Jazz Hands
Remember the 1960s, when this podcast first began? We had such high ideals, and we enjoyed making people happy. Well, it’s 2017 now, so welcome to our bitter, jaded and utterly mercenary take on The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.
The pebble drowning in his lake
Campaigning for our postal plebiscite has turned predictably nasty, but it’s very important for everyone to have their say on this issue: which Colin Baker story should be the subject of our upcoming commentary podcast? Head over to the show notes for Episode 121 to cast your vote.
Buy the story!
The Greatest Show in the Galaxy was released on DVD in 2012. (That was easy.) (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
Brendan’s “surprise mirror” remark is totally incomprehensible unless you’ve seen this literal music video of Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart. Watch it now.
The first episode of Australian comedy series Outland featured a gay Doctor Who fan who briefly considered abandoning his date when he made a crack about Daleks being unable to climb the stairs.
In Richard Marsden’s biography of John Nathan-Turner, it is revealed that JNT and his partner used to refer to hard-core fans as “barkers”, and the attractive ones as “doable barkers”.
Chris Chibnall will be taking the reins of Doctor Who any day now. Here he is on the BBC’s Open Air programme in 1986, criticising The Trial of a Time Lord.
The Pakleds from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Samaritan Snare were intended to be a parody of Star Trek fans.
This sketch from A Bit of Fry and Laurie depicts Stephen Fry’s reaction to increasing choice in the media landscape. Watch it all the way through — there’s a lovely surprise in there for fans of Doctor Who.
Richard identifies 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964) as one of the inspirations for this story. The eponymous Doctor is played by Tony Randall in some appalling yellowface. Check out the trailer here.
Picks of the week
Brendan
Take a deep breath. Brendan’s first pick is Doctor Who on Holiday a remix by Dean Gray of The KLF’s Doctorin’ the TARDIS, featuring Green Day. It’s good.
His second pick is The X-Men: The Animated Series Podcast, a podcast in which two American fans discuss, well, X-Men: The Animated Series.
Nathan
Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, read by Robert Hardy. It’s not available on Audible in the US. Write to your Congressman. (Audible UK) (Audible AU)
Richard
Richard (bless him) just wants you to watch Season 25 again. And eat some fruit.
Follow us!
Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam, and the logo was designed by Anthony Wells. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast. And more surprising and completely reliable information about the show can be found at @FTEwhofacts.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll descend on your fruit cart like a pack of hippie weirdos.
Bondfinger
Richard is off on a top-secret mission to Piz Gloria right now, so our coverage of the Brosnan era will resume in a few weeks’ time. While you’re waiting, you can enjoy our previous commentaries on the Pierce Brosnan films, and our commentaries on the Timothy Dalton Era.
We also have plenty of Rodgecasts online, and there are other Bonds available, as well. Even fake ones.
You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.
Episode 124: Jazz Hands · Download (96.9 MB)
Transcript
Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety the only Doctor Who podcast who's just as good as we've always been. Thank you, Adrian Mole. I'm Brendan. I'm Nathan. I'm a hollowed out melon of creamed corn and custard for this one. We are on our way to the psychic circus for the greatest show in the galaxy. Mind the flaps, dear. This ends up being the season finale of season 25, the anniversary season. Not in my history. No, no. I much prefer Silver Nemesis is the finale. It feels more fitting because, you know, we get the callback and we get that beautiful last moment we discussed last week of who are you? Which is actually really well done for such a... Mawkish line. But instead, we get this four-part story from Stephen Wyatt, who wrote Paradise Towers last year, which we all quite enjoyed. I think the execution in this one is much better though, because we did say last year the execution of Paradise Towers was flawed like the ages didn't quite work. Had more time on this one, haven't they? That's very true. And it looks spectacular. I mean, it really Surprising how good it looks. Yeah, it's not all done to paint box. There's a lot of other things going on here. They put money into this. They tend to do that each season, don't they? They have a big money burner. Well, let's not dispaint box because they do a great job. I think it's no, I love it. it's beautiful. Yeah, there's that wonderful shot where Nord rides off towards the circus and there's that big ringed planet in the background. And think back just a couple of years earlier where you had those sort of appalling day glow pink planets in the sky of Thoros Bisa and just how much more subtle and well done it is. And you have, I think, you know, the greatest director of this era of Doctor Who. Yeah, Alan Waring. And he's wonderful. I mean, we will go on to talk about how great he is in ghost lies and survival, I think. But here I think he's really, really wonderful. And just the look of the show is great. And of course, there were those massive production problems. Which were the greatest benefit to mankind. We could have possibly hoped. On Alan Waring just before we get into that. A moustache. Alan Waring is the most gust, well, gut busting, brine island zip up, $6000000 man, skivvy moustache you have ever seen. Really? Yeah, in the day. It's worth watching the videos just for that. Bristling, it is. Joan Crawford with a pencil moustache, maybe? No, there's nothing Robert Donar about it. It's your it's your full upper brush. We talking Jason King? Oh, I wish. They should have brought him back. But what you were saying with the paint box, for instance, if we just look at the story we discussed last week, Silver Nemesis. And this is something I didn't notice until I was rewatching it for the podcast. The compositing work and the sort of paintbox mat work on Deflora's house is actually really bad. Like the house suddenly... That was really hard to do. But compared to what we see here. Maybe it's just one year is a whole, you know, how much time you the jumps in tech at the time were amazing one year to the next. I also think season. Oh okay. Because Sylvan Es time then maybe. But also, I'm wondering if maybe Chris Klough settled where Alan Waring pushed. Oh yeah, possibly. But as you alluded, Nathan, there were production problems. First of all, something I found out recently that I didn't know. This started life as a three-parter. And essentially the episode they added in was the 1st episode with travelling to the circus. Like that was originally going to be 5 minutes of episode one and Cartmel and Wyatt kind of agreed. No, let's get to know the characters, give it a bit of breathing space. And I think that really works. In terms of the production problems. They actually got all the way through the location shoot. So all the stuff in the sand pit, which we'll see again next year in survival. And there's a lot of it. A whole stack of it is shot on location, as is now the thing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And on the DVDs, there's even character bits that didn't make it into the show, especially for Captain Cook and Mags. So after they shot all that, it was discovered that there was asbestos in television centre. So that had to be cleared out and that had a knock on effect and it was kind of the sharder case of other programs were given precedence over Doctor Who. And for about 4 or 5 hours, this story was officially cancelled much like Charter had been. Q, JNT, and Gary Downey calling around, finding out places they could go, and eventually. Because it had to be filmed on BBC property because the union thing was still really big. So you couldn't just go to any old rehearsal room or any other stage. No. Yeah, yeah. And they were going to go to BBC Elstree, but then the Elstree Studios were being used for something and it was actually the set designer. EastEnders. I know. That would have, look, way before dimensions in time. We had greatest show in the Galaxy. The set designer, David Lasky, had filmed enough. Professor Lasky. Professor Lasky. Well, he had dumb set design for Terror of the Burvoids. But he had done aggressively. He had done a production before in a tent. I know. And that's where the idea came from. Let's put all the sets up in a tent. Funnily enough, it's set in a tent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there was just this penny dropping moment of the office of he said, we can put it in a tent. And apparently it was Gary Dowder. He said, well, it is set in a circus. And that even the TARDIS console room is in the tent, and that's why the lighting is very slightly different from previous appearances, but I think this is the only console room scene this season. It is. Yeah. I like that. Me too. And next season we're only going to get one console room scene as well. But that's how this all came about. And what people have sort of said since is, you know, when they're running through corridors in the tent and you've got the billowing walls. It's like, you know, to do that in studio, we wouldn't have been able to. You need Bonnie Tilo, yeah. Surprise mirror. Sorry, literal music video. But David Lasky kind of went on to say, to do that in the studio we would have needed wind machines, but if we had wind machines, we would have had to dub the dialogue because you wouldn't have been able to hear it. Putting it actually outside. We get that natural breeze. And so in episode 4, jumping ahead, when the doctor's going through that vortex and there's all that wind and everything, it feels like we've been building up to it. It's one of these wonderful serendipity stories where, The circumstances conspire to give you something that is much better than it was originally meant to be. It's the 1st of 2 Sylvester McCoy for partters that just end up being shot essentially entirely on location. And it really works, I think, for that reason. It just looks really spectacular. And this has been a spectacular looking season all the way back from remembrance of the Daleks, which I think we thought looked amazing and had some really terrific sets. We're at that point now, the Indian summer point, we were looking at these thinking, these were so good. Why was nobody seeing these? And Jonathan, well, you know, because there wasn't any publicity. We're about to find out for next season just how little publicity there was because there was no budget for it, and it was partly GNTs doing as well. But you also had Jonathan Powell saying, yes, yes, it's very good. It's very good. I think they'd planned to just let it die its natural death. And I don't think that's just received fan wisdom. listening to what we're saying now and watching them over again. I'm really feeling like they're just letting the kids out to play one more time before we leave. We don't tell them we're moving. Because, I mean, Doctor Who is still kind of a joke at this point. Very much so. And you had stand-up comedians now doing the usual football crowd thing about wobbly sets and stairs. But it does, it doesn't look like that. That's not what we're getting. Well, those tent walls aren't exactly... Well, they are holding themselves up, I suppose. But you know, Richard, you're exactly right. And the thing is, even with the success Doctor Who's had in the last 10 years, and I understand, over the last couple of years, the ratings in pure numbers have waned, but the audience appreciation figures an audience share haven't changed all that much. So Doctor Who is still popular. Yeah, it still gets to be in the top 20, doesn't it? Nowadays. Yeah. Yeah. Only, only, only just. Sometimes it's 21. But people are still making the dialects going upstairs joke. And in 2005, you know, when Rob Shearman's Dalek story finally happened, the headlines were all, oh, Daleks are back and now they can climb upstairs. Oh, how amazing. And there's... received psychism. received everything else. There is not a lot to it. Do you remember that wonderful scene in John Richard and Adam Richards show, Outland, where Toby Trustlove playing the Doctor Who fan brings home a guy who finds a Dalek in his sugar bowl and says, oh, they're the masters of the universe, but they can't climb upstairs and Toby's internal monologue. Like, actually, they've been climbing stairs since 1988's remembrance of it up. No, no, leave him alone. We've all had that little moment, though. That's what it's like. But not we. No, it is, and it's the same reason that, you know, they'll still happily vote the way they do and say there's no climate change. That's right. If you don't accept Daleks can buy? You don't believe in one. Actually, I think there's probably a correlation there. And it is extraordinary to see how well this show was doing at the time. And I think it was actually too good in the way that certain films and certain plays are only appreciated more later. This is one of them. The 80s was all about, just like the mid 60s, early 60s, new and fresh. It hasn't been as fresh, I feel, since, since Hinchcliffe in the popular vision of, although, to us fans, that's not the case. But I mean, it should have been doing as well as those 1st Toms. Absolutely. And episode 4 of this actually gets 6.6 million. That's not too foul, is it? You know why? It had a little bit of publicity. And it ran 5 minutes over or under, I remember. And so the people, casual viewers, caught it as they were coming in to watch Bergerac or whatever it was that came on afterwards. So there were, yeah, it's, if they just had publicity, it would have, would have done really well. It is still this sort of madly experimental thing. I mean, the whole idea of setting it in a circus. I mean, we talked about this with Paradise Towers where it's in no way realistic. All of the characters are programmatic, none of them have proper names. Um, you know, the whole thing is a sort of weird allegory. It's something that could never have happened in the Hinchcliffe era where it's all, you know, long dead evils threatening storybook situation. This isn't science fiction, really. No this is social commentary. We were too close in the Hinchcliffe era to get to what this thing is about, which is the failure of the flower power movement, the failure, the failure of love. Mr. Major. The failure of love. I think I think it does work on 2 levels. And then there's the immediate level where it's about Doctor Who. It's called Doctor Who, the Greatest Show in the Galaxy, and it is essentially about the history of Doctor Who. And so that sort of told partly through the character of Wiz Kid. But then it opens out to be a story about the failure of the flower power generation and the way that they turned into hard nosed coke snorting capitalists in the 1980s. And so it's it's resonant, I think. And, and you, you might wonder why this makes it into a 25th anniversary season, but it is in some senses a secret history of Doctor Who, where the doctor has been fighting the, the gods of Ragnarok all through time just to stay alive, that if he stops being entertaining, if he stops pleasing the audience or possibly even pleasing various people at the BBC, he'll be immediately killed. And, you know, the symbol of the psychic circus is the eye. It's all about the audience. We have an audience appreciation figures. We have all of those sorts of things that we've been talking about. We have the widespread belief that Doctor Who used to be good and isn't anymore. Um, the people making it. The people making it are tired, jaded, and I'm not talking about the podcast. You know, and there's this sort of weird analogue of the Doctor Who constantly, you know, Captain Cucku constantly wanders through the show talking about his past adventures, talking continuity references. So that's it. Can we talk about WizKit and... We ready to talk about that yet? Wiz kid, okay? Apotheosis. Tick that bingo box of of ours, of ours, of Barker's, as Mr. Downey and Mr. Nathan Turner called us. And in his notes to Cartmel and Stephen Wyatt. JNT did write. I really like the Barker character. He... Oh wow. But Cartmore expanded the character of the captain, who was meant to die at the end of episode one, and there is received fan wisdom. I'm not naming names. Some of his lines. purlieus, little twists on actual guests from actual conventions telling the actual same story. The same story. excuse me. Over and over and over. So, yeah, this is this is an internal and external standup of these people. I adore the moment where the doctor shouts at the caption. You're also a crushing boar and the look the look TP mechanic gives me. No, there's a reaction from one of the clown robots in the background who puts his hand open his mouth. Like that like that shocked kitten gift. Can I say I... Well before, yeah. I really love Wiz Kid. and I think WizKit is actually an affectionate take on the fans. He is a send-up, but he's not. I don't find his character insulting. He is a bit over enthusiastic, but he's also a nice person. You know, and everything he does comes from a place of love, even if he's irritating. And the old performers can't wait for him to die. But that's the that's the thing. I think he's also a little bit of a commentary on the fan commentary of the time because, you know, say we keep making fun of him, but Chris Chimnall last year, the year before on points of view, and, you know, the kind of joke we've made now of, okay, if you think it's so easy, you do it. Well, that's more. But that's what the Wiz Kid does in this. He thinks he can go into the psychic circus and be an act, but he doesn't survive a few seconds. you know? So it's kind of saying to fans. We, you know, we love that you love us, but don't think you can walk a mile in our shoes because it is harder than it looks. In fact, before he goes into the ring. The captain says that he's certain that he has style and panache and that he'll be great in the ring and he's actually a little bit he kind of admits that he's not really very sure of that. And so we do know that he's going to be killed. Oh, God, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I also think when you talk about the fan commentary, There is obviously this story that Doctor Who used to be good and isn't anymore. And we're, during a period of time where it's actually not possible to watch early Doctor Who at all. And so in the 5 doctors, They bring back Richard Herndle as the 1st doctor. But they don't know what he's like. You know, he's the grumpy one. Have you seen Todd, really? 30 seconds, no, it's like. So no one knows what he's like. And Wiz Kid admits that he's never seen early Doctor Who and that he's just going by his experience of seeing the posters. He's got all the posters. He's got all the posters, so he knows what it's like. He's got a WH Allen poster. Yeah, he's got a full collection of Peter Haning books on the early history of the psychic circus. The other reason I love... The thing is, it's so true. It was years when I was a fan before I saw Hartnell and Troughton and I just have the targets, but I didn't read many of them, but the covers are burned on my memory and the blurbs are burned on my memory. Because, you know, I was reading Doctor Who books, but I was also reading Roald Dahl. Like Matilda was my favourite book as a kid. I could literally sit there and read it as in a night, considering the subject matter, that's quite apt. But the other reason I love WizKid is because Star Trek tries to do the same idea this year in season 2 of Star Trek Next Generation, in an episode called Samaritan Snare, which introduces the PackLeds. If we remember... They look for things to make them go. They look for things to make them go. So they kidnap the engineer, Geordie La Forge, to try to get him to make them go. And the thing is, the writers have said, oh yeah, you know, they're they're, um, they're a parody of our fans. They're deliberately written to be obese, slow witted, stupid and selfish. Not really a good idea to lampoon your base viewer viewers either at the end of a show or for Trex case at the beginning. Yeah, yeah. But how did the Yanks take that? I mean, I mean, our lovely American friends. How did they take? The thing is, I have seen a lot of people react to that commentary and go, oh, I'd never seen that before. Whereas when we're watching Greater Show in the galaxy, just say if you're, I didn't get it as a kid, so maybe you're if you're about Wiz kids' age or older, you would pick up that, hey, that person is like me. When Doctor Who does it, it's affectionate. It's, it's slightly taking the piss. And he does get killed. And he does get killed. But we kind of like, I think a lot of Doctor Who fans would be happy being in Doctor Who just to get killed, you know? I don't know him very well, but I know you're opening up a whole new can. That's the place on the internet. on the show. But someone I knew in the UK. He had been an extra on several David Tennant stories and he loves talking about it. He was killed by the reality bomb in the Stolen Earth and Journey's End. he's one of, he's standing behind Jackie when she's in the chamber and he's like, oh, you know, it was a great day. And I got to die on Doctor Who. So I think... Compare that to the PackLeds, where I think, okay, I think with Wiz Kid, you're in on the joke. You're part of the joke. You're like, oh yeah, that is a bit like me. Yeah, I do have all the posters. Whereas the PacLeds are like, not even an oversimplification, just a really insulting version of the Star Trek fan. We need to go back to look at the centre of our universe here, the doctor who has become, and I'd like to talk about Sylvester's performances, because he's much maligned by fan history, but I think when you start watching this in the next season, you see that he can hold things together that I don't know many other actors playing the doctor would have been able to do so, especially in Ghost Light. But in this one, he does care about Wiz Kid's death. Whereas Bellboy. That scene, can we get to some of the other characters, that scene let's talk about Bellboy and Flower Child were probably the most, I know it's very, you know, it's like a Japanese anime romance thing at the beginning, but They are rounded out before any of the other ones are. And Bellboys, the filming of Bellboys suicide, the clowns and the doctor just getting up and leaving. It's really well done television. It just happens to be in Doctor Who. The doctor seems to go, yep. That's yep, you go ahead. You made your choice. Go ahead. I think this is very dark. Very nice, though. I think there is a sadness and I do like Ace's reaction as well where she makes that scene, really. Yeah, she doesn't quite know how to react and he sort of doesn't even respond properly to her encouragement. He's not looking in her direction when he sort of ushers her out of the of that caravan. It is really strong and interesting. The caravan of courage. caravan of allowing yourself to be strangled by robots. The... I think it's a metaphor for George Lucas, for working under George Lucas, yeah. He's a really good character and so is Flower. Very well performed. Well, in her very, very short appearance in the show. She's only there in episode one and she's clearly stronger than him and more sensible and capable. Can't keep her earrings on her head. They slip backwards through time. Something that is very successful about this. story is that romance between Flower Child and Bellboy. And as short as her appearance is, as you mentioned, Nathan, the scenes we have of them together are incredibly short. And yet they, at least in my mind, they cement that, yeah, this is a pre-existing relationship. They really love each other. They really care for each other. Something I then love which feeds off that is when Belbo gets back to the circus and sees Morgana. He thinks she's flower child, like he's he's that desperate to see her. But then when he meets Ace, you know, if this had been Joe Grant they would have developed a romance between them. Whereas with Ace, they don't, they don't have to develop a romance for her to have a connection with a male character. You know, she gets a connection with him through robotics because she's like, this is, you know, this is a really neat control unit. And yeah, that scene where he says, you know, I'll distract them while you get away. Yeah, I think that is really well performed by Sophie. I think another really good performance in that scene where he finally does it. Of course, Bellboy himself and his performance, you know, you used to be a really talented clown and then the chief clown hits him and he says, I'm not helping you anymore. And does it. Ian Reddington is the chief clown, you know, all the way through he's been really nasty. The look on his face when Bellboy does that, he's actually disturbed for a moment. But then, but then he puts the mask back on. And the hand and Brendan's doing the hand right now too. Ian Reddington is the centre of the dark centre of this. Well, you essentially have Bellboy who has the job of carrying that deeper theme about the loss of innocence, of the generation of the 1960s. Like, he's the one who essentially explains to us that that's what this story is about. And the doctor encapsulates it as, you know, a fun hippie circus gets turned into a machine for killing people. And that's what that generation did. You know, they were playing and amusing themselves and so proud of of their creativity and their, you know, freedom from the previous generation's streatures and then they got to a certain age and just turned into sort of gruesome capitalists, who, you know chewed their way through the demography of the society that they found themselves in. And he's the one who tells us that. And then I think the chief clown, who's the only one who doesn't feel some kind of anxiety about where they've found themselves. Morgana is unhappy with what's happened to the circus and says that the ringmaster is angry all the time. In a very kind of, you know, angry 80s way, but there is some kind of loss of innocence behind that anger. And the only one who's really wholeheartedly into what he's doing is the chief clown and he's the one who kills the others, you know he is... And with the ringmaster, I'm not far behind him. Yeah, well, but he does, he's the one who kills the ringmaster. and Morgana as well. Yeah, it's kind of a, it's kind of a sliding scale. Like if you were to look at it in terms of role-playing game morality. The chief clown is your chaotic evil. The, um, the ringmaster is probably your neutral evil. And then Morgana is. Does it disturb other listeners that... Brendan has a hierarchy of evil. No, I actually think you're quite... I think you're quite wrong, Brendan. I think that I think that, you know, that hippie circus thing is chaotic good. We're all into letting it hang out. And they've now turned into a machine. And Bell boy calls it a machine. This, you know, yeah, it's because Nathan and I were alive and, and you know, semi-conscious in the 80s and we were both at school. But the, our parents were this generation and we had friends who this, and we'd just seen all of this way before Matt Wiener's madmen, remembrance of the dialect showed us that the 60s were not the cool place, but with the slow jazz that our parents said they were. This is about the death of the hippie movement or the death of the ideals of the hippie movement and what Britain has become and America as well. It's just, you know, it helps that you've actually got US actors in this with genuine accents, not just doing them. So when we saw with remembrance that it wasn't mod cool, but it was racist hot. Yeah. Mushal McLuan. The hippies. Oh, God. When we were young. Okay, we saw the tail end of them, but they were putting on the Donovan albums and you would hear Sergeant Pepper and the White album and all the rest of it. And our parents would talk about, or you'd see on TV, people talking about, you know, that generation, which we spoke of free love and we, you know, and they said, and their hopes for the future. But what that whole movement, say for free love, was actually all about men having what they wanted, and women being entirely subjugated to atavistic libidos. And this is this is the natural outcome. I was just going to say, because it's the same generation that produced people like Steve Jobs, George Lucas, cross yourself. And Richard Branson, who was a big deal in the early 80s rising star with his virgin chat. I mean, how, actually, how creepy is using the whole brand of virgin anyway? It was like we haven't forgotten what Free Love was about, mate. It was about you. Wasn't it? Yeah, it's the self-same people who all spoke about workers and managers having equal pay. Which was another part of that late 60s movement. These are the same people who are subjugating whole factory towns under Thatcher. Um, and then firing them or going, moving their businesses off to China or moving them off to near Asia, Hong Kong when Hong Kong was closing, of course, in 10 years, they were starting to make deals with the mainland China. We now find it very easy to blame other governments and other regimes for their way of thinking, but we really assisted them to get to where they are. Now, we are really, really tired with this. As a culture. And Doctor Who was one of the 1st media pieces to pick up on it? And also, considering the idea of the production machine. I think Doctor Who was the only weekly drama left that was an in house production for the BBC. It was still made, it was, yeah, it was still made at television centre. Whereas everything else was being made externally, in a production machine. Stephen Fry on a bit of fry and lorry lampoons it brilliantly at one point. There's this sketch where he's a waiter. Can he sees someone in charge of BBC one? It's always Hugh Bloody Lorry, is it? It was some kind of guest role. I don't think it was. Emma Thompson. Yes, he was Emma Thompson. But when he's talking to him about, oh, you know, the BBC's going so well and you're getting so many other people involved, he looks down at the table and says, oh, you've only got a knife and a fork. And the guy says yes. Oh, well, we can't have this. And Stephen goes and gets a giant garbage bag full of plastic cutlery and dumps it on the table and says, there you are. Now you've got choice. Okay, you can't find anything. Everything's the same and there's far too much of it, but at least you've got choice and wanders off. And this was what they were being made by the BBC. And Jonathan Powell chortling away like a god of Ragnarok. But it also reminds me of something I once asked my mother, and it could have been in relation to the story. I turned to I turned to her and said, as a kid. Do all black men rap, mummy? Were you and dad hippies, I said. And my mother's response and it gains more relevance with each passing year. No, darling, we were far too poor to be hippies. Exactly. They had a term, rich hippies, very precisely the people we've talked about. You see it now, you've got Bono and what's his face? With £600000000 minimum each, that's the known worth of Mr. Orange sunglasses, telling us all, you know, give a bit more money to the hot Africans. How about you give everything you've got and live there like the rest of us, and then we'll apportionately do the same thing. Yeah, well, Bono, is it Bono in that band in, sorry, is it? I don't know what band it is either. Is it Bono in you 2 who wears the hat and that's his thing. He wears a hat or is that edge? Anyway, one of them wears a... practically drawing their pensions when I was clubbing. How could they how could they be called the edge? Is that like doing it in front of a salad? But one of, can we get to the store? Anyway, one of you 2 wears a hat. And for the live 20 thing, the 20th anniversary of Live 8 a few years ago, they forgot their hat in Ireland and had it flown over on its own plane to a concert, in part about global warming and damaging the environment. Yes, we can now get onto the stores later. And we are now at the river fruit, aren't we? The state of that. Well, I just... Don't call Matthew Ward. I was just going to say that you, as we've been discussing, you know, gender fluidity in casting is nothing new to Doctor. You know who was originally cast as the stores lady? It wasn't piggy mounted all. Brian bless it. I wish. No, that was last week. It was Bill Fraser. Oh, wow. General Grugger fame. Yeah, it was still going to be the stall's lady, though. Yeah, yeah, but he turned it down because he would not be allowed to kick Keth McCulloch. She's terrific. Oh my god, she's amazing, Peggy. She is, just to get back to what we were saying. She is the casual viewer of Doctor Who at this time, sitting at home, thinking, you're all a bit... Is there no end to you, weirdo? I thought you were one of the normal ones. Debbie what? Exactly. She was the Debbie Watling all the time. But yeah, no, she's, she's our mum's and dad, the people who weren't involved in this hyperbole, ridiculous ego fonting that was resulted in the Bransons and... Yeah. Well, she's a normal person and she's, her planet is being used for the sake of this machine for killing people and she resents it. She doesn't like those people. And so originally when we look at her, we kind of think, oh, she's a norm, you know, she doesn't get it, sort of thing. It's a not wee, yeah. But I do think that we get sympathy for her at the end because what she objects to in the circus is that the circus is horrible you know, that the circus is awful. And she's right to object to it. So it's a wonderful comedy performance. It's a lovely, lovely, Sophie Aldred apparently coached her for upper middle-class accent. I think my favourite moment with her is when, you know, the Wiz kid rides up. Oh, you're a nice, respectable young man. How can I help? Yes, can you tell me how to get to the psychic circus? And the whole point of that scene is just Peggy Mount's face at the end of it, like, oh, much like Debbie Watling at you. Yeah. Really just anytime she spotted me in a crowd. She always had a good time before she showed up, didn't she? It'd been a lot going on in the green room. I need a fag, love. I'm here. Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking now of the suicide nets around the Apple factories in China, you know, to stop the workers jumping out of the windows and killing themselves. just bounce straight back up to their seats. It's the same. the same thing with with the 80s. I think this is more than any of the other stories we've seen or maybe, no, they all add together. The gods of Ragnarok thing, if you like, is, in fact, Branson and Simon Cowell, and Cheryl Cole, and possibly Madonna, because she was always made of stone anyway, and always ripped off other people's material. But they are, they even, they even came up with what television was going to be, the next millennium. Yeah, X Factor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Didn't exist when this was made. It's quite odd watching this now. This feels really contemporary. I have, I very briefly worked on one season of The Voice, but in pre-production. I haven't worked on any other talent shows like that, but having spoken to people who do. It's a tight turnaround, it's ruthless. You know, you've got to get you've got to keep the audience entertained. So yeah, you're absolutely right, Richard. It predicts that kind of thing. And, you know, at the time, we had things like talent time, young talent time and what have you. So there were panel entertainment shows, but it's not rapid fire the way it is now, and indeed, the way it is in greater show in the galaxy. You know, when there's something not going on, we keep cutting to the human avatars of the gods saying, oh, something must happen soon. But let's not forget that these people are flawed in the narrative. Stephen M is not saying they're our heroes. The real failures in the narrative of the group, a Bellboy and Kingpin. And one of them never even got the role of Doctor Who, did he? Yes. Yes. Yes. Um, so that's kingpin, um, Christopher Jewry. Jewry, yes. Yeah, auditioned for the role of silver, and that's why he kind of got a callback for this because they liked him, just not as sweet. Yeah, sweetie, but you can see he never would have played the doctor. Apparently he said, oh, I had so much fun fiddling with the knobs in between takes and you could see Sophie Aldred's ears prick up at that one. But no, they're the flaccid hippies, much like the descending tent at the end that, you know, they gave in to self-indulgence and self-pity and egoistic introspection. But that was also pretty much the only way you could deal with the calumny of this deflation of expectation that in fact, the world just went on to hyper capitalism. And these people who spoke of these things, started making TED talks. Okay, they do that now. But that, but that, that thing of the monstrous ego and the, the selling up the Anthony Rollman style of just believe, and you can have it. That came straight from the 60s, the new age movement that started about 8081, which was a hanger on from all those people who were let down by what didn't happen. So it all becomes sort of self-help nonsense in the service of allowing people to exploit others more efficiently, I think. Very efficiently. It's a perfect simulacra for what's happened from communist to capitalist China. Yeah, and Captain Cook, even outwardly criticises that. You know, he says these hippies with their let it all hang out nonsense. And indeed, he is more successful than them for most of the story in exploiting others, you know, he tricks gnawed into going in first. He tricks WizKid into going in 1st because he reads as a colonialist, doesn't he? He is wearing a piffle. But he's also one of, he's also John Major and the whole party whoever, yeah, he's also what's happening right now. And he's the reason they're in charge, because they're self-same people who believed in a beautiful future, when they don't get it run back to the disproportionately aggressive parent or teacher model and go, well, it didn't work out. We were wrong, spank us. I mean, of course, you know, it wasn't lovely to see Roberta Tovey as well. And as the child god. Or as... So the gods are really spectacular. They really work, don't they? They shouldn't and they do. We decided that the mother looks like Eric Idol in drag for some reason. They're super menacing, and it is this thing that Wyatt did in his last story where the characters are allegorical and symbolic, and so they don't behave normally. And the family are really, really fabulously menacing. And they're one visible characteristic, I think, because they're from the 1950s, aren't they? They're an early television audience is an idea. Yeah, but they're hungry. They're always eating. So they're eating crisps, they're eating ice creams, they're hungry to see things. That's a theme in these seasons as well, isn't it? We're going to see that with the constable in Ghost Light as well wanting to see. But about the unending appetite. That's the casual viewer. But they end up being really, really remarkable. And and I think their role. Like there's one scene, which I think is absolutely superb, which is that scene around the Cliffhanger to episode 3 where you have this sort of mounting sense of threat. So you've got Captain Cook finally ushers them all into the ring triggers Mags's transformation into a werewolf, and then you get the doctor being chased around by the werewolf, and that's where the cliffhanger comes in. But by that point, we've, we get a little moment of the family showing up there 10 out of 10 thing because they're really enjoying this part of the show. But by the time they come back into play, we've more or less forgotten about them. And then they stand up in front of the doctor and do the glowy eye thing and push him down back into the ring. And then there's mags instantly and the whole thing is going for some minutes, I think, into episode four. It's not like a cliffhanger where someone comes in and says no way. And then the whole threat is, you know, kind of they do a Davison everybody. where the whole threat's diffused, it keeps building to a really fantastic climax and the death of Captain Cook, and that wonderful, the spinning lamp, the spinning light that we see at the very end of it. And Alan Waring is so careful in choreographing that. Like he creates some really, really beautiful images throughout the episode, but that's a really, really well choreographed action scene. And it's Mark Ayres' 1st music for the program. And it's amazing. I wanted to say the score is gorgeous, isn't it? I really think Mark is makes this work so well. Yeah, and of course, we should mention, ever since then, he's been a champion for the sound on Doctor Who. And so for all the classic series, DVD releases. He's been the one who's tidied up the sound. There's some fascinating documentaries on some of the discs about that and he'll sometimes say, yeah, I've done this from multiple sources and the 1st 10 minutes of this audio is really good, but I've used the 2nd 10 minutes from here. Um, you know, so if you are interested in audio and video production, any talk by Mark Ayres is fascinating. That scene with Mags killing Captain Cook. Something I really love about it is at one point where she's chasing the doctor, the doctor says to her, you know, I know this is hard for you, but you don't have to kill. You don't, and he keeps saying to her, you don't have to kill. And then when she turns on the captain, he's still imploring her no, don't kill him. He's aghast. He gets a reaction shot to Mag's killing the captain because you don't really see it. She kind of leaps at him, but they end up off screen. You know where that shot comes from, don't you? I saw it in 1975 on telly. It's a film called The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao by George Powell which is based on a much, much smarter book, and that what you're both just saying. That's the linchpin, the kingpin, the linchpin of this story. We are not wrong. The narrative is about casual viewing of horrible things and how we all sit back and that hopes and dreams get subsumed by, you know, by sitting there eating creamed corn and custard, tending it's delicious. 7 paces of Dr. Lau based on a book by Charles Finney called The Circus of Dr. Lau, which I have to admit, I haven't read, but looking it up, it's the story of some town in Arizona, I don't know, caboose, poke, or whatever it was called. And it's denizens were completely oblivious to the extraordinary things that Dr. Lau brought to them. And yes, he's got the long fingernails and the whole Sax Rome, Fu Manchu thing. But it's a peace take of all of that as well. So what happens is the entire town watch, the reenactment of the fall of an ancient city, and it might have actually been the entire town watching itself because it's quite clever when the way it's done is you're not sure whether it's actually happening or whether they're viewing it or whether they're wanting to sing it themselves. It's a very Doctor Who tropish thing to do. But there is a werewolf character in it called Maggie Slozny, or Mag, Maggie Slozny, and the story is really about how that generation screwed up, you know, watching, screwed up, though, and they talk, he's talking about post-war and post-Corean war when it came out. It's not a good film. It's got Tony Randall from the Odd Couple in Asian drag. Really? Yeah. I liked it better when he was a gremlin. I liked him. No. Seeing that? It's in gremlins too. Is he? He's in one of my favourite films of all time, which is done with love with Renee Wither or whatever her name is. Zell... Renee Zellweger? Renaissance, Zeppelin Weger. And that bloke that likes vomiting in train in lavatories, yes. Ewan McGregor. She's really well cast. He really miscast, but it's the most perfect take on the early 60s. And Tony Randall plays the evil media magnet. Oh, yeah, sticks to every fridge surface. He's Jonathan Price. Well, I mean, I think, can you tell people what that is? Steve Jobs, Jonathan Price was Steve Jobs in that, wasn't he? Brendan posted a lovely thing of a Murdoch paper review of Tomorrow Never Dies at the time. It was actually Oh, and he doesn't exist on this podcast. Tag. I'm his proxy. So the magic scene at the end with Sylvester doing magic. That when his pants are almost blown off over his head and he tries not to flinch. That's a magic scene. I'm glad he's wearing the brown chick trousers. I wouldn't have made it out of that scene intact. Well, you know, how silver always tells that story. I didn't know the explosion was going to be so big, but I just kept walking. I didn't even know if I had any clothes at the back afterwards. Turns out what it was. They were just going to use air mortars. But the air mortars didn't work. So they said, fine, we'll use actual explosives. But nobody told SEL that it was going to be actual explosives which is why it's so much bigger than he was expecting. It is an iconic moment for that doctor though, isn't it? Where he walks away and just doesn't flinch as it explodes behind him. For any other doctor, it would have been a metaphor for the end of his career. But did you know Silvie's the only doctor that was working full time? Janet Fielding loves making jokes about Peter always buggering off to another. another gig in the middle. Yeah, yeah. But it's actually Silver's the only one of the original doctors who's pretty much constantly been in work. And even while this was on, he called this his summer job, because he was always working. So I would say this to his critics to say, oh, he's he's undecipherable in principle in your kind of order, and you cannot understand a word he says. And I did find when I was young watching this, I did really did find the accent hard to follow because we're not British, so we're not used to hearing it. And he does, you know, throw away most of his lines, much like this podcast. But, but, but, but he has real gravitas, there's real truth and feeling. And I'm finding him utterly hypnotic, I don't look away. Mostly there's something else on screen that grabs your attention even when the doctor's there. But he's got that billy quality of, I'm always watching Billy, and I'm all, well, Barbara, and I'm always, and I'm always watching Sylves. Yeah, I find something I've looked back on, especially with that moment with Mags and after her transformation where he's, he's kind of comforting her and leads her away. If you look back at time and the Rani, when, you know, quite understandably, his performance was still very fluid and all over the place. When Bayes says, no, I'll stay, as the doctor pushes Faroon out of the room. But he was meant to be Colin Baker. But as the doctor pushes Faru out of the room, he turns Silv turns back to Donald Pickering and just gives him this amazing look. And it's what we have since commented on is sort of the doctor's look of sorrow and shock and it's the same look he gives mags in this after she's killed the captain. It's this. It's this look of sadness and a little bit helplessness, like he you know, I'm all powerful, but there's nothing I can do in this situation kind of thing. I never, have never understood, and it's possibly because Silv was my doctor. I've never understood the people who say he can't act. Watching season 26 the other week. I do think there's one, there is one moment of anger. He gets wrong in his whole tenure. In Ghostlight. No, actually, it's in battlefield. But I'll discuss that. I'll discuss that next week. Here, I think he pitches the performance perfectly. In the scene where he's doing like a tent. You know, like a tent. In the scene where he's doing magic with the gods of Ragnarok. Love that so much. That's a piss take of Blackpool, Pier, and Ken and Dottie, Ken Dodd, and he's earlier career, actually. There's that bit in the TARDIS in episode one where he's juggling. Do you know he had to turn to balls disappears? He had to learn to... That book was actually the book he was using to learn to juggle. Everyone to shoot. No, he's never done it. Because at the read through. He reads in the script, the doctor juggles and he just looks up and says, I can't juggle. And... But Chuck can Campbell in that. But they're like, we wrote this because you were in a circus. He's like, yeah, but I never juggled. I hammered nails up my nose. Yeah, it's something bummer. You know, you should try it sometimes as a video for that. Brenda's got it, right? Right in front of the salad. But during that magic scene, he actually had a professional magician called Jeffrey Durham... Yes, had to take him away to a dark place. Yeah, yeah. The set was cleared except for those. Yes, it can't be seen. It was proper magician's circle stuff. But some of the secret men's business. Some of the other tricks. The escapology trick was actually something that Sylv had seen done in Portugal and said to Jeffrey, can you teach me how to do that? The candle trick that he does was taught to him by one of his sons. Oh, how lovely. And, you know, his son kind of did it. during the rehearsal process and Saul said, hold on. Show me show me how you did that because I want to do it in the show. So the only tricks that was specified in the script was an escapology trick, which Silt said, I'll hang upside down and do it that way. And the gladiator's sword bit because that... Gladioli. Yeah, yeah. Just like carry on doctor, isn't it? The gladioli pulls out from it. Yeah. Yeah, that was a daffodil. You know, as a teenager, I was watching it for the 2nd and 3rd time. A fifth, sixth. Looking at where's the join, where's the join? Yeah, yeah. And then to find out, you know, no, most tricks were done properly. So was apparently nervous at the snake, but you just got to get on with it. It's amazing, isn't it? Where did he get the bit of precious metal that turns into a sword? Eileen Way? Is she one of the gods without keeping all the precious metal? You know, I just don't think it matters at all. No, it doesn't. It's lovely. It also shows this doctor is actually quite extraordinary and does fiddle around with time and space. You know, where does he get all that stuff out of the pockets? And, you know, how does he manipulate? I mean, he gets, how does he, the biggest trick of all is, how does he manage to time kingpins tossing cough of the eyepiece down? Down to catch it right at the right time? Because he's the great manipulator of... Well, that's it. The trickster. The piece of metal links this version of entertainment to gladiatorial entertainment, where people were killed, for the entertainment of the audience. And so it links, you know, modern television production to that. I think I think it's very good. I don't think it matters. I wouldn't lose any sleep over how he times that at all. No, and nor should you, but again, it's just a lovely thing of This is all coming together in ways that you shouldn't normally be allowed to get away with in television narrative. Yeah, we meant to, with the truthiness of TV. The whole thing is so hyper real, though, and so allegorical that it doesn't really matter. And, you know, that tag scene at the very end where he says that he finds circus is somewhat sinister. That just makes it very clear that all along he's, he says something about rumours, does he, or something? Or is he just going because of the junk mail? But then it turns out that... He let the junk mail into the tunnel. Yes. It was completely planned. He is the great manipulator. Yeah, so he's Ace is saying that circus is a sinister. He's saying that they're fun. He's wonderful when he gets chosen to be in the ring and he looks really genuinely happy and excited to be able to have the chance to perform, but it's clear that just like with the Daleks, just like with the Cybermen. He's planned this all along all along. Just like this podcast, Brendan, you planned this all along, did you? You did. I am a god of Ragnarok. I'm the little girl. I'm not a little girl. He's a fruit salad, really. Off the podcast. If I get it to be the melons. So, gentlemen, it's time for our Jenny Laird awards for puzzling creative choice. I might start off and I'm gonna do this with a caveat of... The story I'm about to discuss, I think, is the worst story of the season, but it's still a 6 out of 10 from me. And I am just gonna say, I think Silver Nemesis needed one more script polish. As I, as I discussed last week, I just don't see the point of the Nazis in the story, I do think there's a bit too much wandering around. I'm so down on the nuts. all the time. so much for the tolerant left But, you know, also, there's the similarity and plot to remembrance of the Daleks. It's like at the 11th hour they've gone. Oh, we better put in a line about that, rub. We'll try and fix it. We'll lamp shirt. But that being said, I still really enjoy the story. I just feel it's the weakest of a strong season. So that's my Jenny Letterwater. Another polish for silver nemesis. It's probably just the weakest, but it is my favourite. It's not my favourite. They all favourites in their way, but it's just the most fun. It is an incredible amount of fun. I mean, with this season, I'm struggling to find anything. And I guess the thing that I would pinpoint isn't so much a creative choice as a visible problem with some of the scripts in this era. And that is, I do think that some of the edits in the happiness patrol don't quite work. There are some things where clearly stuff is cut for time. I think the most obvious one is the death of the candy man, which just ends up making no sense. There's some scenes in episode one that start at a very strange point where they've clearly cut the beginning of the scene for time. This is going to be a problem that sort of plagues the show from here on in. But I do. Sorry, sorry. And then those elongated scenes of those little cars going chuggy chuggy, chuggy. The battery in my Lego train goes faster. So you get, you do get, but that doesn't work. That discon disconsolate. elongation of time and then truncation. I suppose it heightens the drama, but not in a way that's actually affords an interesting or pleasurable, a more pleasurable viewing experience. What would Mary Whitehouse have said? She'd moved on by then. I think she has. other things to annoy you. How dare you have someone with my hair as the villain. Do love the hair. Oh, my puzzling creative choices care for McCulloch, that's obvious. Damn, you know, I like to attract my creative. I know you all say nice things about remembrance. Really? I mean, you know, you can clip the cat's claws and you've got the same sound coming out. It's like we can do it for you right now. Yeah, and no. No. You know, not at all. It's funny. I was just about to say, yeah, this is such a strong season that we can only come up with abstracts for Jenny Laird awards and not people. And then, yeah, people, but no, I entirely get where you're coming from. JNT's. JNT sloppy slipshods, self- loathing. No, he was never guilty of self-loathing, but his whole lachrymose inability to be enthusiastic about the show in any way other than just perfunctory because, you know, he was going, that's why this show is so good now because he's not taking over like he used to. We're not seeing his inner world. projected and it wasn't all Saber's fault. Now that he sits back and does exactly what he does brilliantly which is making the money work. Yeah, he does a lovely job and leaves it to the young people. Yes. Yes, Nathan and I are looking at you, Brenton. Yes. Leave it to the young people. Because, again, he's enough of a professional, even with, you know the big ego that he has, to realise that things need to change, to keep alive. Well, you know, I have to wonder with no disrespect intended to Beth Willis or Piers Winger or Caro Skinner. However, how Brian Minchin may have had the same effect on Stephen Moffat that Andrew Cartmel had on JNT. And as I say, that is not any reflection on the previous executive producers, certainly not comparing them to the effect John Nathan Turner and Eric Saywood had on each other, but I see a difference in quality of a similar manner. I still like earth shock. I loved it at the time. boy, it was extraordinary. It had some great moments, really good timing. I like the dinner speech. Yeah, look I agree. It was just the decision that we now had to remake that every year a couple of times a year from here on in. That was the thing that I found... We get projectionable. Wait till we get to a battlefield and discover what happened to Bell Reed's girlfriend. Yes. Yes. Um, so pics of the week. Mine is, well, actually I've got 2 because I meant to mention earlier in the episode, but I didn't. When the greatest show in the galaxy were shooting is when KLF under the name The Time Lords released Dr. in the TARDIS. Oh, dear. Really well. It got to number one. And it's, I like it. It's really good And also, in itself, it was a remix, of course, of Gary Glitter song, whose name I momentarily forget. But it was then remixed by a DJ under the name Dean Gray, mashed up with holiday by Green Day, and quotations from George W. Bush. So it opens with George W. Bush having a conversation with the Daleks. And it's... Dolores to his mates. Yes, that's right. It's a really great piece. It is available for free, so we'll put it up in the show notes. So that's Doctor Who on holiday, Nathan, for the show notes. Brilliant. My holiday for the dog? My other recommendation. We've recommended other Doctor Who podcasts before... Grudgingly. But this is not a Doctor Who podcast, and it's not by anyone I know personally, but Doctor Who, of course, big part of my childhood. Another big part of my childhood that I've recently revisited and rewatched all of it, is X-Men the animated series. The X-Men films came off the back of X-Men the animated series. It ran for 5 seasons, about 76 episodes. And now there's a podcast by 2 American fans called the X-Men, the animated series podcast, or X-Men Taz podcast, and it's kind of it's a bit like flight through entirety. It's less about, you know, Richard, you talk a lot about the textual antecedents and we talk a lot about the social stuff, but it's more about these 2 people's recollections of what their lives were like then, but also looking back on the plots as an adult talking about, because of course, X-Men started off and in the 90s were still an allegory for racism and other forms of discrimination. The cartoon series does briefly cover the legacy virus, which was Marvel Comics take on HIV. Yeah, it's a Saturday morning cartoon, so it doesn't go into it with great depth, but there are moments of great depth within the show. And Willie and Sonia, who are the hosts, are really fun and charismatic, and they really love the show, and that makes it really great to listen to. So those are my recommendations. Dr. in the Tartars by the Time Lords and X-Men Taz podcast by Willie and Sonya. Well, I looked back through the show notes of some old episodes and I don't think I've recommended this before, but if I have, I don't care. During the week, we had the news that Robert Hardy had died. Yeah. We almost owned him. We almost owned him. He was like a father-in-law. to the show. Was that around the time of Pete or because there was talk of him being considered for the role of the doctor? Oh, okay. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about at the same peak time. I remember at the time, I wasn't, it wasn't talking to you about it. It was one of our other fan, you know, dawn timing fan folk probably Kerry Doherty. And I remember her saying, he would have been a much better doctor who's the right age. We really loathed, received wisdom, loathed the idea of a young doctor back then. Let's see how Jody goes. I think, well, we should all learn from our past errors. Yeah, so Robert Hardy reads, and you can get this on Audible, reads Evelyn Waugh's novel, Vile Bodies, which I adore one of my favourite books ever. And Robert Hardy does voices. He brings just the kind of languid sneering disinterest to the narrator's role that really characterises the narrator in that book. Much like this podcast. He's so funny. unbelievably hilarious. It's just a virtuoso performance. Yeah, he does great vocal range stuff too. So he does voices for the characters and stuff. So it becomes not so much a novel, as a script for this incredible one-man performance. It's really, really good. So, Vile Bodies, by Evelyn Warre, red by Robert Hardy. How beautiful. Is it my go, is it? I recommend you fruit to all of you? Not so much creamed corn, but yes, you definitely all need more roughage. That's my ready. This is just a big fruity, you know, cornucopia or a melange of loveliness this season, isn't there? There's lots of things I disliked about it at the time. And there are sort of some more ones that I dislike now, but on the whole, I just, it feels like the sun has come out. At the time when, at the time, when this came on, Clanet had kind of gone, and if you listen to, or you listen to, you're living with your parents, and they, they would probably have the BBC or ABC radio, Enya was being played bloody constantly with the sailor bleeping sailor away. But it was really appropriate for the feel of this season and just the sense of exuberance and joy and we'll cast off somewhere where we can't, we haven't been before, and just hope for the best. And that's what creativity is. You're not meant to know how it's going to work out before you start the film or the writing or the design or the drawing or the knitting or whatever it is you're going to make. You're not meant to know the end. It's an it's playing, it's exploration. This season does that for me so well. So my go to is sit down and watch this bloody thing and not just listen to us. Because we know what you like. Go on, watch it. And eat fruit. Well, dear listener, we're taking off from the planet Segen X, and uh, we're having a little break, but we will be back in about a month or so with our commentary on Enlightenment. Do come back for that. In the meantime, check the show notes where you can vote on your choice for our Colin Baker commentary. Your choices are Mark of the Rani, Revelation of the Daleks, the Mysterious Planet, or Terror of the Verboids, and we're hoping to put that out at the end of season 26. You can find that on our website at flight through entirety.sexy flight through entirety on Facebook and Apple Podcasts and at FTE podcasts on Twitter. Over on Bondfinger. We are in the midst of the Pierce Brosnan era, and you can find our commentaries on his films on Bondfinger.com, Bondfinger on Facebook and Apple Podcasts and at Bondfingercast on Twitter. Or just do what we do and rewatch the Roger Moore solos. Yes, before those videos existed. Roger was doing solo commentaries on his own films, on the Blu-ray DPD set. So I did that with the spy who loved me last night and had a rollicking fun with my corgis, just like the Queen. You know, I kind of wish that they got Roger Moore to comment on everyone else's bond. Can you imagine? Imagine what it'd be like with Pierce. Awful. Oh, please. Oh gosh. This is the tragic thing about time moving on. We always think of the best stuff to do afterwards. Until next time, may you find none of your adventures overrated. Thank you very much for listening in Good Night. Good night. chewing. That was Flight Through Entirety with Nathan Bottomley, Brendan Jones, and Richard Stone. Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, logo designed by Anthony Wells. This episode, Jazz Hands, was recorded on August 6th, 2017. The next episode will be released in October. We've just been signed on to the Psychic Circus. Look out for Richard's impression of Marlena Dietrich, Brendan's one-man improvised retelling of the legend of Zelda, and Nathan's three-hour lecture on the origins of the word, tire soul. What's that book? Um, the complete, one of the complete history volumes. Okay. It spans the season. Almost. So, yes, yeah. So yeah, they don't they don't really pay attention to seasons, but when you get to a new season, they do have like an overview. Oh, okay. There's photos there that I've never seen. Oh yeah, there's some good rare photos in here. So yeah, there's the contents, like Silver Nemesis, Greater Show. 1989 Battlefield. Right. They are beautiful, but I just don't want more things. No, I understand that. room for more things. And like the same company is planning another 5 part works. Like a target part work, a target audio readings, part work, a big finish part work, the comics part work, and something else. I can't remember. Oh, like the Doctor Who fact files, like the Star Trek ones, where it was all pull apart and you sort things, which fans love doing. I think friend of the podcast, Peter Griffiths worked on the Star Trek one. I follow the old editor, Robert. He's not at all uncomely. What's this? Oh, these are great. There we are. That's the page I want. Are we good? Cool. Okay. Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to flight through entirety. The only Doctor Who commentary podcast who are just as good as we used to be. Thank you, Adrian Mole. Commentary podcast. Did I say commentary? Yeah. Okay.
