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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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...
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.