Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight to Entirety, the
only Doctor Who podcast that's really worried about having Richard
E. Grant living in our plumbing.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Brendan.
I'm James.
I'm Peter.
Well, it's the 1st episode of a new season, sort of.
And so the doctor's back on earth meeting his new companion for
the 1st time, sort of.
It's 2013.
We're living in a Wi-Fi soup and Habo Hotel is the biggest thing
on the internet.
And it turns out that the ringing in our ears is the bells of St.
John.
Or as I like to call it, what Claudia Bing did next.
Yeah, we finally have Celia, Emory, Star Wars, Celia, Emory.
Celia Emory of Bing, bing, bing, bing.
So she does actually fly one of those Naboo spaceships in the
Phantom Menace.
Her son Angus is 0 on Star Trek prodigy.
So this is a pretty serious kind of... was her grandmother and the
tomorrow people.
Yeah, yeah.
Every scene.
She was the Clara of the tomorrow people.
She was Taiso.
Such a versatile actress.
Yeah, I feel like Celia Imory's casting in this is Moffat going
all right, yes, I should have given Olivia Coleman more to do
here.
Have Celia Emory. being just fabulous and evil and delicious.
So she is kind of the Miss Foster of this episode because I think
everyone more or less says that this is like an RTD season
opener.
Yeah, totally.
Like, it's a modern day story.
We get to see what Clara's life is like through a montage at the
beginning before, you know, the doctor gets involved.
We've got major London landmarks.
Yeah.
I thinking about that.
Is it actually the 1st time we visited modern day recognisable
central London since aliens of London, World War III?
Central London.
Yeah, recognisable St.
Paul's Cathedral, Charlotte.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, I remember at the time thinking that I missed
London during the early Moffat era around about this time, that
there was something, there was something sort of +and optimistic
and exciting about having Doctor Who and having Doctor Who in
recognisable London rather than somewhere cheaper or somewhere
kind of less interesting.
That's right, the sidemen marching down the steps of, you know
Chichester cathedral. wouldn't quiet work with it.
Yes, of course, this is pre-break, isn't it?
You know, I think that's the thing, James, because when Doctor 2
1st came back, it was all that kind of new labour, kind of a
British brand and all of that, whereas, you know, after 2010, it
had all kind of soured slightly, so we just didn't visit London as
much.
Although this was produced around when London had the Olympics.
Oh, yeah.
And there's been a lot of talk since the Brexit vote, it's like
you know, in 2012, all eyes were on the UK and we were this
shining beacon of culture and sport and multiculturalism.
And then 4 years later, this happens.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think that sort of attitude and that sort of pride is sort
of typified by the scene where they land on the south bank and the
doctor pulls out his fez and he's taken back because you see
buskers on the south bank all the time in London.
But it's a confident thing of showing off Doctor Who in its 50th
anniversary year, showing off, you know, this is a British
institution, and this is a proudly British institution.
And when I was rewatching this episode, I remembered that scene
coming up and I'm like, I want to see if this is smug, if this is
too much.
And I'm like, no, I think this is pitch just right.
This is pride in the series.
Yeah.
Not, um, this isn't a bragging moment, but this is a we're here
and this show is fabulous moment.
I was kind of taken back to Rose by that scene on the South Bank.
But I also think there's something to be said for going back as
far as things like the invasion and the war machines.
And also, given the great intelligence connection, the web of fear
obviously, you're going to be in central London.
Yeah, yeah.
So the web of fear had been just rediscovered in the previous few
months or something?
I don't think we knew then officially.
Ah.
BBC New, but weird.
Ah, so hence Moffatt knew, which is why we're doing this sort of
thing.
I mean, the shard.
And I remember seeing the shard for the 1st time and actually not
really believing it and like, I can't remember when I had
previously been to London, but it was a few years before the shard
existed.
And so there's the shard in this.
And then, you know, 5 years later, I think is the most recent time
I've been in London, thanks to various circumstances beyond our
control.
And just seeing the shard down the end of the street.
It's so strange, isn't it?
Our CBD. and point at it and go, shut.
Well, it's our CBD in Sydney is just full of skyscrapers like any
kind of New World City.
And London is surprisingly different. increasingly so.
Yeah, yeah, but, you know, in really upsetting way.
But also it's a South Bank skyscraper and you don't get them.
Right.
There's very few skyscrapers south of the river.
I think it's a grading inclusion because it is like the way that
Russell included the Gherkin in Christmas invasion and that that
clock tower in aliens of London.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, with a backwards block face.
Whatever it's called.
Oh, and you know, like putting unit under the Tower of London and
having the Thames flood things house the Raknos and all of that
sort of stuff.
We talked in our rise of the psidemen episode about having all of
the population of London walk into Battersea Power Station to be
sawn up.
You know, like all of that stuff was great.
I really, really missed it because I think at the time I said, this
is Russell Enchanting London, you know, making London a place
where lots of Doctor Who stories have happened.
And so it's nice to see Moffatt borrowing that as well.
It's the double-edged sword.
Much like the shard.
You know, you see Moffat kind of go, okay, I'm going to show you
what regional England looks like with Ledworth and what have you.
Later Chris Chipner will say, well, what about Sheffield?
And Moffatt, of course, will say, well, what about Bristol?
And, you know, it's kind of like, yes, all these places, their
centres of culture and learning and what have you.
But a lot of international audiences look at it and go, where's
London?
Yeah.
You know, and I think I think that's a great shame.
I haven't been to Sheffield, but I have been to Bristol and
Bristols. bloody wonderful.
And you've never been to me.
That was the previous season.
But the, I mean, you know, Ledworth isn't a real place and it is a
village from a storybook.
I mean, it is, you know, series 5 moves Doctor Who out of the real
world.
Yeah, but London of Doctor Who is not... is a romanticised London
because it's based around all these landmarks as well.
It's just trying to do that in other places.
An international audience doesn't recognise it as much as London.
It's like torchwood making can't have happened.
It's why rom-coms are set in New York and not in, I don't know
Philadelphia.
Yeah.
No, Antonio Badderas.
Tom Hanks, laugh a minute.
I think that that shot of Matt Smith riding the motorcycle up the
side of the shard is absolutely superb.
And, you know, I was actually expecting it to be a little bit
crummy just from my memory of it, but I think it just falls on the
right side of what we're able to do.
There was a feeling I had coming back to this season that it was a
season of excess.
You know, the show's on a high.
It's building up to the 50th anniversary.
I had a feeling, oh, you know, there's going to be moments where
they go too far and they should have been someone tapping Stephen
on the shoulder and saying, no, rein it in, rein it in.
But I think that scene of going up the shard is a great example of
the fact that he was still in control because now, 1st of all, it
would have been very difficult to financially afford the shot of
the doctor breaking through the glass on the motorcycle.
Yeah, yeah.
But I think the bigger reason they don't do it is it would have
been irresponsible to show it, you know, because that is an
imitable stunt that a child could do on attempt to do on their
bike.
And it's like, no, no, no, we're going to do it with sound effects
and we're going to show that it's dangerous because there's going
to be a wind whipping through and whatnot.
It's like, okay, no, that is actually some very subtle thought
going into that.
But as a sitcom writer.
Moffatt must know the importance of the offscreen comedy smashing
noise.
You know, like that is, and it is properly funny.
Spearhead from Space.
But, you know, then this Kiselet comes into the office and says
sorry about the draft.
Yeah, it's great.
And I think that in series seven, the technology is caught up with
the HD as well.
You've had a couple of rupee effects in the previous seasons
through no faults of their own, but they're kind of, they're
writing the ship now.
Yeah, I mean, I think this is slightly ropey and no one watching
it.
Doctor Who rope.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No one watching it is going to think that Matt Smith is really
riding a motorcycle vertically up the side of the shard.
Probably.
Oh, you've destroyed it.
They actually laid the shard down.
And tilted the camera.
It came in when they were constructing it before it was hoisted
up.
Yeah, okay, fair enough.
Bert Ward was actually hanging behind him in the 1st take.
Suddenly Davis.
Jr.
I never saw any of this on confidential.
Well, you see, it's only on the original broadcast version and
then they cuddle that out for DVD and they don't put in enough
Danny Hargreaves.
Yeah.
It's no such thing as enough, Tannyhark. quite.
Wait, where was I?
This is also obviously, as an RTD season opener, our chance to
meet a new companion.
So how do we feel about how Clara ends up coming across in this
1st episode?
I don't hate Clara in this 1st episode?
And at some undetermined point in the future?
I do stop liking her, but not here.
Yeah.
Well, as Brendan puts it.
Which Clara?
Yeah.
All of them.
Yeah.
Like there are so many Claras.
Yeah, like I've always been of the opinion that Clara is written
as a different character in each of her 3 series and always
brilliantly played by Jenna, but I adore this one.
She is funny.
She's capable of, you know, being a bit caustic without being
mean.
There's that beautiful bit, which is, I think, is only a 2nd or
3rd line when she's sort of gently pushing Angie.
Oh, have you done this?
Have you done that?
And Angie says, you're not my mum and Clara says, and I'm not
trying to be.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's a really sweet and sensitive moment that tells you what's
happened before she has to explain it to the doctor at the end.
Yeah, I think Jenna makes a great impression this episode.
And somehow, you know, manages to do all those likeable things
without becoming unreal.
There's a lightness of touch to the characterisation, which maybe
gets lost in later seasons with different versions of the
character.
Yeah.
I think that she's the absolutely generic companion in this
episode and this season, and I don't mean that as a bad thing.
I think she's, she's kind of Sarah Jane Smith redux in the fact
that she just, she comes in, she does all the perfect companion
things.
She's played really well.
She doesn't have a whole lot of character, and that's actually a
classic series companion.
It's powered by the performance.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that that's it.
I'm not super convinced that we have lots of different Claras
because I do think that Jenna is holding it all together with her
performance and, you know, how many different nieces do we have?
And Tegans and so on.
You know, because we're not riding to a sort of template.
Moffat wants his companions to be smarter than the doctor on the
whole.
And here we have Clara calling him you Clever Boy, which she's
done in her previous 2 appearances, which kind of, it's not
patronising, but it is her putting herself in a sort of situation
where she can assess him and where she calls him a boy.
And the bit at the end where she says, actually, no, I'm not
running off with you. come back at 7 tomorrow, and we'll see how
that plays out in the next episode.
So Moffatt wants both Amy and Clara to be in charge of the doctor
in some sort of way or to be better at some things than the
doctor.
It's how he evens up the traditional doctor companion imbalance.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We're stuck in a situation where the lead is male and then the
secondary character is female.
And in fact, he tends to de-emphasize the doctor.
I think a bit in this story.
There's even a line in this story about, she's very intelligent
but not very good with computers.
Yeah.
Like it's clearly stated this is an like an intelligent, clever
person.
I have to say, I mean, I do enjoy this episode very much, but
that's one of my problems with that.
And possibly one of my problems with Clara in this episode that
this episode is all about sort of middle class technophobia.
You know, there's an internet and people can watch you.
They can track you down on social media and things like that.
But the factions of their webcam.
Well, exactly.
I mean, I think that does happen.
But see, QED, yeah.
But the fact, I mean, that's quite funny.
I think Moffat's poking fun at himself as well slightly with
that.
But the fact that he projects out onto Clara and initially makes
her a bit of a dunce with technical things is a bit kind of ho
hum.
I actually do know people.
So Clara's, what, 24?
I know people who are kind of bad at technology, even though
they're sort of substantially younger than me.
It isn't unbelievable.
Yeah.
Well, I was just going to say, like, usually in these kind of
things, it'll be the younger character who gets the technology and
the older character who's left floundering going, huh?
What?
I actually see that as a nice subversion.
And I think what makes it work is Clara treats the computer like
it's the stupid thing.
You know?
And there is a line in the draft script where when she's
struggling it.
She says, what even are you?
A television you can type on?
Who needs that?
Yeah, it is another one of these things where Moffatt is
absolutely a middle-aged guy who doesn't know how the internet
works.
Oh, no, he introduced the internet.
Impress gang.
He did too.
Has anyone checked with Chris bid me to see if he lapped this up?
It is very funny.
Yeah.
I've mentioned before that with Asylum of the Daleks, I was
fortunate enough to go see that at the BFI, and there was a chat
afterwards with Matt, Karen and Arthur, and it came up that Matt
Smith hates Twitter.
And that's where the, the, the line about you knew nothing about
computers 2 hours ago and you just made a joke about Twitter.
Clara's like, it's people screaming into the voice.
There's such vehemence in the way he pronounces the word Twitter.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think someone asked Karen about her social media.
I think she had quite an active Instagram at the time.
And Karen's like, oh, do you guys have Instagram?
And I was like, oh, I've got an Instagram, but I don't really use
it.
And that's like, no.
No, I've got I've got Facebook.
I might get Instagram one day.
I'm not getting on.
Twitter.
He's a man after my own.
Did Moffat get hounded off Twitter?
Yeah, that was another thing.
Yeah, which is probably another place that like come from a people
screaming into the void.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. a huge gentleist.
You're very attractive.
Yes, special to us.
Speaking of people screaming into the void.
That teaser, which is really great.
All I can see as it pulls out, is it next to the central guy who's
been talking throughout the teaser on his left is Scotty Hancock.
My friend's cut.
I was thinking, because I think he was the production secretary at
the time.
And so that's why he's making a brain of Morbius style cameos.
But I was thinking, I must zoom with Scott one of these days so I
can personalise the experience. just edited into the episode.
It is one of the things that makes this not a pure RTD season
opener, is that the actual threat is pure Moffat, isn't it?
It's, you know, don't click on the thing.
There's this thing that inhabits something that is around you
every day.
There's a thing about it that causes you to have a catchphrase
when it attacks you.
Whatever you do don't click.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Good advice.
But it is that, you know, I don't know where I am.
And it is a sort of weird conceptual thing, like some things
living in the Wi-Fi.
It's not, you know, rhino policeman or anything like that.
The thing is, when I watched it 1st back in 2013, I thought, oh
this is a bit silly, and Moffatt doesn't really understand what Wi
Fi is.
It's not living in the Wi-Fi, actually, living in the internet
sitting here like this.
And, you know, I misunderstood what the spoonheads were.
I'm like, oh, so what Clara's router has suddenly grown legs and
just like, no, no, no, it is explained in the story.
I'm not going there, James.
How do English people?
How do we English?
She would be amused.
How do English people manage to call it a rooter with a straight
face?
That's the thing I love about Australian English.
We call a root, a root, and a router, a router.
To differentiate.
Yeah. very strange.
And the combination of the 2 is a roto.
Yeah, I want death to the dialect style root problem.
I think we're getting the beginning of his sort of weird doing CGI
manipulations with heads on the aliens as well.
So you've got the sort of weird spoonheads turning around.
Later on, we'll have people who can sort of zip their heads
diagonally and stuff like that.
I mean, all of this is very morford.
It is, I have to say, even though, again, I'm at pains to say I do
enjoy this episode, it feels slightly warmed over, the concepts in
this.
I think, um, it all feels like a bit silent in the library.
The spoonheads are a bit nude-like. and I don't know where I am
sort of took me back there as well.
It all feels a little bit like he didn't have a very strong idea
for the episode.
No.
It's super thin, isn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah, but I think that's also part of the RTDness of it.
Yeah.
In that RTD's season openers are deliberately thin.
Especially partners in crime.
Especially partners in crime, especially Smith and Jones.
Like, Smith and Jones ends 10 minutes before the ending.
So you can have the character moment.
They're there to serve a purpose, which is to be accessible and to
get someone involved, who doesn't necessarily want to get bogged
down with all of the backplot.
Yeah.
There's an accessibility about these season openers, which maybe
goes missing in later seasons and I think that's the right
choice.
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree.
The other thing, though, I mean, the RTD openers all have
reasonably thin plots, but one thing that they do have that this
doesn't have is kind of interesting characters.
There's a guy, is he called Marla, the guy with glasses, the other
guy, the other guy who's called Alexi.
So there are 2 people who are in the office with Miss Kisler.
But Miss Kislett's really the only person there, and we don't
really get to meet anyone else at all.
And when you think about, say, partners in crime.
Is it Stacy, that Donna goes to visit?
Yeah, there's Stacy.
Penny.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you've got Sylvia and the girls.
Yeah, yeah, being reintroduced. like there's lots of fun people
and it's not what Moffatt does here at all.
There's nearly no one at all.
We get to see Angie and Artie and I think their father, Mr
Maitland, whose 1st name I don't even know.
They've got very, very minor roles to just...
I don't know.
There's a couple of lines each, you know.
Captain.
He's from the sense, right?
That's actually part of my issue with this episode, is that it's
not quite as fun as you anticipate it will be.
And so we've got Celia Emory of Bing, Bing, Bing, and Bing.
And she's fantastic, but I think the character's a bit thin.
And so she's not quite as fantastic as I thought she might be.
Yeah.
This feels a lot like season 24 to be.
Which you all know out there, dear listeners, I love season 24.
And when you say, you know, Clara being a sort of generic
companion and being a Sarah Jane, I actually see her a lot like
Mel.
She's slightly sarky, but she's there to have fun. and she's
totally happy to say to the doctor, you're being stupid now, you
know, you're being stupid and waving your fez around and whatnot.
But yeah, in terms of the supporting characters, yeah, Marla and
Alexi are not terribly interesting.
There's a line that I'm very glad Moffatt cut out, which during
the bit where she's manipulating Marla to make him more
compliant.
He basically wanders off and she just moves to herself, who knew
he was gay when he came in?
And now, but now she's convinced him he has a wife and whatnot.
And I think Moffatt's idea was she can change anything about you.
But there's no record I could find of why that line was removed
but I think it was probably removed because he went, actually, no
hold on. terrible.
That's kind of terrible.
And there's something he'll do next week as well, which I will
cover at the time, which again was cut out of the script.
And I don't know from reading it if it was Moffatt or Neil Cross
but someone kind of went, oh, actually, no, I can see what you're
going for there, but listen.
Yeah.
It does give Celia a bit of a chance to shine.
And it's kind of like a lot of what you see Celia in.
She has, of course, played villains in the past, but quite often
even when she's Claudia Bing, you know, she's only a villain in so
much as she's the antagonist to Eddie, but it's not like Eddie's a
nice person.
You know what I mean?
Claudia Bing's probably altogether more professional.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, Celia is most famous for acorn antiques, probably
but has done sort of period dramas since then and what have you
and is usually sort of a kindly matron or aunt sort of figure.
So to have her here unrelentingly sinister.
While still being Celia Imri.
You know, it's really, it's really powerful and she has that
wonderful line of no one loves cattle more than Burger King.
That's so good, isn't it?
And it's a, well, it's amazing that they could get away with
pointing at pointing at a brand like that.
That it.
Other hamburger places are also available.
Yes.
Can we just talk briefly about how her character ends that final
scene?
It's heartbreaking?
Well, it's the sort of thing that isn't horrible if you're a kid
watching it.
Right.
But it's conceptually really terrifying if you're an adult.
It's the same thing as in the snowmen's note with the corrupting
influence of the great intelligence on the children.
Yeah, that's right.
It's also Emery's performance, I think, in that scene when she's
being the little girl because she's so good.
And that could come off ridiculous.
That could easily have flopped that scene, I think.
But I don't think it does.
And it is this sort of terrifying thing where a nine-year-old girl
suddenly wakes up and her parents are dead and she's an old woman
you know.
What's also quite deep about that scene is you get everyone else
in the office 1st and they're just kind of like, oh, hold on.
I came in to fix the loop.
Yeah, that was Marl, I wasn't.
Yeah, that's why I can't even fix the loop.
Where am I?
It's like, oh, you soldiers, can you help me?
And it's kind of like, okay, these people have maybe lost a couple
of months.
The person responsible for it has lost more.
And so there's a sense of sacrifice in what she's done.
But also a sense of justice and it's kind of, it's kind of
horrible and kind of uncomfortable in that way that Doctor Who
does, where it's like sometimes a villain will get a comeuppance
and you go, actually was that, was that what we should have done?
Was that what should have happened to Solomon in dinosaurs on a
spaceship?
Yes.
When, yeah.
When Terence Dix writes the novelisation of the sun makers, he has
the workers regret throwing the gatherer off the roof.
They're like, it went a little bit far.
Yeah, nearly as funny.
No, what a class trader.
Yeah, yeah.
The thing is, he doesn't condemn, but he kind of goes, these
people are human and that guy is human even if he's a horrible
monster, you know what I mean?
Just in a couple of lines, it's showing moral complexity, as well
as character, as well as giving Celia, as you say, a great moment
which she pictures perfectly.
It would have been so easy to overdo.
Yeah. especially seeing as so far, you know, her character has
been quite arch.
But as an actress, she just really strips it down to a very
believable.
And as you say, very, very scary level, which to a kid, a kid
would understand what happened, but a kid hasn't grown into an
adult, so doesn't know what's been lost.
Yeah, really.
Yeah.
I mean, she was going to kill Alexi after he came back from his
holiday.
Oh, yeah.
My conscience says that we should probably kill him.
I also like the fact that at the end, even though I have slight
misgivings about the episode before that, I really like that it's
got one of those moth at twists, which you don't see coming where
the doctor who rides up the side of the shine. turns out to be a
spoonhead and he's got the helmet on, so you don't know.
It's vintage Moffat.
Yeah, yeah.
And something I also love about it, because I'd actually forgotten
that watching this time. something I love about it as well is when
he's riding up there, I'm like, Clara is all alone and dying. you
know, and then, of course, no, she's not.
You know, he won't leave her alone.
And then when he knows she's safe.
He kind of just rubs her head a bit and walks off.
And my reading of that is him going, I've saved her this time.
And she's not in danger now and I can go away.
And then obviously a day or so later, he's like, well, if she's
safe now, she, you know, we can be friends.
Yeah.
Matt is one of the finest actors to ever play the doctor and he
just picks out such nuance.
Great.
It's really nice, isn't it?
It's interesting that one of the ways that the misdirect works is
that that's the doctor's hero moment for the episode and it gets
given to the spoonhead disguise as the doctor and even Murray is
doing the kind of hero music as he rides up the skyscraper and
everything.
So it surprised me as well.
I'd forgotten too.
And you get a proud bear holding a bag of chips, getting to be
celia.
So great.
It's my drink.
I was like, good.
Lord.
He's really great, isn't he?
I really like one of the classic moth at lines there.
Your dad called mainly about the government.
He's very cross at it.
That is every phone call I have with my dad.
It's great.
It's so funny, isn't it?
And he's even, so he's reading the answering machine messages that
have happened while Clara was asleep.
And there's one from Angie as well and he repeats this, you know
so just get off her back, will you?
Like, he's really funny reading that stuff out and it is classic
Moffatt sitcom stuff, isn't it?
There's another bit that I'm glad Moffat cut out there.
Which is, you know, um, Clara's unconscious.
The doctor puts her to bed and then sits outside because it's the
gentlemanly thing to do.
In the original script, Clara wakes up and she's like, whose
nightdress is this?
And the doctor says, Martahari's.
She gave it to me.
She said it was her only one.
I have no idea why.
And I'm just like, yeah, but Moffatt realises the implication is
that the doctor has like undressed Clara put her in and he's kind
of gone, maybe not.
In fact, that's adorable, that scene where he sort of parked
himself out the front in his mobile phone and he's sitting in the
chair in front of it and stuff and they're chatting via the
window.
I think that is really, really terrific.
And she kind of says, you know, you're guarding me, aren't you?
And he says yes.
That's really.
Yeah, it's really good.
And he's invented the quadricycle.
And he's included the quadricycle.
Max delivery of that is so perfect.
Honey.
Oh my god.
What an idiot.
It's so funny.
I have that bizarre little set piece afterwards, which doesn't
quite fit, but it's quite fun where they're suddenly in the
cockpit of a plane which she prevents from crashing.
I was thinking, when was the last time the doctor was in a cockpit
of a plane?
Time flight.
This is better than time slide.
Yes it is.
Again, I really like that.
I think that's really terrific.
We just have one scene in the plane.
And I think it's nearly a hitchhiker's quote. isn't isn't it?
It's the, can you fly a plane?
No, neither can I, all right, let's do it together.
Is that it?
Yeah, when they take manual control of the heart of gold in
hitchhikers.
Zaphord, Ford, and trillion have that exchange.
Yeah, yeah.
And then from across the room, Arthur says, I can't fly it
either.
No one asks.
Okay.
I guess.
I guess that.
Now, the thing is, as I was watching that plane scene this time
I'm like, I know now why I like this episode so much, this feels
like the colour series of the Avengers.
Like it's fast paced.
It's frenetic.
You don't see them travelling to from location to location a lot.
And when they do, you know, it's exposition about what they're
going to do. like when Steed and Emma are in the Bentley.
It's like, oh where are we going?
We're going here.
Why are we going there?
They serve really good crumpets, steed.
Okay.
There's a dead scientist.
You know.
Do you think that that's the dynamic that Moffat was going for
with the doctor and Clara in this season?
I think quite possibly, yes.
And I think that feeds into the quasi-romantic element of that.
And I think the quasi-romantic element works this time because
it's not Amy who is engaged to Rory, but throwing herself at the
doctor.
It's a young woman who is confident in her own attraction and
sexuality, like when she thinks the doctor is coming onto her.
Her message is basically, don't assume, but also don't not
assume.
Yeah, yeah.
It's kind of just down boy.
Yeah, and so there is a real sort of quirk between them.
And then when she's sort of flirting with him, but also being rude
to him in the cafe, and he's just like, I do not have, what is, I
uh, uh, uh, with...
Coffee.
Okay.
And again, that's very Avengers as well, in that Steed would flirt
with Mrs. Peel, and she kind of rebuff him, and occasionally she'd
flirt with him, and he'd just look up like, what?
I'm sorry?
Can we, uh, okay, no, you're hitting someone now.
All right, fine.
It's really the whole dynamic is the reverse of the tenant doctor
is it, where he was sexually confident and the companions would be
a bit taken aback.
Whereas now it's always the companions who are sexually confident
the doctor's like, um...
I did have one more thing to mention.
Now, of course, as we mentioned earlier, the BBC were aware that
the web of fear was coming back, but by this point, the problems
had happened, which I'll get into.
But if you look at Miss Kislett's badge, it's 2 circles.
Her what?
Her back.
Oh, dear.
If you look at Miss Gislet's brooch.
Peter.
You've got a ring inside another ring.
So oh, oh.
Oh.
And Doctor Who story codes back in the classic series started A
through to Z, and then A, through to ZZ, and so on and so forth.
And then there's 3 bars.
And what episode of the web of fear is missing?
Episode three?
And this would be such a great reference, if OO was not, in fact
the ice warrior.
And I'm totally misleading.
So what is the web affair?
Oh, um, look, no, sorry.
I thought you knew these.
NN.
Back in the day.
It's it's NN.
No. hold on.
Oh, oh, PP, Cuckoo.
Oh okay.
What's NM, enemy of the world?
NNN, is there?
Hold on.
No, PP is the enemy.
Please enjoy this, listeners.
Cutting all of this.
Two Patros, this.
Don't you know this?
There's someone out there screaming at us because one of them is
wrong.
Screaming in joy and ecstasy that we are in fact discussing this.
Is that Simon?
And we haven't even talked about the cute title.
Yeah, so all that weird thing in Cumbria in 1207 as well.
Just another little set piece that he's thrown.
Just so you can make that church.
Yeah, yeah.
It's...
So it's another kind of Moffat thing that Russell would never do
which is that, you know, we build a whole place and characters and
stuff and then kind of throw them away.
And yeah, I don't know.
I mean, I sort of like it.
And you do get that moment of, is it a demon?
It's a woman.
Genuflect.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But something I noticed this time around, which, of course, I
couldn't have noticed because last time I hadn't seen, Heaven sent
is that the doctor is sitting in the dark in a castle ruminating
with a portrait of Clara he's painted.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because she's died.
I also think too, maybe there are elements of the 1st episode of
series 9 as well, where he hides himself in the past, doesn't he
to kind of...
I think Matt Smith could have pulled off playing an electric
guitar on a, what was it, a tank?
Yeah, yeah.
To be fair, I think Peter does forward.
See, yeah, Matt Matt would have played it discordantly and
suddenly go, oh, yeah, I can't play guitar.
What am I doing?
It's like that line.
The line where he says he came last in the Gravity Olympics.
You know, I came last.
I think it's just a chance for sort of more wacky sitcom dialogue
and I guess that's as good a reason as any to have it. absolutely.
And also I just adore the fact that the episode is named after a
silly throwaway gag.
We won't get that again until timeless children.
This is part of Series 7, and Series 7's kind of remit is to be a
feature film every week, and I think that we would probably agree
that this doesn't quite hit that mark.
But what the idea seems to be is standalone episodes that are
fairly straightforward.
I think this does hit the mark in the way of it feels like a
British invasion film.
Yeah.
You know, by which I mean the British sort of heist films. of the
70s because you have all those London settings.
And also, this is an episode clearly in love with Doctor Who's
past and with film.
And sci-fi films, like we get a Star Trek 4 reference of I can't
tell the future.
I just work there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Captain Kirk isn't from outer space. just works there.
We've got the doctor and Clara on the motorcycle having a chat
that is clearly a crib to the telly movie.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We've got some balls in the background, which is, you know, a
throwback to the invasion.
And that's the weird thing.
I find this episode derivative.
But in a popcorn movie kind of thing. affectionate.
Yeah, it's not being derivative because it can't come up with his
own ideas.
It's being derivative because it's like these ideas are really
good and we're going to arrange them in a new way for you.
Being referential and reverential.
Yes.
All you really needed was Miss Kislet played by Michael Kane in a
wig.
It's funny that it's an episode that works absolutely on the level
of being a fun thing to watch and not really being designed for
like a bunch of dorks to sit around a coffee table podcasting
about.
So why are you doing this?
And yet somehow. somehow we manage.
I mean, it is fun and it is colourful.
You can't hold anything against it.
Well, Nelissa, that's all we have time for this week.
We'll be back next week for the green screen extravaganza that is
the Rings of Ackerton.
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 if you're over 50 and posting
political commentary on Twitter from your iPad, our base stations
will be around to harvest you directly.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
I'm the little spoon.
Good night.
Ta-ta.
Good night.
That was Flight for Entirety, sorry, Nathan Bottomley, Peter
Griffiths, Brendan Jones, and James Selwood.
Theme arrangement by Canon Lamb.
This episode of Proud Bear, holding a bag of chips, getting to be
Celia Imry, was recorded on the 29th of May 2022 and released on
the 4th of September.
Of course, Stephen Moffat's hostility to the internet isn't just
the result of middle class technophobia.
His upcoming autobiography details a horrifyingly awkward incident
where he was contacted by an unsolicited Fendoline, who asked if
he could add him to his professional network on LinkedIn.
And cut it to there.
What do you reckon?
Yeah, I think we're going to struggle to speak for this long.
Like that's probably a bit over 40 minutes.
I do have one more thing I could bring.
Yeah, go on, say something.
So the woman in the shop.
Ah, yeah.
So this is when we introduced the idea of the woman in the shop.
And look, if you're watching the new series along with us and you
haven't seen forward from here, I'm not going to mention how that
plot resolves itself.
Missy.
Spoilers.
Linda Barron.
You've got to wonder 9 years later.
Maybe they should have watched this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Darth Vader is anarcha Skywalker, folks.
That smelly old man who just turned up in Ithaca is Odysseus.
But originally, she actually played a larger role in the plot, the
woman in the shop, in that the doctor was going to get 2 phone
calls during the episode.
And one of them was just basically, well, how's it going?
Have you met Clara?
Right, right.
Quick.
Oh, actually, that would have paid off quite nicely.
Yeah.
And then when he comes back at the end of the episode, just before
that, he was going to get a call saying, after everything you've
been through, are you sure you can trust her enough to find out
who she is?
And so this voice on the phone was going to be goading him.
Now, now it was dropped in the early stage of the script.
It was originally conceived as something that could happen
throughout the season.
Right, okay.
And that makes more sense of calling the episode the Bells.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. because it's introducing the phone.
Yeah.
Um, And I think I think it was dropped.
So as not to put the cart before the horse, you know, we, I think
at this stage, we want to believe that maybe this is or
coincidence.
Maybe there's, you know, there, maybe there's nothing sinister
about Clara.
Yeah, you know, kind of thing.
And that would have told us, no, there is.
Because the other big coincidence, I mean, the thing that
convinces Matt that it is Clara isn't just that she calls him on
the phone, but that the Wi-Fi password spells out, run you, Clever
Boy, and remember.
And I think the...
Yeah.
Yeah, one, two, three. don't do that at home.
Just in case you didn't care.
Like, I think that's a thing that will just never be explained and
that's fine.
But we have this tension.
We'll talk more about it next week, I think, between Clara just
being a companion and Clara being a mystery or a puzzle box.
And I think that if this half season has a theme, it's probably
that.
Yeah.
Yeah it's the impossible gut.
Yeah, yeah.
And, you know, that does lead us to that lovely scene of Clara
explaining why she's still living in the house.
And the doctor has a really interesting line where he says, I wish
I was more like that.
And it's kind of like, okay, but just before you lost Amy and Rory
you were exactly like that.
You stayed for a year to see if the cubes were safe.
You know, you actually didn't run off.
Um, and I think I think it's sort of, it's a moment of dramatic
irony.
It's not the doctor being modest.
The doctor genuinely believes he couldn't do that and wouldn't do
that, even though he has, you know, and it's fascinating to me
because, you know, he's the man who never says still.
She's a woman who willingly got stuck.
And that's something that's going to come back towards the end of
this season.
What do you think then?
I've got 56 5 minutes.
Is there anything anyone else wanted to add?
No, I made my joke of the beginning.
Unspent.
That's all I'm doing.
I should have just been silent for the rest of it.
Yes, usually.
When is Tom will be after editing?
Well, I self-edited it.
Nathan said everything I was going to.
So you didn't have to.
The Maitland's house is smoky as fuck. just full of smoke.
Is it?
Yeah, you know, to give a kind of soft lighting effect, but it's
just really like smoky.
Oh, yeah, that sort of dust stream.
Yeah.
And I also like, you know, when Clara hacks into the network, it's
kind of like a reverse of the EastEnders title theme because
you're panning up and you get drum beats as...
I love all of the kind of, it's like sort of JavaScript, a little
bit of HDML, a little bit of just complete, you know.
Yeah, Pearl.
Like it's all just nonsense.
Sorry, that's a very sophisticated joke about Pearl.
Mackie.
This isn't for the episode, obviously, but as you know, I'm
currently obsessed with a game called the Stanley Parable.
And there's a great YouTube series called boundary break where
they take they hack a game, take and take the camera to view
details you can't usually view.
And there's a bit in the Stanley Parable where there's this room
full of screens, and one of them is flashing an error message, but
you're like 50 metres where you can't read it, and he zooms into
it, and it's like error, error, error, can't find file, error
error, error.
Is anyone even reading this?
Do you have any idea what it's like to have to make up a screen of
this era text knowing that no one will ever read it?
And he's like, well, this game came out 10 years ago and I hope
you're out there.
All right.
I'm going to press stop.
What do you think?
Yeah, because you've already done the app.
Nathan, they always know when you press stop.