Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to Flight through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast who's bumped our heads on the console
and now I'm Bonnie Langford.
I'm Michael Jason.
And I've noticed that all occursions are wearing Colin Baker's
trousers.
We are back with season 24 and it's time for time in the Rani.
Now, uh, before we make a start, Richard, two weeks ago, when...
That long, dude, when we had our Colin Baker retrospective, Todd
spent a few minutes just commenting on his general thoughts of the
Sylvester McCoy era because he's not joining us again until
survival.
Do you have any...
He's not allowed to market.
Do you have any comments, general comments on the Colin Baker era
before we start serving?
I did manage.
Thank you so much, Brendan, for lending me your intimate box set
of season 22.
I did manage to get through almost half. the entire thing.
I don't really have anything constructive to say.
I have noticed that Mr. Saywood has disappeared, and indeed, it's
only a mere echo for this story, and that a lot of our dear loved
ones are about to depart, including Pip and Jane, a lot of other, a
lot of, and a lot of other people who we thought were going to
depart.
I hear whether they like it or not.
And actually, I don't think some of them, some significant ones
anyway, come to prove to us that there's a good reason they're
there in the 1st place.
This is my Indian summer.
Very glad we're here.
Yeah, me too.
I've said many times before that Time and the Rani was the 1st
story I watched on broadcast as opposed to on VHS recording, and I
vividly remember the day of episode one.
Being sick and he's happy.
No, go on.
So I was at school and none of my other friends were into Doctor
Who.
At school, you know, it wasn't it wasn't a thing.
It was a select.
Kids were kids were in.
No, God, it wasn't.
No, it wasn't selective.
But I vividly remember the TV guide said it was a new season of
Doctor Who.
My parents had pointed it out to me.
And my memory of that day was explaining to my friend Andrew
Stevens, why this was so exciting.
And as I recall, he didn't get it, but he was quite excited for me
which was nice.
And you remember the strangest things being a kid.
I had Forster there, isn't it?
I had these mittens.
So there were fingerless gloves with a mitten top you could put
over the top.
And they looked like a brown catch, not unlike Su Tech, in fact.
We were recording it, Richards today.
I'm wondering where this is going, too.
This is just the memory of my childhood and being so excited that
you know, that feeling where you can't wait to get home.
You're at school all day.
You can't get it.
I know what happened.
He was standing in the in the school loo, all those mirrors, and
you rub them together, static electricity, and you were whirled
off in a time storm to this very podcast.
Indeed.
Well, I remember putting the videotape into the top loading silver
VCR.
Oh, pushing down and pressing record and just sitting there
transfixed.
I adore this story.
I can see why this would appeal to a very young person.
That was actually how I felt about it, because remember, Richard
the previous season had gone out on a Saturday night, 2 episodes
at a time, and we'd been used to Doctor Who being sort of stripped
Monday to Thursday or Monday to Friday at sort of 6.30 PM before
the ABC news.
This time it was on in the middle of a sort of segment of the
afternoon.
I think it was 5.30 in the afternoon when children's programming
normally happened.
Yeah, and treated with much love as it hadn't been for a long
time.
In fact, we'll get to it.
They did show the entire season and then they showed remembrance
immediately afterwards.
We all thought, oh, this is an oddly truncated season for those of
us who couldn't or didn't watch child of a time mode.
Yeah, I was at 1st year uni when Child of the Time Lord's Blade
getting to see it.
But I saw one or 2 episodes and then I think I died.
I actually remember ringing friend of the podcast, Matthew Farrow
immediately afterwards, and I may have told this story, and saying
yeah, you know, the new doctor's good, but it's turned into a
kid's program, and I think I'm going to be watching it out of
habit from now on.
And I think that was an incredibly, incredibly obtuse 1st
impression of this story because like you, Brendan, I really
really like this.
I love it too, and for wildly different reasons, which I guess
we'll go to.
This comes at you from an oblique angle, like much of this entire
season.
I think this is not only a rebirth for the series, and it's not
just Kant, well, we have to thank, or Sylvester, we have to
think.
We actually have to thank JNT for this as well, interestingly.
And I was very much involved in reading fandom, occasional
jotting.
But honestly, this time, this era, and we have Colin to thank as
well.
Is the birth of all of the people that we look at now who are
working on the show, Nathan himself, who was involved becoming
involved with fandom.
I was certainly being interested in it.
This is the time when it became incredibly interesting and I'm
going to come back to that thing.
It's just like the 60s.
Doctor Who is most interesting when it's talking about what's
going on outside of itself and not referencing itself.
And we get 2 whole stories this season, which have not had
anything to do with anything Doctor Who's done before.
And they don't, and I'm not just talking narrative.
This one itself, even though it's still about the past, is
actually more about the whole thing of what's going on in the
media and in fact, at universities and how we're seeing how we're
seeing the constructs around us.
This is a really interesting program.
And it looks good too.
Yeah, I think there's a huge leap in the in the quality of the
production and Phil Sandifer, take a drink, dear listeners, has a
video blog, which I mentioned during our live tweet a few weeks
ago, and in the video blog, he compares the way that this is shot
with, no, I can't remember.
Maybe some scenes from Creature from the Pier, and just how much
more innovative, how much more careful it is about creating a
sense of space.
And if you look at the location work, it is just a quarry, but
it's so much.
I know we're actually in the IMC mining quarry in Slagchester
again, aren't we?
But we've reached another dimension.
We're post-Kitty over at video show where the titles themselves
take us out of the 2nd dimension and into the third.
Whatever we think of Oliver Elms, and I haven't even got to Keff
McCulloch yet.
But Mr. Elms and Mr. Gareth, Gareth Edwards from Cal Video, who
put this extraordinary thing together with state of the art, and
it was.
It was extraordinary.
And yes, it was like a video game, and that's also a very
important thing.
It felt like watching a comic in 3D. Well, that happening shot of
the TARDIS being strafed by those sort of lightning coloured
beams.
I just thought, 0 my god, you know, this is a cartoon, this is
terrible.
But in retrospect, it's something that I really like and it is
something we haven't seen before.
Whereas I at age 6 looked at that and thought, this is a cartoon
this is amazing.
Of course.
And let's not forget what cartoons were. back then.
We had 2000 AD. We had Ian Moore.
We had Neil Gaiman Sandman coming up.
Fandom was responding.
The kids who were fans in the early 80s and late 70s were now
starting to write and be involved themselves.
The whole world will never be the same again.
And this just happens to be right at the point of the zeitgeist
when things are getting exciting and interesting.
It's funny that Pip and Jane Baker should be heralding into that.
We should say goodbye to the past as well.
They apparently wrote for space 1979, Brendan.
Have you seen their episodes?
Because...
Yeah.
Bugger me with an Netflix catalogue.
If I can remember which ones they were.
Oh, I think they just wrote the one.
Rod and I have recently finished watching space 1999 and my God, it
gets awful.
I'm betting it's a season 2 story Oh, it is.
It is a season 2 story.
Their Space 1999 story was a matter of balance.
Oh my god, I remember that one.
Which concerns a man in his gold underwear.
Um, luring, it's really topical. luring luring a young moon base
alpha technician.
I eat so young, she must have been bloody 13 when they got blasted
out of orbit in order to swap matter with her because he's from an
anti-matter university.
He needs to trade places with someone from a matter universe and
they're going to do it to the whole of alpha.
It's a bit Roman Polanski, isn't it, really?
I can see why they were banned from writing ever again, except
they weren't.
Can I just point out that the Pippin Jane Baker stories during the
Colin Baker era were Brendan's favourites, and I can kind of see
why, because they were a little oasis of normal, fun family tea
time entertainment with very little cannibalism in them, you
know?
And that was...
But they were straightforward and fun.
And, you know, they were pitched very young, but that's not an
absolute crime when you're writing for Doctor Who.
They were straightforward and simplistic, but they weren't
horrible.
Do you think there was a great respect for young people in their
writing?
I'm thinking now of what they wanted to do with King Solomon and
the baby in the opening credits of this story.
You know what was going to happen?
They were going to cut San in half.
It wasn't Einstein.
That was Carmel's idea.
The Rani was going to appear just at the point of Solomon's dictum
when the mothers were presenting the little child and saying his
mind, no, he's mine.
And Solomon, of course, declares, well, I'll cut him in, and this
big swarthy, dark fella comes in full of Eastern promise, a
mystery and smelling of musk, and he comes in with his massive
scabbard and waves it about.
So, you know, oh, cutting enough, then, and that's when the Rani
was going to appear and she was going to kidnap him for his
wisdom.
And JNT said, well, no one's ever heard that story.
No one even knows who that is.
And Carmel said, thank buggery bollocks for that.
Let's make it Iinstone.
Oh, and by the way, I've got a few other things I want to change
as well.
Well, I think by then they had pretty much taken over all of the
Scoopbride. of television everywhere, yes.
Yeah, yeah, the episodes of Tenko are 2nd to none.
Have you seen pictures of they did not write.
Have you seen pictures of Seth McCallum?
He gets to appear in Delta in the Bannerman spoiler, so you get to
see him with his ludicrous ponytail, an acronistic ponytail.
He looks exactly like Pick Baker.
I think it's one and the same person.
He's still with us and still working in Sydney.
Kev.
Oh, yeah.
I don't think he's listening.
Death. as he was many years ago Something during the writing of
score for these stories.
Go on.
Something you alluded to, Richard.
Pip and Jane Baker.
They appear on the DVDs for all 3 of their stories.
They appear on the commentary for this.
Sludging through forests, turning people into trees.
Yes, that's right Where was the witch finder general?
But they they talk about how they found it, um, they enjoyed
working with Andrew Cartwell less than they enjoyed working with
it.
And yeah, they don't...
I mean, it being Pip and Jane, they're not saying that from a
personal standpoint, they're saying from a professional standpoint
I think maybe it was because Eric led a few more of their things
slide, whereas Andrew Cartmel was like, no, we need to have
Einstein because this is a story about science, ostensibly, not
King Solomon.
We need to have Hypatia, we need to have Louis Pasteur.
Oh, she said.
And, you know, they're cutting up babies is what we do.
I mean, Sam would said, you know, we could he promised us that
we'd be able to eat a child.
But, you know, one thing they wanted, which was undermined, I
think it's a mistake, is they planned for Luchersh to be a forest
planet.
Yeah, and isn't this telling?
Yeah, think about this.
Because they didn't want a quarry.
They're like, Doctor Who's not another African IMC query.
Andrew Morgan was the one who pushed it.
Andrew Morgan directed this one and I think did a fine job
actually.
Yeah, I do too.
I think it looks looks really good.
Did you know Bonnie was written as being scintillating in this
one?
JNT's direction was, she shall be scintillating.
This is reflected in the audience appreciation index of 41, which
is 6 points lower than the previous season, which only Todd won.
It's about 10 points lower than Salmonella.
There are some lovely directions in the scripts, though, and I
have to think.
Did you did you see some of the notes?
Pip and Jane are fabulous for their notes.
Icona is humping Mel.
He's actually one of the... one of the little points that I think
we have many things to treasure.
I love the sewers.
I do.
There's the title for the episode.
Don't you notice they didn't have any concrete pipes in that
quarry?
This could be so the BBC brought one in and just to make it look a
bit more alien.
They stuck some blue Christmas tea, so...
Up his freaking chop.
Put a chinsel.
And there's this, I know, cut, but there's this blues tensely
rocks.
And have you noticed why?
There is actually Jermaine plot driven reasons for this.
Tet traps are terrified of tinsel.
The spray guns.
Tinsel, tinsel, tinsel.
Well, this is the gayest thing ever, and we'll get more to this
later.
This is the gayest episode of Doctor Who so far.
The Tetraps were, in fact, conquered by the people of Car felt
famous for their tinsel-based technology.
Oh, they were too.
Um, yeah, I think it is a mistake not having it in the forest
because Pippin Jane's whole rationale with having it in the forest
is that the recursions are indolent because they don't they don't
want for anything.
Nature provides everything for them.
There's no need to strive.
They were a Goganesque landscape of, yes, South Pacific maidens
and young gentlemen with, you know, scaly horrify.
But if you're in a quarry...
You definitely want to improve your lot.
They eat rocks.
Very easily sold.
They're Gorons from the legend of Zelda, some video game stuff for
you kids out there.
It means nothing to me.
You'd like Gorons.
I'll show you a picture later Webs.
But really?
Does it work?
We do have Mother Cumberbatch.
And we do have Donald Pickering.
I know reunited.
It's a faceless ones reunion, of course.
Yeah, they were going to get Colin Gordon as Icona, but yeah, just
no.
I have to say, Mark Greenstreet.
Mark Greenstreet, I think he's quite, he is quite, and he's a good
actor as well.
Yeah, he actually is because he hasn't got a lot to work with.
He pounce at Mel very nicely.
I've got to say, Bonnie pouts back very nicely too.
In that outfit. which I have worn.
Did you keep your bum nice as well?
How does she manage to keep a white arse the entire way through?
Well, yeah, the I think the pants are made of unstable molecules.
Like the X-Men fantastic 4 uniforms.
I don't think the mud would dare.
Bonnie Langford's clothing.
Well, the mug, you see, doesn't know if it's Bonnie Langford or
Cato Mara.
Bonnie Langford it might get away with. would not stand for that.
Can we touch upon our coat?
Well, Todd doesn't like this version of the Rani because I think
he thinks that she's a little bit over the top.
But I think lightly.
But I do think if you're going to cars, Kate O'Mara is a villain
like get her to chew the scenery, it's a waste of time for her
to...
What is she going to do?
You know, she wrote that editor JNT's rescue me from this
Hollywood miasma of palm trees and swimming pools and get me back
into some mud.
Yes, indeed.
And that's exactly what she said.
She did say she didn't enjoy this one as much, but...
I think part of that was, of course, she had a pre-existing
relationship with Colin, they worked together before.
She, you know, had worked with Silv and Bonnie before as well.
She was also very self-conscious about having to impersonate
Bonnie Langford while Bonnie was on the set because she kind of
went, I need to impersonate her without totally taking the Mick.
And she achieves that Disney, yes.
It is a complete mixturational performance from one point to
another.
And I kind of like it.
It's brilliant. absolutely brilliant. silencing the critics.
This is what I think about the whole meta thing of this.
This is actually making the mockeries of the fans that are
bitching about the last season. in a really clever way.
You know, a few months before this, it hadn't been seen on the
UK.
But a few months before this, Star Trek, the Next Generation
premiered in the US.
And Blackadder.
Yeah, black adder two.
The mid-premiere cliffhanger for when encounter at Far Point was
divided up into 2 episodes was Patrick Stewart turning to the
viewscreen and saying, if we're going to be damned, let's be
damned for what we really are.
And I think that's what Doctor Who is doing here.
Yes.
I think the last, the last 2 years, Doctor Who has been slightly
ashamed to be a rather silly, rather cheap sci-fi series.
Whereas time in the run, he says, we're going to put Kater Mara in
a red wig and dresser up as Bonnie Langford in a set surrounded by
Tinsel, and you're going to damn enjoy yourself.
Let us look at, for the 1st time in a long time, in fact, ever.
Jonathan Powell, and, you know, the gods that they said to JNT, we
actually need to see an audition tape. of whoever you want to
cast.
And weren't they interesting and doesn't self shine and look who
is put against?
Dermot Crowley and Janet Fielding.
Oh, yeah, sorry, he's put against Janet Fielding.
And look who she plays.
She's Space iron lady.
Yeah, she plays Thatcher.
It's Thatcher in that scene.
This is who the Rani is in this.
My take on this.
Can I tell you why I think this show is interesting?
Are we up to this place?
If you're at university in the 80s or early 90s, the word
semiotics was something you was said about as often as I'll have a
half a pint, thanks, only make it a triple.
It was, you know, and I, you know, can I nick a fag?
Everything was post-modern.
Now, postmodernism, as we've touched on before, we're actually
going back to, do you remember when we were talking about this
sort of stuff in the early 70s before we lost a great many
listeners and you had to bring Tom in?
Yeah, that time.
But why I think this era of Doctor Who is interesting and why I
think we're actually at a turning point and why it probably
couldn't live very much longer because it's so much of the now and
it's jumped the shark.
It's now, it's actually jumped the entire whale pod.
We're now talking about critical theory at a university level.
It's actually lampooning, not just itself, but the whole of media
and TV and actually politics, because that's what post-mortemism
does.
All right, bear with me.
Postmodernism, you see, as it works, with its resignation to
bottomless fragmentation and ephemerality.
It generally refuses to contemplate the question of how we can
build or represent or attend to the surfaces of modern life with
you know, with the requisite sympathy and seriousness that you
need in order to get behind it and identify central meanings.
In everything that's going on and how you fit into the world.
And this is this post-Murdoch thing and this post-consumer TV
thing of you just eat it and be happy.
And this was all being questioned at this time.
And we were even getting this thing, this sort of thing in, in the
critical theory when you had academics, actually starting to write
about Doctor Who itself.
And you had kids at university who were reading this stuff and
thinking, I think I'd like to get into TV one day.
Most of those kids are now working on a show called Doctor Who.
But I would also say what this is and what postmodernism is at the
point in the mid 80s to late 80s is actually the study of the
collapse of time horizons.
Yeah, really?
And these were terms we used. and the preoccupation with
instantaneity.
With the moment, if you don't think postmodernism is relevant past
the 80s either.
Look at how we live with our iPhones.
This is who we are.
But let me just say, what this means for Doctor Who now in 1987. is
that as Mikhail, the erotician put it, it's a shift from the
epistemological to the ontological, dominant aesthetic, which
sounds like something you'd hear in Dragonfire.
But what this means is there's a shift from the kind of
perspective that allows the viewer to see Colin Baker's doctor
having a bearing on the meaning of a complex, but nevertheless
singular form of reality, a singular view of the world, a
modernist view of the world.
So now the viewing of McCoy's doctor as a foregrounding of
questions.
If you like, as to how to radically oppose these different
realities and how they can collide and coexist and how we live in
them and how we interpret this miasma, this confusion.
But the boundary, if you like, between fiction and science fiction
has as a consequence, resolved.
And Doctor Who is right on the point of that.
That is the very definition of postmodernism.
And studying architecture, as I was doing in this year.
We were also reading the linguistic theoretics of post-modernism.
These are terms they actually used.
I'm quoting straight from my old text books.
Watching Doctor Who at this point.
I guess I would say postmodernist characters often seem confused
as to what and which will be around them and how they should act
with respect to it.
So what's going on in the world?
There's a line from Jorge Louis Borges labyrinths that we've
talked about before from the 60s Doctor Who.
It's really tenable now.
It goes, who was I?
Today, self-bewildered, yesterday's forgotten, and tomorrow's
unpredictable.
That's Sylvester McCoy in Doctor Who.
The question mark tells it all.
And that was a symbol in itself of post-modemism, question mark.
Yeah, well, something we discussed during the colon era was how
much it relies on the past without really doing anything new.
And Nathan, you use the word predictable.
I thought you were going to say cannibalism.
You use cannibalism as well.
I mean, it kind of is cannibalism.
It is just remaking Doctor Who out of habit and doing the beats
that we're just used to.
Whereas this story, as Richard you were saying, is on the cusp.
We do have something old in the form of the Rani.
But so much of this story feels so new, even though it's doing
things that other texts have done.
It's kind of doing things that Doctor Who hasn't really done
before.
The closest we've got to the running impersonating Mel is, you
know, a couple of robot Doctor Who's in the past.
But to me as a kid, that's like, 0 my god, that's so exciting.
But yeah, I think because this takes earlier ideas and reinvents
them in that postmodern way, not just regurgitating what there's
been before, but taking the pieces and going, hey, here's
something new.
That makes it exciting You know what this show felt like in 1987
watching this as a student and starting to just to go to bars and
having friends who, both at university and outside of that, who
actually weren't here 2 years from now.
I had lost quite a few friends by 18990. and it's, you know, it's
just, yeah, pause to reflect.
But this show feels, at this point, we're starting to look at
Turning, turning the, can we say tropes?
Turning the women, the gays, the blacks, the colonised peoples, and
their repatriations of their own histories, and turning it around
and celebrating the, the nonsense of it all, and the shortness of
it all.
Here we've got disparate tribes, of post-HIV queer Britain
colourful outcasts, if you like, and scaly in their self
disregarding infirmity, lolling about, but kind of not willing to
change.
Proud of who they are, if you like, ruled by an iron lady or an
iron lady.
You know, who is a vulgar idea of what ruling class is, you know
or a camp dominatrix, or, you know, a thatcherist trope.
And at the end, right at the end of this story, they pour away the
cure that could have that could have completely changed them into
you know, I guess what everybody else thinks they should be
because their dissonance is now their strength.
This is a, this to.
Yeah, this that's why I love this story.
This to me is actually about queer England dealing with HIV and
AIDS.
You know, I'd never thought of it like that.
And I wonder if people...
Jay knew it.
You know, it wouldn't surprise me if that was part of Cartmel's
influence because he was incredibly politically aware.
He famously said during the job interview, what do you want to
achieve?
As the script editor of Doctor Who, he says, I want to bring down
the government.
That's right, he did too.
And Alan Moore, who did Watchmen and all those other terrific
things, and he's as mad as a cat weasel fan can be.
He looks exactly the same.
Um, Vale, Jeffrey Bell.
Um, is, is, all of those things have come together.
Thank you for indulging me on that spiel.
But yeah, no, I felt that strongly about this show and I actually
still feel it now.
And you know what?
Queerness and queer ideas are something which is going to come to
the fore in this era.
Very much so.
Yeah.
Even the last season, which has several instances of exploring
asisexuality has instances of queerness.
That's right.
But, I mean, the one that will really come to in a couple of
months is, of course, the happiness patrol.
But I'm going to keep my power dry on that one.
Frozen.
Yeah, that's my point.
That was not the big 1st quiz story in New Doctor Who.
I think this one is.
And it's not just that we've got a change of doctor who's now
silly and lyrical and not informed.
Sixth doctor was all modernism and knowledge.
And I know everything, yeah.
Oh, you know, brash modernity, if you like, but the 7th is
actually Roland Bartian.
Can we say those things?
It's post-rational playfulness.
That's what that guy is for his writing about.
Did you know recently in Doctor Who magazine?
Johnny Morris.
Oh, love him.
Yeah, he wrote a queer reading of the Macroterra and how Ben's...
Actually, they're only in little shorts, aren't they?
Yeah, exactly.
They're all in little shorts.
Women keep throwing themselves at Jamie and he's just like, no, no
bug away from me. so to speak.
And Ben, of course, has a huge struggle with his identity in the
story.
But then he goes topless, doesn't he?
He has a huge struggle with his identity in the story.
Does he conform and betray his friends or does he stick by his
friends?
And as Johnny Boris puts it, and of course, Ben saves the day by
virtue of being the only one not locked in the closet at the end.
Oh my goodness.
It's fantastic.
It's so right that the macro were the 1st to be brought back from
am I correct, in the new series in Gridlock?
They were the 1st dog monster other than Khalid mutant thing.
No, they were absolutely the 1st and we'll put that up on FTE.
That was right.
The only monster from the old series ever come back in the new
series, in fact.
So how do you feel about all of that?
Well, I think that there's something really very much to be said
for that.
But on a much simpler level too.
I think the show is rediscovering being fun and doing things that
science fiction fans are appalled by.
I think the dress up thing is something that serious science
fiction fans think is ridiculous.
It's no place in the program.
Absolutely.
And should never have been there.
I should say at this point, 1987, did listener, this was the
flowering of young Nathan.
Asian Phantom blossoming, if you like.
And now that we're touching on dress ups.
No, no, I've already I have already confessed to dressing up as
Jacqueline Pierce.
That's the 1st time I saw you.
You can imagine a crisis. semiotic.
I think it was a little bit later than that deal. had a chronic
history.
It's us on infinite Surferlands.
But I think generally speaking, you've gone from Doctor Who being
a slog, this duty that we have to a program with a 20-year
history.
Yes.
So kind of throwing all that away, and the Rani is back, but she's
only been in it once before, and she's not really very much like
she was, and we only have to reach back in our memories 2 years to
know who she is.
But it doesn't really matter.
Like she's someone with huge hair and, you know, fabulous arm
gestures and things.
She still wields out death from the death wielding mirrored ball
in the disco, another HIV reference. that, yeah, the mirror ball
now causes death.
But the point is that she is to be made fun of, and she is to be
mocked, like all figures in authority, who actually can wield out
death by set clause 28 or section 28 by withholding money for
research into drugs that could actually save people's lives.
And finally, they did in 96.
But we still had to wait those 9 years, those 10 years for me.
And for everyone else around us, of course, it was what, watching
our community be doing more than decimated.
Yeah, she is that, so she is the powers that be, but the point is
we're not to be threatened by them.
We are supposed to find them funny.
We're supposed to lampoon and mock and not take on their idea of
how we should be, even when they give us the cure, throw it back
in their faces.
We don't need them.
Well, she gets very much a cartoon ending, doesn't she?
Where she's sort of tied up by her, her, her, her, her, her
servant.
In a Berlin club.
A double XL?
Actually, no, it's just forecastle.
Or indeed Fitzroy Tavern, if you're kind of... around in the
London in the 80s, yes.
Oh, dear.
They're all fan boys.
Tet trips are fanboys saying that the Tet trips are actually Gary
Lee and everyone else on Doctor Who Bulletins.
That one's all dreadful, no, it's thankful. and none of you are as
good as you should be.
Yeah, your race, your base is so inferior to ours.
That's that wonderful line when Tubby Tetrop says that too.
Live and lovely Mark Greenslip or whatever his name is.
I can't remember who it was, but many years ago when Richard and I
used to frequent Galafray Base, then outpost Galafray.
Oh, we had a time to listener.
Yeah.
You had four, I believe.
But there was a, there was a young man with, in America with whom
I was rather in Abbott. who it was.
No, no, no.
But I remember Richard says, oh no, you don't want to go with
him.
He's got a belly not unlike Yurek the Tetra.
I'm so sorry for everyone.
Sorry of that.
I was Mary Whitehouse.
You were also at the trousers of doom.
I was?
And cellulose wallpaper paste?
And Richard Stone.
Folly of Youth, come on.
I think that's actually how we met now, haven't we?
We met on the forum before we met in real life.
Yeah, no, we didn't.
And when we met, I said, oh, you must be Richard Stone on the
thing.
He said, yes, amongst others.
And this is very wide.
I said, this is very white.
You didn't think it was the real one.
Did you?
This is the point.
All of that came about because of McCoy's era.
Oh no, that's not fair.
Colin polarised us in ways, but I don't necessarily think in ways
that were for the positive, in that they coalesced rather than
bringing together.
Whereas McCoy's era, thanks to cartmal and McCoy and JNT. gets it
gets that things can be disparate, unalloyed, and possibly
unremarkable and yet be celebrated and wonderful when you mix them
all up together.
We can actually be all of many colours and still get along and
actually have some fun doing it.
This feels fun.
Exactly.
One of the sometimes criticism, sometimes just comments laid at
this season is that every story feels so different from each
other.
So there's a completely disparate tone.
I actually think that's one of its strengths, and I think one of
the reasons it's so pronounced, though, is there's only 4
stories.
I think it's what Doctor Who is for as well.
I mean, we had, I thought season 22 was a whole lot of space
corridors and cannibalism.
And I'm not going to let that go.
I can't, I, look, okay, if we're going to go on about the queer
theory thing, I'm sorry, if you asked me earlier, why I didn't
wasn't a fan of Colin's era, and just to put a shadow moment on
this.
I can't get past and neither can my women friends or my queer
women friends who are in theory and politics now.
The act of the doctor strangling the girl who is his, you know, the
if you, if you like the adumbrant of his granddaughter, but the
person in his charge and physically attacking her.
And it simply is not something this show should have ever done and
I've never been able to get past it.
And they don't walk back from an either because that happens to
her the entire time she's on the show.
That's actually the reason I can't watch Colin Zero.
I think I think that you should see what it is.
I like his audio.
I think you should see what it's like when Mel takes over because
that departs with Perry.
And so here, because they show they get killer.
So Mario de Bryan Blessed, which is worse.
I don't know which could...
And so Mel is really perky and really likeable.
She has no kind of discernable character.
It is she's Bonnie.
Have you noticed how good she gets when they actually just writing
start writing for her as generic doctor girl?
Yeah, but they just later on this season. the staff.
And look at how good she is.
I've been blitzing for the last 3 weeks.
Every Bonnie Langford, Sylvester McCoy and Colin Baker audio.
I could get my hands on.
And thanks to James Selwood, friend of the podcast.
He's always here in spirit.
I've listened to almost all of them now and she's fantastic.
She is so... and sensitive and a little bit pansy.
Yeah, yeah.
What I love about her in this story is that for the 1st 3 quarters
of it, Mel is basically the doctor.
It's Mel, it's Mel who makes contacts, start stirring up the
resistance, finds out what's going on in the culture of this
planet.
While the doctor is unknowingly, a collaborator with the villain.
Very much so.
And also completely emasculated.
Yes, absolutely, because he is totally under the thrall of the
Rani.
And anytime he asks a question, she just kind of throws a head
from side to side and says, oh no, doctor, it's fine.
Credit.
And she beats him up quite a bit.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Could you have seen if they said this was written for Colin?
I can't see how that could have...
I don't think it would have been better with Colin.
And I think part of the problem with that is that Collins doctor
was already kind of the universe is whipping boy in a way that
Peter was as well.
You know, his doctor gets mistreated and locked in cells and blah
blah, blah.
And the way Colin plays it, I could never really accept him being
duped in that way, whereas I can explain.
I can accept it from Sylvester because, A, he's just regenerated.
And the, he has this unpredictable quality that Colin doesn't
have.
And malapropisms.
It's a perfect, he even cites, um, Malaprop, even.
Yeah.
In the way that Colin was always, so if you see, and articulate
always with the perfect phrase, the bomb Mo.
Whereas I really wish Sylvester had kept going with this as much
as I wish he'd kept going with the spoons.
Of all the amount of props and mixing things up.
I love it.
I mean, Colin can be silly and Colin can be wrong and all of those
sorts of things and I think...
Yeah, he proves it on the audio and vulnerable.
Yeah, I like that.
But here, I think they deal with the sort of regeneration thing.
I mean, the post-regeneration trauma thing is just a terrible
idea.
Is it though?
Yes.
Yeah.
Well, because you want to see what the new doctors like and you
don't get to, you get to see sort of bumbling.
It's as close as he ever gets to foreplay.
The Christmas invasion gets it right. gives us a...
Puts him in his jam, is his saucy mix, yeah.
You get a bit of an idea of what he's going to be like when he
confronts the Santas with the Sonic screwdriver, but we basically
have to wait an hour and then he has his hero moment and he sort
of does work on and saves the day.
What's that tree made of?
Yes.
But here?
They really throw away the regeneration thing.
Sylvester's working at pretty well, you know, as close to full
capacity as he ever cares.
And the only thing is that he's confused about who the Rani is.
You think he's messy in this?
How do you feel about that?
I think Sylvester is really, really fun to watch.
I don't know.
I think he does.
I think he does sort of resignation and sadness very well.
This is the thing.
He really doesn't.
You don't expect it, but again, if you go back to my spiel earlier
it's all about putting things together that are disparate and
dissonant and actually making them work.
So he's he does this, I feel better than probably seen cinch trout
and for me.
Well, look, I mean, I think Trouton sort of outclasses him as an
actor, but Trouton does that to just about everyone else.
Sure.
I will take that, but that's not too, in any way, to integrate.
So.
No, I think he's really a compelling performer.
He's physically, really interesting.
He's sort of sweet and funny and he does vulnerable very well.
And just comparing his relationship with Mel in this story to
Collins relationship with Perry in his 1st story.
It's almost an apology.
And remember the final line of the twin dilemma is, you know, I'm
the doctor whether you like it or not.
And here, Sylvester goes, I'll grow on you now. grow on you and
he's terribly sweet about it.
And so it is them doing this right and trying, I think, in some
way to heal the horrific wound inflicted on the program in the
twin dilemma.
What I find interesting about that comparison to the twin dilemma
is, like in the twin dilemma, you get a fight scene. in this story
between the doctor and the companion.
But the difference is this is a comic wrestling match that Bonnie
and Silv get into.
And Bonnie makes the first...
Yeah, she was like she throws him over her shoulder.
And it's Bonnie doing that.
I mean, they're the same height, so it's pretty easy.
Brendan does it.
He's doing it now.
But what I what I have...
What I absolutely adore about that.
Oh, yeah.
What I absolutely adore about that scene is when they realise who
each other up because she doesn't know it's the doctor and he
doesn't think it's Mel.
And when they realise there's a genuine warmth between them and it
sells the fact that he is the same character.
But the reason I think it wouldn't have worked with Colin is, of
course, when the script was written for Colin, he took part of
Bayes in the final scene and gets blown up and that was going to
be the end of the 6th doctor.
He was going to get blown up saving the recursions instead of
bass.
And I think...
The reason this scene works better is because it's the 1st meeting
between the doctor and his companion rather than this
bittersweet.
We've, you know, we've remembered each other just before you die.
And it's kind of the 1st place we see that melancholy from
Sylvester.
He cites his influences as Patrick Troughton, because that was the
last time he really watched Shocked her because he became an actor
after that and wasn't in on Saturdays.
Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, which is all where the physical
stuff comes.
JNT wanted that as well.
That was part of the instruction.
But his other influence is one of his grandmothers.
And he says she lived to 100 or close to it.
And all of her friends had died, and she just, as still says it
she just had this wonderful sadness of having had a great life, but
no one she shared it with was there anymore.
And he's like, when I, when I was told the doctor is 900 years old
I thought, how many times has that happened to him?
And when he goes sort of, it doesn't bode well for my 7th persona
you feel that weight of, oh, no, I'm getting it wrong again.
And how many times has he gotten stuff like this wrong?
And we will touch on that even in this very brief Indian summer of
Sylvester McCoy's career.
There's a lot of other stuff, though, isn't there?
There's a lot of books, there's a lot of audios.
There's a lot to be discovered and continue with.
Well, I've recently started.
Um, reading every single Doctor Who fiction book.
I remember we warned you.
Do you remember when you were young, Nathan?
like this?
No.
I did too.
I didn't get very far.
Because, you see, I drew up a spreadsheet with page counts of
pretty much every kind of fan is pretty much every Doctor Who
fiction novel and figured out reading 40 pages a day.
It's gonna take me about 9.5 years.
So I'm up to typeworm apocalypse, which is the 3rd new adventure.
And the difference.
Okay, the difference when Terrence Dixon, Nigel Robinson, right
for Silv.
And when John Peel writes for Silver, makes him really grumpy and
angry.
It just jars.
Terence Dix, who never writes for silver on television, never
writes any of his novelisations, gets the character.
I loved Exodus.
Did I give you a whole pile of those?
You sold some of your inos, yeah.
That's right.
I didn't I didn't give I sold for a reason.
And let me tell you that the shelf has been amply filled by
things.
I'd rather read, but I'm glad you're enjoying them.
I remember Exodus is being very good as well and very much
continuing on the time of the Rani feel of that 1st season.
But I think the reason that Terrence is able to get Silv, so right
is that Silv kind of instinctively gets the core of the doctor
right?
Whereas I think Colin at the beginning, didn't have a chance to
because he's being told, be nasty, be nasty, be nasty.
I think he gets it towards the end of trial.
And I said this a couple of weeks ago that, you know, he's just
hitting his stride and then they fire him.
Whereas Sylvester, because he has so little knowledge of the show
and because his memory of the show is the 60s, when the character
was very bare bones, and that was his perception.
He's like, I don't want the doctor to be constantly going on about
being the president of Gallifrey.
I don't want him to be...
Which is in the constellation of Kostuba's spinary location, blah
blah, blah.
So yeah, his whole thing is trim it back to basics.
He's funny, he's silly, but deep down he's really sad.
And we get all of that in this verse.
So would you be with 2 wives to support?
Sylvester, not Patrick.
It's a lovely interview.
Actually, it might go over a couple of issues of Doctor Who
magazine.
Do you remember this one a couple of years ago?
I've got it in there.
I pull it out.
Just talking about his early childhood and really how difficult it
was.
And I think he brings that pathos and bathos, not necessarily a
lesser thing, into his performance.
I can't say how much I love this doctor, but I think I've probably
given it a fair whack.
I like him a great deal as well.
I think he's, I think he's really, really great.
And it is, it's nice to have someone who will kind of lurk on the
periphery of scenes.
It's not all about him.
Not in the way that Bert Wheat did.
I just imagining pertly like Betty Davis in hush hush, sweet
Charlotte, saying, oh, Joan, you don't need all these lines, do
you?
And that's why we need to cast that Welsh washerwoman. very
versatile.
That's why we got Olivia de Haviland instead.
Oh, no, Olivia de Haviland in this, of course.
But, um, I think also the reason we have such a strong cast is
possibly because Andrew Morgan, Andrew Cartmel and JNT kind of
went, uh, you know, this isn't a bad script, but it's perhaps not
the strongest script.
So we're gonna get an incredibly strong car.
So you got Kate, you've got Wanda, you've got Donald, you've got
Mark Greenstreet.
They put the effort and the money into this.
Yeah, yeah.
And what seems strange to me is this year.
Um, The design and the direction just seems so much better, but I
can't imagine they have any more money than last year.
Yeah, I agree.
There is something more inventive about it.
It's only budgeted for 3 stories this season.
Of course, and the two, three parters are always made in the same
production block, which is how the new series saves money as
well.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so we'll be touching on that later in the season.
I think it looks extraordinary.
They're the best model effects.
Thank you, Mike Tucker.
Ive ever seen in Doctor Who.
I'm a bit of a fan of the shiny things.
Yeah, it is.
It's right up there, isn't it?
Well, it's Terrahawks was only a couple of years before, and we're
owing a lot to that.
Sue Moore did the Tetraps who also designed Zelda.
This is state of the art TV in 1997.
In England.
I have tried to find it, but I'm afraid I can't.
So I do apologise if this is you, but a friend of the podcast when
I was live tweeting. said that they didn't really like the Rani's
lab set, and I really can't understand that because there's depth
of field.
There's things in the foreground, there's things in the midground
there's things in the background.
They've never been to a basement disco?
There's a roof.
It has a roof.
You know, that is actually a very special thing for this show.
Remember back in Marco Polo where Barry Newbury couldn't have a
roof because the sound guy kept saying, oh, can't get me mic in
there, mate.
I do think it is a little bit of a light entertainment set, and
particularly when she starts the machine.
It does look like sale of the century.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But, you know, it's it's Doctor Who.
It's got lots of lovely triangles in it, you know?
It's what they, yeah, thank you.
Another game motif.
The sky is pink.
Everyone's wearing rainbow colours.
The triangles are everywhere.
Yeah.
The pyramid motif, of course, all of that.
I think it's deliberate that it looks like a Bruce Forsyth or our
own Nicholas Parsons.
We own him.
Yes, because he's been Doctor Who very soon.
It looks like a game show because that's again part of this
terrifically clever meta.
I want to believe this was done deliberately to completely take
the Mick duration out of the entirety of British TV this year.
Well, think about when John Nathan Turner 1st comes along, and we
get after season 17, which did look cheap and drab and had lots of
brown cardboard corridors in it, and then we get the leisure hive
which is just a studio bound production like season 17, but done
with a bit of flair and inventiveness.
So powerful that there are goalons still in this episode.
That's right.
Yeah, yeah, there's no goal in it.
But here I think it's the same thing and I don't think it's like
super successful because it is a bit shiny and game showy.
And if we were going for realism, which, let's face it, the moment
you put Kate Omar in a Bonnie Langford wig, you're not.
That's not what this is meant.
See, I think the reason they don't go for realism is because they
don't have the money.
So they go for the comic book aesthetic.
They go for the bright colours and the solid shapes.
As a kid, the pyramid and triangular motif, you know, like most
kids, I was intrigued by the pyramids and the legends of Egypt.
So immediately there's something recognisable for kids there.
I wanted keypads that were triangular with little circular buttons
on them.
I remember watching the story over and over again, trying to
figure out the interface.
Like, okay, he's pressing in 953.
What signifies nine, what signifies five, what signifies three?
It fires the imagination on that level.
And then, The people who are older looking at it are able to
appreciate the critical theory behind it and the post-modernism
behind it.
It's Doctor Who working on multiple age levels again.
Just, you know, and really, I don't think we've had that since
early Pete.
I don't think we've had it in such purity since the 60s.
It takes the everyday and subverts it and turns it on its head and
makes of it something much bigger and it's been very different.
Doctor Who has always been about this period.
In the late 80s, early 90s, it actually has always been about this
time.
It's just reached its apotheosis.
Have a drink, dealers.
And, you know, I wonder why this is so successful because of
course, you know, we're on the planet Zog, with the people of the
Zogs being threatened by an alien overlord.
It's the dominators again.
I mean, it really is.
Why is it so good in comparison?
It's not just the design work and it's not just Cato Mara.
No, it's we're having fun.
I mean, the story is simplistic because it is Pip and Jane, and it
is something that we've seen a lot of times before where you've
got, you know, a rebel who wants to go to population into
overthrowing the oppressors.
And then you've got Bayers who's saying, no, no, take it easy.
We're not going to do that.
I was actually thinking of death to the Daleks.
And Galloway, remember, who, uh, who looks like he's collaborating
the entire time and then uh, is brave enough to overthrow the
Daleks, just like Bayos does here.
And so even though Bayos is politically wrong, I think, in his
approach, and that's how he's supposed to see it, he's not a bad
guy, he's still brave and he still cares about his people.
And I think, you know, that is a story that's been told over and
over again in Doctor Who.
So it's a simple kind of template that we've seen before, but it's
kind of a bit of a relief to get that.
And even during the Colin Baker era.
I think, Brendan, you found that that sort of straightforwardness
and just the sort of fun in the Pippin Jane stories, neither of
which I think were particularly good, but, you know, that there
was something really enjoyable there.
And I think I grudgingly gave terror of the vervoids, the bronze
medal in the Colin Bay hero, not because it's a great story, but
because it's just terrifically fun.
And I think the same is true here.
I don't think time and the Rani's a great script.
But gosh, it's enjoyable to watch.
I think another reason it succeeds so well is what you said
Richard, there is actually a lot of theory and a lot of thought
behind it, which even if you don't get it.
You can sense that there's something deeper going on.
You know, and I've, I've said this many times before about Doctor
Who stories that we've discussed on the podcast, things like
Frontier and Space, which, you know, as a kid, I would never have
realised the political dimension of it as related to the real
world.
But as an adult, it makes me appreciate it all the more.
Whereas something like time lash, which I did say during the colon
era, I enjoy time lash because it's a straightforward story
there's not really a lot behind it.
It's just a narrative, and that's fine.
Whereas this has that extra queer dimension and the rebel
dimension and fighting against corrupt authority.
Uh, can I talk a bit about the science?
Hey, talk matter.
Okay, so we have an asteroid composed of strange matter in this
story.
Now, in fact, that was so important that that was what Pip and
Jane wanted to call.
It was going to be called Strange Matter, and I do think I
remember reading that one of the reasons that they never wrote for
the program has nothing to do with Andrew Cartwell not inviting
them back at all. because they were annoyed at the time in the
Rani rename of this story.
I think at one point as well, they considered calling it the
strange matter when they knew that Colin wasn't coming back
because they thought anything could happen.
So we'll call it the strange matter.
Of the firing of the dog.
Strange matter itself is a theoretical substance, which is made
when atoms are put under very high pressure.
So an example I've read is if you take an iron atom which has 26
protons on 30 neutrons and you crush it, you apply energy to the
protons and the neutrons.
If you crush it enough, there's so much energy applied that the
protons and neutrons break down into their requisite quarks, and
there's up clocks, and there's down clocks, positive quarks.
If you apply even more pressure to these quarks.
Some of them.
Flip.
So they go from being up to down or down to up and some of them
stay in an intermediate state called strange quarks, which are
super dense.
And that's where strange matter being incredibly heavy comes
from.
They have colours and flavours as well.
Yes.
It's very sad.
I think they're making it up.
Yeah, they are.
What's wrong with the theory that, you know, little sprites
inhabit everything?
Works for Conan Door.
God sustains it all.
Very simple.
Now, we haven't been able to create strange matter on earth.
But the theory is that it could form at the hearts of neutron
stars because of the immense pressures they're in.
And if strange matter is negatively charged.
It'll consume the rest of the star around it.
And then shoot off into the universe.
If it comes into a contact with a planetary body while it is
negatively charged, anything it touches is converted to strange
matter, and joins itself like a snowball.
Now, the thing is, theoretically, all strange matter will be
positively charged, which means we could actually just have it
sitting here on the table and we'd be fine.
So that's...
So that's why the Rani is trying to come up with a lightweight
substitute.
Now, from what I can tell, from what I've read, it doesn't seem
that strange matter combined with strange matter will make the
strange matter explode, as is implied in the story.
But that's just the 1st part of their plan.
The 2nd part, of course, is that.
A shell of Cronons will form in the upper atmosphere of Lucersia
which will cause the creation of helium 2, which will cause the
matter of the brain, her giant brain, to expand until the space
between the surface and the space between the Cronon shell is
full.
The doctor tells us that this will create a time manipulator.
And I think that there is actually a purpose behind this.
I don't think it's just a bunch of random words.
Well, no, I'm fairly sure it is.
So empirical thinking.
Understanding time manipulation.
What's the line?
Pip and Jones.
Yeah.
We're going to have this giant planet size brain.
Surrounding the brain is going to be a shell of chronons, discrete
particles of time, which do not interact with universe in the same
way that normal space time does.
It doesn't go forward at 12nd per second.
It doesn't go backwards.
It's kind of static time, if you like.
And using this, the Rani hopes to manipulate evolution throughout
the universe.
What I suggest is the brain would actually compute alternative
timelines, which the Rani would then enact, and because it's
surrounded by the Cronon shell, the brain will never change.
So it will always be aware of what the universe was like before.
So it's like the control in a time change experiment.
So Brendan, if she's able to come up with such a clever plan.
Why is she unable to put a hinge on the rocket launcher thing?
that she can launch the rocket, you know, at any time she rock, or
indeed have steering rockets on the bloody rocket itself.
So you can actually, you know, hit your target.
Yeah, guided missile.
Yeah, like, you know, that's a goodness thing.
That thing.
You know, I think somewhere in the novelisation of time of the
Ronnie.
Pip and Jane actually mentioned that the Tetraps and all the
Kursians haven't found the principle of hinges.
He could have mentioned it.
They have doors on Gala.
Well, they are all...
Oh, no, they are swinging doors on California.
Yeah, yeah.
So I don't know that.
But the thing is, this is a story and the science of it did
actually make me look into the science of it as a kid.
Now, I didn't look into it with any great depth, but I looked up
what's helium 2.
Oh, it was something that theoretically existed at the beginning
of the universe and is highly unstable.
What's a crronon?
Oh, it's a discrete particle of time.
You know what I mean?
It's very 60s educative, Doctor Who.
Exactly right.
I think that's exactly right.
And they do it in all of their stories.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's how I know what Vionesium is. something they made
up.
That's the thing.
I think in terms of scientific instruction.
This is way below Mark of the Rani but way ahead of the megabyte
modem.
Oh, but...
I know we said it several times before, but isn't Doctor Who fun
again?
Hope the podcast is...
Dear listeners, we're taking off for the pink skies of Lecertia
and I feel like a dip, so do come back for Paradise Towers next
week.
Until then, you can find us online at flightthroughentirety.sexy.
Flight through entirety on Facebook and Apple Podcasts and FTE
podcast on Twitter.
Over on Bondfinger.
We are currently enjoying the Pierce Brosnan era of the program.
Much as you can enjoy reusing a teabag. squeezed it out
sufficiently.
That's at bottomfinger.com, Bondfinger on Facebook and Apple
Podcasts and at FTE podcast on Twitter.
Tbagging.
There you go.
So, um, we are now nominating for our Peter Davison commentary.
Todd has nominated 4 to Doomsday.
I have nominated Arc of Infinity.
Richard has nominated Enlightenment, and Nathan has nominated
Resurrection of the Daleks, which just a reminder, D-listener, he
hates.
So you can find the poll for that in our show notes and we will be
posting that elsewhere as well.
Until next week, may all your lightheartgles be lightweight
substitutes.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
Thank you for bearing with us.
Good night.
That was Flight Through Entirety with Nathan Bottomley, Brendan
Jones, and Richard Stone.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, logo designed by Anthony
Wells.
This episode, terrified of Tinsel, was recorded on the 12th of
June 2017.
The next episode will be released on the 2nd of July.
Do come back next week when Richard Briars will impersonate Mel
using only a goat, a prize-winning marrow, and Felicity Kendall's
last Boshrock.
It's kind of doing things that Doctor Who hasn't really done
before.
The closest we've got to Mel impersonating the Rani is a couple of
robot Doctor Who's in the past.
You just said male impersonating Rani.
Thank you.
Works both ways.