Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast, which really does want to know where
Captain Jack was hiding his compact laser deluxe.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Todd.
James.
And I'm a pair of white bakerlite, falsies, and a barely concealed
pistol for this one.
Well, we've arrived back on satellite 5 only to find ourselves
trapped in the kinds of TV shows that we think it's smart to
utterly despise.
Will we beat the odds or will we succumb to the machinations of
the bad wolf?
So, I'm gonna lay my cards on the table.
This is my favourite Doctor Who episode, or at least part one of
my favourite Doctor Who story of all time.
That's a big call, Nathan.
It is a bit of a big call.
I happy for any of you to fight me about it, if you like.
I would have said, if I hadn't watched it this weekend, that you
were wrong, but then I fell in love with it.
I hadn't watched it for about 10 years.
Really?
Yeah.
And I remembered it as being, oh, you know, fun, sort of exciting
bit a bit of a mess.
And it's just, yeah, it was just, I think it's probably one of the
best season finales of the new series.
I'd like to throw in because I will be the Todd for a 2nd before
Todd gets to be Todd.
I think it's good, but it's only good because of where it sits.
So if you isolate it and watch it just as its own Doctor Who story
it's a picture postcard TV week, maybe Daily Mirror version of
what Doctor Who is thought to be, and it does put that off
brilliantly, it really is a very successful.
It's meticulous writing.
It's how a normal person thinks a Doctor Who show should be
written.
So that doesn't necessarily allow it to ever be in my top
favourite list because as you said, we like to think we're better
than that.
It is very well done.
But I don't think it's not as powerful in isolation.
It's only because of all the brilliant things, you know, and the
peaks and troughs of this season.
It's like the hills and valleys of Wales itself, he said, not
doing the accent.
But you know, you've had the lumps of rose and the lumps of rose.
I missed that one.
And then the peaks of aliens and World War 3 and so, you know
you've got those those big moments and then the little, it's like
a beautiful little symphonette.
And then you've got little moments where you've got the Dominiento
of Boomtown, which is a lovely little character piece and exactly
what you needed to see everybody having a lovely time and then
Mickey get to say to them.
You're awful, all of you.
You know what happens when someone says that.
So yeah, it is beautifully done.
I think I've said before that the kind of basic narrative unit of
the new series is the season, really, rather than the story.
And so I think that kind of reinforces what you say.
This story is not really a story by itself so much as a
culmination of things that have happened over the past, you know
11 episodes and it draws from all sorts of previous things in the
season and sort of brings them to a head.
And it climaxes a lot of narrative threads that have been going
all the way along.
And so in context, I think it does work better than perhaps in
isolation.
I would agree with that.
Can I be me for a moment?
Hi, listeners.
How are you?
This is a brand new episode for me.
Wait what?
Because, like, you know, obviously I've got no memory of this
episode, because I sat down to watch it and I went, oh, it's going
to start in the Big Brother house.
Well, no, we get a recap of the long game.
And I went, I don't remember that.
And then as I was watching, whether it be Big Brother, or the
weakest thing, or what not to wear, or the people controlling the
games, I'm going, what is this dialogue?
What are these camera angles?
And I'm just there going, I have edited out of my memory so much
of this episode.
I actually sat there saying to myself, I must be insane.
I cannot remember half the dialogue.
I think I've watched too many YouTube clips of YouTube reactors
looking at the highlights.
And so I've got certain lines in my head, but other things, I just
had no memory of.
Nathan, you know how like when we watch the classic series, you
virtually have the whole thing playing out in your head and you
know all the beats.
I just had absolutely no idea.
I checked to get up, go to the Blu-ray case, and I looked at it
because I swear to God, I thought it was a special edition
director's cut.
I just I just could not believe it.
I love it.
I'm like you.
This is my favourite episode of the season.
Yeah, I think it really is extraordinary.
And part of it's down to Joe Hearne.
So Joe Aherne is the director for kind of the last recording block
because Christopher Eccleston allegedly refused to work with
anyone else, but he is amazingly good.
And the way this is directed, and the lighting was one of the
things that struck me is so strong.
And there's some really, really, really terrific stylish direction
in it.
It's about the direction.
It's about using characters.
He gets it.
And there's also the lovely little everyman play he throws in.
It's a morality tale.
This could actually just be done with no set, like a proper
shaking spear show.
You don't need all the bangs and whistles.
And that's why it's done this way, I feel, because it is about K. I
really didn't like it when it 1st came on because we were all
hating Big Brother for the amorality of it at the time.
That was the discussion, is that this is allowing people to be
base and venal in ways that we just didn't grow up with and we
would always talk not to support.
You're really too pleased with yourself.
We did think that, don't be too pleased with yourself.
Yeah, it was one of the tenets of childhood of the 70s.
That's probably why the juxtaposition of that with the morality of
Doctor Who works.
And that's why it goes so beautifully, because the most chilling
moment for me is when you realise they're all on satellite 5 and
there's just floors and floors of this, Death Games 2000 going
on.
Yeah.
And they all seem they all seem quite sort of okay with it.
That's the point.
Up until the point of the death point.
Like, you know, in the Big Brother house.
They're, oh, yes, it's an eviction and all this sort of stuff from
all together, but it's not until the moment you have to step into
the corridor of death.
The killing booth.
Then it's suddenly like they're all sort of emotional.
And they're all enabling it just like Russell's been telling us
for years. a beautiful morality player.
And that's why the shonkiness of the sets.
And you can see, okay, we have to save money for the finale
because we're certainly not getting it on this set, all of the
rest of it.
But it works really well for that as well because he always shows
the banality is humanity.
Simplicity is humanity.
It's the modern, the modern world and its approach to television
morality take into the extreme.
Well, I mean, if you think about the game shows, I'm vastly older
than nearly everyone who's listening to this.
But the game shows of my youth were sort of rather genteel affairs
and, you know, blankety blanks, blankety blanks. which was plural
in Australia, in fact, and was fabulously rude and sort of naughty
but just terribly funny and silly and things like sale of the
century and family feud.
And, um, what was the competitive Richard, what was the um, show
was it pot of gold or something where you would, Bernard King
would criticise your singing?
Berner King's single entendre anal dilation show.
I think that's pretty much what they all were.
Don't don't try and search for that on YouTube though.
If they'd done this story in the 70s, what would the reference
points have been?
Well, I mean, the thing is that you can only do it at this
particular time, because there is anxiety about the kinds of moral
behaviour that are rewarded in competitive reality shows.
And so those shows sort of seem dark.
And the attitude of this episode to those shows is complicated.
So, um, clearly we're celebrating all of those shows by recreating
them and using all of their music, using all of the guest stars. we
get Divina McColl.
We get, you know, the Android, we get Trinny and Susanna.
They're all in it, like the actual people.
We've licensed the music.
We've got the logo from Demerol or whatever.
It's all there.
And so it's an absolute loving homage to it.
And even the doctor, when he's talking about watching these TV
shows, he loves bear with me, the one where the bear gets in the
bath with them. you know, like he loves this stuff as well and
it's clear that Russell does too.
But it's a system that is backed by capitalism and we saw that the
people running satellite 5 in the long game were a consortium of
bankers and we saw that that was capitalism corrupting the media
and now we have capitalism corrupting game shows and this is a
huge system where people are just eaten up for the entertainment
of other people.
So it is really conflicted in its attitude.
It loves these shows, but it kind of recognises that they're sort
of awful.
Guilty pleasure.
Yeah.
For me, it's...
Because these shows were still fairly new at the time, you know
Big Brother was only about 5 years old, and even the weakest think
was cooling at this point.
But it's very different from now.
Like almost 12 years later, I think, there's a different
attitude.
We were still very new, all these reality shows and a commentary. 2
it was very fresh.
Now we were a lot more jaded and oh, it's another one of these and
this is how the people are going to react.
And you look at the editing of them now and you can virtually call
it out, what it's going to be like, you know, before the
commercial break.
But I just, it's just tickles my fancy, the whole, like, different
lines like Davina droid going, we're going to get you.
And, like, they're all into it.
Android.
I just think that is just brilliant.
The Android is the Android.
And all of those names.
Like you mentioned a bare one, but I had to write them down
because I just crack up, like, call my bluff with real guns.
Countdown 30 seconds to stop the bulb.
Ground force, get turned into compost.
Wipeout speaks for itself.
Stars in their eyes literally.
Don't sing, get blinded.
What?
What would they have done to Susan Coleman?
Yeah, no, this is pretty strictly, sadly.
Let's talk about the game shows.
And we'll start with Big Brother.
So we've got Linda with a Y, who I adore, played by Joe Joyner, who
went on very next year to be in EastEnders for quite some time.
And I really like Linda with a Y.
She was the, I actually thought she was like the alternative
roads.
I think there's an attempt to make her that.
And certainly you get that shot when the doctor calls her out into
the corridor where he's just failed to be kind of evicted from
life.
And we get her point of view shot with him holding out his hand.
Just as in rogue.
Yeah, and then you get that lovely moment from the end of the
world where she's standing in the glass appears to be, but this
time Eccles doesn't save her.
Oh, there are lots of little mirrors to rows and roses
introductory 1st 2 episodes in this one.
We'll talk a little bit more about that next week when Rose and
Linda meet up.
Oh, bum.
I conflate these episodes because to me.
Well, because to me it is one story.
I do think, though, it does better than, say, aliens of London in
making the 2 episodes distinct.
Aliens of London has that big giant, terrible cliffhanger that we
all hated and then just sort of resolves the cliffhanger and heads
off, whereas this one has, you know, we lead up to the discovery
of the Daleks and there's no sort of sign that there are going to
be Daleks in it.
A massive dalek farm.
Except for the next time trailer and Boom.
Well, that's right.
It is interesting how they actually get into the 3 different
scenarios.
The fact that the TARDIS is invaded.
And this seems to be the only time that it actually happens in the
new series. that I can think of, like, or the old series.
The Tarantus is usually an impenetrable fortress that people can't
get into, but for some...
Cat came along and did it to in the pyramids of Sutek, the
destroyer.
Yeah.
Well, Sutek managed to push his way in.
Probably-ish.
He's projected his face.
Yeah, but I mean, taxi extract them out of the TARNIS, which
normally it's like force field city and you can't get in.
But we're post-time war now.
So the dialects really do understand millennial old TARDIS and how
to defeat them. think that's pretty good.
The doctor also says that it's 15000000 times stronger than any
other transmat.
That was a new line for me.
This episode too.
But I think it just makes it very simple, you know, it gets us
there.
What do you think of the other characters in the Big Brother
house?
So we've got Crosby and Strewed, and Crosby is the one who is
evicted from life, and Strewed is the sort of rather pissy little
gay boy who is very cross at the doctor's arrival.
And it strikes me that we haven't actually seen that at all in
Doctor Who before.
You know, there've been people who've been obviously fabulously
gay, even in the classic series, but, you know, a young man who
just sort of seems to be terribly camp and openly gay, that seems
to be a sort of new one.
And they're super obsessed with the rules.
They all clearly watch Big Brother at home.
You know, they all know about it.
But wouldn't you be freaking out?
I'm in the Big Brother house.
I am going to die unless I win.
But if that's the norm of your life, if like your whole existence
is watching television.
What is it?
Like, they quote, eat, sleep, watch, TV, go to bed.
Oh, eat chips.
Sorry.
If your whole existence is about watching these television shows
and that anyone can be in them and the way they end is with your
death.
Like, if that's the norm of your life, why would you question it?
It's been going on for what, 4 generations by this point?
Like a 100 years?
Yeah.
But how can the, the earth just doesn't involve?
People can't have jobs, nothing will happen because like, you know
you can't plan anything because you're going to, like, you could
be extracted at any time.
I think the level of kind of realism that we should expect from
this world that's built is sort of fairly low.
When I 1st saw this, when I was a kid, I was kind of going, how
come in the year 200,000, they still know about what not to wear
the weakest link and Big Brother?
And my assumption was that the villain, the guy who at the end of
the next time trailer says, they survived through me.
I thought that was Adam for sure.
Did you?
Yeah, yeah.
Wow.
Well, that was how we would have known about these game shows.
But of course, I just assumed it was Janet Fielding.
Obviously, it turns out the reason that we have these game shows
in the year, you know, 200,000 is that it's on a TV show being
screened in 2005.
And I also think the reason that everyone isn't freaking out in
the Big Brother house is because we need the big reveal that
people are going to die.
And the reveal that these game shows are all evil and murderous
comes at roughly the same time in the episode for each one.
It definitely does.
And it does it exactly the same way of Scandwegian crime, detective
fiction, which wasn't a big genre on TV or in film in the way that
it is now. you know, the girl with the dragon boat bottom, that
you know, those shows.
I think Eccles is actually in one of them, isn't he?
But all of that stuff existed as Scandalwegian detective fiction
and was really big, but it did also exist on TV at this time.
It had just been starting.
So folk within TV in the same way that, say, an extraordinary show
like Pose at the moment, which is groundbreaking in the way the
wire was five, 6 years ago, everyone within the medium is talking
about it, but our lot are only talking about it this year.
So Russell was already watching these things and seeing the next
stage of dramatic television is game shows where you actually are
deaded.
Like an episode of The Goodies from 1972.
They did this as well.
Again, because it's our podcast, we have to talk about the
ostensible threat.
And in this case, it is TV itself and how it maligns our humanity
and diminishes us and makes us into a delicious sego pudding type
of fair.
Yes.
So, the Big Brother house has Strewdon Crosby's.
Strudel Crosby's?
Yes, yes.
Denise Strudel Crosby.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But Crosby is very quickly evicted from life, isn't she?
And that's actually quite upsetting I think.
Well, I've noticed there's a lot of people of colour that get
murdered in these episodes. you noticed that?
People complain that Doctor Who doesn't show a lot of on-screen
death, but it does hear.
Oh, does.
It always has.
I think there is a problem with the people of colour.
Look, we're recording this the week after the series 11 opening
and everyone's obviously hugely upset. exactly where I was going
with that.
So we could have had a black middle-aged female companion.
I'm right.
And she dies.
But I think there is a problem that if a show is going to have
diverse casting is going to have diverse deaths.
And I think people have gone through and done the maths on this.
But it is, you know, it is a concern.
It's something that people are aware of, I think.
Shall we talk about the weakest link?
Yes, let's talk about the weakest link.
So, Todd, which vowel appears in the word dangle, but not in the
word glad. don't know.
Was it you?
Oh, Joe. This is absolutely for me the most successful of the game
shows.
And the reason it's successful is that I think Billy Piper is
absolutely phenomenal.
She nails it beautifully.
So is Patterson Joseph.
Oh, he's appalling.
One of the worst actors ever perpetrated in the history of Doctor
Who.
At the time, there was all these rumours that he could possibly be
the next doctor. should never be...
We should never, ever be cast in a television show ever again.
I think he's really massively unlikeable and I think that that is
a deliberate thing.
I think he's perfect.
He really is all those things Todd's saying.
He's he is.
He's vile.
And he's not perfect with it.
And even he even does that awful shtick when he's about to be
moidered later on spoiler alert.
And he does that with.
Oh, everything's over the top.
He's perfect.
Really liked it.
I think he's a good foil for her.
And I think that she absolutely sells this.
And her trajectory is our trajectory.
Initially, we think it's really funny that Rose has found herself
on the weakest link and she thinks it's really funny as well.
And then as that 1st round plays out, everyone is getting more and
more terrified.
And there's Fitch who loses the round and who is crying.
And you get rose just like us going, actually, like, what's the
problem?
It's just a game show.
Why are you crying?
And then, obviously, she's killed.
However, I think it probably dawns on us before it dawns on dawns
on roads, which is very clever writing.
Billy Piper is sensational.
I think their character played by Patterson Joseph is really well
written and is absolutely perfect and he is unlikeable.
I just, you know some actors you just dislike.
I just dislike him.
That's all I can say.
I've done a lot of the roles he plays, though.
I think that's he's got that air about him.
That's probably why they cast it.
Probably.
But it is brilliant in the way the terror and the panic of these
people is coming through.
And it's much more immediate because you only have a round and
you're dead.
In Brick Brother, you have a week in the house or 3 weeks.
Like it's only in that last moment.
So yes.
I think when Linda with a Y and Jack and the doctor go to rescue
Rose.
Linda gives us the impression that the weakest link is the most
terrifying of the game shows and partly it's because of the
Android, but I think probably it is just the rate at which people
get killed as well.
I really love the questions.
I think the questions are just so fantastically brilliant.
And that final round.
The way it works is that there's that brilliant, brilliant
question and it's part of the world building, which we'll talk
about a little bit later, but which Icelandic city hosted murder
spree 20.
And obviously most of us at home can only name Reykjavik.
And this is the question that if she loses, it's clear from the
chiron on the screen that if she loses, she loses the round.
And she says, Reykjavik, and you think, well, yes, no, she's been
able to think of Reykjavik.
She'll be fine.
And of course, it isn't that at all.
But all that other world building stuff, like she knows who the
oldest inhabitant of the Iceball galaxy is.
That's really good, you know, harking back to the face of Bo.
And then there's a question in there about torchwood, shadowing
events that is to come.
But no, the questions are delicious.
Yeah, it's that Russell thing of, you know, making the future sort
of silly and funny.
But it's super dark.
Like all of the questions build up this picture of a world that is
really kind of horrible, I think.
This story is also quite rich in references to the show's past.
But like, you know, like it's not just the references to the web
planet.
It's also the references to lunar penal colony from frontier in
space.
The fact that the controller betrays the Daleks and is then
killed.
Day of the Daleks.
Also, the idea that you wire a girl into your computers, if you're
the Daleks, you wire someone up from a very young age, she was
fired.
She is Jasmine Brake?
She is Jasmine.
Wow, there's a lot of little subtle references here.
Very clever, Russell.
What not to wear?
What not to wear.
With Trini and Susanna.
This is my favourite bit.
I like this.
I just really thought the robots were gorgeous.
Those robots are great.
And having them do the voices and even reference their own advice
never wear black with colour.
My mother has been saying that for years, news.
And you referenced earlier, I think, Richard, to the fact that...
Well, Jack, Jack strokes, the breasts.
Yes, he does.
Yes, he really does.
It was another moment that I had that I could not remember, which
was mute for me.
I was looking at it and going, surely that would be cut.
And robo breasts.
There's probably no rule.
Yeah, like, unlike, unlike Jack's butt, which was the only cut the
BBC asked for in series one was, like, originally, originally that
shot.
I thought his bum was in it.
Well, no, but in the original film, in the original filming, they
had shot at full length.
You could see his bottom.
And they edited it so that it cuts at just the right moment that
you don't.
James, in my extended cut that I watched. think I saw it.
That was in your imagination.
I swear it was there.
I watched it last night.
It wasn't.
Now with added butt shot.
The fabricator.
What a wonderful device that was.
It's so funny.
We're laughing about it now.
It's just such a great play on defibrillator, but in the context.
It's just so appropriate for them and Jack and I'm just smiling
now, listeners.
Yeah, it's really sort of terribly great.
And it plays to Barrowman's strengths.
You know, he's so ludicrously confident.
There used to be this sort of story that he would get naked in
radio interviews, like in the studio or he would at least sort of
talk about stripping off in sort of BBC radio for interviews and
stuff like that.
He's just sort of super confident and the fact that he's
completely unfazed about just sort of having his clothes dissolved
on global television.
Your reachings just went up.
Because you could imagine that other people may not be.
They would be freaking out.
And I think the great thing is that you know these other 2 game
shows really well.
People may not know not what to wear as much because it's, you
know, they're helping people with style and you kind of think, well
well, where's this going to go?
And then of course, it's all about chopping off the head and
stitching on whatever we've got, you know, to make you look even
more fabulous.
I think they're super menacing. fabulously fabulously menacing.
And I think it's just before a cut to a scene where, you know, one
of them pulls off their hands and reveals the big chainsaw and
stuff.
I just think all of that is so tremendously funny because it's the
odd man out.
It's not really a competitive reality show, is it?
It's sort of more of a makeover show and they tend to be actually
look, they're all about consumption and they're superficial, but
it's not quite the cutthroat thing that the weakest link is, for
example.
Well, it's, I mean, we now call that lifestyle, don't we?
Like, it's not specifically about the reality.
It's about the style.
I mean, it's actually, in a way, is not negative.
Yeah, I mean, I'm a big fan of those shows where someone comes in
and sort of helps someone improve their lives.
And, you know, Gordon Ramsay, who is a person about whom it's
possible to have opinions.
You know, it swears at people and sort of screams and is generally
obnoxious and then goes into a restaurant and changes it to look
identical to the restaurant from the previous program, you know
but there is something sort of fun about an expert coming in to
sort of help out.
I like the fact that they turn this lifestyle show on its head
with the face off at the end, which is just a brilliant name.
But of course, Jack then has the great comedy moment of
revealing.
Where were you hiding that with the compact laser deluxe, which, of
course, you don't want to think too much about.
Like, it's one of those silly...
It's one of those silly moments from Russell Witches.
Great how small it was. that small.
No?
Oh no, it's absolutely not.
It wasn't quite a pinecone off the Christmas tree, but it wasn't
that wee.
I'm sure he prepped.
One of the delicious things about these game shows is they're all
running parallel, which everything's getting revealed at once, and
what's going on is dawning on both Rose and the doctor at the same
time that things aren't as they are, and we're all heading to try
and escape. and the doctor does escape with Linda to try and find
the others and we then get some really nice moments between him
and Linda discussing what's going on on satellite 5 when it dawns
on him and that's where he is and he thinks he's put everything to
right.
But of course, he hasn't, and it's coming back to that thing about
consequences and the contrast with the original series where the
doctor would just leave and that's it.
But here, leaving 5 episodes ago, um, actually has had big
ramifications by just...
And he says I created this world.
This is the world that I created.
He was Zoanna all the time.
But I mean, this is the world we live in now.
Half of us are too fat, half of us are too thin and we're all kind
of anaesthetized by watching television.
This is just what's happening now.
In series three, we'll see the Daleks being used very explicitly
as a metaphor for capitalism.
But I think that here they are as well.
And they're going to get even more interesting because we haven't
actually seen them this episode yet.
No, at this point, you don't quite know who's in control, but then
Linda turns on the lights in the level that they're on and we get
to see Bad Wolf.
And again, we get another flashback sequence to all the...
All the uses of bad wolf.
Bad Wolf.
And so Russell is very good at directing your thoughts in one
direction about this corporation.
You don't know that it's, I'm not going to talk about next week's
episode, but ultimately, by the end of this episode, you believe
that it is the Daleks that are...
Thank you for that.
But the Bad Wolf Corporation has been running satellite 5 for
years, and we learn later that the Daleks have been as well.
Just check out our episode on the long game because Bad Wolf is
clearly Fox, and the long game is about the effect of the Fox
network.
And that did not occur to me until I listened to that episode.
I watched Murphy Brown.
Like, I kind of, oh, gosh, how stupid am I?
No, no.
I mean, we know that Bad Wolf is a thing, but it actually occurs
natively here.
All of the other times we'll discover that Billy scattered it
through time and space, but this is the place where the words bad
wolf originate from.
So the Bad Wolf Corporation, the people who run the games.
Or are they?
The point of this is, again, it's working because it's not what
we're just seeing on screen.
It's what we're taking from a lot of other shoes.
Russell's a really clever man and so is Julian, so is Phil
Collinson, and they're looking at what are antecedents to this?
He loves fairy stories.
All these references you're talking about with Red Riding Hood or
Rose Riding Hood, leaving scattering breadcrumbs in her trail.
Again, is a grim fairy story.
Now Russell is mates with Marina Warner, who's one of the best
writers.
She's actually the modern take on Joseph Campbell and we've
referenced Joseph Campbell before because of course he wrote the
1st Star Wars script for George Lucas.
He did.
But he was the 1st professor of mythology, international
mythology.
I mean, that's just every guy you meet who sells comics now, but
back then, it was a very rare thing.
Marina Warner has a chair at Cambridge where she does the same
thing and she writes constantly and wonderfully and has done since
I left high school.
Monuments and maidens is her 1st book, the allegory of the female
form, and she talks about Mae West, the statue of liberty, and
there's another American icon.
She does.
She's fabulous and funny and camp and clever, but she also
completely dissected the grim fairy stories.
And a lot of these references that Russell's throwing in here are
very much Marina Warner's archetypes and writing about how modern
culture is so imbued with exactly the same stories.
Culture doesn't change is what Campbell and Marina Warner is
saying, that we just go round and round in circles, repeating, not
necessarily in a bad way, but repeating our errors and our foibles
and our little ways. sometimes we part our little ways, but we're
not up there yet.
But yeah, the point is that these lovely circles of narrative and
gormlessness, if you like, that the follies that we trip over
ourselves, but sometimes they can be the same things that save
us.
The silliness and the childishness can be the things that rescue
us.
I won't crap on about it too much, but I think I've already
presaged my pick of the week there.
I think, too, that when Gwyneth 1st mentioned Bad Wolf. yeah
that's right.
When Gwyneth from The Unquiet Dead 1st mentions Bad Wolf.
She says The Big Bad Wolf in the Darkness, and it sounds like just
a reference to a groom's fairy tale.
It does, that makes that egg out of Boomtown. very rude.
Did you know, the woman who plays the female programmer?
was a Red Kang.
Reno.
I knew you were going to do James's hottie list.
Which one was she?
She was one of the non-speaking.
I want you to tell me she was married to?
She was married to Turlow.
No, too good.
James.
I've just taken off a point.
Yeah, so initially they are, the love interest.
Female programmer.
She was one of the kennels.
Oh that's lovely.
Also, the controller, her father was in Doctor Who.
What?
Yeah, so was he the Fury from Martha Cope?
Is that where she got all the daughter of Kenneth Cope?
Kenneth Cope.
He was Packard in Warrior's Gate.
And he's actually a popper act in Randall and Hopkirk.
I didn't realise he was no, he's an actual proper actor.
Yes, she's his daughter.
Oh, that's lovely.
You know, I'm a Doctor Who fan.
I'm like, what have I seen this person here?
That's my husband mad.
You know, I have to say this, and I think listeners may be wanting
a rant off me, but I find it really hard to rant about a lot of
episodes because they're generally of a good standard and there's
only little things that sort of annoy me.
But I'm going to move on from all of that.
I'm going to say, we're almost up to the point where the doctor
and the team are going to rescue Rose, but there is a conversation
that the doctor does have with Linda, where she asks who he is, and
then she actually says, I could come with you.
And I remember watching that at the time thinking, oh, oh, that's
not good.
At the moment, I just feel that moment people say I could come
with you and voice themselves on the doctor, I always get red
flags as too well that could not possibly end well.
So I might be misremembering, but it's just something that came
into my mind when I watched and I kind of thought, oh, you might
be doomed.
I also think, too, that we didn't know what sort of show this was
or what its rules were even now.
And it's just possible that she comes along because something is
going to happen to Rose's next episode, that we may be introducing
Joe Joyner's character in order for her to replace Billy Piper.
It's very much what it feels like.
Yeah, but who knows that that wasn't planted in the scripts early
on just to be...
I think we'll talk about that next week.
Yeah.
And her character's name is Linda Moss.
Reminds me of something else.
Press gang.
Who the woman in this game?
So she's Linda Day.
And she is Linda with a Y.
And I also think that Linda with a Y is a great way of getting you
to remember her name.
We even get a little bit of deft exposition about Linda with an
eye damaging one of the cameras when she's introducing herself, and
that bit of exposition becomes, you know, crucial to the doctor's
escape.
So I think it's just a little bit of clever writing, but it's such
a charming performance.
She's so vulnerable and she's dead sweet, just like the doctor
says.
That's a beautiful little scene where she's terrified that she
might be evicted because no one even knows who she is and the
doctor says that she's dead sweet.
That's foreshadowing.
I know, but it also sort of struck me as a kind of slang that the
doctor would never have used before either.
Yeah, which is beautiful.
Like it's such a nice scene.
He lies to make her feel better.
So then they go into rescue Rose at the crescendo of the weakest
link.
And I just want to say, you know, shout out.
One of the answers is Hazel Dean.
Yes.
And I almost fell over because I, again, this was new to me
listeners, watching this episode.
I think he actually says San Hazeldean.
Like, like, he, he, like, it's a space name.
Yeah, like, well, like, something, it was a line about, like, a
fault line or an earthquake or something like that.
I can't remember exactly.
Where did this happen?
San Hazeldean?
And if you don't know Hazel Dean is a 1980s pop star in the UK who
had about 3 big hits.
It does turn out to that Jackie Collins is still a well-known
author in 200,000 times.
So anyway, Rose loses.
And then she gets blasted into dust.
Just as the doctor's rescuing her and she's running towards him
and off she goes.
That's another reference to the twin dilemma.
Zanium.
What?
The dust on the ground.
Yes.
Is, is, is... of transmat being.
If they don't say that in this episode, do they?
No, but someone picks it up and it's silvery dust on the floor.
I would never have believe.
I'd be sitting here thinking that this episode links to the twin
dilemma.
But all 3 of the rest of us thought of it.
Yeah, we did.
So you're watching.
Yeah, constantly.
Thanks for that, mate.
Despite the fact of the real Colin Baker.
We know who the weakest link is. people.
Goodbye.
What a moment.
Like, and the music.
The music at that point, just the way, oh, and his reaction.
I remember thinking at the time, this can't be happening.
This can't be real.
They have to get out of it.
How?
How could they possibly do it?
Exactly.
I also think too that that moves into some of the most smartly
directed Doctor Who that we've had this episode because it's all
been sort of cardboard sets because we've been doing sort of cheap
game show knockoffs.
But suddenly the camera becomes all sort of German impressionism
where we're seeing it from the doctor's point of view, there's
action going on in the background, but it's out of focus and the
sound is muted.
We bring up the music.
We're just on the doctor's face and all we're invited to think
about is how devastated the doctor is by this.
And we see, you know, they go into that sort of grungy
industrialist kind of cell and it just looks like the doctor's
been completely broken.
The next sequence is a really interesting, like, in the
interrogation cell or the prison cell that they're put into and
just sitting there and these guys are shouting at them.
Spoiler alert to no one.
I had no memory of this.
Like when I watched it, I literally sat there going, I remember
them getting out of the cell, but none of this shouting at the
doctor and telling them that they're going to go to the lunar
colonies or whatever it is.
It's really quite disturbing.
It's shot very differently from the way Doctor Who normally is too
because it's like a lot of short scenes all happening in the same
place, where each shot is a sort of different time period.
They're clearly in there for a long time being sort of
interrogated.
And you get absolutely no response from the doctor at any point.
He's done.
But then on a dime.
It's sort of like let's do this thing.
Yeah, boom.
Yeah.
And they escape.
But I think that, you know, that's that scene is beautifully lit.
The sets look incredible.
It's really something.
And the doctor and Jack are quite violent in kind of overcoming
the guards, they're sort of kicks and stuff like that.
It's a pretty good scene.
It is.
And they make their way up to control, which we've seen a few
times already.
We haven't really talked about the nail and female programmer, have
we?
So is it Davish Papel?
Well, they're actually just credited as male and female
programmers and the male ones only given a name so that he can
properly flirt with Captain Jack next episode.
I think they're good performances from both of them.
You get the feeling that she's the controller, but she's not in
control.
There's somebody behind her.
Very much so, yes.
And is it the banks?
is it?
As classic series Doctor Who fans, did we think it was the
Daleks?
I don't know that we didn't particularly, no.
I mean, it's almost impossible to remember from this sort of
distance, I think.
I think it's impossible to tell what you would have thought if it
hadn't been spoiled for you.
I mean, I cannot separate the fact that I knew the Daleks were
coming that back this week because of the next time trailer at the
end of the previous episode.
So you know, outside of the story itself, you know, you know the
Daleks are behind it somehow, or they're behind something in the
episode.
If you didn't have any of those next time trailers at all, if
there was no sort of lead in between episodes, it would be a much
bigger surprise.
Originally, the next time trailers were just there because the
episodes were underrunning, I think.
But Russell's previous shows had Next Time trailers, so Queer as
Folk, for instance, and the Second Coming both have Next Time
trailers.
And I actually think that it manages to create a little
cliffhanger in a way that, you know, we don't normally have
because we don't have that many two-part story.
So it is a way of getting us to come back next week, which is what
the cliffhanger is.
And I also think, too, that anything kind of that's revealed
outside the show, and we're sort of acutely aware of this very
very spoiler-free kind of atmosphere that we've got now with
series 11.
Everything that is released, I think, is deliberately released.
And so I think the effect of knowing that the Daleks are back this
week is that as we're watching it, we sit down waiting for the
Daleks to come.
And, you know, 30 minutes in, 35 minutes in, there's no sign of
them, and maybe we've forgotten about it by then because it's all
been sort of fairly engaging.
But that does make me suspect that I probably was thinking that
the controller who had been there since she was 5 might have been
being controlled by the Daleks.
But I guess I couldn't be sure.
I think it's a sort of fairly standard scene, sort of action scene
where suddenly the doctor, again, is a man with a gun running up
to avenge the death of his woman.
He's so broken that he turns into a sort of standard action hero.
And then very quickly that's diffused with that fantastic scene.
I like the way that Rossell always writes that that is the
ultimate defeat for the doctor.
Yeah. to become an American.
And the last time he did that was...
Yeah, yeah.
So, I mean, there's another parallel.
But he immediately throws his gun to the male programmer, which I
just think is a fabulously doctor-ish thing to do.
It's like Paul McGann holding a gun to his head, only not really
really terrible.
Whereas I don't think Jack gives up his guns.
No, he's not out of bounds kind of guy.
But he does get into the Tartars and into the plot point of
working out that the death rays, in fact, not the death ray, so
that we can have a joyous scene between the doctor and Jack.
Don't you think?
He should have just rushed in and said, actually, I've just
discovered that the death rays don't kill people, they just
transport you.
Instead, he just tells me that, you stand over here while I shoot
him.
It's a fantastic scene.
It's like super amazing and she's really good in it.
Show don't tell.
Yes.
Yes, she's here's one I made earlier.
Oh, yes, I'm going to show you.
And when she comes back, she's sort of like wobbly and stunned.
You can't help but laugh.
And of course, at that point, then we do cut to the Daleks
spaceship and that wonderful music that is part of them.
Well, that is Philip Glass.
And then it's actually, um, it's actually Bernard Herman, and then
it's Philip Glass.
Murray Gold, like this podcast, like Doctor Who is always good
when he's doing something else, somebody else.
It is, it's great music.
It's Ark Norton.
Lifted directly from Philip Blast's opera. chanting what is...
Oh, the chanting stuff.
No, I was talking about the actual moments of introduction.
No, the chanting is what?
Yeah I don't know.
I'd heard Hebrew as well, I think.
The source of design is from where, you know, the source of where
it's from?
very close to the comics from the 60s, the century 21 Dalek back
panel strip.
We're back to the tiny gun again, aren't we?
Yes.
Do you remember the Dalek Invasion of Earth DVD release where
there's a special option where you can replace the wobbly tinfoil
plate with a sort of rather stately version of these.
Yeah, it looks like them.
And that like that predates that.
So it is the classic sort of flying saucer things.
And I think that Russell has said in interviews that Terry Nation
had always really wanted to create a giant space opera with 1000s
of Daleks and spaceships and stuff and now we can finally do it.
So this is what Dalek Masterplan might have looked like.
And the artists, was it Eric Eden, who drew the Century 21 strip
for part of it.
Anyway, they all started working on Frank Hampson's Dan Dare
strips of the early 1950s, and just a little squee moment, the
Dalek missiles directly lifted from tree missiles from Dan Dare.
I know.
These things are so important to people like us I really love the
whole reveal of all of those ships.
I love the fact that, you know, we've got dialogue about someone's
been playing a long game.
And then we obviously get the 1000s of ships and 1000s, half a
1000000 Daleks or whatever have been created and the Daleks, of
course, monitor it and go, we have been detected and announced to
the doctor that we have your associate.
Yes, they don't have friends, Daleks. sexual association?
No companions, no assistance, just your associate.
So this is a different kind of cliffhanger.
This is a rose in Peril cliffhanger, and the final shot is her
being surrounded by lots of kind of Daleks floating Daleks and
stuff like that.
But it's not quite that, is it?
Because of the doctor's speech.
What do we think of this as a cliffhanger?
No.
What is the meaning of this negative, dog?
don't know.
I'm as confused as a dalek.
But it's very effective.
Traditionally, that sort of cliffhanger would have been
exterminate, exterminate, exterminate, and a close-up on the
companion is completely subverting what you expect.
She's not dead.
And she's not in immediate peril.
She's not about to be exterminated.
It's the doctor being powerful and triumphant and spurred on by
his desire to get his friend out of out of danger.
The only thing is not doing is the Austrian accent.
They've already lampshaded President Schwarzenegger.
And you think, if only that actually just watched that episode of
The Simpsons and said President Trump, we were all, oh, God.
But yeah, because it is.
It's a Schwarzenegger moment, which in itself is a John Ford, John
Houston, Western moment where everything is gone, you know, the
farms are burnt, the cattle is lost.
So what do we do?
We just say, no, no, you haven't won.
I'm going to come in loan without a gun and I'm going to bitch
slap and tongue lash the buggery out of all of you and you go to
whimper, whimper.
Yes. with all my northern brittle edginess.
He's quite camp.
I think the closest parallel is the, there's one thing you don't
put into a trap speech in time of angels in series five.
We know that the doctor is going to rescue her.
There's absolutely no doubt after that speech that she isn't in
peril.
She'll be fine.
And so the big thing that we're looking forward to is the doctor
actually doing that, what's he going to do next week?
The next time trailer, when I was watching this, comes literally
straight away, like it's not at the end of the credits, it's boom
straight up.
And I guess I'm used to them being at the end credits based on 10
series, but in this series they're not always there.
There's sort of like a 2nd cliffhanger.
Yeah.
By having that because there's that big booming voice.
It survived through me.
You think, what the blazes is that?
That's another besides that I'm left with what is this big voice?
through me, Peter.
See, Janet.
I think it's a great 2nd cliffhanger.
I love it.
Like I said, I always spent all week speculating about who the
hell that was.
I had no idea.
And I think by then I hadn't heard the Emperor Dalek from Evil of
the Daleks, whose voice that is.
It's pretty close to it, isn't it?
It's also a century 21 comic again.
Yeah.
And Janet's Mara.
I mean, she was she's a manly far away.
Fangirling.
Yes.
Have you been listening to a lot of Janet or?
I actually do.
It's funny. again, my pick of the week.
I've been listening to all of the big Finnish, Janet.
Fielding, you know, say, I will never come back to Big Finish.
But she hasn't.
She's the best.
They are my favourite big finishes.
Yeah, but that's that's your pick for next week.
Possibly.
Well, that's Al Cliffhager, I guess.
You can all come back next week and find out what Richard's pick
of the week is.
Yes, his nose, probably.
Have a biscuit.
Well, dear listener, it looks like we're going to be spending the
week trapped on that giant Dalek spaceship, but at least we're all
wearing our stylish and affordable pairs of stellar pock paint
shoes.
We'll be back next week for the denouement in the parting of the
waves.
It was hats.
In the meantime, you can find us at flightthroughentirety.com
flight through entirety on Facebook and Apple Podcasts and at FT
podcast on Twitter.
You can also find us at Jody Inter Terror, where we phone each
other up in our pyjamas to debrief about each episode of series
11.
That's Jodyinterterra.com.
Jody Interterra on Apple Podcasts and at Jody Interterra on
Twitter.
Over on Bondfinger, we've now flown through the entire James Bond
film franchise, providing expert commentary on every film.
You can find it all at bondfinger.com, bondfinger on Facebook and
Apple Podcasts and at bondfingercast on Twitter.
Until next time, may your viewing figures always continue to go
up.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
See you soon.
Ta-ta.
I should like a hat like that.
That was Flight through Entirety, starring Todd Bealby, Nathan
Bottomley, James Selwood and Richard Stone.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, Strings Performance by Jane
Orberg.
This episode, your whole existence is watching television was
recorded on the 14th of October 2018 and released on the 11th of
November.
Here at FDE Productions, we'd like to apologise for the length of
this episode's outro, which was necessitated by the recent
expansion of the FDE cinematic universe.
Our next new podcast, The Death of Cyril Shapps, will be released
sometime in late 2019.
And I think there's a sort of large hipped woman who goes around
hotels with a an ultraviolet light and checks all the bedclothes
and stuff and then berates people.
Like that's a sort of genre of TV.
I guess what not to wear is a problem because of the consumerism
aspect.
On an aside about blue lights.
When I worked at the ABC many years ago.
There was a book that there was out called Spotless.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I remember.
Like, Haddie Hips to clean your house.
And the woman, she was a housewife who had all these handy tips
and she became a household name because she appeared on the ABC.
But she used to tell people to come into the shops and buy the
Sonic screwdrivers so that it could use them to look for stains on
things around the house.
Where are you going with this?
So the light from the Sonic screwdriver would actually show up.
Like a must for anyone who has teammates.
Yeah, a cheap person's ultraviolet light kind of thing.
Could they find compact laser deluxe?
Well, you know, people complain that they don't learn anything for
this podcast, but there you go.
That's a little helpful tip that you can take into your own
person.
So you could actually use the ninth doctor's Sonic to...
I thought it was just 201 uses.
It's got 3 settings.