Both as Bad as One Another
This week, Pete Lambert and Hannah Cooper join us for a particularly embarrassing Coal Hill School parents’ evening, which goes horribly wrong when a Mechanoid is found roaming the premises. It’s The Caretaker.
Notes and links
Pete has a dim memory of something similar happening during his childhood, but mere months before Series 8 aired, the Troops to Teachers programme was introduced, giving veterans the chance to fast-track their teacher training so that they could work in schools. The Guardian reports on the scheme here.
Vasquez Rocks is a park not far from Hollywood, and was famously used in the original Star Trek episode Arena (the one with the lizard man in a skimpy cocktail dress). A particular famous rock formation, nicknamed Kirk’s rock is recreated in the opening shot of this episode.
Nathan alludes to the fact that Barbara is absent from Episodes 4 and 5 of The Sensorites because Jacqueline Hill was on holiday, and that she returns from her time on the Sensorite spaceship with a spectacular tan in Episode 6.
In the Press Gang episode UnXpected, Mmoloki Chrystie’s character Frazer Davis encounters the fictional Colonel X, who was the main character in a cheesy spy-fi show he watched as a child. Michael Jayston is magnificent as Colonel X. (You might be able to find it on YouTube if you look hard enough. It’s worth the effort.)
Follow us
Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, James is @ohjamessellwood, Hannah is @MrsSimonTemplar, and Pete is @Prof_Quiteamess. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.
We’re also on Facebook and Mastodon, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll turn up at your workplace with a mop and bucket and make snide remarks about your ability to do your job.
And more
We’ve got an exciting new Doctor Who project to launch at the start of 2024, but — annoyingly — we’re not going to tell you anything more about it yet. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, you can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the entirety of the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’ll be back with a new flashcast on the second Russell T Davies era in November.
Our James Bond commentary podcast is called Bondfinger, and you can find that at bondfinger.com, at @bondfingercast on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else as well.
We can also be heard on the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which has completed its coverage of the first half of the show’s entire run. Recording is continuing on schedule, and our coverage of Series C should be ready for you later in the year.
There’s also our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. In our most recent episode, we watched a barely competent episode of the Original Series called Wolf in the Fold.
Episode 258: Both as Bad as One Another · Recorded on Saturday 28 January 2023 · Download (48.9 MB)
Transcript
Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight to Entirety, the only Doctor Who podcast you sneak out to listen to in private during dinner dates with your attractive new boyfriend.
I'm Nathan.
I'm James.
Pete.
I'm Hannah.
Well, it sort of paid off 3 years ago and it kind of paid off the year after that.
And so here we are again.
The doctor's doing his best to save the world while hiding from everyone around him, the fact that he's really the star of a science fiction TV show from the 1960s.
Will it pay off this time?
Let's find out as we discuss the caretaker.
I want to start with things that are a bit less controversial or a little bit less heavy, this episode.
So, Hannah, I'm going to ask you, what did you think of the Skovox blitzer?
I wish it was more threatening.
I think visually, I quite like him.
The look of it, I like the sort of doctor's method of lowering it in and I like seeing it blown up because I like seeing stuff blown up.
But I sort of kept questioning the fact of why hasn't it had a bit more buildup.
It's the part of the episode that sort of takes a backseat and feels like it needed fleshing out more.
We only see one person get killed by it.
Well, we don't actually even see them killed. really, do we?
And I kept feeling like those opportunities to get rid of people, kill some of the kids off, say there's been kids gone missing.
Or if you're a bit squeamish about murdering some children.
Um, teachers.
The previous caretaker felt like when we could have a really obvious one to get rid of.
So, I wanted more from it. and um, also, why now?
Why is it a threat just right at this moment?
Yeah, I wanted a bit more from it to for it to be a bit more intimidating.
I was getting vibes of the big robot at the beginning of Blake 7, like in series one.
Yeah.
But I also think there's a real kind of mechanoid thing going on there in that it's like big and round.
It's sort of too big to comfortably get through doors or be in spaces.
And then it keeps narrating what it's doing, but including sort of random numbers and stuff in there all the time.
And it does sound like the sort of thing that Gareth Roberts might go for.
It's very retro.
And it has got a name that sounds like a cold sore ointment.
That's the main thing that I just count.
I would just see that being marketed in chemists up and down.
But it's almost like it's almost defying you to say, this obviously isn't really an episode about this.
This is a romantic comedy episode.
Yeah, here's a monster. fine, there you go.
Like the absorbel of in Love and Monsters actually turned out to be have a much bigger role.
There were layers to that, whereas in this, it's much more like this.
This is the comedy episode about, well, we'll talk about what it's about.
What is it really about?
It feels like it is a, you know, sitcom, rom-com, and then they've gone, oh, wait, we've got to make it a Doctor Who episode and put some sci-fi in.
Yeah, I wonder which direction the script went in to get there because I understand this is one of those where the and between the 2 scriptwriters' names is pretty much an argument.
It feels like you're watching a script, but there was an argument between 2 different writers who are pulling in.
I suspect Roberts tends to write these very comical episodes.
Moffatt was really wanted to go into the darkness of the doctor's character and relationships and things and maybe that's how it ended up sort of having the shape that it did.
It's definitely one where I'd like to soon like how the multiple drafts developed.
I get the impression that Moffatt's giving himself co-writing credits all the way through this year because he's offered writing the romantic comedy subplot.
So, you know, which is definitely there in something like into the dalek, well, very much there, and you can see which things Phil Ford has written and which things Moffat has written here because it's largely about those central relationships.
I think there is some tension between the 2 approaches.
And I do think that the Skovox Blitzer does tap into a theme that we've had all year about soldiers.
So it's something that's awaiting orders.
It's a killing machine.
It's, you know, like a super soldier.
Here we have a big dumb robot soldier, and that exemplifies all of the things that the doctor's been saying about soldiers all season.
And he defeats it by tricking it into believing that he's its commanding officer, which is exactly the thing that Danny accused him of being in their fight in the TARDIS earlier.
So I think it is trying to have some thematic link to the main plot.
It kills that guy who's called Matthew, I think, in the credits.
And you see his hand, like this charred hand fall into shock.
Like, a charred arm with detached from the body.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah, it's not like it's just the hand. kind of forearm.
Just the forearm.
Yeah, yeah, it's pretty brutal.
What does it make Danny pink a dentist or a florist?
That could have just as easily come with that as the thing. could have been more comic potential in that.
We've talked a little bit about this in previous episodes because it's come up all year.
Suddenly the doctor comes along and he doesn't like soldiers and that's not out of nowhere.
Like, that is a sort of plausible character trait.
And you know, each new doctor has different character traits, but they run this so hard.
Yeah, and like, and obviously the thing people will say is, but yeah, he was friends with unit and everything, but he wasn't at the start.
End of episode 7, Silurians, Doctor, is not, is not best pals with the bigger.
So it's not a place that the doctor could never go to, but it does just land with a massive flood at the beginning of this era.
Your face just keeps me.
I don't like soldiers.
I don't like soldiers and it's like, yes, you said that. go somewhere with it.
Well, I was just casting my mind back to them and remembering that that was a period in Britain where the whole, are you wearing a poppy, the whole post, but we want post, mid-Iraq wall, the post-beginning of the Iraq war, um, thing was was putting the country's relationship with its military into a sort of new mode, and it was like, is this trying to comment on that?
Are we becoming more American in the way that we treat our military and is Doctor Who trying to engage with that, but then the way it ends up being resolved at the end of the season?
Is it that the doctor has learnt to not be nasty to soldiers?
Or, and so I, I don't know if it's got a, it doesn't.
Yeah, I'm not sure.
I don't know why they're doing it.
Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't seem to work.
It seems confused.
And like, I don't think it can possibly be on the doctor's side because the doctor is so kind of nasty whenever he's doing it.
And I think, you know, refusing to take Journey Blue on board the TARDIS at the end of Into the Dalek.
It seems really unpleasant and unreasonable.
And it just seems to be there to set up this conflict between Danny and the doctor.
Do you think that's hanging a lantern on the fact that at the end of the season spoilers, Missy turns up with the whole army for him?
Oh, I think that that's why that happens, you know, because that's playing into that thing.
And here we already get the sort of accusation from Danny that the doctor doesn't like soldiers, but he's the sort of person who orders soldiers to go and shoot people, like he's the person who lights the fire.
Yeah.
So there is that, but I just think it's sort of confused and it just makes the doctor seem unreasonably awful.
I feel like it needed more nuance because If you look back, arguably the doctor has acted as a soldier in the past.
But I feel the distinction you would want to make there is that he's more or less been a reluctant soldier rather than one by choice, which he looks upon someone like Danny.
And I'm just looking ahead to, when you're mentioning the Scobox split, it made me think of the mummy on the Orient Express, who is a kind of reluctant soldier who has been stuck in this role for centuries and is just waiting to be told that the sort of war ends, um, Discover split is ends because of it, hearing its leader, that ends because it's his from its enemy that they surrender.
There's a theme running through the season with that, but it's not necessarily coming across in the most nuanced way.
Yeah, I think that the show doesn't know what it's trying to say. here.
And I wonder if it's trying to say anything.
You know, this is the episode where a roundabout midway through the season and we're setting up this conflict between the doctor and Danny.
They meet for the 1st time.
You know, it's a big revelation and they don't like one another.
And Moffatt's given the doctor a reason not to like him because he's a soldier.
And I think we reject that reason, and Danny's the one who calls attention to the idea that the doctor doesn't like Danny because he fears he won't be good enough for Clara.
But it just seems like a lot of work and a lot of trouble to get this episode to work and I just wonder whether it works at all.
Yeah, sometimes it just feels like they watched the 1st episode of Twin Dilemma and decided what it really needed was to be extended for 12 weeks and and like have this season, has this archive, does Clara even want to travel with this horrible man anymore?
And I'd always spent 12 weeks finding that out.
You know, it's an interesting place to go to, but to just stay in that place rather than travelling through it fairly briskly and getting on with things.
And then the series that when we come to her her story comes to that conclusion whether she has that perfect leaving scene and then decides to stay for another year anyway.
So that back projects onto this episode, the fact that they're banned, and the doctor is, the doctor is so horrible to her.
Sometimes, and it's always for a punchline, and, and, but their punch lines at the same level.
It's not like a comedy that has a really big laugh, and then you rain back a bit, and then another, it's just like, snip, snip, snip, sn.
And some of them are, the joke's on, obviously, on him because he's, you know, the thing about, oh, he can't tell that she's beautiful.
She's obviously beautiful, therefore when he sort of insults her appearance.
It's funny because the joke's on him.
Okay, we can take that.
But then the bit where he pops up in the window for extremely small class of only 12 children, which...
I counted about 14.
Like, why is this not twice the size and overcrowded?
That's the real history.
I could a lot of points I could pick apart about the realism of this school.
You see, for me though, like, I'm a school teacher, and one of the things that I like about this season is that it's said in a school, and there are things that it gets right.
And we talked in our listen episode about the way that the 1st date between Danny and Clara only really starts to work when they're telling war stories about Courtney and laughing and stuff and that's what really breaks the ice.
And that seemed very real.
And there are things here which I think work.
Like, you know, he started his career writing about kids in a school and he's sort of comfortable there.
And I think probably that's not a bad thing for him to go back to.
And also I kind of like that Doctor Who is set somewhere again.
We haven't had that for a while, and maybe not since the Russell T. Davis era, has the show had such a close link to a particular time and place on Earth, and that's one of the things that I loved about the RTD era.
So I kind of like that here.
Despite my problems with this episode, I'd have quite happily seen us, like come back here and keep seeing the doctor carrying on as a caretaker, you know, just taking over whenever the old guy's on holiday and or sending him off again, just when there's something up going on near the school.
It does work quite nicely as a sitcom setting.
There's something actually quite nice next week, how he's just there in his normal magician's costume, you know, wandering around the school with Clara for no readily apparent reason.
It's kind of like he's just sort of here all the time now.
I kind of, I kind of like that.
With the relationship between the doctor and Clara.
Because those are so obviously sitcom punchlines and because Clara's never phased by them, like she just thinks it's an idiot, she's not hurt or anything, it's not causing any harm.
I don't find those things quite as upsetting as whenever he does it to other people and like the way he treats Danny, this episode is so awful.
I find that scene so awkward to watch.
It's really horrible and even seeing the doctor sort of like the way he spoke to like Journey Blue similarly.
It's, We're only here for an episode.
Clara can apologise, but she's doing an awful lot of apologising and it's not really acceptable when it's, I feel watching both Danny and the doctor.
That scene where they're in the TARDIS and Danny's sort of milding off about him being a lord.
I look at them both and think neither of you know one another.
Why are you jumping to conclusions so much and instantly being so harsh about one another?
You're both as bad as one another here.
I think that's also the problem, isn't it?
Because Danny's really pretty and like he was sort of adorably awkward in the early episodes of the season.
And when he's shouting and stuff at the doctor, he just sort of seems unpleasant.
And then that scene after that where Danny kind of gets cross at Clara for not confiding in him about the doctor.
That seemed a bit unreasonable as well.
Like there's a, there's, it's really sort of a standard moral principle that if you have a secret alien friend.
You really should tell the people you love about them.
Like, how, like, how is she to know what, you know, is there a rule?
They're also, there's an implication here that they have been dating for about a year and a half because it's not said in dialogue, but he is a new teacher, like at the beginning of the season, he's just started working at the school with her.
And then in this episode, there's a reference to, oh, last.
Courtney's last...
Yeah, so like literally this, this is now said. a year or more after Danny and Clara Ahmet.
So they've been dating a long time.
She's been keeping this secret from him for a long time.
I do think they need to be a bit more explicit about that length of time, though, because it's not, you know, within a Doctor Who M series.
We are thinking of it as being under a year and it does feel like it's, they're still in that early whirlwind phase of romance, which is why him overreacting, well, it seems like he's overreacting, that she's kept this secret for so long.
But likewise her coming out suddenly and saying, oh, I love him feels like a bit.
Oh, that's a bit soon.
We, you know, you, it feels like there should be signs that you're further along in this relationship, you know, maybe they're talking about moving in together or something, but none of that's there.
Yeah, it's the pulling in 2 directions again, things.
We're just getting to know each other jokes.
So they've got to go in, even though the plot has to say, we know each other really well at the same time. it kind of stumbles.
I've been watching quite a lot Buffy the Vampire Slayer lately.
And it suddenly struck me.
Danny Pink is Riley for a month from series 4 and must be the military boyfriend.
He's very pretty too.
Very good, yeah.
They don't have unpleasant character attributes in general.
But they collide with the story rather than flowing through it.
And, you know, we do get to see Capoli having great sparky interaction with a character who meets him at his own level and and I think Courtney Woods is going to be a fantastic companion.
I can't see how it's going to go wrong.
Because when she's being as nasty to him as he is that she's the only person who just talks to him in exactly the same way he talks to her and it really clicks. that one scene where she comes for the for the blue role.
Um, but, uh, particularly. especially that one scene.
It's suddenly like, oh, these 2 are clicking.
It just really stands out at me in a way that with the Clara stuff.
And yet the bit through the window.
That's the bit where when he's correcting her over a lesson.
That's the bit where, oh, hang, no, he's not just getting confused about social mores.
He's deliberately choosing to humiliate her in front of a class by telling her she's wrong while she's teaching them.
That's not the same as saying I haven't noticed you put makeup on.
That's a nasty... him being a bastard.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I like with Courtney.
It's nice to meet you disruptive influence.
And also just throw away and I may have a vacancy, but she loves to come apart.
Capaldi's reaction to her saying she's a disruptive influence is just fantastic because of course the doctor's a disruptive influence and he's got to respect that.
I think that's really quite sweet.
And that is great.
And I also thought it was delightful.
It was just the doctor and Courtney and the TARDIS dropping the Scobox blitzer off at the end and that's sort of unexpected and actually rather great.
I sort of like the fact that that tag scene clearly takes place quite a bit later.
And I'm not a fan of children, Doctor Who. never was.
When I was a kid, I liked Dr. Hooks who didn't have annoying children in it.
And there's a lot of them in this era, but yeah, she makes me laugh.
I think she's good.
And I think she'll do quite well next week too. she was great.
I actually like that she throws up in the TARDIS.
I think, yeah, why wouldn't you, someone occasionally get space sickness, you know?
Clearly not for everyone.
I actually quite like the doctor's reaction to that too, because he's been a caretaker lately and he just repeats a line about a spillage from earlier on in the episode and that's quite good too.
And go away humans.
Never lose your temperature while writing a sign.
That feels very moffin.
Yeah, that's a line.
That's a laugh out loud moment for me.
It's like the sign in Husbands of River song, the Carollers will be criticised sign that he puts on the Tartar store.
It's the same kind of thing.
My favourite thing about the episode is before it starts go wrong, and that's the precredit sequence, which I just think is so much fun and so propulsive, and it's throwing away a whole series of adventures, and the lines are really funny and the camera work is really quick, you know, and it has her leaping out of a Doctor Who adventure and then just turning up to meet Danny.
And like the 1st shot even has that shot of Vazquez rocks from, you know, arena in Star Trek, you know, like it's a CGI version of that that they're chained up in front of.
And, you know, the fish people, what are they like?
They're like fish and people. took her to see the underwater menace.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The underwater man is.
Like all of that stuff is actually really fun and funny.
And I have to think that her coming back later in the day with a tan has got to be a reference to the Sensorites. when Barbara.
But that links to the, if you're doing that, then, well, no, we'll get there in a bit, but there's a bit where later where she says we're doing a play, which is what Barbara says in the Crusade.
Well, she doesn't say it is what he's doing and that she rolls with it in the crusade.
Clara's Barbara, I haven't thought it.
I actually got the, she says, what are you doing here to Danny in exactly the same, like in a Barbara voice.
Like, it's absolutely there.
That's why I think that's why I'm convinced that the, uh, the 1st draft had the Skovox splits it as a meganoid because it's just so full of this sort of 1st doctor star.
Also, like the school principal, the head teacher was originally Miss Coburn in the 1st draft.
There go.
Is it in this or in class that there's a sign outside saying chair of the governor's, Mr. Chesterton?
The doctor.
Obviously to the doctor.
Well, okay.
So we can still say, ah, so they could have called in the governor's board for a meeting to defeat the Mecca.
Why does the doctor lure it to the school to destroy it though?
It's kind of quick.
What expediency?
I mean, is it is it that it's empty at night that it's coming back at night that he's doing it at night?
He says it's the only I don't know.
He's got a sense of nostalgia because his granddaughter went...
That must have been a leisure centre nearby somewhere.
Well, you could find an empty tennis court or a swimming pool somewhere overnight.
Yeah, I just think we wanted an episode in a school, didn't we?
And we didn't want to think too much about it, I guess.
But which school this is filmed in four?
Well, so that's a tradition, isn't it?
I like the fact that he as a caretaker.
I know it's partly like, oh, we've seen him as a teacher before, but I realise watching him getting up to various things throughout the episode that the caretaker anywhere is someone who can go and walk around, go wherever they want, unimpeded, and generally no one will ask too much about what they're up to.
They'll just presume that they, Yeah, they're fixing something.
Yeah, they're putting something back in place.
And although we have the scene of Danny and Adrian watching him fiddle with the electrics, they then have to go off and teach classes.
So they're out of the way quite quickly.
So it does quite quite well as a role for him to have in the school.
Is there a double meaning?
There's usually a double meaning.
Because like Danny taking care of Clara or the doctor's taking care of Clara or something or she's...
Yeah, um, Sorry, it's always been carry on.
I was so angry at the end of that one that he didn't take Zoe Ashton with him.
She my favourite.
She's great.
During the year.
She's so good in it.
It's my Abigail cast.
Imagining up the Dalek is like up the Pompeii.
So, up Pompeii.
Up the Pompeii.
So we kind of alluded to this episode, when we were talking last year about journey to the centre of the TARDIS, and I think that this episode, probably unintentionally, unintentionally, ends up doing some problematic things with race.
Yeah, it's just so cringy.
And I'm sure I think I'm sure it is accidental, but then you can say that a lot a lot of it is, and that's that's the problem in in reality, that's the problem, but, you know, unconsciousness and not not.
And because they're conscious, they've got a show that's got 2 leads who are both white, that they're clearly making the effort to make sure that they are conscious, they want to cast a more diverse gas.
But that means the people that they interact with, who are not our heroes, are going to be disproportionately.
I don't know, it can just blunder into something like this.
And the whole, I mean, I get, I don't know if I'm, if it's the age you have to be, to get the, um, the soldier becomes a PE teacher thing or is that a universal thing?
Because even like in the 70s when I was little at school, that was a thing a PE teacher's work.
Yeah, that was lost for me.
Ah, right, right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's that was a thing that it was the job that an ex soldier could easily get.
And often they were quite scary.
Oh, because they didn't like that. the endurance and the physical training and all that sort of stuff.
Yeah.
So that's where that comes from.
But landing on top of what's already gone before, yeah.
The doctor's best friend was a soldier who became a maths teacher.
And he was surprised, admittedly, when he discovered that.
But just the repetition of it.
And so it's not just that he's being insulting because sometimes that's funny and because of, as I said, because of the way he plays off Clara and Clara reacts to it, it doesn't seem to kind of seem particularly wounding.
But because Danny's kind of annoyed and just because it makes it look like he thinks Danny is stupid, and we've also hinted, perhaps, in the opening that Clara sometimes thinks he's stupid, you know, there's that thing where the doctor's being mysterious and Clara says, it's a mistake very clever people make when they think everyone else is stupid.
And then Danny says the same thing to her when she's mysterious as well.
And so having them think that he's stupid and sure.
It a one off, if it's a one off thing.
But then you have the 2 naughty boys who get approached by Matthew the evil policeman for bunking off school.
You have Courtney, who's a disruptive influence in school, and the doctor sends her off to do shoplifting or something at the end of their conversation.
I'd also add in Courtney's parents into that, in that you might have expected them to almost be absent parents or, you know, something wrong going on at home, but they're just kind of presented as quite dim, really, I think.
They seem kind of more affluent, but thick, don't they?
Like, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, or something.
And look, they're trying to be more modern in the way they can't and more diverse in the way that they cast.
And all of that is absolutely laudable, but you have to be conscious about what you're doing then, I think.
I think it's Peter was having this conversation with me a while ago.
Colorblank casting is laudable, obviously, and it's good that there is more diversity in the casting of this show, but you need to be conscious of that.
You need to be aware that this script could be read in a way which is racist.
Like, you know, like you have to be aware that that character there is going to be read through multiple levels of understanding.
And if you're treating, like all those minds, you know, like that repeated line, I'm a maths teacher, no, I'm not just not getting it.
Just reads as, you're an ex-soldier, and you're black, and therefore, I think you couldn't possibly be a math teacher.
I know that's not the intention, but it comes across as really quite racist.
And we've also had the line.
Even Adrian has said, oh, he used to be an engineer and deal with electronics.
So he's got skills.
It's not just like, you know, he spent years.
Yeah, which is, you know, very mature.
The implication from everything, like the doctor's, I'm saying, I feel like even when you've got Adrian there like reinforcing, backing, aim him up, like, yes, he definitely was.
The repetition of it just becomes really irritating.
I think too, it's disappointing because Stephen Moffatt in his 1st TV show actually had the same problem, and that's the character of Fraz, who is the person that they cast as black, and he was the dimwit on the Juni Gazette.
He was the dumbest kid.
And I've heard Moffat in interviews say that he was kind of horrified that, you know, our one black role went to the dimwit child.
And so he pulled back on that aspect eventually of the character and he just became sort of more disengaged from the job and kind of rather sweet and likeable, but they didn't emphasise him being dim.
And one of my favourite episodes of the show unexpected from a later season.
You know, he's one of us.
He's a fanboy and all of that sort of thing.
You know, he's, uh, he's a super likeable character.
It works out well in the end.
But it just strikes me that if in his youth, he was aware that this was a problem, I don't know why no one's bells rang, and, like, we'll talk more about this next week because it continues with Courtney and Kill the Moon, and, of course, in Flatline.
You know, when they go to cast a graffiti artist, he's going to be a superb, like a truly superb actor who I'm glad has that role.
But again, it's just a little bit of a pattern, I think, in this season and it's a problem.
Yeah, it's kind of thoughtlessly.
Well, hopefully, thoughtlessly, it's leaning into all these stereotypes.
Yeah.
Towards the end of the episode.
We have that sort of final scene once it's all been resolved.
And so Danny's saved the world.
Do we have a comment on his his leap over the scope of his skills?
It's amazing.
Polly Langford herself couldn't have done that.
Hey, come on.
And she could have sung the theme tune as the music.
I'm going to talk about music.
I know you like Marigold a lot more than I do.
The music at the start is just right.
It's funny.
Yes, here we are, a montage of hijinks and escapades, but then as it progresses and there's the bit where she's in the school and the music is just yelling at me that this bit's funny and wacky and actually it isn't any unfunny and wackier than the previous bit.
And so the music is trying to escalate the Madcap caper vibe.
Well, what's on screen isn't escalating and so that splitting of where it's at flips it and makes it less funny because the music's trying to tell me it's that a moderate punchline is a huge punchline.
The action scenes have got cooking.
I'm not entirely dunking on it.
Actually, I am going to dunk on it a little bit because he uses the doctor's theme, the, the, the new doctor's theme, which I think is magnificent for Clara wandering around distracted the covoc splitzer, and I'm not quite sure why that is.
And then he seems, oh, maybe it's a madman in a box is the music.
There's an old series 5 music cue when he shows Danny the TARDIS, perhaps, and maybe that's okay.
But I do think Murray has a habit of over egging comedy scenes, which is a problem, and I do think that sometimes he reuses cues in, he's a busy man, I guess.
But he does reuse cues sometimes when they just don't seem to be really that appropriate.
I mean, that resolution is just as complicated as it needed to be for the episode to work, I guess, given what the episode is really about.
But I have to say that I also found that final scene where Clara's lying in Danny's arms while they're watching TV at the end.
I actually found that also extremely uncomfortable.
Well, I just kind of think that Danny has come off now as unpleasant and controlling as well, and like I always wanted to like Danny because again, you know, pretty, and he was in the history boys and all of that, that always turns out well.
Turns up in Gavin and Stacy as well.
Yes, I have none of Gavin's friends.
Very strong memory. forgotten that.
There's a scene of him having sex with a bridesmaid at the wedding and I've never, ever forgotten it.
But because now the doctor and Danny are both quite unpleasant and they've spent the episode jockeying after Clara, I'm not normally worried about Clara because I think she gives as good as she gets and she's proven herself able to cope with lots of things, but now it's kind of like the 2 most important people in the show are both kind of horrible.
Toxic and controlling.
Yeah, like there's that line.
I want you to be honest with me, like, because, you know, I would never want to not be able to help you or something like that.
Oh, if you break that promise, we're finished, you know, like, there's a threat and then there's, there's a kind of implicit, you know, you need to tell me things because I need to help you and it was, it's kind of almost infantilising as well.
It's...
It's unfair of him as well because he's hiding things from her, which doesn't really come out for her until the finale.
And it comes back to that thing as well of it doesn't feel like they've been together that long.
They haven't shared absolutely everything with one another.
You know, we know he never shares his soldier experiences with her in that much detail.
In fact, we've never seen him discuss any of it whatsoever.
It's clearly a closed book.
He does mention the 23 wells he dug on the 1st date.
I think that I think that's maybe the problem.
You mentioned that he's a soldier.
But I think that's maybe the problem is that because he's ashamed of that, he doesn't share it.
And so she maybe doesn't even think of him as a soldier.
Well, she says that.
She says he's not a soldier, he's a maths teacher.
Yeah, and but to her, because he's kept that part of his life worn off to her, she doesn't see how the doctor would find it so problematic despite his well-established kind of for the last 4 episodes.
Uh, issue with soldiers.
I've been watching this season all the way through and I keep expecting that revelation to have happened already.
The revelation about what Danny did in Afghanistan.
It's made clear to us that something happened that he kills civilians.
We know that by Into the Dalek from that 1st scene in the school where the kid asks him and he doesn't answer the question.
But I had thought the revelation, that we at least knew by now exactly what it was, but I obviously misremembered.
Yeah, I mean, it's so lampshaded that we know we've already filled in the blank sort of it and it's just a case, I mean, the detail.
It doesn't come as it's not a shock when he reveals it.
Okay, fine.
And yeah, I guess with like you said, the weirdness about him and Clara's stance at him being threatening to leave her. is supposed to be teeing things up to say, we haven't resolved this relationship now.
You know, we've got a good few episodes to go.
Yeah, what's going to happen next?
And it's like, I hate them all.
I don't care.
I want to see Courtney be arguing with the doctor.
Um, because the quip ratio has to be kept up and that means that all the constant digs at each other.
Yeah.
I mean, I think I've got a sort of higher tolerance for the sort of Moffat quippery, um, than, than you do.
But Moffatt kind of learns throughout his career.
And I think he does get better.
And I think things like coupling, which are also sort of weirdly gender essentialist and very kind of heteronormative. listen to me talking.
Um, uh, you know, like he moves away from that, he gets better at representation.
He is the 1st person to introduce a queer regular character into the show, like a proper queer regular who is superb and who doesn't have a weird problematic relationship with a doctor is just, you know, one of the best companions of the new series.
Yeah, and wonderfully actually played by a queer actress as well.
Yeah, yeah.
So he gets there.
But this is him and probably Gareth Roberts are not the 2 people to write this sort of stuff together because I just think all 3 of the characters or at least the doctor and Danny come off as just deeply unpleasant people at the end of it.
And I think that's a problem.
I do find myself wondering why any of them are choosing to spend more time with one another.
Even Clara and the doctor at this point, it feels like, are you just sticking with him to have adventures?
And it's not a healthy relationship and it makes me think, it's not as bad, but like Perry and the 6th doctor.
The line between and quite unpleasant comments just seems to be getting more blurred at times.
You know, it's the kind of thing where you, I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, I always identified with a companion.
And, you know, I know that I think Russell T. Dave is the same.
That's why he named Rose after himself and why they share the same birthday and all of that kind of thing.
You know, like I was Sarah Jane when I was watching it for the 1st time and that was who I wanted to be.
I wanted to travel with a doctor like she does and have adventures.
And I think the new series wants to interrogate the premise of the show and it does that, you know, all the way back in school reunion.
Maybe the doctor's a bad person for leaving these people behind now that he knows how to go back for them.
You know, Moffatt's interrogated the doctor as someone who every week blows up a whole bunch of people, you know, and then leaves.
And I think all of that stuff's worth doing.
And that's sort of fun and interesting.
But I do think the idea that Clara is using the doctor just to have adventures.
And that's not fully here yet, but it's going to be, isn't it?
And particularly next year, or that the relationship is going to destroy her or something, that the relationship's a problem.
Like making that relationship problematic to the degree that this one is.
I think might be a mistake or might be one of the reasons why people lose sympathy with this, this pairing.
It's interesting thinking to the finale when the doctor and Clara are parting and they're both lying to one another.
She says she's going to go off with Danny.
He's trying to reassure her that he's not going to be on his own because he's found Gallifrey.
He's cottoned on.
Perhaps that she doesn't want to be with him and is kind of filling some obligation.
Um, I don't know.
It's, it's, difficult to sort of weigh that up at that point.
I mean, we'll get to that, but that is so upsetting and such a problem that Moffatt has to have Nick Frost break in on the closing credits to reassure the children at home that everything's going to be okay for Christmas, you know, like even he recognises that that ending is really a bit unpleasantly downbeat, I think.
Yeah, but it does sort of, it is where we're heading.
Yeah.
There's that moment where she, um, they were bickering in the TARDIS. and then Clara City shows us the invisibility watch and Clara's face literally lights up.
Yeah, actually put a...
And and and it's like, this is what we're doing.
This is why we're doing it.
Um, which is a, on its own is a nice moment, but then, but in the broader context, the rest of the time she just hates him.
So she just hit it for the for the gadgets.
I just hate it.
I mean, I think she is genuinely having fun in that opening sequence.
I think, you know, fish people and sand piranhas and all of that sort of thing is clearly something that's just really fun.
And even though she and the doctor are bickering at the beginning there, she's not kind of upset by it.
That does make adventuring with a doctor look terrifically good fun.
I like that the directing between that opening, it's all really fast cut and like weird angles and the music.
That and the scene where they're like annihilating the Blitz is really similar and it mirrors that excitement and even though it's frightening and scary, it's what she lived for with the doctor.
So, at the end of this one, we have a mystery lady appearing again, somewhat briefly.
I think somewhat CGI'd in, I've got to say.
Green screened in. green screen.
We all know it's green screen, but suddenly we all start saying CGI.
It's madness With a very annoying assistance, played by another member of the thick of it cast.
I can't remember.
I wasn't engaging on the internet much back then, so I didn't know if people were already guessing who she was.
Was it kind of seen as obvious or was there a, is it the Rani?
Is it a new character?
I think a lot of people were leaning towards the Rani because the idea of it still seemed very controversial, the idea of like a time lord sort of like changing gender at the time.
And so I think most people going, oh, they won't do that or they won't be like brave enough to do that.
And they were thinking, oh, they'll do something new and have the Rani.
I was pretty sure it was the master.
And I think because the big episode 11 Revelation that it was actually the Rani would have just fallen completely flat, like who the hell is that?
You know?
So it really had to be, it could only be the master, I think, because we'd seen 2 masters before, this is now Moffatt's been on the character and I just, you know, I think that casting, I think Michelle Gomez is the best master without a doubt.
I think she's absolutely superb at it.
And I love seeing her sort of pop up every so often.
And we haven't seen her for a bit.
And we only barely see her here.
I think that this arc is actually pretty good.
And I think that it's not the sort of arc that he's done before.
He's done the 2 arcs previously, basically been about Amy.
And this is much more of a sort of science fiction-y sort of arc, and I guess, about introducing a character who's important to the doctor.
And I think this stuff's fun.
Like Chris Addison's a great addition.
I think this end scene view of the Nether sphere or one of its other many names.
It's my favourite one so far in the series because it's been hinted at and we kind of know what it is, but the people we've seen that are all quite calm about it.
I love that we get this PCSO's reaction and it's, it is one of absolute horror and they really lean into that dark aspect later.
And, you know, it contrasts so well with just Chris's wonderfully cheery charmingness throughout.
It's a wonderful, like, horrible revelation for this PCSO.
I did do a little shaking my fist at it, though, when it was a Moffat.
They're not really dead again.
You can't let anyone stay dead, can you, muffin?
Well, do whister, that's all we have time for this week.
We'll be back next week for a sensible and utterly unremarkable 45 minutes of television in Kill the Moon.
In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts, and you can keep up with us on our website, FlightthroughEntirety.com, where you'll find links to our accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Mastodon, as well as links to our other podcast, Bondfinger, Jody Interterra, maximum power, and untitled Star Trek project.
Until next time, may your partner always be kind and responsible enough to impress your space dad.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
That was Flight Through Entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley, Hannah Cooper, Pete Lambert, and James Selwood, theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, both as bad as one another, was recorded on the 28th of January 2023 and released on the 21st of May.
Well, that's flight through entirety over for this week.
If anyone needs to contact me, I'll be high up in the skies of high rule, collecting lizards and glueing fans to things.
I'll see you in a couple of months.
All right, well I think that was good.
What do you think?
We got to got our bitch on.
It's been a while.
I'm happy we found some positive things to say because their notes were all.
My notes were mainly questions of meat picking holes in it.
And yeah, I felt bad about that because then I realised, well, actually when I just watch it and I'm not analysing it.
It's really fun story.
Yeah, I thought, yeah, I agree.
I mean, I had fun.
I didn't hate it, but like it was, you know, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think there's none to be had, for sure.
No, me too.
I mean, I watch it when this is actually quite enjoyable, but I find it really difficult to enjoy because of, yeah, the sort of uneven nature of the problematic racism.
I know one thing we haven't mentioned that I do like is the doctor's assumption that Clara fancies the guy.
The young, handsome, dashing, time traveller.
I do quite well.
I like that they do that.
It just makes him look like an idiot. as well.
Like, it's more kind of just...
I think Clara looks idiotic as well when the doctor's there smiling and, you know, cooing at them.
It's like, surely, you know, he's crap at this stuff.
You're meant to pick up on this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Why hasn't she worked there?
Why didn't she just go, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, and there is that theme running through.
And everyone's telling, you know, the hierarchy of cleverness that the 3 characters tell us about that sort of almost implies and at the top of this is is the showrunner is like even cleverer than the doctor.
And it's like, is the theme of this year what it's like when you formerly used to be a young, clever boy that the impossible, wonderful girls would flirt with.
And now you discover that you're a middle-aged Scotsman, um, as a, who is a time lord and or showrunner, who's having to reconcile themselves to the fact that, you know, those brilliant girls are actually affecting younger people than you instead.
Danny, I think Danny even asks, like, do you fancy him or something?
And it made me kind of count up and realise, we have had every single one of the modern companions as there's been, they have either fancied him or someone has like asked if they fancied like a couple as one another, which really feels odd and stand out because it, it's like, surely we had, like even by 2005 reached the point of men and women can be friends without fancying one another.
I mean, do you love him?
And she says, no.
And then he goes, come on.
And she says, well, not in that way.
And he's like, what other way is there?
It's like, let's do it again. everyone knows what people mean when they say that.
You know, like...
It's like, yeah, he's like a brother.
He's my best friend.
He's my space guy.
Yeah, weird.