Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast made of pure soaring optimism.
And of course, nerds.
I'm Nathan.
James.
I'm BJ with an AY.
And I'm BJ without AY because some little microscopic robots have
turned it into 2 radioactive cinders floating about in Spain.
Well, there's platform one, new New York, Starship UK, the Rings
of Atkinson, the Planet Desolation, and perhaps even a spaceship
orbiting Pacifico del Rio, all perfect places for a 1st date.
But this time, the dates on an unnamed planet in the distant
future where modern technology has risen up and killed everyone
which is just the sort of thing that always happens if you don't
remember to smile.
So this is one that I hadn't watched for a while, and I don't
think I had a very strong opinion of it.
That's the same for you, I think, BJ, is that right?
Yes, well, I went to go watch it yesterday, because it'd been so
long since I'd seen it.
And I realised I'd actually gotten halfway through a while back
and hadn't gone back to it.
So I found that was a little bit telling of the episode.
But the reason why I thought this would be a good one to chat
about is because it was this season that I started coming back to
it a bit more and it reminded me more of the David Tennant and
Christopher Eccleston kind of era.
So, I mean, it is the 1st time Peter Capaldi's doctor has
introduced a new companion to travel in the TARDIS.
You know, he came with Clara and we already had a sort of
problematic relationship with Clara.
So he never just got to go and have fun.
You know he never got to kind of show off.
And so it's actually quite fun seeing him in that mode.
And I think you're right.
I think it is a lot like, you know, the tenant era.
He gets to do that a couple of times and so does Smith.
Yeah, yeah.
I definitely enjoyed the banter between the doctor and Bill being
kind of like a combination between Rose and Donna.
Yeah.
I just enjoyed her naïveness of it and just questioning and asking
silly little questions and sort of giving him a little dig every
now and then about it all, which is very kind of donner-ish in
that sense.
She really does a great job of kind of undermining him and
puncturing him and asking questions that haven't occurred to any
other companion.
And we saw that last week and we saw it in that promotional video
friend from the future, which we thought last week was fairly
terrible.
But it is the thing that Bill does, I think, more than anyone
else.
She's the one who realises that the seats are too far away from
the console.
She's the one who kind of threatens to steal a TARS off the doctor
and so on.
Yeah, so she's more the everyday person, again, trying to bring
the people that were watching it back in the tenant era back into
the fold of the casual viewer.
Yeah, I think that's right.
She's also arguably the 1st companion, since Martha, to not be or
spoiler alert, end up as a complex space-time event.
Well-ish.ish.
Yeah.
So this is a really oddly structured episode.
And the reason is that we get our 1st actual other person around
about 30 minutes in.
And so we get what is, you know, slightly longer, I think, than
the 1st episode of, say, arc in space, where it is just the 2
regulars.
We've got a brief cameo from Nandol, but he's a regular two.
We get them just wandering around.
How do we think that works?
I really like it.
You know, the characters that die before the opening title
sequence are completely unconnected to our regulars, so they have
no knowledge of them.
They are just introduced fresh into this world, not knowing what's
going on, and they have to solve the mystery, which is, it's sort
of unfolds and they keep making assumptions based on the
information they have and not quite getting it right.
And then you can see the doctor working it out in his head and
realising he has to get Bill the hell out of there because he, you
know, like her life is in danger.
Look, I really enjoyed this episode.
I only had watched it twice on original broadcast.
I watched it once and then I watched it about a week later, and I
hadn't gone back to it since, but I thought, oh, you know, it was
flawed, but, you know, it had some good ideas.
When I went and rewatched it a few weeks ago. really, really
enjoyed it.
I thought, I mean, I liked in the Forest of the Night, flawed
though it is.
I do too.
I think this is a better, a better script from him.
And it does some really interesting things with technology and, and
you know, like ideas.
We've gone back to time and time again in the show, say, the
evacuation of the earth because of the solar flares, but does it
in a way which doesn't detract from those earlier stories and
actually kind of expands on them and makes it part of a bigger, a
bigger universe without really relying too much on, on that
previous continuity.
I really enjoy the story.
Yeah, I've had take a drink, listener.
I've had the Todd experience of this one.
Um, which is I really didn't think much of it when I 1st watched
it.
I have the weird position where this is by far the season of
Capaldi, I remember the most fondly, but if I look at my
spreadsheet of scores, the average is actually the lowest score
out of the 3 series.
And I'm thinking because I haven't seen this season since original
broadcast at all at all.
So I'm thinking maybe some of my lower scores, such as for this
knock knock, lie of the land and eaters of light may go up as I'm
watching this.
And certainly it went up this time.
I loved the doctor and Bill. exploring by themselves.
I remember at the time, I feel like a lot of people were very
disappointed that Mina Anwar was in it so little at the beginning
she's good thing, the one saying, just big smile.
Mother's dead, you know, it's fine.
And of course, we know her from the Sarah Jane adventures and
previously before that, the thin blue line.
There was a lot of her cutout, but watching it again now, it's
like, no, you want that to be sure and punchy and shocking.
And also, if they kept in everything, that pre-titles would have
been about 7 or 8 minutes.
It's actually a slightly odd pre-titles, isn't it?
Because it's got an important role in the actual ongoing thing.
We need to see Nardol and we need to see the doctor kind of
escaping from Nardol.
I mean, this is laying out the new premise for Beale, who has some
idea of the premise because she's known the doctor for over a year
at this point.
And then we go to the planet, to the colony.
And I actually tweeted Mina Anwar after this episode, just to say
how great I thought she was, because she has to be kind of smiling
but she has to be terrified and grief stricken all at the same
time, and she's so good.
Like, that's a really great scene.
It's really very strange and kind of weird, which is kind of what
we're going for.
But I think she's wonderful and I think that's one of the best
bits of it.
Yeah, I agree.
I think the 1st half of the episode's great.
I love it.
I love that we get to learn more about Bill and the doctor's
relationship and how it's going to be moving forward right at the
start and the intro to the show.
I think it was a good strong start for sure.
I think it's just once they get onto the ship.
It sort of petered out a little bit for me and then when we get to
the end, we'll talk about that.
Yeah, yeah, I feel I feel sort of similar way, I think.
I think a huge role is played by the incredible location work.
Like the, just the extraordinary location work.
And I think that if we'd been wandering around a small studio in
BBC television centre one, It would have been nowhere near as
interesting.
This is television.
It's got to be visual.
So this is the city of arts and sciences in Valencia in Spain.
It's in the middle of Valencia.
It's in the middle of a city and you can see, see it on Google
Earth and stuff surrounded by other buildings, but they've taken
it out, put it in the middle of this barley field or cornfield
from somewhere in England.
Yes, yeah.
Seamlessly, like just incredibly well.
Like the way that they've constructed the location just looks
amazing.
The scene where the doctor and people go back to the TARDIS, and
you've got the parts of the field that still have their tracks in
it from them leaving the TARDIS, with the building out of focus in
the background.
Like it just looks stunningly great.
And it's the sort of thing that Doctor Who has sort of done before
a bit.
I'm thinking the end of the gangers 2 parter has a modern building
playing a space building.
Can anyone think of anything else where this has been done?
I don't think it's been done at this scale.
No, usually, like, if it's being done.
It's being done with a model in the background rather than a
genuine location.
Yeah.
They also go back to Uskmouth Power Station.
Is that the spaceship?
I thought that's what you were referring to.
The paper mill.
That's right.
Yeah, I believe I believe the last time Doctor Who was here was
possibly for either Sleep No More or the Under Lake, before the
flood, two-part, I think it was sleep no more.
And Jenna Coleman tells his story of Capaldi going wandering off
when he's not needed for a shot and coming back completely soaked
because he found a big red button that said, do not press, and he
pressed it happened to be an emergency anti-chemical burn shower.
So she was just plastered with water.
Now, he got in real trouble, didn't he?
He did get in real good costume and stuff.
So he was, well, no, he was just cosplaying that scene at the
beginning of New Earth.
Could be that.
Could definitely be that.
But yeah, it's astonishingly beautiful.
And as a dedicated nerd, I was checking the reflections in all of
the windows to make sure that there weren't Spanish streets or a
restaurant visible opposite or anything like that and they really
nailed it.
It just looks so incredibly good.
Can we talk a little bit about the setting, because James said, and
I agree with him, that there's some attempt, I think, to tie this
into the beast below an arc in space and make it the same space
catastrophe that causes people to leave Earth.
But that does read very much like it's been added later to the
script because we do talk in terms of it being the last group of
human beings alive, and it looks like they left the earth because
some catastrophic political problem occurred.
It's actually one thing I wanted to ask you guys about because um
the doctor does comment that um, he's come across the last of the
human ships a few times in his journey.
So I was wondering if there were episodes about that at some
point.
I don't know if you remember, but Matt Smith's 2nd episode is
called The Beast Below, and it involves them coming across
Starship UK, which is a big spaceship that contains sort of a lot
of kitschy English memorabilia and stuff.
Well, I mean, technically it's a bit of space rock on the back of
a whale.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And in both of in both of those instances.
And I think it is Stephen Moffat doing this.
Stephen Moffatt inserts references to Scottish independence.
Yes.
Dashing.
Scotland wanted their own starship in The Beast Below and the
doctor says here that there's loads of new Scotland's around the
place and they're all declaring independence from any other planet
they've landed on.
You know, we do we do get Rose asking the questions that no one
else has asked before.
And obviously she comments on the doctor's accent.
And so we get Bill doing the same thing here.
And she says, why are you Scottish?
And he says, I'm not Scottish, I'm cross, which is definitely
Moffat, I think.
I don't think Frank Cottrel Boyce could say that without being
cancelled.
So Moffat gets to insert that line in.
So I think Moffatt does do that thing that kind of inserts it into
the wider universe for want of a better word.
But I don't think frank cultural voice. aware enough to do that.
And I think he wants to tell the story of the last humans
arriving.
And so you get that wonderful moment.
And again, it's sort of 27 minutes in.
It's quite late where Bill comes across the dead body of the old
lady of sort of patient 0 essentially.
And the book, the big history book, which is so great, isn't it?
And you open it up and there's a screen.
The big history iPad.
Yeah, I'm getting missed vibes from it.
And that does tell a different story.
It doesn't seem to be solar flares or some kind of exogenous space
disaster.
It just seems to be things have got very terrible on earth.
And again, you know, we're told it's the 1st earth colony or
something like that, but then we're told it's 1000s of years in
the future.
So it doesn't really fit in with anything that we know about the
history of Earth, but I don't care.
And I think Doctor Who should do that more often.
Just contradict people. contradict, get in and contradict some
TARDIS Wakia entries, I think.
I mean, yeah, it definitely doesn't tie in with, say, the arc or
Frontios, let's say.
It's not that human evacuation.
But I think it is much closer to the beast below the arc in space
in particular.
If we're, say, 1000s of years in the future, say, around the year
6000, I think in the arcade space, Earth is evacuated sometime
after the 30th century.
So that kind of fits there.
But again, it doesn't matter.
I think there's enough clues for people who read Lance Parkin's
history of the universe every one or 2 years, which is me, to fit
it in, but it doesn't rely on that.
You know, we're all familiar with the concept of colonisation and
we're familiar with the concept that the earth may become an
inhabitable, you know, and Frank Cottero Boyce has touched on that
before in the forest of the night.
Yeah.
And I think this one is rather more successful.
I have my problems with that story, but I feel like this historic
cultural voice going, okay, no, I'm going to do proper space opera
but talking about some of the same themes.
Well, isn't that the whole point, like with Doctor Who, the past
and present never really exists in a same status.
It's always changing, you know?
Um, so it's good that they're exploring different ways of telling
the same stories that are similar because that's going to happen.
If it's always changing, there's always going to be similar
patterns happening and but different stories to tell of that.
Yeah, I think so too.
I think that's exactly how it should be.
And there is a sort of butterfly collecting instinct that fanboys
have.
And they want to pin down, you know, exactly what's happening and
where and stuff.
And I think Moffatt throws them a bone.
I'm assuming that these are Moffatt's edits to Cultural Boys
script, but that's not really what the story's about, what the
episode's about.
Yeah.
And, you know, like, in a couple of years time, Chris Chibnall
will ignore this dystopian future of humanity for his own one, and
that's exactly the show functioning as it should, I think.
One of my favourite concepts in this episode is the idea of the
emotional contagion of grief.
I don't know whether it's at the same time as this or slightly
before or after, but Facebook got in a bit of trouble for doing
widespread experiments on their uses by promoting certain posts to
the top of feeds in a whole range of people's Facebook feeds and
seeing how the emotions that they were, I believe they were
negative emotions, which is incredibly problematic. how those
posts affected the friends in your friends list when they read
those posts and how they how that emotional contagion spread.
And it's, um, I mean, that's, that's got a lot of uh, um, ethical
issues.
But in this episode, like it's a really interesting concept to
take that and show how it spread like a plague and how these
robots who don't quite understand human emotions deal with that by
killing everybody.
So, in fact, the spread of the, those deaths is explicitly linked
to the idea of virality, which is obviously an idea that comes
from viruses originally, but does actually refer to things
spreading online.
And, you know, like even media things, I think we've got the right
wing entertainment industry, which is rendering all of our
grandparents kind of unfit for human companionship.
But here I think, and there is something that I want to come to
later is that this episode has a real suspicion of technology and
in particular the kind of technology that teenagers or young
people use, we will get there.
But I also think that that scene where we discover the virality of
it.
And we, that's what we'd seen, isn't it?
That's what that opening scene with Mina Anwar is telling us that
the grief is catching, uh, because she tells, she's just speech
with, with, you know, mum is dead, and her friend's sunshine is
also dead.
The whole, whole, all about the people are dead.
Smile, you know.
That emotional contagion study was 2014.
So it could have it could have influenced this episode.
And what's interesting about Frank Cultural Boyce is he went on a
conference which was designed to bring together authors of science
fiction with scientists to capitalise on current scientific ideas
put them in science fiction, and that's actually where the Vardi
get their name from.
He met a professor, Dr. Andrew Vardi, who is an associate
professor working in swarm robotics at a university in Canada.
And after he wrote the script, he emailed Dr. Vardi and said, I've
named the swarms of robots after you and Dr. Vardi was over the
moon with that.
We just never hear the same story about Dr. Dalek, do we?
Salvador to his mates.
But yeah, what you're saying there about emotional contagion, James
of the science behind it.
Frank Cottrell boys actually viewed emoji very favourably, he
thought this is an evolution of language.
This is a new idea coming about, and you can actually convey
emotion more easily and readily than you can with text alone.
Whereas Stephen Moffatt was baffled by emoji and said, I never
used them, but Jenna would use them in every text and I didn't
know what was going on.
And you get those 2 voices in the program, you get Bill going, it
speaks emoji.
This is amazing, and you get the doctor saying, of course, that's
what survives for 1000s of...
What I find interesting is the doctor and Bill's emotional states
influence each other as well.
Yeah.
And in a way, Bill's enthusiasm actually tempers the doctor's
fear.
Like when he's exploring the city by himself.
He's really afraid, but as soon as Bill comes after him, he's all
laughter and smiles and jokes again.
There's also that wonderful bit which calls back to her 1st
episode, which is when she's confused or doesn't understand
something she smiles.
And there's a moment where she's bemused by something about the
Vardis and the emoji bots, and she smiles because she doesn't
understand, and the emoticon her back lights up with a little
smile.
It's the bit, isn't it, just before she says, you are such a great
tutor, which I just think is wonderful.
It's so good.
It's one of my favourite moments.
And that thing that Moffatt hits on for her 1st episode is the
thing that the doctor notices, that she smiles when she comes
across something she doesn't understand and that's what attracts
him to her.
Seeing it there.
And it's wonderful.
Like, like, Pearl's face just lights up.
It's terrific.
Yeah, definitely.
I love the energy she brings with that, the excitement of
exploring new things, and it kind of makes you feel like you're
exploring it for the 1st time again, because you guys have talked
about having to introduce the TARDIS again and all of that in
other episodes of beginning of seasons and this is cute.
This feels different and she's excited and asks not 2 clueless
questions so that she's completely stupid, but just fun in it and
wanting to know and getting excited and yeah, happy to be there.
Yeah.
The show hadn't had this for a long time.
Jenna is introduced in 2012 initially, isn't she?
And then properly introduces the new companion the next year
leading into the 50th.
This is 4 years later.
And this is the 1st time we get a new jumping on point with a new
audience identification figure.
Like, I think, you know, you just jump into Doctor Who with
whatever's on when you start watching it.
I think that it's a show that doesn't really need a jumping on
point because the premise is so thin, not thin, but it's not
complicated.
But I do think that there is something about that regular thing of
having a new person in and introducing them to the show and seeing
their reaction, which really does lift the show.
And you remember when Russell 1st started it back in 2005, he had
no idea that he'd be saying goodbye to the doctor at the end of
that 1st year and then goodbye to Billy at the end of the
following year.
This could have just been the show starring Christopher Eccleston
and Billy Piper for years and then it stops.
And he says, you know, we're not going to introduce the idea of
regeneration.
We're not going to do any of that until we have to.
But it turns out, you know, he changes cast every year that he
does the show and it works really well.
It's a really good thing.
And we have missed that with Moffer.
You know, we had 3 years of Rory and Amy.
We had quite a bit of Jenna, for whom the relationship with a
doctor becomes an addiction or a problem.
It's problematized in some ways.
And so having this doctor just uncomplicatedly decide to take his
new friend off into space, he's showing off to her.
You know how he tries to impress her by saying, oh, I stole it.
I'm kind of cool. stole it from you.
Like all of that works so well.
It's just tremendous.
I think it's really, really good, it lifts the show in a great
way.
Yeah, my sister, she tapped out when Kapati came on board.
She battled her way through the Matt Smith.
Her doctors, David Tennant, and that writing.
And I told her to get back into it from this season because it was
more what she was used to.
And so, and she really enjoyed it.
Yeah, I think that this season is that, and it is, we talked a
little bit about it last time, because Moffatt comes back for the
final season, but he wasn't expecting to do it, and so
everything's sort of tied up.
There's nothing much up in the air.
He knows he's only doing it for one year.
And so he doesn't create a big complex puzzle box or anything like
that.
He just tells Doctor Who stories for a year with a companion who's
just a normal person rather than a strange, you know, as Brendan
said, I think, a complex space-time event.
She's just a person.
And it works terrifically well.
It's actually a real breath of fresh air, I think.
Yeah, agree.
So, one of the problems I had with Frank Cottrell Boyce last time
was, and it's the same problem, I think, or one of the same
problems that Brendan has, was the children are overmedicated
these days and should consider stopping taking their medication.
And that seems like a particularly old man sort of point to make.
And I have to say that I think that there is suspicion of young
people and their technology, and I'm not entirely sure that it is
all from Moffat, remember the line that the doctor says, where
emojis have come and it's the utopia of vacuous teens, you know, we
communicate via texting and emojis and that's how young people
communicate and that's a problem.
And I also think part of the thing, part of the reason why I don't
think anyone's really on board with emoji as a way of
communication is that the emoji bots emoji game is really bad.
Like they're really bad in it.
There are things that aren't emojis. like they look kind of a bit
crap, you know, compared to actual emojis and and I don't know.
Like, there just seems to me to be this thing.
Like, like, Bill decides to take the photo with her phone.
Do you know what I mean?
We make a big thing about that.
And it's kind of like we all take photos of documents and things
that we want to see and we all do it all the time and why does it
take bills so long and why is that a bill thing?
You know, young people take photos on their phones and, and, you
know, Bill's response to having the watch me call it.
I think the doctor calls it.
Does he call it a thingam bomb?
Yeah, think about the thing about...
Yeah, where the ear upgrade thing, which does get a role.
Her response to that is sort of like a bit ridiculous, you know
like, oh, I'll never have to recharge my phone again.
My ear's just been invaded by some strange technology.
I have no control over.
I don't have to charge my phone.
Yeah, yeah.
And I kind of think that's a bit of a shame.
Doctor Who, we've said before.
It's not always, you know, up to the moment with the latest trends
and stuff.
And I mean, it's doing an emoji episode years after we've all been
using them for a long time.
Yeah, this strange thing that teenagers are suddenly into.
And it seems to do a bad job of actually giving us a sense of what
it is and how it works.
My favourite example of the failure of those emojis is the fact
that they think the pound's still going to exist. in what 10,000
years time.
But I mean, there is that emoji with the dollar, isn't there?
Is it like, is it money sort of?
No, it's a pound.
But I mean, in real life, you know.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, with the tongue out, yeah.
I just find it creepy that the robot's got 3 mouths when it does
the smiley emoji.
It's got 3 mouths and it's like, it just doesn't quite...
No, it's like, I think it's kind of crap.
And I'm not super sold on the actual physical robots themselves.
They've got a cute pot belly and stuff like that, which I guess is
a thing.
I don't know.
They're a bit Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Disney movie
Marvin.
Well, I think that Marvin is great, actually, I have to say, that
Marvin is pretty good.
I don't think it's anywhere near as good as that But on a BBC
budget. that's right.
Yeah, we do have Quran Shah as the as the main emoji bot who had
previously appeared as the creature in listen.
And much like his contemporary, Deep Roy, has a long history.
He, you know, he's a little person.
He has a long history of playing the same kind of roles that say
Deep Roy and Warwick Davis have played in the past.
Like he was an e-wok. you know, all those sorts of roles you might
expect.
I actually quite like the robot designs.
I feel like they're sort of a rundown version of the handbots from
the girl who waited, which I loved and a little bit going right
back.
They're a little bit of a smaller version of the IMC robots from
Colony in space, but you know, obviously you don't have to fit 3
people inside it, so it doesn't have to take up half the studio.
The cleaners from Paradise Towers.
I'm exactly...
Right.
You know, all these small robots.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, part of the thing of making them sort of
3.5, 4 foot tall is we automatically think they're on
threatening.
Yeah.
And the doctor and Bill kind of go along with that as well.
Bill adores the robot, but we've already seen what happened in the
pre-titles.
So is this basically episode 6 of the Chase?
So that is actually pretty great.
And there's no way that Cultural Boys is aware of episode 6 of the
chase, although I may well be wrong.
But the idea that you send the robots ahead to build the colony
for you.
I do think that, I don't know, maybe they're commoditized.
Maybe you can just churn out 1000000000s of nanobots in one go
because I think building a massive giant building out of them
seems to be kind of excessive.
I watched Waters of Mars recently.
And I spent a lot of time thinking, how did they build this
massive base for all of these people?
They also have robots that made the base as well, but it's a line
that's just papering over something that's clearly just terribly
ridiculous.
So I don't quite know why we decided to make the thing out of the
emoji bots.
I guess there's some good visuals that come out.
Dramatic tension.
Yeah.
They could jump on you at any moment from any wall.
I mean, right at the beginning, the ones that attack Kesia. you
know, detach themselves from a sort of pile on the roof and they'd
land on her.
So I guess there's that.
Yeah.
It's one of the ideas that Frank Cottro boys picked up from that
scientific conference he went to and talking to Dr. Vardi and Dr
Vardi said, we'd send robots 1st and nano robots or something
already well established in the new season of Doctor Who.
And there is also the concept, and I can't remember who came up
with it.
But the concept of gray goo and the danger of making nanobots that
can say break down at carbon into its constituents and reform it
into something else is that eventually they'll start breaking down
the planet to put it into something more efficient and you just
end up with this sphere of gray goo.
And so that was another idea that sort of informed him of, okay
we're sending robots to colonise this planet, but it's Doctor
Who.
So what's going to go wrong?
Yeah.
I mean, Doctor Who has a history mostly in the new series of
technology going wrong in a way that is just entirely preposterous
and completely designed to produce sort of great visuals.
And that's right from the beginning where people's faces are
turning into gas masks and stuff like that in the empty child
which is, again, nanopots go crazy, misread what human beings need
by, you know, analysing little Jamie's body or something and then
going viral and sort of creating this effect everywhere.
And the show has helped itself to this quite a lot in the
intervening period.
And this is the 2nd episode in a row, in fact, where we've had
technology getting out of hand, you know, wild future technology
getting out of hand and affecting people and stuff and being the
main thing.
And I think that's fine.
That's the thing that Doctor Who could do.
And if it allows the sort of visuals that we get in this episode
then I'm forward, I think.
I think that we should talk about what happens at the end.
So at 30 minutes, we meet praiseworthy, who is the little kid, and
then soon after that, we meet steadfast, who's the chief medic, and
chief med tech, med tech, chief med tech, quiet, right.
That's got to be a Moffat thing taken from the ark in space
doesn't it?
And the thing that you said before, James, where the doctor's
theorising all the way through about what's happening here, but
getting it wrong and discovering that there isn't a colony ship on
its way.
It's already here.
I have to say that my opinion was always that this is the pier
where it all falls to pieces.
Yeah, I agree with that.
The storyline gets very thin from that point onwards, like to the
point at one point.
I rewound and went, did I miss something?
Like right at the end.
I mean, it makes sense.
He worked out.
The majority of it that the ships were coming, so we sets off the
explosion without checking, I don't know, like just a few points
in the plot that were very amiss.
Where's his due diligence?
Study before he does that.
Well, actually, I think before we properly launching to how
terrible that ending is.
I have to say that there is a moment there, which I think is
really good, but where Bill gets to realise that the doctor's not
just the tutor, but that he is the helpline.
Yes, that's right, that he's advice and assistance available
immediately.
You know, it's on the box.
It does what it says on the tin.
And that's a great moment, I think.
And even the doctor's line where I've got a childish impulse to go
and blow it up.
It is pretty awesome.
That is pretty great.
And obviously he does get to reflect for a 2nd that he could have
blown up everyone on earth.
He does realise that he'd been a little bit premature.
But I do like that moment because that is the last thing that Bill
doesn't know about the doctor.
She knows that he travels in time and space and stuff, but what
she doesn't know about him is that he saves planets and she
realises that that's what's going on.
And I thought that was a great moment and I thought that making
that the last big revelation, the last big thing that she learns
about the doctor is pretty good.
Saving it up to be a big dramatic sort of moment for her and a
realisation in this episode is great.
It gives that 2nd half of the episode a bit more punch that maybe
it doesn't necessarily have with the ongoing plot of the episode.
She mentions it a little bit earlier saying about him being the
helper and he doesn't like being referred to as that and he says, I
just happen to be here.
But then it's, I mentioned again later at that point.
So it's like, oh, that's interesting.
It's, yeah.
It sort of goes back to the beast below a little bit as well where
you know, Amy convinces the doctor do the right thing by pointing
out that, you know, when you're very old and very kind and you're
the last of your kind, you go out and you rescue children and
that's what you do.
And, you know, for years, I've said, I have a problem with that
because it relies on the doctor being stupid.
Whereas here the idea is a lot more refined because the doctor's
going off and doing this thing and trying to keep Bill safe and
telling her to stay in the TARDIS, you know.
So he, like he's learned from that experience.
And so Bill throwing herself back into the adventure is it's an
informed choice and it is a supportive choice of what the doctor's
doing.
It's not sort of butting heads and saying, no, like, we have to be
on opposite sides of this.
It's like, no, no, no, we are on the same side, now I understand
everything that's going on.
But yeah, I agree that sort of once the colonists start waking up
things take a bit of a plot convenience turn.
You know, it's kind of like we have to raise the stakes, so
praiseworthy has to wander off without the doctor realising I can
accept, without Bill noticing, I find much harder to accept
because Bill is like, yeah, come with me down to the engine room
that I know is going to blow up shortly. and then wander off.
I have to say that I did like the way that the threat was that he
was going to be the new patient zero, that he was going to
discover that his mother was gone and then he was going to die and
that was going to sort of start the whole thing through the new
colonist.
So I thought that was really good, you know, and the revelation
that the little locket that the doctor had picked up from the
arboretum or whatever, had a picture of him in it.
Like, I thought that was great.
But the episode relied on steadfast being a massive idiot for a
start, didn't it?
Like he's just going to go and fire on the things, even though he
has to know that the entire colony is made out of them.
You know, or only the shepherds knew that.
That seems unlikely.
Well, if he said tech medic, then he would know how to deal with
these.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That doesn't make any sense.
And then the doctor just presses to solve the plot button and he
presses it and it works.
And then like, is there something political going on here?
Because I think it's pretty thin.
Because the doctor says, like every slave class in history, the
Vardia, beginning to have ideas of their own.
And so the doctor wipes their memories. so that the human beings
and Lavardi are on equal footing and so they have to collaborate
in the new colony.
Do you know what I mean?
So it's better for human beings to not have slaves, but they
should have people they can collaborate with.
But I don't know.
Yeah, I, I, that's the thing I have a big problem with in this
episode is the fact that they rely on a reset button to save the
day because they've written themselves into a corner, probably.
And these ascension beings and you've wiped their memories.
Oh, the doctor does that all the time.
No, I just I don't know.
I just find that...
Ask Noor Khan.
Well, I mean, if they were human beings and they he wiped their
memories and that would be problematic, right?
Just because they're robots.
They're sentient robots, like you are literally robbing them of
their identity.
But and the mere fact that they consider themselves under threat
and they're going to retaliate, a rabid dog behaves like that.
Do you know what I mean?
Or a rat.
Like, you know, so we've decided they're sentient, okay, because
he looks at the emoji that are playing across its face and it's, so
it's defending itself.
All right, like, that's okay, but I'm not sure that's completely
sold.
And then we wipe them memories.
I don't know No, so I didn't take it as I'm being sentuent at the
start.
I thought that maybe it happened after he reset them because I
just thought it was bad programming that we talk about them not
understanding the human way.
They were actually trying to help.
They thought they were helping by eradicating the sadness would
stop other people from being sad.
So it was more like a programming fault.
So then when you wipe their memory.
So that was where I was like, it wasn't quite clear as to where
that was going.
There is a line in that 1st scene where Kezia says who programmed
this, like they shouldn't be behaving like that, who programmed
this.
So the idea that they've they've wandered off their programming or
that they've learned to behave in this way without being
programmed is there, I think.
Does it make it cension?
no, that's right.
It's not quite, it's not quite salt enough, I think, is the
problem with that.
Yeah, like it's fair in the 1st scene, but it, it's not threaded
through the pot enough and it doesn't quite hang together at the
end with the, you know, they've developed sentence.
That's why they're trying to kill you now, even though they were
killing you before for your own good.
Now they want to kill you because they think you're a bastard.
You're a threat.
I guess they just ran out of time with the plot as well because
they spent so much time at the start developing the relationship
with the doctor and all of that and the introducing the issue that
I guess it was kind of a, and then they woke up.
Yeah, like I have to say that I don't mind that too much because I
did find the stuff with a doctor and Bill at the beginning.
So much more interesting than what ended up happening.
And so I don't think giving more of it to that plot.
Like, I think they've deliberately, when Doctor Who restarts, I
think it kind of attempts to tell a four-part story very quickly
in 45 minutes and because TV has sped up and because we can afford
to have more scenes, they're quite successful, I think, most of
the time.
But here we've decided to have the thinnest possible kind of
science fiction plot going on, something that can be resolved by
the doctor with the Sonic screwdriver in a 2nd at the end to give
us time to meet Bill and the doctor properly.
And I think that's a good decision.
And, you know, like I could compare it to the end of the world
where it's an insurance scam and the doctor solves it by reversing
a teleporter and yelling at someone and that's really all that
happens.
So it's another one that where the plot isn't so interesting as
the setting and the relationships between the 2 leads.
It's a strange mix of thin sci-fi plot and high concept sci-fi
ideas.
Yeah.
Yeah, I like it for the ideas.
Yeah.
And that's okay, I think.
Probably.
Some beautiful visuals.
Do you know what I mean?
Some interesting ideas, but essentially a plot that is, you know
the we press the kill, so you take button and go on our way.
I mean, admittedly, in my job, that's what I have to do.
Anyways, I've got this really terrible problem with my computer.
I know it's cliche, but you need to restart your computer.
You need to turn it off and on again.
And the problem goes away.
I think we do have, as a sort of Bob Baker, Dave Martin problem of
we have all these ideas, and how long do we have?
Really about 25 minutes.
Well, 15 minutes.
Yeah.
You know what?
It's kind of like, I can see what they're going for.
I don't come away from this feeling. that the ideas don't work.
It's just like, oh, I think I think you just needed to workshop
that a little bit more.
And I think I think maybe it's the whole thing that Colin Baker
talks about in his interpretation of the character in that the
doctor does what's right and that's not necessarily pleasant or
nice.
And, you know, if there had been a little discussion between the
doctor and Bill saying, you know, was it right to white their
memories and the doctor just says, well, it's either that or
everybody dies and this way everyone has a chance to start from
square one and grow together because I think there's an
implication that when Kezi is like, who programmed this?
Okay, so no one's keeping an eye on these robots.
You know, no one is supporting them asking them what they want.
And now we're left with the situation at the end where it's like
well, you've got no choice but to work together to ask what the
robots want and to realise that they are more than what you
created.
I don't think it quite lands that.
But sometimes I quite like a story where I'm able to go, oh, but
that means, and da, da, da, da. sometimes it frustrates me to do
that.
But I'm less frustrated with this one than I am with some others.
Don't you think the sequel is they come back to the planet and all
of the humans are slaving away for their emoji bot overlords in a
feudal system of, you know, renting a class, robots, exploiting
everyone?
Okay, big finish.
Okay, well, it's funny you should mention that because the ship is
called Erewhon.
Yes. which is an anagram of nowhere, but it comes from a satirical
novel by Samuel Beckett in the late 1800s, which was a satire of
what a utopia would look like with Victorian values.
And one and one of the inversions it does is people who are
criminal or perform criminal acts are treated as ill.
They're given treatment.
They're given therapy, da da da, which I'm not denigrating that
but people who are actually ill, who have sicknesses, illnesses.
They are treated like criminals and locked away.
And it's kind of like, oh, well, this is for the good of society
because, you know, the criminals don't have any illness.
It's not contagious, so we can treat them.
But you're ill and you're contagious, so we're locking you away.
And that was another, that was another germ of an idea from Frank
Cottrell Boy.
So it's kind of like, I feel like the idea of in the forest of the
night was quite flawed and led to quite a flawed product, in my
opinion.
Whereas this one Frank's just like, I'm throwing everything at the
wall.
I tend to think that in the forest of the night is a bit better
than this, and I think it's because the stakes are high, and it's
because of that moment where Clara tells the doctor to go.
You know, thank you very much for everything, but you can go now.
We're saving you.
And I think the, you know, in this sort of weird, very weird
story.
We get a sort of strange examination of the relationship between
Clara and the doctor.
I just can't hate that, I think.
Right, I'm gonna say something controversial.
I think that space babies, it does a better job than this, of
introducing the world of Doctor Who to a new companion.
Um, because...
Don't tell Simon.
Because, like, this has no characters in it either.
Do you know what I mean?
You've got Mina Anwar, you've got steadfast and praiseworthy, uh
in space babies, uh, you have um, the nurse and you have Eric and
Poppy.
I think space babies, is more kind of, like, I like the sort of
stately emptiness of the 1st 20 minutes of, you know, of smile, but
it's not much like what Doctor Who is like, whereas we get a very
straightforward base under siege story, I think, in space babies.
It just happens to disguise the fact of how trad it is by having
the main guest cast all be babies.
This is the reason, like the reason you think that's better than
this, I think this is better than that, because it does something
different from what Doctor Who Often does with introducing
companions, it's trying something different. like a lot of this
season.
Moffatt's been there, done that over and over again.
And he's trying to do something different.
I know this is not written by him, but obviously it's influenced
quite a lot by his ideas for the shape of the season. doing
something different with the new companion.
I think makes this a lot more interesting.
That's probably fair.
That's fair.
I just think it's sort of, Lord, it fails in a way that space
babies does it because space babies is being made by Russell, who's
written heaps of Doctor Who episodes and kind of knows what he's
doing, I think.
With this one, I enjoyed seeing Capaldi having fun.
Like, I, he, that's the doctor I wanted to see after all those
seasons of Matt Smith and the complicated storylines and all of
that. and then having the impossible girl, Clara, and I was a bit
disappointed going into that.
But this kind of, it was just fun seeing him having fun and having
a bit of a smile and he does that throughout that, I think this
season.
Um, yeah.
I think we get the 1st kind of genuine, like a real proper Capaldi
smile and remember that Clara used to tell him not to do that.
Like, you just don't do that, please, unless they give you
permission, sort of thing, like, don't do the smart.
But the big smile where he and Bill kind of confront the robots.
I think he's really great.
I, you know, yeah.
Yeah.
And he's wearing his chill outfit too, isn't he?
He's got a sort of red t-shirt and a hoodie and stuff.
Like he is properly relaxed.
Wait, isn't it in his very 1st episode?
He talks about angry having angry eyebrows?
Would you notice his emoji, the badge emoji has big eyebrows on
it?
Well, be the snow, that's all the time we have for this week.
We'll be back next week for an important lesson about interacting
with white supremacists in thin ice.
In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts
and you can keep up with us on our website, flight through
entirety.com, where you'll find our social media links, as well as
links to all of our other podcasts, including our other Doctor Who
podcasts, 500-year diary, and the 2nd grade and bountiful human
empire.
Bell, where can people find you?
Okay, well, Brendan and I do a podcast called the BJBJ Game Show
and so you can find that on all good places that you find the
podcast, and then we've got some websites that Brendan will tell
you about.
Yep, so we're active on most social medias of choice, and most
podcatchers of choice, and you can find that by searching for BJ
AYBJ Game Show, and our most recent episodes are on the Talos
principle, which took a very long time to play, far longer than we
anticipated, and lost in play, which was delightful and took a lot
less time. perfect.
That's brilliant.
Until next time, maybe you should consider buying your phone a
nice new case for Christmas.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
Ta-ta.
That was Flight through Entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley, BJ
Hobbs, Brendan Jones, and James Selwood.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, Happy to Be There, was recorded on the 4th of August
2024 and released on the 22nd of September.
If you missed us earlier this year, you'll be happy to learn that
back in May, we completed a season of a new Doctor Who podcast
called 500 year diary.
So if you enjoy this sort of thing, and, of course, you do, head
over to 500yearDiary.com and check it out.
So, space babies or, um, smile, Brendan.
I think I'm going to say smile.
Not because I dislike space babies in any way.
But no, I think I'm just going to say smile because I love that
opening half hour of them wandering around by themselves.
But something that I don't hear talked about much with space
babies is as well as, you know, introducing the new companion to
space travel and time travel.
Something it does at the end is give the doctor a very obvious
opportunity to go, oh, okay, this is, this is who I am and this is
what I do because space babies has the doctor saving the monster.
Just, you know, just like what happens here.
You know, the doctor saves the emoji bots and arguably with space
babies, the doctor doesn't have to change anyone's nature in order
to save them.
So that's possibly one area where there's been character growth
since this one, you know, the doctor doesn't have to change the
nature, he just has to understand the nature of the relationship.
Um, and would I give up 5 minutes of Peter Capaldi and Pearl
Mackey wandering around Spain for um, for a, a tighter
resolution?
No, I agree.
No, no, I don't think I would.
I don't think I would.
It could have been more interesting.
Yeah, look, I mean, it could have been it could have been better.
I think it could have been better, but it's not the focus of the
episode and he's just like, let's press the button and get this
over with and that's a bit disappointing, but it's not the 1st
Doctor Who story to do that, to be fair.
Would it have been more interesting if they had never met the
human colonists?
Literally, like, they worked the entire pot out and saved the day
and then revived them at last.
And revive them and say, bye, we sorted out that problem for you
just leaving the town.
I agree with that.
Yeah.
If it had been just about those 2 for that whole episode, except
for that very beginning, yeah, I think that would have been quite
interesting.
Yeah.
It's hard to do, isn't it, without kind of manufacturing conflict
between the 2 of them?
Like, um, but I think people overstate how important conflict is
to drama, I guess.
And I do think that what ends up happening is it's the moment
where she realises who he is, what his job is, and then decides to
join him.
I guess that creates the development, doesn't it?
I mean, I, I, like I would have been sad to lose Mina Anwar at the
beginning, but I absolutely don't give a shit about, about
steadfast or praiseworthy at all.
Very non-characters.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. certainly less interesting than Eric and Poppy. for
sure.
I think it's why, like, um, you talk about space babies and this
one.
I like the beginning, like I like this one with the character
development, but I like space babies, I think, because just with
the the topic of society saying you've got to have kids and
encouraging people to have kids and not giving them a choice of
whether they and not supporting them.
Yeah, and then there's all these babies born with no support in
the, like they just go, oh, it's born now and walk away from it.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that's why...
Yeah, it does, it really does say that, doesn't it?
I also, I like the idea too that, you know, both of our leads are
abandoned children.
And so the 1st adventure they have together by amazing coincidence
is the spaceship that's run by abandoned babies.
You know what I mean?
Which kind of, which like the, it undermines it being too
overwrought because the abandoned babies are so fun.
Do you know what I mean?
Because...
I'm just impressed with how they did all that, with the animation
and the hearts roaming around and they remote control.
Yeah, I think they did.
They had a lot of the 3D modelled like young kids.
The kids that were doing the voices were...
Emotion capture reference, weren't they?
Emotionally controlled capture.
And then mapped onto the baby's faces.
I actually think it works pretty well.
I mean, it is very uncanny Valley.
It's supposed to be.
I mean, because babies are weird.
That's the other thing about babies is babies are weird and off
putting and they sh everywhere and they snot.
They're covered in snot.
All of that stuff was brought up in the episode.
Do you know what I mean?
Just how weirded I've put it in.
That Doctor Who is puerile.
It's child.
One of my favourite moments is Eric, with this little toy sword
going down to confront the monster, which I just think is
absolutely adorable because we tell babies what brave boys they
are or brave girls and stuff.
You know.
I'm going to go and have a word with that nasty talking.