Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast armed with scissor grenades, limbo
vapour and triple blast brain splitters, mostly to impress the
boys.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Stephen, and I'm here for the Steampunk Jacuzzi Party, and my
Safe Word is Borsch.
Well, before there was Stromberg, and before there was Drax, there
was Mrs. Winifred Gilliflower, who planned to reign God's
judgement upon the world, preserving only the most attractive
northerners available.
Let's see if she can be foiled before the rest of us all succumb
to the Crimson Horror.
So, gentlemen, Dame Diana Rig.
Well, I'd like to open this meeting of the Dame Diana Rig
Appreciation Society, because I'm sitting here in Sydney with
friends who all are George Diana Rig as much as I do.
Ever since her ultimate performance of Medea, that's all she's
ever played.
Whether it be, you tell me whether it be Andrew Davey's mother
love. because apparently they couldn't do it.
I've never seen it.
I don't think the BBC ever recorded.
I have.
On the podcast...
Oh, no, there was a there was a TV version.
And friend of the podcast, Fiona Tomney, showed it to me 1000000s
of years ago when I was visiting her home.
It was good butt, wasn't it?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Everyone sees.
But that's, she's just replaying that part again.
And I think, you know, Rachel's up for it.
They haven't worked together very often, have they, Stephen?
I think this was the 1st time that they actually worked together
and I'm not sure that they worked again after this, did they?
Brendan shaking his head.
No, no.
No, you're absolutely right.
And it was all because Mark Gatis was doing a play with Rachel
Sterling.
And so I was out to dinner one night with her and with his
personal friend, Dame Diana Reed.
See, I was just imagining Gator like fangirling every time he saw
Rachel Sterling and going, is your mum dropping you off today?
Is she gonna pick you up?
No, it turns out he knew Diana before he met Rachel.
But he was out to dinner with them and just said, well, one, you 2
have never worked together before.
And with Mark Gator, so probably went, oh, maybe that's true.
No, no, no, I've checked.
I've called up Andrew Pixley and he's confirmed.
But then he said, would you like to do a Doctor Who together?
And Rachel's like, yes, I would like to do a Doctor Who.
And Diana's like, you know, I've never seen it.
Oh, wow.
And so the stage manager of the play that Mark and Rachel were
doing cut together a bunch of villain speeches to show to Diana
Rigg to convince her to be a villain in Doctor Who, and it
worked.
She's incredible.
And it is that thing where in the Avengers, which is where we kind
of all got to know and love her.
She's just the most beautiful and sexy woman ever to appear on
television.
Lachrymose saucer comes to mind.
Oh, just amazingly good.
She's amazingly bored.
It's terrific.
She can be threatened, she can be in peril.
She just doesn't care.
She's completely bored and she...
We did an episode on Bond Finger.
Well, with someone...
She's about to be soared in half by a circular source.
And she's virtually checking her watch.
Couldn't be more bored. so great.
But then ever since then, she's just grown old disgracefully.
Absolutely All her own teeth.
All her ideas.
And has played fantastic villains.
Like, she's not precious.
She was so beautiful, but she was never precious about that.
She had a lot of fun being that way, though.
She had a very good early 70s.
Oh, I bet she did. switched we may or may not touch on.
No, we don't have an e-tag on this one.
A lot of fun.
My pick of the week, although we're not up to there yet, the and
Super 8s, she did with her German friend straight after on her
Madges and they're called the mini killers.
Have you seen them?
I have the diadem thief.
They're extraordinary.
And they're almost unwatchable.
And she does all her Avengers stuff in Sherman with Germans around
her.
They're kind of silent super eights.
I'm thinking, he must have been really hot because these are awful
but and he was.
And she did these 2 little films in a bikini and all the rest of
it and it's great and it makes no sense and they're awful and yeah
they're on YouTube.
Yep.
And you can also find them if you have the more recent Avengers
optimum or Blu-ray sets.
They are.
Oh, they like the ones I have.
Yeah, they are on, I think, the season 5 collection.
Lovely. in which case I have them.
Okay.
There's 5 of them.
Like they did, for God's sake, mini films.
They're very Danger Diabolique.
I was going to say Danger 5.
Danger the ever liquid Danger fights budget, yeah.
They're like a sweaty fanboy actually getting Diana Rigg to do
stuff.
And the fan reception from 9075 was on his, it's actually Diana
Ree.
Yeah.
Well, while we're talking about sweaty band boys getting Diana
Rigg to do stuff.
How do we think this episode goes?
Really wondering where this is going?
In my top breed, Stephen.
Look, I'm not a huge fan of seasons 78 or B, but I think this one
sort of rises to the top largely because it's so inconsequentially
and sillily fun.
And that's what really saves it, I think.
There's so much wrong with it.
We'll talk about a few of the things that I don't think really
work.
But when you sort of stand back, there's so much to admire simply
because it just puts a smile on my face.
It's my favourite Matt Smith episode.
And I think in large part, it's because of Diana Ring.
Because I've said before on the podcast that Mark Gatis's writing
doesn't always resonate with me.
I don't think he ever does a bad job almost.
Actually, I would even say sleep no more doesn't do a bad job
until the last 5 minutes, but this one just sings.
And I think it's the perfect scissorgy of it's written for Diana
and Rachel.
He got them involved before he started writing.
It's exactly in his wheelhouse.
He loves his Victoriana.
He consulted with Matthew Sweet, who is the interviewer on the
Doctor Who DVD range.
But yes, that's who Mr. Sweet is named after because it just
dropped.
Nathan's eyes just turned into dinner plates.
But yeah, like, because Matthew Sweet, the TV presenter, had
written the nonfiction book, inventing the Victorians, where he
breaks down myths about Victoriana and says, actually, this is
what really happened.
And so Mark sort of consulted with him because he wanted to
deliberately use some of those myths.
And that's why, for instance, the man who employs Madame Vastra is
constantly fainting.
Whereas the only woman who faints does so as a ruse.
Right.
You know, so it was breaking down that stereotype of Victorian
woman getting the vapours and what have you.
And that's why it's such a woman heavy and woman driven story
because Mark is like, how many Victorian cliches can I include and
invert?
Yeah.
Yeah, for me, I think it is easily the best of 7B, but that's not
a massive achievement.
But it's very, very nearly the best of the season.
I still think that a town called Mercy probably is my favourite
but this would have to be second.
And I think it's incredibly enjoyable.
I think it's the best Mark Gatis episode or it probably competes
with the Unquiet Dead for title of best Mark Gatis episode because
this is absolutely what he's here for.
It's not just Victorian things.
It's northern things as well.
And of course, he comes to us from Royston Vesey.
And so he does lots and lots of hilarious northern things.
There's that great line where even Commander Strax is kind of
slightly terrified by the prospect of going to the north.
And I think, in addition to that, it's also a story that loves
Doctor Who and really recycles a lot of the imagery in a lot of
the troops.
And a lot of the ideas that I think we've seen in previous Doctor
Who stories, particularly classic.
So when we have Jenny open up the, you know, the magic curtain to
see what's actually making the big noise in the factory, it's
straight out of the time meddler.
Yeah, yeah.
Of course it is.
Wow, how did I not realise that?
But it's also filled with all sorts of other Doctor Who sort of
illusions.
The octagram, the image in the eye comes straight out of the arc
in space.
It feels very horror of fang rock as well in terms of its
characters and the setting, obviously the Victoriana aspect.
And Mr. Sweet, I think, is sort of very Brain and Morbius as well
in a sense, in that sort of body horror aspect that Doctor Who
does so well.
So I think it really is a story that sort of is kind of like, what
does Mark Gators love and puts it all together on a page?
I got a ghostlight vibe from where Ada is feeding her monster.
Like she opens the thing and shoves the food under there.
Yeah, of course.
But there is heaps of that, isn't there?
And that's kind of Gatus's job on the show, I think, is he's the
person who loves the history of the show and its imagery and knows
what has worked before.
Maybe even more than the 1st 2 showrunners.
Yeah, and I think possibly not being a showrunner gives him a bit
more freedom and perspective because he's not the person who has
final say.
He can decide I'm going to put this in and they can take it out if
they want to.
Something like the Thomas Thomas joke.
Which I think is so gloriously terrible that it becomes good
again.
Because it's totally played as we know this is awful.
We know this is too far.
And it wouldn't surprise me if Mark Gatus is like, I need to
exorcise this out of my brain and someone will take it out.
That went to a screen and he's like, no, that was me on Saturday
morning at 8 AM.
You shouldn't have included that.
I really like.
And I love the kid.
I love him and Strakes just to hang out together for the rest of
the episode. 3 times James, and it's a spinoff.
But they do have lovely comic timing.
Stark is just gorgeous.
He's really good, isn't he?
I'm really glad you touched on the tropes.
Because I did want to say a little bit on that, that it's not just
Mr. Gatis.
There's film references all through this.
Saul Metstein, the director.
He did some of our faves, Steven, didn't he?
So what else did he do?
Dinosaurs on a spaceship, which you will love.
Town called Mercy?
Absolutely.
Mr. Nathan Love.
Snowman, which I really love. and maybe my favourite, Matt, just
because it's so much fun.
And they were sort of filming this at the same time as the snowmen
to take advantage of the availability of neat Macintosh and Dan
and Catherine.
Oh, that makes a lot of sense.
It's such a great ensemble cast.
But Saul Metz 9.
His dad's a quite a well-known British Scott architect, modernist
brutalist, modernist architect, and this lad studied architecture
and there's lots of little jokes and references in there, which I
might torture you with as we keep going on.
But my favourite film references because this fella also did a
piece or he did his final on James Stewart, Jimmy Stewart, and
he's a mad Hitchcock fan.
And again, the stairs, you go, haven't I seen that in the red
light?
Oh, it's vertigo.
It's Jimmy Stewart looking down the spiral staircase, a vertigo
and that's the rocket silo.
There's lots of little touches, but my favourite is a nod to
Ridley Scott, you know, who would have designed the Dalek.
So that 1st scene coming up the cobbled pavers with his peaky
blinders cap and his ferret and his rope around his trousers is
exactly the opening of the 1975 Hovis Bread Ad, which made Ridley
Scott's career.
And it, because before that, he was a big, exactly.
It was a BBC designer or the rest of it.
And he'd done ads, but that ad, the Hoverspread ad.
And I still remember it because it was on in Australia.
It was just the first, it was gloomy and miserable and northern in
other words.
Yeah, that's it.
Oh, that's so funny.
And there's little pepperings of that all the way through, which
I'll torture you with as we keep going.
Please do.
The other thing I think this very consciously references is the
Avengers.
Oh, okay.
So, for instance, you have Jenny high kicking in a leather cat
suit.
I was really hoping someone would drink that.
But not only that, that whole interplay where the doctor's like, oh
it's attack of the supermodels and he steps forward to do it and
she goes, no, this is me.
That is cribbed from the eagle's nest, which is the 1st episode of
the new Avengers. where Steed steps forward with a gun to take out
some Nazis also with guns and Joanna Lumley steps forward in a
leotard and says, no, I'm going to kick them in the face.
But something else.
That's what you're meant to do with narcissism.
So if...
And supermodels.
So if Jenny is Emma Peel.
When Jenny is infiltrating the factory for the 1st time, we cut
back to Madame Vastra's client who, you know, sees tracks and
faints and Vastra, and Strax, then have this sort of back and
forth, Vastra is steed.
Like, she's the one who's off the coffin, nurse tracks, I think we
should, you know, relax a bit.
And I'm thinking, so who is Strax?
And it's like, Strax is Tara King. he just wants to go in and
punch everything.
And if you watch Tara King.
Tara King's a brawler, like the follow-up because she's got the
shoulder.
She's got the shoulder.
And same height as Dan's Donkey.
Really?
Yeah, yeah, tiny.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
That's why, you know, when Diana Riggs said child, it's fine.
But when Thorson is said child, she's suddenly a foot taller.
If you watch Emma Peel in the Avengers, she's very graceful in her
fighting style.
It's partially based on ballet and Purdy in the New Avengers is a
ballet dancer and Kathy Gale was doing kung fu.
Tara carried a brick in her handbag and threw pianos Penelope
Keith.
She was just using whatever was in the environment.
And that strikes because, you know, you have Jenny doing all the
high kicks and what have you.
And then Strax runs in with a gun screaming because he's on a
sugar high.
That's so that's embedded by Mark Gaitis rather than...
Do you know what?
I think as you were talking there about how much January is Emma
Peel, I just came to mind, that episode of the Avengers called
Death at Bargain Prices.
Yes.
And there's a moment where Mrs. Peel, basically, in a leather cat
suit, faces down against a, you know, would be attacker, and the
look on a, you know, on her face is, are we going to, I thought
we're going to fight.
Either way I'm going to really enjoy this.
And she proceeds to beat the living crap out of... making your
fingers and proceeds to be living crap out of the man.
And that's exactly also the look that I saw on Jenny's face in the
episode as well.
It's just, I don't know whether it's intentional, but of course it
just casts my mind back to the Avengers in so many ways.
Engages is a fan.
Oh, yeah. very self-admitted one.
So, yeah.
It's actually incredible how well they all carry the episode
before the regulars turn up.
The doctor's not in it for the 1st 3rd of it.
And you actually find yourself not missing here.
I, you know, we got a glimpse of him in the guy's eye just before
we go into the opening credits.
But otherwise we don't have him for quite a long time.
But we've got these regulars, and it's a little bit like the
Christmas invasion, and it really highlights the difference
between Russell and Moffatt as showrunners, where Russell's
extended cast, you know, Jackie and Harriet Jones and Francine and
Sylvia and all of those people, Wilf, and Moffatt's is a
Santaran.
And like a Silurian from the Victorian era.
And they are in heaps of episodes together.
And I did read someone speculating that they kind of are a
hangover from the beryl idea for Jenna Coleman's companion.
Can we brush on that?
Because this is a new for me.
Yeah, so this for anyone else?
So there was some idea that Moffat was originally considering
having a companion from Victorian England, played by Jenna Coleman
and she had a name, Beryl, and that survives as Clara in the
snowman.
But we have the doctor regularly going back to the Victorian era
to meet these people and he's specifically done that, hasn't he?
The doctor has come back here to see Jenny Vastra and Strakes to
see how they'll react to the new Clara after they experience the
death of the previous Clara in the snowman.
And it's more of his sort of creepy, you know, trying to work out
what this perfectly normal person has going on.
Yeah, and originally, we were going to go from journey to the
centre of the TARDIS into Nightmare in Silver.
And the scene that shot at the end of this episode, most of that
was shot with Journey to the centre of the TARDIS.
The only pickup was her saying, I'm the boss because it references
the previous scene.
And so Nightmare and Silver was meant to be the 1st story where
the doctor really accepts Clara.
And then we have the doctor acting weird in that story and Clara
accepts in.
So and so we do lose that a bit here.
But instead, what we have is whenever Jenny and Vastra asks Ku
Clara is, the doctor's not really interested anymore, he's just
happy that she's there, which is really great because, um, I did
the funny thing is, my friend Matt was on journey to the centre of
the Tartars, and I said to him, I can't do it with you because
it's in my bottom 5 of all time.
I find it absolutely terrible.
And the confrontation between that and Jenna and that is so good
but so hard to watch.
I'm kind of really glad they did that in the middle of the season
and then we can have a couple of episodes where they're getting
along, even though Nightmare and Silver is also terrible.
But just to have them have fun here with each other and enjoy each
other's company.
And something that's so clever about this with the doctor being
absent from like the 1st 3rd is we then get the backstory in a
flashback, which is essentially episode one of a classic series
story, boiled down to 2 minutes.
And it's so clever.
And I think touching on what you were saying earlier, Stephen, it's
something only a huge fan of the classic series would be able to
do and still make feel natural.
Like the doctor's like, it's a long story, I'll tell you the short
version.
I'll give you the tele snap recon.
That's the great thing about it because some of it is like that
found footage from Fury of the Deep, you know, where someone's got
a film camera and they're training it on the set.
And some of it is just photographs, like between scenes, we have
photographs.
And all of the film grain and the film skipping and stuff.
You notice that whenever the crimson horror, like that liquid
appears, it's not treated in that way.
So the rest of the film will be really grainy, but it really
brings up that crimson venom.
I think it's really well done and it's surprisingly experimental
for a riser as TRAD as Gaitus, I think.
Yeah, that's a really good point.
I mean, it is essentially an act one reduxed at the end of act one
which is, as you say, it's an episode one of Old Classic Hooper
and an absolutely right.
I never thought about that before.
But it's also the point where the RAD finishes and the TRAD starts
again. if we move into act three, I think.
And I think that kind of strange, perhaps, narrative structure is
also reflected in the strange tonal shifts and sort of clashes
that sort of occur in this story as well.
I mentioned before, but Rachel Sterling and Jane Diana Rigg are
wonderful in this, but they are in totally separate productions.
They're characters that don't belong in the same story.
There's so much pathos and, you know, incredible just
heartbreaking sadness around Rachel Sterling's character as Ada.
And of course, Dame Diana Rigg is having the time of her life
chewing the scenery.
And you just sort of wonder, how are these 2 characters not just
in the same story, but related to one another?
I think that sort of tonal shift, just sort of results, perhaps
maybe unintentionally from the fact that we're just trying to get
all these different elements together into a story that kind of
feels a bit like classic who and kind of feels like the Avengers
it kind of feels like a number of the other influences that we've
spoken about today.
I think, though, she definitely joins Diana Rigg in her production
at the end.
So when she overhears Mrs. Gilliflower kind of saying what she
intends to do to Ada, she absolutely just goes crazy supervillain
mode as well.
That's where we go.
Yeah.
I love that so much.
I was watching it.
I hadn't seen it for a while.
And when Mrs. Gilliflowers dying and she says, forgive me, and I
knew that Ada said no, but I just loved the response.
That's my girl. that's so brilliant I love you, perfidious.
Yeah, he's going full Bob Holmes on the insults.
Virago, you know.
Um, and the scene before that when the doctor finds Ada distraught
that he's escaped, and there's just this moment where the doctor
hesitates, but realises, you know, okay, yeah, there's a missile
about who explode and kill mankind, but this person saved me and I
must comfort them.
And it's so beautiful.
And we've spoken before this series about how sometimes, you know
Matt is getting material that's written for Matt because he's good
at falling over and stumbling around and going, ah, at otherwise
unexciting moments.
But this is a moment that shows why he has had such an amazing
career since.
Just that quiet tenderness and the realisation of why Ada is
really blind.
And, you know, someone else I want to praise in that is Jenna
Coleman, because I think Amy would have been standing there very
impatiently going, who, well, who are you paying?
who is this woman you're paying attention to?
Whereas Clara is written much, more like, okay, no, this, there's
something happening here that I don't know about and I'm just
going to stand back.
And then, you know, she does speak up and shocks Ada and she's
like, no, no, I'm a friend. with him, you know, I want to help you
as well, et cetera.
And again, it's a tonal shift because this whole thing has been
sort of painted in poster print colours, you know, and the
characters are painted, and then we have this moment of real human
connection and human emotion before the big confrontations at the
end.
And I think it would have been much poorer without that because it
brings it down to the suffering that this character has gone
through.
And so at the end, when she's saying, no, I'm going to go out and
make a life for myself.
It really hits so hard.
And Matt plays the doctor's face at the end there with such pride
that Ada is looking forward and is finding a new way to be and to
create something rather than going down the same path as her
mother.
I do like the dissonance of the performances that are just
highlights, the difference in character.
And I know you're saying the different productions, but I think
they're both Victorian melodrama.
They both come from the same tropes.
And we might be lifting a partial lace veil into the, shall we say
the home life of Miss Sterling and Miss Rick because I don't
know.
I just don't think where there's art, there's life.
I think I've told this story before on Bondfinger, but I don't
think I've told it here.
So, um, yeah, it was shortly before this went out because it was
before I left the UK, but I think Diana and Rachel had been
announced as being in Doctor Who.
There was a big Avengers convention which Diana Rick didn't go to
but then she gave her a private talk at the VNA.
And at that, she was talking, you know, Rachel and I have recently
worked together, and of course we were all Doctor Who fans were
like, hey, she's like, oh, the Doctor Who fans are here.
But then the interviewer said, but also, you know, Rachel is
playing a part, you made famous because you did Theatre of Blood
with Vincent Price, and now there's a stage play, and Rachel is
playing your part.
How do you feel about that?
And she said, oh, well, you know, I'm very happy with whatever
Rachel plays, and it's very flattering that they're making that.
Oh, but what do you think of the show?
Oh, the show's a piece of shit.
But Rachel's doing a marvellous job in a piece of shit as I knew
she would.
I can't tell you if she agrees with me because it's still going on
but...
So it seems to me from that that they have a healthier reverence
for one another.
Yeah, this is the thing with Gatus.
I want to know what you all think.
He gets this show better than anybody.
He's been a fan as long as and also of all other things he can
write.
There's a reason these people are his friends, not just Sterling
but Rig.
It's pretty tough to break into that cabal.
And the reason is, as we were just saying, rig and all those other
folk only esteem equals.
She is the head girl at Ravenlaw.
She's not a Slytherin, but...
But this is the point.
All his stories, some for some reason to me, never quite hit the
mark.
They deflate just before the target, and I don't know why that
is.
I actually think this one is pretty successful.
It is the most successful.
I think it is the most successful.
I think Unquiet Dead is the story that's kind of been cooking in
his brain for sort of 15 years and has a lot going for it.
It's about competing worldviews and, you know, the sense where the
unquiet dead is all of us, you know, where all dead but still
walking around and we've got all of that sort of stuff and we
talked about that at the time.
I don't think this is about anything in a very deep way.
I think it is a really enjoyable romp that deploys the kind of
penny dreadful tropes that we're used to.
And maybe the only thing that it does is take a bit of a kick at
religion.
But otherwise, I think it's got no more ambition than just being a
really enjoyable 45 minutes of TV.
And that's a pretty good ambition, I think.
And so I think this is pretty great.
Even if I can't see any kind of particular hidden depths to it.
Well, I think you're onto something there, Richard, because the
3rd act for me is where it falls apart, and it's largely an
issuing of the plot in favour of a reconciliation of the 2
characters that also, I said previously, don't exist in the same
narrative, and we're having to sort of bring them together, and
that's the focus of the story, as it probably should be when you
got Rachel Sterling and Diane rigged together on screen.
But the plot is something that we've seen before, I think, with
gators.
It's the don't launch the thing, whether it's Cold War, or we'll
see again in Robot or Sherwood.
There's a variation of that at the end of Idiot's Lantern.
It's kind of just there as a bit of a framework upon which to hang
other things.
And in this instance, it's really that it's the crowning jewels in
this whole thing, which is those 2 wonderful actors coming
together.
And in the story, these 2 very different characters having to in
some way inhabit the same narrative.
Now that's entirely speculative on my part, but that's kind of why
I feel it doesn't really work for me in terms of the way that it
sort of hangs together and it is almost less than the sum of its
parts.
In the course of this discussion.
From all your points, I've had a bit of an epiphany as to why Mark
Gatas's writing is something I find, you know, technically very
good and very entertaining, but doesn't always strike me
emotionally.
And I think it's because we're going to make Simon's head
explode.
I think it's because he does use a lot of tropes.
But he oftentimes falls short of interrogating them.
And so he gets to a point where he goes, and there's this trope
okay?
What about it?
And something I was thinking last night when I was doing the
washing up was the kiss.
Yeah, the doctor plants on Jenny.
And this episode has come into criticism for that.
Mark, I think, attempts to redress it in his novelisation, which
is told from Jenny's perspective, and her response to that is
basically, I was very happy to see the doctor up and about, but I
tried to keep myself a respectable lady and I like to be asked, so
I punched him.
Yeah, but that's in the actual episode.
That's in the actual episode as well.
But I think this is an example of a trope that Gait is using
because ever since the telly movie, it's been a trope that the
doctor and companion kiss unexpectedly.
So with Philip Siegel, it was a Hollywood kiss and in the script
Grace immediately responds with, do it again.
With Russell T. Davies.
When the doctor kisses the companion, it's a plot device where, you
know, sucking the time vortex out of rose, or this is a hint that
something's wrong.
There's a...
So many excuses afterwards, right?
And you're in front of the manager and the photocopy is now turned
off.
Oh, well, I was sucking out of autism.
You know, needs must.
In the in the Moffat era.
The kisses tend to be an attempt at comedy.
It's like, ooh, isn't Amy naughty?
Ooh, the doctors kissed Rory?
Isn't that surprising?
But with Clara.
And this is something you've touched on before, Richard.
Because this is the 50th anniversary.
They're very much trying for a doctor and granddaughter, protective
relationship.
So they're trying not to hint at a romance between the doctor and
Clara at this point. certainly not from his point of view.
And so we get lines like a skirt that's wrapped a bit too tight
and the doctor looks around himself like, what the hell did I do?
Where the hell did that come from?
And any flirtation is coming from Clara, and the doctor's
immensely uncomfortable with it.
So it's kind of like they've gone Mark Gaitis and Stephen
Moffatt.
Okay, the doctor has to kiss someone this half of the season.
Who is it going to be?
And of course, we have the kiss with River at the end, but it's
like, no, we need our comedy kiss.
And it's one of those things where it has become a trope of the
series to the point that they're not questioning why they're doing
it.
And I think even at the time, I thought, oh, that's a bit awkward
you know.
And I kind of went, okay, no, I'm glad she slaps him immediately
afterwards.
But it's way back with resurrection, the dialects, Nathan, when
we're talking about how great the scene with Davidson confronting
Deveros is in the discussion of morality, and you just said, or
maybe just don't give the doctor a gun and you don't have to
address this problem.
It's like...
And yeah, it's a criticism head of talons of Wang Chiang, which is
I think, in some ways, Robert Holmes was trying to criticise the
racism of the era, but just use the racist tropes of the era
without going that extra mile.
And I think maybe that's sometimes where Gatus falls down, but in
Gatus's case, I think he's trying to be super ambitious because in
this he's got tropes of Doctor Who.
Tropes of Victoriana.
He's got tropes of the Avengers and he's got tropes of really, you
know, bond films and whatnot.
And I kind of love, he's even using his own tropes because when
Mrs. Gilliflower is screaming about how experimenting on Ada was
necessary.
I just heard Mr. Connolly and the idiot's lantern.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Both stories have a monster upstairs.
Yeah.
And just like David's upstairs in Tubbs and Edwards shop.
And that's a kind of weird Victorian trope.
There's a moment where we see posters all over the place for Mrs
Gilliflower's big, you know, sermon, just like we saw posters for
Lisa and Chang, of course, and talents of Wang Chiang.
But there's one where it's next to a poster, which you only see
very briefly, which says come and see the freaks on it.
And that's the role that kind of Ada is playing and it's also the
role that Mrs. Gilliflower is playing.
And the League of Gentlemen is all about super grotesque people
sometimes in a way that's now uncomfortable in hindsight, but the
grotesquery of Victoriana and the Penny Dreadful are really, really
sort of key to the sort of thing that Gatus wants to write about, I
think.
And I think also making Ada's, and I'm using air quotes here
freakishness be the fact that she is blind.
Whereas that is something today, and of course, blind people still
face discrimination today.
But far less than they did at the time.
I think it's a very effective thing for a modern audience to then
go, 0 my god, like back then they would parade these people.
Like Ada is literally behind a curtain during the 1st sermon and
is revealed to gas from the audience and Jenny is our audience
identification character and she looks around disgusted at these
people because she's just like, there's nothing wrong with her.
She just can't see.
The education.
And I like that this is very to Northern, isn't it?
I know he's having a brogue 18 hole boot kick at a lot of his own
childhood and his writings.
And education was Bible based, even in the 60s in primary schools
that was still quoted.
So your incapacities represented a moral turpitude of some type or
another.
Yeah.
All that, you know, you were born with sin, as is said in this
episode, yeah.
So Gilliflowers type of Christianity is a very Protestant type.
It's not Church of England or Catholic at all.
And the 2 things that I think of are Bournville, which was the
Cadbury plan.
Quakers, very, very much like Sweetville as a kind of, you know
it's a dry, I think even now you can't buy alcohol around there
it's very, very Protestant.
You can stone unmarried mother.
Yes.
Well, on even dose of the week.
Got to do something in the evenings.
But also, in vile bodies, and this is obviously much later, in
Evelyn Warsvile bodies, there's a character called Mrs. Melrose
Ape, and she's an American, and she holds these old-time revival
meetings, and she has a choir of young women in angel costumes, who
are every bit as good as they should be, I think.
And that's kind of what it reminds me of, this sort of fire and
brimstone sermonising is incredibly Protestant, it's not
particularly English.
And placing that in the context, making that the location where
the world is going to be destroyed from, I think, is a kind of
vague critique of religion.
And Gatis hasn't always done that.
He's reasonably sympathetic to Gwyneth's religion and presents it
to the audience as something that they might not have been aware
of.
But here I do think he's giving it a fairly thorough kicking.
I think that comes back to a very early idea.
He had for the unquiet dead, which was about a dodgy spiritual
medium.
So I think, you know, much like Russell in gridlock.
It's it's not religion or religiosity.
It's manipulative evangelism. in a way.
And, you know, it's something that has been done in Doctor Who
before in that it's not the belief that's the problem, is what
people do in the name of it.
Just as he was speaking there, Brendan, I think one of the things
that really sort of is underlined is that Gatus has got form for
this.
He consistently doesn't necessarily interrogate a lot of the
tropes that he brings up.
And, you know, going back to unquiet day.
And just the way that he couldn't have at all conceived that this
was, you know, something that could have been read in an anti
refugee kind of way is kind of baffling.
And I think that maybe is just maybe a natural blind spot for him
as a writer and that those things are sort of inherent in the way
that he writes and will always be there in his episodes and maybe
going back to your point, Richard, maybe that's also something
that counts against that sense that something isn't quite pulling
off here.
There's a problem inherent in Doctor Who, though, isn't there
where aliens are evil?
And so that's going to be a trope that when he's writing for
Doctor Who that he can barely afford to examine, I think.
That's possible, true.
Yeah, especially in the Unquiet Dead.
But, you know, here we have, you know, a setting in Victorian
England.
There's no real mention of, you know, the Victorian workhouses.
It's sort of presented, as you say, in a sort of Bournville kind
of manner.
That whole trope isn't really necessarily interrogated, I don't
think.
And again, it's that story.
Maybe it's just the stories is not designed to do that.
It's really just designed to, you know, lead up to a don't launch
the thing that actually launches.
And then that reconciliation or a, not a reconciliation, but
really a sort of a confrontation between the 2 characters that the
whole story's been sort of building up to.
I mean, I think I think that's okay.
I don't think that every Doctor Who story has to be ambitious.
And I think had Doctor Who come back and been like this all the
time.
I think I would have been disappointed.
The fact that it came back and started to do things that it had
never done before, that makes it worth bringing it back.
Here, I think doing something nostalgic is okay.
And I think he does it well for a 45 minute episode as well.
Like it's really well paced.
It doesn't drag.
It moves along.
It has funny bits in it and action bits and, you know, Dan Starkey
with a big gun and I kind of think I'm fine with that.
You know, next week something worse will happen, obviously.
But it's going to be different next week.
Something I want to praise Mark Gators for here that he does
different to usual is quite often when he writes a villain, he
will present them in some way sympathetically.
And I think even someone like Mr. Connolly, who's a horrible human
being, when he's giving his justification, sort of in the
performance and in the script, he's sort of listening to himself
speaking, kind of starts to go, oh, wait, no.
Is that is that what I really sound like?
And, you know, he's given a repudiation and as uncomfortable as
the end of the idiot's lantern is when Rose is like, no, he's, you
know, go after him.
At the same time it's like, well, that's still a real person.
And, you know, um, the gel for real people.
They're given motivation and they're given agency, night terrors
the horrible old landlord, after he's been through his ordeal
cuddles his dog.
You know what I mean?
Here, Mark Gators is like, no, I'm writing a villain who knows
that she's evil.
Like, do you know what these are, doctor?
The wrong hand.
I can't believe we haven't spoken about that yet.
And yet Mark Gators gives himself license to go, no, this person
is actually thoroughly evil.
Like it's not Professor Zarov, whose family died in a car accident
so he wants to destroy the world.
It's like, no, no, this person wants the world to herself.
She's willing to sacrifice her own daughter to do it.
She has no sentimentality.
She has no redeeming features.
And I'm going to get a national treasure to play her.
It's so good.
Diana Rig must have had so much fun.
And I think it would have been a mistake to give her any
interiority or any complexity beyond I'm just an evil villain and
she does it so well.
She's just so tremendously loathsome and magnificent.
She has been playing this part for 30.
Yeah, yeah, by the time.
No, no, what else have you seen her do?
That's it.
Yeah, so magnificent.
Did she do any Sondheim?
she did, didn't she?
Little night music or follies on stage in the UK.
I think she has done sometime.
So anyway, we, you know, so just got the range.
But she does, you know, look at her careers, we do. quite a bit.
This...
I'm wondering who's going to pick up the, the petticoat trails of
this because she's, she really was the go to for grandmas, you
don't want to spend a lot of time.
I hadn't seen her Game of Thrones too.
No, what she like in that?
She is magnetic.
She is magnificent.
Because also, I think around the time she did Doctor Who, I think
she had a Neil hip replacement.
So she's moving quite well in Doctor Who, but in Game of Thrones
she's getting around with a stick and I think that was, you know, a
function of the actor.
But it just means that the scene can start with Diana 5 paces away
from a table and then she's going to sit down and everything else
is going to literally revolve around her. it's absolutely the
right decision.
And the great thing is she gets in game 3 and she gets villain
confrontation scenes, she gets sympathy scenes with the heroes.
Sophie Turner's character, Sansa, goes through a whole heap of bad
stuff throughout the whole of the series.
And Diana Rigg is her advisor in some of the earliest.
I was saying, look, there are going to be ways you're going to
have to deal with this.
And they're really great together.
So you have Diana, who at this point was in her 70s and Sophie
Turner, who I think is around 20 during the Game of Thrones.
So you have this performance across the generations.
And I think that's something about Diana Rigg, in that whatever I
see her in, whether she's acting with an actor of her own
generation or a younger generation, there's never an air of I'm
better at this than you, is she reacts and responds to talent.
And the scenes where she's talking to Matt, you know, she and
Jenna don't have much really to do together.
But the moments with Matt are so brilliant and they're bouncing
off each other so well.
And her final film performance last night in Soho, Matt's in that
too.
Oh, wow, okay.
I haven't seen it, but yeah, so her final film performance also
features Matt Smith.
But, you know, Matt's doing his usual thing where he confronts
Villain where I'm going to have a big smile on my face, but my
eyes are telling you you're in big trouble.
And she's like, I literally don't care.
You know, I'm not one of these kids you can make feel bad that
you've done for the last 2.5 years.
No, I am totally evil.
I've got my plan.
I've got Moroccet.
I've got my little friend who I, who I feed my salt and um, oh, by
the way, this is the, this is the hilarious cigarette, the organ
turns around to reveal basically another orc.
It looks like a the Babbage difference engine.
Yes, with all of those wheels.
And it's just a fantastic moment when, you know, the doctor's
going to Sonica and Clara just picks up a chair and smashes it to
pieces.
I've got a chair.
So good.
It's not something that has a massive amount of substance because
they're clearly just having so much fun making it.
And I think it's definitely okay to do something like that every
so often.
It, like, Terra the Vervois is my favourite Colin Baker, and I'm
not going to pretend that has a hell of a lot of substance, but it
has brilliant actors giving great performances.
It's got florrid dialogue that makes fun of itself.
It's got great chemistry between Colin and Bonnie.
And here, even though they don't have as many scenes together.
You've got great chemistry between Matt and Jenna.
Like when she's revived and falls out of the thing and she's a bit
faint and he gives her a kiss on the forehead and she kind of sees
Vastra, but she doesn't freak out, but she just sort of looks at
the doctor like, just explain when you're ready.
No, he just says she's a lizard.
Yeah, but that's the thing.
She's been travelling for a while now.
She knows not to say something that might, you know, make the
situation worse. contrast a few years later to Bill, like, 0 my
god, he's blue.
Racist.
What do you think of Vastra's veil that no one can sing through
and accept the audience?
Yeah, I think it's a, you know, it's a bit like the Daleks in the
classic series.
When the mesh is lit properly.
You can't see Michael Somerton inside.
So we have to assume that the lighting is a bit worse for the
subject object.
I mean, I think it is deliberate, isn't it?
It's just like Clark Kenton his glasses.
Or Diana Prince and her glasses.
Steve Trevor and his heterosexuality.
Title.
I'm also just wondering whether the veil isn't some sort of
illusion, and I might be wrong here to the woman in wine, which is
that 1st er Detective Victorian text that we get, that obviously
Vastra seems to be a descendant of as well, maybe?
Yeah, could be that.
I mean she's Sherlock Holmes, isn't she?
Absolutely, she is, yeah.
Yeah.
No, I mean, like quite literally within the show.
She gets told that Dr. Doyle is writing about her.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, also one of the untold stories of Sherlock Holmes that
Watson refers to at some point is a story about the red leech.
Ah, thank you.
That's what I was trying to think of, yes.
Yeah, yeah.
And so when the doctor's like, oh, you know, the mystery of the
red leech.
No, I prefer the crimson horror.
That's so good.
I am absolutely on board with all of the puppet monsters, In
Doctor Who.
More puppets, please.
I love that this one comes out of one of those gumball machines
1970s.
She put in 5 cents little capsule.
It's that thing with the big claws and he was latex. you
remember?
It was a finger puppet, wasn't he?
You could put him on your finger and go, wobble.
I wasn't going to go there, but since you've decided to.
Yes.
I think I think their relationship was most intimate.
Oh God, she loves it, doesn't she?
Really, just to get to see Diana Rick hoisting round, you know, Emo
on meth. the entire thing.
Why didn't she do more of these?
You know, I didn't live long enough.
I know.
You know, she lived for almost another 8 years after this, you
know.
I think for someone of Diana Rigg's calibre, the appeal is doing
something new.
Yeah.
And yeah, she's never had, yes.
There's that boredom threshold again.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
Part of the reason she left the Avengers, while she wanted to do
new things because she got the pay rise she wanted in the 2nd
series, but quite sensibly said, you know, I will have done 50 of
these.
It's time to do something new, and of course, career then
skyrocketed.
And I think, you know, being a florid out and out villain with no
redeeming features whatsoever and a red puppet clamps to your
chest definitely qualifies as new.
I love the puppet.
I just think the puppet is fantastic.
And it is this superb moment where Ada just kind of goes forward
and just beats the living crap out of it, like squashes it to
death while they're thinking about taking it back to the
Jurassic.
Yeah, and I love that that whole sort of 3 or 4 minute section
really is gatus undermining the Doctor Who ending trope.
It's like taking the gravis to another party.
Yeah, yeah.
But, you know, it's 1st of all, the doctor's like, though them is
gillyflower, you will come with us, but then Strax accidentally
shoots out the bannister and she falls 4 floors.
And I am the doctor is playing and it just recedes the background
as Matt goes, ooh, ow.
And then it's like, okay, well, we'll rescue the...
Oh, wait, no, Rachel's gone.
And the end of the scene is the doctor just going, ooh.
Well, there, sir, that's all we have time for this week.
We'll be back next week for an episode extracted from us through
blackmail, Neil Gaiman's Nightmare in Silver.
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 FDE podcast on Twitter, and on our website
FlightthroughEntirety.com, where you'll find links to our other
podcasts, Bondfinger, Jody Interterra, maximum power, and untitled
Star Trek project.
Stephen, where can people find you?
You can find me on Twitter at Steed Stylin, all one word and
without the G. You can find me also add new to who podcast and
we're at www.newdoo.com.
Until next time.
Remember that when it's just too much trouble to whisk your enemy
off to the planet Kolkakron, several heavy blows from a walking
stick can be just as effective.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
I hope my teeth don't let me down.
Good night.
E, back warm.
Good night.
You see?
That was Flight through Entirety.
Sorry, Nathan Bottomley, Stephen B, Brendan Jones, and Richard
Stone.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, Strax, as Tara King was recorded on the 25th of
September 2022 and released on the 9th of October.
Fans of the William Hartman era, which is all of you really should
stick around to the end of these credits to hear a convention
anecdote from Brendan, which is heartwarming, instructive, and
also somewhat alarming.
I will also say, and this can possibly be cut, as it's an end joke
of an end joke, but, you know, when Diana revealed Mr. Sweet, I
just thought of the name Barbara Joss for some reason.
Oh, no.
Tag.
But I do hope she's still out there because she's fabulous.
Stephen knows that story, doesn't he?
Oh my god.
Okay, come on.
Okay, so... many...
2005.
It was 2005.
And we were having a big who venture and it was in Sydney.
And it was just after the new series came back.
So it's like, get as many guests as possible.
So we had.
Oh, yeah.
So we had India Fisher, Fraser Hines, Debbie Watling, Rob Schimman
Kate Orman, Katie Manning, and on one day, Barbara Joss, we
discovered this actress, Barbara Joss, lived in Sydney.
And you did the interview.
I did the interview.
This is where we're going.
And so Barbados had played one of the Optera in the web planet.
And she's the one, Nemone, who sticks ahead in the acid.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And also later in the chase doubles for Vicky on location running
up the sand dunes because Maureen O'Brien couldn't get was
rehearsing.
It's a tenuous league, but okay.
Well, um, when we asked her to appear, we found her because she
had um, a website as she had survived breast cancer and vasectomy
and had written a book about it and, you know, rediscovering her
womanhood after this, after this operation.
What was the book called, Brendan?
Was it called my left breast?
It was.
Yeah.
She did she did give me a copy, but then someone else she sold out
of the copy she brought on the day and she was so impressed.
She's like, I didn't think Doctor Who fans would want to read
this.
But anyway, and she did give me a copy, but then someone else
wanted to buy one.
I said, I'm not depriving you of your profit from your book.
You can send my and never did.
That's fine.
So anyway, I'm doing the interview with that.
And I said, look, obviously, before the interview, I said this.
Obviously, you know, you were only in a little bit of Doctor Who
so I'm quite happy for the interview to just be a little bit
Doctor Who and also about your book because fans actually love
hearing about the personal lives of the actors.
She's like, oh, okay.
And so 1st of all, we showed the clip of Nemone sticking ahead.
And I kind of said to her, so, you know, that would have been a
week's rehearsal and then filming.
What do you remember about the week?
And she's like, oh, nothing, darling.
And then she's like, no, no, no.
I remember it all. and, you know, William Hartner was, William
Hartner was lovely.
And they all used to bring us lunch.
You know, they used to bring in a chicken and salad and things and
we started to bring in, and no, yeah, it was great.
And then she got to talking about the book and she read an extract
which was the 1st time she went home with a man after having the
removal, et cetera.
And it was really quite moving.
And then she said, so, you know, of course, I've had it removed.
But as you can see, I've had it reconstructed.
And she said, they take they take some fat from here, which is
great, ladies.
Yes, right.
They take some fat from here and put it up.
Would you like to see it?
There's no nipple, so it doesn't count as nudity.
And then she rips her shirt.
Oh, kidding me?
No, no, I'm not.
Very young Brendan.
Yep.
So I would have been 22, I think.
And to top it all off.
Originally, the guest for this convention was Louise Jameson, whom
my mother had always wanted to meet.
So my mum was in the audience.
Oh, my God.
And afterwards, I sort of say to Barbara.
Okay, so your signing is in about half an hour.
Would you like to go back to the green room, what would you like
to do?
And they were showing some clips from upcoming heart little DVDs?
And she's like, well, actually, this was my era.
So can I just sit in the back here?
Oh, of course you can.
I'm just going to pop outside and I'll come back and get you.
And I sort of said to some one of the other conventional
organisers.
Barbara's over there so she needs anything.
And I go outside.
My mum comes and finds me and she says, do you need a drink?
Yeah, so when Diana Rigg rips open, I think.
It's like I remember this.
So my memory of that is walking into the room and just hearing the
words and that's when my pubes fell.
Okay, it wasn't Brendan's.
Sadly not.
I think...
That has to be the tax.
I reckon I found an ow, you know, because we do there are enough
sort of climactic hits where I can move something.
I think we're okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What do you think?
I don't know if I've got anything else to say.
We pretty much mentioned everything, I think.
Maybe maybe drop this back in to the Barbara thing.
And during our signing, the great thing was there were so many
young women coming up to her and saying, look, thank you for
talking about that because it is something that isn't talked about
enough.
And she was really touched by that.
Yeah.