A Man Who Sees His Own Shadows

[00:36]

Hello, D listener, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety, the only Doctor Who podcast, which did fall for Mrs. Pogget's nice old lady act, and we're still trying to get the dust out of our favourite woolly jumper.

I'm Nathan.

I'm Peter.

I'm Johnny.

And I'm a Zimmer frame with a dodgy 3rd eye and a terrible case of halitosis for this one.

Well, this week we're freezing to death both in Ledworth and inside the spaceship while trying to work out what's reality and what's merely a dodgy children's science fiction program from the 1960s.

Are we Team Rory or Team the Doctor?

Let's find out in Amy's choice.

So Johnny, is this the cheap one?

[01:36]

I don't know if it's the cheap one of the season, but it's definitely one of my favourites.

And this is a season that I struggle with a little bit.

I run a bit hot and cold on some of the episodes, um, often episode by episode, but if this is the cheap one, it shows that the, some of the most interesting stuff can come out of the, uh, the one with the least resources.

I think.

It is basically the standing set, isn't it?

And then a sort of fairly straightforward location shoot.

That's right.

And I think, um, Because it was shot last with the lodger and they truly had run out of money.

This wasn't a typical Oh, we've run out of money at the end of the season.

There was just no money.

And so they shot this with the lodger.

And yes, so this is the cheap one, but actually, I think it's the slightly unambitious one.

I think the lodger does a much better job of being cheap and being focussed and about something than this episode does.

Oh, I think I think this one, for me anyway, the focus on this one is on the relationships between the 3 characters, I think that's why I like it more than most things in the season because although some of the stories don't do much for me.

[02:48]

I really like these 3 characters of the doctor, Amy and Rory, and so an episode that really changes them from the beginning of the episodes of the last of the episode.

That's where I find the focus in this episode.

Oh yeah, I'm totally with you.

And I love those 3 characters as well.

Maybe Rory is slightly less than the doctor and Amy, but I think they're all good.

And I really loud what this episode is going for.

I'm just not sure it entirely comes off, and so I'm left a little bit underwhelmed by it.

Not very underwhelmed, but a little bit underwhelmed.

Is it this season's boom town?

It's not quite boomtown.

You definitely get the sense that it's um, Hastily, shall we say?

put together.

And I think there's some wasting of a cast and some opportunities that aren't there, but it's good direction.

It's tight, which this sort of thing really needs.

The old people's home thing is done delicately and with great warmth, and then you get beating up an LAP, which really stuck in the core at the time, and it's still shocking now.

[03:51]

My memory is that it was a blow to the head and I'm grateful that it's to the shoulder.

But really, I'm not really grateful to see any LAP beaten up and I really don't think that.

It just doesn't sit in Doctor Who.

See, I adore it.

I'm happy to have old people and don't forget that we do push Mrs. Pocket off the roof.

And let's not forget that John Pertwe got into fights all the time.

Yeah, no, I really adore that.

And I do think it is the sort of thing that little kids are actually likely to enjoy.

Sure they would.

I think it's something really creepy about the slow, deliberate way they move too.

I think.

Yeah, the great playground chasings thing.

To me, that kind of makes it okay to push them off buildings or whack them with bits of wood because they're clearly not the friendly, cuddly old people, but, um, with their clearly something alien and something unpleasant.

Yeah, this is blink on a playground budget.

No, it really is.

And it should probably be called Rory's story, not Amy's choice, since we find out who Rory is, the hair, we need to talk about that.

[05:00]

Oh my god.

It's so great.

There's that massive symbolic moment where Rory cuts the ponytail on.

Oh, it's so Samson and Delighto.

It's the emotional arc of the episode.

But then Karen just says, I was starting to like it.

Which makes me doubt her.

But it's just undercutting him at like every available moment.

But the hair is so disgusting.

It actually makes me like the character a little bit less and I know that that is slightly the effect that they're going for, but it's terrible having to sit through the episode looking at that hair and it's not just the mullet.

It's the dreadful top as well.

It's artful, isn't it?

The ponytail is terrible, but then so is Amy's fake pregnancy belly that she's got that she carts around unconvincingly for the whole episode.

So you've got you've got both companions working with sort of unwieldy costume slash props throughout the whole thing.

[06:00]

I'd like to see that as a nod at the same year too, um, the great Australian, um, Saint Nicole Kidman, who was wearing exactly the same thing at the, uh, at the Golden Globes and then turned up on the set of Australia a week later with an absolutely flat belly. true because my friends were working on it.

I thought you meant a mullet.

And once she married several of those.

Yeah, no, I thought that was, look, it really does lampoon every sacred cow, doesn't it?

And I'd like to think that it's having a nod at Midsomer murders and all of those British.

Yeah.

Oh, totally is. other, you know, sacred stallards and maybe are not at their audiences as well.

Very much so.

Very much so.

So, yeah, even though it seems, shall we say, Jejune, one 1st viewing for several of us sitting here doing this podcast, it, I get what Johnny's saying, because it's, it actually does go deeper and touch deeper.

Who's the writer on this one?

It's a lady person writer isn't it?

[07:02]

No, actually, it's really interesting who it is.

It's Simon Nye.

So he is a reasonably big name.

Bill knows Toy Child.

So back then he was best known for men behaving badly.

Which is very good.

Yeah it's pretty good.

Now it's he's best known for the Dorrells.

Okay.

Yeah, but Darrell is fun.

I think this season seems to have a sort of embarrassment of writers in that it can, it can even afford to shift Neil Gaiman, of all people, to next season, you know, and I think that this is a really smart and witty episode, and I was looking online to see if Simon Knight kind of wished he'd come back, and he's sort of going, no, no, I'm quite happy to have just done my wine, it was fun, and that's all I want to do, but, um, I could have, uh, I could have gone for another episode or 2 from him.

Certainly, his dialogue is really funny.

And, you know, the, that opening scene.

That makes it work.

Yeah, you know that opening scene where they're in Ledworth and...

And the dog...

[08:03]

Like the doctor is incredibly bored.

And so there's that sort of wonderful line.

What do you do to stave off the self-harm?

And then, you know, they wake up in the TARDIS and he identifies it as a terrible nightmare.

And the other 2 have just had a dream.

Well, a man.

Yeah, a really good man.

Um, like all of that stuff is funny and there is funny dialogue all the way through.

I love the moment where Rory decides that he doesn't like the Dream Lord.

You know, like several minutes after the rest of us have all sort of decided that he's a villain.

Like all of that stuff.

I think I think lifts it.

And it's quite nice to all the dialogue that's given to the Dreamlord.

That kind of throwaway sarcasm is always very funny.

Like when he's in the butcher's shop and he says, oh, we've got to use these places or else they'll close down.

It's like, yeah, just those nice things. lines that, yeah, and he does it with a middle club with a sneer it out at the, at the dwindling middle class, which is what this is about.

Is it politically?

No, it doesn't have political stance, does it?

[09:04]

It's just saying, this is the BBC and aren't we twee, but we love us anyway.

I love the Dreamlord.

I love Toby Jones.

Love Toby Jones.

Yeah.

He's just amazing.

And I think the the, the real genius of it is the, is the wheedling away at the doctor.

I don't think we've ever seen anyone do this to say, look, you know, to be sort of, um, being narky to him all the time, sort of pointing out, pointing out his his tawdry quirks and so on and saying, you know, just undermining his confidence all the time.

It's just, it's, it's really sort of wicked and, and it's, um, it, it makes it feel like, you know, the theme of this story that the doctor has this uh, underlying self-doubt and self-loathing.

This is, uh, this is for me is something new.

I don't think we see it anywhere else.

And it could have developed something else.

You know, you could see this being a story arc of some sort where the doctor's lack of confidence in his own abilities actually becomes a problem later on.

[10:08]

So I think for me, it's a combination of a really nifty idea and a great performance that that lifts the whole thing.

I've said before that Moffat's doctors are Moffat, and they both were like all 3 of them, I guess, um, have some degree of self-loathing.

Like, I think it's actually a super interesting insight at this point.

Like, now I can't have seen Matt Smith in action, and he can't really have known where things were going to go.

But all the way back from joking apart, Moffatt has had this feeling that he's a bit of a bad person and and so his doctors are a little bit like that.

[11:08]

And so in the 11th hour, he lies to Amy about why he's bringing her on board.

You know, he sort of flatters her by saying, oh, you know, I'm lonely, or confirming her guess that that's the reason, but really he's brought her on board because of the crack.

And then all of next season.

He lies about her pregnancy or conceals it from her or whatever.

And he is kind of a bad person.

And so this does seem to be crystallising that theme really sort of surprisingly early.

And although they don't run with it explicitly, we never see the Dream Lord again or anything like him.

I think it does reflect something that's eventually a feature of the doctor in the Moffat era.

It's a new broom as well.

You can't imagine the story being told with David Tennant's I'm clever, doctor, doing the same thing.

You need a doctor who's got that kind of introspection and those foibles to kind of chip away at.

I can almost see it with Charlton, but it ends, it sets up an interesting polemic with Jamie and so yeah, Charlton.

[12:15]

And we all know it was Trout.

There has to be a vulnerability in the doctor for this story to work.

And because the Dream Lord's so nasty about a whole lot of things like the way the doctor dresses, the way he looks, the way he surrounds himself with young girls, you know, all of these things, which are, um...

Very Davison.

Their point, their points of...

Did I say not just in the series?

I didn't say that.

Oh.

But it would have worked with Davison as well, wouldn't it, Johnny?

I mean, there's a few, you need a soft doctor for this to it.

And look, I don't know what you guys have been talking about in the earlier episodes, of course, but I think that for me, Matt Smith's doctor took a little while to land because he was kind of in Tenant's shadow a bit because we was coming from one young, dashing handsome doctor to another, and so I feel that in his 1st couple of episodes, he's trying to find what differentiates him from Tenet.

And it's around these episodes like Amy's Choice and Vincent and the Lodger, where you start to see that this is a very different doctor.

[13:21]

You know, he's he's goofier, he's more guileless, he's more of an innocent, he's more childlike, and and I think Matt Smith is less afraid to make himself look a bit foolish on screen, if you know what I mean.

Like, I'm thinking of that, where he's running away from the old people and he's going to hide himself in the, in the butcher's safe.

He's not afraid to to kind of fall about and look, do his kind of gawky, awkward movement kind of thing. has a physicality that's really been missing from the doctor, I think.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah.

So for me, this is where I start to.

I start to like this doctor a little bit more around these mid and late episodes of this season.

You see, we pretty much thought that he landed straight away and we were absolutely relieved by the difference between him and Tennant and and I guess in this episode, I thought the most striking new thing that he does is his reaction to the Dreamlord when the Dreamlord 1st turns up because, you know, when Tennant does anger, it's all teeth and kind of flecks of spittle and things.

[14:26]

And and Matt sets his face in a really, really, um, like in a different way.

He's been angry before and he's been low key angry before, but there's a real level of contempt in the way that just he sets his jaw.

He barely moves his mouth as he speaks to the dreamlord.

And that's the thing that strikes me about Matt, is his ability to do anger.

Uh, and to be threatening, without kind of going over the top, without shouting, by by underplaying it.

And, you know, that thing about the doctor has some line about where did you pick up this ridiculous cabaret or something like that.

And I think he's really properly threatening and he's not going to tolerate any of the Dreamlord's crap.

And so the goofiness and that weird, awkward physicality and stuff.

Uh, you know, like a strange contrast to, to some real steel.

[15:27]

Do you know what I mean?

And some real proper menace, uh, that Matt is capable of that I don't think Tennant ever really attempted.

I think tenant, tenants doctor so wants to be likeable.

Whereas Matt, I don't know, I don't know about Matt.

Matt's a bit like Tom and I think he can be angry in different ways.

Yeah.

Yeah. certainly.

I mean, he doesn't do a big shout in this episode and when he does, we talked about it in the beast below when he sort of suddenly shouts at Amy and it's absolutely terrifying.

Um, but he can do anger in a really low key.

It's early time, isn't it?

It's like Tom in Horror of Fang Rock or Tom in season 12.

That's right.

Tom has that steely anger.

He can also when he yells, like he does in the pirate planet.

It's properly shocking, like when Matt does, but he can also turn anger into comedy, which Matt does as well.

Yeah, and I think if Matt Smith does seem to be better at making the leap between those dark moments in those funny moments.

He seems to be able to turn on a pin a little bit better than tenant perhaps.

[16:30]

I think that Tenet is for 10 of the comedy is a mask and and a role that the doctor's playing, and sometimes that drops away, and you can actually visibly see him making it look like it's dropping away.

Do you know what I mean?

Whereas Matt doesn't seem to have that guile.

Like, I think what you see is what you get with Matt.

He's not playing a role.

Yeah.

And Peter, I was interested when you said that, you know, you think that Rory's the, the, the one of these characters, which you think is the, is the one you don't respond to the most, for me, I think that actually the, the team isn't really complete until the 3 of them are there.

And I much prefer the combination of the doctor.

Dr. Amy and Rory to just the doctor and Amy, because actually, I think the 2 of them bring out something different in Matt's performance because it allows him to take a step back to be a step more aloof from, from, um, from these pair of human companions and he has a male companion and a female companion to interact with in different ways.

[17:34]

And that's what for me is one of the shifts in his character.

Throughout this story, is we start off with a competition between the doctor and Rory for Amy's affection, and in the end, the doctor loses, which is a really uncommon thing to happen in a doctor episode.

But in that competition.

Um, the doctor loses and and Amy realises her affection for Rory.

Rory realises the power of that too.

And the doctor is happy to lose because he finds a way to interact with his companions, which is much more, uh, which he's much more comfortable in, I think.

Well, I mean, wasn't it his intention last week and the week before to actually fix their relationship?

So at the end of flesh and stone, where Amy comes onto him and he sort of grabs her and drags her back into the Tartar and then picks Rory up at his buck's night and takes them to Venice precisely in order to kind of fix the relationship up.

[18:36]

And it doesn't quite take.

I mean, they're in quite a good place at the end of vampires of Venice, and Rory's had the chance to kind of critique the doctor a bit.

But here is where it actually gets solved.

And I think from here on in, whenever Amy is given the choice between the doctor and Rory, she will always pick Rory, just absolutely reliably.

She was never not going to.

She just wanted her summer holiday with Ernest Stubbs and Cliff Richard on the top of the red double decker bus.

It's perfectly understandable.

This was just one long hen's night with her raggedy stuffed toy boy.

But I think there was a point at which she could have decided not to go back.

And I do think that when Rory dies and the doctor travels with Amy...

Spoilers.

Yeah, spoilers, sorry.

Doesn't that happen in this episode as well?

Not really.

Spoilers.

Um, that in a way that's almost her making the decision not to go back.

[19:42]

At one point, she can't even remember that there was going to be a wedding.

That 2nd half of the series, you know, she doesn't know that there's going to be a wedding.

She will say to Vincent, she's not the marrying kind.

There comes a point in this season where the decision.

And even here, do you know what I mean?

She says, why would anyone leave the Tartars?

Why, why would we ever choose to go back and live in upper lead worth like that?

Amy's convinced that this is real because she would never make the series of decisions that leads her to Upper Leadworth.

And so I think that it's up in the air.

And that's what this whole season is about.

Um, and I think that this episode prefigures the final decision, which is a clever moffety resolution.

I don't actually disagree with any of that.

I agree with you, Johnny, that the dynamic works well, and I think that the 3 characters together work well.

The jury for me is slightly out on the success of Rory as a character.

I'm not sure how well defined he is.

[20:44]

Um, I do like what happens in this episode and the beat that it hits with um, Amy and Rory and the focus on them.

But I think it slightly misses the mark.

I think there might have been a cleverer or subtler way of telling that character beat.

Does Amy really have to prove that she die for Rory to make the and move their relationship onto firmer ground?

I think that feels a little bit overwrought in the storytelling.

Perhaps you're right, because it does lead to that moment where Amy decides to commit suicide in one of the world and take the doctor with her.

And, well, it's all it's all makes sense within the fiction of the story.

It is an odd thing to see in Doctor Who.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I don't hate it at all.

I don't think it's terrible.

I just, it slightly misses the mark for me.

I think it's unsubtle.

And I think if Stephen Moffatt had been writing this episode and we all know he gave it a good old redraft, I think maybe it might have made it in a cleverer way.

[21:45]

Yeah.

I compare the Dr. and Amy and Rory's love triangle to the Dr. Rose and Mickey.

And it's really, they're completely different in the sense that there was never any doubt that Rose was going to choose the doctor, right, from the very, from the very 1st episode, and from then on, Mickey is kind of playing catch up all the time.

I think it's interesting that the series then decides to say, there's something valuable in just being human.

And I think that Rory's great active love for Amy is travelling in TARDIS.

Like, he would not, he'd always strikes me, but he wouldn't necessarily choose to do that, except that he knows that that's what makes um, Amy happy.

And so he's, he's gone along for the ride.

And that Amy finds something.

Find something in that basic humanity, which is a little bit more than the doctor can offer.

Johnny, that's exactly it, actually.

I think, um, it's the fact that Rory makes concessions for Amy, um, and that is his sacrifice and that's because he loves her.

[22:48]

And I think what I would have preferred to have seen was rather than some big act or big revelation or epiphany for Amy.

I just wanted to see her decide to make concessions for him.

Yes, that's all it's printed on.

That's all it would have taken.

We need the arrogance to chip down a bit.

It's not even defensibility on her part.

It's just knowing that she's the alpha in the chicken coop.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of squawking and feather ruffling in this episode.

And Johnny, that was a really good comparison, actually, with Rose and Mickey and the doctor, which hadn't, I hadn't actually thought about very much.

No, because they're dead to me too.

It's all a tea.

I think Boomtown is very instructive here because Boomtown does such a great job of tackling and moving Rose and Mickey's relationship to a different level.

And it does it breaking your heart with small, with little things that happen.

Like, brilliant writing.

Oh, good.

And it works for the characters because it reinforces what roses, which is using Mickey.

[23:53]

You know, he's there when she wants to go to a hotel for an hour and then she'll up and leave him.

Whereas Mickey is utterly devoted to her and realises in that episode that she will never feel the same way about him and so he has to move on.

Um, Yeah, I feel like I'm bagging Amy's choice a little bit and I am, but it's only a little bit.

I feel like I would have liked more of that kind of boom town ethos to it.

I like that there's an inherent tension between them that never really goes away.

Sometimes there's a general thought about Doctor Who, but everyone who is on the TARDIS crew has to get on and they have to be soulmates and they have to love each other and they have to great time all the time.

Like Tegan and Adrick.

Like Tegan and Annie Bob.

Taking a chameleon.

And while I'm not necessarily in bickering with roundels, but I think that there's room for differences in how the characters see the situations and I think that's interesting.

[24:55]

And if I can scoot a forward a few episodes to the impossible astronaut to just pull in something that Nathan was saying about Matt Smith's ability to to kind of to be angry.

It's just a terrific beat in that episode when they're in the Tartar, and the doctor that knows that his companions are keeping something from him.

And he just says to Amy, why has somebody put you up to this?

And he shoots a just a look of pure venom at Rory at that point.

Right.

And it's, to me, it's always chilling that just that that little moment he chooses to play that line by just reminding us that he's never, he's never as comfortable with Rory as he is with Amy.

That's right, they never love each other, do they?

The doctor and Rory?

Not in the, yeah, certainly not within that unconditional way, but Amy and the doctor do.

And it's Amy that appears to the doctor when he regenerates, not Rory.

Not even Amy and Rory and River, just Amy.

It's there's 2 points there. that tension between the 3 of them is interesting.

[25:59]

It's what it, what makes this, this trio of characters work.

And also just, just echoing what Nathan's saying is that occasionally Matt Smith can really just shock you if how serious and how grim he can, he can be.

I actually think again, the choices between childhood and adulthood.

And so, you have Amy running off with her imaginary childhood friend on the night before her wedding in order to avoid her wedding.

And here, she has the choice between hanging around with him in the magic box, you know, in this sort of fantasy land, and actual adulthood, and motherhood, right?

Pregnancy, being married, and for her, the choice is still childhood.

But I think that what's interesting and the reason that Rory has to die in Ledworth is to change what that choice means.

[27:09]

So originally, there's a big conversation between Amy and Rory in the TARDIS, about the relative merits of travelling in the TARDIS and Ledworth, and she's very clear that she wants to travel in the TARDIS, and Rory is a bit kind of miffed by that because he recognises rightly that it's a rejection of him.

You know, she excitedly says it can continue to be the night before our wedding for as long as we like, isn't that great.

And he's, you know.

And so when Rory dies in Ledworth, her choice to go back on the Tartars is no longer a choice to avoid Rory.

It's the choice to have Rory in her life because she loves him.

And so the whole valency of that choice changes with his death.

And I think that that's why it's there.

I agree with you, Peter that it is all a little bit overwrought.

Although Karen underplays it so wonderful. good in this episode.

Remember when she says to the doctor, well, what's the point of view then?

[28:10]

That's got to be a moth that line?

That feels so mothy.

It's so good though, isn't it?

You know, like, you're not Rory, I don't love you.

If you can't get me out of this scrape, if you can't save Ferri's life, then why are you even here?

I find that an appalling line and one that really reveals the self-centredness of, I won't say millennials because hello, listener.

But it really just shows me that even though Moffatt, Stephen Moffatt writes.

Uh, we've talked about his female paradigms before, but he still understands his own foibles and it's interesting, isn't it?

He is a man who sees his own shadows.

So he still writes her.

Yeah, I guess in a way that Russell had always set up Rose, that the flaws are very clear, the cracks are very open and well lit.

And I think it just shows us what a flawed person, Amy, really is to expect the doctor to still be a Freudian or Jungian child archetype when he's also just another person.

[29:12]

Okay, he's a very big person, but trying to do his best.

Yeah, but I think Moffatt doesn't write Doctor Who liked that as if they're sort of real people who need kind of...

Yeah, I think that the doctor plays a story role.

It's almost like, like she's, she's rejecting him as a sort of potential sort of mate or match or hero or something like that and is putting him in the role of the sort of daffy madman in a box that Hartnell is, you know, Hartnell's not the main character when Doctor Who 1st starts.

He's just the crazy old man who gets Ian and Barbara into various scrapes and they're the main character.

And it's kind of like this rejection of the idea.

You know, it's this thing.

Why would I want you when I have Rory, you know, you are not my lover, you are not the person I care about.

It really, really is, like, it's dark, and, you know, it comes from a sort of inner scene, which is about grief, I guess.

But it is such a such a superbly blunt rejection of the idea that running away with a doctor is the right thing to do.

[30:19]

But I think I think that that rejection doesn't take.

And the great thing about Amy's choice is that the end of it when the doctor blows up the TARDIS.

He blows up what they've decided is the real world because that's not real either.

And what we have at the end is that Amy can be an adult and can have a relationship with Rory without rejecting those elements of her childhood that made her what she is and that were so important to her as a child.

And she'll replay this in the Big Bang.

She gets married, but then she says no, this isn't acceptable.

The doctor should be here.

I'm not going to reject the doctor completely in order to be an adult.

And she brings the doctor back into existence in the same way that Russell brought the doctor back into existence in 2005.

This story has them making a 3rd choice that she doesn't have to choose Ledworth.

[31:26]

She doesn't have to just choose the doctor.

She gets to have the doctor and Rory in their rightful place, I think.

That is undeniably a good beat for Amy, I think, and sort of makes her character more whole.

Unfortunately, it also reveals the problem with Rory in that Rory runs against the ethos of the series in that the thing that the companion should want to do is go off and have adventures with the doctor, that should be the ultimate thing.

They never want to leave the doctor's side, they want the universe opened up for them, and Rory rails against that.

Rory just wants to live a quiet life and he wants to drag Amy back down into that.

Now, I don't necessarily think that that's a terrible thing on Rory's behalf, and I'm not sure that it's the right thing that Amy doesn't want that, but it limits Rory as a character a little bit and makes me feel like I'm not on his side.

It doesn't play out like that though, in the end, does it?

And by kind of midway through series 7, Rory and Amy are running off with the doctor to have jolly adventures and then going back to their real lives and stuff.

[32:33]

Like, I think he's into it.

Yeah, I like that much more as Rory goes along and as he becomes more sort of acclimatised to the doctor and sort of fulfils the Harry Sullivan role, I warm up to him much more.

I do think it's a problem with this season and his character.

And as I said before, not a huge problem, but it niggles away at me slightly.

Where do you reckon it's resolved?

I think when he comes back next season and basically chooses to go along with the doctor and the team in the Impossible Astronaut, it starts to get better.

So once you've sort of fulfilled this arc with Amy and him playing that specific role, once he's out of that, it works more as character.

Yeah, I'd say that a Christmas carol.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, I think it's interesting you describe it as a, as, you know, as the climax of the story being the characters making a 3rd choice, instead of the kind of binary that they're presented with, but I wondered if it doesn't actually work in the other way, but it kind of negates the journey the characters have been on, you know, because Amy makes her choice between these 2 worlds, but actually neither of them were real anyway.

[33:45]

So what does it matter?

And this is a problem.

This is a problem.

I think with story set in kind of dream worlds or cyberspace or whatever it is that you always get the feeling that it was fairly inconsequential at the end.

For me, for me, the fact that Amy's choice kind of persists into the real world after we've blown up the 2 makes it a bit more satisfying, but it was just interesting when you described it as a 3rd choice, and I was starting to think, is it actually the lack of a choice between those 2?

I guess so.

It's just that it's the way the characters change. you know what I mean?

Like that, even though it hasn't been real, whatever that means, because it's Doctor Who and it's a TV program and it's never real anyway.

Um, but it's, it's not real.

But they've changed and Rory and Amy do something they've never done before.

We've always seen Amy hesitant and slightly embarrassed by Rory, like right back from the 11th hour and kind of unwilling to show affection to him.

[34:48]

And I remember there's that conversation about who's a gooseberry, like I think the, the dreamlord calls Rory a gooseberry, and that final scene is Rory and Amy staring into each other's eyes and the doctor trying to say something to attract their attention or decide whether he needs to be there at all, and he is absolutely the gooseberry in that scene.

So the dynamic between the characters has changed fundamentally because these 2 choices have been presented to Amy and she's made the choice that she has.

Um, And, you know, like I said, it doesn't take until really the final episode.

But I do think that this in microcosm is the kind of, Kind of the R of the season.

The arc isn't the crack.

The arc is Amy deciding whether to go for adulthood or childhood and eventually deciding, well, I'm having both.

And I love that arc.

Like, I just love what it means.

[35:49]

I think there's also, on a completely different view of what the choice is that's happening in this episode.

We're also being asked to choose between 2 different types of Doctor Who, I think, because, you know, on one hand, there's the slightly wacky Douglas Adams type, there's aliens living in old people in a sleepy country town kind of Doctor Who's...

And on the other hand, there's the Christopher H.

Bidmead, kind of.

We're all trapped in the TARDIS, and there's a scientific bro, and, you know, we've got to try and work that out kind of thing.

And I don't think...

You're saying we're being asked to choose between inside the spaceship and the keys of marathon?

That's right That's right.

Now, there's a, there's a, there's a point, girls.

That's, um, I don't think anyone was intending that, but that's the kind of effect it has watching it.

And I think one of the things the episode does well is it keeps each scene.

In each of the 2 worlds relatively short and punchy.

So we don't get too used to either of the 2 worlds before we're sna back to the other one.

There's always a slight unease about when that bird song is going to be heard and when that transition is going to take place.

[36:56]

It's funny, I originally didn't like this episode very much because I thought that that cold sum thing was just a bit too star trekky, like a little bit too kind of crummy.

And I think the reveal that the doctor knew all along that a cold sun was an impossibility, which is what he says at the end, and maybe he's lying, rule one.

For no good reason other than to extend the narrative in the moment, which is very tricky in itself.

And I think it's a cheap threat in that it's on the screen. you know.

I don't know.

I thought the, the, the, the crystal myth effect was very Sydney, or very Western Australia.

It was...

Sprinkled all over the Tartars, you know.

It looks great.

It must have been when we were saying it's cheap, I thought, actually, cleaning that stuff up is nothing cheap about that.

And it is one of the most striking images of the season.

It is.

You know, we're not we're not a huge fan.

I don't think of that console room, but when you turn off those orange lights, doesn't it instantly look better?

I've grown up to it now.

[37:58]

I can see it's his homage to Cushing and his happiness with those colour dalek films.

And the box is trying to do that as well.

We haven't talked about the police box, but why didn't we just get a cushing box?

Come on, it's just so much better.

It's pretty close though, isn't it?

No, no, not to me.

The proportions are all wrong in those windows.

This is the thing about this episode, I think.

It's slightly, it's slightly successful in my mind, but it's also slightly muddled.

And I think it might be because we don't have a natural Doctor Who writer or a natural sci-fi rice behind it.

And so the things that it goes for are not the things you would expect that it would go for.

And so it ends up being some weird technobabble explanation for why the dream lord existed in that, which is fine on its own terms, but I don't think a more natural doctor writer might have gone in that direction for it.

But also because, um, like 3 in 3 episodes time, Richard Curtis is an outsider to Doctor Who as well.

And he chooses a completely different spin on the program and tackles subject matter that you wouldn't normally within the program.

[39:03]

That's part of why this episode works and why it doesn't.

The technobabbly ending is disappointing and it is unsatisfying after everything that's gone for it.

But for me, it's saved slightly by the little reflection of the rewards face and the console because it makes you remember the doctor's self-doubt and self-loathing hasn't gone away, but it still exists under the surface.

Compare it to roughly the same ending at the end of the trial of a time ward. very strange things to to juxtapose here, except that the one in Amy's choice works far, far better because it's a, it's a reminder of the themes of the episode.

Uh, rather than just a, well, I don't know what it is that happens at the end of the trial.

I should go down that dark path.

It's interesting what Richard said earlier about it would have to be one of the one of the nicer doctors like Davidson.

I think a story like this would have worked very well with Colin Baker's doctor because Colin Baker's doctor is all front and all bluster and to have sort of had an opposite to him, which kind of niggled away at him and exposed his failings would have been really interesting. played by Patrick Trouton.

[40:18]

Love to have seen how that would have played out.

It could only have been played by Brian Blessard.

And the Dream Lord is great, isn't he?

It's a really great performance and Toby Jones is it's one of those spunk castings that's actually too good for the show.

We've got Bill Nai in this season.

We have we have some other blessed laurels that descend upon our heads, don't we?

So I'm trying to think who else is quite wonderful in this season, Johnny, who else stands out?

In tiny guest pub.

Oh, I wasn't on the...

I think the highest is Helen McCrory.

And if you've ever seen her on stage or even in film.

I mean, I know she's Penny Dreadfuls, but if you actually see her do Shakespeare or Raticon or just anything.

She's extraordinary.

She's dying a rig level.

You're going to love last week's episode, Richard.

Yeah, I said, I wasn't gone, vampires of Venice, because it's definitely one of my favourites, simply because of how it plays Posh Mummy's son.

[41:23]

And that really does feel like Thatcher and Mark. really what that one's about.

The combination of Matt Smith with a acclaimed older generation actor never fails.

And I think for me, the best of it is him and Michael Gambin in a Christmas carol, but it works every time that they bring...

Some of us are feeling a bit sensitive, Johnny, because Toby is actually younger than several of us.

I didn't check that myself before.

Well, you know he's Freddie Jones's son and the wonderful effusive Freddie Jones, who was in everything.

He stands out in his role in June, of course, but he's in a lot of other things as well, isn't he?

I'll just say that Toby Jones never lets a line get away.

You know, he speaks every word in it.

He, he, he reads his line readings are all perfectly calibrated.

Yeah, he's very theatre.

And that's the sort of skill you get from somebody who's been working for a really long time.

[42:25]

Toby Jones grew up literally in the dust of the from the sides watching his dad from really early age, at least for what, just watching performances and that he gets intonation.

He gets the structure of language and plays with it.

Have you seen him in dad's army?

Do you know, I can't believe we've got this far without mentioning Dobby the house elf, to be honest.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, the makeup's great. didn't spot it thought he was played by David Tennant.

Hey, but yeah, I mean, he does the accent.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And Trim and Capote, of course, yeah.

Yeah, that's on.

Just as a segue, if, oh no, it won't be by the time this has gone out.

There's a great little Doco on Kapote that's part of the Mardi Gras Film Festival, but you'll be able to get it on download worth watching.

Capote.

Yeah, Toby Jones, I mean, and Capote.

Quite different people underneath, though.

I think it's one of the things that struck me about the Dreamlord is that he's a male villain, and rightly the Russell T. Davies era is full to the brim of great female villains, and that's great.

[43:33]

But we've been, I think, missing a really good strong male opposite for the doctor as well, and the Dream Lord is that.

So, the doctor, the doctor has found himself in a van and he's luckily found some, some younger people in Ledworth to rescue from the old age pensioners, but it's got to be said that none of those people look at all convincingly like they're running in terror from the old age people and all of them look like stunt performers working out how to, how to get onto a moving vehicle.

What are they doing there?

What's that bit for?

I don't know.

And it's indicative of the problem with this episode in that it's hedging its bets.

It doesn't really know what it wants to be.

It doesn't know if it wants to be a strange dream world where they're in an empty leadworth, which is just populated with old people with eyes coming out of their mouths, or if it wants to be sort of have one foot in the real world and have actual regular people inhabiting this village and running away from the menacing old people.

[44:49]

And so it just kind of like throws it in to kind of, you know, give a nod towards it, and it's not convincing in the slightest.

You know, I think it's there to critique because at every stage the Dreamlord is critiquing how the doctor acts, how he behaves is modus operandi.

So he has to have a moment in the episode where he's saving people because otherwise he doesn't get to do that.

Um, except it doesn't, it never really makes the point about that.

And so it sticks kind of oddly mid-episode and leaves you wondering what exactly it's trying to do.

The other problem, I think, with lead worth is that it's clearly meant to be like an idol in some way, and it's meant to contrast with the Tartars.

It's got to be a possible sort of attractive outcome of Amy and Rory's life.

But it is so miserable.

It's the most miserable.

I thought it was snowing. gorgeous.

They're freezing their butt off, sitting on that bench while snow falls on them.

[45:49]

The playground is like a massive mud patch.

Like why is anyone outside playing at all?

It's it's the most miserable location shoot since Black Orchard, I reckon.

Rory has fulfilled his dream of becoming a doctor, apparently.

And the most exciting thing he has to deal with is is your hippo okay?

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

And then when you go to the scene shot over at the, at the house, they're all sunny and bright.

So we're back to freak weather conditions, clearly.

Well, they've run out of money and they can't remount and it doesn't matter what the weather is.

We're going to get this in the can.

Upper Ledworth, indeed.

Cheap, cheaper lead work.

So miserable.

Do you feel it's missing an axe on because those things that those things that pop out of their mouths.

Like, like, like enormous thermometers are a bit axe on axe on.

I think they were scoped for a really whacked out kind of surreal version of those upper Ledworth scenes, but instead it's sort of mildly menacing old deers shuffling around.

[46:55]

And while that has charms of its own.

I'm not sure it quite gets there.

Yeah, there's a, I've got the, I was telling Nathan before, I've, I've just Googled up the shooting script, which is available online, and the beer where the old age pensioners are attacking the house and Amy and Rory are trapped inside.

Um, I don't know if you remember, there's a shot looking out the window where 2 of them are, 2 of them have got their hands on the TARS.

They're kind of, they look half like they're trying to push it over and half like they're using it to steady themselves.

The shooting script says, but it's an homage to 2001.

Where...

Where the aliens were looking at the monolith and sort of gazing up adoringly at it.

And I thought to myself, I did not get that at all.

If you'd asked me, if you'd asked me, name the, name the bit of Kubra Commage in Amy's choice, I would not have plumbed for when the, um, when the old people are, you know, just, um, are hugging the TARDIS briefly out of a, out of a, looked out of a window.

[48:00]

Weird.

I think it is that thing that we say about Simon Nye.

Like there are disadvantages to someone who doesn't quite know what Doctor Who does writing for it.

But I also think that it means that we do something that we've never done before, and I'm absolutely on board with that.

I wish that Russell had written this because you can't see him passing up a setup like murderous old people and not having the most amount of fun with it.

And there's not a whole lot of fun to be gained from those images.

I mean, maybe the one where the doctor sort of chucks that old biddy from the 2nd floor window with a lamp.

I mean, that's about the closest it comes to being outlandish and a bit surreal and shocking.

Yeah, you don't remember Freddie and Daphne doing that in Scooby-Doo?

Although.

[49:14]

Well, dear listener, that's all we have time for this week.

We'll be back next week to find out how 2020 turned out as we take a trip with the Silurians to the hungry earth.

In the meantime, you can find us where wherever you get your podcasts and you can keep up with us at Flight For Entirety on Facebook, at FTE Podcast on Twitter, and on our website, Flight For Entirety.com, where you'll find links to our other podcasts, Bondfinger, and Jody into Terra.

Johnny, where can people find you online?

They can find me on Twitter at Johnny Spandrel and read everything I've ever thought about Doctor Who at randomhunas.com.

And Johnny's also contactable if you have any problems with the Shebogans.

Awesome.

Until next time, please remember to hoover the console room thoroughly after your next trip to the Candle Meadows of Carraston Slava.

Thank you very much for listening and good night.

Good night.

Good night.

[50:14]

Nighty night, dear listener.

That was Flight 3 Entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley, Peter Griffiths, Johnny Spandrel, and Richard Stone.

Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb.

This episode, a man who sees his own shadows, was recorded on the 27th of February 2021 and released on the 25th of April.

For those of you dismayed that the last 2 episodes of Flight 3 entirety have focussed on the details of the regular characters' romantic relationships, we would like to reassure you that normal service will resume next week with monsters with space names wearing rubber suits.

We'll see you then.

Yeah, you don't remember Freddy and Daphne doing that in Scooby-Doo.

Although, Well, you know, if they got mini from the end of time, I cheerfully crack her over the head with a 2 button.

That is not staying in.

That's so agious.

I'm right here.

I reckon I've got an out there, so I might wind it up.

[51:18]

We're going to...

Did we miss any extraordinary things to say about this?

I'm trying to think about extraordinary things.

Nah.

No, I think it's thin, but I think it's thin.

I want to know why Johnny likes it so much because we all think you're daft.

No, no, I like it.

I didn't like it originally.

No, but seriously, Johnny, can you talk about why you think it's one of the best to this season?

I find, um, I, it might be me being slightly unfair to other episodes in the season, but I always find there's something that kind of irritates me about each of them. you know, in a way that I can't get past.

And particularly in the 1st half of the season, less so in the 2nd half of the season, but this, I guess I like this because, um, I, I can't find anything in it that, that, Makes me, um, Makes me dislike it.

You know, that makes me that I can't get over it.

You know, I think that it's, it's the, it's the novelty of the concept, it's the wittiness of the writing, it's the warmth of the performances, and it's probably got a lot to do with Toby Jones in that protagonist role too.

[52:30]

For me, it all hangs together nicely in a way that a lot of the upper episodes.

Didn't.

But I'm getting the sense that maybe I'm having a very different reaction to this season to to the ones you guys are having.

Well, from what you just said there, I wouldn't fight your characterisation of the episode very hard there.

I think there's actually a lot to be said for.

I didn't warm to it, but, you know, I'm on board with a lot of what you said.

All right, I think I'm going to do an outro.

I think that's actually not a bad place to stop.

That was good.

Thanks, Richard.

That elicited a good kind of final speech.

All right?

Here goes.

Well, dear listener, that's all we have time for this week.