Men in Massive Suits

Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety the only Doctor Who podcast with absolutely no idea who Harriet Jones is. I'm Nathan. I'm James. And I'm Max. Well, we're finally back on Earth after a 12 hour jaunt through time and space, and everything seems to be completely normal. The city is gridlocked. Big Ben doesn't work anymore, and the government is run by fat flatulent aliens. Is it real life or is it just aliens of London? So, uh, Max, can you talk to us a little bit about when you first saw this episode? I can. This episode was the first episode I saw, and I, as a kid, as I saw, I was 7 years old, and I, I'll just, I'll drop that in there. And then, no, but I was 7 years old and I, um, I saw the trailer on ABC, and it's had the spaceship hitting Big Ben moment. That was about the most exciting thing a seven-year-old could possibly say, or at least it was like a dream. It was fantastic. And I think my parents were worried that it was going to be too scary for me. So they taped episodes and then I sort of didn't, and I just was, I think I was only interested in seeing the carnage of Big Ben at that point. I wasn't really interested in anything else. So then I finally sat down and watched the episode and it hooked me from the moment from that scene where there roses on the rooftop and she's talking about like the things I've seen and no one's seen them and then the lorry sound and the spaceship flies over. And I think my dad was saying that he saw in that moment, he thought, well, he's not interested in cricket or football, but at least he's got Doctor Who. And that was it. And that I was hook clone and sinker. That was me. Yeah. And so that was the 1st doctor who you'd ever see. Yeah, yeah, pretty well. I think I'd seen the classic reruns before the new series came back Yeah. Yeah. Because I have a vague memory of Sylvester McCoy crouching in a quarry, but I don't know. That's sort of that's a vague. Maybe it was could be anything. Could be anything. But no, but that was in earnest, that was the 1st time. Time of the rhyming? Well, it could have been, but it could have been any of those, Alan Waring ones on location. Yeah. Yeah, but effectively, yes. And then it became like sort of playground, like, in my imagination, every kid was watching Doctor Who and pretending to be Doctor Who at lunchtime from that point on, probably wasn't the case, but from that point on, all of our year one class or whatever, reenacting Doctor Who all week. That's such a great thing to hear because I think there is very definitely a sort of conscious effort from RTD to make Doctor Who something that gets reenacted in the playground. Yeah, when I when I watched it again. The sort of zip in the forehead moment. I realise it's just perfectly distilled kind of playground fodder. I remember hearing him interview where he talks about how he loved the idea of like slightly chubbier children being able to just sort of menacingly, like start to unzip their foreheads and everyone would scream and run away. I think RTD probably does have a little bit of an issue with ways. And not always in a good way, but it might be something that we get back to. But I think, you know, in the ones that we've done already this year, I think things like the bin, I don't know if we said that in the rose episode, but I like to imagine kids. Oh, you know, dodging bins as they walk down the street just so that they don't suffer Mickey's fate, um, and giving the aliens catchphrases like pity the Gelf and stuff like that. I mean, it was just perfect for the playground. Or even just the way the doctor's given a normal key. Yeah. As, you know, in this early 70s, they had that gorgeous spade design, that per wind baker had, which they brought back in the TV movie. But giving, giving the doctor, you know, a household key. Yeah, for the TARDIS means that any key can be a TARDIS key. Any door can be an opening to adventure. Yeah. You know, like he's he's very evidently going, this is a family show. I want kids to, you know, have the same experience I had growing up watching this where, yeah, the whole world was this adventure. Yeah, I think that's it. I think I've said before, he kind of enchants the world. You know, like he imbues it with things, so that a kid looking out the window as they drive along in London and seeing Big Ben thinks about the ship crashing into it or even sort of seeing a London bus or driving down Westminster Bridge or the London eye, you know like all of those things. Oh, or a yeti on the loop. Precise. Tooting Beck's not a real place, James. Yes, it is. So we're talking about family. And of course, the episode opens, the cold open, doesn't do what a Doctor Who story normally does, which is show you the monsters or show you the threat. The role of a cold open is to tell you what the episode's about. And the cold open is entirely about Rose's family. So the doctor brings Rose back. She thinks she's been gone for 12 hours, but the doctors made a mistake. And it's a kind of hilarious mistake that we're used to the doctor making, but we suddenly see that it has this massive impact on Rose's family. She actually has a real life. Yeah. She's a real person. And it's even with the, I think the doctor's going up to that missing poster. And even like Marigold's music is kind of just like really sort of pleasantly and then it just sort of goes sour and there's like this really like huge cheesy stick that just starts to, and as these sort of face drops and horror. fantastic. I think it's such a good as the music tells you how to feel. It tells you exactly how to feel. I like Jackie's reaction because she has been such a sort of hilarious, oblivious comedy character and just the look on her face, like she's seen a ghost and she drops the thing. and it is all intercart with the discovery of the missing poster. and I think Rose looks across a table and there's heaps of missing posters and it's clear that Jackie's entire year has been about Rose being missing. And I think I was, I was reading sad for sentry on this, and she talks about the idea that there is concurrently with Doctor Who, a kind of EastEnders style soap going on, and that the 2 of them are crashing into each other, and every 3 weeks we come back to Rose's family in season one, and there are clearly episodes of the soap going on while we've been enjoying the end of the world and the unquiet dead. Like, yeah, you get Mickey and Jackie's life is just is happening while we're away. Like, even in Mickey's terrible apartment, you know, like that sort of like, like, there's the stop sign on the wall. But there's all his UFO books and you get the sense he's just been like, it's just built into the world of the show that, oh, you know sort of what he's been. And I love the detail that like Jackie just assumed that he'd murdered him. It's just sort of simmering away underneath it. But it's sort of, it's, it's a really, it's kind of terrifyingly dark thing that's just sort of thrown by the wayside. Yeah. Yeah, there's it's played for laughs, in fact, when Rose asks him later if he's been with anyone in the last 12 months and he says no, but mostly because everyone thinks I murdered you. And, you know, the idea of a black man being called in by the police for the murder of a white woman. Like, the show is kind of too light to deal with that really properly. But I do think there is a pretty good bit in the middle where the doctor and Rose step out of the TARDIS with Mickey and there's a helicopter and they're going to be escorted to number 10 and the moment that Mickey sees these soldiers, he knows that he has to run, you know, like he doesn't have the kind of charmed life that the doctor and Rose have. Exactly. Like, I mean, and that's really subtle. And like, on 1st viewing, when you're much younger, you don't realise the coding there. Yeah. I mean, I was 24 when I 1st got this. And I didn't even get that coding. Um, I like what you say about it being an EastEnder style. Soap going on in the background, I much prefer this to the last time Doctor Who didn't, he send his cell soap. We'll put that in the show. What it reminds me of, and I think I've said this before, is that it's like the Pertwee ear is sort of small semi-regular cast, and particularly after kind of season eight, they do become sort of very semi-regular, but they're always there and we go back to them and it's nice to see them again and they're there for season finales and stuff like that. But they're sort of a ridiculous TV army. And having them instead being a ridiculous TV sort of soap opera family, particularly at a time where Doctor Who doesn't know if it's going to be popular, it doesn't know whether it's got an audience. And I think pitching it at just normal people and having normal TV depictions of normal people. I mean, I don't think Jackie's a normal person, but she's a TV mum. And the soap opera is so engrained in British culture by this point. Yeah, yeah. much more so than for us, I think. Yeah, and much more so than it. I mean, soaps were very popular back in the 60s and 70s as well but not in the same way they are in modern Britain now. I mean, I think both EastEnders and Coronation Street are some of the highest rated programs on television, like soap is still, most British drama. And, you know, soap and science fiction have a lot in common, I think, and there's a scene in queer as folk. And I think, again, I probably have to credit Dr. Sand for this again. But there's a scene in Quira's folk where Vince goes to a straight pub with people from work and he meets a girl and they bond over Coronation Street and talk about how Doctor Who was put up against Corey in the 80s and ended up suffering in the ratings. And most people would have assumed that the audiences for the 2 shows were quite different, but of course they weren't. And soap creates a involved world where there are a lot of things to know about a lot of different characters. And science fiction does exactly that, particularly in the 80s as well, Doctor Who's completely doing that. So I think they're a natural fit. But I do think it was met with a bit of hostility from Doctor Who fans. Yeah, and I'd be interested to see with season 11 coming up whether that's the same approach that is used because I think as an exercise in grounding the show and making it much more open to families and to anyone. Yeah. Like, it's proved an incredibly worthwhile tactic, like, since the 70s, you know, for doctors. So I'm interested to see whether that's an approach that Chris Chibnell takes as well. Because in a way, it is sort of, I think, coming from the same place and that they want this show to appeal to the most amount of people possible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think just having a regular cast of 2 is problematic even just from a TV production point of view. It looks, I mean, and this is probably certainly fan rumour. But it looks like series 11 is probably hitting down more of a like, you know, police procedural crime drama. You know, probably season 11 will all have been screened by the time I managed to get this. Well, it's supposed to be out in October. Yeah, yeah. Yes, it came out in October. So we take a little bit of time away from the Tyler family to just go upstairs and have a breather while mum's downstairs having a little bit of a panic. And so the doctor and Rose get to have this conversation where they talk about, you know, kind of the story so far. That's a great scene, but there are bits of it that aren't land, in my opinion, especially coming from a gay writer. chucking in, you know, and look, we all grew up with this, you know, with the word gay being an insult in the playground. And the fact that Russell chucks in, oh, you're so gay. And what is it? It's in response to the doctor saying that it hurt when Jackie hit him. And yeah, look, I mean, yeah, yes. But we should be expecting better from a gay writer. If you were writing it now, I don't think you would do it, you know, obviously. But I think, yeah, it's interesting. It is an interesting choice. Like he said in defence of that scene at the time, you know, I wanted to put that in there because I am a gay writer and I wanted to make people stop and think and go, oh, if a gay writer is writing this. Is it okay? Is it okay? It's not the 1st use of the word game. Because it gets used in rose. Remember, you know, that won't work. He's gay and she's an alien. Yeah, but that's a different sort of thing. I mean, that's not being used as an insult. And the sort of general ask with Slaven talks about his previous host, having a wife, a mistress, and a young farmer. Again, again, that's normalising. Yeah, yeah. That's normalising being gay or at least... sort of representing it itself. Yeah, representing in some way. Look, yes, you can read it that way. is that Russell coming up with a reason for using something which he possibly should have questioned. Or, I mean, I don't have a problem with that scene if the doctor calls her out on it. Or somebody... I just think it's too it's complex and distracting. And that's a scene where the focus is on that incredible rose tireless smugness about knowing something that no one in the whole world knows and then suddenly getting the rug pulled out from under. Yeah, and then I think the lorry sound as the spaceship comes over is just an incredible masterstroke. Because you hear it before you see it. Yeah. And so you're not quite sure what's happening and then just this massive spaceship. I just think as a sort of trailer moment and as a scene, I think it's fantastic. So Doctor Who's had alien invasions before, but I think that this is vastly different from anyone that we've ever seen in that it's the most public alien invasion ever. Well, we're talking about the Saigon gambit with the Loch Ness monster or the yetis in the underground. Yeah, I guess they have been public in the past, haven't they? We've evacuated London twice. Or the invasion of the dinosaur. I think what makes it feel particularly new obviously is looking at it through the prism of the media. The scene where the flicking through the channels and the doctors just in this sort of, it's just forced to be in this in, like everyone's just bickering about, you know, like, I think Jackie's talking about like an old relationship or or like something like he characterises it as some talking about where you can get cheap top-up cards. Yeah, yeah. And I love, but then like seeing the spaceship in Blue Peter. And then seeing, obviously, like the US media, like as the episodes go on, as it becomes sort of more, a more sort of global UN getting drawn into it. And it becomes such a staple of the Russell T. Davis era. Yeah, even the US newsreader has a name and has a character and Trinity Wells. Wells. And I remember in the writer's tale, he talks about wanting to bring her in a sort of fantastic cameo appearance in the stolen earth where she has to be your badass and kind of, I think, but I just, I love that there's this extended world and it's pretty quickly drawn and it's sort of quite surface, but I like having actual BBC anchors. Yeah, like Andrew Marr. Andrew Mar talking about and he's fantastic. Yeah, like he's just such such a natural kind of... And he's just in it a lot and he's giving this little sarcastic snipes throughout the entire episode. He just takes it up slightly one level sort of bigger than reality. Yeah, yeah. yeah exactly. And it's, and I love, and I just think seeing an alien invasion through contemporary 24 hour news is something that feels incredibly fresh for the program. And if you're thinking about likes of the capolia, they kind of jettison it because it became such a staple and a tribe of the of the Russell T. Davis era, but I think it's it feels fantastically fresh in these 2 episodes, I think. They basically jettison it from, yeah, from, from, it's the 11th hour onwards practice. It's in the power of it's in the power of 3 a little bit. But that feels more like a bit of a callback when they bring Brian Cox on, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, or that sort of episode 11 sort of montage of various people that happens in the Russell T. Davies thing as well. It is something that he did in the 2nd coming. Like he partly tells that story through media as well. And in fact, this is very similar, I think, in some ways to the 2nd coming, which is absolutely definitely worthwhile watching. Yeah, it's fantastic. Absolutely, definitely him going, I'm trying to make Doctor Who but I can't do it. Not yet. So how can I tell a story? Kind of a bit like Doctor Who. Ah, I know, I'll bring back Jesus. But he actually uses it sort of quite deftly to push the story along as well. I mean, part of the story is that the aliens have done something huge and public and dramatic to create an impact. But then he actually moves the story from the doctor in Rose, where it stays for quite a lot of that 1st episode into the hospital and then we move away from them and have scenes without them for the 1st time. Of course we get the 1st introduction of Tashiko Sato. Yeah, so she's credited as Dr. Sato, and we discover, I think, in Torchwood series two, that... Is that episode 11 or series two, I think? But Owen Owen was hung over. He was supposed to do it because he's actually a doctor. And so she was just there pretending to be a doctor. And that's how she sort of comes to be just a really rough day. I mean, there's no sign that she's tortured and obviously they didn't think of that until later and it was just a sort of cute recon. Those are quite good scenes, I think. Yeah, I love the whole, again, I think maybe because it's quite fresh in my head from when I saw it and I was devastated by the shooting of the big man. Like, I, that was, I mean, I'm pretty easy tears, but, but that I was, I was sort of very, um, and I think, I, I don't know. It seems like one of Russell T. Davis's where you can be quite brutal in just killing off this poor little... It's sort of quite a devastating scene, and it seems, and it's quite, it's a bit of a tonal shift, certainly, from the episode that it's been set up before that point. It's very clever because it goes from being kind of horror with the thing banging inside the sort of mortuary drawer. And then it goes to comedy when the pig sort of sticks its head around the corner. It's clearly peak. It makes a pig noise and then it runs off in this sort of comedy way and then suddenly it shot dead. And I think it's Eccleston who sells that with the, it was scared line. He says it twice and he really feels it. Like, and I think you're right, identifying Russell as brutal. I mean, he does have this light tea time tone, but there's a lot of kind of horrible nastiness. Even I'm skipping ahead slightly, but even when all the experts are killed in the cliffhanger, and there's just a room full of dead scientists, like it feels... I mean, I mean, Doctor Who does that a fair bit, but I think maybe even coming from the Moffatt era where I think you just see less of that sort of willingness to just kill an entire room of people and then just sort of like flippantly kind of move on. But I mean, it is he's he's pretty good at making it sort of wash over your head while you're watching, but it's sort of taking a step back and going, there's some incredible sort of, I mean Doctor Who is incredible at definitely navigating massive tonal shifts from comedy to what otherwise would be horrific. Yeah. No, I think there's a real kind of dark cynicism behind Russell's really sunny exterior. You know, that sort of public persona. He has all the way through the publicity of his time, all of the DVD commentaries and stuff. Everything's marvellous and everything's just lovely. It's just so jovial, but like under the surface. Yeah, it'd be really horrible. I think that episode, I think it's episode 6 of cucumber is the most upsetting piece of television I've ever seen. Yeah, don't. Can we talk about the Slovene? Maybe the most controversial part of the episode? The Slakeen, the Slakeen, as Jackie calls them. Maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves because it is in the next episode. Do you read the most controversial part of the episode because of the farting or because of or because of the terrible cliffhanger that goes on for 25 minutes? Well, we'll talk about the Cliffhanger, but let's talk about the Sabine because it is kind of, this one is in fam memory as the one with the farting aliens. And I know that there's a lot of people who are really angry about that. And I think that Russell is definitely kind of rubbing it in our faces, like it's very deliberate, I think. I mean, yes, you say that, but it's like there are 4 episodes with gassy aliens this season. We've had the we've had the gals. Yes. Yeah, and then these two, and then Boomtown. Is there another one? No, I think that's it. But I mean, Bob Holmes has that entire planet living off Kroll's farts joke in the power of Kroll? Or the terceron? by more of it. But I think this is the 1st time it's been on screen in Doctor Who. And I think we've seen from, say, the last Jedi backlash that people who are proprietorial over their science fiction franchises want them to be super, super serious. And it's not just the farting. It is that kind of childish glee. that the Slavene, you know exhibit. I think I loved them when I was a kid. And then when I was 11 or 12, I sort of thought, you know, oh, it thought who should be serious. Yeah, and that's ridiculous and stupid. They're very teenager. Very teenage thing. And I think then I've come back around to I think they're perfect for the story that they've been put in because I think it's the idea that you would put what is effectively sort of a bit of an urban kind of thriller, you know, returning to earth and telling this, like the longer story so far in the season about this sort of strange alien arrival. The fact that you would put then silly green monsters that when they're putting in, you know, on their human bodies, I think it's fantastic and it's just, it's a way of not appearing to take the whole thing too seriously. And I think, yeah. I think too, the conception of the aliens where they actually sort of tear people's skin off and sort of live in the skin is actually really kind of horrible. And when you get Harriet Jones cowering in the cupboard watching it happen and sort of reacting like it's a real, horrible, scary thing. So selling the fact that this is horrific what's happening. Yeah, but then having Annette and Joseph being just sort of truly hilarious. Fantastic. The juxtaposition. Yeah. I had a neighbour. Our next door neighbour was the spitting image of Annette. And so the combination of that and having her like evil, yeah, it's that sort of evil glee that she has. And she just steals the entire... So you can totally understand why. I mean, I don't, was it reflective of a performance why they came back to her character? I think so. Like, I think they bring her back for Boomtown. I think something falls through or something like it's a bit of a late thing. I'm not entirely sure. of the production history, but I think they bring her back on the strength of that performance. And then, of course, they cast her in wizards versus aliens as well as a result of it too. Friend of the podcast, Peter Griffiths says that Annette tells a story about being kind of stared at by a small child on the tube one time and her sort of turning around and going to zip her forehead open at the child. And like I can just totally imagine that. She's really, really wonderful. But I think all of them are really sort of terrific and funny. And um, look, I'm not sure that all of the farts land quite as well as they might. And I think we can talk more about that next week when we talk about Keith Folks' direction. But I have absolutely no objection to it and I really like. I mean, you know, Russell makes the doctor say, would you mind not farting while I'm saving the world, you know, and puts it, I think in the next time trailer for the previous episode. Like, he totally leans into it. So it is a very definite attempt, I think, to alienate the show from sort of 80 style science fiction fandom and to say this is for kids and families as well. This is going to be funny. And it's not like this story is without any serious intent. It's got serious things to say, but it has a lightness and a comedy and a refusal to take itself too seriously, I think. So, who do we think was the prime minister in the cupboard? Well, I mean, was definitely actually supposed to be Tony Blair? I actually like the, there's a little bit of banter when they're in the car on the way to number 10. Because on the posters, it says that Rose disappears on the 6th of March 205, 2005. And so... I don't know. I'm quite old. And so this story is set nearly 12 months into the future. by time of broadcast. And since 2003, Brown and Blair had been clearly having conflict over whether Blair should step down and whether Brown would take over. So, Rose, Rose doesn't know who the prime minister is. Well, there's that, but if it had been brown, they could have actually just replaced the prime minister. With a saline. Oh, absolutely. No, they actually did employ a Tony Blair lookalike to play the dead private on the floor. But when he turned out not to look very alike to Tony Blair, they decided to not really show his face. I like the fact that he just falls out of a cupboard. And it sort of, it's completely humiliating. They've just shoved him in a cupboard. I think it will become very clear next episode why the hostility to Tony Blair. It gives them a little bit of like a room to say, no, it's actually a fictional Prime Minister, but on the staircase in number 10 where they have the photos of all the Prime Ministers the very last one there is John Major. There's no photo after that. So let's say it's Tony Blair and we'll talk about why next week. Well, there's also that line from Harriet Jones where she says, I'm hardly one of the babes. Yeah. And after Labour one, the landslide election 1987, there were, I think, 100, 101 new feet. Well, not necessarily new, but elected female labour MPs in parliament. It's one of the highest representations of women in British Parliament ever. Still to this day, I believe. And in Parliament that year, there were 120 women elected. So, like there was in the media, in typical sort of misogynist fashion at the time, they were dubbed Blair's babes. Right. Because, you know, like, let's trivialise the fact that, you know instead of Instagram, wow, this is amazing. We've got the highest representation of women ever in British Parliament. Let's just trivialise it. Trivialise them as babes, basically. Okay, so that is Blair. Yeah, and that was deliberate foregrounding the fact that it was supposed to be Blair, but they cut everything else out when it turned out the guy that they'd hired as a lookalike. wasn't that good or like, which is sort of failing at the 1st post if you're if you're billing yourself as a blender. Yeah, yeah, you had one job. You've lost your shot to be the murdered Tony Blair and Doctor Who. So what do you guys think about the doctor and Rose in this story? Like, I was reading Sandifer's thing as well. jumped on that bandwagon. And it was interesting how it's saying the walk, because the 1st 3 episodes are clearly story of the week and sort of dealing with this is what Doctor Who is. But this is sort of the 1st occasion where the doctor in Rose sort of particularly Rose's character starts to impose itself on the whole show rather than rather than a sort of textbook. This is Doctor Who. Yeah, yeah. I think that the overall arc thing, because there is a big story about what Rose is doing in her relationship with her family, which really becomes clear, I think, in the very final scene of next episode. But I think that there is something about the relationship between them that is already kind of slightly problematic and that is how much they enjoy what's going on around them. And it's really sweet seeing them both in the car and both being super excited about going to number 10. But I think that the show as early as this is starting to kind of look askance at that. And it sort of reaches its apotheosis in series 2 with Rose and the 10th doctor and the fall at the end of series 2 and her ending up in other universe because of their hubris, basically. Um, as a character arc, I actually quite like that. The fact that the show is going, you know, there are costs to the way you approach the world. Um, you know, you, you, you're enjoying the fact that you could die any minute and the thrill and the adrenaline of that and, but there are costs. There's a price you have to pay if you keep approaching the world in that way. And they return to that in season 9 with Clara's ark quite deliberately and probably a bit more sort of explicitly. But it's interesting, I think, because both of those characters have the longest kind of, I suppose Amy does as well. But they have the longer sort of one-on-one relationship with the doctor that we see in this. And I think it's treated as an almost inevitable if you stay with the doctor too long, this... Their lives are forever altered by interacting with him. And unless you sort of get out like Martha does or tragic circumstances before you like Donna, it's almost like a corruption or something. It's just this sort of altering of these adventures and this danger will definitely change. You could backwards construct that onto Sarah Jane Smith as well. I mean, not that it's a deliberate thing in the classic series, but well, school reunion does that as well. But when you were talking about this in the classic series of flight through entirety way, you were talking about how after her 1st couple of stories, she's not really a real person anymore. And she becomes corrupted by travelling with the doctor. I think it'll come up later on next series where Jackie suggests that at some point Rose won't even be human anymore as she keeps travelling with the doctor. She'll be on some moon somewhere and she'll have forgotten who everyone is. And all of that, I think, is yet to come. But I think here, that feeling manifests itself most of all, in the kind of cavalier way that the doctor wrecks, Jackie, and Mickey's life. And, you know, he runs into the room at the end of the cold open and just goes, I'm sorry, you know, you've been gone 12 months sorry and then gives that smile, that sort of embarrassed smile. And then we just cut back to this sort of, you know, weeping Jackie, like all of these terrible things have happened. Unfortunately, he does pay for it. I mean she does smack him in the face. It would have been perfect if that smack had come. At the end of the cold open. Or at the beginning. At the beginning of the credits. So it would have been perfect. And that stuff is great as well. They give Chris things to do that the doctor's never done before which is, you know, push a toddler off his lap while he's trying to watch television. Um, even when he sort of has to stay, and they, because the police officer comes around at the end of the coal open, and he sort of has to sort of sheepishly, sheepishly stand there, sort of, you know, being questioned by... Is this a sexual relationship? Well, shouldn't have that. That's never a question that gets asked of the classic series at all, even when the doctor and Lala are running hand in hand through Paris. But, but, but, I mean, companion was always quite an innocent thing. you know, what was that lied about? Isn't a companion, uh, something that dowager aunts had? What's that from? I don't remember. Companion has only really got that meaning between the classic series and the new series. Companion has gained this sexual innuendo. Which is interesting, particularly because the news series has dropped the word companion from the entire format of the series when they had their big sort of worldwide launch. They don't call them companions. They're the doctor's friends. Yeah, every reference to companion seems to sort of be kind of pushed away. It's that weird Fanish construct where you get to argue about whether Katerina is a companion or not. And it's sort of nonsense. like what is that? I was reading feminist critique of Doctor Who recently. Which was, you know, interesting, but they counted Caterino's companion, but not Sarah Kingdom, which I was like, is Brett Vine a companion? How could you count someone who's there for like an episode really? to someone who's throughout an entire story. Well, I mean, anyway, the whole thing is a sort of silly idea, and the word companion is a sort of stupid word, and kind of the doctor gets slapped down for using it. But he is also kind of sexualised in a way that he hasn't really been much before. I mean, we had Pat Trouton flirting with various female guest stars, but... From the moment Jackie meets him, he's sexualised. Yeah, yeah. Even when he's walking away from the power estate to his TARTA someone calls out from the balconies and come back to the party handsome, too, which I really like. And he sort of just, and you can tell that he's heard it and registered it. We're kind of nearing the end of our discussion and it's not a real Doctor Who series unless there are some cliffhangers. So this is our 1st cliffhanger of the new series, and it's one of 3 cliffhangers. We're not getting a cliffhanger every 25 minutes anymore. How do we think this one lands? It's definitely the worst one. Probably the worst cliffhanger of the entire new series. Possibly the entire series altogether. Why do you say? It's almost as if they'd forgotten. I mean, well, you know, it's the new people making this show. So they haven't forgotten, but it's almost as if the show doesn't know how to do it, Cliffharing. Okay, they work it out by the next time. But it's so bloody prolonged. It's like, how many peril monkeys can you have? Can 3 different cliffhangers intercutting backwards and forwards constantly? It could have worked if there were 2 3 is just overkill and it's just so slow. It's like, oh, they're undoing their zips. They're undoing their zips. They aren't doing their zips. They aren't doing their zip. Like, when is somebody going to die, please? And then straight after the cliffhanger, we get the next time trailer. And it's just... I mean, you can tell they're they're, you know, they, it's a new show that like, it's the 1st recording block, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. And I think that scene with the doctor and the experts doesn't really land, I think, at all. It feels orchestrated, but I need to get to the cliffhanger rather than a sense of, I mean, I know that there's the sense of, oh we're getting experts and it is sort of part of the Sadine's plan to get rid of get rid of these people in this room. So I get that, but I just feel like it sort of comes, I don't know it comes out of the blue a little bit. It's almost like RTD went, well, they're all here. How am I going to kill them? Oh, security passing. I think what's odd about it too is Chris's demeanour in that scene is very strange. Yeah, I think when he's talked about not landing the comedy right I always think of that scene where it's a bit, I think, well, maybe because it's the 1st recording block. Yeah, he handles the comedy with sort of quite heavily. I think he's talked about in the part. Yeah, he's not natural to him. when he works it out, when he actually gets the rhythm of it. He's quite charming. Yeah, yeah. I also think those experts are kind of scenery as well. Yeah, like none of them get aligned, you know, yeah. who are so integral to certain parts of the classic series and are mythical and just thrown away. And that's that's a very deliberate thing, Russell's part as well going... This is what you think, Doctor Who is. It's interesting what you say about Chris, you know, looking uncomfortable at the scene. I think I like to think that's the scene at which he realised he wanted to leave. Because that, I mean, essentially the 1st recording block is where he kind of went, oh, this thing is a mess. I don't like what's going on. I don't like how they're treating their actors. Like, he read that as a toxic work environment, apparently, from what he said since, when, you know, it was more a case of they were clueless. They didn't know what they were doing. They were overrunning, they were over budget apparently. And, yeah, it's accident more than design. Yeah, I think. But I kind of think if they've got like 3 cliffhangers, they really need to make them each land. And so there's a very clear desire, I think, to make this enormous. And so having the same cliffhanger at sort of 3 plot strands and building it up, I think you're right, it takes too long. But I do think it strikes upon something that is genius, which is having Jackie in peril. love that. I love it's the same cow that she does with the autons, like notes. It's just fantastic. It's like, and it's the same. I think she's, of all the three, I think, the one in Jackie's apartment is the most, there's something fantastic about seeing the Slavin in just in a normal apartment. Yeah. I mean, it is fun seeing them in Downing Street, but having just a like a huge, like a really like monster monster in a way that the new series hasn't done before, like, you know, like it's men in massive suits, you know, leering over, and it's kind of just, I like that part of it. And I think you're right. Like, I think it takes like work to get those to converge at the right time with 3 separate, very similar, you know. Well, it didn't really work. No, no, but the effort. I sort of, I can see where the intention in creating this sort of all of the regulars in peril. If they're all in peril, how can they possibly get out of it? Yeah, but they could have done that in ways which, you know, would be used later in the series, you know, during split screen or just much faster intercutting. I don't think they've quite developed that yet. And the pace is a problem and it takes up quite a bit of the episode. Well, it's funny because I was thinking, like, then I was thinking about Russell's Cliffhanger in Bad Wolf, which is totally different. I mean, that's clearly a different approach to it that just works I think, incomparably well. Like, it's just, it's funny because I was trying to think of incidences where they sort of return to that style of cliffhanger where it cuts between everyone in peril, but I kind of was struggling to, unless they're all, I mean, it sort of happened, the side man one, but they're all together. It's of a big set piece. But I think they don't really go near it for a long time. Yeah, they come out, oh, well, that didn't work. Well, do this, ma'am. There's a nice policeman hacking down our front door, and James is rummaging around in the pantry for a jar of pickled gherkins, so it looks like that's all we have time for this week. Do come back next week for World War III. In the meantime, you can find us at flightthroughentirety.com flight through entirety on Facebook and Apple Podcasts, and at FTE podcast on Twitter. Max, where can people find you online? You can find me at max underscore Jailbar on Twitter. It's pretty barren there, but if you wish. Excellent. and that'll be in the show notes Meanwhile, over on Bond Finger, you can find a very sober and well-informed series of commentaries on nearly all of the James Bond films. That's Bondfinger.com, Bondfinger on Facebook and Apple Podcasts and at Bondfingercast on Twitter. Until next time, may your country's head of government not be replaced by a giant farting alien baby, unless, of course, that's happened already. Thank you very much for listening and good night. Good night. Good night. That was Flight for Entirety starring Nathan Bodley, Max Shel Barton, James Selwood, theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, strings performance by Jane Orberg. This episode, Men in Massive Suits, was recorded on the 8th of July 2018, and released on the 16th of September. If you want to know more about the Slovene's plans to take over the Earth, why not check out next week's episode of Flight through Entirety, or consult the Wikipedia article on neoliberalism? Seeing a London bar or driving down Westminster Bridge or the London eye, you know, like all of those things. Oh, or a yeti on the loop. Precise. Tooting back's not a real play, spread. Let me try that. No, well, well, no, no, I'll go and ring him. can come and replace me now. I know I have a 2nd class substitute. Freudians, lady. There's your excellent. Let me try that again. Tooting.