Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast, which takes the form of a 327
subsection 9 Appendix 3 conversation.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan I'm a tatty old pool cleaner for this one.
And we are going to visit the Great Pool in the sky.
It's Paradise Towers.
Well, here we are.
I managed to watch it.
It was one of those ones we broke out of the cellophone.
It's actually pretty good.
This is one where there are some production problems that kind of
get in the way of the sort of full realisation of what's going on
but the script, and by extension, the novelisation are actually
both incredibly clever.
It's League of Gentlemen Light, isn't it, before League of
Gentlemen?
Yeah, I guess so.
It does have that sort of weird, dark Gothic thing going on.
Um, an all local.
Very, very local.
And in fact, it is a Doctor Who story set in a lot of space
corridors, which I've complained about sort of quite a lot.
I think we'll get it again at the end of the season.
It's a lot of space corridors, but it manages to do something
different from what we've had for a while.
And we've observed before.
I think it's fairly well known that this is the 1st Doctor Who
story for a very, very long time that hasn't had any returning
elements that doesn't really reference anything that's happened
before that can just be understood on its own terms.
Corridors don't count.
No that's right.
This is actually the 1st claustrophobic use of real, the real
sense of isolation in corridors.
And again, as we went on and on and on and on and on last episode
thanks for listening, that the sense of the now is very much at
the front of this.
This is a tower block and this is about, we're going to see this
in rows, aren't we?
Yeah, it's much more kindly.
Yeah.
And so it's a decaying tower block with all of these promises with
a glossy brochure with, you know, promises of an exciting future
and happiness and achievement and it's all gone to hell and it's
inhabited by warring tribes.
Do you think this was J and T having a go back at Jonathan Powell
and maybe Doctor Who Bulletin?
You know, I think that J and T is one of the least political
producers that we've ever had.
A political.
Yeah, and and given that combination with Eric Saywood, who was
also not interested in doing politics, just meant that we had a
Doctor Who that supported the status quo and really didn't engage
with the outside world.
And this story, I think, is a type of story that Doctor Who has
done before, and I think we were thinking about the macraterra
fairly recently, where it's not set on the planet Blizzbloss.
We don't know what planet it's on.
It's not set on a planet.
It's not set on a spaceship or a space station.
It's set in a big building, and that building, we given no idea
where it is really how it got here.
And there is a sort of backstory that doesn't really work and
doesn't add up.
And I think it's partly because the ages of all of the people who
are cast are sort of all wrong.
So it doesn't add up with what we're told about the backstory.
But that just doesn't matter because openly allegorical.
And the idea is that we're illustrating something about society by
having an artificial and an openly artificial situation created
where no one has kind of normal names, you know, people have
titles and stuff or they're called fire escape or bin liner or
whatever.
And so it's really just saying something about contemporary
society.
Stephen Wyatt, who wrote this will do a similar thing with the
greatest show in the galaxy, and I think Russell T. Davies will
really bring this approach to its apotheosis in gridlock.
Have a drink.
And gridlock again is openly unrealistic.
I still have friends who complain that often, I think it's
superb.
And, and, you know, I have friends who complain, no one's going to
drive in a car for 20 years.
What are you doing now?
I would say that, again, this one might have slipped onto the
radar.
I actually think it's got to do with things like lighting and not
to do with casting at all or said, although there are some
questions there and maybe Nicholas Mallet after Mysterious Planet
although he said he actually ran away from and quit on a job, which
directors should never do, but he quit on a job doing a German
mini series filmed in Berlin, written by Pip and Jane Baker to
come back and do this.
Go on.
How do you feel this fits in?
I think it's directly after time in the Rani?
It is really getting straight into the critique of modern life in
a very dark and upfront way that kids can recognise and that older
people can recognise and it's very much the Judge Dread 2018
universe.
Yeah, which is, again, what he's doing in gridlock.
And so what you have here is on a surface level is a sort of
critique of modernism in the sense of a building is a machine
rather than a machine for living, rather than something for human
beings, the architect creates the building, but doesn't want
people to spoil it by living in it. you know who said that?
Le Corbusier, Pierre Generay.
Do you know what else he said?
That's not even in the architecture textbooks.
You've actually got to go in and read his stuff, which I had to do
at school.
He was one of the progenitors along with the Bauhaus school that
they went into Europe, you know, and it's actually the reason we
had this style of building is in fact the Nazi Party.
It is, in fact, the excising of the Jewish population of Europe
that these architects came to America and came to the UK.
But, um, Le Corb was very famous for saying, the whole design of
tower blocks is to get people off the streets and to quell nascent
Marxism.
The principle, and the reason he got early government funding is
that if you isolate people onto flaws, with doors that don't face
each other, with nowhere to gather, with no marketplace, they
won't be able to have political inclusion.
Yeah, they won't be able to organise.
And so this is a story.
Utterly deliberate.
Yeah, well, it's a story of a society that's fragmented into
tribes that are all preying on one another and that are all
hostile to one another.
And J.G. Ballard.
Exactly.
And that's the other thing.
High rise, which I won't pretend to have read.
I did.
I did back in the day.
It's okay.
It's just this story.
I liked Empire of the Sun, which is the reason he was getting
nodded to, and that was a film around this time that Spielberg, and
that's when Ballad.
Ballard was a fruitcake.
He was like a Samuel R.
Delaney.
Really, Wacko was doing a whole lot of fun stuff, not just
mushroom results. to, you know, to really, really, but it's good.
It's worth reading if you like this story.
I suggest we should all be looking at the things that were going
on around this era because it's very rich.
And so very simply the story is that those people learn to work
together and organise against a murderous authority figure.
You know, someone who has created this society, given it the shape
that it has, and then sets about massacring everyone, and the
people all join together and defeat their oppressors with the
doctor's encouragement.
And I think it's classic, it's terrific.
It's in the tradition of the sun makers, whether the doctor
arrives and an oppressive society is overthrown within a day.
And it's, you know, spectacularly angry and fabulous.
And it's not without its flaws, but I think it's really terrific.
Yeah, it's funny for me because I grew up in Campbelltown, which
has a lot of public housing, social housing.
It's not in the form of tower blocks out there.
It's in the form of these whole cul-de-sacs full of little town.
Ramsey Street.
Yeah.
But when I went to school, I was, I was from a different area from
this, it still had some public housing, but it was mostly private
housing.
And there were people who looked down on the people living in the
social housing and even around ads where I went to school.
It was roughly, I would say, 70% social housing and 30% private
housing.
But if you said you came from there, it was assumed you lived in
social housing and therefore your family was poor and this sat the
other.
Now for us as kids, most of us didn't buy into that.
It was parents, it was people on the parents and citizens
committee who were overruling people on the parents and citizens
committee who lived in these houses because, oh, no, you shouldn't
have a say in the uniforms.
You shouldn't have a say in what the school spends money on this.
And yeah, I only found out in the years afterwards.
And also, I did find out while I was there because one of my best
friends, lived in a privately owned house, in this area and his
family were really looked down on.
And yeah, no, no one deserves to be really looked down on for that
reason, but it's that kind of thing.
You've got the caretakers looking down on everyone.
You've got the resis looking down on the kangs and you've got the
kangs who know that the caretakers and the resis are corrupt, but
no one will believe them.
And again, it's, yeah, it's pitting everyone against each other
within this environment so they don't notice the evil that's
living underneath them.
Much like modern media.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Very much so.
And again, critical theory was had already assumed that that's the
base of riding up until this period, this mid-80s period that
people were consuming pap.
Warhol said it when he famously said, you know, if we just feed a
tube from there, from their fundaments, just diet pink, put
flavouring in it and put it in your mouth, and that's modern
culture.
And I think also the queer message continues through this story as
well because, you know, the kangs are all girls.
You don't see any young men of their age, except for pecs.
And I think...
Plus, I think, you know, you were talking about the chronology of
this story, Nathan, it's like, you know, this story might work if
Pex was in his 30s and the gangs were in their very early 20s to
late teens and the war started 15 years ago.
So, you know, Pex could have gone because he was 16, but the Kangs
couldn't go because they were 2 or 3 because, you know, you don't
see any women in their 30s.
So presumably the women who were of fighting age went off to fight
the war as well.
No, I mean, it doesn't work.
It's the thinnest possible sort of premise.
And once you start casting, you know, that pretty young caretaker
in episode one who gets killed, like why wasn't he offered the
war?
I mean, it doesn't work, really.
Exactly.
But it's not meant to.
No.
And, you know, I think Tilda and Tabby are very clearly coded as
queer.
You know, they're they're 2 old ladies living together.
Nathan will like them because they're cannibals.
And Tilda's clearly the feeder because...
No, I'm not and I'm not...
I am not saying that in terms of, you know, tabby's bigger.
I'm saying that in terms of we only see tabby eating.
Like when there's the scene with the rat, Tilda actually makes
this little snide comment that she didn't have much to eat of it
because Tabby had the rest.
But, you know, she's just trying to preserve her own safety.
It's so clever.
Yeah.
And I think also they're a little bit of a pastiche of the Golden
Girls.
The Golden Girls were popular at this time.
You're certainly wearing a lot of nylon, aren't they?
I think they're, yes, as much a pastiche of Coronation Street.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
That cannibalism cliffhanger, the cliffhanger at the end of
episode 2 must be actually one of my favourite cliffhangers ever
where Mel's being threatened by a toasting fork and she's got like
a crocheted knee rug over her face and she's screaming and
things.
And it's also beautifully set up.
Richard, couldn't you imagine that happening to Tara King?
I mean, really, that sort of Avengers moment.
That actually, you can imagine that happening in homicide and old
lace.
The Avengers episode that was cobbled together out of a failed
Tara King pilot. and there's mother telling the story of Steve and
Tara to his 2 old arts who greet him with handguns and they'd say
oh, no, they're presents.
We're not about to shoot you.
Really?
Because it is, in itself, a pesticional homage to those old
Hollywood horrors.
It's properly funny and it's well set up too.
But it's also touching on the fact that there were pensioners
freezing in the 80s and starving, literally, because of that just
cards.
And now, Mr. Cameron and Miss May.
So I do think, however, there are production problems.
Oh, the lighting's a hell of a lot better.
Those beautiful bits with silver illuminated from behind.
They've turned the lights down.
You know, we Mallet got that.
He said, no, he wanted to redress the mistakes, the really obvious
mistakes it made in.
I mean, yeah.
It doesn't get all the way to the casting, though, does it?
No, so...
Well, I think the music is terrible.
Oh thank you.
Back to my bet noir, my black Betty, which is Kath McCulloch.
Have you heard the David Snell?
score?
Yeah, I don't like that very much.
Don't you?
I think it's a hell of a lot better.
Yeah, I do think it is better, but it is a bit atonal.
It's kind of like he's heard Dudley Simpson and that's the last
Doctor Who score that he's heard.
It isn't very good, but it is sort of striving to be sort of
atmospheric.
So I think the music's a problem.
I think some of the performances, I mean, they're doing sort of
broad kids TV and, you know, maybe that works given the sort of
hyper reality of kind of the premise.
I don't know.
And I do think that Richard Briars is terrible.
What do you think, Brendan?
No, I agree.
Richard Bryce is terrible.
And if you watch, not in general, just in this.
I really want to disagree, but no, his wife.
Like, you know, everything else everything else I've ever seen him
in, especially The Good Life, of course, Monarch of the Glen.
He is brilliant.
He is a great actor.
But when you watch the making of on DVD.
You find out why he's terrible in this and it's because he treated
it like a joke.
Yeah, he did.
He was playing the very last big sitcom he'd done in the...
I'm just trying to remember what it was called.
Um, ever decreasing circles.
So the show he'd just done. played it exactly the same way.
Yeah.
And I think part of the problem is he says in his interview on the
DVD that the chief caretaker is a little Hitler.
And I just remember seeing on Twitter at some and again, I
apologise.
I didn't save the tweet, so I can't remember who it was, but
someone I follow on Twitter, who is Jewish, just came out with
Richard Briars, how dare you?
The caretaker is not Hitler.
You know, Hitler was a monster.
The caretaker is a bureaucrat.
Hitler wasn't a bureaucrat.
Yeah, no, it's stupid.
Yeah, it's dumb.
His decision, his decision to play it, like whatever the hell he
thinks he's doing in episode for once he's got the great
architect's brain in his head.
I mean, he's clearly striving for someone who's just suffered
brain surgery at the hands of a garbage compactor.
But it's it's a terrible, terrible ill-judged performance and it's
sort of it's sort of horribly ablest in this sort of really
unpleasant way.
There's no menace in it whatsoever.
And, you know, there's very little menace in Crowagon, not to that
point because he's just a pair of neon lights with...
You see, I actually...
I actually really like that.
I think that's super funny.
And I do think that Richard Briar is calling him my pet, you know
in this sort of desperate attempt to enforce some sort of
hierarchy where he's the owner and Croagnon's the pet, but all the
snivelling and cowering that he does shows that it's quite the
other way round.
See, that's the one set of scenes where I like Richard Briars.
I think he gets it right there.
And I think then the main problem with his chief caretaker
portrayal is that the chief caretaker is always on the brink of
losing control.
And so when he does lose control in front of Croagnon, there's no
surprise.
But if he'd played it sort of, oh, no, everything's fine and I'm
completely straight down the line.
Like if he like played it like a stereotypical detective sergeant
on the bill and then falls to pieces in front of Crow Agnon, that's
scary. nuanced it and led up to it.
Yeah, I agree.
But I think the point is that he's a sort of pathetic job's
worth.
You know what I mean?
He might have just seen recent Doctor Who.
Yeah, yeah, he could have said, oh, JNT, can you send me some
tapes to Doctor Who?
JNT sends him timelash.
Oh, that's how I meant to play it.
But then you've got Clive Merrison.
Who is great.
Who's great.
But the thing is, he plays the deputy chief caretaker as someone
who's competent.
And also with a proper fanboy, giant sporting accent.
Can I just mention, can we name check Clive Merrison for a
moment?
I'm so glad we remembered.
He's my favourite Sherlock Holmes.
Up to almost including Jeremy Brett.
So Jeremy Brett from the classic 80s.
You know who was actually tipped to play the chief caretaker, don't
you?
Edward Hardwick, who was one of the Watsons, who was a good Watson
yes.
But I think Clive Merrison is...
I just love him.
Do listen, if you haven't heard the BBC for, they've got Mr. Judy
Dench, Michael Williams playing Watson, he is actually the best
Watson of all time.
He really is extraordinary with Merrison.
They're my favourite audio, no offence to Nick Briggs.
Favourite audio, Sherlock Holmes. you heard them?
No, no, I have heard also.
That's so good.
They're so good.
I mean, of course, he was in... just camping off.
Yeah, speaking of...
I think he's quite wrapped on TV, but he really in everything.
But he's superb on radio.
What did you, look, he's chief caretaker.
I think he's taking at the Mickey as well.
But he's doing the children's TV performance that everyone's doing
I think.
Mind you, I really like the moment where he says, the one
situation where you're allowed to disobey the rules is when the
chief caretaker is just not the chief caretaker.
I think he is playing it for kids TV, but he plays that
realisation quite well.
He then has to do that completely stupid jump over.
Can we talk about the cleaners?
I wanted to love them as much as the war machines.
And I didn't.
I think a big problem is... is the long lingering shots of them
going down corridors.
It is hilarious seeing manicured legs with fluffy slippers
sticking out.
Don't get me wrong.
But I think the problem is you get a long lingering 32nd shot of
them, which Kef McCulloch then has to fill with you to see?
with his score.
Dun, dun, dun, dun.
Just to get the nether regions of Thora herd sticking out of the
back.
And haven't we all wished we'd been there at one point?
You know, I have to say, with the music for this.
I do enjoy it, but I agree a lot of the times it is working
against the drama.
One piece I particularly love, though, is the Kang's greeting
routine with the raising your arms up one at a time and lowering
them.
Because as a kid, I looked at that and I went, it's, I'm going to
hit you.
No, I'm not going to hit you.
I'm not going to hit you, and now I greet you.
They're in this culture where playful violence is how they fight
with their other tribes with the other kangs.
And the only television they have is reruns of Eurovision, because
it honestly all looks like dance moves from the Dutch ensemble.
That's true as well.
But they're showing, I'm not going to hit you with my left hand.
I'm not going to hit you with my right hand and now I'm going to
greet you.
Yeah, I kind of get what they're going for.
Yeah, yeah, subtle and clever.
Yeah, you know, I get their language, which, in a way, it has to
be clunky, so you pick up what they're trying to say, like ice hot
is cool.
High fabion, high fashion.
These are picking up on Marshall McClue in terms, you know.
So again, we're indulging in metacritiques of media.
And he's the one who coined the terms hot and cool.
I won't go into it again. unless you write, unless you ask.
I really will.
But yeah, yeah, they're actually picking...
So what I mean about this thing working on so many different
levels.
This is kind of, you could say kind of sad that it doesn't quite
get there.
But if you look at the etchiness and scratchiness of graphics at
the time and really of the quality of media, I think the fact that
it allows, as you were saying before, Nathan, about Tom and the
Rani, which didn't really do this, it talked about glossy and
glossy itself, was a subversion of the gritty reality of what
these people were going through, whereas here the grit is on the
surface and brought home.
I think it still works as a critique for, you know, a double
whammy of what the story's trying to do.
I don't think the appearance or the look or the styling or even
the casting is actually working against the narrative.
Big finish have kind of done a remake of this story.
It's called Spaceport Fear.
Oh, I just heard that.
With Colin and Bonnie.
The premise is that there's this group of people who've been
locked in a, like an airport lounge, but for spaceships, for a few
generations.
And so you get the corruptions of language, like when people talk
about being children.
They say, oh, no, that's been there since I was carry on.
But I think listening to Spaceport fear, it's because it's more
polished, it's not as successful for me, but also, I look back on
this with the nostalgia of a six-year-old watching.
And one thing I particularly love.
I picked up on this when we were alive, tweeting it a few weeks
ago is I find it hard to imagine Colin Baker in this story because
the doctor with the gangs, he doesn't correct their language.
He doesn't diminish their culture.
He joins in.
Sylvester McCoy is the doctor is a working class doctor.
And we'll see Osmotic influence in that, yeah.
Yeah, and we'll see this all the way through his tenure.
He'll buddy up with the guards who are working the door.
He'll buddy up with the gangs and, you know, he tries to adopt
their language as well to communicate with them and they really
like him as a result.
And in the 1st scene when they meet Mel.
Mel does hang back and, you know, I don't want to be a kang.
Well, we don't want you to be a kang.
They like the doctor because even though he's an old star, he
speaks to them on their level, whereas Mel retains her middle
class poshness.
And again, there's that classism going on.
Lower middle class.
Lower middle class poshness.
The upper hand.
It's all shoulder pads and knee-warmers.
Oh, actually, we barely talked about her outfit last week, but
she's got another cracking outfit this week.
I know, she says a white dog. not really one of any colour.
No, you're all of them, you...
She's wearing blue.
Why do we have that?
I don't know what I am.
Yeah, actually, you're right.
Maybe that's why they're asking because she's got red hair, but
she's got the blue outfit.
I never thought of that. absolutely no dress scenes.
She is really the carry-on from the Colin era, and you do need
that.
You do need to recognise the immediate past in that I don't really
think she fits in.
For me, Bonnie plays this exactly the same pitch and relativism
that Katie Manning played her part in that she plays it for the
junior audience, whether that was direction or whether that was
Bonnie's feeling for it or whether it's just that the way she read
the lines and thought, what else are you going to do with this?
But also maybe that's where Bonnie's career was at the time too.
She was a panda star and a singing dancing girl.
So she was brought in for the lightness of touch.
But it doesn't work for me at all.
Well, I think next week when she's on location, her performance is
quite different.
It's a bit of mud on her.
Well, it's a little bit more realistic because she's shooting it
in a realistic environment, whereas this does still feel like a
stage and everyone else is going panto in this one.
So I think, yeah.
I kind of like that she gets a pseudo romance with PECs.
And it's not really a romance because we're not doing romance in
this part.
You know, it's all very broad strokes.
And Pex is gay.
I'm glad you mentioned broad strokes because it is more of a strap
on, right?
But 1st of all, there's that great bit where he pulls the lighting
fixture off the wall to impress her.
And her immediate reaction is just, you're destroying something
for no purpose whatsoever.
If you could put that back there and it could serve some purpose.
That'd be great.
But you can't create, you can only destroy.
And I'm like, that is a great statement of what Doctor Who should
be about.
Yes, and what it hasn't been recently.
No, it's like Patrick Trouton and all the crockery in that caravan
in the enemy of the world.
Yeah, yeah.
People make lovely things.
People spend all their time making putting lovely podcasts
together and then other people come along just to destroy them.
But yeah, they get, listen, we're looking at you.
Despite the fact that they do spend like half of episode 3 trapped
in a cupboard that just happens to be a lift.
They get some really lovely moments where like, like where Mel
discovers that Pex has been lying all this time and he's actually
a desserter and she, she is just, she's really quite not upset
with him, but just really sad that he's had to lie to her and...
That nicely shadows what we just saw last night, doesn't it?
We just saw Empress of Mars on TV last night and that really
lovely subtle performance from another dessert.
From another red coated hottie, yes.
In fact, I think Pax is obviously pivotal here, and the very last
shot has the words Pax lives, and 2 sort of Kang colours scrawled
on the wall.
I think that PEX is, and I live tweeted this and got a little bit
of pushback, but I'm going with it.
I think that his storyline is heavily informed by the story of
Jesus, and I think seriously, I think that he is an outcast, his
despised and rejected of men. everyone hates and mocks him.
He, however, sacrifices his life, lays down his life so that a
group of people who are fragmented and at odds and in terrible
danger, unite together, the very last thing that we see is them
having a religious ceremony to honour him.
And then, of course, his ultimate resurrection with the words Pex
lives at the end, their animated by that spirit of self-sacrifice
that he exhibits.
I love the scene where he loses his bottle.
He's got to delay the great architect from getting there, so they
have time to get their plans in place.
And he's stepped up and he's been so brave and everyone's so proud
of him and he knows what's hanging on this, but he still just
can't bring himself to be brave enough to do the right thing.
He has to step in and sacrifice himself instead.
And I think that's so lovely for something where all the
characters are types where none of them have proper names where
there's a level of unreality.
There is a little bit of a level of realism there, which I just
think that C.S. Lewis could have written this.
No, he's horrible.
That's what he would have done.
No way Marxist at all.
And it actually, and then it makes the Bonnie Mary Magdalene.
And if it makes Sylvester the Holy Ghost.
See, what I love about that scene is, you know, Pecks tries to run
away from the fight as the doctor is having his head caved in.
And what makes him come back isn't just Mel looking at him, it's
him looking at his Kang bracelet and realising he finally belongs
and he's finally accepted for who he is and that's when he lays
down his life.
Do you think that's what they're trying to tell us that Jesus was
actually just a member of one of Leonard Bernstein's West Side
Story gangs, really.
Well, it's all just, which makes, which makes God entirely Old
Testament Jewish and queer.
If he is, in fact, a good story.
Well, we've just said Pex is gay.
It's all making a lot more sense to me.
When I say broad strokes early. story that functions on, as you
say, archetypes.
You know, the 3 old ladies who are named are Tilda Tabby and
Maddie.
They're all sort of...
Oh, yeah.
They're too... behind Brendan right now.
Yeah, then you've got the gangs who are all named after
architectural features.
Binliner, fire escape, drinking fountain.
And yet this really is abominable.
It's a, it just doesn't work.
It doesn't hold together.
I know, we're all so nice about everything.
But it doesn't, does it?
I mean, there's great little moments, but it doesn't hold
together.
Well, Gareth Roberts once said that if season 24 had had tone
meetings, the way that the new series does and everyone was on the
same page with tone.
And if it was put on Saturday night with the same level of
advertisement of the Trial of the Time Lord.
He says it would have got double the ratings.
He's like, there's nothing wrong with the script.
There's nothing wrong with the direction.
There's nothing wrong with the performance.
They're just all pulling in different directions.
Getty Wyatt was a real coup.
And we have to say, GNT had him on board before Cartwall had come
along. because of the play clause, which also had, I think
Elizabeth Spriggs in it, didn't it?
It was a send-up of cats and it was 2 old ladies.
It was actually kind of like vicious, but without Ian McCellen or
whoever the other old lovey was.
I always say Patrick Stewart, but it's actually Derek Jacoby.
You never see them in the same room together.
I have some sympathy for people who complain that it doesn't quite
work.
And I do think that season 24 does take a while to kind of hit its
stride.
And I do think there's one story in it that isn't particularly
successful, but I don't think it's this one.
Yeah, for me, this is the one that isn't particularly successful
but we'll go.
Yeah, well, I think it's got enough going on that it overcomes the
flaws in the production. which are undoubtedly present.
And there's joyfulness and there's, you can see there's a willing
intent to do a lot, not just to do good, but to make it messy and
interesting.
Yeah, and it is messy.
It is experimental.
It's not clean and tidy.
We haven't seen it before, have we?
No, and it doesn't fit into the hooniverse either.
Do you know what I mean?
There's no references to the tin clavic minds of Raga or anything
like that. disappoint you at all.
No, no, no, no.
It didn't need a pteraleptyl in it.
It's functioning quite well without that.
You know, it had no monsters.
It was actually Cartmore's thing to push the cleaners to make them
the robot monster.
Wow, that's surprising, considering...
ANT is so determined to have a marketable monster.
Didn't have a monster.
Yeah.
And that stupid crab thing in the, which I actually think is
terribly cute.
The Toyota design crab that's living in the terrible pool.
That's really cute.
It's like some...
It's like Koreans being given Thunderbirds to Remo.
Tamagotchi TV.
Did you know there's actually Paradise Towers apartments on the
Gold Coast?
Stop it.
Fully horrendous to anyone who'd care to look it up.
And as mentioned earlier, of course, Maddie is played by Judy
Cornwell completing the 3rd of 3 annual guest appearances by
keeping up appearances, main actors.
Oh, God, it's true.
Yeah, she's dazy.
So yeah, we had Onslow last year and we had Richard.
The year before.
Cyril Cusack's daughter or granddaughter as one of the kings, the
leader of the Blue Kings owner.
Yes, yes, of course.
And of course, he was up for the casting alongside Billy.
Yes.
James Cyril Cusa again.
Yeah, so yeah, that's Catherine Cusack.
And also as Fire Escape, we have Julie Brennan.
Yeah, Mrs. Mrs. Mark Strickson. of the time she was the one I said
I was awful that they dyed his hair, orange.
Everyone looked at him.
It was appalling.
He was so self-conscious and he had a dreadful time.
She would never shut up about it.
And then all of a sudden, she was no longer Mrs. Drickson.
I was going to say all of a sudden she's put in red for this
funnier and crueller.
I like it.
But oh, how I adore the scenes of Sylvester telling the kangs
about their history.
I love them all sitting down to watch the video and drinking
lemonade.
Curiously refreshing.
Yeah, they even take the piss out of Pepsi and COVID.
Really good.
Yeah, you know, I have to agree with you, Richard.
It's it is a mess, but it's a mess that everyone wants to try to
make good except for Richard Bryars.
Everyone wants to try to make this entertaining TV. everyone just
has different ideas about how to achieve it.
It should be a mess because the context is messy.
Does it work in the way that Horns of Nimon works?
When I watched it for the 1st time, I thought, ooh, it's Graham
Williams back, you know, there's this sort of...
Yeah, it does, doesn't it?
I actually think in retrospect, it's not as witty as that.
It's not as detached and ironic as that.
It's not slide in the way.
I think it is much more straightforward and a bit more earnest and
political. also young.
Yeah, in the way that William's stories never were.
Yeah.
No, no, no.
There was a kind of level of irony.
We were always being told what was funny by the older
undergraduates in Williams era.
It was always, yes, Tom and Lala are students, but their final
years, and they already know everything and they're terribly
sophisticated.
They probably smoke behind the toilet block.
Those sorts of kids.
Whereas this lot, no, we're right here and now.
Yeah, I think that's right.
I think it is much more serious, much more politically serious, and
it really wants to do something that Doctor Who hasn't done for a
long time, where Doctor Who has been deliberately trying to be a
political and has only occasionally inadvertently stumbled into
sort of horrific right wing militaristic messages just out of
sheer kind of incompetence.
And so, however flawed this is as a production, I just think it's
really, really amazing.
It's a great breath of fresh air.
And if you, you know, don't aim high.
Do you know what I mean?
You just produce the same space corridors every week.
You can show.
But if you build high, you have a chance at happiness.
The thing is, I love that.
And when I am in stressful situations and when I am unhappy, I get
a voice in my head that says build high for happiness.
It's a lovely sentiment.
Look what you don't, Andrew, come.
But going back to, you know, Doctor Who is now suddenly being
political, I have to wonder if the cancellation slash hiatus is
partially responsible for that because I'm reading John Nathan
Turner's biography by Richard Marson totally tasteless, which was
previously published as The Scandalous Life and Times of John
Nathan Turner.
And, of course, he was a producer of television in Thatcher's
Britain, where, as we've discussed, gay either wasn't talked about
or it was something to be looked down upon and shunned and
shamed.
I think John Nathan Turner's apoliticalism in producing Doctor Who
was as much avoidance as it was self-preservation.
I think he felt that he couldn't put political messages into the
program.
Do you think he wanted to?
I don't know whether he wanted to, but I think by that point
having been at the BBC for so long, I think it had just become 2nd
nature to conceal.
So when Andrew Cartmel comes along, 1st of all, he's got this
political idea...
Yeah, he's straight.
But also, the show's already been cancelled.
Why not start kicking the hornet's nest when no one's watching
anyway?
That's what I mean about Indian summer because this is just this
brief respite. resuscitation. where they have nothing to lose.
No one's really watching.
And so they can start to be crazy and experimental.
And I think that's terrific.
And there's something you said before on the podcast, Brendan, is
you know, you can't make that's not political.
You know, like, that's a very profound statement.
We go back to Walter Benjamin, again, who I wanted to cite in a
previous episode, Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, when
you say that all things are reduced and all things are pap and all
things are repeated, but that doesn't necessarily devalue the
message innate in each article.
And the fact that it's mass produced and the fact that it's
everywhere.
It doesn't make these lives anymore dissolute or any more
meaningless.
In fact.
Yeah, yeah, well, I think I think that what ended up happening was
that Doctor Who failed to engage with the outside world at all.
And by default, that's a support of the status quo, the idea that
you know, the obsession of Doctor Who Monster book reading
teenagers is the most important thing that we want to address in
this television program, just kind of the subtext of that is
because basically everything's okay.
And this is what we can afford to expand energy worrying about.
And the deliberate rejection of that.
There's nothing here, that lovers of the Doctor Who monster book.
There's no points at which you can go back to it to verify that a
reference to the pteroreptils is correct.
All that you've got instead is a political message about, you know
like a kind of Marxist political message in a sense.
I mean, any society that you depict is inhabiting a building full
of different floors, you know, you start to think about
stratification and things.
That's what Benjamin touched on.
And again, the integration of this and the Marxism and with
postmodernism is that you can take detritus, but still find
meaning because there are individual lives within this.
This was all coming out of great despair after the war when we
expected things to be fantastic and we expect, you know, that
golden age, which is what we came to with Billy and with Pat, that
there was this great expectation.
And then there was a sort of reconditioning, if you like, rather
than a reconnection, and the Tories took power again, and there
was the energy crisis, and there were all the stories, when you
could see with Pertwi, before the rush again of youth and
reclaiming the lost hope, which is Tom, you've had Doctor Who
always touching on the political pulse at the time.
We're getting that now.
Yes, we live in despairing times.
Yes, there isn't funding.
Yes, pensioners are freezing all the rest of it.
Education is starting to cost, but we can still reclaim the
meaning of our lives and create our own subcultures and our own
what the ruling class would call deviant we actually call life and
art.
In terms of art.
There is a video game I funded on Kickstarter.
This is going somewhere called ukulele.
It's building on an old series of games called Banjo Kazooie, the
original programmers, it's a British game.
And what happened was it was massively funded.
It was fully funded within 38 minutes on Kickstarter, 175,000
pounds. naked.
Ouch, actually, those strings hurt when they snap. ended up with
2500000 pounds funding.
Yeah.
Now, a fan of their games, a gamer with a YouTube channel. his
handler is John Tron, and pretty much he kind of said, hey guys, I
love your stuff.
I've pre-ought the game.
You're so wonderful.
I would have loved to have been in it. they're like, well, why
don't you play a voice in the game?
So they recorded his voice, da da da.
About 2 months before release, he went on this massive anti
immigrant rant, kind of pro-Trump. what have you and then kind of
doubled down on it.
And they removed him from the game.
And the thing is, no one asked them to, but they said when, you
know, we're not comfortable with him representing.
And of course, there was a backlash against that.
Oh, you know, this is censorship, et cetera, et cetera.
But it is kind of an example of you cannot make art that is not
political and who you choose to have involved in that art has a
political message to it as well.
The Enders game movie a couple of years ago.
The studio desperately tried to say, oh, you know, it's not about
the politics contained within the story, it's not about the
politics of the author, and lots of people said, ah, no, actually
it is, because it is pushing that idea.
And not critiquing it.
You know, you haven't used this as an opportunity to update the
story.
It's just kind of a straightforward adaptation.
And you know what?
If people want to put out that kind of art, that says morally
dubious things, I think it is important that that art is
experienced.
But it cannot be above question.
And so when people, for instance, might look back at the Tom Baker
era and say, oh no, you can't criticise Hinchcliffe, you know
Hinchcliffe was wonderful.
Well, we were very critical of Hinchcliffe.
And I think it's equally true here that Colin Baker and Sylvester
McCoy at the time and in the years afterwards came in for a fair
bit of a kicking.
And there has been a reappraisal of them, especially in the DVD
market and after the new series.
But I think we've said this before as well.
There never was a golden age of Doctor Who.
You know, there are ears.
There are ears that are...
It's like he reached down my throat.
But, you know, objectively, there's no golden age of Doctor Who.
Personally, there certainly is.
That's the thing, and that's okay.
And it's okay to say that.
And it's okay for friend of the podcast, Bernard, to make fun of
us for saying that snake dance is a neglected German.
Are we 20 years behind the rest of the world?
That's okay because that's dialogue.
That's dialogue about how we experience art and how we experience
the world.
And that's really valuable.
And the only time you lose that is when you kind of say, oh no
you're just wrong.
Like, Richard, you know, you've said just now that you kind of
consider this story to be quite a mess.
Oh, I think it's extraordinary and beautiful, but I don't think it
just doesn't gel on screen.
Whereas for me, it gels a lot more.
And that's okay.
You know, we don't have to agree on these things, but that is also
a part of the political and personal experience.
I'm surprised how watchable I found it when I, as I say, it was
one of the sealed tombs of wrestle on copies that I just never
unearthed, and, you know, it's been sitting gathering dust.
No, well, I'm fond of this one.
And on many levels, it doesn't work, but it is the show for the
very, very 1st time in a very, very long time trying to do
something new.
Yes Yeah, this is a whole new show.
And yet I can see Pat in it.
I could even see pertly in this one. you know?
Yeah.
I honestly just can't imagine Colin in it and I love...
I love.
Actually, yeah, Tom would laud it over a bit.
Tom would be awful.
No, I think Pertwee would as well.
I think you need someone.
But I think Purby was a bit kinder and more subtle.
Especially with the lids.
Actually, you know who I think would be the one other doctor who'd
be totally brilliant in this Billy.
Imagine Billy with the cag.
Flirting with them all the dirty old scrubber.
He would.
I'm not a drinking fountain that I prefer a bottle of gin to any
day.
He would be amazing.
And it does actually feel a bit, except, of course, that would
have been cataclysmic because these things were being built at the
time.
And celebrate it.
They do say that the birth of post-modernism is actually 1972 and
it has a date. the end of June, 1972, when the Grand Pruitt ego
isn't that a great name?
Building estate was destroyed, and it's from the La Corbusio
school, and it won awards when it was built only in the early
60s.
But it was high rise for housing development for people on
pensions and such like, and there were drugs.
There was active gang warfare in the buildings, all the rest of
it.
So that's only, yeah, 1972 is the death of modernism, but, you
know, we've got there in the end.
It might have taken us 15 years, but we're there now.
Speaking of Billy, something I didn't mention last week.
Between season 23 and 24, of course, JNT thought he wasn't coming
back, he went off on holiday and came back to 2 messages.
One, you're still producer of Doctor Who and two. you have to fire
Colin Baker.
You have to fire.
Colin Baker.
Yeah. you, Jonathan Powell.
Instead of having like 9 months to prepare for the season.
He had two?
I think I think 2 before they had to start briefing directors.
Actually, yeah, and possibly 2 before they had to start filming.
But because John didn't expect to be there.
And, you know, he was tired of working on the show and he thought
he was finally free of it.
He called in Sidney Newman for advice.
This is amazing.
I'd forgotten all of this.
Have you read the letter?
Oh my god, it's insane.
So, Nathan, do you know my story?
And verity was also brought in.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Or consultant.
She said, I've got better things to do with my life.
Thank you.
Yeah, okay, Sydney. 93 has no idea where he is.
Ask him.
Sidney Newman's ideas included an older doctor again.
So get back to the Billy idea. told them to come.
Who did he suggest?
He said, you must recast Patrick Trouser.
Oh, yes.
He's still venerable and virile.
He still moves about.
Yeah, he's still got it.
He wanted him.
He died on the job.
Yeah, must not know how to control the ship.
He must want to go home.
And then he must regenerate into a woman person.
But not a Wonder Woman because we've had too many of these strong
strident dynasty ladies, but more on her later.
He must have 22 companions.
Perhaps brother and sister.
John, no, not John.
Go on.
But okay, yeah, so brother and sister, aged, I think. 17 and 13.
Aged annoyingly.
And the sister who is the younger one would have her hair in
pigtails with John Lennon's spectacles.
And when she gets upset or stressed, she plays the trumpet.
Oh dear.
But she lost it.
She's a bit acey, though, in the way he just, or perhaps is a
Malange, again, because the brother was a tagger.
The brother sprays graffiti on everything.
You know, he had some modern ideas in there.
This is not the young people in the industry.
Yeah.
I think they just all had an enormous chortle at the BBC and
thought, oh, Struth, what do we do now?
You know, it's like when they auditioned Sylvester and we touched
on this last week.
JNT wanted Sylvester, but of course, 6th floor, Jonathan Powell
said, no, we must see other actors, and JNT was enraged by this.
He's like, you're forcing me to stay on, but you won't trust me.
So the way he describes it, and the way Silt prescribes it is, we
got 2 other very good actors, but completely for the part.
Now, the thing is, they got him more than two.
They got in Ken Campbell.
Ken Campbell.
Who was dark?
Who started Source's career in 1970 as part of the King Campbell
Roadshow.
Would you remember Sylvest McCoy, the human bomb, which is how he
started his career.
That was the guy that, in fact, you know, Sylvester based a lot of
his performances of early on.
And he was, and Sylvester was still better than Ken.
Is he Roger in that episode of Faulty Town?
Yeah, in the anniversary.
Yeah, yes.
They got in...
They got in Chris Jury, who later played Deadbeat in Greatest Show
in the Galaxy.
They got in Dermot Crowley, who's actually not bad in the audition
tape.
It's on one of the DVDs. one of the DVDs for this season. yeah And
Harry Fielder.
And another bloke.
Yeah, kind of just really why?
And so the last two, we have they're audition tapes along with
Sylvester's.
Dermot Crowley would have been interesting.
Acting right up against Janet Fielding. and they did.
Brave man.
And they did, I believe, 2 scenes.
So they did the Iron Lady scene, which was extensively reworked
for inclusion in the Happiness Patrol.
Yes.
And they did what will become Mel's leaving scene in Dragonfire.
And Silv kind of impresses the most in that and it's where it
brings that melancholy we've been talking about.
It's Cartwell who wrote both of these.
Yeah. right.
For Janet Fielding, who they actually wanted to play the doctor
right from the start.
That would have been great.
She's actually quite good in me.
In those auditions.
She is amazing as Thatcher.
Well, terrified.
Indeed, as Peter Davis would say, just playing herself.
There was a funny moment on Twitter the other day where Janet
wished Colin Baker a happy birthday and said, I'm sure you were
always reasonable to all your companions. which Peter Davidson
responded, well, I'm sure he had very reasonable companions.
Oh, my goodness, there's not an inch of sunlight and all that show
is there?
They love each other.
You can just...
Oh yeah, absolutely.
I'm kind of glad they didn't go with Sidney Newman's ideas.
Mainly because Bollock...
There's nothing postmodern about those ideas.
No, it's just like, oh, yes, this new show called Doctor Who, which
is exactly interesting for the, yes, with Biddy and Cliff.
Yeah, when you think back in 1963, if you look at his notes
practically nothing makes it into the show and he's like, no
monsters.
We can't have any monsters in Doctor Who.
We wouldn't have Nathan on this podcast if there were no
monsters.
We'd have James, who's now going to jump in a time machine and go
back to avert the creation of the Daleks.
Harsh but fair.
Do that.
Just despite me. vindictive.
Well, ladies, gentlemen, Kangs, Rezies, Caretakers, we think we
all deserve a bit of a holiday, so we're off to Disneyland in
1959.
Hooray!
How can the BBC budget stretch to this?
We'll find out next week with Delta and the Bannermen do come back
for that.
Until then, you can find us online at flightthroughentirety.sexy
flight through entirety on Facebook and Apple Podcasts and at FDE
podcast on Twitter.
Over on Bondfinger, you can find the PS Brosnan era, and that's on
Bondfinger.com, Bondfinger on Facebook and iTunes and at
Bondfingercast on Twitter.
Don't forget, voting is still open for our Peter Davison
commentary.
Your choices are for to doomsday, nominated by Todd.
Arc of Infinity, nominated by me.
Enlightenment, nominated by Richard.
That's a good one, listening.
And Resurrection of the Dialects nominated by Nathan.
He hates that.
Because I hate the world. and everyone in it.
That's a bond film with Piss Brosnan, isn't it?
Until next week, may you not disappear up a Resi's waste disposal
shoot.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
I'm steaming my tool skirt for next week as we speak.
Cheers.
That was Flight for Entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley, Brandon
Jones, and Richard Stone.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, logo designed by Anthony
Wells.
This episode, Thatcher's Britain, was recorded on the 12th of June
2017.
The next episode will be released on the 2nd of July.
We would like to apologise to our listeners for bringing up any
unpleasant memories of the Thatcher years and are delighted to
reassure you that nothing like them can ever happen again.
We're releasing some lovely dunkable biscuit varieties, the
Bonfinger label, too, you'll soon be able to purchase for your
added enjoyment.
Yes.
It goes with Pierce Brosnan's teabag.
Roger Monte Carlo.
Sean Canary things.
Just dreadful, man.
Just trying to think of a biscuit beginning with D, but I can't.
George Lamington.
Are you doing the voting part?
Yes.
Don't forget.