Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast whose theories appal you.
Our heresies outrage you.
We never answer your letters and we're not even wearing ties.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan I'm a pre-Raphaelite spangly chandelier for this one in
a very high pitched voice.
And we're off to see some animals.
It's ghost light.
So, uh, much like last season, uh, this season is a bit wibbly
wobbly in production order, so despite the fact that this is the
2nd story broadcast, it was originally intended to be broadcast
3rd and was in fact the last Doctor Who story shot at getting this
piece of trivia out of the way, the scene where Mrs. Pritchard and
Gwendolen are frozen into stone was the last scene shot for the
classic series. which you might say is metaphoric.
This is really, really amazing, this story.
I just think it's incredible.
And I have to say that despite, you know, a lot of fanboy
protestation, it doesn't actually really make very much sense.
Well, yes, it's a very split fan reception, isn't it?
and indeed viewers reception.
It's one of those things you can't watch as a Doctor Who story
alone, and those fans who we were young at the time, of course, but
the folk who do come to it youthfully and in the middle of a
Doctor Who series, expect Doctor Who.
It not.
It's a student's piece on everything he's ever watched and ever
written that he loved.
It's the most literary Doctor Who story I've ever seen.
And goodness, that means we'll have a lot to say about it.
Yes.
So in theory, the idea is that this house is built on top of a
stone space ship that's been here for ever.
Yes, or it's just slipped back.
The novel suggests, yes.
But anyway, there is the suggestion that was built on the
foundations of wrongness.
Yeah, and out of time, out of sync, out of evolutionary phase and
out of God's domain.
Yeah, and so light is this sort of powerful entity that is
cataloguing everything in the world and the way that works is you
have a survey agent, which is released into the world, and
presumably recapitulates all of evolution until it reaches kind of
like the highest rung on the evolutionary ladder, which is
obviously the white landed Victorian gentleman, whereas the
control creature stays behind as a control control.
But of course, none of that really makes any sense at all.
And it doesn't actually, you know, become clear that that's what's
happening.
There is some attempt to explain it in dialogue.
In the end, it makes sense because you've realised that everyone's
evolved and everything's changed.
People's thinking changes.
Light also manifests as the dominant life form, which is a cockney
barrel bloke who has appeared in EastEnders and the Blackadder.
Yes, yes.
He's quite terrifying in the blackadder on a sort of big horse.
Yes.
He was also Brian Blessed's wingman in Flash Gordon.
Oh God, yes.
Pun intended.
Yes.
God, I adore this story.
And I adore it because of its depth and complexity and because of
its rough edges.
In a way, the lack of fully developed explanation and the fact
that we have to fill in some blanks ourselves is kind of
lovecraftian.
Whatever light is, and, you know, the doctor never says he's a Zog
monster from the planet Zog in the style system, Zogos.
They never talk about what species he is, which would be a very
Star Trek thing to do.
They never establish exactly what kind of being he is.
He is just light and he is knowledge and he has the power to
influence evolution and we as mere mortals just have to kind of
accept that that's going to happen.
That brilliantly macabre scene where he's confused and calls the
maid over and the next time we see her, she's dead and he's got
her arm and he says, I wanted to understand how it worked.
So I dismantled it.
It's this concept that an intelligence so far ahead of our own
will not view us as intelligent life.
In a sense, I would be disappointed if we got a proper explanation
and I literally don't care that it doesn't make any sense.
Yeah, and if it was trek, it'd be tied back to the mutants because
they blow the same or we'd know that light was actually just
another part of this survey.
And that in fact, the manufacturers or the, you know, the
controlling intelligence is some other species entirely.
Yeah, you can have a lot of fun guessing who that is.
Absolutely doesn't matter because what we have is a story that is
unbelievably, beautifully choreographed and directed.
It looks like a merchant ivory film of the time for TV.
Yeah, yeah, merchant ivory film on videotape.
But when the doctor and ace appear in the 1st scene, they
materialise in the upper observatory.
A doll's house.
I love this is a boy that it felt like you were playing Doctor
Who.
Well, she picks up this and it's sort of thrown away.
I think it's emphasised probably more in the novelisation, but she
picks up a toy, which is clockwork, which has figures spinning
around inside it, like an ice ring.
And in fact, the whole house is like that, particularly for the
1st episode.
So, you know, when it strikes six, these doors open and all of
these people come out.
It's all just sort of incredibly beautifully choreographed and the
music is absolutely extraordinary.
So it's all atmosphere and set pieces.
And that's fine by me.
And keys right into the reviewers very recent memories of BBC
television period dramas, which they had done so well.
And this was done as an homage to that because just with Mrs
Thatcher's government of the last few years, that was no longer
done in house.
There were all these costumes and all these experts who was lying
fallow trying to look busy.
And yeah, so everyone who worked on this went to town as a last
nod to what had once been a really good factory working thing for
the bee.
They only ever did them in these, they were doing them at the time
but with American money, usually or German money.
It's the same way they did downton.
So.
Yeah, well, this, I mean, this is...
Well, I mean, that's the thing that kills Doctor Who, isn't it?
The move to outside production, the fact that the BBC is no longer
made.
Wales killed Doctor Who.
But, you know, the fact that BBC's not making drama in house
anymore.
And those of us who are alive at the time will remember, you know
the endless stories of the different production companies that
might be going to take it over as the years passed after, you know
Ghostlight was made, and it just never ends up being picked up and
falls between the cracks, I think.
So it doesn't survive that transition.
You know, the Victorian era is something that the BBC has done
incredibly well in the past and it's something that Doctor Who has
done very well.
I mean, for all of the things that you can say about talons of
Wang Chiang.
It looks spectacular.
And a lot of the Hingecliff era, looks so incredibly good because
it's set in the late 19th century or early 20th century, using the
sort of sets and costumes and things that the BBC could do
fantastically well in its sling.
Suited Tom very well.
Yeah, yeah.
But, I mean, here it just looks amazing.
And the sets are lavish and detailed and kind of terrifying as
well.
At the risk of losing friend of the podcast, Chris McDonald for a
couple of minutes, I'd like to talk about colonialism.
So, of course, we have read for the Sven Cooper, who is a colonial
explorer who's been to the deepest, darkest heart of Africa, and
what have you?
James Finnamore Cooper's last of the Mohicans, and also, and also
every Whitey in a linen suit that's ever appeared.
Yeah, but on film, yeah.
Yeah, but by accident or design, played by Michael Cochran, who
last appeared in Doctor Who, playing the brother of a colonial
explorer.
Black Hawk, the worst Doctor Who story ever made.
But the whole story, one of the things it's about is colonialism
because light is a colonialist as well.
He expects everything to adhere to his idea of civilisation.
Yes, it's almost as if he'd want a survey done of why people would
even want to change.
What could possibly go wrong with that concept?
right.
And, you know, he doesn't he doesn't view the people in the house
as people.
He takes them apart.
He regresses them to soup, but puts them in uniform.
Puts them in uniform.
At the end, of course.
When Redfers rejects colonialism to take control, who is not yet
quite refined to a refined event, Josiah actually appeals to him
you know, on the grounds of colonialism.
It's actually a country.
Yes, gone.
And Redver's response is, oh, forget Redver's.
Forget colonialism.
He's only ever talking about himself.
That's a really good point because George Monant Shaw, in his
writing of Pygmalion, where the whole, I'm a ladylike now, et
cetera. boulderized for my fair lady, but he was a prime socialist
and vegetarian, a nudist.
Whenever he got to the fans... inclement weather.
It wasn't mad.
But yeah, which was the whole thing about, as you're saying, about
just tilting the social order and just so he never...
Well, maybe in St.
Joan, he did actually, but I was going to say, he didn't really
propose radical change or any outcome.
He just said tilted slightly and let the light hit the edges and
then see exactly what it is we're looking at and we're performing
and you'll find that we're all dancing around on a glass dish.
We're all dancing on a petri edish and we're much smaller than we
think we are.
The antecedents to this aren't merely visual or rhetorical.
They're actually really cultural and literary of the 20th century
and the changes that have come on.
I think the reason a lot of fans, especially at the time, loathed
and despised this.
And friends like cough Dan Hogarth. you know, one of the finest
minds in fandom, I know, absolutely detests this.
On every single level, he says a complete waste, blah, blah.
All the rest of it.
But I think that's the point because they're so disappointed
because it's not really Doctor Who.
It's one of the things, it's, for me, it's reached the coin in the
slot, apotheosis of what Doctor Who's supposed to do and that does
everything else.
Yeah, well, I mean, I think maybe it's nearest antecedent is the
mind robber, which also sort of plunders Victorian literature.
Especially Lewis Carroll as does this.
Yeah, yeah.
Alice, she gets called Alice.
Cross dresses.
The lift is explicitly called the rabbit hole by the doctor.
They go underground.
They're dressed animals underground, just like there are animals
in Wonderland.
I mean, it is very explicitly taking from that.
There's that whole Victorian idea of evolution.
I mean, evolution predates Darwin.
Darwin really only discovers the mechanism for it.
But the idea of evolution as a ladder as something that you go up
and you reach a pinnacle, which is not what evolution is or how it
works at all.
And, you know, all sorts of eugenics and sort of racialist ideas
being thrown into the mix.
So Josiah, the survey agent gets released and he becomes the most
evolved thing in the in Earth's biosphere, which is a landed
Victorian gentleman.
You know, that's what he's evolved into.
And that's once controls released, she evolves into a ladylike
into a Victorian lady as well.
So it's not a story that is scientific.
It's not a story that has, you know, pteroreptils in it or
anything like that.
It's a story that takes place in a kind of weird amalgam of sort
of Victorian obsessions and Victorian literature.
It happens in a kind of land of fiction that some localised within
this sort of one strange house.
Much like Britain at the time. and the way that it had
fictionalised its own history, certainly its own Victorian values
as Mrs. Thatcher was fond of saying.
And we'll have a lot more to say about Lewis Carroll coming up for
Fenrick because there's even more of him in that. as in as in
this.
It wasn't merely his writings on...
He was really writing about maths, wasn't he?
Great deal. an order.
But he was also a social critic.
So when he talked about the topsy-turvy world and the confusion
that was going on.
He was really talking about the stuff that Blake and that we've
talked about before.
I'm not putting us up with William Blake.
But hey, if you want to make that connection, we shan't complain.
Is that is that nothing was actually function. under a capitalist
industrialist empire, that people were falling through the cracks
in the stone temples that we've built to Gog and Magog.
Light is actually way back to a Tigris Euphrates' deity.
Yeah, he's an angel.
Remember that there's an angel with a flaming sword that prevents
Adam and Eve from getting back into the Garden of Eden.
And that's what light is.
And one of the reasons that light opposes evolution is because
he's from a mythology that contradicts it.
And that mythology is, of course, represented by the Reverend
Matthews, whose objections, whose...
Is it not, he says at the end of every sentence, so you know he's
Victorian.
But Reverend Matthews prefigures light in the same way that Red
for Sven Cooper does as well.
So he objects to change an evolution in the 1st episode, and then
light comes along, who's an angel from Matthew's own Christian
mythology, who also objects to evolution as well.
And it's very telling that light comes along after Matthews has
been sent away to Java and fulfilled his plot purpose.
Now, we've talked before about characters and Doctor Who stories
who are just killed off when they no longer serve the plot, but at
least in the case of Reverend Matthews.
His death serves the plot by showing us what Josiah is capable of
but it also fulfils the plot because he is out evolved by someone
who doesn't want to evolve.
Yeah, you know, light is so much better at doing what the Reverend
Matthews does because the Reverend Matthews is just reading
scripture.
Light is scripture.
I think also, like the deaths in this are so hilarious.
Like the death of Matthews, like when he raises his hands into
shot and they're covered with like their gorilla hands all of a
sudden.
It sort of shocking and hilarious.
We've already had the, that's the way to the zoo song.
We should mention for the casual listener that that was not
written for the program, but actually discovered at the 11th hour
in Book of Victorian songs.
Isn't it perfect?
And as detailed in antecedent and worshipful and ancient law of
splendid chaps that was sung in their Sylvester McCoy episode by
John Richards and Petra Elliott to Ben Mackenzie, who had to
scream at them to stop because for God's sake, it's about death.
You know, it's about passing into the afterlife and being
stuffed.
Oh, it was a Pestiche on Darwin at the time or on evolutionary
theories.
This is one of those parlour ditties that it sits perfectly, and
I'm really glad that Catherine Schlesinger is allowed to sit and
she doesn't play the piano in the end, someone else, and did it in
2 takes.
No, it's wonderful.
And I love how it goes on in the background of the following
scene.
Well, it has something like 10 verses in the actual...
Yeah, yeah.
And we're about to sing them all.
No, I couldn't possibly replicate the legend that is John Richards
friend of the podcast.
But on the DVD, there is actually raw, the full-time...
Raw footage.
Yes.
There's the full take of Catherine with 2 A's singing that song
and she sort of gets to the end and I did that rather well.
They're all having so much fun.
There's Rocky Horror sighted in this.
That dinner party.
Is the rocky horror picture show?
Oh, it is too.
It really is.
Where they're serving meatloaf is the...
Oh, it's missing.
And the Douglas Adams, like the hitchhunkers...
Douglas Adams is canon now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because what does the doctor say?
Who said that Earthmen never invite their ancestors around for
dinner?
That either means...
Ooh, figure of 8 on its side.
That either means that that show that Douglas Adams was editing
was Professor X or, oh, where are we going to end up with this?
But yeah, yeah, I'd like to think that the hitchhiker universe is
part of the...
No, no, it's later established in the Christmas invasion.
Arthur Dent's a lovely man.
And of course, Doctor Who and the Cricket Man is coming out next
year as transcribed by James Goss.
So it's part of the Douglas Adams increasingly inaccurately named
unnovelized trilogy.
Fantastic.
This story is so very rich.
And it also continues the trend we saw last year of emphasising
the role of the companion.
And how good is Sophie in this?
You can see this is...
Is this her favourite that she did?
No, I think she likes Fenrick, doesn't she?
Yeah, I think she does say Fenrick's her favourite, but she does
get that brilliant speech in F1.
Yeah, well both of them are good in that, I think.
Yeah, yeah.
Sylvester, we've talked about before that one of his driving
forces of the role was the melancholy of the man who has outlived
his friends and that really comes across when he's talking about
burnt toast and bus shelters.
You're kind of looking at him going, you don't actually care about
those things, but you won't say what you do care about, whereas
Ace is just staring off into the middle distance and telling us
exactly.
It's all, it's all on the surface for her now, whereas the
doctor's still hiding and that feeling she ends with of, I didn't
care anymore.
I mean, before this podcast we were discussing, of course, the
awful survey we're being put to at the moment.
And sometimes it does feel you get so angry that you don't care
anymore, but you don't not care anymore.
What's happening is your mind is protecting you by saying, you've
got to go on fighting and for that, I have to remove the emotion
from somewhere.
So when Ace says, I didn't care anymore and the doctor says, I
think you cared a lot.
That's the whole point.
She cared so much. that she was able to put her feelings aside to
take action to destroy the evil.
You know, there is something that is a critique of the doctor in
this and it's a bit subtle, I think, but the doctor lists the
things apart from burnt toast and bus stations.
He says there's unrequited love and tyranny and cruelty and aces
responses to right.
You know, yeah, there's cruelty and you're doing it to me.
Yeah, because it's an initiative test.
Remember that?
Which is a very strange thing, which isn't properly played up, but
clearly the idea is that this week, a little bit like how Missy is
going to be the doctor, you know, in world enough in time.
This week, Ace has to work out what the place is.
And so the doctors brought her here and, you know, she's drawing
conclusions and stuff and he's sort of patronising her and the
whole while he knows that this is the house that terrified her as
a child and he's deliberately brought her here and is forcing her
to find out for herself that that's what that is.
And I always think that the new adventures conception of the
doctor is this sort of manipulator.
I think I actually think that that's reading a little bit too much
depth into this era.
But here, I think there is a sort of, it's underplayed, but there
is a sort of an intention here that the doctor is being rather
callous in the way that he exposes Ace to this.
And, you know, she achieves some sort of catharsis, I think, as a
result.
Yeah, and the important thing to note is getting back to that
dinner scene, the doctor doesn't know the full story before he
brings her here.
He doesn't know that she burnt down the house.
And when he finds that out, he is genuinely sad that he's done
it.
He has a lot of faith, not just in her, but in, I think, in
circumstances to resolve.
The man is essentially an optimist or he wouldn't keep going.
So he does that thing, that full, he's the holy fool, if you like
call the tarot card zero.
He's the one that jumps in and trusts his people around him and
trusts that people will, when shown a better way, perhaps choose
them.
He does always give an alternative, doesn't he?
He does always give them a chance.
It gets more callow and constraint and I think colder in the new
series, which is a literal fan interpretation through the new
adventures of the last full television doctor.
I think we, our current doctors are much harder than our classic
series doctors actually were.
And also, in terms of the new series, a lot more inconsistent.
Like, if you look at early, early on in David Tennant's tenure, the
Christmas invasion, you know, he drops the Sicorax leader off the
side of the ship saying no 2nd chances.
Meanwhile, Cassandra poisons a whole hospital full of people in
it.
Okay, yeah, I'll take you back and give you closure. 2 weeks later
with brother Lassar in school reunion.
He's just like, no, I'm going to put you down.
And then I'm going to use my robot dog to blow you up.
It's like, what are you doing?
And that's because of the virgin new adventures, reinterpretation
I think, of Silv's doctor.
But he's actually, I feel much more, let's just go and have a look
something's a bit odd here, but I trust everything and more
importantly, everyone to do their best and it will turn out.
It is foolhardy.
But I do believe he works from acts of faith.
Yeah, absolutely.
And we are sounding a bit songs of praise on a Sunday.
For a good reason, because Silv himself goes through life that
way.
And when he talks about his childhood and those fantastic issues
of Doctor Who monthly, well, all magazine as it's now called for
you young people.
Yeah, the last one he did was really superb when he's talked many
times about how he works in faith in his life and just, you know
give people the benefit and hopefully they'll come good because
that's really all you can do.
That's actually one of the best lessons I took from this series in
this doctor.
That's why he is actually one of my favourite doctors.
Yeah, because here, even though he is being a bit cruel and a bit
callous, he's not setting out to hurt.
Is it callousness though?
I don't think testing, because we all get tested.
Is testing a callous act, or is it merely you have these tools, we
expect you to evolve into who you're meant to be?
I think that not giving her the choice, you know, that just
springing this on her. does choose to travel with him.
Yeah, I know, but springing this on her is thoughtless.
And of course, it turns out for the best because this is Doctor
Who.
But certainly she interprets it as cruelty in that speech.
But the show doesn't dwell on that because that's not what it's
about.
I mean, this is more characterisation and more driven by the
companion's background and stuff than we've ever been used to, but
it's still not the new series.
It's still not, you know, quite as soapy and character driven as
the new series becomes.
No, it's entirely different from that.
The metaphor of the testing is actually of the greater narrative
and is that we are all being tested to see how we can live with
each other and respect each other's humanity in a society that is
now structured on growth for its own sake, and change for its own
sake, and improvement, and all of this simply means capital
improvement.
It doesn't mean improvement of character, sensibility or intent
which is why Lady Pritchard and Gwendolen had to be frozen in
stone because that's their...
Oh, we never used karma in the old series.
So that's a misreading of contemporary styles, but that is their
evolution based on how they have conducted themselves into this
point.
This is really very much an, you can see, if Mark Platt didn't go
to Anglican Sunday school under the Reverend Nicholas Parsons, I'd
like to know who he was under because this really does feel like
Sunday school parables in the best possible ladybird illustrated
book way.
If you treat people well, you may not have a good life, but your
intentions will propel you honourably, and that will be your
companion.
Certainly, Lady Pritchard and Gwendolen are...
Are buggers?
Well, they're judged by the doctor.
Like the doctor says, you know, I could have forgiven her sending
all those pyjama if she hadn't enjoyed it so much.
And there's actually, she's, it's the closest we get to the
tenant's coldness, isn't it, to the 10th doctor's coldness.
Well, and he's really very, like he doesn't dwell on that.
It's just a very clear judgement.
And Gwendolen is sexualised in a really...
Well, but in a really sort of creepy way, her enjoyment of sending
the Reverend Matthews to Java. you know, like she's kind of
straddling Josiah at that point.
And there is a very kind of definite sexual element to the
environment and early sexualisation is always hand in glove, isn't
it?
Yeah, not to mention the queerness of Ace and Gwendolyn running
around in... like a music hall trollop. like a music hall
trollop.
That's also very Lewis Carr or whatever.
But the reveal of that is kind of sexualised as well because
they're behind the screen and say, oh, we can't go out like this.
A lot of fan thought had gone into what was going on behind the
screens, matron, for that one.
And, you know, Gwendolen and Ace fighting on the bed while
controlling egging them on.
But of course, with control, it's like, new gameplay. control go
next.
God, she's brilliant.
I love Sharon Deus's control.
She's wonderful isn't she?
She's terribly good.
Can I pivot?
There is one thing in the storytelling, which I think is really
unusual, and that is that incredible way.
You know, Doctor Who isn't very good at telling us when it's night
and day and things just sort of go on and on.
You know, like the doctor arrives on Scaro and leaves 6 episodes
later, but who knows how many days he's been there or whatever.
Here, there's a night that happens.
Like, things happen at night.
And so Ace falls asleep and while she's been asleep all night
suddenly we wake up and the doctor's been doing all of this stuff
in the background and it is that sort of muddling through with
faith that you mentioned Richard because he's sort of said all
these things in motion without really knowing what's going to
happen or how it's going to turn out.
It really wrongfoots you, I think, because you're used to in the
narrative following the doctor and seeing what the doctor does, but
wireless is asleep, we don't get to see what's going on as well.
So she wakes up and we suddenly see that the whole plot has moved
on while we haven't been sort of privy to her.
Which is something that the new adventures will pick up on.
And I have, I did take a bit of a break from my blog, but it's
back now.
And, you know, most recently I've read Cat's Cradle, Warhead by
Andrew Cartmel, which is it's lousy with the doctor running around
in the background while other things happen.
But something Cartmel does well is experimenting with story
structure.
And that's an example here as well.
Mark Platt had been trying to write for the series since 1975.
The 1st story he submitted to Robert Holmes was called Fires of
the Star Mind, and it was a story set on Gallifrey.
Wow, it sounds terrible.
It sounds totally fan.
Now, this is this is pre-deadly assassin.
Yes.
But he came to the conclusion that Time Lords store their data on
beams of light, and a creature made of light uses this to invade
Gallifre. actually really sexy.
And also kind of pretty on top of the pops, glam pop rock at the
time.
We had been to Galifre, and it did look like a game show. didn't
it?
We could have had Nicholas Parsons again.
But here's the thing.
Sale of the century, go on.
Robert Holmes rejects that on the grounds that it doesn't have
like a tangible villain, which was of course...
It's a big thing that Hinchcliffe and Holmes always did is, you
know, you always had a villain.
You had your Su Tech, you had your Harrison Chase, you had your
master.
But the next year they do deadly assassin with information stored
as holograms.
The year after that, Graham Williams...
Graham Williams does aliens who invade Gallifre on thought waves.
So they don't...
What bugger?
Yeah, exactly.
So then for season 23. expire to Shepherd's Bush.
For season 23, television centre.
Mark Platt submitted Cat's Cradle, which became the novel Cat's
Cradle, Time is Crucible, which God is hard to get through.
We've all read them, but no one can remember a single thing, can
we?
Has it got a giant slug in it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Doolittle, yeah.
Eric Saywood turned it down for reasons of prohibitive cost.
Oh, okay.
And it's like, yeah, it would have been really hard to make, and
the compromises that would have to be done to it to get it on
screen would have robbed it of its power.
So this story, it started life as lung barrow.
So the house was going to be the doctor's ancestral house, et
cetera, et cetera.
And John Nathan Turner and Andrew Cartmel liked it, but said
unfortunately, we're going in this direction where we don't want
to reveal stuff about the doctor.
Let's keep the haunted house.
But why don't we make it about Ace?
And that's when it became Beastieary and eventually Ghost Bise.
And of course, set in the 70s.
As a sort of Sweeney minder kind of thing.
But that's what Platt wanted.
And it was, oh, no, no, it's too recent history.
It's too recent.
Now it won't feel historical.
I'm really glad they did that because you've got all the BBC frock
department.
And yeah, I mean, having it set in the 70s as the house that Ace
will go back to in 10 years doesn't feel like something exciting.
It would have been more sapphire. steel.
Yeah.
But it's like, you know, having it as the house that she will
destroy in a 100 years time.
And somehow for me, and I'm not exactly sure why.
Maybe you guys have got an opinion on this.
A lot of time travel stories will look at it and go, like Rose
does in The Unquiet Dead, but I know that the earth wasn't invaded
by zombies in 1869. from 1918, 1988.
James Selwood would often say.
No one brings it up in this story that, you know, history can't
change because it's already been burned down in 1883.
Ace, of course, says no control, don't burn the house down.
That's what I did.
But it never occurs to me watching this that, well, hold on.
I know everything's going to be all right.
They somehow managed to avoid that.
Well, it's Doctor Who and you know everything's going to be all
right.
You know, the world's not going to be destroyed.
The doctor will save it.
I mean, I always thought that sort of was a rather pointless
thing.
You know what I mean?
Yes, of course, the doctor's going to defeat Zue Tech, for God's
sake.
Have you been watching the show?
Luckily, she is back with Australia.
After 2 weeks lost in the wilderness.
We might put something up on the blog about that.
It's an extraordinary story.
Yeah, I hadn't I hadn't alluded to that, Richard, because I didn't
know if you wanted people to realise that.
Yeah, she was lost out in Mount Druitt.
She climbed Mount Druitt for the, for the, yes, we've all had an
epic adventure, but she's back here with us now and being quiet.
But yeah, I'm sure we'll hear from her soon.
We're going to give her our own mic, can't we?
Yeah, silent villains, I think.
I agree that these, this is, I would suggest Nathan's definition
of high concept, and I feel it's successful.
The thing that really grabs me with this, we haven't talked much
about the story because like just everybody knows it, but I would
really just like to know if people feel it's successful in its own
terms.
I had to, I have to admit, I did have to watch it more than once
when it 1st came out and we had VHS, but mostly because that you
need a United Nations simultaneous translator for whenever
Sylvester McCoy opened his mouth.
Oh, I think that you encarted.
The music is loud for middle-aged young people.
It is.
And and Marquez has gone on record as saying I didn't write it
that loud.
Alan Waring pumped it up in the dub.
Alan Waring, yes.
He does like things his own way.
And in fact, Mr. Waring. and Mr. McCoy did have differences of
artistic opinion during this shoot, didn't they?
Although wearing, I think, is the best director of the McCoy era.
I think he gets it very tight.
I like actually, I really like Nicholas Mallett.
But yeah, he does.
But I think the conflict actually helps because the conflict
within the story within any narrative will actually be reflected
in people's behaviour.
You look at any project or any job you're working on, we assume
the mantle, the emotional mantle of whatever we're doing.
That's what art history is.
Yeah, owning it.
I do think it works.
I think it's extremely accomplished.
And I, I think, you know, part of the reason that it's difficult
to understand is a, the plot isn't like hugely well thought out.
Is it just that it has a circular plot?
It works better as a novel.
It works better as a piece of writing.
And like all good writing, it's constantly alluding to other works
to enrich the text.
Yeah, I think it's too much a page that's filmed.
Well, I think you need to read it more like the mind robber than
the Zygon, which is also entirely literary-based.
Yeah, you know, the idea that these are aliens that are
interacting in a certain way and, you know, that this is straight
science fiction, that's just nonsense.
It's all kind of weird and metaphorical and cultural and stuff.
I mean, you know, evolution works in this story, the way that
Victorian gentlemen thought it worked.
It doesn't work the way it actually works.
The husks in the basement are there to kind of do the episode one
cliffhanger, kind of fulfil the insistence that they needed to be
a monster in it, and also to kind of reference the dressed animals
of Alice in Wonderland.
But they don't make sense.
I mean, control doesn't leave a series of husks behind her as she
evolves.
You know, so none of that stuff matters.
You know, that background, you know, which is there's a sort of
thrown away exchange about, you know, control is me and the survey
is just sire, which I think happens in episode two.
And Nimrod is in the book of Genesis.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's a mighty hunter.
But it doesn't matter.
Like none of that matters.
What matters is how incredibly beautiful it looks, what the music
is like, the way it's choreographed, the way that it moves
effortlessly from scene to scene.
It suffers slightly from the cart more problem, which is scripts
that run too long and then need to be chopped up. to reach, you
know, a sensible running time.
But anyone who's watching this, expecting it to be like claws of
axos or something is just reading it the wrong way.
And I think it ends on such a powerful scene when Control Nimrod
Josiah and Redburz depart because they depart to go travelling to
see the universe, not to control and restrict it.
You know, they sort of say, we'll go visit other cultures, and we
will do a survey.
But the surveys in the sense of we'll look around and see what's
out there.
And Ace's speech, which we've spoken of before, and, you know
whether a white character saying white kids fire bomber is mawkish
or not.
But Ace kind of sees herself as postracial.
She doesn't see any difference between herself and Manisha and
cannot get inside the heads of people who do.
And that's the message of the story.
The message of the story is acceptance.
Not tolerance, but acceptance, accepting of others who are
different and not seeking to diminish or control them, but to go
out and meet them.
And control says to the doctor, you are not in our catalogue, nor
will you ever be.
Now, she has no pun intended, the control and the power to put him
in the catalogue and to tell everyone that there's this traveller
who's going to come around and mess your stuff up if you screw
up.
But instead, she's going out to see the universe now.
She's not going out to rule it.
She's not going out to take over planets like Josiah.
So there's no need to warn people about the doctor because the
people who are going out to explore the universe don't need to be
warned about the doctor.
Hello, travellers.
Yeah, exactly.
And even when they leave, you know, there's there's this sense of
danger with the doctorate ace running away from takeoff and
they're saying we need to get away from the blast.
And the doctor's, no, they're already gone.
Even their form of transport is peaceful and non-disruptive.
It's a passing thaw.
It's, you know, like they've, again, it mythologises them, doesn't
it?
They travel by the panel.
Is it made of calcium silicate?
Who cares?
Great many fan listeners.
This is most important thing.
Well, I do think, you know, like it's a stone spaceship. grown
from the earth, I'd like to believe.
Well, I just sort of think it's like the fortress of solitude, but
rockier and therefore cheaper.
Without Marlon Brando's floating head in it. like doing a lovely
melee pre-Raphaelite angel.
I mean, look, there is any point on which we want to focus on this
story.
We can harp and soliloquy on how, on how resonant and radiant it
is.
But I think coming from the social aspect and as in the Carmel, and
McCoy is.
And I think JNT needs to be included, simply allowing them their
heads, is that they're actually about social commentary, which
living in at the time and being there.
Of course, it's contemporary.
You don't see it.
But this is really very much a series that, as Kart more later
admitted, that was doing exactly what we now have, the news quiz
or we now have.
So many other programs that are satirical, that comment, but at
the time, we had this.
Well, remember that there are 2 stories this season with evolution
or survival of the fittest as their theme, and it is also a theme
I guess, in Curse of Fenrick as well, given where the ancient
hemivore comes from.
And that idea of competition for resources was kind of part of the
ideological justification for that sort of neoliberalism, that
Thatcherite capitalism, where, you know, the idea of helping
people and supporting the needy and using the taxes you collect in
order to alleviate the suffering of people who are badly off were
seen as a temptation, a distortion.
Yeah, there's no such thing of society.
There's individuals, you know, and there are so that's where
that's coming from.
And also the rigidity of light who wants everything categorised
and whom the doctor condemns is lacking imagination.
You know, he wants everything stopped.
He wants it to be simple, he wants it to be able to be understood
but what survives, light doesn't survive.
What survives is this incredibly bizarre, random assortment of
people who end up in the spaceship.
You know, like it's not like, and there's there's a Neanderthal
and then there's this woman who used to be like a sort of scary
monster in the basement and there's a sort of crazy...
You're already at me.
I live on the top floor.
I've had my basement moments.
Ladies and gents.
We haven't talked much about Ian Hoggs, Josiah, or indeed, why
Josiah is so reprehensible to Reverend Matthews.
What is it that's so appalling about wanting to be a Victorian
gentleman?
Matthews does say, you know, you're a worse scoundrel than
Darwin.
And so it is the idea that, you know, evolution poses a threat to
Matthew's sort of fairly rigid conceptions of what the world is
like and how it got here.
And I think that that's because he is, as I said before, kind of a
precursor to light.
And also, Josiah, Josiah is a bit interesting in his desire to be
a Victorian gentleman, because it seems to all be about the
physical form of the Victorian gentleman, because Matthews is
there telling him how a Victorian gentleman should behave.
When Matthews 1st sees Ace, of course, he reacts in horror to her
off the shoulder, Blousson, whereas when Josiah sees Ace and
Gwendolen in their men's suits, he's just like, oh, how
interesting and inventive.
Josiah, as a Victorian gentleman, is obsessed by novelty and
newness because there are evolutions and changes.
He comes up with this insane plan, which never is really explained
why he thinks assassinating Queen Victoria will mean he's able to
become king.
But I think I think he's basically attempting a political coup.
So he's going to kill the Queen and then take over as emperor
rather than king.
I actually think it's a little bit overstaffed, the script.
I wonder why that's...
I actually think this is Platt's take on the dichotomy within
neoliberal thinking because to me, it's Nietzschean.
There's a line in there that from beyond good and evil, that
Josiah quotes, and I actually think this is the really interesting
and unworking dichotomy within the politics of the time.
You are meant to be a self-made man.
You are meant to be jet propelled and self-propelled and wear a
cape and be the greatest thing.
But that, of course, is blasphemous because you must also be
humble.
So the structure itself crumbles within and of itself just as
Josiah's skin crumbles, as his, as his carapace is moved from one
to the other.
The entire postulate of this, of this concept of the self-made man
is itself counterdistinctive to what they're supposed to be.
And so you've even got critiquing of the narrative itself within
the narrative between Matthews.
That's how bloody clever this really is.
Because the Nietzschean concept of the Superman.
Is it odds with the Victorian values of these, well, when you
because, and that's what it comes down to.
You can't actually ally scripture or the base concept of the New
Testament with the notion of overweening capitalism or huburistic
intent for expansion.
They don't work together.
Yeah, I think it's true.
And this story kind of shows that of any set doctrine or scripture
or set of rules, if you try to live your life by them entirely, you
won't live a life, you'll become like the Reverend Matthews.
You'll become like Josiah, whereas you should be more like control
or Redvers or Nimrod.
Now, they're all a bit odd, and Redvers, literally.
Yay, Soo Tech.
Redvers, literally, you know, goes mad during the course of the
story and finds himself again and by the end is still referring to
himself in the 3rd person.
So he might not quite be there, but he is his own person, as shown
by the fact when he invites control to the dinner instead of
desire.
Yes.
Despite the fact that he understands she may not be a lady, but
she's a ladylike, and he likes her.
So he doesn't even say at one point, I don't care for social
niceties.
You know, in a sort of wildian thing, like when Algernon says, I
don't give a damn about Cecily's profile.
I'm glad you mentioned world.
Do you know who Mark Platt's parents actually are?
Oscar Wild?
Mr. and Mrs. Platt.
And Lord Douglas.
Hurst Platt and Gwendolyn Platt.
Ernest and Gwendoline.
I'm really not joking.
That's lovely.
Marcus said this and his obsession with Wild goes back to his
preteen years because they were always making jokes of it and
quoting earnest at each other.
Have you got a cucumber, dear?
No, I can't say that.
Wasn't one in the markets for love nor money.
This kind of thing.
So he grew up in that really rebald, silly sort of house where
there was all of that literary lampooning going on.
Of course he's going to write something like this.
And of course, he has gone on to write so much.
All good stuff too.
Cradle of the snake, spare parts.
Whenever any of the Philip Hinchcliffe presents.
It's mostly Mark Platt, who's adapting Philip Hinchcliffe's
ideas.
The good too.
I like the 1st one.
Point of entry, which was one of the most surprising sex doctor
lost stories.
Double entendres that we've had, yes.
With Nicola Bryant pretending to be a British monarch in Jacobe in
England.
Wow.
Which is actually quite good.
She is.
I mean, from a story...
That's just the accent.
From a story by Barbara Clegg.
So the writers of Enlightenment and Ghostlight having a baby
together at last.
Just before we finish, I would like to mention the very last
scene.
So it's, of course, the doctor and ace discussing what will happen
to the house in 100 years.
And Ace says that she only has one regret.
She wishes she'd blown it up rather than burnt it down.
Now, in the script, the final line that doctor says was that's my
girl.
And it was actually Sylvester.
And this goes back to what I was saying about acceptance.
It was Sylvester who said, no, no, no, you know what?
The doctor has been teaching Ace, and he's trying, and at that
point, there was talk that Ace would go to the Time Lord Academy
and that had been discussed with the actors.
And the doctor was like, he, you know, she's his protégé.
We need to show a way that he respects her on her own terms.
He's not just trying to turn her into something.
He's trying to train her, so she can take her uniqueness out into
the universe.
And that's why instead of saying that's my girl, he responds
wicked.
That was Sylvester's idea of saying, I want the doctor to accept
days on her own terms.
There's no condescensional patronising in the term when he of
that.
And it would also be diminutive of a vase.
So he simply mirrors her back.
And also shows that I love the intent, but not necessarily
condoning the action.
Yes, it is a double meaning.
He does mean, you know, you're a naughty person.
Naughty, naughty girl.
I just wish we'd had one of these with sylvan drag.
It's so unfair.
This would have been perfect rather than Ace and Gwendolen doing a
frock up.
It could have been Red Vers and Silv.
He would have made the most astonishing Lady Bracknell in this one
at the dinner party.
And I would have not I wouldn't have clashed at all.
He could have sat there and said, I know, very good.
Very good Indian takeaway up Yakaiba Pass, so to speak, and it
would have worked beautifully, and there would have been also
filth.
Cut.
Wilderness, that way, it's getting off from Gabriel Chase, and
we're off for dinner somewhere, but I don't think I'll eat the
soup.
Do come back next week, of course, as we take just a minute with
the curse of Fenrick.
Until then, you can find us online at Flightthrough Entirety Doc
Sexy, flight through entirety on Facebook and Apple Podcasts and
at FTE podcast on Twitter.
Do please leave a five-star review over on Bondfinger.
We are almost about to finish the Pierce Brosnan era of James
Bond.
And in the coming months, we have a few special Bondfinger
episodes coming for you as well.
Some rather unexpected things, we think.
So do come back for that that you can find Bondfinger at
Bondfinger on Facebook and Apple Podcasts, Bondfingercast on
Twitter and Bondfinger.com.
Until next week, however, may your freeness not bite.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
A hand button.
That was slime through entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley, Brendan
Jones, and Richard Stone, theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, logo
designed by Anthony Wells.
This episode, Gog and Magog, was recorded on the 30th of September
2017.
The next episode will be released on the 29th of October.
If you want to be a ladylike, why not enrol in the Gabriel Chase
finishing school, where you can learn which fork to use when
eating cockroach, and where the carved's brains are served before
or after the primordial soup called.
Ghost Light, 30th of September.
Oh, we should try and be hilarious.
I'm just seeing if they have the savages on Audible.
Richard, could you just give me your level, please?
Yeah, it's here.
Tissu tech.
Please give me a level.
Thank you.
Perfect.
It's on there, Les Sauvage.
The Dan Savages.
Oh, expect I've already purchased it.
Of course I am.
Okey-dokey.
We all good?
I think so.
News.
Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to Flight Through
Entirety.
The only Doctor Who podcast whose heresies appal you.
So what is, damn it.
Oh, what am I this one?
Heresies are for you.
Something outrageous.
Theories appal you. heresy's outrageous.
Okay.