Episode 199
A Great Release of Tension
Friday 1 January 2021
This week, we’ve hastily convened an emergency meeting in our darkest conference room: Todd’s itching to try out his new glove, Nathan has some serious objections to make, James is here mostly for the exposition and Peter is hunched over the desk doing his best Dalek Caan impersonation. It’s the end of the David Tennant era — The End of Time, Part Two.
Notes and links
For the last time ever, the best source for background information about the development of this script is Russell T Davies’s The Writer’s Tale, particularly Chapters 23 and 24. That’s also where you’ll find the scripts to some of the deleted scenes where John Simm was playing against himself, scenes which were very kindly pointed out to us by friend-of-the-podcast Scriptscribbles.
Our new trope for 2021 is the Florana speech — which is the speech where the Doctor lists a whole bunch of possible magnificent destinations in order to entice someone to travel with him. The locus classicus for this is Pertwee and Sarah at the end of Invasion of the Dinosaurs; Nathan’s personal favourite can be found at the beginning of The Day of the Doctor.
Picks of the week
Todd
Todd has been enjoying Marie-Claire’s World, a YouTube channel where a new series fan is watching her way through the entirety of the Classic Series and recording her reactions. She’s very positive about it.
Honourable mentions also go to SeskaSays and Medusa Cascade, who are doing pretty much the same thing.
James
James’s pick is returning favourite W1A, also chosen by Simon in Episode 172. It’s a sitcom set inside the BBC itself, starring Doctor Who royalty Jessica Hynes and Hugh Bonneville, and narrated by David Tennant.
Peter
Peter wants us to take a look as some of the news coverage of Donald Trump’s childish and mendacious post-election tantrum, so that we can properly appreciate what Joe Biden and the American voting public will deliver us from on 20 January. Not long now.
Nathan
Nathan has been watching The Boys, a violent and hilarious satire of comic-book superheroes and American capitalism, brought to you by those cuddly Marxist hippies at Amazon Prime.
Follow us
Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, James is @ohjamessellwood, Todd is @toddbeilby, and if you see Peter around anywhere, tell him how keen you are to follow him when he finally gets round to creating a Twitter account. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam, and the strings performance was by Jane Aubourg. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.
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And more
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We plan to release an episode on Revolution of the Daleks very soon after its broadcast.
Our James Bond commentary podcast is called Bondfinger, and you can find that at bondfinger.com, at @bondfingercast on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else as well.