Hello, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety, the only
Doctor Who podcast, which doesn't mind being a queen, although we
really didn't have much of a choice.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
And hello, I'm surprisingly not pregnant, and back from Cambridge
although I think that slip on the weir might have had something to
do with it.
I have this wait time carrying is nothing to do.
Richard is back with us.
And Todd is just getting a quick vacation in Devil's Hump, I
believe.
Well, that's what he wrote on the postcard.
It meant nothing to me.
What does it mention?
As we move into possibly Doctor Who's only 2nd story dealing with
Time Paradoxes, Day of the Daleks.
Right, well, lucky me.
This one's mine, and I'm glad I've got this one, 'cause I have to
go and study it forever. and learn all about things.
Well, we're here watching a show that isn't really about what it
says it's about, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, because
the Daleks were a last minute put in thing, weren't they?
They were going to be in Robert Sloman's final story of the year.
And then they thought, oh, no, we need another whiz banger sees an
opening.
And Sloman had previously proven himself to be a really good
writer.
And I think he is a really good writer and we won't look forward
to, we look forward to your opinions on that at the end of the
season.
Gee, that'll be fun, won't it?
But Gray of the Daleks, or Doris Day of the Daleks, if you look at
what Katie's wearing in this little number.
She's not actually, is she?
Brendan slipped through a time bridge. hanging around a bridge
beside a canal at a certain point in history.
I think Katie's outfit in this is the height of fashion, quite
frankly, I don't think.
Well, even Katie says it's nuts.
Even she says it's terrible.
She says she has.
And we have it on proof.
Anyway.
Well, Stewart Fell agrees with me at least.
I mean, mostly it is Stuart Full.
This is great.
We've got Percy Granger's English country garden getting the
pantomime goodies treatment, haven't we?
It's hard to know where I am.
Am I on a backlot?
Am I in a disused?
It's not a quarry.
Disused sort of greeny place?
I, you know.
Yeah, it does give it a bit of visual, visual variety. doesn't
it?
We've got we've got the country house and we've got this sort of
scrub land.
And even though they're both predominantly green, the scrub land
is dying off and it's yellowed and there's blocks of concrete
everywhere.
So we've already got that tense dichotomy.
And that's just the original styles.
So what we've got, what we've got is a lovely English country
heist, and we've got a conference because of course it's 1970 blah
whichever version you believe in.
And of course, Nixon hadn't got to China yet and all the rest of
it.
So, you know, the Daytente thing was simmering away.
The Cold War had sort of turned into some interesting thing in, um
in our region here in Australia, really.
You've got Vietnam going on for far too bloody long, simply
because Henry Kissinger believes you've got to destroy every
communist, wherever you can find it.
Nixon got in, promising to end it, and that's how they got rid of
LBJ.
Nixon, of course, was that we own him because he's been in Doctor
Who.
And we then had Kissinger behind the scenes telling him with the
CIA that it had to continue.
The war had to continue.
So the money had to, in fact, was taken out of the space program.
So we've got lots of things to be angry to with Mr. Nixon for at
this time.
But also, before all of that was going on, Nixon was actually
trying to get behind the scenes stuff to try and get a big
Congress in China and meet with Mao Zi, Mao Zi, Dong, and Chewing
Ginsburg, whatever his name was.
And, um, you know, try and ease east-west, the new east-west
relations.
So that's what we're seeing here with world conferences of, you
know, a couple of blokes in hats.
And so that kind of overshadows, all kind of is really important
to the entire story because the centre is, as you were saying.
It's about wine and cheese, isn't it?
Giant wine and cheese do.
And the PLO.
The world is in terrible danger and the doctor isn't aware of it
at the beginning.
The brigadier says, you know, I don't think you realise how
terrible the international situation is, or is that cause of
axos?
anyway. a blur, isn't it?
Well, it's a constant, it's a constant consideration in Perley's
1st 3 seasons, and indeed, this seems to be the conference that
leads on from the conference in the mind of the...
And units handling security arrangements.
Again, it's interesting what you were saying, Richard, about how
Nixon's platform about how he got in in that your current leader
can't do this.
I can win this war.
Where have we seen that in local politics recently?
I wonder.
The repetition goes round and round, isn't it?
Yeah.
And when are we going to get one of our microphones into a hotel
room with Tony Abbott?
Please, no.
Actually, should we should we email this to George Brandis?
I think that's the dumb thing now.
We email everything to Jordan.
I guess your international listener would think all this.
What's the closest?
David Cameron and Nick League don't really come anywhere near them
do they?
No, they try to. one umping each other on a waiter on a race to
the bottom, but it does fit in with that whole tone of history
repeating itself.
And I think Louis Marx must have been a very politically aware
writer.
Lewis Marx isn't a bad writer at all for a bloke who came up with
friction drive daleks in the 60s.
Isn't that what he actually had a lovely toy empire?
I'm sure it's the same person.
That was M-AR-X. Groucho's younger brother.
But look, this one... is am I crazy or did he write...
Planet of Giant?
Yes, he did.
Which has...
Yes, you're right. hasn't done anything this is?
Yeah.
And, yeah, he would later write a mask of man dragger rather, which
again, has a political bent.
And are both terrific stories.
And you know what?
So is this one if it just, if you just ignore all the tweaks and
pulls.
So he's writing a story which is called the Ghost Hunters.
And the current political situation goes pear shaped.
Like what happens is the conference goes wrong and it fails. and
it creates, you know, a 100 years of war.
And so people come back in time, anticipating the Terminator by 15
years and try and put a stop to it.
And that's the story that he's written.
It's like a ghost story that becomes a time paradox story and
things.
And because of what you said earlier, They shoehorn the daleks
into it.
And I have to say that I think that that they do it really, really
badly and they risk wrecking the story by doing it.
They do throw another story into another story, but I think they
do it really well because, well, I'll get to that.
But because there's really no other technocrat organisation other
than Scaro.
Inc. that's going to have time tick.
And really, Daleks work best when you see them through a slot, and
you only see them for of minutes on screen each story.
The less is more with Dalek, certainly by this stage.
Well, certainly these Daleks.
I mean, they're terrible, aren't they?
So in the intervening time, since we last had the Daleks, and it's
been a very, very long time.
Five years.
Yeah.
Someone said it's like longer between, you know, the Daleks and
Evil of the Daleks, that's a shorter length of time than the time
that they've been offscreen.
Yeah.
So no one can remember how to do them.
So there's 3 Daleks left.
They're in really shockingly bad condition.
3.5 .
There was a skirt.
That was left, which is the which is the bit that you see burning
in the car park.
It's early 70s Doctor Who.
There always a skirt.
So there's someone tweeted the other day and I'll put it in the
show notes.
Was it Clayton?
Yeah, it was Clayton Hickman.
He tweeted a screenshot of one of the Daleks from Day of the
Daleks, whose luminosity emitter thing on the dome, you know, the
light that flashes the mini Cooper light that flashes to let you
know that he's talking. is stuck on with duct tape.
Like there's a cross of duct tape.
So they're a mess.
They're really battered.
No one can remember how to shoot them.
There's no Dougie Campfield to, you know, do extreme close-ups or
make them look good.
Director Paul Bernard had never worked on the show before to the
point that at the beginning of each episode, at the end of the
cliffhanger, he has the sting in there because he thought that's
what you did.
Because he's what, he's never even watched a previous episode.
Paul Bernard is a really good painter.
I don't know if he's still with this.
No, he really was.
And he only did directions.
He only got into TV to support his painting career and he's since
left and went on to have a really successful.
No, he's actually a high-end level. proper, yeah, yeah. actually, I
really liked his stuff, looked him up.
I actually think he's a very good director, specifically for
people.
Yeah.
I like that the Daleks, so the other monsters in the cupboard
literally, you don't see them.
You know, the one thing we haven't mentioned, I was holding off
deliberately.
But the reason they feel shoe horned and they don't have much
space is because this is actually about the glamour and apologies
because this is a kind of contentious point to make now.
But back in those days, terrorism was glamorous.
A lot of sympathy was being given to the PLO.
Don't forget the 1968 Israeli border war, that 6 day war that was
seen to Israel really kind of tit their PR job in in that one.
It was seen as being expansionist and without very much.
Anyway, the public opinion at the time was that the PLO had a
worthy complaint, and as long as they didn't affect any citizens
even the IRA, but weirdly enough, was actually seeing more
sympathetic light than it would be later on in the 70s, according
to it.
Well, you do use the word terrorist this year and it comes up in
the mutants again.
Exactly. vastly different way.
It was glamorous because of Leila Khaled.
Yes, I wonder where that name's going to come up again.
And, of course, he was actually an incredibly stunning girl who
was who happened to be a PLO.
And, of course, Patty Hearst, who was the daughter of Awesome
Wilt?
No, but she was the daughter of William Randolph Hurst and
subsequent star of many John Waters films.
In between those 2 things.
She was one of the kids who was, in effect, kidnapped, the
daughter of a, you know, the story, don't you?
The daughter of the empire.
Is it the character that, um, Awson Wells-based, his citizen Kane
film on, and she was kidnapped and developed something that, you
know, we later all knew to be called Stockholm Syndrome.
She became sympathetic with her keepers.
And she was then filmed doing naughty things with a gun, holding
things up.
Apparently she didn't actually injure anybody, but she spent time
in prison.
And of course, that's why John Waters discovered her, and she's in
some really funny John Waters film.
There's a really great interview with Paddy Hearst in John Waters
book role models, which came out a few years ago, and I would urge
anyone who's interested in the background of Annat in this one
played by Annat Barry to look it up.
Fascinatingly, of course, Annat in the script was not a woman.
Originally, was she originally?
She was assumed to be male and Paul Bernard decided, no, look
let's have a woman.
This is the future.
Let's have a woman who is getting down and dirty and really mostly
in charge of this group.
There's only, we only see one person superior to her.
And he comes in later too.
He comes in later and indeed defers to her.
Like he questions some of her decisions, but it's not because
she's a woman.
It's because he doesn't agree with the way she has done things.
He's got a great moustache, that guy.
There are some great moustaches in Doctor Who.
Oh, she got Playgirl.com.
Yeah.
And we've also got TV's version of Malcolm McDowell playing Stahl
whatever his name is.
Scott Fredericks. would later appear menacing Paul Yorick in Image
of the Fendal.
He's so pretty.
Who is it?
Scott Fredericks.
Oh, yes, Boaz.
Boaz.
Yeah.
Featherboat.
Feather to his back.
Feather Boaz, yeah.
Featherboat.
They're all sort of vaguely kind of sexy names, I was going to
say.
They are.
But they're also the most convincing of the characters and players
in this, and I think they're the reason that the show kind of
works and you're not, look, okay, I'm going to put it out there.
A lot of these are a little trenchant. to sit through, especially
if you're doing a seasonal viewing simply because the pacing and
timing of early 70s television is not what we're accustomed to
now.
I actually find the early 60s ones pacier than these ones.
But the pacing of the editing in these is continuing something you
commented on last season, Nathan, which is the characters say, oh
let's go investigate that.
And we don't see the travel time. just see them there.
Yeah.
And that certainly happens in this season as well.
And with Day of the Daleks, we have a similar conceit to Inferno
where we're switching between this time to time zones rather than
to realities.
And the action moves quite quickly in places, but then slows down
for conversations, like that conversation between Joe, the doctor
and the controller played by...
Can we get onto Aubrey fabulouswoods.com?
He's so good.
When I was a little boy, the very 1st, I was one once, the very
1st single, I forced my poor mother to buy me was Sammy Davis Jr
singing The Candyman from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
from 1971.
If you get out the video and watch it again, as many of us do, the
Gene Wilder and far more proper Willy Wonka.
Guess who sings Candyman in that?
Aubrey Woods.
Camp is up.
So good.
In Hessian sack full of candy cones.
He is really nuts and he's really, really good.
And I think he's amazing in this.
So he and the terrorists are the things that make this work.
Oh, and don't forget the pants, people on the Thermins as his UFO
shadow operative, moon-based goals.
How freaking cool is the is the future when everyone's in Nehru
suits working for Shadow?
It is operated by gesture, which is what we're seeing in computers
now.
There is now there is now a one-handed keyboard that DJs can use
and play notes into their mix.
Most DJs have worked like that for years, do you?
In one-handed.
Oh, so just so that people know exactly what we're talking about.
So we go to the future.
So we go to the future in Aubrey Woods is the controller of a kind
of region and he has this secretarial stuff with shiny, shiny
faces and blonde air.
And he also has a lot of...
Is this the moment where I can have my nerd goes on of the story?
peaking early.
It's even better.
Thank you.
It's even better.
It's been a while.
It's even better than that.
He reaches out and touches a pretty much like a 4tran card, which
looks metallic, and he's able to read the information on it just
by touching it.
Now, I had an exciting little Frisson boy nerd moment when I
thought, ah, maybe the skin effect they have is some kind of dalek
nanotech mutation thing where their skin.
The way that the girls are able to operate the termini, without
actually touching it, that they have perhaps a field interface
over their skin and he's able to read the data on a card just by
touching it.
Like those people who get magnets, some putaneous magnets inserted
in them and they can feel, you know, like microwaves and various
other things.
It could be like that.
There's a cybernetics expert, Kevin Warwick.
And he's been interviewed for the Doctor Who DVD range and he has
been implanting RFID chips and nearfield communication stuff into
his body into his wrist and whatnot to unlock his front door.
And he's really...
Well, he's...
It's his sounding very graham. very a bunch of keys, really.
I mean, he's a professor.
Is it that hard?
They're not that heavy.
It's always losing.
Processor inside the netics, you know.
And he is...
He's interested in Dr. and interested in the cyberman.
Come on, we love him.
Yeah, yeah.
He's very, you know, it may not be something I would do, but he's
very, very interesting.
Yeah, will become like him.
Yeah.
A bit annoying when you, you know, shaking hands with your wife.
It's a bit cold, love.
It is interesting, though, that we started talking about the
dialects and straightaway veered into talking about the humans of
this story because they are the more interesting.
Well, that's what they're doing the voices.
No, to the people who never do the most.
I've never done before, and oddly never will again.
But you know what?
They lost the ring modulator.
They were doing the voices live from the suits.
There wasn't the pre-recorded thing.
They were doing them in the little things and then trying to treat
them after.
They always did do that.
Yeah, but they didn't have a ring modulator.
So they were kind of guessing around and the early blokes, David
Graham was busy.
I don't know what, driving Sylvia Anderson around somewhere and
Peter Hawkins.
Peter Hawkins was just drunk on a big ship with Tom the Cabin boy
I think, as Captain Pugwash.
Oh okay.
Because he's captain, of course, because that's a 60s thing.
So Peter Gilbert and Oliver Messalin.
Yes they're the ones.
Oliver Messalin has a hugely impressive name.
He does.
I keep thinking he's a mid-century composer, but he's not.
They have both said that the reason they did it so flat was they
were actually told that the sort of hysterical thing was part of
the voice modulation.
So sort of the very high, like the high pitch that Peter Hawkins
and Graham did, that it would be done in post.
So they were told, give as neutral a performances you can, so we
can play with it because as we've just, as we've just said, they
hadn't done it for 5 years, no one on the current production
team.
No. had done it.
Had seen that.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, so it was like, oh, what are we doing?
And yeah, they...
Well, we're doing Planet of the Apes, aren't we?
Yeah, we are doing Planet of the Apes.
So there's no room for Daleks.
But, I mean, the Daleks, fortunately, are barely in us.
They do their traditional episode one reveal.
You know, it's called something of the Dalek, so the Daleks will
be the Cliffhanger.
Ooh, it's the Daleks in, you know, in the cliffhanger to episode
one.
But of course, they've appeared midway through the episode for
like...
Whoops.
Just a terrible suddenly crash zoom where one of them says
report.
You know, it's like a shocking... you just see the skirt of them?
Okay.
Do you know my best bloop in this one?
The Ogons.
And any ogons are the bilottis of this story, aren't they?
But I mean, you've got grunting...
And then you see the 2nd one, just totally forget what how he's
meant to be doing the voice and Aubrey was supposed to be doing no
complications.
Yes, it's great.
They're really, really shockingly terrible, aren't they?
But I mean, they make the...
I think they look good.
I think they're very good.
I think there's that one moment where it's a bit questionable
would have been shot very early on and they do later have a great
deal of consistency in terms of movement and choreography and in
terms of characterisation.
Indeed, after that 1st scene, they don't really speak very much
they're just big heavies who will mess you up.
And they, I mean, they kind of work thematically and I do want to
kind of try and rescue this a little bit.
We don't sound enthused about this too.
No, I love this story.
But the Darks...
I mean, I think it works out really well.
Yeah.
In Galaxy, Manhattan, the dialects represent a sort of capitalism
run wild, you know what I mean?
And that's a story where there's oppressed, unemployed, homeless
people living in Central Park, and the Daleks are building this
sort of luxury skyscraper and things.
And they're very corporate and Mr. Diagoras, who comes along is
wearing a sharp suit and he's, you know, sort of terribly
capitalist.
And I think the same thing is happening here because you get the
Daleks are the people who motivate the controller to exploit the
workers.
And this is something that's starting to happen a little bit in
Doctor Who now that's starting, I think, to rescue and
rehabilitate John Pertwee.
So the Daleks exploit the workers and they tell Aubrey Woods to
increase the output of mine, blah, blah, blah, sector 12 and
Aubrey Wood says, well, that will kill the workers and they say
well, you know, only the week workers and, you know, everyone else
will survive and things.
And so what's kind of happened is this capitalist depression is
the result of whatever happened in sort of 1971 when the
conference blew up.
So I guess the Daleks sort of have some kind of thematic thing
going for them.
But they're really ineptly done.
And what they've forgotten is that sort of Whitticarian idea that
the Daleks are the doctor's nemesis and that they're
representations of evil.
And so we don't even get the doctor confronting the Daleks.
No, they sort of strap him to a table and shout at him and then
put him in a cell.
Yeah, well, give him to Aubrey Aubrey Woods to talk.
Yeah, there was a conversation written that was mainly just to
explain how the Daleks seem to have survived the events of evil of
the Daleks and they decided, look, it's not necessary, which is
quite interesting when you consider that's kind of what the new
series do with the Daleks.
You know, the 1st few times the Daleks appear in the new series
is.
And that's the last of the Daleks that have been destroyed.
Oh, except for the ones over here.
Okay, we'll destroy them.
That's the last except for the one except you know what?
just going to stop explaining it.
That's perfect sense because they have time travel.
Oh, we haven't even mentioned Dalek Invasion of Earth 20 cough
cough, whatever.
That was actually meant to be.
They do mention it though, don't they?
57?
We have invaded Earth again or something.
We have changed the course of history.
Yeah.
And I think the implication here is this time they've invaded
Earth before their previous invasion.
Yes, this is meant to be earlier. 20th century.
Which makes sense.
Not a lot of sense when you got certainly got the sense that the
Scorovian Daleks in that one was their 1st go, which is why there
were a bit pants that the whole thing you wanted to hollow out
habited planet, where they make, you know, with a magnet a spear
and go flying, all that nonsense for duh.
Oh, yeah, yeah, but Russell 2 Davies explained that, so all is
forgiven.
You're reconning.
Yes.
Can we talk per tweak?
Yeah, you know, I think I think we should.
I was avoiding that because I haven't had a go for a while.
Yes, go on.
You don't want to tell that.
Oh, I wanted to talk about the Bogdanovich limitation effect.
That's what prevents them from going back and trying to
assassinate.
Can either of you explain the tag scene because, okay, my research
for this was, in fact, reading the target book, I'll come out and
say it.
I'll be out in a bit.
I didn't watch the TV thing.
I read the target book again.
Is it Terence?
Yeah, it is.
But it's good.
Are you serious?
sometimes good.
Yeah, he is.
Most often when he's got a bit of time.
He's certainly, you know, the 1st author I read with any, any
truth persistence at the age of whatever.
The tag scene is cut out of the TV version where they meet again
in the lab, simply for a time.
Okay.
It was filmed.
The whole Bogdanovich limitation, I said, is surely that you can't
meet yourself.
So what's going on in that 1st scene and what's going on in that
tag scene?
It's that you can't, for instance, the future doctor can't say to
his past self, don't press that button because I'll come into
existence because then he's not there to say, don't press that
button or I won't come into existence.
But that's exactly what happens around the console.
And we do it all the time.
Do you know what I mean?
Like in Doctor Who now.
I mean, Blenovic limitation effect is essentially just a crummy
McGuffin, you know, like it's an I'll explain later, essentially.
Yeah, yeah.
It's not actually a thing.
And they ignore it routinely.
Does it come up again in Modronundu?
Yeah, Is that the thing that...
Yeah, and wherein it becomes too sentient beings, I suppose, from
2 different time zones, cannot touch or else...
Sorry.
I thought it was the same.
Yeah, so yeah, 2 of the same sentient being from different time
zones can't. can't touch, can't interact physically without there
being a massive explosion of time differential energy.
Except Kazra and Sardic hugs himself in...
The Christmas Carol. doesn't explode.
I mean, that's to me, that's the least questionable thing about
the Christmas carol, but we're getting ahead of ourselves
outrageous.
No, no, I'm not saying I didn't like it.
I just said, I just said there is quite...
Oh, no, I totally really care about it.
No, but per we in this, I think it's continuing something we were
talking about last season. which is his character is softening.
In this instance, he doesn't have to be almost forcibly dragged to
come in and help out at the peace conference.
Let Prince Stewart turns up and says, I need you and they have a
bit of banter back and forth, which you always know is going to
end up with the doctor going down there, but he's just going
through...
I was going to say, he doesn't actually have to be cajoled, does
he?
You know, what the brigadier wants.
It's just sort of a playful, awful slash moment.
Please don't very quickly.
Come on.
You know, it's gone from the antagonistic relationship they would
have sometimes in the early seasons of the doctor saying, no, I
just want to have a look at this.
Sorry, what's the name of the thing I've written on the prop to
actually... get to that later in the season.
Yeah, the naughty thing is pinned onto props.
Yeah, that's...
I think I missed that. don't you?
I actually miss when Pertwe's doctor had a real kind of reason to
push against something.
He's just a little bit too comfy, cosy home counties.
No, you see, I actually think that it's a bit cleverer than that.
He's not as obnoxious as he normally is with Reginald style.
So Reginald Styles, he's pretty awful.
Being obnoxious.
He's being obstructionist.
He's not telling us the truth about what he experienced the night
before, all of that.
Yeah, if anyone deserves to be treated obnoxiously.
And Kertwe is actually quiet.
He doesn't push him.
He sort of lets him tell all of the kind of strange confabulations
he comes up with to explain things, but he doesn't push him and
he's not obnoxious.
And this is a civil servant who you might expect Pertley to be
horrible to.
And then we do see him being very comfortable in home counties in
episode one where he's slappably reading the wine cellar.
Look, at least he's stealing the wine.
Do you know what I mean?
That's a little trout and touch.
He's at least stealing this stuff.
And you know, he's not just having a glass of wine.
He pulls out a bottle and 3 wedges of cheese and grapes or what.
And Joe's just like, what?
has a bouquet.
Yeah.
It's sardonic but not cynical.
And we get that we get that charming scene where...
Cody rides her eyes, yeah.
Yeah, Joe tries to give Benton some food and Mike comes in and
you're not meant to be eating on duty and sends Benton away and he
eats.
And what about that date, Miss Grant that we never have?
She's, yeah, right.
So I'm not, like, I'm not a massive fan of action pertswing.
I don't think that the doctor should be running around hitting
people, frankly.
It's not havoc pertly anymore.
It's profile pertly, is it?
I am a little bit of a fan of the moment.
Terry Walsh.
Yeah, yeah, just doing the stunts.
So we have to mention Terry Walsh is not in this story.
We contractually obligated to mention Terry Walsh every story
from...
Terry Walsh's son is now following the podcast.
I believe he found our comment for punching Terry Walsh in the
face.
I do hope he realises that that's not meant as an instruction
because we think his dad's wonderful.
So we're going to start Walsh watch.
So profile was like his stunt team thing that he...
I think it's just Terry standing side on.
Oh, okay, profile, obviously.
Yeah, they got a bit pansy.
Someone at the BBC was getting smarty pants because Derek Weir
covered in fleas still to this day, was both an agent and a
stuntman and they didn't like him having 2 jobs.
So which is pretty much why Havoc disbanded.
So Persui gets attacked by Ashura or someone in episode one.
And he's doing his horrible wine and cheese thing.
And he actually manages to attack Shura, knock him unconscious
without putting his glass down, and then when Shura falls over, he
takes a sip.
We don't, oh, it's awful.
I'm afraid I like it too.
Like, it's the kind of thing I think Roger Moore tries to do it as
James Bond.
Yeah, he doesn't get away with it either exactly.
But I think I think Pertwee does get away with it because Roger
Moore would do it and, you know, possibly still kick the body
while it's down because that's a very James Bond thing to do.
Whereas the doctor is about, okay, remove the immediate threat. and
carry on.
Well, the reason the stunts always looks so terrible in the 70s is
Roger was too lazy to do any proper rehearsals.
Yeah, Roger would just do a little...
That's it.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So he is very obnoxious and he's sort of horribly middle class and
kind of annoying.
But when it comes time, he sees the oppressed workers from a
distance in a car park because the future consists largely of sort
of car parks and the South Bank.
Yeah, terrible.
Cottage is under bridges.
But then he goes into bat on their behalf.
Do you know what I mean?
And what we find is increasingly in this season, but we did find
it last season as well, that he goes into bat on the progressive
side of causes.
And here it's very, very clear where he talks about the oppressed
workers being fit only to lead the lives of a dog, about how
they're being, you know, monstered by secret police and all of
that sort of thing.
And so Pertuys sort of dropped the obnoxious thing.
He still does sort of come in as a sort of patrician saviour who
you know, intervenes from a sort of moral high ground.
That was the political savvy at the time, though, wasn't it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. ingratiate yourself with the upper glasses and
then say, excuse me, you people have a real problem here because
of the way you're treating your quote unquote lower classes.
In fact, that scene where he's actually delivering that polemic
about the oppression of the workers from a lovely couch with wine
and grapes and all of those things, which sort of parallels season
one.
And he doesn't do his usual blustering, you know, attacking Mr
Brown Rose or horrible walker from the ministry or whatever.
He's actually quite sort of urbane and quite calm about it.
And I think it is an improvement in his character.
And spoiler alert, I'm finding myself not disliking poetry quite
as much as I expected to.
Dear listener, my string of pearls was about to snap from the way
I am clutching them.
My word name.
I think Nathan's speaking entirely honourable and fair about this
because the character of the doctor in this is entirely honourable
re right.
He's there is glorious without the vein in front of us.
He's automatically sympathetic to the terrorists.
Even when they're tying him up in the cellar.
And thank you.
Can we just mention that, the doctor gets some proper biffo in
this, and how good is the casting?
They're very rodent featured, no offence to the actor, but there
is no one in this I don't thoroughly believe is true to their
part.
The casting of this is superb.
And the bloke at the end, not to spoil it for anyone who hasn't
watched it.
But we's jailer. is one of the most convincing villains I've seen
in Doctor Who ever.
There's yeah, there's no one in this that I would say is poorly
cast.
And what's really great about pert we softening in the role in
this one?
Like a ripe breeze.
Like a rice left out on the lawn?
It has a good runny Camembert.
It has a great, it has a great deal of character.
Is this the 1st time that we have seen him inspire a villain to
become heroic?
Ah, okay.
Savages?
Wasn't there some consideration of what was going on?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So I was thinking, particularly with Pertwee's doctor, you know
usually he just slaps the villain of alphabet or what have you.
He actually saved his life.
Yeah, yeah.
He does prevent them from killing him.
He saves the controller's life and the controller sort of thinks
about what he said and not only actively helps him from that
point.
I think he saved him because he had great heroic death.
I think he saved him because he was really envious of that peacock
green neighbourhood.
He really wanted to wear from season one.
It is a fabulous. mostly about the frost.
Fabulous suit.
So can we talk very briefly about the special edition?
I think we should.
So have you seen this?
I saw the special edition when it came out, but as I say, I read
the Tiger book this time, which again was fun.
I didn't watch it this time because I wanted the authentic
horrible experience of Peter Messelli in his voice.
Was it that bad?
It really is.
Oliver Messi.
Oliver Gilbert and Peter Messaline.
Yeah, yeah, terrible.
Truly terrible.
So what they did for the special edition?
A lot of bird noises on the lawn.
They put some crummy CG special effects.
So instead of like council blocks where the controller lives with
his retinue of blonde secretaries.
No, I've seen them once in the original cut, I just remember some
white concrete...
Yeah, yeah.
So but instead they're sort of space towers, I think that's
actually done rather sympathetically.
It's done by Farmageddon, the same chat behind the 5 doctors
special edition.
Okay.
And Flight of the Darnd, which are 2 of the greatest.
The side of the dance. about socks.
We can link to it on the website.
Oh, okay, all right.
You're in for a treat.
Let's just say Farmageddon does a little turn on time flight.
Oh, okay.
It's based on time flight.
But yeah, there's that, of course.
Nick Briggs does the new Dalek voices and we have new effects.
We have some new editing.
No, they did a great thing.
Yeah.
They got some people that dress up as unit people.
They got some people to dress up as Ogre.
They got a bunch of Daleks.
So, because the final...
Do they get Sean Pertley and drag as he's dead?
No, I want that.
Although he did do that for Halloween.
He did, and we should stick that.
I want that, dude. pretty good, please.
So, and the alp off against Capaldi.
With Michelle Gomez in the middle saying, you too.
Just be like, it'd be like, Mark of the Rani, only less crap. even
better.
So they restage the giant climactic battle at the end of episode
four, which is actually the original location.
They used they used the same type of camera that they filmed the
exteriors on.
Because they've got 6 Ogrons and 3 Daleks, and these people are
trying to prevent their entire invasion of Earth from ever
happening.
Even the Daleks are trying to stop it, but they can only afford to
send 3 of them.
Even Katie said, you know, in subsequent interviews, she and John
thought it was all a bit, you know, that is a bit rubbish.
And this is still sort of fairly rubbish, but it does improve
things sort of enormously.
Oh, can we just also mention, is this the 1st time I've ever seen
the doctor actively and sensibly, insensibly?
Shoot, a protagonist, sentia being for no good damn reason.
No, seeds of death.
But he's having a great time being Roger Moore with a pistol.
The Ice Warrior did have a gun when the doctor shoots the ogre on
this.
The doctor just comes around the corner.
There's one Ogon with his gun raised and the doctor shoots him.
The doctor turns around, sees another Oberon, doesn't have a gun
in his hand, takes the time to aim and shoots him.
Does he shoot 2 Ogron?
This is an episode.
Yeah.
Interestingly enough, in the special edition.
They Star Wars it.
The Ogron shoots fast.
They do other things like they cut out the no complications line.
They cut out like all sorts of really just sort of inept
directorial moments.
So they do improve it.
In the book, it's a shootout, as you say.
Okay, the doctor doesn't shoot 1st in the book.
I don't like Trout and shooting those.
No.
Seeds of death. awful.
It's not very trap.
Can I just say, though, I do kind of like the only 3 Daleks aspect
of the story for most of it because I love the idea that Earth is
only important enough to warrant 3 Daleks.
Oh, I thought there were only the 3 dialects of that region
because it's a region.
Maybe England is only important enough to warrant 3 Daleks.
Where the final battle scene falls down then is, when, you know
you're shooting the same daleks in different places to make it
look like that.
That usually works. unless one of them is gold.
And we've already been told there's only one gold dalek and
suddenly there's 10 because you're shooting them from different
angles.
If they just had a shot, the 2 gray Daleks from lots of different
angles.
I think it would have been a lot more convincing.
That wrist rabens.
Well, maybe not a lot more convincing.
Well, the gold one, because it draws your eye, immediately tells
you that these are just the same 3 props, whereas if you've got
clever editing and, oh, there's the gold dialect and 2 great Alex
and there's a great dialect, and there's 2 more great Alecs there
you would still sit down afterwards and go, oh, hold on, they were
probably the same props, but probably not what you're watching at
the time.
You know why they're that colour, though, don't you?
It's funny you mentioned that the transponder emitter on their
heads were stuck taped on.
They're the colours of minis and mini coopers respectively at the
time.
The gray is a, yeah, it's calf name.
The gold was called something sunset that Mini Coopers came out in
the year before.
Lovely.
Do you know, we've done the whole of this story without mentioning
Miss Paget.
Oh, she's rather bad. full of poetry.
Yeah, she is one of them.
I think possibly though, she's a bit eclipsed by Anat, but maybe
maybe that's a direct comparison we can draw, you know, even
though the future is horrible and people are being worked to death
at least women aren't just secretaries who are told to shut up by
their boss because they're telling the military the truth.
You see, English.
That's a charm.
Miss Paget could be a terrorist.
That would be a spinoff that I would really like to see.
Well, we kind of got it, didn't we?
In Age of Steel, Rise of the Cybermen, with Mrs. Moore.
Oh bless.
I love Mrs. Moore.
Well, you know what?
I think possibly after this story, Joe saw how brave Captain Mike
Yates was, and we see her agree to go on a date with him at the
beginning of The Curse of Peladin.
Well, what could possibly go wrong?
I don't think they're going on a date, and she's certainly not
dressed as if she's going to share a comedy beer if she does.
She is a comedy beard.
She, um, she's, you know, taking out to the clubs and she's
wearing something, you know, a bit fabulous, but a little bit
frumpy because she doesn't want to attract attention away from
Mike, who's obviously the main, the main attraction here.
Good beating for each other.
Yeah, I think so.
I think that's clearly what's happening.
It's a very, very strange opening.
I see he was just doing her hair.
Have you seen all the publicity shots for this?
Every single publicity shot that was done before the final shoot
Katie had forgotten to remove one of the rollers from her hair.
She's got a big pink roll.
I mean, well, I think Mike was just in such a hurry. forgot to
finish. forgot to...
But he only gets mentioned.
We don't actually see him.
And this is kind of important because it's tiresome at this time.
He's getting pretty tiresome.
No, nonsense.
This story actually has like an opening that doesn't involve the
regular cast and it's it's set on an alien planet, a sort of
strange mediaeval planet where, you know, an argument is taking
place in a throne room.
And it is something that we really haven't had for a very, very
long time.
It's the 1st story.
It's the 1st story of John Pert, not to feature Nicholas
Courtney.
Yeah.
Very important.
That's interesting.
Even in colleague in space, you know, he was there to help the
setup and for a moment we believe went, it's all going to be on
earth and then suddenly we're in space.
This time it's just no, it's traditional Doctor Who, we're in the
Tartars and we're about to land somewhere.
Yeah, there's not even a scene on Earth at all at the beginning.
And the doctor claims to have fixed the Tatus, doesn't he?
He claims that it's a test flight.
So this argument in the throne room is kind of the big thematic
argument, and it's between the high priest and the chancellor, and
it's the lovely lisping David Trouton, is king of Paladon, and
these are his 2 sort of beloved advisors, and they're arguing
about joining the European economic community.
You know, everyone...
I believe, join Eurovision.
You know, I actually think I actually think that people overplay
the European economic community thing, and I don't think it really
works as an allegory because Peladon is this sort of primitive
culture.
Do you know what I mean?
And they're all sort of technologically advanced and stuff.
But I think that there is something about progress, and I think
it's important, sort of in the pertwi era.
Unit belongs to the United Nations, which is a big sort of
supernational organisation.
Both mind of evil and day of the Daleks present international
diplomacy as a sort of progressive thing as a way of avoiding war
as a way of making the world better.
And in claws of Axos, Britain misbehaves by keeping Axonide for
itself. you know.
So the perjury era has this idea that forging alliances and things
is a good thing in itself.
And so this is what we see happening here.
You've got 2 stories in a row that are actually looking at current
political events.
That hasn't happened, I don't think, ever before in Doctor Who has
it.
The savages touched on it, but you've not seen stories that are
trying to be quite so contemporary as this season has been.
This one, you know, you touched on it before.
Britain was trying again to join the EU.
The reason it had taken so long is that De Gaul, apparently
because of simply because of Dunkirk and feeling that Britain had
let them down so terribly in the war, opposed Britain joining the
EUC.
And it was only after his passing that finally jumped in very
quickly and had a very short window in which to do it.
So, really, you're just, you're seeing on TV all the delegates in
grapery getting together in capes because apparently you're not a
delegate, unless you're wearing a high collar, even if you're
trundling around in a front loader, you know, with suds effects
you've still got to have a collar on the back of it.
And you have to be green.
They're actually all green.
Well, actually, yeah.
And again, I think the best, yeah, the best thing about this story
if you want to look at it, because when you analyse it and what's
actually working, it's not much, but the whole thing works
together.
I think the costumes and the designs are gorgeous.
They really get that right.
And the lighting is lovely and the sets really work.
Well, for instance, the Peladonians are all different shades of
heliotrope.
Different shades of purple.
And the delicates are...
I thought they were all Cadbury purple.
They are.
Oh, don't say that.
We get soon.
We've already mentioned George Brandon.
They melt in your, they melt in your hand, not in your mouth or
something like that.
Lovely agador.
We haven't even touched on him yet.
Look, we haven't really said what this story is because if you're
listening to this, you probably know.
And it's meant to be a hound of the basketballs thing.
You see a lot of fans say, I don't even see that.
It's just other than it's got a teddy bear that's disappeared for
a long time and comes back.
I think one of the bigger influences is Star Trek's Journey to Bay
which went out about a year before the script was written 2 years
before broadcast and it has a very similar thing.
It's a bunch of cultures actually on their way to a conference
when there is a murder.
It's all it all dates back to Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, of
course, but Journey to Babel sort of has that element, the
strongest.
It doesn't have the mysticism element, which is what this has in
actor.
You'd think it would, but there's one caveat.
There's one thing that makes me say it's actually nothing to do
with.
It just superficially looks like it's the trek thing.
Actually, there's a lot more to do with, okay, if we want to go
back to antecedents.
This is really Ursula Le Guin's Ecumen stories.
Did you read those when you were a tiny, tiny person?
read a few of them.
You know, the long separated non-humanoid races that reestablish.
Well, Gethen in those books is Alpha Centauri with an unfixed
gender, but just a lot more convincing.
That's not hard We'll get on to what lovely Lenny Maine.
You know who was actually credited at one point?
It was a joke and it almost went out, that the director of this
story, the Australian ex-donceur, that became a director, was
actually billed as lovely Lenny Maine director.
And someone said, get that off that car.
That's true.
He was Australian.
He was Australian and had a very fruity vocabulary, which we may
well touch on. especially when it comes to Alpha Centauri.
This story actually comes about, I think, again, with the
political stuff that was happening with Britain and the end of
Empire.
If touch on mining corporations, which is really, you know, what
this story seems to be about minerals.
Mining corporations as then as now, had influence at the
diplomatic level, and we're pushing treaties, giving them partial
ownership of countries themselves, in South America, and in
Africa.
And Britain, just as in every Bond film over the last 10 years, was
the moralising adjudicator, you know, who offered aid whilst
shoring up its own banks, with loans that would take generations
for these countries to pay back.
Now, if you look at how the federation is operating here.
I don't think the Star Trek Federation would have ever had
battleships supplying around going, well, you know, if this
doesn't work out, we're going to blow them.
No, no, the buggerries out of your purple shorts.
No.
So on the surface, it definitely feels tricked, but I actually
think it's much more insidious and darker in English than Trek
ever gone into.
And I think Jody Tobabel is probably the best Trek story of the
original series.
And similarly, I think this is Brian Hale's best script for the
show.
And he's really good, isn't he?
Yeah, he's great.
I love what he's done with the Ice Warriors.
Spangly now.
They have Spangler capes.
I actually was actually thinking they're not quite as Spangly as
they used to be.
No, they've got a new Spangley tuck cape, apparently.
Well, you remember the Marshall?
Seeds of Death.
Well, no one...
Deal listener, this is actually the day after the Mardi Gras
parade, and I was in that, and there were quite a few grand
marshals, judging by the amount of glitter.
I still have glitter on me.
And the other listener, I didn't wear glitter, nor did I hug
anyone wearing glitter.
No, that's right.
God knows how it happens.
The ice warriors in this.
The people have talked about it being humanising the ice
warriors.
Well, quite frankly, though.
That's a racist term, isn't it, really?
I think that's quite racist.
Mainly because our human influences in this story are Joe and the
doctor.
Amazonia.
And Amazonia further down the line.
The chairman delegate from Earth, Nathan is looking very
confused.
She's billed as Amazonia.
Oh, is she?
I love her.
Oh, can we talk about her later?
Yeah.
That means she's from the Amazon.
Did you notice everyone's called from the country?
so it's Arcturus.
So the doctor should really be called Earth, Soul.
Soul.
But because the doctor doesn't trust.
The Ice Warriors.
Joe immediately doesn't trust the ice Warrior.
So I, you know, I would say the racism here is coming from the
human element, which ties in with the colonial theme.
But it's wonderful how the doctor then, when he realises he's been
wrong about the ice war is.
He doesn't attempt to justify himself.
He just says, look, you know, I was wrong.
I was wrong because of my past experience and I'm sorry about
that.
Joe's actually a little bit sceptical of him.
She eventually sort of follows on and she finds Arcturus's thing
in... she gives them the benefit of the doubt first.
Yeah, she does call the doctor a little bit on his prejudice, but
look, I think the ice Warriors are great and it is a great thing
to turn them from villains into heroes.
But gosh, those costumes are awful.
I mean, they really, really just look terrible.
Oh, they do.
I swore it was all weird.
Yes, the ice Warriors are terrible.
They are bits and pieces left over, you know?
They were a bit of a. they look worse in colour than they do in
black and white.
No, that's possible.
Black and white hides a multitude of things.
Are you saying that the costumes aren't convincing?
Have we touched on Alpha Centaur yet?
Well, that would be rude.
This is not...
You know, the director is not consented.
If we haven't seen if the listener hadn't seen Alpha Centauri, how
would you describe?
Well, look at being giant green penis in a shower curtain
hexodecimal hexapods, shooter pod waving.
It's got 6...
It's got a big round head with an iris and...
Yes, yes.
And it's green, which you wouldn't have read in colour, so it
would actually have been even ruder.
It turned up, and Lenny Maine said, and I'll say this very
carefully.
It looks like an effing prick, is it?
But with an Australian accent.
That was like an acting prick.
He said, get rid of it. do something with it.
We don't have Australian accent.
No, we don't.
We're very not very convincing.
So they took it away and put literally a shower curtain around
it.
He said, now it looks like an effing prick in a cave.
But it's not as good as what he said about Aguador.
He was really annoyed with how English all the extras and the
actors were being when Agador finally makes his appearance in the
throne room.
Not terribly. looks quite convincing in the half lit tunnels shot
from below.
But I'm sorry, it's a bloke in a teddy bear suit when he comes
out.
Oh, it's Nick Hobbs.
Nick Hobbs is gorgeous.
We saw him in Claws of Axos. as the unit driver hypnotised by the
master.
He's quite gorgeous.
But anyway, care fluffy out there, right?
Well, only you would know that watching it.
So the folk at home are just sitting there thinking, oh, it's a
lovely teddy bear and everyone goes, yes, it's a teddy bear.
Anyway, the story goes, Lenny Maine says sort of classic.
Look at this thing, like you go to all say, holy freaking cow.
And of course, there was a troop during the camera rehearsal troop
of Boy Scouts being led around by their vicar.
So, of course, at that point, Agedor comes in in the entire cast
in unison calls out, holy freaking cow, in a foam, for Australian
accents, for the scout boys all burst into laugh.
You don't need to go to conventions.
You can hear it all in the year.
You'd think, though, by this point that Vickers would just know to
avoid the Doctor Who set or indeed. hanging around with young
scouts, considering later eventualities.
Yes, sadly.
Can I talk pertween?
I think we have to.
Yeah, it's, it's kind of, it's kind of... a bit into pert we
watch.
We don't necessarily.
I just love that hair.
This is the 1st time when he does a truly convincing B. Arthur for
the entire...
No, seriously, the entire performance.
There are moments when I have to squint to be sure it's not per
week.
He does have to strap on his fighting wig.
Yes, oh, here we are.
And notice to attack.
Yeah, in order to make Grant because he's fairly obviously played
by Terry Walsh during that scene at the end of episode three, I
want to say, when, you know, he's fighting the King's champion.
Gron is a member of Habik, you knew.
Oh, is he?
Yeah, scored some Claire, yes.
Yes.
Yeah, I think I saw some of him last night at Mardi Gras.
And he's an arranger.
And it's time to Ranger as well, in his own right.
Yes, Ian Terry.
Why does he had his tongue cut out or something?
Oh, because...
Well, because just be grateful he's not black.
Yeah that's true.
It's usually what they have to be, isn't it?
And we do we do have another situation in this story where Joe
doesn't really get to meet any strong women.
Oh, I don't know.
Since Pellet, I think.
Yeah, Rod did comment that although he enjoyed the story, he gave
it 8 out of 10.
He doesn't really understand Peladin's marriage proposal because
he's clearly gay.
So why is he proposing to Joe?
That's the same reason Mike Yates is.
Thank you.
I think that was artfully set up in the opening scene for us all
to go.
Ah, yes.
Instead of cunning parallel.
Well, it was difficult in the 70s for young men with, you know
raspberry ripple hairdos too.
Convincing.
In those shorts.
Have you mentioned the disco shorts?
And the go-go there?
She's taking fashion advice from Altos from...
She's got the legs for it, though.
From the keys of Mariners.
Yes, one of my favourite stories.
I totally blank.
Second only to the massacre.
Yeah.
Which is still good.
Yes, I was watched a bit of it this week.
Right.
Peter Purvis says it was the best story he did, the massacre.
Then again, he said it was the most intelligent script and it was
it was really done for adults and I think that, you know, if
you're not getting it, you're probably looking at Doctor Who for
the wrong reasons.
I'm really fond of Peter Purpose.
Is that the one with the terraleptol in it?
I don't think that's the one that's not a nice way to talk about
hastily along.
And chaplet.
That being said, you know, I think the relationship between
Peladon and Joe is very sweet. is touching, isn't it?
Mainly because of how Katie Manning plays it because this is the
1st time and since Joe arrived on the show where Joe has had Joe
has met anyone who inspires her as much as the doctor does.
You know, it's very clear early on last season that Joe thinks the
world of the doctor.
At the end of last season, she is ready to sacrifice herself for
him.
You're saying she's a bit upwardly mobile?
No, no, she only goes for talk.
Ooh, a king.
No, no, no.
I suppose I suppose it could be construed that way.
Essex, isn't she?
I think Katie plays the conflict very well of choosing between her
life with the doctor and possibly a life with peladin.
And I don't think the royalty appeals because really, you know
peladin is an asset rich planet, but it's not a socially rich
planet.
Well, he wouldn't want to live in a big fisher price rock face
with, you know, stuffed turdy bear.
I think I had the toy version of that in Castle Greyskull as a
child.
West Castle Gray, Scott, was it?
It's pretty much Castle Gray, Scott.
But a lot of the same cast.
But that final scene is beautiful and it does begin to set up an
element of Joe's character in that, you know, she is a young
woman.
And I think it's possibly the 1st time where a companion character
is allowed to have these romantic feelings without just being
kicked out of a TARDIS, Susan.
She gets free. and she leaves with the 3rd one.
But she gets petal or whatever his name is, last name.
Lartep.
It's petal backwards.
Um, from, uh, Planet of the Daleks.
And then later, of course, some.
Professor Jones.
Lovely Professor Jones.
Long hair.
I inherited that from the family, obviously.
Sight gag, it was not.
But no, I think that, especially that final scene where she is
genuinely torn and would be devastated with either choice, but she
has to make one and also pert with his portrayal of his reaction
that he would be devastated as well, but he wouldn't try to stop
her.
He's very sweet.
I think in that sweet.
It's very sweet.
And then, of course, they have to make their comedy escape.
But they don't forget they're acting emotionally when they realise
they have to get out of there.
Like Joe's voice is still breaking slightly when she's joking
about going to see the coronation.
We haven't seen an evolution of a relationship like this since I
think the doctor and Barbara.
I don't know that it's being done in the writing.
Do you know what I mean?
or particularly the production?
But I think it is just an artefact of John and Casey warming
towards each other and enjoying working together.
And I think too, that the doctor is being allowed to relax a
little bit and be a little bit more silly.
So he gets some comedy moments here.
Do you know what I mean?
He's got this rotating mirror that he's going to hypnotise Agatore
with.
He looks at it and nearly hypnotise himself and has to sort of
shake it off.
And he sings Twankador and it's sort of terribly funny and like he
hypnotises Joe by mistake with it later and all of that sort of
thing.
And he's starting to be allowed to do funny doctor-ish things
again.
We were talking a little bit about the poetry from our childhood.
Were you saying that, Brendan?
This is starting to be the per tweet from my childhood.
Yeah, this is this is the part we that people remember because
when I talk to people who aren't Doctor Who fans, about Doctor
Who.
Half of them remember Tom and he's their doctor and half of them
remember John and he's their doctor.
And the people who remember John remember the funny side and they
remember, oh, that, you know, that one with the teddy bear in the
caves.
Yeah, for instance.
And he's like, he treats Agador like a dog.
Do you know what I mean?
Like in a kind of sweet way.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. terrific if we'd actually got to keep Agador as an early K
not.
That would have been something, wouldn it?
He would have livened up the mutants enormously.
Oh, God.
The mutants coming up.
He's not just the pompous, obnoxious Tory bastard.
Oh, that's hard. in season seven.
Yeah, that is harsh.
This is what he was like all last month without your influence
Richard.
But now, you know, like I'm really warming to him enormously.
Doctor is Patrician.
I do like that line that Danny plays to Capaldi.
Oh, you're a lord, of course you are, even with the, even with the
Glaswegian docs brine that you're throwing over it.
I can really hear you, you really are very lordly, and I really
like that moment.
Moffat has picked up on, the doctor is Patrician.
No matter how much he may try to deny it, which I think is why I
found the 10th doctor, slightly grating, and he's the love that
they picked up on it, the Dick Van Dyke, sensibility, copy accent
because it always felt a bit phoney.
And you could see Tenet have moments of tenet have moments of real
obnoxious patricianism in a way that the only one that really
wasn't was Eccleston.
It is that thing where the doctor comes in to solve your problems
from a position of kind of superior knowledge.
Are you saying pissing from a great height?
Something like that.
Yeah.
And I think that's unavoidable in the character.
And the show critiques that and perhaps particularly under Moffatt
but the show does critique that a bit.
It's not until he actually does lose everything.
This is the pet.
This is a petulant teen adolescent doctor, really, if you look at
his overall lifespan. commented on later, that he's had his toys
taken away.
He's lost his flying ball.
He's been grounded.
He's going to be here. been grounded sent to his room with a whole
lot of friends he's got to make for himself that aren't on his
level. and okay, he's doing quite well considering. and they'll
send his best worstie bestie worstie enemy from school.
Can you imagine what brittle little queens they could have both
been in the pride on Academy playground, just absizing everybody
else up, sitting on the sidelines, not playing sport and just
bitching about everybody else.
That's right. creating time flow analogues and wrecking everyone's
homework.
Exactly.
On a side note, Russell T. Davis was actually approached by the
BBC to make a series about a teenage doctor.
Whoa.
Oh, Golly Wally.
When was this?
After his...
This was during the, this was um, when it was really big.
I think during the production of season two, they started talking
to him about before Sarah Jones.
Yeah, yeah, it becomes Sarah Jane Adventures, that's what they
do.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Do you think they would have gone?
Well, that's the thing.
He said, I did like a one page document and decided it would be
absolutely terrible.
So I pitched them Sarah Jane instead.
Well, I'm really grateful for that.
I don't think it would have been terrible, but I think it would
have been a lot more work when, you know, Liz gave us a whole
world.
Yeah, we don't want to know.
It would have been demystification.
Yeah, we had that lovely moment in listen recently where we had
the young doctor.
Spoiler alert, but you know what?
It was broadcast a few months ago.
But yeah, I, you know, that was brilliant.
And we don't see him.
We see him in shadow and we see him like we see a monster, which
is amazing.
And that, I mean, that brings me back to the monsters in this.
Put these nostrils.
You do get quite a few shots of those.
Yeah, yeah.
Remember when he's lying on that he hates those nostrils.
They do them quite a lot for someone who's asked them not to, don't
they?
But what's what's really interesting about this is they're really
trying to do non-humanoid aliens because Star Trek had finished
its run in the UK by this point.
And the original Star Trek had 2 types of aliens.
They had humans with funny bits or funny paint on them and they
had wibbly cameras on the pattern representing energy beings and
sometimes a combination of the two.
So when Doctor Who's trying to do aliens, they're going to do a
non-bipedal alien.
Okay, ends up looking like a penis in a coat, but whatever.
And they're going to do an alien which is a head in a jar.
We do it much, much better.
I can't wait to see how they do Croton the Coronavore.
It's going to be fantastic.
But the croats on the coronavirus.
I love the I love the head on the jar.
That's like the face of bow. you know where he turns up later?
Octurus.
Very good.
It only turns out later, Bernard's his name.
Burn it up.
Bernard is his name.
Do you know he turns up?
In fact, he is Bernard.
The same out costume he's used to the blackout a Christmas special
and he's with nursey inside it, Bernard, and he's part of the...
He's part of the triple husbandoid.
That's right.
That Queenie.
I must say that again.
So they did revive and resuscitate him.
And it was nursey all the time.
It's actually Murphy Grumba inside that machine.
It's been a Dalek.
Murphy Grumbo and he has to operate the gun by kicking it with his
foot.
But this is a, I mean, this is this is what they try and do in the
end of the world and then again in the rings of Atkinson, which is
to produce as many sort of strange aliens as they possibly can on
their sort of limited budget.
And you can see, like Russell's just pulling out all of the stops
in the end of the world to be as expensive as possible. in the
discontinuity guide, Cornell Day and topping note that there's
only one bed in the ice Warriors.
Yes.
We don't know the gender of Sorg, though, do we?
Sorg has to stand.
How do you know that?
Because the outfit has a rod in the back.
That's the thing has to click into.
To sit down on the set of the ice Warriors, Bernard Brisler had to
have a shooting stick round up.
So to me, really?
Yes, you know, you did.
He did.
That's why he's terrible.
That's why he begged to have the part returned.
Who would have known that fibreglass was so expensive that you had
to amortise the expense over like 4 terrible stories?
Okay, they're not that terrible.
Except for Monster Paladon, which is really, truly awful.
Well, we're not there yet.
I do think this is a lot more effective than, like, all the aliens
turning up in the end of the world and all the aliens turning up
in rings of Akaten, simply because each of the aliens in this are
given a character, they're given characterisation.
Oh, they're just spectacle, I think, in the end of the world. you
know what I mean?
I think that's deliberately, you know, intended to say this is
Doctor Who, you know, you might remember it.
Well, this is this is flashing...
You might remember it as a sort of penis in our shower curtain, but
we have a lot more money now and here's what we can do.
And we've got people made out of wicker baskets.
I actually think the most convincing alien is Alpha Centauri, and
I love the characterisation.
He's utterly convincing as a perplexed civil servant.
And you know, Isan Churchman, who plays, yeah, the queen of the
spiders, as Alpha Centauri, as everything else, was told to play
Centauri as a perplexed and bothered homosexualist civil servant.
Yes.
I think she's great.
It's a really memorable character.
I really love it.
Really love him.
And especially... he was going to get his own spinoff too, wasn't
he?
Offer Centorian friends.
I thought that was just disappearance on the black and white
minstrel show.
Yes, we should make sure that he actually did appear. didn't he
actually appear...
Did he do it black and white men?
Yeah, he do.
Yeah, yep, they did a dance number on the moon, so he's surrounded
by people in blackface and curly wings.
Oh my God, England is such a miserable place.
You know, it says a lot.
It was the highest rating program on the ABC. rated higher than
the 2 Ronnies, which was the other highest rating thing at the
time.
It says a lot when the when the least objectionable thing on the
screen is a giant green penis in a shower curtain.
I've never seen no.
I've seen this.
I was going to say, the greens are your dogs.
It's very sensible.
I think we stop it from splashing all over the parquetry.
Ah, parquetry.
The doctor's in his parquet waistcoat.
It's the 1st time he wears a waistcoat.
Forgive our indulgence listener, we'll get there in the end.
And he makes it out of parquet.
It's so awful, isn't it?
There are some real... terrible fashion experiments for the doctor
this year because in the mutants he's going to wear...
Stop that.
Do you know Pertwee was designing his own outfits because Patrick
McNee got to.
Did you know this story, Brandon?
this time I'm wearing a cravat.
We had a lot more.
Yeah, probably had a lot more influence on what he wore this
season.
I can't say I'm surprised.
Yeah, it certainly didn't help though.
Awful, awful, awful.
Look at what Roger and Tony were wearing in the persuaders.
It's not that bad right at the same time.
And it does add a lot more character to him because he pretty much
spent 8 of the 9 stories of his 1st 2 years in the same costume.
And this year, there's red coats, there's orange coats, there's
the black coat and blue coat occasionally, you know, it makes him
a lot more...
Scarf and a pin.
Oh, that's next season.
I think we're getting less capes too.
And I actually think I hate the cape.
I think it just looks stupid.
He's got a lovely Inverness cape now, hasn't he?
Sherlock Holmes, because again, it's the Baskervilles reference.
I think it's to wear the cape as much.
He'll wear it at the beginning and then take it off.
I think it's his day wear.
He looks like dashing, I have to say, with the jacket. you know
what I mean?
Like, I like it a lot.
Just with the velvet.
Yeah, no previous doctor has, you know, everyone's worn sort of
tails or quite a long jacket and he's just wearing a sort of
normal length coat thing.
I think he looks pretty good.
And I like the way his costume's going where it'll be like a
wardrobe of different coloured sort of velvet. he mixes and
snatches with that.
Like, sort of like Capaldi, except that that polka dot thing that
he wears in Kilamoon is unforgivably bad.
I'll see if I can find it, but there was a rather wonderful thing
when the classic series Doctor Who figures 5 inch range was still
in production.
You know, an adult wouldn't snigger at the words 5 inch.
But it was when various pertwies were coming out.
I think we ended up with sort of six. to figure outfits of pert
week.
Well, someone took the basic stock standard photo of the pert we
action figure and Photoshopped all the different possible pert we
outfits.
And I think they ended up with about 20 because, of course, some
of them are unique to their story, like Monster of Pellet and he
never wears that again. et cetera, et cetera.
And I just thought I would buy all 20 of these.
I would want to have my rainbow of pertly.
And I think that's that's the one.
Rainbow of perk, sweet.
We would now have the collective noun.
I think he'd approve. he'd approve of that.
Poetry, we do discover at the end, and it does seem to be
something that's kind of grafted on by Terence Diggs because Brian
Hales is writing a kind of old-fashioned story where the doctor's
just sort of travelling around.
So Terrence Dix has the doctor to decide that in fact, what's
happened all along is that he hasn't got the TARDAS to work and
this is the time...
Yeah.
And that's something that is going to be used in a couple of times
again, I think, in the it's been used once before.
It's going to be used once more.
Yeah, so it's been used in colony.
It's going to be used again in mutants, and then it's used for a
couple of early Tom Bakers, actually.
Yes, yes, that's true.
But he won't quite fix the TARDIS, yeah.
No.
And as we'll see, the next story seems to be going back a little
in the per we hear in that we do not see the Tartars at all in the
sea devils.
Someone said that it's the last story where the TARDIS doesn't get
seen or mentioned.
It is the last story where you just, it's not even. progged.
The only time it almost happens again is seeds of doom, but they
throw in that last... at the end.
Have we been here before?
It's like doing a podcast, isn't it?
Have we said this before?
No, I was wondering if in season 12.
Like, you don't see...
Yes, actually, you don't see it in... and Genesis of the Daleks.
Yeah, it might get a mention, though.
I think it might be mentioned.
I don't think it's even mentioned in this story.
No, it's not.
Yeah, we've got Malcolm Hawke back again writing a direct sequel
to his season 7 story.
We haven't applauded Malcolm Hulk yet, have we?
No, no.
So this is Malcolm Hulk's yearly story about giant lizards, as you
would say, Nathan.
We have the sea devils here.
Yes, and the experimental score by Malcolm Clark, who wouldn't
work on the show again until 1982.
Poor thing though.
Apparently he was just told we want it to be electronic, unusual
and experimental.
You know, I was given no other guidance.
You know why?
It was a budget cup.
The reason they could have Dudley was working very, very hard on
other things and was bringing things only 3 days before the cut.
Because Dudley was also freelancer, the BBC radiophonic workshop
and yes, they weren't actually seen as perfunctory as the title
suggests, we're told to do it.
And I think was Hodgson said, look, you know, we're all too busy.
We've got lovely young chap here called Malcolm Clark.
And he was given the Delaware, as they called it, because of
Delaware, Delaware Road, but it's the SC 63, I think it was
exerciseer.
Yeah, it was a very early synthesiser.
But the problem is you could only play one note at a time, so
everything had to be multi-tracked just to get a chord, every
single chord.
Funnily enough, I don't find this score.
We haven't talked much about the music so far this year, and yet
it's quite prevalent.
I don't find this score anywhere near as grating as my all-time
favourite composer's work for this series is Tristram Carey.
I mean, Tristram's work comes up in a future story of this
season.
It's really annoying.
I think that, I mean, the music is odd this season and this stands
out, but not that much.
That's the thing, isn't it?
It should support the story, but not to the point you're going
what the hell is that noise when you're actually trying to watch
the production?
It's true.
It does a bit of both. face or something like that?
See, what I quite like about it is it starts off as really quite
conventional.
But then when the monsters start appearing, we get the famous, you
know, we get the famous...
So you don't need, you don't need TV.
No, I'm just going to sit here and listen to Brendan and do
the...
I really quite like it.
And we get all those things.
Like, bang, wing, wing.
They do the they do the master's theme in the sea devil style
music sting.
You know, it's really well.
And of course, Roger Delgado's back.
We haven't seen him for a couple of stories, which is...
This is probably the biggest story where you can look at it and go
right, I'm seeing where Michelle Gomez is getting informed by her
characters because the master is having a wow of a time in this
story.
You know, yes, okay, he's locked up, but he's in luxury.
I want a colour telly.
But Russell steals the clang of scene.
So the clangers are like knitted puppets.
Little knitted puppet.
On wood instruments.
They talk with recorders.
Yeah, and they sort of go for a couple of years and stuff and
they're like kids TV, a little short, I think.
You can see them on YouTube.
But Russell steals the scene for sound of drums.
Yeah, with Teletubbies.
Yeah, I don't I don't think it's impacted there simply because
John Sim isn't the charming master, like Rod Delgado is very
charming and so...
He's actually there whistling along with them.
Like, as if he's trying to communicate with them.
He's actually whistling as he's watching the players.
And he's watching the clangers on the world's worst video screen
which they just stole from the goodies set.
Oh, you mean John Sims or this one?
No, they are goodies.
Yeah, they're yellow painted.
Yellow Venetian blinds.
Because this is the future.
But in the goodies, it's done as a joke.
Yeah, it was meant to be said on an oil rig.
The old sea fort where the doctor 1st encounters sea devils was
meant to be an oil rig, and that was ruled out for several
reasons.
First of all, the location.
It wasn't where the oil rigs at the time existed and there was no
evidence there would be oil there.
So of all the things to go, oh, that's too much of a stretch.
We're not going to say there's oil under this stretch of the
channel.
But the main reason was they wouldn't have been able to do any
location filming on it because women weren't permitted on oil
rigs.
And Katie wouldn't have been able to go on it.
They could have just got Stuart failing the week.
What exactly?
Two points of irony there.
Joe never climbs the exterior of the four.
It Stuart fell.
Very convincing.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
There's a bottom double.
Stuart Fell is...
He says in an interview that he deliberately gave himself a bit of
a wiggle to emulate Katie.
But the 2nd thing, do we know who the 1st woman in Britain allowed
on an oil rig was?
Margaret Thatcher.
Elizabeth Sladen.
Oh, really?
Several years later, and you can see this on the terror of the
Zigon's DVD.
Yeah, she made a school special about oil rigs and she was the 1st
woman permitted on an oil rig.
Wow.
I can see them all clutching their phantom pearls and spooning all
these poor riggers.
But collapsing under the weight of...
Because they have to wear pants because there's a lady around.
But the thing is, I do love the story.
It's such a clever script.
For instance, it is Mac Hulk.
Blind, Trenchard, Hart, Walker.
The 4 major human characters who assist the doctor and really take
the place of the unit and the civil servant in this story.
They're all named after commissioned ships of the time.
Oh bless.
And also Blythe, as well as being an incredibly strong female
character who would have outranked Sergeant Benton.
Is that Maggie Harris?
It is Maggie Harris.
Yeah, yeah.
And the whole reason she was hired...
The one who murdered Victoria not long after the incurrence.
That's right.
The whole reason she was hired was that director Michael Lee
Bryant had worked on Fury from the Deep. and was impressed with
her because of the scene where she walks into the water and he
sort of says, you know, she made no fuss about it.
There was no panic.
She went in and stayed under the water for 30 seconds before
popping out. 30 minutes before anyone had remembered that she was
there before popping her head up and saying, that's professional.
Did I get that right?
She actually died in 10 minutes.
We have to recite.
But you know, she's a professional.
But she is such a, she is such a bit slow now.
A bit, you know, bones hard to remember the words.
Yeah, and then or, you know, where she put a soup or anything, but
she's, she's a trooper.
She's such a strong character and everyone around her treats her
with the respect, you know what?
And she never says she met Nelson.
No, she never she never bloody does.
The only person to disrespect her on the basis of her agenda is
Walker.
Yeah.
That's true.
And that's the thing.
We're not meant to like Walker.
No, no, no.
Mr. Walker's the one who can't stop notion, can he?
He's the pert we. in a puffyosis.
He's season 7 pertly.
He's season 7 per week.
Whereas Per we nixed the cheese sambos, though.
Per we does need so mean...
I think it's the Nadir of their relationship is in this one.
He's pretty horrible in this...
I think that's the worst thing that he does to her.
But again, he doesn't violent sword play makes me hungry.
Yeah, no, he's constantly stealing sandwiches all the way.
Yeah, he steals the master sandwich.
He steals that guy's boat.
He does sort of apologise to Joe for the sandwiches.
Yeah, and Blythe is just like, Blythe kind of gives her a look
like, oh, man, I'll go make his...
No, thank you.
She does, man.
That's the thing.
She doesn't make the sandwiches.
She orders someone else to make the sense.
She's too good for that.
If she is a wren, at the time the women's naval officers were in a
different category.
She is a 3rd officer, which is the equivalent of a sub-lieutenant
or ensign.
So she's the Leslie Phillips equivalent from the Navy luck.
I think the reason I really liked this.
You know, Perkley was still making the Navy life.
Oh, yeah, this was filmed.
Yeah.
You know, we've touched on it.
I'm still making that after Doctor Who.
Yeah, very much so.
Went into the late 70s.
The longest running British sitcom happened to be on the radio.
It started in 59.
And I love Pertwi in that.
I actually like him a lot more in that than I do in Doctor Who.
What's him do, I think, because the characters, but I think
Perkley himself felt more comfortable in his playing a denoted
character.
I think he was still.
Did you get the feeling?
Maybe that's why, in fact, he's interesting.
He's still not feeling entirely comfortable with the idea of just
playing himself.
Doesn't know who that is.
So he keeps defaulting to Basil Rathbone in the Robin Hood film or
he's a little bit patrician or, you know, when he's with a little
bit with whomever.
He's still trying to work out exactly what the doctor is, but that
makes it interesting to watch.
Well, I think when his demands are placed on him.
Do you know what I mean?
when he's actually forced to act by the script and that doesn't
happen very often.
He's pretty good.
When he's horribly treated, when he's under adversity, such as
Dave the Daleks, he's actually at his best when he's actually
getting a bit of proper biffo.
I mean, here too, here too, he has to convince people as well.
He doesn't just have the brigadier to, you know, go and do what he
says.
Yeah.
And with walk...
Yeah.
Is that Edwin Richfield?
Edwin Richfield.
He just he literally just stepped off the set from UFO playing an
admiral.
Captain John Hart, not the James.
Yeah, sorry, Captain's character from from Torchwork.
He's very convincing because you know how they got to use the pom
pom guns and other things is that a lot of the officers on the
ships thought that Richfield was actually a captain. because they
weren't allowed.
Siiblings weren't allowed anywhere near any of the tech.
Yeah.
Could I have some gam on this place?
Oh, yes, though. and opi-pops.
Yeah, he said to he said to a warrant officer, I think, oh, this
boat has gone.
How does that work?
Warrant officer, oh, well, you press this.
Oh, so I pressed this.
Yes, that's right, sir.
Okay, let's go.
And that was that got into the final program and the Navy were
rather annoyed, but as Barry Letz pointed out to them, we've just
given you 6 weeks of free publicity showing people how wonderful
life is in the Navy.
And a series got made off the back of this by the BBC called
Warship, which ran for 4 years.
It was already in pre-production because let's pitch a series to
the BBC.
You know, now we've worked with the Navy does.
And they said, actually, we're making one already, but it helped
strengthen the relationship to make warship and worship ran for 4
years.
A few details about the production of the story.
First of all, it actually had a very pragmatic development.
First of all, they decided the sort of setting they wanted.
They wanted a contemporary earth setting.
And then they thought, well, we've got to have the master back and
he's got to escape so we can use them in future stories.
Then they thought, oh, okay, in terms of a monster, we need to
have a monster in the story.
The Silurians, they were very popular.
It was actually planned.
Let's bring the Silurians back.
And it was Mac Hook, because he was chosen as the writer after
that idea.
It was, let's bring the Solarians back.
Oh, and if we're having a modern day earth story.
Let's make it a six-parter in case we need to make new costumes
because it's cheaper to make costumes for a six-parter than it is
for a four-parter.
And then it was decided, Mac Hook, and it was Mac Hook, who
decided I will give you a related race rather than just do the
same race again.
It was going to be called the C signing rate.
I think that was just a working title until we came up with
something better.
Oh, he never did, though, did he really?
Watery otters.
Also, the 1st episode of this story was one of the lowest rating
of the season, but that was because power strikes.
Power strikes.
That's right.
Because of a mining strike, meaning there was no coal to go in the
power, which also meant that at the top of episode two, Doctor Who
got its 1st ever narrated reprise, if you missed Doctor Who last
week, here is what happened.
It's on the disk, isn't it?
Oh, is it?
And the ratings did actually go up and up and up.
This was another story which broke 10000000 viewers several
times.
Again, we see the new sort of production model, Barry, let's set
up of 2 episodes being filmed at once because we've got the prison
for the 1st 4 episodes and then we get the sea devil's base for
the last 2 episodes.
We've got Trenchard for the 1st 4 episodes and then we get Walker
for the last 2 episodes.
Is this also the 1st one that's broadcast out of production
order?
It is indeed.
So it was shot after the mutants, but broadcast before.
That's right, before.
And so sometimes in the 60s, they were, I think they got as close
as a fortnight before transmission.
The whole reason this was broadcast out of order was to take
advantage for longer filming days.
Oh okay.
Because this was an episode with so much outside filming, they
allocated a more summary time of the year to get the hours and
pushed, I think it was Curse of Peladin, which was more studio
bound into the winter months for production.
They wanted some non-unit stories and they wanted to kind of, you
know, space them out.
This is the only non-unit story, though, on Earth.
Yeah, yeah, at all.
And unit is certainly mentioned and Captain Hart called them to
get the doctor.
They keep mentioning them, actually, in his unit passes and all of
that, and unit is the only reason that the doctor and Joe get to
see the master in his prison.
Yes, yeah.
And the master is the only prisoner in his prison.
It's a converted castle.
You know, we're back in the influence of Patrick McGooan again, I
think.
And it's guarded by people in capes and berets, all of whom have
moustaches, and all of whom drive citrons.
So are they all French?
Renault's without the drawers on.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, the whole reason for that was Michael E. Bryant owned one
and never saw them very much on British Rhodes.
So if I'm setting this slightly in the future.
Let's get something that's not popular in Britain yet, but my wife
and I have one and it's wonderful.
People must start buying them soon.
And we'll take the doors off to make them look futuristic because
of it.
Why do they all have moustaches?
That just seems...
Well, I think I think that's the influence of the master.
Because, yeah, clearly hypnotising the guards.
What I find really fascinating, though, is, you know, when
Trenchard starts acting weirdly, you think, oh, he's hypnotised
Trenchard, but no, he hasn't.
He's just convinced Trenchard that it's his patriotic duty to help
him and there's enemy agents.
And because Trenchard is this ex-colonial governor.
We're back on the theme of colonialism.
And he's been essentially put out to pastor, you know, he used to
run a whole colony and now he runs a prison with one prisoner.
Which a lot of ex-clinonials would be, you know, shuffled into
when they came home.
Like they joke about him being a failure.
Even the doctor and the master joke about how...
Yeah, yeah, he got sent out as colonial governor and the colony
declared independence, you know, like a few weeks later.
You'll see it again with the marshal and the mutants.
Yeah, we'll talk about that.
Yeah, I mean, it's amazing because it's the 1st time the masters
had someone helping him, but instead of forcing them to help him
He's manipulated him into that position.
And that makes his death all the more tragic because unlike, say
Farrell or the Verger in the Daimons, you know, you feel sorry for
them because they had no control of their actions, here's someone
who has just made a series of very bad decisions.
But for the what he believes is the right reason.
The novelisation, which is also by Malcolm Hulk, makes Trenchard's
death even more kind of tragic, what happens in the actual
broadcast thing, the sea devils invade the prison sort of
roundabout episode four, sort of midway through.
And they're attacking everyone and all of the moustache beret guys
are all being killed and that sort of thing.
And Trenchard goes to his office and gets out a revolver, his
trustee service revolver and he shoots a few.
We see him get off a few shots, but they don't have any effect.
And then the next time we see him, he's just lying dead in the
corridor.
In the novelisation.
He imagines, because he's terribly patriotic.
He imagines that he'll be the one man who sort of fought back
against the sea devils.
He envisages a future where there's a plaque on the wall, with his
name on it, talking about his sort of heroic victory.
And then he goes to shoot a sea devil and realises just at the
moment when the sea devil's ray gun kind of cooks his body.
Just at that moment he realises he's left the safety catch on.
Oh, that is, that, oh, that's really...
Yeah.
But it is that thing. you know, Mac Hulk, when he does his
novelisations, gives so much sort of depth and richness to the
characters in the background.
Mr. Robbins.
The doctor steals his boat and then Joe steals his motorcycle and
then the doctor blows up his boat.
He's not going to get that deposit back.
He wanted the master to be killed.
Like the death penalty and that was a big public trial and all of
that sort of thing.
The doctor intervenes to suggest life imprisonment for the master
and all of that sort of thing, but it had been a sort of big
political thing.
And so there's all this stuff, all this extra stuff, which I think
you know, always makes Matt Hulk's novelisations superior to the
actual stories.
Absolutely.
I mean, even if he doesn't put it in the script, Mac Hole just has
this all in his head.
He's like, I can't, you know, I can't put this into half an hour
of television, but I can put it into a book.
A word on some of the actors, of course, Edward and Richfield
famous character actor, Richard, you mentioned, he was in UFO.
He is the only actor aside from Patrick McNee to appear in every
season of The Avengers.
He plays a different villain every season.
Oh, he does.
This is Captain Hart.
This is Captain Hart, Edward Richfield.
Do you know who he goes on to play in Doctor Who?
Yes, of course, he goes on to play Mestor in Doctor Who.
They're being sluggy.
The big...
Is that who he was?
That's who he was.
But only sometimes because he was incredibly claustrophobic.
And, you know, they put him in this giant slot costume.
Declan Mulholland. turns up as one of the workers converting the
fort.
And he'll turn up again.
Androids of Tara. and was also the original jab of the hut.
Ah, yes, okay.
And Hugh Futcher, his co-worker on the rig, was actually a
contender for the 7th doctor all the way later in 1987.
Really?
Yeah, I didn't realise that either.
Sorry, another nice note about Declan Melholland who, of course
passed away, I think, in the early 2000s.
The DVD mentions that any royalties he gets from DVD sales or TV
sales or anything like that actually go to a bursary funding the
education of young actors.
Oh, bless.
So he's rather wonderful.
And this is also a really, really good story for Pert Wheat, I
think.
Because, okay, we do have that incident with the sandwiches.
Yes, but also he's got those really rather wonderful gentle scenes
with the chief sea devil, where he actually tells off the chief
sea devil for running away underground.
When he's with the old Silurian in the Solurians.
There's no recrimination.
He's very, very gentle.
But here, his voice is very gentle, but he's saying things to the
sea devil.
Like, you abandoned this planet, and now you're turning up and
complaining because 1000000s of years later, someone else is
making use of it.
How about you share it?
You know, he doesn't kind of say that, oh, yes, you're absolutely
right.
He doesn't say you're absolutely wrong.
He says, look, you know, it's not as if you have been displaced.
You displaced yourselves, but let's try and find a peaceful
solution of this.
And when the master starts shouting, oh, no, he's your enemy.
The doctor just, no, I'm going to maintain my car.
I'm maintaining my adult voice.
He's being a child.
We're the adults here.
It nearly works. too, doesn't it?
The thing that stops it is that...
Bloody Walker.
Walker bombs them.
Yeah, and Walker is the example of what happens when the
bureaucrats are there and the doctor isn't.
In fact, the doctor, you know, has a perfect opportunity to be a
blustering, obnoxious fool with Walker.
And he has every reason to be, actually.
Do you know what I mean?
Because Walker does.
This is before the doctor meets him, that Walker bombs the sea
devil base and puts paid to the idea of peace.
But then he comes up and actually tries to persuade him.
You know, we saw last a couple of episodes of the podcast that
Pertwe would come in, be obnoxious, everyone will get their back
up and no one would help him.
But here he actually persuades and cajoles Walker into letting him
continue the peace process by saying, you know, wouldn't you like
to be called Walker the Peacemaker and all of that sort of thing
by flattering him?
And so the obnoxious thing has kind of gone away.
And he has some fun, doctor-ish moments again.
Like the sandwiches is fun.
He's in Trenchard's office blindfolded and he cuts a ball into a
glass, you know, when they're trapped on the fort and he turns the
transistor radio into a transmitter and it doesn't work and he
looks like a bit of an idiot and then it does work.
Yeah, exactly.
And then it blows up in his face, you know, and all of that.
And so he gets to be fun and silly.
Yeah, he gets to be fallible.
Yeah.
And also, that really extends to when the sea devil is trying to
break into the room on the fort.
He actually looks quite terrified by what's about to happen.
I know a criticism of him that you've laid, Nathan, is.
If the doctor's not scared, why should we be scared?
But in this, yeah, he's allowed to be scared.
He is allowed to be fallible and make mistakes.
He gets chained up and not for the 1st time.
Joe rescues him.
And I've been trying to do a count in my head.
So we've got terror of the Auto.
Joe rescues him.
Mind of Evil, Joe tries to break him out of the cell.
She thinks he's still unconscious, and she tries to get him out of
there.
Damons, of course, she tries to sacrifice himself, herself for him
this moment in sea devils, which is almost identical to the moment
in terror of the autons.
But instead of breaking a vase over someone's head, She actually
uses her brain a bit.
No, I'll get locked in with him.
That sequence is actually terribly enjoyable.
Yeah, the sign language.
It's like Donna and the doctor in partners in crime.
But she, the only reason that she's running free in the, in the
grounds of the prison is because Walsh watch...
She's punched terry in the face.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
In fact, she overcomes 2 guards.
Yeah, well, she...
Yeah, she throws Terry Walsh into Terry Walsh.
And yeah, there's...
Yeah, they did explode into a universe.
I think that it happened off screen.
Yeah, I mean, Joe's just basically pretty wonderful in this
story.
When they 1st meet Trenchard, Joe now realises that she's the one
who has to start the introductions.
Hello, I'm Joe. You know, I'm the charming one.
Hello. and and this is the doctor, you know, don't she's like, no
I'm not going to let him introduce himself else.
He'll just say, you're a dick.
You know, let's just get on.
Trenton sleazes on to her, really, revoltingly later on.
She deals with, like, she puts him in his place so well.
Like, he sleazes onto her in Captain Hart's office later and she
sort of extricates her hand and then he goes to give her a
handshake and she just not doing it.
Slapping him in the face would have been an even better.
But the cold rejection for someone like that who's so full of
himself is a really good tactic.
The other great thing about Joe is towards the end of the story
when he's going to go down to the sea devils for a 2nd time in the
diving bell, you know, she protests and she's like, no, you can't
do that.
Look at what happened last time.
And you almost got blown up.
Well, she objects the 1st time.
She says, do you really have to go down?
But the 2nd time is when she really says, no, no, no, you really
you can't.
But when he finally decides to and we see them walk out, she's
made her objection, but she is still going to stand by and well
she does it.
Yeah, it's the definition of friendship.
I don't agree with what you're going to do, but I'm still going to
support you in doing it.
Isn't that sequence so superb?
that the navy thing and all that navy hardware and stuff.
It's so fun.
That scene is really good.
And they're all real sailors.
Except for the admiral who's most in Evans, previously seen as the
puppet in colony in space.
Brilliant.
But as Barry Letts pointed out after the rushes were in, you do
realise that admirals are meant to have perfect eyesight and you
wouldn't be wearing glasses.
Apparently that's a thing.
Really?
It's a lesson.
They learned from Lord Nelson.
But yeah, Buckley Bryant's responsibility was, but he looked so
clever in his glasses.
And finally, you know, Joe really gives Walker a big telling off.
The doctor's attitude of pacifism and not blowing things up is
really rubbing off on her, but rather than take it out on the
doctor, which we saw didn't work out too well in the Damons, but
probably should have.
Yeah, instead, you know, she's directing at where it should be
directed and calling in a monster and a butcher and what have
you.
We see Walker eating all the time and we get those close-ups of
his mouth while he's eating and talking while he's eating.
He is constantly engaged in a destructive act. in a very sensual
carnal, destructive act.
Sandifer tries to say that that part of the story is almost being
told from the sea devil's point of view is if we're looking at
it.
Well, that's where the doctor is, like an animal sort of thing.
He's sort of chewing his way through sandwiches.
Yeah, it's kind of reaching a little bit to find any real politics
here though, isn't it?
You know what I say?
No, it's a recruitment.
For the Navy.
Yeah.
Because the, you know, the sign, it's also anti-colonial.
The fact that the master turns up really just turns it into a sort
of, you know, a cartoonish kind of thing.
And that's not a criticism.
The Silurians attempted, I think, to have something about
colonialism and something about immigration.
But I think I argued at the time. that it was undermined by the
fact that the Silurians killed the only sympathetic side you were
in in the entire colony and just went out and tried to be terribly
evil.
Here, you don't even get that.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, there's no manipulating them.
And there's no discussion between the Solurians.
There's the chief solar in. the only one with any character.
The sea devil.
Sorry, the chief sea devil.
He's the only one with any character, yeah.
Yeah, well, it's actually, you know, apart from the noble
personnel that are closest to the doctor.
They're the most sympathetic, the only sympathetic characters
outside of their team.
And there seems to be that whole kind of the Jacques Cristeau
documentaries that were really big in the early 70s when we got
colour TV, the undersea thing was on every almost every week.
You know, there was a new respect.
It wasn't just something to be exploited.
It was a wonderful place that we were only starting to learn
about.
I think that, you know, it's considering also it's Mac Hock.
And he had been a member of the Communist Party and he certainly
was still very much a humanist and believed in the rights of the
underprivileged and the underdogs. generally.
And yeah, I think that the sea devils, certainly.
There's that wonderful scene that almost wants a member of, oh
you're being served to be doing the voice for the sea devil when
he's on the on board the submarine and they're standing around as
if they're playing Ludo.
And it's just so silly and so funny.
It's the sea devil's world and we're looking out from in their
world.
I think I mean, I think this is Hulk's least political script.
Yeah, it is the most action adventure one. exactly.
And it has a lot of hardware and lots of great locations and stuff
stacks of filming.
And so it is really terrifically enjoyable to watch, but it's not
exactly the sort of thing that Matt Hulk will do kind of
normally.
I think it's all the more effective for that. because he is such
an intelligent writer, we do get an action adventure story, but we
get an action adventure story with a lot of brains as well.
Yeah, yeah, that's which I think is really effective.
In terms of the characters.
I would just like to talk about the master for a second.
He spends the 1st half of the story, having a wow of a time.
Yes, he's in prison, but because he's taken over the prison.
He just has a staff at his beck and call.
He's the lord of the castle.
He really is.
He's very much Bezel Rathbone in this one.
We haven't seen him for a while, so they're giving him a big.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, it's great.
Yeah, big comeback.
Yeah, and he gets who all the masterly things except shrink
people.
You know, he gets to hold a gun.
He gets to throw knives and have a sword fight.
He gets to dress up in disguise.
He gets to do electronic things.
He gets to lie to people, he gets to hypnotise people.
There's that wonderful scene, of course.
We know it's subterfuge.
But he tries to hypnotise the garden, the girl just says, let me
know when you finish with your book and walks in.
And Delgado's reaction to that is perfect.
Where it all falls down, of course, is where it always falls down
for the master in that the master's whole storyline in this can be
summed up as the master turns to the doctor for help again, and
the doctor tricks him again, and the master doesn't realise the
doctor's tricked him until the doctor explains that he's tricked
him again.
And the sea devils betray the master and bless him, he's really
surprised.
I know.
Who would have thought of the autons and Nazal, and, you know
literally every other alien he's ever brought to earth.
How cute.
Oh, yeah, you kind of start to feel sorry for him because
underneath it all, he seems to have a really great sense of fair
play, but he wants everyone to play fair by him, but he doesn't
get to play fair by everyone else.
You know, he's like a little boy who, you know, in one of those
made up games, like tag or something where this is safe and this
is, you know, he's declaring everything safe, but, you know
someone can still tackle you.
It doesn't matter if you say that's safe.
He's very well prepared in this story, I think.
And I think that's an impressive take home lesson.
So he and the doctor escape.
They're floating, you know, up from the Siberian base and they're
rescued and he fakes a heart attack and he happens to have a
master mask on him at the time.
And so he's able to put the mastermask on the sort of ambulance
guy.
He escapes in the hovercraft and the mastermask is on the
ambulance guy and they take it off.
So I've got a mastermask on me right now, actually, just in case
sort of something similar occurs to me on the way home from here.
It's the last time we see them, isn't it?
The mastermask.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I think it is.
The hovercraft, the boats, the little ski-doos.
They're all wonderful.
Well, they did create some problems on production, though.
They were meant to have a helicopter, but they ended up with her.
You know, you're talking about the moment where Katie was having
to drive the hovercraft.
Well, that's one moment.
Do you want to tell it?
Oh, it was just, you know, being Katie, she pressed the wrong
button and the starboard skirt deflated and a dozen sailors fell
on top of the dot com.
Well, why do you think I?
Why do you think I dress up as Katie Manley?
I wanted to be Katie Manic.
The other thing that happened, of course, was you had those little
sort of jet ski things that the doctor chases the master on.
And of course, the master in that shot is Derek Ware because Roger
had terrible sea legs.
Well, like me, Roger Delgado couldn't swim.
And so was terrified of the open water.
It is him floating around at the end.
I know.
It is him floating around at the end and apparently it took 20
minutes to coax him into the water and just as he was about to get
in.
Should have just pushed him into it.
That would have done it.
Like John was already in the water saying, look, Roger, it's
fine.
Come into the wall.
Come into the water.
It's lovely.
I mean, did you water?
Apparently, just as he was getting in.
A member of the crew said, oh, finally.
And John lost his nut and just said, sort of, like right there and
then.
How dare you?
How dare you criticise an actor for preparing his performance
loan?
And then went up to Barry Later and said, we are not working with
this person. do you know what he did to Roger?
Barry's a bit, yeah.
What did Barry say?
I don't know I don't know what Barry said, but yeah, John John was
one, you don't do that to an actor two.
You don't do that to my friend, who is, I was just coming to be a
child. you know who I am?
But anyway, the jet skis.
Of course, filming takes a long time to set up.
John and Katie had nothing to do.
There are 2 jet skis sitting there.
Where is this story going?
This is going into John and Katie in the next few scenes.
They were going to be soaked down anyway.
So in full costume, jumped on the 2 jet skis and we're chasing
each other around.
I forgot that on film.
The problem being, Katie's flares shrunk.
They shrunk around the waist so the zipper couldn't be done up and
they rode up about 4 inches.
She had a spare pair, which they used for the ab sailing scene the
next day, which tour.
So Katie's trousers are about 4 inches longer on location than
they were in the studio. which means in the studio, her jumper is
untucked.
On location, her jumper is tucked in.
It is also why in the studio we get so many shots of Katie's bum.
Because if there was a if there was a shot, if there was a shot of
her metre, if i.e. when she's going up into the roof and she was
facing the camera. the fly was constantly busting.
This is how she tells the story.
Well, actually, in the in the doctor prison break scene, after
she's down on the floor, when she gets up, as she goes to the door
you see her doing up her flight.
What do you have borrowed?
Stuart Fowls out, family?
Well, that was one of the spares.
Oh, okay.
So he didn't take it home with him, right?
No, no.
No, he took the wig.
He took the wig home.
But continuing on the behind the scenes.
God, I love Michael Bryant's direction.
Yeah, it's a lot of work, friends.
Do you have a lot of crazy camera angles and stuff?
There's lots of crazy camera angles, but also he uses triangles a
lot in his geometry.
He'll have a figure standing in the foreground and another figure
sitting in the background.
So you have the foreground figures head, the foreground figures
waist, and the figure in the background's head as your triangle.
And Katie's bum in the making.
And Katie's bum, of course.
I believe all the angles add up to 180 degrees on Katie's butt.
When John and Roger are in scenes together, if there is a shot of
John, there is a negative space in the shot.
And then in the next shot of Roger, Roger's in the negative space
and there's and there's negative space in his shot, they're
completing each other's shots, they're yin and yang.
Michael Lee Bryant is very, very clever.
But you notice it most in the beginning of episode 3 after the
doctor and the master have had their big sword fight and Trenchard
catches them and takes the doctor prisoner and lie, da, da, da.
Whenever the doctor and the master are talking, there's almost no
one else in the shop.
There's lots of negative space and they're cutting back and forth
between the doctor and the master.
Now that is a standard of visual filmmaking, but it's a standard
to imply that these 2 characters are very deeply connected.
And I don't recall seeing another director previously in a story
do that.
I think Mike Lee Bryant's terribly clever.
So just before we move on, there's a continuation to something we
were talking about earlier and there's an end to something as
well.
So for the continuation, Nathan, what do we see in this story that
we've seen in several previous stories?
All right.
Well, a couple of episodes ago, Todd, listed every gurning
instance in the pertwe era up until that point.
And it turns out he'd gurned at least once per story up until, I
can't remember exactly when, but certainly midway through sort of
season eight.
Here he gets captured in at the end of episode 5 of the episode 5
Cliffhanger, he gets captured by a sea devil and does some real
quality gurney.
So I thought I'd mention that for as a little shout out to Todd.
Yeah, yeah.
And also, sadly with this story, we say goodbye to Havoc.
This is the last story with action by havoc.
The sea devils, Stuart fell flipping along the beach, which the
other Stantartists apparently didn't approve of because the BBC
should only get what they paid for.
They're not paying for Flit Stewart. dont do any flips.
This is the last story that havoc is build on. shall we say?
Yeah.
And it's the only story in which the doctor says reverse the
polarity of the neutron flow.
Indeed.
Although in Time Monster, we get a lot of variations on that
theme.
Oh, yeah, yeah, it does.
There are variations of it, but it doesn't actually occur again
until the 5 doctors in its, you know, glorious entirety.
What a perfect time to say that our next episode, out in two weeks
will be focussing on the mutants and the Time Monster.
Please don't forget that you can comment on our website for a
chance to win a target novelisation from a selection we still have
available.
Of only these 5 stories.
Only these photos.
Also, we do have a presence on Facebook, just search for this
flight through entirety, and Twitter, FTE podcast.
There are also some changes to the website incoming.
So if you are new to our podcast, Welcome.
We will be introducing some pages before our next episode.
We'll be listing each episode of the podcast along with the
stories covered in them and separated out by doctor as well
because this is, gentlemen, our 25th episode.
Hurrah.
Well, I should say the nemesis of episodes.
Actually, I should say, there's a lovely portrait of you just as
Madame Poppadour.
Yeah, yeah, they actually use that at the beginning of every
Gainsborough picture in the 30s and 40s.
Of you, just to Stuart Phil.
Yeah, yeah, it's lovely.
Yeah.
And until next time where I will be dressed in a brown and yellow
knitted ensemble or is it blue and white?
I'm not sure.
Good night.
And thank you.
You have been listening to Flight Through Entirety with Nathan
Bottomley, Brendan Jones, and Richard Stone.
This episode, a Hessian Sack full of candy canes, was recorded on
Sunday, March the 8th.
The next episode will be released on March the 29th.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go make 7000 sandwiches.
Herclees coming over.
Oh, yeah, we're not starting yet.
Okay.
Now, yours may pop off, so just keep an eye, keep an eye on that.
I may position it.
A little further up, just because...
Just clamp it onto his nipple.
Yeah, that's better folds. not very big.
Okay.
Where is he?