Bum Wetting

And returning to our original music can only mean one thing. It's time for Flight through Entirety, the only Doctor Who podcast which gives you, the listener at home, a taste of Thomas Tickler. I'm Brendan. I'm Nathan, and I'm perplexed. And welcome to the 1st episode of Flight Through Entirety, covering season 4 of Doctor Who. Very important season. Of course, we say goodbye to the 1st doctor and hello to the 2nd doctor, Patrick Troughton. I'm going to start the clock on our 1st story, odd season four, the smugglers. And then, dead man, they could be. Norwood. Ring. Good. Well I think we're done. I believe this is my story, Nathan. But yeah, there's not a lot to it aside from RRR and yeah, there we go. Now, we have an interesting position here. Doctor Who is in a position of transition. Once again, we have another new producer in the form of in as Lloyd. Hmm. And, you know, Innes had sort of put his stamp on. So I put his stamp on with the savages and the war machines. I think it's less successful here, really. We have a historical based around Cornwall and pirates and smugglers, but it's... You know what? This was my one and I've watched the recon and I've read the novel and it just leaves you with an immense sense of meh. Oh, did you listen to the audio though, the BBC audio? Well, I did that when I was listening, watching, watching the record. It's not... that's the thing. not bad, but what good there is, it's just sort of outweighed by sort of feeling it's very tired. It's hardly surprised that Miss Lloyd decided to drop the historicals just a few stories later. I think it is bad. And I think it's rightly forgotten. I really like quite a lot. We've got the good, the bad in the middle. So, again, we've talked endlessly about historicals. And there are 2 kinds of modes of historicals which have been identified as this Sandra, I have to channel Sandra for once, once an episode. There's the Lucarati style historical, like the Aztecs or Marco Polo, where the history is kind of, or the massacre, I think probably is, is, you know, the quintessential one where we're in a dangerous period of history. We can't really affect it and we just need to escape and history is a sort of scary hostile place. And then we get the, what, the Donald Cotton version, the Dennis Spooner version, where we drop the characters into a story with strong genre tropes and let them have fun. And so presumably this is the pirate story in the same way that the curse of the black spot in series 6, I want to say, is the pirate story. Like, I don't know whether it's because I'm not so familiar with the source material in there. You know, there are definite sort of antecedents in literature and things, but I just sort of found it, you know, really a bit boring. We have the prison and we have the tavern as usual, the pub and the prison in quick succession. So everything that we need from a 60s historical. But there's just, you know, really very little to say. I think production wise, the fun thing about it is there's a season opener. We've got a new set of companions who we obviously, you know, we're introduced to it at the end of last year in what will become a tradition, you know, the new companion will be introduced in the final story. So we start with these, it's their 1st trip in the TARDIS. They're really sort of fun and interesting. Richard, you've said before, how much fun you think it would have been to have these 2 young people kind of look after Billy as the doctor for a whole year that they've been sort of quite an interesting sort of idea. Kind of Richard Lester. You've already mentioned the knack and how to get it or one of the Beatles films. It's, yeah, you've got model London jumping right in with, who was the Sabotsky film that they made before, Doctor Who and the Daleks? It's Trad Dad. It's that kind of thing. Yeah, are the old and new. And I think if Billy had been more well and better, just cared for by the producers. We've seen how sensitive Bill is in other moments and what we allude to that fabulous just recently discovered moment of an interview on the 10th planet DVD that we all just watched before recording this where Billy does. Wow, talk about heartfelt truth. I really get the sensitivity and candour of this man of how much he cared about this program to the point, in fact, like you get a lot of really, very sensitive people, that he excluded everyone who he identified as an enemy who didn't share the passion that he had. So instead of being able to maybe bring people in, he excluded and ostracised, and the more angry he came, he became the more he including, you know, as people like, uh, wills have said, you know ostracised people on the set, which we'll guess we'll get to in a moment. But this is really poignant for me these last 3 stories. Is it 3 stories? Two stories. Two, two, two. I thought it was 3 because so much happens. Since we're on the smugglers, and, you know, and again, you can look at, see that Ennis Lloyd's looked over the shoulder of Daphne Deren said, which cozzies haven't we seen yet? We've got we've got ancient Greeks and we've got Amarind. Oh, hello, pirates. But we've got, you know, antecedents are really big at the time that Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean, their 1st film version had come out very recently. That was a reasonable success, RR. Peter Pan, which is a 50s cartoon from Disney was still doing really well on the summer holiday circuit in cinemas. Carry on Jack? Carry on Jack. Thank you, Carry on. That we mentioned last podcast. Carry on, Dickon Highwayman. And more importantly, Dr. Sin, SYN, which was recently broadcast several times for BBC for extra the radio thing I keep going back to because I love it. And that's got Rufus Sewell, Sewell in it as the eponymous hero, Dr Sewell. And it's almost this story. And that was a series of little books that were around at the top. Just kind of like post-Jack Harkness, Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson kind of thing. The pirates were, it's something you should do in the historical and we haven't got around to it yet. And I think it's a really jolly romp. And lots, there's lots of R's and gnashings and there's some truly horrible, horrible characters and sharing dark ones. Cherub is amazing. And what about the squire? What a dreadful, dreadful black carted character. No name, I like it. That's the one thing that I like. You see, that's the thing. I really like him, but I think he's the worst villain in the story. Yeah, I think so too. Cherub and Captain Pike. You expect them to be Illinois because they're pirates and they're doing the sort at RRR. Whereas the, um, the squire, he's insidious because he is only out for himself, and he flip-flops throughout the whole story to whatever side will give him the greatest advantage, and he gets away at the end. No, you see, I don't read it that way. What I read it as is he encounters. He's like, you know, like he's a small time smuggler. Paul Wits and Jones, by the way. He's the enormous sort of hilarious fat guy from the mutants, the evil marshal from solos from the mutants. It a really fun performance. He's really funny to watch. He's got a fabulous wig, you know, all of that. And I think that he's like a small time criminal who then discovers what real evil bad guys are about and decides that he doesn't want any of that. And so he actually reforms. I think it's it's a little bit like the Algernon character in the Highlanders, which we'll talk about next time. He does have a little bit of a character arc. And so I think he's redeemed. I think he gets away with it because it's a redemption arc. I mean, it's not very strong. of these things are particularly strong in the 60s. I suppose it's hard to tell without the full visuals. And can I just say that what we do have suggest that it would have been pretty impressive? So this is the 1st time... So we go on location to Cornwall. It's the 1st time the cast have to stay in a hotel, like they're not driving distance from BBC television centre or wherever. Where are we, Lime Grove? God knows where we are. Were we recording at the moment? Wherever we're recording. Yeah. So they actually go and stay in a hotel in Cornwall. The beach scenes look fantastic. There is surviving footage of people riding horses around the place outdoors, which is really good. And this is another one of these really funny ones where a lot of the moving images in the recon are things that were cut out by the Australian senses. And so you just get moments of people being stabbed and that's back to the slide show, you know? So it doesn't help that it's just a recon that you're just watching a slideshow, but it is sort of largely pretty forgettable I think. What I find the most interesting thing about it is... Looking at the story from a production standpoint, because the actual story itself, You were talking about different types of historicals. I think this is a slightly different historical from what we've seen before. This is an historical adventure story. So it's the kind of adventure story in the style of, say, the last half of the Daleks with a series of events that happen, which just happens to have it and historical backdrop and historical characters. But what I find most interesting about it is it sidelines the doctor in the same way he is sidelined in the celestial time maker. He's locked up in a room with one of the villains and even ends up playing games. You know, he ends up playing a game of cards. But the difference is it appears that Innes Lloyd or Brian Hales who also wrote that story, it appears that someone had the sensitivity to say, we're not just going to shut William in a room and shut him up. We're going to put him in a room. We're going to take him away from the main plot, but he is going to have lots of the stuff he's good at. He's going to have rapport with the villain and be very intelligent and clever while we get Ben and Polly doing the other stuff. This feels like Ennis Lloyd kind of going, I know I have to get rid of my star. I'm figuring out how to do it, but is there a way I can minimise his role. And I find that very, very interesting and certainly Billy seems more comfortable here than he was towards the end of season 3 and this was made immediately afterwards. It was made immediately after the warm machines. The war machines, you can see him getting his vigour back because it's a, it is a better script than the last few. You know, I mean, the savages start the upward. yeah got stuff to do. Whereas, yeah, the smugglers is kind of weird because it does sideline him, but at the same time, he gets lots of doctor-ish things to do while Ben and Polly are off doing the legwork. And Ben and Polly straight away are an excellent team. Yeah, they are great. And we've got this interesting inversion of Ian and Barbara. I think I mentioned it last month where Polly is sort of mind is wide open to accept anything. And Ben is completely, no, it is not that. You know, there's not time travel. We're just down by the sea and I've got to get back to my ship. Whereas, you know, Ian and Barbara, we're both a bit more open minded, a little bit sceptical, a little bit open-minded, but Polly and Ben, they're just chalk and cheese. Stephen Stephen didn't believe. In fact, this is what this reminded me of is you've got a historical and the time meddler goes out of its way to establish the new team, the new TARDIS team. And this does that as well by giving Ben and Polly a lot to do. And presumably they're aware at this point that Ben and Polly are going to have to carry the transition, so they need to be kind of strong characters whom we know. And so they are given a lot to do. They get to outwit Tom and get out of the obligatory historical prison that they're in. And what I like about their outwitting of Tom, they outwit Tom using witchcraft. And I then expected that that would be a cliffhacker that, Oh, no they're going to be burned at stake. But no, it's completely forgotten because Tom thinks he's got a curse on him. He's not going to tell anyone. He's got a curse on him. So I quite, I quite liked that that subverted it. So maybe I like the story more than I thought. I don't know. There are certainly lots of good little moments in there. The Brian Hale script. and he could almost, well, great links where he does know wrong. and don't forget the other shows he did in the 70s for children's TV, where he was just terrific, really really good. The Robert Banks Stewart with his... of his time. I really, really, really like this. There's some really lovely little moments in it. And again, Billy's stuff is good when he has one-on-ones with the it's interesting when you go to the background of this story. It almost seems like Karma of the actor, where, you know, there are lots of conflicting stories from Billy's own, um, telling of where he was health wise and place wise and all the rest of it. But, you know, where it might have appeared that he was faking his illness in the previous season, Lloyd is now finding that he really isn't doing as well. And, you know, Billy later on said that he'd he'd left because the show was becoming evil. That was actually the word he used, but then he also said that he'd had pleurisy. And, um, pneumonia, I was trying to say, and and also a nervous breakdown at this time. I don't really hear it in the performance, but still... I suppose the cases with a lot of actors who do have breakdowns or depression or what have you, but it's actually the acting, when they're acting, they're functioning well. Well, you know, it's after recording episode two, that his wife Heather, relates conventions, that that was when he came home to Mayfield and told her that he was leaving the series. Right. So is he told during the smugglers? Like he told her that he was leaving the series, not because of ill health, but just because he said, as he said, the Sarah had become too dark. There are many different versions from them. That timing would make sense, though, because this was filmed at the end of the 3rd production book. Yeah, of course. And then 10th Planet was the 1st story of the new production book. And he's a guest star. He's not the star of the show. I mean, he's credited as Dr. Hewitt, the head of it. But in the 10th planet, he's actually, he's just a guest performer as far as contracts are concerned. So they're just getting back for the 1st 4 episodes of series 4. So yeah, that does make sense. Maybe he was told during the studio stuff. Someone at home will know, someone will... Well, I mean, if we look at adventure in time and space, that certainly seems to be the case. It's funny you mentioned that because this was about the time when was it not that Lloyd had commissioned Whitaker to write the destiny of Doctor Who, which was about how to change over the role. Horror. I probably got even less to say, actually. Derek Ware. Derek Ware as a Spaniard. We haven't mentioned him. I used to have it as a Spaniard. Terry Walsh, too, appearance, apparently. Oh, look. Yeah, it's huge. Yeah, it's right. possibly better than you remember or not. But let's have... only as an audio, not as a recon. Again, I just say, if there aren't a lot of images, then recons are really hard to sit through. Pictures are great. It makes it look like the location stuff would have been really speaking. I like using just like having it slightly in my head. It's like reading out loud and listening to the audios. Okay. All right. On that note, moving on to the Infant era, the final Willie Partner story. Spoiler alert, the 10th planet. Right, Richard, this was yours, though. It is, this is the, what Kenneth Williams have said, mid 70s radio deviation of the universe. This is one of the inversion. Everything's topsy-turvy, misrule, the January Callens have been brought home and the universe has never be the same again. Other critics have said, you know, um, Oh, Santa, of course, we always go to our go-to's, Mr. Sandifer, and Mr. Lawrence Miles and Mr. Tatwood, to both say, everyone's got this wrong. This isn't like a res- you know, a regeneration story. And this isn't a cyberman story because people didn't know what that was. And the cybermen are never going to be the same in any way ever again. Just to jump in. I reckon this is the best side of the man's story. Because of what it suggests. Not necessarily for what you're seeing on screen, but for the ideas. Although, can I say, the scariest moment. I'm watching this with a friend who's now in his 50s and watched the 1st episode with that gorgeous moment of what looks like a human hand in a sleeve on the body, you pan up, that's a surgical gimp mask with, get this, an actor in blackface behind it, with white staring eyes and a helmet, utterly expressionist. It's still one of the most frozen horror moments the series has ever done. It's truly scary even now. And what are these things? What are these things? Yeah, I, the sidemen just look fantastic and and it really is, they will just become robots by the time, the next time they appear and and they'll be being groomed. It's the 2nd monster ever to reappear, the 2nd monster to maker another appearance. As poor ward, with those poor food, they never worked again. And so they're being groomed, obviously, to replace the Daleks which they will do, essentially, during the, during seasons 5 and 6, there are, there are no Daleks. I think at this point, the BBC were very much aware that Terry Nation was trying to launch his series in America and they knew if that happened, they wouldn't be able to use the Daleks. Yeah, so they so they turn the they turn the side men into sort of fairly generic robots and there are elements of them in the moon base when they come back. There are elements of this kind of side man there. But this kind of side man's never seen again. And for those of you who haven't seen it, I mean, it's remarkable. They have human hands, they don't have any gloves on, their faces are just sort of cloth. And as Richard said, you can see the actor's eyes, but there's black makeup around the eyes, the mouth, they just... And the gorma, silent mouths, without, they don't move, but speech comes out. Peter Davidson, when he was here in 83 just to age me. Did a little convention here at Sydney Uni and he said to us back then. Were you with that one, Nathan? You weren't. No, Brendan. And he said this most scary moment for me growing up was that 1st episode and the voices and I still have memory of Peter Davidson doing the voice. That singsong like this, up, Banda. And he liked that, that was, he said, that's what computer synthes voices were like in the 60s more, all right. Oh, really? Did they? Yeah, he said, that's what we thought computer voices would sound like. And the synthesised thing of the robotic, not having pitch in your but not having any meaning for the words. Really, really unsettling. And my go to just to jump in. If you want to know how good these cybermen would be in the new series. Have a listen to Nicholas Briggs' voices on Mark Platt's spare finish. Thank you, spare parts. They're really scary. Apparently, I mean, the story goes that Peter Davidson and Sarah Sutton just roared with laughter when they 1st heard Mick Briggs do the voice. Okay, Simon, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Apparently. That's wonderful. Um... That's it. Totally devoid of meaning. No, you have to do the rest of this. No, I... Lucy. But never far away, are they? That's the little yellow character. Um, the Busby little yellow character in, not vision on. What's the, what's the, anyway, that's the puppet voice book. Look it up and put it off. The rest of the thing. But there was a character on 70s British TV that actually had that voice. Well, it's funny. It's funny Peter Davidson saying that's what we imagine computers would sound like because the other very famous verbal computer from that time was the Star Trek computer, which of course we now think of the Star Trek computer as Major Barrett's next generation. Very gentle kind of voice like this. But in the 60s, it was major doing a Dalek cyber animals and it was very harsh and very high pitched like the cyber. But the Simon have this sort of strange thing where they don't have normal sort of intonation contours in their speech. And so it just sort of randomly goes up and down. And they also are sort of terribly polite. Do you know what I mean? And they're much more eloquent. I mean, by the time of the invasion, I don't think the sidemen even get a line in the invasion. I can't remember them saying anything at all. But these ones are quite chatty. Look what they offer. Yes, well, you see, that is the most terrifying thing. It's looking even more pertinent now with the whole global warming talk and what's happening. They offer peace, security, and a passionless life without pain. In fact, it's terrific. There's that scene. It must be an episode 2 where because the sidemen are only in episodes 2 and 4 as well. They appear at the end of episode one. That's the cliffhanger. you know, what the hell are they? Then they're in episode 2 and they're dispatched at the end of episode two. Then episode 3 is virtually free of sidemen and episode 4 has has them back, a new set Invade. And in episode two, they're explaining that what they're going to do is save the human beings because Mondas is going to sample all of us energy and they're all going to die. And so they're actually all trying to talk. And the sidemen are going, you know, what's your age? You know, what's your name, all of that sort of thing, like they're collecting information to prepare them for their sign but... They book... No, your real name, because otherwise we can't say it so much. But they, like, they're quite calmly talking in this fabulously dispassionate way about converting all the people on the bass. And it is something that you lose, like, you know, by the 70s, I mean, there's only one side man's story in the 70s, Revenge of the Sidemen. There's no mention of them turning people into Cybermen. No, a need thing. The doctor just refers to them, being built of parts. You've got enough part... You've got parts in your spaceship to build more side, but he doesn't refer to them converting humans. That comes back in force in the 80s. But yeah, it's kind of forgotten after this. Well, even Earthshock do people to, you know, they're just sort of stupid robots in Earthshock with star data voices. I think they do talk about turning Ridgeway into a cyberman. They do. Oh okay. Terrible. But but here, you know, they're really, I think they're really quite terrifying and and their origin is sort of mythic and really interesting. Like they come from our twin planet that sort of wandered off into the universe and and now it's come back. you know, and that's something that Russell captures in rise of the sidemen by making them be from a parallel universe rather than just a sort of twin planet to earth. So they're us, you know, they're us in this. And they are in this story as well. They are humans. There are lost primal people. I love sand of his blog on this, and again, that's my go-to for this one. I won't go into it too much It's crazy. But he's right. It's really interesting British fantasy and what we now call fandom and riding was very much on this post-Aleistair Crowley darker, neo-pagan, right await tarot, stuff Anika Wills is in too as well that she references the whole, you know, this is the neosama of the burgeoning open mind thing. You had the beginning. Well, you know, there was the William Morris Revival and the Arts and Crafts thing in the 60s. But along with that, from the time that was, was a whole lot of writing on, I guess, different kinds of enlightenment and approaches to enlightenment. There's one, and Sandova mentions Kenneth Clark, who is a British writer, um, he died in 2011 and the inheritor of the Alistair Crowley Golden Dawn stuff, then. The necromancer that the Clive Barker stories use the same reference material. The idea basically is clipothic is the term. Yes, no, I've never even attempted to pronounce. I'm sure I'm wrong. Enlightenment through darkness. We should explain. There's a lovely line where the Sidemen said, we have gone, we have travelled. the universe and come back. They have passed through the darkest. It's kind of the Hades. It's really a bit of seeing the underworld, isn't it? It's what's the character. Everyone goes to the underworld. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Catarina. Yeah, yeah. The promised gland. Oh, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allen, a lot of Lovecraft in this. Enlightenment is achievable through the passage of nightmares. Very Clyde Barker. Now, when you... I don't think that's actually a big leap because once you read saying it for saying. And you're looking at this. Yeah, that's what it is. They're us having gone through some horrible things and they actually do offer a version of enlightenment. But when they say when Polly says, but that's awful letting death and things happen, that's not nice. She's the voice of, you know, of sensibility and good sense and kindness as we see it. And then he looks at her and just passionately and says, you don't allow people to die. In suffering and all around the world every single day. You do nothing about it. Yeah you don't care about them. She loses that argument. Yeah, completely does. It's the biggest poke to how, you know, it's the maybe it's the 1st gruly post-colonial moment in the show. when it says, your society doesn't function. And that's why the cybermen are so successful in this because they're not evil. No, they are. They're alternative. They are ultimate pragmatists. Whereas, you know, later on, the sidemen would just become evil you know, the wheel in space. They're attacking the space station with asteroids so they can get Earth's mineral wealth. Well, just land somewhere and get Earth's mineral wealth, which is what the cybermen now would do. They just land and say, we are taking this goal. Thank you. No one says delete in this. They're not going to kill people. They're going to better them. Yeah, they're the most horrible coal to us way, possibly imagine. It really only achieves this again with Earth Shock, doesn't it? Until the new series when there's that nice line with where Peter says, you know, a lovely meal, fragrant posies and hitting your bum wet on the grass. That's a well prepared meal. Yes, well prepared, bum wetting on the grass, that kind of thing. But when we do get those speeches, and it is a sort of an obligatory thing in a side man story where you talk about what they've given up by giving up their emotions, there are some corners of the universe. The cybermen lose that argument. you know what I mean? In a sense, where here they win. you know, they're right. And so I think they're sort of terrifying for that. And look, I mean, they degenerate into villains by the time of episode for, you know, they're sort of fairly standard. Yeah, they're taking the doctor and Polly as prisoners because it's the doctor and Polly. Yeah. But I think, I mean, I think there's a stack going on even apart from the cybermen. So I read sort of running through corridors account of this and they talk about the fact that in episodes 2 and Thor, you've got the emotionless cybermen in charge of the bass. And one thing we haven't mentioned is this is really the 1st base under siege story. And that's a genre that's going to become exclusively the mode, the Doctor Who operates in pretty much for the next few years. But then in episode three, the peril is the over-emotional um General Cutler who's frightened uh, for his son. And, you know, he's the one who holds out the Z bomb. He's the one who threatens life on earth. He's the one who is going to kill the cyberman. And so we do get to see in a sense that the cybermen have a point about human emotions, that they're, you know, that they're dangerous and destructive and actually a real problem. And it's just demonstrated to you all throughout episode three. And I think that's sort of terrifically good. Another thing that's really great about this basis, and so soon after the questionable racial politics of season three, we have a multicultural cast in charge of the base, a multicultural cast in the UN office. Now, we still have a problem in terms of sexual equality. Like there are no women. There are no women on the military base. There are women in Wigner's office. You know, they're still in a subservient position, but they're in an important position at the UN. There is definitely worth noting that within a couple of months. It seems like in his lawyers come in and maybe seen some of the really quite horrible racial stuff that was in that season and went, no, I'm going to do better. We had Jamaica in the smugglers, who's just another pirate. you know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. you know, like... you know, his race is mentioned as it would have been at that time. But, yeah, he's, unlike, say, the monoids, he's not regarded as stupid because he's black. No. And then you get this, you get the Australian and the American astronaut, you know, in Zeus 4, Zeus 4. And what is it about Australian astronauts in British productions being a bit crap. I mean, look at Alan Carter in space 1990. He's great. Shut up. He had 2 options in that 1st episode. Oh, the moon's flying away. Do I fly back to Earth or do I go to the moon with my friends and possibly get killed? I'll go to the moon, idiot. He got a year's workout of it. And you're in a bit. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. Sorry, tangent. And I think the other thing too that's overlooked is that Polly actually has a pretty significant role in this. And you know, we do talk about the sort of lamentable sexual politics of the 60s. But Polly is the one who kind of in episode three. She's really the one who starts the plan. You know, they're going to disobey Cutler. Cutler's going to blow up the Z bomb. Yeah, you know, we've gone from the A bomb to the H bomb, but we're now in the near future. It's 1986. Solar system level category. We've gone through all of the letters of the alphabet as far as bombs are concerned, and we're up to the Z bomb. And she's the one who really initiates the plan to kind of subvert Cutler's orders there. But it does kind of come back to that thing. I was talking about with the Peter Cushing films, which is it seems like you can only have one strong woman per script. Or one woman, in fact, in this case. Well, you know, as I say, there are, yeah, one sort of major character woman per script. More antecedents. This is again closest to Kubrick than any other film I can think of. This is strange, love, because Cutler is Jack D. Ripper, isn't he? Even with the overacting in the ham acting and that whole... That whole South Pacific. You know? Oh, boy, Golly Gee, and... That's his relaxing. There ain't nothing like a dame. He's actually... Yeah, because he shows up in Blake 7. He does too, doesn't he? And I thought again, he was just reprising the role. He's Bran Foster with extra hair. And extra rough. It's not actually that bad. He has some good moments, especially with, well, there's very few with Billy, aren't there? But there's little... Well, you see, I mean, we should talk about, we should talk about what happens to Hartnell. I've just read the um, the novelisation, uh, which is called Doctor Who in the 10th Planet, bizarrely enough, and it is by Jerry Davis, who wrote the script. And in it, Hartnell does actually disappear in episode three, but not for all of it. So the story is that Hartnell is too sick to appear in episode three. We don't have episode four. So our last, the last time we get to see William Hartnell as the doctor until... Well, yeah, yeah, and until the 3 doctors, sadly, is episode two. And he's on the base. It's not really his thing. This does seem like he's a bit out of place here. There's lots of Americans and shouting and stuff. But he still gives a really great form, I think. He keeps being called pops and stuff. But again, if you sort of look at the direction of it, a lot of time he sat down, like they found him in a nice comfy chair as soon as he walks in, but he commands the set from that chair. Like, he's a little bit modern Doctor Who in that he sees he kind of listens to what's coming up and writes down what they're going to see before they see it because he knows. It's very mass, isn't it? Isn't it? Well, because that's the other thing too. It's the 1st time in the near future. You know, like it's set 30 years after the broadcast. Well, 2020. I can't do any maths at all. can I? It's said 20 years. So, you know, people watching it in 1966 could expect to be alive in 1986. The novelisation sets it in 2000. Just what I thought the book was 86. No, the book says 2000. And the novelisation of Power of the Daleks, which picks up, sets it in 1996. You thought unit dating was bad dealers. So the doctor clearly knows the future history of Earth. And so he writes down that you're about to see a mysterious planet. And he seems to know, too, that he just says, I mean, they don't have to do anything to resolve the situation except wait and prevent Cutler from Z bombing everyone. This is the 1st time we've had a future moment that's an intractable point, fixed point in time. We've had the Aztecs. We've had that you cannot interfere with history. Finally, we've got a point. Yeah, history occurs all over the You can't interfere in 1986 because it's going to will have happened. Yes. So with grammatic consequences. Serious grammatical consequences. So, um, and so he disappears for episode three, and there's clearly lines that, you know, he, he should have in episode 3 being able to say, all we need to do is wait, uh, and the cybern will overload themselves and mombas will explode, and as usual when uh, mones explodes, all of the sidemen will be dead, just that tiresome, just because that helps us get out of the plot quicker. Stephen Moffatt uses it in deep breath, doesn't he, where the half faced man gets killed and all the other clockwork droids deactivate themselves? conveniently so we don't have to go around and mop them up at the end. And he would have delivered that, but he's taking the... I just assumed he was had a tantrum and didn't want to come in. According to the various stories I've heard, including Anika Wills and production people and whatnot. He was actually taken ill shortly after the 2nd episode filmed, or possibly during the filming of the 2nd episode, and his doctor said he cannot come in. They kind of looked at the script where he wasn't really involved that much anyway. Because he's just saying, no, you just got to sit around and wait. So they just got Ben at one point to say, the doctor said, da, da da. And then it's just some guy in a wig with his back to the camera plays the doctor for that episode. Is it open Warwick again? I wish it was. I do hope it is because Edmund Warwick deserves a send off as well. He does. And so and so we get this sort of resolution and stuff. I mean, the novelisation kind of opens with the doctor being weird and distracted and a little bit kind of tired and that kind of thing, but there actually isn't really that much lead up to it at all. And it's almost as if the absence from episode 3 is a kind of inadvertently foreshadows what's going to happen. But in fact, you know, it seems to happen for no reason and with very little fanfare. And I think that this is going to be a theme of our discussion, you know, of the rest of this story, but also a power for Daleks, which is how little fanfare, how little preparation, how little apology there is for this giant, incredible move that they're about to take, which is to recast the leading man, which is just utterly weird and utterly unprecedented, I think. And they don't think they need to explain it. They don't think they need to lead up to it. They make it mysterious and off putting. And if you compare it to the 1st regeneration that we see in the new series, where you've got Christopher Eccleston spending 2 or 3 minutes carefully explaining it to Billy Piper so that the audience at home aren't alienated from it. We get nothing like that at all here. See, I do have a theory on that, which is, you know, they've been looking for a way to replace Billy for about 6 months. And they've hit on this way, but nothing like this has ever been done on television before. I think they didn't highlight it because they thought the more that we highlight it, the more obvious it will be. If we make it as smooth as it possibly can be, you know, we can't just put another guy in his wig because they already discounted that. So we need to have a new person in there, but let's make it so that the audience have to figure it out at the same time as the characters rather than having it fed to them. Intelligent way of doing. They chillax while keeping warm. Thank you. It's good. Keep warm. But yeah, I think the whole thing of not drawing attention to it is so is so that they don't have to explain it. And because they're kind of like, this is going to be jarring enough as it is. Let's make it a smoother toss. Well, I mean, they don't have an explanation, and the idea that this is the 1st regeneration is completely wrong, because, I mean the 2nd time when he turns into pert, it's the time laws, changes appear, and it's at no point do we get the word regeneration at the time. And so the regeneration's only really invented in the 1970s for Planet of the Spiders. So that's not what's happening. Buddhist term that. Yeah, yeah, that's why the term regeneration gets used. But, um, I mean, you know, like and interpreting this in the light of future events, that's fine. It's a regeneration. You don't have to go all Doctor Who magazine and say, it's a rejuvenation and it's really just the same person. You know, that's kind of crazy in the light of what's happened since. But just the fact that they don't explain it, they don't lead up to it. And as we're going to see, they do nothing to kind of smooth the transition in the next story, I think is really remarkable. Does anyone want to say a few words about the fact that we're now leaving Hartnor behind? How do we feel? I have far too much to say, I know, it's all just... Thank you, Billy. He is wonderful. It is that thing too, where when we were kids, he was the grumpy one. Do you know what I mean? We hadn't seen him, he was irascible and all that sort of thing. But we knew him through the Target books. I never read the ones with Harmony. Oh, didn't she? See, they were my favourites. Maybe that is why I just quietly say he's still my favourite doctor. And he's the only person to play the doctor rather than a doctor. And he's just wonderful. He's so lovely. He's so terribly sweet. A French mine posted on Facebook, you know, he'd just seen the 5 doctors and was going, was Richard Herndel was the 1st doctor really liked that? He just seems horrible. And he said, no, he's awfully sweet. He's cuddly and lovely and funny and, you know, terribly human and things. I think he's terrific. You know, it's been a great, you know, like a great 3 years for all the bitching that we've done about it. And he's just a great doctor. He's constantly surprising. in a role that is, by its very nature self-limiting and, you know, or really auto program is just there in the way that Cushing didn't really make it stretch any further. Yeah, little moments that were terribly cool. Okay, you didn't have very long to do it. But in every scene, Billy will find something, a slight twist, a slightly new way of doing it, something to surprise the viewer and keep us, keep us in there with him. He has lots of reasons I love him. And what's, what's really amazing about him is he has this mystique around him. Even more so than Patrick Trouton, who was notoriously very private about how he played the role until later in his life when he was looking back on it. Hartnell didn't get that later opportunity to talk about Doctor Who. It's only recently that a TV interview has been unearthed after he finished the role. And we watched that before the podcast. And what's amazing about it is there's always been this debate in fandom about Hartnell, like, was he that forgetful or were the hms and the Rs and the hesitations, were they character? And you see this interview when, you know, his illness has really taken hold according to the time frame and he is focussed. He is lucid. He is not hesitating in what he is saying and he is completely different. from his character as the doctor and completely vulnerable. In a way, that interview answers that question, but it throws up so many other questions about him as well. And I think that's a really good place to leave him because he's the original and still the most mysterious. Yeah, who is? God bless him. Yeah, we love you, Ben. you. Out with the old and in with the new, it's time to welcome Patrick Troughton with Power of the Daleks. And this one was mine, and I've been saying for a few podcasts now but I've been looking forward to this one because when Rod and I were making our way through and watching them, we really didn't think much of this one. But on my recent trip to the US, I hate watching videos on my iPhone, so I didn't take the recons on my phone. I took the John Peel novelisation. Which, um, it's it's very, Richard's making a face. It's very, it's very interesting. For a start, it was towards the end of, actually, it was after really, the target novels. It was when Virgin had become fully established. So the novelisations of Power of the Daleks and Evil of the Daleks are almost double length compared to Target novels. So the 1st couple of chapters actually retells about the last 10 minutes of the 10th planet from a 2nd person point of view with Ben as the 2nd person. So it's not Ben saying I did this, I did that, but it is like a narrator following Ben and telling us what Ben's thinking and what have you. It's Ben looking for the doctor and Polly in the ship. Now, John Peel has long been regarded as a writer who does something called fan wank. Now, what that means is sort of just throwing in bits of continuity and really this book is no exception because after the strange old man and his 2 young friends disappear in the blue box a team from unit turns up in the year 1996 to Snowcat base to mop it up, led by Lieutenant Benton, Professor Alison Williams. and their and Eunice. Unis cried, crotcheting, alert, robot dog friend. No, not quite. But he could have been there because they're accompanied by units official chronicler Sarah Jane Smith. Oh, please. Now, the thing is, it's a bit like Hitchhiker's a Guide to the Galaxy, because after that, the book settles down and actually starts telling you things you need to know. And the book has given me a new appreciation of the story because my problem with the story before watching the reconstruction is I didn't understand why the rebels were rebelling. But reading the book and listening to the audio again just by itself helped me realise the sort of subtext and cleverness of the title, which I know you're going to touch on later, Nathan. But something in particular that I loved about it is because you've got 2 companions. One accepts him as the doctor. Not straight away, but you know, within a couple of scenes because Polly just kind of goes, well, look, you know, he can't be anyone else. We saw the cloak go over the doctor's face. It came off his face. He's the doctor, whereas Ben... is like the viewer who doesn't immediately accept it. And we sort of have that again with the Peter Capaldi, um regeneration and 1st episode where he has to convince Clara and thus the audience. I think it's better handled here because you have the 2 perspectives. Yeah, and they're presumably there. It's the same as the viewers at home. Like, for all we said about it, not being explained. It is aggressively not explained. You know, like the doctor refuses to answer their questions. He's annoying on the recorder. He talks about Bill Hartnell in the 3rd person. You know, the doctor was a great collector, you know, all this sort of thing. Like, he really is quite off putting and, you know, deliberately goes out of his way to kind of put you offside. Which makes him sinister because he's very, very friendly, but he's hiding something. And then hiding what's happened to everyone's grandad. And then, of course, the 1st thing he does, he steps out onto the planet Vulcan and he impersonates a dead man. He steps into his shoes and pretends to be that dead man. Yeah, which is so straight away. Do you know what I mean? He's unreliable. He's impersonating someone, someone who's died. And so they do deliberately try and put you off, I think. a little bit. I think the power of the Daleks is necessary. And I think the power of Daleks is something brilliant that Whittaker does. And what's happened with the Daleks under Terry Nation is that we've started with the Daleks versus humans in a science fiction setting. And they're sort of, they're not humans as such, but they're sort of human-ish. Yeah, and they're science fiction humans. You know, they're stupid. And then you've got the Daleks invading Earth, and then you've got the Daleks chasing the doctor through time and threatening to become the star of the program. And then you've got the Daleks are going to destroy the galaxy. Do you know what I mean? And each time, it's got bigger scale and higher concept and all that sort of thing. And what Whittaker does here. This he takes it right back to the beginning. So we're in a city. It's somewhere in the future, but we don't know when, you know despite what John Peel might say. He probably gives, you know, their address and their geolocation and the gear. Surprisingly he didn't. Okay, so it's very deliberately kept vague. And we have humans versus Daleks, but this time they're not stupid science fiction humans with holes in their clothes or lots of makeup. They're real people. With David Whitaker. Yeah, with politics and all of that sort of thing. There's a whole the B story is even more interesting to me than the A story. The politics of the colony are really, really great. And the great thing about it is that the politics of the colony play out against this backdrop of the fact that we know that the Daleks are going to come to life and kill everyone. And we're waiting for it. And he will do it again. And I think he does it vastly less successfully in evil of the Daleks, which I think wears out its welcome in a way before you get... You might actually be going to agree. Please keep listening, dear listen. But in power of the Daleks, benefits enormously, and particularly because you get the Daleks being friendly, and you can see why Gaitas went back to this for victory of the Daleks, where you have Daleks carrying trays and bringing people liquid and like expressing concern that the governor hasn't finished his liquid and stuff. It doesn't quite reach the superb heights of the Dalek going, you know, care for some tea. Which I just think is truly splendid. And that's actually how Rod offers to make me feel. He loves that episode. So, so, you know, the fact that you've got these Daleks that you know, and, you know, you see the Daleks looking at the doctor. This is the 1st time you get Dalek eye view through a toilet roll you know, and you see them looking at the doctor and you see that they recognise the doctor. And so they're sinister and malevolent all the way through and you know that this rebellion is really not going to be permitted to reach its natural conclusion. And I think I think it works very, very well. And it's all, it's all the levels, which I didn't pick up when I 1st watched the recon. And I think that's why I didn't enjoy. It's all the levels on which the word power is used. Yes. There's actual electrical power. There is political power. There is the power of ideas and dissent. There is the power of identity with the doctor, not quite saying he's the doctor, and as you say, also stepping into a dead man's shoes for the 2nd time in 10 minutes. Um, There is the multiple power struggles with the humans. The novelisation really fleshes out the character of Janley. Yeah, almost once a season in Doctor Who. We have had a female villain. We had Carla. We are... Marg, you know? They don't engine an A. They probably say. And now we've got Janley. Oh, there you go. Like missy. It's not a vowel, but it still sounds... And I mean, something that John Hill doesn't shy away from. And I know this is kind of my my my drum that I beat him podcast. He doesn't shy away from the notion of sexual politics and the notion that, yeah, the notion that generally would perhaps be taken slightly more seriously, if she wasn't a pretty girl. Oh, I think she's actually more interesting because of that because, yeah, she's able to subvert. Wouldn't this have been great if Whitaker had novelized this one? Yeah. This is my favourite Dalek story. But here's... Here's a bit of an insight into John Peele's version of Janley's mind. This is after she's demonstrated the Dalek gum to the rebels and they're all really happy. And the thing is, in John Peel's mind, she's helping the rebels not overly because she's interested in overthrowing the colony, but just because it will improve her position in the colony. Fool, she thought, so easily manipulated by stupid phrases and idiotic desires. Soon there will be change all right, but there will be precious little freedom for you idiots. It's subtle, isn't it? It's a subtle narrative voice, John Peels. But that is so politically relevant because that is what bad leaders do and think of their people. Not that I'm pointing any fingers at a certain Prime Minister of Australia right now. I'm not crediting him with as much intelligence. But I now adore this story. I gone from thinking the story is, meh, to thinking that, God, this is so clever. See, I don't read generally as the villain in the same way that Bragen is. Like, I think Breagan is definitely a villain and he's played by he's Scarman, you know, the evil possessed tech guy in the future and so it's a very... He's a it's a terrific performance. He's really he's terrifically good. But I think the fun thing about it is that the Daleks actually just end up being a kind of metaphor for the evil. You know, the Daleks are going to be used by one or either side. The rebels or the government in order to prosecute a conflict that they're just having on a purely human level. And so the reason the Daleks are unleashed is because of this, you know, human inability to get on and a human inability to cooperate and human rivalries and human political intrigue. And it unleashes this force, this ontological force, if you will that just comes in and mows them all down. And so the Daleks get, they get an allegorical role. They get to play the role of human evil and so they're unleashed and they rayify that human, that human evil. And those scenes are just fantastic. They just literally go through the base and sort of kill everyone off. It's spectacular. In a way that Mondas never could. No, no, no. And then there's the stuff about power. So the whole thing. The Daleks get, when the Daleks become a real threat, what it is is they're going to become independent from the colony's power supply and they're going to have their own power supply. And David Whitaker even brings back the idea of static electricity from the Daleks that they operate on a different kind of power from human power. So they're initially dependent on the colony's power, but once they get unleashed, once they get to be a real force, they become independent of the human power structure and end up being having a power structure of their own. And the way that the doctor destroys them is before that can happen. He destroys the colony's power structure. And he even says we'd better leave now. He destroys their power system. You know, their power system. And, uh... The poisonous atmosphere. And he leaves he leaves before before they can send him the bill is what he says. And so there's that, there is that meaning. before Jacqueline Pierce turns up. She's really, you're really just writing for the last scene, huh? She takes over the colony, yeah. dead bodies. And Commissioner Jan... So all of that, that double meaning of the word power and things. It is just terribly, terribly clever, massively interesting. Those great visuals. You know, that inside the dialect capsule where there's the incredible conveyor belt of the blob Daleks being put into the thing. There's huge scenes of Daleks. About half of them are cardboard cutouts, you know, but there's sort of a number of Daleks and things. The Daleks are clever, you know, they're subtle. you know, they're vastly better than I think they've ever been. And I'd have to agree with you. I think it's the best Dalek story. They show that the master of the universe, not through brute force but through cunning and subterfusion guile. They're smarter than us and it's not nice to watch. It's not easy. And well, the reason they're smarter than us is because of our own petty rivalries. It's a bit like the cybermen are better than us because they don't have emotions and our emotions will literally blow us up with a giant bomb. The Daleks are better than us because they all work towards the same goal, whereas we fracture and split them. Does the Dalek actually ask Bragen why human beings kill one another? Yeah. And Breagan pretty much said so. Go away. I'm too busy to talk to you right now and the Dale is just like thanks for bringing that up because that's my perfect moment in this story and you get the real moral imperative. Oh, once again, you don't have the upper hand human. You really don't. Yeah, no, the Daleks aren't evil in opposition to the humans. The Daleks are a representation of the evil. They're an each force. They're a force of nature. They're just a force, not necessarily, yeah. Yeah, that's right. They're a psychological force or something. It is so much smarter than the stupid vowels versus the Daleks, you know, the good and evil people and stuff. It's very... Another moment where we've seen before with Spooner, where Terry Nation's ideas are really great, as you can see as a device and as a place to start with. Just don't let him finish the script. somebody else jump in please. It's all right. He almost does. It's true. We haven't really addressed the new guy and what he's like. So Trouton in this. Well, he's literally on his feet from the 1st few seconds. It's not what we may expect from later in generation stories where the doctor spends a little time lying around or recovery or what have you, which, you know, would be an understandable thing to do. They've got to just get him up and get him straight into the story. Well, he spends that 1st part of the story, the 1st few episodes referring to Billy's doctor as the real doctor. What the doctor did? The doctor? You're not really meant to believe it. The tensions kept going. He doesn't, I don't reckon personally. He doesn't become the doctor until the Leicesterton scene when he has that that one-on-one with Lester. Yeah, in all his early stuff. He plays it slightly differently in each scene, as if His character is trying out different personalities. Like he doesn't know who he is yet. He's he's a blank slate. So he tries being quite bullish at one and I think he's actually picked that up from Ben being very bullish with him. But yeah, as you say, it's when it's when the Daleks show up and he starts confronting Lesterson that he kind of remembers. And then the Dalek does that double take and looks at him in the ice stalk, sort of, and then you go, whoa. You know, does it recognise him? And actually, by the end of it, we never get a definitive answer as to whether the Daleks recognise him as the doctor. I don't recall that. I don't know. I'm sure they do. I think because I was sure that I was sure that they would, but you know, Ben and Polly surmised that the Dalek looked at him so he must be the doctor. But it's never explicitly stated. And I think that's very clever as well. It's a way to keep that kind of thing going because, you know, a dalek would start screaming. It's the doctor, like a broken Hitler dog. Except that they're trying to be subtle and the Daleks are being undercover at the moment. Yeah. I think that the, I think that the huge, huge PD, and this is going to be a huge feature of season 4 because it's the one that was most heavily, um, I want to say decimated, but I'll annoy Patents if I do. It was the most heavily affected by the junkings of episodes. There's not a single story that exists in its entirety, and heaps and heaps of them don't exist. And it's something like there's like a 12 episode run or something like that where the episodes don't exist from 10th Planet 3 to Underwater Menace 2. And so we don't get to see Trouton for a really, really long time. And we'll come next episode to underwater menace and it's terrible. But the, the, um, but the relief in actually seeing Troughton's performance in episode 2 for the 1st time and he's magnetic, even even though the material is terrible, it just would have been quite spectacular to see him because his doctor, like we can't see the performance, but we can see his doctor and his doctor is vastly, vastly different. The closest that we've come to it before is the savages where he takes such delight in smashing up the machinery. Yeah, yeah, real anarchic moment. Here he is, you know, he's the most feared being in all the cosmos. You know, he drops out of the sky and tears down your world, you know. He's unpredictable. He smashes the place up. You know, he watches as everyone gets killed, but he destroys the Daleks and then he's off. before there's any, you know, explanation or apology or anything. He's really, really remarkable. He just smashes the place up and leaves. And that becomes quite a thing for Patrick Troughton's doctor which we'll talk about more next episode. He does sort of, after whatever he's done, you know, regardless of any good or bad, final consequence. Obviously, there's always a good thing that's happened. He slips away quietly and unnoticed, more so than any other doctor. And I think I think that's going to be quite interesting to look at as we go through his era. But he's spectacular. And I think it does give the series a shot in the arm straight away. We'll see how it plays out. Let's not forget that we 1st we see the 1st shimmer of the dark doctor in this. Billy would never have sent a platoon of guards to their death list. I don't believe he did. I don't remember a moment. Do you? But Bragen's guards. That's what Pat does to sort it out. That's what they're for. Send them there to divert it. soldiers. Send them off to the doom. I don't like soldiers. Yeah. Yeah, I was looking out for that because I had heard of that and I didn't think he's as directly responsible as it seems, but he's remarkably unaffected by it. Do you know what I mean? He's kind of happy for it to happen. Yeah, so he does become this stranger marking figure in a way that we haven't really seen very much of. Right, on that note, I think it's time for us to move on. So we'll be back next week with a new episode looking at the next 3 stories for Patrick Troughton, and yet another shake up to the TARDIS crew in those 3 stories of the Highlanders, the underwater menace, and the moonbase, where we also see the side men come back again. And I think we see Doctor Who reach its current form. So I'm going to say good night. Yeah, good night for me. And good night from me. Good night. You have been interesting, Michael. Pirate, where they can bother me, Brandon, don't get me turns down. Please, get me down. Mum wetting once we call it on Sunday before October. The next episode will be released on her baby, when it's sick. at Biduentirety.com, but do entirety on Facebook and iTunes and FDE com, Twitter, it's a short, eh? Booping all about. All right, on that note, Moving on to the infant era, the final Willie Partner story, spoiler alert, the 10th planet. Woo, woo, our, our, our, our...