Hello and welcome to Flight Through Entirety, the only Doctor Who
podcast who gives you 300 lashes apiece, but only when you ask for
it.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
I'm wearing a fishhead for this episode.
Hello.
And yeah, we're back looking at season 4 of Doctor Who, which is
also the 1st season to feature Patrick Trouton as the doctor.
So we're going to jump in with a story which is a story of thirst
but also a story of lasts with the Highlanders.
Just tossing, okay, deflating the bagpipes, okay.
Is that ready to go?
Is that a burner cribbons, isn't it?
I believe this is your story, Nathan.
All right, so the Highlanders, it's mine.
Yay.
It was very carefully allocated by the randomiser.
I did actually hack into it beforehand to ensure that I would get
the last say when it came to the genre of historicals because the
Highlanders is famously the last Doctor Who historical until Black
Orchid, which I'm really looking forward to talking about actually
in 2017 or something.
So we talked about Power of the Dalek's last episode, and I think
we agreed that it was something pretty spectacular.
And so now we see what Patrick Trouton is like in something that
you know, is a staple of the Hartnell years, the historical.
And I have to say that I'm not really going to surprise anyone.
I really don't like it at all.
It's terrible, isn't it?
Why?
Well, WHY question mark.
That question in the 60s, do this at fellow pointers in on my sofa
of reasonable comfort, is was the kind of question that you could
type into a computer and instead of just getting an error message
Patrick Magoon did it in the general episode of the prisoner.
And the whole room exploded.
This is the thing of, the season of waking up, let's read Abby
Hoffman and Alan Ginsburg and go and smoke a little bit of, oh
etheric sensibility and find out where we are.
This is the last of the old style of storytelling, but it isn't
just an historical because, as the whole point of Doctor Who is, we
have people who don't belong anywhere, let alone 1746, in the
bloodiest, as far as I know, the bloodiest moment of any conflict
on British soil.
There were, what was it, 9000 English under the butcher, Duke of
Cumberland, slaughtering 4000 Jacobites, and as one of the
characters, as a solicitor graces in this, It takes only 2 hours.
It was a blood bath.
And then you've got a lovely London dead, and a cocky cockney
sailor, and who the hell is this guy in a bird, the hunter's hay
hat, and...
Oh, it only appears when I think Polly tries it on, but you don't
you only see it in, Don't you, in a little bit of this, and the
power of the Daleks, and it's gone forever.
Yeah, yeah. which is a sad thing.
It always seems back coming back to the hatch, doesn't it?
I think I think it is featured briefly at the beginning of
Underwater Menace that he moves... why she tries it on.
As yeah, produces tape. by the fish people.
So what we find is they arrive just as the battle is finished.
Oh, look, in that called Shakespeare.
There's a battle over there on the left of the stage.
You know, it's just already happened.
It's a real nice way of doing it though, isn't it?
That's the 1st time we've done that, that the event is, okay, you
could say with the Romans, that we burn the map and we see it all
erupting as we leave.
And with the massacre, we had the big, the huge climax was
portrayed using the contemporary engraving.
So that did actually take place during the story during the night
that people were there.
It's also a device that's been used to great effect the 1st 7
series of the new Doctor Who series.
Here's this war that happened over there, but we never see it.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, well, I mean, it is sort of cheaply realised, but we do we
do get some idea of what the aftermath is like and we do get a
sort of fairly clear idea of how horrible the battle is just from
the behaviour of the sort of the horribly English troops and
things afterwards.
I mean, it isn't really very much about that battle, and all the
guidebooks suggest that it's, you know, the doctor goes to the
Battle of Colloden.
No, he doesn't at all.
No, it's not really about that at all.
And it all just sort of turns into taking prisoners of war.
And then sort of selling them, they're going to be sold as
slaves.
It's a series of comedy set pieces with some real underlying drama
underneath.
And that's why I feel, personally, and I've said this many times
before, the historicals are the only ones that really get to the
viewer, get to me as a viewer, because they actually happen and
they mean something.
This really is present danger and whatever is going to happen.
And it could actually affect the characters in a very real way.
We know it's happened.
It's a fixed point.
So when you see, especially in this story.
When you see Paddy locking it up and putting on every accent under
the carry-on sun, Are you been doing for the very 1st time, don't
you wish Billy had done this drag as the doctor?
You've got all these crazy, wonderful things happening with a very
real sense of there's, there's, there's genuine darkness in some
of these characters and the motivations are awful and the sense of
of dire threat, just, just a shoulder turn away is ever present in
this one.
You see, I mean, I think I think that this story more than, uh, you
know, any of the others that we're going to discuss in season four
and, you know, we said uh, last time that season four, just
doesn't survive very well.
It's the season that was most seriously affected by the junking of
past episodes.
And so none of the highlanders exists and none of power of the
Daleks exist.
And the final episode of 10th Planet doesn't exist and the 1st
episode of Underwater Menace doesn't exist.
So we're in a run of like 12 episodes, none of which exist.
And crucially, it's the beginning of Troughton's doctor.
And so it seems to me that, that if the Highlanders is fondly
remembered, it's not fondly remembered, because it really
particularly does what the other historicals do, because remember
the other historicals sort of fall into the 2 camps.
One is like the Aztecs where history's a terrifying place that we
have to escape from.
And then the other one is the sort of comedy, you know, Romans
Donald Cotton approach where we're doing some things here.
It's, you couldn't really say it falls into either of those 2
camps at all.
You know, like I don't know that slave traders, you know, is a
particularly strong genre that has, you know, outstandingly
interesting tropes that we all wanted to see.
Sorry, that we all wanted to see covered by Doctor Who.
So it's not a Donald Cotton style historical.
And it's not, it's not seriously enough, serious enough to be a
Luka Roddy historical.
And I mean, what Xander does is he just says it's a savage
deconstruction of the historical as a genre.
And what you do really...
What you get is you get Trout and doing all of his party pieces
Trout, and doing these things that Hartner would never have done
in a 1000000 years, like drag, like the comedy Anoverian accent
like slamming the guy's head into the table repeatedly.
And, you know, like, you know, all of that came from notes from
Jerry Davis and Dennis Lloyd.
They actually wanted all of that.
That was the reason they ended up hiring Trout and it was the
comedy labels and trying to get it more that pitch it to the, a
lot of that was happening in British cinema.
At the time, you would get violence with comedy together.
It was all post- postmortem before postmortem.
But that pre-post-mortem.
Yeah, thank you.
Chin chin.
Yeah, that whole, that whole, exacerbate the drama by throwing in
the unexpected, the comedy over the top.
The Bond films were doing it really well at the time too.
Thunderball was the last bond just before this, but we'll get to
the underwater menace.
You can watch Thunderball and the underwater menace and not tell
the difference.
They're almost identical.
See, that's why I think that this story is so important because it
is at a time where the producers are saying we want to get rid of
the historicals, but they get quite a good sendoff because this is
the 1st historical that to me anyway feels like it's a drama 1st
and it's a historical story second.
Yes, I agree.
Because the Aztecs and the Massacre, good though they are, Their
whole shtick is it's a historical story.
Whereas this, as well as having the historical backdrop in
historical events, you've got the characters pursuing their own
line of drama as well.
And it's really important for defining Patrick Troughton's
character as the doctor because as you said, Nathan, These are
lots of things that the 1st doctor would never do, you know.
I'm not a woman and I prefer trousers to petticoats any day.
I hate dresses.
That just would have put page to that, whereas trowns just like
ooh, yes, I'll have a bit of this frog and a bit of that frog.
Oh, and yes, I'll have one of these lovely hats.
Or I should like a hat like that.
I should like a hat like that.
You know, like, I think I think if we if we had were actually able
to see that stuff, when when we get to the underwater menace, and
we actually finally get to see Trouton's performance for the 1st
time in episode 2, because, you know, the rest of the time we've
been listening to audios are watching slideshows, even in
underwater menace, he's just a pleasure to watch.
And I imagine that I would like the Highlanders if I could see
Troughton in it.
But as far as I can see, it's just another tiresome trip to a past
prison followed rapidly by the pub, you know, in the great
historical tradition.
And it really doesn't sort of amount to anything and there's a
vague bit of casual racism in it as well.
And, and, yes, we're taking Scott's people to Barbados to work in
the, in the sugar mines as how that works, because they're much
better workers than the, uh, than the black people who would
otherwise do it.
It is like there's something kind of seedy and unpleasant about
the whole slavery being anyway.
But remember, you're not you're not supposed to agree.
No, no, I... in any way.
Something I quite like about it is, and this is especially
relevant today with the recent failed Scottish independence vote.
This story does not patronise the Scots.
No, it really doesn't.
And it treats...
Okay, there are some, you know, there's some really kind of almost
pantomimic characters and they're very black and white boomtish.
But it is treated as if they're all adults and there are some
really lovely stuff.
The closer you get to the driving forces characters within the
narrative of Ben and Polly and the doctor.
And Jamie doesn't really count so far because he wasn't a
companion yet.
Barely in it, exactly.
He doesn't actually get much to do.
Kirsty gets more to do than J.
Thank you, because that's what I wanted to say.
If you're looking around for someone to join the TARDIS crew and
who really has a response.
All this season, in fact, will see how secondary female characters
present each and every time a great response to a story and a
great integration with the cast and then bug it off in this later
episode and we just take someone yet.
Else, I haven't got to Debbie Ward.
Waterfield, yes.
Debbie Waterfield yet.
Debbie Waterfield.
Yes, how fantastic is Hannah Gordon?
And if anyone remembers, you know, had a youth in the 70s and
remembers Hannah Gordon in Howard's way, or as I remember her, 1st
sitting on that fence on Malcolm and Wise, singing Michelle
LeGron's Windmills of Your Mind, as her clothes were slowly blown
off in the windmill behind her, lost its sails.
She's indelible.
It was the 70s.
And she's she's a terrific actress and really well respected and
you can see why here when she was very young and studying up.
She holds those scenes, the moments with Polly's shines no better
than when she's up against an equal, but from the past, so who
doesn't have her sophistication into her 20th century books part.
They are so good.
That's one of the reasons I really love this story.
Especially when they trap algae down the hole.
I mean, you can just love the euphemism.
It's so true.
You got to lift that scene out of the Highlanders.
Chuck it in today with Clara.
Yep, no one would buy it.
Do you know, it's a funny thing too.
And it's something that starts happening with Ben and Polly
because they do the smugglers before this and then the Highlanders
and they're the 2 historicals.
And in each case, they're portrayed as being able to outwit or
perform better than the historical character.
So, you know, they dupe Tom in the smugglers into releasing them
from prison.
Here, Polly is better than Kirsty.
Like Kirsty is, you know, a fabulous Scotswoman who, like I could
just imagine her, you know, punching Polly's head in, you know
about the 2nd thought, but she's crying all the time and she's
sort of pathetic and Polly has to, you know, take control.
And when it's trapping algae.
And I love algae.
I think he's the best thing about this.
So it's Algernon Finge with a double F, lowercase double F. Um, and
he's sort of terribly positive.
He's not very nice, you know what I mean?
Yeah, but no, is he particularly bad?
But he's sort of a class member put out of place on a field of
battle and forced to behave.
Like, the reason I feel we have compassion for him or an
understanding with him will go along with him is because he
doesn't really fit with what's going on with the narrative.
He's actually quite a modern nice lad who's put into the wrong
place.
In fact, what happens is you see him mistreating his subordinates
and being really horrible to them?
And then you see polypatronizing him and getting the better of
him.
And then eventually he gets humiliated by her a few more times.
But then he becomes a hero at the end.
And he actually does.
He actually gets a proper arc, proper character development, like
you would in a modern story.
On modern sitcom.
It's like George Siegel and Glenda Jackson in touch of Class, which
came a few years late or any of the Peter Sellers movies, already
any of those story arcs of The Alan the Pussycat, again, which
came out just around this time, Streisand and George Siegel
exactly the same character.
Algernon thinks she's sort of feckless.
When I said nice, nice, meaning the etymology is, you know, the
original definition of nice in mediaeval English was the action of
a knife through flesh.
So it's not, yeah, the knife actually means the cut, the action of
the cut.
It does, it doesn't look like it tells, what does it mean?
does it?
Turn the Latin to a nest.
Your switch means ignorant.
Because...
I'll find the source.
Oh, how perfect.
I'll find the source because there is a point where...
It's a nice means...
It means the action of a cutting.
Dear listener, please stay tuned for the Nice Wars.
We'll cut all this out.
But he's very modern and you can see him in a suit sitting in
Thatcher's Britain just letting horrible things happen to during
the G or post thatcher's Britain in the GFC.
Horrible things happening to people with a mortgage and going, oh
well, it doesn't affect me.
I not in that class and I'm in, it doesn't appear.
But then in my life.
Polly would come along and redeem him and he'd become a tremendous
person.
Not before showing him the area as well.
Yeah, not before humiliating him and calling him algae and teasing
him and things.
And that's really fun.
Like, she's sort of terrifically fun in it.
Ben is sort of fairly unmemorable although he does get to jump in
water, which is sort of terribly exciting.
Yeah, we do get a few blurry tellies of thumb of Ben in a wet t
shirt.
I've got no complaints there.
Is this the moment where we start to see where we start to see
Ben?
Oh, I think really could have given a lot and just isn't served.
Well, this is, I mean, this is, the thing that we haven't
mentioned is that, of course, this is Jamie's 1st story and
Jamie's really barely in it.
He doesn't have that much to do.
He is in it all the way through. was surprised by that. like his
performance is memorable and I think it was just the strength of
his performance that got him through, as we'll see later with John
Levine. you know, you're given a small part and you still give it
your all.
Okay, you can have a regular part.
But yeah, I was surprised by just how little Jamie was in the
story and had to do in the story.
Yeah, yeah.
I was, you couldn't see him being built up to being taken away.
Do you know what I mean?
He's not auditioning in the story itself to be a new companion and
it's just that he happens to be around sort of thing when they're
getting on board the TARDIS.
So it is, you know, it's a little bit surprising.
And it is the beginning of the sidelining of Ben.
I can barely remember anything that Ben really does in this story
and from here on, he has to kind of share time with Jamie until
they eventually get rid of him.
It's been accused of killing off the historicals, but I actually
think it's the most successful historicals as a set piece for the
actors to do something.
Again, that's not exactly immediate, possibly more so now for us
as modern viewers with the results of the Scottish independence
elections just last month as we record this.
But for the viewers at the time.
Simply to say, yes, this is something we've read of.
We've all read Rob Roy.
I mean this is very much, you know, in the field of Walter Scott
and the books that kids would have read before they've seen this
story.
There is an immediacy to it.
There's still friction between the Scottish and the English.
Just look at the football games at the time.
There's still lots of levels at which this has, okay, it doesn't
have buzzing spaceships and solar discs and...
It has no road.
Well, some of the performances, but actually, all told.
It's got lovely nuances.
It's got terrific, um, side players, solicitor Ray is fantastic
and the part players behind them.
I really do enjoy this.
It's a go to audio.
Again, I would never watch these things on the reconstructions
because it's the subtleties of the voices.
The way they've done these 2 in the 60s.
It's British television was British character actors standing in
front of a backdrop talking at each other.
It's still very much as you do Shakespeare or any other.
So it works really well as a radio play and I really enjoy it as
such and I listened to it again this week and enjoyed it just as
much as I did many years ago when I 1st heard it.
I think you're right Richard.
It's not so much the death of the historical as it is a nice going
away party for the historical genre.
And I think it does send it off with as much as much of a bang as
possible.
And the last thing I'd like to say about the story is the villain
is a lawyer.
What more do you need?
Yeah, very modern, isn't it?
So can I get the last word, since this is my...
I think that it's a bit shapeless plot-wise, that nothing very
much happens.
It doesn't compare to other historicals, like, say the Romans or
the Aztecs.
It does seem to be a lot of faffing about in a prison than a pub
for 4 episodes.
And I think the only thing that would that would really get me to
like it would be if we rediscovered it and I got to see Trout and
doing his acting.
Because I think that's very much what it's about.
It's about giving Trout and, you know, his 1st regular story and
giving him a chance to do some fun stuff.
And I have no doubt at all that he would be, you know, compelling
to watch.
But without the ability to actually watch a minute, I just thought
the whole thing was a bit a bit tiresome, really.
Very harsh.
It's really enjoyable.
It's a lovely start, though.
Oh, my scaly gilt hats, come on.
That was very exciting.
Oh, dear idea.
Thank you.
Guess where we all are, folks.
Well, where are we?
Where are we?
Where the hell are we?
Where in Atlanta, are we?
You can tell we use salt water.
And the Gillishness. and yes, we're an underwater menace, and
thank you for that beautiful intro, I believe, that we couldn't
have gone any closer to.
Well, before we started the podcast, we were listening to the
score, John Barry's score of the Thunderball, which was the last
Sean Connery 007, mostly an underwater romp that came out pretty
much just before this episode, and you, when you listen to it
again or watch the telly construction snap.coms, It's.
Why?
There's a whole lot of go to, if you're not doing space effects, if
you're not doing, what's that T word we keep using?
If you're not using flying discs and mutant renegades, you're
using, you're going underwater.
Jerry Anderson did it after Fireball XO 5 with Stingray just a
year before.
Um, Irwin Allen after lost in, well, lost in space also did um
voyage to the bottom of the bathtub with the sea view, which is
with Barbara Eaton in the film version of Walter Pigeon.
It's actually really dull, but really pretty. pretty to look at.
The film version, nothing happens for about an hour. and then in
the last 10 minutes.
It's like, oh, really?
That person's the traitor?
Wow.
It's proper eating been gorgeous.
There's lots of good reasons to watch it.
So this one's kind of following the whole thing and you're
watching it or listening to it and all I can think of.
And I've heard it many times because I keep wanting to say
thinking to myself, I'm missing something.
It's got to be better.
I can't I haven't got it yet.
There's got to be more to this.
Is there?
I still haven't worked that bit out.
It's terrible.
No, it's really shockingly bad.
And it's, it's, it's just terrible B movie rubbish.
Do you know what I mean?
Like we've had, you know, Doctor Who has gone to strange places
and done extraordinary things, even, you know, in the historicals
it's done things that are sort of unprecedented and, you know, at
least attempt to be interesting.
But I mean, this is, you know, tying people to volcanos and and
you know, like robed cultists and and absurd, mad scientists and
things.
I mean, the whole thing is just incredibly crummy.
It's sort of reasonably entertaining, I guess.
You know what I mean?
It's sort of funny and sort of fun.
But the premise is so just crummy and uninteresting.
Well, the premise being there's a mad scientist who wants to blow
the world up for no adequately kind of explained reason and he has
control of the people of Atlantis who worshipped Amdo and...
And he lives as usually do, and he lives under a, well, you get to
his under underwater lair, through an extinct volcano on an island
and then whisked away to this extraordinary base.
Isn't this every bond film that came out after 1965?
These are trying to do Ken Adam on a Ray Qic budget.
Yeah, but as plot goes, even the fish people, which whom we've
cited so far, please have a look, if we can put an image up, please
have a look at some of the images.
They're actually not that much different from the 1st cybermen, and
we didn't criticise them for having stretchy masks and behaviour.
Well, I don't think it's so much the stretchy marks. stretching
masks.
I think it's really the gills at the side.
It's a very obvious join between the mask and the face because the
mask doesn't cover all of the phase.
And the Kirby wires...
You had young lady view.
It's true.
You had very stingray, but you had young lady viewers writing in
to the BBC asking how to make the costumes.
It was kind of popular for yeah, yeah.
Well, they look like a very sort of funky 1920s bathing outfit.
Could I swimming?
And it's got the 1st one that's got a whole new score.
Stanley Simpson, isn't it?
Mind you, it's...
Well, it's pretty confronting.
It's a very romophone band.
It's a common phone.
It is, it feels very short, Chmele, again.
We've got sense of very old SF brought up into the present as they
were doing with design and with architecture and interiors and
graphics at the time, looking back to the term of the century, so
the William Morris period, of George Mellis was a part, if you
like, of that very baroque.
This is kind of like underwater steampunk.
It should be fantastic.
It does do a lot of 007.
Joseph first, who's the fulfilling your speaking of, he's got a
reputation for being appalling in this and just so Maximilian
Vaughn skill and over the top.
But everyone performing in the 60s was doing this.
You look at a look at, we mentioned Walter Pidgeon, who was also
famous for the Forbidden Planet as the, if you like, the Prospero
character.
I'm Francis's father, who's, you know, discovered the lost city
under the ground.
It's pretty much the same part, actually.
But, you know, again, we had Von Skull.
We had, um, We had all kinds of silly villains, Blowfeld, had yet
to be revealed in the 007 films.
But we, this is the standard for the time.
So it should be working.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it is it's sort of entertaining, but it is
something a bit tired about it.
And I don't mean Joseph 1st, you know, hilarious villain, because
we all love a hilarious camp villain.
And that, that cliffang into episode 3 is brilliantly funny.
I mean, it is terrific.
And nasty, Camille, do it together. two, three.
Nothing is about...
Stop me now.
It's wonderful.
There you go.
You wanna do it at home yourself, don't you?
You know, this thing ran over budget.
Do you remember by how much this thing?
How many episodes of four?
45 P.
It's only four.
Well, the average runner, and it happened with Doctor Who, because
it got the same budget as a standard drama show, and there's
nothing standard as if you'd been following us, too, isn't there?
There's been nothing about it that's been standard.
The average was £200.
This run over budget, 2200 pounds.
Goodness.
There's lots of expensive stuff with water and things.
Yeah, I suppose that might have been it. like waterproofing the
set and whatnot.
Yeah, it's like they do with the sting, right?
I mean, there's some beautiful sets, but again, you just don't see
because we haven't found them.
Oh, we haven't released yet that episode two, have we?
Yeah, episode 2 though.
Oh, no, we have, there's no possible way we could see.
Although it's very good.
Oh.
No idea what's happening there.
It was meant to be released earlier this year.
There were going to be episodes one and 4 animated.
The animation house we were working on it have confirmed that the
BBC has stopped, asked them to stop work on the animation.
Last I heard, someone I know on Facebook had emailed BBC customer
service who said Underwater Man should be released in some form
early next year.
That means I don't know.
The whole BBC line, the whole classic Doctor Who BBC line, like
last year, they released Terror of the Zygons, and so that was the
last fully extant story.
So I think every episode that exists apart from Underwater Menace
2. is now available on DVD.
Which is a good achievement, you know.
Well, I mean, it started in 2001, I think.
Yeah, they took them 12 years as opposed to 21 on video.
But the whole thing just stopped and there was no announcement.
No, no.
I still checked the website every so often to see if anything's
coming out, but it was a, it really fizzled out.
I was in the uh, in the most depressing way, I think.
It didn't.
It's sad because I want to see, this is one that I still don't
quite get why, why it appears to not be working.
Just the 1st we've mentioned before.
It had a reasonably starring role in a big picture, 55 days in
Peking before he made this.
He was a legit actor.
He works really well with Paddy in those scenes when Trump has
been kind of overdoing it and maybe, you know, getting a bit
tenancy in the strength of his performance, but then when you put
him up against Professor Zarov, you've got that point where
Patrick, because he's such a good actor, realises if somebody's
chewing the scenes, don't go and dislocate your jaw trying to
match him, step right back and almost whisper and underplay, and
you get real tension between the 2 of them.
In that episode, none of us have seen.
No, no, we're allowed to have seen that because that was a bit.
The confrontation between Zaroff and Trouton in episode 2 was
actually released on the BBC. website.
And so you can see Trouton, Trouton underplays it fabulously
well.
You know, it's that why do you want to destroy the world?
You know, again, that's a problem.
There's no reason for it in the televised version of it.
Why wouldn't you?
It's so super fun.
And you know, I'm following and I have a slightly Germanic
accent.
So I've got that really cool because that's what you do in the
60s.
Yeah, that's, yeah, in the script version.
There's a whole reason for that and it's explained.
His wife died in a car crash.
It's just not transmitted.
And their young child.
Yeah, yeah, a young child is killed in the car crash, and they
don't include it because it's too confrontational for a junior
audience.
The funny thing about, well, maybe...
Really?
I just don't think it sits very well in an episode where people
address as plastic.
It would have made a bit more sense.
The interesting thing about that is 2 years later, when Kevin
Stoney was playing Tobias Vaughan.
He was trying to get a handle on why this character would act in
this way.
And he came up with the idea that Spice Von's family were killed
in a car crash.
It's the go to, isn't it?
It's Stroker and UFO. or something?
Just look up those.
Well, no one wore seatbelts until...
I suppose if you look at, you know, even stuff like Astro Boy, the
motivation for the villain in that is that his son, his son was
tragically killed in a car accident.
You need to get some rubber bumpers on those cars.
So, further to Joseph first, Joseph first was actually in a bond
film.
He was, and later on, he was in, for, correct me, if I'm a
dermatographer, playing apparently Blowfeld's mistress.
It seems, well, Blowfield, London, like, and that's the only Bond
film where Blowfield does drag.
Yes, that's true.
That's played by.
That's great.
Who is a brilliant actor, but as blowfeld?
You're just going, what?
Crazy, that film.
It's not very good.
Well, it's this, that's my point.
It's no worse than this.
And of course, Joseph 1st we own him in our country because he
ended up his last role I ever saw him in was the mid-70s
blockbuster soap, and yet it was because it's the soap that
actually started the big selling to the UK called the young
doctors.
In the younger.
He was the young doctors.
He was a doctor.
I don't think he was Gwen Plum running the snack club.
But with Marty Roan and Delaney and Mark Holden and all the little
everybody else who later came to something big in the 70s or 80s
are singers or whatever.
Yeah, there was Joseph first.
No, he spent his, he spent his last years here, in fact, he passed
away here. quite recently, in the last couple of years, and the
loose cannon reconstruction includes an interview with him, which
was arranged by Dallas Jones and Dwayne Bunny of the Doctor Club
of Australia.
I believe Dwayne's now moved to Hobart.
But yeah, they arranged that interview.
Joseph 1st speaks very fondly about his time on doctor and working
with Patrick Troughton.
So if nothing else, he had a wow.
I hope he did.
One person did.
I think we can really blame whatever's going wrong.
I don't know if you can look at the director.
That was Julia Smith.
The last one she'd done was the smugglers, because they obviously
trusted her with location shoots and budgets, cough, before that.
I think the smuggles, we've talked about it before, from what we
can see, looks gorgeous.
Yeah, agree.
And they thought, yeah, she can pull off something that needs to
be.
Okay, there are 2 reasons why this story was the big one and was
allowed to overrun the way that it did budget wise and whatever.
It is Innis Lloyd's, this is the Doctor Who I want to do.
It was just like we had John Wiles wanting to do the arc, the arc
thank you, as being, you know, to go, I don't think that was
entirely unsuccessful.
Yeah, I hate, but the arc is fine, but yeah, we just discussed
that.
It's just execution.
And people we know, our friends who were young viewers at the time
say that that's one of the 2 or 3 they remember very clearly as
viewers in Australia from the web planets, the other one
actually.
So it certainly had a visual strength.
They wanted this to be potently on the level of drama.
Let's not forget this whole season, and this will, I think, affect
the rest of this podcast once we look at it, was just like Emma
Peel's, Diana Riggs colour season of the Avengers.
This was the one they were trying to, Inisloyd was trying to sell
to the US.
So everything was a marketable blanket product with a one sentence
idea that, it's kind of, you might want to say the way we watched
Doctor Who now in the Moffat era.
Stephen Moffatt did say the series 7, what he wanted to put out
were episodes, which were like mini feature films in themselves
each of them with a tagline, a central idea.
So yeah, you can definitely say that.
And I think you can fairly say that because there's nothing wrong
with that idea on its own.
How do you pull it off?
Most of the time in the Trouton era, the one sentence pitch is
monsters of some kind, invader, base of some kind. you know what I
mean?
And we haven't quite settled down to that yet.
So we don't get the variety that we get even in the reasonably
forgettable series 7, I think.
But thank you for bringing that up.
Because the repetition of the plot, every single story, the
cottage under siege, the base under siege that we end up getting
is very much the Avengers style and when it gets really apart from
it's only because the performances are mesmerising as our actors
are in this, but the actual plot lines are execrable.
It's the same dole down thing because that's what Americans
networks wanted.
The whole point of syndication is, mix them up out of order.
It's the same plot.
The casual viewer, you're not going to get I'm totally unlike
British and Australian audiences where you turn on and just keep
watching.
US television didn't work in that way and you would jump in and
out maybe a few times a season.
They wanted something that was comfortable and predigested.
So the whole thing, as we'll get to later on with a Doctor Who
based under siege story, was the deliberate thing to appeal to a
foreign market.
The other thing I wanted to say then is that another reason you
might want to put the failing down to is just the writer and the
director who was having a hard time.
We're just talking about Julia Smith and how she was, I would say
successful on the smugglers.
But in this one, she was spotted.
Anika Wills talks about it in a biography, catching Juliet crying
after the recording of an episode in a corridor, because things
were going so badly for her.
Patrick Trouton was calling her names on set and the 3 junior
leagues.
And Anaka did join in and freely admits to it.
And because the 3 junior junior leagues thought this utterly
ridiculous, unquote.
So it wasn't really going well for any of the performances, running
performers or production, running horribly off course.
And the writer, Jeffrey Orme, I don't think, quite had that well
of Terry Southern style or Michael Willard.
Well, you look at the other writers for the bond pictures or the
rom-coms of the 60s of the time that just put in a little bit more
walks into it and made that kind of level work.
Jeffrey Orme was famous for pretty much for one thing.
It was the old Mother Riley films which were hugely popular cinema
drag acts of the 1930s.
They were Browns Boys.
Well, but without actually, yeah, really much like that.
Maybe without some of the batty humour, but not far off.
They were so popular that they ran opposite season 6 of Doctor Who
on the ITV regionals, and were matching Joe 19 in Land of the
Giants for ratings. and matching Doctor Who as well.
So yeah, Jeffrey Orm was seen as a shortest thing.
I still don't get why this doesn't work.
Nathan, what do you think?
Well, I mean, I think...
When you say it doesn't work.
It's not completely lacking in entertainment value.
They're exhausting sort of cliches and things and peril and it
doesn't serve poly very well.
Yeah, not at all.
I'll come to that in a minute with the novelisation, but please do
go on.
But there are some things that it is attempting to do.
Like it tries to be sort of visually interesting in a way that
compares to Web Planet.
I don't think it pulls it off.
But the strange fish people ballet is an attempt to put something
up. on television that is unusual.
Do you know what I mean?
And like, you know, I don't think it comes off, but it's an
attempt.
And then I think, This season, you know, there's at least this
story and another one coming up that have themes of kind of, you
know, economic revolution.
And so, um, the fish people who are essentially slaves, who
provide food for the people of Atlantis are exploited, and they're
encouraged to strike by, you know, a number of working class
characters, the Irish guy and Van and the other guy.
Do you know what I mean?
And so there is a sort of political kind of undercurrent to it.
It is, in fact, that eventually sort of, you know, leads to the
resolution of the story.
So I don't know.
I think there are some, there are fitfully interesting things in
it, but it's all just a bit of a giant mess, really.
I do gather that apparently during script writing.
Geoffrey Horn became quite ill because this was, I think, the 3rd
idea he pitched.
So that could go away to explaining some of the script's
problems.
I mean, a big part of it that doesn't work is something you
touched on earlier, Richard.
So Joseph 1st is on one level of performance.
And it's fine with Patrick because Patrick responds to that with a
complimentary, but opposite performance.
Colin Jevons is also on a similar level.
I think this is his 1st appearance in Doctor Who.
He would go on to become a very familiar face.
He's one of the surgeons.
He's not, he's, um, uh, he's like Max Caudlebline in the, in this
TV show.
He doesn't do another Doctor Who, does he?
Oh, well, not quite.
He does canine and company.
That's right.
But that's the, he's always got this method of acting where he's
overacting without even trying.
I think it's he's just got this very distinctive voice.
So his scenes are fine.
But everyone else, all the other supporting cast are trying to get
quite naturalistic performances.
And that's the thing.
I actually think Joseph 1st isn't the problem with this story.
I think it's the fact that everyone else is trying to take it far
too seriously.
Exactly.
It's meant to be a romp.
Yeah.
But there is a darker side to this story.
And I think I've mentioned it before on the podcast, but a couple
of years ago, I was making my way through reading the Trouton
Target novels.
And I came across something quite startling in the underwater
menace.
So I'm going to read you an extract here.
Zarov ran at the priest with the spear.
The weapon pierced Ramo's rib cage, and he fell down with a
terrible cry of agony.
Polly screamed.
Zarov turned round instinctively at the sound, and slapped her
across the face, shutting her up.
Hooray.
Oh, that's true for casual sexism.
The thing is violent.
I think it's hard to tell whether that is in the original script
or not, but I'd say it probably was.
And you kind of go, okay, 1966, 1967.
It's not so great.
This novelisation was written in the late 80s by Nigel Robinson.
Now, and even so, you can then kind of squint and go, okay, but
it's the villain hitting a woman we're not meant to like that.
Well, then we get this bit.
It's no use, Jamie. will never make it, cried Polly, her eyes
brimming with tears.
We're never going to get out of here.
Of course we are, Jamie reassured her firmly.
One more minute and then we'll be out of this.
You will see.
Polly shook her head in despair.
The dark oppressiveness of the tunnels through which they had been
climbing was taking its toll on her.
And another, and another, and another.
Jamie, don't you see?
We're buried in knives.
She broke down.
Oh, but there's more.
There's always more.
She broke down into an uncontrollable fit of sobs.
Out of desperation.
Jamie slapped the hysterical female across the face.
That shut her up.
Now come on, Polly, he said gently.
There's still a chance.
Get up and follow me.
So not only has one of our heroes responded to quite a genuine
concern of Polly's by slap air across the face, he's clearly
slapped her so hard, she's fallen to the floor.
Oh, good God.
I mean, she's terrible in this story, but it clearly even worse in
that novelisation.
She's a blubbering idiot and she was really cool before.
She was sort of fat and cool and smart.
She out with Christy.
You know, she outwits algae.
She outwits, Tom, you know, she's smart.
She's the moral conscience in the 10th planet.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She ends up to the sidemen and has that argument.
She understands regeneration way before Ben does, you know.
And yeah, she's just reduced in this story to someone overly
emotional and far more weakly emotional than she was in previous
stories, but not only that, punished for being emotional.
Well, I mean, it is that it's that B movie 50s thing.
What was that, um, the Flash Gordon super soldiers thing where
someone's being forcibly married to being the merciless?
and she just, she's, I thought, I thought dad was like drugged or
unconscious or something, but she's just so passive that she
literally does nothing at all.
She's not been hypnotised or anything.
She just sits there while the men fight over her.
In the Mike Hodges, 1979 Flash Gordon version, she is drugged.
She's given an elixir to make it all a hell of a lot more pleasant
than it's going to be otherwise.
Kind of like you need to be to watch the construction of this
story.
But it does work under those conditions I think.
So I suppose the end result of that is...
Underwater mass was made about 20 years too late.
Yes, it was, or maybe too early or just without the...
It's interesting to see, isn't it?
We look at such heroic failures, if you like, as being those
points of Nadirism in these seasons, but actually they're the ones
we spend the most time discussing, and the ones that end up maybe
being the most interesting for why they go wrong, because you can
see how it could be fantastic with just a few little tweaks, and
there's something intriguing about when things don't quite work.
Maybe that's why we've Doctor Who fans.
How the hell do you want it?
Okay, so, so, was that Yetis or Cyber people?
In a horrible day now?
So, in fact, it's very hard to tell who these robot things are
because we've never seen them in Doctor Who before.
They don't look anything like the mondass people who...
They're not the same at all, are they?
No.
And this means we also start to get David Banks wonderful fan
reccoming of the Spider-Man with this story.
No, tough look.
I think it's brilliant, but do go on. don't know that one.
What is that one?
He wrote a giant book like in the 90s, right?
Explaining how, you know, the reason that the sidemen look
different all the time is like there's various boring casts of
cyberman that redesign themselves and decide to start wearing sort
of... flares and boots and...
Ping-pong balls on their shoulders and vacuum cleaner tubes.
Yes, David Banks.
I now get who you mean.
I love it when the mass OCD fanboys get hold of something and
really put a construction on it.
Oh, he was the cyber leader.
He was.
Hands on hips.
He was the Christopher Robbie of our general.
Exactly what he was.
Oh, dear.
So tell me about that.
Why do these sidemen look different?
These sidemen look different because when Mondas was on its
journey to the age of space.
They sent out some cyberships to try and colonise our planets and
this particular ship. landed and colonised on Telos, but then the
expedition left again, and that's why the Cybermenon Telos look
like the Cybermen who attacked the Moonbase, despite the fact the
stories were about 500 years apart.
So the cybermen we saw in 10th Planet are civilian cybermen's
scientists saw perhaps actually politicians.
They were.
They were civilians.
And they said they want everyone to know their name.
And they had names.
Whereas thank you.
And there is these ones, and military or space fearing cybermen, so
they have pressure resistant impact resistant armour, et cetera.
But, I mean, the real reason Sandboy squee right there, isn't it?
really hate all that stuff.
I mean, the real reason is...
This is the 2nd time that we've ever had a returning villain.
So the Daleks have been back all times.
This is the 1st time anyone else has ever come back.
And so it's the side med, but they're completely unrecognisable
and they're clearly been retooled.
I don't know whether we know whether the production team knows at
this stage that they might lose the rights to the Daleks.
And so maybe they're getting someone else.
Oh, no, they definitely knew that was part of the reason that they
decided to bring back the sidemen so quickly too.
Yeah, yeah.
So they're going to be the new recurring villains and they will
be.
In fact, we next episode will be doing evil of the Daleks, which
is kind of portrays the final end of the Daleks, only not really
unless you're John Peel.
And so we, you know, these are the other villains.
And, you know, the new recurring villains and we'll see them again
and again in the trout era.
And they're always a bit crummy, aren't they?
Like they're like, they're quite good.
They're quite good in 10th planet and I think it's because they're
sort of strange and shocking.
They're extraordinary intense plan.
They're really mesmerising and their motivations are not that far
off a world under climate change and geological catastrophe.
How different would BB?
Yeah, no, they're from a parallel world.
They from an alternative, if you know, they're us.
But these are just sort of like a big troop of dumb robots, really
aren't they?
And there is a little hint at the stuff from the 10th planet.
It is very definitely the same. you know we do have references to
it.
And there is even references to sort of converting people, I think
towards the end.
But they're kind of, they could be anyone, really.
And that's really the role that they're going to play.
Could be the commies, couldn't they?
All that conversion stuff.
It's pretty much what we said before, the straight reds under the
beds, except this lot on top of the beds under a sheet.
How thicky are always, again, very bond-like space tech people up
on space.
You know that I've read that the reasoning this Lloyd didn't have
so much racial variation was that he was not wanting to offend the
Southern states trying to sell this story to the US.
So a lot of white people on the moon base, even though they have
like comedy accents.
Absolutely.
So we're not getting a proper C-based 2020 animated kind of groovy
base.
In the 70s, you started getting Star Trek was still not in
Britain.
So what we're seeing here with an international crew is still very
much Dan Dare, Charles Crichton's directed, you know, what the
empire would be like.
It really is Commonwealth Games on the Moon, isn't it?
Plus Andre Moran.
Plus Andre Moran in an exotic neckerchief because, you know, he's
French.
I actually really like his character in this.
I like all of them, except maybe the fobby old silly old duffer
commander, but I love them.
Oh, I really like it.
I like it. because And a scientist who had risen to the rank to
command this kind of thing wouldn't be a dashing young man.
He would be a man in his middle age who has devoted his life to
science and thus he's been put in charge.
Well, I mean, compare it to the last time we did this story, where
you've got General Cutler, who's so crazy that he's in fact the
chief of Dylan and antagonist in episode 3 of the 10th planet.
He've got Hobson, and Hobson's just kind of doing his job and, you
know, like he's sort of really normal and like he, and I really
like him.
He's terrific.
He does suffer, doesn't he?
Yeah, no.
Get out of here.
I can cure your disease.
Oh, all right.
Just don't make too much noise, you crazy kids.
He's wonderful.
I think he's he's um he's really terrific.
And I really like Bob.
Bob, you know, fat, poor fat Bob, who gets killed at the, you know
in episode at the start of episode three.
I just think he's he's trivic.
So like they're good.
It's a shame there's no one ever thinks to employ a woman in these
places.
That's crazy.
We do get that in the Ice Warriors, but although Polly's character
does start getting a bit restrengthened, seeing if she's the one
who figures out how to deal with the cyber invasion in the base
which is pretty fabulous.
Because quite often with Doctor Who companions, they're sort of
given whatever skills are needed in the story.
And we sort that a bit with Ian, but that can be rationalised away
with things like national service and da da da.
But with Polly, the things she knows to deal with sidemen, I the
chemical solvents.
Are things like a 60s dolly bird would know because she's an
expert on nail polish.
She's an expert on nail polish.
But also, you know, she would have to know, working with those
chemicals, like nail polish and presumably hair products, it would
because she's a girl.
Well, because she has a fabulous beehive, everything.
But, you know, working with those products, Polly's a pretty smart
person, she would want to know what chemicals she was using on her
body and what their effects were.
So, you know, if she knows that acetate dissolves plastic and she
knows that the side men are made out of plastic, you know, it's a
rational character development for her.
And what's really great is Ben just stands there going, what?
That doesn't make sense.
Yes, Ben is poorly served in this one, isn't he?
Yeah, even though Jamie's unconscious, so they didn't, you know
like we didn't really know Jamie was going to be in it, I think, at
this stage.
Yeah, we didn't, we get he gets...
He gets knocked out at the beginning of episode one.
In fact, we haven't talked about the moon and it's kind of funny
because as we record, last week's series 8, Doctor Who episode was
set on the moon.
And right?
The very 1st thing that I noticed them saying about the moon was
the doctor noticing that the gravity was normal in Kill the Moon.
And so, you know, we wouldn't have to do any special gravity
effects.
And it turned out there was a sensible plot reason for that.
Well, not a sensible.
I'm a podcast for the listeners at home.
To raise my collective eyebrow there, yeah.
But here they get to do like 10 minutes of just fapping about on
the moon surface, leaping up and down wearing fabulous.
I mean, does the doctor pull out his does he have the...
He's got a big chest, which is dimensionally transcendental and
has like whole astronaut outfits and so they put astronaut outfits
on and they bounce around on the set and stuff and they do it for
about 10 minutes and they're having great time.
What I love about their astronoid outfits too.
And this is before Adam West Batman was on.
But they've all got these sort of robin eye masks for some
reason.
Is it like to protect themselves against the glare of the script?
I think it's the mask, the stuntman person.
Yeah, you could be right.
It is a base under siege.
This is, I think, and, you know, there is that much quoted speech
from Trout in here where he says, yeah, you know, there are things
in the Farcons of the universe have bred the most terrible things
and they must be Ford.
And, you know, that's much quoted.
But what I actually think this is, is this is kind of like the 1st
modern Doctor Who story.
You've got a group of people, under threat from an alien outsiders
and the doctor comes in, is initially suspected by that group of
people, but eventually saves them from the aliens.
And it's something that we're just going to see over and over
again.
And people complain that the late trout and stuff is, you know
essentially that story over and over again.
But I mean, waters of Mars is that story, image of the Fendal, is
that story.
I mean, that story.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, that story is an absolute staple of Doctor Who.
And surprisingly, we haven't had it really that much until now.
Maybe the closest that we've had it is the censorites where the
people are actually the aliens and they're under threat from
mysterious people, you know.
But we've, you know, this is the 1st time we do it in that modern
way and there's some talk.
You know, maybe that's a sort of depressingly xenophobic view of
the world, whereas before we used to go out and see weird things
and we'd always end up getting sort of captured or menaced or
thrown into a prison or narrowly escaping a dull historical
massacre.
But, um, But, uh, we were exploring the world and seeing new
things.
Now we're kind of frightened of the world and we, the big threat
that it presents is that it will get in and we need the doctor to
prevent that from happening.
And so I think that there's a sense in which this is kind of a
step up.
This is what the status quo was going to be on the trout.
It is, in a sense, what the status quo is going to be, you know
from in Doctor Who from now on.
But it does foreclose some sort of fun possibilities, and some
really strange, enjoyable things that we've had up till now, and
that's a bit of a shame.
So this story seems this story seems very competent and very
modern, but it does lose some of the charm that we've had over the
last 3 years, I think.
Do you feel it's just trying to do too many things at once or
select too many other story types and types to be one thing?
I just think it's the 1st story that will eventually just settle
into this groove that gets done.
Very quickly, too.
Yeah.
My only problem with this one because it is kind of the 1st real
Doctor Who story as we now know.
If you could refilm it for Capaldi and it's, okay, you could
refilm it for Matt Smith and it would almost be Capelli's old
different universe now.
But it's almost a Matt Smith story.
Waters of Mars.
Yeah, thank you.
Actually, yes, what is the Mars really ringing in my head looking
at this again?
But so too, was the Cybernaus, the Avengers that just, we'd just
seen Michael Goff doing the year before.
He did so I still try and make it.
He's much better in that one.
But these really are cyber naughts of the Avengers, the M appeal
fame, even the way they karate chop through things.
We never, unfortunately, get to hear because they're mute, the
cybonauts accuse human beings of having to stop...
Which is just...
I wish we could use them in everyday parts and work meetings
really.
See, I really like this one and I think it is actually a step up
from the 10th planet.
The sidemen may not be as complex in this anymore, but it's not
just their appearance that streamlined.
It's their characterisation is streamlined as well.
They are the menace who want to make us like them.
And take what we have for themselves, but there is still no malice
in what they're doing.
And I think that's the important thing you have to have for a
decent side of men's story. the absence of malice.
What we're trying to do is logical.
And on the surface, you know, it might seem that what the cybermen
are trying to do here isn't logical, you know.
In the 10th planet, they went for a full frontal assault, and that
didn't work.
So these sidemen, what they do is they attempt to invade by
stealth.
You can't do that fully frontally, can you?
No, no, indeed not.
Now, when that doesn't work, they do come in.
They're repelled, so they attack from a distance.
Each of the cyberman's actions in this is informed by something
that's happened to them previously.
They adapt to what they've learned, whereas in the 10th planet.
They attempt to go in once.
They get defeated.
They go, oh, okay, we'll just lay around the corner and wait for
everyone to die.
You know, the side men in this are a little bit more proactive.
Behind the scenes, of course, they've had the redesign, uh, which
was handled by, um, Sandra Reid, who has said in interviews that
um, part of the reason for the redesign was, she felt so badly
about 1st design, because the 1st design for the 10th planet, she
was asked to do at the last minute, and didn't think much of
science fiction.
So just designed something she thought was kind of terrible.
Really?
Yeah, she really doesn't like that.
That's the thing.
They, you know, people thought they were really menacing.
But she felt so bad that people really liked something she had
done sort of off the cuff that she went, no, I'm gonna do it, quote
unquote, properly this time, and I'm going to make them sleek and
metallic.
With polyphene tennis balls, yes. polyphene.
This is, I mean, it's essentially the what we have now.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, Simon get undergo a couple of redesigns in the 60s until
they have those big bun head things that they have.
We beat George Lucas and Carrie Fisher again, didn't we?
You know, they had the invasion and all throughout the 70s and
80s.
But what we've gone back to now is essentially these moon-based
sidemen or their close cousins, the wheeling space ones, with the
smaller heads and all that sort of thing.
And I think they look pretty good and I actually like the voices I
like.
They're incomprehensible.
They're not quite as bad as they will be in tune with the sidemen
where you can't understand a line of their dialogue, but, you know
I think that they, you know, they look reasonably cool, but they
are very generic and they are they're slightly dull.
I mean, the fact that they're not us anymore, they are just robots
you know, and they're not threatening to assimilate us or take a
sofa or depersonalise us.
They just want to, you know, hit us over the head and take on our
staff, essentially, here.
So it's a slightly less interesting thing.
And in fact, I think that the fact that the gravitron is a weather
base and that what they want to do is kind of destroy Earth.
It just is just a way of upping the stakes here.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, you know, like cybermen invading a moon base with half a
dozen white people on it.
That's not very, you know, that's not particularly threatening.
But, you know, Simon threatening to destroy the world by taking
control of its weather, obviously, up to the stakes.
Very prescient.
And it does it does give us a chance for some really, really
incredible foam rubber shower caps in the graviton room, which I'm
wearing one now.
Do you know, we weren't going to say...
I was wondering.
You know, this was almost Patrick Troughton's last story.
You just mentioned the big ballsy prop in so many ways.
Why?
He knocked the motherhead thing.
The gravitron itself, you know how Paddy was a very physical actor
compared to build micro physicality, and you Bill's things, you
always saw his hands.
Something that came from 20 cinema.
We haven't mentioned that this podcast, so I think it's important
to throw that in again.
I haven't had a drink at home.
So you'd always see Bill's hands in his close-up shots.
Paddy liked to walk around the set before the 1st day of shooting
just work out his moves and the size of the props.
The gravitron hadn't been properly secured and fell down within
apparently 2 feet of where he'd just been standing and would have
cut him coming through.
Yeah.
So then, ooh, can you just see him jumping up and down like
running away when I say run?
Yeah, yeah, he wasn't happy about it.
So maybe that means an edge to the 1st episode.
Shoot when you watch it again.
But he's so consummately good.
I think that's the thing about this season.
Plot for plot, plot for plot.
It's kind of like the colour series of of Diana Riggs Avengers in
that isolated their fun, but try and watch them in a sequence and
you just fall into a coma because it's the same plot every single
week.
This one.
Almost the same, I think much, much less so and actually more
creatively.
But Patrick Troughton is just amazing and everything he does.
And I'm really unwilling to say that because I'm still having, I'm
still having Billy Gas.
I'm still really missing Billy, but he just, you can't not be
astounded and kind of confronted and because he's certainly not a
black and white doctor.
He certainly, he's morality is impused several times throughout
the course of this adventure, because we saw it, um, in this one
not so much, but he's willing to sacrifice for the greater good
depends on who, depending on who that is.
We're going to see more of that as the season goes on.
But, you know, for instance, in Underwater Menace, he floods the
lower levels for no good reason, just to give him a bit more time
and to distract Professor Zaroff.
There were other ways he could have done it.
And we talked in power of the Daleks about the Bragan's guards.
Yes, sacrificing that he sacrifices then.
And like you said, we'll see an evil of the Daleks and a bit more
of that.
It was listening to this one that I realised where so much of
later doctors have come from, most significantly and visually as
well.
You can really see Sylvester's doctor being very much based on
Patrick.
But when you get the look of it, but also the greater good and the
manipulation.
He's very subtly so, and I didn't get it the 1st time I listened
to these.
Did you notice the big referencing robot of Sherwood a couple of
weeks ago?
There's a fantastic saving mood base where Hobson's given the
doctor permission to investigate, you know, what pathogenal, what
it is in common?
And he's cutting people's hair.
Yeah, yeah, he's crawling around on the front, stuff their clothes
and stuff.
And Capaldi's doing the same thing to all of the people.
I'll introduce you to people who are fish.
But he does the same thing to Robin Hood in his very man.
He's rolling around, taking blood samples and stuff.
Terrific.
Yeah, Patrick and Chartin is the go to doctor and this, for seeing
how to, what to do with the doctor and how to play it, Matt did
it.
I'm really getting that this season is just like, again, other
things like the Bond films of that time are still addressing how
to do a Bond film, the, again, with the reboots, the Avengers is
how to do a rom-com with a male and female leads, still kind of
done that way.
This is the doctor.
This is how to do Doctor Who.
Yeah, this is the reboot, isn't it?
It's series one of the reboot really.
And I think by introducing that sort of gray morality of the Trout
and Doctor, the series, the series grows up very quickly because
Hartnell's doctor, you know, he could be irascible, but you would
never think that, you know, that he'd flood the lower levels
without checking there are people there or that he'd send some
guards in to die just to buy himself as a mate to time.
Or as you mentioned, Nathan, that he'd smash a lawyer's head
against the desk.
Pretty much just for fun.
Just for fun, yeah?
You know?
And yeah, it feels like such a more adult and bigger series, even
with the problems that arguably all 3 of these stories have, it
begins to feel a bit more unpredictable again, in a good way
whereas series, sorry, season 3 was unpredictable in probably a
bad way.
That was unpredictable in a way of, oh, God, what's coming next?
Whereas this is unpredictable in a way of, what's coming next?
Don't you think it's just growing pains?
Like, it is, they are kind of, like, this is the story where they
settle down into the mode that they're going to follow.
You know, they create the template.
And before then they were just kind of trying to work out what on
earth they were going to do.
And so, you know, Power of Daleks, I think, works surprisingly
well in context, given how the subsequent stories go.
But, you know, the Highlanders is a bit of a mess and and, you
know, like underwater menace.
I think they wanted to get away from alien planets, so it's on
Earth, but it's essentially, you know, crummy B movie tropes.
And then there's this and this is what they'll decide on going
forward.
So, like, I don't, I'm not, I'm not convinced that the show's been
revitalised yet.
I have to say, I think, you know, recasting the doctor was amazing
and it's amazing that that came off, but I think it really did.
I think Ben and Polly are, you know, were great regular cast
members.
I think that you know, some really positive changes have
happened.
But I'm just not convinced at this direction.
Um, you know, clearly in hindsight, we know that this is the
direction of the doctor who eventually takes.
But I don't know how great it is at this stage.
I'll have to. finding a feat, aren't they?
And they're making as many perhaps not so great choices as they're
making positive choices.
For me, if we can get to that right now, the biggest bar, what a
shame so far is the casting.
There's nothing against the actor himself because I really love
his performance, but we have Jamie McCrim and instead of Kirsty.
How amazing to have had Hannah Gordon, such a good actor as she
later proved in her careers, as the girl, she could have been
asleep on the bunk and it would have been absolutely terrifying
for everyone concerned.
I really like the character of Jamie.
He the companion, isn't he?
But it just would have been interesting to have seen maybe a bit
more playing around with the formula.
Well, in fact, we'll get to this next episode, probably, because
what we're about to see is some, you know, we're going to say
goodbye to the 2 contemporary companions who, you know, at the
time, I think we said we were really excited to see them coming
they're going to go, and we're just going to have Jamie and
someone else.
They don't want to spoil it for you.
And like again, I think that's that's...
Queen Victoria.
And also, next episode, I'm going to be, I'm talking about how
actually, I think when it works, the combination of Jamie, Ben, and
Polly is really good.
Yeah, yeah.
So that's all we have time for this episode.
In our next episode, we are going to be discussing the last 3
stories of this season, the Macraterra, the faceless ones, and the
final end of season 4 with Evil of the Daleks.
But until then, I'm off to Praise Amdo.
So good night.
Squilch.
I don't know what I'm off to. either of those two.
I'm up to get gills fitted.
Yeah, I should do.
I've got very unhygienic operating room.
Which will be cut out by the Australian sensors. right, Damian
Shanahan will have an extra bit.
That's why that's in the room.
That's why. to mention in the highland is the fact that all of
like all you would get is like someone suddenly being hanged.
And then it's back to the pictures.
From the tomb of Jamie and Shanahan.
So I think we can finish this episode by saying all the bits of
these episodes we do have.
Thank you, Damian Shannon.
Thank you, Damien, in your evil ways.
Thank you.
You've been listening to Flight Your Entirety with Nathan Botomey
Brendan Jones, and Richard Stone.
This episode, Comedy Accents, was recorded on Sunday, the 12th of
October.
The next episode will be released on Sunday, the 2nd of November.
You can find us at flatthroughentiresh.com, flight to entirety on
Facebook and iTunes and FTE podcast on Twitter.
Now, I'm going to make some coffee while you all think of
something.
Zarov ran at the priest with the...
Zarov ran at the pre.
Oh, it's a yeah, it's a reversing truck.
So it has to stop reversing eventually.
You'd think?