Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast, which has a wingspan of 50 feet and
blows fire from its nostrils.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Todd.
I'm James.
We're 5000000000 years in the future.
We've got canapes, cocktails, and several 1000000 gallons of
sunscreen, which means that we're ready to face the end of the
world.
So, James, apparently you're allowed on the podcast now.
Apparently.
Welcome James.
Yeah, welcome.
This is great.
This is the 1st and last time.
Yes, that's right. very, very well behaved.
You won't be back.
So let's talk about this because this is a crucial episode in the
history of Doctor Who because, oh my god, we've actually had some
news since the last episode aired.
And that being that the doctor's leaving?
Yeah. already.
I know.
It was heartbreaking at the time, don't you think?
I was really crushed by it because this is something we talked
about this last week about how incredibly excited we all were.
It's sort of makes you feel like, 0 my goodness, like change
already, or is it going to jeopardise the future of the show
really, you know, and we're only just getting an audience now.
Well, they stick with it if somebody's already leaving.
Yeah, I mean, I was questioning whether it would actually be back
off the 2nd series, if it couldn't keep, I mean, it just, it just
threw the entire sort of future of the show into kind of
question.
I mean, obviously that's not what happened.
And whatever people personally think of David Tennant, he made the
role his own and Yeah, became incredibly popular.
Had he been announced at this point?
No, I don't think so.
I think were there rumours?
Well, I think the smart money was on David Tennant because he'd
been in RTD's Casanova and he actually had been with Mark Gatas in
a live action version of the Quatermass experiment.
And I think that he knew about that then.
So I think he was kind of big and I don't think anyone was
particularly surprised when it was announced that it was going to
be him.
There's an in joke in the Quage Mass experiment remake, where I
think it's actually Geisha's character says, the doctor, I presume
or something along those lines.
Yeah.
So he'd found out, I think the day before it was made, because
it's filmed live. and and they slipped that line in there.
Right, right. interesting.
It's very good, actually.
It is well worth a look.
It's kind of amazing that they managed to do it.
And there was only one kind of line fluff in the entire sort of 90
minutes or however long it runs for.
Wow.
But of course, we've got Christopher here, and of course, this
starts off, you know, segueing straight away from the previous
episode, straight into this, and they're in the TARDIS. so
organic.
I just find it as a classic series fan, you know, all the pumping
of the Fiston thing and the turning of the stuff, like straight at
the beginning of this episode, it's so different from the classic
series who, like the way in which he's dealing with the TARD.
Yeah, well, the last 3 doctors apart from mum, that one fateful
night, one night in the 1990s, had a TARDIS console that was just
buttons essentially and had one lever.
And so running around.
I mean, they did do a little bit of running around and business
with the console.
But here you've got an incredibly physical console and a really
physical kind of working class doctor who's pumping things and
using all sorts of physical effort.
He's got that bong on the console that he turns around.
I never thought of it like that.
Oh, dear.
It's actually a really funny scene.
And we will come back to it later because they do think that it
does talk a little bit about Russell T. Davies' conception of the
future and the way that he uses the future in Doctor Who.
But let's talk about the role of this episode, because this
episode has an amazingly important job to do, which is to kind of
convince us that this show is a going concern and to kind of show
us what the show is capable of.
Yeah, it's so crucial.
I mean, I consider it to be Rose Part 2.
Because it just segues into it.
And in the 1st 15 minutes, it's very much Rose dealing with a lot
of new things and the audience dealing with it as well.
But as we'll see in our discussions, I think it then changes
throughout the episode and suddenly to the doctor's story and and
the audience getting little bits of information before a final
sort of scene where there is a payoff to that.
But yes, you're very right.
This, I mean, this sets the scene of what the tone of the show's
going to be like.
And straight away, I mean, we're out of the TARDIS onto this
platform.
And I'm absolutely amazed at the visual effects, like straight up
with the earth and the sun and the platform that could never have
been done in original who.
You know, they spent most of the budget of series one on that one
episode.
This episode.
Yes.
I'm not surprised.
Well, it has a massive number of effect shots, like a huge, huge
number.
Slightly over 200 special effect shots in that episode.
It was, we need to throw everything and the kitchen sink at this
to sell how Doctor Who is going to look now.
Uh, you know, this is Doctor Who.
This is not the creaky old cardboard set show that you saw when
you were a kid back in the 1970s.
This is big.
There's a very definite attempt to ground this season on Earth.
And a lot of fanboys, you know, complained that we never left
Earth this season and there weren't any alien planets.
We were all around Earth.
And I think Russell T. Davies was afraid of Doctor Who's
reputation as being a bunch of stuff that happens in space
corridors.
And so the 1st time that he goes to the future, he takes us to a
beautiful kind of, what's the location called?
Platform one.
No, but I mean, it's like a hotel in Cardiff or something.
It's temple.
Yeah, it's a temple and it's used over and over again.
You see it all the time in Doctor Who, even in the Moffatt era.
This location comes back.
But it is incredibly beautiful and, you know, impressive looking.
And because we've got to sell rose's kind of dislocation about
being in the future, it throws just heaps and heaps of ridiculous
aliens at us.
And they're not just men in suits, although there's plenty of men
in suits, but there's, you know, the face of Bo, who's in a giant
big tank, and then you've got Jimmy V as the mocks of Balhoon, and
they're all sort of strange, odd looking aliens.
And when they're introduced, none of them are like Sontarans or
Cybermen.
Like they're not from a particular alien race.
They're from financial family 7 or, you know, from a company or a
family or a forest.
You know, they're they're not just sort of generic alien races
from the planet Zog.
They're strange and sort of incomprehensible, even, I think, to
people who've watched Doctor Who before.
It does your head in.
It really does.
I sit there going, what does that actually mean?
But at the same time, I'm sort of laughing at the names that have
been thrown at me, like they bring a smile to my face.
Yeah.
I think it is really quite significant that the steward is the 1st
alien that we actually see as classic series fans since 1989.
Last week we had the nesting consciousness with the plastic autons
but the classic series fans, that's something that we know.
And they're not characters.
They't speak or anything.
No, that's right.
Whereas here, he is the 1st real alien.
And then Rose is suddenly confronted with this litany of different
looking aliens.
Yeah, and the audience is having to deal with this as well.
I think it's a wonderful scene.
It's comedic, but at the same time, you also have Christopher or
the doctor being introduced to these, these aliens and how he
interacts and Rose is watching that and you're what.
I mean, when I was rewatching this, I'm watching her reactions to
him and his reactions to her, it's quite, it's very cleverly
written, and also to intimacy that the doctor has with Jade or the
intimacy that she shows back, and seeing Rose's reaction to that.
So Jabe says she's from, um, she's descended from the planet below
and she's a direct descendant of the tropical rainforest.
She's a village in South London.
Yeah, it's a real place.
It's not a sort of crazy planet.
Yeah, until I lived in London, I had no idea.
It was just like, oh, that's a funny sounding name.
But no, it's literally she's from South London.
It's trerendous.
And, you know, she's one of many races that have evolved on the
surface of the planet.
And you've got to think that that's a reference to the Silurians
which are, you know, yet another race that evolved on earth.
So humans, Silurians, trees, all of them reached sentience and
then sort of developed spaceships and, you know, headed off
world.
Even those bird head creatures that appear, what's her name?
Mrs. what is it?
Mr. Mrs. Pacoo, is that there?
I really think it's very clever, the way the way that whole scene
is set up and then, you know, then Rose does have a moment and she
has to leave the situation.
And that's really well told using something that we've never
actually seen in Doctor Who before, which is the use of tainted
love, which whose lyrics actually tell us what Rose is feeling, and
she has to get away.
You know, she is overwhelmed by sort of culture shock.
In a way that we probably are as well, the way you were talking
about your reaction to all these aliens, Todd.
I mean, they're sort of funny, but they're incomprehensible and
they're nothing that we've ever seen before.
And that means that we're experiencing a kind of disorientation
the same way that rose is.
You are very overwhelmed by lots of things and things have been
thrown at you.
Like, we've already had at this point, the introduction of psychic
paper.
And it's a very subtle introduction.
It's something that as a classic series fan, you kind of go, well
how are they going to do these 45 minute episodes, because in the
original series, the doctor turns up, gets accused of something
it's put in jail, a cell, a dungeon, and then has to spend time
breaking out and proving himself.
The middle part of the 4 parter.
Or even the 1st episode, James.
Whereas here it's like, okay, we've got our in.
We can get into the story and we can be whoever we need to be
which I think is just brilliant and it's just done quickly.
It's over with, but I'm processing that going, oh, oh, oh.
And then when Rose leaves that scene, Jade scans the doctor.
And she's looking at her little device going, this is impossible.
As a classic series of stands, I'm going, well, I know why it's
impossible because you're a timelord, but do new series fans
really, do you pick up on what's on that little scanner and what's
going on?
It's just this, it just seems, it seems, well, there's something
about the doctor, you know?
And then we have a little break.
Where we're trying to process all this stuff, but it sort of just
it goes from being really rushed to rose talking to Raffello.
Is that...
And wasn't that scene added later or am I...
The Rafallo scene was was a late edition to the script because it
was underrunning, yes.
But it's so crucial because it just gives us time to process.
Rose is talking to a real person in this environment, finding out
that this real person does real things.
Yeah, she's a plumber.
We still have plumbers in the future.
That's right.
And I just really love that connection.
Of course, it's the kiss of death because in the last episode
Clive only interacted with Rose, not the doctor, and he got killed
off.
And here again, this character only interacts with Rose and, well
she's gone, you know, moments later.
Gee, I'm really worried about Gwyneth next week.
But she does get to interact with the doctor, but it's sort of
it's setting a precedence.
But those characters die so pointlessly as well.
You know, they just die off screen.
But of like, from the point of view of the lead characters.
They die without any lodge of that.
I think that that is a really great economical scene that sells
the threat really early.
Like, we don't really know what happens to Rafallo.
But she's very funny and very sweet and very human and super
likeable.
And it's interesting that they cast a woman to play that part.
I think that's really good.
But it does what Doctor Who does.
You know, it's what Clive said in the 1st episode, like death and
destruction follows him and that is a feature of Doctor Who.
And it's reinforcing that to the new audience, you know, that, as
you said, death and destruction do follow the doctor even when
he's not around.
It influences what events are taking place.
And that builds and builds over the next 9 seasons.
And and sort of reaches its apotheosis that last year's Christmas
special.
The doctor being in someone's life is, is, is kind of a death
sentence. is the way Moffatt tends to have sort of aimed
towards...
Yeah, I think Moffatt...
You know, Russell does interrogate that a little bit later on in
his in his run, but I do think that that is something that Moffatt
really kind of plays with.
And, you know, I think we also do need the alternative story which
does happen, which is that the doctor is called the doctor because
he makes people's lives better.
Which is what they're reaching for.
But but they're doing it by going, oh, well, look at all this
death and destruction, but he, you know, he's trying.
Yeah.
But we then get another scene, which I just think is so crucial.
And that is the doctor and rose.
Having an art, well, she is, you know, questioning why, who are
you?
Why am I here?
What's going on?
They have one of their arguments, and I think they have
disagreement, I should say.
And they have it in this episode and they have it in the next
episode as well, where they they argue about something.
It's really interesting to see their dynamic working through that
process.
But it's so, it's so interesting to me here again.
Rose is making it all about her.
She wants to know about the doctor.
She wants to know what's going on her feelings.
The doctor is not ready to give her certain information at this
point.
He can only go so far, but, you know, he has to connect her with
Jackie.
You know, he's we're getting fed a bit of information.
Again very cleverly.
It's explained how everybody speaks English.
Another thing that's not really dealt in the classic series except
for once with Sarah.
But I never thought of it like it invades your head and is not
given permission.
Like, it's, again, a very clever thing from Russell, it really
questions for those of us who are original series fans, how
preconceptions or what we believe to be the show.
So it's like a really, it makes a really interesting point about
consent.
Yeah.
And and whether Rose is a character really consented to what like
is happening to her life.
She's jumped into it without all of the, all of the information
that she necessarily needs.
Yeah, well, I mean, that's what that whole thing is about, isn't
it?
Like it's, she even says to Raffallo that she didn't know what
she's doing.
She's jumped into this thing with a stranger, she doesn't know who
he is.
And there's a sense in which she goes on the attack.
Like when she tells the doctor, like demands to know where he's
from, and he sort of accuses her in some ways of being racist, you
know, the deep south line.
But that aggressively asking someone what their background is, is
kind of impolite in a sort of normal human context.
Especially if you're British.
Yeah, yeah.
And so, and so, um, she backs off and they do repair it, but they
repair it in a nice subtle way, and it is what you said, Todd
where he fixes her phone so that she can speak to Jackie.
Did you notice that that that's actually a flashback that she's
ringing Jackie before Hendrix explodes?
Yes, I will say that because I was watching it going, like, is
this even Jackie's flat with those trees outside and I'm going
like, is this set before the events of Rose because, you know, in
a couple of episodes time, like she's never gone back after the
events of Rose.
Like, so it must be before that.
So I was trying to place that. like I...
Well, I think that Jackie actually says that she wants Rose to put
some money into the lottery syndicate, which is run by Wilson
which is, you know, the very, very 1st time that we see Rose last
episode.
So I think it is explicitly like the Wednesday before or something
like that.
I've got a big spot on my face.
That's fantastic.
I hadn't really picked that up.
And it's just a clever sort of subtle little throwaway that you
just, unless you're really listening to the lies, you don't get.
But it doesn't matter if you don't get it.
But it's also to the fact that we're speaking to one of the semi
regulars as well.
We haven't quit completely detached from the earth that we know.
So it's also sending out this signal that those characters can
still be at least Jackie or whatever can be involved in a small
way, but not just in space away from the earth that we know.
I do find it intriguing that this is one episode where there's not
a significant other than the doctor male in the cast.
If you look at this season, next week we're going to have Simon
Callow as Charles Dickens.
Thank you.
Then we've got a two-parter where Mickey is back.
Then we've got the companion that ever was in 2 episodes.
Then we've got Rose's dad, and then we've got Captain Jack or
Mickey for the rest of the season.
Right.
So this is the one episode where we don't have another supporting
male character.
Yeah, we've got the steward, but they kill him quite quickly and
he's more of a comedy performance than an actual character.
And I think that's important because we've got to start focussing
on the doctor.
And that scene, going back to that scene with Rose and the
doctor.
There are questions there, and you want those questions answered
but we, like Rose, have not earned the right to those answers as
yet.
And that will suddenly, you know, play out throughout the
episode.
The doctor's relationship with Jade. is beautiful.
Yeah.
She's terrific.
Has she been back?
Yasmin Bannerman, who plays Dana in the big finish audios.
Is that right Oh, and she is fantastic as Dana in Blake 7.
I don't I don't know if she's been back to Doctor Who?
No, not in the TV series.
Big finish has just brought her back as James's...
Clone...
Sapling?
I'm surprised there isn't a Jab box set, actually.
In their new spinoff series, New Earth.
Oh, Tales from New Earth.
But I'm surprised that those trees have not been back to Doctor
Who.
We've had trees in that, what's that horrible Christmas special?
The Andrazani one.
The Doctor the Widow and the Wardrobe.
Yeah, in the forest of the night.
And then we've had tree character in that wood episode with
Capaldi and Pearl Mackie, you know, yeah, that's terrible.
Knock knock.
But she's such a great character.
They have some wonderful moments and she's so intimate with the
doctor.
Like, just her concern over him, like, and you know there's more
there when she puts her hand on his arm.
And the tears that Christopher Eccleston gives in his eyes, like
at that moment when she talks about his race or being the last of
his kind.
I can't remember the exact words, but I'm just thinking, 0 my
goodness.
I still tear up in that scene, even watching it in preparation for
this.
And I remember at the time thinking that that's a difference
between the new series and the classic series...
Is that the 1st time we've ever actually seen the character cry?
The doctor.
Possibly, yeah.
It's certainly the 1st time he has the same kind of interiority as
another...
Yeah, it's a real human and it is really, really good.
And it also shows that the doctor is hiding this the whole time.
And we saw that in the fight with Rose, where he just says, all
that matters is the hero now, and that's me.
And Jabe says, you know, maybe someone seeks excitement or danger
or something when that's all he has left.
Yeah, and the tears thing, he instantly pulls himself together and
gets on with the adventure, which just we see the mask go back on
almost immediately.
That character, just the way she connects with the doctor, the
intimacy of it.
And he doesn't, in their initial meeting, he doesn't, he sort of
flirts with it, but he doesn't realise he's doing it.
But she trusts him and ultimately she makes the ultimate
sacrifice.
That sequence where she burns in the background as he's trying to
save the platform is just for me anyway, heartbreaking that she
you know, and it's the music.
So, music is now playing such a huge part of this selling the
emotion of what's going on.
It's modern television.
Yeah, there were a lot of people who complained about it, you know
who said, oh, well, here's Murray telling us how to feel and how
to be a motive.
But that's what music is for.
That's a common complaint of all grumpy old men who watch
television these days is that you're telling me how to feel
constantly.
But I mean, that's what that's what drama is supposed to do.
We could go back to Aristotle for that.
You know, we meant to feel in a particular way, and we now have a
massive orchestra and a talented composer, and that's a cinematic
technique as well.
I mean, that's one of the reasons why we continue to love Star
Wars, even after it's had so many misses, is that the music is
always so great.
I actually found that the mix on the Blu-rays was kind of
strange.
The mix on the 1st few seasons of Doctor Who is strange, right?
Like, you know, like there was like music.
Yes, we've got a great composer, music, music, music, music, music
and then they don't get it right in the mix.
I thought that at the time when I was watching, I was just like, oh
this is jarring.
Like, I mean, I love Marigold's music. for Doctor Who, but it, in
those 1st few seasons, it just drowns the production.
There are whole swathes of rose where you're looking at the scene
and you're going, what are they saying?
I can't hear them.
You don't think it's just that we were all quite old?
By the time you watched it.
Wow.
Oh, you weren't.
No, you weren't.
Oh, no, what?
Like dear Brendan, listeners.
James is a decade younger than the rest of us, at least.
Yeah, but having a talent composer, Russell is still willing to go
with modern music, and I put that in quotes, like the iPod will
play toxic by Britney Spears, that classic ballad.
Like any, I love the fact that it's, it's a modern music track for
the time, but he plays with the humour of it.
Like, they get it wrong.
Well, in fact, Cassandra quotes burn baby burn as well.
So this is a future, 5000000000 years into the future.
The only earth music that survives is disco and you've got to
think that's that's a pretty impressive conception of the future.
And in fact, I love the conception of the future here because like
there's new numbers that have been invented, you know, Apple and
Cup are now numbers.
And I think that stuff is really funny and it draws from
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I think.
And it also plays with the idea.
I think it kind of sells the idea that the future in Doctor Who
has always been slightly ridiculous and it kind of leans into that
and lampshades that.
And Doctor Who was sort of always a cheesy program where people in
rubber monster suits would stand around in corridors talking to
one another.
And Russell knows that that's how people or just, you know, the
ordinary TV viewer has conceived it.
And he leans into it.
And I think it's really successful.
This is a massively, massively successful season of television.
And I think it knows how to talk to a general audience in a way
that the show really hadn't for, you know, quite a considerable
amount of time.
It does it with humour. with throwaway lines that aren't crucial
to the plot, so you can pick and choose what you get out of it.
But for the casual view it, you can still follow what's going on
after something's thrown at you.
I love the fact that Raffello is from, not even from a planet.
It's from some other thing and I'm going, what the hell does that
mean?
You've just blown my mind.
You've blown my mind.
Like everybody has to come from a planet.
No, I just come from...
The jacket brocade.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. whatever that might happen to me.
It's elusive affiliation around Scarlet Junction.
Well, there's the silver devastation gets its 1st name call here
too.
No one seems to be from our planet.
And I think that that's a really good thing because it puts the
old fans and the new fans, you know, in the same footing with
respect to what the universe is like.
And I think too, there's a very deliberate attempt to move out of
Doctor Who continuity by setting the future stories vastly, vastly
further in the future than we've ever been before except maybe the
Ark.
And even the arc is clever enough to, you know, not have a year.
It's set in the 57th segment of time and, you know.
So it clears all of that stuff.
We can still have our space war between the Earth Empire and the
Draconians and that gets left untouched.
Isn't the 57th segment of time when the Earth originally burnt
up.
No, we're never speaking of that again.
You make a really good point there.
It means that we're all on the same page.
Old fans and new fans.
And Russell's redrafting what it means to be Doctor Who rewriting
not rewriting.
He's telling us this is what the show is now, and we have to be on
the same page, moving forward.
We get lots of the Tanoi voice.
I love that voice.
Whoever does that voice, you know, earth filter descending and
there's little throwaway things outside when we see the visuals as
well, that we forbid the use of teleportation and weapons and
religion on platform one.
We get another throwaway line by the mocks of Belhoon, about the
this is a bad wolf scenario.
This is a bad scenario.
I don't think that's going to be important in any ways.
We don't watch all.
Do you know what that tanoi voice reminds me of?
What?
Earth shuffle arriving.
Yes, from the leisure hive.
Yes, yes, very true.
I mean, it's obviously it's nowhere near as iconic.
But it has the same sort of Tom, bro.
Yeah, the same feel to it.
Yeah, totally agree. totally agree.
So there is one other thing that Russell does to put us old fans
on the same footing as the new fans, and that is the mystery of
the doctor, which is finally revealed.
And I think that you talked earlier, Todd, about how both Rose and
the audience needed to earn that revelation about who the doctor
is.
And I think that the way that Rose earns it is, because their 1st
date, the doctor takes Rose to the future so that she can see her
planet burning.
And so when she reacts to that and she reacts to that with sadness
because the world ended and they were caught up in this stupid
capture and escape and pressing buttons plot, and no one was
paying attention to the world, and she has a little moment of kind
of mourning for something that's passed.
And that's the moment where he says what happened to him, and
neither the new fans nor the old fans knew that during the time
when the show was off the air, that the doctor's home planet was
destroyed, and that he's the last of his kind.
And that revelation gives the doctor a kind of more epic
backstory.
And, uh, it obviously sweeps away all those sofas that were
scattered around Galifre and gets rid of.
Yeah, yeah.
Like gets rid of Gallifrey, which is terrible and, you know, I
hope never ever comes back.
But it also gives the doctor this sort of, you know, tragic
scale.
And I think it's so well done.
It's so cleverly seated.
We had references to the last great time war in the last episode.
And we'll learn more about the time war as things go on.
But I remember watching the series for the 1st time and being
intrigued, like wondering what the time war was.
And, of course, being terribly grateful that Russell had got rid
of Gallifrey.
And it's, you know, Jade even calls, like even says, stop wasting
time, time lord.
So again, we had the word time lord last week.
We've got it again, but Rose hasn't necessarily heard it properly
until the end of this episode.
But yes, it's great.
Getting rid of Gallifrey and giving him a backstory that we're
intrigued about what has happened.
It just gives him emotional depth and there's a pain behind
everything.
And when Jada dies.
He gets really angry, you know?
Christopher just turns on a dime to deal with the character.
We have not talked about yet, which is Cassandra, O'Brien.belta
17.
He was once a little boy, which is another amazing line that at
the time I kind of, what?
And he just gets thrown away.
Do you know, this is my most favourite thing and it's slightly
spoiled by new earth, but my favourite thing about the conception
of Cassandra. is that when we 1st see her, the camera goes around
so that we can see how flat she is, and then on her backside, just
immediately behind her mouth, there's a hole, and I am absolutely
certain that that's her asshole, yeah.
Because, you know, basically human beings are a sort of giant tube
with an elementary canal sort of starting at the mouth and ending
at the other end.
If you remove the middle, that's all you have left.
So this is the 1st character whose bum hole has actually appeared
on screen.
She's literally mooning the audio.
I'm just going to go past that for a moment. as we grapple with
that.
You're welcome to ignore that completely now, Todd.
It's a wonderful performance by Zoe.
And it's also an amazing piece of special effect.
Yeah.
But the doctor at the end lets her die.
He brings her back and because of that, his actions actually kill
her. and every's in action.
Oh, he brings her back.
Yeah, but he doesn't help her.
He doesn't help her.
Like, he doesn't help her.
And then he says everything has its time and everything dies.
He knows that he's sentenced her to death.
So it sets up the sort of person that he actually is.
He is dangerous, you know?
You push him too far and he will get to a point where, you know, I
take no prisoners.
Like, you know, there are consequences for your actions.
And he's just got this gravitas about him, which I don't think any
doctors had.
I think Capaldi's got it.
I don't know whether his success has quite got there.
Yeah, yeah.
I think the idea that the doctor's performance is a mask is
something that tenant does in silence of the library or the sequel
to it, where River tells him his name, and he's really shaken by
that, and then he's instantly back to being doctor-ish.
And I think that's a great, great conception of the character
because you've got doctors who are, you know, charismatic in the
way that Tom Baker is charismatic or Colin is charismatic, but
neither of them have much interiority.
Do you know what I mean?
There's not much idea that there's something behind that or under
it.
And it's not something that you get very much in the classic
series at all.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I'm not I'm not dissing the classic series at all.
But I do think that this was a much more interesting direction to
take it rather than having a sort of happy wisecracking hero who's
just travelling through the universe for fun.
The idea that the doctor's travelling through the universe to
escape something, which still allows him to have fun still allows
him to be charismatic and funny, but allows him also to be just a
bit more complicated and interesting.
You push those triggers.
And that hurt and that pain and that anger come bubbling to the
surface.
Something Christopher does really, really well.
I often think that this episode is overlooked.
I think people often talk about Dalek or Father's Day or the empty
child.
We remember Cassandra.
We should remember this story.
Yeah.
And it's just so important, along with Rose, as this handle at the
beginning of the season, sort of mirrors the end of the season
we're on, we're now on platform one, platform's going to come
back.
Bad Wolf is introduced.
We've got psychic paper, TARDIS, Last of the Time Lords, time all
of this stuff you set up.
And from here on, it's just little bits seeding us through the
rest of the season.
Well, I mean, you are someone who has said over and over again
that the TV movie doesn't work because it introduces all of those
things in the 1st 30 seconds.
Whereas here, there's a lot of backstory that's introduced here
but they keep the rest of the plot fairly light.
You know, it's a sort of whodunit plot and doesn't really have all
that much going for it.
But it does allow us time to get to know both rows and the
doctrine to learn more about what this new show is going to be.
I have to say, there are 2 things that I really love in this.
Those stupid fans that are just impossible, right?
always reminds me of Sigourney Weaver in Galaxy Quest, when she's
going, what are these chomping, chompy, chompy things that we have
to go through, the writers just don't know, you know, they're just
hackneyed writers, and the fact that all these fans are speeding
up and the doctor has to go through them.
It's an impossible thing to get to the switch that he has to
pull.
I just love that, like, Russell sort of sending up that whole
genre. does lampshade it, doesn't it?
The doctor kind of goes, oh, yes, you know, of course that's where
they would be. 42 is, I think, the worst new series story for
inconveniently placed controls.
But this...
But it does it with humour.
And the other thing is I love the spiders.
When they hit the camera in the ventilation duct, which I think is
a nod back to the 1965 classic, the web planet, when one giant ant
hits the camera and the camera moves out of place and then goes
back to the shot.
I think it's a nod to classic series.
I don't know if it is or not.
Yeah, it was.
It was actively, it was like they said that at the time.
Like, I think, does Russell say it in the righteous tale or in a
commentary, he says, no, that was a reference to the web planet.
That was specifically that...
In fact, the web planet gets repeatedly referenced in this season
and it's worth mentioning that the face of Bo is the oldest
inhabitant of the ISOP galaxy, and we'll have venom grubs coming
back in Boomtown.
Like, I think.
And I think, uh, let's take a drink, dear listener, Elizabeth
Sandefer, um, mentions that this story actually has something in
common with the web planet in that it is an incredible weird
spectacle that's designed to be like nothing else on television
and it does that right up front.
It goes all out to say, this is what we can do.
You know, we've done the housing estate and the local shopping
centre and running down Westminster Bridge, but we can be much
much weirder than that if we want to.
And I think it's a really ballsy, really brave 2nd episode and
absolutely the right thing to do.
What I love about this story is that, I mean, we've talked about
the way that it shows what Doctor Who can be now.
It also tells what Doctor Who can be now.
Like the the concepts and the just the the seemingly throwaway
lines, the the great line about continental drift, sorry.
Um, and, you know, but the continents move.
I saw it on news round extra.
And then the doctor says, well, that's classic earth, the national
trust, put it, put it back together.
And, and, and, there's so much imagination there is showing the
imagination that this show can have in a way that it probably
hasn't ever done before.
Yeah.
Even in the classic series.
And I think it's really important because I think a lot of people
would have come into Doctor Who thinking that it's a science
fiction program, and especially the American audience, I think
would have a preconception of what science fiction shows should be
like.
And this is really just saying, well, this is Doctor Who.
And like, let's blow your mind.
And if we've blown your mind and you're going, oh my goodness, it's
so different, then join us for this journey.
Well, then, this nomads, all we've got time for this week.
We're off to eat our own body weighting chips before our first
excursion into the world of BBC period drama.
Do come back next week for the unquiet dead.
In the meantime, you can find us at FlightthroughEntirety.com
flights through entirety on Facebook and Apple Podcasts and at FTE
podcast on Twitter.
Over on Bondfinger, you can find commentary podcasts on every era
of the James Bond series.
That's bondfinger.com, bondfinger on Facebook and iTunes and at
bondfingercast on Twitter.
Until next time, listeners are reminded that Flight through
Entirety is a maximum hospitality zone.
Please keep any lianas or heartbreaking personal backstories
concealed at all times.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
See you soon.
Good night.
That was Flight through Entirety, starring Todd Bilby, Nathan
Bottomley, and James Selwood, theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb
strings performance by Jane Alberg.
This episode, literally mooning the audience, was recorded on the
11th of June 2018 and released on the 2nd of September.
Fans of James's appearance on this podcast will also enjoy his
turn as the mastering episode 112 and his upcoming sitcom in which
he plays a former Doctor Who club president with a dark secret and
a heart of gold.
I'm not picking that up.
Good, fine.
Or you should maybe stop.
So, I don't know.
Just go around the house smashing all the clock.
Yeah, we should.
Yeah, I think if we delay pressing the fast return switch for long
enough, they'll all just meld.
It's 10 o'clock.
It's gonna be 10 chimes.
It's 9.55.
They're all set to go off a different time. hilariously.
That must be joyous.
So it's sort of like, is that a, is that a sort of analogue
version of searching the, searching your, um, your liability?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, God.
Bong.
Okay, okay.
But let's talk about the role of this.