Hello, Delister, and welcome back to Flight for Entirety, the only
Doctor Who podcast.
Entirely hosted by men who are into musical theatre.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Lisa.
I'm James.
And I'm a mounted mooring mast barnacled with dalek bulls for this
one.
Well, we're back in old New York, but the metaphors for late
capitalism are still everywhere to be found.
The boss is watching and starvation is just one insolent remark
away because it turns out that our supervisors are Daleks in
Manhattan.
So, this is a very highly regarded two partner, I think.
Is that right?
Am I, you know, do I have my finger on the pulse of fan wisdom for
this one?
I don't think that is right now.
How can it not be?
When I went to New York for the 3rd time, and the 1st thing I got
off the, I got off the plane ran inside, even before I made the
pit stop, was to turn it up to telly on and put this on again.
I'm packed with this on.
Truly.
I have to say that I haven't really watched this all that often.
And so watching it in preparation for the podcast.
I was actually surprised by how much fun it is.
It is fun in places.
I mean, the last time I went to New York, I arrived at the base of
the Statue of Liberty, to the strains of George Gershwin, and I
felt like I was there.
So what goes wrong with it?
Why do people not like it, do we think?
I think its ambitions are greater than its delivery.
Yeah.
It really relies super heavily on some pretty ropey CG Matt shots
and the staff.
Really?
Well, are we going to starving those fans before we've even had
our 1st gulp?
Well, I actually think that that's a bad take.
I would fast sooner that Doctor Who tried to be visually ambitious
and tried to look interesting.
But certainly people, I think, compare it unfavourably to our
other Manhattan Doctor Who story where they actually go and sort
of shoot in Central Park.
But I, you know, have no memory.
And it looks exactly like Swansea.
So there you go.
There is a Swansea.
I'd like to say why this is so beautiful then, because, yeah, okay
we could then, if you want to be naked, nelly, because, you know
hi.
Hi, we're right here.
It's the pace of the and feel of it.
No, the feel is superb.
The pace maybe slacks off a little bit in the 2nd episode, and I
think some of the performers are kind of looking at each other
working out, hey, director, what am I doing here?
You're getting that, especially with Mr. Pinstripe, Diagolev.
What his name?
The ballet Ruse.
That guy.
Mr. Eater.
Mr. Diagonal.
Yeah, but more about him from later, I hope.
But it's got the joy of the jazz age deco.
It's got the Gersh ones.
That's where I'll be sticking it this week.
What did you think?
And actually, Nathan, you talked about the fact that it gets
criticised for kind of the establishing shots and things like
that.
Is that right?
I mean, I think that they lend it much of its atmosphere.
All those lovely sort of skyline shots of the 1930s.
I mean, yeah, obviously, they weren't there, but it does lend it
sort of, you know, a nice feel.
Oh, I have to say that one shot of the Empire State building that
they keep matting into Central Park with like Solomon standing in
front of it and that there is no place in Central Park that will
give you that.
I was like, they've moved it up to 60th. right on the park.
The MI Street building is about 2.5 kilometres from...
I've walked it and yes, it's quite a walk.
Yeah, you can't, you can't, you, Helen. not that close.
Same same with the shot when they land on Liberty Island and
they're looking at the Manhattan skyline.
It looks something like that.
Are they looking at Midtown?
Like, yeah, the Empire State Building is miles away from...
Yeah, they are.
They're looking at Midtown from Liberty Island.
We descended into other podcast realities now.
That's right I demand better geographical accuracy from my Doctor
Who.
Although having said that, the fact that where the Empire State
Building is situated is so well known makes it really obvious.
But is it, is it to Mr. and Mrs. Kuffoops in Swansea?
Because there's a lot of Austrian and German descendants who ended
up in Wales after the war.
How can you not love this?
No, really. that's my question.
How could you not?
It's got Gershwin swelling up the ranks.
There you go, banging away with his rhapsodies.
It's true.
Just this great swell of hope and joy. and it's absolutely
perfect.
I think Russell is simply saying, come on, UK, they could do it.
We can do it.
I would tend to agree with you on that, Richard.
It's much better than, I think we all have been led to remember.
It tends to, I think, be derided as one of the worst stories.
Is it really of the season?
Why?
I'm quite serious.
We haven't even touched on the plumping muskety deliciousness of
Miranda Raisin, but received fan wisdom.
I watched it for the podcast this week and I really enjoyed
myself.
Yeah, I have to say I did as well.
And it is in a kind of mythical New York and we've just come from
a future New York and there is dialogue, I think, in this episode
where Mr. Diagoras and the and the Dalek have a conversation about
New York being a thing that kind of recurs.
When they're looking out over the city from, yeah, from floor
100.
And so it's Central Park, it's the Empire State Building, and
it's...
George Goshwin.
Yeah, it's Peter Purvis in that rubber suit, isn't it?
in that.
Definitely, he's there.
Yeah, yeah, in one of those little moments.
He's probably in the vomvum machine.
But it makes sense that Russell's doing the same thing to New York
that he does to London.
He presents a pitched postcard version of London where every time
you go there, you've got, you know, the the eye and you've got
tower bridge and things like that.
And so it just makes sense that if you go to New York, you sort of
sketch it in with a couple of broad strokes and you're there.
Yeah, yeah.
Of course, this isn't the 1st time we've been to New York as you
just implied. you know what which episode that's in.
The chase.
Flight through eternity.
All right.
And we're home.
Has anyone ever pointed out, by the way, then flight through
eternity, Ian and Barbara actually get home.
They've just got to jump on an ocean liner and...
Yeah, I think they have.
Why didn't they just go home?
So you want to know, you want to know Russell's head cannon for
that?
Oh, no.
So he actually had cannoned, it's in the confidential episode, that
the Daleks remembered the time they bumped into Morton Dill on top
of the Empire State Building, and when they were doing their
emergency temporal shift at the end of Doomsday, they remembered
oh, you know, that building that we landed on, like, brilliant
back in the 60s.
We'll go back and build that.
Yeah.
Well, it's not implied that they build it.
They just take it over.
No, yeah, they finish it off.
They had another, but this is actually, oh, archie nerds.
Hello, my people.
They did in fact add another...
Oh, I think it ends up being about 3 metres to it because the
Chrysler had already been built, but they needed to top to be the
tallest.
So right at the end of the build.
They did actually add an extra, at least a minimum of a metre and
a half .
Dalek balls, yes.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's it's a symbol.
I like to think that they built it in the same way that Torchwood
built Torchwood Tower because here with hope and absolutely no
structure.
Well, here, here, though, the Daleks are just very deliberately
and perhaps for the 1st time, being used as a metaphor for capital
and here, we've gone from communism to Nazism to neoliberalism.
Yeah, now they're capitalism, I think.
And so the main area that much of this is said is Hooverville, and
we get a little history lesson because I don't think Hooverville
is sort of very widely known about.
It was also under a bridge.
Well, there were several Hoover bills, but the main one was on
there.
Hooberals across the United States.
Yeah, so like just tent cities.
Yeah, like literally refugee cities in the middle of the middle of
all these major American cities.
There were 100s of 1000s of people living in those.
And so you get the Daleks sort of preying on these people and
these people are used by capitalism, I think, in order to have
access to cheap labour.
So the threat of Hooverville, the fact that you can just be thrown
back into Hooverville at a moment's notice, if you raise your
voice or say anything to the boss, is, I mean, it's a threat that
capitalism still uses today, I think.
I mean, one of the reasons in Australia, we're having a big debate
about the level of unemployment benefits, which are miserable and
impossible to live on.
And those levels, I think, are low, not just because the channel 9
audience won't wear more of their tax money going to dole blunges
but because it makes unemployment a threat and means that people
can have less bargaining power when they're in work.
And that's very much here.
You know, Mr. Diagoras comes out and gives people work that is
dangerous, that they might die from.
He pays them a dollar a day and they basically have no choice but
to take it because Hooveville.
And so we see the Daleks are Deco as well, aren't they?
In the way that and always have been, well, since. certainly the
reboot, they are, the brassy baseless substances, aren't they?
Yeah, yeah. hollow tin men that rule without favour or thought.
And so they belong in the Empire State Building.
And so what you have is this sort of, you know, Russell's usual
verticality where you have capital on top looming over.
That's why it's visible from Central Park so that you can look up
and see what everyone's building with the profit that they are
accruing as a result of your labour.
Writers and artists knew this.
That visionary spectacle of the city that we see in things like
metropolis or later transposed to the US in just imagine, based on
the drawings of beautiful charcoal and gosh and graphite drawings
of an architect called Hugh Ferris, and they're seen now as being
visionary and beautiful and great towering, you know, glass
sculptures and labyrinths of canyons of beauty and structure.
But he was actually saying, no, hang on.
This is the warning.
And journalists and artists and writers saw this as exactly what
you're saying, that there is a danger that we are building these
identify to crush the persons below, you know, the Weimey knew
it.
What was happening in Germany in the 20s is exactly what was
happening in New York, and even in Australia, in the UK.
These were visions of Gog and Magog.
These are these are the temples where capital is.
It's an interesting choice.
I mean, to use the Daleks in that way, because the obvious choice
course is fascism and fascism is flourishing at this point in
history.
So that the fact they didn't go the route you would expect is
interesting in itself.
Yeah, I think, you know, the Daleks aren't ever used for that.
And we talked in our Cyberman episode, where there's evidence that
that alternative world, Pete's world is a world which is, you know
borderline fashist.
There's Zeppelins, there's massive wealth inequality.
And there's sort of stylish Hugo boss design sort of cyberman.
And that was what we talked about at length.
So we've seen the cybermen being used as symbols of fascism.
And here it isn't fascism, is it?
It is capitalism that's being talked about.
But like a lot of mixed fibre articles.
They tend to bleed together in the wash, don't they?
So we arrive at a wall somewhere in Cardiff with Lady Liberty
gives Great Wall.
Matted in, sort of above it.
And there's a big thing in the confidential about finding the
right wall, isn't there?
Did you watch the confidential, James?
I seem to remember them being very proud of, you know, scouting a
war.
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
But that's, that's, that's in, that's at the end of episode two.
Talking about confidential.
I mean, what were they going to do earlier?
It was only the fact that confidential was going to New York
actually going there to, I think, look at some of the locations or
whatever, that they were able to hitch along and get some of these
match shots.
So it came out of confidentials budget. absolutely.
They couldn't afford it on the Dot 2 budget.
So there's a great, there's a great anecdote about that wall in
confidential, where David just has to go at Phil Collins and
because he, and the director and the, I think it was the art
director and the confidential crew all went to Manhattan for the
weekend whilst they got stuck in a car park in Penarth.
He did seem actually genuinely annoyed as well.
Like he was trying to be funny about it, but there was no kind of
masking the actual genuine annoyance there.
So and it looks like Martha's trip has been extended.
And nothing is really said about it.
We don't get any previously on Doctor Who.
There was actually a deleted scene set in the TARDIS where Martha
basically is like, oh, you know, come on, like one last trip and
he's like, oh, well, right, then I'll take you to...
Exactly, Blackpool.
But that was edited out for timing.
Do we not think that undermines the character of Martha a little
bit?
He's like, he's really grudging in sort of taking on every
adventure.
It makes her feel like she's just a bit of a stand-in.
We'll talk about that more next week because I think he's quite
horrible to her at the end of next week's episode.
I think it's right to remove that scene.
Yeah. for tone.
Because he is, like you say, terrible to her.
And I don't think we need like our 4th episode in a row with a
doctor grudgingly saying you get one trip and then you're going.
We've had...
Yeah, we get it.
You loved Rose.
We get it.
Yeah, yeah.
And it is actually sort of quite nice.
She is so enthusiastic, isn't she?
And she's smart, sort of straight away. she's able to tell what
time it is while the doctor's sort of still sniffing the air.
Are we getting some truth in fiction simulacra here?
If you've got your FTE bingo card, dear listener out.
Which word did we just use then?
Tick?
Are we getting any of that here?
Well, I don't know.
It is sort of early on in the year.
But certainly it does seem like David enjoyed working with Billy
and didn't enjoy working with Freeman quite so much.
And I'm not entirely sure why that is.
But certainly she has a real enthusiasm and it really bleeds into
her portrayal of Martha, I think it's a good term.
Bleeds is a good turn because I do feel that one of Russell's
great strengths with people and the reason he's so popular and
continues to be is he's meta writing that the personalities of his
performers become in part the characterisations of his players.
And so therefore, Freeman's enthusiasm.
David's perhaps looking at what he's going to be doing with the
role, he's midway through.
You always get that on we, don't you?
It seems to be the Pat Trouton 2nd season, you know, or, you know
it took John a bit longer, but we've seen we've seen this before.
I think Russell's great skill is putting the truthiness of the
actors into the parts.
I think as well, so much for it relies on Freema's charisma
because Martha's actually quite an underwritten character.
She's really underwritten, isn't she?
She gets very little to do in this episode.
She traipses around, you know, behind the doctor.
But she gets to do best girlfriend thing with my favourite thing
in the season.
We'll get to that next week, which I think is absolutely
wonderful.
Her and Tallula are terrific together.
Can't have too many L's.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, once she's out from under David's shadows.
She's, you know, she gets to do some things, but here she gets
captured.
I mean, she gets a brave moment with a darling.
She's pretty well passive throughout the entire thing, but also
she does get 2 big scenes with Tulula, and both of them fail
they'll test spectacularly.
They were talking about Laslow.
And then talking about, but you love the doctor, didn't you?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it's also very 30s writing.
Yeah.
And I think this is this is also mirroring and the reason I love
it, it's George and Ira and Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin.
But it's mirroring the structure and context of a 30s musical.
I think that's wonderful too.
I think the theatre location, Todd had a bit of a complaint that
it started in the theatre and, you know, that the cold open ends
with a pig slave rather than a dale.
We're all mean to those shows.
But I love the theatre because I think it's a beautiful location
that doesn't need to be kind of dressed particularly to look like
the 1930s.
Got a big entrance to a sewer in a dressing room.
Yeah, like you do.
Actually, you know what?
All it needs is a giant rat.
Yes exactly.
And some more diminution of the female leads.
And also get your togs off, before we're there.
That is a period appropriate theatring in the Welsh valleys. sewer
and all.
Yeah.
Suran Jones, what?
Well, let's give it a symbolic meaning.
I mean, she talks about, um, and again, it'll be next week, I
think, we discover her, the precarity of her situation as well.
She still has to work, even though Laszlo's gone because if she
doesn't work, she'll starve.
There's Hooverville.
And so having her kind of sewer adjacent is, you know, kind of on
point, I think, for the metaphor.
I think you're lending this episode a little bit too much there.
I mean, it seems like all 3 of you have quite enjoyed this
episode.
I do enjoy it on its own merits.
I just think that they're few and far between.
I think I wanted to talk about the difference between plot and
story. right?
I don't think it has a story so much as a plot, this 1st episode.
So it's introducing us to the world, but then it is just, you know
Frank gets captured, that Martha gets captured.
We all end up in a thing.
It's very traditional.
Whereas, you know, the 1st of these 2 parters has a massive plot
hook, which is aliens crash a spaceship into Big Ben, and he's our
very 1st invasion.
This is much more like a classic series story in the way that it's
plotted rather than having an overarching story.
It is.
I also, I think it does have a great idea at the centre of it, and
there's something to be made of that story, and I think if, as
originally intended, Stephen Moffat had written the 2 parter with
the Daleks, it could have been something really interesting.
But it just seems like the plotting is not really extending the
story at all.
There's an awful lot of detours, for instance, where they all go
down the sewers the 1st time and wander through the sewers and see
some pig sleeves and then come out of the sewers again.
And you think, well, how does that progress the story in any way
in an interesting direction?
I think there's a lot of cul-de-sacs in this story like that.
Yeah.
There does seem to be a lot of going from place to place in order
to kind of discover things.
Yeah, and you know, that could be rookie stuff as well.
I mean, the writer Helen Reena.
This is her 1st episodes for the series.
And so you don't expect magic 1st time out.
But I think maybe Russell or Stephen would have made a little bit
more of that.
Is Russell busy or tired or something at this point?
I think maybe Russell wasn't, well, maybe had the flu or
something.
I don't know.
I can't quite remember, but I don't think these episodes received
the full Russell treatment that most people do.
Because, I mean, there are rustly things to them and certainly the
character of Tallula.
I think Tallula and Laszlo, like that that's a very kind of rustly
thing to do, to have that kind of love story going on throughout
the entire time.
And I think that Tallula is a truly great character, like an
excellent Doctor Who character.
Is she English?
Yes.
So like the accent is kind of movie starlet kind of accent, isn't
it?
I watch a lot of these things. think it's great.
And they're actually, she's on point.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's period appropriate.
Yeah, exactly.
And she does...
It's a Hobogan New York Jewish accent.
She does, that's great.
She does a terrific job of selling the period, you know.
And she's not dumb.
Like it's one of those things that Doctor Who has sort of stopped
doing, which is people in the past are not as clever as people
now.
She's smart.
Get that coal in Vince.
She's super likeable and really funny.
I think she's terrific.
And there is a real kind of sadness.
I just think it's it's tremendous.
I think fans are really hard on Helen Rayner, but she did actually
come up with some of the more interesting plot elements in the
story.
Russell only really gave her the, I want this set in the 30s in
Manhattan.
Pig Slave, seal system.
And she was the one who actually made the construction of the
Empire State Building central to the plot.
Right.
And that all came out of her research into the building.
And the fact that during the construction, the press was really
vague about what the master was for.
Right.
Well, it was actually just the to be the hire.
Yeah, it was also, no, they are lightning masks.
They are the conductor masks.
And they were also mooring masts because the idea was, seriously
that airships.
For Zenitids, yeah.
King Kong to hang on to.
So she made that part of the Daleks plan to construct a hire, like
to instruct the mast so that it could be used for their evil
experiment.
But you see, that's great.
And I do think Helen Rainer gets a rough trot from fans.
I think she's better than the reviews would suggest.
But again, that's concept.
That's not plotting.
I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, the plotting is very Trad, I think.
I think that the treatment of Helen Rayner after this episode airs
is a massive black mark on fandom.
It was disgraceful and What happened?
Well, I think, you know, Gallifrey Bass or whatever it was back
then, just kind of slammed her quite personally. quite a
misogynist way.
Yeah, well that's right. she the 1st woman to write for the new
series?
Yes.
Yeah.
I'm just thinking if we'd been rattling down Terry Nation Street
again in a brass bath chair, you probably wouldn't have copped the
same.
No, to the point when the, you know, how long is it between female
writers after this?
Yeah, but I mean, I think that that was terrible.
And I don't think that she's to blame for the story's flaws.
I think there are some people struggling with accents.
I'm seriously still not seeing the flaw.
No, no, like I think it's I think it's super enjoyable.
I think it is really Trad.
And I think there's a great deal of atmosphere in the 1st
episode.
And, you know, I worry about the direction.
There are some good moments in it, but it is a bit flat.
It is, but also, I mean, I see both sides.
I mean, I wasn't aware that she'd been criticised in those terms
and that's reprehensible, but also the fact is I don't think she
did do a particularly good job, but that's okay because a lot of
people haven't done a particularly good job.
She comes back the 2nd time and she does a much better job in the
Santaran 2 passer for next year.
So it's the terms of the criticism, if she was criticised in
misogynistic ways.
And they thought, that's just unforgivable.
I think Russell must have thought it was successful to give her
the same story the following year.
He loved it.
But I don't think there's anyone very far from this broadcast who
doesn't appreciate a good musical. indeed at this table.
No, originally in the earlier drafts, it was not musical theatre.
The original draft of the script involved it being set in jazz
clubs, prohibition.
And Laslow is in the mob.
No, it would have been really interesting, maybe a bit too dark.
And and Russell Russell wanted the musical theatre, so it morphed
into all that.
It's also setting something in speakeas and things like that.
It's going to all your usual touch points rather than, you know
trying something.
It would have actually, yeah, it would have looked a little
flatter in those spectacles of the stage of the angels.
I love that so much.
And I love Mary Gold's take on it.
You can tell, yes, he Murray doesn't mind a bit of musical theatre
himself because he's really got all the bangs and whistles of it's
just between Rhapsody and Blue, which Gershwin George wrote in 3
weeks because he'd forgotten he had to premiere 24.
I think you're kind of seeing why I love this so much.
But it taps into the Zeitgeist and the joyousness of popular music
at that time and the ardour and the hardship that was behind it.
Gershwin himself was 11, you know, wasn't going to be trained.
So I'm going to segue.
Um, and his family bought him a lovely 2nd hand upright and he, and
he just started writing and composing away and he was, you know
already a genius and his and his brother, of course, he died at 38
and his brother was, um, Feinstein called him his lovely wife, Ira
took over.
But there's that sense that Peter was touching on that there is so
much to work against.
And you might also say that was Helen Rainer's position here.
And also if Russell wasn't available and she wasn't getting much
tips.
I do remember Helen saying something along the lines of I was
given 3 ideas and I had to get this script out and there wasn't
really much feedback at the time.
So yes, I think you're right.
Russell was ill or perhaps just really busy on other staff and
getting tortured up.
But this is kind of the ardour and the pressure that she was
under.
I think really reflects well in the sense of this is a story of
great hopelessness and just ignoring that and standing up.
Your heart might break, but the show must go on.
That's it.
Where's the where's the tule?
You see, so I think it was a good idea, not sort of go with, you
know, the mob or a speakeasy or whatever, you know, something
which was like too indicative of the era and say, okay, let's go
for a theatre instead.
That's a good idea.
I'm on board with that.
But then if you've got 3 big locations in the story, if you've got
the Empire State Building, you've got Hooville, you've got the
theatre, they need to be tied together a little bit better than
they were.
The theatre is just a backdrop.
It's just, yeah, they go there and some things happen.
It doesn't feel like it's connected properly.
Got a sewer, haven't you?
That's it.
That is really kind of the scaffolding showing, isn't it?
The fact that there's the sewer in the...
Doctor Who, you have to pursue her.
Poor Victoria was always getting shunted down one, wasn't she?
It is a very nice sewer.
I have to say, it's a very, very impressive set.
And the Adulthood, do you hear the words?
It was a very nice story.
We've got many to choose from.
Or maybe in the construction of the Victorian Embankment.
But yeah, I just, I don't think it hangs together that well, that
you get the impression that people are just going from place to
place because they are just going from place to place.
What's the point of going to the theatre?
There really is none.
No.
And I guess thematically it's tied in because of her precarity and
the fact that even though she's a sort of a big star, she is, you
know, suffering under capitalism as much as anyone else.
But that's probably not quite enough.
And that seems to be from Helen Rayner, that whole, the Daleks's
agents of capitalism.
I think is seems to come just directly from her.
And so I think that's super interesting.
And I do think Hooverville and the Empire State Building are
they're well integrated.
I think the theatre would feel more of a piece if like you touched
on a little bit earlier, Nathan, it was shot a little bit better.
Everything feels a little bit separate.
So when you get the big Busby Berkeley kind of number and
everything, It doesn't quite come off.
And so it feels like anytime you're at the theatre, it's the least
successful part of the story.
Certainly that scene where Martha tries to make her way across the
stage doesn't quite work.
Although it is standard Broadway stick.
I wonder if it's, I wonder if it's sidelined because the women's
roles themselves are sidelined.
I wonder if there's a bit of meta happening there.
So we have some big male guest stars, don't we, in Hugh Quashi and
Andrew Garfield.
It's one of them very well known at the time. one of them, of
course, about to become well known.
Yeah, so Andrew Garfield is not well known at this point.
He's about to become Spider-Man.
Well, not quite, but he was about to do boy A, which was his big
break, which was, I can't remember the exact details, but was
dramatisation of a child who'd killed another child and gone to
prison and then had come out as an adult and had to live with the
consequences of his action.
So it was based on the Jamie Boulger case.
And that was where his star really soared.
He gave him tremendous performance.
And he speaks with an English accent normally or he does both
doesn't he?
He grew up in Britain.
Yeah, I think he did grow up in Britain.
Yeah, he was born in California, I believe, and but he'd spent his
entire childhood in the UK.
Is this an episode where Americans are embarrassed by the American
accents?
I should ask an American.
We should.
I don't know. embarrassed by them.
I think Hugh Korsi does a pretty good job.
And certainly he is very charismatic and extremely good, I think.
Yeah, I mean, there's no touch of the Ike Clanton.
So he's Captain Panaka in Star Wars, the Phantom Menace.
Really?
Yeah.
And he's the detective inspector in the last word part two, a
wonderful press gang episode.
So just over a Griffin in Holby City, which is where most people
would have known him from.
So for the listener who's not watching this at home, this he's the
fellow who's in charge of his.
He the alpha man.
Yeah, so he's called Solomon.
And in fact, we see him breaking a loaf of bread in half.
Not at all subtle, yes.
Yes.
Well, at least it's not a baby, right?
He's breaking...
He is breaking a loaf of bread in half and giving it the 2...
Buttered both sides.
Which one do you drop?
And he's wonderful.
I think he is really great.
And we'll talk more about him next week where he gets his really
big hero moment.
But he's terrifically good.
I think Andrew Garfield pretty good.
Garfield plays Frank, doesn't he?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, Frank's nothing wrong.
He doesn't really get anything to do.
You know, he just trails around after the doctor...
Escapes, good.
However, I do remember saying after this episode went out when my
friend Paul, and I were talking about it, and I said, oh, I think
Frank in Daleksy Manhattan, it was really cute, and I think, you
know, he's going to go places, and Paul said, what?
him?
He'll amount to nothing.
Nothing.
Do you know, we haven't mentioned the Daleks doing things yet.
So what do we think of their pig slaves?
I'm kind of loving that the Daleks are very scroovian and very
heart-molisk in that they really are just 4 of them and they're
stuck.
They can't really leave their little tiny walled, glittering
city.
It is the 1st time and Xander does point this out.
This is the 1st time where the Daleks are just normal, where we
start with Daleks in existence.
We know that they're there and they're not in here for like a
giant format changing moment, like in their 1st appearance and
they're not here for a season finale.
They're cornered and timid.
Yeah, they've like, yes.
It is just business of the week for the Daleks.
And I think some people are disappointed by that.
They're not giant agents of chaos.
I don't understand how you can be disappointed by that because I
think, you know, I think I've been a bit more down on this episode
than the rest of you, but I think the Daleks are the best they
have ever been in this story.
They're given proper characters and motivations.
Gorgeous valve radios.
Huge things.
They're sort of intradalek conversations are all interesting.
They're given sort of verbal ticks and things.
I think they sound, and especially, you know, the rest of the
episode, I don't know about how well it's shot, but the Daleks are
shot brilliantly.
I think that there is this sort of idea, and I think it's down to
Terry Nation's kind of laziness, that Daleks are sort of boring
conversationalists, and we need Davros along in order to have
someone saying interesting things.
They weren't Doll under Whittaker, though.
No, absolutely.
Exactly.
And this is back to a real Whittakerrian conception of the Daleks
but I think we have to talk about that next week.
This is the Daleks as they were in the 60s, I think.
And they're given proper status when they're on the screen.
The camera loves them.
They're big in the shot and stuff like that.
They're glamorous.
Yeah.
They're filmed from below quite a lot.
Yeah, no, they're made they're made to seem powerful.
And every time they enter a scene, they're given a proper
entrance.
And also a lot of it's down to Nick Briggs.
I mean, you've got Nick Briggs providing the voices.
And he knows how to do Daleks, different registers, different
tones.
You never in any doubt over which Dalek's speaking.
Well, we'll talk about that next week.
He is incredibly good, isn't he?
Because he does the Peter Hawkins voice.
He does the David Graham voice, but he makes those voices
something that can say interesting dialogue.
And Dalek Sec, in that 1st episode, where he's speculating about
humanity and New York and things, is a Dalek who is thinking
deeply about something.
And I think that that's really interesting.
I think the idea that that you have this cult of scaro, that is
rethinking what it means to be a dalek, that that's properly
interesting and something that we haven't seen before.
And you get, as well, I think it's Dalek, they.
I'm not sure which one, which comes up in Lyft and talks to Mr
Diagoras, and they stand there for a scene looking out over in New
York and talking about things, and you think, well, great. let's
have more of this It is pretty good, isn't it?
And Nicholas Briggs can't get enough credit for that because he
takes those voices, which have just so often said seek, locate
exterminate, and nothing more interesting than that and does a
proper acting performance.
And we saw that right 2 years ago with Dalek and he's been doing
it ever since.
But he also remembers that whatever a Dalek sounds like, it's
always got to be angry.
It delivers its lines angrily all the time.
We haven't talked much about Diagras.
And he's a performance that I'm not completely on board with, and
I'm not sure with that at all.
See, I'm with you as well, but it's also probably the most truest
of the New York play pieces because that is the flat tone and that
is kind of how we talk.
And, you know, you're wanting up and down.
You go Midwest.
This is actually what we guys are like.
What's your problem?
He, unlike a lot of the other people in the episode is in America
right?
I do get a sense of discomfiture in the performance.
And usually we can then reestablish that into the narrative and go
oh, well, you know, there's a lot coming.
It's called the Caroline Ford principle.
No, I'm really not kidding.
Is he slightly telepathic?
Yes, and was going to be an Avengers girl and everything. just
didn't happen.
Very pissed off.
But I get the sense that he doesn't really know what's going on.
But yes, we can matter that because that is how the character
would feel.
And of course, he's really scared.
And of course he's totally out of his depth.
He does have one or 2 terrible scenes in that 1st episode with
kind of workman, you know, kind of expostulating workman and stuff
where he's bullying them.
And I don't think the workmen are necessarily all that good.
So you know, workman number one was in Dalek.
Oh was he?
Yeah, he was the commander of Mr. Van Staten's guards.
He's not had a good run. temporal displacement going on there.
Yeah, I don't really have a problem with his scenes as Mr
Diagris.
He's not the best in the world, but then I don't think the
character's given all that much to work with.
It's when what happens at the end of the episode where you get the
very uncomfortable marriage between that actor, that character.
The spectacular cloaca.
Yeah, I think that's where it all goes off Quacker of Doom.
Oh, that horrible scene where he's sort of down there and, you
know, shot from beneath his James pointed out.
Well, we we met Mark Strickson and Mark Strickson has been sort of
a stuntman and he gave us tips on how to be menaced and how to be
held onto and how to struggle against someone who's who's holding
onto you.
And that was all I could think about in that scene where he's he's
such an actor being held onto by pig slaves.
It's really, it's really not very convincing.
And then, yes, the giant dalek, Clo Acre, that engulfs him is...
I wonder if Russell was just commenting on the colour free base.
I think.
It is a funny scene.
I mean, it gives it gives us new things for the Daleks to do, and
it gives us some a CG Dalek mutant rather than the sort of puppet
that we had in the in Dalek itself.
It sort of goes back to, I think, one of the reasons these
episodes aren't so successful is that they're the 1st time on
paper, they sound amazing.
They fail to fly, and I think it's the 1st time New Doc 2 is
unintentionally camp in many ways.
It sets out to be funny previously, and it may have had moments
which were camp, but here, things don't fly, and so they become
camp, and one of those things is Dalek Sec.
So you've got Dalek Sec, who wants to become a human.
He then reaches out, grabs Mr. Diagoras, pulls him into the casing
spends about 5 minutes, sort of rattling and sort of groaning
about inside there, and then releases this creature with Mr
Diagoras's pinstripe suit and dalek sex head on top.
I actually think that that is spectacular.
And I don't think it comes off, but the fact that Dalek Sec is
wearing a lovely suit for the 2nd episode and for that final scene
is marvellous.
It's a bit Scaroth, last of the check.
Yeah, yeah.
Look at the broad grins on your faces.
You're liking it because it's so camp and I don't think it was
meant to be.
I think it absolutely was meant to be.
Of course it was.
I think they also, they blinked.
And that's why you end up and possibly this is coloured like
people's opinion of it.
They went, oh, we're not so sure about this.
And so they spoilt it.
Let's take off the radio time. tentacles.
Oh, yeah, that's crazy, isn't it?
So Dalek Sec, the mutant, is on the front cover of the radio times
that week.
A giant close-up of his face.
Yeah, and so they completely spoil that cliffhanger.
Well, actually, it was on the radio times cover for the 2nd
episode.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
But why?
Why a close-up of something that just looks like a CGI blob on the
cover of a magazine?
With Willies on it.
Exactly.
And so that takes you back into the episode where you think, why
did you do this?
I think we've answered our own question.
It's incredibly camp. don't believe for a 2nd that they were
unaware of that.
I don't think Russell's solely a fan of survivors and nothing
else.
I don't think he's ever said no to a show tune.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I really think that this is very classic Doctor Who. and that
image of it is Scaroff, isn't it?
It's like a squidhead in a lovely suit.
It's funny we say that because I think it is nodding to the greats
of the past.
And one of them, one of them is Whittaker's exchanges and the
other is Douglas Adams.
And there's moments of just the mélange, if you like throw it all
into the Dalek front loader and see what comes out, which is what
Dalek Sec does.
Yes.
Covered in willies.
How did that work out?
Well, do we start it?
Looks like Mr. Diagoras is in need of some fairly urgent
assistance, so we're off to find him some spirit gum, and we'll be
back next week in time to witness the evolution of the Daleks.
In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts
and you can keep up with us at flightsthroughentirety.com, flights
through entirety on Facebook, and at FTE podcast on Twitter.
You can also find our series 11 flashcast, Jody interterra at Jody
interterra.com and at Jody interterra on Twitter at our James Bond
commentary podcast, Bondfinger at bondfinger.com at bondfinger on
Facebook and at bondfingercast on Twitter.
Until next time, remember, your heart might break, but the show
goes on.
So we'll see you next week.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Goodbye.
Good night.
Good then.
That was Flight 3 Entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley, Peter
Griffiths, James Selwood, and Richard Stone.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, Strings performance by Jane
Orberg.
This episode, the Big Busby Berkeley number, was recorded on the
11th of August 2019 and released on the 6th of October.
Fans of Musical Theatre will enjoy our upcoming online operetta.
All these Huguenots look the same to me, a sung-through version of
the massacre, with music by Steven Sondheim and lyrics by Eric
Sayward.
But also, it's touched on Campley because the Daleks bitch at each
other constantly.
They're always arguing and say, you know, it's capped off
obviously by the wonderful scene where the Daleks look around them
to make sure no one's listening before they start bitching.
Isn't that part 2?
We should probably talk about that next week.
Oh, is it?
Yeah, let's I would actually quite like to end this episode on the
discussion of Willy's just to be...
The set dance look like the Grace Brothers are you being served
shop, doesn't it?
So when the Daleks are all gathering gathering around the
haberdashery to have a moan.
Get that joke next week.
First flop perfumer.
We do too.
And we didn't talk at all about Mr. Diagoras. like his name and
that, but I mean, that's nice.
Can we do that next week?
Because I really do want to hear that.
Also, I mean, like, Tallula is named after...
We get there when we do names.
Talula is named after...
To Lulu.
Okay.
Jodie Foster's.
Sorry, Jane Foster.
Jodie Foster's character in Bugsy Mine.
Oh, she is too.
Oh, see, that's clever.
Well, let's do that next week.
Yeah.
I think we talk more about that because there's not that much to
talk about next week.
Okay, so let's let's just do the let's do the outro.
So like so many people.
All right, here goes.
You've got a nice young man tied up upstairs.
Devil and me.
Yeah, okay.
Pussy.
Is that next week or this week?
Is it?
I thought it was episode one.
Well, where's the big Buzz Berkeley number with Martha?
Is that this week or?
No, that's episode one.
Yeah, because like it's the whole Laslow thing.
What draws them down into the sewers is her seeing Laszlo. and she
chases after him. and they're getting into the series.
That's episode one.
Okay, all right.
Should we do should we do an outro?
Well, dear listener, it looks like Mr. Diagoras is in fuck.