Hello, Delissa, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety, the
only Doctor Who podcast that would have no objections at all to
being appointed Queen of the Universe.
I'm Nathan.
I'm James.
I'm Peter, and I'm Natty Longshoe's comical electrolytic spar and
sauna for this one.
Well, everyone loved the doctor's wife, of course, and so Neil
Gaiman is back to try his hand at a script, which recreates all of
his most resonant childhood fears, and which demands the credible
realisation of about 3000000 cybermen.
What could possibly go wrong as Angian Artie confront a nightmare
in silver?
So am I right?
everyone hates this episode.
There were people, there were people clambering over each other to
get on this episode of FTE and get a good solid rant on.
Is that right?
Oh, I thought people were clambering over each other to get off
this episode of MT.
Most episodes.
I mean I have some sympathy with the people who hate it.
I hate it myself because it just doesn't rouse that much in me.
Right.
Yes.
I think this is a very successful episode of the Sarah Jane
Adventures.
You know, I think that there is something. about there's something
about childhood fear, which is a thing that Gaiman is very
definitely into.
And so we have these kids who have kind of inveigled their way
onto the TARDIS at the end of last episode.
And we're kind of telling it from their point of view.
But then they're kind of suddenly sidelined and stuff.
And so it ends up not being about what it probably ought to be
about.
This is the WC feels and he was actually, you know, when he
famously said, don't work with animals or children.
But what he was actually saying in the, you know, in the 30s films
that he did, and some of them did have both of these avenues of
thespian intern, is that they require so much absolute genius
directing and then editing and very cautious, very, even with a
brilliant child.
And I did like the little girl Angie's sparks and her anger and I
did like that they are actually both mirror selves of Clara's
personality.
I like posh little auntie, you know, he's got this terrible posh
voice and he's a member of the chess club because of course he
is.
But then there's the cantankerous son of a.
Angie, who is just, you know, the thing we all love to hate.
But no, I just honestly think this could have been, it's almost
there.
It's maybe of Disney, it had Disney's production crew behind it
and they're editing suites and their directors.
Okay, I will say out front, I just think it comes down to time and
directing.
I think everyone does their absolute best.
Matt doesn't look like he's being directed.
So he's just doing it as Matt would feel he's doing it.
It feels like a very competent rehearsal shoot.
Yeah.
I think that that's actually the problem.
So the director of this episode has never directed another Doctor
Who episode.
Astonish me.
Yeah, his name is Stephen Wolfenden, and he doesn't come back, and
I think I'm going to say it.
I think he's bad.
I think this is a badly directed episode, and nearly everything
that goes wrong with it comes down to that.
This episode feels to me like a difficult 2nd album in the
writing.
So it's the doctor's wife was a pretty tight marriage between Neil
Gaiman's brand and Doctor Who.
This feels like Neil Gaiman without much to say.
So it's pretty scattershot.
He's got some ideas there, but there's nothing really driving it
and so it's tricked out with all kinds of diversions like
bizarrely whimsical characters who don't really fit the narrative
or drive it forward.
And I think that that extends to the production.
It feels like there wasn't really a tone meeting.
So nothing's really on the same page.
And so I don't know what we're seeing on screen, really.
It's bizarrely unfocused.
Yeah, I mean, part of the problem is, I think that Gamean gets
such an incredible director and Richard Clarke in his last episode
he is relying on having a director that good.
And like, you know, there's a scene kind of early on where the
doctor puts Angie and Artie to bed and says, you know, don't
wander off.
Otherwise, we might have to go rescuing and or someone might have
to go and rescue you or something.
And one of the kids says, you know, rescue what, from, you know
like there's clearly some sort of danger and the doctor refuses to
say anything and he just leaves.
And then you get Angie leaves and you've got auntie by himself in
this room full of waxworks and it's meant to be terrifying.
It's meant to be about childhood terror.
And that's why you have sort of incompetent adults and people not
telling you the truth and stuff like that.
You know, if this had been more like night terrors.
If this had been more about, like nightmares in the name.
If this had been more directly about the fears of childhood.
And if it had had a consistent aesthetic, it might have worked.
Well, it suffers from the doctor's daughter, itis, in that I think
you know, we've seen many times in Doctor Who, in episodes like
The Leisure Hive, and the girl who waited that are fairly
unremarkable script can be totally brought home by the design.
And what this needed was a consistent design ethos, something that
made you believe in the fairly whimsical and bizarre world that
it's producing.
But actually, it's the doctor's daughter.
It ends up being shot in a castle with kind of gels on the light.
Yeah, it actually even uses one of the same locations.
The barracks is the same location as the, as the, theatre.
Yeah, the human's base, the theatre.
Do you know, I actually thought that when I was watching.
I looked and I thought, this doesn't really suit what it's going
for.
It's just like the doctor's daughter and isn't that funny?
It's actually the doctor's daughter.
Yeah.
Actually, I think the settings and all the rest of it are very
gaman, but it comes down to, you know, there are at least 20 I can
think of hammer horrors, one of which stars, Adrian Corey, and
Lala Ward. trying to remember what that one's called.
It's about 97. leisure hive.
Is it something about vampires?
It's usually about vampires, but there's Zombieland came out a
couple of years before with Woody Harrelson, which is almost the
same plot, again, set in a fun fair.
It's a grand tradition of similar going all the way back to Robert
Vener's cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which we might have mentioned.
I mean, it's really sound notions of how to set up a thing like
this and get, do the drama happening and get the audience
involved.
And I sort of think it just maybe it's just down to rushing.
I don't even know that the shots of the directors are actually all
that bad.
I think the cybermen are shot very nicely.
There's camera angles that, you know, with the number of crew that
you've got.
The movement is gorgeous.
He's got the speed working.
A little child would be, you know, this is the thing with game and
that I'm trying to say.
He writes so beautifully. of children for children as readers, and
I'm thinking graveyard book, which is actually one of my favourite
children's books of all time.
And the subtleties and the nuances that he expects from his
characters and therefore from his actors is, I just feel beyond
the actual structure of Doctor Who in the time they have.
If he'd been writing for adult characters, I think we'd have a
different, we just don't get genuineness from this and that's what
Peter was saying before.
I mean, if you look at the 2 children in the doctor, the widow, and
the wardrobe, where you've got Lillian Cyril, who are well-defined
characters.
And it is an older sister and a younger brother.
And I think that they're better defined.
Angie and Artie, I think, the idea is that they're kind of
naturalistic and they're, you know, Angie in particular is a sort
of bullshy, annoying teenager who's not impressed by anything.
And like that's kind of okay, but they're just not characterised
clearly enough, I think, is the problem.
And I mean, as for the setting.
Like the crumbling fun fair is a great classic setting.
We're looking back on childhood, on our own childhood, the fears
that inhabited our childhood.
So the crumbling fun fair is perfect, but it's one shot.
You know, it's one effect shot.
It doesn't feel like it's set in a crumbling fun fair at all.
No, it's that modern Doctor Who cliche of basically looking out a
door at a digital effect shot.
And it just brings home how cruelly that opening scene, which is
meant to be a moonscape, is actually just a corner of the studio
with a bit of green screen behind it.
Do you think that's a moon base reference?
Yeah, of course.
I thought they were going to do a cubric.
Kubrick Griffin.
I was getting a bit excited about that But the Hammer horror films
that he's referencing vampire circuses, the Lala War.
Oh, here we go.
David Proud, David Pruss. in it as well.
And the other one I'm thinking of is waxwork with David Warner and
Patrick McNee from 80 from the late 80s, which is hilarious and
looks, yeah, this has got really strong legs.
They just, they just got crumbly knees.
It's what you were saying earlier, Richard.
It's so hard to bring in successfully, something which is meant to
be about kids and scary for kids.
So for every Willy Wonka in the chocolate factory, you've just got
a miss like this where you think these moments, which should work
don't.
Well, I mean, look at what Richard Clarke manages to do with Night
Terror is, which is not a good script.
I don't think, but it has not real proper look to it.
It's so beautiful for sure.
Yeah, it feels a bit fun.
It's shot like a Cronenberg.
It's definitely looking at David Cronenberg's early stuff and I'm
actually thinking of the harsh overlighting and the saturation of
the fly, which was actually a Mel Brooks film.
Did you know that Anyway, yeah.
No, it was.
Millbrooks created a lot of those great schlocky horror things in
the 80s and 90s.
Yeah, the lighting directing.
I honestly think it just comes down to, if you're working with
children, you need a lot more time and some very judicial cuts.
Yeah.
It's the perils of bringing YA fiction to the screen.
I was talking to a friend of the podcast about this episode last
night and he said it feels like a live action cartoon.
And I'd agree with that. got a very Scooby-doo feel to it, and I'm
not sure that that's what Gaman was going for.
No, it wasn't.
Yeah, yeah.
No, the sort of crumbling past its time, you know, dark, you know
a childhood that's sort of haunted by strange fears.
It's all just too kind of slap dash, I think, in just the visual
look of it.
And far too grand a scale for what they can achieve in the top.
Yeah, but I mean, if they'd given us that, if they'd given us that
effect shot of the crumbling fun fair.
And then we had seen them in there, do you know what I mean?
Tider shots with actual sort of practical set elements that which
placed them in that glass painting.
Yeah, rather than just looking out at the glass painting. think
it's a problem.
It's the kind of story, I think, that they might have actually
done better back in the 1980s in a Sylvester McCoy 3 parter
because they would like the happiness patrol.
They would have gamely approached making this fun fair in the
studio.
And it probably would have worked in that kind of that way that
the happiness patrol does.
And with that sort of the falseness, the facade of funfare would
work really well.
Good point, actually. with cheap sets instead of locations.
Well, I mean, if you if you think about what happened in the
doctor's wife, where you've got that crashed spaceship that is an
effect shot, but that, the characters are interacting underneath
it, they're integrated into that shop, there's a real proper sense
of place, and it's the sort of place that this needed to have, I
think.
It needs to feel more like theatre in the way that the early
German filmmakers.
Nosferado is a 100 years old this year.
I thought we were looking quite good.
Is that you're working as you're both saying, Peter and James
you're working with flats, so angle them, play with them and
harshly light them and make them surreal, make them hyper real?
Actually, it's a question of timing, and, yeah, more time with the
actors.
Actually, the biggest letdown for me isn't the children.
It's Matt being given a lot of exposition time and there's not a
lot of pitch in your in what he's doing.
No.
I think the script needs the doctor and Mr. Clever to be
indistinguishable from one another from the outside, you know, so
Clara has to guess which person she's interacting with.
But I think it's just a lot of effort to put Matt through.
And I think he tries to make it watchable, but I don't think he's
being given any direction, as you said before.
He's the over eager substitute teacher for this episode trying to
win us all over and you're just trying.
Oh, you just haven't got the tone right.
I mean, we've seen that before, that multiple personality disorder
effect where one person snaps between things.
And I think Matt puts in a game effort to pull it off, but I'm
just not sure.
I think it's a tall order.
No one really could.
Was this shot in a hurry?
This one?
Do we know the history?
I think it just looks like a...
Because it is a 50th anniversary Cyberman story.
That's a very special thing.
I know, side man anniversary stories are always so good.
Thank you, silver nemesis. we still love you don't we?
It's even got gold in it.
Yeah, yeah.
Gold's back. cleaning fluid.
Oh, yes, lots of lovely knobs.
Lots of lovely knots.
Of course, Neil Gaiman watched the moon base before this.
Oh, yeah.
And he probably watched it as a child.
He's the bright age to a voice, doesn't he?
He is a Doctor Who fan.
Yeah, he said the cybermen were the most terrifying.
Well, you know, people say this.
But when has that been proven?
You know, when you're five.
I think this is someone pointed out, the 2nd time this half of the
season has gone back to season five.
You know, we've got Cold War doing a base under siege and now
we've got this doing the Cyberman attacking a base.
Right.
We've got a lot of week next week.
And we know that Matt loved Pat Trouton's. work.
So, yeah.
I think though, I think that Cold War is boring is the problem.
It's an unambitious script.
I thoroughly enjoyed it because of that.
I just like that it was an episode of the Champions that just
happened to be a doctor. fair enough.
I think this is more interesting than that, but it just works less
well because it's something the show doesn't seem to be able to
pull off.
You know, I think the thing that fails for me about this episode
is that the doctor's wife is the Doctor Who story that Gaiman has
wanted to write his entire life.
And it's brilliant.
It's an amazing concept.
This is Neil Gaiman as Doctor Who fan going, how do I write Doctor
Who story?
Oh, I'll just chuck all of these sort of things that scared me
about the cybermen as a child into a melting pot and it's just
it's a mess.
It's a bit of a nothing burg of a story.
That's what I said at the start.
The doctor's wife was a tight marriage between Neil Gaiman's brand
and Doctor Who, whereas this is an open marriage.
This is very loose.
I think, I mean, there's a version of this story that nearly works
though.
If this is a story about Gaiman's own childhood fears, watching
Doctor Who with the Cyberman in it.
And because he does childhood fears, you know, that's part of his
sort of brand, it's not hard to imagine a version of this, that's
well directed and that coheres around that idea.
And I just think the problem is that it's so flat and
unambitiously directed.
It's like those doctor versus doctor scenes.
I see where that's coming from and I see how you might think we
can rely on Matt to make this work.
But the way that it's presented is a fantasy writer's idea of a
sci-fi concept.
And so when we go into Matt's brain and you've got the doctor and
Mr. Clever talking to each other, the way that it's mounted is not
that different from the Matrix in the Arc of Infinity, you know
things haven't moved on, there's no more visual impact to those
scenes than there were in Arc of Infinity.
Wait till next week.
How do we feel about the redesign of the Cyberman?
Because I am going to, again, put my cards on the table and say, I
really hate it.
Brendan pointed out to me the other day that this Cyberman
redesign is basically the MCU's Iron Man.
Yeah. he's right.
It just needs a nice paint job.
I think the problem is that it's so clearly plastic or whatever.
I mean, the previous costumes are made out of fibreglass, are
they?
And they're painted with metallic paint because it was important
for Russell, that they should be made of steel, that they were
people in steel armour, and they were wearing the steel armour to
protect them against their inherent vulnerability.
And, you know, it's the emotional vulnerability that destroys them
at the end of the age of steel.
But they needed to look like steel.
These ones look like plastic, I think.
There's something that could work about them.
The idea that they're segmented in the same way that a cybermatch
is that they could change form.
I wanted to see them do phantom agents things and turn into
bowling balls.
That's a reference for the older listeners.
It's just not there's something that doesn't quite work about
them.
No.
I think they're too slick and well designed, and as you say, they
do look like an earth sets made in Hong Kong iron person toy that
you'd see it that used to show.
Yeah, yeah, that's right, a knockoff one.
For the body horror that Neil Gaiman is going for, which again is
an uncomfortable marriage with what we actually get on screen.
The design doesn't really work for it.
The faces don't look very skull-like.
They look kind of like smooth, and as you said, Nathan, plasticky
and not very frightening, actually.
It's a bit of a nod to metropolis.
It's a bit of a nod to Fritz Lang.
They have definitely a deco inspiration there.
But they're also a 1930s car hood ornament.
Yeah.
I think the featurelessness of the face is probably trying to hark
back to the original look, and that's kind of fair enough, I
guess.
I just don't think it works.
Well, there's a reason we don't see them much more, isn't there?
Well, except that they're going to be in the finale next year
aren't they?
And they are those cybermen.
And then we'll see.
We've made them all.
Yeah, that's right.
And then we'll see all of the different costumes hauled out for
the end of series 10.
Sidemen only get scary again when you bring back Sandra's latex
body stockings.
Yes, I think so.
Imp Mask.
They are really terrifying.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
There's something about those 1960 sidemen where they're scary
where they're up close to you.
So if sidemen in 60s get up close to you.
They chop you or they grab you and they're big and they're
overbearing and they're visceral.
These don't look like any of those things.
It doesn't look scary if it gets within 2 feast sphere.
In fact, when one does get within 2 feet of Clara and she swings
that thing at her.
It's pretty lame.
Yeah.
Yeah, and there's that weird effect shot of just like 1000s and
1000s of them marching in.
And I don't know how they managed to make that boring, but they
really, they really do.
It's so lifeless.
So much of a climax, is it?
No.
Also, plot question, and I've watched it twice now. trying to work
out how.
So we're all in diaparel.com and Matt's covered in gorgeous 7 of 9
facial jewellery effect thing like is going to the worst pride
festival time.
Because it's going to get hot if you're wearing that all day.
And then they're back on the set of the end of the world and
everything's fabulous.
And we've got Willow, one of Willow's mates.
We've got the lovely Warwick Davies, who just makes everything
warm and wonderful and really carries a scene just by being in the
scene.
I find him.
I think, I don't believe any of this.
Oh, but then this work, Davies, and actually he, I don't know how
he does it.
He grounds things.
Probably not just by looking at everyone in the room saying, I'm
not buying your shtick.
I think he is magnificent.
I think he is really good and maybe the best thing about it.
Yeah, he is.
And I can't decide whether going back to the temple of peace and
putting a viewscreen in is a horrifically bad misstep or a sort of
delightful ignorance of how spaceships normally get realised in
Doctor Who.
And I might land with the 2nd one.
It is kind of fun, and there is that effect shot, it's the
spaceship flies off where we're looking into the room in the
temple of peace, through the...
Yeah, yeah.
You know, like, I think that's kind of okay.
He is really good.
And so it's that thing where he blows up the planet with the
cyberman on it by using his A ghetto blaster.
Yes, using the ghetto blast.
Okay, that's ghetto blast.
Yeah, it makes the ghetto blaster.
That effect is the most explosive implusion I've ever seen.
Or of an unexplosion.
Like, and I like how Angie is the one who works out that he's the
emperor. pretty good.
And, you know, like that scene at the end.
I don't know.
I think it's, it is strange.
But I think it's going for strange.
It is.
Warick Davis is charming. in the role.
But the character, again, even in the constraints of this bizarre
world that we created this universe, doesn't work.
Okay, so he's the emperor and he's sick of ruling the empire, but
does that mean that he wants to spend his days manipulating an
empty cyberman?
Yes, sitting in a box playing in a mechanical turf. in a discarded
fun fan.
How the fricking long has been sitting in that commode?
In the working bit of the commode.
Yeah.
It's not commodious at all.
It doesn't really work, does it?
But the world that this episode creates is one that I'm kind of
weirdly interested in because it's a future.
We don't know when it is or anything about it.
We don't know where it's set.
It's one of those empires that has a bunch of galaxies, you know
in it, so it could kind of be anywhere.
You look up at the night sky and there's a massive hole in the
night sky where they've detonated an entire galaxy and killed
10000000000s upon 10000000000s of people.
And there's a thing called the Siberia, and we don't know what it
is, but it's like their version of the internet or Wikipedia or
something.
Or the Bork hive money.
Yeah, yeah.
And we've got cyber mites, which I think that's...
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I would have liked more of the shot of them being tossed onto Matt
so to speak, because that is quite disturbing.
It is, and that shot is just thrown away.
It's like Captain blonde hair, lipstick's death, just thrown away
in the ground.
Did you want to speak?
Oh, really?
I wasn't even sure she was dead.
Like, I thought they were so poorly done.
Is this a performance note?
No, Tamsin health, it was just sleepwalking.
So she's she's a big name.
She's EastEnders.
Yeah, she was mellow in EastEnders, and it's that sliding scale of
soap stars in Doctor Who, where you're at the very top with Tracy
Ann, Cyberman, and Luis Germison.
Well, absolutely, all that wrong way around.
And then you sort of scrape the bottom of the barrel with...
That's her.
And I don't think that Tamsin Hathwaite does very well.
She's not quite at the bottom of the barrel, but she is looking at
it.
But that's where all the delicious fruity lees are.
And in fact, I have a problem with that.
That string of characters that make up the punishment platoon.
I think it feels like a tacked on effort to give these characters
something to hang on because they don't really fulfil a function
in the plot.
They're not driving forward any of the ideas.
I was waiting for Georgia Moffatt, McDonald, to swoop back in and
rescue us all only to be cruelly disapporated, some point or
another.
It did feel a bit Jenny.
Yeah.
So they don't even have names. like one's called beauty.
One's called brains, and the fat guy is called ha ha.
I just call him the James Corden one.
Yeah, the James Corden one.
Like, Ouch.
What is that?
I mean he does that, doesn't he?
Does it in the doctor's wife?
The characters are called Idris, Uncle, Auntie House.
And yet all of that is integral to the story, the doctor's wife.
I'm sure there's there's stuff that's left out of this.
Maybe it was meant to be a two-parter.
Maybe it was written as a longer.
There's just a lot of stuff to get through in 45 minutes.
But the thing is, those are character names in the doctor's wife
these are just descriptions.
Yeah, they are. of what, what, they're plot functioning. because
they don't get any, They don't get names in dialogue.
So he just calls them anything.
Yeah, like...
Boy one, boy two.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, fair enough.
Angie Artie.
It does feel a bit Eurovision, doesn't it?
So what's your band called?
It does.
I didn't think that that gingerhead guy could act in skins and he
can't act here either.
And I didn't recognise any of them.
I also still don't understand why it's a punishment force.
I don't know why they're at a circus.
Yeah.
So they were put there.
So they had been in the army?
Is that their understanding and they had refused to obey orders?
So the captain says that she had been given the order to explode a
planet and she didn't do it before.
And so there's meant to be a tension between Clara and her, because
Clara has been told not to let her blow up the planet and she's
already suffering in this punishment thing, and that they're stuck
here because it's the middle of nowhere and they can't.
It's meant to be the army.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
What do we think about Clara in this episode?
Treading water very quickly.
I do love how she's doing Sarah Jane Smith's season 11 accent of
the episode.
Yeah, it does rock off the game for a bit, doesn't it, doesn't
it?
Isn't that Jenna's own?
Yeah, I think.
Leaking through, yeah.
I think, yes, like she hadn't settled on it properly by this point
where she was pitching the character.
And yet Dodo got so much flag.
And that was all from me.
I think it's a little bit of a step down.
And is it because last week's episode was recorded after this?
I don't think she's very well catered for. think she's very good
in last week's episode.
I think she's very good in this too.
Again, it's what am I supposed to do with this scene?
Look feisty.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And resolute.
And yet sort of vulnerable and is my, you know, and lip glossy and
again, it all gets very French and so does very quickly, doesn't
it?
You could really say, she's the one with the pen knife in this
episode.
Yeah, it could.
I actually would have liked it if it had I need more comedy in
this.
It needs something to rescue it.
What did Graham Williams era, which everyone looked, you know
there was all those years later, I was like, it was terrible.
It was terrible.
I can tell you at 12 years of age.
It was fantastic.
And the assides and the buffoonery and Tom saying, well, this is a
bit piss, isn't it, Lana?
You know, pretty much to camera.
Or, you know, actually, he was doing that more with Mary.
There was a whole lot of, we know this is, and it just worked.
You get a bit better and have some fun with it.
It's because of that that interplay between the comedy and the
horror.
There's a lightness there, even if it's not deliberate, even if
it's Tom Hamming it up.
The comedy, the comedy often actually works with, like with the
horror.
It just, maybe this is just a rush.
Do we know if Matt and Jenna, Louise were getting on really well?
I mean, I don't think it was Matt and Karen, but then nothing
was.
And actually when I was watching it, I kept thinking that Amy
would be a better fit for the Clara role in this because she would
have played that kind of fish out of water, thrust into an
authority role, but not quite able to pull it off in a more human
way.
I don't believe in Clara as a real person in this episode.
Again, where umbrella did never to believe, and we keep being
reminded she's impossible.
It's not really a person.
It is a problem, I think, because the, well, because the mystery
and we've said this before this year, The mystery is that, in fact
there is no mystery.
She's just an ordinary person and we find that out for sure. next
week.
I think, you know, because she's an ordinary person, that kind of
limits how she can play it.
She's a mystery, but an ordinary person and there's something
hanging over the characterisation combined with the fact that it's
all being shot out of order, which just means that it never
properly lands, I think.
And so I think she's fairly appealing, but there's nothing to the
character at the moment.
Because the character is the arc of the season.
There can be no development for her over the course of that arc
because it's all discovering the mystery of what she was in the
beginning.
Yeah, and we still get that here.
I mean, we have the Mr. Clever discovering the impossible girl and
telling Clara that the impossible girl is her and something that
the doctor's obsessing about and the doctor kind of tries to talk
his way out of it.
I think later, but it does come up again.
And that's got to not be gaman, does it?
That has to be Mofford doing that.
Anyway, it just doesn't end up being very good and I don't think
she's got this role. which is potentially interesting, but nothing
really comes of it.
Yeah, and I think that the episodes are shot later.
Obviously, were scripted later, and Mothat has a better handle on
what he wants to do with the character.
So we're a bit all over the place.
It's season 19 Tegan.
Yeah, changing from story to story.
So much so.
So which was this in shooting order?
I'm not precisely sure, but I know that the snowman, Crimson
Horror, and the name of the doctor, say anything which had to do
with Vastra and her group were all shot towards the end.
Yeah, so that you can have.
So you can have those characters and lovely Richard E. Grant
phoning it in as well.
So they all had to be shot when everyone's available at the same
time in a blog.
No, that's interesting because yes, there is a very different
characterisation from the act from Germany.
Yeah, and there's a consistency in the in the characterisation and
the and the tone of all of those episodes as well between each
other.
And Jenna is very assured playing the snowmen version.
So she's obviously hit on what to do with the character. how to
present it.
Actually, that's my favourite of her performances.
And maybe in deep breath as well.
She has moments where she's asked to just react.
She's and I can see why she was cast.
She's really brilliant in reactive shots.
Not everyone can do that.
There is a bit of an obsession with cybermen's stories flashing up
like publicity shots from earlier, Doctor Who.
I really loved that.
No, not the Mind Pro. It was nice.
I could see pertly with one knee up, strapped to the table again
all of that stay of the Daleks.
And they're gorgeous shots.
And then they culminate with Matt Smith doing his terrific Duke of
Edinburgh Award green into the camera.
Like, think about the way that it just rips off the design of Tomb
of the Cyberman.
In a way that kind of excited me.
It was so exciting.
We've got little half roundels you can climb up again.
Yeah, like it's odd that that never sort of turns up and maybe
that's a Moffat thing.
Like in a year's time or so, we'll have a Dalek city that has the
doorways from the Dale.
I can't wait to talk about how, no, the external design is lifted
from the TV 21 comics.
James and I are a bit pash about.
So there'll be more yaveling to come.
But the, you know, that scene where the cybermen, you know, all
3000000 cybermen are coming out of the thing is just that.
3,30000, James.
How many was it?
It was a very big number.
It was, wasn't it?
Like, I think that is kind of cool and that's the sort of thing
that we're going to see before.
And so it is, I think, game and having childhood memories of
watching the moon base, which is why we get the Spacey Zuma scene
with everyone jumping up and down in an unconvincing moon surface
set.
And then we get the sidemen coming out of the thing as what is
supposed to be the high point, but again, it's sort of weirdly
thrown away.
It could have been really thrilling.
It could have been like the fantastic March on the, like on the
bridge of whatever that spaceship is, Beryl Reed spaceship at the
end of...
But somehow it doesn't have, it's not that exciting.
It's kind of missing one of those long zoom ins on Peter
Davidson's face.
As he screams, no.
Cyberman.
Not my feelings.
Don't get them in the shop.
It's obviously like the episode pulls its punches a little bit
because if that's what Neil Gaiman is going for, the cybermites
should be the scariest thing ever.
It should be like the cyber mats in Tomb of the Sidemen, which
sort of leap onto you, and they look like some kind of leech was
attached to you.
Whereas what happens here when we mentioned that scene earlier
where the doctor gets a handful of cybermites thrown at him.
And we pull away into long shot.
He turns and then he has he has prosthetic on.
Like, I would have liked to see them and you're not going to do
this in Doctor Who, but burrow into his skin.
They could have done that in Doctor Who.
Yeah, of course they could.
Yeah, it is pulling its punches.
It's just, I don't know.
It's a bit depressing, but I just think it's kind of terribly lack
cluster.
The whole thing is kind of a bit mere.
And it really shouldn't have been. you're right.
There are ideas working.
Nice, meh.
I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself.
I don't think it deserves the sort of hatred that it gets.
I mean, Todd and friend of the podcast, Joe Ford and a number of
other people.
Yeah, all but they were all desperate to be on this episode
husbands of Nathan Bottom.
To rip it to peace.
Oh, no, that is fun, isn't it?
I don't know how you could get that worked up over this episode.
Well, it is a bit like that all the way through 7B. In a way, there
are episodes.
Oh, really?
We've got a new title sequence into series of episodes that just
don't quite deliver on their promise.
So, yeah, it feels like Cold War, this?
Yeah, season, which is what, thank you.
That's what I wanted to say before.
It feels like a series of comic novel adaptions, as we now call
them, or actually just comics, as we used to say.
So there were some really good ones coming out at the time that I
think Titan were doing, and James and I, I think, have copies of
them and they're hardbound.
I can't remember the names of them anyway, but who cares?
But there's, you know, and because there's more in them and the
graphics of it all, yeah, these feel like comic strips for TV
which can be a very fractious, thin line to draw upon because you
still require.
Jenna does it very well.
Matt does it very well.
Karen did it sublimely.
If you're going to shoot like that and you're going to write like
that, you've got to have the reactive shots.
You know what it is for me.
It's it's season 20.
Ouch.
So mean.
We're back at the Ark of Infinity.
Well, especially with the, you know, the shots there with the 2
doctors in the sort of void space, that's very arc of Infinity.
With better graphics.
Oh, that's a horrible thing to say.
Oh, the hard-on-kaleider thing.
Well, dear listener, that's all we have time for this week.
We'll be back next week to try and wrap up all of this nonsense in
the name of the doctor.
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, FlightTroughEntirety
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 the future is stupid, despite the
abundance of phone service.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
Good then.
That was Flight through Entirety, starring Nathan Otterley, Peter
Griffiths, James Selwood, and Richard Stone.
Theme arrangement, Break Hammer and Lam.
These episodes, shot in a hurry, was recorded on the 26th of June
2022 and released on the 16th of October.
We'd like to apologise to those of you who tuned in expecting us
to get our rant on this week.
Be assured that we will all be well fed and well rested just in
time for our episode on the caretaker, which will probably be
released about May 2023.
Sorry, what was the other thing?
Jason Watkins?
Yeah, the little guy playing the usual Neil Gaiman thing of, and
it's very Decensian, and it's also very early horror, the little
cute guy with the top hat, and he turns out, and then he's got all
the face flash on.
Who was that?
So that's Jason Watkins, who I think is an extremely good actor.
He's great in everything else.
So I am the only person.
James and I are the only 2 people ever to watch the English being
human all the way through the end.
Oh did you?
Yeah, which is Toby Withouse.
That's the show.
He plays like a head vampire.
Yeah.
And he's amazing.
I think I want to go and watch that He's also he's also in he's
fantastic in comedy.
He is absolutely terrifying.
I've never seen anything like it because he's kind of like a
doughy, middle-aged man.
I'm right.
We all are.
He's not physically imposing in any way.
Yeah, but he is absolutely terrifying as Herrick in being human.
And so I was super excited to see him the 1st time I saw this, but
it doesn't go anywhere.
And he, I think he plays the kind of borgified version of himself
quite well.
You know, it's not much to do, is there?
No, but it's not, you know, he's not playing it as a robot or
anything.
He's still playing it as a sort of version of himself.
But again, it all just seems to be just, it all just seems to not
add up to anything very much.
So what was he in that I remember him from?
in Psychoville series too?
He, he collects Nazi memorabilia in a tournament.
Not in Victoria.
Yes.
That's where I'm thinking of him.
He's very gay in that.
Yeah.
Let's try and get it out happening because we've done now.
I'm just a hard episode to talk about.
Yeah, it really is.
There's nothing very much here.
Just wait till you hear next week's episode.
Did we talking off about Angie and Artie?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think so.
I think they're all right.
All right.
What do you reckon?
I think there's something, I'll find something.
I mean, I think next week is the same problem.
It is.
What's next?
Next week is the name of Doctor, which is just... you're recording
that next week?
We're recording it now.
It's just Moffat vamping.
Like it's all of Moffatt's things.
He's just vamping for 45 minutes.
And because he's a good rider and he's got, you know, a great semi
regular cast happening.
It's watchable, but it doesn't really amount to anything.
And like when you compare it to the previous weird single episode
season finale.
Um, which was also him sort of vamping in a way and relying on
that regular cast.
It's much better.
It's much more interesting and colourful and stuff than name of
the doctor.
I mean, I think at the end of the day, the thing I enjoyed most
about this episode was that Anginati was so middle class.
Even after everything that they've been through.
Artie's there at the end saying, this is the most fun I've had in
my whole life to the doctor.
I wish I could sympathise, auntie.
That's our out.
That's very true.
Oh, yeah.
See, there is that thing where the kids are sort of obnoxious.
You know, like they, they, they, they get their way onto the
Tartars and she's all, oh, the future is so boring and this is
also crap.
Put me down. hate you.
Yeah, but then they're into it.
Like there's supposed to be an arc where they discover that
actually they've had fun and it's all been great and they're kind
of good.
Yeah, but their neocortex has been stabbed in front with whole
wires.
Yeah, and I love the fact that she has a space phone.
It doesn't just say there's no connection.
It has to flash up in big hitchhiker's letters, no service.
All right, I'm gonna press stop.