Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast hosted by the sort of boys that give
motorcars pet names.
I'm Nathan.
I'm James I'm Stephen. and I'm Dan.
Well, this week's episode features special guest writer Neil
Gaiman, the famous comic book writer slash novelist who put the
sand into the sandman, the grave into the graveyard book, and the
nightmare into nightmare in silver.
But that's all in the past or possibly the future, but in the
present, let's talk about the doctor's wife.
So, this started life as a whiteboard in John Nathan Turner's
office, is that right?
Yeah, wasn't it meant to be the Caves of Andrazani, but it was a
way of JNT trying to find out who the mole was in the BBC office.
Is that right?
And of course, the thing about it was that it was a title that
would have been completely impossible in Classic Who or 80s Doctor
Who in particular.
You could never, ever, ever have even sort of countenance the idea
of the doctor having a wife.
And so it was an absolutely kind of obviously fake episode title, I
think.
I love that there's a there's a mole in the BBC office.
Did they catch?
Did they catch her?
But that's lots of history.
I think so.
Well, like, I mean, you couldn't imagine him having a wife until
she left the show and then they got married just a few months
later.
That's right This is, I think, sort of fairly universally liked
isn't it?
by everyone.
Certainly by me.
I think it's one of those great totemic high points, I guess, in
the Stephen Moffat era for me.
It does help, obviously, having Neil Gaiman on board, but I also
feel like it's the combination between the 2 of them.
Moffatt's obviously edited this and sent a lot of notes back
according to a lot of the sort of information around this episode
to Gamer to make sure that it does actually sing and it really
does.
Just a really good, um, just just starts with a really great idea
and goes on from there.
It's very imaginative.
The the sort of the settings very evocative, but they got a great
writer and it all came together.
I feel like, with a cast and crew who are obviously having a great
time.
Oh, look, I love this story.
We were having a conversation the other day, Nathan, about it
being a little thin, but I can forgive its thinness, because it's
just, it's so enjoyable and like this, um, so many rich characters
and actors in it, um, and I, yeah, no, I, I, I, unconditionally
love this story.
And mainly just for Saran Jones.
Yeah, isn't she great?
She, um, of course, turns up in Sarah Jane Adventures doing just
the most spectacular turn as the Mona Lisa, uh, running around an
art gallery in Cardiff, presumably with a giant space gun.
And come on, it's an ealing.
It's healing.
That's right.
She really is absolutely extraordinarily good.
And I think in a way, the episode really kind of hinges on how
good her performance is.
And so it's perfect casting and really just a sublimely great
performance.
I think she's given like, you know, the lines that she's given up
and the direction that she's given really sets her up, but it's
she really, she just nails that performance.
It's just sort of a high strong, and then laconic, and then
there's the hair and the dress, and it all goes so well together, I
think she's just wonderful.
Seems to me like such a gaming character.
I'm not sure whether it's more for a game and sort of bringing
this to the fore.
But, you know, that sort of otherworldly kookiness, which is just
yeah, she plays it wonderfully.
But I think the direction to her was to sort of play it like the
doctor, which I think is really quite evident.
I sort of read that online to sort of do a bit of research for
this.
And then I read, I watched the episode back a 2nd time and it was
like, actually, she's very much playing it like Matt Smith, that
sort of otherworldly kookiness that they sort of bring both bring
to the performances in this one.
I love it.
I've got that.
I've actually got that written so many times in my notes I've just
got written.
That's so gaming. sort of the hair piled on top of a head and the
sort of the black lace and that sort of, I guess, that sort of Tim
Burtoney, Helena Bonham Carter type type character, you know, that
we see so many times.
She's great.
I'm not as familiar with Gaiman's work, I think, perhaps as I
should be, although we assigned the graveyard book to year 7 and 8
at school and got all of the kids to read it as a kind of big sort
of book week book club thing, and I thought it was, you know
absolutely spectacular and adorable.
But I get the sense that, that the setting itself is a bit gaminy
like a sort of trash heap plug hole at the end of the universe and
the characters like, like auntie an uncle and a nephew, that sort
of technological junkyard, kind of slash graveyard that's kind of
like sort of semi-Victorian, but also a little bit cyberpunky
pretty, that's quite gaming.
I'm not, I haven't never really been a, not a huge gaming fan, but
I've, his works, is also very familiar, kind of, his work is very
familiar to me, and I've always got time for an old British goth.
Says the man wearing the Joy Division T-shirt.
I've actually been reading the Sandman.
Oh yeah.
Because I'd never read it and there's a Netflix adaptation
coming.
And I was like, what is all the fuss about?
It's, and it is, yeah, there are a lot of, there are a lot of
gaming tropes in this story that are really evident in, like in
some of his earliest writing.
Like he does have a, a really clear voice that he brings to this.
And so this isn't the 1st attempt that Moffat has made to get a
kind of big name writer in, and even next week, he's going to try
it again.
So we've had Simon Nye.
We've had Richard Curtis.
We're going to have Matthew Graham from Life on Mars next week.
And he's done that in a way that, I think, has brought something
to Doctor Who that it hasn't had before.
I think Amy's choice is surprising.
I think that Vincent and the doctor.
Again, is the show kind of breaking new ground.
And so I think it has been kind of a fairly productive approach.
In a way, in a way, this is the 1st attempt. of him trying to
bring a big name writer onto the show because he commissioned him
for series five.
Ah, yes.
This was actually supposed to take the slot that eventually went
to the lodger, but they had to push it because of the cost of
Mounting this story was huge.
Right.
So budgetary issues sort of meant that this got bumped to series
6.
I wonder whether it actually doesn't fit better into series 5, um
and particularly if it was so late on into the series, it sort of
foreshadows, you know, there's there's a, um, it opens, of course
with hope in a box, doesn't it?
Um, and it ends in that in that way as well.
And I just wonder whether that would have been a beautiful
thematic link through to the Pandorica, which obviously based on
hope being the last thing in Pandora's box.
I think it would have worked a little bit better.
But this way kind of works as well because it sort of
foreshadows.
Here we have the doctor's wife, but of course we've got the
wedding of river song right at the end as well, which is also the
doctor's wife.
So there's a nice little link there too.
Despite all that gamanness, though, I reckon that I can detect
Moffat's hand in the dialogue.
I mean, I think the, you know, biting is like kissing only there's
a winner is absolutely classic Moffat.
And the explanation of the bubble universe where the doctor
explains it, and then, you know, someone takes up with that, and
then he says, no, it's not like that at all, but yes, if that
helps, which, you know, actually happened, I think last episode
didn't it?
It seems to be a thing that he's doing.
So it is very moffity still.
I think I read that Gaiman had a lot of trouble with the script
and because there were some budget cuts, they had to do some
rewrites and Moffat jumped in and did a whole bunch of that.
And I can't even, like, I get, there's some things in there they
did to, very clever things in there they did to save money.
Like, they sort of use those that corridor set. a bunch of times
and they, I really like the, where they, they get house to speak
for the 1st time just through the uncle and auntie characters
which I think, and it's basically just a disembodied voice, but
it's just a clever way to save money, and then they've got the
fabulous, fabulous Michael Sheen to do that voice.
Uh, And then they um, then they get the Doctor Who experience and
film, film on the, the, the, the, I can't even, but then you've
got things like that junkyard set and the whole, all of those, all
of those sets are fabulous.
Like they're so...
Drunkyard set is a quarry.
Just the query.
It's amazingly well done.
Like that giant looming kind of spaceship hulk over the place
where the TARDIS arrives.
And then later the hardest graveyard.
That is also a great again.
But it's a quarry that they've kind of beefed up with CG in a
really kind of effective way.
I think it looks really good Yeah, with match shots.
And just filled it with crap.
And it's so simple, but it just looks, it's really evocative.
You buy it straight away and it's kind of there.
They're kind of surrounded by detritus for the entire episode.
And I think I think it's wonderful.
Fabulous.
Michael Pickwade is fantastic, isn't he?
Oh, he's superb.
Absolutely.
But I also think it's kind of what the 3 doctors was meant to look
like.
And you're talking earlier about Moffatt's sort of trademark
dialogue there, Nathan.
Like, isn't that example of the bubble on the bubble, a bit like
you know, the brigadier trying to surmise what the space lightning
is, and the doctor's saying, no, that's nothing like it at all, but
if it helps.
It's obviously written by 2 Doctor Who fans.
It is absolutely written by 2 Doctor Who fans.
And I think the story is that Moffat tells, you know, when they
1st met, they were sort of skirting around each other, like, you
know, lions in a cage trying to sort of suss each other out in
terms of Doctor Who fan, you know, levels.
And it's obvious that these 2 have just been watching it since
forever.
And, you know, things like the hypercubes.
Like, it's obvious.
I think I've seen game and talk before about his love for Trout in
particular the war games.
Like that, it's just straight from it, yeah.
Well there you go.
Yeah.
I mean, and it's just one of those things where it doesn't need to
be explained because it works perfectly within the confines 45
minutes and for a new audience, but we see it and we just go, oh
my god.
They obviously love this show and they're making it you know
reinterpreting it for us.
Well, yeah, the whole I'm sort of wandering around the corridors
not necessarily the horror aspect, but they're wandering around
the corridors and finding another console room is, like, you know
like admittedly completely lifted from master.
Of course it is, including the little shaving mirror on top of the
lashed up console that they put together in the junkyard.
I think it's worth mentioning that that was the winner of a blue
Peter competition to design a TARDIS console.
Yes.
I didn't know that until I did a little bit of research.
That's so adorable and it's really cool as well.
Yeah, yeah.
But even even the setting, like even the planet setting, the house
setting is a reference to an unearthly child.
It was a deliberate reference to the 1st story. set in a
junkyard.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So the TARDIS in a junkyard, you know, it's kind of, it's super
iconic.
The other thing that I think that the story does really
successfully is create a new version of the Time Lords in a way.
So Doctor Who hasn't had time lords because they've all been
destroyed.
But here we get a sense of a kind of arrangement where there are a
lot of time lords flying around the place in TARDIS and, you know
they get together for sort of drinking parties or something like
that.
Like the talk about the course there, you know, being a bad girl.
Clearly they've been getting together and having a great time.
And so it is a kind of pre-galafray conception of the time lords
in the sense that all we know about the time lords by the time the
the end of the war games comes along and they're introduced
properly and the show is ruined forever. is that there are time
lords like the monk and the doctor who have TARDises who travel
around sort of time and space doing things.
And so that's the version that we get.
And I love that as a way of introducing the time lords to a new
series audience who haven't had to sit through Mark of Infinity or
something.
Like I think that's a much, much more fun conception of what the
time lords are.
And my favourite thing about the time lord, the sort of the extra
time lord stuff in this one is that he does they do the best thing
you can with it, which is you tease the time lords, you talk about
the time lords, and then you don't bring any time lords into the
show.
Don't go to California.
And to introduce the idea of them changing gender for the 1st
time.
Is this the 1st as well?
Is this the 1st time?
Because I noticed that.
I thought it was yeah, really cool.
Yeah.
And that whole conversation about the corsair, which is fun and
entertaining in itself and gives us some background into sort of
Matt's character and it teaches us about the time lords, obviously
becomes a plot point when we see the auntie's arm comes from the
corsair and now we start to see, in fact, what's really going on
here.
That part where he opens up the cupboard and it's just a bunch of
those mailboxes.
It's just so so creepy and fun.
And at the same time, I breathe a huge sigh of relief because
we're not going to gala free. just, just, just, just a really
wonderful moment for me.
I love that.
Matt plays it incredibly well as well.
Because he doesn't go the tenant route of chewing the scenery and
yelling at everyone.
It's very calm and very kind of frightening.
That thing you gave me hope and took it away.
And that would make anyone dangerous, but he just says that
without kind of, you know, looking hugely, visibly over the top
angry.
Yeah, like he's, he's um, bottling it up.
It's uh, it's simmering beneath the surface.
I think that's got to be a choice, right?
Like to just get away from that kind of bug-eyed tenant hysteria.
I absolutely agree, Dan.
I think, you know, I don't know whether it's conscious or not, but
the way that Matt Smith sort of naturally plays those lines and it
happens again throughout, I think, his tenure, but even in this
episode.
You know, Amy says to him, you want to be forgiven.
And there's just this heartbreaking delivery where he says, don't
we all?
It's such a different sort of take on the character in terms of
his relationship with the, you know, what he's done to his own
people and the time war.
I think it's wonderful.
I think he's superb, but it's also just a great, great way of
distancing this 11th doctor from the 10th doctor.
I think Amy's response to that line is incredible because she
clearly says yes without saying anything, like she clearly
indicates that she understands where the doctor's coming from, but
she just does it in a look.
And you know, people, you know, people underestimate Karen Gillen
I think, and they're wrong to do so.
I think she does some really very subtle acting in this one.
I think this is probably the 1st and maybe only time I'll do Matt
Smith get to do a Matt Smith one with you guys.
But yeah, because I just really, so I wrote, Amy and Rory, one of
my favourite combos, I know I know Rory's not like universally
popular and not everyone likes the 2 of them, but for me, they're
just so, especially in this one, they are understated, and aside
from that whole, like Rory ageing, getting lost in a labyrinth
corridor is being controlled by an evil overmind thing, which is
not my favourite part of the episode.
They are really, they are really good and subtle.
And one of the things I love about Rory and Amy is they're very
grounded.
They ground the show.
They're very, they're quite ordinary.
Because, you know, we've had sort of Rose and Martha and people
who are fabulous and excited and adventurous and they want to go
out and do things and then you've got one of my favourite things.
Rory says, once we're fuelled up, we're going to go, right?
Okay, we're going to get back in the charters and go.
And that's because that's what I always, I'm always thinking
whenever I watch Doctor Who, I'm like, I'm that companion who's
like, can we just go back to the times?
And this will just be a one episode story where we just go, we
just leave and everything's fine.
And I love that.
I love how ordinary Rory isn't with his like southern coast accent
and his puffer jacket and yeah, they're quite good.
Sheely.
Yeah.
I think it, I think it takes Rory to bring Amy down as well.
Like they they are so recognisably normal and there's couples that
I know that are very much, you know, have that dynamic.
But Amy's such an elevated character, a fantasy sort of manic
pixie girl, and it takes Rory to bring her back to that sort of
recognisable sort of dynamic that they definitely have here.
And just going back to that line about, you know, you want to be
forgiven and don't we all in Karen's reaction to that?
I wonder whether that's also a kind of interiority on that
character's part because, of course, she's now living with the
guilt of having Rory wait 2000 years for her, right?
And I wonder whether that's in that performance as well.
I just think it was a really good idea to bring Arthur Devil on
board as a regular.
I agree.
Not least because I think him and Matt Smith know each other
already, but like you can tell from this story and also I think
the confidentials that we're playing at the time, you can just
tell that they are having a ball.
They're just having the best time hanging out making this
ludicrous show together.
And it really, it really shows like, I found just a couple of
weeks ago when we were doing the two-part opening story, just
having the 3 of them back, along with River, just made me so happy
instantly.
I do think that this crew is really amazing.
And I think it's for exactly the reasons that you say there, Dan.
I think this episode, especially back in the day when this aired
and I saw it for the 1st time, it just reminded me how tickled I
was that the show was back and it had been back for about 5 or 6
years and it just made me sit back for a minute and giggle and I
still couldn't quite believe that it was back on TV, you know
after that, or that long wait.
Should we talk about Cyran Jones as the TARDIS, or the way the
TARDIS is kind of used here?
Oh, let's, I think this is a hugely interesting and fascinating
aspect of this story.
It touches on so many things that, um, well, I guess it's sort of
central to the way that Moffatt just tells stories, but also the
way that this 11th doctor is presented as well.
And what I mean by that, in terms of the Moffat thing is that
Nathan, you've said many times before, this is a sex com writer
writing for Doctor Who, and there's so many tropes that sort of
come across with that, not least, the hyper-competent, incredibly
intelligent, sexualised, dominant woman, which I think we get here
with Saran Jones is the TARTA.
Some people just go to counselling.
I do love the reveal when she's saying that she stole him instead
of him stealing the TARDIS.
I love that.
Another thing I have got written, so gaming, which is like that
there's sort of like that sort of creepy, crazy ballerina music
playing in the background.
I thought I thought that Clara told the doctor to steal a child.
I mean, the fact that she can't get verb tense is right and she
keeps remembering things that haven't happened yet.
I think is really quite magnificent.
There's a line earlier on about a nine-year-old trying to fix a
motorcycle which has nothing to do with what's going on in the
scene that it occurs in, and then she says it later when the
doctor's trying to fix the TARDIS.
She's archived console rooms that haven't happened yet.
All of that stuff is really sort of tremendous.
And of course, there's the central thing around that as well, which
is the reveal that the very sad word, the sad thing that she has
to say, isn't goodbye, which is what we assume it is.
She actually remembers that word.
It's hello.
And I just think that's actually really very good.
And it's impossible to tell whether that's Moffat or game and
because it could easily be either one of them.
That's so true, definitely.
And how wonderful.
Like it obviously pays off on...
We go back to the edge of destruction, which is a car crash of a
story, but what's so wonderful about it is that...
As the 3rd ever story, Whitaker establishes that the Tartars is
not just a dreary prop or just a narrative method of conveyance
but actually a character.
And here at last, that character is given voice and it's really
really just gorgeous, that we have that moment where, you know, the
oldest character, the 2, you know, 2 oldest characters or 2 oldest
continuing characters in the show finally get to say hello.
It's just wonderful.
Isn't it as lovely how excited he is to talk to they finally get
to talk to each other?
And it's it's just it's so sweet.
The whole, the whole story is so sweet and imaginative and just
the idea, I mean, going back to the, just the, the idea of putting
the TARDIS in a person and having it talk and be a character.
It's just such a brilliant idea.
But at the same time, I couldn't believe that they never thought
of it before.
In a way, it's something that the new series has opened up because
it has a wider range of available ways of telling stories.
And so you couldn't, I think, have done it successfully in the
classic series because the classic series doesn't have that
character focus that the new series has.
They've probably got Kamika to play.
I would like to see that.
I love it.
I love a tide eccentric story, like whenever you get to go inside
it or you learn more about it or anything like that.
But I just couldn't believe they hadn't done it before, even like
in New Adventures or a book or something like that, but it's just
such a simple, brilliant idea.
And they just, they just now, like we said before, they just
absolutely nailed that casting.
They wanted to call the story bigger on the inside.
But, um, yeah. connotations, but they went, oh, actually, that
probably gives away the main plot point, doesn't it?
No, the doctor's wife is such a fun sort of, you know, nerd
baiting title, but also just that maybe sort of link back to the
JNT board.
I think I think it's absolutely perfect that way, but it's also
isn't it funny because it's not, I don't know, literally, this
isn't literally the doctor's wife.
I think it rather suggests the show that we've been watching, and
particularly over the last 45 minutes, but maybe over the last, you
know, well, 48 years at this point, should really be called the
TARDIS's husband.
And it is that line right at the end.
What makes you think I would ever give you back?
Like she says, it's just wonderful. absolutely superb.
It is wonderful.
And like you said before, obviously written by the lifelong Doctor
Who fans, they get to the doctor in his title is fine.
I get to have a conversation and basically tell each other they
love each other at the end of they get they get teary.
It is kind of self-indulgent, but it's just really, really, really
lovely and touching.
There's an effortlessness to the way that he reinterprets the
entire program, the premise of the entire program now gets turned
on its head in a way that doesn't spoil anything that doesn't kind
of require radical reinterpretations of the show, although it
permits them, like the idea that the TARDIS gets the doctor to
wear a good story is going to happen. you know, like we knew that
but now here it is sort of presented as part of the show.
Yeah, they do it without like a nerd angering retcon.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Very deft, very yeah.
He'll do it again.
I think in things like listen or even in, you know, the 50th
anniversary special.
It is something that he's able to do that he's able to look at
what happens in the show, produce a different interpretation of it
and still leave the show intact.
It's what's the point of a good idea if you can't reuse at least 2
or 3 times.
Sometimes, you know, just a season apart.
Yeah.
But also to use them in a way that is conciliatory or at least, you
know, there's kisses to the past.
You know, there's this sort of wonderful love for the program, what
it was, what it is and what it can be and will be.
And it's also another way in which, in addition to it being just
really super meta.
Um, it's tied in with those glorious, um, you know, beautiful sort
of emotions that underscore it as well.
It's, for me, it's probably one of those top 10 new who episodes
where the fields far outweigh the plot.
Like, I don't really care.
Nathan, you've said many times before about the bliz-bloss and all
the rest of it.
Like what this actually is, I feel, is a perfectly shaped, and
maybe even deceptively simple story, because it has been refined
so much by Moffat and Game, and who I do think are geniuses, you
know, in much the same way perhaps that a Terence Dix storyline
seems so effortlessly simple.
And I think it's really for all of those reasons that, you know
the sort of kisses to the past, the emotion led character led
narrative, which is still very much recognisably a classic Doctor
Who kind of field story.
Um, and, you know, a 1000 other grace notes, I think, that this
story continually strikes.
Like, I really couldn't possibly care less at the resolution to
such a highly lauded script by 2 genius writers is literally a
dais in Makina.
I just don't care.
So let's just talk about that because I do think that it is very
very thin in certain ways.
And we complained last week about the way that the curse of the
black spot kind of fails to resolve into anything of any value at
the end.
So here we shunt Amy and Rory off to a side plot, which looks
incredibly cheap and a little bit played and actually kind of
unpleasant to watch as well, I think.
Really, really nasty.
You know, there were like, there were extra scenes where like Rory
got trapped in the 0 room.
And Amy ended up in the Tartar swimming pool, but they got rid of
the Amy in the pool scene because she couldn't swim.
And because it costs money unlike those sort of dreadful Tartis
corridors.
I would have happily had them doing a wandering around an old
hospital income art gallery.
I do.
Why not?
It can look like anything.
The corridor parts are pretty drudgy.
They're not my favourite, but I do really like something they do
often in Newhu, where they make the, they just make the Tartis
scary.
There's like 2 ways where they just turn the lights off and it's
such a simple thing.
They do it at the very start of the episode and then again when
the when Michael Sheen takes over, um, and they just turn the
lights off and it's like a dark TARDIS with no power is just
inherently scary because it just never happens.
And then they diffuse the whole thing with a green glow and they
make the TARDIS menacing.
I just really, really enjoyed that. you know, I like the idea of
Michael Sheen watching people run around corridors.
You can watch me run corridors anytime.
Well, we've been doing that with Doctor Who for 50 years, so...
Yeah, that's it.
We need space corridors again for the 2nd week in a row.
And then I do think that it's a little bit of a shame that there
are basically no obstacles, you know, the plan just goes
completely according to plan.
We build a TARDIS.
It lands in the other TARDIS.
It lands on nephew.
How can we do this really cheaply?
Telepathy with just let it tell telepathy with you with Rory.
Rory just gets it.
He knows what to do.
He just does it. is so quick, isn't it?
You get that as wonderful lines.
It's like, you know, like the cute one.
No, the pretty one?
pretty one.
But again, those images.
So what was it?
Crimson 11 Delight Petrochor.
And that's so similar to the way that the Tartars communicates
with them in edge of destruction, just by showing a series of
images.
So it does make sense with, we know the TARDIS has a telepathic
kind of field or whatever.
So I don't mind that.
I think that that kind of plays on the mythology, but it is all
just a little bit easy and a little bit straightforward.
I kind of love how that's actually, it's the show fulfilling its
original educational remit.
It's teaching people what the word metrical means.
That's how I learned.
And it'll become very, very valuable in episode 12, I think.
Petrochord, is it, like, is Petrochord is an Australian?
word?
Like it's as in, it's a word that was 1st used to describe that
smell by an Australian scientist.
Oh, okay.
It's the smell of, you know, the smell of water on dry earth in
the outback.
Yeah, no, now available at a perfume counter near you.
Duty-free.
You were saying before about like a thin plot.
It's really just a good idea with a bunch of great dialogue and
some good casting around it.
And then they kind of, I guess they have to beef up the episode
and you end up with these, the corridors, which, I feel like I can
just, you can forgive because the rest of it's just so good.
It is just, I did find myself when they were in the corridors with
old Rory.
I was just like, I just remember, I felt like I was shouting at
the team, you're like, get back to the, get back to the love in
because it's just like, all those climactic, all the climactic
stuff when they're, um, the doctor and the TARDIS are, you know
flying through the vortex, like without a shell and they're just
like yelling at each other and having a great time.
Then they just keep cutting back to Amy and Rory.
And I'm like, no, no, take me back.
Maybe it doesn't have like the full confidence to not be a Doctor
Who episode.
And that's a problem with Doctor Who, I think.
It's like Power of 3 or Boomtown or something where all of the
things that aren't the Doctor Who episode are vastly more fun than
the things that are.
And here I think we could have afforded to have a few less space
corridors and a few and a bit less of a Doctor Who story going
on.
And that would have been more entertaining, I think.
It could have, but I'm not sure I particularly mind.
Like, and I know I say this as someone who loves Castra Valver.
So it's not going to maybe carry too much weight, but those
corridor scenes, the creepiness, all the rest of it, it kind of
does found it in a Doctor Who nurse that maybe doesn't alienate
you know, as many viewers as maybe it probably could have in
introducing essentially the doctor's wife, right?
And I feel like Doctor Who, I think Richard said this before many
times on the pod in the past.
Doctor Who is best when it does something else, but it's still
Doctor Who doing those things.
And I feel like that's what it does here.
Yes, the plot is really thin, but isn't it also thin in city of
death?
It's not about necessarily the plot.
It's about just how wonderful a ride it is across the duration of
the episode and that's really what really works here for me.
I guess it's a way of showing how essential Idris's character, the
matrix of the TARDIS, the soul of the TARDIS, to the TARDIS being
a sort of friendly, safe environment, like once she's gone from
there.
Yeah, making the tide is scary.
It just always works for me.
I really like it. a dead, a dead TARDIS, a dark TARDIS, or when
the TARDIS disappears, and it's separated from the doctor, that's
just inherently scary to me because it just doesn't happen very
often.
I guess for me, the problem is the kind of implication that Rory
is suffering for prolonged periods of time.
I just find sort of deeply unpleasant, I think.
Yeah, nah, it's just sort of nasty and yeah, Rory's a punching bag
again.
I like that they give them a bit of agency with the that sort of
telepathy and the...
I didn't read it that way.
Like, I think you're supposed to read it that way in the, in the
initial sort of moments, you're supposed to think, oh, he's
trapped, again, for, ah, you know, 1000s of years or whatever
slowly dying and hating Amy, but then that's just house screwing
with her head because he just pops around the corner the next
moment.
So they, like, they set that up and then defuse it immediately
going, well, no, actually we're not doing that to him this time.
Well, except that we see it.
Do you know what I mean?
It doesn't matter whether it really happened or not.
Guess what?
of it actually happened. weekend to see it, though.
I did laugh and I really did really enjoy that sort of corridor
covered in graffiti with a skeleton in the middle.
I did really enjoy that.
It was quite fun.
So, I just want to go back to that issue of the doctor's
relationship with relationships, really, and the topic of your
sexuality, or even asexuality, particularly for this 11th doctor
who, you know, doesn't quite get it right. and it sort of
indicates that this isn't as a sort of romantic lead as perhaps
tenants doctor was.
And I feel like that there's always that tension in Moffat stories
particularly with the 11th doctor, that straddles the line between
that sort of, you know, very early 2010s hetero lattishness, which
really is Moffat stock in trade, but also was very zeitgeist at
the time.
And also his, at the same time, utterly alien asexuality.
You know, at the end he talks about bunk beds, a bed with a
ladder.
You can't beat that.
Like, just sort of, you know, showing just how clueless he
actually is in this regard.
Or rather a sexuality, maybe, that we can't possibly fathom in
full, in the same way that even the doctor can't fathom time in
the same way that the Tartars can perceive of time.
There's this sort of alienness about him.
Like, obviously he has a sexuality.
Moffat said many times he has a granddaughter in as an answer to
the question of, you know, does a doctor have sex, basically.
So he's not sort of shying away from it, but he's, he reinterprets
it and we, you know, obviously see it later.
I think Missy in the season 9 opener sort of, you know, talks
about his companions being like the dog in the couple.
And I feel like that's just like a really clever having it both
ways. like Moffatt being someone who can just sort of, you know
produce this ambiguous depiction of the doctor's sexuality, which
is at one time, you know, quite lettish and hetero, as I say, but
also at the other, just utterly alien.
And that kind of works for me, and I'm not sure whether it works
for everyone else.
I have said before that I think that both of Moffatt's doctors are
him in the way that both of RTDs doctors are him as well.
Like, RTD's doctors are a facade of sort of jolliness and being
charming and being likeable over a core of kind of cynicism and
sort of self-hatred.
And I think that that's Russell.
And I think Moffatt's doctor is a kind of clueless manchild who
likes being bossed around by other people and who secretly
suspects.
Yeah, by strong women. and who secretly suspects he's a bad
person.
And I think that the asexuality is playing up that manchildness
because the asexuality often manifests itself as just being
childish, like the bunk beds.
You know, a 10 year old loves bunk beds because a 10 year old only
conceives of beds as a place to sleep.
And so I do think that that's what you get with Matt Smith's
doctor that he is actually kind of unpleasant in all sorts of ways
like and often quite unlikeable, despite the sort of jolly
exterior.
But his incompetence.
You know, the way that River comes in, just a few weeks ago, River
again demonstrates how much better she is at Flying the TARDIS
than he is.
No one else would have dared ever to suggest that in the history
of Doctor Who, but Moffatt does because Moffatt himself is a
little bit of a man child and is kind of aware of.
And she's constantly being like confusing him and embarrassing him
by being sexy at him in close proximity.
I do think that there's I think there's a bit where it's somewhere
maybe it's in the Smith's 1st season. someone offers him alcohol
and he takes a sip and then just spits it straight back out and
it's...
Again, he did that 3 weeks ago in the Impossible Astronaut.
I love that. so simple.
It's like you don't have to explain why he doesn't drink or they
don't have to...
They don't really have to explain his sexuality because he's a
1000 year old alien and it should be something that we probably
can't understand or conceive of.
Like they do with that missy episode down the line, which I do.
I just love that conversation they have.
It's brilliant.
But, yeah, I just think, uh, I'd like they sort of toyed with, uh
companion fancies the doctor a 3rd time with Amy earlier on, and
I'm so glad they got past it and got, because it's just been so
done, um, and and done, done clumsily, I think.
And I'm glad that they seem to just have like, now, not taken a
stand, but like staked a position out that that's probably not
going to happen with this doctor because he's, uh, he's a weird
1000 year old alien and he's just not not into it.
He's just not that into you.
I like to think that, like, you know, um, River and the 11th
doctor never, never consummated their relationship.
That didn't happen.
And until Capaldi is the doctor.
I agree.
Like they spend 24 years together on...
Yeah, like, like, I kind of like that conception.
Yeah, Matt Smith does seem like with River Song. he's got a
girlfriend that he doesn't know what to do with.
Like a, like, when you get a girlfriend, when you're in, like, in
primary school, you just don't know what to do with them.
Like, you know?
So, originally this episode, like the introductory scene, um, that
became the Tartar scene, uh, at the beginning of this episode, were
set on the Planet of the Raincords.
Um, and the the hypercube turned up and and interrupted them being
sacrificed.
Just some rainbows.
And it was just cheaper to have it knock on the door.
Well exactly. like that I did so much.
He rewrote it for the doctor and river, like as a mini, a mini
episode that they used on, like, yeah, they released on the series
7 box set.
Oh really?
I do, I do, it's quite fabulous.
I do love that. another tiny little idea that's just nothing and
it's just a quick thing, but like the idea of someone knocking on
the knocking on the TARDIS door in deep space is just so fun and
silly.
It's quite quick and they go past it quickly, but they do enjoy
it.
Like, the doctor's like, someone's knocking on the door.
It's great.
Who's it gonna be?
What's so good?
It's a continuity range.
Well, they listener, that's all we have time for this week.
We'll be back next week for some timely lessons in workplace
health and safety in the rebel flesh.
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 FTE podcast on Twitter, and on our website
FlightthroughEntirety.com, where you'll find links to our other
podcasts, Bondfinger, and Jody into terror.
Until next time, may you find a man who looks at you the way the
doctor looks at that helmet regulator.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
Be seeing you.
Good night, beautiful idiots.
That was Flight through Entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley
Stephen, B, and Dan from New to Who, and James Selwood.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, nerd baiting title, was recorded on the 8th of
August 2021 and released on the 3rd of October.
You know that recurring nightmare you have where the soul of your
beloved Prius is placed in the body of Siran Jones, who then comes
over to your house and beats the crap out of you for all those
times you crashed her into other cars.
Just knee?
Bye for now.
I thought you were gonna talk about the, um, the little thing at
the start, which I've never seen in Doctor Who before, which I
forgot it even happened, that there's like a little bit of a recap
where I don't know if it happened at the time or if it's just
something on when I watched it just now on a streaming service
where it's like Amy's just doing a little recap of previous, not
previous on the doctor, but like, uh, a man came and took me away
and now we're travelling through time and space, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah.
So it's not on the DVDs, but it is on the streaming versions that
we have.
So I was watching on the stand.
It's on series 5 as well.
And I think it is an attempt to kind of make the show accessible
to an American audience in particular.
Well, I, because I thought, because I thought it was, it was a
little trite, but I did really, I did quite enjoy it and it did
make me think, like, if they did, if they did it, did they do it
at the time?
Yeah, but not when they showed it on the BBC, I don't think.
James?
No.
Just in America.
I think maybe we did get some episodes on the ABC.
They did it with, and I think maybe, you know, Australian Doctor
Who fans, Australian Doctor Who fans.
There were lots of complaints.
Oh, ruining my break.
I don't need this explained to me, I'm not an American.
That's annoying because it does seem silly and unnecessary, but
then, like, you remember, like, in the classic era, one of the
mistakes they made when they got by the time they got to the 80s
they didn't, they forgot that their fans had sort of children had
aged up and left the show and they weren't making an attempt to
like, bring in 2 kids.
And this is just this is just one of the things they do with this
doctor to kind of appeal to to new kids.
But it's just a tiny thing, like a little recap.
If you're a kid, you've never seen it before.
You're immediately up to speed as much as you need to be.
And I just thought it was a really cool little thing.
I don't care what the Australia is. what the nerds think.
I'm not plugged into fan.
None of us jumped.
We didn't jump into Doctor Who from the beginning.
Do you know what I mean?
All of us kind of rocked up at some point in the middle of it.
And in fact, series 5 is a great starting point.
You wouldn't want to never go back and watch the earliest
seasons.
Do you know what I mean?
Because they're all sort of, well, that's like a personal
trainer.
But, but, you know, like I think it's a pretty good start.
I think that Matt Smith here is pretty, you can, like, if you're a
kid, you could probably jump in anywhere and be fine.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's not an accident.
This is the series and the doctor that broke the broke into the
American market through BBC America. absolutely.
And again, again, it's one of those seasons where with the arc
where it's got, like, sure, it has a season arc, but most episodes
it's like 10 seconds at the end.
They're like, oh, put the arc thing in.
Just put the, you know, put them under of Amy's pregnant thing and
the doctor's like, well, no, remember the arc?
Oh, boy.
And then it's the end.
Well, don't we start with that this week?
We actually start with a discussion of having seen the doctor
die.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This season's so all over the place in my memory because I didn't
I don't think I watched it all at the time and then I watched it
later and it's all out of sequence in my head, but to be fair
series 6 is all over the place.
You had something, Stephen, about a YouTube interview?
Oh, yeah.
So, I mean, this is probably just something that you can put as a
tag.
But I don't know, but I don't know if you gents have seen it.
It's actually from something called the Hay Festival in 2017, back
before, you know, life was good and we weren't locked down.
And it's an interview panel interview on stage with Neil Gaiman
and Stephen Fry.
It's called the Mythmakers.
It's really wonderful.
But, uh, you know, towards the end where they get the inevitable
questions from the audience, what one lady asks, have you ever
felt like a god, uh, they were talking about gods the whole time.
And the gamer's response to this was something along the lines of
the closest that I've ever felt to feeling like a god is when I
sat down and wrote interior Tartus console.
And I just think that was just such a beautiful answer and just
speaks again to how much of a fan, a super fan he is of the show.
So I wonder whether one day he won't actually be sort of like the
Netflix show runner for Doctor Who.
That would be something.
That'll be something.
He can't get my favourite. to see one.
He's so busy making all the other BBC.
All right.
Let's let's do an outro, I think.
I think we've got, I think we've sorted.
Yeah.
All right, here goes.
Are you ready?
Well, dear listener, that's all we have time for this week.
We'll be back next week for some timely lessons in workplace.
I'm so, I'm really excited to be on the flight for retarity
Gabriel.
Let me just say.