Hello, dear listener and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast which spends an inordinate amount of
time thinking and talking about the invasion of the hot Italians.
Or is that just me?
I'm Nathan.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Todd.
I'm Peter.
Well, it's episode 12, and you know what that means.
Any number of celebrity guests cameos swiftly followed by the
imminent destruction of the entire universe.
But since it looks like we're planning to actually follow through
this year, we must have only about an hour left to discuss what
happens when the Pandorica opens.
This is an episode 12, and over the past sort of 4 years or so, not
counting the specials.
We've been trained to expect certain things from episode 12.
Does this do them, do we think?
We have 7 minutes of pre-credit sequence?
Have we had that before?
No, that is a special thing, isn't it?
I adore it actually.
Yeah, yeah.
I remember this was the 1st full season I saw when I was living in
the UK.
I remember sitting in my house in London with my flatmate who was
also a big Doctor Who fan.
Hello, Lee Thompson, and just our jaws getting progressively lower
with, oh my god, it's Liz Ted.
Oh my god, it's River song.
Oh my god, it's Winston Churchill.
Oh my god, it's Vincent.
And I think I just did them in reverse order.
But yeah, it was gobsmacking.
After about the 2nd one, you're thinking they're going, oh my god
are they going to do everyone?
It's the 1st time that Stephen Mothat does that kind of cutting
between vignettes breathlessly in a teaser and Russell did it in
2008 with the stolen earth and it worked so well.
I was a little bit disappointed that we didn't get more.
I mean, where was Cully from the 11th hour or Air Kiss guy from
football guy from the Lodger?
You know, I wanted them all back.
But it was amazing.
It is different though, isn't it, from that stolen earth thing?
Because the stolen earth is set in a universe that's been
carefully built up over 4 years and the RTD finales generally tend
to put us back in that world.
So they're always at least partly set on earth in the present day
in this sort of well-known world.
But Moffat doesn't create a universe for the doctor to have his
adventures in.
Moffat is telling a series of Doctor Who stories.
And so what we get instead is little bits of the previous stories
that we've had this year.
And I think they're marvellous.
And I think I think that what he does is this caper.
It's like it's a caper about a painting, a Van Gogh painting, a
lost Van Gogh painting.
And, you know, we're tracing it.
We don't see the painting until the very, very, very last moment.
We hear about the painting.
We trace River Song's adventures.
All of that sort of stuff and it's so light and fun and funny
despite the clear stakes, which are made absolutely clear at the
end.
It is very funny.
I mean, it gets, you know, the big blue guy turning up that whole
sequence with, you know, the vortex manipulator off the wrist of
handsome time agent.
Which is Captain Jack, right?
He grew one back.
Oh, so it's not back to like the doctor getting his hand chopped
off as well.
I didn't think about that as well.
And then the whole, what does she put in his drink, Nathan?
Oh, micro explosives.
And he takes a quick sip and then asks what micro explosives.
So perfect.
Totally river stealing that from Princess Lia in return of the
Jedi.
He's holding a thermal detonator.
And let's face it, Dorian's not unlike jab of the heart.
My favourite bit is the pretty young guard who she sort of misses
Robinson's and seducers and that limp, you know, sort of stick
figure that he then thinks is with the sort of big hair.
It's just, it's so fun.
It's so incredibly fun.
Yeah, and then and then, of course, to cut to Amy and the doctor.
Like, you know, 4 minutes into that teaser and, you know, the
hollow sweetie, the 1st recorded words in history.
I mean, really.
And then, and then the Roman Legion and, you know, what is he, he's
mistaken for what, Caesar?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. because of her lipstick.
She's Cleopatra.
I mean, it's just it's just such a romp.
It's it's absolutely wonderful.
It's light and fun and it's clearly going places.
Yeah, yeah.
Notice how River has escalated her.
Hello, sweetie, every time she's appeared.
So the 1st time it was on the psychic paper.
The 2nd time it sort of carved into the black box of the
Byzantium.
And then, you know, the 3rd time it's now carved on a giant
cliff.
And the 2 it says hello, sweetie, there at the top.
And then there's Theta Sigma. are the 1st 2 characters in the 2nd
row, and then there's some coordinates or whatever the hell it
is.
But it's just so fun.
And I think that computer-generated planet looks awesome.
It is the 1st time they've...
Oh, there's a planet, isn't there, in Army of Ghosts, where they
visit, just in the teaser, for like, you know, I, the erode says I
never want to leave the doctor, and it's similarly spectacular
because they only have to do it for the one shot.
Yeah.
But even then, you know, that is like a rocky planet so they can
get David and Billy to stand on that rocky beach that becomes Bad
Wolf Bay as well and dinosaurs on a spaceship and just CGI in St.
Rocks.
But this is lush, hopefully not aggressive vegetation.
It reminds me of mechanism.
Well, what doesn't?
But it's absolutely a sort of terry nation style dalek jungle
planet with giant fungoids.
He missed a beat there.
You know, when River is saying, like, who else is coming and she
does her megalist?
She should have said the mechanoids.
Well, got to say, I would have loved the Hartnell version of
that.
Can you imagine how that would have gone?
Dalek, Sensorites, Dravans, Monoids, Malfa, Maya Beast, Dodo.
Immediately after the opening credits, we head straight into
something that is shot as a heist, isn't it?
We see them planning to go to Stonehenge, you know, pulling out
the maps, intercut with them on the horses heading there. it
doubles.
Yeah.
And and again, it's just fun.
Caper, heist, you know, the whole thing is such such an incredible
adventure.
Like we very, very quickly are in sort of Indiana Jones mode.
Absolutely.
It totally reminded me of you know, the music Murray picks up on
it.
The music is very Indiana Jones, but it explicitly casts river in
the Indiana Jones role, and I think it makes the doctor sort of
maybe a cross between Marcus, Denim Elliot's character and maybe
Henry, his dad.
I mean, it's the most Indiana Jones the Doctor Who's ever been and
it's just brisk and wonderful.
I enjoy it so much.
Like, you know, the stone moving away, the nicely placed torches
and the big door and yeah, exactly the same thing.
I just get into this and it looks sensational.
That underhenge is wonderful.
I mean, aren't we grateful that we didn't pay one last visit to
the paper mill.
It is a thing that we've done before where, you know, there's a
secret base or something hidden underneath a famous landmark.
I mean, it's an RTD era thing, but here it's done so well.
And much like back in the Shakespeare code, Doctor Who was the 1st
drama, given permission to film at Stonehenge.
Oh wow.
And they got one night.
So the riding up on the horses was done just after sunset to
indicate dawn, in fact.
So the idea is when they're then getting underneath at night, in
story terms, they have been there the whole day setting this up
and trying to find whatever.
And the stone that Matt Smith jumps onto, it's a prop stone.
It's not one of the real ones, but even then they had to get
permission to put a prop stone in for him to jump onto.
And it was just apparently this really complex thing.
And Toby Haynes, the director basically says all the way through.
I was expecting some hand to come down on my shoulder and say
right, you've had your time.
So we just got as much done as humanly possible.
It was bucketing down.
So he's like, we only got about half as much time as we wanted and
we were still grateful of it because they had always intended to
get as much done there as possible and then build a replica, which
they called foamhenge.
I think I saw that in the stones of blood.
But they made contingencies for shooting at other stone circles
and writing dialogue as to why it's the roll right stones, for
instance, rub and stonehenge, but both Toby Haynes and Stephen
Moffat were like, if we can't get stonehead, what's the point?
The cache of this show.
Yeah.
It's huge isn't it?
And then we get the Pandorica.
And I think the Pandora is absolutely classic, Stephen Moffat
which is kind of a mystery whose answer is hidden in plain sight.
I agree.
He does it all the time.
He does these little lines of dialogue where he misdirects your
thinking and it's between River and the doctor where they, I don't
I don't think they say it directly, but it's intimated that
there's something inside.
Yeah.
So you keep thinking that there's something inside rather than
what actually happens, is somebody's going to be put in there and
it's very clever.
And there's another misdirection, isn't there?
Because we talk about who's in the box and as you said, Todd, we're
assuming that it's occupied and River has that dialogue about how
it's being opened from inside.
And it's that speech, that incredibly beautiful speech that Matt
gives about a goblin or a trickster who will fall out of the sky
and tear down your world.
And who locked him in the box?
Um, you know, oh, a good wizard did it, the doctor says, and then
River gets the dialogue.
You know, I hate good wizards in fairy tales.
They always end up being him.
And so for a 2nd we get the idea that he's the one who has or will
have locked, whatever it is in the box.
It's Stephen explicitly spelling out what you've been saying all
season, Nathan, is that he's interested in stories and everything
about Doctor Who is a story.
And because this is, the whole thing is a trap, which is conjured
out of Amy's childhood and Amy's favourite books and things like
that.
And she created the Raggedy Man stories.
And as we'll see next week, she's going to recreate the Raggedy
Man.
So it's all about stories becoming manifest.
It's interesting interesting to say that because like here he
introduces that Romans are Amy's favourite topic in history and
Pandora's box is her favourite fairy tale.
I don't know whether that's been mentioned before.
Next year, it's going to annoy me. when he does introduce certain
things like, you know, people that they've known their lifetime
right?
But here it works so wonderfully well.
Yeah, I agree.
I agree.
And so we get shots of the doctor saying, who are you?
Who could you possibly be?
Which he says several times.
Yeah, and he's in shot.
And there is that thing.
If it's something this big, I would know about it.
And, you know, I don't know what you think about the doctor being
so famous, you know, in this era, in this part of the Moffat era
the doctor's terribly famous.
Everyone knows who he is.
And we've been watching the doctor for a long time, and we feel
like we've got a handle on the universe that he lives in, the
Doctor Who stories.
And so for us as well.
Who could it possibly be in the box?
Surely we would know?
If it's this big?
Is it Fenrick?
Is it the Black Guardian?
You know, it's got to be something that we already know about
because the Doctor Who universe has been filled up over, you know
50 years or whatever. nearly 50 years at this point.
It's more fat playing with fan expectations, isn't it?
But also, is he doing a wordplay?
Who could you possibly be?
Doctor Who could you possibly be?
It's also, you know, obviously Matt's in shot because he's
delivering those lines, but the answer to the question is in shot
as he asks it.
Can you remember when you were watching, if and when you picked, it
was going to be for the doctor?
Or was it a shock when the box opens and there's nothing in
there?
It would shock.
Yeah, I was completely shocked, yeah.
Completely.
Brendan?
Well, my my flatmate and I discussed it after after that and I
said, I thought it was going to be John Sim.
I thought it was going to be the master because we don't know what
happened to him.
Whereas Lee said, oh no, I knew it was the doctor, but I still got
it wrong.
He said, I thought it was going to be Sylvester McCoy because who
is the doctor who falls from the sky and tears down your world.
It's Sylvester McCoy.
That would have been a dramatic highlight.
I mean, but it's all of them, though.
You know, think about the pirate planet.
Think about the savages, you know, the doctor drops out of the sky
and blows everything up in episode four. over and over again.
And the doctor has done this so much that that description of him
from the villain's point of view, actually really works.
And that's what Moffatt's all about, isn't he?
Like people having different points of view on things, people's
knowledge being partial, people's memories being imperfect.
All of that stuff is what he's about.
And it's a really interesting idea to look at it from the
villain's point of view.
You actually do side with them in sort of those last scenes coming
up where you've got where you've got Christopher Ryan, who, by the
way, I'm sad that we lost him as kind of our go-to Santarin.
It shouldn't have just been him.
When he is like, you know, we've joined forces because the doctor
destroys our universe. in many ways.
That's really fun to think about.
And the thing is, he, Commander Stark, looks so proud when the
Pandora is closing at the end.
And I'm kind of with you that we've, we've gotten so used to Dan
Starkey being the Santarin.
I just remember at the time thinking that, obviously, we hadn't
seen the Santarin, since then, except for one cameo in Doctor 2
and of course, in the Sarah Jane Avengers, where it's always Dan
Starkey.
So I was kind of of the opinion that, oh, Christopher Ryan
obviously didn't enjoy working on the show.
But he comes back to do this.
And I remember at the time going, sort of being almost pulled out
of the scene going, that's Christopher Ryan.
He's got a very nice line in kind of nodding, going as the doctor
is being put in Pandora.
I approve of this.
That was very good, friend.
Hey, I know for a fact that if I'm ever a Doctor Who monster, it's
going to be a Santara, and I've been practising.
Peter, you are totally right.
It's a shame that he doesn't come back as a Santarian later on.
Like, he's actually really good.
But I also like the fact that you've got the big Daypole Daleks
back after them buggering off like earlier on in the season.
You know, what have they been up to?
And I do think it's a shame after this that they're just
completely, basically sidelined and written out.
Like I actually quite like the colours and the bigness and the
sort of the 60s filmmic nature of them.
But I think it's really great that the Daleks and the cybermen and
the Santarans.
Who else gets to speak anybody else?
No, but basically every single kind of monster costume that they
have lying around is there.
And I have to confess that the scene doesn't make any sense.
Like if you're trying to kind of make it actually work.
You know, if you're, you know, writing a history or editing some
TARDIS Wakia pages or whatever, you're going to be hard pressed to
explain what's going on.
Because why are there Silurians there?
You know, how does how do Cyberman even get there?
In RTD's era, RTD was very, very careful to give the Cyberman a
coherent story and to explain how every appearance fit in with
that story.
And he had an eye to the sort of 10 year old fan that he once was
who was going to kind of, you know, make up those stories, you
know, the future David Banks, perhaps, who was going to kind of
tell a coherent story about how the cybermen came to be.
And the side men are created in 2006 by Roger Lloyd pack.
You know, like, it's, um, it's a definite thing that happens.
Why are they here in 102 AD, like it just doesn't make any sense
at all.
And when the sideman appears, he's literally nothing like any
sideman has ever been before.
I just want to say here, like, I, as you know, through this
journey, I've reevaluated Russell Cyberman, and I like them so
much more, but at the time, I had not liked basically all the
Cyberman appearances up to this point.
And I just enjoyed having them being so creepy, that one lone
cyberman with its head coming at Amy and being able to, you know
the dark going into her and then the horrible tentacle things as
it's along the floor.
I just thought, wow, this is scary and he's inventing what they
can do.
And I really, really enjoyed it and I enjoyed it again.
Yeah.
He'll do the same with the Daleks in a season or so's time doing a
different take and that's and that's Stephen's thing.
But I really like the fact that the 1st time I actually felt that
the cybermen were actually scary.
Yeah, in modern Doctor Who.
So Moffatt's cybermen are dead bodies encased in armour.
Yes. aren't they Yeah.
And I have to say, you know, we've had 3 showrunners for the new
series now.
And when you look at something like the Daleks, even though each
of the showrunners does do something interesting with them, it all
comes back to the same germ of an idea that, you know, the Dalek
is a crazed creature in a tank.
Yeah.
Whereas I do feel that Russell and Stephen and Chris Chipnell have
all come up with different takes on the cybermen that you kind of
go, that is something the other writer didn't do.
Yeah.
So I remember that scene you're talking about, Todd, with the
snap.
The head kind of biting at Amy, you know.
Which she plays so well.
Like, Karen...
Yeah, that's the thing. is fighting a helmet.
She's amazing.
But I remember at the end of that scene thinking, because Cybermen
are my favourite monsters, I'm like, that is better than every
single Cyberman scene we've had up till that point from Russell
and that's not an insult, but that is just, 0 my god, that's
amazing.
And I got the same thing from a shard.
I loved the take on a shard in series 12.
So I kind of feel like maybe the showrunners sort of we can't
change the Daleks too much.
And like literally Moffat comes in and tries to change the Dalek
design.
I'm with you, Todd.
I quite like them, but there's a huge backlash against them and he
backpedals on that furiously and kind of semi-explains it with a
voiceover at the Doctor Who experience.
Of course he does.
Whereas it's almost like the production teams can put a new spin
on the cybermen every time because people aren't invested in
them.
They're always looking at the Daleks.
So you can do new stuff with assignment.
And I think it goes back to Eric Saywad, who brings back the
Cybermen in Earthshock and really interrogates.
Okay, now what makes them scary?
And how can I make them as scary as they were in the 60s, but feel
1980s and feel very modern.
And yeah, I think it's something you can do with the cybermen.
I imagine the temptation would have been, let's have a dalek
guarding the underhenge because if I'm sure Stephen Moffatt's a
fan like us and he'd be going, I need to have a monster guarding
this.
Of course his 1st thought would be Dalek, but instead he goes, no
no, let's have, let's turn this into a horror movie.
Let's have a slow moving monster like Jason Voorhees.
That's the thing that people complain about as the Friday the 13th
series goes on.
Jason turns into this fast, unstoppable killer, whereas in the
early films, he's slow and he is just one step at a time coming
after you.
And that's the thing.
When Amy gets stunned by the head and says you and whose body, we
just hear clump.
Clump.
But the fact too is like the cyberman's already dismembered, like
who dismembered the cyberman and you kind of think, well, you know
it's just lying around, nothing really is going to happen, but
then bit by bit, it comes into play.
Like even the cyberarm, like with that hilarious moment with Matt
Smith, look at me.
I'm a target.
Was that her?
I can't remember.
No, no, that's it.
And the line before that is something like where he says to Amy
you know how I come up with these brilliant plans.
Well, sorry.
And then he runs in and just says that and is so stupid and sort
of wonderful. did that at the shops earlier.
I ran down and said, look at me, I'm at Target. have several
thoughts about that.
I think that the Cyberman have always been a slightly amorphous
enemy and so they've just fitted into whatever the plot needs them
to do, which becomes strength under showrunners who want them to
do different and interesting things.
And I think it's nice that Stephen does that rightly trick of
having so many monsters and aliens show up that they're just kind
of a horde and we don't get much time with them.
And so he chooses one example earlier in the episode to just do
something interesting with a solitary member of that of that
race.
And also, don't you think that Karen, with the snapping helmet
does the best companion struggling with monster prop that is
supposed to be attacking her, but is actually just being held by
her, since Sarah, in Revenge of the Cyberman.
Thanks for that, Brendan.
If you hurt that, everybody.
He's getting attacked by a fake cyber.
I don't know what you're talking about. cockatoo just flew in
here.
My favourite thing that she does is when Matt encourages her to do
what he's just done and run out and draw the arms fire and he does
the thumbs up and she does this sort of terrified I really, really
don't want to do this thumbs up.
It is so good.
That whole scene crystallises their relationship for this season.
And I have to say, I've had a bit of an epiphany on Karen.
I always thought she was okay, but I didn't love her.
I think she's just become great through this season.
And the sense of fun that they have together and the business that
they work out is just really joyous to watch on screen.
And that moment where the doctor says, stay back and, you know
stay undercover.
And she takes sort of 3 steps back with the most pouty reaction
ever is hilarious.
Well, I mean, I'm with you, Peter, and call me a cliche
listeners.
I have not liked her much in the past, but I think her
performances this season.
I can see so much more and she's much, much better, like the
humour she really gets and the danger here, especially in this
episode.
So I've grown to really like her over the past few episodes.
But even earlier on, I could see that all happening.
So she's grown for me throughout the season even.
If Amy at times is not my favourite person, but I think Karen's
doing a wonderful, wonderful job.
Agreed.
So that scene where they confront the cybermen. actually sort of
comes in to interrupt a scene where the 2 of them are talking sort
of about Rory.
So Amy's found the engagement ring.
Well, no, she found the engagement ring last episode.
Doesn't he talk about nothing is ever forgotten, not completely?
And at the same time, Rivers going off to get the centurions and
you've got that shadowy figure.
So it's all parallel leading up to Rory's introduction at dealing
with the side of them.
And what's happening here is that Moffatt is kind of laying out
something and it's hard to believe that there isn't a subtext
about Doctor Who here.
You know, if it's remembered, it can be brought back, especially
with animation.
But you also have this sort of clever thing where there's a fake
out here, because that thing about people turning from stories
into reality, turning from memory into actual people, we think
that that's done with once it's explained, Rory.
And what we don't know is that it's going to be the climax of the
next episode as well.
I think that stuff's beautiful.
It's very Douglas Adams-y too.
You know, sometimes people fall out of the world and little things
get left behind and all that talk about miracles and coincidences
and stuff like that, I think, is just classic atoms.
It doesn't ever bother you, Amy, that your life doesn't make any
sense.
Yeah.
But it's subtle because, well, it's subtle.
It is Stephen giving you a conversation that is setting up next
week and answers that are going to be delivered, even if at this
point in time, you kind of think, oh, Yeah, he's just giving you a
bit of mystery and maybe you don't think twice necessarily about
it, but it's, yeah, it's the joy of his writing.
I think what's super interesting is that we've had the, we had the
duck pond in episode one, which is a duck pond without ducks.
It's empty.
There should be ducks there.
We think there ought to be ducks there, but there are no ducks.
There's no one in her house.
She says she doesn't have a mum and dad, but we never hear what
happened to them.
We find out kind of what happened to them in the 2nd episode of
the two-part angel story when we discovered that people can be
drawn into the crack and then forgotten by everyone else.
So that's been there again, hiding in plain sight.
And so the doctor is starting to sort of edge towards that.
And he's always been aware once he's kind of seen the crack that
that's what's happened to Amy's mom and dad.
And Stephen introduces that in a really interesting way because
part of the writer's job is to segue between plot threads and, you
know, push the narrative on.
And Stephen does this very interesting thing where sometimes he
will just have the character stop talking and one character will
deliver the line which pushes them onto the next scene.
And Matt does that in that scene.
The doctor does it, where they've been talking about something
completely different.
And the doctor just looks at Amy after a short gap and says
doesn't it ever worry you that your life doesn't make sense?
And so he just puts it straight out there rather than being clever
with the way that they transition to it.
I think that's the last line of that scene, isn't it, before the
sidemen appears?
I think that that's where that ends. think you're right.
Well, Rory ends the cyberman. he says he's Amy, and then, of
course, the doctor comes in for another hilarious moment.
Like, you know, how have you been?
Yeah, good, good.
And what?
No, is that?
No, sorry.
He comes in and talks to Rory about missing the obvious and goes
out.
Do you like that?
Do you think it's a little bit overdone?
Is it Com?
Yeah, it's slightly over egged.
I think though the reason it works is Arthur Darville's
reactions.
He's great, isn't he, Brendan?
Just his reactions to all of that.
But then when the doctor comes back and it's, oh, hello, how have
you been good, Roman, you know, blah, blah.
But like the absolute sitcom moment.
Firstly, he calls him Rory twice before he notices that he's
there.
And he talks about not being someone who misses the obvious.
He goes out of shot and then drops something noisily.
So there's a crash.
And doesn't Rory give sort of a little nod to himself?
And then he comes back in.
Then he pushes Rory with one finger.
And Rory goes back and then forward and you can hear the leather
of his armour creaking.
It's so great.
It's so funny.
Maybe Mario for does it with his sort of little comedy music that
comes in there.
But I love the fact after we've just had a lot of tension and a
big dramatic moment.
Then Stephen just, you know, turns things 180 degrees and suddenly
you've got a comedy moment, which sort of breaks the tension and
and and you're reintroducing the wonderful Arthur Darville back
into the cars.
And that's the thing about Stephen.
People miss this about his writing.
They think he's all about sort of big ideas and clever tricks.
He's also just hilarious.
He writes really funny scenes.
Yeah, yeah.
All the way through this.
I was just sort of super aware of how funny everything is.
I love, you know, very early on, even in the pre-credits teaser
where the doctor goes 102 AM. no wait, 102 p.m.
Oh, right, 102 AD. And like, it's not just funny.
It's clever.
Like, would you have thought of it?
And I just, you know, that experience of being wowed by how smart
dialogue is, is something that I've been missing, I think.
Doctor Who is always funny when it does the Romans.
Even the eaters of light, but that wasn't funny.
Ha ha.
Oh god.
I like the eating.
Yeah, I do too, Tom.
I do not.
But anyway.
What about the shop where Matt is on Stonehenge talking to all of
the aliens in the sky and all of those spaceships and the way that
he's shot with the wind and what and how he's delivering it as
well, Nathan?
It's so amazing.
It's such an odd choice, the way that he does it.
It's nothing that you would predict, I think.
I gather that it was Toby Haines, who said to Stephen Moffatt, how
about we do it like he is in the middle of Wembley?
Yeah, he, he, this isn't just the doctor telling off the
villains.
This is the doctor realising that the villains are his captive
audience and just in performing it in that way, the doctor is
saying, no, no, no, I'm in control, even though you've got all
your ships up there, and all your guns, none of you are fired yet
and there's a reason for that.
I'm in control.
Thank you.
And he's not.
No.
I mean, because there are sort of spotlights and stuff, which are
sort of practical lights, presumably intending to be lights from
the spaceships and stuff.
And there's wind and kind of rain and stuff like that.
So he's having to shout all over that.
And he pauses while he's talking.
There's 2 incredible moments, which is where he does the I am
talking and they all stop and the camera pulls up.
It's above and it pulls up into the sky and we see him getting
smaller and smaller.
And then the very end where he drops that loud kind of shouting
over a Wembley crowd delivery and just says, let someone else be
the 1st try in his kind of normal sort of register.
Things so good.
It's so visually striking as well.
I mean, you can imagine in the 80s under a director like Ron Jones
a bunch of spaceships above Stonehenge Waller dog talks would have
looked execrable. whereas Ron Jones, we have Peter Moffatt there
as well. better and better.
The decision just to represent those spaceships by basically close
encounter style lights. sort of moving above absolutely makes the
scene.
And of course, Stephen's been looking to give Matt these wonderful
speeches all season.
He gave him one in the 11th hour, which obviously worked
brilliantly.
He gets one in the angels.
He's been searching as a child of the Hinchcliffe era, and as the
Ark in Space, his favourite story.
He's been searching to give Matt really good indomitable speeches
and here he just does it again.
Did you imagine?
David Tennant doing this one?
You know, I don't think David Tennant would have failed at this
but it would have been just vastly less interesting.
Someone else try fast, apples and pears, apples and pears.
It is it is interesting that like Stephen comes back to that
point.
Let someone else try first. like back in the library to part of
last season.
Like, I'm the doctor, look me up, you know, and they sort of back
off, and it's something that he now continues to use quite often
where the villains, you know, when the doctor look me up, or, or
or, is that the, um, what does River say about him in silence in
the library or Forest of the Dead, where he could turn whole
armies away with a single word or something like that?
Well, that sort of relates to here.
They do turn away.
Stop, but really they've got something else up their sleeve.
Yes, that's the other thing too.
It's so beautifully delivered that we actually think he's
triumphed, but it turns out they were playing him all along.
I love that line.
Everything that ever hated you is coming here tonight.
Not Mary Whitehouse or Lala Walk, though.
Not even dodo.
To be fair, we hated that.
The doctor just tolerated that.
There's a heartrending bit at the end where he says, Did she miss
me?
and the doctor's just like, um...
Yeah, his reaction is amazing.
Yeah, the gutted look on Rory's face is just incredible.
And Karen comes in and does an incredible comedy performance as
well.
You know, like she's all loose limbed and stuff because she's kind
of coming off the drugs or whatever.
But she's got a very Edina monsoon vibe.
Comes in is super dismissive.
You know, like he's kind of horny for Romans visibly in front of
Rory.
And she's got that very Amy dialogue where she says, thanks for
the swordie, nice swordie.
I don't think that's the 1st time Rory's ever heard that.
Yeah, you're right, Nathan. she really is doing a great job there
as the supporting player in that scene without you really thinking
about what she's actually doing.
It's actually really selling, how distressed he is about the whole
thing.
Yeah, that's right.
She's completely kind of more or less unaware of him or absolutely
dismissive of him in this sort of comedy way, which makes it worse
for Rory, I think.
And then when we do move above ground and it moves totally away
from comedy, it's heartbreaking in the writing, but Karen also
plays it so well where she just starts crying and doesn't know
why.
It really got to me when I was watching it.
Yeah, yeah.
That whole, that whole plot is so affecting.
And again, the genius of Stephen Moffat is you think it's going to
go in a very maudlin direction of Rory, you know, pontificating
about why Amy doesn't remember it, blah, blah.
And Stephen Moffat is just like, I'm not interested in that.
No one's interested in that.
The doctor says, shut up and go talk to her.
And Rory's like, but why am I here?
What happened to me?
And the doctor's just like, I don't care.
You're here.
That's a wonderful thing.
Shut up and accept it.
And to get back to what you were saying earlier, Nathan, and to
use one of your phrases.
So when you were talking about how does this fit in with
cybercontinuity, to use one of your phrases, I don't care about
that.
And the 10 year old at home doesn't care about that.
The 10-year-old at home is going to go. theres Daleks, and there's
cybermen, and there's autons, and there's a hoix.
I love them.
Is there a steak?
I loved the hooks.
You know, there was also Spirit-ons.
We just couldn't see that.
And Vizians.
They asked refusians, but they refused.
Oh, dear.
But that's the, see, Stephen Moffatt kind of goes down the root of
saying, I've explained well enough how this could possibly have
happened.
Now let's get back to the human story.
And that's it.
I mean, he's telling Roy to shut up because he has seen that Amy
loves Rory and it was in question at the beginning of the season
but it's not in question now.
And so he says shut up, go up there and kind of, you know, get her
really.
And that's kind of the subtext of that.
He's super confident that Rory's able to win her back.
And part of the tragedy of that whole scene is that Amy is too
confident as well.
Amy, earlier in the season, talked Professor Brieswell in victory
of the Daleks around and sort of made him human again through the
power of her emotion, and she tries the same thing with Rory, and
she's confident that she'll succeed and she doesn't.
Yeah.
I mean, we said earlier this season that the bit after Hungry
Earth and cold blood, that that's where the relationship has gone
horribly wrong, where her decision to flee has had terrible
consequences.
And, you know, she doesn't even remember Rory anymore.
And so the natural arc is for that to be fixed.
You know, we have to be waiting for the other shooter drop at that
point in the season.
And so doing the thing.
It's an absolute episode 12 thing, isn't it?
where that looks like it's going to be resolved only to be
snatched away.
Yeah.
And it's also, this becomes a troop of Stephen Moffatt to do
something really horrendous to the characters in the finale or the
penultimate episode.
So, you know, here.
Rory shoots Amy.
Yeah, yeah.
And basically kills her.
And, you know, we're gonna get these throughout Moffatt's tenure.
And I don't quite know.
It feels like I should want to switch off the television at that
moment.
But I don't.
There is something about the writing and the performance that
makes me go, okay, that's horrible, but I want to see where this
goes next.
And we have it right up until Bill gets turned into a cyberman in
world enough in time. that it's a sickening moment, but you're
like, I need to know how this turns out.
I mean, she spends decades down there with the master.
Like I, I think Moffatt's playing a kind of knife edge game that
clearly doesn't work for a lot of people.
And it's because he's writing in this storybook register where the
characters perform plot functions and deliver funny lines, but you
can't kind of interrogate how they would feel.
And it's part of a problem with Doctor Who, right?
Right from the point where Billy Piper gets hit in the face by an
adherent of the repeated meme and knocked unconscious and locked
in a room.
You know, why would someone who is as realistic as her in rose
ever travel with a doctor again after that's happened to her?
So no one really works as a real person in the Doctor Who world?
But Moffat pushes that further than most people would like, I
think.
And we'll see that next year, I think he flubs it a few times.
He goes too far next year.
Yeah.
Isn't she what you say about that moment in end of the world
Nathan?
Because that was the actual scene where New Doctor Who became
Doctor Who for me.
It felt like, you know, the companion's just been clobbered and
put in a room to die by lightning coming through the walls.
I think it's an artefact of Moffat having been raised on the
Hinchcliffe era. because he saw how strong Sarah was companion and
everything that was thrown at Sarah Jane and he's kind of he's
that's in his subconscious and that's what he does with
companions.
And I think we said that Sarah Jane didn't work for us in ways for
that reason as a character.
The performances, you know, impeccable and we love Sarah Jane to
death, but like why is she still travelling with a doctor?
She ceased to become a real person.
Yeah, yeah.
And I don't think Moffatt wants these people to be real people.
I think they're sitcom characters and I think that it works on a
kind of sitcom logic, that, you know, there's the male lead and
the female lead and all of that sort of thing.
So I don't, I'm not as upset as people might be by Rory shooting
Amy, but that might just be because it's the 1st time he pulls
this.
Yeah, yeah.
And that's the thing, I'm not upset about it, but I feel like I
should be.
You know what I mean?
And that's the thing.
I'm not even that upset when we get to Bill.
I hate the bill things. so much.
But I think that's possibly because of the way it's resolved.
Yeah.
You know.
Where, whereas Nathan, I know, for instance, for a fact that you
were, you were quite upset with Darkwater Death in heaven.
Yes.
Yeah.
But again, I think that's a really, really good 2 parter, and I
just remember feeling an absolute sense of dread all the way
through dark water.
And if there is, I think, just because Danny's death is so
terrible, you know, so awful.
I think it's the worst death in Doctor Who.
Like the most upsetting death, I think, in Doctor Who.
But it's kind of that Stephen Moffatt is operating at a register
where it's impossible to read those companions as people, you know
and it's a feature of the show, but Moffatt sort of turns it up to
11, I think.
And is it interesting that Moffat's not interested in
interrogating that, but Russell is.
And so we have those scenes in Army of Ghosts where Jackie talks
to Rose and tells her that she's becoming a storybook character
tells her you're not going to be a real person anymore.
You're just going to be some woman walking through a market on an
alien planet and you won't be you.
You'll be a space person.
Correct.
Speaking of space people, we do have the whole Rory shoots Amy
intercut with Rivers' dilemma.
Yeah. and her whole discovery of Amy's house and her room and the
figures and the books on the Romans and the Pandorica and all of
that leading into the final few minutes.
I'm just going back to what Brendan said where he doesn't really
feel like upset at Rory killing Amy.
I'm sort of similar because it's intercut with the doctor getting
put in the Pandorica, rivers, rivers getting trapped in the TARDIS
and all these things are happening.
And so I feel like all of these things are going to be resolved.
Like I don't, she's not going to remain dead.
The doctor's not going to remain trapped in the doctor.
All these questions are going to be answered.
And I think they are in the next episode.
So, I guess jumping back to River for a bit. you know, and what
she's discovering.
It's interesting how he's writing her into the TARDIS, sort of
putting her in the side plot, perhaps jumping ahead like the next
week, but getting rid of her, but she's still discovering all
these important plot points.
Yeah.
Do you do you think the burn marks outside Amy's house are Daleks
have landed?
Yeah.
Like, so that's like in remembrance of the Daleks.
Yeah.
So the Daleks have landed.
They've gone upstairs to a bedroom, they've read all of her books
you know, they've gone through the photo collection.
Who is Nancy Drew?
A couple of them through flew in through the skylight like they
did with Adelaide.
It's so great that he gives them such a preposterous non-science
fiction job.
You know, it could have been anyone else, but it's the daleks who
are rummaging through Amy's stuff. you know in her bedroom.
Daleks do not understand, choose your own adventure.
It's interesting you say that because I don't think the 1st time
through it registered, there were burn marks there, that they were
even Daleks, that the house had been ransacked by whatever
monsters.
Yeah, a part of the alliance.
But it's interesting how like you've got the books on Roman.
And so that's come true.
And you've got the Pandoraca's box and that's in the Pandoraca.
But then you've got the picture of Rory.
Now, if he's been erased from time, like, would have ever existed
that picture, I'm a bit confused by that one point.
So did they go there before he got erased or doesn't the doctor
say people fall out of the world, but things get left behind?
Okay, so again, Stephen is actually explaining the cracks perhaps
in his plot away through lines always one step ahead of us.
That's right.
And it's something that I think only when you come back to rewatch
his episodes, is that you pick up on all of these things and often
in the moment, because there's so much wonderful dialogue and
things going on.
You miss.
Well, I do anyway, miss little bits and pieces around and think, Oh
has he explained all of that?
I'm a bit, you know, you know what?
You know what I'm like, where I want everything sign sealed and
delivered in a bow, and it actually is all there in plain sight
when you go back and rewatch it.
Won't you be lucky next week for the series, though one of Amy's
favourite childhood books was Doctor Who in an exciting adventure
with the Daleks.
Also tell what you said about, everything is kind of answered.
Do we ever get an answer for why the TARDIS is blowing up?
Or is it just for space reasons?
It is I think it is just for space reasons.
There are throwaway comedy lines in time of the doctor. where he
kind of realises that he never explained it.
And so there's something about, oh, I don't know, the silence or
something.
And it's surprising how little that matters.
I think this two-part finale is triumphant.
Central to it is the TARDIS exploding.
And it looks like it's going to be the silence because we get a
voice on the screen saying silence will fall, but series 6 never
really resolves it either.
No.
I also think this cliffhanger is a product of having to follow on
from Russell.
So, you know, Stephen knows that he's being handed an incredibly
popular show, but he also knows from all of his experience in
television that it would be very easy to fumble it and get it
wrong, which is why he follows Russell's structure so much this
season.
But I think for this cliffhanger.
He's looking back at Russell's last big season cliffhanger, which
is the stolen earth.
And so the cliffhanger for the stolen earth.
The doctor is regenerating in the TARDIS.
Sarah has almost run over some Daleks in her, Nissan Figaro, and
now she's going to get shot.
That'll never not be funny.
Gwen and Yanto are unloading submachine guns into a Dalek while
screaming, you know, everyone is in some form of danger.
So Moffatt is like, I need to put everyone in some form of danger
but I don't have 2 spinoffs worth of characters to put in danger.
So the doctor's being locked in a box that we know takes several
hours to open and can only open if it feels like it and there's a
bunch of monsters outside.
River is in the Tardus.
She's locked in there and it's exploding and we don't know what is
happening.
And Amy is dead and Rory is an auton.
Oh, and by the way, every star in the universe is blowing up at
every point in its history, fade to black, cliffhanger scream, no
next time trailer, titles.
Get out of that one, whoever writes the next episode.
That sounds like a good.
Oh my god, it's so good.
It's so ambitious.
And the special effect of all the stars exploding.
The last thing we see is earth and we fade to black and the music
is interrupted by that.
It's so well done.
And is the stars fading?
Does that look like Van Gogh painting?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, a little bit.
The stars are all kind of swirling and stuff like that.
I can't even say Metala oriensis.
It's incredible.
I hope that tracking comes back in the reset.
But you are right.
Like, you know, all of that going to black and just having the
earth, it's sort of a bit of a mirror of like when we come in.
Yeah.
The shots that always come into earth at the beginning of
Russell's and even this season with Stephen Moffatt.
It's now it's sort of the pull back and it's just this little
dot.
Very evocative shot, just earth left by itself and a sea of
blackness.
But I love the fact that there are all those different
cliffhangers to resolve.
And you're quite right, Brendan, you know, how can Stephen compete
with what Russell's done before?
And here you go, people, here are all my multiple cliffhangers and
hopefully you'll like at least one of them to come back or more
than one.
And can we make a mention for how beautifully it's shot?
Toby Haynes is fantastic throughout the episode, but in particular
the cliffhanger and the buildup is so beautifully put together.
All of those wonderful, slightly slow motion scenes with River and
the Tartars intercut with the doctor being dragged into the
Pandorica and Rory holding Amy.
I mean, it's just superbly shot.
But isn't the inside of the Pandoraca like a blue green colour?
Like it's a slightly different whiting and in some of the shots
Matt looks absolutely stunning like the way in which he's actually
framed.
I think, yeah, you're totally right, Peter, the direction and the
lighting in that is just utterly superb.
There's another shot wrong in the entire episode.
It's just masterfully done.
Well, they listen to that's all we have time for this week.
We'll be back next week.
If there is a next week, to try and work out what in God's name is
going on in the Big Bang.
In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts
and you can keep up with us at Flightthrough Entirety on Facebook
at FDE Podcast on Twitter, and on our website
FlightthroughEntirety.com, where you'll find links to our other
podcasts, Bondfinger, and Jody Interterra.
Until next time, please remember your training about Doctor Song's
hallucinogenic lipstick.
We only just kissed you 2 minutes ago, and already you imagine
that we've been droning on about this silly TV show for more than
210 episodes.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Kiss kiss.
See you soon.
Good night.
That was Flight through Entirety, starring Todd Building, Nathan
Bottomley, Peter Griffiths and Brendan Jones.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Ladd.
This episode, Space Reasons, was recorded on the 9th of May 2020
and released on the 30th of May.
Now that the universe has been destroyed, a post-credits joke
seems somehow inappropriate.
So instead, let me thank the many guests who joined us this series
Stephen from New to Who, Kevin Bernard, Col Solito, Simon Moore
Karen Carpenter, Johnny Spandrel, Eric Stadnick, Fiona Tomney, Jack
Shanahan, and Joe Ford.
We'll see you next week.
I think that's it.
What do you think?
It's good discussion.
Yeah, that was so good.
There's so much to say.
It's so good I will give you the link, but someone at a convention
made Sylveste to do the...
Yeah, someone else do our 1st speech.
And it's actually quite good.
Like, it's it's actually madder because it's silver sight
reading.
It's like he's drunk or something, you know, like, there's
something, you know, like, he really is sort of selling the, I've
got nothing left to lose thing and he's doing his sort of weird
posh boy accent and stuff like that.
And he changes his, he changes his delivery, so he slows things
down and then speeds things up and delivers things in a staccato
way sometimes.
So good.
I think later on they give him sort of things that we know Matt
Smith can do in the scripts.
And I always think that's a shame because what Matt Smith can do
is something you've never seen before.
And, you know, I think eventually I think they just sort of turn
to sort of, you know, Matt Smithy things, you know, I felt the
speech in Rings of Ackerton, which is supposed to be like this
absolutely falls flat and is sort of super embarrassing, really.
And again, Colin's done a version of that.
In that case it's actually much better.
Well, I can imagine.
I can imagine.
Mainly because to hear Colin Baker performing as his doctor and
most of that speech is quite erudite, but then to hear Colin Baker
saying, you take it all, baby.
John Pertley said that once.
That's not that again.
No, no.
Well, I like the rings of maggot.
Yeah, yeah.
Colin was David Troughton's flat mate.
Just saying.
All right.
I'll stop recording.
Hang on.
Do you want to do the outro?
Oh, yeah.
Do we do the outro?
forget that.
We have an outro.
We want to talk about the title a bit as well.
I really love the fact it's a verb title.
Well, no, no, it's not a verb. a sentence.
So, yeah, it's not just a verb phrase. a full sentence.
So we have verb phrases like kill the moon.
Um, and let's kill hit, well, let's kill hit.
The doctor dances.
Well, that's its 1st one that's a sentence, I think.
Isn't it?
Yeah, I think you might be wrong.
Don't shoot the pianist is obviously a sentence, but that's a
single episode.
We should have had more of those in the classic series.
Yes, well, let's kill Delta.
Bring it on, baby.
Maimon pursues.
We did all...
We did almost have There a doctor in the horse?
Yes, he did.
That would have been great.
What's all roads lead to a nightmare?
Yeah, yeah, that's a sentence and the nightmare begins as a
sentence.
Yeah, we did more often than we think, do we?
Well, no story titles, I don't think, but certainly episode
titles.
Yeah.
Yeah, but I think the doctor dances are the 1st one that's a
thing.
Yeah, it was like when attached was a Star Trek.
Yeah.
When attached was a Star Trek title and I thought, oh, adjective.
Well, maybe it's a verb.
Okay.
All right, here goes.
Well, dear listener, that's all we have time for this week.