Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast that's been left to fend for ourselves
will be fine.
I'm Nathan.
I'm James.
I'm Peter.
I'm Simon.
Well, Bonnie is determined to derail the fragile piece between
humans and Zygons, and the doctor has a very, very, very long
speech to deliver, so we'd best be cracking on.
It's time to discuss the Zygon inversion.
So, we're back from the cliffhanger, quite a long sort of pre
credits teaser.
How do we think the resolution ranks alongside the cliffhangers of
history?
I can remember being underwhelmed by it when I watched it the 1st
time, but this time I thought it was quite funny.
If you're going to have a cliffhanger, just have a missile fired
by Clara or someone looking like Clara at the doctor's plane and
then it explodes. right?
Yeah, yeah.
We did hear the offscreen explosion at the end of the last episode
before we come to the credits.
Yes, but we didn't see it, did we?
No, no.
It is a slight sheet, but I think that's just about permissible.
I like it when the reprises are a little bit different.
And I think, I mean, so we get a co-writing credit with Moffatt
and almost certainly that's the speech, don't you think?
Absolutely.
But I mean, this is also very moffity as well, having Clara in
this sort of weird virtual reality environment or, you know, inside
her own memory or inside her own flat, you know, to represent her
being in the pond.
It made me think of Forest of the Dead.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's right, with a little girl watching TV and it ends up being
somewhere else that's actually real.
Yeah, I think it's a really good realisation of how you can
portray someone being trapped in something like that rather than
them being like in a black or a white void.
Yeah, but even down to the nonsense on the newspapers because
that's not important to her.
It just, the newspapers are just gibberish, but the only things
that she can see are other things that attach her to reality.
I thought the really interesting thing.
You know, when she 1st looks at the alarm clock and the writing's
either upside down, I guess it's upside down rather than...
I think it's weird, yeah.
But it just reminds me of getting one of these AI art creating
things, you know, like Dali or something that can't do words.
Like it just can't do words.
It can do people in places and stuff.
But it just can't do letters or words at all.
And so it just seemed like an AI created reality that couldn't get
the newspaper or the toothpaste, right?
Like that really fabulously off putting toothpaste thing where it
just says this is toothpaste on it.
So it makes it dreamlike, I think.
Charcoal toothpaste is really great actually.
It's actually a thing, isn't it?
Since 2015.
It's sort of like the teachers in the peanuts just sort of
being...
No, I think that is really good.
And I do think that the sort of things that she does.
You know, you've got to sell Clara as smart and I think they
generally manage it.
And so he or she gets to be terribly smart, and I love her kind of
moving the television in order to get the site, not to work, and
then realising that if she moves her own hand that's going to
start affecting how Bonnie acts.
So I think all of that stuff is really, really great.
And it's a natural development of that kind of relationship
between the Zygon who is imprinting off Clara.
It's something which Terror of the Saigons didn't do, but you
think that should actually work.
It's the person who is in stasis or in the pod or whatever, being
able to control them back in some way.
Yeah, I think that's right.
And I think it's something we could never, ever have done in the
1970s.
And one of the things that I think that this 2 parter gets right
is bring back the Zygons, but do something different with them.
Don't just get them back to do their greatest hits.
And we talked a little bit last week about some of the changes in
the Zygons that didn't quite work for us.
But certainly, you know, changing the rules slightly.
We saw last week and having this relationship between Bonnie and
Clara works really well.
And again, that's a very moffety thing.
Like when he brings back the angels and the 2 parts and he sort of
changes up what they're capable of and the way that they affect
the characters.
Yeah.
I mean, it gives the angels a voice in that 2 partner.
Yeah, but I do love the way, you know, it's actually explicitly
said, you know, that was the old rules.
This is the new rules, like they've actually said.
Now we've just decided that it's going to work differently now, and
we're kind of acknowledging that.
Yeah.
Well, there's that thing in the reprise where Jack says, actually
they can't be the duplicates because Zygons don't work like that.
So there is an acknowledged set of rules because we don't know.
I think I said last week, we don't know whether we're going to
follow the rules properly or not. you know, how is this going to
work?
Are we just going to use our half remembered bits of terror of the
zygons and then just sort of do something slightly different?
But here, no, we're obeying the rules very properly.
And Peter Harness, as I said last week, is writing this with the
soundtrack to Terror of the Zygons in his headphones, apparently.
However, that is part of the problem with the story for me.
I think this episode is quite good.
Last week's episode missed as much as it hit for me, and I think
the main problem is the Zygons.
It's the same problem that I had with them in Day of the Doctor
where they're really interchangeable with any shapeshifting alien
race here, because the thing that makes them incredible and tear
up the zigons is that alienness and that bleakness to the story
and the John Wood nuttiness.
And that is missing here.
They look silly.
It's the brigadier in Morden Undead.
You can't just bring back the brigadier and pop him in the middle
of a gaudy, noisy 80 story and expect that that will be fine.
If you bring back the brigadier, you have to bring back the
essence of the brigadier.
And so it needed to be a unit story.
It needed to be something that made you think of the pertwheat
era.
And that's my problem with this, even though I quite like the
story.
And I think the Zygons are done well in some instances.
It's missing that essential zygonness for me.
I think by this point we own the Zygons in the new series and now
they're the monster from the day of the doctor.
And I think that's okay.
But we did talk a little bit again last week about the fact that
the zygons aren't played by the actors who whose doubles they
are.
Big mistake.
Yeah. and there's just 2 people.
There's 2 men who play all of the Zygons, which is why we only
ever see sort of 2 Zygons at once, except in effect shots because
there are just 2 and it's just them playing the same doubles of
everyone.
Imagine if you'd got the the little girl actors in Zichon costumes
like the decimas.
God, they would be like a decimal.
I mean, I mean, Jenna's not that big.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, if she had been, I just can't imagine her sitting still long
enough to be made up like a Zygon?
I don't think she would have put up with it.
They wouldn't have asked them.
No, they just obviously wouldn't have asked her.
But yes, I think that that is a little bit of a shame.
The problem is that the design is immaculate.
It was Roger Murray Leach. who designed them the 1st time, and
they look incredible, and they still look incredible, but the
difference between this and Terror of the Zygons is in Terror of
the Zygons, they're shot in shadow and in bizarre close-up of
those deep eyes and menacing Sarah in a barn.
And that's how they work.
Here, they're stomping around and they just look vaguely silly.
And just going, ah, you know, it's kind of just archetypal
monster.
It's not as interesting as it could be.
I did like this more than I did the 1st time round, I have to say
and I do think the 2nd episode is actually, and I think the 2nd
episode is actually quite strong.
The 1st episode's a bit kind of like, it's just a bit too much of
a runaround for me.
But yeah, just to echo what Pete is saying, is that I don't think
it's the fact that the Zygons are, it's all very well to say that
oh, yes, you know, the new series owns them now since day of the
doctor. effectively like it's a different monster, but I just, I
just think that the realisation of them in the 70s is is so much
better.
It's more interesting.
It sets them apart from other monsters and it's the, it's the
creepiness and the isolation, the feeling of isolation that I
think makes terror of the Zygons so powerful.
I don't think that means you have to set this in a remote part of
Scotland or something, but I think...
Yes, or just a remote part of anywhere.
Two of the Zygons has that sense of creeping infiltration.
Now, I think that's that also is what makes that original story so
so fantastic for me. speaking of remote locations.
You know the cliff top, which is supposed to be the white cliffs
of Dover, is actually the same location as Delta and the
Bannerman.
Oh, really?
It's where the holiday camp was, like it was demolished in the mid
2000s, but it's the same location.
And speaking of locations in general, this is very specifically
set in South London, because they keep referencing places like
Brockwell Park and Dulwich, but of course not shot there, and I've
been to Brockwell Park many times, and it does not look like that
corner of Cardiff that they shot.
I guess what I think is great, though, is just the ambition of the
premise here that we suddenly have 20000000 aliens living on
Earth.
I just think that's incredible.
And so last week, which is a runaround, isn't it, to kind of try
and establish the scale of it by taking us to New Mexico and
wherever.
Where else are we going?
Turmenistan?
Oh, yes, I made up a stand.
Yeah, I made up a stand, which seems to somehow have a Christian
church in the middle of it.
Even though it's, but it would be a Muslim country.
Well, I think that we wanted to kind of avoid that, I think, like
we talked a little bit about this last week, and obviously it kind
of works as some kind of take on Muslim immigration in the UK, in
particular, and, you know, other European countries and even here
and the anxiety that people felt because that was happening during
a period of time where we were in conflict in various Muslim
countries, and, you know, there'd been terrorism and all of that
sort of thing..
But I think they go out of their way not to make it about Muslims
particularly.
And so we have a sort of strange Eastern European country, I think
probably with that Christian church in the middle.
It's just all the talk of radicalisation.
The audience just makes the connection anyway.
Yeah, that's right.
And that's sort of interesting, isn't it?
So you've got the idea that there are 20000000 people living among
us who are quite happy living among us in a are contributing.
There's that guy, the guy that Bonnie makes normalise and he just
wants to leave.
That's a really great part of this. really good.
It's very strong.
It's super upsetting.
Except for those 3 kids who are sitting outside when he turns into
the Zygon and they just look at him.
They don't actually react. and background queue background queue.
Yeah, that's really, really good, isn't it?
I think.
And properly atmospheric too.
So we get that happening while Bonnie and Clara interacting.
I'm going to say body and body.
I keep trying not to say funny, Clyde.
I would have liked that spinoff, Bonnie and Clara.
But yeah, that is properly good, isn't it?
Because it is just an ordinary person.
The only ordinary zigon that we see and get to know in any way, and
he's absolutely just happy living in England for some reason, and
he just wants to live his life and he's being prevented from doing
that.
And that scene with the Saigons and their incredible design works
because when the doctor comes across him and he's in that darkened
kind of corner store.
That's exactly where the Zygon should be placed.
Like Harry in the barn.
Exactly.
Yes, yes, yes.
The fact that he commits suicide.
Is he doing that or is he?
Yeah, I was trying to work that out.
Is he committing suicide or is it the fact that Bonnie is sort of
like it's some kind of influence of...
No, I think he does kill himself.
He does decide to kill himself.
Yeah, yeah.
And they can for town ruin.
They can tell that he's about to do it.
And there aren't that many on-screen suicides, and this is a sort
of space fantasy suicide.
Nevertheless.
But still, yeah, I think it is pretty strong.
I think it is why this episode might work better for me than last
week's episode.
It narrows down the focus.
And last week's episode with the best will in the world felt a bit
torchwood.
It was just kind of, was trying to be global, was actually shot in
Cardiff.
Um, and it was um, a bit puerile, I think, in its politics, whereas
this episode drills down on it a little bit, and goes in a little
bit more and feels more consequential, and it doesn't fall into
that two-part trap of having the 2nd episode just being a slightly
associated riff on the 1st episode.
It actually continues and focusses the story.
It's got some edge to it as well. as we were just saying, with the
suicide sequence.
I think the 1st episode has to kind of justify the scale of this.
It's such a big thing.
And so it needs to look a bit worldwide and stuff and they do that
the kind of best they can and they do go to Spain, don't they?
Yes.
Oh, yeah, but that's the equivalent of going to a quarry.
Oh yeah, no idea.
It's a very brightly lit quarry.
Yeah, and lots of colour grading and all of that sort of thing.
See, what we really needed was a bit of Trinity Wells.
Yeah, that could have sold it.
Well, except that, of course, it's not public.
That's the other thing about it, is that it's kind of happened, but
no one knows about it, which is kind of interesting.
You're not getting the clips of BBC News apart from when the Zygon
body uploads the video.
Yeah.
I can imagine Trinity Wells, can't you?
News flash, people are turning into orange babies.
I think too, because the way that guy reads, it reads like he's
really grossly diseased.
Do you know what I mean?
Like he's got these, you know, the suckers and rough thing on his
arm.
He's got, like, his faces swelling up and all of that.
And so he looks like that looks really effective.
It's like that wonderful shot in Day of the Doctor, where Kate
turns into a Zion on camera.
And we never really do it that expensively in this 2 carter
particularly not, particularly not the one that's menacing Kate at
the end of the previous episode, where the camera just sort of
moves away and we look at Kate for a bit and then it moves back
and it's aside.
I really quite like that.
One of the few directorial touches in this episode of Deadline.
Let's do that.
In episode one where they turn the little girls into the Zygon so
they can kill them because of course you can't kill them.
No, yeah. exact screen.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Did you know that, uh, initially, the general that was in charge
of the unit forces in what became Tazmenistan was supposed to be
General Bambera?
Oh, wow.
You see, that would have really lifted this episode for me.
I don't know what the, you know what it is that she wasn't there?
It's a shame.
We did get Rebecca Front reunited with Peter Capaldi, which was
pretty great.
I have to say.
And she was really pretty good.
She's not in it this week and lovely Jack is not in it, obviously
because she was killed at the end of the last episode, sadly.
That's horrible, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She was really good. was very effective.
She's got such a fabulously posh voice as well.
I really appreciated her in the rapprise at the beginning of this
song.
She's really good.
So the other thing that happens, which I think is really
interesting is that the doctor thinks that Clara is dead for a
while, and it's big enough that he addresses it later, and just
considering what happens in 2 episodes time, I think it was worth
doing. absolutely.
That piece of dialogue at the end, where it was really only 5
minutes, he said, it felt like a month, you know, I'll be the
judge of the time, really hits home.
Actually, that says a lot, that peace dialogue.
Yes.
And the interaction there, like Osgood and the doctor get quite a
lot of time together while Clara's acting against herself is
Bonnie.
And I like the 2 of them together.
I like the 2 of them together more than I like the doctor in
class.
But isn't it just that thing that we miss so much in the new era
which is the doctor having a kind of a studio surrogate companion
in a story and we have that finally here with Osgood.
It's so rare.
And she's really great.
Isn't she?
she's fantastic.
She just gets better with each episode she's in.
She does and she sparks off Capaldi so well.
And the actress.
And that bit at the end where he invites her to join him on the
Tartars.
You're like, yes, please.
Yes.
And she's just like, I've got a whole world to look after.
Like, yeah, I have responsibilities here.
Coming back to how dark this episode is. like in the initial
drafts, it was even darker. they had planned to bring back Samuel
Anderson as a Zygon... and have him killed.
And that's why Bonnie, who had already assumed the identity of
Clara, was mad and wanted...
Oh, okay. on the Zigon high command.
And in those initial drafts, also the real Clara was mortally
wounded and would transfer her consciousness into Bonnie.
Bonnie would die.
She would be as icon the rest of the wrong.
Yeah, and Clara Clara was going to become a zigon.
This all sounds very complicated.
I think that ended up on the cutting room floor.
I mean, I would encourage it to be darker, but as could of echoing
what we were talking before about terror of the Zygons.
I also want it to be physically dark.
That's why I think that mini mart section works so well is that
it's actually dark.
There's so much of modern Hoo, which is brightly lit or brightly
like that they somehow multicoloured lit. multicoloured lit and
they somehow have managed to find, you know, some sunny days to do
all the outdoor filming.
And of course, they're going to places like Spain and so on, which
changes the light.
But it's interesting, that thing about, you know, what you're
saying, James, about Osgood wanting to, you know, saying, oh, I've
got this whole world to look after.
It's what I've said many times about companion departures.
She's taking this responsible. she's, yes, she wants to travel
with a doctor, but she says, no, I am needed here.
And it's that choice, which has always disappointed me that with
the exception of Martha.
We haven't allowed any other person in the new series to be able
to take.
They always have to leave for space reasons because the doctor
could just come back for them.
Well, they always have to leave for space reasons because they've
somehow decided that the idea of travelling with a doctor is so
wonderful and attractive that you never wanted to end and there's
never going to be a point where you want it to end.
But people change.
People grow apart and so on like that.
You know, the best companion departures throughout the years
whether it's Joe or Sarah or Tegan, for instance, or Victoria.
Yeah, they realise that, no, this part of my life is over and I've
got to now do something else.
And even though it's a bit rubbish and it is contract roulette
even with Stephen leaving at the end of the savages.
You know, there's this sense that, or Nissa at the end of Terminus
which is, again, pilloried as a bit of contract roulette, in those
cases, they're saying, I can actually do something with my skills
here, I can do something and help other people.
I can become like the doctor, which is sort of, I suppose what
claret sort of ends up doing at the end of this season, but just
not, not with the same sense of self-determination.
It's a little bit too science fiction-y.
Like the next 2 companions.
This companion, Clara and Bill will both leave to become the
doctor.
Yeah, essentially.
And all of that's good.
That's all fine, you know, and that's where Clara is sort of
working towards and has been for a while, but there's so much
science fiction, so much high concept stuff around it, that the
kind of emotional thing never really lands.
And I mean, Bill doesn't really properly get to say goodbye to the
doctor at all.
Yeah, it's quite heartbrending.
Yes, awful.
I also like I liked the final answer to the question because
people ask both the doctor and Kate ask Ozgood.
I think the doctor asks her twice and Kate asks her, which are
you?
And her response at the end is I'm not going to tell you until it
no longer matters until no one is interested in the answer to the
question.
And I think that's really great.
Elegant, isn't it?
Yeah, it's totally good because that's what it's about, isn't it?
You know, like if this is about immigration.
You know, the moment it doesn't matter if someone has migrated
here or not.
We still accept and regard and, you know, that's right.
Us, you know, older people ask the question, where are you from?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But that's interesting, but it doesn't matter, you know.
Can I provide a bit of a counter to this, which is certainly not
deliberate in the way the story is written, but it is a sense that
I get, and it's also the sense that I get from the guy who
basically kills himself in the mini Mart, is that what we're
saying is that, okay, there are 20000000 zygons living amongst us
mainly in Britain.
And it's okay, provided we don't know that there's igons.
So basically, as long as they assimilate to the extent that they
look like us, they sound like us and we don't know who they are.
Sorry.
You look like us yourself.
That's my line.
But the, you know, that's okay.
But basically, because what Bonnie wants to do, Bonnie says, no
I'm sick of pretending to be a human.
I want to live my own self.
I want to be a zigon.
Now, she's doing it from a kind of a more revolutionary extremist
point of view, but having said that, she does have a point.
Why should we have to hide amongst the humans?
Why can't we live our own life?
So, you know, and so what she's doing and what her gang are doing
is sort of effectively outing people as Zion.
So, I mean, yes, there's the more, it is that sort of thing is, yes
it's okay to have all these Muslims here, provided they just, you
know, behave and don't, you know, don't, and assimilate and
basically we can't really tell.
So I actually think, and I'm not saying... not allowed to wear a
heat type or whatever.
Exactly, exactly.
And yeah.
And so I was reading it from a gay point of view rather than
Muslim point of view.
But whatever it is, any kind of outsider, the kind of thing that
the best way to get along with everyone is to hide your true self
and I think that is unfortunate.
Yeah.
And I think that that's why it doesn't actually properly work as a
parable or some kind of commentary on Muslim migration.
And I think what it's just using is things plucked from the
headlines in order to create a big, massive scale, um, uh, you
know, change to the status quo on earth in the sort of Doctor Who
universe for precisely that reason.
It is, you know, the idea that, you know, body would be right, I
think, to have grievances about not being allowed to be herself or
you know, not being acceptable unless you changed wholeheartedly
to look exactly like the people who are already here.
So if we take that to its logical end, what do we then think of
Bonnie changing her mind and deciding that that is the way to go?
Well, because I think that, yeah.
Is it is it Peter Harness, he keeps writing stories that then
susceptible to all sorts of unpleasant interpretations like the
abortion kind of thing in Kill the Moon, which again, we didn't
think was actually there.
No, killing is unpleasant for a variety of other reasons.
So yeah.
Unpleasant is not the right word for it.
You're giving it too much credence, Peter, by calling it up
please.
I think what's really great.
And of course, we have to talk about it.
It's around about 10 minutes long.
The Capoldi speech at the end, and I think it's really amazing, and
I think he manages to pull it off. you know, and he may just about
be one of the very, very few doctors who could ever have pulled
off something like that.
I mean, the 10 minute speech is nearly half a classic series
episode.
It is.
I think it actually goes on too long and I also think it sort of
repeats it.
But basically because I think it repeats itself effectively.
Yeah, he kind of does the speech.
There's kind of, it's kind of the same speech rewritten and done
again.
But having said that, I think it's absolutely superb. absolutely
superb.
I think you sort of, you needed the reiteration of that because
it's so important to the story.
But also I came to it wanting to be a little bit like, oh, this
isn't as good as people say it is because people, Lord, this
speech so much as being a definitive doctor and Capaldi moment, but
actually it is.
It is exceptionally well written and exceptionally well
delivered.
And I do think there are other doctors who could have done it.
I think Peter Davidson could have made a well-prepared meal of
this speech. and Tom Baker goes to a dog's breakfast.
And Tom Baker.
Certainly could of.
But there's something in it which plays to Capaldi's strengths of
being able to look like he is extemporising.
It's just amazing.
How do you think Sylvester McCoy would have performed it?
Yeah, lots of spittle.
I agree with you.
The speech is brilliant.
And I don't think it overstays it's welcome because he is arguing
for the existence of the human race and the Zigon race.
He's arguing to try and stop a war.
He's, you know, he is emphatic is, you know, he's arguing for
existence in a way.
And so going back to it and trying to convince these people, the
repetition needs to be there.
And to be a cogent argument, it needs to be made eloquently and to
be made eloquently, it needs to actually drill right down, which
it does.
And he convinces he convinces Kate 1st and then convinces Bonnie
as well.
And that fabulous lion where he says to Bonnie, I'm trying to
convince you, and I'm almost there.
I think the best line, and Capoli absolutely nails it.
And it's a real proper insight where you kind of think, oh yes, I
hadn't really thought of that before. is we're going to end up
where we were always going to end up sitting down talking about
it.
And now we have to decide whether we're just going to kill a lot
of people 1st and then do the talking and you just sort of think
yes, you know, that absolutely nails, what is so kind of weird and
horrifying about war is that it just ends up with the 2 people at
the table.
I could have just, we could have skipped that step.
I mean, I think it's incredible.
I think the downside of it is, I think it's the, uh, it's the
Sanequa Martin Green effect, uh, if we if we're going to do a Star
Trek reference. where you discover that an actor is particularly
good at a particular thing and then you just make them do it over
and over and over again.
Is that for the children?
children, they can know your name.
That speech where poor Peter Capaldi is hurling himself around the
set at the end of twice upon a time, a similar speech where he
spends 10 minutes mansplaining to Jody Whittaker, how to be the
doctor, and they should listen to it.
So tedious, and so bad, and he's doing everything he can to try
and rescue it.
I think it's a shame.
It's because that's a grandstanding speech in aid of nothing.
This is a resolution to a two-part story.
The other thing that's great about that speech in that sequence is
because, I mean, it's so intrinsically Doctor Who in terms of, you
know, this is the message of pieces is the message of, you know
tolerance getting along, seeing difference and understanding it
but also it's the thing about forgiveness.
As he says, you know, the way these, you know, wars escalate and
conflicts escalators because, you know, you bombed my village
therefore I'm going to bomb your village. therefore, okay, well
this time I'm going to take out the entire city and then next time
I'm going to exterminate the entire race, et cetera.
And it just keeps building and building and escalating.
But, and this goes back to sort of what I've mentioned before when
Doctor Who has tried to touch on other issues.
The refreshing thing is it is trying to do Northern Ireland and
Israel, Palestine, and all those sorts of things, without actually
doing them, without explicitly.
It's doing Muslim immigration, without actually doing Muslim
immigration.
Do you know what I mean?
That's the whole point of having something like Doctor Who is that
you can tell it through allegory and through parallels.
And without some massive speech about naming an asteroid at the
end.
Exactly.
I think the speech is amazing.
I also think the new cruel people part of the speech, you know
that it's just you're going to be cruel to these people and
they're going to be cruel back to you and we'll have a whole group
of new cruel people.
Yeah, exactly, which is so...
The vicious cycle.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think it nails that and that's the most important message.
And even though I think it's overlong, I don't think it's laboured
from the point of view.
I don't feel like I don't feel like I'm being preached at.
No, absolutely not.
I hate it when I'm being preached at.
Oh, for God's sake, yes, we know, we know.
Whereas even though, yes, we know and we already agree with what
he's saying and we don't need to be convinced, I still get
absolutely swept along by it.
Because it makes you think about war in a way that you may not
have intellectualised in the past.
And the key thing is, okay, so once you've won the piece, what are
you going to do with it?
What's your plan for the piece?
don't have one.
You just want to win.
Isn't it a bit large for the 6 of you here?
Yeah, yes, absolutely.
But now we have 20 million.
Pretty good.
It's also a bit large for 20 million.
Yeah, that is quite true.
Can I just talk about another aspect which I always love about
villains?
I mentioned this about the master, which is why I think, you know
Missy is so much more successful than John Sim, is the fact that
when Clara is Bonnie, She's just that little bit more well
dressed.
She walks with that little bit great astride.
Her hair is that little bit more immaculate.
The makeup is that little bit more full.
It's like villain.
She looks more smug than Clara.
That's the thing.
He's that thing of villains.
Hard to achieve, too.
It's that thing of villains always being more sophisticated, more
suave than the normal version.
But the other thing is when Clara comes out of the pod when
they're in the black archive.
She's all completely dishevelled in one shot and then it cuts to
something and comes back and she's suddenly virtually immaculate.
Like she's, she's got, she's got a hairbrush out of it.
She took her handbag into the pod with her.
I mean, I love how she looks more natural than Bonnie in the
scenes where they're talking to one another from inside.
That's because she's just gotten out of bed and is it a single
time?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She hasn't put that makeup on because I think last week I was
struck by how differently she was made up and that's clearly so
that Bonnie can look like that in episode two.
But I thought it was a little bit of a shame given that Clara
hadn't been kind of substituted before the episode began because
we clearly start in place, don't we?
But there's a very clear moment where when you watch episode two
you realise that that signalling that she has now been taken over
where Bonnie puts her hair up.
Yeah, yeah.
She, like, ties her hair up in a ponytail.
And so from then on, the Bonnie Clara is the Clara with her hair
up.
And so it's a very specific moment there.
I do love calling her Zigella.
Yeah, great.
But also, whenever they mention Bonnie, does not your fan gene
tingle?
Oh, yeah, a little bit.
It is actually interesting, though, that even though Bonnie wants
to live as her true Zigon self, she calls herself Bonnie rather
than a Zigon name?
Like, what's his igon name then?
Yeah.
What psycho names do we have?
We just have Broton, don't we?
Sister Lamont?
Your sister Lambert is...
That is...
It's actually psychon word.
Not many people know that.
That is spelled.
Yeah.
She's got an apostrophe.
If it was a new adventures novel, there'd be like 3 apostrophes in
eight.
Do you like that from Terror of the Zygons?
It's Flowers of the Forest, Lamont for the dead.
Oh my god.
You know, the thing in the speech that I like is the American Game
Show host thing, because, yes, it's really great.
It is a game show.
Well, that's probably the, but I don't like about it.
So, yeah, just what they've got most depressed, yeah.
It's all speaker box, right?
But also that thing.
Not just that, the whole thing is, you know, that game show that
they reference in the episode was a real game show.
That town was named for that game show.
And that game show included an element, which was a box that was
opened and you didn't know until after you'd pressed the buttons
what your prize was.
So it's actually, I'm surprised they weren't sued.
They got away with happiness, Patrol, for God's sake.
Yeah, only just, like, the idea that it is a game as well.
Like, that's the other thing.
Like he's setting up, he's saying, no, no, these boxes, what they
are, is a microcosm of what war is like.
You don't know what the outcome is.
So you get 2 possible outcomes.
You just press a button at random because they're not labelled and
you've got no control over what the outcome's going to be.
Kate's ones are directed against people, like either we blow up
London with a nuclear bomb under the black archive that we had in
Day of the Doctor, or the Zygons all become human and lose their
ability to change.
And then Bonnie's got ones that concern the Zygons.
You know, she gets what she wants or she gets all the zygons to be
killed.
And I think that's really great.
And I do think too, the moment where Bonnie realises that the
doctor hasn't actually set this up because of course he has.
Of course he hasn't.
The nuclear bomb, the gas that's going to kill them all. yeah.
Yeah, I mean, the nuclear bomb was already there.
It was planted there by Kate, remember, and it was the one that
they, you know, they lose their memory and they have to do the
countdown.
That's right.
Yes, yes, yes.
And they both countermand the order at the same time.
But the, like, the other thing that I think is really interesting
and weird and it's thrown away is that this is the 15th time this
has happened.
Yeah, that's just wonderful.
And it's prescient for, you know, heaven's sent coming up in a
very small way.
Although the implication is that Kate's agreed to have her memory
wiped each time where she quite clearly doesn't agree to have her
memory wiped this time because he just flashes the whole thing.
All of that.
I mean, that was so clever that was so brilliant. brilliant.
Because, I mean, it's done in Day of the Doctor, and it's a kind
of joke, isn't it?
That poor bastard who turns up to work every day and thinks it's
his 1st day.
He's been there for like 10 years or whatever.
He just gets memory wiped on the way out the door.
But this where, like, it's just saying that this is a constant
thing, a constant thing that needs vigilance.
It's not something you do once.
You don't just once decide that you're not going to become the
next generation of new cruel people, that you have to keep
deciding it over and over again.
I thought it was really good.
It's not just a funny line.
You have to keep choosing peace.
Isn't the depressing thing, though, that it's going to keep
happening.
Like if it's happened for 15 times, it's going to happen for 16, 17
18 And it's almost like, isn't it better if they didn't have their
memories wiped so they actually learnt from the mistake?
Yeah, I guess so.
But I think, like, because part of the war thing is we remember
how horrible it was.
Yes, and that's why we try not to do it.
And that's why we prevent war for at least a little while until
those people die in the beginning, et cetera, et cetera.
I mean, the idea is so that we can keep using the Osgood box.
Again, he doesn't have to come up with a better idea next time. yes
yes, yes.
So the Osgood box, I think, is really great.
We see it introduced in that video with the 2 Osgoods, which is in
black and white for no reason other than making sure we don't know
there's a red one and a blue one.
Did you see that?
And then she has that big, cheap, horrible laptop that she smashes
up, which I quite enjoyed.
And then, you know, you should, of course, it's the Osgood box
because there's 2 of them.
Like no one understood that the Osgood box was about playing out
the war in minuscule in microcosm at some point.
Yeah.
I like the way the Ozgood boxes are sort of stored in the black
archive by sitting at either end of a long table.
Like that's just, they're not kept in kind of a stack.
They're just sitting on a table.
Yeah, I gather the doctor, they can't go in there anymore.
So unit can't go in there and use it, the doctor.
Siled off.
Yeah.
Okay.
Do you see in the background, by the way, there's a helmet from
the dreadful Viking one.
Is it the Maya?
I thought it was the helmet from the, is it what it's called?
Yeah, they call the Mulmeyer.
So those monsters there, that exists purely for war.
Like those monsters are mercenaries and all they do is make war.
And so we've got that like in the centre of the shot.
And I was just kind of wondering who was doing that because like
harness can't be riding this with knowledge of what's happening in
episode 5 or whatever.
No, will have been the props person having a really bright idea.
Or me snuck in and left it there.
I mean, I think it is good, isn't it?
Because it does remind you of that.
Like, it is clearly just an emblem emblem of war.
They should have had the helmet of fear on there.
I didn't see this an emblem of war.
I just saw it as an emblem of a, he's a prop from a previous
episode in the same way that, you know, because, you know, the
black archive is the repository of all this alien tech and this
has obviously been found in Norway.
That's a very specific prop to have front and centre.
Yeah, I think I think it has to be.
It is, you're quite correct, yes.
I think it has to be trying to say something about the episode
which I think is, you know, pretty good.
And it's always that thing with Doctor Who, isn't it?
Because every episode happens somewhere completely different.
You have to go to special lengths to make it seem like it's all
taking place in the same world.
So I thought that that was kind of good, I guess.
Yeah, because they steal the helmet, don't they?
They actually steal the helmets from the mire in the girl who
died.
They have like electromagnets run by the eels and the helmets come
off the top of them and she's wearing that helmet when she dies.
So a shield has got that helmet on when she dies, I think.
And of course, Shilder will be back in 2 weeks.
So it's a reference to that, I think.
But associating that episode with this episode does not make the
other episode better.
In fact it might make this episode marginally worse.
Yes, because it just brings back, it just brings back unhappy
memories.
Also, I can't think of Maya without thinking, do they have
beasts?
Do they have Maya Beasts?
Yes, exactly.
Yes.
When you said Maya, I thought, no, that's from something else.
So, can we talk about the two parter aspect of it, or let's just
say the modern naming convention of two parties, because I know
they want to link them together by having one called the Zygon
Invasion, and the other called the Zygon Inversion, but I just
can't help but thinking there might be a better way of doing
this.
If only they could just have one title and call one of them
something like, oh, I don't know, part one.
And the 2nd one something like part two.
And then we'd have to stop using terms like the Salurian 2
parter.
Oh, the 2 part of that open season eight, 2 part of it's this.
You know?
Simon, do you mean like the end of time?
For example, I mean, goodness me.
But we, what about the 19th...
Oh, my God, Russell, Simon, you're erasing the 1960s.
My goodness.
If Russell T. Davies has allowed himself to call something part
one on a cut part two.
Therefore, it must be breaking the rules there, though.
I really, really like Simon.
At least in the 1960s.
I really, really liked that Russell was actually going to call the
1st part of the end of time something different.
He actually teased it in DWM. and he said, it's a 6 word title, and
it was meant to be the last days of Planet Earth, but it ended up
being the end of time, part one. end of one.
The most self-contradictory title of any Doctor Who story.
But isn't it, but isn't it funny, though, that we're quite happy
calling all of these Hartnell stories by a single title rather
than the three-part of that open season 2 or the 6 parter on
Vortus?
We call them the web planet or whatever.
Whereas we've never been able to agree on in the modern era that
we're just going to call this, the Zygon invasion, or we're just
going to call...
I think that people do default to calling them by the title of the
1st episode.
Yeah, quite alternated. yeah And so does.
Ah, yes, but not without not without the suffix.
So and so does the target novelisation.
Ah, it calls it the Zygon invasion.
Yes.
So, episode 2 was actually originally going to be called truth or
consequences.
Yeah, I would have actually preferred that because they do want to
parallel all of them, don't they?
So we've got the magician's apprentice, the witch is familiar
under the lake before the flood.
Like, they're the same structure and stuff.
Yep, sleep no more face the raven.
Yep.
Yeah, they're not.
That's not really...
I do like that conceit, but I think it's a bit misplaced in this
two-parter, Simon. is that I think the general public has scoped
to be confused.
It's so similar.
Zygon invasion, Zygon inversion, that would they have just thought
it was the same episode if they were looking at that week's radio
time?
Well, I think they care.
No one really knows what the title is.
They don't care what the title is.
The Doctor Who's one of the very few programs that actually has an
on-screen episode time.
Yeah, noticed that the new Star Trek don't, except for the
animated ones.
So lower decks.
Oh, really?
Prodigy.
No on-screen titles, the Picard or...
Complete with the inverted commas.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, Picard feels more like it progresses from one episode to the
next.
Although, just so strangely, Wells doesn't have onscreen episode
titles.
No.
No that's disappointing.
But anyway, point being that it's annoyed me for about the last, I
don't know, 18 years and it would probably continue to annoy me
for a while yet.
I kind of like the idea.
And I think I said this at the time.
It's one of the reasons why we don't do the 2 parters as one
episode.
That's why we're discussing the Zygon inversion this week, is that
separately, I think that the unit of storytelling then becomes the
season rather than a story.
And the idea of a story, at least when we sort of projected back
onto the 1960s, doesn't quite work in a way.
When you think about like the arc or the Daleks masterplant that
do weird things with the idea that there's a four-part story or
written by the same person.
But nevertheless, they still, you know, there's still a sense of
it being one set of things.
And I think that's one of the things. yeah, one thing.
Even if in the arc, they, you know, you could argue that it's 22
putt stories.
Well, no, not really. you know, it's much more different to having
say, I can space followed by some tyran experiment.
Yes, they're linked.
And, you know, I mean, that's the thing I really loved about the
that's what set Doctor Who apart from me back in the day as a kid
was that it was completely different to every other television
show because it neither just had self-contained episodes, nor did
it have this continuous, never-ending story where, which never
quite resolve, or at least takes forever to resolve.
Anyway, that's my old beef.
It was the only series that was made by the Department of series
and serials that was actually a series and a serial.
Yeah, and I think I think.
Yeah, yeah.
Episodic serial?
What a John Tullet title. episodic serial series. stupid.
But I think it's a problem.
And obviously you can't do it now because most of the time you're
tuning in for a quarter of a story when you watch Doctor Who.
And two-parters always, the 2nd part always is outrated by the 1st
part pretty much.
And in fact, I think Moffatt, when he did series 7, said, look, we
lose a couple of 1000000 viewers for part 2 all the time.
So I'm going to do a series of just single part stories for series
7.
And then he does his usual thing where it's just like, oh, but now
I'm going to do the opposite.
Now I'm going to do it.
But I think that was true in 2005, and I think it probably was
also true in 2015.
But I don't think it's true now because even broadcast television
people consume, you know, they either decide to watch a series or
they don't.
And I mean, I know there are some strange freaky people out there
who just turn on the television and watch whatever's on, but we
don't care about those people.
I want to talk to discerning people.
If you decided to watch Doctor Who.
You're probably not even watching it when it goes out.
You're watching on a BBC iPlayer or ABC iview or whatever else the
streaming service it is.
That's the way people consume this now.
So I think the arguments that are made now for why the series has
to be the way it is. no longer relevant.
So no on-screen titles when it comes back is what we want.
No, because that's not here and there. a completely separate.
So that's completely important to the thing.
Well, well, you know, well, actually, no, you don't even need
onscreen titles because what are you doing?
You're going to an app.
You find it, you're scrolling the time and you're pressing play.
It has the title and you press play.
So whether it appears on screen.
It doesn't appear on screen.
It just appears on screen in a different way.
Although a small part of me would die if they didn't have on
screen titles.
Is that the reason why Doctor Who's ratings, even though they've
been very high at times, tend to fluctuate more than drama series
because more than most drama series, is because people are still
locked into that idea that you can dip in and out of Doctor Who.
You'll get a new story every episode or every 2 episodes.
It's an anthology.
Yeah.
All right, it's part 2 of a two-part story, the Zygon invasion two
parter, in fact.
And so we're going to do...
Just the Zigon 2 party.
So it's time for peaks of the week.
Simon, do you want to start us off?
Well, Peter did actually mention it earlier in the conversation
but I thought it's worth formalising as a pick of the week, and
that is Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
And I'm talking about the original 1956 film, which has got a bit
of a different moral of the story compared to what we're looking
at here.
I'd encourage people to go back and see it.
It's actually really well-made film and a lot of Doctor Who, as
was pointed out, whether it's faceless ones, tear up the zigons
does, oh, its existence to invasion of the body snatches.
It's really well done.
Basically, aliens are gradually replacing people in this town with
carbon copies, then take the role of that person and go about
their daily lives.
However, back then in 956, it was more an expression about Cold
War paranoia, communist infiltration and so on rather than, you
know, tolerance necessarily.
But, I mean, the most famous scene, and this is not a spoiler
because it's a very famous piece of cinema where, you know, he
feels like he's the only one left at the end who is a human being
and he's running around the streets like a crazy person going
they're already here.
They're already here and everyone's just looking at him going, well
who's that?
Well, that's because everybody else are the aliens and he's the
only human left.
But it's really, really good.
And I'd encourage you to look at the 1956 film, not the subsequent
I think it's said late 70s remake.
Brilliant.
James?
I recently watched Marvel's secret invasion.
Ooh.
Which is quite enjoyable.
I have not read the comic book.
I could ask my husband if it was any good.
But I haven't.
No, I quite enjoyed it.
I think in many ways this Doctor Who story, either consciously or
unconsciously borrows a lot from that original comic book, and
obviously Invasion of the Body Snatchers as well, but I think and
not wanting to spoil what happens in that TV show, the genoure of
this story is a better resolution to the plot.
Okay.
My pick of the week might be Barbenheimer.
Because I don't know, this just puts me in mind of the
Barbenheimer experience that was a short-lived social phenomenon
because Oppenheimer is, of course, about war and the end of the
world and mutually assured destruction and, you know, how are we
going to win the piece?
Whereas Barbie is about plundering an iconic property and doing it
with affection and knowingly, which maybe this episode does with
the Zigons.
I drawing a long bow here?
No.
Yeah, go watch both.
Well, my peaks of the week. so far this season have all been Star
Trek related.
So I am instead going to say that I think this week or last week I
finished the 2nd series of Heartstopper, which is based on a
series of graphic novels, which are still kind of being
published.
I think the last one is due out in December.
It's very lovely.
It's terribly sweet.
And it has Olivia Coleman as one of the main characters, mothers
which is pretty awesome.
The best mother ever.
She's so great.
I wish she was my mother.
She so awesome.
And Yasmin Finney, who would be playing, we've discovered Rose
Noble. in the upcoming 60th anniversary specials.
I wonder why she chose her mother's surname instead of her
father.
That could be Rose Temple Noble.
Rose Noble Temple.
Well, then, now, that's all the time we have for this week.
We'll be back next week to try and find some other aspect of human
life to monetise, in sleep no more.
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, including Startling Barbara Bain
maximum power, and untitled Star Trek project.
Until next time, may your next birthday see you given a Ferrari
and your own personal tailor.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
Bye for now.
Can I have a Stephen Taylor?
That was Flight Through Entirety.
Sorry, Nathan Bottomley, Peter Griffith, Simon Moore and James
Selwood.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, Orange Babies, was recorded on the 17th of September
2023 and released on the 5th of November.
If you haven't heard enough of us for a while, and who would blame
you if you had, remember that we can also be heard talking about
Blake 7 on maximum power, a co-production with the Trap One
podcast, which is currently covering fan favourite series C.
We'll catch you over there.
What do you think?
I think we're done.
Yeah.
What do we think of Harry Sullivan?
We said last week.
There's no way we would have done that.
Yeah, we talked about that.
Well, maybe he did it by accident.
Sullivan's gas.
Yeah, I thought maybe that, and that was my head can and it was
just going to be a mistake.
I thought he was too busy creating Twinks for knock knock next
season.
Yeah, I did mention that too.
I did say he gets a very positive reference to make up for it in
series 10, where he's the grandfather of that pretty boy.
But not the gay grandfather. completely forgot about that.
Yeah.
Yeah, knock knock.
I love the beginning of knock knock.
I think it goes to hell.
Yeah, I love all of that.
The student accommodation stuff.
I can remember.
I can remember virtually nothing got a treason store. in terms of
those episodes.
Knock, knock.
I couldn't even, I could not, I could not even tell you what's not
David's about.
I cannot remember at all.
Yeah I've been blue, right?
It's still wrapped in plastic.
But I'm liking this season more on this run through, so that's
kind of...
Isn't isn't that the 1st thing that Souche does after he finishes
Piro?
What was he thinking?
Yeah.
Oh, well.
It's pretty good.
Yeah, it's all right.
Yeah, I'm going to press stop.