Hello and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety.
The only Doctor Who podcast that's up on the slag heap with the
Professor.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
And I'm invisible because Terry Nation demanded it.
That is a very fetching shade of purple on you, though. as we
hurtle towards the planet of the Daleks.
Hooray.
Well, this is my one as well.
So I'm getting the entire 12 part Dalek epic, including the 6
parts that actually have Daleks in them.
So that's particularly exciting.
It's been a while since Terry wrote for the Dalek.
So we had David Whittaker doing the 2 trout once and then we had
that sort of crazy one last year, which barely had the Daleks in
it.
And so this is really Terry's greatest hits, isn't it?
This is not a script that is high on originality or anything like
that.
And it does really bring back a whole lot of elements that we've
seen before.
Can I just say as I sat down to watch this and had to labour
through it, I actually thought of the 3 of you.
And what you were thinking as you were watching this, having
endured so much of Terry way back when and how you were feeling as
this, this spectacle unfolded before you.
You know, I actually, I actually have a soft spot for Terry's
stuff in the early 60s.
Like, I really like He's of Mariners, and I've said, why, you can
go back and listen.
I mean, the Daleks, you know, it's sort of flawed, but it has sort
of fun things in it.
And, you know, like the other Dalek stories.
You know, they build and there's a sort of scale and stuff.
But I have to say that this might sort of be something that I
would consider fairly tiresome.
And so, I did go through and I made some notes and I think that
I've identified a number of elements from previous Dalek story.
So tell me if I've left anything out.
So we have a jungle planet realised in the studio from Mission and
the Chase.
We have the BBC Sound Effects Record, Landing Atmosphere to that
jungle.
Oh, with animal noises and stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, yep.
We have a spaceship crashed in the jungle, like in Mission to the
Unknown.
We have plants that are more like animals. that take you over on
contact.
So we had that in mission.
We, of course, had the fungoids in the chase and Wester, get some
extra points for calling these plants fungoids as well.
So that's that.
They're like vaga plants, aren't they?
We have invisible aliens that are fairly cheap to realise from
Dalek's masterplan on the planet Mira.
We have the peace loving files and moral arguments about the value
of war from the Daleks, and we have plague bombs and plans to
release even further plagues from Dalek Invasion of Earth.
Plagues on plagues.
We have dangerous escapades through tunnels in which Al is
tragically killed.
The Daleks.
We have the Daleks using humanoid servants, you know, subjugated
humanoid servants from the invasion.
And we have just a sort of tiresomely dark tone all the way
through.
We also have an escape up a lift shaft with a Dalek pursuing in
hover mode.
What's that from?
The Daleks.
Really?
Yeah, remember?
forgotten that?
Ian can't get out of the Dalek.
So they have to go up in the lift and they said the lift back down
for Ian and Ian comes up in the lift, but then a Dalek's flying up
after them and they have to push a statue on top.
Don't we?
So that, what else have I left out?
I'm trying to think.
In mission to the unknown?
Does somebody take a log at all?
Like, does...
Yes, yes, Mark. recording a miracle?
So Joe's taking the recording of the lot.
Brilliant.
In episode two, The doctor is disabled by the Daleks like shooting
at his legs.
His legs, yeah.
Like with Ian trick.
Weber is attacked by a tentacle, which I'm sure there's a similar
thing way back in the Daleks or something like that.
No, no, no.
You see, this is one of the things that I had wished was in it
because what we don't get is the slither, the Maya Beast or the
10th of the, but we do actually get a tentacle.
So remember one of the files gets pulled into the swamp by a sort
of crummy octopus thing in the Daleks?
But it would have been nice to have had a sliver sort of just sort
of bouncing up and down.
Oh my god, somewhere.
We get someone inside a dalek in person.
We get someone impersonating a dalek insider dalek, Rebeck instead
of...
Yeah, we get a thal kind of doing the whole, what is this earth
thing called kissing kind of plotline?
Oh, do we have?
Instead of Barbara.
Do thals recognise handshakes?
I don't think it's quite so overt.
Right, okay.
Yeah.
But we do, well, we do actually have, in the Daleks, I think it's
Ganitis says to Barbara, we won't use one of the traditions of
your planet, ladies first, whereas here Lartep isn't aware of
Earth tradition.
So, 0 my god, Terry Nation is inverting one of his, dare I say it
listener, tropes.
And the doctor is trapped in the Dalek cell with Codal, and
they're devising a plan to get out of the cell, and then they
attack the Dalek, you know, how they settle with it.
And that's what they do in the Daleks as well, isn't it?
Yeah.
And also they're locked in a cell in Garlic Invasion of Earth, and
it's actually an intelligence test to figure out their way out.
And we're going up and down lifts.
Is that onto lower levels?
Is that part of the Daleks or am I misreading it?
L. There is a lift, but I think I think it might be too much to
criticise terrogation for using a lift. have doors and kind of
floors and stuff.
One thing I will mention though. interrogation's defence is that
Terry Nation's 60s Dalek scripts are all typified by getting cut
off from the Tatars.
So they're prisoners, so they can't get back to the Tatars, Tatars
buried under girders.
They're on a different planet, so they can't get back to the
Tartars, et cetera, et cetera.
In this, for most of the 1st episode, the danger is actually the
TARDIS itself.
It's a sealed environment and it's slowly killing the doctor.
It's kind of a bit stupid though, I have to say, because, oh, it's
incredibly stupid.
The TARDIS has gone from being this sort of Whittakerrian sort of
otherworldly interdimensional thing as recently as the time
monster, it was like that.
But now, like plant goo can gum up its ventilation system and the
doctor's going to sort of suffocate.
But he does have time to go and change his outfit and do his hair
again.
He does and he changes into that wonderful purple jacket.
I think it's one of his best costume.
It sort of double breasted and stuff.
Yeah, I love it.
That's the only double breasted costume he wears.
And I think Katie fairly callously goes and does her hair and gets
changed. while the doctor's dying, you know, she goes and has a
good wash, but she really spends some time on her hair because it
does look fabulous and quite different from before.
So, yeah, it's almost as if they made another whole 4 part story
between frontier in space and Planet of the Daleks.
So I want to say about the jungle and I don't know whether it's
you...
I really, really liked the Planet of Campbell.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, I thought the set was really effective.
You have Douglas Camfield, who's, you know, one of Doctor Who's
best directors directing the Daleks through it.
The set seems really big.
Here, and I don't know whether it's colour or what it is, but
there's a few less plants and a lot more tinsel and the whole
thing just looks a little bit more crummy.
I think that the production team aren't used to doing indoor
outdoor sets.
And all the other poetry stories have location work for going
outside, you know?
And this doesn't, for 4 episodes, you are trapped inside studio
with inside studio jungle.
I was getting cabin fever by percent.
I was like, 0 my goodness, we need location work.
And then suddenly there is a little bit of location work.
Not very good though, is it?
And it certainly doesn't fit with the rest of the planet.
But no, but I think it's that fact.
They haven't had to do an indoor set like this.
They represent the outdoors, perhaps.
They do use some film stuff for, don't they?
They use film stuff for the ice tunnels and that looks really
good.
Good, yeah.
And the ventilation shaft as well.
Yeah, but if they had done that for the jungle, it might have
looked better.
Yeah, I mean, I think part of the reason we remember Kemble so
well is before Day of Armageddon was recovered, which is over 10
years ago, I think now.
The clips we always saw of Kimble were Daleks burning down the
jungle, which, of course, was on film.
It looks impressive.
It looks big and it looks vast.
Plus, Dougie Campfield has the capacity to make video look
filmmic.
Yeah.
I believe this is David Maloney's 1st job on the colour era of the
show.
He had directed 3 Patrick Troughton stories.
Yeah, that's right.
Mind Robert Crotons and war games.
He does a very good job in my opinion, but I do think part of it
is the lack of film, because later on when we see the jungle of
Planet of Evil, which is shot at Ealing Studios on film, that
looks amazing.
It's a better design jungle, though.
I agree.
This is just a whole heap of plants to make up from the local
nursery.
From the production office.
Pulled out an aspidistra from leop production office and shoved
some tensil on it.
It's the planet.
Spir it on all of a sudden.
So I do think that's a bit of a shame.
And I also think that the spaceship part of the set, you know, the
spaceship in episode one, the...
Yeah, the Joe stumbles into... the outside looks pretty terrible.
Yeah, and compare that, like I remember seeing, you know, for the
1st time last year seeing what the spaceship looked like in those
1st few episodes of Dalek's master plan.
And that set looks spectacular, you know, not just inside but
outside.
And it is like they've kind of lost their ability to make a sort
of convincing indoor set.
What I did like about that spaceship though, is that it was a
fully functional set.
So you walk through the door in it and you're in the set.
It's not like the TARDIS, where you walk in the doors of the
police box, cross over the studio, and then walk in the doors of
the console. that definitely true?
That is definitely true.
So it was solid on the side with the door.
And then the right hand side where the camera was was cut away.
Right.
So that I really liked, it kind of then doesn't help that the
interior is like a space Winnebago.
Yeah, it is pretty dismal, isn't it?
It's not good.
So, um, yeah.
So we hate this, yeah?
No, no, no, no.
I think as individual episodes, and I think the way Terry writes
it with, you know, all these little moments that are going to add
to a cliffhanger or people in jeopardy.
You can watch an episode and sort of get through an episode, right
with these moments.
But I just found this so laborious to get through.
It's the 1st poetry that I've struggled with.
And I actually had to have not just like one episode a time, but I
had days off in between days off to recover.
And it took me like a good 2.5 weeks to watch this story and I
just, it is my least favourite John Pertwe story. but it's not
completely awful.
Do you know, the bad thing is that I was like, I had, you know, 18
episodes of Talk 2 to Watch in the last 3 days in order to be
ready for the podcast.
So I couldn't really afford to get up and make myself a sandwich
between episodes of Planet.
Oh, and Pertwee just would have reached off the screen.
You would have stolen it anyway, yeah.
You know, episode one, as it all unfolds, and a lot of it's on
Katie's shoulders because she's recording.
It's pretty much a monologue for Katie in half of episode one.
Because John's lying there, you know, with that stuff on his face
as he gets all cold and all that sort of thing and she's wandering
around and having to record on her tape, cassette tape.
I was amazed by that as a kid.
Because, you know, of course, cassettes were incredibly
commonplace and cheap when I was a child and I would buy cassettes
and I would record songs off the radio or very embarrassingly, I
would record myself doing one man audio plays.
Somewhere at my parents' place is a one-man rendition of Red Dwarf
backwards.
Excellent. anyway.
So to me, a tape that ran itself. and recorded your voice rather
than having to use my parents' giant stereo.
That was a wonderful concept for me.
And I wanted one.
And of course, now the device that we record the podcast on is the
size of 2 cassette tapes stacked on top of each other and it can
store 10 hours worth of audio.
I'm living in Joe Grant's future.
It's great.
I was listening to the audiobook and I'll talk more about this
later, read by Mark Gatis on the way over here.
And it says that the log had limitless power and limitless
capacity.
And that's what they prioritise over limitless breathable air
inside the TARDIS.
That's an interesting TARDIS set, you know, having the whole IKEA
sort of pull out bed.
They're really glamorous, actually.
Richard was here.
If only Richard was here, Todd, he would be able to tell us who
the furniture designer was.
Well, he is not.
The set was designed by Roger Lymington, who did design the
abandoned Time Monster version of the set.
Oh, I missed that.
I really loved that.
Yeah we all did. thought it was great.
It was absolutely wonderful.
But his brief for this was to bring it closer to the Brakaki
original, which is why it's no longer symmetrical.
You've got the scanner suspended above.
In this case, what he referred to as Teleporter pads.
So there's the Star Trek influence again.
They look like the transporter pads and a wall that you could get
stuff out of and lockers and whatnot.
And what happens to it?
They just rented it for this story and then gave it back.
Um, yeah, pretty much we don't see, we don't see that scanner
teleport wall again.
I don't think we see the lockers again.
It goes back to the hexagonal walls.
I like to see them lying on that bed a bit more often.
Do you know what I mean?
Like Joe saying, wake me when it's over or something or pertly
there with one knee up. lying.
Yeah, yeah, the pertly death boat.
Look, I do like in this episode that the doctor mentions Barbara
Ian and Susan.
It's a lovely moment.
It's the 10th anniversary.
We're harking back.
I also think the files are much like this podcast because they
have a mythology in which Barbara is a legendary figure.
Yes, quite right.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm sure I'm sure if they went on, I'm sure if they went
on with that, they would have revealed that their greatest medal
they can offer in their space service is the cardogon of courage
medal.
Yeah, yeah.
Cardigan of bravery.
Well, um, Rebik kind of has a little bit of a back home going on.
You know, it comes up to a bun, but... really good that she
actually does turn up at the end of episode 2 because otherwise
it's just Joe Grant all the way through.
It's not having a female woman.
And then Joe's is separated from the doctor and actually everybody
else except for invisible people for almost 4 episodes.
I mean, she has a brief scene.
Invisible naked people.
Yeah, because...
How does that work?
How does society work that they're completely invisible?
I don't understand.
It does my head in.
So, but the thing that worries me, right, is that Wester turns up
at the plane of stones later.
West rescues Joe. She's got fungoids all over her arms and he
rescues her and gives her some, you know, cures and all of that
sort of thing. and she gets to be asleep for a long time.
She's separated from the doctor for like 4 episodes and barely
gets to say anything, but she does speak to Wester.
And then Wester turns up later at the plane of stones in to the
Big Purple Cape.
They do look good.
They look comfy.
And Joe says, oh, that's Wester and so on.
But then when I saw that it occurred to me that when he was
nursing her back to health, he didn't have any clothes on.
Yes.
That's kind of icky, isn't it?
Yeah.
It's like, okay, you're unconscious. take you back to my place.
Take all my clothes.
Take all my clothes off.
And then I'm gonna pour this gunk on your arm.
Yeah, I think that's creepy.
I never thought about it Yeah, before, he's completely naked.
Yeah.
And it's Roy Skelton, so you don't really want to be imagining him
naked, I don't think.
No, no, not really.
And, and, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.
We have proper darlic voices.
Yeah, Roy Skelton's back, and Michael Wisher does his duty as the
Dalek voice, really for the 1st time.
He did it in frontier, but this is really the meat and potatoes of
it.
Has Roy Skelton done it before?
Yes, Roy Skelton started in Evil of the Darwex.
Oh, okay.
I actually don't think he's all that good.
I've heard people say that I like Michael Wisher a lot better. but
I think they're both pretty good.
They're not Hawkings and Graham, are they?
Who are just fantastic, unequalled.
Michael Wisher, I think, is very good and does that sort of
panicked thing and that weird thing where you lay emphasis on a
syllable for too long and that kind of thing.
And that's really good.
They haven't quite got the same ring modulator and so the voices
sound a little bit more muffled and a little bit more mechanical.
Yeah, they're continuing to refine it.
I actually quite like that, I have to say, because, you know, the
whole idea of the Dalek is it's trapped inside this thing.
And so having the voice just a little bit more muffled just
reminds me a little bit more of it. actually quite like it.
And they are much better.
They're shot much more competently.
You know, it is proper Daleks back for the 1st time and that is
pretty good.
It's good and there's more of them, even if they don't move.
Well, in the Daleks, there were lots of fantastic sort of
cardboard ones cut out.
Yeah, at least these ones, at least these ones are 3 dimensional.
Yeah, they're empty.
No one's in them, but they're just sitting there and they're
curiously immobile, aren't they, when people get discovered in
that control room.
They all just sort of sit there.
Joe gets out of the bucket and there's one sitting in the corner
looking straight at her getting out of it and just doesn't even
register.
It's having sleep.
But it is good to see more of them and it's good to see the voices
good to hear the voices.
Yeah.
And, you know, they have a lot of conversations about this
patrol's out doing this, and we have to do this.
And, you know, I like seeing sometimes that Alex is talking about
what they're going to do.
I mean, these days they just, they'd all just get the download all
at once.
Yeah, yeah.
Just on the voices.
Peter Hawkins, of course, is no longer with us.
David Graham is still alive.
Not only that, but as we speak, the new Thunderbird series
Thunderbirds Ago, has already started broadcasting in Australia on
go, and David Graham is back as Parker.
Do you know, I had always assumed that was going to be a movie.
So it's a TV series.
It's a TV series and how they're doing it is their physical sets
with CG characters.
So they've reconstructed Tracy Island.
It still looks wonderfully 60s.
As we record this podcast.
I haven't seen an episode yet.
I've just seen the trailers.
Rod is a huge Thunderbirds fan and he has been worried really
quite seriously about it.
He's like, no, it's going to be terrible.
It going to be terrible.
He saw a design for them and he's like, no, they all look too
young.
They look pretty pubescent.
And then he saw a trailer and ever since he's been very, very
excited.
So it's going to be next weekend for me on the 12th.
We're going to sit down and watch the 1st new episode of
Thunderbirds since 1966.
That is pretty exciting.
I did see the trailer on Facebook and it is pretty impressive
looking.
I thought it was great.
Did you know that 11000000 viewers tuned into episode one of this
story?
And it's ranked the highest ranked John Pertree's episode ninth
for the week.
Ninth of the week.
They were expecting Bloody Daleks, and what do they get?
In part one?
Well, if they had ever watched a Terry Nation Dalek story before
they would know that you only get to see the Dalek at the end of
part one because that's the, it's like the, oh, my God, Cliffhanger
you mean this story called Noun of the Daleks has Daleks in it.
You know, amazingly, but it's something that happens every time.
And remember the fantastic one.
At the end of the chase episode one where the dalek comes up out
of the sand and it's coughing.
To be fair, though, we had seen them before that in their own
spaceship, plotting and conspiring and what had you.
Okay, that's true.
Really, in terms of cherry dation. this is the 3rd time he's done
that.
The 1st time, obviously, it was in their 1st story, the Daleks
where you just see a plunder at the end, then Dalek Invasion of
Earth, it comes out of the Thames, and that would have been a big
shock if they hadn't had a radio times cover saying the Daleks are
back.
And in the Daleks master plan, again, they're plotting and
conspiring in the 1st episode anyway.
We don't have the episode one reveal.
But this is the 1st time they're invisible.
Like it's not sand, it's not water. now invisibility.
Yeah, yeah.
And you know what?
If the word Daleks hadn't been in the title.
It actually is an excellent cliffhanger.
Because you do get the pieces to figure it out before we get
there.
I mean, 1st of all, the doctor was chasing the Daleks.
So it's more of a question of, hold on, who are these blonde
people?
Who are this?
and then sort of altogether at the end when the dalek stops and
you've just got its footprint.
It's it's a penny drops moment, except the story is called Planet
of the Darlet of the Darlet.
So the doctor recognises the thial straight away because they're
horribly blonde, doesn't he?
And they still live on Scaro.
Like how does that work?
Like, have the Daleks just gone off and adopted a planet and gone
elsewhere and just forgotten about Skyro and so these people can
live in peace?
Like I thought they would have just been exterminated.
A planet's a big place.
The Daleks with LVID technology?
The whole thing's a giant continuity mess anyway.
So it's presumably still 2540.
Oh, because we're continuing on from, it's our tenuous link to
frontier and space, personally.
It doesn't matter that the draconian human war never happens
because somewhere on this planet are the 10,000 Daleks.
I think Christopher Eccleston would be impressed by that number
think not.
It was sort of going to happen anyway.
So it must be 2540, right?
And the doctor and Barbara and Ian and Susan visited the Planet
Scaro many years earlier.
Yep.
Except doesn't the doctor say in Darlic Invasion of Earth that
that's a 1000000 years in the future?
Well, what's he basing that on?
You know, I think that's that's pure speculation on his part
because they've gone to an alien planet.
And because they've recently been in the past and he sort of tries
to hit the future lever.
He presumes they're in the future, but maybe they're not.
It's Doctor Who continuity and sometimes it's best not to think.
Yeah, well I think that's right.
And certainly Terry Nation wasn't thinking about it.
Man, he wasn't thinking about the names of the thars.
We've got Taryn, Weber, Kodal, Rebeck, Lateb, Marat.
Why are they all five?
Letters.
Kate Orman once wrote a Blake 7 story where there was a character
called Two Sill, like... 2 syllable name.
And it was sort of very deliberately a riff on that because that
happens in Blake 7.
And of course, Tarron is just Terry Nation.
Do you know what I mean?
as a character.
Tarrant.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. played by Bernard Horsfall. who is back.
He's being 2 of David Maloney's previous stories and will be in
another one.
And just a reminder to listeners who may have only joined us for
Pertwee.
In this household, Bernard Horsfall is known as British Jack
Thompson.
I think he does a really good job.
He's very dependable and solid.
We've got Prentice Hancock, his neighbour. reliably wooden
Prentice Hancock as Labour.
He always plays these angry people that have to go off on, you
know, I think he's actually pretty well cast here.
He's right.
Yeah, except he's not very good at being angry.
Well, I always find.
He's just, you know, unreasonable.
And then we've got the 3rd thal, played by Tim Priest, isn't it?
Hello.
And, you know, he pairs up with the doctor for a lot of the story
and there's a wonderful little scene at the end.
I think he's got a bit of a man crush on the doctor.
Yeah, there's a bromance happening.
I think it's a bromance because I think the doctor doesn't even
really know he's alive.
Do you know what I mean?
Codell, it's a bit unrequited for Coda.
I think the doctor likes running into another scientist because he
very rarely gets to interact with an open-minded scientist.
And it's really good that he doesn't get killed off like it's good
that he's learning from the doctor and he can take that away.
I thought at least that's a positive.
I really like that scene.
I think it's in, it's in episode two.
And it's, it's crummy.
It's, you know, per to he delivers a lecture about bravery to
Codal.
But the 2 of them play it so nicely.
And then there's that line at the end which can't be written by
Terry Nation where the doctor says, well, after that little
tutorial on bravery, off we go, and you've got to think that
Terry's...
Oh, Terry's just going, we have to put some comedy gold in here
you know.
Yeah, yeah.
No, you know what I think?
I think it's Terrence Dick's reading it going, oh, for God's sake
this is ridiculously gung ho.
I'm going to bung this line in here.
But it's so nice. really well done. it's terrific.
Well, the thing is, that speech on bravery, you know, we look at
it now and think, oh, that's a bit mawkish, but we look at, we
look at then and, you know, you had things like the troubles as
they were called in Ireland.
You had the rise of freedom fighter slash terrorist acts.
You had the Vietnam war still going on.
The conversation about war and pacifism and what courage is was a
very important thing in society at this time.
And I actually think that little bit at the end, that courage
isn't about not being afraid.
It's about being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway.
I know just that sentiment has helped me a lot in my life when
I've been afraid of doing things such as when I moved country
twice, you know.
So I have always held a place in my heart for that scene.
You know, of course it's a bit clumsy and it bashes you over the
head.
But like you say, it's the performance. pertly doesn't overplay
it.
Tim Priest's codal.
He's terrified, but again, he doesn't overplay the fear of his
character.
It's more of a numbing fear than anything else.
It doesn't make him hysterical.
Um, I do wonder about the names, but I think you're going to carry
on.
So I'll wait.
We may, yeah, we will talk about some of the other.
I think that's a beautiful scene, and I think John does really
well in this story, and I think despite labouring through it, I
think there is some nice positives throughout this, but it's
really good that other styles do turn up at the end of episode
two.
We've got Rebeck, played by Jane Heron.
I think she does a pretty good job as the other love interest and
the female character throughout the story.
Yeah, I think she's pretty good.
She gets smacked down pretty quickly by Tara.
We'll get there in a minute.
Go on.
We've got Marat, played by Hillary Minister, who, of course, is um
in Alloa Low.
As General Klickerhofen.
Really?
Yeah, that's him.
He's barely in it.
I didn't even really recognise.
Well, exactly.
He's in it for like, you know, two-thirds of an episode and then
decides to sacrifice himself for no apparent reason, just so the
Dalek corridor can be blocked up.
He's seen the Daleks episode six.
I think, and thought, and Antidus.
Yes.
Antidus is his role model.
And so off he goes, sacrificing himself bravely.
He may as well have a big target printer on his forehead. so
clearly dead.
And then there's...
And then there's everyone's 70s teen idol, Latep.
Petal backwards.
Yeah, who, of course, develops a huge crush on Joe, just through
holding hands and scaling down the ventilation shaft, like with no
harness or anything, just going straight down how many metres it
is. miles, the doctor says. you know, and then feels like he needs
to propose to her.
I love how she lets him down, though.
She's very sweet.
Yeah, she's not in love with him, although she's a bit affected by
it at the end.
Yeah, no, well, yeah, she certainly, it's kind of the thing of, you
know, the 1st time, the 1st time you meet someone whom you
eventually have a relationship with or what have you, there's
always a friskle there to start with.
So I think for Joe, the Frisson is there to start with and
Lartep's just leaping ahead in bounds and leaps.
Well, they've only got a couple of episodes to sort of get the
chemistry and sort of pull that off.
And I think both of them are doing a really good job of trying to
get that chemistry in a few scenes that they've got and so that
there's some sort of payoff.
You know, it's 3 strikes and you're out for Joe. Yeah, well, I
think that he's too young and not sufficiently pretty for her and
that's really the issue.
So it's never really a thing.
In terms of the supporting file characters.
I think this is probably the best example of nation putting some
thought into his character names.
So you've got Taryn, who is Tarrant.
So he's the voice of the author in the story.
Fair enough.
You've got Weber.
Weber, Sabre.
It's an aggressive name.
Codal codeine.
He's on, he's the scientist.
He's the medic.
I thought quadrel, but anyway.
Oh, quadrill?
you know, but it's a scientific sounding name.
Rebeck, of course, was named after his daughter, which is very
nice.
Marritt can't really think of why he's called Marritt, but you
know, he dies.
It's the sound he makes when he when he hits the ice floor.
Yes.
Or maybe corruption of mort.
The French for death.
And finally, that leaves us with lartep, of course, petal
backwards.
But coming back to that concept of is courage fighting or is
courage, not fighting when the cause is not worth fighting for.
Is it being peaceful when others around you are being aggressive?
What was a big symbol of the peace movement, but flowers?
And he's the 2nd person this season, whose name is an anagram of
petal.
From the peace party.
Coincidence?
I think not.
So what's the connection?
Terrence Dix?
Well, very probably Terrence Sticks, but they are both pacifist
characters who insist there's got to be a better way other than
war.
We're taking this to whole new levels, guys.
It's crazy, isn't it?
We're back on the lift.
There are a couple of sequences that I really like.
I love them crawling through the ice tunnels, which I think is
really well realised, even if having a planet full of molten ice
makes no sense to my brain.
And I love the ventilation shark, the ventilation shaft.
Obviously, Terry has watched Charlie and the chocolate factory
which came out, you know, a year or so before where Charlie and
his grandfather take the drinks and they go, they float the
shafts.
So I kind of think of it in those parallels.
But I really like those sequences.
I think he does good action set pieces, you know, part of the
problem with the Daleks back in 1963 was that was all it had going
for it in for like 3 whole episodes, you know.
But, you know, his reigned in a little bit.
There's a little more going on here.
And so there's action set pieces are pretty good.
You know, they're pretty memorable I think.
I do get a bit sick of the bombs, you know?
Something's always detonating the bombs or having to stop the
donation of the bombs.
Poor, Katie gets hit on head to the polish.
Founding rock, which should kill Joe, but luckily doesn't.
There's a lot of hitting people on the head with objects in this
story.
There's a lot of hitting them with big sticks and floating mid
air.
But that rock, that's really terrible.
It's like a massive giant polystoring boulder that hits her on the
head.
Unfortunately, doesn't break the skin, doesn't mess up her hair
she's able to fix the, you know, recover quite quickly, just makes
you go to sleep. just briefly.
You know, little nap.
It is really lucky that the geology of this planet is formed
entirely from Jabalite.
I just have to say.
Yes, I think that would be it.
Now, we've got the plane of stones.
I actually quite like them in the set of the Plainest Stones, the
Men Lookout Museum.
I light things.
Yeah they're pretty good.
But then, of course, in episode 5 when we get into daylight, then
we can actually go, for no apparent reason, on to location, just
so we can push the Dalek into a ice canoe.
So tell me, does this ice kill the Daleks?
Well, the doctor says that the extreme cold will make them dormant
but yeah, I would presume that then throwing the mutant into the
ice.
Oh, maybe that's it. because I thought it killed the Daleks like
when they pushed them into the puddle, but they weren't dead.
Did it kill him straight away?
I don't think it did because when they go to open it, they're like
what if it's still alive?
The doctor says something like, oh, no, no, no, it'll be dormant
you'll be fine.
Okay.
So then they throw it in Denning.
Then they throw it in there.
But they do come around it. get to see that.
Which, again, is from the Daleks.
We don't get to see them lift things out.
Now there's 10,000 Daleks.
They do make a valiant attempt to sort of cut from the actor's
faces to looking at the 10,000.
I think they're all right.
Yeah, you know.
As I said, a valiant effort.
They move around. and stuff.
I mean, how else are you going to do it?
for 1973.
No CG.
I never thought this phrase would be uttered, but if only they'd
had Daypole.
If only they had.
It is rather convenient that there's a back passage out of that
entire refrigeration area, which they discovering episode six.
But they didn't have access to an episode before.
Like if they've gone through the arsenal and up those things, they
wouldn't have had to, yeah.
I haven't really thought of that before.
Well, you know, like there's catwalks that lead up to the outside
which the doctor suddenly realises must be there in episode six
which would have been very useful from when they were escaping
earlier.
But hey, we got to have a 12 episode story, so it's not going to
happen, isn't it?
Are you saying you just didn't like merit very much?
Yeah, maybe that was it.
The doctor couldn't figure out the linguistic and thematic
connection of Marritt's name, so he had to go. had to go.
Of course, the files have to get off the planet somewhere, and of
course, the only way they're going to get off is biodalek
spaceship.
So the Dalek Supreme arrives.
One of my favourite Daleks.
Oh, tell us about it and what?
Oh, he just looks impressive, you know.
The black and gold colour scheme.
I have the toy here.
It's one of the 1st Doctor Who toys I bought when I moved to the
UK because it came out in a pack with a Dalek from the original
story of the Daleks, and I believe the Dalek from Genesis of the
Daleks.
It's got a flashlight in its eye.
It's got 2 jam jars, it's black and gold and glorious.
And of course, the lights don't come on at the right time.
You can't tell who's speaking some of the time, actually, because
the operator can't make the lights.
Maybe it's because they're wired, the flashlight in or something
but it doesn't respond quickly enough to the switch or something.
So it sort of goes on and off really slowly and I'm not entirely
sure that it works.
But it does continue the tradition of having the chief dalek be
even more shrieky and kind of hysterical than everyone else, which
I kind of like.
And I do like I like the flashlight.
Yeah, I mean, this dalek is actually adapted from one of the film
daleks from Dalek Invasion Earth, 2150 AD. Did Terry Nation own
it?
Terry Nation owned it and loaned it out to production. and that's
why its neck rings are a bit different.
It doesn't have the slats between the neck rings.
I also believe, and I could be wrong on this.
I believe that whoever was operating it, this was actually their
1st time inside the Dalek, which is why the lights were a bit
off.
And what's amazing about the Supreme Dalek is the Supreme Dalek
survives.
Yes, it's stranded on the chases after the doctor.
So much like the end of the last story, we have the doctor and Joe
leaving, they had solved the immediate problem, but this world
still goes on.
This world still exists.
They've still got the Spiridonians and they're still 3 or 4 Daleks
on the planet and they just...
There's somewhere on this planet of 10,000 Daleks.
They're all in an ice canoe and Big Finish would return to that.
Oh, really?
Yep, with Sylvester McCoy in a story called Return of the Daleks
which was the working title for this and every other Terry Nation
written Dalek story in the 70s.
And it ties in with their excellent Dalek Empire series of audios
which features Gareth Thomas and Sarah Mowat.
Wow.
Do I have to listen to those?
No, thanks.
I give you permission not to listen to those.
They've also got David Tennant at some of them.
Oh, cool.
Click hanging at episode 3 and the reprise in episode 4 is
actually different.
Do you know, in this story, the Cliffhanger to episode one and the
reprise for episode 2 are different as well?
So they don't go back and have a reprise of a few minutes.
I actually thought there's one cliffhanger.
It's like Weber imperil cliffhanger, as if we cared.
Yes, that's terribly boring, isn't it?
I guess he's got the bombs, which we're all terribly interested in
all the time.
But yeah, you know, if it was literally any of the other files
except for Marritt, we care more.
Because we don't like Vaber.
No.
And it's not just because he's Prentice Hancock.
But it's mostly because he's Prentice Hancock.
Yeah, that's right.
Yes, I think it's comparing her to episode 4 and 5 because I've
got here cliffhanger speaking grimace.
So the grimace sponsors is going, oh, whatever.
And then Waver is finally killed in episode 5 in my show notes.
Finally.
Prentice Hancock appears, I believe, 4 times in Doctor Who.
And in 2 of them, he's just sort of supporting.
But whenever he has a main role, he always gets a quite
spectacular death.
So in this, you know, he's killed by the Daleks and in Planet of
Evil.
Does he get killed by the thing?
He gets killed by the thing after he goes insane.
But we'll comment on that later.
Anything else?
I was just going to get back to something you were saying earlier
Todd, that, you know, you had to watch this with gaps and you had
to put it on.
I remember you texting me and saying, I'm taking 3 days off.
I can't handle it.
I really struggle.
This is one of the stories which, if I've got a rainy day by
myself.
This is one of the ones I put on and I just sit back and I watch
the whole thing in one go.
This is, this is me with a bucket of ice cream and a spoon style
Doctor Who, you know, this is Doctor Who for certainly not the
soul, but the waistline of the brain, you know, it's fattening and
it's terrible and it's stupid, but I love it so much.
Do you know, I think I think Pertu is often like that, and even
bad Pertu is a lot like that.
I have hugely, hugely fond memories of this story, not because of
seeing it on broadcast or, you know, in repeats, because I read
the novelisation long before I ever saw it, and the novelisation
is great.
It's not massively long.
It's not one of Terrence's more sort of Florida or well worked out
efforts, but it's really, really enjoyable.
And Terrence's pros, combined with the plotty action thing that
Terry is able to do.
It's really good.
I really like it.
Apparently, according to Richard, it's Mark Gatis's favourite
target novelisation and it's actually available, read by Mark
Gatis, which is really, really nice.
So I'm listening to it again at the moment.
The novel is very influential.
It's one of 2 novels that was abridged and read by Pertwi in the
90s shortly before he passed away, the other being cursed
peladin.
There's a very funny, but not suitable for younger people edit of
Pertwee's reading of the novel on YouTube, and that's all I'm
going to say.
But also the cover by Chris O Kelly or Swift, the doctor and Taryn
fighting the Daleg and Planet in the background and Comet
streaming down.
If you look at the DVD cover next to it, Clayton Hickman has
recreated that in Photoshop and it's an amazing piece.
And when it came out, there were lots of criticisms against him
about how can you steal that design?
And it's like, no, it's not stealing the design.
It's paying homage to design.
Yeah, because it's so wonderful and iconic.
Yeah, well, Brendan, you know, I'm pleased that you enjoy this
story on a rainy day.
I struggled through it and it's part of the scientific concepts
which are very 1960s.
It's very pulp 50s sci-fi down there sort of stuff.
And, you know, I don't, it's not the worst story I've ever, it's
not my least favourite by anythings, but, you know, I found it
laborious and, you know, I think it's certainly one of the weaker
per twist for me.
Certainly, this approach was dated back in 1963.
Yeah, and they would, they would in the next couple of years, Terry
Nation's a bit scripts again, and they really tighten them up and
make him produce new ideas.
But you know what?
I'm going to give the last comment on this to Rod, which was, you
know, he quite enjoyed it.
He liked the designs.
He said that the statues outside the Dalek City actually look a
bit like Totemic Daleks.
But in the end, he said, I want to enjoy this story more, but I
don't.
Great comment.
So, um, yeah, hurtling towards the end of the season now with uh
the Green Death, and uh, just in that little interstitial void, we
actually had our 1st baked good for quite a while, pistachio and
green Death, tea, cupcakes.
And you'll see the recipe for those online.
You're also noticing the photo I made a little maggot out of icing
just for this story.
They were delicious.
Thank you, Brendan.
And the front axial projection was particularly effective.
Yeah, as well.
It serves a very similar function.
So the end of the season, the end of the 10th anniversary season.
This one is mine, and it is quite a favourite for me.
The 1st episode is a bit of an odd one for me.
I've very rarely seen it because when I was growing up, the copies
of the episodes that we had recorded off ABC TV would sometimes
have the 1st episode at the back of the tape of the previous
story.
So to get to the Green Death, I had to fast forward through 6
episodes of Planet of the Daleks.
And our green death tape only had episodes 2 to 6.
But that 1st episode is so very, very important.
It's another example of Robert Sloman delaying someone getting
into the plot.
You know, the doctor goes off on his trip to Metabelist 3, which I
never realised was shot on location.
Shot on location and at night, it looks like, as well.
Yeah, it was shot between 4 and 7 p.m.
And as you drive up to the mine, you get a perspective shot, I
think, at the end of episode one with the doctor in the brig
driving up to the mine, you see 3 roads, like one going straight
ahead and 2 veering off to the right.
If you take the 1st road, you go to the metabolis 3 quarry or
metabolis 3 will come to that.
If you take the 2nd road, you go to the nut hutch.
And if you take the 3rd road, you go to the mine.
So all the locations were really quite close together.
Right.
Wow.
Yeah, it was a very economical way to do it.
We've got Michael Lee Bryant back as director.
What did he do previously?
He's done the sea devils, colony in space.
He's never done a Sloman Letts finale though before.
No, he hasn't.
And you know what?
I think it really picks up the script.
You know, out of the Damons, the Time Monster, and this.
Firstly, I think the script is a big improvement. the last two.
It is the best of these 3 scripts.
Well, I think it's the best of these 4 scripts.
Spoiler alert for spiders.
I actually think Sloman and Let's do a pretty terrible job of
these finales.
And the last 2 have been really bad, like increasingly bad.
And this is one that they get right.
I have to get it right.
You know, Katie's leaving and I think they, you know, they really
want to try and construct something for her.
And so the problems with the scripts that we identified before
which were largely pacing problems and the fact that incidents
would get introduced and then thrown away and things happened with
no sort of real character purpose, that's happening much less
here.
Yeah, I think because Robert Sloiman has a central idea, which he
has to deal with, which really is the leaving the departure of
Katie Manning, which, spoiler alert listeners, happens in episode
6 of this story, or does it?
I'll come back to that in a moment.
Barry Litts has spoken about the sort of writing process that he
and Robert Sloman would do.
Right.
And pretty much, because they lived quite close by, they were very
good friends.
Robert Sloman was the only writer who was commissioned for each of
his stories before a storyline had been written up.
Usually writers would have to send in a storyline which they'd get
commissioned from.
But because Barry had worked with Robert and knew how he worked.
They would come up with an idea.
And the idea for this story was actually alien amoeboid creatures
instead of the maggots, and they were invading and they've been
sent by this forced da da da.
But then there was an article published all about how humanity
can't keep using the planet on its current course and 100s of
scientists and reporters and whatnot signed off on it, saying, yeah
this is this is actually true.
And that's where the environmental angle came from.
I think it's pretty much ahead of its time.
And I remember as a kid watching this, thinking, oh, you know, all
this stuff's bad, you know, refineries and all that.
I mean, you might pull a face, Nathan, but I come from a very
conservative background with certain worldviews, and I was never
exposed to things like, you know, the advancement of technology is
a bad thing, whereas this was presenting me as something that I
never really thought about in any way, shape, or form.
It was around.
You remember when we talked about Planet of Giants, we talked
about a few sort of cultural influences, including the silent
spring and things, which suggested that ideas about pollution and
stuff were around in the wider culture.
So I don't know that I don't know that this story's ahead of its
time, but it's very timely.
Do you know what I mean?
And I think what they're trying to do, and I think as excellent as
the amoeboids storyline might have been.
The idea is that the whole story is structured around Joe's reason
for leaving and Joe leaves in order to continue the fight, in
order to fight for her principles, not in sort of stupid made-up
science fiction planets in TV studios, but in the world that she
actually comes from.
So the whole thing is structured around that reason for leaving.
And so rather than aliens, it's about pollution.
And there's a sense in which it's all very simplistic.
Do you know what I mean?
Like the corporation is very evil and very obviously evil and and
hippies are very obviously good and pollution is very bad and all
of that sort of thing.
There's nothing sort of massively subtle about any of that, but
it's thematically all structured around the need to give Joe a
good reason to leave.
And when does she leave, Brendan?
Joe leaves in episode one.
When we 1st see the doctor and Joe, they're actually kind of
mirroring the last Robert Sloman season finale with Joe reading a
newspaper and the doctor not paying any attention to her and they
get into they get into their mock argument of not listening to
each other.
And it does look like it's going to come to blows and then they
both laugh and yeah, everything's happy and whatnot.
But this time, instead of just going along with the doctor when he
dismisses it, Joe's like, no, no, we really have to do this.
And the doctor pulls out every trick.
Like, I'm not just offering you metabulous three, I'm offering you
all of time and space.
And what's amazing is, you know, he has a persuasive argument
which is it's a time machine.
We'll be back before we left, but Joe's reaction, isn't it?
You know, no, this is this is morality.
I can't just run off and have fun while my planets dying.
And when she decides.
No, no, absolutely not, I'm going off with the brigadier.
That's when the doctor actually agrees to go to Wales.
Because the brigadier has been in saying to him, oh, you've got to
come down.
You've got to come down and the doctor's like, no, I'm going off
on a trip.
He doesn't say the brigadier.
Ill follow you down.
It's when Joe is leaving to go down there.
He says, I'll follow you down.
It's interesting.
I remember watching this as a kid, that entire sequence, and I
just said to myself, Joe's going to leave.
I just, you know, how that things flick in your mind. and it's
just that realisation.
I love the drive down with her and the brig and that's a nice
little moment.
The thing that I really love about that leaving scene just before
they head off is that the doctor realises that Joe's leaving, but
Joe doesn't realise that.
Yes, yes, yes.
And she seems so young there.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, he's old.
He kind of knows what's coming, but she doesn't.
And I think that's lovely and poignant.
And the thing is, for the 1st time with poetry, I think we're
getting a little bit of interiority.
Do you know what I mean?
It's nothing major.
He's not that interesting a character.
But at least we do start to see these things from his point of
view.
Yeah, well, for want of a better word.
Joe is the character who has given him his humanity.
You know, his his empathy.
And now he knows she's going away.
But because he's got that sense of empathy and that sense of
fairness now because of her, he won't say anything.
I'm not choking up now.
I choke up in that 1st scene when she 1st leaves, which brings us
then to the cliffhanger of that episode where she's falling in the
mind.
It's the standard Doctor Who thing of, you know, it's the close-up
of the doctor's reaction to the situation.
But the doctor's reaction to this situation.
It's pertly saying what, but it's pertly's face saying, I'll never
see her again. you know, and so he, yeah, jams a piece of metal
into the works to make it stop and has to hold it there, which
could wrench his arms off.
He does that all to save his friend.
It's one of those wonderful accents it's not commented on.
But it's one of those wonderful acts which is both selfless and
selfish.
He's doing it to save Joe, but he's doing it to save Joe because
he can't live without her.
Yeah, Robert Simon is just knocking it out of the park with this
one.
He's given proper human emotions to work with.
And I think that is kind of what was missing in the Time Monster
and to an extent in the Damons as well.
The Damons.
A very large extent.
Well, the Damons, at least, it had Miss Hawthorne, who was a very
emotional, empathetic character and it had Joe's attempt at
sacrifice at the end.
Whereas time... really terrible.
Which the time monster didn't have any of that.
But it looks like, you know, if you give Robert Sloman proper
emotions to work with, and in my opinion, we'll see this again
next year.
He really turns in a good script.
I really like episode one.
I love Joe turning up down at the Nut Hutch and a whole meeting
with Professor Jones, who parallels her very 1st meeting with the
3rd doctor.
Yeah, where she gets to clumsily wreck his experiment.
And he gets angry at her and, you know, there's an instant
chemistry and, and I guess in this case, you know that he's the
man that she's going to marry or not.
It's this thing.
You know, Santa is vastly more ambiguous about this story than we
are.
I really like it, but he thinks much like the other Solomon
stories.
It's a bit of a mixed bag.
And he actually thinks that, um, Cliff is really horrible to Joe
most of the time and shouts at her and stuff.
But I have to think it's kind of like a rom-com thing.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, it's that.
And also, it highlights the difference between that scene they're
riffing on from Terror of the Autons and this, because in that
scene, as soon as she realised she's done the wrong thing.
Like Joe, Joe is cowed, physically cowed by the doctor in his
tirade against her as a ham fisted bum vendor.
Whereas brings back memories, doesn't it?
Whereas when Cliff tells her off and says she's a bit cloth
headed.
She sort of does the whole whatever thing, just...
And, yeah, she gives it back to her.
And so it is the rom-com thing.
You know, it's it's Spencer Tracy and Catherine Hepburn.
It's some Carrie Grant and Catherine Hepburn.
Or Doris Stane.
Doris Day and Catherine Hepburn.
It's really not quite as good as any of those, though, to be
fair.
It is still...
Well, you know, it's still, well, it's still Doctor Who.
Yeah, I think even Katie Manning would say that she's not
Catherine Hepburn.
Oh, she is.
I don't think that's a fair criticism delay at anyone.
You know, Gillian Anderson.
I don't care how good you are in Bleak House.
You're not Catherine Hepburn.
So speaking of people who aren't Catherine Henley.
The brigadier, it's in this story.
And you started to say something about how much you liked him and
Joe in that scene in episode one.
Yes, he's driving his Mercedes. like, you do?
1964 Mercedes, yes?
Oh, really?
Good on you.
Yes, well done, bread.
You've had a couple of years.
How do you know about cars, Brandon?
I know, it's weird.
Kind of dirty.
But, you know, he's got a really good part to play in this, you
know, dropping her off down there and I think he's also, isn't he
talking to Stevens in that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And he has that great conversation with all Jones the Milk.
If you go out that way, you can't miss it, can you?
Yeah, and then, of course, he, um, uh, back in unit headquarters
you know, he says, oh, the doctor's galavanting off on a, on a
pleasure jaunt and in the comic book style that we're now used to
it cuts straight to the 3rd doctor being attacked by a huge
tentacle and gurning face, you know, so, you know, um, Barry Letts
and Terence Sticks are having a whale of a time.
I actually think that that scene is really clever because it is
played for comedy and by the time the doctor gets back to the
Tartar after he retrieves the thing.
It's just people offscreen throwing things at the TARDIS and like
there's an assagai and then there's a big tentacle and all of that
and it's all really deeply silly.
I don't disagree with you.
But, but I think it's making a serious point, which is that the
real reason the doctor wanted to go to Metabela Street.
He really just wanted to take Joe to Metabelis 3.
And when she's not there, it's not fun.
You know?
So, you know, and they play it up by being silly about it.
But I think that's it.
You know, he's offered her all of space and time.
He's determined not to, you know, reveal that he knows that she's
leaving or be upset or be too manipulative or anything like that.
So he sort of goes off petulantly to Metabilist 3 anyway, but he
has a terrible time.
It's actually a really well-judged piece of comedy.
Whereas as much as I love the Time Monster, most of the comedy in
that is too much.
You know?
is not funny.
That too.
Whereas this, it's amusing and also dangerous at the same time
which is which is a really hard balance to do.
I'm kind of amazed by that essentially silent performance that
pertly puts in.
He doesn't utter a word on metabilist 3.
It's all in his face.
He does get to Gurn again as a tentacle is reversed off him.
But also it kind of goes against that thing that he was saying
last year where the doctor shouldn't be afraid of anything.
Whereas he does some pretty good scared acting on this planet
especially when those 2 giant bird feet.
And I'm going to find a clip to show the listeners, possibly the
worst monster fight from a Godzilla film ever, that the giant feat
in that remind me.
I'm not going to say anymore.
They thought I'm just going to give you the link to show people.
And it also means it in itself is funny, but it gives us the best
gag in my opinion of the story where the phone is ringing
forever.
And it's not the brig on the other end.
The brig has said to the receptionist, look, just keep trying.
The phone's drinking forever.
Stellar.
It's stellar.
Stellar, the receptionist.
And then the TARDIS arrives. phone's to ring.
The doctor steps out.
He's dazed for a second, realises the phone is ringing, picks it
up and says, hello, yes.
Yes, I'll speak to anyone.
You know, I think, and it just shows Pertwee's talent for comedy
because he doesn't play it as a funny line.
It a natural line, which is only funny because of the situation.
I really like the fact that in this story he gets to dress up as a
milkman and as a washerwoman.
He wants, you know, this comedy, I love the milkman performance
actually.
I think it's really funny and it's really really good.
And he's playing it much older. hilarious fake moustache.
And then he gets the comedy with a fake moustache.
You know, he's in the building and an announcement goes, there's a
milkman loose in the building, blah, blah, blah.
And so he gets into it into a cupboard and he takes the moustache
off and it sticks to one finger.
And so he pulls it off the finger with the other finger and it
sticks to the other finger and he's sort of desperately trying to
get it.
You know, just like when he gets to do sort of silly comedy and
when he's not just, you know, this sort of stayed rigid, you know
rather unlikeable figure, I think he's great.
He's terrific as that.
He's terrific as the washerwoman.
Sorry, I meant the cleaning lady.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The cleaning lady and the cleaning lady thing where he does the
sort of camp voice with Mike and then tries to be all blokey for a
second.
Now, Mike, let's talk about something.
And then someone comes in and asks her how her husband's hippies
or something.
Oh, lovely.
That's right.
It's just terrific.
And all that stuff is really good and it's nice to see him sort of
relaxed enough to do it.
This story is often attributed to patronising the Welsh.
When in fact, the Welsh characters actually come up a lot better
than than the English ones.
It is a bit patronising in that, you know, people say, boy, and
what have you.
But at the same time, people try to condescend them and they're
like, no, you're not condescending me.
I a minor.
I know what I'm doing.
I think there is a bigger problem than that, and it is with the
politics of it.
And again, I just think, you know, not giving you a big political
story to Malcolm Hulk is a big mistake.
And that's a mistake that'll be rectified because he does get to
go back and fix this in the normalisation, which is extremely
good.
But it's the opening scene.
So the opening scene has Stevens, Dr. Stevens, Dr. Stevens, they're
all doctor in the novelisation.
I think it's just Stevens in the show.
And he arrives and he's talking to a group of minors and he's
talking to a group of the hippies from the Nahach.
And this is in a historical context where widespread closing of
coal mines, which, you know, has preceded this and will continue
causes massive widespread devastation in places like Wales, and
you know, like completely up ends entire communities and things.
And so in a sense representing that on the screen is kind of
interesting.
But what you have.
And I think it's a lapse.
I don't think it's something that infects the entire story.
But you've got Professor Jones there for a moment lecturing the
minors.
Do you know what I mean?
Like telling the miners off for wanting to participate in an
industry that causes so much pollution and they have a little
fight and Dave, the miner, sort of yells at Professor Jones and
stuff.
And it's kind of like, you know, we're middle class people and we
know better than you.
Do you know what I mean?
And we're here to tell you why your chosen way of life is wrong or
you know, that you're to blame or that you're complicit in all of
this sort of stuff.
Now, Santa really rides with this and thinks it's a big political
problem in the story.
And I think that that's what people are talking about rather than
the comedy accents when they're talking about patronising the
Welsh.
But I have to say, the mine has actually disappeared from the
story pretty much after Joe and the doctor get rescued from the
mine.
And in the meantime, there are a lot of scenes between like Dave
in particular and Professor Jones where they're quite warm towards
each other and they're working together and part of the sort of
same community.
So, look, there is something, there is something slightly middle
class about the hippies slightly, terrifyingly middle class about
the hippies, but I'm not entirely sold on the idea that the minors
are being heavily patronised to you.
No, no.
I mean, I don't think they are either.
And I think...
I don't think it's an oversight on the part of Robert Sloman.
I think what he does in the 1st episode is he makes the audience
aware that this argument exists that, yes, we need to have cleaner
energy, but what about the people who are working in the mines?
What about their livelihoods?
How are they going to live?
And I don't think it's something he can answer within this story
because then you wouldn't have a story.
You just have a polemic.
So I think he sort of brings it up and says, look, I am aware of
this.
This is happening in this world, but it is too big an issue to be
solved here.
And I think in episode 2 and 3, when um, Telf the teeth is working
with Professor Jones, I think that's sort of his effort to say, you
know, Okay, Professor Jones wants everything 100% renewable energy
and no pollution.
Stevens wants great big fat profits and global chemicals to take
over the world and therefore produces this sludge and that's
terrible.
Coal is somewhere in the middle.
So I'll, you know, I'll work with these people.
And yeah, it's, I think it's quite a complex view of the morality
in that it doesn't attempt to provide any specific answer.
See, I actually think probably what it's doing is carelessly
glossing over that and just saying being a big pollution is evil
polemic.
I'm not sure that it's quite as subtle as, as um, you're giving it
credit for, and I guess that's what people see as problematic.
We can't look at it now without thinking how disastrous, you know
continuing to dig up coal is now, you know, and how important it's
been for Australia's economy.
Do you know what I mean?
And all of it is sort of dated by global warming and that kind of
thing.
I mean, Stevens is proudly proclaiming that you can get more
petrol and things from an amount of crude oil with this process
and there's that weird scene where they're cutting between Stevens
explaining to the brigadier and Professor Jones explaining to the
doctor about the problems with the Stevens, with the Stevens
process.
Do you know what I mean?
But they're still burning up the oil.
You know, it's still a problem.
We're still creating pollution.
As you say, at the time, in Wales, like these coal mines were
closing down and people were losing their jobs and losing their
livelihoods, and it was because deposits of oil had been found.
And it's this weird thing.
And I think Stephen's lying about, if that's not progress, I don't
know what it is.
Yeah, Robert Slowman is sending it up a bit.
It's like, we're going to run out of one type of natural
resource.
Well, if we use the other natural resource, we won't run out of
the 1st one.
See, it'll never run.
It'll never run out.
You know, it's that old line about tax avoidance, like buying a
boat to avoid paying tax because what are you going to pay tax
on?
You just bought a boat.
I do think, you know, Robert Sloan is getting some social and
economic commentary in here.
Yeah, not quite on the same level as Malcolm Hawk, but he is
really trying to pull his socks up.
In terms of the pollution, watching that 1st episode, I wonder if
any viewers at the time, thought that perhaps there was a
returning monster because early on Professor Jones mentions and
places great emphasis on, the byproduct must be some sort of
liquid plastic.
Right, so you're thinking...
Yeah, I mean, could it be a deliberate red herring?
Considering that every story this year has had some kind of
throwback.
It's not, of course, and it probably isn't, but it's just a nicer
throwaway.
There's some other pollution that's going on in the story and
Stevens and his heavy, the chauffeur, they're smoking cigars.
The brigadier, smoking, is on together.
Well, so there's this character, uh, Professor uh, Mr. Fell, Dr
Fell, who comes in.
I think it's like episode 2 and Hinks, who is Steven's driver, is
sitting on Stephen's desk.
Yes, it's lighting his cigarette. and that kind of thing. and they
look really guilty when he walks in.
Yeah, and what's amazing is Hinks doesn't seem to be hypnotised.
He doesn't go through anything that the other characters go
through when they're hypnotised of self-doubt or anything.
It just like, oh, yeah, you know, I'll go sort him out for you.
He's just a heavy.
And I always find that very interesting.
I think I've commented on that before with some poetly stories.
You have some characters who are forced and coerced into doing
evil things, and then you have other characters who are just nasty
people.
I really like the fact that the brigadier and Stevens have a
confrontation in episode 3 and the brigadier, given this backbone
the characters going through a reformation or a renaissance.
It's really good to see Nick Gibbon stuff to do.
And, you know, he has to talk to the PM.
Yeah, Jeremy, Jeremy.
Head of the SDP.
I think...
And of course, he's back on form by episode four, where he blows
up the mine.
Again, I mean, he blows up the mine under orders from Stevens
doesn't he?
I mean, Stevens wants it blown up.
And he has to do what Stephen says.
So he's in a difficult position because politically he's got to
support big business because, you know, that's his kind of social
role here, you know, the government supports big business.
He's kind of an agent of the government in this case.
And so he is put in a strange position.
He's also, we have to assume that he's kind of politically
conservative.
Do you know what I mean?
He's slightly suspicious of all of this, but the way that he
enjoys his interaction with the people in the nut hutch, the
constant surprise at the fact that the fungus tastes like actual
food.
Yeah, you know, just the warmth and there's there's 2 big parties
I think, in the story and there's one at the end of episode 3 and
one at the end of episode 6 and they joke and the brigadier is
really, feels really welcome and they're drinking and stuff.
And, you know, like, the world of the nut hatch, like the nut
hatch is a scientific research base like Dr. Lawrence's base in
the Silurians or the Inferno project.
And so is global chemicals.
You know, it's a research based, they're looking into this way of
refining oil.
But one research base is full of people who eat and drink and play
music and laugh and tell jokes.
And the other is full of men in suits who are all hypnotised and
hurling themselves out of windows.
And like it's not very subtle and stuff, but I like how the
goodness of those characters is represented by their ability to
enjoy a well-prepared meal.
Do you know what I mean?
I think it's just to.
Yeah, yeah.
And you're absolutely right in the way that the brigadier is so
open-minded with them.
Like when he finds out what everyone's doing there, he's like
really?
She's doing that. doing this.
Yeah.
Now, on the other hand, in global chemicals, we do have a
sympathetic character, Mr. Elgin.
Yes.
He's sort of sympathetic.
He's got a weird moustache and he is kind of annoying.
He has an annoying demeanour.
Yeah.
And apparently on set he was quite annoying as well.
But what ends up happening is he gets brainwashed in episode four
I think.
And then we don't see him again.
And it's because the actor gets parotonitis and can't come back
for the last 2 weeks.
So they have to quickly get Roy Skelton in. and he gets to be the
same.
And, you know, like I actually don't mind that it's Roy Skelton
because that character, the Elgin character is kind of human.
He's certainly the most human person at working at global
chemicals.
And it's, you don't have to be, you know, like a terribly moral
person.
You don't have to be Gandhi or Jesus or something to object to
kind of flushing human beings down a pipe of waste.
You know, I mean, he's not a moral giant or anything.
But he does at least react in a sort of horrified human way to
this and, you know, like he's captured by Stevens when he's about
to go out and say, you know, he's about to report to the police
the fact that they're, you know, he's about to leave and tell
someone what's going on at global chemicals.
So I wouldn't have really wanted him killed at the end of episode
five, which is what happens to whatever that character's called.
The thing is, though, the only conclusion to come to is he's
killed at the end of episode four.
No, I like to think he goes for a little lie down somewhere and
then, oh, yeah.
He's out in a country house with Dodo.
He's out of Cachiosa Dodo recovering.
Yeah.
Yeah, actually, maybe he's still in his office when the whole
building...
In terms of him not being able to perform the rest of the show
because he had peritonitis.
The thing about him was he was apparently bugging the rest of the
cars the whole time expounding on the health benefits of eating
raw garlic.
And then he goes and gets sick.
Well, yes, that's But also serendipity.
Yeah, that's very...
But also from a plot point of view, he seems to be Steven's right
hand man, but he hasn't had any sort of processing at all.
You know, he's Stephen's right-hand man.
Surely Stevens would have known, oh, yeah, you know what?
He's going to start objecting to us doing all these horrible
things.
Maybe I should process him now before he becomes a problem.
The only reason that Mr. Fell.
Has to throw himself off a building. fell.
I know that's crazy, isn't it?
Oh yes.
So what happened to George or whatever his name was?
Well, he fell.
The thing is, though, it was completely coincidental because
originally he was Mr. Bell, but it turns out there was a Mr. Bell.
There was one single Mr. Bell, who worked for a chemical company
so they couldn't use that name.
So they changed it to fell.
Anyways.
They use Mr. Bell in the novelisation, actually.
Oh there you go.
Speaking of people, Mr. Fell wouldn't have had to throw himself
off the balcony, if Elgin hadn't messed with his programming.
But of course, then the doctor and Joe would be dead.
So, you know, swings and roundabouts.
Well, speaking of people working for global chemicals, never so
too, a character who we haven't seen for a long time is mentioned
Mike Yates, and of course, he does turn up in episode 4 as the man
on the inside, in his inevitable James Bond sort of style.
But do you know what's brilliant about this?
It's a twist.
In episode four, over and over again in a per twi story, the man
from the ministry turns up, we instruct people to blow things up
and to get shouted at by per twig.
And that's exactly what happens here, only this time it's mine.
And he does get shout.
He does.
Yeah, perhaps he gets a good old shout in, one like we haven't
seen since season eight.
I love it when he goes, hi.
At Mike, and then Mike does that comedy collapse on the floor.
Oh my goodness.
It's very well done, I thought.
But is it the character doing it?
because poetry tells him to stop the horseplay and get up.
He does.
Yeah, yeah. like so Pertwee thinks that Mike's bunging it on.
That's not, he's not really fainting.
And you know, it's just like what happened to Paul Mike, in mind
of evil.
He got strapped to a chair and menaced by Rog.
And Benton finally turns up too in episode 4 as well. on location
to deal with all of the maggots, you know?
And can I just say that we've been talking about this story for
about 3 hours and that's the 1st use of the word magnet, I think.
And this is the story with the maggots.
This is the story that everyone remembers.
Yeah, we just had cakes with maggots.
I have a life-size maggot here made by friend of the podcast
Gillian Brent, which has been photographed with Katie Manning.
Over and over again.
Yes.
And they are so extraordinary, aren't they?
They're really terrifying and it's that scene.
I think the thing that everyone remembers is, Joe goes down in
mind with bird at the end of episode one, and then they wander
together, they're investigating a glowy green man, and so the 1st
glowy green thing that Bert sees, he puts his hand in, which is
kind of, well, there you go.
But then, you know, at the end of the episode, we get that giant
you know, the doctor and Joe are reunited and it's a giant pool of
maggots that they have to punt their way through.
And it's real magots, isn't it?
There's a shot of real maggots.
It's really disgusting.
It really is gross.
I mean, there's some shots that just don't work like going down
the mine shaft like on the lift and then as they're punting
through it, it's pretty ropey when you watch it now.
Terrible CSO.
Terrible screens.
Terrible CSO.
Yeah, Barry Letts did not like the punting through shot.
Oh, it's not good at all.
But it's so memorable though.
It is.
And just the maggots moving.
And, you know, the way they move and whether it's Joe and Cliff
trapped in the outside little mine thing or whether it's in the
house where Joe's sort of sitting there by the fire or whatever it
is and it's moving and you think it's going to get it.
You remembered this stuff. you know, it's iconic.
And they have, what do they have?
Like, are they dog heads or something?
Like, they've got real animal heads.
Yeah, yeah.
I think it was similar to the drash eggs.
Probably a fox.
Yeah, yeah, like the skull inside the puppet.
So the mouth opens and it's got like canine teeth and stuff.
No maggot wouldn't have that, obviously, but they look really
good.
Yeah, yeah.
The puppets are great.
And what helps most about it is they went down the road of having
3 different types.
They had the static maggots for background shots.
They have the rod puppets, which they could move, move along on
the set through holes and covered with gravel.
And then they had, for close-ups, actual hand operated puppets.
And they cut between them so well, and especially in episode 6
when the doctor and Benton.
Here, little naggot, come and get you dindins.
Here, kitty, kitty.
Sergeant Benton now.
But, you know, when they do that, what they do is they have 2 hand
puppet ones and they have one on the right of the screen and on
the left of the screen, but just before that, they've had a shot
with 2 of the rod puppet ones.
So when you it just looks like you're cutting to a close-up, it's
so effectively done, they've really taken the care to try and make
them look as alive as possible.
Yes, but what they haven't taken care of is, of course, the actual
shots of the doctor driving, which are these wonderful model shots
of a toy car with little toy things.
I'm nominating this for...
Now, the Jenny Lad moments.
And then, yes, then we cut to like Benton and the doctor, you know
the outside shop, but then they're CSO in the car, like...
They're CSO all the way through.
There's these scenes of the brigadier and things standing in front
of a yellow screen all through episodes 5 and six. which are
terrible.
And they were, it's not a matter of, they ran out of time on the
day.
They actually had always planned those for CSO because some of the
1st location work done in that location was the scenic
photographer taking the photo for the CSO background.
And I think it was precisely because they had run out of time
doing location stuff before that they decided, okay, these little
cutaways, which are only 2 or 3 lines, let's do them with CSO.
It's a questionable decision.
It is, but...
I would say a bad decision.
Yes.
One special effect that is very good in this story, Todd.
Even if the model driving through the quarry isn't.
We have front axial projection.
So, Brendan, what is front axial production?
Well, it's a special paint and inside it, a little tiny glass
beads.
Here it's used to represent the green depth spreading across the
skin.
So when it's painted on the skin.
What happens is when you shine a light directly on it, it reflects
the light as if the light is glowing out of the paint.
So they shone a green light on it, it turns green.
Did they actually do it for the end of the metabolus crystal as
well?
I actually was wondering whether they did...
Like blue pulsing light.
So there is a blue pulsing light that's actually superimposed upon
the end of that.
But the end of it also glows as well.
I don't actually know to be honest with you.
But it was...
What were they using it for?
They were using it for Kronos.
We did talk about that.
Yeah, they used they used it for Kronos as well.
And they will use it again next year.
Just a little bit of trivia about it.
The paint itself was developed by the 3M company who now make a
range of adhesives.
And post-it notes.
And post-it notes as well.
And one of its developers was the exquisitely named Philip the
Palm Quist.
Excellent.
Wow. who actually won an Oscar for it in 1969 for various services
to film because it was used in such classics as 2001 a Space
Odyssey.
That's brilliant.
That's our best trivia ever.
Also problematic in the location work for this is this story was
meant to be another cooperation with the military.
So just like we had the sea devils and the mind of evil.
This was going to have cooperation with the Air Force for the air
strike.
But since the sea devils, the armed forces had decided to do more
direct promotion actually advertising, oh, look where the army
rather than the more subtle promotion of featuring the army, the
Navy, or the Air Force in television programs, which they had to
pay for the resources.
That was sort of the understanding.
The TV productions didn't pay the armed forces, the armed forces
paid for their resources, and it was sort of an agreement of will
cover that cost.
And yeah, so it was deemed too expensive for the Air Force to do
that.
So instead of getting an air strike, we get a helicopter. single
helicopter, dropping bombs, and exploding maggots, which were made
of condoms filled with gasoline.
Terrific.
And we also get a giant fly.
I actually really like the giant flying.
I actually do too.
Well, then you go.
I know people going about it, but it's creepy.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think at least half of it has to be down to the great sound
design.
So, you know, the BBC radiophonic workshop of possibly Dick Mills
again in this case, creating a really great insect-like sound, but
magnifying it, just like the beast has been magnified as well.
Although, as many have pointed out, the eggs that the fly lays
seem to be bigger than its head.
Well, there's subsequent instances of that happening in the show
as well.
So I think we can probably, we can probably wear that.
We haven't really talked about boss.
So after the maggots are dealt with, and the maggots are dealt
with.
Again, in this symbolic way where the hippies fungus beats the
corporations waste.
You know what I mean?
The hippie fungus is more powerful than the corporation's waste
products. you know, sort of very unsubtle sort of symbolic thing.
And then we've got boss and just in case you weren't getting the
subtext, you know, the homicidal psychedelic computer that runs
this entire corporation is called boss.
And so it sort of stands for the worst kind of um, aspects of sort
of corporate capitalism, really.
Do you know what I mean?
Turning everyone into drones, working for them and all of that.
So again, it's not particularly subtle, is it?
But the whole thing has the potential to be slightly tiresome. is
lifted enormously by John Darth, who is just terrific.
His voice work on this.
It could have been really tiresome, but it really does make the
whole computer come alive, you know.
When you've got the whole computer around the doctor and it looks
really dated down with all of its, you know, databanks and schools
and all that sort of thing.
But I just love that whole, the big round circle with the voice
wave thing.
It really is extremely effective.
He's funny, isn't he?
Yeah, yeah.
And when they, when they shoot the, um, the voice wave monitor
from the side, they actually distort the wave slightly, so it
looks like it's bulbous.
Like it looks like the screen is coming out like an old cathode
ray screen.
I mean, John Dirk is so good that when we were watching it, Rod
was convinced that at the end of episode 6, a wall panel would
slide open and it would actually be the master, Wizard of Oz style
talking through the computer.
And I had to tell him after that that no, Roger Delgado was killed
shortly after this story was aired. during the airing of this
story.
Yeah, but actually, you know, it's kind of like, that would have
been pretty cool.
Yeah, price is right style, and you've won me, doctor.
Yes.
I am behind boss.
Oh, Nick.
Oh, Nick, zing boom.
It's wonderful, isn't it?
It's very cool.
And it's nice out.
It's all about efficiency and all that sort of thing.
But like, what's the deal with boss?
He's sort of flippant and a bit silly and stuff.
He's learned.
Yeah, because Stevens has programmed him to be inefficient for the
sake of efficiency, but he still gets trapped in the sort of
ancient Greek.
I'm lying, I'm telling the truth, kind of paradox, which...
Yeah, that's a bit crummy.
Yeah, a few years previously, he had also put paid to Harry Mudd's
Androids in the Star Trek episode, I Mud.
Oh really?
Yeah, yeah.
I like the fact that boss is going to be linked up to 7
international computers.
Just like Votam.
Just like Votan, just like the inter intertubes.
Yes.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Interweb we have these days.
The electric internet.
There's some nice stuff that happens in episode five.
I love the fact that the doctor is giving Mike, the Christopher
Metabulus to go into Global chemicals.
Global chemicals to try and unhypnotize people and there's a
comedy moment where the brigadier is looking at the thing and he
gets hypnotised.
Of course, Mike tries too hard as per always when he's in global
chemicals and buggers it up again.
And he actually gets the cliffhanger to the end of that episode.
Yes, it's a Mike Imperil one.
Yeah.
So, you know, it's nice to see Mike Yates, you know, actually
getting some things to do.
I think, I mean, this is the beginning of a plot for Mike because
he'll appear twice next year, which actually goes somewhere.
You know, they weren't really using Mike.
He didn't turn up in the in the 3 doctors.
He's only in sort of 3 episodes this year.
So they do give him something substantial to kind of to move him
on and make him a little bit more interesting.
And that'll be quite good next year.
I think that works right, somebody well.
Yeah, I do wonder if the reason they did that was that he was
getting work elsewhere. as we mentioned last podcast, he was
originally scripted to be in the 3 doctors.
But he had work elsewhere.
So I do have to wonder if the production officer said to him, look
next year we're going to give you sort of a little character plot
line between a few stories.
Can you please make sure you're available on these dates?
And then we'll never trouble you again.
And then we'll have trouble you again.
But when Doctor Who actors complain about being underwritten.
Usually what they're complaining about is a lack of character
development.
And, you know, I think that's what any actor wants if they're
playing a regular character.
They don't just want to play it like a comic book stereotype and
be exactly the same all the time.
They want to make it grow.
And the companions who look back on their time very fondly and
talk about it.
People like Katie Banning.
People like Sophie Aldred, got character development, whereas
actors who are promise character development, dingers, such as
Carol Anne Ford, They're very fond of the people they worked with
on the show, but they got very frustrated with the creative side
of it.
And then you've got John Levine on the other hand, who's just
happy to be there.
I suppose that's the other end of the spectrum where John Levine
had had such a rough life that he was just happy to be a part of a
family.
And he said that himself.
Happy to be out of the yeti costume.
Smelled of wee.
My book's so sad when Joe announces her engagement.
His reaction in the background.
He looks crazy.
It's not legal for him to get married in 1973, you see. so he's a
bit upset.
Yeah.
Corporal Osgood's already waiting for him.
They'd be great together.
Yeah.
Did you did you notice the throwback to the Damons in that scene?
The brig offers Mike a drink.
Oh, and then they're going to dance later on in the living room.
Yeah, they do get a thought that was it.
Yeah, the brig's like, oh, you know, hard luck, Mark, how about a
drink?
Which is very sweet again.
It sort of builds on that thing we were talking about earlier with
the time monster.
We've been to talk about Joe's departure scene and Joe talks about
her uncle.
Yes, another call back to the very beginning.
And that's really nice.
This is massive though, isn't it?
I mean, she has been the she's the longest serving companion
ever.
She's done 3 years.
Maybe Jamie does more episodes than her.
Maybe she's the 2nd longest.
Does she beat Jamie in time?
Yes, because, well, I mean, if you think about it doing a full
season.
She does 3 full seasons.
Jamie nearly does 3 full seasons and they were 40 something
episode seasons.
The other thing to consider, though, is Joe is the solo
companion.
Yeah.
Whereas, whereas Jamie was with Victoria and then Zoe.
But she also, I mean, she really creates the single female
companion role and she's spectacular at it.
You know, she really, really is, she's funny, she's super
competent.
She's terribly smart.
She knows what a controlled, super lucent emission is.
You know, she's she's funny to watch.
She humanises pertly.
She's just been extraordinarily.
She's been at it for, you know, nearly as long as Trout and, you
know, like it's, it's really something this is absolutely
monumental.
And we complained over and over again about these characters being
thrown away in the 60s.
But this is lovely, isn't it?
It's set up right from episode one and that scene.
They almost kiss.
They almost kissed 22 episodes earlier.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. and the doctor walks in and and
deliberately drags him away like, nope, that's not happening.
But yeah, you're not at the end, you went at the end and then it's
like, you know, we're going to go to the Amazon and do all this
and, oh, we're going to get married too, because you can't have an
unmarried couple in 1973.
Yes.
Well, stop off at Cardiff, get some supplies, get married, and
then sort of head off, but they kiss at the end.
It's so nice.
And not only that, I've said it before, but Michael Lee Bryant's
such a clever director.
In the 1st episode, when the doctor's standing by the TARDIS and
Joe's going to leave, she hugs him, the doctor's on the left of
the screen, Joe's on the right of the screen.
In episode 6 at the end, the doctor's standing by the door.
He's on the right of the screen, Joe's on the left.
She hugs him and he walks out.
And last night I watched episode 6 on the special edition DVD
there's a commentary from Katie Manning and Russell T. Davis.
And it's great because for the 1st 2 minutes, Russell T. Davis is
saying, I don't even know what I'm doing here.
You know, you were in this.
I wasn't.
But they both start crying in that last scene.
Like, you know, not crying buckets, but their voices are both
breaking and like, It's a beautiful shot of her looking over her
shoulder.
Yeah.
Yes, that's nice, isn't it?
And it is a contrast to how oblivious she was in episode one too.
She didn't know she was saving.
Now she knows she's leaving.
She will miss the doctor, but she thinks, you know, she's made the
right decision.
Sorry, Russell comments on that action as well because he says, you
turn to watch the doctor go, but you touch Cliff's arm.
And he said, if you had just turned to watch Dr. go and not reach
out for Cliff, it would have been Joe realising she's made the
wrong decision.
You touch Cliff, you know it's the right decision.
And Katie says, well, it is the right decision. have to grow up.
Yeah.
And that's it too.
It is growing up that she's moving out of sort of silly science
fiction adventures and actually going off to make the world a
better place.
It's really just, it's lovely.
I'm not afraid to admit that I shed a manly tear when I was
watching it last night as well.
I mean, God, I usually shed a tear in episode one when she
leaves.
Because as I say, that's when she leaves.
Yeah.
And then you've got, you cut to the doctor in, and that long shot
with the, is it the sun fading or the sun?
Yeah, sunset.
Oh yeah.
There's a long scene before that where he's walking through a
bunch of animals though, which I think probably...
Oh, up to the car.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's a lot of lot of farm animals in that story.
I think that that might undermine some of the emotional impact.
I don't think it undermines it at all because it emphasises his
strangeness in a situation of ordinariness.
And it's because of his strangeness that he walks away.
You know, he's not going to stay for the party and say goodbye to
Joe because he can't because he's already at his threshold for
emotion.
Yeah.
You know.
The doctor doesn't say goodbye.
It's something that the new series comments on overtly, especially
when spoiler alert, everyone, Katie comes back to play Joe in
Sarah Jane Adventure's death of the doctor.
And she comments, you know, you never said goodbye and you never
came back.
It emphasises his distance from that.
And that shot of him driving along the horizon, the horizons
directly in the middle against the settings on because the day of
them together is ending.
And I like the sting actually comes in.
Yeah, it fades.
It fades in rum.
But then you almost have this wonderful Jenny Laird moment where
you actually get the end credits coming in upside down.
For the last time.
And it happens 3 times in this story.
So apparently what happens is they don't have time to rewind the
tape during, while they're putting the whole thing together.
And so they just play it backwards, which results in the film
being upside down.
So the very last time we have those closing credits, they're
upside down.
So until next year we'll get a new one.
And you realise what this means for me.
Next month we get a new logo.
Ooh, terrific. wait.
You have to do the diamond logo.
A couple of podcasts ago, I promised a new trope, which I had
discovered as the podcast resident tropologist.
And what I've discovered is a trope called the exposition coma.
And the exposition coma is very much in evidence here.
Cliff gets infected by the maggots and spends an episode sort of
lying in bed and thrashing around like you do.
But he does deliver important exposition during that coma, in
where he says the word serendipity, and then they all have to work
out what he means.
But it turns out that there are exposition comas all the way
through, Doctor Who, starting with um per twee, talking about
number 2 output pipe in Inferno.
Filer, Bill Filer, talking about Axons, Must not distribute Axon.
Must not distribute Axon.
Because it's Bill Filer, nobody listens anyway.
No, well, there's no one else in the room, even.
Stuart gets an exposition coma in the time monster where he talks
about how dangerous Chronos is.
And there doesn't seem to be a page for this on TV trope.
So I'd like to think that I've discovered the exposition coma.
So that's a term of art now that I've invented.
Exposition coma.
Yeah, I'd like to call it Nathan's exposition coma, actually.
But the exposition coma will do.
You don't have to mention me every time you talk about it.
You can live with me.
The NEC, dear listener.
And I've just realised we haven't done Walsh watch for this
season.
Now there's 2 prime examples.
There may be more in other stories, but I couldn't see them as we
were going through.
So I'm going to start off, 1st of all, the 3 doctors.
The aforementioned wrestling scene with Pertwee, where Pertwee
goes to his back, bad idea.
That was Terry Walsh, for the most part, playing Pertwee.
You can tell when the hair colour changes from white to gray.
That wig is so bad.
I agree.
What are they thinking of?
It's just, it looks like a scrubbing brush.
And as per twee's hair has got more and more bouffant over the
years, they've chosen not to revise the Walsh wig.
And so it is.
He straps on his fighting wig whenever he has to like wrestle.
But at the moment, they're still they're still making an effort to
cut between all the sequences, so they try and mask it as much as
possible.
Yeah, it's really just the wig that spoils it.
Next year you'll see his face.
Next year?
Not so much.
And thankfully when Tom comes on board, spoiler alert, Terry Walsh
gets a much better wig.
But he can't keep the same one.
I'd be surprised if they didn't attempt it, actually, given the
per tweeting. really is so bad.
And then in the green death.
Terry Walsh gets to pull triple duty.
So 1st of all, he's John Poey, stunt double in that wonderful
fight in episode two, gentlemen, Venusia Nikito.
I do hope I haven't harmed you, which is a class line, but again
we can tell who it is by the colour of the hair, and we do get a
brief, brief glimpse at Terry Walsh's face.
Terry Walsh also gets a speaking part.
It's quite a big speaking part. quite a big speaking part.
And he gets to argue with the doctor in episode six.
And then he gets kind of possessed or whatever and collapses.
And then the doctor saves his life because he drags him away
behind Bessie for the explosion.
Speaking of Bessie, she's got a new engine in this, so you'll
notice her bonnet is noticeably longer than it was in the 3
doctors.
Look out for that.
I love him when he talks about cars.
And the other part that Terry Walsh got to play in this was
actually the stunt double for Richard Franklin when he jumps off
the roof.
I was wondering about that because there is a really suspicious
cart.
And there is a big jump.
Like he actually jumps out the window onto a big awning thing. and
you actually see that.
And then he jumps to the ground, but there's a cut there.
So that's obviously not here.
But it's very well.
It's very well edited.
Richard Franklin matches the action of Terry Walsh.
And considering that it would have just been Richard Franklin
watching the action and then jumping in, not reviewing the
footage.
It's really well done.
But I think that is Walsh watch for this month.
Dear listener, if you've seen Terry Walsh in Carnival of Monsters
or Frontier in Space.
Or just when you've gone down the shops?
Oh, indeed.
Or, you know, like the cinema or something, if he's been dining
out at a restaurant, just let us know.
Yeah, I do recall a rather fun story of someone who lived in
Whitstable when Peter Cushing lived there and he had a punk band
so he wrote a song which went, Peter Cushing lives in Wisstable.
I have seen him on his bicycle.
I have seen him buying vegetables.
Peter Cushing lives in Winstable.
That's genius.
Speaking of genius, we now have the Jenny Laird awards and Todd
from your myriad nominations, you're going to have to choose one
Jenny Laird award for this year.
It's tough.
It really is.
I'm going to go with the end of Frontier in Space.
I just think it's unforgivable.
Nathan?
Well, I'm going to go with the scrotoid, actually.
I just sort of think the scrotoid from Frontier in Space, which is
a related puzzling creative choice.
When they had the opportunity to create giant lizards.
And when they knew how competent the production team were at the
creation of giant lizards.
Why would they not get, say, a puppeteer in and realise a giant
lizard?
That's got to have worked well?
Certainly better than the scrotoid slug monster did.
I think we'll see them take up your advice very soon.
Excellent. can't wait.
I think my Jenny later award for puzzling creative choice has to
be the Styrofoam mountains of the planet Spiritum.
Yes, that giant rock that falls on Katie's head.
I'm still like wincing, just seeing it.
We have come to the conclusion that the 3rd doctor just pronounces
everything wrong.
So it's actually spirit and not spiradon.
It's metabolis, not metabolis, and it certainly kittenous rather
than chipness.
Yeah, he says chitness.
That's right.
I think it's chitinus.
Titanus. yeah So, you see, it's infecting an E now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gentlemen, recommendations for this season.
What should people check out?
I think they should check out the Sarah Jane Adventures, Death of
the Doctor, with the return of Katie Manning as Joe Jones.
Wonderful performance, and it's a delight to see her with Liz and
with Matt, and I just can't recommend it enough.
The character development is so great too, because Russell gets
exactly why she left the doctor.
She left the doctor to become an activist.
So rather than becoming a housewife or contracting syphilis or
something, you know, she she is a fantastic, wonderful activist
who still loves her husband, who has lots of children and
grandchildren, whom she loves.
She's a dotty, crazy old lady, which is that persona that Katie
projects as well.
You know, Russell writes for Katie now and writes with a real
knowledge and a real love of the character of Joe and it's
spectacular and the scenes of Joe and Sarah together are just
wonderful.
It's terrific. you know, if you hadn't seen it.
Make sure you check it out.
And incidentally, dear listener, if you can't track down Sarah
Jane Adventures series 4 on DVD or Blu-ray, that two-part Sarah
Jane Adventure story is included on the Green Death Special
Edition DVD.
Oh, it's an extra. that's right Really?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think I knew that.
Okay.
Brendan?
My recommendation, of course, it has to be Katie Manning related
is for the Big Finnish Companion Chronicle Find and Replace, which
is set, again, about 20 years after Joe leaves the doctor.
She is now Joe Jones.
However, someone is stalking her based on her life with the
doctor.
Now, like all companion chronicles.
It's a 2 hander with Katie and one other actor, but that doesn't
mean it's limited to 2 characters.
Indeed, Katie is not limited to 2 characters within it as another
character made famous by Katie appears.
We have Jo Jones meets Iris Wild Time.
I've listened to this wonderful.
Isn't it wonderful?
Oh, I highly recommended.
You know what?
It's just a testament to Katie and the scriptwriter because it is
funny and scary and heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once.
I'm not going to say anything more about it.
Go download it.
I think if you're in Australia, it's about $10 to download one of
those.
It is well worth the hour of your time.
It's very clever.
Nathan.
Okay, so my pick of the week.
I had three, but Todd fortunately chose one of them.
I think that that's an absolute mask.
I have mentioned listening to Margasis Reed, Planet of the
Daleks.
We've mentioned Russell T. Davis a couple of times this episode
and I want to recommend that people watch cucumber, banana, and
tofu because essentially no one I know has watched them.
I have no one to talk to about them.
And I think they're really really extraordinary.
So Russell has learned from his time on Doctor Who, that you can
create a TV event by releasing a bunch of linked TV shows.
Do you know what I mean?
Like the way he had Doctor Who and Torchwood and Sarah Jane and
Confidential and stuff all at once.
So he created a really big TV event here.
So there's 8 episodes of cucumber, which is sort of 45 minutes
long, and it tells a connected story about a 46 year old gay man
who lives in Manchester, you know, like a kind of sequel to queer
as folk.
And then immediately after that, you switch to the other sort of
channel 4 channel for a 25 minute sort of short story called
Banana, which was like an anthology show that dealt with like one
of the individual characters from the episode that you just
watched.
And then there was a 3rd thing called tofu, which was a sort of
interview show about sort of sex and sexuality and stuff.
It's not suitable for children.
It's proper grown up drama.
There are no robots in it, but it is some of Russell T. Davis's
best work, and as someone who loved his time as Doctor Who
Showrunner, It was just lovely to see new stuff written by him.
And it's funny and it's heartbreaking and harrowing and affecting
and just really interesting and so I can't recommend it enough.
Well, dear listener, as we bid a fond and tearful farewell to
Katie Manning as Joe Grant, That's all the time we have for this
episode of the podcast.
Nathan and I will be back in two weeks, along with Richard.
Todd will join us again in a month's time.
So story allocations for season 11.
Richard, if you are listening for John Pertwee's final season in
the role of the doctor, you will be discussing the Time Warrior
and the Monster of Peladin.
Sorry.
I will be handling invasion of the dinosaurs and Death to the
Daleks.
And Nathan, that leaves you with Planet of the Spiders.
Excellent.
Oh, wow.
I'm really excited by that.
I love Robert Sloan.
He's very unfairly maligned in some fan quarters but never by me.
Speaking of maligned.
As we move into season 12 where Todd will return, Nathan, you will
be discussing Revenge of the Cybermen.
I like revenge.
Yeah you're crazy.
Todd, you get half of the Nerva Beacon story arc with the Arc in
Space and Genesis of the Daleks.
I've lucked out.
You have.
Uh, which leaves me to uh, do the honours with the Santarian
experiment.
The Bristol boys are back, and the debut, possibly the most
important Doctor Who debut story, robot.
So, ladies and gentlemen, and those who have yet to make up their
minds.
My name's Brendan, and this is the end of Flight Through
Entirety.
We see you later.
Good night.
See you soon.
That one's quite your entirety.
For Billy, Nathan, Brendan James.
In this episode, you're not comfortable hip there, is reported on
the 3rd April 2015.
Next episode will be released on the 10th of May.
Podcasting isn't just a matter of not being frightened, you know?
It's being afraid and eating the cakes you have to eat anyway.
I can't think what else I needed to say.
The thals.
Lartep, Taron, Fungoids, gosh, this is stupid.