Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through
Entirety.
The only Doctor Who podcast unexpectedly dropped from the
television version of this story.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Todd.
And I'm Simon.
Well, the doctors know where to be seen this week.
Instead, it looks like BBC One have decided to screen an unseen
prequel to serve them all my days, a prequel where there's no sign
of Matthew Waterhouse, and where the plot seems strangely familiar
for some reason.
It's everyone's favourite episode 8 of series 3, human nature.
So, this is slightly unusual, isn't it?
We have had Doctor Who stories that have been roughly based on, or
inspired by, sort of, big finish.
I'm thinking Dalek.
Yeah, and Age of steel.
Yeah, right.
They both get sort of credits, I think.
You know, Mark Platt gets a credit in the closing credits because
he's the inspiration for that.
But this is just really a straight kind of retelling of Paul
Cornell's 1995 New Adventures novel.
Yeah, so in one fell swoop, they basically say the new adventures
didn't happen.
Yes, I did want to talk about Canon.
I always do.
I know it's all made up, but at the same time, it effectively is
saying that the new adventures didn't happen by retelling the
story.
But hang on, like, in that novel, it's the 7th doctor in Benny, and
this is not the 7th doctor in Benny. and there's some other
differences too.
Well, the doctors just decided to do it again.
Yes.
Why not, I suppose?
Every time I become human, I end up falling in love with Joan Red
going back to 1913 or 14.
Yes.
They are set at slightly different times.
Cornell's novel set in sort of April 1914.
So what, five, 6 months after this one.
So perhaps both of them happened or neither, who knows?
I mean, the canon thing is really of no interest to me at all.
No, exactly.
And what Canon really is, is what can you refer to in Doctor Who?
And so this is a bit of a big Easter egg for all of us who are
following the new adventures. we all were, weren't we?
Oh, yes.
That was what Doctor Who was at the time.
Yeah, 1995.
We just didn't have anything and we hadn't had anything for a long
time.
And the new adventures, like when I look back on them, I feel a
sort of strange reluctance ever to read any of them again.
But my memory is that there was some extremely good Doctor Who
there.
Yes.
I've actually got quite a nostalgia for them and I've just started
reading them all from the beginning because there are several that
I never read at the time. or some sort of they get halfway
through.
And um, I mean, I'm only up to sort of, what is it?
Andrew Cartnell's one, Warhead, whatever it's called, the 2nd of
the Times crucible ones, of the cat's cradle ones, rather.
And I do have a great nostalgia for them because I, there are some
of them that I think were very, very good, or at least spoke to me
at the time, and human nature was certainly one of them.
And we, as some people in this room may recall, when the series
came back in 2005, my future husband and I were deliberately
avoiding any spoilers at all, any spoilers at all, even we didn't
want to know titles, we didn't want to know who was in them.
We wanted to try and revisit our childhood where it was just the
episode titles in TV week and you went, oh, what's this?
and you watched it.
I remember that because we had to avoid you.
Yes, yes.
Well we had to avoid you.
And I know there was much consternation at the time that we'd
chosen this route, but however, we all worked through that.
But when at the end of 42, the next time comes on and shot by shot
it suddenly dawned on me.
Oh my god, they're doing human nature.
And I think it was the moment when you see him in academic garb
and and Joan is the sort of the nurse and it really completely
clicks.
They're doing human nature and I was so over the moon because this
one really, that novel really did mark a pinnacle, I think, of the
new adventures books.
I think, you know, 1995 was probably a pretty good year for the
new adventures books sort of generally.
And this one was actually re-released.
You can actually still buy it on the Kindle.
It was re-released as part of a thing called the history
collection, which includes some new adventures and some BBC books
and things.
And Paul wrote another sort of intro.
And he actually says that he was really fond of this novel because
he thought his previous novel had been bad.
So that was no future.
Yeah that was terrible.
Yeah, no, he said it was just sort of a tiresome collection of, you
know, in-joke references to previous stories.
And, you know, that was something that the new adventures could
probably get away with better than the new series can because it's
only being read by like 4000 people.
Well, the print run was microscopically small.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
With all due respect to our friends, you've written them.
No, no.
And it was being read by people who could pick up all of those
references and things.
But he had decided.
And what he says is he wanted to get the doctor to fall in love
and he couldn't really do that without kind of breaking the
premise of the program.
And so that was when the sort of Superman 2 idea hits him.
He gives up his time lordiness.
Yeah, to become human.
Do you remember reading this song?
No.
By this time I was giving up on the new adventures.
I read some of them, but then there were too many hit and misses.
So then I just picked and choosed the authors and the ones that
they said they were that were really good.
And it was around this time that I decided not to continue buying
them or reading them.
I'd read Kate's and I knew that Paul's were good.
So I can't remember if I even read this.
I may have purchased it.
Did you purchase all of them?
I can't remember whether I think by then, Peter and I had
consolidated our collection and were just buying one copy and I
certainly don't own them now.
I've got a box. reading Brian's copies.
Yeah, I've got a box.
They're not out on the shelf or anything like that.
I have a box in the attic and this is the most embarrassing
admission that I've made on the podcast, among many embarrassing
admissions, but I actually got rid of all my target novelisations
but kept the new adventures inexplicably.
And I can't, you know, they are upstairs in the attic and I can't
imagine pulling them down again.
And the only way that I was able to, you know, read this was by
buying it again.
I wasn't even going to explain. couldn't find it.
Well, I just wasn't going to be bothered and, you know, my Kindle
was in my hand.
What are you going to do?
Well, you see, I got rid of the target novelisations too, because
as soon as it became apparent that, you know, everything was going
to be based on that wonderful thing called VHS.
Everything that was extant.
And then you had audios of the ones that weren't.
The need for the novelisation sort of, for me, evaporated.
And I'm a bit, you know, regretful about that because there is, in
some respects, much more of a nostalgia about that than there is
about the new adventures.
But the new adventures are unique.
So they in some respects are worth keeping.
Yeah, because you can't buy them on DVD or anything.
I belong to a group on Facebook, the Doctor Who Target novel
people, and they are constantly hunting down sort of, you know
rare copies or library copies or hardback.
It's usually the wheel in space or something.
Yeah, yeah, Paradise Towers.
And like I've got a lot of sympathy for that.
Certainly, I have great memories of the target novelisations
including things like Doctor Who and the cave monsters, doomsday
weapon, like all of these ones that were vastly superior to the
frankly pertweet stories.
Oh, what's up?
I'm offended by it.
No I love them.
I do too.
There's a whole lot of Twittery stuff going on at the moment where
they're voting on the different covers of the different versions
of the target covers.
The original doesn't always win out, but sometimes it's like it's
too much nostalgia. just go, I just love that cup.
I'm sorry, let's have a confession here.
The cover that you like is the one that you happen to buy.
And with our age group, we would have been buying for some of
those earlier ones, we'd have been buying the 2nd cover.
Yeah, I had the 2nd cover of the Green Death and of...
And we didn't have dinosaur invasion.
Yeah, we didn't have the clack version of the dinosaur invasion
for instance.
And so they're the covers that you think are the best.
In fact, I even had a Pyramids of Mars with the neon logo on it
which was, didn't, you know, which I, of course, thought was much
better than the, than this strange drawn one that was, I can't
remember the original.
But let's get back to this.
So, the cold open.
We're right into the adventure.
There's things happening.
The doctor and Martha are being pursued.
We've got the watch, and then we cut to Mr. Smith and his dreams.
It's actually a bit cleverer than you think because you think
you're being thrown sort of in made arse rays at the very
beginning, but it turns out that you're actually even further
along.
So you think you're starting in the middle of an adventure, but
the adventure is actually, you know, it's months now after that.
And how long have they been there?
How long have Martha and the doctor been there?
several months, several months.
I know that she keeps saying there's only one month to go.
Yeah.
So yeah, I think it's supposed to be several months.
It is mentioned, like it's 3 months or a term or something.
Joan does mention how long they've been there for.
But it sets up a lot of interesting questions because I was
writing my notes going, well, how do they get the job and all this
sort of stuff and then that, of course, is then revealed in the
narrative as it goes along.
This wouldn't work if the character of Joan wasn't so well written
and performed.
And I think Jessica Hines is just tremendous, giving the strength
to the character of Joan, but also the vulnerability.
And as viewers, we obviously have to accept that the doctoral this
version of the doctor, Mr. Smith, can fall in love with this
character.
We've only seen it really once before in Stephen Moffat's episode
with the girl in the fireplace, where there's sort of a love
interest there.
It's a love interest with the actual doctor as opposed to a
simplified version of the doctor.
So it does work so they are different in that regard, which is why
it's quite beautiful, I think.
I think too, that this, you know, the fact that this is being done
with a 10th doctor, who is a romantic figure with a girl in every
fireplace, who was in some sense in love with Rose during the
series 2.
So that makes this story very different from the novelisation
where you've got Sylvester McCoy's doctor who is sort of silly and
sort of sweet, but not at all a romantic hero, and where we
haven't seen the doctor depicted in that way.
Now we're used to it.
You know, when Russell brings the doctor back, he's not the
neutered public schoolboy of the classic series, which is how
Russell actually puts it in the in the kind of series Bible.
So we already have a romantic hero and we already, you know, we're
travelling with a companion who is in love with a doctor who's
attracted to him.
So this isn't as series breaking an idea as it was when it was a
novelisation.
It wasn't a novelisation name.
I keep saying novelisation.
Let me I'll see whether to cut that out.
No, don't cut that out.
Yeah.
But just can I add, sorry, just going back to the McCoy version
though.
The McCoy doctor is older, quote unquote.
You know, he's someone who presents as in their late 40s, maybe
even older by the time you get to the new adventures, and the Joan
character in the book is portrayed as older.
So it's sort of a more of a sweet later in life, kind of coming
together of like minds, rather than in this, where you've got this
young, handsome, you know, 30 something person.
And so there is a different tone anyway.
Are we reading Jonah's older than the doctor?
than Mr. Smith?
In the in the television?
absolutely.
I think she's a little older, but not terribly older.
But I think I think they are coming to this later in life.
You know, they're in their 30s and they're both not married and I
think for that time, that is older.
Well, she was married.
She her husband died, right?
Yes, but she's not married if she doesn't have kids.
Like, yes, she has that past, but they are both older.
Yes.
And I like the fact that it gives David Tennant the opportunity to
be completely different to his doctor, who is always so confident
and talks really quickly, and here he's tongue tidy, he forced
downstairs, he's clumsy, he's very, he's not the man that we
know.
And I think it gives him that opportunity to show a different side
to his ability as an actor.
I think too, that that is a very moffety scene, that scene with
Joan and John Smith just kind of blirting for the 1st time.
And um, the doctor's often really super confident, you know, like
even with women, Matt Smith's doctor won't be, you know, Capoldi's
doctor won't be, but but David Tennant's doctor is sort of sexy.
Matt Smith work is more awkward.
Yeah, yeah.
So this is a very moffity scene.
Yeah, well, he's awkward.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like that's Moffatt's sort of go-to sitcom thing. is men and women
being awkward around each other.
And Paul Cornell is obviously a friend of Stephen Moffat.
And in fact, the novelisation includes a character called Mr
Moffat, who is named after...
Yes, that's hilarious, Stephen Moffat.
So I think that that's a sort of very particularly moffity scene
and it is really genuinely very funny, and it ends with the sort
of fabulous slapstick falling downstairs.
Can I just go back to Jane's performance?
You sort of say how sweet and sort of wonderful.
She's, in some respects, she's the only actor and character in it
that you feel could be dropped into Downton Abbey and work because
you know, Timothy Latimer is obviously supposed to be ahead of his
time because he's obviously a bit psychic or whatever he is.
And the other boys are a little bit, you know, differently
played.
They're not quite right.
The headmaster is sort of a bit of a caricature.
He's barely in it.
And the doctors, well, the doctor, as John Smith, is a sort of
style of performance, which I'll come to later.
But Joan is the one that feels most like she is in a period
drama.
And I think that's why it works as well.
The way she, the little tick she has, the way she doesn't quite
look at the doctor, when she's talking to him and all that sort of
thing, the modesty, the way she tells Martha off for, remember, you
have to remember your place and so on.
It's that sort of prim and proper, you know, the things are done a
certain way, you know, and you should know that, and don't be so
silly, dear, and all that sort of stuff.
She grounds the entire performance in BBC period drama reality.
Yeah, yeah.
And let's talk a little bit about that because this is our 3rd
story this season that's said in the past.
And the last time you were here, Simon, you got what was sort of a
period piece, once said in the 51st century.
And this doesn't do.
I think what has been the sort of standard way of depicting the
past in Doctor Who, which is the theme park past, you know, we
talked about this a great deal in our Shakespeare code episode
that all we get are sort of very standard shorthand signifiers of
the year 1599 to kind of locate us there, but the basic messages
people were basically the same back then.
And you were saying something before we were recording, Todd, about
the Dalek 2 parter. to do with Martha.
Well, just, you know, the Hooverville thing, it's set in a world
where racial attitudes are different.
Yeah, I mean, I was saying that this is the 1st time, right front
and centre, that racism towards Martha is there from the boys and
from the other characters, like the headmaster just dismisses her
completely as a woman and whether or not that's a woman.
Well, as a woman, as a servant, as a person, yeah.
Yes, all of those things.
The previous 2 times this season, we've dodged that in the
Shakespeare code, sort of, you know, a bit of humour and then, you
know, left behind and in the whole structure of the Dalek 2
parter.
It's not there to be addressed.
You know, we've got Hooverville where we've got Solomon is in
charge, but would we see other white characters reacting to that
the fact that there's a black man in charge?
They don't address that.
But here, it is there and the frustration, We see the frustration
and the resilience of Martha Jones in these episodes.
And as it goes along, I feel her angst and her frustration and
it's great that it's actually in there and they're not shying away
from it.
Yes, I think in the earlier episodes, they're conflicted as to
whether, whether we want to make a thing about her being a person
of colour, or whether we're just trying to say, no, here she is
and it's all fine, it's all normal, because of course everyone's
sophisticated and, you know, that's the past.
And despite the fact that we have gone back into the past before
where it could have been addressed or it could have been noted, it
wasn't.
Well, it is noted in the Shakespeare code.
Like she says, you know, I'm not exactly why.
Do I need to be worried?
And the doctor gives a very kind of white privileged response
about, you know, don't be so silly, just walk around like you own
the place.
Yeah, you think, well, that's perhaps not an approach that... is
available.
Compare that to Rosa.
Yeah, that's right. where both Towson and Mandeep's characters
actually suffer from racism.
Yes.
And thin ice, I think, as well, brings it up and addresses it in a
better way.
But here, I think, you know, partly it's a kicking the puppy
moment, like partly it's a characterisation of Bains and Hutchison
as arrogant, horrible, you know, public schoolboy.
But it's good characterisation for Martha because, you know, one
of the things about Martha is the, you know, the 1st time we see
her.
She's looking after her family.
She's on the phone, making sure that everything's all right for
kind of Leo's birthday that night.
And we know that she's patient and we know that she's caring and
resilient.
And so I don't think this story works if Rose is in it at all.
You know, like I don't think we've seen rows in the past just
dressing in sort of normal clothes and stuff with Queen Victoria
and being kind of arrogant and dismissive of people in the past
where Martha's put in a position where she's subservient to them
and kind of has to wear that.
It totally works.
And she doesn't get to the doctor and you see that frustration and
and then Joan herself is also very of her time in terms of her
attitudes, you know.
She asks about Martha and Martha says, I used to work for the
family.
He sort of inherited me.
And Jane says, best remember your position.
Yeah, you know?
And all the way through, the headmaster just dismisses it all the
time.
But as I said, it's not just because she's black.
It's because she's a servant.
The servants are seen and not heard. and a woman as well.
I mean, they're outside.
And a woman as well. pub You know, like, I imagine that's because
they're women.
Yes, it's because they're women.
But the headmaster's attitude is, you know, you don't even address
like you don't even talk to me.
And I think that's why the racism of 1913 is a different sort of
racism because, you know, if you look like that, you're only going
to therefore be a servant and therefore it sort of goes hand in
hand.
It's when, in some respects, racism becomes more aggressive, when
there is an attempt to change the socioeconomic positions of
people of colour.
And that's where you get the aggressive racism of the 50s and
60s.
Because these people are getting ideas above their station.
Yeah.
So while ever Martha's sort of deferential.
Quote unquote.
She'll be okay.
Exactly.
Although she is the victim of racism or she gets particularly
targeted by Hutchison.
Baines.
Yes, yes. with that sort of standard association of black people
with being dirty.
Exactly, yes, yes.
Yeah, yeah.
It's good.
I think it's really good.
And I don't think it overwhelms the show.
No, no, at all.
It adds a texture to it.
And I think if it wasn't there, you would have cause to say, well
you've sort of whitewashed history if you want to put it that
way.
I actually like the fact that we're not trying to present the
people of 1913 as the same as us.
And I think that they come off as somewhat incomprehensible and a
bit repellent as well.
Well, apart from Tim, because he's the one that is from the
present day who feels like he's been dropped into 1913.
Yeah, yeah.
But that works because that's supposed to, he's supposed to be, you
know, a younger version of the doctor, you know, curious and, you
know, so on.
It never really properly gets explained why he can see things and
guess things that are correct.
Oh, there's always been, um, the doctor's always met the odd human
who's sort of slightly psychic, slightly psychic or slightly
obviously, you know, evolved to a to a higher form amongst all the
other savages sort of thing, you know, that that's happened
before.
I wonder whether it's the effect of his possession of the watch
kind of echoing back in time.
Well, no.
Oh, echoing back in time.
Yes, I see.
Because he does it before he gets the watch.
Yeah, yes, you're right.
No, quite possibly.
That's a satisfactory excuse.
Thank you.
Thomas Sangster, of course, plays Timothy Latimer.
I find him quite Gormless, really.
It's a fine performance, like, but I don't, of the 3 younger
males.
Harry Lloyd is Baines, a son of mine, is by far the most
captivating and standout for me, Tom Palmer, who plays
Hutchinson.
He could be anybody.
Like he's competent.
I think he does get a good acting moment next week.
We'll talk a little bit more about Baines's performances, son of
mine next week.
He does fabulous upperclass twit, though, when he encounters the
space.
I say hello.
Yes, no, he's brilliant.
He is superb.
Yeah, he superb.
Yeah, really terrible.
Because he walks the line between it being a caricature and it
being a character.
And I think, you know, you can get a, you can get away with a
little bit of character.
You need a bit of caricature to tell people instantly who this
person is and he does that without it just being hammy.
Just going back to Thomas Sangster.
He looks very young.
I think he's afflicted with the fact that he looks like he's 12.
And even when you get to Game of Thrones, where he's quite
possibly 23 or something.
He still looks like he's like 13 years old.
And he's supposed to be, he's quite clearly, he's supposed to be
the same age as the other 2 boys.
They're giving, no, they're giving him his Latin homework to do.
There is no way.
He is basically the trodden on junior member of the same former as
them.
I just assumed that he was bullied by them and able to be beaten
by them because he was younger than them.
Like the sort of fagging system in an English public school.
Because, you know, the others are clearly being played by adults
so that we can, you know, make them work for long periods of time
during the day.
They do have some background tastes next week who are clearly very
young and again, we'll talk about that.
But it does look like Thomas Angst is the only actual child
playing a child here.
But I just assumed that he was terribly bright and that the
upperclass twits, Baines and Hutchison were terribly thick.
So he could translate, because he's just been asked to translate
Catullus, and, you know, a kid at an English public school before
the war would have been doing Latin since they were very young, you
know.
And so I imagine he could do their homework.
Fair enough.
But I still think that he is, um, maybe I'm just trying to I'm
just projecting part of my childhood at school in that, you know
you are, even though you're in the same form as these people, you
are the littlest, you are the youngest appearing and, you know
even you are the younger because there can be like, you know, 18
months between these kids and that's a long time when you're when
you're that age.
Anyway, look, it's detail.
But he, I think it's just going back to the original point.
I think the actor has that floor where he looks like he's just
going to look like a child his entire life until he looks like
he's 50.
I agree with you.
I think that's part of my problem with casting him is that he
looks just so young compared to the others.
In the novel, he is called Thomas Dean, and he is younger than the
other boy, and they beat him in the very 1st scene in which he
appears, is being beaten by a knotted rope, and then they
eventually hang him and kill him, and he is revived because he's
got enough kind of residual generation, blah, blah, blah, from the
watch.
In fact, there's not a watch.
No, it's not.
It's a cricket ball.
And Cornell says that it was Russell's idea to make it a watch and
the reason that the watch works is because you can open it.
And so you make a decision, you do a physical action, it opens
special effect.
Yeah, and that's visible.
So the choice of what to do with it makes more sense.
But the cricket ball is retained in the moment where John Smith
has to save the Yes, from the falling piano. the baby and a woman
from the from the falling piano, very much shades of Peter
Davidson, and I just think it's a bit of the doctor shining
through the mask that is on John Smith at that point.
And just going back to what you were saying about those other
differences about what happens to Tim.
I mean, that is a very dark thing to happen. tongue and so on.
I mean, you know, hanged, that it's no way in hell you'd be able
to do that.
No, absolutely.
Yeah.
I actually think I know why he's called Timothy Dean in the
novelisation too.
Because Paul Cornell went to a day event that I was at before
writing this, and there were 2 boys there, Dean and Unarmed, and
he promised to name characters in his next book after.
Yeah, he did a lot of that.
And Arnand does turn up as a character. and so and then Timothy's
last name is Dean, which they obviously change for this.
But I reread some of it last night.
Famously, there's a character called Nathan Bottomley in the
novelisation of human nature.
You in human nature, right?
Inexplicably failed to turn up in the TV show, even though I
thought he was probably the best thing I've ever seen in the
book.
And our friend Sarah and our dear friend Lucy, who died last
year.
Both appear in the prologue that's written by Benny and, you know
Benny spends some time drinking with the 2 of them and arguing and
stuff.
And so Paul does this a lot.
And it's very sweet.
And that's one of the things about those new adventures is we were
kind of weirdly adjacent to them.
Yes, we were.
Yeah, in a way that we probably haven't talked about on the
podcast before, but, you know, Kate Orman is someone that we've
all known for decades and who was extremely good in all of her
novelisations and then Paul, who creates some incredible Doctor
Who, in that context, is someone who used to come out and visit
and stuff like that.
Martha is paired up with Jenny, the other servant in quite a bit
of this episode.
I think she's great.
And so likeable.
And when she meets her demise.
It's actually quite affecting.
Yeah, I think so too.
And I think I maybe could have done without the scene of her
cowering in the spaceship being menaced by Baines.
I think that that's just about at the edge of what I think Doctor
Who can do.
It's nothing better than that nasty.
Oh come now.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, it's like an arrogant privileged white kid threatening a
servant in this sort of super gross way. and she's really sort of
properly terrified and she's a character that we've grown to
like.
She's got this sort of lovely accent.
There's that gorgeous scene where the 2 of them are out the front
at the pub and Martha's talking and, you know, they run off to see
the invisible spaceship land and all of that.
She's terribly likeable.
But doesn't that make it better?
The advantage of having 90 minutes rather than 45 minutes to tell
a story is that you can do those things with the characters.
You can get to know them before they're taken from you.
So you will have more, it will affect you more.
That means you can have a more a deeper emotional engagement with
the with the plot.
You can do that and still have a fast-paced pre-credit sequence
for the 1st episode because after that, it all the pacing then
drops back into a sort of a more mellow sort of flavour before it
then sort of ramps up again.
It does exactly what you should be doing with a 90 minute story
rather than a 45 minute story.
And the advantages of that are just, I think, cannot be
overstated.
Well, I always talk about Greg and Petra in this context, you know
by the time where you finished watching Inferno.
You know Greg and Petra?
Yeah, you've spent a month and a half with them.
Three hours of yell about them. that's right.
And you can't possibly get that in a 45 minute episode.
Yeah.
So otherwise, if it was a 45 minute episode.
Jenny wouldn't have would have barely appeared.
She'd have been in half a scene with Martha scrubbing the floor.
Yeah, yeah.
But it's great that both Jenny and Baines take the central roles
of son of mine and mother of mine heading into the next episode
because the other 2 characters are much more thinly written, which
is the girl with the balloon.
So she's called Lucy, I think.
But she's daughter of mine, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
And she skips along to some little music that reminds me of the
girl from Remembrance.
Yes, I thought that too.
Yes.
And then Mr. Clark, who owns a farm or...
Has a big moustache.
And that's about it.
You know?
And he sort of fobbed off to the side anyway, trying to find the
Tartars.
But there's still more characters in this than there are.
Oh, yeah, but I'm just saying that those 2 are much more thinly
drawn than Jenny and.
I think for them, you know, Mr. Clarke, it's in the performance
and the look and for Lucy, again, performance and look.
And we'll talk more about them next week, I think when we sort of
see them properly.
One of the things I really love about this episode are all the
little touches to the past or the future.
Like I love all the little flashbacks when Timothy opens the watch
to things that we've seen.
I love the doctor's journal of impossible things with all the
little sketches of rose, blue box, and obviously McCoy and
McGann.
Yes, McGann becomes canon at that point.
Oh, he was always canon.
Was that the 1st time we saw, we had reference to the original
seer. proper reference beyond Daleks and Cyberman.
Yeah.
Well, so we decided that the 1st time there were real proper
references to the old series was when Sarah Jane Smith comes back
in school reunion.
Of course.
And we think, you know, there are hints at it, but the 1st sort of
real proper statement that it's the same kind of continuity is
there.
But we haven't seen original series doctors and we do see sketches
of them here.
But we also get with Joan and the doctor when they're walking in
the field and she's asking about his past. and Gallifrey and my
mother was verity and my father was Sydney, of course, references
to Veroti Lambert and Sydney Newman.
Yeah.
And so there's all those little touches.
But that's more of an in-joke for our benefit rather than here is
a sketch of Paul McGann.
I think, too, that that is a lovely in joke and it's a very poor
Cornell in joke as well.
It is absolutely beautiful because it shows a real reverence for
those 2 people who really did give birth to Doctor Who, and I love
it a lot.
I think it's, yeah, it's just one.
One of the things in this story is the whole Martha visiting the
TARDIS, and then she gets the whole, we get the whole explanation
in flashback as to what's going on, and it all seems rather rushed
and the family are after them.
Did you see the face?
I've got to then put this thing on my head and become part of the
watch.
But then she gets to look at the 24 reasons, you know, if
something happens to me, The doctor has sat down and obviously had
several minutes to be able to explain to her what to do. her not
there.
Correct.
And it's something in terms of the structure that doesn't
necessarily...
In the original, the doctor gives Benny a note, a handwritten note
with all of that stuff, you know.
I really like that scene a great deal because I think Murray's
music is amazingly atmospheric.
It's really, really good.
And there's a real kind of sense of dread.
And it's partly those quick flashbacks to, you know, tenant
gurning his face off in the chameleon arch, which why wasn't it
called a transformation arch?
I think they really skipped a potential Delta and the Bannerman
reference there.
I think that's very well directed.
I think it's ominous.
You know, it's sort of frightening and it is the place where we
really find out the premise.
It's impossible for us to watch this now without already knowing
what's going on, but that's where we find out, isn't it?
Oh, yeah.
I don't have a problem with that.
We come back to it, obviously, later in the episode because Martha
needs to, is expressing her anxiety or her frustration with the
doctor falling in love.
You know, what about women?
Had to fall in love with a human.
That wasn't me.
Oh, I literally went, well, I just literally did that when she
actually said those lines.
She could have just said, you had to go and fall in love with a
human.
Like it could have stopped.
One of the problems I've got with this season is Martha in love
with the doctor goes on and on and on.
I don't have a problem with it in the 1st 3 episodes.
She has a real moment in episode 3 at the end where she sort of
sits down with the doctor and, you know, I feel that there's some
sort of moment where she might be letting it go of it a bit, in
the Dalek 2 parter, because of the structure of that story, to
deliver on her, have 2 conversations, about being in love with
somebody who's unavailable, with that fantastic joke in episode 5
that is into musical theatre.
But at that point, I kind of feel like, okay, she's having this
conversation.
She's working it out of her system.
And in the last 2 episodes, it sort of made a bit of a joke of in
the Lazarus experiment.
And last week in 42, I mean, Martha has a love interest and it's
sort of like, I feel like she's moved on.
And for me, at that point in this episode, just that line, just
you know, that wasn't me, just irritates me.
I just think the line's a bit on the nose and I think that Freema
is well and truly capable of conveying that she's still in love
with the doctor without us having to hear her say that.
I don't mind her being in love with the doctor.
I do think, though, that this does represent a real proper
development in her relationship with a doctor, and it's certainly
not a story that could have happened any earlier in the season.
And I think the Lazarus experiment is really kind of the proper
moment where the doctor stops being dismissive of her and is
openly appreciative of her.
And here, the fact that he trusts her enough to look after him for
all of these months, that he knows that she's reliable and
responsible and caring, like that's good.
That makes her being in love with him a bit less.
Um, you know, a little bit more tolerable because if she's in love
with him.
She's at least in love with someone who likes and appreciates
her.
And that smile that Tenant gives at the end of the recording where
he says, oh, and by the way, thanks, and we freeze frame on that
smile, which is a lovely, you know, sort of genuine seeming tenant
smile.
We don't see his teeth or anything.
I think that that helps a bit.
But I do agree that that bit of dialogue, I think is on the nose.
And, you know, when you're in production, you're not going to be
able to see that you're too close to things, it's only from a
distance, then, you know, I think the conversation she has next
week works perfectly fine without having that better dialogue in
there.
I just think it's, it was an unfortunate choice for the character
and I just think it was tedious.
And so every time it happened, I would, you know, roll my eyes and
and then, yeah, throw out it because I just thought it was doing
rose again.
Because Rose falls in love with the doctor, especially the tenant
doctor.
I think it weighs the character down, but I've actually not minded
weighs the program down. fair enough.
I've not minded it as much this time round.
Like, I can see where they're coming from and what they're trying
to do with it, but this is the 1st time that I'm quite irritated
by that, but it's not a big deal.
No, it's not a big deal.
But you know, on the flip side, she does get to slap the doctor.
Like, in this episode, which I think is just hilarious, like
mother-like daughter.
Although I think this time it's earned, whereas I think 2 weeks
ago, I think it's not quite earned.
Yeah, and it's just done for effect and I have a problem with that
but that's a conversation for another time.
So let's talk about the dance?
Yes, the climax.
So the village dance?
On the 11th of November.
1913.
Yeah, so, I mean, obviously.
Yeah, yeah.
So this takes place over 2 days.
I think it starts on the 10th of November. like he in, you know, I
think the Joan and John Smith have that conversation about going
to the dance, the initial one that ends up with him falling down
the stairs.
It's the day before.
And I do like where he gets that little moment of doctor-ish sort
of sexual confidence to invite her to the dance after rescuing the
baby from the falling piano.
Yes, yes, yes.
That's the moment when he does it.
But it is very chaste and wholesome dance, which is entirely
appropriate, I guess.
Did you recognise the there's a veteran, presumably he's a Boer
War veteran because there's a few references to people fighting in
the Boer War, including the headmaster and Jones' 1st husband.
Well, husband.
And he's the one who gets sort of vaporised by Baines.
But he was evil mob boss Largo in the Blake 7 classic shadow from
early integrity.
Are you talking about the guy in the wheelchair?
No.
Seeking the nation's?
Yeah, I don't think he's in a wheelchair though, is he?
Is he?
I think he's standing at the door.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I can't remember.
But yes, yeah.
Oh, in this episode, he's standing at the door.
Oh, standing at the door.
Martha just walked straight past him.
Yeah, forget it.
Yeah, this is the...
I've had enough of this... this is the 1913 crap.
Yeah.
You know, I'm a woman from 2007.
I'm not going to do this anymore.
I really like that.
Her and Jonah, my MVPs of this episode.
Even that the dialogue exchange.
He says, you know, back entrance or servants entrance or something
I think.
And she says, yeah, no, I don't think so, mate.
I don't think so, mate.
But the beautiful thing is she doesn't even slow down.
No.
And it is.
She's had enough of all your 1913 crap at this.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so we have, you know, all of the family, I think the little
girl has been sitting there at the dance being bored and resentful
for quite some time, which I think is sort of super hilarious.
And then everyone else sort of converges on it with the lobster
guns.
They're very strange guns.
They are indeed, aren't they?
Yeah, I've never thought of them as lobster.
They do kind of, they do look like the kind of guns that would
have turned up in, you know, mind warp or something.
I gather that there was some idea that they were actually an
animal in in a sort of frame that finds the sort of disintegration
thing, but perhaps that just didn't properly make it to screen.
But yeah, like they look like sort of giant lobsters.
Yes.
And we get all the scarecrows attacking...
I'm sure the guns seemed like a good idea at the time.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, like Doctor Who at this time actually does quite a
good job of trying to differentiate things like spaceships and
guns and stuff, like to try and, this is the prop from last year
that we've just spray painted.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
But I love the cliff.
I love this whole cliffhanger whereby the doctor isn't there to
save the day.
John Smith is flailing.
Martha is the one that they know.
And there's dialogue that he has at the end there. like your
friend or your lover.
Your choice.
I can't even do it half as good, but it's just...
He's really good.
Fantastic.
I do want to spend some time next week.
Yes, I'm saving it for next week.
He's really tripping.
All of that, it's sort of slightly low scale, isn't it?
But it is super interesting because the doctor's absent and
because a decision is being given to someone who really has no
idea and I don't think we could even be confident how he would
decide.
No, how are we going to get out of this?
Yeah, yeah.
Yes.
I think that's what that's what makes it strong.
And it's so exciting that, you know, the universe isn't about to
be destroyed or something.
You know, it's so much better than it's just about this.
I also love the fact that the next time on Doctor Who, when you
watch it, actually doesn't give anything away for next week.
The way it's cut together is very clever.
Yeah, it cheats horribly, but we'll talk more about that next
week.
Because it uses sequences from the end of the episode, right?
But I do like that because quite often next times give quite a bit
away.
Whereas, whereas I just felt watching and I'm going, yeah, I like
the fact that it's a misdirection in the way it's cut together.
I just think that the whole thing does have a classic series
cliffhanger feel to it. a better classic series cliffhanger feel
where you it builds up in the last few minutes to the cliffhanger
itself.
It's sort of a bit logical.
At the same time, it's it's delightful because it is a contrived
moment.
And when it's all resolved next week, you could cut out the three
4 minutes surround it and the story would have just continued.
You know, without this contrivance in the middle of it, which also
gives it a very comforting feel.
Comforting in a Doctor Who kind of work, comforting that this is
how things are done.
There's a confidence in this production in terms of the
performances in terms of the dialogue, the music, and the design
that for me makes this episode up to this point in this season
along with Shakespeare code, my favourite 2 episodes up to this
point in the season.
I just think this is really strong.
It's not my favourite thing ever.
Like I'm going to give it 8.5 out of 10, but I think it's a really
solid episode of Doctor Who.
Well, dear listener, this fruit cup isn't going to drink itself, so
we're going to grab a paper cup and a chair while we wait a week
for Mr. Smith to make his terrible decision.
We'll be back next week to check in on the family of blood.
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 FDE podcast on
Twitter.
You can also find our series 11 flashcast, Jody Interterterra 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, remember not to let me eat pears.
I hate pears.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
See you soon.
Till next time.
That was Flight Through Entirety, starring Todd Beelby, Nathan
Bottleley, and Simon Moore.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, Strings performance by Jane
Orberg.
This episode, dropped into Downton Abbey, was recorded on the 18th
of August 2019 and released on the 3rd of November.
The Chameleon Arch was originally invented by Terence Deeks, who
intended it to be used by John Pertwee's doctor, so he could
become human and vote for Edward Heath in the 1974 general
election.
It is very needed to mention that I was in it.
That was really all.
I'm in one and I can't remember which one I'm in.
I don't have a cold in one of them.
You died of what?
A cold.
Not in that one, but in another one.
Is that because of Voltana or something?
I get Voltron.
I don't know.
What a story.
Martha is paired up with.