Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight for Entirety, the
only Doctor Who podcast, which absolutely doesn't get the whole
Don't Wander off thing.
I'm Nathan.
Sorry, I wandered off.
Brendan.
And I'm just trying this out, but I'm feeling the latex is pushing
up my throat a bit.
So we've taped up the windows, put Dane Vera Lynn on the wireless
and we're cowering in a shelter with nothing for company, but a
massive roast leg of pork.
It must be time for the empty child.
Now, you see, if it were modern dress, if we were doing this in
modern dress, we'd actually have Gracie Fields rotating away.
You know that Lisa Stansfield, who is Gracie Field's niece and a
certain J.D. Whittaker all come from the same little bit.
Oh, and they all have exactly the same accent, which I'm not going
to try and do.
That's exactly the same.
Yes.
We don't know when this is going out exactly, but it's entirely
possible that you, dear listener, have already seen Jody in
action.
Yes, which would be rather apropos, because as we record, we've
just seen her in action for the 1st time in the Comic Con trailer
and stealing a catwalk.
It's a hot topic.
Actually, the t-shirt I'm wearing right now, I got from Hot Topic
while I was in America, because Hot Topic do all sorts of geeky
things, and I'm wearing a t-shirt that has the 1st 12 slash 13
Doctor Who's, because it does have Peter Capaldi and John Hurt on
there.
It doesn't have Jodie Whittaker. going to scrawl her on here.
Go to wall scrawl my own shirt.
You can actually just colour in Peter Davidson.
Give him slightly longer hair.
Yes.
I think not even.
She was the P.
Davidson all the time.
No, I think the same person does their highlights.
That's definitely a thing.
I'm just waiting for the 1st fanboy online to say, who on earth
you know, what Doctor Who has ever had their hair blonded and
bleached?
Where and where are we?
Colin Baker.
Possibly even Billy, if...
Well, actually, there was a lovely gilded rinse on Mr. Pertwe this
week on day of the Daleks, day of the Daleks.
Was that your weekly viewing?
Yes.
I'm currently up to Pertz.
And yes, yes, there's definitely a gilded hue.
So yeah, it's been going on for quite a while.
Hey, cover everything on this planet.
It numb in baker light.
We cover it in bake light.
We do.
So this isn't the 1st time that we've been back to the 2nd World
War.
It was something that the show kind of avoided, partly because I
think it was just, you know, kind of the recent past when the show
began.
Yes, yeah.
I think we've mentioned this way, way back in the dawn of single
digit episodes that the 1st World War 2 story looted was Operation
Werewolf, which was conceived by Douglas Campfield for Patrick
Troughton.
And yet, the whole reason that was turned down was actually, this
is quite recent too soon. too soon.
And Mr. Letts agreed with that, didn't he?
Yes, yeah.
Yeah.
And Douglas sort of said, oh, yes, yes, I take your point.
Absolutely fair enough.
But yes, yeah, I think they weren't allowed to go back to World
War 2 until 1989.
So it was like 40 odd years was deemed.
Yeah, all right, we can do that now.
And I think that that's a sort of cart milish thing is to sort of
set stories in a much more recent past.
And that's something that the new series has obviously sort of
been able to do.
How do we think the production goes at recreating 1940.
Well, I think you could ask, how does the production go recreating
2005?
And it goes because it's so long ago.
And it goes the same way.
I really find watching these because we haven't talked about
watching the new shoe yet, have we other than Rose?
And it does feel like a completely new and fresh thing.
And seeing it now, it is the human drama, and it is soap, it large
but it's bigger than soap, and the characters are somewhat
hapertrophied and intensely coloured in a way much like the
Whitaker posters of the new companion.
Oh, sorry, best friends. are also that intensely coloured thing.
It's very different from what we end up with just a few years
later when we see an animated comic strip under the next producer
where the characters become somewhat less fleshed and 2D. This is
hyper real.
And it's the same with 1940.
The way they present 2005 is the way they present 1940.
And intense, just that point, maybe, between childhood and
adolescence, where everything is saturated with emotion and
colour.
And that's the experience I'm getting from this.
I'd forgotten how good this 1st RTD series really is.
Absolutely.
And how good Eccleston is and how he isn't he isn't gurning face
forward as Amanda Ianucci was always joking about at the time.
He was constantly pushing jokes armed about Eccleston's gurneying
into the lens.
I'm not finding that at all.
I actually feel he's holding back a bit.
Yeah, something that Christopher Eccleston has said in recent
years that he felt he got wrong was comedy.
But I think he pictures comedy perfectly.
Yeah, we have that bit in the cocktail bar at the beginning, which
I remember seeing that in 2005.
And that's one of the moments to see it on my memory because the
doctor standing in the doorway watching the singer.
And I remember just sitting there going, so is she going to be
sort of the Cathica of this story or the Harriet Jones MP for
Flydale North?
Is she going to be the main character because there's a bit of
flirtation going on?
But Stephen Moffatt just brilliantly then throws her away.
You know, we have this glamorous nightclub singer.
But no, we're not gonna follow her.
We're going to follow this street urchin later on.
But then Eccleston gets up on stage and does his whole bit of has
anything fallen out of the sky recently.
The semitones fell very flat.
I hope she ended up with the alley cats.
But that's the whole thing of, you know, that scene is immensely
funny.
And the only funny bit Eccleston gets is just his sort of sigh at
the end when he realises how hard it's going to be to find
something that's fallen out of the sky.
And I think Eccleston pitches that perfectly.
It's what Tom Baker said Nicholas Courtney was so good at in that
Nicholas Courtney, quite often when he was getting a funny line
didn't get the joke, but just kind of played it as completely
straight.
This week I've been watching the new season 12 box set.
And Tom says on the commentary, like Nicholas Courtney's last line
in robot of, oh, yes, well, I suppose I'll tell Her Majesty you'll
be a little late.
According to Tom Nick didn't get that that was funny.
But he said that, you know, that's why Nicholas Courtney is so
funny because he doesn't know he's being funny.
And when you say to him, oh, Nick, that was hilarious.
He would just sort of defer and demure it.
Oh, what's a Tokyo?
It's one of Tom's sticks or tropes. about other actors.
He said it constantly of Arthur Lowe.
That the reason he was so brilliant in comedy and he was one of
Tom's favourite comedic actors.
Artholow, of course, played Captain Mannering in Dad's Army.
Yes.
He didn't even prepare this earlier.
It's just this beautiful solidipity. of not knowing what you're
doing.
And we can't say that of this season because we know how many
rewrites went into every damn scene we're watching.
So, yeah.
And of course, this has probably been mentioned on every episode
this year, but every episode of this season was underrunning by 5
minutes.
And so you get scenes that were added in at a later date.
I think this episode suffered less than others.
I don't know of any scenes that were filler in this episode, but
I'll talk about some next episode.
I've heard it said that the next time trailers are the result of
that as well.
Exactly.
I mean, that is something that Russell did do in both Queer as
folk and in the 2nd coming.
I don't know about Casanova.
And I actually quite like it because it gives us a 2nd cliffhanger
I think, or a cliffhanger in episodes that wouldn't otherwise have
one, a way of getting strategic next week.
This, of course, is Stephen Moffatt's 1st contribution to the
program.
And he's someone who will go on to be the person who has written
more Doctor Who screen time than anyone else.
He beats Robert Holmes at some point during series 9, I want to
say.
Um, And just like the other stories this season, This is the story
that Stephen Moffat had wanted to write for Doctor Who, I think
for, you know, decades, literally, everyone is bringing to the
show the thing that they most wanted to do during the wilderness
years.
And it does have the moffety tropes in it, but in a way that we're
not sort of sick of yet.
And I think, I think, particularly, I remember, do you remember
the 1st episode leaked onto the internet, uh, rose leaked onto the
internet and was sort of made available and some unscrupulous
people, none of whom we know or, you know, indeed are, um, sort of
watch it beforehand.
But after at least, Stephen Moffat actually came out to Sydney and
did a Doctor Who day event, and I had the opportunity to speak to
him.
And being a big fan of press game, the 1st thing I asked him was
so do you do a telephone gag?
And of course he does. sort of very early on we get the TARDIS
exterior phone ringing for the 1st time.
It's perfectly realised and perfectly articulated and also paced.
It feels like an Herge comic to me.
It's as if Tantown was actually played by Eccleston and set in
Britain, World War II. the pace and the action and the high
points.
There's a high point of drama or action.
Almost every 3rd beat.
Bang, bang, bang, there's another event.
And it's expensive to look at, and it's complex and it's timed
perfectly.
And the thing, if we're going to get onto, maybe it's too soon, but
the thing that holds all together for me, is not the introduction
of Jack.
It's not even Eccleston.
It's Billy.
It's Billy, it's Billy's vault facing and actually throwing, she
throws more lines away than she, much more than Eccles does with
comedy.
They both actually have a kind of two-handed style that they're
mirroring each other.
He separates them both really quite quickly.
And they don't actually meet up until the end of the episode.
So they get sort of different things to do.
And so you get Eccleston sort of wandering around, really just
learning about the world that he's in, uh, and, you know, meeting
Nancy and experiencing an air raid and all that sort of thing.
And then you get that sort of spectacular scene, which is
something that, again, Moffatt is famous for pushing further what
could appear on screen, uh, and that incredible scene where she's
hanging from a barrage balloon during an air raid and that there
are German sort of bombers going past her.
And I don't think for a 2nd that that scene looks realistic.
No, not at all.
It feels ailing level, really.
Yeah, that's the thing, though.
It feels like a 1940s war movie and they're being very careful
with the special effects in that there's only a few shots where
the Billy and the planes are in the same shot and the rest of the
time, you know, it's Billy Piper hoisted up on a crane in the
middle of the night above a crash mat, you know?
I love that because it does have that level of adventure that
we've come to expect from this new incarnation of the show.
And I think there's a bit of serendipity involved because I
remember at the time with Aliens of London, World War 3, there was
a disappointment in the viewership that the 2nd episode was pretty
much about the doctor being locked in a cupboard.
So this time instead, they're kind of pushing the boat out.
I don't know if the production team felt that, okay, no, we need
to have a more action-packed two-parter than the two-parter we've
already had.
Yeah, viewed it all as a whole.
Yeah, yeah.
It was all in the can before it was shown.
That's true. yeah.
But yeah, we get that action set piece straight away.
I love the bantering we get before that of do a scan for alien
tech.
Give me give me some Spock.
And the sort of thrill that in the Doctor Who universe.
Star Trek is a television program, you know.
That was a thrill.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, all of that Joss Whedon thing of citing modern stuff.
Yeah.
My goodness, we're modern now.
And it was sort of part of the program's sort of rebit.
I mean, there's a very definite buffy vibe to rose in that 1st
episode.
Like I, Moffatt doesn't strike me as a massive Star Trek fan.
But it is a really sort of fun thing.
And the way it pays off, of course, she meets Captain Jack, who is
like the doctor only sort of sexier and more sort of self
confident and a little bit less kind of ramshackle and haphazard.
And obviously we'll talk more about how that turns out in the next
episode.
But I think that that 1st scene, obviously, is, you know, something
that a show could never have conceived of doing before.
Like, you know, you couldn't have had Debbie Wattling hanging from
a crane with some sort of air fix, you know, model planes on wise
sort of seeing pasta.
We could never have had that before.
And it does look great.
Not with her notorious Nick or Elastic.
I'm just imagining that now, Victoria hanging from there.
Oh, Jimmy, you're swine. you're swine.
Could I just say one more thing about that 1st scene before we
move on?
It's the 2nd reset. we get this year because Dalek at episode 6
that was seen as a 2nd opening night.
Yeah.
And this one about two-thirds of the way through the series.
In the 1st scene, we get an explanation of what the psychic paper
is.
We get the doctor saying 900 years of phone box travel.
We get don't wander off.
We get, I don't have a name.
All the kind of things you need to know about these characters.
We get in the 1st 5 minutes.
And I think this is a conscious thing of, you know, people know
that the Daleks are going to come in, they might start watching
from this point.
People know the end of the series is coming up.
They might start watching at this point and it's very cleverly
done.
It never quite feels as bad as you well know, Bob, kind of thing.
I think the psychic paper is a bit of an asthma.
And I think she says, yes, I know or something.
I think that that's really interesting given that from our point
of view, we're about to see a season that's presenting itself as a
reboot in a place where you can onboard, but now instead of
happening 3 times a season, we get those, you know, every 3
seasons or so.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think series 10 was very much designed as a place you could
start watching.
But before that, what series 5 was maybe.
So, yeah, I think that one of the charming things about this
season is they don't know that it's going to be a massive
success.
They don't know whether anyone's gonna want to watch it at all.
And so they're a little bit less kind of cocky. you know, and much
much more careful about not putting the audience off and giving
the audience an in.
And I think that that's definitely right here.
Yeah, yeah.
Movin is already famous, I think, for his romantic comedy staff.
And we've got some of that, I think, in series 8 in all of those
stories that he co-authored, but here he gets. coupling with bow
ties.
Yes.
They really are the same.
No offence.
Maybe on the same show.
But I think he does a great job here, and I think Billy sells the
hell out of it when she 1st meets Jack.
There's that wonderful thing where he says, oh, you know, you look
like you're about to faint.
And then she says...
What about you?
You're not even in focus and then she fails.
Yeah.
And yeah, I love things like, can you please switch off your
mobile phone?
No, really, it interferes with my instruments. stays with me.
Yeah.
It's perfect scripting.
Moffat just shows how brilliant he really is when he's given 12
months to do one story.
There'll be more of this anon.
Yeah, but at the time, this just felt so fresh and no Doctor Who
writer had done the kind of things that Moff doesn't. weren't
allowed to.
And it wasn't even.
It wasn't even Doctor Who.
It was really until Secret Army.
The BBC didn't tackle this stuff.
You've got to remember, the people working on the show, in our day
in the 1970s, grew up at a time, British film didn't talk about
evacuations during the war.
It didn't talk about allied pilots or allied soldiers from Europe
working with.
There were whole lots of things that were not discussed.
Any of the concentration terrible business.
That was never referred to, although they knew about it, the
bodies.
So British wartime films, which this is very much and yes, I'm
back.
This is very, very much sourcing visually with little high note
jokes.
So you got it with the static horizontal line model shock work
which is very much how these things were done.
Although there are some beautiful, and the Danbusters is a lot of
model work and it looks gorgeous.
So this then jumps out of the TV screen and throws us into the 3rd
or whatever dimension.
We're up to.
Now, by exploring what if, and the what if is in the presence of
Nancy.
And I believe that Moffat will always put himself in apotheosis in
a script, but as a girl.
I think he's Nancy.
I think he's always puts himself in as the girl.
I think, and they're always the best parts.
I think as we own Carrie Mulligan.
I believe that that's also Mufford's voice in Blink, because we're
getting up to, so.
Yeah, always.
Or he's, if you like, Moffatt was doing mindfulness before the
rest of us, but his mindfulness is a very smart. swanky, sarcastic
Julia Swala, who's always just, you know, perched on your shoulder
in the room.
That's a position.
Go to go on.
Getting back to that, just let me drop another name here.
The same name again.
Getting back to that conversation with Stephen Moffatt that I
actually got to have.
Was this while you were holding Camille Kajuri's handbag as well?
before I neck come in.
He was super proud of the gags about Eccleston's nose and ears.
Oh, that he puts in Nancy's mouth.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that is quite a mouthful.
Yeah.
You know, being that I'm back on the podcast, I have to mention
the silent podcast partner.
So watching this the other night with Rod.
Who, of course, for once in this story, made no comments about
homoeroticism, but did say... actual homosexuality.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He just turned to me at one point. the whole reason this story
works is her.
And he pointed at Nancy.
Florence Hoef does an amazing job as Nancy.
Extraordinary child actress.
She's 67 in this.
Amazing word.
Deborah Watling is here.
But what makes her work so well is we get a few characters this
season who are characters who need to step up and be extraordinary
often quite reluctantly.
So we get Kathika, who just, you know, leave me out of it.
I don't want to be part of this, but steps up and saves the day.
We get Harriet Jones, who is overwhelmed, but steps up and saves
the day.
When the doctor arrives in this story, Nancy has already stepped
up.
You know, she has suffered a tragedy, and so she is looking after
these children, and the scene around the dinner table is so
charming where despite the fact that they are coming into this
home and taking the food.
She's like, we will not make negative remarks about the people in
this house, and we will each only take one piece, and we will wash
up when we are done.
You know, she doesn't, though.
No, no, she doesn't.
Dinner is interrupted.
And we get that lovely bit where the doctor's suddenly around the
table and Nancy is just cool and unflappable about that.
Don't worry about him.
He's not meant to be here either.
He's not here to arrest us.
He's not a copper.
But yet, she's just so charming and brave and funny and vulnerable
and all those things we like in Doctor Who characters.
Yeah, I mean, we'll see next week though, that she still does have
to overcome something and is inspired by the doctor to step up.
There was a big complaint, I think, when this series 1st aired
that the doctor didn't seem to solve any of the problems.
But I think it's really deliberate.
And, uh, you know, that over and over again, Mickey is another
example in World War 3 where someone is reluctant, but they're
inspired by the doctor to be better.
And, you know, John Sim makes fun of that when he comes as the
master in a couple of years time, where he sneers at the doctor
for choosing the name doctor, the person who makes people better.
But I think that that's so much more interesting than just having
a superhero come in and waiver thing and joins and wires together
and stuff like in power of growl and everything sort of picks.
Throw the, just LSU tech leaf.
Yeah, it is true, isn't it?
But that was what Tom did so well.
Except when he was when he knew he was doing it.
And then he just said, no, bugger this, I'm not going to.
He had a whole bit of that Peter Cook and Dudley Moore thing is
well, I don't know if you're going to pay me to do it.
I'm not going to.
So again, that's why we still have dialects.
It's not has to do with Rob Schumann.
It says bloody fuse wires.
It's 3 amp fuse wise.
He just refused.
Honestly.
This is before the threat of Brexit.
I mean, maybe there just weren't enough Polish electricians in the
Khalid bumper, but really, I've been catching up on Doctor Who and
Dark Eyes from Big Finish.
And there's, there's a few, there's a few references in that
basically, whenever the doctor complains about the Daleks, a Time
Lord will say to him.
Well, if you'd done your job properly, we wouldn't be having this
conversation.
Twice really.
Well, that also starts off with a lovely wartime theme. 1st
episode. my favourite thing.
And very interestingly.
Usually when Doctor Who goes back to World War 2 with one notable
exception, which we'll talk about in a few years.
But usually when it goes back to World War II, it avoids showing
the Nazis.
They are this off-screen.
Yeah, I agree as well.
It's because, and we mentioned this back in cursor, Fenrick.
I think if you are going to show them, it can be difficult to tell
a story and get across just how vile they were as an ideological
and physical force.
Indiana Jones does it very well because the whole thing is comic
book and kind of pastiche.
And it's writ large and it has a momentum behind it that sweeps
everyone along.
Exactly.
Otherwise, you end up with, if you do it on the small screen, LOL.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's like, yeah, you can only kind of do it as fast or as
yeah, the weird thing is with Indiana Jones, the Nazis come in and
make it a lot more serious than it was, and they raise the stakes
you know, whereas it's a jolly romp, and then the Nazis turn up
and, oh my god, this is deadly serious.
Whereas I think if you tried that in Doctor Who, it would rob some
of the magic of it.
So having them as this offscreen force is much better.
They're barely mentioned.
I think the doctor mentions Hitler in like next episode.
I don't think anyone actually uses the word Nazi in this story.
I think it's the right idea.
I mean, you know, we think that Doctor Who is very important. and
serious and things, but it really doesn't have the dramatic weight
to deal with nancism.
And I think that attempting to get it to do it is a mistake.
Do you remember years ago, there was this talk about, I think Paul
Cornell suggested that the 7th doctor was the only doctor who had
the moral gravity to walk through a concentration camp.
But I think that that's completely wrong.
I think that the doctor has never had that kind of moral gravity
but that's something so horrific and so unimaginable, but it means
it to put it in Doctor Who.
And Doctor Who can deal with that stuff as metaphor, I think
really well, and has had kind of rubber suited Nazis in it ever
since the sort of 1960s. although perhaps they were mostly
communists.
But I think it's wise to keep them out of this.
And they are represented literally by a computer-generated cartoon
in episode one and that's really all we see of them.
I agree.
It's, it, it, well, we've talked again ostensible threats in
Doctor Who.
It is about metaphor.
Well, it's about the child's experience, which is always filtered
through other means and other mediums.
That's what Doctor Who is for.
If you are experiencing these horrors 1st off.
I don't know the Doctor Who's the place that's going to be able to
help you deal with these things.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We learn through inference and metaphor and and other means of
expression.
This one's very musical.
What do you think of the score?
Because it does feel like an Elgar triumphal march.
Just stomping along.
I think it's a little bit less sort of obviously thematic and
stuff, you know, like it's, there are other stories, I think, that
have a more distinctive sound to them.
But I think that perhaps that's because there's a sort of generic
war movie thing going on here that Murray wants to bring out.
And he likes throwing in his references, just like, you know, well
indeed anyone, the state of the British composer, to be Lloyd
Webber and just nick anything that no one else is over for a few
years.
But there's quite a bit of corn gold and there's quite a bit of
wartime scoring in this generally. which is a great thing.
Why would you want to reboot?
I like to be reminded of a source of material.
Yeah, well, I think that there's still an approach.
You know, this isn't gritty.
This isn't in any way realistic.
This isn't really the 1940s.
It's our memories of the 1940s.
I love the couple whose...
The Anderson Shelters.
Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd.
They're the Lloyds. with her big kind of freely apron and her sort
of angry demeanour and stuff like that and her expostulating
husband and the sound of air raids.
And even the nightclub that we mentioned before, which is clearly
some kind of sort of secret speakeasy thing.
Like it's just hidden. behind a door and and it's underground and
stuff.
All of that stuff is kind of movie style.
I love the bit where they're going into the shelter and Mrs. Lloyd
says, get underground.
It's an air raid.
And Mr. Lloyd says, I know it's an air raid.
And that's where Eccleston really lends his own, and I think
that's why, I don't know, he may well be my favourite of the new
era doctors so far, is that he does lend gravitas in the middle of
enlightness as well. with the duality of that in the middle of
great horror.
There were 71 air raids, almost 20,000 Londoners killed twice, you
know, almost twice that injured, and a 1000000 homes destroyed.
There was a picture that turned up on Twitter just a couple of
days ago of like London scene from the point of view of St.
Paul's immediately after the war was over and just, you know, block
after block of London, 1965.
Oh, blessed Twitch.
I really like what you're saying about wartime movie troops.
And no, it was right, not cast Eccleston in this role, but where
was our matinee idol?
And it's the 1st and I feel still the best, dare I say, only time
that I have really warmed to the character of Captain Jack.
He just works beautifully and that the positioning is perfect, the
size and shape of him is perfect.
He really is, though, interestingly, the only 2 dimensional
character in a 3 dimension.
Which is as it should be.
Something I love about the introduction of Jack is that he's
introduced like a monster.
We don't see his face.
We see him holding the binoculars up and then we see his vision.
It's just a flash.
So the 1st thing you think is, hold on, was that like electronic
stuff across it?
And then we get a longer look through the binoculars?
And the thing is, he's spying on Rose.
He's spying on the doctor's friend.
So he is introduced like a monster, but then he turns around and
we get that matinee idol smile.
And of course, in this story, he is an anti-hero.
You know, he is an exploitative character.
So we're not quite sure whether we trust him or not.
We like him because Rose likes him.
But, um, even at the end of the story where they don't have much
screen time together, the doctor is very sceptical of him.
So we had this tension with the character.
The character, of course, was created by Russell T. Davies and
sort of given to Stephen Moffat.
Okay.
But Stephen really streamlined the character because in the
initial outline, he's an alien called Jax, posing as a person
Captain Jack Harkness, and Stephen Moffatt streamlined that for 2
reasons.
He's like, Jax is very similar to Jackie.
And also very early on, Jackie was going to be shortened to Jax.
Like her friends would call her Jack.
So J-A-C-K-S, whereas this was J-A-X. And Stephen Moffatt kind of
went, well, if he's called Captain Jack Harkness, you know, why
have that complexity of my real name is Jax.
Well, who cares?
on the planet Z. Yeah, it's like, and Ernst Stavlo Bluff out, you
know?
It's that moment of dramatic reveal for no reason.
The other thing was Big Finish had just introduced Hex a couple of
years beforehand, the BBC books had had tricks.
So it's like Doctor Who becomes the show where you have a
character whose name ends with X, which is a sci-fi trope.
So Stephen Moffatt was kind of like, no, no, no, have him as
normal on the outside. and then you go beneath the surface and
he's a bit odd and a bit strange.
And I think that works really well because he's introduced as this
odd, possibly villainous force, but then the very next thing he
does is turns around and, you know, Pat's one of his army
colleagues on the arse.
That's where he stops being Walker from dad's army.
With the Hershey Buzz and Nylon stockings and her sets everything
else.
Yeah, and then it becomes very much in modern dress, doesn't it?
Well, that's when we get the sort of fabulous rom-com stuff too.
We do, but we also have to remember that, okay, we're slightly
just beyond the point, but one of the antecedents, this film that
really works for me, and I will be going on about that, is John
Borman's 1987 film Hope and Glory.
I don't know if any of you remember it.
I just left school when it was on.
And it was full of wartime nostalgia, but it also touched on the
truths and realities.
And the 2 couple going to the Anderson Shelter are exactly 2
characters from hope and glory when woman yells out, boy, Mr
Hitler, go and hit that woman in number 16.
She's a right cow.
Yeah, I miss that was Mrs. Evans.
My favourite line in that film is with the schoolteacher with the
kids all yelling away just as Catherine Tate would do in her own
show and he turns and he yells at them and throws some chalk at
them and says, men are fighting and trying to save all the pink
bits for you ungrateful little twerps.
And I thought that was proper filthy.
I was 21 and I think it's even filthier now.
It's...
It's funny that you mentioned Catherine Tate because for Christmas
last year I bought right a whole heap of Victoria would DBDs.
And there's a bit where she's doing a mock movie tone news in
wrecked London during the blitz kind of thing.
And she's playing this housewife and she's standing on a pile of
rubble, you know, calling back to that famous photo of the
housewife, sipping a cup of tea while sitting on a pile of rubble
that used to be her house.
But Victoria Woods says, Yep, we're digging through here because
under there is my Christmas pudding, which has been steeping for 6
months, and I believe also my husband.
So if we find them both, it will be a very good day.
I think next week we get on a bit more about British attitudes
towards the war. when we'll be joined by David Cameron and Porris
Johnson and Theresa.
I do have to say the other thing Stephen Moffatt does so well here
is he does the throwaway lines that make Doctor Who a bigger
universe so very well. so good at these.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Russell will start doing it more, but certainly at the beginning
of the season, There's a big shying away from mentioning other
things.
You know, we see a cyberman head in Dalek kind of thing and later
on in the season we're going to get just in a couple of weeks time
my father would have fed me to the venom grubs, you know.
But here, Stephen Moffatt decides, it's a Chula warship and we've
never heard of a Chula before.
And I spent the rest of the Russell T. Davies era waiting for a
chula to show up.
And in my head, can I...
Dutch flower people.
Yeah.
In my head cannon, until they were named as cat kind.
I thought that the cat people on new earth were the chula.
I thought that's a very that's a very feline name, but then they
were named, you know, the cat kind.
But that's the thing.
My head cannon was that the Chula were these...
We all know they're actually the lost cat people of Gallifrey who
are romping about with Andrew now in the waist, aren't they?
It was a restaurant, I think, that the series one writers, an
Indian restaurant that they used to go to.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's where all the other writers, except for Russell, went to to
celebrate their commissions, and apparently where it was Mark
Gators, who said, oh, God, now we actually have to do this, and
now we have to make it work, and now if it sucks, we are going to
be blamed forever more, which, you know, according to Rob Sheaman
really brought the mood down a bit.
Yes, those puppadums didn't crinkle quite so crisply after that
didn't they?
Big Finisher's short trips range, which has recently included
Joseph Lidster writing for Camille Kadouri, which are fabulous, and
you should go.
I haven't downloaded it, but I haven't listened to it yet.
I need to get back to Joe and tell him how good it was.
But it's also recently had a short story called Erasure, read by
Sean Carlson as Narvan, who's one of the characters from the
Gallifrey Audios.
He's a CIA operative, but in his framing narrative for that, when
he's about to start telling the story, he talks about, you know
the crises, the time lords has faced and he mentions, you know, the
killer cats of ginseng, but we removed that from the records
because it wasn't our proudest moment.
So it references how, you know, we got it the invasion of time.
So, you know, they left the invasion of time in, but removed the
killer cats of Ginseng.
So it tells you how crappy that was. all true.
And then Richard Bloody Wilson turns up. as Dr. Constantine.
Fave, he's actually, again, after Nancy, my favourite character
piece in this.
It's some amazing cast.
He's so sensitive and poignant, and he plays a proper queer.
Yeah.
Yes.
Well, he is an out actor and has been for a long time.
He also, you know who he grew up with and has the fruitiest
stories about Sean Connery.
It's a lovely crossover to our bond finger. that's right.
Which, hopefully by this point, we've got the complete run maybe
by this point.
There's got to be another casino royale that we have.
But no, Richard Wilson is just so warm and charming and I feel
genuine sadness and grief and there's that 2nd point after Nancy's
moments, but that 2nd point that we've seen so far with the little
children.
But that just that moment when you can see his illness and you
spot suddenly you spot the scar on his hand.
Yes.
And you realise, oh, he knows.
Yeah, there's that moment too where he says, like before the war, I
was a father and a grandfather and now I'm neither.
And what he's been doing is just been sitting there heroically
looking after these people. playing it as Billy should have.
Yes, he actually cares about his grandchildren.
But it is incredibly beautiful.
And of course, we're back at Albion Hospital because there is, you
know, there's this tension with Doctor Who because every story is
set in a different place, every episode we're somewhere new.
You know, this episode gives us Big Ben again and it gives us the
Albion Hospital back from Aliens of London just to create this
sort of consistent place for the stories to take place in.
And that scene is proper scary.
And of course, that's one of the things that Moffat will become
famous for during his time writing for the RTD era is just how
scary he can make Doctor Who.
The great thing about using that hospital again is it was, it was
a decision based on the fact that they decided to use the same
location because, of course, we've mentioned before that 2 weeks
into filming, production was 3 weeks behind, so they were grateful
of anywhere they could use twice.
But they then said, well, if it's the same location, let's make it
the same location.
But it occurred to me watching it.
It's really good that we never get a line where someone says, oh, I
was, you know, the doctor never says, oh, this is where I met the
pig person.
Yeah.
The other reason for that is, last time the doctor was here, he
never saw the place from the outside.
Oh, okay.
So, you know, there's there's no way he can say that.
But I'm glad he didn't because we, we, the loyal viewer who has
been watching the entire series.
Just get that free song of, hold on, is that?
Yes, that's the same.
It's the same sign at the front?
Yeah, that's the same place.
Yeah, it's a lovely little touch and Richard Wilson just comes in
and I love it.
It's quite a common thing when they bring in a classic character
actor.
They will just sit in a chair and they'll rule the entire scene.
I know I've mentioned this before, but I saw Diana Rigg in
Pygmalion as Mrs. Higgins, and she would just walk in and sit down
and Rupert Everett would just yield the stage to her.
And Christopher Eccleston kind of does the same thing here.
And you can kind of see that Christopher Eccleston goes, I'm with
a really experienced actor who I respect.
This is your scene, mate, off you go.
And that's the thing, Richard Wilson just comes in.
He sits down, never raises his voice, never shouts or anything
like that, doesn't play it to the back row, just plays it very
subtly.
And there's kind of this weariness to him, obviously, he doesn't
ask to see the doctor's papers.
He doesn't say, are you from the war office?
He wants to tell someone and pass on the responsibility because he
knows he's changing.
He knows he's infected.
So he tells the doctor everything before he changes.
So, okay mate, over to you, you do something about this.
And the scene is really, really quite scary.
There's a great moment where the doctor asks what the cause of
death is for all these people, and Dr. Constantine just says, there
isn't one, and we discover that they're all still alive.
They're all suddenly sitting up.
Yeah, he hits the bucket.
Yeah, everyone sits up.
Yeah, it is really proper frightening.
And I guess that brings us to the cliffhanger.
We've had one cliffhanger so far, this series, and it wasn't
perhaps the most elegant cliffhanger in the show's history.
What do we think about this?
We've got a dual cliffhanger where Nancy is being menaced by Jamie
and at the same time we've got Jack, Rose, and the doctor in the
hospital being menaced by all of these zombies.
What do we think?
Superb.
Yeah, yeah, I think it's absolutely wonderful.
And something I didn't pick up on until I was watching the upscale
on the Blu-ray.
Um, is that you get a great shot of JB and I think part of the
reason it doesn't come across is just the similarity in texture
but you get a shot through the eyepieces.
And what it's meant to be is he is empty.
The head is hollow.
It's just leather at the back.
You know.
There's nothing behind the eye holes, which is it's a very hard
thing to sell when you've just been looking at the eyepieces and
they're dark anyway, but you suddenly realise, no, no, no, they're
not dark.
They're see-through and there's nothing there. which is
terrifying.
That has never occurred to me.
No, I didn't see it.
Yeah. watching it on the old release, so that's very interesting.
You have to look really closely and you sort of see as his head
moves slightly.
There's a parallax effect and it's like, oh, that's quite a bit
further back.
But I do find it interesting that in aliens of London, we get a
triple cliff hangout, which is it's all the same cliffhanger.
It's everyone's being threatened by the Slovine.
Here we get a double cliffhanger where everyone's being threatened
by the gas mask people.
And in a few weeks time in the finale, we get a single
cliffhanger.
But it works perfectly because again, it's the playground threat
with the upstakes and that's how Moffatt, when he works at his
best, deals with what terrified you as a child.
How can I make bring this straight up?
No.
There's a lot of amateur Freud in the way that Moffin writes, you
know, how jolly that guy can be.
But the whole thing when you're playing chasings or you're forced
into a corner, that thrill and excitement as a child and just how
thrilling it was and they'd squeal.
But, oh, no, no, no, it's for real this time.
But it's also kind of playing the same and they're all a little
bit dressed up.
And isn't it?
It's a beautiful thing that the alien monster is actually just a
kid in a gimp mask.
Yeah It doesn't take a lot of CG or tons of latex to produce that
outfit.
And it is, you know, like we kind of think that Doctor Who must
always have done catchphrases for the alien baddies so that we
could play it in the playground, but that's a very moffity thing
really.
Although, where they don't exist, Doctor Who fans tend to make
them up anyway, the quest is the quest, the great journey of life
you know, we pick phrases from the monsters and we use them.
My entire body aches for it.
All praise to the great one.
Sorry, I should...
And so much time in the playground.
Oh, look, praise to the great one.
I think what Stephen Moffat does is being a fan, as much as any of
us are, he decides, you're going to do this anyway, I'm going to
give you something here.
And that's the thing at home.
If I want to talk about this story, I don't say the empty child
the doctor dances, because I've said that before to Rodney, he's
just sort of squinted at me.
I said, are you my mummy?
He's like, oh, okay, right.
Yeah, I like that.
Well, I think the show itself will call back that catchphrase
twice.
Yes.
Yes, yes.
But the other thing I love about that cliffhanger, at least to me
it seems there's a deliberate visual reference to the 1980s
invasion of the body snatchers with Donald Sutherland because the
pod people in there act in a very similar way, just when they're
sort of milling around.
And then they do the whole screech thing.
And instead, the screech here is mummy, mummy, are you my mummy?
are you my mummy?
Are you my mummy?
And they can say other things.
Like at the beginning of the story, Jamie says, balloon. you know
in a very childlike way.
And next week he'll be much more articulate and perhaps even a
little scarier for that reason.
Yeah, yeah.
But the catchphrase continues over the credits just slightly.
I don't think that the sound ends when the sting comes in.
I think it's still going.
Well, dear listener, it looks like we'll be stuck in this hospital
ward for the next week or so, so I'm off to find some bandages and
rubbing alcohol.
We'll see you next week for the second part of this story, the
doctor dances.
In the meantime, you can find us at Flight through Entirety.com
flight through Entirety on Facebook and Apple Podcasts, and at FT
podcast on Twitter.
Over on Bondfinger, you can find any number of James Bond
commentary podcasts covering every era of the film series and
more.
That's bondfinger.com, bondfinger on Facebook and Apple Podcasts
and at bondfingercast on Twitter.
Until next time, may you meet a tall, dark and handsome stranger
willing to give you some Spock.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
I'm just after a bed pan.
I'll see you then.
That was Flight for Entirety starring Nathan Bottomley, Brendan
Jones, and Richard Stone, theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb
Strings Performance by Jane Orberg.
This episode, Debbie Watling hanging from a crane, was recorded on
the 22nd of July 2018, and released on the 21st of October.
If you're tired of our all considered takes on Doctor Who series
one, why not listen to Jody Interterterra, which features our ill
considered takes on Doctor Who series 11.
That's Jodyintaterra.com and Jody Intaterra on Apple Podcasts.
Just wait one sec.
It was Calvin bringing snacks.
I got excited.
It's a sex pit.
Bobby, outside mate.
Come on.
That's sex pics.
Look at all that cake stuff over there.
It's an interesting house.
I know you're listening to this, aren't you?
I did look over there earlier and think, is that cake, but I think
it's some kind of soap. same difference.
What is in that box?
Is that cake?
Is that soap?
Hey, I was right.
I did a soap thing.
So, um, we have...
Well, you know, Brexit is coming.
We'll be living on that.
Speaking of which, there's going to, this is just going to be a
little tintinabulation.
This is a little fairy bell.
We're going to be seeing a lot more of these sorts of dramas come
a year or 2 hands.
We were nostalgic for when we won.
For rationing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So we have an episode where the entire tag is just Alfie
interrupting Brendan.
Is that it just then?
Yeah, so I just pull the toddler fence across.
He did start doing...
The topclophane defence.
Yes.
So, so Captain Jack, yeah.