, Musk’s SpaceX will “presumably” seek NASA funding to help with an uncrewed Starship flight to Mars that Musk has claimed will launch next year. Another $7 billion would be …read more