Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast, which triggers its info spike by
Whistling 3 Guitars Mood 2, and we're doing it now.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Todd, and I'm Peter.
Hello.
Well, judging by the architecture, I'd say we're about the year
200,000.
Adam's still with us and someone really should think about turning
the heating down.
It's time for the long game.
So, Peter, when this episode first came out, I had no idea what a
long game was, so perhaps you can explain it to us.
A long game with someone who's keeping their eye on the future and
I have no idea what the answer to that question is.
How do you define a long game?
Aren't they playing something that you don't actually see what's
going on at this point in time, but they've got the eye on the
prize, which might be 6 months a year down the track?
and they're building things in the background and making little
moves.
And their moves are not really obvious to anyone else. but they
know what they're doing and they're seeding the ground.
Yeah, and I think it's the production team, really, that's playing
the long game here in that this is episode 7 and it's setting up a
whole heap of stuff for episode 12.
And in fact, the story kind of works on its own, but it is sort of
a little bit low stakes, but in retrospect, it becomes vastly more
important, I think.
I have to say that I would agree.
Like when I 1st watched this.
This was probably my least favourite episode of this series, I
don't think that anymore.
And I think sandwiched between Dalek and Father's Day, which quite
which have emotional stakes, quite emotional stakes, this doesn't
seem to have those stakes in in the same way, it's in any way
shape or form.
Obviously, in hindsight, you can see all the sets being reused
from the finale, but also linking back to sort of platform one
even in episode 2, sort of, you know, the space station, or the
space platform outside the Earth's atmosphere, as far as
Christopher Eccleston appears to get away from Earth during the
entire run of his series, even though other things are mentioned.
But it just sort of links everything from the beginning to the
end.
And as you said, and as the name suggests, um, yeah, there's
things going on here that we don't see until the finale.
I think there are rumours that this was a story that Russell had
written a long time ago and perhaps even submitted.
Did I dream that?
Maybe I dreamt that.
There's something along those lines.
Yeah.
But it is very trad.
I mean, it's super old-fashioned.
It doesn't look very expensive and it is completely studio bound.
It's a very sort of traditional Doctor Who story, I think.
And it doesn't really participate in the ark as far as we can see
up front.
It looks cheap Yeah, in fact, I remember being disappointed the
1st time I saw it.
I went over to a friend of the podcast, Matthew Farrow's place to
watch it because, you know, Doctor Who was back and we had the
chance to watch it together.
And it was that thing where every new Doctor Who episode was
absolutely crucial.
You know, if there was a single terrible one, who knows the show
might be cancelled again.
It was so important that it was good.
And I remember kind of feeling like I was forcing myself to say it
was good.
In retrospect, I think I've had the same journey as you in that I
think it's much, much better than I thought it was the 1st time
round.
But that's what's cool about this episode as well.
I mean, you mentioned kind of, you know, every episode was an
event.
I think this is the 1st episode of New Doctor Who.
That's not an event.
It's not, you know, Rose being introduced or going to the future
for the 1st time.
It's not the Daleks coming back or a statement 2 parter.
It's just an ordinary episode.
It's kind of daring to be average.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think we said last week that Dalek was kind of the start
of a new kind of era for the show.
It had done all of its initial things and shown us what sort of
things it would do, the past, the future, you know, adventures on
earth and things.
And then we have a break.
It's the 1st story that doesn't really, you know, immediately
reference previous events that have gone on and it's our 1st story
but it's so huge.
It's so important, Dalek, that this is kind of like, yeah, the 1st
kind of regular Doctor Who episode. it's great for that.
So let's talk a little bit about the beginning, because I think
you've spotted something, Todd, which is that this is a redo of
the end of the world, only with Rose as the doctor and Adam as the
companion.
And so they both come out of the TARDIS, the doctor and Rose, and
the doctor quickly briefs her about where we are, and then Adam
comes out, Rose pretends that she knew all along where we were.
We're sometime in the future, but because Rose isn't quite so good
at being the doctor as the doctor is.
It's only, you know, 200,000 years in the future rather than
5000000000 years in the future.
It's a much crappier space station.
We get the shot of them looking out the window, you know, onto
onto earth, just like in the end of the world.
And then of course, Adam faints.
That is comedy goal.
He is such a good fainter, just that whole collapse.
I just burst out laughing Every time I watch that and as the
doctor says, he's your boyfriend.
Not anymore. just love it.
The thing that's so perfect is that both of them fail completely
to react at all to him fainting.
Like they don't, you know, there's no eyebrow rays or anything
they just deadpam their comedy lines immediately afterwards
without realacting at all.
I think they've been watching Tams and Grieg in rehearsal.
Oh, yeah, let's do it like that.
And of course, even after that, this is a thing that Russell does
and he'll do it again in gridlock, where suddenly a whole heap of
people appear.
So the doctor and Rose and Adam get to explore the space, and it
looks deserted, and then suddenly all of those booths open and all
of these people sort of come in and there's a whole heap of
activity and we had it in the end of the world.
He'll do it again in gridlock and he does it here.
And it's, I think it's a, you know, a deliberate callback.
It's almost as if that would be the end of episode one.
You know, it's like Ark in space.
We get episode one where we wander around and kind of look at
things.
Convinced into the teaser, yeah.
And then we get all of these people.
And it looks it looks cheap.
They look cheap.
And those sets look so small.
Like, and they just reuse that area, you know, and redress it and
even the other white space where they lie down and get
headspites.
Like that's redressed a couple of times.
The director on this is Brian Grant.
Who the hell is Brian Grant people?
I've never heard of him?
He's never directed anything again?
It's a legend.
Is he?
Absolutely.
Do you not know his pedigree?
I think he's in a terrible director.
Oh, I think he's a marvellous director, but also he started off in
music videos.
He directed things like, um, I want to dance with somebody for
Whitney Houston and private dancer for Tina Turner. pop music.
Oh my.
He's got a proper pedigree and he's done loads of TV before he
came to this.
I think the reason he only did one episode is he's a bit above
Doctor Who in his pay grade.
Oh really?
Because I don't, I actually don't, I don't really like the
direction in this quite a lot.
I think it's, I just think that it's distant and I don't know.
There's something about it.
I really at times just think it's weak.
It's hard to pin down what his style is, I think.
It is very kind of season one Doctor Who direction.
I think.
He's not clever with his camera work.
Like he's not sort of, you know, swoops and camera moves and
everything.
But what he does to is he makes the episode look a lot better than
otherwise.
What it could have looked like the Space Museum.
Instead, it looks like leisure hive.
And the reason is that he foregrounds a lot of objects and
lights.
And so when he's shooting things, you'll notice on a lot of shots
it's subliminal, you don't even notice it half the time.
He'll have the action in the background, he'll have shimmering
lights in the foreground or an object which is out of focus in the
foreground, which lends a lot of depth of field to the story.
And I think without that, it would look like you were shooting in
a corner of the studio.
I do think that that scene with everyone sort of pouring in and
buying Cronkburgers and things looks a lot busier and a lot more
populated than it probably was.
It is, and the few wide shots that you get, where you actually get
to place where different things are on the set.
So you'll get Rose and Adam sitting down and then you'll get the
doctor with Cathica at the cash machine in the background.
You realise they're only about 2 feet from each other.
But, you know, like the Android invasion and East Hagborn, if
you've ever been there, it's one corner and it's made to look like
an entire village and Brian Grant does the same thing.
He turns this set, which is really very, very small, into quite a
vast space.
What Brian Grant is not is showy.
He doesn't impress you.
He doesn't set out to impress you, but he just does a really good
job under the radar.
Right, listeners.
I've just learned something.
I have to go back and watch this episode again.
See, I am open to new ideas.
Maybe his direction isn't as bad as I thought.
It is bad and I want to dance with somebody.
I can tell you that because I've watched that video clip recently
and it is shockingly awful.
Especially Whitney Houston's little CSO Ed in the top of some
stupid poll thing to the one side.
You know what I'm talking about, Peter, don't you?
I do indeed.
Awful.
But also, Toadie did some Kim Wild.
I know you're a fan of Kim.
Yes, yes, yes.
I'm not exactly sure.
Well, there you go.
Brian Branch has gone up in my opinion by 10 points.
But also, he did a lot of drama.
He did things like bugs, and I think he might have done some
episodes of Highlander, actually.
And he did clocking off, which I'm going to guess is where Russell
knew his work from because clocking off was written by Paul Abbott
who I think Russell Either Nose or his friends with.
He's another very, very good writer.
So he did shameless, for instance, and was slated to do episode 11
this year. through episode 11 and I'm not entirely sure, but I
think they might have been holding it open for him if he got the
chance to do it because he's a very busy writer.
And in the end he wasn't.
So Russell ended up stepping into the void.
It does have one link to the ongoing dialogue of things that it
mentions the Bad Wolf Channel and the face of Beau is pregnant
right?
Yeah, yeah.
And so we have the face of Beau.
And I don't know whether this is deliberate or not, but obviously
the face of Beau, therefore, in the end of the world is over
5000000000 years old.
And I don't know whether that was kind of a thing that he didn't
think of or didn't care about.
Yeah, well, that's right.
And I think they're definitely trying to create a world.
It's a difficult job in Doctor Who to do that because we're in a
different place every week.
But one of the things that season one does is create a whole
universe for this story to take place in.
Yeah, and I think the story does a really good job of Russell's
world building because what Russell does.
His vision of the future is not Zog from the planet Zog.
It's people and then nature essentially unchanged throughout the
millennia.
And so it's ordinary people reacting to whatever unreal situation
they've put in because it's 200,000 years in the future or 5000000
years in the future or whatever, 5 billion.
And um, the long game sets a lot of that up.
The long game is Russell's vision of the future and he adheres to
that in kind of new earth and gridlock and all of those other
future different stories.
Well, even utopia, which is, you know, the very, very end of the
future, the human race remains unchanged.
It's not like Star Trek where we all kind of, you know, get rid of
money and greed and we're all sort of fabulous, enlightened
people.
We're just people.
And the other thing that Russell does with the future is he plays
it for comedy as well.
And sort of fish out of water comedy and there's some great stuff
here.
The doctor compares time travel to going to Paris.
Uh, you know, tourism and next week, he'll compare sort of 1987 to
the Isle of Wight.
You know, it's just tourism.
And those scenes where that guy is selling them Cronk burgers.
What did you just say?
No cheese.
Kronk burgers.
What a name.
That would be 2 credits 20, love.
I love how he says sweetheart as well.
That's a particularly Russell thing, I think, calling people
sweetheart.
Everything is that his thing is that he wants people at the end of
the line.
Doesn't want anyone at the start of line.
Everyone has to go to the end of the line.
Yeah, he's really good.
And Billy's delighted discovery. that her slush puppy is beef
flavoured, which is just so deeply revolting sounding, but she's
absolutely delighted by it.
You know, there's a real kind of fun to the whole sort of time
travel thing which I think is really, really terrific.
Rose always gets into those kind of future flavours when she's in
the impossible planet.
She likes protein one with just a kicker 3 or something.
It reminds me of midnight where Sky and the doctor are wondering
whether they're having the chicken or the beef and he tastes it
and decides that it's both, which is, again, just kind of deeply
revolting, I think, the taduck in a future.
Yeah, that's right, or some gross hybrid of some kind.
That's the hybrid, the real hybrid.
So, we get to meet a few characters here in Satellite 5.
We've got Suki, Cattrell, whatever the rest of her name.
Mick McGram Cantrell.
Okay.
And we've got Kafka.
Yeah, Kafka.
Kathika.
Kafka.
You know when you get one of those inserted.
I really like how that's actually just a common future name
because she has to specify that it's with a C, as if it was
Catherine.
It's kind of she's space Catherine.
She's also space actor.
She was one of the things I really disliked about this episode
when I 1st watched it.
I just thought that she just was so blank and emotionless. in her
acting and very wooden.
Christine Adams plays her.
But I've reevaluated that because I've watched her in, um, she's
the wife on Black Lightning, the CW Superheroes Show.
Okay. which they're just filming season 2 of as we record this.
And I really like her in that.
And she plays all the emotional stuff really well.
So when I came back to watch this, her performances the one that I
was most intrigued at to see whether or not I felt that she was
doing more than the 1st time around, and I think she is doing a
lot more.
Perhaps my eye was drawn to Suki because like she's the one that
gets promoted and is pretending to be somebody she's not and
driving that part of the plot.
But I really do like Christine's performance in this as this
character that wants to be promoted, you know, and is desperate
for that promotion, but ultimately has to face up to the reality
of things and actually save the day.
I think she does a great job too, because she's a journalist, of
course, you know, despite all that sort of space brainhead thing
the job that she has is journalism.
And she hasn't even thought to look into the 1st thing that Rose
notices when she gets off the TARDIS, which is that it's hot in
here.
Why?
And it's never occurred to her to investigate it.
And, um, I think that there's more to this story than their 1st
appears because I think it is just very definitely a story about
Fox, Fox News.
And I think that that's where Bad Wolf comes from.
Like the name Bad Wolf comes from this story.
And, you know, 90 years later, the Bad Wolf are still in charge.
And what we have is a world where a consortium of banks controls
all of humanity, frightens them, makes them xenophobic.
You notice there's a sort of budget saving measure of not having
any aliens because we used all our aliens in the end of the world
but he lampshades it.
The reason there are no aliens is because satellite 5 is producing
a kind of journalism that causes fear and xenophobia and seduces
people into not asking why things are the way they are.
So for instance, you know, Max, the Jagrafess is named after Max
Hastings, who was, you know, longtime editor-in-chief of the Daily
Telegraph.
And he is the boss and he sends heat downwards, you know, like he
makes it a hot environment to work in.
And he's controlling humanity.
And at this point, there's no idea that they're the Dalek's doing
it.
When we're asked who it is, It's a consortium of banks.
You know, it's the rich who are allowing this kind of journalism
to keep humanity under control to stop them from asking why things
are the way they are, why things are going wrong.
Spread and circuses.
Yeah.
But it's really interesting, like, like all that you've just said
back in 2005.
And then what's happening now with Trump, you know, the quote here
create a climate of fear, easy to keep borders closed.
It's happening now.
Well, you watch this episode now and it feels really on the nose
but 10 years ago.
Yeah, yeah.
It wasn't.
I mean, things weren't quite what they were, and the whole idea
that you have in America, a whole sort of subset of the population
who listened to, you know, news beaming direct out of satellite 5
and believe everything that they hear.
And you've got a president who encourages that and constantly
dismisses other news sources as being fake.
This is much, much more timely now.
And you really believe that Trump's Twitter feed comes direct from
satellite 5.
It's just that sort of inchoate roaring coming from the ceiling.
Don't look up.
What do you think of the actual effects of the monster, like that
giant...
What do we call it?
Well, I think the fun thing about it is, you know the story about
the drashings being called Dishrags by Bob Holmes, because he just
expected they would be massively poorly realised.
I think that Russell calls the Jaggerfest something that makes a
rotten foe.
You know, like the Jagrafess of the holy hydrojassic maxa roden
foe.
I think it's very, very deliberately him saying it's going to be a
bit crap.
And the meal is just bringing their A game to it.
You know, it's a labour of love and I think it's better than we
had any right to expect.
So I think it looks really great.
But, you know, it's cheap to get the ceiling and replace it.
You know how in in the TV movie.
You've got the ceiling of the TARDIS is just replaced by, you know
visual effects and stuff.
And you could do that because there's nothing in the way.
You don't have to mat around anything.
It's simpler.
So having it on the ceiling, I think, is a budget saving measure
and I think that they didn't expect it to turn out as well as it
did.
I think Max is a pretty good effect, but what on does it slightly
is the perspective.
So you get those low angle shots with Billy and the doctor in
front and Max above them and the perspective doesn't look quite
right.
It seems like it's higher up.
When Simon Pegg is looking up and talking to it, the camera seems
further away from him than the effect kind of does.
And you've got a lot of people walking into this room where
there's a sort of big blobhead thing on the ceiling and no one
looks up or even seems to notice.
Well, I didn't notice when we walked in today.
I mean what's that?
Yeah, I really need to do something about that.
What do you think of Simon Pegg?
Um, truthfully, he's not my favourite part of the episode.
I think in an amazing guest cast for what's not an event episode
he's probably the least of them.
And that's fine.
I have that opinion, Peter.
Why are you laughing, Nathan?
Am I just gonna dismiss Peter's opinion?
Like, I actually quite like him.
But initially, no, I didn't really know who he was.
Like, I think he'd done, had he done the Star Trek movies or the
Mission Impossible stuff by this stage?
No.
No, he Don Shaun of the Dead, which was quite a big hit.
And spaced.
Spaced, yeah.
Okay, which neither of which I'd seen.
So I knew the name, but I didn't really know him.
So, but I quite liked his sort of like, you know, I'm the editor.
What is he?
He's not editor in chief, is he?
No, he's the editor.
He's the editor. editor.
I liked the fact that we had this human person controlling things
and you knew that there was somebody above and I quite liked his
performance in it.
I mean, I think, is it Tens and Greg?
Oh, yeah, she steals the episode, but...
She steals the season, I think.
She's incredible.
She steals anything she's in.
No, I thought he I actually quite liked him.
Yes, no, he's all right.
I just I don't think he's the best part of the episode.
It is a classic kind of Holmesian villain, I think.
Like someone who is sort of technocratic and has, you know, a
bunch of people, sort of pushing buttons and things, but he also
has someone above him whom he has to be kind of obsequious too.
So it is, it's a little bit like uh, gatherer Hade from the sun
makers, only not quite so big, uh, a performance.
And it's done by a really, really talented comic actor.
And it is massive overcasting too, isn't it?
But the whole episode is massive overcasting.
So you get someone like Anna Maxwell Martin who plays Suki.
And she's now, I would say, as famous as David Tennant in
Britain.
She's huge, isn't she?
Probably she?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What has she done?
So she did Pembley.
She was Elizabeth Bennett in the sort of BBC's sequel to Pride and
Prejudice, which was based on a novel by PD James, I think.
And directly after this, she was the star of the BBC adaptation of
Bleak House, which was absolutely amazing.
It was made in half hour chunks. and was just a fantastic
adaptation and went out after EastEnders, I think, in half hour
chunks, or underlining the parallels between like the soaps of the
day and, you know, Dickens.
But she is, yeah, she's done a 1000000 drama series and won a
1000000 awards and, you know, she's not a Carrie Mulligan or Andy
Garfield, but she's not far off.
I really like her and I really like when I initially watched this
straight away.
She was the one character on this station that I that I sort of
felt connected to.
I think the actor who plays Catholica, very deliberately lets her
be foregrounded because we are going to follow her.
Because the other thing about this story is, I think it's designed
to give Chris and Billy a break.
Yeah, they're backgrounded, aren't they?
They're not in it all that much.
And we've already had that thing and we'll see it again next week
where the doctor's job isn't so much to solve the problem as to
inspire someone else to solve the problem.
And that structure allows them to just have a sort of few scenes.
And so Suki actually drives the episode for a good sort of 5
minutes when she goes up to floor 500 and we kind of discover
what's really happening through her eyes.
And the doctor and Rose kind of know that they've been
backgrounded in the story.
They just kind of amble around and then decide to do something
about it.
They sort of turn up, eat a Cronkberger, watch demonstration, go
upstairs and get slobbed on by Max, which is, you know, just a
Saturday night.
Yes, listeners, I believe that is true.
I have witnessed that.
There's one thing that does annoy me is the fact that Max dies
because it gets too hot, right?
and just falls apart like within seconds.
Heaven forbid anything would ever go wrong with the actual cooling
system at any point.
But when Suki goes up and she fires her stays up.
Like, he's immune to that, obviously, you know?
just kind of get a bit sort of like, really?
Like, okay.
I think that the heat thing is a simple kind of solution, but it
is also doing some kind of metaphorical job as well.
I do love how he looks like he's crapping himself when he gets
on.
And like all of these chunks are falling down and it's all...
It is such a great character design with the teeth and the way the
jaws snap, you know, like it's super, super angry and it super
fits with the just the sort of incoherent growling noise that it
makes when it speaks, which I just think is really terrific.
You'd be angry if you were stuck on the ceiling all the time.
It is funny.
It is parallel back to episode one where the doctor talks to the
nesting consciousness and it goes and the doctor can talk to it.
Here, he can talk to Max and nobody else understands, you know
what's going on.
It's interesting as well because what I thought was one of the
deficiencies in rows was that when they're talking to the nestine
and it's basically not talking back, you don't get a doctor
villain confrontation in the traditional sense.
And what I thought you really needed there was like a Channing
character from Spearhead from Space, which is putting the human
face on the villain, enabling a conversation with the doctor.
In the long game, you get that because you've got the editor
there.
And so the editor is fulfilling the confrontation role.
And so it works a lot better.
And it's a great confrontation because he doesn't know who they
are for a lot of it.
And then all of a sudden it all just kicks, kicks in with Adam and
his spike.
So perhaps we should talk about his little subplot and what's
going on with him.
The idea was that this was the companion that would fail.
Yeah, companion who couldn't.
And I really loved him in the previous episode.
Like you're supposed to, you know, I really thought he was cute
and sort of, you know, great, come on board.
And then when he faints, you just kind of get this feeling, oh, you
know, there's a bit of an unease and then he needs to go off by
himself.
You go ahead and when he takes Rose's phone, there's a look and
you just kind of, yes, it's all just about to go a little bit pear
shaped.
I mean, it's that thing that you have to do at the very end of the
cold open is the most important part of the episode.
That's when you say what the episode's going to be about.
And so that's when he fails.
So we know that he's going to fail, and one of his jobs is to take
a lot of the load off Chris and Billy so that we have another plot
because there's a problem with having a doctor and a companion
isn't there?
that you do want to split the plot up, like we will do, say, in
the empty child in a couple of weeks time.
But the problem with that is then you don't get to see the doctor
and the companion interact for a whole episode.
And so we still get to see the doctor and Rose solve the problem
or investigate the problem.
But then we get this sort of whole world building thing with Adam
and this sort of, I mean, it's a comedy someplot, isn't it?
It is.
And he gets to go and get something put in his head.
I like the fact that he's a bit useless.
He does what I think most people would do in that situation.
They'd be thinking of a way of profiting from it.
They think, oh, look at this great technology.
Wow, I can make a huge amount of money from this.
Yeah.
And, um, I like the fact that he's fails.
He's kind of like Dodo, without the groovy toy maker outfits or
the syphilis.
But yeah, I like his role in things.
And I like the fact that he's an every man.
Yeah, and I think it's set up quite well.
I mean, last week, you know, he was in the employ of Van Staten.
He was kind of hiding artefacts from him, like he had a collection
of guns that he hadn't told Van Staten about.
He was slightly problematic, you know, he was kind of the
villain's henchman in a way. and bringing him on board and having
him be kind of venal and seeking to profit.
And that whole thing is so wonderfully done because, you know, he
gets Rose's phone and rings his parents.
And they have an answering machine and I think I'll have to
explain in the show notes what one of those is.
But those scenes are just wonderful.
And the thing that makes them wonderful is that little dog.
That little dog, those seats would have been deadly boring, you
know, because it's just an answering machine on a table and we're
listening to Adam Speak.
But the fact that the dog hears Adam's voice and reacts to it and
runs in and sort of jumps up on the table is really terrific.
It just is a little clever.
I don't know whether it's Russell's or the director's idea, but it
just adds a little bit of interest in humanity to those scenes.
And certainly when we get there at the end, you know, when we get
back to Adam's place, it's just a normal suburban house.
He's just a kid from the not too distant future, just an ordinary
English kid.
It's cute, I think.
So, of course, he ends up on floor 16 for medical and meets the
wonderful Tens and Greg.
Who does she play?
What is her character's name?
Oh, the nurse, I think.
Just the nurse.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I just love all of the conversation with her.
It's sort of like, who are you?
And then her entire performance is based on looks, little looks.
Yeah, and it's sort of like you from what?
Mars?
Has something to do with that?
Yeah, the University of Mars or something he guesses that that
must be a university.
Maybe he watched Futurama or something.
But it's almost like he's having 2nd thoughts, like, you know, but
she just keeps next to question, then he goes back, there's
hesitation, but it just sort of comes together, you know, with the
unlimited... like a seduction between them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's really well structured.
Just keeps dragging back just when you think they're going to, he's
going to give up.
No, drags you back in, drags you back in.
But also, this comes down to the performance as well, because
Tamzungri is, you know, a master of that kind of drawl delivery.
Yeah, just absolutely deadpan, you know, really.
Even the absurd comic moment with the vomiter massic, which is so
wonderfully stupid.
Brilliant, double taker.
I just love that, the vomitomatic.
It's still that too, you know?
It's just so silly, but it just brings a smile to my face.
It's Russell doing the future for laughs, which he tends to do.
And it super humiliates Adam.
You know, like he ends up with a sort of spike, the info spike in
his head.
But this just incredibly stupid moment where he sort of vomits up
an ice cube and that's clearly that's what he's left with from now
on, you know, like whenever he vomits, it'll just be a neat little
ice cube that he can sort of quickly dispose of.
It's interesting that they say, Nathan, that his spike is set to
the default, which is the click of the fingers.
So how does one change that default?
There must be a way.
There's an iPhone app.
But of course, he never discovers that.
So if he's stuck with his hole in the head, he has a button in the
back of his head.
When we never do find out, you know?
It is such a great closing gag as well.
On new to who they always talk about the BBC crap joke at the end
of a Doctor Who story. you know, every so often.
Like the worst one, I think, is Seeds of Doom, like the most
embarrassing crap joke at the end of the story.
But this is so wonderfully done because I think that you can just
about see it coming because she starts to say something that's
going to require a click of the fingers so you can just about see
it coming.
She clicks her fingers.
We don't see it.
We hear the sound.
We don't cut to him.
So they save money on the effect.
But what they get is the mother's just absolutely superb reaction
and it's so brilliantly timed straight into the credits.
And I think it's the only time this season where we end on just an
outright gag.
And I think it works just wonderfully well.
Yeah, it sort of catches the tone of the entire episode.
It is a stunning ending.
I just I just watched it to get to that point to see her
reaction.
I just think it's so clever and it's just brilliant.
I really, really love that.
And I love all the stuff before that with the doctor and then, of
course, Rose, you know.
Oh, they're torturing him by repeatedly clicking their fingers and
stuff.
Yeah.
It's interesting.
You were talking about dodo previously, like how poor syphilitic
dodo.
Here, Adam sort of, you know, he's the dodo.
He talks about being in the Tartars, but we never get to see that
reaction.
It's not missing a trick, right?
It's because he's a failure as a companion, that we never go there
but the potential was to have somebody else new in the TARDIS to
see their reaction, but it's not the point of this at all.
Do you think it would have given him added legitimacy if we'd seen
him sort of in the TARDIS with the doctor and rose?
I actually think that Russell is aware of these stupid arguments
that we have over whether so-and-so counts as a companion or not.
So Sarah Kingdom's a companion, but Brett Vine isn't, you know, and
stuff like that.
And we have these lists and we have kind of rules about what makes
a companion.
And I think just as Russell wants to kind of get us to see stories
in a different way as well.
Like the main unit of narrative, I think, in the new series is the
episode and the season and stories, you know, there's no part ones
or part 2s.
Here, I think series one is set up so that we have someone who's
there for 2 episodes so that we can argue about whether his
accounts as a companion or not.
And then we have Jack for a bunch of episodes as well.
And does he count as a companion and, you know, what happens when
he's left behind and things?
So I think Russell wants to break our way of thinking about the
show.
Like by the time this goes out, series 11 will have started or
will be very close to starting and they're very definitely gone
away from the idea that the doctor has companions and they're
referred to in sort of publicity and things as the doctor's
friends.
Because I think we talked about that as well, the companion thing
just is this relationship of a sexual nature, you know, like it's
such an odd thing to talk about.
So it plays with the idea of a companion, but it also kind of
wants us to throw it away, Abe, I think.
Well, that lovely line later on in the season with the dialect
said, the doctor, we have your associate.
Yeah, well, the Daleks aren't going to understand what a friend
is.
I think Bruno and Langley does a good job of this.
You know, he certainly is up to the task of acting against Tamsen
and the others.
No, I think he's underrated.
You know, pity about all of his offscreen shenanigans later on
with when he was in Coronation Street and letting go of that.
But over these 2 episodes, I've really enjoyed his performance.
Well, remember that at the time, he was well known from Coronation
Street.
So even though he was asopactor in voted commas, He was a well
known face.
And I think this is one of the brilliant things that Russell
does.
He's not against casting soap actors.
He recognises how good soap actors can be.
And so he'll cast some of the most louded talents in the land, you
know, Simon Callow and people like that, but up against them, he'll
put in Bruno Langley from Coronation Street or Tracy Ann Cyberman
who is in EastEnders as Den Watt's wife, Chrissy.
And it's good.
He doesn't subscribe to that snobby attitude, that a soap actor is
only a soap actor.
And 99% of the time it works.
You get great performances.
And you can see that he respects soap as a medium, I think.
You know, he, there's that scene in, um, clear as folk, where
Vince meets a girl at a pub, and they bond over a shared love for
Coronation Street, and, you know, they even lament the fact that
it was put up against Doctor Who, you know, at one point.
And so I think he likes soap and certainly when he brings the show
back.
I mean, every 3 weeks having us go back to earth and meet the mum
and the boyfriend and that kind of thing, there's definite sort of
soap storytelling going on there.
Yeah, and I think one of Russell's previous big hits was the grand
which was set in a hotel.
And while it wasn't a soup, it had that kind of structure to it.
I think Russell appreciates soap writing.
He thinks good soap writing is some of the best writing out
there.
And same with performances.
I think it's very strange that science fiction fans kind of look
down their nose, it's so, because enjoying something long running
like Star Trek and something long running like home and away
they're pretty similar kind of experiences I think.
Yeah.
There's one other aspect of this episode that I think is quite
unique for this season and that's the musical score.
I think this score for this episode, with all of its bleeps and
blops, is very old school Doctor Who, and very different from so
many of the other episodes where you got Rose's theme and other
themes running through it.
I just think when I watched this back, it was something that just
I noticed that I thought the musical school was quite different.
It is different.
It's not my favourite.
Murray work.
When he does sort of whimsical future stories.
He tends to have those kind of tinkly tonkly, um, knowingly comedy
scores, and I don't think it necessarily works.
It doesn't add a whole lot, but, you know, he's 50% genius, so
that's fine.
I'm a big fan of the score for the end of the world.
And the world's great.
Yeah.
No, I'm just saying it was just thematically very different from
all the overarching themes that you get in his work.
And I just didn't really pick up on any of them in this particular
episode.
Murray underscores emotion a lot, and there's not a lot of emotion
in this episode, so we sort of left with scoring the action.
Yeah, the stakes are quite low, aren't they?
And the doctor and rows are a bit sidelined and so there isn't
really much opportunity for their big thematic things.
And so it is action and atmosphere that he has to that he has to
create.
But as a standard doctor episode, as you mentioned, Peter.
I think that this one, it flies under the radar, and I certainly
think it's one that people should go back and rewatch and see all
of this interesting stuff that's going on with a new perspective.
Yeah, and certainly now, you know, now that it is so incredibly
timely.
It's so prescient, it has important things to say, I think.
Yeah, sort of, it's an average episode, but that's not a bad
thing.
There's a lot of good stuff in an average episode.
Well, Elissa, we've toppled the Murdochracy and dropped Adam off
home, so it's time to take a relaxing and not at all emotionally
exhausting trip to the 1980s.
We'll see you next week for Father's Day.
In the meantime, you can find us at Flightthrough Entirety.com
flight through Entirety on Facebook and Apple Podcasts and at FDE
podcast on Twitter.
Don't forget to check out Bond Finger, our commentary podcast
covering 50 years of the James Bond films.
That's Bondfinger.com, Bondfinger on Facebook and Apple Podcasts
and at Bondfingercast on Twitter.
Until next time, may you remember to bring an umbrella when the
doctor visits your workplace and detonates your boss.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
See you soon Good night.
Thank you very much.
That was Flight 3 Entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley, Todd BLB
and Peter Griffiths, theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, strings
performance by Jane Orberg.
This episode, Eater Kronkberger, was recorded on the 5th of August
2018 and released on the 7th of October.
Today is, of course, a historic day for Doctor Who, with the
release of the 1st episode of the Jody Whittaker era, The Woman
Who Fell to Earth.
But be assured that you'll get to hear the definitive FTE take on
it sometime in late 2023.
So let me try and do an outro. then we'll go and walk around for a
2nd and then we'll do...
Did you notice, well, talking about world building earlier.
So, conversation between us. that when they talk about the floods
in Glasgow, it actually cuts to the screen behind Catholica and it
says New Caledonia or Caledonia Prime floods.
And so it's Russell's World Building.
He not talking about real Glasgow.
He's talking about new, new, new, new, new, Glasgow, out.
It's great.
I love that stuff.
That, that, um, that whole thing, like the, there isn't actually
that much journalism you get to see in a story that's ostensibly
about journalism, but the little titbits are just, it's silly
Doctor Who world stuff, which I just think is wonderful.
Talking about the budget earlier where they couldn't afford aliens
and things like that for this story, when they have that little
where they're looking at the info spike for the 1st time, and
Kathika says, ladies and gentlemen, multi-sex robot, and undecided
there's no multi-sex robot and undecided that we can see there.
But I think that might be us.
I'll take robot, Todd, your multisex.
Oh, thank you.
There you go listeners.
That's what I was waiting for.
Help me now. right Let's keep laughing, Nathan.
I will.
I always do.
All right, here goes.
Well, dear listener, we've toppled the murdocracy.