Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flightthrough Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast that did mean to imply that we don't
care.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Peter.
I'm Simon.
Well, it's our 1st underwater base for more than 30 years, both
diagetically and extra digetically, and this time we're up against
I don't know, ghosts or something.
So let's see what sort of predestination paradoxes we can get
ourselves into in under the lake.
So, this episode gets me thinking of the history of bases under
siege in the new series, and given that I don't expect to have
very much to say about this 2 parter, I thought that we might just
compare it to some things.
So what do we have?
I want to say Impossible Planner, Waters of Mars, 42, what else?
The gangers two-parter?
Ganga's 2-parter, and maybe last Christmas.
Where do we where do we want to rank this?
I mean, I don't think this is as dramatically awful as the gang is
two-part, I don't think it does.
I don't think.
Simon, are you saying that's baseless criticism?
I don't think it's very good because using as a comparison
Impossible Planet and the Satan pit, which made something really
beautiful and interesting and elegiic out of what it included and
made its characters really interesting and all stand out.
You knew who they were, and they were finally drawn 10 minutes
after they'd been introduced.
With this, it's just moving those pieces around and creating
something that's really quite bland, I think, nothing stands out.
I think bland is probably a little bit harsh.
I think it's fine.
I enjoyed it actually more than I was expecting to.
Not that I disliked it the 1st time round, but I did find it a
little bit tiresome the 1st time round, but this time I thought, oh
that was diverting, entertaining, and I was drawn into it.
I certainly wasn't bored by it.
I really like this one.
I loved it at the time. and watching it again this week.
I found that like some of Stephen Moffatt's more time travel-based
and paradox-based plots, it doesn't so much reward repeat viewing
as you just go, oh, I hadn't noticed that before.
So I do think it has somewhat diminishing returns, but that
initial viewing and the fact that we're doing a time paradox, which
is something Doctor Who doesn't do to this level so very often, I
found highly entertaining.
And I'm actually going to disagree with Peter that I think the
characterisations of these characters.
I will agree they're not as well drawn as the Satan Pitt uh two
parter, which is one of the best stories of Tenet's entire era, in
my opinion.
I do think the way the characters are drawn serves a particular
purpose.
I think you're right, Brendan, but I think that I don't like it
when I can see that each character has a particular purpose.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, I want to, I want to have the, and I know that in writing
obviously, characters are created with a purpose to drive plot and
so on like that.
But I want to have the illusion that it's somehow random that
these people have just come together and this story unfolds.
And I find it a little bit too mannered in that way or maybe not
mannered is the right word, prepared. functioning.
Yes, exactly.
I have to say that there is a big gap between the 2 Russell T
Davies bases under siege because I think the waters of Mars has
very strongly drawn characters as well.
I think perhaps he doesn't quite reach the heights he does in
Satan Pitt.
But one of the features of the Moffat era is that the one off
characters in the episodes are actually never all that memorable
and he prefers to give most of the interesting drama to the
regular characters, which is different from how Doctor Who is in
the classic era, for instance.
And so here I actually did find myself surprised on this watch
through that the characters are quite well drawn.
I had no difficulty working out what their names were, or even how
many of them there were, which was a problem in the gang is too
far.
Even without the 2 sets of carrots. right. right.
So I did like these characters and particularly Lun, who I just
think is beautiful and adorable.
Isn't he cute?
Yeah, wonderful.
And I also liked O'Donnell.
I think she's really sort of likeable and she seems to be kind of
drawn as, you know, a bit tough, hard as nails and stuff in part
two.
But in this part, she's sort of mostly fangirling and being funny
and calling Pritchard an idiot.
I think she's really great.
And I also think we get extra points for having Pritchard's 1st
name on his IDB Richard.
So he's Richard Pritchard.
For those of you who've seen broken news.
But I did think that was great.
And there was a little moment where I wasn't sure whether Clara
was calling out Richard or Pritchard over the communications
thing.
So that's all sort of terribly cute.
So I did think that they were actually quite well drawn.
What I think is that it's really thin, in terms of having a solid
idea.
And like, I think the gang is two-parter has the potential for a
really, really seriously solid idea about identity and stuff.
And we talked about it at the time.
It doesn't quite do it.
It doesn't quite kind of get there, but it's got a really solid
idea.
And I think the base is a little bit more interesting.
You know, like it's a castle for no reason, which we said was
weird.
There's acid everywhere.
Again.
Like it was just an ugly and off-putting setting in a sort of very
deliberate way.
And while we found it ugly and offputting, It's a bit less
generic.
It's a bit less generic than this sort of undersea base, which I
think is a great sad.
And like I was thinking of the impossible planet and this, that
has a real solidity to it, that the impossible planet set couldn't
afford to have, I guess, at the time.
That is actually part of the reason why I think the characters
blend together for me.
I do think they're actually they're drawn okay.
And I think the performers do a good job of bringing them to life
and differentiating them.
But the visual style is all a little bit samey for me.
So the characters are dressed very similarly, which doesn't help.
And all of the sets, even though they're quite moody and
atmospheric, are only moody and atmospheric.
There's no real light and dark in there.
And so it's almost like by the end of 44 minutes. or however long
it was.
You're just a bit tired of seeing these same images over and
over.
Yeah, they should have set it on sea base four.
I would have loved it.
This story would definitely have been improved by a murka
breaking.
Yeah.
But actually, that's an interesting point, Peter, because all it
needs is one of the areas whether it's the living quarters or
something to be dramatically different, which you can kind of get
away with in the sea base, like, okay, this is all the grungy work
bits that are just, you know, dark and grungy and so on.
But then the little haven that we retreat to when we're having our
relaxation is all light and bright with ferns and things, you
know.
They could have made the Faraday cage, I think, something really
quite different and interesting looking. spend quite a lot of time
there, just hanging out.
I like the effort they went to, to make it obvious that it's hot
down there. because they're all they're all in shorts and some
they're in sort of tank tops and so on like that.
And there's a lot of sweat.
And I think that actually comes across, comes across quite well.
Sophie Stone, who plays Cass and is hearing impaired, is on the
commentary.
And when Toby Withouse is praising how the production team have
realised his research into undersea bases, and that's why there's
moss everywhere because that actually happens.
Right.
What, Tedmos?
And the humidity, as you're talking about side.
But when he's talking about that.
Sophie Stone just says, I never want to see any petroleum jelly
ever again because the out decision...
Oh, of course. petroleum jelly.
Yes.
They don't just spritz them before the tax.
They have to, yeah.
They're slathered in it.
And that hanger set is one entire sound stage at Rothlock.
And, you know, Toby Withouse is like, it's one thing to write
these things and I thought we'd have, you know, a hanger set and
then we'd have a control room set, but then Daniel O'Hara, the
director comes along and just goes, okay, that's one integrated
set and I can shoot through the window here and et cetera, et
cetera.
Yeah, I think maybe if the mess hall had been a bit warmer. as you
would expect, you know, this is the recreation area.
Although I do appreciate that in the mess hall, we have a mural of
Kirk, Bones and Scotty in a little boat being attacked by the
dragon creature.
I didn't notice that.
Yeah, if you look, there's 3 men standing in the boat and they've
got like gold shirt, a red shirt, and a blue shirt.
Another criticism that I've seen labelled against this is that
Colin McFarlane, who is obviously an incredible actor with an
amazing career, gets killed off super early on.
But I do have to say that I was imagining him enjoying the hell
out of playing a scary ghost for the entire 2 parter, so we did
miss his performance and he's fantastic.
He makes an impression absolutely immediately.
And the hilarious thing about him is that he's slathered in
petroleum jelly, he's sweaty.
He's chewing gum.
He reads his very working class, but he just talks like a duke.
You know, like he's absolutely unbelievable, that accent.
And we do lose that voice, which is a shame.
He has been in Doctor Who before.
Really?
Which one?
He plays the host.
He does the voice of the host in Voyage of the Damn.
The incredible posh voice of the host in the voyage of the dad.
And of course, he's in Children of Earth as well.
He's the black general who doesn't look like Colin Baker in that
thought you were going to say he was in trial of a time lord or
something.
That's an amazing thing.
And it's something we've seen this era do before with say Olivia
Coleman, who we always come back to because she's Olivia Coleman
you know, casting a huge actor in a small but memorable role.
And according to Sophie Stowdon, the commentary, he absolutely
loved doing that stunt jumping in front of the flame jet, which
was a real flame jet, by the way.
It is enhanced in post, but they had a real flame jet on.
And even though it is a small vocal role for him.
He loved that his character got to die heroically and doing a bond
stunt, basically.
Yeah, and then he gets to be a Doctor Who monster, which is kind
of fun as well.
And he's really relishing it.
There's a great moment, I think.
Like it's not the only reason that Cass is deaf, but one of the
things that she does is, of course, Lip Reed, the 2 ghosts.
And it's very well directed.
I think this is someone who doesn't direct before or again.
Daniel O'Hara.
And what he does is we can't tell what the people are saying until
after Cass interprets it, and then we see close-ups, particularly
close-ups of Moran's mouth.
And he looks super fierce and terrifying at that point, I think.
Can I say I actually don't think it's all that well directed?
Okay.
It's all right.
Like, there's nothing terrible about it, but I think it's a little
bit flat in places, which contributes to the feeling of just sort
of moving from space to space and there's some visual grammar
missing in places.
So there's a bit where the doctor and Clara are being menaced
early on by the ghosts and then they run away, but you missed the
shot of them running away.
So they just kind of like serve land when she's being attacked.
They just leave frame. somewhere else.
But having said that, there are moments of visual beauty.
I think that scene towards the end of the episode where the doctor
and Clara are communicating the bulkhead and the water's coming
up.
That's really nice.
And even the point at which the water covers her face.
Like there's a moment where we're uncertain of our relationship
together and the surface of the water is occluding their eyes and
then finally, when she does agree that she trusts him, their faces
are both visible to one another.
Like, I think it is very, very well done.
Toby Whitehouse has been a bit lucky, I have to say. because he
had Nick Curran for the God complex.
He has that incredible guest performance in a town called Mercy.
And here where nothing super spectacular is happening in the
production.
I think that there's nothing to distract us from the fact that the
script is a little bit empty.
And so as I started to say, I think before, there's no real
interesting idea here.
So, so I think that the impossible planet has what if a base under
siege, but the devil, you know, like I think that that's kind of
interesting, I think the waters of Mars has the question of
whether the doctor needs to save these people and create
unnecessary work for the Wikipedia editors.
I think, you know, 42 has something, something, a countdown maps.
But, you know, like that's an idea.
But again, that's perhaps the weakest, the other, you know, weakest
of the bases under siege.
Can I posit something?
Yeah.
I think part of the problem is that like what they sometimes do
the era they sometimes make with these 2 partters in the modern
era is that they start the 1st episode as if it's only one
episode.
And so too much has happened already.
I think, and this is one of the reasons why I enjoy the gangers 2
parter, um, unlike others.
But also I think one of the reasons why the Impossible Planet is
so good is because the menace and the threat takes time to build.
Yeah, right?
It doesn't it doesn't all happen in the pre-credit sequence.
Now, you need to do it all in the pre-credit sequence when you've
only got 45 minutes to tell the entire story.
But when you've got 90 minutes, even though, yes, the 2nd episode
we go back in time and there's a kind of a change, you get this
kind of saminess in the middle of this episode because you've
gotten into it quicker than you needed to, it would have been much
more interesting if the doctor and Clara had have arrived.
Who are you?
Stranger, how the hell did you get here, et cetera, et cetera, et
cetera.
They found this ship from the bottom of the lake.
We don't know what it is.
We don't know what's going on.
And then Moran is killed and he comes back as a ghost and so on
and so on.
And so rather than that happening in the pre-credit sequence
that's happened to like after 10 minutes, say, or 15 minutes.
And that's one of the reasons why I like the gang is two-parter as
well is because it builds in that classic series kind of shape.
They arrive and whilst there's a bit of stuff going on, the true
menace hasn't actually arrived yet.
It's interesting that there's only one character death after
Morans in this episode, and that's Pritchard.
And so you've got sort of 40 minutes of just going from place to
place and that sequence where they're trying to...
Yeah, they're trying to lure the ghosts into the Faraday cage is
really long and not that invented.
And also something that we've seen before so many times.
And that's the thing.
I think you're absolutely right, Simon with that.
And part of my issue, such as it is with this episode is that it
feels like it's taking those things that we've seen before and
just moving the puzzle pieces around to create a new episode out
of them.
There's nothing that really stands out for me.
But can I say something that I really like about it?
Well, things that I really like about it.
Because I do think it is, good television is good, Doctor Who
broadly speaking.
The criticisms I'm making are a bit more nitpicky a bit just a
bit.
Oh, look, look, it could have been better if they'd have done this
this and this, right?
Okay, that's what all I was kind of saying before.
It is so great to have a really, really creepy image and the image
of the ghosts with the black hollowed out eyes is actually quite
shocking.
And I hope that lots of kids from that era remember that and had
nightmares about it because really that's what Doctor Who's
supposed to give out.
The other thing is it's really refreshing that I love is when the
doctor and Clara have arrived and the doctor says, what do you say
I haven't a clue.
Isn't that exciting?
And I think, yes, yes, it is.
Yes, it is exciting when the doctor arrives somewhere and doesn't
know where they are, doesn't know what's going on and doesn't know
anything and has to discover it.
And he doesn't go at the kind of the 30 minute mark going, oh, my
goodness, I've just realised this is the thing of me, Bob's from
Watch McCoy.
And therefore, blah, blah, blah. you know what I mean?
I'm so sick of that, which I know doesn't happen all the time, but
I think just happens more often than it should.
So I mean, it takes you back to the Hinchcliffe era where the
doctor and Sarah would just turn up and have a new adventure every
week.
Yes.
Exactly.
I think it's marvellous seeing Capaldi do this.
I mean, he got a little bit of a go at it in last Christmas and
he's really, really fun here, I think, like really properly
enjoyable, including kind of identifying the intransigent base
commander straight away and just say, well, you know, like, I'm
not talking to you or you're clearly an idiot or something like
that.
And all of that is really terrifically fun.
Well, he's not the base commander.
He's just the guy from the company.
But he is the one who's intransigent in the sense that we could
have all just left. you know.
But just echoing something you said in the last Christmas
episode.
But you pointed it out as, well, of course, it's a dream because
you've got this perfectly diverse base under siege. set of
characters.
But you've got that in every base of the section where the bottom
of the era.
You've always got this perfectly ethnically engender diverse group
and age diverse group of people.
And the most important thing is that the base commander is not a
white male.
Not even in this era.
We can go back to the 10th planet or the wheeling space in the
moon base.
Yeah.
Something I really love about the character dynamics in this, and
this is what I was alluding to earlier, is the 2 character
pairings we end up with Cass and Lunn and O'Donnell and Bennett
both mirror aspects of the Dr. Clara relationship.
So Cass is responsible after the death of Moran for the base and
is aggressive in that this is my duty of care and this is what I'm
doing.
Meanwhile, you have Lund translating for her in the same way that
Clara does for the doctor.
Yes.
That is a bit that I think goes a little bit far as the little
flash cards, the little prompt cards, I think.
Right.
Actually, it's I quite used to think that joke worked, but it
absolutely doesn't.
It seemed grinds to a halt.
It's a bit that they had to get in.
It's not a very funny bit.
I think it would have been better if, like, the doctor had turned
around, got something out of his pocket, said the line, and then
we saw that they were flash cards for when he's in an emotional
situation.
You know, if he'd driven it, if he'd gone, oh, okay, no, I know
this.
But, I mean, both of them kind of shake off the joke and then go
back to their acting.
Yeah, like you can actually see a moment where Capolda goes, yeah
I'm done with this bit.
No, I'm just going to do my acting.
You know, yeah, it feels like if it was a stage production, it'd
be one of those moments where all the actions stopped and the
actor is now kind of effectively addressing the audience directly
for the laugh and getting a laugh and then kind of returning to
the rest of the scene.
If you're going to do it, you actually, Brendan, your idea is good
but I think the better thing to do is that's just a funny scene
and a TARDIS before they've actually left the console room at the
beginning.
Yeah, yeah.
Even if you flash back to it and say, now, if we encounter someone
whose friend has died, what?
Do we say...
But, I mean, one of them is the, you know, I promise that no other
people are going to be hypnotised or mortally wounded or killed or
eaten or whatever, you know, with all the slashes and stuff.
But the doctor says that all time.
Yes, exactly.
You know that.
And in fact, you know, we made a point of that last season in
flatline, that that was essentially a doctor-ish thing to do, and
we watched Clara do it with that sort of ragtag group of people
that she was leading.
And like, I don't, like, you know, I'm not going to complain about
this.
I'm not going to complain about how no one knows about aliens or
spaceships or anything like this, even though it's 2119.
Like, who cares?
like whatever.
There is a kind of level of character consistency that should span
kind of longer than 8 episodes, I think.
The other pairing, of course, is O'Donnell and Bennett.
And for me, the doctor companion thing, there is O'Donnell is
mirroring the behaviour the doctor is concerned about in Clara.
And we do have that lovely scene in the TARDIS where he's saying
you know, I'm worried about you because of this emotional reaction
and Clara's like, I'm fine.
And of course, it brilliantly ends with going, okay, can I can I
stop doing this now then?
And she's like, yeah, please do.
And she's super relieved.
Yes, please.
But it is incredibly sweet.
And it is an overarching theme here.
And O'Donnell faces the same thing here and you'll discuss that
more in the next episode, I'm sure.
I want to know, is this a Moffat thing or is it an arc thing or
something because that seems to be new?
That seems to be setting this agenda where the doctor is worried
that Clara is turning into him.
And again, it's kind of hinted at Flatline because Clara gets to
be the doctor and the doctor doesn't like it on some level.
She enjoys it about 100% too much.
Yeah, yeah.
And then here, she's sort of super enthusiastic about being on
adventures and stuff and suddenly the doctors a bit thing about
that.
And I know where we're going in this season with that.
And so that seems to be the beginning point of a trajectory that
leads us to face the raven.
It's one of those things.
It's why Clara is not in the pantheon of greats because every
season they try to do something different with her and they are
trying to do something different with her rather than just letting
the relationship happen.
And so this season they've decided she's gotten past all the Danny
Pink stuff.
She's going to be an adventurer.
She wants to be the doctor, she's embracing it too much.
Where will that lead?
Could she die?
I don't know.
Let's see.
But it's all a little bit forced.
It's all layered on top of what should be just a generic doctor
companion relationship.
Well, you've got 3 companions basically.
She should actually just be 3 companions.
Yes, yes.
Yeah.
It does lead to that great little speech she has to Bennett at the
end of next episode.
And that's when I started getting really concerned about the
character of Clara in this series because I love this series.
I think it has so many good episodes.
There's only one that I don't rate too highly.
But I also look at Clara's character trajectory and it's one of
those, one of those times where you see a character you like going
in a direction you don't like and you're like, no, come back.
You know, by the time of Face the Raven, it's this Thanatos.
It's this death drive, this thrill seeking death drive, and I
don't, I don't like it, but it's not bad.
It's not badly done.
It's well acted.
It's well written.
I, I, I love it.
I hate it.
I want to kiss it to death.
It's kind of starting last season, isn't it?
Where the relationship between the doctor and Clara is kind of
problematized and compared to addiction and stuff like that and
you only know its addiction if you, you know, try and give it up.
And now, for some reason, we have this sort of thing where we have
to punish her for being like the doctor.
And I don't know why she deserves punishment for that.
Is it because she's only a young woman or something?
You know, like it, like, that seems to be kind of the, I don't
know.
I mean, that can't be deliberately what they're saying, but I'm
just trying to work out why it's a problem.
Why is it bad to enjoy Doctor Who?
You know, why is it so bad?
And O'Donnell gets killed, doesn't she?
And she's a massive Doctor Who fan in this story as well.
And you said, Brendan, that some of the problems that the doctor
saw in Clara are being exhibited by O'Donnell, and O'Donnell gets
killed as a result, is it kind of foreshadowing?
Yeah.
And something that does wind me up a bit, and I'm not on the next
episode.
So I'll just mention this briefly now, until about the 5th draft
O'Donnell survived.
Right, okay.
And it was actually a faked death that was part of the bootstrap
paradox in order to make the doctor realise that Clara is next.
Right, okay.
But because it was part of the bootstrap paradox.
The doctor gave her a bulletproof vest.
I can see why they cut it because it's a bit too, you know, it's a
bit too.
Of course the doctor's been shot by a Dalek, but there's a
regenerating box in the corner.
And I know it winds up friend and contributor to the podcast, Kevin
Bernard, the wrong way.
Like he's spoken a lot about the treatment of O'Donnell in this
two-parter.
Yeah, she's kind of fridged, isn't she, I guess, essentially
because then it's all about Bennett's reaction and stuff.
We'll talk about that next week because, I mean, the time paradox
doesn't really hit until next week, we have the doctor going back
to before the flood towards the end of this episode and then we
have what look like the consequences of that for the cliffhanger
which is a pretty great cliffhanger.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a proper old style cliffhanger.
Yeah, yeah.
It is pretty good.
And it's not like most 2 parties, it doesn't spend 10 minutes of
the episode leading up to it.
Yes, exactly. yeah.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
And Toby Withhouse freely admits that the imagery of that
cliffhanger is taken from the television miniseries of pet
cemetery.
Okay. when a child appears outside the young Petrie Boy's window
as sort of a flying vampire figure and he sent that clip to Daniel
O'Hara and he's like, this is what I have in mind.
It's such a shame about Toby Whitehouse, because I really like a
lot of his previous episodes.
Town Call Mercy is Amazing.
God complex is really good.
School union is a script is really great.
He just doesn't land with this one.
I think that's a bit unfair.
I mean, your reaction is obviously a lot more negative than mine
and mine's not, well, mine's not really a negative reaction.
But not hugely negative, I have to say.
Like, I don't hate them, so I'm just a little bit not carried away
by it.
I just think it could be better.
It could be better structured.
I think the fundamentals are all there, and certainly it's very
very well made.
It's just, there are just ways you can, I think you could improve
it.
Rather than it being, rather than it being, no, chuck this away.
We're not we're not going to make this one.
Yeah.
I'm a bit more negative because I think you could improve it by
making it be about something for a start.
You know, like episode one is about ghosts and we get the mystery
of how come there are ghosts, you know, and that's, I suppose
something.
It's sort of a thing.
But we decide that the mystery is, no, they're actually ghosts or
something.
Like, what?
like something happens next week and I'm just not sure what's
going on there.
And then the following week is the bootstrap paradox thing, which
I think is done like a 1000000 times better in the Wedding of
River Song without a big giant speech and without a whole lot of
sort of song and dance about it.
It's like a throwaway line at the end of an episode.
But taking it back to the Impossible Planet, what makes Great
Doctor Who is not just having a big concept.
So, you know, okay, we're on an isolated base at the end of the
universe and the devil is there.
It's also that they then turn that into something.
It's thematically about faith and, you know, what faith means to
different people.
Whereas I think this episode is lacking that big driving force, but
also it's lacking talking about anything.
There's no theme that's derived from it.
No.
So the characters, like it's plot but no story.
That's a good way of putting it, actually.
Yeah, like lots of stuff happening.
There's been a script meeting and they've all discussed things
that should happen and how it should develop and blah, blah, blah
blah, and someone hasn't taken quite enough notes from it to then
put it all together.
You're right.
It's missing an element.
It's missing something else to make it truly satisfying as opposed
to just diverting.
Yeah, I think it is diverting and I did enjoy it.
I've watched it 3 times, I think, over this weekend and like I
wasn't bored, but but there's nothing there.
There isn't a there there.
And I think that it does good Doctor Who things in order.
On the surface, it looks great.
Yeah, Capaldi's really fun in it.
You know, like the regulars are both doing a really good job.
I like all of the characters, which I haven't done, for instance
in the gangers 2 parter, but it doesn't have the big idea that
even the gangers 2 parter has.
And actually, that's my takeaway from the episode.
It's Doctor Who going through the motion. to me.
I find those comments interesting because getting back to
something, I think you said earlier, Simon, about the sort of
thinness of the plot and the structure. what you were talking
about, the structure.
I actually really like the slow burn of this episode.
I feel like we have a feeling of dread rather than necessarily a
feeling of suspense, which I can understand isn't to everyone's
taste.
As for what the story is about outside of its own plot and the
paradox.
I think it is pushing along.
The idea of the magician's apprentice that Clara is getting too
close to the sun, to use Icarus as an example.
Does it advance it that much?
Perhaps not, but we do see the other characters here reacting to
it, and even more so next week when she puts Lunn in danger, and
there's that brilliant bit from cast of her very aggressively
signing, and Clara's saying, well, I don't need a translation for
that.
If I could talk about the sign language aspect for a moment.
Because I do have a friend who is deaf, so I have a little bit of
sign, as he puts it, I have the sign level of about a 4 year old
but...
I do have a little bit of sign, and Ozlan, Australian sign
language, is quite similar to British sign language, but just
listening to how they did it on the set.
So they had Sophie Stone, who outside of the show users hearing
aids, but couldn't use them in the show.
They have Zaki Ismail, whose older sister is deaf.
So he already knew sign language.
This is his 1st television.
Wow.
And and he was hired because he knew sign language.
And something Sophie says on the commentary is because someone in
his family is deaf, he signs differently from a professional
interpreter.
And it creates, she said, you know, people who don't know sign may
not know this, but it creates that feeling of intimacy between me
and him because he's signing casually.
Right, right.
But she also said, in the script, my character talks about nuclear
fission.
There is no sign for nuclear fission.
And she's like, so you have to spell it out or use other terms, and
it was taking too long.
So that line was given to someone else because otherwise it's just
people watching him moving his hands.
And she's like, for other stuff, we made up new signs because
we're 200 years in the future.
And sometimes we just shot over his shoulder.
So you can't see what he's signing for the more complex things.
And she just talks about, you know, how the production really
worked to adapt it.
Capaldi was really keen to make sure that he was communicating
with her as an actress and as a character to get it all right.
And she says, funny story with Jenna.
Those scenes in the Faraday cage.
Jenna took ages to understand that in order for Sophie to
understand her, she needed to see her lips.
Yeah, right.
And she's like, but then we talked with Daniel O'Hara, the
director, and we made that part of their relationship because they
were antagonistic towards each other in that scene.
Um, and Toby Whithouse does say with the deafness aspect, it came
from, he wanted a character who could lip read.
Well, who could lip read, naturally, a deaf person, but also he'd
done sort of diversity training and kind of went, well, I don't
want to make it that is her whole character, but it does mean she
reacts to situations differently.
And so I think that that way it's written really.
It's just her character has written so well for me.
I really liked all of that.
I think.
And that is one of the strengths of the episode.
And that it doesn't kind of find a space way of getting around the
fact that she can't hear.
We just have to sign and we see we see Lunn signing.
And I love the moment where Lunn kind of is so used to just
speaking forecasts that when he's asked who's in charge.
He says, I am, but he's just relaying her word.
I think that's insured.
As in her.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I think too, like they do make an effort this episode to
foreshadow the conclusion to next week's episode where we discover
everyone's in love with everyone else.
Suddenly, it's like a Midsummer night's dream. you know 60 fathoms
underwater.
Um, and they, there's that scene where where everyone escapes
after locking the ghosts in the Faraday cage and Lon and Cass are
kind of hugging and congratulating one another, um, Bennett and
O'Donnell are as well and Clara's kind of like the 5th wheel going
you know, I'm okay too, by the way, just in case anyone cared.
So they did make an attempt, I think, to do that.
And I do think the closeness of Cass and Lun is sold here, I
think.
And just having that information about how he signed just adds to
that, I think.
This put me in mind of Hyde, it's an episode that sets out to be
something and isn't quite it at the end of the day.
So Hyde wants to be a ghost story like this is.
And so it says, that's great. do a doctor ghost story, and that'll
be really creepy, except that it's not.
It actually turns out to be quite boring, Hyde.
And I feel the same about this to a lesser degree in that I can
see what it's setting out to do.
I just don't think that the end result really justifies setting
out to do that.
Well, that's what you're saying is what Nathan said before.
I think the problem with both of them is that it's missing that
additional element to make it actually interesting.
Yeah, I mean, Hyde does at least have a thematic thing where
you've got the 2 leads, you know, the 2 guest stars in love with
one another, but not fully aware of it, and then we get the creepy
monster in love with the other creepy monster.
Do you know what I mean?
But I mean, that's so ludicrous and it happens so close to the end
of the episode anyway, that it doesn't end up telling us anything
or being interesting in any particular way.
Here, I think ghosts and then time paradox.
Neither of those are interesting enough ideas to hang an episode
on.
And so there's fun things that happen.
It's kind of treating it like it's a new, interesting idea.
Like, we should be really invested in this.
I've seen this 100 times before.
Picking up on what Tom said a couple of weeks ago about Dr. and
the Clara in the Tartar, same old, same old.
Maybe there is an element here that, you know, Stephen Moffatt and
Toby is, so Stephen Moffatt is like the time paradox guy in Doctor
Who, yeah?
And Toby Withouse creates being human.
And the whole Faraday cage in this, by the way, was an idea for a
plot in being human that didn't materialise.
I think there is a machine in series 2 of being human that...
Yeah, originally it was a Faraday cage and then it got changed to
something else.
So perhaps part of the problem is for Stephen Mofford and Toby
Whitehouse, this is just bread and butter and normal.
And sometimes they forget that actually, this is a new and
exciting idea.
And I think the opening monologue next week tries to do that, and
Toby Withouse was very surprised he got it passed.
Got it past the draft stage.
Yeah, maybe that is what, where things fall a bit flat.
As you say, Peter, that we're just treating this like business as
usual when it's like this should be exciting.
And if we look back to like Day of the Daleks, the doctor is quite
blasé about the idea of goes from the future, but the reason we
think it's exciting is because Joe is freaked out by being in a
haunted house and constantly questions who could these people
possibly be?
We do try and sell the ghosts as a big deal though, don't we?
Because the doctor, there's that fantastic moment where the doctor
kind of goes, you know, they only come out at night.
They kind of see through, 0 my god, they're really ghosts and he's
super excited.
The TARDIS doesn't like the ghosts and doesn't want to be near
them.
You know, there's something about breaking that fundamental rule
of the universe, that everyone dies and then they're dead.
Like there's a lot of talk to try and make ghosts a big deal.
But the trouble is that they're not really a big deal.
And even in the Doctor Who context, there have been so many aliens
that are ghosts, you know, the Vardens, the Gelf, you know, like
all of this sort of thing, we've had this over and over again over
the years.
And so it's not as interesting as I think it wants to be or not as
not as big a deal as the script seems to make of it, I think.
And even going back to something like Day of the Daleks, there's
always rational explanations for what ghosts are.
And so we're just waiting for that.
It's going to happen at some point.
And it never does.
Spoilers for next week.
It turns out there really goes, you know, like it's sort of
something.
I don't even know what it is.
Our explanation includes the word souls.
So I don't think it can be said to be an explanation.
Do you know what I mean?
It's just like more words describing the thing.
Well, that was the responsibility of thumb script exec Lindsay
Alford.
Okay.
Because basically Toby Woodhouse is like, I want to use ghosts, but
we need to come up with a scientific explanation.
And Moffat said, well, that's Lindsay Alford's job.
And so she researched and there are theories that spectral
happenings are a result of electromagnetism.
And that's where the Faraday cage cuts in. the car before the
horse.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's very much, we want a story with ghosts.
How can we scientifically make this work?
I think we had a discussion.
Oh, I can't remember where in maximum power series C, but we were
talking about how they come up with some ridiculous science to
justify a world. what episode it was now.
I mean, it was kind of like.
Well, I mean, the fact that they land on electromagnetism and that
they give them the ability and there's that great moment where the
doctor says, oh, and 0 my God, I only just realised that I noticed
that, you know, that they can only touch and manipulate metal
objects.
And I think there's 2 really terrific seeds, which is one where
Moran's ghost is dragging the axe along the floor.
And then that other superb scene where Lan is menaced by a ghost
and we recreate the, you know, alien 3 moment with Sigourney
Weaver. and then the ghost goes and picks up like the world's
biggest spanner.
I was about to brain him with it.
Yeah.
And like all of that works quite well.
I think the mystery, you know, like why does he not get attacked?
Like, I think that mystery is solved in a good way, you know, the
way that they noticed that the ghosts want to show them the inside
of the spaceship.
All of that sort of stuff is really good, like the deductions and
stuff.
I don't know.
So I think there's some good visuals and good bones, you know.
Oh, there's definitely good visual.
And then living quarters are good bones, apparently.
I've remembered which podcast it was where we discussed how
terrible science can ruin something for you and um, and it's, you
know, it's a responsibility.
Yeah, at the risk of reopening old wounds and making daddy and
daddy fight again, it was killer mood.
Well, speaking of that, what about Orion's belt?
Simon, I was expecting you to be able to tell us that just because
the sort of Orion appears like 3 stars in a line in the sky
they're not going to be 3 lines in three-dimensional space that
eventually points out.
I haven't actually checked that.
Well, it's certainly not the point.
They're certainly not going to point to earth because when we're
looking at them, they're pointing in different directions.
Over somewhere else.
It's just, but also, I just found that a bit kind of, it was just
a very long bow, that was a thing.
And, okay, they decided they wanted to put in the script to some
reference to an actual constellation, a real constellation out
there that you can see.
But I just worry that in the modern era, people just don't know
that sort of stuff.
They wouldn't even know what the sort of variety is.
They would barely know.
I mean, with light pollution in cities, you can barely see it
anyway.
Yeah, and the whole three-dimensions thing pointing is just
wrong.
It's kind of like, we have to have the ghosts chanting this
stuff.
So what are they going to chant?
they're going to chant like a coordinate so that each thing has to
be some kind of, you know, poetic reference.
It can't just be, it can't just be soul 3 or something, you know
it has to be a, something in detail and, uh, some, something come
always, it's just terrible.
And Nathan, you do a podcast on 90s Star Trek.
You know that space is 2D and not 3D. Yes, exactly, right?
So there is this weird system, and I can't remember what it's
called, and I will undoubtedly research it and put it in the show
notes now that I'm saying this. where every spot on earth, and I
think it's like 2 by 2 metre squares or something, is specified by
3 dictionary words.
And because, yeah, there's enough words in the world that you can
divide up the earth's surface and specify a very, very specific
place with 3 words.
Now, here it's just not going to work in any way at all.
I do like the words that are chosen.
Like it's the dark, the sword, the forsaken, the temple.
There's something mythic about it and that works really.
Well, it works well with the revelation that the monster is the
fisher king, although that just appears to be a name, uh, and
nothing sort of particularly to do with our theory and legend or
anything.
But I think that sounds wonderful, but not for a 2nd does it
convinces a potential coordinate that specifies a particular
building anywhere in the use.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, if it was 2 stars forming the sort of Orion, obviously there
would be a line that went through all of them.
But if there's three, then there's literally no chance that
there's a straight line that goes through all three.
No, no, no, no, there's always...
It's infinitesimal chance.
And they do get the detail right that one's a nebula, which is
good.
That was good, but that's so, so brief that it's like, well, who's
going to remember?
It's just, I think if you're going to do the sign.
I mean I know we don't want to do the science lesson, but I just I
just think that it's it could have been done a bit more
interestingly.
Well, it just comes from the Terry Nation school of not knowing
what a constellation, a universe or a galaxy are. or a solar
system.
Or famously a quadrant.
Actually, to be fair, to be fair, those 3 bodies, one of which is
a nebula, are actually only 600, are within 600 light years of
each other.
And they're about to occur light years away from us.
But they're certainly not pointing towards us.
No.
That is a great visual, though.
I do think that that is good visual kind of storytelling.
We talked about character consistency before.
Don't you love the fact that the doctor has now done a complete
180 around his attitude to the military once again?
So, you know, he's all, you know, he's all trying to inspire them
with their vows about protecting and serving and so on.
Do you know, I actually really like that scene as well, and I
think Murray does a great job by putting a version of the doctor's
theme in there, and where even Bennett, who has one characteristic
which is that he's kind of scared of everything.
Even he agrees that staying behind is the right thing to do
because he, like the doctor is intrigued by the ghosts.
And I think that's a good doctorary moment.
That's what the doctor does.
He makes people better.
And so I really thought that scene landed really quite well.
But yes, like that military thing.
We're just going to now completely...
And the doctor's famous.
Like everyone knows who the doctor is now. tedious.
No.
Haven't they made like 3 different stabs at removing him from the
history of the universe?
and And then in the next episode, they've decided that he's famous
again.
It's just, you know.
And it's both Russell and Moffatt do it too.
If they don't want him to be continuously famous, he should stop
saving the universe.
No, he should keep telling everyone not to tell anyone like Pete
does in Frontios.
That's kind of amazing.
Next week, of course, I'm not going to be here.
So I just need to mention that the village that we visit next week
is around the year 1980, which means it's after...
You're not.
Now that means in terms of Doctor Who production, it's after Daryl
Blake, but before Gerald Flood.
Brilliant.
That is really funny.
That is really great.
That is pretty brave.
Well, Alyssa, it looks like the doctor's definitely dead this time
so we'll see you next week for what might turn out to be a very
short episode, indeed, in before the flood.
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 all our social media links, as well as
links to our other podcasts, Bondfinger, Jody Interterra, maximum
power, and untitled Star Trek project.
Until next time, remember that when furnishing an underwater base
it's important to only buy lights that make loud banging noises
when you turn them on and off.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Bang.
Good night.
Bye finesse.
That was Flight Through Entirety.
Sorry, Nathan Modernly, Peter Griffith, Sprinda, Jones, and Simon
Moore.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, baseless criticism, was recorded on the 13th of
August 2023, and released on the 1st of October.
A whole new era of Doctor Who starts next month, and the FDE
podcasting universe will be there to cover it with a flash cast
released a day or 2 after each new episode.
Watch this space for detail.
There's altogether too much heterosexuality going on in the space
though, I have to say.
Maybe I should save that for next week.
If there was a law, it would be against it.
The Fisher King's bisexual.
It's in a comic somewhere.
So it counts.
That's right.
He's the fishwife to his friends.
On Saturdays.
This put me in mind of Hyde.