Hello, everyone.
Welcome to a very special episode of Flight Through Entirety, the
only Doctor Who podcast whose space expands to accommodate the
time necessary to encompass its dimensions, and with the amount of
cake we eat, That's a very good thing.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan I'm a pull back Rolykin in exotic livery for this
episode.
So as you probably guess by the music and that introduction, today
is all about the Cushing films.
Nathan, would you like to explain to the listeners why we're doing
the Cushing films now?
You know, we could have done them at sort of separate times.
The 1st Cushing film came out in the sort of interim between
seasons 2 and three.
You're really the history.
I'm not...
It was after, it was after the chase, and it was...
The point is that the 1st one came out, there's a lot of things to
say about these, isn't the, you know, why were they not as
successful, perhaps, as they might have been.
Everything was glowing on the board.
It should have been the best thing.
The 1st one came out right in the spirit of Dalek mania.
The 2nd one came out, I think, 6 days after Britain won World War
3 in the World Cup, which is pretty much how won England being
Britain in those days.
And I've got a lot to say on the 2nd film as to why, because I
guess you can probably get which one I'd like the more, but you
know, why it really should have done pretty well and kind of
didn't.
Well, I mean, But yes, it was mid-seasonal thing.
They both came out at times.
The 1st one came out when Hartner was at his peak and doing, you
know, really well when the show was being talked about, ITV were
looking nervous still.
What else do you want to say about that?
Well, I just wanted to say that the 2nd one comes out, you know, at
a time when the show is floundering.
When the Raiders went, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that has to be laid at least partially at the feet of the
production team chopping and changing and being so tumultuous that
the show didn't know what the hell it was doing.
No, it was doing a lot of other things it wants, wasn't it?
We spent hours complaining about what I was doing.
So the hours and hours.
Thank you for showing that with us, do listen to this.
So this is this is something of an addendum and an antidote to
that rather chaotic period of the show.
I want to say gruesome.
Gruesome.
Not tiresome, which really took the conventions of the show and
did something new with them.
Have a drink.
We're having a...
Dear listener, we do have our Flying Pots, Honda Valley, Blanc de
Blanc, as we have to call it.
Thank you, friends.
With some very shiny Jill Curzon inspired wallpaper. effect on
it.
It does look like it does look like the cushion, the whose front
room, doesn't it?
The nice, the good room, the parlour.
Yes.
And we'll keep the tone suitable for the wallpaper.
Yes.
So Doctor Who and the Daleks.
Doctor Who's in the title of that?
So it's still a major thing.
Well, yes, but when you look at the publicity things.
I mean, it really is a film for people who want to see the Daleks
again.
And, you know, they change the premise of the show quite
substantially.
They change the regular characters quite substantially.
But the things that look the same and sound the same, who have
they got back if they've got David Graham back?
They've got, you know, people from the TV show to do the Daleks.
The Daleks are faithful to the way that they appear in the show.
And so it is very definitely a film about Daleks, with sort of
Doctor Who in it, sort of incidentally, despite the fact that he
gets billing.
And of course, he doesn't get billing in the title of the next
one.
It's um Darlic.
No, he doesn't.
But they're very, very different films with very different
precepts and they do very different things.
And if you want to look at, no, that's usually what I do, isn't
it?
You want to look at what else is happening in cinema and
television at the time, but it might as well be 20 year, 30 years
apart in the way they're made.
They do feel just so different.
They feel you watch them back to back.
So different.
And actually for me, the 2nd film is more like a 40s European
film.
And the 1st film is actually kind of that gorgeous, um, uh
visionary, almost panto, can we say panto?
But that sense of, we've talked before about the Edwardian
sensibility in British fantasy writing of Edith Nesbit, of the
kind of more of the child riders that came after Wells, but the
sensibility in the aura of it, if you like, especially when you
get to the petrified forest, the little cupboard, the quiet
inventor.
It feels very much like a children's award, an adventure story, and
I really like it for that.
Just the mood of it.
And when I was 7 or 8, the 1st time I saw this film, it was on
black and white TV on a Sunday afternoon, but seeing the TARDIS
and it's still my favourite outer plasmic shelf, every, of
anything, that prop, sitting in the forest with the transparent
windows.
It's the little things like that, the tick, the amygdala, and the
canvas, bits of the fanboy brain to go into, just cortisol
overload.
This is too exciting.
And it's gorgeous.
Yeah, I was building a lot of Lego tard-eye in petrified.
It does look.
And then when you finally see it in colour.
It's so lurid.
It's kind of like those sequences in the Wizard of Oz, again, where
you just go, which is, again, another one of that narromantic
style.
It's actually kind of Vincent Manelli.
The 1st one is a bit like, is it American in Paris?
No, it's Cushing in a patch of pine forest because they're doing
it on a budget.
But it's, but it actually has that same sort of sensorial, very
emotional style of that neo Hollywood.
I actually called it Neo.
I think it's neo-realism.
I think it's expressionism.
Can we use that one?
Oh, please.
Have a drink.
That very expression of style of Hollywood cinema, which is
actually Both of them, if you like, when we took at American
cinema.
And I think these, I think both of these films are really
interesting for looking at in exactly in a way that what would the
Yanks have done if they'd got hold of Doctor Who in the 60s?
Well, I was just going to say, it's funny you should say that
because these films were used to try and launch Doctor Who in
America because the 1st film was adapted for, uh, it was adapted
as comic and that was published in the UK and America.
It was also novelized and only published in America.
And there was an attempt to spin off a international
internationally distributed radio series.
Totally separate from all of nations goes with the destructors and
serials.
Yeah, absolutely.
And this was, it was, I believe, Aru focussing on all this.
Terry Nation was naturally involved, and the BBC were naturally
involved, and I think that may have had a hand in why it didn't
quite launch as well as the dwindling popularity of the Daleks, as
we'll discuss later on with the 2nd film.
So, I actually remember watching this for the 1st time, you
mentioned your 1st experience of watching it.
I was actually kind of horribly disappointed and I can't
remember.
I think I have only seen, I think, I think I had only seen the 2nd
one.
Right. before recently watching them for the podcast.
I think it was the 2nd one.
Yes, it definitely is because it's the one with all the coloured
ward going down the plug hole as the time.
That's right.
Yeah, it actually it actually is Doctor Who does Psycho.
Whereas the 1st one sort of lies.
We didn't mention Jill Curzon's part yet, did we?
That's going to go quite well. would be unfair.
We're not up to Dual Curtson yet.
Sorry, dear listener, we are getting ahead of ourselves.
And I think I think the disappointment came straight away from the
fact that the music was different.
Because, you know, it wasn't the I'd only ever experienced the 70s
style title sequence.
It just shows you how powerful Delia Darbyshire.
Wow.
We still miss her.
Yeah, even in especially this year.
Just to jump forward of you.
I'm kind of like it. quite good this year.
But anyway, he's getting way ahead of us.
You know, like, I didn't really have enough sort of knowledge
obviously, back then of sort of 60s Doctor Who to have any sort of
particular opinion about the rest of it.
But I think I must have been Tom Baker or John Pert.
We must have been the only doctors I ever saw.
And so this, which was a lot about the Daleks and not very
interested in the doctor. didn't really grab me.
And so it was only, it was only in the last few weeks that I've
actually sat down and properly looked at them for the 1st time
interesting.
I remember the 1st time I saw the 1st one.
I was staying with my uncle and my cousins, they lived about a 20
minute walk from our house, so quite often I did their weekends or
they big rounded hours weekends.
Um, and my uncle who knew I loved Doctor, my cousin's wife Doctor
Who, I just got it out from the video shop.
He had no idea what it was.
Oddly, the person who knew what it was was my mother, who's not a
big science fiction fan at all.
But I will never forget the way she described it.
She said, it's Peter Cushing doing his family friendly movie.
Oh, because she remembered Peter Cushing as um, that Helsing and
Dracula and as Dr. Frankenstein and even as Grandmoth Tarken, you
know, she remembered him always as playing villains.
This is the film where he's not being villain.
This is the film he can take his children to.
However, he's still keeping the Caesar Romero moustache just so
you don't feel too comfortable.
There's just a little bit of, you still don't know what's going to
come, kids, do you?
In the same way.
No, I don't remember that he does.
Frankenstein doesn't.
So do you think that he's doing the moustache?
Because I hate the moustache.
He's really confronting.
It's worse than Nicholas Courtney's worst thrown across the broom
and landed slideways on his face, moustache.
It's terrible.
We have now, you know, in...
She waxes.
Oh, she looks...
Yeah, yeah.
Terrible tombstone teeth. mirroring up at you.
We're still on the 1st one.
Yeah, no, I find the moustache really off putting, but he's
clearly doing it to distance himself from scary hammer horror
role.
It's like when Tom Baker quit Doctor Who and cut off all his
hair.
Yeah, cut his head very short, so it wasn't curry anymore.
So he had a completely different silhouette.
Yeah.
So how do we find, how do we find it?
was going to say Capaldi.
How do we find pushing?
How do we find pushing in the role?
Oh, yeah.
He approaches it, approaches it in the same way that Billy does
but you end up with a very different reading in the way that there
are ticks and mannerisms and there, you know, vocal things.
I like the way he uses his physicality in the film in a similar
way that Billy does.
Cushing, you know, the way he hobbles about, kind of actually kind
of, actually like, kind of like golem.
But in a long velvet prop coat, right?
The whole thing, you know, he takes up a lot of space and these
actors have a way of making you look at them even though there's a
big set with a wide screen.
No, no, you're going to look at me because I'm doing things you
don't expect a body and a person to be doing at this moment.
It is very cheeky like that, yeah.
It's very different from TV, is it?
Yeah, you're in medium, you're in medium close-up.
You know, Billy.
I think, again, Sandafar. you know, Billy does a lot with his
hands.
Billy is performing for the small screen. his chin, that sort of
thing, yeah.
Whereas you've got you've got him in a giant giant screen.
And so he's stooping, you know, he still vocally does a lot of
stuff that Hartnell does.
He still does the sort of fascinating. sort of thing.
And he seems to be playing it older the way that Billy does as
well.
He just seems a little bit more generic and he's certainly more
he's more cuddly and family friendly.
Yeah, he's more mischievous, whereas Billy was more menacing.
And I don't think Billy ever lost that sense of being slightly
dangerous and slightly menacing.
No, he never did.
Even after, he is humanised in the 2nd season.
But right up to when Ian and Barberley.
He can still turn on them and shout at them and what have you.
You can't imagine Peter Cushing's doctor shouting at Ian for
falling over and breaking something, sitting on a box of
chocolates, when arguably, you know, it's all soft centres.
Roy Castles.
Ian is far more deserving of a telling off than William Russell
Ian ever was.
So can we talk about the other regular cast, people in the Dalek.
So Ian, Ian is new.
He's not known to Barbara.
It's like the 1st date or their 2nd date.
They kind of know each other, but he's taking away.
Now is getting more complicated than the 8 doctors in the novels
you know, because you've got TV, Ian.
You've got Doctor Who in an exciting adventure, Dalexy, and where
he's a research scientist, but of course he is because he's
telling the story.
And you've got Roy Castle's Ian, who's a prat falling buffoon.
It is, I mean, because it's trying to be family friendly and
that's the most obvious. attempt to do it.
There's very little humour in the TV version of the Daleks, is
there?
Yeah, there's like, you know, you've got people dying of radiation
poisoning and death rays.
Oh, don't know.
There is like costume. squids.
But it is, it is Terry Nation and he's terribly gone.
And, you know, like he doesn't want us to have too much fun.
And some of those costumes in San Francisco, by the way.
Please go on.
On the same thing.
Better.
Still going.
So all of that sort of funny physical comedy in the in the 1st
scene and he has another scene trying to get in the they're going
into the Dalek city for the 1st time and they have to split up and
he tries to go through a door.
Yeah, he can't go through the door because he keeps closing and
all of that sort of thing.
And so, you know, that gives him something to do, given that he's
you know, doesn't have an established character who we've been
with for 4 episodes or, you know, who we've by this time been with
for 2 years.
And he's sort of funny and he's sort of fairly amiable.
And the interesting thing is because of that.
Um, he actually gets the most character development out of anyone
in the film because he starts off just as this accident prone
idiot and everyone underestimates him.
But in the end, he is the one who risks his life.
Quite knowingly.
You know, he knows what he's doing when he says, oh, he dialects
and throws himself on the floor.
And he gets up and makes a joke about it.
It's like, actually, he's completely saved the day, which is very
sort of modern new Doctor Who.
If you look at Nicky.
Micky starts off as a complete buffoon.
That's a really nice reading, actually, because, yeah, the Roy
Castleian is Nicky over there, just transposed to 2 seasons
Constantined into one little picture.
You're right.
Except they don't really, like they don't push it that far.
Do you know what I mean?
Like by then, I think, you know, the film's just a bunch of stuff
that happened.
And so the arc isn't very clearly signposted.
I think you're probably right.
The fact that the person who's the idiot in the 1st scene saves it
in the final scene, but I never really kind of felt that as a sort
of character progression.
There's no moments leading up to that or anything.
No, not really.
I mean, he...
Even though he has that development, he is pretty much still the
buffoon until that happens.
You know, it's, Which doesn't leave a lot for everyone else to do
except he's suffering, scared females, plucky young girls or
Dottery.
Where does Cushing fit into this?
Do you know why I feel they actually didn't do as well as they
might have been expected to, considering there are good moments in
it?
I just think that it's the laziness of the production team.
Why would you use a script that's already been seen on TV and
familiar and redone because it really is never going to do as
well.
I think the answer to that might partly be, I do want to know what
you think, but we've got 2 things we've touched on before that you
only ever saw at once.
So the collective memory is, what was it like?
And, you know, seeing it again at the cinema, this would have
become how people actually remembered the 1st Dalek story because
this was much more, and this was much more viewable than that very
1st story.
And in fact, for decades afterwards.
Do you know what I mean?
They didn't repeat the Daleks on television over and over again.
But they did repeat, you know, it was a sort of bank holiday
Monday thing, I gather, where you would see those films.
And they had a really strontium 90 half life for 20 or 30 years
before video and before, yeah, TVF scene.
And they did they did kind of well for that.
But the other thing is that it's a way films were made back then
we might see it as kind of laziness or playing too safe, but then
it was you take the familiar and you put in your little twist on
it.
Stories were re-read, culture, if you like.
We have so much that's now available.
Press another button.
There's a whole other branch of stories.
Stories are kind of simpler.
People grew up on repetition of stories.
This is, well, this is like grim fairy tales or like your
favourite books or your favourite shows.
Repetition was seen as something that was actually a structured
useful thing.
But we do live in a world of like sequels to every blockbuster is
a sequel to something.
But also, notice, what's our 1st reaction as a culture and
especially as geek culture when we hear that something is being
remade?
We scoff.
We immediately go, why are they no original, I guess?
But of course, back then, when we did have, as you say, Richard
that whole thing of you only see it once and it's gone.
Do you know the 1st British sequel?
Ever was only 3 mainstream sequel was only two.
I'm not talking about things like Gladys Jones in her mermaid
pictures in Miranda, the mermaid, she'd done a sequel, that was
kind of exciting.
British fantasy.
It's almost a trope, isn't it?
But she's...
But cheers.
The very 1st successful sequel that was from Russia with Love.
Britain didn't do sequel sequel cinema until 007.
And actually, I've got the I've got the Blu-ray set of the James
Bonds and they do say on the extra features, you know, we didn't
expect to get a 2nd film.
We got the options for the extra books, but we didn't we expected
the 1st film to be popular.
We didn't expect it to be so popular that we could go straight
back into production.
Cinema didn't do sequel.
And what I'm saying is laziness, that was at the time seen is, oh
the audience isn't going to ride with you on this one.
You're just rehashing an old.
Yeah.
Actually, I'm all for abandoning the Doctor Who podcast at this
point. and doing a bond one. wouldn't that be awesome?
Can I?
I'd actually like to say there are little points where you can
jump on and off because some of the lovely stuff about this film
the set designs.
And that it's very Dr. No.
It's very in Adam, you've got these huge sets with tiny figures
inside.
I actually think it's Ken Adam after he suffers a serious blow to
the hand.
I remember picking that at the time.
I believe that's what we call you only live twice.
Well, I just, oh, no, come on.
That's a brilliant, superb set.
Yeah, I just mean the film in general.
That's when that's you've even got the hood from Thunderbirds
taking over as Blowfeld.
All his eyes don't light up.
She only lived twice his Thunderbirds in Bond.
I love that film.
Really, I'm really seriously considering abandoning this.
You know, it's clear to see through this discussion just how
ghosty these films are.
Are they?
The music and the opening credits for the Daleks could have been a
Bond film.
You know, like Dr. No doesn't start with the with the sort of song
that we're sort of used.
No, Street Blind Mice, Jamaican Calypso.
But yeah, yeah.
And so it's that instrumental thing, which is exactly how this
thing begins.
I mean, it could be the opening credits to Dr. No.
So it is, and that's something that this film loses that the TV
show has.
And I think spoiler alert will probably come down on the on the
side of this is inferior to the TV.
This is inferior to the transmitted version.
The transmitter version has terrible problems.
But the film is not as good.
And one of the reasons is that that all of...
Well, at this point, there's no Jacqueline.
No jacket.
There's no Carol Anne.
Oh, yeah.
They, they, all the things, you know, you hear these stories about
people being scared of the Doctor Who theme, um, that it's the
Doctor Who is putting something on television that's strange and
unprecedented. and for all of its rough edges and all of its sort
of various cracknesses.
It's trying to do something weird.
This is much safer than that, isn't it?
The Daleks, I don't think, are scary in these films.
It's really sad that they're not.
And they're made to be poppy and fun.
And guess that's the point of difference, isn't it?
is what Nathan's saying.
The original television series has a kind of naturalistic greet
and a playing out of time.
Again, you don't even know how long the story is going to take
just like this podcast folks, to get to the point.
So you are very much enmeshed in the narrative and you are really
as much as you can be in a small screen in your front room on a
Saturday afternoon, taken along for the ride.
Cinemas are very different approach.
I think the failing again in this, especially more so for the 1st
film, is trying to just ape the 1st TV series rather than just
saying, let's just do something fresh and surprising.
Yes, the Daleks aren't threatening because they're on the big
screen and they've now become a piece of Warhol pop art.
British pop, actually, just a Peter Blake piece of pop art.
And they're quite powerful for that.
But the thing is, they could have actually been made to be very
menacing and that could have been used to even heighten the fear.
There's nothing as scary as a clown face, is there?
All that colour and shininess.
And these, but these anodised anodyne, little solatropes that are
spinning around there.
Yeah, we've kind of got to the point that I'm expecting Sylvester
McCoy to come in and blow a raspberry because they're just so
silly at this point.
You're really easy to push down a tube, aren't they?
Or is that Jill person's wrong in a 2nd?
Can we go back to talking about the regular class for a second?
Like, the new regular cars.
So they've made the decision to make Susan a little girl.
Yeah.
Doctor Who.
How do you feel about that?
Well, you know, like, I have to say that I actually really like
Susie, in both films, and I was really surprised by that, it's
clearly an attempt to be child friendly.
Do you know what I mean?
We're bringing children to the cinema.
It's an sort of identification character.
She's not at all unearthly.
You know, she's not that weird man at performance that we get from
Carol Anne Ford, but she's really plucky and she's sort of really
fun.
She's British Empire youth.
She's very much British atwardian fantasy, Edith Nesbit heroin.
I've got to say, I love her.
I think she's she is what she is, isn't she?
Were you thinking watching this what would season, is that season
10 have been like if we'd had Amelia rather than Amy Pond?
Oh, a new series.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I mean, Where am I these?
But no, yeah, it's...
As soon as we did have Amelia in that series, I did kind of go
this reminds me of Susie and, you know, she's she's plucky and
she's got a bit of attitude without being precocious and
irritating.
She really propels the story too. when she's the one that goes off
and picks up the, you know, the hootch that the spangly man in the
what the... walking around London, like dressed like that.
No, well, that's why I'm dressed like that for this recording.
I shaved my chest and put some serious eye makeup on.
I did wonder.
In fact, dear listener, we've had to close the blinds because
passing planes were reflecting line with fake chest and blinding
local wildlife.
Do you remember that story, Barrying, whom we own because he's
Paris in...
The myth for makers.
But as Alanon, do you remember him telling that story of the, um
Thal extras, the big muscly blokes hanging around in the
background were mostly costermongers from Coffin Garden, big burly
gut blokes with, you know, with cockney accents who were
apparently constantly blowing kisses to each other and camping it
up and trying to do Kenneth Williams voices while they were just
trying to shoot or just off the...
Because they were wearing eye makeup.
And I heard that they didn't want their chest show.
Yeah, they had to be paid extra.
But and weren't they sort of placated by the fact that it was sort
of gorgeous female makeup assistants doing it.
That yeah, that helped.
But I think they also got a couple of extra shillings to shake
their chest.
Outrageous. what they would have done for a quid.
I mean, the files look stupid in the TV transmitted.
However, but they don't know how stupid as they do in the film.
Oh, I know.
It's like, we are peaceful agrarian farmers who spend 2 hours
there. every day.
What the heck is going on?
Right.
But yeah, um, we can blame George Powell again, okay?
Oh, yes, it's very George Palin.
Very easy, George.
But the thing is, the e-lawyer, not the whole point of the time
machine is you're not meant to emulate the Eoy.
It's no good being beautiful and fabulous if you're going to be
picked up one by one because you don't know how to fight.
So the moment that we were talking about is Susan's hero moment.
Yeah, where she goes through, and in both, in both the TV version
and the, and the film, she goes to the TARDIS to retrieve the anti
radiation gloves, uh, drugs from the, from the, from the...
That's true for the price.
From the TARDIS and bring it back to the Dalek city.
And in the TV version, Susan is sort of sort of tragic and
flailing our arms around and panicking and things.
But Susie in the film is actually, she's scared.
She's got a much bigger set to contend with, you know, more
frightening for her.
He's actually able to run instead of running on the spot while
people slap all the twists.
And so look, she still sells it as a scary moment, but she's just
a little bit more comfortable.
I think she's amazing.
She saves this film in every scene she's in.
I wouldn't have said that 20 years ago.
What's doubly amazing.
And a little bit troubling about how brave Susie is, is it seems
to happen at the expense of the character of Barbara.
Because doesn't it, though?
Jenny Linden is Barbara.
There is, you know, there is nothing wrong with her performance.
And I like Jenny Linden in other films I've seen her in at the
time.
She's got a lovely comic style and she's, yeah, she's terrific.
But her Barbara is given very little...
A lot of backcoming.
Just give me, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, right?
Even more backcoming than Jackie Hill, I guess.
Yeah, so she makes Jackie Hill look like Sinead O'Connor, really.
The hair is higher.
So she is closer to God.
But the weird thing is, in the TV version, Barbara sort of gets
Barbara does get a few sort of key moments over the course of the
TV version of the Dalek.
There's the cliffhanger she gets, there's coming up with the way
to Blind.
Yes, the cliffhanger, which is so brilliant.
And in fact, that whole, she does, like, I think Jenny's Barbara
does sort of wander through the corridors.
The very boring looking corridor.
Yeah, yeah, they're not anywhere near as exciting.
And that cliffhanger is there's no sort of suspense to it.
Later on with the whole blinding the Dalek thing, you don't see
Barbara come up with that idea.
She's just suddenly got the food, the mucky food in her hand.
Actually, she does she does sort of pick it up and look at it
thoughtfully.
So, wait, this is they're in the prison.
They're in the prison.
They're trying to escape.
She shoves some Plato on the dark eye.
Yeah, and but the thing that's really missing, I think, which
helped define Barbara's character in the TV version is when she's
actually agreeing with the doctor and saying, no, we should leave
you know, we've got to save ourselves and Ian brings her around.
Jenny Linden's Barbara doesn't do any of that. completely silent
throughout that whole thing in the film and it's kind of like the
2 men sort out the problem.
It's a great scene in the TV version too.
And I think we did talk about it when we covered it in the
podcast.
They have a proper marital dispute, you see, in an opera about the
ethics of this. a big blowup.
Yeah, yeah.
And so really everything and that's going to be an issue in both
films.
Everything cool that Barbara does in the in the TV version gets
taken away and given to the men to do in the films and it's a huge
shame.
I can barely think of anything that totally sucks them, which is
why Toby, I think, gets to shine, really.
Because she's not sexualised yet, so she's allowed to actually be
part of the story and yeah, can we get a little bit feministy
here?
No, she doesn't need to be protected.
She doesn't need to be, you know, patronised and coddled.
Yeah, because no one wants to date her yet.
Yeah, yeah.
Give a 5 years love and you'll be just the same as the rest of
it.
Oh, where's Jermaine Gregg?
Oh, we've got to wait another 5 years.
In general, the story streamlined at the expense of
characterisation and relationship, because on the TV, because I
suppose it was part of an ongoing narrative, you've got lots of
character development for the 4 regulars in the TV version, you
don't have that here, the characters are so changed and their
rough edges are so smoothed out to be that family friendly thing.
Yeah.
Either by convenience or design, that means it's just, as you said
earlier, it's the series of events that happen, rather than the
soul of the TV version, it's just the plot in the building
blocks.
You do have to remember, though, that the TV version has huge
amounts of padding, and that's something that I said at the time.
Like it is, it is at the expense of some of the horrendous
padding.
And in particular, there's that appalling indefensible thing that
got the Jenny Laird aboard when I did it before, which was we
finished the story in 4 episodes, the doctor pats his pockets and
goes, ooh, you know, I've left the fluid link or I must have
dropped the time ring in the car led city or something, you know
we'd all better go back.
Road trip.
And here that's streamlined.
Do you know what I mean?
Daleks, take the fluid link from the doctor.
And everyone mysteriously forgets about its existence and has to
go back.
But in fact, that leads to a really sort of cool set piece in the
film where the files are attacking the Dalek city from the front
and then Barbara and Ian and and the nurse and the, uh, heading
around the tinnitus and anodyne. heading around the back going by
the pipes.
But all of that is so much.
So, like, I think we get a whole episode of them going across that
abyss.
Oh my god.
And the abyss.
Is actually an abyss?
Oh, if they go across the abyss, the abyss looks fantastic.
Anatodidus has a giant panic attack or whatever he's called.
And in the Terry Nation theme, because Terry Nation is just
horrible. he has a sort of huge panic.
He falls down the thing and then he cuts himself, he cuts the rope
and plummets.
Because he wasn't a man and because he experienced fear, he must
die.
But in this one, because he's the queerest character in the
narrative.
So therefore he must die.
But in film, he's just mysteriously okay.
I know, I cut myself off, but then there was this convenient ledge
exactly shaped my hand.
But you're kind of like, you know what, we don't care.
We like you.
And so he survives.
I mean, it is...
I mean, who else is going to do all the hair and makeup, yeah.
Intrinsic to foul culture, yeah.
Oh, dear.
So what do you reckon about the 1st one?
How are you feeling?
You know what?
Even though it's got its problems, and it's nowhere as good as the
TV version.
I still enjoy it.
It's a nice bit of 60s pop cinema.
And I think what really helps is unlike some of the problems we
had with season 3 of Doctor Who.
There's, Not as much in it that is offensive.
For the fact that Barbara is a weakened character, We do have the
fact that Susan is strengthened because of that.
And, you know, there is never any question, because quite often
Susan on the TV show, there was the whole thing of, no, you can't
do that.
You're a young woman.
But there's never any question that Susie can't do things.
And in fact, she's the most intelligent character in the show.
She's the most responsive to the narrative within the narrative
isn't she?
To the point that Cushing is really just there to be a mirror to
the original series.
He's much.
He has much less content and flavour than Billy has.
Yeah, absolutely.
Could it be Susan Who and the Daleks?
Yeah, absolutely.
Cool.
Yeah.
And I think I think for that, for that alone, that's the great
success of the film, that Susie is such a strong character.
And really, she's written the way she should have been written on
television.
And look, I mean, it is more accessible.
It is more straightforward.
The Daleks goes on for like 3 hours, doesn't it?
I mean, it is, it's a bit of a slog.
And you know, it was...
We should really say it goes on for almost 2 months.
Yeah, but look at how people would have watched it.
No, no, of course.
And would have forgotten the 1st 3rd by the time the latter 3rd
was on.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I mean, that's fair enough.
No one was forced to sit through it for 3 hours in the 60s.
This does sand off, you know, the rough edges of the TV show.
But I think the rough edges of the TV show are what I really like
about it.
Yeah, agree.
But seeing it as adults.
As a kid, this was very beautiful when we 1st got colour TV in 77
78.
I should add, in Australia, I think, much like Britain.
It was on pretty much at least twice a year.
I remember it being able to see it around the same time.
Catwizzle was repeated in the summer holidays.
So it was Doctor Who and the Dialects.
Was it on the ABC?
I seem to, I can't recall that far back.
We can check it out for you, but just sitting there with a big box
of Lego making lots of the crunchy noises that you get really did
help, right?
In the narrative while watching this.
I remember when I was a kid.
It was once or twice a year, Channel 7's midweek movie in the
school holidays.
That's right.
Midday movie.
It was seven.
Yep.
Although the 1st time I saw the next film, it was a late night
movie on channel 10 and we taped it.
So was this a segue onto the next film?
I think it is a segue?
Sound effect?
Music.
I don't know what the sound effect is.
I don't know.
Gosh, I'm just thrown then.
Oh, sorry.
That was fantastic.
No, no.
I'm chatting away.
Well, can I, am I allowed to have my little moment of indulgence
here as we break out the albino chocolate crackles?
But in foul eye makeup.
Now, what we have here. edible ball be.
Eagle eyed viewers.
Eagle eye viewers of the 2nd film may have noticed a theric beam
locators.
Eagle eye views of the 2nd film may have noticed one or 2 subtle
art signs of sugar puffs in the background of the 2nd film.
Now, I did my research and sugar puffs aren't really available
anymore as sugar puffs.
They are available as honey puffs in the United States and as
honey something else in Great Britain.
And for those of you who don't know, dear listener.
I was just in the United States and actually found... known as
Honeypuff to many of his dearest friends.
Well, I found a box, but I didn't have room to bring it back in my
luggage, and that's what I discovered, but here in Australia, make
makes honey wheat.
Because what sugar puffs were.
They were sugar encrusted puffed wheat.
Do we...
Is it product placement?
Well, can we contextualise this?
So all throughout the underground and all throughout the film, the
2nd film, there are posters for sugar.
There are very, very, very 5 foot tall posters.
Is it product placement?
Do you think they paid for it?
It the sponsorship.
Bankrolled the film.
Really?
Yes.
Yeah.
Wow.
So you can relive family and friends.
Your memories of waking up in the middle of the bloody blitz.
It's really going to sell it.
What do you want to say about yes?
Wait, wait, so what these are?
These, dear listener, are Dalek sugar puff treats.
And so they are primary colours, as you can see, on our website.
And also I've gone out and got coloured edible ball bearings or
couchos, I believe they're pronounced.
So, gentlemen, would you like to try a darlic sugar puff treat?
You've also...
Very simitudinally. match matched, matched theatheric thing
locators.
They blue in the 1st film, but a lovely, pleasing shade of mauve
in the 2nd film on the drone.
I'm going to grab a yellow one.
And they're very simple to make, dealers.
As you'll see, they're only a few ingredients.
I probably should have agreed.
We all enjoying the folding at home right now, aren't we?
Yeah, it's all through everyone's Apple eye buds.
I bug. as their nose.
AirPods.
Cheers to everyone.
They are literally called the earpods, summarised at the side
man.
That what they're called.
They certainly are.
Well, I really think this 2nd film is interesting as a film, not
just as a little bit of hooniness.
Well, baking inspiration.
Is it the blitz?
I mean, is it, it's several things at once.
That's why I reckon it's interesting.
If we can have my usual indulgence here, unlike the way it starts
it's got several styles of filmmaking or thrown in at once, just
as what was happening with world cinema at the time, mainstream
cinema was conflation of several different things all happening
and you had the Hollywood musical, doing really well on top of
well, the colours and the lights on top of some of the styles that
were post-war.
We start off with this thing that's almost Krit Kubrick.
It almost presages... almost... almost...
In that neorealistic style of the bark, cantata being played over
the hood sitting in the car.
I love that.
And it's very much you're waiting for Alex to come along with the
concert.
But this style is actually post-war European, actually starting
off with Italians and the Germans are doing it as well.
The Bark cantata transposes to a lot.
Then you get a beautiful Michelle Le Grand Free jazz lilting
score.
And it's really kind of a violent scene.
I actually thought it was quite surprised.
Because, you know, poor old Wilf really gets it in the Nadgets
doesn't he?
So it's in the, it's the opening, okay?
So, Will, Tom Campbell, um...
Tom Campbell...
PC Plod, Tom Campbell.
Is it Sir Bernard?
Is that, I believe he, uh, yes, he's, he's better than...
He is in my heart.
Yeah, anyway.
Actually, no, I won't get ahead of myself.
So he's a copper doing his beat in London.
That's right.
And it opens with a villain in the car and you get that, the bark
played on the piano.
And it's partly there, I think, to serve as a queue to indicate
that we've gone back there in a very timey, whimey and Stephen
Moffati kind of way in the final scene because you actually get
the same scene, which is the same very distinctive musical queue.
And of course, a lot of TV screenings cut out that pre-title
sequence.
Gosh, that would be a bit trashy.
Maybe not these days, but...
Well, I think I think just because it's slow.
The same reason the MGM wanted to cut out somewhere over the
rainbow.
Oh my god.
I know.
Sorry, things better.
You get those little moments of using a classical score.
The prisoner does it beautifully as well. film did it.
Slashinger did it. film was doing something, you get a piece of
well-known classical music or on this toatcase baroque over a
moment of ultraviolence.
It's not quite ultravience, but it is...
That's pretty, that's pretty much ultraviolence.
There's a significant episode of Danger Man, the paper chase it's
called with Joan Greenwood and Patrick Magoo and Pat.
The scene goes for about 3 or 4 minutes of John Drake being beaten
up to a very similar piece of bark on the obstacle.
It's just a thing that folk were doing.
Then we switch suddenly and violently to London Blitz.
It worked really well on TV, but I'm looking at this thinking, Come
on, you're 6 weeks out of winning the World Cup.
Britain is ruling the world right now and you're wanting to take
everybody back to.
And what's more, because it's such a bigger production value than
the TV version.
It looks so realistic.
Doesn't it?
And it looks beautiful.
And the model work, when you see the girders land on the police
box, that's all a model work and the glass paintings are lovely.
Get to that in a second.
But what you then, we jump then from neuralism, realism to, um
what was called Truma film.
Or literally rubble film.
And from 46, 47, 48, 49, you had people like Vittorio Dosico
bicycle thieves, you might remember that amazing film.
Very sad.
The little moments of this that actually mirror images in there.
There really are.
And I'll find them, I'll stick them up.
I promise this time I will.
The film was a style most eponymous with Wolfgang, a stalker, and
it, I'll spell his name on the, on the website.
I'll put it in the in the show now.
Or he's more significantly more well-known Roberto Rossellini's
Germany year zero, which is also 1947.
And there are moments, okay, there aren't anodyne Daleks, but the
kids in the rubble, the young boy, it's that's what it's harking
back to.
So we've suddenly gone from London now, a bit mod, a bit happening
now, a little bit of ultraviolence, too, why are we back in the
blitz?
Even though we've gone into the future.
So it is, it is like going back in time.
Yeah, this future thing and we go back in time.
I just think it's an appalling mistake and just to preempt the end
of this, I reckon this is why the film bombed because the rest of
it's actually not that bad.
But the, um, I mean, how much was the blitz present in the TV
version?
Well, you did see...
You really only saw rubble in the area where they 1st landed.
It's true, but for me, my memory of it, 1st time I saw Dialect
Invasion of Earth, subsequently, my significant image from the TV
episode, are the CUs and middle close-ups of Jackie Hill running
through the wasteland, looking terrified.
That's the image, which is entirely Roberto Rossellini.
But the, I mean, the thing that's absent from the film, which is
so iconic, um, in the, in the TV shows, the Trafalgar Square stuff
and the Westminster Bridge stuff where, where the Daleks, you know
that's completely absent.
There's no tagging.
No, and the thing is, I think there's a, there's like a painting
of St.
Paul's Dome in the background.
But where are the vetoed elephants?
where the vetoed everything.
You know, in the TV version, that...
In the TV version, that is where the whole dalek as fascism and
Nazism really started because you've got the, you know, you've got
the Daleks, they have invaded us and they are wandering up and
down in front of our landmarks doing the Nazi salute, you know, and
that doesn't happen in the film.
No, and that's, and as we said again, at the time, there was a
whole genre of stories about, you know, what if the Nazis had won
you know, like even before that, like surprisingly early, that
exists as a thing.
And so that's what they're playing often.
Clearly it's still present in the, in this film because you've got
collaborators and you've got, you know, the evil Philip Maddock
more.
More of whom later. the best thing in the entire film.
And so you do have all of those sort of things that are that do
hark back to World War II.
But what you don't get is the absolutely, you know, best moment of
Darlic invasion of Earth, which is that incredible location
tuning.
But they don't get that, they honestly have the patience for it
because they immediately jump into a whole other pop style, which
I would say, is also very dated and is much more like the neo
surrealism or the Louis Bunelle style.
There are moments in this that are very much like Bernelles, the
young and the damned.
Now, Bunyol was the collaborator with Salvador Dali.
He later went on to make his own films and was very much, they're
a very, the whole thing of that gorgeous, Don't you love how
they've taken a flying saucer and mashed it with a 1953 Ford
Thunderbird?
That's now the Daleks get round in a hot rod.
But there's all the mashup of all these different significances
with pop art on the top is pure new surrealist cinema.
And those 2 together made Uchianand loud, didn't they?
Yes, yes.
Which, of course, does have not quite examples of ultraviolence
but sort of microviolence, you know, you get very focussed images
of very violent things happening.
And in this film, the dialects actually become a bit scarier
again.
The one that comes out of the water, which, by the way, that 1st
episode is told in 10 minutes, and that includes about 3 minutes
of original material and titles.
Yeah, absolutely.
But it comes out of the water at breakneck speed, and you are
actually scared of it this time rather than the TV version, which
is...
And then it does a jolly little Ursula Andrews hip shake.
Did you notice that?
just at the end of it, just to sort of go and look at me.
But also, when the saucer lands and they're escorting slaves and
that one makes a break for it.
And the Daleks hunt him down and no one will help him.
Is that David Graham?
It looks a lot like David.
It is, it's actually professional stuntman.
And when he climbed up on the awning and fell through.
He broke his leg.
Really?
He does.
And he just was watching it.
It keeps on going.
We were saying, it looks a really violent fall through 3 stories.
Yeah, and the thing is, he then has to get up again.
So he sort of half gets up and then he shot down because he kind
of went, well, I can't do it again.
So I'll just get on with it.
And because of that, because of his frenzy action.
That makes the Dalek scary again, plus, with the exception of the
Daleks in charge, this time around all the Daleks in uniform
they're that beautiful silver and blue, which is one of my, that's
one of my favourite Dalek designs.
It's less pop art. you know, we are soldiers.
We mean business.
We are here in uniforms.
And we get them on the streets at night, lit front lip and back
lip, and they look amazing.
Yeah, lots of good things in this.
And it's maybe it's the whole tooting beck.
Yawning more of the scary furry dummy effect that having them in
London does work.
It really does.
There's certainly a better directed film than the 1st one.
Yeah, it is.
There's a lot more going on for the viewer, but the 1st time felt
like a Edwardian fantasy story, just transposed.
This one is doing huge amounts of things all over everybody into
everyone.
It's Quatermatt and Triffords and Chuck Jones as well.
If you leap forward to the saucer scenes, you've got Bernard
Cribbons doing Chuck Jones' Daffy Duck in the 24th and a half
centuries.
With the boot machine.
And the same helmet as mum.
It really is.
Can we have a little moment?
Do we all jump forward to the to the source of scene?
So wealth is in there.
We haven't got the companions from the previous film back and I
don't know why.
Why is Jenny Linden not in this?
I don't know.
She had a career?
I assume it's just availability.
I mean, Roy Castle was in very high demand.
Yeah, they were lucky to get...
No, he was a big...
Well, vaudeville was still a big thing, which is why you're
getting the slapstick.
And he's actually a very, very talented dancer.
Really?
Yeah.
Yes.
And so he was, he was too busy dancing and being strange.
He was the Michael Crawford of his generation.
And you know what?
He really was.
And one of the highest paid stars in Britain.
I imagine if they couldn't get one of them, they probably just
went, you know, there's meant to be a unit, a relationship there.
So, yeah, yeah.
So we have Louise instead of Barbara, Louise who, and we have, and
we, and we have Bernard Cribbons as Tom Campbell.
And, and like, we all love Bernard Cribbons because Wilf, Donna's
grandfather is so incredibly fantastic.
And part of the fun of watching it now, which wouldn't have been
present when you 1st watched it, is seeing little wilf moments.
Yes. in Tom Campbell.
Especially in his face, just so... that they just make you love
him so much.
Do you notice how much the camera focusses on cribbers in this
cinema?
He's using this film.
He's given a lot of close-ups.
I think he's actually extraordinary to watch.
He's really good.
And so the scene you were talking about.
He's dressed in vinyl Bernard Cribbons in vinyl.
Thank you, Ron.
Rod.
So he's dressed in vinyl.
He's pretending to be a robo man, trying to goose step and falling
out.
Yeah, the roba mineral.
And the robamen are sort of crummy.
Who dresses them in vinyl?
How does that happen?
They dress each other, therefore.
Well, just at gunpoint to dress each other in vine.
Haven't you noticed that before undergoing the process?
I have been to San Francisco before.
That moment where there's the goose stepping, he's falling out of
step, is actually intrinsically violent and intrinsically
frightening because we know that there's an ontological threat.
If he does fall out of step.
This silly sequence, unlike all the Roy Castle stuff where it's
just prep balls in the 1st film.
If this goes wrong, he'll be noticed and shot.
I have, except that there aren't really any Daleks there watching
them.
Oh, one of the other guys, you don't, you know, the point is
there's tension where there wouldn't have been in the 1st film.
Yeah, it is tension and comedy.
Yeah, which is what and one heightens the other and that's the
classic thing to do.
And he is wonderful in it.
I mean, he is really terrific.
And Bernard Cribbons was sort of a star on the rise.
This was a couple of years after he was the star of Carry on
Jack.
Carry on Columbus, as it was remade.
With Julian Clary playing the part of Bernard Cribbins.
There you go, dear listener.
Rick Male was in that too. as the...
Alexi Sale.
John Pertley was in it and Bernard Cribbens as well.
Because everyone was the reanimated corpse.
Yeah, I couldn't get that.
Oh, no, it was 1993.
Oh, okay.
John was still with us.
Apologies.
Yeah, John and Jim Dale. moving moving back.
Bernard Cribbens was, he was in a very interesting stage in his
career at that point because he was getting lead roles as a
romantic lead, as he is in this film as he was in Carry on Jack.
But he was also the comedy lead.
He was the prat falling guy who got the girl at the end of the
film.
It was kind of, it was a coup for them to get Roy Castle because
he was big and it was a coup for them to get Bernard Cribbons as
well.
But I think Berner Cribbens is far more successful in the formula
of the story.
His comedy in the story doesn't distract in a way.
I felt that the Royal Castle comedy did, which, you know, it's not
the fault of Roy Castle, but just Bernard Cribbon seems a bit more
naturalistic and fits in a bit.
Yeah, and he has a bumbling, innocent, blokey charm, a child
blokey charm that isn't in the 1st picture.
But, I mean, for me, it is just impossible to divorce him from
Will, and I just rewatched the end of time parts one and two.
And like you just see moments of Wilf in his face.
He thinks it's just glorious.
It's really special, I think.
And so anyone who hasn't seen it, who's familiar with fear.
New series should go and watch it immediately because it is really
funny for that.
Can we talk about Louise who?
And we've done.
I think we've seen everything that needs to be sent.
So she has she has moments of drama.
She's, you know, she's escaping the Roberman and she suddenly
finds a nice slidy pantry cupboard door with the same door handles
that your grandma had on her cupboard and goes into what looks
like the gimp closet with all the Roberman helmets on a normal
shelf far too high for a dialect to reach.
And then all the whips nicely array on little hooks.
She has a moment of pause there and she thinks, what the hell am I
doing in this film?
She stays there about half an hour.
Oh, yeah, you know, she's a game girl, I guess.
She's wearing a lovely outfit.
Well, that really is a sort of theory about that. that she later
when we found a read that she later ends up running a lady boy bar
in Cooter Beach Bangkok, Sherlock Homosexuals and...
Well, I mean, she's kind of dressed dressed in that, Louise, who?
Spicy dressed as a future campy Benedict Cumberbatch, you know.
Yeah, it's a sort of Tweedy... outfit.
I love it. she looks fabulous.
What I think it ends.
It's the producer said.
We obviously can't afford Diana Rigg.
Let's get someone who looks like it, put her in an outfit that
Diana Rig would wear and cash in on the Avengers thing.
She's wearing the courageous little yellow go-go boots, yeah.
She's hugely pretty.
I mean, she's she's gorgeous.
But she's given literally nothing to do.
I mean, if you want if you want someone to emulate Diana Rigg, you
shouldn't get all of Barbara's cool moments from the TV version
and then give them to other people.
So Barbara gets to, you know, mow down.
Don't worry.
Yeah, that's right.
That's now a bloke stuff.
Yeah, that's bloke stuff.
And she's even wearing Perkwee's Inverness cape English.
She could have done it really well.
I love that you mentioned that Bedford van thing because this is
where it really just drains and it starts off.
It looks so potent, you've got six, seven, 8 Daleks, and they get
into the Red Bedford Mac.
Do we think we can actually get an inkling into Dalek religion in
this moment?
We realise that Daleks worship the god of Bedford.
Because not only do they not fire on this little red dinky car
when it comes to them.
They scarp her out of their shells.
When things get knocked over, they're hollow.
Yeah, no, terrible.
Emergency temporal.
Only, only ground, only ground crew, darling.
Only drone darlic.
Sauce of Darlic Scone, I will boggle the hell out of the ball.
Oh, we'll blow it.
And then they come in and it's just and bang, and then it's gone.
It melts down and it's just like you burnt your tall corgy cars
back in the 70s.
That's a great moment.
Except, of course, it's a little bit.
You think, where's Roberto Tovey in the scene?
And suddenly Wiley gets up and there she was.
Robert I mean, Roberta Tovey gets things to do.
She gets things done.
Yeah, yeah, she leads a note for the doctor, which he completely
misses despite the fact it's huge and written on a wall and
foregrounded in the shot, like the director foreground.
Suddenly enough, would be used by Derek Sherwin later in the
invasion.
You can't lose a wall.
So write a message on the wall.
Oh, of course.
Fantastic.
But I mean, the really interesting thing about character in this
film.
Unlike the 1st film.
Characters here are changed.
Jenny, for instance is completely absent.
The character of Jenny.
Oh, God, I hate you.
I know you hate Jenny.
Louise replaces Craddock in the plot because Craddock gets
robotised here, whereas in the TV version, he travels with Ian.
Instead, it's Louise travelling with the Ian character of Tom.
She doesn't actually do anything.
No, well, and really neither does credit.
Kind of just is an exposition machine for saying, well, this
happened to her, and that happened to her.
Oh, there's my dead brother.
Oh, I'll kill us both.
Susan replaces Barbara.
She doesn't drive the truck, but Susan and Weiler. who replaces
who replaces Jenny travel along together.
And there's a lovely little character moment where Wiler and Susan
are wandering around a wood on their way to Bedfordshire or
wherever they're heading.
And Susan runs ahead and hides behind a tree and jumps out and
boom.
Which is like the one kiddie childish thing.
She does in 2 films and he just turns around, knock that off.
Don't do that in this post-apocalyptic wasteland.
It serves no hot purpose.
It's for trying.
But it really works.
Possibly because, you know, Susie is about 7 and David Campbell is
still in his early 20s, the doctor travels with David instead.
And that leads to a...
Not David Campbell, of course. isn't it?
No, no, he's David, but he doesn't get a last name because Tom has
the last name.
Of Campbell. right.
But it leads to another one of my favourite scenes in the film
which is the doctor and David are walking along and looking at a
map.
And the guy who played David, I've forgotten his name.
Ray Brooks.
He's good.
He was, he was, he had just started a film called The Knack, which
is why in the trailers, he's the boy with the knack.
So he was kind of England's answer. how to get it.
It's a great little film too.
He was kind of England's answer to James D. You know, he was this
young heartthrob.
So they give him this rather incongruous action scene.
He and Doctor Who are wandering along and checking the map, what
have you?
And suddenly a roberman appears out of nowhere in this forest and
Ray Brooks throws Peter Cushing to the side, has a fight scene
deals with the guy and Peter Cushing just gets up and picks up the
map.
Yes, we're headed to Bedfordshire as if nothing's happening.
And it's a great ultra cool moment.
It is, really.
Do you know what I've just remembered is, doesn't the transmitted
version have crocodiles in the sewer?
Yes.
Where are the crocodiles in the sewer?
Yes, why do we not get that?
We don't get the sleeper birds did that.
They did.
Where's the slither?
That's a very effective movie.
That's one of the reasons that I...
Also, there are characters referenced that we never get to see in
this form, the most significant one for me, and we haven't got to
Eileen Way yet.
You know, when they 1st go to the underground rebel HQ and meet
the bloke in the winter.
Dortmund, Dortmund, who looks like Kenneth Brannhard.
What's the 1st...
Exactly.
But what's the 1st thing they say when they open the door?
Did you notice the password?
Mildred Coachwire?
No, I don't know what that is.
It's the 1st thing I say.
Mildred K When are we going to see Mildred Kobe?
She never appeared.
Well, I think it's either away.
Playing a part of Mildred Coatwire and she's unspecified as a, and
they're all bloody terrified of her as they should be because she
has 2 or 3 just there's 2 or 3 moments on the centre of the screen
and she's the scariest thing.
You don't need a thing.
She's far scarier than the TV counterpart.
Isn't she a great actor?
So, but it is...
So, one of the things a woman who says humans for soup, yeah.
We sacrifice all of these...
And Sheila Staple, of course, who's the younger woman.
It's terrifying.
We sacrifice all of this fantastic location shooting in London
which we get in the TV version.
But we do get this fantastic location stuff in the country, which
I think works really well in the 2nd half of the film.
And so Susie and Wyler end up, you know, at the house of the
collaborators who make the frocks for the people who are working
in the Bedford mine.
And of course...
It's Eileen Way.
And the house is beautiful and spectacular, like the whole thing
looks great.
And Eileen Way is every bit as menacing as she is in, uh, in, uh
creature from the pit.
The creature from the pit.
And she really, she really still, she's a much better actress than
she's given credit for.
I could be wrong because I watched these films before I went to
America.
I could be wrong, but I believe in Eileen's way house that there
is no fire.
And if I am wrong, it's still a good joke.
So, you know, don't write in.
With this whole, you know, Louise is kind of just put there to
look like Emma Peel in the trailer.
And then, so once you get in, you know, you won't realise that she
doesn't have much of a character because your cinema's already got
your money.
Barbara is sidelined as well.
But in both films, character...
But in the 1st film.
Oh, sorry, yes, yes.
So Barbara is sidelined as well in the 1st film.
It seems like the attitude is you can only have one strong woman
per film.
And it's got to be Roberta Toby.
Now, of course, I have no objection to refer to Toby being a
strong character, but it just feels so... that you can only have
one strong woman per film.
Well, I don't even know why Louise is there, I guess, because you
want, like, you've got the old guy and then you want a male and
female lead.
But Louise doesn't do anything.
Louise is there as a she's there as a motivation for Tom Campbell
to impress her and save her and, you know, we shouldn't still have
to talk about this in 2014, but that was my problem with the new
Godzilla film.
Spoiler alert for those of you who haven't seen it.
The women in the film exist solely as motivations for the male
characters.
It's really poorly done.
Otherwise, it was a very good film.
But they have no character other than I've said this about that
film as well.
It really stands up.
You don't expect it anymore.
But I guess in 1963, there was just a lot of unrevolution going
on.
Yeah, it's kind of weird because...
You know, this is now 66.
Yeah.
It's very strange because visually, Barbara and Louise are strong
screen presences.
You know, they've got a very strong silhouette.
They're both wearing trousers.
Yes.
You know, they they are taking on what would be considered a
modern feminine appearance.
They are challenging the notions of femininity in the way they
dress and in the way they appear, but then they're given nothing
to do.
It's very, very strange.
And I mean, it's particularly strange for Doctor Who, where women
were getting strong roles.
The outstanding parts of this film are, the little bits that are
inside it, little bits that are tertiary level.
The best characters are the fleeting ones, and maybe that's a nice
way to take away from a film you've mentioned, wow, that little
moment with the Bedford, um, Bedfordshire map and that great
little moment with David and the whole, and the doctor just
completely ignoring it.
It's the characters that are almost ignored.
You've got ironingway.
Oh, you've got Philip Maddock.
He's spectacular.
I mean that performance is so great.
He's the darkest thing in this film. a transcript, playing a kind
of John Lacare figure, but a Smiley's people character from, you
know, with just, again, we've had the Burgess Willby McLean
scandals blown up.
He's straight out of the Cambrigeshire backlot of nefarious
baddies who you think you're on your side, but you can never trust
them.
I mean, it is a character that is in the TV version. but never
meets the doctor in the TV He gets killed quite quickly, actually.
Yes, yeah, by the sliver.
By the slither.
See, this is what you lose from not having the slither in your
film.
He's so sort of oleaginous and so he sort of underplays it and
there's a smile and you like at the very end.
I have to say, you know, I'd seen the film decades ago.
But I actually thought at the very end where he offers to help
that he was actually really offering to help.
And then when the doors open and the Daleks are all out there and
the doctor says, I mean, sorry, Doctor Who says, oh, you know
don't worry, I expected you to betray us.
I was actually slightly disappointed because I actually thought he
was, you know, like he had enough self-interest to do the right
thing.
He was just terrific.
And, you know, they're cooking the beans and the doctor and David
says, oh, they smell nice.
And then he just kicks the beans over for no reason.
He's terrific.
That scene with Doctor Who talking to.
I think he's still called Ashton.
Philip made its character.
I think that's Peter Cushing's best scene in the 2 films because
his doctor finally shows a bit of guile.
When he steps when he steps out and just completely unflappable.
That's all right.
I expected you to betray me.
Yeah, I can imagine Billy doing that.
But, you know, Billy would have turned around and how dare you?
But Peter Cushion's just like, no, I'm just very quiet.
I'm very calm, but It's actually very sanguine, you know, and
you're very cool.
So he will see he knows he's going to be taken prisoner, whereas
he's going to be shot.
We will see more Philip Maddock in series 6.
Yes. subsequently a bunch of times as well.
He's really a highlight, I think, in this film, he's fabulous.
So, can we go on to talk about why we didn't get a 3rd film?
There was some talk of there being a 3rd film.
We did speak about this.
We touched on this briefly, yeah.
We've seen the trailer for it, which we will put up the link again
because it's brilliant.
Mr. Orton.
Well done.
There was some talk about it being keys of mariners because it was
3 nation scripts that they bought. deal with Terry Nation, yeah.
But I mean, the absolute lack of interest in the production, on
the production team's part, in the doctor and his companions
suggests that it would have had to be the chase, which I just
think would have been spectacular.
See, I think you could make peace of mariners, put the Daleks in
instead of the board, because they already changed this script a
fair bit.
I put the Daleks in instead of the board, had them chasing them
around Marinus, because you remember one of the complaints I had
about Keisha Marinus as the board just sitting there doing
nothing.
And you know, and you could have the Daleks chasing them in the
Mac.
That would have been really interesting.
And also maybe go get away from the Doctor Who character and the
target, just have different people doing it.
Might have been...
Yeah, it's hard to see the Daleks take, take, take 1st step rather
than just...
I actually think they're just not really interesting enough.
Daleks.
Yeah, yeah.
Maybe in the new series, they've got a bit more interesting, but
essentially, you know, they're just not.
They can't move very well.
They don't have CG and all this.
You do get a lot of distance shots of them just standing static
around an explosion. for too long.
In fact, I actually found some of the direction in the Dalek ship
in the in the 2nd film really off putting.
So they're using a handheld camera and it's really juddery and
like they're tracking daleks going up and down ramps and things
and the whole thing is sort of really off putting and actually
really not very much fun to watch.
And so I actually found the Daleks a bit tiresome.
They're very easily defeated.
Oh, and that's fantastic.
No, no.
That's awesome.
I love the fact that they speed down corridors and fall down the
hole, you know, all of that sort of thing is.
Yeah, their safety rail seems to be made out of toenails.
It's terrific.
All of that stuff is really great.
But a lot of the direction is sort of really weird.
And I just don't think they're very interesting.
I think, you know, I think that, um, Whoever told Terry Nation, no
we're not going to do a TV show based on the Daleks, whoever did
that deserves a medal or an OBE or something because it just would
have been terrible.
I mean, who's kind of interested?
a few other people agreed with you back in the day Anyway, we'll
get to the Daleks next episode.
Yeah, will.
This film did have a bit of an afterlife. as well in that, I
alluded earlier, there was an attempt at a radio series and there
was a pilot recorded Doctor Who Journey into Time.
Now very little is known about it.
The recording's been lost, but the script has been published by
Richard Bignall in an issue of his magazine, Nothing at the end of
the lane, which focusses on unproduced Doctor Who, unmade stories
that sort of thing.
And I believe there is a fan group trying to get a recording off
the ground who have recorded it.
I haven't been able to find it in time for this podcast.
If I find it during editing, I'll put up the link.
But it was going to feature Doctor Who, Susan and a character
called Mike.
But there is no concrete, um, indication of who was playing who.
It was publicised as a 52 episode radio series that would start
Peter Cushing, but there's no indication as to whether he actually
recorded it.
He was asked in his later years, and he said he couldn't remember
it, but that doesn't mean he's been remembered.
We would have had to have a series of podcasts about that.
Yes, it's been nice.
Can you imagine?
But you think of Cushing's performance overall in this?
I think it's...
It's okay.
It's inoffensive.
But then he has moments where you think, yeah, he's a cinema actor
and you've mentioned 2 of them.
Yeah.
And it's just like, you know, I wish you could have played it like
that the whole time, but I just think back to what my mother said
of this was him going, I don't have to be a mean person.
I can just play this as a character who is exactly as he appears.
He is a kind old, intelligent, slightly dotty man.
I don't need to play someone with hidden depths.
It could have been very refreshing.
I think.
He has the worst wig, this out of keeper of Tracans.
Especially in this one, girl.
And in this 2nd film, he has an auton face.
It's all shiny.
Yes, it is, which is weird too, in itself.
What was it of Day of the Daleks?
Yeah, exactly. controller.
Yes exactly.
I think there's a bit of slap that's left over for the 1000s.
The thars gave him makeup, yes, the last film.
William Hartnell snuck into his dressing room and replaced his
foundation.
Harold died.
What I was going to say.
I just wonder how good this film or how different these films
would have been if you'd had Billy and say, you know, Jacqueline
Hill or just like, you know, a few of the other members of the
original cast, but 2 have had Hartnell doing this.
I think he would have really shown.
It would have been his chance to say, I am a cinema actor and I
can feel the screen.
And he's certainly done it before.
Yes, he's been.
Yeah, he was a film actor.
I think it would have been really interesting to see.
I think what's nice, though, is there was a fan conception in the
80s that the reason it didn't have the TV cast was that the
producer said, oh, they're not big names.
I think they might have also not been available for contracting.
Well, exactly, exactly right busy.
Verity has said in later years.
You know, there was some talk, but we all agreed that they
wouldn't have time to do it because we would have had to stop the
TV series and Hartnell didn't want to do that.
He wanted to keep going on television rather than appear in the
film.
Yeah, if he would have said, you know, maybe along the lines.
We've already done that.
Yes.
I mean, you know, if he had the chance to do both, he probably
would have jumped at it because he loved the role.
But yeah, it is nice that they were considered to be... didn't
know that.
Yeah. glad that they were.
Interestingly, we've got another segment on what does Rob think?
Shortly before we started watching everything in order.
Um, I said, oh, you'll probably like it more when we get up too
the 4th doctor.
And he said, oh, John Pertway.
And I said, no, no, no, no, no.
John Pertley is the 3rd doctor.
No, Patrick Trouton is the 3rd doctor.
And I just went, Okay, Patrick Carton's the 3rd doctor.
Who's the 2nd doctor for you?
Peter Cushing.
Rob thought that Hartnell turned into Cushing.
But a couple of films. did a couple of films.
So Rob thought that, you know, you had the TV, they did a couple
of films, and then it went back to TV afterwards.
And I had to explain to him that, no, that's not the case, I did.
Now, Rod is a huge Godzilla fan.
And the way he rationalised this because, you know, when you've
thought something is true for a very long time, you need to remind
yourself that it's not.
The way you rationalised this was, there was a rather terrible
Godzilla film in 1998 made in America.
Just the one that...
Matthew Broderick.
With Matthew Broderick.
Sarah, Jessica Parker, play the eponymous.
Yes, she did.
Yeah, she was Godzilla.
But the thing was, was they are married in what is known as real
life in Hollywood.
That film is widely regarded by Godzilla fans as pretty terrible
as in, as in, you know, worse than a lot of Doctor Who fans
consider the Paul McGann movie or even these movies and he was
just trying to say, but he is the doctor.
And I said, he's the doctor in the same way that the American
Godzilla from 1998 is Godzilla.
And he said, oh, so he's Dino.
I'm like what?
And he said, well, we call that Godzilla Gino.
So he's Dino.
No, no, no.
I know this one.
Doctor in name only.
Because that Godzilla, that terrible Godzilla from 1998 is
Godzilla in Nemo.
So he's Dino. and that's how I think of him now as well.
So I don't refer to the Cushing doctor anymore when I'm talking to
Rod.
I say, oh yeah, it's the Dino movies and he knows exactly what I'm
talking about.
I think you should call them Duino.
Doctor Who.
Otherwise it becomes a rat-pack film.
Exactly.
What's your final word on the film's name?
Oh, you know, they passed an agreeable amount of time.
I did take 2 sittings to watch Dalek's Invasion Earth 2150 AD. I
will watch them again.
Do you know what I mean?
But it is, I think I've said what I want to say.
I think the thing that I like about the, um, the transmitted
versions with all their sort of slithers and, and, you know, sort
of ludicrous unmotivated trips across abysses and stuff, um, is
that they are trying to do something new and different, that they
aren't particularly family friendly, that they're a little bit
rougher and a little bit stranger.
So, you know, these versions which look fantastic, you know, um
and move at a sort of reasonable pace, still not as fun as the
sort of creaky old TV show that I love, I guess.
Now, we've only got one recommendation for this month because, of
course, there's less about these films than there is about
anything else, but I'm actually recommending the Doctor Who fanual
which was published earlier this year, uh, through Soft Centre
Limited, and uh, the uh, fanual.
I like the art lines.
Fannual Broadcasting Corporation.
And what this is, this is a world distributors style annual for
the Doctor Who films.
And so it's got the sort of traditional stories and comic strips
that you will find in your other Doctor Who annuals.
It's been produced in hardback and softback, hard centre and soft
centre.
And it is available to order online.
We'll put up the links on the website.
But it's just, it looks like it was produced in 1966.
There's a variety of stories.
The artwork style varies from story to story.
I actually suspect Peter Capaldi was responsible for some of the
fan art in it.
I think one of my favourite, a favourite pieces of art, and I'm
going to show this off, is Barbara here in Day of the Automatons.
And unfortunately, we won't share the image online because we
don't have the artist's permission, but I do heartily recommend
you buy this book.
The other nice thing is it pretty much fits in between the 2 films
some stories set after the last film, but that means it also
covers where Barbara and Ian went and how Louise came in and what
have you.
And it's just the most glorious book.
It is a beautiful piece of...
The same people did the wonderful book of Doctor Who, 1965, which
we'd previously spoken about. and they are currently preparing the
unit manual in the same style.
So, and some...
Corporal B in it?
Corporal Bell is allowed to be in it.
Fantastic.
I believe their stipulation was it can include the brig, Captain
Yates, Sergeant Benton, Corporal Bell, Joe Grant, and Harry
Sullivan, other characters who can be included.
Not Liz Sloan.
Not Liz, it's...
It is set, I believe they've planned to set it at some point, any
point between season 8 and season 10.
And yeah, they just decided to cut it off there.
But I suppose they could bring Liz in.
I may be wrong, but we'll include that link as well because I
think it should be available for pre-order soon.
But yeah, that's our recommendation, the Doctor Who fanual. include
the links for that.
How exciting.
And there is a tiny segue, and if you're wondering further
references of this film in popular culture.
I believe you can't go wrong or can't go further than listening to
the 1st episode of Round the Horn, which subtly references the
introduction of Ian in this scene with Doctor Who.
When Julian sits with Kenneth Horn and says, you might have seen
me on the telly where I'm alone in a room with a beautiful girl
and we put out the lights and test chocolates. to see which of the
yard and which of the soft centres.
And you know, you know that really this film could have been shot
just like that.
Yes.
Absolutely.
That's probably the saddest thing about these films is there isn't
a Kenneth Williams in it.
Right, on that note, I think it's time to say we will be back next
week returning to regular programming with the 1st 3 stories of
season 4 appropriate.
Now...
Season 3 is over.
Yes.
That means it's also time to attribute our stories that each of us
are going to spearhead.
So Nathan.
You will be spearheading discussion on the Highlanders, the
moonbase, and the faceless ones.
Richard, you will be spearheading discussion on the 10th planet
the underwater menace, and evil of the Daleks.
And I will be spearheading probably a very short discussion on the
smugglers.
In fact, it's over already. followed by discussions on Power of
the Daleks and the macraterra.
So it's good night for me, gentlemen.
Do you have anything further to say?
Night from both of them as well.
No, good night from me too.
Good night.
You've been listening to Flight Your Entirety with Brendan Jones
Nathan Botany, and Richard Stone.
Episode 10, Jill Curzon inspired wallpaper, was recorded on Sunday
October 5th.
The next episode will be released on Sunday the 19th.
You can find us online at flightthroughentirety.com, flight your
entirety on Facebook and iTunes or FTE podcast on Twitter.
Where so thrilling, you must be there.
The TV version.
Barbara sort of gets.
We pause now, dear listener, to share a picture of Helen Shapiro.
Which we were sharing this with you.
We feel that she's something of her inspiration.
Something of a Priscillaizing influence on this whole podcast
yeah.
Barbara does get a few sort of key.