Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast whose performative thickness is
defined by auxiliary semiotic codes.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
And I'll be arguing that the semiotic thickness of a performed
text does not, in fact, vary according to the redundancy of
auxiliary performance codes.
All that and more to look forward to in Dragonfire.
Aren't you glad you're tuned in?
So, um, yeah, we come to the story which for ages was lauded as
the good one this season where everything else was crap, and we we
have the return of a few things.
We have the return of Dominic Glynn doing the music.
Music is spectacular.
Didn't hurt.
And we also have the return of Tony Selby as Sabalong Glitz, but
sadly not Glenn Murthy as Dibber.
We have Patricia Queen.
Oh my god.
And I'm looking sober.
Who doesn't do it with his Yorkshire accent?
Do you know how space he is?
He's not just your white skin tight onesies and Eurasters.
He was in the last Charles Crichton journey into space series of
the late 70s, early 80s playing an astronaut.
Playing it straight.
And he's also in Kill the Moon, playing an astronaut.
I've seen his bum.
Really?
Yes.
Well, not quite his full bum, but he's, I'll tell you what, it's
worth voting for. sign, but I wouldn't mind doing 45 minutes on
that one.
I was going to say, can I touch you?
Because I think he's really handsome.
And he's very funny.
But in Journey to Space, which is again, you know, the thing that
we talked about in Billy's era, I really won't spend a lot of time
on this.
It was the last radio show to ever beat TV in the ratings.
But yeah, this has got a stellar cast of it's got Edward Peel.
It's got Edward Peel, who wasn't going to be in it.
It was, you know, Peter Jeffreys was actually up.
I don't know if he ever got there, but you know, those sorts.
Can you imagine Karl Grendel in this?
He would have been.
But it was very much in the line.
Do you remember who else was going to be up for this?
Was it Beryl Reed?
I wish it had been.
Imagine Beryl Reed's face melting off in the final episode.
Oh, we need to talk about it.
How would you tell?
Do you know that there was a little bit of chat?
Oh no, you can't.
It's 2 Raiders of the Lost Duck.
Ronald Lacy was actually approached to play the part, who, in fact
played the melting Nazi in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
And that cost, that one effect on Raiders of the Lost Ark cost the
entire William Hartnell era's budget in 1980, 81.
Really did.
They did this with wax and an adipose-inflatable lady person that
you can buy in shops where you can't tell your mum you've been.
Yeah, and that seriously is how they did it.
And I think it looks extraordinary.
Looks amazing.
That moment with his face melting, I've mentioned this before in
stones of blood.
So Stones of Blood where Romana falls off the cliff was one of the
moments as a kid that I couldn't stay in the room.
I had to run into the other room and sort of peek around the
corner.
And in high heels. managed that.
The other moment was Kane's face melting.
I found it so terrifying as a kid.
I had to sort of peek around the corner, not being quite able to
see the screen, but I could see the white out moment and that's
when I could come back in.
It's so amazing because they screened it here like before 6 p.m. on
the ABC.
Yeah.
I think it comes back to something I was saying a couple of weeks
ago in that Doctor Who is pushing the envelope because they're
like, no one's paying attention.
Exactly it.
It's like the 1st season of Rove when he was on Channel 9 doing
ridiculous comedy sketches about the mysterious Tonya Todman
sightings and things like that.
Oh, you know, because he's like nobody's watching anyway.
And sure enough, he got cancelled and Channel 10 picked him up.
Did you know that Tonya Toldman did see herself as Australia's own
Martha Stewart for anyone listening?
Oh, yeah.
She doesn't know who she is.
That's who she was.
She was doing crafty things.
Anna Theresa May Helmet Monoidwig, which was in fact her own
hair.
She was a little bit motherly and nice.
So it's no wonder that she died in a flaming inferno of her own
egotism, just right as well.
And I can't stand those people, can you?
And as for Tonya Todman.
Well, she was later cast as the dragon in this, wasn't she?
I think that this is the least successful story of the season.
And yet, yeah, I wonder why it is that this had the reputation of
being the good one.
I think it's because unlike the other 3 stories, there is a
consistency of tone to script to design to performance.
Even with Delta last week, I praised the fact that you have a
really mean mercenary force coming into this jolly story and
everything's destroyed by the power of love, not in a new series
kind of way of someone remembering someone they really love and
that power destroys them.
Like, no, love brings these people together and they do fight
them.
But here, I think it is a lot more coherent and consistent.
The problem then is that watching it down the years, and at this
point, Doctor Who was being made for the video generation, it was
being made to be watched more than once.
You know, you can look at the 1st 3 stories of this season and
peel it back and look at the different layers, like you've
discussed, Richard, with the postmodernism of it.
Whereas Dragonfire.
I don't think is bad by any means, but I think there's less to
peel back and less to discover.
It wears it a lot closer to the surface.
It seems a bit inessential.
I mean, I think there are great things in it.
I like the having a little adventure in the corridors and being
back in time for tea.
I think that's charming and that, um, that's the keys of
marinace.
Ice world episode.
You're barely back in time for dinner next Wednesday, I think, in
that one.
It goes forever.
But this, it has enough incident to fill out 3 episodes and we
haven't talked about the new 3 episode stories, which is yet
another thing that the show hasn't done. planet of and Giants.
That's exactly right.
And even then, that wasn't deliberate.
That was Verity Lambert saying these last 2 episodes are
terrible.
So it's a really, really good length for a Doctor Who story, I
think.
And why didn't they think of doing it before?
You know, just do 4 episode things because that's what we've
always done.
I think that's charming.
I think the stuff about the seduction of Ace, you know, the way
that you lose your free will when you follow Kane and the scene
with the sovereign, which...
Yeah, yeah, the market.
Which, um, is so beautifully sold by Dominic Glynn's music.
I think that's terrific.
I'm so relieved he's on this one.
Yeah, and I think also, the camera just stays on Sophie Eldred, and
the sound mixing is amazing because the sounds in the background
kind of get diminished, and we've just have Kane's voice with a
very slight echo on it, and with Mel screaming to Ace, it's
actually really quiet in the mix.
And then you're just pretty much on Sophie's face for about 30
seconds.
And she's playing it all behind the eyes.
You know, Sophie Eldred hits the ground running as ace.
What an extraordinary up and tumble to the present time.
She's so contemporary.
Well, it is that thing where, um, where they've created a story
and I don't know if this was originally intentional, but I guess
the reason the story can get away with being so inessential is
that its main job is to introduce Ace, you know, in the way that
the rescue was designed to introduce Vicky.
And so...
I was going to say Dodo.
That little trip to Wimbledon Common was designed to introduce
Dodo.
But and so I guess that works, doesn't it?
We get to see what she's like.
We get some time for her to interact with Mel so that we learn
things about her, that the doctor doesn't even know.
And also, her scenes with Mel bring out more character from Bonnie
Langford as well as this sorororal maternal figure 4 ace. you know
and because we know so little about Mel anyway, it kind of falls a
bit short, but I love their scenes together.
I do too.
Yeah, I love that bookending of Colin to Sylvester's regeneration
when she deliberately bumps ahead without actually touching the
raven cameras right on it, showing you.
She never really did in the 1st place.
And we get that, you know, that bit where she talks about the time
storm whipping her up, and it's complete nonsense and it's going
to be recon later as part of a story arc, spoiler alert.
Well, it's not complete nonsense, is it?
Because her name's Dorothy.
She gets carried away to a magical land by a storm.
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's only the beginning of the filmic references.
But that's the thing.
Her conversation with Mel, because it's too new friends talking
they make it seem like it's it's just normal for them to be
talking about these kind of things.
And you get Ace's speech about how she's always felt like an
outsider and she felt like she was from space and somewhere her
real parents were because she hates her mum and dad and then sort
of admits to Mel that her real name is Dorothy.
And it's this moment of...
I've never told anyone, including the teachers at school or...
My sister.
As bo people.
I mean, it makes no sense.
But it's this moment of vulnerability and Mel to her great credit
you know, she thinks it's going to be this amazing secret and Mel
doesn't laugh in her face or anything.
And Ace just quickly turns it into a joke.
Oh, you know, I knew they couldn't be my real mum and dad.
It's just this really sweet moment of character development and we
haven't had character development like this since episode one of
Planet of Fire, for God's sake.
This is true, actually.
Oh, look what they did with Nicola, yeah, with Perry, I should
say.
But all those scenes together of Bonnie and Sophie are just gold
in my opinion.
Big finish have obviously thought the same because now they've
paired them up together.
And I've just been listening to those as well.
There's about 4 stories now, the TARDIS rescues Mel from the
Nosferatu 3.
There's so many filmic references.
I think this is where you're saying this isn't the greatest story
of the season.
I possibly agree with you.
It should have been fan culture will tell you at the time we
thought it was.
We definitely all did because we were students and it references
everything visually and name checking.
All the guards, everyone who works there are either in film
criticism or are filmmakers.
The ice worlds itself.
Can we just have a little moment?
Charger glasses, do listeners.
But most of the names they've checked, certainly the German names
and the Russian names, Pudofkin, of course, and it was the other
one.
Siegfried Krakawa was, in fact, a German expressionist film.
And he also wrote from Kalagari to Hitler, which is, you know
pretty much modern politics, but it also, well, yeah, it's also
considered the best book on that period of interwar German cinema
which we're now calling German expressionism because Nathan keeps
giving us looks if we use the term German expressionism.
Yeah, but this is the problem.
They do name check these things.
You've got the ice world, which is, you know, with the caves of
crystals and all the rest, which is actually kind of, again, citing
the films of that era, German cinema at the time made a lot of
films about mountains.
Lini Reefenstyle started climbing up mountains.
It was a big thing.
I stuff.
So a lot of early film criticism talks about outdoor filming nice
things.
There's all these...
Oh my god, the levels of this stuff.
But does it help?
I don't think it does.
I don't think it makes any of it stronger or wealthier.
It's cute.
Do you know what I mean?
Like the person that Ace works for in the cafeteria is Eisenstein
I think, you know.
Oh, he was going to be Anderson.
Oh, he's Anderson, but he was actually written as Eisenstein.
And in the novelette, he's still Eisenstein.
Yeah, rather than Sylvia Anderson.
But it is all sort of slightly like it's a bit of a veneer, you
know?
Yeah, very much so.
They do reference with an aerial.
They reference aliens, you know, way so much with the ant
monster.
Although I do like the way the little pig cracks open, just like a
Kinder surprise.
It's like a fluffy sort of plush alien, isn't it?
They're sort of happy toys animal.
Yeah, yeah.
I loved the alien as a kid, though.
And I think...
I have to see him trying to tie up his shoelaces.
You know, we questioned during our live tweet, what is the purpose
of Stellar and her mother in the story?
And they have 2 purposes.
One is for the kid to be saved by the aliens, so we can see that
the alien is not an evil creature.
Just like Newton.
Just like Newt?
Yeah, yeah.
And the other is for the closing shop.
You know, it's a child looking up and seeing the TARDIS
disappearing, which is cute, but it's it's a veneer, as you say.
It doesn't quite work as well because the child is so terrible.
But I thought she was a lampoon of all those child booty contests
and talent content.
She sort of jumping a Ramsay in space.
Quite possibly.
I mean, her mother is the female camper who gets killed by the
ogre in stone's blood.
Justly.
Yeah, and no, I get what you're saying about the veneer because
it's kind of like, okay, we have these characters named after
films and directors.
So what?
Yeah, it kind of is.
So what?
Because it doesn't lend itself to anything.
It's just a nod and a tick.
And you feel horribly clever at 18.
No, 19 knowing any of this.
Well, even the quote from the unfolding text, which you have
around here, which, somewhere, the doctor, look out.
The doctor has that conversation with the guard.
And most of it is nonsensical.
The whole thing doesn't make sense as a conversation about
anything.
It's flinging a whole bunch of sort of 1st year philosophy
concepts and bringing them up and trying to make a conversation
but it doesn't really actually work.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, we liked hearing it name checked at
the time.
And then he comes out with that quote from the unfolding text.
And it's a great comedy moment because of Sylvester's reaction, but
it doesn't really go anywhere.
The story itself isn't about any of that sort of thing.
And, you know, there are other references.
I mean, Peel is clearly Dracula.
You know, he sleeps in a coffin behind an arrangement of ice
crystals on the wall that look like a pipe organ, you know.
The placement of the little girl is, again, Boris Kyloff, James
Wales, Frankenstein when he meets the little girl in the in the
woods.
Yeah, so those things are nice, but it's hard to say that they
even give the story any extra texture even.
But that's because thinness of the polemics of postmodern theory
is that everything's intertextualized and self-referential within
and outside of itself.
Maybe they're just redundant auxiliary performance codes.
Well, if you talk about semiotic thickness, that's what you got in
city of death, city of and death, which, you know, all of those
things with Catherine Skell, you know, for example, when she
appears, Dudley Simpson puts little riffs of the pink panther
themes.
Yeah, she was one of Clouseau's girls in the Pink Panther film.
So there's all of that kind of thing or the bond villain, no one
takes seriously threatening the doctor and it's so good.
Can we do City City City?
Just let's just sit into it. again.
Let's just do it now.
Well, we kind of are.
Because that's probably the closest story in Doctor Who law to
this one as far as textualizing.
I just think maybe City of Death does it better because it's
probably a more competent or well-rounded writer at the pen.
And it's genuinely about that.
I mean, it is about mass producing the Mona Lisa and the idea...
Yeah, art to scarcity and all of that sort of stuff.
And so there really is something terribly clever going on.
Whereas Zana's sculptures, that's a little bit, I would have
melted him before that.
I wouldn't put her in a top shop window. would you?
No, and so like, no.
And so there's a sort of thinness to that whole thing.
And just the discovery that really everything interesting happened
1000s of years ago, much like, yes, the film theoreticians that
they're pulling up, yeah.
I'm just not convinced that Edward Peel hasn't kind of looked out
the window or checked a telescope to see whether there is planet
still there or not.
You know?
Oh, yeah, we can touch on. the fairy tale nature of it, isn't it?
suppose.
Well, sometimes when it's one or 2 days before payday, I don't
want to check my bank balance.
I don't want to look at what I've spent.
Or watch an Edward Peele performance.
It's kind, it's kind of a...
I think it's kind of a Schrodinger thing that he's so obsessed
with getting home and having his revenge.
That's all he focusses on.
So he never stops to think.
What if there's more?
And I think... is that all there is?
And that actually ties in with the conversation that the doctor
has with the guard that you were just talking about, because the
doctor talks to him about, basically, do you believe in God?
And the guard's response is, well, no, I believe in what's here
and now right in front of me.
But I also think that you can dream of whatever could be and it
can come into being.
And that kind of triggers then the quote from the unfolding text.
But the payoff for that scene, isn't Glitz a spaceship, where
they're talking about the nature of Bellage and her service to
Kane and whether she is her own person or not.
And it starts off with a joke, which is her saying to doctor, what
are you doing here?
And he says, why is everyone so obsessed with metaphysics?
Which is brilliant.
But then there's that beautiful moment.
You know how pertly used to get to have his moment of charm wants
a story where he's very sweet and consoling. era.
He's very sweet and consoling to someone.
Silv gets to have his moment of sadness when he says to Bellage, I
don't think you'll ever pay off your debt to Kane ever.
And the way he looks at her.
And, you know, you don't then see Bellage let them go, you don't
see her leave the ship, but all of a sudden, she's somewhere and
there somewhere.
And yeah, she's just gone, okay, I'm not going to try and steal
this.
I have to go face my fear.
And she's a future possible version of Ace, obviously.
Very much what's at stake, isn't it?
And the way...
Colin Baker Freightwig.
But the way that Edward Peel appeals to ace...
I saw what you did there.
Yeah, sorry about that.
I was trying to avoid it.
Appeals to Ace is the same way that the doctor later appeals to
Ace, is very much so.
You know, it's the Florana speech, isn't it?
Yeah.
Oh, actually, I was thinking ahead to the Fenrick. yes, you're
right.
The Anne Fenrick, yeah.
Yeah, it's all those things that I'm going to show you.
I can show you the universe and that's exactly what Kane says to
Ace.
Look what happened to Paul Sarah Jane.
Just stuck on another mud quarry with a whole lot of rubber
arrows.
At her person.
I think the big difference between those speeches though.
And it's just, it's the line that rings in my head from when Kane
is trying. it is a seduction scene.
He's trying to seduce as and take advantage of her, is, I
understand you.
Because, you know, Ace is set up as his character who, much like
many of us when we were teenagers, we feel no one understands us
and no one has our back.
So for him to say that to Ace, he is saying exactly what she wants
to hear.
Whereas when the doctor does it, all he's saying to her is, hey, do
you want to have an adventure before you go home?
He doesn't kind of say, oh, you should come with me because X, Y, Z
because I understand you because it's because that, because he
doesn't have to because they have built this friendship
tentatively.
And, you know, he gives her 3 rules, which is basically just, do
what I say.
My name's the doctor.
And what the hell, we'll figure out the 3rd rule later.
You know, he's fun and he's quirky wearers, whereas Kane, he's
sleazy.
His modernist cinema is averse to postmodern media, which the
doctor is.
And, you know, that's why he's frozen.
He's so still.
And that's why all the critics and all the writers and sorry, all
the filmmakers they were speaking of before belonged to the past
eras of constructive cinema or indeed subjective or indeed
structuralist thinking, which is what's being cited.
When I'm not going to let these auxiliary redundant codes go, you
know.
You're going to worry these things like a huge piece of uncued ham
Don Henderson.
I am.
And time has flown by without them.
And this is the beautiful thing.
And so that makes sense of Nathan's exact point, which is how can
he have sat in isolation and not noticed that his world is blown
up, or indeed that a supernova cannot take 1000000s of years, but
actually just a thousand.
But, you know, between, if it blew up a 1000 years ago.
Yes, souls.
But that's the point because he lives in a sub-zero shopping
mall.
Yeah.
He has all this power.
All this power, all this ability, this frozen ice world that could
be anything.
He makes a frozen supermarket.
Why?
Because it's ordinary and it's drossy and it's, again, the
Paradise Towers thing and it's a bit pants and that kind of works
as well.
And it really does look crap, does it?
Do you think it's a relic of what we talked about last week, how
this was going to be the comedy one?
And so Ice World is, again, another sort of comic conception of
what a science fiction world is like.
It's not a refuelling centre.
It's not a space refinery.
It's a shopping centre.
And there's something fun about that.
Like the scene in the cafe where, like we're just in a cafe with
people, that's really funny.
Sylvester goes to pat that, whatever the hell it is and it goes to
Barton.
I love that.
Remember that?
was still throwing that in, you know. really great.
It's really funny.
You know, the ice cream on the head, throwing the milkshake on the
head is fun.
That woman that we talked about. feeler and doing that Visconti, it
still wouldn't have come off.
But the wonderful woman that we talked about last week who plays
the Tannoi voice. voice over the PA with her increasingly
plaintive attempts to persuade someone from maintenance to go
upstairs and clean the ice out of the docking bay and stuff.
Like all of that stuff, I think, is really funny and light, and it
does create, it creates an interesting world of a kind that we
haven't seen in Doctor Who before.
And it also picks up on that thing you mentioned a few weeks ago
Richard, with Paradise Towers, in that it takes something normal
and subverts it with essentially a Nazi war criminal living
underneath.
Because, because, okay, the 1st conception of this story was
called Absolute Zero, which was about a 14-year-old financial
genius and his sidekick, Mr. Spewey, who were in this ice pyramid
in space trying to find a treasure.
And Andrew Cartmel said, well, actually, um...
Well, Delta and the Bannerman is being a bit more comedic.
Can you be a bit more serious?
So Ian Briggs pretty much wrote Dragonfire as we see it now, but
with the character of Hess as the villain.
And of course, at that time, the Nazi war criminal Hesse was
petitioning for release.
And so he changed the name to Kane.
But yeah, so Kane is definitely, he is a Nazi war criminal and
he's presented as someone who killed 1000s of people, I believe
along with Zana in his gang and was exiled because of that.
They really have escaped from season 3 of Blake 7, haven't they?
Five times.
I like that their little hats are upturned vanilla ice cream
buckets.
Yes, that is nice.
Okay, she missed, yes.
With a little frosty.
Yes, yes, just sell the Nazi walk.
Yes, och.
This is my point about casting.
I don't think I think the wallet sit down is actually Edward
Peele.
He underplays it all.
If they'd cast Miriam Martin, surely pretty much had the art
Peters aren't white.
But, you know, just something maybe a woman.
Maybe actually make it a little bit, you know, a little bit lady
loving.
I think it would have been quite interesting.
I actually quite like him because he underplays.
Really?
I would have liked Patricia Quinn in the park.
That would have liked them reversed.
Yeah.
There's one moment where I really don't like him and that's in the
reprise of the episode 2 Cliffhanger.
No, because the scene continues on after the episode 2
Cliffhanger.
So they shoot a version for the Cliffhanger and they shoot a
version for the episode.
And for the episode 31, he turns down the camera and says, the
dragon fire will be mine.
And he actually looks really pleased.
He looks really chuffed.
I was like, no, don't look, don't look happy.
You're evil.
I have to ask how much of the original comedy script, which was
written as a comedy is still in there.
I suspect that was one of the moments.
I actually like that cliffhanger to episode two, though, because
I'm not a big fan of the just peril.
Are we talking about silve climbing over the railing for no good
reason?
That's episode one.
We haven't touched on that, have we?
Good reason.
Yeah, no, it's terrible.
I just don't understand it.
Ian Briggs was the right pratt at all the conventions.
Do you remember?
He was asked this for something like 10.
Go read the novel.
Yeah, it's like, why?
I think he was a bit annoyed because in the script, the doctor is
meant to come to a dead end.
So it's like, oh, no point in going back.
I'll go over.
Yeah, no, the map shows.
Yeah, the way it shot.
There's a big thing.
The left or right?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
No, it's just poorly directed.
But it's also a bit of Harold Lloyd silent era comedy.
Yeah.
Proper Harold Lloyd Buster Keaton stuff.
And it is supposed to be a joke, isn't it, on the word
cliffhanger?
Like, it's supposed to literally...
Yeah, that's certainly how it was publicised.
And it isn't well directed.
Like there are 2 shots.
Yeah, cut too early.
Like, Sylvester, Chris Clough.
Well, he did a great job on the location stuff last week.
Yeah, of course.
I think he's a much better location director as many are, and
we've seen before.
Some directors are good in sight.
Some are good when they're let outside to play.
I think we can see the difference here.
Yeah.
I quite like the ice cave set design.
It's not bad for the money, is it?
Yeah, and of course, again, it's exactly how they did 20 cinema.
It is.
Yeah, yeah.
I'll show you pictures.
It's because it's done with conviction.
Instead of, you know, just giving us the brown corridors of
varrel.
Oh, and must we go down another of your brown...
Or the palate crates of turbinus, you know?
But it's also an early indication of how in tune with each other.
Sylvester and Sophie are, because if you look at the scenes with
Sylvester and Sophie together, they're the only 2 sliding on the
ice.
Bonnie and... putting any effort in.
Yes, Donny and Tony just kind of clump around as normal.
And the way Sophie tells it is, apparently, once they were on the
set.
So after rehearsals, Silv turned to everyone and said, hey
wouldn't it be great if we did this?
And he and Sophie were the only ones who did.
And so later told Sophie, you know, that's when I knew you and I
were going to get on just fine.
It is such a shame that Bonnie Langford decided she didn't want to
stay on because they did offer her another year.
Because, you know, JNT is a little bit similar to Stephen Moffatt
in that way of if his actors are happy to stay on.
He's happy to keep them on in most cases.
Well, Bonnie was not only his 1st choice.
He wrote the character.
Yeah, that's right. for her.
Yeah.
But they also knew from a very early scripting stage that she
probably wasn't going to stay on afterwards, which is why we get
Ray.
Yeah, and out.
Ace's original name was Alf.
Still to be still to be a female character, essentially the same.
Because, yeah, Ian Briggs, I think, taught drama.
As a sort of afternoon club for kids, and he based the character
of Ace on these 3 girls.
One of whom was it, apparently, a street child.
I don't see how she can be living on the street and going to drama
school, but anyway.
I think it was sort of a community-based school.
So occasionally there were kids who, okay, maybe they didn't pay
their fees, but, yeah.
But she's too posh for that.
She's middle class.
She's not playing at middle class.
It is the grand Doctor Who tradition of an actress playing vastly
younger and less posh.
But, you know, I do have to wonder if that could be easily
reckoned by, you know, we hear about her mum a lot in the show.
We don't hear a lot about her dad.
So if one was a bit posh and one was, you know, born in pair of
vales, that could definitely explain it.
That's what Dodo's excuse was.
We're getting quite a bit of presaging of dodo.
I think I think Dodo just had a cold and that changed her larynx
or something, didn't it?
No, the doctor told her to cut it out.
That's right.
Here's a book on diction.
Sorry, I can give you the face with it.
Yeah.
She is possibly a bit too posh for the character as written, but
aside from that, I think she plays it as well as humanly
possible.
She never quite convinces me as 16, but she does convince me as
18.
There were over a 100 actresses going for this part.
And they interviewed all of them.
Yeah.
So Doctor Who is still incredibly popular with the acting
fraternity.
Oh, yeah.
And of course, the ratings have been going up since the beginning
of the season.
They're in the midfives now. pretty good.
Yeah, you know, considering. and considering what they're up
against.
Wednesday night, Coronation Street hardly any adverts.
We said a few weeks ago on the column retrospective.
Is this just the BBC bringing it back with an excuse to run it
into the ground so they can kill it off.
They're not expecting it to do well, but it is.
But Grade actually said Heath, because this is how little Grade
understood the show.
He thought that they were completely disparate and different
audiences.
But of course, it's not the case because the kids ended up going
into their room while Mum and Gran watched Corey and writing
smarmy, snotty, snippy letters to DWB and whoever else.
Do you remember there's a scene...
And now a lot of them were called Chris Chibles.
Do you remember there's a scene in Queer as Folk, where Vince
meets a young woman, and they talk about Doctor Who, and he says
that he's a huge fan of Doctor Who, and she doesn't watch it
anymore since they put it up against Coronation Street, and both
of them commiserate about that because Vince, as a gay Doctor Who
fan, is, of course, exactly someone who would have watched
Coronation Street as well.
And there is, of course, that overlap, but the show itself has
been styling itself as something that doesn't have an overlap.
It's designed for introverted 14 year olds who think they're
clever and have no friends and have a copy of the Doctor Who
Monster book.
And now it's emerged blinking from that child's bedroom into the
sunlight and is creating things.
Shimmerong grub child.
No wonder Bonnie's screaming.
It's creating things like Delta and the Bannerman and Dragon Fire
and Paradise Towers that increasingly normal people can sit down
to watch without being able to tell the different types of
cybermen apart.
That's the point, isn't it?
This belongs not so much to Doctor Who, but very much to the era
it's made on.
We touched on it earlier.
This is the year that Black Adder 2 came out.
This is a whole generation that's just seen the young ones. that
grew up with Python that gets self-referential TV that makes fun
of itself and other things within it.
It's really of the youth moment.
Yeah.
Whereas it allowed itself to stall, I think, with its obsession
with the past.
There's no mention of Ian Levine this season at all, have we?
We've not mentioned him once.
There's a reason for that.
I, yeah, I don't think he was really involved with the production
card. made sure of that.
Yeah.
And I think JNT was really happy to see all of that lot go.
I thought that he was so unhappy about the casting of Bonnie
that...
Yeah, he wasn't happy about that.
People will all say they're the same reasons and I don't know that
I disagree with them, actually.
But, yeah.
No, it was it was just all new clean sheet.
JNT had wanted to move on, decided he was moving on.
Shocked and surprised, he thought, and he thought, you know, I'll
never get another job producing the BBC.
I can't just have one job on my CV and it being this and it being
a failure, he could see the death and thought, okay, how am I
going to make money pantos?
Yeah, so he was actually going into looking at other ways of
making a business for himself later on.
And he was happy, I think, just to sit back and do his job that he
does best, which is counting the beans.
Yeah, and I think it kind of proves that what JNT really needed
was someone, Christopher H.
Bidmade, or in this case, Andrew Cartmel.
Yeah, someone...
Yeah, someone who gently says to him, no, I'll handle the story. do
this.
So this is the case where I'm going to criticise JNT over Eric
Saywood.
I find it very hard to believe that Eric Saywood wouldn't have
said that to him at one point, but there must have been something
in their relationship that made Eric Saywood not be able to stand
up to John.
And he shouldn't have to, as the script editor.
Eric Saywood should just be able to say, no script is my
responsibility.
Pull your nose out, John.
And I wonder if John being so tied with it, he actually enjoyed
just going back to counting the beans.
I think we've also not having to be created.
We're not suspicious, haven't we?
Or indeed feud.
We know how that relationship would have played out.
Ooh.
Yeah, because, I mean, there is this thing where Seward complains
about the difficulty of getting people who can write for Doctor
Who.
And of course, they're increasing numbers of people who won't come
back and write for the program.
And in comes Andrew Cartmel and manages to bring with him a whole
heap of people who've never written for the...
There are people he met at writing schools.
Yeah, yeah, at the BBC writer's workshop.
Yeah, exactly.
Like, Pip and Jane Baker are the only people who write for the
Sylvester McCoy era who have written for the show before.
And they were just kind of commissioned already.
Oh, yeah, already.
Yeah, they were commissioned because, as you said, earlier, Richard
JNT had about 2 months.
He turns to the people he knows.
He already had one in the pipeline just in case because he's a
shrewd sly player and top marks to him.
Yeah, and Pip and Jane are reliable.
Like they can produce a script.
We saw what Time Incorporated was like.
I think we have to have a bit of a reappraisal for P and Jane.
Well, that's what so many of our listeners have said, like, there's
actually a comment on the website from someone called Ben, I
believe, who says, wow, you know, I'd always heard of this script
and I assumed it must be better than what we've got, but I have to
apologise to Pip and Jane Baker.
And thank you for your comment, friend of the podcast, Ben
because...
No, that will.
It's a terrible script.
It's extraordinary.
Like Andrew Cartmel just seems to come in and kind of go, oh, well
hold on.
I've got all these new people.
And something else I noticed when I was reading up on this season
is that there's all these references. especially with Delta and
the Bannermen and this story of Cartmel going to the writers
houses or flats and writing the script with them.
Oh brilliant.
And I can't confidently say that Eric Sayward didn't do that.
But whenever we hear about Eric Saywood...
But whenever we hear about Eric Saywood saying the script was
having a problem or the script didn't come in.
Like he's always talking about how he's in the office.
Yes, yes.
And I kind of think, okay, maybe it's not your job to go to the
writer, but you've also got to consider that writing is or can be
a very lonely job.
So writers sometimes like working collaboratively.
Nigel Fairs, writer, musician, actor, does Big Finish.
Bon vivant, bon vivant.
Lovely chat, very famous.
Man, man, man, man about town.
Friend of the podcast, probably.
But once or twice a year, he runs a writer's retreat for writers
who are friends of his.
They hire a castle during the off-season and go up there and write
for 5 days.
He did actually invite me to one once.
But it was just, but it was after I would have already been coming
back to Australia.
So that was nice.
But, you know, he and Joe Lids to go on them.
Louise Jameson goes with them, that kind of thing, and they just
write for 5 days.
And that's the thing, writing for a TV series is a collaborative
process.
You know, when we hear about the writers for the new series.
Like the 1st season, Rob Shearman, Mark Gators, Paul Cornell, all
talk about and Stephen Moffat, yes, all talk about how they went
out to a pub after Russell 1st briefed them and said, what the
hell are we going to do?
And think Sherlock was born that way by the trade.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
To and from Carter.
You know, and they help each other hash out their stories.
I can't readily think of examples now, but...
I think for season 26, either Ben Aronovich or Ian Briggs mentions
how the other helped them break the story for either battlefield
or curse of Fenrich.
We'll get more to that next season, won't we?
Yeah, it becomes a collaborative process.
Yes, it does. where it didn't sound like it was ever that under
Christopher Hamilton, they'd made or Eric Saywood.
It certainly was under sort of Graham Williams and Douglas.
I was going to say, it's going back to more your traditional rep
theatre. and how that runs and is produced. and in fact, how
Doctor Who was in those good old days.
Yeah, well, I think in the Pertu era, you have a bunch of people
who will write something every year.
Without choice, whether you want to or not.
Bob Baker and Dave Martin.
But what's happening?
Barry?
Oh, if I must, I'll buy one then.
Who might be this week?
Does it have to be about Buddhism?
Oh, fine.
I actually really love berry lit story.
So I'm glad he was, you know, forced to do what he actually wanted
to do every year.
But I think that what's ended up happening is that all of those
people who would have formed that group are alienated and dead.
But mostly alienated.
And so it takes someone new with new contacts and new ideas to
come in and refresh the program.
And look, I mean, this season has been uneven.
There are people who really, genuinely dislike it.
But I just think it's such a relief.
It has energy.
It has vivacity.
It has, I mean, it has similes.
It's all sorts of adjectives.
It has strike nouns.
It has wonderful moments that are perhaps sometimes a bit too on
the nose that restate the purpose of the character of the doctor
and the purpose of the companion, like in this story where Glitz
tries to shoot the dragon and the doctor rips the gun out of his
hand and says we have no right to kill.
It's well performed, but it's also restating who the doctor is.
And of course, Sylvester famously said, my doctor will not use a
gun.
My doctor will not use a weapon.
And it wasn't a response to Colin because he hadn't watched what
Colin had done.
Some people have taken it as, yeah, it's, oh, that's a direct
criticism of Attack of the Cybermen.
It's like, actually, no.
It's Sylvester reading in the script for remembrance of the Daleks
I think, was the 1st one that he's going to pick up a gun.
And he just says, no, no, no, I'm not going to pick up a gun.
She can pick up a gun.
The human can pick up a gun, but the time law doesn't.
You know, Cartmel said we want to get back to the mystery of the
program, but also it's just saying, okay, if we get back to the
mystery and we're not going to talk about how he's a timelord from
the planet galaframe, the constellation of Custurbus, of the
Pridonian house, if we're not going to talk about that, who is
this person?
Right, he comes in, he helps out, he tries to look for a
nonviolent solution and he tries to make people lives better.
Go. That's your starting point writers.
And people have been talking about with Chris Chipnell taking over
the show.
There have been suggestions that he is going to go for a US
writer's room approach.
And I'm not sure where that came from in the 1st place.
It might be the broadchurches written like that.
I'm not sure.
But he said, look, I'm not dismissing it.
I am not even thinking about it at the moment.
I'm finishing Broadchurch.
And I'm kind of like, well, if collaborative writing is what gives
us the Sylvester McCoy era, and it's what gave us Christopher
Eccleston season.
And it's something Doctor Who hasn't officially done before.
Maybe it's a good idea.
Maybe it can be a good idea.
One thing we have briefly mentioned, but not really touched upon
is Tony Selby's back.
Law of diminishing returns.
He's not as interesting this time around.
Yeah, he's a bit cuddly, even though he's just sold a bunch of
people.
I think it was another character.
Yeah, Razorback.
Right.
And it was actually Andrew Cartmel, who had watched Colin's stuff
I believe, who said, well, we had a similar character last year.
Let's see if he's available just for a bit of follow-through.
So, yeah, it was Andrew Cartman, who brought back Glitz.
I think it works in the sense that there is something nice about
the ensemble again.
We talked last week about building up an ensemble indulgent in the
Bannerman.
Here we have someone familiar who, you know, essentially was a bit
cuddly by the time he appeared at the end of trial of a time lord
anyway.
Yeah, bit largely sort of defanged by then.
And so that is kind of nice.
I do think that he works terribly well in this story.
Yeah, I think he's lovely with Silv.
You know, I still think his most effective appearance is his 1st
one, of course, but he is absolutely lovely with Silv, and they're
traipsing around the ice caves, and yeah, he's the Cowardly Lion.
So, you know, if we're going with the Wizard of Oz thing, the
doctor's the scarecrow, glitz is the cow, which I suppose leaves
Mell as the tin man.
So maybe this metaphor doesn't work as well. as well as I
thought.
She's glitter.
Actually yes, that works even better.
Kane's the tin man. doesn't have a heart.
They make a really lovely force amid the 1st episode where Ace is
saying, you don't want to believe nothing he says, Professor.
Sorry, you don't want to believe nothing he says, professor, apples
and pears, apples and pears.
And then, you know, the doctor and glitz go off together.
And Melanese go off and have their own adventure together because
contrary to what Glitz says, girls just want to have an adventure
too.
And that's really effect, like, I love the end of episode one, not
so much the silve hanging off the umbrella thing, but the
cliffhanger with Melanese where he says, there's no such thing as
a dragon.
So you just know that around the corner is going to come the
dragon.
And Mel, of course, does her scream.
And Ace is just like, what the is happening?
And it just tells you everything you need to know about those 2
characters. like Ace encountering danger doesn't scream.
She just goes, what?
No, that's not real.
And then she's the one who realises hold on, those are lasers.
Yeah, it's really resourceful.
And then they come back together again in the ice caves and you
have that hilarious ice spy scene.
I really like it.
I spy with my little eye something beginning with I. Your turn.
Mel explains that the tarnus is transcendentally dimensional, which
still works grammatically.
But she wasn't paying attention when it was explained to her.
She really wasn't.
But yeah, it shows how infectious the doctor is because now she's
malapropping.
Yeah, so she is.
We forgot to mention last week, of course, the question mark
umbrella is now with us.
Yes, it is, but that's okay.
Let's not mention.
No, it's a postmodernist trope. suppose. umbrelled that in the 1st
episode.
Yes.
As Silv points out, you know, it's a little bit subtler than the
pullover.
Mind you, I didn't mind the pullover, because the pullover kind of
is, until you look at it properly, you don't realise it's question
marks, it's just your brain just processes it as a pattern, and
then you see the question marks.
They're still silly, aren't they?
I mean, the costume's an improvement, but, you know.
Okay, I think we need to talk about the worst instance of Andrew
Hodson's contract release, which is the departure of Mel.
Yes.
So this scene is, in fact, the scene that we have mentioned, I
think, over the last few weeks.
It's the scene that was written for the audition of Sylvester
McCoy, by Janet Field, by Janet Field.
She wrote it to decide everything.
Still to this day.
And it is inexplicable, isn't it?
It is really very strange indeed.
Yeah, like why is she going off with glitz?
I don't really.
And it's hard to understand why you can't...
Well, I mean, the TARDIS can travel instantaneously, and it's the
sort of thing that we do all the time now.
Think about the end of the god complex where that set in a weird
holodeck spaceship that looks like an 80s hotel, but we have time
to shoot a scene in the London street at the end where the doctor
drops Amy and Rory off. it would have just been very easy to do
that.
It is, it's stupid.
And it is, well, look, I mean, Mel's the 2nd last companion in the
classic series.
This is the last companion departure that the classic series
does.
It's terrible.
But think about the scene where the doctor 1st meets Mel.
Actually, we don't see that.
Do you know what I mean?
So there's no 1st scene.
There's no last scene.
This has really just been an instance of let's get Bonnie in to
play the Doctor Who girl for a few episodes.
We don't really care about the character.
Yeah.
And it's really unfortunate when you consider there were a couple
of Tartar scenes filmed during Dragonfire for use in Delta and the
Bannermen.
Only one makes it into the episode after editing.
But, yeah, it's a shame that they couldn't have put up a sign for
peas potage next to one of those Welsh roads and dumb Mel's
leaving scene on location in Delta and the Bannermen, because you
could still then have the doctor wander back into the TARDIS and
there's ace and aces, and I suppose you've taken me back to
Perivale then, and then we get the bit of, well, you know, we
could go back to Perivale.
It feels mean-spirited to do it because also how?
Unless the Nosferado has time abilities.
Yeah, yeah.
She's never gonna get home, apparently.
We don't know what period this is, but...
Yeah, no, it's just, it makes no sense.
It's definitely futury.
Well, Glitz is contemporaneous with a couple of 1000000 years in
Earth's future, you know.
Exactly.
Yeah.
What does he think it's Paraval's going to be like now?
covered in Joan Sims.
Yeah, I mean...
It's really a sweet scene and it's played very sweetly by Bonnie
and Sylvester. just a pity she's not walking back out on a lane in
peas pottage instead of walking out with someone who we know as
fans is a psychopath.
Well, in fact, too, I mean, the whole scene, which isn't really
very good.
I mean, it is an audition piece, it's not a good scene in context
of the story.
And it's certainly because the doctor and Mel have essentially
nothing to say to one another, because Mel's barely.
Who are you?
That's right.
Which one are you?
You're the one with the red hair.
So it doesn't really work.
But the whole point of the scene is you're going to go back and
live a normal life while I'm the doctor.
You know, think of me living my life while you're living your days
one day at a time, you know.
But she's not gonna do that.
So it really just sort of makes no sense at all.
And I think...
Yeah, it's a big shame.
So I think, you know, if you're at home, razor glass to all of
those companions who had really deeply terrible or in some cases
actively offensive leaving scenes because...
She got the dodo award for this season, I might say predicating
what you're about to award you a puzzling creative choice too.
But it's, ah, she is almost being set up in the same way that
Clara departs, the alternative doctor stories, whereas instead of
going off with a lady companion, she's going off with glitz and
she's sort of going to be the, you know, his moral compass.
He's he's developing voice that she'll make good for the world and
I suspect that there was something of that, but it really doesn't
come across, does it?
We're having to write this over. don't know why she's going.
Why is she going?
Yeah.
Why is she going?
There's not a single line of dialogue that points to why she's
deciding to leave.
Yeah, it's not like Tegan being tired of violence or, you know
terminal. a lot at the time.
Turlow's found his family or Nissa can do some good here.
You know, is literally no reason.
It is simply because...
No, it's because Bonnie's not getting paid next week.
Yeah, and you spoon.
About the stones.
Yeah, you know, it's kind of like, at the time, we kind of
lamented the lack of a leaving scene for Liz, but it would kind of
be better if Silv, Bonnie, and Sophie fly off at the end of
Dragonfire, and then at the beginning of remembrance, we just get
a line of, you know, Mel decided to go back to university or Mel
really shouldn't have pressed those buttons on the food machine.
I did warn her.
It's a shame, really.
And it ties in with something, Clayton Hickman said, on one of the
DVDs, which was, you know, back at the beginning of the season
where we have this bizarre regeneration where spoiler alert, it's
Sylvester McCoy in a wig playing Colin Baker before he turns into
himself.
And Clayton just said, you know what?
The program was in such a headspace at the time that they would
never consider not having a regeneration.
But at the same time, they were in so much trouble.
Why didn't they just try?
Mel walking down the TARS corridor saying, doctor, doctor, where
are you?
And Sylvester McCoy pops his head out the door and says, yes.
Cut to opening credits.
The regeneration was last week and Mel just makes a comment to the
effect of, you know, you've been really strange since you've
changed.
And that is a dynamic, interesting thing for the viewer.
And I think here, an offscreen departure would have been better
than this.
I think that although the show is going new places, it's still
tied to a fairly traditional type of storytelling.
And this is something that we wouldn't blink at.
I mean, I think it's a bad idea because you invest in the
characters and it's not fair to just, like, take them away from
you for no reason.
I'm being punished for not knowing why.
Yeah.
But, you know, that sort of alighting events or having them happen
off screen or jumps in time and stuff like that.
We don't do that at the moment.
You know, I said at the beginning that this at the time was sort
of regarded as the best story of the season.
I think maybe that's the earth shock effect of just, you know, on
1st viewing, it's it's dynamic and explosive and fun, and then as
you watch it more, there's perhaps less under the surface.
But I think by no means it's a bad story.
I think it's just the weakest, most traditional, if you like story
in a really experimental season.
I think it's giving us exactly what we expect Newhu to be, which
none of the other stories have done yet, which is clever, self
referential, and then referencing everything else outside it.
So maybe in a way it's actually giving us what we want and showing
us that that's not the direction we're going to be taking.
It's all easy to say in hindsight.
The show is experimenting.
It's giving something different each time.
It had to do this story at some and I'm glad it did it in the 1st
season.
It is the most archly self-aware critical piece of film exposition
and literary thinking of what the show is.
And that's possibly why it's not that successful because writing a
lot and thinking a lot is the opposite of spontaneous enjoyment
you might say the art is writing and poring over a script much
like the way we prepare these podcasts, too, listener. that it
just seems so fresh and original, yet we've spent months working
out what we're going to say.
That's a lie.
At FTE who facts.
So, puzzling creative choices.
I have two, and I've mentioned them one this week, obviously, is
Mel's departure and the way that was handled.
And then the other one is the death of all of those people on the
bus, which I think is vastly more objectionable than the death of
all of the people in the shopping centre this week, which we
haven't referenced yet.
And I think it would have to go to Mel's departure for reasons
that I've just explained.
Mine goes to oral casting.
And I would then suggest that of all the people we could have had
perhaps too much of a slight thing can be less of a slight thing.
I don't know why Mr. McCulloch was given quite so much work as he
was.
Or indeed that it all sounded exactly the same from the other
work.
I know he might well make good next year and I'm looking forward
to hearing that because I haven't heard it so far.
Yeah.
No, I think there are real moments, especially in Paradise Towers
where I've lost the intention.
And really, for me, and it's probably saying a lot.
He's the only thing that's really let me down this year.
Apart from, obviously, the things that you've just said.
But even that isn't as great as the wholeness or the, um, the
congealing of all the parts, and it's McCulloch that has not been
part of that process for me.
As I've already said, I really like Keff McCulloch's music, but I
can certainly understand why some people don't.
Why, a lot of people don't, to be honest.
I think I am...
A lot of them in this room...
Look, I am safely in the minority of fandom in liking Kev
McCollough's music.
I know that.
And absolutely.
I agree that the 2 massacres in the 2 stories.
They're just completely tone deaf.
We've name-checked the massacre.
I think the Delta and the Bannerman wanted...
Delta and the Bannerman is offensively toned F. The dragon, the
dragonfire one just, it just feels like, we can't afford to pay
the actors for the last studio session.
You know?
It does, doesn't it?
And I think I tweeted at the time, Stella's mother is remarkably
unaffected by this massacre.
Is she a Tory?
Yeah.
This milkshake is an adequately shaken.
Yeah, right.
Okay, love.
But if I wasn't going to go for one of those things, I would
actually say my puzzling creative choice is not having Lakersia be
a forest.
I couldn't agree more.
It really rubs, doesn't it?
Like a bit of sandstone on your white pants.
Yeah.
Pippin Jane suggested locations that they knew had been used on
Space 1999 for their story, a matter of balance. of Luxor or
whatever it was called.
The rules of Luton.
Yeah.
No, that's a real story.
The rules of wood.
But yeah, I can't understand why Andrew Morgan instead chose a
quarry.
I can't imagine significantly cheaper, you know.
He was allergic to trees.
It's a little bit insensitive for him to bring it up, actually.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Helen Blatchiner osteoporosis, you know?
But yeah, that would be my choice.
I don't think this season sets many feet wrong.
One thing we haven't discussed, which I think we should just have
a short discussion of before our picks of the week is the new
title sequence, a new title music.
We touched a little on it in the 1st story when I said, this has
brought us into the 3rd dimension.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
And then beyond that into the 4th and 5th as Susan might have told
us.
It's a three-dimensional Rawshack ink block, isn't it?
Yeah, it's great.
I mean, discussing doctor with my brother.
He's not as big a fan as me, but he does enjoy it.
He said he loved it.
So when I was six, he would have been 15, he said he loved it at
the time because it really felt like you were travelling.
And it felt like a really high quality video game, which it did.
In fact, that's exactly what they looked like.
If you were paying enough, and then you'd get those few seconds of
intro before you went back into the 2D world.
It's very period, and particularly the typography is extremely
period.
I do like the closing credits where for ones you're not travelling
down a time tunnel or something like that, it is static with a
thing revolving underneath it, but it is spoiled by those stupid
rocks that are two-dimensional.
They don't even roll through the thing.
Even Gareth, Edward says, you know, he's ashamed of his rocks.
Well, it's the harsh thing for any man.
That's true.
Yeah, they were a last minute edition because JNT kind of said, nah
there needs to be more motion.
And of course, you know, the sequence cost, what was it, £8000?
It was very expensive.
It was, it was somewhere in the region of the, um, the trial um
ship.
Emotional controlled camera thing.
The emotional control camera.
You could only model in primitive polygons at this and we didn't
even actually have polygons as we know them now.
So I don't think we'll probably get into this for the non
animators out there on the non-modelers.
But it was, I would have liked swirly little blurry star things
you know.
Bonnie Langford's career, something like that, just sort of, you
know, hurtling towards us.
I'll put this in the show notes, but there is a version of the
title sequence that was created by an animator like quite
recently.
In about 24 hours.
Yeah, I think they created in 24 hours and it is a really faithful
rendering of this particular title sequence only done with modern
technology and it does look amazingly good.
Okay.
Yeah, so, you know, it was a great concept and I think in terms of
the animation that was available, the time that was available, the
money that was available.
It was the best they could buy.
At this time, of course, Pixar were forming and making short films
which you can find on their DVDs.
And I believe it was around this time that they started doing the
very early animatics for the 1st Toy Story film, which are also on
the DVDs.
And to be honest, the very early stuff is not much more
sophisticated than what we see there.
It really was cutting edge.
I've heard people say, oh, you know, at the time it looked
outdated 2 weeks later and I kind of think, really?
You know, I was at home playing my Nintendo entertainment system
where you can see the edges on Mario's hat, you know, and that was
a mass, that was a mass consumer product which sold over 1000000
units.
Yeah, it's really...
What's your favourite title sequence?
Oh, it's Pertley's last season.
Yeah, me too.
Yeah, actually me as well.
It's not a lot of controversy.
To be honest, though, I think my favourite music is Dominic
Glynn's revised version.
So not his televised version, but he's done some remixes of it
where...
Yeah, the trial point.
Is that the one that's on the big finish audio?
They used on the big finish audio?
It's quite shimmery.
Yeah.
And he's done another version with a lot more bass.
And he's done a great 8 minute remix of it where it's kind of just
used as punctuation for other music and it does sound mysterious
and it does sound scary.
Kev's version of the theme.
It feels like we're going on an adventure.
To the arcade gallery.
But that's the thing.
I think one adjective I would use to describe Keff's music is
unashamed.
You know, he's he's like, I'm creating this and there it is
accepted on its own terms.
It never feels half assed in a way that sometimes say Malcolm
Clark did. singular buttocked.
I might also want to say.
Delia Derbyshire still wins for me every time around.
You've got people like Kraft for exciting her.
She's she's it.
Pix of the week?
Pix of the week.
Well, I'm going to go down the path of least resistance and
suggest a big finish and that big finish is flip-flop.
Which is a Sylvester McCoy and Bonnie Langford audio.
It is 2 discs, but unlike other big finish stories where it's disc
one and disc two.
It's a black disc and a white disc, and you can listen to them in
either order, and the story still makes sense because there is an
event that happens at the end of both episode 2s on each disc
which then leads it into the episode one of the next disc.
Wow.
The story is set on the same planet and the discs are set 30 years
apart.
So either you're in the future and go into the past or you're in
the past and you go into the future.
It's incredibly cleverly done.
Friend of the podcast and friend of ours, Richard Dan Hogarth.
He is the slithergies who are poor blind aliens who cannot see.
I am a slithergy who cannot see.
And yeah, they're on this human colony world and the story unfolds
like that.
And there's also a very nice nod to Hartnell in one of the opening
scenes.
And Bonnie Langford gets to say the line.
Well, now that we've quelled the quarks.
So Doctor Who flip-flop available for $3 to download from Big
Finish. brilliant.
I want to recommend an idea. rather than a particular thing, or as
well as a particular thing, and that is, we all grew up with the
target novelisations, and I love them to death.
I cannot understand why they're all not still in print or
available from Amazon, although a whole bunch of them are.
But very recently, they released an audio version of the Delta and
the Bannerman novelisation, read by none other than Bonnie
Langford.
And so you've got Bonnie Langford reading you a book.
So it's fantastic, as you would expect.
She's absolutely gorgeous and fabulous.
And so that's what I recommend.
I recommend, say, getting an audible subscription and using the
promo code FTE, which won't work.
It won't get you anything at all.
But there's heaps of them available.
They release them month by month.
We've got them from all over the place.
You can choose Maureen O'Brien, reading the rescue, all the way to
John Culshaw, reading the Santara and experiment.
But Bonnie Langford and Delta and the Bannerman by Malcolm Cole.
I haven't been able to get beyond what this season's been doing
inside itself.
So I don't have any Doctor Who recommendations, even though I've
been listening to all of the big finish stuff like Brendan's been
saying.
So all of those have been terrific.
But I just keep going back to the imagery and what they're playing
with.
So yeah, I'm going to be really intertextually auxiliary on this
one and say, okay, any of Corosawa's films, especially Iran, or
Mojimbo is Wonderful, Hidden Fortress.
They're all playing on different Shakespeare stories.
They're just beautiful, if you like Delta and the Bannerman, but I
would also look at I would also look at Joseph von Sternberg's
films with Marlena Dietrich when he got to Hollywood because
there's a lot of visuals in this, especially the ice stuff when
she does Scarlet Empress.
Morocco is one of the most extraordinary films you've ever seen
visually.
If you just want to see something that style about style.
And I think that's actually what this season has been about.
It is no longer the divide between form and function, which was
the 50s thinking, we're now in the, it's all the same thing.
It doesn't matter which one it is.
So yeah, I would go and see Morocco, Shanghai Express, is amazing
and hilarious.
And she really does play it like Billy Hartmore.
Go and have a look.
And if you don't want to, you don't have to.
Well, dear listeners, we've come to the end of another season of
Doctor Who.
But we will be back next week with our Tom Baker commentary, which
is The Stones of Blood.
So do come back next week for that.
Until then, you can also vote for our Peter Davison commentary to
go out at the end of season 25 and the nominees for that are for
to Doomsday, Arc of Infinity, Enlightenment, Resurrection of the
Daleks.
You can find the link to that in our show notes.
And on our website, Flightthrough Entirety.sexy, Flight Through
Entirety, on Facebook, and at FTE podcasts on Twitter.
Don't forget to also follow at FTE who facts for all your very
true and 100% accurate Doctor Who facts.
Over on Bondfinger.
We are in right in the middle of having a big Brosnan.
So check that out at...
Rosnan Brew Up. Bondfinger.com, Bondfinger on Facebook and Apple
Podcasts.
I think I need to get me bags out of the pot they've stewed.
And at Bond Fingercast on Twitter.
Until next week, may none of your experiences border on the
existential.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
Good thing is.
That was Flight through Entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley
Brendan Jones, and Richard Stone.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, logo designed by Anthony
Wells.
This episode, a really, really good length, was recorded on the
12th of June 2017.
The next episode will be released on the 23rd of July.
Fans of this season will also enjoy several other seasons
including season six, season 17, season 48 of Law and Order SVU
and that season that comes after summer, the autumn, or
something.
Okay, I'm just going to think of something to end with.
That 1st bond finger.
You spend your entire time talking about how he's just been found
like at the perfumes count.
Oh, fridges.
Oh, he's funny?
Yeah, yes, it's really funny.
It's a constant reference.
Golden Eye.
Golden finger.
Okay.
Let's see.
He's awful.