Horribly Blond(e)

[00:30]

Hello everyone.

I'm Brendan and this is the 2nd episode of Flight Through Entirety, where we're going to be covering part of Doctor Who's 1st season.

We actually recorded it altogether, but as it is, we've discovered we don't have time for the whole thing.

You're actually saying this before we've recorded the episode, Brad.

How do you know that?

Well, I'm the editor.

So, you see, I actually have to know what's going to come up before we even say it.

I mean, for instance, I can make you say this.

Lush, aggressive vegetation.

You see what I mean?

It's almost as if it's happening in real time.

I'm Brendan.

Oh, I'm Nathan.

I'm the other one.

So I'm Razzle on, he's OmeGarron, he's the other.

Yes, I'm...

Although everyone seems to be Linda Bellingham for this episode.

Especially if you use gravy.

Now, last time we discussed the pilot episode of Doctor Who, and this time around, we're looking at William Hartnell's 1st season proper.

[01:34]

So the actual broadcast episodes.

So we're going to start off with the broadcast version of an unearthly child and the following 3 episodes, sometimes referred to as the Tribe of Gum, or 100,000 BC.

Hello, Toms Bilsbury, if you're listening.

So, gentlemen, what do we think of the transmitted version of an unearthly child versus the pilot version we were discussing before?

Well, I have no opinion.

I'm probably the wrong person have on this podcast.

Never the wrong person.

Well, get out.

What about you, Red?

I'd prefer the pilot to the transmitter, just simply because Billy and Susan, I think, are closer together and whatever nights were handed down from the control box, the gods, about, I don't know, well, if you can remember loosening it up or more naturalistic or just having some more flow, because nothing was working, they said, it was all felt very stilted.

I kind of liked that it felt silted, it is meant to feel strange and surprising and alien and dangerous and nothing you've ever seen before.

You know, taking them back off the TV set and finding you can dive into it.

[02:38]

And I don't get that so much from the transmitted version.

But mostly it's just, um, feeling that very much in that raw state of the 1st of the trans, untransmitted, that Carol Anne Ford is the centrepiece, the guiding, the guiding light in the story, just as, just as Russell understood it when he rebooted for Rose.

It's about the companion.

It's interesting that Sydney Newman was really disappointed in her casting as a granddaughter, just to stop the sniggering from the, from the ranks, you know, the thought, you know, we can't have her travelling with a young girl.

So I can't, I can see what he means because there's a problem that's built up that we'll guess we'll talk about as this, as this talk about the season goes on, that she's too close to a narrative, but also an alien, so she's neither us nor them.

I actually think really like that.

I don't think she, she would have worked as well had she been entirely familiar in just a schoolgirl, the idea of her being outside both of our world and, The, um, the worlds of Barbara and Ian make her between the doctor and us very much so.

[03:52]

I think it's a real shame that that wasn't explored.

But we get moments of it as we're going to discover this season.

Can I disagree with Richard?

I actually think that I actually think that the that Susan in the transmitted version is vastly worse and as I've said before, I think, you know, does Morris take her aside and say, listen, love, if you're nowhere near stupid or panicky enough, you know, like I don't and so I don't quite know what they're aiming for.

She's much, much better.

And it, I think it, um, it, fatally, uh, it fatally damns the character, that, that, and we'll talk about this next time, I think, when, uh, when we discuss season 2 and the introduction of Vicky, where you have a character from the future, who is strange and alien, who gets to, um, you know, look condescendingly at Barbara and Ian, um, and be that sort of Starchild that Susan was meant to be, but she's having fun and she's plucky, whereas Susan is just sort of panicky and stupid, and it's not Caroline Ford's fault, but right from, well, you know, right from very early on, I think that she's

[05:07]

she sort of damns herself as a character.

Whereas I think that the decision to get Bill Hartnell to tone it down and be more lovely was precisely the right decision.

Oh, with added loveliness.

You see him, you see him do doctor-ish things in episode one, things that you can imagine, you know, all of the other doctors, except Pert, we probably doing.

And again, we talked about this last time.

He's looking at things in the junkyard and not paying attention to Ian and Barbara and being distracted and and, you know, being a little bit silly and absent-minded and irritating.

And that's the doctor, whereas the sort of grumpy old man from the pilot isn't really in the same vein.

So I think it's, I think it is an improvement from the point of view of the doctor.

And then just technically it's an improvement.

The whole thing looks a bit better.

Technically, I definitely agree, but performance wise, I would have liked us to have had some time to go from Cranky Billy to Grandfatherly Billy, because he's certainly got the range, certainly does it, and he does it even in that in that 1st story.

[06:16]

Oh, some great moments there.

Turkish, you're going to get to.

But it's what they were trying to do with Colin Baker.

And maybe stretching that out too far, but I think it's...

It's a, how did that go?

But it's a really worthy experiment.

Give the audience time to look, this is meant to be shocking and surprising.

And for me, that's why the pilot is better because I really don't know where we are with it and I don't know what to think of these initial characters other than Billy is a dangerous figure.

A big thing that shows that difference between the doctor's characterisation and the pilot and the transmitted version is that scene you were talking about when he's picking things up and looking at them.

In the pilot, you get the impression that he's going, oh, now look at this, da da.

Are they still listening?

Are they still there?

And he's sort of trying to distract Ian and Barbara by going, oh, look at this.

Whereas in the televised version, it's like, no, he's genuinely seen this thing and he's genuinely interested in it.

Oh, people are still here.

You know, he's not trying to be obfuscatious anymore.

He's just gone, ooh, shiny thing.

I mean, that is an aspect of every doctor's personality, the slight shiny thingness, even pertwee. especially if it was sandwiches.

[07:21]

Ooh, shiny sandwiches.

Cheesy whiny. tea.

Well, tea.

I mean, Susan in the transmitted 1st episode isn't vastly different.

She's a little more scared and a little less aloof.

I think the damage really starts to come in a scene you've talked about before where I, I, um, I think I'll let you say it.

No, I mean, that is that scene in episode 2 where she like just falls over and has a big giant panic and a cry while the doctor sort of has wandered off somewhere.

I mean, it's just embarrassing, really.

And it's not some...

I mean, it's something that they do again over and over again.

If we get up to the reign of terror.

That's, I mean, it really reaches its nadia and the reign of terror where, where she's panicking and so we decide not to escape from the cell or we decide not to escape.

I'm looking forward to getting to that.

There isn't a real idea for Susan's character at the end of it and for Carol's performance.

Right.

We haven't talked about much about it.

There's not much to say about them, really, except right away, Doctor Who seems to be doing political satire.

[08:27]

You know, the tribe of gum, Karl and Tsar are the leaders of the labour and the conservative party.

That's interesting.

Because Cal, um, czar, rather.

You know, he wants he wants to protect his tribe, but he wants to be the one in power providing the protection, which is very labour and very union, whereas Cal is very conservative.

Like, I'm going to tell as many lies as I can.

Sorry, controversial.

Okay.

Cali's very conservative in that he... waits for an opportune situation to prevent to present his point of view.

Discards what doesn't really relate or discards anything which might make him weaker in his position and then takes his enemy's weakness and uses that as strength.

And to be fair, so does Zaar.

You know?

So you've got the 2 sides of politics there.

Not that I'm saying conservative politics is built on lies, but remember a lot of Carl's argument and attack is based on lying about czar.

[09:31]

Now, Tzar, there's a lot of problems to Tzar.

He imprisons our regulars, you know, he does lie to them, that he doesn't lie to his own tribe.

Whereas that's something cow does.

There's also that the fact that the back 3 episodes parallel the 1st one.

So we have time travellers going back into the distant past and dealing with primitive people, you know what I mean?

So, um, Ian and Barbara get to see what it's like for the doctor and um, and Susan in some sense.

And then someone, it's almost certainly Santa.

For someone talking about the power struggle between the 2 men, being like the power struggle between other doctor and Ian about who's going to be the star of the show.

And so you get, so you do get these parallels, but despite all of that, like as sort of entertainment, it's a bit rough.

And I have a friend who every so often watches it and then rings me up and does a caveman with a Rada accent. must make fire.

[10:38]

The old woman now.

Well, I'm glad you raised the point of there shall be no fire because there was a lot of fire in that episode and it's all called Eileen Wayne.

And we have a great deal to thank Ms. Way for.

It's not just the sound of a cat singing.

Did you know that?

Apparently she had, she recorded a cat singing and just played it to Tom Baker.

Really?

Yes, yes, she's had a real thing for her singing cats.

She's an amazing woman on so many levels.

Crazy. think she's great. she still with us?

Sadly, nice.

But her spirit lives on in a young man called Philip Van Pelton.

Hello, Philip, if you're listening.

Yes, channelling her as we speak.

But she's terrific in this, and she really does hold it together, and I love that there's spinning around out of, what are we seeing here?

We're seeing revolutions.

We've got...

Okay, we're before the Perfumer Scandler of 64, only just.

We're already getting this kind of sub-level free song of the.

The political climate's starting to get agitated and people starting to question what's going on.

[11:43]

You've got beyond the fringe just heading out.

They're just starting to appear.

There is such a thing as political satellite finally appearing on the BBC.

Maybe we're getting a reflection of that in the way that you're seeing.

This fractiousness of a tiny tribe set before civilisation.

It's a really nice take on it.

I haven't thought of that before.

It is a, It's a bit of a slog though, isn't it?

That, that, that, that's the thing, for all the sort of political commentary, it's still people kind of jumping up and down and going, ugh.

A lot of bad BBC wigs as well.

And just thinking, a thing about the Rada accents.

If I were the kind of fan to rationalise things with crazy theories, which, coincidentally enough, I am.

I have...

It could be that, um, for the 1st say, 7 of the doctor's lives that the TARDIS's translation circuits, telepathic circuits are set to RP.

[12:45]

They are a bit posh, aren't they?

Yeah, generally bit bosh.

And then lo and behold, done for one night of the 8 doctor's life, they seem to be confused as to whether they're in America or Canada.

I blame Dodo Chaplet. she did something when she walked in.

Yeah, actually, yeah, Dodo has broken Dodo.

Dodo broke every circuit she ever touched on so many levels.

And then, you know, when the doctor went from being ultra received pronunciation, John Hurt, to being the northerner, that just completely broke them and you got all the accents at once for the Russell T. Davis era. and it's lovely.

Oh what was that?

I think that's the noise that tells us it's time to move on and talk about the Daleks.

Ah, good, good.

Can we use it for other stories as well?

It's not the cake cue.

It's not the cake cue.

Oh, listen, we haven't introduced the cake, which is, in fact, pecan slice prepared by my boyfriend, and we will be making the recipe available to you.

[13:49]

Moist and nutty, like most of this proceeding.

Yes, indeed.

So let's have the noise again.

And it's time to talk about the Daleks.

Very 1st Dalek story.

Is it?

Oh, no, no, obviously.

Is it, but is it actually about the Duck X?

I actually, I would put it out there that it's the 1st story that isn't really about the Daleks at all, but it's in fact about a whole lot of other things and it really has nothing to do with the rest of the Dalek saga at all.

The Daleks only become the Daleks in the next story to follow, which we'll get to next year.

It's, for me, it's an interesting composition on what science fiction is on the telly in 1963, 64.

It's a soundscape and a lightscape.

It has much more to do with scoring and much more to do with visually playing around with what a TV show can do.

The Daleks themselves.

I'll leave it there for the moment and I'll get back to it.

What did you think?

Well, I think, I mean, clearly that 1st episode where it's just the regulars, um, or did I dream that?

[14:56]

No, it's just the regulars and the conjure.

Oh, and a hand and a metal lizard.

And and that really is, um, It is sort of about visuals, but you know, you've got a tiny telly in the corner of the room and so you're kind of very limited in the impact of the visuals.

I'm jumping ahead into the centre of the story, yeah.

But, but, um, it is sound.

And certainly that the huge climactic scene at the end where Barbara is just being menaced by a whole bunch of doors and stuff.

But because the corridors are really interestingly shaped and because the sound is so good, it's really, really tense and quite terrifying.

And that, I mean, that cliffhanger is sort of unequal, isn't it?

Just utterly spectacular.

It's a beautiful thing.

It's probably worth noting at this point that, you know, we've mentioned Mervyn Penfield last time. in his featured in the adventures in time and space, as the inventor of the pinny prompter, as he called it, or the auto queue as everybody else.

[15:58]

And there's that lovely moment where he's acknowledged for doing that.

He was old school.

Um, and But old school for the BBC in the late 50s, early 60s was actually still very expressive. and I've been hoping on about German expressionism.

I'm going to do that when we get to the sensor rights later on.

But there was a big thing in the BBC at the time with creating new visuals and new sounds.

So they were more interested in things like bringing those German expressionist ideas and new things.

So you get past, you get very VCUs, close-ups of people's faces, half a face, and you'll get a black curtain with white objects floating, like a Juan Mero image of to symbolise things.

It was actually very expressionistic.

And the new guys were saying, no, bugger that.

Let's get some more.

Bug, we did feature in the BBC.

Let's get some more, get some actual naturalism here.

So let's sort of have real-time real movement, have some real action, not quite so stagey.

So constructed.

So even though we see Pinfield as being old school, to our eyes, now he would probably be more animal guard than the new new school, which was make it real, make it natural, make it post John Osborn, give it a bit of kitchen sink realism.

[17:09]

I think the German expressionism you mentioned. does come back to that 1st episode.

It's very Dr. Kalagari.

And strange corridors, the shadows.

Thank you.

That's what I wanted to say because Ray Kouzik was one of the new boys who was going for symbolism, rather than metaphor.

We'll get to this, if you want to get to it, we'll get to it later.

But Cusick's big hero, architecturally appears to be gaudy.

The cars are familiar, the bus or anything.

But he has a trope with circles.

There are circles in the corridors of of power of the Dalek city.

There's circles on the sensor right spaceship.

There's um, it's a, it's a nice kind of thing with, with, there's no right ankles.

It's a semi-organic space.

The music then is music concrete, um, reinterpreted and um, carrying on by Tristan Carey's workshop.

We should maybe take a moment to just have a little worship of Tristan Carey and the extraordinary things he did for early electronic music.

[18:14]

Yes, it's just so it comes out of the atmosphere of the forest.

Like it's almost like it's a sound you could hear in the forest, but then it becomes a strange, unnatural sound and then it goes back into natural sound.

That's very unnerving.

Very unnerving and there's very dreamlike space.

The whole thing and the way it's shot and the slowness and then the quickness of the camera cuts and the narrative itself is very odd.

It's a beautiful piece, that 1st episode.

Dead planet.

Something that really affects me.

Not having the same knowledge as you do about design and architecture, but the design of the Dalek city and those curved doorways, which then permeate throughout Dalek designs everywhere.

You're sort of, it makes you feel uneasy. when you're watching.

Sounds and vision, you get everything on radio.

The rills have one of those.

Yes.

They do.

I don't know what it was.

Something that must come with alien garden centres.

That's it.

[19:17]

What is unnerving about those corridors and you don't necessarily pick up on it when you're watching it as a child because I think I 1st watched this story when I was about eight.

But as an adult, you suddenly realise it's unnerving because A human would not make those shapes.

A human would not have doors like that in, you know, just as a functional thing.

So who builds something to be that functional and it ends up being these aliens, the likes of which had never been seen. and has often been copied afterwards.

And you know you've gotten iconic design when other people copy it.

So that that to me is.

The immediate effect of that design, it just makes you feel uneasy because you can see that's a building.

You can see that's a doorway.

But why on earth would you design a doorway like that because you're not on earth, that's why.

Exactly.

Makes me pretty pictures too.

Yes.

I mean, that looks spectacular, though. end of the scene.

[20:18]

So does it all go to hell when the Daleks appear in episode two?

Um, I don't think so.

No.

But I do agree with the critique by Cornell Day and topping in the discontinuity guide, which is it's a 7 part story and it's a story of 2 halves.

And for the 1st 4 episodes, You have this sort of tense, almost a thriller, um, based on, What will alien life actually be like?

Will it be so different to us that it is impossible to have anything up than hostility?

You know, it's very thought provoking sci-fi.

And the last 3 episodes are Flash Gordon, Dan, Dan making our way across dangerous landscapes.

Both halves are very good.

And it's interesting because it sets up the 2 kinds of science fiction that Doctor Who will do and eventually meld, which is the thought-provoking allegorical science fiction.

I don't think it's a surprise to anyone that Terry Nation got the idea of the Daleks and their dependence on their dependence on... static electricity and radiation from the 2nd World War.

[21:23]

Yeah.

How much of that is Whitaker, though, because he's such a thing on static electricity.

And then pairing that with sci-fi runaround.

Yeah.

And, you know, in this in this case, they're almost entirely split up, but in the future, they would be melded together.

And so is episodes 2 to 4 racist.

See, I don't, I, you know, I know that the Daleks are based on fascism and Nazism.

This is where I would question that.

Are they?

Or is that a reconning from Nation when he gets 1975 with Genesis of the Daleks?

Because at this point, when we look at what's going on with communism and the split from China's CPC and Russia's Soviet state, only just having occurred in the last decade, we've got things like, and we'll get to this with sensorites and reign of terror where you're getting this commentary on what's happening right now.

[22:23]

I think the Daleks symbolise communism.

It's the straight down the line, it's the lack of individual personality.

It's all the fears, the very Huxley-like fears of what communism would say.

And I think people have kind of moved on at this stage.

The war, although it was 20 years ago.

With the rapidity of cultural changes, it was seen as something that happened back then.

The threat here and now was the Cold War, was nuclear, as you say, nuclear holocaust, and this distalt state of being a nothingness that is communism.

There are no individuals, there's just the state.

It was pretty terrifying for the West who still had its fundament in the humanities to see that a machine state, which is kind of what communism was certainly meant to be.

Mao talked about the great leap forward.

Yeah, it's not just a Billy Bragg song.

In 58 that these five-year plan of massive pogroms against the people and enforced um, enforced famine, actually, deliberately going around and doing horrid things to people.

[23:26]

Um, and denying them, denying them that the, the, their own crops lying in their own food, taking half of the, the reserves and putting it into central storage seems to be kind of a symbol between the wandering files and the centrist government of the Dalek city.

I also think, though, I mean, you know, the whole thing goes back to the time machine, you know, where you have humanity splits into 2 into 2 races.

And the film makes that much more about...

Oh, well, you know, it's it's A she whales and all of that sort of thing.

So it's about class in HG Wells.

Do you know what I mean?

The aristocrats turning to the Eloy, who can't even speak, you know, um, and, you know, they, they lounge around by the river eating river fruits and that kind of thing.

And someone falls in and starts to drown and they're like, oh, dear.

And yeah. and then you've got the morox morons.

Morlocks, thank you.

And they're industrial workshop people and all of that sort of thing.

[24:27]

So you've got you've got, um, and it seems to me that he's got the idea from that.

So the thals are... blonde white people who Susan recognises as being perfect.

Scandalwegian.

Yeah, it's very much George Powell's time machine of the 50s, yeah.

And then, you know, you've got the morally corrupt, ugly people.

I mean, I think I think it's at least slightly accidentally racist in that. the thals are all blonde white people.

And maybe maybe we go back and think of the Daleks as a Nazi analogue just to kind of expunge from our memory how Aryan, the conception of the files is in its in its original, even in the Planet of the Daleks.

Bernard, horseful in a blonde wig.

Do you know what I mean?

Like everyone's horribly blonde.

You know.

So, I mean, I think there is something...

[25:29]

They're horribly blind.

I think that's the title of this episode.

We can get a musical.

A broadband...

Yeah, so I think I think the racism is inadvertent, but it is kind of weirdly there.

Um, uh, and and I think that, like all of Terry Nation stuff, it's all just a bit less clever than it would like to think it is.

And so, you know, that whole thing, the, you know, evil science fiction monsters on one hand and beautiful people is all sort of really very much being done before.

And the thing that really lifts it is that the Daleks are fantastic.

You know, they just look great.

The voices are perfect.

They do look lovely.

It's probably worth noting at this point that Mervyn Pinfield did suggest to, um, Cusick, that the Daleks could actually be actors in silver painted cardboard tubes on their arms and legs, just like you can do to cats with smarty toes.

[26:30]

And that would be... to do to cats.

Yeah, it's fantastic.

But to do to actors and maybe I don't think we'd quite have the series. kind of the 60s cyberman really, though, isn't it?

Yeah, it's very German theatre.

Thank you, Raven. sticking to your guys.

Or you, Georgian state dances.

Now, there is something that was, I think, meant to happen in the story.

And I can't remember at the moment, whether it was Inter Nation's original script, but got cut because people thought it would be too subtle, or if it's something David Whitaker introduced in the novelisation, because it's been about 2 years since I last read it.

But during the conversation where Susan finally meets Aladdin.

She says, they said you were mutations, but you're not.

You're beautiful.

Either in the original script or in the novelisation, Aladdin actually says, what do you mean we're beautiful, we're hideous?

Because that's... reading that as well.

I think that's in the Whittaker.

Oh okay.

Yeah, it's not in the script.

I thought she said you're perfect, which is just...

[27:33]

Yes, not a little girl anymore.

Okay, so the Whittaker novelisation.

And that's a very interesting concept that what is a human notion of beauty is not the thoul notion of beauty.

To them, they are mutations and maybe they did have 4 eyes and 3 noses before and to them that was beautiful.

Um, That actually brings me to the 1st of several moments I'm going to mention because I've actually been for the last year and a half sitting down with my boyfriend and we've been watching one or 2 episodes of Doctor Who were Knights. where currently halfway through Tom Baker.

But I've been taking notes on what he says.

So if you could just pass me that notebook next to you, because I've, um, I've chosen a few key things, he said, and one of them is from Daleks, um, where all I've written is the note homoeroticism, which I think he was mainly relating to Antidus and Ganitus, um, the 2 brothers who were constantly moaning to each other.

[28:34]

I don't I don't think he was actually being serious, but I think he just kind of went at one point.

Okay, so we have 2 muscular blonde boys in leather trousers with holes cut out fighting on the side of a beach.

No, I...

No, no.

No, neither can I. But, you know, there's so much to interpret, isn't there?

And that's the thing.

I thought it would be interesting to occasionally bring up Rod's observations because although he's been a casual viewer, really, he was watching his 1st memories of Doctor Who are watching 1st round Patrick Troughton.

That's pretty interesting.

Yeah, um, see to death is his 1st memory of Doctor.

How do you know that?

Just the foam.

I remember the doctor struggling through foam.

That's what he remembers.

He remembers the doctor struggling through foam, the bubble blowing up behind him and the ice warrior silhouetted coming over the hill.

But I thought it'd be interesting to throw in his observations occasionally because unlike us, he doesn't live eat and breathe.

The series.

Well, it sounds like he does if he's up to Tom Baker.

Oh, but yeah, but, you know, he couldn't, for instance, we were watching an episode of The Avengers morning.

[29:36]

He says, oh, I know that guy.

He's been in other Avengers episodes.

I said he was in Spearhead from Space.

He played Channing, who was assisting the...

Oh yes, that's right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So he's not a sad sack, right?

So anything else to say on the Dialects traps?

Well, I mean, the last 3 episodes are boring, are they?

Well, they're not boring so much as they're, you know, they're standard sci-fi fair.

As we can see from the film version and we'll be doing a podcast for the films later, as we can see from the film version.

Yes, I just decided that now.

A lot of the story.

A lot of the film version of the story is devoted to that trek through the tunnel sequence because that's the action event.

You know?

Is it done well?

Because I mean, it is sort of a bit tiresome in that tiny lime grove studio on a BBC budget.

I think just for 3 episodes, it works.

You know, it doesn't, it doesn't require too much mental power, but it doesn't outstay its welcome.

And it does give the doctor a chance to be more heroic. because when he realises the dialects are going to blow up the bomb and destroy everyone.

[30:39]

He says, look, I have this amazing ship.

I will show it to you.

And I'll show you how it works and I'll tell you its secrets, but you have to not kill everyone.

And later on, like in the colour era when the Daleks want the TARDIS.

The doctor's like, no, fine, kill everyone.

I'm not giving you the TARDIS.

And I suppose since he started by being so naughty and selfish in sort of episode one, When's the fluid link come up, episode two?

So he has been naughty, so he probably does need to redeem himself with something heroic at the end.

And I think the end is pretty good.

Or the, we're in the control room.

Yeah, there's some cardboard Daleks up against the wall.

You know, I think the end sort of works.

But the 3 episodes sort of leading up to it, I think, a bit of a trial.

So, there's that noise again.

So time to go on to the edge of destruction.

Right.

So, um, 2 episodes written in a hurry to varying stories, the sets for Marco Polo weren't ready yet.

[31:43]

They needed to make up 13 episodes just in case they got cancelled.

All they had with a regulars because they'd spent so much money on the Daleks.

Call it what you will.

We got 2 episodes set inside the TARDIS with only the 4 regulars.

And if you'll indulge me for a moment, I just like to say how I 1st came to this story.

It was actually reading Nigel Robinson's novelisation.

It's a good, good place to discuss.

It's brilliant.

And there's this really tense and scary couple of chapters where the doctor and Ian go down to the tons engine rooms.

And it's all steampunk, right?

It's brass and...

Brass and Ian can hear all these noises and so the doctor goes off in front of him, but then to the side of him, Ian sees shadows and people moving about and it's just so scary and tense.

So then I got... and very well zoomed.

Very, very well said.

And then I got the copy on video, which was like a 3rd generation snowballed copy and the doctor and Anne go off to check the systems.

I'm like, yeah, and then there's a conversation between Barbara and Susan, and then we cut to the doctor and Ian in front of the fort.

[32:46]

Okay, they're saying, no, everything's fine.

So to say I was a little disappointed with the televised version.

You've hit something right there that's so much that we can see now being able to review and rewatch these.

May have had parallel with the way viewers watched them then in that they had to use their imaginations and being able to only see something once.

You rewrite it in your head and your memory is not very much of what you've seen anyway.

You've got a 2nd narrative.

If you've already seen the thing once.

Exactly.

So that engine room thing may well be a memory for some viewers who assumed that to be there.

And it's a really nice way of seeing it.

Being able to go back and look at things and hypercritique them as, you know, we possibly are doing, is if you want to be critical, is.

In a way, it's it's unnatural.

It's, it's against the, it's against the viewing principle or the way that we did it at the time.

[33:47]

I think the hard thing to do is actually to try and forget everything in the subsequent sort of 48 years of Doctor Who when you're watching. watching it, you know, um, I've just been watching Time Medler and the, and the, the summary, like the plot synopsis, describes the monk as another time lord.

And it just makes me very cross because they haven't been invented yet.

Yeah, that's not how we're meant to see the doctor's planet.

That's all you need to know.

And so all of the stuff about the TARDIS and and, and, you know, all those years and years of, it's very hard not to sort of bring that back in to while you're watching it.

And, I don't know.

Again, like I don't want to be really critical because I really like seasons one and 2 a lot and I love the Heart and Oleera. really enjoying it.

Um, but I actually think this one's a bit rough as well.

And I think the reason is that it never really becomes clear what we're trying to do.

[34:52]

So we get we get lots of sort of weird moments.

We get Susan sort of stamping the, the, um, chair, she stabs a chair.

Or whatever.

And all of that sort of thing, but it's still not very clear what's going on.

Like they've sort of lost their memory or are they sort of possessed and and it's clearly presented as a possibility, um, you know, Susan theorises that someone's in the TARDIS hiding inside them.

And so it's something that we're supposed to be considering, but it's not really done very clearly and it's never really resolved.

And we don't know why Ian's been behaving like an idiot like at the beginning.

I think William Russell knew either.

Judging by his performance.

It's very strange and it does sort of undermine it a little bit.

And again, in the novelisation, the great thing in the novelisation is there's that chapter and it's set in the coal hill room.

Yeah, which is...

Which explains why Ian and Barbara are so detached in the 1st scene.

[35:53]

Yeah, because, you know, because they just think they're in the staffroom and there's someone sick on the floor in the staffroom.

Oh, no, okay.

Yeah, we've got to deal with that, but don't panic.

Yeah.

Because there's a moment where Barbara suddenly goes, of course, we're in the tardise.

And that's the 1st inkling you've had that she didn't realise she was in the top.

So it is like it doesn't quite, it doesn't quite work.

And, you know, the resolution is sort of slightly silly and things and, you know, like the fast return switch.

Like, you know, I know it's been said a 100 times before, but he could have just pressed that before and taken them home or like pressed it a bunch of times.

Maybe it's only got one memory, like an old pocket calculator, you know, but then there is something sort of magical about it still, though, I think.

Yeah, and I think I think it's because it helps solidify the character's relationships.

And I think, especially it's the 1st moment where Barbara really becomes the Barbara, we think of, when we think of the series, when she stands up to the doctor and says, you stupid old man, you'd be dead if it wasn't.

[37:00]

Can you do that now, Judith Lucy?

You stupid old man.

You'd be dead if Ian hadn't made fire for you in the cave of skulls.

That can't ever happen again. so beautiful.

Actually, I think I've got a friend who's made of of dudes, this will be sent to him.

And I just...

I do do cross plate.

So, you know, I could cosplay. and it will happen, folks.

And there will be pictures on the interweb.

A lovely thing you mentioned about Ian that you just reminded me is Nathan was talking last week about the setup of the characters and the internal dynamics and the tensions between them when we were going to have instead of Barbara and Ian, Cliff and Lola McGovern, they were much younger characters.

Lola was about 23.

Cliff was going to be about 28 and and standby for your icky factor to go off, the 2 women were supposed to have a sexual frisson for the cliff character.

[38:03]

Oh, yeah, a bit of a love trying.

Exactly, and have to resolve that, and this story would have been that place where that would have come up and been resolved.

So there's a whole lot of Freud going on with those scissors and sometimes a pair of scissors is just a pair of scissors, going into the sofa, the sofa behind which the rest of us are cowering in Freudian shame.

I don't really want to explore that any further and I'm really glad it didn't happen.

But I'm kind of getting maybe Ian is kind of where am I right now because if that had stayed in there?

I get the sense of watching Edge of Destruction.

There's a whole lot of other things that were lying on the cutting room floor again, those scissors that didn't make it to the screen and actually the fact that it's so confusing and it is actually hard to watch.

It's not just the pace of it.

And it's not just the lighting, which is really, you know, if you've eaten a lot of cheese before you've gone to bed, you've probably had visions not that dissimilar.

The fact that it's all so disjointed and really isn't making sense, even even internally, even unto its own story, it's just not making sense.

I mean, its performance kind of works for me for that.

[39:04]

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, the thing is, it's kind of like William Russell is such a good actor and so much fun to watch that even when he's not giving a very good performance.

He's still very entertaining.

And centred and is the a surety in the narrative.

He's the one that is actually the really the male lead.

Billy's just silly old grandpa sitting on the sofa at home, as most people who are watching this would have, you know, we forget that it was a different life, then different countries.

We didn't tend to have more old older people in the family home.

It was usually their home.

So...

They were sitting on the sofa grumbling and making noises, just like Billy.

Just as Ian is the hero, this is the story where Barbara becomes like the moral centre of the group.

Because in the Daleks, when it's revealed, oh, the fluid link is left behind and they're like, what do we do?

The doctor and Barbara, just say, oh, we'll use the files to get it for us and then we'll nick off.

And Ian's one each other and says, well, no, we've got to set them free as well.

And Barbara says, why?

Yeah.

And she gets quite cross at him and he's like the 1st lover's teeth, isn't it?

Yeah, but here it's like she's kind of gone...

[40:08]

She's standing up for herself, but she's standing up for Ian as well as incapacitated.

But what she's really standing up for is we didn't ask to be in this situation, but we have helped you.

You have helped us.

We have helped each other.

We cannot turn on each other now.

And it's kind of then returned in that lovely scene at the end where the doctor comes to her and apologises and says, you know what?

You were completely right.

You've saved all our lives.

I was so foolish.

And she's just like, what, why are you even talking to me?

And he says, look, you've taught me something about myself?

And I want to return the favour.

And I'm actually getting I'm actually getting a little lump in my throat talking about it because it's such a beautiful scene and I have a theory that the 1st doctor is in love with Barbara and I think it's... be.

Can you imagine a series set up in the as it is now on the modern premise where it's just the doctor and the stolen younger female companion if it actually had just been Billy and Jackie. for that season without the other two.

[41:09]

I think it would have been a really interesting program.

Well, look at all, we'll get to this in a few minutes, but look at all their scenes together in the Aztecs.

I can't wait.

Yeah, all their scenes together and everything.

Do you know what I mean?

That's the, I think that's the big win of Edge of Destruction.

I don't think it works, but I think it the fact that it ends with 2 spectacular scenes with Jackie and Billy that that really redeems it.

And as you said, every time they're on screen together talking to one another, they're just superb.

Absolutely superb.

And well, as we're talking about character, let's move on to one of the biggest character pieces in the whole season.

Marco Polo.

Oh, echopanthic...

What if that gets discovered and returned to the BBC between now our recording and your editing and putting it up on the...

[42:11]

Well, I'll look even sillier, which is kind of the point.

I'll put in a little disclaimer.

And then we can add it to an addendum for the season 2 podcast.

Okay, there we go.

Easy, easy. easy.

I do want it back.

I really...

Do you know, I had never ever seen it before.

And it's one of these things where...

Like I've only listened to a few on audio, like Galaxy 4 and Dialect Masterpie and things, but I'd never even listen to it on audio.

And I have this thing because I'm deeply shallow and childish that if they don't have monsters in them, I'm not quite so interested.

This will come up later when we talk about the Aztecs, tragically.

And so I'd never been sort of really highly motivated.

And then again, I read Sandov's thing and Sandov is sort of a bit dismissive of it.

And so I am doing what you're doing, Brandon, which is watching it all the way through.

Um, Uh, and I'm just up to season three.

[43:12]

So I'm just slightly behind you.

Just a list one.

I am going to give up work, though, so that I can so that I can keep up with the podcast, all right, over the next few months.

Well, I would expect nothing.

No, well, yeah.

And so this was the 1st recon that I had ever watched, you know, and I was really nervous about it.

The recons, like this, for those of you at home who aren't aware of this loose cannon, whoever they are.

I'm sure they're lovely.

They get all of the sort of surviving footage, all of these sort of publicity photos.

They get the soundtrack.

Every soundtrack to every episode exists and they created a video of it.

And originally, originally you had to email them a videotape.

No, I don't think you can do that.

I think it does.

It's very modern.

You had to post them a videotape.

And they would copy it on and send it back to you.

Happy days.

Now, don't tell anyone, but due to the magic of the internet, a lot of these are available on YouTube.

Will we be able to post a link to this in our friendly happy podcast page?

[44:15]

We may well.

I'll take a note.

It doesn't infringe anyone's copyright.

It's just a YouTube link.

So I watched it for the 1st time and I thought I'm not going to make it through a recon because that's going to be terribly boring.

But in fact, it was just spectacular.

And it's partly because the visuals are so stunning.

And it's really, really heavily photographed.

There's stacks and stacks.

And beautiful colour photos.

They really went all out on it.

Oh, no, I'm a bit of a purist.

I wouldn't watch.

What's the colour phase?

There is a version.

It's an interesting thing, though, if we can just segue the performances in this, from what you're saying, like, look, okay, I have to admit, I've listened to the audio many, many times and I've looked at the images, but I haven't watched the loose cannons.

So I find that when I'm listening to it, and I have just an audio experience of it, and that really nice Lucaroti novel, yay, John Lucaroti, everything he touches is gold until other people get their hands on it, I still like to think that his work is pure, we'll get to reign of terror later.

Yeah, what about Eric the Red?

[45:16]

wasn't that one?

Yeah That was one of his.

It's an interesting thing that the BBC was going for really highly saturated sets.

Even the Daleks had lots of lovely cyan blue all over it.

It wasn't just, it was more like Jane Mansfield's swimming pool.

Yeah, it wasn't tech gray, the sets at all.

The floor was a beautiful, shiny sign, poured floor blue.

Um, and the people go in and repaint that every day while it was during the shooting.

It's lovely glossy blue.

Yeah.

ITV at the same time, you know, whilst this series was on, was repeating episodes of the Buccaneers, which was already five, six, 7 years old, their sets were largely monochromatic.

They had this thing of the directors of producers, whoever was in charge at the time, saying, I want to see exactly how it's going to go out.

And I can't imagine that the performances you were getting on the rival network were just a little flattered because of it.

Are you saying that they were like, that it was like, like the Buccaneers, I don't know anything about that.

Is that the past?

[46:16]

Are they pirates?

I haven't seen it.

It's just one of those things that, you know, British television at the time was largely fun historicals and nice ladies telling children how to play with rob puppets.

Are they sitting?

Oh, like, what would be your favourite, yes.

So, but you're saying that they would do these sets, you know, it'd be the past, right?

And but the set would all be painted in various shades of...

There was more than one major direct major producer on the ITV networks who were saying, well, see, the cameras, we've got to remember, the tech wasn't there and you would strobe.

So you'd get one of the few concessions that be made was that you never had pure wine in costumes, but the richness of the colours.

And they understood they were a lot more cinematic, a lot more older people involved with the tech of it, saying, you know, it works, we've been shooting cinema in Britain for a long time in monochrome, but using colour sets, you don't get the depths of greys if you don't use colours.

It actually doesn't transpose as well onto videotape.

ITV wasn't getting that.

[47:19]

Maybe there's just thinking maybe there's something in this lovely richness you get at the performances.

In Marco Polo, and they are.

They're really great to just listen to it.

You don't get that so much on.

Well, it does look like this sort of lavish period piece despite the fact that it is, you know, just sets and they're all gray.

And I, like I said, there is a colour version, but I wasn't going to watch it because that seemed to violate the spirit of things.

But it looks really spectacular.

It's terribly fun.

There's a lot of time for the regulars to do things because there's not that much plot.

Um, And so there's sort of lots of interplay between the characters.

The villain is great, the guy who plays Tagan.

Darren Nesbit.

He's terrific.

Oh, good.

He was the Sean Bean of his generation.

He crops up in the prisoner and lots of ITV series.

He's always the bloke who appears to be a friend, but just don't because he'll cross you.

No, he's terrific.

He doesn't and he's not like a moustache twirling villain, particularly.

He's sort of fairly straight down.

[48:19]

And his motives are purely political and for his own he's his own people, his own nation.

Yeah, he's strapping down and...

Well, evidently, as you do, like covering with ants.

Is that No, no, no, I dream that.

That's the crusade.

Okay, good, all right.

It's coming, folks.

When we do go up to the Crusade, I've got an interesting story about that scene, but we'll leave that for them.

Thank you.

I have actually seen the colour version of Marco Polo.

The reconstruction, everyone.

I do not, I do not, I do not have it.

Please don't check me.

No, the I've seen the colour reconstruction.

And it is...

As you say, those sets, the costumes, they're just sumptuous.

They are.

It's begging to be a musical, isn't it?

And yet, thankfully, it never quite means.

Although, although... it looks like the king and Ar.

Although, shall we now...

Zen...

Some fantastic dance number. and that's the main reason why...

A lovely homaged Caroline Ford's moment in her hopefully child.

[49:20]

Only good, probably.

I mean, that's the thing that I would really like to see because again, you know, you see a still, and then this text crawls along the bottom of the screen saying Pingcho does a fabulous dance sequence in which, and that's really all you care.

It's so strange because Doctor Who was meant to have a radio times cover for an unearthly child and it got bumped for something else.

They gave them the radio times cover for Marco Polo's head.

And that's why story is so heavily photographed.

Except it seems for this one dance sequence, they took 3 photographs of this 3 minute dance routine all about Assassins and what they spoke and where the word comes from kiddies.

And this is an example of...

Yeah, Ian at one point says, do you know we still use the word hashish today in English, Susan?

1964 Britain come round, I'll show you.

They didn't explain.

Yeah, exactly. is still very much alive and contactable.

I think it would be onerous of us not to seek her out and ask her what her memory is.

[50:22]

She could do it.

She would do it for what he created.

She, I'm sure I'm sure she has cam on her laptop.

She'd be upset.

She's a game girl. reenacting.

Oh, really?

Nobody mentioned Space 1999. she'll be up for it.

She married, she married Nigel Havers and Sarah Jane Smith in the...

She was the celibate, yes.

And she was an old, the magical old woman in the cave of Menligato in Wizards versus Aliens in the 2nd series of Wizards versus Aliens.

So and she's fabulous.

I mean, she is just terrific.

And she was always my favourite thing in space 1999 and one of the heartbreaking things about that show limping towards the end of the 2nd season is that she disappears from it, like everyone else.

Well, you may not know this, but this is a nice little coder to that.

About 10 years ago, this huge space 1999 convention was on.

I think it was the 30th anniversary or something.

And they got her in costume against a flat recording a message saying, we found a planet.

[51:25]

We're about to go settle on it.

This is the last transmission from Moonbase Alpha.

And she says stuff about people who, like she explains how people have died.

Yeah, yeah, you know, such and such as died and da, da, da.

And I could be wrong, but I think they did that for the cast members who had passed on.

Oh, lovely.

We'll find it.

We'll find a clip if we can.

It was also something about how it was the, anyway, we're getting far away from things, but the planet meta, that they detect the metal planet.

Get it, get it.

They detect the signal from it in the 1st episode.

They do, and I think that's where they end up setting it.

Yeah, yeah.

Hurrah.

Not many people know that.

To finish talking about Marco Polo, I just want to go back to something I said about the edge of destruction.

At the end, the doctor says to Barbara as a way of sort of saying, as a way of saying, sorry, he says, as we learn about each other, so we learn about ourselves, you teach me something, I'll teach you something.

And that is really what happens over the course of Marco Polo.

You know, Barbara's tirade at the doctor in Edge of Destruction. makes him take Ian and Barbara seriously.

[52:29]

And then over the course of Marco Polo, you see them working together and each of them sort of has a function like Susan keeps them in a far better position than they would be because she has her friendship with Pincho and Pincho is able to talk to Marco.

Ian and Marco developer a relationship and a friendship.

The doctor and Ian figure out what Tagana's up to and realise, look, Marco won't believe us, but we'll do our best to protect him.

And Barbara also sort of helps Marco to understand, you know, we're not spirits, but at the same time, yes, you're right.

We're not of your world.

And the interesting thing about Barbara, there is.

She never talks down to Marco.

Never.

Because, of course, of course, the doctor does because he nicks the doctor's TARDIS.

But, and this would become a habit of Barbara's character.

A bit a bit like Emma Peel would be later because Emma Peel didn't didn't exist yet.

You know, she meets all...

That Gale was an anthropologist.

Yeah, Kathy, that's true.

Um, Kathy Goer was Steve's companion in the Avengers, which you just know.

[53:32]

Yes, indeed.

After this.

But that's the thing.

Barbara, Barbara accepts the people they meet for the intelligence of their own ears.

Barbara is our informed curiosity active within the narrative.

Barbara is not just our history teacher if we kids at school.

She's our, she's our humanist, creative, sensical self, engaging in the narrative, in a, actually in a fabulous piece of backcombing.

Since we have a little metaphor, the hair things are going on on this.

Yeah, yeah, Babs's hair just gets even better.

In an alternate universe, I suspect in, um, edge of destruction or wherever with the scissors, she just says, give me a number one all over, Susan.

And the show, the show doesn't, doesn't make it tonight.

This is, yeah, the show never makes it beyond episodes. 13 yeah.

Ah, well, that sound means that it's time for us to end part one of season one, and we've actually just opened the wine.

[54:34]

Chin chin, cheers.

Cheers.

Cheers.

We actually got it scraping the condensation off the walls.

Well, Doctor Who is educational.

So, um, but next week we're going to be... didn't work.

You stole my gag and then...

I think the whole thing could start again, actually.

And of course, for those of you who don't know, Richard there was referring to Marco Polo.

So if you haven't experienced it, listen to it or watch the recon, which, of course, we're not encouraging you to get online.

Well, I think we linked to it in the show notes.

Oh, yeah, yeah, it's on YouTube.

I was just saying that for anyone from the BBC who were listening.

Okay, so next week, next week, your time, but in about 5 minutes our time, we're going to be talking about the 2nd half of William Hartwell's 1st series, working our way through the Keys of Mariners, the Aztecs, the Sensorites.

Right.

And the reign of terror.

So, from Brendan, it's good night or good morning, whatever you are, whatever you're doing, do it safely and do it well.

[55:39]

Yes, and it's good night from me.

And it's good night for me too.

You have been listening to flight your entirety with Nathan Bottomley, Brendan Jones, and Richard Stone.

Episode one, horribly blonde, was recorded on Sunday, 1st of June, 2014, in city, Australia.

The next episode will be released on Sunday, June 15.

One day we will know all the mysteries of disguise, and then we will end our blatherings.

So yes, that's my theory, the telepathic circuits are set to RP.

Should really turn my television, your telephone off.

That's right.

What a professional podcast.

Telephone off.

Before recording.

That can be our post-credits moment.

That will be.

Okay, so anything else to say on unearthly child or shall we move on?