Hello, and welcome back to Flight through Entirety, the only
Doctor Who podcast that doesn't want to set the world on fire.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
And I'm your new assistant.
Oh, ladies and gentlemen.
I feel the need to explain.
Richard is having to take a step back from podcast duty slightly.
So he will be alternating the meantime with Sir Todd Bealby, who
joins us in the 3rd slot on the sofa.
And what better time to give him a baptism of fire, because Todd
terror of the autons is your story.
Oh, wow.
I've never experienced that before from this side of things.
Oh, thank you, Brandon.
I've heard that before.
Thank you, Nathan. and thank you, Richard.
And before I begin, obviously I want to say the more things change
the more they stay the same.
So, you know, although things will be different, hopefully will be
you know, I can't hope to emulate Richard, but I will be different
and, you know, change is a good thing.
Hey, Richard would never have said that.
No, no, you're already a business.
Oh, dear.
Help me, dear listener. help me now All right, so tear of the
Ultrons is, yes, baptism of fire straight into it.
Our new producer.
Well, no, I'm not so new producer, but Barry Lex is now in control
of the series, working with Sheron sticks on his 1st full series
from the get go.
And with that, of course, comes a number of changes.
He's decided that we're going to be going for 4 episodes and 6
episode stories.
The 7 episodes are out the window.
And you know, I think this is a change, certainly for the good.
You've got more 1st nights, you know, in this season with, you
know, with an extra story, and script wise, they're a bit easier
to write in the 7 episode stories, and obviously, the viewers
don't have to be engaged over 70 weeks.
I think we found last time, didn't we, that the 7 partters?
Well, I certainly found them increasingly tiresome, each one
slightly worse than the previous one.
And we did talk a little bit about the advantages of 7 partners.
And look, you know, if the 7 partners were boring, you know, per
twee, 6 partners from here on in are going to certainly, you know
be pretty much equally boring.
I think on the whole.
But it is a much better pattern, you know, and it is precisely
that episode one just tends to be better than the other episodes.
And it's only marginally more expensive than what they were doing
before.
Yeah, and I think this year is when we start to get the pattern
the Doctor Who would bed down in for the next 20 years of its run
you know, the typical 4 to 6 part story arc and where we have 6
parts, they're usually a 4 parter with a 2 parter at the end or
vice versa.
So, yeah, this season sort of is where Doctor Who starts being the
Doctor Who we know from the colour era.
But I'll be, I'll be having a bit more to say about that when we
get to, um, clause of axos.
I agree with you on that.
I think the legacy of Doctor Who is actually cemented in this
season.
I think Barry Letts and Terrence Styx have a lot to be praised
for.
And I think what they do in this entire season ensures the
longevity of the show over the next 5 years.
I think if we had just had a repeat of season 7, the show would
have ended here in season 8 and that would have ended, it would
have been a quite little show.
So, I mean, this is a, this is a soft reboot and I think I called
it a reboot last time and it really makes quite a lot of changes
from last year.
So we had virtually no TARDIS last year. you know, the Tardis
exterior only appeared in the corner of the laboratory in
spearhead from space.
The TARDIS exterior is back, unit wearing sort of sensible
uniforms instead of those stupid jumpsuit things or the horrific
yellow turtlenecks that they were wearing.
You've got basically 6 regular cast and something that we've
really never had before at all.
Yeah, it is the biggest wreck of a cast opportunity's ever had.
Very next is quite clever here.
I mean, introducing those standard uniform. is a very clever
ploy.
I mean, what is the biggest comedy show on television at the
moment?
Oh, Richard would know.
Richard would know.
Dad's army.
You know?
So it's familiar.
He's trying to aim it for a family audience.
We're getting a team together that you can then choose which one
of that team you like more or less.
And of course, going into that means we've got a regular captain
in terms of Captain Yates.
You know, that's a 1st change to have that 2nd in command then.
They've already started those changes back in season 7 with Benton
coming back in, you know, in the last 2 stories. whether that be
by chance or by design.
But here, by putting a regular captain in, you've now got, you
know, 3 people to choose from in, you know, turn to the guys.
But, I do have to say, Yates is by far my least favourite of the 3
regular... is terrible.
Well, but I'll say this.
I think his character art compared to the other 2 is actually the
one that has the biggest change in his whole...
Spoilers, but we're getting...
Now, the thing is, and I'm glad I'm glad you both said that
because it is a minor thing in Doctor Who fandom, but I've had the
discussion many times before with people, who do you prefer?
Captain Yates and Sergeant Benton.
And nobody I've met has said, oh, I both like the Minkle or
dislike Minkle.
Someone always prefers one or the other.
I actually prefer Captain Yates to Sergeant Benton.
But that's just me.
You guys obviously prefer Sergeant Benton to Captain Yates.
And with all the things that Doctor Who fans out of you about, and
there's a lot of them.
This one seems to be the most good natured.
You never sort of see flame walls online about, you know, Benton
Gate or standards in Yates journalism.
Well, I don't think anyone likes either of them very much.
So maybe that's not enough to hear.
But I do have to be just enraged on the beat and made Richard
Franklin chuckle.
But I don't have to say this.
The way in which Richard Franklin sautés have to do his sautés.
No, no, no, that's cooking.
Sachet is up to do his 1st salute.
I mean, honestly, unit were ahead of their time.
There's a don't ask don't tell policy back in 1970.
I mean, how anybody could ever think that this man was going to be
a love interest for Joe Grant.
I'll never know They give up on that after this story, don't
they?
They really do.
And I have to say, I think that Richard Franklin looks really
uncomfortable in many of the early scenes.
They're really trying to put Yates into the scenes and he's
looking down and he just, he just seems to be ill at ease in the
role.
In the later episodes of this story.
He gets better and I think he, you know, been a few weeks into
filming, he relaxes and you can see that difference.
But in the 1st couple of episodes, he's not great.
He's up and down that sort of thing.
But they do try and work the character into the backstory of the
show.
It's really interesting The doctor says, you know, to Mike, you
know, that he helped clean up the author.
You know, and that's actually quite clever of, I think, of
Terrence Dix to work this sort of stuff, then, and he does it
quite often.
It's history that's only like a year old.
But, you know, the audience aren't going to know that he wasn't in
there because there's no repeats, there's no DVDs, and they're
just going to say, well, he's part of the team and they're going
to accept him much easier and quicker.
But constantly, because I'm watching a bit ahead in the pertwe
era.
They're referencing things like a few stories previous, that the
audience should know, and you as an audience member sort of feel
like, oh, I know that, and I remember that, and I feel, you know
you're getting caught up in it and feeling part of the...
Yeah, because even a viewer who missed that earlier Auton story.
What that scene tells them is that there has been a previous
invasion.
It doesn't say, you need to know about the previous invasion to
understand this story.
It's the best kind of continuity reference in that.
Add something for the viewer who knows.
But it doesn't detract anything for the viewer who doesn't
understand.
And that's one of the things with this story, Brendan, is that I
really see them.
I mean there's a complete change in style.
It's I find it, it's much more comic book telling.
Yeah, yeah.
And it happens again and again.
And it's actually it's actually very clever.
Like you can see when Joe has to go to the plastics factory to
investigate.
She having a conversation with the brigadier about going somewhere
then you see her there, then you see the consequence, then she's
back.
Later on, in the story, they do the same thing with the daffodil.
You find the daffodil, you see them distributed, you hear about
the deaths.
It's boom, boom, boom. picture it now as a sequence.
And, you know, for the casual viewer who's coming in week after
week, it's actually quite clever in terms of keeping the story
moving and that sort of thing.
It's this comic book style that keeps the pace going.
I see it in the 4 episodes, George.
You can actually sit down, dearly.
I'm finding that you can watch, you know, 2 episodes of a per twee
4 episode story, like, you know, with a, you know, 5 minute break
in between, 6 episodes.
I'm, you know, again, it's trip, but you need to have like a
dinner break, you know, because they're, you know, they're a bit
slower with the characters and that sort of thing.
But I, you know, this is the nature of television in 1917 and what
they're delivering.
And I think those people that often watch these stories in one hit
and then complain about repetitiveness and all that sort of
thing.
And if you approach it in that way, you're not going to enjoy it.
I mean, one of the things, again, episode 3 of Brigadier does his
big list of where we're up to with, you know, the master and the
audience and what's going on.
But, you know, if you hadn't watched, you know, it's been a week
since you watched the show and you haven't had it on the VCR to
watch 500 times and, you know, take that information in.
Exactly, and especially seeing it from the beginning of the season
you could very easily have missed the 1st episode and then caught
for the 2nd episode.
Something I find very interesting about this as well is we now
have our 5th returning Doctor Who monster in the form of the
autons.
Really?
Fifth.
Daleks?
Cybermen?
Ice Warriors?
Yes.
Okay. that's it.
Now, previously, when we've had, say when the cybermen returned
for their 2nd story, their 2nd story is essentially a remake of
their 1st story.
And certainly the Dalek story started to become very derivative of
one another.
The yeti stories as we kind of explore the yeti kind of a one
trick thing and it's more about the great intelligence.
But terrible.
Thank you, Nathan.
But here, the autons...
Robert Holmes does come up with a completely new plot and idea for
them because he's introduced this new character element, of course
of the master.
How are we going this far without even mentioning the master?
We've barely mentioned John.
So this is, again, Holmes gets to do, uh, in the future, homes
will get to, like, introduce new companions several times.
He does it quite a lot.
Well, I think that Terrence Sticks and RX realise how good he is
at doing that.
He does it with Sarah Jane.
The following year, it's the same team, but lets his scripting for
the new doctor and companion.
Holmes introduces, always a script editor for Leila, and then they
turn to him for a moment.
There's a reason, you know, why he's there, you know, Letts and
Dicks can see what he can do.
And so he introduces, he introduces the master and he starts the
story pretty much with what we've been missing for ages, which is
the dematerialisation sound and the time lord.
And some, and you know, we're not in a research centre.
We've, you know, in a really gruesome circus, isn't it?
Just a most unappealing, unhappy circus you've ever seen.
Oh, this poor stock footage lion.
Oh, awful.
It is so awful.
I'm so glad that we don't have those kinds of circuses anymore.
It just looked terribly great.
But all of these sort of fun things that have been missing from
the previous year.
The only real story with any sort of element set in the real world
was Holmes's story last year with the Seelies and their house, a
plastic factory and all of that sort of thing, everything else was
sort of scientific installations and stuff.
So that's all really fun, and then he, it recreates the time
lords.
So we haven't seen a time lord since the war games, and now we see
our 1st time, lord.
And the one who just appears hovering in mid-air, dressed as
Patrick McNee and the Avengers.
Well, there's a Magrit painting since Richard's not here.
I'll...
Yes, too, isn't it?
Just like the opening few minutes of terror of the autons.
The opening few minutes of this podcast are going to be based
around the absence of Dr. Liz Stone.
Zock in Cambridge.
Yes, he is.
Investigating German expression is dramatic.
So he's suspended in midair and he looks like those men in there's
a painting and a grit painting with that looks like sort of civil
servants falling from the sky like rain and so he's suspended in
midair like that.
And he has some banter with poetry.
You know, the last time we saw the, um, the time lords, they were
really rather terrifying and omnipotent and the doctor was scared
of them.
But now, you know, the doctor's just sort of bantering with them
and they're sort of, they are like sort of comedy civil servants.
And later on, homes will get to do a sort of full scale
reinvention of the time lords in deadly assassin, much to
everyone's horror at the time.
Yeah, well, I'm still horrified by it.
I would say, I really like it.
I think that the Holmes conception of the time lords is fun.
Anyway, we're getting ahead of ourselves.
There's already so much to discuss in this story.
So then we get the master.
And the master is also just a truly fantastic character here.
Well, I think it's actually a stroke of brilliance on part of the
production team to introduce another time.
They've already realised the limitations of the doctor being
trapped on earth.
Here, as you've said, in the 1st shot, you've got the atar is
materialising, you're reintroducing that.
By having another timeline, you're constantly in these stories
reinforcing to the viewer the concept of the doctor's history.
We've got to remember that only 5000000 people tuned in to the
original time moulds back in at the end of trout.
Okay.
And now, in this 1st story, you've got 8000000 viewers tuning in
like you did the previous season.
They're trying to ingrain this into the psyche of the viewer.
You've got that wonderful scene you talked about.
I think it's just a brilliant scene with that timeward appearing
up straight away.
It's like, this is the master, this is what he does.
You're trapped on earth because we've exiled you there.
You're going back to the viewer and telling them all this
information so quickly.
And then there's that wonderful moment where he talks about the
doctor's degree is less than the master's one.
Yes, yes.
His scoreboard, either.
I think it was astral science.
Was it a higher degree than yours?
Can I just say, make me look so crestfallen.
It's such a billing card for a moment.
I just went, oh my goodness, you know?
And then the facade goes back up.
There's this really big bravado facade that the 3rd doctor puts on
so often that you sometimes can be mistaken for, like he's such a
Tory or arrogant or such a.
I like the word obnoxious.
Okay, obnoxious, but I actually think it's a lot of bravado and it
drops every so often.
You know, I went into this thinking, oh, good grief, you know, this
is the 3rd doctor and the last one I watched this story.
I didn't enjoy it at all.
I thought it was a comedy send up of the previous year.
So much so that when I actually went to view this.
I didn't actually earn it on DVD.
I had a DHS copy of the black and white version because I had
refused to buy it because I was so outraged at the crackiness of
it.
I just can't believe that, you know, that's what I was thinking
because I actually think this is actually brilliant.
It is a bit controversial though, and I'll put something in the
show notes.
Paul Cornell wrote a very famous article in DWB about how terrible
it was.
I think he praises Delgado, and I think he praises Katie Manning
and I think he probably praises Nick Courtney.
But he, you know, thinks the story is not an auton story.
He thinks it's a mess and he doesn't like the doctor at all.
So I'll put a link to that because it was sort of hugely
controversial.
And so, you know, like a lot of people didn't like this because
they thought it was a comedown from season seven.
But I'm actually relieved by it.
I was finding season 7 so boring.
See, I love I love season seven, but I think you've hit the nail
on the head there, Todd, in that, what the presence of the masters
is, in giving the doctor an enemy, it also humanises him.
And this is something you picked up on last season, Nathan, you
know, he's so aloof and so far above everyone, because there's no
one he can relate to.
Well, suddenly he's got someone to relate to, and we see that
actually the way he relates to people, of his own level is no
different to the way humans relate to each other.
And it actually just serves to humanise the character a great
deal.
I also wanted to bring up the big criticism I've seen people make
of the 3rd doctor and the sort of, this is the damning proof that
he is pro-establishment and it's that scene with the civil
servant.
We used to talk about this.
Oh, what's his name?
Tubby, Tubby Roland.
Oh, I know brown nose.
I know Tubby from the club.
I went into that set.
I had to watch it twice.
And the 1st time I'm thinking, oh, I was so obnoxious.
This is, you know.
And then I thought, no, hang on.
The way he's treating the brigadier and other people, he really
just wants to get off this planet.
He's actually really annoyed.
But at the same time, I think he actually then goes and does a bit
of research just in case anybody, you know, rockles his feathers.
And I actually think he's never met this man.
He's just throwing it in there to ruffle this, this, um, the
feathers of this, and he actually doesn't know this man at all.
And it happens a number of times in other stories as well.
He talk, like, in the very next story, he talks about meeting
Mouse Situng, but I don't think he's ever met him.
I think it's just to get in and find out what's going on.
And then, you know, It's funny.
By the time you get to the CDs, he tries it on a 3rd or 4th time
with one of the guys in the boats about the different wars, and he
gives up halfway through.
It's like the whole passage just comes down and goes, would you
buy this war or this one or this one?
Yeah, it...
Yeah, this war and this war.
And so I'm now actually convinced that in 99% of these cases, you
know, it's just bravado.
But he's so obnoxious in that scene.
He really is unbelievable.
And this man is being obnoxious with someone who is being
obnoxious to his friend.
No, that's really not what's happening.
Mr. Brown rose has come from the ministry. to talk about a whole
heap of deaths that are sweeping the country.
And per tweets.
So with useful information which they will actually use to help
their investigation.
He's there to help them.
Per toy comes in and says, oh, you know, wrong sort of chap
creeping into your being.
But then dismisses brown roses, petty concerns, and the petty
concerns are, A, really, really relevant to the thing that they're
investigating, and B, like a huge number of deaths that are
sweeping the country.
I just think that poetry comes off, they're just being absolutely
unnecessarily obnoxious.
And we will see him do this over and over again.
He's done it before.
He comes in and actually makes it more difficult for himself by
being so unpleasant.
No, I agree that he does make it more difficult for himself.
And I think this is part of the character from season 7 and the
character that I remember as a kid, that's not the character I
remember.
And I actually think over the course of this season, It begins to
change and it's through the character of Joe in particular that
this happens.
And as much as I love Liz Shaw.
Liz was seconded to unit and would side with the doctor against
the brigadier, whereas Joe is actually employee.
And so she has to navigate the waters between the two.
And you actually see as this season progresses, and the next, that
there is a change in his doctor, and by the time he's not as quick
to jump down the throats of these civil servants by the time I'm
midway through season nine, it still happens.
He's still not, he's still prickly, but he will pull back more.
And at this point, the character is still very much, you know, in
balance with season seven.
I'm sort of glad that it just doesn't change overnight that you
actually see this progression.
But, you know, I do take your point.
And I think that Barry Letts and Pat's chance to realise that the
character can't continue like this.
And so they're trying to work a way to change this, you know, even
if that's John's initial approach to the part, they're trying to
work a way to try and get away from that.
So we get the family unit working together.
I think, I think too, uh, it is held by the fact that John, that
Pertwe really clearly likes Katie Manning, like, likes her a lot.
You can tell the sort of the dynamics of this group of actors
really settles in quickly.
You know, they're all getting along very well.
Whereas with the previous season, The previous season was a lot
more military in a way.
You know, no one actually seemed that chummy with Sergeant Benton
whereas now, because you have Joe, who is an assistant at unit.
You know, she doesn't have any official rank, she's not a sort of
a department head, if you like, like, sure.
So she can get on with Benton on a personal level.
And I think it's when Joe starts getting on with Benton on a
personal level, that the doctor starts getting on with Benton at a
personal level.
Can we talk about how just truly superb, Joey?
Oh, my God.
So the folklore is that, um, Terence Dix thought that, um, Liz was
too smart and didn't need things explained to her.
And so he brought Joey in as kind of dumb blonde to get menaced
and ask the doctor stupid questions.
But she's absolutely not that at all.
And she, she's really competent.
Um, she's, she pushes the plot along, like we see her.
She's the one who finds the master, she ignores the doctor's
instructions and goes off to rescue him at the circus.
You know, we see her ordering things on the phone and flirting on
the phone in order to get things done for the doctor.
She makes the list of plastic factories for them to investigate.
And she's so funny.
Sandra talks about the moment where she's discovered by the master
in episode one at the plastics factory.
And rather than screaming and looking terrified or, you know
pulling a kind of Debbie Watling on us.
She just sort of stands up sheepishly and sort of goes.
Uh, hello, you know, like, she's terribly, terribly sweet and
terribly.
And terribly competent And it's a great performance.
She, um, you know, she really creates, you know, we've talked
about this before, and Maureen O'Brien really creates the modern
companion or Debbie Watling really creates the modern companion.
But Joe, I think, you know, these days when we think of the
doctors travelling with one young woman.
You know, Joe kind of started that and she's terrific.
No, I agree.
I mean, the casting of Katie Manning, the casting of Roger Delgado
the casting of Liz Slade and the casting of Tom Baker, Barry Letts
has a lot to be praised for.
But it starts here with the marriage of this character of Joe and
what she's been written for and getting it to Holmes to actually
do.
And with the actress.
And Katie, it's just so adorable from the get go.
And she gets in there and destroys the doctor's experiment, you
know, just by doing the right thing.
And then in the very next scene, when the doctor and the brigadier
spoken and the brigadier got the doctor's number and saying, well
you fire...
And then he has to do it, but she walks in and she's so
competent.
My goodness, had it been Dodo, Dodo, Ronda pieces, you know?
After destroying anything, I had to go off to the country.
So I could make you a list of all the plastic factories, but I
burnt it.
And now I'm going to go and have a little lie down.
I think there are some moments in this story where Katie is over
the top.
I mean, after she gets hypnotised and gets out of the hypnotism
she's a little bit too hysterical.
And there's a few moments like that, but I think that's a settling
in thing, which she does very, very quickly.
I mean, she has some lovely moments.
There's one where she's lying on the floor in the doctor, in the
um, the, the, the, the, the...
The signal to the brigadier and she says something about, you're
not gonna drive it, are you?
And it's just the look on her face.
I just burst out in laughter and I just thought, you know, that's
just so lovely.
And that's what I'm discovering is how good Katie is.
We'll put some photos of this on the website and I'm going to out
myself because I'm sure I'll be out it soon.
Back in December.
There was a Doctor Who convention with Katie in Bankstown and I
actually went along in cosplay as Joe Grant.
From Planet of the Dialect. from Day of the Dialects.
You know, the reason was Katie was very flattered.
I explained to her, well, when I was a child, it was the pertly
stories, especially the perfect stories with Joe Grant, that I
just watched again and again and again.
My 1st story memory is coming up in a couple of podcasts with
Carnival of Monsters.
And yeah, Joe Grant is...
She's the archetype of the companion we expect now, you know, she's
not Liz Shaw.
She doesn't have degrees in half a dozen subjects or whatever, but
she is intelligent of her own intuition.
And that's what you need for a doctor companion.
A doctor companion needs that intellect and that intuition and
that humanity, that heart, and certainly as the season goes on.
We're going to see a lot of heart from Joe as well, and that's a
hugely important part of her character, which, as much as I love
Liz Shaw, Liz Shaw didn't seem to have a lot of that list or was a
scientist, she could be quite cold and analytical, which is a very
positive character trait in itself.
Or snarky. or snarky.
Astringent.
But I think, yeah, when we start getting this warmth from Joe
really through, once you've met Katie Manning, you know that that
warmth isn't acting, that's just purely coming from the actress
herself into the character.
I mean, you talk about warmth.
I mean, you look at the scene with the doctor and show when they
go and visit Mrs. Farrow and, you know, the doctor's like gunning
for questions. husband's dead.
But, you know, then she's there to be that bridge and say, oh, no
you tell us.
And then Mrs. Farrell does the very British thing and pulls itself
together and tells them everything, but it's through that
character.
And Joe is just, as you're both saying, so competent.
Like she's a scape artist.
She can knock out strong men with vases, she can rescue the
doctor.
You're going to talk to Joberman's back.
Come on, I hate this so much.
And we add alcoholism to the list of you know, unpleasant
stereotypes.
He has a drink.
That doesn't make him an alcohol.
But, you know, the fact that we see him on screen for such a short
amount of time and some of that is him sort of stealing Mr
Rossini's alcohol and smirking like he's done something clever.
It's so bad.
And he, I mean, he had been, it's Roy Stewart, isn't it?
And he'd been in Live and Let Die, and he plays Quarrel Junior, the
son of disposable black guy in Dr. No, but he's like an actual
human being who gets lines and things.
It just didn't have to be like that.
And that's sort of lazy.
Holmes is occasionally guilty of that kind of lazy stereotyping, I
think.
Sorry, I just had to say.
No, no, no, I had to bring it up.
I wanted to see what the reaction was having her, you know, tomb
of the side and et cetera, you know, and what they're doing with
racial stereotypes.
But, you know, Joey's competent and, you know, when she knocks out
Yates at the end of episode one, like she cloggers him to open the
door.
Oh, that's good, isn't it?
It undermines Yates, I think.
It makes Yates look weak.
I mean, later on, she punches Benton in the stomach.
No, no, Ben Benson gets the bum off her, you know. you know
whereas Yates is down to the count.
Luckily.
Yeah, no, no.
No, he is.
I'm watching these episodes And Yates does one thing and it all
goes horribly wrong.
And then, a few episodes later, they try and redeem him, like, as
in this, when he's in the blue engine, the blue little car of the
brigadiers and most down in the autumn, he's suddenly man of
action.
So why can't you not afford proper cars?
I don't know, my mother had one of those cars.
I kept looking at going, I've seen that somewhere else before.
Yeah, they had nice black Daimlers or limousines last season in
Spearhead from space and now they've got this little sort of pale
teal.
Yeah, it was probably the, you know, the production unit manager's
car.
Yeah, it was probably Derek Sherwin's car.
Probably.
He came over there to punch that actual majority cake.
He is very bizarre in this in this story to have that little car.
Like, I mean, later on they have their Jeeps and all that sort of
thing.
Maybe they haven't gone out to purchase them yet, but it is quite
strange.
I want to talk about Roger Dorgado some more.
Can we talk about the plan?
With like with Roger Delgado.
Yeah, yeah, we'll talk.
I counted.
I was so, you know, I did a lot of homework.
The master tries to kill the doctor 7 times. in this story.
Fabulous.
So what are we talking once every sort of 15 minutes.
And it sort of fails.
And he's never that upset by it.
Do you know what I mean?
And his final plan, which is so spectacularly bad, is, you know
he's going to kill the doctor because he's going to bring the
autons of the nestines to earth.
And then the doctor says, you know, they won't be able to tell the
difference between you and us.
And he goes, oh yeah, that's right.
All right, I'll stop you.
It's so stupid.
And again, Cornell, I think, points this out that Terrence Dix
fixes that plot problem by having the brigadier pull a gun on the
master and make him help the doctor, which is slightly better, but
despite that, or maybe that's even the master's thing.
The whole, we get introduced to the master.
We need to know what his deal is.
And his deal will be coming up with just increasingly baroque and
stupid ways of attempting to kill the doctor and failing every
time.
And if the pace of failure or slow down a bit, you'll just fail
sort of wants a story, really, to kill the dog from now on.
But we're getting in there right away.
See, um, Barrett Lance and Terret 6, of course, describe, you know
if the doctor Sherlock Holmes, then the master is Moriarty, but
especially looking at this story, I come up with another classic
hero and villain dichotomy in there, one that's been around since
the 30s and has already been referenced in Doctor Who before
because the doctor is essentially an exiled orphan who is trained
in hand-to-hand combat.
He got a variety of gadgets.
He's got a secret base.
He got a fancy car with gadgets and a teenage sidekick who is also
effectively an orphan.
We never hear about Joe's parents.
She's just got that uncle who got her the job.
The doctor is Batman.
And the master is the Joker.
Because the Joker comes up with these incredibly elaborate schemes
based on, For instance, the daffodils because people are already
giving out daffodils.
So I will give out dacodils, but they will kill and people are
giving out dolls.
Well, I will give out dolls and they will kill.
The doctor likes talking on the phone.
I will kill him with a phone.
It is, it's actually, that's actually not so crazy. is it?
Because, I mean, Batman had run against Doctor Who's sort of
fairly recently, like in living memory within the last few years
against Trown, right?
Yes, right.
And it was incredibly popular.
Yeah.
So it is.
I mean, it is they are sort of preposterous plants, aren't they?
It is really fun though.
Oh, I think so too.
But I mean, I guess he's Batman is incredibly fun as well.
But actually taking your point, you know, there's a number of
resolutions in the poetry stories that seem to happen in the last
5 minutes.
Sometimes it's quite rushed.
Often, I think, actually in the 4 part stories.
The 3rd part is often the strongest, and the 4th, you know, they
wrap things up or it's, you know, and then there's leftover stuff
they have to do.
Yes, the master changes his mind very quickly.
They're like, what was the point of the last four?
Yeah, you should have thought that through.
I mean, the master's sort of an interesting character and we've
had the master back for last season with Peter Capaldi.
And, like, I don't think he's Moriarty.
Well, maybe he is Moriarty to, to home.
So I think I think the idea is that he's the mirror sort of
counterpart of the doctor.
Unfortunately, the way they do that here is by having him be sort
of patrician and well dressed and arrogant.
Only he looks foreign.
So he's like per to be only foreign.
Right.
I think that is a slightly, you know, the Nehru colour and the
kind of being Spanish.
But I think, I think, I think also Doctor Who has used the Nehru
collar as a shorthand villain before in Kevin Stoney.
Yeah.
Roger Delgado's European heritage, I don't think is what got him
the role, if you like, but I think it did get him past villain
roles, proved his worth as a villain, and that got in that.
So in a way, yes.
But at the same time, I was about to say they don't really play on
it, but they do actually play on the fact that he looks a bit
Spanish later on this season, don't they?
So you may have something there.
But he's just so good.
And he's so he's so still and calm and mesmerising.
Boom.
And it's sort of like, you know, you can now watch this show.
You can either go for the team and they've got a win or...
We've got this.
Yeah that's right.
And what's great about that stillness is.
Occasionally he does lose his temper.
And you can just see there results so much bubbling under the
surface.
Like when Mr. Farrell Sr. can't be hypnotised.
The master really gets angry for a few seconds, but then stops
himself.
And that was something I felt recently was missing with the John
Sim incarnation, who just often seemed to be very, very angry and
didn't have those moments of stillness, sadly.
He had sort of funny moments.
I mean, John Simsmaster, the idea is that the real threat he poses
is that he will take over a star of the show because one of the
things that we know that a time war does is starring Doctor Who.
You know what I mean?
And so John Sim appears on the series 3 DVD covers and stuff, you
know what I mean?
And sidelines tend completely.
And I think that's a great conception, you know, that that's the
real threat.
That's true.
The nesting is really crummy again, isn't it?
I mean, last time it was sort of a box full of glad rap with
someone throwing tentacles out of it now.
I was out of focus washing up glove.
It's really bad.
It's like tinsel.
And again, it was so the, do you remember the, do you remember the
novelisation?
Yes, the Alan Hood artwork with the with the eye.
Yeah, the big eye octopus tentacle thing.
It really never looked like that at all.
It was terrible.
No, never.
Unfortunately, there isn't a Japanese version of that, but the
Japanese novelisation, a sphere head from space, pretty much takes
that nesting and that's the nesting monster in auton invasion.
I mean, even the so iconic.
Even the target novelisation had that great, had a great picture
of a nesting in it.
Yeah.
Um, I want to talk about some of the minor characters in this.
Michael Wisher, I think is fantastic as Mr. Farrell Jr.
He was in it last year. as the newscaster guy in Ambassadors
okay?
Yeah, we forgot to mention it.
Yeah, yeah, completely different.
I just think he does a great job of, you know, being under the
influence and then wavering like he's not there with the master
and and then you've got, you know, the scientists who get shrunk
to the size of a doll, but aren't a doll?
And Mrs. Farrell, who some people have a go in, but I actually
quite like her.
She's very stoic. carries on Robert Holmes does have a gift for
very strong characterisation of minor characters.
In this story in particular, I quite like to compare young Mr
Farrell and Rossini, because young Mr. Farrell is constantly
questioning why am I doing this?
Is this really me?
What's going on?
Whereas Brasini is just like, nah, I'm a pug.
Yep, I'll get my money.
Great.
And it's a great contrast there.
But also is it saying that people of the lower classes have no
moral fibre.
Whereas a businessman has moral fibre.
Hmm, right, your answers in on one of those kinds.
Okay, there's one other thing I want to talk about and has to be
talked about.
It's the use of CSO in this story.
Oh, God, yes, it's a CSO.
It is unbelievable.
The number of shots that Barry Let's use is in CSO, he really does
try to cut things in with mid-shots and headshots and not focus on
what's going on in the background.
For the most part, like you've got you've got the stuff in the car
like that's all we might have the CSA stuff as they're driving
along, which, you know, is taken from Hollywood films and that
sort of thing.
You've got the telescope tower, like, and again, most of that
stuff, he tries to frame it with people rather than what's going
on behind.
I watched it in black and white, to see it was any better, because
of course, at this time, I still watching black and white, here in
Australia, it's still going to be a black and white premium as
people watching that.
And you know, for the most part, you can, you can sort of, he gets
away with most of it, most of the time, because it's like it's
like there and then it's gone and before you kind of think, well
there's something strange about that.
It's it's gone past you and you're not going to see it again, as
I've mentioned before in rewatching it because you can't record
it.
But, There are a couple of moments that really, Take the K talking
about...
Yes, Mrs. Kitchen and the Master's Auton Ladd, right?
They're determined.
And there's another moment where Joe is on a in a telephone booth
which is also just, but I think you're wrong.
I think it's deliberate and I think it does, it's part of that
comic book thing that you said before.
So we get these quick shots of things.
Uh, you know, it would have been uh, impractical or too expensive
to build a set for, you know, the scene where the master and Lou
Russell um, steal the auton thing.
But so what it's doing, it is contributing.
It's got really, really quick shots and it makes the world less
real.
It contributes to that comic book thing.
And I think it's a deliberate artistic choice.
And we're going to see poetry, poetry, era, do this again soon in
Claws of Axos, where, you know, just as the master is making the
world more terrifying by people in it with sort of killer flowers
and killer shop window dummies and killer, promotional head guys
and killer dolls, the director is making the world less real, less
like the one we inhabit and more psychedelic.
And we will see that, and it's a deliberate reaction to against
last year's sort of grim succession. of bases scientific
establishments. you know what I mean?
This is a a brightly coloured, fast moving and glam and artificial
world.
I take a point.
I understand all the reasons why he's doing it. 99% of the time, or
95% of the time, I actually think it works, and he's really trying
hard to use the resources that are available.
And if you didn't have this going on now, you wouldn't have what
we have now with all the CGI that we have, you know?
This is him doing his version of CGI and using that technology to
make those choices and to keep the story moving and not overspend
and all that sort of stuff.
And, you know, most of the time it works quite well.
There's just those couple of shots that I just kind of go, oh, you
know, I love Mrs. Farris.
No, I actually like her, Keisha.
You know, and it's such a short shot, but I think that sometimes
people go, oh, the CSO in this is just terrible.
It really is the whole thing, but it doesn't.
It doesn't.
Barrylex does use it more than other directors having watched the
next run of stories.
Yeah, directors use it much more sparingly at certain times.
But he does start to pair it back a bit after this, which is
good.
But just before we move on.
I would like to praise particular CSO shot, and that is the shock
of Gooch in the lunchbox.
Because both in colour and in black and white, that actually looks
like an actor in a set.
Yeah.
There's a little tiny bit of fringing on the colour version, but
it's one of the best CSO shots in the entire Perl era.
They were going to put a doll in there, weren't they?
Yeah.
It's much better than the dollies you get in.
They get rid of them pretty quickly.
But it is interesting how, like, it's only in home stories that
the master shrinks people to that size.
Like the other ones, I don't think it shrinks anybody else in the
rest of the season.
No, he has a laser pistol later.
It's different.
Yeah.
Maybe it is not to have to go through the whole CSO setup and all
that sort of thing.
It's also because it fits in with the Batman sensibility of this
story.
Do you know what I mean?
Yes, well, um, the 1966 Batman film, which featured Cesar Romero
Joker, Lee Mary, whether it's Catwoman, um, both Merrick, Penguin
Frank Gautian's Riddler, that was theatrically shown in the UK and
the villains in that.
Didn't exactly add a shrimp ray, but they had a dehydration ray
which reduced people to powder.
Coloured powder, a little vial of coloured sherbet powder.
Perhaps that's another antecedent of this story.
Having been allocated this story, I was really pleasantly
surprised, and I've certainly revised my opinion of it.
It's a great start to the brand new vision that Terrence Dixon
Barry, let's bring into the show.
Well, coming off that, let's see what you think of, the mind of
evil.
All right, so, the mind of evil.
So you've got Don...
Yep.
Who wrote Inferno?
Inferno, you've got the director.
To Tim Coombe, who directed...
Oh, say lyrics.
So we've got 2 throwbacks to season seven.
And I actually think that of all the stories in this season, for
me anyway, this is the one where at least starts off very much
like a season 7 story.
I think his Shaw could be there.
The doctor's in his own plot, separate to the brigadier, like a co
lead.
And the doctor's gone to investigate some sort of scientific thing
which he just, well, he's very narky quite frankly.
He's obnoxious.
He keeps interrupting as Professor Watt's face.
God, how horrible is that?
He keeps interrupting.
I know what a rude person.
And he derides the idea that there might be humane ways of
treating prisoners and even at some point seems to be supporting
the death penalty.
It is a very odd scene, isn't it?
When the professor says science has abolished the hangman's noose
in a sign of progress, and the doctor says, it depends what you
mean by progress, is it?
Hold on.
What?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. saying we should hang people by the neck until
they are dead.
Yeah, no, awful.
He awful.
He only tops it later in episode 6 when Barnum dies and Joe
expresses grief over Barnum's death and his response is, well, how
do you think I feel?
Yeah, how do you feel?
How do you think I feel?
I'm still stuck here without my ride home?
It's like, yeah, why did people punch it in the throat all the
time?
That's what I wanna know.
I can't answer that.
But they do subject him to the Keller machine a number of times in
this episode where he gets to make those gurning faces.
Now, we have to remember that in the previous story, he also got
strangled so he kept the girding faces.
And the previous story to that, he went from one world to the
other.
I mean, he got mirror-oned.
So he got girding faces.
Then in the ambassador's deck, he got put up in a rocket, so he
got the girding face.
Then in the Salarians, he got the girding face when the Salarian
went, and then in the original story of his, then he also makes
the gooding face when the tentacles go around his neck.
And Greek story so far.
I think we need to set up a tumblr.
That's genius.
And then in the claws of Axos, he's actually in a chair in getting
zapped by the Axons and it's another.
It's another gurning face.
I think after this point, John Hasting has gone to Terrence Sticks
and going, you can't keep doing this too.
After this series, stories.
It's there.
It is. right. never noticed it before.
The other thing about him being subject to the Keller machine is
is he really that afraid of Coquillian?
I seem to recall that in the completely useless encyclopedia by
Chris Lyons, they posit the theory that the only reason he's so
afraid of Coquillian is that he thinks it'll take him 50 minutes
again to see through such a transparent disguise and he's horribly
embarrassed by the whole affair.
But I like, I like the fact that the 1st time he's subjected to it
he sees all the flames from in Furnace, that's reference to that.
But then when you get the cliffhanger with the Dalek voices and
all those images to begin with, I couldn't even make up one of
what one of those images was the new struggle.
The 2nd time it is a bit clearer and you can actually work it
out.
But that 1st time it's only the Dalek voices that sort of, you got
to go, oh, okay, that's a nice little throwback to that sort of
thing.
So again, here we've got these little throwbacks to what's
happening in the recent past, that sort of thing.
I think the earliest one they have in there is a zombie.
So again, it's that reward for longtime fans. that new viewers can
also go, oh, what was that?
Was that a giant ant?
So it's still exciting for a new viewer who has no idea what these
things are.
It's a very good method of visual storytelling.
And just another example of, yeah, Doctor Who is starting to do
info ducts and continuity references, but it's doing them very
well.
It's very nice in these 1st episodes.
Joe's really warm and she goes to see Barnum in the hospital when
she's talking to the Michael Scherard.
Michael Who's great, you know, again, it's one of these stories.
Well, it's a 6 episode of where certain characters come in and out
and that happens a few times in the perch year.
It's very interesting that not in everything.
He's not in every single episode.
Speaking of, we've got another debut of a very important character
this story.
Corporal Bell.
Fantastic.
And they're expanding the unit family lash again.
I knew she really even existed. 30 years.
She just looks fabulous.
And she's so no nonsense.
Like she just sits there and gets on with her job.
And it's this very odd thing of, yeah, it's a small part.
She is not given much to do, but manages to put in a good
performance.
You know, you're never in any doubt that, Okay, yes, you are a
professional.
So she's invited back.
She does 2 stories, doesn't she?
She does this an axis.
And then Kate Foots are in a novelisation that gives her brain
cancer, I think.
Oh, great.
And David and McKinty put her in a novel called Face of the Anime
a very good novel. where it's explained what happens to her
between season 8 and 9.
Pretty much, well, she doesn't get brain cancer at that point
maybe she does later on, but she is given a quiet discharge
because she blackmailed into healthy the enemy.
Okay, I have heard of that story.
We will put a link to it in this notes.
Very, very good.
But of course, she's in the brigadiers.
Subplot, which at this point isn't linked to the doctors.
You know, we've got this whole peace conference with the Chinese
and I think it's actually great that they're actually doing
something like this, you know, Nixon hasn't gone to China yet.
Our prime minister, you know, it's still a few years away before
he is, is, um, it goes to China.
So it's so relevant to what's going on in the world.
And I like that link.
And then we've got actual Chinese people playing the Chinese, which
is great.
I think it may be the 1st time in Doctor Who, we've had people
listen Zenya Merton from Burma.
Yes, I think that's right.
Actually, you're quite right.
In Marco Polo. they did actually have a lot of Asian actors
filling out the background because Daniel Merton is, of course
Asian as well, but I think it's the 1st time since then because in
the Crusades, we had Bernard K and Roger Avon, in 2 of the Sidemen
we had Shirley Cookland.
And well, I suppose George Pastel.
But yeah, it's it's a big step forward from a program who that has
often just applied heavy makeup to actors' faces to make them look
forward.
You do know that it's Don Horton's wife, though, don't you?
You do know this, actually.
I had actually...
Wasn't she great?
Isn't Kicks and Lim as Corporal... sorry, Captain Chin Li.
Yeah, she is really excellent.
I think she is very good in the 1st 2 episodes.
I'm going to qualify this, right?
And it's, you know, as Yeats mentions a pity, she's quite a dog.
Well, I love that look from Nicholas Courtney, because, of course
Richard Franklin has now written novels about Yeats and what
happened to Yeats afterwards, and, yeah, pretty much Yeats say
it's so strange, if those novels.
And there's a look from Nicholas Courtney when Yates says that, and
it's not a look of, oh, you dirty young man.
It's a look off, seriously, Mike, everyone knows.
It's very true.
Look, it's great that I think she does a great job of being
possessed for the 1st 2 episodes.
Then we get the unfortunate incident with the American
Ambassador.
Where she has to turn into Puff the Magic Dragon.
Oh, the dragon's really bad, isn't it?
Yes, but I'll give the director this in Clickhang out of episode
two. really cutting around it.
So you don't see it.
Unfortunately, then for some bizarre reason at the beginning of
episode three.
You then see the whole thing in all of its disgrace, right?
It's really, really bad.
It's a vinyl.
Oh, it's just awful.
And often in a poetry 6 part, I've discovered that there's almost
often one episode, for some reason, that is worse than the others
through design or through whatever.
And it happens to be episode 3 because you get that stupid dragon
shot, which I just went, you for real?
Then it turns back into Captain Chinle, who then does the
wonderful, I'm going to faint, but I don't want to hurt myself
kind of.
Then the doctor has...
No, it's true.
And then the doctor has to talk to her and she's coming around and
it's just the worst acting.
After that, she's then shipped off to the country and we never see
her again.
She's staying with Dodo.
I must think.
But that's her weak moment.
The 1st episode, I think she's very good in.
She does appear to be the only Chinese person, the only Chinese
woman in London, of course.
Because when, yeah, yeah, when the Brigadier Expresses surprise
that Benton somehow managed to lose her in broad daylight.
No, no, but there's also the thing that the link between the 2
parts of the story, published by the fact that there's a Chinese
girl in both parts of the story.
A Chinese girl, says the doctor.
There's only one of those.
Well, you know, it's Doctor Who, and sometimes they just make
these sort of links that you kind of have to...
You just do you just run with it?
Yeah, well, that's the thing.
Coming back to that whole homesy an idea.
Sherlock Holmes would often make giant leaks like that.
It would be presented because that's the only possible option.
For instance, the 1st episode of the Stephen Moffat, Mark Gaitis
Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock deduces that John's sister has a
drinking problem because there are scuff marks around where the
charger goes into her phone.
And I just watched that and looked at my phone and it's like
there's got work going into mind.
I am not an alcoholic.
I just clumsy and lazy.
Look, you really, you know, it's probably about time that Todd and
I talk to you about this.
Well, this is the 1st thing that you need to do is admit that you
have a problem.
But this is just Pepsi.
This is just 100 mils of Pepsi with 500 mils of vodka.
I don't see what the problem is.
It's really interesting in episode two.
Benton's not in episode.
And we only see him going undercover to see Chinlei in episode 2
and he, of course, has a bit of a headache and the brigadier is
not so... sympathetic.
You're too delicate for intelligence to my invention.
Perhaps you should go after that.
One of the things I have discovered is how Barky did, in fact, the
brigadier is and how rigidity is in his beliefs of how to deal
with um, things from out of space or not of this world.
And he's actually, Nick Courtney makes him so warm and you know
there's nice moments where he, you know, he raises the eyebrow or
whatever, but there's, there's other points where I kind of think
you know, the brick area is quite, you know, this is the way it's
going to be, and this is how I'm going to deal with it.
He does think that that too delicate for intelligence work line is
funny.
Like you can tell that, you know, even the brigadier is sort of, it
is the raised eyebrow or the curled lip or something.
However authoritarian he's been, his lovely warmth is exactly the
right word, I think.
But I think I see where you're going with this toad, and that is
the brigadier doesn't seem to be change to becoming more accepting
by all these alien invasions.
If anything, it makes him batten down his belief that there's a
rational explanation for everything.
He sort of ups the scully factor, if you like.
Yeah, and it continues.
Yeah, it continues throughout all of this.
I was actually quite surprised at how literally he grows in as a
character in that belief, like through what I've been watching.
And it was surprising, but you know.
It's a part in the narrative that he needs to play.
Yeah, yeah, no, I agree.
I mean, certainly with Yates coming in, he has to play that even
more.
And so he's much more deskbound.
So it's really great when you actually see him getting out and
doing things now, but he's no longer the co-lead per se and that's
changing the season.
Yeah.
Well, I think that's a result of you now have 6 main cast, if you
like.
And yeah, we would often see this in Star Trek.
There are very few episodes of Star Trek or Star Trek the Next
Generation that feature all of the lead actors equally.
You know, at the moment, Star Trek, the next generation discussed
to a man on Blu-ray, we're making our way through that and, you
know, you'll have a data episode and then you'll have a Deanna
Troy episode and then you'll have a Riker episode.
Doctor Who can't really have that.
Each episode has to focus to some extent on the doctor.
Therefore, the secondary focus becomes the companion.
Now, in season 7, that was pretty much split equally between the
brig and Liz.
But I think with the fact that they wanted to emphasise a costar
who would need things explained to them as an audience surrogate.
That why Joe gets sort of pushed up.
And then you've got the master as well.
And he's a major guest star and he's Roger Delgado, who was a big
name at the time.
You know, he had guessed it in loads of different things.
He had been in films.
He was in high demand.
So he needs to have a lot to do.
In a way, Nick goes from being equal second lead last season to
4th league this season.
And I think it's a great testament to Nick, that if he was annoyed
by that, or if he felt slighted by that, you cannot see any of it
in his performance, he is still having the time of his life.
Yeah, no, no, it's so true.
And with all these different characters, you know, Mike, for
example, in this, like in episode two, he sent to get the doctor
from the prison.
And the doctor doesn't want to go, and of course, he uses his
Venusian karate.
Now, is that the 1st appearance of it?
Am I?
No, it did appear in Inferno and it's really weird because in
Inferno, it was presented as a defensive martial art, you know, the
doctor never tries to attack anyone.
People attack him and the doctor uses their force against them.
I think this is the 1st time that the doctor actually sets about
someone with it and it's quite uncomfortable.
But on the other hand, I think that Richard Franklin does a lot
better in this story than he does in, um, than he does in terror
of the autons.
I agree with you.
I mean, you can see that he's much more comfortable with the
character and what he is doing on set.
And he really holds his own in those couple of scenes he has with
Roger Delgado.
He's challenging Roger Dog Adam.
Why are you doing this?
How can you be so cruel?
And it's actually quite, his moral indignation is quite powerful
and it tells us something about the character, which we'll come
back to in later years.
And it's very interesting that he's the 1st unit character to
actually get that confrontation with the master, a full bedroom
and before the brigadier.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, good.
I haven't thought of that.
Now, also, we don't have to get someone back by the brigadier, but
you know, the doctor has an agenda.
He wants certain equipment, everything, and the brigadiers going
oh, yes, yes, I'll do all of that and everything like that.
It's really nice to see that 2 can play at that game.
And then, of course, then they go to see the Chinese delegate and
the doctor then decides to speak in Chinese.
Is this the 1st time that we've had subtitles in the show?
Yes, yes, I believe so.
And I think he specifically says with Fu Peng is speaking in
Hokkien.
Yes, okay.
Whereas with Chin Li speaking Cantonese.
Yes.
What's interesting, of course, is according to the production
notes, yeah, it's actually Pixen Lim, who coached John Pertwee, in
the Chinese phraseology.
Yeah, because it said in the script, he speaks Chinese.
Of course, Don Horton was able to talk to Pixen Lim and say, oh
well, you know, I need a few phrases.
Can you help me out?
And apparently John was quite nervous about getting it right.
You know, he didn't want to get it wrong because, yeah, he's such
a professional, and we've heard so many stories that he had to
follow the script rigidly, and he needed everything to make sense
so he knew what he was saying.
So, yeah, even though his character may be a tad arrogant, at
least he was trying to get it right in his own mind.
Can I talk about the moral philosophy of this story?
The thing that I hate the most about it.
Okay, go to it.
So in episode one, we get told by Professor Catering, the evil
antisocial behaviour is governed by certain negative or evil
impulses.
And so they're pulling these negative or evil impulses out of
people and storing them in a giant box.
And the reason that people are evil is these evil impulses and has
nothing to do with kind of economic or social pressures. you
know.
And so the whole thing is really, really conservative.
And it has an impact on the way the story is told because all the
people in the prisoner, evil by definition.
And so in episode, the end of episode five, I think it's a really
shockingly horrible scene.
You have the brigadier and the unit people storming the prison and
just shooting a whole bunch of people and you see it sort of quite
close up.
You know, there's one, there's one thing where Nick comes in and
just goes, bang, bang, bang in 3 corners of the room and just
shoots 3 people in the space of like, and later on they kind of
wallpaper over it by having Dr. Summers say there's lots of
wounded and stuff.
But because these people have so many evil impulses, they're evil
and they can be killed.
And that seems to be okay with all of us.
Well, it seems like, look, I do agree that there's a huge body
count in this episode and it's not just the prison guards and the
prisoners, it's also unit.
I'm actually... no, no, no.
I swear, watching these stories that, you know, you want to be in
unit, put up your hand, you know, if you've got a death wish
you've got a 50% chance of survival, you know, the brigadier has
obviously got funerals are us on speed dial because, you know, unit
soldiers are going down.
You know, I'm absolutely astounded at the number of unit soldiers
or red shirts that, you know, go down for the count in these
stories.
It just happens so regularly.
And you would never do it now.
I mean, the new Doctor Who doesn't have scenes where human beings
shoot one another with guns.
No, that's true.
It always is sort of fantasy violence.
But, you know, I say this.
Some of those shots. like the actual shootings are really.
Really, close, like, it's literally, like, you know, less than a
metre away.
Some of them are quite...
It's because they're villains and it's kind of okay because
they're evil.
And so the moral, that the moral philosophy of the story kind of
informs that.
And the other thing that it does is that it divorces good and evil
from ideas of like human behaviour.
So the doctor can be obnoxious, he can, you know, like threaten
Mike Yates.
He can be just sort of deeply selfish and unpleasant, but the
camera machine still recognises him as good.
You know, there is something to be said for keeping a pure heart
Joe. The killer machine recognises Barnum as good.
The killer machine still attacks the doctor.
In episode 5, it goes after Maler instead of Joe on the doctor.
Yeah, because perhaps because there are more evil impulses.
But I start to wonder now, if when the doctor makes his comments
at the beginning of the story, it depends what you mean by
progress, if he's not referring to exactly what you're talking
about, that evil is just not a matter of the evil impulse in your
brain.
Because I think the doctor realises everyone has those evil
impulses.
Even Professor Ketchering, who's running the machine, obviously
has the evil impulses because the machine is able to affect it.
So what if the doctor is not saying, I support hanging people, but
he's actually saying psychology is more complex than this.
Yeah, except that it does just seem to be a sort of curmudgeonly
reactionary kind of response to dealing with prisoners in anything
other than a sort of punitive way, I think.
I don't, I mean, you know, like, I think you could imagine a
reading where the doctor didn't side with the moral philosophy
that was being presented, but in a story context, there really are
evil impulses that can be extracted from your brain, turning into
a loveable saint.
Do you know what I mean?
That that actually happens in the story.
So I don't think I don't think he's critiquing that.
Coming back to um, the Star Trek idea on that, uh, a Star Trek
episode that had gone out at this point is the enemy within. which
very early Star Trek episode in which Captain Kirk is divided by
the transporter into his good self and his evil self, and they
need each other to survive.
They hug.
Everything at the end is sold by a hug on the transporter pad.
But I hope I never get to watch that.
Shatner camps it up fabulously as evil shadow.
Oh, yeah, God.
Evil, evil, evil Shatner is up there with Malen Tekker in time
lash for terms of evil.
He's a good chat that he's kind of incompetent without evil
Shatner or something.
Yeah, yeah.
So, well, I mean...
It's hunting is quite interesting because the master who I've
spoken very much about thus far. actually has to turn to the
doctor to solve his problem with the actual Keller machine
creature.
Um, and sort of like, well, maybe can't you actually do it
yourself?
Like, you know, just like the 2nd time.
This is the 2nd time you brought an alien here and you stuffed it
up again.
It's like a child saying to their parent, look, I know I said I'd
look after this dog, but it's peeing everywhere.
Can you help?
And it's like, no, use it.
Can I talk about his absolute hero moment in the story, which is
in episode three.
He is in the car and he's being driven around by his chauffeur and
he appears to stretch over and turn the incidental music off.
Like, it's on.
You think it's the incidental music, but it turns out that it's
it's, it's digetic.
And he actually is able to turn it off.
And it does that thing where the master is in control of the
program.
It just makes him look, you know, more powerful than the
director.
What I absolutely love.
What I absolutely love about that as well is it's just after he's
installed the bug on the phone line outside unit where he can't
actually be seen.
You know, he's got that hat on.
He's got that scarf on, but he still feels the need to put on one
of his little rubber disguises.
No, he just does that to relax.
Yeah, like this twitch.
It's a face pack.
But of course, that's part of the audience identifying that
character with the audience and what he...
And that's part of his whole modus operanda, you know.
And as if he wasn't already evil enough, it appears he's a
Tottenham Hotspur fan, dodging by the scarf.
There you are.
And he also gets to smoke that big cigar in the back of the...
He's just so good.
And there's just a wonderful scene being in episode four.
There's some really nice poetry Delgado scenes when they're in the
prison in the cell and with Joe Grant.
Lovely to see you, Miss Grant.
I just love that.
In fact, I think that Pertuy is vastly more obnoxious than the
master who's never less than unfailingly polite.
There is, that also reminds me, and Sandifer brings up this scene
and I also think it's a real highlight, and it is, it's episode
five.
The master comes into the cell and Joe and the doctor are playing
drafts, checkers, and like they kind of hold up their finger and
make the master wait.
But the genus of the moment is, of course, that Joe beats the
doctor at Czechos and just takes all of his pieces, you know, one
after the other and he has some obnoxious dismissive thing to say
but it is terribly sweet.
And it goes to show how great Joe is.
And Joe, of course, foils the prison riot single-handed in episode
three.
That's right.
You know, I couldn't necessarily see Liz Shaw single-handedly
doing this.
The fact that she's a trained agent.
She, you know, she, She gets the gun and she's got the gun.
Like she actually whacks somebody out and she and she actually
holds that pistol and it's actually great to see.
I mean, she sort of gets sidelined a bit in the 1st two episodes
but then the whole next two episodes with the whole prison ride
and getting captured and released and that.
She's actually taking an active part.
She's the only female there.
It's actually quite...
Tiresome?
Oh, I actually thought I was going to say it's a bit tense because
she is the only female and this is a male prison.
Yeah, I actually wondered because that is slightly yucky, that
thought, isn't it?
And it does, you do have it as you're watching it.
They don't seem to want to put it there.
Although Mela does blow her a kiss. as he leaves the cell at some
point in a really aggressive and unpleasant way.
But, you know, since it's still a kid's show, even though this is
a bit more adult, a bit more like season seven.
It's still a kid show, so it's not going to really go there
explicitly, I think.
I, I do, when I said Tyson, I do, I do think that, oh, I guess
you've got, I guess you've got Chin Li, but this is a sausage fest
this story, isn't it?
There aren't very many women at all.
No, I mean, that's why you've got...
Sorry, that's why you've got Corporal Belling there to try and
give that balance, but you're quite right, you know, it's very
male dominated.
It wouldn't, it wouldn't pass the back, backadale test, for
instance.
No, because 2 women never talk.
No, exactly.
Joe and Joe and Captain Chinley never actually meet.
Corporal Bell and Chinley are in the same room, but don't talk.
But I really like towards the end of the story in part 5 is the
fact that the brigadier actually has to play cockney because he's
there.
Yes, the provisions driver.
It's really great to see Nick Courtney doing something different
and seeing that the brigadier can get there, can get involved, and
is not just desk bound.
And obviously in part 6 as we get to the conclusion of the story
he has to leave acting Governor Benton in charge.
And I actually really like it.
See how band he turned his hand?
Yeah, because he gets attacked.
Well, that's because we have the whole missile business where the
missile was attacked where we've got that wonderful stunt where
the 2 lead drivers on the motorbikes decide to do some sort of
somersault thing before them actually even attacked.
And then everybody seems to get shot, but Bitten survives, and of
course, Mike Yates is in charge of it thinking, oh, yes. here we
go again, Yates.
But then he gets on the motorcycle and, you know, drives off to, um
the hideout of the master and the prison guards and, which gives
him that wonderful confrontation with the master we were talking
about earlier.
I think it's time for a couple of observations from Rod, this
story.
Oh really?
Roy actually made a really interesting observation on the story
which I had never thought of.
And it relates to the Keller machine because of course, when we
get to see the inside of the Keller machine.
It's a green one-eyed blob that feeds on hate.
Rod fully expected in episode 6, that it was going to be revealed
to be a darlic mutant.
I thought that'd be a wonderful idea.
They, you know, they ended up trying to do that in the 80s with
the unmade story, the elite, which has now been recorded by a big
finish.
But yeah, it's like, why did I never think of that?
So that was a good one.
Rod's other observation was, I'm getting a bit sick of the
master.
I'm hoping it doesn't turn up in every story this season.
Yeah, that'd be terrible. stupid idea.
Well, you know, we've had the 1st story had to be introduced
here.
He's come back for the sequel, right?
And then saving me a year later. carry on.
Yes, the timing of that, you know, he would have had to set up a
lot of this stuff before he actually arrived in the previous story
you know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So he arrives with that alien thing, then has a bit of a go with
some autons.
Yeah, kind of comes back to it, plan B. So he had 7 fail plans.
He would have been a bit disappointed had any one of them
succeeded because he wouldn't have had he wouldn't have got to
play with the Keller machine.
Yes, and he also had to, of course, lose his dematerialisation
circuit to the doctor as part of that entire planet, but he gets
it back at the end of this story.
Presumably think he's not going to be in the next one.
Yes.
Well, we, well, we don't know, but the fact is, again, it's part
of this legacy of Doctor Who that's being presented where this
deometrization thing is being ceded into various episodes, the
doctors repairing it, the master needs it.
You know, the audience is suddenly becoming aware of this sort of
history of the show, you know, like never before.
And we're going to see in the cause of access that we're going to
get one step further to, you know, the TARDIS coming back and all
these elements, you know, returning to the show after being absent
for quite some time.
I think I preferred the fluid leak to the team serial.
You could zap things with the fluid link.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
So, we move into what's this one called?
Is it the cause of accessors?
Is it the vampire from space?
Is it Bernard Holly can't see in this cost?
You'd get me out of here.
I don't know.
Um, and just as this is happening, deal with snow, we're looking
outside, and there are freak weather conditions across the whole
area.
Who are, who are, who are?
I believe this is yours.
So you kind of get this impression, in fact, that the alien
invasion is sort of a staple of Doctor Who is something that's
been going for a long time.
That's exactly what I was going to say about the story.
Yeah, this is an alien invasion, but they are actually
surprisingly rare, aren't they?
So we actually really normally only get one alien invasion a
year.
That's actually probably less than sort of in RTD's era.
And this one begins exactly the same way as Spearhead from Space
did a year earlier.
So it's 2 unit people tracking, you know, some kind of meteorite
thing.
And I guess this is what we were led to expect from the invasion, I
guess, and the web of fear.
We just thought unit would be dealing with alien menaces, but they
don't really actually do that.
So this has to be the weirdest Doctor Who story.
We're just looking Doctor Who story so far.
Would you say so?
Because I was actually going to say about the story, that we were
talking about this season is the season that sets up the archetype
for Doctor Who.
I think it's sort of distilled in this story, this is the
archetype for Doctor Who.
We have aliens but there is something we don't know about them.
Sometimes the aliens we have in Doctor Who just turn up and say, we
are going to take over your planet, but there's always some kind
of twist or reveal with them, just like there are with the axons
here.
I think this really sets the template for much of what we're going
to get over the next 20 seasons, this story.
But visually, do you know what I mean?
It's something that we've absolutely never seen.
It's so crazy looking.
Oh, the whole inside of the Axos.
Yeah, but just sort of everything, you know, like um, you've got
the eye of Axos, which is, you know, the rudest looking alien
we've had so far.
Yes.
Yeah, it's up there with the vervoids and Alva Centauri, I think
is...
Really?
I just look at it as a big iron stalk, and I've never thought of
it as anything else.
Honestly, maybe it's just me.
It might just be me.
It's a rato, I have problems.
But, you know, like the doorways are kind of a bit organic and a
bit icky and sort of proto-geeger sort of thing.
Everything sort of is breathing.
But there's also these sort of weird video effects as well.
So remember the Axon man with his weird revolving head in episode
3 where his head is just kind of revolving for no reason and the
monsters all appear using CSO rather than just sort of rollback
and mix, you know, and then, of course, there's the, you know
notorious attack duvet at the end of episode three.
I'm sorry, I'm just, I'm just, yes, I can just visualise that
attack, do that.
Again, Star Trek had been on recently, The Horter from the Devil
in the dark.
It is crumblier though.
I never water that.
Oh yeah.
But I like the revolving head of the act.
Oh yeah, yeah.
I like that overlay that they put in that it's psychedelic effect
in the Axos station.
I think that's great.
It's really weird.
And it is doing and it's television sort of effects as well.
Do you know what I mean?
It's using videotape and CSO and all of those sorts of things that
TV uses and film doesn't really.
And so it creates this, you know, very, very strange look.
And the show won't go, I think, quite as far as this again, but it
is really kind of remarkable looking.
It's Michael Ferguson, again, isn't it?
It is, and I think it actually does a great job.
There's some wonderful shots in the 1st episode where you've got
the entire cast.
And they're all framed.
Like, they're all in the shot in different positions, and it
happens not once it happens, you know, a number of times in the
big sets that he's got.
And he manages to get them all in.
It's actually really interesting to see what he's doing.
He also does his signature shot, which is the looming monster on
film with the sun behind them, which is sort of previously with
the ambassadors of death and with the on in the seeds of death.
And so here he does it with an axe on as well.
So visually, it's really interesting.
Like you said, it's an alien invasion that kind of sets the
template for alien invasions to come.
But gosh, the characters are all, without exception, utterly
terrible.
Oh, no.
I really like it.
Oh, come on.
They've got Mr. Chin, or as I like to know.
Do you mean Colonel Sanders?
You've got Mr. Chin, who I think is hilarious.
Even he's chicken.
And I like his superior, who's got his resignation ready to go
comedy goal.
He speaks to the, he speaks to the, so Chin is ringing up his
superior and says that, shall I scramble, sir?
And the guy says, no, gin.
I am sure your report will be quite garbled enough.
So all, like, I'm not saying it's not funny and it's not
entertaining, but all of the characters just, just sort of
massively overdrawn and kind of overacted and stuff.
She was terrible.
Yeah, Bill Final.
What's he even doing there?
It is very strange.
What section of liaising?
The CIA are amazing with unit about the movie.
Oh, no, no, but I mean, what's he doing from a story standpoint?
Is he's trying to be the male lead or something?
Well, you know, I think, you know, he's this American cowboy who's
come in to investigate what's happened with the master and the
American ambassador in the previous story, I would presume.
And he's really blokey bloke.
You know, he flirts with Joe right at the beginning there.
She hasn't had she hasn't had this before.
You know, she's more convincing than Richard Franklin.
Correct.
She only had all these British Toshes.
He has a remarkably charmed life.
I mean, the accents could have killed him, not once, but twice in
this story and he manages to survive.
I actually quite liked the fact that he's that gun.
So these obviously had a great respect for sideburns.
Well, that could be it.
I mean, I just, I think that I think he's probably there.
You know how in the empty child, the doctor dancers, the doctor
gets contrasted with a more traditional American sort of style
hero.
Do you know what I mean?
Gun, so he's a bit sexier and all of that sort of thing.
And they're clearly doing this with Bill Finer, but the actor
himself is so kind of hideous that that really kind of hugely
undermines his kind of leading man credibility, I think.
I think he looks like a lot of Americans and people of the early
1970s with the sideburns and the chest here and that sort of
thing.
If you look at any magazines from that time, that's the man's
man.
And certainly...
I don't really look at any magazines from that time.
Well, neither do I, but I'm just saying that, you know, I think I
think also he's heavily based on some of the ITC programs at the
time, things like the persuaders, the champions, he's that kind of
figure.
And yet he is spoofing them a bit.
It's doctor who's trying to go, oh, look, we're better than this
because he goes along, he doesn't listen to the doctor. he gets
captures the 1st chance he gets.
But I also think he is quite a comedic character deliberately in
his own right as well.
There's that great bit where the doctor almost kills him instead
of the axe on duplicate.
And the doctor realises his mistake because Filer calls him Doc.
And afterwards, Doc says, are you all right?
And he says, yes, are you sure?
And he actually thinks about it.
Yeah, neat, yeah, good.
And there's also that wonderful line, he has when he wakes up in
hospital saying, could one of you Florence Nightingales, please
get me my trousers.
Which is, you know, it's pure carry on and I think Barry Letts has
learned his lesson a little bit about CSO because I think if you'd
made the story at the beginning of the year, We would have had a
CSO hospital ward behind him, whereas we've just got a flat with a
bet this time.
He's realised, oh yeah, I've got studio flat so I can use.
Roger Delgado.
I think it's, again, a great performance.
He gets to do something different with the master.
He forced to work with unit.
He's great in it too.
I mean, he takes the doctor roles.
So the doctor's off and he's like, he's charming and and clever.
Those scenes with him and Sir George, the line where he goes, you
know, like I think he's going to blow up the, the, you know, the
whole power public.
And he goes, oh, I suppose you could take the normal precautions
against nuclear blast, like a sticky tape on the windows and that
sort of thing.
Like, he's so, he's wonderful.
And poetry has been at his most obnoxious all story.
So he's been yelling at Chin and yelling at the brigadier and like
fighting with Windsor and being like just completely awful to him
as well.
Again, having the master in this story, it's great because it's
focussed on the fact that the doctor doesn't have his TARDIS.
The master doesn't have his tartars.
Then who is the character that actually gets to go inside the
doctor's tires for the 1st time in the season and a half .
Oh the master.
The master.
He's really unimpressed.
Very unimpressed.
But it's great that's reintroduced.
You actually then get to see both Tarnus's working partially.
So do we see the master in the TARDIS before we see the doctor in
the tunnel?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's a real mess.
He's been redecorating and the master is fabulously dismissive
about it.
Oh, really?
Which is amazing because one of the show's big conceits is we have
this miraculous machine that's bigger on the inside than outside.
It's wonderful.
It's this, is that.
And then the villain, who is a villain that we love as the
audience, we're still going, oh, you're terrible, but ooh, we like
you, who comes in and says, this is rubbish.
That's just cardboard.
Yeah, he's saying what the sort of 12 and 13 year olds who are
possibly getting a little bit old for the show are looking at them
going and saying as well, it doesn't stop them watching it because
really they still like it, but they're trying to be cool and
saying look, it's cardboard.
Do people get too old for this show?
When is that gonna happen?
The set is terrible. you know what I mean?
Like, it's a tiny corner of the set.
You know, it's not the, you know, the massive grand heart and all
console room.
It is, you know, just a little corner they've erected in a corner
of a studio.
And did you notice when they opened the doors?
Then there's roundels outside the doors as well that never makes
any sense, does it?
No, not at all.
And I'm completely forgotten about the ending where the doctor
appears to be agreeing to the master's plan and then, of course
double crosses in them.
I actually quite like that.
It does give the doctor to play to his strength, which is, is to
be rude to everybody, you know, before, before he departs, just to
make his betrayal seem more convincing.
Can I talk to you about a great personal disappointment with this
story?
Go for it.
Windsor, who has one of the worst lines of dialogue where he calls
the doctor a stupid quack. and who is killed.
Is he killed by the attack Duvet?
No, no, he is still by an axe on.
Oh, no, the accent explodes.
The axonite explode.
Pretty much because the doctors put the X in the particle
accelerator and set it off.
When Windsor goes over the particle accelerator, he's like broken
down like pigbin Joshua's.
So...
So his his is a really terrible performance and more overacting
and stuff.
And do you know who it is?
Yeah, I do.
Yeah.
It's Carstairs.
It's from the War Games, who was lovely.
Cr stairs, yes.
And he's awful in this.
And I guess, I guess the thing that I don't like about it, like I
liked, you know, we talked about the comic street thing in terms
of the autons and how fun and successful this was.
I think all of the characters are so so grotesque and so
overplayed that it kind of undermines it a little bit.
And I think the other thing too.
And this is something that Sandra identifies as a big problem with
Bob Baker and Dave Martin.
This is their 1st grid.
Yeah, yeah.
And they'll go on to be old hands of the series and they'll be
writing for it long after they've stopped being any good.
And the problem is that they just have too many ideas and they
don't follow any of them up.
So it looks like it's going to be, you know, like a very
straightforward Trojan horse story, you know, that the humans are
tricked into sort of accepting this gift from the axons.
But here we have sort of axos and then we have, there's a
cyclotron and then there's a, you know, the power complex and then
there's filer and then there's a double of filer and then there's
some sort of bizarre thriller thing, political thriller thing
about England keeping axe and eye to itself and not telling anyone
else and, you know, then the doctor abandoning everyone and
teaming up with the master.
There's just sort of nothing gets developed and it all just, there
just seems to be sort of too much in it, I think.
It's undisciplined.
Absolutely.
It reminds me.
Or perhaps it informed a scene from the comedy black books, in
which Bernard and Manning are trying to write a children's book
and you cut away from them as they start planning, and then you
cut back and mainly say, okay, okay, okay, okay.
But perhaps instead of the butcher and his composer daughter and
the boyfriend that the butcher doesn't really approve of.
Perhaps instead of them, the character can be an elephant.
And perhaps instead of the backdrop of the salon is purges and
them attempting to escape from St.
Petersburg.
Perhaps he's lost his blue.
Yes, that's really what needed to happen.
We needed Manny in there.
Maybe put an elephant in it, just kind of simplify a little bit.
So it's a frog.
So it just means you need to be paired back a bit.
Well, the thing is, it already was because the original plotline
is the ship, the ship, which is shaped like a giant skull, crashes
in Hyde Park, so they wanted the story to be in Hyde Park, and all
this stuff was in it, and pretty much Barry Lance wrote back to
them saying, boys, it's a wonderful thrilling story.
If we had the budget for a feature film.
And so there was a giant carrot in it. okay.
So it was like, it was literally that situation.
So perhaps instead of Hyde Park, we can have an abandoned field in
Skegness.
You see, and that's the other thing too, and it's something that
they do again in hand of fear, which is why I'm going to disagree
with you when that comes up, depending how much I hate it, is that
it's not set really in the real world at all.
This is what, you know, pig binge Josh is the real world.
And then everything else is this stupid power complex and, and, you
know, like the brigade is office and stuff.
And we don't, like, are the people on earth, like are the people
in supermarkets and buskies and stuff, even aware that Axos has
landed. you know, no one really cares.
Yeah, I'm like when the autons break through the window on the
high street, you know, people are aware of that, the disease hits
Marlerbone station.
Yeah, yeah, that everyone's watching Mars Probe 7 trying to link
up on television. people are aware of all that.
But we are moving away from that level of grittiness.
And perhaps we are losing something there.
Yeah, no, I think I think it is it is a bit of a giant mess
unfortunately.
I quite enjoyed the mess.
Like it moved along and there were a number of, you know, sequences
that I really enjoyed from Roger Delgado jumping on top of a
moving truck.
I'm sure that was here.
I was going, gee, that's a bit, you know?
And then, you know, then we get Benjamin Yates in the truck in
episode four, I think, aren't they being attacked by all the axons
and then and the blue sheet and Mike decides to blow up the van
with his grenade and they have to jump for it.
So there's a bit of action stuff happening and I have a graphic.
Almost certainly.
Yeah.
The time loop thing.
Does that make any sense to you?
I think it does, but it does.
It is Doctor Who.
I mean, do you know what I mean?
It doesn't make sense in the way they explain it.
It only makes sense once, you know, you're a bit more familiar
with science fiction. and have seen time loops and other things.
All we really needed to see, well, something on the axon ship
where the same few seconds played out over and over again, like
we'll see later in Meglos, like we see in quite a few episodes of
Star Trek.
That's the sort of standard acceptance of what a time loop is in
sci-fi.
And if we just had that, you know, I think that would have made
the idea a lot clearer.
Well, I mean, it just needs to be a trap that the doctor can get
Axos into using the TARDIS.
And so you call it a time loop, who cares?
Do you know what I mean?
Um, it could have been a time shoe box or, you know.
No, forget.
I said that.
Do you know what I mean?
But it could have been anything.
Okay.
So, I don't, I don't, you know, like, I'm not surprised that they
don't do a sort of loopy time thing.
I like the design of the axons, both in their corporal form and
when they depersonalise.
They do have zippers.
Oh, that's the chance.
Let's have a look at the action figure.
I got in here.
Oh, there's a sort of seam there, isn't there?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Come to this, dear listener.
We're looking at action figures on an audio podcast.
So who plays Axeon Man?
Who is that?
That is Bernard Holly?
And he's been in it before. hasn't he?
Yes, he was Peter Hayden in Tom of the Cyberman.
Was he doing the accent?
No, no, he wasn't one of the Americans.
He's the one who gets killed at the end of episode one.
Oh, is he the one who opens the door?
No, not one.
Oh, at the end of episode.
Yeah, yeah, he gets shot.
So he's the one who sort of paired up with Jamie and there's a bit
of a broke back mountain thing going on.
Do you think it's kind of racist that when the axe on man says to
them about the frog, I trust this is one of your food animals and
they both say no.
They always say, you just have to hop across the English channel
for it to be one of our food animals.
See, I think it's actually playing into the theme of Britain
keeping it for themselves.
Britain.
Yeah, Britain's imperialism because Bob Baker and Dave Martin
whilst their ideas aren't very well organised, they're very good
at writing on theme.
And I think that's why their stories are often so chaotic because
all their ideas can relate that to a theme and, you know, the
theme here is imperialism.
The axons themselves are quite imperialistic because all they care
about is what they can use Earth for.
They don't care about pain and suffering they cause.
Similarly, all chin cares about is getting the concession for
England so England can keep all the money or Great Britain can
keep all the money.
And hence the doctor's obnoxious English, England for the English
beach, whereas yelling at cheating.
Yeah, exactly.
That's really good, isn't it?
So accentite's really like sort of glass beads that you give the
natives sort of thing before coming in and taking over their
entire planet.
Yeah absolutely. yeah.
Lovely.
You're quite lost.
I think it is the weakest.
Yeah, I think that's probably it.
Pertui never really gets too terrible.
But it's never that great either.
So the worst, you know, I think that probably Axos is the worst
story in the season, but it's not very bad.
No, no, it's still...
Yeah, still quite enjoyable.
I think I'm going to have to disagree on that one, but we'll find
out that more about that next episode.
So, clearly, listener.
We'll be back in a fortnight, discussing the last 2 stories of
this season, Colony in Space, and the Damons, as well as giving
our Jenny Laird awards, and our picks of the month, but until then
thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
Bye.
Hello, hello, flight to entirety.
Hello, Todd, BLB.
Nathan Botany, and Brandon Jones.
All are increasingly Baroccan stupid.
Sunday, 8th of February.
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And like fighting with Windsor and being like just completely
awful to him as well.
Including that really awful bit.
And you know, I've been saying, oh, no, it's all character in
that.
No, there is that really awful bit where pretty much the doctor
criticises what the brigadier is going to do.
And Joe says, that's right. you know, what use of shooting how to
go back?
He is your commanding officer, German, you should serve some
respect. in the demons.
Fucker.
There's the credits.
You know, I've been compiling a list of his most obnoxious
moments.