Episode 17
Surprise! I’ve Got a Moustache
Sunday 14 December 2014
All set, Jimmy? It’s time for Flight Through Entirety to enter the final season of the 1960s, as we discuss a rapidly-improving and largely foam-free trio of stories: The Dominators, The Mind Robber and The Invasion.
Buy the episodes!
For once, all three of the stories we discuss in this episode have been released on DVD. So you can actually watch them. (Although, in some cases, you might not want to.)
The Dominators episode 3 was returned to the archives in 1978, so we have all of it. Sigh. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
The Mind Robber has always existed. It was repeated on ABC-TV in Australia in 1986. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
The Invasion is still missing episodes 1 and 4, but they were expertly animated by Cosgrove Hall for the story’s DVD release in 2006. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
The Dominators
Fans of Joan and Jackie Collins won’t want to miss their fabulous biopic by French & Saunders.
Oh, God, what else? Elizabeth Sandifer’s review is a good place to go for a discussion of the horrible politics in this story. (“Not only is it an attack on the entire ethos that underlies the Doctor as a character, it’s an attempt to twist and pervert the show away from what it is and towards something ugly, cruel, and just plain unpleasant.” Yeesh.)
The Mind Robber
George Orwell’s essay on Boys’ Weeklies discusses the politics of the kind of stories written by the Master of Fiction before he was kidnapped by, er, whatever.
According to The Living Handbook of Narratology, metalepsis is “any intrusion by the extradiegetic narrator or narratee into the diegetic universe (or by diegetic characters into a metadiegetic universe, etc.), or the inverse”. And this story has metalepsis in spades. Don’t tell me we’re not educational.
Edith Nesbit’s Five Children and It, which sounds like a terrifying premise for a Stephen King sequel, is actually a famous English children’s book, published in 1902. It’s a part of the tradition of children’s fantasy fiction which will eventually give rise to Doctor Who.
You should also ignore Nathan and read Gulliver’s Travels. It’s really clever and funny and entertaining, particularly the bit where Gulliver puts out a fire in the Lilliputian palace by weeing on it. No really.
The Invasion
Richard identifies the inspiration for the incidental music as The Ipcress File (1965), a brilliant kind of anti-Bond spy film starring Michael Cain. Just watch it.
Fans of Isobel Watkins and her modelling aspirations might enjoy Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1996), a groovy film in which a very now young photographer, creeping on a mysterious woman in a park, accidentally photographs a murder.
We have a competition!
If you would like to win one of three 1970s Target novelisations from our personal collection, just post a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode.
Follow us!
Follow us on Twitter, or on Facebook. Check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes. We’d really appreciate it.