Hello and welcome to Flightthrough Entirety, the only Doctor Who
podcast, working for the good of your colony.
Remember, report anyone who thinks there is such thing as, oh, I
don't know what I was going to say.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
I'm wearing mutant crowd claws and looking a bit perplexed.
Which can only mean one thing.
There's no such thing as Richie wearing New York type of crap
quals and looking at perplexed.
The insects.
Yes.
As we go into the doesn't exist terror.
Yes.
This is fine.
I'm sure it's not fun.
No, it's not yours.
I'm not even asterisk here on my notes.
I can talk about it.
We've got new credits.
Exciting new credits.
We have exciting new credits with Patrick Trouton's mushing them
which don't exist.
Well, those ones don't, but we can't sort of see what it looks
like, and it is the 1st time, and we went a long time in the new
series without the doctor's face in the credits, and now we've got
sort of looming terrifying capalli eyebrows coming at us from out
of a giant clock.
Yeah, so it is.
We did briefly have a little bit of Matt Smith's smoky, shadowy
face.
A la the original Sylvester McCoy titles.
I actually quite like that.
But I like this.
Sandup, as usual, mentions that this is a doctor who looks out of
the television at you quite a lot.
He's quite, you know, often portrayed on screens, looking out and
stuff.
And so this is, he's looking out, smiling beneficently at you from
the television and it does tell us something about his approach to
Doctor Who in that he is now unashamedly the hero of the show.
Yes.
We talked last episode about how the show had bedded itself down
how it had found the thing it's going to do for the next 47
years.
It's going to be bases under siege, spoiler alert.
And he's the hero of that.
Do you know what I mean?
So, and so naturally he gets his face in the opening credits.
And look at me talking.
So who's going, is it?
It's my go.
Oh, okay.
Me?
This is my story.
And I have to say, I think this one is absolutely the highlight of
Patrick Troughton's 1st season.
I know that's quite controversial in a season that also includes
Power of the Dialects and Evil, but I will I will go on and
explain.
Now already we have had in this season the setup of the base
underseage idea.
But already we're subverting that because here we do have a base
under siege.
We got the colony under siege by grotesque insects, the macro
which are actually giant crabs, phrasing.
But the twist here is the base doesn't know it's under siege.
In all the other base under siege stories we see, sort of when the
doctor arrives, you've got the leader character saying, oh, yes
well, we've got this problem here, and, you know, we're going to a
rescue because you're up this new path, but the doctor says, no
I'm not.
Oh, no, you aren't, right?
You can help us solve it.
Whereas this one, The doctor turns up and says, oh, there's
something wrong here.
And everyone says, no, there isn't.
We're all happy.
We're all fine.
So, Already we're subverting that great idea.
Although, now this is our, this is our 2nd ever earth colony in
the future, and the 1st earth colony in the future is power of the
dialects, and power of the dialects was an earth colony that
didn't realise it was under threats and thought that everything
was okay.
And as the audience, we knew that was all going to sort of turn
into a sort of giant bloody massacre at the end and we spent some
time waiting for it.
Here.
Here it's very different, isn't it?
And within the space, like the conception of what an Earth colony
is going to look like, goes from something that's sort of fairly
standard to something that's much more crazy and whimsical, and I
think we'll talk about why that is later.
But so it is different from the base under siege thing, which we
just said was, you know, had just been established.
And we know as viewers, of course, that if there's, uh, if it's a
Doctor Who story and someone's blathering on about monsters and
things, uh, that, that, uh, we're going to be on the side, that
thinks the monsters are real, you know, they're not going to be
made up.
And of course, in that role, you have the brilliant Terence
Launch.
I think I stayed there on holiday work.
He plays a very similar role in some early Avengers stories.
He's in some very good on a black man episodes such as the ringer
and the man with 2 shadows and in the man with 2 shadows.
Again, he's playing a brainwash character who has seen something.
He's seen an enemy plan, but his mind is so broken that he can't
say what it is.
So does he meet off?
He's Me Doc.
That's right.
And you've got Peter Jeffrey as well as the colony's pilot.
He's a great appearance.
He's always...
He was a win cast for them.
They hadn't had a major name on his level before.
Was he made City?
Well, you know, BBC at the time.
Yeah, sure, in-house, but there was a bit of pre-propulosity for
him.
Yeah, well, very few photographs exist for the story, but those
that do exist. tend to put him to the forefront in his very nice
tunic and whatnot.
What we can see of the story, it seems to be very well designed
and a bit like in Stuart Black's previous story of the Savages, you
know, they've really thought about the designs of this culture
where everything is not as it seems.
And in Stuart Black.
This is his last script for the series, but in the 3 scripts he
writes, there's a very clear sort of attitude from him, which
would become quite traditional in 1970s, Doctor Who, of on the
surface, everything is fine.
But if you scratch the surface, you get into something really
really nasty.
And what's worse, there are people who know how nasty it is and
they're doing nothing.
So savages was very much like that.
Savage was very much like that, yeah.
And also the war machines, because you've got these respectable
people, a professor and an ex- army man making these robots to
take over the world.
People know what's going on, but they're powerless to act because
of the bureaucracy of the world itself.
He's a very complex scriptwriter in Stuart Blake.
He is not, I would say, as successful when he comes to writing the
novels, his pro style is rather excitable.
Again, much like the underwater Venice.
I've taken a few notes.
Now, for instance, within the 1st 30 pages of the book.
I'm cutting you free, the doctor informed him blandly.
That's not very polite, said the doctor blandly.
The doctor turned to him blandly.
I'm only trying to help you.
Uh, it's just been strange.
Not a lot of colour and flavour in that.
You know, I think I think the novel was the 1st time that I ever
sort of encountered the story and I have to say I quite liked it.
Oh, I quite like it too.
It's just it's just the writing style is a bit sort of odd.
It's bland perhaps.
Bland, yes.
They don't improve much of the doctor.
Did he not realise how desperate the situation was?
And my own personal favourite.
What are they doing?
Polly wanted to know.
We call that probing Medok Tolman.
But at the same time, to be fair, something he's able to do in the
novels is he really gets across the ideas he wants to put forward
in the story.
So this is an extract, I just highlighted, not because they amused
me, but because I really thought it was funny.
Another way of exercising powers over them, like voices in the
night.
The colony was nothing more but a multitude of marionettes, the
strings being pulled by someone or something that they knew
nothing about.
And that short segment has 3 exclamation points, which I believe
makes it a contender for an article in Doctor Who magazine.
But in that paragraph.
He really gets across the point of, you know, these people are
being controlled.
It's, he seems to be very much a boy's own writer, but with huge
ideas and I really love that sort of melding.
Well, I think that, I mean, I said this before when we were doing
the savages, I think this is about capitalism and that it's a
definite satire of capitalism and or maybe an allegory.
So, you know, Power of Daleks at a very realist kind of approach
to what a colony was like, this is a sort of strange colony that's
a bit like a holiday camp and then dancing and there's someone who
announces, you know, there's an announcer with an American accent
who talks about, you know, what's happening next in the colony and
gives you all these messages.
You know, you will work hard and happily and all of these slogans
and things and everyone is working in the colony and they're
working really hard and they're mining gas and no one knows what
the gas is for, you know, and when the doctor asks what's going
on.
Like why are people going to these great lengths and doing all
this work to produce the gas?
Everyone's evasive as if they've never, it's never occurred to
them to ask the question before.
And it turns out that the gas is being used to benefit the macra
who are underlying the colony and controlling it.
And so it is that idea that our labour is alienated from us.
It's used to enrich other people.
You know, that we work hard and everything in the colony is about
working hard. you know, you work hard and happy happily, all of
that, and it's to enrich, it's to enrich the macra and the macra
our enemies.
So, and we don't realise it.
And the doctor essentially smashes capitalism in the, in, in, in
this story is sort of resolution, and he's really happy about it
as well.
And we saw that in the savages, you know, where they were
destroying the machinery of the entire system.
It has the same outcome.
So um, So I mean, there are sort of potentially dodgy things
aren't there?
You know, they've colonised an inhabited planet and, you know
there are macro there and, you know, why aren't we on the macro
side?
But the macra are, you know, just sort of part of the allegory
they're very ill defined.
They're bacteria or insects or, you know, crabs, you know, we
don't know, but they're malevolent and they're not acting in our
interest, but we are mysteriously doing everything they say and
working incredibly hard just to keep them alive.
It's very much the sort of the sort of thing that the occupy
movement is stating as well.
You know, the idea that it's not the lower classes who are the
parasites, because a parasite is something that manages to live
off the host animal without being noticed, and the occupied
movement goes on to say a bit like the top one% of people who own
99% of the world.
Exactly.
And so Ben gets hypnotised and ends up supporting the camp.
Do you know what I mean?
Which is very, it's very confronting because he is the most
working class character of the 4 regulars.
And I think that that's why that's why it happens to him because
um, like, again, Sandra says this is a holiday camp.
It's like Buttlands.
Delta and the Bannerman.
Perhaps Ben went to one of these on his holidays.
He does actually mention, yeah, this is like the holiday camps
when I was a kid.
And it's also just...
I heard of it.
And the sound of it is pirate radio, just before radio one started
radio Caroline.
You know the story of pirate radio, outside Britain, where the
funky sounds were coming illegally because the BBC was so dull and
they, the mile, you know, just like the Goody's pirate radio
station, which is a documentary of the time.
Yes.
So, so, um, Now I walk into Black Park.
So I think that the reason that Ben falls for this isn't that he's
working class and it's a holiday camp.
It's that he's working class and the only way that the working
class is kept, he's kept compliant.
He's on a steady diet of this sort of mystification. where they're
constantly reassured that their work is essential for the
functioning of the society, even though they themselves derive no
benefit from it.
And so I think I think that that's why Ben falls prey to it.
But the fun thing, of course, is the Ben isn't a robot or anything
like that.
He's not an automaton.
He's not Jackie Lane or even Polly mesmerised by Wotan.
He's still, you know, Ben.
It's just that he's...
It's a really beautiful point that you bring up, and that's why I
think their writing in this is very elegant.
And this is actually, possibly, politically and socially the most
significant trout and story or Doctor Who story of this season.
It's such a shame that the prisoner comes along later in the year
and does it on a bigger budget so much better.
Because the ideas are as salient and just as strong.
You could say that this is about all, um, and that, you know, you
know, that this, this is about brainwashing and the it Chris file
and the smilest people stuff that we've seen with the Lacaro films
and um, Alec Guinness.
These are not the spies you're looking for.
That sort of thing.
Well, it's actually, you're right.
It's about Saltzen Heightsen, Alexander Salton Heightsen and his
novels, but it's also just as much about the USA.
And the same way that we were being fed in misinformation about
what was going on, Vietnam, and the psychology that Madison Avenue
was using to tell us to be good little consumers.
It's really clever.
Because this is the 1st use of like radio jingles, which I don't
think, do you know what I mean?
Which is a Radio Caroline sound.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But also it is ITVs.
It's kind of a spoof as well on the opposing network, isn't it?
Turnover and this is what the earths sound like.
And isn't it hell?
staying with us and just get nice programming.
So we've...
So essentially, you know, we're anticipating the happiness patrol
I think.
Yeah, you know what I mean?
Which again, is an earth colony in the future, but reasonably
vague about when and where and why, where everything is sort of
hyper real and sort of strange and where a definite, you know
message is more important than kind of a realistic, um, sort of
setting, really.
Um, and it's not just the macra that are lifted from this story
and put into gridlock.
It's that whole attitude of maintaining the status quo, even
though you know there's something terrible underneath.
And, you know, it's in this story, they're being brainwashed by
radio in that story, they're kept together and have a sense of
community, thanks to the ability to radio one another, but it's no
substitute for actual contact.
And their religion as well.
Redlock.
We'll talk about gridlock in 2028.
Yes.
I'm a huge fan of Gridlock.
Absolutely.
He's only just now that it strikes me that it's terribly
appropriate that the MacBook should show up.
Yeah, even though like the macra in gridlock aren't the thinking
intelligent creatures they are in the macraterra.
They're still the commonality of theme, which is very nice.
Getting back to Ben and specifically to Michael Craze, I think
this is his best performance in the series as he struggles with
the conflict between his programming that he receives in the camp
and his sense of loyalty and sense of self.
And when I was reading Anika Will's autobiographies.
She talks about Michael Craigs, who, sadly, is no longer with us
and how talented an actor he was and how she was always amazed
that he didn't go on to have a huge career.
When I read that, I kind of went.
Okay, yeah, he's all, you know, he's all riding war machines
because I hadn't seen.
I hadn't seen or heard any of these at that point.
But then when I watched the Macroterra, I went, well, you know
just from the audio, I can tell that this guy is an amazing actor
and it made me feel all the sadder that, one, he's shortly to be
gone from the series.
And 2, that he didn't achieve high heights later on in his
career.
I think he really should have done because it's a very subtle
performance.
And as you said, Richard, this story has a lot in common with the
prisoner further down the line.
And yeah, I think that Michael Graves could have become a big
leading man in the same way that Patrick McGillan was.
I think they do share some of the subtleties of acting in their
performance and it's just a shame we didn't get to see more of
it.
It's very short though.
Yeah, I was going to say, he's a big leading man.
It's more a kind of shame or high noon, Gary Cooper kind of, you
know, on a box.
Don Adams was very short.
Dawn Adams.
She was.
Polly's hair.
Yeah.
She surprised everyone going all me at Farrow, Twiggy...
Really hot with the with the razor cut gaman style, and it's
gorgeous.
She gotten some short shrift.
Yeah, she got a troubled lucers.
Yeah.
Yeah, but it really just makes her eyes and mouth look bigger when
she screams.
It works really well.
She looks lovely.
I mean, she just looks fantastic.
And the whole outfit that she wears in, this is great.
But, uh, they obviously travel around in the TARDIS for a while
between this and the faceless ones because it's grown out
completely by uh, by the next story.
Well, I believe that's where Big Finish put all their, uh, Hanging
Chronicles, so that works.
So did she mention like every few episodes in those companion
chronicles that she's decided to grow ahead.
My hair was getting much longer now.
Although she is amazing in those.
I met Anika.
I was very lucky she came to a convention and she was just lovely
and I told her I was a Latin teacher and she told me she was an
ancient Roman in a previous life and we just hit it off.
It was...
With the same haircut.
But she's just gorgeous, absolutely lovely.
Ben and Polly.
Ah, shortly to be written out and only replaced by one character
because the writers felt, oh, you know, you can't have 3
characters running about, 3 companions running about.
But in their story, they use 3 companions to great effect.
You know, you've got you've got Ben struggling with his control.
You've got Polly working in the mines, and you've actually got
Jamie as the one who tries to escape and is menaced by the
monsters in what would have been a traditional role for the female
character, whereas Polly then gets paired up with the doctor and
helps him do scientific things.
Yeah, I think it's less...
Oh, the writers can't do anything with 3 characters.
As maybe for some of the stories this season, they chose the wrong
writers because Ian Stewart Black can clearly do something with 3
characters.
It's funny, isn't it?
Because it hasn't really settled down to what we kind of regard as
the default mode, which is the doctor travels with a human girl
and what we're going to get for the next 2 years is the doctor
travelling with Jamie and Victoria.
Victoria and Zoe.
No, that's someone else.
The thing that is going to make me sad and will come up, you know
will get there in a moment, is that we're not going to have any
recognisable human beings or audience identification characters
from here on in until the 1970s.
It's going to be Victoria in a crazy frock. or Zoe, but we don't
have anyone who can make contemporary earth reference.
Sure. 2 episodes in.
They're into miniskirts and hippie beads and or MMP or cat suits
and saying exactly the same stuff that Maureen O'Brien was made to
say.
No, I don't think that's true at all.
I think Victoria is a much blander character than Vicky.
Well, say she's not black.
She's not there.
We're not there yet.
We may we may proceed towards that.
I know this is your one, Nathan, but I'm just gonna say 1st and
foremost.
We have Dr. Pickering and Wanda Bentham for the 1st time.
Yay, in Gatwick Airport.
They're Benedict Cumberbun's parents, very sort of-ish.
Well, no, she is.
I'm not sure of it, no, not as such.
Although, that means that Benedict Cumberbatch is part Lucertian
and part air traffic controller. cabin pressure, that's right.
We'll put a link to that at the end, please, in my favourite sick
radio sitcom of all time that launched Benedict Cumberbatch's
career and it's joyous.
The final episode is aired this Christmas.
And it's Stephanie Cole as well, isn't it?
It is definitely Cole.
It was going to be Wanda playing his mother in one episode, but
for whatever reason, the lovely Prunilla scales does it and does
it beautifully, but I can't feel sad, but they didn't keep it in
the family like they did with Sheryl.
Sherlock, yeah, yeah.
So this is kind of funny and it's going to be like the faces ones
goes for 6 episodes and we have episodes one and three.
And for some reason they were kind of widely available even back
in the late 80s.
I remember.
I'm sure that I had them on videotape.
I'm sure that I had evil and the 2 episodes of the faceless ones.
I think they were returned quite early on when the BBC put out a
call and said, actually, we don't have these, if you have them, can
you send them back?
So I think they may have been returned by a TV station.
Right.
I could be wrong on that.
Right.
So, um, I mean, I kind of like this one.
It's a little bit strange.
It's a little bit formless and the funny thing is that it doesn't
really end.
You know, Ben and Polly disappear and then the doctor and Jamie
just sort of wander off because the TARNIS is gone or something.
So it's not, it's, you know, the beginning of sort of 7 episodes
where they're just hanging around on earth.
And it's set the day that Ben and Polly leave at the end of the
war machine.
So they've been gone no time at all, which I think is sort of
rather fabulous.
So it's set in the recent past and it's set in Gatwick Airport and
you get this fantastic, uh, like, you know, most of Gatwick
Airports just sort of crummy sets, obviously, but there are some
really, really great, huge location shots of, you know, um, planes
landing and things and escalators and these huge concourses and
stuff.
And that's that's really fun.
Very Mauld.
It is. trying to find just how cool and movie it can be.
And we kind of forget too.
And this is something that, you know, that when we do our, you
know, flight through Russia with love podcast, we'll talk about
this, but part of the appeal of the Bond films in the 60s is that
people don't really travel abroad.
No, it was a big groovy thing.
You did it if you were young and you spent all your savings from
working that year on a summer package trip, which meant you turned
up at the airport.
Chameleons, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But so airports are, you know, for us, an airport kind of leads to
that sort of sinking feeling, doesn't it?
But, um, because we've often felt going to...
You know how they have their own police force and they've always
had their own completely independent force with their own rights
and rules and regulations.
Yeah, which is why it's so very much like an episode of Thought
about air we could Gapport, the famous Gapport.
I think that's what he was to send to the lavatory.
So But the other funny thing about it too.
And it's completely incidental to the original intention of the
story is just how crazy it is.
So there's one point where they have to ring up foreign countries
to find out what's happened to the planes and we're terribly
worried about how much that will cost because, you know, like
overseas, like making phone calls overseas. these sort of horribly
expensive.
Spectacularly twee mobulousness, script riding in the middle of
something that's meant to be glamorous and international.
Is it?
The doctor pretends to throw a bomb at someone like...
That is this story is about territoriality and fear of...
We hadn't actually had hijackings yet or had we?
This is a thing that was more with Paddy Hearst syndrome in the
early 70s. and the Simbionese liberation army and, you know, a
group of ash tons of intellectuals and kids that, you know, done a
lot of asset and got a bit cranky about Vietnam and said, let's do
some.
I'm not meaning to belittle it.
Because, you know, there's arguments on both sides, but Sinn Fein
had been agitating, but not to the point that is familiar to ask
kids now.
So people weren't thinking the fact that the security and things
are so lax and all of that, we haven't yet had, um, uh, hijackings
and stuff.
We haven't as such, but we did have a knock Powell doing his
rivers of blood speech and we were terrified about immigration and
the whole white Australia policy that we had operating in this
time here, which is, you know, if you're English or South Africa
you look like us.
It's fine.
You can come in and you're probably nice, but if you're not, well
it's going to be a lot harder.
Now, Britain's colonies, of course, were devolving, and you had a
lot of immigrants coming from the West Indies and from other parts
of the Monster Empire.
This was causing a lot of chat in Parliament, as in the media, who
knows if it was causing that much problem on the streets.
It's just like now, isn't it, when we're getting stirred up for
whatever reason.
But do you think that this is, so you're saying there's an
immigration kind of metaphor happening here?
I suspect so, since a lot of it's about what's going on there.
Well, where is the, where is the Frisson?
Where is the agitation coming?
So the chameleon tours have lost there.
Was it a galaxy accident?
In a galaxy accident?
They lost their identities in a galaxy accident.
Was it?
That wasn't the Refusians?
No.
Just wait for Moffat to start picking up on this one.
There be a galaxy accident.
Anyway, some kind of terrible galaxy accident has happened.
I'm sure it was there a few.
You're probably right, but everything's a galaxy.
Yes, a galaxy accident where although they weren't all horribly
killed.
They did way managed to get up the next day. and realise, oh, we
don't know who we are, what we're doing, but I don't know, let's
go to Earth and make spaceships that look like VC 10s and start up
in an international business and appetize to a niche teenage
market.
How about that?
Really, if you're going to have those sort of objections, we need
to stop watching this show.
Because, you know, running.
I haven't even got to the whole why Polly is an alien pretending
to be someone else pretending not to be Polly, when she doesn't
just say, oh, they, well, the doctor's appearing to be a
difficulty to our plans.
Why not just squeeze her into that and she can sabotage whatever
he's doing?
Nah, I'm just going to sit here and pretend to be something.
It's sitcom land really without the loud jokes.
And yeah, it does rather imply, and it's never really settled.
Is there actually a Michelle P out there who looks just like
polish.
Ooh, now that's an interesting other story all in itself.
And so they're stealing human idea.
They're miniaturising humans, stealing their identities, which is
the kind of thing that racists fear, you know, they come over and
they're going to take our place, invasion of the body snatchers
kind of.
But what does, I mean, you know, does that mean that this is a
kind of racist parable then?
Do you know what I mean?
Because aren't we right to fear them?
I mean, I guess the doctor does resolve it by, you know, helping
them out and coming to an agreement and no one's blown up and no
one.
There's the evil Donald Pickering, who, you know, he's evil, but
not all of them are evil.
Well, I think there's definitely an immigration, possibly refugee
theme to it because the chameleons are coming here because they
are in such dire straits and they're coming here to have a life.
Now, their methods may be questionable.
But when they're confronted about earth methods and given an
alternative, which isn't going to hurt anyone.
They go, oh yes, definitely, let's do that.
It's quite a typical ending, that ending.
Um, with the doctor saying, well, how about you try this
scientific method and they go, oh, you know what?
Yes, that's wonderful.
We didn't have the science to do that, but yes, that's definitely
what we'd like to do because we hate that we have to do this
thing.
What do they do?
They have to put you in a cupboard and then put on your identity?
Yeah, exactly.
This is also coming from, I mean, if you want to look at what, why
this story is here, it's kind of, well, the laziness of this
Lloyd.
There was a film that just came out a few years before called so
long at the fair, starring Dirk Bogart, who we already mentioned
as being the glamour boy of 60s, um, Britain, the thinking set
night.
He's the kind of the Tony Perkins of Britain at the time has
certainly seen as a simulacer, that guy, you know, all swab and
satinine.
Anyway, this film was set in the 1899 World's Fear, but it was
about a bloke who was assisting a young girl's hunt for her
missing brother.
It was based on a true story or her missing brother.
Brother.
That's right, because, of course, we have the girl now played by
Sula Black.
No, she's pretty.
Isn't she meant to be silver black?
Oh, wasn't she being groomed?
in this story to be?
Yeah, what was that?
She does look like she's a replacement companion.
Well, they have this weird thing with Michael Craze and Anika
Wills's contracts that they're actually contracted up until the
end of Evil of the Daleks, episode two, but they decided let's
actually write them out as early as possible for reasons we
mentioned when we were talking about the macro terror.
There was this conception that 3 companions weren't working.
But it was apparently when they saw how Pauline Collins was
working with Fraser Heinz, they offered her the job.
Much like they did with Fraser. like they kind of went, oh, we
like this up a lot of you a job.
They did that with her and she turned it down.
Right.
She, I mean, she's terrifically funny in it, and she gets to do
the accent that Dodo would have liked to have been able to do for
longer. liveable.
She's a Liverpool girl.
She was a mate with the Beatles.
He was talking about Sam or... or Sealer Black.
Not sylla black.
She's she's Northern, so it's possible.
I mean, she, Pauline Collins will be known to new who fans as
Queen Victoria.
She does come back and play Queen Victorian.
Without a Liverpool accent without the accent.
But not amused.
But she's really sweet with Jamie and like she kisses him.
She kind of fancies him and stuff and makes that clear and that's
that's kind of modern, you know, that skirts the problem of Susan
a bit, doesn't it?
It's like young female sexuality and she kisses him.
But he takes the opportunity to steal her ticket and all of that
sort of thing and she's bullshy and demanding and stuff and she's
really plucky.
She helps the doctor and she does work really well with Jamie.
I think she would have been she would have been terrific.
But, like, they're writing Ben and Polly out, but they choose to
write them out in episode one. like they don't even get to go on
it.
Yeah, and then Polly reappeared.
Oh, Polly reappears, the pens, or...
Yeah, it's very, very strange.
And what I find even stranger about it is.
The story is about the absence of Ben and Polly.
You know, because that's the doctrine that Jamie's driving force
you know, they're constantly mentioned, what about them?
What about Polly?
about halfway through the story, they forget for a bit, and then
start mentioning them again in episode five?
But yes, it is very strange.
And because their appearance in episode 6 is a pre-filmed insert
at the Epic Airport, They didn't have to come into the studio
after that 2nd episode.
So it's, it's kind of odd because the doctor and Jamie spent the
next few episodes.
Oh, we must rescue Ben and Polly.
We must rescue Ben and Polly.
We never see them and they're not even there.
So...
Have they learned nothing from Dodo?
But I think they handle it better than Dodo, though.
And I remember thinking, because we've had this discussion before
about how poorly served the 60s companions are in their departures
and Dodo, in particular, who also leaves midstory and just never
gets heard of again.
But I actually thought that the final scene with Ben and Polly was
actually quite sweet.
You know what I mean?
Like, that they did say a proper goodbye.
And like it was.
I don't I don't know, you know, I think it's a shame that they
decided to abandon the idea of contemporary human companions.
I always think it's a good idea whenever anyone in the new series
is, but they're always girls from London, you know, like what's
going on.
I kind of think, well, you know, just think about the long 80s or
you know, the late 60s when you don't get contemporary humans and
that will cure you, I think, of that desire because, um, you know
it's the, it's the contrast between contemporary humans and the
crazy adventures that they end up in.
That's the fun, that's the free song of it.
And I've talked about hating historicals, but, you know, again
Santa points out these people belong in history.
Do you know what I mean?
You can't do a historical, if your companions are Jamie and
Victoria.
Do you know what I mean?
Because they're from the past.
What do you do?
sort of send them to mediaeval England or czars cave or something
you know what I mean?
Like, you know, there's kind of no point.
I think this needs more jokes.
I mean, I think it's, I think it's pretty entertaining.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, I think it does what it needs to do.
The recon.
So, of course, we only have episodes one and three.
So loose cannon reconstructions have made a fabulous CG plane and
a fabulous CG space station that the plane goes in.
Which look very close to the existing telly snaps.
They did a really good job in terms of design and in terms of
their direction.
Yeah, of the shots.
I was pretty impressed and it was a fun surprise.
I wasn't expecting it at all.
So, but, you know, like it moves along and stuff and it's got some
fun bits and it's got Wanda and Donald Pickering.
And it still manages to be different from time flight.
Yeah, how can you build a convincing air traffic control room in
the studio in 196667.
And then have air traffic control at Heathrow, a bigger airport as
one little computer terminal in a cupboard in 1982.
I do not understand.
It's really not that convincing United States.
Still manages to be better almost 20 years.
No, no, no.
This is quite fun.
It's not the train wreck that time flight is.
Spoiler alert.
I am going to have fun when we get to time point, though, because
even though it's a train wreck.
I kind like it.
It's a good thing and it balances humour and scariness and, you
know, an intriguing spectacle better than a lot of other shows.
It's if you want to look at what it is.
It's, you're looking at this show, um, now it's Doctor Who.
We haven't quite got to the point yet.
Later on, as we do, is what's the new gimmick monster this week?
It's what's the new gimmick situation scenario.
We've been to the moon because that's what everyone's doing.
Apollo had just learned, 1st Apollo had just launched.
We're now in an airport because that's what groovy things are
doing.
So where worthy are we going to next week?
He's got a ticket to ride.
He's got to take it to ride. but he don't care.
That's pretty groovy, really.
I think it was indistinguishable from the original, actually.
Well, it's all we're allowed to use now because, as you know, from
the audio versions of this, paperback writer was broadcast as part
of their 1st episode of the interminably groovy and a bit
spectacular evil of the Daleks, as was the seekers, nobody's known
the trouble I've seen. and that is still on their BBC audio that
said they'll be missing paperback writer, but we've got the next
best things.
Thank you very much, Brendan, for that.
There's so much in this that's so much fun.
Nathan, you were saying, the 1st episode is pretty much radically
different from anything else this season or anything else in this
story.
Yeah, so the TARDIS has gone missing.
And I think that that's announced at the end of the faces one
someone you know, you know what, though, don't you?
It was grabbed by the leather men.
That's the removal company.
I mean, it's not there's a hell of a lot of this Joe Wharton
referencing going on in this.
We didn't mention that Mr. Orton, in his diaries, singled out
Fraser Hines as being someone he'd really liked to have cast in
his notorious entertaining Mr. Sloan.
It's being a lovely little boy.
Yeah.
There's a lot of that going on.
That's when he was jumping up and down in his one piece rubber
onesie wetsuit thingy.
We don't get much of that in this story.
We get a lot of other carry-on dialogue.
If you listen to it as an audio as I do, it's very carry on.
I mean, the funny thing about it, and again, it's another attempt
to be really modern and as you were saying, really modern up to
the minute.
And so it's a coffee shop.
It's like a cool coffee shop with a French name.
And in fact, the funny thing about it is that trickleur, yeah.
Yes, that's it.
Nothing at all really happens for the 1st episode.
It's a lot of marking time.
It is.
Richard Lester or the NAC.
It's one of those Beatles Chase movies.
We're waiting for TARDES, place over there.
A bit of that as well.
There's some great lines.
And finally, then we end up doing Budum and Crash.
Comic-Con, 2011, where you've got Professor Waterfield dressed as
a Matt Smith fan.
Exactly the same costume. really is.
And the whole show then starts to do probably the biggest thing
you know, as we've said before, this whole season is not so much
about the monsters, I think it's more interesting because it says
what can what else can Doctor Who be as a TV show in other TV
shows, carrying on straight from that 1st episode when we look
into the TARDIS monitor and see the whole world as a TV set.
This one is doing what's the biggest hit right now on TV.
It's the foresight saga, Donald Wilson's production.
Yeah, exactly.
The guy who's almost started Doctor Who kind of almost started
Doctor Who.
From the John Galsworthy novels.
It was the hugest, hugest thing.
It ran for 6 months, and it was still being repeated.
I saw it as a little boy in the early 1970s on Australian TV bits
of it.
It was it went on for more than 10 years.
It was just, I guess, before upstairs downstairs, one of those
programs.
Proto Downton Abbey.
Yeah, exactly.
Thank you.
But about the politics of the upstairs and the downstairs.
And the 1st one to talk about real class cataclysm, class clashes
but without all of the stern drum, melodrama and soapiness of some
of the later ones, it took itself reasonably seriously.
But yeah, it was surprisingly for everyone concerned, phenomenally
successful.
And I think we'll start to see where the character of the young
girl, who, in her 1st scenes is kind of fabulous, isn't she?
Molly?
Ah, how interesting.
Yes, for about 5 or 6 episodes, 4 or 5 episodes of this, we get a
plucky young girl again who has lots of great interaction with the
young male lead who really has a winning and vibrant affiliation
with the with the lead casting, who you think is just going to fit
in so beautifully.
And then, of course, she disappears completely, and it's the other
one who's a bit whiny, but looks good in a frog.
Big eyes, pretty big eyes.
And she is very, she is very beautiful.
Of course, we're talking about Debbie Watling.
And when we mentioned Peter Jeffrey before, as being some coup
casting for this season.
Debbie Watling is apparently the biggest star doctor who had ever
had up to this point.
She was a child actor?
Very much so.
She played Alice in Wonderland.
And that was so Keystone, Big BBC Pro. BBC thing, but she was
not.
Yeah, she was wildly known as a child actor and really, very
good.
I think she's amazing in that scene.
This is David Whittaker doing, do not feed the flying.
So, do not make up.
Yeah, you know, she's clearly scared, but she's not petrified at
the point of being meek.
You know, she's quite bullshy with the Dalek, but still being
realistically scared as a young Victorian lady would be.
You know, it's a bit silly that, oh, we've got this new character
from the Victorian era.
What shall we call her?
Victoria.
They all went home early, you see, after they came up with that.
But, you know, if the young if the young princess of the time was
called Victoria, and then you had a daughter, it's quite
understandable that you might call her Victoria.
You know, there's probably going to be a lot of Kate's and
George's being born in the next few years because the Princess
Kate and the young Prince George. with just as much.
Just as much narrative truth and reason for about it as well.
Oh, yeah, look, this is carry on up. up the downstairs upstairs
isn't it, really?
And then there is more to it than that, though, isn't there?
Because there's Maxtable and he's a really sort of sinister.
Oh he's gorgeous.
Yeah, and he outshines the later on in the story when you get to
the big bad boys in the team suits, he manages to actually
outshine both Paddy and the Daleks in the series, he's in with
them.
Because, yeah, it's like, it's one thing to have a dalek that's
evil.
You just go, yeah, okay.
But he is just utterly selfish and evil.
Like, he wants his gold.
He wants his alchemic secret.
And if you get in the way.
Forget you.
He's very much contrasted with Waterfield.
I was thinking, waddling, I was thinking, Travers, you know
thinking.
So in this?
Straight out of the Poachers season 7 shed or Dickens book, yes.
Or Joe Alton play, actually.
So he's he's really worried about Kennedy dying and then someone
else dies and he remembers, do you know what I mean?
And his hand ringing about it.
And that's contrasted with Maxstable, and it gives us the chance
to see how manipulative Maxstable is and how insincere.
And so, you know, um, Waterfield and Maxville, Waterfield thinks
they're accomplices, but Max Stables playing Waterfield the entire
time.
And what they've done is they've used electrified mirrors that
have attracted Daleks into the past or something in this sort of
crazy demented way.
The alchemic way that David Whitaker writes static electricity.
Yes, yeah. everything he does. gorgeous.
It was static electricity.
And so it is, it's this mad steampunk Victorian thing.
Thank you.
Where, you know, you've got all of these sort of strange machines
and then you've got the Daleks gliding through looking for all the
world as if they belong.
They look terrific.
But they're not given very much to do, and it is, I actually think
you know, power of the Daleks makes us wait for the Daleks to be
threatening.
Here, we are here.
I think the weight is a bit less successful and it just feels a
bit longer and a bit more padded than power.
And so, uh, even though you've actually got episode 2 of evil of
the Daleks to watch.
I actually do think it does start to wear out its welcome a little
bit until we're off to Scaro.
There is a lot of that chasing about corridors again, although we
can't see it.
There's a whole lot of visual impact in the description.
Again, a lot of this feels like it's doing, um, contemporary plays
and again, Joe Orton at the time, the image of Jamie and the
Turkish camel, rottering about the corridors in, in such a way as
if it depicted by Tom of Finland in the graphic covers for a
Commonwealth Games brochure for nighting.
They do sound like they're doing all the trials and tribulations
that you do.
It's a knockout or something or what's that?
I mean, I didn't have that then.
They had gamesmanship amongst the and that's chaps with, you know
chasing hankies.
It's very strange and I don't understand why camels mute.
Why has Campbell got to be mute?
And why is he's Turkish?
Do they cast a big black guy to be mused?
And when Maxwell says, oh, you know, he can't talk because his
mind is undeveloped, but he can read, but he can read, he can
read.
He can perform complex physical tasks which involve things like
deciding whether a beam can take his weight.
You know, he can collude with others.
I don't know why they do that.
That's just annoying.
It's off footing.
And of course he has to be killed at the end, which just annoys me
as well.
I mean, maybe they're trying to sort of say, oh, this is what the
Victorian era was like, and this is how people from other
countries were treated. and, you know, yeah, but there's nothing
they never do anything to reverse that.
You know, it could it could have been quite fun if after Kimmel's
adventure with Jamie, which I think goes on for far too long, you
know, it stretches over episodes three, four, and a little bit
into 5 as well.
Yeah.
I think it would have been great if Kimmel had spoken to Jovi.
And if people said to him afterwards, well, hold on, why have you
never spoken to us, he could have said, well, he treats me like a
person.
You don't treat me like anything, so why would I talk to you?
That would have been a wonderful inversion and would have added a
lot of meaning to Camel and Jamie's relationship.
In fact, the only thing that nearly saves Camel and it doesn't
really go anywhere near far enough is that Victoria trusts him and
likes him and...
She's very fond of him.
And that kind of sells him as a human being a bit, but it is lazy
and a bit shoddy, I think, and a bit of a shame in an otherwise
pretty a pretty good story.
This, of course, is one of the ones where only one episode exists
and of course, we're reaching the end of series four, thank God
where we don't have a single intact story.
Yeah, most we've got is half a story. half of 2 stories, I should
say.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
It's a bit of a slog.
But the loose cannon reconstruction.
So really fun. and Richard, you prefer listening to them.
I like listening to them, yeah.
But the loose cannon people.
Actually went back to the location, the hotel in which this was
shot.
I did a day's filming and they had a Dalek.
They had someone in a Victoria wig and in her frock who could just
sort of see walking along long corridors and stuff like that.
And then they do all this CG, they do CG, Jamie, and Campbell
climbing up the balcony to get to Victoria.
And like some of it's a bit cheesy.
And there's stacks of CG Daleks everywhere.
It's really, really fun.
And they go out of their way to try and not introduce anything new
because they're, you know, they're a bit OCD and that's how they
want to do it.
You know what I mean?
I think they prefer the term purist.
Purists.
That's a much better word.
And they do a terrific job.
Like there's so much work has gone into it and they really, really
do make it, they do make it watchable, which is kind of fun.
They do make it a lot of fun, don't they?
And it's a great lead up to the big bang end of the season where
we once again end up on Planet Scaro, Musical Include.
And those, the final 2 episodes on Scarrow, well, 2.5 episodes on
Scarrow, they just really, really pick it up.
It's quite amazing.
It's a bit like the original Daleks, which is a game of 2 halves
and the 1st half is vastly superior.
But in this one, it's the 2nd half that's vastly superior, and we
get the payoff.
We get to pay off to the last 5 episodes, but we also get.
We also get the emperor, darling.
I was going to say we get the payoff to 5 years worth of Dalek
lore because of course this is the end of the Daleks in Doctor Who
for the pussyeable.
They thought for truly for the end, and Paddy certainly behaves
that way.
This is where we get them.
Thank you again, David Whittaker.
His inclusion of his writing for the Century 21 comic strip, the
Emperor Dalek, from that into the narrative of this.
So we're really getting a lovely conclusion of the disparate
Doctor Universes coming to the one story at the end.
And what we've neglected is bringing them down to 2 allegorical
forces.
And power of the Daleks kind of does this where the Daleks
represent or come out of the human evil that infest the colony
politically.
You know, colony and power of the Daleks, everyone's backbiting
and stuff like that, and that allows the Daleks to emerge.
Here we have, here we have humanity and Dalek kind, rayified as
the human factor and the Dalek factor, and it allows us to do
really new things with the Daleks, which include, you know, the
fabulous Daleks playing, saying, dizzy doctor, that incredible
cliffhanger is that episode four.
With the trains.
Yes, where the Daleks are playing trains and the doctors, you know
riding on the diamonds.
James horrified.
And the Daleks call the doctor friend and all of that sort of
thing.
So the Daleks, thanks to Jamie and all of that padding in the
middle episodes, there are now 2 factions of Daleks.
There's the human Daleks, the human factor Daleks, and just the
Dalek factor Daleks.
Which are the ones with the pointy heads that look like the Lewis
Marks pullback friction drive action dialects.
That was Planet of the Dale.
I do it in this one as well.
They use Lewis Mark.
Did you?
The doctor gets to see the biggest, baddest badass Dalek in the
entire history of Dalekness.
Do you know what the emperor dalek was called on the set by pretty
much most of the production crew?
Gordon.
I wish, the queen, darling, the queen died.
To continue my thing. ostensibly maybe because of the honeycomb
sets.
So this is meant to be the same city that Barbara Ian and Susan
visited all those years ago and Roberta Toby a year after that.
Because you said, Richard, the doctor knows his way out of it.
But the design is so different, isn't it?
And the design is fantastic and it is this thing where a lot of
trout and sets, you know, they paint the walls black and then they
use sort of grids and things and so there's sort of negative space
behind the walls.
Like the top of the pops already steady go set for a dusty
Springfield song.
It was really very sensitive to pop iconography on TV.
And it looks great.
It really does.
That's fantastic.
And so the emperor dialect just sort of emerges out of that giant
sand.
You want him to start cracking into a song, don't you?
It'd actually be probably more like a Bernard Crib than this right
set, Fred, or something like that because he's he's getting a bit
old.
Do you notice he's a bit deaf?
He actually asks that at one point the doctor, he asks the doctor
to speak up.
And he does have a one for a Dalek.
He has a wonderfully pompous voice, you know, he doesn't have that
pissed out.
Like this.
Very plumbing.
Much more like Nick Briggs does it later on, but he's much more
aesthetic and much more human.
And he introduces himself.
He says, you know, there's no direct speech and so you are the
doctor.
Do any of our little fanboy frontal lobes consider that it might
be a descendant or clone of a Davros type of...
No, no, it's Yavelling.
Oh, of course, it was because it's David Wisaker, which could be
coming.
Share a bit of this because I didn't do that last time we were
talking about...
I didn't know that much about it. was just trying to be funny.
No, it is the comics you are failing is the original person who
created the Daleks in the sort of comic... tall and blue with
Billy Hartnell wig.
What, silver wig?
And once again, the altered visitors who have made videos of all
the Dalek Chronicles have also made made a video featuring Yav
Delling's creation of the Daleks..
That's what we want to see.
Something I find very interesting about this one.
Because that's I've said before, I'm not a huge fan of this
story.
I think it's really let down by the padding in the middle.
Could have been a great four, possibly potter, but the ideas it
introduces are wonderful.
And especially when Jamie says to the doctor, you know, people
have died and you're treating this like a game when this is over
we're through.
And, of course, Jamie comes to realise that the doctor has tricked
the Daleks and it's not like that at all.
But in a way, what Jamie has said is coming true because the
doctor doesn't seem to care that the 3 humanised Daleks he's
created are beings as well.
He just sends them off to fight the guards.
So it's kind of weird because as you say, Nathan, it's the 1st
time that we don't have an identification character from the
modern day, I mean, even with Vicki, as you said before, Richard
Vicki was very much a modern girl, we very briefly had a period
between Vicki and Dodo where we didn't have that sort of present
day character.
But this is the 1st time where it's ongoing that way.
So, The season ends just like it began.
It began with a with a reboot of the doctor's character, and this
is kind of another reiteration of you can't really trust him.
You know, he does, he does fight for the good of all, but that
that, that means some sacrifices.
Do you know, it's never occurred to me to wonder that.
I don't think the narrative, do you know what I mean?
Do they foreground the idea that the doctor's sacrificing those
dialects?
No one else seems to care.
That's what I find it to do because the Daleks are so humanised
and so childlike.
And I think that deliberate decision had to come from somewhere.
Let me write it off pretty quickly, don't we?
Yeah, no, it never occurred to me, but it is a thing, I think.
And he does even encounter them, doesn't he?
Does he encounter them on Scaro and talk to them and they have a
little chat.
And he kind of says to them, you know what you need to do.
And it's hard to tell them, there may be a bit of remorse in his
voice.
It's hard to tell without the visuals, but, you know, he still
sends them in 3 daleks against the emperor and all its guards in a
bloody firefight.
Do they do they infect people or convince them or something or do
they hand out, I don't know, sandwiches laced with human factor or
something, like, is it just them?
Hello, my name is Elder Alpha, and I would like to talk to you
about this amazing book.
Yeah, yes.
Do they do that?
I think that's more of a Dalek is certainly fearful that that will
happen. that they will introduce the notion of questioning.
And I think at one point Daleks do go along to dispatch them and
the human Daleks start questioning them and the other Daleks are
like, I don't know what to do with this.
So I'll return to base for orders.
So it does, we see a small breakdown which leads to the line of
the civil war later on.
I actually quite like that ambiguity and for me, it saves the
story.
It's not just about the doctor directly destroying the Daleks
which is something that Hartnell really didn't do.
He would only attack the Daleks as a last resort.
You know, most of the time he was just trying to get away with, get
away from them, but this new doctor's just like, no, I've had
enough of wiping you out.
I mean, the 2 Dalek stories this season, reimagine the Daleks
rather than just being an occasional threat.
This is the point at which they actually become iconic
representations of evil.
And so it's not just their allegorical role in the power of the
dialects, but also the fact that the doctor needs to face them in
order to become the doctor, you know, the new doctor.
And then here, you know, is this sort of giant empire and things
and we bring it around full circle by going back to the original
Dalek city.
And so they have become mythical.
And, you know, that's the progression, you know, he, the doctor
meets them in a tiny city, then he meets them in earth, then he
gets chased through space, then they try and invade the galaxy, and
then they just become these giant mythic forces, even though their
plans themselves aren't anywhere near as as big a deal.
They are a big deal in this.
And I wonder with something of a cinematic quality.
After the Dalek movies.
I think that's achieved by the sound.
Did either of you notice how good the score is for this?
It's Dudley Simpson, but it's as good as the last time we had.
I really like to score to macro, even though it's crazy.
But this is...
This is, um, this does really quite beautiful things with with the
score.
He uses hobo, flute, timpani, uh, marimba, and vibrophone, but
then he froze in over that, a processed piano, and he does that
before George Martin and the Beatles did it.
I wonder if John and George Martin were watching this one and
going, ooh, I like the sound of that one.
He was that one.
Wow.
I don't know.
That's actually Simpson.
But it's the score is gorgeous and it really works to compel the
story along.
There are moments, yeah, when it's dull and it's sort of, you kind
of feel that it's plodding along a little bit too slowly.
But then it'll just throw us into some really different
environments that are completely unexpected and support that and
go along with it.
That's the beauty of Whittaker's writing.
He never lets you down in the moment.
There's always something that'll grab you and that's surprising
and keep you involved.
In the end with this story.
You know, power of daleks, as you said, Nathan, the doctor had to
face the Daleks in order to become the doctor.
Now Doctor Who's getting rid of the Daleks because we have this
new doctor, the show survived and we don't need them anymore.
And we're losing the rights to them.
They are kind of alive.
Try and be poetic.
There is despite what John Peel says, there is a Dalek still
moving at the end.
It's a little bit like the shot of the little cybermat heading
away at the end of 2 of the side.
Oh, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.
So starting with Jenny Laird award, for me, I've already mentioned
it, but Jenny Laird award has to go for Nigel Robinson.
I don't know whether he came up with slapping Polly into
submission, but he certainly didn't try to sugarcoat it through
his novelisation either.
So that's my choice for the Jenny Laird award for puzzling
creative choice.
Oh, my journey Laird Award is equally obvious, I guess it's poor
old John Peel, not the radio one DJ that we're talking about radio
but the writer. of the evil of the Daleks novelisation.
Have either of you read it?
No.
You know how you get all of that padding in the middle third?
This is kind of like a musical set piece in 3 parts, isn't it?
The middle fur is stretched out. episode four. into 2 episodes.
And John Peel describes every single moment of it.
You know that Wisaker would have said, okay, that was just part of
what was required for TV.
Let's shrink it down. and make something interesting.
Isn't it sad that Whittaker didn't write the novelisation of
this?
Yeah, so yeah, once again, John P. or Dong gets mine.
It gets my genie.
You know, mine actually goes to the entire production team.
And I tell you why.
And normally we think the Jenny Land award, it's, you know, it's
for a puzzling creative choice, and not necessarily a bad creative
choice.
Okay. just in case the name confused you in some way.
Puzzled you.
And so here it is.
Here I think it is the way that the change in cast is dealt with
in series four, the change in the lead.
And we've just very recently had this happened.
We've seen Matt Smith go and Peter Capaldi take over as a doctor
and Matt Smith's departure was, you know, massively telegraphed
given huge amounts of publicity.
We had TV shows about it.
Um, you know, there was, it was all over the news.
He was given a Christmas special, which was all about growing old
and leaving that was thematically all about what his era had been
about, that was a giant celebration of his era, that right from
the beginning was set up as Matt Smith's last story.
And Peter Capaldi's thing was set up as a dinosaur to parallel how
old Peter Capaldi is.
There's the half-faced man. you know what I mean?
wondering whether he's still the same person after he's replaced
all of his bits over the years.
You know, it's thematically all about that change and the change
we're reassured all the way through.
Do you know what I mean?
Like everything is, uh, is geared up these days to ensure that we
don't go away because we don't like the new guy.
There's an accidental kind of anticipation of Hartnell's departure
by his collapse and disappearance in episode 3 of the 10th planet
but the 10th planet is in no way a regeneration story and the way
that we think about it now.
There's no celebration of the era.
There's no mention of anyone.
It's just heat for the last 5 minutes.
And then there's no attempt.
And I think this is deliberate and I think it's risky and it's
amazing that it comes off, but there's no attempt to reassure us
that Trouton is...
Is the doctor.
And in fact, there's plenty of things that put us off. early on in
power of the Daleks and it's such a strange choice of recasting in
the 1st place and it's dealt with in such a surprising way to a
modern Doctor Who audience that that's what gets my award.
I think that's pregnant, yeah.
And now we also have our picks or recommendations.
Someone we've spoken about a lot over the course of these episodes
is Anika Wills.
She, along with Fraser Hines, other 2 surviving members of the
main cast from this point, Deborah Watling, of course, as well, but
we'll talk more about Deborah Watling in next month's podcasts.
So I would like to recommend Anika Will's autobiographies.
They 1st came out a couple of years ago.
They're currently out of print, but I believe, um, There is some
talk about them going back into print with a new publisher.
They are Anika Will's naked and Anika Will's self-portrait.
Uh, naked covers uh, her time on Doctor Who and her early acting
career.
But there is so much more to her.
And it's actually the parts that weren't about Doctor Who that I
found the most interesting in reading these.
They are readily available on Amazon for good prices thrown out of
print book.
But actually, as we release this episode, a new autobiography, a
picture autobiography with many rare photos from Anika's
collection, Anika Wills in focus, will have just been released.
It had a limited release 2 years ago, but this is a general
release and will include the link for that on the website as
well.
I think we had better include the link because I just Google
searched on Anika Wheels naked and that's not something that I
don't remember.
Richard, your recommendations very quickly. very swiftly and
absolutely on the tail and... generous exposition.
I just thought if you want to get a grip on what was happening at
the moment and we've talked about the Beatles and we've talked
about the look of feel of the era.
I've plumped for the Joe Wharton diaries.
If only because, very similarly, there is a reference to the very
young Fraser Hines and how Mr. Orton wanted to cast him as the
juvenile lead in entertaining Mr. Sloan, opposite Patricia
Rutledge.
She is our very own Hyacinth Duques. think I would have been
fantastic.
So it's a shame they didn't carry on with it.
He's producer, also called Wiles, said to him, you're going to
have a very jolly time of it, aren't you?
What a shame that didn't happen and he, well, he was murdered at
the end of that year.
But yeah, he was right.
He does mention having watched an episode of Underwater Menace
does he?
Yeah, he does.
And the faceless ones.
Oh, really?
I've mentioned that too.
He says there was on Doctor Who tonight.
Oh, sorry, Richard.
Well, I have it right in front of me here.
Look at the diaries and he says, well, you've got to just trudge
through it because there's a hell of a lot of Kenneth Williams on
every single page.
Why would you not pick it up?
He says on Saturday I was watching an episode of Doctor Who and
spotted a little boy in that called Fraser Hines.
So I rang John Wiles up and he said, my word, you are going to
enjoy yourself, aren't you?
That's it.
That's all we get on Doctor Who in the actual, everything else has
been inferred.
You can do that with this kind of man.
It's just a really great taste of the period and there's so much
you can look at, as we've said, not just TV wise, but writing wise
on.
This is a fantastic year for England and for creative writing
generally.
And this season, despite all its many, yeah, not so great success
as manages to give us a taste, a smoggish beyond, if you like, of
little bits of all of it. really.
We got a lot of different shows in Doctor Who this year.
And Patrick is astounding.
I don't know that many people would have been able to pull it
off.
No, that's very true.
In my pick of the week is, and it's kind of, you know, along the
same lines that I've come up with many times before, but I had
intended to spend this morning planning lessons for the upcoming
week, uh, but I became alerted to the fact that uh, volume 5 of
Philip Sanders, TARDIS, a Rudatorum, complete with an interview
with Gareth Roberts, uh, in which he talks about the Graham
Williams ears, uh, that's out on Amazon.
And so I won't be winging it tomorrow.
I know what I'm doing.
But the rest of the week, goodness knows what's going to happen.
Looking forward to that one.
So next month, our next episode will be released on November the
16th.
And gentlemen, your story allocations for season five, Doctor
Who?
Nathan, you will be leading discussion on the recently recovered
enemy of the world.
And sadly, still missing theory from the deep.
Richard, you will be covering the recently animated, Ice
Warriors.
Yes, animating a dead corpse.
Standby for more.
Oh, it's really good.
And the mostly recently recovered weather theatre.
Oh no, this is a good one.
Okay.
And I will be covering Tomb of the Sidemen.
The abominable snowmen and the wheel in space.
And the reason I get the tomb of the side men is because you 2
both have a full or almost full story and otherwise I wouldn't
have done and that's not bad.
Fair enough.
So, um, as Nathan has to rush off, we're just going to say a very
quick goodbye and thank you for listening.
Good night.
Goodbye and thank you.
You've been listening to quite your entirety with Nathan Bottomley
Brendan Jones, and Richard Shan.
This episode, Airwick Gapport, was recorded on Sunday, 12th of
October.
The next episode will be released on November 16th.
You can find us online at 52 Entirety.com, 52 entirety on Facebook
and iTunes and FTE podcast on Twitter.
I am a student of human nature, especially Mikey.
Wow.
That helps.