Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flightthrough Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast that's only really a profile piece.
You know, hair and clothes and nonsense.
I'm Nathan.
I'm James.
I'm Todd.
And, ooh, I'm a Terrahawk Zeroid chock fold of daimonte Kitty fans
for this one.
Well, it's our 3rd annual end of the world, and who could possibly
have imagined that it would be at the hands of the prime minister
of Great Britain.
Yeah, a guest.
So we're planning to run and skulk and lurk for a bit until we can
find somewhere warm and dry to sit down and discuss the sound of
drugs.
All right, so Harold Saxon is the master, and he has just been
elected Prime Minister of Great Britain.
And he has a wife and he has a wife.
How do we feel about that?
Well, Stephen Moffatt actually does make that joke, doesn't he, in
time crash a little bit later on, the master's rubbish beard and
he's clearly referring to Lucy Saxon there.
I think that this is something pretty amazing, and I do think that
this episode was broadcast, you know, just a matter of days before
Tony Blair resigns, and you have to think that John Sim is another
Tony Blair.
Very much so.
Yeah, so he's young.
But with far more charm.
And I would say ability.
Well, he's sort of young and charming. everyone voted for him for
some reason, but no one can remember why.
He's kind of a middle way, isn't he?
Like he's a 3rd way.
He's not Labour or Tory.
He's in the middle somewhere.
But with even more war crimes.
And that's the thing, you know, so at the end of the episode
1000000000s of bombs descent from the sky, wiping people out.
And next week we're going to see him kind of turning all of Europe
into, you know, like a giant missile launching pad.
So this is Russell at his angriest, I think, at Blair, even
angrier than when he killed him and stuffed him in a cup in Aliens
of London 2 years ago.
I've forgotten about that.
Yeah, yeah.
So this is you know, much more political, I think, than we're
generally inclined to think of it.
We've already been through the Congress of the willing.
We were congressional in that past.
We were being Australians.
Yeah, so, you know, the full fat lie that was being discussed.
I would like to think that had something to do with the
destruction of Harold Saxon's reign in whatever this year was in
2017.
But we'd already got to the point that no war crimes and indeed
war hardware just makes you look purposeful.
Yes.
That's right.
They get things done, they slot, don't they?
Well, this might have actually been the turning point in our
Western history where we actually did quite like the idea of a
Charlemagne, but with more knifey things and elephants.
I was actually hunting on Google, like trying to find whether
anyone else had decided that Harold Saxon was Tony Blair.
And I did find an article that referenced sound of drums, a fairly
recent article and said that it was very notable and memorable as
a depiction of Tony Blair that for once wasn't being done by
Michael Sheen.
Actually, they've got the same waxy, polished, putrescent quality
haven't they?
There's something that's really so fecundly ripe that you don't
want to poke at too much because you know it'll exude.
It is wonderful seeing him.
That's just his performance.
Yes.
It's wonderful seeing him.
So we see him on the screen.
Very soon after they arrive.
So they arrive on earth in the present day, we don't see them
escaping from last week's cliffhanger, and very soon they see him
on television.
And I think we discover or have discovered that it is only 4 days
since Leo's birthday party.
So Tish has, we were speculating about this earlier on in the
season.
But Tish has literally had the most impressive week career wise.
Yes, we've been talking about this.
Her job resume and the jobs that she goes through and how she, yeah
and what she's doing in her week.
Yeah, no, it's one hell of a week.
I mean, Harold Saxon's clearly been engineering it because we
discover that Harold Saxon was behind the Lazarus experiment.
Professor Lazarus mentions him in the episode and we get another
reference to it this week.
There are so many nasty...
Well, should you say nasty?
Let's just say visceral RTD nods to what millennials expectations
are as well.
You know he's looking at all of us.
Well, slightly younger than us saying.
This is what you think a career path is going to be for you, don't
you?
Just you wait.
There's either that line.
How did you think that you got the job so quickly just on your
talent?
And she bankly looks at him.
Yeah, well, I'm pretty.
What do we think of John Simm?
Let's go straight in.
We saw him very briefly last week.
How do we feel about him as the master in this episode?
I think he's my least favourite master of all time.
Oh, edgy.
Less than Anthony Ainley.
Less than what's his face from the beginning of the TV movie.
Gordon Tippet.
Oh yeah, he was stunning.
The other one from the Pet Shop Boys always wears a hat.
No. house in London is all glass floors.
You don't want to go there if you, you know, have had a few.
James, why is he your least favourite?
Yeah, why is it your least favourite?
I don't know.
It's just, I liked him at the time, but he's been surpassed by
Michelle Gomez.
Yeah.
I think when he's brought back.
We're getting ahead of ourselves.
He's much more masterly.
I think it's one of those things where whenever anybody comes into
a role, they do it a certain way.
And if you look at Tenant or Matt Smith or whatever, the 1st
couple of episodes that they do, there's certain things that then
they reign back and they change, right?
And I think here he's got to make an impact immediately.
I mean, he's following on from last week with Derek Jacobi being
the master.
So he's got a, you know, he's putting his stamp on what it is and
the script is written in a certain way to make a contrast between
what was last week and what was this week.
I absolutely and utterly loathed him back in 2007.
I hated him beyond all belief. can tell where this is going.
I hated him.
Why did you did you really?
Because he was just so over the top and I just, and the one scene
which I still don't like, is when he starts pulling all those
funny faces in the cabinet and he's about to kill off the, um, the
cabinet.
And, uh, he's doing his thumbs up staff and pulling all those
funny cases.
And I just, I still don't like that sequence.
I think it's too far.
We've had all these things saying it's been around for 18 months
and but we don't see it.
It's all just said.
So there's, the 1st thing you see is this big over the top.
I'm, you know, destroying all these people, but we don't see the
restraint that he's had in the last 18 months.
I mean, to be fair, I don't think we can see that.
Oh, no, no, no.
That's one of the things to do with the plotting of the script.
And where Russell is taking us with the conclusion of this season
that you can't get around that because of the decisions that are
made in terms of the story sequencing.
But that one sequence in the whole episode, it just set me off
back in 2007, 2008, and from that point in time, I just could not
see anything, but over the top.
Yeah.
See, for me, that nailed that he was poultering our tenant.
Yeah, he was really doing tenant in that scene.
And that's what he has to do.
He has to be tenant.
And he's always the shadow of the doctor.
But to go back to what you were saying is that we've now obviously
seen more stories with him.
And so when I came back to watch this, I edited that out of my
head, that sequence.
And I said, I want to see what you're doing in all the other
sequences, which I've sort of blotted out.
And I just think that he's absolutely and utterly stunning.
I think he's perfect.
There is subtlety.
There are moments of stillness, like on the tarmac and other one
liners, which are just fed in. and it's, it is, I've totally
changed my mind.
Totally, listeners, believe it or not.
And I absolutely adore him in this episode.
I think that they haven't got the master right since Delgado, and
the reason is, and we said this at the time, you know, Delgado is
just pert we only foreign.
And Sim needs to be tenant.
You know, he needs to be a mirror of the doctor and particularly
for new fans.
He can't just be some guy with a BBC press on beard, which is what
Ainley goes.
He has to be the doctor.
And so they choose someone who is the star of the other big
science fiction television program at the time.
Life on Mars.
Yeah.
And so the threat is in this 2 parter.
And it sort of happens that the master takes over from the doctor
as the most fun and interesting thing to watch.
And our reaction, our initial reaction to John Sim is a little bit
like an old school fan's initial reaction, say, to Tennant or
Smith.
You know, the reaction that the war doctor has in Day of the
Doctor about how these kids are running around pretending to be
the doctor with their timey, whimey, and their giant sonic
screwdrivers.
Am I having a midlife crisis?
Yeah, yeah.
So he needs to be like tenant.
And so I agree with you.
That scene, I quite like the, you know, the tapping on the table
and the gas mask stuff and all of that.
But when he does the, when I'm being serious, I'm like this and
when I'm not being serious, I'm like that.
I was more on board with that this time, but I didn't much like
that at the time.
I thought that that was a little bit mischarged, but it's just of
a piece with this fantastic, fantastic performance.
When, um, Vivian Rook is killed by the Choclafane, and he opens
and closes that door.
I absolutely adore that. wonderful.
See, I just, I hate that.
It's so good.
Like, yes.
I, you know, look, I know that's the way you're supposed to feel.
It's supposed to say, you know, this man is evil.
Look at how he's treating this woman's like horrible murder.
What would Tony and Chari have done?
Yeah, precisely that.
They would have done exactly that.
But I just, like, in that sort of 4 or 5 minutes that she's in the
episode, I really warmed that character. which is what you're
supposed to do.
I know.
And then she's horribly murdered.
And I just, it, it really upsets.
But that's Russell.
That's a deliberate choice by Rose.
Russell, that's not John Sims' performance.
And the fact that he's sort of biting his finger or, you know
pulling a funny face as he opens the door 2 or 3 times to have her
still screaming, that's really funny.
He is he knows he's on television and he's treating the death like
a sort of comedy cartoon death.
But I love the moments just before that when she's talking to
Lucy.
And then it pulls back and he's standing there quietly and
subtly.
It's just a brilliant moment.
And Lucy is completely unhinged, but she appears to be completely
in control, but she's, but she's obviously...
Lucy isn't just the British television audience.
Lucy isn't just Susan for this episode.
She's actually the voting public that voted Tony Blair.
Sorry, Harold Saxon in.
It's funny how those two.
But do you agree?
Because that for me is the moment that this episode actually
crunches and goes cold metal in my heart when there is the appeal
to Lucy's.
It's not very kind to the Tories, is it?
Even though we know that he's not necessarily a Tory, but there's
that moment of, I've accepted my privilege.
I've signed for.
So now I'm ready to do what must be done to the Panama and
sewers.
Oh, I'm sorry, no, I'm not the queen, that what must be done too.
To establish my power.
She's a horrible, horrible poshka.
I actually think no, well, I tend to disagree.
I think she's just a person who's realised that a mammal that like
the rest of us who's realised our comfort and security comes
before.
Can I just put in that Friday, I went to the march with, I think
3000000 other people, 4000000 other people for the climate change
a year after that little 16 year old girl.
Thank you, great time.
That's the difference.
But for the rest of us, and for people even on the feed on the
holy book of face was saying, you know, relatives of mine were
saying, well, the rest of us were at work, so the children would
have a job.
Yeah, yeah.
I actually got that.
Yeah, but no, I get it. terrified.
Yeah.
So and and and terror demands comfort.
And we will see more of that next week because we do find what it
is, what has happened to Lucy, that has turned her into this kind
of weird shell of a person who is all just sort of posh girl
performance, but has nothing left inside her at all and much like
this podcast.
I thought she was actually, at the time, I thought she looked a
bit like Kylie Minogue from various views.
Given another couple of weeks.
Like, please stay video and yes, but then, of course, Kylie does
turn up in a couple of weeks and looks absolutely nothing like her
with terrible hair.
Well, Kylie's my age.
But I think, is it Alexandra's performance as Lucy is just
sublime?
She just supports John Sims so well and it's just lovely having
that contrast.
And, yeah, he has just shone and just shot up in my opinion in
this episode.
Do you know the one moment of performance that just made my blood
run cold is where he's looking at the camera and the camera is
absolutely conspiring with him and he goes, peoples of the earth.
Please attend carefully.
And he knows it's a quote from Lagopolis.
He's doing its camera.
The camera moves in on him as he says it.
He's so excited by it.
And, you know, he's displacing the doctor.
He offers Lucy a jelly baby as well.
And there's no way that that isn't just, I'm going to be the
doctor.
And not only that, I'm going to be the most compelling and
charismatic doctor, you know, in the history of the show.
And that's the threat that the master poses.
And what this does, is it has him having an incredibly successful
plan.
And we have never seen that before.
Think about season 8 where every month he was being foiled by the
doctor.
I totally and utterly agree with you.
This is the 1st time ever that he actually gets his plan to
succeed.
It never has succeeded.
Ainley was just like, you know, thrown away with rubbish plots.
And and Paul Roger Delgado, you just knew that it was, you know, we
get to a point where it's all just going to go belly up.
And this is the 1st time where he's succeeding at every single
point along the way, you know, when he talks about the medical
student and the bomb is already there.
He's manipulated.
Jeffrey Beaver's wasn't unsuccessful, was he?
No, but the scale of what he was doing.
I mean, he's mostly powerless.
Yeah.
Whereas he, just the massive scale of it, that he's doing it in
front of the entire world and we get to see what the master would
do if he won.
It's not that different from right now.
So Stephen Moffat had this thing about Missy, where he had to have
her kill people fairly frequently because otherwise we would like
her too much. you know?
We still, it didn't work.
We still loved her enormously, especially when she could kill
Chris Addison.
Yeah, yeah.
But having him just kill the cabinet.
And, you know, at the end of the episode, he kills 600000000
people, you know, like it's super, super bleak and horrible.
And he's just incredibly great.
This is the best we've ever seen the master.
It might not be the best performance, like maybe Delgado is better
sometimes.
But I just think this is an extraordinary story for the master.
But in the same moment, he also fulfils Doctor Who's educational
remit by explaining what decimate means.
Yes, he does.
Thank you.
Tom moment, was it?
I love the fact that subtly in the plot, no, we talk about the
doctor says as if he's mesmerised the world and we're using
current technology with the whole archangel network. so that he's
still, the master was always sort of hypnotic.
Like, there's all these subtle threads back to how he was with
Roger Delgado that we're as classic series fans are going to pick
up on.
And the 1st time through, I think I was just so sort of like
stunned at the overchop performance and that, a lot of things
these subtleties that Russell has been threading through things
over various episodes.
I just didn't pick up on, which is why I loved this episode even
more than I, like, this has improved so much for me.
This is besides blink.
This is my favourite episode of the season.
The reason the master works now for the reboot of the series is
the reason the series is working.
We've come to, correct me if you, you know, disagree.
Come to see the whole of Doctor Who, which I call real Doctor Who
as in 63 took.
It never ended. is because it belonged in its own alternate time
if you like.
And it belonged to the BBC world of Penelope Keith was just up the
road and Tom and Barbara were just next door.
It was a lovely universe where things, even when they went
horribly wrong, would always be corrected, and everyone who was in
charge was essentially okay.
And there were a few awful characters.
There were a few, but there was always a lovely Sir Charles, if
there was going to be a war machine.
You always had someone reliable, even whatever side of politics
everyone was pretty much decent.
But there was still contemporaneity.
And we, and certainly by the late 70s and into the 80s, and even
before JNT, we had that sense of things are starting to actually
change and unravel, and we've mentioned Green Death, and we've
mentioned the Peladon, EU, EC, crisis, and such like, but we're
now at a point where things have moved so far in reality, in this
truth, politics, in the environment, just the fact that we now, I
would say there was a really good piece in the Guardian last week
on the end of Western democracy and what We now accept as gross
fallacies, gross mistruths and utter, in fact, denial of the
humanity of many of the peoples that we once, you know, either in
the colony or the way that we produce arms and that's how we make
our money or, hi, Harold Saxon.
We are now so complicit in this, we are actually Lucy Saxon.
We are completely Lucy Saxon.
It is our responsibility that this has all happened.
And this is, because I love Russell, because even when he talks
about his childhood, he goes to the very, very darkest place.
I don't think you can ever underestimate how dark Russell's
thinking actually is.
Years and years proves it for all of us.
Years and years is actually just this show. these 3 episodes.
Just put slightly outside the valiant down onto earth.
It's the same thing.
So yeah, Russell is really pointing the blame at us and that's why
it's uncomfortable and really entrancing to watch.
So, I mean, the original master is sort of part of the
establishment.
And although he sort of kills people occasionally.
Like the empire did.
Yeah, he is.
It was for a just course.
He's still he's still not quite a monster.
It's not until Hinchcliffe brings him back as, you know, yet
another sort of long dead kind of threat from the distant past
that he actually tries to sort of destroy the whole planet.
Sorry, I think Hinchcliffe was doing that just as a naughty
stabbed Terrence Dixon, Barry Lee, to say, this is what your show
was like.
Hingebeef?
What do you think it's Robert Holmes?
Well, I think it's both.
But before that, the master was always sort of rather tame and he
was part of the ensemble in season eight.
And if you look at all the press photos and stuff like that.
It's like he's a regular character.
And he does risk rather being kind of a bit neutered.
And, you know, we see him working alongside unit a couple of times
and it is, I think, indicative of the kind of trust of the
establishment that we had back in the 70s.
And now that's all unmoored.
And now that we've had, you know, very recently, a British Prime
Minister openly telling lies about Iraq's capabilities and
encouraging sort of a massive war that killed 100s of 1000s of
people.
So when the master comes back, and he comes back as the
establishment, he's a monster.
And however, sort of his public persona is and however
entertaining he is, Russell makes sure that he keals just huge
numbers of people.
And it will only escalate next week, the sort of things that he's
described as having done next week are appalling.
And all the time he's dancing about in his kind of giant palace up
in the sky completely invulnerable, you know, lying to and
manipulating the public that voted for him.
And I think this is a better conception of the master because it
doesn't have that trust to the establishment that informs the
previous master.
I think the previous master's too cosy and too domestic.
But he's still quite happy to send the torture team off to the
Himalayas and not actually just kill them off.
Well, yeah, and that, again, is a sort of comedy cartoon thing
isn't it?
It's like, well, why aren't tortured here?
Well, because it's not that show.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so he does it in a sort of comedy way.
And we can't kill them off because...
Well, they've got to do that.
They got to do that themselves.
Well, exactly.
So we're back in Martha's apartment.
Very high ceilings.
She does have very nice things.
How do you get that thing in there?
I've always wanted a police box in the bedroom.
We've got this team of Martha and Jack and the doctor, which was
introduced last week, and I think it was a great chemistry between
them all last week, and it's great to see them all working
together again, and her bond with Jack.
They're in Martha's bedroom.
The doctor is trying to work out what the master's doing.
We've got that whole sequence, which I think is a joyous sequence
where you've got Vivian interviewing Lucy and giving her all the
information about Harold Saxon's not real at the same time as the
doctor is working all that out in parallel, which I always like in
storytelling.
We have that next week as well, a very similar thing where 2 plot
threads converge on the same kind of revelation.
And of course, then the whole, you know, the master is again 20
steps ahead and has planted this bomb behind the television, which
I just think is hilarious.
A magpie television, did you notice?
Yeah.
Electricals.
I think that this stuff now is really great and now we go into a
political thriller.
I think it's one of Martha's most superb moments as well. where
she's got this great relationship with the doctor going.
And then the moment her family's under threat, she just turned
straight to him and says, you know, don't tell me what to do.
That is a fantastic moment, Nathan.
She's so good then.
And the doctor knows better than to tell her what to do.
And so he just goes along with her.
But suddenly we're being chased by the government.
There are bombs exploding and people firing machine guns and
stuff.
So most of most of those car chase scenes are actually freeman
driving instead of her stunt double.
With the visual effects supervisor sandwiched between David and
John Barriman.
In the backseat?
Because her driving was far more terrifying than any stunt
arranger could have done themselves.
Setting off all the little explosions.
I think that this sort of thread of the plot really works.
I just think it's not something Doctor Who gets to do a lot
often.
That's wonderful.
It's terrific.
The closest we've had is Mike Yates backing up into a trench in
Planet of the Spine.
I'd love the people coming for Francine and Clive and sort of and
you know, herding them into the back of a truck and stuff.
And her trying to manipulate, like, it's, you know that thing
there's a meme, you know, like, you're being held hostage by
someone, what would you tweet that would make it clear to everyone
that you were being held hostage without kind of giving the game
away?
And, you know, like I would tweet, I'm now about to sit down and
watch my favourite Doctor Who episode of the 1960s, you know, the
massacre.
And what, um, what Frances?
I would just feel you've come round.
What Francine's tweet is, Clive and I are getting back together.
Your father might give it another go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Have you noticed their whole run feels like an episode of This Is
Your Life?
And it's the way Saxon introduces them, the family, but the whole
thing.
But then it ends with the chitty, chitty, bang, bang childcatcher
throwing them into the back of the van and they're pulling exactly
the same faces.
And it backs up your theory about this episode because what
they're saying is they're being bundled into the van to their
neighbours who are watching it happen.
They're saying you voted for Harold Saxon.
This is what you were voting for.
When I originally watched this.
I just thought, you bitch about Martha's mum because I hated her
so much.
But now, of course, coming into it, I see how manipulated that
she's been and how unconvinced she is, but has she made the right
decision?
She's still 2nd guessing herself.
And I mean, I think it's great that Clive is the one that tells
Martha to just run.
Like he's not a great husband, but he's a wonderful father.
And then Francine's, oh, but I helped was helping you out, but I
helped you whatever she had to say.
And at the same time, Martha is just telling the doctor off, you
know, it's all your fault and all that sort of stuff.
It's just magnificent and really well acted by Francine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, she's really something.
But Francine wanted security.
She voted for the safety of her family.
Well, I think she didn't vote for Saxon, though, because...
Oh, no, she does.
I voted for you.
Typical British boating public.
When she's when she confronts the sinister woman or the mysterious
woman.
Is she sinister or mysterious?
Eloise.
Yeah, sinister woman.
Sinister woman.
And she says, I'm not going to tell you who I voted for.
And she's certainly playing it like she's saying that she didn't
vote for Sax.
When she's sort of packing up at the end of 42.
She is quite hostile, I think.
And perhaps because she is being manipulated, she realises she's
being manipulated into ratting on her daughter.
Yes, it's the 1st time that I begin to feel a bit of sympathy for
her, because she's dawning on her what she's done. she had that
series of unfortunate events to be manipulated into this situation
and she's now going, have I done the right thing, I probably
haven't.
And again, this is reinforced here when she screams out, I was
helping you.
Yeah.
And she's terrified.
Her and Clive are both terrified in the kitchen with those people
around, I think.
And she should be.
I don't know that any of us in the same situation with children
would behave any differently.
Yeah.
Well, certainly one of her biggest characteristics is how
protective she is of her daughter.
And that continues, you know, all the way to sort of stolen earth
when we next see her.
She absolutely has Martha's safety as her 1st priority.
The whole family is, um, obviously Tish is arrested and then
Martha phones Leo.
Of course, he's not available because he's off doing whatever top
of the pops or something like that.
Whatever he's doing.
So then it means that the storyline has to be written so that he's
off in Brighton, but he manages to get into hiding.
But of course, that leads the master is listening into that
telephone conversation. which then leads into that wonderful
exchange between the doctor and the master.
I think that too, it's better than the big one that we get next
week.
It's the only time, like they don't actually sort of properly meet
until the end of the episode.
And it's the one where they get to catch up.
We actually see what's been happening with both of them since the
last great time war.
Yeah, I mean, there's a bit of an info dump like the time once
resurrected me, you know.
But it's good to have that moment because we only see the dobby
doctor or the doctor in really old makeup.
So it's nice to have Tenant and Sim go have a one-on-one at this
point in the story.
Yeah.
It is interesting too, isn't it?
Because what fascinates the master is that the doctors killed
everyone.
But he also starts talking about the constant drumming in his head
which, again, is this very subtle thing with Russell. going to
come into play, obviously, a bit further down the track.
And at the time, you just think it's related to like the story
title or whatever, you don't really see the bigger picture.
I think, um, there's so much going on in that phone call
especially when he starts saying, like, does he say it or is it on
the news that they tick every...
No, he says they tick every demographic box and he calls him the
girly and the freak, but I'm not going to say which one is weird.
We're right here.
That's right. much like this podcast.
No denial on this corner.
I think we get some really great stuff with the Dr. Jack and
Martha when they're on the run.
I like 2 more of that, yeah.
I love those.
The Scooby crew.
You know, they're eating chips.
Jack's revealing that he works for Torchwood.
The doctor describes standing in the great schism or whatever with
that Gormless child that plays the master who actually played
young David Tennant in Casanova.
Oh, I think he's showing and was in Tortured as well.
Yeah, yeah, some, some, yeah, obviously the kid of someone
involved.
But I do like that the Scooby gang are constantly referencing Rose
Tyler's mouth.
It's either chips going in or what did you say about the Great
Cavern?
Thank you, Rich.
But also, you know, the whole archangel network and the rhythm is
everywhere.
All this stuff that's been alluded to is just getting explained
and then we get the 3 Tartar's key concept, which I really quite
like, and that leads to the bit of bonding between Martha and Jack
over.
It's like you fancy someone and they don't even know you exist.
And Jack says you too.
Oh, see, I love that.
I think that's great.
And that kind of takes the sting a little bit out of that stupid
subplot that we've been contending with all year.
Can we unpack some things there?
So we get a backstory with the master where at the age of 8 and we
have, you know, it's now canonical that time lords have childhoods
you know, and stuff like that.
Russell kind of humanises them a bit.
Lala did that for us Yes, we had time tots, didn't we?
But woven from a loom.
No, they're not woven from a loop.
They might still be, but no, they still had time nannies and time
attics where they would sit up there and read time Beatrix boxes.
That's exactly.
But the so the untempered schism, they all look into the
untempered schism and it drives the master mad.
And what the master gets as a result of that is he has the Doctor
Who theme going on in his head.
Right, parenting there, O Lords.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I think that's intentional.
I think we're meant to feel that's terrible.
The Russell has claimed that that has nothing to do with the
Doctor Who theme is actually the sign of his alarm clock.
Yes, well, but he doesn't get the final say on this.
No, everyone else kind of reads it as the Doctor Who theme. and I
think there's some...
You can drive a child about...
We're right here.
See, I don't really like that.
Like, you know, is the master mad from that point on or does it
take a number of years to manifest?
Well, I think that it is the thing where he reinvents in some way
each of the elements of the old show that he brings back.
And I don't think, and I think El Sandefer says this at some point
as well.
I don't think that you can see Roger Delgado larking about on the
set of the clause of Axos and imagine that he's got drumming going
on in his...
Not unless they slipped in a tab or two.
But I, you know, I think Katie might have been up for it.
You know.
Have a mushroom. have too.
But Welsh, it's good for you.
But what drives the master then is time, that the destruction that
the master reeks is the same destruction that time eventually
reeks, that he has been affected by the time vortex, and he goes
around dedicating himself to destruction.
And we saw last episode.
What destroyed all those conglomerations on the planet Malcasero?
It was just time, just time.
So the destruction that the master is committed to is Kylie
Minogue's hair.
Well, that was time too.
So it is all about time.
And I think that that just makes the master a little bit more epic
a little bit less of a cartoon villain who, you know, does things
just to annoy the doctor or to entertain the audience.
He's there.
It's a peculiarly time-lord way of being villainous.
Look, I get your point.
And they've got to make the master a threat equal to and greater
than the previous 2 major villains, the dialects and the
cybermen.
So he's got to be up there and he's got to be totally unhinged and
capable of what he, well, what are you mentioning, does do taking
over the world, which I guess the others never quite did succeed.
No.
Like I said, I don't think you can watch Delgado and think that
that's what's going on in his head, but we're bringing the
masterback for a new audience and we have to give him something
just a little bit more than he's the doctor's Moriarty for no
particular reason, which was our previous backstory.
And look, the audience seemed to like it because the ratings go up
between this episode and the next substantially.
I think it's an amazing, like an amazing spectacle.
And I think giving the doctor 2 companions to confront it, having
you know, other people who we care about, having this all kind of
built up to in this amazing way, it does feel like an old
fashioned multi-part story, just because it's been going on for so
long.
It works really well, I think.
This is by now, even now, a familiar villain and a familiar
environment, and I think it just works terrifically well.
Well, we've had the buildup.
We had last week and then this is building, like it's really, it
really is stepping it up to another level.
And obviously we get up to the valiant.
The president elect is killed by the chocolate fane.
Again, another moment I don't particularly like, which is where
John Sim is, what's he doing?
I've got something here Oh, when he zips and unzips his mouth.
I hate that.
I kind of like that.
Yeah, yeah, I would agree.
Well, because he doesn't give a crap about the last president of
the United States.
And that's an incredible scene.
That is the same scene that we were talking about before.
The scene on the tarmac.
And by now, the doctor, Jack, and Martha have been so successfully
defeated by the master that they have to resort to not being
seen.
So they've got this perception filter thing.
And I think perception filter is a brilliant name for the
technology because it is a real thing that we have in our head.
And so they're outside of society, they can't interact with anyone
they've been successfully expelled from the world, and they're
there watching him, and he's being annoying.
He's being a childish, you know, dick to the president because he
doesn't care.
He's not cowed by him.
Yeah, I, you know, I just, it is a mask. because I think he knows
that they're there when he's standing there on that term, actually
senses and he knows what's going on.
And that wonderful thing where the wind blows open his jacket and
it's all lined in red. like, you know, like Pertuise cape or
something.
It's a great shot and a great moment and one of his best moments.
And it is.
It's the mask.
It's the same mask that Tenant has, that that comedy silly
performance.
See, I love it when he welcomes the Joneses out of the van and
he's rubbing his hands and dancing from foot to foot and spreading
his arms out and laughing and stuff.
Yeah, that's wonderful.
I'm very inconsistent about what I like and don't like, but
there's certain things where I just think, oh, can you just rain
it back just a little?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I just I don't want him to write it back.
I want it to be as huge as possible, I think.
Yeah.
So the president elect line. was Russell misunderstanding what the
term president elect means.
Yeah He is the president.
You know, president-elect in the...
Waiting to be...
The president, like Donald Trump before he took power with
President... president is the president.
Yeah.
It's just that he's misused the term.
Yeah.
He thinks it just means elected president.
He's wonderful.
He's got a very George Bush kind of feel to him.
He's clearly very dim.
Do you remember him in Broken News?
He was like the kind of dumb American newsreader in the sort of
American cable channel?
IBS News.
The IBS. syndrome?
With Claudia Christian.
Yeah, it's wonderful.
If you can find it, there's only sort of 6 episodes.
That sounds crazy.
It's really good.
And, you know, that line about welcoming the master to the planet
Earth and it's associated moon, which I just think is absolutely
brilliant.
And, you know, if God wants you to have mastery over me.
He's kind of a sort of dimwitted George Bush character.
I'm rolling my eyes.
Yes.
Yes, it is.
You're totally right, Nathan.
And it is part of that great tradition of killing off.
We, as we've observed each time, we kill off the Prime Minister of
Great Britain in every single one of RTD's Doctor Who series, we
do actually properly kill off the Prime Minister next week, but
for one brief, glorious moment, we thought we'd escalated to the
President of the United States for series three.
Yeah, so we have already decided that ageing makeup is this
season's BBC foam machine is going to occur over and over again.
This is the 2nd time we've seen tenant in ageing makeup this
season.
I've been watching these on the upscale Blu-ray versions, which
are not kind to the ageing makeup.
So the ageing makeup for tenant in this story was actually based
on William Hartnell.
I've read that.
Is that true though?
Do you think aged up?
Because William Hart, oh, it's not that old, but they specifically
went, Billy.
Let's let's try and make him look like Bill Hartle.
I think too, giving the master a thing that's very time-laudy, you
know, that's about time that's about suppressing regenerations.
Like, think of how time laudy this master is.
We've seen him regenerate.
We've seen him steal a TARDIS.
Um, you know, he does timelordy things.
And now his next job, the one thing that we know that timelords do
is be the star of the BBC television program, Doctor Who.
And so that's the next thing that the master's going to manage to
do, and he does it by rendering, the doctor unable to do that job
anymore, unable to run up and down corridors, unable to, you know
be funny and witty, and he gets to take over and be the most fun
and entertaining thing in the room.
I, you know, like I think, I think it's great.
I think that this is the moment where he takes over a star of the
show.
And, you know, like our original DVD box sets have a picture of
John Sim on one of them as if he has even taken over. on the back
cover.
Yeah, yeah, he's on the back cover as if he's taken over the
show.
Well, yes, I mean, he, he, from this point on to the cliffhanger
we've got him showing Martha bringing in her family, he's in
control there.
He says, if I told you the truth, your hearts would break to the
doctor, we've got a bit of an illusion to, oh, there's a mystery
here with the talk of Fane.
Suddenly we've got, here come the drums, sorry, voodoo child, by
the rogue traders, and they're dancing around.
Lucy's dancing around.
Fantastic.
She's so out of it. foot shuffling.
Yeah, yeah.
She's off her face on value.
Yeah, yeah.
Valiant.
Those fumes are pretty intoxicating aren't they?
I have to have my little fanboy moment and say I'm just finally
glad that Captain Jack has a role in this universe as Captain
Scarlett.
I know we said it before, but it's really is Captain Scarlet.
Yeah.
Tweet, tweak.
It's wonderful.
Same wooden acting too, go on.
Our heroes are so much on the back foot. you know, Martha exit
stage, right, but there's that glimmer of hope that when she says
I'm coming back.
I just think it's deliciously delivered by Freeman.
She is.
How do you feel about that favourite in this one?
She is the help me Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Like she's, she is the doctor's only hope.
Like, she is the only...
How do I feel?
I think this is this episode might be Martha's most shining moment
in the entire season.
I think she is just that phenomenal in this episode.
I have more to say about performance next week.
That'll be interesting, yeah.
I think you have to remember...
You know how people were quite harsh on her at the time. was
basically her 1st acting role.
So, like, I think you could actually see her like her acting
growing in this season.
You actually get to a point towards the end of the series where
she kind of finds her feet and I think it's in this episode.
I think she's quite amazing in this, but I'm prepared to go on the
record before next week's episode to say that I think she's
amazing next week as well.
I'm not saying she's not, but I don't like the performance next
week compared to this.
What we haven't talked about marches a Toclafane.
And they're not real as far as the doctor knows.
And I do think it's telling, but there are 6000000000 of them.
And that's the 1st hint that they're us because there's the same
number of Toclophane as there are of us in 2007.
I think we're probably more than that in 2007.
But that's the number that we had in our heads.
And so it's already a hint that they're us.
And then the master says that the identity of the talkophane will
break the doctor's heart.
And so that's a kind of another indication.
But there, of course, the monsters that were devised for Dalek, for
absence of the Daleks.
The absence.
Yeah, yeah.
So when in series one, Rob Schumann was writing the Dalek episode
we weren't sure we were going to have the rights to the Daleks.
Yeah, so they were trying to negotiate with Tony Nations Estate.
Very late in the day, like they were unsure that they would get
them.
But did you know they also were planned at one point to be used in
the station pit?
Right.
Talk to phone.
I'm glad that didn't happen.
I do think that we'll find out next week that they're a great idea
that there is something about them.
All of, you know, the best.
Jerry Anderson's for finest villains.
But I mean, all of the best Doctor Who villains are people that
have gone wrong under some kind of moral pressure.
Does that make Francine Zelda?
But back to, you're saying, the writing in this episode, all the
little setups, like from the archangel network, to what you were
just saying there, to the TARDIS being, the paradox machine
there's all these little subtle things that Russell is doing that
you don't actually see where it's going and it's really very
clever writing.
Yeah.
And it comes together next week, in a way.
Like people always say, you know, Russell doesn't set things up
properly.
We needed another lead and exposition scene in order to sell this
development at the end of the episode.
But this one is absolutely no one can say that.
And Russell writes about that in the writer's tale.
He doesn't want to stop for a dumb exposition scene.
He knows that as viewers, we've watched TV before.
We don't need that.
And it's not what Russell's interested in.
But here, I think it's incredibly well set up.
Everything comes together amazingly well.
And as you've said, like the master is now the star of the show, he
gets the voiceover at the end of the episode, even though the
close-up goes onto the doctor's phase, which looks like nothing
like William Hartnell, can I just say?
At all.
Well, I did just watch the 3 doctors on the Blu-ray.
Actually, we've been talking about paradels to the old series, but
I think you've both just hit on a really interesting point that
this is antithetical to the 70s.
And perhaps we look at the reason that Pertwiz area was so
maligned, and it probably is that the ever presence of Basil
exposition.
It's not pertly, and it's certainly not Delgado, but they do a lot
of action figures standing around telling you what the scene's all
about.
And that may actually just come down to the way that drama was
written then.
I mean, there's a lot of people standing around, whether it be the
bridge of a ship or, you know, a hamlet or quarry, that they're
all standing outside.
And they say, what happens there?
And then I'll tell you what happens next.
I mean, we get a fair amount of that.
We have the conversation on the phone.
We have them sitting around talking about the master's backstory.
But quickly get that.
And they're doing things while they're doing it.
Moving about.
I just smell there's so much clever writing.
There's so much serendipity here with decisions that have been
made previous seasons or even this season that everything just
comes together in this episode.
And well, where do you go from here?
Well, there is nowhere off to find a shelter somewhere and stock
up on some tennis racquets and baseball bats and things, so
there's every chance we'll survive until next week, when we'll be
covering Last of the Time Lords.
In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts
and you can keep up with us at Flightthrough Entirety on Facebook
at FTE podcast on Twitter, and on our website
FlightthroughEntirety.com, where you'll find links to our other
podcasts, Bondfinger, and Jody Into Terror.
Until next time, remember there's no such thing as the
Toclophane.
It's just a made up word. like Tory or Brexit or carbon.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
See you soon.
Good then.
That was Flight to Entirety, starring Todd Bilby, Nathan Bottomley
James Selwood, and Richard Stone.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, Strings performance by Jane
Orberg.
This episode, this is what you were voting for, was recorded on
the 22nd of September 2019 and released on the 1st of December.
If you've been finding all this backslapping and relentless
appreciation rather tiresome, please tune in next week for some
furious disagreement about the quality of the universally loved
series 3 finale, Last of the Time Lords.
He likes the sound of his own drums.
The sound of my own drums.
Today is the 22nd of September, and we are recording the sound of
drums.
You should just do a podcast on the song.
Don't you think?
No?
What song?
Awesome.
Beauty, tumble the drums here comes.
Yeah, that one.
Who's sang it?
I don't know Morgan.
Natalie Basser thing, a thing waits band.
Basset finger.
I haven't heard at all.
The rouge traders.
Oh, thank you.
I'm sorry.
The rogue traders.
When they were 1st on American radio.
Yes. on me recording.
Yeah, yeah, this could be a tag.
You might say something funny.
Yeah, but the rogue traders went their 1st on American radio
somebody misspelt the entry on the, on the, on the digital radio
sort of master file as rouge traders. lovely.
Yeah.
I have to say that you are doing very well there, James, with that
mark technique.
Okay, it's all downhill from here.
It is.
Shall I start?
Please do, if you must.
I'm all nervous now. putting me off.
Okay.
That was Chan's fault.
Why is it my fault?
Help me now, listeners.
Okay.
Oh, are we a point of thank you for reminding me.
A point of, I don't know, logic.
Is it listeners or listener?
It's normally dear listener?
Because there's only ever one person listening, you know, at a
time.
It's the way the Beeb does it.
I don't care.
I think it's nicer to say, for me, it's nicer to say listener
because it feels like you're talking to them personally.
Yes, but I don't do I don't do that.
I always do listeners, do you?
I do. don't want change that?
No, it's tag scene.
All right, okay.
You're getting me irritated already, Richard.
That might be good, though.
I don't want to be irritated for this episode You got to work up
to it so I can be irritated for the next episode.
I like the next episode.
Yes, but you like everything.
No, I don't.
I have very good time.
And I don't like the massacre.
We mentioned that.
I still think it's one of the best groups.
Yeah, probably is.
I'm relentlessly low brown.
Massacre.
Well, middle brown.
Not my opinion, please.
Stolart.
All right, we're all in a mood. lets go.
Okay.
Yep, good.
That's what we want.
Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight through Entirety.