Tiggers Don’t Like Bacon

Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety the only Doctor Who podcast broadcasting from our bedroom in a wide variety of comedy fetish wear. I'm a nun. I'm Nathan. I'm Peter. I'm Todd, and I'm an 11 year old's assortment of dietary allergens for this one. Well, we said farewell to Russell T. Davis last episode, and now the production office has been taken over by a grumpy Scotsman with an eye for the ladies, and the new young white guy star is surprisingly different from the previous one. Welcome to an entirely new era of our favourite TV show. It's the 11th hour. Let's start with a precredit sequence because I think it's a little bit interesting in the sense that it's telling us what the show's going to do in a sort of interesting way. It wasn't originally in it, was it? It wasn't. It was written and shot quite late on. So originally the episode was going to start with the scene with little Amy, Amelia, praying to Santa, and then the TARDIS would crash and you'd have the credits, but this was entirely fabric. and we'd have David Tennant if he hadn't decided to bugger off absolutely. And in fact, that opening shot immediately after we come out of the credits is the bottom of the garden, which absolutely establishes the kind of fairy tale thing. But we do say goodbye to the iconography of the Russell T. Davis era, don't we? We have an opening shot where we start on the moon and then head down to earth, which we've had any number of times. We have London. We have David Tennant's TARDIS console room. We have something almost crashing into Big Ben, but in a more comedy way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and we have a thing that's going to really be a chief obsession of the Moffat era, which is anxiety about our masculinity. And dietary requirements. And so Matt breathes a sigh of relief when his testicles don't sort of crash into the spy at the top of Big Ben. Oh, I thought you were going to say it was like people hanging out of the TARDIS, like seemingly, you know, hanging on for dear life where there's nothing to hang on to. Yeah, yeah. I can actually spot the moment 48 minutes in when they descend. But I think it's a lovely sort of homage to Russell. Like it's got all these elements, but it's got, obviously Stephen's got his own take on things. As you said many times, Nathan. It's so obvious that Stephen loves the RTD era and all he's done and this episode is so important in saying to everybody. I'm doing something new, but and it is actually very new, the whole thing, but it's sort of shrouded in the RTD sort of style or there's just enough there that people aren't going to be saying let's so totally different. When in fact, when you drill down, it actually is very, very different. And that console is blowing up the best it's ever blown up. There are sparks and explosions everywhere. You would have thought that Matt would have learned not to hold it in the next time he regenerated, but he absolutely fails to learn that lesson. I was talking about spitting on the console. whole mouth of debris ready to spit over big Ben. It is very funny and it is actually kind of nice introducing Matt in a scene where he doesn't actually say anything. And, you know, it is, it sort of works really well. His face does more than some actors in the role of down in their entire careers. He is entirely. It does actually feel like something a child with a very creative bent would have made him plasticine, doesn't it? In space. It's not quite right. Well, the episode's full of those kind of raggedy man versions. is like cartoonish. Yeah, we're back to, I don't know, the books that Moffatt grew up with, but we're definitely back to Edith Nesbit and Children of Green. No. And the great traditions of British fantasy writing, which were not YA, young adult. They were the children, but they expected children to be already read and interesting and educated and have ideas and will respond to creative ideas. I think that for me, the big thing in this one is Amelia. And probably get to your thoughts on who you think should have actually stayed for the season. But I'm very, very fond of Amelia. And it's one of the few times that we see a child in Doctor Who that doesn't want to kill you. One child in dog 2 that you don't want to kill. slash. Yes. Or that actually shows us who the doctor is, is and that what he's actually about. And other artists and other actors and writers and just good people say that, um, if you can't speak to a child, friend Leibowitz on the current Netflix um, series by Scorsese, pretend it's a city, and she's one of the most acerbic vitriolic old Warhol crowd critics of the modern malaise of all since the 70s. And she says, you can't talk to a child. You're not a person, you let alone an adult. A child speaks truth. That questions are interesting, and they come from the heart. You get very little dissembling from a child because they haven't learnt to fake it yet. And that's the same with this doctor. I'm getting why we love this doctor instantly because he speaks to the reason we love Doctor Who, the little person inside. in my red cardigan and mismatching drag. Yes. Yeah, I mean, we'll get that again next week. But that sequence. You know, the 1st sort of 10 or so minutes, I guess, is it? Um, is uh, 15 or 16? It's that long? It's an absolute masterstroke. It's so incredibly good. And it starts with that children's literature thing that you mentioned. So she's praying to Santa. There's a mysterious portal in her wall that leads to another world. She's in her nightdress, you know, like Peter Pan. You know, it, um, it's, and, and we have something at the bottom of the garden. You know, someone sort of crashes, you know, into her world from another world altogether. Thankfully, it's not Capaldi. It would not have gone the same way. But it's like having the faraway tree. Yeah, the wishing chair at the front. Yes, the far away tree, off the garden. Yeah. Exactly. If one fell swoop, it introduces what this new series is going to be about. And what the moth idea is going to be about, but it also introduces you to Matt in all of his kind of childlike innocence through the eyes of a child. So there's no cynicism there at all. And the child, it's Caitlin Blackwood is incredibly good. It's a really good performance. To be fair, though, I mean, she was up for the replacement in the crankies. She's 46. A tragic thyroid condition. shouldn't make fun. She is kind of impressed by the doctor, but not too impressed. Well, she's sandy toxic. You know, she, um, there's one moment where, oh, it's when the doctor is eating the fish custard and she just looks at him and says, funny, you know. Again, the critiquing of this entire episode is by a child. Yeah, you know, talking about all of those kind of English fairy tales and that, you know, the explicit Winnie the Pooh kind of sequence with the food. Yeah. It means that like it doesn't wear grams at home. And you know, Matt's doctor is a tiger. It's like, oh, Tigger, isn't it? Everyone have a moment. and then the next seekers don't like bacon followed by followed in 3 or 4 years by E or. Yes, yes. In fact, doesn't isn't the actual dialogue, doesn't the doctor say whatever it is eating? Let's say it's bacon. I like bacon. Yuck, I don't like bacon. explicit quote. And it's so well directed. Like, it's funny, like beautifully quick. Who's the director on this one? Adam Smith. Oh, we like it. What else is Mr. Smith done? He only does the Angels 2 parter, which is every bit as good, if not better. That's the 1st thing they filmed, isn't it? Yeah. Because that's outstanding. So this is the end of the 1st production block. No, they actually, they did The Angels, then they did episode 2 and 3 and then they came back to do this by itself. So they did the sort of Peter Davis and the thing where you do the 1st story after the actors had the chance to settle into the role. Only it turns out that wasn't necessary at all because Matt nails it completely straight from the beginning of the Angels too. Oh, you know, we'll talk about this in a couple of weeks. But yeah, that scene on the beach with River song, his very 1st scene and he's just utterly inhabiting the doctor. I mean, he is unbelievably great in this. Sometimes maybe, you know, there might be someone who might critique it for being maybe overtly or just a little bit too comedic, but I absolutely don't care. I think it's really funny. There's that moment where he's eating bread and butter and it's on a plate. And then we cut to him at the open door, frisbeeing the plate out of the door and then you hear a crash and a cat yowling. So he's hit a cat. It's really just so fun, just so wonderfully fun. He's never liked cats since not the same. I love the line you're Scottish, fry something. Which we only get away with because Stephen wrote it, I guess. We love Matt in those early scenes. It's all part of the post regenerative them, him being kind of broad like that, but he also gives off wonderful spiky reactions. So when you cut to the inside of the kitchen, when Amelia's about to prepare him some food, he's looking around quite suspiciously and awkwardly at all the corners of the kitchen. It's just a little moment thrown in and it's so doctor-ish. The other thing that I really like is when he talks about sort of about the time war, about being the last of his kind. And the way it's done is they're eating. And Amelia says, you know, I don't have parents. I've just got an aunt. And he goes, I don't even have an aunt. And she goes, you're lucky. And he goes, I know. So that's demonstrably untrue. He once had a giddy aunt. He did. Yeah, he did. What's he got against ants? I think the only aunt he's ever, the only aunt he's ever met is aunt Vanessa. He didn't like that sports car driving Harrodan. He only met her when she was an action figure. Yeah. It's a scene. Woodhouse. There's a lot of there's actually a lot of PG Woodhouse comedy in this. I actually love that they also hit on children's food allergies which is what I was referring to, the whole thing, which is the glycophate roundup thing. So many children born since the 90s can't digest and have ADHD. It's all traced back to that now. Maybe a bond. And that's what it. Yes. it's just a lot of also children are very particular. It's one of the few things you can control at that age is what goes into your body. So, you know, we have no control over our lives, but we can say what we will and won't eat. There's all these tips and nods to the discomfiture of being a child in an adult world. And sort of casting Smith as a child. You know, like that... I think he just did it himself. Hell he looked like a child. He was 26. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, it's really interesting, all these things you've touched on because Stephen's not interested in having mum and dad's, you know anymore. And like, so Amelia doesn't have one. We've just got this art that we see a couple of times. And, you know, he talks about, you know, Amelia's name being like a fairy tale. Yeah, he's setting up all this stuff. And that entire sequence, I love the fact that Peter, you mentioned it so broad. There's some of it, which I think plays really well, and others which I think a couple of those sequences with the eating. It reminds me a bit of early Tom Baker, like with Harry in that where he's just a little bit not quite what he ends up being, but it's, but it's sort of refreshing at night. And but it's at the moment where he actually says, you know what I think. Must be a hell of a scary crack in your wall. At that point, I was not expecting that delivery, that question. And although I didn't get it this time when I rewatched it, the 1st I said, you're the doctor. At that point when he said that, I just went, 0 my god, you are now the doctor. Sorry, the crack in the wall. I'm sorry, the crack in the wall is the moment for you. When he's talking to her and he says, you know what I think? And they're having a conversation, then he says, must be a hell of a scary crack in your wall. And I did not expect that line or that delivery. And, you know, ages ago, I mentioned, like we say, Sylvester McCoy when he reads that rule book in Paradise Towers, that's the moment he becomes the doctor here. That's the moment he becomes the doctor for me and that's what, 10 minutes in? It's an amazing delivery too, because he's got his mouth full. Like, he's actually sort of eating around that line. That's the hardest thing for an actor to do is to eat and work. Yeah. But then to go into the bedroom and just the way the use of his fingers down that crop. Yes, yes. The physicality is just incredible. As if it's a keyboard. Yes, yes. But it's also his relationship with young Amelia. I think she's phenomenal and I just fell in love with her throughout all this. and I know, of course, I knew that we'd be getting, Karen, and I just, I remember at the time in my head, How am I going to cope without her? She needs to be here for the whole season. This is like, you know, Doctor Who and Susie or whatever for... John and Julian. I actually thought, I want the doctor with, you know, this young girl. So it's not practical. No, it's not practical and, you know, as the original production team of Doctor Who realised a grown man and a girl unrelated to him travelling around together is possibly problematic. How long before Matt would have been giving a jolly good smacked bottoms? She'd give one to him. She probably would. I think too, the idea that the doctor is someone who's childlike and can therefore sympathise with children. The best line is that thing where he says, you know how adults tell you that everything's going to be all right, you suspect they're probably lying. Well, everything's going to be all right. And so he's playing the adult role, but he's absolutely aware of what children feel. You're saying I'm on your side and I'm not going to lie to you. Yeah exactly right. There's such an easy poetry to the dialogue in those scenes, which you know, we just, you know, we really do miss at the moment when we had Russell and particularly Stephen. They can just take a scene like that. And like you were saying, Todd, just turn it on a dime at the end there and go from broad laughs to something which segues beautifully into the next scene. But what Russell does is sort of naturalistic TV dialogue. Like it's not naturalism, but it is, you know, TV dialogue. Whereas as Stephen Moffatt is more poetic, I think, and more artificial and much more deliberately calculated, I think, to sort of reveal... Rom-com dialogue versus soap dialogue. Yeah, maybe that's it. Maybe that's it. Although saying soap dialogue is doing a huge disservice to Russell, but you're right, more naturalistic. Whereas Moffat, I think, writes with a little bit more poetry in his dialogue. Yeah, yeah. We get to see that big giant eyeball through the crack in the wall which then shoots out some sort of light that seems to go straight into Matt's crotch. We're going to start on about packages again, I do. No, Peter, I know I'm not. The eyeball is great. And when it's cicades, you know, when it does those little movements that your eyes do, there's a little whoosh sound that comes on. Yeah, it's like a Star Trek door. It's a grade sort of fabulous, well-designed monster. And again, it's not a sort of rubber alien or anything. It still fits with that sort of strange fairy tale atmosphere that we're going for. Do you think the Atraxi with its big eye on a stalk has a bitch off in space with the axons with their big eye on a stalk? No. So the Atraxi, we know where that comes from, don't we? More forton. And tonight's dinner is oh, that again. He just nicked the glass bill off the tray. Sorry, Barbara has wrecked the main course. Yeah, from Kate, friend of the podcast, Kate Orman's novel, vampire science. There's a mention of Atraxi 3. Oh, and so Moffat's just quietly lifted that and dropped it in. Wow. Well, he will he will refer to the novels or at least an alien race created for the novels at the end of the season. He is aware of them. Yeah, he's totally steeped in Doctor Who and he throws in things like we do for laughs. There's a few Anderson references. I think Stephen might have grown up with Space 1979 like the rest of us. There's a couple of those too, through the season. Yeah. And then everything has to end because we've got the Cloister Bell doctor's got to get back into the to the TARDIS and then deal with the swimming pool and I like the way automatically like he's expanding what's in the TARDIS, like... But always back to Lou Jamison in the pool, in the swimming pool and trying to lose Adric in the cloister room. So I think we did eject the swimming pool at one point in the 1980s, but obviously Paradise Towers. right. Well, they ejected it because it was leaking. Maybe it leaked into the library. The swimming pools in the library. So great. It's so funny. So the doctor disappears and then comes back and it's a very moffety thing, isn't it? I mean, I guess, I guess Chris Eccleston sort of disappeared and came back 18 months later, but this is really something very different. It's interesting that straight away in this episode, Stephen does all these time jumps, like he says, I'll be back in 5 minutes and it's not 5 minutes. He gets it wrong. Obviously, in Classic Who, the doctor can't control where he's going, but Stephen takes it where... We can now control the Tartars, but Matt just can't get the timing right. Keeps breaking bits off. Well, I mean, I mean, it is on fire, I think, probably when he does that little jump forward. But even like, you know, later in the episode, there's jump forward and if you look back at Russell's time, a lot of his stuff there's very few episodes where that even happens, it only happens in the Moffatt episodes. Well, listen, yeah, Moffatt's plundering himself with the girl on the fireplace. Yeah, whereas Russell would just land and then we'd have everything play out in real time here, Stephen, and it's part of his fairy tale, part of his, I don't know, novel approach that he's willing to do time jumps within an episode, which is something very different. And of course, our time jump, then takes us a number of years into the future. Yeah, so it's 12 years in the future, and the purpose of this is to change really the premise of Doctor Who for this season where it's about a young woman who flees her own wedding the night before the wedding with her childhood imaginary friend. And it's absolutely that. And it's very, very different from the way the relationships between doctor and companion have been conceived. It is as if Sarah Jane is standing in the unit lab peeking through the doors watching Tom quick change and nodding with surprise because it really, I mean, I think this is the 1st time we've seen a companion. watch a doctor assume his costume and pull salacious grimaces. Well, I think that something is happening here too. That, you know, you know, in aliens of London where Russell has the word fart in the dialogue and we see aliens farting, and it's something, of course, it's happened before. Bob Holmes loves the old fart joke, but it is... I'm sure there's some bubbles in Pertwe's bath in Spearhead from Space, I'm sure there's a bit going on with Channing peering molestingly through the ribbed glass at him. Channing is controlling your bath salts. So here, Moffatt introduces sex to the show in a way. Well, but because this whole season is going to be about Amy's relationship with her adulthood. And remember that that is a fraught topic in children's literature. And of course, the, you know, the most important place that happens is, of course, in the Narnia books, where Susan ages out of being able to travel to Narnia because she's an adult woman who has become interested in Sam. There's so much to unpack in C.S. Lewis. Yeah, yeah. Well, Neil Gaiman writes a short story entirely about it called The Problem of Susan. And Sandra takes that up to talk about. She was talking about the reign of terror. Yeah, well, no, so Santa for repurposes that idea to talk about why Susan... Yeah, we talk about that in the 1st season, FT. 10,000 years ago. It's a very long time. So having Amy, we've had little child Amy, who's, how old is she? 10 maybe, um, and then we have Karen, who, you know, Karen Gillon playing a version of that 12 years later, and she is instantly sexualised. So the 1st shot of Karen. is a shot that moves up her body. It's like when we 1st see Perry in Planet of Fire. It moves up her legs, which is a feature of Karen that Moffatt will upsettingly keep mentioning. And she's wearing stockings with seams up the back. She's wearing sort of sexy stockings and stuff. So she's instantly sexualised and particularly when we find out she's a kissogram. That is so crap. Yeah, that is a bit crap. Who's a kissogram? Like that's something from 19 Kissograms in 1970s these days. Do you even have them? Like, I really don't like that she's a physogram. I think it's introducing my career choices. Yes, yes, Peter. Yeah, I just, yeah, it doesn't seem well with me. It just seems, I don't know. Well, she does that to she does she do anything else? I think that's something for schoolgirls to get titillated over. He is writing for young people. So as a teenager, you'd go, oh, that's so racy. But it's also sort of a transient profession, it's not something that someone aims to make career out of. So it speaks to the fact that Amy's lost. Yeah, she hasn't carved out a life of her own. Oh, she is, she is, I think, the 1st sexual companion. I don't mean sexualise. She's the 1st sexual companion in that she speaks about desires and things like that. Romana just had the wand. was just threatening. Well, exactly, previous companions were romantic companions. They would speak about relationships and love, whereas Amy speaks about sex. She has desires. Yeah, I mean, Leila had a knife, but she still talked about love. But, I mean, Rose is having sex with Mickey, right? At some point, you know. And they, don't they plan in Boomtown to get a hotel together in Karma? Go off to a hotel, that's right. Yeah. And get rubber Mickey out of a bin and... He doesn't have a head, but it's fine. won't need one. But note how disappointed the doctor is by the fact that Amy is sexual. You know, he says you were a little girl 5 minutes ago. Because he sees them as one person. Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And from his point of view, you know, she was a little girl, now she's kissing strangers for money or whatever. We're all looking at Peter, I don't know. can I say? Have you got it, Flaunter? They give him money. Don't get your fingers caught in the coast draw. Reminds me of that scene in prisoner cell block H where B says, you know, I could go on the game and at a totally unscripted moment that they leave in the show. Lizzy says, what would you do with all the ¢2 pieces? I think that at some point this goes horribly wrong, um, because it does become an obsession with Moffatt, who is after all a rom com writer, sort of primarily. So things like joking apart and obviously coupling are all about sex and all about love and sex. And I think that coupling does have an effect on what he ends up writing. And this story, this season is about Amy's relationship with her childhood and her refusal to grow up, she escapes at the moment of a huge adult milestone in order to run off into fairyland with her imaginary friend. But her adulthood is sort of um cast as sort of sexual in in some important way. Which again is a bit of a younger people thing, you know, when you're younger, you think in terms of, you know, one night stands and things like that. Whereas as you get older and, you know, head into middle age you're starting to think more in terms of lasting relationships, I think. Yeah. Yeah, but I do think that, you know, just becoming sexual is like a marker of adulthood and a pretty sort of salient marker of adulthood. And we are going to spend the next couple of years raking over that, I think, because I think sometimes it doesn't work and is a problem, but it certainly isn't yet, I think. possibly not a great match for the series. Yeah. It's interesting that you're talking about this because, you know a lot of the younger viewers may have been 12 or 13 when the show 1st started. And now they're like 17 or 18. That's that's the point. Yep. Yeah. Yep. And there's a lovely bridge in just in the styling of this story to take up from 2005 to where we are now. But I do agree with you. I think, Vampires of Venice, which I'll talk about in many weeks. I think that's the ultimate rom-com sexual sort of thing, and I don't think it works, the Amy Rory relationship in that. It's not a problem up from here. to that point because Rory's really not in it except that this episode. Yeah. But we'll talk about that. We haven't gotten we get to it. But Rory makes this season work for me and makes this episode work for me. In the way that older Amy actually doesn't, in this one. And if we're talking about the sexualising and the development of character and emotionality, I didn't want to cut you off, Todd because I want to hear what you're saying, but I'm just sort of throwing this in to see what your reaction to this is, because for me, all the emotional intelligence is an 11 year old Amy. And yes, we know she's been in the psychiatrists for 6 or 7 years but I wonder if that's aligned to just make up for the fact that we have a very removed and I would say, look, I don't want to get into how she acts yet, but they're very different people. Little Amy and Big Amy. Whereas the bridge is Rory because Rory's always Rory. I have mentioned that I have not liked. I'm not in love with Amy and I was certainly not, didn't think much of Karen as an actress. I've mentioned this many times. So coming back to this season, coming back to this episode in particular. I was really intrigued to see what I thought of the character versus the actress. And over the course of the last, sorry, the next 5 episodes, I really like Karen, the actress, more and more. But the Martha problem I had many moons ago where I said it was just Martha Blankface because it was all based on her last episode which of course I've scrubbed that. Here, I find that Karen's performance in those 1st sequences when she's in the policeman's outfit when she's in with prisoner 0 when they're walking up the path. She's like that emoji, just like that emoji with just the, the, the eyes, the bug eyes. It's just the same face. I just don't see enough differentiation in her performance at that point. And that's what I had a problem with, and that's what stuck in my mind. But it's really interesting when I went back because I was really watching to see if she was doing anything. And there's subtle, there is subtle things happening in her face. And I think in this episode there's scenes where she's not, she's too subtle. The scenes where she's too subtle, and then there's other scenes where, well, I'm going to go to Elizabeth Sladen, where she gets to that point where it's heightened, and it works really well. And I actually think like in the beast below, and in victory of the Daleks, she's actually nailing it. I love her in the beast below. Absolutely. In this, I don't know whether it's a direction or perhaps because in the 1st filming block they've got River Song as somebody to bounce off here. It just her and Matt. There are sequences that I do struggle with. But I can then see in certain parts when she's with Arthur and that there's actually a lot more going on. So I'm actually liking her performance a lot more. Amy. Well, Amy is a sort of Moffat woman and it's fairly clear that Stephen Moffat likes bossy, competent women who are a bit dismissive of other people's feelings in uniform. Well, in uniform, dressed as nuns. And, and, you know, Linda Day from Press Gang is obviously in some senses what he's going for with Amy. And Amy is a kind of force of nature. There's that wonderful scene where she slams Cully's tie in his car door and tells him to go off and, you know, get a coffee or something. And it's clear that everyone is slightly scared of her. Everyone defers to her. Oh yes, Amy. Yeah, yeah. And I actually have to say that I quite like that. But there are one or 2 scenes where she's put on the back foot. Like when she breaks into Annette Crosby's house and has to kind of explain why she dresses, you know, as a nurse and a nun and all of that sort of thing and she's sort of slightly embarrassed. So I think she does comedy really well. And I think that these 3 who, you know, will bed down as the as the companions for the 2nd half of series 5 and all of series 6 are superb. I think they love one another. You know, like all 3 actors clearly got on really well. I think Matt and Arthur went to drama school together or something. And they're all the same age. It's like 3 attractive young people and they just seem to be having a blast. And I actually really like this TARDIS team quite a lot. Yeah, I don't think Rory makes a huge impression in this episode. I think he's quite forgettable. He comes into his own later on, but he's really the 3rd wheel, um and he doesn't have any scenes which um, focus you on him. Well, there's the scene with Dr. Ramsden. Yeah, I think he's a bit lost in that. I find him spectacular in the town square when we're doing the darting about. I find he's as a reactive actor, he's the glue between the 2 of them that makes it really work for me. With Todd on this, I find some of, and it's nothing against Karen as such, but stylistically, I find that she's all over the park with her tie caught in the steering column, and it doesn't gel for me in a way that the young less playing, who did we say? Standy Toxic? Caitlin Blackwood. Caitlin Blackwood, maybe it's just innocence or... Jeanette Cranky. Jeanette Cranky. Absolutely nails every moment for me. Okay, she doesn't have to do as much. But Rory, I just thought, oh, look at all the emotional intelligence and the humour in that man. He's a really good actor. Maybe acting is just all the innate stuff that a camera reveals explicitly. Well, I mean, he is just doing a comedy performance here and it's completely reactive. His performance will open up, but he's he's flustered and stuff with Dr. Ramsden. There's that sort of wonderful scene where he yells at the doctor for bringing the aliens back. But it is it is all just sort of nervous guy, you know, comedy. But I think it's vampires of Venice where he really properly lands. I would agree. I don't actually think I'm struggling not to criticise Arthur because I think Arthur's fine. And I think Rory will turn out to be fine, but I think we have a slight Mickey problem at the start in that he doesn't have a very expressive face and he gets lost in the mix a bit. Yeah okay. Oh, really? Yeah. I would disagree, and I would say that I love all the subtle stuff that he does in this episode. He's not given a lot because it's not his focus. The character is written to be that Mickey character and I think it actually does a disservice to Amy. It's this rom-com thing that I don't like. And I just think all of his little scenes he's seen with what's her name, Dr. Ramsden or Zainab from EastEnders. Fabulous. She is wonderful. But just his little subtle stuff like, oh, it's a raggedy doctor and he's so like, you know, oh. No, just, again, that sort of weird thing, you know, like he'd been forced by Amy to dress up as the raggedy doctor when he was a child. Again, you know, Amy is just bossing everyone around. I think too, what's really super interesting is the introduction of Jeff, who the doctor describes as not him, the good looking one. Remember that? And so when Amy leaves, like when we see in that final shot, her wedding dress, we don't actually know who she's getting married to at that point. That's right. And this could actually be part of my problem with Rory in this episode in that I think Moffatt's intentionally misdirecting us. So, again, Rory gets lost in the mix a little bit because your attention that should be on him is divided, as you question, what's going to happen in the future? It's funny too, isn't it? Because she denies that he's her boyfriend. He says he corrects it, doesn't he? and says boyfriend when she says friend. He does, and I'd never noticed that before, and I think it might be an artefact of there being a two-year gap between when that happens and when the doctor comes back and she's going to marry him at that stage, they might only just be sort of dating. Except that next week. She still doesn't know whether she'll end up marrying him. Like, quite explicitly. She wonders. Remember the voting machine is about to save her marital status in it. It doesn't. Yeah, yeah. So she is this is part of her arc. She's embarrassed to admit that she's in a relationship with Rory to the doctor. And that relationship just develops to be absolutely the opposite of that, where by the end of the season, she will prioritise Rory over the doctor absolutely every time. And it flips in the middle of the season. I think it's terrific. I'd love to thank you brought up Jeff. Because he was in Merlin. He was one of the knights in Merlin. So I knew him from that. So I thought, oh, and I think he went on to do black sales and he got crispified in Game of Thrones after. Yeah, Melric Academy. But he's actually also quite sexualised in terms of like, Jeff, get a girlfriend and delete your internet history. In fact, this is the 1st time the doctor's ever seen porn. Well, on screen anyway. Wasn't there something where Perchwee was in some sort of thing forced to watch something? Yeah, that might have been porn. And there might have been porn in Space Museum among all those walruses. How did the 1st doctor break his monitor? Susan came in threw something at the screen. But it's quite explicit, like... Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no. a phrisexual. Yeah, yeah. Again, it's Moffat doing sex comedy, which is his absolute wheelhouse. And I, you know, it's not that I think it's inappropriate for children because that sort of thing just sales over kids' heads. It doesn't matter, you know? But eventually I think it will become a problem. I just think it's very convenient that we just happen to break into Annette Crosby's house, and we love her from one foot in the grave, and we already had her husband back in the RU, my mummy episode, so we both own them. But it's just interesting how like these 2 characters that Amy happens to know and other people in the village like we never see again. Like again, Stephen's not interested in going down that track. So the world building is just basically the doctor, Amy, and eventually, of course, Rory and River. That's what is interesting. But this episode. We've still got like Russell. We've still got people she knows, the boyfriend, a potential boyfriend. There's still a world there. Yeah. So as I said earlier, like there's wrappings of Russell, but it's really not going there. We'll go back to the house again, weren't we, at the end of the at the end of the season. And we will see Caitlin Blackwood again at the end of the season. I heard someone online complaining about throwing away Annette Crosby and Olivia Coleman on very small roles. What about Cully from the Dominators? And Cully from the Dominators, obviously. Yeah, what was that all about? But hang on, you cast good people in those roles and that's what lifts them. That's what makes them. That's what those roles are for. Yeah. It's overcasting. I think it's a great thing. Exactly. It's just putting the little moments, the little highlights of jewellery in the tiara. I think so too. I think, you know, complaining that they've cast too good an actor in this role is seems like a very strange thing to be doing. When we had the lockdown tweet along of the 11th hour, which Stephen Moffatt joined in on, and so did Matt and Karen, and Arthur, I think, um, Stephen Moffatt said, oh, here's Olivia Coleman in what I like to think of as her breakout role. It's funny you say that because because I knew who she was, like because you see her early in the episode, like in one of the beds. And I said, oh, I know who that is, but I didn't really know her. Yeah. Like we know, know her now. And then when she comes back later with her girls and gets to deliver all that biting dialogue to the doctor, she's just delicious. Well, I mean, it's the doctor's 1st confrontation with a villain and the villain is played by Olivia Coleman. I think it's superb and she is really, really, really good. She's really good in it. Were they thinking of her as the doctor? How could they not? Yeah, how could they not? Well, I have to think because she had that starring role in Broadchurch that Chris Chibnall must have had her at the top of the list, but we know he did, in fact, that's been revealed for Gymnal series. But what about now? What about back for season? I don't think Stephen ever seriously entertained casting a female doctor. But she had to have been in the mix. Like, just passion. I virtue of being there and so good. Yeah, yeah. And I think she'd already done beautiful people, hadn't she? Yes, and peep show. Oh yeah, of course. show. I think British. The British would know her much better than like Australians at this point in time. I mean, we watch a lot of British TV. So I knew who she was. Yeah. Well, she actually says in the David Tennant podcast, interview that she does, that her real breakout role is Broadchurch, and that's the moment where it becomes difficult for her to go out in public without being recognised and stuff. I mean, people knew her from Peep show, but she became really quite famous with Broadchurch. Can we talk about the doctor? Because... Absolutely not. Because in rows, and then again, in Christmas invasion, the 2 previous stories that introduce a new doctor, we hold off on introducing the doctor, and we actually create a world or go back to a sort of established world and we're forced to wait to see what the doctor's going to be like, and people talk about the doctor, and then he turns up. And you want him to be there. Yeah, at that and you have that longing. And here, well, we've got a whole new team. You've got to put in front of the centre. Yeah, you've got no one else to sort of hold onto, but I think it is also just a deliberate decision that Matt is in nearly every scene. And it's quite surprising. It's when Amy hits him in the face with a cricket bat and then we cut to the hospital and that's the 1st scene at that point that doesn't have the doctor in it. And he is absolutely just compelling to watch. Breath of fresh air. Sorry to roll up my cliches, but I just adore him. He just has this frantic energy and the ability to deliver lines in a way that you never thought possible that works, and I don't know how many takes he does of things or anything like that, but just the whole story. I just adore watching what he's doing, as well as Murray Gold's little doctorary theme coming in as it goes along, you know? And you've got the Geronimo and you've got that who's the man that's never going to happen again. But all those things just make it. We have moments back to. Maybe it's the outsider's view, although I wouldn't hardly call Stephen Moffat an outsider, but I'm getting real flashes of the potential of Paul McGann and how excited we were in that story by McGann's performance in the same way than as when we were really little with Tom's surprises. And I would say if we were older with Pat Troughton's surprising moments. It's what makes the doctor the doctor. But it's also the way that Mothat will take the program. In Moffat situation of the program. The doctor is at the centre of it. Things revolve around the doctor. Stories are created about the doctor and about people know him and the universe is aware of him, and you get stories about his background, which you haven't had in the past. So Moffa is interested in the doctor as a character rather than a catalyst. That's really interesting you say, like, the universe knows him because Olivia Coleman's character says, time for what? Time Lord. Yeah, right? And then, yeah, it's just like he is known. And then, of course, the Atraxi later in his showdown. can bring up all these images of him and all the monsters that he's defended the earth from, like he is known. I think that what Moffatt is interested in is Doctor Who as a type of story. And even though the universe that Doctor Who is set in doesn't revolve around the doctor, you know, up to now, like the doctor's just a person in that universe travelling around and interacting with people, a Doctor Who story does centre on the doctor because he's the main character and he's the person who will resolve it and because Moffat isn't creating a coherent universe for these stories to take place in. I mean, he blows up the universe at the end of episode 12. He's not creating a universe. He's telling a type of story and that type of story has to centre on the doctor. And, you know, that's been how the program works since sometime in the middle of the Hartnell era where the doctor stops being the crazy old man who gets them into trouble and starts being the hero you know, the main character in the show. And so the doctor does become centred and it does become about questions about the doctor's identity and when there are character arcs, they're not about bad will for Mr. Saxon or things like that they're all about the doctor and who the doctor is and maybe even what the doctor's relationship with the companion is. What his name is, et cetera. Yeah, yeah. But I, I mean, I don't mind that, but you can see Moffatt having anxieties about it himself because, you know, the doctor tries to sort of wipe himself out of history at the end of series 6. Yeah. Yeah. Can we talk about that hero moment at the end? Where he calls them back. Yeah. Yeah. Enough of the raggedy. And he steps through the past images of the doctor and he's got the bow tie. Well, in fact, we don't see the bow tie. The bow tie is actually really, really clever, right? So he steals all those clothes just like the 3rd doctor and the 8th doctor had before him in a hospital stealing clothes from people's lockers. Yeah, another Doctor Who introduction story that owes a debt to spearhead from space. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd add terror of the autons to that. I'd add Smith and Jones. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so he's basically dressed, right? But he has like these crappy nylon ties around his neck, like a collection of these sort of terrible ties. And he's trying them on when he gets onto the roof. And it's only, we see him tie, but we don't see the tie until he steps through that ball, that projection ball showing all the previous doctors. And we can see that he ties it. He's clearly settled on a tie, but that's the moment that he becomes a doctor. And it's really, really fun, that the bow tie, which is not cool is absolutely emblematic of the doctor. He becomes the doctor when he puts the bow tie on. He stops being the doctor when he drops the bow tie to the floor in time of the doctor. Poetry isn't it? It's wonderful. I mean that scene is absolutely incredible. And imagine Tennant doing that scene. All the teeth acting and showboating and stuff that would have gone into that sort of speech. Oh, Sean David Tennis. Look, I mean, he's wonderful in all sorts of ways. But the way that Matt underplays it. The way that he underplays it, and how threatening he seems without shouting, when he says there's a tightness around his mouth, when he says, I'm the doctor, basically run. And he, it's really, really, really quite threatening. sort of like mafia, you know, if you know what's good for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's incredible, I think. Really, really quite extraordinary. And it's a scene that is just absolutely the doctor's Aristea, his hero moment where he does what River Song said that he was capable of doing in silence of the library. And you know, Moffat would have been delighted to get in some flashbacks there of the occasional sea devil. Yeah, yeah. But that's also his agenda too, is like in that sequence. Suddenly you were getting more flashes of classic who, which he's going to keep on introducing as a sort of a maybe a buildup to a long-term plan, the 50th or whatever, or you can look at it like the 80s where the show sort of looked in upon itself. But something that Russell actively tried to avoid a lot of the time, less so towards the end of his time, but it's suddenly here in flashbacks and it will, it'll keep on popping up. Yeah, I mean, Moffatt is the showrunner that heals the rift between classic and new series. Agreed. And you know, it's a shame because as much as I love Matt's outfit it comes through. He does look very good in David's raggedy costume, and I think there is a precedent for doctors looking good in their predecessors outfits. already? Yeah, absolutely. Jodie looks wonderful in this outfit. Silve looks much better in Colin's outfit than Colin does. Yeah. But I love I love it when, like, Prisoner Zero turns into the doctor and doctor going, oh, he's that. that's a bit rubbish. Is that meant to be? That's another brilliant moment because it's suddenly in the doctrine, you kind of think what? And then when Caitlin steps out from behind, that bit of direction and again, how evil she is as as prisoners error is just another wonderful moment in this direction-wise acting wise and yeah. See, one thing about that scene. And one thing that we haven't touched on in his portrayal of the doctor is that the doctor is suddenly clever. He's suddenly Sherlock Holmes. And so he does these deductions. So he deduces that Rory knows something important because he's not looking at the sun, he's looking at something else, and he's able to sort of deduce all kinds of things here. And so you get this face off where the doctor outwits prisoner Zero by being incredibly clever. And then prisoner 0 outwits the doctor by, and, and you know, like the doctor's scheme is super complicated. There's going to be zeros on every screen, the attracti will trace it to the phone. They'll see the photos of the various coma patients on the phone so they'll be able to recognise them as prisoner zero. It's actually quite complicated And then prisoner Zero thwarts that by appearing as Caitlin holding hands with the doctor. And then the doctor thwarts prisoner Zero again by remembering that Amy saw prisoner Zero in its original form and getting Amy's subconscious to make prisoner Zero look like himself again. What's he hanging from? Yes, I always wondered the ceiling tiles. There's very thin grip. like a baby Jagrafest. That means we don't have to do legs. They're very hard in CG. Yeah, this was a lot plotier than I remembered it being. It's quite, it gets a little bit convoluted, I think, in the details. And I mean, that's fine. It's not important at all. But in a way, the story is very simple. So the doctor meets Amy as a child. Then we establish what the threat is posed by the attraction prisoner zero. And then, you know, the doctor goes and sees Jeff, they go to the hospital, they have that chat, and we resolve the problem. As far as, you know, like a plot beats go, it's fairly simple. But story simple, plotting's not simple. Yeah, and I think, I think too, that one of the things that Moffat wants to do is to make the doctor clever again. That the, you know, tenants doctor is clever, but even when Moffat's writing the previous doctors, writing for Chris and David. He makes the doctor clever. He gives the doctor puzzles to solve and writes him as clever in the way that he solves them. And that's that is a feature. You know, like David Tennant's doctor tells us he's clever remember? But I don't recall. When did he do that? He literally does it in midnight. But the doctor that Moffatt writes is actually clever and we see him solving things. And that works with Smith's delivery as well, because Smith is visibly thinking as well. You know, like you can see the way that he delivers the way that he pauses when he's speaking. you know, as if he's thinking of the next word to say. Sometimes, you know, you know, it's just a torrent of words with David. But there's a real sort of deliberateness to the way that Smith's doctor speaks. And it makes him seem clever. And I love that. That's why I love the doctor, you know, because the doctor's clever, he outwits his enemies. There's a sense, though, I think that Moffat is challenging himself, because of course Moffat's an extremely clever man. Yeah. And so he's setting himself challenges in the rising. And as ever, the doctor is an analogue for the ricer. And, you know, it's why he tells stories out of narrative order because telling narrative order would be too simple and not interesting enough for him. But I think it's really interesting, like you said, how simple it is, like going from this location to that. Like, you can look at it at that level. But you come back to Stephen's stories, and then you find all these multi-layers and all this complication that is actually going on underneath, and I think that's what makes it so brilliant. And how I enjoy. A lot of it, sometimes I get a bit tired of things at certain points in ahead. But here it's refreshing and it's so appropriate. The other thing is like, with these story arcs that Russell's doing, as opposed to, um, Steven. Like, again, we've got, obviously, is Amy's running away from her wedding. But it's explicitly stated in the dialogue, the universe is cracked. We've actually got the crack, the Pandorica will open silence before. All these things were repeated. The doctor is aware of all this episode one. Yeah, not... I'm on an adventure. We hear the words Harold Saxon at some point, totally aware, and then it just sort of all happens at the end of the season. seems very different. He sets up the whole season arc is there. We're going to hook people in episode one and what's this, what's this? I need to find it out for the entire year. Yeah, yeah. And just putting the icing on the cake as well. If we ever had an episode title, which is that clever and means that many things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because he's only got 20 minutes to save the world, so he's saving it at the 11th hour. It's why I'll always be disappointed that twice upon a time wasn't called 12th night. Yeah. Oh. That would have been brilliant. Yeah. Particularly around Christmas, right? The doctor runs back to the Tartars, goes into it. We don't get to see it. Again, harking back, perhaps, to Rose, where she goes in and then out and we don't get to see it. And then we have another time jump. Yeah, so it's 2 years that she waits and we'll get to the point in power of 3 where Amy says it's 10 years since the doctor came back to Ledworth in the 11th hour. And so these time jumps are going to be characteristic of their relationship, but we don't get to see that because it's the story of the doctor. So we follow him all the time. And then we get to go in to the Tartars. What do we think of the sand? Yeah, orange. Yeah. I think I like the reveal, and it's not done quite the same way as it's done in other times. Like we don't get to see the whole of the console room until Matt has crossed that massive distance between the door and the console and we keep a close-up on Amy's face and so we see the background. We see Amy's big emoji eyes there and and then we get to see the doctor in the console uh room. I'm not a massive fan. In hindsight. I'm not a massive fan. I think at the time I was excited because it was so different and there was obviously stairs going up and all sorts of things happening. Um, and there was nods sort of back to perhaps the telemovie console with things. It's very busy. I do like the glass floor. Yeah, I like the glass floor on the hammock and the stuff underneath, you know, like it ends up being a good place to shoot in, I think. And the television, I love his little scanner, television pull down scanner. Do you love it? I'm not fan of the console itself. I think it sort of goes off in weird directions with taps and things like that. It's ridiculous. Yeah, nodding back to the shape of the brakaki, but still with the coral motifs. They could have just upturned an old piano on its side and just shot it all like that because that's really what it all looks like. Yeah No, I think it looks like a junkyard. I don't I don't like it. And it is, the junkyard's right to be outside. We're meant to be in the junkyard, not the junkyard. right. that's right I mean, it's trying to be fairy tale. It's trying to not be science fiction. And so it's various magical objects stuck on a table, I guess. It's one of those things which sounds like good idea as a concept but just doesn't really come off. But I love this... I love the whole sequence from outside to inside. So there's so much stuff going on. Like he talks about bow ties are cool. The girl who waited. The new Sonic says dear to the TARDIS console. You know, just all these little seeds of dialogue that is going to keep recurring, that you don't think about at the time, but ends up being something that Stephen will use time and time again that and you just love it for that, that fact. And, and the madman with a box. Like that line is brilliant. And when Matt goes, haha, yeah, that, the way he delivers that. Yes, I know what you mean. When he breathes out and does that, I was just like, and chills. Yeah, he's really good. chill. You know, there is one ominous thing at the very end, and that is that TV, which is the TV that is used to tell you what Matt's thinking about because it shows a picture of the crack. And we see it when Amy asks the doctor why he is taking her on board. And he says something about, oh, I'm very lonely. So we see the crack on the wall depicted in the screen and it's the doctor's ulterior motive for taking her on board. She says, you know, why are you taking me on board? He says, I'm talking to myself and it's giving me an earache or whatever, and she says, oh, it's just because you're lonely then and he says, yes. But in fact, he has an ulterior motive right from the get go. And then in season six, that's the same screen that will depict Amy's quantum pregnancy. He just wanted to know where all the ducks went. If it's a duck pond. Where are all the ducks? But the ducks are gone in the same way that Amy's parents are gone. That's a massive crack. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'm kind of thinking the ducks are back in Ledworth now that it's all been fixed. I don't know. Well, people talk about, you know, there's a lot of emphasis given to the duck and where all the ducks. I think it's just a moffat joke because later when the doctor's driving the fire engine. and he puts the ladder through the window. He sends Amy Pond a message saying duck. Yeah. But also, though, what we will discover is that massive, massive house with all of its rooms has one or 2 people living in it. And it's the absence of the rest of the ponds. Yes, yes, yes. And so I do think it does deliberately, it points towards exactly what's going wrong. The doctor will say to Amy, doesn't it worry you that your life doesn't make any sense. Why are you an orphan living in this massive, massive house with all these rooms? He might as well have said, where are all the ponds? Yeah, yeah. Dark. Correct. Well, good, listener, that's all we have time for this week. We'll be back next week with the next chapter of this fairy tale in The Beast Below. In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts and you can keep up with us at Flightthrough Entirety on Facebook at FTE podcast on Twitter, and on our website FlightthroughEntirety.com, where you'll find links to our other podcasts, Bondfinger and Jody into Tara. Until next time, remember that when facing certain death at the hands of a mysterious alien threat, it's very important to have backup, or not to have backup, one of those. Thank you very much for listening and good night. Good night. See you soon. Keep your nighties firmly pressed. That was Flight through Entirety, starring Todd Bilby, Nathan Bottomley, Peter Griffiths, and Richard Stone, theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb. This episode, tickers don't like bacon, was recorded on the 24th of January 2021 and released on the 14th of March. Today we're announcing the launch of the new FDE Kissogram service in which an FDE host or guest comes over to your house for a quick snog, dressed as an actor or character from the 1966 story, The Ark, including, for this month only, Michael Sheard and Monicker the Elephant. There's only one other thing I'd like to discuss. And that's the new theme tune, rearrangement. I don't mind the theme tune rearrangement, but I do think that the opening thing looks like a colonoscopy. Oh, right. Did I miss that with that? Was that in terror of the vervoid? Straight back to the car. What? An explosive colonoscopy. I mean, the last time I don't remember it getting lightning. We're all over some of us are over 50. That's right. We know what we're talking about. is a sensitive topic. What made him regenerate? I didn't like it when it 1st started. You know that whole little intro bit? But now, the moment I hear that, it's like, this is a Matt Smith episode, and besides a few clangers here or there, it's Matt Smith so I'm gonna like it. And it's just, well, yeah, it's that's what it is, and I love it. It's just like the sea devil, a few clangers here and there. Yeah, no, absolutely. And you, I didn't particularly like it at the time. I didn't feel particularly strongly about it, but now it is resonant of that particular era. And so, you know, it makes you happy because you know that what you're going to watch is likely to be pretty good. I just think that this whole episode is, it's my favourite introduction to a doctor in New Pooh. Yep, right? I think it might be my favourite introduction to a doctor full stop. I give it 11 out of 10. Sorry, I had to get that in, people. All right, I think that's an out. Yeah? Alright.