Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast too cheap to commission an electric
guitar version of the theme tune this week.
I'm Nathan.
I'm James I'm Peter.
And I'm Fraser.
Well, last week we saw the consequences of the doctor's death.
So this week we'll be asking ourselves the question, if it's not
wrong to change the present, how can it be wrong to change the
future or the past?
Let's see if we can come up with an answer as we discuss before
the flood.
So, Fraser, you weren't here with us last week.
And so, how did you find the first part of this story?
It was really good.
I remember watching it, you know, 1st time round enough.
I remember the series night started with a really strong opening.
It had, which is familiar, Magician's Apprentice, and then you
came into under the lake and before the flood is the next 2 part
and I thought the 1st part was really, really strong.
The story.
Coming back to rewatch, again, thought exactly the same.
It's just classic based under siege, isn't it?
You know, you've got your cast of characters.
You've got a really claustrophobic, intense setting, gets warriors
of the deep done right underwater sea base, but it's damp.
It's rusty, you know, you can feel that moisture in the air, which
is what worries the deepest is sadly missing.
And then the ghosts coming in is tremendous fun as well with, you
know, just how spooky they are, the shimmer around the edges, the
missing eyes is just really quite terrifying for a family show.
You can see why this one went out a little bit later than the 7
o'clock slot.
And that just kind of builds up to that, that brilliant
cliffhanger of, you know, the doctor's gone back in time and then
what do you see out the window, but the doctor's ghost and in
comes the credits and you just say, all right, how are you going
to get out of this one?
It's absolutely classic, isn't it?
We were really positive about the cliffhanger.
And one of the things we said last week, too, was that it's really
fun to see Capaldi doing all of this stuff.
Capaldi did have a sort of base under siege with last Christmas
but that was all sort of ridiculous and made up plus Santa.
So this is his proper 1st base under siege and so he gets to be
dismissive of whoever's in charge and all of that sort of thing.
You know, he comes in like he owns the place.
It's really fun to watch and you can see that he's really enjoying
it.
He's having a wheel of a team, isn't he?
He's absolutely loving himself in this one.
And I think that's, that's, that's a bit of a difference between
you know, his 2nd series in his 1st series is how much more fun
his doctor seems to be having since he was 80, he seems to be kind
of, you know, he's a little bit tortured.
He's a little bit, am I a good man?
You know, why am I doing all of this?
When you get into series 9, he's cut loose a lot more and you
obviously have that scene with him where he is bouncing off the
walls of that control room until the rest of the crew have to
point out actually someone just died.
Our friend just died and he has to get these cards out.
So there's that element of his performance in here, which is
really enjoyable.
I think too, the way that this starts is really good.
So we get the traditional kind of previously on, but then we're
somewhere else, and we're somewhere that we haven't seen before
and we don't get a reprise as such.
We just get the previously on and then suddenly we're in 1980 in
the village.
And I'm not hugely sold on the village in a sense.
I don't think it's that fascinating a place, but I don't mind the
Soviet era propaganda posters.
I think that just about sells it.
No, absolutely.
I think it's a really interesting idea, but they don't do anything
with it, really.
It's just a backdrop.
There's nothing which is integral to the story.
And it could have been really fascinating.
Having said that, I do think I was a little bit underwhelmed
by...
Under the lake, I'm more whelmed by this episode.
Oh, I think it's actually, because we do change location because
there is more happening in the story and we are cutting back to
the base, I feel like it's more of a traditional doctor episode
whereas last week's episode, as I said, then it felt like we were
going through the motions a little bit, this is actually going off
on a slightly more interesting tangent.
It does that Moffat thing where the 2nd part of a two-parter has
to pivot and do something significantly different.
So, you know, changes location, changes the gear of the story
turns everything on its head, which keeps things interesting, I
think.
So he introduces 2 new elements.
So we get to see the village, which we had seen submerged out the
window at the beginning of last week.
And then we get this time paradox thing.
And that is sort of hinted at, it's gestured at at the end of last
week, but it really comes in here.
So that opening, so you remember the opening of listen, right?
And the doctor is talking to himself, and he's really genuinely
talking to himself, he's in the TARDIS.
He's going a bit bonkers and he's starting to talk to himself and
he's starting to theorise about why people talk to themselves.
And the normal answer to a question like that is because this is a
soliloquy and, you know, you're in a show and we need to know what
you're thinking.
But there's a real reason he doesn't have a companion this week.
That's right That's right.
And so there's a real reason for it because he's going a bit
mental and he is talking to himself and he's theorising about why
people talk to themselves.
Here we don't have that.
This doesn't happen.
Like, spoiler alert, none of it happens, right?
It's a TV show.
But this doesn't happen.
Like, but it actually works really well because I think the
doctor's a great lecturer.
And so having him deliver a lecture to us is really great.
But I found myself surprised that we made such heavy weather of
the actual paradox.
It's like there's this new and interesting thing, a time paradox.
It's like, have you seen doctor?
I do like the line where he says, it's the bootstrap paradox.
Google it.
Like I thought that was brilliant.
Like, that was really...
That was really great.
But essentially, I think at least one of Matt Smith's fezes is a
bootstrap paradox fez that doesn't have any actual origin.
It's a hat strap.
That's right.
I think that time crash is a bootstrap paradox where the 10th
doctor remembers how to solve the thing because when he was the
5th doctor.
He listened to the 10th doctor talking about how to solve the
thing.
And so that solution doesn't come from anywhere.
And I think, too, the predestination paradox that we have here
which is the doctor is definitely, definitely dead.
And how do we get out of this is what season 6 is it all about?
And get solved really quite kind of deftly in a funny way at the
end of season 6 where the doctor just...
No, no, that seriously.
So, you know, the doctor almost forgets that he has to solve the
problem of the death at Lake Salencio.
And so he sticks his head around the corner just after speaking to
the test elector and says, oh, actually, wait, there is one thing
I can get you to do.
And then he solves that problem.
And so the essence of not changing time is changing what
everything means.
So what you see still happens, but it means something different
and that's how you change time.
So the box doesn't have the Fisher King in it.
It's got the doctor in it.
And I think maybe we probably predicted that in episode one if we
had our wits about us.
I mean, I would say yes.
Yeah, let's say yes.
It sounds smart. say yes. on the cutting room floor.
I think the Oakland's really good. because it goes from that
cliffhanger and it does that very moffety thing a bit doesn't
resolve the cliffhanger within the 1st couple of minutes.
Because you can't you can't resolve this cliffhanger. you know, the
cliffhanger is the doctor's dead.
You know, yeah, we don't get the resolution of the cliffhang until
the very end of the episode.
So we need to come in with something different.
So what they do is the spell out how they're going to get out of
it.
Yes.
And that's the clever bit.
I want to take you back to when you did flatline.
And Stephen B talked about the film, the prestige, the Christopher
Nolan film, the prestige, um, for the benefit of anyone listening
that didn't catch that episode or hasn't seen the film.
It basically is a magic act in 3 parts and at the very start of
the film.
Michael Kane spells out what the magic act is.
It's got 3 parts.
It's got the 1st part, which is the pledge, which is where the
magician says to you, this is the magic act I'm going to do.
The 2nd part is then the turn where the magician does the magic
act, does exactly what they said they're going to do, but then the
3rd part is where the real magic happens, which is the prestige
which is the unexpected, you know, what you didn't see coming.
So, in the film, the example is a disappearing bird in a cage, the
magician gets up, says, I'm going to make this burden, this cage
disappear, that's the pledge.
The turn is, the cage collapses, disappears.
Everyone claps everyone applauds, but then the magician brings the
bird back, makes the bird reappear.
So that's kind of what struck me about this. that opening, you
know, called open of Peter Capaldi explaining as the doctor
explaining the bootstrap paradox.
That's the pledge.
So that's sort of Toby Witow saying, this is what I'm going to
do.
You know, I'm telling you this because this is how it's going to
get resolved.
We have then, you know, if we, again, have our wits about us.
We'll be watching this episode, then waiting for this to play out
thinking where is the bootstrap paradox going to be in this, and
if we get to it at the end, if we get to the point where the
doctor pops out and, you know, we totally predicted it or
absolutely surprised, then that's fantastic.
That's what it's done and then have the final scene where he kind
of like really spells it out and brings us back to that that cold
open with the um playing Beethoven's 5th on the guitar again that
brings it into a nice loop.
So that really struck me as, you know, this is Toby, which I was
trying to do a magic trick on us.
In fact, it turns out there's 2 different things going on here
isn't there?
And the one that is front and centre is how does the doctor get
out of this, the doctor's dead.
We see the consequences of his death at the end of the previous
episode.
When we go back in to this episode.
We're somewhere where that's not known yet.
And so the doctor doesn't know about any of that stuff and he has
to be told by Clara that his ghost has arrived over the phone.
And it's very clear that he has no plan.
Don't you think?
But he reacts as if he's about to die, even when he busts the
shoulder of his coat and says, all right, well, I have to go and
speak to the Fisher King now, he's reacting straightforwardly.
He's not hiding anything from us.
He hasn't got a solution yet.
He's doing it on the hop business.
It not a master plan.
No, no.
But then it turns out he has done some clever stuff, which we
weren't properly privy to.
And you remember he goes in and tells the Fisher King.
Oh, no, I erased the thing and now it's never going to happen.
You know, I erased all of the things.
And that's not, in fact, what he does.
That's not the trick.
And the trick is that he moves the suspended animation thing.
He blows up the dam using the other power cell and so on.
So he's just getting the future to happen.
And then it looks like at some point that we don't see before he
gets into the, before he gets into the, oh.
Actually, so before he gets into the sarcophagus thing, into the
suspended animation thing, he does all the programming.
So he programs the sonic sunglasses to connect to the base's Wi-Fi
and create a Dr. Ghost hologram which behaves in certain way.
And I wonder whether he's getting inklings of that idea when he
tells Clara that he has to know exactly what it is that the ghost
is doing.
Yeah, maybe.
When does he have time to do this unless he's doing it whilst he's
talking to the Fisher King?
Well, doesn't he just, but doesn't he just hop into the thing, do
all his programming and then press the suspend animation button
and then wake up?
I just assumed that like...
He's actually in the box where the Fisher King comes back.
Why not?
I mean, he's got half an hour, hasn't he?
Because the tortoise hops back in time, so he's got kind of half
an hour.
The, the, do the sort of back to the future 2 thing of, you know
going back and re-seeing the events, which they can't interfere
with. and then... which they do on Father's Day as well.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
Actually, did did O'Donnell hear Bennett the 1st time?
Yes.
Because there is a moment.
I went back and had a look.
There is a moment where she looks off to the side, but it is not
highlighted at all with us.
Right, right.
Because that shot of her is so beautiful.
I mean, she I think she's really great in this episode.
Like I think she comes to life.
She was pretty good in the 1st episode, but I think she really
comes to life in this episode.
And there's a beautiful shot of her from Bennett's point of view
where like there's some, you know, behind her head and she looks
stunning and stuff and that's what sort of inspires him to get up
and save her.
She's reading the business card of the Tiboolian and...
She's, and it's, yeah, it's just, you know, this is, this person
you know, living their best life.
She is the fan of the doctor.
She is now involved in one of the doctor's adventures.
She's kind of, you know, got, you know, another 5 minutes left to
live, unfortunately, but she is just living our best life at the
moment and that's what Bennett says, isn't it?
She's quite Ozgoody, isn't she?
Yes.
Yeah, with that fangurling thing, and she knows a lot more about
the doctor.
Like, she name checks Rose and Martha and Amy.
Man.
Yeah, and there's that, there's a kill the moon reference.
What about the killer reference?
It's also a tortured and Sarah Jane Adventures reference as well.
The Arcatinians, the ones that liberate the Tavolians and then
enslave them.
Are the weird fishy aliens with the floating tendrils of hair from
like Greeks bearing gifts and invasion of the bane.
Well, he writes Greeks bearing gifts, doesn't he?
Like, we'd have rights there.
Yes, he does.
Yeah, yeah.
Yes, okay.
So he's reusing them.
He's reusing the Devolians, obviously, from the god complex.
Actually, find the Tvolians quite annoying.
Yeah, I mean, it's a way of getting a comedian in, isn't it?
We get a comedian in, you know, like...
Is David Wallace comedian?
Well, I know David Williams, but I don't know this guy.
Paul Kay?
I don't actually know who he is.
Suppork here made his name as a comedian in the UK in the sort of
mid to the late 90s.
He was a bit of an LEG type character, um, called Dennis Pennis
who would, um, rolling with laughter.
But the routine would basically be, as Dennis Pennessy would be
the sort of like ginger American character with a microphone who
would go up to, you know, celebrities on the red carpet, but, you
know, film premiers and more and ask them, you know, pretty
offensive, you know, questions for, for the sake of laughs, a
classic example, as he went up to Steve Martin and said, so Steve
Martin, why are you not funny anymore?
when he was kind of, wow.
Dangerous territory for media, yeah.
Yeah, so it's kind of like shock jock humour for, you know, the
sort of AliG age.
Dennis didn't last very long, but that's really how we made his
name.
He then obviously moved on into acting more serious roles.
Most recently, he's been seeing as Thorus of Mia in Game of
Thrones.
Oh, okay.
The sort of red priest who keeps bringing Dondarien back to life.
So he's had, he has bad more, more sort of serious acting ones, but
he was primarily a comedian when he 1st started out.
I have a couple of observations about this.
I think tackling a bootstrap paradox.
It's probably a good thing for Doctor Who to do, but as we've
pointed out, it has been done previously as a joke by Moffat in
kind of time crash and a little bit in series 6 as well.
And so I'm not quite sure why it merited having a whole episode
about it.
I don't mind it, but it's actually not that interesting, I find.
I mean, I think that's what I found the problem with this story a
little bit last week.
So last week the mystery was ghosts, and although that produced
some scares and some atmosphere and some solid Doctor Who stuff, it
wasn't groundbreaking.
And then this week where it's the paradox thing, that seems sort
of well worn ground as well.
And so this kind of lacks the big idea that some of his other
scripts have, like the God complex, or like a town called Mercy
where there is a really strong central idea, I'm just not quite
sure what that strong idea is here.
And I think it is a lot of Doctor Who stuff done well, but it
doesn't have the edge, I think, to say the Impossible Planet has.
Yeah, I guess that's it.
Although, the ice warriors, the ice warriors.
That's great.
Shut up.
It is.
It's great.
It is.
Probably great.
For me, I don't think the story was necessarily the bootstrop
paradox.
I think the paradox was just the way of tying ends up at the end.
I always think back to the episode of The Simpsons, which is the
Lord of the Flies parody, where the school bus crashes, the kids
end up on an island, it all goes, Lord of the Flies are about to
eat Milhouse or Martin Prince or someone, and Bart stops them, and
then you have this pan back at the very end of the episode, pans
back from this island, and James Hill, Jones voice comes in and
says, well, the children all learned a valuable lesson here today
and oh, I don't know.
Let's just say that we're rescued by.
Oh, I don't know, let's say Moe.
It's just that.
It's the idea that, you know, the final resolution isn't really
quite as important as what's happened beforehand.
So that, again, struck me as this is, you know, the bootstrap
paradox bit is how it's solved at the end, you know, you go
through this whole story thinking, well, are they ghosts, or
they're not ghosts, and it's never really properly answered.
It's just electromagnetic projections and technobabble and, you
know, you never really get a good sense of, you know, how how is
the Fisher King made ghosts, essentially.
It's just...
I think I said last week that the explanation had the word souls
in it, and so it didn't really constitute an explanation.
It was really just saying the same thing in different words.
It's like he turned people's souls into electromagnetic kind of
things that can pick up metal and like whatever.
Like it was never really going to be very good, which is why it's
not a great central mystery in episode one.
And then here, it's not so much the bootstrap paradox as the
doctor's reluctance to change time.
And he doesn't want to do it and the Fisher King makes fun of him
for still kind of obeying those rules.
Clara tells him off and says just break the rules.
It doesn't matter.
And he even kind of does this feint to the fisher king where he
says, yeah, I erased the inside of your hearse and now none of
this is going to have happened.
And I always have a problem with these things, which is the idea
that there are moral rules that govern time travel seems like
nonsense to me, that you can do a thing in the present day, but if
you travel back in time a year and do the same thing that's
wrong.
And I don't get that.
Like, I just, that doesn't land for me in any kind of real sense.
And so, for instance, with Waters of Mars, which I think is a
brilliant story, it's like, why does the doctor not just go, I
don't care about the rules of time?
I'm going to save these people because what I always do is ignore
the rules in order to save people.
And that's what we love about the doctor.
That's what Bob Holmes kind of creates, I think.
So that is the thing.
I think that that's kind of the central, like when we're having
conversations about stuff that's mostly what we're having
conversations about in this episode.
So I think that there is a kind of ingenious way of solving it, but
it's, we just told it in a way, you know, we just told it.
And suddenly the base has the ability to project holograms outside
the windows for some reason, like whatever.
Like it doesn't matter. you know, I guess.
But we have whatever we need for that to sort of kind of work.
But it's nowhere near as clever as, you know, river looking into
the doctor's eye in the wedding of river song and seeing a tiny
doctor wave back at her because he's solved the problem
undetectably.
So it doesn't look like time's been changed at all and
everything's fine.
It's less fun, I think, than that.
Nathan, all true.
And also to Fraser's points about the fact that bootstrap paradox
is just a means to an end.
I think that's the problem if you're introducing a bootstrap
paradox, then you've got to commit to it, which is why we then
have the scene at the beginning where you have to explain it and
suddenly it becomes bigger than what it is.
And so the episode becomes about the bootstrap paradox and that's
not very interesting.
So it's not what the episode's about.
But it's kind of one unanswered question at the end of the episode
and I like those.
Yes.
But it's not actually clearly shown to be a bootstrap paradox in
the episode itself. that you don't see enough of it.
So they have to lampshade at the beginning and the end to say, well
this is how we solved it.
And that's tell, don't show.
I mean, you're not actually, it's like, oh, we did something
clever.
We didn't show you it.
We just told you we did something clever at the end.
Yeah, because he explains, no, I did all of that stuff because you
told me that I had done it.
And so why did I originally do it?
Well there's none of that because we've got this causality loop
thing happening.
And so there's no 1st cause to any of this.
It's no, I went back and bribed the architect first.
Yes, but like I said, we did it in time crash and it was for a
throwaway gag.
Maybe bootstrap paradoxes, I like other time, things they're only
good for cheap tricks.
Like the doctor says in Smith and Jones.
Ambassadors of death.
I want to talk about the Fisher King.
El Sandafar, noted critic of Doctor Who calls it the bone
vervoid.
James is bursting to say something rude and unbroadcastable about
it.
I call it the fishwife king.
So is the Fisher King the latest in the long tradition of Doctor
Who Monsters that in some way resemble human genitalia?
Yep, you're not getting that as a title this week, James, but I
can't, because Fraser's here.
Do you want me to see her that lane then you don't?
Yeah, you can take the latest example of blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, we'd love to see the Erato meets the Fisher King.
Yo, no, I don't think we would.
So, again, it's quite good when it's offscreen.
And like hilariously, it gets 3 credits, right?
So you know how we get voice of Alpha Centauri is Zan Churchman.
Body of Alva Centauri is what?
Stuart Fell.
Here we get voice of the Fisher King.
The Fisher King is played by a massively tall person, someone
called Neil Fingleton, who is the tallest person ever recorded in
Britain, and then the tallest person in Europe, and he died
tragically, from being tall, he had a heart attack and died at the
age of 37.
And then the person who took over from him was in a cut scene in.
Can you hear me?
playing another Doctor Who monster, the guy who took over as
tallest person in England.
So if you're the tallest person in England, we should mention this
to Cy, possibly.
If you're the tallest person in England, you have a fair chance.
I didn't mention it to Brendan because I thought...
If you're the tallest person in England, you have a fair chance of
becoming a Doctor Who monster.
But the voice is Peter Serafinowitz, and then separately credited
is the roar of the Fish King. who is Corey Taylor, who was for a
while the lead singer of Slipknot.
So he does the raw.
It's sad that we were missing Fisher King movement by Rosalind.
De Winter, yeah, yeah.
So it's Peter Serafinoitz as the voice, and last week we had the
incredible Colin McFarlane, who was the voice of the host in
Voyage of the Damned, and now doesn't get to do anything besides
whisper those words over and over again in this episode.
And you've got Peter Serafinowitz, who was, of course, Darth Mall
in the 2 lines that Darth Mall gets in The Phantom Menace and is
terribly funny and hilarious and just got, he's just got an
incredible voice.
He's fantastic.
He's another comedian as well.
Again, he started out his career as a comedian comedy writer
before moving on to, you know, more CVC actor and roles.
I know investors the tick from the Amazon series.
Yes, of course. which is he's absolutely pitch perfect in.
I mean, I would say the Fisher King is more funny, strange than
funny.
Ha ha.
He was also in that episode of black books, wasn't he?
Yes, he was in black.
Was it was it him in that episode of Black?
Yes, yes.
He's reading the shipping news in the episode of Black books.
Is he the person responsible for that fake series of science
videos called Look Around You, which occasionally people at my
school put on in class and just wait and see how long it is before
the children realise that this is absolutely ridiculous?
And there's a film about water and stuff like that.
It's absolutely hilarious.
And of course, he's Brian Butterfield, who is famous for the Brian
Butterfield diet, which I will lead to in the show notes, and you
should all watch immediately because it's absolutely superb.
Yes, you know they mean 2 seasons of look around you.
Oh, yeah, okay.
And it is him, isn't it?
It is him, yes.
Yes.
It is him. yeah.
No.
It's like, yeah, he's one of the leads in it.
It's really funny.
I mean it's properly brilliant, I think.
I mean, talking about latest in the long line of the Fisher King
is the latest in the long line of Doctor Who monsters who look
fine when they're in the shadows, well, you take them out and put
them on location and shoot them in wide shot.
They just look ridiculous.
Yeah, that that shot of him sort of stumbling out of the church is
hoodwobbling.
Yeah, is not great, is it?
And he's a bit of a nothing monster, isn't he?
Like, he's called a fisher king and you kind of expect it to have
some kind of mythological King Arthur thing happening, but not
really.
And so he gets off some zingers at the doctor, you know, and the
time lords and stuff.
But he's a little bit nothing, I think.
He's a bit like Tim Shaw in that he sort of thinks he's a big
villain, but he's small fry compared to all the doctor.
Yeah, maybe that's it.
Maybe that's it.
I think the issue with the Pisha King really is one of the
strengths of this story for me is the way that it does have the
1st part which is set in one location and the 2nd part going back
in time.
I mean, that's the real interesting part of the story is when we
go back in time to see what's led to these events that are
happening, you know, saying the before the now, as it were.
And that's a real strength, but also it's a bit of a weakness
because it means that we don't actually get to be introduced to
the Fisher King until about, you know, 3rd of the way through the
2nd part, so most of the story's gone before we're even introduced
to this character who is supposed to be a big bad, the big evil.
And so he comes across as a bit of a nothing because there's no
chance to give him any sort of backstory.
All we get is from Prentice, you know, that the Fisher King
enslaved our world, then someone else came and enslaved us, which
were more thankful for and so on and so forth.
So you don't get any sense of menace or danger from.
Yes, he kills Puo O'Donnell, but that's the only, you know, on
screen death, we say, you know, he kills 2 characters.
There's nothing else there because we don't have the time to give
them anything else there.
In terms of stomping up to the ship, yeah, that is, you know, a
weak shot, you know, it does remind me of what would happen if one
of the vervoids became one of the dominators, then all that
costume. watch the hell out of that.
But at the same time, when it comes to his final end, the final
shot of the Fisher King with him stood in front of the oncoming
flood with his arms outstretched.
It's pretty correct in that kind of fate with his role.
I thought that was a brilliant shot. as a white show of this
episode.
That was a really effective shot for me.
He sort of, I did want to go, whee. got pulled out of shot.
But it was pretty great.
And it is sort of epic like with the crashing waters and stuff.
I still don't know where all the water comes from and why that
lake is now so deep when that dam is so short.
The water's so deep that you have to build a base all the way
under there. rather than just kind of like put boats there or
something like that.
I actually have to say that was one of my issues with this story
and I don't get a defined sense of place.
We know that the drum is in that lake, but I never get when they
go back in time, the idea that that's the same place that the drum
is there right there in future time.
They do show you the kind of flooded village in one shot out the
window.
See, we generally, unanimously, I have to say, because Simon's not
here, didn't think very much of the ganga's two-parter.
That's putting it kindly.
Well.
But I thought that the, that, that place, again, we had no real
sense of where that place was or why or why they were mining for
acid or any of that.
But there was a kind of a weirdness about that place that didn't
make it a standard base under siege.
And then the decision to shoot it in sort of various castles and
stone buildings and stuff like that.
Like it was a murky looking episode and stuff, but it did lend an
edge to it.
Here, here.
I think the corridors, as you said at the beginning, phraser, like
that base, I think, looks properly good.
And I said last week that, you know, money and technology and
stuff has come on and it looks better in lots of ways than even
than the base on the Impossible Planet.
But it doesn't, like, it just doesn't make any sense.
Like they're drilling for oil in 2119 for a start and I do like
the doctor's reaction to learning that Richard Pritchard was an
oil company guy, like he just sort of tosses the oil thing away.
Oil, okay.
And, you know, throws his business card away.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But like, why are they building a underwater base in a fairly
shallow lake somewhere in Scotland?
Like I just, who knows?
whatever.
What's what's the, the version of Space Reasons then?
Scottish reason?
We said last week that, well, I said last week, people disagreed
with me that I didn't think the direction was very strong on this
episode, and I think that's the same this week.
I think it's let down in a number of ways.
And I think that it would have been more interesting to have had
that town, that military town and all of its bits, like they go
into an office at one and there's like a dummy behind a desk and
posters up.
The camera doesn't dwell on them in any way, whereas actually you
would have been placed more in the environment if it had been set
up properly on screen, whereas it's just there in long shot in the
background.
And that's why it feels a little bit murky.
The whole thing does.
Part of the problem too is that that sort of comes out of
nowhere.
So it's a town in Scotland that was made up to look like a Russian
town.
We do know that that's the sort of thing that did happen during
the Cold War.
Maybe 1980s too late for it, but that does seem to be the sort of
thing that was going on.
And it is shot at Ministry of Defence facility.
Do you remember the town of Christmas?
Wasn't the town of Christmas shot?
in a location.
What's it called?
Phubia town.
What's?
Phibia, fighting in built up areas.
Right, okay.
Yeah.
So it was a training thing, the town of Christmas on the planet of
Christmas.
Fubar is far beyond all repair.
It was fine, but the doctor was not.
I think the location, you're all right, doc, it isn't used most
effectively.
You kind of think, well, why does it need to be a Scottish
village?
Why does it need to be a Scottish village pretend to be a Soviet
village?
Why can't it just be a Soviet village or why can't it be?
Any of the others?
I don't think it necessarily takes anything away.
But it doesn't necessarily add anything either.
It's just kind of there.
It feels like it should be an interesting setting.
Yeah, it's not quite.
It could be.
That the thing, isn't it?
I think there is, you know, a lot of elements of this that could
be a little bit more interesting if maybe's, you know, we had a
little bit more time or if it wasn't quite, you know, spread
across 2 episodes in the way that it was, again, you know, kind of
strengths and weaknesses about them and that, you know, we could
have had a whole episode just set in this village and, you know
rather than having to cut backwards and forwards between the base
and earn another story.
Even it been like properly before the flood, in a sense that
there's something else going on where it's not already abandoned.
Yeah, like it's abandoned before it gets flooded.
Maybe, who knows?
I mean, it's clearly not a Russian village because not all of the
people on the base in 2119. you know, all of the people in the
base in 2119 are British.
And so, you know, we're not going to do Cold War again.
So, so I guess it has to be in Scotland.
It looks, I mean, you know, like the location is a good location
but I think maybe you're right.
Maybe the director lets it down.
You kind of think that he had Saul Metstein, the previous episode
and then Nick Haran, the episode before that.
He has been very lucky to get some incredible directors and some
great actors, you know, cast in his previous scripts, and here
he's been a little bit less lucky, and so the whole thing looks a
bit too nondescript, I think.
I think also the whole of this series so far has been given a very
heavy grade.
And so it all looks quite dingy.
Oh, yeah.
Magician's Apprentice did.
The bass does and also on the location in the town does.
But it wouldn't have taken a whole lot to just dwell on the
details.
Do you remember the curse of Fenwick when you go into Commander
Millington's office and it's made up as a Nazi office?
Is it Hitler's office?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that's just an interesting detail, but it adds a lot to the
storytelling, whereas here we don't even get that level of going
into it.
I don't mind it though.
I don't mind this episode.
It's just a bit nondescript.
Yeah, I mean, I enjoyed this episode.
I think it's one of the stronger ones.
In terms of the direction, I think you are, right, that it's
there's nothing sings about the direction.
I don't think there's anything necessarily poor about it.
It's just, It is just a directed episode of Doctor Who.
I think, you know, Daniel O'Hara, the director doesn't come back.
There's nothing in this to suggest why you would actually want
them to come back.
Yeah, you don't want that on rotten tomatoes, do you?
A directed episode of Doctor Who.
I think we've touched on this already in the episode.
Like, it doesn't do anything poorly.
No.
But, you know, it doesn't, it's not terrible.
It's, it's, it's, it's workmanlike.
It's a, it does a lot of Doctor Who type things well.
But it doesn't stand out.
So I have to make a confession that this is as far as I've got in
my rewatching of series 9 and I am, I think, probably not going to
get very far ahead of where we go.
So I'm not in a position to say where this sort of sits in
relation to the season as a whole.
And I also am not really in a position to say what I think about
the season as the whole.
As I said, I haven't really gone back to this very much and it's
the season of Doctor Who that I know least well, I think.
That's okay, Nathan. that why we do retrospective Then I can bring
out my polished opinions.
But Todd, I think it's worth saying that Todd really rates this
and I can see why as well, because it is Doctor Who things that
are very well done.
And because he loves Peter Capoldi and he's right to do so.
I think he enjoys Peter Capoldi doing these Doctor Who things.
And that is a proper pleasure that the episode affords.
And I can completely see why people do like this.
I absolutely see that.
I say it's working online, but I thoroughly enjoyed it mainly for
those, for the same reasons as Todd.
Like, it's Doctor Who done well with a good doctor.
Like one, probably one of the better actors to ever, ever played
this character.
Yeah, same reason I like Time Lash.
And he just gets it.
He just gets Doctor Who.
Exactly.
No, that's exactly it.
You know, it hits so many beats, doesn't it?
You know, I've got a few continuity references in.
You've got, you know, Peter Capaldi enjoying himself being the
doctor and the doctor enjoying doing Doctor Who things.
In terms of the series as a whole.
I think, you know, one of the problems with the season why
potentially people don't go back to revisit it is because it is a
series of 2 partners.
So, you know, if you want to watch and enjoy this episode
technically you have to watch the one beforehand and if you watch
the one beforehand, then you feel, well, I've got to come back and
watch this one as well.
So, you know, in terms of dipping in and out as a rewatch, that
kind of hampers it, you know, if I sit and I've go, well, you know
I'm not ready for bed yet.
I'm going to put an episode of Doctor Who on, I wouldn't
necessarily come to this series, and that's one of the reasons
why.
Where it sits in the series is interesting because it's very arc
light.
Yeah.
The arc for the series being for better or worse, the hybrid, and
there's no mention of the hybrid throughout.
So that makes it a bit more accessible as is just a, as I want to
enjoy by itself, and it does feel very much like a standalone
episode.
There is the theme, one of the themes of the series rather than an
Arca theme is Clara becoming the doctor.
And that is very evident in the 1st part under the lake where the
doctor even, you know, points it out and says there's only room
for one of me in this tortoise.
And it's...
It's kind of shoehorned in at the beginning of the episode.
There's only one me.
Yes. definitely.
And in this episode, it's very obvious when Clara sends Lun out to
get the phone, which allegedly they need, they don't actually need
the phone anymore.
I think everything's been done at that point, but, you know, she
we need this phone and we must contact the doctor, so you must go
out and get it.
And there's no argument and she literally says, you know, the
doctors taught me how to make these decisions.
We're seeing that very, very clearly the theme of this series
Chloe becoming the doctor and taking risks with hers own and other
people's lives.
It's a very flatline moment, isn't it?
That moment.
And just another mention of how pretty Lun is, because I just
rewatched this episode just before recording and he is very
sweet.
I like his curly hair.
Yeah, those eyebrows are pretty amazing as well.
So it's actually funny, the Clara moment here, isn't it?
Because it isn't just the Clara sending Lund to go and get the
phone, which is great.
It's played really well.
Like, um, Cass's reaction, all of that stuff is really, really
terrific.
I think it's a proper solid B plot thing for them to be doing.
And I think it works really well.
You know, there's that thing where she starts to appear dependent
on the doctor.
And there was that thing in episode one, wasn't it, where he says
you need a hobby or you need a relationship?
It can't just be me.
And then when she's faced with the prospect of the doctor dying.
She says, you can't make yourself essential to me or something
like that and then die.
And so it's not just, it's not just that she's becoming the doctor
but that they're becoming weirdly codependent.
Remember that the doctor admits to Bennett, that the thing that's
making him change time is to save Clara.
He's not going to do that to save O'Donnell.
He's not going to do it to save himself.
He's doing it to save Clara.
And I think that that theme is inextricable from the arc, I think
because I can't remember where we land with the hybrid, but
there's every chance the hybrid is the doctor and Clara, isn't
it?
I don't know.
I can't even remember.
Don't think anyone ever knows who the hybrid is, to be honest.
All right, it is part two of a two part story, and so
traditionally, we have the peaks of the week.
James.
So if you like time travel and paradoxes, I don't think you can go
past Dirk Gently Celestic Detective Agency.
Which one Well, the original...
Yeah, the book, the book.
Sorry.
Yes, the book, not one of the many loose reinterpretations.
So the radio play is good.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Like, I think that's done very well.
It's Dirk Mags. you know, the same production team behind the
later hitchhikers radio plays.
Yes, no, Duck Gently is one of my favourite Adam's books.
It's really good. and it's good.
Part shutter.
Yeah, part city of there.
City of yeah.
Yeah.
Ball Douglas Adams.
It's really great Yes, great stuff.
100% Douglas Adams.
What about you, Peter?
Well, for my part, if you like hard hitting sci-fi and bootstrap
paradoxes, you can't go past the sex and the city sequel and just
like that, which is... which I actually really enjoy, but is an
instructive lesson for how to make every dramatic decision in a
series incorrectly.
Go and watch it.
I have and you're right.
Are there robots in it?
I mean, sometimes I think Charlotte, but, you know, remains to be
seen.
So my pick of the week is a podcast.
It's called Strong Songs, and in it, a musician called Kirk
Hamilton looks at a sort of famous song or an important song and
does a musical analysis of it, talks about its history, talks
about what is it that makes it great as far as music and
performance and instrumentation and things are concerned.
Today, I listen to an episode on killing me softly.
And he looked at 3 versions of that, um, including the one from
sort of the 1990s by the Fugees, um, but a few different
versions.
There's a wonderful one where he looks at the 2 Dolly Parton
versions of I Will Always Love You, followed by the Whitney
Houston version, which is incredible.
If you're a genre fan.
He does an episode on the music of Andor, which is an
extraordinary TV series where music plays an important role in the
actual narrative and his analysis of its music is incredible.
And before the release of Tears of the Kingdom, he did a whole
thing on the music of Zelda, which was great as well.
So it's called Strong Songs.
It's a podcast.
He is so enthusiastic and so in love with his subject.
It's such a beautifully produced podcast.
I can't recommend it highly enough.
It's really something.
Well, he's hoping it does an episode on variations on a theme.
Fraser.
What's your pick the week?
Well, if it's musicals you're after, then my pick of the week is
the Star Trek series, Strange New Worlds.
I just sat the other day and discovered I've actually got a
Paramount Plus subscription.
I don't know how long I've had it for, or where it's come from, or
who's actually paying for it?
Me and my wife, but it turned up there on Prime, so I've been
bingeing strange new worlds for the last week or so, and I'm
absolutely thoroughly enjoying that.
I'm about halfway through series 2 now.
I know the musical episode is coming up, but I'm not quite there
yet.
Um, but it's, you know, you talk about like, hitting Doctor Who
beats, but this is, this is all the Star Trek beats.
This is everything you want from a Star Trek.
It's, you know, going out and exploring.
It's, you know, it's got all those episodes you want.
They've got the space valuers, they've got the travelling back in
time.
They've got the wishes come true and fantasy comes alive on the
ships.
You've got everything you want in there.
You've got tons of law thrown in the back, not that one, but
like...
You know, you've got, you know, everything that you know is going
to come up into Star Trek, which is coming up.
But more than that, it's actually a really well put together. show
the story talent can be a little bit breakneck at times, you kind
of like, oh, straighten up story and was telling it and we're not
actually going to pause, but there is still sort of like loads of
character work and loads of stuff the characters are or I'm
starting to come to really enjoy some of the characters, the new
characters as well.
So that's my recommendation.
If you haven't done it already, if you start rec fun. out and
explore strange new worlds.
How I wish we'd gotten a musical from Star Trek Voyager.
The 3 Roberts.
Yeah, the 3 Roberts, a close harmony group of the best Robert, the
medium Robert, and the worst Robert.
It would be really something.
Neelix's solo.
Well, Melissa, that's all the time we have for this week.
We'll be back next week for some comedy Viking hygienes in The
Girl Who Died.
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 InterTera, Maximum
Power, and Untitled Star Trek project.
Until next time, remember that Saturday is treat day.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
That was this flight through entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley
Fraser, Gregory, Peter Griffiths, and James Selwood.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, Scottish Reasons, was recorded on the 13th of August
2023 and released on the 8th of October.
The lake in this story might seem unrealistically deep, but the
next time you watch Battlefield.
Remember that Dos Marie pool in Cornwall, where the lady of the
lake came from, is three metres deep at most.
Team, educational and entertaining.
That's brilliant.
Do you know what?
That was my bigger than work.
The, um, the, um, uh, uh, the which is familiar because I think
it's incredible.
I think we should remind everyone every 2 weeks on Flattery Tiny
that they should be watching straight 2 worlds because they think
it's incredible.
It's so good.
I love it so much.
Hey, Doctor Who fans, go and watch Star Trek instead.
What was the episode before that?
Was that a comedy one?
Before that was Spock sex comedy, the annual Spock sex comedy?
No, the one before that episode was where, ah, I can't remember
her name takes over the ship.
Oh, Serene School.
Yeah, she's amazing. far out.
Yeah, it's just kind of like such a pivot from like, in general
genre and tone from one episode, because I've been watching, I
watch it about 2 and 8.
The 1st series like binged 2 and a go and it was just like, this
is a bit whiplash, but you know what?
It's absolutely... everything.
Yeah, that's what you want.
It's just so refreshing to have a Star Trek again that is just
episodic.
You know, that you can't just...
Yeah, the thing about Strangely Road is that the characters are so
immediate as well.
Yeah, like and know all of them from the off.
They're so relaxed.
Like they're so well played and so relaxed and so real.
They inhabit, they inhabit their characters really well, don't
they?
You know, the thing, this is my theory, that everyone has such
PTSD from series one and 2 of Star Trek, the Next Generation, that
they decide that they raise the floor by just saying we're going
to do this every week.
And they don't raise the ceiling like, oh, maybe they do.
There's some pretty great episodes there, but there's a sameness
to Star Trek the Next Generation, which I think that Strangely
Worlds is such a better version of Star Trek than that.
Just because it does everything.
I mean, there was a bit of an issue in as much as that there's
only 10 episodes long, so you have to kind of, you've got half of
the length of like a, a DSNA, the next generation says you've got
like squish everything.
Not even that.
It's like less than half because they're like 26 episodes long.
Yeah, I want episodes like the price. don't we get them Oh, did
you see, you haven't seen the lower decks trailer?
No.
So the lower decks trailer for season two, there's a scene in the
price where Beverly and Deanna are in...
As a limb doing in the in the gym doing jazz size in these
outfits.
And there's a scene in the in the lower deck series 4 trailer
where Shacks and Ransom are wearing exactly the same things
sitting opposite one another, doing splits, literally wearing the
same outfits, the same colour, everything.
Like it's absolutely 100% that.
Oh, are you watching Lower Decks, Fraser?
I've not.
I've watched the 1st episode.
Oh, this is a bit.
No, I was with you, Fraser.
This is a bit like keep going.
Star Trek was Family Guy, which was a bit of a...
But it's actually properly Star Trek.
Like it has real proper Star Trek.
Things like it makes fun of Star Trek, but it does proper Star
Trek episodes in a way.
And wait till you see them come on board.
I was going to say, I'm going to have to because I know there's a
crossover episode. coming up and cutting up with a couple of
nights time for us, so I'm going to have to get into it before...
When are they going to their Deep Space 9 crossover, lower Dax
lower Dax.