Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast that was expecting to talk about
Kiefer Sutherland and Near Death experiences this week.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Peter.
I'm Brendan.
And I'm Stephen.
Well, since the doctor 1st compared time travel to television back
in 1963, we've been eagerly following his two-dimensional
adventures.
But what happens when a 3rd dimension comes along or a 4th or a
5th?
Let's find out as we discuss flat blind.
When was the last time that we had two great debut episodes in a
row from a new writer?
I'm thinking 1977.
Really?
Yeah, Chris Boucher?
So not Hyde and Rings of Ackerton then.
Not quite, although one of them's pretty good.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
So this is the script that Matheson originally submitted or one of
a number of scripts that he submitted, I think.
Yeah, this episode nine, but I think Mummy on the Orient Express
was his follow-up.
Yeah.
So this is extremely strong, isn't it?
Like, I just think that we're at a point in the season now where
we've been getting some pretty strong outings.
Oh, absolutely agree.
And for me, actually, this is the best script of series 8.
Okay.
Yep.
I'll go into that later.
I think it's the most moffety of all the new Moffat writers.
I think Jamie Matheson channels him the best, even so far as
having, as we'll talk about, a big high concept monster that
hasn't been done before.
Yeah, it really is fantastic.
And um, Jamie Matheson had uh, submitted ideas to Julie and
Russell way back in 2004.
Wow.
But they're like, oh, the slates will come back next year and then
he went off and wrote a film called frequently asked questions
about time travel, which is a rather excellent time loop time
paradox comedy film with Dean Lennox Kelly set entirely in a pub.
I have a low rent sequel by Christopher H.
Bidmead.
And then, of course, you know, being human comes along and yeah
Jamie doesn't get a chance to pitch Doctor Who again until 2010.
I'm trying to work out exactly what's good about this.
I guess it is literally what you said, Peter, that this is nothing
that's ever been done before.
And we have had the Tata shrink before, haven't we, in Legopolis
and Planet of Giants and things, but we've never had just the
outside shrinking, which is absolutely a stroke of genius.
And it is, in fact, the cutest shrunken Tartar, since Orum plucked
it from the insides of the...
I mean he's...
So that's brilliant, but it also has a really properly terrifying
monster.
Yeah, so we have the boneless, and Jamie Matheson's, they're
basically, um, as they were in Jamie Matheson's initial concept
his main thing was that they would sort of absorb your body a bit
at a time, which we kind of see in this, and then kill you by
snapping your neck, which Stephen Boppett and Brian mentioned, said
ah, maybe we can tone that down.
But Jamie was very insistent that we need to have the sound of
bones breaking to tell the audience that these people are dead.
So I respect that.
Well, but it's also the sort of being flattened thing.
Like, I think that they're proper Doctor Who monsters in that, they
kill you in a sort of alarming and strange way.
A unique way.
And I think that that's something a new series has always done
isn't it?
Like, you know, the way the zygons kill you by turning you into a
tumbleweed or the secret acts kill you and you're a sort of
smouldering pile of bones or whatever, like a characteristic
killing move is an important thing for a monster and this
absolutely has it.
But it also just relies on what we're now able to do as well.
You could never have had the boneless, even during the RTD era
because the technology wasn't there to kind of make it happen, I
think.
And it's kind of like, it's a nice synthesis of the CG and the
soundscape, so that the noise that they make is really great.
And also the fact that a lot of the effects are actually done
pretty practically.
So while we do see the boneless.
I can't say the boneless, it reminds me of something you'd eat
from a KFC bucket.
You do see the boneless and they look great, but often they're
just suggested.
So you have all those lovely shots down the end of the subway
tunnel with just the lights at the end and they're kind of like
movements and shadows and it's a really effective realisation as a
whole.
I think that's the best part of it for me as a monster, the fact
that they're sort of in the liminal spaces, in the shadows.
It's the way that Stephen Moffatt loves to present his, you know
aliens and monsters.
They sort of skulk in the shadows and they're perhaps not everyday
things, but, you know, they sort of live in the walls.
And I think that's wonderful.
I think that kind of juxtaposition, I guess, of something that's
really mundane, but also incredibly spooky, is what had so much
atmosphere to the story.
Yeah, I mean, I think once we're down in the tunnels and stuff
we're in a place that's a little bit less recognisable, but in the
houses, on the estate, and particularly, the house that the young
constable is killed in...
Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's fantastic.
But with its sort of horrible wallpaper and all of that sort of
thing.
You know, like it's got night terror sort of vibes.
It's a horrible overdecorated flat.
And then just to have that, like a very ordinary place, that's the
place where they get you.
Yeah, like I think that that's extremely good.
Um, and they're just sort of proper solid, brilliant conceptual
Doctor Who monsters.
So much so that we don't even, you know, this is the 2nd episode
in a robot, Matheson, with a monster that doesn't speak that we
talk to and it will respond, but it doesn't ever respond in
words.
So it's a weird, unknowable monster.
And in fact, it's so strange that the TARDIS translation circuits
can't translate for us.
It's completely incomprehensible to us.
And he'll repeat that trick again in oxygen in series 10.
Oh, yeah, which is another brilliant episode.
It's really great monsters an episode.
But also, like all good monsters, they give rise to really great
set pieces.
And so that bit where PC Forest is kind of like flattened into the
ground.
It's really quite shocking and like quite scary for a kid, I
think.
But then that brilliant set piece where Clara and Rigsy have to
escape and they do so by hopping onto that kind of suspended chair
from the ceiling and rolling out the window and get away from it.
And it all comes organically from the idea. that's what makes it
really great.
Yeah, yeah, it's really good, that, is it?
And it's fantastic locating the conversation between her and Danny
on the phone at that point in the episode while they're doing that
set piece.
It's terrific staff.
This so much feels like an episode that Mothat wrote.
It feels like it's all of that standard.
Yeah, I agree.
And I think it's in those sort of set pieces, including the egg
chair that's suspended from the ceiling there.
That's something straight out of a moth of sex comedy scene.
I'm sure certain.
I can't help but wonder. hasn't got his fingerprints on this
script or is this actually Matheson who's come up with it because
it's so moffety.
Are you saying has he got his fingerprints on the script or on the
egg chair?
Well, it is very more fatty.
I mean, I don't know.
I mean, mommy on the Orient Express must have been handed to Jamie
Matheson as a broad idea, but this feels new and fresh as well.
And so I just don't know.
Yeah, um, this was one of 4 ideas he brought to the production
team for the 2014 season because when he pitched in 2010, um
there's not much known about the idea, but Stephen Moffat
basically said, you know, this is tense, it has pace, it has
character, it doesn't have a villain or a monster.
Right.
And and so Matheson kind of went away going, okay, I need to have
a villain or a monster.
Matheson, before becoming a TV writer, was a stand-up comedian and
good friends with, at the time, a lesser known comedian, but now
far better known comedian, Toby Haydoke.
Ah, okay.
And so Matheson sat down with Toby and said, I have these ideas.
So he brings 4 ideas to the production and basically said to Toby
have these been done in Doctor Who before?
So that's how we get something so unique?
Right, thanks to Toby Hader, probably going, well, the Tardis was
shrunk in Planet of Giants, Legopolis, and Carnival of Monsters.
However, not quite the way you've done it, but avoid using fish
islands because we had that in Lagopolis.
No, don't go.
Don't do idea number two.
That was the monster of peladon.
Well, that makes a lot of sense, and, Brennan, because I think you
do get these set pieces like the egg chair.
You know, and sort of flashes of the doctor doing goofy things
like dancing in the Tartars, and you get the horrible pie joke
which sort of channels the 5 doctors.
And Matheson was a stand-up comic beforehand.
Maybe it is actually all him because it's comedic gold, all of
it.
Maybe that's why it feels like he's channelling off that.
Yeah, well, Muppet's a sitcom writer as well.
And, I mean, this does have the sort of Moffat monster, like the
Vashtarada or the silence, you know, where their high concept and
they basically kill you and you don't really know why.
Like they don't talk to you about it.
And they can be here, right?
In the room.
And in this case, in the walls.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so it is a moffity kind of monster. not some guy in a rubber
suit.
It's not a draconian or a zigon or something.
It is that sort of weird conceptual monster.
And I do like how fabulously evil they are.
Like they seem to be just totally evil, even though we never hear
them speak.
Yeah, you know, there's that moment where the doctor sort of
theorises that perhaps they don't understand our 3D world and so
that they don't realise that they're hurting us, but it is made
completely clear to us that, yes, they do and they're fine with
it.
But again, that feels so lofty.
It's like the angels laughing.
Yeah.
Time of Angels.
You know, there's no getting away from how evil they are.
Doctor, I'm five.
Fine.
Fine, I'm fine.
Yeah.
Oh, countdown.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
From what I can see of the script development.
It seems that Moffatt's main input was making it simpler because
initially you had a group of street kids who were doing graffiti
and then you had the community service group and then you had a
group of passengers on the train as well.
So Moffett's like, no, simplify, simplify, simplify.
It wasn't a doctor light script to begin with.
So it was going to start with the doctor and Clara already in
situ.
It became the Dr. Light script because of scheduling.
So it seems like Moffatt's main influence here is just kind of
saying to Jamie Matheson.
It's like, you've written like a film.
We need to make it a TV show.
Yeah, and so we collapse the graffiti artist into just Rigsy and
make him a member of the community service people and that he's
there doing community service because he's been doing the
graffiti.
And I guess because there's that moment, when the community
service people 1st see Clara and she is looking at a, what do we
call it?
Like a memorial where people have put flowers and pictures and
things because someone has gone missing and they assume that the
people trapped in the walls are actually a memorial mural, which I
think is so brilliant.
It's so good.
And just the response, you know, this really real seeming response
uh, when horrible what's his face.
Fenton.
God, he's ugly.
He's fabulous, isn't he?
What a great character, actually.
He's done some big finishing stuff.
He's never not working.
Well, the further adventures of Fenton.
Yeah, no, no.
Yeah, yeah. it's a box set.
He is really good, but when he orders them painted over, you know
like there's a real kind of, because that's the thing too.
This is not our 1st council estate, is it?
But this one is drawn very lightly, I think, but the one
impression that you do get is that it's a community and these
people who've gone missing myst.
It is a bit more broad stroke.
So the Fenton character sort of doesn't come from the power
station.
No.
But it's sort of very much in keeping with what's required of the
script.
And I think that moment when the memento mori sort of characters
turn around, it's absolutely chilling and it's beautifully
realised as well.
Fantastic.
I mean, we've had living pictures before, haven't we?
Well, let's not talk about that.
Well, I mean, I don't think for her it is as terrible as everyone
suggests, and certainly it's its problem isn't that premise
because the drawings coming to life or people being turned into
drawings is actually great.
It's a, you know, obviously a sort of sapphire and steel thing
isn't it, with the photographs.
Remember that four parter, with the people trapped in the
photographs.
It's very like that.
But here, because it's, it's the 2Dness of it, I think, you know
there's, there's that famous book, isn't there, flatland, which is
by a, um, I think it's an American mathematician.
It's quite old, and it's a description of a 2D world by a
character called A Square, and he describes what the experience of
living in 2 dimensions is like.
So that's a thing that it's obviously kind of cribbing from, but
also the fact that Doctor Who has always been two-dimensional
because we watch it on a television screen. and its images.
So 2 dimensions can represent 3 dimensions.
And so we can make things move between dimensions.
And I think that's really brilliantly done in the cold open, isn't
it?
Where what's his face?
Is he Robbie or something?
He's got a beardie, witty bald man.
Yeah, we're the beardy guy. gets sort of smeared on the wall and
we only see that it's him because the camera tilts.
It's so brilliantly done.
It is really well directed, isn't it?
Douglas McKinnon.
Yeah, Doug's Kenyon is hit and miss, but he is, yes.
All kids.
Yeah, yeah.
But I have a couple of notes on this.
I mean, if we are comparing it to fear her, and it did make me
think of that, I wouldn't like to think which episode is actually
more 2D. Well, they're both quite too, yeah.
But also that, going back to the community service gang, heavy and
the zeitkaist at this time was misfits.
Ah, yes.
Even if you didn't watch the show from start to finish, the one
image that you took away from it, the image that was kind of
popularised in the advertising and everything was of the community
service gang with the heroes, and they're really horrible
overseer.
And so I think that was kind of like that image would have been
strongly drawn on for this.
It went from sort of 2009 to 2013 and so, yeah, it was fresh.
Yeah, yeah.
What do we think of this being set in Bristol?
Well, I guess Jamie did work on being human, which was set in
Bristol until I became too expensive and they had to move to Barry
Island.
Yeah okay.
Isn't this shot on Barry Island?
Yes.
Yeah.
I've been to Bristol.
Everything does seem a little bit smaller there.
Oh yeah, I mean, I know I kind of like that.
I think that's a thing.
Everything doesn't have to be said in London or Sheffield or
whatever.
Bristol's a pretty little town.
It just made me think, maybe this is where the doctor got the idea
of going to work in a university for however many years it was.
Ah, yes, okay.
He wants to have liked it, yeah, partner.
Also the birthplace of Tom Spillsbury.
Ah.
Well, there you go.
Is there a plaque?
I think it also continues the joke from the beginning of the
season, which is, of course, Clara being dropped off in Glasgow
and, you know, Clara is deceiving both Danny and the doctor and
wanting to lead this double life.
And it's like, I can keep travelling with you so long as you get
me back exactly where we left from at exactly the same time.
And he manages the time.
It's just Bristol.
Yeah, yeah.
And it leads to, I think, my favourite line in the episode where
the doctor's actually really thrilled that the TARDIS is half size
and Clara's complaining.
And he says, this is impressive.
This pointing at Clara.
He's annoying.
And yeah, it's one of those moments where that is a line that
could be delivered in a really cruel way, but actually it's really
fun because Clara is being annoying because she doesn't care about
the adventure we're about to have.
She just wants us to go sit on a park bench with Danny Pink and
have like a Tesco sandwich.
You see, I actually am always in favour of the doctor making fun
of Clara, partly because Clara is very self-confident and it's fun
seeing her taken down a peg or two, but also because she's not
offended by it because he's just a stupid old man.
And so no one's feelings are hurt, particularly.
And so all of that is really funny.
Like she never reacts with dismay at the doctor making remarks
about how wide her face is or, you know, that sort of thing.
And I'm totally there for it.
I think actually, and we've said this already this season that
where Capaldi's doctor doesn't really work is when he's being
cruel to other people who don't really deserve it.
That's actually not much fun to watch.
Well, on that point, I think he needed.
I was thinking about it because you've got Fenton in this
episode.
And I think what he needed earlier in the season was a few
unambiguously more evil and rotten people to play off against his
kind of gruffer, am I a good man, abrasive quality into focus.
I think here we finally see them get it right.
We finally see the performance and the character actually working
together.
Yeah, I mean, that's the other thing too, isn't it?
Because the other real moffety thing that's happening here is this
examination of the doctor's character.
And I think it's perhaps the most important part of the episode.
So we're in a situation where the doctor is disabled in some way
and he's only able to do sort of comedy nonsense on the fringes of
the story.
Sort of being the Greek chorus.
It's an Arabic.
Yeah, yeah.
But also just the sort of ridiculous stuff with him sort of
sticking his hand out of the Tartis and sort of walking it along
the railway tracks and stuff.
Like he's doing all sorts of nonsense at this point.
And so Clara has to step up and be the doctor.
And it works within the context of the series because she has
started lying to Danny at this point, and he got her to promise
that she wouldn't do that.
And so she's lying to the doctor as you said, Brendan, and lying
to Danny at the moment.
So at the end of last week, she told the doctor that Danny was
fine with it and she didn't tell Danny that this was actually now
no longer her last trip.
And I think that this examination of the role of the doctor works
really well, like really, really well, because it doesn't just
work for the Capoldi doctor.
It works for the doctor generally because the position that Clara
is placed in is a group of people that are being attacked by
monsters and picked off one by one.
And what does she have to say to them to be the doctor to get them
out of it?
This is the best part of the story for me, I think, and why I
think it's probably the best in series 8.
The absence of the doctor, which we've seen another doctor light
episode.
But here it sort of works in another way, in a way, similar to
perhaps to human nature family of blood, where the absence of the
doctor actually reveals what the doctor's impact is.
And here it's not a good one.
And this is the story of series 8 for me.
We have a Doctor Who intentionally in terms of the production team
is more abrasive and has been given that line, am I a good man?
And that, to me, is really dramatically feasible and valid and
interesting and it's a great direction to take the show in.
And I think it sort of plays out here in the way that it brings
the doctor back.
And what I mean by that is it's almost like a magic trick.
I might get into this a bit later on, but the way that this works
for me is that it sets up, through the absence of the doctor, a
real examination of what is his impact on Clara, who is becoming
increasingly dangerous in her actions and attitudes and self
endangering in terms of what happens in series 9.
And the doctor sees this from a position of almost impotence.
He can only watch on.
And he realises goodness has nothing to do with it.
And at that moment, I think we start to see the Capaldi doctor
come back to be the doctor, our doctor, and he's realised.
Actually, my actions, in terms of how they're being mimicked here
almost by Clara, have been not the actions of a good man, and he
starts to change from this point.
And that's to me like the great thing about Flatline.
We get our doctor back.
That's so wonderful.
It sort of culminates in that scene in dark water where Clara is
behaving in a very what she would classify as assertive doctor way
when she's disposing of the keys to force him to do something and
the doctor is just endlessly kind with her after that.
And so it's actually it brings in full circle.
It's really interesting as well because one of the things that
Clara does to become the doctor in this episode is that she lies.
Rule number one is the doctor lies.
Rule number 2 is moffat lies.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I always forgot to lies.
And they keep coming back to that in this episode where she says
I'm the doctor and the doctor says to her, oh, lies.
They just keep referring to it.
And it builds on the end of last week.
And, you know, also the end of Kill the Moon.
In Kill the Moon, the doctor doesn't tell Clara the full truth
which leads to the rupture in their relationship.
At the end of Mummy on the Orange Express.
He gives her the unvarnished truth and says that he had to make a
terrible choice and he didn't know if it would work.
And that's his responsibility is to make that kind of choice.
So other people don't have to.
And watching these episodes back to back again, I kind of went, oh
when he's saying goodness has nothing to do with it.
He's like, I'm not doing this to be good.
You know, this is not good.
This is not good.
This is just necessary and you're enjoying this and to me, that's
his problem with what she did today.
She's like, tell me I was good.
Tell me I was good.
And he's like, people died.
You know?
Yeah, it's great that we save the planet, but it's not something
to be happy about your performance review.
Yeah.
But I mean, she asked him last week, do you love it?
You know, do you love being the person who makes that decision?
And there is a way in which, of course, he does.
And I don't think this is particularly a critique of the 12th
doctor because it's what David Tennant's doing in voyage of the
damned or what Tom is doing in horror of fang rock.
You in a situation.
Yeah, yeah, you're in a situation where there's a group of people
being picked off one by one by the monster.
What do you do?
You tell them that there's hope?
Why?
Well, not because there's hope because they're likely to run
faster if they think they're home, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, you make sure that you're the leader.
You have to do something now to stand up to the biggest person
there.
Fenton, is that his name?
Horrible Fenton in this case. so that you're the one who's
listened to and you're the one who's believed.
And these are things that the doctor does.
And now we're being invited to regard them as moral problems.
And I think that's really interesting.
Oh, completely.
And this is also why I think Moffat sort of goes back to a world
that he's drunk from from before, which is actually in Moffat's
1st series of Sherlock, and he has Lestrade, say that line about
Sherlock, something along the lines of, he's a great man, and one
day, if we're really, really lucky, he might be a good one.
That's that sort of moral dilemma that Moffatt likes to really
explore through his characters, which works so well here, I think
in Flatline.
Well, I think it's the thing that Moffat frequently does is he
takes something that we're used to in the show and then puts it
under the microscope. like invites us to look at it in a
completely new way.
So, I mean, in a way, like lying is bad, blah, blah, blah, you
know, wow, that sounded terrible.
So, you know, lying is bad or whatever.
But I mean, lying to those people so that they're more likely to
survive seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
I think it's something that the doctor does a lot.
And there's that sort of argument around the utilitarian sort of
principle, which, again, comes to the fore here, is this the right
thing to do in terms of the end result, the end justifying the
means, and it does in that regard.
But through that, that's where the questioning of the characters
goodness comes from.
Because the doctor then becomes a liar, like a habitual liar.
And even though it might be justified on sort of consequentialist
ground, as far as what sort of person he is, is he a good person?
Perhaps that means after seasons and seasons of behaving like this
that he isn't such a good person.
Well, that's why we've always had that Terence Dix via Paul
Cornell maxim of the doctor makes the villains fall into their own
traps, as if that kind of absolves him. blame.
But here, that is what Clara does.
She channels the doctor.
She thinks outside the box, you might say.
And she makes the villain fall into its own trap.
Yeah.
I mean, it's it's been a thing that we've been examining since
deep breath, isn't it?
where it's always a doctor's role to make sure that the villain is
sort of soundly dead by the end of it.
And we're not invited to see it in deep breath and we're only
invited to kind of infer what happened.
And then last week we get this very similar thing where the doctor
says, oh, I saved everyone and you were asleep and I didn't want
to wake you and we don't get to see any of that either.
So here I think, as you, you hinted at Stephen, I think you get to
see the doctor evaluating his own kind of normal techniques for
dealing with something like this and having the doctor and Clara
just openly talk about what that role means is really, really
properly interesting.
And something that the show hasn't done yet, even though it's
spent all of this year so far, looking at the doctor's character
and evaluating it in some way.
I mean, other people have been the doctor before, haven't they?
Maybe just Romana in Horns of Nimon because Tom is too busy being
a massive brat. in that story to do any of his actual job.
I mean, missy and world and often time.
Yeah, well that's coming as well.
And again, it is that thing where the doctor becomes a kind of
role rather than a particular person.
It's a way of behaving.
And there the doctor is also evaluating Missy's performance.
Yes, as the doctor.
She's really good.
She's much better than him.
And also, if we go back to something we compared this episode too
earlier, in fear her, when the doctor disappears, Rose has to
become more like the doctor.
And something I've always found interesting in that is Rose's 1st
response is very rose like she gets angry with Chloe and, you know
there's sort of this petulance and the doctor's not here, da, da
da, da.
But then she realises no one else is going to do this and she uses
what the doctors told her to reason it out.
And from the moment she grabs the pickaxe, she's the doctor for
the rest of the episode.
And then, again, in doomsday, where she's left alone in the TARDIS
she grabs the psychic paper to try and infiltrate torchwood.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it doesn't work the same way that Clara's psychic paper
doesn't work on Fenton because he has no imagination. lack of
imagination.
And you know, Jamie Matheson had fun with the psychic paper last
week as a mystery show.
That's your worst.
Okay, right.
Yeah, I mean, we've had the doctor as a mask, haven't we before?
And that was sort of David Tennant.
It was definitely, you know, the doctor is an acting performance.
But here you have the doctor as a kind of, it is a job or a role
or a particular strategy for dealing with people.
Or a promise.
Yeah, maybe.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And with the whole, the Dr. Lies thing, something I find so
interesting about that is you compare it to flesh and stone, where
men, River says to Amy, no, you're fine, no, and the doctor's like
she's dying and River has a go.
Oh, well, if we tell her she's not, then she'll get better.
And it's like, so, you know, the doctor's criticised when he tells
the truth and he's criticised for lying as well.
And in both situations, he's telling the truth to Amy and lying to
other people for the same reason to make them run faster and hope
more.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's interesting that both actions are right and wrong in
different ways.
And I think it's the exploration of that that just makes for good
drama.
There is no definitive answer.
Okay.
It's not like there is going to be a statement or a conclusion at
the end of which you will be able to say the doctor is X and only
X. So that sort of continual interpretation through.
You know, really tricky moral dilemmas and, you know, wonderful
stories and dramatic moments is what makes Doctor Who so
wonderful.
Don't you think this episode has a stab at it, though, when the
doctor finally comes fully grown out of the TARDIS and has his
incredibly doctor-ish moment?
Is it not kind of restatement of doctor-ish principles?
No, this is absolutely what I agree with.
And the issue for me is that it comes at the, is it the ninth
episode of the seals and there's 13.
We're about 2 thirds of the way, 3 quarters of the way through, and
it's only at this point that we start to see that doctor come back
again, which I think is probably a bit of a mistake in terms of
the overall series, and perhaps what that does in terms of the
doctor in the public imagination, not amongst the nerds, but
really the sort of watching public, and I wonder if there's a bit
of damage, particularly around the ratings, that doctor who
doesn't really sort of recover from after that.
It's the Colin Baker problem.
You know, I mean, I don't really believe that they had a mid-80s
plan to make him nicer overhauls. that's what they marked it at.
I think here there was that plan, but I think, and it's actually
really great that you have the buildup to this payoff, but it does
come a bit too late.
I think you're right.
I think I think it does come a bit late.
The issue with it, though, is that it's just so good as a way of
bringing that character back and bringing that moral centre of the
character back.
Would you indulge me for a little bit as a story?
Perhaps try and persuade all of you that this is actually a story
built around a magic trick.
Okay.
And the magic trick that I'm thinking of sort of borrows from the
prestige, which talks about a 3 act structure to a magic trick
which mirrors very nicely and closely the 3 act structure of a
Doctor Who story, but also I think the series as a whole, series 8
as a whole.
And the 1st part of a magic trick is the pledge, and I'm going to
try invoke my best Michael Kane here, where the voiceover on that
on that wonderful film, if you haven't seen it do so.
He says, the pledge is the 1st part.
So the magician shows you something ordinary.
Perhaps he asks you to inspect it and to see if it is indeed real
unaltered, normal.
But of course it isn't.
And it's almost as though this is the way that any Doctor Who
story starts.
There's an introduction to something wonderful, spooky happening
with the beauty-weedy bald man, and we have what Todd might call a
TARDIS bitch scene, but actually good.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
At the beginning of that sort of promises japes and adventures.
And it's just that sort of, I guess, he's an ordinary Doctor Who
story, except it isn't, and the 2nd part of a magic trick is the
twist or the turn.
And again, to invoke Michael Kane.
The magician takes the ordinary and makes it do something
extraordinary.
Now you're looking for the secret, but you won't find it.
You're not really looking.
You don't want to know, you want to be fooled.
And I think this sort of plays out in the way that, you know, we
obviously have a shrinking TARTIS, which is a wonderful visual
trick and gag.
But in removing the doctor from the narrative, we talked about
this before, Clara comes to the fore, she becomes the doctor, if
you like, and in a wonderful way, foreshadows, Missy being, can I
reveal this?
Is it is it a spoiler territory?
She's revealed to be the master at the end of this series.
And then obviously you sort of get the foreshadowing, I guess, of
Pants Jody's doctor as well in the years to come.
But it also means, as I say before, the doctor is removed from
that narrative, and he's able to watch on like a Greek chorus and
comment and observe and understand, uh, that what he's actually
being, um, I guess role modelling to Clara actually isn't the
actions of a good man.
And this is, I guess, where the 3rd act of a magic trick comes in
which is the prestige.
And again, Michael Kane.
But you won't clap yet because making something disappear isn't
enough.
You have to bring it back.
That's why every magic creek has a 3rd act, the hardest part.
And I think this is what you were talking about before.
Peter, when you said about the doctor being brought back.
And I think this is the moment, I think in series 8 and why this
story is, I think the pinnacle of that series for me.
This is where we get the man in the red line magician's code to
bring us into the 3rd and last act of the series, which is the
return of the doctor, the return of our doctor.
The doctor's not just the magician.
The doctor is the magic.
It's just wonderful, the way that the whole story just acts as a
keystone to the entire series.
I think it's absolutely beautiful and wonderful.
That's really great.
Yeah, and also, at the end, the tartist becomes a magic box. comes
that little magic box when it's in siege mode.
Yeah, it does.
Also, I liked your Michael Kane.
My Michael Kane is from that Jack the Ripper film where he goes
somebody must know something.
My Michael Kane is from the swarm and it's, um, the bees, general
they're getting more intelligent.
He'll do anything, won't he?
Man whose agent doesn't know the meaning of the word no.
Him and Malcolm McDowell.
He was asked about that once and his response was, I've never had
a mortgage.
Brilliant.
So I've said several times this season that one of the weird
things about it is that all of these episodes really seem to be
interrogating the doctor's heroism, and they all seem to be doing
it in vastly different ways.
And I've speculated that either that's a stroke of genius or a
horrific mess.
And I think, actually, probably, it's a horrific mess.
And I think that this is the 1st one that successfully does it
because it invites the doctor to stand outside of himself and see
himself in action and then he's able to evaluate what that looks
like.
And it's his refusal to tell Clara that she did well because
that's actually a moral judgement.
Like, let's go from Michael Kane to Roger Moore.
You know how Roger prevents that lovely young lady in for your
eyes only from killing.
He doesn't want her to take revenge for her parents' death because
he knows what that will do to her.
And so he'll take responsibility for killing the bad guys in order
to protect her morally.
This is the same thing.
The doctor doesn't want Clara to be proud of having been a good
doctor because being a good doctor is not being a good person.
Yeah, not something to necessarily make you proud.
Exactly.
And so he's reluctant to do it.
Not because he's a bit of a bastard or whatever, which is what
Clara says, you know, he can't bring himself to give her a
compliment or something.
It is genuinely because he doesn't think it's a compliment.
He thinks it's a pretty harsh critique.
Yeah.
And I think that him becoming more the doctor we know really
starts with Rigsy because at 1st he's really dismissive of Rigsy
winning off the screen.
But as soon as Rigsy comes to the same conclusion the doctor comes
to about it, being a locked room mystery and they're still in the
room, the doctor's like, no, don't let him leave.
And actually, no, she's leaving.
Of course, knowledge is leaving.
Yeah.
When you say that kind of thing.
That's what scares him off.
And that beautiful moment at the end where he's just full of
praise for Rigsy. like, you know, your last artwork saved the
world.
I can't wait to see what you do next.
And there's no backhanded compliment or anything like that.
It is humble genuine praise.
And it totally feels within the character we already know.
I mean, something similar happens, doesn't it, in Into the Dalek
where he's super dismissive of Ross being killed.
You know, he's the top layer if anyone wants to say a few words.
And then Gretchen gets killed afterwards and he's abashed and kind
of humbled and properly recognises her sacrifice and acknowledges
it, you know, in similar words, I think.
So the doctor has been learning, I think, throughout the season
but I do think that this is the most direct and effective lesson
so far.
Rigsey and, in particular, Jovan Wade's performance is great
untapped companion material.
Yeah.
He's a real Linda with a Y.
He's charming as hell, isn't he?
Great.
I mean I hope he'll come back.
Because you do have Clara as the doctor.
She needs companion.
Yeah, yeah. able to fill that role.
Yep.
And their chemistry.
Clara and Rigsey's chemistry is really, it's really sweet.
For me, it evokes like the best of the Doctor and Rose
relationship.
Like there is an immediate affection and rapport between them and
that whole business on the train with the airband.
Which was there from the very 1st draft.
Like Rigsy's got to make this huge gesture and Clara's like, I've
got a hairband.
You know?
I'll just take my hairband and I will think of you every time I
look at it.
I mean, I have to say, I don't think Clara's been this funny
before.
And again, one of the attributes of being the doctor is that you
have to be funny.
Yeah, yeah.
So being such a funny script.
It makes her funny and so she can be the doctor and it makes
Capaldi's doctor because he is commenting on the action funnier
than he's been so far.
So he is now assuming the mantle of the doctor more successfully
as well.
Yeah, although I have to say that all of the horrible things about
Capaldi's character that everyone complains about, I think, they're
absolutely hilarious.
And, you know, I think that that's one of the reasons why Moffatt
made him like that isn't just because he wanted a morally
problematic doctor because he had that in Matt Smith.
He wanted a doctor whose normal affect was kind of unpleasant and
hilarious.
And he wanted the doctor as himself with his companion.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Eventually, eventually our 2nd doctor is just ourselves.
I think you're going to have to do a mega cup this season of every
time someone says that the 12th doctor is just Stephen Moffat's
self-insert character.
Fingers come up in every episode.
Well, I mean, I've always said this, though, both of Russell
Stockters are Russell, you know, everything is superficially
fantastic and brilliant, and then there's a real kind of dark
cynicism at the heart of it.
Moffatt's doctors are both bastards and they're the smartest
person in the room, but they're kind of obnoxious and they're
liars and all sorts of things. to strongly.
Yeah, yeah.
So I think absolutely.
He's a self-insert.
But even more so, I think, now that he's Peter Capaldi and
Scottish and that age.
Yeah, yeah.
And, yeah, in terms of chibnol.
Well, he just never touches up his roots.
It's interesting that you talk about chipmol, because it strikes
me that this is the kind of storytelling that the chipmolera
should have gone for.
Obviously, the aesthetic is right.
I mean, Sheffield and Bristol are. interchangeable at the best of
times, but you can absolutely see Yaz in the Clara role.
It's kind of down to earth mystery.
Like, you know, a bit of a skew on modern life in the UK playing
out.
And it's a mystery to me why we never really went there.
I mean, the closest arachnids, the arachnids in the UK is the
closest thing I can think of.
And when compared to this, it's a very straightforward, it's not a
mystery.
It's just straightforward story.
I think the problem is that I don't think that Chibnal is
comfortable problematizing a female doctor.
And think about the reaction that everyone has to the roof doctor
who is a bit brusque and imperious, and everyone really liked
her.
And she was playing on easy mode because she only turned up a few
times and just sort of had to come and sort of be fabulous.
Yeah, yeah.
But I don't think he wants to make the doctor a problem.
And that's, I think that's the reason that one of my favourite
lines in her era is when she says, actually, it turns out it's not
that flat a team structure after all.
I think that's good.
That's her showing a bit of steel showing her teeth, but generally
he's reluctant to do that.
And I think that there is a group of fans, there's a big sector of
fandom that doesn't want the doctor to be central to the show, that
doesn't want the show to be about the character of Doctor Who as
much as it is about the adventures that the doctor goes on.
And I think that Chibnal is one of those.
And I think that that's the big reason for me, why I think his era
doesn't work, is that he's reluctant to send to the doctor, and I
think that it turns out that centring the doctor and interrogating
the doctor is really interesting and making the doctor a character
who is sometimes a problem in a way that he's always been, right?
Right from Trouton, right from Hartnall.
I know toly child.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. that the doctor is potentially a problem.
And I think he's been reluctant to do that to the 1st female
doctor.
Or possibly it's just how Chibmill doesn't want because, I mean
Peter Davison's doctor, who I think is Chibnall's doctor in a sort
of real way, isn't examined in the same way either.
I don't know.
I think it's a confidence thing.
I think Moffat is at an all-time high in his confidence when he's
making the show now, and you have to be confident to kind of
interrogate the show and the doctor like this.
Yeah.
And you have to be confident to embrace the essential silliness.
Of the concept in this, of the tiny TARDIS and the doctor moving
around like thing in the Adams family.
Um, And I don't think Chipmill had that confidence.
I also think you have to be confident to have a fairly
unreconstructed, nasty character like Fenton and let them walk
away at the end.
If it was a Chipnell story.
You'd have big arrows pointing to him saying, this is a racist or
whatever, like Rose Park's pal in Rosa.
Prasco.
I'd forgotten his name.
Yeah, and so I think it's a confidence thing.
Moffat has the confidence and Jane Matson as a newcomer has the
confidence to go with that.
Something about that, though.
And I absolutely agree that this season really plays that element
very well.
But looking at the Whitaker era, the times where the character is
deliberately, morally ambiguous.
Other times the character was massively criticised by the fan
base.
And I'm thinking the end of it takes you away.
There's a very vocal section of the fan base who don't see Hannah
and Eric remaining a family as a happy ending.
They think Eric is irredeemable.
There's SpyFall, which Chipnall and Whittaker have been
interviewed about. is like, yes, what the doctor does to the
master is a problem, you know, but it's defeating the master and
in that situation, the end's justify the means.
The end of can you hear me?
The end of, can you hear me?
With the doctor not knowing how to emotionally respond to Graham
if that was Capaldi, it would be on YouTube, doctor highlight
reels.
But because it's Jody, it's not.
But I do, I do think that Tribnol shies away from characters
criticising the doctor, which is a, which is a problem, because
Clara criticises the doctor several times this series, but now is
kind of going, oh, now that I've walked a mile in your shoes.
Actually this is addictive.
Yeah, yeah.
That's a really good line too, isn't it?
You don't discover that something's addictive until you try and
give it arm.
And the doctors never try to give it up so he can't say that he's
addicted to it, but Clara is clearly addicted to it and has tried
to give it up last week. and was completely unable to do it.
Doctor Who reacts to what's come before.
Yeah.
And I can't help but feel with Chibnall that it was a reaction
against the centring of the doctor and the problematizing of him
and the examination of him, which I think probably goes all the
way back to Rose, I think.
I think it's really interesting that we talk about Chipnol
reacting against what went before because of course Moffat always
acts against what went before.
And so it's only logical that after all the hype of the 50th
anniversary and all the focus on Doctor Who and what a beloved
institution and character it was, his next logical step was to go
okay, let's interrogate that character a little bit.
Let's see what makes him take and whether he really is a good man
and let's, in the early part of the season, maybe say he's not a
good man.
And like I say, with all the problems of it takes too long to get
there and everything.
It was a very interesting tack for next time.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I just think if it takes 2 or 3 episodes to do that, then great
and then move on, but I feel that when you're sort of dragging it
out to those lengths and really alienating people, particularly
people who, as, you know, non-hardcore fans are watching it for
you know, Spikyhead, David Tennant and Floppyhead, Matt Smith and
how wonderful and cute and lovely they are, although we've seen in
their performances, that's probably not the case, then you will
risk losing them.
And I think that's ultimately what we got towards the end of the
season with the ratings.
I actually have to say too, that this examination of the character
although it lands very, very well in this episode.
I think ultimately it doesn't end up going anywhere.
There's a lot of things going.
We've talked about some of them already.
We'll talk about some of them in our last few episodes on this
season, but I just can't see that what happens in death in heaven
really properly solves or rounds this out in any kind of way.
And we're still making the same criticisms of the doctor in that
final episode.
I'm really not sure that it properly lands.
And then there is this very, very strange ending and will
obviously get there, but there's too much unfinished business and
there's no real.
There's no real conclusion.
There's been a whole heap of examination, a whole heap of question
raising, but I'm not sure that it really goes anywhere.
I mean, the central problem is that the doctor is a hero.
Yeah, we can talk around it as much as we want, but at the end of
the day, that's what he's going to be.
Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
And that, again, that comes through in the way that you have that
wonderful resolution.
You know, you're the monsters.
That is the role that you seem determined to play.
So I must play mine, the man who stops the monsters.
He's always going to be that.
Well, then, listen, that's all we have time for this week.
We'll be back next week to get lost in the woods in the Forest of
the Night.
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 podcasts, Bondfinger
Jody Intertera, Maximum Power, and Untitled Star Trek project.
Until next time, remember what Hyacinth UK always says?
Don't touch the walls.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
See you.
That was Flight Through Entirety, starring Stephen B, Nathan
Bottomley, Brendan Jones, and Peter Griffiths.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lann.
This episode, the Prestige, was recorded on the 30th of April 2023
and released on the 11th of June.
If your immediate response to Flatline on broadcast was to claim
that the plot was a bit thin or that it left you feeling flat
please report immediately to your designated processing centre
think that's it.
What do you think?
Great.
Yeah, fantastic.
Okay, cool.
Now, how long do we have?
An hour.
I think an hour before the next one.
Okay.
That's enough time for me to do a Wii, isn't it?
Well I don't know.
How much?
Enough time for you to do two. 2 or three.
I can go crazy.
I wouldn't have to nip out, which is a thing that's featured on
the...
So that's the complete history volume.
And I will just read you something that was cut from the script at
a very early stage when there were a lot more graffiti artists
because it was going to be revealed that one of the graffiti
artists came back to this spot every year to tell the homeless
living around here to look out for the boneless, basically.
And so the story was going to end with this dialogue. hold on.
But we're the sliding boneless hiding on your wall.
They'll crack your back upon the rack, make you 9 feet tall.
But wear the sneaky boneless slide under any door.
They'll make you thin, they'll take your skin, you won't be you no
more.
No, you won't be you no more.
And then there was going to be the sound of the boneless behind
them.
Not wild.
They made me thin, I'll take this.
Yeah, that's right All right, I'm going to stop recording.
Likewise, I'm gonna I'm gonna go have some fud.
I might have some food as well.