Hello, dear listen, and welcome back to Flightthrough Entirety, a
Doctor Who podcast of great power and wisdom and consolation to
the soul in times of need.
I'm Nathan.
I'm James.
I'm Peter.
And I'm Todd.
Well, we're in a world entirely populated by John Sims, and I
can't see any particularly persuasive reasons for leaving.
Still, David's ultimate immolation approaches, and so it's time
for us to sit down, wipe Timothy Dalton's spittle from our
clothing, and discuss the final episode of Russell T. Davis's era
The End of Time Part 2.
I think that this is really great, and I have to say that as
someone who hates Galafre and, you know, I think it was pretty
good in Deadly Assassin, but ever since then, it's been shockingly
bad, and so this, I think, is really kind of magnificent, and, you
know, it's very CG, like it's perhaps a little bit more ambitious
than they can properly realise, but we go into this negative space
like a completely empty black room.
Senate chamber from the Phantom Menace?
Yeah, yeah.
Wasn't it at the end of the last episode or was it this episode?
So we did see that, but we also see him walking from that senate
room across a kind of tree.
Yeah, yeah.
And then they're in this sort of space.
And now we get the time war and it's been the thing that's been
hanging over the program ever since it started and now we actually
kind of see it.
And we see it in a Doctor Who way.
It's a lot of people talking about it, but we actually see it.
I do love that they name check the moment.
Yeah, so this is the introduction of the moment.
And in fact, we were talking about this during the week.
This is happening.
This scene is happening at exactly the same time as the scenes
with the general in.
Yeah.
So we report that the doctor has the moment he's going to destroy
us all, somewhere else in the capital.
The general's having that meeting.
Oh, yeah.
I didn't know that.
And Moffat does change things a bit because he wants to tell a
slightly different story, but he rewrites this ending for the time
war, but he refers to this ending and the moment he's Russell's
creation.
You said that you really like it.
I have problems with this whole scene.
I think Timothy Dolton, when he screams, I will not die, is so
over the top.
I just kind of go ugh.
And then he doesn't know that it's earth, right?
It has to be revealed through the visionary that's where they
are.
But in the previous episode, he's narrating the master and the
doctor and what they're doing.
So he knows what they're doing, but then he doesn't know where
they are.
So how does he know what they're doing, where they are, and he
doesn't know where they are?
I'm completely confused by logic.
So that final speech looks like it's still part of the narration
that Timothy Dalton's doing.
And so perhaps it looks like he's telling that narration to the
high council or whoever that is in that big room.
But perhaps in retrospect, that's not what's happening because, as
you say, why is he talking to the High Council about Earth and
people having dreams and things?
So generation episode one is occurring after this 1st sequence
here when he knows where it is, and then, so it's all out of sync
with time itself, which is a really appalling sort of, we're just
explaining away plot holes.
Well, I don't think it's a plot hole because I do think that what
happens is you've got, you know, distinguished actor Timothy
Dalton giving a narration and then that narration turns into him
addressing the timelords.
And so if you want to look at it that way, no one actually says
that that's the narration for the 1st half of the story.
He's not telling that story to the assembled time lords in
Gallifrey. telling it to us.
But then he intrudes into the story and it turns out he's a
character.
And so it doesn't quite work.
But I think it's Timothy Dalton.
I kind of agree with all of you to an extent.
I think it does look good, although it's mostly played against
black drapes and then against white drapes later on.
But I'm so disappointed in the conception of the Time Lords from
Russell, because Robert Holmes made something of them.
He made them organic and interesting and funny.
Whereas what Russell falls back on here is just standard sort of
politicking and theatrics of people sitting around a big table
remonstrating with each other.
There's no charm and there's no wittiness to them at all.
But isn't that the point?
It may be the point.
It's not entertaining to watch at all.
So, I mean, what something has happened to the time lord since we
last saw them?
So in the initial scripting, Russell had wanted the time I was to
have formed an alliance with the Daleks to show how far they had
become debased in their attempts to escape from the time lock.
Right.
And then just toss that away.
Okay, so they were all in the time locked together.
Yeah, and trying to escape, but then Moffatt said, oh, I want to
use them in victory of the Taleks. so he didn't.
Yeah, I mean, he couldn't have destroyed the Daleks forever sort
of thing.
You never really did.
We just brought him back.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But you see what I mean?
lack of wittiness. in any of those scenes.
And I understand that that's what he's going for.
But that's not a reason to do it.
I think because what's happening in this story is that the time
lords are the most evil threat that the doctor has ever faced, that
they've stopped being his home planet.
And he knew that all along.
And so while ever he was talking about his home planet and how it
had gone and how he was the last of the time lords.
The reason his last of the time lords is because he killed them
all because they were going to destroy the entirety of creation.
And so they are more evil than the daleks.
And I think that's a really, really great thing to do.
Even if it means that what you've got.
I don't think there's no pleasure to be derived from Timothy
Dalton shouting at people and exploding people and stuff at the
table.
And I think that you could still, you could still tell that story
and keep Timothy Dalton's wrestle on pretty well unchanged.
But the characters around him are utterly faceless.
And so it's really just him shouting at the camera and at other
people.
Yeah.
I do like when he explodes that woman, the partisan.
I think that's sort of really quite fabulous.
I thought it was Chancellor Flavia.
No, no, no, it's Thalia.
Are you sure?
Yes.
Is there anyone who doesn't think that the addition of like, you
know, an Engian or a Kelna or a mind probe would not have made
those scenes better and more fun?
Well, there is that other guy that's there that keeps explaining
it's grovelling a bit.
I think that's probably that character.
But he's not funny enough, is he?
Maybe he could have been funnier.
But what you were saying about the time lords and what they've
become.
I don't get that sense.
But I mean, they are trying to destroy literally everything else.
But I don't get that sense.
Not at this point.
At all. at all.
Until right at the end where you suddenly get an info dump saying
we want to transcend to beans of whatever.
That's the only moment in time.
And so I just don't think for me, Yeah, they're coming back, but I
never get the sense of the real threat.
It's all words spoken by David Tennant as opposed to showing us.
So I just don't feel it as much as perhaps what you are feeling
it.
Yeah, I think that's fair.
I mean, you get it a little, you get a little sense of it from
Dalton's performance.
I mean, he's so clearly a villain and he's wearing the torchwood
resurrection glove, isn't he?
I think we're meant to understand that that's what that is.
Okay.
I do see the similarity in the glove.
I didn't necessarily think it was that particular glove, I want it
to be.
Let it let's have it be that.
And you're right.
We don't actually hear it.
And when we do hear it, it's word peril, but it is that revelation
at that point in the story, that what, and the master doesn't know
it.
You know, the master doesn't know that the time lords are.
The problem that the time lords are going to pose to him isn't
that they're going to lock him up or erase him from existence or
anything like that.
It is that they're going to destroy everything, that they're so
much worse than him.
And because he was away, he missed the end of the time or he
didn't know that.
I guess some of their, of what they've become, does perhaps shine
through in the fact that they've used the master from a child and
putting the beats into his head.
And I do get that from that.
That's my problem with the time laws in this episode.
They've become Zog from the planet Zog.
What you were saying, Todd, is we're meant to care about the fact
that they're going to destroy the universe because we're told to
care about it.
It's Russell doing Omega from the Ark of Infinity.
We're meant to care who Omega is because we're told to care about
it as opposed to there being any resonance or involvement for the
audience to make them appreciate it.
At one point, Emmeka was supposed to be in this story.
Oh really?
What do you think about being wrestling?
Because I liked jolly old wrestle on back from the 5 doctors when
he was a floating head with a red beard and I kind of thought, oh
yes, he was a nice old soul that, you know, sort of steered the
Time Lords in the days of old and he's obviously been resurrected
like the master.
I mean, could it have been Barusa or?
So what we're trying to do, I think, is this is the 1st time that
the people in the new series have seen Galafre.
They know nothing of the mind probe.
They know nothing of those plastic sofas.
This is their 1st shot at Galifre.
And I think Russell gives them the name Rassalon, so they can have
that as well.
And so it could have been anyone.
The name Rassalon is thrown away in one line of dialogue.
He's just the president until then.
And it's a surprise to us who have seen the show before, but it
doesn't matter.
Now the kids have a wrestleon and they can have that word as well
as part of their Doctor Who fandom.
So I thought that was a kind of generous thing to do.
And the partisan, that fabulous, who I do think is really quite
fabulous.
She's sort of super poshen, a little bit dismissive.
She says people are dying and being resurrected and dying and
being resurrected.
This is a time war.
It's super weird.
Russell's time war is much weirder than Moffatt's time war.
Moffatt's time war is just, you know, guns.
Yeah, yeah.
Whereas, whereas Russell's is always sort of much weirder than
that.
He has like the silver devastation.
Maybe the silver cloak is part of the nightmare.
It's all those all those things that David Tennant spurts out like
which make no sense in my head at all.
And I think that's the point of them.
I think the time war is ultimately supposed to be incomprehensible
got to be described in terms that are super suggestive but utterly
weird.
Is that dramatically satisfying?
Well, I mean, how much more dramatically satisfying is, I guess
those scenes in the time war in Day of the Doctor are pretty good
but they're also pretty generic as well.
That scene where the doctor is facing off against Wrestleon, and
is there in a big dramatic moment, the music swelling, saying, back
into hell, Wrestleon, or whatever that line is, is, I think, the
Nadir of Russell's Doctor Who, because it's everything he set out
not to do when he brought the show back.
He didn't want the doctor remonstrating against kind of aliens in
pompous terms, against sci-fi settings and things.
He wanted some character warmth there.
And I think he shouldn't have brought back the time lords.
Or if he did, he should have done something interesting, put a
spin on them, like Bob Holmes did, because otherwise he's left
with the thing he didn't want to do, and he was right.
He was vindicated in that decision.
I mean, I guess the spin that he puts on them is that they're more
evil than the Daleks, but maybe that's not so interesting.
I mean, it's, you know, we have to remember that all of the people
all of the 10000000 people watching this know what Galafre is and
know who timelords are.
Actually 12.270000000 by the end of it.
Right.
So there's like 272 or 12.273.
Well, mine is the naceness.
But so I think Julie was right in saying this is the one thing we
haven't touched and we need to do it before we go.
But yeah.
Well, I'm glad that he did.
And I don't necessarily have a problem that there is generical
whatever we want to say.
You like them a lot, Nathan, you don't, Peter.
He's proving why we don't want them and we've brought them back
and we've now covered that and we can never see them again. move
forward.
They lack campness.
Yeah.
And I'm surprised to Russell for that.
But, and, you know, I want to emphasise the fact that the only
reason I'm disappointed is that I expected Russell would do so
much more with them.
You have a camp villain, though, already in the master.
And one of the ways of coding someone is villainous in Doctor Who
is to give them no sense of humour.
Yeah.
So we obviously cut back from Galifre back into what's going on on
Earth and the master's got the doctor all strapped up.
Donna's phoning Wilf.
The master winks at Wolf, I think, is hilarious, and then I love
that line.
He loves playing with Earth girls.
What is all that winking because Tenant does it as well?
Tenet winks at the master?
Right, leading a defence weapon for Donna, again, with the Donna
flashbacks and her hole exploding with energy and collapses and
the typical Russell has not told us the whole story.
This is, you know, he's got a get out of jail free card for
Donna.
Yeah, it's one of those things where it's not exactly what we were
told and almost certainly not what he was thinking at the time, but
it's like I have this sort of set piece that I want to do for the
cliffhanger and I'll just paper over it a little bit with a little
bit of dialogue.
But I love that the master doesn't want to hear anything from the
doctor, right?
He doesn't want to hear anything and then when this happens, then
he does take off the tape over the doctor's mouth and then the
doctor's trying to persuade him to travel with the stars and with
my honour.
So I kind of like this scene for the interaction between all 3 of
them, but particularly John Sim and David Tennant.
Yeah, I think the last episode was lacking some of this.
And something that Moffat returns to with Missy in a big way.
And the show is all better for that, I think.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
But you mean the idea that the master could be redeemed?
He could actually make a decision he doesn't have to own the
world.
He can just see it.
And the doctor just gives him a Florana speech, doesn't he?
And he kind of rejects it.
And the only reason that he rejects it, why?
Everybody's water wing.
No, you know why he rejects it because he then says, will the
drumming in my head stop?
And so the only reason he can't be redeemed is because the Time
Lords did that to him. in this episode do it to him.
And so that also, you know, puts them above him as villains, makes
them his enemy and makes them more evil and manipulative.
Like so now they're responsible for every death that the master
has caused for all of the harm that he's caused.
Yeah.
It makes narrative and thematic sense. as we knew it would with
Russell Rice in it.
I just question it's entertainment value.
Yeah, no that's fair enough.
And I do like the entertainment value towards the end of this
scene where the master gets distracted because he wants to
triangulate with a 6000000000 of himself.
And then, you know, the smugness of the doctor like that person is
one inch too tall.
And then he gets rescued.
Master just gets knocked out and it's like worst rescue ever.
I think it's the most hilarious line as they're coming down the
stairs.
I love that.
Meg Lost Twins to the rescue.
You know how we were talking last week about David Tennant being
injured?
He had actually had just threw some head back surgery before that
scene.
And in long shots.
It's a mannequin.
Yeah, it's plastic David Tennant.
You can tell if you look closely, but it is pretty well done.
You may not ever have noticed, and it's clear from the
confidential that it's not David Tennant in the trolly going down
the stairs.
Wow.
But before we do that, there is a whole bunch of staff, when I
tweeted about this earlier in the week, friend of the podcast
Kevin, tweeted to me some excerpts from the script where the
master seems to be hitting on himself, where one of the masters
like I think the Chinese one, who the master speaking to, is sort
of super hyper, as if he's been on drugs.
I think he says, I think this one's been self-medicating, and then
the master instructs him to go off and shoot himself and he shoots
himself in the head, like off camera and stuff.
And so there's all this sort of fun camp interaction between all
of the masters that just doesn't make it to the final version of
the story.
And it might have been more fun because, you know, at that moment
where he winks at Wilf, he's doing the master thing, which is be
more fun than the doctor, threaten to be more charismatic and
interesting than the doctor.
And I love that.
That's the best thing about the character.
It's Perry from the caves around Rosani, isn't it?
Why is she doing that British accent because there's a whole cut
scene where she's mocking the doctor's British accent?
Yeah.
Yeah, okay.
That's cool.
Yeah, no, it's really fun.
You're going to have to give it to John Sim.
The amount of stuff that he had to do and now this as well.
All of the new series Masters are pretty attractive.
They get more attractive as they go along.
It has to be said.
Yeah, no, I think John Sim is really great.
I think we have been really lucky with all 3 of them.
John seems a star performance.
I mean, he undoubtedly brings the scenes that he's in in these
episodes to life, even more so than in the sound of drums because
these episodes are not placing the master at the centre of the
show.
Yeah.
I think there are some scenes and we did say this at the time.
I think there are some scenes in sound of drums in particular that
I where I don't think his performance quite comes off.
But here is perfect.
I just think he's wonderful.
He actually nails it in the Capaldi 2 parter, where the master is
not intrinsic to proceedings at all and is more of a Greek chorus
kind of standing by going, well, that'll never work.
Now, come on.
And so maybe he works better when he's not at the centre of a
scene.
Can you explain to me, like, you know how Timothy Dalton throws
that white point star into the projection, is that supposed to be
the time vortex just right there in front of his table?
I think it's almost literally magic, isn't it?
Like he throws the white point star at an image of Earth and then
it ends up landing on Earth.
I don't understand how it can get out of the so there's just some
technology or something.
Oh, they do say that, something small and perfect.
In fact, one of the things people...
People often accuse Russell of being a bit sort of sloppy with
this sort of stuff or failing to explain bits of it or whatever.
And whether it's because, as you say, Peter, he's running out of
steam and he has to feel in the running time or something.
But they go to great length to explain how that works. the reason
that they do it like that is because it looks good.
Yeah.
Yeah, you paper over it with dialogue.
Yeah.
So I think the idea is that they can send the message, can't they
through the untempered schism to drive the master mad and then
they can hear that so that they can get something out of the
timelock to where they want to end up, which is a...
Yeah, but it's something small and perfect.
Or there's some dialogue saying, yeah, that that's that's why it's
going to work.
And then it lands and the master finds it and he brings them.
I don't have a problem with the dialogue.
I think you're quite right.
Russell often has explanations that people miss because it's it's
a short explanation that he doesn't want to go into, but it's
enough to explain it, but it's just the throwing of that into that
thing about the table that I just kind of go, is this where you
would do it or is there a specific point?
It just throws me a bit.
It gets it done really quickly without it, us having to go to the
teleport chamber or something like that.
And it works on the logic of, you know, a visual logic where
that's a picture of earth and so it ends up in earth.
Or an open-ended power boosted transit beam.
You know, in the 5 doctors special edition, how they replace the
black triangle with the Mr. Whippy crystal thing.
I'm still angry about that.
Doesn't it look like one of those little things that he throws
into the...
So anyway, they get beamed up to a spaceship.
Oh, yeah, that happens really quickly, doesn't it?
One last trip to the paper mill.
Ed Thomas's famous paper mill.
But right from the get go, you've got wolf looking out at earth
from above and the emotions that he gets from it and you are
taking that on board.
It's back to the end of the world, isn't it?
The same scene where Rose is looking out of the porthole down at
Earth.
It's really, it's really great.
You know that the original idea, one of, you know, Russell in the
writer's tale talks about some of his, some of the things that led
to the story.
And this was always supposed to be a small scale one.
He wanted the doctor to regenerate to save one person and someone
just any someone else.
He lands on an alien spaceship and they're, the reactor is about
to go critical and he saves them but dies in the process of saving
a normal family.
Yeah.
Oh, Moffat steals that wholesale.
Well, I mean, he saves a planet, doesn't he?
Night of the doctor.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So this is kind of the remnants of that, this spaceship, isn't
it?
And so it's just 2 random aliens on a spaceship.
And it is really just marking time, isn't it?
That scene with Wolf looking out over the earth and talking to the
doctor is like a coder to the scene in episode one, whether in the
cafe, because, again, it's just the 2 of them talking and you get
flashes of that Russell brilliance in that scene.
The dialogue, my wife's buried down there.
Yeah.
Who would have thought of that?
It's beautiful.
And the fact he's talking about his war service.
It's just like, you know, the entire episode is filled with
flashes like that, but unfortunately they're just flashes.
Yeah.
And that was inspired by a conversation that Russell had had with
Bernard.
He had been in the war in Palestine at the end of the war.
And so that's actually him, you know, paying tribute to him.
It's great too, that scene, because a lesser writer, well, maybe
even just an ordinary writer would, in order to emphasise how dire
the threat is.
The doctor would have taken the gun.
And he doesn't, he refuses it a bunch of times, and when does he
finally take it?
It's at the end of the seniors.
It doesn't work. push it onto him?
At the end of the scene, I think, when doesn't the master
broadcast that it's a white point star?
Yeah.
And so the thing that makes him take the gun is that the time laws
are right.
Yeah, until then he won't.
He won't take the gun to kill the master.
He absolutely won't.
You know, even when, even when Will says to him, don't prioritise
the master, don't put the master ahead of all of the people on
earth.
Don't you dare.
You know, it's so good.
It's such a good scene and even then he won't take the gun and
then, oh, it's the time lords are back.
Then he takes the gun immediately.
It's so good.
I love the fact that that, I think that scene is probably one of
the most stunning scenes in this entire 2 parter.
But I like the fact that leading up to it, Wilf has had another
encounter with the woman in white, and then when we get to the end
of that scene, then they're running back through corridors to
repair the ship, and David's doing a huge info dump about the time
lords as he repairs the ship, but it's, it's, I just find it very
clever writing that you, you have that moment in the middle of
running through corridors and running through the paper mill
before it and after it.
There's a lot of really time efficient writing here.
Yeah, he keeps it going.
It is essentially sort of marking time until the plot kicks back
into gear, but it's not that nothing happens.
They're not just sitting around talking.
That's right. not people sitting around a table and talking, though
that might be intercut with it.
It's still, the stuff in the spaceship is actually really good.
And the structure of this episode, I think, is better than the
last one, because you do get quieter scenes like that, and that's
followed up by that big Han Luke and the Millennium Falcon
shooting at Thai Fighters scene with Wilf, which is just, you know
you've got to love that.
Yes, but he gets to say, Alon Z, you know?
One last time.
Yeah, it's great.
I think that that is really good, isn't it?
Because he's up there.
We can't do anything.
We're trapped.
We, you know, what's going to happen.
And then he just sort of goes, actually no, it's time for me to be
the doctor and actually kind of do this.
And so he gets a hero moment on the way out.
Doctor Who fans, I think, hate spectacle.
They love plot, but they hate spectacle.
They think spectacle is meretricious.
It's cheap.
They could never afford it back in the back in the classic
series.
That's right.
Because we spent 26 years watching squabbling rubber and people
standing talking urgently in corridors.
We decided that that was much more grown up, but that was a much
greater televisual pleasure than special effects and things, you
know, that's for stupid people.
But in fact, that sequence where, you know, the master's firing
his missiles and Wilf is in the cockpit in Luke's cockpit on the
Vinvocci spacecraft is absolutely superb.
You can't have a heart of stone not to enjoy it.
I just love the fact that Sinead is so, like, not into the whole
thing and then she's running from one side of the ship to the
other and throwing up her hands and going, whatever, you know, it's
like, it's just comedy gold, which feels great tumbling from side
to side acting like in Star Trek.
But I just love all the point of view shots with all the missiles
and going around and it's just it's, it's, you need that bit of
action to lift the episode into the final moments.
But the way they get written out.
Oh, he said he was going to die.
And they just bugger off.
That's great, Jay, I think is hilarious.
Eric Saywood would have had them killed.
Horribly, horribly.
I think they should come back.
Say it 3 times.
They'll get their own big finish series.
They've been bot cheated in botch.
I mean, they've tried to do a sequel to Megloss before and it
didn't come off.
It's waiting there for Chris to, you know, take that on.
Volce and me.
He said, yeah, it's great.
All of these sort of the quieter scenes and then the action
scenes.
It is masking the fact a little bit that there is not much plot.
I mean, we've basically had capture, escape, recapture.
If I wanted that, I watched Frontier in space.
I mean, it's fine.
It's absolutely fine.
Then the doctor jumps out of a spaceship from a very large height
and survives that fall, which is a precedent to the woman who fell
to earth.
Yeah, well, she just regenerated so she can fall through a whole
railway carriage.
I don't think he falls all that far, does he?
Like when we see the spaceship, it's flying sort of fairly low
over the water and stuff and heading towards the sort of thing
still think it's a very large fall.
I think that's a nice little throwback to Legopolis.
I think it's a fake out.
I think that we think that's what's going to kill him, right?
And, of course, the other thing that we think is going to kill him
is the time lords, and they don't.
And instead what actually kills him, I mean, literally kills him
is radiation.
So that's another throwback to Planet of the Spiders.
Yeah.
But I think it's a it's a faint.
I think that we're supposed to think that he's gonna die of this.
From that, yes.
Yeah, because he's covered in blood and stuff.
No, totally agree.
Literally, we thought he was going to be war games.
Then planted the spiders and then Lagopolis.
If only he'd been time in the Rani.
No, David Tendon is not going to regenerate because of some
massive thing.
He going to bump his head on the console, that dirty console and
regenerate.
So we're now at the time lords are returning and they're
materialising in Naismith's parlour.
Yes, because that's where the link is.
And then it's Timothy Dalton, his guards, and these 2 women who
have their hands up over their faces, one of whom we get to see
and the other one we don't.
Yeah, the other one's Susan.
Yeah, yeah.
Snap.
Who else is it going to be?
His mother.
No, Claire Bloom's his mother.
So the other one is the woman that's covering her face.
Yeah.
Do you know, were those sequences shot at different times?
Was Timothy Dalton's just shot from one point of view?
Does anybody know?
Bills like that, doesn't it?
Just the way in which the camera is positioned.
I just get the feeling that they could be talking to somebody off
camera rather than the actual.
I think sometimes we see, you know, the reverse shot.
I think sometimes we see tenet, like the tenets between the
camera.
The blocking is very stagey in that sense.
I think I don't think that really works.
That scene where he turns around and around and around and
around.
I think that's a bit stupid.
And I think too, we've had the master wink at Will.
It would be great if the doctor winks at the master and the master
gets it.
You know, this is smart, and then he shoots the, you know, the
link out or whatever.
I think that would have been good because at that point, the
master and the doctor are on the same side, aren't they?
that they're facing something much, much more evil and much more
destructive than either of them.
And so it would have been nice to have seen them work together
sort of one last time.
And it does become obvious in that scene how far gone the time
lords are.
And I do like, I do like the staging as to an extent with the
doctor and the gun clicks, although that's technically not how
that revolver works.
And the music and the shaking and all that then stops at a certain
point, but I'm jumping a bit ahead, you know, Rustling gets to
change everybody back.
Yeah. from the master into themselves and so you get to see the
characters you care about. and Smith.
And yeah, and Gallifrey, of course, materialising outside and...
Yeah, see, that's that's Russell's greatest hits, isn't it?
You know, the planet's in the sky again.
And he makes a difference by making that planet so incredibly
big.
It looks it looks really ominous.
And it's rolling towards us in the shots on earth.
So the planet is actually rolling towards us, which makes it, you
know, it's just Sylvia in the foreground going, oh, another one
another planet.
I'll have to get some more new ornaments after this.
Like a steamroller towards a loony tune on the phone.
So good.
But I think it's really great that the master gets the opportunity
to take that down. wrestle on ultimately.
I'm not sure where the master goes.
Everything just fades to white, so does he just get sucked in with
them?
Yeah.
Well, it goes to Mondas, doesn't he?
I think it's a good payoff because the last time Rastlon and the
masterface to off-wrestle on was a pantomime ghost and the master
was trussed up like a chicken on the floor of the vault.
So that's a Christmas story as well.
So it's the master's revenge.
Correct.
Whose crimes will be punished in the end?
I will say, I didn't, when I, when I watched this originally, I
didn't get it that the doctor was going to shoot the machine so
that it would then explode and everything would just revert back
like I didn't see it coming.
Um, like when everything fades to white and wolf is trapped.
All throughout these 2 episodes watching this again, there are so
many, Russell's pointing us in the direction of wealth all the
time and then suddenly just doing a left or right turn very
quickly with humour, with some emotional beat, something else, to
take our mind away for it, but he keeps on directing it back.
And until he knocks that 4 times, like I, and the music then just
goes from triumphant and then slowly goes, like goes down.
It's so well done.
It's super well done.
And it's one of those things that writers do, good writers do all
the time.
They tell you what they're going to do.
It's exactly what you said.
Wolf's all the way there.
He's central.
We're told it over and over again.
He's bound up with a doctor's fate.
All of that.
We know it's wealth, but we've even forgotten wealth is there, and
it's completely quiet, and it's kind of like, well, what possible
threat is there?
Do you know what I mean?
Like he fell through the roof.
That's not going to kill him.
Rastalon's not going to kill him.
He's not sacrificing himself to get Gallifrey to go because the
master does that.
And he's there.
It's just like, well, what's going to kill me then?
And that's what we're thinking because we all know it's a
regeneration story.
And he even has the line.
I'm alive.
And then knock, knock, knock, and it's like, oh, my God, like
exactly.
You see it coming now. you see it coming and then every single
time you just get misdirected away from it.
Just when you, I think you're about to make that link in your head
you get distracted.
It's very clever.
And I love the fact that it's 4 knocks, but it's 4 lots of 4
knocks.
Like it just, it just, yeah.
And it's, they sort of tend to, if not, too. you know, we had the
master hitting barrels with a with a big stick.
And last episode, even like you only get 3 knocks in the waters of
Mars thing as well.
It's always these big bangs, but this time it's not.
It's just him tapping with his nail on the glass.
And the reason he's in that position is that he allows a young
technician to escape.
So the technician says, I can't get out unless that door is
closed.
And so he takes the young technician's place.
So he's rescued someone and then there he is.
And the scene is so, like, it's really quiet, you know, like it's
completely quiet, and all of this sort of histrionics and stuff
has all gone away, and it's, it's very, very good, I think.
See, I find the whole speech from the doctor to Wilf. really
really cruel.
It's awful.
I think it's meant to be, though.
I think it's meant to be the doctor wallowing and he's self-pity
before he does the right thing.
But I think that's a step too far.
It just, it feels really wrong in in the character's mouth and and
to say that to a character we've grown to love.
To Bernard Crippens.
You don't yell at Bernard Cribbons. rule one.
It's terrible.
I really really hate it.
That's why he should die.
But I think we're being put in the place of the audience there.
We talk about the fact the audience was participants in this era
of the show.
And so the audience is there, even though it's lovely Bernard
Cribbons, going, what, so you've killed our favourite doctor.
Well done.
That's right.
And how old are you?
Exactly, if you hadn't saved that young technician, he would let
him fry.
Just the, who are you?
I could have done so much.
I could do so much more.
I hate that moment.
I really do.
And I really don't like David Tennant in that moment.
I just find him completely OTT and out of control.
Well, see, I love that moment, but for the same reasons.
I really don't like the doctor.
Yeah.
So you're saying that that it's the doctor being awful and it's
clearly time for him to go.
No, I'm not saying that.
It's just like you'll feel less bad when he's not in the next
episode.
No, it's more the fact that the audience is on the doctor's side
in this.
It's loveable as wealth is.
The audience doesn't want the doctor to go.
And so the doctor is allowed to stand there and say, well, great
because you are basically stupid and now I've got to save you.
I don't want to go.
The audience doesn't want me to go.
I'm going to say that.
However, now I am going to do the right thing and I'm going to do
it anyway.
Yeah, I totally see your point of view, but I just, I don't like
some of the dialogue.
I don't like David's performance at that and I just, it's all the
things that I don't like about his doctor.
Yeah, I agree.
I'm now recognising moments in these last sequence of run, just in
the last 6 or 7 episodes where it's these over the top moments, or
this is what's sticking my mind, but it's actually not indicative
of his performance actually all the way through.
I think it's a very raw moment for the doctor and we're not used
to seeing that rawness where the doctor blames other people and is
cruel to other people.
But I think give him that moment because of what he's about to
do.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know.
I see where you're coming from and I totally understand.
Yeah.
I don't feel it.
No, I don't like it.
And I don't, it is that tenant performance, which the worst thing
about David Tennant's doctor, and it's absolutely in that scene
and the way he delivers it.
I think he's been excellent throughout this story.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I just have a problem with that moment in episode one, and I
have a problem with this moment, because then he comes back with
oh, yeah, now it opens or whatever. that is so, yeah, I love that
moment.
It's beautifully played.
It's a great release of tension, I think.
Thank you, Nathan.
Yeah, yeah. is a great release of tension.
A great release of tenant.
But in that same moment, you know, then, you know, he puts his
hands over his face and the scars are gone and you get to see the
hug from Will and Donna wake up and Sylvia smiling at the doctor.
Yes, she's smiling.
She's smiling, and then, look, I'll see you one more time, and I'm
going to get my reward.
So from Wolf knocking on the glass to the end of the episode.
I think might be one of the most perfect stretches of Doc 2 ever.
Everyone, here's my experience.
Everyone that I speak to really loves it, but believes everyone
else hates it.
And I think there are people who think it's self-indulgent.
It is?
Yeah, I think it is too.
And so was the end of Journeys End, too.
But the actual visiting, the companions actually only takes about
5 minutes.
It's not very long.
And I think it's absolutely superb.
And I think it's necessary.
And they've earned it.
Yeah, they've earned it.
That's why it's not there for the doctor. for them to play a part
in the end of the year.
And for us.
You know, to remind us of what we've been through over the last 5
years and it does it perfectly.
You hate it, Todd.
No, I absolutely and utterly adore it.
At the time, I was going, what is this?
Why is this?
The doctor just sort of regenerates and we have floating heads and
flashbacks and this is not the way Doctor Who works, right?
Russell has just, uh, he's just been self-indulgent and, you know
he should just regenerate right now.
He can't go on for another 16 minutes before regenerating.
Of course, as always, I've changed my tune.
We now know 5 to a nine.
You now know that we can hold it in for a whole special.
Correct.
We go back to Todd's little black book.
Who invited you, Patrick Griffiths, who invited you?
I really love it.
And it is earnt and it's necessary.
And I think what's really great is that everybody comes back to do
it.
Yeah.
And I think that's testament to the family atmosphere of the show
and how the show is run and it's a reflection of the viewers and
how all these people are part of their family and have been.
Yeah.
Well, I think I think that we are probably more impressed by that
as classic Doctor Who fans because it literally never happened.
Or not never, but very, you know, seldom actually happened.
Matthew Waterhouse, um, in Andresani, yeah.
Well, in fact, they all come back from Rosani. just for a brief
thing.
But it's sort of crap.
No, it is.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But this, I think is just tremendous.
And we saw them go off into an unknown future at the end of
Journey's end.
Now we see where they are now.
And so it's not just a repeat.
So we've got Martha and Mickey and they're married versus
Santaran.
How do we feel about the marriage?
I'm fine with that.
Yeah, I don't mind.
I kind of love it.
Yeah.
It's so hilarious.
Like, it's like, and they're married?
She gave up Lucifer.
He's got dreadlocks?
That's great.
I'd give up Lucifer and all Clark.
Yeah, yeah.
He's sorry.
I mean, Lucifer's hot.
Oh, yeah. come and meet you on a beach in the middle of the
night.
Is that a euphemism?
And then we've got Luke and obviously the doctor saves Luke and he
name checks Clyde and Mr. Smith and then the final appearance of
Liz.
Liz looking at the doctor, the doctor looking at Liz is guaranteed
to bring a lump to your throat.
Oh, no, I was crying by that point.
So you know the saving of Luke is an in-joke by Russell because
the kids never looked left or right when they crossed the street
outside the house.
And they get into closed off street for filming, et cetera.
Well, no, no, like they and they do it even when they weren't
filming, like just walking sort of around and they kept being told
off for it.
And so he made that part of the story.
But you see, it's these vignettes. accompanied by some of Murray's
best ever music, which have all of that Russell warmth and
cleverness and the ability just to draft a complete emotional arc
in 30 seconds, which the rest of the episode does lack
occasionally, but is utterly redeemed by these sequences.
Totally agree, and you've just summarised that utterly
brilliantly.
I tried my best.
And then we get the cantina with, let's have every single monster
that we possibly can.
With Captain Jack and Alonso from Voyage of the Damned.
It's just...
You know where that's set?
on the planet Zog.
See, I think they missed a trick there.
It shouldn't have been Alonso.
It should have been Jenny.
Jenny needed a reappearance.
The doctor could have set up Jack with his own daughter.
How about that?
It would have just tie in with Mr. Nasmith and his daughter. in
the prison cell.
Then the surprising one to me is the Verity Newman book launch, but
my goodness, doesn't it get to you?
It's the very last line of the scene where he's asked Verity if
her grandmother was happy.
And she blatantly lies and says yes.
Yes.
And then she says, were you?
And again, because Tenant chooses to underplay it, it's not a
slappable moment for him.
It's actually really pretty good.
And apparently did an early cut of the episode, leave it out.
Yes, Russell or Julie or somebody said that when Eros assembled
the edit, he took that scene out for reasons unknown, maybe for
piecing or for duration or whatever, and it took them several
times watching it to go, wait, where's the Jessica Heinz scene?
Yeah, interesting.
Then we do get a bit of levity and joy in the Donanoble wedding
and Neres, friends and Neres.
Again, generally in long shot.
Yeah.
But then bringing it back to Will and Sylvia, and my goodness, the
moment the doctor says that he borrowed the money from Sylvia's
husband, Jeffrey Noble.
Yeah.
It just got to me.
I actually burst into tears the 1st time I watched it at that
point.
And it's not only David Tennant's performance, it's actually
Jackie's performance. as Sylvia, and that character arc, and the
playoff of that character where, yeah, obviously she was in turn
left a lot, but a lot of the other times she's just in the
background doing things.
I just think is an absolute testament to her, to Bernard and to
David and the way they work.
It's the big important Sylvia moment that we've been waiting for
all story, and she gets it finally right at the end and pulls your
heart to pieces.
There's the famous GIF, of course, of Wilf saluting, which is
taken from that moment as well as the doctor leaves.
It's wonderful.
It's so beautifully shot as well.
I mean, the music, obviously, but the wind machine blowing the
leaves across the Tardis is, I mean, it's beautiful television.
Oh, and he gets to tell the doctor the nasmiths were locked up.
Yeah, yeah.
And his daughter.
That's actually really cute.
Like, it's just like, let's tie up this air. you know, who cares?
Was anyone wondering, you know, but there we go.
And then it just cuts into 2 lovely ladies walking home together.
I will say this.
I do think Billy Piper looks too thin in this scene.
I think because her teeth are bigger.
I was going to say, I'm not sure about her teeth. not saying it's
criticism.
She actually looks really thin.
I think she's really great in this and I think she she nails
Rose.
Like, after all this time, after all those times we've talked
about how she comes back in series 4 and can't remember how to
play it or whatever.
This is her playing the original character.
She's given Jackie.
She's given the estate.
She's right back there.
It's so good.
It's so great.
I mean, having Jackie back.
Yeah, yeah.
Having Rose telling her not to stay out too late.
We get that.
And, you know, 30 seconds.
Russell, beautiful emotional arc with Jackie saying at my age I'm
not gonna get any better.
Rose stopping and saying, don't say that.
Yeah, this is an important moment between those 2 characters
jammed into this tiny scene.
It's wonderful, isn't it?
It's so good.
And because how else are you gonna do it?
And it's perfect because it brings the entire show back full
circle. where the show starts and where his doctor starts.
And you know that they're going to get a happy ending as well.
Well, she's gonna marry a mechanic.
This also has a personal resonance for me. because the 1st time I
ever saw David Tennant in action was visiting the set when they
were shooting scenes for the Christmas invasion on the estate.
Right.
And I stood there with Frenemy of the podcast, Paul Masters, and
we watched these scenes and we watched the little sort of bottom
of the TARDIS that they flew above Jackie and Mickey as it came
into land and we watched David Tennant in it.
And I couldn't help thinking when I was watching this.
It just took me back to that and I thought, how far the show had
come in those 4 years.
I mean, it was just incredible.
Yeah.
I think that that is one hell of a great sequence.
The final scene, on the other hand, I don't really like very
much.
Oh, when he, what, staggers to the wall and then and then the
music is too over the top.
Yeah, yeah.
You've got the oude and like that oude was cross at him before.
I liked the od when he was crossed.
Now the od's all over him.
I think he just needed to stagger to the Tartars. and get him to
the Tartars.
We didn't need that.
Yeah, I think it's too much.
It's bit overwrought.
Yeah, I think so too.
And just look, you know, it's it's Doctor Who, and it can be
operatic and melodramatic, it's not prestige TV.
We've got Murray telling us how to feel about that and that's
exactly what incidental music is for, but I just think it's too
much, just far too much.
And when tenants acting in it.
That's precisely the sort of tenet acting that I hate.
So his last moment is him gnashing his teeth, crawling along, you
know, his bottom lip wobbling, he's in tears, and it's all just
you know, overwrought?
Yeah I just want him to go.
There were several takes of the very last line, including one
where he was much more overall, and they used kind of the middling
one, which I think was the right decision. number three, where
he's almost, almost fraught.
I don't mind me, I don't want to go.
First to number 4 where he's past wrought.
But isn't it the story of Doc 2 all over, that you have this huge
dramatic moment with big emotions and swelling music and the
console room on fire, and then you bring in the new doctor who
just gets comedy moments, kissing his legs and going, I'm not
ginger and going, ooh, then the TARDIS explodes on him.
And I think every subsequent regeneration, you feel the same way.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, and I don't know whether it's because all of the doctors out
stay their welcome or something, but it's kind of like, oh, so
Smith's gone, here's Capoldi.
He's like really scary and interesting.
You get that terrible, terrible twice upon a time where, um, and
the doctor gives an 18 minute speech at the end and then and is
thinking about killing himself.
And then suddenly Jody turns up and goes, wow, brilliant.
And, you know, like the whole thing.
It's always a relief.
This is a template for every regeneration since.
Yeah.
And and the show suffers for it, I think, in the long run.
I really hate the way he spits on the console too, and he says, I'm
crashing.
I was very unimpressed.
I was quite determined to hate him from that point.
That's because all of the debris falling from the set got in his
mouth.
And he was literally spitting stuff out of his mouth as he was
saying that.
Did they not do a retail?
No, they were exploding the set in the background.
No, they were going to cut it out, but Russell insisted that they
keep it in.
I quite like it.
It has to be said. hate that bit.
I like him immediately, though.
Like, I think he does, he's a bit squeaky voice and he never
really properly does that again.
But it is that thing where you've had a doctor who's been like
dreading this and then he gets through it and actually it's all
right.
Everything's fine and it turns out he's really funny and silly and
super doctor-ish.
And he used to say Geronimo and I'm thinking, really, are they
going to keep that?
That's going to be like the word?
I think he only ends up saying it 3 times or 4 times in all.
It doesn't become a catchphrase.
And as much as I do like Matt Smith's 1st outfit as the doctor, he
looks great in David Tennant's costume.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I've sounded really negative on Matt Smith right here at
this point, but I adore him as the doctor, but at this point in
time, I was struggling with the new guy.
And also that, you know, when he was interviewed, like when he was
announced and I just thought, oh, yeah, well that's right.
More too young.
It's going to be Peter Davidson all over again.
It's too cold.
He's too fat Well, I just thought, oh, really, it's just another
kind of sort of wacky white guy.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, it just didn't, anyway.
We will be talking about this.
We will be discovering the joy of Matt Smith.
Over the next five. few years.
And of course, there is no doctor who's ever nailed it in his 1st
scene as much as Matt does.
That doctor that you get there is pretty much the doctor that we
get.
Okay, so it's part two, so it's time for picks of the week.
My pick of the week is the YouTube channel, Mary Claire's life.
She's a new who fan who's gone back to the beginning of the
classic series, and she's watched every single episode up to the
Robots of Death, when she's an absolute joy and delight to watch
because she's tried not to be spoiled on anything, and just her
discovering the show and the characters and her joy for it, and
telling Yoo-hoo fans, these people that don't want to know
anything about classic who they've got rocks in their heads.
I just love her.
And I continue to watch her, go and find that channel.
I'll put a link to it in the show notes.
That's a delightful choice.
Isn't it delightful having a Doctor Who fan on YouTube who likes
Doctor Who?
That's it.
There's a couple of others.
Cesca says and Medusa Cascade are also doing this journey.
Cesca.
Yes, she's a fantastic.
I saw my real name, but it's just fantastic.
They're also doing the same journey and they're at different
points.
And so I watch all 3 of them and all 3 women are just loving
different aspects of the show and it's brilliant.
But Mary Claire's my pick at the moment.
So my pick of the week is W1A. The BBC 2 mockumentary comedy
featuring Q Bonneville and Jessica Hines.
It's kind of a bit like, say, uh, Utopia or um, the games.
It's a spinoff from 2012, which was the BBC's version of the games
basically, with the same characters from that story.
And tenant does the narration.
Oh, okay.
And is better in it than Doctor Who.
But no, I just love it.
It's just so enjoyable.
It's basically set behind the scenes at the BBC with their sort of
spin doctor PR department.
My pick of the week, or indeed the month, um, given that President
Obama is name checked so much in these episodes and Wolf talks
about the fact that he's got a big plan to save the planet, I'm
not sure that ever came to fruition, but I think he did try.
My pick of the week will be to go back and look at some of the
post-election coverage from 2020 with Donald Trump refusing to
concede in a very autocratic way, and Joe Biden winning the
election and becoming the president elect, because it turns out
that because President Obama, then Senator Obama took Joe Biden
and made him vice president and gave him that platform, and he
then ran for the presidency, and I think it's becoming
increasingly clear that maybe he was the only Democrat who could
win against Donald Trump and indeed did, President Obama did, in
fact, save the planet.
So go back and watch some of the coverage and enjoy.
I'm going to go for a TV show, um, and it is uh, The Boys, which
is on Amazon Prime, uh, and I am just really enjoying it.
I've watched the 1st 2 seasons all the way through.
I'm someone who doesn't do violence and gore very well.
I like to watch, you know, the sort of violence that I like is
where someone gets shot in the stomach and then they clutch their
throes or whatever and then they fall to the ground.
Space 1999.
Yeah, yeah, just something something gentle.
This is super gory.
And eventually the gore is hilariously funny, and that's not
normally how I kind of process it.
And it is slightly ironic.
The boys are a group of sort of people who are fighting against
superheroes.
So it's a little bit like the Avengers in Avengers Assemble.
Only they're run by a giant evil corporation, and they sort of
represent American capitalism and American imperialism and stuff
like that.
And there's a bracing dash of white supremacy in series 2.
It is really, really kind of great satire with really, really fun
performances and it's delightful that it comes to as courtesy of
the largest and most evil corporation on the planet.
Well, that's all we have time for this week.
We'll be back next week, Frau Russell T. Davis retrospective, where
we'll be talking about the entirety of the first five years of the
21st century version of Doctor Who.
In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts
and you can keep up with us at Flights or Entirety on Facebook, at
FTE podcast on Twitter, and on our website, Flightthrough Entirety
com, where you'll find links to our other podcasts, Bondfinger, and
Jody into Terror.
Until next time, may the next person who saves your life, at least
try to be a little bit gracious about it.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Happy New Year.
See you soon.
Good night.
I don't want to go.
He's always saying that.
That was Flight 3 Entirety, starring Todd, but it'll be Nathan
Bottomley, Peter Griffiths, and James Selwood.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, strings performance by Jane
Orberg.
This episode, a great release of tension, was recorded on the 13th
of December 2020 and released on New Year's Day.
That was the last episode of our coverage of the 2009 specials, and
so it's time to thank our guests over the last few weeks.
Simon Moore, Pete Lambert, and Conrad Westmers.
We'll see you next week.
Sorry, did I ruin the outro there?
No, no, no, that's it.
Let do pics of the week.
I didn't get to say that I gave it 7 out of 10.
Used to be a 6.8.
Yeah, you revised it up.
Well, I had a total Todd moment rewatching this, like doing the
thing.
Like because I just thought, oh, you know, this is a bit of a mess
and it doesn't go anywhere or anything.
And then I re-watched it and live tweeted it and really enjoyed
it.
Wow, it is a mess that doesn't go.
But it's quite good.
Well, I mean, like I like it.
I'd always thought that Russell kind of vamping.
You know that thing is that Xander, who says that Bob Holmes could
write Doctor Who in his sleep, and the reason we know that is
because he frequently did, and I think both Russell and Moffatt
can do Doctor Who in their sleep, and this may be, this is kind of
like Russell on empty.
Yeah, not giving it all his energy.
He wakes up and writes the last 10 minutes.
Well, no, but the last 10 minutes is really his wheelhouse.
There's no plot.
He doesn't have to do anything beyond just those little vineyards
that's true.
It's him on easy mode, you know.
So good.
I know.
I was going to say something, but now I've completely gone blank.
Was it about Nesmith's daughter?
Peter.
No, no, no.
I think all the emotional beats throughout these episodes are the
things that keep me going, just when I'm going to get annoyed with
some plot point or something I don't particularly like.
And yeah, I liked it.
I didn't love it, and I can, and he uses every trick in his book
that, that, and it, it hangs together.
It does what it has to do, I think.
But the choice to do, I think this is a tag.
The choice to do, um, like something that's not plotty at all, that
is just, let's spend some time with these people and give David
some acting moments on the way out the door, uh, and will re
resolve the Galafray thing.
And I think that's the right decision.
I think doing a big giant overstuffed spectacle, you know.
Well, I just done that with stolen earth and Jameson, but also it
proves again, even exhausted and running on empty and having
nothing much left to say.
Russell is incapable of writing bad Doctor Who.
All right.
Okay, so it's part two, so it's time for picks of the week.