Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flightthrough Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast from a parallel universe where every
beloved Doctor Who classic is in reality just terribly tiresome.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Brendan.
And I'm a complimentary tray of WD 40 centred spumanti for this
one. since I'm in the kitchen again.
Hi folks.
Well, the entire time vortex has collapsed, and we've landed in a
dystopian version of Britain, where the bewildered populace are
skulking in the streets, while the Toffs are sailing around in
Zeppelins, drinking champagne and generally enjoying Brexit.
Thank God, really, for the rise of the cybermen.
So, uh, can we all agree that Roger Lloyd Pack is really terrible
in this?
No.
I can never decide whether I like him or not, but I think I fall
on the side of liking him.
I appreciate his aimoral disdain for the audience.
I appreciate that he is seeing us all as some panto hoopla, sticky
children, and he's just throwing us a whole lot of really, look, it
actually, it's Barnum and Bailey.
It's just, or, you know, any vaudeville old act, and I think
Doctor Who does vaudeville beautifully.
So really, he's the celestial toy maker.
It's really weird to go from sort of scenes where you've got Billy
and Noll and David Tennant kind of doing sort of proper, you know
emotional acting and then you go to Roger Lloyd Pack and his
little friend.
Well, this is something I was going to bring up later.
Are they?
Or is it actually that Billy and Noel are really giving us Fabe?
Um, and this is no denigration?
Because we all know how good these shows can actually be, Fabe
Corey realism, or whatever, whatever the Welsh equivalent is.
And then we've got Tenant doing his Dick Van Dyke Shtick, which is
Canon because it's named in the actual program.
Yes.
And then, and I think, I'm wondering if Roger, who is a great
funny bloke and a proper comedian and loved by everyone in the
industry for being a genuine wit and dry and super smart on set.
So I'm sure not having seen the um, yet.
I'm sure the gentle listener has watched the, you know, commentary
but I haven't seen Tenets one.
But I know that those 2 would have been sparring off each other.
So I actually think Roger might be picking up on tenants, acting
style, which I'll be talking about throughout the podcast.
Yes, a friend of the podcast, Fiona Tomney, was complaining about
his general face pulling and sharp behaviour.
She works with horses.
So she knows what that's all about.
You could stick a bridle in that thing and it'll still be gurning
away.
Yes, quite.
Ah, dear.
He does seem, you know, he is sort of a low rent version of Davros
isn't he?
Like he's disabled.
David Tennant, absolutely.
He's disabled, which is obviously unfortunate.
No one can be as camp as Deveraux.
No.
Well, I mean, you compare him to Davros and Davros has...
Well, he has Nider, but he has the range, doesn't he, darling?
He really has the range.
So he goes from shouty to being sort of quite quiet to being
thoughtful.
It's a really impressive performance from Michael Wisher.
I agree.
No, look, Lloyd Pack is definitely pantoing this.
I think he's seeing it as a kiddie show.
But I do honestly believe he's getting that from David's
performance, which is quite hypertrophied and shticky.
It does feel quite Disney fight.
And watching the sensitive scenes, he, at least, well, I was going
to say, he can't boldlerize those moments between Noel and Billy
that I'm still sticking with the 1st episode when they're
realising they're going down because the camera's not on him.
When you look at it, the emotional moments work when tenants face
isn't tenanting in the room.
I loved him at the time, but I'm getting a real sense of you're
acting a lot here, aren't you?
Whereas the others are giving, I would say, a performance that I
can feel.
We actually talked about this at the end of last week's episode
because he's devastated by the death of Renette at the end of the
girl in the fireplace and he comes.
So much so that he dated her for a little while.
He did, yes.
He comes into the TARDIS and he's really sombre and he's
absolutely not doing the Doctor Who acting thing that he does.
And it's wonderful.
It was nice change, wasn't it?
I think that Tennant does try to delineate between the, you know
Dick Van Dyke apples and pears, whatever.
And there's a scene where that really comes to the full in this
episode where, you know, he's just done the bit with the crystal
with Mickey, which is full-blown Dick Van Dyke, you know.
Just wasted 10 minutes, my life.
I like that every second.
I really like it as well.
And then he comes to Rose and say, oh, look, I fixed it.
We'll be going home soon, blah, blah, blah.
And, you know, Rose has just research Pete and Tenet's face falls
and he's like, what is it?
It's a total switch between grinning idiot too.
Did you do the thing?
I told you not to do this.
Did you do the thing?
You did that thing.
Okay.
And then you've got Mickey going off in one direction, Rose going
off in the other.
Am I having am I having Salford withdrawal syndrome?
Am I?
Am I having Eccles withdrawal?
Um, oh, well, God, I'm still having echles because I'm measuring
echles.
I'm watching these again.
I'd love to know what the lovely Liz Miles and Stevens have said
in earlier episodes of the podcast, which are available to Down
there. from your choice of Nathanisms. that, you know, how how
everyone else has been taking it because I'm still seeing what
would asking myself, what would Eccles do?
He'd be amazing in this one.
I'm pretty sure that the girl in the fireplace started development
with Eccleston, and that was part of the dichotomy there that you
had the rough Salford lad and the aristocratic mistress of the
king of France.
I was Lady Penelope, you know.
Best thing about that.
Just nobody.
Tenant's interesting because, yeah, actually, yeah, this is the
1st podcast I've done on a tenant story, isn't it?
Ten is interesting because when I look back on the era, I feel
he's the weakest of the new series doctors, but then I actually go
back and watch them as like, oh, actually it's really hard for me
to fault you.
I also got the best stories.
I mean, I, yeah, I agree.
I feel the same way.
I always kind of expect to be slightly irritated by him, but you
go back and watch an episode and you are slightly irritated by him
but it's very clear why he is one of the best remembered new
series doctors because he had Graham Harper.
Well, Graham Harper and Russell T. Davies as well.
These are great seasons of Doctor Who.
Which brings up my question, he does, is the, um, is his own 2IC
Nider, actually Graham Harper in apotheosis in this episode
because the casting, the bloke, I know the actor. trying to think
who he is.
He looks just like Graham Harper.
Colin Spald.
That's it, Colin Spald.
Who is in?
He sounds like Graham.
He is in Revelation of the Dialects.
He's Lil, type thing.
Yes.
Yeah.
Also, he and Graham went to school together.
They've known each other since they were 10 or 11.
Yeah, he's doing it.
Yeah.
And so he's cast him as well.
So we have Graham Harper and he does, I think, 4 episodes this
season.
That's right.
He does these 2 and he does the finale, and these were all part of
the one block.
It took me 3 days.
They exhausted the elderly gentleman, didn't they?
to, I think, to the point that he said, I'm getting on bit for
this.
Well, he was very famous, I think, in his 2 classic stories of
being super, super active and kind of running around.
He was one of the people.
Silicon suit, wasn't he?
He was doing the whole dance moves.
Sarah's Jack and everything.
But he would direct from the floor.
And we said, I think, at the time in our episode on Caves of
Andrazani, that it was an astonishingly well-directed story and
vastly, vastly better than everything that surrounded it and
really, really stylish.
Now he's slightly older.
It's still, I think, very well directed, but not as markedly well
directed because all the other directors in the era are very good
as well.
And visual tropes of, did we, what did we just say?
Visual conceits have caught up as well.
But he, I actually get that this is a nice traditional way of
directing a program.
There's those lovely vistas.
I actually felt it was a little bit Disney and rocketeer.
We'll get onto the cyberman designs in a bit, but the way it was
shot was definitely filmic.
And also it felt very much like some of my favourite World War 2
British films and his shooting of the of the dirigibles of the
airships was very much like Sir Carol Reed's shooting in his war
biopics, which might possibly pick of the week.
So, let's talk about the parallel universe.
The parallel universe is kind of stolen a bit from Philip
Pullman's his dark materials.
Thank you for bringing that up.
It really is, isn't it?
And Philip Pullman actually, I think, writes the introduction to
the writer's tale and talks about being ripped off.
And so, um, and, you know, in an, in an admiring way, you know, um
so the parallel universe where there are Zeppelins is the universe
from uh, the Golden Compass, which is also called Northern
Lights.
Yes, it's the his dark materials.
Yeah, Triptic.
And he's brought out another one.
I've got all 4 of them, another one. coming up.
Oh, there's so many pics of the week.
They're really great.
I mean, if they don't come up as peaks of the week in next week's
episode, then you really astonished or forgetful.
Yeah, exactly. one of those.
It is incredible.
And it's where that image of the 2 people trapped on either side
of a barrier between parallel universes comes from.
So the 2 leads end up being split up and unable to get to each
other's universe and they meet in Oxford and sit on the same park
bench, but in different universes.
And we will talk about that at the end of the season because, you
know, it's, it's a huge, a huge image and and one of the most
memorable scenes, I think, in modern who.
That's a lovely presage because we get that moment with a wall
don't we?
I'm remembering.
A friend of mine's just had chemo, which didn't work. and he's now
because none of us are getting any younger.
It's all right, this is a light end to this.
That didn't work.
So they now use this really super version of radiation therapy
which would be the sort of thing that Roger Lloyd Pax's character
had been having here.
No, it's true, and the walking thing is all very difficult.
But there are amazing results now with people who we were losing
even just last year on this fabulous trial.
But the nurse said to him after his 1st radiation treatment.
Now I'll take a picky of you, look at this.
He had an aura and he glows and she said, no, you can get a cab
home.
You've got to sit in the back seat and you can't share a sensitive
moment with anyone, not even through a hole in a wall.
She was 23.
How does she know?
I say, well, so I would actually note that to both Billy and David
for the end of the year.
So just be careful where you go with this.
That's a plot for Star.
So we've had a parallel universe before.
And it was in Inferno.
Yeah, aren't we lucky we didn't accidentally end up in this one?
It's like, oh, we've fallen out of things and we've ended up on a
radioactive cinder. floating around.
Oh, there's Liz's wig.
No, I guess I want 7 episodes and Billy and a Helen Shapiro black
Motown wig.
I want that.
I mean, with a moustache.
I think I've said before that Inferno is a bit overrated. and it's
extraordinary.
I think.
Well, we can't all be right.
No, no, no, that's true.
I am wrong sometimes.
I think Elle Sander says that it's the most egregious padding in a
Doctor Who episode because you have a bunch of episodes where they
just redo the previous episodes again in a parallel universe.
But the thing that the parallel universe does, is gives actors at
the end of the season, the chance to camp it up and play different
versions of themselves.
And so here we've got Rose's family.
We get wonderful Sean Dingwell back with less hair, you know, as a
successful version of himself.
And I think attending a few fitness classes in the meantime.
He's looking well lickable in this one.
Yes.
Well, you know, he does do his health drinks.
No, but they're just pop.
They don't actually work.
They just pop.
But the interesting thing about his health drinks is that Lumek
has a line in his voiceover of how cybers works, that the brain
will be suspended in a blend of patent chemicals.
Oh, you think it's viting?
I think this is why he's bought Vitex.
Because, you know, you consider you see all those videos.
Well, you know, here's what coke can do to a coin and it can clean
things and it can preserve things and it can, you know, clean your
loo and teach your children how to do algebra.
I think the brain is suspended in Vitex drinks.
And I think that was the joke at the time.
And I remember laughing at that and my mum and dad going, what?
Nothing, nothing.
It's copyrighted chemicals, isn't it?
Exactly.
Yes.
Yeah, it's there's a sort of darkness to this too, because the
health drinks don't work.
They're a fake.
And there's something about the world being sick.
And I think that... the Mark Platt...
Yeah.
So Mark Platt gets a with thanks to Mark Platt credit here, even
though Spare Parts is not very much like this story.
Indeed, but the original concept was that it would be not exactly
an adaptation of spare parts, but draw on it more heavily.
And the initial drafts by Tom McRae. who was kind of a protégé of
Russell T. Davis.
Do we know how he got the job?
This isn't salacious.
I had to say that because of my face, Richard.
Silent Muise in the room, yeah.
No, but in...
Had a maleficent moment.
Shortly after queer as folk.
Russell Davies was doing a signing and Tom McRae turned up with a
few spec scripts.
And so I said, Russell, I think you're wonderful.
Could you give me some feedback?
And Russell did and sort of nurtured him from then on.
And yeah, gave him this opportunity.
He was 25 when he wrote these scripts.
It was always a parallel universe, but it was going to be a
parallel universe where there was a plague, and that's why people
were going in for these upgrades.
And Russell kind of thought, well, hold on, back in the 60s, it
was all about, oh, if you replace things with prosthetics and
whatnot, you'll become a cyberman.
And Russell's like, well, we have people who are amputees now who
are experimenting with this thing and it's enriching their lives.
It's not taking over them.
Let's go for a different angle and that's when they decided on the
consumerism angle.
And even then it was going to be people going in and getting their
arms replaced as a fashion statement and Russell went, oh, I think
that's a bit far, but look at this new thing called an iPod.
And I think we were a few months away from the 1st iPhone or a few
a couple of years away from the 1st iPhone.
So they decided to go down that angle instead.
And that's why it moves away from spare parts so much.
But Mark Platt did get a fee sort of for the ideas.
Right.
Yeah.
I also think that the world was going to be more dystopian that it
ends up being.
And I gather that they pulled back on it because that was where
Rose and Jackie were going to end up at the end of the season.
So it couldn't be a sort of terrible world where everyone was sick
and where there was, because there's a huge demarkation between
rich and poor, and they do talk about food cues.
And they do talk about, you know, the absence, the lack of
employment.
Yeah.
Perfuse, heaps of homelessness.
It's a little bit April in 2019, isn't it?
rather than April in Paris.
Yeah, yeah.
And in fact, it is amazingly prescient because as you say, Brendan
the iPhone, I think, is announced in 2006 and comes out in 2007.
Is it that long ago?
I heard one in two, okay.
Yeah, yeah. it didn't come out here in Australia until a year
later.
So you see the phones.
Like, Rose has a new phone for this story.
She doesn't have her old little colourful Nokia.
She does have a sort of upgraded phone and it is funny seeing
these people with what are called AirPods, but look and function
like AirPods, which you see people wearing all the time now.
In fact, Apple does use the term AirPods for the wide headphones
that I'm actually currently wearing.
They're called AirPods.
And Joe. And the idea that we all sort of have this sort of
similar experience.
There's that scene, which I'm not sure quite comes off, where all
these extras stop moving in the morning and everything gets
downloaded to them, the news and the weather and stuff.
And it just seems to me like Twitter, you know, like every day on
Twitter, there's something that more or less everyone is talking
about, something that there'll be, you know, a report in the
newspaper a day later about.
Here's what we're talking about on Twitter today.
And so there is this kind of cyber world that we're all sort of
plugged into.
And we all isolate ourselves by creating our own soundscapes, by
not interacting with each other.
Everyone on the bus is on their phone.
And this is the new thing that we're anxious about.
And we seem to be kind of, you know, anxious about it in
anticipation because it hasn't quite hit yet in 2006, but it is
going to hit.
And that's the cyberman.
And, you know, keep Pedler's original idea doesn't work anymore as
a conception of the cybermen.
And so we have a new reinvention of the cybermen that works really
well now.
We used the term cyber now in a way that wasn't really current in
1960.
And we have a parallel Earth instead of an upside down Earth that
sort of wandered back into our orbit.
I'm sure that's Malaysia.
It's just a trick of the light, my dear, if I stand you the right
way.
That's Norway.
I do have a question, though, about the AirPods, right?
And the daily update.
What the hell happens to bus drivers?
crane operators and crapees artists.
Bicyclists like myself.
I mean, and if it's a matter of, oh, you know when the daily
update's going to come, you pull over, why is that person in the
middle of the road?
I just, hmm.
Yes.
Yeah, it doesn't...
I mean, that doesn't really work, the all stopping thing, but it
is a very sort of quick and handy kind of exposition scene.
The AirPods were, obviously not for the extras, but for the lead
actors, were specially fitted, which didn't work and they
constantly kept falling out.
And you can see it most in that scene towards the end where Pete
is talking to Rose about his marriage.
Sean Dingwall sort of tries to keep his left ear mostly on camera
because if he turns, you see the giant fluoro earplug that the
AirPods are based off halfway out of his ear and he's sort of
angling his head and trying to will it back in.
And according to Noel Clark, is like, yeah, that's exactly what
Sean Digwall was doing. is like, this is coming out.
Can we get through the scene?
Can we get, can we get, can we get, we did it?
Okay.
It's the craft, my dear.
With sort of rigid plastic earphones, I don't know about anyone
else.
But if I smile with them, yeah, I can feel them shifting within my
ear, and I'm sure that's what they can't take into account with
these things is, yeah, when you move your mouth, which you
occasionally do as an actor, it's gonna make the AirPods.
Pounce up and down.
Billy Piper manage.
She does wear them, but they're fake, you see.
Well, differently.
One grin from her and her ears.
And also they couldn't hear each other.
The actor could hear each other.
It's the Gene Wilder thing in, speak no evil, here, no evil.
Or hear no evil.
Speak, no evil, whatever that film is called.
You know, the actors just have to look at each other and, okay
have you finished?
No, sorry, sorry, sorry.
You still going?
Okay.
I love that scene at the party.
You know, with Rose so angry that she has to serve people food.
Well, again, she's a 2 weeks later.
She needs a bath.
I absolutely adore that scene.
It's absolutely one of my favourite things.
And it's when you hear Jackie calling for Rose.
And I think it's clear a little bit too early that Rose must be a
dog from the way that she keeps calling her.
And then the little sort of horrible Yorkie comes in.
It was horrible Yorkie.
But the great thing is that Rose is about to go off on a sort of
really soulful kind of angsty thing about how her mother in this
universe doesn't love her or something.
And then the dog turns up and Tenet just looks at her and herself
laughing and completely kind of forestalls any sort of weepy
nonsense that was about to take place.
I think the scene where Jackie is horrible to Rose is really
really. really hard to watch.
I think it's superb.
This is a real levelling moment.
I was going to bring this up with the best thing about the Russell
era is that we, you've said it many times, we care about the
characters, and that's really what we've missed.
We only really got it in seasons 10 and 11.
We've had to wait this long.
Yeah, this long.
But the whole thing is that I really didn't care too much when
when this Jackie, well, that Jackie disappeared into a rather
fabulous rocketeer Art Deco hood ornament suit at the end of the
end of the story.
Because she's horrible.
Well, it's just that I also really loved it and there's the
subtleties and nuances of just this is a family and people are
awful to each other just as much as they're not, just as much as
they're loving.
But I really like seeing them both together with a turn again.
So I could see it's such a nice bookend to Father's Day.
Well, we now have the roles kind of traversed and that we've
got...
I can really see roses, acumen and insight and subtlety as all
Pete, but her emotional Sturman Drung and her wilful selfishness
is a mother, of course, and they, and they, but we are all all
things at once, depending on which we favour.
She's emotionally like parallel universe, Jackie, actually.
She looks bloody good too.
Yeah, she brings her breasts with her after this episode. full
frontal and forward, yes.
And according to Camille, she was only 39 during filming.
But interestingly enough, Cuba Gooding Jr. who Jackie cites says
we've got the same birthday.
Cuba Gooding Jr. was born in 1968. and with Russell's Everything
is one year forward in the Tenant era, 2007 would make Jackie 39.
That very cheeky of you Russell.
And of course, the cybermen are 40.
Yes.
Yes, of course.
Yeah.
That's true.
Something I really love about Jackie and Pete in this episode is
you know, when we last saw Pete in Father's Day, Jackie's quite
horrible to him.
Deservedly so, from the way he carries on.
But there's an implication that Pete's death and having to bring
up Rose by herself softens her and not exactly makes her a better
person because she was already that person, but gives her
perspective she didn't already have, whereas Pete's survival in
this universe, which isn't the divergent point because Rose had
already been bored by that stage.
Pete's survival in this universe makes him more sensitive and
Jackie very much still in the Father's Day mode.
Is he sensitive though?
He's still whacking a whole lot of Fanta at the kids.
Is he?
Yeah, he is dark, but I think we'll see next episode that he's
redeemed a bit, you know, when it becomes clear what his actual
deal is.
Yeah.
Part of the reason I love that scene with Jackie and Rose, where
she tells her off, is it's a masterclass from Camille, because
when Rose sits down next to her, She wants to open up to this
girl.
She doesn't quite know why.
That in itself annoys her and it all plays out on her face.
So she's not just annoyed that this waitress wants to have a word
but she's annoyed at herself because why am I why am I talking to
you about how I like my tea?
Because self-loathing will demonstrate itself in many different
ways and the most is seeing oneself at a younger age, right next
to you being sensitive and open.
I don't want to be feeling these things right now.
And how dare you make them?
And also I come from nothing.
And thank you for reminding me of that.
There's no greater snob than those who are self-made.
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right, isn't it?
Oh, exactly.
Jane.
Her disdain for staff is self-hatred. you know, in many ways.
Let's talk about Mickey's family.
Oh, that scene.
God, Noel is brilliant.
We don't deserve him.
It is so great, isn't he?
Takes a good slap and two, doesn't he?
Is this the scene in the chair with the undies?
Where are we?
No, no, no.
So he goes back to visit his grandmother.
And it's really interesting because we've never thought to ask
about Mickey's family.
He seems to live on the estate on his own.
It makes perfect sense that the other boys that we see even when
he's in the workshop.
He's indefinitely the beta or the delta.
He's never the alpha male.
And we sort of have to ask himself, well, why is that?
And of course, he doesn't have the confidence that other children
had growing up because he didn't have the examples of that.
Yeah.
And it turns out that he's living with just terrible guilt over an
accident that happened to his grandmother.
And in fact, I find myself really warming to Rose in that scene
where she explains Mickey's background to the doctor and talks
about what a great woman his grandmother was and, you know, about
Mickey's loss.
And it's just one little moment where she's thinking of someone
else, where she's not, where she's not being rose wrapped up in
herself.
It's nice.
And the, it's actually a little bit horrible when the preachers
kind of grab him and leave his grandmother kind of bereft not
knowing what's happened to him.
It's great.
She's really good.
And, you know, all of that stuff early on where the doctor talks
about a parallel universe being a honey trap and it's a bad thing
for Rose to go and see her parents.
And you kind of think, well, why are you even saying that?
That's so that seems odd.
And he's so easily defeated by Rose pulling a funny face and he
just eventually goes, oh, all right, we'll go and do it.
But in fact, it turns out that he was right.
And they will see next week how it leads to the loss of Mickey, the
parallel universe is so seductive that we actually lose someone to
it.
Because it gives us the opportunity to see how we can ourselves be
better.
And well, it gives us mindfulness.
It gives, it's the, it is the Buddhist uh, Maya.
It is the world of the 2nd opportunity or the observant world.
And how often do we have esprit descaglia, do we have staircase, we
can look back at what we just said a moment ago, an hour ago, years
ago quite often?
Everything would have changed if I just hadn't said that in that
moment or hadn't been a smart arse or just or had actually just
listened to that friend or listened to that person, my whole life
would be different.
I can count so many times where that's happened.
In this very podcast, episode after episode.
In discovery, the Federation decides to keep the Mirror Universe
secret for precisely that reason because the Mirror Universe is
presumably full of our friends and loved ones who haven't died.
And for Mickey and Rose.
They have a dead relative that's still alive in this universe.
And if only things had gone a different way.
So that kind of over the top, you know, this is a terrible
dangerous place.
You don't know what you're doing messing with this.
You can't meet your father.
He's not your father, all of that sort of stuff.
It seemed a bit over the top, but it does seem justified, I
think.
Something I love about Noel in the 1st half of this episode, not
just the meeting with his grandmother, which is tear jerking, and
I think it's a very smart decision to have Mickey start crying.
Because when we'd previously seen Mickey at the height of despair
it was in Boomtown and he's screaming and this is a very quiet
moment instead.
But we get a counterpoint to that moment in Boomtown as well
because in Boomtown, he screams at Rose.
It's always the doctor and it's never me.
Yeah.
Here he says to the doctor, it's always going to be Rose and it's
never me.
But again, it's very quiet when the doctor's deciding who to go
after.
Because it's acknowledged and they both admit it.
Yeah.
Well, they're really horrible to him.
Like the opening.
The opening scene in the TARDIS, he's been standing there pressing
a button for half an hour.
It's the Leila moment.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's as nasty.
I thought it was making the magic work.
Yeah, and I know that's what they're harking back to.
And that was just as, can I use the racist word?
That was just as you're a primitive person, you don't get where we
come from, whether it be a person of colour or just a person of
lacked opportunity or just hasn't had our generous experiences.
You haven't been lucky enough to be as smart as we are.
Yeah, yeah, no, they're super horrible.
I can't wait.
I think they're awful.
I hope something genuinely wrong happens to both.
Well, I mean, they lose Mickey at the end of this.
You know, they lose.
Because they don't deserve to keep it.
Because they don't...
Absolutely.
Because despite what Mickey goes through there and fun moment on
the commentary, because the commentary for this episode is Camille
Noel and Andrew Hayden Smith, Camille says, Clarkey, do you think
that the doctor knew what he was doing there and you holding that
button for half an hour would send you into the parallel universe
where you needed to be?
Do you think maybe he was manipulating you into that?
And Noel responds.
Well, that's entirely possible, of course, because the doctor can
see through dimensions, and that's why he's been calling me Ricky
since season one.
No one's a massive Doctor Who fan.
That's his head cannon.
Because he also then says, because Camille says, how do they know
that they're cyberman?
And Noel says, well, Rose hasn't met them before, but in season
one, episode six, she saw a cyberhead in Bad Statens Museum.
This is literally what he says in the commentary.
I love this man.
You shall be like us.
But what I so love about him, and Mickey, in this 1st episode is
despite how the doctor and rose treat him, when the doctor is
mourning the TARDIS, Mickey actually comes in and sits with him
and mimics his body language, which is a basic psychological
technique for making someone feel comfortable with you and sort of
tries to encourage him.
Oh, but we can hop back between dimensions, that's easy.
We can hook that up to the national grid and get power.
We can do this.
And it's just this coaxing of the doctor.
So while Rose is off thinking about, oh, how can I meet my dad
despite the fact my best friends told me it's a bad idea, and I'm
arguing with my designated driver.
Mickey's like, okay, no, you've had a massive loss here.
I get that.
It's like the end of last week where Mickey gets, oh my god
someone he loved is dead.
Rose, just shut up and come off.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's the sensitivity of the character and it's something
that Russell wanted to explore after Chris persuaded him.
No keep this guy on.
Russell actually sat down with him and said, I am writing Mickey
out next series, but here's how I'm going to do it.
What do you think?
And I was like, yeah, I'm up for that.
So this script was always envisioned as this is the moment Mickey
becomes a hero.
Actually, something Mickey, we haven't discussed, and Richard, I'll
throw back to you for this one.
He does end up tied to a chair in his pants.
And of course, it's only a few months since the premiere of Casino
Royale Redocks.
When are we going to talk about that?
We should do a podcast.
When are we doing the James Vaughan commentary podcast?
But it is a lovely nod to, as you said, Russell really gets this
zeitgeist, and you might even say he's a little bit premonitory
about it, but there's, I actually think it's a take on the
sadistic level of the general take on what is sauciness now.
And you can really look at this against, say, the carry-ons of the
60s, which we really ought to discuss at some point.
And how what was humourous and what was au current then is now
salacious and darker.
We're getting older, but and we've grown up, but not necessarily
in the way that our parents had hoped.
Do you think it's like, you know, in the 80s, Nissa drops a skirt
when she leaves the program and Turlow sheds his trousers before
leaving the program and so Mickey's about to go, so they strip him
down to his undies, you know, because we've only got one more
chance to have Noel in the show.
I think they have a lot to Kenny Everett and other Phillips hot
gossip as well.
It's very British postcard humour.
But yes, no, I definitely believe that again, as we've said many
times, Doctor Who is at its best when it's reflecting what's going
on around it.
And this is definitely it.
What do we think of Noel's performance as Ricky?
It's pretty flawless in that it's, I feel, in that it's exactly
what a homespun boy would be doing, is overcompensating.
So yes, it's hyperbolic and over the top, but I think it's
actually a very nice counterfoil for tenants.
And I would like to think that Noel was actually taking a little
of the mixture it against our 10 hour David.
With the sort of snarling and baring his teeth and things
possibly.
Mickey is a character who's changed so much from his initial
conception and Noel has always managed to keep a track of that and
keep a handle on it.
So he has this other character to create Ricky and he has one line
to sell the facts that this is a different person.
What am I doing here?
What am I doing there?
Yeah.
So, yeah, I agree.
In that moment, it's over the top, but it's over the top because
as you say, Richard, he's overcompensating.
We discover next week what he is London's most wanted for.
And you know, it's not for robbing banks or anything like that.
So yeah, it's a performance of bravado, but from someone who is
genuinely brave anyway.
You know, it's not, it's not a bravado born of cowardice, but it's
a bravado born of, I need to own this room.
And also something really weird's just happened, and I still need
to own this room.
Um, We've got the other 2 members of the preachers as well.
We've got Jake played by Andrew Hayden Smith, who was 22.
No way.
And Mrs. Moore.
Oh, I think we'll talk about Mrs. Moore a lot more next week
because that's when she really gets to shine.
She's really great.
Jake is obviously there quite early on to see the homeless people
getting hoovered up.
And it's amazing watching this again, how much this story owes to
the invasion.
So the invasion, uh, we get international electromatics mentioned
here, they're on the side of the uh, big truck that the homeless
people are going into.
But Tobias Vaughan's plan was to take over the world by giving
everyone a small electronic device, a music player that would
eventually make a noise that would, you know, take over everyone's
mind.
And that's exactly the plan here.
And it's a long story set on sort of a near future earth.
It really is very similar.
Yeah, and also Graham Harper, specifically sites.
His mentor, Douglas Canfield.
Right, okay.
As his influence here.
And of course, Douglas Canfield directed the invasion.
It's a similar style too, they both have, yeah.
There are certain shots that Harper says, yep, that's because
that's the kind of thing doggie did.
They work together specifically on the seeds of doom. and possibly
other stories, but also that is why the cybermen march in time.
Harper said, I want that.
And in order to achieve that, The choreographer Alsa Burke, 1st of
all, auditioned 20 actors and then whittled it down to 10 actors
who could actually stomp and march.
But then she got to set and discovered how restrictive the vision
in the costumes were.
So after Cybermen got into formation. they tied them together with
rubber bands at the wrist.
Really?
Because they couldn't see each other to stay in formation.
They could just use the sensation of their own. that's how tense
it should be.
And that's how they stayed in that sort of bowling pin formation
that they have.
We're feeling it now.
What do I think?
What do we actually think of the Cyberman?
I mean, he keeps them out of shot or like out of focus?
Yeah, until the end of episode one reveal, really.
Well, it's Will Eisnett design.
I mean, it is the rocketeer.
It is those gorgeous deco things, which is never far away from our
thoughts.
And his style, as I was trying to say before, is very 30s, 40s, and
the filming, especially with the big Vista pullback shots, and, you
know, those grand sweeping, melodramatic, emotional shots.
Yeah, he's he's deaf.
It really is flawless with the direction.
That's what makes me happiest when editing direction design is
there.
And then the actors are free to do exactly what they need to do
and they're not.
They're supported because I really probably care about the former
more than the latter.
I mean, they've gone away from that sort of 70s design, and from
the invasion design, with a big bun head.
Well, he did say he didn't, he, he's really tired of that whole
Harley Berry wetsuit paints all the thing, isn't he?
Yeah, so they're very much, and they're very much steel rather
than silver.
He's very definite that they're...
Oh yeah, that's right. fibreglass.
I feel that heavy.
No.
But no, they clunk beautifully and how do we feel about the
flares?
speaking as nods to the 70s. think it's got an anime feel to it.
Because the original design had the shin pieces turned the other
way.
Right.
So, well, more so, so they had nice tapered mod ankles.
Oh, God, yes, disco ankles.
Yeah, it does sort of flare out.
And I'm on the fence about that.
Sometimes I think the overall design is a little bit too layered
and sometimes I look at it and think, oh, that's just right.
So I think it's all dependent on angles.
The faces, um, are based on the Chrysler building, uh
incidentally.
And yeah, there is a bodysuit element underneath that looks like
tubes, which I think is wonderful.
Overall, I like the design.
I miss the wetsuit a bit because my favourite design is the
invasion design, but I get why you can't have that today.
It's a bit like if you look at Star Trek, even though the Borg are
based on a full bodysuit, they then cover it with layers and
layers and layers of like tubes, pieces.
Yeah.
And I'm glad we went with a uniformed look because as the doctor
says next week, ooh, they're a brand.
And so, yes, of course, they look sleek and they, you know, they
look like technology you could have in your home, like one of
those shin pieces could be like an Alexa.
But I do like, I like the idea that they are hefty and
invulnerable.
And I think that that fits thematically with where we go next
week.
And one of the things that Russell said.
I think Russell tended to give the designers real freedom to do
what they wanted.
And he said, we obviously need the head handles because that's, you
know, what the cybermen are.
And he wanted the teardrop, which I think appears 1st in wheel in
space.
I believe it does.
Yeah.
And again, for that very reason of what's going to happen next
week because the actors can't see out of the main eye.
No, but it's it's about, is that the reason that probably is the
reason they're there in Wheeling Space?
Because it's about the way that we isolate ourselves from each
other through this technology.
And so the teardrop thing is, you know, about tears.
And in the end of the year, we'll see a tear, a teardrop and oil
teardrop coming out of Tracy Ann Cyberman's eye.
She didn't get picked up for that next season at EastEnders, did
you?
tearing in.
Well, that's a 2nd mortgage.
So let's talk about the cliffhanger, okay?
We're at the party.
It's huge.
We have the president of Great Britain.
Don Warrington.
Yeah, big finishes wrestle on.
I was going to say, in an alternative universe.
James Bond.
We really should talk about that one day.
And on a podcast.
Also, he was the actor that Noel Clark saw as a little boy and
thought, oh, maybe I can be on television.
Department of S?
Rising Damp.
Rising?
Oh, he was.
And he was a proper hottie in that.
Yes, yes, he was.
Yes.
And he'd done some ITC stuff as well.
But yeah, much like, yeah.
Yeah, for Koto, are you going to say?
Much like Yasmin Bannerman and Gisette Simon, seeing she's at
Simon and thinking, oh, there's a black woman on television.
I can be on television.
Noel Clark saw Don Warrington and said, oh, there's a black man on
television and he's a main character and he's sympathetic and
likeable.
He's really got the gravitas for the role as well.
He is terrific. when he when he dresses down Roger Lloyd Pax's
character.
He's so impressive.
He's really, really good.
And that's, of course, why he has to be killed at the party
because he's standing in the way of the sort of his sort of cyber
thing.
He's actually the chunky beefy Obama we got before we got.
Limlined Madmen version.
It's funny, but every single year Russell kills the Prime Minister
of Great Britain.
Oh my Lord, he really does.
Wow.
Can we get him back chippers?
Yeah, chippers could take a year off and we could get we could get
him back to deal with the current mares.
And then in his last year, he replaces the president of America
with the Prime Minister of Great Britain.
Yeah, who gets killed again?
Who gets killed again?
Yeah.
So, yes, literally every year Russell kills the Prime Minister
which is a tradition that I'm sad has not been picked up by his
successes.
Who's the Prime Minister this week?
Charles Jones.
That's it.
I don't know. been gone 18 months.
I have 2 questions about the Clefhanger.
First of all, why do the cybermen need consent exactly when
they're going to control people with AirPods?
Yeah, no, that's crazy.
Well, because there's a terms of agreement.
Oh, right.
No one ever reads.
The human senti pad still can't read.
Yes, that's it. the Euler.
And also, when we when we do get to the cliffhanger, which is
beautifully directed by Graham Harper, although it suffers from
the Prometheus thing of you know you can run sideways.
Title.
What the hell is maximum deletion?
Given that deleting involves electrocuting you to death anyway.
That's an auton line.
Where...
No, you remember.
That's a...
That's when you reverse that.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Destroy maximum destruction.
Yeah, fair enough.
Yeah, and I suppose as we don't see maximum deletion.
Yeah.
Okay, good.
I'm satisfied now.
But what about that gallant man at the party who is being
electrocuted?
and so grabs his girlfriend so she gets electrocuted as well
because both of them.
That's not well till death do us part means love. kill a lot of
people at that party. satisfying.
It's great.
There's no one there you want to talk to.
No, no.
Harper wanted 100 people at the party and the casting agent, not
Andy Pryor, but Andy Pryor's assistant said, um, how about 20?
Which they make work brilliantly?
Keeping them all in the four, yeah.
And according to Camille, the people who owned the house.
It was their family home.
And they were absolutely lovely.
Like, she thought, oh, you know, better be on best behaviour
because she made a bit of jewellery, didn't she?
whole stone lion.
But yeah, apparently they were so thrilled for Doctor Who to be
filming there, how times will change for Amy Pond's house in a few
years, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Well, there was her at Flight through Entirety.
We love a good party, and so we'll be spending the next seven days
hiding in the cupboard, drinking Pete Tyler's champagne and trying
to avoid the cybermen.
We'll be back next week for the age of steel.
In the meantime, you can find us at FlightthroughEntirety.com
flight through entirety on Facebook and Apple Podcasts and at FTE
Podcast on Twitter.
You can also find us at our series 11 flashcast, Jody
Interterterra, which is at Jody Interterra.com, Jody Interterra on
Apple Podcasts, and at Jody Interterra on Twitter, and at our
James Bond Commentary podcast, Bondfinger, which is at bondfinger
com, Bondfinger on Facebook and Apple Podcasts, and at
Bondfingercast on Twitter.
Until next time, remember that your brain is the most valuable
thing in the universe.
Apart from Spectrox and Jethric and Argonite and gravel.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
I love my silly tone mug.
Good night.
Good then.
That was Flight through Entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley
Brendan Jones, and Richard Stone.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, Strings performance by Jane
Allberg.
This episode, Horrible Yorkie, was recorded on the 2nd of February
2019 and released on the 14th of April.
Fans of FDE will be delighted to learn that to commemorate this
episode of the podcast, Star Wars 9, The Rise of Cider Man will be
released in cinemas on 20th of December this year.
Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast from a parallel universe where every
beloved Doctor Who classic is... racist. is actually really
racist.
Oh, well, the entire time vortex has collapsed.
Let me say that again, because I pronounce the word vortex wrong.
The entire fuck.
Oh, please let that keep that.
Brandon's so good at this.
Why can't we be from a parallel universe where Brendan still does
the intro?
The entire time vortex has collapsed and we...