Don’t Do It Again, Todd

[00:30]

Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety, the only Doctor Who podcast, which not only doesn't exist, but is only programmed to act like a dizzy day, not sound like one.

I'm Brendan.

I'm Nathan.

I'm Todd.

And we are going to be talking about today those 18 months where Doctor Who was off the air. aside from the 18 months where it was off the air between Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi and between Picapaldi season.

No, not that 18 months, we're talking 1985, 1986.

And to that end we're kicking off with Doctor Who's 1st official radio production slipback.

Now, now, now!

It wasn't so bad in November. 22 years ago.

There was a beach box in Junkyard.

We didn't know where it would go.

But old man took to teachers.

[01:33]

Into time and space.

It started all the legend That no other could remain.

I quite like this.

Yes, written by Eric Saywood, and broadcast as six 10 minute episodes between July and August 85, 2 episodes at a time.

In a sort of, it was a kids show called Pirate Radio or something like that.

Yeah, Pirate Radio 4.

Right.

And yeah, it was a weekly morning kids show and roughly the episodes went out at 10 AM and 1130 AM, but there's no kind of official documentation because it was a live show and it was just, right, we finished this segment.

Now we're moving on to this much like this podcast.

So I actually owned it as a cassette tape that was released, I think, probably as part of the BBC radio collection that released cassette tapes of missing stories and that kind of thing.

[02:34]

But it was in a 2 pack with Genesis of the Daleks.

Remember that sort of famous 13, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So it was Genesis of the Daleks and Slip Back.

And I think it may therefore be the Colin Baker story that I've experienced more often than any other Colin Baker story because I just used to play it in the car all the time.

Wow.

Now, anyone who's not familiar with the premise of this story.

It was six, 10 minute episodes, as we mentioned, it has the six doctor Colin Baker.

It has Nicola Bryant landing on a spaceship where there's a rampaging monster on the loose.

There's a computer with split personality.

There is a ship's captain breeding a disease on his own body to wipe out the rest of the crew, and there's an art thief.

So I think it's safe to say that we have Eric Saywood's usual thing of let's tell a story about anyone except the doctor.

Despite that, though, the doctor and Perry are in it sort of quite a lot.

And I think because because it's for kids and because, you know, it's the only Doctor Who we have in this period.

[03:37]

It is, it does go out after the cancellations announced, doesn't it?

Yes.

Yeah.

So it's the only Doctor Who that we're going to have for some time.

So he does sort of foreground the doctor, but there is a lot else going on here.

It's that late period, say, where it's not all about trying to redo earth shock.

It's much more fun and here he's very, very definitely ripping off hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.

Yeah, although we do have the line on this ship, we execute stowaways.

Yes, that's good.

On this ship, we killed mad.

Right.

Well, see, I don't really know hitchhikers very well at all.

I actually think that this is a rip off of one of the missing episode stories, song of Menatra. song of the space whale, where the Dr. and Perry actually land on a ship and are pursued by a creature in the tunnels and there's a mad captain on the ship and then there's a few officers after the 2 of them in the tunnels. which will actually meet this creature and that's sort of a lot of the plot of episode one of song of Menuptra have done by Big Finishes as these missing episodes.

[04:40]

So I just, when I listened to this, and I listened to that, I went, oh, there's a lot of parallels there.

I mean, obviously it's different because this particular ship's captain played by Valentine Dial, wants to meet Perry, he actually finds her, is told that she's a very beautiful woman.

I mean, it's the same old tropes that Eric likes to do.

Nicola actually sounds like Perry in this.

Like, you know, she's still got the accent from the 85 season.

And I think the music is very much like not, Well, it's 1985.

It is the same music.

It's not, you know, trying to be anything different, which I really like.

The ship's computer.

Oh, dear God.

You see, that is a hitchhikers thing.

So the thing that it takes from hitchhikers is a sort of chatty ships computer with an American accent and a sort of morose robot servitor, and so all of that sort of stuff.

And when we talk about the novelisation, the parallels are even more striking, he's really, really desperate to do hitchhiker's guy into the galaxy, which is really the model for kind of, you know, radio science fiction in this period.

[05:42]

And what amazed me was for years.

I thought the computer was Sandra Dickinson, who played trillion in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and of course, is Peter Davidson's ex-wife, but it's not.

It is an actress called Jane Carr, who has done masses and masses of voice work.

She plays both computer voices, which I didn't realise.

And for genre fans, she may be most familiar as Timov, wife of Londo Malari in Babylon 5's episode Soul Mates.

I've never heard of that.

Never me.

I didn't mean it either.

Her name is deliberately vomit spelled backwards.

And she's also Malcolm Reed's mother from Enterprise.

Star Trek.

It just gets better.

All right.

The voices she does, she does this one little high pitched sort of squealing voice, which I think is like the, it sounds like the Mulligrops.

And the Money Grubs is an Australian television kid show from 19 early 90s.

We can definitely put up a video.

And it's on YouTube.

And actually, the Molly Grub thing.

She actually looks like the lady Cassandra, but like a crack hall makeup. isn't it?

[06:46]

And it just drives me mad for 3 episodes.

But by the end of it, I actually quite like that voice.

I think what she's trying to do is a sort of Ditsy dame from a, you know, like a noir thing or something.

Yeah, like Tallula with a bunch of L's, you know, it's that voice.

Shellingbourne Grant actually does say your only programs that talk like a dizzy dame not to act like what.

You know, to us, that may seem ridiculous.

But anyone out there with an iPhone, I'm pretty sure Android phones have a similar thing.

You have a choice of voices for your virtual assistant.

You have a choice of voices for your Siri.

So why not this situation?

It's a slight takeoff of Star Trek as well.

I mean, Next Generation hadn't happened yet.

But in the original series, the computer voice is it's Major Barrett still, but very staccato delivery as a computer.

There's one episode where they put it in for service with a group of female engineers who give it a soul tree, attractive voice, and Captain Kirk threatens to wipe the computer to get rid of it and asks her if she understands and she says, computer, dear, and has a hissy fit.

[07:53]

So the idea of computers with funny voices has a long history and sci-fi, but actually really fits in here.

Well, I think it works in a radio series context.

You have to have characters that sound different because you don't get to see them.

And there are one or 2 sort of scenes where it's just, say, the 2 computer voices talking and they're not in a particular place or anything like that.

It is all about voices.

There's people speaking over communicators and stuff.

This is very well designed, I think, for radio in a way that the subsequent stories that we're going to discuss today really aren't.

So it does work as an audio, I think.

Yeah.

And it's got the time lords.

Isn't that great that they all know about the time lords and they're in it and there's the big bang going to happen.

You know, it's all these wonderful cliches and tropes that, you know, they're just, he likes to...

He's ripped that off terminus, hasn't he?

So the Vipod more, this spaceship will go back in time under the influence of the um, ethereal voice computer, the mysterious female voice, and it's going to explode and it's going to cause the big bang.

[08:58]

And in fact, the big problem with the story, and it's a typical say would problem, you were saying before, Brendan.

The doctor doesn't resolve the situation at all.

No, I mean, it's kind of not as prominent because this is a nice tight 60 minute story.

Really about 52, 53 minutes once you take out all the titles.

The Dr. and Perry land, they get locked in a ventilation shaft.

Then the doctor gets locked in a room and talks to the computer for a while, then he goes back to the Tartar centre, timelord turns up and says, no, don't do that.

You'll stop the universe being created.

It's like, really, you couldn't have turned up before now.

But yeah, it's the whole thing of, at the end, the doctor just goes, what a stupid idiot I've been. going to go to a library and read up on something.

And of course, the doctor starts the story massively hung over.

Having had 3 bottles of voxnick because he didn't realise it was alcoholic.

I really dislike that, actually.

That's another sort of thing of say we're trying to be sort of adult.

And in a kid show context, it's a bad idea, but I think just generally in Doctor Who, it's a bad idea. you know, the doctor doesn't get drunk, really.

[10:05]

And the only time he's ever said to be drunk is in the twin dilemma, and here, and I just, I don't really like it very much.

In the novelisation, really, the 1st 3rd of the novelisation is all world building and preamble, and there's some really good and funny stuff in there.

It has to be said.

It sort of explains what the ship is doing.

We're in a completely different galaxy.

And this ship is a survey ship, as is suggested in the dialogue of this.

But the idea is it's trying to bring together all 17 civilisations from this galaxy, and in doing so, it collects art treasures from all of them, as well as doing a census to try and get an idea of where everyone is and what all the cultures are and et cetera.

And that's how Grant gets access to these things.

We also find out that Shellingbourne Grant isn't really Shellingbourne Grant.

He's this arch criminal who has had his brain transplanted into the body of shelling board.

And it's just all sorts of silly stuff like that.

But yeah, I remember texting you, Nathan, when I was reading this, saying, it's page 55, I believe, and the doctor has just come into the story, and it even recounts them getting drunk in the bar and the doctor falling off a bar stool and all this kind of stuff, and it's like, I feel like this story would have been great as its own thing, not a Doctor Who story.

[11:27]

I love the fact that it is a Doctor Who story, of course, because it's Doctor Who story, but it's kind of like you can take the Doctor and Perry out of this and nothing really changes.

Like, much like many of the season 22 stories, except for maybe timelash where the doctor does really nothing to resolve the situation.

Well, I didn't even bother to read the novel.

And so I just listened to the audio and I think it works as an audio.

And I think you could have done it as a 50 minute episode with just the focus on the doctor and Perry, which obviously that's what it is.

You could have put it in season 22 and done one episode for timelash on one episode for this.

Yeah, it would have been a big improvement.

So there's one thing that we talked about during the week, Brandon, and it is the only chapter of the novel that I read.

I went back and read it, and it's when it introduces Slan, and that's Valentine Dial's character, and it's actually the last acting job he ever did, I think.

He passed away before this was broadcast.

Yeah, so he's wonderful in it, of course. just absolutely terrific.

I love how he goes, look how my past stools grow.

[12:28]

You know, he's really funny.

But he is, as you pointed out, Brendan, a thinly veiled portrait of John Nathan Turner.

Yeah, absolutely.

To read you an extract from the novel.

First of all, he's been made captain kind of just because he has stuck around long enough and not got fired yet.

His 1st job was as entertainment officer of the SS vampon vamping on.

And to review just a little tiny bit here.

It must be said, though, that Salon was very good at 2 things, writing memos and dodging the flying globules of fat after they had hit the fan.

And we then have a chapter of instances where from Slan's life where disaster has happened and he's ridden on the coattails of other people to get out of trouble and bullied people and what have you.

And yeah, it just becomes really uncomfortable reading this, knowing what is just about to happen between Saywood and JNT.

[13:31]

But this is written after his time on the show.

So he's putting in all that stuff.

I think there's a hint of it.

There's a scene where Valentine Dial complains to his attendant that no one on the crew likes him and that he would like everyone on the crew to like him.

In the novelisation, there's a line about how all of the young and competent people that he used to work with have quit and he's replaced them with sort of old people who aren't going to challenge him.

And there's all this stuff about his bad temper, and it all is so thinly veiled, and it's so ungracious and so unpleasant.

I have occasionally felt guilty about saying nasty things about Eric Saywood on the podcast, but reading that chapter really has cured me of that.

He's really horrible.

Also, I think is Stuart Velsper, who, in the novel, it's slightly different from the audio version, because in the audio version, both Slant and Velsper succumbed to the infection from the captain and die.

In this, Velsper saves the rest of the crew by killing the captain with a scalpel.

[14:34]

But I think Velsper is a go-it Gary Downey.

And here's another extract from chapter 6.

Like the captain, Velspa was a quartz-based life form.

Also, like the captain, he was grossly overweight and rather unpleasant to carbon-based life forms.

The reason for his behaviour, unlike that of the captain was simple.

He was a racist.

And I actually think that line's hilarious.

Say would get some of the comedy really, really spot on in this novel, but I was just reading it, going, wow, knowing how much you hated John Nathan Turner.

It's kind of obvious that, yeah, slam is you having to go at your boss.

And I think Shellingbourne Grant is probably Eric Saywood in apotheosis.

Take a drink deal list about the spirit of Richard is with us because, you know, he's cleverer than everyone else in hiding these art treasures and what have you.

But the whole novelisation, as well as having those funny bits.

All the characterisation that's added for Grant, and Slan, and Velsper, and Seedle, and Snatch.

[15:40]

Eric Saywood's idea of character development here is, I'm going to put in lots of stuff to make these characters unlikeable.

Yeah, he does that in the twin dilemma normalisation as well.

Yeah, and sometimes it's funny and sometimes it's...

You get past the point of hating the characters and just going, okay, can we get on with it now?

It's very cynical, I find.

But as a 60 minute audio play, it passes the time really nicely and unlike some other Doctor Who from this time period, and not just Collins era, but pizza era as well, you don't notice that the doctor hasn't done anything at the end.

Try.

So, moving on to season 23, proper, or rather, the season 23 that never was.

Todd, I think you've got a rundown of what the 6 stories were to be.

I think on the turn of the vervoids, there's actually a documentary that actually shows what they are.

[16:43]

So 1st up was going to be the nightmare fair written by Graham Williams involving the Sylvester Toymaker.

Colin Baker had seen a script for this.

And obviously we know that the end line of the previous season had been edited not to include Blackpool, which was the location, that when the axe came through for the show, they already had letters out to various locations to say we need the locations in about 10, 12 weeks time.

And so of all of the shows in this season, you know, the nightmare fair was going ahead.

And it's completely in the murdus operandi of Eric Sabred, and John Nathan Turner in that the 1st story of every season is their take on something from the past history of the show, and this time they're going back even further to the celestial tray maker.

You know, in the previous year, it had been the tombs of Telos, then previous year, it had been the Siberians, and then Omega and the Master. you know, the same thing.

So, of course, the novels came out in 1990, or thereabouts is the missing episode, and then Big Finish did their audio adaption in 2009.

[17:44]

So this one is both book and audio.

And so what did you think of the book in, sorry, in 1990 when it came out?

So I did buy all of the books in 1990 and I did read all of them.

And in preparation for the podcast, I started reading the Nightmare Fair, but kind of got bored with it and needed a version that I could get through one while I was walking the dog in the morning.

So I switched around about a quarter of the way through to the big finish audio.

The same with Mission to Magnus.

I hadn't enjoyed admission to Magnus at the time.

I do remember that And so I listened to the audio of that.

The final one, the ultimate evil, doesn't exist as a big finish story because Big Finish, I couldn't successfully negotiate with Wally Kay Daly to get it done.

Thank God.

And I do remember being unimpressed with it, but basically had no memory of it.

So I did actually read that one all the way through.

[18:44]

I think the nightmare fair is not good.

I was disappointed because I'm a bit of a Graham Williams fan, but I do think it would have in some ways worked on television, in that it was going to contain a really impressive location shoot at the beginning, and all of the descriptions of the stuff that goes on in the fun fair.

I think would have been great.

I'm a big fan of the scene where the doctor rides the roller coaster and really enjoys it.

I like the doctor's reaction to eating, you know, candy floss for the 1st time.

All of that stuff is sort of rather lovely and doctor-ish, and shows Colin at his best when he's being sort of slightly silly. you know, I think he's quite charming.

I think that stuff would have been good.

But all too soon it just heads down into a bunch of corridors and prison cells and there's a lot of running around and nothing very interesting happens.

It's interesting because when I 1st read this in 1990, I was so disappointed.

It was just boring.

It was basically what you'd just said, and then the doctor was just in a room and playing a computer game, like 2 rooms in a computer game in the 2nd half of the normal.

[19:50]

So coming to the audio, I was concerned about it.

And when I 1st listened to it, I actually thought, they'd actually done a really good job of this.

And it made me appreciate more the fact that it would be a visual thing.

And Matthew Robinson, who was going to direct this, he directed to take at the side of them, and I think actually was actually quite good in terms of location, working that sort of thing.

So I actually think that what we see in the novel and what is in the audio is basically what we would have got on the screen because it was that close to production, you know, how they would have realised the playing of the computer game and the actual monster, which remind, if you look at the cover of the novel looks a bit like a multicoloured yeti, yeah, I don't know how that would have quite come across.

But certainly, I felt after reading it again and listening to it.

I actually felt the guts of it.

There was a solid core to it, not anything fantastic, you know?

I mean, I've certainly come away giving it like for me, 7 out of 10, like it's never going to be groundbreaking, but I actually thought there was a solid, very, fairly solid structure to it.

[20:55]

But again, in the same, John Nathan Turner, Eric, say would way, they just redo it, and they perhaps don't do the celestial toy maker as good as he was done the 1st time, and I would say the 1st time he wasn't done great.

I said before that I think maybe the celestial toymaker is the weakest Doctor Who story.

It's really terrible.

It has no structure. and really nothing very much going for it.

And I can't imagine why you would want to bring the celestial toymaker back.

You know, Michael Goff is good as the celestial toy maker and, of course, as everyone's favourite member of the High Council Councillor Hedden in Arc of Infinity.

But the character is completely pointless.

And here, we're supposed to learn something new about us.

We learn that he's from, you know, he's on his own and from he's from another galaxy or no, another universe altogether, but all of that is really not very interesting and who kind of cares.

Yeah, it's Omegur is controlling the Matrix.

So what?

Yeah.

My 1st experience of this is out of the audio.

[22:00]

I had the book as a kid, but I never read it.

So coming to the audio, I was aware that it was set at Blackpool Fun Fair Toymaker, that was about it.

I enjoyed it.

I did feel that it was kind of, it was just cashing it on nostalgia again, the way a lot of these JNT say would season openers with an old villain does.

I think what saves the audio version is so many of the scenes together with Colin Baker opposite David Bailey.

They're both really strong in their performances.

David Bailey is the celestial toy maker, and...

Previously, of course, isn't he dance?

from robots of death?

I actually find him annoying because he's just going, and I just go, yeah, no.

No?

No.

Okay, that's a shame.

They did keep him on to do one more story as well, that's your toymaker as well, solitaire as a 2 hander with India Fisher, as Charlie Pollard, which is even better than this because, you know, it's entirely original.

[23:02]

There's some fascinating stuff in the making of for this audio, where John Ainsworth, who I believe adapted it, talks about the difficulty in adapting it because when he had a look at the scripts and actually timed them.

Episode one was about 35 minutes and episode 2 was about 60 minutes.

So the cliffhanger we get in the audio version of the doctor agreeing to play the toy makers game isn't the cliffhanger in the script.

The cliffhanger in the script is Perry in the caverns with the robot.

But it is actually a much stronger cliffhanger because it's the 2 opponents in the thing.

The bizarre thing for me is somebody who loves video games is listening to a video game being played in an audio.

It doesn't, but then again, I kind of think what would it have looked like on screen?

It would have been made in a BBC micro, which, even at the time, was not a very high powered home computer.

What would we have had with that?

Like, would it have looked like the Wonderful Twins equation game back in the terms?

What would have it looked like in Terra the Bulloids where the Mogarians play?

[24:03]

Galaxian?

The 3D Galaxian, like, which looks better than that.

So is it going to be somewhere in between?

I don't know.

It would have been terrible.

I mean, that's a very undramatic looking kind of climax where you've just got the doctor playing a video game.

Well, we've already seen it.

When was never say never again?

That was 1983.

And there's that sequence with the video game, and that was actually exciting.

But they spent 10s of 1000s of pounds just creating these graphics for this video game.

It wasn't an existing video game.

Whereas Doctor, either would have gone for an existing video game, or they would have animated something which anyone who knew about video games would have said that's not a video game.

It would have been a bunch of asterisks, you know, like in The Awakening.

But the UK game production market was actually really big in the mid 80s.

There were lots of home programmers who were making games and selling them to the big publishers and then getting 2 or £3 per tape sold.

It was a cottage industry in the UK.

So it was at least an attempt by the production team to have a story set in the modern day to have it set in a recognisable location and with a hot topic.

[25:12]

But in fact, it is just a lot of generic corridors and prison cells and sort of weird, uninteresting aliens and sort of totally incomprehensible resolution.

Perry appears to be in the cell, fiddling with some kind of thing that's being made by the mechanic who's a big Venusian hairy beast, and that has some effect on what's going on in the room with the doctor, and then the doctor kind of confronts the toy maker about being the last of his kind or something like that.

And I actually couldn't work out what was going on.

And I did go back and read that bit of the novel and it really didn't help at all.

And I think there's a theme that I'm going to touch on later in the episode, which is that Doctor Who is turning into a show where a lot of stuff just happens in corridors.

I think it's absolutely no coincidence at all that Perry says over and over again, all these tunnels look the same to me, because Doctor Who is getting like that, Doctor Who is a show about science fiction things happening in space corridors, which I think is why I would have liked episode one because I think that's a bit of a relief from that.

[26:24]

Yeah, I think episode one, being on location on Earth.

Present day, something novel for the 6th doctor.

I think episode one would have worked really well.

Episode 2 probably would have fallen in a heap, but this still would have been made.

Yeah, absolutely.

And before we move on, I just want to point out one thing.

There's a character called Kevin Stoney.

Yes, isn't that weird?

Who will grow up and then go back in time and play various people on Blake 7 and do a starring turn as Tobias Vaughan and Magic Mavic Chen.

Oh yeah, lovely.

The Galaxy Well, the 2nd story was going to be called the ultimate evil, directed by Fiona Cumming.

Now, the ultimate evil was written by Wally K Daly.

Who's still working and is has quite a long career in writing TV.

[27:26]

So he's not no one at all.

But you can write TV and not be able to write Doctor Who.

And that is obvious from this novelisation.

Well, particularly during a period of time where the show is being run by people who can't write TV and can't write Doctor Who.

I go on a bit of a tirade about this?

I think you're going to.

Which I'm going to talk about the plot.

Get the popcorn, brother.

Because this could go on just for a few minutes.

So there's this continent of Tranquila. what a fantastic name that is.

And all the people are going quite mad because of some ray from space.

And the son of the 1st family believes that he and his wife can overcome this, this ray, their love will overcome this ray.

And everybody's supposed to chain themselves up so they don't.

So what happens is he pushes her off a cliff.

I want to play by Marina Theatres.

She's called Mariana, so I think Marina Theatres perfect.

So up in space, there is this thing called the dwarf mordant that is doing this rating, which could never have been visualised on screen.

[28:30]

It would have needed CGI.

And in league with him is the leader of the 2nd family.

So we've got a 1st family and a 2nd family.

And there's a couple of scientists on this continent trying to develop a helmet that can combat the effects of this ray or whatever it happens to be.

To the doctrine, Perry, having an argument in the TARDIS about her weight.

Which one I just want to kill myself, right?

No, you should, you know, kill someone else, I think.

Yes, the writer of this.

Okay.

In the end, the doctor finds this thing called the holiday ball, which he's confiscated from guess who?

old friend.

The dwarf mortant.

And this holiday ball will obviously tell you where to go on a holiday because they need a holiday.

And guess where they're going to go?

Oh, yes, it suggests Tranquilla, which the doctor happens to know a couple of old scientist friends there who he'd like to drop in on.

And of course, he tells Perry about this.

You know, they're all peaceful, but they have this ability to travel very quickly in these big sort of thought bubble balls and so Perry wants to go in one of these balls, right?

[29:32]

She's obsessed with it.

So, surprise, surprise.

The doctor, of course, touches his version of the holiday ball, but the dwarf Morton has a twin ball, which allows him and the leader of the 2nd family to see everything that's going on in the TARDIS, and at the same time, take, of course, the doctor's DNA, which means that he can manipulate his special ray to focus just on the doctor.

Did Dr. Perry turn up on a beach?

They get attacked. doctor leaves her for dead, but she gets rescued by the son of the 1st family, right, who I think is on the run because he broke the law.

Oh, I'm surprised, surprise.

Perry is the spinning image of his dead wife.

And then the doctor goes to see his 2 scientist friends because they can sort everything out, and of course, the dwarf Morden is monitoring this, and so every time the doctor takes off this special helmet, he then decides to do a special rage just for the doctor.

So we get the doctor going berserk in this laboratory for at least an episode or half an episode.

No, it's good.

He tries to stab people with shots of glass.

He strangles people, which is becoming a habit at this point.

[30:35]

It's really really terrible.

It's just appalling.

In the end, things start going bad to worse for this leader of the 2nd family because his plot falls apart.

He even gets a hypno gun, a hypno gun, like really hypnotise people.

The doctor and the scientists end up on this other continent.

There's been a 50-year piece, and the other continent is full of these computer worshipping dodoes who worship the great computer or some such crap.

It's an incredibly uninspiring collection of B grade science fiction trope.

So you've got a planet with 2 continents that have been at war.

You've got mind control.

You've got all of these just kind of terrible things.

And they're high concept societies, but we literally learn nothing at all.

They're not there to make some kind of point.

There's no underlying message.

This is the sort of planet that Star Trek would invent with the 2 societies that are quite different and are both kind of weird.

But they're not being used to say anything at all.

[31:35]

The whole thing is just curiously pointless.

You know the planet Generios in the one doctor.

This is the planet Generios.

I mean, it's worse than the planet Zog.

These are people that I couldn't possibly care about doing things that couldn't possibly rouse my interest.

I just agree completely 110% with you, Nathan.

Like the resolution of it.

Don't do it again, Todd.

Yes, the dwarf moment just gets like a slap on the wrist.

The leader of the 2nd family apparently blows up the leader of the 1st family, but he miraculously survives.

And, you know, the leader of the 2nd family dies.

His whole motivation is the fact that as leader of the 2nd family, he's in charge of security, but because of this peace treaty, everything's locked away in an armoury.

And so he wants to break her armoury out and be, you know, be leader and so they can have, oh, I mean, it's just pathetic.

He dies, Dr. Perry bugger off, and then in the piece to resistance, the whole thing.

The son of the 2nd family's wife walks back in.

She's alive because as adults, rather than using these special bubbles of transport, when they're in a dangerous situation, they can just think of a really safe place and be instantaneously transported to that place, which she was, and they've kept her hidden until the entire situation was resolved.

[32:49]

But he's got a death penalty hanging over his head because she's apparently dead and he killed her.

This would never have been made.

It would never have been made.

They would have looked at this and gone, forget it.

And so I'm going to suggest, and I'm just sort of going to divert here.

One of the big finish audios that exists is called the Song of Menaptera, or Song of the Space Whale, right?

Which was written, well, a number of times, but was in the ventures on Barrel slot for season 22.

And I actually think it could have been slotted into this slot in the season quite easily.

I think the whales could have been realised, they do go inside the whales, and I think that's something that Fiona Cumming could have dealt with, like in her sort of way that she deals with things.

And I actually quite like the song of Menaptra as a audio.

I think it's good, not outstanding, but I think there are some really good things.

I think Seward didn't like it though.

I think that was the problem.

And, you know, like, just because the ultimate evil is terrible, and that's not a universal opinion among the hosts of this podcast, even though it was terrible, Eric Saywood really had in this period literally no problem at all with commissioning and going ahead with scripts that were terrible.

[33:58]

I don't think this would have been made.

I really like it.

I'm sorry, Todd.

I do.

I hear all your criticisms.

If I may, if I may, if I may, what I really like about this one is, for a start, with the Dr. and Perry scenes at the beginning, they are comfortably ribbing each other rather than tearing shreds off each other.

They're teasing each other, when they're talking about where they go for a holiday, Perry just pipes up with, but not Majorca.

And several times during the story, she says, I don't want to go to Majorca.

And it's never explained.

It's never resolved.

It's just an inside joke between the 2 of them.

Well, they do, she does end up saying that she wants to go to New York.

Yeah, that'd be awkward.

So I quite enjoyed that.

When I was reading it, it just fired my imagination.

I was actually really easily able to imagine these locations and I agree it would have been hard to realise.

But I kind of think back to Meglos where you had a sort of big planetary light beam.

You know, and that's what I kind of see as the dwarf mordant.

[34:59]

Nathan raised something with me during the week, which is the dwarf Morden engineering a war situation so he can sell weapons isn't that different to what still is going to be doing in the next story.

In fact, we'll get to it, but I think what Seal is going to doing in the next story is much better. much, much less boring.

But at the same time, we have a villain who is manipulating a planet on a big scale.

And as you say, it's a high concept.

Not all the high concepts in this are incredibly well realised, but I love the little sojourn to the other continent, to Armelia, where everyone's a germophobe run by a computer and wants everyone to be run by a computer.

It's a metaphor for Dayton and the Cold War.

So on the one side, we have the continent of Tranquella, which if you like, is the West.

You know, it's the UK, it's the US.

We have 2 people leading it, one of whom wants to keep the peace at all costs, and one of whom wants to go in and blow them all up.

[36:01]

So we've got a kind of Doctor Strangelove thing happening there.

I think the whole thing with central computer and everything being neat and tidy and, you know, it must all conform.

I think that's a very simplistic view of Soviet era Russia.

Oh, see, I was taking it as a kind of metaphor for sort of fundamentalist religion, you know, that they have these helmets that sort of filter out evil thoughts and stuff like that, and they're shocked when the doctor arrives that he's undressed, you know.

But it just annoyed me that really nothing very much came of that.

You know, it's incredibly generic.

And I don't think that Eric Seywood would have been able to improve on it.

No.

I think a better script editor would have been able to turn this into something that was a real allegory with identifiable characters, but we also don't have any creepy old men in wheelchairs lasting over Perry.

Perry gets... a kind of weird romance with a guy who's just killed his wife.

Yes.

And I think probably in that 1st scene, we would have had Nicola Bryant sitting down on the planet with him. before we see Perry.

[37:04]

So the audience goes, hold on, what the hell's happening here?

But when I got to that last page and it's revealed that Mariana survived because the idea that they could teleport had been used in the story.

Locust does teleport with Perry several times, and it's mentioned, and they do give an explanation as to why they don't constantly use it.

The idea is, if they happen to accidentally think of the other continent, they'll cause a planetary incident.

So it is explained in the plot.

And when I got to that last page and they revealed that.

It was a genuine surprise to me and I liked that ending.

I think this story would not have been a classic by any means, but even if it was put on screen in the form we have there, I think it would have been enjoyable if you don't look at it too hard.

I certainly think it's flawed, but for me, out of these 3 which were novelized and were, if you like, the most developed at the time of cancellation.

This is the one I enjoy the most. darkness.

With the man in that there's side.

[38:05]

We never think when they ain't done.

They didn't come.

They And I'm also And a canine.

Yoga.ing down the Yeah, he wouldn't suit her.

The 3rd story was going to be Robert Holmes is the yellow fever and how to cure it, which is the best title.

It's like fantastic beasts and where to find them.

I think it's a great title.

And it was going to feature the autons in Singapore, and ultimately it appears the Rani.

But at the time of cancellation, he had not written anything because he wanted to have the rights to the run he secured, and of course, know that they were going to film in Singapore after last year with the US going out the window for the 2 doctors and all the rewrites he had to perform on that particular script.

So, it doesn't exist.

[39:05]

So let's move on.

Story four.

Mission to Magnus. directed by Ron Jones and written by Philip Martin, and it exists both as novelisation and as audio, featuring SIL and the Ice Warriors.

We're getting a bit of a theme here.

We seem to have a double up of people like the Rani and the autons, seal and the ice warriors.

And there's one coming up that will also have a couple of, well, we'll talk about that later.

Anyway, mission to magnets.

So this is really terrible.

And it's insultingly bad in that.

It's a generic planet of women's story.

And Planet of Women's stories are always really about how women are irrational and inferior, and what a bad job they would do if they ran the place.

So they don't critique patriarchy by switching it on its head.

They reinforce it by showing that women are unsuited to run society.

[40:06]

And so here the only reason that the women are in charge is because the men have a disease that kills them if they're exposed to the planet's air.

And there is a planet of men, which does have at least one woman on it who comes on an expedition later, but it's basically the planet of men, and the men are violent and they're going to attack us and all of that sort of thing at any moment.

And there is a speech that the leader of the women on the planet Magnus gives about how men are violent and oppressive and all of those sorts of things.

And that's true.

I mean, you know, men have run all of the world's wars and all of that kind of thing.

And that's fair enough, but it's so undercut by the kind of revolting sexism of the thing as a whole.

And at the very end, the women are forced by the people, from the planet of men, which is called Salvac, to get married to them.

And there's one horrific scene where these women who are telepathic, are forced to imagine what it means to become a man's wife, because they have no idea about what wives are.

[41:14]

And so they look into the minds of the Salvakians to see what being a wife entails and they're kind of revolted by it.

And the men kind of say, well, but you really need a good one of these to teach you a lesson.

You know what I mean?

It really is truly, truly, truly awful.

And a horrific throwback, I think.

That's a kind of 1960s thing.

It's the family guy concept of a rom-com, which is every romantic comedy ever can be summed up with a man saying to a woman.

I'm going to show you how all of your problems can be solved by my penis.

Yeah, yeah, that's really it.

The Salvakians and their magic penises. are going to solve this entire problem.

My huge problem with this as well. is the fact that the Dr. Perry seem to travel a great distance from a temperate climate to the ice caves in a matter of minutes.

And, you know, I think their whole pot about the ice warriors wanting to change the actual climate of the planet is okay.

But it's all framed within this pathetic framework.

With the time lords involved, the women have got this time lord ambassador coming in because they want to go forward in time or something to prevent these men from overtaking their planet because they've foreseen a time when this will happen.

[42:24]

And this timelord ambassador is a timelord bully of the doctor, sort of get the doctor cowering in his TARDIS.

Yeah, it's like, what the hell?

The guy who actually plays him does actually does a really good job and he's a pompous git who deserves his up and comments and does get it and that's actually quite good.

But the whole thing, like this is version one of the script.

This is like, okay, he'll go back to Eric Saywood, and Eric say, we'll say right, with any luck, get rid of this, this, this, and this.

We need to simplify all this and do a complete rewrite from top to bottom.

And whether or not that would help, but I don't really see why Seal has to be in league with the Ice Warriors at all.

He's well played in the audio again by Nabil Shabin.

He wants to sell woolly jumpers, the people of Magnus, once the Ice Warriors have changed their climbers, and that's a bit more interesting and a bit more Doctor Who-ish, really.

But you see, there is a very complex reason that cylinderless Warriors are working together.

It's in the novel, but for some reason it doesn't make it into the big finish version.

And that is that they're both green.

Yeah, that's the colour for monsters.

[43:24]

It's green.

That's right.

Yeah. making that up.

No, and the Ice Warriors, you know, who are generic, you know, lizard aliens from Mars and were always really sort of fairly crummy and aren't even that good when they're brought back for the new series, although they're improved a beard.

You know, they're kind of terrible.

Who wants to see them back?

It's like bringing the celestial toy maker back.

This is now getting stupid.

And the point that Todd made before.

They seem to be able to sort of crawl from the equator to the poles of this planet in a very short amount of time.

And that's because all of the planets are small.

That planet the Tranquilla and Amelia are on is like kind of 3 rooms and, you know, half a dozen people.

This planet is really small.

The show now does people crawling around corridors, doing science fiction things to each other.

I'm really, really bored of it.

And it makes me think that season 23 as conceived before the cancellation would have been worse than what we got.

[44:32]

And what we got wasn't all that good, but it is really, really well and truly pastime that someone with some ideas took over the show and fixed it.

There is something I remember really liking in the audio production, and that is the realisation of the cliffhanger.

And saying I really like it.

It's not, I really like it in the same way I love Tom Baker and Lala Ward running around Paris and it makes me feel nice.

It's the bit where Perry discovers there's ice warriors at work, but they set off the explosives and the planet's axis is tilting and 0 my god, we're all going to die, and the credits crash in, and I just sat there at my desk thinking, are we really doing this?

Are you really wanting?

Okay, I'm gonna go with it.

I get it.

I get that this is completely ridiculous.

But kudos to you, big finish, for not trying to update a damn thing.

You know, keep it as terrible as it was.

It's the Terry Nation school of astronomy, isn't it, really?

So we're not quite sure about the orbital path of a planet and it's axial hilt.

[45:35]

We actually don't know what the difference between those 2 things. is.

We have the planet actually moving so that it's twice as far away from its sun as a result of these nuclear explosions.

And then there's a handy backup set of nuclear explosions that the doctor uses to get it back into that, which just, like, it literally makes notes.

And like I don't care.

This isn't a realistic science fiction program, but it is just kind of a bit lazy and stupid, isn't it?

Yeah, it's like, you know what, I should not be enjoying Doctor Who on the same level as I enjoy mystery Science Theatre 3000.

I really shouldn't be.

So we're sort of saying that this would not have made it.

Even worse, I think it would have...

Yeah, I think it would have too, because the Philip Martin, Ron Jones collaboration from the following year is substantially better than this, I think.

I think it's ill-conceived and nasty and they're all sorts of things I don't like about it.

But it is competent in a way that mission to magnets just isn't.

And that's why I actually prefer the ultimate evil to Mission to Magnus, because Mission to Magnus, It seems to try to start saying something about gender identity and sexual politics, but no, it's just saying women are stupid and need a penis.

[46:50]

It tries to use the ice Warriors, but just goes, they need ice.

How do we get ice by setting off some nuclear weapons?

How does that work, Philip?

I don't know, Eric, shut up.

Whereas ultimate evil is simplistic, certainly, and if you read the novelisation, there are moments where a character says something and you realise they have a hidden meaning behind what they're saying and then they say what the hidden meaning is anyway.

It's by no means perfect.

But the characters within it, all the name characters each go on a bit of a journey and end up in a different place from where they started.

And for the most part, end up in a better place than where they started.

Whereas in this story, no one really ends up in a better place than when they started.

It's got some great concepts.

And I think still in the Ice Warriors working together, especially when we've established in the pertly stories that the Ice Warriors do believe in honour and have a code of conduct and still has no code of conduct whatsoever.

That could have been an interesting idea to play with, but no, we don't get that.

[47:51]

All right, um, the 1st story was going to be the Hollows of Time, written by Christopher H.

Bidmeet and directed by Matthew Robinson again.

So would that have been flawed and plotless?

Sorry, Chris.

Well, you know what?

The big finish audio has so many compromises.

The script was originally 19,000 words cut down to 13,000.

It involves attractators, but they don't get to speak.

Everything's off screen.

We've got flying cars in space.

We've got robots, we've got an English village.

I don't know.

I think Christopher wrote this.

It's the ultimate FU to John Nathan Turner, and Eric said, saying, make this if you dare, because we could not afford this.

And of course, then there's this other character called Professor Stream.

Now, I want you to do an anagram extreme, Nathan.

Could it be an anagram of Estram?

Yes.

So it's supposed to be obviously the master, but we've, you know, we've already seen the master of disguise back in Kestrepalva 5 years later.

It just doesn't work as far as I'm concerned.

And the other thing is the big finish audio is completely compromised because they actually can't get the rights to the master, so there is actually no reveal.

[48:57]

Yeah, it was a situation that existed with Russell T. Davies era of Doctor Who, which was less of an issue with Stephen Moffatt, actually.

Stephen Moffat's production office, didn't mind so much, but Russell St.

Davies had this kind of thing of if we're using a character or villain on the show, we don't want them featured in the audios for sort of an 18 month period either side.

So this season came out around the same time as the Mr. Saxon plotline of series 3.

Right.

So they had to make Professor Streamer not mention it was the master, which also meant it's not Jeffrey Beaver's.

It's actually, and this is one of the stories highlights.

David Garfield.

It's Neva.

Oh, really?

The inexplicably hot David Garfield.

I mean, who'd go for a bald man with a beard.

I know.

But yeah, even in the making of the interviewer says to Colin.

So with Professor Stream, what do you think is happening there on contest, well, I got the impression that there's something the doctor's meant to know and we've got this whole storytelling device where the story starts with the Dr. and Perry and the TARDIS trying to tell each other the story but not remembering it properly, which is a great way to involve your audience.

[50:07]

But then the interviewer says, well, Colin, Professor Stream is actually meant to be, and it's the Matrix bleeping sound effect, the mysterious planet.

And Colin says, oh.

Oh, I didn't get that at all.

So yeah, it's a horrible compromise Big Finish had to make, but it's kind of a catch 22 in that the Lost Stories ended up being a 4 season run for them.

They did like 20 or 25 of them across different eras, but they couldn't have known that at the time.

So they had the choice of doing the story and not saying explicitly that it was the master or holding off on doing the story and possibly never getting the chance to make it.

As for the story itself, it's just a mess.

Yeah, just a mess.

Don't even bother.

Like, don't even bother.

Just don't listen to it.

Just don't.

If you find yourself listening to Big Finish stories and you can easily imagine the locations and the and the visuals and what have you.

It's weird for an audio story.

It's incredibly, impressively visual.

That cliffhanger to episode one where the doctor is hanging onto a car travelling through space and warp speed as pieces of it disappear.

[51:14]

If you can imagine that, it's a great moment, what does it have to do with the story?

I listened to it again 2 weeks ago and I can't tell you.

So bit me when he wrote Frontios, which I think is really good.

Yeah, does actually write something that couldn't possibly be produced, and obviously it ends up being cut down and we had that the sort of tragic Plantagenet's father in the stupid, you know, cardboard tube thing, which was supposed to be a sort of giant leg wheel of lots of dismembered bodies joined together.

It was meant to be dancers sitting on top of each other like a Mardi Gras podcast.

Yeah, yeah, terrible.

So he does have form with that, but you've got to think that Bidmead story would at least have been interesting.

Well, I think if they, you know, if it had been majorly script edited to probably eliminate the tractators who I just think don't necessarily need to even be in the plot, like you could come up with another device because there's also robots and other things going on.

It just needs to be simplified and cut down.

Whether or not Chris would have said, yes, okay to that or not, who knows?

[52:15]

But, you know, it's just so I just think it's so compromised all the way through and a mess, as you say.

Yeah, yeah.

And it was in the development of this, that they approached Christopher Hamilton Bidmead to write a big a new big finish story, which eventually became Renaissance of the Daleks, I believe.

And there's a reason that the front cover of that says from an idea for Christopher Hamilton bid me because again, it's such a mess because they they just reached an impasse where neither side really wanted to compromise.

But in the end, Bidman just said, okay, look, use the idea and go off and make your own thing.

The weird thing is though, when Christopher Hamilton Bidmead writes a mess, it's still strangely enjoyable because you're left there with a bemuse smile on your face saying, what the hell did I just experience?

Whereas when Philip Martin writes a mess?

It's just a mess.

Bring it back now, we won't send it.

[53:19]

Sometime in distress.

Let's all answer his ass, ass!

Stop, stop, baby.

Okay, the children of January was gonna be the last story written by Michael Feeney Callum, directed by Bob Gabriel, who I don't know who that is, but it was never written, and it's not an audio.

They did negotiate with him, but because Michael Finney Callen is still an in demand writer.

He's writing novels and whatnot.

He wanted to adapt to himself, but he simply didn't have the time to fit it into his schedule.

So that was the season that was going to be.

Big finish obviously had more audios than that in this missing season.

There's a couple that are based on ideas from various writers, one based from Barbara Clegg, called Point of Entry, which I think is a great story, but it's very big finish, not really 1985.

There's another one called Guardians of Prophecy, which is based on a one page outlined by Johnny Byrne about to do with Trarkan, but I think it's just awful, so don't even go there.

[54:19]

There's another one called Power Play, which actually has Victoria in it.

So an interesting, well, interesting in the fact that you have an old companion coming back in, but it's so boring and I failed to get through it every single time I listened to it.

You know, I have a theory that the longer a science fiction show goes on, the chance that one of its episodes will have the title power play approaches one.

There's another one called the Macros, which I quite like written by Ingrid Pitt, which involves the Philadelphia experiment.

Ingrid Pitt.

Yeah, wonderful.

Tony Rudland.

The 1st episodes, I think, are very of the time, the last few episodes are much more big finish, so it's sort of my bonus buy, if you want to get something that's a bit of a mix of both.

And something interesting about that one, that was the replacement in this run for either the ultimate evil or the children of January.

It fell through.

And what happened was Ingrid was, I believe, at a convention with some of the big Finnish guys and came up to them and said, I hear you're looking for Doctor Who stories that were never made.

Um, we put one in.

I'll try and find it for you and literally all they had left was the hard copy of the computer version they wrote up and it was it was just a plot outline that was then developed.

[55:28]

There's another one called Paradise 5, which was actually going to be for season 23 with Mellon the trial, but this is with Perry, so it's too compromised as far as I'm concerned.

There are 2 others that I just want to mention very briefly.

One is called Leviathan, which I think is absolutely stunning.

Although episode 4 would need to be rewritten to make it doable on television, but it is, I think, the best of the whole lot. and it makes my season.

The other one is called the 1st Sontarans, written by Andrew Smith.

Andrew Smith of Full Circle, and that was in the original slot for the 2 doctors.

And again, I think it's really good because he actually did a scene by scene breakdown, much like Warrior's Gates, it was written as a novel with all the dialogue and all he had to do was take the dialogue out and put it into a script for audio.

So it really does feel at the time.

Again, episode four, I think, is too much for Doctor's budget and would need to be rewritten.

Yeah.

Those last 2 you mentioned, Leviathan.

The 1st one Tyrons, I think, are the pick of these 11 lost stories they did for Colin.

[56:30]

Leviathan just blew me away.

And it was another one that the big finish in the doctorate production office just kind of had as a name on paper, but one of them knew the son of the writer who has since been working for B Finisher.

So it was the son adapting his father's work after the father had passed away, which was very nice.

I think that's possibly why it came out so well because there was so much love put into it.

The 1st on Tyrans was actually one I came to with really low expectations.

I thought, this is going to be Genesis of the Daleks, but with Santarans, but it ends up being this really lovely, touching, bittersweet, romantic story.

I mean, yeah, if you only get 2 of these, and I think you should get them all because they're very cheap now, these stories.

But if you only get to Leviathan and 1st on tyrants.

Right, so for me, just as a conclusion to all of this.

If I'm wanting to have more of this era and sort of see a progression from revelation of the dialects before we get into trial of a time, Lord, and actually have more stories with Colin and Nicola, this is the season that I would have.

[57:33]

I would have the nightmare fair.

It's not outstanding, but it's solid enough.

I would have the song of Menatra because I think it's quite good.

Leviathan is in there because I think it's outstanding.

We've got slipback because I think it is very, it's very so much fun.

The 1st Santarin's, I think, is great.

My bonus by is the macros, because it's a bit more big finishy.

And if you really have to go there.

The hollows of time.

Because I do like the stuff set on earth, but there's a small annoying child that says sand creatures every 5 seconds.

Yes, God.

But for a Christopher H.B. meat thing, that's interesting.

So by doing this, I'd actually got a season in my head that bridges between the 2 seasons and I suddenly feel having now watched all of Colin a bit more satisfied that I've got more of this doctor and I can see what's going on.

I think what's interesting, though, is to think about what would have happened had the cancellation not taking place and what we would have got.

[58:35]

And from what I've managed to see, I think that we would have done more of the same as season 22 only, probably worse.

And I have to say that what we got instead is at least better than how it sounds, the original season 23 was going to be.

I have to agree with that because something that occurred to me as I was looking at the 6 stories as they would have been made.

Your dream season sounds amazing, Todd, to be honest.

But, okay, the nightmare fair, we have, the toy maker is back. and they had signed Michael Goff to play him again.

The ultimate evil, we have a new villain, but the villains met the doctor before, and 2 people on this planet have met the doctor before.

You know, so it's the time lash problem all over again.

I think it would have been a 1000000 miles better than time lash, but it is that problem.

We've got Mission to Magnus, which has still in the ice warriors coming back and a new time lord we haven't met before, who makes the doctor look like a weakling.

[59:37]

You know, which is kind of say woods thing again, if you read that novelisation of slipped back.

He is taking pot shots at how ineffectual and feckless the doctor is.

Yellow fever and how to cure it.

We would have had the Rani and the autons, and in the 1st draft, the master, but he was dropped and he wouldn't have appeared in the story because he was coming back next week with the master and the Tractators, and then the children of January, I presume, would have been completely original, who knows?

As a speculative script, also the script, Gallifrey was sought from Pip and Jane Baker as a possible season ender before they settled on the trial theme entirely, and it would have seen the destruction of Gallifrey.

So that was a possible contender in there as well.

But that was after all these were cancelled and before trial was commissioned.

It was just a speculative idea.

I think 2 problems that would have been solved from the previous season based on what I'm what I've read in these novelisations and scripts and extracts I've seen.

[1:00:38]

I think the Dr. Perry relationship would have been much as we see it in the mysterious planet, with them enjoying each other's company and joking together and, you know, just kind of needling each other rather than full on bitch fests.

And I also get the impression that there would have been less imitable bloodthirsty violence.

So hopefully those 2 things would have improved, but God, the continuity fest and are we meet again, doctor?

And that is a problem for audiences.

Audiences don't want to have to remember 10 years ago, 5 years ago.

Sometimes even 2 years ago, unless they're really, really invested in the program, and we're only getting viewers of 6 to 7 million, not even a 1000000 of whom would have been big fans who own the Doctor Who Monster book, I would say.

So, yeah, it's a bit, it's a bit bad that they were still going down that path.

[1:01:56]

You okay, dear listeners?

We're taking off from the planet January.

Let just assume that's where that last story was going to take place.

And our TARDIS is going to be grabbed by a snatching beam at any moment, as next week, we start on Doctor Who's longest ever story, possibly depending on how you count it, the trial of a time lord.

So do come back for that.

In the meantime, I would like to announce that Death to the Daleks has won our Pertwee comment along a thon.

Todd breeds a sigh of relief as it's not the mutants.

Thank you, dear listeners.

Thank you.

And yeah, so we'll be putting that out sometime between the end of Colin and the beginning of Sylvester McCoy.

Also coming at that point, we will have a special big finish themed episode where we'll be looking at the big finish plays.

Doctor Who and the Pirates, the one Doctor Jubilee, and the Brink of Death from the Last Adventure Box Set.

So get ready to listen to those.

Over on Bondfinger, we've recently started the Timothy Dalton era of James Bond.

[1:02:57]

Certainly my favourite, so you can check that out on Bondfinger.com, Bondfinger on Facebook and iTunes and Bondfinger cast on Twitter.

And of course, we are Flightthrough Entirety on Facebook and iTunes and at FTE podcast on Twitter and of course, Flightthrough Entirety.sexy.

Until next week, may your yellow fever not be incurable.

Thank you very much for listening and good night.

Good night.

See you soon.

That was Flight Through Entirety, starring Todd Beelby, Nathan Bottomley, and Brandon Jones.

Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb.

This episode, don't do it again, Todd, was recorded on the 26th of March 2017.

The next episode will be released on the 30th of April.

This episode is dedicated to the memory of all those unproduced Doctor Who scripts over the years, including the planet in space, the Impossible Actuary, Day of the Dodo, and Genesis of the Dialects.

That could have been an interesting idea to play with, but no, we don't get that.

So that's another fail.

Yeah.

[1:03:58]

Okay.

How is this train wreck going to?

This is not turning out the way I thought it was going back.

All right.

The 5th story.