Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast, broadcast live from Battersea Power
Station.
And it smells like bacon in here for some reason.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Brandon.
Aren't we warm and delicious?
And for this one, I would therefore be a, oh, Henry Hoover tubing
Mr. Snuffleupagus oesophagus comfy armchair with interducting.
I was sitting comfortably.
Oh, so we've been cowering in a cupboard all week while the
sidemen have been rampaging through this lovely house, but the
champagne's run out now, so it must be time to emerge blinking
into the sunlight to find out what Great Britain is like during
the age of steel.
So, what do we think of the Cliffhanger Resolution?
It's very Disney, so it actually does kind of work when this
Disney parallel universe thing, that it's a lovely chunky piece of
jewellery that, you know, ends up being, I just felt like it was
suddenly dunked into frozen.
It's a little bit easy, but it is set up for people complain that
Russell doesn't set things up properly and that they just get
pulled out of thin air.
What else are they going to bloody do?
Yeah, well that's right.
Pull out an eye patch.
Do you want to meld a cyborg?
Yeah, look, it's still the doctor killing them all with a big
gun.
You know, it's seeds of death again. a huge mood ring, isn't it?
But that being said, it is the thing of the doctor gives them a
chance to take them away to the factory where, you know, presumably
he can then get away and this episode would only be about 10
minutes long. without overtly being, I'm going to give you a
chance here.
Yeah, I mean, you know, we have to get out of the cliffhanger and
in a way, it's the same solution as the beginning of World War 3.
But, you know, this time, this time it's more refined just because
it's better shot and better directed.
It is the same. you're absolutely right It is going down into the
bales.
In fact, it's actually the MOD where that room is.
Do you know there is actually a room like that, but it's in the
MOD, which we know from listening to the news quiz.
And we know that Sherry Blair changed, you know, when Theresa May
said, what do you think about all the furniture to the woman who's
on the news?
And she said, well, it's all right, I suppose. you know, she said
bitch, John Lewis, she said, Cherry Blair made us get rid of all
the nice 60s, mid-century modern, and go to John Lewis and get all
this comfy furniture, which is exactly an illusion to Roger Lloyd
Pax's comfy aunt.
I think that this episode is vastly different from the previous
one, and they've learned the lesson, that the 2 episodes of a
single story have to be quite different.
And this one doesn't revisit any of the places where we've been
before, we never go back to the house.
We do see Jackie sort of lurking in the like lurking in a cupboard
just next to the one we were in.
I was hoping Rose would become a cyber mat.
Really disappointed.
Little rose.
That would be great.
Just crawling around on Jackie's shoulder, cyber Jackie.
The cybernization of Jackie is quite harrowing and, 1st of all
forgot to mention last week, Camille gets a wonderful scream when
she sees a cyberman, you know, recalling when she 1st sees an
auton and Camille just has the most wonderful terrified scream.
It's theatrical, it's loud.
It is pleasing to the ear, like it's musically pleasing.
It's the un Mariah Carey.
All the time.
Yes.
I just think having the mother as a damsel in distress is great.
You know, companions are getting more and more competent and less
and less screamy because we find that irritating.
And so instead you've got the mother who can be threatened by
monsters and scream.
And what is so horrible is that Pete is going to run back in to
save her and the doctor says anyone in that house is dead.
And she's wrong. not.
He's wrong.
Exactly.
And in fact, a whole heap of survivors walk out of the house and
head off to Battersea Power Station later.
He's completely wrong.
He's just leaving them, those rich guys.
Yeah, you have to wonder...
It's not actually about saving his own skin.
It's about saving Pete.
And that's that's very interesting.
You know, he's been saying to Rose, no, no, no, you can't go near
him. you't have anything to do with him.
And yet he saves Pete.
I think that's the whole pertly thing of once your, it actually
goes back to Billy, doesn't it?
I mean, Trout and did it all the time.
Well, no, we mustn't get involved.
Oh, we're involved now.
Yes.
Well, we talked last week about how a parallel universe is a honey
pot.
Like it's a trap.
And it's a trap for the doctor as well because now there are
monsters and he's desperate to investigate and that's what gets
him involved.
It's what gets him to go to the party.
He's not going to the party to see Pete.
He's going to the party because he's fascinated by what's going
on.
It is very AML, isn't it?
Much like this recording.
And so often here we've all removed everything, save our red t
shirts and honey jones.
So Jake and Ricky, they're totally gay, right?
Or do they only do it on the cutting room floor?
Yeah.
Look, I think that Andrew Hayden Smith totally plays it that way.
Noel does and he doesn't in a way.
It's kind of codified as a Butch and Femme dynamic, really.
Yeah.
We all know who's the ostensible top.
It's the actual bottom in the chair.
It's always the femme, isn't it?
No, I think they do really top, yes.
They do play it that way.
Jumping straight to the end.
I'm glad they cut the line that confirms them.
Me too.
Why are you gleb?
Just because it's too much of a gag about your boyfriend who's
just died and I don't envy Andrew Hayden Smith, because how do you
deliver that line?
You know, if you deliver it really sadly, and it's the last or 2nd
last season of the episode, then it's a downbeat ending.
If you deliver it too lightly as kind of happens, you are
demeaning the relationship.
And for those of you who aren't aware, pretty much, there's a
deleted scene where after Mickey says, I'm not replacing Ricky
Jake responds, no, you're not, I'll never have another boyfriend
like him.
Right.
It's too glib, and that Phil Collinson and Julie Gardiner, actually
said, no, that's the reason we're cutting it, because it hasn't
this is the 1st time it's made explicit. we're making it explicit
as a joke.
Is that actually the reason?
Look, I'm impressed if that is the case?
I am going back to my Peter Davison defence, Janet Fielding would
probably back me up on this one, is that you remember why Peter
left Twitter because he made a remark that the doctor needs to be
we need more role models for little straight boys because there's
actually not enough sensitive straight characters out there.
And, you know, hello, Gillette had.
He could actually be saying something that has pertinence here.
And although I probably, you know, I get where Peter's coming
from.
And I'm surprised to find myself agreeing on this case.
I like that this is still for children 12 and under when I fell in
love with Doctor Who.
It wasn't as an adult.
It was at that very sensitive age.
And I like that we, as little boys of whatever, you know, sexuality
you're going to end up with can simply appreciate it on whatever
level you choose to.
Yeah.
I certainly it's the intelligence and emotional intelligence to
take this as we will.
I certainly think that the deletion of that line, and I wasn't
aware of that or I had forgotten it.
The deletion of that line doesn't prevent us from reading it that
way if we want to.
As gay people, we used to reading ourselves into texts all the
time, and it is kind of irresistible, and we get to imagine the
story where, you know, your boyfriend is replaced by someone.
I think I've seen that film. video.
And certainly, when Mickey says at the very end in the van, it
must be really hard for you me having the same face as him.
Like, I think there's there's very good grounds for just assuming
that that's what he's talking about.
Yeah, like your friend is dead.
Yeah, but I can be your friend is dead.
It can be your boyfriend, is dead.
Yeah, I think you have, you know, like I was fairly certain that
that's what they were going for.
I didn't know that there was a version where they make it
explicit.
Yes.
Is it filmed or...
It's filmed.
It's on the it's on the DVD in the the blurry.
Okay.
It's there.
It was cut out during editing.
Right.
So it was filmed.
And also, you know, Knowles, rather Mickey's reaction to that.
It's not gay panic, but it's okay, definitely not replacing it.
Which, you know, is funny until you think, and your boyfriend's
dead.
Yeah, no, it's too harsh.
It's too quick.
Certainly he plays it that way too, doesn't he?
Yeah, when he finds out that Ricky's dead, spoiler alert.
Yeah, Andrew Hayden Smith in that moment.
And what I love, what I love about Graham Harper's direction is he
allows the guest actors.
When it's their moment, it is their moment.
They are front and centre at the shot, they are facing the camera
you are seeing the emotion.
Like when he tells Mickey to shut up and turn away, Mickey's the
one talking, but Jake is the one in focus.
We've all learnt from Mark Strickson, haven't we?
That's it.
Keep your face on screen, love.
One of the things this series does, and one of the things that I
miss about Doctor Who now is that it romanticises London, it
enchants London.
Really does, doesn't it?
Yeah, so it puts things in secret places in London.
So you've got unit in the Tower of London, when we think about
number 10.
It's a place where the Slovene, where the London Eye was used as a
broadcaster for the autons, the Thames barrier, becomes a thing in
the Runaway Bride.
And here we've got Battersea Power Station.
And maybe our Australian listeners aren't familiar with it.
It does appear briefly on camera in Dalek Invasion of Earth.
And it's a hugely striking visible building.
And in this version of London, the entire population is marching
towards Battersea Power Station to get sawn up and turned into
cybermen.
And I just think it's wonderful.
I just used to, you know, every time I go to London and see the
building, that's what I think of.
Imagine living in London as a kid and seeing it on the train as
you go past all the time.
I used to see it every morning because I lived in North London, but
I worked in North Kent.
So I had to tube down to Victoria and catch the train from there.
And yeah, yeah, it is such a striking building.
And the romanticisation of London is interesting because years ago
I was having a chat with a friend of mine who is a West End set
designer and so lives in London.
And he was complaining about usage of Cardiff and Newport and
Swansea as streets in London.
And Graham Harper, of the Coventry for this, points out that last
scene on the embankment.
If you are facing the TARDIS, you're in Cardiff, if you are facing
the river, you're in London.
He's like, I had to shoot the scene in both locations to do the
cuts between.
But this friend of mine was saying, oh, you know, I, that street
Donna walks down in, in turn left, I know that's not in London.
And I said to him, Doctor Who is an international program.
I don't know that's not London.
The story tells me it's London, so I believe it's London.
And I said to him, it's the Avengers thing of a fantasy Britain.
Yes.
You know, Emma Peel's flat is nowhere in London.
The exterior is a set. but it's London Because I've stood there
called out for her.
The one with the karyatids in the yeah, in the black and white
season.
It's a gorgeous building too.
And I've done that to Pat McNee as well.
Well, yeah, but the, you know, the 5 Westminster Muse thing too.
And I wasn't escorted from the premises.
It is a TV version of London.
You know, and that's what Doctor Who should do with locations.
It is a TV version of that location.
And of course, we have an extra level of fictionalisation being in
this alternative universe with Zeppelins flying about.
Actually, yeah, sorry, I'm back on the AirPod update.
What are the Zeppelin pilots do?
How do they stop playing?
Because when we see them flying through the sky, they're all sort
of higgledy-peldy, there's no skyways.
I'm really cross.
I really like the Zeppelins.
I think they look great.
And so we've got that image of Battersea Power Station with Lumic
Zeppelin kind of moored to the roof and it's a huge important
image for the entire episode.
And I just think it's superb.
It's so imaginative and so wonderful.
And so kind of terrifying.
I mean, because we're in a parallel universe, you know, the last
parallel universe we're in, we destroyed by fire.
This one we're allowed to just hoover up the population of London
and turn them all into cyberman.
And I think it's just terrific.
It's so great.
It does feel with British SF really, actually going back to HG
Wells.
It's always been precient of its own downfall.
It's almost as if it wanted this that we're going through right
now, the B word, that would, Yeah, that there's this sense of self
determination of dystopia.
British SF has always done this really well.
You know, the nation that gave us all is Huxley and George
Orwell.
Yeah, and Wyndham as well, who destroys London too.
A couple of times, actually.
And the very, very 1st time the show goes back to London.
It's a destroyed London.
It is too.
With no elephants.
In terms of the massive cyber conversion.
Something that was made explicit in an earlier draft of the script
but is reduced to sort of a one-line thing here.
It's actually last week, but I forgot to mention it.
Lumic and Cyrus Industries is referred to as working on
homelessness in New South America.
The original draft script had reference to a quarter of a 1000000
people going missing in New South America, and there's references
later here that there's other cybers factories around the world
processing people.
So the idea is that Lumic trial cyber conversion somewhere away
from Great Britain, and of course, remember, in the pre-title
sequence last week, which was hurriedly added at a later stage.
It was a reshoot.
The original Cliffhanger was my dad's still alive, bang into
titles.
But Russell's like, no, we need the cybermen up front and the
centre because it's called Rise of the Cybermen.
And clearly that said a lot earlier than the rest of the thing.
And it has him going back to Great Britain.
Set course for Great Britain, but importantly, he only wants to
proceed if Great Britain can be the centre of it, because Pete
says there's other countries we can try it, we can try New
Germany.
No, Britain is the motherland.
You know, it must be here.
B word B word.
Um, yeah.
And that's enhanced here because he goes after London, you know, we
don't hear people are walking from Coventry to London.
No.
Do you think it's trading on that sort of British fascism thing?
Well, the Oswald Mosley with a Mitford in the room.
Yeah, you've always got the tichotomy of high and low and of
received and formalised and certain in the old, you know, the
charming old English country house, right in the middle of an ice
age where everyone's wearing zip up shower's jetsuits.
You've always got something frightening happening with it.
Yeah, yeah, fascism and fascism and the ruling class.
Look, we forget Britain's not that different from France.
They had a civil war to the point that they dug up the
pretenders.
They dug up the skeleton of Cromwell and hung the bloody thing.
So that they don't get over things well.
It has a long memory of supremacy, of having an empire.
Because you've got a very, very stratified society in this
parallel world.
Because that's what I was trying to say.
If you want to, the perfect cocktail, get out your shakers, if you
want delicious fascism in your own home, you start off with fond
memories of an empire gone and a heavily stratified society that
isn't quite running as it used to.
And you know, Zeppelins are German, you know, funny though.
Yeah, so maybe there is some sort of fascism here.
It's not just about consumerism and isolating ourselves from our
feelings through technology and things.
What is fascism?
I mean, this is why it's so pressing for this.
It's certainly fashionable.
It's true that it always looks swanky.
It's no surprise that Hugo Boss designed every single little
outfit.
Yeah.
So if you look at how fascism becomes popular, it's because it's
really one of the 1st exercises in successful branding.
We have a look, we have a spiel, funny that we would use that
word.
We have nostalgia, we have the painful memory of loss of something
that was once and always a misaligned memory of greatness.
There's usually an empire that's fallen not that recently that
allows fascism to rise and that we want to regain, but it's always
in the most perfect stratified and very manufactured in that it's
a tooling thing.
It comes from a post-industrial state where we have very much
classification of people as consumers and what ability you have to
consume, dictates what level you are in this new society.
Yeah, and it's funny you should mention with sort of Hugo Bos, you
know, designing the Nazi uniforms.
Of course, these are the most designed cybermen we have, and they
are designed to look beautiful and desirable and streamlined and
streamlined.
And they're branded with a corporate logo.
And they're branded with, like, even the doctor says, you know
cyber, it's a brand.
Something I love about the old cybermen is, of course, they had
bespoke pieces on them, but they looked slightly cobbled together
whereas no, these cybermen have their excretia together.
You know, they...
This is how they look.
And this is how they will look worldwide.
You know, it's a bit like this Apple sell the same iPhone exterior
wise in every country.
Samsung have the same design features, everywhere, everywhere you
go.
So instead of having, you know, no one will have a locally
designed cybermen.
We'll all have the cybermen based on the great British cyber
empire.
Russell T. Davis and Tom McRae wanted to explore the idea of
conformity, which is why we get lines from the doctor, like, oh
you know, you lost anything for the latest upgrade.
And Rose says, well, it's not exactly me.
Well, dear, you do have a new phone in this one that we haven't
seen before.
And it's, it's purely based on plot expediency because our old
Nokia could not have played video.
No, they would have superimposed it.
Everyone would have gone, I've got that.
It doesn't play video.
Can I talk about missing characters?
Oh, yes, please.
So, um, 2 characters were drafted into the story who were pretty
much sort of streamlined out of it.
So the preachers originally had a 4th member called Ismay, who was
an ex-green beret.
Now, the audition process for this story, because this was being
double banked with Army of Ghosts and Doomsday, pretty much a lot
of actors were seen for parts in each story.
So one of the actors to audition for the part of Esme, who got
very far along in the auditions before the character was dropped
was Freema Adjumen.
And the reason the character was dropped was when Mrs. Moore's
character was more fleshed out, being played by the late Helen
Griffiths, who we lost last year, when she was more fleshed out, it
was decided to make them a bunch of talented amateurs, and having
an ex-green beret in there was seen as, oh, well, actually, no
hold on.
She's got a bit too much experience for this role.
And pretty much her character was folded into Mrs. Moore, which is
why, as well as being the tech expert, Mrs. Moore is handing out
weapons and guns and stuff, you know?
The other character who was in early drafts was Lumic's son.
So originally you had Jacob Lumick, who becomes John Lumick, Lumick
Sr., who is dying.
And as well as him pushing for immortality, his son is pushing for
it as well because he wants to save his dad as a parallel to
Rose.
Yeah, that's more the novel version, isn't it?
at 600 pages.
Exactly.
And so instead they decided, they pretty much fold his character
into Mr. Crane, who was then offered to Colin Spall, Graham
Harper's old mate.
Finally, we would have said goodbye to another character in this
story.
Do we know about this?
In the early drafts at the end, instead of the doctor saying we've
only gotten off power to get back to our universe.
He's actually got power for one more trip and they take Jackie to
be with Pete.
Knowing that then, at the end of the year, Rose would be reunited
with her family.
And the idea was Rose would kind of spend the next half of the
season sort of thinking and being torn.
Hold on.
I can be with my family or I can be with the doctor instead of it
being a snap decision at the end.
The whole reason, though, that Russell decided to keep Jackie in
the prime universe was suddenly realising if I don't have the
Doctor and Rose so much in Love and Monsters, I can make it a
showcase for Camille.
Yeah.
And she is the best thing about Love and Monsters.
She's wonderful. absolutely.
And, you know, she doesn't get a lot to do here, but then in that
oh, I know we're jumping around all over the place, but in that
last scene, she's so sweet because she hears the TARDIS landing
and it's just utter sheer joy.
I actually find that scene so affecting. because we've lost Jackie
in the parallel universe and we get to see that she's safe.
So we absolutely had to see her at the end of this episode. was
completely necessary.
The TARDIS materialises in the flat for the 1st time.
Breaks the bloody coffee table again.
And she asks.
She's the one who asks, where's Mickey?
Because, you know, that's the sort of thing that the doctor and
Rose are too kind of selfish to worry about.
She's the 1st to say, where's Mickey and the doctor gets to say
he's gone home.
And it's so beautiful because of the relationship that has
developed between Jackie and Mickey as well.
Which is lovely.
You know, that's one of the greatest things about aliens of London
and World War 3 is the 2 of them go from antagonists to like close
friends.
It's delightful.
That scene is just beautiful, I think.
Can we talk about Mrs Moore?
She's a very rustly character, I think.
It's funny that you mention her because I see her as a cypher for
many exact characters, poems, it's of that with, you know, John
both in John Wyndham's novels.
There's one in Midwich cuckoos and an elderly lady, but definitely
Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.
Thank you, Nathan.
The elderly lady running the library.
She's, she's actually, Christy uses this character with Marple.
It's all about being the quiet, resolute radio for listener who
will ultimately save the universe by being the symposium of all
not only find knowledge, but appropriate behaviour.
We will win our empire back through nice manners.
That is very windy, isn't it?
Very survivors, remember?
Survivors is all about mucking in and being British and middle
class.
I really like that she gets this family detail and that she gets a
name.
Like we, um, the doctor and her spend a lot of time together in
this episode, everyone's sort of split up into teams, aren't
they?
And she gets to go with a doctor and talk about her life and how
she got to where she was.
And all of that sort of backstory is just Peak Russell, I think.
You know, in someone else's, in a lesser writer story, she would
just have been a man.
We wouldn't have learnt anything about her.
She picks the name Mrs. Moore from a passage to India, I think.
It's a character from Ian Forster's a passage to India.
And she gets to be there when we find out what the cybermen really
are.
And she wasn't meant to be, at least not in that sense.
That scene where they knock out a Cyberman and disable the
emotionally inhibitor was originally seen out on location.
It was on their way to the factory and the whole gang was going to
be there.
But what happened was overshoots.
It was decided, okay, we'll need to shoot this in one of the
internal locations.
Mrs. Moore originally died in the tunnels.
She didn't get up the ladder fast enough.
But when they decided, oh, well, we still need this scene, they
thought, well, if we're going to remount it, minimum amount of act
as possible, we need to have someone to talk to.
Well, let's keep her alive for another scene.
Now, this is the scene my mother had problems with.
So at that point, I was acquiring the episodes before they had on
the ABC.
And pretty much watching them every week with my parents.
And, um, dad was quite drunk, so he passed out before we watched
the episode and mum and I sort of waited 2 hours for him to for
him to wake up.
Yeah, it was a Saturday.
And finally, Mum just said, oh, let's just watch it.
And so we watched it and we get to that scene, and of course, Mrs
Moore is horribly murdered by the one Cyberman who has silences on
his legs.
Is that stamping diegetic?
You know, the doctor says, oh no, you didn't have to kill her.
And my mum started shouting at the screen.
You've just been talking about killing all of them, she shouted.
I said, yes, but they're, and she said, no, no, that one's getting
married.
They still know who they are.
I'm like, that's a very interesting point.
But I think she knows who she is because they've broken the
inhibitor.
But they're definitely in there.
I mean, Jackie knows that she was Jackie.
Interesting, yeah.
Yeah.
But I think that this is where we properly see what the cybermen
are, where it's properly explained.
And it's never very clear.
I think in the 10th planet.
We assume that they're kind of people, you know, ensues.
But here it's clear that it's the brain and the nervous system
that exists and everything else gets stripped away.
And because what's happened to them is so horrifying.
They have to have an emotional inhibitor.
That's why side men have no feelings, not because they're robots
but because they've been so violated that they would go mad if
they didn't have the emotional inhibitor, and the doctor's
solution is to switch it off.
And again, it's so rustly.
It's a little bit like in Boomtown where that young journalist is
pregnant and she talks to Margaret while Margaret's on the toilet
you know, having Sally.
Like giving her a full name, Sally Phelan, she's got a name
Phelan.
She's not feeling when the emotional inhibitor is on.
Sorry.
I'll cut that.
No, please, no.
You deserve for everyone to hear that. and that she's going to get
married.
You know, it's so heartbreaking.
It's so terribly sad.
And the doctor does like put her out of her misery.
He does kill her.
And in a way, with switching off the emotional inhibitor, you know
it's it's horrible because it gives them back their feelings, but
it's also dying as a human.
Yeah.
You know, this terrible scene of one staring into a mirror.
You know, he's just looking at himself and what's been done to
him.
And in terms of attention to detail, Nicholas Briggs and Graham
Harper said they had a lot of trouble with that scene because
Nicholas Briggs was providing the voices live and then dubbing
them in afterwards.
So Briggs had to give a performance of someone in torment that was
quiet enough that David Tennant could still be heard.
Right.
And, you know, David Tennant doesn't overperform that line.
Like, it's it's very, it's his catchphrase.
I'm sorry.
It's very effective.
I don't understand why some of them explode.
Well that just looks cool.
Yeah.
So we've all had our moments.
I do love that Russell forces, you can see his life and how he's
grown.
And I'm just thinking back to queer as folk and what we've read as
writers tell, but really you just need to watch queer as folk to
see Russell's life.
He's very much the character not, I don't think, Billy, but Rose, I
should say, but of Camille's character.
He's very much, you are only the person you are because of the
terrible things that have happened to you, and they are actually
more just as worthwhile and possibly a bit more useful than all
the good stuff.
You need both, but you're really only worthwhile because of the
awful thing.
So that's why that key moment, yes, we're jumping ahead.
But this story works because we see Jack at the end of this story
and we realise that the loss of a mother, for both Mickey and Rose
could have completely defeated their lives and completely and
turned them into monsters, actually, cyber persons, unless they
own that and work through it and live through it and acknowledge
it.
And so Mickey only really becomes bigger than both Mickey and
Ricky when he takes care of his grandmother and realises that I
have a 2nd chance.
And I think Rose will discover that as well.
Yeah, I mean, it's his home, isn't it?
The doctor says he's gone home and he's gone home to be with his
grandmother to look after her because he's got the chance now to
keep her.
And especially considering the implication is that her death was
partially a fault of his inaction.
Yeah.
And also, it's heavily implied that he has never told anyone that
because Rose doesn't comment.
You know, she fell down the stairs.
She doesn't comment. like the carpet on the stairs had been ripped
for for years or anything like that.
Mickey had been planning to fix it.
Yeah, I got around to it.
I don't think Mickey had ever told Rose that is the implication I
get from there.
And also when he's saying goodbye to Rose at the end, when he
becomes emotional is when he's talking about how his gran is still
in this universe.
Yeah, yes.
Which is why I'm buggering off to a nurse that's honeymoon in
Paris.
Well, he'll pick her up on the way in the van.
Oh my God, she could be a preacher.
She could be blind out from Deadpool.
In the back with all the weapons.
Now, Graham, we need you to figure out how to make electromagnetic
bombs because we just lost someone in the organisation.
It is really great, isn't it?
It so pays off the beginning of the story where they're horrible
to Mickey.
He's a 3rd wheel.
He's still the tin dog despite his efforts.
And he becomes a hero.
And the way this show shows that is by making him become the
doctor, and he actually says to Rose, something like, just hold on
Rose, I'm coming to get you, which is what the doctor had said at
the end of episode 12 last year.
And so he gets to heroically save Rose, um, by, you know, steering
the Zeppelin and rescuing them from the exploding building.
And he becomes a doctor.
He has a life now where he goes across the world and fights
Cyberman.
Yeah.
Now, of course, the moment in that scene, which catches my ear, is
when Mickey says that he learned to fly a Zeppelin on
PlayStation.
Now, I've tried to do a little bit of research.
Mickey at this point is from the space year of 2007.
So it's possible that he could have a PlayStation one, two, or
three.
And the novel winner takes all tells us that he has Grand Theft
Auto, Grand Turismo, and one other game.
Now, Gran Turismo is exclusive to PlayStation, so that ties in
with this.
Now, the Grand Theft Auto series has featured Zeppelin since Grand
Theft Auto 3, which came out before this episode is set.
We live for this movie.
However, they were not flyable by the character until Grand Theft
Auto 5 in 2013.
So I think this is just another example of how the Doctor Who
universe is slightly ahead of us, right?
In terms of piloting Zeppelins in video game technology.
Brilliant Now, um, You don't hear that on new to who, do you?
No, you don't.
And, you know, quite frankly, I think that's just as important as
any discussion about Rita Ann Smith, his grandmother.
Interestingly, Roger Lloyd Pack had very few scenes with the rest
of the cast.
He's actually got no scenes in person with the regulars.
Right.
You see, this is where his character falls apart a little bit for
me in that when Mr. Crane attacks him, you know, makes his
wheelchair explode and presumably, you know, sneaks around the
back and disconnects his thermal lobes.
What a friend's fool.
But, you know, then he's like, no, no, no, I don't want to
upgrade.
I don't want to, and I just kind of feel, mm.
The character up until this point, he hasn't almost religious
fervour for the idea of upgrading.
It isn't just about preserving his physical form.
I feel it would have been far more chilling if he had seen it as
ascendency.
You know, if he had said to Mr. Crane before Mr. Crane dies, thank
you.
Now I can ascend, kill him.
It would have just been the last removal of his humanity.
We haven't mentioned William Blake for this podcast, which is
unusual for this episode. you know, we usually do. in that we also
need to look at Britain's self-eulogizing and nods to
transcendence or it's aspirant nature.
And Blake is pretty much its voice for that.
But you see it through a lot of other fiction as well.
There's a whole lot, you know, we don't need to just look at the
US for evangelical senses of our future.
Yeah, manifest destiny.
Exactly.
Her.
Please welcome to the stage.
Manifest destiny.
I think Russell was terrified as a child watching Tomb of the
Cyberman and seeing the brain inside the transparent cybercontrol
ahead.
And so he replicates it here.
Never been able to use a pressure cooker since.
On the commentary, Paul Casey. who was the lead cyberman and also
inside the cybercontroller suit.
The lights that were in his eyes and brain.
He said, I couldn't see a thing.
I could see the white of David Tennant's collar and that's what I
used as my eyeline.
But yeah, you can't see a thing with Thor lights in front of your
eyes.
Graham.
Gorgeous.
Oh, yes, he looks absolutely wonderful on the cyber throne of
reasonable comfort.
It's ducted.
It is ducted.
And just like being able to sit on every good throw.
He couldn't keep his pants done up.
The cyberpants couldn't be done up at the front while he was
sitting on the throat.
That's what I said anyway.
You try relaxing into a comfy chair and keep your buttons all up.
I do, yeah, I do wonder what the nodules are about, but, you know
you've got to ask.
But as originally scripted, the Dr. Rose and Pete were going to
take a lift up to the roof to be rescued by the Zeppelin and the
cybercontroller was meant to burst through the lift bottom so
close.
You could feel his fire.
They sort of cost it, okay, so we'll need to build a lift.
We need to build a collapsible floor.
The actors can also stand on.
Or someone pointed out, you could do it on a ladder against black
drapes.
So it's like, oh, we'll do it on a ladder against black drapes
then.
It's another nice callback to the invasion, isn't it?
As is the fact that the cyberconversion facility, interior was
meant to be a power station, but it was filmed during a very cold
winter.
So there was no downtime in the power station.
Pretty much the power station usually shut down and went to
automatic for 6 hours overnight.
But they couldn't do that.
So it was filmed in a brewery, just like the invasion, which was
directed by Douglas Canfield, which is a lovely bit of...
It looks amazing, doesn't it?
So those big tanks all become like cyber conversion units.
And that really nightmarish, and it's sort of very PG because
there's no blood or no human beings in shot.
But that sort of thing that comes down from the ceiling, like a
sort of shower rose with teeth that's covered in sort of, you know
chainsaws and things that chops you up.
I think it's really cool.
I do think that the charm bracelet of death, isn't it?
Really, or really just sitting in any dentist chair.
I think you, when you do this Ironman, you have to be about where
they come from.
And the problem in the 80s, I think, is that we kind of forget
that the cybermen were people who are converted into something.
And here it very much.
It's another great reinvention of a classic era, idea, and even
better, I think, than Dalek, because the Dalek had such a kind of
a strong mythic resonance already in the classic series.
Whereas the side men, I think, needed more rescuing because
they're a bit more crap. sort of generally speaking.
And I think he does a great job reimagining them, like saying what
they are, giving them some kind of thematic resonance, giving them
a new origin story.
All of that, I think, is wonderful.
I think this is super underrated.
It certainly made us think about their wishes when it's always at
its best made us think about things that are, you know, far beyond
what might appear on the screen at the 1st viewing.
But that's what good drama is.
It doesn't have to yell at you to make its point.
It should just nicely suggest.
It is a recapitulation of the whole history of the show too.
I mean, the 1st doctor classically faces off against the Daleks.
The 2nd doctor faces off against Cyberman and the 3rd doctor faces
off against the master.
Jolly good brand, of course.
And he introduces each of them in turn, you know, in the
respective season.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think he is so clever to do it in a parallel world because
Dalek continuity was convoluted, but, you know, there is a way to
rectify sort of post-Davros, pre-Davros, survival, timelines.
But the Cybermen timeline, God, it took David Banks 200 pages to
try and make sense of it in the classic series.
And then just as he finishes, they go and make another one.
And Tom McRae and Graham Harper both read David Banks Cyberman
book.
I've got it.
I really liked it when it came out.
It's such fanness.
I cleaned that up.
But, you know, it quite deftly acknowledges the continuity
problems, comes up with a continuity and admits where it can't
rectify things.
I think Russell is so wise to create Cyberman that are true to the
original idea, but also saying, I respect this past continuity.
Here is a reason I will not be tied to it at this stage.
He leaves it intact too.
Yes, he says there are cybermen in our universe, but in this
universe, they arise on earth rather than on silly, you know
wandering, identical twin earth.
Malaysia.
And Russell keeps a consistent continuity for the cybermen from
then on throughout his era.
All of the sidemen stories make sense.
And it's not until, I think, closing time where suddenly, you know
there are assignment entombed in a thing 1000s of years earlier
and it's kind of like, well, where did they come from?
And the idea is that Stephen Moffatt actually doesn't care and it
doesn't really matter all that much. you know.
But Russell is, I think, writing this with an eye to a smart, nerdy
science fiction fan like he himself was during the 70s and he
gives it a proper continuity as well.
We even get a call back to Dalek, where we saw the cyberhead in
Van Staten's music.
Yeah, Noel Clark insisted on.
Okay, so let's do pics of the week.
My pick of the week is, uh, because I was recently extolling the
virtues of this to someone on Twitter, big finishes Cyberman.
Oh, miniseries.
So it's um, 8 audio plays.
And um, whereas Big Finisher's Dalek Empire subseries is sort of
this massive space epic.
This really examines what are the sidemen.
It's far more of a sort of techno political thriller.
Oh okay.
And yeah, you can get the whole series of 8 adventures for $20
Australian.
Yeah, but yeah, so Big Finishes Cyberman series. is my pick of the
week.
I jolly love it too.
Well, I was going to go with Philip Pullman, but we've all
discussed that before.
And I'm thinking, why did I love this and the feel of it?
and we talked about Carol Reed and wartime, Britain and parallel
universes, but my favourite thing really that keeps coming back
into my mind is Connie Willis.
Have you read any of hers?
She's so good.
And she loves she's an American author, but who loves Edwardian
humour and PG Woodhouse and Jerome K. Jerome.
So 3 men in a boat is her 1st pastiche where she does a parallel
universe time travelling thing.
Cambridge in the late 21st century has a time travelling device.
Right?
When we're not in any fascist state.
None of that, none of the trumpetisms have ever happened.
Everything's gone on in quite a lovely way, and yes, there's time
travel, but it's entirely Douglas Adams, and it's based at
Cambridge University.
So academics run it.
And so her 1st novel is called to say nothing of the dog.
So it's a take on that, and it's just sublime and delightful.
Then she jumps to the Doomsday book, which is, which has a
character slightly younger than Rose, and it's absolutely
heartbreaking because a young girl, finally a student, transports
to the late Middle Ages, and of course, or the period of the Black
Death, and her device fails.
They can't scoop her out.
So that's an extraordinary book.
But the 3rd...
Oh, there's a few other ones, but the blackout series, it's a
diptych, a double novel set, set in the 2nd World War, same
universe, some, sorry, the same business with Cambridge time
travellers, and again, a lovely young girl gets trapped during the
2nd World War, and it's just so good and has the same feel of this
with the parallelisms and lots of Russell feeling writing.
So I really, just look up Connie Willis, but you, I guarantee if
you love this era of Doctor Who and British SF, you will really
love Connie Willis's take on time travel.
Brilliant.
I want to bring the tone down a bit.
I've been watching a show on Netflix starring Gillian Anderson and
Husky Young actors in chairs.
Yes, what's it called?
It's called sex education.
And Gillian Anderson, who turns out, does a mean English accent
because she, I think she grew up in Great Britain.
She plays a sex therapist who has a son and the son is the main
character and the son goes to school and starts a kind of sex
therapy clinic for his classmates for money.
It's really funny.
It's really it's really, really funny and clever.
What's that on?
It's on Netflix.
It's a Netflix original.
And Julian Anderson is just spectacular in it.
She's so great.
She's so good.
So it's well worth watching, really, really funny stuff.
And do you know what Gillian Anderson's next big role is?
Yes.
She's going to be Margaret Thatcher in the Crown. this podcast
very own Olivia Coleman.
Oh, yes.
She's wonderful.
I mean, she is just so funny in this.
The show is really, really great.
Well, dear listener, it's time to return to the real world, or at
least a rough approximation of it.
We'll be back next week, glued to the set for the idiot's
lantern.
In the meantime, you can find us at flightsthroughentirety.com
flights through entirety on Facebook and Apple Podcasts and at FT
podcast on Twitter.
You can also find us at our series 11 flashcast, Jodi Interterra
which is at Jodi Interterra.com.
Jodie Interterter on Apple Podcasts and at Jodie Interterter 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, may you remember to put your phone down every now
and again, or it will kill you and everyone you care about.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
I'm off on my pedalow home.
Good night. then.
That was Flight for Entirety, starring Nathan Bottleley, Brendan
Jones and Richard Stone.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, Strings Performance by Jane
Orberg.
This episode, delicious fascism, was recorded on the 2nd of
February 2019 and released on the 21st of April.
As you all know, the worst thing about Flight Through Entirety is
that it doesn't make money for Swedish tech bros.
And so we've now made it available on Spotify.
If you must go to our website and follow the link to subscribe.
He fell so in love with remaking Star Trek that it stopped being
it stopped being a comedy at all and is just basically, yeah.
I'm still convinced that he wanted to make a comedic drama rather
than a comedy, and that's why the 1st 2 episodes have such sort of
comedy in them.
Yeah, they're good.
So it's the age of steel, by the way. and it's the 2nd of
February.
Right.
What was I going to say about Galaxy Quest?
Yes, the American DVD and Blu-ray, which I have.
I haven't watched it, but one of the audio tracks is Thermian.
Oh, really?
It's entirely done.
The alien language.
I know.
I just didn't realise it was even better than I'd always known it
to me.
Well, that's like you can have the Klingon subtitles option for
the entirety of discovery.
About halfway through episode four.
It's just like, are you really reading this?
That's it.
My sister got bitten by a moose one.
Oh, like you still need a galaxy quest too.
Well, unfortunately, it will never happen.
Well, Daryl Mitchell is now paraplegic.
The young black man.
Oh, he was in a car accident.
Actually, I think he may have passed on by now.
Oh, no.
Oh, wow.
And of course, Alan Rickman.
Yeah.
Which is sad.
And it made in series, maybe?
There are comic books.
We got Orville, so.
There are comic books. did see one. are they any good?
I don't know.
I mean, I don't know if they're from the fictional perspective of
episodes of the original?
I've looked at one the other day, but I didn't.
I mean, I didn't read it, but no, it looks entirely as if it's the
you know, like the trek ones.
It's alt universe trek.
No, Orville, I think, is one of the best things on TV right now.
It's just this whole season has just been extraordinary.
I think I remember like a Star Trek, the Next Generation fanfic or
something where the actors and the characters swapped places like
the Mirror Universe and like Jonathan Frakes is on the Enterprise
worrying about what Will Riker is doing with his wife and stuff.
It's like, oh dear.
Okay.
All right, let me see if I can do this.
Marina saying Louise Jamison didn't have to wear contact.
Oh God, I love Marina.
Hello, dear listener and welcome back to...