Hello, dear listener and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast that can smell David Tennant from the
other side of the universe.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Todd.
And I'm Simon.
Well, the fruit cup has run out.
The band is nowhere to be seen, and we've been sitting here
awkwardly for an entire week waiting for Mr. Smith to make his
terrible decision.
Who will live and who will die?
Let's find out as we discuss the family of blood.
You didn't notice that there didn't seem to be any visible band of
any kind.
No, I did not.
The music's just coming out of thin air.
It is. did not notice that. you kidding me?
Maybe they're the 1st ones to be vaporised, please.
Oh, no way.
Yep they're not visible.
It's basically a pretty lavish looking production, I have to say
but there are some obvious cheaping... funny.
I disagree with that.
No, I'm not saying it doesn't look good.
I'm just saying it doesn't look like they need to spend a lot of
money on it because it's all easy.
Because it's all sort of locations.
Yeah, yeah.
The church hall and, you know.
You know, they have a lot of background artists.
They do. which is refreshing.
Yeah, yeah, that is kind of nice.
And particularly in this episode, because you've got the scene in
the village hall and you've got, you know, a whole heap of boys at
the school.
Yeah, yeah.
The place seems populated.
And there are a lot of, they must be sort of digitally kind of
doubled or tripled or quadrupled or something.
The scarecrow.
Yeah, yeah, there are a lot of them in the attack.
How do they make them again?
We don't know.
But son of mine says that he created them.
Yes.
Very quickly.
Yes.
Oh, who cares?
But the thing is, though, that it's quite clear he's taken the
template of one and somehow duplicated.
It's not like every farmer in the area has the same looking
scarecrow.
That's the implication is that he's also stitched them together.
Anthony anally turns up.
Dusting the dusting the hay off.
What do we think of the scarecrows?
I think they're brilliant and I think they're brilliant because of
the way they move.
The weird lumbering where you're not sure which bits are joined
you know, where is the shoulder, where is the elbow and I think
that's quite effective.
They've got very sort of floppy limbs as if they have no.
As if they're made of straw, yeah.
And I think the face too, which is very kind of skull like.
Yes.
And the stitching over the lips and things.
It's quite grotesque actually.
We have had scarecrows before, but they've always been sort of
adjacent to Doctor Who, not really in the actual show.
So you remember that the 2nd doctor meets his demise at the hands
of some scarecrows in the comics in season 6B. And I think Doctor
Who meets Scratch Man.
Does that have some scarecrows in it?
I think it probably does.
So we've never had them before.
And this is a story that would otherwise completely lack non-human
monsters, isn't it?
Yes.
So if you want merch or if you want things for the kids to be
fine.
Yeah, you need you need them, I think.
Wasn't there a straw queen of the May in an episode?
No, that was Tegan.
But as usual, and I've said this before, and I'll say it again, if
I'm given the opportunity.
The best Doctor Who stories often have no, or the monster that is
the sideline.
The real villain is a human or humanoid type figure.
Well, I mean we do get that here.
Exactly.
Yeah.
That's what I'm saying.
It's a thing.
The scarecrows are just window dressing.
Yeah.
Well, it's a thing that Holmes does very often, isn't it?
Where he's given some stupid monster and he's sort of fairly
confident that they're not going to be able to realise it
properly.
And so he makes the humans the villains and he's doing it all the
way back from...
Whether it's Harrison Chase, whether it's at least, whether it's
you know, the towns of Winchang, uh, periods of Mars even.
You know, you've got Suttech. it's a voice.
I mean, you know, he's a, for all all intents and purposes
humanoid.
The mummies are just window dressing.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think they're effective.
I think they look really good.
Those scenes where they attack Mr. Clark and Lucy Cartwright in
last week's episode.
I thought they were really effective.
Here they work really well kind of thematically.
Because we get that attack on the school.
And one of the things that we haven't really properly mentioned is
that the spectre of World War one hangs over this.
And the boys are training in a sort of army cadets unit, like sort
of posh expensive schools in Sydney now have army cadets units
still, you know, I don't think they have machine guns though.
They tend not to, no.
But we had a rifle range at school.
Yes, but we didn't have a machine gun.
I mean, you know, we had a, we had a, we shot 6 bullets or
something like that.
Have you shot a gun?
Yes.
Yes, we did cadets at school?
Wow.
Okay.
It wasn't compulsory at my school.
So these are boys who will be being killed in a year's time.
You know, like it's going to be 1914 and they're going to be
fighting in France or whatever.
I think they had originally intended to set this before World War
II, but decided to set it before World War one, partly, I think
because during production, the story got closer and closer to the
original novel.
Oh, it started further away, yeah.
I think so.
And Paul says that, you know, he would hand the script to Russell
and Russell will say, but what about this bit in the novel?
I really liked that.
And so he would put it in?
And so, you know, there are ways in which it's quite far away from
the novel, but there are ways in which it is quite close
particularly the ending, which we'll talk about a little bit
later.
But that scene where the boys are being given the guns and that's
when they're really young.
You know, Hutchison and Baines are clearly adults, played by
adults, but the background artists aren't.
They're all very young.
Yeah, yeah.
But what, I don't know whether you're about to go there about the
the way they mow the scarecrows down.
You see, that is very World War one. the mowing down.
And they are, you know, and mowing down people as if they are just
scarecrows.
And the boys are crying.
Like while they're doing it, the boys are crying and even
Hutchison, who has been like horrible, like is a sort of horrible
person in the 1st episode, is shaken as well.
So you see these shots of boys with tears in their eyes gunning
people down.
Isn't there to be a pilgrim?
Song playing over the top of that?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and again, that's, you know, World War one is big European
Christian empires killing 1000000s of each other's citizens, you
know, like the Christianity can't be kind of separated from it, I
think.
It's interesting in that whole sequence that the doctor, sorry
John Smith doesn't appear to fire a gun.
Yeah.
And he puts the gun down.
I think it's more explicit in the novel again where he doesn't
shoot, but I don't think we could have tolerated seeing the doctor
gunning people down.
No.
But the thing about the World War one thing, I mean, I can
understand because no one in 1913 or even in April 1914 would have
had any idea in terms of the people in charge, quote unquote, would
have had any idea that there was about to be war.
It was such a weird, stupid, peculiar series of events and
treaties activating and all this kind of other nonsense that got
them into it.
Whereas I think if it was 1938, say, we would have known it was
something.
Because everyone's got that sense there is war coming, there is
war coming because this is all going on in Europe.
So I think it can work that they're gunning down all these
scarecrows and that's kind of a premonition of World War I without
them all thinking, a war is coming, war is coming because no one
thought that.
Well, Baines thinks it though.
And so he sees himself as sort of, you know, prefiguring World War
one in that scene by sending his soldiers to to be shot down by
children whom he knows will be fighting.
But that's just because he knows the future.
Yeah, because he's, you know, a space guy or whatever.
And, you know, his reason for knowing about the war is sort of
fairly thin, but it does sort of need to be there.
And the story is very positive about World War one.
I think in a sense.
Not positive about World War I in the sense that it was a good
thing and let's have more of them.
But the only person who expresses reservations about the war isn't
the doctor, it's Baines.
Do you remember when he dresses down the headmaster and says, you
know, what are they going to think of you when you've taught them
to be in a war like this, what will they think of the man who
taught them this was glorious as they're all being gunned down?
And giving that, that idea that the 1st World War is in some sense
sort of futile or pointless or some horrible cheat that sort of
perpetrated on the populations, the unwitting populations of all
of these countries, that gets given to baits and no one else
expresses that.
For everyone else, we imagine that they see this as fighting the
king's enemies.
And certainly when the king and country.
Yeah, yeah.
And that's how that scene with the scarecrows is couched.
It's couched in those terms.
They speak about fighting the king's enemies and defending his
properties and stuff when they're fighting off the scarecrows.
Joan, of course, knows has read the doctor's diary and John
Smith's diary, I should say, and he references 1914 and what is to
come.
So she's got in her talk with the doctor.
She knows that it's wrong for the boys to fight or John Smith
knows.
Yeah, yeah.
And she would like to think that John Smith thinks that too.
Even though last week, she very nearly puts an end to the
relationship, I think, when she sees him training the boys to
shoot.
It's just after John Smith says to Hutchison that he can beat
Latimer.
Yeah.
And she kind of walks away and says, look, I was remembering my
husband who died.
And so she is the one, I guess, expressing reservations, but
everyone else thinks war is really quite glorious at this point.
Make a man of you.
Yeah.
Well, I wish they'd make a man of Latimer, because he does resolve
the cliffhanger resolution with opening the watch, and that gives
Martha the opportunity to seize the gun and take control of that
situation.
It has to be Martha that doesn't.
You can't have the John Smith, the human John Smith, resolve the
Cliffhanger.
No, no.
Because that's the point of the Cliffhanger.
Yeah, yeah.
But it's another reason why she's so good in these episodes.
She's got so many great moments and her Sass comes back in this
episode.
Like in her bits of dialogue, like, God, you're rubbish as a
human.
I've got that written down here too.
And then and then with Nurse Redfern, when she doesn't believe
that she's training to be a doctor and she goes, oh, you think?
Like, I just love the fact that she's standing up.
In fact, those are my favourite sort of Martha Lyon readings, I
think, where she's just a little bit kind of sassy and naughty.
Like she tends to be quite a good girl.
But every so often she hits back with a zinger and I think Freeman
plays that really well.
It's something in my rewatch that, you know, she's under control
most of the time she's handling situation, but every so often she
lets that little bit of a fire out.
I really, really love it.
And it's why she's my MVP for these episodes.
And of course, later on, in this episode, you know, is the doctor
sort of, I keep saying the doctor.
But as John Smith keeps saying, like putting it down, what exactly
do you do for him?
And she has to justify that.
And she says, he's everything to me and I love him to bits, but he
won't even look at me.
That moment is glorious.
Well, in fact, I quite like a bit of dialogue saying, I really
hope that he doesn't remember this because she's sort of genre
aware to some degree.
Yes, yes.
And it turns out he does remember it, and they do have an awkward
moment discussing it at the end, which is kind of funny.
That's kind of quite cute.
We did touch a little bit in last week's episode about Harry
Lloyd's performances, Baines.
It is so good when he becomes possessed as son of mine or
reanimated or whatever he is, but it's aided by the direction by
the shot choices by the choice of lens, the way when they're doing
the sniffing thing.
And it's really fast and sharp and it cuts to this.
I don't know whether it's a fish eye type lens almost, but it's
really, it's from the side and it accentuates the shape of his
face in a way to make it look, because he's quite attractive
right?
He's a very attractive bloke, but they kind of defort, almost
deform the shape of his face, to make it like unnatural, that, you
know, this is not Baines anymore.
This is not a human, this is an animated corpse.
He's in the Merlin, isn't he?
Isn't he a regular in Merlin?
Well, he's No, he's in the 1st in a 1st season of Game of Thrones
is Janeris's brother and he meets a terrible fate there.
Because I remember, but again, upperclass twit in the same way.
But he's not like that in real life, actually.
I think we had to eat it, I was reading.
But he doesn't look like that.
Do you know what I mean?
He looks much more relaxed.
He was sort of bearded and stuff in the confidential, possibly.
And I think he was...
Everyone's bearded now.
Yeah, well.
No, but I think he was in a regular kind of genre program and did
seem to be a little bit more relaxed.
Not like that at all.
But the performance is really, really fun.
And he's adopted all that sort of shouty military crap from the
headmaster. from his teachers and stuff.
And so he comes back and brings that back to them.
I'm only surprised that he hasn't done more, like that I can
remember, like in terms of film and that sort of thing.
Like it's now been 11, 12 years.
I'm really surprised.
And it's a shame that in Game of Thrones, he gets killed because
in some respects, if he hadn't if that character hadn't have been
killed a few episodes into the 1st season of Game of Thrones, he
probably would have gone on to great and glorious things.
As being catapulted from Game of Thrones, like it's done for so
many of the others.
Yeah, I don't know why I'm not remembering what he's been in
because I just kind of think he has been in things, but I've just
sort of missed them.
But there is a glorious shot.
I don't know if it's him and mother of mine.
It's a high shot, like, taken from the school or somewhere and
they're standing.
And it doesn't look like him.
It literally does.
I thought this is a stand-in actor and I had to pause the thing
and it is him, but just the way it's totally framed.
He's so alien.
He is so good.
But she, I also think Jenny is also great.
And there's a reason why those 2 are the central figures.
I think they cut around that little girl a bit and their father's
competent.
But if I can say too, they all, but particularly, veins and Jenny
too, they managed to chew the scenery without eating the entire
thing.
There is a there is a...
No, no, but that's the glory, the best Doctor Who villains, the
Harrison Chases, and like how I keep coming back to my note, they
are, it is a camp performance.
It's over the top, but it works in the context and there's a very
very, very fine line that has to be walked to make it work and to
not make it look like it's hammy.
And I think it's achieved by a director who maybe knows when to
say just dial it back a fraction there, darling, or something.
And also using the shots and editing in a way so that it doesn't
become dominant.
You know, otherwise it does look like Paul Darrow in Timelash
think they do a great job.
I think they all all of them do, but obviously they concentrate on
the 2 strongest ones.
They're really, really terrific and absolutely kind of off-putting
because it's an off-putting performance. like quite a deliberately
of putting performance.
The director is, of course, Charles Palmer, who is the son of
Doctor Who alumnus Jeffrey Palmer.
He'll be turning up in one of his son's episodes.
Very, very soon.
Yeah, so he directs Voyage of the Damned, where Jeffrey Palmer
drives the Titanic into an iceberg or...
But he'd obviously been in the in the Doctor Who in the 70s, sort
of quite a lot and was a sort of terribly famous sitcom accurate.
Yes, wonderful.
Yeah, so Charles Palmer is his son.
And I think he's extremely good.
Like I think he does a great job.
I like the choice of giving the family of blood, no visible alien
characteristics, but giving them a sort of a green colour because
the colour of aliens is green.
And so whenever they talk to one another telepathically, we just
get a green line on their face.
And it's just a practical light.
It's not a post-production effect or anything.
I'd forgotten all of that.
It's one of my, my, my mental black hats.
But no, honestly, I'd forgotten that that was the way in which
they communicated.
I do have to say one thing at this point.
We've been praising this episode and we'll praise it the ending
and we'll praise.
I think I think you love the music, but I have to say this is the
1st episode of New Who that I actually was disappointed in.
I came in with an expectation, the first.
I came in with an expectation of what I was going to get.
And I guess I've had various expectations of other episodes, some
very low and they've lived up to those expectations.
But with this one, I came in thinking, yeah, I'm going, this is
going to be knocking it out at the ballpark all throughout the
episode.
And about, I don't know, 10 minutes in, I was just beginning to
lose hope from 2 perspectives.
One was John Smith and him going on and on and on about why can't
I stay and I just wanted it to stop and the other one was Latimer
with the watch.
How many times can you open that thing or run away to a different
location?
And I just found that personally, I just thought the episode was
marking time for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, I'm going, I just want
this thing resolved.
I know that sounds slack because I actually like, I think this is
a good episode.
I actually enjoy overall this episode in the last 10 minutes.
I think are extraordinary.
But I did have a problem in this middle part of the episode.
I certainly think that Latimer keeping the watch is just spinning
the episode out.
You know, when he finally surrenders the watch.
And I think he's even asked why didn't you do it before?
And he says, oh, you know, the watch told me, the watch told me.
And that does seem to be kind of artificially delaying things a
bit.
And I do think that scene where Nurse Redford takes them to that
house and then they just sit around talking for a very, very long
time.
Like, I think that starts to wear out its welcome a little bit.
I do think that scene is really good.
I love the idea that it was little Lucy Cartwright's house and her
family have all been murdered.
I have a little her father.
Yes, that's it's very nicely done and very subtle and it's that
thing of that there are consequences.
I'm sorry, but I've forgotten.
I didn't even remember.
I just thought this little girl's dead.
Her family are going to be devastated.
And then they said, 0 no, she's actually murdered them all.
And I'm just there going, well, that's something new I
discovered.
And the teapot's ice stone cold.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's quite gruesome, actually, in a nice underplay sort of way.
It's very well known.
And thanks to Jessica Hines, I think, because she's the one who
properly sells it because the idea is that she has already worked
out that this has happened.
She goes to that house because she knows it will be deserted
because she knows that daughter of mine will have killed Lucy
Cartwright's entire family.
And he's unlikely to return there.
And I think she says, you know, how quickly we come to accept
these things or something like that.
And that will pay off.
And I think it matters that so much of the episode takes place
there because it's just a reminder of what has happened.
And at the end of the episode where Jones gets to speak to the
doctor himself, it really pays off.
It does.
And in fact, it's interesting.
She's, well, because one imagines she has an apartment at the
school, so she hasn't have a house and yeah, so she's sort of
sitting in that house.
It's nice because it adds a different, extra location and I think
that it's nice when you get that, you know, the new location
appears in, you know, episode 3 or something and takes you through
the end.
It's like the new home base and it's somewhere where you think the
characters can feel safe when the world around them is totally
going to hell.
If I can just sort of come to, and Todd, you touched on it with
Tenant's performances, John Smith.
He starts last week's episode with a bit of 1913 acting in a
pretty minor tokenistic way.
And I think, especially during the 2nd episode, it does descend
into it just being the normal David Tennant performance of the
doctor.
I think it's...
Now, there could be reasons for this.
There's artistic choices and they're all valid and so on.
But it was when I was watching the 2nd episode that I felt that
there was a missed opportunity for both the program and for tenant
himself as an actor.
When you consider Patrick Trouton's performance as salamander in
enemy of the world.
Now, I know salamander is actually a different character, whereas
you know, this is actually supposed to just be, you know, a
watered down version of the doctor.
But this could have been a beautiful way for him to get rid of the
stupid gelled hair and have a very kind of slick, 1913 Edwardian
early Georgian sort of hairstyle for him to speak much more poshly
than he does and much more kind of middle, in that very middle
class version of posh, particularly in the sort of the early 20th
century.
And also for his character at that moment where they've got to
decide, are we going to open the watch, are we not?
You got to do this, and she's the one who has to convince him, and
I know that's part of it, that she's the one being strong.
But surely the human John Smith would be very stoic and I've got
to do this for kicking country.
I've got to sacrifice myself rather than going to pieces a little
bit.
I don't think I agree with you about Tennant's performance, but I
do agree with you about, you know, like about that choice.
Like, I think Tenet really, really differentiates John Smith from
his normal performance as the doctor.
And there's that moment, remember, when he's holding the watch, and
then he tells Tim why it is that he's got precognition.
And, oh my god, the doctor's back.
And we haven't really seen Tenant do that in that outfit at all.
And Tenant's outfit is a modified version of his normal outfit
with same colour scheme.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like the tie looks like it's a version of one of his normal ties
that's kind of been chopped up and turned into a bow tie in this
sort of final episode.
So I think he does maintain a big distinction between the 2
characters, but I don't like the muleing, crying performance that
John Smith does.
And I do think a bit more bravery would have been, or anger
perhaps.
You know, if it had been anger, but it's blubbing.
And I just... right.
And I just find myself with very little sympathy for it
particularly as it goes on and on.
And, you know, we're getting to the point where, you know, they're
raining down destruction on the entire village where there's, you
know, space bombs raining down everywhere and he's still crying
about it.
Because he should be, the distilled nature of who the doctor is
even if he's been turned into a human should be about what's the
right thing to do.
I will sacrifice myself.
He, you know, he does it.
The David Tennant doctor at the end of his reign does that.
He sacrificed himself.
The doctor's always sacrificing himself at the end mainly when it
comes to regenerations and stuff.
It's a shame that Joan has to convince him that that's the right
thing to do.
I think that anger would have been appropriate as well.
But I guess what I do like is that Jones anger only really, really
properly becomes apparent when she's faced with the doctor at the
end.
And I think that's so amazing.
The bit where she says, would anyone have died if you just hadn't
decided to come here on a whim?
And that is, I think, perhaps the only time in the program, one of
the few times in the program, certainly, where they use those
sorts of lines, and it's true.
Because the doctor has actually come to this village to escape, to
hide, right?
He's not because the alien menaces dragged him there or he happens
to have arrived there and discovered the alien menace.
He has brought the alien menace to this place.
Often when it's, you know, like the doctor turns up and, you know
it's a thing in the program, isn't it?
The doctor's dangerous, the doctor turns up and... it's so
overdone and I hate it.
And it's never his fault, really, or whatever.
But here, every single death.
Like, you know, we've spent so much time in a house where the
entire family's dead, and that's the doctor's fault.
And she just says, go away.
You know, like she's furious with him and doesn't overplay it at
all.
No, but it's just get out.
You know, like I'm not going to travel with you because you are a
monster who put me through this and put everyone else through it.
The fact that the doctor even asked her to travel with me, I think
is clueless.
Yeah, absolutely clue. and absolutely galling.
And, you know, and she says that's not fair.
Yes.
She's already said she can't bear to look at it.
Jessica Hines' performance in this is just sublime.
She is amazing.
The characterisation in the way that it's written as well and
directed, but without her having that inner strength and that
insight throughout all these episodes.
It's a mark of a very good actor because what she's done is she's
looked at the script.
She's looked at the reasons why this character is saying the words
that they are and she's she's got the thought process of what is
this character thinking at this time and you can see it written on
her face.
So I was complaining about the middle part of the episode.
We're now talking about the back end of the episode.
All these wonderful scenes with Martha with Nurse Redfern.
There's also just the brilliant montage of the life that could
have been.
That was the cheat that I was talking about because that's in the
next time trailer as if the doctor is going to have the rest of
his days.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, that's all right.
But I love that.
I adore that sequence and it pulls at your heartstrings.
And notice that they both see it.
Like she sees it too.
So she sees what both of them are giving up.
Do you feel that they almost experience an entire life in those
few seconds.
It's the inner light.
It's, yes, the inner light, exactly.
And like 50, 60 years pass in the blink of an eye.
Or do you think it's just it's just flashes?
I think we see what they see.
Because if they get to experience that life, then having it taken
away from them doesn't happen.
You know, the thing is heartbreaking because they both know what
they could have and they don't get it, you know, and that's the
doctor's fault.
That's entirely the doctor's fault that that doesn't happen.
So I think if they got it in some kind of science fiction sense
that would kind of undermine that a bit.
I think it's terribly good.
It's well known that John Smith's final words, you know, is
everyone okay?
or his sort of near final words, based on something that Paul's
father once said, when he was ill, the 1st thing, you know, that
he says is everyone okay?
And so he remembers that.
There's some shocking, shockingly insightful things about grief, I
think, in the novel.
Yeah.
And we'll get back to that later.
But I do think that it is the 1st hint of some horrifying
developments to come with the ageing makeup.
Oh, at the end of the season.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, that, I think the ageing makeup here is okay.
Well, yeah, I watched it on Blu-ray on a 60 inch television last
night.
It didn't really hold up all that well.
But it is there quite briefly, I think, so we'll give it a pass.
But it's going to be kind of the foam machine.
The BBC foam machine of series three.
It's going to get one series too.
It's gonna get more horrific.
So the doctor goes to the spaceship, pretending to be John Smith
and fumbles around and accidentally pushes a lot of different
buttons.
And then by doing that, the spaceship's going to blow up.
And so the family of mine become utterly useless at that and just
have to run outside and let their spaceship blow up.
And then the doctor can just then become the most powerful being
in the universe and put people in unbreakable chains, put them in
the advent horizon of a collapsing galaxy, trapping one of them
inside a mirror and suspending son of mine in time in the fields
of England.
If he's that powerful, why doesn't he just do this all the time to
every single villain?
I think that that scene is very strange.
I think it's extremely good.
You say the scene where he presses the buttons or the aftermath.
So the aftermath.
So the scene where he presses the buttons, I think that that is
wonderful.
Yeah, and it gives Tenet the chance to do some, you know, fun
acting and you're relieved, I think.
Whatever you think about David Tennant's normal performance is the
doctor.
You do feel relieved when the doctor's back and he is sort of
funny and wonderful and that line.
You shouldn't have let me press all those buttons, you know, when
he's fallen on a bunch of buttons.
I think that works really well.
But then after that, that scene where you get a voiceover from
Baines himself from Son of Mine explaining to us what ended up
happening to them.
But I don't know exactly why it's there.
And I think it exposes a kind of problem with the whole setup.
And we've talked about this before.
And we'll talk about it next week because it's an important
feature of next week's episode.
The family of blood.
Have the characteristics they have because Paul Cornell wants to
tell this story.
And so the fact that they like Mayflies, that they'll just die in
a few months, 3 months.
Yeah, yeah.
I've got it written down here is just there to make this plot
work.
We have the doctor pursued by monsters who haven't seen him for
some reason and who he just needs to prevent them from catching up
with him for sort of 3 months and then...
Did they die after 3 months?
How do they build a spaceship?
Is it somebody else's spaceship?
I assume they've nicked the spaceship or something.
Right.
And then when they inhabit somebody, do they last for 3 months or
is it the lifespan of that person?
No, it's the lifespan of that.
I think the 3 months is the lifespan of their of their lifecycle
they're gaseous, whatever it is, the green glowiness, whatever it
is, but look, I get what you're saying.
And you did sort of say that when we were doing girl in the
fireplace, that the universe or the world is a contrivance, just
so you can tell the story that wants to be told.
Correct.
I don't think that that's a sort of fair thing because that's
exactly what they're, we're paying them.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. is to tell us these stories and the whole of
Doctor Who is set up so that these stories can be told.
Game of Thrones, anything we watch.
But there's a sort of fridge logic to this, you know, like it's
only after the episode's over and then you're at the fridge
getting something and you think, wait, how do these people even
exist properly if they only have a 3 month lifespan or something
like that?
Like, I'm happy that they get to tell this story.
Well, and you have to.
That's the thing.
It's not the premise of human nature, the novel where...
No, what they have is they create families that are just 8
people.
There's 8 of them instead of 4 in this.
And if they can assimilate a time lord, then each of them can
regenerate and create their own families and stuff and they'll
eventually take over the entire world.
And the doctor doesn't, I think, necessarily know that they're
chasing him, although I might be wrong about that.
But here, you know, they have to set up a fairly fairly special
and complex reason why he chooses to, you know, go through the
transformation arch and I think that's the weakest, the weakest
part of it is why he actually needs to make this extraordinary
decision in the 1st place.
But I buy that.
That for me is the problem if there is a problem.
Yeah, I mean, I'll come, okay, if I can compare this to an offline
discussion we've had about gridlock.
Why is this a kind of contrivance so that we can tell the story we
want to tell?
But being caught in a traffic jam for 28 years or whatever it is
in gridlock, why is that not a contrived?
Oh, no, I think they both are.
And I think that I think that, like, I'm not saying that those
contrivances are things that shouldn't happen.
Right.
And I do think that whatever it takes to tell the Doctor Who as
Superman 2 story, whatever it takes, I'm happy for us to just go
through that.
But it is sort of it's a bit thin, I think.
Well, it doesn't look to need to have these people live forever in
these situations.
Can't they just live out there, put them somewhere.
Well, I mean, but he could just, if he took them to the planet
Kolka Kron, you know, just to live out their last month, like a
tractator or something.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, then, like that's a thing he could have done and it
would have been sort of less interesting and obviously less poetic
and less effective, but why does he make them live forever?
Okay, that's the thing.
Why can't we just have them live out their lives trapped in those
things for the punishment for what they've done and that's
enough.
They're large as the humans that they've taken.
Yeah, so the doctor is initially we discover being kind.
That's why he became human because his only way of dealing with
them was to make them immortal...
No, I think my interpretation, and this is from not me trying to
retcon explain it all away.
This is just my impression, is that these are a form of immortal
being, but they only have existence in our universe or existence
as a sort of a sentient being for very short stretches of time, and
then maybe 1000000s of years might go past, and then they'll kind
of coalesce again and be able to have 3 months of life.
Kind of like, you know, those frogs that live at the bottom of dry
creek beds in the desert.
And they can hibernate there without water for like 3 or 4 years.
And then there's a shower of rain and the pond fills up.
And then they go through an entire lifecycle where they breed and
they have babies and then they all rot and die in the drying creek
bed and then their babies come back to life.
The eggs hatch in 4 or 5 years time when the next rain comes.
I see them as that sort of entity where they're not necessarily
having children, but they are only having these moments, these
flashes of existence and they are trapped in a sort of
immortality.
So I don't think the doctors are making them live forever at the
end.
I think he's dealing with the fact that he doesn't want them to
then come back again in another herald meet 1000s of years time
minions of years time.
So they already live forever.
They already live forever.
And this way to stop them from doing bad things, they are then
trapped.
Yeah, they already live forever but they can't have more than a
few months at a time.
But except that they were going to die.
They were going to die in another month and then the doctor could
have gone off and just said that the threat was over.
I don't think they said die.
I think they said that they will cease to be or cease to.
Yeah, but the threat goes away at that.
Then the doctor can just go off.
Yeah.
But that still works with my theory.
Yeah, I guess the fact that the episode itself just says that
they're going to stop and the doctor just has to wait out the end
of their lives.
And that's the solution.
Like, I don't know why that still doesn't work once the doctor's
the doctor again.
Like if he he's blown up their spaceship.
They can't go anywhere.
They're on the planet Golcocron with the gravis.
You think they should just keel over?
They die in a few months time.
And so he seems to be imposing immortality on them.
And it seems to be a disproportionate reaction. like a
disproportionate response.
And I don't know why exactly Paul wants to make the doctor so
vengeful and so godlike.
And I do think that Russell kind of wants to do this as well.
Like that the new series seeks to problematize the doctor in
various ways and different showrunners have different ways of
doing it.
But this thing where he's a kind of vengeful monster.
A little bit like the way that Matt Smith's doctors described in
the Pandorica opens as well.
He'll drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
See, does this tie in with like what Donner experienced in the
Christmas episode where he gets rid of all of the...
Yeah, yeah.
Brachnos's children, where he goes too far.
Like, he's got all, he actually has all this power and there are
moments where he makes the wrong decision.
Which the companion holds him back.
Yeah, yeah.
Is this trying to demonstrate this to us when having a discussion
about it?
Yeah, I guess that's it.
I guess I guess that is the same thing, isn't it?
But it does seem, it does seem really extraordinary, like really
really quite strange.
And I certainly love the scenes and I love how that voiceover is
delivered and I love how it's written.
And, you know, like he is talking to the audience.
There's no other way of interpreting it.
You know, he tells you what happens when you look in a mirror and
you see a movement behind you that's his sister.
And I think all of that's great.
And there's obviously a reference to Warriors Gate in there with a
dwarf star alloy and all of that sort of stuff.
Like it's um, it's epic and it does make the doctor into a sort of
scary godlike figure, but it just, which is very new adventures.
It is very new adventures as well.
It is very new adventures, but it does seem like a fairly
disproportionate response to just 4 people with lobster guns.
Yes.
No, I'm prepared to acknowledge that because that is the sort of
thing that I didn't like about the new adventures.
It's the sort of thing I don't like about the new series when they
do stray, they're, like you said, with the Pandora Opens. and the
doctor is golden, the doctor is this super powerful being, and
also playing up the fact that, oh, the doctor's an alien, therefore
he has different morals to us, and therefore, blah, blah, blah.
But for some reason, I can just go with the flow.
In fact, if I'm going to be uncomfortable with one element of it
it is the girl being trapped in the mirror because it's a bit like
I mean, I know that's probably just a poetic way of saying that
she's trapped between the dimensions or something like, you know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's magic.
Doctor Who's full of magic.
Well, that's another reference to Warriors game. one could I?
Yeah, yeah.
I don't like it with a Doctor Who strays too much into magic
though.
I'd rather have a, you know, stupid explanation for why it
happens.
Yeah, yeah.
Or I'd rather just have them all killed off in the spaceship.
Didn't you, did you see tear of the zygons in that?
I saw, I know it's completely different in so many ways, but maybe
it's just the sort of the dull lighting of the spaceship and
everything, the bleeps and the bloops and all the kind of the
knobbly bits that he presses, but it's when they're all running
out and they're running from the spaceship and it blows up behind
them.
I just saw tear of the Zygons.
That's a great observation.
No, actually, I didn't see that, but now that you say it, I can
clearly see it.
I think that the design of the spaceship owes something to it
don't you?
Yeah, it's a little bit less rude, but yeah, yes.
Especially the outside.
Yeah.
I had heard that that was a budget saving measure that ended up
being more expensive.
It would have been if it was visible.
But there is an invisible dome that the villains hang out in the
novel as well.
Oh, he's there, yeah.
The endings?
Like after all of this.
Many endings.
Many engines.
No, all the endings rescue this episode for me.
It's all the endings.
The fact that Joan keeps, you can see that she's going to keep the
diary.
Yeah, it's a subtle, lovely moment.
I love the doctor and Martha's awkward conversation, but the thank
you is so, she's earned that, thank you.
Yeah, 0 yeah.
Above and beyond.
Um, and then when they look to, you'll love this bit to, to Tim, um
so he gets to see the dematerialisation and then we, then, of
course, we get the whole war sequence, which has been peppered
throughout.
And then the doctor and Martha turning up to what may not be
present day, but it might be, you know, 10 years ago or whatever
always brings a tear to my eye with him in the wheelchair there.
Well, that's actually the scene that I was, one of the scenes that
I was referring to, which wasn't in Paul's original script, but
Russell remembered it from the novel.
And so it's back.
That's exactly how the novel ends.
And, you know, it's absolutely perfect in that you've got age
shall not weary them all of that kind of thing.
You got this very old man who's got to be in his 90s.
It can't possibly be 2007.
It could be 105.
Yeah, I guess.
I reckon it's 1990 something.
I don't think it really matters It doesn't matter.
It's the end of the 20th century.
And we've been through in the last few years, the sort of
centenary of World War one and a kind of renewed appreciation.
I think of what people went through.
And I think, you know, there's that British thing where people
wear the poppy, you know, more than we do here and certainly sort
of... presenters.
Yeah, yeah.
But news presenters and stuff where the poppy politicians and
stuff like that.
And I think that that's a pretty good thing to do, but it is, it's
odd.
I do think it is slightly odd at the end of a story which has been
mostly about gunning down scarecrows and, you know, David Tennant
blubbing.
But I guess it adds a sort of proper gravitas to the, to the
story.
I think it's a nice little coder.
It doesn't need to be there, but given so much of the, there are
so many references to the fact that, you know, what World War one
stars next year and all these young boys are going to be, you know
horrifically gunned down and so that's not just a glancing theme.
They keep coming back to it, particularly with Tim.
And I think it's nice to see that Tim's had a rich and full and
long live.
I mean, for me, the more annoying bit is the bit in the battle
scene when the shell comes down and he dodges it, you know, that
for me is the most tedious bit. actually.
Well, because it's just like, oh, do we actually need to do that?
I think we've seen it already in his little flashboard things
these little premonitions.
Doing it again.
It's just like everything has to be tied up with a little boat.
As I said in the last episode, I started rereading the new
adventures.
And at the end of time, when Revelation by Paul Cornell, which
seemed very cool at the time, that he spends this last section of
the book where he goes back and puts in place all the little
newspaper ads and all these little things to make all of these
little magical moments work in the early part of the book.
And in some respects, it's just an unnecessary.
Let's tie it all up in a little bow and make it all neat.
And I don't think it's really necessary.
It's funny, I've just been watching on Friday night with Peter
we've watched Death to the Daleks.
And at the end of that, the doctor's just standing there with
everybody else and it's a close-up on him and they haven't left.
They haven't, you know, the Dalek, you know, it just ends, and you
know, okay, yes, well, they'll say their goodbyes and they'll go
we don't get all that neatly tying up, we don't get to see like, oh
Bel Al come with us, but, you know, he doesn't get that
opportunity to...
Yeah, exactly.
But what I'm saying is I'd rather have the scene at the memorial
in whatever year it is rather than the scene in the bunker or
whatever it is in the trench.
Look, I don't know.
Although it does show, sorry, it does show that Tim is more of a
man than the other bloke is Hutchinson is just an idiot.
But no, I like all those endings.
For me, it rescues this episode and brings it back up to at least
an eight.
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, is this a weaker episode for you guys?
Is it, is it, do you think you just see it as the one big thing?
Like, you know, every week I kind of think the 1st part was
stronger than the 2nd part, although the back end of it was quite
glorious.
I think that generally speaking, unless the 2nd part decides to go
in a completely different direction, which does happen, and it's
something that Moffat in particular is very keen on Dewey, I think
that just of necessity, the 2nd episode tends to be weakest in a
two-part story.
And I mean, even in four-part classic Doctor Who stories, episode
one always tends to be a little bit more fun.
Here, I think the problem is that the plot runs out a little bit
too early and there is a little bit too much talking, but I think
I agree with you, Todd.
I think that those scenes at the end, my favourite of the of the
final scenes is the one with the doctor and Joan.
I think that's extremely good.
But all of them are great.
And I do think, I mean, we've spent 90 minutes with these
characters.
Let's say goodbye to them.
Exactly.
The scene that you're talking about with Joan is definitely the
best of them.
And that is, I think, I wouldn't be surprised if it's one of those
ones that Russell told Paul to put back in the story because
whilst I don't remember much of the detail of the book.
The one thing I that really stayed with me at the time, and upset
me a little, at the time, was when Joan says goodbye to the doctor
not to John Smith.
And it's sort of more set at the door.
I think the impression is that he never actually gets over the
threshold of the house because I think she's living in a cottage.
And basically, she closes the door behind him.
And I should have looked this up before the podcast, but I think
the line is something like it's a paragraph all by itself and it
just says, and she stood there for a very long time.
And that really affected me at the time.
There is some of that in that in that final farewell sequence with
Joan.
There is a change, which Paul remarks on in the forward to the
edition that I referred to last week.
And in the original novel, she asks him if he can change back and
he says no.
But here she asks if he can change back and he says, yes.
And then she says, will you?
And he says, no.
Without a moment.
I think that's so incredibly good.
That's so amazingly good.
I think.
And I like, I'm not even sure what it's saying about the doctor.
I guess it bespeaks a bit of callousness or something like that.
Well, I don't know, because it's his, you know, he's being asked
to give up his identity and his his cape and his underpants on the
outside. and all of that sort of thing, yeah.
Who's going to do that?
It's so blunt.
It's really blunt.
It's much better. than saying, no, you know, the technology only
works once or some not.
Exactly.
It's much better to say no.
No, I will not.
I choose not to do that.
Despite what we had, I choose not to.
Picking up on your point, Todd, and well, both of your points
about the strength of the episode.
It's almost like there's enough content there for an old style 3
parts, like a McCoy 3 parter.
I agree that maybe the 2nd episode is a little bit stretched.
I agree, Nathan, with your point that the 2nd episodes generally
are going to be weaker because the 1st episodes, there's all that
promise.
And, you know, the promise is never going to be lived up to.
With the possible exception of case Avengersani, the promise is
never really lived up to. you know, classic series stories, you
know, the 2nd half is always a bit, oh, well, okay. then this
happens and then now and then it's all over and bang explosion, the
end.
Um, I look at it as a whole.
I like to see the whole both episodes as one story.
I know that's not the fashionable thing to do with the new
series.
You want to sort of treat them all episodes and yes, this just
happens to be sort of a two-partter.
But I think the whole thing works as a 90 minute story, whether
you break it down into 2 or whether you just watch it all in one
hit.
I think it works really nicely.
Um, I think that, um, I don't know how Russell, how, why this kind
of, it happened in the Russells, did Abe's era, but that thing
where the 1st 2 part of the season is disposable and a bit stupid
and, you know, is a runaround and lots of explosions and things
like that. the word enjoyable is the word you're looking for.
And then the 2nd two-parter is, and then the silly is the word.
And then the 2nd two-parter is got a lot more emotional depth in
it.
There's a bit more adultness in it.
And then when I say adult, I don't mean sex and stuff.
I just mean, it's just more mature.
The story, not only is the story more mature, but I think the
emotional responses from the characters is more mature.
There is nothing mature about aliens of London.
No, I think it's got a serious political point to make, but it's a
cartoon.
And, you know, those ones are sort of Sarah Jane Adventure style
runarounds.
Yes, exactly.
And so I, and so it was like, this was sort of when human nature
came on, it was like, yes, this is, now it's completely clear, set
in stone that this is the way and your modern Doctor Who series
works.
And the more interesting episodes tend to be backloaded in the
season, apart from when you get to the very end, which is again
another sort of stupid runaround.
But it's like the way he puts together a season.
And because, and I get that a story like this and a story maybe
like blink or something is going to maybe lose some elements of
the audience that are just wanting the silly runaround that you're
so fond of.
But it's just that thing that this is what makes, you know, we
needed more Doctor Who like this, not less.
Even if they're a little bits that you, I'd say that, oh, this
could have been better, if any, that have done this, and this is a
bit dragged out, et cetera, et cetera.
But overall, this is exactly what Doctor Who should have been
doing and should continue to do.
All right, so it's part two, and so that means it's time for picks
of the week.
Do you want to start Todd?
Well, I decided, surprise, surprise, to choose a classic Doctor
Who story is my pick of the week, and I thought about this, and I
thought, I need something that's got a green glowing alien
spaceship that sort of crashes, and it's sort of a period piece
and somebody slaps somebody else, and the women upcharacterized in
a certain way, and there's former public schoolboys, obviously, you
know, so I've decided to go with the horror of Fang Rock. from the
Tom Bake era.
Go and enjoy.
I think that's very good advice.
Simon.
Well, if I was to choose a classic Doctor Who story is, pick of
the week because it's got a link to this one, it has to be enemy
of the world because of, you know, the main actor playing a
different role.
But I'm not choosing that.
I'm instead choosing W1A. Which features Joan, our very own Joan.
Jessica Hines is in it as sort of a marketing guru.
It didn't really get much of a run here in Australia.
It's the kind of thing you really have to track down if there are
any British listeners here, they'll be more familiar with it.
But basically, Ian Fletcher, a chap called Ian Fletcher, who
you'll recognise from Downton Abbey, who is formerly head of the
Olympic Deliverance Commission, has taken up a position of head of
values at the BBC, and it's got a wonderful, yes, minister flavour
of the perils of bureaucracy and how everyone could walk around
and nothing actually gets done.
But she plays.
It just shows how good an actress she is because she plays a
totally different role to what she plays here.
And is it like just a one series or?
I think there are 3 series.
There are only a few episodes in each.
Okay.
Yeah.
Good.
Look forward to watching it.
Nathan.
I'm going to choose the original novel.
By Paul Cornell.
We talked quite a lot about it last week.
I, at the time, often found new adventures a bit tedious.
One thing that they had a habit of doing was introducing a whole
heap of characters and settings that wouldn't pay off until the
very end.
And they didn't generally feel like works of fiction that merited
quite so much effort on my part.
And so, you know, occasionally they were tedious and eventually I
did stop reading them.
But they were what we had in 1995, and in fact, they were what we
had from sort of 1990 to, you know, goodness knows when.
And there was some extraordinary Doctor Who in that series.
There was some bad Doctor Who as well.
But human nature, I think, as you said last week, Simon, was
really kind of one of the pinnacles of the series.
And I think it's well worth experiencing in that medium, if you've
enjoyed this episode as much as we have, I think.
I look forward to reading it for the 1st time.
I'm sure it's in my box in the attic, but I bought it, but I don't
think I read it.
No, definitely read it.
It's really good for me.
It is great.
I'm looking forward to getting up to it if I ever get that.
Well, there is, now, that's all we have time for this week.
We'll be back next week to find out what the school births of Mr
Moffat has been up to during those illicit trips to the pub.
So please join us as we discuss a Doctor Who's most savagely
underrated episode blink.
In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts
and you can keep up with us at Flightthrough Entirety.com, flight
through entirety on Facebook and at FDE podcast on Twitter.
You can also find our series 11 flashcast, Jody and Terra at Jody
Interterterra.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, may you fall in love with a charming
schoolteacher who isn't secretly an alien from the constellation
of Kosterberus.
There's a lot of us about.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
There is.
See you soon.
Bye for now.
That was Flight for Entirety, starring Todd Beele, be Nathan
Bottomley, and Simon Moore.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, Strings performance by Jane
Orberg.
This episode, 6 Bullets, was recorded on the 18th of August 2019
and released on the 10th of November.
Fans of human nature will enjoy series 12's upcoming TV adaptation
of John Peel's War of the Daleks, which will remove every other
Dalek story from Canon, except for the wheel in space, which
doesn't even have any Daleks in it.
Nathan, I know that you really enjoyed the musical score for this
episode.
Did you want to, well, talk about what I expects that you...
Look, I think that this is where the all the strange, strange
creatures track, really, sort of comes into its own, and there's
not really all that much more to say than that.
All right, well, do you have something to say about the music?
Absolutely not.
Because, I mean, it's...
You're a musician, you might.
I'm not a musician.
But I will say that...
You've got an ear for music, Simon.
I will say that it's typical Murray Gold, in that there are
moments which are perfectly good, but then it, it, it, um, it gets
too big into, um, showy, uh, in too many places.
But that's just a general complaint, but and that's not
necessarily my goals falls.
It's the fault of the style that they're going for I think.
Have you seen years and years yet?
No, no.
Murray does the score to it?
I think it's just tremendous.
Well, I'll be looking forward.
It's definitely on our list.
Is it actually, it's not available here, though, isn't it?
Well, he did.
I mean, he, you know, Russell brought him for queerest folk and
stuff as well.
Well, the queer folk music is very good.
Yeah, I think that that seems like that.
I think the Marigold music, you talk to, owes too much to Dudley
Simpson, and that's who I'm not a huge fan of either.
I guess I like that sort of sort of more operatic.
I mean, I think, well, that's what music's for, you know, tell me
how to feel, Murray.
I'll cry, I promise.
I think that's probably a tag actually.
The endings, like after all of this.