He Finds a Way to Fix It

[00:40]

Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight for Entirety, the only Doctor Who podcast that really does know how to snack.

I'm Nathan.

I'm Brendan.

I'm Peter.

And I'm Jack.

Well, Christmas comes round again every year, but a final farewell is something that can only ever happen once, or 2 or 3 times.

So now it's time for River Songs last, last night in the Husbands of River Song.

So how about that Ramon?

My God.

He's pretty.

He is pretty.

So he is in the survivors that stars.

[01:42]

That's him.

Raveo.

Did not know where he was from.

Yeah.

I knew him.

Oh, yes, okay.

Yeah, he was attractive in survivors.

He was really great.

I remember his one line when he talked about what he most missed about the before time was his laptop, and I kind of thought, that's exactly what I would say as well.

Laptops, how can we podcast?

Exactly.

This is a really kind of funny episode in that the bulk of it is overshadowed by the last 10 minutes.

And I'm going to call on us to do something formally complicated, which is we're not going to talk about the last 10 minutes until the very end.

How about that?

No, I think it's easier to do that because as you say, it is such a marked shift when it happens.

So yeah, I can do that.

The one thing I am going to say is that I recently saw the last 10 minutes on YouTube, and I think I sort of pre-cried before pressing the play button.

[02:49]

But then when I think back on it, I always kind of find it hard to remember what actually happened in the 45 minutes leading up to it.

Turns out quite a lot.

Yeah.

A few jokes.

Some action?

Recycled set?

A bit of romantic comedy.

Yep, yep.

I mean, Moffat.

This is this is really what he's done the 2nd year in a row with Capaldi, which is that we've had a sort of fairly bleak season finale and then followed it up just a couple of weeks later with some fun.

And last Christmas was really very great and properly scary and stuff, but was also just fun and warm and solved many of the problems that existed at the end of series 8.

Does this do the same thing?

I think that's very right, because particularly in series 8, I think there was an eagerness to capture the darkness that, you know, Peter Capaldi has demonstrated he can bring to the role.

[03:49]

And kind of everybody assumed he would bring.

He does come from a very strong comedy background with a very high pedigree and it's quite a Serbic comedy.

Um, but it's really nice to um, uh, see him do something that's quite charming and sweet and romantic, which I don't think you've really seen from him up until this point.

Yeah, I love what Peter Capaldi's given to do in this because by forgetting Clara, It relieves him a lot of the baggage of the last 2 series, and that's not a veiled insult at Jenna Coleman, who's brilliant, or even at the character, because the character's really great as well, but it seems like Stephen Moffat has kind of gone, well, what would the doctor be like if he hadn't met Clara?

And he's still got a bit of the irascibility, you know, the bit with the reindeer antlers.

Because the TARDIS knows what's happened, so the TARDIS is trying to cheer him apart.

I love the description of it as a holodramatic antlers.

[04:51]

Yes.

Maybe the Tarlist just knows he's going to be a bit horny this episode.

I think possibly the moment where the character of the doctor gives into the comedy of the situation is after they've teleported out and fallen down and hydroflex is in the bag yelling at them and he just starts laughing and Rivers's like, it's not funny.

And he's like, we're being threatened by a bag.

Well, he actually says I haven't laughed for a long time.

Yeah, that's true.

And I mean, it doesn't, doesn't, maybe it's in deep breath as early as deep breath where Clara tells him not to smile.

Because, you know, I'll tell you when to smile.

Because he's smile, he's a bit scary. has the line where he says, don't look in the mirror.

It's fury.

So that is a fun thing to see, but he still gets to be irascible, but in a more comedy way.

Like, I think we get it right.

I think Carol singers will be criticised.

Criticised. absolutely.

Absolutely.

Very warm irascibility.

Yeah.

Poor Carol.

[05:54]

Even that really early moment where he just sort of half turns to Matt Lucas and says, do you still really think I'm a surgeon?

So great.

No, but doesn't he say, this might be an alarming question.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Don't make puddles.

Dont make puddle.

You might need a mop.

Because Moffatt is at hard a sitcom rider.

And even when he's doing Doctor Who, it's most serious, you know, the characters that he creates are sitcom characters who behave in predictable ways, they're well characterised, we know how they're going to respond to things and that's part of the fun and subverting that or playing with that or reinforcing it is what he does.

And 2 of the principal roles here.

You have Matt Lucas, a comedian, and Greg Davies, a comedian.

You know, but Matt Lucas playing it a little bit for laughs, but not, it's kind of weird.

You know, he's not winking at the audience.

This character is just a bit silly.

And Greg Davies is sort of, you know, from the Graham Crowden school of villainy, that I have no problem with that whatsoever.

[07:01]

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, he's perfect at Christmas, I think.

And I also think too, there was a time where people said we're really kind of out of ideas as far as Christmas is concerned.

And I think that this gets it completely right.

It's literally on the planet Zog, isn't it?

Like it's, you know, 2 name kind of vaguely Latinate planet in the 54th century or something Christmas day.

Like we just literally don't care where it is.

And, and, you know, we have sort of Christmas decorations and stuff and we have the spaceship that looks like a Christmas bauble and we have snow and stuff and I think that's kind of all you need.

I think the only person from the actual planet, which all we know is in the future and it's a human colony.

We just get the surgeon who turns up and then we never see him again.

I think that's the only person on the planet we see. other than Matt Lucas.

Yeah, yeah.

We literally don't care, do we?

No, no, actually, I was one of those people who was complaining that every 13th episode of Doctor Who was about Christmas.

[08:05]

But around about the time of the snowmen, I think Stephen got it right where Doctor 2 stopped doing Christmas on Christmas Day and just did a Christmassy feeling.

Obviously, last Christmas accepted because that had actual Santa Claus in it.

But the snowman and this, they feel right for Christmas without being about Christmas.

Yeah, I guess the snowman has the advantage of being sort of set in Victorian times where most of our Christmas iconography comes from...

Yeah, here we're in the 54th century.

That seems less Christmassy on the face of it.

But it's just sort of terrific that it happens.

I'm really, you know, we're releasing this on Christmas Day and the Christmas special is back and I'm really happy about that.

I think it is a great thing.

And it makes Doctor Who big, I think.

Jack, how old were you when you saw this?

[09:08]

Ooh, we're coming out with the big questions, are we?

You can fudge it a little if you want.

I was in university if that makes people feel a little better.

Okay, fine.

I was just wondering how, you know, kids, like the teenagers would have responded to something, which is essentially a love story.

It's a romance.

And in its early segments, it's a screwball romance.

But as with all screwball comedies, the romance is at the heart of it and that's sort of what gives way.

I remember really enjoying it.

I think I was in my 2nd year of uni and I really love series 9.

I love the darkness in it, particularly at the end of it.

I loved Heavensend and Hellbent as well.

And I remember finding it a really wonderful reprieve.

I think for me, um, I, I, been enjoying Stephen Moffat in this very serious big thesis statement register where he's coming up with these very big statements about what the show is and what the show can be and what it could be.

And it's really quite nice to see him kind of, not retreat entirely into his comfort zone, but he's in a much more familiar register of like, it's essentially a series of romantically linked sketches.

[10:19]

It's a lot of farcical scenarios.

They barter the head of a dead king to his own servants.

The whole premise of the multiple husbands is kind of very space sitcoming as well.

Don't forget the falling through the floor.

Falling through the floor.

It's all very frothy and very silly and very witty, and there are lots of little clever jokes throughout it, and it is very much guided by that romantic chemistry that Alex Kingston, Peter Capaldi have.

I remember finding it really nice to see the show embrace that because up until this point, there had been this kind of anti-romantic streak in the doctor, like overcompensating for the David Tennant and Matt Smith year.

So it was quite nice to see him in this much cosier, cuter register.

I think wasn't there that quote that Stephen Moffatt emails Russell T. Davis saying he'd got Alex Kingston and Peter Capaldi for a special and he said, oh, think of it, the sex storm that's coming.

Good advice always.

It is really wonderful, isn't it?

We'll get there, but they never actually kiss, but the romance stuff is really good, and it's actually the one really sort of heartbreaking thing.

[11:27]

We still not talking about the last 10 minutes.

Because what we get here is something that we never get to see, and it's a very strange depiction of what rivers, life is like, because...

So we learn here that she's 200 years old.

We know that we go straight from here to the story that she tells the 10th doctor when she's sort of chained herself to the wall or whatever in silence in the library in Forest of the Dead.

So we know it's it's the end coming.

And what doesn't seem to have happened is that the doctor doesn't seem to have made her better. that when the doctor's not there, her life is sort of weird and kind of a bit bad, you know, she's marrying people in order to get diamonds off them.

She, you know, hires a surgeon to sort of scoop all the brains out of Greg Davies head and stuff.

[12:31]

Like, it does seem strange.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I really like this depiction because we got hints of it in the Matt Smith era if Matt Smith was in the other room.

You know, she, that's when, you know, she makes a Dalek beg for mercy or shoots all the silence and says to Rory, don't tell him indoors, basically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And just the sort of anguished look on Peter Capaldi's face when she's going through all this.

And I think it's then a bit of a strange choice where, you know, she originally explains she's getting the diamond because it was stolen from other people and she's going to return it, but then she's just going to sell it.

And I think I think maybe we needed another twist there where she's like, and then I'll give the money to the people.

What do they need a diamond for?

you know.

But that being said, I think the uncomfortableness is kind of a bit more true to the character.

Yeah.

Because, you know, she is a trained assassin.

And I think it's the game that the episode is playing in the 1st half because it, the 1st half of the, well, most of the episode is built on the idea that we're seeing the bits of Rivers life that the doctor doesn't see because she doesn't know he's there.

[13:44]

And it kind of posits this idea that that river song has secretly been stringing the doctor along the entire time.

And like, you know, she says, you know, there's the joke about him being damsel, because he needs a lot of rescuing. when there's that bit a little bit later where she says he's nobody special but terribly useful every once in a while.

And it does feel, in some way, a kind of response to a line of criticism to the character of her song, which is that her life is entirely built around the doctor and she's entirely codependent and he is the centre of her life.

And this kind of flips that a little bit to be like, no, actually, he's the help.

He, you know, he helps me do the things I want to do.

And he kind of gets away thinking, oh, she's a lovely, kind, beautiful person.

I love the idea that she is constantly sneaking into the Tartars taking it away.

Oh, yeah.

Just dropping it back.

And the doctor never finds out about it.

[14:46]

And even that thing where the doctor says, well, what if he found out about it now, you know?

And that also gives us the opportunity to do that incredible thing where he goes in there and properly does the bigger on the inside of the outside speech, how he thinks it should always be done.

And that was so good.

Finally, it's my turn.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's, you know, like everyone is aware that everyone writing the companion's 1st scene in the TARDIS has to do it and has to find a way of doing it.

And, you know, you have Donna who sees the inside of the Tartars 1st and comments on how small it is outside and you have Martha saying it's made of wood and you have that wonderful scene with Rose.

Like there are so many ways of doing it, but it's a thing that you have to do.

And so having the doctor know that rule as well.

And actually, it makes up the fact that River, to my knowledge, has never had that scene.

We've never seen that.

And also, it's that twist on the companion thing that the new series does where travelling with the doctor makes you a better person.

[15:52]

It makes River a better person when she's with him, but is she a better person when she's not with him?

I really like that.

Yeah.

And the one thing I will quickly say on that joke is that it is one of those scenes and one of those jokes that you think, how has this never been done before?

It's such a fun idea.

But the great button on it is that he does his grandstanding and he does his little speech and then River pulls open a panel that reveals a whole cabinet of alcohol that he's never seen before.

Or the button, he says you might want to press that button and she says it clears the weight tank.

Oh, on deck seven.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and he's like, best to avoid decks.

Does he know anyway?

He leaves the brakes on.

So good.

I think my favourite line in that speech from Capaldi, and I'm not going to get it verbatim, but it's like, the laws of Euclidean geometry have been scribbled on, torn up, and then snogged to death.

He's been practising it in the mirror.

[17:03]

That bit where River is saying, like, she's just using the doctor, the big finish audios kind of play with that, and she'd started making them already at this point.

Alex Kingston thought after, um, name of the doctor.

She's like, well, that's it.

Like, I've done death, I've done post-death, not going to invite me back again.

So she started making these with Big Finish.

And one of the recurring themes in the big finish plays is people trying to get at the doctor and her convincing them he's not as important as they think he is.

Right.

And, you know, it all culminates in that beautiful speech she gives about, you know, you don't expect the stars themselves to love your back.

It's so good, isn't it?

Because...

And because she's starting to say the thing. because it's a sitcom and because it relies on her having insufficient information.

And so she's saying all this stuff about there's no way he is stupid or sentimental enough to be here right now just because I need rescuing.

[18:07]

And it becomes clear that all that stuff that she said about the doctor and why the doctor's not important and how the doctors are occasionally useful is all defensive because she thinks that the doctor doesn't really love her.

And she's wrong about it.

She's wrong.

Yeah, it's written all over Peter Capaldi's face.

It's quite beautiful.

I feel like it's the kind of performance.

That as good as Matt Smith is, he could never give that kind of performance simply because of age and personal lived experience.

And, you know, Peter Capaldi's doctor has that big chunky ring on his wedding finger because he refuses to take off his real-life wedding ring.

Didn't we see the close-up of it in his announcement video?

Yes, exactly.

You know, and so Peter Capaldi is a massive romantic and there's that video of him being told at a convention that he's a silver fox and having to ask the interviewer what a silver fox is.

And getting terribly embarrassed to say, well, I think my wife must think so.

[19:10]

And he looks at her the way we all want someone to look at us.

And it's one of the things where her relationship with Matt Smith, Rivers's relationship was always played for laughs because there was the age difference.

And they've shied away from giving the 12th doctor any of that kind of sexual chemistry with his companions just because of the age difference again.

In fact, early on they were making some icky jokes about old man and how old he is, which just didn't really fly.

But here they're able to move that on from being a screwball comedy to being an actual romance, just because he and Alex Kingston look age appropriate, look right together, and have that level of sophistication, where they can actually play it as a proper romance..

River has that line where she's like, hush, mummy and daddy are talking, which, which, which, I imagine works a lot better with Peter Capaldi than Matt Smith?

Although that would be funny with him.

Oh, my comedy cutaway.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mummy and 2nd husband at all.

[20:11]

So I think Ramon's only the husband just to justify the plural, I think.

I think we want just more than 2 husbands if it's going to be called husbands of River Song.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

So now we have three.

And also, you know, it's a matter of if Ramon's around, you're going to, yeah, yeah.

That scene where, like, he's reacting to them kissing and kind of, you know, dismissing kissing is something where there's not a sort of lot of variety.

You just the one thing.

That's really great.

And he, you know, just his constant reaction to her extra husbands.

I guess maybe the extra husbands are, like, a kind of symbol or a, you know, an epitome of this weird different life that she leads that he's completely unaware of.

Even the gag at the end before the opening credits where he says, I think I'm going to need a bigger flow track.

Which again is super brilliant because everyone was doing flow charts of how the relationship between the doctor and river intersects, you know, throughout the different episodes.

[21:19]

But it's also a reflection of that.

She's married to the doctor and the doctor is all different people.

So she's had multiple husbands.

She just, yeah.

Yeah, I do think one of the really nice details about the husbands of River song in particular.

Because, you know, by this point, River song's timeline on television alone is so complicated and so nonlinear that it is hard to keep track of.

And the episode is constructed, it's very conscious of where this falls in rivers, personal timeline, and it does kind of, uh, position it through a lot of very careful lines of dialogue, but it doesn't, it also doesn't get bogged down too much in, you know, the last time we met, we did this, we did that, uh, it does because you were in Manhattan, you're about to go here, and it tips its hat to where she will be going back too.

In fact, there's a line very, very early on when he 1st meets her and doesn't even know who she is because she's wearing the cow and he says new suit, new hair car, which is a quote from Forest of the Dead.

[22:23]

And I wondered why that came in.

And I guess it comes in because then she gets to react to his actual suit when when the date happens at the end of the episode.

But it does for those of us who are watching, put it in a particular place straight away, I think.

Yeah, yeah.

I think the detail, uh, that mo, which is, it's very Stephen Moffat, um, but again, not to, not to jump ahead too much, but right at the end, uh, Alex Kingston just says, do you remember that time there were 2 of you, which is a reference to uh, one of the series 6 minisodes, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Good night last night.

Bad night.

Yeah.

Yeah, from the DVD.

Yeah, so this is, and she alludes to it.

I mean, the script alludes to the fact that they've occasionally arranged dates on durelium before, but the doctor's cancelled.

And, you know, Moffatt is an inveterate recycler of his own staff and his own ideas and, you know, Sally Sparrow, for instance, is perhaps the most obvious example of that.

[23:30]

And so he's not going to not do something because he's done it in a DVD extra. particularly because when he does this, it's so amazingly good.

Yeah.

Is it worth talking about how, I don't know how much we want to talk about this, how this was originally going to be Stephen Moffat's intended last episode?

So we have been talking about that over the last few episodes of series 9 that this is him winding up the River song Arc and actually kind of going out where he comes in because when Silence of the Library and Forest of the Dead go out, we know that he's the next showrunner.

Yeah, already.

[24:31]

And so that's kind of the start of his era.

And obviously it's the start of his era because we're getting that picture from River of what the doctor is going to be like in the Matt Smith era and the Capoli era.

And so he is very definitely winding up something that needed to be properly finalised and kind of closing the circle, I think.

And so this is his kind of victory round, isn't it?

You know, with heaven sent and then hell bent, you know, following up his triumphing day of the doctor, both in the Zygon episode and in the season finale, and now just coming back for a romantic comedy, which is also where his career starts.

And it's also from a sort of writing and production point of view, Chris Chibnell has already been approached as his successor.

So Stephen Moffat has gone, okay, Gallifre's back, and we know where it is.

Clara has left the show.

[25:35]

Clara has left the show.

We've wrapped up the river song story.

Here is your blank palette.

Yeah.

And then, of course, he has dinner with Chris Chibnall.

And so the BBC have already sounded out Chris Chibnall, and he says, yes, I'd love to take over when Stephen finishes.

Didn't tell him when Stephen was finishing.

So he has dinner with Chris Gentleman says, so can you take over for Sirius 10?

And Chris Chipnell says, I'm making Broadchurch season three?

That's when everyone involved kind of goes, oh, maybe we should have confirmed schedules with each other.

But even without that, there was going to be a break.

Capaldi injures his knee during the Zygon 2 parter and has to go in for surgery, which I think puts him out of filming for 8 months.

So there was always going to be a long gap anyway, but I think it was more that it was going to be a year rather than a year and a half .

Yeah.

I mean, this is the longest gap between episodes in New Who, is it not?

Up until this point.

Yeah.

Yeah, 365 days between the same mysterio.

[26:36]

Yeah.

Yeah, and it does affect series 10 because series 10 can't really do anything.

I mean, he's gotten our doll and he's got messy still to do stuff with. and they get an arc and they get to be kind of concluded in a sort of satisfactory way.

So there's that.

But in a way, I think there's something interesting coming up about how Moffatt works when he doesn't have this sort of big plan and this massive toy box and stuff.

And it actually, I think, probably has an interesting effect on what he produces.

Yeah.

I do think it's kind of darkly humourous how many times Stephen Moffatt tries to leave because, you know, originally he was like, I'll do 3 seasons and then, you know, day of the doctor comes along and all the contractual issues and Matt Smith may be staying for series 8 and maybe not.

And then when Matt Smith decides to go, Moffatt's like, well, I can't have someone who's like, I know how difficult it is to start totally fresh.

[27:40]

I'll stay on for one more year.

Oh, God, we've got Peter Capaldi. stay on.

And then he's going to leave with last Christmas.

And, oh, Jenna's staying on.

I'd better stay on rather than really a 1000000000 years over a 1000000000 years.

There is a venerable tradition in Doctor Who of the producer being persuaded to stay.

Yes.

I think my favourite version of that story was, I think they had wrapped on series 10, uh, or were close to, and uh, he was like, all right, I'm done.

We're finished with series 10, I'm done.

And I think he was at a BBC party and they go up into him and say, Chris doesn't want to do the Christmas special. he's like, what do you mean he doesn't want to do the Christmas special?

And then he's like, all right, give me 2 more glasses of red wine and I'll convince Peter to stay on too.

Let's talk a little bit about the ship, which is called, I think, Harmony and Redemption. and the villains that we have.

[28:45]

So the villains are called 3 random nouns that don't seem to have anything to do with anything.

The shoal of the Winter Harmony.

There's 2 definite articles in there.

Okay, it's not the harmony of the Winter Shoal.

No, I'm pretty sure it's the shoal of the winter harmony.

Impossible to tell.

They do come back, actually.

Immediately.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. and and then never again.

Like, I thought they were setting up a Chris Gibnall thing.

Right, right.

You know, but no, I think I think Moffatt learns with the spoonheads that you can do CG with people's heads.

Yeah, that's what they remind me of.

And you could do weird head stuff.

And that moment where the guy reaches into his own head.

So the guy who comes up to her scratch.

So gooey.

Yeah, everything is gooey and then the thing that he pulls out is really gooey and so River has to put a napkin under it in order to take it.

And Capaldi's going, I wouldn't do that in a restaurant.

[29:45]

I don't know what that means.

Does he mean that he...

It's unhygienic.

Oh, I thought it might mean someone thinks there's raw meat somewhere.

If there wasn't before, there is no.

It's great.

That guy does that stupid voice, though.

Yeah.

I think he's got scratch?

He's called scratch.

Yeah, yeah.

And he's got a really sort of weird and definite look, but as you alluded to before, Brendan, it is Mancini's restaurant, isn't it?

From Deep Bread.

Yes.

And we have the moment where we look around and discover that they're all scratch, you know.

So he is, as we said before, recycling his own ideas a little bit.

But of course, he's not the best villain in the scene.

The best villain in the scene is the splendidly camp concierge.

Hemmy.

Oh, Fleming.

Fleming.

Fleming.

Yeah, Fleming.

He is amazing.

That dialogue.

There's something because it's not just that she wants to murder Hydro flags.

[30:50]

It's also that she seems to be sort of hanging around with the most evil people in existence.

And I think one of the reasons they're evil is just for plot reasons, so we don't have to save them at the end.

You know, so we're quite happy with them crashing on Derelium and everyone's dead and we don't have to kind of worry about that.

So I think there's a very simple sort of say Wadi and we don't need them anymore, but we give a moral reason for kind of killing them.

Yeah, I think the doctor actually says he has a line at the end where he's like, oh, and I think if anybody on board that ship probably wasn't worth saving anyway.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He says it to Alphonse at the end.

But he also says it to River.

He says there's not one person on the ship who is worth you and she says the same thing to him.

But, you know, these are very evil people.

And the way that Fleming is described as evil is sort of sort of weirdly racist in a way, because it's to do with the way that, you know, his species reproduces.

It's that just tremendous, you know, how are the twins of, very well, still digesting their mother.

[31:56]

It was a lovely service.

Yeah, so good.

Like all of that stuff is really funny and they're really sort of gross and horrible.

Basically, every villain this episode is just some kind of ick.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And we have that dialogue, which is just ludicrously over the top, you know, even the people who are serving the dinner have to have lots of confirmed slaughters, so we don't have to worry about that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's not like platform one.

Do you know what I mean?

Where all the rich come and then there are poor people who we have to sort of care about.

We hate all of them.

They're all murderers.

They're all bad, and so we can kill them all at the end.

And that's just the nice people.

And there's that great line where River says something like, you know, en-suites are reserved for planet burners, do try the fish.

So much fun.

Well, we all know Jim the Fish.

That's the other thing.

We do get the scene where we synchronise diaries, sort of, don't we?

But it's it's Fleming going around just reading it out.

[32:59]

And apparently there was a film with a crash of the Byzantium.

Which, uh, would have been great.

Yeah.

I'm Angels.

But it is when they are in the in the dining room, and they have that little scene at the table where the episode begins to signpost that the tone is slightly shifting. because you do have that moment.

And again, it's one of those Stephen Moffatt things that is like, you know, a very pithy and beautiful in a very concise way where she mentions that her diary, you know, is almost out and the man who gave her the diary is the kind of person who knew how many pages you would need in a diary.

Because it does the thing that Moffat always does, which is he fixes it.

We think the story is going to have a bad ending and he finds a way to fix it.

And the way that he does that in the 1st story that we see River Song in is by having the doctor in the future.

Give River the Sonic screwdriver.

[34:01]

And use it to save her so that she can be uploaded to the virtual reality that's at the heart of the planet.

And, obviously, we see that moving into place gear.

But he does more, I think, to fix it, doesn't he?

So we get the dialogue saying that river is 200 years old.

So we, this isn't a life tragically cut short.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, and also we have had in, I think it was let's kill Hitler.

She makes a comment that she can make like minor alterations to her physical appearance.

Like, you know, I'll knock off a few years over a few decades and keep people confused or something like that.

Yeah, that's my philosophy.

You do it so well, darling.

Yes, yes.

And I think also where the doctor starts to fix it is once he realises that river was bluffing with all that stuff about him not being important, there's no further judgement of her actions.

[35:04]

Because she doesn't have a TARDIS, she has to make her way in the universe.

And...

Regardless of her reasons for why she's married Hydroflex and whatnot, he is a genocidal maniac.

But I mean, I mean, the thing.

There's no way to talk about Stephen Fry.

But I think the thing is that the doctor realises that he has allowed River to believe that he doesn't love her.

Yes.

And so it's down to him, you know.

So that final 10 minutes is him making up for it.

Isn't it?

You know, yeah, so he takes the diamond, he convinces Alphonse to build the restaurant.

He then tries to get a preservation. okay, well, in 4 years, he's like, oh, fine then.

I'll come I'll come back.

It's such a splendidly moffat thing leading into that.

We've never had the action sequence before, where the doctrine companion leap into the TARDIS and shut the doors on a crash that's about to happen.

[36:07]

Feel it inside, and then move on in time to, they open the doors.

There's nothing there.

They set something in train.

He just like moves to lever very slightly.

You get very slight tartis wheezing and groaning.

He opens the doors again, and you're aware, you think you will be.

And it's really nice.

It's really Stephen Moffati leading into a very quiet Stephen Moffatt moment.

It reminds me a little bit of the beginning of Hellbent, where we have that story where different groups of people come to the doctor until the doctor manages to overthrow the government.

It like a short story.

Like it has an absolute short story structure.

So that 10 minutes at the end is almost something separate.

And you can imagine him just writing that.

But that's the final night that they have.

Oh, and I think, Brendan, you're quite right.

Just talking about that sequence, I love the idea of the doctor just giving somebody the most valuable diamond in the universe.

He just says restaurant.

It's a restaurant to happen.

[37:08]

But I think you are right, because there's that bit where, you know, the Tartar goes haywires and it lands and he picks up the diamond and kind of, she mutters to himself, marry the diamond, and he makes that choice to end his story with her.

And there's all throughout the entire Moffat era.

There's always been this through line of the doctor will do anything to even in this story, he's, you know, he will do anything to avoid endings, and then he makes the choice himself to proactively and decisively end the story with the woman he loves.

But then that final line is just unbelievable and it's Moffat doing what he always does, that her last night is 24 years long and that they will spend those 24 years together.

Watching this last night and leading up to that scene, I thought to myself, I'm so glad that we don't do these Christmas episodes as commentaries anymore because no one needs to hear me ugly cry and sob for the next 20 minutes.

[38:11]

That ending always destroys me.

It is so, it is so beautiful.

It's from like the scene earlier with her thinking she doesn't love him.

That gets me.

But what was it last night?

I think it was it was from, it was from the moment where she's saying, you know, you always change things.

You can always, and he, and he's playing it like, no, no, tomorrow morning, you're off to the library.

And that's a recurrent theme this season with Clara and Face the Raven.

Yes, but but it's so good because she says you always do something.

Tell me how I'm going to get out of this.

And by that point, he's already scanned her with the screwdriver.

And I think I only properly registered that this time through.

I've watched this over and over again.

But, you know, he gives it the screwdriver.

And we get the silence in the library music from Murray at that point.

Clem Murray.

Yeah, yeah.

And then he sort of waves at her like an idiot. that's him scanning her for the purposes of uploading her.

[39:16]

So he has already found a way out.

He clocked that.

I never noticed that.

And then, of course, he's already thought of a way of getting out of it because it's 24 years.

It's not the last night.

She doesn't have to go off to the library in 8 hours.

She's got 24 years and she's spending them with him.

Yep, Yep, absolutely.

And something else I love about this scene is it sort of, it repurposes a bit from Mummy on the Orient Express when Clara's trying to talk about how she feels about ending their friendship and he's like, can I talk about the stars now, please?

And River keeps trying to talk to him about change it, change it, change it, and he's explaining how the music is made.

Yeah, you know.

And the difference being that, you know, she doesn't try to stop him.

But the thing we, I think we sometimes forget about river issues.

She is basically human with Time Lord element.

She's not a time lord.

She has real feelings and real emotions.

[40:18]

However, she might try to mask them to protect herself.

And Alex Kingston plays that vulnerability so beautifully.

And even though it would have been breaking the rules, as it were.

I do deeply regret that we never got a story with her with Jodie Whittaker.

Yeah.

I mean, I do think that this closes the loop and we can't have her back. totally.

And and then the other thing that I think is really good is that it's a story, isn't it?

And we end with, and they all lived happily ever after. and we have river reinterpreting that for us because as a human.

She knows that happily ever after doesn't mean forever because there's never forever.

You know, everything ends at some point.

It's not something the doctor would understand, but it's something that she understands.

And 24 years with the person you love is more than is granted to many of us, I think.

Yeah, yeah, I've been on dates that felt like they lasted 24 years, and they weren't as beautiful and romantic.

[41:22]

I can tell you that.

But it is such a beautiful bit of writing where that ending couples itself thematically a little bit with last Christmas, the doctor invokes, you know, every Christmas is last Christmas, and that for a moment, it looks like it's suggesting the doctor took kind of the wrong meaning from that in this kind of grim way.

And then and then Rivard says, you know, that has the wonderful line of, you know, happily ever after, doesn't mean forever.

It just means time.

Little time.

And it's just, oh, it's gorgeous. beautifully written.

And again, it's a recurrent theme this season.

Like we were saying earlier with Clara and Face the Raven.

Clara gets the long way round, so does River.

Yeah.

Yeah.

[42:32]

Well, new listener, that's all the time we have for now.

We'll be back for Christmas in July and the return of Dr. Mysterio.

In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts, and you can keep up with us on our website, flightthroughentirety.com, where you'll find all our social media links, as well as links to our other podcasts, including the 2nd great and bountiful Human Empire, Startling Barbara Bain, Maximum Power, and Untitled Star Trek Project.

Now say it well drunk.

I am drunk.

Until next time, remember that when the wind stands fair and the night is perfect.

When you least expect it, but always when you need it the most, we'll be here, saying how tiresome it all is.

Thank you very much for listening, and good night.

Good night.

Good night.

Good night.

That was Flight through Entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley, Peter Griffiths, Brendan Jones, and Jack Shanahan.

[43:32]

Theme arrangement by Cameron Lann.

This episode, he finds a way to fix it, was recorded on the 6th of December 2023 and released on Christmas Day.

FTE won't be back until Christmas in July next year.

But we will be back before then in a newly bigenerated form as 500 year diary, with new people, new ideas, and new takes on the world of Doctor Who.

We look forward to seeing you there, and have a Merry Christmas.

[44:33]

Oh, I'm gonna cry now.

Like, it is the thing where I literally pre-cry, and there are a few TV things that even thinking about them will make me cry.

I'm not going to mention Jurassic Bark.

Yep.

But this, like, and it was this sort of thing I hadn't seen it for ages, I knew it was coming up, like someone posted a link on Facebook or something and I followed it, and I just thought, this is kind of the best thing ever.

He's really good.

And writing romance is just his absolute thing.

While I realise you will never watch Babylon 5 and don't even know what that is.

What are you doing the Babylon 5 podcast?

Yeah, don't even say that.

There is a character in that who basically at one point is killed and then revived.

And because there is a prophecy surrounding him, he knows he has 20 years to live.

[45:33]

And that's it.

Well, what about what about Captain Pike?

Well, yes, similar, similar, similar kind of thing.

And so the last episode of the series is set 20 years after everything else, and it's about him preparing for his death.

And there is a similarly... a couple of sort of bookended moments with him and his wife realising that the end is now.

And it involves a sunset.

I think there are some similar shots here.

So Douglas McKinnon may have seen it.

Yeah, it was a bit for 90s sci-fi.

Sorry.

There he is.

There he is.

And it's just like, oh, gels.

Gels.

I'm coming to the conclusion.

Okay.

Have you seen good omens?

I've seen the 1st 2 episodes.

Okay.

[46:33]

And it did seem, it did, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Someone told them to lay off the journey.

Maybe someone had just watched the Santaran stratagem and said never again.

But he is doing it again years later.

Purple gel.

He single-handedly ruins listen because he doesn't understand the script.

Makes me so gross. we finished?

He had a big Christmas that year because he did this.

He did Husbands of River Song, and he did the Sherlock Victorian special that went out not long after.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was a Christmas special, wasn't it?

I thought it was a New Year's, but I got big Robbie.

I think it was New Year's special.

Yeah.

Which we know are inferior to Christmas specialty in every way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you, Christian.

If you do want to cut that bit about Douglas McKinnon, I'll just say.

So it wouldn't surprise me if Douglas McKinnon had seen the finale of Babylon 5.

And also, doesn't he use a lot of?

[47:37]

I think God wants us to say this.

Look, as Katie Manning would say.

I'd love to see the cut of this where it's shot like time heist.

Just in a deep green gel.

Yeah, yeah.

It shot like a pressure point.

Exactly.

Time Heist follows the Blake 7 rule.

You can shoot on the same set and pretends it's a different level as long as you change the gel.

Works for Wild Blue yonder.

Yeah.

Well, that's true.

Yes, wild green yonder in places. green on it, yeah.

God, that was good.

Wasn't it great?

thinking about it.

Loved it.

Yes.

Amazing.

I was I did the a commentary with Joe for it.

Yeah, this morning.

And there's so many times already.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, I was trying to schedule that with Joe and he was, I was like, can we do Sunday?

Anytime where I don't have work the next morning.

And he's like, no, it has to go out this week.

I was like, you know what?

[48:37]

Fine.

It's a good episode.

I'll do it Every block of time you tried to put in, he said, no, I'm doing untitled stuff.

But I was watching it just going, oh, God.

I kind of just want to watch this.

Yeah, so good.

It is so terrific.

Yeah.

Yeah, they've been both good, I think.

Yes, yes.

And I look, I can't see the last one dropping the ball.

No, I can't.

Oh, neither Christmas, from what I've heard.

Okay.

Oh, good.

But then again, Gemma Redgrave's back, so...

I'm emoting in the corner.

Yeah, yeah.

Anyway.

All right, well, we might finish up in that case.