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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.