Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to Flight Through
Entirety.
The only Doctor Who podcast pressed onto two plastic discs for
your listening pleasure.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Todd.
I'm Richard.
And today we are having a whistle stop tour through the big finish
range, focussing on the adventures produced with Colin Baker as
the doctor, and the 1st story we're going to be looking at is
Jubilee.
Well, this is yours, isn't it, Nathan?
Yeah, I chose this one.
Without actually having heard it before, it was really just on the
reputation of Rob Shearman, who wrote Dalek, and who was kind of
asked to somehow adapt Jubilee for the screen or to use elements
of Jubilee for the TV program, and in particular, it's the
incredible, I think, Cliffhanger, who episode one of the audio
that he virtually reproduces years later with Christopher
Eccleston, which is the reveal that the prisoner in the Tower is
in fact, a single Dalek who's been chained up and tortured for
decades.
And so this shares a lot, I think, with Dalek.
But nevertheless, the kind of setting is extremely different.
And I think so is the message.
I remember, um, years ago when Rob Sherman was at a Huvention, he
was talking about the writing process for adapting garlic, and he
said the 1st draft was very much like Jubilee.
And then in the 2nd draft, I changed it slightly so that the owner
of the dialect wanted to make the Dalek sing happy birthday for
his wife.
And yeah, then it became very different on television.
But this is, it's an amazing piece of satire, I find.
Jubilee.
It's a beautiful piece like all of Robbie Schumann's work.
Have you seen his books?
There are some of his short stories you can get through big finish
as well, or at least, you know, via the website, you'll find
them.
I've downloaded those and I've been reading those as well.
He's got a really acerbic, cynical, Charlie Brooker kind of feel.
It's the closest Doctor Who's got to Black Mirror, if you've
watched any of those.
Yeah, so it's really beautifully done. sort of a near future.
In this case, it's an alternative future, we have a British Empire
again, to whom the, to which the Americans kowtow with hilarious
results, and indeed every other nation, and a president and his
wife.
But not the queen.
Anyway, they're in a fantastic couple.
You can see they're definitely sending up.
There's so much in this.
The underlying structures behind power and why power is never
actually something to be sought or why capitalism confines it.
Humans themes are vast and really nicely contained.
It's extraordinary.
He shoves that much into one little disc.
So the titular Jubilee is the commemoration of a 100 years since
the doctor defeated the dialects.
Correct.
And that gives rise to this.
It's actually worse than a British Empire. an English empire.
That's right, it is an English empire.
With all of the racism, you know, and colonialism that that
implies and doing this podcast while we're in the throes of Brexit
just makes it resonate even further, actually.
You said, we're, you see, you're meant to have said, we are.
Sorry, I'm doing contraction. which are not allowed under the
English empire.
Nathan, had you listened to many audios before?
No, I have to admit that it's not a medium that I like very much
usually because all of my listening kind of happens when I'm
walking the dog in the morning and I don't really want to pay much
attention to a narrative.
So I mostly listen to just old episodes of Flight through Entirety
actually.
Every morning.
There is no plot, I assure you.
So coming to this, as somebody who hasn't listened to the 6th
doctor on audio, what did you think of the interpretation of the
doctor and Collins performance?
So Colin, I think, is really quite different from what we've seen
before.
And I think I've mentioned in previous episodes, because this
isn't the 1st episode we've recorded since I've listened to
Jubilee, I think he benefits enormously from being up against
Evelyn Smythe, who is a really, really great character.
It took me a little while to warm to her.
I think she's a little bit staging, a sort of very talky initial
scene at the beginning of this story, but she settles down.
She's really good and she just can't be bullied by the 6th doctor
and the 6th doctor isn't mean to her.
And this is clearly set at a time after the 6 doctor has kind of
settled down and stopped being quite so obnoxious.
And so you get to see Colin at his best when he's being funny.
You know, he's almost immediately wrong about things.
You know, the TARDIS suffers this malfunction, which causes the
entire problem.
And, you know, he dismisses it and gets it wrong.
And I think that he really benefits from that and she's a really
great character and a sort of shame that it would literally be
impossible to conceive of her as a companion on television.
Did that put you off listening to this or like initially, did you
find it hard to break into that having never listened to any of
her introductory stories?
Yeah, I had never heard her before, but because Jubilee has such a
reputation.
You know, I was kind of happy to give it a listen.
And I was hugely impressed by it.
There are some really great performances, and I think this is
Martin Jarvis's best work. isn't it great?
Yeah, we need to cite Jarvis.
Yeah, so he's president of England.
Yeah, President Rochester and his real life wife, Rosalind Ayres
is Miriam Rochester.
So they're a real couple.
Really?
Yeah.
And doesn't it show?
I imagine. they had a lot of fun.
Yes, you putrescent ugly cat bags.
I really am fantastically ugly.
Yes, you are.
I think Shiman is also riffing a bit on Mindwarp as well because
Rochester at one point takes the doctor aside and says to him, no
don't you realise everyone in the city's undermined control?
I'm not really like this.
I'm having to play along.
And then that whole thing comes around full circle. like no, he
really is insane.
But the lie he tells himself is that he's not insane.
I think there's a lot of Tony and Cherie in this as well.
Of course, because this was getting towards the end of Tony and
Cherie. very true.
At that moment that I'd forgotten about because I had heard this
before.
I re-listen to it for the podcast.
The bit I'd forgotten about when they're flying about in the Dalek
solar disc, the bit where Rochester says, oh, no, this, you know
all this rubble and damage isn't from the Daleks.
This is from us.
I'm like, oh, wow, you know, yeah, that's that's really quite
biting for now.
Yeah, well, in Sandra's review, take a drink.
He compares the fact that Rochester is spending money on the
Jubilee instead of providing housing.
He compares that to the Olympic Games, of course, in 2012, where
we have people on 0 hour contracts preparing for the games, money
being spent on the games, the whole of London being militarised
with missiles placed on the top of tower blocks and things like
that.
And the fact that this whole thing is a celebration of sort of
English imperialism, at the expense of the actual well-being of
the English people, and Rochester actually says they would much
prefer a big street party, though I'd much prefer a jubilee to
adequate housing.
And so there's something obviously about that sort of
neoliberalism thing and just the idea of using history and
patriotism in order to get people to ignore their own welfare
essentially.
And so we do get these giant crowds. the end, the whole thing
culminates, doesn't it, of the Jubilee, which is this massive
giant celebration of English nationalism.
It's very prescient for now, isn't it?
You could feel as if it was just made to shear or last year.
And June the 8th, well, no. how close it is.
Yes.
Did you find yourself comparing it to the episode on television
like trying to find similarities all the way through or did you
forget about that once you got into the story and that sort of
thing?
I pretty much think that after episode 2 where we really get to
see the Dalek and the doctor interact, there isn't actually much
in common between this and the actual story Dalek?
Because you've got less time in Dalek and because the job of Dalek
is to reintroduce the Daleks to a completely new audience.
And so Dalek is fairly simple.
It is just a dalek escaping a base and killing a whole bunch of
people.
Whereas here, it kind of relies on the fact that we know who the
Daleks are.
It also relies on in terms of Evelyn.
This is about Evelyn's, I don't know, 7th or 8th story.
She's already met the Daleks in her timeline.
So she still takes on the role that Rose would later take on of
saying, you know, this is a creature in pain, but she doesn't have
the naivety Rose has.
I'm not using naivety in the pejorative sense.
Rose literally doesn't know what the Daleks are capable of, whereas
Evelyn does, but at the same time she distinguishes that, hold on
this Dalek is very different to other Daleks, and she even pulls
the doctor up on it far more strictly than Rose does.
She says to the doctor, in that case, I cannot see the difference
between you.
Yeah, yeah, it's the you would make a good Dalek line from Dalek.
And in fact, that dalek does become a character and Nick Briggs
does just an incredible job.
Like, he really is a superb choice for the new series and for Big
Finish, as someone who does these monster voices, because I think
they introduce Davros in the 70s and keep him going in the 80s
because, generally speaking, the Daleks are sort of fairly boring
conversationalists.
But here, he's given a real character and all of that stuff about
needing orders and stuff, I guess, stays in in Dalek.
You know, he's been abandoned, he's got no sort of purpose.
And I guess we discover through his complete lack of purpose that
in a sense, the Daleks don't make any sense as a threat because
they define themselves against the other.
Their whole purpose is to destroy everyone else.
And so once they've done that, the only thing that they can do is
invent another within their own ranks and fight against each other
until there's literally only one left.
And what's the point of that?
And I guess that that is supposed to be a commentary on the humans
themselves.
I mean, the doctor tells this story about this sort of warlike
race of people who fight until everyone's sort of eliminated, and
he's giving that as a big speech at the Jubilee, and we're all
supposed to think he means the Daleks, but he doesn't.
He means the English Empire.
He means the human race.
Speaking of that, Ross, with all the lines in the beginning about
the prisoner in the wheelchair in the tower.
Now you hadn't heard this before.
I did actually know this though.
I had been spoiled.
So that is another doctor, the doctor from 1903, who had gone back
in time and he'd been captured and horribly mutilated and stuffed
in the tower for 100 years.
And Colin gets to do some proper acting.
You know, he's not normally called upon to be anything other than
himself sort of slightly louder.
And I think he's really good there.
But I think that's one of the strengths of big finish and
certainly their vision and Gary Russell is that they wanted to
regenerate this doctor in the eyes of fandom and really change the
character or give common, you know, different things to do to show
what he could do, which, as we've discussed, you know, behind the
scenes stuff on the show, just never really gave him that
opportunity fully.
Well, I think this is the best Colin story that I've seen or
heard.
I think it's certainly better than anything that made it to
television.
It's much more complicated and much more interesting.
While still being sort of camp and silly and funny.
But funny in a way that's increasingly unpleasant, you know, and
difficult to tolerate.
Yes.
Well, the poor little people in the Daleks, especially the one
from America who doesn't fit.
Yeah, so what he saws his arm off or something.
Yeah.
So he fits in the dalek.
Like all of that stuff is gross and black comedy, but it's black
comedy that's actually done well as opposed to the sort of black
comedy that Seward does, which is kind of not very sophisticated.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, that's the thing, because especially when Rochester does
cut off that guy's hand, his immediate reactions doctor is, just
saying, no, remember, I'm not actually evil.
I'm just pretending, the doctor's like, no, you just chopped off
someone's head.
That's evil.
You keep that in mind, Nathan.
Yeah, sorry.
I won't do it again Something I love about that old doctor in the
wheelchair scene is Colin has that rare talent in an actor where
you know, you've got the whole storytelling thing of show don't
tell.
But in about 30 seconds, the doctor tells us what he suffered in
the last 100 years.
And I think the most affecting part is when he talks about how
Evelyn died, his version of evil and died.
And he just has that line of I had your bones to talk to, but then
they took them away.
And, you know, it's like one of those things of, you know, write a
sad story in 10 words kind of thing.
But it's just the way that he says it, not exactly without emotion
but without an extreme of emotion.
You know, he's all cried out.
He's not gone insane, but he's just like, he's done.
He's just done.
He's resigned to it.
And then his scene with the Dalek at his dare.
I mean, I can just imagine Colin going, hey, I get to die as the
doctor and keep going all in the one script.
We all love a good death scene. dear listener.
We just recorded our time incorporated, and I think Nathan and
Todd had the most amount of fun when I told them they had to
grapple in the time vent and scream at each other.
Yeah, no, we've already arranged a date to reenact that. much like
this podcast, indeed.
There's a lots of cod Shakespeare in this too, which is also
something that Rodri Schimman does really nicely.
So, you know, they are, as Cherie and Tony were, the current Lord
and Lady Macbeth.
Yes exactly.
Well, and she's sort of fabulously scheming too, Miriam is really
really terrifically good.
Is Miriam our favourite big finish, naughty girl?
I think she might be one of them.
She is really terrific.
So there's even that very opening scene and it's not entirely
clear what's going on.
But they're playing naughty sort of games with each other and
contracting their words.
So they're saying isn't mustn't to each other.
And Rochester slaps her.
Then we discover that she's actually plotting against him and we
think, you know, the slaps. absolutely fantastic.
Yeah, and but the reason is, no, she's even more evil than him.
Yeah, yeah, because she doesn't believe that she's doing this
because she has to hide the fact that she's a good person.
No, she's like, no, we want revolution.
Well, in fact, the slab, which is meant to be a signifier that
Rochester's evil and that she isn't.
Her actual objection is that the slap wasn't hard enough and that
he never once broke her skin.
And this is a world where women are sort of subjugated and
relegated to 2nd class status and where foreigners aren't allowed
into the country and once you leave the country, you're not
allowed back.
And, you know, it's really, it's a really, really gruesome
dystopia.
And it's kind of funny that the doctor doesn't kind of remark upon
it initially and it's not entirely clear how it's arisen.
And so for a while, we think that this is what the world is like.
And apparently, Schumann had wanted big finish to actually leave
this world in place and maybe go back and revisit it.
And I've read a comment on Santa's blog by him where he actually
says that he thinks that episode 4 is a bit talky and doesn't
quite work.
And that's partly because Big Finish wouldn't let him keep this as
the status quo and everything had to sort of revert back to normal
at the end.
So it is really kind of dark and I really, really like the
alternative creepy, horrific world that it creates. alternative
anymore, is it?
Well, I think that that's the point of alternative worlds, isn't
it?
You know, a lot of science fiction set in the future is actually
just set in the present day.
British asset. specialised on in that since before the war.
And it's not just Orwell and Huxley.
We've had so many of them doing this.
All the great writers have looked at it.
We're just getting closer.
Well, in fact, there's an adaptation on American television at the
moment of Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's tab.
I was just thinking of Handmaid's Total when we were talking about
Miriam.
Yeah, it's very close.
Well, that's about the present.
You know, that's not about a speculative future. about how women
are treated now.
And I think this sort of strain of English fascism has sort of
been present in Britain for, you know, decades and decades.
And so the doctor's done something that really unleashes it here.
So from an alternative present to a rather distorted version of
the past, it's Doctor Who and the Pirates.
Was this your choice, Brendan?
This was my choice, and why did you choose this one?
Apart from being able to go...
Um, there's a few reasons I chose this one.
One of them, of course, is Billy...
Bill Ody is the... playing Bill Ody.
But also, you know, Bill Oddie, famous for being in the goodies
comedian, you don't expect him to play a villain and he's funny
and chilly in this story.
It bookends nicely with the previous story, doesn't it?
Because you're not quite sure which side the villains are and then
are they as, ooh, they are.
Ooh.
Oh, I also enjoy the story because it works on a few levels.
So the story starts with evil and visiting one of her old students
who is quite upset about something.
So Evelyn starts telling her the story of when she and the doctor
met some pirates.
She's rescued her from the chip vat, hasn't she?
Down in the uni canteen.
That's right, yes.
Yeah, it is a bit Bill, isn't it?
Yeah, and so starts telling her the story.
And Sally, this girl who...
It's Helen playing the part again.
Helen Goldwin.
She's so good, yeah.
And for a moment I thought, oh, is this Sally who later turns up
as a companion to the 7th doctor, but no, it isn't.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
So Evelyn's telling the story.
And the great thing is all the way through part one, Sally's
breaking in with, hold on. no that doesn't make any sense.
I think in the story, like Evelyn Gibbs, Bilotti's character, 2
peg legs and hooks for hands.
And it's kind of like, well, how does he walk?
How did he draw a sword, you know, and she complains that all of
the pirate tropes are actually sort of historically inaccurate.
Yeah, and all the pirates are called Bill Billson and John Johnson
and they all, but they all sound the same.
You've already done that.
Remind me, who wrote this one again?
This one was written by Jacqueline Rayner, who also created Evelyn
and she Jack Rayner does a fantastic job with historical.
She's great with sci-fi as well.
She's got a good blog too.
And she also writes wrote that page in Doctor Who magazine for
ages.
Yeah, about introducing her children, Doctor Who, which is so
lovely and heartwalling and you get you get things in there like
they're watching time flight or time lash and really loving it and
enjoying it, you know, that sort of thing.
So we have a level of artifice in this story because it's evil and
elated the doctor telling Sally.
This story about meeting up with pirates.
It's funny too, isn't it?
Because the whole thing is a very definite short story kind of
premise.
You know, it's the evening, the doctor and and Evelyn turn up to
tell a story to Sally and they resolve something in Sally's life
by doing it.
And it's not entirely clear that the pirate story is going to
matter or indeed go anywhere.
But that story really develops and becomes engaging.
At the end of episode one.
I think at one point in episode one, there's some throwaway line
from someone suggesting that the story actually doesn't matter or
there isn't really a proper story or anything like that.
And I found myself a little bit irritated by the inset story while
still enjoying the framing story, but that inset story actually
becomes quite compelling, I think.
Yeah, yeah.
It does become compelling.
And again, it kind of becomes compelling almost entirely because
of Maggie Stables as Evelyn.
You know, the doctor's companions are always the human touch and
identifying the human emotion, and Evelyn is so incredibly human.
You know, she tries to stop the pirates fighting by giving them
all a piece of dairy milk.
Only she could do that.
Exactly.
And she's like one for you and one for you and one for you.
But then Red Jasper jumps across to a pirate who's contradicted
him just before that and rips out his tongue anyway.
You know, we have this combination of Evelyn's great humanity and
jolly hockey sticks kind of attitude, counterpointed with this
extreme and possibly historically accurate violence and punishment
and torture.
And we also get the sense that we're not sure where the story ends
and the truth begins and not to preempt, but at the end, it seems
that all of these things were in part way true.
Yeah, absolutely.
And yeah, as the story goes on, we discovered that something has
happened in Sally's life and she's been responsible for someone's
death, which is why Evelyn has come to see her and Evelyn starts
to imply that she knows what that's like and she's like, no, sorry
look, I can't tell any more of this story.
And so the doctor says, I think you need cheering up and says, how
about a musical?
The cliffhanger team. going to sing.
That's the cliffhang of the episode too.
And it is it is Colin going, oh, and the cliffhanger cuts in.
And the weird thing is with the music and I don't know if it just
takes some getting used to, but at the beginning, the musical is
just bloody horrible.
It is Colin very cleverly, Segigo, a rewrite of, I am a very model
of a modern major general.
Well, in fact, most of the songs are taken from Pirates of
Penzance, but there is also...
There's a bit of pinafore in there as well.
Because they had been talking about Gilbert and Sullivan
beforehand in the plot.
But the songs, I think, become very good.
There's one occasion where Sally starts singing in the present day
which is a ballad and that intertwines with the stuff from the
pirate ship.
In fact, I think that that's terrifically clever because the only
reason the pirates are singing is because Evelyn and the doctor
are telling the story in that way.
But suddenly in the real world, in the framing story.
She starts to sing to express her emotions as well.
So that artifice leaks into the framing story, which I think is
terrifically clever.
And that's really where we discover that what Evelyn wants to do
is actually try and persuade Sally not to kill herself in remorse
at the death that she's caused.
And one of the ways she does that is, of course, showing that
she's in the same position, but is still managing to live on
despite her own loss and her own feelings of guilt and
responsibility.
Yeah.
I think it's one of the things I really like about these audios is
that it allows original series actors and their doctors to
actually be able to be put into a more modern day context and be
given these really heavier plots or, you know, stopping her
killing herself is something that we see on television today.
Whereas back in, you know, 1986 or whatever, these things weren't
really explored with any complexity.
That's one of the things that I like in these audios that you can
actually go there with the cast and see how it all develops.
Yeah, absolutely.
And as you say, there's some real modern kind of storytelling
here.
Not only with kind of the 4th wall breaking, but particularly when
Jasper starts to kill Jem, the character who's sort of become
Evelyn's companion during this.
He the cabin boy of the ship that the pirates rob, and he's
resourceful and plucky and charming and sweet.
Exactly.
And unwittingly, he knows where the treasure Jasper is looking for
is, but he doesn't know that he knows.
So when Jasper's asking for information, he can't tell.
And that's when Evelyn says, look, I can't tell any more of this.
And when we see Evelyn again, it's already too late and we get a
beautiful scene between her and Colin, where there's hardly even
any words, it's just the sounds the actors are making.
And it's shortly before then that instead of poking holes in the
story.
Whenever we cut back to Sally, she's saying, but what about this?
And what about that?
You know, she's like a five-year-old kid wanting more
information.
And it kind of proves where Eric Sayward was on a bit of a false
premise in this era of the show, where he's talking about, you
know, in order for violence to be effective, you must, you know
you must show the blood.
And it's like, not really.
You know, the violence there is effective, not because we don't
show the blood.
It's because we show the human reaction afterwards.
And not only that, it's also not a gratuitous death because Evelyn
is able to...
I hate to use the word use, but Evelyn is able to show the other
pirates and sailors, look, this is what's happened to Jen.
This is what it will happen to all of you.
This guy doesn't care about you.
We're giving you a chance to escape.
So he doesn't die in vain in a way because all those other lives
are saved, which is a very modern Doctor Who thing as well.
But it's not just those lives that are saved, but Sally's life
that's saved as well.
It's that death that enables her to connect with Sally and really
reach her.
And I think that's really good.
You know, there's, there are superficial things about the big
finish audios, like the 4 episode structure and all of that sort
of thing, which just makes it seem like they're there for sort of
fanboys to kind of slot chronologically into their appropriate
spots.
But here I think it uses that episode structure and really kind of
subverts it.
It does something that Doctor Who could never, ever, possibly have
done during Holland Baker's era or indeed during the entire
classic series.
Yeah, and I love how it takes, you know, we've always said, and
fans always say, the 3rd episode is run around, get captured and
talk in lots of corridors.
So it kind of goes, right, if the plot never advances in episode 3
anyway, We'll make that into a musical where, you know, the doctor
drinks a sailor under the table and throws him overboard.
Yeah, it's just the plot doesn't really go anywhere in that
episode.
But hey, who cares?
It's using an otherwise useless part of the story in an
interesting way.
Yeah, and then we get the beautiful ending where the thing is, evil
and doesn't kind of say to Sally, this is what I think you should
do.
Evelyn just says, look, that's the end of the story.
I don't know if it helped and maybe it was the wrong story to
tell.
But by then it's morning.
And I think it's really very sweet.
This is a historical story.
I think that really benefits from not having any pteroreptils in
it.
That's a first.
Well, after all, that sadness and death, I think it's time to pop
down to the great plaza of Generios for a party in the one
doctor.
I approach this a bit differently from everybody else.
In terms of, although we've been talking about go and listen to
these things, I kind of think that some of our listeners won't
because they're not into audio.
They might only like Doctor Who on screen.
They're very busy people too, I think, Todd generally.
That's right.
And very attractive people, which has to be said.
So fun at parties.
So I just want to say, I'm not a big fan of Doctor Who in other
mediums other than what we see on the screen.
I'm not into the books.
I find after a while with reading the books when they start
introducing you characters.
I lose interest because I can't visualise them.
They're not real people that I've seen on screen.
I'm not into comics, so that means nothing to me.
And so I like the Doctor 2 movies.
They a bit of fun.
But when it comes to audio, I guess, you know, we've got missing
episodes of Doctor Who, which we can only now hear on audio.
So for this, I thought, well, I wanted to try and appeal to
perhaps those of you out there who don't particularly like other
mediums, but might be prepared to listen to the actual original
stars of the show.
And so when I chose this, I basically said, well, I'm not going to
choose Evelyn, who I really love and think is fantastic.
So the choice was either Perry or Mel.
And of course, Perry has got so many audios with not only the 6
doctor, but the 5th doctor, so I thought, well, I'm going to go
with Mel.
Now, if you've been listening to the podcast, you know that I'm
not a huge fan of Mel, and I do prefer her with the 6th doctor
over the 7th doctor.
So when coming to this, I think in deciding to do the one doctor, I
thought, well, let's have a look at the entire range, and I
decided that I wanted to actually go with the very 1st one that
they've recorded together, right?
And this is fairly early on in the big finish range.
Bonnie's only done one before this, the fires of Vulcan with
Sylvester, which is, I think, number 12 in the range.
This the one doctor is number 27.
So it's still very early on.
I personally think that big finish are fairly variable in their
1st 50 to 60 titles.
But the titles that actually do work are actually all the
Collins.
Later on now, I think they work really well with all the doctors
and have really honed the companions and the doctors and getting
strips that work.
But at this point in time, for me, like 90% of the colon or the 6
doctor scripts work.
So anyone I don't particularly warm to is probably, I think, the
1st one, which is the whispers of terror with Perry.
So anyway, so I decided to go with Mel.
Now, for me to choose Mel, I think does say something about the
big finish audios.
I don't buy all the audios anymore, and really, for me, the
pinnacle of the audios are the 6 doctor and Eve.
The only other ones that I will always buy.
Are the 6 Dr. Mel or the 7th Dr. Mel.
Wow.
And what's the one and of course, the common factor there is Mel.
And I just think Bonnie Langford is absolutely brilliant in the
audios.
Not only her performance.
But like the rehabilitation they've done at the 6th doctor, they
finish do the same thing here with Mel.
Bonnie's allowed to use her own intelligence in the part and
actually, and therefore flesh out a character that really wasn't
much more than a daisy duck without the bustle.
Yeah, no, it was just getting Bonnie in.
That is a costume, Brendan. looking at you.
Yeah.
But you see, this chronologically is the 1st one that she does
with the 6th doctor.
It's a damn good one too.
I agree.
And I think one of the things here is that they actually allow
light and shade. when he gives it light and shade.
She's still plucky.
I've actually just watched Time and the Rani, and one of the
biggest problems is that Mel screams and is given just terrible
dialogue that Bonnie has to contend with.
And I actually now appreciate what she's trying to do. in that
performance.
And here, she's given much better dialogue.
And the character can actually make fun of herself.
And that's one of the strengths, I think of this one doctor story
is that if you've been listening to the range so far, you would
already be in the mode of the new 6 doctor, right?
So you already know what he's going to be like.
But here with Mel, it's sort of like, well, is she going to be
like she is on screen?
One of the things I just enjoys the fact that she can be earnest
and forthright and, you know, is going to succeed.
But at the same time, she can rid the doctor, the doctor can rib
her, she can make fun of herself, and that's throughout this
entire script.
Now, this script is by Clayton Hickman and Gareth Roberts.
And Gareth, of course, has written a number of stories on screen
such as The Shakespeare code, the lodger, closing time, Unicorn
and the Wasp.
And there's a lot of comedy in those.
And I like comedy in Doctor Who.
And this is like their Christmas special.
It's also fairly early on in the range in that all the doctors are
still using the pert we Tom Baker theme in their 4 episode
format.
They haven't done all the individual titles.
So if you're listening to this for the 1st time, you'll get what
you think is the wrong title sequence, but just... didn't have the
rights at that time.
But just listen for...
I think it's episode three.
And that's all.
It's a carnival, isn't it?
wonderful.
That's all I say.
Okay, so that's why I chose this.
I mean, that's very long winded, but, you know, I wanted, I
absolutely adore Bonnie Langford.
So the story, the doctor and his companion, Sally Ann, have just
defeated the evil Skeloids on the planet of Generios, and they
couldn't possibly take payment, you know, for their services, but
they are going to.
Then the real doctor and Mel turn up and are suitably outraged by
Mel is certainly by this situation.
And uh, it gets more competitive because then some actual aliens
do turn up and want to, you know, destroy the 17 planets of
Generius or whatever it happens to be.
And this is where I think it gets really funny, is that I can just
imagine Gareth and Clayton, much like perhaps Nathan and Richard
having a few drinks one night and then deciding to get more and
more outrageous and then coming up with a way to sort of poke fun
at the show, but also refer back to things that they really do
like in terms of the show.
So they have to go on a quest. right?
A bit like the key to time, right?
To do a few different activities.
I actually think it's more like it's more like the keys of
mariners.
Oh, yes, actually, you're right.
With a nod to Douglas Adams.
But what's really wonderful is the fact that this fake doctor
played wonderfully by Christopher Biggins, right, takes an instant
shrine to Mel, like in a, yeah, in a way that, you know, Mel's got
to sort of, she likes him, but she's got to vend off his
advances.
It's very funny.
The doctor can't stand him, so there's this friction.
Likewise, Sally Ann finds the 6 doctors so attractive and, you
know, wants to get her on with him, much to the annoyance of Mel
right?
So this is just wonderful interplay between all of these
characters, like the opposites.
And then they've got to go off on their little separate missions.
And it's just, I just find it delicious.
I have to say that I think that the beginning part is stronger
than the rest of it.
And the best thing is, of course, the take that Christopher
Biggins's character who's called Banto, I think.
Banto Zane.
Yeah, and Sally Ann have, you know, and when the president of
Generios leaves the room, they start cracking open beers and kind
of snogging and stuff like that and all sorts of things that the
doctor and Mel would never do.
And all of that's really funny because you've got Colin Baker
who's a large sort of bombastic performance.
And then you've got Christopher Biggins, who is, of course, TV's
Nero from Claudius, and he's sort of famously Anto.
Yeah, yeah, huge Enpanto.
And so you've got 2 characters, both Mel and Colin Baker's doctor
are big.
And so Christopher Biggins and Sally Ann.
But after that, I do think it gets a little bit tiresome because
they do head off and their quest involves some fairly kind of some
fairly kind of generic satire.
Do you know what I mean?
Like IKEA furniture.
Gosh, is an IKEA furniture hard to assemble?
Let's make a cliffhanger about that.
Yeah, or when you're waiting for a delivery, you get given this
like 4 hour time window and the moment you nip out for a sliced
loaf, that's when they come and deliver.
And those are sort of fairly well-worn kind of observations.
And they're sort of charmingly done and there's some wonderful
sort of fun performances, but the things themselves are just a
little bit kind of predictable.
Yeah, I do think, though, that just sort of gives more strength to
the performances.
Like, um, spoiler alert, the IKEA furniture bit, that's something
Mel and Banto have to do, the fake doctor played by Biggins.
And there's a bit where Banto wants to give up and Mel gives this
really stirring speech about how she never gives up on anything
and she tells a story about her childhood.
And I won't spoil it, but there's a bit at the end of that, that
it takes a turn.
You just don't expect from Mel and it's just really, really
funny.
Similarly, the doctor and Sally Ann, like you said, Todd, she
can't keep her hands off him and the doctor's just a mixture of
annoyed and confused by this.
Like what on earth is going on, but again, that's something that
pays off at the end of the story, again, in a way I won't
explain.
See, I like, I really like the whole IKEA furniture thing with the
dissemblers, because the dissembler, they remind me of the stones
of blood and the Megara, the justice machines and like, you know
Mel and Banto are, you know, up against it with this IKEA
furniture and their their instructions and they're going to be
dissembled if they spoil alert, don't finish it.
But she's also having to fend off his advances at the same time.
I just keep laughing and laughing.
And their solution to that problem is actually genius.
It is genius.
This was recorded, I think, in 2001.
So it's 16 years ago.
This is before the new series.
And so the doctor and Sally Anne have stumbled upon this quiz show
which is sort of like the weakest link.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's got this super brain.
Mentos is the super brain.
Yes, it's plain toss. sometimes.
But I kind of think, well, okay, so they're sending up not only
the weakest link, but also their super brain is sort of like Aurak
from Blake 7.
And of course, you know, the whole thing with the 6 doctor
thinking, you know, he's going to get it right, but of course, he
doesn't.
And, you know, Collins sort of the sort of fumbling around and
sort of the embarrassment at that.
But then giving Sally Anne the opportunity to actually solve that
problem.
Is I just...
One Essex way.
Do you love the name check of Sally Anne as well?
Do you remember the math show in the mid 70s that some of us were
forced to watch?
It is on YouTube, and there's the phonus, and there's some bloke
in a sort of really roony-oed version of, what's his name, who
does all the Dead Ringers audio?
Yes, a really many times a roonyoed version of John Colshaw, as
Tom.
And he's a companion is Sally Ann with the little bobbles in her
hair and being just as plucky and annoying as we loved it.
It was so exciting to see Pastasia Doctor Who in school in the
70s.
But now they've done her as an Essex character, and she's really
nicely foreshadows the character of Rose.
I do agree with you, Nathan, that I think the last segment with
the Jelloid is the weakest of the three.
And you know who's the Jelloid is.
The geloid is Matt Lucas, who, of course, plays Nadol in the
current series of Doctor Who.
He's also the voice, I think, of the actual aliens that are going
to destroy the system.
It's a great voice too.
And that Jelloid character is really funny and terribly sweet.
It reminds me of, um, there's a Futurama episode where they go to
planet that's all sand.
Yeah, the creature from the pig.
And I think fry drinks, like there's a glass and drinks the king
whereas this is sort of in reverse.
Like, so it is, I do find that quite funny, but I do think it does
run out of steam in that sense.
I just think for people out there who perhaps aren't into audio
and not even necessarily into Mel.
I think this is a really good example of how the characters can be
regenerated or rehabilitated.
And if you like a bit of offbeat humour like I do, then it's not
too heavy and you can, and if you're willing to go with it sending
up things, but in a fun way, I think, you know, it's a great
enjoyable hour of your time or hour and a half of your time.
Now, before we go on to our last story, Todd is going to leave us
because we're discussing a story called The Brink of Death, which
is part of a 4 story box set called The Last Adventure, which has
4 adventures featuring Collins Doctor, the last one of which is
the Brink of Death, which finally, with Colin in the role and
performing it, shows the events leading up to his regeneration.
Now, Todd, last time we were talking recording, you actually told
me why you didn't want to stick around for this one and I thought
it was a really lovely thing to say.
So would you mind telling the listeners?
I don't want to actually listen to this until such time.
And so such time when we can't record any more stories with this
doctor.
If people understand what I'm saying there.
There will come a time when Big Finish won't be able to have the
previous doctors working.
So I actually want to leave this until that time.
Like, this is the end of that, and that will be the end for me.
I listen to everything else, but I'm just, at the moment, I'm just
decided that I'm just going to wait, you know, another 15 years
before I actually, you know, listen to it.
So, Todd has stepped out, and we're going to discuss the brink of
death, which...
I think we should talk about him, actually.
Well, that's really what this episode is actually all about.
It's Todd.
That's right.
I get where Todd's coming from and I kind of like to put them in
order of listening.
I just have to throw this in.
I know I've said it before, probably.
Audio is my prime favourite way of experiencing Doctor Who, and it
came about through the missing episodes of the Hartnell and
Troutens, which I love more than watching them on television, even
the rediscovered ones.
Webber fears a lot more exciting when you don't know what it looks
like or how when it drags, you've just got the musical cues.
Doctor Who works best in a dreamlike state, like a lot of good
cinema, there's that suspension when you're in the dark room and
you're, there isn't any other interference.
I just think it's a purer way of presenting the narrative.
I think this really takes advantage of the medium as well.
Really does.
It's a great little piece.
They're 4 little set pieces.
They need to be heard all together, as we were saying, Brink of
Death is just the final of the four.
We get back all the surviving companions, extraordinary that even
in the audio period that makes it really salient, what Todd's
saying.
We've lost Maggie Stables.
So of course she doesn't get a chance to do this.
We have the fantastic Miranda raisin with 2 L's and no wine.
You know, it was Tallula in Daleks in Manhattan, who's now the new
companion.
And that's who we thought, I 1st thought, well, we should go with
her because she's just so fun and she's a Bletchley Park girl and
all the rest.
So we get to meet her.
We get some lovely moments and some clever things and I want, if
you haven't, I don't know, it's hard to talk about something in
case the listener hasn't listened to it.
So we'll just assume you have.
Yeah, I think now, I think, you know, this episode is going to go
out with a spoiler warning.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They all should.
But I really recommend.
I, as I said to you, I couldn't do the wrap-up thing because I
hadn't been able to get through Collins era and I couldn't in the
80s and I really can't now.
But I love him in the audios.
And so for me, this doctor exists in the audios, much more than he
does on TV.
I think the advantage of this particular story, the brink of death
is that instead of trying to be a four-part traditional Doctor Who
story, it frees itself up by just being an hour long.
And a lot of it isn't set in any kind of real place.
I think it is very, very clever.
Set in Sapphire and Steelland for the 1st episode, isn't it?
Very much so.
Oh, yeah.
But we didn't want to talk about the other stories, do we?
We should talk about this one.
Quick rundown of the other stories.
The 1st one with Miranda Raison is Constance Clark, as you said, is
the end of the line, which is set in a sort of weird netherworld
railway station.
The 2nd episode, the red house is on a planet of werewolves with
India Fisher as Charlie Pollard, and the 3rd episode stage fright
features Jago and Lightfoot.
And the audio companion flip.
Yes.
But linking all 4 stories is...
Yes, so the Valley Yard appears.
Our own Nathan.
Well, I say all four.
The Valiard appears in he's sort of pressaged in the 1st three and
then it appears in the last three.
So it doesn't appear in the first.
Michael Jason is so fabulous in this too, listening to him again.
Have you ever heard him on BBC 4 reading Rogue Male Jeffrey
Household thriller?
Written before, Hitler came to prominence, but about a single X
Soldiers game to assassinate Hitler?
And it's so true of people who've lived in the trenches and
because this man spends most of his time literally in a burrow in
this novel and chased and is just, anyway, everything he brings to
it is fantastic.
So, of course, it just works so much better in this one.
There's a really clever ways that they play with the threat of
losing tenure of losing life and it almost happens and then it
almost happens.
And then Colin just deals with it in the most beautiful way that
the doctor should do.
And it's a very current series way of you give up your life for a
friend.
It explains the opening of time in the Rani, which you would have
assumed would be inexplicable beautifully.
It really does a very good job of that, I think.
It's really nice.
It's satisfying.
It also gives Colin something really interesting to do because
what happens at the very beginning is, you know, the Valiard and
the doctor change places kind of inexplicably.
And for a 2nd it's hard to work out what's going on, whether we
hear Michael Jason's voice so that we know that it's the Valiard
because it's audio, but Mel is seeing the 6th doctor, but it does
actually turn out that they've swapped places and now thinks that
Jason is the doctor.
And it's a doctor.
Exactly.
It works beautifully in audio and couldn't work in any other
medium.
And also, you get this exciting here.
What were the value I'd have been like, had he been able to have a
life outside trial and be, of course, he's wonderful and much more
horrid than the master could have ever managed.
Yeah, yeah.
And I love Jason and Bonnie together.
Yes, they're great.
Because the weird thing is, Bonnie Asmel is still sort of bright
and bubbly and what have you.
And Michael Jason. his line's on paper.
He's been quite charming and what not, but just the way he
delivers them behind every line is, I'm going to kick you out of
the 1st airlock combined with no one else around.
Miss Bush.
Yeah, it's nice he keeps calling her my dear.
Okay, kind of old-fashioned doctor.
But in the meantime, Colin is like this weird, you know, for...
His shadow of his former self.
In fact, it's the hiatus colin, isn't it?
I'm just trapped in this non-reality on hold.
I might not even exist or you won't, actually.
You've got 6 minutes.
Yeah, and that's that's why it's called the brink of death.
You know he's constantly just a moment away from death.
And we have a lovely new Scousey companion, don't we?
wonderful, isn't she?
Janesta.
She's a uh, a time-lord technician or a galifrain technician who
spent some time like in Birmingham or something.
And she's really, really funny.
And the doctor doesn't have to explain to her any of his earth
idioms or anything like that.
Rodan all the time, wasn't she?
Not the chompy monster, but the other chompy monster for invasion
of time.
And if you're familiar with Big Finish, you kind of know that this
situation could lead to her becoming a companion.
So when spoiler alert, she's revealed to have either been taken
over by the valiard or to have been the valiard all the time.
It quite affecting. awful.
What I find really strange is something we've criticised the
Davison and Colin Baker era a lot for is, you know, whenever they
want the villain to get a bit further ahead in the plot, they just
lock the doctor in a room for a while.
Yes.
It's like Nick Briggs has said, right, well, you know, I'm writing
for a particular era and that's something that happens in this
era.
How can I make it interesting?
And he makes it interesting by still giving the doctor a
difficulty to overcome, which is in convincing Janesta to help him
when he has so little time and then concocting a plan, despite the
fact he can't physically influence the universe using what's at
his disposal.
And it really emphasises the best part of Collin's interpretation
of the character, which is the doctor's mind, his intelligence and
his vocabulary.
So it's like, let's just give him those things and see him work
his way out of it.
I think Briggs also does something that this era of the program
does that I don't like quite so much.
And I guess it is kind of slightly unavoidable given who the
Valiard is and what the conception of his character is.
And that is that the resolution all becomes about the matrix and
symbiotic nuclei and all of those kinds of time, laudy
horrible...
Well, and you know, the Valiard has given an explanation, which is
pretty...
I like the explanation.
No, I like that he has a reason.
He's not a midi-chlorian. not that bad.
No, it is pretty bad, though.
I liked it.
Because that wasn't one of the most unsatisfying things for me
this era of Doctor Who and why I didn't watch much of it.
It just none of it made sense.
It's all a bit too time-lordy, I think.
And yeah, I know.
If you're going to do it, do it in this story, but I've already
said that I really hate the Time Lords, and I'm glad Russell
killed them all.
And so, you know, I don't think you can have an audio where it
isn't all word peril from beginning to end, can you?
Because it's an audio, but it is very word parole.
You see, I quite like the whole thing of, you know, it's the
Matrix and it wrestle on imprimatches and that sort of thing
because it retroactively creates a story arc for the era that ties
together season 22, 23 and the audios.
I agree with you that it's continuity heavy, but big finish for
the last, they're coming up on 20 years, producing Doctor Who
plays.
They have sought to redress that failing in the colon era of too
much reliance on continuity.
And I think this is an effort by them to say, okay, we're
honouring what we did, but at the same time, we're not ignoring
what happened on TV.
So it's like, how can we smush those together?
And also, it's a matter of the only people who are really
interested in, oh yeah, but how did the 6 doctor regenerate, are
people who are going to know what a megabyte modem is and a
particle disseminator and a time vent?
It's okay to include all those.
Bloody time vent. gets you every time, doesn't it?
Oh, we prime the bolts, you know.
So it does do one thing which I do think is amazing where it does
turn.
Colin just accidentally hitting his head on the console and
falling over into the doctor sacrificing his life to save the
entirety of the universe and the time lords and everything.
By giving the console a Liverpool case.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. that is really terrific.
And I think I think it was a brave idea to have, you know, the
last half of the audio, have the 6 doctor played by Sylvester
McCoy in a wig.
Spoilers.
You got a lovely little moment there with Silver, don't you?
I love this story.
Thank you, Brent, because Brennan was saying, no, you need to get
this one.
This is really good.
The last adventure is worth it.
And since he said that to me, I've actually been buying all of
them and I've been enjoying all of them.
Yeah, yeah.
I think when, and this is just a comment on the range in general.
When Nicholas Briggs took over as executive producer, there was a
run of maybe one or 2 years when things weren't bad, but there
were no real standouts.
That's correct.
There was none of the Baroque silliness that you were getting with
say, some of the stories we've discussed earlier, Todd's one
doctor, is a really great example, but we haven't had anything of
the level of Jubilee.
Yeah. or Holy Terror or what is the parts?
Bare parts is extraordinary.
But it's also that those riders have now gone on to bigger
things.
Yeah.
Whereas now they have been getting new writers in off the back of
things like the Lost Stories range.
And yeah, there's a lot more of variety now.
There is, there's so much.
In fact, it's really hard to keep up and it's expensive, but it is
worth it.
But yeah, I mean, really, there's any point you can jump in on
even, even that early sort of Briggs period, it's still good and
it's good.
And, you know, that's when they started, that's when they got
Janet Fielding back.
Oh, yes.
In fact, what a coup.
And our Tom.
Yeah, yeah.
Whoever thought that he would come back.
Yeah, and whoever thought that he'd be recording with Lala Ward
although they squeeze Tom into that old perspex octahedron that
they had to squeegee Billy out of, don't they, for when he's
recording with Lala?
not actually allowed to leave it.
Todd had been using that.
I hope they cleaned it first.
And he's back in the room?
I am here listeners.
Well, look, uh, Colin has recorded over 60 plays for next finish
as well as guest appearances in Jacob and Lightfoot, the Worlds of
Doctor Who, the Excelus Range...
Bag puss, rhubarb, and custards.
And weasel.
Well, and also including not as the doctor, sapphire and steel.
The Avengers where...
Game of Thrones version.
I, you know, I've been wrecking my brain and I've been trying to
think of a bad 6 doctor audio and I just can't think of that.
No, there aren't any.
Todd, are there?
Besides that one that I mentioned.
That one-ish.
Initial whispers of terracotta.
But yeah, the 1st few aren't that great.
But they're still not bad, but they're better than the ones around
them by the other doctors.
Yeah, they are actually, yes.
I agree with you. 95, 99% of the 6 doctor ones are actually
they're just written for him.
He knows how to play it from the get go with which companions, and
they just rehabilitate the entire character, if you don't like the
character from the series.
And whereas I think other doctors aren't as well catered for
initially, but as I said now, I think it's much more an even
playing field.
Yeah, or indeed, I think the big thing is, the reason we didn't do
Peter Davidson, one of the reasons we're not going to do a
Sylvester McCoy one is, well, we might, but we're not currently
planning to, is that... as good as they are.
There's not much in the audios that they didn't get a chance to do
on television.
Whereas, as you say, Collins audios are about rehabilitating the
character, redressing the kind of damage done to the character by
production decisions, whereas Pete's doctor and Silv's doctor
weren't as badly affected.
Yeah, they had stronger support behind the scenes as Connell was
pretty much by himself. exactly.
But they also get variation like in the show. like, you know, Peter
does do 3 years and Sylvester doesn't have a season of an
overarching one story, basically.
Yeah, yeah.
So that's the main reason that we thought we definitely had to
focus on a make a big finish special because he has worked so very
hard to create this new characterisation of the doctor.
And it's really good, even if you don't check out the fall we've
talked about today.
All of the ones he did up to the 50th big finish story, they're $3
to download.
So do go and check them out.
In the meantime, you can find us online at Flight Through Entirety
sexy, Flight Through Entirety on Facebook, Apple Podcasts, and
Google Play and at FTE Podcasts on Twitter.
Don't forget, you can vote in our Tom Baker commentary, and the 4
options are the hand of fear, the sun makers, the stones of blood
and the horns of Nimon.
You can find a link to the poll in the show notes and also at
flightthrough entirety.sexy.
Over on Bondfinger.
We've recently completed the Timothy Dalton era of James Bond.
We may even have started on Pierce Legs.
Brosnan by this point.
You can find that at Bondfinger.com, Bondfinger on Facebook, Apple
Podcasts, and Google Play, and Bondfingercast on Twitter.
Until next time, may none of you hit your heads on the console.
Thank you very much for listening good night.
Good night.
See you soon.
Good, everyone.
That was Flight Through Entirety, starring Todd Beelby, Nathan
Bottomley, Brandon Jones, and Richard Stone.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lann.
This episode, rehabilitation, was recorded on the 23rd of April
2017.
The next episode will be released on the 11th of June.
FDE productions are proud to announce a new range of full cast
audio dramas, including the Doctor Who Technical Manual, Travels
Without the TARDIS, and the Pit by Neil Penswick.
This is my final recording with the team.
Joking.
Okay.
Don't do it again, Tom.
That was magic.
What are you talking about, Richard?
Don't spoil it.
It's you don't know when you used to come in and do your sound
segues.
And I said once that you were floating in that, and then it became
the meme and then he stuck the little tinkleation music over you.
Is Tom doing that, has he?
No, that's how that's the only way they could actually get Lana
into the room.
That's right The first, he won't allow her to record with him
because he's too old in his words.
Not quite, but I don't think they're actually, when the 1st ones
they were doing, they weren't in the room together, were they?
They weren't in the studio together.
Yeah, different days.
Are they still doing them that way?
believe so.
Wow.
She looks really well.
He's fine with, like, they're okay.
Like they're okay, but he doesn't want her to see him as an old
man.
No.
He could watch.
Day of the Doctor.
Yeah, basically that's in tailor. not recording them at the same
time.
Good God.
Wibbly wobbly.
I'd also heard that he gets to the studio 1st and sneaks into one
of the booths and insists that she's putting a booth where she has
no eyeline with him.
Rubs himself all over it.
So I have heard that for some of them they've been in the studio
together and talking, but he's just like, no, don't let her see
me.
God, that's fantastic.
He's like Shara's Jack.
They're doing feud next year.
Did you hear?
Yeah, shooting that.
With Tom Baker and Lala Ward season 18.
You know that actually feud is as a concept going to go on with
other stories.
Yeah, this is only the 1st one.
Charles and Diana.
Yeah, Tom and Lala.
David Nathan Turner.
Yeah, Tom and Lala.
Yeah, yeah.
No, truly.
Charles and Diana are the next one, yeah. and everyone else.
I was going to say John Wiles, but hey, Janet and Liz.
Janet and everyone else except for Todd, whom she loves.
Deny that. really love Janet.
I think we should do it, Janet season. talk about Janet.
Christopher Eccles doing Keith Boke.
Christopher Eccleston and eventually everybody's in the
production.
Except for Camille. we still here?
Yeah, okay.