Hello, De, listen, welcome back to Flight Through Entirety, the
only Doctor Who podcast with an inexhaustible supply of milk.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Todd.
I'm Simon.
And I'm Nina, your meta powdered egg protein supplement for this
one.
Well, a lot has happened since the last episode of Flight through
Entirety.
Simon and his husband have discovered that they cannot conceive
children, and both Todd and Richard aren't speaking to me for some
reason.
Is this the sort of thing that Doctor Who can fix?
Let's find out as we visit the asylum of the Daleks.
So we're back for what is a bit of a weird year of Doctor Who, I
think.
Yes, the weirdest, perhaps.
Do you think?
Well, certainly, it's not really one year.
It's sort of 2 years, really.
Yeah.
And we've kind of decided, I think, to drop the serialisation.
So we don't quite have a big arc in the same sense that we did
last year.
And I have a theory it's because Stephen Moffat always reacts
against what he did the previous year.
And do you have how lucky we were?
Do you think?
Well, I just watched Flux, haven't I?
What could have been?
Yeah, but it's nice to sort of go back to a series of completely
self-contained episodes.
It's a change.
Why not do that, given that we've had 2 like that.
But I also like the factor, it's interesting that there's a large
gap of time, not just between this episode and the previous
episode, but also between each episode from now, really.
Yeah, there's like 10 months between this episode and the next one
according to Amy. from her points of view.
And so that's the other thing that's happening here, is that we
have part-time companions for the 1st time.
We have kind of companions who go on trips and then go home for a
bit and then go on another trip and stuff.
This feels like, I don't, I'd like to talk about how you received
Rory and Amy at the beginning of this at the time and now.
So I'm really interested in everyone's opinions, but I'm feeling
as to umbrella it.
This feels very much informed by the new adventures.
We were just talking about one of Codleman's beautiful books.
They're all beautiful, but the characterisations and the acrimony
and also the separation in time thing feels very new adventures.
It's also like normal television in a way.
Like, you know, Well, there's often a gap between seasons.
We come back to, you know, series two, episode one. and some time
has passed and the relationships between the characters have
changed a little bit and we spend the 1st episode kind of looking
into that.
I mean, that's sort of because in sort of normal American
television.
You know, the last episode went out in June and the next one's
going out in September and so they have to move time forward in
order to get to the Christmas episode.
I have to say, and I know that this isn't a popular opinion, but I
like what happens to Amy and Rory in the inter, not interregnum
but in the interval between the 2 seasons, the fact that they have
a, well, that they're breaking up.
I mean, it starts with Rory delivering divorce papers.
Does this have anything to do with the fact that we are
broadcasting live from Oswin's crucible?
Looking around the room of stuff.
Yes, this is...
FTE Studios is a place where I like to retire to and make...
But Richard, which one of us is Oswald?
all are today.
Well, we will get to Oswin, because I do think that that is a
really clever and surprising thing to have happened.
Do you remember the shock you felt?
Yeah. saw her. they kept it so well.
I was debating that with Brian when we were watching it the other
day as to, did we remember?
Did we know who she was when we were watching this?
She's been in the magazine.
Yeah.
Be in the next, so we knew she was car.
She knew we knew she was cast and I remember the shock at, 0 my
goodness, what is going on?
She's in this.
Did they kind of fudge it and sort of say, oh, well, you know, she
was so good in this.
We then decided to cast her as the companion.
Was it like that?
No, no, no.
It was always intentional.
So it is part of, so I know it was intentional, but was that the
kind of the cover story they gave us?
So I think there are 2 loose arcs in series 7 or at least in the
beginning and end of series 7.
So the series 7 A arc is Amy and Rory's relationship, which is why
we start with them broken up, and the series 7 B arc is obviously
about Clara.
That's the Golga French and mark.
Yeah, the BR.
Where all of us are.
Me anyway.
Yeah, I teach a dead language to rich children, I'm essentially.
Have we wiped these marks?
I just want to check.
So this kind of introduces that that 7BR, who the hell is Clara?
Why is this person that we saw at the casting call taking
publicity photos with Matt Smith?
Why is she here already?
But only the audience knows.
Yes.
Not the doctor, not Amy, not Rory.
Of course it's very cleverly written in that the doctor never sees
her.
Of course.
Yeah.
So he only hears her voice.
He never actually gets to see her.
What sort of name is Oswin?
Can I just ask that?
Like, like, I don't even know the origin of the name.
Like I've never heard it before.
Like, you know, you can have old English ladies names, but I'd
never heard of this.
Like it just seems so...
It just seems so random, you know, and I guess we'll talk about
the Clara arc later on.
I don't know if at this point Steven's got it fully in his mind
what he wants to do with that.
Yeah, it does a similar, there's a similar name for Oliver's name
isn't there?
I think we need to look at Moffatt's early schoolboy diaries and
discover who she actually is.
Well, she does later on, I think, as Clara say something like
Clara Oswald for the win or something.
There is some dialogue, which suggests that that's where the name
comes from.
And obviously, like the mystery is enhanced by the fact that she's
not Clara.
We know that this character is going to be called Clara, the press
release and the whole thing has already happened.
So I think it just adds an extra layer, who the hell is this?
And I think that that is really great.
But let's go into it a little bit later.
Let's get back to Amy and Rory's marriage.
How did you feel about it breaking down between seasons, Todd?
I was not impressed at all.
I really hated it at the time.
I just thought this is a plot device.
We've made a decision to keep them on his companions for a bit
longer.
And so we need some sort of hook.
And I certainly think with what happens to them in 5 episodes time
I think, especially when it talks about that she can't have
children, I just think that's really nasty.
I still think it's really nasty and awful.
I can see now, having rewatched it, the whole dynamics and to give
the doctor something to fix.
We've talked about this, Nathan.
But I still feel like it's something in the episode that just
doesn't sit well with me.
I just, I've mentioned in the last few episodes.
I really like the fact that they were sort of being let go by the
doctor and they're right out at the end of the last season and now
it's sort of like, well, how do we get them back in?
Like, because quite frankly, it's very generous of the Daleks to
go and get them and bring them to be with the doctor because he
needs his companions out of, you know, some sort of structural
need of the story.
Did we need to actually have that extra layer in there, right?
We could have had them separated, which they are for the most
thing, but it's sort of like Stephen needs to have some colour in
the relationship.
If they were just together and separated, you wouldn't have all of
that sort of interplay.
So I think from a structural point of view, I have problems with
it.
It's sort of like a means to an end, right?
But it doesn't stop my enjoyment of the episode and I liked it a
lot more this time.
What do you think of it, Simon?
Well, leaving aside that I probably would have preferred the Amy
and Rory thing to have been wrapped up at the end of the previous
season because it was so beautifully done and neat.
I just went with it when it came on.
I thought, oh, yes, okay, so we're, we've got relationship
problems.
We're doing you win exactly.
We're doing this now, because essentially it's resolved by the end
of the episode anyway.
I mean, he goes back inside the house and.
But I just thought it was unnecessary.
No, fair enough.
And I just, I guess that the biggest thing for me, Simon, is the
whole, she can't have kids.
Yeah, right?
to try and make all that happened last season even worse.
Well, interestingly, she says she can't have kids.
What she should have said is she can't have any more kids.
They actually have a daughter.
And it's kind of a bit rude.
It's like we're now deleting River song.
Like she doesn't count anymore.
I know they didn't get to raise her as a child in the traditional
sense, but it was nice the way it resolved at the end of the
previous season with River arriving and River calling her mother
and all that sort of stuff.
I get it.
I get that you don't like that and that's fair enough.
I just feel with Todd that maybe with Simon as well, I wanted some
continuity and characterisation.
I understand that Mr. Moffatt finds that narcissistic sociopathic
women very attractive.
I, however, found that really on the nose at the time.
And I still now I just find it unnecessary.
It's an artificial point to raise drama where I don't think it
needs to be.
I expect more emotional summary.
I expect more emotional intelligence from these characters
certainly seeing where we've been before.
That's a great point.
More emotional intelligence because I really felt that they were
in such a great place.
And their relationship was so strong that they could never
actually get to this and I just don't quite buy it.
And they also look just so glamorous now.
And so well grew.
Rory's wearing great clothes.
Yeah, so gray hair.
But yeah, no, I think that's the perfect point.
It is the fact that I don't buy the fact that we're here already
given the love between them.
No, you're going to get to this point where you're divorcing maybe
12 months later.
No way.
And so it's I don't buy it.
I think it's it's lazy.
I think that it's unpleasant to watch because we love them and
we've been rooting for them for 2 years.
I think that that's a problem.
I do think, though, this episode is barely about the Daleks at
all.
It's not particularly interested in Daleks.
Best Dialect stories are barely about the Dialect.
Yeah, no, I agree. complaining.
Did you mention the chase?
But it is interesting that Stephen doesn't really ever want to
write Daleks necessarily, even cyber them up to this point because
all we've had is back in series, end of series five, a dalek in
that final episode, right?
Going around.
He hasn't written really any other dalek Dalek things.
And here.
And I think it's in his writing.
He always wants to do different things with them.
Like we've got the human dalek thing, which is different, you know
with the unfortunate.
Oh, okay.
And with the cyberman, like back in again, series five, that one
cyberman.
But he was doing something different with that side and with, you
know, down in the um, under stone hinge, like how it sort of was
going to eject its skull and take over Amy.
That was something different.
He's not interested in doing the cybermen or the Daleks, as we
know.
It's always different thing.
And here we've got the human daleks and we're not, we've got the
Oswin dalek.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. egg and we're not really interested too much in
the new paradigm daleks, which have now been shunted off to one
memory hold.
You know, with the Parliament and the Prime Minister and all of
the Russell T Daleks there.
Yeah.
So I think that the Amy and Rory relationship breakdown does 2
good things, which is that it gives us more consequences for the
things of series 6, which we sort of complained about before.
Like Amy undergoes this horrific torture and then is off on a
jolly adventure the next week and that's a problem.
So it makes those events have more consequences.
And it's a baseline because the thing that we're going to see is a
relationship that is much more mature and has weathered a lot of
stuff.
And what we actually find here is, I think, Rory and Amy growing
up to the point where the doctor kind of realises that they don't
really need him anymore.
And that culminates in Amy's big decision at the end of Angels
Take Manhattan.
She doesn't need the doctor anymore, but she does need Rory.
And so giving that relationship a bit more history, taking it from
something that is, you know, the very beginning of a marriage
where they're all sort of totally into one another, into a sort of
more solid domestic relationship, I think is a good thing.
Just shaking my head because every time I say something about how
I dislike this and how it's not any good.
You then come up with all these wonderful voices to say the
consequences of this and there's so much payoff and there's
actually really good things coming out of something that I don't.
You know, I acknowledge that it's unpleasant to watch.
I think it is unpleasant to watch.
And what, like, Simon and Richard said about it, like, I thought
it was a very TV writer.
And I suppose that's why I just accept it and move on because I
know that they do things in TV which aren't real. especially in a
program like this.
But yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I think I agree.
So, let's go back to Oswin then.
And the big question is, I remember this.
Do you remember this at the time, Richard?
I thought that she had had an egg whisk in her hand at some
point?
remember that as well.
But it doesn't happen, does it?
And I think we, it so should have happened that we just imagine
that it happened.
Well, because like a 60s dialect sometimes have egg whisks on...
Well, she's making souffles.
And she's a dalek.
And they don't have a scene where she has an egg whisk in her
hand.
They're only in the they're always in the oven.
See, flaves are always in the oven.
Whilst unblocking the sink with the right hand.
Yeah.
Mr. trick.
It would have been so good.
I love the plumbing. pardon the pun of Grim Fairy stories for this
one.
I want to talk a bit about metas.
That's a thing that we now live in, Mr. Zuckerberg.
Did anyone else pick up all of that?
They're really ploughing the Grimm's fairy stories and not just
Oswin being the sleeping beauty who slept for a year in this case
but in the sepulchra of her own lovely imaginings.
But, um, my favourite moment visually in this.
And I think it's beautifully shot and so well lit.
And it's so well directed that this one.
I think that's really why it works because I think we're all
probably thinking along the same lines.
It's actually kind of a thin story.
And there's a lot of very artificial TV jerks to get the things to
happen the way that they happen.
And it's not just Amy and Rory.
It's really all of the incidents and I find the Parliament of
Daleks, as Greg Miller said, are delightful carols by
candlelight.
I would have loved to have been there.
But there's a lovely, my favourite moment is when Amy is delirious
and looks out and says they're just people.
Oh, there's a lonely sequence.
It's gorgeous.
And you know where it's lifted from?
And I had another look.
It's cocktail.
Jean cocktails, belle la bet, you know, the 1946 film, 47 film
with Jean Marais.
Again, lit the same way, the mere lighting and deliberately so.
And just the way that reality layers into fantasy.
I was like, where have I seen all this before?
And that kind of language soupy density atmosphere.
I feel as if the air is thicker on the planet.
I also love the descent onto the ice planes and that the young man
who they meet is wearing camo gear that's white.
It just looks spectacular.
Yeah, looks very nice.
So it's Nick Curran again.
So girl who waited God complex. and he is absolutely maybe the
best director of the Moffat era.
Certainly it's the visual style consistent. full throughout.
He's really good.
I think this is less showy than those.
Yes, it's definitely less showy.
But I, actually, it's interesting that you mentioned the girl who
waited because, Richard, you sort of suggest that the plot's a bit
thin or the story has been thin.
Well, you see, for me, it feels like the kind of plot that you
need in what is a 45 minute self-container.
I brought it up in that episode, the girl who waited as well, in
that the floor of some modern episodes is that they're trying to
do an old style 4 parter in 45 minutes.
And so you all rush through all this stuff and then it's over.
Whereas this and the girl who waited are good examples of how much
content you need, and the kind of story you need, to take you
through a 45 minute episode, and get all the nice stuff in that
you want, like, you know, Amy's sequence where she's hallucinating
the people, which is quite gorgeous.
You do actually need to let the actors and the artists involved
with the directors, the lighting crew, the designers, to have
scope to create a narrative that isn't just on the page.
So, yeah.
I mean, I think this is fundamentally about Rory and Amy's
relationship and about Clara.
And I don't think the Daleks...
That's actually good Yeah, it's like making sourdough.
It's a bit spooky, though.
Yeah, I think the Daleks are something that Moffat isn't
interested in beyond their mere iconography.
And so he doesn't care about the history of the Daleks
particularly.
He doesn't want to create a Dalek story where Daleks do Dalek
things.
He wants to just use the imagery in a story.
And so there is essentially no Dalek story here.
It's just, you know, the Dalek send him down a thing.
He wanders around for a while.
He finds Oz when.
He beams back and then escapes.
You know, there's not really that much Dalek business.
And the new Dalek thing where they have the eye stalk and the gun
both of which are iconic Dalek things bursting out of people's
heads absolutely makes no sense.
So Daleks can do that now.
They can just be people with sort of guns coming out of their
hands, but it is using Dalek imagery in a new way and that's what
he's interested in.
That's right.
Yeah.
I just don't like it though.
I think it's twee and looks awful and it's a bit embarrassing.
I find it a bit embarrassing.
I like the concept of the people being taken over by the Daleks
but through the nano bots or whatever they are.
I love the, well, but effectively it's like a modern take on the
Roberman.
Yeah, yeah.
It's people being taken over by the dogs.
I just think the ice stock coming out of the forehead in
particular, it just makes me cringe.
But I like that grotesqueness.
It's not the grotesqueness. cringing because I think it's just
it's like, what the hell does that mean?
What is that about?
Why is that necessary?
I liked it actually when, I can't remember the character's name
but the woman that's in the pre-credit sequence with Matt.
Later when she's in the Parliament of the Dalek ship.
She's just got more of a blue glow up there rather than the ice
talk up there.
I think that's nice.
That's kind of suggests there's something implanted in your brain
or growing in your brain.
And even the gun coming out of the hand is...
I saw coming out of the forest and it happens several times in the
future and I just go, please, why did that?
I love the bus driver.
Remember when Rory gets on the bus?
But that doesn't make any sense.
Why the bus?
It makes sense to Amy's assistant.
It's taken over by the Daleks because he's working with Amy every
day.
How do the Daxies know that Rory's going to get on that exact
bus?
But it's so good.
They take over all the bus drivers.
They do.
You don't actually see it happen, do you?
You just see him looking scary in the bus revision.
Maybe there's a bit of a thing on the bubble on it. bubble of
patters on his head, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, all of that stuff's just terribly fun.
And it is, the trouble with the blue glow on the forehead is that
it's subtle?
Yes, it's not daleky enough.
But I think keeping the Daleks as, as you say, as a motif, I think
is when they are most successful for me, because Diaz has been
brought up many times before, conversations between Daleks are
tiresome.
In the extreme, conversations between cybermen are tiresome, in
the extreme.
So you use them sparingly rather than en masse because of the fact
that they are more interesting sparingly.
Yeah.
And they're great because they're frightening. creepy.
They're creepy.
Having, however, many bazillions of them CGI'd into the Parliament
of the Daleks, is just, it's just for the fact that it's the
opening episode.
Yeah, it creates the pre-credits teacher and that's all that it's
about.
But talking of the parliament, I wouldn't understand some more
because we do have a prime minister of the dialects.
So is there a leader of the opposition?
Do they have divisions?
You know, is there a pairing system?
So many questions.
It's odd, isn't it?
It's almost like he's kind of gesturing towards some kind of
political point, but I don't know what it is.
Yeah, yeah, it doesn't actually get developed.
What was he trying to say?
I don't know.
Trying to remember what was happening when this was being
written.
You're right about the partisanship of the Darlings.
I think it was just an excuse to have a lovely big rotunda, but it
was also, I felt a little bit of a tiny Mick duration against our
dear Russell's final episode for Eccleston's doctor.
So the god emperor Dalek is now a Vaseline jar.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So he's the prime minister.
I mean, because Parliament's actually a good word because I can't
remember what animal...
Owls.
There you are.
So owls have a collective noun is a parliament.
So I just thought it was maybe the collective noun have done it
which is, which would be so good.
Which is fine.
But then they call the...
I mean this is prime minister doesn't make any sense.
But you know, who cares?
Yeah, yeah.
It's been a while since we've had a non-evil Prime Minister of
Great Britain and perhaps that's it.
Maybe that's the point, but it doesn't seem like a very
interesting point to make.
And it's certainly not developed in any way.
So, you know.
I think he's more interested in the outcome at the end where
they're all just, they forget about the doctor, which has been an
ongoing thing in the master episodes, which, of course, is
conveniently dropped after this.
No, it will come up again next week.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
So that's that's a thing too, because we start with the doctor
being dead.
And so when he turns up on Skaro.
And that's another thing.
Moffatt isn't interested in the fact that the doctor blew up
Scaro.
He doesn't care.
He's Scaro.
We're going to be on Scaro because I literally don't care.
A different point in time.
Well, yeah, I suppose.
Well, the future.
Where he's, he, no one knows who he is and he's disappeared.
His his kind of his death has taken.
People think he's dead.
Isn't that the implication of that conversation?
Like he's surprised that whatever her name is knows about him or
knows who he is.
There is some reference to that.
Yes.
But of course, the dalek's no, you know, him and they know his
companion's addresses and they know what bus Rory catches
obviously.
And then by the end of it, they've never heard of him.
But it's interesting that, you know, this has been like was a big
point at the end of last season and is here again and as you said
next week.
But after that, it seems to be somewhat dropped.
Well, I mean, I've said this before, but the show has done this
before.
At the end of World War III. the doctor gives a CD to Mickey with
a computer virus on it that will wipe out all of the mentions of
the doctor from the records and stuff.
There's always been this sort of weird thing.
Is the doctor famous or not?
And then they bottle out of it.
The thing that I find disappointing, because several times they've
done that, as I think I said, at the end of Wedding of River Song
several times they've done that and they've always bottled out of
it.
Not just in the new series, been the old series as well.
And I think they missed an opportunity on each occasion by not
then running with it and doing a bit of a reset.
Yeah.
I mean, you can always have the doctor just not be known in a
particular place.
Exactly.
The universe is a big place.
Yeah, so time is long.
Yeah, that's right.
He could be famous if the story needs it and unknown if it
doesn't.
Yeah.
I mean, even Chris Chibnall, who kind of tries to reset Doctor Who
to just be a traveller rather than a superhero, has her bragging
about her backstory by about episode three.
So it doesn't take with him either.
I think it's a thing that Doctor Who has had to do ever since, what
the savages occasionally is famous.
I still want to talk a little bit more about Jenna.
I mean, she is doing an absolutely spectacular job.
She is one of the best things.
She is so good.
The delivery is fantastic.
And basically, I assume she's basically performing all of these
takes without anyone else there by herself with just some stage
hand reading off the other dialogue.
She is so good.
And but when the credits finish and she suddenly is there in the
red dress with Carmen going on in the background and the souffle
is coming out of the oven and she's got the little monologue.
That is such a great sequence and beautiful and it just suddenly
changes the tempo and style of the program almost.
Like, I feel like I felt like at the time and I felt like watching
it when I was watching it again the other day, how fresh it
suddenly was.
And she's so vibrant.
She's such a vibrant person.
She's great.
Yeah, I'm a huge fan of Jenna.
I really, really like her performance.
I think she's charismatic, she's charming.
I think she's a little bit more subtle and versatile maybe than
Karen, who we have quite a high opinion of, I think, after the
last few years.
Looks at me.
Well, no, I've grown to love Karen, but straight away, I'm totally
drawn to Jenna.
She looks stunning.
Every piece of dialogue, every, every look to the camera or not
everything that she does in this episode is just sublime.
I get the feeling that she's had a lot more experience than
Karen.
Yeah, it may not be right.
Well, I mean, she was on Emmerdale for a few years.
So, I mean, she certainly cut her chops in having to do episode 8
television.
So she can come straight into something.
At a fast pace where you're doing a lot of shooting. television.
She's also just very, very good at Moffatt's dialogue as well.
Now, that's an interesting thing because I looked up when I wanted
to find out, did we know that she was going to be the companion
when it came out and I found a little kind of a factoid in there
that apparently one of the reasons Moffatt said he cast her was
because she could talk faster than Matt Smith and makes sense.
And I think it works so well.
You get the sense that she, whether it's the actress or the
character, she's keeping up with the doctor. almost like the way
River song does.
Yeah.
And I think she manages to do it with both doctors as well.
Like she absolutely holds her own against 2 different doctors
during her run.
Yes, but I actually think that she's best in the Matt Smith
episodes.
And I think she, the character works best with Matt.
And I think it's fine with Capaldi, but I think it may be just for
me more the way they change the character developer character that
I start to lose interest in her as we move into the Capaldi era
but I think she's strongest at the start.
Yeah, I think we will complain about the way the character works
because she does tend to be jerked around by whatever the...
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that is a little bit of a problem.
But, you know, we used to, the classic series where, you know, the
character has a paragraph long description and...
Computer programming, peace popping, that's right, and nothing
else, and the whole thing just relies on the actor's performance
and I think that's what's happening here.
The whole thing is tied together by Jenna's performance.
It's funny that you mention that because, I mean, I'm jumping
ahead.
Like, we do get about 4 different Claras throughout the time, but
I also think if you look back in classic, you also get 3 different
Sarah Jane Smith, in my opinion, when you look at it, and it's
Elizabeth Stadden, who holds that all together.
And here, I think again, with Jenna's performance is the thing
that holds Clara together throughout all of that.
But I certainly agree with you, Simon.
And I certainly think that, well, this is Oswald.
My favourite Clara is yet to come and she's only in one episode.
Yeah, right?
I wonder if that's the same one as mine.
I think it might be.
But she's just a breath of fresh air in this.
And it says a lot about the writing and her performance and the
direction in the fact that she's trapped in this room and she's
been there, but you don't really think about that for a while.
You begin to question it, but then, whether it be the performance
of the dialogue or whatever, you then get distracted and it's only
towards perhaps the last little for me anyway, the last 15 minutes
or so where you start to go, well, how does this actually work?
Exactly, despite despite the fact that you know that she can't be
there.
You just don't think it.
Well for me, you just don't think about it.
Despite all the hints that get dropped, it is still a terrible
shock and the station when it's revealed that she's a dalek at the
end.
Because I think when you're watching a program like this, I'm
spotting things and then I'm kind of dismissing slash forgiving
them, thinking that either it's an error of production or it's
just they just stuffed up the writing or it was the wrong person
on the wrong day.
And so even if it's flagged, it's still a surprise. for me.
So are you talking about the where does she get the milk for the
souffle?
What is it from?
I think that's...
Don't they have replicators?
It's a throwaway gag, is it?
Like it's a joke and it looks like a meta joke about how Doctor
Who kind of doesn't make sense often about that kind of stuff.
Like, none of us would have been...
Oh, I don't know, maybe people would be writing angry letters to
the production team about the milk problem.
It's like, where's the milk?
Where are the eggs?
Where everything else?
What else are you eating?
Like basically that's why I thought it was just the running joke
because if she doesn't have milk, then she doesn't have anything
else either.
But that's but that's how the doctor realises that this is not
real.
Like that's an important thing.
It's not just a throwaway line.
He brings it up again.
So I think that's really clever.
She's like, what is she?
She's really smart.
She's super flirty with both the doctor and Rory, which I really
like, actually.
Yeah, no, it's gorgeous.
The nose and the chin.
But it's yet another female character that Moffat's created to
insult and tease the doctor.
Yeah.
She's another Julie Solala.
Yeah, well that's right.
He's always been trying to recreate Linda Day, hasn't he?
I think this is more like Julius Swala.
She even starts to dress like Linda Day a little bit as well.
With sort of leggings and short skirts and stuff like that. like
Linda ends up wearing.
Brendan Jones and I had a lovely Diana Rigg flashback when we 1st
saw this.
She's a modern day M appeal.
Yeah.
Yeah, she's pretty and smart and cool.
Yeah, I mean, not to belabour the point, but the hair, the dress
the makeup, is all so elegantly sophisticated.
It's just lovely.
And even though she's in this little, what is supposed to be in
her mind, at least, an escape pod from the Alaska.
And she just looks so glamorous and fantastic and I buy it
completely.
Yeah, yeah.
And she has that thing about not being distressed by this
difficult situation that she's in, which is solution orientated.
All of us during lockdown.
Yeah, all of us here.
And in the absence of an egg whisk, what hints do we have apart
from where's the milk?
I guess there's a round porthole that she looks at through.
And there's, I think there might be other sort of semicircular... was
the 1st big giveaway.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
She speaks to the dog.
Very Star Wars, that I thought, that's something out of the snow.
Yeah, yeah.
In fact, all of that stuff is great.
We're in Spain, aren't we?
Oh is that where it is?
Yeah, yeah.
I'm in Spain It's awesomely beautiful.
Yes, lovely.
Yeah amazing.
And gloves.
Spanish gloves.
Well, I think this episode and town called Mercy might be shot in
Spain as well.
That's right in Spain.
Oh, tackled Mercy Spain, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So the gunfighter?
The gunfighters, in a studio set in Spain.
Time met.
Well, it's not Spirit and Campbell, Iridius Falcon.
Excellent.
I can say, yes, they pronounce spirit on wrong as well.
Inspiredon, but that's not what's said in the dialogue.
So Sylvester McCoy pronounces it Spiriton.
Spirit on.
And so does, so does Jenna.
She pronounces it Spiriton.
So that confirms my theory.
What are they saying, planet of the Dialects?
They say spirad on.
So my theory is that John Pertwee mispronounces the names of all
of these planets and...
Yeah that's right.
Like metabolis 3.
It really is metabolis 3 and per twig just mispronounced.
The balance of evidence, Planet of the Daleks is wrong.
Yes, clearly.
In other ways, so...
Go back to that.
Previous comments about Dalek centric stories not being
interesting.
What do you mean there's Bernard Horseful in?
that's true.
You know all the hallucination, like of all the different Daleks
and their characters, like, is that in her mind or is that sort of
showing us like these were the people behind these dialects?
or the characteristics?
I think it's beautiful.
I just, like, what's the imagery?
What's the?
I got the impression that she is reading the Daleks as people
because she's becoming a dalek.
And they all had their own little...
And that's who they were.
I don't know about that.
They're all from the 1920s or whatever.
They're all kind of like it just, it is.
We're all at a party.
That's right, a lovely party. garden party in the 1920s.
No, I just think it's what Richard said.
It's just an incredible piece of imagery.
In Beauty and the Beast.
Bell has to put on a glove to pass through into the other universe
which is a whole lot of other kink in it as well.
It's cocktail.
And in here, of course, it's the nanites, but there's still that
lovely sense if we pass into other realms and what is reality.
So it really has some little nods to film history and especially
to French romantic fantasy that is really, I suppose, cocktail
started, but anyway, 40s and early 50s just after the war.
There's that lovely sense of, which Stephen Moffatt does very well
of when he allows himself to indulge is we are not sure which
reality we're in.
I really like that.
It should be that way.
It's Doctor Who.
Yeah.
Just going back to the references to the other planets, be they
spirad on or spirit on.
There was a lot made at the time.
I remember that we were going to see Dalek's...
Every time Dalek was going to be there and we saw the special
weapons dark.
But apart from that, I didn't really get the impression you saw
very many.
But what I thought was disappointing is when we're going into
intensive care, which were the Daleks that had survived the doctor
and they're from places that Todd mentioned, they're all just the
RTD era daleks.
That was the opportunity to have the retro looking Daleks from all
the places and I just thought that was disappointing.
So he decides.
I think Moffat decides that that didn't quite be bothered by
then.
No, no, because he does it properly in the series 9 opener. and
has a whole heap of well lit.
Daleks from the films and stuff like that.
Could have been a budget time thing.
I just think that...
Someone had a special weapons dialogue in their garage.
Yeah, Andrew Beach could not be bothered.
I just think it's, let's do Dalek things and have things that look
very daleky because that's really all he cares about the Daleks.
I mean, the Daleks didn't turn people into Daleks very much
before.
I guess... revelation.
Is the M1 name.
Yeah, most of them, they just want to conquer and destroy.
They're normally too racist to turn you into a dalek, I think.
Oh, I guess the humans were sifted and filleted and stuff in
parting of the ways where we learn that the Daleks have been
created through humans because there weren't enough Daleks around
or whatever.
In fact, there's, there are more instances where the using humans
as Daleks goes horribly wrong with like the human factor in evil
and um, and then uh, the, the, the Dalek, the new paradigm, not
the new paradigm, the new um, the guy in evolution of the Daleks.
Yeah, yeah, Dalek sex.
Dalek sex, yeah.
Makes sense.
We're post-emperor Dalek.
We've seen the purity factor.
I'm trying to remember the name of that little Easter egg that
they cart about with them in the tobacco.
Yeah, yeah.
There's some nice, if you want to get fanboy about it.
There's some nice meta concepts of what the Daleks are proposing
to be doing now and they have no longer have a god.
Yeah, they have a parliament.
They have, yeah.
Going back to the whole final reveal. that she's a Dalek and the
horror on Matt's face, all of that sequence.
It's so heartbreaking and then just seeing her, the flashbacks to
her.
Yeah, getting transformed. very powerful.
So we actually don't see what Matt sees for a while.
Do we?
Like it's, we see his reaction before we see what his reaction.
I think we know what he's saying.
Yes, I think we do.
But it's nice that they delay it.
And before then, he has actually fixed Amy and Rory's marriage.
And he has done it deliberately.
So when Amy 1st meets the doctor and and the doctor questions her
about what happened and she says this isn't a thing that you can
fix.
You worry about the Daleks.
This is not your thing.
And then she also suggests that when the doctor fixes a problem
he's going to straighten his bow tie and sort of saunter off
there's that wonderful moment, isn't there?
And it's beautifully directed where he leaves the 2 of them alone
and he walks past security cameras.
Well, yeah, yeah, he leaves them alone.
He actually taken his bracelet off and put it on Amy, which he
could have done that earlier.
I don't know why I was thinking that myself.
Maybe, uh, whatever.
Maybe maybe he doesn't know that he's not going to be affected or
it's kind of like I'm at the end game here.
I can go without it for a bit.
And then they're doing this sort of self-sacrifice thing and Rory
saying, oh, it's the love, isn't it?
To turn you into a dalek, they drive out love and introduce anger
into you.
And so Rory says, well, you're going to turn into a dalek before
me because I love you more than you love me.
And she, you know, break, anyway, the whole thing sort of is
resolved.
And then, yes, the doctor Saunders passed a security camera and
looks into it and then straightens.
It's so good.
Talking about the bracelet thing, actually.
It is a little flaw, which is sort of brought up at that moment
where because it's brought up that the doctors slipped to her onto
her wrist.
It's like, well, actually, why didn't they share them around?
Why didn't they all have a turn for a little bit 10 minutes
without without it?
This goes back to Belladabet as well.
So there's a similar thing with the glove and the mirrors.
I suspect he's lifted it from that.
I think it's a little bit like the doctor's plan in Destiny of the
Daleks to give Romana. the beeper that tells her when to take the
pills but not any of the actual pills.
Because that's just how Tom Roll.
Yeah, things are not going well.
Baker Ward household.
Yes.
She looks like she's got plenty of anti-radiation gloves, doesn't
she?
They're going back to Amy and Rory in that whole sequence with
them resolving and getting back together, I think, as much as I
don't like necessarily some of the dialogue and that sort of thing
I think they sell the hell out of it.
They're both extraordinary sequence.
It even always brought me to tears.
Yeah, Arthur is so good.
No, I know.
And we've not diminished Karen, but Arthur is amazing.
And we've had 2 years with them where the show has been focussed
on their relationship.
We're really invested in it and it's good.
It works properly, I think.
I think it's really interesting that the audience appreciation for
this episode was 89, like one of the highest season openers ever
like in terms of audience, liking things.
And when you look at it all, like it's Daleks and it's human
Daleks and it's a whole heap of...
And you can understand what's going on.
If I may venture then.
Yes.
Yeah, you can understand what's going on.
And the audience is obviously invested in this team, you know, and
they obviously know that Jenna's coming and she gives them one a
performance.
It's just incredible that they like it even more than I like.
Well, the average punzer wouldn't necessarily know that she's
going to be the companion moving on, but the point is they love
her.
She's so brilliant, yeah.
Can I be perhaps needlessly cruel?
Yeah, please.
There's no such thing as needlessly cruel, apparently.
Only needlessly kind.
Is anyone getting sick by now?
of Nick Briggs' Dalek voices.
Oh, wow.
Controversial.
Look, I think he starts brilliantly in the new series.
He has a perfect undeniable understanding of Dalek inflections and
all that happening on the kind of the various amateur things over
the years, you know, back in the day.
Well, he does Peter Hawkings and David Graham impersonations.
Like, he got to sell.
Yeah, and he's got he's able to do the, you know, the high fast
one and then the loo-sloo one.
He totally...
But I wonder whether it's starting to become almost a parody of
his own performance and a parody and a mocking of that style of
thing.
Is anyone feeling that?
I kind of, even though, yeah, he does do the modulations, I'm kind
of looking for a 2nd person to be doing the voices as well. and
you get a bit more variety then, it's not just the fact that
there's one voice, and I think that's important for consistency.
But, you know, the funny thing about the new series is whilst we
can have new doctors and new companions and new theme tunes and
new everything.
The 2 things we can't seem to have are new Dalek voices and new
incidental music.
Succession planning.
There's no succession planning.
It would be lovely to have somebody else doing it.
I mean, this is why I could only give this story 7.8 out of 10.
7.8.
Where did it lose the .2?
Well, 7.8 to 8 out of 10.
Right. 78 out of 100.
No, I think it's good.
I think it's good.
But I do agree with you.
Like, we do get to a point where it's sort of like, we need a 2nd
voice in there just for difference, I think.
I think the thing that Nicks Briggs, Nicks Briggs.
Nick's Brigg.
The thing.
Briggs very proud of that, Nick.
He's very proud of that.
The thing that Nick Briggs brings to it.
Chap with wings.
Yeah. is, is that he does the dialect voices perfectly and then
makes them express emotions, which they have never done before.
And so in Dalek.
Well, I mean, they've done hysterical and panicky idiot and
stuff.
But, you know, the way that that performance in Dalek is a proper
acting performance.
And so by now, year, you know, 7 or whatever, it's the same old
thing.
Oh, Nick is being sad, Dalek, we've heard this a lot before.
Yeah, maybe it's that.
But I also wonder whether his performance is becoming too...
Not by rote.
It's not too rote.
It's just too parody.
Could you have had Jenna perform those lines?
Well, that would have been interesting.
I mean, we have had a female...
With a voice treatment.
With a voice treatment. interesting to see how that sounded, that
might make it too obvious, but we only hear the voice, don't we
after we know that it's Clara?
Oh, I see what you mean.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Yes, yes.
But also in Stephen's writing, maybe that's why he introduces
these human like daleks to have different voices for just to break
it up a bit rather than just having dialects, having the human
people be dalek like and those emotions just to give a bit of
variation.
Oh, yeah, that's why, you know, the best Dalek stories always have
the human surrogates, whether it's, you know, Nider and Davros or
Lytton or the robo man.
I mean, I think there are just so many great things about the
episode.
Jenna in particular and the overall plot revealing her to be a
Dalek.
It's not just that, though.
I think it's the production style, as Nathan was said earlier.
All the regulars are on form, which they always are.
This team, I found.
But there are just those few things that annoy me and I think they
annoy me more because everything else is so good.
You know, I don't like the idea of the palm of the Daleks.
It just for show.
It just doesn't make any sense.
It's just a bit stupid.
The ice stalk's popping out of people's head, as I've said, is I
find it just almost unforgivably embarrassing.
But, you know, whatever, you know, there are always things that
one regrets about a Doctor Who episode.
Overall, I think it's an excellent, and Todd, what you're saying
about the audience appreciation, I think it does indicate this is
what people want and I think they should have it. great.
It's a really solid episode.
And like you, I have niggly things like the whole Amy and Rory
relationship is, and that structure forced upon us is the one
thing that, for me, even now.
Like, I sit there going, okay, I get it, but it's just that little
thing that takes away everything else. is just wonderful
generally.
I disagree with you about the eye stalks.
I just like to see that. they're awesome.
More of those.
I think it's sort of criminally underrated.
I think people don't like it.
I don't. you think they don't like it or they just don't remember
it?
Well, no, I think that there are people who actively don't like
it.
But I actually think that it's really sort of solid and scary and
entertaining.
Does a good job.
Very solid piece of television.
Yeah.
I agree.
It's a very good opener for the season and it asks more questions
than it answers, but not in a way that excludes us from the
narrative.
It just invites us to enjoy it more.
And it's lovely at the end when Jenna turns to the camera and just
says, and remember.
Yeah, so good.
I really wanted her to be doing her own Dalek voice, though.
I thought what an end.
Not only do you die horribly in the realisation that your life is
artificial, but your voice is by Nick Briggs.
Well, hey, listener, that's all we have time for this week.
We'll be back next week for a genocidal Silurian romp in dinosaurs
on a spaceship.
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 Interterterra, maximum power, and
untitled Star Trek project.
Until next time, remember that you can't make a souffle if you've
forgotten to bring your egg whisk.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
See you soon.
Bye for now eggs. eggs.
That was Flight 3 Entirety, starring Todd Bealby, Nathan Bottomley
Simon, Moore and Richard Stone.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, unblocking the sync, was recorded on the 13th of
March, 2022 and released on the 10th of April.
To commemorate Doctor Who's Series 7 premiere, FTE Enterprises is
releasing a totally non-infringing angry robot playsuit, consisting
of a tricycle, a bowler hat, an egg whisk, and a sink plunger
together with a lifetime supply of cream of tartar, available
Christmas 2022 for kids of all ages, so long as the warehouse
doesn't burn down.
Well, a lot has happened since the last episode of Flight for
Entirety.
Simon and his husband have discovered that they count...
Tag.
Sorry.
I wish they you...
I actually can conceive children instead of cannot.
Sorry.
A lot has happened since the last episode of Flight through
Entirety.
Simon and his husband have discovered that they cannot conceive
children, and both Todd and Richard aren't speaking to me for some
reason.
Is this the sort of thing that Doctor Who can fix?
Let's find out as we visit the asylum of the Daleks.
Is that all right?
It's gorgeous.
Marigold.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You've had a lovely cadence and a slight sibilance at the end
which I actually enjoy.
Just a very slight...
Just worried where you were heading until I realised where you
were heading.
Yeah.
And Todd and Rich and I thought, no, no, Ash won't like this.
They could have sat Todd and his husband, but, um, All right.
How do we start this?
I'm really disturbed by this Ronald McDonald.
Handler, by thing in front of me.
It's a shrine.
Well, there's a Sesame Street over there.
So many things.
Big bird. many physical objects.
What I really want is the total destruction of all spatial
objects.
I'm like swarming as you.
Does the doctor know you're out this later?
It sounds like 60s doctor who died.
He does.
You must destroy all living matter.
So we're back for what is a bit of a weird year of Doctor Who, I
think.
Yes, the weirdest, perhaps.