Hello and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety.
The only Doctor Who podcast you can't kill because we're all
geniuses.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
I'm not.
And we had a special guest for this episode of the podcast.
Rod, my partner, whose comments have often made into the podcast
is actually sitting here in the room, but he's just flicking these
and I don't think he's going to say anything unless he wants to
touch at some point be for victory today.
And he's also made us some lovely, lovely croton head apple pies.
Delicious. which we've already devoured half of.
So without any further ado.
We'll go to the founder of that particular beast with the
crotons.
Yeah, yeah, it's a macro chair.
Oh, sorry, no, it's face of evil, no, it's a mysterious planet.
No, it's what is it again?
It's the crotons and it's the 1st script by Robert Holmes.
And also the 1st TV appearance of Sir Philip Maddock.
As Elek.
We already owned him though, didn't we?
Because he's playing Dr. David Keel in an exciting adventure with
the Daleks and he would turncoat, Smiley's people thing in a, you
know, white Mac, isn't he?
His fingers Alex.
Broccoli.
Naughty films.
Yes. as cubby broccoli.
That's right.
That's right. be broccoli.
Don't eat your broccoli.
That's right.
Um, So the protons...
And by the way, the best thing in that film.
Other than Eileen Moy.
Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you.
And he's got to be one of the best things in this, I think.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, the coats, though, that's not stretching it, is it?
too far?
You can be mean about this story.
I know this one doesn't have a great reputation.
But you've got to sort of consider the factors around it.
It was commissioned to replace a script that fell through, namely
the prison in space.
Yeah, you know, that one was remade by the big finish.
Yeah, and what's the big finish one like?
The big finish one just doesn't pull any punches.
It doesn't attempt to modernise it.
It's still as ridiculously cancer.
The prisoning space, whatever it was.
Is that about space age suffragettes where Zoe is stridently
feminist and get this?
Jamie has to beat it out of her with smacks until she wakes up
from the spell of trying to...
What the hell?
It's the wormer turned from...
Yeah, it's male something.
It is too Bar castle.
And Joanna Dawes as the chief controller.
But this wasn't a comedy?
Was it a comedy?
It was a comedy.
It wasn't a comedy.
Did anyone laugh?
No.
Not on the BBC off.
Well, cancel it.
Not in the BBC office.
This is how the crotons came about.
Nathan and I were actually at a convention yesterday.
Well, the times three, which had Terrence Hicks.
I was in a march to try and stop 6 lane highways going through
this very suburb.
Yeah, so he was doing the bit.
You might think the environment's important because we had adopted
the convention.
And as Terrence said, what happened was he was the junior
assistant undercredited script editor at the time and he worked
jolly hard on it too.
Yeah, yeah.
And what happened was he had found this script by Bob Holmes, which
had originally been sent in for William Hart, Jackie Lane, Peter
Purpose.
That's right.
It was a script, as the space trap, and had just been sort of
shoved down the back of the filing cabinet.
And anyway, he said to Sherwin and Bryant, look, you know, I'd
really like to develop this. to which Sherman and Brian said, oh
no, no, we've got a full slate.
We can't possibly have any other stories.
And Terence said, well, how about I develop it as a backup?
And they're like, fine, but you've got to do all your other work
as well.
So he worked with Robert Holmes and developed it.
David Maloney, the director, got the scripts for the prison in
space, read them, and pretty much said to Sherman Bryant, I can't
make this.
It's terrible.
And so panic stations and Terence sort of walks in like James Bond
says, actually, I have a script just here.
And David Maloney goes, this is a perfectly acceptable adventure.
Sorry let's do this.
It's much more political in the 1st draft, isn't it?
It's the space track.
It's much more about student uprising and rebellion, which you get
a little bit of still in the final show.
Should we talk about what this is actually about if there's
possibly anyone who's never seen it?
Absolutely.
So you have this spaceship which crashed years and years and years
ago, 1568 something years ago.
I think it was 67.
No, you can actually work that out.
Just have a look in the military somewhere.
I'll explain that.
Um, The humanoid life forms living there.
Around this site.
Around this site, then sort of develop their town around this site
and just pension off for terrible togas.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, we, you know, we all go through that phase.
It was a bit like the 80s perm.
I know I went through mine.
Just think that had some sort of alien, incursive, reducting
intelligent quality to making us do shell suits in 1989.
There's nothing intelligent about...
We'll get to the seats of death next.
What these aliens do is they need hybrine. hy brain.
So there were four.
There were 4 of these things flying the ship and 2 were killed in
their wall with the dominatrixes and fighting.
Actually, that's a wonder.
It would make more sense actually, wouldn't it?
Because it would be the rutens.
Um, the root and they, and what's nice about this is they live in
this sort of soup, this slurry of 7-Eleven slurpee stuff until
until you add the right sort of energy to them and then they form
a body.
There was a nice thing in the notes.
I found that form you see because, okay, it's a budget thing, but
it's nice.
The form you see when they're on this planet, which seems to have
a much, um, yes, to be a higher gravity.
That's higher gravity.
Yeah, because they're buildings that they make the people build
the doctor comics when he steps out of the Tartar.
So they look like they're from a much lower gravity.
Because there's funny little squat, zigarettes.
So it kind of makes sense.
And they also have sort of trouble with their arms and attaching
things to them because they're built exactly like the B-line robot
from lost in space, but with nice zarovsky crystal cut edges to
them.
But they um...
But yeah, this is this squat invasion form.
And I like to think that in their natural, in a more natural
state.
They're a castrians.
Because the crystamine, of course, it's Eldra.
Eldra's people.
And how beautiful if we'd actually had the bit of money and
foresight.
Because the thing that lets this down is not really the base story
which everyone thought was interesting enough, you know, to use
and invest time in.
And I don't think it holds up.
It's odd.
It's not bad and it's not fantastically good.
It's just surprisingly not what you expect to be watching at this
time.
I think this season sort of goes out of its way to vary itself and
perhaps in reaction to season five.
So each story in season 6 is sort of quite distinct.
But in fact, what I find surprising is how much it has in common
with the dominators.
So we're on a planet's realised with a quarry, which was new and
exciting in the savages, but is now a sort of hoary old trope
beside this point.
As one put it at the time, another bleeping humanoid race in
another bleeping quarry.
Yeah, well, I mean, that's Leap himself, does he?
I'll solve this.
It's 3 PG.
And, you know, like the like the people on the whatever planet, the
dominate, oh, Dunkus.
There you go.
No, no, on the planet Dolcus.
They're sort of terribly wet and here on the planet of the Gonds.
They're sort of very wet. 2 aliens in a spaceship take over the
entire planet, you know.
Chin Chin Chin.
But more importantly, the big difference is that there's a
generational political problem.
So with the Dolphins, all of the old people are pacifists and
you've got Kali who wants to fight things.
Here, you've got a group of students who are being fed information
by the sort of mysterious machines that they don't sort of
understand.
And, you know, they're rebelling against that.
So what we have here.
It's like the dominators only.
It's kind of on the right side of history, in a sense.
The sympathy of dominators we observed was with, you know, the
people prosecuting the Vietnam War, you know, it was an anti-anti
war story.
Because the students, you know, we just talked about the invasion
of Czechoslovakia, and we've talked about the, the tanks in Prague
and we've talked about the kids in Paris, learning down the
universities, and but also the stuff that was happening on TV.
You know that also at this time, Harold Wilson later claimed to
have you some greatest triumph as prime minister in the UK was the
opening university program.
So that through television and radio, you could enrol in remotely
through university and learn or speed learn.
But it was also the red brick uni thing of a different style, which
I think has gone out of schools, but we certainly went through it
in the 70s and 80s.
And it's just info dumping of facts that you purge out again at
the end of the year in an essay, that you'll never use a goon.
I've got something like over 95% for migration war, crashing
Thracian war essay when I have to do that in year 11 because I
don't, I mean, that's the kind of thing that just really appeals
to Doctor Who phones.
But for the rest of the world, it must have been miserable.
If you don't have a fanboy head to exams like that.
And so both of those, like both stories have students in them
don't they?
Remember, it's a group of students going to the museum on Dolcas
and the island of death.
And there's that terrible young female student who just recites
all these fags with a candour without understanding them.
And now here we have, she gets steam punched, doesn't she?
She goes through the doors. gets nozzled.
Well, they're being forced to in facts and so they smash the place
up.
Yeah, I mean, this is absolutely the anti-dominated.
If Innasloyd commissioned the dominators going, oh, what a
wonderful idea.
Let's show these passivists who what the world is really like.
This is direct, everyone's saying, actually, no, you can be anti
violence, but still fight for your freedom and fight for what you
believe in.
And what I find very interesting about this is, you know, at a
time where we've just come out of the year where the Doctor Who
Monsters are the monsters.
And they exist purely to get you.
All the crotons want is to be able to take off again.
They're not inherently evil.
You know, certainly their methods are... that kind of thing
invasive Western culture heal a bunch of people.
They do call a bunch of people.
They don't kill a bunch of people just to kill a bunch of people.
Unlike the Doctor Who monsters of last season.
Or the dominators who do it just because they're really grumpy or
they've just had a marital tiff in each other.
Exactly, exactly.
And also you've got these student characters. who, you know, they
want to smash up the hall, but none of them try to smash off the
croton who comes out.
Like the Croton just zaps them and they go.
So at the same time, they're not an inherently violent force, but
they become violent to fight for their freedom.
And eventually their solution is found, not in brute force, the
way it is in the dominators, and certainly not, but doctor going
bugger it, I'll do it myself, as in the dominators.
But the doctor kind of goes, this is the knowledge you need to get
rid of them.
This is the knowledge that was never given to you.
Now you do something with that.
I think it would have been a lot more powerful as a Billy story.
Can you imagine fluffing billious, Timothy Leary, because they're
using acid to destroy...
Girl dropping acid to destroy the status quo.
It's all about the foundation.
There is a lot, though, isn't there?
You know, that was a mood of the time.
I think this would have been a really good Billy story.
Now, I think it has a lot in common with the space music.
Yeah, yeah.
But it's a more active doctor.
Yeah, with young people, you know, trying.
And they were trying to get him to be a mod to every, you know
which Modro dad, yeah.
Something else that really comes to the fore here that he would
become famous for is Robert Holmes's characterisation.
Yeah, it's the characters that save this, isn't it?
Yeah, absolutely.
So we've already mentioned Philip Maddock.
We've already mentioned Philip Maticus ELEC.
We've got James Kane Crossback, yeah, duck facing James Kane Cross
is back for above Reign of Terror, where he played Le Maitre.
He's now playing Bieta.
Beta, Beta.
Beta.
I know his sidebones and the pronunciation change between scenes.
There's a lot of that that's happening in this.
Yeah, because there was a big 6 week breakoff, wasn't there, a 5
week break between Patty running from one thing to ending up in
the learning hall and he suddenly got swapping these massive
muttons on the side. and we'll have more sideburn trouble next
door, as well.
We will.
Really well served by this is Fraser Hines.
Last season, you commented on this, Nathan.
Jamie sort of became just the every man.
He became like Ian.
But whereas Ian would have a general knowledge of all different
situations.
Jamie is meant to have very specified knowledge of his time.
And the Crotons manages to make him intelligent and resourceful
but also play on the fact that, unlike Zoe, his mind is
untrained.
Zoe is given a similar sort of character development.
She's able to use her computer knowledge, and of course, it leads
to that wonderful line of Zoe, something of a genius.
It can be rather irritating at times.
She beats the doctor in the test.
She actually says to the doctor that he's almost as clever as me.
Yes, yeah.
And it's just wonderful character interplay, which would soon
become a byword behind.
Where the characterisation suffers is in the character of Vana.
And this is something that the wife in space picks up a fair bit
in that Robert Holmes doesn't seem to be so good at cooking.
She's not given a lot of time on screen either, is she, before she
turns into a big aubergine?
Yeah, she does. which is sort of unconscious for a fair amount of
it.
She does, but it's lazy.
But I guess, you know, the girls were there to squeal and look
lovely.
So there are, oh, there's Madeline disagree, I guess, coming up in
space pirates and there's Meg Seely.
I'm just trying to think of women in future homes stories.
There's none in power of control.
It's really weird because when he writes women well, particularly
he usually writes The Companion very well.
They're really great.
Yeah, but other times...
Other times they're just cyphers or they've got one line or
they're not even present.
It's it's really old and this is a very strange start for him, but
as we'll discuss next time, he does kind of start to make up for
it with Madeline, secret.
I think the big thing that starts here that you can see right from
the beginning and something that becomes a staple of homes as
whole outlook on the program. something that really influences the
program going forward. is that the doctor has to be more fun and
funny than the villains, you know, there's 2 fantastic scenes
between him and Zoe.
There's the one we alluded to earlier in the learning hall where
it's his turn to use the learning machine and he keeps getting
flustered and getting it wrong and and, you know, don't help me.
No, no, what do I do here, you know, and he sort of terribly
funny.
And then there's the other scene when they're in the dinotrope
which is the name of the Croton spaceship.
And they have to put the helmets on because they're the 2 high
brains and they're going to take off.
And the doctor's, you know, putting the, putting the headset on
you know, the wrong way round and picking an argument about where
to stand and, you know, so he goes, oh, I wanted to stand there.
Oh, I'm so sorry, my dear.
And like they're talking about...
And and like the doctor in a home script tends to be fun and funny
and the villains here.
They're not just sort of stupid crystals or anything.
They go on about procedure.
Everything that they do is informed by the procedure.
We don't know what that is, you know what I mean?
But, um, and so they're hide bound and rule bound.
And that's the big theme of, um, of Holmes's take on Doctor Who
that, um, the enemies are humourless and rule bound and
conservative.
I mean, Holmes himself is sort of politically conservative.
And you can see it in the character of E-lech. is, you know, the
person who takes the youth rebellion and turns it into something a
bit, you know, evil.
You know, there's a conservative.
But so Holmes is kind of conservative and he's sort of known to be
politically conservative, but his enemies in these stories are
always the people who stick by the rules, the people who are
beholden to procedure, and the thing the doctor comes is the thing
the doctor does, rather is he comes in and sort of breaks that up
and does that by being more fun and funny than the villains he's
fighting against.
Absolutely. what you were both talking about earlier with the
instructional model of teaching, the info dump model of teaching
you know, you follow the textbook and you'll be fine.
Well, the doctor doesn't follow the textbook.
The doctor can't even find the textbook because he's just thrown
it over his shoulder.
Oh wait, no, I needed that.
You know.
And straight away that becomes a great interest to the gods who
are kind of going, oh no, you know, I don't want to. take all
these tests to see if I'm ready to go inside the Dinotrope.
The big thing is the discovery that, um, Abu Gond and blah, blah
Gond have been killed. you know, the chosen ones.
What are they called?
Are they called chosen ones?
The companions.
The companions of the Crotons?
The croton.
What we discover is that the companions of the crotons are all
being killed and that revelation is sort of irrefusable and that's
the thing that, you know, sets everything in motion.
And it's no wonder everyone's surprised by it because evolutionary
wise, it's completely pants.
If you're trying to, look, what I guess from this is they're
trying to find a couple of guns or builds, I don't know, the race
up so that they can get a couple of kids who are smart enough to
join them on their four-sided console and fly out of there.
Why would you denude the gene pool by knocking off everyone when
they seem to just recover after a certain amount of time anyway?
Yes.
Except for Vana, who's just stuck being red haired or open haired
and a bit, you know, ex-go-go dancer for the rest of the episode.
Quaalude and Nelly's being off the place.
It's just, it's really stupid. really silly.
Select all the smartest people and kill them. and kill them.
It sounds more like a Murdoch program.
You know, if they were mining the area for the micro and the
silicone that's around. you could.
Which would kind of think they would be exactly yeah, but
they're...
I know they're feeding.
They obviously feeding assistance with the lower intelligence
system that they're getting.
So they're keeping it keeping the system doubling over, but
they're not.
No, Eldred wouldn't have done this.
No, they just keep much cleverer.
That's right.
She was actually the 1st missy.
Eldro.
Yes, the sex changing Doctor Who.
Yeah, we own her.
It's got the 1st spot joke.
I know you love aliens of London and World War 3 and all the rest
of it, but honestly, as soon as they're good on this planet, it's
got to ruling on them and sulphur and it's the planet of the fart
bombs.
Well, you take Bob Homes is quite famous for our jokes and power
crawl. the biggest one.
Do you know what I mean?
They're packaging up methane.
Wonder where this methane comes from.
And then they discover it's Kroll's farm.
And that's what then Tom says to the Mighty Hargore or
Philomatic.
Well, have you seen I'm not surprised you haven't seen Raman or do
you have you seen Raman?
She's not the easiest of guests.
I think they're perhaps fart jokes going all the way through.
So can we talk a lot about Philip Maddock when the war games comes
out?
I think we're going to have to.
Yeah, because he's... amazing.
I don't know what else we can say about this.
It's more interesting a game for what it alludes to, which is
revolution and stuff that was going on in the press at the time.
But you can get why it's there.
It fits really nicely in between the invasion and what's just
about to come up.
Sitting on its own as it did in the early 80s before you were with
us, Brendan, but then some of us were, you know, got pirate copies
of the 5 faces of the Doctor Who.
This was the one used to show us what the trout Nero was like.
And for most people, they hadn't seen us in 69.
What?
Is that what it was like?
It's not my memory of what it was.
No, because it's completely atypical.
But the thing is, it was the only completely extant small part of
that was available on the 5 faces of Doctor Who was all 4 part
ones.
And then we had the experience that we talked about last time in
1986 of seeing the crotons and the mind robber, which were the
only ones that they repeated.
So, yeah, we've known it for a long time, but it is massively
atypical.
And it is partly, I think, because season 6 is breaking away from
that season 5, let's do the same thing every week, but only
slightly better each time, perhaps, and they're doing crazy
things.
I mean, we did just discuss the mind growber, you know, it's a
very strange season.
I've got to get out of this is that it's nowhere near as bad as I
remember it being, which is...
No, no, it isn't.
I actually didn't didn't not enjoy it.
And there are parts I really did enjoy watching it again.
I mean, even if its message is not 100% coming through loud and
clear.
I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing because the one thing
worse than the message of a story not coming through clearly is it
being hit home with a sledgehammer.
Hello, season one of Star Trek and Next Generation.
But what you have here, as well as that message, you've got a
pretty solid action adventure story.
You know, within 10 minutes of episode one, Jamie's got into a
fight because he's JB, he gets into a fight.
But it just, it clicks along at a fair pace.
It's never boring.
It's never dull.
The plot hangs together, it makes sense.
Yeah, at its worst.
It's a great story to put on while you're doing the ironing.
We're doing a pertuie era early next year.
That's how I feel about that, general.
Well, you do it in the eye.
Yeah.
You can't iron bills, it crushes the pile.
And from piles to the moon, we're often seeds of death.
So I complained loudly and bitterly over and over again to whoever
would listen at that season 5 was terribly samey, and it was that
sort of base under siege thing.
And that's what we have here, we do have, I think, the very last
or maybe the 2nd last trout and base under siege story, and the
last classic monster story of the 60s.
It's a lot of lasts in this.
So we've got the we've got the ice warriors that probably is for
no other reason than to be a monster in a base under siege story.
And of course, they keep both builders in business.
But they make Gia Kelly skips in that outfit look tame.
They have such embarrassing, don't they?
Louise Pleasure is a lovely actress.
No, it wasn't.
Very unkind.
And so they're in vain the moon as usual.
That's another favourite place.
Is that a metaphor?
Well, it's the...
It's another famous location of a base under siege.
And I think at one point in the dialogue, the moon base on the
moon is called Moonbase 2.
And you have to think that Moonbase one is the one with Benoit and
Hopson and things that got attacked by Versideman that one time.
We have a base commander, Radnall, who will go on to play another
base commander in Tom Baker's 1st season.
He's.
He's in the sidemen story in that.
And again, we've got a high concept future world where something
big has happened and the world has sort of been changed.
So in this case, the huge, fabulous, sexy technology of the era
which is, you know, rocketry and space technology.
Remember, we're, you know, months away from the moon landing.
Yeah, about 4 or 5 months.
It wasn't very long at all.
And the early missions had all been televised, so people were
aware, you know, we're going to the moon.
Apollo 8 had just circumnavigated the equator of the moon as this
was going out.
And you can see that.
So we're getting our 1st shots of the dark side of the moon.
And the opening credits, you know, like as happened sometimes in
the in the trout near and in the 1st season of perchway, you've
got a special bit after the closing credits end for the story
title in the episode.
And here you've got model shots of the moon and the earth seen
from space and all of those things that, you know, that were huge
at the time.
And the audacious thing is this is a world where everyone's bored
with that stuff where that stuff is obsolete.
It's such an English show.
Thank you for raising that up because you've got a female based
commander who nobody comments on being in that role, whereas in
Star Trek, as you say at the time, it would have been such a big
deal.
It's a lady person, doing a lady job.
Can I imagine?
The only Star Trek episode that I was alive on broadcast is
Turnabout Intruder, which was the final episode.
I was born just before it.
And that final episode has a woman called Janice Leicester.
Janice Lester.
She finds a special archeological artefact that can swap bodies
and she swaps bodies with Captain Kirk so that she can become a
Starfleet commander because women weren't allowed to command
spaceships in the 23rd century.
That line has created so much trouble in Star Trek law because
it's like Gene Roddenbury wouldn't have written that because of
course Gene Roddenbury wanted an H.L. Barrett to be in charge of
the ship whenever Jeffrey Hunter wasn't there. right, way back.
And that's the thing.
Her line is slightly ambiguous in that it's your world of starship
captain doesn't admit women.
And what some people have taken that to mean is several times.
Kirk laments that he can't marry because he's married to his
ship.
They come with a girl.
Although he put his best efforts in.
Yeah, actually, with the gusset and the wig later on, yes.
He minces around the ship when Janice possesses his body in the
most remarkable way.
It's really something spectacular Look, I mean, that's just
desperate recons from a fan of that has an actual canon where they
have to harmonise things.
Yeah, that's a nice thing.
We took no such thing.
Yeah, it's amazing that I can't wait till we get into Dalek
History podcast.
What are we doing that one?
It is amazing. you're right, Nathan, that at that time that Star
Trek was going, Women can't be in charge of starships and then
having a plot where a woman gets in charge of a starship and goes
hysterical.
We have Gia Kelly.
I'm saying that I'm saying that presentation is a bad thing.
Sorry, Richard's eyes, it was ping-pong balls.
On the other side of the pond, we have Gia Kelly as the only
person who knows how team at works.
He just runs circles around everywhere.
She's so spectacular.
And there's a moment where she has to go to the moon, like Pat and
Jamie and Zoe are going to the moon by rocket, but she actually
gets there before them because Team Adam sort of repaired enough
for her to be able to do that.
And Radner says, no, no, you can't go.
And I expected his next line to be something about how it was too
dangerous for a lady or something like that.
But you can't go because you're completely indispensable and we
can't do without you here.
And she's just so superbly confident and so fantastic.
Miss Garrett, I think we liked in the Ice Warriors last year, which
was Brian Hale's previous story, but Gia Kelly runs rings around
her.
I think she's absolutely superb.
Brian Hales does actually do quite interesting things with gender
in his scripts because in the Ice Warriors, you had Penley in
store, who were very much written in a romantic or anti-romantic
old complaining married couple kind of way.
And normally the ice warriors come as a complaining married couple
too, then.
That's true.
That's very true.
It just depends.
It depends on the temperature of their eggs when they're born.
You know, you've got you've got Miss Kelly here.
You've got Alpha Centauri, who is neither male nor female later on
and you've got Queen Falira, who has terrible trouble being a
woman later on, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
I just find it very interesting that Brian Hales does play with
gender in his scripts.
Albert in a very muted way.
But, you know, for 60s and 70s, it is quite notable.
Again, we have the theme of science versus technology and you
talked about store a little bit earlier.
You remember that stores kind of represented the complete
rejection of technology in the ice warriors.
Do you remember he was the Scotsman in sort of bear skins and
things?
Um, and the whole thing was opposition to having the computer run
your life and, you know, the big decision that's made at the end
is to go with human instinct and reject computer.
What I like about this is this is also about technology, old
technology versus new technology.
Um, the team at, which seems to be a terribly brittle system.
Do you know what I mean?
The moment something goes wrong.
Everyone is days away from starving.
I mean, literally days away from so.
No one has a pantry anymore because they've just got a phone block
phone box on the corner that's necessary for me.
Every meal.
That's the most dissolving and uninteresting form of transmitting
that's ever been.
You know it's Doctor Who and they just flip.
Yeah, there's no roll back in me.
I mean, what that reminds me of is the machine stops by EM
Forster.
And if you haven't read it, I do recommend it, where you have
everyone is living in a little sort of honeycomb like cell and
hardly anyone ever goes away and leaves to see other people
because they can get them on the busy screen.
They can talk to them that way.
Oh, that's grind.
They get all... they get all their food delivered to them.
That's their WWW.
Tinder.
Tinder or any exactly.
I saw a girl on the on the bus the other day flicking through
pictures of boys and then she came across an Asian once you just
hit X. And I thought, yeah, that's kind of our culture now, so you
get real for a second.
Yeah, that is. yeah.
Yeah.
Who knew who would have known how pressing this was?
I think I read that.
I think I may have read that.
It's a lovely novella.
That's the thing.
A lot of people say about this part.
Oh, you know, it's completely unrealistic that we would put the
control centre so far away and it's completely unrealistic that
people wouldn't have.
But moon based in London.
Well, it's actually just a PNG, isn't it?
It's Telecom, British or Telstra.
Exactly.
Most call centres for services are not in the country, servicing.
Bane modern culture.
But the system is brittle in a way that it shouldn't be if
everyone relies on it.
And Professor Eldred.
He's been the one against science, not against science, but
against modern science.
And he points that out at the end when they're talking about
research.
That why he's the only team.
Yeah.
That's why he's the only one in a rubber cardigan, isn't he?
Oh my god.
Can we talk about that in a second?
So here, the science versus technology thing, and I think terribly
sweetly, in the Ice Warriors, it's a guy with a stone axe and
bearskins who's on the anti-science side.
Here, it's a guy who looks nostalgically at the very cutting edge
technology of 1968.
You know, it's it's our technology that's uh, uh, that's valorized
here.
Well, it's a bit like what they did in the space museum a few
years before this.
You know, old space travelled, old hat, now.
Nobody's interested in that anymore.
Nobody's coming to the museum.
Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
British thing, isn't it?
A very British thing of absolutely refusing to get excited about
what's the most...
And looking at I'm looking at it in the most cynical way possible
as if you could have actually had Tony Hancock, as Eldred, or as
one of the older commanders, and it wouldn't have set, this could
have been played by the cast of Hans Hancock's half hour, which is
a lovely thought, because we would have had Hattie Jax as Geo
Kelly.
And that rubble James is Commander Radnor.
That would have really been a stretch, wouldn't that true?
I want to get back to the rubber cardigan at this point.
I was saying that would have gone a bit of stretch.
So everyone's wearing these.
I mean, like they, you know, normal. rompers.
Yeah, horrible.
It's like consonants, pants.
But like Professor Eldred works at a museum and Radner works
somewhere else.
Do you know what I mean?
team at stations.
Exactly.
And then there's John Sudbury or something.
Is that what he's called?
make that up.
And he comes to old...
Then he comes from he comes from the the ministry, but they all
wear these sort of depends undergarments on the outside if
they're...
Except for geopellic.
She wears her own black, etherquette, catwoman version of it.
Louise brought that from home.
Yeah, those costumes are absolutely ridiculous.
You guys showed this to a friend who hadn't been watching after
who we just watched the 1st one and all he said was, what the
expletive are they wearing?
Whose idea was that?
It's the 60s.
Everyone was very modern.
At least they're tucked in.
We don't get any little sense.
They're defining little lines around their hips, just to let you
just to let you know that everyone's been living on a diet of
spams, dodge.
Well, the funny thing is, it's only spam and dumplings that are
the foods that survive the team that process, so many people know
that.
But yeah, I can sort of look at them and go, they come from
Thunderbirds, that kind of, this is what the future will look
like.
But they just missed the point that the Thunderbirds things are a
logical extrapolation of current military uniforms. whereas this
is just textured...
Jumpsuits.
Thunderbirds where the American graffiti hasn't been on yet, but
they wear 50s ice cream sellers uniforms. where they're coming
with this one.
You would never do that now.
I mean, if you had a civil servant coming from the ministry in the
year.
What year is it?
It's like 100 years in the future.
No, Ice Warriors is a 1000 years in the future.
This is a 100 years in the future.
Yes, that's 2060s, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
And you would have a man from the ministry turn up in a suit
wouldn't you?
He'd been dressed like Trevor Sigma, you know, with a bowl hat and
stuff.
And he would be an anatronism, but you were trying to convey to
the audience who this person is and what sort of character they
are.
And, you know, for some reason they forego doing that using their
clothing and just having everyone in these sort of horrendous
adults. incontinence where, yeah, I mean, a show that really did
well with not going very far in the future, but figuring out a
really good dress system, not just for the military, but for all
walks of life, was Babylon 5, who had suits where instead of
having, instead of having a lapel that's attached to the suit, it
was a separate strip of fabric that was attached and just had sort
of epaulettes at the top, like little epaulette buttons, and
that's all bullet hell walls.
So it kept the line of the design.
But made it look like it was from a different time.
And that's the thing.
What these people are wearing doesn't really have much bearing
with what their functions were in the 20th century.
The scientists don't look like scientists.
The civil servant doesn't look like a civil servant.
Unless it's a non-to-communism.
The only people who were wearing uniforms at the time.
If there was any way reductive and normal.
This thing like this.
Well, yeah, with a malice. and that would seem as a really scary
thing.
So maybe they're talking about that society's had a huge change.
Yeah, it's what we're looking at.
So no one actually mentions with all these team activeries going
about.
No one's mentioning who's picking up the bill.
Yeah, it looks like a world government thing, doesn't it, on Jerry
Anderson line.
No, they talk about the United Nations, I think, don't they, at
some point or did I just make that up?
Am I completely adulating?
The United Nations?
I tend to think, you know, most of these things, we assume, post
apocalyptic world of some kind or another, that something's been
mastered, and this is the reason you now have social cohesion.
The 1st thing I thought watching this is what were they doing
about terrorism and illegal immigration.
It doesn't seem to be a concern, which again suggests that the
rest of society is so normalised and formalised and maybe, you
know, just in such tight little strides that that isn't a
problem.
Why would that not be a problem?
Because everything else is so controlled.
I don't think it's because everyone has all the lovely things that
they want appearing the moment that they need them.
Provided you live in Canberra or Tokyo or Ottawa.
So why are the Ice Warriors is the next question because in the
last, in the last Nice Warrior story, we were surrounded by ice
and they got thawed out of ice and that's something that Gates is
reusers for Cold War when he reproduces the Ice Warriors after all
this time.
And the only thing that I can think of is that, um, Hales is
borrowing a lot of stuff from more of the world.
And in particular, you might remember that the War of the Worlds
which is a fantastic novel.
I mean, I saw the, um, I'm totally blanking on his name.
John Powell?
No.
Tom Cruise?
Tom Cruise.
I saw the job.
I never seen the George Powell version.
But I've read the book and I've always wanted them to do a film of
the book because I want a film where the Martians invade London in
like 1901 or whatever, you know, like that it's a bit more
steampunk.
But in any case, the Martians are trying to colonise our planet
because their world was dying.
That's their motivation in war of the worlds.
And they inadvertently infect the world with a deadly weed, the
red weed, and the red weed drives on water, whereas the vice
Warriors one is destroyed by it, and it gets sort of killed by
earth bacteria.
And of course, like any giant fungal infection in late 1960s
Doctor Who, the weed is realised using the BBC phone machine.
And it's a huge, it's a huge finale for the BBC phone machine.
It's really never worked as hard as this.
You know, is it cliffhanger to episode 5 where Troughton's like
flailing above his head in like giant amounts of foam?
Yes, yes. that's right.
And Wendy Padbury is behind a door on the other side of town at
Ealing.
Incidentally.
That scene, as we were watching Doctor Who and making our way
through that scene and the ice warrior coming over the hill with
the sun behind him, are the 2 earlier scenes. that Rod remembers
of Doctor Who.
Oh, okay.
See, I told you he was here, didn't it?
Shut up.
I can imagine that.
That's a great scene with the sort of looming, you know, the light
behind him and stuff.
In fact, there's some really good direction on film.
I think in this story.
Yeah, yeah.
I think it's Michael Ferguson.
Am I right in thinking, Nathan, that this is the swan song for the
BBC phone machine in Doctor Who?
I think this might be its last one and it may actually have choked
on the very demands place.
Maybe it got a white balloon court in it. never worked again.
Sport play blue grade because it turns up a lot in Space 1979.
Does it?
Yes.
I'm not straight watch that.
So does Fred Freiburger, unfortunately.
And of course, the other thing about those phone machine scenes
either some, those scenes with Patrick falling about in the phone
were filmed several weeks before the rest of the story.
So in that scene, Patrick's got very short hair.
And then for the rest of the story, he's got slightly longer
haired, but you can't really tell.
And then there's the episode where he's not actually there because
he's gone off on holiday.
And remember, he said, the whole episode is unconscious and then
he's going to be beamed out into space or something.
And when he comes back from that, his sideburns are almost down to
his mouth.
But a lot of people in this episode look radically different from
they do in other stories, especially the 1st wiggly wobbly
appearance of Jenna Coleman.
Did you notice that Oswald is in the 1st episode?
No, Jenna Coleman's Oswin, Oscar.
I suppose she'd also been Oswald?
No, Osgood is Osgood.
Ingrid P.
Ingrid Pitt.
Ingrid Pitt, Oliver.
I thought I thought it was a little bit.
Yes, well, she does make an appearance as Harry Towb.
For old Harry.
Yeah.
He comes in, he flirts with Louise, you know, and gets killed.
Yeah, because that's what happens if you quote.
He gets killed every time he appears in Doctor Who.
What's his other one?
He's in terror of the automs.
Yeah, as well.
And he was interviewed years later and people say, you know, how
do you see all that your character sort of comes in and dies
within 2 or 3 scenes. like, no, it's great.
I get a job and people remember it.
How many times has that clip with the armchair been played?
Oh, he gets killed by the armour player.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
I like fuchsium in that scene, actually. and Fuchsium's quite a
good character.
It's great all the way through, isn't it?
Yeah.
And it's this gift Brian Hale seems to have writing minor
characters.
So just to contextualise, fusion is the only person who survives
the initial ice warrior attack on the moon base on Moonbase 2.
Oh, except for Phipps.
Mr. Pipps.
He's lovely, isn't he?
He gets killed too.
But Fuchsm is desperate not to die, which I kind of think is a
pretty reasonable motivation, actually. you know, like I think
that's fair enough.
Like the ice Warriors in this are really like murdery, aren't
they?
They didn't kill they kill lots and lots of people.
And Fuchsian was kind of getting a bit more tense about this and a
bit more implicated, but he continues to work with them.
Like he sacrifices himself in episode five.
He teamats everyone else off the moon, uh, and pretends that the
special timer switch that he's going to use to get off pretends
that that works.
But I think we like Miss Kelly knows that it's not working or
something like that.
And then he broadcasts himself.
Like he turns on the video, which is repaired, and he broadcasts
the ice warriors' plans to everyone back on Earth.
And the ice warrior kind of looks up at the camera and say, am I
on camera, you know, and kills him.
And so we see his sacrifice.
And it's really wonderful because even Miss Kelly doesn't believe
you know, once his team mattered them all off.
She doesn't believe that he's sacrificed himself.
She still thinks that he's a worthless traitor, and he gets to
redeem himself.
And it's very cool.
It is very cool.
It's another great character arc, I think.
He's in Blake 7.
Of course.
Isn't everyone though?
at this point.
Well, pretty much.
Yeah.
So, the one thing that I wanted to say too, can I talk a little
bit about the base under siege thing?
Yes, actually, I've got something to say to that as well.
I do go on.
I said initially that I thought the problem with the base under
siege thing is that Doctor Who goes from a show about going
anywhere, doing anything, exploring the universe to show about
desperately trying to keep the universe out.
Um, yeah. and that it was kind of xenophobic and and kind of
narrow-minded in its in its approach and that it was a, that it
represented a sort of drop off.
You know, I think Doctor Who production wise gets better year
after year.
But, There are things I like about the Heartnel era as being just
more experimental and more fun and having less of a clear idea of
what it's trying to do.
Whereas now that we're stuck with bases under siege.
I think we've hit us a pretty negative note.
And I have to say that this is the ultimate base under siege, and
I think that it really, really, um, shows how bad bases under
siege can be.
And the thing about it is it's the moral effect. that it has on
the doctor.
So the doctor has a solar gun that he kills an ice warrior with
like he carries a big gun and he vaporises an ice warrior with a
big gun.
He diverts their fleet into solar orbit where they'll all die.
Do you know what I mean?
And that's the thing instead of meeting new aliens and that sort
of thing, the doctor's job in this story has become killing them.
And, you know, you very rarely see the doctor with a gun shooting
people.
Pirtually it kills an ogre on at some point, but I think that
really means it's time to say goodbye to the base under siege with
Trown because I think it just has a terrible impact on the
character of the doctor and just on the whole show's entire
outlook.
See, I have to disagree.
I do agree that this is a based on a scene story.
But I think that this is the halfway house between the trout and
base underseat model and the troubleshooters model that we're
going to get in the Pearl era because you have the base under
siege up on the moon. while down on Earth, you have a team of
scientists and eventually the doctor working on a solution down
there.
Now, as for the doctor's actions, You know what?
Yeah, he does get desperate, but it takes a lot for him to get
there.
You know, it takes the fungus to be spreading around earth, it
takes several deaths at least 5 team that personnel we see
killed.
I think we've seen 4 security guards killed.
So, you know, almost a dozen people we see die before the doctor
takes up a gun and takes a life.
And also that bit with him diverting the ships into the sun.
First of all, he hatches that plot with G. Kelly.
So it's a bit like the whole Peter Capaldi, I need you to decide
what to do about this Moon Eck thing.
But 2nd of all, when he goes up to tell the ice Warriors what he's
done.
He stands there waiting for death.
He is aware that he has done something horrible.
Like he takes no pride in what he did when Sly says, you destroy
Buckleet.
He just says, look, you're trying to destroy an entire world.
I had no choice and he just stands there.
He doesn't try to run away.
He doesn't go off on that big chase through all the mirrors like
he does earlier in the story.
He stands there.
He stands there waiting for his death.
And of course, who comes to his rescue, but the man whose
character is being further redemed and rebuilt story by story.
Jamie throws himself into the middle of 3 ice Warriors to rescue
the doctor and you've got that beautiful moment at the end where
you know, they're blokes so they don't talk about their feelings
it's just very quite, thank you very much, Jimmy.
And back off to earth.
I think it's...
Very much an undeployed scene. certainly it's questionable
morality, but this doctor, Patrick, has always had a questionable
morality, but the key factor is he doesn't turn into Bruce Willis
because of this.
He doesn't go up there to gloat.
He goes up there to confess. that this is what he's done.
So, I just think they haven't kind of quite been the doctor's
morality down yet.
And so you get that, um, you know, the tenant has to go out and
give the son Tyrans a chance, you know, or, um, you know, the
doctor's never cruel nor cowardly, but all of that's in the
future.
I think that I think that, like I said, per tweet pulls a gun on
an ogre on him day of the Daleks and sort of vaporises him.
I just think that they haven't quite pinned it down.
So I don't mean, I just mean sort of narratively that you put the
doctor in a situation by having a story like this where the
solution to the story is to kill all of the aliens.
Do you know what I mean?
not to make them go away, not to trick them into blowing
themselves up, not to get them to learn a valuable lesson, but to
kind of kill them all.
It's really obvious that he's ploy here is or his plan here is
genocide. just because they're willing to do the same to earth.
As far as we know, they're very few ice warriors left, for a few
Martians left, but he's perfectly determined.
Is it article 12?
Article 18, Article 46, Article 7.
When did he start becoming like this?
Was he like this?
I didn't do that.
Middle of the Daleks.
Yeah, it's very much a new doctor thing, isn't it?
In the moon base, they...
What do they do?
They demagnetize them and fling them off into space.
They could say you could say happy there, probably.
Yeah, but you could say that the cybermen are not a racist such. a
demonised and dehumanised form.
Well, I think that's a bit ablest.
I mean, the thing is, Something that has happened several times
now with Patrick is, everyone wants to get to one, you know
everyone wants to get to escape. once.
Power of the daleks, he just destroys a few daleks.
Evil is just like, okay, no, you're messing with me again.
You're gone.
Moonbase.
Okay, I'll just fling you off into space.
Two, right, I am burying you.
Burning.
Great, great intelligence.
Jim Moriarty of Doctor Who.
Yeah, great intelligence. 1st time.
Okay, yeah, fine.
Leaf.
Please go away.
Second time, I am going to drain your intelligence and that's all
you are.
I'm going to drain who you are away.
Ice Warriors.
And we get it now as the default card.
It's why Matt Smith was just picking up on so much of that.
Really our 11th doctor. with so much now we're looking at the
underside of this doctor underneath his tortoise shell, his shiny
tortoise shell.
He's actually got, you know, dark underbelly.
And yeah, so it's interesting to see how this is informs so much
of later.
So I have a, I have a favourite production gap, and that is the
heating control.
It's very important.
They go up to a 100, they go 100%.
That sounds great.
Why would you have that?
Why?
And like they turn it up to 60 at some and no one's breaking a
sweat.
The ice rators are all falling over, but my people don't survive
very comfortably at 60 degrees centigrade for a particularly...
No, I just thought that was very strange.
And what happened if you leant on the, like, lent on the?
Yeah.
No, no, no, if you leant on the switch, you know, and
inadvertently pushed it to her.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, so I wouldn't have had, I wouldn't have had those controls
on me.
This is because the production team themselves are realising how
much they miss fluffing Billy. and so instead of letting the
doctor do it.
They just have everything else around him.
Well, from committing the same fact.
From a production standpoint, this is another one that was got
ready in a hurry because 1st of all, Brian Hales wrote them Lords
of the Red Planet, which has again been made by a big finish.
I'll have that.
Is that got the zombie sort of space thing where they, don't they
in the original story?
They were hypnotising or brainwashing the inhabitants.
Oh, no, no, that's some, that was another story he came up with
but no, this is essentially Genesis of the Ice Warriors.
Oh, interesting planet.
And it has my own trout in it as well, which is a nice touch.
But that was sort of deemed that it wouldn't work.
Then, um, Brian Hales said, okay, I'll write you the face stories
see the death bloody.
Fraser Hines' contract was up in, I think, episode four.
So they're going to replace it with a new character called Nick.
But then Courtney is when Patrick solidified that he was going to
leave, Fraser said, I'll stay on until Patrick goes.
So Terrence Stick said, oh, Brian, would you mind rewriting the
story, keep Jamie in it to the end.
Oh yeah, it's fine.
Then something else happened and Fraser might Fraser might have
been out, so he had to start rewriting the next story.
And then finally Fraser was back in and Brian said, look, I've got
other commissions I need to move on to.
And for that reason, and also for reasons of plot, apparently, the
last few of Brian Hale's episodes weren't too interesting.
The 1st 2 episodes are completely Brian Hales.
Episodes 3 through 6 are Terrence Sticks from a story by Brian
Hales.
It wasn't J.R.
Kelly going to be hypnotised in the original thing.
I think I read that Oh, I don't know, to be honest with you.
I, I, I, Yeah, yeah, because, you know, you would have weakened
her role and her specialness for, as you've said before, being a
female character in a 1960s piece of television.
But nobody, unlike Anne Travers, nobody comments what's a girl
like you doing in a place like this, they're just like, yeah
that's you.
Um, you know, you're J.
Kelly, you're wonderful and you're the best we've got.
She's the Megan Jones of Seeds of Death.
Yes, Indeed.
Okay, so that's why we have time for this podcast, and we only
have one more episode of the 1960s to go.
So...
My giggy art.
We'll be back next week, just after Christmas. to talk about the
space pirates and the war games, which is not only the end of
Patrick Trown's era, but it's the end of quite a lot and the
beginning of something else altogether. of the 1960s.
Yeah, it's the end of Doctor Zoo in the beginning of a completely
different show. interesting.
Don't forget, you can comment on our website for your chance to
win a target novelisation.
We'll be announcing 3 winners from our season 6 podcast and it's
the end of next week's podcast.
But until then, good night.
Good night.
Thank you.
You've been listening to Clutter entirely, Nathan Bodley, Brandon
Jones, and Richard Stone.
This episode, Sidegone Pro, is reported on Sunday, the 4th of
December.
The next episode will be released on December 28.
You can find us online.
It's Centre Entirety.com, find your entire show on Facebook and
iTunes and FTE podcast on Twitter.
At any notice that new scripts don't have many terribly busy
lines.
It turns out at the end of our podcast.
Another bleeping humanoid race and another bleeping quarry.
I do that thing.
Just swallow that and just...
Yes, that'll be in the end.
Swallow that and do it again, such time, so hard.