Electrified Pubic Merkins
This week, we’ve invited twenty million Zygons over for cocktails, and now we’re starting to feel self-conscious about cooking up all that salt-and-pepper squid. And so soon we’re involved in an international political thriller that takes us from Fake New Mexico all the way to Madeupistan. It’s The Zygon Invasion.
Notes and links
Sister Lamont from Terror of the Zygons was played by Lillias Walker, who died in August at the age of 93. I hope she knew how many small children she terrified. Bless her.
I thought I would probably regret researching this, but here’s a link to the Scottish Falsetto Sockpuppet Theatre’s YouTube playlist, and here’s another link to a video where they announce the casting of Peter Capaldi as the next Doctor Who. (Brendan’s impression of them is actually pretty good.)
El Sandifer’s interview with Peter Harness was broadcast on the Pex Lives podcast feed. You can find it here.
Friend-of-the-podcast Erik Stadnik has just finished the RTD1 era on his podcast Doctor Who: The Writers’ Room, in which he and Kyle discuss the various writers and eras throughout the show’s history. In their most recent episode, they start their long journey through the Steven Moffat era with a discussion of The Eleventh Hour. Highly recommended.
Follow us
Nathan is on X as @nathanbottomley, Brendan is @brandybongos, Richard is @RichardLStone, and Todd is @toddbeilby. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on X at @FTEpodcast.
We’re also on Facebook, Mastodon, and Bluesky, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll record a really smug and irritating voicemail greeting before going off on holiday for a few weeks.
And more
Yesterday, we released the first episode of our new Space: 1999 commentary podcast, Startling Barbara Bain. Space: 1999 was, at times, a thoughtful and beautifully realised British science fiction show that dealt with questions about the very nature of the universe, and at other times was mostly about astronauts trying not to get eaten by unconvincing monsters with rubber tentacles. Our first episode, Breakaway, sees the moon hurled from its orbit by a nuclear explosion and heading off into space for some thrilling new adventures.
A couple of our podcasts are finished or on hiatus right now. Jodie into Terror was our flashcast on every episode of the Whittaker era, recorded just a couple of days after the broadcast of the episode. Bondfinger was our James Bond commentary podcast, which also covered some of our favourite spy-fi TV shows of the sixties and seventies.
Maximum Power is back! Our podcast about Blakes 7, co-produced with the Trap One podcast, makes a start on Blakes 7 series C, with a discussion of the first episode, Aftermath.
And finally, there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we were astounded to find ourselves enjoying a late-era episode of Star Trek: Enterprise in which the Vulcans go completely rogue — Kir’Shara.
Episode 273: Electrified Pubic Merkins · Recorded on Sunday 10 September 2023 · Download (55.0 MB)
Transcript
Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flights of Entirety, the only Doctor Who podcast still wearing question mark underpants.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Todd, and I'm a unit lorry reversing into a fishmongers window full of squin entrails and horrors for this one.
And I'm Brendan.
Well, it was Malcolm Hulk who once said that Earthbound Doctor Who could only do 2 stories, Alien Invasion, or Mad Scientist.
But now more than 40 years later, the show discovers it can do yet another new thing.
Let's see how that turns out in the Zygon invasion.
So, in a way, I'm kind of sad that Simon's not here, and Peter isn't here either, because they really don't like the new series icons at all.
Yeah, because I think that they think that Zygon should be played by John Woodnut.
Which is not a crazy opinion to have, and now we've got Nicholas Briggs doing this.
I love the fact that Zygons in the original series are played by the people who they actually transform into.
Yes, yeah.
So Sister Lament is the other one who is fabulous too.
She sadly passed away.
Only a couple of weeks ago.
Wow.
Yeah.
I'm actually a little bit with Simon and Peter in that I don't like the teeth.
Yes.
Because, you know...
Zigons.
Zigons, they're sort of meant to be squiddy and amorphous and everything like that and with the originals.
I can't readily say for sure, yeah, they definitely had their teeth obscure, but it felt to me like they did.
And adding the teeth kind of makes the horror of the appearance, a bit obvious, in my opinion.
And the other thing which told you sort of touched on there, like the actors being inside the suits.
By this point, big finish have done women voicing zigons.
And here, the zigons in human female form are male zigons when they transform.
And I just kind of think, no, like give us...
Give us Jenna Coleman in a Zigon outfit, for God's sake.
Yes, thank you Yes.
The other thing I like about the original cycons is that they're a little bit translucent, like the rubber is a bit translucent, and given how sort of foetal they are, that smooth rubber where I think, yeah, we're in hydro. and vulnerable.
Yes.
But we're in high def now and so they feel that they have to make the costumes more detailed and a bit more interesting.
But I do think that we lose something there.
Not necessarily to the detriment of these episodes.
No, and in fact, what I think is really great about this isn't just that it's Doctor Who attempting to do something which is about politics and the real world and stuff, which is always good, is usually good.
But...
But it's finding new things to do with the Zygons.
And do you remember when we did Chibnall's Silurian 2 parter at the end of series 5?
And we're not brave enough in that, even though it's said in the future to say, oh, yeah, actually, why not?
Let's share the planet with the Silurians, and instead we say, oh, we'd better wait another 1000 years until all the racists die out or whatever.
Here, we've just kind of gone, Actually, from now on, there are 20000000 cycons on Earth and that's just how Doctor Who is going to be.
And I think that's absolutely incredible.
Such a great thing.
I wonder how the Daleks feel about that when they invade.
Yeah, no, I think it's a great thing.
I mean, you may all recall that at the end of last series when we do the retrospective, I did question what I was going to think of this 2 parter because I was really quite undecided about it, knowing what I how much I'd liked under the lake before the flood.
And, you know, I was really, really surprised at this, well, I think both episodes are really strong.
And, oh, you might be surprised to find out, listeners, and Nathan and other OG FTEs, that I like this episode slightly more than the 2nd one, despite the fact there's fantastic Capaldi.
Oh, good stuff in that 2nd episode.
I really, really thoroughly enjoyed the whole setup of this.
And, you know, 3 Doctors, 2 Osgood's one piece treaty, Truth or Consequences, the Osgood Box, and Ingrid Oliver is back.
Yeah, that setup is done very well, I think.
Because a big thing has happened that we haven't seen.
And the normal way of doing that on television would be to have 2 characters who knew all about it explaining it to one another, as you know, Bob.
But instead, we have that to camera thing with the 2 Osgoods, which I think is really terrifically grade.
And I think also very economically it sells her grief at the loss of the other Osgood in Death in Heaven.
So I just think that's done incredibly well.
Yeah.
It also evokes for me a little bit of the Scottish falsetto sock puppet theatre.
Hello, we are the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre, and so am I. And so is he.
But yeah, it's always great to have Ingrid Oliver back.
And I also really like that in death in heaven, she was a bit less whimsical than she was in Day of the Doctor, you know, and there's that wonderful moment where the doctor's like, oh, might take you on some trips.
And it was like, well, okay, she's dead.
But here in this one again, it'll be more developed next week.
I think it helps make her a more rounded and believable character.
If we still have that comedic element that she had in Day of the Doctor, which was fantastic and perfect for the tone there.
I think she wouldn't work as well here as she does.
And there's that great bit where they're talking on the plane at the end and she very matter of factly states, no, no, you can't tell that I'm easily human because X, Y, and Z, and actually that was my sister and we both believed in it so much that we have given up our identity to it, the peace between humanity and the Zygons.
And I think it's such a wonderful new hook for the character.
And probably, because I'll be the 1st to jump in, I guess, the most overt nod to trans, um, I don't want to say the term acceptance, um, absorption of our culture, just trans acceptance, just trans acknowledgement is the word I'm looking for in this, and it's such a lovely, blatant metaphor, just as SF has always done with concepts that society appears to be struggling with.
God knows why.
And yet, really, really gets it right.
And it also brings it to the here and now, in a way that Doctor Who maybe didn't used to do, and I think has been doing this season.
Like it's hard to know exactly what's happening here.
I think that what it wants to do is a big kind of thriller episode that's a massive event in the way that the 1st alien invasion of Earth in 2005 was a huge event, certain terrible people scoff at aliens of London, World War III.
But remember, it was like nothing we'd ever seen before and you just never knew where it was going to go.
It was so huge.
You know, you had the worldwide media, all of that sort of thing.
Here we have a sort of similar setup.
We have a kind of Doctor Who story that we've never ever seen before.
We've never had 20000000 aliens on earth.
You just made me think it's a 90s virgin.
It is.
I to think which one it is.
Is it a bit blood tidy?
Well, I don't know, but it has that sort of feel to it. doesn't it?
Like, it's such a huge concept.
And the show has gone on and never referred to it again, I think, is that right?
We've just never, ever mentioned it.
But it's a huge thing.
Something massive has happened.
It reminds me as well, a bit of children of earth, you know, this big worldwide event, this big giant alien event.
And then, in order to sell it, we're doing new things with the aliens and those things are the sort of things that we're seeing on television at the time.
And so you have what is kind of a parable about immigration, but, you know, just done in a different way and using some different tropes, you know, because I think particularly it's about Muslims, isn't it?
It's like about Muslims in Britain.
And so you have, you know, young people being radicalised, you have a lot of people who just want to get on with their lives and you have a sort of potentially horrific response from the powers that be.
And I don't think it's exactly trying to, well, maybe it is trying to say something about that.
But it's certainly using that scale on the sort of news stories that we're seeing to tell a story that's sort of vaster and more interesting than just a normal alien invasion story.
Yeah, I think it is using those ideas as a starting and weaving a science fiction story around them.
I don't think it's necessarily saying this is a one for one retelling of what is happening in our world, but we're using zygons instead.
And I think that is a mistake that some people make when they're reading this, that this is meant to be a one-to-one representation of our world.
It's like, no, it's not.
It's meant to take an idea that's already happening and see how it would apply on what would happen with an alien culture from another world, who have this ability to shapeshift.
It's interesting that this is by the same writer as Kill the Moon, who tells us that his story was about one thing, but multiple readings insist, no, no, it's actually about this other thing that you shouldn't be writing about, and it's kind of, it's kind of like, it may have a germ of that idea in it, but that doesn't mean, I was watching recently The Curse of Peladon on DVD, and on the DVD commentary, Barry Letts and Terence Dix actually stayed outright.
This was not designed as a parable for joining the common market.
That was a starting point from which we thought, what would that be like in space?
We're not saying that we're Peladon.
We're not saying that we're the Galactic Federation in this.
It's just what would it be like?
That's the thing.
Sometimes people read parable as depicting reality.
And it's like, that's entirely not what parables are.
I like that it can be about whatever ostracised or marginalised subculture that you wish to name.
I didn't even pick up on the religious aspect.
I was just thinking gender.
Yeah you're right.
Well, I mean, you've got like last season, remember, that there had to be some late minute editing done to Robot of Sherwood, because during the week, there had been an execution video released, and then we get that sort of hostage video from Osgood, flanked by the 2 Zygons and stuff, and that, that thing where you were getting extremists putting violent and threatening videos on YouTube and them turning up.
Like, I think that that's the kind of imagery they're going around, like they are trying to make it now, but, but it's, it's about that in the same way, for instance, that the Siderians is about immigration or colonialism, where, sometimes the Siderians seem like indigenous people who have had their land stolen from them, but sometimes they seem like immigrants or we seem like immigrants or, do you know what I mean?
Like no one plays any sort of particular role there, but it raises the sort of questions that are raised by those ideas.
And I think here, you know, you've got the idea of immigration, you've got the idea of a demand that people should assimilate.
You've got people who are hostile to that whole status quo and are trying to do something about it.
And all of it, all of it sort of rings true because it's kind of taken from the headlines, I think.
People who've been displaced.
Yeah. and had to be resettled in a strange land and trying to fit in.
One of my biggest takeaways in this episode is the fact that besides Ingrid, Oliver is Osgood, Kate Stewart is back and Gemma Redgrave actually has something to do. she is off to truth or consequences in New Mexico and there she meets a female sheriff.
We've got her offsider Jack and it's great to see that continuity from the 1st episode to hear.
We've got Colonel Walsh played by Rebecca Front.
We've got Hinch Hitchley's mum played by Karen Mann and Hinchley.
But most of the supporting cast are strong women characters.
Yeah, it seems like unit is entirely women now, which including, including Peter Capaldi.
Dr. Disco.
Dr. Funkenstein from Tala Match, that album.
But I just, Rebecca Frant and Malcolm Tucker together in those things. wonderful.
I'm just waiting for him to tell her to... the eyes and the T. I just want to see her turn it on him and she kind of does.
It's a great rapprochement.
I think she wins the scene.
Like, I think that she's absolutely in charge.
And when she says that thing, it's not paranoia, if it could actually happen.
Yeah, exactly, it's real.
That's pretty great.
It's actually great seeing her play a serious character.
Like, I've seen her do a lot of comedy in a lot of different things.
And I just love the fact that she's in this.
I always think great comedic people make wonderful dramatic actors.
So we have them split up sort of quite early on in the episode.
So we have this sort of fairly straightforward thing where it's established that it's all falling down. and we find out that Ingrid, Oliver's character has been kidnapped, what, by the by the opening credits?
That's the end of the opening credits.
And then the plot splits up.
And so we have Kate, we send Kate to truth or consequences, and we leave Jack, and we think it's, what's her name?
Jesus Christ.
We think it's Clara.
And we think it's Clara.
But it's actually Bonnie.
Bonnie Bless.
And then we send the doctor to made up a stand, which will occur again, I think, in the pyramid at the end of the world.
So it's another place.
I do get irritated by made up a stand.
I do get I do too.
I actually like Dr. Who set in real cases, like, you know, like, I mean, it's a fake show, as you all know, but I just like it when it's real and not making up funny abcois, cola sort of things in our real world.
Yeah, I think that too.
I'm not quite sure what it is, and I guess that they want to avoid being too obvious.
Like they can't set it somewhere, you know, they can't set it.
What is it?
Is it cross between Turkey and Uzbekistan or something?
Without sort of coming under some sort of fire saying, well, you're planning our country like such and such.
Yeah, okay. get it.
It's Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
It's a portmanteau of the 2 and the geography roughly matches.
You know.
Yeah, because we see the flight path of boat one, the doctor's plane, heading back to London.
He likes ponting about a fancy plane, yeah.
That's so funny.
And then when you cut Tim Ponting about, it's so much fun. so great.
Something I did notice about our jet setting locations, and of course, you know, we go off, we go off to Termezistan, witches, whales.
We go.
We go down in the tunnel, which is the Barry Island tunnel from flatline again, and we go to truth or consequences, which is the Canary Islands.
Oh, I thought it was Spain.
Well, I suppose, yeah.
Canary Islands.
Yeah.
Yeah, but yeah, it's it's it's the Canary Islands.
So, uh, yeah.
Gemma Redgrave gets to go on the international junket this year.
Yeah, she's the only one who gets to go there.
Right.
I did true.
They must have had to lure her back.
But I think they realise all those locations well, you know?
Yeah.
Yes, totally.
Whether it be New Mexico, which with the tumbleweeds and all that sort of stuff.
I just remember the moment, the 1st time watching it where I realised those dumb tumbleweeds were clearly dead bodies of people who've been zapped by Zygons.
It's actually clever.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. where you kind of think, oh, come on, tumbleweeds, you've got to be kidding me.
And that 1st one looks like it is being dragged across the shot by the end of a fishing wire.
But it's clever when you realise that it's another one of those sort of electrified pubic merkins that is what everyone turns into.
And there's the episode.
Something I really appreciated about the locations is, now, um, truth or consequences, New Mexico, it's given the typical orange grade that you get with Mexico or New Mexico.
However, Termenistan is given a blue grade, which is usually reserved for English speaking countries in English speaking film and TV, and usually Afghanistan and other countries in the region are given a harsh orange or yellow grade.
But here...
Like you saw last year in Doctor Who itself.
Yeah.
But here, you know, the area around the church and the village, it's lush, it's the blue sky is blue and the grass is very green.
It's actually given a similar grade to the Scottish village in before the flood.
It's kind of weird in that it's breaking a trope, but at the same time, I think that's designed to unnervous.
We've been consuming this media set in this part of the world, but made by studios from America, the UK, et cetera.
And we're used to seeing it with this red, orange, yellow grade.
So we get something else, which I think is immediately unsettling, even though it's actually probably far more normal for that area of the world.
I have written down in my notes.
Great visuals of the village and New Mexico.
So although I didn't necessarily pick up on that, I did think it was utterly beautiful and stunning.
It's funny, isn't it?
There's a sign which seems to be using a language in Roman letters on the outside of the approach of the village.
So we see the establishing shot then where nearer in.
And that's been defaced with whatever, because there's a special kind of writing.
I think the Zygons use as well as their symbol.
The white hand.
I wonder where they got that from.
Yeah, so it's got the it's got the hand, doesn't it?
But it's like 3 fingered hand because the zycons here have 3 fingers, which I don't think they do in the classic era.
No, they don't.
Yeah.
And a big Logan's run whole in the middle of it, were they?
Yeah, yeah.
And we do also get the doctor titivating the Zygon's controls again, just as he did in 1974, isn't it?
Yeah, do I need to leave you 2 alone or something or are you enjoying that?
And that was actually a properly revolting thing.
And we didn't get quite as much of that in the day of the doctor, but there is a lot of that same lighting, the green and red lighting that we had that Dougie Farmfield did in 17 years.
Or was it 1980?
They do it so perfectly, don't they?
She just says, there was an earlier icon invasion in the 70s, 80s, and she just throws it away.
It's so brilliant.
I've met Daniel Netheim.
We all have, I think, or many of us have.
So Daniel Netheim came to the big sort of day in Sydney...
The 50th anniversary...
Yeah for the anniversary and so we had Capoldi and we had Sylvester and we had Ingrid Oliver, you think?
And Stephen Moffat, I think.
Yeah.
And it was the day that we met Stephen B, friend of the podcast, Stephen B, and Daniel Netheim was there.
And I kind of knew of him because his son went to my school.
So I had had that link and he was the one who told Stephen Moffat about my school's Doctor Who club.
But we had him actually come to the Doctor Who Club at school, Daniel Netheim, and he brought some props as well, and they were sort of goopy Zigony things.
So that the smoke bomb, for instance, that lands in the playground, I think, looks, again, sort of revoltingly organic.
And then there's that disgusting thing that Kate Stewart's speaking into in the final scene where she's using a Zigon communicator and it has something very gross sticking out of the end of it.
Like, I think they do a good job.
Most of the grossness of that thing seem to be Tom's performance.
Like Tom decided that he had to stroke the fleshy things.
It got very squelchy time, didn't.
John Woodenhart and Sister Lamont gave their fair share of sort of stroking the things as well.
But here it's explicit in the script.
And the other thing that I remember very well is an interview with Peter Harness done by El Sandafar, in which Peter Harness said that he listened to the soundtrack for Terror of the Zygons all the way through while he was writing the script, which I thought was a pretty great detail.
So is that why we get nerve gas developed by a naval officer in the 1970s?
I'm very cross about that.
Are you, Brendan, who would never do that.
Or criminal Harry Sullivan.
Yeah, would do that.
He wouldn't do that.
Yeah, I mean, maybe you can head cannon as he, you know, he was trying to develop a better aspirin and accidentally created a nerve gas.
But it's also the fact that they're like, oh, yeah, we took some of the Zygons in and created this.
It's like, oh, so he was also Mengela.
Yeah, yeah.
It's not very well thought through, is it?
That is...
Why, you know, why is this an heroic moment?
Yeah.
But, I mean, we need, so it's called Z 76, I want to say, or 67, Z 67.
And I think we need it for next episode.
But I really hate the idea that it was given to Harry to make.
And he'd been kidnapped by the Zygons and all of that sort of thing, but that doesn't stop him being an immensely cuddly and loveable person and not the sort of person who would experiment on people in order to turn them inside out.
It doesn't tally with the bumbling, loveable macintosh, straddled chap that we know and love. he was meant to be a bit of a bulldog drummond, so not to not too flaring on the upper brain capacities.
So I'm not really sure where they're coming from with research scientists.
I think that that was probably a mistake.
Harry will get another mention next season, and it's a much happier mention.
So maybe Stephen Moffatt's trying to make up for it.
It is kind of creepy though, isn't it?
Yeah, it's just weird.
And it's also weird to me, just from a digetic point of view, that Kate would tell Clara.
Yeah, well, like, okay, she's the doctor's companion.
Fine.
But you're still heading up a supposedly top secret military organisation.
It's like, generally your security's better than torchwood, but not this time.
Yeah, but, you know, like the brigadier tells Sarah all about the disintegrated gun one day because he's bored.
Do you know what I mean?
It's not like there's no precedent for this.
Can I mention a part I didn't particularly like this time around?
Oh, yeah.
It's the soldiers being lured into the church.
Oh, okay.
Here's the thing.
I like the concept.
And I want to give a shout out to the actress playing the soldier's mother.
I think she delivers a very good performance and there's the whole range of emotion in there.
And I think the soldier, I think her name is.
I always questioned.
I always questions whether that was actually a real American accent or whether she's just, I'd love to know if it's actually her real accent.
But anyway, it's interesting you're bringing this up because the 1st time I watched it, I always thought, oh, they're not going to fall for that.
Like, but continue.
Yeah.
Well, my whole thing is, I think it's unbelievable that all 7 or 8 of them go inside.
That's right.
So if it were a smaller team, if they're like, no, no, we're just taking in bare minimum, minimising loss of life, et cetera.
So if it were like 2 or 3 people, I'd buy it.
If 2 or 3 of them go in and the rest fall back, I'd buy it.
But I think they just over egg it. with 6 or 7 of them going in.
You know, because they can only really have the 2 speaking parts.
And so you see that happening to one person and then the whole rest are sort of told in this shorthand by various other people clearly unrelated to that soldier coming out as well.
But yes, they all just sort of tromp in their like massive morons.
And like it is, I think enough is said between those 2 main characters in it that I buy him going in.
Yeah, totally.
But the rest of them.
Yeah, I think, yeah, now that you've brought it up, I totally agree.
Like, I don't think all of them would have gone.
No.
And it is, they all just kind of traipse in after him, you know, without saying anything to anyone.
It's all a little bit sort of grummy.
I do think the scene with the drone controller with Lisa.
Again, is not overdone as well.
Like, you'd have to be in another room altogether to not pick up what was being said.
It wasn't sort of super subtle or anything, but just relying on the visuals to tell you rather than the dialogue is kind of refreshing.
And I thought that that worked really well.
And we get an explanation of it later.
We get the idea that a Zygon can take a loved one from your memory and recreate them because we know very clearly what the rules are for zygons and they're established in terror of the zygons to give the zygons a reason for not killing the duke.
You know, they have to keep the duke alive, not just to keep the patent alive, or, well, that's what they say.
They have to renew the pattern or something like that.
And it looks like now there's been some kind of technological advancement and now they only need to keep the link in order to get new information from the person or if they revert back, then they have to have access to the living person to change again.
So all of that.
Like, it does the right thing by acknowledging that the rules have changed by making the doctor say what the rules were originally in that conversation with Oscar, where he says you have to be.
Because I think we were saying that, weren't we?
I'm sure we were saying like they have to keep the original has to be kept alive, so Osgood has to be like the human.
Yes, because otherwise the pattern would have reverted.
That's right.
But look, yeah, so they have to explain that away.
But I do, I do miss the, like, the little cubicle things that, you know, they put their hands in in the little shield that comes out.
But I guess that was in the spaceship rather than like the pod version that are transportable.
You know what I mean?
The transportable pods just look like giant zygon heads, don't they?
Like they've even got rows of suckers up the thing.
I beg your pardon?
Organic Christallography stays. crystalography.
Did you, on 1st watching, or even this time through, did you always buy that, did you always suspect that Clara wasn't Clara?
Like, I think it's actually done quite well.
I mean, you kind of think there's something off about the house and the apartment that she goes into with the little boy and the parents are strange and then now when she comes out and she does the whole putting a hair in the ponytail as Bonnie.
Like it's now obvious, but I actually think it's done in a good enough way that you can have doubts.
Do you know what I mean?
So I haven't gone back.
I think I've said this before, that this is the season of Doctor Who that I know the least.
There are some black and white ones maybe, but like this is the one that I've not gone back and watched very often.
And so when I saw her appear for the 1st time, she's got like much red lipstick and a much more, like more foundation on or something, something about her look that is different.
And we get the Clara theme, but it's not the normal Clara theme, it's arranged a slightly different way.
And I wondered whether maybe she was already Bonnie at that point.
I thought the calamari loop earrings were indexed.
That's right.
That's it.
But, Nathan, you are quite right, because she has the red lipstick, and there's a whole slightly different look, and I think Jenna actually plays it really well, especially when poor Jack at the end comes to the horrible realisation that it's a trap and they're all going to be killed and just Jenna's look, and I'm going into the next episode, I really think she does a great job of distinguishing between Bonnie and Clara.
No wonder she had to have last week off because she's got she's got drinks so much heavy hitting in these episodes and all the subtle stuff that she's doing.
I think she absolutely again proves to me why she is such a great actress.
Do you know, I think Jack is really great in that scene as well, because again, we don't know.
The thing that we don't know is we know what the rules are for the zygons, right?
But we don't know whether the news story is going to stuff that up inadvertently because they're just being careless with continuity.
And so when Jack says they're growing duplicates of us.
We actually aren't in a position as viewers to know whether that's true or not.
And so when Jack comes in and says no, Zygons don't work like that.
That's kind of what we've been thinking as well.
Zygons don't grow duplicates.
They turn into duplicates of you.
That's not how it works.
And of course, she's right.
She's absolutely right.
And that's the moment where Bonnie reveals herself because she's been sprung.
I think Jack is really great.
I mean, she was always great.
I love Drin Bugs back in the 90s.
Oh, okay.
Oh yeah, of course.
But yeah, I've always liked her as an actress.
So when she popped up in episode one.
I kind of thought, this is interesting casting somebody who is people would be familiar with of certain age.
Like, she's just in this one episode.
So bringing her back in here and having her play such an important role up, you know, in this episode, I think was brilliant.
Something subtle, I think they do to help you not realise that Clara has been replaced is just before Clara goes into the flat.
She hears the voice message from Dr. Disco, but then she hangs up to talk to the kid.
And then after she comes out of the flat, She calls the doctor and says, did you just call yourself Dr. Disco?
So she's continuing the conversation that the real Clara was having.
I think they cheat, though.
I think that Daniel Nedheim does cheat because the reprise version is slightly different from what we actually saw on screen, but I do like that it happens as Jack is being killed.
So that's explaining how come what we've seen happen has happened.
We don't get to see it until after Bonnie swings into action and has Jack killed.
Remember we see it the 1st time, but then we see a revised version of it where we actually see the Zygon version.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so we actually see what really happened.
So we get to see a sort of slightly faked version of it 1st earlier on in the episode, but we only see what really happened after Bonnie's unmasked.
Right.
Did anybody else notice that Clara is getting in on the Dr. Cosplay game with Osgood in that she's got this flowing black coat and a frilly white shirt?
Oh, and the red lipstick.
And the red lipstick.
Off John Pertwheat. right.
Too much Foundation.
It all clicks.
But it does have a sort of poetry sort of vibe to it, doesn't it?
It has an ambassadors of death kind of thing.
But it is deciding to do something on a massive scale, which I think really works.
And they managed to pull it off.
They, you know, within their budget.
There's a lot of speaking parts in this episode, like quite a lot, many more than normal, but they use the money to really sell that we're in sort of several places at once.
What do we think of the British invasion of truth or consequences?
Well, we all know monsters speak with RP, don't we?
Well, I think that's it.
Do you remember Donny Arana deciding that the Santarans and the Shockeye must be English?
You are English?
When she hears them speaking.
So that's what I'm assuming has happened.
But remember that we are told that...
She was also going on their appearance.
We were told that they were mostly kind of moving to Britain.
I'm just not quite sure what the truth or consequences bit is actually doing there beyond giving Kate something to do.
Well, obviously we need to get her out of the way.
We need to make it appear that she's actually being compromised, but she's going to come in and save the day.
Yeah.
And if we had her back in Britain, then she could potentially be killed.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, so it's basically to save the character.
Yeah. some colour and movement.
There's that electric tumbleweed again.
Yeah, we've got a 2 and we've got another 2 parter.
So we have to actually have we've got space in the story, you know?
I'm just kind of kind of exactly wondering what's going on there because essentially it's like an event, a big thing happens.
We learn all about the history of this town, but it's essentially given to us by one character who just narrates it. and then is there to menace her for the cliffhanger.
So, like, if I had one criticism, it would be that perhaps that was a bigger thread that had been cut down to the point where you're wondering whether it actually contributes anything very much to what's going on.
Because we start in truth or consequences, don't we?
That's where Osgood's kidnapped from.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes.
But otherwise it's not entirely certain what that's doing there.
And there's, there is that great moment, I think, where the scary sheriff who we just assume is racist because she's white and it's New Mexico.
And so when she actually starts to express sympathy for the child's icon that didn't really know how to retain its body print and then everyone in the town reacts badly to that and that's where things start to really properly escalate.
Like, I think that's quite good.
And I think the cliffhanger is pretty good.
So we've got a triple cliffhanger.
Yes, yeah.
So, yeah, tying back to aliens of London again.
Yeah, yeah.
We've got Kate and the Zigon.
Yep.
We've got Bonnie on the coast with the bazooka.
Yep. launching at the doctor in the plane. and we get someone who we think is probably a Zygon calling Bonnie up.
So Kate is calling Bonnie up on the Zygon communicator.
Yeah.
Okay.
So we think she's been taken over by the Zygons.
And it's another slight cheat from Netheim, I think, because next week's reprise isn't exactly what we see on screen.
Bonnie shoots the bazooka and then we hear an offscreen explosion of some kind, but it's not exactly clear what's going on and that's made clear at the beginning of the next episode.
There's a lot going on in this episode.
I mean, even the talk of the hybrids brought back into it, you know, with Osgood humans are gone by the doctor.
Yeah. to keep that bit of a thread going.
It really is so perfunctory that I don't even know where it ends up, but it's like, oh, and maybe this week they're the hybrid or is it a shilder?
Or is it Davros?
Or like it could be me and Missy.
Like, like...
It's like, it's like Jeopardy or something.
Like, you know, I pick, who's the hybrid for $500.
That's it.
Like, I think it's probably deliberately a bit crap.
And like Moffatt will do his usual thing.
I'm saying, actually, in a real sense, the hybrid was all the friends we made along the way or something was all of us, every single one or something like that.
The thing is, though, I do kind of go, is the having to make sure you mention the hybrid at least once every 2 episodes is that any better or worse than, did that person just say Bad Wolf Torchwood missing Planet Saxon?
It's certainly better than showing us the doctor looking at that video on the screen of Amy being pregnant and not pregnant at the same time, like every episode.
I saw some graffiti on the wall, something about the hybrid.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Something I found very interesting about the Kate element of the cliffhanger is when she's sitting at the desk and she realises who the cop is, there's an identicate photo behind Kate that looks a lot like the cop.
Oh, okay.
I don't think we've really focussed on it before, but by focussing on the fact that she's behind Kate and in front of Kate.
There's 2 of them.
There are some great visual touches here.
And for instance, the scenes in Clara's apartment building.
When she goes into the little kids flat, it's, I think, flats 52 and 51 and they're 2 doors right next to each other.
One, two.
When she goes home to collect some things, it's 63 and 64 next to each other, three, four.
Right.
So, you know, we go from 2 duplicates. 3 duplicates.
For duplicates, you know, and the kind of escalates.
Oh, God, I just think of the lift.
But I find it hard to believe that these elements of sort of duality and doubles in the cinematography were accidental.
I do love the way that they cheaply move the camera across to a reaction from Cade and then move back after the ladies run away and has been placed by a Zigon.
And I can't help remembering how incredibly great that special effect was in Day of the Doctor, where Kate actually just turns into a zigon on screen with what looked like a very effective and expensive CGI effect.
Do you remember it?
When she vomits.
Yeah, she vomits and then turns into us. it looks so gross.
It's wonderful Yes, it's so gross.
I hate it so much Look, you had to give kudos to an episode that has a picture of William Harton on the wall.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. pretty great.
I got a real flash when I saw it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I missed it.
So the safe in the safe house in South London has a picture of Hartwell on the wall and we actually open that and go in and look for things later.
So it's definitely...
I must have been making a note when that was... pretty awesome. pretty great.
It's really interesting when you're watching this.
Like, I always forget that it's not written by Stephen Moffatt.
Like next week he is co-writer.
But, you know, this week it's not him and I know I was thinking, oh, yeah, Stephen's bought back Ozgood and all that and I'm sure, you know, it was all of his idea, but I just kind of forget that.
I just really enjoyed this so much more this time round.
Well, it just solidified that it is, I think, a really strong episode, and I've said earlier on, I think this one I enjoy more than I do next week slightly, although there's terrific stuff with Osgood, and obviously you'll talk about the doctor's speech, you know, towards the end of that episode.
I guess the one thing I'll say is this.
And next week it's mentioned the same old, same old.
And it's the one thing in these episodes that I just want to briefly mention before we have to stop, is that the villain is faced by Jenna Coleman, who we know.
And it's the same old, same old, and this all goes back today, the doctor.
At this point in the season, I'm finding it's not, I don't want to say fresh, but I feel there's something about it, that I'm just saying, I feel like I'm treading water with these characters, or there's something where I'm not, like I've watched all these episodes and you've heard me talk about how much I'm really liking this season, even the episodes I don't like as much, and there's great performances and consistency, but I get to this point in the season, and it will go into sleep no more a bit, where I just kind of feel tired.
And I don't know whether it's having all these 2 partters or having the villain played by members of the cast.
I think next week there's only one extra character that's not a member of the semi-regular cast.
And I don't know if that's affecting the ratings.
I mean, I've been talking about that, you know, where hovering high-fives, low 6s, whether it's that feel, but it's the one thing that I just wanted to bring up at this point, whether you talk about it or not in next week's episode, I don't know, but it's just something that I'm aware of.
I think it's something to talk about in the season because I'm finding going back to this. that I'm really enjoying it a lot more than I remember and a lot more than I expected.
But I think it's a bit introspective.
So, yeah.
Thank you, Nathan.
Yeah, yeah.
It took me a while to come up with that word, actually.
It's because the 1st story is all about the Dr. Missy and Davros, that stuff that I was saying earlier, that we are examining the show as we have it, and this is very much, here are the consequences from day of the doctor.
And that's a good thing.
You know, that's a good thing.
And it's something that Moffatt doesn't often do.
Like it doesn't often give us the consequences, but it's...
I just remember, um, Eric Stadnick on the writer's room saying that the thing that he didn't like about the RTD era, or one of the things that he started to feel towards the end of the era, perhaps, is that its world is small.
It inhabits a small world.
Like everyone kind of knows everyone else.
Everything in the world's happening to the same group of people.
Is that happening here?
It's interesting what you're saying there.
I'm sort of getting it like, you know, we've got Missy and Davros and our little unit world in those 1st episodes.
In the 2nd world, we are trapped in that little world with those people in the base on just siege in the next 2 episodes.
It's a shielder and the doctor and that little world and and just him talking to either a shielder or to Clara and here we're going back to something that we're seen before we're trapped in our own little worlds.
We're introspective.
There's something about it that's sort of hemming me in.
I just feel this sort of inward sort of pressure, if I can say that.
I guess it's something we'll talk about at the end of the season and see where all that goes.
Because I'm just trying to work out where the relief comes from when series 10 comes along.
Because I think some of us did feel some relief that we threw all of that stuff away. away, that we sort of emerged from a long period of doing the same sort of thing into something that seemed a bit newer and fresher.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
But it's interesting to think about.
Well, there is now we're going to pop off now and see if we can find any parachutes anywhere.
With a bit of luck, we'll be back next week in the Zygon inversion.
In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts, and you can keep up with us at our website, flights are in tidy.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 to live out your lives in peace and harmony.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
See you soon.
And I'll be waving a tendril from the balcony.
Good night.
That was Flight Through Entirety, starring Todd Beelby, Nathan Bottomley, Brendan Jones, and Richard Stone.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, Electrified pubic Merkins, was recorded on the 10th of September 2023 and released on the 29th of October.
Today, we're pleased to announce the debut of our new Space 1999 commentary podcast, Startling Barbara Bain.
You can find it at startlingbarbrabain.com and in all good podcast directories.
Brandon's falling asleep.
Nothing more to say?
Very tired.
Well, it was just nicely cooked.
Not falling asleep.
It's just something I wanted to bring up.
Yeah, yeah.
Just feeling it as this season goes.
Because Joe said tired.
And I said, and I thought to myself, you know, doesn't he look tired?
But that's something that's not something in the show.
That's something that's happening in behind your eyes.
Do you know what I mean?
Like unless you can point to a thing that's happening in the show, then Thai's not a criticism of the show, but it is how you feel about it.
So what you need to do is kind of go, well, what is it?
Why is it making me feel tired?
What's in the show that's doing that?
And I think maybe that's it's Moffat.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think I think it's introspection.
He's starting to... so think about the... not a young woman anymore.
No, the fun of series five, the fun of series six, the...
Gorgeous energy.
Fun of 7A, the episodes in 7B. Do you know what I mean?
The shot in the arm that it gets with series 8.
And then it's kind of like, well what am I doing?
And, like, almost, like, we having all these 2 parters, so we don't have to come up with lots of...
Like, you are 12 stories.
It's a fair point.
I would conjecture.
Perhaps he's just doing what he does so well, which is I need to shake it up again.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because he'd done this, he hadn't done 2 part of the scene 8, apart from the finale, and series 7 didn't have any at all.
And he's a big fan of what we grew up with for part stork.
He wrote the 2nd two-parter of the new series and he wrote the last two-parter of the RTD era, apart from end of time, I guess.
And both of those are magnificent.
Like they're extraordinary.
He can do 2 parters, you know.
What do you think, Todd?
You're not...
No, that's great.
That's a great discussion.
And I'm sure we'll bring it up again as we take notes.
Ask questions in the retrospect.
But how do you feel about the tired thing, though?
But I thought about that as I was watching it.
Like, what is it?
Am I feeling I'm tired of something.
Like I'm feeling tired.
Why am I feeling tired?
It's because of these 2 partters.
I think we've discussed a bit. that was good.
I thought that was probably good ennui.
So French.
No, because I wanted to pinpoint in the show what's happening.
I only think what it is, is that we don't have a fun new element this season.
We have new elements.
And they're not fun.
I'm not saying they're bad.
They're not bad, but they're not fun.
We don't have a new companion.
We don't have a new doctor.
And the new recurring supporting cast member we get is playing a character who has to watch her loved ones die over and over again and then she has to write it down.
She has to write it down because she forgets because she needs to remind herself of the pain.
It's not, it's a great idea.
It's and it's so well done.
Is it fun?
So do you remember when the show starts again in 2005, right?
I just wanted it to be the doctor and Billy and like they don't mention regeneration for a good reason because it's daft and we'll only do it in the direst of emergencies.
And so I just imagine the show being the doctor and Billy for ages and ages.
Do you know what I mean?
The doctor and Rose travelling together.
You know, they worked really well, all of that.
But every year Russell gets to introduce a new character.
And it turns out that that makes the show really propulsive and keeps it fresh.
Because he understands what the audience's appetite, actually how voracious we are.
And fickle, I would say.
Oh, and also Doctor Who isn't a thing where you have to start from the beginning.
Like, I'd like to start watching Doctor Who.
So can anyone tell me where I could buy a DVD of an unearthly child?
Like you don't have to do that.
You can just turn it on one day.
I would say it is about the producers.
It is.
I mean, Hinchcliffe will be bored and yeah, will be bored with 3 seasons of Liz Sladin?
I don't believe any of us were.
No.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I think for the new series, because the new series is more centred on the characters, do you know what I mean?
Like, as people, like, the characters of plot functions in the 70s.
Do you know what I mean?
They're characters.
They're definitely characters and we like them and care about them and stuff. rapey billboards.
But what we don't, do you know what I mean?
we don't get the let's introduce the show again to Martha and how fresh that seems, you know, how interesting that is.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
I think I think there's something in that, isn't there?
Okay.
All right.
I think we've done.
That's a tag anyway.
I think that's a good tag, don't you think?
Yeah, yeah.
Now, Todd, I've mentioned this on a recording we've done, but you won't have heard it yet.
So a friend of mine listens to the podcast and I can't remember which story he was talking about, possibly under the lake before the flood, and he wasn't a huge fan of it to begin with.
And he re, he's rewatched it recently and he was saying to me one day, I've had, I've had, Oh, I've had my, I've had my Brad moment.
I said, you've had your what?
Oh, that guy that guy on your podcast who hates everything until he watches it again.
I'm like, that's the Todd experience.
Yes, I've had a Todd experience.
A sad moment.
That's my bread moment.
Romana Voltra, Brendan.
That's you.
That's the tag.
And guess what this episode's now called?
No, I think it has to be the tumbleweed thing.
Sparking.
Yeah.
The bread.
What did you call it?
The bread moment.
The bread moment.
The Brad moment.
The Brad moment.
Brad is short for Bradward.
Okay.
Yeah.
Thank you, Brad.
Alright, sweetheart.
That's a compliment.
Send me the thing.
Send me the thing.
I will send you the thing.
Thank you, old gentlemen.
All right.
Have we done it?
See you later.
Yeah, we did it at the beginning.
Oh, I'm old.
See you all soon.
All right, okay.
See you soon.
Bye bye, darling.
Bye.
Bye bye.