Hello, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety, the only
Doctor Who podcast made up of unpeople, undoing unthings, un
together.
Sorry, that was unforgivable.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
I'm unattainably yet still here.
And we are back discussing the Doctor Who Stories of season nine.
We've got two more to go today.
So, uh, we're off on a trip into space next.
We're heading to the planet of Solos home to the mutants.
Thank you, Mr. Carey.
Yes, bubble, bubble, toil, and trouble.
In fact, this is my story and so is the next one.
So both of you, you can both go home, maybe.
This is it'll be the Nathan show this week. am home.
Oh, okay, yeah.
This is my home.
He lives in the podcast.
Although that's oddly topical for this story.
People saying you people should go home and the people are
responding, we are home.
You came here.
This is so, so obviously about colonialism and especially
apartheid.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and there's there's all sorts of elements of other things as
well.
Colony in space was set 500 years in the future.
And people are just sort of mining and starting colonies and that
kind of thing.
And this is 1000 years in the future.
And so this is the middle of a sort of trilogy of future stories
that will culminate in sort of frontier in space next year.
And this is a sort of earth future history that's sort of a bit
standard.
Like the new adventures picked up on it as if it's like an actual
thing.
Yeah, the doctor describes it as the end of Earth's empire.
Yeah, he compares it to 2 years.
The history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon
like he mentions Gibbon.
And in the new series, we get reference to the 4th Human Empire by
the year 500,000.
So, you know, obviously it's going to rise and fall a few more
times.
Well, Russell pushes all of the sort of future stuff out into the
far future, kind of, so as not to collide with this.
So what's happened here is, you know, the Earth has colonised this
planet has strip-minded for sort of rocket fuel, essentially
ephesium and is about to grant it independence.
And so it is really topical stuff about the sort of British Empire
and it's fairly negative and anxious about the whole idea of
colonialism, I think.
It's really blatantly so about exploitation and about mineral
rights and the fact that, you know, these colonial citizens
colonised citizens had no rights over their own land.
Yeah, so very early on, you see this sort of visualised in the
fact that we're on a sky base, which is a big satellite.
Bass Sky Bass?
Sky base.
The valiant.
And we sort of teleport down to earth, you know, and there's a
humans and a overlords and a Silurians thing, you know, like
separate drinking fountains for black people in white people in
the United States.
And the doctor, when he sees it, actually uses the word
segregation.
And so that is. and quite disgustedly as well.
You know, it's not scientific detachment.
Oh segregation.
Yeah.
Yeah, and so it's on the eve of independence and we're going to
Grand Independence. not because we've realised we've been doing
the wrong things.
Yeah, not humanitarian these people.
We've run out of money.
The earth is exhausted, it's environmentally destroyed.
There's just no money to support solos.
There is no thesium left.
And so we're going to go.
And in order to announce independence.
We get the lovely Jeffrey Palmer arrives on Skybase, who Doctor
Who's very own Sean Bean, because you know what happens when he
turns up?
Oh, he'll get killed.
Yeah.
Yeah, like quite early on.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, no, he really only lasts he lasts less than an episode.
So he gives this very self-serving speech where he says, you know
that humans and Salonians have been working together and now we've
decided that Salonians have been developed enough that they can
now rule themselves.
And so there's all this sort of moral justification.
But he does give the real kind of tawdry justification to the
marshal.
The marshal is Paul Whitson Jones, who we have seen previously in
the smugglers.
Yeah.
And so he's sort of terribly fat and overacting and all of that.
Nathan is actually controlling this podcast because he just
gestures at me for names.
That's my other contribution.
I'm counsellor Troy.
Lieutenant Tawney Madison in Galaxy Quest.
That's it.
Scorny Weaver, reading off the computer.
You know, I'm quite happy being Nichelle Nichols or Sigourney
Weaver or even Marina Surtis, who's really just a dark-haired
Bonnie Langford.
Yes, you could do worse, could he?
In fact, what's going to happen is, and it's a sort of strange
twist.
The Marshall doesn't want colonialism to end because he's got a
whole planet that he can run.
Yeah, exactly.
And so he has and he has Jeffrey Palmer executed and he declares
martial law.
And like, I don't know that much about the sort of politics of the
time, but is this a Rhodesia thing?
Yes, it is.
It's the most obvious signifier is the divided teleports for
overlords and locals.
It's not overly complex in its, you know, political symbolism, but
it doesn't have to be.
It was such a topical thing.
Yeah, so Rhodesia, at the time, all the way through the 60s, the
British government had discussed giving independence to South
Rhodesia.
But the condition was that it would have to be majority rule so
that everyone would have one vote and the white minority
government objected to this.
Yeah, that was considered, that was the caveat. was the only thing
that they were going to get.
Yeah, that's right.
So they unilaterally declared independence.
Do you know what I mean?
So that the decolonisation didn't happen.
And so it's very much around about that sort of thing.
So there are all sorts of issues of race and empire and stuff all
the way, sort of underneath this.
Yeah.
And I do find those issues very effective.
Because straight away, we are introduced to the concept of we have
this young, again, freedom fighter, slash terrorist, slash
terrorist, in the form of Kai played by Garrick Hagan, who, during
the speech to give independence, gets up and start objecting.
And on the very surface level, you can say, shut up, you're about
to get what you want.
And it's actually, you know, why should this culture get what they
want on the terms of their oppressors?
It's a very mature scene.
He does, he does actually, though, prevent the administrator from
declaring that solos is independent. before we get shot.
But that's what he is shot.
You know, that's what, I suppose he's doing the whole pertly
antagonising people who could actually help him.
And in fact, everyone, like people are constantly accusing Kai of
speechifying like every, like there's 3 or 4 times throughout the
episodes where people tell him off.
And I think in episode 3 or something the doctor says, look, it's
not a political meeting.
Just shut up and, you know, we're all on your side. with the
speeches.
So he's a sort of slightly ridiculous figure, I think.
Oh no, he's not.
I've got a car of you.
No, Kai is not.
Kai is the hero in here and he's the sympathetic character.
And the fact that he argues is because, well, as we turn on the
news, and as we later see Professor Jones, you know, the mouthy
ones are the good boys and girls, aren't they?
The ones that can speak her out.
But enough characters mock him for the speech of fine.
Because they're all the oldies and squares who aren't getting it.
But the thing is, also, he does learn in that he starts taking
action rather than just talking when he is given the agency to
take action.
And of course, he is then the 1st person to spoiler alert at the
end evolved into the energy being.
And what's the 1st thing he does?
Shoot the marshal.
Yeah, it's questionable.
But at the same time, it's like, what other solution is there in
the plot or that person?
He doesn't even object.
Just go ahead and shoot him.
No, well, the marshal is about to turn the planet inside out and
kill everyone now and then.
You know, what is fat.
But, you know, it is it is morally objectionable.
I don't think we're meant to go, yeah, the marshal's dead.
It's meant to be a situation of utter desperation.
But like a glowy rainbow being. in a situation of utter
desperation.
He really looks stupid though, doesn't he?
Like, he really, really looks really good.
No, that's the thing.
It's still divided as how this looks.
I don't remember it on black and white, though, so I've only ever
seen this in colour and I never bothered to turn the colour down.
I think it looks terrific.
I really like the trippy weirdness of it.
And it's one of the few times where the CSO is actually worked for
me.
They have this new effect too, which is this sort of rainbow glowy
thing that they use a couple of times in this story.
They use it on.
That's right.
They use it on Kai. and they use it on the box and that sort of
thing.
Allows you use it on the croton, won't they, on the cronivol, on
the cronivol.
No, I think there's something different.
I'll talk about that when it comes to Amy Stewart.
There's something vaguely rude about what they use on the croton
the name of it, but we'll get into that soon enough.
Yeah, I mean, Doctor Who has been in colour for 3 years now, but
it seems every year they do a story that's not just in colour.
It's in bloody colour.
So, you know, the Ambassadors of Death was in bloody colour
and...
Cause of acts.
Bloody, and this year, this is this year's...
Look, we're not just in colour.
We're in every colour simultaneously.
And the big scene is, of course, the scene in the big Theseum mine
the big cavern, so to speak. which is really fabulously trippy, you
know, with John Hollis.
I do love John Hollis because John Hollis just plays the same part
in everything he ever does.
So he's Professor Sondegard.
Yeah, he's gone native.
He wearing lots of fabulous...
He's actually wearing a really lovely pink, fluffy dressing gown.
Have you noticed?
It's a lovely dusty pink.
But he's got it's all...
And then he's got his, Yeah, his gorgeous necklaces and stuff.
He's accoutrement.
He's low bots in Empire Strikes Man.
Yes, yes.
He wanders around shadowing, stalking Lando Calrician with those
sort of headphones on.
And he turns up in Blake 7 wearing very little.
Yes.
No. doesn't he break rebreak Villa's arm or something?
No, he treats Villa's broken arm.
To be fair.
It doesn't hurt him a lot, though.
Well, it is Villa.
Yeah that's true.
And he seems to be wandering around with Blore from the monster of
peladin in that story.
I think there are a lovely couple.
Blore, really?
Well, I don't know, but it looks like him and he doesn't speak.
Oh, so stupid.
It's been long considered the best of this season.
It's by the Conyo.
How's it?
Yeah, I thought it was.
Is it?
Do I still think it's the best of the season?
I think for what it says and for how it does it, yeah, I do.
The weird thing is that they've given Bob Baker and Dave Martin
they get to do the political story, but they're not really up to
it.
And so everyone's, everyone's massively overdrawn and overacted.
There are some speech-y speeches, aren't there?
The marshal's just a stupid villain.
You know?
No, I think actually, this is the thing.
You look at the adults, the colonialists and the people coming
back and the political people on television at the time.
The Marshall Ring doesn't stand out as any different. especially
crazy compared to kung fu.
It's just very narrow and really and really driven and really
believing in his own speed.
Look at the ones we've got now.
I actually think the politics is the really successful part of the
story.
I possibly argue the only successful part of this.
Well, I don't know why you don't give that to Mac Hulk to do.
Do you know what they're like?
Mac Hulk was kind of squandered on the sea devils.
He created that.
Sea devils is brilliant.
It is brilliant. my favourite of the season.
I really like it.
It's really strong action adventure.
But the politics that we had in the Sileurians as thin as it was
there, is nearly absent from the sea devils.
But the politics, like, colony in space is so good.
Do you know what I mean?
And it plays to hulk strengths.
But here in the mutants, you've got these guys who create great
spectacles.
Do you know what I mean?
And really memorable images and things in their writing.
But their characters are really one nose, I think.
Just think about colony in space, and you have ash, and you have
Winton, and you have Mary and the Leasons and Caldwell, who are
all really interesting nuanced characters.
And here you've got like the Marshall and Stubbs and Cotton and
Sondergard, who are all kind of archetypes, you know, and they're
not unwatchable.
The performances aren't terrible, you know, except one exception.
And I feel really bad about that.
But the characters are much less nuanced and much less
interesting.
And so I came into this story expecting it would be this year's
colony in space and expecting really to like it, but I actually
found it a bit tiresome.
You see, I see that coming.
I know.
But I think the archetypal nature of the characters actually
serves the story well.
I agree too.
We're in a period of time where the empire is stagnating and so
it's humanity.
It's gone.
But it means humanity is stagnating as well.
The Marshal is simple-minded because he is afraid to use his
mind.
If we look at Sondergard, Sondergard came to the planet with
certain convictions, which have been disproven.
And so he has accepted new ideas.
And as such, at one point, he's actually ready, ready to die, you
know, not because he wants to die, but because he's like, well, you
know, I've lived my life.
The martial is terrified.
Yes.
The Martian is terrified of change because right now he is in
command.
Trenchard in the sea devils.
You know, he was removed from his colony and now is running a
prison.
And he's a little bit bitter about that.
But what Trenchard does is he wants to go back to how he was, and
like you were describing in the novelisation, Nathan, he pictures
himself as the great white hero.
He's so much more interesting a character than the Marshall.
Because the marshal hasn't had that power taken away from him, he
will do anything to prevent that power being taken away from him.
That does make him single-minded.
Yeah, he's an unsympathetic colonel blimp, and it's worth looking
at the military antecedents of the marshal to see that he's
actually quite well-rounded.
On the other, again, you know, like you talk about, you talk about
Professor Sondegard, you know, offering to die, but he does it in
the most tiresome programmatic scene possible where it's no, no
you go on, leave me.
Do you know what I mean?
Like it's, it's, yeah, but could you imagine any other character
in the story doing that?
No, I know, but I just don't need to ever see that scene on
television again, you know.
And I think I think that that's it.
I think he feels the story with stock characters and fairly stock
situations.
And so it's less entertaining than it really should be.
I agree.
The only 2 that don't really work in cotton and stops.
See, I like both of those characters.
I like to concept.
Oh, I just think the idea of a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern should
work so well, but they're really just been trained on ice cubes.
There's nothing Yeah, I mean, Christopher Cole. to them.
Christopher Cole is he's a reliable actor.
You know, we've seen him already in Seeds of Death, but he's not
he's not really good with the comedy in this.
And of course, Rick James is pretty.
He is very pretty and he's got a lovely voice.
He's got a lovely morpheic voice, you know.
It just doesn't have any rhythms that standard English speakers.
Yeah, he's great.
His intonation's the West African, that's all, which is why his
speech patterns sound kind of jarring.
I had one else there.
I had wanted that.
I don't think he's a bad...
I had wanted that to be my conclusion, but I think it's really
still.
You actually really flat.
Oh, no, I don't know how much of it. is actually a language
thing.
I don't know that he's necessarily any worse than anybody else.
I mean, I don't think it's just the accent because that's what I
wanted it to be.
I wanted to find Rick James's performance acceptable. it really
isn't.
And there's that terrible, terrible moment, the cliffhanger to
episode 5 where essentially there's no visual evidence of any
danger at all.
All we get is there in a room and Rick James tells them it's very
dangerous and we'll all be done for and then crash bang into the
credits.
So it's, you know, he can't, in my opinion, he does get, he does
get one good scene where he rises well to the material and that's
when Stubbs was killed.
Yeah.
You know, I think his reaction to Stubbs' death is really, really
good.
Perhaps because, you know, he has been underplaying it the whole
time, so he underplays that scene as well, but that scene in
isolation, he seems genuinely affected by his mate's death.
I thought he was a bit upset by the death of Stubbs, actually
because he is the sympathetic working class character.
I mean, you know, Joe flirts with it when they're locked up and
then the doctor knocks him out and Joe's like, oh, what did you do
that for?
A dozen burly, unfooted sailors, hefty sire, remorse.
Look, it's interesting you mentioned Katie just there, Brendan
because really, I don't see that Rick James's character is doing
anything but playing up to the scene in exactly the same way that
Katie does in pretty much every scene she's given.
It's funny how when you look at Tet Woods commentary and the about
time things and he does go on about her batting her eyelids and
that Melanie Griffith effed up baby voice that she uses, which I
think is a little harsh.
But she certainly does play up to a preconceived role of what a
girl companion is supposed to be, which is kind of...
Did we mention acting tropes this season?
We haven't used those at all.
Acting.
We haven't mentioned acting, really.
Tropes.
I will introduce a new trope to you later in this later in this
very episode.
So excited already.
Stay tuned.
Yeah, but I mean, it's really just playing the character up to the
scene in a way that there's a kind of, you know, very sort of
theatrical way of playing it, not so much a television way when
you've got to underplay because the camera's so intimate or you've
got to diminish your work by a 3rd to 2 thirds.
Heartmolt used to say that to the people he liked on set, his
underplay underplay.
Keep it all in your eyes because that's really all the audience is
seeing.
Don't bother doing anything else.
But then he also didn't Hartnell ever told him, it's put your
fingers up because, you know, that's what everyone else is going
to see as well.
Take up the whole screen, much as you can.
But we does his little tricks as well. rub the back of his neck.
Oh, yeah, he's got his he's got his... his twerks, I believe.
Twerks.
You haven't said anything to really say this is a bad story.
Well, I think I have.
Yeah, but that's not unusual.
I mean, just... to Brendan Rinardo.
I don't neither of you have actually really said why this is so
funny.
I thought you liked it, Brendan.
I don't you know, I don't mind it.
But I still I still don't think it's very good.
Oh, I think that's wonderful. symbolism and great.
Sorry, you know, Barry Letts actually gave...
It's got great commentary.
It's got a great concept.
It's high concept, which I believe is a term that Nathan has
thrown our way before, and I think this is really worthy of that.
You know that let's actually pitched this story, the Salonians and
the 500 segment quartered to a 2000 rotation.
It's all part of his Buddhist trip to Jerry Davis in 66.
And Jerry rejected it saying, oh, that's too intellectual for a
Doctor Who audience, which kind of tells you a lot about the Jerry
Davis era, doesn't it?
Yeah, he's...
And I really like, I really like that Lets has these.
Okay, you may call it weekend Buddhists, and there were a lot of
them around in England in the 1970s.
A lot of people who are getting into TM or transcendental
meditation and growing among beans and watching the good life.
A lot of people do, that sort of thing in the early 70s in not
just in Britain.
I think that's a really, I think that is a really strong aspect of
the story, and that is that the cyclical thing.
I love that.
You know, the cave scenes, just to throw my bit in.
Really feel like William Blake.
When he went absolutely cray-cray with his watercolours box
because he did have episodes where he went quite mad and ran
around naked and, you know, upset his wife.
It is Mardi Gras weekend.
Yeah, I know.
But it's perfect, perfect one for Mardi Gras.
I think it's a really beautiful story with some lovely
symbolisms.
And I actually really love Garo Kagan as Kai.
I think he makes it.
And if you're talking about intimacy and sympathy. between Joe
Grant and the male lead.
I think you've got a much more convincing one here than you do at
any other time in this series.
Do you know, when I was writing up my notes for the Paladon one
because I wanted to try and work out which story, she has an
interplanetary romance, because, you know, I've heard the joke
before that Joe cops off, you know, every time she goes to another
planet.
She's the William Shatner of Doctor Who.
But I couldn't see anything between her and Kai.
No, I mean, there seems to be there's a very strong platonic thing
with them.
I don't think it's anything romantic.
Yeah, I don't know.
I couldn't say, you know, she doesn't take a big push, though.
No, but there is very much a there's a mutual respect between them
and a mutual understanding between them.
I think that's actually Dashes into that into that porter cube
with alacrity, doesn't she?
Well, doesn't she get dragged in?
Oh, that's what she does.
Oh, she dressed quite casually.
She follows him.
She wearing a lovely outfit in this story, by the way.
Can I just say?
It's really awesome.
So is this the yellow boots one or is that where?
No, no, that's coming up.
That's, yeah, that's next.
Yellow boots, yellow knickers.
No, this is a sort of weird sort of brown suit thing.
It's very tiny because she's lovely.
No, she's following him because he...
She's following him because the box opens as he goes past.
So, yeah, we haven't really left... talked about the box.
So let's, the doctor has been given a box by the time, Lords.
It looks like a kind of crummy football.
Looks like something children of the only 1970s used to put
coloured shapes into.
Really?
I remember that.
It's like a stealth version.
A Borg stealth version of that blue...
Blue and red.
That was very cool. red and blue with yellow shapes.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah, so it's the most irritating toil, though it made a very good
Death Star spaceship thing later. on.
Gosh. want one of those.
They still make them, did they?
I think they do actually.
Shots on eBay for the price of a new car.
Yeah probably.
So this is, the time loads are really not very competent here.
Sand for comments on this, but pretty much anyone who's ever
watched the story knows that the box appears, you know, in the
doctor's laboratory, Joe and the doctor head off to another planet
to deliver the box to someone, the doctor doesn't know who the box
is for.
The box opens when Kai goes past, which is why Joe goes
chasing...
Yeah, that's her excuse.
The box opens and it's got tablets in it that Kai can't read and
he doesn't understand.
Then John Hollis nearby is wrote in to do the translation about
it.
So it's not really the most direct or kind of efficient way of
getting a message to someone, really.
You would think my grit guy from Tara of the Autons could have
just popped, you know, into existence in front of me.
Why didn't they just, why didn't they just bloody materialise the
thing in his lap to start?
with?
Why does it have to?
Why is it also, and why didn't Gandalf just send the bloody
Eagles?
Yes, why didn't the Eagles drop the ring into Mount Doom?
That's crazy.
I mean, no, or carry the, carry the, you know, took Frodo into
Mountain Dew.
Let me try that again.
No, I haven't left Talk to Who?
They could have dropped frog. can't even say it.
Really, the ball should have been Ian McCellen in this story.
He was around and he would have made it quite a nice little bit of
tasty cottage pie out of Kai, I think, in his story in this one.
Well, come 2012.
The ball was Ian McCellen in Doctor Who and the Snowman.
Yeah.
At Christmas with the giant snow globe, voiced by Siri and
Mackellum.
Do we own him?
Is the listener still with us, do you think?
They've actually gone off too.
Wake up, dear.
He'll disentangle all of this in post.
Don't worry.
Richard, coming back to something you were saying earlier, like
why is this still a bad story?
I've been thinking about.
Well, it isn't.
Well, that's a good story, which has been executed very poorly, in
my opinion.
You have, how is that, okay?
You know what?
You have a very strong guest, Carl.
Paul Wits and Jones.
You have George Prafter.
You have Jeffrey Palmer.
You have John...
Yeah, George Bro.
Lots of John Hollis.
The bloke from the beginning of Monty Python.
Yes.
You had the It sky.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
For me, I think the big problem is.
And I know we've kind of glossed over this, but I've been thinking
about it.
And the big problem is stops and cotton.
Rosencrantz and Gildens.
Rosencrantz and Gildenstead, because they're our main audience
identification figures with the world of skybase.
Yeah.
And then just not very interesting.
They're not terribly sympathetic.
Like, you know, we just, we don't really care about them until one
of them dies.
And even then we kind of care because there's sort of there is an
emotional reaction among the cars.
Why do you think we don't care?
I actually think it is the thing that I identified before?
Is the characters are just types?
of them are particularly interesting?
You know, so particularly sympathetic.
So they, that's the thing.
They need interesting performers. the martial, the martial works
because he's giving a really interesting performance.
I've just got one.
But it is a real...
Sorry, James Atcheson.
It's his 1st go on this. we got there yet?
They're the best looking monsters to have appeared in Doctor Who
almost so far.
And I'm sorry I jumped in there quickly, but hey, it's a podcast.
Look, it looks gorgeous.
And it's great moments.
You know what?
Yeah, the design's good.
I also liked that it nods to Solaris, which had just come out that
year, you know, with the toss version.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. and the sky-based thing.
I mean, it's about as much like Solaris says, you know, the
goodies is like the Brandenburg concerto whenever Graham gets on
the computer organ, but I'm still, okay.
I mean, we can go on for it forever.
I think maybe the listener needs to decide.
I actually think it's my highlight of the season as what it's
saying.
But you mean us as a story.
But what it's saying is not exactly a spectacular moral insight.
Do you know what I mean?
Like oppressing people and stealing all their stuff is wrong.
It's bad.
You know, like, it's not bad.
And how we deal with it.
And I look, anything that shows up the moral impunity of these
characters is not a bad thing.
Yeah, yeah.
But I'm just, I think the moral thing is sort of really basic and
I think the fact that the martial is sort of a moustache twirling
villain, it makes it less interesting than it should be.
I think Hertway's also most likeable in this story is to any of
them this year.
Well, again, it's really sympathetic.
Again, it's per twee's new instinctive attraction to progressive
causes. which we're starting to see all the time.
I really like the doctor in this story.
He's more like the doctor.
I've got to say, I didn't get a chance to say it last season, but
it's actually taken now for me 2 years to accept him as the
doctor.
Yeah, I think I threw it somewhere out.
He's the least doctor-ish doctor I've seen and I'm thinking later
doctors as well.
I actually have about as much trouble with him as I do with the
other baker. as the doctor.
Surprise maker, the other other baker.
Yeah, I'm surprised at that.
I certainly have great fondness for Colin now through his audio
work, but I just, I think it's having heard Barry Letz's 2 audio
versions for Mr. Pertley in the 90s.
It's not quite the same thing.
Can I say a word about George Prafter for a moment?
Please do.
Nice space.
Nice lab.
Yeah, yeah, he's got a really nice lab.
He's probably for me the most interesting character in the whole
thing.
It's very sympathetic in everything he does, isn't he?
He pictures it, really.
It's interesting because he is built up as being a sympathetic
character and the doctor starts to change his thinking, oh, maybe
we shouldn't turn the planet inside out and kill everyone.
Yeah.
And then he just goes ahead and tries to do it anyway.
Anyway.
You know, in a way, he's more evil than the marshal because he's
been introduced as a character who does have a conscience and does
think about the effect on other people.
But he's going to bloody do this thing anyway because he just
doesn't care.
And that, I think, is very effective in the doctor's
disappointment in him.
It's very...
The martial...
Is that true though?
The marshal kind of railroads him into doing it.
Yeah, but he doesn't really object does he?
But and then in episode, like in front of the Inquisitor or
whoever it is who arrives at the very end.
Who looks like a timelord?
Yeah, he arrives at the end and he's never in it again, but I kept
thinking, surely he played a time lord at some point, but he
doesn't, I think, George Pravter's character, who's called Jager, I
think, testifies against him or is kind of horrified by the
martials.
Yeah, he plays Frederick Yeager.
See, he does break Roger, I was thinking.
With that unfortunate accent.
And unfortunately, that unfortunate line, I was just following
authors.
Well, it is that...
You know, again, I think...
I just don't think any of the characters rise to the level of
complexity where, you know, you could say anything so definitive
about what Jaeger's like as a person.
I think he's just kind of pushed around by whatever the plot
needs.
I think he's the most realistic, therefore.
Yeah.
For me, this could have actually been the best story of the season
if more care had been taken with it.
I think it's a great shame.
I think it's a great improvement for the Bristol boys over clause
of access.
No, because I think it's their fault that it's crappy.
Oh, okay.
I think it's the direction.
Right.
Yeah, no, no.
I think it's because they've written a whole heap of like of stock
programmatic characters who aren't very interesting.
I think it's up to the listener to decide.
Yes, absolutely.
With an exciting me to decide.
We haven't talked about, we haven't talked about Tristram Carey's
last score for the program, and I've got to say, it's really kind
of sad that he's gone from such beautiful levels with the Daleks
and master plan he did as well, didn't he?
and how now sophisticated and elegant they were.
And then there's this one.
I'm just going, well, I'm sitting here thinking, what, who's
opened the fridge?
Yeah, really glaring?
Like scorching?
What we're doing in 1972, isn't it?
I know he had very little time and he was a last minute edition
whoever else they had on wasn't available and Carrie, I think by
that time was, you know, moving to Australia and doing other
things and lost a lot of money with his lab.
He stayed of the art cutting edge, of course, simply because of
machines like the Delaware. were cutting him out so quickly. tech
was moving so fast.
And poor old Carrie was just kind of doing everything, quick
little jobs where he could from what I know.
But yeah, I really, this is really irritating story.
In a year of interesting scores.
It is disappointing.
But, um, that's a harsh word.
Well, it's disappointing because as you say, you know, he's been
so good in the past and would continue to be good.
That's the Trump card in ending any relationship, isn't it?
you were so good in the past.
Disappointing.
But as you mentioned earlier, Richard, 1st story of James
Atchison.
Yeah.
Yeah, and, you know, I really like the mutt costumes.
I think there are, there are really like, they're pretty much a
really effective update of the zombie.
I was actually thinking that as well.
They're like sort of scary ants made of leather instead of
fibreglass.
Which means they move a bit more naturally as naturally as one can
in a giant ankle.
Beautiful, too, which helps.
Yes, I just love them.
But they're also, like, they're scary looking, but they're
sympathetic and they have a lot of sort of sad eyes.
I mean, they look like sort of sea devil eyes, you know, it's the
same kind of eyes.
You see them again cropping up on San.
Yes, yes, yes.
I also really like the in brain of Morbius.
Yeah, yeah.
I also really like the sky base uniforms.
The kinky devil.
They actually do look a bit like Berner Cribbons in vinyl, don't
they?
Yes, they do.
So just before we head right into the end of the season, Rod
didn't have much to say about this story, but I think my favourite
comment that he did make.
I think it's the Cliffhanger to episode four, he described as the
best depressurising airlock scene ever.
Gosh, it's terrible, isn't it?
Is he a Blake 7 fan?
The next episode, there's a gaping CSO hole in the wall and the
marshal just walks out of the room while everyone else is sort of
trying not to be sat down. ridiculous.
Awful.
Yeah.
Right, well, we've just taken a little gap between now and now.
Is that why you're naked except for a swaddling cloth?
Yes, well, I've just been played by the baby from next door.
This is, of course, the time doesn't stuff. that different from
the baby from the story. you still impressively youthful.
Oh, you're just saying that because they don't have any hair.
Nathan, I think this was one of yours again.
Well, this is just terrible, isn't it?
I'm going to start by saying, God, I love this story.
Thank you.
But it is terrible.
No, it's Robert Sloman and the thing that nobody gets with this
story, dear listener, is that it's written as a comedy.
Oh, that's amazing.
It's funny though.
Of course it's 1972 and it's a feminist comedy.
And it's one of the few ones that actually has a lovely little
sparring thing between an overtly queer character and a dominant
feminine character.
And apparently that's not a good thing to be.
No, I think it's great because people don't like the politics of
it.
It's absolutely not that.
It's just really not very good.
It's this weird tension of we have a plot which is essentially
bobbins and just quite terrible, but everyone's having a really
great time, except reportedly for pert week.
And us and the people watching.
No, no, no, I have an amazing time watching this.
But oddly, the thing pert we really didn't like was conceptual
science fiction.
He liked stories to be crowned in reality.
It's like, well, you're on the wrong show.
What he talking about?
It's got Ingrid Pitt.
You know, a flouncy, trouncy, bouncy, busty outfit.
That's pretty real.
So, but in a way, this actually works in Purpy's favour because he
did complain to Terrence about the script and how he didn't think
the script made any sense, but he also then said, you know, I will
do it because my job is not to enjoy the scripts.
And I will pass that on to the audience.
He said, my job is to say the words with the best conviction I can
manage.
So even if I am not enjoying myself.
You might want to add.
Even if I am not enjoying myself, even if I don't believe what I'm
saying, the children at home must believe it.
Yeah, but can you hear Patrick Troughton's response to that?
Because you could just, or indeed, Lawrence and the VAs would just
try acting more.
You know, how about elevating that to the next level where you
actually experience and have some feeling for it?
Don't just read the bloody lines with conviction.
Be somebody.
We're not up to 3 doctors yet, but I bet we'll have a lot to say.
I think that it really is evident in that scene in episode 2 where
he's explaining who Kronos is to Dr. Ruth Ingram and Sergeant
Benton and that bird in a white rock and a farm attack. painted
white.
The thing is, he has to do all this sort of babble and he has this
beautiful line which I'll come back to, which is along the lines
of the Atlanteans believed in Kronos and thus brought him into
existence and imprisoned him in the stool.
It's very Buddhist, but apparently John just went, oh God, this is
terrible.
But in that scene, the doctor isn't speculating.
The doctor is saying this really happened.
The doctor is essentially saying magic happened, but he convinces
me in that scene.
But it's a Buddhist thing, isn't it?
Interstitial time.
It's actually a concept of Tibetan Buddhism.
There is much more Buddhism in this than you think, and it is...
I'll just pat my yeti while I'm just saying that, so to speak.
You're disused, yes, yes.
God, I need to shave my legs.
Brendan's hugging the disused game as we speak.
There'll be a photo to a company.
There's a euphemism.
So every year after Dick's and Let's take over, every year we get
a 6 part season.
It does sound like a euphemism, doesn't it?
It really isn't.
There's a six-part season finale.
It's by Letts and Sloman, essentially, although sometimes Letts is
credited and sometimes he isn't.
In fact, he's never credited.
But it's a huge input from him.
And there's always sort of spirituality in Buddhism.
So last year in the demons we discovered for the 1st time that
Doctor Who can say that an alien is responsible for some aspect of
magic or human mythology or something like that.
And we get that again this year.
It's Kronos, who is a Titan in Greek mythology.
There's a minotaur.
There's all of these things which are caused by, you know, sort of
strange alien names.
Richard Dorkard's atheistic alien, do you think?
Do you think he's actually an Asyl?
Is it?
Richard Dorkos.
I think he could be.
I think I'll have to ask Lala Ward.
She would know.
Yeah, yeah.
We should ring her up and leave.
I think we might get a rather curt reply.
She said at a convention she's married monsters in the past.
So it's very similar and we'll get this sort of Buddhist sort of
staff as well.
If only there was a Buddhist we could know.
We knew in Fandom, we could check with you, Luth and see if this
is...
Well, I know a little bit about Buddhism.
And and the...
There is a hugely massively Buddhist moment, of course, which is
the flower sermon in episode.
Yeah, where Hertui tells the story of his blackest day and he goes
and meets the hermit halfway up a mountain who we later discover
Whoopi Campo, Rimposhe, and Queen Darius.
King Dalius in this episode.
It's the same actor.
And, you know, it's the flower.
Queen down, I think.
We'll have to talk about that later because I've got lots of juicy
things to say about Galileo, who I think is just fantastic.
This is the highlight of this story.
So there is sort of overtly Buddhist stuff.
But the other thing that lets and Slyman do in the season finale
every year is give us a fun unit romp.
Do you know what I mean?
And so that's why everyone remembers these things as being such
fun.
You know, the demons was fun.
This is kind of fun.
It is terrible, but it's kind of fun.
The Green Death is the one that they get right, where it's
actually a good story as well as being a fun unit romp.
And then there's Planet of the Spiders where all the unit people
are back and it's really not very good.
So it is a pattern that they sort of set every year.
And I think the 2 reasons why this story is so terrible are the
dialogue is shockingly bad all the way through.
Like absolutely absurdly ridiculous.
And it's all that Cretan jazz and the whole King Arthur bit and
like simmer down, Stu.
Everyone sort of speaks in this sort of absolutely fake appalling
way.
You know, the brigadier is suddenly a giant fool who can't really
understand anything that's going on and doesn't believe all the
other things that are going on.
Dialogue is just painful to listen to, like really, really
atrociously bad.
Joe says groovy twice.
Far too often.
Twice.
It feels like it, well, apparently the whole industrial universe
is groovy.
You see, I feel like the dialogue is actually really nicely
quirky.
We have the 2 scientific characters.
We have Ruth and Stu, who, as well as being scientists. doubles.
They are.
Yeah, they are a comedy double.
It's not a funny comedy.
As well as being scientists.
They have a pre-existing relationship as brother and sister.
You know, they banter with each other and they tease each other.
And it's that it's that kind of familiar relationship that we
don't see often.
She's butcher his film.
It's a perfect television...
I do have something to say about her whole, the treatment of her
as a feminist. is very interesting.
It's, um, you know, it's the 1st time that Doctor Who is actively
doing feminism and doing women's lib and they actually call it by
name, God bless women's lib at all, but not all the same.
You know, it's incredibly awkward.
It's incredibly awkwardly done.
Roughly handled.
I think the cast do the best they can with the material they've
got.
I think Delgado probably handles it best because he is sexist
towards her.
But when he apologises.
Delgado's master hasn't shown signs of sexism before.
He's courteous to a fault with everyone until he needs to kill
you.
And again, he shows actually no intent that he ever seems ready to
hurt Ruth.
And I don't think he ever intends to hurt Stuart either.
He just gets in the way, you know what I mean?
But I think one of the really questionable moments of Ruth's
status as a feminist, if you like, is when Stu is kind of gently
asking, oh, come on, you know, we should we should give it a try.
We're just as qualified, this, that, the other, this, that, the
other.
And her response is, don't bully me, Stu, or I'll burst into
tears.
But I actually think that that's actually, that was a line that I
thought was meant to be funny.
It's a really lovely character moment, but it's also saying, oh
yes, we're doing all this feminism stuff, but really women will
just manipulate you by crying.
Coming back to my other package.
Thank you for that, Judas.
Is that your other person?
Coming back to my other passion, of course, which is video games.
I imagine most of the listeners will have heard of Super Mario
Brothers.
It's kind of a thing.
And one of the central conceits of that is most games start with
Princess Toadstool, Princess Peach Toadstool, being kidnapped by
Bowser, the king of the turtles, and Mario having to go and save
her.
And, you know, so it's obviously the, you know, the woman is
kidnapped and the man has to say that.
About 10 years ago, they made a game called Super Princess Peach
where Mario was kidnapped and Peach had to go rescue him.
They've watched an episode of The Avengers. in 1960 blah, yeah.
But Peaches' superpowers.
Mario Superpowers are throwing fireballs or freezing things or
turning into a raccoon.
Peach's superpowers involve emotions.
She gets angry at people and hits them or she cries a river and
the enemies get swept away.
So it is the Delgado on purple.
Yeah, so, yeah, it's kind of that thing of women will manipulate
you with their emotions still exist today.
That being said, it was a decent game and peach got to be a hero
and beat lots of people up.
Ruth is a decent character and she is strong and she is
intelligent, but there's still this tension in there of, ah, the
terrible woman.
Not in 72 and he's out.
Well, they do that to Sarah Jane when she turns up.
She's not having a bar of it, though.
No, no, I mean the writers do it to her.
Like they try and make her look like an idiot.
You know what I mean?
Maybe Liz doesn't have a bar of it, but Holmes is a bit mean to
Sarah Jane as a character, but...
Holmes likes that kind of underplayed cruelty, doesn't he?
He likes throwing that in, yeah.
Like he makes Sarah say things that make her look like an idiot
sort of thing.
Murderer time warrior.
No, I was just actually adding that.
But Ruth doesn't get to recover a bit.
You know, she goads Sergeant Benton into action, like, we just
going to sit here and then, you know, when they're trying to
control Tom Tit again after the masters left.
She's like, right, Stu, disconnect the thermal lobes and load up
the homemic regulator.
Oh, what do you want me to do?
You stand there and look pretty.
Yeah, I like it too.
I love that as well.
So generally, I love her character.
The only thing I don't really like about her character is that
she's not Liz.
We're in Cambridge.
They should have got Liz.
No, we didn't even mention it.
No.
So can I tell you about the 2nd thing that I think is makes this
story terrible?
If you must.
The plot is just absolute garbage.
It's so bad.
It's full of all of these sort of elements.
I disagree with you again.
Go on.
All of these elements.
So Stu becomes an old man for no real reason and then gets younger
an episode later again for no real reason.
None of the characters actually does this to him or fixes it.
It just happens and then it unhappens.
The master has Dr. Percival for the 1st 2 episodes as his sidekick
and then Cronos kills him for no other reason than he's got
another sidekick and we don't want all these sidekicks cluttering
up the place.
Everyone gets to move very slowly for an episode for no reason and
then pertly rescues them.
You know, the master ejects pertry into the time vortex and 2
minutes later, Joe retrieves him by pressing a button on the
TARDIS console.
Do you know what I mean?
The dog spends half an episode building the time flow analogue.
It works for 10 seconds, has no discernable effect, and then it
explodes for no reason.
Baby Benton appears in one scene and then in a scene at the end
he's clearly only there to give us the hilarious, you know, tag
scene at the end of episode six.
All these elements come in and go absolutely precisely nowhere
they just get resolved as quickly as they come up and all they're
doing is marking time.
And it's exactly what Sloman did with the heat barrier of the
previous year.
Do you know what I mean?
Like at the end of the demons, we complained and complained about
the pacing problems of the demons.
Here.
This barely has a plot.
It's just a bunch of things that happen.
See, I think that's because it's 3 two-parters.
It's three, two-part stories, written in the style of a 40s
serial.
Is Robert Solomon playing with the ideas of time.
So what does time do to you with ages you?
Okay, we'll have a character age.
Okay, I've had someone age, now I'll use someone.
Ah, now what if I had people in one speed of time and people in
another speed of time?
So we'll put that in.
We'll freeze people in time.
Now, I'm not saying it's really well done.
You probably should have gotten released.
You probably should have focussed on one or 2 things, but at the
same time, none of the ideas stick around long enough to outwear
their welcome.
No, sometimes they subcribe for like 5 minutes of screen time.
Don't you think the time flow analogue out stays as welcome?
Not really, because I'd always thought the time flow analogue was
a bit silly until I rewatched it recently for the podcast.
And I was specifically looking for something in the plot that
justifies the bloody time flow analogue.
It's crisis' pendant.
The master takes the pendant and uses the geometric designs on it
as a constant in terms of measurement in terms of time.
In the original script.
The master actually has the line of it doesn't matter if something
is centimetres or inches so long as the measurements remain
constantly with each other.
He talks about the ratios of proportions.
Yeah, exactly.
And that is how the doctor explains the time flow analogue as
well.
It is not the items that are important.
It is how they are arranged in relationship to each other.
No, he talks about their molecular structure as well, you can't
retrieve that.
I can and I just... you know, Gareth can.
Gareth, Gareth Roberts, of course, has a sort of loving tribute to
the stupid time flow analogue in the lodger where he creates that
giant thing out of umbrellas and things.
And the doctor even tries to pass it off as a piece of modern art
which is what both of them.
Yeah, yeah, it's what both of them do.
I think, actually, Nanamouskurri was wearing it on her earlier
appearances on the 2 Ronnies.
She just broken through in the charts.
Because, you know, with the Hunter, or with the Greek military
uprising in 67, you had a lot of Greek people coming into London
and there were lots of restaurants and, you know, and there were
Domardis and there were donor kebabs, although I think they had
just ooze over there.
But you know, it was the great thing was the trendy thing.
All that Cretan jazz.
All that, exactly.
And terracotta weeks and sensibilities.
But no, anonymous curry, that year, she'd been charting and she'd
be on the 2 runnings, wearing exactly that pendant.
With the backing vocals provided by those that big umbrella
machine.
Can we go to Atlantis?
Oh, look, you know what?
Gorgeous sets.
So my to 4 point is, I think it's stunning.
And you know what?
The principal players are not that bad.
I think Dalios is a bit of a worry, but oh, he's lovely.
I love...
I love Ingrid Pitt, isn't it?
Oh, yeah, it's impossible.
We actually get proper BBC Shakespeare-ish classics with her
performance and in fact, with the sets and the look of this, This
would not have been at all odd for any of the viewers sitting at
home who were at school at the time or maybe in professions like
yours that, you know, I said, she's totally convincing as a BBC
classics naughty old Medea type of queeny type person.
In fact, she's really explicitly sneaking around on Dahlias, of
course, because she says, you know, she's talking with her maid
and they're talking about him. that one.
I shall have a bit of that one.
She's actually the John Collins of the Asian world, isn't she?
Well, May West.
You get the impression that she's had an affair.
She won't sink.
Well, you do get the impression that you've, that she's already
had an affair with hippy ass.
Oh, so she says she has.
She knows that he cloy on her tongue.
Well, he says, when he comes in, he says, I was I was expecting to
see the sympathetic and shy young girl and now I've got this ice
queen.
But he also says that he expected to be sent on a message, you
know, for some other lordling.
So there are other people.
And then, of course, she fancies the master something wrong.
I like that.
I shan't have that one, yes.
And the master tries his charm on her and she's not having a bar.
It's like, no, you are mine.
Who's queen?
Yeah, she's actually very convincing in her royal disposition.
And when she meets Joe, it's one of those few scenes that Cody's
given where both characters are entirely sympathetic and really
believable.
Look, when the queen looks at her, you know, what's this handshake
and why would I repeat myself?
She's willing to come forward and willing to meet, but never
forget her position.
Yes.
She's terrific really well.
Yeah, she might be interesting in it.
Well, it's just a relief to get someone who's acting.
Yeah, yeah.
Also acting, of course, is Kronos.
Straight from the parents' people. love that.
Yeah, well, where do we go with that?
So it really must be, is it the worst?
realised monster so far?
I think, you know what?
I think the biggest problem is...
Joan Sutherland hadn't finished with the frock before they put it
onto Chronos the Carnival, yeah.
I think the big I think the big problem is just showing it.
Don't show it.
Keep the camera out of focus.
Well, and they do try and do that.
I mean, they had the birds flapping.
And originally the appearance effect was going to be with a
variety of different birds flapping.
So you would just see all these wing shapes and a ghostly ethereal
being would come out of it.
And of course, we got the Doctor Who equivalent instead.
Yeah, which is really terrible. and they try and hide it.
Like the scene where it attacks Atlantis at the end, it's barely
visible.
Clearly the director has said, get that thing out of my shot. you
know, And they do the thing too, where they kind of, it's very
white and they light it and they hope that it's going to flare out
the videotape. front axial projections.
Oh, they do use front axial projection.
That axial projection.
So, yeah, I deal with that.
Quite enough of it, though.
Dear listener, for those of you who don't know, front tacks, your
projection is when you paint a costume or object with a certain
phosphorescent... not phosphorescent, it's sort of like...
Pearlescent.
Yeah, you we're sort of an emperor.
Silver Nemesis will do it.
We'll also see it next year in the Green Death.
And then when you shine a light on it, The light reflects, but it
doesn't reflect the way a mirror would.
It sort of absorbs the light 1st and then reflects it back a
millisecond light, meaning you get a glowing effect rather than a
reflection effect.
Well, you do.
There are some shots where you can see it.
It is kind of blowing out.
Clears the hotel.
I just kind of wish they, you know, they've done it with just the
shadow of the creature.
Like you sort of see the flapping.
I've never seen.
Look, you know, thank you.
There's that cat people, the Tourneau, the Jacques Tournay film of
1942.
And its sequel, both excellent film.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was not as successful, but he also did, we've
mentioned him before, but he's a terrific early RKO horror
director who whose shots would have been perfect for this story.
You never see the cat.
You never see the village.
You just see the shadows on the wall.
Gee it works well.
It was also the 1st film to use that technique, which is so famous
in horror films, which is having silence, silence, silence.
And then a loud noise.
No, that's called Tristram Curry.
But the loud noise is then something non-threatening.
So where it's used in cat people is she is walking along the side
of the street and she thinks she can hear that.
How much love becomes up and she's, no, sorry.
Can I hear the cat?
We should probably come back to it.
There is a hissing sound like a big panther.
Oh my god.
John Nathan Turner.
No, it's the hydraulic door of a bus.
How often those 2 have been confused.
I would like to get a sample of you saying surprise and make that
my text tone.
Can I do that?
I was thinking that was...
I was thinking that was some hippayas.
Can I just say that?
really love the jumping around that this story does.
Hello?
Because, well, exactly.
Doctor Who, for the past few years, really since the Chase, hasn't
had a story that's set in 2 locations continuously.
The closest we get is Inferno and Day of the Daleks.
There's a reason for that.
But in this story, there's something exciting about it because the
story twists and turns so much.
You don't know where you're going there.
Because you get the scenes in the TARDIS in the middle and then
you get Atlantis and stuff.
Yeah, I think also before that, you've got, you've got, you've got
the Cambridge lab, you've got the rooms around Cambridge, then
you've got the convoy on its way, then you've got the TARDIS, then
you've got Atlantis, and then it all comes back.
Look, it's messy.
Don't get me wrong, but I think it's also really exciting that
they are trying something new.
Like we were saying with the mutants, and I know you don't agree
Richard, but if there is a criticism that could be laid at that
story, it is perhaps that the characters are stagnant character
models, that we have seen this type of story before.
For better or for worse, I don't think you can say you've seen
anything like the Time Monster before.
I'm very fond of this story.
I do think you could have done with some judicious cutting and
perhaps losing a couple of episodes that I can think you can say
that for a lot of the 6 parties, except for sea devils maybe, just
because there's so much going on.
I think, I mean, it's worth talking about what sort of badness the
poetry era does.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, I think that this is probably the worst story.
Maybe Monster of Paladon is worse, but I think it's still
enjoyable.
The worst poetry story.
Really?
Time Monster?
quite a lot.
Yeah, I wouldn't say that.
No, I wouldn't say that. very entertaining.
But that's what I'm saying.
Even a band per twee story is actually pretty entertaining.
And you've got the big regular cast.
You've got people doing their party pieces.
You know, you've got the master.
Like all of that stuff is actually quite fun.
And so I enjoy this.
I didn't think that the demons was as good as I remembered it last
year, but I still thought it was pretty enjoyable.
So I think that even when there's a misfire, like this story, that
it never falls below a certain level of competence and a certain
level of entertainment value, there's nothing in the purse we era
to kind of equal, you know, the celestial toy maker.
Do you know what I mean?
It never, ever got...
We don't have that wrong.
That's wild.
Although there is a point of the story that seems to draw more eye
on anything else.
The Tartar set.
Thank you for getting back to that. you love it?
Yes.
I love it.
I think we've all made cupcakes at home.
We can all see the point of those walls.
This is what people don't get.
The Capelli designs that were really featured strongly in the 68
Milano design fair in Italy that you subsequently see turning up
the vac form plastic and the fibreglass things that you see.
The Vernapant and things of the early 60s, but pretty much watch
every episode of Space 1979 or everything that was made in the
early 70s. those beautiful formed white furniture thing.
This is absolutely contemporaneous and it's good design.
I like it.
I actually kind of disappointed that they didn't upgrade the
console to go with it.
And I think that's why the set doesn't work.
It was called Modular, the whole look and that lettering, you know
the microgrammar lettering, the space style that you see on space
1999 that ends up on sky base in that whole look is very much of
this period.
They didn't actually go far enough with it.
And I think that's why it didn't work.
I also think it's a great relief given how tired and minimal the
Tartar set had been during the Pertuy era.
We've only seen it a few times, but it's pretty perfunctory.
The corner of the room.
Well, it's a corner of your dad's office, isn't it?
Including the filing cabinet.
And, you know, like those terrible photographic blowups and
stuff.
It was looking really tired.
This is groovy.
I love how the master's version has chocolate fountain in the
middle of it.
I'm sorry, is that another euphemist?
No, no, your time rotor looks like a chocolate fountain.
No, it wasn't.
I don't think you should be using that kind of language is a
family podcast.
I won't invite you around for fondue.
No, we've done that, but...
Anyway, no, I really do think it's a shame that the console is
staying in the Brakaki original, and how sexy would it have looked
with a slightly curved, moulded my pick of the episode would be to
go and look at any of Colani's designs, which are very much
influenced of this form of circularity and curvaciousness and a
Kalani console.
I might do a little drawing and stick it on the website to show
just how fabulous this whole story might have been with, oh
goodness, what a fanboy thing to do.
But anyway, I think that's a wonderful idea, Richard.
I really hope you do that homework for me.
Now, I have been unresting in my praise of this story, I suppose.
And I will say the one thing I find that's kind of kind of
problematic about it is it's really starting to see the sort of
dumbing down of unit.
Oh, absolutely.
Thanks for mentioning that.
Yes, it's getting a little...
Nathan, what's the word you'd use?
Ah, exhausting.
That's the one. you.
You know, it also doesn't help that all 3 of them need a jolly
good hair. cut.
They're a bit wet, aren't they?
They're a bit dark.
I don't think it's just that they don't have a blow dryer.
They're a bit soggy.
Brigady is really stupid.
Well, he's cranky.
And mouthy.
Benton actually, I think, is the most sympathetic.
I really like the way Benton takes on the master.
Yeah, yeah, it's good.
It's convincing.
It actually works.
Well, mate, you just try it.
I love the mask going, no, Mr. Benton, that was the oldest trick
in the book.
He's fabulous.
That's why the master won't kill any of them because he's having
too much.
He loves them.
Yes.
Yeah.
Benton is easily the most capable member of unit in this story.
Everything that happens brigadier says, oh, no, no, that can't
possibly be happening.
It's like, you've bloody seen spaghetti monsters.
Yeah, it's a bit Counsellor Troy, mid-run, next generation trek
when we just have to reboot every episode because, you know, we're
in syndication.
Doctor Who doesn't have that excuse.
Doctor Who was the 1st series to properly story arc, soap operas
don't count, and they're forgetting it, aren't they?
Yeah, and it's a shame, really, because it seems like the reason
they're doing it is to make the doctor seem more clever.
And I know I said on the podcast that one of the things I really
hate in any kind of storytelling is making one character look
clever, not by making them look clever, but by making the people
around them look stupid.
It's bad child rearing, isn't it?
You don't do it in a family.
You don't do it with your school with your school charges either.
But also, it actually just makes your hero look more stupid.
Like pert we said, with Carrie John not going down in the caves in
a miniskirt, he would say Doctor Who would not work with someone
who would do something.
Because it actually brings the doctor down.
Exactly. so to speak.
Are we still talking about min skirts?
And the fun thing about the brigadier is that in some ways, he was
sort of more savvy than the doctor.
Yeah, he was amused by the doctor, you know, and we talked about
that sort of curl of the lip and that kind of rye and he, you know
attitude.
He was smart, he was clever.
He was kind of funny, but here he's turning into a blustering
idiot.
It's only going to get worse spoiler alert in the next story at
the start of next year.
And I think it's a big shame.
And I don't think it's a degeneration of his character.
I don't think this is where he's headed from here on in.
Do you know what I mean?
It's an aberration.
It's a blip.
Thankfully.
But the trouble is, it's a blip in a story that Barry Letts has
his fingerprints all over.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, as Richard said earlier, I do think this story is an attempt
to do a proper comedy.
Romans, is it though?
Yeah, it's not the Romans.
I don't I don't think Doctor Who. who doesn't.
Doctor Who has found it very difficult to support comedy every
time it's attempted, which is very often.
That's true.
For some reason, just doesn't.
No, my biggest disappointment in this story is you've said, is
that the brigadier is so poorly served.
And you do notice throughout the last few seasons that it's only
Nick's sidelines and sardonic grin or a certain little thing that
he'll throw in that elevates the character.
He's really poorly served and underwritten.
It's bit dumbed down.
Yeah.
Just before we go on.
Oh, yes.
Jenny Lairds and our picks of the week in Welsh Watch.
Purvy, windowy, washy, Walsh.
Yeah, yeah.
Terry Walsh plays a window cleaner who was surprised by a vase
appearing out of thin air.
Surprise and falls down from a ladder.
That's Walsh Watch for this season.
It's so terrible though.
Because, like, the brigadier and some...
He does a lovely prep for, though, is really good.
But the brigadier and some civil servants come along.
Feel him up a bit.
And they go, oh, he's still alive.
And then the Civil Servant just sort of walks.
Yeah, bugger off.
No, I love the ambulance. shows what a bastard, this whole sermon
is.
It's a cut price, Steve.
It's a bit of a shame that he doesn't get his cup-uppance.
He just sort of disappears from the plot.
Oh, you see him later on arguing and being ticked off by the
doctors.
Coming back to something you were saying earlier, Nathan, I've
been thinking about it.
The master does have a lot of instances of starting off with one
henchman and then swapping them halfway through the story where
they're after they're brutally murdered or... hench swapping.
Yes.
There's a lot of that in the early 70s.
Yes, they're cold.
I think the only one who actually survives is Captain Chin Li when
she swapped out for Maler.
That's true.
Well, that's because she was also married to the director, so she
wasn't going to be lost.
She wasn't going to be lost in a hench swapping party.
She would not have been left behind.
Although, you know what?
If I were married to a writer and the writer said, oh, I'm going
to put you in a TV script, I would actually say, oh, can you give
me a really good death scene?
Like, can I be burned to death or something?
You know, get your aggression out on me that way.
It's an interesting relationship, paradigm.
Tell us more.
Yeah, lie down here on this camp.
What's Rod's comment?
What do you want?
What do you think his paintings are about?
Okay, so aren't we move on to that time of the season, the Jenny
Laird awards the most puzzling creative choice?
Nathan, would you like to go first?
Well, my Jenny Laird Award goes to 3 time Academy Award winner.
So he can put...
He can put this on his mantlepiece next to his his Oscars, which
is a...
Well, he does a spot.
No, he did the Spider-Man, the last 3 Spider-Man costumes.
Yeah, yeah, the same designer who designed Tom Baker's costume
designed the Toby Maguire Spider-Man.
So he did the costume for the mutants, but he gives both Jeffrey
Palmer and George Prafter these unbelievably terrible dresses
which make them look paunchy and have like giantly narrow
shoulders and a hugely hideously unflattering.
Due to mid-career time lords, didn't he?
He did do time lords for deadly assassin too, didn't he?
Yes, yeah, that was great.
Yeah, just crustacea collars.
But they have shoulders.
Do you know what I mean?
Poor old Jeffrey Palmer comes in.
You know, he's fabulous, but I'm just distracted by how
incredibly...
Don't forget how Hugh Walters was dressed as Roncible.
But even then, you're right.
They had very solid shoulders.
Yeah, yeah, no.
These people are shoulderless.
It's really terrible And then finally, the investigator turns up
and seems to be wearing a sort of brass judge's wig.
So like maybe it was a day off. a judge, you know.
Maybe it was a bad day.
Richard, what's your Jenny later?
My puzzling choice has to go to one of my heroes, as Nathan just
did then, because I know that how much he really does love Mr
Rutchison.
My puzzling thing is, is poor old Tristram Carey, you?
I always loved and everything he's done.
And just the score for the mutants is honestly the weakest point
for me in an otherwise pretty good season.
Dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk.
As they fall down the stairs.
It's, look, it's been a series of very much a wild experimentation
and that doesn't always end up successfully, does it, for the, for
the viewer or the, you don't think so?
I think it's the difficult 2nd album. you know what I mean?
I think they get season 8 pretty right.
It's a reboot of the show season nine. what do we do now?
Ratings are more successful this time round though, weren't they?
Bratings are doing very well around the tens.
Yeah, ratings were constantly in the high 9s with quite a few
episodes breaking the 10s as well.
I think it's enjoyable and iconic, and I think that'll be even
more so next year.
But I think maybe this is weaker than last year.
Great.
Well, you know, it's quite funny.
My Jenny Laird Award relates to the mutants as well.
He's saying this to listen, are covered in glitter. covered
English, actually.
So it's a mutant trifecta.
It's getting all... pink one under your left eye.
This is true, listener.
And a gold one just near your nostril there.
It's like, what's a beauty box?
It is.
Now, well, I was just going to say, you know, this season is
filled with strong female characters.
You've got Anat, you've got 3rd Officer Blythe, you've got Ruth
Ingram, you've got Galea.
You've even got in the curse of Paladin.
Alpha Centauri, who is a gender queer character.
She does...
She's actually one of the Denver. 1st progressive, gender queer
characters, yes.
Coming with its own toys.
At the end, the ambassador from Earth, who is the chairperson of
the whole committee is a woman.
A fabulous...
Amazonia.
You know, she doesn't she doesn't have anything to do in the plot
but she is still a woman in a position of power.
On an admittedly backward planet where they've said only women of
role birth can enter the throne room.
Well, see more of that later with Poland.
So my Jenny Led War for most puzzling creative choices, where are
the women in the mutants?
Ding-dong.
There are no female characters apart from Joe. There are no female
characters.
I think there may be some background women, but there are.
There are some like people in Chinese people and extras.
Do you know what I mean?
They're doing a conference type thing, yeah.
There's another guard apart from cotton is black.
Yeah.
Yeah, so there is some there is some effort in that... isn't that
outrageous?
I think, as I say, there are some background salonians, maybe with
one or 2 lines. but no characters, if you like.
There are female extras, but there are no female characters aside
from Joe. That's so boring.
And, you know, any of the sporting characters could have been
women.
Yeah, if they...
It does explain with the flatness of it.
Yeah, if they were worried about the implications of kinkiness as
they were with colony in space.
You know, they could have made Sondergard a woman.
The marshal.
Well, that would have been...
Remember, the head of cereals didn't like the idea of kinky women
which is any woman who is not virtuous.
Yeah, well, pretty much.
Look at Susan Germis.
Yeah, that's why that's why Morgan wasn't a woman. okay.
So that's my, that's my Jenny Wad for puzzling creative choice.
That's a good one.
Well, we'll have to see if Bob Baker and Dave Martin improve on
that score.
We shall see.
We don't know what's under Omegus Frock.
We've got no idea.
Picks, picks of the month.
I had two, but I'm going to just have one.
I'm going to save one. next month.
And my big of the week.
I am contractually obliged to mention Philip Xander for every
single podcast episode.
This is true.
And Stephen Wood.
Yes.
Oh, hello, Stephen Wood.
Yes.
Oh, yes.
Yeah, no, no.
We liked it.
Well we do.
But especially in that three-quarter profile, short he's got on
his page height.
But so Sandifer has just wrapped up Tardis Rudatorum, which was
his flight through entirety, he's been through Doctor Who.
Yeah, including some of the novels and stuff from the wilderness
years.
And it's been really interesting.
It's been really fun and insightful.
And he's been doing the River song stories out of order, you know
because the River song stories are sort of out of order, you know
in the show.
And so the final one that was left that was published just last
month, was the Forest of the Dead.
It was the last one that he had to do.
And instead of a review or an essay about Forest of the Dead.
What he did instead was a 100,000 word blog post, chronicling the
entire history of Doctor Who, everything he's learned from the
entire blog.
Now, just to give you an idea of how long 100,000 words is, pride
and prejudice is 120,000 words.
So it's a novel length blog entry, and it is just one of the most
you know, sorry, it's just one of the most concise and brilliant
descriptions of the history of Doctor Who.
Well, do you know what I mean?
Compared to... compared to us. compared to about time.
Do you know what I mean compared to the blog itself?
It's only 2000 words a year of Doctor Who.
It's really, really good.
It's really, you know?
Have you read it?
Yes.
Yeah.
I need to have a job and everything.
I actually, it took me 2 days because I have a job and everything
but I did stay up really late, you know, one night to, which was
not reflected in your performance.
I was terrific at work then the next day.
I really recommend it.
I'll put a link to it in the show now.
Thank you.
I'm actually gonna go and read that now.
I shall go and read that now.
Oh, well, I'm going to be really exciting and different and
unusual again and say, come and read the target novels because I'd
never say anything new.
I really, really enjoyed sea devils.
I even enjoyed Dave the Daleks, but Cursive Paladin by Mr. Hales
is much better than the televised version.
It actually carries it all through and it's quicker.
It's quicker to read it.
No, it really is.
Look, you get a different take on each one, but I won't say
anymore because we've gone on forever.
Almost 100,000 words, but I really like my pick for this season
would be the Curse of Paladin Noel, and I'm surprised to hear
myself say it.
So, Can I have a quick little read?
I'm sure you can find it somewhere.
My pick of the month is related to something I posted on our
Facebook page a few weeks ago, which is real-time pictures have
now been rebranded as time travel TV and they are putting their
back catalogue, particularly of myth makers interviews with Doctor
Who stars and writers and directors and so on on their website
available to buy as DVDs or download to own. as video on demand.
Treasure in your own video lounge for eternity.
They actually have a 45 minute interview with Robert Sloman
talking about his work on the Damon. the Time Monsters, the Green
Death, and Planet of the Spiders.
Told you he was good.
He also talks about why he didn't return to Doctor Who after...
I don't think anyone, I don't think anyone would deny that
probably the Green Death and Planet of the Spiders are the 2 best
scripts he worked on.
I think Green Best, right?
Oh good.
No, there aren't the other three.
But yeah, this was conducted 2 years before his death.
He died in 2005.
This was conducted in 2003.
Bugger, we could have had him writing for the new series.
So yeah, that's my that's my recommendation.
I mean, there's lots of lovely titles on there.
But that one... that one really caught my eye because, you know
because his scripts aren't are so polarising, really.
Are they downloads?
What are they?
So they're available as video on demand from Vimeo. the video
sharing service, and each of the myth makers are available to
download or stream to own.
So sorry, they're available for $9 US.
They're also available to rent for half that price for a 48 hour
period.
The price of a mid-range mocktail.
Yes, that's right.
And a comfort of the bar of your choice.
Or you can have, you can get really, really piss faced at home and
watch them for the same price.
Take your iPad to the pump.
Yeah, no, because you get confused after a couple and use it as a
coaster.
Yeah, you've done that.
It's a trouble.
Who hasn't done it?
I almost do it in 2001.
You can see them.
Oh, well, I'm just glad that people told you that.
Right, I think that's, uh, all time we have today.
We will be back in two weeks, although, Richard, you'll be taking
have to go to Cambridge again, yeah.
You have to go to Cambridge again.
Perhaps you'll get to see Liz.
No one else gets to see Liz.
Todd will be back with us as we make our way through Doctor Who's
10th anniversary season.
Oh, gosh, you're gonna have a big time.
Yeah, the 3 doctors, Carnival of Monsters, Frontier in Space
Planet of the Daleks, and the Green Death, where there's some
really quite emotional times coming up in Doctor Who.
And yeah, we find out that things are never stable for too long.
So before we go, don't forget, uh, if you come to us newly on the
podcast, you can easily find our past podcasts about the 1st 2
doctors.
We've even index them by story.
So if you want to particularly hear what we said about the space
pirates...
Everybody is waiting to hear that.
Or the celestial toy maker because let's face it, sometimes you
can't just run your fingers down a blackboard.
Uh, you can listen to them there.
You can also find us on Facebook, flight through entirety, and on
Twitter at FTE podcast.
If you've enjoyed listening to us, please drop us a line, send us
a comment, review us on iTunes.
We really like that.
And until then, thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
Thank you.
That was flat through entirety with Nathan Bottomley, Brendan
Jones, and Richard Stone.
This episode, France and Trouncing Bouncing Busty, was reported on
Sunday, 8th of March.
The next episode will be released on April 12th.
I tried to feed a rabbit to a bowl constrictor once.
It complained that there was a hare in its room.
That was flight through entirety with Nathan Bottle?
That was...
That was Flight through Entirety.
That was Flight Through Entirety with Nathan Bottomley, Brendan
Jones, and Richard Stone.
This episode, Katie's bum was recorded on March the...
It's not going to be called Katie's phone.
No, no, no, no.
I think you should record it when we're not here.
I think you should do the one we're watching.