Hello, and we are coming to you live through your earholes.
This is the 1st podcast for Flight through Entirety, where we're
going to be going through the entire duration of Doctor Who season
by season.
And as this is the 1st podcast, this is episode zero.
My name's Brendan, and I will be one of your presenters.
Hello, I'm Nathan.
And I'm Richard breaking the binary duality.
What being third?
Just because we're starting at zero.
Yes, hooray.
So, um, a little bit about what we are going to be doing on this
podcast.
Today we are going to be looking at the beginnings of Doctor Who.
So we'll be looking at the pilot episode, the untransmitted pilot
as well as Mark Gatis's and Adventure in Space and Time.
I believe Space comes 1st before time.
Is that right?
Did I get the title right?
Do any of this know?
I never had Spain in time.
Spain in time.
An adventure in Spain and time. in gloves. of time.
And then we will be going through Doctor Who season by season
after that.
Yes.
In its entire season.
You know you want to.
We're not dry and without alcohol. feel free to start before us.
Yes, we haven't had alcohol, but we have had cake.
Yes, that's something of the cake.
We are recording this live from the sofa of Reasonable Comfort
Newtown Branch.
And to set the scene for you, the coffee table we are recording on
is covered in cake crumbs, a William Hartnell action figure.
A William Hartnell TARDIS, which I'm told is quite inaccurate
outer scale size wise.
It is not anatomically correct.
And just force me incongruity. some Steed and Mrs. Peel comics
based on the Avengers.
Avengers.
It is a Fonaguchi coffee table for people who are fond of the
bleep your Naguchi coffee table website.
We urge you to go and have a look after you've enjoyed this
podcast.
I never knew it was phone again.
I never knew it was a phone, a Gucci.
All of this will end up on a cutting.
Yeah, yeah. post, I think probably.
So where we're going to start from is having a look at some
extracts from the original pitch documents for Doctor Who.
So we're going back roughly to the middle of 1963.
Where were you?
Where were any of us?
None of us was born.
I think outside time and space.
No adventures had been had so far.
I think my parents were 14.
So that's um, that's where I was.
That's where I was.
So where are you getting these from?
Is this robbed the BBC?
I have I've ransacked the biggest thing.
For the lead up to Doctor Who's anniversary last year, the Doctor
Who news website actually did a 30 part series on the genesis of
Doctor Who and part of that was looking at some of the original
pitch documents.
Did you read that?
Did you read it?
I didn't read all of it.
I skimmed.
I kind of felt like I ought to be reading.
Yes, but I couldn't really bring myself to do it.
So if any writers of that rather wonderful 30 part series, It was
great.
I didn't miss a word.
I didn't miss a word either because I didn't try to read all of
them.
Now, I just want to, 1st of all, relate what the series was
originally going to be about and get your opinion on it
gentlemen.
It was originally going to be a series called The Troubleshooters
with a team of a young man and a young woman and an older man.
There was no teenage girl or child because it was believed that
they didn't command the attention of anyone older than themselves
in the audience.
So you had an older scientist, um, an older man being, a man in
his late 40s was defined as older in the document.
And in real life, in those days, in real life.
People didn't make it past the 50 line.
That's very true It sounds like a mashup of Newman's Avengers
pitch that he'd just done with ITV.
Do you think that might have been?
I think that's part of the storm of it.
Well, no, I gathered that it was Newman who kind of actually
vetoed it and just sort of said that a group of scientists
wouldn't really need, you know, the doctor character to tell them
things.
Or, indeed, young people.
Yeah, well, I mean, I gather that was it.
They go through the pitch document in the, is it the origins
documentary on the edge of destruction?
DVD.
And it seemed that Newman wanted the teenage girl and Newman
didn't like the idea of the scientists.
He kind of vetoed it.
But it's obviously a place where Doctor Who eventually ends up
going.
I mean, in the 70s, that's actually pretty much the premise, isn't
it?
You've got, they're not a group of scientists, but it's a sort of
troubleshooting group that the doctor advises and he's a bit older
than in his 40s, but he's not the old man that aren't always.
It's interesting that they vetoed it because it's still very much
the post-war, the future looking post-festival of Britain way of
seeing, we're still part of an organisation.
We're still Britain and we have something of an empire and we're
still recognising structure and organisation.
But the thing that, like, the reason I reckon that Doctor Who did
so well right at the time, I guess we'll get into that in a bit, is
that it broke the mould and it broke it on every single line.
It didn't allow for anything except maybe the tradition of C.S
Lewis.
And Huxley were instrumental in this, of the talented amateur.
The man who exists outside of structure and outside of, well
conformity and.
And does his own thing.
And muddles through.
There's a great tradition in British writing, British fantasy
writing, indeed. that kind of that kind of character.
We wouldn't have had anything like that if it had been the
troubleshooters that would have been unit and it would have been
the unit adventures, yeah, by some other means.
And when you sort of look at TV, English TV in the late 60s, early
70s, there were a succession of series like that, the persuaders.
Yes, but all on the road.
All on the rival network.
And made for the American market who were set up for that kind
of...
And arguably not as successful as Doctor Who.
Or indeed the Avengers, which they were really trying to get on
the back of since they had done so well in the US.
Yeah, and I think it does come back to what you were saying in
that part of the appeal of Doctor Who, and certainly part of the
appeal of the Avengers.
Most of the most of the Avengers is you have at least one major
character who is not a trained professional. exists outside of the
normative structures.
We don't really know who he is, where he's from, who he works for
who he answers to, most importantly, what he's going to do next.
And that brings us very neatly to the point where, as you alluded
to, Nathan, Sidney Newman, Z. No, I don't want this.
This is this is safe.
I want something risky and out there.
And so we then got the famous pitch document which included
characters such as Cliff, Biddy, and Lola, McGiven, Lola, McGovern
played by Oona Stuff, and the red double-decker bus.
But that's enough now.
Iris wild time.
I love that.
No, I was referring back to Summer Holiday, Cliff Richard's
movie.
Yes, sorry.
With the double-decker bus that went over a cliff.
Or is that the young ones?
The young ones.
They did have a picture of Cliff Richard in the origins
documentary, which is...
Yes, well, that's where Cliff gets his name from.
And then they decided, well, actually, no, Cliff Cliff has gone a
bit past being popular with teenagers and is now a symbol for
being sort of unpopular with teenagers and people trying to be
cool with teenagers will mention Cliff Richard.
So they were still going to call him Cliff for a while and
actually have it as a character point that Biddy, later Susan
would kind of be.
Oh, you think you're so cool being Cliff.
You're not cool.
Cliff's not cool anymore.
And then they came to their census and did they?
He gets replaced by Ian.
Dances in a very stylish way throughout the show, particularly a
chase episode one.
And you know what?
Having been a supervising teacher at a 7th form disco, I have to
say that, yes, teachers do dance like that.
That's good, that's good.
There will be a gift of this, a comedy podcast for your
entertainment pleasure.
Something I really wanted to pick up from this pitch document is
The Secret of Doctor Who.
Are we familiar with this gentle look?
In his own day, somewhere in our future?
He decided to search for a time or for a society or for a physical
condition which is ideal.
Well, he did share, too, digs with Charles Hortrait.
And having found it to stay there.
He stole the machine and set forth on his quest.
He is the extension of the scientist who has opted out, but opted
farther out than ours can do.
One symptom is his hatred for scientists, inventors, improvers.
He can get into a rare paddy when faced with a caveman trying to
event the wheel.
And this then developed into an idea that...
The doctors or rather Doctor Who's ultimate ambition is actually
to stop technological progress wherever he sees it.
In order that his own future, which is highly cop part mentalized
and highly mechanised, will never exist.
Yeah, no, it's a terrible idea, isn't it, really?
I mean, stealing the, stealing the TARDIS obviously uh, makes its
way into the series a few years later.
But again, I remember that Newman's reaction to this was that he
didn't want the doctor to be a reactionary.
You know, I mean, the doctor just would have been politically
horrifying had that been the case.
I mean, I guess there's sort of some sense of, I mean, they say
dropping out.
So maybe that's a sort of leftist hippie reaction to progress or
something, but it just would have made him monstrous, I think.
I think we've got to look at, we're not going to get to the
dialects as a teaser, their kids, till the next one of these.
But we need to look in context of the Bay of Pigs and Kennedy
being really the only face against which the Western world was
facing off Khrushchev and the bomb, and it was a very real thing.
There were kids were hiding behind the sofa, but they weren't
doing it behind Doctor Who.
They were doing it at the 6 o'clock news.
Because those bombs were about to go off and that's certainly what
children at school, at Susan's age, were believing.
So you're saying that that, the idea of a doctor who prevents that
kind of future from happening by being a bit of a Ludd eyes.
I'm feeling that where would that have come from, but other than
saying technology was a dual-edged sword very much for Britain at
the time, it was they were seeing their way out of economic
turpitude, but also seeing where it was spinning out of control.
I guess that you do later in the program get, you know, the Doctor
Who digs at computers, you know, who says negative things about
them.
They're, you know, something in the robot about them being sort of
sophisticated idiots.
You do get that, don't you?
even with pert wheat, but that seems to be once we move into the
70s and you've got the ecological viewpoint that started to come
into it.
Doesn't Trout and hate computers in...
And actually, even...
Even William Hartnell says, in the full 1st season, which we'll be
covering in the next episode in the Keys of Mariners, he says, I
do not believe machines were made to govern man. machines can set
laws, but man has to administer them.
So that, I mean, I think that sort of marries the 2 ideas of that
he's not anti-technology, but he does not want technology taking
over every aspect.
Yeah, that's a weird one, isn't it?
I mean, we'll get to that next time, but that only gets sort of
tacked on the end of episode 6 and they all seem sort of quite
happy to reinstate the scary brain.
Mind controlling computer.
Which, because it's written by Terry Nation, is a brilliant idea.
Do you know, I'm the only person that I've ever met who loves Keys
of Mariners to Dare.
I quite enjoy it. it's fun.
Anyway, we're getting we're getting off topic.
As happens with Doctor Who.
We're going to be talking about the actual pilot itself now.
For those of you who don't know, the 1st episode of Doctor Who was
in fact, recorded twice, and the 1st recording, which was beset
with technical problems, but also had some very different
characterisation and performances of its leads, was rejected
rerecorded later.
And Richard, I believe you've got some things you want to say on
the characterisation of Susan in the pilot, because she is very
different to what we eventually see.
She and Bailey are both very different, aren't they?
And at cross purposes.
Do you want to talk about the doctor first?
Or do you want to talk about Susan?
I think let's go with Susan.
Because she is the title character.
She is, and she is an unearthly child, but watching it from our
perspective and thinking, where we are now with however many years
since the show's rebooted.
And with Russell, Russell T. Davis, when he was brought back the
series and called his 1st episode Rose, he said, I was never very
interested in the character or the role of the doctor.
It was the companion who was significant for me.
That's why my premiere episode is called Rose, not Doctor Who.
Um, and we have it right from the beginning.
My strong feeling watching this again is that Carol Anne Ford is
Russell T. Davis in apotheosis.
And Russell, you'd look great in that dress.
If you're watching, if you're listening now, I'd love to see it.
I really thought I was watching watching a fan.
And a fan from our time, not a fan contemporaneous with the
production.
It's called an unearthly child, but it could have also been called
A Little Queer.
And when I say that, I mean, not just the queerness and oddness of
Susan herself, but the juxtaposition of her inner story set in the
time.
She's a fan from now.
She's interested in history, she's interested in science, gobbled
she's a geek.
She a nerd.
She's not a kid of the 60s.
They did exist.
They just didn't have, we didn't even have the comfort of a word
fan back then.
I think she would have stood out just as much as any science
fiction fan did.
She's us watching the show, a box within a box within a box.
You see, I guess, I guess when they replace her with Vicky, again
you know, spoiler alert for a few episodes, for a few episodes.
For those of you who haven't seen that.
Yeah, sorry.
Um, uh, that Vicky is very much more contemporaneous, and she is
actually much more hip.
Which is funny because her character is from the future.
But she's a Mersey beat girl.
Yeah, she would have...
Yeah, it's sort of a modern characterisation.
It's kind of saying that we're not going to change that much in
500 years.
Teenagers are still going to be these excitable, enthusiastic
plucky, young people.
But she's also kind of cool and fashionable.
There is the, the Xander for Lyon in the, in his review of the
chase where he, you know, she's much hipper than the Beatles.
You know, she hears the Beatles.
They're playing classical music.
You know, she's she is just much more hip and up to date.
But Susan's not like that.
I mean, she's just strange.
And in the pilot, like, I'm not sure that she's vastly different
like her portrayal is vastly different.
But the one scene where it did strike me was the scene where she's
trying to persuade the doctor, you know, to let Cliff and Lola
go.
And, um, uh, rather than the sort of panicky, you know, pleading
Susan that we get in the transmitted version.
I think she is a little bit more distant and a little bit more
alien and a little bit more in control.
In the pilot, most definitely. in her quasi-futuristic outfit.
Yes And when in above push... push their way into the Tartars.
The doctor barely interacts with them at all.
He just sort of dismisses them.
But it's Susan saying things like, you don't know what you've done
coming here.
It's not fearful.
It's, I don't know what's going to happen next.
Isn't that exciting?
Yeah, you've broken the 4th wall, kids.
And the kids are actually the adults now.
Yeah, yeah, you're through the looking glass.
Yeah.
You're in our world, in our fanzine.
This is our domain.
Yeah.
And she only becomes worried and panicky when people start getting
hurt.
And it's all, it's...
Well, when he elects... on the console.
And it's kind of... which is a nice touch, isn't it?
It's the 1st time that you actually get physicality.
It's the 1st time that these people from the real world go through
the junkyard, if you like the junking of old BBC drama and all the
tropes that they pass through the portal of security with the word
police on the outside into the world of television itself, you're
gone inside the TV box now, kids.
It's this weird tension of Susan's character in that she's, she is
mature and she is intelligent, but there are things she doesn't
know, as we've already discovered.
She's being playful with Ian and Barbara.
You don't know what you've done coming here.
I don't know what's going to happen now, but as soon as someone
gets hurt.
She becomes concerned, and that is a very childish, childlike, I
should say, quality, because, you know, children, it's all fun and
games until someone falls over and gets hurt.
So she does have this childlike quality, even though she's very
confident and self-assured.
And then something happens to push her out of her comfort zone.
So Ian's been pushed.
Everyone's been pushed out of their comfort zone so far.
Like the doctor doesn't want Ian and Barbara there.
Ian and Barbara are suddenly in this huge spaceship that they
don't understand.
Susan is the last person who's comfortable, relatively comfortable
with the situation.
She's just like, oh, this is a minor irritation.
No, it'll be fine because no one will believe what they say.
But then suddenly, oh, wait, no, what we're taking off, you've
electrocuted him, you've hurt him.
Everyone's knocked out.
What the hell is going on?
But in the broadcast version, all of those things in that line, you
know, you don't know what you've done coming here is all delivered
in a much more sort of panicky way.
As soon as they come in.
She's she's panicking and she's worried.
You know, you, um, in the transmitted version, you lose that sense
of her, what Tom Baker would like to do of not reacting like a
human being.
Exactly.
It's the beat in the drama where you get in dramatic speak, with
the pause, the beat in the drama, where you bring the visual
bacteria reality that these characters actually have feelings and
can be hurt.
This is where it becomes truly dramatic.
It's for real.
So do we think that after Newman saw the pilot, he said, you know
no, the girl, she needs to be more stupid?
I think that's the sentiment, but I think I think he had
introduced her to the concept in order that children would have an
identification character.
And so he kind of said she needs to be more identifiable and I
think it went too far in the other direction.
She became identifiable, but also she became someone that I think
children would have been watching thinking, oh, I'd be more brave
than her.
Yeah, which is unfortunate.
I think they watered it down and made it something comfortable and
familiar when it wasn't going to be that at all.
And, you know, even as early in the Daleks, you can see Carol Anne
Ford's performance, perhaps separating itself from the centre.
She really did a appear to be the centre of the show in that 1st
episode.
I think it really takes only till episode 2 when she's having a
giant panic because the doctor's gone off for a smoke somewhere, if
you know what I mean?
She's rolling around on the ground and that kind of thing.
I mean, she really, you know, loses it straight away.
But there is something very centred and something very kind of
alien about her performance in that scene, you know, in a way that
we don't really see very much until the sensorizes, probably.
What I found so interesting about Susan is Ian's line when he says
she's absolutely brilliant at some things and excruciating at the
rest.
Now, we're not talking about acting, we're talking about the
character and how she plays it.
I think she's actually terrific.
And the only reason her acting, as some people have criticised
Caroline Ford, further on is that she's bored and feels left out
and takes it personally.
You know, they're sensitive people.
It's going to come across.
You can see Billy doing it later on.
I don't think it's purely because of his arteriosclerosis that he
starts to fluff his lines.
I think it's because he's utterly miserable.
If someone's unhappy, they're not going to do a good job.
Well, and that's the adventures in space and time take on it as
well.
Exactly.
Like once his friends leave, one's verity and Cliff and Lola are
out the door.
Do you know what I mean?
He's...
Clifford, all around the door.
There's Ian, it's a good point because Ian follows that up when he
talks about the character, about Susan in the classroom and then
he says of himself, I take things as they come.
And I think that's quite an interesting point going to where the
series was going to go with these characters.
Ian and Barbara represent order, structure, and the Newtonian
reason, the universe of absolutes and constants.
Whereas Susan drawing away with her Rorschach blot and her little
hexagon is extra dimensionality.
She mentions currency and alchemy of change when she talks about
the decimal system or can't we just chuck this red to blue thing
and start making acid tabs and hootch juice and get onto something
more interesting.
You wanted to make bombs. make acid bomb, acid bombs, and go and
join Abby Hoffman and try and raise the pentagon.
In preparation of this podcast.
I did wonder how the scene of Susan getting the French Revolution
book would be different if it had been Ace.
Oh, what a beautiful idea.
And, you know, you could have had the little radio playing some
Kef drum solo.
I think Susan should have been ace.
Yes.
Well, I mean, there's a deliberate thing though, isn't there?
She's from London and it's 16 and she doesn't know the decimal
system either, of course, Ace doesn't know how many shillings to a
pound anymore than Susan does.
Actually, in the pilot, not many people know this, but I'm a
little bit of a Doctor Who nerd and it's always annoyed me
enormously that the French Revolution book that Ace gets doesn't
have a white paper dust cover, like the one in the brand in the
transmitted version.
And I know I'm not alone.
But the one in the pilot doesn't have that dust cover either.
So my theory is that Asa actually comes from a parallel universe
where the pilot is canon.
Oh, that's kind of beautiful.
What do you mean?
Yeah, like that.
I think the pilot has to become because drug references abound.
We can't forget that the vortex when the TARDIS takes off comes
spewing out of Susan's left nostril.
It really does.
And her eyes go...
Her eyes go bling.
It's an interesting thing again about her that she can't actually
focus on anyone in the pilot.
Her eyes dart about left to right.
She also gets those strange close-up camera things too, doesn't
she?
Like we're deliberately made uncomfortable with her just because
she's this giant face in kind of, you know, extreme close-up
whenever she kind of appears, everyone else is in sort of normal
medium close-up shots.
But Susan, Susan's face is there, you know, right in front of
her.
So I think that, you know, there is that attempt to make her kind
of unearthly, unearthly and alien, which in those days meant
foreign.
It's not just the Vidal Sassoon haircut.
And the Corage style dress that she's wearing, the camera
technique that you're talking about is very much God-ars of Gene
Seaberg in a bouffe du souffle or Breathless just a few years
before.
I believe that Susan is there to represent the Nouvelle Vague
young woman who is very much not at this time, not at our
generation, completely different with a twiggy haircut.
And it's all there.
And she likes walking home in the English form.
She must be foreign.
She must be, which, of course, Ian had to stop her saying that
because that's a filthy word foreign, you know.
Well, I mean, they did get rid of that for the broadcast version
because she likes walking alone in the dark.
It's mysterious.
Yeah, it's mysterious.
She might need to avoid.
Something would be so normal.
And therefore unlikely.
That's quite interesting about her physicality, is that she only
sits down.
We only see her sitting down.
Um once. aside from the flashbacks when she's in class and, you
know, so obviously she's going to be sitting down and even then
she jumps up.
Of course, the decimal system hasn't started yet.
She jumps up out of her seat practically into the camera and it's
a really big moment.
The only time she sits down.
Aside from that is when she's doing her raw shot ink block.
She sits down, she's relaxed and she just sort of starts putting
ink on the paper, putting ink on the paper, folds it, and it makes
2 lines.
She then encloses the 2 lines in a hexagon and suddenly she's
terrified of what she's just done and sort of scrunches it up.
And it's never elaborated as to what you do.
In fact, doesn't the documentary, the Origins documentary has
marginal note from Sidney Newman saying what the hell does the
girl draw?
Yeah, what is she doing?
But I think it's very interesting.
That happens.
A, she gets scared by what she's doing.
So it's like she's not aware of what she's doing, and it only
happens when she relaxes, when she sits down.
The rest of the time she's on her feet, she's on her guard.
When she lets her guard down, this strange thing happens when she
draws a simple shape, which I always have thought, represents the
TARDIS console.
Oh, beautiful.
With the 2 lines being the central column, but just it's kind of
like just drawing it.
Oh my god, if someone finds this, I'm going to be in trouble.
And that is mirrored later on because in the transmitted version
the doctor says, I can't let them go because they'll tell everyone
about us in the in the pilot, rather.
He says, I can't let them go because they'll tell everyone about
the science here and the world isn't ready for it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's worried about changing time.
And he doesn't have examples like giving Napoleon an iPod or
something, like, what is it?
I can't remember.
Yes, I think that's a goon episode giving Napoleon an inflatable.
Yeah, yeah, something like that.
It's, it's, some sort of unmechanized culture giving, giving them
the steam engine or something like that.
Steam engine, for God's sake.
It's a joy.
It will lead to steampunk and ruinous fiction. and tea.
It will lead to tea.
It's a lovely thing that they're referencing so there's a lot of
cleverness in this pilot.
I reckon that the notion of the Rorschach test goes back to Jung's
writings and the unveiling of the unconscious and the shadow
self.
Perhaps it's that Susan is also saying you'll get to see inside my
head if they see this.
I'm starting to reveal some of them, which means something to her
and of course, nothing to us because we can't read it, but, you
know.
To segue into something about the doctor, sort of in his 1st scene
when he's talking to Ian and Barbara in the junkyard.
Something I found very interesting, and I hadn't noticed until I
rewatched the pilot to talk about it, is that the bit where he's
talking to Ian, do you think it's reasonable that a young girl
would be locked up in there?
He takes Ian away from Barbara, and the thing is, up until that
point, Barbara's been the one challenging him more.
So it's this very odd thing of, you know, 1963, the Avengers has
been on, on a Blackman's been in the Avengers for about a year.
So one of the very strong, 1st very strong female characters on
British television.
It's like the doctors kind of going, right, she's the smart one.
But he's a man, he's in control.
So if I convince him to go.
Get her, like not talk to her, I'll talk to him.
If he goes, she'll go.
Because he know, he seems to kind of go, right, I can't challenge
Barbara.
She's very feisty.
So I'll challenge the man because he seems like an idiot.
That was the impression I got from that scene, which is quite
subversive because yes, you know, it's the doctor dismissing a
woman, but it's the doctor dismissing the woman because she's too
clever.
It's very interesting.
She is too clever.
I mean, she's terribly clever.
One of the great pleasures last night, watching the documentary
was just the DVD menu for the edge of destruction, which has
Barbara calling the doctor a stupid old man.
Yes, you know, explaining what he owes them and she really is just
truly spectacular.
And the performance is fully formed here.
Do you know what I mean?
She's instantly superb even in the pilot.
I'd say she is the one person out of the 4 of them whose
performance does not change.
How do you think Ian changes?
Something I felt watching Adventure in Space and Time is when
they've got Ian recording the pilot.
He's very stiff and wooden.
And I thought, that's very unfair.
And then watching the pilot's like, actually, yeah, William
Russell seems very uncomfortable in that pilot recording.
He's very muted compared to how he would later perform.
Whereas, you know, the doctor and Susan are brought down a few
notches, Ian seems to be brought up a few notches, but Jacqueline
Hill is just perfect all the way through.
Just to warn you, folks, for the 1st few episodes of the podcast
you're going to hear a lot of praise for Jacqueline Hill.
So if you're not about, if you're not a Barbara fan, how are you
still alive?
He is a bit, it's true, he is a bit stiff in his 1st performance.
But one of his opening lines is we're looking for a young girl.
To which Billy doesn't say, well, that's nice and normal, I
suppose, unlike keeping them in this cupboard.
Oh, look, here's one I prepared earlier.
Well, it is funny in that there seems to be this undercurrent
throughout the whole thing of...
I suppose child neglect and child mistreatment because Barbara
says...
Well, that wasn't Kathy come home?
No.
What year is that?
We keep referring to Philip Sandeth's blog on this as well, and
we'll see a note, of course, which is...
And he cites Kathy come home as being as potent a force for
radical social change on British media as anything of the time.
I don't think Doctor Who quite reaches those levels of social
really.
No, no, despite the fact that we have a neglected 16, 15-year-old
in a cupboard.
But what Barbara says, which I found very interesting, and I
hadn't really listened to the words before.
She says to Ian, sort of I want to push this whole thing further
about her living in a junkyard with her grandpa who doesn't like
strangers, but I don't, she says, I don't want to get the girl in
trouble.
And it's like, okay, how would pushing her specialising in history
get her in trouble?
How how would contacting her grandfather get her in trouble?
And it's a sort of slightly sinister undertone.
And then they go spying on her.
And then, as you say, Richard, she gets locked in a cupboard.
We've also got to look at social tropes at the time and structures
and that, you know, a child really didn't have very much say and
really didn't have a voice at all.
I think Doctor Who is great, and the reason we love it and still
do, is that it's a palmsist.
It's a cypher for everything else.
It can be anything else.
You can apply it.
You can see it through the window of the TV to as a filter for
every other production and every other story and it can go into
any other story.
Nathan, you said something interesting about it.
What was it, Sanderford?
TV.
It's so easy to get me too confused. in that when Billy talks
about how the TARDIS works and...
Yeah, well, that it works via television.
It actually strikes me, is that in the pilot?
You know, in the broadcast thing he goes, you've discovered
television, haven't you?
And he explains that that's how the TARDIS works.
You can get a small building on television into a small box.
And of course, you know, the, um, the title sequence has always
been sort of, I mean, it's literally a camera pointing at a TV
monitor and that's how the doctor travels through time, isn't it?
You know, it is the power of television.
And that's pretty much what you were saying earlier, I think.
Yeah, anyway, weren't we going with that?
I don't know.
What about the doctor?
The descriptor.
I always heard about his performance in the pilot before I 1st saw
it was nasty.
Hmm.
And I don't necessarily think he's any nastier in the pilot than
years later.
He's colder, certainly, but I'm not sure if I'd use the word
nasty.
He's he's uh, he's colder.
And I think the big, I mean, the big difference between the pilot
and the transmitted version as far as Hartnell's performance is
concerned, is that scene where they're confronting him in the
junkyard.
And in the transmitted version, you know, he's going from object
to object, he's picking up a frame and, you know, like and looking
at things and going, hmm, you know, and throwing them around and
saying, oh, I meant to get that fixed up and stuff.
And so he's not really paying attention to Ian and Barbara in that
sort of irritating way.
And he seems vaguely amused by them.
Whereas he's very definitely irritated and angry at them.
And like, I think that shift, you know, that in the transmitted
version, he really is the doctor, even as we know him today.
You know, he's sort of slightly distracted.
He's amused his, you know, irritating, um, whereas the kind of, um
angry, you know, um, high-handed sort of doctor that we get in the
pilot in that scene at least, um, is very different from what what
we eventually end up with, I think.
I think the big difference between what we see with the pilot and
Billy's performance further on, and it's also really shown in the
origins, Adventures and Time and Space show, is the difference
between Billy's generous detachment, of his own feelings, in his
performance and the role, and how he softened it, and how, in
David Bradley's performance, you've got the actor's sensibility
sensibilities, and the actor's performance. being very much at the
forefront.
That's the thing that actually struck me as a bit of a loss or a
little bit sad about the Gatus production is that we didn't get to
see how good nuanced Billy really was.
We just get the one beat.
Sure, it's 90 minutes.
You've just got to get an idea across.
You've got to get the story there.
But the subtleties of the doctors being able to Step back
sometimes be present in others, allow the companions to have the
floor, and then come forward radically opposed to the narrative or
be a part of it, and not actually knowing which way he was going
to go.
Was what made him really interesting and exciting.
And I think that really did propel the series.
He was very much the outsider at the centre.
And so was Susan in the beginning.
I think the show really lost something.
Perhaps it lost something that really would have made it
extraordinary had they just continued with the 2 of them being
allowed to be outside their own narrative.
In the end, I guess, as it had to be, only the doctor remained so
everyone else had to follow the tropes of drama and be the mum, the
dad, or the teenager.
Yeah, yeah, really until, yeah, the mid 70s with Mary Tam, who was
allowed to be doctors, but even she decided to leave when her
character was being watered down.
Exactly.
And in fact, the only, the only really...
The only really naughty actors were gone, got in it, who play with
a narrative, a Billy.
It's early Susan and then Tom and then throws it all up in the
air.
Yeah, absolutely.
And Katie Manning, obviously.
And very sad, you know, not long before she died, that the only
actor who could really, she felt replaced Billy was Tom because he
was dangerous.
After all the political politeness had gone, she could say what
she wanted to say.
Yeah.
So now we move on to our 1st award for this podcast, which is the
Jenny Laird award, the most puzzling creative choice.
I think that one's rather self-explanatory.
And for me, it's got to be the question, where was David Whittaker
in an adventure in space and time.
Yeah, I think, I mean, I think the greatest omission of all.
I think Gaitus said that he sort of keenly felt the emission of
David Whisaker.
Like he acknowledged, I think, publicly that Whittaker deserved to
be there, but just said, you know, with kind of collapsing it in
you know, we've got 90 minutes.
We can't.
Oh, yeah, it's not like I blame him personally.
What would Whitaker have been doing?
Whittaker would have been doing?
I think some of the Mervyn Pinfield role.
He wouldn't have just been sitting at a table, editing scripts.
Huffing something.
Did he huff things?
Huffing Mercury, probably.
Thing is, even if they just had him in 2 scenes.
You know, that would have been better than not having him at all, I
think.
Maybe everyone could have mentioned him.
He could have been like Poochie.
Like when he's not in the room, everyone could have been saying
where's David Whittaker?
Would have done something?
Yes, that would have been much better.
And the thing is, the man looks amazing.
He looks like Jeff Tracy in human form.
He's got this wonderful shock of white hair with black eyebrows.
Is Alistair Darling?
He's a badger.
But a proper darling.
Can I offer an award?
Yes.
I guess the obvious Jenny later award for most puzzling and
creative choice in the pilot and the broadcast thing is Susan's
hand movements during the during John Smith of the Common Man.
I mean, that is unearthly.
Do you know what I mean?
But then there's unbelievable.
Again, it's, to me, it's picking up on what the French were doing
God on, then the Nouveau Vag, and you see, that kind of movement
is foreign being alien.
So everyone's doing it?
Well, well, everyone, if they're called Gen Seaberg, really.
Coffee shops across Paris.
People are sitting there with a baguette in one hand, a string of
onions around their neck. and their hand movements doing this sort
of little...
We should probably mention that half the wardrobe budget went on
for the homosexuals listening at home went on Carol Anne Ford's
Vidal Sassoon haircut.
It was apparently the 1st wedge, not wedge.
The 1st wedge scene on TV.
And I think we should also say for anyone worried about the French
stereotyping of necklace of onions, I would like to point out that
Nathan did not mention wearing a beret.
So we're not about stereotypes at all.
No, no, we're not.
That would be wrong.
And of course, the gloriously titled, what would Stephen Moffatt
do?
Because I've been thinking to myself, We should look at how
Stephen Moffat would approach some of the classic moments in
Doctor Who as we look at them going through.
And for me, a, you know, a classic moment of this, you could
obviously go with walking into the TARDIS, which every subsequent
producer has had their way of doing.
And I did actually quite enjoy Stephen Moffat's moment where Jenna
Louise Colbert says, it's smaller on the outside.
I thought I thought that was a nice simple inversion.
So I'm going to go for the scene in which Susan, who doesn't want
to attract any undue attention to herself, immediately acts very
strangely in front of her teacher.
I like walking in the English fog.
It's mysterious So I'm going to say if Stephen Moffatt were in
charge of that, the Susan in that scene is actually from, After
Susan has left the TARDIS and she's come back in time in order to
get Ian and Barbara interested and pique their curiosity.
Susan's actually already left for the day.
She doesn't want to book on the bloody French Revolution.
She just wants to go home to a space television inside the TARDS.
To snug a boy, perhaps.
Through a space-time visualiser.
Through the space time visualise.
Which they don't have yet.
But again, she could have brought, she's Nick's the space-time
visualiser, which is why we never see it after the chase.
She's come back, she's put it in the TARVS.
And then she's gone to Coal Hill School to pique Ian and Barbara's
interest, which is why when they turn up at the ship, Susan's like
what are you doing here?
I haven't even spoken to you today.
Get out of my house.
So that's what I think Stephen Moffatt would do if he were given
this script.
Okay.
I think he'd kill Ian.
Yeah.
And then bring him back.
Yeah, maybe a couple of times.
Yeah, when he drops the torch, he actually falls over and hits his
head.
Yeah, well, maybe Ian sort of magically pregnant in some way.
Would that be a thing as well?
I offer to do that.
Yes, yes.
Yes, I think so.
Ian gets pregnant to a caveman.
I can actually see this particular segment of the podcast having a
limited future because it seems to me that Moffatt only does about
3 or 4 things.
So, kill them, get pregnant.
Cross your own time.
That's it.
Something with statues.
I think it's there's also, you know, the creepy one where the
doctor meets his companion as a little girl.
Yes.
It keeps happening and it creeps me out every time.
Anyway, so enough about me.
Okay, so I suppose we're coming to the end now.
But I'd like to hear, gentlemen, if you have any recommendations
for our listeners to go out and experience.
Oh, well, I have to I have to plug my own website.
What is your website, mate?
So it's the Randomiser.net.
And basically the idea of it is that say you're planning an
evening of watching Doctor Who.
Well, you could, you could let, you know, quality or entertainment
value dictate what story you end up watching or you could do it
completely at random.
And that's what the randomiser is for.
So all you do is point your browser at the randomiser.net, and it
will pick a Doctor Who story for you at random.
It's very simple.
Although it does have a complicated system of preferences, which
allows you to exclude certain doctors or make sure it doesn't pick
a story that you've seen before or if you're not keen on loose
cannon reconstructions, you can get it to pass over stories that
don't exist in their entirety.
So there you are.
That would might be the only thing that would ever motivate you to
watch, uh, you know, time flight or or the dominators.
Uh, uh, but it exists and, and uh, you can follow it on Twitter at
uh, DW Randomiser.
Excellent.
Just a quick question.
Have you added Knight of the Doctor to the Paul McGann section?
No, no.
Okay.
It's not canon.
It didn't happen.
Shock and horror.
The C word has come up.
Richard said canon before, actually.
I think I'm going to say it a few times an episode.
Yeah, yeah, yes, but I agreed with you the 1st time.
Richard, do you have anything for the listeners?
The randomiser for me every time because I was constantly young
each time I pressed it, although it would only give me Peter
Davidson story.
So obviously it is being run by Valentine Dial.
It's from a darker universe.
It's been possessed by the marlas, I think.
That's the one.
I think Paddy Kingsland gets royalties whenever you watch a story
with one of his jaunty scores.
That would be it.
I do love it.
If only you've got an electric shock every time.
Anyway, sorry.
Yes, but it's live.
Uh, my recommendation, uh, in um, in keeping with the theme of the
podcast, is the pre-series Audio Adventures featuring Art Carolan
Ford, there have been some companion chronicle set before the
series.
One of them is...
Quiz.
Is there Quinnus?
Quinnus.
In the 4th universe.
Could they go there?
Yes, Quinnus in the 4th universe. in the 4th universe?
Written by Mark Platt.
Wow, is it good?
It's quite good, yes.
Almost as good as ghost light.
So there is the beginning.
Oh, P road spare parts.
There is the beginning, which is, which does actually tie in with
where we see Billy in the name of the doctor.
There's even a bit where Susan says, grandfather pushed me into it
pushed me into one of the capsules, and he, he was outside for an
awful long time, and then he reached it out and pulled me into a
different capsule, because that moment where Clara says, you can
take that one, but this one's far more interesting.
So it ties in.
I'm just saying we have to...
There is Quinus in the 4th universe.
There's the Alchemists, which is set in 1930s Berlin.
I don't even know how these work.
So does Caroline Ford do a comedy Billy Hartnell impersonation?
Is that what happened?
She does a not bad Billy.
She really does?
She gets the tone, right?
More, you know, obviously she can't get a spot on impersonation
but she does get the tone and the mannerisms quite well.
So is it a 1st person narrative told from Susan's point of view?
I just know nothing about these.
Yes, the companion chronicles are a 1st person narrative told by
the particular companion.
What's slightly different is her story in the destiny of the
doctor range.
Hunters of Earth.
Actually, it's been a few months since I've listened to it, but I
believe she told me.
You don't listen to it every week?
I don't listen to it every week, no.
So, yes, pretty much.
It her telling the story in 1st person with one additional voice
as well.
So the beginning, for instance, has Terry Malloy as Quadrig of
Stoyne, who...
He's a timelord technician who's inside the TARDIS when they steal
it.
Oh, I think I've heard of this.
Yes, spoiler alert.
It's very good.
Well, that's the 1st 5 minutes.
Okay.
So there you go.
And that's on the cover.
Okay, all right.
Sorry. all right to me.
Go, man.
So yeah, I would recommend those audio adventures.
They're about an hour long, so you can listen to them in the car
or on the bus on the train.
I wouldn't recommend listening to them on the bike as I do
sometimes see other cyclists with their headphones in and then...
That's an age. ironing. ironing is a good time to listen to
these.
Yes, ironing is.
I was wondering where we were going by mentioning the word.
No, no.
It's just a little recommendation for the viewers. that's
absolutely right Now, as this is a podcast by fans, we would like
to hear from you if you've listened to us.
We hope that someone has.
You can actually find our website, flightthroughentirety.com, and
we are going to be having a comment section there.
Please write in with any thoughts you have.
Abuse is entirely acceptable.
Abuse is entirely.
Almost inevitable, I would think.
Yes, indeed.
It's actually how Richard gets through the week.
Yeah, under a pseudonym.
Mrs. Mary Whitehouse rent has already written some, owns some
poems for us, which will be in the next exciting podcast.
Tune in for that.
And if there's any topics or observations you have, or if you
disagreed with anything we've said, by all means, leave a comment
at flightthroughentirety.com, subscribe to the RSS feed there, and
you'll be able to get the podcasts direct to you.
We will also be on iTunes so you can find us that way.
So just remember, flightthroughentirety.com.
We will have Nathan's Twitter handle there, DW Randomiser, as well
as mine, which is critical theory, but instead of the 2nd C in
critical, it's a cue.
And it's not critical theory then.
Um, Well, quite frankly, I'm considering changing it because it's
very hard to explain each time I do have to explain it.
So it may be something completely, I may regenerate it before the
next podcast.
This is going to be like audio visuals.
Our next podcast will hopefully be out in one month's time, and we
will be looking at the entirety of William Hartnell's 1st season.
So that is an unearthly child through to the reign of terror.
And, well, who knows, by the time we record it, Marco Polo may
have been found in a Mormon basement in Hong Kong or somewhere.
They don't have...
Hong Kong.
You tell that to Deborah Watling.
I'm not going to disagree with her.
So I'm going to sign off.
And I would like to thank Richard and Nathan, who may also like to
sign off in their own voices as well.
Well, it's good night for me.
And it's good night from him.
You have been listening to Flight Through Entirety with Nathan
Botomley, Brendan Jones, and Richard Stone, episode zero, A Little
Queer, was reported in Newtown, New South Wales, Australia, on
Sunday, the 6th of April, 2014.
You can find us on our website at flightthroughentirety.com or on
Twitter under FTE podcast.
And now I'm off to walking the Australian Sun.
It's mysterious.