Hello, dear listener and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast that actually does have another 10
miles of cable lying around, and you won't believe what we've been
doing with it.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Todd, and I'm Peter.
Promise I won't go mad.
Well, after a week of sitting around waiting, nothing seems to be
coming out of this big hole, and we've only got 55 minutes of
oxygen left.
So let's spend our last few moments on earth discussing the devil
metaphysics and the Satan pit.
So, Todd, what is the beast?
Why are you asking me this question?
Well, I know that you're a man of strong metaphysical
convictions.
What do you think it is?
Fenrick.
He is actually from before time.
It's sort of weird that the doctor is so dogmatic about things not
being from before the dawn of time where, presumably, the beast
was hanging around on that spaceship in terminus or something, you
know, like there's plenty of things from before the Grandfather of
the Garm.
Yeah that's right.
That's right.
Look, I don't know.
Like, I mean, does they go through a litany of what he could be
like, set and Satan.
So there's a list of names.
So as the oud sort of advance up the stairs, they talk about badon
which is an old name for the devil and, you know, all of the names
for the devil and things.
And then the doctor speculates that every culture has a devil and
he mentions the people of Demos and the people of Draconia.
With horns.
Yeah, with horns, a horned beast.
They should have had a little shout back to Miss Hawthorne, who
made much the same point, and maybe they could have pulled out the
doctor's old sort of slide carrousel with horns.
Thornhawk.
See, that's one of the clever things about this script is that
there are these little nods to classic who, in dialogue that, you
know, if you're watching this for the 1st time, it's a piece of
dialogue where you pick up some things and other things are just
there.
But for us as classic series fans, it's the last thing on the cake
which I always love.
Yeah, that bit of dialogue where he mentions all of those cultures
that have the devil in them.
There could have been any number of made up planets and it doesn't
matter.
So just sticking Draconia and Damos in there is really good.
And it kind of addresses the question, you know, about the devil.
There's a moment where Rose says to the doctor, you know, is there
really a devil, tell me there's no devil, and he doesn't answer
it.
And all I could think about was pertwe telling Joe, like kind of
telling Joe off for believing in a sort of mythical devil.
It's nice because the Dr. Wayne doesn't dress it.
He just goes very quiet and says, keep it together, Rose.
It's a really nice moment.
Yeah he doesn't answer it.
And there is this feeling, I think, that the beast is in some ways
just an idea that the devil is an idea that appears in sort of
different cultures.
And so the beast isn't sort of just a sort of big old monster or
anything, but that he exists in the sort of space where ideas
exist.
That's the doctor's conclusion.
Maybe the devil's an idea.
And that's all he is in the end.
And I like that the episode poses the questions and then talks
about them, but doesn't provide any answers.
See, I didn't like that when I originally watched it.
Like, I just dislike it when things try to deal with, is there a
devil or not?
Like, let's give a definitive answer.
Doctor Who doesn't generally go there?
And I'm fine with it now, just like to say, like, I like the fact
that we don't get a definitive answer and there is a discussion.
I think it's really good.
But initially I was, that was one of the things I didn't like
about this particular episode.
I was going, oh, really?
We have to go there and sort of not answer it if we're going to
pose the question, which, as you know, I'm pretty black and white
with things and like my world to be in a nice little box.
So.
Well, I mean, I actually think that the weakest part of it is
where they lampshade it in that final scene, where the doctor says
I don't know, and that's okay.
You know, like, I don't think we needed to be told that or needed
to be reassured that we were deliberately not being told who the
beast was.
And I think that Doctor Who, being pinned down and having a very
definite cosmology, I don't like that.
It's a show that's been going for 50 years under the stewardship
of, you know, many, many different creative teams.
And so as a result, it's cosmology as a giant mess.
And the show just, I think, should at this point just lean into
that.
Well, the doctor has that amazing line where he says, um, his take
on religion is, I believe we haven't seen everything and that's
why I keep travelling.
I mean, that's a great idea of it.
And so little of Doctor Who is about faith and religion.
I mean, you know, unless you want to count the excellence or
something like that.
Well, I think I made this point before, that Russell gives
religion back to Doctor Who, that he makes it a thing, whereas the
only religious people who would appear in Doctor Who, in the
classic era, were, you know, high priests who wanted to kill you
the followers of Deimos, you know, there wasn't proper religion
there.
Yeah, some vicars who don't believe in God anymore.
Or other master.
Well, both.
And so it is nice to have the doctor list a whole heap of
religions, and then we hear about Ida's religion, and it's given a
name, and the doctor asks her if there's a devil in her religion
and she says, no, we just believe in the evil that men do.
And in a religious context, men, you know, because sacred texts
use old-fashioned language and stuff.
Men is sometimes used to refer to people.
But the way that she delivers that line.
And the fact that it's her mother's religion and the fact that she
has to run away from her father, we discover, from her backstory
she says the line as if it's men, the evil that men, male adults
do.
Yeah.
And and there is something here about human evil.
The devil is an idea or a concept, but the real evil that we see
in the world is the result of human action.
And when Ida says the evil that men do is the devil in her
religion, the doctor says, well, it's the same thing in the end
that you can have a mystical representation of evil that's
personified and part of your mythology, but talking about that is
really a way of talking about, you know, the evil that people do.
I think, um, as well, when she pauses, when she mentions her mum
and just, just for a moment, reflects and says, my old mum, and
you know that it's a really illuminating character moment, but it
plays into that.
Yeah, maybe let's move on and talk about that scene because we've
had the doctor and Ida stranded down the pit.
They can't get back now because the devil has somehow
telekinetically broken the cable and there's no way for them to
get back.
And so they're stranded down in the pit for much of the episode
the doctor and Rose are separated and the doctors left with Ida.
And we talked a little bit about Ida last week, but she's one of
those brilliant companions in waiting.
Uh, so you think like Dr. Todd in Kinder or um, Amelia in The
Stones of Blood, and she works so well as companion for this
doctor.
It's an extraordinary performance.
Well, I'm just sitting here listening to what you're having to say
about it.
I don't know.
I think whenever I watch this, and it happened again with this
episode, is that when they're down there talking, I'm always
looking at the visuals all around them, because when that ball
goes up and it illuminates and when they're walking through and
how cavernous it is, I just love this empty space.
There's a beautiful shot, I think, where, you know, the doctor and
Ida are quite small in the frame and we look off into the distance
and there's these sort of rock bridges over a sort of giant
chasm.
It looks so beautiful and I think they do a great job.
We should perhaps have mentioned this last week of integrating, you
know, those giant dragon sculptures and that big temple.
They integrate that, which is clearly a CG element into the
footage of the quarry.
And it looks incredible.
Yeah, it's much like time in the Rani, really.
It's very much like I was actually thinking how much like time.
I mean, this story could only have been improved by melon a bubble
trap going past.
I mean, what beautiful location filming it is.
They shoot at night.
It's just a quarry wall.
And yet they make it look like an underground cavern.
And there's something they do to the sound as well.
There's a very distinctive echo to it, which makes it sound
totally authentic.
Except that it doesn't make much sense because there's no air
outside.
But it works because it makes it feel like they're in a cave.
Yeah.
Can we go back to the cliffhanger resolution?
Yeah, it's a total cheat, isn't it?
Yes It's another one of these fake outs, like, you know, the
camera is riding out of the pit, but is it just the essence of the
thing?
it's just the camera.
It's just the camera.
So, yeah.
Yeah, nothing's actually rising.
And, you know, he gloats.
Doesn't the beast gloat.
Gabriel Wolf gloats about escaping at the end of the last
episode.
But then he doesn't and he's still trapped.
I like to think that the tin vagabonds stepped in and say...
Does he say the pit is open and I am free?
Yeah, yeah, but he's not free.
I mean, his mind is free and I guess he's already sort of free.
And so maybe the opening of the pit is what allows him to
completely possess the ood properly.
I guess that's how we have to read it.
He's free through Toby and the Ud.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Not free.
No.
And it's not really made clear until the end and deliberately not
made clear that the mind of the beast and the body of the beast
are different.
So the beast itself is still sort of chained up fabulously
downstairs while its mind is free to take over the Ude and start
sort of killing people. 1st watch, that was something that I
didn't really pick up on.
Like, I couldn't work it out.
Yeah, I don't think it's very clear.
But it's perfectly fine.
Like, you know, I really like the fact that that's the way it's
done.
And of course, also with that cliffhanger resolution.
We also kill off the female guard very quickly as well.
Then he stands by Gormlessly.
Yeah, well, we talked about that last week and it is a horrible
scene because the camera is straight on her face and we see her
reaction and her scream and, you know, her kind of shaking and
stuff.
So it's it is kind of horrible.
But no one stops from in it and sort of registers her name and has
a little bit of a speech and says 2 K 5 X one or whatever and, you
know, does a little tribute.
Well, assume on the on the pecking order when Zach gives his list
at the end and he goes through the crew and then they come after
the end.
Yeah, that's right.
They're at the very end.
After basic slave guards.
The Beast is such a great malevolent villain.
He's dripping with malevolence and everything that he says is
designed to make people uneasy.
Like when he has that little pep talk with everyone over the comms
before the cable snapped.
He says, this planet is your grave.
And you think, ooh.
Even the bit too, where he seems to know much more about our
characters than we do, and he goes through and gives a secret to
each of them.
So like Jefferson's wife must have died.
Like the way that I read it.
She never did.
No, she never forgave you, which means that she's not going to do
it in the future because she's lost the chance because she's
dead.
But I also think too, there's a kind of sort of horror film trope
where the devil actually knows that because his wife is down here
in hell with her being tortured, you know, like, yeah, you know
there's something kind of horrible about that, the reason that the
devil knows is because the devil lives in the underworld and
that's where dead people are.
And so he knows that.
But he knows about everyone.
And the thing where Toby's the virgin.
Yeah.
Do you know my theory about this?
I have no evidence to support this, but it feels like where Toby's
the Virgin and Danny's the little boy who lied, it feels more
naturally that it should have been reversed because Danny is a
more authentic virgin than Toby is.
Because he's a sort of nerd.
He's a nerd and he's jishery.
And Toby, because he's shifty, looks like the little boy who
lies.
So it's very interesting that that's not the case.
Although I think that it's sort of a rustly detail to do something
surprising there.
And because we do see Toby actually quite withdrawn and shy.
Like Danny is much more sort of friendly and gregarious and
confident than Toby, who is, you know, sort of classically
handsome and built and all of those sorts of things, but is super
kind of withdrawn.
It's interesting that the beast is basically listing character
flaws as they go with a little boy who, like, is being a virgin, a
character floor.
He's looking for something that shames the characters.
Yeah, it is a weird choice.
I also think that we get something about Ida's father, like she
runs away from, you know, the scientist who runs away from daddy
and we've already talked about that conversation that she has
about her mother.
So it does sound like the father has perhaps abused her or
mistreated her mother, but he's no longer around.
And the accusation that the beast makes is that she's still
running away from that part of her childhood.
And she has the moment with the doctor in the lift where the
doctor's trying to convince them that the beast is playing them
and she looks utterly shocked and she says to the doctor, how did
it know about my father?
That's really good too, because I think the doctor came into the
base in the 1st episode and was, you know, banging on about how
brave and wonderful and crazy and beautiful and indomitable they
all are in that sort of usual sort of tendency way.
But here he uses that speech to counter what the beast says.
You people are brave.
You are friends with one another.
The beast is on its own, but we're not.
There's another story that can be told about you.
And that's the story that I want you to hang on to now.
I think it's really good.
Yeah, it's superbly written.
And talking about Ida and the way that she reacts.
She pleads later on, she says, I don't want to die on my own, which
is, you know, of course, we can all be on board with that.
But that's kind of as good an explanation of having faith in a
higher being as I've heard.
You don't want to die alone.
You don't want to think there's nothing.
In fact, that scene is beautifully well played as well, because
she says that to try and persuade the doctor not to jump down the
pit, and his response is to say, I know, but he's going to do that
anyway.
There's a melancholy that infuses last week and particularly this
week because this week's episode narrows its focus down onto the
characters.
It's not all about the world building.
There's a morning, kind of a sense, I spoke last week about the
fact that they're all alone, and these people really are alone
even though they're together, they're all struggling with their
own demons.
They're all desperately battling to get out of it.
There's something very dark and dismal about the feeling the
episodes.
Well, I mean, particularly since Ida and the doctor have the sort
of clock running out.
They've got, you know, less than an hour of oxygen.
There's no way that they can be rescued, and for a long time
they're out of communication with a base upstairs.
And the fact that they have the time to just have a quiet moment
and discuss what's going on is so nice and so rare.
I think there's an instinct among classic Doctor Who fans to wish
that any given sort of 42 minute story was actually a 2 parter, you
know, wouldn't victory of the have been great if it was a two
parter.
Well, no, we'd have had to watch another 42 minutes of it.
We would have preferred a 0 parts.
But here I can see why people say that because there is a moment
for sort of proper character stuff.
And that observation about falling, you know, they're at the side
of the pit and go on, go on, go over, go on.
Yeah, yeah, that thing where you where you're standing at the edge
of a cliff and you think I could just jump and all that's between
me and jumping and falling is a decision that I could make.
You see it in your mind's eye, don't you?
The fact of you doing that.
Yeah.
And that wonderful thing where the doctor's falling and that's the
moment where they reestablish communication with the base
upstairs.
And, you know, Ida has to say he's fallen. couldn't stop him.
It's so good.
There's something about the pacing of this story.
I think it's perfectly paced, maybe the most perfectly paced 2
parter of the series.
Um, there's, it rattles along.
It keeps moving from one action piece to the next.
And yet it stops every time to have a discussion about the
important things that make you feel it.
And so that scene you were talking about standing on the edge of
the pit, that would never be in a single episode.
It just, it's too long and too involved.
It holds up the story.
But here, it propels the story.
I just thought it was really interesting that our Beast identifies
the doctor as the killer of his own kind.
Oh, yeah.
And he talks, everybody's in the past.
It's all about their history, but for Rose, it's the lost girl.
The valiant child who will die in battle very soon.
She's only one that he makes a prediction of for the future, like
you know, foreshadowing a few weeks time.
I think that's partly an artefact of the fact that this is shot
after Army of Ghosts and Doomsday.
So they decide to put a bit of a prophecy in there.
She's really rattled by it too.
And the doctor twice has to reassure her that it's not going to
happen.
Yeah, there was that feint at the start of army of ghosts where
Rose says in the teaser, this was the day that I died.
So I think that that might have been a promotional point, will she
won't she die?
We know she's leaving, don't we, at this point?
Yes.
Yeah.
When did they announce that?
Um, I think it might have been early in series 2 because Billy was
always going to come back for the 1st 6 episodes.
And so I think she was going to depart on the age of steel.
But then early on, she decided that no, she'd do the entire
season.
And so they had the extra time to play with.
But I think she might have had Mickey's departure.
I said Mickey got hers.
Right.
Okay.
Does Rose swear in this episode?
You know when they have that static search?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's about to swear.
And I think the doctor said, oh, you know, watch out.
I like it when they do those sort of things.
Well, she's super angry at him and super, you know, I actually
really like the 2 of them when they're apart when they separated
like this, you know, her concern for him is really, is really
good.
And she's super massively competent in this one, isn't she?
Well, she gets to inspire her crew.
Yeah. and work with our captain to go along all the little the
ventilation shafts.
Yes.
Can I just say of all the Hinchcliffeness of this story, and of
course, you know, Matt's a huge Philip Hinchcliffe fan, I think
he's more a Hinchcliffe Fearer fan than he is of Doctor Who, in a
wider sense, for all the kind of Hinchcliffe tropes of like the
ancient evil coming back for revenge or what's your thing, Nathan?
Not sufficiently executed enough.
So this is our 2nd story in a row where we have a villain who
whose people tried to kind of execute or imprison it. but didn't
do a very good job of it.
And so they've escaped.
And so it's like Eldrad or Su Tech or, you know, it's a very Hinge
Cliff kind of trove.
And I mean, what are we to do if you've got 2 episodes?
And the 1st one, you set that up.
The 2nd one you've got to have ventilation charts.
You do, yeah.
I mean, and you know, possibly a rocket that provides an
independent power source.
But, you know, it's all good, steel for the best.
I love the fact that with these ventilation shafts, they actually
have to put the air into the ventilation shafts in different
sections, normally, you know, the air's just already in there. and
the ud are suddenly after them.
And Danny gets so like, there's one sequence there where he's
really just like losing it.
Oh, yeah.
And I love the fact that they get to work in through the captain
that, you know, he's talking about the torch with archive when
he's talking, you know, doing his little talking to them and yeah
and all the jokes about their butts and stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
Why am I on that again?
Last week, this week.
Oh my goodness, I'll shut up now.
In fact, the oud are properly scary in the ventilation shaft, just
the way that they walk with their forearms.
Very quickly.
Yeah, yeah.
It's not a sort of slow moving thing that you've got to get away
from.
And we get the death of Jefferson, which again is another death
that really properly lands, like Scooty last week.
And we learn his 1st name, John.
John, yeah, yeah.
It's really upsetting.
I actually find it really upsetting.
I think it's a great performance by Danny Webb as an older actor.
Yeah.
He's sort of like a forerunner to Graham, like in the current
series.
Like I really do think that he had the potential to be with the
doctor. in some way, you know?
He's very good, and he does get to do that thing where he's going
to shoot Toby, and, you know, Rose has to interpose herself
between the 2 of them.
You know, he's grizzled and tough, but he dies saving them.
And there's a very nicely framed scene with Toby sat down, you
know, when he's recovering from all of that, and Rose and
Jefferson in the background, and Rose is doing things at the
console, and Jefferson is just staring at Toby throughout the
entire thing.
It's really quite unsettling.
I just think it's so convenient that Toby is just accepted like
he's not possessed anymore.
Doesn't the doctor say something about that?
Oh, Rose says he's clean or whatever.
It's not the doctor.
And it's like one of those convenient things where it's like, oh
yes, he's clean. you know he's never going to be possessed again
one of those convenient things where the TARDIS has fallen down
into the middle of the planet just for the doctor to lean back on
it.
There's a couple of convenient things in this.
I actually think it's sort of sold because because we do see that
special effect of all the all of the letters, you know, coming off
him into the Oude. absolutely.
And Doctor Who usually sets it up as a Doctor Who troop, you know
people are possessed, but then once they're no longer possessed
that's fine.
I mean, I can't think of another story where someone is just
suddenly possessed again, usually it does pass out of them, whereas
here it doesn't.
I actually think there's one fantastic moment, which is where
they're emerging from the ventilation shafts into the sort of oud
control area.
And the oud nearly catch up with Toby, who's doing a sort of giant
panic, and then he just turns to the oud, and he's got the red
contact lenses in and he puts his finger to his lips and does the
most terrifying smile.
And it really is super wonderful.
And then later on, I think he gets a hug from Rose or something
and he kind of looks really, really uncomfortable and doesn't like
it at all.
And I think that is just wonderful.
And I don't think he's possessed again.
I think he's got Gabriel Wolfe in his head the entire time and
he's just pretending not to be under its influence anymore.
From that point.
Yeah, no, I agree with you from that point.
He is totally taken over and he is just Toby is dead.
Yeah, he's super fantastic.
He's really really good.
I wish I had Gabriel Wolf in my head all the time. imagine Yeah, I
do.
So the other thing that I want to talk about is this is a very
standard base under siege at this point where you have monsters
running amok, killing people one by one and we have to do things
to kind of defeat them.
And I think that it's super interesting that what we actually have
an oppressed race of people who are mistreated and disregarded by
our main human characters, doing what perhaps they have every
right to do, which is to rise up and overthrow their oppressors.
That's the side the doctor normally is on.
And they're inspired to do that by the devil, who himself is a
rebel. you know, in Christian mythology.
He rebels against God.
He takes a 3rd of the angels with him and is thrown out of heaven
for his pride and his pride is sort of wanting to take God's
place.
The devil has always been in rebellion against God.
And here are these, here are these Oud, who are slaves, who are
just slaves, and they rise up, but the moment they do that, they're
evil, and they're a threat, and we're on the side of the people
who are oppressing them.
And there is something uncomfortable about that, I think.
And I think it's something, I don't know whether it's conscious or
deliberate or not, but I think it works really, really well.
There's a kind of, there's a kind of moral indistinctness about
what's going on despite the fact that one of the characters is
openly the devil.
So do you feel that when you watch it?
I don't normally, but I really felt it this time.
Like the 2nd time I watched it in preparation for this.
I thought that it was a really kind of interesting choice.
And I do think it's the same choice that we make in robots of
death.
So robots of death is another base under siege where the slaves
rise up and start killing their masters.
And so what do we do?
Well, we have to protect the masters and make sure the slaves are
all killed so that the rebellion stops.
And their leader is someone who's rebelling against this sort of
stratified society and is trying to free his brothers from their
oppression.
And I don't know whether it was because I 1st watched Robots of
Death when I was like 10 and didn't pick any of that up.
So it all sort of seems to make good sense.
Whereas here, I think, I think that in a story which is about
human evil and human ideas of evil that associating that evil with
rising up to throw off your oppressors is really interesting.
Some of the things that men do, maybe to have the basic slave
races.
Yeah, and I don't think, you know, like I don't think that it's
unambiguously on the side of the oppressors.
I don't think that this is a right wing tale telling us that the
underclasses should continue to be mistreated and it would be
wrong of them to expect otherwise.
I'm not saying that it has a right wing explicitly deals with this
but it is super interesting.
And this is why I do FTE podcast because I never think of these
things.
I'm still the 10 year old child, everybody.
And Nathan or Peter or somebody else brings up this and it makes
me think about it for the 1st time.
It's an extraordinary interesting point that you make and it's and
well observed.
And when they're getting pursued by the oud at no point to
actually go, well, kill them because you're the slaves.
I never think about that.
And they're possessed, like they're red and they're horrible
monsters and stuff like that, you know, like, and that's how
they're shot.
That's how we're meant to read them.
But it's interesting, the kind of underlying thing.
And even at the very end.
You know, the doctor has one trip to make in the TARDIS, and he
can rescue 50 Ude or one woman, and he rescues Ida and just leaves
the Ude to die and is apologetic about it.
And of course, we would have been horrified had he left Ida to die
and sort of heard it a whole heap of kind of squidhead guys into
the Tartars, so that they could be happily reunited with sort of
Zach and Danny in the final scene.
Or squeezed into that conference. right.
That would have been terrible.
On Danny's lap.
But now once you think about it, that decision seems kind of dodgy
as well.
It does, but there's an unintended side effect to that, that the
doctor doesn't know that Rose has gone with Zach and Danny.
He's just assuming.
So it's implicit that he made the decision to save Ida over Rosa.
Isn't there some sort of continuity problem in some of the
dialogue at the end here, the doctor says something that he can't
possibly know.
I just kind of went, how does he know this?
How does he know that the rocket loses protection and falls into
the black hole?
How does he know this?
Maybe he picks it up, you know, while he's in the Tartar.
I think that the resolution here is a little bit kind of a bit too
easy.
But certainly, I think just sort of getting to the end and getting
the rescue happening and stuff is the right decision without a lot
of faffing about and seeing shots of the doctor looking at screens
or something in the TARDIS.
Like it needs to be a surprise and for it to be a surprise.
Rose and the audience need to learn about it at the same time.
No, I think it's very clever, like working it out at the same time
but that rocket thing does strike me as a fault in the script that
he knows about it, how does he know about it?
It's just something that, you know, but I just love all the stuff
with Rose and Toby suddenly turning, like with all the lettering
and, you know, the seatbelt and the that one shot with the gun
thing.
Yeah, so she's got the bolt gun that Zach had in the control
centre and it's a joke.
It's actually quite well introduced.
It's Chehov's bolt gun, but he makes some kind of hilarious remark
about how he could take out one ode, maybe, if he was lucky, and
that's all the armaments that he's got in the room.
And then they've got that with them.
And obviously, we can't have Rose shooting Toby.
That would have been terrible.
Yeah, it would have been...
Bring back Eric, say what I say.
Can you imagine?
So she shoots out the windscreen and lets Toby get sucked out into
space.
It's really great and really lucky that they have those emergency
shields on this rocket.
She didn't know that.
It's also lucky that Danny had his seatbelt on.
She didn't know that.
And it's also extremely lucky that the doctor falls back on the
TARDIS, which just happened to fall into exactly the right. love
that.
I don't just when all hope is lost.
You've forgotten all about the TARDIS.
There it is, and the music sends you spirit soaring.
The music is wonderful, but I just think it's such a...
Too convenient.
Amazingly convenient.
I love it.
Do you think if there's a devil, there might be a god?
Who's done?
Yeah.
Thank you again for enlightening me on this.
I just want to say, you know, can you explain to me the 2 pots
like, what do they do?
Yeah, no, and again, that's another one.
You know, we, everyone raves about Pyramids of Mars, but Pyramids
of Mars is resolved by the doctor wiring up a console and pressing
a few buttons and then sending Soutek off into the distant past or
whatever.
And it's super undramatic and massively uninteresting.
And there is that scene, which just consists of a long speech by
David Tennant who has no one to talk to.
Just like the nesting consciousness in rose.
It's that again.
Yeah, but he's not.
I mean, he's talking to the beast and the beast isn't really
listening and he's kind of working out what's going on, but he has
nothing to go on.
He just sort of comes up, or, you know, maybe I'm supposed to bust
these lovely vases or whatever, and they'll have whatever effect
I've just speechified about.
And so I'm not convinced that that works very well.
We've got all this writing on the wall, like the twin dilemma
about the history of everything.
I was thinking about colony in space, actually.
Well, no, I was thinking about between dilemma, Nathan, because I
always think about the twin.
Yeah, well, your version does have slugs in it, so...
This story could have been improved with mess store.
It's all I say.
Oh, Mel in a bubble trap, Mestor.
Oh, Rose.
You know, can I just say, like, okay, it's very convenient that
the cable snaps.
It's very convenient that they can get the cable out of that
tangled mess and get him to go down and then it's very convenient
that, you know, there just happens to be an air cushion.
Like, where did the air cushion come from?
Have I missed something?
No, so the dog just created the air cushion.
No, the doctor suggests that the Beast's jailer created the AK
Bush.
So originally, well, I'm not really sure because we wanted someone
to, if the mind of the beast ever escaped or something, we needed
someone to smash those vases for some reason, like I'm not
entirely sure that any of that really properly works.
Dear Matt Jones, I love these episodes.
I'm sorry that I'm pointing out these little things right at the
end, but I just at this point, this is why, for me, this is not
the top of the season.
I love this story and I love so much of it, but it's all these
we're lucky we've got this.
Lucky we've got that, all these little things that, for me, are
just convenient or it feels very, we've got 5 minutes left rushed
sort of bullet point, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
I don't think the confrontation with the beast is the strongest
part of the story.
No.
Yeah.
I think the beast looks incredible.
Amazing.
Yeah.
And you get that flash and last week's episode where Zach is
working on the controls, he just flashes up on the screen and it's
properly shocking. this horrid face showing up.
It's super scary.
It's actually getting to the point where it probably is slightly
too scary for Doctor Who, which is a very sort of Hinchcliffe kind
of approach as well, but it's slavering.
And even though its mind's gone, it does things like laughing.
It's super menacing.
It's much more menacing than just a sort of dumb shell of a body
with no one inhabiting it, sort of has any right to be.
And the doctor does get to interact with it.
But I just wonder whether having the big confrontation between the
doctor and the devil happen in such a way that the doctor doesn't
even get to speak to him.
It needed a touch of the Gabriel Wolfs there, didn't it?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, think about that scene in Pyramids of Mars, where
the doctor is in that room that Sutek is in.
And, I mean, you know, again, it's one of these things we all saw
Sutek when we were 10.
We completely accept it, but as has many times been observed
Zutech was exiled to that pyramid in Egypt, along with a whole
heap of robots and a bomb, and, you know, like all of these
things.
You were probably trying to avoid putting in the cell with him if
you really wanted him never to escape.
And so here, you know, it's not exactly 100% certain what's going
on.
I think the doctor says, if it's mind ever escaped, it was
designed, or if the beast ever escaped.
The idea was that the jail would immediately fall into the black
hole.
Yes, that's right.
Yeah.
And so, I guess smashing those things makes that happen.
Yeah, sort of a slightly magic version of, I guess, there's
science going on there.
I mean, I don't care about there being magic, particularly in a
story about the devil.
You know, there's magic all the way through.
I mean, how does the devil broadcast its image onto Zach's
hologram monitor?
Why do all those sort of weird things happen?
I mean, the magic symbols flying off Toby's skin into the ode is
absolutely nothing but magic.
You can't say that that's sort of science fiction in any sort of
proper sense.
And so that's okay.
I just kind of think that it requires just a lot of dialogue to
explain what's going on here and it would be better if we saw it.
I do miss there being a proper confrontation with a villain.
I'd agree with that.
Having criticised that part of it.
It's still extremely entertaining, like, as these things are
taking place at the same time and, you know, um, them all escaping
and and then ultimately, of course, the doctor and Rose been
reunited there at the end and and her just, what was the thing
that they said?
Sorry.
I think we beat it. and it's good enough for me, you know?
And who are you?
Well, the stuff of legend, which is, you know.
And you know, I do believe, I could be wrong on this. that that
last shot of the Dr. and Rose might have been the last shot of the
season.
I think that too.
I think I'd heard that as well Yeah, and I think if you look and
they're both looking up at sort of the roof and the cameras up
high, I see tears.
I see Billy all misty-eyed.
I like to believe that.
I think that's a beautifully framed shot.
And it's definitely designed to just be an iconic shot of the 2 of
them in the Tartars.
You know, it would make a great still to just sort of show what
they were about.
It is them being horrifically smug.
And I think possibly it's intentional because at this point
everyone knows exactly what sort of fall they're, you know, heading
towards over the next few episodes.
Not the audience, but everyone's sort of involved in the
production we've already shot.
You've ghosts and doomsday.
And I think we are kind of setting up this sort of smug hubristic
kind of relationship that they have, which is about to go horribly
wrong.
I think it's working on a metal level as well, because unless you
were there, it's easy to undersell just how popular David Tennant
and Billy Piper were with the general public.
And I think that's speaking to the audience.
They are the stuff of legends when it comes to the audience.
I do love that line.
I do love it.
And I do like the way it's played.
And of course, when speaking of Ida being saved at the end there
you know, the original plan was her to come back in a very early
version of Planet of the Ude.
So they always had their eye on the fact that she might be a
recurring character and you get the line where the doctor says, Ida
maybe see you again.
He has to say that to many people.
Yeah.
It's a shame that we didn't get to see her again because she was
such a great character.
She's fantastic.
You know, she was on the Doctor 2 weakest link, which came after
season two.
She was one of the contestants.
There was David Tennant, John Barriman, Camille and Noel Clark, and
Jake from Age of Steel, and Claire Rushbook.
Ida was one of the contestants.
So K 9 a contestant?
He was.
He got voted off first by everyone.
I think there might have been a pact amongst the contestants to
allow the core characters who everyone knew to sort of get through
to the later rounds.
I think maybe too, you know, canines there as a kind of joke, but
he's not really sustainable as a contestant on the weakest link.
And so he's there because, you know, everyone loves canine and
stuff, but they just wanted to get on with the people doing the
weakest link.
I'm not going to spoil who wins because I live in hope that I can
find video of this and put a link in the show notes, but suffice
it to say I'm very pleased with the outcome.
Look, I'm very pleased that I got to chat about this two-parter
with you both.
It's been illuminating and it's a really solid story for me.
It's not my favourite of the season, I think, the points there at
the end, just take the show off it right at the end, but it really
is one of the most underrated, 2 partters, often people talk about
other ones, but I think this is, you know, a really fantastic
story.
And you know, it's an important story for the series as well, I
think.
It does a lot for it.
It establishes a lot of what we think of as the aesthetic of the
series. you know, the Ud reoccur, the doctrine kind of as an
astronaut in that orange space suit and the grimy kind of space
aesthetic.
They end up revisiting that again and again, right into Peter
Cabaldi's era.
So it sets up a lot of that visual imagery.
And we're going into space, really, for the 1st time, alien
planets with alien creatures much more than we have in the 1st 18
months.
Yeah, and it works because, you know, it's a template that works.
It's a resounding success, this story, and so they just keep
feeding from it.
I think that it does Hinchcliffe. well.
You know, there's a whole sort of cohort of fans roughly our age
for whom the Hinchcliffe era is the best era of Doctor Who.
I mean, I'm not one of them, but I like the era a lot.
And I think this improves on the Hinchcliffe era in lots of ways
that we've already talked about by having better characters by
having better relationships between characters, by making us
properly care about the people who die.
By having something more to say about, you know, the long buried
evil rising from the deep, which is more interesting, I think, than
we've normally had.
I think this might have been the kind of story that fans were
hoping for when they heard that the series was coming back.
And it's not exactly what you get, as Russell said, you know, dark
is easy.
It's not easy, not easy to do it this well, but they didn't
realise that the series they got was the series that they would
want.
They wanted every episode to be dark and grim, would necessarily
work, but on the occasional outing like this.
Fantastic.
All right, so it's part two of a two part story, which can only
mean it's time for picks of the week.
Todd.
Well, I've been debating about this in my head because originally
I was going to go with something like the Philippines classic the
Pyramids of Mars because Gabriel Wolf is in that.
And then we were talking through this episode about all of its
nods to the Planet of Evil and so I thought that would be a great
one for people to watch, but I'm not going to go for those
people.
I'm going to go with something a bit different.
I'm going to go suggest that you should all go and watch another
pit and another creature, the creature from the pit, just to see
how old school Doctor Who does it on a budget with a creature in a
pit that the doctor jumps down and hilarity ensures.
Thank you.
That was never bad advice to watch creature from the pin.
No, no, you have such a way with words, Todd.
Rarely, Nathan, rarely.
We call him the Todd.
So, Peter.
I would like to recommend a new YouTube series called Weird City
which is set in A Future World.
I've only watched the 1st episode, but I think it's said in the
same world where there's people who live above the line and below
the line, sort of in opulence or in more kind of a old style
sissy.
And the 1st episode is amazing.
It's got an A-list cast with Ed O'Neill from Married with Children
and Dylan O'Brien from Teen Wolf, and he's a big movie star as
well, Maze Runner, and LeVar Burton from Star Trek Next
Generation.
And it's the 1st time in a while that I've watched something which
has surprised me.
It's a love story, and I won't go any further than that, but it's
not what you expect, and it's got a great sci-fi backdrop to it, so
I'd recommend it.
Is it a series?
Yes, it's a series, but I think it might be an anthology series, so
it's different characters in each episode.
So the whole thing's available now.
There's certainly more than one episode available, but they might
be staggering it.
Give it a go.
You'll enjoy it.
Nathan?
I'm going to recommend a TV series as well.
There was a long time when Flights of Entirety 1st started where
we had to watch, you know, 40 Doctor Who episodes a month or
something and I kind of lost touch with television.
But I've had the opportunity to watch a lot more things and
Netflix is just a giant fire hose of fantastic high quality
entertainment.
And I've just watched a thing called Russian Doll.
A lot of people are probably talking about it now.
So it's probably, again, old hat by the time you get to hear this
but it's 8 parts.
They're each about 25 to 30 minutes long.
So it's about as long as the invasion.
And it really is extraordinarily well acted.
It looks incredible and it's really surprising.
So you've seen it, Peter?
No, but I've had so many recommendations to see it.
People say that it's amazing.
Please tell me it makes sense.
No.
So it's a woman, she's at her 36th birthday party.
We see her at the party.
She leaves the party and is hit by a car and dies, and then she
wakes up at the party again in a reprise of the very 1st scene of
the episode.
And so it's got a sort of groundhog day thing where she keeps
repeating a sort of sequence of events that end up somehow with
her dying and ending up back at the party.
And it happens over and over again, but it ends up going in such
surprising directions, and it has such interesting things to say
about the characters, and it's just a really, really strong piece
of writing, and it's beautifully performed by the lead actor whose
name I'll put in the show notes, but she's from Orange is the New
Black, and she's really, really incredibly good.
And it's intriguing and it has a lot to say about sort of trauma
and choice and it just has this incredible atmosphere.
And it's the sort of thing that you could absolutely watch in a
sort of long evening.
And it's really well worth the effort.
I really enjoyed it a lot.
Goodness, that does sound like the invasion.
I hope 2 episodes are animated.
I was going to say it sounds better than Planet of the Daleks
because that feels like 8 episodes.
It certainly feels like going through something over and over
again.
Well, dear listener, we've smashed up the devil's entire
collection of priceless meat vases, so we better head off quickly
before he wakes up and comes after us.
We'll be back next week to discuss your favourite Doctor Who
episode, Love and Monsters.
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 on our other podcasts, our series 11
flashcast Jody Intetera, and our James Bond and James Bond
adjacent commentary podcast, Bondfinger.
They're at JodyintoTara.com and bondfinger.com respectively, as
well as on Twitter, Facebook, and Apple Podcasts.
Until next time, may all your most cherished metaphysical beliefs
turn out to have some basis in objective reality.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Thank you for having me aboard.
See you soon.
That was Flight for Entirety, starring Todd B. will be Nate for
Bottomley and Peter Griffiths.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, Strings performance by Jane
Orberg.
This episode, some Vickers was recorded on the 23rd of February
2019 and released on the 12th of May.
Of course, to those of us who know him personally, The Beast is
not just the rarefication of the entirety of human evil.
He's also a great cook, a talented lounge singer, and a warm and
generous professional mentor.
Quiz.
Scooty, floating off into that black hole.
That'd be it.
Yeah, do you know what that is?
Yep, we're too.
So we're just nominating something.
Yeah, so I'll talk you through it and I'll just say, Peter, Todd
you know, what am I going to talk about?
Did we have we already picked David Tennant does a podcast with?
You weren't here.
None of that?
No, I can't, I don't know.
The only other pics of the week that we did were at the end of Age
of Steel.
I suspect I probably did.
It's just something related to this that you want, you want it.
What did you say?
Podcast with some Nonese.
He did a podcast with some non-entity, someone no one would want
to watch.
Ian McCallen.
No, not him.
Wasn't it the 3rd one?
anyway, whatever.
Oh, she was good.
I loved her.
At the end of that, I kept imagining the director saying, no, Jody
love, that's too interesting.
Give it more steel, Anthony.
More st land.
Yeah, sports deal.
Yeah, she's so likeable in it.
She's so likeable.
Well, I'm going to listen to it because if she's so likeable.
What going wrong?
Yeah, yeah.
I think, like, I don't think she's unlikeable.
Her doctor's not unlikeable, but she's not as interesting as Jodie
Whitaker herself is.
It's kind of like, just let Jody go.
It's like David Tennant.
It's kind of like, no, don't make him do the accent.
Just make him be kind of sexy, confident David Tennant.
It's like Peter Capaldi.
Yeah, you know, so hopefully maybe we'll get a change.
I think if your life was being written by Chris Chibnall, you
would be very interesting either.
No, I guess that'd be...
So you're right, Todd?
Can I throw to you first?
Yes, you can.
Okay.
All right, here goes.