Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast that comes to you free with its very
own tiresome and repetitive catchphrase, and we're doing it now.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Todd.
I'm a resprayed welding helmet and a resprayed plot for this.
Well, the doctor has finally decided to take on Martha full-time.
So 1st stop, plummeting headlong into a blazing sun to the
soundtrack of one of Chris Chibnell's countdowns.
Time to pull out the Pizbooee, everyone.
It's 42.
Or is it?
I can't believe we're up to the Saranga conundrum already.
Exactly.
Oh, dear.
No, I like this one.
This should be a wonderful show.
Well, I see, it is a triptych, isn't it?
It is a sequel to Satan Pit.
Yeah.
It's only got the same cozzies.
And the same sort of crew and stylising.
Yes, but you don't know a single one of these people's names.
Like, I just go through and I go, right, we've got the captain
we've got burn with me, we've got the old engineer, we've got the
young engineer, we've got the medic, we've got Martha's love
interest in the 2nd in command.
And I don't know.
I don't know any of their names.
No, we don't do it.
Okay.
Um, Captain McDonald, um, Riley Vashti.
Abby, who is Rosa Parks.
The MRI machine.
The MRI machine from Smith and Jones.
Scammel.
Scam Scammel.
Scamel, Scamel's the one who...
The doctor's like, oh, you're so negative.
Sorry.
Sorry, that was Billy Piper.
You're so negative.
There we are.
That's David Tennant.
Oh, I forget the name of the bald daddy, and that's my thing.
You, darling.
And Hal Corwin, and Veronica Cartwright in Alien as Arena, the
engineering sort of...
But no, this is, in terms of production, definitely set in the
same time period as the impossible Satan Pitt of Gabriel Wolf.
Well, I just think that that story set the kind of aesthetic for
the gritty near future.
You've got a couple of different types of futures in the RTD era.
One is the sort of comedy future of New Earth or the end of the
world.
But this sort of gritty space pioneer future.
I mean, it's a similar aesthetic, I think, probably to Waters of
Mars, much later, even though that set a great deal earlier.
But what you have is the sort of fantastic Graham Harper
direction.
It gives it a sense of urgency.
Well, this is why filming in real time. should create an enormous
amount of interest and immediacy in caring for your characters and
the situation in which they are placed.
I actually think, though, that it doesn't quite work.
Because there is still a lot of standing around and talking
cheaply in corridors.
And we have got this countdown that is basically the name of the
episode and kind of the episode's gimmick, but it doesn't really
kind of lean into the gimmick quite enough.
And for me, the countdown just ends up being a sort of cheap way
of creating drama.
And it's something that we'll go on to talk about because in, I
think the Silurian 2 Padre in series 5, I think there's no less
than 3 occasions where they're racing against the clock to do
something.
And here.
It is a little bit too leisurely at times, I think.
Look, the other thing is too, like there's this problem set up at
the beginning, at the very beginning, we've got to get through
these doors in this sort of stupid way to get to the flight deck.
Oh, sorry, I was just listening to what you were saying.
Yes, doors.
Sorry.
And it turns out we just do that.
You know, like it's impossible.
You know, we're racing against time.
We've got all of these doors.
We've got less than a minute per door, but we just managed to get
through.
It work?
No.
I feel like an episode of Torchwood?
But some of these questions are just so unreal.
Like, I mean, the whole Elvis thing, you know, I mean, I may as
well, like, throw out a thing saying, you know, what's the name of
the banana arm single that made it to number one in the United
States and Australia, but only got to number 8 in the UK.
What is it?
Venus in furs?
I don't.
You are correct.
The end of this episode will give you the answer.
The answer is Venus.
Well done, suppose Aussies.
Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi. 7 weeks at number one.
It does feel a bit of revision, doesn't it?
And that we throw a lot of things in or Britain's got talent and
just hope it'll all work out.
But I think that's another nod to Douglas Adams and trying to get
that uppity spiky.
I know, it'll be lots of fun, like Eric Sabo did with his very
recent Dalek novelisation.
If we just throw in crap that is entirely irrelevant to the plot.
I mean, it's trying to be Doctor Who.
It's trying to do something that only Doctor Who would do in this
contest.
It's made it organic and tied it back into the plot.
You might argue not always successfully, but he did, and we don't
actually have that here.
I wanted Elvis to turn up at the end.
I wanted Elvis to be in the shining heart of the sun.
I mean, the one listening to his Monty Python albums.
You know, he was a massive Monty Python fan before he died.
And Elvis was used to do Neil Innis impersonations.
So there are very few British comedians that can say Elvis did
impersonations of me, but No, he's a very naughty boy.
Elvis used to do that all the time when he died.
And for a little while after, I think.
Probably.
So that does at least. allow us the perhaps the saving grace for
the episode is the involvement of Francine.
Look, I like those scenes, but I think you're all being needlessly
harsh.
I said during the week on Twitter, someone asked me my least
favourite episode of Series 11.
I said it was Saranga conundrum because it's aggressively
mediocre.
And, you know, it should be airport 77.
It should be the Poseidon adventure, but it's more super trained.
This is like full-blown Poseidon adventure.
And I think it is partially down to Graham Harper's direction.
But for me, the heart of the episode is actually Freema.
Martha.
Well, yeah, I think so.
This one who sells it.
Yeah.
In her hot tub moment.
She's locked in the solarium with a new man.
I have to agree with you on that.
I've not been here since episode one.
And if you can just indulge me for a moment.
When I watched this series originally, at this point, we'd come
off 3 episodes that I hadn't particularly liked, the Dalek
episodes, which I thought just the pants.
I was so over Martha being in love with the doctor.
I thought Freeman was just giving a Freeman blank face.
The mother did the slap in the previous episode.
So I was already against her.
So when she sort of says, why are you cheating at trivia?
I just wanted to, you know, just push her to one side.
So I thought it was okay, but I really liked all the stuff we've
just talked about in terms of the whole Poseidon adventure thing
but the whole subplot with Martha, which I perceived was like, I
couldn't care less, just put her in subplot.
I don't really want to know about it.
That's what I was thinking.
But I still quite liked the episode.
Well, I've obviously been rewatching this, and 12 years later, it's
the Martha plot that I absolutely adore, and it's the other plot
that I think is, hmm, pants.
I've done a big flip because when I started this season, as you
all know out there, I wanted to investigate what I thought of
Freema and Mum and the whole plot.
And I think that Freema is just the best.
They're Anne's pants.
She has just got this heart and soul and this strength and this
sass and it's her story throughout all these episodes that I'm
really invested in and I'm invested in this.
I really like the 1st 3 episodes of the season.
And last week's episode, the Lazarus experiment has just grown on
me so much.
It's so much fun.
I mean, I give it like 7.8 out of 10.
Almost an eight, almost an eight.
No, I really, really enjoyed it.
I really enjoyed it.
It is a series of unfortunate events, which culminates in the slap
which I don't really think pays off, but I understand where
they're coming from.
I also understand like last week, Martha's only been with the
doctor for a week or so, so I understand that she's still in love
with him.
So I get all that.
I think the Dalek 2 parter weighs everything down.
The construction of that having to be 2 parts.
I think it would have been better to cuddle the fat and make that
one part and have one episode, put in an episode before that with
Martha's mum.
So you could have a series of unfortunate events and then have the
slap in last week's episode just to build that up a bit more.
But I totally get where they're coming from.
And now that I'm older watching it as well.
I've got female friends who are mothers and they would totally say
to their kids, why are you cheating at a pub trivia thing?
So I actually was really liking that.
So I can't believe I'm saying this, but Martha's mother is okay.
I understand where she's coming from.
Framer is just the best thing and that whole, I'm just enjoying
her so much at this point.
And it's really great that last week and this week, we don't
really focus on Martha being in love with the doctor, but she
loves the doctor and there's that underlying love and I like that
more.
So there you go. where I'm at.
Thank you.
I also think that there's a sort of attempt to apologise for how
horrible the doctor's been to Martha up till now.
And so here we have the doctor really genuinely concerned about
Martha and trying to rescue her.
We have her faith in him.
She's absolutely confident that he is going to be able to rescue
her, even when they're sort of plummeting an implausibly long
distance away from the Pentalion, she still believes in him.
And then you've got the doctor trusting her, which prefigures what
we're going to get next week when the doctor is overcome by this
rather sort of unimpressive adversary.
He absolutely trusts her to look after him in that situation.
And so there is a bit of an attempt here and last week, I think, to
kind of repair the relationship between the 2 of them.
The scene where she puts him in the MRI machine and she's taking
the temperature down.
That is properly disturbing and not to take anything away from
David Tennant, who plays the agony of it very well.
And he, you know, he is doing his teeth gnashing thing, but I
think it's actually appropriate for once.
It's Freema who sells that scene.
It's the pain on her face having to put him through this.
And there's just this little bit and you almost can't hear it as
he's screaming. you cut back to Martha and she just says, yeah.
She's like yeah, I know.
I actually weld up watching that this week, just because the whole
romance potline we've talked about before.
We'll talk about it again.
But there are times that it works.
And when it works is when it's not just a teenage crush when it's
clearly a deep, if quick forming affection.
And that is one of those scenes when they're trusting each other.
And when he, when he's screaming through the glass, I'll save you
and you can't hear him. it's good, isn't it?
What a moment.
Like, there's no sound.
It's just, I wrote that down in my notes, Brendan, totally agree
with you. such a moment.
I actually like what's happening with Riley there too.
Because, I mean, they're both attractive young persons.
And they very quickly bond because they think they're going to die
together.
He's the one who encourages her to ring her mother.
There's that little bit of physical affection between them as
well.
Yeah, because they're going to, you know, get it on later because
there isn't going to be a later at this point.
But just the desire to be held, you know, one last time by
someone.
And for me, that's the best bit of the episode as well, Tom.
I think that whole plot.
Nathan, in that pod, you know, when she stops worrying about
herself and ask questions of him.
It's just a brilliant, brilliant moment.
And even with her theme that runs over all that when she's talking
to her mom and just, I mean, I overcame with emotion.
I cannot stress enough how much Martha and Freeman in this episode
is the heart of the episode and what is really the biggest
strength.
You know, all this other plot stuff, like, it's so generic.
It's so incredibly unambitious.
I'm shaking my fist at this point.
The more you see showrunners that are going to come into the show
like the more you see their stuff now or in the future, then you
look back and you can see how they construct things.
The whole magnetising of the hull business, you know, to bring
them back.
Like, where did that come from?
Like, I just kind of went, you've just pulled this out of your
butt to sort of, you know, so that we don't, and where do we put
the controls for remagnetizing the thing?
Obviously on the outside of the spaceship?
Where else would they go?
Don't do that in frontier in space.
Yes.
Okay, I'll tell you where that comes from because this is part of
block seven, shot with utopia.
This is the cheapie.
This is where the money ran out because originally, right, with
the ship falling into the sun, the artificial gravity was going to
be haywire, and so the whole thing, everyone would have been
literally pushing uphill, but they couldn't afford to build a
tilted set.
Right, right.
And also the doctor was going to do a spacewalk along the outside
of the ship. couldn't afford to do that.
So it literally becomes, and this was Russell's note to Chris.
Make it a lever on the outside of the ship he can't quite reach.
So the whole ship is plagued is plagued within inconveniently
placed controls.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, if they'd had backup controls for restarting the engine
somewhere else, like in engineering, there are engines.
This isn't an unused terry nation.
But last week had a series of unfortunate events with Martha's mum
leading up to the slap.
This week we've just got a series of unfortunate events, the
actual writing.
Oh, it's terrible.
And you've got the masked person doing a catchphrase, which is
just borrowed from the empty child, the doctor dances.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it is it's as generic as possible, man.
The point with real time and what Todd did, you know, I totally
agree with you.
And what you're saying is the plotting, in fact, the scripting
ought to be irrelevant because with direction and with real time
think back to films like Run, Law, or Run, or I'm trying to think
of other ones.
My favourite one came out the same year as Doctor Strangelove in
64.
Fail Safe.
Sidney Lumet with Henry Fonda.
He also did dog day afternoon in 1975 that I remember as a little
boy with other people.
That was the same story.
The setup is probably the most famous one, Robert Wise, who gave
us Star Trek, the Motionless Picture, and Sound of Music, Sound of
Music, and a vacuum, yes, which we were enjoying here.
United 93, if you ever saw that, that came out in 2006 about the
911 planes, which I weirdly saw in a theatre with John Waters, but
that's for another time.
I really did.
Are all wonderful films and they show that all you need to do.
All a writer needs to do is just give absolute truthful
narrative.
You don't throw in quirky things.
You're not cheeky.
You just tell it for real.
And the pacing and marvellous direction will do the rest for you.
And this is also beautifully lit, and this also does have great
atmospherics. you can see it's cheap, but all the rest of it.
And yet, it's not popular.
We're not liking this show.
And yet, I'm saying we've got a perfect director.
We actually have a script that doesn't really do too much.
So why are we all feeling somewhat dispassionate about this?
Well, Richard, I think it comes for me.
Like, if you look at classic Doctor Who, yes.
We have other stories that have a series of impossible things, but
through performance or witty dialogue or things that are honest
and appear truthful and organic, we buy into it, whereas here, none
of the performances personally stand out, especially the captain
who, I think, needs to really be the heart and the soul of this
like she is at the crux of it, but I just think she's very by the
numbers.
I refer back to cyberdad and coronation dad from last season.
She's as good as them, which is, for me, not great.
Soap actors have worked so far in this because she's in EastEnders
isn't she?
Yes, yeah.
Michelle Collins.
And I don't think she's very good at all.
Like, yeah, I was watching it knowing that her performance isn't
too popular.
I'm sure I'm sure Peter Griffiths would kill us if we didn't
mention that he detests her performance in this.
I think he's poisoned me against her.
This is his least favourite episode of the season.
For me, though, I was watching her and I'm thinking, you're not
you're not giving a bad performance.
But whereas I believe Beryl Reed as a freighter captain.
Oh me too.
I don't. the leather.
Yeah, Beryl Reed has this swagger and this bravado.
I don't believe Michelle Collins in this role.
I believe that she is a woman whose husband has been horrifically
transformed.
She sells that for me.
But not the captain part.
See, for me, it's the other way around.
I think that the shorthand that Chibnalls use to create the Corwin
McDonald relationship is that they're married.
But we never, ever, ever see that.
And so the 1st thing that we see of Corwin is him in the Sick Bay
already having been infected.
And so we don't get a scene of them bantering together before this
happens.
We don't see them interact in any way at all.
And just telling us that they're married is in no way interesting
enough, and in no way, a good way of establishing that they have
an important relationship.
And the way it ends with the 2 of them, you know, out the airlock
together kind of dancing, that should be amazing.
Whereas it's a relief.
Yeah, it's zero.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And in Giblon's original script, she puts him out the airlock, but
she survives and it was discussions between him and Russell and
Julie Gardner, where they kind of said, well, no, she's got to go
with him.
She's not coming back.
But as you say, it doesn't mean that much because as an actress
Michelle Collins has had to do all the emotional lifting to create
this relationship because he's not there because Matthew Chambers
I think, is the actor who plays cool when he has no chance to
demonstrate his affection for this character.
Yeah, so we don't see that at all.
I just don't buy it So we know it's not the director because we've
seen him be brilliant before.
We know it's possibly not the actors because, you know, our agent
provocateur has delivered on other levels during this script.
She's given us warmth and real sense of, you know, heightened
drama.
And again, we know a good director and even an adequate actor can
bring each other up to a very high pitch and make it work.
So we're coming back to, oh, dear, Chiba's chunkies, aren't we?
Look, I think Chippers will go on to do better than this before
series 11.
But this is, you know, terrifyingly unambitious, I think.
I wanted to avoid doing that to tubers because it is so much the
source du jour.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, this month.
But, I mean, the other thing that I think is a massive mistake is
you know, every so often you'll get a Doctor Who monster that
doesn't really seem to deserve the fear that the doctor shows in
its presence.
I'm thinking, say, about the crinoid.
You know, Tom's playing it as if he's scared of the crinoid, even
though it's just a sort of big ass vegetable. massive rubber
mattress.
That's right.
And latex.
Sorry.
That's it.
A mixture of latex foam and memory foam.
Well, Paul Sarah Jane had a latex allergy to try to protect her.
For goodness sake, you're right.
When we've got the biggest plot device of all time.
We've got Stanis and our limbs, Solaris.
Yeah, the sentient sun.
Which is possibly the most extraordinary pricey for a film and a
wonderful book and we talk about it all the time.
This has got everything going for it on paper. but it just doesn't
go anywhere.
It's more like, you know, Croll.
It's the biggest Doctor Who monster to date, but it ends up not
being very interesting.
And don't know how you can say such a thing.
Getting tenant overcome by this and so making him gurn and gnash
his teeth and yell and crawl down the corridors and throw himself
about the set for like a 3rd of the episode is so not what I want
to see at this point in his career as the doctor.
I love that.
Do you think he's enjoying it?
Because he looks pretty miffed to me.
Well, I'd be very surprised if he wasn't.
I think it's like when you get, um, later than this, obviously, but
the Sarah Jane adventures where she's overtaken by, I think it's
Kudlak, and Liz Sladen gets to do her whole, I am evil, thank
you.
Oh, that's fun.
But, I mean, if Tenant's not enjoying this, frankly, he shouldn't
be playing the role because, you know, every doctor needs a good
possession storyline.
Yeah, it just makes him do all of the terrible things about his
performance that I ate.
Only dialled up to 11.
But with an excuse.
Yeah, I know. up to Matt Smith.
Also, original script outline.
Martha got possessed.
I think that could have been more interesting.
But the thing is, Russell said, we've had Martha kind of being
pushed away by the doctor for 6 episodes.
We need to give her something where she is more proactive.
And Russell's idea was demonstrate a new factor of their
relationship.
She's still in love with him, but she is now a full companion and
she's got the super phone and she gets the key at the end of this
episode.
To be honest, if it had have been Martha being possessed.
I would have been very disappointed just because, you know, last
week she made herself bait for Professor Lazarus.
And, you know, before that, she was being dragged off by the pig
slaves and in gridlock, she gets dragged off into a car and in the
Shakespeare coach, she gets knocked out by the witches.
You know, this is the 1st time the doctor's the one
incapacitated.
And as you say it earlier, Nathan.
It prefigures the fabulous two-parter we're going to have next
week.
When he dresses up as a cleaner in South Wales.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
Yes, so join us for Doctor Who next week when Doctor and Martha
look for a watch.
Scintillating stuff here, BBC one.
The doctor has obviously recovered from his heat strip.
Very 50s radio, isn't it?
Sorry, I'm just grasping at straws.
So I run out of stuff to say for this episode except about
Martha's mum, which I'll talk about shortly.
Oh, and she's extraordinary.
I think she's the best actor in the cast.
This is the 2nd episode in a row where one of Mr. Saxon's
underlings is working to kind of recruit poor old Francine to kind
of separate her from the doctor, do you think?
Certainly to drive a wedge.
Right.
And not so much even to drive a wedge between Francine and the
doctor because that's already been slapped into place.
It's to drive a wedge between Martha and her family.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, so, you know, we will find out later that Saxon has employed
Tish and now he's whispering in Francine's ear.
It was meant to be, and I got this wrong last week.
It wasn't sinister, man.
Creepy man.
Mysterious man.
It was meant to be the mysterious man from the Lazarus experiment
sitting behind Francine listening to the thing, but he was a late
addition to the script.
He wasn't available.
So we get the sinister woman.
Okay.
And she'll be back.
Yeah, she'll be back.
But it is very interesting watching those scenes and now with
hindsight and knowing what's to come, how they're progressing that
plot and how you sort of, well, how I am a bit offput by the mum
saying, oh, you know, you really don't like the doctor, you're in
cahoots, but it all just takes a little bit of a turn at the end
there where, you know, she's not going to tell, tell her who she
voted for.
And the look on her face at the end means that she's not entirely
convinced that she's done the right thing.
And for me, that's the redemption moment for her character.
Yeah, I think not voting for Saxon is like that's particularly
telling.
And all of the Saxon stuff is being reused in British politics
right now.
Well, in British politics right now, but also in years and years
as well.
So it's hard to read Saxon as anything other than a kind of Emma
Thompson.
Yes, a proto-Emer Thompson, sort of pre-Vivian Rooks.
So a sort of weird political outsider who's sort of populist.
And so having Francine basically say that she didn't vote for him
is pretty good.
And so that means this is election day.
And so all of the, uh, you know, the next few episodes will all
take place like within a 24 hour period and then we arrive back on
earth the day after that final scene of 42.
Yes, it's something that I never really picked up on, that it's
all literally within like a week or whatever it happens to be
which fed into my dislike of the whole Martha in love with the
doctor, plot line, just get over it, but I totally understand it
and understand it now.
And due to a quirk in broadcasting, there are about 21 novels with
Martha set during this season as well because there's only a few
with Catherine Tate because after what happens to Catherine Tate's
character next year.
Russell kind of went, oh, no, I don't want to do any more Donna
novels because, you know, the ending was so powerful.
Whereas with Martha, you get the novels from this year and you get
the novels from before Catherine Tate becomes the assistant, the
following year.
Yeah.
Yeah, Martha, it's kind of weird.
Her story takes place over a week in terms of the show, but she
has some of the greatest amount of media out there out of any new
series companion. characters I really liked in this one.
There is no one I dislike, but as your earlier saying, there's no
one that really sticks in the memory, but rather the cruel.
And even I find the doctor, as you say, the gurning, yes, it's
right for it, but it seems like he's pushing an enormous amount of
energy for very little return.
Yeah, it's almost as if we're being pushed through a CVE, isn't
it?
and reexperiencing the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
I wonder if I wonder what St.
Bidmead would say about this one.
Because it's got proper scien-y-ish.
It does feel a bit meaty, doesn't it?
Except it's not...
No, actually, I'm working this less now.
I came in here saying it's about a seven.
All the Martha stuff's great, but then the rest of that stuff
is...
Mother's good in it.
It's not working for me.
That doesn't happen very often. usually find something to
celebrate.
This is rivalling the Dalek 2 part of my least favourite episode
of the season.
We loved that.
Yeah, yeah, it's more interesting than this.
I mean, he has got better ideas.
And I care about the characters in that one.
That's the deal.
I really care about everybody, yeah.
I mean, we were talking about it earlier, Todd, before we started
recording.
And if you think about the Impossible Planet, which this is trying
to be like, We know and love those characters.
I mean, you can you can name like Ida, and Toby, and Danny, and
Zachary Croft's Flane.
Scooty, you know, like, we know them and we care about them.
Mr. Jefferson.
Whereas I'm struggling to know anything about these people at all
or about their relationships to one another.
I guess there's the grumpy engineer guy who's very clear on who is
allowed to give him orders.
But that's not really enough.
I mean, that's not good enough.
Like, if you're going to care about characters, you need to really
know their names and have those, as you were saying earlier.
See those relationships rather than being told about them.
And that's something that I hate saying this, but I'm finding in
Chris Chibnall's writing, is that you get told about these things
rather than actually seeing organic, if we see those things, then
we're much more invested, and I think there'd be a much better
payoff on that entire plotline.
Yeah, well, the death of Scooty and the Impossible Planet is so
much more heartbreaking than any of the deaths or all of the
deaths here put together.
I just can't bring myself to care.
And having this sort of menacing guy that sort of wanders around
killing you and uttering a catchphrase.
So what?
Riley is the only one that I really care about.
And that's through his relationship with Martha.
I think it's appalling that virtually everybody's just killed off
and some of them with a joke.
Like, I just think that's just not Doctor Who.
And if you know my classic FTE podcast, then you'll realise that
for me to say that, that's a big thing.
Yeah, yeah.
It's like Arena complaining about fetching Carrie, fetching Carrie
kill me now.
But, you know, that's straight out of a horror movie.
That's some scream, 1996, a character called Tatum is cornered in
the garage by the Ghostface Killer, but thinks it's someone in a
costume having a joke, and she has the rather wonderful line of, no
don't kill me.
I want to be in the sequel.
And then she's killed by a doggy dorm.
I would have liked one of the women to have survived other than
Martha, but anyway, that's a good point, actually, because, yeah
you've got Abby Lerner, who will be Rose Parks.
But yeah, playing the ship's doctor who basically gets a few lines
of exposition really doesn't get much in the way of character and
is then killed.
And Arena's then killed.
So, yeah, aside from cooling, like they're the 1st 2 to die, the 2
women.
I hadn't considered that.
And I really, I really like Arena.
Like she's only there for a few seeds, but she just gets the kind
of grumpiness of being the intern across and no one ever says
she's the intern, but she appears to be the youngest member of the
crew.
She is told to fetch and carry a water.
She almost gets locked behind the doors and her 1st aid is, who's
shutting all the doors?
Mama's got locked in.
She should have survived.
Yeah, yeah, she was great.
Her and Riley should have survived.
Yeah, agree.
Yeah.
Because, you know, Scaml could have had his Mr. Jefferson moment
of, yeah, I'm the grumpy taciturn one, but really I love all you
crazy kids.
Scam all the old man.
No, Scamel's the other guy who survives at the end. the 2nd in
charge, I think.
Yeah, yeah.
The one who's constantly grumpy and well that won't work and that
won't work and that won't work.
I have literally no memory of him.
It's what should have been done to the Scooby-Doo cast, isn't it?
We really do.
We should have picked them off one by one.
Velma and then...
I suppose we've seen enough horror postiches to that have done
that before this, but it almost does feel like that.
That we've got such a setup of cyphers that, again, recognisable
memes, tropes, tropes, tropes.
And again, knocked off like dominoes.
Oh, I really want to say something nice about Chipper's script
really do.
Look, I think he will go on to produce better scripts than this
but it is just astonishingly...
Better Malcolm Hulk script.
Yeah, better Malcolm Hulk scripts than this.
But it is really linear and it really just doesn't have anything.
It really should work for real time.
That's where you get the paint.
But it'd be nice to have some plot twist or something.
And I don't think the discovery that it's they're being killed by
their own fuel, which could go somewhere or mean something, but
doesn't.
It's just a science fiction trope.
I mean, we're all being killed by own fuel, even as we speak, but
it doesn't actually have anything to say.
And that's another thing about gymnal scripts is that they often
just have no real subtext.
They are a collection of science fiction things that happen for 42
minutes.
And you get the whole resolution where, you know, they jettison
the fuel and then it just unpossesses the doctor because that's
what we do.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It occurs to me that Star Trek Voyager did this episode at least
twice.
Really?
Like living nebulas and things like that.
To the point that, yeah, they take a bit out of the nebula and
then they have to repair it.
Brendan, yeah.
Is there coffee in that nebula?
coffee in that nebula.
Yes, that's the one.
I remember.
I think that's like episode 3 of which.
Yeah, look, I quite like this, but I think Chibnell will
definitely do better.
Like one of my favourite chibnal scripts is the power of three
which we're still a few years away from.
But I think as a debut Doctor Who script, You compare this to the
Lazarus experiment last week with Stephen Greenhorn.
And it seems to me, this script, it may be linear, but what
happens is a logical progression.
You never sort of have to make a leap to understand why we are
where we are.
Like with the Lazarus experiment last week, you know, there has to
be all this talk about a cathedral in the 1st couple of acts.
So it's Chehov's Cathedral.
You know we know we're going to end up there.
There's nothing like that here.
This is one I think you can come into halfway through and you know
what is happening.
And I think the way I recommend coming in 5 minutes from the end.
Right, and so it's just sort of Francine and Martha. the only
thing you get to see.
I will say something about the timings in this episode.
It's not 42. not 22 minutes, is it?
doesn't it start like that?
It starts out pretty well.
So our 1st time call is 4227 and our next time call just after the
opening credits is about 10 seconds out at 4026.
After that, all the remaining time calls are about 4 minutes out.
And I was trying to figure out why that was.
And then I discovered, so where we get the opening credits, with
that pullout shot of the ship falling into the sun, which was to
date the longest special effect sequence the mill had done.
Wow.
That wasn't originally the crash into the title.
So crash into the titles came later in that scene where Martha
says, we're stuck here. and that's why you get a big close-up of
Freeman saying that line. and she's doing cliffhanger acting.
Right, right.
Because then the next time call after that is the one that's 4
minutes out.
So the idea is during the titles, we lose 4 minutes.
Okay.
Then are we then consistently 4 minutes out?
It's then consistently 4 minutes out.
But I think they're aware of this because I started a timer when
the computer said 4227.
They do here at FTE.
And it went off as Francine was watching the sinister woman leave
her house and the music goes into the next time trailer.
So there is an element in there that is at least 4227.
Because I was going to bitterly complain about that.
It would have been better had it actually been properly, you know
42.
But it's good investigative work.
Thank you for that.
So we don't have to.
It's something I always do when there's like a countdown in a
movie.
It's like we've got 10 minutes to do this.
It's like, yeah, and in 15 minutes time, it'll be at 5 seconds.
Can I just praise Freemur again for her screams in this episode?
I think her screaming is just fantastic when she's in the pod and
she's, you know, in dire deadly danger.
Yeah, because there's one she does where she sees Corwin and it's
not a scream of terror.
It's a scream of, if I could get my hands on you, I would take you
apart.
Which you just can't imagine Billy doing.
Oh I don't know.
Well, maybe with her teeth.
One more thing I will say is this completes a sort of trilogy of
very filmmically based stories.
So Daleks in Manhattan, that two-parter, very Frankenstein, very
30s universal horror.
Last week, as I said, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Flied.
This week...
The Carl Emley films.
And of course, there was also Berkeley and 42nd Street, and Daleks
and Manhattan is every great New York film from that period that I
love.
Yeah, you're right.
We're seeing an homage to 30s drama.
Yeah, and this is, as you said, Richard Solaris, it's forbidden
Planet.
And also alien, very obviously, with the arena comparison I
mentioned.
But I think of the three, this uses its references without
directly copying them the best.
This isn't, hey, remember Frankenstein?
Well, here's a guy with some tentacles on his face.
This is if you know...
We hope they tend to go.
Yeah.
This is, it's like, if you know alien, and you know that scene
where Veronica Cartwright is attacked by the alien, then arenas
attack from the sun monster has resonance, but you don't need it
to understand it.
Because I remember in 2007, Todd, watching Daleks in Manhattan, an
evolution of the Daleks at your place.
And why do I have that memory of these things?
There was lots of champagne.
And I seem to record time.
You really, really hated like human sick.
You thought it was so ridiculous.
And someone said, oh, but it's Frankenstein's monster. and you
went, oh, right, fine.
But that's the thing.
You need to get that reference to fully appreciate the character.
And in this one, I don't think you need the references to
appreciate it that gives you a deeper understanding.
A lot of these film references.
Go totally over the top of my head.
I like the concept of Dalek Zec now.
Like, I still think performance wise, but I bought into that plot
a lot more.
What you're saying should be a real strength to this episode.
I don't know whether it is.
Yeah, it doesn't quite lame.
In fact, the fact that it's the same aesthetic as alien, it's all
sort of just terribly familiar, you know, that does operate as
shorthand, we know where we are, but it does mean that just the
concepts are just a bit retread, you know, like it's all stuff
that we've seen a lot of times before.
Oh, dear.
I'm looking at that painting above Brendan and Todd, and it pretty
much is the artwork for this episode, the burning sun with the
little tiny little astronauts. tiny little actors that we'll never
see again plummeting into...
I'm getting into the solar sphere.
I really want to say something good and I've been struggling all
the way through this.
I think it's, I think it does what it sets out to do
successfully.
It's entertaining.
I wasn't uninterested watching it, but my heart's not there.
I'm sorry.
Well, they listener, that's all we have time for this week.
We'll be back next week to visit an old friend, as the doctor gets
his Superman 2 on, in human nature.
In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts
and you can keep up with us at Flightthrough Entirety on Facebook
at FTE podcast on Twitter and on our website, FlightthroughEntirety
com, where you'll find links to our 2 other podcasts, Bondfinger
and Jody into Tara.
Until next time, thanks for all your doing, dear listener, Mr
Saxon will be very grateful.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
See you soon. frying.
That was Flight for Entirety, starring Todd Beelby, Nathan
Bottleby, Brendan, Jones, and Richard Stone.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, strings performance by Jane
Orberg.
This episode, I believe Beryl Reed is afraid to captain, was
recorded on the 1st of September 2019 and released on the 27th of
October.
Other things that you might plunge into from a great height in a
Chris Chipnell episode include the Earth, a pit leading into the
centre of the Earth, an enormous CG demon, the Earth again, a
dinosaur, and a disused building site just across the road from
Tim Shaw's dentist.
And today is the 1st of September.
And we are going to go for 42 minutes, exactly is the plan.
So not the actual raw recording.
We'll go a bit longer than that, but let's get started as quick as
we possibly can.
I've got nothing about this one, by the way.
I've got a few things.
But it's not about them. about other things.
Yeah good.
Oh, yeah.
So the commentary is Rusty T ladies and Chris Chinball.
Calvin, are you going?
42 minutes.
Yeah, we're starting now.
Do you want me to pull across the thing?
No, the dogs won't come.
They'll be outside.
I like we've got the sunny room.
Yeah, yeah.
Because he's going to not be.
Yeah, because he's not going to be here.
Sir, not appearing in this.
They all look pretty up there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I haven't really sort of arranged them or anything.
They're not even...
I know.
A logical order.
Look at that moment there.
One, like 10, 12, 19 and 18.
I think the most phones are having inner apoplexy just
contemplates upsetting on that show.