Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast brought to you by Vitex Health
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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.
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.
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.
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.