Episode 76
K9 and Commentary
Sunday 5 June 2016
This week Bondfinger meets Flight Through Entirety, as we attempt our first ever Doctor Who-related commentary podcast. DVD remotes on standby: it’s the lump of coal in all of our 1981 Christmas stockings — the first and worst Doctor Who spinoff: K9 and Company: A Girl’s Best Friend. (Other Doctor Who spinoffs are also available.)
Buy the story
K9 and Company was released on DVD in 2008 as part of the K9 Tales box set, which also includes the execrable Season 15 story The Invisible Enemy. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK).
Notes and links
As usual in the 70s, we reference a whole bunch of Avengers episodes, including Murdersville, The Winged Avenger and The Midas Touch from The New Avengers.
Colin Jeavons appears in some vastly better television programmes: he’s Stamper in the original BBC House of Cards, directed by Graff Vynda-K Paul Seed, and Max Quordlepleen in the somewhat terrible television adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Fans of children’s television who don’t hate themselves will enjoy these seminal programmes: Robin Redbreast, Children of the Stones, Sky and the Chocky trilogy, based on Chocky by John Wyndham.
The K9 and Company Annual is included in the K9 Tales box set, so if you’re as sad as we are, you probably own it already.
Acorn Antiques was a hilarious series of sketches on Victoria Wood as Seen on TV, which parodies the conventions of badly made television programmes. You can see it all here, and you really, really must.
Hilary Briss, played by Doctor Who’s very own Mark Gatiss, secretly sold special stuff to the inhabitants of Royston Vasey in the horrific and superlatively clever League of Gentlemen TV series.
The Travelling Salesman problem is a giant thing in computer science, which posits that it’s really, really hard to work out the shortest route to take to cover a whole bunch of known locations. So no wonder K9 was so incredibly unhelpful.
Here’s the Literal Video version of Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart. If you click one link in these shownotes, it must, must, must be this one.
And, of course, the best Doctor Who spinoff ever (apart from Wizards vs Aliens which totally doesn’t count), is The Sarah Jane Adventures. Take that, Terence Dudley.
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Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.
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Doctor Who in 10 Seconds
Doctor Who in 10 Seconds is Brendan’s vanity video project, which is basically a lot better than this podcast. Fans of things that are just superb will enjoy Brendan summarising every Doctor Who story in less than 10 seconds.
To see Brendan’s summaries of the first three seasons, check out the playlist on YouTube.
Bondfinger
And it’s just up: our commentary podcast on the Rodgetastic Bond classic The Man with the Golden Gun. It’s our best episode yet, but other commentaries are also available, starting with Dr. No and even including the ludicrous 1967 film Casino Royale. You can find these commentaries on our website, and you can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.