Hello, dear listener and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety.
The only Doctor Who podcast that has this nagging feeling that we
might have forgotten to turn something off upstairs.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Todd.
I'm Brendan.
And I'm Eric.
Well, over the years, the Silurians have been exploded twice and
poisoned with hexachromite gas once, so we have good reason to be
a little anxious about how things are going to turn out today.
Still, Marvin the Paranoid Android seems nice and the decor here
is comforting and familiar.
So let's find out how the negotiations pan out in cold blood.
Can I say something about the decor?
It's that thing I hinted at last week that will make Todd ever so
happy?
Oh, what's that?
Um, so part of this was filmed at the same botanical gardens that
the end of the doctor's daughter takes place in.
I'm estatic about that.
Oh, another point deducted from this episode.
And much like this episode, I just paid off the cliffhanger I set
up last week with a voiceover.
So we start this episode with a picture of the earth and it's a
voiceover from a 1000 years in the future.
Do we know that at this point?
The monologue does mention that this is the story of a day a 1000
years past where we started sharing the planet with humanity?
So it cheats?
It cheats.
Imagine that.
Moffat era story cheating.
I know.
It's extraordinary. 1st few seconds.
So the other cliffhanger resolution, which is, of course, Amy is
about to be vivisected, is resolved in a classic, say, with era
way by, um, it's not someone coming in saying, no, stop, but it is
basically a, uh, PA announcement, uh, telling Malik that he has to
stop.
And so he leaves.
Yeah, the motion detector's gone off and the lights on the front
porch have come on.
And these kids need to get out of our front yard.
No, I mean, he's got to, he's got some more people to vivisect, I
guess.
Yeah, and D-Louse.
Yeah.
He's got to delouse them.
But doesn't she manage to pick his pocket?
Oh, dear, oh dear.
It really, you know, honestly.
Yeah.
She is somehow completely restrained in such a way that she can't
even move her hands and yet she picks his pocket.
It is, I feel frustrating.
It's so frustrating.
And and given how in the 11th hour, um, while dressed as a
kissogram, she's known to Khali from the dominators and steals his
car keys to lock.
Yeah, that's Cully from the Dominators.
Yeah.
It's it's set up that she nicks stuff from people that she's
kissogram for me.
I mean, you know, I suppose kidsogram can't pay terribly well.
No, she'd have to steal the occasional car, I think, to make ends
meet.
I'm just smiling at those comments.
So, I mean, there is a weird thing about the characterisation of
Malakare now because he has been vivisecting people, including
attractive father of one Mo Northover.
Yeah, but he's fine.
He's fine.
But now he's lovely.
Now we love him.
Hasn't he been doing it for a very long time?
Yes, he's been vivisecting people for a very long time.
And this is part of, um, again, the cut scenes from this story, and
there's a line later on where he says, no, no, I never do that to
the young ones.
Yes.
But he says, I've taken some of them and I've taken their genetic
code and extrapolated and they live for ages and you're like, you
don't see any other humans running around.
But no, there's a cut bit. where um, Amy and Mo discover that he's
got basically his own private petting zoo, if you like, you
including Tony's dog from when Mo was a kid and the dog ran away.
Wow.
But the dog is down here and it's fine.
It's been living there for 30 years because Malakare has been
extending all these animals lives.
So when he's talking about the young ones, he's not making a
distinction between humans and, um, other animals because to the
solarians, we are pets.
Or mammals.
Or mammals, yes.
That does not increase my enjoyment at all.
There's a Silurian petting zoo.
I would have loved to see that.
Yeah, it's one of those moments where they need this Allurians, all
of them, to be a horrible threat in episode one.
And so they're all horrible threat in episode one.
In episode two, he needs some of them to be good guys and some of
them to be bad guys.
And so suddenly, Malachi, the scientist, who is essentially a
Megala type figure in part one, becomes, oh, friendly old
scientist dude, that the doctor thinks is wonderful and wants to
have a makeout session with.
It is horribly done.
The other problem I have is the fact that all the mouse celery
insane to be quite reasonable people, but all the female salarians
who seem to be worries, just want to destroy everybody.
And I don't, I mean, whether it's casting or whatever, I just find
that a problem.
Well, in fact, it becomes more of a problem when you realise it's
the single female.
Well, Nasrene accepted, but the only other female human character
is also a problem.
So in a sense, this is a peace negotiation that is derailed by the
fact that women are unable to control their emotions.
In the scripting stage, it was sort of a couch 22, because
originally Restac was Alaya's brother.
Ah.
And the reason they, um, they decided not to do that was, 1st of
all, they didn't want a layer to be, A, the token woman, Solurian
and also B, the dead woman, Silurian.
Yeah.
And then they struck on the idea of, okay, well, what if the women
are the Warriors?
And, you know, we're getting a bit of Edgar Rice Burrows there and
Amazon's kind of kind of vibe.
Oh, and what if it's the same woman and they're part of the gene
pool and yeah, okay, we save on an actress, but also we introduce
the idea that these people have advanced genetic technology, which
again would have been paid off with the petting zoo.
Yeah.
But yeah, it does then create its own problem.
And that's something the Moffat era does quite a bit in that they
sort of go down a route of saying, well, hey, let's do something
progressive and let's have women aliens as well as men aliens
because we rarely sell them in the classic series, but then not
think about the roles they're giving them.
And yes, Todd, absolutely, making all the women aggressors
including the, um, just the soldiers wearing the masks, there's no
male shapes.
There's no, there's no men's soldiers.
So the 2 male solurians we meet, you know, the scientist and the
wise elder who's like, well, if you kill those humans, you're
going to have to kill me and 0 god, I'm very depressed.
But yeah, it does then create that unfortunate situation
especially when you have Ambrose as well.
It's sort of men reliable women unreliable.
And I think it's unintentional, but it comes from a place of not
thinking about it enough.
Yeah, no, I agree with you.
I don't think it was their intentions to do that.
But by the choices they've made, they've gone down a certain path
and that's the that's the outcome at the end of the day.
I mean, the whole Ambrose pot I just find so painful and annoying
throughout the whole thing and I just couldn't care less for her.
I even don't think the, I don't even feel that a layer's death is
even earned.
Like I just don't think there's enough.
I't know, I just wanted to build it up more to that point even.
It's just there because we need it to be there.
Yeah.
And it's not, I think I want, just to add the sort of little bit
of complexity to the women are irrational and can't handle emotion
thing.
It specifically about family.
It's that these females, uh, Ambrose and rest tack can't handle
that their family members are in danger.
And it's so it's very much this idea of the sort of mother, mother
bear, you know, protecting the cuff.
It's so trite and predictable.
It's Kipling, the female of the species more deadly than male.
So, um, I think you're right.
I think they were trying to sort of do something progressive and
it's not sort of painting them into a very tropic sort of corner
but it is, it's still, it's still problematic and, um, Yeah, I
generally kind of wish the entire Ambrose thing had been cut
almost.
I find her presence and her role throughout this entire 2nd
episode to be so awful.
She's so horrendous as a human being.
Uh, I could, especially compared with everyone else that she's
around.
It's bad.
It's also, you know, the fact that she doesn't learn her lesson.
Like she kills someone and like Tony has that sort of, you know, my
little girl, what have you done?
And she sort of faced with the consequences of it.
She knows that she's going to have to take the dead body down and
kind of confront the Silurians.
No one else is prepared to sort of whitewash it or lie on her
behalf.
But she doesn't learn a lesson.
And she then goes to set the drill up to actually like kind of
kill everyone.
Better and better.
It's crazy.
Elliot's going to be in therapy for years and they're not going to
like her much when he gets old.
No.
But the thing the thing is, I do think then when when Elliot finds
out what she's done and walks away from her, and it is an
underplayed moment, you know, I think in the hands of a less
capable director, that would have been the moment where Ambrose
snaps and tries to grab one of the Solurians gun and then she
shot.
And not to insult anyone, but I think if the story had been made
in the 80s, that probably would have happened and it would have
been the episode 3 cliffhanger, so you don't have to pay her for
episode four.
But I, but the thing is, I also think that that moment with her
and the doctor standing in the church doorway at the end and the
thing is, her, her punishment is not a big speech for the doctor.
The doctor does say to her, you've ruined this.
You know, it's your actions that have ruined this, but at the end
her punishment is actually just the doctor saying to her very
quietly, well, your son's going to have to be better than you
because you screwed it up.
There's no coming back from the fact that you're a murderer.
It's kind of like, Killing her character as as a punishment for
that.
And I know no one's suggesting that, but I feel like your 2
options are, she survives, or you kill her.
And if you kill her character.
You know, the doctor says an eye for an eye with the implication
that that's a terrible idea.
So instead, her punishment is that she has to live with what she's
done.
But there is that glimmer of hope that that is going to make her
pass on the lesson that it's not worth it.
Do you know, I hate that scene.
And the reason that I hate that scene. is that the doctor lets her
off so lightly.
And the 2 of them smile at one another as the scene ants.
The doctor isn't menacing.
He's not even, he's trying to be nice thing that he was doing last
episode.
He absolutely just kind of lets her get away with it.
Oh, it's understandable.
We've all had maternal instincts that have led us to murder
someone from time to time.
And that's, you know, that's regrettable.
But I just think she's, you know, kind of let off far, far too
lightly.
Especially considering as, as, as you were saying that she, she
murders one and it's like she gets a taste for it, so she
escalates straight to genocide.
She sets the drill to destroy their entire civilisation.
And and the doctor does nothing.
She does not repent during the story.
We see her feel a little bad, I suppose, but she does not have a
moral enlightening, for all we know, she's going to continue in
this same path, because all the rewards she has received have been
positive.
She has not been punished.
She has been, all the reinforcement has been, you got your son
back, you got Mo back, the alien lizard people went back to
sleep.
You didn't have to sacrifice anything.
Woohoo.
Kill more people.
Maybe you'll get more cool stuff.
It was, I find it...
Yeah, except your father.
But he was old anyway.
And I find that moment and her resolution really troubling from a
moral perspective.
And it, but I think that's something that's consistent with uh
chibnal stories.
He is willing to have the doctor, quote unquote, punish aliens or
have aliens have repercussions, but when humans have actual moral
failings, he seems very inclined to just sort of say, well, what
you going to do?
Humans are flawed creatures and try not to be quite so flawed.
And it's more than that, isn't it?
Because it's her attitude, her attitude and rest tax attitude.
It's the most belligerent and unreasonable people who are
accommodated in the final decision.
And so we have a situation here where 2 groups of people have
equal claim to the land.
They're trying to work out.
There's this speech.
The doctor gives this speech where he tells Eldane and Nazarene
and Amy to be bold and be imaginative and think about the future
and Murray puts the 11th doctor, sort of hero music over that.
It's a great moment.
And what happens, we better not do anything for a 1000 years
because it will upset all of the racists in this story.
And it's just that tedious centrism of chibnal that just
infuriates me, just makes me infuriated.
And and like maybe Doctor Who doesn't want to do.
You mentioned this last week, Eric.
Maybe Doctor Who doesn't want to have a world where there are
Silurians living in you know, deserts or whatever, uh, in
settlements in the future.
But then you're just setting the story up to be a failure where
nothing happens and nothing happens in a much, much less
interesting way. than the way in which nothing happened in 1970.
Yeah, I do think, I do think, uh, since we had a discussion, uh, uh
on last week's episode, I did think about the fact that Moffat
would revisit this idea of integrating an alien race into human
society with Zigons and actually do something with it, do
something, both actually have it happen, have them negotiate a
peace treaty, and then follow up and see how that's doing a few
years later.
Um, in a way that here, yeah, it's exactly this sort of, well, in
a 1000 years from now, we're, we're all going to be better.
Sure.
Okay, if you say so.
It's like going 0 carbon by 2050.
You know, it won't cost us anything because we'll be dead.
The thing is, I find with that, it's kind of a quiet indictment of
humanity, because as much as we've got that voiceover at the
beginning hinting at what is going to happen or not happen in this
episode, Nazarene at the very beginning of negotiation says, we
can't even feed everyone who's on the planet.
And it's like, well, actually, mathematically, you can, but also
mathematically capitalism.
Um, So, you know, it's kind of set up from the beginning that the
failure of this is going to be down to selfishness.
Um, and also, you know, the the other thing is, you know, I agree
that accommodating the violent threat is wrong, but also you're
accommodating a violent threat, who do have heat rays that can
just totally kill you in a 2nd.
And so The thing is, then the doctor takes the reins back, which I
think is kind of weird.
I think you could have had Nazarene stay in charge with that and
Nasrene and Eldane go, neither of our species are ready.
And the thing is, Eldane is just representing one city.
Nazreen is just representing one community.
So it's flawed anyway, but at least that way it's the
representatives of the 2 species talking about it.
The other problem I have with that negotiation scene is Amy's
proposed solution.
Taking land off indigenous people and giving it to Silurian.
Yeah pretty much.
It's like, even in 2010, it's like, they can use the Australian
outback and I just went, ooh, and I was living in London and my
housemate's like, what?
What?
am I?
and, um, Do you know that people live in the Australian app?
No.
I'm like, well, they do.
And then this time when I watch it, I think because I was so
shocked with that, it never occurred to me that they also
mentioned the Sahara Desert, which has like 2000000 people in it
who are nomadic tribes.
Yes, I think some people might own Nirvada as well.
Like, uh, it's, uh, you know, it, it is a child's storybook
solution.
And if Amy had suggested that, but then Nasreen turned around and
said, you do know there's people living there.
And Eldane could say, well, we can negotiate directly with them
but this is an idea and a start.
That's something, but it's just lazy.
Oh, but, but the thing is, right, that the, the Silurians are all
about questions of colonialism and settler societies and and, and
all of that.
Who has who has a proper sort of claim to the land?
And what does the doctor tell the Silurians?
You don't have a claim now because these people have come along
later?
Things have changed and these people are here now.
And then that, the sort of tone deaf failure, to even take
indigenous peoples into account in the solution?
I just think it's bad.
I think it's, I think it's, I, you know, I think I said last week
that the sort of, uh, the 1970s salarian story ends up sort of
raising a problem.
It is in not any way capable of addressing.
And the same thing happens here.
It's like the Silurians are, would be, were they to be real, would
be a massive, huge earth shattering sort of problem to try to
confront that would bring out probably both the best and worst of
both kinds of species.
And they're trying to do something with 3 people around a table
negotiating on behalf of 2 completely separate, you know, species.
It's like, this is not how this would happen.
It's never going to work this way, and you're going to get a very
limited basic sort of simplistic view of what this would actually
look like to do it this way, which means that things like
considering indigenous peoples, the fact that there is not a
spokesman for the human race, there are 150, whatever it is
nations on earth, plus all the sort of indigenous tribes that are
semi-autonomous, or fully autonomous.
Like, this is not.
This is not how any of this works, and it's tremendously
frustrating, especially because you know it's not going to result
in the end.
You know, you know the entire time as a viewer that Aleia is
dead.
It's like, well, Okay.
This is all pointless.
Why are we watching this again?
Exactly.
I just I just don't buy the whole negotiation thing right from the
start.
Now, for all the reasons that you have pointed out, which I didn't
necessarily think about at the time, but just having like these 2
women and a solurian in the room that can just really just resolve
all of this?
Like, I mean, I just don't buy it.
I just don't buy it.
You know, I get the impression that whatever they come up with
it's not legally binding.
It's like, okay, you know, we'll we'll take this to God.
Oh, God, it's 20, it's 2020.
We'll take this to Boris Johnson.
And Donald Trump.
Oh my god.
And hold on.
Yes, no, it was Scott Morrison in 2020.
It gets hard to keep track of over here.
Um, The thing is, the, the whole thing with, you know, we know
Alaya's dead.
I think I mentioned this last week.
I actually quite, I think the dramatic irony of that, that we as
the viewer know something that the doctor doesn't, is very well
played, and we do have that awful moment you alluded to last week
Nathan, where someone comes in and shouts, stop, so no one gets
executed.
But I think Matt Smith on the screen afterwards is hilarious.
Todd is waving frantically.
Yes, yes.
Like, Eldane walks in and says, stop Amy's execution.
We've never seen him before.
It's just this miracle to get out the device of the pot because
we've woken him up because we need it.
Yeah, no, absolute say word era sort of stuff.
I'm hating this more.
My marks are going down.
But, you know, when even when Restac calls them up on what was
meant to be a broken down all in one iMac, like from when they
relaunch, that was was what was suggested in the script.
Um, when Restat calls them, they all, before they go, go on the
call, they're like, we don't tell her what's happened.
We don't, and then the doctor comes on and says, and bring a layer
with you, and everyone's just like, Oh, dear.
I think I can possibly get behind it just because I, um, I feel
all the actors in this are very good.
And I think even Ambrose, whom, you know, you don't like for what
she's done.
The actress does a great job of performing a role you don't like.
Yeah sure.
And something I'm finding as I go through this season is I am
liking Amy a lot more than I did in 2010 and then I think in 2014
2015 is when I did the great journey of life and watched
everything through and I really didn't like Amy.
I like Karen Gill and in other things.
Um, That's how I know she's a good actress because I like her and
I don't like the character.
But I'm actually really liking her here.
What I didn't like was I felt there was a lack of vulnerability.
But we get that here because yeah, she's she's about to be
vivisected and whatnot, but she does not stop talking.
And she's doing the sort of Wendy Padring Katie Manning thing of
being brave and scared at the same time. you know, which is which
is essential.
And the other thing I kind of like is when she and Mo find Elliot
and Mo says, we're going to go get some weapons.
It's kind of like, you know, if that was Donna or Rose or Martha
they would go, oh, no, no weapons, we don't do weapons.
The doctor says we don't do weapons.
Whereas Amy is more like, um, yeah, okay.
I think she visibly kind of just in her facial expression
expresses reservations about that.
Yes, but it looks like she just doesn't want to kind of contradict
him, which kind of fair enough.
It's his kid.
Yeah, and she does then take one.
But when she's given the chance to fire it, the whole character
point is that she's not going to shoot someone in the face.
It's interesting that you've brought up Amy and Karen because I've
mentioned it a number of times already that I did not like her
performances, Amy, and I did not like Amy throughout this entire
season.
And I'm really liking her performance so much more.
And and I'm liking Amy a lot more, um, except in Vampires of
Venice, where I think there's a lot of disservice to that
character.
But I've mentioned that already a few weeks ago.
But yeah, here again, I actually am liking Karen and what she's
actually bringing to the role.
I think she's good.
I'm a big fan and kind of always have been.
I love this TARDIS team.
I've said it before this year that the 3 of them, 3 sort of
reasonably attractive young people who all have really sort of
good chemistry and like one another.
Lovely hair.
It's a version of the Tartis crew that I actually really like a
great deal.
And I think Arthur does a really good job.
I mean, although he's not as prominent as last week, even in all
those sequences up on the surface, having to deal with the
ramifications, I think he's actually really, really good in all of
those.
Yeah, I actually quite like this grouping as well, and I think
they all, yeah, as we said, Rory gets more to do in Hungary or
certainly, but he's still, he's still around and sort of trying
it's interesting.
Both Rory and Amy are sort of trying and failing to be the doctor
in some way.
Like Rory is trying to sort of keep people from shooting each
other and murdering the innocent, not the innocent, murdering the
captured combatant, and Amy is trying and failing to keep people
from resorting to guns when they're running around an alien base.
Um, it is interesting to see that both of them, while they kind of
think they can handle things maybe a little bit more than they
actually can, the story makes it very clear that actually, That
they are also flawed, um, and, you know, Mo saying they have my
son is enough for Amy to brush aside her concerns about weapons
and Rory clearly also has enough understanding of where Ambrose is
coming from, but he he does not do anything to punish her.
Like, he does not like, okay, you get tied up and changed now and
we hand you over to the Salurians as an exchange.
Like, which is something that I would have proposed.
I'd have been like, okay, you, she murdered your one of you.
You take her now.
She's yours.
Here.
See, something I said months ago on the beast below is I don't
like the doctor in the moment where he screams at Amy for not
telling him about the star whale and blah, blah, and I thought
like that was a bad choice.
So here, when people fail him, he makes it clear that he's not
happy with them, but he also makes it clear that.
They're human and well, he may not approve of what they do
especially with, say, Ambrose, um, that, He.
He understands why what happened happened kind of thing.
And I also think that feeds into the inevitability of this story
because again, there were scenes cut from this episode, and one
scene, and you may have seen a picture of this floating around.
It has been floating around for a few years.
I think it was even released officially by the BBC's publicity
before they realised they'd cut this scene out, where Rory brings
a layer, a tray of food.
Oh, okay.
And it's like a bowl of cereal and a banana and juice and milk and
Ape food.
Ape food, yeah.
And she's like, she's basically, I don't want egg food.
Why would I want to eat food?
And they have a discussion about faith.
Wow.
And she's basically, oh, like, yeah, kind of like the vest perform
you primitive apes with your tribal sky gods.
We been observing you.
We've been looking at your communications and we see that.
And but Rory, Rory doesn't directly say that he has faith.
He actually talks about his dad, but he's like, this is why humans
have faith and he tries to get to know her and understand her and
even says to her, the skin on your face is so different.
May I touch your face?
Ooh, creepy.
Which is creepy.
And she says, why?
And he says, I'm a nurse if anything goes wrong.
And that's why he knows how to feel for a pulse later.
But, you know, that's a that's an instinctual thing.
Um, but again, that's also slightly insensitive from Jubile.
If you're chained up, can I touch your face kind of thing, which
could be another reason it was cut.
But as such, there's a lot in this that is building up to, and I
know we'll come back to this later, but it is building up to
Rory's death because there's a few conversations he has where he's
like, I won't allow that to happen.
And it's like, okay, the implication to this is over my dead
body.
Oh dear, you're gonna die.
And when Arthur Darville got the script for this, Because the way
the production blocks worked is he's in one episode of the next
block of two, then it's the Pandora opens Big Bang and then he's
in another episode at the end, he hadn't had the script for the
finale yet, he said, he said in an interview, I know I'm filming
more.
At the time of getting this script, I don't know if this death is
permanent.
So at the time he recorded this, he didn't know about the Pandora
Opens and Big Bang Twist.
Right.
So, and I think that is the most sensible idea because it informs
the actor's performance.
If they if they know that this is a temporary death and they're
coming back.
They're not going to play it like a real death.
And the thing is, this had impact back then, people believed it
for a few weeks that he was really dead.
Did they?
In in the UK they did.
As I recall.
I did.
I believed it.
Did you?
I didn't.
I thought no, he's coming back.
Well, because he died last week.
Yes, death number two.
I just kind of went, you know, okay, he's died and then we're
keeping the engagement ring.
Why would that still be there?
And I just went, no, there's something here.
I am someone who doesn't think that Rory dies too often and that
actually likes this idea, even though I'm not sold on the
execution of the actual death.
So, So it's a Meglos episode 4 death, isn't it?
It's Jacqueline Hill gets killed by a random person who we thought
was dead.
She leaps in front of the doctor for some reason and then gets
shot and we do that exactly again.
Nothing really has been leading up to it.
We didn't need to see Rastak again.
She could have just sort of died or whatever.
But instead, we have her turn up just for the express purpose of
killing Rory for the purpose of this scene.
And the crack.
Yeah, and then the sort of crack comes along.
But I mean, what's happening here?
We've talked about this season's arc, which is Amy runs off with
her childhood friend the night before her wedding, the whole thing
is about childhood and adulthood, and we're going to get to the
point where she accepts adulthood goes through with the wedding
and then decides actually that's not good enough and I'm going to
have childhood as well.
And that happens in the finale.
Here, I think, we're at the point where the doctor has tried to
course correct in vampires of Venice and sort of Amy's choice and
things look like they're going well.
And then Rory is killed and she can't even remember him.
She's so completely rejected her adulthood.
He's no longer someone that she even remembers.
And so in a way, this is the point where the season kind of where
her escape from her wedding goes horribly wrong and gets out of
control.
She's really, really good in these scenes, Karen.
Do you?
I think they're a bit overwrought.
I think this is a time to go over overwrought though.
And especially because she has been someone who is so cagey about
her level of emotion for Rory, like her reaction last week to
seeing themselves on the other heelers.
It's 10 years and we're still together.
Yeah, well, I think her last sort of proper words to him are wrong
way idiot.
Yeah, yeah.
So I think it's actually fully appropriate.
Yeah, because it's alluded to several times this season that the
doctor leaving her as a child really messed her up.
And so she puts on a very fierce exterior, but actually she's
quite hurt.
And yeah, and getting through and getting through her life and not
letting that stop her.
But this moment opens up the floodgates of that trauma.
And I think once we see sort of real, the real depth of despair
from a companion.
Yeah.
No, I actually, I'm inclined to think that maybe it is a bit big
but I'm fine with big because it's a big emotional moment.
I find myself actually rather affected, even though I know how the
rest of the season goes and and everything because partly because
I thought Darvel's performance as dying Rory was actually
tremendously effective.
Uh, and because Matt Smith was really playing the genuine idea
that Matt, I believed that Matt Smith didn't know how the season
was going to turn out.
And so the doctor really seemed to be believing, I need to keep
Rory alive in Amy's memory because otherwise I don't know how I'm
going to bring him back.
Uh, and so, yeah, I quite, I quite found that whole thing uh, quite
emotionally.
Touching, I would have preferred it without the uh, portentous
voiceover from Eldane about all the doctor's losses and all the
doctor's losses yet to come, which is just ripping off what they
say to Donna at the end of season four.
Um, it's how does he know?
How did they know any of this?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, he's the narrator at that point, I think, probably.
But Matt's urgency about making sure that Amy remembers Rory is
right.
Rory comes back because Amy remembers him.
There is quite a few things going on here at the end.
We get that really pathetic stock explosion of the...
Big mining thing?
Oh, I think it's terrible.
I love it.
Yeah, that looks a bit Sarah Jane Adventures.
No, I agree with not an insult.
It is sometimes.
You said last week how good the actual plant looked, but I think
the explosion this week looks as cheap as tacky as anything
right?
And of course, then we get the wonderful moment where Amy gets to
say hello to herself up on the heel.
Yeah, great.
I care back to 0 from me.
And of course, then the doctor's got a piece of the TARDIS to
reveal so we can all go ooh ah, which actually I really like.
I think that's amazing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That was a huge thing in in 2010 in in the year 2010 AD. No, it
was.
That moment is you are literally there going, 0 my goodness, what
is really going on with this crack?
Like I really, I was blown away by that.
It doesn't save the episode, which has gone down 2 points, I'd
like to tell.
So we're down to a 4 out of 10.
Can I just say, I would love later this year for, um, Tardis lands
on a street?
Dr. Yaz, step out.
Doctor, why there, lizard men?
Oh, it's 3020.
It worked.
Nice.
Unfortunately, though, Stephen Moore passed away 2 years ago.
So we won't, we won't be seeing Eldane's outlet.
But we could have, um, we could have Nasrene back.
We could have Miraciel.
That'd be awesome.
And to top it all off, this was the result of several years of
Miraciel getting her agent to contact the Doctor Who production
office and saying, let me in.
And it looks like part of part of what got her in was she she was
in Jekyll.
Ah.
She was in Stephen Moffatt's Jekyll.
So, um, and with the greatest of respect to Olivia Common, I'm so
glad that she got a meteor role than Olivia Coleman did.
Although Olivia played that role perfectly well.
I'm so glad to have Mira Ciel all throughout this, and it's, and
again, the bit where she decides to stay with Tony and going to
hibernation, that could have been sickly sweet and overwrought, yes
Todd?
Yes, completely twee, but she's great in this episode despite
everything else going on around her.
And that sells that moment and I really, I think it's a beautiful
ending for her and Tony, I guess, in a way, like the best that we
can make out of this entire Chris Chibnall script.
Yeah, it's all a bit kind of let's tidy them away at the end and
stuff.
I mean, that whole resolution is so sort of horribly disappointing
you know, and we get another countdown.
You know, like it's 12 minutes until the drill hits us in 10
minutes until the poison gas goes through the city and like it is
all just incredibly rose, I think.
Yeah.
No, I completely agree with that.
I find it, um, it's a, it's a sort of climax that needs to either
put all the toys back in the box or find new boxes for the toys, uh
without creating any actual significant change, the status quo
because I said Lurians are too big of a problem in some way for
Doctor Who to actually effectively and properly handle.
And so, Gymnal just does, okay, everything goes back to normal and
again, as we said, a 1000 years later, it'll humanity will be fine
and these, uh, these lizard people will all be fine and everything
will be great.
On that, Eric, um, with, you know, the the whole thing of they're
going to wake up in the future.
Um, and you know, we've put all the toys back in the box.
That whole voiceover kind of reminds me of the final Planet of the
Apes film in the original 1970s run of the films called Battle for
the Planet of the Apes, which ends with A few 100 years in the
future, um, ape children and human children learning the history
of how the humans and the apes made peace alongside each other a
1000 years ago.
And it's a really mawkish ending because the children aren't very
good, and then the camera pans across to a statue of Roddy
McDowell's ape, and a tear comes out of the statue because all of
the cycle could begin again.
The thing is, when I 1st saw this episode, I hadn't seen that
movie and now I have, I think it's a direct crib from that.
And that final Planet of the Apes movie actually is pretty good
until you get to that moment and the screenwriters tried to get
their name taken off it because they didn't write that.
I just, you know, like I think had we seen it, had anything other
than just voiceover saying that it was all going to be okay.
You know, that might have helped, perhaps, but it's very
unambitious in that it doesn't desire to really go anywhere.
And I think that's the problem.
Yeah.
So do we think that Silurians can't be done anymore?
Is that it?
Can we never have another Silurian story?
I don't know.
I kind of think of them and the Santarans, like the Ferengi of
Star Trek, where they tried to make them all menacing and
everything, but they work much better when they're sort of out of
character.
Like, when it's Madame Bastra as a single detective solder in, that
works really well, when it strikes in comedy mode, et cetera.
That works really well, but as a collective, do they really work
that well?
I don't know.
Maybe if they're just people, you know, maybe from now on, they
appear and they're just people and we can't do the story again of
how we work towards trying to find a way to share the planet and
failing.
Yeah, I think we don't need to jump a 1000 years ahead.
We need to jump 1500 years ahead to where they've already been
around for 500 years and the 2 societies are integrated.
We just need the doctor to land on a spaceship that has humans and
Silurians on it on the same crew, like, you know, Captain James T
Silurian.
Yeah.
And, you know, his his his human crew and Niamh McIntosh as
another Silorian, as the communications officer.
You know, we just, we just need to get to the point where, yep, in
the future, humans and homoreptilia are sharing the planet and
everything's fine.
So I have one more Silurian theory, um, which is this.
Every time the Silurians appear, they get given a scientifically
impossible new name.
So if they were homo reptilia, like that makes no sense.
No one who knows anything about the way species are named would
like it just absolutely makes no sense.
They can't be in the same genus as us.
So that's absurd.
And we tried with Silurians initially because it sounded cool and
then we tried with EO scenes because that sounded cool as well.
Um, I can't work out when they live because there are apes and
like, who the hell knows what's even going on, apes and and
tyrannosauruses and all sorts of things.
But no moon.
No moon.
That's it.
No egg.
Sorry, but I'm jumping ahead of ourselves.
All right, so it's part two of a two part story.
God help us.
And so it's time for picks of the week.
Todd.
My peak of the week is called Warriors of the Deep.
It's a classic Doctor Who story that involves the Silurians.
I think you'll just love it.
Brilliant.
We will.
We promise we will.
Um, Eric, do you have a pick of the week?
I do have a pick of the week.
It is not Doctor Who related, unfortunately.
Uh, it is a Broadway musical called Natasha Pierre and the great
comet of 1812, uh, written by Dave Malloy.
It was on Broadway a few years ago now, about 2016, 2017.
Um, and it is, um, it's something that's, I've, I love, and it's
been a favour for a while, but I've been revisiting it recently.
And it's just one of the most astounding works of human
imagination.
Essentially, Dave Malloy took a chunk of War and Peace, and
musicalized it and using a ton of different styles, everything
from traditional Russian music to electronic dance, and it's wild
and incredible, and more people should check it up.
So Natasha Pier and the Great Comed of 1812.
Marvellous.
Best peak of the weekend, I think.
Yeah.
Brendan.
Yeah, I have a pick of the week.
It is a Spotify playlist.
And this is by the official steps, Spotify account, and it's
heartbreaking the city, steps anti-Valentine's playlist.
So it's a bunch of sad step songs, but being steps, you know
there's also dance remixes of the sad songs.
Um, and yeah, you can find it on Spotify. one hour and 11 minutes
and Nathan, I will send you the link to put up on the website, just
because I've been listening to that on the bus this week, and it's
awesome. brilliant.
All right, so I have 2 picks of the week.
One is a former student of mine and a friend of his have started a
podcast thereabout, sort of 25, 26 episodes in at the time of
recording, and they are releasing regularly.
It's called Pilot Club.
And each week they look at 3 TV pilots that are from this year
from the current year.
So there's so much TV out there and a pilot from the past, they've
done the prisoner and um, they did the Mary Tyler Moore show and
and all sorts of things like that.
Billy and Drew are both very sensitive and insightful critics.
The show is extremely clever and it's absolutely worth listening
to.
The 2nd podcast is called a hamster with a blunt penknife, which
is hosted by friend of the podcast, Joe Ford, and he gets guests
on and gets them to pick a story and the 2 of them record a
commentary.
And some of us have been or are soon to be on the podcast with
him.
So check that out in your podcatcher of choice.
Well, no, sir, that's all.
We have time for this week.
We'll be back next week to see what Richard Curtis can do on a
Doctor Who budget in Vincent and the Doctor.
In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts
and you can keep up with us at flights or entirety on Facebook, at
FDE podcast on Twitter, and on our website, flightthroughentirety
com, where you'll find links to our other podcasts, Bondfinger and
Jody into terror.
Eric, where can people find you online?
Oh, people can find me on Twitter at SJC after night?
That's S-J-C-A-U-S-T-E-N-I-T, and they can find me in the
podcasting world on Doctor Who, the writer's room, where we look
at Doctor Who from a writing perspective, and the real McCoy
podcast, where we talk about the Dr. Ship of Sylvester McCoy.
Until next time, may you find a way to cross off all the major
things on your to-do list sometime before the year 3020?
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
See you soon.
Good night.
Toodles.
That was Flight Through Entirety, starring Todd Bealby, Nathan
Bottomley, Brendan Jones, and Eric Stadnick.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, the status quo was recorded on the 21st of February
2021 and released on the 9th of May.
Now that you've heard us trashing a couple of Chris Chibnell
episodes of Doctor Who, we hope you'll like and subscribe to our
YouTube channel, why we hate girls and fun and telly and have
literally never had sex, you'll love it.
No, you won't.
And, uh, some of us, I think, uh, have been or are soon to be on
the podcast with him.
So check that out in your podcatcher of choice.
I'm going to be doing time flight.
He made me do Resurrection of the Daleks because I told him I
hated it so much.
So he let me do Aliens of London and then I did Resurrection of
the Daleks.
And it is actually really hard to talk about Resurrection of the
Daleks for like 2 hours because you just keep on saying, here are
more people with guns.
Why is this happening?
Well, somebody's just died.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's awful.
Have you seen It's a Sin, Eric?
No, I'm actually probably not going to watch it.
I find, uh, as you know, my my RTD tolerance for when he goes sort
of full, uh, depressing drama is quite low.
And I honestly think I would just, and everyone has said, oh, it's
gutting.
It's so emotional.
I'm like, I don't need that right now.
I don't need an excuse to sit and cry for 7 hours.
I could do that on my own.
Thank you very much.
So I think I'll probably maybe come back to it at a later time.
But everyone says it's fantastic.
It is very good.
It's the same thing with years and years and sort of cucumber and
stuff.
When I 1st watched cucumber, I was alone in the house.
Calvin had moved to Tokyo for a year and so I was completely alone
in the house.
And episode 6 has the most upsetting death that I've ever ever
seen on television.
It was absolutely heartbreaking, and I was completely destroyed
and I was on my own totally, and it's, I think it's an episode of
TV that I can't ever bring myself the watch again.
Um, it was brilliant.
It was brilliant, but you know, absolutely. sort of impossible to
watch.
All right.
Okay, so let's do the outro.
Okay.
Oh, I've got a really cruel potential outro, which I think I won't
do, but I'll record it anyway.
I'll do them both.
You can use the laugh from the cruel one on the other one.
Lisa, you might hate me. for this one.
Here we go.
Well, dear listener, that's all we have time for this week.
We'll be back next week to make a whole bunch of bourgeois
liberals cry in Vincent and the doctor.
Sorry, that was that was my watch telling me.
Oh, okay, sorry, I will record that again.
That's intolerable, isn't it?
I can't air that.
That's terrible.
Yeah, and you can record it again.
I know, but it's unuseable.
I'm going to do it again anyway.
I'll release it as a bonus track.
Well, dear listener, that's all we have time for this week.