Moisten Up

Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety the only Doctor Who podcast brought to you by Vitex Health Drinks. That's VITEX and use the offer code Useless at checkout. I'm Nathan. I'm James. And I'm Daniel. It's 1987, Margaret Thatcher's prime minister again, and it looks like the driver of that oncoming car isn't paying close attention to the road. Doctor Who finally gets its teeth into some real family drama. It's Father's Day. Oh, man, I'm so excited to do this one. I've always loved this story, and I'm so thrilled to be on. Thanks for having me. Oh, no problem at all. Thank you for agreeing to join us. So, what is it about this story that puts it up among your favourites? Well, it's a few different things. I am a soccer for, and I don't do it very often in who, and I think it's probably a good thing. I'm a sucker for sort of things where characters kind of recurse upon themselves where they're in, there's 2 people in the same time thing and they're not supposed to touch each other. I like that stuff. I think if you overused it. It would be rubbish. But I just like the idea of playing with little bits about time travel, and I think it's just such a, like a rich vein to mine if you're a writer. There's so many ways to go with it. And I think this one goes, it keeps it, keeps it to a small story which is really great. It's one of the best things about, um, one of the, the 1st season of um, Nuhu in 2005, as most of the stories are quite small, and focus on family, and this one's just got a lot of great writing and I just love the character of the dad. I think he's Sean Dingwall, who plays him, is just so great. He holds the whole thing together. And there's some, there's a lot of, there's a lot of good emotional stuff in here. Sometimes it's a bit cheesy, but on the whole, it's wonderful. Yeah. I have to confess that this is one of the ones that I cry in and like I'm fairly stoic. You know, I'm fairly well known for my high level of emotional control, but, you know, like I cry at supermarket openings and school fates and things like that. But this is one of... that's right. This is one of the 10 or 11 episodes of series one that I cry. But perhaps I'm not ashamed to. not ashamed to admit that I'm cold and dead inside, as most of my friends know. Yeah, I get a quick catch up today just to catch up with it and watch it again and I was tearing up a couple of times. It's great. powerful. Yeah, I think, I think two. Like, it's something that we haven't really had the opportunity to have in Doctor Who very often, and that is a regular fam that's part of the show. So we're back, you know, every 3 weeks, we've been back to the Tyler family, and we've heard Rose's dad mentioned, we know that he's died from the Unquiet Dead, I think. We're invested in her. We've seen enough of Jackie to have a sort of past version of Jackie work, you know, like we know her well enough in the present in her relationship. Yeah, it's mostly the hair. She just works the hair. Yeah, we've gotten to nowhere enough that you're safe to go back and explore like a past, even angrier version of Jackie and sort of know where you are. know where you stand. Yeah, yeah. I think I think you're right. I think Sean Dingwell is yet another superb guest star this series. Another character who is inspired by the doctor to do the right thing and kind of solve the puzzle. He's great. He's just great. Partly because he's so ordinary. Like he's, you know, he's Rose's dad, he's, and she's been sort of raised to think he's amazing. And it's one of those great sort of ideas, another thing of great writing, like that sort of thing where you, I don't know about being disappointed by your parents or, you know, Rose discovers that he's not all that she was led to believe he was. It's just a great little idea. And it also taps into that thing. everyone goes through. you know when you sort of get to your teens. And it seems like such a silly thing to realise. but when you 1st time you sort of realised that your parents were real people before you were even around and they, you know, they had a relationship and they're real people now. And it's such a silly, obvious, selfish thing for a child to realise. the 1st time you sort of get that. It's a big thing. And this is where she gets, she actually gets to go back and see it, which, you know, we don't get to do. I totally agree with that. I mean, this episode just, I'm bawling by about halfway through. It's just so beautifully put together. I mean, it's almost as if the story has been written as a eulogy to her father. It starts with that line. Um, Peter Allen Tyler, my dad, the most wonderful man of the world born 15th September, 1954, and then ends with like his his, um, the day he died. Like, it's the same line just with the date change. Yeah, and the whole episode is like a, it's like a memorial to his father, she never knew, and then, I think in fact, the very end of the cold open is the photo of Smiling Pete, and then the very end of the entire episode is that as well. That's the last shot, the same photo. Oh, I think they're walking towards the TARDIS, but it's the last close-up episode. But there's something really beautiful about, I mean, let's just go straight to the end. We are the ramblingest Doctor Who podcast currently available. Rose gets to fix her father's death. Do you know what I mean? She can't change it. She tries to change it. She tries. Yeah, she tries to stop it happening. But Jackie is telling the story at the end, and it's different from the story that we hear. And it's fixed in 2 ways, and both of them, I think, are terrifically humane. I mean, the most obvious way is that he doesn't die alone, that there's someone there that we now know was his daughter comforting him. But also, the thing that I like is that in the 1st version, it was a hit and run, you know, where someone presumably spent the rest of their life feeling guilty about what they've done. And, He's tearing up as he's tearing up. At the end, he gets forgiven. Do you know what I mean? Like Jackie forgives that guy and says he was just a young kid and it wasn't his fault. He stayed and waited for the police to come. And so he gets forgiven. And I just think that's so extraordinarily beautiful. And it's what he was saying before is, you know, the small scale of the story, that it matters on a level of human interactions and things like loss and forgiveness and love. You know, what drives this whole story. There's hardly any space corridors or guns or, you know, anything like that. And, you know, like I just think that ending is spectacularly well judged. I just love, I love how it starts and ends in the same way. I think her original intent is just to be the someone there to be there so he doesn't die on his own. Uh, and um, I think it's still sort of up in the air about whether she actually planned to save them or not. I don't think she, she did. But I mean, at the end, that's what happens. She's just there, you know, so he's not alone. And also he knows who she is. So, you know, it means more to him than if it was just a stranger. And I just think it's beautiful that the whole, the way it's fixed isn't that he gets to live because that would be a little bit strange and against the rules of Doctor Who generally. But just the fact that he didn't die alone. I think that's just so simple and powerful and wonderful. I also think it would be a bit sort of science fiction-y and magic. Like in reality, you don't get to save a dead parent, all that you get to do is change the way that you think about what happened. You know, one of the reasons that going ahead, that blue suit metacrises doctor doesn't quite work is, you know, how do you feel when a magic replica of your boyfriend, you know? Do you know what I mean? Like it's so science fiction-y that it's hard to relate to. But here, you know, we could never go back and save Pete. We know how TV works. We know how Doctor Who works. And for it to have any emotional resonance at all, it has to be kind of real, I think. And like, like he says, he, he, it's not like he didn't think about going back and saving his entire race of people on the planet he's from. If he could he would, but he can't. So that's not yet. No, no, you wait. Flash forward to 2013. But, um, but it's you're right. but everyone's got a dad, you know? and everyone thinks about when their dad's going to die. Yeah. One of my favourite lines in the entire episode, the that line where, where Pete says, I'm your dad is, like, yeah, it's my, it's my job for it to be my fault. That's actually a quote from Paul Cornell's father. Yeah, I read that, so Paul Cornell's dad is, I mean, that Pete's sort of loosely and partly based on, on Paul Cornell's own dad who's a bit of a dell boy himself. I love that. Yeah, no, like, that's the story that Paul tells at least, is that his father was, you know, very similar to the character that he wrote, he, um, had went through dozens of jobs, like, trying to like, find something that worked and, including selling health drinks, and eventually ended up running a, like, a vetting shop. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, it's just, I think maybe that's why this story has so much emotional depth to it is that he's writing what he knows. I think too, that we kind of have Paul Cornell to thank for introducing this sort of emotional depth into Doctor Who, in the sense that he did that during the wilderness years, in the new adventures. You know, he's one of the very 1st people to put a new adventure out. And it's a very strange story. So it's timeworm revelation. And, you know, it's a sort of strange mindscape and a sort of internal examination of what the doctor is like. But it does hinge on ideas of sort of forgiveness and sacrifice and that kind of thing in a way that we hadn't really seen that much of. And I think it's, you know, I think that if you're putting together a stable of writers to bring Doctor Who back in 2005, you know, you'd be absolutely crazy to not include Paul Cornell for that reason. Yeah, absolutely crazy not to include book on now when you're putting Dr. back together in 2018. Oh, well. He's very busy. I've always felt like the 1st season of New Who has a tiny little echo of a feeling of the last couple of seasons of classic coup and a little bit of tiny bit of new adventures DNA in it as well especially with the Paul Cornell bits. And yeah, like focussing on companion stories a little more than just straight up doctor or having the doctor in the background which is which he kind of is a lot in this one. But I feel like all that emotional stuff with the dad really carries the whole thing. And one of the bits that really gets me and, you know, made me moisten up a little bit was when he he's got Rose alone in the church and he, you know, he figures out who he is and what's going on. And he, the 1st question he asks is, am I a good dad? in the future. And that's, that, got me so bad. That's like one of those things that all parents want to know. All dads are insecure about whether or not they're good and he gets to ask his future daughter and find out. And not only is that so loaded with emotion, but also if she can't she can't answer the question because, but she can't tell him he's dead and that's just such a, I love that moment. In fact, there's a perfect blend of comedy too because it's like am I bald? Yeah, you know, like, you know, she he starts asking questions. It's like, 0 my god, I've realised something terrible. Am I bald? It turns out to be, you know, much, much worse than that. I think what's clever about that scene as well is how smart Pete is because, like, Rose is smarter than Jackie, I think are just sort of more competent generally than Jackie is, and you kind of wonder, well, you know, where they should get it from. And Pete is an ordinary person. He doesn't know he's in a science fiction program where people can travel back in time from the future. That's just not a possibility that is open to him to think about. But he pieces it together in a really clever way, and we're allowed to watch him do that, and he even shows us a little bit of his working. And so you get this overall feeling that he's a smart, clever caring man. Whereas Jackie, I think, comes off really badly in this story. Um, you know, I adore Jackie. I think she's sort of really lovely, but she's so horrible too that awful fight that they have outside the church in front of all their friends. That's great. And that's, I feel like that's the 1st moment that Rose realises that her mom, you know, is kind of an embellishing all those years telling stories about her dad, you know, telling her how he was perfect and wonderful and they were really happy and, you know that's not necessarily the truth and I love that sort of reveal and you see it on her face. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. She calls out you're not like this or something. Yeah, yeah. In fact, those stories, I think, actually do reflect really well on Jackie and having her just sitting there, you know, not being big giant performance Jackie, but just being sort of quiet, Jackie talking to her daughter about her dad. There's something really sweet about those things. But funny in the story. He has actually become the best dad in the world. Yeah. I mean, like he's a bit rubbish to start off with, but then he becomes a hero. Yeah, he's become the father that her mother always told her he was. Yeah, like, oh, no, say, I'm now getting emotional. Yeah, yeah. But it answers the question. Am I a good dad? And the answer is yes. You know, he does say. I can't be there to bring you up. I can't do the picnics or any of those sorts of things, but I can do these. Yeah, he can't get his life together. can't do simple things like be on time or, you know, he's generally useless, but, you know this is the one thing that he can do. He can die to save everyone else. I thought that was really, and I love how he figures. Obviously, by then he's figured out who, you know, that Rose is his daughter. But at the end, the last hit where he figures out that he is dead he's in the future, he's dead and he's not meant to be there. And then he even figures out that it's the car outside. And just the scene where he's sort of saying goodbye to them that's the bit where I really, I was like, I'm just going to stop trying not to cry because it was just so, it's, it's heavy and it's great. And, you know, he gets the chance to say to meet his daughter, uh and say goodbye to her, which is like not something that most people who have died before that you ever have grown up get to do. And I thought that bit where he said, you know, she says it's not fair. And he says, you know, I'll think of all the extra hours I've had you know, people don't, no one else in the world has had that. And I thought that was wonderful. The beautiful thing about it is that you're not crying because it's sad. You're not crying because Rose is losing her father, you're crying because there's something so incredibly humane and warm about it all. And like Paul Cornell is a religious man and his wife is an Anglican priest. And you know, he puts at the centre of this story. A story of self-sacrifice, you know, a man who saves the world by laying down his life. In front of a church. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, well, yeah. And you know, like the, he had that big church character in timeworm revelation as well. It's such a resonant story because it's something that is, you know, embedded so deep in our culture and that we've heard told so many times. And I think it's really well told here. It's beautiful. quite different. No, um, Simon Pegg is originally of, well, of Pete Taylor. What? Yeah. Perfect. Um, but he couldn't do the dates. and so, uh, not sure on doing well instead, would gave him the role of the editor in one game. Would he have put on the accent to be Pete Tyler? I don't know. Would he have been would that have been any good? What do you have just have been Simon Pegg? You know what I mean? Where he always kind of, I think I prefer what we got. Yeah, well, he's very, the guy, well, Sean Dingwell, kind of played it as almost as a dell boy. Like, he's kind of wearing the shabby suit and he's got the same sort of East London accent. And the hair. Yeah, that looks like he's going to go bald any minute. like just in that second. Love that. And yeah, it's great. he had by the next the next series. Oh, well, he was older then, right? So, I mean, there are some actors that take over a role. You can't see them as anything but themselves. And sometimes that works in sort of small parts and things like Tams and Greg last week as the nurse in the long game. But, uh, I think that Simon Pegg would have been completely wrong uh, for Pete. Oh, totally agree. And I don't know that he does warmth quite so well as Sean Dingle does. Sean Dingwell is just, he just plays it. He plays it so kind of, he exudes uselessness. But at the same time, he does. I don't know how he does it. Maybe it's just the 80s, the suit and the with the sleeves pulled up, it just makes people look like idiots to me. But, um, he plays are generally sort of flappy and useless, but he's got that warmth and, you know, he's got self-doubt and he's he's really trying. this character, you know, to make it make it happen and get their lives together. And by the end of it, one of the reasons it's so heavy to watch him walk out there and it means so much for that goodbye scene is that you've been made to like him, despite his obvious faults and flaws. He's only human. But, you know, he loves his family. I did read recently that they were planning to make this one like a sort of a low budget story just about character and about family but so the monsters weren't even going to be in it to start with but they were sort of... Well, they were grim Reaper characters. Are they called Reapers? Well, they're not referred to as reapers on screen, but they do have like a big sort of scythe thing. You can see it more clearly in some of the photos, but the tail has a big scythe on it. But the idea was that they would be guys in costumes. Yeah, they're going to be like death figures. Right. Actual Grim Reapers. Yeah, basically, sort of weird, ethereal, grimly for characters. But I believe. they were too similar to the adherence of the repeated meme. Any of the world and also they went, no, we want we want more monsters. And yeah, so the budget blew out. Yeah, that's what I read. They blew the budget out after they suggested. I think it was even Cornell that suggested the monsters and then they just had to, they were completely, obviously completely CG. I guess they just wanted a monster, some monster antagonists. He suggested the rapers, and I think then Jane Tranter suggested that, or maybe let's make it more sort of action in more science fiction, and and so they, they, um, turn them into these sort of weird half shark, half fat, sort of dragon things, I think. There was a trailer. I don't know if you remember this at the time that, um, that showed, it did show a few CG monsters, including the sort of running Civine from Aliens of London in their sort of CG form and and the reapers. And I think that because there hadn't been CG and Doctor Who before, they clearly wanted to foreground this sort of new technology that they were using. And I think they do a really good job. I like, um, There's one scene where the vicar gets killed and one of them sort of sweeps down to attack the vicar, and then it sort of decorously puts its wing in the way between the vicar that it's eating and the camera just to maintain our kind of PG. Well, like when it when it goes after the dad. You really hear like, you know, thwacking sounds of like flesh being penetrated. but there's there's no, there's no blood flying but you can tell that that guy is in pieces. He's totally eaten See, the sound effect there is a vulture. Okay. Yeah, a very coded vulture, probably. I do like the effect they leave behind where you start to realise that it's not just happening at the church that it's happening all over the area, like I knew you end up with young Mickey at the playground, and everyone just sort of disappears around him in that sort of haunting 80s crappy playground. I do like that, it's the streets are sort of deserted. There's something really strange about that scene too, where you have a whole heap of people, like you've got like a homeless person drinking a bottle of wine and you've got someone kind of pruning roses and someone hanging out the laundry and stuff and you know that they're going to die because like why else are we showing them? You know what that reminds me of? survival. Oh, yeah. Kittlings, like in their point of view and then like, yeah scream. Smash milk bottle. true. I mean, those are the only 3 things that British people really do outside. Yeah, you know, hang. Yeah, that's it. Otherwise it's indoors and talking about tennis and stuff. But, um, uh, despite what we identified as a small scale, there is also kind of a massive scale too, because even though it is a sort of small emotional story in the confines of a church, it is about the destruction of the world being at stake. But it's in a really kind of weird way because the way that time is presented. I mean, the way that time is presented in Doctor Who, it's never like a physicist would present it. But here time is sort of weird and mythical and has these sort of strange powers. It's odd and magical. In the same way that we criticise the uh, telling movie. It's magic dust. Yeah, I just think that people who criticise Doctor Who for having magic in it are silly. I mean, what have they been watching? Because I think the reason that we get to see Rose try to go and help her father and then fail is to kind of up the emotional tension. Like it's a really scary thing and it reminds you how confronting that would be. Yeah, yeah. Like it really, it kind of ups the stakes. But then it also offers this sort of science fiction hand wavy explanation for why, um, it's so disastrous. You know, there's 2 of them present in the same place. The doctor's aware that he's sort of breaking the rules, but he's he's an answerable to anyone these days. There's Mary a mention of the Blunovic limitation. Well, I'm really, I'm really happy they don't mention the awfully named stupid, stupid Blenovic limitation effect. I hate that. whenever people bring that up, I just go to sleep. I do really... It's in it. It's not mentioned by name, but Rose gets told not to touch baby Rose. Yeah, like the concepts there. I just really like how when there's the, they shoot the scene the same way the 2nd time, you know, he says, she says, can I have another go? And he says, oh, I guess, all right. yeah they they but they're shot the same. you know, it comes around, the camera comes around the corner and you see them standing on the edge of that, um, awful looking housing estate. By the way, it's suppressing how easily you can make a modern kind of housing estate area in any British city look like the 80s with very minimal effort. Like I think they just took down some satellite dishes. I think they put some rave posters up and that was really basically it. Well, they looked like they were in the 80s and the 60s. Well, no, that's I mean, because I grew up in Britain in the 80s and it is all concrete bollards and knackered playgrounds and it does feel like it does feel like a mishmash of different decades. Like that's one of the reasons why remembrance of the Daleks was so easy to do just because so many parts of Shoreditch look like that time. They've barely changed. But I like how they sort of do the same shot coming around the corner and they're still standing the same place, but then you realise that you're actually with another Dr. and Rose who are looking around the corner of that building at them. And he, you know, they don't go on They don't waffle on about time and how you shouldn't blower into yourself and how you shouldn't blah, blah, blah, but he he's very serious and he says, this is the last chance you have to do this because we can't come back again because it's too weird. Too many freaky things will happen. I just like that. And then once she runs out there and saves him, the older version of Rose and the Doctor disappear and they don't explain it at all. They don't tell you why. And I quite like that. Obviously, it's because that timeline's sort of been short circuited and they never go to do what they did because they just saw future versions of themselves, save Pete. I just like that they don't really explain it, but it just happens and it's sort of like, if you know what that is. There are all sorts of other weird things that happen like that 1st phone call that everyone's getting on their phone. Um, that the father of the bride is getting and that rose is getting the... Yeah, that 1st phone call. I mean, that doesn't work in any sort of real proper sort of physical sense of time. It's because time is in some way magical and the 1st phone call is you know, there's something essential to the 1st phone call that makes it available as a kind of thing that would happen when time is going weird. And, and I also think too, the, the car that appears around the corner from the church, like the other rose appearing, in a sense it's just sort of plot convenienced, do you know what I mean? It's like, well, we're done with them. Let's not follow them, or let's not have Pete go looking for the car, so he can throw himself in front of it. The car appears there for a sort of plot convenience reason, but it also appears there because time is giving Pete the chance to fix it. Do you know what I mean? It works on a magical level. And even the idea that old things. Here, it's old things are... Old things that offer more protection from the Reapers because they've been there longer, like the Reapers are sort of future backwards through time. Yeah, in a way. So they're more solid because they exist in a longer sort of duration of time. And that's just sapphire and steel, isn't it? That's how time works in Sapphire and Stale. Yeah, me too. When are we doing the saffron steel? We're doing it now, darling. Sorry, I'm signing up for that right now. Let's do it But I love, yeah, I even love the doctor steps in front of everyone because he's older than everything there, but they all go inside a church that to me seems quite old to the doctor, it's not old at all. He says, you know, the church is not going to last forever because it's not that old. Yeah, it's not as old as him, is it? Like, there's no way it's as old as him. A couple 100 years is a drop in the bucket, you know, yeah. But again, you know, there's that religious idea of the church as a sanctuary of going to the church for safety. It's not just a terribly old tire warehouse that they hide in. Like it's very definitely a quarry or a quarry. His quarry's been here since the middle age. Apparently, look, I don't remember this at all. At the time, fans nicknamed the Reaper's Flying Killer Time Monkeys. And they would use that as like, you know, like, you know shorthand for, for when, um, you know, some, something, you know plot convenience wise happened, which was science fiction, sort of magic and didn't really make much sense. They just go, oh. Um, time monkeys. But I mean, that's a Doctor Who thing. Like, blink, everyone loves blink. It's lousy with Thai monkeys. You know, like, but we don't type. that's exactly right. I guess they're really just there. So there's something to be scared of and something to hide from something physical to hide from. I mean, if they weren't there, I suppose there would just be sort of a shimmering wall of time changing the surrounding area or something like that, and it wouldn't be quite as something to be as terrified of. So I guess they're just there to move the plot along, really. I'm not a huge fan of them. I mean, it's Doctor Who. And they kind of want there to be monsters and it, you know, builds the world a little bit, and it is nice to have sort of flying CG animals in a way that we haven't really ever had before. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think it holds up a little bit. It was it was like kind of a shock to see all the CG in the 1st season and it was kind of nice, actually. So, there's a Vaseline on the lens. I keep going on about this, but the Vaseline on the lens in that 1st series of new who is just crazy. It takes a while for them to get over that. It does have a very definite look, though. Yeah, like the 1st series of Drag Race. Like, oh, we're not quite sure how this is going to come across. Craig rubs the vessel on the lane. But it kind of works for this story because it's set in the past that kind of work. And apparently I don't remember this either, but apparently the original DVD release, they put a whitewash. On the episode, so it was even more pale and pasty and washed out. I kind of think it works because it is said in 1987, but it's eventually said in a sort of magic alternative 1987 that's called in a sort of weird time eddy and subject to these sort of strange time magical monkey forces. And so I think that level of like unreality really works. The monsters even remind me of this other, something else. I don't know if you guys ever saw the crap, late 90s American adaptation. It's like a TV, TV miniseries movie of the Stephen King story at the Langoliers. It's about like Banky from Perfect Strangers and some other fools are on a plane that somehow doesn't go through to tomorrow. They got caught in some storm and they get stuck in yesterday which is a great idea, but the thing they're supposed to be scared of is that there are these sort of similar to the reapers, these sort of crap looking CG monsters that fly around everywhere and eat up, you know, and eat up and destroy yesterday so that it's gone. I actually think I remember the Langolias. Are they sort of, have they got lots and lots of tea? Yeah, they're sort of like balls. There's sort of giant chicken nuggets that have a sort of three way mouthful of teeth. Yeah, do they revolve like revolving teeth? Yeah, they spin and they sort of, they sort of just fly through everything and just eat sort of tubes through everything. This story always reminds me of that. It's much better than a Langol is because I thought it was a bit crap. But it was just around that time in the late 90s when they were adapting all these Stephen King books into miniseries like the stand and it's kind of a similar story. One of the things I love in this story is that they immediately almost immediately take away the TARDIS, which is, you know, it's a safe place that you always can go back to. And in Classic Hoo, it was something that the companion would always say, can we please just go back to the TARDIS? And the doctor would say no. But in this story, the doctor goes back to the TARDIS. And I love that bit where he opens up and it's just a regular police box. Or it's just an empty, empty box. And yeah, even the sanctuary has been taken away. It's some, like, uh, wheel in space? No, is it women's space? Someone takes the time, blah, blah, blah, out of it and it's just an empty police box. Oh, no, no, no. No, we do it to the meddling monkey. But it is something that we sort of have seen before, but we've obviously never seen it in the new series and it creates a new thing for the TARDIS to do. And it is more time magic, you know. And it's great how it's just the outside doors inside. Yeah, it's not a white box. It's like it's folded in on itself. Originally it's scripted. The police box prop was supposed to, like, disintegrate around him. It was supposed to fall apart around him, like he'd just become paper or something. All the panels fall out like a big couple books. Yeah, they decided not to do that for budgetry and safety reasons. There is a scene, isn't there, where there's a sort of giant fake out because you do think that the doctor is going to throw the lever and send Sutec back in time by doing some sort of technological, you know, by doing some sort of techno battle solution to the problem. And it very much looks like it's going to work. It's just perhaps a little bit too early in the episode for us to completely fall for it. But then it sort of fails horribly and ups the antique. Well, he's killed. You know, the doctor's, he's, he's gone. Well, I, because I love the idea in, I mean, in Doctor Who, it's so rare that he swoops in with the TARDIS and everyone gets into the TARDIS and he saves them at the end. That, I mean, that happens only a handful of times if I remember right. So, yeah. And so, so, so adventure's over though. So as soon as he says, you know, we'll get the TARDIS, we'll get you all in, we'll get out of here and we'll fix it. As soon as he says that, I don't quite believe it. And I do like that they take that option away again a 2nd time, you can't get into the TARDIS. The TARDIS doesn't fix everything. And I, because that's just, you know, too easy to happen. And like, so I like it when riders remove that from the equation. He does it twice in this. It's great that it just sort of disappears in all that's left of the doctor and the TARDIS. Because he's dead. He's been great. You don't quite believe it, but he's totally gone. And she picks up the key and she's like, I'm on my own. Well, they make up for that later in this series. And and the whole whole new series as well. It's like, oh, quick, get them out, get them out. Like, it's constantly using an escape, Bruce, the new series much more than it was in the classic. Yeah. I like it when they take it out And then at the end, the doctor's gone, and so Rose has got to figure it out. Not only Rose, but Pete's got to figure out that he's dead and he's got to fix it by going out there. So at the end, he, without even the doctor there to help them. He's the one who sort of saves the whole thing. And then I just love our, um, I think when he's hit by the car Rose is standing in the church door watching and he and the doctor comes out from behind her, like, just like, like, it's such a great... But he just appears, doesn't he? Like, there's no sort of magic flash or anything like that. It's just fixed now and the doctor's back. And there is that thing where the doctor is standing in for pay you know, for Rose's absent father. And so, you know, Pete not only realises that he has to die to fix this situation, but he actually realises that the doctor knew that all along and that the big complicated plan with the TARDIS was just his way of saving Pete, making sure that Pete didn't have to go through that and that Rose didn't have to have a childhood without a father. You know, he does all that stupid humans, you know, stupid apes out for what they can get. thing. But he really, really shows so much respect for Rose's feelings about the loss of her father. You know, before when we were talking about him giving Rose a 2nd chance. Like anyone who's watched any Doctor Who at all would have to think that he's gonna say, no, are you kidding? You know, like, we're already here. There's the 53rd law of time, which expressly forbids doing this blah, blah, blah. And he says, yeah, all right, you know, because it's important. The 53rd law thing. That's what happens in fan fiction when you let fans write, Doctor Who. But if you let, you know, when you've got to write a, Yeah, I just love how he's like, yeah, no, we'll just we'll try one more time but this is the only time you can't do it again. Yeah, yeah. And that is a proper rule. you know, like, you know, there's a proper rule and a reason for that. But he does do something risky because he recognises that it's important for Rose to do this. It's interesting that he's standing here for Rose's father throughout this series. And then, yeah, he regenerates him. That's a kind of creepy kind of. That's so true. I never thought of that. Well, we all marry our fathers. It was from from daddy to love interest. It is a bit creepy, very creepy. I really like the custom in this. I like, I do like at the start when I'm, they're in the flat and he's sort of kind of, he's got his arms folded. he's given her the silent treatment. He's kind of insinuating that, uh, is this why he came along with me in the 1st place all those episodes ago? Was this just your plan all along just to like sneak out and save your dad? Space, like, it travels in space. I said. And then I said, it travels in time. And then you were interested. Um, yeah. I think it's very clear that it wasn't premeditated, was it? It's just that she couldn't bear to watch it a 2nd time. Well, not as recent, both Russell and Paul, I think, have said on a number of occasions. We left that ambiguous. We actually never decided whether she had gone. Oh, I can save dad. Um, But Billy Piper has said, no, she always saw it as, like, it was, it was just spur at the moment. She's overcome with, Oh gosh, I could save my father. So that, I mean, like, that's how she was playing it. Well, the way the way it plays out on screen is like that. And when she says, you know, it wasn't my, that wasn't my intention. I didn't know, just kind of did it. I mean, she's got, you know, you don't, the characters can't really lie to you. You know what I mean? unless it comes out again later. I like that fight a lot. Like, it's kind of cute that Pete just assumes that it's a, you know, boyfriend trouble and stuff like that. But, but he storms off and you, like, you know the format of the show and you know that, you know, it's not going to ditch the female lead midway through. an episode, probably, although more of that later in the season. Um, But, um, it's a real proper fight. He's really properly angry, and she's so horrible to him because. He's one weakness is that he's lost everyone that he ever knew his family, his home, his planet. And she just goes, you'll be back. I know how lonely you are. I know how sad you are. It's so brutal. She's so horrible to him. And when they do meet one another again and it's they do it just very briefly before some kind of crisis happens. It's all okay. And I like when a show will rely on just the performance of the act is to sell sort of forgiveness without having to kind of rub our nose in it. Yeah, like you say, they're just sort of touching it really briefly. You know, he says, you know, I wouldn't really have left you. She says, oh, no. I just like, that's great. A little shorthand. And then he just asked her to say sorry. It's kind of weird, but it's a bit weird, but I do like how Eccleston's really good at being sort of Stern and serious and a bit worried. And then when he just turns that big smile on, you know everything's going to be all right. when he turns that smile on it's huge. Like it's great. really good at it. He does it again in that moment when he's talking to the two, the bride and the groom, you know, when they come up to him and I love this moment. Some people think it's a bit cheesy, but I love it. Like he come up to her and say, you know, are we going to be okay? Are you going to save us? I know we're not important and I just love that bit. this one line where he says, who says you're not important? And that, to me, I think when I saw that the 1st time, that might I mean, I did enjoy the episodes before that. I really loved some of the episodes before this, but that's like that was the 1st time when I was like, wow, this is Doctor Who they're really getting this right. That little speech she says about, you know, street corner 2 AM that's important. You guys are important. It's a little bit like when Sandra says that, take a drink. that Bob Holmes is the is the writer who discovers that the doctor's enemy is bureaucracy, right? And that is people who are hide bound. I think Cornell is the person, and I could be wrong. They may be counterexamples to this, but I think Cornell is the person that puts the ordinary person at the centre of the world that says that everyone is important. And that the purpose of life, the things that are good, that are worthwhile. In a sense, the thing that the doctor gives up is street corner, 3 o'clock in the morning. And even when he talks about Pete, you know, he's an ordinary person. It's kind of a much less, um, overt version of the, um, small beautiful thing speech from earth shock. Much less crap. Yeah, so I was trying to avoid saying that. I love that earth shock. I know it's... It means a lot to me, that one. I mean, that's probably, well, that's, I mean, you get moments of charm with her, but like that's probably the 1st time you get that sort of, you know, this is what life should... Yeah, look, I think I think the problem with that is that it gets uh, it, that the doctor loses that argument because the cyber leader, just so it's Tegan and he just... That's what we said in our Earthstock episode. I know if you remember, but I've always felt, ever since I saw it as a kid, that he loses that argument against the Saberman because he's got no answer for when they, you know, when they say where they're going to kill his companion and then emotions are a weakness. And I've always found that to be deeply bleak. Yeah, yeah, it's very say-wardian, I think. Well, you know, like, I think there was sort of a debating point. But here it's something that I think the story is 100% behind. The show lands on the idea that ordinary people are important and it really has sort of failed to make that point a lot of times in the past. And it's a point that will be made again. You know, Moffatt adopts it, um, in a Christmas carol, where Sardic says that, uh, you know, this young woman in the freezer is is not important and the doctor goes, wow, that's strange. I've never met anyone who wasn't involved before. And then and then rewrites his life to make her make her a love interest. And here it's, I mean, they're important because, I mean, not only yeah, because this sort of doctor sees ordinary people as important, but they've got a story. You know, immediately they, he says, you know, where'd you meet? you? Watch your story? they tell them about 2 AM on the street corner. And, you know, you warm to them immediately because they're sort of looking at each other and they're remembering. And as soon as they get a story, They're important. And, you know, that's sort of the point, you know, even though people are ordinary, they've all got a story to tell. Like, they've all got it, they've brought them to that point. There's something beautiful in their interaction too. Do you know what I mean? When the groom mentions his father and then remembers that his father's just been eaten and the bride comforts him just very gently and then they go on talking. And of course, the bride's pregnant. And so they've got a future ahead of them that we're constantly just visually reminded of. You know, they're important because they have a future and they're going to affect the future. And again, there's just something, the scale, the human scale of that, I think, is spectacular grade. I've got such a soft spot for them because their wedding looks exactly like so many 80s weddings I went to in my family as a kid in England. Right down to the gray suits and like, do you notice the, I think the groom has got like an earring, like a little stud? I love that little touch. Someone in, someone in production was like, let's give him a little lyrics. It's great. Right down to the, yeah, right down to the all the gray suits and the pregnant bride. It's right straight flashback from me. Wealthy listener, we've dispelled all those pesky coronivores and substantially improved the timeline, so it's time to head back to the 1940s to emotionally scar a whole new generation of children. We'll see you next week for the empty child. In the meantime, you can find us at flightthroughentirety.com flight through entirety on Facebook and Apple Podcasts, and at FTE podcast on Twitter. Where can people find you, Dan? Oh, you can follow Noodahoo on Twitter at Noodahoo podcast. We're on, we are on Facebook in a very limited way, where you can get our episodes at newtohoo.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Over on Bondfinger. Our flight through the entirety of the James Bond film series is reaching its ultimate termination. You can find our commentaries at bondfinger.com, bondfinger on Facebook and Apple Podcasts, and at bondfingercast on Twitter. Until next time, may the next wedding gift you buy not end up being an ominous symbol of your own ineluctable mortality. Thank you very much for listening and good night. Good night. Good night. That was Flight to Entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley, James Selwood, and Daniel from New to Who. Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, strings performance by Jane Alberg. This episode, Moisten Up, was recorded on the 29th of July 2018 and released on the 14th of October. Fans of flights to Entirety will also enjoy Jody InterTara, a weekly Doctor Who flashcast, where we briefly discuss each new episode of Series 11 after it airs, available now at Jodyinterterra.com, and soon on Apple Podcasts. So what do you think? It feels good so far. Yeah, yeah, I think we're doing good. I mean, I'd be happy to, unless, you know, if there's, um, I don't like, I, I, honestly, like I, I don't feel like I've left anything out, but I was, I'm trying to think of, I'm trying to think of some more stuff. Well, everything I've written I've already talked about. Well, I think we're okay. Do you know what I mean? I think that, yeah, I think that we're okay. I think that's the only thing I forgot to say is my favourite... I think my favourite part about Rose, like we said before, like how you sort of, um, how am I going to go about this because it's not, you're not disappointed by your parents. The fight, one of the, my favourite things about Rose, like I said before, you sort of learn that your parents are people before they were parents and that they are still people before their parents. One of my favourite things about Rose before she even meets her dad. is that I think they go somewhere, I think it's before he's on the, they're on the street corner. They go somewhere and see him talk. And the 1st thing she says is, I thought he'd be taller. It's the wedding, isn't it? They go to the wedding. Is that? Yeah, they're standing. I think, yeah, I think you're right, Nathan. They're standing at the back of the wedding. Oh, I thought he, I thought he was taller. I love it. He gets Jackie's name wrong. He can't remember Jackie. their wedding. Oh, that's right. That happened at the rehearsal for my wedding. Yeah, yeah, no, but it happened at Charles and Dyer's wedding. She says it's good enough for Lady Day. Can we cut that out? Jason, kill me. But I love that the 1st thing is, you know, the 1st thing in this monumental figure that she's been built up by her mother for her life and she imagines that he'd be taller. It's a full that stuff. so great. And it's like, it's for the best introduction to him because it's like, you know, he's nervous. He's forgotten his wife's full name. Well, she does have a long full name and then, you know, it's sort of taken, like from there that he's a bit of a bit useless. I just love that.