Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast that involves a lot of day drinking.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Todd.
I'm Peter.
And I'm Melvin.
Well, it's the 4th of February 1814, and at the heart of the
British Empire is a massive sprawling monster that consumes human
life at scale and converts it into massive profits for the
wealthy.
And also, there's this eel thing chained up in the Thames.
It's thin ice.
Alright, I'm gonna lay my card straight on the table, and I think
this is a top tier episode, and perhaps one of the best companion
introductions in the history of the show.
What do you think, Melbourne?
Absolutely.
I agree across the board?
I don't think I'd watched season 10 since maybe maybe a year or 2
after it went out and revisiting it now.
Bill is such a breath of fresh air.
Capaldi's doctor is almost a new, a new character.
He has such a new lease of life, a new approach to life.
Uh, and Bill is a big part of that.
And to have him being a university professor, which is something
in a previous life, I was, means it's really wonderful to revisit
that now.
Uh, it's really refreshing.
What did you keep in your vault, Melvin?
Mostly action figures.
Wouldn't expect anything less.
Hey, I really enjoy these 1st 3 episodes of the season for the
character building of Bill and the relationship between her and
the doctor and especially in this episode and I think by next
episode they are fully formed.
And I think that's one of the biggest strengths.
I'm perhaps not as enamoured with this as what you are, Nathan as
a top tier.
I think it's enjoyable and good.
I do think the main villain is a bit one dimensional, if I can put
it like that, but that doesn't detract from it.
Like I'm, here we go.
It's a 7.5 to an 8 out of 10.
So just wait.
Just wait.
Which is just wait until the end.
See what we can do.
But I think it's better than last week's episode, right?
which I think is the weakest of the fall thus far, but I do like
it and I really like the refreshing take that the character of
Bill brings to the show.
I think too often with companion introductions.
We're just used to companions reacting like a Doctor Who companion
to people dying.
Like no reaction, really.
And we just accept it.
And here she's really challenging things.
And it's initially, I think, quite not off-putting, but I kind of
going, oh, oh, I hadn't thought about that and it's actually very
real.
Yeah, I think I'm a Todd on this one.
I think this is a top tier mid-tier episode at the top of the mid
tier.
I think it's really well written and really, it's good mostly for
what Bill brings.
I think the focus on Bill and Bill's reactions is something that
sets the episode apart.
And also what it is, is just superbly confidently made.
It's an excellent production and you can't oversell the importance
of that in Doctor Who.
I think we'll come back to Beale in a minute because I think she's
the backbone of the main plot of the story.
The story is about introducing Bill not just to the genre, but to
this particular TV program.
In a way that we didn't really do that much of last week.
But let's talk about how it looks because I'm astounded by how
amazing it looks.
I've just come from watching it again.
And, you know, there's a lot of elements being stitched together
and stuff, but somehow it just works perfectly.
And like that shot at the beginning.
You know, we move.
We didn't talk about this last week, but we recap the ending of
last week with the elephant on the Tam.
Well, actually, that scene was stolen from the start of thin ice
because it was...
Yeah, of course.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But then we move up to the bridge, and we're looking out, and
Capoldi's in front of that backdrop, and there's no hint that he's
been matted in or anything like that.
It's so it's so seamless.
It's so flawless.
I think what they've mastered by this point in the show's history
and the new show's history, is being able to stitch together
things seamlessly, as you said.
So that there's just, there's a couple of crucial shots where
everything's mattered and composited together, which totally sell
it.
You wouldn't believe that some of it was blue screens.
Some of it was a set in studio, some of it was on location.
It's just so easily put together that you absolutely buy that
you're on the Thames at a frost fair in 1814.
And this is a regular episode.
This isn't a banner episode.
It's not Christmas, although it could be.
One of the other things about the Moffat era is that where, you
know, RTD seems very comfortable both in contemporary times and in
like, for strangely, the 51st century.
The Mafa era has a real confidence and comfort in Victorian
times.
Like, uh, see deep breath or any of the the patternoster gang
episodes.
Like, there's something that's my whalehouse as well. really enjoy
that.
So it brings something to this era for me.
Yeah, and there's something to the, again, part of the look of the
episode is, I feel like that there's a great comfort with that.
And as far as I remember, the bridge set, the fair set was
entirely built for this episode, wasn't it?
So I don't know that there's actually any compositing in the
bridge scenes at all, is there?
There's some location work that we do see.
But I think the bridge thing is a set.
And when we come down from the bridge onto the ice and we see the
bridge, like I think that's fairly clearly a set as well.
But it is a very accomplished set.
And I think that the director whose name is Bill Anderson.
What's he done?
He did this recording block, didn't he?
He does the next episode.
He does.
Yeah, so he does this a knock knock.
But, I mean, even last week we commented on how well that building
was matted into the barley field or whatever on that planet, you
know, and then we had characters in the foreground that were just
sort of seamlessly in there.
This guy has just managed, you know, he just, he normally does tag
it and stuff, like, or Mr. Selfridge.
I don't even know what that is.
Something to do with white goods.
I'm not sure, but he's just a normal TV director, but this is such
an incredibly confident production.
It's what the program has got really good at.
So you go back to the Russell T. Davies era and you will have one
or 2 glamour shots which sell things.
So you'll have the wide shot to start where it's, you know, a
market on, what's that planet in turn left?
Shan Shan.
And it will come down and then that's the last you see of the
world.
You're in a set.
Whereas what they've got really good at is just kind of using the
occasional shot very cleverly put together and very expensive
which sells the entire thing.
And Series 10 is full of moments like that.
They use their budget so well now.
Everything's on the screen.
Even the big dumb rubber monster looks amazing.
Are you still talking about Queen Victoria?
But don't you think?
Like as it goes past the camera at the end.
Oh yeah, I think that looks good.
Perhaps not as sold when it's completely underwater, but I love
all the old style diving equipment. and all that.
I love all that.
Yeah, yeah.
I probably would have preferred terror of the Zygon style stop
motion.
With a terrier's head.
One of the great things about this episode and that sort of idea
of setting and place is the sort of, I want to say that Capaldi's
doctor has, at least in this episode, there's a concentration and
a focus on using what's about to solve the issues to solve the
problems.
You know, he's got the Sonic and whatever, but what you were
saying about the diving costumes.
Like, it's almost as though he has, uh, because I went and did
some a little bit of research and the diving costumes that they
used weren't available, weren't useable, weren't, uh, weren't in
practice until sort of the 1830s, the mid 1830s.
And, you know, there's the scene where he's talking to the urchins
and reading them the poem about Conrad, the thumb sucker.
And yeah, that's 1845.
So what I'm assuming is that he sort of like river has that hidden
liquor cabinet in the in the console room, that Capaldi has sort
of a cabinet of anachronistic trinkets that he, you know, can pull
out at a moment's notice because he didn't get the diving bell
there.
I asked my head cannon is that he went back to the TARDIS, rolled
that thing out to use it for this particular adventure, which I
just find. find that charming.
And I wish there were more, that there was more Doctor Who like
that, where you're sort of constrained by what is available in
that, not necessarily in that particular era, but in that
historical context.
I also think too, like we commented on the recent episode Rogue
and said that it was really nice to have a doctor who dressed up
to go into the past again.
But it was fairly recent, wasn't it?
And having Capaldi.
Like Capaldi's look is perfect for this and I love Bill's outfit.
I wonder if the idea of the frost and having everything just
slightly kind of muted and white and stuff in the background helps
to sell it.
So we don't get very crispy images of what's going on
necessarily.
And often you get, just get the doctor in the, in the hat against
what is a white background and we can't quite see what's going on
because of the mist and stuff. it sells it so well.
There's those scenes of sort of the people disappearing into the
mist, which is just basically a warrior's gate style white.
But because you've just, like we were saying earlier, you've just
had those shots in and amongst the tents on the frost fair, and a
well chosen higher shot, which kind of shows you the entire thing
with some bits matted in.
That's all you need.
You can just go to a corner of the studio and have someone
disappearing into mist.
Let's talk about Bill, because she's obviously the centre of it
and this is a companion introduction story.
And when we 1st met Bill in the terrible friend from the future, in
the terrible friend from the future, in her role as Bill, like
that was kind of terrible, but she was presented to someone who
questions the doctor, and in particular, she's familiar with the
genre that she's in, and so she does.
And I guess, I guess Ruby Sunday will do something fairly similar
later, but she does the thing about what are the rules of time
travel.
I think even Martha does that too, doesn't she?
Well, there was a genre fan.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So she's a genre fan.
So she knows about, you know, the sound of thunder and treading on
butterflies and we have that conversation about Pete.
And my theory is Pete is Pete McTie because...
Because Sarah Dollard and Pete McTie know one another.
Oh, absolutely.
And I think, yeah, they both work together on Neighbours and both
living in Britain at the time.
Yeah, yeah.
So I think that's Pete.
And so we've got all of that discussion about the genre stuff and
how time travel works and that's how the episode ends.
Isn't it where Bill goes back and checks what impact they've had
on history and stuff.
And one of the things, and I think that this anticipates what
happens later, because the questions that she starts to ask after
that are much more interesting and are much more central to who
the doctor is as a character and what sort of show we have.
And that's what I think is brilliant about this episode.
You start with a companion whose shtick, like part of her sort of
one paragraph description is she asks questions about sort of
science fiction-y things that are happening, but instead you have
her ask much, much more important questions.
I think that's great.
But in that conversation about genre, for me, time travel is
always a moral problem in Doctor Who, because of the idea that
people with sort of extreme genre brain think that it's immoral to
change the past.
And what you get is Bill saying, you know, any decision I make now
could affect the future.
And the doctor says, yes, it's like that all the time.
Just get on with it.
Any decision you make at any time could affect the entirety of the
future.
Just get on with it.
And I think that's such a brilliant way of kind of dealing with
it.
Well, one of the things about Bill's questions is that they aren't
just the standard like 80s Doctor Who companion.
What is this doctor?
What does this mean, doctor?
What is that, doctor?
Like, she's been prepped for this. you know, go back to the
pilot.
You know, he makes her serving apprenticeship.
You know, he makes her write papers.
Again, I'm thinking about my own university professorial
background and like the fact that he more or less recruits her to
time travel with him because he says in the pilot, you know, when
I when I say something that's confusing, you smile.
You know, you're the only person who smiles.
And so she's asking, not only asking genre questions, but she's
asking practical questions.
Like, this is what the one of the things that that university
setting allows you is this almost Socratic relationship between
Bill and the doctor, where she's asking, he is presenting a
problem.
She asks a question.
He answers it.
She asks for clarification, and then they immediately put it into
practice.
Like, I love that.
I don't know that we've ever had that approach in Doctor Who
before.
As much as Ace used to call the 7th doctor professor, like this
explicitly tutorial relationship is it's really new and it's
really refreshing.
I think it's, um, it's a shame in many ways, the historical kind
of the flow of Doctor Who, that we got a fairly hard reboot of the
show for series 11, which overshadowed the lovely soft reboot that
it got for series 10.
I think the pilot and these 3 episodes up to thin ice are such a
lovely dropping on point for Doctor Who, where you could just, you
could come in and find the entire length and breadth of the show
in these 3 episodes with all the questions you needed answered and
bills are really good kind of lead through that.
Yeah.
And that's one of the follow-ups.
I was going to say when Nathan, you were saying earlier about this
being a sort of top tier episode of Doctor Who.
This is one that I never hear talked about when people say, what
is a good new to who episode?
What would you show to someone who had never seen Doctor Who, where
they could step on and get what it's about?
And this episode, from start to finish, and a lot of the, a lot of
it because of that question, answer, you know, theory and practice
you know, mess up and then try again, uh, uh, the format of the, of
the way that their relationship works through this episode.
This is a perfect episode for that, which, you know, the 1st time
I rewatched it for this recording, that was the thing that really
stuck out on me is how does no one talk about this as an episode
you would use to introduce someone to Doctor Who.
Yeah.
It's very light on law as well, which I think helps too.
Like, it's unusual that there are no aliens in it at all, and even
tiny, the sea monster seems to be native to Earth, or at least the
doctor says it's immaterial.
We don't where it comes from.
I think we might be asking ourselves the wrong question about the
quality of this episode.
The question is, is it as good as the 1st time Doctor Who had an
elephant in it?
The answer is, yes, it is.
It's certainly less racist than the 1st time that Doctor Who had
an elephant in it.
And there's no security kitchen either.
No, which is such a shame.
It is a shame.
That's negative, yes.
But it's, you're saying it's less racist.
I think it's really important that it does bring up racism.
Yeah, for Bill's character and her concern over that.
And certainly the doctor's reaction when he's, you know, going to
be very diplomatic and then punches that charming.
He was going to be charming.
Charming. charming.
And then he punches Lord Sutcliffe in the face, which is just a
brilliant moment.
But just the way they are willing to talk about things like, you
know, the doctor says, um, history's a whitewash.
Yeah.
It's great as well in that when Bill mentions slavery, there isn't
a massive discussion on it, Capaldi does it all in one look.
And it's a really affecting, look, shows how great of an actor he
is.
In fact, you remember how Martha's concerns in the Shakespeare
code get dismissed.
And so she says, look, I'm not exactly white.
It's 1605 or something like that or 1599.
I can't remember.
It's around about then.
And the doctor says, just stroll about like you own the place, like
Sylvester McCoy does in Silver Nemesis.
And you kind of think, well, that's great.
Doctor, but you're a white guy.
You know, like, like, uh, you're not addressing this issue and
that issue then doesn't come up.
There's, you know, the sort of comedy archaic language used to
describe Martha and her response to that and she...
Something about the Queen of Africa?
Well, yeah, yeah.
Like a more lady and stuff like that.
But Martha's a response to that is great, and Freeman does a
really great job, kind of not seeming too upset by that, but also
going, like, what the hell even is this, which I think is really
good.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But this is one scenario where he could, he could actually explain
it away with a line because technically the slave trade was
abolished in Britain in 1807.
So he could say, I mean, there's literally no danger of her being
taken.
I mean, there aren't like in the in the US for the next like 75 or
80 years runaway slave laws.
Like, that kind of thing doesn't exist in Britain.
I mean the slave, slave trade was abolished in the colonies not
until like the 1830s.
So, I mean, it is technically still a thing.
But there's nothing specifically for her to worry about in this
moment at this time.
But he doesn't dismiss it at all.
Exactly.
And he says that, yes, it is dangerous.
But then when I think it's really interesting is a decision that
the show makes at this point, because you've got an issue where if
you're going to have stories set in England's past, then the kind
of England that you've got to show, you have to make a decision
about what kind of England you're going to show.
And, you know, you're in London, which helps, which is more
cosmopolitan and more racially diverse than other places in
England.
But are you going to put out a casting call for extras and specify
that they're all going to be white?
You know?
And so what the doctor says is in universe that that history's a
whitewash.
And that's clearly true.
And you think about Doctor Who's history.
Like, let's think about the hinge cliff era.
Let's play this on hard mode.
It's the Hingecliff era. everyone loves it.
It's one of the show's high points.
It has virtually no women in it.
And story after story after story.
It's telling stories of white men.
And that's in no way representative of the population of England
at the time, and it's a deliberate choice that the show is
making.
And it's not making it because of some sort of conscious sense of
white supremacy.
It's just making it because they're too lazy to think about it or
it doesn't, do you know what I mean?
It's still culpable. still a problem, but it's not as malicious as
it might be, I think.
Here the show has to make a different decision.
And so what it does is it just has the doctor say, yes, things are
less white than you remember.
And think about the way Bill puts it.
It's Regency, England, it's much blacker than it is in the
movies.
Like she approaches it from the point of view of someone whose
genre savvy as well.
And so we're saying here that on this TV program, this is what the
past is going to look like from now on.
And I think that that's a really, really good call and it's
something that Chibnal will go on and continue with.
And in a way, rogue, although Rogue has some odd genre things
happening as well, kind of does the same thing.
You know, the danger is always underplaying the levels of racism
at the time.
When you've got Bridgerton, you're kind of going, well, there
isn't historic racism in England and everything was fine.
And that's the danger that you have.
Here, I think it sort of strikes a balance.
It gets bill to express her concerns about being black in England
in 1814 and it shows a diverse group of people living in England
at the time.
There was a quote in Sarah Dollard's mind when she's writing the
episode.
I interviewed her about this episode.
Oh, 2 magazine.
Oh, magical.
And she yeah, she's great.
I know it's not cool to talk about Louis C.K. now, but back then
he hadn't gotten into trouble.
And she had a quote of his in her mind, which ran, here's how
great it is to be white.
I get to go in a time machine and go to any time and will be
awesome when I get there.
That's exclusively white privilege.
A black guy in a time machine's like, hey, anything before 1980.
No, thank you.
I don't want to go.
And so that's what she was thinking about when she was scripting
these scenes of Bill confronting what it's like to go into history
and what that would actually be like for a real person.
Yeah.
And like Doctor Who, in a way, doesn't want to get sort of too
saddled with that in the Shooty Gantwa era.
And so it does its episode about racism before we go into the past
and it goes into a version of the past that is fictional in all
kinds of ways because of the effect of Bridgerton, I think.
And in many ways, I think that this episode's great strength is
that it manages to be quite a light, whimsical feeling episode.
Well, actually dealing with some quite big issues, but never
putting them on the nose.
It strikes a very delicate balance between the sort of, and again
I already talked about sort of the gentle anachronisms that, you
know, you see with the with the gear and stuff like that.
But between being in history versus what the RTD 2 era seems to
have gone for, and, you know, the more like straight ahead
historicals that of the Chibnol era.
And what RTD 2 seems to have chosen is that explicitly fictional
regency period, or explicitly fictional 18th century, where
everything is colourblind, where it is sort of no one's paying
attention. like that isn't a factor.
So the fact that he's like in here in thin ice, we're striking
that balance between, yes, this is a genre show, but we're also
looking at a specific historical moment is it's very impressive.
It's and it's very light.
It's a very light touch.
It surprises me that it's not coming from Stephen Muffet's pen.
Like, when I was watching this, I was going, oh, yes, Stephen, and
then I realised, no, this is Sarah, you know, last week wasn't
Stephen.
Next week's not Stephen.
Oxygen's not Stephen.
Like these 4 episodes with all the world building for Bill and the
relationship and all these questions are coming, not from
Stephen.
He's obviously their supporting, but I think it's really
significant, like that he's not putting his name to it. to take
away from these other writers.
And they're obviously having huge conversations to ensure that
they're on the same page and setting up this character because
she's a one season wonder if I can say it like that.
So that just surprises me.
So like, I'm impressed by that, you know?
The other big issue, of course, is Bill's reaction to death, you
know?
Yeah, absolutely shocking when spider gets taken, like that young
child.
That's pretty horrific.
Like, even when I was watching it, I was thinking, you know, how I
like my death and dying in Doctor Who, but, and, and, and, and
having bad children actors dies in better, but that's not the case
here.
Like, it actually is.
Like he grabs the Sonic and that's it. and she's absolutely
stunned.
That moment of brilliant black humour when he's only concerned
twice in this episode is to get the Sonic back before it goes into
the depths of the terms.
And so I think what that plot is doing.
And I think that's the more important plot about introducing Bill
to the show is introducing her properly to the doctor as a
character.
And I think it's really, really well done.
And, you know, Sarah Dollard is an incredibly good writer, and
it's done in a very rightly way.
So Spider is killed and the doctor grabs the Sonic.
And you get kind of early season 8 vibes, the sort of, you know
he's the top layer, if anyone wants to say a few words, kind of
vibes about not caring when someone has died.
And it's not as explicit as that.
Like he's not flip or kind of horrible, but he does just sort of
grab the, grab the Sonic and then run off.
And then you get Bill's response to that.
And we get the question about, have you seen people die?
And then the more important question, which hardly ever gets off.
Have you killed people, which is so good.
And this is stuff we don't get from other Doctor Who companions.
And this is what impresses me so much and makes you really, well
made me sort of just think twice about.
Oh, hang on.
Yeah, like this is something that should be asked and has never
really been asked.
And that scene is just so impressive.
Like, you know, doctors does say I care, but I move on.
And after the response to that, have you ever killed anyone?
And, you know, he says, yeah, it's just very quiet.
And I just think there's a real strength in that.
It's actually really good because he offers to kind of
justification.
She says, have you ever killed anyone?
And he says, oh, you know, sometimes I'm in a position where, and
she goes, that's not what I asked.
And she says it twice, she refuses to accept it, and then he
smiles, and then replies, like it's so, it's beautifully acted by
Capaldi.
It's so well done.
And it kind of, we're in a bad place, aren't we?
Like we just interrupted at that and we're still in a bad place, I
think, at that point of the episode.
And I think that that's, you know, this episode much more than
being about the sea monster in the Thames is about her learning
what the doctor is really like and what it means to be the doctor
as well.
Well, for me, one of the most devastating moments of the episode
it nothing happens and you could gloss over it.
You could completely miss it, but it's right before they have that
confrontation.
When the doctor is talking to Kitty, I think her name is, and he
says, we're going to help you.
And she goes, we, she's gone.
And he turns around and, you know, you were talking about the mist
earlier and it's just him surrounded by me.
It's there's something really objectively terrifying about that.
Like, where has...
Yes, like where has Bill gone?
And for me, again, going back to that professorial nature of their
the, the professor student, uh, tutor student nature of their
relationship, when, when he does that smile, when she follows up
on those questions?
Again, he has prepped her all through the pilot.
She's writing papers for him and she's like, you will not, we will
not continue this unless you get a 1st every time.
Like, he has prepped her to be in these situations to follow up
questions, not to just take something at face value and move on.
Like, I mean, to move on in this in this scenario means something
different than accept what I say and let's let's do the next
thing.
Like he wants her to ask those questions.
She is learning in that in that scenario.
She is pushing him.
Yeah, it's he smiles, doesn't he?
Because he's, um, attempts to fob her off don't work, and on some
level, he's pleased about that.
Yep.
It's it's really, really good.
And that's because you have Sarah Dollard.
And like the last time we saw Sarah Dollard, we've seen her once, I
so want her back.
What was her previous episode?
Face the Ravens.
Oh my god.
Yeah.
And the trouble with Face the Raven is, of course, that it's
interrupted sort of 10 minutes from the end by the needs of the
show.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, it becomes a Doctor Who episode.
But even the idea as well.
Do you know what I mean?
There's all these questions, which get raised in this one about
aliens and humans, and our assumption that aliens can be bad and
humans aren't quite so bad, and you've got refugees, we've got a
refugee camp.
Like it's political.
It's a bit about race.
It's certainly about, you know, who's moral in a particular
situation and she does that again here.
Because we throw the face the Raven plot away.
We throw the Trap Street plot away towards the end of the
episode.
There's no real resolution to any of that.
But she's good, and having her back was the right thing to do.
And I think this episode is, if anything, better. because even
though it doesn't have the big shock moment and the incredible
acting opportunities for Capoldian Coleman at the end.
It's just solid and has something to say.
And one of the things that it does is it interrogates the doctor's
character.
I don't want to reduce things to gender.
But one of the things that is brilliant about having female
writers in Doctor Who, which is still less common than you would
hope it would be. is that they do bring a different perspective
and experience.
They focus on...
Do you remember enlightenment in the original series?
How that whole subplot with Tegan and Mariner, I don't think, would
ever have entered into the story if you'd had Eric Saywood writing
it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't think Terrence Dudley would have thought of it.
No, it just had a door or 2 to go through.
He would have turned it into a successful stalker plot where
Marinade ended up killing Tegan.
But yeah, no, I think it's really great.
And Sarah Dollard brings a very specific thing to her scripts.
I feel in Face the Raven and in thin ice.
And so after that, of course, we get the moment where they're with
the urchins, and Kitty's kind of accusing Bill, and Bill says, no
I moved on, and it's because the doctor hasn't been able to save
Spider, but he really, really, really properly does want to save
the urchins, and that's enough for her.
He said, look, if I don't move on, people die.
And he does that thing, which actually does sit badly, doesn't
it?
In over 2000 years, I've never had the luxury of outrage.
And you kind of think, maybe, but that doesn't sound like the
pirate planet.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That doesn't sound like you, does it?
And there's something incredibly moffity about the line that
resolves it.
Isn't there that in 2000 years you've barely had time for anything
else?
You know, I think that's that Sarah Dollard knowing how Moffatt
writes the show.
Nathan, that entire scene is just gold.
You put Peter Capaldi with small children.
Yeah.
And just his chemistry with them and how he interacts with them is
just brilliant.
And you can see Bill watching all of that.
And when she actually does say that move online and then she pokes
out her tongue and the chemistry between...
It's so adorable.
And it's just, it's just, this is another moment we had moments in
smile, but here it's sort of like, here is this team, we're
getting it together.
We are we're fine.
Like, we've already got it together, but we're really solidifying
it.
And this is us moving forward.
I mean, I think she deliberately says move on because that's what
the doctor said before.
And the doctor looks at her.
And before he can be triumphant about it, she sticks her tongue
out at him.
It's perfect.
And this is why a friend from the future didn't work because that
gave you all of Bill's literal asking all of the on the nose
questions without any of this context of what makes her a
brilliant character.
And I'm going to I keep coming back to it.
And I will keep coming back to it because I believe it's super
super important, is that is there, again, professorial tutorial
relationship, and one of the things revisiting this series and
thinking back on my own, uh, university history, the students that
you are most proud of, the students that you go, Sorry, I get
really emotional about this stuff, the students that you go to bat
for, the ones that come to you after class and will, like, really
impress you.
Those are the ones that you want to impress.
Those are the ones that make you want to raise your game as a
teacher, as a professor.
And so I see that in their relationship.
I see students who came to me after class and we're like, you know
I was reading this as speaking of racism.
There was a student who came to me one time talking about these
close readings we had done and how he was reading an article in
the newspaper about how urban students were more used to seeing
guns.
And he was, he was pointing this out.
He's like, the way that they talk about this, it's it's racially
inflected.
And I'm like, yes, exactly.
And that is that that is that moment where she says she's moved
on.
It's the, you know, he is trying to impress upon her as time
travellers.
This is how we conduct ourselves.
This is how we approach these various scenarios and to see her
implement that in the next scene is it has to be a moment of just
extreme pride for him.
And, you know, we've had in the uh, the 2 previous Capaldi seasons
you know, the the season 8 doctor is, am I a good man?
Like we've, we've, we've divorced in some ways in the Capaldi era
the doctor from who he is as a person, as a character.
In that season, he is trying to figure out, who am I?
In the in the next season, in the in the season where Clara
leaves.
It's now that I know who I am, which is I'm an idiot with a box
you know, how does that fit in with the doctor?
How does that fit in with my role?
And now in the 3rd season with Bill, he has this more professorial
role.
There's a different relationship, how he is, how he is.
As an idiot with a box, is different now that he is with Bill, and
this affects everything.
It affects everything.
I feel like this is him at his sort of most comfortable as himself
and as the doctor.
Like this is him at his, this is peak Capaldi Doctor Who.
And I absolutely love it.
It's true what you said, series 8 and 9 were quite inward
focussing on the doctor as the doctor focussing on himself.
This is seeing him through the prism of new eyes.
Yeah.
And I think it's Peter Pauldi's sweet spot, the characterisation
of the doctor, I think, in this season is pretty perfect.
And we'd never had that before.
I mean, Clara, when she meets this new doctor, has been travelling
with the doctor already.
And so she knows him.
He's a known quantity.
She knows him terribly well.
And so this, you know, like right from the pilot, even just from
the pilot, you know, Capoldi is so comfortable and so good.
I mean, this is a year where you have someone playing with Doctor
Who is very nearly the best person ever to play the doctor in his
best year as the doctor.
And so I think going forward, I'm not going to be wowed by every
single episode, I think, this season.
Maybe I am.
Uh, but...
Knock knock is to come.
But I'm so impressed by Capoldi as the doctor.
This is the doctor, I think, in an incredible way.
There's all those overarching things that make or break a Doctor
Who season.
And so I've heard it mentioned that while the 3rd Capaldi series
is pretty well thought of as being his best overall, there are
some people who grouse about the fact that some of the stories
aren't that great and so is it in fact?
Yeah, okay, there's some lesser entries in there.
There's also some really great episodes.
But the fact that Capaldi is at the height of his powers, and
they've really nailed the characterisation, and he's given a
companion who really works well with that characterisation, means
that that's what makes it feel like the best Capaldi season.
It doesn't come down to the nature of individual episodes.
I mean, it's a bit like Lislated and Tom Baker.
Like, you know, like their chemistry and their height of powers
makes you watch anything, even the lesser entries, you still want
to watch those episodes for their chemistry, and for their jokes
like even when they go in, to the, um, they go to the dredger's
yard, and they're looking at the stuff that's been burnt, and
there's even comedy moment there at the end, you know, where she
says, oh, she's going to swear.
And that's what I love about Doctor Who is when there's comedy
between the leads.
It's just the chemistry there.
That makes it for me, even when perhaps the plot is bit on thin
ice, so to speak, or a bit thin, like that's what elevates it.
You know, I'm really thinking, Nathan.
No, no, no.
An 8 out of 10 at least.
We'll get you there.
That scene in particular.
Incredible. so beautifully written because it's really, really
funny and all it is is an exposition scene.
Yep, yeah.
It's really well done.
They managed to sell the thing that it's the dung of the monsters
without ever explicitly saying it.
And it's the squelching sound when Bill puts it down and the look
on her face that sells it more than anything else.
Doesn't it look like the stuff that comes out at the insect
machines in Snowpiercer?
don't know what that is.
Basically they feed the people.
They feed the people in the steerage of the train by putting all
these insects into this machine.
It comes out of this kind of black gelatinous mass that they all
eat up.
It looks just like it.
But yeah, in this in this scene where they're interviewing or, you
know, grilling the guy at the dredger's yard.
He's still teaching her. you know, this is like, you know, this is
a mini boss.
If you were, you know, to put it in video game parlance.
You know, you don't have to be as, you don't have to be as
assertive with him.
You can make him give away his own secrets.
Like, I love that that part where Capaldi says, Suckcliffe will be
very pleased with your inquisitiveness.
And he's like, oh, you think so?
And he's like, yeah, I think you'll, you know, he's like, you
won't be here long if you keep asking questions at this rate.
I've already talked about, you know, any idiot could come in here
and just get you blabbing.
I think the best bit is Bill's line where the doctor throws to
Bill and says, is Sutcliffe expecting us or something, and Bill
delivers this line and kind of swallows it because she's making it
up as she goes along.
It's such a brilliant, perfect line delivery.
And it's, you know, no, no, he insisted that we come.
And he's kind of inviting her to participate in this and she nails
it, but it's such a comedy line delivery.
I think that's a really, really properly great scene.
And again, it's because Sarah Dollard is an incredibly good
writer.
And Bill, as a character, is so she's so genuine and so gentle and
so unassuming.
Like, it's a completely different.
I mean, obviously it's a completely different character than the
more sort of arch, knowing sort of approach that we would have
gotten from a Clara, say.
Like, again, the approach is so different.
It's so, again, it's just so gentle and so, so welcoming.
You know, you feel like you're part of that.
And even with all the issues that the episode is discussing.
It's the doctor giving Bill permission to have fun. and the
expense of the bad guys.
And so that speech.
So, like we've talked about the doctor punching cycliff in the
face, and obviously that's absolutely superb, and partly it's
superb because the doctor's being so high-minded, and in a way
he's telling a black woman not to get too angry about racism.
And he's putting himself in a position of sort of Olympian
detachment and rationality and stuff.
And he's kind of saying you have a tendency to lose your temper
about these kinds of things.
And so it's not that great.
And then, of course, the moment Sutcliffe opens his mouth, Capaldi
punches him in the face.
Do you remember that punching a racist in the face was having a
cultural moment at the time?
Remember what happened on Trump's inauguration day?
Oh no.
We had the white nationalist, Richard Spencer on TV.
And someone just came up and punched him in the face.
He was being interviewed.
He was explaining what the badge on his on his lapel mend and
someone just came up and punched him in the face.
Yeah, I would never advocate violence except comedy violence such
as that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, punching white supremacists in the face.
And it, you know, like this episode airs a few months before the
unite, the right rally in Charlottesville, but obviously Trump is
in the air.
It's in the air, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And those, yeah, those were those were ugly times too.
I mean, there's still ugly.
There still could be ugly times.
It's funny, isn't it, that we've been complaining over the last
few episodes that Doctor Who often comes to things about 5 years
late and starts talking about them, but here it's absolutely...
No, but it's, you know, like we get Charlottesville in August and
this comes out in April.
Like it's very, very timely.
And of course, Trump's inauguration day was January 20, but Sarah
Dollard wouldn't have been referencing that because the script
would have been written.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
So I mean, that's incredibly good.
That scene is incredibly good, but then there's the speech that
Capoldi gives, which, and again, it's so rare to hear what the
doctor stands for, expressed so briefly and concisely, and he says
human progress isn't measured through industry.
It's measured by the way that we answer the question whose life is
valuable.
And Suckcliffe thinks that his life and the lives of people like
him are valuable, but other people's lives aren't.
But progress comes when we regard people like Spider and Kitty as
valuable, even though they're unproductive urchins who steal
things and stuff.
And I think that that's a beautiful statement.
And Bill, like Bill's reaction to that.
The way that she is gazing at him and smiling, and then the way
she comes back and says 2000 years, you've done nothing but
outrage in that time.
It's like, it's a properly good speech.
It's not 10 minutes long, like the one at the end of the psychon
inversion.
Which also is amazing.
Which is also amazing, yeah, but it is amazing.
It's a very condensed speech and but it is very effective.
And what she says to him in the carriage after is she follows up
on a different question from earlier because he had said, you know
I'm 2000 years old.
And so Bill says, are you really 2000?
And he's like, why do you ask?
And she's like, well, I want to know how long you have to live
before you can make a speech like that.
Like that, and again, that's that, that's that tutor student
moment where, you know, it's not the admiration she's looking at
him with isn't like, wow, isn't he so great?
It's the same thing as she came to him in a smile in the previous
episode with there's a moment where they're walking through the
corridors and she stops him for a 2nd.
She's like, you know what?
You are an awesome tutor.
Like, it's, it's that, it's that look that she gives him.
It's, I can't believe I'm I'm learning.
I'm learning from him.
And it brings it back, I think, to the cleverness of Sarah Dollard
in the frost fair is, of course, an amazing location for a dog 2
episode to be set in.
I'm surprised that we haven't pitched up there.
Well, we have, because in a good man goes through a war, river
comes home from this frost fair, where Stevie one taken.
Yes.
Don't tell him, though.
I'm surprised hasn't been the prime location for a doctor episode
so far.
And it has actually been in some spinoff media that are the... short
stories and things.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But the thing is, the frost fair in Victorian London was one of
the few forums where you would get all of the classes
interacting.
And so that really sets it up for a discussion about that.
And so bringing in Sutcliffe and the urchins makes, you know, you
say all of London society, all of human society at the time
represented there.
So it's a really good forum for those issues to be highlighted, I
think.
And so this is where we get to see what the doctor stands for.
You know, this is why the doctor does what he does, is because he
thinks all lives are important and that's why he puts a stop to
people oppressing people.
And I think that there are just 2 more scenes in this arc that are
really, really important.
And the one is where he asks Bill what has to happen next.
Yeah?
Give me an order.
Yeah, give me an order.
And we have touched on that, haven't we, in Kill the Moon a bit
but this is done better than that, I think.
And I think he's revisiting it on purpose.
Again, I think it's part of the lesson to build because moments
before, they're tied up in the tent with all the explosives and
they're kicking around the Sonic to try and get it to get it, which
is a funny comedy.
John and Katie moment?
That's a John Katie moment?
I'm trying to think because now she's in a, like we've done the
moral thing.
She's convinced that the doctor's a good guy.
And so now we're off to have a Doctor Who episode.
And so someone ties us to a bomb.
And then by the same token, I mean, you get that moment, the
repeat of the moment from deep breath where he's like, oh, I wish
Amy were here because her legs are longer.
Yeah, but so she's like kicking the kicking the Sonic around, but
they have to lure the lackey back in.
So you get a repeat of the spider moment from earlier because
again, you have to, you have to sacrifice a lackey in order to
move.
And Bill is Bill is right there.
You know, and she has to be part of it.
It's not just that how many people have you seen die?
It's how many people have you killed?
And so we see him trick that guy.
And he does say that sort of blase thing about, oh, you know, it's
got a knack to it pressing the off button on it.
But it absolutely clear that he deliberately kills that guy in
front of her and she's okay with it.
And so, and so that's answered.
I think that's so incredibly well done.
It's that thing of the doctor doesn't really sit out to kill
people, but he happily lets the villains fall into their own
traps.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I mean, that guy's just some guy.
Do you know what I mean?
But it's it's just so well done that both of those questions that
get raised get answered.
It's very good.
And again, it's practice.
It's practical implementation of the lesson he taught her
earlier.
And I, in the same episode, like I absolutely love that, that you
get those echos from the 1st phase of the episode, which is like
asking questions about the practicality of time travel and about
you know, the moral responsibilities that you have as a time
traveller.
And then here in the, quote, Doctor Who episode, part of the show
like we're putting those lessons into practice.
Nathan, you were saying there's another moment.
Is that at the end where they check about history and...
No, the 2 moments I was thinking of, and I just got them in the
wrong order, the one is where Dow gets killed, you know, where the
henchman gets killed, and then the you have to make the decision.
And so he gets her to be the doctor is what's happening with
that.
He gets her to be the doctor and learn what it is like to make
that decision.
And then at the very end, when she is delighted that he has saved
the urchins.
He says, no, no, you save the urchins.
And so that big moral decision where you have to, you know, the
doctor can't sit around mooning about the fact that Spider has
died and he just has to get on with saving everyone else.
He does that spectacularly well to the point where they end up in
a big giant mansion and eating sort of lots of food and all of
that sort of thing.
But he makes her involved in making those decisions.
And I guess it's what you were saying, Melvin, about being a
teacher.
You know, now you watch.
This is how we make the decisions and these are the kinds of
decisions we make.
But by the same token, Capaldi himself is also a student.
He is learning from Bill and learning from his own experiences.
I don't think it's a coincidence, and whether it's intentional or
not, doesn't matter, because it does so closely echo that exact
sequence of events in Kill the Moon, where he abandons Clara and
the astronaut and Courtney Woods to make those decisions for
themselves.
Here, he's like, I've done this.
I can do, I can do this better.
I can do this better for Bill.
Like, you know, and he doesn't make her necessarily kill the
lackey.
He doesn't necessarily make her go and set the explosives.
You know, he goes and says the explosive while she goes and tells
people to get people off the ice.
So he doesn't want a repeat of what happened with Clara, where
Clara is making decisions recklessly and fecklessly, like in a lot
of ways.
Like that there is, he wants to teach her in a way that will
maintain some of her essential billness, you know, to, in other
words, to allow her to make those decisions, but the right way and
for the right reasons.
And when you say he's learning, he learned from Clara's reaction
and kill the moon, they are just foisting that responsibility onto
someone and then walking away is not the right way to deal with
things.
The other thing that we haven't talked that much about is the kind
of political allegory of satire.
So you've got a big monster that eats children and people and
turns them into fuel for, you know, the steel mills.
What's that, Nullagry for?
I can imagine.
And, you know, like all of that sort of fairly obvious and stuff.
Simon would think it was too obvious.
But I think it works incredibly well.
And I think what's great about it is that it's not just an
allegory because at the end of the episode, we can't kill that
monster, we have to free it as well.
The monster is being exploited every bit as much as the people fed
to it.
It's very beast below, isn't it?
Yeah, it is very beast below.
And it is like a slight troping, like a turn on the image that we
get at the beginning where Bill is asking, it's 1814, won't
someone enslave me?
Like that, you know, again, it's like a, it's a slight trope on
that idea that there is a, there is something in this episode that
is enslaved.
And Sutcliffe says that the fish has been that Tiny has been in
chains.
And that I think we get like a sort of minor sort of explanation
of why the Thames has frozen over since the 1600s or whatever, is
that the fish has been down there since there have been records.
So it has been enchained all that time.
And it's very well told that as well, like that discovery is not
hammered home to us.
It's just we see the chains.
You know, there couldn't be a better kind of visual image of
oppression than chaining something up and that's what we see.
And so the doctor breaks the chains.
And again, you know, it's absolutely emblematic of what the doctor
does.
I know it's about imperialism and capitalism and all of that sort
of thing, but it's also just about any kind of oppression in the
same way that, say, the savages is about. the race on some level
as well, but it is also just about a group of people oppressing
another group and the doctor coming in and smashing that system
up.
And I think, so this is the episode much, much more than smile
where Bill learns and we learn what Doctor Who is about.
And smile is visually stunning.
It teaches us some of the genre things about the show in this era
but it doesn't really have anything very interesting to say, I
think, whereas this properly does.
And it's very unusual to have a regency set piece.
And I think that's one of the things that Bill is talking about
when she says that Regency England is a bit blacker than it is in
the movies because, generally speaking, when there are popular
fictions or popular films or adaptations, there are adaptations of
Jane Austen.
Or, you know, Fannie Bernie at the outset, but like, you don't
usually get the Mills kind of stuff, which is more of a William
Blake sort of, he's, you know, in this era as well, talking about
that kind of stuff, but the popular fictions of that era that we
know are the polite society drawing room stuff.
You know, we don't usually get the, you know, mill exploited
children stuff until Dickens or Gaskell, like in the 1860s and 70s
like this is, that is also a very clever thing that Sarah Dahr
does in this episode is turn the lens away from the drawing
rooms.
The, you know, who is the resident of the drawing room in this
episode, it's Sutcliffe.
Like, we're not living. in that world in this episode.
We visit it, but it's a place that, and it's a place that we can
you know, the fantasy of the show doesn't extend super, super far
because while he does, you know, while Sutcliffe does fall and the
children do inherit the estate, it is Perry, who has had no lines
in the episode because he is the one white boy.
So you can't completely overturn the system.
You can't let Kitty have the Kitty can't be the inheritor.
So, you know, you can't completely overturned.
So again, this is another clever thing that Sarah Dollard has done
is show you ways that you can, I don't know, exploit a system that
is exploiting others, but only within certain bounds.
So, again, we're not in the RTD 2 era where, you know, it's it's a
free-for-all Bridgerton fantasy world.
Like we do have to obey some of the constraints of the era that
we're in.
I really like that Sarah brings all of this to the episode, whereas
apparently Stevens one big question was, why is the Thames shaped
like that?
And that's where the monster came from.
He'd been watching EastEnders.
I do wish the splash that goes on Bill and the doctor was bigger.
It's pretty cheesy, isn't it?
It's pretty great.
With a Sarah Jane adventures moment.
It is also really great because there's another sort of echo of
Kill the Moon.
Remember the idea that if we kill the baby dragon, we look up at
the moon and it's a corpse for the rest of time.
Every time we look up at the night sky, we're reminded that
there's a corpse circling the earth.
And the doctor says to Bill, when he's trying to get her to make
that decision, he says, if your future is predicated on the
continued suffering of this creature, is it worth saving anyway?
And she just says, you know, screw it.
No, which I think is really great.
And that's another sort of historical fact that if you do a little
bit of digging is, in some way, tangentially related to that
because we were talking earlier about, you know, the, I said that
you know, the slave trade was outlawed in England in 1807, it was
finally outlawed, uh, throughout the empire in the 18, like, sort
of 1833, and then finally, finally abolished, because that's how
you have to do it in 1838.
But the way it was abolished was that the government of the United
Kingdom had to pay all of the slave owners, throughout the
colonies, and those, and they had to take out a giant loan in
order to do it.
That loan was not paid off until 2015.
And so that, and so if you want to think about like, if the future
of your country is predicated on the exploitation, you know, I
mean, you don't have to look any further than that to, like, to
have that sort of, like, ring in your ears.
I mean, you and I both live in new world countries where we look
around and are reminded of where all this stuff came from.
Yes.
What an absolutely mesmerising discussion of this episode and
trying things back to kill the moon and just the whole structure
in which you've all discussed this.
So, 9.5?
Oh, yeah, easily.
Best episode of the season.
Well, nearly, sir, that's all the time we've got.
She'll be sweet. will be back next week to watch David Souchet in
an adventure in millennial flat sharing in knock knock.
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 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 great and bountiful Human Empire.
Until next time, always remember to put a bit of coffee in your
tea, just to give it some flavour.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
See you soon.
Good night.
Good night, everyone.
That was Flight Through Entirety, starring Todd B. It'll be Nathan
Bottomley, Peter Griffith, and Melvin Penya.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, the ones that make you want to raise your game, was
recorded on the 11th of August 2024 and released on the 29th of
September.
With climate change being what it is, things like the Thames
Frostfarer, now a thing of the past.
But we can still look forward to the Thames fire fair to be
celebrated in 2027 when the river itself catches fire for 6
months.
We'll see you there.
Honestly, I've come to it with new eyes now.
Like, I mean, I liked it, but I didn't put all those dots together
and certainly seeing all of the callbacks to and the growth in the
Capelli character and their whole relationship and how that's all
building.
You made it perfectly clear.
And I think it's a real strength of the episode.
And it's not, I said a few 30 minutes ago that it was like thin on
plot, but it's actually not.
Yeah, I think I think that what it does is it has enough plot for
45 minutes.
It does have them tied up in episode three, which I thought was
pretty delightful.
The old snake dance.
But she kind of manages to, you know, the show is getting better
at that as time goes on as it shakes itself off from the shackles
of the four-part episode.
And so, um, a thing that classic who very rarely does, which is
this episode is about the relationship between our 2 leads
essentially.
Like, that's not a thing that the show is interested in doing back
in the classic era, and that's perfectly fine.
But now that it's back and it's doing modern TV, I think it's a
thing that it does really well.
And I think that this manages more than smile last week to have an
interesting plot that goes beyond just the 2 leads getting to know
one another and the version of the plot with the 2 leads getting
to know one another is so much better than it is in smile.
Like, I think it's just a triumph.
There's definitely enough plot here, but you know, there is more
to an episode than plot, and there is a lot going on in this
episode, I think.
And also smile is sort of, I'm sorry.
I was going to say, smile is also sort of easing you into or
easing Bill into being off-world, whereas the pilot, you know
again, she's writing papers, you know, who, I feel like that
episode maybe takes six, 8 months because, I mean, she writes lots
and lots of papers.
You can't do that very quickly, but like, you know, he is...
Yep.
He's preparing her for for this.
And smile, I feel, is a 1st step.
It is a simpler episode.
Yeah, there's not as much going on, but I feel like it is a way to
ease both the audience and Bill into a larger world.
And again, like one of the great things, I may have mentioned it
earlier, um, or maybe I was just thinking it in my head.
Uh, it amounts to the same thing.
Bill, at the beginning of Smile, one of, I think my favourite
moment of that episode is, at the very beginning, Capaldi asks
where do you want to go, past or future, and she goes, future.
And he says, why do you want to go to the future?
She says, why do you think?
I want to see if it's happy.
Like, there's something really, like, earnest and joyful and
hopeful and optimistic and, uh, uh, again, very, very genuine
about Bill's outlook and to have her go into an episode called
Smile.
Like, again, it's, it is simple, but it is, you know, it prepares
us and her for this episode, which is more complicated, more
layered, more, um, yeah.
Yeah.
No, no, I mean, I, I think I, I compared it last week to both
space babies and at the end of the world.
And the end of the world, which is magnificent, you know, in all
sorts of ways and, you know, an absolute triumph, um, has a very
very thin plot, like paper fin.
It's just...
Thin and gorgeous.
It's just Cassandra.
You know, doing an insurance scam.
There's really nothing to it at all.
Um, whereas, you know, this, you know, whereas um, both smile
whereas this manages to do something very, very similar, I think
it does the bulk of the getting to know what Doctor Who is for
this season.
It does it very similar in an episode that is not trivial, I
think.
I think you're right, Melvin, by saying this is much more
layered.
And there are lays to this which are just, you can gloss over if
you're not, if you're not really in the moment.
Like, you know, if you're not really thinking about it, you can
just look at it and go, oh, yes, it's, it's a nice episode, but it
has got that layering.
And, and of course, it also has no doll serving tea coffee, which
is, you know, extremely important.
It's a deceptively strong episode, much like the arc that we were
talking about.
So let's talk about the end because we forgot last week to talk
about the cliffhanger and this one ends on a cliffhanger as well.
And so it looks like we've decided that the doctor's going to go
travelling.
Is that right?
Because, and it's a great callback because there's the, the guy
the, there's the pie man, um, and the doctor learns the, the trick
the coin trick.
And then he uses the coin trick to manipulate nut all into letting
him go off world from now on.
So he's clearly doing that.
And now we're being and now we're being made more curious about
the vault at the end.
If there's anything to say about that.
Well, it's just the ongoing plot of the season, what is in the
vault?
Yeah, yeah.
And it's just there to remind us without sort of.
Yeah, I was going to say.
Yeah, I was going to say the thing about the arc tacked on here at
the end is even if you were popping in and out as a new viewer
watching, you know, this is your 1st episode of Doctor Who.
That's a very nice, easy, like, entry into the arc as well.
Like, you don't need to know anything else about it.
Because Nordo tells you everything you need to know.
Your oath, the vault, you know, it's like, it's it's all there.
And this is like in terms of the, uh, you know, Moffatt sort of, uh
arc, uh, tendencies.
They they do tend to feel a little bit forced from time to time.
And I really like the way that this one is just sort of feels
organically part of the part of the episode.
We said on the pilot that there were parallels with the Pertwee
era, with the doctor kind of being in an institution on earth and
getting a new companion, having a sidekick, you know, the
brigadier or Nardol interchange as you want.
Um, but that would also reflect that in the in the Pertwee era, the
doctor starts to move away from Earth more and more.
And so that's what's happening. what happens after this episode as
well.
And I think it's good that like what makes this a good cliffhanger
in the sense that it's a what's going to happen now, Cliffhanger
is that the doctor makes the decision to go off world now after 70
years and as he makes that decision, the vault is seen hotting up
you know, suddenly becoming more active.
And so I think that sort of, that's pretty interesting.
And knowing that, can we give spoilers?
Yeah, yeah, knowing that it's missy in the vault, has dulled it to
the 1st time when we weren't sure.
And actually, the mystery was quite thick.
It's like, what is behind that door?
Yeah.
It turns out Michelle Gomez?
Yeah, which awesome.
Open my front door.
Yeah, and it also gives you a little bit more clue into Nardol's
character because he tends to be all over the map in his 1st sort
of 3 or 4 appearances, but here he is very decisive and very sort
of like, you know, uh, uh, uh, uh, forceful with Missy.
I mean, we know it's Missy through the door.
So we know that whatever he has gone through, even though he
didn't ask to be put back together, as he says in here in thin
ice.
Um, that he is that he is part of this team.
And, uh, you know, it's a character that I, I really have a lot of
time for.
And, you know, had sort of, you know, sort of forgotten about
until revisiting this season, uh, and a couple of, the previous
couple of specials getting ready for this is like, I was just sort
of forgotten about him and his character and the, the fact that
you know, we don't know how long he's been with Capaldi, you know
they, they could have had, you know, big finish box set after big
finish box set together because, you know, even in the 1st few
episodes of this season, the way that he acts and interacts with
seems to, you know, very, you know, based on what scene they're
in.
Like, he can be very aggressive towards the doctor.
He can be very sort of it's not my problem.
He says in, you know, I think it's the pilot, you know, I'm not
going to serve tea to that human or whatever when Bill joins up
like, he can be all over the place, but you get a sort of, you get
a firmer sense of who he is based, you know, once you know that
that's missy in the vault.
Well, it's only a scant 8 episodes until Missy will correctly dub
him comedy and or exposition.
Comedy relief and or exposition.
I think I think we have an out.
I think we have an out.
So I think we're good.
Yeah, the, I think that was like, I think we decided early on, like
I think I might have said in the pilot that that Nadol is the 2nd
longest serving companion of the doctor has been with him at least
70 2nd handles.
Yeah.
Yeah, 2nd only to handles as companion of a doctor.
And I wonder where there's a difference in the way he plays it in
like, he's much grumpier.
He's decades older, in the pilot than he is in, um, uh, what's the
what?
Dr. Mysterio.
Oh, yeah, Dr. Mysterio.
Yeah, remember?
Remember when he goes into the thing and goes, ooh, elephant, and
then runs over a word?
Like he's and he's asking for the little boys' room and stuff.
Like he is much more comic relief, isn't even than he is later.
But he also has sort of very tender moments.
Like, they're at the very end of Mysterio.
Uh, he's saying to the the Lucy character.
He's like, he's very, and it's, God, that, that scene thinking
about that makes me, makes me, uh, uh, well up as well.
He's like, he's very silly, but he's very sad also.
Like, I love, I wish we could have had more of that, more of that
Nardo, more of that, like, that, that turn on a dime, and he's, you
know, somehow, it says something extremely profound, like
something very insightful about the doctor.
I mean, spoiler, I think we'll get that towards the end of the
season.
I think the role that he plays in the final 2 parts really
captures that.
So good.
I can't wait for that. is so amazing.
No, I can't wait either.
I've been enjoying the season I've just watched the Ice Warriors
one and I love that.
I love that one.
I do want to smack Mark Gadis about the head when we do that.
Oh, you can't do that.
I like eaters of light.
How about that?
Spoiler alert.
I'm the only one.
Oh, I'm ready.
I like ears of light as well.
I'm ready and willing to...
They could have made Nardolan elephants a running theme of the
season.
In the 1st scene of this episode, you could come out of the tiles
and go, ooh, elephant.
Get that elephant.
See, in fact, the elephant in the ark is better than the elephant
in thin ice, right?
Because the elephant in the ark that is actually there.
And you get that shot reverse shot where you sort of think, oh
stock footage of an elephant and then Dodo just walks up to it and
they're in the same shot and she touches it.
You don't get the big close-up of Dodo going, oh, look at you then
which would have only improved this.
What did I say?
Didn't I say dodo?
I can't remember.
You did.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's stupid.
My ears are always alert. mention it's of data.
Have we had other elephants in Doctor Who?
No, I don't think we have.
Is there one in Animal and Botanic in the other...
One of those...
They pull open little drawing out as an elephant.
There's been various trunks.
What about the doctor saying that it's not a wrestling match
unless...
Oh, unless it's in 0 grade. with tentacles and magic spells.
Oh my god, I love it. so good.
And it's the way, but it's the, if you go back to that scene, it's
the way he says magic spells.
There's just like something, you should like melt a little bit
because he's like, and magic and magic spells.
Like there's something so charming about that.
I also think the fact that when he's telling the children the
story, it's about something that someone that comes along and cuts
their thumbs off.
They suck their thumbs like it's horrible.
It's inappropriate.
Heinrich Hoffman, it's a poem, like I said, from 18.
I think it was published in German in 1845 and the, the, the child
that's being lectured to in that story that gets his thumbs cut
off is named Conrad.
So a nice little shout out to our pal.