Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to Flight Through
Entirety.
The only Doctor Who podcast you can have as many as six husbands
but they're not all necessarily ours.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Don.
And it's gonna be a trial for you and for us.
It's the mysterious planet, the 1st part of Trial of a Time Lord.
So welcome to Trial of a Time Lord.
Episodes one to four.
I've talked before about the fact that things working against the
show and a lot of decisions were made that just a culmination of a
series of errors that were just going to get worse and worse.
So here at this point, we've had 18 months off the air.
The BBC are not supporting the show.
If you actually watch the extras on trial of the time load, there's
some interviews with various people, um, Eric Seywood, Michael
Grade and Jonathan Powell, I think head of drama, and it's obvious
that he doesn't like the show.
They've done absolutely nothing to replace the production team.
Interesting.
Eric Seward says that he and Jonathan Turner were talking about a
theme for the new season.
Which is always not a good thing.
Key to time was a good thing.
But a way of alienating perhaps the audience if you've got a theme
going on.
And of course, during those discussions, then word came through
that they were getting a reduced number of episodes.
So, Eric says in his interview. that he's trying to think of the
theme.
So he's talking to his partner, June, or she's one of the
production people in the doctor office.
And just like what happened with the Oscars recently, you know how
Warren Beatty just didn't know quite what was going on and just
gave the envelope the best film to Faye Dunaway and threw her
under the bus.
Here in this interview.
He just throws June under the bus because she says to him, what's
going on in the show?
And he goes, well, we're on trial.
And she goes, well, there, you've got your theme, the trial of a
timelord.
So in 1000 swoop in this interview, if you watch it.
He's blaming somebody else for this.
Anyway, he takes this wonderful idea of the trial to John Nathan
Turner.
Now, of course, what they've done before is every season they look
back at something in the past and they try and outdo it from
gazillion years ago.
So here we put the drop draw on trial for 14 weeks, we can have
the longest running story in the history of the show.
And even by episode three, JNT kind of thought, maybe this was a
bad idea.
So we start getting recaps during the continuity announcements
which, of course, means that the continuity announcer can't
pronounce things like Thorus Peter, but they are present on the
DVD as well.
It just proves that John should have gone.
Right?
as producer.
You're off there for 18 months.
What you actually need is you need to have like more than one
night only.
By doing 14 episodes story.
Youve got one night to capture everybody.
What, you know, you want to be able to have different stories so
that if something doesn't work, then you've got a new night.
Whereas here everything is about, yes, it's a new episode of the
trial or a new segment of the trial, right?
And then, of course, Eric's fleshing this out with the wonderful
idea based on the Christmas Carol, that we'll have one in the past
one in the present, and one in the future, in terms of evidence.
Well, how does that actually work, Eric, like the future?
Does that mean the doctor actually has a future?
And, well, what about the past?
Why would you just show something recent when you've got 23 years
of Doctor Who to actually do clips from?
And who's actually putting the doctor on trial?
Spoiler alert people.
It's actually the time lords, and it's a specific time lord, which
is actually what an amalgamation of the doctor's 12th and 13th in
between his lives.
How does that work?
Please explain that to me.
But you know, we're going to do a trial because, you know, Eric's
written so many trial dramas before.
And we're going to take this up to Jonathan Powell, who actually
approves it.
And then you would think, well, okay, we're going ahead with this
concept.
Maybe we should write the whole thing and get everything scripted
before we start so we know it's going to work.
And so the whole thing is a huge giant disaster when, of course
Eric Say would eventually leaves taking his script for episode 14
with him.
Which is a blessing, really, because it's all terrible.
And it becomes clear that no one really knows what's going on.
So the whole thing is a massive misfire.
And the DVD extra that you refer to, Todd, is called trials and
tribulations.
And I actually think that it is one of the best DVD extras in the
entire range.
I've spoken perhaps about the incredible hour long documentary
that accompanies Doctor Who and the Silurians, which I think is a
brilliant, brilliant documentary and something that we're lucky to
have.
And the DVD range has other just occasional gems.
And I think this is remarkable.
And I think one of the most telling things about it is that Seward
thinks that Jonathan Powell doesn't like the show for no reason at
all.
And it's pretty clear to me that he doesn't like the show because
it's not very good in his opinion and he's the head of drama at
the BBC.
And what happens is he looks at the scripts for episodes one to 4
and then sends them back with notes, and those notes survive and
you actually see those notes on screen.
And all of the things that he says, and I encourage you to put the
DVD on and press the pause button at this point, because you can
actually read them.
And all of the things that he says.
He's actually identifying bits of the plot that don't work.
And he's kind of right about it.
Isn't that he's just set against the program for no reason because
he's mean?
He's kind of set against the program because he has strong
opinions about what makes drama work.
And he kind of has an idea and all of the points that he makes are
flaws in the story.
And in particular, the framing story with the sleepers and all of
that, which is meant to play into the greater trial, but doesn't
properly because no one who's making the show has any idea about
what the greater trial is actually going to do.
All of those points are right.
And so we're in a terrible situation, I think, where we've been
cancelled for 18 months.
And we had the opportunity to go back to the drawing board and
think about what's not been working.
But we don't have enough talent or insight to work out what that
is.
And in fact, we double down on it.
And I've said before, I hate the Time Lords.
I think they're terrible, they kill any story, stone dead.
And here we're going to have 12 weeks of time lords, fools in
stupid hats.
It's a big misstep and it's not why people tune in for Doctor
Who.
Now, that doesn't mean that I think the whole season's a failure.
I think there are things that I like about it.
I watch it, you know, every so often with enjoyment, but I just
think the whole trial thing is just a huge fundamental stumble.
It's a big mistake.
And even going further back, Eric say would on this documentary
trials and tribulations does say upfront, I'd just done Revelation
of the Daleks and I should have left.
I should have left after doing revelation.
And I think if he had, and especially we hadn't had that meltdown
interview, that he conducts where he just throws everyone else on
the production under the bus and how terrible it was for him.
And you know what?
I am sure at that point it was a toxic environment for him to work
in.
But I don't think what's gone wrong is all one person's fault, you
know what I mean?
I think if Eric had left after a revelation of the Daleks and we
had a new script editor to hear, that he would be a lot more
fondly remembered, and this would have gone a lot better.
John Nathan Turner didn't want to be there anymore.
He stayed on for 2 reasons.
One, he was a staff producer at the BBC and he was one of the last
ones and they refused to find him another show to go on to.
And Jonathan Powell says on that documentary there was no show to
move John on to.
Whether that's true or not I don't know.
Jonathan Powell also says no one else was putting up their hand
for Doctor Who, and that is a lie.
Because I have recently discovered that an ex-writer for the show
wrote to John Nathan Turner offering to replace him on the show if
John had something else to move on to.
Who was that?
Terence Dudley.
We could have had Terrence Dudley as the producer of Doctor Who.
So remember when he was almost Verity Landit?
That's right, I'm explored by this fact because all I can think of
is the doors in in Sarah Jane's spinoff, canine and company.
There would have been a lot of phones, a lot of doors, you know
that kind of thing.
Yeah, so we almost got T-Duds.
So it's even worse.
This is the thing, you know?
The show gets put on suspension and John feels like he can't leave
or just can't leave because, you know, he's responsible.
Eric feels like, well, he should be going, but he can't leave
because he needs to help the show continue.
And so it's just these decisions, you know, if John had been
stronger, he may have turned around to Eric and say, look, we need
a new script editor.
I need to find somebody else goodbye.
But, you know, John's coming back, you know, we've been away for
18 months.
This would mean the perfect time for a brand new title sequence
because we've had this Starfield effect for God knows how long.
Maybe, and also to get rid of Colin's coat and change it.
But of course, he's so locked into his ideas that each doctor has
to have their own title sequence, their own costume.
I mean, you look at John and Tom and how their outfit changes
every single season in between stories.
And so none of that occurs.
You know, I think Eric loses started the fact that, you know, we
want to make this about a better relationship between Perry and
the doctor, which does occur in this story, but then in the very
next adventure, they're going to have the matrix lying and having
the doctor do cruel things.
I mean, how does that work, you know?
Have you actually thought about how Perry is actually going to
leave?
This woman, and she's now a beautiful woman, a mature woman.
A couple of years ago, has been disappeared from earth, whether
she drowned or some people on a beach in Majorca, saw her being
carted off by some guy into a blue box that she been captured.
What is Perry's ultimate fate going to be?
Have actually thought these things through?
I agree with you that the whole thing is a miscalculation.
And at some point, Eric should have had enough guts to say this is
not working in script, we need to jettison it, but that never
happened.
I don't think he saw a problem with it, and that's what he seems
to say on a documentary.
I don't think he thinks it's bad.
Eric's catch cry on these documentaries and it comes up quite a
bit.
You can make a drinking game out of it is, he says, some variation
on it worked when it left my desk.
So in, you know, at that point, he's saying it's the director's
fault and it's the actor's fault.
And I think there are some cases in Doctor Who, where you might be
able to say that, where you might be able to look at a performance
and say there is nothing wrong with this dialogue, but the actor
is not giving a good performance.
Jill Tarrant anyone.
But to say that about a whole season, to say that about 4 whole
years of Doctor Who.
That is not a fair criticism.
And that is not a self-aware criticism, no.
But let's think about this, okay?
We've got a courtroom for the trial for 14 episodes.
Surely you would decide, well, if we're going to have a courtroom
we've got to make this courtroom feel real.
We're going to think about the doctor.
I detest beyond all belief, the courtroom set.
You've got the doctor in a small box on one side, the value on
another, and basically the inquisitor is on a ramp, right?
And it's in the one side of the studio, you know, up to this video
monitor.
Now, I guess it's just me. used to American courtroom dramas where
you've got the judge at the back and you've got a big space
between where the prosecution and the defences.
You've got people behind.
You've got the jury down one side and you've got a big space where
if they're making arguments, they can walk up and down and you can
have witnesses in a witness box, right?
But none of this, which I consider to be in a courtroom trial is
actually going to happen, you know?
And so, We're limiting ourselves by, you know, by this concept of
what it looks like.
Now, I realise that it looks like a lot of now that I've seen a
lot of British shows, like a lot of British shows, the actual
courtrooms in Britain are much closer together than American ones
but I just have a problem with, well, but I think it's a corner of
the studio.
I think the courtroom looks plasticky.
There's an attempt to make it look gothic.
There's sort of Gothic arches and things, but this story, in
particular, you go from a really impressive initial model shot to
a really sort of wobbly cardboard set.
And, and, you know, the fact of the matter is the courtroom is, you
know, their big concept, but basically what they do is just cough
up 3 fairly standard Doctor Who stories, which are, you know
slowed down and constantly interrupted by pretty inconsequential
and boring scenes, culminating in their sort of big two-part story
which is supposed to cap it off.
But the courtroom drama is really so undercooked, that it's not
really what they're doing.
You know, they think they're putting the doctor on trial, but all
they're doing is having a sort of Greek chorus over business as
usual.
Yeah, they're doing what we're doing.
The show should be better than this.
There's lines of dialogue that the doctor says, you know, wake me
when this is over and other things.
Oh, it doesn't help.
And they have no idea that by him actually saying these things
about what's going on.
It's a judgement within the actual show that we're seeing on the
show.
Yeah, Colin says he was aware about this and questioned this.
He says this on the documentary that as soon as he heard that this
season was going to be a trial before he even started getting
scripts.
He said to JNT, this sounds risky.
You know, it sounds risky to parody this element of ourselves, and
I agree with him.
My big problem with the courtroom scenes is, It's just the 4
pedestal cameras, so one wide shot, one close up for the 3
speaking leads, the doctor, the inquisitor, the valley yard, and
you just cut between those.
There's no visual flair.
And I think part of that is we've got 3 directors having to work
with this courtroom.
We've got Nicholas Mallet for the 1st story.
We've got Ron Jones for the 2nd story, and we have Chris Gloff
coming in for the last two.
And so rather than try and put their sort of directorial stamp on
it, they all go middle of the road so it all matches up.
I think what the trial scenes needed is they needed a dedicated
director to think, how am I going to make this 3 wall proscenium
arch set look interesting?
And the 1st thing would have been to turn the lights down.
When the doctor 1st walks in and everything's in shadow, doesn't
it look just like what is happening here?
It's mysterious.
When we get there next week with the 2nd element, Mind Warp.
In spite of what you may want to say about the story.
The lighting is dark.
It's confusing, which feeds into the confusing elements of the
story.
But for ones in the 80s, they've turned the goddamn lights down to
make things atmospheric, and that continues in the last 2 stories
of the season as well.
But then we come back to this floodlit gold plastic set with as
wonderful as she is.
The mum from the Oxo commercials as the inquisitor, and Linda
Bellingham is fabulous, and she's in that 1st scene in the
mysterious planet where she just swans in and practically ignores
the doctor.
I quite like how the doctor sort of stands up because she's so
fabulous and then goes, no, wait a 2nd supposed to be crossed.
Yeah, that's great.
And Michael Jason establishes himself well in those scenes.
The 3 of them are the ones saving grace of these scenes because
they are good actors, being given really thankless dialogue and
just trying to make the best they can out of it.
And the whole boatyard, knacker's yard, brickyard, junkyard
stuff.
Have you got a list of all of them, Todd?
I hated this.
I hated them beyond the It belittles the doctor.
It does.
Boatyard, graveyard, farmyard, scrapyard, knackers yard, brickyard
rail yard, stockyard, errex, a yard.
No, it's poor.
I mean, Colin does get some good speeches in the trial, and it
kind of plays to his strengths because he's big and bombastic and
oratorical.
So he gets to give big speeches in a context where big speeches
are appropriate.
But, you know, I just think those scenes are terribly boring and
they completely slow to a crawl the pace of any, you know, scene
that they appear in.
A lot of my problem is the fact that I don't like a lot of the
dialogue, and Colin is a big performer, and so rather he doesn't
have the space to perform, and so he's got to use his voice.
So the overemphasis on some lines annoys me.
I like Linda Bellingham, but at times I think some of her dialogue
should be the valley yards and sometimes I think his dialogue
should be her dialogue throughout this.
And what I do like about these 1st 4 or 5 episodes is the fact
that Michael Jason's value is very still, very still, and very
controlled, whereas the doctor is like a caged animal and is
trying to get out of the cage and increasingly coming across as
more and more desperate and, you know, his little tempered
tantrums and everything like that because he can't. convey what he
needs to convey.
And that's, I guess that's the one thing I got more this time, but
I've grown more numb to the trial scenes over the years.
Like I just sit there and I watch them and yeah, okay.
I actually think Ron Jones is a poorer job than the other 2
directors because you actually see the black floor and all the
lines, whereas the other 2 are trying to mask that as much as
possible.
But in Ron Jones's defence, I would like to say that those early
atmospheric scenes before the lights come on were done by Ron
Jones as well.
They were a remount because the set was erected in the wrong place
for Nicholas Mallett's 1st trial session.
So he lost time.
But the thing is, you've got that magnificent shock to begin the
season with, right, of the actual space station costing over £8000
and the 1st time they'd used that to scan technology to actually
you know, when you see that, you then expect something like end of
the world, the carter should land and there should be a huge open
area that is walking through, you should be able to see out to
space with big windows.
You don't get any of that.
It could be anywhere, not this space station.
That's the thing.
Where is it?
Is it one of those domes?
Is it in, why is it in this little corner?
Why do the time Lords have this?
A time Lords committing these crimes every other day or are they
judging other species and they're supposed to be non
interference?
And then what's with the matrix?
Like, you know, something that the public have never really heard
of, and we've only ever gone into mentally, but later we're going
to be able to physically penetrate it, and now it can record
anything from a TARDIS.
It's like compromise after compromise in order to get the evidence
on the screen.
Yeah.
Something I wish these trial scenes had been like.
About 10 years later, Babylon 5, and I talk about it a lot.
But Babylon 5.
No, I've never heard of it.
The creator of Babylon 5 has gone on record as saying he loved
classic Doctor Who and it was one of the influencers.
The whole twist in frontier in space of how their war started
between Earth and Draconia.
He stole that idea and freely admits it for the Earth Minbari
conflict.
And the Minbari are this mystical kind of race.
But when they put someone on trial or when they have secret
meetings, it's just this black space with people standing in
spotlights and it's immediately mysterious.
It's like the war games with this abstract space.
And part of the problem is now, Doctor Who has become a show which
does not any longer take visual risks or storytelling risks.
Next week it'll take a big storytelling risk, and then a few weeks
later we'll completely say, oh, no, no, it's all traditional in
Disney all along.
But there's no longer any visual risks.
Everything is literally represented visually.
The trial set just could have been negative space with just those
3 actors.
We don't need those bloody 12 time lords sitting up there.
You know, they're just...
There to be peril monkeys in the last episode and we still don't
care about them.
Well, I mean, they aren't there for that reason because they're
being peril monkeys in the last episode is a late invention by Pip
and Jane Baker.
That was never there.
So they're really just set dressing.
And I think they're just there so that we have some, you know
stupid galafrean collars.
I think that that trial set looks terrible.
It is really shockingly bad.
And I think a contrast between that space exterior and some sort
of big Gothic stone cathedral like space would have been fun to
experiment with as well.
Yeah, It really undermines things.
All right, well, that's the trial.
Why don't we talk about the evidence, which I call the mysterious
planet, the actual evidence that we've seen.
I think this is a bit of a return to form.
It's nothing spectacular.
But it starts with the Dr. and Perry just chatting and wandering
through the rain and making jokes at each other, but laughing
together, and he teases her, she teases him.
She's really clever in pointing out that this, if this planet has
been ravaged by fire, then this shouldn't be here and that
shouldn't be here.
It's clear that some time has passed, and they've made a conscious
effort to show that in the characterisation, also the fact that, as
you alluded to earlier, Todd, Perry looks older, this, to me, feels
like they've been together for a few years now.
A week ago as we discussed this.
I actually sat down and watched every episode of Trial of a Time
Lord back to back over a period of about 7 hours, you know, and
live tweeted it.
Nathan, you joined me for the mysterious planet.
And just coming off the back of season 22, which, you know, we all
said there were at least 4 stories in there we enjoyed.
But it started to feel very claustrophobic for me, season 22
because there was so much studio stuff that everyone in this
universe is horrible to each other and what have you, to then come
into this scene and we're outdoors in this ethereal wood and the
doctor and Perry are just wandering along, chatting amiably and
being nice to each other.
I think that's a really strong opening.
I actually remember at the time feeling the same way.
I hadn't liked season 22 when it 1st came out and when I saw it
for the 1st time.
And I wanted to like it.
You know, it's Doctor Who.
I wanted to like it.
And here, I think Colin gets it right.
He's really likeable.
He's still all of the things he is.
He's still pompous and self-regarding and all of those, but he's
toned down the nastiness.
And the 2 of them together are really great and the jokes that
they make at each other's expense.
And the interaction, once the 2 of them get down out of the
location and into the studio, into Mob Station, and she gets that
speech about her world being destroyed, and the doctor's response
to that is otherworldly and alien, and precisely what the doctor
was originally conceived to be when Colin took over, and it works
really well.
He's never unlikeable.
He's sort of funny and silly.
You know, when she stumbles after he leaves and he quickly sort of
sticks his head back around the corner.
He's nice.
He's funny.
I think this is perhaps the only time they get this relationship
right and they will throw it away immediately in the next story.
I think that's a great shame.
These are my favourite scenes of the 2 of them acting together.
Oh, look, I love them in season 22 and here it's just icing on the
cake, the fact that there is no bitchiness and, you know, I don't
think it was actually originally written quite that way in the
script.
They both comment about that.
And some of the outtakes indicate perhaps it was not as all rosy
but they play against typing those scenes purposely to ensure that
they just have a wonderful relationship.
And I think there's just a lightness of touch to Colin in this
which I just really, really love.
And plus he's got the blue bow tie, which is my favourite one of
all of his bow ties because it brings out the greens and the blues
and the coat.
In this story, like his hair does need about 2 inches off the
bottom.
He's not as overweight as in later in the season.
You can tell he's put on a bit of weight, but it's not too
distracting in this.
And I just think both of their performances in this are just
beautiful, and I think if you don't like the 6th doctor, This is
the one story that you should watch to get a different opinion.
Yeah.
I mean, the weight thing, I think, it is something fair for us to
mention, because it's going to become a plot point in a later
story.
It kind of comes back to what you were saying earlier, Todd, of
whiting they get rid of the costume because all of Collin's
costumes in this season are brand new.
They recut because he has put on weight.
Then none of them are the original coats from last year.
It was a perfect opportunity to give him a new coat.
When he would later do the ultimate adventure stage play, they
gave him a new coat, which was still patchwork, but it was red and
purples just all the way through.
And I've only seen a photo from the front, but it doesn't look
like it has any greens or blues in it.
It's just red and purple with velvet lapels.
And it is still out there and strange, but it has symmetry and it
has complementary colours on it.
And it just would have been a great time to give him the same cut
of coat and maybe even still patchwork.
But bring it in line with complimentary colours, you know, to
indicate that this character has mellowed.
I think that Matt Smith's 2nd costume, the one that he wears when
he's with Clara is very definitely an attempt to get that costume
right.
Do you think that's a mistake?
No, no, I quite like that. outfit and I think it does work.
And I think Colin would have looked much better.
And it would have had, you know, a knock-on effect with the
visuals of the rest of the show.
Yeah.
Now, this story, I think, is very much a rewrite of the crotons
for me.
It's really very safe.
It's Bob Holmes' greatest hits and it is, you know, Bob Holmes has
come into the show before and kind of relaunched it.
You know, he did at the beginning of season 7 and then again at
the beginning of season 8 and then sort of at the beginning of
season 11 and 16, you know, like he's done it a bunch of times.
I think he's really out of ideas at this and what they've decided
to do is something really very safe and traditional.
And so I think it's all just a little bit low rent.
We talked about the sort of high concept of the terrible ultimate
evil last week.
Here we've got people who live in a station underground where
there's no water and they're high tech people and then you have
people living outside in a sort of Iron Age society.
And all of that's been sort of more or less done before, you know
humpker and tantral who live with the giant robot in the base
underground are very definitely taken from the crotons, aren't
they?
And the Immortal's Palace is like the Crocodile.
You've got to do something to get into the palace and all that
sort of thing.
And if they're outside the system, they're going to be killed and
that sort of thing.
But having said that, I just find this story so whimsical and I
just sit there and I just laugh all the way through it.
Well, it's less nasty.
They have toned the nastiness down.
There's one yucky bit where the leaders of the tribe of the free
are kind of melted by drathrow.
And that seems to me to be the kind of traditional yucky Doctor
Who death that is what we do now, you know, when people die and
that's fun and yucky, but nothing's unpleasant.
But because we haven't had people with their hands being crushed
leading up to that or guns being broken or strangled by cybermen
or whatever, that's effective.
And no one wants to have sex with Perry this time, which is a
relief.
Although, Joan Sims is trying to pimper out.
But that's a matter of their culture. that in order for their
culture to survive, they have a polygamous society.
No, it's polyandrous, really, isn't it?
Oh yes, I suppose so.
That's, I mean, that is really fun and silly, and it gives Perry
the opportunity for that really fun line about husbands that you
riffed on earlier, Brendan.
So all of that's fun.
You know, Bob Holmes, right?
funny dialogue and stuff, but, you know, it's a giant robot
underground threatening people.
One piece of casting I particularly loved is actually Joan Sims.
I think she's perfect for the role as this matriarch.
She's taking it seriously.
She's not doing a silly voice and sending it up.
And, you know, when she's saying things to Perry, like, you know
you're most welcome to join us, and I will find many good husbands
for you.
She completely, it's hilarious.
It's so funny But she completely believes it as well.
And when she's saying, you know, we will go and kill the
immortal.
As I tweeted at the time, is there any more purer sight than Joan
Sims holding 2 laser rifles?
She looks completely comfortable.
You know, I believe that she is this bronze age queen of a tribe.
It's the Beryl Reed thing again.
She's come into it and even if she doesn't necessarily understand
it.
And we know Beryl didn't.
I don't know if Joan did.
But she's just kind of going, I have a truth in this character.
And I think she's kind of glad also to be playing someone who
wouldn't be in a carry-on film or wouldn't be portrayed that way
in a carry-on film because actresses of this time, actresses of
her age.
Like Beryl Reed, like Molly Sugden, would get typecast in that
kind of role.
Like Molly Sogden come back, Mrs. Noah after that was basically
just Mrs. Slocum in space.
You know, whereas Joan here, she's given an interesting character
to play and she decides I'm going to do this seriously.
I think she's smart and that's really fun because she's Iron Age
but she isn't outwitted by Glitz and Dibber and she doesn't
believe the doctor because she's canny, you know, and she sort of
makes mistakes.
I mean, she makes the mistake of recognising that incredibly
crummy L1 L3 robot. through the wall.
So she does make a mistake and she does get herself killed.
But she's never mocked.
You know, she's never regarded as stupid by the story.
And that's nice. yeah.
I adore like, I adore so many of the smaller characters.
He's the book guy.
Bellazar.
He's really funny and I love how he calls the planet UK Habitat.
I think that's really great.
He was previously in a Blake 7 episode where they were bidding on
slaves.
Do you remember this?
And he was the one who was on his phone saying that Valeria of
Prin bids 300 VMs.
No way.
Yeah, that's him.
And he's also subsequently in various Jeeves and Worcester stories
too.
And he goes on to play James Bond.
What?
Yeah, in the okay, so in the early 2000s, there was a series of
James Bond video games where they had Pierce Brosnan's likeness
but Pierce wouldn't do the voice.
So he's the voice of that James Bond.
And there's one game where they didn't have Pierce's likeness, so
they create a whole new James Bond with Adam Blackwood, but
there's 3 or 4 games where Adam Blackwood is James Bond.
And he's kind of archerish with his delivery.
Sterling archer-ish.
He is very good.
The main game where it's him and not Pierce Brosnan's face is
called Agent Under Fire.
I think we can find some cutscenes of that on YouTube to put up
but that's quite fun.
Like there's a bit where you've just played a level where you're
driving around Monaco. taking out enemies with rocket launchers
and when he arrives at the dock and the car's smashed up, Q comes
out.
What did you do?
Sorry, Q. I was delayed.
He's fabulous.
Yeah, I love him waiting for the food machine to spew all that
green gung over his face and calling the doctor the old one.
No, I really love him and Merdine.
Tom Chadbourne.
Yeah, so he's Duggan from City of Death.
I think he plays it with gravitas.
Look, I think he does as well.
There's a sort of plot that the cliffhanger to episode 3 hangs on
and that's the plot between him and Grell, who's that younger
guard.
And I kind of think Grell's in it so little that that plot doesn't
really land and it's trying to give him something to do, but it's
not really very interesting.
And so he is a little bit wasted, but it's always nice to have
someone good. even if they're in a small park.
You know, I think he's quite watchable and his interactions over
the video phone thing with the immortal are pretty good too.
Yeah, I like the fact that that episode 3 Cliffhanger is actually
shot with like him firing his little arrow gun and that's the end
as opposed to episode four.
Colin's face on episodes one and 4 and even episode 2 where he
goes, oh, this could be the end, close up on the rocker's face.
Well, actually, no, because we're actually watching this and this
happened.
So that's not actually going to happen.
Yeah, yeah.
And also, you've literally been chucked out into deep space
several times.
You know, you've faced firing squads.
I don't think this is actually such a big deal.
The immortal, Drastro.
They go on and on and on in the actual DVD about his production
and how they were making his parts actually moveable like a robot
rather than having like the robots from mind robber where you've
got human joints masked.
And it's actually really great.
Like I actually think that's really good.
It's a pity that the actual top of the head is always at a two
thirds angle rather than full on.
But it's one of these things in the story where I kind of go, well
you guys are focussing on this.
They're focussing on that visual effect in episode one.
Shouldn't we be focussing on other, more important things like, you
know, casual viewers may not even pick up on this fact, is such a
small minute detail.
Well, I think that just having a big giant out of control robot is
massively boring and unoriginal.
And Colin, you know, in theory, Colin should work in a scene where
he is having some kind of ethical argument with the robot.
But the dialogue there is unusually terrible for Bob Holmes, I
think.
Yeah, it's very simplistic.
It's kind of just the doctor saying, no, things should be left to
be alive because they're alive and life is good.
Yeah, I mean, it's even sub a well-prepared meal, that speech, you
know.
And Colin does the best he can with it.
There is a wonderful bit of that whole scene I love, which is the
doctor saying that the robot is feeling hubris and just the way
they choreographed the robot to look over his shoulder.
That's a hubris.
It's camp, but I think what really sells it, it's Collins outrage
of course, which he's so good at doing, and a robot looking over
their shoulder.
Like that's kind of, what's the word that, that incongruity of
ideas.
Two other cast members, of course, are Tony Selby and Glenn Murphy
as Glitz and Dipper.
He's very pretty.
And he's funny too.
I think he actually is really genuinely very funny.
He does a great performance.
I love his crack about how they've got so much black light in
their ship that sometimes they can hardly even see.
I think that's really good.
I think Tony Selby actually surprised me and I tweeted this as we
were watching it.
I actually think he's not very good in this.
He's certainly not as good as he is in his subsequent stories.
I think he's really declarative and stagey and unrealistic.
And I also think it is just more of the Holmes playbook.
You know, he's Garren, again, essentially.
Only a bit nastier.
Interesting, because I actually really like Tony Silby in this
performance, whereas maybe it's the character.
I think the character here, you could imagine him being quite
nasty, whereas I think subsequently down the track, he's much, much
kinder and gentle.
They make him more cuddly for his return.
It's more his delivery, I think, than his character that I don't
like.
I do have to say at the time watching it, I was quite obsessed
with Deborah and I couldn't quite work out.
Why?
I'm rolling my eyes listeners.
And I've always liked you, bro, and I've always been bitterly
disappointed that he never came.
Yeah, he's next companion later in the season is terrible.
Terrible, terrible.
Also, we may have never had these awakening feelings about Dibba
because do you know who the director actually wanted to play these
roles?
Jennifer Saunders.
And Dawn French.
French and Saunders were the 1st approach and it was literally
just dates.
They couldn't make it work.
Jonathan Bow was perfectly up for these 2 parts being played by
women.
And I'm just imagining them as their extras personas, as we see in
the trial of a Time Lord sketch, they do.
I'm thinking Jen would have had to have been glitz, and Dawn would
have had to have been Dibber, because usually in their sketches
kind of Gens, the more worldly one, and Dawn is the kind of
ditzier one.
But strangely, there's this show they made around the same time
called Girls on Top.
It was billed as a female version of the young ones.
And of course, comic strip presents, all of them will work
together before.
So it was Jennifer, Dawn, Ruby Wax, and Tracy Ullman, and they're
these 4 young women trying to live in London.
They move into like a 2 bedroom flat, which is all they can afford
above this ageing romance novel is played by Joan Greenwood.
Now in that, Dawn French is this sort of militant feminist
character who falls apart every time a man looks at her.
Whereas Jennifer Saunders is an idiot savant. who just is, you
know, plays at kind of ditsy and talks like this and everyone
makes jokes at her expense, but when people make jokes at her, it's
bed, you suddenly get this extreme close with Jennifer Saunders
with murder in her eyes and then you cut away to something else.
It's all on YouTube.
It's a really good series.
So it's possible it could have been the other way around there.
It is possible.
Imagine them going up against Joan Sims. great.
I think Bob Holmes would have vetoed it.
He would have got confused if they'd been 3 women in a story.
There's not many women in the underground settlement, is there?
No, but apparently they get their women in the tribe of the free.
The reason they have women at all is that they come up from
underground, but I couldn't see any underground at all.
Maybe they'd all come up for the extra husbands that they could
get if they joined the tribe.
Yeah, well, I don't think handbag and handrail or whatever their
names are would be very interesting.
My theory is, and I tweeted it, but Humper and Tandril, that Colin
gets their names from a bunch of times, he calls them humbug and
handbag at one point.
I think that that is Bob Holmes making fun of crappy 2 syllable
science fiction names.
Because it's a sin he tends not to commit.
He tends to come up with much more interesting names than that.
So I think it's making...
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I think he's making fun of that So can we talk about the climax of
the story because I think that this is where it all really falls
to pieces.
And that is not Drathrow.
Drathrow, the immortal, is very neatly dealt with my glitz and
dipper, which I think is lovely.
The doctor doesn't manage to outwit him with the big stupid
philosophical conversation.
You know, glitz just tricks him, but it's the black light
explosion.
And I tweeted at the time that Black Light was not only a source
of endless, clean energy, but an incredibly great source of word
peril as well.
So all of that is just us talking about a big explosion
happening.
And then Colin talks it up so that the entire universe is at
stake.
But it's all just words and flashing lights.
And how is the situation resolved?
They all meet in Jethro's palace and just press a whole bunch of
buttons and then run away.
Yeah, it is a bit disappointing in that regard.
But on the other hand, we have just had a year of stories where
it's very rare that the doctor directly resolves anything.
So if we look at, say, attack of the cybermen, he resolves it by
shooting a bunch of sidemen, if we look at vengeance on Varos, as
you complained at the time, Nathan, he does nothing.
It's just market forces.
Mark of the Rani, he does actually do something clever to sort out
the problem by fiddling with the Rani's controls, but again, it's
just pushing a bunch of buttons.
The 2 doctors.
It's kind of, oh, I think I teched the tech and now we're fine.
Timelash is just, oh, I'll explain that later.
I actually thought Timelash was the one where he solved the
problem probably.
I think that's the only time when it gets it, right?
And the revelation.
Yeah, just waits around until Tarkasson lilt phoned the Daleks.
Exactly.
Whereas, unlike here with Time Lunch, we actually see what he's
doing to solve the problem.
He talks about containing the energy.
So we at least get some form of explanation.
And we get quite a good bit where Colin sends everyone else out of
danger while he continues working.
And as the doctor sort of staggers out.
He says, I just hope it was enough and runs away from an explosion
behind him, which is a typical action trope.
But what I love about the story is the mysterious planet section
of the story.
It's delightfully uncomplicated.
You know where everyone is at all times.
You know what they're working towards, you know what each of the
characters want.
And when the doctor saves the day at the end, even though it's
word peril.
You've heard exactly what the stakes are, you know that the doctor
has to fix it.
And we are left with a little bit of a mystery at the end, and the
doctor identifies that in the dialogue, clearly telling us that we
should be concerned about.
Who were the sleepers, what is Earth doing so far away from its
original position in space.
We do have the utterly stupid moment where you think, Valiard, what
the hell are you doing, where he includes an inconsequential scene
that anyone reading lips could then figure out, oh, it's something
to do with the matrix, bleep, bleep, bleep.
Yeah, we see, that's because the way the trial is structured is
it's 3 normal Doctor Who stories, surrounded by a framing device
that has nothing to do with those stories.
And so if this was sensible, if this was actually what was
happening, the vaniard would have picked something else that
didn't raise all these questions.
He would have just picked another incident.
I mean, what does this incident prove?
It doesn't really prove anything.
And, you know, like what's the doctor accused of, meddling in
other planets?
You know, well, you know, fling the savages DVD on or watch that
you know there's no point to picking this.
And so it doesn't really work raising that mystery.
And that mystery is so inconsequential.
This could have been done as a kind of thriller, but no one's
competent enough to do that.
And so having this little bit of a mystery, introducing this sort
of weird thing about the sleepers and the matrix and all of that
sort of thing.
In more competent hands could have paid off.
But, you know, in the context of the trial that we have just
literally makes no sense at all.
No, I agree completely with you.
Like, I mean, why should the valued even put it in there?
You're really just implicating ultimately the time lords of the
fans of the audience to sort of work that out, that there's
something wrong with this trial that's really about to begin
because we've only had this investigation in these 1st 4
episodes.
It just makes no sense to even put it in the plot.
If they're actually really thinking about what's going on.
What I find so bizarre about the trial setup when we keep coming
back to it here is, I think it's the end of episode one where the
valiard says, you know, I suggest this inquiry becomes a trial and
the court will demand your life, doctor, and we get our 1st grade
Colin Baker, Zoom, cliffhanger of the season.
But when we come back in episode two.
The inquisitor says pretty much, no, it's an inquiry.
Shut up, but the rest of the remaining 13 episodes, then treat it
like this is a situation where the doctor will lose his life if he
is found guilty.
And it's like nowhere officially does that changeover happen.
It's just the Valleyard says, oh, wouldn't it be nice if we did
this?
And the inquisitor says, no, it wouldn't.
But then somewhere off screen, someone says, oh, no, yes, it
would.
And it's like, that's not how the legal system works.
No, it's a space legal system. all work like that.
Even so.
That's what I'm saying.
She's totally inconsistent in what they give her in terms of
dialogue.
In one moment, she's complaining about things have been bleeped
and that's a concern and next moment in the next row will just
dismiss that, you know, don't worry about that.
She knows apparently what's happened to Perry.
We'll find that out.
You know, the doctor's been taken out of time and space. wouldn't
it be bets?
Dirty be checked out medically or something.
Somebody explained it.
That would have been interesting.
Do you know what I'm saying?
Like, you know, some other space where we're going to, you know
doctor, you're here on this station for this reason.
Like, none of that, it's all just, as you go along, ad hoc
whatever.
And it's just occurred to me that we have seen a trial on
Gallifrey before back in the deadly assassin.
And even then, that was different from an earth trial in that you
had this semicircle of desks with everyone facing the people
talking and you had everyone standing around and it wasn't just
this neat arrangement of gold plastic.
But again, remember, that's really urgent because you've got the
election and all of that sort of thing.
And so having them all stand around doing this really kind of
makeshift trial and the clock's ticking and all of that, I think
that that's, you know, that is kind of different.
But the previous trial that we saw, you know, which was just
people standing in a negative space telling the doctor what a bad
boy he'd been, which made the time lords look powerful and
imperious.
Here, you know, the trial is really not doing anything here.
It occurs to me as well that that I mentioned in Deadly Assassin.
There's kind of a parallel with the doctor here with the boatyard
knackers yard, graveyard, et cetera, et cetera.
Because back in the deadly assassin, the doctor's drawing
caricatures of the various people speaking against him.
But I think the important distinction there is, while the doctor's
doing that, no one's looking at it.
It's not a declarative.
Oh, look how stupid you look.
I've drawn this picture of you.
It's a thing that naughty children do to sort of get out their
aggression and frustration.
You know, it's a private thing like writing in a diary.
Whereas the doctor's standing up and saying Nackers Yard
graveyard.
It weakens the character because he becomes this name calling.
Kid, really.
I think, you know, those previous trials had plot reasons for
existing.
The reason that this one exists is because there were previous
trials, you know, in the show.
Yeah, yeah, time lords do trials or sit around and access the
Matrix.
That's what time lords do.
And that is all time lords do in the 80s.
Yeah, I'm super grateful to the Daleks for blowing those buckers
up, to be honest.
Let's talk about ratings.
Oh, it's been so long.
So I'm just going to say that the powers that be get their wish.
They ever wanted to cancel the show because the show comes back to
4.900000 viewers for episodes one and episode two.
Now, episode one actually places 69th on the chart.
Previous season, we had 8900000 and it came 71st.
But, you know, nobody's going to worry about chart placings.
It's all about bums on seats.
And Doctor Who is going up against the 18 again and the A team is
getting close to 12000000 viewers, right?
So, in Doctor Who's defence, the show before it, Roland Rat is not
even on the charts, like less than 2 million.
So Doctor Who's doing this heavy lifting to try and grab an
audience.
But it's ITV's biggest night because blind date is on after the A
team, which is their highest rated show on the network, like
coming number 3 or something like that.
So it's just up against it.
Episode 3 and 4 then collapse in the ratings to 3.9 and 3.7
million.
Now, the last time we had those ratings were with Tom Baker, where
he got an episode that got, I think, 3.7.
Now that came 180th.
These ones came 98th and 97th.
And they're the lowest placed episodes of the season.
So if there's one thing about this season is that it doesn't drop
out of the top 100, unlike last year, which had 4 or 5 episodes
out of the top 100, but most of the episodes this season are
between 80 and about and 98.
Episode 5 will rebound to 4.8, but it's not until episode seven
they get 5.1 million. the 1st time it breaks 5000000 in the
season.
So, you know, if they ever had a case to say, well, it's just not
popular, it's just not with people, here it is, you know?
Unfortunately, Colin, won't realise it yet, but you know, he's the
face of the show and the fact that they weren't willing to get rid
of the producer and script editor, he's now on the chopping block
with these ratings.
We'll discuss that later on.
The audience appreciation figures are interesting because the
audience appreciation figures for this season are actually the
high 60s and the early 70s.
Now last year it was the mid to low 60s.
And for Davidson, it was generally the mid to high 60s.
So in fact, who's watching or whoever they're getting their
audience have actually liked it because it's not violent and it's
funny and it's safe perhaps.
It's also that it's now so unpopular that it's Doctor Who fans
still watching it.
The lower the ratings get the higher, you would expect the
appreciation figures to get.
But, you know, next year they're going to be in the high 50s.
And the other thing to remember about the audience appreciation
index is it's a random sampling.
It's not a volunteer-based thing.
And I believe it still works this way.
It's a bit like ratings boxes in Australia are a random sampling.
Yeah, the audience appreciation index is the BBC contacting a
bunch of people at random and saying, what did you think of this
show out of a rating out of 10 or a rating out of a 100 and they
collate that information.
I wonder if in terms of casual viewership, people enjoyed this
season more because even though it's not very good as a courtroom
drama.
It's more recognisable.
So if someone was coming along and seeing this and they, for
instance, used to watch Perry Mason or watching reruns of it, they
would look at this and go, oh, this is a courtroom drama.
I wonder what's happening and they might only watch one or 2
episodes before they figure out that the mystery being developed
isn't very interesting.
But for those one or 2 episodes, they're going, oh, well, why was
that bleep down?
Why aren't we allowed that information?
Why is the doctor saving the universe a bad thing?
But it is really interesting that there's a 1000000 viewer loss
for those last 2 episodes of this story.
You know, and luckily it then doesn't recover as much as it can.
I mean, the average for the season is actually 4.93.
Which is not going to be much different from next season, which is
4.96, I think.
But, you know, different factors are at play, but, you know, you
have to say we took it off and it's come back and, well, there was
this outcry, but really, where have all the audience gone?
Yeah But I do want to say this, that I really love the mysterious
planet, the story.
Yeah, and I personally, despite plot points or whatever, I
actually give Mysterious Planet 9 out of 10.
The trial of a time order, episode's one to four.
I give 7.5 out of 10 too.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think the mysterious planet element of the story itself is
good.
The trial scenes, while they are banal, are not too intrusive just
yet, and as I said before, they're saved by the fact that we have
3 very good actors performing in them.
But a lot of the time, the commentary from them is just a little
bit too on the nose. like I know what I just watched.
But at the same time, I think as a kid, you might enjoy that
breathing space and you might enjoy the name calling and you might
enjoy the fact that Michael Jason, his stillness.
His facial expressions are so evil.
You are left in no doubt that you are not meant to like this
character.
I think again, Doctor Who is being made for, Not necessarily for a
younger audience, but with a younger audience in mind more so than
the previous 2 scenes.
I think they have learnt something of a lesson and that making it
less nasty and fixing the relationship between the 2 leads has
helped a lot.
But I think it's a shame that they couldn't be just a little bit
more imaginative because this is very, very routine.
Hey, listeners, we're taking off from, uh, Errolox, or Raffle, or
whatever it's called, and, uh, we found some rather nasty phases
from the Warlords of Thordon, so we're gonna find out where
they're coming from.
Do come back next week as we do that with Mind Warp or do we?
In the meantime, you can find us online at Flightthrough Entirety
sexy, Flightthrough Entirety on Facebook and iTunes and at FTE
podcast on Twitter over on Bond Finger.
We are in the midst of the incredibly lengthy Timothy Dalton era
of James Bond.
You can find that at Bondfinger.com, Bondfinger on Facebook and
iTunes and Bondfinger cast on Twitter.
Until next week, may you always remember the name of your blonde
serving boys.
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 Brendan Jones.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, I'm supposed to be cross, was recorded on the 26th
of March 2017.
The next episode will be released on the 7th of May.
This episode of FTE was brought to you by Black Light Energy
switched to Black Light Energy for cheap and abundant lower
mission electricity, and a 50% rebate on your next bill if an
unexpected outage destroys the entire universe.
I think we should go out on that, but I'm gonna ask a question
that you might want to put beforehand.
So, Time to choose between the 2 alternative dimensions.
Would you rather have had the mysterious planet or the nightmare
fair?
Mysterious planet.
Nightmare Fair.
I'm mysterious planet as well.
We could have The Nightmare Fair episode one.
Not only episode one, and just the mysterious planet, the actual
segments we see, nothing to do with...
There we go.
Good.
Wrong.
Wrong finger.
I was keeping that in.