Hello, dear listener and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast that's thinking of closing down its
Twitter account completely and moving over to Tree Facebook.
I'm Nathan.
I'm James.
I'm Matthew.
I'm Kevin.
Well, the moon's an egg.
Time can be rewritten, and for just one Saturday night in 2014, an
unexpected forest engulfed the entire Earth.
Let's see how the Coal Hill year 8 gifted and talented group cope
with this as we discuss in the forest of the night.
So, Brendan's not here this week because James, he refused to do
this episode, is that right?
I think in his words, it was anything, but... for the night.
And I think that Peter as well was saying some stuff this week
about how he thinks it's a premise that the show can't possibly
pull off that it's a little bit too ambitious as an idea.
And so it never really, really looks real.
But I have to say that I'm not convinced about that.
Oh my god, a Doctor Who episode that doesn't look real.
Yeah, yeah, well, there's that.
Yes.
Is it even trying to look real as the thing?
It's out of the gate saying, we are doing Doctor Who is a fairy
tale and playing with the communal myth idea.
So just set it in a forest, not a couple bits of set dressing.
That's all you actually need to convey that idea.
It's that really funny line from Capoldi where he says it's like
the new forest only newer because, you know, Doctor Who, you know
frequently went to the new forest to record forest scenes back in
the day, as did Blake 7.
So this is the new forest only newer.
I have to say that close up, it looks like a forest with a few
things in it, and I think that the long shot, the computer
generated long shot, is actually pretty good and does sell it.
Yeah.
I think it sells the premise.
I would say the shots of the globe where the ocean is also green
were a little confusing.
The shots of London skyline throughout the episode, I think, are
gorgeous.
Like, there's those beautiful, like, amber, gold coloured shots at
the end of sunset over London as the trees sort of evaporate away
where it's just, like, I know people are always posting special
effects shots at the Chip Nolan saying, this is the best doctor
who ever looked.
And I'm just looking at these effects shots saying, what's the
difference?
Yeah.
I think that for some people there is a kind of level of realism
that Doctor Who kind of needs to keep to, and it's, I think, the
baseline level of realism that's kind of set during the classic
series, so you can have faster than light travel.
You can have people in rubber outfits being monsters and stuff.
But when the moon's an egg or when a forest grows up overnight
that's a little bit too far for them.
And I don't know what those people think they're watching.
I clearly haven't seen any of the Sylvester McCoy era.
Yeah, yeah.
Or a mind robber.
If your argument.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
If your argument is this Doctor Who story. stretches the bounds of
my credulity.
Yes.
What?
What have you been watching the last few decades?
Yeah, I think it's telling a particular kind of story and this is
the Moffat approach to Doctor Who is a self-conscious thing about
storytelling.
And as you said, Kevin, the forest is where fairy tales are set
and the forest is, as the episode itself says, a source of primal
fear.
Which is why it's got the wolves and the tiger.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, I think it has the tiger because of Blake.
Right.
Because we needed one burning bright in the forest of the night.
It's where the title comes from.
Tommy reads that poem out, the tiger from songs of innocence and
experience.
I think it's from Songs of Innocence, in Planet of the Spiders.
So the tiger is definitely there for that reason, but the wolf is
there because the wolf is what's in the forest.
And I just noticed this this meve's wearing a red hood.
Red hood, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
I'd actually thought when it opened, I assumed it was a take on
Little Red Riding Hood.
Ah, yes, yeah.
And the doctor does call Clara little Red Riding Hood, I think, at
some point during the episode.
It's got that very short story opening, doesn't it?
where the little girl turns up in the TARDIS like comes knocking
on the door asking for the doctor.
And Frank Cultural Boyce wrote like lots of casualty and stuff
like that, but he is also a children's book rider.
He was also suggested to Stephen by RTD.
Oh, wow, okay. as a writer because they'd worked together back in
the 90s on the soap opera together.
And he writes smile.
Yes.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, I thought that that opening was really very kind of
literary because it goes out of its way to establish Maeve's
character.
She's someone who's confused, who doesn't understand quite what's
going on.
There's something special that sets her apart from other people
and she has a sort of inability to understand things.
She suggests to the doctor that he goes and asks someone else who
understands the TARDIS about why the TARDIS isn't working.
And so that seemed to me to be a very kind of literary way of
establishing the character.
And it feels like a very literary way of establishing the whole
show.
Like that scene in in of itself, you could show to anybody to be
like, this is what Doctor Who is about.
It's got, like, for example, one of the all-time best explanations
of how the TARDIS is bigger on the inside saying, like, you know, a
bottle of soda is this big and has this much sugar in it.
I totally forgot so many lines in this episode and that is one of
the best.
It's so good.
They actually say coke and they don't then have to say other, you
know, unhealthy or also available. right.
Yeah, he didn't say bubble shark.
Oh if only.
It's really good, isn't it?
It's really great And something that we haven't seen before.
And this is a one off director.
She's someone who doesn't come back.
Cherie Folksson.
Yeah, Cherie Folkeson.
She doesn't come back.
But she shoots that sequence as they're walking along the kind of
it's not quite a cloister, but that sort of mezzanine in the
TARDIS console room, which I think is really dynamic and
interesting.
Yeah.
It's a very good walk and talk.
Yeah.
There's a lot of very interesting camera work here.
Like, I noticed like a lot of like odd camera angles or even, I
think, a bit of fish eye to try and emphasise the difference in
size between the adult characters and the children. get really
weird camera angles like Capaldi pointing out a child by having
his hand in the foreground, just really interest in playing with
the scale of contrast between characters.
I loved that.
Well, when the camera comes into the TARDIS, it comes in at
Maeve's head high, too, I seem to notice.
So it is absolutely selling what that space looks like to a little
child.
And I think Doctor Who has had a kind of fractious relationship
with its child actors over the years.
I think both Maeve and Ruby, but Maeve particularly.
I think they're both great.
I think all of the children in this are very good.
Well, it shouldn't be a surprise.
Ruby's terribly good.
She's Peppa Pig.
Yeah.
Oh, is she?
She played Peppa Pig for 10 years.
Oh my goodness.
I mean, they're all adults now, aren't they?
Terrifyingly.
Yeah, wow, I didn't know that.
She's so good.
And she's properly funny.
I've remarked before that this season gets teaching, right?
You know, Moffatt was a teacher.
The 1st couple of things he wrote, press gang and chalk a set in
schools.
And so this sort of stuff like Clara having a big pile of marking
on board the TARDIS.
There's a joke that we say that you shouldn't really start marking
the work unless it's travelled to and from home, you know, a
couple of times, like to and from school, like wait until it's
been in your car for sort of 30 miles and then get round to
marking it.
Clearly, Clara's rule is, you know, 300 light years and a couple
of centuries and then she'll get round the market.
Which is difficult when you live so close to it.
That's right.
Did you drive backwards?
I have to drive around the block, a fair amount.
Yeah.
For about 3 hours in the morning, to get the miles up.
Yeah.
And that stuff like the stuff where the kids actually rings really
true.
I think it's it's pretty great.
I thought the children were quite well characterised.
Usually children are very poorly characterised in television.
They don't seem real, like they seem either too adult or too
naive.
And I'm not sure that they're year 8, but they certainly pitched
as, you know, in that in-between space.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's right.
I think because there's a bunch of children.
He does go out of his way to give them different characteristics, I
think.
So they work.
And I just think that little girl who does Maeve.
I think she's probably too young for you, a year age, and I think
she's really good.
I love the, um, one of the characters who's standing there saying
um, this is upsetting me a lot and I'm forgetting my anger
management.
Well, that's the kid who loses it and storms out of the classroom
when he's told to say please to get the other kid's dictionary.
I'm forgetting my anger management.
Bradley.
I love that at the end.
That's the kid Danny shouts at saying, please, is more interesting
and impressive than anything the doctor can show them.
Also, there's references, not just to literature, but to the
beginning of the show, It's set in Coal Hill School.
They're talking about students and their strange...
Yeah, yeah.
There are flashbacks to those students.
Yes.
It's a very conscious reference to an earthly child.
And they're not idiots.
Yeah, the children aren't stupid and we discover that it's just
called gifted and talented because Clara thinks it makes them feel
better about themselves or something, but they aren't stupid.
And in fact, Ruby's really smart.
Ruby comes up with quite a lot of stuff.
She's the one who notices the ring in the tree in the museum.
Museum, yeah.
Yeah, and then notices that there's no ring in the trees that have
grown up overnight.
I think that's really great.
I also liked the whole gift and talented angle.
I'm not sure if it's explicitly stated, but it kind of gives the
impression that all of these kids are the sort of oddball misfits
like as an ADHD child, it got thrown into a lot of like child
support groups like that where they would do like their own little
small scale meetings to try and help us deal with all our
personality issues and stuff like that.
And I like that those are the kids they chose to star in a Doctor
Who episode because like, yeah, those are probably the ones that
are going to be, you know, the kids that are gravitating to Doctor
Who in the 1st place, the nerdy misfits who just want to escape
his TV.
Yeah exactly.
It is it is really good.
I mean, the there are some people who don't like seeing children
in Doctor Who, but for me, the fact that there are children in
Doctor Who now is the result of the fact that the show is engaging
at a deeper level with the real world.
So it's not a show that's set in kind of space corridors or set in
scientific research bases and things anymore, it's very frequently
set in very ordinary places and that's where children are.
I totally agree with you on that point.
It's very much a pert we kind of concept of the show. that, you
know, weird things happening in the real world, in the real
world.
And Frank Cultural Voice was a Perti fan.
Right.
And and it came at it as, well, this is the version of the show I
want to make.
And and then sort of expanded the, you know, what would happen if
you know, this forest popped up overnight?
Like it's the whole yeti on the loo and tooting back kind of
conception of the show.
Like it juxtaposes to odd things, doesn't it?
Like it brings the world where fairy tales are set, crashes into
contemporary London.
And I think the thing, it's sort of an extension of what I think
works about series 8 in general, we were talking about Kill the
Moon earlier and talking about how those ridiculous premises throw
a lot of fans off, but what I think really works for series 8.
It's about crashing these ridiculous premises and to utterly
serious emotional drama about real people.
Because that is more important than just being set in our world
being set in a world of people whose relationships actually matter
and feel real.
And so I think the previous episodes that have dealt with Clara
and Danny have done it with varying degrees of success, listen, I
think, which is obviously set during their 1st date, does a really
good job of making that relationship important and getting us to
see how it happens.
But this here, which is episode 10, is kind of at the point of the
series where maybe Boomtown is or something like that earlier on.
And I think it's the only real proper chance that we get to spend
time watching those 2 in a relationship.
And I think it's absolutely necessary going into dark water next
week that we get to see that happening.
And the relationship is really great.
You know, Clara has been lying to Danny all along.
And previous episodes of associated Clara lying with her
increasing role as the doctor, the doctor lies.
And so Clara lies in Flatline, for instance, in order to be the
doctor, but she's been lying since mummy.
And there's some call out to the doctor lying, I think, as well
that Clara makes in this episode.
But Danny doesn't rub her nose in it or anything like that.
Like Danny doesn't force her to apologise or get angry with her.
He just says, go home, have a think, and then just tell me the
truth.
I don't mind what the truth is, but just tell it to me.
I think it's great.
I personally really love the way Danny's drama with Clara is drawn
out because I think there's common misconception among fandom that
Danny is controlling or abusive.
I see a lot of people tweeting things along those lines.
There's even a quite bad big finish where Danny goes on a trip
with a 12th doctor and spends the whole time.
They basically just hate each other the whole time and are
fighting over who gets possession of Clara, which is, I think
awful and terrible and small minded.
Whereas what's so great about the relationship in series 8 in my
opinion, is that Danny disagrees with the doctor, but also
respects Clara enough to make her own choices.
He just worries for emotional health and tries to ask her to
communicate.
I think that's a much more sophisticated conflict and one that
rings a lot more true.
I didn't get that.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, I mean, he kind of says, I don't mind what the truth is
remember?
I don't mind what the truth is.
He does give her instructions.
Like he gives her instructions at the end of the caretaker.
And I think he doesn't come off well in the caretaker at all, but
you know, does anyone?
No, it's pretty terrible.
People tend to hark back to that when they, yeah, they focus on
that scene at the end, the caretaker as being, that's what, that's
why they're saying he's controlling and, and, you know, pushing
her into a situation because that's, that's the bit that they
focus on.
And so here he says, you have to tell me the truth.
And I think that's a perfectly reasonable requirement, if you're
having a relationship, you know, tell the truth about important
things.
And then the very last time the 2 of them interact in last
Christmas, Danny also gives her an instruction.
You know, you have to give me 5 minutes every day but you aren't
allowed to spend more than 5 minutes on it.
You've got to kind of get past this.
And so seeing Danny, you know, and he's taller than her and all of
that sort of thing.
So, you know, I guess that's how people kind of read him as
controlling.
But I thought he was super charming here.
And there's that moment where she finds him incredibly hot.
Remember, it's that sort of she's about to say something about the
way he orders the children around and the way that he deals with
them and she ends up just saying how incredibly hot he is.
Because he's taking care of the children and putting them first.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think that really rings true as to why Clara would fall for a
guy like him in the 1st place because I've been watching series 7
again recently, and I mean, obviously Clara acts like a totally
different character there, but you can kind of see this sort of
charming facade she puts up as the same sort of charm offensive
she might have put up with Danny, where she is this giggly manic
pixie dream girl where she's trying to present herself as this
like perfect heroine.
And obviously she's a real person and so much of series 8 is her
trying to build herself into 2 people. one built in the real world
and one built as still that bubbly space character.
And you can see her trying to build this perfect relationship with
Danny, where she's trying to perform being this ordinary person
because I guess maybe that's just her fetish.
I just think that the best illustration of that is the one
successful bit of the caretaker, which is the pre-credit sequence
which I just think is unbelievably funny and clever, and it is her
rushing from one world to another, from one role to the other, and
kind of not really successfully being able to separate them.
I'm not sure Clara actually exists.
Really?
I have a feeling that Moffat wrote Clara to be the impossible girl
and then he gets to series 8 and goes, okay, what character does
she have?
Yeah, I think so Series 7 really starts off with her looking after
children, right?
That's the very 1st thing that we see is her with Angie and Arcy
and she had intended to travel, but had ended up staying behind to
look after children.
And we do see her interacting with children in a positive way.
We see her in Rings of Ackerton with Mary, for instance, looking
after her.
And so I don't think the school thing is a bad call.
It's not a giant leap, is it?
No.
No, she goes from nanny to kind of English teacher.
I think that's kind of okay.
But it's a funny thing.
You know, high concept companions were a feature of the classic
series, but they tended to be, you know, like a short paragraph, a
3 sentence description of the character, and then we cast Matthew
Waterhouse, and he just becomes like Matthew Waterhouse, you
know?
And I think that that's what they really do hear.
She's the impossible girl.
But the fact is that the whole thing, if it's tied together into a
coherent whole, and plenty of people don't agree that it is, but I
think the whole thing is tied together by Jenna's performance.
Oh, Jenner is a very capable actress.
I also note that she's she is very clearly and very competently
portraying the fact that she desperately wants to get out there.
Yeah.
And as soon as this new space mystery happens, She's like, 0 yeah
this is right up my wheelhouse.
I quite like that they kind of portray Clara as an addict, really.
I mean, that's sort of an arc across series 8, but it's especially
clear here.
Her sneaking off to phone the doctor or something is like sneaking
off to have a quick cigarette or something.
Yeah, yeah.
I do like, though, the bit at the end where they make the decision
like Danny and Clara make a different decision.
Danny goes off with the kids, making sure that they get home.
And he does kind of give her permission, not that she needs it, but
he's okay with her decision to go and watch the space thing.
That was the bit Kevin, where he talks about Bradley saying
pleases, you know, as big a miracle as anything that she's going
to see up in space.
And so we cut to her and the doctor hovering in space watching the
solar flare land.
There's a great line there from Danny, which is, I don't want to
see more things.
I want to see the things that are in front of me more clearly.
Yeah.
It's funny.
We keep mentioning the caretaker in this episode because wasn't
one of Gareth Roberts' real missions with Doctor Who for all his
flaws to try and normalise the perspectives of people who don't
want to go on zany space adventures, but are happy with the lives
they live in here.
I feel like Danny is a better articulated version of that by a
writer with more complex understandings of the world, I might
say.
Yeah, so James Corden's character, for instance, in the lodger, is
someone who can't see the point of Paris, who would never travel
with a doctor, and that's an important sort of character beard.
I just think everyone in the caretaker is just in unpleasant
mode.
And I just think neither the doctor nor Danny come across well
because they're kind of fighting over Clara.
And I think part of the problem there is, it's saying, yes, we
don't need someone to be obsessed with all the space reasons, but
it doesn't really say, why should they be so excited about Earth
beyond Earth is mundane and we live here.
Here and in the forest of the night, it genuinely presents Earth
as a space full of wonder, not just with the kids, but with the
forest itself.
It's saying the earth is a remarkable place.
Yeah, yeah.
Let's talk about the forest.
There's a great line that actually gets whispered, I think, is an
unfortunate directoral choice, but it's when the glowing tree
spirits, shall we call them, say, we are the grass that grows over
mass graves.
After your wars are over, we will still be here.
We are the life that prevails.
We were here before you and we will be here after you.
It's presented as being bigger than the doctor, isn't it?
The forest is older and will outlast the doctor.
As scripted, they are called the here, apparently.
Okay.
The year.
They are here.
Yeah, okay.
Okay.
I think like what it says about the forest, like the Orvalds, you
know, the forest that we have in our imaginations, and it's a
particular European thing, I think, that idea that the forest is
the original environment in Europe, the one that we've cut down in
order to kind of make lives for ourselves.
So we have this sort of strange relationship with the forest and
it's something that we're frightened of.
And that seems like a sort of primal hardwired instinct, the same
way that we seem to be just naturally afraid of the dark.
We're afraid of forests as well, as if that was a sort of
terrifying environment back when we were kind of prey animals or
something.
Well, it was full of wolves, isn't it?
And it is full of wolves.
And brothers grim.
Yes.
And gingerbread houses, all of which get kind of referenced.
And I also like that in the end, where the forest is sort of
explicitly something that comes again and again, and we forget
there's beautiful lines about why we forget, like, if we forgot
the pain, we'd stop having wars and stop having babies.
It's just these incredible lines about human psychology and the
way we deal with these fears, these primal urges that I think
makes this episode far more interesting than pretty much any other
era is generally regarded as worst episodes.
Like, there is so much to unpack here, even if it doesn't work for
people.
I think Doctor Who has a problem with the present day, and it was
a problem that it didn't have in the classic series because it
couldn't afford to do large scale events that everyone in the
world noticed.
So when the aliens landed, they landed somewhere in the home
counties and, you know, presumably a D notice was put out and no
one ever found out about it.
And Doctor Who, when it comes back, decides rightly, straight with
aliens of London, that an alien invasion is going to be a big
public event that we all watch on the news.
We have our very 1st news stories about an alien invasion in
aliens of London, and we have the forest being covered by the
world's news media as well, even though none of our characters are
sitting watching the telly.
We still get to see it.
And then you've got the problem.
Well, then Doctor Who stops being set in our world, because Doctor
Who is now set in a world where lots of public alien invasions
happen and we all know about aliens.
And I don't think Russell ever managed to kind of square the
circle on that one.
And I think that Moffatt's instinct is to just ignore it.
And here, I think the fact that cultural voice hangs a hat on it
and then uses it as a launching point to talk about the way that
we forget, the way that we get past terrible events, the way that
we live through them all.
You remember the bit where the TV, the person on the TV says that
we should all just stay in our homes?
And I couldn't help thinking about the pandemic, you know, that we
all went through this thing, and for most of us, at least now, I
think it's largely in the past.
And I find myself struggling to remember the sort of 105 days or
however long it was that we were locked up at home in 2021.
Longer if you were in Melbourne.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
You know, that we do forget.
We really properly do forget.
And I love the choice of wars and babies as well.
From one extreme to the other.
Well, yeah, but there's also like a male pastime that
overwhelmingly in history wars have been fought by men, and then
babies, you know, suddenly we're women now as well, and women
forget what childbirth's like because they would never, ever do it
again. otherwise.
It is really terrific staff, I think.
The writer gives a summation of that in his theme, I would think
of the episode, which is fear a little bit less trust a little bit
more.
Yeah.
Because we mentioned the pandemic, I feel like that's a good segue
to probably the most controversial, and perhaps rightly settlement
of this, the doctor telling them not to overmedicate children for
psychiatric illness, which I have my own feelings about, which I'd
like to get to, but I'd like to just know what you guys think
about it first.
In fact, it is one of the major objections that Brendan has
towards the episode.
And it's a little bit like a sort of grumpy old man thing.
You know, all the children are taking medication these days. blah
blah, blah.
Isn't that terrible?
Why can't we allow them to be creative?
And I think Sandifus says something as if the story was saying we
would have medicated Blake, William Blake, and we would never have
got any of his literary or artistic works as a result.
And I think it's unfortunate.
Yeah, and I think it is a kind of, it's a grumpy old man kind of
thing.
And I think because cultural voice and Moffat are both grumpy old
man or grumpy middle-aged man at the time, that's why it makes it
to air, but I think it should perhaps have been rethought.
So like the dramatic equivalent of one of those posters is say
this is a natural antidepressant.
Well, and has a forest.
Well, I was kind of thinking that it's a little bit like the
abortion stuff in Kilamoon, which I think is not at all intended
by Peter Harness in any way.
And I don't think that the episode has presented works as an anti
abortion metaphor at all, but it is just one of those things that
perhaps should have been thought about more carefully.
If you take a step back, though.
There are quite a lot of environmental factors that are known to
impede children's ability to cope.
And I think the problem is Maeve is clearly coded as someone with
more mental health issues than the other children.
So we all look at it and go, well, perhaps she does really need
it.
So it becomes harder to justify the author's choice to suggest
that she doesn't just because of the spirits around her.
But when you to look at the other children, you might make the
discussion a bit easier because stepping back into the queer
perspective, you've got the question about, well, you don't fit in
with society, you're deviant, we've got this medication over here
that will stop you being deviant.
Is that a good thing?
Yeah.
But I think given the context of the discussion and the fact that
people of a certain age are likely to kind of say that the younger
generation is overmedicate it, that we end up falling down on that
side of a debate.
So for me, it's a very complex one because, like I mentioned, as a
kid, I was going through a lot of groups like that because I am
very ADHD and probably around the time this episode 1st aired, I
would have been, I think, probably just starting college or
finishing up high school and wrestling with the decision of
whether I wanted to stay on medication because on the one hand, it
really did help me fit certain needs of society.
But on the other hand, it did feel like losing a part of myself.
And I am blessed in that it's a manageable condition without
medication.
It's not, for example, schizophrenia or something like that, which
I think what a lot of people object to in this episode saying, well
there's some conditions where you do need to be medicated because
otherwise you will not be healthy.
But I do think there is also truth in saying, maybe listen to
children and hear their perspective on it before jumping to those
decisions.
It's a big, it's a conversation bigger than Doctor Who is the
problem.
There's not space in an episode about trees taking over the earth
to have an honest conversation about mental health.
Yeah.
I mean, there are conditions, the symptoms of which seem to be a
list of things that annoy teachers when they're trying to run a
class, you know.
So like, okay, maybe there is actually room for a debate here, but
I think you're right, Kevin, it's a little bit too hit and run.
It doesn't seem to be aware of the implications and there isn't
space to address it without distracting us from the main story.
One of my friends who was a special needs teacher had a simple
rule of thumb that she conveyed, which was, you could tell the
children who needed the medication, because they would be happier
and more able to cope after they'd had it.
Whereas those who were just terrible after the medication were
just badly behave children.
Like Bradley.
Can I mention the other thing that Brendan doesn't like?
I'm sub-tweeting, but it's not sub-tweeting.
Not sub-tweeting, I'm mentioning him by name.
I hope I'm not miscaracterizing what he thinks.
But given the issue of climate change, which does come up, if
you've got a magical forest that appears and solves environmental
problems, is that discouraging us from doing anything about it?
Are we in sort of Gaia hypothesis territory where nature kind of
heals itself?
I think not for me, just because I can't imagine anybody watching
this episode thinking, yes, the trees will absolutely come and
protect us when things go wrong.
Or is it like, yeah, we're doing that to the trees, they're not
going to help us, whereas they're trying to protect the planet.
Well, I mean, the trees do that.
You know, the special thing that they do overnight. is just a very
special exaggerated version of what they do anyway.
One of the things that the trees do is they make the planet
habitable.
And you might remember that summer just before the pandemic where
all of the forests in the world, including in Australia, just
seemed to catch fire one after the other.
Australia.
Yeah, yeah.
Like it was incredible.
So the trees do this.
That's what the trees do.
And because this is absolutely a fairy tale, it's not an
environmental drama.
It's not a thriller.
It's none of those things.
It's explicitly doing something to the trees like making them
people, giving them souls, giving them purposes and stuff in a way
that is absolutely magical.
I think that its aim, and I think it probably succeeds at it, is
to make us more concerned about the forests.
I thought it was a very clear message, save the treats.
Yeah, well, that's right.
It's the thing that they say that Maeve says over everyone's
phone.
They go on about how wonderful trees are and how they produce
oxygen and all of that and all the biosphere.
And it was broadcast in 2014, as the discussions about the Paris
climate accord are being had in the public space.
And I do take it as an absurdist fairy tale, like, you know, the
trees aren't going to save us.
No. is quite clear to everyone.
But it is saying that, you know, we have to save the trees.
Otherwise, they can't help us.
Yeah, yeah.
I also think in terms of environmental commentary, there is a
theme that comes up repeatedly in this episode, which talk about
the fires reminded me of, catastrophe is the metabolism of the
universe.
Things in the world happen with big moments of change.
And I live in California.
We catch fire all the time.
Part of my day job is trying to prevent that happening.
But the simple fact is, that is how forests reproduce.
They catch fire.
This is an episode about a forest springing up across the earth
and catching fire because that's how things propagate.
Big moments have changed big catastrophes are part of the natural
flow of the world.
I mean, yes, humans are causing a unprecedented catastrophe that
the earth is not prepared to deal with, but that is how things
progress.
Yeah, I think our situations are fairly similar.
We live in a place where there are regular bush fires and there
have been since before Europeans arrive.
And most of our indigenous plant species evolved, like
specifically to take advantage of these bushfires.
Yeah, yeah.
And so I just remember like the summer of 1980 or something and
everything was on fire and we couldn't use the, it was great.
I was staying with a friend who had a pool.
We weren't allowed to have showers, we had to save water, so we
were just hop in the pool so we didn't have to wash.
They would be like, and then just months later, you see the
vegetation kind of reclaiming the area that's been devastated.
I think the 2019 bushfires really do come into this quite well
because what's forgotten in Australia a lot is they started in
August.
You know, my parents lived in, um, near Glen Innis, and those
forests were on fire since August.
People actually had cardiac events and all kinds of things because
of the smoke.
Um, and everyone's just forgotten.
Yeah, yeah. the public consciousness has just moved on.
The issues about the fires just completely forgotten.
And now we're all talking about housing prices and the price of
oil.
Yeah.
Yeah, and it was kind of COVID, wasn't it?
in a way.
We just moved on to the next giant catastrophe, but...
Yeah, yeah.
But I mean, if it's burning in August, August is like, what, early
spring?
Like it's it's certainly not summer and it's not when we expect
that sort of thing to happen because we do have those seasonal
fires in summer.
It was extraordinary.
We had the New South Wales government telling us not to go outside
because the air quality was so low.
So it's a little bit like this and a little bit like the lockdowns
around the pandemic.
I wonder if part of the reason the Brits don't get this episode is
because they don't catch fire all the time.
Yeah, maybe that's too wet.
Yeah, so I do think, you know, this episode is being broadcast
into a world of climate change and what it's doing is reminding us
of what the trees actually do, which is they help to maintain a
habitable environment.
And it's especially targeting kids with that.
It's saying kids.
Trees are amazing.
This world is amazing.
Protect it.
Like there's that little class project, protect the trees.
I love that so much.
I really love that.
And that is also too, the moment where the doctor kind of embraces
the kind of school teacher role, you know, he's been kind of
slightly dismissive of Danny looking after the kids.
Clara's looking after the kids as part of her job and that's
something the doctor's not interested in.
He's almost presented as an alternative to her doing her job.
But here he sets them a task.
And just seeing all of those kids, you know, on the floor of the
TARDIS with an exercise book, writing something with a biro, like
a speech from Maeve to read.
It's one of the happiest moments, I can remember it, Doctor Who
it's just beautiful.
I guess that does also lead if we're talking about Maeve's little
speech to the world.
We have to address Anibal Arden.
Please come home.
I think they ruined the end with that because I think if she'd
just been sitting on the on the steps smoking a cigarette, then it
would have been more impactful.
The, like, magical... magical bush.
She was hydrangeas all along.
No, standing up with a kind of evil glint in her eyes.
Like, how are we coding this character?
I think that she, I mean, she's a beautiful young woman and but
she does look slightly evil with that smile.
It's clearly the forest giving her back to Maeve and her family
isn't it?
I think it is, and it isn't, because I think the other implication
and this episode wants to work both on the magical level and the
real emotional level is Maeve calls literally everybody on the
entire planet and says, please come home.
I'm pretty sure the implication is she heard that and came home
but I think because it tries to have both ways and because I think
it's the one moment in the episode where the direction really lets
it down, it comes off like she's just magically summoned out of a
bush.
I can see why that's a step too far for people. hiding in the
bush.
Her mother does complain that the next door neighbours have
planted those hydrangeas and she initially thinks that that's
what's kind of blocking the door because the hydrangeas have got
out of control.
So the hydrangeas are kind of telegraphed early on.
I mean, on the fantastical level on the fairy tale level.
She was lost in the forest.
Yeah, yeah maybe.
Yeah, yeah.
And so the whole, yes, she's been given back by the forest thing
works because it's, you know, she was, she was a little girl lost
in the woods, like on a figurative and psychological level
perhaps.
I don't know.
I think those levels were probably intended.
I also think they don't really land.
It's definitely the weakest scene in the episode and I think
probably the 1st thing people think of when they hate this
episode.
It's a very strange ending and the final shot is very strange, I
think, the final shot of Annabelle's face is super odd.
Also, just, as a scene feels kind of tacked on, like, the episode
already has so many good conclusions that ending on that note
feels kind of alienating, like, why are we going back to this?
Yeah, I guess, though, we're told that the reason that Maeve is
able to communicate with the trees is because she's lost Annabelle
and Ruby, Ruby's assessment of Maeve, where it's, for God's sake
give her a medication.
You know, she's barely functioning.
She's such a hilarious drama queen about it.
It's really funny.
And so the reason that she can communicate with the trees is
because she has lost someone and she's always on the lookout for
that person and because she's always on the lookout, she's more
sensitive to seeing things.
And I thought that that was a kind of beautiful thing for the
doctor to say.
Yeah, like, so I thought that worked really well as an observation
and particularly well coming from the doctor.
And so I think we do have to get Annabelle back.
If Annabelle's so important, then she has to come back at the end
I think.
Maybe it's just not pulled off.
Maybe it's that scene doesn't quite work.
I tell you what I did like.
I did like, you know, there's a few references to things that are
happening throughout the series.
And does Movak get a writing credit on this one?
No.
But his hand's clearly in it, isn't it?
Because when Moffa gets a writing credit, it's almost always, I
think, for the Danny and Clara stuff.
But the callback to Mummy on the Orient Express, the you breathe
our air line.
You know, when the doctor says, I'm going to stay and the
references to time heist and stuff like that.
It all does a very good job of pulling the season together and
making it cohere in episode 11 before we launch into the finale.
I quite love that scene of Clara and the doctor talking out
whether to use the TARDIS as an ark to save the children, whether
Clara will stay or go.
I think everything about that just really sings.
What's so cool about this episode for me is it's not actually a
Doctor Who plot. a catastrophe happens and it's about a bunch of
people emotionally responding to it.
And that ending really feels like the climax to that where Clara
realises, yes, she wants to travel, but she doesn't completely
want to be the doctor.
She doesn't want to be the last of her kind.
She still has a reason she wants to come back home.
I thought that was really beautiful.
Her reluctance to say that.
And I think we know that she's going to say I don't want to be the
only one left.
I don't want to be the last of my kind.
And her reluctance to say that because it's, I don't want to be
like you, doctor.
I don't want to be like you.
I don't want to experience the terrible things you've
experienced.
I don't want it to sit in my heart the way it sits in your heart.
I think that's really, really good.
And I love the, you know, the I walk your earth.
I breathe your air.
And when she says, you're welcome.
And that let the human race save you for once.
Like, I think the amazing thing about this story.
It's like what you say, Kevin.
There's no villain.
There's nothing alien.
It is just something said on earth where earth things are
happening.
So it's able to just concentrate on putting the characters in
different situations and seeing how they react.
And just having it escalate to the point where everyone's going to
die.
You know, that we just assume that everyone's going to die because
what the forests have called down the, you know, are calling down
this solar flare.
I just think that's amazing.
Like suddenly we're in a situation where everyone's going to die
and we have to have the doctor and Clara react to that.
And also it has the biggest callback of all, and it's the climax
of that.
The, uh, I think the 1st time we hear repeated from the day of the
doctor, home the long way around.
Yeah.
Like, that is such a big moment and putting it at the end of this
standalone, odd episode is, I think, really weighty because the
doctor has just dealt with the guilt of being the last of his
kind.
He has just resolved that, and that's the last piece left of it.
So dealing with that in the conversation with Clara about what
that does to him and what that would do to her is, I think, such a
beautiful way of addressing it.
It doesn't need to be this big space, pyrotechnics, galifrayan
epic that people wanted.
It needs to be a drama about how the doctor's feeling.
Yeah.
I also quite like the fact that they seem to have written the
doctor to embrace what is a bit neurodivergent.
At the start of Capaldi Zero.
He clearly is having trouble with emotional intelligence and
social interaction.
He's clearly got face blindness where he's, you know, which ones
may, which ones may, and he's starting to grow a little bit more
in understanding himself and other people, but he's still clearly
quite affectionate and friendly and a real person in wanting Clara
to come with him, but he also is being quite understanding and
saying, well, I understand that you don't want to, because the
horror of being the last of your kind is quite. terrible.
But there's still that thing through this whole season where he's
being a person who is neurodivergent.
And also, speaking of the neurodiversions, I think that putting
him with a bunch of neurodivergent kids is a definite choice
because there are a lot of scenes where instead of talking to
Danny and Clara at their level, he's at the same level as the
kids.
Like, one of my favourite lines in this episode is when they're
talking about, like, where's Maeve?
and Ruby's like, oh, my God, Maeve's dead, and the doctor
screams.
So good.
Ruby is so great.
Well, this is what that's all we have time for this week.
We'll be back next week for an extremely unwelcome revelation
about death in dark water.
In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts
and you can keep up with us on our website, FlightthroughEntirety
com, where you'll find links to our accounts, on Facebook, Twitter
and Mastodon, as well as links to our other podcast, Bondfinger
Jody Interterra, maximum power, and untitled Star Trek project.
Until next time, please don't chop, spray, or harm the trees.
They're here to help.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
That was Flightthrough Entirety.
Sorry, Nathan Bottomley, Kevin Bernard, Matthew Hounsell and James
Selwood.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lam.
This episode, she was the hydrangeas all along, was recorded on
the 6th of May 2023 and released on the 18th of June.
The most striking thing about this era of Doctor Who is the
deplorable lack of space corridors.
But please don't worry.
Episode 271, a flight through entirety to be released later this
year, contains one of the all-time classics of the genre, and
we're confident that you're going to love it.
Has anyone on this season of FT mentioned how good the 12th
doctor's theme is?
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's really great.
And we do also, we do have to, of course, mention as as an insert
into the episode, but not, you know, in any way related to the
episode is missy.
Yes, and she goes, I love surprises.
Tell your face, Michelle.
No, because she's lying. that's the thing.
But that's sort of wonderful thing where she's kind of watching
the season along with this.
Yes, yeah.
We mentioned that in deep breath.
She's watching deep breath and so she doesn't know whether the
half-faced man has been pushed out of the restaurant by the doctor
because we didn't get to see that in the episode.
And so when the half-ace man turns up in the nether spear, she's
unable to determine exactly how he got there, although she
suspects that the doctor did push him out of the restaurant, which
is the correct answer.
She's just sitting there with her time-spaced visualiser.
Yes, yeah.
I mean, it's terribly funny too.
It's terribly funny to imagine the master watching the doctor's
adventures and seeing the earth get about to be destroyed by a
forest before she can get around to enacting her plan.
It's like, imagine the breakdown.
She would have had it. if it went through.
Humanity was sorted out.
Look, I mean, I just think, so this is the last time she just
appears and from now on, she'll be kind of the doctor's antagonist
when she turns up.
I just think Michelle Gomez is absolutely brilliant and that this
arc with her has been just tremendously entertaining.
So good.
If I remember correctly, also all the little inserts from her
weren't they directed by Rachel Talloway?
No, she directed the ones in the 1st 2 episodes.
Okay.
Who directed the first?
We talked about this actually.
She just directed some in a few early episodes where the director
himself wasn't available to shoot them.
But yes, she directed the ones in Into the Dalek and deep breath.
Yes, this episode's ones are actually recorded by the director of
this episode, but were recorded before the rest the episode.
Right.
Okay. interesting.
Because I did want to mention just in terms of both Rachel Talalay
and Shree Folkson.
That's the 1st time we've really had women direct the Maffa era
since I think there was like one women in one woman in like series
5 or something, but it's something that he really did not make
enough of an effort in, and that there was really a big
conversation around the Moffat era and the role of women writing
and directing.
And series 8 is the 1st time you really see him start to make a
course correction and emphasise that.
And I think it really pays off.
These are 2 of, 2 of the best directors of series 8 right there.
Yeah.
I think, you know, I think that Tubinal is the one who kind of
deserves the credit for finally getting this ride.
Moffatt is the sort of person who learns from his mistakes and
does grow, I think, during his run.
And so he is starting to work towards it.
And he's also starting to work towards the idea of a female doctor
obviously, with Missy, and with some of the stuff at the end of
series 10.
But it does take Cheap Mill to come in, determined to kind of get
a more diverse team of directors and a more diverse team of
writers.
And so he gets that right finally.
And we're waiting over the next few months to see how Russell
takes that even further in all likelihood.
Here's a question for you all.
Yep.
If this had been directed by someone else, do you think it would
have been a lesser episode?
Do you think her direction makes it?
I think she manages successfully to portray the to create this
world.
I think she manages to create this world really well.
And I think that some of the technical stuff like getting the
tiger and getting the wolves and stuff is quite well.
They were filmed specially.
They weren't, you know, stock footage, um, cut into the episode.
It's impossible not to think of the arc, isn't it?
Yeah.
And you wonder at some point, at some points, whether they are
actually like rotoscope, did you?
I mean, there's that one thing where we have a shot of Maeve and
there's a sort of dark patch in the foliage behind her and then
the wolves appear in that and that's very stylised and stuff, but
I think that's perfectly reasonable given the sort of story that
we're telling.
Like the Gamork in never-ending story.
Anyway.
I think she does do very well directing the children and things
like her shots, shot choice.
Her angle choice.
When they're doing the school experiment, how that's shot from
under the Tartar console.
Yeah, yeah.
And across at them, not at the teachers looking at them.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I think it's, uh, it's been a while since we've had an
episode that actually properly centres children and I think they
pull it off.
They actually managed to do it and it could so easily go wrong.
Anything else?
This will all be sort of cut together into a thing and I'll make
sure that it ends at...
I've got a thing for your art show.
I just love the idea of Missy sitting at a desk with a laptop
watching Doctor Who on Blu-ray going, that didn't happen.
That's implausible.
Look at those sets wobbly.
Missy likes her hard science fiction when it starts to be evil
trees.
She just gets a little impatient because she's the only one
allowed to do the ridiculous plots.
And it turns out to be good trees.
She's really much worse.
All right.
What do you think?
I think we finish it off.