Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight through Entirety
the only Modern and People Focus Doctor Who podcast that thinks
it's very important to know everyone by name.
I'm Nathan.
James.
I'm Todd.
And this is the story of how I left.
This is the story of how I left FTE podcast to go to the toilet.
So what's new with you, Richard?
Well, I'm just temping for this episode.
I'm hoping someone will give me a full-time job.
You know, it's worth a crack.
Well, we've arrived back on Earth for another two-part finale, only
to find that all our dead racist relatives are back. voting for
you, Kip, and sticking the place up with cheap cigarettes.
It's a pungent and terrifying army of ghosts.
Listeners, I had you all going there for a moment.
I wasn't giving you quite enough information, and I was sort of
misdirecting you a bit, you know, you thought I was actually going
to leave.
And the beginning of this episode, we've got that new who classic
trick of giving us certain information without giving us maybe the
correct information or all of the story and I certainly was very
worried.
Were you worried?
Did we think that Billy Piper's character was going to die at the
end of this?
We'll be suspended in the narrative because that's what naughty
Russell does.
He knows he's writing a soap.
And there's no doctor who never does that.
Sorry, Matthew Waterhouse.
Doctor Who never does that.
Sorry, Katerina, Doc, you never does that.
Sorry, Gene Marsh.
Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, unless we do.
So I remember a story and it's probably recounted on Elle
Sandifer's blog, and it's Russell talking about Bad Wolf.
And in Bad Wolf.
There's a scene where it looks like Rose has been shot and she
turns into a little sort of pile of dust on the floor.
And Russell says that the audience, the child audience would know
that she wasn't dead.
And I think that that's because she's too important a character
for us to kill off.
There's no way that we could have found that final episode next
week's episode satisfying or even tolerable, I think, if the focus
character for the last 2 years had ended up dying.
Well, you'd end up with something like, I don't know, torchwood.
Where everyone ends up dying sooner or later.
But I mean, that is geared towards adults, in theory at least, or
sort of horny 15 years. that's right. who also pine for Joss
Whedon.
So, yeah.
I mean, we've been leaning into her dying.
We got a mention from the beast a few weeks ago who said that she
would soon die in battle, and we know now, of course, that that
was shot after this was.
And so they sort of stuck it in as some foreshadowing.
And then last week, of course, at the end of fear her, there's
some kind of big battle coming and something terrible is going to
happen.
So we have been leaning into it.
Yeah, and like she's never, ever, ever, ever going to leave you.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, that's a bad situation when somebody says that.
Well, I think we knew that she was going to leave.
It had certainly been announced that Billy Piper was leaving the
program by then.
So the big question is, how does she leave?
and the other big question is, how on earth are we going to cope
with a modern Doctor Who that doesn't have Camille Kaduri in it?
And I seem to remember that I was much, much more upset about the
prospect of Camille leaving the show than I ever was about Billy
Piper.
It's so wonderful to see Camille front and centre in this episode
really taking the role of the Doctor Who companion.
She hasn't been in a lot of this season.
Like, it's just been little scenes, save for 2 weeks ago when she
was in Love and Monsters.
Yeah, where it was a great affecting role.
But besides that, it's been alternate Jackie and just little bits
and pieces.
So to have her right smack bang in the middle of the plot saying
grandad, Prentice, Hancock has come back.
You know, it's just fantastic.
I always think that. a wide role.
Because he's not, he's got not a lot to do, but he is wearing
flares.
Not much has changed.
Every time she says that.
I always think grandad, Prentice, Hancock. and I think Doctor Who
Classic says the rebus operation and the planet of evil.
I really hope that's what Russell meant now.
He's probably tractably evil.
Wouldn't be exactly meaning that.
Yeah, she is the, again, she's the lovely warm, sparkly heart in
everything she's in, isn't she?
I love her. when she's talking about being on set.
She's exactly the same as Jackie when Camille says, oh, I was
standing right next to a cyber person and I turned and I thought
he was, I was on his mark and he gave me such a blank look.
It was horrifying.
There's a beautiful moment where she really annoys the doctor by
repeatedly kissing him and like grabbing him and calling him, you
know, big fella and giving him a big kiss and stuff, which I just
think is absolutely terrific.
Like she now has the upper hand.
She gets to make the doctor feel uncomfortable and I think that's
really kind of sweet.
And all the way through, she does it.
There's a wonderful moment next week where the doctor leaps in for
some much needed exposition and she just tells him he can shut up
now.
But he does treat her like, you know, he puts it down so much in
this episode, yet she still just, you know, sucks it up and
bounces back.
When the doctor actually like explains who she is, like not the
best I've ever had, age 57 years because she looked into the time
vortex.
Like, she says, I'm 40 and he goes, delusional.
They make such a wonderful team.
And it's such a lovely sort of foreshadowing to perhaps a
companion who would be more his own age.
Yeah, yeah.
Who's willing to sort of, you know, have that sort of banter and
have little digs at each other.
But she's there for him.
When he pulls that chair up when Yvonne is going to do the ghost
shift, she stands there right behind him, like backing him up.
And it's beautiful.
Their bonding is beautiful despite all that little niggling
throughout the episode.
She's just a delight.
It's so great having her be the companion.
And the one thing.
I mean, it was just the one thing they had to do with her given
that it was going to be her last sort of semi-regular appearance
on the show.
And the only thing that I kind of miss is that she never got to
travel to an alien planet with them, which would have just been
tremendous.
It would have been very funny.
I mean, I guess I get a bit disappointed when she says, we better
not end up on Mars or wherever, you know, when she's inside the
Tartars.
It's sort of like, oh, Jackie, I kind of would like you to end up
on an alien planet.
But I'm with you.
It's such a, at the time, knowing that Billy was leaving, knowing
that Camille would be going as well was quite devastating.
And I don't think there's quite been a mother like her since
they've they've had some good attempts at it, but for me, she is
the best mum in the show.
It's not like she's Amy's mum or Clara's mum or Bill. right?
A case of perhaps diminishing returns there, but she's just a
joy.
Yeah.
I think Jackie King probably gives her a bit of a run for her
money in series four, but as Brendan would say, we're getting
ahead of ourselves.
So we come back to Earth, we're in the middle of something, and
invasion has already started to happen.
Always the best way, as Russell said, bring him in in the middle
of the drama.
We don't appear on a white void set and unless we're doing episode
one of the mind robber.
Everyone disses the mind robber as well.
Yeah, no, we're not doing that kind of thing anymore.
And it's much more exciting because of that.
It also, unfortunately, means that we don't get to see David being
quiet as much as I would like.
Yeah, yeah.
I quite like it when he doesn't do anything.
That's right.
When he's on screen, but not saying anything.
But it's a little bit like invasion of the dinosaurs.
Something huge and worldwide has happened and our, you know, the
doctor and rose appear and they don't know what's going on yet.
And so Jackie is the one who gets to explain it to them.
But it gives rise to something that sort of happened last season
but becomes an episode 12 tradition, which is the celebrity
cameos.
Oh, on the TV, like with the weather and then the Tricia Show and
that ad they do, Ecto Shine, and then Barbara Windsor in
EastEnders.
Dirty Dens Ghost comes back.
You know, you know that's that's an in-joke in joke.
Really?
Because...
Does he come back?
Well, he left the year before, did he?
Dirty 10 Watts.
Who is Kisten in Resurrection of the Dialects?
That his wife.
Chrissy Watts was played by Tracy Ann openly.
Ah.
How about that?
You know, it's not just, oh, isn't that funny?
Okay, let's bring back Den Watts and it was Kiston.
It's a reference to the fact that you've got his ex-wife in the
show.
Yeah.
I just adore that Barbara Wins is now canon.
I think it's amazing that she had never been in the show before.
I mean, it's if Tom Baker got talked to in the scratchment off the
ground.
Surely she would have been, you know, the companion in that or
something like that.
She would have played Camille Kuduri.
Ah, yeah.
I mean, they've had Joan Sims back in the 80s from the carry on
movies, but I'm just really surprised that Barbara never made it
until this point in time.
We also have Derek Akora, which I think is a really funny little
cameo because he's the sort of famous ghost hunter and he's on TV
lamenting that no one needs him anymore because there's ghosts all
over the place, which I think is pretty good.
And so this will go on.
We'll get that again next year and it'll be a thing that happens
from time to time in the future, I think.
It's another way that Russell is able to say we own all of
television.
Yes.
This is a show about a television box with a box flying around
inside the box.
Yeah, yeah.
That's how Billy Hartnell explains it.
It is.
Billy Piper Hartnell.
Billy Piper Hartle.
You've discovered television.
With similar tombstone teeth.
You knew she was going to die.
She's been carrying the graveyard around in her mouth 10 years
now.
It's such silliness, but I love it.
I just love all those little cameos Oh, no, we do.
It will also, as little fan children of the of the never wear of
the previous generation, it posits us in reality.
And we used to get so excited when Doctor Who was mentioned on
Dave Allen, or there was a little clip of anything.
This is a little nod for the children now to know that, you know
you're big, but this is the difference though.
Back then, it was a discreet, quiet, little nerdy thing that was
just lost amongst the rest of television.
And not saying it was any less popular, but it also wasn't that
much more special except to us.
Yeah.
And now, of course, with media, the whole world can share being
nerdasmic little children again, like weekend.
We're not.
I don't know that we're as special as we used to.
No, but I think that's a great thing.
I actually remember, and I've probably said this on the podcast
before, when series one was on air, someone at work said, you look
happy, and I said, I have to confess that it's because Doctor
Who's back on, you know, and not only that, but it's the biggest
thing on TV.
And I think this is the era when Doctor Who is at its most
important.
It's at its biggest, maybe in the mid 70s as well, but definitely
here where it is absolutely massive and will continue to be for
the next couple of years.
The ghosts, did you suspect that they were the side limit?
No.
It's a very strange way of bringing them back, isn't it?
Because the cyberman, James.
Well, they deliberately spread a rumour back in 2006 that it was
the Gelf returning to throw people off.
And she actually says, asks if it's the gals, doesn't she?
And he says, don't be dumb.
We're never bringing them back.
Saws.
I love his dialogue.
Like the footprint doesn't look like a boot.
Yeah, it's that's a lovely line, isn't it?
Hang on.
Is that...
Are we lampshading something else?
Is that actually...
Now, but isn't it Conan Doyle reference?
Doesn't it come back, gentle listener, out there might remember?
I know that line.
It is a clever way of introducing. off Watson. the eider down
muddy.
Yes.
I do remember that one.
All other, whole other fanfic world just opened up beyond the
bridge. called Sherlock.
It's a very strange way of bringing them back because they have
been science fiction villains very much.
And so bringing them back in this weird, supernatural way.
You know, it's a way that none of us would have predicted.
In fact, from the edge, back from memory.
It's a very nice way of doing.
I think it is it is tremendous.
It could be a bit of phasic if you can't remember a couple of
months ago.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's always interesting how Russell sets these things up because
back in the age of steel, Rise of the Cyberman, it was quite clear
that the worlds had closed and thus it kind of could possibly be
the Cyberman, the fanboy in you wants that, but it's been stated
that it's highly unlikely, you know, if worlds are colliding.
So you're sort of discounting it at the same time as wanting it to
happen, which I think is a really clever writing.
I mean, it had to be them, didn't it?
Last year, it was a monster that had been brought back for the 1st
time in the two-part finale, and so this year, it's the same
pattern.
And I've observed before that series one brings back the Dalek
series 2 brings back the Seidman series 3 brings back the master
you know, corresponding to the main antagonists of the 1st 3
doctors.
Russell is bringing the mythology of the program to a whole new
generation of viewers in the same order.
And series 4 brings back Davros, just like Davros is introduced
with the 4th.
Yeah, yeah.
So, and the sultanans, obviously.
The sudden and themselves.
For me, I've never been the greatest villains of all time.
No, they're terrible.
But it was really great listening to your Age of Steel Rise of the
Cyberman podcast. because we're obviously still recording this as
the season has been released.
And I've just listened to those.
But your whole discussion about the way in which Russell has
reinvented the cyberman and the new origins.
I found really quite interesting because I had just sort of
dismissed the whole thing.
I hated that when I watched it originally because it wasn't the
original.
Well, it wasn't not like you.
Not at all.
Because it wasn't the original cyberman who had a history with the
doctor was just these robotic monsters that are all the same that
are just, you know, have no history with the doctor.
So I just kind of went, that's a whole load of rubbish.
Thus, I'm going to dismiss those 2 episodes.
And so having these cyberman cybers things coming back here.
It's sort of like, well, they're not really the cybermen.
They're just fakes.
But I really did enjoy your discussion about why he did that and
how he reinvented them and coming not from like, you know, some
10th planet thing, you know, upside down earth.
Yeah, so I actually do really appreciate that discussion.
And certainly coming into watching these episodes and even
reevaluating age of steel and rise of sidemen, it certainly
improved my appreciation.
I do think here, though, they are kind of generic robot monsters
in a way.
They do upgrade people and that's clearly their aim.
And so that's something that Russell has chosen to foreground that
very often gets forgotten in the classic series.
With a notable exception tide of attack of the side men, which
does upgrade people.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think it's very much back to Kit Peddler.
Yeah.
In that it was all about the fear of technology.
And the fear of modern, you know, where they were talking
Christian Barnard was talking about at the time on anyway, he was
good.
We've talked about this before, actually. heart replacement
surgery.
Goodness, I'm getting a flashback, dear listener, 1978 when we 1st
did this podcast.
Yeah.
So the same fears are there.
And the little AirPod thing is very clear, but Russell talks about
why do we constantly need the new thing?
What is it about the fear of being left behind?
And that maybe is the clinch of this episode.
The fear of rose being left behind, or in other words, dying is
the saying that we fear, the little FOMO fear.
Get out the BBC FOMO machine.
That's what this episode is all about.
Yeah, the fear of missing out.
The fear of not being part of whatever this collective is.
Have we mentioned Brexit yet?
don't think.
No, normally we have to.
I do think, though, there's sort of so much going on that there
isn't that much time for the sidemen to do very much apart from
sort of stomping around the place.
And that's why we have Graham Harper.
Yes, we do.
Can you imagine how doll this would be without him?
Getting 9.7% appreciation from, not from the viewing figures.
I think they got about James.
You're our lexicographer here.
The appreciation.
Yeah, it was eight.
That's not bad.
I'm being seventh, I think, that was only after Corey and more
football.
England lost that week.
I was hoping they'd throw a reference in, but I don't think they
did, but there was a major thing, you know.
But getting that sort of thing, it's just Graham Harper, it really
would, there's not much in this. really thin.
Yeah, I think that that's true.
I mean, you get the ghosts introduced and then you get a guided
tour of torchwood and we kind of set up the situation for next
week.
Which is the apprentice.
You know, that's the location.
That's the same opening establishing shot that the British
apprentice used.
Yeah, the aerial shot.
Yeah, the Crown Tower, whatever it is.
They had originally, I think, intended to create their own CG
tower, but kind of ran out of money.
It was going to be over the breach, wasn't it, James?
It was originally written to be in the writer's tale.
It was over the over the card. originally, originally, the episode
was set in Cardiff.
Oh, okay. over the time riff.
Right.
And when Torchwood was commissioned to series, Russell decided, oh
I'll set it in London, make it bigger, make the whole torch would
mythology, and then destroy that.
And then we have this one over here, which is still relatively
unaffected by the events of that story, apart from, say, Yanto.
I think that we did talk in our previous episode about the way
that Russell takes London and stuffs it full of secret alien bases
and stuff.
And so this is another example of that where you look at Canary
Wharf.
You see that very building and you think about how Torch would
actually build that in order to get to the rift.
And I just love that.
That's one of my favourite things about this era of Doctor Who.
But it's so ridiculous that the cybermen came through 1st and then
they're just in the office space next door behind some plastic
sheets.
And then, and then, and then like Gareth goes in, and he gets
cyber tied and you hear nothing, then Freemas, and whatever her
name is, goes in and she screams and sees a cyberman, and then
Matt, I want to see something?
Yes, Matt, you go in, but you get to scream and have all the like
it's like an angle grinder, isn't it?
Thank you, mate. angle grinder and anything like that.
Like, I just love the way it goes from.
No noise to like full on.
Our office is in the Governor Philip Tower down at the quay on the
top floor.
And for the last, honestly, 4 or 5 months, we've had the office
suite being built around us, there's a lot of screaming.
And honestly, the glint in the eye from the mirror balls, those
builders put up constantly.
It's really not that far.
It's not that far different really, isn't it?
In fact, it's the only kind of interesting peril that sort of
happens, isn't it?
Because it is just very much an introduction and a guided tour.
And so we have to have the cybermen do something.
And so that's, I think, why they're there doing that in this
episode.
Yeah, it's all William Patterson.
I see them all as being Bill Patterson's resurrected career from
the rocketeer. because it's that same gorgeous 30s, Will Eisner
helmet design.
But hang on, didn't the sphere come through 1st and created the
breach through which the cybermen were able to follow?
So was this, there's huge bronze ball in the air?
James?
The sphere came through after the tower was built.
So they noticed the breach and then built a tower and then the
sphere came through.
I like the sphere a lot.
I think it's very cool.
And it's a sort of great idea.
And it's one of those things too, that Russell manages to explain
in just sort of very normal terms, you know, there is a talk about
no sort of electromagnetic radiation and no mass and no kind of
anything, no readings from it, as if it isn't there.
And just that detail where it said, that's why it makes you feel
uncomfortable because it doesn't seem to be there.
And he manages to achieve that and make it uncanny without leaning
very heavily into sort of science fiction gobbledygook.
Yes, it's a mystery. another mystery on top of things, and you
have to wonder, how does that work with the cyberman?
And part of the fanboy in me, when you look at your kind of thing
Oh, could it be something to do with the Daleks being like a
sphere, but you could sort of discount that?
I can't remember.
That's good that you guessed.
I'd hadn't guessed at the time.
It's a little...
Paul, he said it.
It's a nod to the hard SF of the 60s.
So Fred and Jeffrey Hoyle and Standard Style Lamb, and, you know
who would posit things like this, that, you know, especially in
Standard Style Limbs writing, where you've got things that
shouldn't exist, and it's about the disquiet of being in around
unrealities.
It's really nicely done.
Because again, it ties in with the whole new tech thing.
We're very comfortable with things that slightly frighten us.
Or then maybe there's that sense of the brave new world of having
to overcome our fears by believing that we're in control of it, but
underneath there's the substantive fear that we don't actually
know as, as, um, David said it at the time, it gets into our
little plastic things and we don't know how it gets there.
I assume he's talking about his phone. but I love the fact that
that entire plot allows Rose to do a very classic Doctor Who thing
of the companion investigating separately and she gets to put on
the white lab coat and then follow somebody down somewhere else
and she's got her own little story to solve.
She's pert we for most of this episode, isn't she?
He puts on a white cone.
I mean, both parts of the episode separate the doctor and Rose for
pretty much all of it.
They're not together very much, except in the sort of last few
scenes of the final episode.
But what we do get, and what was an absolute surprise, is the
reappearance of Mickey.
Does she follow him down there?
Is he the scientist you're following or not?
At the last minute?
Sure, but he is definitely visible in shot before he turns
around.
With his back to her.
Yeah, yeah.
And he's had a haircut or whatever and we don't recognise him.
He's wearing that great hoodie anyway.
Did you know it was him?
Had you spotted him before?
I haven't in the in the day.
I didn't even do it again this time.
Oh, that's right.
It appears in it.
It's been so long since I watched.
No, I kind of remember my gaze sort of went to the person in the
background.
Why is that person sort of horring in the background, but I didn't
really...
And then when he turns around, it's like, oh, my goodness, you
know?
How fantastic.
And I do think too, that it is a good idea to have Rose and Mickey
together.
We'll talk more about this next week, but the last time Mickey
appeared.
We thought that Rose had been rather mean to him.
And so getting them together to kind of patch things up a little
bit, I think, was kind of a good idea.
And it is just amazing to see him back.
What I like is the fact that Mickey is seen to be completely
competent and has managed to infiltrate this organisation, whereas
Rose can only infiltrate for 5 seconds before she's caught.
And that massive gun.
Where was he hiding that?
You really don't want to know.
It's not a compact laser to last.
He's actually a little bit dismissive of her too.
He's in no way excited to see her.
He calls her babe in this sort of dismissive way.
And it's kind of like the tables have turned.
He's sort of over her, or at least wants to look like he is, but
he doesn't sort of fall into that subservient tin dog role
immediately.
He's got a job to do and he's clearly, you know, since we left him
behind in sort of episode 5 or whenever it was, episode 6.
With the other blonde.
With the other blonde, more of whom laser.
But only last week in recording, too.
But I think that's so fantastic, I think.
His role in this episode, Rose's role in this episode.
Jackie's role in this episode are all wonderful.
And the other person who I absolutely adore is Tracy Ann Cyberman
Yvonne Hartman.
I mean, I think she's every Doctor Who Gay Boy's delight.
I mean, she sashays handclaps and hair flicks away through this.
Fabulous hair.
You know?
Really?
Are we going to talk about the hair?
My favourite moment is when is the confidential when David says to
her she's been 15 hours in makeup?
And, and, oh, one of the wake-up lady said 16, David, we didn't
get a home over the weekend.
And she still can't get a bloody hair.
Oh, sorry, it's the driest thing.
Billy's been out on a planet of the flying stingray vortisors and
she still manages bounce and plasticity.
And honestly, open, it's just a thicket.
It's a single Lego. clipped onto a head.
No, it's just really dry and rough.
No, no, she obviously's just her own hair because she's 15 hours
in makeup.
She is incredible and I think we should talk about torchwood as
well.
So Torchwood has been occasionally name checked.
Even since Bad Wolf.
Yeah.
You have a list?
No, actually, I don't have I don't have a list.
Sorry to disappoint you, listeners.
So it has been, you know, name check from time to time, but not in
a sort of massive way.
It doesn't get... almost every story, but it's just subtly done.
Yeah.
It's even at the party in Rise of the Sidemen when Pete says how's
Torchwood going, mate, something.
Yeah, that's right.
And there's a wonderful reference to Torchwood in Love and
Monsters.
I can't remember whether in that episode we mentioned that it has
Bad Wolf Torchwood and Mr. Saxon all in the one episode.
It's our 1st Mr Saxon reference as well.
So Torch would sort of set up as an antagonist for the doctor, but
it hasn't really been serving that purpose.
But it's a very strange antagonist for the doctor, I think.
Well, I quite like it.
Like, I like the fact that they're trying to find the doctor, like
using CCTV.
The 1st time we have the ghost shift, the music that accompanies
it is literally the torch would theme.
Oh, yeah, it is too.
And then, you know, they get taken and then we're walking around
the base.
I mean, I think it's a bit stupid having like the Egyptian mummy
thing.
I loved that.
You could see that one of Sutek's little animated corpses is
standing right next to the police box.
A sarcophagus next to it.
I mean, I liked it at the time.
And I thought, well, didn't they burn the entire house down?
So it wouldn't have been all charcoal?
Maybe those things are not proof to, you know, maybe they're
asbestos line?
Yeah, it was a space sarcophagus.
Okay, time vortex protected it.
Okay, I stand corrected.
I like the cat with a moustache and a big begging bowl and
thinking what that's from.
And what about the big giant CG thing?
There's a giant CG spaceship.
Enormous Webber barbeque.
Is that a reference to the killer cats of Jiddensen?
Oh, that's not real.
But I do like to get the whole tour of Torchwood, and it's like, oh
happy day, and I'm a people person, like all of that stuff.
Oh, yes, and I love when she says that because she's a monster and
that's how you know she's a monster.
Yeah, because of her fluent management.
It's neoliberal proto-fashion.
Jab a walkie man.
Yeah, she's great in the torchwood audios.
Oh really?
finish is done.
They've done a number of them set before the fall of torture.
We did talk a little bit about fascism in the last cyberman to
Pada, and so I think it's interesting that what we have here in
Torchwood is explicitly imperialist.
And there's one point where Jackie says, we don't have a British
Empire, and her response, Tracy Ann Seidman, responds, not yet.
And we observed in our tooth and claw episode that Torchwood still
uses imperial tons, and she has to make that quite clear.
We don't go metric in torchwood, like those terrible Europeans.
And it just seems very strange.
Let's talk Brexit, Richard.
It does.
It's exactly, the one knot I thought here was another commendators
have said this.
It's really precinent of Russell to get this. and others have, you
know, the guardian and the independent, what's left of the
independent.
How will Britain manage without our own energy source?
I think we actually need to go up and find some seaweed.
And then, you know, if only Debbie Watling was still with us and
could hurl a lungful at the North Sea and see what we get back.
Well, I mean, if the doctor hadn't spent so much time in the 70s
shutting down alternative energy projects.
Thank you.
A whole lot of eye patches distribute it to every fascist crypto
dictator that might want to take over a power station.
Then we might get that.
But yeah, it's very, it's a very interesting nod to, well, Britain
if you want your empire back, you'll need a power source.
Yeah.
Holland had its, all the Netherlands had their, the nether regions
as Storm French has, has their, their own energy source for many
years, just why they were able to, you know, pull an empire.
Well, keep a welfare state going.
The Scandwegians will do clever things.
But we have, yeah, we're being still part of the British Empire.
I think it's just us and August Bank holiday Island now, isn't
it?
Maybe he's just tapping into the late motif at the time.
He's very good at knowing how people are feeling.
That's why his productions, all his TV shows.
He's got a new one coming up.
Yeah, yeah.
With that bloke with the ears.
He can't stop sketching, clean to that up.
I mean, there's always been U-Kip and things in Britain.
There has always been.
We always had Mosley and we always had, you know, the Mitford
sisters.
Yeah, exactly.
So there has always been that sort of under current of sort of
British fascism.
And so here that's the doctor's enemy.
You know, we've talked about years ago about how Bob Holmes makes
bureaucrats and humourless, rule bound, hide bound people are the
doctor's enemy, but Russell has made the doctor's enemy, that kind
of, you know, strain of British imperialism.
It's a lovely nod back to Mac Hulk and Bob Holmes, isn't it?
Which we've kind of lost over the years.
Well, I think Russell's Doctor Who is, you know, explicitly
political in a way that Moffat's is not so much and in a way that
Chibnol in his 1st year, he seems to have really very, definitely
trying to avoid.
But it is very strange.
And I do love the contrast between Tracy Ann's incredibly genial
manner and her response to the doctor's question, so am I your
prisoner then?
And she just says, well, yes, you are.
So it's a great sort of Doctor Who villain in the sense that it's
not a slavering moustache twirling villain.
She's a super genial management type.
Look, if this had been set back in the 1970s, she would have been
a he and she would have been like Mr. Chin or something like that
you know, um...
Although unless we've got Susan Gemma sitting in her leather
knickers out, you know, the BBC board, you know, Barry Letts have
been allowed to do that.
But this also predicates season 11.
I believe that's what we've just been through, haven't we?
I shouldn't say that.
Series 11, we've just enjoyed.
Chibnall's response, you might want to say, is Graham Williams
response.
I'll just say quickly, is that we respond by small acts of
kindness, with the overweening and overbearing threat that it
cannot be controlled, which is, you want, if you want to call it
free wheeling, late stage capitalism or neoliberals, gone mad or
whatever it is you want to call it.
But it actually is nicely indicated in this story, is that, you
know, as living in this stage of capitalism that you have to buy
the new things, and if you don't keep up, you're left behind, and
you're less of a citizen.
Because we're not citizens anymore, are we?
We're customers.
And boarding any state rail.
You'll know that straight off.
It's really amazing how foreshadowing this is. 13 stop.
Stop it.
How many years later?
I don't know how many years.
This is like sitting, watching Sarah Jane leave to the point where
an unearthly child started for us watching this now.
Oh, Lordy, as to when it was on our television sets in 2006.
That's horrendous dot.
The 1st and 8th of July 2006.
So nearly 13 years ago.
Gosh.
But to have these things discussed in an episode 13 years ago
which is so relevant now, is amazing.
It harks back to things like the Green Death in the Pertury era
where those things weren't really to the forefront at that time.
Well, they were strongly discussed at the time.
We just all got over it quickly when Neoliberalism took on.
Yeah.
Dave Tennant in this episode wears some 3D glasses throughout.
And when I 1st watched this, I could have just gone up to him and
ripped those things off his face and just thrown them in the bin
and go, what are you doing?
It is super slappable, isn't it?
No, that what little children can be a part of the show because
everyone's got a pair.
But this time through.
I actually was quite amused by the whole thing and he keeps coming
back to it and keeps having them.
I actually quite liked it.
It's the same reason why Moffatt puts Capoldi and the Ray-Bans. you
can make something normal or every day or gettable by the
audience.
And it's actually a consumer.
He's the point of difference.
Thank you.
He's the point of difference in the plot.
Everyone else has got high tech.
The doctor gets something out of a comic book and still manages to
defeat the threat.
It also kind of works with his sort of slightly 50-ish hipster
kind of look.
You know, those 3D glasses, the green and red ones.
Big deal in the 50s.
Yeah, for 3D movies.
And so it fits his look.
I think really well.
I think Tennant has, I'm going to do a my favourite tenant moment
and my least favourite tenant moment of the episode.
My favourite tenant moment is where he makes Yvonne call off the
ghost shift by just sitting in a chair staring at her and kind of
half smiling and just his confidence.
Like, that is a great doctor moment.
Wonderful, wonderful.
Had they written down, yes.
Yeah, least favourite moment.
It's who you're going to call Ghostbusters.
I just think that is bum clenchingly embarrassing.
It's really...
I'm just sort of, yes, okay.
It's very self-conscious, yes.
It's so bad.
It's really bad.
But again, little fans would love that.
But I mean, is Ghostbusters a living reference in 20 years?
No, it's 1980, what?
I guess the thing is here, when I was looking at David's
performance in this.
I knew that this had been recorded earlier in the season.
So I was quite interested to see whether or not there's still
traits of him finding his way in the role and not being perhaps
the stereotype that we think that he is.
And I think there are moments in this episode where he actually is
more subtle than what comes ahead and there's times where I think
oh, it's not quite the David Tennant that I remember.
And it's interesting coming at this point when you view it in the
season having been through the last few episodes.
Again, for the most part, his performance in this is surprisingly
enjoyable.
I know that we've talked a bit about how annoying we think he is.
But then when you come back to actually watch him, I actually find
him quite hypnotic.
It's a bit like perch we in that, you know, a lot of fans of a
certain age will be quite critical.
But then you actually go back and watch him, you actually sit
there enjoying the performance.
And I really enjoyed this episode.
I mean, I don't know where we're at with it, but I came out of
this liking it more than I had previously liked it.
And that's been the case for most of this season is that virtually
every episode that I've watched, I've either liked the same or
more.
And I'm at 9 out of 10 for this episode, which I'm...
Which is reeling.
I'm sure that you're running a shop because you're saying like, so
the plot is so thin on the ground, but I just...
It doesn't matter because you've got direction and performance.
And I just enjoyed just watching it. really enjoyed the lines, the
performances.
Isn't it a lovely to talk about presaging.
It's a lovely thing to say, you don't need to over egg the plot
Stephen.
You can just do a very simple, elegant story and let the director
and then as Graham Harper says, in his interviews.
Then I just stop, leave the cameras static and let the artists do
what they've been working on for 3 weeks.
And that's when we all start tearing up.
And it's that gorgeous juxtaposition of really beautifully edited
crisp direction.
And I am going to, I was going to mention some of the, some of the
Socarol Reed and David Lean thumbs, because there's a lot of
British army stuff in this.
Then I thought, of course, it's Graham Harper.
He grew up with those films.
He knows how to array soldiers for the camera.
It's just like all the life and death of Colonel Blimp is a great
film that does use almost the same camera angles for their
soldiers.
So, yeah, you've got all of that lovely stuff there.
And then you've got these little moments where, no, I'll just stop
now.
Billy's doing her thing now.
David's doing his thing now.
I just love the way in which when the ghosts finally do come
through.
They suddenly take that formation as soldiers.
Yeah.
And it's just lovely little touches.
And then as we head into the cliffhanger or the intercutting
between what's happening with the doctor, what's happening with
Rose down in the sphere room and the tension is building and, you
know, you're getting that parallel story between them, like the
severe is not ours.
They came through 1st and that sort of stuff as they're
discovering that down there.
I just love that device where you intercut between people having
conversations and finding that out at the same time.
And the 2 plots kind of reach their climax at exactly the same
moment.
In fact, it's 3 plots because we get all those shots of the ghosts
turning into cybermen, you know, at the power estate and uh, in
Paris, I think, and uh, outside the Taj Mahal and sort of news
reports.
We get the guy from the pirate planet warning us to stay in our
home.
Louise Jameson's husband.
Yes.
But at the time, it may have been an ex at that time.
He's such a great actor in that, isn't he?
Well, he gets killed.
But like that stuff is tremendous.
And I think the best thing about it, we're being told to stay in
our homes and the cybermen are in our homes.
So, you know, they escape up the stairs from the Cyberman only to
find there's a Cyberman there.
And one of the things that I miss a lot, these massive scale
scenes.
So you get a family, you know, who have nothing to do with the
plot, but are just there to illustrate...
Yeah, it's the inversion of the camera.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
They're us watching it.
They're Eric and Esa for sort of 2006.
So we see the scale of what the cybermen have done.
And we haven't really had that before.
The only classic series, things that I can think of are The
Invasion, where, you know, everyone's out and Cybern are marching
through the streets and clearly this owes a lot to that.
And invasion of the dinosaurs, I guess, when we evacuate London.
But we don't really see that.
Whereas here we see, you know, it's another big public invasion
like the Slovene last year.
And I just adore it.
It's something new that Russell's brought to the program and I'm
absolutely on board with it.
Yeah, no, it's great.
I mean, I love the fact that they actually state we are the
cyberman.
I mean, the fanboy in me.
They have to say it because I didn't really say that.
I don't think in the previous 2 episodes.
Then you've got Mickey Smith, defender, defending the earth, the
earth, like sort of the spinoff that never happened for Rose.
And, you know, the sphere is not our own and then you've got that
music rising.
As the Daleks come out of that.
I think the Dalek music kicks in just before the Daleks appear.
So, um, if you know your music cues, uh, you'll know what it is
and presumably some of the audience would have got a sort of
unidentifiable Dalek related sensation at that moment without
really realising why Dalek tingle.
Tag.
But I like the Wayne Witch, like you've got the cyberman threat
and the threat of the world's collapsing, but then you up the ante
with the Daleks.
You know, had it been the cyber controller coming out in his chair
the same sort of impact at all.
It's like he references the cyber king in this, doesn't he?
Yeah, there is a little nice.
Yeah, nice that these time things through as well.
Oh, what about the cyber thing from Tobias Vaughan's office?
Or the one from Wheeling Space.
The decorative wall feature. in the cupboard.
From Fear Hurst slash the invasion.
Yes.
See, I've never found the cybermen.
That threatening compared to the Daleks.
The only time I've ever been more sort of afraid of them was in
Revenge of the Sidemen.
I agree.
When you've got the cyber mats that were poisoning everybody, and
that sort of freaked me out.
So to have something here that is even more of a threat, going
into the cliffhanger is just tremendous.
And you'd sort of, your senses are overloaded between all of these
things and also knowing that Rose could potentially die.
And then you've got the 2nd cliffhanger, which is the next time on
Doctor Who, straight following it, where, again, he's already
misdirecting us with, oh, this is a story of how I died, but then
in the way that next time it's cut together, you actually believe
that the Cyberman and the Daleks are going to be working together
it's very very clever.
Well, dear listener, those darlets aren't going to run away from
themselves, so it's time for us to leg it.
We'll be back next week, ready to moisten up for doomsday.
In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts
and you can keep up with us at flightthroughentirety.com.
Flight through entirety on Facebook and at FT podcast on Twitter.
You can also find our Series 11 Flashcast, Jody Interterra, at
Jody Interterra.com, and at Jody Interterra on Twitter, and our
James Bond commentary podcast, Bondfinger at bondfinger.com, at
bondfinger on Facebook, and at bondfingercast on Twitter.
Until next time, please make sure you always insert your AirPods
firmly, but gently, on no account should they be shoved roughly
into your brain.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
See you soon.
Thank you.
That was Flight Through Entirety, starting Todd B, it'll be Nathan
Bodley, James Selwood and Richard Stone, theme arrangement by
Cameron Lamb, Strings Performance by Jane Allberg.
This episode, Grandad Prentice Hancock, was recorded on the 28th
of April 2019 and released on the 2nd of June.
Of course, the Australian version of Torch, what is called Torch
Walker, and is mostly concerned with spiders, land, and white
people.
If interested, contact our new assistant minister for
Multicultural Affairs, Parliament House, Canberra.
If I say the words you know one more time, kill me today, because
I keep doing it.
I edit a lot of them out.
I'm much worse than you.
The floor is littered with me saying, you know, over and over
again.
The last episode I was in.
That all I kept saying.
I kept hearing it and going, oh, Nathan, you just must want to
just destroy me.
No, no, that actually is a nice tag with you.
You're going to die for the 1st bit.
Nathan probably recognises the waveform.
Okay, before you know now.
But when the doctor actually like...