Fix the Kippers

[00:36]

Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety, the only Doctor Who podcast now with realistic human genitalia.

I'm Nathan.

I'm Brendan.

I'm Peter.

I'm Corey.

Well, we've been trapped in this rift for nearly a month now, and the crew of the USS Britain have made no effort at all to lighten our mood.

As we descend into chaos and madness.

It looks like only Councillor Troy's one moon circling can save us from our night terrors.

Looked like a full moon to me.

So, Corey, we haven't spoken on the podcast before, and I was kind of hoping that you might give us a bit of an idea of how you've been finding series 6.

[01:40]

Well, as some members of this podcast are fully where I am a huge fan of Matt Smith, probably inappropriately so.

And I love series 5 and I revisit it often.

I haven't seen series 6 for, I think about 5 years.

It's been that long since I've seen it.

So sitting down and revisiting this series in preparation for this podcast.

I was pretty underwhelmed, I have to say.

I mean, I can see the ambition.

But it feels to me like it falls short of the mark with most of the episodes.

There are a few obvious exceptions, which you've obviously discussed so far in the podcast and there are some to come.

But overall, it feels like it just falls short of the mark with at every step.

And so it's it's disappointing and some of it's actually controversially a bit boring.

So it'll be interesting to see where this conversation goes today.

There is no inappropriate love of Matt Smith.

[02:42]

There's only an inappropriate love of like William Harnell, you know.

We'll talk about that later.

Jolly good smack bottom, Corey.

So we are back in a council estate for the very 1st time for a while.

And I think, hmm, it feels different this time.

It's been commented on the council estate under Russell, was a place of kind of warmth and home and community, but under Stephen and Mark Gaitis, It sort of a bit cold and grim and other place, no one smiles and people are sort of perpetually suspicious.

I mean, I do think that Stevens version is probably a little closer to reality.

I think what you say about other is right, actually.

And and, uh, I mean, I don't know if we want to get into the weeds too early, but there's a sense that with the RTD era, there was a real, um, empathy and an understanding and, um, almost a love for that world.

[03:45]

But here it feels, I have some real problems with this episode because it feels to me like there's some issues around class and how the story engages with working class people.

I love Matt Smith, but his doctor is quite posh.

He's a private schoolboy, and he seems to swoop in and fix the working class people and then take off again.

And that's problematic, I think.

I think it's particularly apparent.

Firstly, that, uh, Amy and Rory at least seem quite disappointed to have turned up here.

You know, they're hoping for sort of history and planets and things, and instead we're in this sort of council estate.

And all of them.

It's not just mad.

It is all of them who kind of approach the residents of the estate as kind of middle class saviours.

They sort of turn up as if they're sort of social workers and they're interrogating them about their sort of personal lives.

And they all get the door slammed in their face one after the other.

This is a place that they don't belong.

[04:47]

And so in RTD's era, the council estate was home.

And, you know, there's a sense in which they were sort of slightly comedy working class characters, but they were our regulars and we sort of grew to love them and to kind of understand them.

And even when the companion went middle class in series 3, that the blow was softened by the fact that the family was black.

And in series four, Donna, you know, is she is middle class, but they're not super well off or anything like that.

And so Russell was very keen to ensure that Doctor Who wasn't just the middle class concern it had been during the classic series, but now we're back there, I think.

And that is an alien world.

It does kind of mirror the experience of fans as well.

Long-term fans when the show came back, they were like, what are we doing on this council estate?

[05:48]

We want pseudo-historicals, damn it.

Yeah, we want reporters for Metropolitan magazine and air hostesses and computer programmers, you know, vaguely sort of idealistic jobs, you know, we don't want someone who just works in a shop was kind of the thing. you know, I remember people going on about, oh, well, what, you know, what's special about Rose?

She works in a shop.

You know, she's not a teenage demolitions expert or a computer programmer from Peace Pottage sort of thing.

So yeah, there was a sort of snobbery.

I think, yeah, going on.

And it shows how middle-class our characters are when Rory kind of comes out of the Tatus and sort of sniffs a bit and proclaims it to be a place they could get the bus to.

And later in the episode, he calls it EastEnders land.

Yeah, which is a weird comparison because EastEnders is old EastEnders. high rise council estates.

It's just very expensive old terraces with about 10 bedrooms.

I think, though, that that's a sort of fanish reaction as well to the early RTD era was, you know, because he's using a lot of the sort of tropes and sort of character beats that you find in a soap opera.

[06:58]

People were comparing it to EastEnders as a sort of form of criticism.

Doctor Who is now set in EastEndersland rather than in sort of a fake secret military organisation or something.

Like a lesser drama.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so I think I think there's that.

I think, I think also, though, one of the reasons why the council estate seems so forbidding is that we sort of have a bit of a case of German expressionism, I think, in some senses, it's made to look as scary as possible because we're seeing it through George's eyes.

And remember that the moment the problem is solved, the council estate looks quite different.

You know, it's sunny.

It's much less forbidding and frightening.

Yeah, see, I think another big part of it is we've got Mark Gatis writing.

And if you look at something like League of Gentlemen, Mark Gaters often takes his settings and turns them into something grotesque.

[08:07]

English villages are not like, say, Midsomer Murders, but they're also not like the League of Gentlemen, the truth-wise somewhere in between.

So Mark Gate has given a housing estate like this, he's going to amplify the negative perceptions of it.

And in a way that is a little bit different to doing that to an English village because, you know, part of the appeal of something like Midsomer Murders is seeing posh people get killed by forklifts in a jam factory.

But I hope that's a real example, Brendan.

That is real example.

That is a real example actually.

I can't remember if that was real Barnaby or fake Barnaby, but anyway, um...

But here, yeah, it's...

It's a little bit punching down. which is which is a bit uncomfortable.

But that being said, you do have Alex and Claire, who are lovely sympathetic characters.

And even Elsie, the little old lady.

[09:09]

I love her.

Because no one else looks after the estate and I've got to go up and down with me bad knees.

I'm getting them replaced soon.

You know, I actually really, really think that the portrayal of Elsie is incredibly mean-spirited and I dislike it enormously.

She's not a very she's not a particularly likeable character at all, actually.

No, she's the most unloveable long hag we've had since Dodo.

It's not that though.

She's such a tedious stereotype.

You know, it's such a sort of trite observation that old people go on about their knees and their hips and their tablets and stuff like that and that they don't, you know, like I do it myself.

They're suspicious of young people and all of that sort of thing.

So she is just a sort of very tired collection of stereotypical tropes.

And I actually think that like pulling her into those garbage bags, there's just something kind of a bit nasty and mean-spirited, punching down again, I think, is the problem here.

[10:11]

That journey into the garbage bags didn't do her rips any good, did it?

I actually think the supporting characters are pretty thinly drawn.

Purcell is another example of that.

In fact, you could take Purcell out of the story and you wouldn't miss him at all.

I couldn't quite see why he was there, to be honest.

Other than for us to see the consequences of George's, um, you know, what George does to the manifestations of his anxiety.

I mean, sure we see that, and yes, he's turned into a doll towards the end of the episode, but I couldn't really see what the point of him was, to be honest.

So both actors, I think, are working with very thin material, I think, for both of those characters.

I think there's a whole juxtaposition going on in this episode between the modern council estate and the Victorian world, and so you get it, obviously, between the estate and the dollhouse.

But then the estate is filled with grotesque characters, like Mrs. Rossiter and Purcell, because it's not how the real world works.

[11:18]

So in the real world, council estates don't have a landlord, who's kind of there, you pay the rent to the council, or you bought your flats off the government in the 80s under Thatcher.

There's not a menacing man with a dog who owns the half place and turns up demanding his rent.

But I quite like that.

I like that odd sort of middle class idea of what a counsellor state is.

I think he does manage to be properly scary in that scene where he sort of comes in and threatens Alex and he does do that mixture of genial and threatening.

And I adore the scene where he gets sucked into the carpet and the dog just completely fails to react.

The dog doesn't care.

Do you see a horrible image of your future there, Nathan?

And we have the wonderful Doctor Who tradition of, you know, oh, I've got this big dog.

And anytime he cuts the dog, it is the most placid, adorable thing on earth with a browl being dubbed over the top, like in canine company.

On the topic of Purcell.

[12:21]

I agree with you, Corey, that he's just sort of there to provide a bit of fake drama, which adds texture to the family, but there's no sort of payoff and like, you know, he's hugging the dog at the end, but there's no implication that, you know, it's Christmas morning and Scrooge is going to be nicer to Bob Cratchit kind of thing.

And reading up on the development of the script, Mark Gaters has actually said that Purcell is based and named after his high school PE teacher whom Mark hated and had been waiting 25 years to find an appropriate character in a script to base him on and then have him melt into the floor and turned into a doll.

So I think that's just a good writer's catharsis there.

In that case, he can stay as far as I'm concerned.

I'm glad he was there for good story reasons.

I mean, while we're talking about acting, how do we feel that the little kid does here?

[13:21]

Because, you know, we have had a few children, I think, in the Moffat era, and the last time I think we had anyone sort of really significant, we thought he was really pretty great, the boy in Curse of the Black Spot, who played Toby, who sort of managed to hold his own against Hugh Bonneville.

How do we feel that the child actor portraying George does here?

He blinks really well.

It's sort of a weird thing of, you know, his characterisation is quite wooden because, yeah, he doesn't quite fit and he doesn't quite belong.

And the problem with giving that role to a child is you're left wondering if they're really, really good at playing wooden.

Or if they're just wouldn't.

And I think he's, I think it's a performance.

I think it is a performance choice and he convinces me as a scared little boy.

I think the direction actually has a sort of pretty significant role in the way that he's portrayed.

[14:26]

And so things like, you know, increasing the sound of him breathing, having him blink.

Because this is Richard Clark, Peter.

It is, and he did the doctor's wife as well, didn't he?

Yeah, he did.

He did.

And Gridlock and Lazarus experiment.

And I think he does a really tremendously good job here.

I think, you know, the visuals are really quite impressive.

But I also think he manages to coax a reasonable performance out of this kid, just by sort of restricting the things that he needs to do and by relying on conveying his emotions, not just through the kid's performance, but through the way that his world is presented.

We know what George is feeling because we see what he sees and what he sees are these sort of ordinary things.

Are they ordinary?

These strangely sort of anachronistic things that furnish his bedroom?

All frightening.

And so because Clark makes the world George's world, you know, we're able, I think, to kind of have a better handle on that character than maybe the performance was capable of conveying.

[15:41]

I think there can be a problem with kids that age, um, where it can be a little bit hit and miss and a lot of it does depend on the direction.

But when you just go very slightly older.

So I think George is probably about 8 years old.

When you go a bit older to Toby in Curse the Blackspot or Caitlin Blackwood.

You just can get a more nuanced performance from them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He seems younger than eight, but I'm not very good at judging that, but he is 8 in the dialogue, I think.

Yeah.

And what you said about Richard Clark is true.

I mean, he puts some really great images on the screen, that location that they found for the estate looks incredible.

Those wide shots where it just all looks like a puzzle box that's been kind of put together, is incredible, like a weird jigsaw.

And again, that juxtaposition with the Victorian kind of tropes.

It looks like some kind of hellish factory because it's behind gates and high walls and there's barbed wire on kind of the ground floor.

[16:41]

So it's a really weird and interesting look.

I think it's beautifully shot and lit.

I think it's a case of the director and the director of photography really working together well to make what is a pretty ugly structure, quite beautiful, and the palate that's used in the episode, the yellows, the oranges, the greens, the browns, particularly when we get inside Alex's flat.

I mean, it's the production design, it all just comes together really well on that front, I think.

Yeah, so I think it's the housing estate looks quite amazing.

Yeah.

And it reminds me for Jeffrey Smart painting.

There's a tiny image of Matt in the bottom right hand corner of a lonely man in a huge sort of urban landscape, and it's very much like a Jeffrey Smart painting as well.

It looks brilliant.

I just remember being sort of particularly struck by how the TARDIS appears, and maybe this has been done before, but the TARDIS materialises as a reflection in a puddle, and then focus is pulled as people come out, you know, like there's a very, you know, the shots are interestingly composed, and it does make, well, it does contribute to making the estate somewhere kind of threatening.

[18:03]

We're not doing history.

We're not doing a planet, but we are doing something that is just as weird, I think.

That shop is beautiful.

It actually, I really enjoyed it as it was happening.

And I cast my mind back and I think I can't verify that the only other time it's been done is in the war games.

Yes, you may well be right there, I think.

The other thing I find quite unsettling about the design work is the 2 interiors of the flats that we see.

The decor is still sort of the original, presumably 1970s kind of decor because the physical location is a 1970s tower block.

And so they seem to have gone with the decision that this place was set up and then it's just been left.

You know, nothing's ever been updated.

There's 1970s wallpaper everywhere.

Even when we go to Purcell.

I think he's got like a flat screen TV, but things like his hi-fi and whatnot are older models.

[19:06]

And also, Brendan, those weird anachronisms like the serving window into the kitchen.

Yeah, yeah.

There's one of those in Rose's Flat in Rose, isn't there?

Exactly.

Like, you know, that is a standard feature of when the block was built.

But if you look at Rose and Jackie's flat, you know, they've obviously repainted Jackie likes her pinks and her reds, so that's what they've gone for. in the 1st season.

Whereas here, you've got the 1970s sort of patterned, as you say, Corey, the greens and the yellows wallpaper, those slightly sickly colours.

And, you know, George's room, it's not like a nice blue paint, like you might find in a child's bedroom.

I think I had a similar shade, but in green as a kid.

It's old sort of nature wallpaper.

And he's got the sort of 1920s, 1930s wardrobe as well.

And then you have, as you say, Nathan, all the modern toys, and it just all creates this feeling of unease.

I have this horrible memory which has just surfaced.

[20:10]

And I think it must have been staying in.

There's one grandparent that I used to stay with sort of reasonably regularly, but there was like a great grandmother.

I think I stayed in my great grandmother's house and she had that weird old, is it Deco, that sort of weird old furniture, which I actually found really threatening.

Um, and I'm not quite sure about the smell of it as well, wasn't there?

Yeah, yeah, there's something sort of uneasy about it.

I mean, this is Mark Gatis's wheelhouse, right?

He's sort of mid-20th century stuff.

The aesthetic of League of Gentlemen was very similar.

Everything was sort of very old and kind of garish and bad taste.

And I think that bedroom is terrifying.

I mean, I know it's terrifying because it's meant to convey the fact that George is scared.

But like, I don't know why Alex doesn't just look at the bedroom and say, holy crap, these things are all incredibly frightening and they need to be put away somewhere.

[21:12]

That's why they just kissed it out the bedroom for IKEA.

It would have been fine.

That's right.

It's so horrible.

I mean, it is so horrible.

No wonder the kids' scared.

And the toys aren't modern, are they?

I mean, they're sort of like the crummy wind up robots and all of that sort of thing.

Again, these are the toys of Gatus's childhood and not of any kid now, I think.

I really like the aesthetic focus of these episodes. everything, like the toys and the room, they all fit together really well.

And so it helps to create a really defined world.

I mean, it is a little bit subdued, I think.

It could have had a dash of Paradise Towers, kind of, you know, madcap look, which is the last time we visited a high rise in Doctor Who.

Um, but I like it.

I think it really works kind of well.

And like you say, it's that unsettling world where it's meant to be something which is modern and which we recognise, but it's kind of not.

Yeah, yeah.

[22:26]

I'd love to hear what you guys think about the TARDIS team themselves.

I find them all slightly out of character in this story.

Matt isn't particularly nice to Alex at all throughout the entire story, the way he talks to him.

There's normally such energy and enthusiasm and um, and spark in Matt, but it feels like he's working against dialogue that he doesn't feel entirely comfortable saying.

I don't know what everyone else feels about this.

And Rory is sort of annoyingly obtuse a lot of the time.

Um, he seems to just dismiss what's happening around him.

And yet, If we're to look at where the episode sits in the season, he's gone through a lot in the episodes leading up to this point.

So you'd think he'd be a little bit more adept at handling time travel.

Of course, we know it was filmed 1st and due to go out very early in the season.

So you could probably forgive it for that, that actually he's probably still on his pee plates, I guess, if it's earlier in the season.

But because it's placed in the 2nd half of the season.

[23:28]

I just really struggled with the idea that he was like, oh, we're dead, and Amy was having to always bring him back on track and get him to sort of focus on what was happening.

If it weren't for her, I think Rory would have been a real mess in the episode.

So I'd love to hear what people think about that.

Corey, I was thinking exactly the same thing as I was watching it because Amy and Rory have just been through an ordeal.

You know, they've lost their daughter and the whole Mel's river kind of revelation.

But here they kind of shrug off the idea of a child in distress and Rory even cracks a joke about it.

And so it is an artefact of the swap in the running order, but it's a good reason why Doctor Who shouldn't tackle those kind of big traumatic ideas like losing a child, which aren't a good fit for it because you need follow through that it doesn't really get.

No.

I mean, the arc, even though it turns up in just about every episode, we're reminded of some important element of the arc in just about every episode, and that does happen here where the sort of nursery rhyme that's been in the soundtrack appears over the screen readout of Lake Silencio in the very final scene.

[24:34]

So, but generally speaking, the arc doesn't intrude on the individual episodes apart from little moments like that.

And here it is, I think, a problem.

I think it is a problem that we're just off on jolly adventures again.

And the horrible trauma that Amy's been through is just not addressed at all.

And he doesn't want to address it.

He doesn't want this to be a show about a woman who's lost her child because that's not what Doctor Who can handle and Doctor Who is a sort of family adventure fantasy show.

So maybe the losing a child wasn't a good fit for the show in the 1st place.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, we will see in a couple of seasons where Stephen Moffatt goes, okay, no, let's, you know, if I put a character through trauma, let's address that for a whole season and that brings its own problems as well.

The moment I find Rory so out of character in this is actually when he says, oh, maybe we should leave the kid to the monsters.

Yeah.

There's not even considering like this is after, you know, they've lost melody.

[25:40]

That just seems such a weird thing for Rory to say, and it's literally just there for George to overhear so that Rory and Amy are someone he's scared of.

And so he'll put them in the dollhouse.

And the funny thing is, I look at that and I go, Actually, I can imagine Amy saying that more.

Like Amy is a bit more flippant like that, whereas Rory is usually the one to go, well, no, we need to be more cautious, et cetera, et cetera.

And he's been set up as more empathetic, hasn't he?

Yeah exactly.

I will admit that I still laugh a great deal when he sits up in the dollhouse and says, oh, we're dead again.

Again.

Because that was something I had a very polite argument about with Tom Spielsbury on Twitter once.

He's like, Rory and Amy don't die that often.

I'm like, here's a spreadsheet.

They don't have that as much as Harry Kim, but...

Because my answer do everything as a spreadsheet.

It's interesting because, of course, Arthur Darville plays that perfectly well because he's a very good actor, but he, yeah, he still turned into sort of Harry Sullivan at his most buffoonish for, for much of this.

[26:52]

And it is just a bit of a weird choice.

And that line about, um, you know, maybe we should leave him to the monsters.

It actually replaced something else where when they were initially going up and having doors slammed in their face.

When they got back together, Rory said, well, you know, no one likes being knocked up in the middle of the night.

It's like those people who knock your door to talk to you about God.

And the doctor's like, oh, yes, them, and they have this conversation where the doctor implies that anyone who does that is actually an alien.

And George overhears that and associates that with Rory and Amy, but, um, Stephen Moffat eventually said, you know, let's not annoy, um, you know, Jehovah's Witnesses and people who go around doing that door knocking or what have you.

And Mark Gater said in an interview.

I got away with it for 5 drafts. 5 drafts.

I didn't think I'd get past one.

Um, And then and then at the end of the story, um, as Dr. Amy and Rory are leaving, there was going to be a man and a woman knocking on a door and saying to the 2 twins, is mummy home and handing them a leaflet?

[27:55]

You know, slightly livid.

Slightly laboured.

Probably an element too far.

But yeah, it does it does give us then this contrivance that Rory suddenly has to be this insensitive, slightly panicky idiot, you know.

He's sort of given, he's sort of given the dodo role, really.

I think that they are shunted into a subplot that is completely weightless and is merely just atmosphere and sort of standard horror tropes.

I think there's just not very much to what's going on in the dollhouse.

So we sort of slowly wander around.

It's lit.

I mean, they even make the point themselves, don't they, in dialogue that if it had been well lit, it wouldn't be scary.

You know, and take the Warriors and the deep lesson.

And so there's nothing very much to that, I think.

They are just shunted off very quickly into a side plot to leave the doctor alone with Alex.

[28:58]

And the doctor is in that awkward position of having kind of forced his way into Alex's home under false pretences.

Um, And it not being who Alex kind of thinks he is.

And that is sort of awkward, you know, to have him sort of in the kitchen making tea after he's been explicitly told to leave.

You know, there's something slightly unpleasant about that.

I do, I do like his I'm the doctor speech.

You know, it gives a speech about who he is and how he got there.

And it's the sort of speech that, you know, David Tennant would have showboated his way through.

And Matt Smith chooses to deliver it really quite casually and just to let the words do the job rather than his performance.

And I was struck by how well that worked.

The focus is entirely on the doctor in this episode, I think.

And Matt does a great job as always.

[29:59]

I mean, it doesn't matter if he's up against the child playing George or if he's up against Daniel Mays, who's terrific and has had a stellar career.

He injects life into every scene.

And I think it is clear that Amy and Rory have been shunted off into this subplot, whereas you said, Nathan, nothing really happens.

There's not really enough incidents.

It a little bit spooky, but I think the fact that it's just a bare dollhouse actually hurts it visually because we're just walking through an undressed set.

And so there's not much of visual interest there either.

What do you think of the um, the peg dolls?

They're kind of emblematic of the episode, aren't they?

Because, um, they look good and the sound design is creepy, but they're kind of more unsettling than scary.

They don't quite have as much impact as they should.

But that said, I think the transformation of Purcell is fantastic, like really unsettling.

And then when it happens to Amy, it's a genuine moment of body horror, because you're not sure what's going to happen next.

I actually don't agree.

[31:01]

I think the episode pulls its punches a bit.

It is unsettling, but it's not particularly scary.

Mind you, I'm not a 12 year old, but that's, I know hard to believe, but it's true.

And in terms of pulling its punches, it's, well, I guess you could argue that the imagination is much more powerful, but I wanted to see, I wanted to see Amy transform into the doll, but we actually had the reverse angle of that.

And I guess that's because of the reveal when she turns or the doll, Amy Doll turns and faces Rory, but just a taste of that transformation before we cut back to Rory's point of view would have been, would have been just enough to just push it a little bit further for me.

It just felt like it was a bit tepid that moment.

I think that the scene where Purcell transforms and he looks in horror at his own kind of wooden hand.

I think it would have been much harder to watch Karen do that.

And so I think it is a deliberate choice not to kind of rub our noses in in Amy's transformation.

[32:02]

Where's the fun in that, Nathan?

Where's the phone?

I'm with you on this one, Corey.

Because I think also it represents something that I think is in Moffat's thinking.

He's never really spoken about that, but, you know, Moffat... is a very clever person.

And we as regular viewers of the show, and again, not 12 year olds, we know that Amy's going to be fine by the end of the episode.

She has to be fine because there's a story out going on.

You know what I mean?

Um, And I think, Sometimes Stephen Moffat remembers that we know that, but forgets that kids might not.

And so he probably goes, oh, we don't need to see Amy go through it because we've seen Purcell go through it.

And Amy's going to be fine by the end anyway. anyway, it's like, well, well, no, in that in that case, show the full extent of it.

Because you're, you're not going to get the shock of Amy's still a peg doll at the end and is going around the TARDIS going like this.

[33:09]

Sorry, once again, miming on a podcast.

It's great.

But yeah, I agree with you, Corey.

You know, it's already a sad and surprising moment.

Make it as sad and surprising as possible.

I mean, especially considering what happened a few weeks ago at the end of a good man goes to war, Moffatt is not averse to disgusting us.

Yeah.

And I think this is a moment where he could have pushed it further.

It's such a dark season.

Up to this point, it is pretty dark and as Peter and I discussed, uh, away from this podcast, um, sometimes it's quite devoid of humour.

That sort of trademark humour we need to sort of break up the darkness in the world of Doctor Who.

And so for us to sort of step back from that kind of reveal and see Amy transform into the doll.

I just, it's at odds with the tone of the rest of the season as far as I'm concerned.

I think this is a sapphire and steel dog 2 episode.

[34:09]

I think that's what Mark is going for.

And so actually Sapphire and Steel was not graphic and was not in your face.

It sort of hinted at everything.

And so I think this episode is, as you say, Corey, I do think it pulls its punches at times, but it's sort of getting away with creating atmosphere with a few sound effects and, you know, a fan in the corner of the studio doing all the heavy lifting.

I mean, an actual fan, not Mark eaters.

And I quite like it for that.

I like the fact that it's basically just creating a world with not much and it's hinting at a lot of things without putting it all on screen.

One such example of that is that nursery rhyme, which was a um, a post-production decision.

So they had in um, 2 young child actors uh, recording the dolls dialogue, and what they found when they were editing was the dolls were really creepy when they were standing still.

But less creepy when they were moving.

And...

Because they look stupid.

[35:13]

So Stephen Moffat asked Mark Gaiters, hey, can you come up with this nursery rhyme and Mark came up with it.

It's like, actually, we can now see this through the 2nd half of the season.

And of course, this being shot first, they could then factor that in.

And it really, really helps because I'd forgotten that we started hearing the nursery rhyme at the beginning of the episode and I remembered it was through the season.

So when we start hearing of the incidental music.

I got a little frisson.

It's like, oh, it's here.

You know, we've got the nursery right now and it does really, really help the peg dolls.

Around this time was when I stopped collecting every single action figure because I think the 1st set for this series came out and was a bit uninspired.

I'm just like, okay.

But the one I was tempted to get, but I never did, was the peg doll that came out, because I absolutely love their design and the, like, the grotesque, massive faces, and it's like, yeah, I can easily imagine a child being absolutely terrified by this.

[36:17]

And one thing Mark Gator said about the script was that he was inspired as a children by action figures and toys because they were almost human, but not quite.

And he couldn't quite see what other children saw in them because aren't they hideous?

Don't they terrify you?

Where does that dollhouse come from?

Like, I just don't understand why that dollhouse with these weird Victorian dolls is in his cupboard.

You know, Mrs. Rossiter gave it to them.

It's so weird.

Like all of those toys, all of that furniture, like all of that sort of anachronistic kind of set dressing, like it's there to serve Mark Gatas's aesthetic.

But it doesn't really make any sense.

And like the peg dolls, I just don't know what they even are.

You know, it's it is very strange.

Yeah, it's a peculiarly kind of league of gentlemen idea of kind of wide British childhood.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's it.

[37:30]

Does anyone have any thoughts about the absence of women in this episode?

It's a very male dominated episode.

The mother Claire is sent off to night shift, and then comes back the next day after the men have fixed the problem and is effectively patted on the head and told, it's all okay.

Trust us, it's being fixed.

Now can you fix the kippers for us?

Well, Matt and Alex, they go out on the balcony and sort of tie up the loose scenes and you can hear in the kitchen going, kippers are ready.

And I thought that's about all.

She's been reduced to that.

Call me that was one of my favourite parts of the episode.

It just reminded me.

It reminded me of the movie Hairspray where Zac Efron's been singing and dancing around the room and John Travolta's Edna calls out, Link, your pork is ready.

If you laugh out loud.

So like Gatus's next script for the show won't have any women in it at all, apart from Clara, is that right?

And it's just a sort of very TRAD approach to Doctor Who, and I just think he's more comfortable writing man.

[38:34]

And, you know, the woman who gets the biggest speaking part is Elsie and she's a horrific stereotype.

I think it's a weakness.

And I also just think there is a level of absurdity about that ending.

Because the child is presented to us as a kid who, you know, seems to have some like OCD symptoms and, you know, various kind of real world issues, you know, the blinking and the being scared of everything and the rituals and all of that.

Those are kind of real world problems, childhood problems that kind of just get solved by a sort of touching reconciliation scene, and then everything is going to be all right from then on.

Our parents' love saves the day again.

Yeah, it just seems just a little bit too pat.

[39:34]

Like it just doesn't convince in any way.

I think it's a problem.

You know, if it's an alien invasion, you can repel it.

But if it's a kid with kind of emotional and behavioural problems, just fixing it like that just seems a little bit crap, I think.

It just reminds me of what Pat said to Eddie once in AbFab.

Oh, Eddie, we've been here before.

That's what it feels like to me.

It feels like, well, it's a remake of Fear Her, I think, in just about every respect, is it?

Goody.

But that's what it is, isn't it?

It's like a, you know, fear her as more middle class than this.

It's in a suburban street.

There is a scary child who, you know, has the power through an alien or because of an alien to transform people and put them in a sort of weird kind of fantasy location.

The child has suffered some trauma, and the doctor comes in, you know, goes through the fridge.

[40:35]

Um, he fixes the problem and then everything's okay again.

It isn't a story that really needed a remake.

And I, you know, like I think it's generally, I don't know, better shot than fear her.

But it is in many respects, just a straight remake.

It's what we were saying a little bit earlier about the Amy and Rory and their baby arc this season.

If you're going to delve into those kinds of things about, you know, childhood trauma, and as you were saying, Nathan, genuine childhood problems, don't kind of gloss over them too much, you know, don't go there if you're not going to deal with it in a reasonable way.

Um, and also, Corey, what you were saying about the lack of female characters is true.

I think there's a recurrent theme in the Moffat era of paternal bonding.

So we'll see it in closing time later this season as well, where it's all about the bond between the father and the child.

And I think that probably comes from Stephen because, you know, he's got 2 sons.

And I think so that was probably foreground in his mind.

[41:37]

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree with you there, Peter.

And I think also it's possibly a response to Russell's Doctor Who, where the family bonds were all about mothers, essentially.

You know, you had Jackie, and when Pete was there, in either dimension, Pete's a bit rubbish, you know, even in the alternative dimension where he's a big success, he spends half the finale debating about whether he's going to save Rose or not and, you know, step up and be her father.

And, you know, then you've got Francine, who's fabulous, and Clive, who's a bit rubbish because he's run off with Annelise.

Say properly, Brendan.

Hi, babe.

And then, of course, you got Sylvia, who is a bit rubbish, but we adore her because she's hilarious.

And you do have Wolf, who is a far more capable character and a father, but is still sort of kept in place by Sylvia.

[42:38]

Like, oh, I voted for her.

You did not.

She won't let me have it with can.

They naughty?

You know what I mean?

Now, series 5 comes along, and I remember at the time was criticised for a lack, you know, we, Amy doesn't have a family, and that's the big problem, you know, and then they turn up for 5 minutes.

So I think Stephen Moffatt here is like, right, I'm going to do families, but how do I do families in a way that haven't been done before.

So we've got Avery, we've got Alex, and we've got Craig later in the season, all doing very similar stories to each other about bonding with their child.

And it is interesting that in 2 of those 3 cases, the only way to do it is to remove the women.

Yeah, you know, and even in close time.

In all of those cases, yeah, in all of those cases, yeah.

Yeah.

Like with closing time, I was going to say you've at least got Linda Barron.

You know what I mean?

who takes on a grand maternal, a figure in the story.

Um, it's, I think it's slightly undermines what Moffat is trying to do of presenting um, father figures who overcome adversity for the sake of their child.

[43:45]

And it's like, you can only do that by removing the mother from the story. is a bit of an odd message.

You do have a big central arc that is about a mother and her daughter, though, and I don't think that makes up for it in any way.

I think it is a problem, but that is at least happening at the same time.

But like the arc, it's a space arc.

I think that is an effort to sort of balance it.

It's like we've got, you know, the whole season is about motherhood, like Amy's motherhood of river and is that particularly successful?

Perhaps not.

So we'll make these mini arcs about these fathers.

Are they particularly successful, perhaps not.

An effort was made.

I actually think this is a pretty underrated episode.

I think there's a lot to like.

[44:45]

I don't mind the idea of kind of the cuckoo child as the rationale for the urban horror setup.

Um, we've had much more tenuously technobabbly explanations for things like the psychic pollen last year in Amy's choice.

Um, and I think it is trying to say things.

You know, there's there's sort of a little bit of comment being here on the breakdown of society and the impact on family and the isolation of kids, which I think is more relevant in a lockdown world than it was 10 years ago.

But the problem as ever with Mark's scripts, and I do enjoy, um, you know, I do enjoy his scripts as a rule, is that they do have a good setup, but it's not quite developed that well.

And so like we were saying with the subplot in the in the dollhouse, it's an interesting idea, but then nothing is really done with it and it loses steam.

See, I actually think there's quite a lot to like about it, but it doesn't quite land, does it?

I'm not sure I agree with you, Peter.

I actually think this episode is completely devoid of any real political position around class and around housing estates.

[45:53]

Um, And I really struggled with the idea that the doctor just stays in George's room while Purcell does some heavy work on Alex to get the rent out of him.

That seems a very odd choice for the doctor in that moment.

If I were to place that situation in perhaps the old series, and this might be a problematic thing to say, but drop it into the old series.

You can imagine the doctor possibly stepping out and intervening and um, and writing the wrong there, I guess.

But I guess more to the point is that I don't think Gates is actually really saying anything about housing estates and about the breakdown of community.

There's a fleeting comment.

I think that Matt's doctor makes about housing estates, but it flies by so quick that I think, you know, you have to watch the episode a number of times to pick up that comment.

There's nothing really about what do these housing states represent?

They, in effect, ring fence working class people.

[46:55]

Um, socially disadvantaged people away from the rest of the rest of us.

That's certainly my take on it.

And there's, it's problematic that the doctor doesn't comment on that at all in the episode.

Yeah, I really struggle with it, actually, to be honest, just to be contrary.

Sorry, chaps.

No, not contrary at all.

I mean, I actually I agree to a large extent with you.

I think that there isn't a lot of comment in the episode.

I think Mark is, you know, he is striving to say a couple of things, but his politics are not the politics of the working class and not the politics of kind of people who live in a states.

And so um, I'm not sure if he knows exactly what he's saying.

I think he's trying to say a few things, but he doesn't actually end up saying them.

So I actually agree with you broadly.

Like I knew you would, Peter.

We always do, Corey.

I think that Gatus's interests are aesthetic rather than political.

I think he ends up being sort of accidentally conservative as a result of that.

But what he really wants to do is bring that sort of grotesque mid-20th century horror aesthetic that he had in League of Gentlemen, and to some extent in the idiot's lantern, and then sort of do it in a modern setting.

[48:08]

And it, you know, his most political script.

I think probably, like his most explicitly political script is sleep no more.

But even there, he can't resist shoe horning his mid-20th century aesthetic into that in places as well.

And indeed, shoehorning in Reese Shearsmith.

Oh yeah, quite.

Which is not a problem.

He's the best part of the episode No, I should imagine a lot of people don't have a problem with shoehorning.

Why did I know you were going to say something like that, Peter.

I agree with what you're saying about Mark Gator said, because, you know, if you look back at the Unquiet Dead, and he's commented on this since then, people kind of said at the time, so is this anti-refugee?

And Mark says, oh my god, no, it's a space thing.

No.

No, that's not what I was going for at all.

You know, but it's because, you know, he's thought about, as you say, the aesthetic, the script function without thinking about the world that script is going out into.

You know what I mean?

[49:09]

But Peter said something he liked about this.

I'd like to say something I really like, and I know, Corey, it's something you brought up earlier that you don't think works so well, but I actually really like the relationship between the doctor and Alex after the doctor gives him the stunning star speech and whatever, especially that conversation about, do we open the cupboard or not?

There is such a sort of doctor and Harry Sullivan vibe to that whole conversation where the doctor's saying, no, no, it's far too dangerous. and Alex says, yes, it's far too dangerous. and the doctor goes, yes, Alex, what are you thinking?

We can't possibly open the cupboard.

Now hold this cup while they open the cupboard.

You've taught me into it.

It's really well done.

It's really well done.

And also, I don't quite know where this comes from.

But...

Here and with James Corden, there is a homoerotic vibe, when Matt's Mind, please don't put that image in my head.

[50:10]

I'm sorry but it's true.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Peter, we must face our fears if this story is about...

If not, put James Corden in the cupboard.

But, um, yeah, there's this homoerotic vibe, especially during that stunning star speech, they're just gazing into each other's eyes while the doctor is actually, not even stunning stars.

He's basically giving the Florana speech without become with me at the end.

You know what I mean?

And they're just staring into each other's eyes and you just cut to Alex babies.

You're not from social services.

It's such a brilliant thing and it really brings it down to earth.

And the other thing I really love about that relationship is, at the end, when they're surrounded on the stairs, the doctor explains why George is feeling the way he's feeling, but he doesn't say to Alex, now go hug your son.

That would have utterly ruined it.

He says you can end this, but he doesn't explain how, and it's up to Alex to figure that out because that love has to come from a genuine place.

[51:15]

I mean, George calls out dad, and that's what he responds to.

And, you know, he responds as dad in a situation where he's questioning whether the child is his at all.

And it is kind of the same thing that we are going to get in a few weeks time with closing time.

So I think maybe fear her suffers from being in the same season as the idiot's lantern, which it has lots of similarities with.

And I think this one probably suffers from being a little bit too much like closing time.

I know it sounds like I'm really down on this episode, but I agree, there is much to enjoy about it, and it's hearts are in the right place, I think.

[52:23]

Well, new listener, that's all we have time for this week.

You will be back next week for another Star Trek episode with the girl who waited.

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, Jody InterTara, maximum power, and Untitled Star Trek Project.

Until next time, please go easy on the patented wallpaper.

Thank you very much for listening and good night.

Good night.

Good night.

Good night.

That was Flight Through Entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley, Peter Griffith, Brendan Jones and Corey McMahon.

Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb.

This episode, Fixed the Kippers, was recorded on the 29th of August 2021 and released on the 14th of November.

Fans of the League of Gentlemen will be delighted to know that for FDE 29th of August is new today, which means that this episode was recorded with all 4 of us wearing nothing but upsettingly fluffy merkins.

[53:34]

As a result, we strongly recommend unsubscribing from our YouTube channel.

Also, can we just say that Mark, being the big old geek that he is throwing in jokes about Snow White and the 7 Keys to do this day?

That's right.

He laugh out loud.

I thought to myself, what others could you have?

How about Ian Barbara and the 40 Thebes?

Captain Jack and the Beanstalk.

You know, like I'm, this is the tag now, I think, at this and I just think this episode's really boring and I'm glad that you all derived some kind of enjoyment from it.

Oh God.

I thought it was charming.

Oh, bugger.

I agree with you.

It is.

It's boring.

I had to watch it 3 times.

It was like, oh, not again.

Do you know that comparison with EastEnders?

Sorry, you go on, Brennan.

I was just going to say, I, you know, I enjoy it, but I don't overly enjoy this series.

[54:35]

So would I have enjoyed it as much if it were part of last year's series?

Um, which also begs the question, is dragging a stereotypical little old lady into the trash better or worse than driving a van into them?

Oh, I go for the van.

A van every time. man every time.

I'm absolutely on board with the violence towards old people in Amy's choice. hilarious.

It's a go-to moment.

It's a go-to moment.

Hit up.

Whack up.

It's a go-get. man.

All right.

So, shall we do an outro?