God, I've missed doing these with you.
Why have we waited 2.5 seasons, Brandon?
I demand that we do one next year.
That were my list of things.
Let's do the doctor's daughter, darling.
Well, I demand that.
Yes, that's excellent.
I think you would probably redeem that for me.
James, the doctor's daughter, please.
Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through
Entirety.
The only Doctor Who podcast to produce more than 185 episodes in
just under 7 days.
We're exhausted I'm Nathan.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Todd.
And I'm a Hath.
Stay away from the bathtop here.
Well, before we launch into the triumphant home stretch of series
four, let's take a quick pit stop at an old theatre to make time
for Donna to do some counting, the doctor to do some gurning and
for Martha to do some emoting and a drowning fish.
Sorry, everyone, but it's time for you to meet the doctor's
daughter.
So, for me, this is really quite a complex and sensitive
exploration of the futility of war.
Is that how you feel about it, Todd?
What are you talking about?
I've never thought of it in those terms ever.
Something about futility in there.
Sorry, I'm still struggling with jetmag.
I can't get my brain around that.
There is a sense, I think, in which it kind of would quite like to
be that.
You've got 2 sides of sort of people who are being manufactured at
scale in order to fight a kind of pointless war with each other.
They are enemies of each other for no readily apparent reason.
They're seeking something that's sort of mythological and
absolutely not important.
And, you know, when peace is made, the kind of leader of one of
them can not cope with that and kind of refuses to allow it to
happen.
So there is a sense, I think, in which this actually attempts to
be about something.
Well, the doctor even references the Vietnam War when they
discover the human command camp, if you like, in the theatre, he
quips, oh, perhaps they're doing Miss Saigon.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That is quite good.
Yeah, is good.
And that is a choice.
He's not saying perhaps they're doing any get your gun.
He's not saying perhaps they're doing Oklahoma.
He's not saying have a new Q. You know, he picks Miss Saigon
because that is a musical about war.
Yeah, with 1000s of Vietnamese children in rags swarming across
the stage.
And, you know, you could argue that war is always pointless, but a
particularly pointless war and one of the 1st wars where a lot of
the residents of the countries who were in Vietnam were saying
actually, we probably shouldn't be doing this.
So why is it so stupid then?
Well, the tone is more Avenue Q. It's silly is the problem, but
it's not silly enough to be entertaining.
It's just it's kind of NAF.
It's got ideas behind it, but then it doesn't execute any of them
very well, but it also takes itself very seriously.
There's not a lot of humour sort of endemic to the story in
there.
No.
Yeah, I think I think you've hit on it there in that it's trying
to do several things, including, it's trying to be the doctor's
daughter thought bubble that Russell T. Davies had, and
understandably, that's an irresistible idea, but it's also the
Martha Trapped in space story.
And those 2 things, as we see, are probably enough to fill an
episode on their own.
You put both of them together in an episode and neither is
adequately explored.
But I also think the problem is the stupid fish.
I think that's like it is an absolute problem, the half are
ridiculous.
And they are ungainly, like they look stupid in profile.
There's some decent sort of animatronics and stuff in the masks
but there's whole scenes where there's no dialogue or just
Martha's dialogue and everyone else is sort of standing around
bubbling at each other.
And it's absurd.
Exactly.
I mean, talk about a puzzling creative choice.
Everybody's looking at me because I've gone very quiet, just
burple at us.
I like the Hath.
Do you?
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
See, I quite like them too.
They're quite cute.
I like them as well.
I think the only problem with the burbling is it's not subtitled.
It would have been interesting, I think, to subtitle them for the
audience because at the beginning, Martha doesn't understand them
but suddenly she starts understanding them and she's able to talk
to Peck.
Yeah, and we don't know at what point there's no realisation or I
don't think it's at all clear when she, you know, that she
understands them, isn't it?
Well, after most of them go off.
Is she and Pecker looking at the map?
And the way he responds to her, she then responds to him, you know
it seems like, oh, that's outside, yeah.
Well, there's just a bit of radiation.
Oh yeah, I knew you'd come with me.
You know, she is responding to what he's saying.
And I looked into sort of cut material and whatnot because I
thought maybe there was a line cut where for some reason the
TARDIS can't translate them, but they give her a translator patch
or whatever because there's that awesome bit where they're all
like touching her and touching her.
Exactly.
And just, I, God, I love Freema.
And isn't this episode just a show of Freema will give you 100
even when she's dealing with a script that asks her to do the most
ridiculous thing.
In fact, when Peck dies, she gives them much more than 100%.
It's miserable, isn't it?
So we talked last week or the last 2 weeks about the fact that we
have Freeman back and we get her to play Evil Freeman.
We don't get her to do any of the things that we really loved her
for last year.
And separate her from the doctor for most of those episodes.
Yeah, that's right.
And now, like in the cold open, she's immediately separated from
them.
She doesn't see them until the end.
She has no one to kind of give her anything back.
It's these people in these sort of preposterous masks that she's
having to interact with the entire time.
So she's carrying all of these scenes on her own in a plot that is
completely disposable that could have been excised from the
episode and we wouldn't have lost anything at all.
It's really super thankless and they get her to flail about in the
mud and stuff like that.
After flailing about in the goo last story as well.
Yeah, yeah.
And she has to emote at a drowning fish, as I said, and she really
goes over the top.
But I just suspect that she was like super bored, you know?
She gives it so much more than it deserves.
And I just, you know, I hail her for that.
I mean, you know, there's a fish drowning in front of you.
Oh no.
I mean, no, I mean, you know, does she feel guilt because she
lured it out onto the surface and promised it, it would be okay.
I don't know.
She doesn't give us the opportunity to say that and she never
refers to the fish again.
And even if she did, it might not have understood her.
It would have just nodded.
It's a big waste of her.
And the whole thing sort of screamed contractual obligation
doesn't it?
It's kind of like, we'll give you 7 episodes next year or 5
episodes or whatever.
She does five, doesn't she?
Five and 3 torchwood.
Yeah, it will give you that many episodes, but it really doesn't
matter what we do with you.
You're just a kind of warm body standing in front of the camera.
One of the things originally. when I watched this season was that
I completely agree with you about Martha and her treatment and
bringing her back, her 3 episodes for me were by far the weakest
of the entire season.
And I really despised the Santara episodes because I hated the
uses of Santara and how bland unit was.
And I didn't really like Martha, like very much originally
either.
And it was written by Helen Rayner, who wrote that appalling Dalek
story the previous year.
So we just had all these black marks.
And so they were the worst episodes.
So this episode was slightly better, right?
Because she actually, well, it wasn't 2 episodes off since Terence
basically, and it wasn't Helen Rayner.
Of course, we've explored last series. and Helen's writing of that
Dalek story, which I probably don't like as much as everybody
else.
But coming back to the Santarian one, like I actually said, look
I'm going to give this a go, like, because I actually could see
what she was trying to do with the Dalek one.
And I love Freeman now.
So, of course, it went from surprise, surprise people to the
universe.
Like it went from 5 out of 10 to suddenly 8 out of 10.
I thought the 1st episode was fabulous, right?
Except for the cliffhanger, which was just terrible.
And the 2nd episode's not as good, but I still enjoy it.
I probably would give it like a 7.25.
So I was really concerned coming in watching this particular
episode because I always thought it was one of the weakest 3 of
the season.
And I actually think it is the weakest episode of the entire
year.
But I still give it.
Oh my goodness. 7 out of 10.
I still I enjoy it, right?
And I enjoy all the talking between the doctor and Donna about his
past and his family and it actually, I think, gives an opportunity
to explore that side of things and give it a bit of breath into
the show, like to reiterate that he does have family, right?
And what is he like with his 2 hearts and all that sort of stuff.
And I actually, this time around, I thought there was actually a
lot of talking about that.
And I really like that part of the episode.
And actually, I like the daughter as well.
And the fact that we've got Martha and I really adored her, right
this time around.
I really love.
I actually love all Peter.
I actually really love her crying at that fish.
I actually get enough.
That sequence, she's giving it.
You have to give it to her.
But I actually really think she does a great job there.
And so for me, it's performances of Freemer and obviously David
and Georgia, in particular, who I and Catherine, that make me like
this episode.
Right.
It's not old Rumble Bum.
The whatever his name is the Cobb, General Cobblers, whatever
who's appalling, and that whole plot.
It's just a device.
I think it's more of an explanation about the doctor and his
relationships with family and educating the new fans of Doctor Who
a bit about his history, that he does have a history.
You see, Todd, I think therein lies the problem that Martha
Freeman is actually giving a good performance in those scenes, but
the episode doesn't deserve it.
The episode doesn't deserve that emotional weight because it's too
lightweight and too disposable.
And I was saying earlier, it's NAF, but it's not NAF in a fun way
like New Earth or Evolution of the Daleks, maybe.
It's just disposable.
I think, too, that the big problem with her performance in that
scene is that it's a stupid drowning fish. who she's had a few
scenes with and now it's, you know, the most affecting death that
she's ever experienced while she's been with a doctor, apparently.
Well, she was the last personality.
Japan.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's it.
She's been through much, much worse than that.
It's just bathos, you know, like it just seemed bizarre and
inappropriate.
It's great anguish acting, but it just seemed to be wasted on the
wrong topic.
Unearned.
But I don't mind if fish actually drowning because like it's got
its own little bubbly source of liquid, which may not be the same
as the liquid in that lake.
And so when that glass shatters, then it's contaminated.
And the glass does shatter, I did notice that this time, yeah.
See, I have never noticed the glass shattering, and I was reading
that during the dubbing stage.
They're like, hold on, the fish drown.
And Russell said, oh, well, just add in the glass breaking.
And the thing is, I've never noticed it.
I have actually always been with Tom.
Like I know I've joined him with a fish drowning joke, but I've
always been told in that that doesn't look like water.
No, no.
You know, that doesn't look like pure water.
And the doctors told us before, you're 70% water. you can still
drown.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But still, is a fish that drowns.
See, I think the purpose of that scene in the plot, which makes it
both a success and a big problem is that the point of it is to
give Martha a definite reason to go home.
Now, yeah, she's already engaged, but of course, this is a massive
temptation to go on travelling.
So they give her a really crappy episode.
She decides she doesn't want to stay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She, you know, she has a horrible time in this episode and a
creature sacrifices itself for her and she has to watch it die.
And so she's like, no, that's it.
I can't do this anymore.
I want to go home.
But the problem is, the subtext of that is Martha is no longer
worthy to travel in the Tartars.
And that's what I got watching this because she's not being Donner
and being clever and figuring out the mystery.
Like Martha's big contribution to the plot is that someone dies
for her.
Right.
Again, I don't think that's the intention, but I think that's the
problem with jamming these 2 plots together.
It's not considered.
I don't think it undermines her departure last year because she
still leaves on her own terms and she still leaves to go to
something positive and at the very end, there's this sort of
bizarre moment where she looks at her engagement ring and goes, oh
that's right, I'm engaged and then kind of walks off.
I'm engaged to Lucifer, for God's sake.
Why am I going after that tall streak of misery?
So, Brendan, basically, are you saying that hell hath no fury like
a woman's gone?
Oh God.
Sorry.
I actually agree with both Nathan and Brendan in the sense that I
think this fish dying for her is just a reinforcement of, you know
all the deaths that she has seen and it's so pointless.
Yeah, I just think that it just reinforces her decision that this
is not for her anymore.
And I don't see, I don't think it undermines her at all.
I don't see that.
No, in fact, there's that bit at the very beginning of the episode
where both Donna and Martha Bond over this being the fun bit of
the episode, they go out into the TARDIS and discover what the
world's like, and that's really fun, and both of them appreciate
it.
I think their relationship, Donna, and Martha, throughout these 3
episodes, is actually great.
I think it's really warm and lovely, and it would have been nice
to have had another one where they actually got to team up
separated from the doctor.
I think that would have been nice They're both sort of in the
companions club from the start, aren't they?
They're kind of, even at the start of the Son Torrance, you
party.
They kind of embrace each other and recognise each other's kind of
experience, even if it wasn't shared.
It's like Rose and Sarah Jane after they got over their initial
bump in school reunion.
It's just, it is a lovely relationship.
And I like at the end when they drop Martha back, how Martha and
Donna walk off down the street leaving the doctor behind.
That's great.
I think it's a little bit of a shame the way the show has gone
with kind of companions and casting and contracts and stuff that
that's never happened again, that all of the companions from now
on will leave for sort of stupid science fiction reasons.
And so the doctor never ends up having a group of people on earth
who know him, who like him.
And I've always felt that Russell gets that right, you know, for
those 1st 2 seasons, he has a group of people who know him.
And I always felt that in the 80s, I mean, maybe even in the Colin
Baker era, the fact that it's just the doctor and Perry, and they
don't seem to know anyone else, and that always makes me feel a
little bit sad, you know.
Yeah, it's like, as to drag us into 2020 for a moment, as much as
I have really enjoyed series 12 of Doctor Who, I do regret that we
haven't spent as much time with the cons as I would have liked.
Like we've had some great scenes with Sonya, but Naja and Hakeem
have just been pushed off to one side and they're great.
I would love to see more of Najia.
Who knows?
We literally have no idea what's going to happen to the companions
at the end of this series.
Yes, for once, you know.
You know all of you at home, no.
Yeah, by the time we've, yeah, we are recording this just before
episode 9 goes out.
And yeah, we don't know, and that's really exciting.
But the other thing that made me think of that is, of course, this
week, Chris Chibnall has said, of course I'd like to bring old
characters back.
And he specifically mentions Amy and Rory.
And initially I rolled my eyes, because I've said before on the
podcast, I don't really like Amy.
But then I thought about cold blood, Hungry Earth, Power of 3
dinosaurs on a spaceship, and it's like, hold on.
Chris Gibnall writes Amy as really likeable.
Yeah, Amy and Rory.
He does a great job of both of them.
I also want to mention that he wants Tegan and or Ace back as well
and I'm totally on board for both of those, but especially Tegan.
Definitely.
One performance I really want to praise in this episode is
actually David Tennant.
Oh, I dislike him enormously in this.
Ooh, okay.
You see, what I like about it is when he's playing the emotional
stuff about having lost his family, for once he actually
underplays it to Donna.
Like when he says to Donna, I was a father.
He, you know, it's almost a murmur or a whisper.
He actually says it quietly instead of the rage of a time lord.
It's, you know, it's genuine pain.
And then whenever Jenny does anything to impress him, he looks
thrilled, but there's still this kind of furrowed brow of, no
don't, don't, don't get attached.
Don't do it.
So there's one scene where he talks about the legacy of being a
time law, that being a time lord isn't just about having a certain
genetics or a certain parentage, that it's about being the heir to
a sort of long legacy of things.
And that's when he's being sort of super grandiose and stuff.
And he's horribly dismissive of Jenny and her identity and her
experience.
And I just find that performance so slappable. despite the fact
that Murray Gold does the little, this is galafray music in a
really sort of light, soft, gentle kind of elegiac way.
I think that's beautiful, but tenant's performance there really
annoys me.
He's super smug and unlikeable.
But that is so when he does accept Jenny later in the episode.
It's it's effective.
I have always read that performance where he's being like really
snug and horrid.
He's being egotistical.
He's making this about him and about his man pain.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So then Donna kind of says to him, well, you know, if she's got
the 2 hearts and she's got the perspective of wanting to explore
and she's got the questioning of why she's fighting.
How is she different from you?
Yeah, she doesn't need to have a big collar or be from the sort of
Prydonian Academy or something.
And that's what I love about this episode, that Donna takes him
through this journey from that point that you don't like, right?
to obviously the scene that you do, Brendan.
And I love I love all that.
That's what that's, for me, the real strength and the heart of
this episode and seeing the doctor come to that realisation.
I think his terrible pickup a Ghana name at the general, I never
would over the top stuff at the end.
Utterly awful.
Or maybe his worst performance ever.
There is an element there, I think, of what we were saying earlier
about Freema, where he's giving it is all to compensate for
something that really doesn't work and isn't earned on the page.
Yeah.
And although shots of Freema and Donna, looking shocked, when
Jenny shot and looking shocked when the doctor does that, were
recorded like 2 weeks later at a completely different exterior
garden.
They found another botanical garden somewhere in Cardiff.
Some of the shooting days for this story were disrupted, mainly
the stuff in the half encampment, because that was a civic hall
outside which there was a protest about a closing primary school.
So after all the half leave, the scenes with just half Peck, named
after Gregory Peck. and Martha were recorded in a totally
different location. that they had to like redress as best they
could.
And look, I couldn't tell.
And I think Alice Troughton's direction helps that because when
all the half are there, she actually kind of shoots it from
Martha's perspective of it's very confusing, there's lots of
movement around her, Freema, of course, I think is about 5 foot 6
and all the half are like 6 foot six.
So she's surrounded by these gentle monsters, if you like.
Look, one thing in this episode I can praise is the cinematography
and the visual direction.
That's not the performance direction because, yeah, you're right
Todd, Cobb is dreadful.
It is the most wooden performance of any spaceship stroke base
commander since that narcoleptic old fossil in the arc.
You know, I'm actually offended by the fact that they pick someone
with an Irish accent to carry on this pointless war.
And so it, don't you think it's gross?
So it kind of takes whatever it was that went on in Ireland and
turns it into 2 sides that have just been manufactured to hate one
another for no reason at all.
And they're continuing this wall.
Well, isn't it?
Like, I don't, I think it's about war generally, but I just think
it's a miscalculation to give Cobb an Irish accent or to get him
to use his Irish accent.
I think it was a miscalculation to maybe cast that actor.
It was a puzzling creative choice, as is his performance.
His Wikipedia page says that he dedicated himself to the classical
stage.
Good luck with that.
Just like Jenny Lair.
I can only imagine that it was like bringing his audiences down so
that more people wouldn't be exposed to his performances.
Did they did they play Romeo and Juliet together?
Romeo, my husband, my love.
Why did you do it?
Why, why?
And he's got utterly awful teeth as well.
I don't get it too.
If those machines, the generators produce like generations
generations and generations of young people.
What happened?
One of them had a fluff in its sprocket, and he, like, he, or does
he know that we've only been fighting for a week?
Or do they all like age really quickly?
That's it.
He's just 3 days old?
I just, I just don't like that it's a 7 days since the start of
the war.
I just, you know, this is, this is, I just have a problem.
And so please, Nathan and Brendan, I'm with you. stupid.
And I'm the one who thinks that it's okay that the traffic jams in
new, new, new, new, new, new, new, New York last for people's
entire lifetimes because I think that's making a allegorical
point.
This thing for 7 days.
Like, what the hell?
how does it even work?
Well, they've chosen 7 days to be a Genesis parable.
Yeah sure.
But I think, just logistically, a month.
Just make it a month instead of 7 days.
And in a month, you can conceivably have this degradation of
knowledge, I think.
Enough time that maybe a living memory has passed rather than
days.
But if we saw lots of people being killed, do you know what I
mean?
Like if it was a convincing war and people were going out and
being killed in enormous numbers and they were having to
manufacture lots of people to replace them, if there was any
indication of that rather than we're hanging around a theatre in a
ballroom and talking, what's you from Skins just kind of hanging
around outside a cell dwarf?
Yes, to his life.
Joe Dempsey, yeah Joe Dempsey.
Can I say he's got really bad skin in this episode?
Yeah, well, they've got bad teeth, bad stuff.
Listen to you.
Send him all off to the clinic.
But the other thing is, it doesn't make sense like 7 days.
If we actually saw them ageing, like the people from the leisure
hive, like really rapidly and dying.
Then I could probably buy it.
Or if waves and waves of them were being killed.
And so we had, you know, um, 20 generations a day or whatever, um
because the death hole had been so great.
But, you know, they're all sort of hanging around in this sort of
I mean, look at the map.
It looks like a dungeons and dragons module, doesn't it?
You know, like all of these rooms connected by corridors and
things.
And the locations, like what the hell is going on?
I think that's a serious problem with this episode.
I think it undermines the episode and it makes it look like
student project in that it was a breakdown in production.
They weren't able to find anywhere that looked suitable.
And so you end up shooting in an old theatre.
There's lines lampshading it everywhere when they turn up in the
botanical gardens.
Why does this look like a botanical garden here?
They know it's a problem.
And they've lampshaded it?
But it goes back to that old problem that Ed Thomas just didn't
build sets.
He didn't build enough sets.
This clearly needed to be something that was bespoke and instead
they've they've just gone with whatever was to hand.
Yeah, I mean, the script wants it to be a newly excavated colony.
And instead, it's old buildings with like chandeliers and stuff
like that.
And, you know, down staircases with fading wallpaper and things of
green gels everywhere.
So the wallpapers faded in 7 days.
They need to get a new contractor.
It's ridiculous It needs to look like warriors of the deep, quite
frankly, brightly lit and very stark and futury.
Okay, I just say the Hatha, not a 1000000 miles away from those
solurians.
But I had forgotten that it was set in an old theatre.
Like, and I wrote in my notes, oh, it looks like an old theatre.
And of course, then it is an old theatre.
And so, yeah, so Jenny at the end when she's sort of lying on that
plinth is actually just put on a stage.
And it looks bizarre.
Yeah, it's like, why do that?
You know, yeah, you're doing a service for her.
It's like, but the thing is, this is also, this is also your basis
where people have been living.
It's an allegorical story, but it's not allegorical enough.
I think you said earlier, Peter.
It's a bit silly, but it's not actually silly enough.
There's something to be said, like, if we look back at season 24.
It's kind of like some people are taking it seriously and some
people are not taking it seriously and that's where the disconnect
happens.
Here, there's no real excuse for that.
No.
I mean, this is the era of tone meetings.
Yeah.
You see, Brendan, you talk about season 24 and Paradise Towers in
particular.
I think that's quite instructive in that Paradise Towers clearly
didn't have a tone meeting or a director who was keeping everyone
on the same page, but what it did have was a recognisable world
because they built that world in the studio.
Paradise Towers and the sets look amazing.
It would have looked really bad if they'd just gone to some
backstreets and dressed them up and sure.
Whereas, that's what this episode lacks.
If they built some sets and given it a sense of place.
None of these locations look like they're tied together.
They go from an old theatre out to a quarry, to some staircases to
I don't know, the inside of a paper mill or whatever, and they end
up in the botanical gardens.
It's just bizarre.
The bloody paper mill again. how many times do we have to see this
place?
I also think, too, that there is a big problem at the end with the
visuals and something that had never occurred to me before, that
we actually go out onto the surface of the planet.
And we see quite a fantastic shot where Peck and Martha see the
sort of big ship thing from the outside and you've got the moons
and you've got this desolate planet.
And then at the very end, they do the terraforming thing, and the
terraforming thing happens at the same time as kind of peace
breaks out, and everyone's in dialogue, saying how beautiful the
big swirly thing in that sort of set is.
And that's the thing actually, that seems to have people make
peace.
They see a swirly cloud and lay down their gums rather than seeing
the effects of it.
But that's it.
That's what you don't see.
You don't see that world. turned into a beautiful paradise, and
you absolutely have to see that for that to work.
And all we get is a swirly thing and we get some light coming in
through the windows of the theatre.
And what we don't see is a new world created once these people are
at peace.
You know, it's bizarre and clearly they just didn't have the money
for the sort of effect shot, but that effect shot is so
important.
It's, if the story is going to be about anything, it's got to be
about that, they're fighting to achieve something and it turns out
what they get isn't a weapon, but a way of recreating the world
creating a beautiful, peaceful world and we just never see it.
So rather than word peril, it's word safety.
Yeah, that's it.
Word victory.
See, that's a big problem with the ending and you build up to this
and you want the episode to be about something.
And that just turns into that horrible collection of cliches where
the doctor stops people who should just be shooting him because
he's hoisting aloft their prized artefact, and then he smashes it
and still no one does anything, and then they all lay down their
weapons just because, and then someone decides shoot the doctor
while someone else throws themselves in front of him going, no.
Yeah, I was getting awful.
I was getting some pretty serious Jackie Hill vibes from Megloss.
Yes, because they make survibes.
And do you know when Martha gets kidnapped at the startly
episode?
It's just like when Barbara gets kidnapped at the start of a
crusade?
And that is the only connection between those 2 episodes?
I don't know, presumably, you know, with all this single parent
genetic stuff going on, there's there's going to be some
interbreeding.
Like Richard and Joanna.
Anyway.
I could say, wouldn't it have been great if Donna was cloned?
Can you imagine the Donna's daughter?
That would have ended the war quick, smart.
I think I saw a few of them at Gallifrey this week. joined forces
against their common enemy, Nerris.
By the way, yeah, they're a schizophrenian.
She's a lesbian.
Is she a lesbian?
Well, I don't know, but she's either a lesbian or a single mum
who?
has used a turkey-based to produce her own offspring.
So there you go.
Neres.
Yeah.
The funny thing is, Doctor Who, the Complete History, refers to
that as Neres fathering twins with a turkey-based.
And I'm like, I'm not sure, that's the right verb.
Maybe she paid a little visit to Morocco, like Patsy.
It might be the case that the names of the clones come from their
progenitor, because the forenamed soldiers we get aside from Jenny
R, Cobb, Klein, Carter, and Cash.
Maybe they're the sea generation.
Like each generation, you know, has a different letter.
That's why he doesn't like Jenny.
She's jumped ahead.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We really haven't spent all that much time talking about Georgia
Moffat, and she is the eponymous character in this episode.
How do you think she does?
I love her.
I think she's got so much energy and and pizzazz and that backflip
sequence through the lasers.
It's just the most hilarious thing.
Like, you know, compare that to Richard Herndl and Tegan.
The frigging floor in the 5 doctors.
Shuffle any old wear and this is like, you know, it's out of the
field.
It is as easy as pie.
I just love it.
It's like when Lady Christina comes down from the ceiling like
Mission Impossible. next year.
It's a great homage to an action movie.
I love I love her.
I actually really like the reaction to where Donna kind of looks
at the doctor and goes, oh, you know, like I'd love to see you
doing that.
You know, this is a time lord thing.
He said off you go.
And she does actually listen to him.
You know, like she does kind of earn her place in the TARDIS
because she starts off as a soldier.
She's there ready to shoot them with those terrible guns that have
flames coming out the end for no reason, whether they're shooting
or not.
And then she decides, no, I'll pull a trick, you know, and escape
in a sort of clever way.
Yeah.
Production information for why the guns like flash with that gas
flame.
It was to save on buying blanks.
They're like, this is how we can economise.
We can have a gas cylinder on each gun.
It makes it look slightly futuristic.
We don't need to do a laser and we don't need to do blanks.
The backflip sequence was inspired by Britney Spears' toxic music
video.
Of course it was.
That's how Britney Spears.
But, you know, that in itself, as you say, Todd, was inspired by
action movies.
And while you may think, oh, well, you know, that's definitely a
gymnast doing that.
The final shot where Georgia Moffatt sort of flips back into
screen.
Georgia Moffatt does do that last cartwheel and backflip.
You know, so she's, she gets it done.
Sort of, they had a gymnast and a choreographer on set, and before
the shot, the gymnast sort of said, well, I can do this, I can do
this, I can do this, I can do this.
And George Moff was like, well, I can do that.
Well, work that is...
You see, having her played the doctor's daughter, she's clearly
not the 10th doctor's daughter.
No, she's the 5th doctor.
Yeah, I mean, that's an icky thought given real life.
But, you know, I would have loved an in universe explanation for
why she looks like the 5th doctor.
It would have been utterly ludicrous.
Really quite funny.
Like, tenant removing his hand.
So he's like, I think they only got genetic information from my
1st 5 incarnation.
I would have given this episode a bit of a, you know, that sort of
silly kick it needed.
You aren't on board with her performance, Peter.
I think it's fine.
I think she's doing what Freema is doing and she's doing
everything she can with material.
I don't think the character is particularly well defined.
She doesn't get a lot of doing doctor-ish things.
We get a lot of Donna saying, see, she's like the doctor.
I'd like to see more of that.
I like to see her have a journey throughout the episode where she
becomes less of a soldier and more of a thinker.
I don't think we really do get that.
I guess the closest thing is that scene that I just mentioned
where she has the choice to shoot Cobb and decides to shoot the
thing in the ceiling instead.
Yeah, I mean, that is sort of one of the most obvious kind of
iterations, though. like I would have liked to have seen more
too.
I think the character had a lot of scope to be interesting.
I think she's a fine actress, but like the rest of the episode, I
don't think it gets there.
Weren't they supposed to kill her off at the end and wasn't it
Stephen Moffatt?
said to Russell keep her alive.
And I kind of feel a bit cheated that, well, great, keep her alive
but you know, bring her back.
Well, I mean, I kind of, I'm never a big fan of bringing people
back because I think it actually probably rarely works unless
you've got a good 2nd idea for them.
But I do like the scene at the end where she's in the shuttle and
she says what she's going to do and she just lists the things that
Donna said that the doctor does, you know, that he saves planets
he fights monsters and she just gives that dialogue back and says
that's what I'm off to do.
So I like the idea that she's now in our imagination out there
somewhere doing what the doctor does.
And although we don't get to see her again, we do get to have
that.
And I think that is quite nice.
I like that too.
My heartaway sinks a little bit when someone says, oh, we'll
recast her and bring her back or she's regenerated or whatever.
And I just think, no, no, no.
Let's not everything needs a big finish box set on it.
Like not everything needs to be explored.
And it's quite nice to have that little loose end because it's a
hopeful and kind of optimistic loose end, I think.
And I certainly think that killing her is just the most cliched
and appalling thing imaginable.
And she doesn't die saving anyone.
She doesn't, do you know what I mean?
Like it is just, oh, she needs to be dead.
So we'll just get cob to shoot her.
And like Cobb shoots her because he is a warrior who can't accept
peace.
So there is a proper point being made.
But otherwise, like it's it's super random.
Yeah, and Stephen Moffat's objection was exactly that.
It's like killing her is the cliche, and it's there to reset the
doctor's status quo.
Because part of Stephen Greenhorn's brief for this script was
based on an interview he gave about the Lazarus experiment.
Because what he said in the interview was, this is my 1st time
writing for Doctor Who, and he says, writing for Doctor Who is
very different from writing for other drama, because in other
drama, you want to give your central character an emotional
journey, and you can't do that in Doctor Who because he has to
stay the same.
So you give the emotional journey to the companion.
And Russell heard that and went, Actually, Stephen, that's a
really good point.
I want to give you a story where you give the doctor an emotional
journey.
Except that that emotional journey then ends at the end of the
episode and we never speak of it again.
Yeah.
He's still right.
Right, don't get me wrong.
But I just want to praise David Tennant and Georgia Moffatt's
performance in her death scene. pretty much because again, it's
not tenants spitting in the master's face that we got last year.
It's gentle and it's tender.
We do have that really overacted.
I'm the man who never would.
It's not just the acting.
That line of dialogue is absolute whippet.
Do you know what I mean?
It's terrible.
As you always say, if the doctor picks up a gun?
rewrite your script.
But then wait, the thing I so love about that scene is after he's
done all that big thing, he just comes down and sits next to
Jenny's body and he doesn't say anything else.
Yeah, it only, it's only a few seconds, but the speech is
performative.
It's him performing a speech and then he's like, now leave me the
hell alone because everything is about her right now.
And there's a sort of there's a grandiosity to the speech as
well.
It's like, I want you to base your society on how I behave right
now when I pull the gun on the guy and then decide not to do it.
And it kind of wrecks what's happened before, where they've all
laid down their guns because, you know, the world has changed and
become, you know, beautiful and blah, blah, blah, and they've
discovered what they're all there for or whatever.
I mean, it doesn't come off, but they have their own reason not to
find their own reason to not be warriors and his tenet inserting
himself into the middle of it.
Yeah, and it highlights the passivity, I think, of those
characters and that they follow whatever the script gives them.
They say, oh, okay, well, let's, you know, stop fighting and, oh
that's a good point. you make doctor, you know, have the blah, blah
blah, blah. none of it is owned, none of it has any emotional
weight to it.
I also have a problem with the scene as well because there's no
blood or anything like when she gets shot.
And I know Russell didn't want to show anything like that, but I
just have a problem that she sort of just clutches her chest and
then you look back and there's never any indication she's ever
been shot or the anything's gone through what she's wearing.
And it just doesn't sell it for me.
I just kind of go, that's if you're going to do that, you've got
to direct it better than what it's direct.
Todd wanted bits coming out like condo.
Not at all.
But a little hole in the t-shirt.
Just something.
And I just, and I just, it just, it's just rubbish.
No, she looks like she's having a bit of a rest.
Between scenes. waiting for a beauty treatment.
You know, I was saying, like, I love doing these with you all, and
often with Brendan, you actually make me love episodes more than
what I initially thought.
I think with this one, I'm liking it a little bit less.
Does that mean that I've influenced?
Yes, Peter, it's now a 6 to a seven.
Look, I give this one a 6 as well.
I think I think it's flawed, but I still enjoy watching it.
You know, I get to that scene in the garden and I'm like, oh, it's
almost the end of the episode.
I didn't notice that time going by.
I'm not sitting here feeling like this is a slog like I do with
Planet of the Oude.
You know, I find that episode quite difficult to get through and
it's just that I like the doctor actually doing stuff in the plot
but that's not for him.
I also really respect Russell four, right?
In series 3 and this was the case at the time.
The Dalek 2 parter was heavily criticised.
Lazarus experiment was heavily criticised.
And that was a two-parter by Helen Rayner bringing back an old
monster and a new monster with Stephen Greenhorn.
Rather than Russell say, okay, well, I'll do the middle two-parter
and I'll get Stephen Moffatt to do the episode immediately after.
He, like, actually, no, everyone out there.
These are 2 very talented writers, and you're going to have the
same for them again next year, and you will like it.
I mean, too.
I'm mostly, I mostly like the Santaran 2-parter.
It's fun, it's a bit of fluff.
I like Colonel Mace.
I like evil Martha.
It's got cribbons. yeah It's got Jackie.
Yeah, and this is a perfectly enjoyable 45 minutes if you don't
think too hard about the world.
Like, Brendan, I agree with you.
Like, I'm going to be quite, well, I'm not surprised.
I mean, David Tennon is not my favourite. doctor, but this season
is, I think, my favourite season of New Who.
And in terms of shows dipping below six.
There's only, well, one in that category, which is this one, and
everything else is like way above, and the back half of this
season is just like, you know, from strengths and strengths or
strength, and I love the 1st 3 stories.
So, yeah, I just, yeah, it's quite incredible that this is my
favourite season of New Who?
What is it with them having terrible military characters?
First of all, Colonel Mace, then general cobblers.
They're all.
I will give you this, Brandon.
I don't think this episode is too boring.
And boring is the number one crime.
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
It's like Orphan 55 this year.
Like, it's my least favourite episode of this series, current
series.
It's probably my 2nd least favourite of the Jodies.
It's just above Battle of Ranscore of Colos because it's fun.
Yeah.
And this episode is fun.
It's like, you know, my worst David Tennon episode is Fear Her
because it's not fun.
It's boring.
There long periods with nothing happening.
You can't say that about the doctor's daughter.
There's something happening every second.
Just doesn't make sense.
I wish it had been more fun.
Yeah, I, for me, I think there's so much kind of ineptitude and so
many cliches in the script and it is just a little bit of a mess.
I'm not bored, but maybe I'm irritated.
Well, the listener, that's just about as much as we can take this
week.
We'll be back next week to watch a vest perform drown in the
unicorn and the wasp.
In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts
and you can keep up with us at Flight Through 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 IntoTera.
Brendan, is there anything you'd like to plug?
Yes.
So, it's 15 years since Doctor Who came back on our screens and on
the anniversary of each episode.
I am reviewing the relevant episode on my YouTube channel.
So I'm in the midst of the Christopher Eccleston series at the
moment, just giving my thoughts.
And also, if you want to on Twitter or in a comment on the YouTube
video.
Please leave me your comments about next week's episode.
As we're recording this ahead of time.
I'm not quite sure where I'm up to, but just check out the channel
and I will be reading some of them out in each review and kind of
responding to them as well.
So do please join me for that over on my YouTube channel, Brandy
Bongos.
Thank you.
Brilliant.
We'll have links to that in the show notes.
Until next time, may you never experience dad shock.
It's easy to avoid.
Just ask any of us here on the podcast.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
See you soon.
Good night.
That was Flight for Entirety, starring Todd Bilby, Nathan
Bottomley, Peter Griffith, and Brendan Jones.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, Strings performance by Jane
Orberg.
This episode about his man pain was recorded on the 22nd of
February 2020 and released on the 19th of April.
Stay tuned, of course, for the inevitable Big Finish Jenny box set
comprising 6 story, starring Georgia Tennant, phoning it in as
Jenny, with Michelle Collins as the War Briggs, and Ryan Sampson
as loveable hat sidekick Glug.
Hit the nail on the head in that the problem is with the design
department.
I think all the actors are pulling in the same direction, as
opposed to season 24, where, you know, each story, there's someone
who is not performing the same as everyone else, like Richard
Briars.
But even Cobb, who it's not a very interesting performance.
Wait a sec.
General cobblers.
I'll see your woman die. a terrible thing.
Nathan, that's no way to speak to Todd.
I think I'm going to cry.
What's the stupid name of this planet?
Oh, it's miscellane.
Vaseline.
It's named after the wife of the emperor.
Can I?
Oh, Messalina.
Is it Messalina?
or is it Messalina?
Yeah.
Yeah, look, I finished that point about actors.
I'll see your woman dies.
We're not together.
It's one of those ongoing...
Yeah, yeah.
You see, Brendan, I think that's really...
Sorry, I'll start that again.
You see, Brendan, that's really interesting because...
We may as well just put a report in the middle of Pitt Street.
I felt like that was a commentary on what I was going to say.
I snoop a mouth and clue.
You see, Brendan, you talk about season 24.