Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast Tired of all this talk about Daleks
and just wanting to know where to collect our prize money from.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Todd.
I'm James and I'm elegantly bronzed for this episode.
Well, we've spent an exhausting week trapped on that spaceship
surrounded by megabytes of CGI pedal bins.
Still, I imagine the doctor will be along to rescue us any 2nd
now.
So while we're waiting, let's talk about the series one finale, the
Parting of the Waves.
How does this episode begin?
They do the reprise, and it cuts straight into the next...
Into the opening credits?
No, no, no, into the next scene.
So it literally just flows as if it's the one scene.
Like they just cut that scene in half.
My 1st lot of notes here, say the missiles launched at the TARDIS
and there's an impossible explosion a la survival and the doctor
and motorbikes, but that's not the 1st shot, is it?
Yeah, but we don't actually see the doctor sort of get into the
TARDIS and set the coordinates for anything or anything like
that.
We're on the ship, aren't we?
And Rose is being told to predict the doctor's movements and she
refuses to do it.
And then she says, oh, you know, the TARDIS has no defences if you
fire a missile at it, he'll die.
And then they say you have predicted correctly.
The Daleks actually do great dialogue when Russell is writing.
You know, we saw it with Sherman as well, but this is the 1st kind
of big giant Dalek story that has more the one Dalek and has good
fun, excellent dialogue.
You don't need Davros along to do that.
And that's exactly what Russell wanted, but he loved those century
21 backpage strips and they were pithy and ironic one-liners.
There was wit in those as well.
The dog's very boring when written by Terry Nation.
I think it went spread out.
But they have great little moments.
I think they're funny in the chase.
Yeah.
Especially that one digging itself out of the sand.
There might be the fact that, you know, a lot of terry nation
starlic stuff is in the mid 60s.
So it's a different feel to television.
So I can understand where you're coming from with that.
But the Daleks themselves here, up until the emperor is
introduced.
Have their own little personalities.
They're willing to converse, they're willing to move back with
their eye stalks and back away from the doctor and all that sort
of thing.
So it's nice to see them have some sort of characteristics other
than just be Davros's army.
I think they're super interesting here too.
Russell has occasionally sort of had digs at religion.
You know, religion was one of the weapons that was forbidden on
platform one in the end of the world.
And here the Daleks use all of this explicitly religious language
about blasphemy.
It's the biggest thing about this story and the thing I wanted to
bang on about because it really does feel like it's the Hillsong
Church or whatever you have in the UK.
But it's the Daleks are Pentecostals.
I had originally thought that given that this is a post 911 series
of Doctor Who, that maybe we were sort of fundamentalist
terrorists.
But watching it this time, all I could get was that they were kind
of conservative, fundamentalist Christians.
Super far-right Bush family acolytes.
Yeah, yeah.
They would have voted for Trump in 2016.
Totally Starlakes.
The big killer lion is the line about how they hate their own
flesh.
They hate their humanity.
They've been made from human beings and they hate the fact that
they're human and subject to sort of human frailty.
There's also that incredibly cheeky line, which I think has been
observed heaps of times before.
When Rose says the Daleks are half human and the Daleks respond
with that is blasphemy, which is exactly what Gallifrey Base said
I think, when the doctor said he was half human in the TV movie.
Of course, that's what he's lap shading.
Of course it is.
Those lines around there are really, really good.
And the filleting line.
Yeah.
Oh, sifted and filleted.
It's even the words that are used.
The way it's enunciated.
Yeah, it's very visceral.
Well, it's poetry.
I mean, he's chosen those words, not just for their meaning, but
also for their sound, I think.
It's very well written.
And also words that you wouldn't usually hear from a dalek.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dalek language is usually quite boring.
Seek location extermination.
Yes, well, scientific, factual.
It's not descriptive.
It's not poetic like you say.
Yeah.
I mean, so this is an amazing kind of reconception of the Daleks
because we've talked about them being communists before and about
being Nazis.
We've had them as...
Amway salesman, consumerists and so on.
And now they're the religious.
And I think that when Russell introduces old monsters to his new
series. does try and find something new to say about them.
He certainly does.
And it's always about the abuse and misuse of modern technology.
The ease and fun and the way it was meant to bring us all together
and all that we've allowed it to do in the way that we debase the
fundament of anything that we get a hold of, say Big Brother or
whatever is meant to, you know, be familial and bring people
together and it's actually just become the Hunger Games. defeated.
The side men next series.
Yeah, more of that next year.
What do we think about the emperor?
Richard has opinions?
think I'm okay with it.
Well, I think he's meant to be the US, isn't he?
He's really meant to be cultural imperialism.
George W.
Bush.
James?
I prefer the original.
What, the white pepper pot?
The lady emperor.
The black and white Empradale from Evil of the Daleks.
Because it looks so different.
This one just looks fat.
Though, it is, it is, it is, it is a Mike Tucker prop.
I think it's amazing.
It's beautiful.
And is huge.
Like for a prop.
How big was it?
It's a large scale miniature.
It's about 6 feet tall.
I guess when I was watching this, and looking at that, on the Blu
ray, all the Daleks around it, not just the ones floating in the
air, but in the background doing little things, I never realised
how many different ones there were.
That's sort of what drew my attention.
It's the kind of thing that Terry Nation would always have wanted
to do.
And he tries to do it in planet of the Daleks and they're reduced
to using the little toy Daleks.
Yeah.
And it's 10,000 Daleks astonishingly.
So this is a mere half 1000000 of them, but they really give that
impression.
It's amazing.
It is like finally having the entire toy box to play with.
The doctor materialises around rose and a dalek.
And a dalek.
That's the 1st time a dalek has ever been in the tartis.
I don't think we've ever materialised around anyone before.
Well, that was my point.
I was going, is this the 1st time?
Yeah.
It's happened again a bunch of times now, I think.
I think they've gone there again, but that is the 1st time.
And that's great.
You know, the doctor does something amazing.
I think it's in TV comic.
We need to we need to ask Gary Russell, friend of the podcast.
I'm pretty sure it's happened in one of the comics in the 70s.
Yeah, the televisual antecedent of that is gobless.
But Time Monster.
Oh, yeah, Lagopolis.
Because Time Monce is the funniest Doctor Who episode...
Materialising around Tartises.
Yeah, that's the closest we've ever got.
Yeah.
Fan, fan, fan.
Bang, bang, bang.
But it's good.
You know, the doctor does something very clever, something that no
one who's written for the show before has ever thought of.
So he's bringing his A game to this rescue, I think.
And his massive comic back catalogue.
Yes.
I really like Eckles in this one.
He does gravitas really beautifully and all the gurning and all
the rest of it.
It's really nicely referenced in this because you can see, you
were actually just putting on a mask.
It always felt a bit fake and we make lots of jokes.
I'm under Ionucci spent an entire year making cracks about
Christopher Eccleston's gurning on every radio show he was on.
The guy who wrote the thick of it and, you know, in the loop and
all the rest, um, and Veep.
So, you know, he's, but he, a massive Dr. Ivan was always joking.
And that was the, the parlance of the criticism at the time was
that, you know, he really isn't comfortable being humourous and
doing work for children.
No, no, no, you all missed the and you can see it here.
That is his frailty and that is his mask because underneath is
just abject horror at what he's seen and utter defeat and the
feebleness that he feels of just trying to be optimistic, faking
it.
Yeah.
And you can see that he admits it here.
And there are all these moments.
We're not at the end yet, but all these little moments that
presage the end moments for Eccleston, where you see, oh, I can
really see where you've been going with this, and it's very
impressive.
He goes straight from giving them noul point, like a Eurovision
charge.
And then when he gets back into the Tartar, there's that
incredible scene where he's resting his head against the door and
listening to the Daleks say exterminate and firing at the TARDIS
and just not saying anything and no one comments on it.
But it is exactly what you said.
It's a mask, all that discomfort that he's felt with the levity
and stuff all along, is really deliberately in service of the
character.
It's a great point.
Like, I mean, that mask is there, obviously, with the whole Delta
Wave project and giving people hope, whether it be Linda or Jack
or Rose and then sending her away and you see that mask slip.
Because that is what the doctor does that, like, he brings people
hope.
Yeah.
And that's not been foregrounded so much in the original series.
No, he kind of sidestepped it and Genesis of the Daleks is a good
one for that, isn't it?
But yes, he seemed to sort of feel that sacrifice is something
people have to make, but he never wanted to face it head on.
So they get back to the station, and they have to come up with a
plan to save Earth and to save the people on the station.
Linda is there and our male and female controllers or
programmers.
It's very interesting to watch the doctor's interactions with
Linda, how perhaps awkward they are with Rose looking on, and you
also see Roses, a bit of jealousy there, which comes up again
later in the series with Martha.
Like it's, I just found that really intriguing just to see Billy's
performance throughout those sequences.
It's really rough, isn't it?
The doctor says you could come with me, I think maybe last episode
but the offer is kind of repeated only in front of Rose and when
she goes off to sort of monitor her station.
She actually touches the TARDIS a bit proprietorily as she goes
past us and Rose sees it.
And Rose is kind of a bit sort of self-centred and self-absorbed, I
think, as a person and she only gets worse next year.
Look how she treats Mickey.
Message you, no, there's nothing here for me.
And Mickey says, what?
Nothing?
No, nothing.
It's the most callous, cold moment of the whole season for me.
He stands there with a broken heart.
You watched Boomtown this morning.
Yeah, but...
We get it again in this one.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Just a hammer at home, you sucker.
But like the moment in this episode where she treats him like that
and then he and her mother still go out of their way to help her
get back to the future to save the doctor.
It shows the quality of those characters.
Let's talk about that bit.
Like, the Dr. Tricks rose into getting into the TARDIS so that she
can escape and Murray Gold conspires with the doctor as well
because the doctor does this sort of, oh, I've suddenly cracked it
and Murray goes in, like tries to sell that moment to ask as well
swell of music.
And then, as Richard said, before, the mask drops once she's
safely in the TARDIS because he never intends to see her again, and
he sends her back home.
And there's that breathtaking moment where the doctor's ghost
speaks to her in the Tartar saying he's dead.
That just gives me chills every single time that speech happens.
I'm still vivid in my memory.
The moment that goes turns to her.
Yeah, he turns to camera, all the interference patterns are gone.
It's just Christopher Eccleston and the voice treatment changes as
well.
Like it suddenly becomes real.
It's so incredibly beautiful and it's really sold.
And I think, you know, for a little while, even though I've
watched this 100s and 100s of times because it is, as I said
before, possibly my favourite Doctor Who story.
For a moment, I thought, oh, they're never going to see one
another again.
You know, that's really what's being said at that moment.
Have a good life.
Do that for me.
Have a fantastic life.
So beautiful.
Chill.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And then, of course, we just cut to those chickens revolving in
that revolting rotisserie thing in the restaurant where they're
eating chick.
I love.
I'm just thinking, is that a predicate of Eccles's future career?
No, he's told them all to knobble.
I think Russell was being a complete bitch.
I just laugh every time.
Oh, they've gone off market.
Yeah, they do little tubs of...
They tastes kind of clinical.
So like the pizza shop.
You know, have you seen the new pizza shop in whatever road?
Oh what does it have?
Old pizza.
You know, like it is the most banal conversation ever conducted as
part of a television program.
And Rose has just left, you know, the year 200,000 where Daleks
are destroying the world.
And they're just talking absolute nonsense.
And that speech, that thing is wonderful.
And she's trying the whole time not to seem arrogant.
That's a really good point.
Because she is like that to Mickey later on, but at this point, her
mask hasn't dropped.
Yeah.
I mean, you talk about Richard, that horrible speech that inspires
Mickey to kind of just say, all right, I'm going to help her go.
And, of course, the speech that she gives to Jackie is about her
father from Father's Day.
Was that little girl?
Oh, yeah, it's wonderful.
But it's also incredibly cruel.
And it's, it's, the character of Rose pushing against the people
that she loves because they ground her in, in the normal, everyday
world and she could be safe and happy there.
Yeah.
And she she needs to not be.
She needs to alienate them so that she can get back to what she
wants.
Well, yes.
Yeah, she's, she's, like you say, Nathan, incredibly selfish
character.
She's super emotionally manipulative and like she's rubbing
Jackie's husband's death, you know, rubbing it in her face. in
order to get her to go away.
Is she?
Well, I think what's happening here is that Rose thinks that
Jackie and Mickey are dragging her back, that they're holding her
back, and the reason that she had such a dull life.
The reason that she nearly decided not to go with a doctor was...
Yeah, Mickey and Jackie need me.
I'm the grown-up here.
I'm, you know, doing all the emotional labour, but she's wrong
because the 2 of them are the people who get together and enable
her to resume that life.
Yes.
And I think that they come off just amazingly great in this and
Mickey particularly.
But Jackie is wonderful when she comes back with that big jet, big
yellow truck. the love they have for her And they're willing to
put aside whatever manipulation or feelings to give her what she
wants. is just incredibly moving and incredible.
And Jackie with that truck and, you know, you've got it for 2
hours, like Regrigo or whatever.
And Mickey being able to be there in his little mini trying to get
the heart of the TARDIS open.
It just shows what a character is he is and how he has grown as a
character.
This is a defining moment, a real pivoting turning point in that
character.
And the timing of it as well is he's like, we need something
stronger than my little mini.
Something like this.
I think too, that it is amazing that in a story set in the year
200,000 that the people who end up saving the world, in fact, they
don't save the world and we'll get to that.
But the people who end up saving the doctor are just ordinary
people on earth in the present day.
And Russell, you know, has talked about Planet Zog, we've
referenced it many times before.
That's not what he's interested in.
He's interested in people.
And for that reason, all of his other season finales are set on
earth in the present day, and a big sort of climactic apocalyptic
things happening to our world.
Here he said it in the distant future, but it's still our main
characters.
It's still Jackie and Mickey who actually managed to save the
world.
And Rose.
Yeah.
Well, none of the other characters could save the world because
they all bloody die.
Just all keep dying, don't you?
They literally the only people who don't die in this episode.
Jack.
Well, no, Jack dies and the doctor dies.
He gets brought back to life.
But the only characters that don't die are Rose, Mickey and
Jackie.
So our present day contemporaries.
Yeah, they are the heart of the show.
It's actually, I think this is the 1st time since Horror Fang Rock
the entire guest cast is killed off.
So, unfortunately, Linda, with a Y is in for the killing zone.
I think that's incredible.
When the dalek comes up the window and just the lights flash and
you know that they're saying exterminate because of the rhythm
with which the lights flash.
It's a great misdirection too for classic fans in that, you know
she's in that platform and you're expecting them to come through
the door with a cutting device which we've seen numerous times in
the classic series and that's what's happening.
But then just that moment when you see it in her eye, the close-up
in her face, and then it's like, you're turning to behind her with
the glass, that is just, you just know that's the end.
There's also a line in there about the glass being...
It's exoglass or something.
Like, take a like a meteor to break through that or something.
He says it's protected against meteors.
That's what he says.
Yeah, and that sells the power of the Daleks.
They are so powerful that this thing that's supposed to withstand
meteor strike is just shattered by them.
And that sort of plays into the conception of the Daleks and the
new series is being all powerful.
Yeah, completely invulnerable being.
Besides Linda dying, we've then got Jack and the programmers and
all the wannabe winner contestants or people staying on the
station down on level 0, and it's really satisfying to see the
winner of the weakest link, get exterminated.
We talked about this on a previous episode that Russell writes
stories that are very vertical.
You know, there's always lifts in them and he makes it very clear
what the Daleks are doing.
And their only reason to go down there.
They don't need to go down there.
Remember they come in at floor 446 or whatever it is and they're
going, they're going to go up.
That's the bit that's protected by the extrapolator's force
field.
But the only reason they go down is because there's a bunch of
people there that they can kill.
There's no strategic reason for it at all.
Just to show how evil they are. and just before she dies, Linda
gets to hear that happening.
And it's in that scene and she is so effective.
Like she's so broken up by it.
And I think too, in the scene just before she dies, you can see
her realising that she's about to die.
It's so well done.
She's really fantastic. really is.
Yeah.
I shed no tears for Roderick's death at all.
You astound me.
He's all the bad bosses and the weak people we've always known, and
that's the whole point of his moment or his arc, flat though it is
is to show us how people who don't have, anyway, in touch with the
humanity, you could say.
We've already said that the world that's created by last week's
episode is horrible.
And it's sort of told in a slightly comic way because we've got
all these sort of parodic versions of our favourite TV shows, but
the world is horrifically appalling.
It's a terrible place and Roderick is the sort of person who wins
in that world, you know, and so he's an ultimate winner.
Yeah, he's the winner in that world.
And so... every corporate success story.
Yeah, exactly.
It's really interesting that the doctor's influence on Jack
inspires some of those people in that world to take a stand and to
fight, the controllers, and also the girl who's the assistant
director on the weakest link.
Yeah, she's the floor manager, I think, is the name, the right
character.
Okay.
But she's not credited.
Oh, isn't she?
She's really good.
Yeah, they appear to have accidentally not credited her because
she has a pretty main role in both his episodes, but she doesn't
appear in the credit six.
I love that scene where she is firing bullets at the Daleks and
they don't work, they're doing sort of bullet time and she says
you lied to me.
Did you notice what the bullets were on?
It's a revelation of the Daleks?
Their bastic bullets invented by Eric Seward himself.
Or the 1985 classic Revelation of the Diaries.
Yeah, Orsini uses them.
We see a Dalek get blown up by bastic bullets.
Not anymore.
Really?
Yeah, yeah.
How do I miss these things?
How am I missing these things?
Of course, the Delta Wave, it was the reference to Kinder.
When I blanked that out of my mind.
What did that do to Nissa's brain?
Yeah, yeah.
Fried it.
Exposed it to a huge amount of ancestine energy.
And save gin to your paycheque, probably.
That's it.
So the program has died.
There's a nice moment between the ongoing little, will they go on
a date dialogue between the male and female programmer, which I
quite like through out both episodes?
Yeah.
Just to give them a bit of character and a bit of humour in the
face of annihilation, I guess.
And also to make her death more horrifying because there's someone
who to mourn for, and in fact, their little exchange, which is
super trope aware, isn't it?
Like, perhaps I should ask you.
Is that the title for this episode?
That's right.
Perhaps I should ask you out.
You know, well, then tough.
I'm not going to go out with you and then they smile at each other
and she winks.
Like it's a very sweet, very quickly sweet thing.
And she was someone, remember, the doctor yelled at her last
episode.
One of my favourite lines last episode is where the doctor
criticises the staff and she says, well, they're just doing their
jobs and he says, well, with that sentence, you've just lost the
right even to speak to me.
But she's humanised by then and her death's horrifying and so is
the male controllers.
It's almost fridging, isn't it?
She's horribly murdered and then it spurs him on to try and kill
the Daleks and then he does as well.
Well, yeah, I mean, fridging is more about sort of long-term
emotion.
Very brief reaching.
A free change.
It's an escape.
It's an ice tray.
Yeah, that's right.
Around this time is one of my favourite moments in the episode
which is when the Daleks enter floor 495.
Somebody says, what's on 495, and then they come in, and I
completely forgotten. and there's the Android taking on the
Daleks.
I just love it when she tells them you are the weakest link and
you know, then the fact that she has to say, you are the weakest
link before firing, gets her kick, well, gets her head blown off.
It is also just the incredible comedy world that was created in
the beginning of Bad Wolf gets to have a little brief go at the
Daleks before we sort of forget about it forever.
So now you've brought up Bad Wolf.
Obviously, in the playground on Earth, the bad wolf thing appears
everywhere and suddenly it's a message that is sent to Rose.
Is that what she says, a message.
And so this is the 1st time that it sort of, well, actually, no
it's mentioned before this, isn't it?
Because the doctor has a conversation with the emperor Dalek.
It's one of those things like last week where the 2 different plot
strands are running in parallel and rose and the doctor both find
out that bad wolf isn't what they thought it was at sort of
roughly the same time in the episode.
I find it interesting because you've been led up to believe that
it was something and now it suddenly changed.
What will it actually be?
Yeah.
I think the bad wolf on the playground is incredibly cheap because
it's clearly just done with chalk.
I really like that she's whispering into so many little kiddies
ears, go on, do it.
Come on. throughout eternity.
She's actually been fostering tagging.
She's the cause of it all, right from the beginning.
Banksy is actually Rose.
So Jack is exterminated.
The doctor's going to be exterminated.
For the 1st and only time. that I was actually sorry to see it
happen.
Every subsequent time.
It's the same with Barrowman, I've said it before when we were
early, early on when we were doing the old podcast.
I only like him when he's in Doctor Who and the character only
works for me when he's in Doctor Who.
Soon as he jumps into torture or anything else.
It's awful.
It's just too much cheese, as Mickey would say.
It's crotch from Maggio performance levels.
But in this, it's really poignant and lovely and really touching.
And the fact that it's just done as any great Kurosawa film does
or the magnificent 7 or any great Western is this posited hero
this chief identifier for our morality just disappears in
slidestone.
There's nothing else to it because that's what meaningless death
is.
There's no ceremony, it's just wasteful.
Yeah, it's that sort of thing too, where they say exterminate and
he says...
I kind of figured...
Yeah, kind of figured.
Yes, and that's it, yeah. bang.
And then, of course, it turns out he was holding his breath all
the time.
The big cheat.
Oh, that's something new I've discovered.
That thing with the Daleks as well.
At this point, they're all pouring out of the spaceships and
destroying the earth.
In the most exciting way that we've only imagined that that should
have happened since we were 4 years of age.
We've been living this moment in our little heads all this time.
Although I have to say that most of the destruction of the earth
is realised by some sort of fairly low-res graphics.
Australia melts. doesn't it?
Yeah, they're all gone.
We have new continents back then, but they all look the same as
the old continents.
Pacifica and Europa and stuff.
Is it like a 100 and something 1000 years, enough time for...
No, actually, maybe Maybe it's just political...
Yeah, the American Alliance and Pacifica and Australasia.
They were going a bit all well with it, weren't they?
Yeah, yeah.
But that's what I was going to say about this story and why I
liked it so much because Russell again has picked up in Bad Wolf
and really cemented it with this one.
The chief alternatives in British writing of the 20th century
where you have industry, and it's always been dystopian because
the Brits really get how awful society can be.
They always know that what they've got is quite thin and actually
not that fun anyway.
So it's why I say, right?
So, Brexit.
Exactly, which is why, well, yeah, I was going with it.
This is why they write such great dystopian fiction.
You've got all wall on one side saying it's militarised and
conditioned and very programmed and obvious.
Then you've got Huxley saying, no, no, no, it's going to be
exactly like that, but you won't feel it because you'll be
anaesthetized with sugary sweetness and affable vaporousness.
And that's exactly how we are living right now.
The Daleks of climate change.
Well, Teresa May or whatever else you want to see it, but really
they're just about the threat that none of us are admitting.
Well, remember last episode, like the whole planet's atmosphere
was destroyed.
You couldn't breathe outside.
There's smog storms and stuff like that.
And I think that climate change was clearly sort of a living
concern in 2005.
But obviously since then, the people in charge of scene reason and
sorted it out once and for all 12 years later.
But yeah, I think the Dalek says climate change and having the
Daleks come in and just destroy the world.
And the doctor doesn't really do anything about it and we never
kind of hear about it again.
In fact, the only reference to it is in Pudsy Cutaway, which is
the little red nose taste sketch that 1st introduces David Tennant
to the world, as the doctor, where he says that Captain Jack is
back on trying to rebuild human society or something like that, as
if the doctor had locked him out of the Tartars, because he'd
fallen in love with a Scottish rebel of some kind.
Oh, of course, I thought it was that Rose reversed all the
incidents that had happened and removed the dialects from this
moment of time and that none of that had ever happened.
Oh, okay, that's possible.
I always thought it was a sort of weird kind of loose end and a
sort of strangely downbeat ending.
I thought the same as you.
I just thought that she brought him back because she had a
connection to him and could see that.
I didn't ever think that she'd.
She got rid of the Daleks as they were then, not reversing
everything that happened on earth.
But then, as you say, if she does do that, which is resuscitation
then they're all indestructible.
It's a planet of Captain Scarlet, so that doesn't happen.
We know that doesn't happen.
So yeah, what you're saying could be true.
So there is this point.
We know there are huge gaps in this Doctor Who universe of
Russell's.
So in the next time we see the earth, it's the year 5 billion
isn't it?
Yeah, yeah.
So I think that he doesn't worry about that and doesn't let that
stop him from telling the story that he wants to tell.
And I also think he's unleashing his inner cynic because, again
we've said this before on television, everything's lovely and
marvellous.
And, you know, he couldn't be more jovial and likeable, but there
is a kind of deep vein of cynicism that runs through his writing
in a really kind of upsetting way at times.
And so here he smashes the earth up as a sort of background to
this story that he's trying to tell.
Yeah, it is bleak and it did seem like a loose end to me.
When I 1st watched this, uh, and he clearly thought it was a loose
end because he made that remark about it in Pudsy Cutaway, which I
am definitely calling it.
The official name for it was born again.
Yeah, that's crap.
Dear Rose turns up to rescue the doctor, with the time vortex
running through her head, and she has some superpowers to stop the
Dalek rays, and she announces that she is the bad wolf and
scatters herself messaged through time and space to send a message
to herself.
So, what did we think of that at the time?
Because I thought it was crap.
Why?
I just hated it at the time.
I just went...
To Deus X Makina?
Yes, she scatters this message.
She's this bad wolf message.
I just thought it was really weak and I just thought that's it.
I think that if Euripides does the Deus X Martin. then Russell T
Davies can.
It is definitely a Deus X marker.
I'm not sure that it makes sense.
And certainly in subsequent commentaries.
DVD commentaries.
There was a wonderful commentary on Forest of the Dead with David
Tennant and Russell and Moffat, and I think they gently rib
Russell for the bad wolf thing, because it doesn't quite work.
It's a little bit sort of formless.
And her suddenly going, it's a message.
Like, I'm not quite sure how she gets there.
James?
Yes, no, it's crap.
It is it's a crap day, sex mashing up.
But it's also kind of fabulous because she's wearing all that gold
body pain and she's quoting her own song lyrics.
What?
Okay. explain.
I see everything.
The sun, the moon, the day and night. night Oh, and I've got that
album too, people, so I should know that song.
It is actually a very good song.
I might have to recommend it.
Remind me.
That's very, that's very clever of you, German.
I'm surprised you didn't notice That's the 1st thing I noticed
when I was watching this episode in 2005 was, oh my god, it's a
Billy Piper song.
I've actually changed my tune on this over the years, and I think
part of changing the tune is what happens in season 4 or whenever
they refer back to the Bad Wolf, whether it be Bad Wolf Bay or
that message that she sends in turn left, it suddenly has a big
resonance and very emotional and very impactful.
So down the track, it's influenced me to actually quite like
this.
Yes, it's a little bit, as you say, seems very rushed and that's
it.
But I actually quite like it now.
I absolutely don't object to that way of resolving the story
because it's all been set up.
It all makes sense.
It has consequences.
It's really emotional.
I think it's wonderful.
And I think that scene is absolutely lovely.
The only bit I don't quite buy is that she gets the message that
she can go back from Bad Wolf being written in chalk on that
playground.
Why bad wolf, like, you know?
Oh, well, I mean, it is Bad Wolf because it's something linked to
that time and place.
It's a message from Satellite 5 in that year.
You don't believe that she was actually the Rupert Murdoch all the
time.
Yeah. created Bad Wolf TV.
Wolf Media Enterprises.
No, I actually think that she gets the word from them and then
scatters it through the rest of the series.
And the other thing that I think is good is it's the 1st time we
very definitely get things happening and having consequences
earlier in the show.
And we're about to have that in series 3 where the master
dematerialises in episode 11 and rematerializes in an earlier
Christmas special.
And I think that's amazing.
Like, I think that's absolutely incredible.
So he's definitely had a 2nd go at this idea and done it a bit
better.
But I think this is still pretty good.
And then Moffatt will do it constantly. yeah Well, I was going to
say that Russell's playing the long game with that one.
But I won't.
So she saves the day.
And then she needs a doctor to kiss her.
So that all the new fans will be satisfied.
And the old might not tongue out.
We forgot the other kiss.
Oh, Captain Jack saying goodbye to Rose and the doctor.
Barriman made sure when filming that scene that he kissed them
exactly the same.
Yeah, to show that this is an enlightened guy from the future who
doesn't have hang-ups like we do now.
There's also a great story about that where like when he kissed
Eccleston.
There was one take where he just didn't stop.
And he just keeps snocking his face off until they fall, fall in a
heap on the floor.
Where they laughing?
Well, it's good to know that Chris was having a fun time on the
set.
For at least a moment anyway.
Yeah.
No, he had everyone together.
They were doing a bit of a pert we for him.
So his favourite director.
The people around him that he liked.
I know that people would have worked well with him and wished him
the very best.
He did a beautiful job for everyone.
And he worked damn hard on this.
He really cared.
He's a perfectionist and perfectionists are the 1st people to feel
downtrodden and hurt and affronted.
Because those levels, you never really reach them.
But he has moments where he pretty much does.
He actually really does.
Yeah.
Oh, no.
I think he's incredible More of this in our Eccleston
retrospective, which will just be lousy with panegyric, I think.
Yes, I'll take two.
Thank you.
And a scotch.
So the doctor does kiss Rose in order to extract the time vortex
from her head and just because he loves her as well.
Really?
Yes, absolutely.
I hate, you know, there's that.
Well, in fact, the doctor is a time lord from the planet Gallifray
and the constellation of Consurberus and they don't kiss.
They just squeeze one another's left elbows.
And this is purely for a science fiction reason.
It's a kiss.
So even if there's a science fiction reason for it.
It's a kiss. you know.
And so he loves her and she's done all of this stuff.
She's nearly sacrificed her life to save him.
Not to save the world because they don't manage to do that, but to
save him.
I feel like a naughty schoolboy thing.
Yes, I'm telling you off.
It's definitely a kiss.
They're in love. and they're kissing as well.
I just like to say that I'd actually don't believe that at all.
And I don't, it doesn't sit well with me.
They shouldn't be kissing ever.
Isaac just sucking her golden essence out.
You've said this before, Richard, I think.
It is don't snog the companions.
It's yucky.
I don't know if it's simply, to quote our Nathan.
It's not lampshading the telly movie.
Or did it Russell feel, I have to acknowledge this is what
television is now.
We have intimacy.
We can't have Dr. Magnus Pike in space anymore.
There actually has to be, you know, a dental hygiene and a
willingness to engage.
He's not a new to public schoolboy.
No, we haven't got Matt Smith.
No, that's right.
But also, you know, he loves Rose. that doesn't mean that they're
going to shag or anything like that, but it means that he really
loves her.
And so kissing her is an expression of his love for her as much as
it is about sucking out her golden juicy essence.
God, you can't keep that.
You said it.
Yours was worse. juicy essence.
Richard, Richard, Richard, I'm ignoring this listeners.
Richard, does it sit well with you or not?
The Kissy Facey.
I'm trying to picture anyone upfront mouth snogging Billy Hartnall
when they're saying goodbye.
Can I just can't see it happening?
No, it really doesn't because I think, although it does work in
this and I'm completely fine with it.
But if we're looking at it from a wider angle, it's he's 900 years
old.
She's supposed to be 19.
Yeah, but what is age?
What is age, but where you are in your body right now and the
amount of hormones you've got.
So his body's not that old.
We're not suggesting that Captain Jack kissed the doctor for
science fiction reasons.
He kissed him goodbye.
And so the kiss doesn't have to mean we're snogging, but, you know
he doesn't do a Vulcan mind meld and put his fingers on her
temples.
You know what does actually kiss her?
Yeah, and you're right.
You know why it works because Eccles has been given an arc and
he's worked beautifully with it.
There is no way the Doctor of Rose would have done anything, even
holding a hand was award's a bit out there for him.
It was.
It was, and that was really one of the 1st tactile moments.
You've seen, okay, Nicola and Colin were always trying to infuse
humanity into a relationship that didn't really seem to have very
much ridden into it at all, but they were trying to do that sort
of thing, certainly by mysterious planet.
That was really quite lovely and jolly because they knew the
characters if it's going to work.
There has to be some connection that the audience can also enjoy.
But Eccles did it really beautifully coming out of, we know, he's
a war hero.
What he is, is a lot of lads in the UK as well, but coming back
from a war zone.
Now the British had troops stationed overseas and always have
done.
He's in Afghanistan.
He is...
Martin Freeman of our show. by any other ways.
He's suffering from PTSD.
Yeah, he definitely is.
Definitely is.
I just wanted to say, like, with the kiss thing.
I have a lot of baggage from Classic Who?
Because that's what I'm used to.
And so I was never comfortable with the kissing in the telly
movie.
Oh, it was awful.
But I do buy it here.
I don't like necessarily seeing it often. but I'm okay with it.
I just like to clarify that.
Even though I was berated, like, for that point, Nathan.
I don't mind it.
I do find it really interesting that he seems to have the vortex
in him for like all of 3 seconds compared to how long it runs
through Billy.
And she seems to come out of it completely fine, but he doesn't.
Maybe it's because he has to return it out of an essence.
I don't know. sticky wickets here, isn't it?
But I do just have a problem with how short he contains it for.
I just wanted to see...
Oh, he's a bloke from the north, you know, they don't muck
around.
So the Dalek emperor asks him whether he is a coward or a killer.
And then we have, I think, possibly a defining moment for
Christopher Equiston as the doctor.
He gets a redo.
He's put in a position that's identical with the position that we
assume that he was in in the time war, where he got to press a
button to destroy the Daleks and his own people, and the decision
that he made was to do that.
And he has learned since then, and he gets the chance to reenact
it, that that wasn't what he should have done.
It's so important.
Yeah, I think this, even before day of the doctor, we've had a
reenactment of that crucial moment in the time war, and we get it
here, and his decision is different.
Yeah.
Nicely put, Nathan. because he's going to wipe out the entire
world, isn't he?
There's not enough time to calibrate or whatever, the Delta wave
thing.
So that's his choice.
Hail the doctor.
The great exterminator.
Yeah, well, we've already seen our friend the Dalek from Dalek, our
eponymous Dalek, accuse the doctor of being like a Dalek, and now
we get the emperor doing the same thing, and he realises that his
decision to destroy his home planet, and all of the Daleks was the
wrong one, that he can't do that.
Even if it needs to be done, even if morally speaking, it's the
right decision.
It's such a morally toxic thing to do beyond the utilitarian
argument is another argument about whether you're going to be the
agent of that or not.
I actually think, though, that it does suffer a bit from being
rather undramatically directed and scored. don't know that it is.
It certainly still strikes the heartstrings.
I was watching it again today after so many years thinking, yeah, I
would have done it, and I would have taken on that karmic
backlodge and, you know, paid for it seeing how many lives hens
because it was the right thing to do.
We're not saying the comics is of these 2 episodes, like the
doctor's already given a gun back earlier.
And so here again, it's showcasing that he's not willing just to
take life for the sake of taking life.
But it's not fresh for him.
He's already done that.
Yes, he's done that before. he doesn't want to repeat the same
mistake.
I think that's it.
He can only bring himself to do it once.
This is a Buddhist parable.
We ever mention that before.
It's not a trolly problem because there's more than sort of
consequentialism in the sort of moral calculus.
It is kind of the wrong thing to do because of what it will do to
you because of the kind of person you become.
This is the point and that's the beauty of it.
He says, I'm willing to take on the great pain of the rest of the
world and be worse than everyone because it will ultimately
spare.
Look how far he's grown from being Tom from that 4th doctor you
said.
I can't put these fuse wise together because, you know, it's a
couple of fuse wires. and yes, all of that sort of thing.
Well, you've actually faced your moral responsibility, which is
yes, your ego is not bigger than this situation and you actually
do have to sublimate yourself.
Like, I don't think that the story wants to come down on a
particular side or anything.
Do we applaud him for doing it or is he actually just copying
out?
Is he doing another top?
Is he doing another Tom and he's actually learnt nothing because
his moral duty was to protect these people from this future?
So in fact, he's simply gone back. oh he's wasted 5 lines.
But it's one of these things where there isn't a right decision.
When he destroys Galafray, he decides one way and becomes a mass
murderer.
He just listened to your podcast.
He said what you think about Gallifrey.
All those sofas.
And then he gets to make the decision again, and again, it's the
wrong decision because he just leaves Earth to be destroyed and
who knows what's going to happen well.
In fact, Rose, much like Garmin before her comes in and, you know
takes the need for the decision away.
And it's only in Moffat's era where he gets to kind of Kobayashi
Maru that dilemma and find a 3rd cheat way out of it.
But I like that that becomes live.
We don't get to see the doctor in the time war, but we do get to
see him confronted with that same decision.
And so did, since that brings us to the end moments in the TARDIS
with Christopher and Billy and the whole regeneration, which has
come about because Christopher is not continuing on to a 2nd
series.
This time when I was watching it, I was acutely aware that they
didn't seem to be in the room together.
Were they not in the room together at all?
Tenant's definitely not in the room with Billy.
I knew that, but I thought that they were both in that console
room together.
So I think they are in the same shot initially she wakes up, but
that whole conversation where they're speaking to one another
across the TARDIS and they're in completely separate shots, whether
they're not there in the same room or whether a Hearn is directing
it so that it's not jarring when suddenly her and Tennant aren't
in the room together.
I don't know, but it did look a bit jarring, I think.
They wrote an alternative version of that scene.
As a red herring to try and keep people off the scent that
Eccleston was leaving.
How did that work out?
Whoops.
Um, where they actually head off to Barcelona.
There's no regeneration and the closing of the whole series was
supposed to be, the TARDIS having scanned Rose and a little
message coming up saying life form dying.
What you were saying before about the time vortex not damaging her
but killing him, Russell turned that on his head in the scene that
they filmed or were going to film to release on the on the press
tapes.
Right.
Like was actually dealing with the fact that, well, no, it would
kill her.
I actually didn't know whether they would get to do a proper
regeneration scene.
I didn't know whether it would be like Colin saying carrot juice
carrot juice, carrot juice, and then we would just turn up the
next season with a new doctor because there was kind of no way of
knowing what the production was like.
Clarence of Salford kiss on the console.
He was poisoned by carrot juice in an exercise bike.
You know, I didn't know how whether his resignation had been a
surprise, whether it had been announced after the series was in
the can or what.
You know, there was kind of no way of knowing.
And so I was watching this and I remember being hugely delighted
that we did seem to be getting a regeneration scene.
In the series Bible, Russell says that there's no need to
introduce the idea of regeneration because he doesn't anticipate
that he's going to be changing cast every year.
But I think it does a pretty good job of kind of selling it to
viewers.
But can you imagine being a new series fan, and then he's suddenly
just talking about the fact that all his cells in his body are
dying and he has his little trick, and then it all hell blakes
loose with that explosion.
Like you'd be going, what the hell is going on?
And then there's another person there.
I liked it back in the good old days where they would just recast
the doctor and not really tell you why.
And I think ever since they explained it 1st in the war games and
then again in Planet of the Spiders, the whole thing, kind of lost
its mystery.
I'd prefer to think of the doctor as someone who just gets recast
every 3 years or so.
But I think he does kind of a deaf job of introducing that whole
concept of regeneration.
And I look forward to a future time where, you know, the doctor is
a generated and he has no head.
Oh, that's right.
Or no nose or something.
No, that's the dogs on Barcelona.
I'm getting confused again.
Yeah, no, like that whole dialogue is, I think sells it well and
Christopher was always going to get to say the word fantastic a
number of times right there at the end.
It's his catchphrase.
In fact, that was one of the things that I thought I would most
miss when Tenant took over because I loved the fact that the
doctor thought everything was fantastic and I thought that they
wouldn't survive into Tenant.
And I think an original draft of the Christmas invasion had a
thread where he kept trying to say fantastic at not being very
good at eventually dropping.
It didn't work until this came out. right.
There we go.
Christopher's gone.
David's there with a bit of dialogue.
We'll find out what we think of the new guy. in a few
commentaries.
I think his catchphrase is going to be Barcelona.
It's going to be new teeth.
That's weird.
It's time for pix of the week, and I'm going to let other people
go first so that I have time to think of one.
So my pick of the week on the Time War Dalek theme is series 6 of
the Big Finish Gala Phrase series.
I really like Galafre.
It's kind of, it's Gary Russell's own little project.
That's why.
Yeah, it's Gary, Gary all over it. doing the original House of
Cards.
But in space and time.
And frogs.
They're really sort of fun and twisty and turny and, you know, it's
Lala Ward and Louise Jameson, for God's sake.
It's always good, even if it's crap.
Um, but that ties into in a big way ties into the time war and how
it started.
But I can't say any more than that because it'll ruin it for you.
I look forward to listening to those sometime in 2043.
My pick of the week is for classic series, fans, or for new series
fans who'd like to go back and visit the classic series, but when
the Daleks were Daleks and had great dialogue between them and
weren't ruled by Davros and the doctor had a friend who made a new
friend on the planet Excelon, so my pick of the week is the John
Perchby classic Death to the Daleks, go and enjoy.
Oh, that's the 1st one I ever saw.
Richard?
Oh, well, mine, I've already mentioned it's Marina Warner's
writing if you want to look at what comes before this, and if you
really like to look at, you know, the stuff that goes underneath.
She's written some really good ones.
Signs and wonders.
I really liked.
Oh, what else?
Really good ones if you want to look at how.
Why people write this way and what's underneath it and where it's
all coming from?
So, um, no go the bogeyman is one of my favourites and it's about
male dark archetypes in fiction and mythology.
But then monuments and maintenance is the feminine one.
I just go to her for any of the ones.
The overarching ones.
The lost father's really good.
Yeah, take that, George Lucas.
The myths of our time, a loan of all her sex.
There's signs and wonders.
I go and look at signs and wonders.
Just if you want to do further reading or just listen to Big
Finish, you don't have to work that home.
Oh, I've just realised, my other pick of the week.
Must be Billy Piper's day and night album, where you can listen to
all of the lyrics, to all of the songs and see where they fit into
series one and 2 of Doctor.
Do they really?
Do they really though?
If you want to.
It's a little known fact that Russell T. Davis actually based Bad
Wolf in the Parting of the Ways on that album.
All right, so my one is a complete cheat, and it's also an
opportunity to make up for how mean I am to James all the time.
We have a new Doctor Who flash cast.
It's called Jody Inter Terra.
And what we do is we just Skype in, like proper podcasting
professionals every week for sort of about 20 minutes and talk
about our sort of hot takes, our 1st impressions of series 11.
James has designed a spectacular website for us and a logo, which
I am hugely, hugely delighted by.
And any 2nd now, I'm going to make him edit it all from now on.
But James and James's husband, Jason and Richard and a few others
are kind of the motive force behind us doing that.
The alternative would have been us reaching series 11 at some time
in 2023, by which time we would be doing it underwater in scuba
gear.
That's it.
It was mainly to get us, well, me out of the house.
That's it.
This is why he's constantly suggesting podcast projects, you see.
We were going to call that one the underweening menace.
Overweening the underwhelming man.
Yes.
So that's it, Jodieintaterterra.com and Apple Podcasts and stuff
like that.
I'm sad he's gone.
Yeah.
Well, we've got one more episode and we'll certainly be going on
about how great he was because he really was.
That is a massively special year, I think. certainly for me.
And I look forward to telling Todd who from that season I would
snog marry or avoid.
Weldy listener, that's all the time, an emotional energy that we
have this week.
We'll be back next time for our Christopher Eccleston
Retrospective.
In the meantime, you can find us at Flightthrough Entirety.com
Flightthrough Entirety on Facebook and Apple Podcasts, and at FT
podcast on Twitter.
Over on Bondfinger, you can find highly expert and deeply
considered commentaries on every film in the James Bond
franchise.
That's Bondfinger.com, Bondfinger on Facebook and Apple Podcasts
and at Bondfingercast on Twitter. casino royale.infinitum.
Any number of versions of that.
Until next time, may your next holiday in Barcelona be as
hilarious as the doctor makes it sound.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
See you soon.
Good night.
How does he smell?
That was Flight for Entirety, starring Todd Bealby, Nathan
Bottomley, James Hellwood, and Richard Stone.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, Strings Performance by Jane
Orberg.
This episode, fostering tagging, was recorded on the 14th of
October 2018, and released on the 18th of November.
To counteract our relentless positivity over the past few weeks
I'll now be travelling backward in time to scatter the word
tiresome throughout the last 13 episodes.
I hope you enjoy it.
So interesting titbit.
I wish we can probably use the tag.
Um, so, um, In, in Harry Potter and the goblet of Fire.
The character and the character of Buddy Crouch Jr. is like has
his soul sucked out by a mentor in a chapter called The Parting of
the Way.
Oh, spooky.
Is Spider Crab Jr. played by David Tenon?
Yeah, yeah.
There you go.
Introducing David Tennant as the doctor.
What year did that film and book come out?
The book was 2000.
The film came out after Doctor Who.
Yeah, but the book was out.
By that point, I think.
But hang on.
Parting of the ways, Buddy Crouch being tenant.
No, it's a coincidence.
No, it's a total coincidence.
It's not a deliberate reference.
It's just, it's just a coincidence.
No, J.K. Rowling scattered it back through time.
Oh, shit.
Good honest.
She was the golden suck facing essence all the time.
It's interesting, Nathan, that you just said, um, Introducing
David Tennant as the doctor.
Well, actually introducing David Hennant as Doctor Who. is in the
credits and is the final time that I think he's referenced as
Doctor Who because didn't David say that he's actually the
doctor?
Yeah, big fanboy.
I don't agree with that because he was Doctor Who for the 1st 18
years and should remain Doctor Who.
I love the fact when it came back, it was Doctor Who.
It's not called The Doctor, is it?
I think I recall you at the time.
Todd, saying, saying, well, it went to crap when they drop Stock 2
from the end titles.
It's going to be cancelled.
Well, that still could happen.
Good next listeners.
But there we go.
All right.