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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
I'm sorry but it's true.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hit up.
Whack up.
It's a go-get. man.
All right.
So, shall we do an outro?