Hello, and welcome back to Quite Your Entirety, the only Doctor
Who podcast who, in recent years, has been sending probes deeper
and deeper into Spain.
Sorry about that.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan And I'm a big mannequin on the back of your Gregory Pix
scooter for this episode.
Which means I'm actually Kim Catchell from Sex and the City Otto.
There you go.
She played.
She was the eponymous hero in mannequin.
Would love to say about fetishising of mannequins today, so do
stay tuned. in the 70s. wasn't expecting this at all.
So without any further ado, we're breaking the last taboo and
going into colour, with spearhead from space.
Now, Richard, I do believe this was yours.
Honestly, it's not just backwards in time or indeed forward some
time into colour.
Should we just say something exciting because wearing colour?
It is totally different, isn't it?
What is this universe?
This isn't anywhere I've been before.
It's all film, isn't it?
I mean, it's all shot up.
You know why it's all a middle film. don't you?
Dear fellow.
But I'll let you say.
No, no, it's just because, you know, there was there was a bit of
a strike with the rehearsals, spaces, but there actually could
have still gone onto VT, but the BBC weren't going to sacrifice
any of their rehearsal time for their 2 absolutely lead shows
which could never be cut.
Do you know what they were?
The black and white minstrel show.
And yes, it's Lulu.
There are lots of French and Saunders crossovers in this, or
should they add that crossovers?
So yeah, Lulu is the reason that we get so many 7 parts in this
season.
She's very greedy, Lulu.
More champagne for Lulu.
She's the reason for the season in fact.
Oh, yeah.
It's going to be like that, isn't it?
Oh, sorry.
Well, we're in colour.
I wonder we're all coming up daisies.
I do like what you're wearing.
I actually think there's a snide reference to the strike in the
actual dialogue because General Scobe tools autoplastics, and he's
impressed by the automation, you know, replacing everything with
machines.
He says, damn machines can't go on strike, can they?
Yeah, that's that is a real, and you know it's homes or Terrence
sticks, big, smarty pants about it, good for them.
Um, yeah, we're in we're in this beautiful coloured, lovely, lovely
thing, which I'm really happy to see if Mary Whitehouse was with
us had the very 1st nude scene in Doctor Who.
Oh, it is too.
It's a complete afterthought.
They were actually everything filmed, including the Brigadiers
Weirdly, the Brigadiers Office, and the Cottage Hospital.
All the rest and the grounds, it's all in the one place.
It's one of the earl of the area, some old house, and it had been
used as an army base in the war, but that little coronet is
because he'd been an earl, and so he had a coronet over his little
it was off one of the, um, changing rooms off one of his drawing
rooms.
And yes, yes, all of that is there, but you get to see, you
actually get to see a little bit of the back bottom cleft of Uncle
Pertwick.
No, I should actually say the cough 6 shock shot, shouldn't I?
And the tattoo.
And did you notice people took, you know, he got that.
He doesn't remember getting that in the war one night, so it was
even in a drunken rage, but have you did you notice the shape of
it?
Is it a snake thing?
It's curled around about, have another look at the doctor's wife.
It's the corsair symbol, which really makes me think, well, you
know, of course there had been another forms and other shapes.
I'm wondering if there'd been a bit of time lord branding, with a
bit of heavy corsair on doctor action in a past life or indeed in
season 6B. Well, yeah, because Matt Smith's doctor does say the
Corsair was a naughty woman at one point or worth to that effect.
I'm putting it out there.
Well, I do wish you wouldn't because it's not a virtually getting
it on with really anything.
No, it's kind of prospect.
There's kind of lovely rompy innocence to this.
We talked.
Well, this is not the 70s, to be honest.
This is still 1969, written in 69 filmed in 69.
The moon landing occurred during filming.
Yeah.
Because John Pertwee was disgusted that nobody else wanted to
watch it.
So Carrie John sat down to watch it with him and they bonded over
that.
Okay.
Because they were staying in a hotel and everyone else was off
having a drink and like sitting in the foyer looking at the
television saying, this is important.
Why isn't anybody else here?
Unbelievable, the Doctor Who team would not be sitting and
watching the thing that really is, you know, ostensibly what most
of Australia is supposed to be about, ish, except it's not really
is it?
Yeah, well, Terence Sticks was probably saying, oh, we did that
last year, but with ice quarries.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
That's the thing.
You just touched on something that's probably, you know, we've got
colour.
Sorry.
No, no. exciting and new and beautiful things, but we've actually
got Carrie John.
Oh, she's spectacular.
This is how you know it's not a kid show anymore.
Yeah.
We've got a grown-up, just banging on about, please, can we have
another Barbara figure, a mature type of woman in it again?
I think we got one.
When the show starts, I think Jackie Hill is 34, said, ooh.
Um, and carries carries 30.
So we have another grown-up. for the 1st time.
And she's terrific.
She's really, really funny and sarcastic with the brigadier.
How could she not be in a pre-proto-bubble wrap camel here?
Oh, terrible.
What is that?
Is it just the earliest sign of airbags because the cars didn't
come with it and she was just really concerned for humanity?
She's so into a jacket.
Yeah.
It's really just how she could withstand the Gormous gaze of Derek
Sherman.
You did get to see him, as we know, that, you know, the big
producer guy.
He is the one standing in the undercroft in the car park.
What kind of deal?
What actor could not have delivered a line?
A non-audible line that he just had to look gormous and open his
mouth?
He's really terrible in that role.
He's really terrible in that role too.
There's something going on there.
His name was Gilbert, the actor who was kicked out and skilled.
Oh, do we know that?
Yes, we do.
Yes.
So Gilbert got sadly shafted so that he could wear an outfit.
But back to Carrie, though, she really is the best companion since
Barbara.
It's not even, yeah, it's not, it's the closest easy game, Swanson
the Avengers, but it's also quite strange report, character of
Annabel in that, or Jason King, where you have, I've got the
succession of women in, around, you know, Justin King played by
Patrick.
Peter Winger?
Peter and Go, whom we own, who was also in Planet of Fire and
Prison.
No, he was number 2 in the prisoner.
He was number 2 in the prisoner.
Yeah, his career was sadly curtailed in the 70s and really, really
going really well when he was discovered in his very own form of
cottage hospital on one of the commons in London, which is very
sad.
He'd been Alan Bates's partner for ever and ever and ever.
It's very sad.
We've actually got a doctor now who's, You see the least doctor
ish so far of the doctors?
One of the things about this is how peripheral the doctor is for
the action.
It's great, isn't it?
It is terrific.
And, you know, for a while, perhaps he has some elastic passed
over his mouth, which is nice.
But he's doing his own stunts too.
Yeah, yeah.
But he's not elastic.
He's a bit sort of trout-ish.
There are little moments, you know, the Delphons or the Delphoids
or whatever the hell they are who, you know, can be with their
eyebrows.
As I'm doing now, dear listener.
And he does the chair.
The only way I can get away with swearing on this.
But he's quite charming with Liz, you know, he is sort of funny
but no one really knows who he is yet and his character doesn't
really properly settle down until later in the season.
Which is a really good way of doing it.
They did it sort of with Pat. in Power of the Daleks when he was
really playing it, you know, hype away and jumping about.
Yeah, and we weren't sure, you know, where he was going to be
coming from.
So then this has to be, and it's kind of a throwback throw forward
to Capaldi.
Am I a good man?
We're getting that with Pat.
With this one, we're actually getting the adventures of Cat Weasel
in a wheelchair.
Or actually, if Jason King and Tara King have had a lovely
daughter.
I think he would be a 3rd doctor.
See, I think that it's really very effective, but pushing him to
the periphery because it does mean that when he finally comes to
the unit base.
The brigadier doesn't trust him.
And even though we've seen him fall out of the TARDIS and we, the
viewer, know that he was going to be sent to earth with a new face
we don't really trust him either.
It's really harking back to the fact that we didn't trust
Hartnall's doctor because of the mystery around him.
And yeah, we didn't trust Pat's doctor, but we did have Polly
saying, oh, no, he is the doctor to build up the, there's no
really to build up the trust here. very unnerving.
You've just got it.
This is why this is such a risk, not just for the for the viewer
in the sitting room, but for the BBC because apart from the brig.
And, you know, thumbs up if you remember him because it's only 2
stories and it's a while ago.
If you don't remember the character of the brigadier or the word
unit, there is nothing in this to tell you it's Doctor Who other
than the words on maybe a bit the theme-ish.
Oh, and the TARS. which is pick and then it's gone.
You know, it turns up again as a box in the corner.
That's it.
Yeah, and you don't see the interior, which...
You don't see the interior.
The iconic bit, if you like, because police boxes were still not
uncommon at this point.
So the really unique thing about the show was the big white
gleaming controller.
But a nor was John Perkley.
Not uncommon, but he, you know, we forget what a huge star, what a
big thing radio comedy was, you mentioned before the people.
You know, around the hall was getting over 20000000 listeners on a
Sunday afternoon.
The Navy Lark, which had been going since the late 50s, was still
going and would be recorded through the Pertwear era. was massive
massive hit, and he played Chief Petty Officer get this for
casting pert week.
Yeah, everyone used the same names in that.
It also had Leslie Phillips and I'd still played on BBC 4 extra.
I keep plugging it every week and it's lovely.
It's quite sure it's dated.
But it's naturally, I'm going to still listen to it and it's
lovely.
It just makes me think how miserable life in how post-war it still
was.
It sort of was, and it's sort of charming, but it's, no, it gets a
bit risqué in sort of Leslie Phillips.
It gets quite blue by the 70s and it's much more like, I'm sorry
I'll read that again, which, of course, Brendan's mentioned before
are the goodies and the Pythons before they became, before the
goodies became the goodies and the Pythons.
Bertley is a big, big hit.
Was it Carrie who said I wanted to do it because pertly I'd been a
fan of pertly as a little girl and he just gave her a shuddering
little concept. mean, my dear.
But the thing that's so interesting about this is, is, we get a
monster that's really surprising.
We get the, when they talk about the, um, the yeti and the loo in
Tooting Vic, and are you all aware that the monster was actually
until reasonably late in the day going to be the yeti?
Oh, yes, a bloody Gen.
Yep, that's why you got the yetis on his on his photo call, his
2nd photo call.
Yeah.
See, I wonder why, because he invents the Yeti in the loo on
Toosing Baker at least popularises that as a phrase.
You just sort of think, well, you never had any.
Yes, you would.
Yeah, well, we don't know what happened, do we, in Tooting Beck
because what with the cast and call or why they were called off.
What happened in tears?
In tears.
Tears of fuzzy fur filts.
But yeah, we've got we've got mannequins and I think it's the most
exciting and creepy thing.
I looked into this because it really, it's the bit everyone
remembers.
But funnily enough, when you read the papers at the time, you know
I admitted to being nerdy enough to go back and read stuff in the
papers.
People thought it was an episode of The Avengers.
They actually got English reviews, and I love that episode of the
Avengers last week when the dummies burst out of it.
No, it just ended, dear.
We're still getting Tara King Epps in the 70, weren't we?
Is it the 1st instance?
of a monster which is a commonplace everyday item turned into a
monster.
I think it might be.
Apart from foam.
And I suppose the whole radio thing with the side member, you know
the real guys.
That was a nice touch, wasn't it?
that the little...
You're right.
And the 70s will do it beautifully.
What do you think about the premise?
There is now, you know, no spinning TARDIS as such that we landed
on earth with a different place.
We're actually doing Adam adamant or mini James Bond or actually
department S shows that ITC had been famous for, which kind of
already passed glory.
Strange reports are what I mentioned.
I mean, is it trying to be Avengers-ish as well, like the lovely
car and...
I think it's trying to be war machines.
I just, well, look, I'll have things to say.
I think when we reach the end of the season, I've been through 25
episodes. looking forward to that, too, listen.
But it is it does seem like they've cancelled my show and replaced
it.
I really get what you said.
Yeah, I really get what you meant last time when you said this is
the end of Doctor Who and I thought, well, no, it's just the
beginning, but it really isn't Doctor Who at all.
No.
And we're getting into interesting worlds.
I'm not just talking about the cop 6 shock shot, which I have to
say again, because I really have to practice saying that.
But we've got Bob Holmes on illicit love.
And he's quite a quirky bloke and he does like playing with
people's heads.
He was very naughty in rehearsals.
He was the one spinning the proto-colum bacon, cheeky jokes and
playing it up, especially with the ladies.
Um, and terroristics love that, which is one of the reasons they
had him around so much, he was fun.
The whole concept of the lifelike mannequin.
Had actually caused a kind of stir.
Can we say for some?
Have a drink with a woman called Mary Brosnan.
And her company was called Carriage Trade, and it was a US company
in the 1950s.
Before that, they'd been quite stylised and they looked actually
not unlike current day meal game and cybermen.
The store dummies were quite deco and stylised and streamlined.
But then we started getting actual really lifelike ones.
Um, there was a really big American fashion designer called Lester
Garber in the 50s.
He was ostensibly queer, but he actually, and there is a name for
this autoerotica, he fell in love. with a dummy called her
Cynthia.
She became his constant, constant companion, and he took her to
every 1st night, and every dinner party.
Liza Minnelli's own mother, Judy.
Judy Garland actually commented on, oh, Leicester has brought his
tire gam.
It's a note in one of the books of one of the diaries.
Yeah.
He was notorious for it, but this became fetishising of mannequins
became a big thing.
It must start with Pygmalia, mate.
Surely.
That's a nice thought.
Yeah, it's a statue and it comes to life. you know, that's a very
old myth.
But the whole thing is fashion with when the Xandra Rhodes ones
Adele Rootstein, what a name, was Mary Brosnan's equal in the UK
produced, ever more lifelike thing, and there was actually a thing
between these 2 women to produce even more.
The Xandra Rhodes dummies, if you remember Xandra Rhodes, look
with a shock of pink hair in the 70s, and her very, it's actually
pre-boy George, the look, that in the 70s, beautiful fabric's very
gauzy, and really pronounced nipples, and then they were sent over
to the US, they were sawn off before they could be...
Yeah, before they would be allowed to be shown in the US and they
started to get very anatomically correct to the point that they
were having to then change other sections of these things.
So there was a sort of this kind of thing of the dummies must have
been, I'm hoping, at least in Bob Holmes's head when he wrote this
story, just because.
There is something about the face of them and being so close, and
of course he touches on it also with 2 swords, the uncanny valley
2 like to be comfortable.
Well, I think that's it.
And I think that I mean, I've heard stories of children being
unnerved and frightened by mannequins.
Well, it's us, isn't it?
Yeah, absolutely.
On watching the show when we were little.
This was on for the English listener.
This was on constantly pretty much in the late 70s, early 80s
wasn't it?
I'm looking at you.
Yeah, yeah, it's great.
Not bread.
They used to show from Spearhead from Space all the way through to
whatever.
But we didn't get the other 3 stories.
No, we see them soon.
No.
Or any of season 8 because the master was in it.
That's right.
We never saw Delgado.
Yeah, it repeat, yeah.
So they would just repeat sort of bits and pieces.
My actual person counted with this story, though, was in Terrence
Dix's novel, Doctor Who and the Auton invasion, which I still
think is actually superior to the transmitted story.
It's really, really.
It was one of the 1st or was it the 1st new target novel to come
out?
I think it was.
Because before that, they'd republished the...
Exactly.
Crusaders.
We're Planet?
Yes, the exciting adventure with the Zabi, exciting adventure of
Daleks, an exciting adventure with rapey Saracens. right.
So this was this was quite an early one.
And like I was a kid.
We've talked about this.
I used to get maybe 7 Doctor Who novelisations and lay by them at
David Jones.
I used to get them from the local news agency.
They were there each Saturday, yeah.
And, you know, they were like $2 a year.
Yeah, something I would say, but my pocket money and then take
more home.
And I read and reread the auton invasion.
And then my friend at primary school told me that all-time
invasion was actually on television and I was shocked to hear that
it was called Spearhead from Space.
Which makes no sense at all.
Well, I still think it makes no sense.
No, the original working type of facsimile.
I like that.
There's so much things.
I think that's possibly better for an adult audience.
There might have been a lot of children who didn't immediately
know what facsimile was.
That being said, I didn't need him.
He's a bit...
They were going up to it as well.
They were going much more adulty in the original than the
original.
There were so many drafts from what we know, but, you know, much
more adulty and kind of and more violent.
They turned down the violence.
Or the transmitted thing.
They were really being influenced by, you know, the film industry
had suddenly jumped to grishy realism.
It was very English thing, but it actually, from what I could see
it actually started with Steve McQueen's bullet in 1968.
Have you seen that?
It's in itself influenced by advertising at the time, which was
which became moments of people just sitting staring out into the
blue and smoking grisly with a girl sitting there, almost in her
dialogue and just the flowers moving, all the cars moving, great
speed and jump cutting and such like, this is kind of like our
boy's own version of that style.
It's almost like a Mike Hodges film.
You know, get Carter with Michael Kane, that kind of, or an
episode of the Sweeney.
And we're getting some even more of that as we go on in this
season and action by havoc starts to jump in.
Sadly, we don't have them just yet.
But, um, what are they going for here?
The tone is all over the shop.
But in this 1st one, it still feels that like that lovely Indian
summer, we've talked about the end of the 60s where childhood
drama and all these other new kinds of making film for TV and are
together.
So we've got silly romps in wheelchairs that are more like a
Margaret Rutherford wheeling film from the 50s when he's racing
along.
And then we have, I think, my favourite villain of the early 70s
shot through vertical broadline glass so that his eyes look like a
flies.
It's Channing.
It's Hugh Burton's chatting.
Chatting.
I think I think he's the...
He's actually the Delgado of season seven.
He's just superb.
He was so terrifying in the novel and in those illustrations that
I was actually finally a bit disappointed when I saw him in real
life.
Yeah, but I actually find him, he's in immobility.
The fact where he just stands in the phone box doesn't do anything
doesn't need to lift the receiver.
I think that is terrific.
And the shot that you mentioned where he is shot through the glass
and he looks like he has multiple eyes and things.
I think that is terrifically good.
What really gets me about his character is Robert Holmes sort of
takes the trick out of David Whitaker's book in that he puts off
the confrontation between the doctor and Channing.
Aside from Channing, trying to kidnap the doctor.
They don't meet until that last 5 minutes.
Well, in fact, the doctor's so sideline.
Because we're setting up the premise of the show, the new premise
in episodes one and two.
His sideline, but the episode two, Cliffhanger, is ransom in
peril.
And then the episode three, Cliffhanger, is Scobe in peril.
Like the doctor is interacting with the plot enough to be in peril
enough to motivator cliffhanger.
He really is, you know, on the sideline completely.
And so, It really is only an episode 4 that he gets in any way
involved in the plot.
And I guess, you know, that's a little bit like the Christmas
invasion.
But I don't think it's quite as conscious or as clever as what
happened in the Christmas invasion, which is the Christmas
invasion shows you how the characters can't cope with the aliens
in the absence of the doctor.
That's not quite what we get here.
Do you know what I mean?
He is just sort of sidelined because we kind of want to see him
swinging into action once he's bedded into place and we know what
his relationship is with Liz and what his relationship is with the
brigadier and why he's staying and, you know, what's going on in
this sort of new premise.
See, what I really love about that scene is it gives us the best
idea of Pert, his character in the story, which is when he comes
in and confronts Channing.
He's just very conversational.
Like they're talking about a piece of modern art at a party when
they're talking about the nestine.
Let's not say what body part it looks like pulsating in the
cabinet.
No, I think we have to, when we get up to that because I'm sorry
it is the 1st sphincter in space.
And we get, no, really it is even as a boy.
I thought, is this Kenny Everett doing a special effects?
Because Captain Kremen?
It's very, it's very Thagoid, isn't it?
That's amazing.
Not until the Blu-ray. you realise there's green dungeon there as
well.
You can't see that on the thing either.
That's a new machine.
Did you know about the new green guns machine?
We'll see a lot more of it.
Yes, we do indeed.
In the, in the novelisation, again, the, um, there's a great
superb picture of this sort of terrifying octopus, um, advancing
on Pertu and Liz, and just seeing that it was a sort of sad box
with some playing film in it and someone throwing tentacles out of
it, um, was a huge, hideous disappointment to me.
And pirtually, you know, he's still acting in season seven, but he
will retire from acting.
Oh, yeah.
Surely soon.
He has a few tips, you know, that he increasingly relies on. like
rubbing the back of his neck or rubbing the side of his mouth or
the famous pertwee death pose with one knee.
He's being poised.
Lots of less is more.
And here we get his 1st real proper gurney.
You know, he'll go.
He'll go in again when he's attacked by the Silurians in Doctor
Who and the Silurians, but he really sells the being attacked by
tentacles by rolling his mouth about and crossing his eyes and
things.
It really is a virtuoso performance.
The thing about Pertley's performance is that he's the one that's
really out of sorts in this.
He's famously, he said, you know, when he when he asked Bryant and
Sherman when they appointed him how to play it.
He said, well, we want Pert Week.
Who the hell is that?
And you can see he's, he was apparently quite nervous that um, even
of Nick, because Nick had been in the show before and knew what he
was doing.
And Carrie, because she'd just been working with Olivier.
That was enough to daunt him, but he's a very multi-layered man, as
we know from, I've got his book here, Moonboots and dinner suits
put a picture up there and it doesn't really come across because
he's such a raconteur, but he was terribly nervous and will go on
later in the season about himself as a performer.
He was very reliable to be able to do pretty much any accent
Kenneth Williams school of any accent as long as it's John.
You can always tell it's him.
But um, and do any role.
I mean, it can be, you know, as camp and as silly and fun as you
like.
But yeah, he had no handle on this.
And I think that's actually why he's so likeable in this story.
You really do get the feeling that he's finding his feet.
He does become much less likeable in later series and he...
Even later through this.
Yeah, later he starts to get a little bit too London Club, doesn't
he?
Yeah, there's that, but there's also just the fact that he
antagonises people in a way that actually makes it more difficult
for him.
And the, in particular the way that he antagonises Dr. Lawrence in
the next story.
Yeah.
But Boffins were famous for doing that.
And he sort of doesn't, oh, he doesn't.
Oh, yeah.
You know, like he is just obnoxious.
And he starts to do it to Ralph Cornish and the brigadier pulls
him up and then he kind of backs off and actually ends up having
quite a nice relationship with him.
But he, yeah, it's, it's not a take on the doctor that I like very
much.
I don't think he's that much fun to watch.
Well, I think you and I are going to disagree a lot during this.
Because I do see the qualities you're talking about, but I think
that they are more complicated than just the doctor being
obnoxious.
Yeah, I mean, he's always been a novel.
Just remember Lau saying, oh, don't mind him.
He just likes to irritate people.
You know, like he has always been irritating, but there's a
particular kind of irritating.
There's a very Oxbridge.
I just saw the imitation going last night with Benedict
Cumberbatch. we own him as Alan Turing and that very much Oxbridge
professor thing, really indifferent and caustic and callous and
indismissive, is all throughout the film.
And when you think about other portrayals, we've seen the films
shot in the 60s and earlier of those sort of, it's, Not
necessarily making excuses.
I'm just trying to see where Perp's character was coming from.
I'd like to think it's not who he is himself.
It is patrician and patronising.
It does make him difficult to like on occasion, doesn't it?
I think and I think they really like what character is the
brigadier in this.
And I think he's really terrific.
And it's something about Courtney's performance, and you don't
quite get it in the 60s ones, although he's heading towards their
invasion.
But he always does it with a slight curl of the lip, but he is
amused by what's going on and not really phased. quite sardonic in
this one, isn't he?
And almost flirtatious with Carrie.
There's little moments.
Yes, my dear.
Well, yeah, he tries to be and then she just complains. is
amazing.
Funny.
Like, oh, I was even such.
Yes, it's quite a music, don't you think?
No, no, you don't.
That's what we were hearing about. bubble wrap going in the spare
room.
I thought, hang on, it's not arking space.
What's all that bubble wrap?
The new scheme for this.
You're a reason we're on Earth.
It's actually just budget cutting.
The BBC agreed to it because with colour they just couldn't afford
all the extra stuff and a new space set every week.
Is what's happening that they've been somewhat surprised to get an
extra season.
They're in colour.
But seeing this as the last season. fully expected that this is
it.
Kind of like the 2005 season, which is maybe why everyone's
putting concerted bidding to really make it work.
Just like 2005 season is so strong to watch again.
Yeah, because they don't know they're a sure thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Just this week, I watched documentary on Stan Lee, the comics
creator and he was talking about his early work in the industry
and how it became so hamstrung because with McCarthyism and
chasing comic books and saying they corrupted juveniles and what
have you.
Pretty much he had to lay off his whole comics department.
He was the only one working on them.
And he said to his wife, I'm going to get out.
And his wife said, don't be stupid.
You love doing this.
But if you're gonna get out, do one comic. the way you want to do
it.
And, okay, if they fire you, who cares you're going to get out?
And that comic was the fantastic four.
Oh, yeah.
That's how the fantastic talk about.
And that's how this Doctor Who is coming about because they think
they're going to be cancelled anyway.
Let's just go for broke, make it this gritty adult scary show.
We'll see a lot of that in the next story. the one after that.
Yeah, and much like the Fantastic Four, it paid off.
Yeah.
I mean, they do have to substantially retool it when they come
back in the following year, spoiler alert.
It isn't the direction the show will take from now on.
It is a kind of a blind alley.
The received wisdom for a long time was that the Pertoy era was
okay, but season 7 was great.
But having recently watched season 7 in context, the whole time I
was disappointed about the show that they threw under the bus, you
know, and this doesn't have all of the things that I loved about
Doctor Who in it.
And I think that's a great shame.
See, I adore season 7 and I do think that what was happening in
the 60s was starting to become a bit stale.
I think it did need a massive shakeup.
Not exactly tires up, just stale.
It didn't make me tired.
It just made me go, oh, it's this again.
Oh, that's nice.
But you've got to feel that way by the end of season seven, don't
you?
You would say, oh.
Oddly not, but I think I think I'll discuss that more when we get
to the internal.
Yeah, the moment for the logicians.
We are assuming that everybody knows this story, but I mean, really
if you're listening to the podcast, you've got to know this story
because it's just been around.
It's had more iterations on more kinds of medium than anything
else we've seen, not just the book, the audio read novelisation.
We had it on video.
It's the only one we've now got on Blu-ray officially and
properly.
The one bit that really annoys me, can I just have a little
nerdism in my head here?
Why do they put the real people in Madame Tussords?
Why?
It's just so stupid, so it can easily be discovered if something
happens to the auton facsimile.
Why put them on display?
Apparently there isn't deleted scene.
Scripted below.
They explain that much like Zygons, they need to keep the original
patent alive.
So you put them up on big display.
What's in the script and it was filmed?
I wish we'd got it on the Blu-ray, but it just just doesn't exist
is that the Scobi-Fox facsimile is having to risk detection.
So the original is kept alive to mask the signal, but it has to be
nearby.
And for some reason, it was easier to have it.
It has to be very close to the, oh, look, it doesn't make sense
when I say it out loud.
I don't know, there's probably why they cut it.
But yeah, it is Doctor Who.
I mean, that's a really mass.
And it's just over that shock.
It is actually Madame Tussault, I think.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
I thought, no, it just looks like a really weak BBC curtain on a
rep rehearsal stage.
It is, and they're filming it at one in the morning, and all those
extras are really patient, aren't they?
Yeah, sitting around.
I will say, though, that when you're writing science fiction and
you come up with a great idea or a great image such as replacing a
bunch of people with dummies and putting the real people in the
place of the dummies, it can be so hard to dislodge in your brain
that when you think to yourself, oh, I don't actually have a
reason for that.
Oh, who cares?
It's cool.
And Doctor Who is very much like that.
I mean, the set pieces and visual things and all of that sort of
thing.
It's a little bit like, you know, the way that James Bond films
have, you know, giant action set pieces and then paper thin
reasons for them to actually exist and then this time.
It's pretty much...
That's the reason behind every script that Eric Saywood ever
wrote.
And you want set pieces.
It's a TV show.
You know, you want something memorable.
You want something to act out in the playground the next day.
And this one is absolutely full of it.
I mean, you talk about the Sorry.
That's my Altonga.
You talk, Richard, about how many iterations of this there have
been, but every single relaunch of the shows.
Yes, it was cancelled has borrowed massively heavily from this.
So the TV movie lifts Paul McGann taking the costume out of the
lockers of the hospital.
All of that stuff in the hospital.
You know, Rose has the autons and...
There was nothing else they could have used.
In in rows as well.
They're actually able to afford the scene that everyone imagined
had happened, but didn't really, which was the autons breaking the
way through the shop with those.
In fact, all that you get is, you know, cutting away from the shop
windows to the BBC sound effect record of glass breaking and then
they're walking through because they can't afford to break any
windows.
Still works.
And it's, 0 yeah, no, it works terrifically well and was clearly
in the minds of just generations.
You think that's why BBC Wales did it just so they could show
glass broken?
So we can afford this.
But do you remember, you remember, in fact, if you read the script
book, the script of Rose was published along with the scripts of
all of series one, and Russell wants the autons to be terribly
elegant and well dressed because they're wearing great clothes, so
he wants them to move very elegantly.
And I remember, I remember too, that when we were 1st getting kind
of spoilers and stuff to series one, there was a hint that one of
the crucial auton battles would happen out the front of a bridal
shop.
And I remember thinking, oh, please, please let there be autons in
bridal gowns.
And of course, there were.
And but then the subsequent relaunch under Moffatt too, in the
11th hour, again, borrows hugely heavily.
We have the doctor in a hospital going through the lockers, you
know, getting his costume together.
You know, this is something that has been the template for
starting the new show.
And that's wrong.
Thanks for mentioning that because the big chase that you get in
11th power is very much the chase.
Okay, they get a fire engine rather than a wheelchair, but it's
very much the same feeling.
Yeah, so it is, it's like a regeneration story or a launching your
show again story and that's very much what's happening here.
And in fact, the one big relaunch of the show that borrows heavily
from this is, of course, the following year's terror of the autons
which is just as much a relaunch of Doctor Who's this is.
So this is a very, very important story, I think, for the history
of the program.
You should just mention how well it did, the US bought the rest of
season 789 as a job lot.
And, of course, in Australia, Hong Kong and Dubai, so, you know
bought all the 14 stories.
The Americans weren't offered spearhead from space.
They didn't get it.
So if we had, you know, if anyone's listening, who grew up in the
US, you've got every right to go, huh?
So, yeah, it's like, why would they not have done that?
Surely if it's just film, if it's filmed, like the Avengers and
all the other ITC shows, they were deliberately done on films, so
they could be easily transferred to NTSC rather than doing it on
Powell and then transferring it.
I believe that America and Canada were the only other countries
who got pertly in colour initially.
Australia still got 16 millimetre black and white film.
Oh, we still got more.
Mon Chrome.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
We had an odd way of showing it back then too.
It was really delayed and choppy.
The 16 millimetre film things.
In some cases, the only thing that survived.
Isn't that right?
There are no missing episodes from the Pertoy era, but there were
plenty, including in this season that needed to be recolorized
because the only existing copies of them were the 16 millimetre
prints.
And so that was one of the reasons why these things weren't
shown.
The whole episodes of the Silurians don't exist in their own.
And ambassadors are death.
Technically, earning this episode one is colour.
Everything else was monochrome.
Yeah, yeah.
Next season even.
And as late as, as per to his last season, of course, episode one
invasion of the dinosaurs.
So they only existed in black and white.
So we are so old of seeing a reconstructed...
Yeah, aren't we?
It's a repond.
Yeah.
I don't really want to move leave this story. just so cool.
If you haven't seen it, this is the one to watch.
Yeah.
I mean, this constantly is on lists when you when you go on
Facebook or forums or Twitter and someone says, I'm introducing a
friend to classic doctor, what should I watch?
90% of people say show them spearhead from space.
Other mad people say show them caves of Andrazani, which is a
silly idea.
Well, it's a great episode of Lake 7.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But no, spearhead from spaceship.
If you're listening and you want to introduce a friend to classic
doctor, show them spearhead and then get them to listen to this
podcast.
So moving on to Doctor Who and the Silurians with that wonderful
score from Kerri Blyton, Kazoos.
It is so weird.
We're still with Kenny Everett and Captain Crewman, aren't we?
That's great.
So you didn't you did make a mistake just now.
It is Doctor Who and the side.
I just said that.
Oh, good. okay I thought you said the sign.
No, no. okay. we should just talk about the title as if it's a
French symposium.
So it was called the Silurians and they used to call the things
Doctor Who and the Miler.
Oh, okay monsters in one of the...
No, no, that's what the...
No, the novel, but it just calls the monsters.
Yeah It was frequently called the monsters in the...
The format, poor Doctor Who script, to that point, was to call
them Doctor Who and.
So, um, Apple Hook's previous co-writing with Terrence Dix, or
Doctor Who and the War Games.
This was director Tim Coon's 1st job on Doctor Who.
And he didn't realise you were meant to cut off the prefix.
So that's why it's...
That's why it's like that.
And of course, this was Barry Lett's 1st full story of producery
had a lot going on because, you know, he didn't want to make 7
parters.
Ambassadors of death was in terrible trouble.
Inferno still needed extra elements added to its 7 episodes.
So it just slipped between the cracks.
You know, the titles were ordered and of course titles were laid
on as they were recording.
So by the time anyone saw it, it was like, okay, do we really want
to spend £100 to do this edit to make new titles?
It's like, ugh.
Let it go, let it go.
So yeah, nothing more, nothing more sinister than that.
But yeah, it's a wonderful title.
Doctor Who, Doctor Who, and the Solarians.
So is this mine?
yours.
This is mine.
I am going to talk my life.
Yes, I know.
Can we talk about the other aspect of the time?
Which is the website.
Yes, of course, because the dinosaurs themselves hadn't hadn't
even evolved in the Silurian era.
I believe is correct.
It's 4430000 years ago.
Oh, what's that between?
Whereas...
There were only plants and arthropods on land and there were no
reptiles or apes or dinosaurs of any kind.
I mean it is 100s of 1000000s of years.
And the production team, I think, were aware of this, but they
just thought it's a cool name.
Kind of like being a child in the early 1970s with the shops only
open till 12 PM on a Saturday.
That was it.
It was actually very slowly rean era.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
They like this idea in era.
So, you know, it is a pretty cool name, I suppose.
And nerdy children like us, yeah.
They get it, right?
It seems too hard to say.
And it's wrong anyway.
It doesn't work either.
I don't know.
So it's a giant mistake as well.
Yeah, you see, I think the original mistake is a bit more
forgivable because the person who calls them Silurians is a
nuclear physicist who is an amateur potholer, an archeologist.
So clearly he's just an idiot.
Well, it's just not his thing.
Yeah, I'm a Latin teacher and I can crack an encyclopedia, I
forgot to say.
No, I mean, it's not that hard.
Now, is this a Barry Litt story?
Speaking of people who should have known better?
Yes.
So this was Barry's producer, but he didn't, he didn't commission
it.
I don't think.
I think it was commissioned by Derek Sherwood.
Was he working on it?
Because Sher was working on special project here, wasn't he?
With Dr. Martin King.
From the, you know, the long forgotten, was it John Rollison?
Yeah, John the Avengers.
Who was Harold Chawney in Web of Fear, which who we've all had the
fortune to see now?
as the irritating reporter.
Because you can see, you wonder why that didn't get off the ground
can't you?
But no, it would have been a fantastic Cord of RAF fabulous show
about really lavish overseas production to rival the persuaders on
the other network with Tony Curtis and Roger Moore, you know, being
all terribly rap and fabulous and everyone had a moustache.
We'll get to that later in the season.
Yeah.
So this is the 1st 7 part story since the evil of the Dalek.
Gosh, it is too.
And so it's also the 3rd longest story since then.
We had the invasion, which was longer, but that had the sidemen
and we had the war games, which was longer out of necessity.
So we have the 1st example of these 7 episode stories, which was a
decision made by Derek Sherwin, which Barry Letts hated but had to
live with.
Is it a budget tree decision?
ED's about a tree decision.
It's cheaper to do longer stories because you can use the sentence
for longer.
Episode one is always very expensive.
Yeah, exactly.
Let's not forget, though, for a second.
Just how much outside broadcast filming was actually allocated for
Spearhead.
All their shops.
I mean, yeah, there wasn't really.
I just think maybe, you know, it was used as a bit of an excuse.
I think they wanted a big bang at the beginning of the season and
they, yeah, they used up all their money.
And it's, oh, look what happened, all that naughty strike.
I think they were really glad for the strike.
It allowed them to actually get all of this across.
Hugely breaks free from the studio look of the 60s.
And so it does, it's even more than colour.
That's a really good point. look amazingly different.
Because I just wanted to you bring up your next point, Brendan.
Did anyone here feel a little bit, you know, lachrymosal bored
with the 7 partters?
Because I didn't.
The weird thing is no.
No.
They've got this amazing quality whereby instead of having one
overarching plot.
They had several overlapping plots.
So for each of the 7 parties this season, I've written down the
overlapping.
For sure and actually writes in that interview, I was quoting the
other week, they were deliberately trying to make every single
episode within each story, let alone each story, subsequent
utterly different from the one you'd watched the week before.
So you might get a repetition of the plot at episode 3 again in
episode five, but it'll be in a different location.
They were really trying to spin it as play of the week looking as
different as they can within the module of being the same story.
Yeah, so in this story, it starts off as being about a mysterious
power drain.
And yeah, because Britain was having those terrible power strikes
at the time.
And you get all these theories that, you know, it's saboteurs from
the other side, you know, that mysterious...
Molly Sutton was suffering from it exactly the same time. are you
being served, yeah.
Now, the power drain is then explained, but not soft, because it's
monsters behind it.
And that's the 2nd plot, this plot about the monsters.
Commies.
Yes, indeed.
You know, they're insidious. don't think so.
The monster...
The monster.
They're tiresome.
What are you doing about?
Still talking.
So the monster's plot is almost solved because the leader of the
monster says, yes, we will work in peace with mankind, but then
they unleash a virus, but then the virus doesn't work, so they go
for a full-blown invasion.
And so what happens is as each of these plots is partially
resolved or at least explained, it opens up the next plot.
And I think that's why this story isn't Tyson because it's not
just about one thing.
It's the same as the war games. wasn't just about one plot
happening.
Things overlap.
As they do in real life and in real war.
Absolutely.
I think that the Siurians of the 7 parters in the season is the
most successful one and you have identified precisely why, that it
does move along.
It goes from place to place.
And I think neither of the 2 that we're going to discuss next
episode do that quite so successfully.
I just...
But it's all right.
You've been wrong before.
Um, so...
Oh, it's just like the production too, man.
Real life, isn't it?
We all know the colourful monsters is green, Nathan.
But it wouldn't be doctor if things ran smoothly, would it?
And it often leads to really great things happening.
Recently, perhaps not.
But yeah, I really like Dr. Quinn.
I kept expecting Jane Seymour, though.
That's not the Dr. Queen.
I thought, oh, not her.
And that French and Saunders line, when Jen Saunders says, I just
asked myself, you know, what would JC will do in this difficult
situation?
Yes, I don't think she would have kept it.
No way.
What would she have done?
plastic surgery and just had a drink.
Okay, is just always wonderful because he has that wonderful look
about him where he looks all sweet and affable, but he's he can
actually play nasty, really, really well.
You know why he got the role, don't you?
Well, you know, he was after Ron Moody and Bertus, he was up for
the role of wearing the big cake.
I think we did know that. as the 3rd doctor.
The 3rd doctor.
He was up for the 3rd doctor.
He was in the top 5 choices.
Yeah, it's a lovely moment on the making of where Carol and John
talks about working with Hawton McKay and she says, oh, God, you
know, he was so naughty.
He would say, Carolyn, if you stand on this side of me, I think
that'd be best.
And John, if you stand, he just wanted to be in the middle.
Easy every single shot.
But we really knew what was going on and you can watch it on that
level and just see, sure, the doctors look very agitated in the
scene, isn't he?
Well, that scene when he goes to the cottage, it confronts Dr
Quinn is rather like...
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
It's rather like that scene where he confronts Channing, where, you
know, he's all affable, but there is just this simmering
resentment between the...
I got your scene.
The doctor being aware that he's irritating people and he really
and the bit, the stupid comedy bit where uh, Mackay thinks he's
gone where Dr. Quinn thinks he's gone.
He just looks in through the window and it smirks and then sort of
wanders off.
He's sort of fabulously irritating in this.
See, that's the thing.
I think we're getting a much better idea of Pertwee's character
here because he is being deliberately irritating to Dr. Quinn, Dr
Lawrence.
But in the case of Miss Dawson, he tries to be very sympathetic
with her, yes, to find out what she knows, but also because he
recognises that she is actually a very strong character and it
takes a very strong person to try to maintain a secret trust, even
though the right thing to do would be to break it, but she has Dr
Quinn's trust.
And...
I really like her character.
And if we look at the novelisation, it was Matt Hook's.
Oh, it's amazing.
It was Matt Hawke's intention that she was actually in love with
Dr. Quinn, but it was completely unrequited and she is such a...
On paper, you know, you would go, oh, that is a very weak
character, a woman with unrequited love for a man, but actually
she is an incredibly strong character.
She's wonderful.
The way that Hulk does this too.
And it's something that he does in all of his novels is he gives a
much more background to the characters.
You get the impression sometimes with Terrence that he's just
taking the script and the sticking he said and she said into it.
Then look, I've got a lovely novel.
He did have to write like 3000 a year.
Yeah, no, that is true.
But Hulk.
There's a whole chapter that really corresponds to nothing at all
that we see on screen where she's unmarried.
She's probably looked after a sick mother or something I can't
remember.
And she's kind of passed the point where she's going to get
married.
She likes Dr. Quinn.
It's a sort of older kind of world.
It's very clearly the 70s and so conventions are a bit different
but he goes over, she goes over to his place, I think, for Sunday
lunch, you know, regularly and they bond and then they talk about
his discovery of the silurins and what his ambitions and things
are.
And it's really lovely and it makes her she doesn't get really the
chance to show that the script doesn't really bring any of that
stuff out on screen.
But it's lovely in the novelisation.
And I'm going to go on and on about the novelisation.
I think it's extremely good.
It was the 1st I 1st encountered the this story as the Hulk novel
and I think it's one of the best of the range.
It still stands up.
Oh, and if you haven't read it, you could actually just watch the
Matt Smith Silurian stories because so much of it is used as
backstory.
We should talk about that too at some point because I think that
the Matt Smith story while it's not great.
It actually does, and this is kind of great.
I think this story is kind of great.
I think the Matt Smith one isn't really that great.
Buddy's Chibnol's plotting though, isn't it?
Well, it does some things better than this story does, I think, and
we'll talk about them. you know, why a bit later, I think.
I mean, what are wonderful things about this story is the way it
came about, which was when Terence Dix was talking to Malcolm
Hawke about the new premise for the show.
You know, it's going to be Earthbound.
It's going to be like Quatumats.
Malcolm Hawke's response was, well, you realise Robin Terrence.
You've got 2 theories now.
You've got mad scientists and alien invasion.
And Terence said, oh, dear, you're quite right.
And so Macolt turned around and said, what if the aliens were
always here?
And that...
Yeah, which Terrence Dixon spins are saying that he claims he
simply replied, dinosaur men want their planet back, Mac.
And it's not, you know, because yeah, because Max said, you know
this is the same thing you're giving us, you know, all we've got
is invaders from space or scientists potting around in their lab
with lots of burgers and petri dishes and we know we've all said
you said last time, how boring would that have been to have
watched Pat be doing this season of the doctor as doing that?
Do you think it is dull because of that?
I will say the story.
One part of the story that I feel doesn't work very well.
Is that whole business in the lab?
But it does interrupted fabulously by Peter Miles's camp comedy
breakdown as well.
Oh, I think that's I think that's absolutely wonderful.
Terrific.
Simply because he's such a restrained character all the way
through.
And really, his power has been eroded. bit by bit by bit.
Am I to take it who have now arrested my security office?
He's so funny.
He's actually my favourite intransigent base commander so far.
Because he's the most realistic in a way.
No, no, because he's the most camp and kind of ridiculous, I
think.
Well, you see, I think he's quite realistic for the same reason
that I thought Hobson was realistic.
A scientific based commander does not need to be this dashing
heroic figure.
Like Peter Barkwer is actually quite dashing.
Like he's a dashing older man.
And Roland Lee Hunt, has this great shock of white hair.
He's very visually imposing.
Peter Miles.
Is this sort of very skinny, tall, comb over kind of?
He does look like a civil servant.
Exactly, exactly.
And he is.
He is a civil 7 because he's got a government job.
And, um, yeah, he's very much the chap who, you know, the trains
need to run on time because the trains need to run on time because
the trains didn't run on time.
The trains wouldn't run on time.
The moral duty of the trades.
Yes, exactly. preventing that, aren't you?
Don't get me started.
Yeah, and for that reason, like Peter Miles cites that breakdown
is one of his favourite scenes he ever did in Doctor Who.
And he says that part of what made it so good was it took ages to
put the makeup on.
And there was word coming up from the studio.
Like, where's Peter?
Why is Peter taking so long?
So he was actually ropable when he came?
When he jumps over the table because it's not just the repression
of the last 6 episodes getting to him.
It's the repression of his entire life.
And that's why where Macolp is so successful because everyone in
this story is a character, including the monsters.
Each of the...
Everyone who has more than 2 lines.
Look, I think that that's the intention.
And the reason why I think the monsters would have been a very
very clever title for it. is, of course, that they're meant to be
people.
And in the novelisation, you know, they're Morca, Optal, and
Cato.
Um, you know, the, I get, I get the, the mixed up, but I think uh
Morgan is, Morgan is the young Silurian and, uh, and then...
No, no, no, Optal.
Okay.
Octylsolita, morc is the young one and Cato's the scientist.
Oh right.
And so they're clearly intended to be people, which is why it's
such a bizarre decision to get Peter Halliday to do all of their
voices.
So he's doing slightly different funny voices for them.
And that kind of undermines them being people.
And again, they're undermined being people by being sort of rubber
suits with really obvious seams and places for the zippers to go
and things that are clearly designed to cover the zippers and
stuff and flaps. and things.
And, you know, like it's the 70s and this is probably the best we
can expect from the costume department.
Do you know what else was going on though?
It was Christie Lawrence who'd done all with his eyes.
Apparently, they look really good in rehearsal.
But on location, the cast and crew was staying in a hotel in
Godalming that they were sharing with a conference for Olivetti
typewriters.
And apparently the 2 parties had drinking games to outdrink each
other every single night of the shoot.
And they, and the extras were, over salarians were the worst of
the lot.
So they just all terribly hung over and didn't get zipped up the
next day.
It actually colours Perley's performance quite tellingly.
He seems talking around and I'm like, where the new series gets
this right and it is partly sort of technically and people whinge
whenever the new series reinvents the look of a monster.
But here they get it right.
And I know that there's Silurians in the hungry earth and Madame
Vastra and things like that.
People complain, oh, they look like monsters from Voyager, and
they do look exactly like the aliens from distant origin.
Which would rip off.
Which was very...
But you can, it's like what Pertuy says about the Draconians.
You can see the human mouth.
You can see the eyes, the actors get to act, and they get to be
different people.
The Hungary Earther even has an old Silurian, a young Silurian, a
Silurian scientist.
You know what I mean?
Exactly the same thing, but they're much, much more identifiable
as people and monsters.
And I think that, and that if you're going to have a story which
is, it's about colonialism and it's about immigration.
I think it's undermined by having them be rubbery lizard head
people instead of people.
See, I disagree because when I watch this story, I can very easily
distinguish which southern is which?
Yeah, no, one is sort of Peter Halliday doing a high voice, one's
Peter Halliday doing a middle voice and one's Pete Halliday doing
it, sort of another voice.
You can tell my part.
Yeah, not because of the voices, because of the physicality of the
actors.
The 3 actors do put in very different physical performances.
And it actually makes them look different to each other on
screen.
Certainly the voices help.
And to be honest, before I knew it was Peter Halliday doing all 3
voices, I didn't know it was one person.
And I guess the idea of calling them the monsters is, you know, the
big discovery is the rubberheaded guys are actually just people
you know.
And so I guess there is some ambiguity there.
So the whole idea of colonialism is hugely present.
And one thing that I want to recommend is that people should watch
the documentary.
If you have the DVD, there's an hour long documentary on it.
And I think it's one of the best things that they've ever done.
It barely mentions Doctor Who at all, but it does talk about kind
of racial politics and stuff like that at the time and, you know
Enoch Powell and all of that sort of thing.
It's really, really terrific.
The rivers of blood.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so and so it talks about, you know, in a sense, the Saudi are
sort of colonial overlords who used to oppress the human's
ancestors and now it's the other way around.
You know what I mean?
Or you could say that the Siberians are an indigenous people whose
land we've taken and now or, you know, the cellurians are
immigrants and we have to learn to live with them and so on.
And, you know, all of these things underlie the story and I think
make it more interesting.
And it is one of these things.
Malcolm Hulk is famous for 2 things, I think, in the 70s.
One is he writes the annual story about giant lizards.
He writes one story a year for poetry and each story features
giant lizards of some kind.
So he's there goes to a giant lizard guy, but he's someone who
writes about progressive politics and all his stories have a
political message under them.
And I think this one is the one that's most interesting in that it
has so many different kind of things underlying it informing it.
So many.
One thing I didn't get to say earlier, we should be really
grateful that Peter Halliday lent us his prodigious talents.
Do you know who was actually lined up to do the voices?
Sheila Grant?
Yes, she of the voice of the...
That's what they were going for.
So it was actually Barry Letts, who said, what the hell?
Let's get Peter on the phone.
There's been lots of noises.
No, no, no.
No, perfect.
So Peter Halliday did, um, he, his packer.
Oh, obviously from the invasion, isn't it?
But he has some pub wash.
Really?
He is.
But he did lots of voices before.
He used the prosons.
Yeah, we can forgive him.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, he is pretty good.
And he'll be doing a voice again next door.
He will.
Now, we do have a lot of firsts in this story.
It is, of course, the 1st appearance of Bessie, who Kate Orman's
theory.
I think it was Kate Orman's theory, is that the reason that Liz
reacts the way that she does to that news because the doctor says
oh, she's called Bassie and Liz just goes, I see, is that she
realises that the doctor's named the car after her.
Yeah, yeah, Beth, Elizabeth.
Yeah, perfectly done.
She, well, it is built on a Ford popular chazis, isn't it?
No offence, Dr. Shaw.
Oh, there's another thing.
Why is she not called Dr. Shaw?
She's a bloody scientist with how many degrees by the age of 30.
They only do that in parallel fascist parallel universes.
I think she's a surgeon.
And other people have said this as well.
She's did a biomed engineered degree, didn't she?
But, no, they're really vague about it.
She says physics and meteorites and half a dozen other things and
she claims to be a doctor, a medical doctor later.
Well, the nice thing is, though, she does surgery, that's the
whole thing, you know, because surgeons are called Misto.
It comes around about because of the old naval tradition, but
she's so I'd like to think that she's actually a surgeon and
that's why she gets to be called Miss.
I'm hoping it's not just another bit of rampant sexism in the
production.
We'll get to it in Inferno.
I do love that the 1st time we see Bessie driving.
She's driving down a busy street.
Every other car is like gray or dull green.
The buildings are like beige brick and you've got this gigantic
yellow car right in the middle, which you can only see on the new
version.
I think we have to call it a sprightly yellow. the yellow road
despite the fact that it's actually a tour.
A roadster only has 2 seats.
A tour has four.
So there you go.
See you knowing that.
I know it's cars.
Steve McQueen had just driven something that looked exactly like
it, 1905 Winton Flyer in the Rivers that came out the year
before.
And of course, there's Gabriel from the Secret Service, Jerry
Anderson's really weird, wacky.
Gosh, if you're looking for...
It's a puppet vicar who sold the crime. who's sometimes a real
person.
It's actually my favourite Jerry Anderson show of all time.
That is what I should have mentioned for war games. because it has
quite a weirdly off-centered reality thing of it.
But yeah, he drives a cute little yellow car, Gabriel, which is
also in every bloody episode of UFO you've ever turned on.
And also for the final season of The Avengers.
Patrick McNee traded in his Green Bentley for series of yellow
Rolls Royces.
Not sure how we feel about that.
I do have a sort of theory that John Pertu is kind of cut price
John Steed.
And Adam Adamant, and the pop stars of the time.
He's actually, he's dressed in the rags of the rich hippies.
Which is interesting because as we've already said, like those
things were on the way out.
And so Doctor Who starts to do them now.
You notice that the car has replaced the tartars completely and
the tartars doesn't even get mentioned or seen in this story at
all.
That's true.
I think and that's the 1st time that's happened. that a bad
thing?
Yeah, it is, I think they're genisoning.
I think that, again, when we do terror, the autons, we'll see
exactly what decisions for this season that they immediately
reverse, and that's one of them, is backgrounding the TARDIS.
Well, Barry Letz did say that, you know, if he'd been setting up
the premise, they would have had, for instance, 3 stories on Earth
and one story off Earth.
As proven in next season, spoiler alert, he does get the TARDIS
working again, kind of.
We also have the 1st appearances of Peter Miles, whom we've
already discussed, and Jeffrey Palmer.
Isn't he great?
So awesome.
So no Wendy Craig.
No, he wasn't married to Wendy Craig for about 10,000 years.
What was that show called?
Butterflies, which was lovely.
Carla Lane wrote that, who wrote the Liva Birds.
And Wendy Craig is currently making Mother Makes three, which
would then be Mother Makes four.
She the early 70s or a great time for TV.
No, I've got them.
They gorgeous.
She's a great comic actor.
This is the nice thing about this season that you're getting.
Paddy was doing it.
But it was more for children.
This is adult and gritty and kids and fantasy all at once, and you
can jump scene to scene and have a completely different show, even
within an episode.
Yeah, it doesn't it doesn't go all out gritty, does it?
I mean, you still do.
We're going to see that in the next story.
Yeah, I think Ambassadors of Death is certainly the peak of that
approach, isn't it?
But this is the experimental season.
Let's see what we can do this.
It does at least have sort of dinosaurs and lizards.
Yeah, yeah.
And still in the public consciousness at this point was 2001, the
film.
And this is, in a way, it's a reverse. of 2001 because 2001 was
about an alien species. sort of trying to evolve man to the point
where they can come out and visit them.
I've been here a lot longer than anybody realises.
Exactly.
Whereas this is, this is a species on Earth, who've woken up and
gone, oh, man's got a bit of a bit of his station.
Let's bring him back down again to the level we prefer.
And what is really great about that is, you know, we've had alien
menaces trying to pluck for a man, his mastery of space, back with
the animus, and attack humanity in the future with the ice worries
trying to take on team out.
But these stories are set now or in the near future.
They are a recognisable world for the viewers.
So this danger instead of being some hypothetical thing.
This danger is immediate.
This danger could happen now.
And by using a virus.
Measles was still a problem.
Smallpox and chicken pox in certain parts of the world was still a
problem.
So it was quite feasible that a virus could wipe out most of the
population.
It is.
It was a big deal.
Those scenes are so frightening too.
They're really awful.
When was the 1st anthrax terrorist?
scare. anthrax certainly existed.
Well, I was wondering when survivors starts, but that's not... for
a few more years. late 70s.
Yeah.
But those scenes.
So that, again, is there's a bit of a sort of longer towards the
end of the story where Pertwee's in a room testing drugs I talked
about. last time.
It feels like it goes on for ages, but it is actually only about
half an episode.
But it is Intercart with those scenes at Marlowbone Station, where
people are just dying in the street.
It's really awful and the police come and all of that.
And in fact, the chase chasing masters and all of that stuff is
really, really good, but it is really as grim as the show's ever
got.
Jeffrey Palmer has the wonderful distinction in Doctor Who of
dying horribly every time he appears.
You know, I think it's the biggest name actor that that happens
to.
Oh, you know what he's doing?
He's a...
Which was with Billy, wasn't it?
Yeah, so he was actually, he has more right to be dying than
anybody else.
Because he dies of a virus in this in the mutants. shot in episode
one.
Shot an episode one. and famously very painful, I think.
Famously, in the discontinuity guy, the authors say Jeffrey
Palmer's the best thing about these dead before the end of episode
one.
And he has half a bulkhead fall on him in Voyage of the Damned.
Oh, of course, he's back in voyage of the dam.
I completely forgotten.
After he shot Russell Toby, which makes him one of the most evil
people in Doctor Who ever.
Wow, I must watch that again.
I missed that this Christmas.
It is kind of terrible, but I forgot that Jeffrey Palmer is in it
fantastic.
And of course, Paul Darrow.
Yes, very young.
Jimmy Darrow for this.
Yes, we've had Jimmy Monroe and Jimmy Bloody Everybody, Jimmy.
Yeah, that's Jimmy.
Jimmy's Magic Flute from HR Puff and stuff.
I think was a captain in the next story, isn't it?
Yeah, it's really weird that we keep having changing unit
captains.
Was there a reason for that?
Cool.
I'm glad you asked.
Yeah, there was...
Derek's just smooth as tap on.
Derek Sherwin had this thing.
I won't call it an idea that it looks so much more capacious and
UN and not just another episode of the Champions if you have a
completely different underling team, every single story.
It will seem vast.
No, it won't.
It'll seem choppy and discordant and that's why we get Mr. Benton
for the rest of her happy years.
And then we get, and another captain coming in.
Not called Jimmy next year.
Well, in fact, in fact, he is kind of right because next year when
it does settle down to being, you know, Captain...
Dad's army in the future.
Well, you know, now unit consists of 4 people, essentially.
It's not true, actually, isn't it?
At the same time, when you see senior army officers in anything
else, they do have an adjutant, they have one person who is their
assistant. you know.
So it is understandable.
But yeah, at the same time, unit does start to feel a bit
smaller.
I miss Captain Monroe.
Captain Monroe was great.
But Captain Hawkins.
Paul Darrow, he's not actually that bad.
He plays his dead streak.
No, he doesn't.
He's really camp again.
And he hasn't quite, you know, he hasn't quite got that snarling
over enunciation that Avon has, but he still he still waves his
gun around the way that Avon does in this sort of massively.
Yeah, sort of florid way.
He's saluting the troops at the colour, yes.
He's fabulous.
He is really great and he's got a very sort of piercing voice.
He'll come back as male and tanker and he'll sort of out.
Colin Baker.
Like, it's not a great moment.
He's revenge camping Colin Baker there, but I suppose here no one
has wronged him yet.
So he gives a lovely.
I actually think it's quite an understated performance.
For him, I think it really is.
Yeah.
And the one sort of pity about that is...
You don't even know if he dies or not.
Like a Silurian zaps him for a 2nd and he falls down.
And he never sees me again.
Yeah, he's probably dead.
Miss Dawson, who catches the plague and then we never hear.
I'm sure she's better.
I'm sure she's visiting her mother soon after, you know, everything
explodes.
And she and she finds and nice gentlemen to settle down with, which
is, you know, what she wanted.
Yeah, she wanted to find someone to take care of.
Maybe octail survives.
Yes, she settles down with him.
Initially, how about how about Miss Dawkins and Captain Hawkins?
Oh, that would be, this story is a bit Old Testament.
They all die horribly in one of the many plays.
Maybe she settles down with Ivan Orton.
Did you notice that in Spearhead?
Because they re- they reshot the space sphincter in the space tank
for the final episode, that was a re- that was a remount.
Yeah, yeah.
They remounted the Space Fix, which is why...
Which is why it's brilliant the only bit in the story.
I reckon that Pertwee looks relaxed.
Because he knew it was a reshoot and if they got it wrong, they'd
do it again.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But Hugh Burton had was back doing his other show on ITC based on
the Edgar Waller stories.
So it's a bloke lying down in Channing's suit, but he's billed as
Ivan Orton.
Oh, yeah, Ivan Orton.
Brilliant.
So it's probably Torah Wilcox or Barry Glitter or someone or Jimmy
Savile, someone famous that we own or don't want to know.
Yeah, we don't want to.
We don't know.
And I just want to send out there a very big thank you to the
restoration team because the colour version of this story is
pretty damn good.
I loved the black and white version as a child.
Once I finally actually sat down and watched it.
And then I never saw the colour VHS.
So the 1st time I saw it in colour was when I bought the DVD and
it was like, 0 my god, the base meeting room is burnt orange
horrible.
There's a lot of orange in this story.
Yeah, actually the young Silurian is pretty orange too.
And the Silurian base, I think benefits from colour as well.
Yeah, it's very sort of agate green.
Well, there's a lot of really weird psychedelic colours that are
coming up this particularly next season.
Yeah.
Next season, I think it hits a time, but it is a feature of the
Perto era.
So we've had black and white now we have this really, really kind
of off-putting psychedelic kind of rock top of the pops.
We're not just in colour wearing bloody colour.
You know, the opening titles were going to have pert wheat
frocking about with his cape and his cape would rise and drop to
reveal the swirls.
That was one version they filmed, or one where he's doing a
Christopher Lee Dracula thing with his arms outstretched in the
Coke wings.
And one way famously is, but we saved himself.
I had 3 noses.
So we didn't go with that one.
Which is different to the usual.
Did you feel that it was a bit, the score of this cut?
You either love it or hated, you know, because as we know, there's
mediaeval instruments.
It isn't synth, some of it, it sounds like synth is actually a
mediaeval oboe that he played to Barry Letts down the phone and he
said, it sounded execrable.
But how do you feel about the sound of this?
Do you know, I really like it.
Yes, do I. It's not doing what Doctor Who themes do now.
It is just sort of creating weird counterpoints to the action or
something.
It's quite intrusive, isn't it?
But then, really?
I think it balances the Salurian calling device.
Yeah, really nicely.
And, you know, it's some things like when we're in the cage, you'll
hear dripping water and the music will sound like dripping water.
It'll sound like where we are.
It'll sound a bit more technological or it will sound a bit more
natural.
Um, I think.
Oh, clutes, crumbles and circumstance.
That what you're hearing in those things.
Yes, of course.
I just think it's really atmospheric.
And because it's surprising because it's not electronic and it has
the sound of breathing in it and something that doesn't belong to
our time or our place.
Look, I mean, by sort of next year or the year after, we'll think
of this as sort of classical music, because the entire sort of per
twee score thing goes completely mental.
Yeah, Dudley Jones.
Yeah, and Malcolm...
No, it's like someone playing a single ringtone.
We get carried back for Death to the Daleks and Revenge of the
Cybermen. watching the song.
Yeah.
What exactly?
Jets of the Dianx has got gray.
I love it.
And the other, the saxophone. watching this again, I thought, oh
actually, I didn't watch it.
I listened to Carrie reading it on the audio, like I just got
right here.
Terrific, isn't it?
She does the best pert.
I really enjoyed it this time. is wonderful.
I love those podcasts.
I'm listening to it this time around in that version really worked
for me. really worked for me.
Carrie Plyton, I should say, I mean, Carrie John.
Carrie Blythe and other great calls the fame of adding the
clarinet to the Andy Pandy theme, writing the bananas in pyjamas
theme for which he got constantly paid.
He didn't really have to work after that.
And his aunt wrote the noddy theme.
So when you're thinking this sounds a little bit like Play School
you're actually right.
The last thing I want to talk about is just the technology in the
story and specifically the Cyclotron, which being used as a method
of power was quite unusual, but much like the use of plate
tectonics in the plot, it was cutting edge science at the time.
A lot of palaeontologists still didn't believe that plate
technonics were a thing in 1917.
I know it's so weird, isn't it?
We just think we must have always known that, but it was really
recent.
We didn't even know about black holes when this was filmed.
No, 3 years off, yeah.
But the Cyclotron very much interested me because when I sort of
really listened to what it does.
I'm like, that's just a large Hadrinkolider.
That's CERN.
It's a particle accelerator.
Yeah, it's described.
And, you know, it's amazing that We go from that being a cutting
edge idea in 1970 to being a mainstream idea.
Certain part, certainly particle accelerators and particle
colliders existed before the large hadron collider, but that's
really when it hit currency in about 2010 with people going, 0 my
god, yeah, that's amazing.
Look at that. 40 years.
That's it.
How is it going?
years ago and Peter Miles had one..
How was going to be a power source?
Well, I mean, is the other thing the Van Allen belt as well?
Yes, I mean, science that we'd get from, is that the thing?
Yeah, the schoolboys were riding into Mac Holt, according to the
production office, saying, got that long.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, apparently is a thing, but it wouldn't have actually
affected the way they were talking.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
But there is a belt of the atmosphere, whose name escapes me at
the moment, where if you stripped that away, would have the effect
Liz was talking about.
The ozone lighter.
We've lost that.
Quite possibly.
No, we haven't.
Almost.
A cup burnt phone.
We're inside.
There is a kind of moral dilemma here.
And the very last moment, I think, is pretty well done.
So you've got the doctor and Liz in Bessie.
Bessie stalled.
The brigadier thinks the doctor and Lisa have gone already, but
they haven't.
The doctor does something very Troutonian with his uh, with the
car.
He puts something silly in the in the crack.
Yeah, tracks it.
It's cute.
So there's a little bit of silly fun and and Liz is wearing like
an atrocious headscarf for no kind of reason.
And then things start exploding and it turns out that the
brigadier has killed all of the Siurians, that they've all been
exploded.
He's blown up the sleeping banks as well, is blown up.
Yeah, that's and that's how we meant to read it.
It is so genocide.
And it's a really cold, cool, realistic moment for pert weed.
It's kind of the birth and death of Doctor Who in these last 2
stories.
This is the season 7, beginning and end with the previous story in
this one, and after this, we'll have a whole different show.
Barry Letts did this.
This was Barry's writing at the end of it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The doctor in Mac Hulk's script was apparently getting all excited
about the new science-y stuff.
That was scripted.
But there was no death to the infidels as you get in this one.
Well, it's appalling, isn't it?
Well, like I, Santa says it blows up the program.
Do you know what I mean?
He says, well, you know, why on earth would the doctor ever
consider continuing to work?
Yeah, why would you come back after the, it's his moral duty?
moral duty?
But I actually think that the script does go out of its way to try
and justify it.
So, you know, Morca, um, is staying alive.
Do you know what I mean?
He's not.
And he's going to release everyone again.
He's about to release.
So he's about to release everyone.
Everyone's set anyway to wake up in 50 years time and Morpus says
make sure that you kill all the humans, you know, or deal with
them and stuff.
And with the death of octail, you know, again, we have this thing
where the Silurians are meant to be people, but they're just sort
of genocidal lizards, really, with the exception of octail.
You know, all of them are quite willing to kill everyone.
And so, you know, it is painted as a moral dilemma.
It's certainly directed that way and the very last shot of the
story is, you know, explosions on the hillside.
So we are left with that image, but I have to say the script tries
at least to justify the brigadier's position.
It's very up to date, is it?
What it also does is it really enhances the characters we've got.
You know, it shows us that the brigadier is ruthless in the
pursuit of his duty.
But it's also a great character moment for Liz because in the
revised version of the script.
Liz was in on it.
Liz knew what the brigady had made and so sort of bundled the
doctor out of the place and then they broke down and...
Well, Carol and John actually put her foot down and said, well, no
I think Liz would agree with the doctor.
She a scientist and she's not a murderer.
And but we said, how is the doctor meant to live with this
character of Liz?
She's his friend.
The brigadier is just a colleague.
You know, he can sort of put that, he can't do that with his
friends.
They're stuck up for each other.
Similarly, right at the beginning of the story, when they go down
into the caves, in the script, Liz was meant to go down into the
caves in her miniskirt.
And Carolyn John was like, well, that's a bit stupid.
Why can't, you know, it's not realistic.
And Pertwee actually said that director, that That's completely
ridiculous.
The doctor would not hang out with anyone so stupid as to go
caving in a miniskirt, get her into a boiler suit.
So, you know, but it's the only time of his life he ever said
that.
Yeah, it all changes next to you.
But, you know, we have heard stories that John and Kara may not
have got on.
There was apparently some tension between them on the 75 doctors.
But really, more recently, um, with the now sadly departed Carrie
John on DVD extras, it sounds like there was a great deal of um
fondness and respect between them.
I think you were saying earlier, Richard, she idolised him and he
was amazed because she'd worked with Olivier.
Yeah.
They are nice together.
I think they are nice.
Their dream team.
I'd have liked another year, thanks.
I mean, it wasn't possible because she was ready to find out. or
alone.
Well, that's, um, that's all the time we have for these two
stories.
We will be back to discuss the ambassador's death and inferno, but
just before we go, gentlemen, do we know what yesterday was?
Saturday.
It was Saturday, the 3rd of January, therefore 45 years since the
broadcast of episode one of Spearhead from Space.
Oh, how exciting.
In the UK, not here, yeah.
Yeah, in the UK. 45 years.
Goodness.
Just seems like yesterday.
So, celebrating 45 years of pert week.
This is quite through entirety signing off.
Good night.
Goodbye.
Thank you.
That was Fletcher Entitled to you, Nathan Bottle, Roman Jones, and
Richard Stone.
This episode, they've cancelled my show, was recorded on January
the 3rd, 2015.
The next episode will be released on February 2nd.
You can find us online to entirety.com, fly the entirety on
Facebook and iTunes at FTA podcast on Twitter.
I'm not sure if we're with 150000000 pins, but that seems a very
odd unit of currency anyway.
Do you remember the, um, The French and Saunders sketch.
With the solorians.
I am the side you're in, and I'm going on my tea break.