A Mild-Mannered Josef Mengele

[00:36]

Hello, Delissa, and welcome back to Flights of Entirety, the only Doctor Who podcast Flying through the entirety of Doctor Who as a penance for all that torture and vivisection we did.

I'm Nathan.

I'm James.

I'm Peter.

And I'm Stephen.

Well, it's Nevada 1817, and it's time for a reckoning with our past and the doctors and the other doctors.

It's a remake of the gunfighters with acting, production design, and some kind of moral message.

We've got weird facial markings and a backpack full of souls.

It's a town called Mercy.

So, Stephen, is this one of your favourites?

Look, it's not.

And it's one of those episodes that I probably have seen twice prior to preparing for this podcast and I thought, well, that was an episode of Doctor Who.

[01:41]

It wasn't particularly offensive or inoffensive.

It was just an episode of Doctor Who.

And then earlier this year, I had the pleasure of being invited to Pete's 30th birthday party on top of Sydney tower, and we got chatting about series 7 and we got chatting about this particular episode.

And the number of things that Pete eloquently said, made me think, oh, hang on a 2nd.

I should probably go back and revisit that So I think what's probably happening in the meantime is that I've learned to admire this more than I have.

But I'm still not sure if I like it anymore than I did the 1st time that I watched it, which was, you know, if we were to sort of apply a rating, maybe a 5.5 out of 10.

Oh, thanks, Tom.

I remember that conversation with you where we spent quite a few minutes talking about a town called Mercy, and I stand by my conviction on it, that this is the most precious thing in the Doctor Who universe.

This is a really strong standalone episode.

I recall that too, because you turned to me and said, James, put us on that episode.

[02:48]

I remember that as well.

I didn't really raise it very highly when I 1st saw it.

It's the Todd experience again, but I think it is extremely strong, and it is partly down to some really, really good central performances.

So we've got Adrian Scarborough as Carla Jackson.

And we have Matthew Smith as the doctor.

And I think he is really absolutely extraordinary in this.

It may actually be his best performance as the doctor.

I'm just putting that out there.

Yeah, I think it probably is close to it.

I had thought that the longer that Matt goes on the more kind of the more matt-like he becomes.

You know, he does, yeah, he does the usual Matt things.

But here he finds interesting things to do with just about every line.

[03:49]

And there's some thought and complexity.

And I don't know.

I get the impression that Matt's very instinctive rather than sort of cerebral, but his instincts are good and I think he does a great job here.

So can I jump ahead to talk about that scene inside the space pod, Carla Jackson's pod, which I think might be the best scene that Matt Smith ever films for Doctor Who.

So when he is watching the war crimes on the screen and he realises what Carla Jex has done and it's all, the images are flickering over his face.

And he does a very, like what we remember Matt Smith form, what we celebrate him for is the fact that he does really great business and he gives off slightly off the wall reactions and things and he's very doctor-ish, but he just, he completely underplays it.

He watches what's happening.

He just looks away with a look of kind of indefinable sadness and disgust on his face and then has to look back at the screen and take it in.

And I think it might be his finest acting moment, Doctor.

[04:51]

He clearly is forcing himself to look back and it's all just in the performance.

There's no dialogue in that at all.

I just found one where there's a scene towards the end of the episode where an angry mob comes to kind of lynch, Carla Jax, and the doctor is the marshal, and he's there to defend him, and there's that young man, the 18 year old boy.

And the doctor confronts him and does the sort of thing.

You know, it's like, it's like Sylvester McCoy talking the snipers down from the balcony and the happiness patrol only much better.

And then he turns around, walks between Amy and Rory, and then just gives this smile, this happy smile, and it's kind of like, what's that?

What are you doing there?

It's such an odd choice.

And it's just his capacity to surprise you with thoughtful, interesting things. whether it's business, whether it's facial expressions.

[05:54]

I've talked about his anger.

And I think when he has heard about Jax's crimes and then comes back to confront him and he absolutely underplays that, except for one moment, he says, sit down and then he shouts it.

And when he shouts, it's so terrifying.

And Adrian Scarborough actually recoils in the house.

Yeah, and falls onto the bed. ice becoming fire.

No, absolutely.

I agree with you that that Matt is really good here, Pete. and Nathan, all those examples that you've pointed to.

There's that wonderful dichotomy about Matt's doctor, which is that, you know, old man trapped in the young man's body and that ancient being actually trapped in a young man's body, that we see moments like that.

And of course, like the silliness that comes from that youthful exuberance from the actor himself, you know, things like, you know, the opening lines around, you know, dry clean only, and, you know, has someone seen my Christmas list, all of that is just wonderfully doctorish, as you say, Pete.

I think it's aided by the fact that the doctor, this is a story about the doctor and it's sort of played out through 3 characters that all sort of like foils it for him.

[07:00]

And, you know, Amy doesn't have a great deal to do, like, or really, what's Rory doing there?

This is a very doctor specific and doctor centric episode and I think Matt really rises to that.

I do agree with that.

And that's probably one of the things that I've reappraised in coming back to it.

I think you're right.

When we were watching it just now, we were talking a little bit about the fact that, of course, the doctor is in some sense, as a war criminal, and perhaps a worse one than Carla Jex, but the episode doesn't kind of lean into it, and it doesn't make the mistake of giving us a sort of goopy speech about how the doctor feels bad about killing all the people on Gallifrey or whatever.

We kind of just take it as red.

And Jex recognises that in the doctor, but that's basically it, isn't it?

There's that terrifying scene where he just drags Jex out and pushes him over the line so that the gunslinger can get him.

And I think you have to read that as his self-hatred, in a way, that he's reacting to something injects that is present in himself.

[08:10]

I think that's true.

And I think one of the things that I think Toby Whouse does really well is right to a theme.

And the theme is often exploring what the doctor's moral dimension and aspects are.

And here what we have is, um, there's a discourse of choice between the utilitarian argument, and that's that trolly problem, I guess, where certainly up until probably is at the end of act two.

Um, you know, Matt Smith has, or the doctor has very much sort of reverted to that because he spent too much time away from his companions. you know, who are the moral, moral force in his life, as against that sort of more moral argument, a more moral sort of aspect about doctor, which, you know, very much sort of comes into play in that 3rd act and the resolution tool.

Although I'm not sure the resolution is quite as tidy as it should be, and I'll talk about that later on, perhaps, but this is definitely like a story about whether the doctor chooses to do good on the basis of the, you know, the um, the utilitarian principle, the greatest good for the greatest number.

Or whether actually there's a higher standard, uh, to which the character should be, should be held.

[09:15]

And I think that's always fascinating.

And I think it is something that Toby Whithouse has written, particularly well here, for the most part.

And I think also it's something that he likes to do again and again, like the way in which there's a character or a foil for the doctor in the other episodes that he's written, whether it's, you know, Tony Head's character, in school reunion, whether it's actually the, the, uh, the minor tour slash Naimon in in the god complex, there's a sort of, you know, a correlation against, uh, the doctor's, um, and Carla Jax, I guess, in this one as well.

Um, I think it's, I think it's super fascinating.

And there's definitely sort of emotional depth to be mined there and philosophical depth to be mined there.

So I appreciate that about this story a lot more than perhaps I did previously too.

I mean, I'd love to know which came first, the chicken or the eggs.

So did he set out to make a story about the doctor, as you were talking about, and then crafted the character of Carla X, or do you come up with the character of Carla X with all that murky morality there, and then decide that that would play well with the doctor's character and so went there.

[10:18]

It's why this story works so well for me because it feels like a showrunner story.

That's something that a showrunner would be concerned with.

Sure.

Yeah.

I think that's a good point.

I think what I like, too, is that the answer isn't obvious, and it doesn't seem to definitely come down on one side or the other, and you have Rory and Amy on opposite sides of the question, should the doctor save the people of mercy by pushing Jets over the line?

which is something he clearly deserves.

Yeah.

And when the doctor initially finds out about the crimes and the gunslinger is there when he gets out of the pod, he says, we can put him on trial.

You don't have to kill him. you don't have to do revenge.

We can put him on trial and he's shut down.

He says, look, he hasn't harmed you.

[11:19]

He's harmed me and my people.

And so it's going to be my justice that applies.

And that's reasonable.

And so that utilitarian argument does seem to work because there is a sense in which he's deserved it.

He's caused harm.

Those sorts of harms need to be punished because it's important that we discourage people from doing it again.

But there is also the, is the doctor the sort of person who pushes people over the line so they can get gunned down by, you know, like this week's monster?

And clearly he isn't that kind of person either.

And we have someone who has done some good as well.

And I think that's interesting.

You know, they position Jex as someone who's saved the town's population from cholera.

So he saved people as well.

Yeah, yeah.

[12:19]

I think, though, like the story is pushing us in a particular direction, and it is in that moral dimension, that higher standard that the doctor should be held against, and ultimately plays out, by the way, in the 50th, like the way that that choice is made in the barn, I think very much sort of echos the choice that's made here as well, and the realisation that is again, um, only come to because of the good of the companions.

You know, my friends have always been the best to me as a doctor has said in the past and here it is, you know, happening again.

It's clever in the sense that the, the, the setting of the story, um, sort of helps to, to promote that in, um, mercy, which is a town that is, is not named for no reason, right?

There's essentially one man who, which is Isaac, who really stands for this idea of redemption, and the rest of the townsfolk who really sort of are standing for this idea of atonement.

And it's that whole thing about, well, atonement would be, yes, dragging, you know, Carla Jax and throwing him over that line and letting the gunslinger, you know, do what he needs to do and justice for to be served.

But that's not really the point because that higher standard around redemption rather than atonement, I think, is something that, uh, is played out through the setting of that town of mercy.

[13:27]

And, you know, the character of Isaac, who then deputises, you know, his his sheriff's badge to the doctor, who now becomes the figure of redemption as well.

I think that there is a really, really electric scene between the doctor and Jex, and it's when he's in the prison.

And when he's accusing the doctor of being confused by the fact that he's a good man and a bad man at the same time.

I'm not just one thing, I'm not just a war criminal.

I'm complex because I help people here and you can't handle that.

You don't know how to deal with it.

And the doctor just rejects that completely.

He turns around and says, no, you don't get to do your own redemption.

You don't get to pay your own price.

You don't get to decide that you're a good person because you've saved some people in this little town.

I think you compared this to Boomtown.

[14:28]

That's right, where Margaret Slovine says that just because the doctor accuses her and says you get to live with yourself, because occasionally you let one of them go.

And so she's convinced herself that she can be a good and moral person because occasionally she does something rise.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so Jax has evaded justice and evaded punishment and he's decided that this life that he has, where he's actually quite well regarded and he's able to help people, that that's sufficient penance, that that's his atonement, and that's not good enough.

And the show doesn't sort of dwell on his crimes.

Like, we get to see the scale of his crimes just through Matt's reaction in that scene that we had before.

And through the minisode prequel.

Oh, what was the minisode prequel?

It's called the making of the gunslinger.

Ooh.

It's very low budget.

But basically, you know, bits being strapped onto the actor.

[15:30]

And sounds of like bone sores.

Yeah, okay.

Wasn't that awesome the name of the documentary on the gunfighters DVD?

It was very, I think it was the same sound effects that they used in Cybermen.

Yeah, in Battersea Power Station.

Oh, yeah.

So I have a couple of things to say about that.

It's interesting that Jex basically wants to determine his own goodness or badness and he sort of carries that through.

He doesn't give the gunslinger the chance to have his revenge.

He takes his own life at the end, which is a really, yeah, that's a morally complex thing because did he get his comeuppance or not?

Yeah.

Yeah, he gets to go out on his own terms.

And it is expressed in a way like he says that he is relieving he's relieving the gunslinger of the guilt of killing another person.

So he does say that I'm not going to make you continue with this war. going to end it for you.

[16:35]

But he does escape on his own terms.

He still decides on his own atonement.

The jury is out on how self- serving that is.

Yeah.

He gets to have his cake and exploded too.

But then his TikTok.

But then that scene that I was talking about before continues because after the doctor has rejected Jex's kind of self-assessment, then we get the talk about what happens to the Carla in the afterlife.

And that's kind of beautiful and poetic.

And it is a way for him to express the guilt that he is feeling.

Like he, he does feel the weight of all of the people that he's wronged.

I do agree and I think, you know, it really sort of echos and brings to mind Dante's purgatory.

It's just, you know, slightly sort of revised where you're climbing a mountain, except here you're carrying souls, you know, that you've robbed in the meantime, until you're finally sort of expunged of those sins.

[17:42]

But I think one of the things that sort of um, maybe undermines it for me, one's about motivation and ultimately it's about resolution as well.

In terms of motivation, the doctor is a war criminal and let's not pretend he isn't because he is, but he's the war criminal who regrets.

He absolutely regrets his choices.

Whereas, you know, Carla X has stated that he's almost proud of what you did.

You know, half of the population were decimated, so that makes it, what, 5%, Nathan?

Is that right?

Yeah, yeah, that is pretty bad.

I don't think decimate really has to mean 10%, but I do think it's a problem quoting another fraction in the same sentence.

Didn't they watch the sound of girls?

But he's a war criminal who actually thinks he's a hero.

You know, I ended the war, he says.

And that motivation is something that I don't think quite, you know, leaves him like, yes, he is fearful of the afterlife, his, you know, his own gods and his own punishment, et cetera, in the afterlife.

But there's something that doesn't quite pay off.

[18:43]

And if we sort of jump now to act 3 in the way that sort of pans out.

The dilemma that's set up isn't, I don't feel particularly well served in the way that um, Jex basically um, kills himself.

One is sort of adds 20 minutes to the plot after which, uh, you know, the the gun slinger should have shot Jex, uh, at the border there.

So it sort of feels a bit like padding it unearned.

But the doctor's plan of, you know, getting the, you know, this war criminal away to then, you know, perhaps go somewhere else only for the fight to continue, isn't a resolution, is a deferment.

There's something missing there in terms of, well, what is that redemptive, you know, the doctor is a moral force.

What is his plan?

Ultimately, I don't think it sort of reaches that, that sort of that it does in day of the doctor, where we have the absolute, you know, one most wonderful moments of the doctor's life where he actually does save the day and he saves it on his own terms, which is, you know, to that higher spiral standard.

That doesn't happen here.

And and the suicide is just an easy narrative way to finish up and wrap up this really complex Gordian knot of a philosophical and ethical dilemma, I feel.

[19:54]

I just don't think the show has ambitions to properly resolve that.

I think that it deliberately presents us with a moral issue where there isn't a very clear answer and where the characters themselves differ in how it should be handled.

And I think, when the gunslinger talks about what Jex did, he suggests that that was honourable behaviour, and so he's in a sense satisfied by it.

But that's just one opinion, you know, and it's hard to believe that that's the doctor's opinion.

I mean, the doctor very gracelessly agrees to go with the plan, I think.

I think he's visibly unhappy with the plan to let Jex go and he's angry with him whenever he speaks to him because he's not on board with it.

[20:55]

But that is part of what I like.

This is the reason that I liked it, and I think the reason that you don't like it, Stephen, is it feels like an extension of the themes of the episode where the doctor sees himself in Carla X. And so he can't bring himself to loathe what he did because the doctor did the same thing and the doctor is racked with the same guilt about what he did.

And so letting Jex go to when deferring it for another day is kind of what just the doctor has done. just like kind of lived with it and moved on.

Yeah, that's a really good point actually.

Yeah.

I guess, I guess for me, it just, it set up those things.

I think, Nathan, you're probably right.

Doctor Who, as a show, doesn't really get a chance to do that, although it does it in isolated incidents.

I think the Beast Blow does it.

I think the day the doctor absolutely does it, where, you know, the day is saved and saved in, you know, to the highest possible moral standard that the doctor should on his best day, you know, ascribe to us as the promise rather than perhaps a person.

But it reminds me of something actually that going back to my grad days.

[21:58]

Hamlet and his problems is an essay written by TSL in 1919.

And he talks about how Hamlet has an enormous structural problem in the sense that it brings up all of these, you know, complicated, you know, depth psychological aspects, but it doesn't resolve them.

It doesn't find the narrative framework and what he calls the objective correlatives, with which to pay off on those and resolve them adequately.

And that's kind of what I feel happens here.

We have these incredible, you know, wonderful, you know, arguments, philosophical, ethical, um, you know, I've, I've really come to, uh, admire the craft and the art with which the stories put together.

We saw Met segment we haven't talked about yet, but my god, this is one of those beautiful looking Doctor Who stories there ever has been.

And I think all of that sort of has so much promise, but for me, and maybe it's just, again, Pete.

This is just the way that I react to it and it's different to the way that you've reacted to it.

I feel like there isn't that satisfactory, you know, narrative structure through which that problem and that dilemma is ultimately resolved in a satisfying way.

[22:59]

Whereas, I do find that in the beast below.

And I do find that absolutely in the day of the doctor.

It's interesting because when we did our god complex podcast, obviously, also written by Toby Wickhouse.

I think Conrad said exactly the same thing.

Yeah, that it's muddy, that it's not quite sure what it's trying to say.

But I think here the difference is that we have an intractable moral problem and the episode doesn't try and resolve it in any kind of overt way.

And in fact, the resolution is entirely about the gunslinger, isn't it?

It's kind of like, what does the gunslinger do?

You know, because we've got, we've got a kind of happy ending.

Like, the doctor says something like you might have no role in peace, but you could protect it.

And then, then don't we can't, to him being zany and talking about the dogs and monkeys, set up into space and we're all off on jolly adventures and stuff now because it's been resolved.

[24:01]

And then we get the sort of that weird mythic thing where the gunslinger turns into this sort of mythic protector.

Absolutely.

And, and, you know, I talked earlier about the 3, you know, well, 2 foils, but perhaps all foils for one another, the doctor, Carla Jex, and the gunslinger.

These are all variations on the archetype of the stranger, which is no stranger in itself to the Western genre, right?

The, the, you know, man in the white hat arrives in your town, does most amazing and wonderful things.

And then before you can thank him or even asking why he disappears into the sunset.

That's the doctor.

That's also now Carla Jackson.

That's also the gunslinger.

There's a thematic resonance that sort of ties those 3 characters together, each of whom have a different sort of moral and philosophical framework, but they ultimately serve as protectors to the innocent.

I think I think that's also really wonderful, Pete.

Something that I perhaps missed that 1st time around, but you know, I really, really appreciated this time round.

[25:13]

Let's talk about this as a Western.

We started to allude to that a little bit.

I mean, it works as a Western in the sense that it is a mysterious stranger arrives and solves our problems and then goes or 3 mysterious strangers.

And in fact, we do get some weird confusions among the roles, don't we?

The voiceover sounds like it's talking about the doctor at the very beginning of the episode.

Then we have the confusion between the doctor and Carla Jex, where Jex actually says, I'm the doctor at one point. then we discover she wasn't talking about the doctor at all, but the gunslinger.

So it works as a Western in all sorts of ways.

But where is this shot?

El Maria.

In Spain.

Do they have a Western town lying around in Spain?

Yeah.

It's a Hollywood set. the leftovers of the Spaghetti Western genre films.

So, yeah.

[26:15]

It's amazing.

Yeah, it looks fantastic.

Yeah, yeah. incredible.

I mean, I'd have been happy if they just went into the studio and set up a flat of the last chance salute.

But I mean, they don't even do that in the gunfighters that we thought the gunfighters looked impressive at the time because we were in a big studio.

We're riding horses around and stuff like that.

But this is massive.

Actually, the gunfighters also includes the doctor in a white hat coming into town.

But this is huge, this location.

It just looks so convincing and so real.

And the director, and it's all, yeah, well, he, he only does things in series seven.

He's just here for this series and then he never comes back.

That's right, isn't it?

That's right.

Yeah. and he is amazingly good I think.

He's got a terrific sense of what he's putting in the frame.

Um, I guess you call it Miseonsen.

But thank you, James.

[27:19]

That's French for putting in the frame.

But I think because there is a big moral question here, it's served by a big backdrop.

So the fact that it's got production value, and that's played out against something which looks quite grand, really helps the episode.

It wouldn't have worked in a corner of the studio.

No, no.

I think it just looks amazing.

Absolutely.

Epic is the word that comes to mind.

It's epic in terms of its direction.

There's somewhat wonderful and incredible twilight shots or whether it's early dawn.

I'm not really sure, but the sun on, on that slanted angle sort of with that golden hue coming through, you know, this one shot where the doctor's riding off into the distance on, uh, um, on Susan.

And I just think it looks... back and watch series one of Doctor Who, that would create some problems.

Or watch coupling.

But it also feels epic through its intertextuality.

[28:20]

Like, we have all seen those Saturday matinees film growing growing up on channel 7 or whatever the case is of, you know, the John Waynes and, you know, you know, the Clint Eastwood films and all the rest of it.

Like it, it hearkens back to those, that kind of genre, which, uh, you know, maybe feels a little bit old and, you know, my dad was a great fan of it, but I could never really get into it.

It sort of felt just that generation or two, you know, before me that I just couldn't resonate with, but I can definitely appreciate the cinematography of it.

But the other thing, of course, is like it feels epic through intertextuality around the very mythos of the Western.

And it's one of those things that continually surprises me that we're not talking about the 1700s.

We're talking about the 1880s and I think maybe it's 1890s that this story is set.

I mean, to put that into perspective, so October 1881, okay, corral, uh, the shootout, the okay corral, so the gunfighters, that's what that set, Pete.

Um, and Billy the Kid is shot in the same year in July of that year as well.

Now, to compare what's happening at the same time in terms of American literature, Henry James has just written the portrait of a lady.

[29:26]

And to think that those 2 things are happening at the same time. my mind.

And it really means that I think we're talking as much about a mythic setting or a mythic period than an actual time that existed.

And I think that really helps with this story as well.

So that it appears to be set in a Western rather than in America's history.

Exactly right.

Yeah, like in some sort of parallel, you know, Hollywood version of history.

Yeah.

It's funny because Doctor Who and the Western are such kind of distinct entities that it's odd and yet understandable that they've crossed over so few times.

Doctor in the Western is basically just the gunfighters and a town called Mercy.

And for all the reasons it doesn't work in the gunfighters.

It does work in a town called Mercia, because it takes all of those archetype characters, like the sheriff and stranger and does something interesting with them.

And it's a very difficult marriage of genres, which is why I appreciate this episode because it makes it work.

[30:27]

Special shout out to the sheriff who is hot as hell.

Yeah, clam chowder.

Yeah.

Ben Browder.

He's really good, I think.

And a kind of he gets to participate in the moral conversation, doesn't he?

The decision not to let the mob kill Jex is honouring Isaac's memory and Jex recognises that Isaac's death is another thing that he's responsible for.

I think he's a really fascinating character and Pete, you know, this idea of, you know, Doctor Who and Westerns and the sort of uneasy alliance between them.

I think Isaac really sort of is the crucible in which those discourses clash and meet.

So he is, as I said before, the sole figure for redemption and the advocate for redemption in this town of atonement.

Even though the town is called mercy.

He's the one who sort of stands up for what, in his own words, America is a land of 2nd chances, that there is something perhaps idealistic about what it is to be an American.

But at the same time, he talks about a war that had just finished, which I'm assuming is the Civil War, perhaps in America, and that this is also a society and a culture and a nation that is still under the surface, you know, shaped by that violence.

[31:43]

And that's very different in terms of the, um, the character of the doctor, which is, you know, that, you know, I think you've said Nathan many times in the past a long time ago.

But this is sort of like the Edwardian Victorian amateur scientist.

You know, it's a very, very different archetype and a very different character.

And I think the, um, you know, the shaping of an Isaac character who is clearly the town's hero prior to the doctor arriving, I think, uh, is so at odds in terms of, you know, he's a gunslinger and himself, against the doctor who, at least in my mind, shouldn't be picking up a gun, and that's one of the other gripes, by the way, that I have about this story.

Yeah, at some point.

But I think we're meant to.

I mean, it's it's absolutely playing on that and it's not made explicit, but it is that self-hatred, I think.

It is absolutely his reaction to someone who did what he did.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's absolutely true.

I agree.

No, I mean, all of those things, that sort of complexity and the ambiguity around, you know, the moral and ethical dimensions of this story, like really have made me reevaluate, just how, how complex it is.

[32:53]

Whereas before I genuinely thought, oh, You know, that was an episode of Doctor Who, I think it's a lot more thought out and complex than that now.

And actually, I can understand why this episode doesn't land for everybody.

I mean, I don't think anyone or many people would say that it was a failure of an episode, but I can't understand why it doesn't speak to people in the same way as it speaks to me.

So Adrian Scarborough's been in everything.

Yeah, so you were looking at his IMDb page before, I think.

James.

No, it wasn't, I just know it.

Of course you do, darling.

He was in the History Boys.

Everyone was in history boys. mystery wise, of course.

He wasn't one of the eponymous boys, though, was he?

No, you'd hope you'd hope not.

That would have been very American cast.

Was he in the theatre version as well or just film?

Not sure.

They were transplanted.

He was he was Pete in Gavin and Stacy.

[33:54]

Yep, yep.

We recognise him from Psychoville.

Yes.

He was Mr. Jolly in Psychoville?

There was the butler in the revamped upstairs downstairs doing a very thankless role taking over from Gordon Jackson in the original and doing it phenomenally.

Yeah, I mean, he's never not been working.

He is that guy.

He's very familiar.

And I remember kind of knowing who he was, but without being able to sort of put my finger on where I'd seen him before.

And he is incredibly great, I think, really quite an extraordinary performance.

It's that thing that Doctor Who does quite frequently, where you've got a really good guest role, and from the 1st moment that this actor appears, you're at your ease thinking they're absolutely going to perform this to the hilt.

Yeah, and I think, I mean, the character itself is super interesting.

I mean, when you give it to someone like that who's a supremely talented actor, it's essentially like a mild mannered Joseph Mengele.

[34:55]

It's incredible, incredible mishmash.

No, he's superb in this. absolutely, you know, and you need that, don't you?

Because if this is essentially the doctor's foil, I wouldn't say nemesis, but, you know, very much, you know, a twisted mirror image of what the doctor character is, and he's got to be someone who absolutely can bring it.

So he was wonderful, I agree.

I thought an interesting aspect of the character was the empathy.

So his ability to judge what Amy was like.

And that scene is actually really quite extraordinary because he nails Amy.

You know, you're a mother.

I think that complexity in that character is actually something that is a strength in this episode.

He has that empathy.

And he committed these crimes.

It actually makes his crimes even worse because he can actually appreciate how terrible what he did was.

[35:55]

And it's just why he's so conflicted.

Well, and I think, you know, the weight that he feels, you know, the burden that he expects to bear when he's climbing up that mountain, you know, like he's not bunging that on.

I think he clearly means that.

We've seen, you know, him actually being understanding and empathetic.

The interesting thing in that scene, though, is, again, that performance where he says, oh, I'm a father, I guess, in a way.

And then the reaction to that, because we find out that that's actually his father in the sense that he, you know, sawed someone's limbs off and kind of stuck things in their head.

In the same way.

Frankenstein.

Yeah, that's right. was the monster's father, which is why it's okay to call the monster Frankenstein.

But also, Frankenstein was the monster all along.

He was the monster monster.

Yeah, well, he's played by Kenneth Brenner.

But there's just a look on his face where it's clear that he's conscious of what a dreadful thing he's done that yet he can't stop congratulating.

[37:07]

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and again, I guess if we're trolly probleming it.

You know, it's a little bit like the, remember the variant of the trolly problem, which is where you get someone in a doctor's waiting room and you sort of carve them up, they're quite well, but you carve them up and give their vital organs to 5 other people.

So those 5 people survive and, you know, numerically we're ahead.

He's doing that.

Isn't he during the war?

He's taking a small number of people who are volunteers, he says.

Except they didn't know what they were volunteering.

Well, there's that.

And he ends the war in weeks and saves 1000000s and 1000000s of people by brutalising and torturing a small number of people.

And so there's another aspect and we've circled all the way background to the moral issues.

There's another kind of aspect to that, I think.

You know, he says he's a war hero.

We can't really believe that, although in the moment the performance looks like, well, it's one person's hero is another person's villain.

[38:15]

So he probably is a hero to his own people.

Yeah, but I mean, we know that he feels more deeply about what he's done than that, that sort of bravado, just based on how he reacts the rest of the time.

I love that scene between him and Amy because it does that thing which Good Doctor 2 always does where the villain has an independent relationship with the companion.

And it's always interesting because you almost always get a different facet of the villain when they're not dealing with the doctor.

Yeah.

Because the doctor has such moral certainty, not really in this episode, but usually he has such moral certainty, whereas the companion doesn't.

Yeah.

Let's talk about the arc.

The series 7 AR, and we've been talking about this.

Is there a line about how long it's been since Amy and Rory have seen the doctor?

No, but there is a moment at the end, isn't there, where the doctor tries to lure them into the TARDIS with like the weirdest and most upsetting Florana speech in the shows. which he've alluded to before.

[39:24]

Dogs in space?

Dogs in space.

It'll take it'll take us until flux to get there.

That's what happened to them and they travel back in time and became humanity's protectors.

All got wiped out.

It all fits together so neatly.

And they say no.

They say, no, we should go back home.

Our friends will be wondering why we're so much older than them.

And I think that this is something that basically every episode has properly done so far.

And it's such a great arc because it's nothing to do with space reasons.

It's just to do with how the characters feel about each other.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, that will doubtless pay off in a very satisfying way in episode five.

There are so many tropes about this episode, which are just interesting sort of throwaways, and are good for the characters.

[40:28]

There's that bit where the doctor is examining the bullet hole through the hat, and when he says, who would shoot a hat or whatever, he says, all that fez related outrage?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like this terrible, terrible villain who would shoot a hat.

It's so great.

And that's what I was saying earlier about it feels like it's a showrunner episode because even though it's dealing with quite big issues and playing them out against an epic backdrop, you know, successfully or less successfully, depending on where you're coming from.

It has time for all of these beautiful little moments which kind of colour the scenery.

This is what makes me appreciate this episode so much, is that it feels like an important episode for the show, even though it is absolutely a standalone episode.

There's that moment too, where we've had this really, really fraught and emotional scene where the doctor is going to kick.

Well, you know, kicks checks over the line.

And then we get Amy doing the sort of comedy, you know, you've been taking stupid pills or whatever since I last or stupid lessons as though what she says.

[41:32]

And then she, she's gesticulating with a gun, which then goes off twice and you've got Isaac kind of yelling at her. you know, and all of that stuff like, like, Whitehouse can be funny and can write funny dialogue. he really does it here, I think.

He's moffity in that he's wacky even when he's being serious.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

I was upset that the doctor didn't send Susan on her way with a jolly good smacked bottom.

I think that joke has, you know, aged like milk, hasn't it?

It's well intentioned, but it's absolutely not the way we would express it now.

So it's a bit of a shame.

I just like milk out in the western sun.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a bad thing.

But I do like that he speaks horse.

You know, like...

It's like it speaks for me.

Baby, pony.

Yeah, yeah.

He can speak horse, but he still misgenders them.

[42:33]

Yeah, no, no, no, that's right.

But he does call her Susan a bit later and say that's kind of cool.

All of that stuff too, like with them out in the wilderness, you know, being hunted down by the gunslinger trying to evade him.

There's one fantastic moment where the gunslinger shoots right near Isaac and Rory.

And Rory goes, I think he's seen us.

Which is just a perfect distillation of Rory, who is there to state the obvious.

But I mean, that's this episode all over.

It's funny and it's action packed and it has a moral dilemma and it's shot well.

I mean, what's not to love?

Yeah, yeah.

And it has some really extraordinarily good performances.

Even the lesser characters, like you were talking earlier about the scene where the boy want to get and the boy is really good, even though he's essentially got one scene and then a bizarrely extended goodbye scene with the doctor.

[43:34]

But I think the bizarrely extended goodbye scene is there to show that the doctor was right that he gets to be a kid at the end because the doctors prevented him from killing someone.

And the doctor gets something in that scene that he doesn't get in the scene where he's pushing jets over the line because, and I guess I'm thinking of this for the 1st time, but we were talking about it a little bit before.

That killing someone affects you.

It turns you into the kind of person that kills someone.

And that's not the primary problem with killing people, obviously.

Isn't it?

No.

So we have the doctor who looks like he's the kind of person who is going to allow Jex to be killed by the by the gunslinger, but he prevents the boy from being the same kind of person who would do that.

[44:37]

And so when we see the boy at the end, The boy is chilled, his face is relaxed, he's prettier.

He's just being a boy Yeah, yeah.

He gets to be a kid because he doesn't have the weight of having taken part in a lynch mob on his conscience.

I mean, Stephen, do you not think that's an effective thematic close?

No, it is in that regard, definitely.

And that's part of it that works for me, right?

So we have Amy being the moral censure, that resenters the doctor.

And that is, you know, from that point onwards, the doctor is the doctor that we should be expecting and should have, that conversation about, is, you know, is Jex really worth the risk of trying to save?

And he says, I don't know, but you are.

It's a superb doctor-ish moment because it speaks to the, you know, again, that sort of high moral standard that the doctor, um, as a promise, uh, should be kept to.

I guess my, my, I feel the shortcomings are, I kind of feel like we've seen this before, you know, the utilitarian choices has been something that we, you know, seen before, whether it's in Boomtown, as you say, or the beast below, and we'll see again in the day of the doctor in a much, much better way.

[45:43]

But also other things in terms of, you know, the doctor having, uh, needing to be, you know, re-centered in terms of his morality.

Well, isn't that something that, you know, see before in the runaway bride?

And then ultimately just the resolution itself doesn't match that sort of philosophical or ethical framework that the doctor has now come back to.

And that maybe is probably what doesn't quite suit well for me, those 2 those 2 things.

But it's still, you know, far more complex, far more nuanced, far more beautiful a story than probably I gave it 1st credit to.

So, yeah.

I think maybe it's the highlight of the 1st half of this season. agree with that.

[46:50]

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

You'll be back next week for an extremely slow alien invasion in the power of three.

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.

Stephen, where can people find you?

There is a backlog of episodes on the New to Who podcast, so you can find us at New to Who podcast.

We've taken a bit of a rest our world of recent times, but hope to be back in some point in the future.

Until next time, remember that you can support the podcast by buying a Braxa security software for your next escape pod.

Don't forget to use the offer code war crime at checkout.

Thank you very much for listening and good night.

Good night.

[47:51]

Good night.

Good seeing you.

That was Flight through Entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley, Stephen B. James Selwood and Peter Griffiths.

Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb.

This episode of mild mannered Joseph Mangola was recorded on the 20th of March 2022 and released on the 24th of April.

In a series with no two part stories, we probably won't get any pics of the week.

So if you've enjoyed our conversation about moral philosophy, and if you love things that are really, really funny, Please watch Michael Shows The Good Place.

It's tremendous.

I think we end it there.

What do you think?

You have to call this episode mild mannered mangalay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mild manner, Joseph Bengal.

I've already decided it.

It's a little bit on the nose for the episode title, but it's such a good, you know, it's such a good phrase. absolutely mentally saying title in my head as you said that.

[48:56]

Yeah.

And maybe if it's our mild mannered Joseph Mangler, that might be good or just mild mannered.

No, A works better, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I think so too.

Stephen, you did such a great job of articulating your slight misgivings with the episode. if I put you on the spot.

I didn't mean to put you on the spot at the end to go, well, do you not?

Now, do you know what?

This is exactly what I was preparing for.

Like, this is this is how, like, I watched that again for the 1st time in my 10 years with our conversation in mind and hoping that we would be able to sort of come to a better resolution and understanding than, you know, I just wasn't able to when we were talking at your birthday because I just had that initial impression in my mind.

It's funny, isn't it?

Because that the death is a cheat in a way.

I agree with you.

Like, I think it works on some level, but it also kind of solves the problem for us.

It's kind of like we're wrestling with a moral dilemma and then he kills himself anyway, so we don't have to worry about it.

[50:02]

And there are things to think about, you know, that are presented and all sorts of all that sort of thing.

Like I don't think Doctor Whoever comes down on the side of utilitarianism, really, does it?

Ultimately, no.

No.

And it's about character.

It's like virtue ethics almost.

It is what sort of person are you?

What sort of things would you be prepared to do?

Um, Yeah.

I mean, it's difficult to see a way that it would have ended. still addressing.

Yeah, yeah.

I think you kind of just have to do that And give him, if you give the doctor a motivation for doing it, which the show does, I think, successfully. and it preemptively comments on it as a cheat, you know, that you don't get to choose your own atonement speech.

That's a good point, actually.

And I haven't thought of that until you just said that then, Nathan.

I think that's true.

Maybe I need to watch it again and think about that.

But yeah, like that that time that I watched it just yesterday.

My, my impression was, again, the objective correlative is not there.

[51:07]

We're not able to contain the ethical, philosophical, you know, dimensions of of what's being, you know, explored here through the actual events of the narrative.

Yeah, which isn't, you know, I mean, if that, if that, if Hamlet has the same problem, you know, and that's not, yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. then that's that's not a huge fan.

Yeah, yeah.

It is, it's, it's, I think what Peter said about what we said about the God complex, about what Conrad said about the God complex, where I'm trying to create a coherent reading of it, and he says, actually, no, it's a mess.

And I think that maybe that is a White House thing.

Like, I, I, like, I think, you know, Widhouse would have been a better choice of showrunner than Chris Chipnall, but because he'd run a show before and all of that, even if it wasn't terrifically successful, but he'd run a genre show, you know, like he, he's funny, he's, but he's still not a Moffat or Russell, though, is he?

[52:15]

But in rare moments he can be.

Yeah, he can be good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, Chibnell doesn't have rare moments.

Although we were pretty positive about both of his, and I think he has 2 good episodes.

Dime sauce on a spaceship is so much fun.

It's great, isn't it?

And plus killing David Bradley.

It's the opposite of what Jody's doctor would do, which would be, oh, all right, see you next time or whatever.

And it's like Matt locks him in the thing and just lets missiles hit him.

I just think, woo hoo.

That's what I want Walk away unscathed space Nazi.

Actually, that's something that I forgot to mention, but this idea that, you know, the doctor would allow that to happen to, is it Saul?

Is the name's character?

Solomon.

Solomon, sorry, right?

Very Old Testament.

Um, you know, and his fate is very Old Testament as well, isn't it, really?

Like, that's, that again is, is an example of, again, the doctor being alone for too long or, you know, not having that constant companionship and what he, he does.

[53:19]

So maybe maybe that was sort of seeded in the previous episode as well.

Yeah, he's unobserved doing it.

None of none of the other characters know, but that's what he's done. that he's just let the missiles lock on.

But given the horrific scale of the genocide that we're talking about, isn't that funny?

Like it is, I think it's straightforwardly okay for the doctor to do that to Solomon, but I'm less happy with the doctor pushing Shara's Jek over the thing.

Shara's Jack?

That's what I called him.

Carla Jex. didn't realise.

I'm less happy about that.

Did I ever call him Sharon's Jack in the episode?

Okay, good.

But I'm less happy about that, you know, and in a way, they're very similar.

They're analogous situations.

So I wonder what that is.

On a related note, I'm happy that the gunslinger Carla Tech has named that because he's full of Carla Tech.

Yeah, so dumb, isn't it?

I think he should be TK.

[54:19]

But for some reason, the subtitles said he was Carla T-E-C-H, which I just think, oh, come on.

Really?

The great thing about the test, colour test.

The great thing about the subtitles was like that kept subtitling the horse, horse snorts. winning in the background.

Winnie.

Four snorts derisively.

You just misgendered her.

So good.