Hello, dear Lister, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast that wants you to stay the hell away
from us with that Sonic screwdriver.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Peter.
I'm Simon, and I am a bathtub full of promising blanc mange for
this one.
Richard, you're that every week.
Well, the workers have risen up against us again for some reason
and it looks like the only person who can save us from this
terrifying acid trip is still suffering from the effects of a
particularly nasty facial.
Let's see how this complex political situation can be painlessly
resolved between the people and the almost people.
All right, so, let's talk very quickly, as we are wont to do about
the cliffhanger resolution.
Well, it's one of those cliffhangers that doesn't need a
resolution in the way that's not like a die, doctor, die, kind of
clickhanger.
So I think the resolution is a sort of a continuation of the
story.
It's actually kind of fun in a way.
Yeah we really did need something to get us to tune in next time
after the episode.
Oh how dare you?
I really like it.
I think that this episode straight off has more to recommend it
than last episode.
I think the Matt's doctor versus doctor interaction is really fun
and plays to his strengths and for all the bitching I've done
about the quality of the direction last episode, I think it's
seamlessly put together.
The actors do seem, I should say, the performers do seem to know I
have a better handle on what they're doing this time around, don't
they?
And is that the writing or is that direction or is it just simply
that we've been on the set for a while?
Matt certainly feels, I like Matt's hesitancy.
Although I should say the doctor's hesitancy and his removal from
the drama.
I do like that he's a spectator in much of this and there's an
uneasiness to that.
He's not the centre of, and he's certainly not driving the
narrative in this.
When the doctor is sitting back, the stakes, I feel, become higher
because he's not in control.
And for a young person who'd be watching this, I feel that perhaps
this one felt more fraught because of that.
Although, I mean, the beginning of the episode is an injection of
really much needed fun into the story and having 2 Matt Smiths
which I would gladly have all the time, you know, from here on in
I think.
Matt Smith's equal one Anthony Ainley, because we didn't have
Simon's die doctor die, so we had to...
It's also a case of diminishing returns because Matt playing
against himself here, brilliant, but they'll try the same trick
next season.
It won't work quite so well No, absolutely.
But I do think that just kind of that sort of delighted admiration
of himself, you know, he's super happy to be in his own company
and he thinks he's really terribly good.
And I think all of that's adorable.
Yeah, and it's all the false modesty. like, 0 no, thank you.
Oh no, it's okay, you know?
It's really quite fun.
But it is kind of, I mean, I agree that it kind of does introduce
sort of a much needed wit into it because the 1st episode is a
little, is, I wouldn't acknowledge flat for that.
It's like having river salt there.
You have these 2 terribly witty people bantering off each other.
Yeah.
Wouldn't it be great to have the doctor accompanied by the
doctor?
Yeah, yeah, his travels.
A multi-doctor story with the same actor.
Basically, with the same doctor.
Yeah, and we tried that last in Journey's end.
And it's conspicuous how better this works.
Yes, well, that goes without saying.
Oh, fine.
No, but it does.
I think it does because they're actually playing against each
other.
And I mean, my favourite bits of multi-doctor stories is not all
the doctors being in their own silos.
It's when they are talking to each other.
And this is what you've got a lot of straight straight off.
You've got the 2 Matt Smiths having the beautiful double X. And I
love, one thing we haven't covered is I love the, you know, when
the gang adopter is becoming fully formed, you know, all of the
the one day I shall come back has to kind of leak out and the John
Flam and so on like that.
But it is funny that the one day I...
Did you love that?
I found that very rose.
Yeah, maybe not wrote.
Well, I think I think they did it well.
If they're going to do that, I think... they do tenant and they do
Tom, you know, and they do the voices and all of that sort of
thing.
And I think that that's actually okay because this isn't the 1980s
where we're doing that sort of stuff every week.
It's been a while since we had that in the show.
And I do think that it is actually sort of nice.
I mean, there's a sense in which there are elements of previous
Doctor Who stories in this one.
It is very sort of TRAD.
And I'm sort of okay with it.
One of the things I didn't mention last week is it last week that
we hear the story where the gangers go crazy and tear someone up
and all that's left, is there a ear or something?
I think buzzer tells the story.
And it's absolutely the story that's told to Borg in the 1st
episode of Robots of Dead.
Or his arm off.
Thank QV 15.
I heard it was a leg.
Amy notices almost straight away that the doctors have different
shoes.
And so we know the real doctor has the sort of crummy, ludicrous
shoes that he's sort of peeked out of a locker after he trod in
some acid, which had some very sort of Harry Sullivan vibes for me
I have to say.
And the real doctor has his really terribly nice shoes.
And that's obviously something that is going to be sort of a huge
point.
And the director deliberately goes out of his way to not let us
see the shoes.
No, there's a close-up of them digging next to a show.
Oh, no, but from then on.
Yeah, yeah.
From then on, yeah.
Yep, yep.
But isn't it interesting that they kind of hang a lantern on the
somewhat stupid thing, of the fact that the flesh also mimics the
clothes.
So somehow the doctor putting his hand into the flesh pond in the
previous episodes where it's obviously read his biology to make
the duplicate of him.
It's also read his schwat shoes he's wearing. to do it at that
point.
It's sort of almost deliberately ignoring that, but they're kind
of like invisible enemy sort of clones in that part of your DNA
are the clothes that you're wearing.
That's quite beautiful though.
That's quite beautiful because it plays on the imagination.
It also reads how we present ourselves.
I'd like to see that it would have been nice if there's a nice
idea.
There'd be a heightened sense.
Maybe the bow tie could have been even bigger and more colourful.
You could dress him as a bloody clown, actually.
I would have liked to have said, how does the Smith doctor
actually see himself and then see that presented?
I mean, that would have been silly.
Simon, that also could have been the title of this episode.
The flesh pond.
Poor Amy.
Or Amy.
Does anyone else have a problem with the whole double doctor and
Amy plot in this episode?
Uh, yes, yeah, I think it's really crap.
Amy sort of takes against the ganger doctor in a way that is kind
of believable, but, you know, the whole thing's been explained to
her, and she's even prepared to concede that he's almost that key
word as good as the original doctor.
And she says, you know, I didn't travel with him and I, like I
don't properly know him.
I don't have the history with this doctor that I have with the
other doctor.
But I mean, that doesn't make any sense in the context of the
story, does it?
Because they have the same memories.
I mean, in effect, she did travel with that doctor. doesn't
matter.
What are we, but the summation of our memories. and our tastes and
our hopes and we're back to Blade Runner.
Yeah, I think that's the character trying to differentiate between
the 2 individuals.
Like, if you, if you're put in that situation and you had, you
know, someone who you, you know and love and care about duplicated
uh, and you, like, literally duplicated in every way, it'd be
natural, I think, to try and say, well, this is the original.
And so now I need to create reasons why the 1st one is superior to
the 2nd one.
I get what you're saying, and I think there is something in what
you're saying, but I think we're probably thinking about that too
hard.
We're back to Benjamin, actually.
So why does the doctor teach her this lesson about her own bigotry
in such a cold, manipulative way?
Yeah, I think that's kind of the problem.
And the fact that he drags her out of the room and physically
threatens her, and that's how we're meant to read him as the
flesh.
And he even does a sort of slightly less posh version of his
accent when he's doing that as well, because the flesh are, you
know, the working classes or whatever.
And so he does. conquer me.
He goes a bit EastEnders, doesn't he?
Get out my path.
He does sort of tone down the posh schoolboy accent for a moment
there.
And he's threatening her and he gives the speech about the eyes
doesn't he?
Which is the thing that Jen remembers, like Jen is able to
remember all of the previous decommissioning and what that feels
like.
And that's a super cheesy scene too, isn't it?
The last question they ask is why.
It's so on the nose. dialogue.
Shocking.
But like, what's the purpose of that?
I just don't understand what the purpose is.
And I think that you're always waiting for that other shooter
drop.
It doesn't come as a surprise that, oh, it was the doctor all
along and your bigotry was irrational.
You know that that's where it's going.
So what is the point of it?
That's right.
And so all you're left with is the realisation that this was, in
fact, the doctor roughing up Amy and saying these nasty things and
her walking away from him saying, keep him away from me.
And all in service of a red herring or something to make her think
you know, later on.
And then he goes on and he roughs up Rory as well.
So it's really not great.
It puts me mind of the twin dilemma.
So I do have a thing and I don't know whether this is a crazed fan
theory or whether everyone except me already knows this about
series 6 and I'm going to look like a massive idiot.
One thing that does happen, and maybe this is the reason, is that
Amy tells the actual doctor and not the ganger doctor that she has
seen him killed.
And so now the doctor knows that and he didn't know it before
right?
And so at this point now, the doctor is going to try and stop that
from happening.
And if he rewrites time to do that, is it possible that Canton was
telling the truth, that originally it really was the Doctor Who is
dead and then the doctor intervenes later to change it so that it
isn't him?
We don't know yet, do we?
But that also touches on the premise of this, and I know I keep
going to the higher level on this, on the writing of this.
But there's a line, if you'll indulge me, Susan Buck Moore's wrote
on Benjamin on the further critiquing of what is a copy.
What is the truth?
When she talks about restoring the instinctual power of the human
bodily senses for the sake of humanity's self-preservation, and to
do this, not by avoiding new technologies, but by passing through
them.
In other words, by becoming one with them or uniting with them.
And absorbing them into the vision of ourselves and that we are, we
are all one, in other words.
And our copies and our duplicates and the things that we make are
substantives for ourselves and for what we hold dear and true of
ourselves.
And that's why I really like the scene, with the cockany, Matt
Smith going off.
I don't like it.
It's disturbing to watch, but the truth of it is that he's very
much in touch with what his ganger is going through and that
they're sharing the same thoughts and feelings at that time.
And that's certainly true.
Like the only way that the real doctor knows about the eyes, which
is something that the gang of doctor is experiencing to a lesser
degree in the other room is because they're linked.
So he is learning to feel what it's like to be a ganger just by
having a ganger duplicate in this situation.
Isn't there some suggestion that they can kind of, even, you know
after the solar storm, that they can sense each other to some
extent or that there's some momentary connection from time to
time.
And you can imagine that the doctor's connection would be much
more superior to the human one, to his gang herself.
That's what I got from it very much, yes.
No, I think there's something in that.
There's a charitable reading of the scene where no one is quite as
they are.
So it's the doctor pretending to be the ganger doctor.
That's fine.
And he is also interreleasing with someone who he knows is not the
real Amy.
And so it's sort of, it's sort of more okay that he's, he doesn't
treat her like the real Amy, but it doesn't take away from the
fact that what you're watching in the moment is, like you said
Richard, a bit uncomfortable.
Yeah, but I don't think it's bad to be a bit uncomfortable.
I mean, I remember, you know, you do get sequences in other things
where the hero is being unpleasant for one reason or other, and I
think I think they can be part of the complexity.
Remember though, that the not real Amy that we discover at the
end.
She's completely linked to the real Amy off wherever she is, uh, in
a way that the gangers were linked to their host's pre-the solar
store.
It's only the solar storm that split them into two.
This Amy is feeling everything that this ganger Amy is feeling.
And for us ever since Day of the Moon, this Amy has been our Amy.
I mean, we've been watching it and experiencing her as Amy.
And so the revelation that she's not at the end of this episode
you know, only comes later.
And so when we've been watching Day of the Moon, when we've been
watching Curse of the Black Spot and the Doctor's Wife, that has
been the Amy that we've been experiencing as actual Amy.
And so I, that is, I think, exactly right, Simon, that Amy is
driving that kind of replica of herself, experiencing what it
experiences.
And that's partly part of the eye patch woman's plan to kind of
make it look like she hasn't kidnapped Amy.
But it's also a deception that's being played on Amy herself.
She doesn't know where she is or what's happening to her.
And I think that we can now locate that in between the 1st 2
episodes, can't we, where she's suddenly not pregnant?
And that's not because it's a weird timehead pregnancy or whatever
although it is.
But it's because we're now experiencing the ganger, Amy, and we
never kind of find out when that happens.
But it must have happened by the time of day of the moon, because
of course that's the 1st time we see iPads later.
Yeah.
I was talking to a friend of the podcast, Stuart Manning about
this, and I think that might be part of the problem with this
story, is that it's kind of, there's some reverse engineering
going on.
So the story is here to deliver the revelation about Amy being a
ganger of herself, a clone of herself, but then the whole story
before that is to kind of set that up, and she doesn't really play
a role in that story.
She has the role where she's dousing the doctor because he's not
real.
Whereas actually, I think she should have had Rory's role where
she feels some kinship for the gangers ahead of everyone else.
And so plays on the sympathy of that and actually goes on a
journey with it.
And I think that's thrown away a little bit.
I think that's really interesting.
I do think that there is, there's some kind of friction, there's
some sort of problem.
There's some issue at the joins here between the arc and what the
story itself is doing.
Yeah.
I think Gangers and Silurians last season, which we talked about
in the previous episode, share some of the same kind of problems
because in both of them, they're progressing the arc, but it's not
the showrunner doing it.
And I'm not necessarily saying that maybe arc stories shouldn't be
given to non-showrunner people, just maybe they shouldn't be given
to Chris Chiplin and Matthew Graham.
I think that's needlessly cruel You and I know there is no
needlessly, girl.
I do think that we have this sort of situation where the show is
attempting literally the most kind of complex and ambitious arc
that it's ever done.
And there's a lot of plates that need to be kept spinning.
And I think we thought that Curse of the Black Spot suffered a bit
as a result of the arc.
And here, I think, the story is kind of built round the arc.
Like we need to know about the gangers, we need to have a story
about gangers.
I think that the story that's told here about gangers is kind of
the obvious story to tell, and it's a good story to tell, but
there's some problem at the seams, I think.
However, I do think the person who fares best from the 2nd episode
is Cleaves.
I think that she is really quite incredible, and I just want to
shout out to that scene where there are the 2 Cleaves, kind of
conspiring against one another in different rooms and trying to
2nd guess one another.
And I do think that the actor herself is really pretty damn good.
Let me agree with you on half of that, Nathan.
I think Cleaves has the most interesting material in this
episode.
However, Raquel Cassidy, who I like in other things, she was
really good in Townes Abbey.
Please every line like this. too much world.
Yes, there is a bit too much world weariness in her delivery.
Downton Abbey.
I was spending the entirety of watching it going, where have I
seen this woman before?
Yes of course.
She's in Downton Abbey.
But I think there you're actually seeing a character that where or
the character that we're missing in the 1st episode, the only
character that gets developed in any way is Jen, and Jimmy a
little bit.
And now Cleves gets her character developed.
It's her turn and I think she comes off well because of it.
Yes, and it's quite a subtle change.
Whereas I don't think Jen is.
I sort of struggle with the carry through Jen.
She's meek and mild, but why does that make Gangajan properly
evil?
She says she wants the gang to survive and have their own lives.
That's all fair enough, but she's psychotic.
She seems to relish the prospect of mass murder and sort of rub
her hands together in glee.
Yes, it's like we'll destroy them all.
You know, with that sm- evil smile.
I think that's just the, you know, playing up the villainy kind of
thing. and right, it would be more interesting if she wasn't quite
so psychotic, but we touched on it last episode when we said that
she was the one who was most intimately involved in the case of
the gangers and the only one that actually shows any empathy for
them. and therefore that drives her, um, her baselessness, in
other words, she, she's driven to lose her sense of control and
self more than the others.
And therefore, she's probably the most interesting character in
this.
I think it may be a bit overplayed, and, you know, it's, I think
the, it's asking a lot of itself, and the performance that it
has.
The themes in this are so large.
Perhaps the time and the scope isn't there.
But I actually find her, yes, there's some of the performances
boldarized, but I don't actually find that her impetus is odd at
all.
I think it's quite realistic.
I've been to these rallies.
Yeah.
So she's the one who can remember being decommissioned.
And Brendan told me last night that the idea was that she was a
person with an idetic memory.
And so as a result, her ganger remembers the decommissioning.
And so she's the one who tells the story about how gangers
dissolve, because apparently they always fall into acid rather
than anything else.
And they dissolve with their eyes last and those, the question in
those eyes is why.
And it's grotesquely overwritten.
And she also has that scene with Rory last week, which is nearly
successful and she has some sort of good moments there.
But it is that just the sort of speech that would only occur to a
TV writer and that no one would ever say, this bizarre character
beat where she's a little girl in Red Wellies and she remembers
being scared of a picnic.
And it's shockingly bad.
And she imagines that there's a stronger, tougher Jennifer that
you know, like that exists basically to justify why she turns into
the villain in part two.
And it's a bad speech.
It's not a completely terrible scene.
There's some good stuff between her and Rory, which we mentioned
last week.
But that's also there to justify why she turns evil.
And in fact, there is a pretty great moment where she's sort of
ranting about being evil and Cleave just goes, no, actually, I'm
sick of all this crap and I just want to live my life.
Can we do that instead?
That would shut the master up at times.
I think you are right, Nathan, about that speech. the red...
Red Welly's.
It is that kind of species that for me, a not very good writer
writes going, I have now created a character for this person.
Great kick.
But you see those speeches in loads of stuff.
And so maybe just wash over me.
But maybe the reason why she remembers the decommissioning stuff
is because remember all the flesh is, when they've all been melted
down, and the flesh is just in the big vat, it's all connected to
itself.
So, you know, it can divide the cells converted, et cetera, and
it's all one thing.
So I think what it is is rather than the gen having a memory of it
of her decommissioning.
It like the flesh itself, is remembering all the deer
commissionings.
And for some reason that's been loaded into Jen's body, Jen's
flesh body rather than any of the others.
You know what I mean?
Like there's a connection.
It's all one thing.
It's all one entity.
It just seems to me that the idea is that she's the person who's
most conscious of their oppression and mistreatment and everyone
else is telling her to calm the hell down.
And I'm not sure that I like, you know, like, I'm just not sure
that I like that very much.
I do love the thing where she's sort of weirdly painting bits of
herself on the wall and then we get the scene where the eyes are
accusing everyone and it's super grotesque and it's only just on
the boundary of what works.
Like it risks enormously looking stupid.
I'm absolutely on board with that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I would just say when the lips appeared from the Gunge last
episode and said, trust me, it all got perilously rocky horror.
God, this story could have used Patricia Quinn.
Is there a story that's true of any story?
During a grumbly, grindy jaw face.
Yes.
Oh, she would have made a great cleaves and made a meal.
Does Jen get the immortal line?
How could they do this?
Who are the real monsters?
Oh, actually deliver that life.
I should missed it the 1st time.
Yes.
God, her crush on Rory has all the narrative depth of a Chumbly
developing a crush on Finky.
Terrible.
Or canine.
There is something clever about establishing that we've killed the
gangagen only to find out that there's another gangagen.
Because we never saw the actual real Jennifer die.
We did have that reasonably effective scene last week where the
real Jen, whom we hadn't seen for a while, is sort of walking
along muling and being irritating.
And then sort of scary gangagen is on the roof about to attack her
but we never see her killed.
And, you know, it's established that she has a limp and all of
that sort of thing.
So I was actually, despite having seen this any number of times
momentarily blindsided by that.
I'd actually forgotten that development and thought for a 2nd that
we had the real Jen until, of course, she dupes Rory into
activating the explode the base machine, which is conveniently
located somewhere on the base.
There is a point where, and I think you've just touched it where I
feel we're watching a representation of Stella Gibbon's cold
comfort farm, and I'm waiting for Joanna Lumley to turn up and
espouse the benefits of a tight fitting corset, as perhaps one of
the more controlling women.
It just it just does feel a little bit yokel, doesn't it, by this
stage?
I'm trying to, you know, see it in its lofty ambitions, but
unfortunately yeah, presentation does let us down.
Also, it's so dull.
No, I think probably a doll is not, not.
Actually, at all.
He's not dull.
It's predictive, isn't it?
It feels like the iPhone's written it with predictive text.
You do kind of tell you know what's going to come in each moment.
That's, yeah, but that's different to dull.
That's very dull.
I think there can be something comforting about watching something
which follows the, God, here's that word, tropes. you sort of know
you sort of know what's going to happen next and you can expect
it.
Maybe something's a signposted too much and the rest of it.
But, oh, no.
I do think that the gen thing is that's a surprise.
I do like the stuff between the Cleaves's.
I mean, we know that Ganga Cleaves is going to work out the
special code word that the real Cleaves is typing into the thing.
That comes as no surprise.
We know that's kind of going to happen.
But I do think that the way the whole thing is resolved is just
unbearably kind of neat and pat. you know, towards the end, right?
We're all running into the TARDIS in order to escape.
The base is exploding around us.
We have a few extra duplicates that we need to deal with so that
only one of each person survives.
And everyone just behaves like a complete moron.
I mean, the whole thing is people sacrificing themselves for no
reason at all.
If they hadn't stood there explaining why they're sacrificing
their lives, they could have all just gone into the TARDIS and
they would have been fine.
That's his bizarre scripting choice of playing out an entire
emotional climax while people are valiantly holding a door
closed.
And she's still down the corridor.
I just don't get it.
I don't care.
Yeah, sacrificing themselves, you know, on the metre of
sacrificing yourself for no reason.
It hardly meets Lexa in Neglos level.
It normally says a bit of that and it's and it's poor.
And I think one of the flaws, one of the things that the show runs
away from, is not having 2 versions of the one person, even one of
them having 2 versions of themselves surviving.
Otherwise, it just ends up feeling like the ultimate episode of
Get Smart, doesn't it?
How to finish 7 years of a run with multiple doors.
Yeah.
Maybe the doctor could have taken the ganger doctor and dropped it
off on alternate world with rose.
Here you go.
There's choice of two.
I mean, there is a kind of hint that the gangers are human in that
they are prepared to sacrifice their lives. and so they're not
monsters.
Like they've decided not to be monsters.
They've decided to be people.
And one of the things that people do.
And one of the things that we regard as incredibly meritorious is
the choice to lay down your life to save someone.
And so the fact that Ganga Cleaves does do that.
I think kind of speaks to her humanity. certainly in a sort of
Doctor Who context, at least.
If only we could have believed from what we saw on screen that she
needed to do it.
Yeah, that's the problem, I think.
That is the problem.
But that's a flaw of the production or a flaw of the writing
around that moment, if you know what I mean.
Do you think there's a direction problem there, too, in that
scene?
Yes.
Broadly speaking, like, not talking direction from a shot choice
point of view, but there's a little bit of writing a little bit of
direction, a little bit of the way it's put together, makes it, you
know, you realise later, wait a minute, they didn't need to die.
And I acknowledge that is a problem.
It's just a problem of having just not thought through how that
little sequence is going to work well enough and that's, that's a
fault of a number of people, I think.
Certainly, Dickon just deciding to close the door with himself on
the other side of it is utterly baffling.
That's actually the most the more ridiculous than the gang of
doctor and gang of cleaves holding in the door chart.
Yeah, absolutely.
Especially because it was the other one that was going to be
locked or something.
Didn't he do that because he had to lock it.
See, there's probably a missing line of dialogue where what's his
face has to close the door from the other side in order to lock it
properly.
Yeah, but again, even putting them in a situation where that's the
problem is kind of stupid.
Like even if they'd managed to put that dialogue in there.
It's kind of like, well, that seems an odd choice for a door.
Why would you do that?
You know?
Todd should have been on this episode.
And it doesn't help, of course, that we don't care about Dickon
you know.
No, no, he's just generic potato person.
And we don't care about doors.
It's like terrible.
I think the script is to blame, but also, yeah, the director
fumbles things.
I think it's part of the editing.
I noticed last episode, the scene where Cleaves runs out the door
from kind of the communal quarters is so loosely edited that
you're not really sure where people are and like she, she runs
from long shot sort of next to the community thing.
Why did that shot last so long?
It's really poorly paste in its shot structure.
Well, I mean, Richard was talking about that last week, I think.
Yeah.
How do we feel about the final Monstery form of Jen?
That's my reaction.
Reminds me of the Mark Gaters Scorpion thing in the Lazarus.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yes Puzzling creative choice, perhaps.
In fact, is that where we've seen the head thing come out?
Because doesn't that happen in that as well?
Like the earlier sequence in the bathroom?
Also her giant mouth.
I mean, she actually killed one of the human beings.
Yeah.
Like, I actually think that the kind of uncomfortable
grotesqueness of that actually works in the way, I think, that the
Gatus, you know, scorpion monster sort of works in the Lazarus
experiment.
I do think it needs to kind of skirt making you laugh out loud at
how terrible and ridiculous it is and also just sort of being this
sort of uncomfortable thing about her physicality, I think.
I think it works because it's not very long.
Like it would have been tedious if she was like that multiple
times throughout the 2nd episode or perished the thought through
most of the 2nd episode.
Where I think the Lazarix experiment one fails for me is that he's
liked that for too long, whereas here it's just the climax and I
think that would have been a better use of it.
Is she a projection of Rory's libido, Rory's darkest desires.
Speaking of unfortunate climax.
She's the only one who does it apart from that kind of wonderful
moment where Ganga Cleave turns a head around 180 degrees at some
point. love that.
I just wanted to vomit up human flesh like Jen did in the sink
last week.
Linda Blair's pea suit.
I really like that final form of gen.
I think it's quite unsettling. looks quite good.
It's just a shame that the CG isn't quite up to it. which is you
know, the story of these episodes.
Was the mill on this one or had they'd left by now, hadn't they?
No, I think the mill was still working on the show.
Yeah.
I do think that the decision to go HD, which was kind of
inevitable for a TV production at this point, does actually kind
of take its toll on some of the CG effects for a number of years
and I think we're still kind of feeling that.
Certainly some CGFX look spectacular and the creation of
environments and stuff is particularly successful generally.
But sometimes CG creatures that kind of move their mouths and
stuff like that don't quite work at this point.
Yeah, you remember the 11th hour last year?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Although that was Olivia Coleman's own teeth.
It was.
There's a reason she's truly terrified, and that's why people keep
employing.
What was she doing?
You just have to CG regular teeth in.
Let's talk about the sort of end once we escape in the Tartars.
But I do think again, the blood clot in Cleaves's brain is just
incredibly summarily dealt with.
And in a way that sort of is a massive cheat.
And it's kind of like particularly bad given that just a few weeks
ago, the doctor couldn't revive Rory.
And Amy had to, you know, do CPR on him.
And now all you need is a little vial of kind of something that
smells like burnt onions.
Yeah, that's right.
And we're all okay.
And that was actually a slightly interesting thing.
The moment where Cleaves tells other Cleaves, welcome to the human
race.
You've got an inoperable brain clot, you know, it sucks to be
you.
That's actually quite cool.
It's the human race but not for long.
It's also totally unnecessary.
There's no suggestion that she's going to drop dead in the next 24
hours.
It's a problem.
She going to die at some point.
Why did we need to save it?
Why can't she just, well we don't know, she should die at some
point.
That just the way it goes.
It's totally unnecessary.
Yeah.
And then we sort of stabilise Jimmy and Dick and, you know, just
from the TARDIS's magical space reasons field and everything's
going to be okay from now on, they can't turn into monsters even
if they want to.
All you needed was some ad fab dialogue.
What's she doing?
Just clearing a blockage, I think.
Yes, in fact, the stabilising thing of those two.
It's almost like, is there, again, another missing.
And when I say missing dialogue, I'm sometimes meaning like from
an earlier draft or when they were doing the story idea and then
they never ran with it, it was an idea at one point that
eventually those ganger duplicates, even though they were made
real by the solar storm, were going to eventually decay. you know
what I mean?
Because there are certain things that don't make sense unless
something like that's gonna happen.
I think the idea is that they can't turn into sort of giant
lolloping monsters at some point.
You know, they're stable in the sense that their heads won't turn
around 180 degrees and like, you know, they won't be able to snake
through toilet doors and stuff from now on.
And we need to get Jimmy in particular to be sufficiently human
because he's actually properly replacing Jimmy, who dies in a
completely arbitrary way.
He's going to raise a child. needs to give his son some acting
lessons.
So the sun is terrible.
No, he's not terrible.
He's just not very good. there is a range here. like 4 hours.
Terence Dudley's children and survivors bad.
Yeah, I think we are too.
Well, certainly, we had a child actor who was probably about 14 a
couple of weeks ago in Curse of the Black Spot, who was actually
very good indeed.
And it might have been an idea to make Adam just a little bit
older.
And I guess that's where the story properly resolves itself, isn't
it?
Where Ganger Jimmy can actually properly replace Jimmy, that
Ganger Jimmy is Adam's father, every bit as much as Jimmy was, and
both of them acknowledge it.
Um, I think it's that's actually properly good.
That's a resolution to the problem.
The problem is that these people suddenly became something that
was no longer a human being that had the potential to be a monster
and that that Jimmy rejects that.
In fact, you know, it's not Rory that rescues them from the locked
room at all.
It is Ganga Jimmy because Ganga Jimmy goes, oh my god, my son's
father is in that room and he needs to be rescued.
And I do think that that actually works really quiet well.
Yes, it does.
I mean the whole thing's a bit perfunctory.
He dies in a completely kind of random accident and stuff.
He gets acid on him and something and an 80 yard line from that.
The character's last moment is his one character beat through the
2 episodes, but you know.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, I think that that is a properly good resolution of things.
But I I just think there's a problem politically, which I I kind
of hinted at last week, which is that everyone needs to settle
down about being mistreated and just kind of go in and resolve it
with a nice conversation with management.
Um, and the, the idea to go, like the idea to go full ood and
start killing people from marketing.
That's the wrong approach.
Acting, though, it is.
And I think that that's a shame, given that this is Doctor Who and
everything should be sort of, you know, a bit heightened.
I couldn't agree more.
Yeah, and given the kind of oppression to which the flesh has been
subjected, there's 10s of 1000000s of them in India, you know, we
get that.
There's 1000000s and 1000000s of these gangers around the world
that are being repeatedly kind of melted and then reconstituted
and they feel it and they suffer, and that it's regarded as
monstrous and illegitimate for them to strike back.
They just have to turn up at a board meeting and everything will
be okay.
The difficulty, though, is, is that these gangers here have been
you know, made into real people by the solar storm, whereas the
ones, the 10s of 1000000s of them in India, and the Amy that is
melted in the TARS at the end, are still connected to their
originals.
Right?
Although, isn't there the feeling that the big pool has actually
achieved sentience?
Exactly.
But the pool as a whole, perhaps, right?
Rather than the individuals.
And the individuals only became the individuals when they fully
adopted the lives of the people they're duplicated.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is, I think you're not
necessarily wrong.
I'm just trying to say you're not necessarily right because I
think it's deliberately muddy and murky.
That's sort of one of the things we're sort of questioning is, you
know, when did they, when did the ganger become an individual
rather than a piece of a larger slab of goo, which, yes, we have
to look after or we have to do something we have to improve the
conditions of because the goo is sent into and is feeling the pain
every time they did commission, blah, blah, blah.
But it's not as custom dried as that.
I get what you're saying about the fact that, you know, you want a
bit more of a revolution going on, but that's kind of a different
story.
If you're going to do that, that's episode three.
Like, you can't tell, they're not going to, they're not going to
walk out of the TARDIS, get their automatic rifles and barge
through the door into the press conference and mow down all of the
humans. you know what I mean?
It's not going to work like that.
It's a different story.
And so I think the way to resolve this story, rather than hiding
the fact that you're the ganger, Jimmy, and pretending that, you
know, everything's fine, you actually say, no, no, no, I am the
ganger, and I am going to still need a normal life now.
Do you know what I mean?
As I say, I think I think it's deliberately ambiguous.
So I mean, I think you're right.
And one of the things that I do like about this episode is the
fact that the scene with Amy at the end, where we've just had this
big fight for kind of, you know, ganger independence and all of
that.
The doctor is fine with melting her down because she is not one of
those kinds of gangers.
She is just basically a skin suit.
And so even though I don't think it's narratively that clear, the
murkiness does add something to it.
Yeah, it's not an allegory or anything like that.
It's hinting at things.
And I and I do think that it does associate the desire for
revolution with becoming a monster.
Like I just, I don't like that quite so much.
So, let's talk about melting Amy down because I think.
Only Todd was here.
I think that that scene is actually really quite uncomfortable to
watch.
Oh, it's horribly on Doctor Who.
Yeah, yeah.
It's really unpleasant, isn't it?
Yeah, it's a real world intrusion of body horror in a way that I
don't think the show has ever done before.
It is.
Even before she wakes up in the tube.
You have the doctor being horrible to her all of a sudden and her
being frightened and forcing Rory to step away from her and leave
her isolated.
And Rory does that as well.
I mean, there's, is there an in-story reason like maybe gangers go
crazy when you, or something like he expects some danger from the
ganger because we've seen the... doesn't want me to melt it down
at the same time by accident.
Maybe.
I think he doesn't want Rory to ruin his clothes.
Or was that about fetching a towel, Nathan?
Part of the problem, I think, is that it's another one of those
situations where Karen is too good an actor for the scene.
And I was talking to a friend of the podcast, Joe Ford last
night.
And I compared it to, you know, the scene where Perry C's Shara's
Jack's face and then screams and, you know, and Shara's Jack
screams and runs under the table and stuff.
And one of the problems with Caves of Andrazani is that Perry is
so convincingly frightened that it makes the thing too real and a
bit like not quite comic book enough.
And I think that's the problem here, seeing Karen being
convincingly scared in this situation is actually quite upsetting
I think.
And it's not the scariness of on being pursued by monsters.
It's the scariness of why are my friends treating me in this awful
way.
Yeah.
I think, though, that, I mean, maybe it's just a question of, you
know, what we think Doctor Who is, but I think it's okay to be
pushing those boundaries and, you know, you can talk about whether
that sequence in, say, case of understanding goes a little bit too
far, but it's one of the reasons why I think that story is so
brilliant because it is so real, those sequences.
And I don't think we should be afraid to eventually.
I think I think comic book is not something that I want Doctor Who
to be, really.
Maybe that's where we differ.
No, I'm actually, I'm actually fine with what we see on screen up
to that point.
I think it's uncomfortable.
I think what comes after crosses the line quite significantly.
Okay, so is it the fact, is it the fact that she turns into a pile
of goo, rather that if, say, she was an android and her face fell
off, you know, would that be okay?
Would that be better then dissolving it?
Yeah, well...
Well, no, from this point of view, originally.
Very much so, because we've already explored that the simulacra of
the flesh is that it is us.
And the doctor presages it nicely in, I think, episode one or this
one, it's all a blanc mange to me, when he says, I wanted to go
and see the flesh in its earliest days.
So again, I'm thinking, Mr. Moffat, why did we not have a part 3
and 4 of this when we explore the flesh as its own separate, I
suppose, because it would have been tedious.
Yes, by mercy.
Yeah, as another race, because it's kind of, that's where we're
going with this.
And if this is going to have any stability as a storyline itself
as I mean, as if it's going to stand on its own.
And I think we've all identified that perhaps it doesn't, then it
needs to continue.
Because otherwise, yes, as Simon says, how is it okay to melt
Delia Smith putting pond?
Yeah, perhaps there's an exothermic reaction and Rory would have
been nastily scalded had he stood too close to the hot milk?
I think part of the problem is that we have spent 2 episodes
exploring the fact that gangers are real people and even though
there are space reasons why Amy's not the same, that's not quite
enough to prevent it from being unpleasant.
Yeah.
It's too high concept to wrap up like this.
You can't have it each way and they try to.
Yeah.
And then, of course, there's a scene where she wakes up in that
tunnel.
That's the bit that I find truly icky.
Yeah, something cheers.
So basically the arc of the season is that a pregnant companion
was kidnapped from the doctor held in a nightmare hospital until
she comes to term and then has to deliver her baby to her
captors.
That's just a bit gross.
That's when Mr. Moffat lost me in Doctor Who at the time.
I found that absolutely, it was worse than anything that had been
done to Sarah Jones.
Yes, I think that's absolutely right It puts being blinded and
falling down some stairs into perspective.
Yeah.
I still prefer it, yeah.
Yeah.
Look, I think I think it's a massive problem.
It's something that we addressed last season finale when we talked
about Amy being shot to death by Rory.
And I think that that falls on the right side of the line.
It's not great.
Do you know what I mean?
But Doctor Who is scary and people get shot and terrible things
happen.
And that's part of the deal.
But here I think, and I think it has something to do with the fact
that it's around pregnancy.
And that there seems to be this uncomfortable suggestion.
There's something weird that it reveals about Stephen Moffatt's
attitude to pregnancy in a way.
It's, it's, I think it's kind of uncomfortable and I think it's
something that the show shouldn't really be attempting. touches it
touches on some very broad business that's going on with control
of women's reproduction in the world and I don't think it should
have gone there.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I'm inclined to agree that I think I wish it had gone there
but given that it did, I didn't have a particular problem with it
and I certainly don't have a kind of problem that you're sort of
having with it.
Now, I sort of saw it more as a rosemary's baby sort of thing, that
the evil people, because remember the people at the other side
they're evil.
She's wearing an eye patch.
Of course she's evil.
She's Francis Barber.
For God's sake, of course.
Or Nicholas, Courtney, and Inferno.
I think what's supposed to be going on is that they're effectively
you know, using Amy Zassarigate in order to get a baby that they
can make, you know, the evil emperor of the universe or whatever
it is.
I mean, you know, the story will unfold, but that was my take on
it.
And yes, it's it's cruel, it's a bit awful.
It's a bit icky and all that, and it's a bit, should they have
done that?
But it's kind of happening in front of me and I went with it.
I think we are going to discover in 2 episodes time that Moffatt
is capable of recognising things that Doctor Who can't deal with.
And it's kind of the centrepiece of that episode.
But here, I think that this is something that Doctor Who can't
deal with satisfactorily.
And I remember actually being a bit queasy when I 1st watched The
Impossible Astronaut and Amy told the doctor that she was
pregnant.
And I just thought, how can this show even do this?
Do you know what I mean?
How can we now put Amy in danger every week?
Like, how does this even play out?
And also kind of why is it happening?
It's all just a little bit kind of, well, the 1st important stage
in a woman's life is marriage and this.
Yeah, this season is going to be about her trying to avoid her
marriage.
Now the next thing that we can think of for the female companion
is pregnancy.
And so there's a kind of sort of unpleasantly essentialist thing
to turn her into a kind of baby making device.
That's interesting because I think and thought the opposite.
I thought, well, actually, isn't that interesting and refreshing
because isn't the whole point of, you know, what we're trying to
do on this issue is to suggest that when a woman gets pregnant, she
doesn't have to sort of shut herself away for 9 months plus that
you know, she can carry on and be a working woman and so on.
Do you know what I mean?
I think there's something going to the office is not the same as
you know, throwing yourself in front of aliens every week.
Agreed.
But nevertheless, you have to acknowledge that she's got the right
to still lead her life the way she chooses.
Of course, of course.
But what we actually do discover is that she's immediately stuffed
in a tube and just turned into a sort of incubator for...
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And, like, I think it's deeply uncomfortable.
Do you know what it reminded me of?
Angel, you know, the series Angel.
So, um, in the 3rd series, Dala becomes pregnant and Dala is
basically going to give birth to this, Angel's baby, um, and she
she starts to go mad because the baby has a soul, and so it's
making her go mad, and she ends up staking herself so that the
baby can live.
And that's fine.
That's all science fiction because she's, you know, she's a
vampire.
So we get away with that.
It's fine.
The next series, they make Cordelia, one of our regulars pregnant
and basically put the devil spawn inside her, and that's deeply
uncomfortable because it's Cordelia.
And we also know why narratively that happened because she was
fighting with Joss Whedon, who was a predatory presence on set.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's as dark as it looks.
Yeah.
All right, so this is part two of a two part story, and that can
only mean picks of the week, gentlemen.
Well, I can go 1st because I've got one ready.
And that is, I'd like to recommend a film from 2009 called Moon
starring Sam Rockwell.
It's very difficult to say why it's my pick of the week based on
this story, so I would just without giving too much away, but I
would just encourage you to watch it.
It's a great science fiction film and it's kind of harder science
fiction, but not sort of meaning boring.
It is relatively slow paced.
There aren't very many characters in it, spoiler alert, but it's a
lovely, gentle film. and really, really well made.
It's also very hauntingly uses the 2nd slow movement from Mozart's
flute and harp concerto rather in the way that 2001 uses the Blue
Danube walls.
It's very elegant and I thoroughly recommend it.
Apparently, its working title was egg.
I hope it wasn't that was also the working title of Kill the
Moon.
My pick of the week is going to be the good fight.
It's a series in its 6th season about an African-American law firm
in Chicago, and I wanted to choose it because it's so far from the
as Nathan said earlier, perfunctoriness of this ganger's 2
parter.
I actually watched them back to back, um, the good fight and this
and there was no contest.
Unlike so much recent drama, it kind of faced up to, and lived in
a world where Trump was president, and it's clever and it's nimble
and it's whimsical, um, as much as gangers is leaden.
It has superb performances from people like Niambi and Iambi and
Audra McDonald, who has 6 Tony Awards, go figure, and also the
eternally fabulous Christine Baranski.
So stop whatever you're doing and go and watch it.
Richard?
I love Moon as well, and it was actually on my list for all of the
reasons.
Interestingly, that Simon said.
I'm glad you did.
It reflects the times we've been in this year.
It's beautifully directed Davey Jones, who, of course, we've got
I'm trying to remember his name, actually, the director.
Duncan.
Duncan is, of course, David Bowie's son.
And so the budget was not really a problem, but it, it was still a
small budget thing that uses unrealised designs by Ron Cobb and
Macquarie.
So designs from Alien and other productions that they hadn't been
able to use their artwork for.
So for a fanboy, it's got some really lovely 70s, high notes in it
even if you just watch a film from a design point of view.
And it's really stunningly beautifully done of what it is to be a
person on their own and how that's explored.
I really do want to talk about, um, and I won't do it for long, but
um, Cousinsev's 1964 Hamlet, we touched on that.
It's the music is Shostakovich, and I'm sure Simon might agree
with me that it's used really well in the production.
It's just a really lovely piece if you want to look at water
crashing against ancient stone walls on an island.
It feels it feels to me as what this might have been had they just
been a bit more creative with the camera work.
And I do feel that just as Simon's choice, Moon is so supported by
the production values and by the sensitivity of the skills that he
used to make it, that this story we've just watched might in fact
we would have felt better about it had it just had a bit more time
spent on it.
I'm not sure about that actually, because we've revealed some
really deep flaws in this.
Might have been better with a few laughs as well.
Had all the raucous wit of a space 1999 episode.
All right, I'm going to take a desperately lowbrow.
I am secretly a massive fan of Star Trek, and particularly
Kurtzman Star Trek, which a lot of people hate. and their hate
keeps me alive.
It sustains you.
I have really enjoyed Lower Decks, which is the comedy, cartoon
Star Trek, that's been released as one of the sort of suite of
Star Trek series that we're currently enjoying.
It is a marvellous, wonderful parody of Star Trek while still
being in the Star Trek universe.
It creates real proper Star Trek episodes so that are genuinely
funny, that are character driven and, you know, insanely violent.
It's really, really terribly good and I highly recommend it.
Yay.
It's really well written, yeah.
Yeah, really well written.
Very good.
Well, listen, that's all we have time for this week.
We'll be back next week to wrap everything up in a completely
satisfying and totally non upsetting way in a good man goes to
war.
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 be able to find links to our other podcasts
Bondfinger and Jody into Terra.
Until next time, remember that the thing about a board meeting is
that there are almost never enough guillotines available.
So be prepared.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
Good then.
That was Flight Through Entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley, Peter
Griffith, Simon Moore, and Richard Stone.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lam.
This episode, Generic Potato Person, was recorded on the 15th of
August 2021 and released on the 17th of October.
If yesterday's Doctor Who Trail has piqued her excitement for
Series 13, you'll be even more excited to learn that in just over
two weeks, we'll be back with our undercooked reactions to the
series, at Jodi Interterterra.
Available now at Jodi Interterra.com and wherever good podcasts
can be found.
I'm going very Marxist in my intros and outros.
Yes, you are.
Oh, good.
Only now.
I have to say that was a camp high points of the episode where, you
know, they're talking about, well, you have to convince the
board.
And so then they open this door and there's suddenly the hubbub of
press and some flashes and people shout questions at them and then
they close the door and it all goes away.
There's 1000s of them out there, sir.
So bad.
All right.
Does everyone want to press some stop and send me their thing?
Okay, stop.