Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast that suspects that the sky, the air
the earth, colours, shapes, sounds, and all external things are
merely the delusions of dreams devised by some malicious demon of
the utmost power and cunning to ensnare our judgement.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Stephen.
I'm Johnny.
Well, a mere 13 years after renowned thriller writer Dan Brown
inflicted the da Vinci code on an undeserving world.
Here's the doctor in the Vatican discovering the horrifying truth
that his world is nothing more than a complex simulation.
A fact that television viewers had found out for themselves more
than 50 years earlier.
But is there a simulation within the simulation?
Let's find out as we discuss extremists.
Speaking of Dan Brown, there is a bit of cut dialogue from this
and as we tend to discover with Moffat, he sometimes skates a bit
close to the boundaries of good taste, so in the initial scene
with the doctor and the monks in the doctor's office and they
explain, you know, everyone who's read this has committed
suicide.
Nardol describes a veritas as being a bit like the da Vinci code
to which the doctor replies, oh, dreadful book, but I wouldn't
have gone beyond self-harm.
The thing about da Vinci code.
And like it was huge.
Like, we can't overstate how enormous it was.
But it is a book that sort of hinges on the idea that it turns out
that the things that the church teachers aren't actually true.
And given that most of us kind of know that already.
And the church is still here.
Like I never really kind of understood quite what the deal was.
In any case, there's heaps of that here, isn't there?
I mean, the whole idea of a sort of deep secret at the heart of
the Vatican, some doctrine that can't be acknowledged.
Well, I'm sure it's one of you fine flight through entirety, gents
who says the doctor who always gets to things a few years late.
Yes.
And this is absolutely what happens with the da Vinci code.
But there's this other thing that isn't Henry Lincoln, ex-Doctor
Who writer somehow involved in this kind of religious kind of
crime kind of hidden artefact.
I think he writes the er text on this subject, something like
sacred blood or something or other.
But yeah, he is involved in that...
So the weird thing is it's all kind of circular.
It's all sort of come back to dogs back to Doctor Who.
All of this.
Wow.
No, I never knew that, but it sort of explains how abominable
snowmen explores, religious themes in a way, Doctor Who hadn't
until that time, really.
Well, I suppose except for we don't mention the massacre.
No, I'm kind of thinking, you know, the cult of Demnos or the
people on Tigella.
Oh, yeah, but that's later.
But everything I've learned about cults comes from Doctor Who.
I assume they all wear hoods.
I'm assumed they all, yeah. they all kind of walk around and do
chanting.
That's how it happens, right?
We sacrifice a companion at some stages.
That's it.
Amy Pond is basically Kimmy Schmidt.
So it is true that Doctor Who has sort of not kind of done
religion in this way, I think, but it is a sort of cartoony
version of religion, I think, with Pope sort of turning up and
handsome Father Angelo and things.
I guess there's one moment which I thought was particularly good
which was where Father Angelo says that Pope Benedict the ninth
who the doctor spent, like clearly having a night of kind of
heterosexual sex with.
We've really abandoned the idea that the doctor just isn't into
that.
He really clearly is, that she said that he had more to confess
than could be confessed, that there wasn't time to hear his
confession.
And I thought that was actually pretty good.
He actually, Angelo puts his hand on the doctor's shoulder and
offers him confession and I thought that was pretty great.
Yeah, and the rest of the time it is treated as very much a joke.
You know, the whole thing about the pope crashing builds date, I
just think is pure Moffat and absolutely hilarious.
But the only thing that, you know, absolutely can only be done in
Doctor Who.
Like at no other point does Pope actually appear in your in your
bedroom with a whole bunch of other priests as you're looking to
get your date into the bedroom.
I think it's really the only way to treat religion within Doctor
Who because it has to have a light touch because any sort of going
any further into this makes the whole kind of world fall apart.
You can't really have the doctor in the same space as the pope
without saying we could just get into the TARDIS and go and check
if you want.
You know, if you want actually some certainty about this, this is
actually fairly easy to sort out.
So, so actually, I think that Moffatt treads a fairly respectful
line.
And he, there are a number of jokes he obviously avoids throughout
the whole, that 1st section of the episode with them.
And I just don't think it would have gone out on BBC One without
that kind of careful treading.
You're absolutely right.
They actually had to go through more sort of checks and balances
to use the figure of the pope than they do to use the British
Prime Minister or the American president.
It's kind of like political figures don't need as much leeway as
religious ones and possibly because they're elected rather than
appointed, but particularly with the pope, Moffat sort of set out
to go, we can sort of make jokes around the pope, but we can't
make the pope the joke.
And I think him, you like crashing into the living room, is about
as close as they can get.
And Joseph Long, who was previously in turn left.
Mr. Colosante. and wasn't actually cast because of that.
He went through the usual audition process, and the character he
was auditioning for was Paul, um, and needed to be able to speak
Italian, but as he's like, as soon as I got into the audition room
and read the script, it's like, this is the pope.
But his bit where he bursts into the living room and starts
speaking in Italian.
He wrote that.
He actor wrote that.
And the translation is, what's going on?
Who are you 2 girls?
How do I end up here in this house?
I thought we were returning to the Vatican.
This is madness.
Doctor, why did you bring me here?
While we're talking about ad-lib dialogue.
I was watching this with the subtitles on.
And there's a moment where the subtitles seem to capture Matt
Lucas ad-libbing.
So there's a there's a moment where Bill, after this moment, she
rushes into the Tartis and says, don't put the pope on my date
please.
And Nadal has to quickly explain the plot to her.
So he's sort of coming, come over here.
And in the subtitles, it's Matt Lucas is saying, so these are
priests, and they are from the Vatican, and the Vatican is in
Italy, and Rome is in India.
Surely nobody wrote that dialogue.
Like surely not.
It must have been just audible enough for the subtitlers to pick
up on.
I think it's really funny though, because it is, you know, because
Nardal's an alien.
He doesn't know what can be assumed.
Yeah, so he's overexplaining it, which I think is delightful.
And you know what?
It may also be a bit of a riff on airplane slash flying high.
You know, Johnny, tell me everything that's happened.
Well, 1st the earth, cool.
And then what dinosaurs came, but they got too big in fact.
That wouldn't surprise me, actually, because I also think the
other sort of unconscious maybe influence on this is the Blues
Brothers were on a mission from God and you've got sunglasses
break bands, sunglasses.
It's all there.
Yeah.
I mean, the pope at this point is Francis already.
He becomes pope, I think, in 2013, actually, before even the 50th
anniversary special.
I would have guessed it a bit later than that.
And so we still had Pope Benedict.
He was kind of a little bit like the 14th doctor.
You know, he still kept going, even though the next pope came
along.
And so there is a little moment where we mentioned Pope Benedict
and there's a little intake of breath, and then he says the knife
you know, from 1040 or 1070 or whatever.
Yeah, so clearly they do tread lightly.
Clearly, the pope is not like a figure of Fana, an idiot, and we
do kind of take them seriously.
No one is being disrespected here for being Catholic or having
beliefs.
The doctor at the very end says he doesn't believe in anything.
He thinks he probably doesn't believe in anything.
But that's long after those characters have kind of left the scene
I think.
Also, in keeping, just, as you said, that, I don't know whether I
read this in a missing adventure or whether it's actually in the
canon somewhere on television, but something about Hartnell's
doctor saying that he considers himself to be currently an
agnostic, but by the time he reaches the end of his travelling, he
would probably expect to be an atheist.
Does that ring a bell with anyone or have I made that up?
I can't remember that.
It might be an Empire of Glass, I wonder.
That's probably, actually, that's my favourite missing adventure
probably where it's from.
I mean, we have dealt with the idea of religion before, and
obviously we're not really doing it properly here, and I think, you
know, the blocus classicus for that is the Satan pit, that
conversation with Ida, which I think is just sort of stunningly
well done.
Here, though, we have the whole episode taking place, though, in a
kind of imaginary universe, the shadow realm or something?
Are we calling it something, but it is a computer simulation.
And the show itself kind of leans into the fact that it's
regularly a simulation anyway.
We tune into it.
In fact, the role of the opening credits, I think, uh, initially
when they used to happen at the beginning of the episode and at
the end of the episode in the classic series is that it's a kind
of point of demarkation between the real world and the world of
Doctor Who.
And so it's that sort of screaming, weird, eerie, uh, sound that
tells us that we're leaving our world and going into somewhere
else.
And this episode actually makes the titles have that role as
well.
And so everything in the pre-title sequence is in our world.
The doctor receives the email with a subject line extremist, and
then we start to get that weird video effect, like there's static
going into the opening credits and coming out of the opening
credits, and everything between the opening credits and the scene
towards the end, where the doctor presses send is the simulation.
And the way that the simulation is marked is by, you know, the
sort of video effect that you would get on a television.
And so Doctor Who every week is a simulation.
But this week, the doctor himself is watching the episode at the
same time as we are.
It's almost the trial of a time lord all over it.
Except he's not watching from a comfy seat.
Yeah, hanging up.
It's a particular type of simulation in that, you know, I think we
find out in the next coming episode, there are 100s, if not 1000s
of 1000000s of similar simulations.
We just happen to be watching the simulation where the monks have
decided to write down the secret of this place in a book and place
it around for people to say.
It would be interesting to see a simulation where they decided not
to reveal the whole plan by writing it down somewhere for people
to see.
It's interesting that and getting to the video game metaphor the
doctor uses, which, of course, I absolutely love.
And it turns out that comes from the fact that Moffat is a gamer
which I never realised.
But recently over on one of my other shows, the BJBJ game show, we
played a game called the Talos Principle, which is very, it's very
clearly set in a computerised simulation.
But there's one and this was a secret both eye and my co-host BJ
discovered, which is there's this doorway that's very
conspicuous.
And if you run at it, The door doesn't open, but you just pass
straight through it, and there's this weird Easter egg inside that
I won't spoil for anyone.
But that's the thing.
Video games do have cheat codes and debug states and weird Easter
eggs hidden inside them.
So it's kind of like the veritas is the cheat code.
I mean, I wondered whether a group of people had discovered
empirically the thing about the random numbers and so that it had
been written down so that it wasn't necessarily by the marks, like
I thought that it was possible to believe the backstory that
Father Angelo gives.
Oh, okay, yeah.
No, I must have misread that.
I thought that as a result of the Verrit has been sent to CERN
that that was the sort of precursor to that, and then they
discovered the shadow test through the numbers that way.
But I feel like that's what you have to do in this genre.
And I'll talk about meta fiction later on, I think.
But this whole idea of the shadow test, which is explicitly
mentioned.
I mean, where have we seen this before, but the Chronicles of
Castra Valver, which Chronicle, the rise of a civilisation up to
and including the present day, but they're 500-year-old books.
And I think like that's kind of like the guffin that needs to
happen or some kind of, again, here, shadow test that needs to
happen to sort of give that genre, the, um, maybe the sort of
plausible way out of the, the simulation.
Well, I suppose, I suppose if you think about it, there's lots of
simulations which don't end in the shadow doctor being able to
send the email to the doctor.
So there logically has to be one where there's a tell like the
Veritas so that he can work it out and succeeds.
And that's why we're following this because we are actually
watching the message that the shadow doctor gets to send to the
real doctor.
Initially, I wasn't as positive about this episode as I am now, I
think it is of the ones that we've done so far, and I've watched
ahead a bit.
I watched the end of the Monk trilogy.
I still think the pilot and thin ice are absolute top tier, Doctor
Who, like incredibly good.
And I think this is nearly as good as those, but initially there
are a couple of things that I didn't like very much.
And perhaps I'm in the position of one of those nerd fans who
knows about physics and, you know, it doesn't want the spaceships
to make a noise as they wish past you in space or something.
But, um, this was something that we did before.
So trying to find an inconsistency or some part of a fabricated
world that hadn't been properly implemented happens in last
Christmas.
And you remember where they've all got the base manual, but the
base manual hasn't been completely written.
And so they go to a page, you know, random pages and stuff and
they get messages or they all have different things, you know, on
page 27 or whatever.
And that's how we twig that it's not real, that the whole thing
has been made up by the dream crabs.
So here the tell is that computers can't do random numbers.
And I have a website, the Randomiser.net, which runs on a computer
which lets you select random Doctor Who stories at random using a
pseudo-random function because computers are deterministic and
whatever their initial state is determines what their subsequent
states are going to be.
And so there isn't real randomness in a computer at all.
So I was on a podcast called Pull to Open, and they have a
randomiser that actually uses a random number generator that is
kind of online and that actually uses things like the movement of
wind and stuff to input an actual element of real randomness in
there.
But a computer itself can't do randomness.
So you have to have something else happening outside the
computer.
In a sense, though, random just means I don't know what it's going
to be next, right?
It means unpredictable in a way.
And any means of producing a random number is caused in some way
by the rules of the world.
You throw a dice and, you know, it just obeys the laws of physics
and produces a number that you can't predict.
Therefore a random number.
And computers can do that.
We've all played computer games.
The same thing doesn't happen each time.
So when the doctor says that computers can't do real randomness
and that in any given computer program, every person is going to
say the same random numbers.
That's clearly demonstrably not true.
And so that kind of annoyed me a little bit.
I think at the time.
And then the other thing that annoyed me is this.
I don't buy that everyone who discovers that they are in a
simulation wants to kill themselves.
I think that this is a little bit like the terrifying secret that
faces us all, which is that you are still conscious and sentient
after death, and so the words don't cremate me, you know, being
heard over the TV broadcasts and stuff, that's properly terrifying
and I know how to react to that.
In a sense, we all discover at some point through the kind of
process of, you know, just modernity that we are different from
what we thought we were.
Do you know what I mean?
Everyone thought that we were the centre of the universe, that we
were specially created by God, who cares for us, and has put us in
a sort of particular position in the world.
And the modern world has largely rejected that.
And so in a sense, we've discovered that we are different from
what we thought we were.
And obviously that's kind of terrifying, perhaps, but the
discovery that you're not real, like that just doesn't mean
anything.
I just can't see that that means anything.
Well, it is an overreach, isn't it?
The problem with that particular overreach is it's the main
feature of the episode.
Like, it's the driving part of the plot.
It's what gets the doctor into it.
It's what has to be resolved.
We have to understand that problem.
So that the rest of the story can continue to the climax and it
undermines the whole episode right from the very beginning because
you can't help but go, when I really go on top myself if I read
that book, I just don't, I can't quite see it.
And it is the sort of weakness which unfortunately plagues the
entire thing and starts to undermine the premise.
Then once you have an element like that.
You start questioning everything else in the story And I think
that the other element like this in the story for me, which
doesn't cohere properly, is the idea that virtue is virtue only in
extremists because it's mentioned over and over again.
And so it's clearly important to the episode.
And yet we don't really have an example of where anyone puts that
into practice.
The closest that we get, I think, is when Missy says, I'm your
friend.
This is me saying this without expectation of reward or witness or
anything.
I your friend.
And I think it's setting us up for the finale, which is where
Missy does do that.
I thought you were going to say the closest we come is when the
doctor saves Missy's life.
And yet for me that is not really virtue and extremist because the
doctor would never have killed Missy.
We know this about him.
He was never actually going to perform that.
And so it's not really that he is acting in any way differently to
how he would ordinarily behave.
And so there we have these these 2 elements, these 2 really
important elements of the story.
One plot-based, one thematic based.
The plot one is about why everyone is committing suicide.
The theme one is about the virtue of performing doing the right
thing when it's really, really hard to do the right thing.
And actually neither of them actually land properly.
And so it's very difficult to come out of this story going, wow
that had something really profound to say about either of those
things.
I guess the other thing that gets close to it is the doctor faced
by a monk now aware that he's not real and that he doesn't
actually exist, still, you know, sending the message to make sure
that the doctor gets called.
And there's that line, I think, which is, you know, you don't have
to be real to be the doctor, which is fortunate because he's not
real.
And I think that as well.
But again, like that sort of extremist, and it is linked, I think
explicitly with that plot.
But I still agree with you, I still don't think that theme quite
lands.
And I think we have to borrow from the finale in order to get it
to work.
I think that's all true, but I'm not sure that it's a failure of
an episode on those counts either, and it doesn't automatically
qualify it as a failure, but I think in raising a lot of these
ideas and questions, not all of which are able to be resolved or
contained within the narrative itself.
I still think that's a really valid form of experimentation for
Doctor Who to do every now and then.
And, um, you know, the whole idea that sort of leads up from, you
know, effectively the glitch in the matrix is the precursor to
effectively that incredibly, I think the conceptual horror of that
kind of existentialist solipsism, Shardovanian, Shardovanesque, um
idea of like, I'm not real is a really awesome conceptual horror
point to lead up to in the climax of that, of this story.
And, you know, the exposition that sort of follows between Bill
and the doctor in the White House.
I think is actually really wonderful as a sort of piece of Doctor
Who.
Now, I'm not saying it succeeds, but at the same time, sort of
exploring these and pushing the boundaries.
I think it's a great thing for Doctor Who to be able to do.
And, you know, the idea that we have, you know, a puppet doctor or
a sim doctor really effectively, um, being able to to rise up
against a simulation and say, no, the idea of the doctor is enough
to save the day is an incredibly powerful and metafictional point
for the show to be making about itself and how it relates in terms
of us as an audience because, you know, it even invokes at some
point, um, Terence Sticks is, um, words around, you know, I want
to get this right.
You don't have to be real to be to the doctor as long as you never
give up.
And that's just like, yeah, never cruel or cowardly.
Absolutely.
And that's the ethos of Doctor Who, as much as the mythos of
Doctor Who coming through there.
And that's incredibly powerful.
And I don't think it's a failed experiment in the same way that
timelash or arc of infinity, or something much worse like the
Saranga conundrum is, where it's just a dearth of ideas, the
experiment here in terms of meta-fictionalizing the construct of
Doctor Who, as a not really actually a thing, because it's a
fiction, but sort of playing with that in the form of the fiction
I think is really, really valid.
Um, you know, like a picture of a hand drawing a picture a hand or
drawing a picture of a hand.
Yeah.
In that scene with the doctor and Bill in the Oval Office, There's
actually a fair bit of deleted dialogue, and I think it was
deleted to sort of keep up the tempo, you know.
Really, the only remnant of the idea it presents is when the CERN
scientist says, we're saving the world.
Because what the doctor theorises when he's talking to Bill about
video game characters and the fact that this is a simulation is
this is a simulation designed for people to invade Earth.
Ergo, these people are removing themselves to stop giving data
about what humans would do.
Now, if you include that, it adds a nobility, it adds that thing
of without hope, without witness, without reward.
But as it stands, it's kind of like people are just removing
themselves because they can't handle. the reality.
And it's nearly there, isn't it?
Because Nicola says we're saving the earth and she says, how can
you do that?
And he says, well, this is not the earth.
And so if they were doing that, and if, like, why are we in CERN
does blowing up the cafeteria and CERN destroy the world?
Where did they get the dynamite?
CERN very helpfully has signs saying this is CERN in a service
corridor and a cupboard marked wily coyote dynamo.
Should we blow up the Hadron Collider, or should we blow up the
star room?
But I think, I mean, if they'd been blowing up the large Hadron
Collider in order to destroy the world so that the monks wouldn't
get the data from their experiment, that is virtually in extremity
brilliant. and it's so nearly there.
I have to say, though, the moment where they look under the table
like the camera goes down with us to see all of the comedy
dynamite under the table and then back up and then Bill's reaction
is pretty great.
That's pretty awesome.
I think it's great that the idea that the deaths aren't suicide
the doctor says that their escape, and he even mentions in that
scene in the White House around Super Mario deleting himself from
the game because he's sick of dying.
This idea that NPGs think they're real, but they actually also
feel the reality that they're experiencing.
It's a direct nod to at least one of Moffat's inspirations for
this episode, which is a 2015 piece from the Guardian written by
Charlie Brooker.
And in it, he says, German AI researchers have created a version
of Super Mario World starring a self-aware version of Mario, which
doesn't simply play the game by itself.
And this is where the conceptual horror comes in, but is
psychologically affected by the experience as it does so.
That terrifyingly stupid thing to do is detailed incidentally in
an article entitled, The new Mario is self-aware.
How long before he goes inside you to fix things?
I'm excited to keep these.
I've never found that explanation in the doctor's speech about
Mario that convincing.
For me, it's a bit like the random numbers things, but this is a
very complicated story, and I think Moffat knows how to
communicate concepts to an audience that doesn't watch shocks with
her every week and doesn't know everything about it.
And so I think I think, in a way, you kind of, he kind of gets
away with those things.
Is he doing to the cobblins what he's already done to statues?
Do you know what I mean?
Like statues are terrifying.
When I've played a lot of Zelda over the last couple of years, a
terrifying amount.
And there's times when you're killing one of the monsters and it
keeps trying to get up but can't, and you know, you've got your
posse and you're kind of all wailing on them and they're kind of
crying and then it gives this sort of anguish scream and then
explodes.
And I do feel bad. you know what I mean?
And so if Moffatt's there saying, actually, they're experiencing
all of that, and you're a very bad person as a result.
I was kind of suspecting that anyway, I think.
But I think it is Moffat taking an element of the rare world and
making it frightening and that that doesn't directly follow from
the idea of a computer simulation, but it is just another sort of
moffity trick in the episode.
And I think that's fine.
You know, we mentioned Dan Brown at the beginning of the episode
and that's very much the cultural text that informs the 1st half
of the story, but the 2nd half is the Matrix.
And then I think also beyond that, you know, influences like the
Brooker article and the idea of, you know, Super Mario Land, that's
sentient is terrifying.
But there is also this idea, I think, from some strain of quantum
sciences around the idea that we actually do live in a holographic
projection of a universe that is real, but our one actually
isn't.
And, you know, there seems to be all sorts of, you know, scientific
formulae or an equation that seem to suggest that that's the
case.
And, you know, these are all these influences and whether it's, you
know, uh, movies and films and books, uh, as well as ideas that
are out there that are, that I think Movit likes to play with and
package up into these neat little bows. again, does it work?
Not entirely, but again, that experimentation of thought within 45
minutes of Doctor Who, where you take on these great big ideas, and
I hear I am defending Castro Albra as much as I'm defending
streamers.
Well, the Castro Valver needs to be...
I think it's incredibly valid and Doctor Who does need to do that
occasionally.
I think one of the other influences on Moffat is the West Wing.
And he talks about his admiration for it quite a lot.
And in his show running tenure, He uses the White House and the
Oval Office as settings for various stories.
And as it gets further in, Capaldi comes closer and closer to the
seats of power until he becomes the president of the world or
something like that.
I find this particularly unsatisfying, but that doesn't really
matter.
I think that where it is in this episode is that he's interested
in these seats of power, the Vatican, the White House, the
Pentagon, you know, and so he wants to put the doctor into these
worlds and see how that works out a bit.
And it's, you know, he's sort of premised that the doctor should
be the president of the world.
Is reinforced in that last scene where he's sitting behind the
president's desk at the Oval Office.
So I think that as well as the influences which are thinking about
worlds within cyberspace and worlds which are informed by popular
literary fiction, like Dan Brown, he's also drawing on these
televisual influences all the time too, the ones he admires, I
think.
Can we just talk quickly about the space that projects those
realities?
And it's a classic Moffat thing, isn't it?
You just assume that they're projecting the doors and then we
discover, no, they're projecting the spaces behind the doors and
that's a classic, you know, reinterpretation of what's going on
which we get over and over again in Moffat episodes.
This is directed by Daniel Netheim, who directed the Zygon 2
parter last year. and I think he directs next week.
And he'd not long been off Broadchurch at this point.
And I think visually it's just absolutely superb, isn't it?
You've got that white space.
You've got the projectors, which are just kind of boxes, aren't
they?
They're just sort of prisms, you know, that are that with a circle
on them and then that scary black space in the middle where
there's no projection taking place.
And there's just a brilliant shot where that's in the foreground
and you're not quite sure what it is.
I think it's really well done.
And had we decided to go for a more kind of space science fiction
y thing, it would have been vastly inferior, I think.
Just on that space.
I absolutely agree with you.
It kind of looks like an Ursat's Tartars.
Daniel Netheim, by the way, just returned to him.
Australian.
Yes. has directed All Saints, episodes of Secret Life of Us, and
K9.
Oh wow. of which I've seen.
So quite possibly the only Doctor Who creative, aside from Bob
Baker, to have been involved in the production of K9?
Oh, John Lason?
That's true.
I think that this is a really well-directed episode.
And it's really stylish.
And I think apart perhaps from the interiors of CERN, which do
look a little bit.
We've posted some quick Photoshop posters on the wall to let you
know that this is certain.
The rest of it is beautiful in terms of its art direction.
And it's really, it's a really beautiful polished looking
episode.
And I think that's one of the things that keeps it going for me is
that his direction's so nice.
A lot of the iconography, I think, as well, you know, that Ursat's
Tardis console room that I was talking about, and, you know, the
sort of dusty corridors and darkened, you know, for arcade
knowledge of the, um, hair, you can have to help me out here
Nathan.
Hereticum. hereticum.
And also, I guess the composition and the direction and the shots
around the monks as well.
It just gave me this vibe that these were meant to be almost like
anti-time lords, that there was this hugely impressive, you know
incredibly powerful race.
Now, I don't like how the next 2 episodes pan out and I think the
mystery of the monks is largely thrown away.
But this is another reason why I absolutely love this story
because it kind of suggests for me that there is this antithetical
force to the time lords out there that maybe have taken their
place after the destruction of Gallifrey in the 50th.
And I just wondered where this was all going.
I thought it was very, very mystical and interesting.
So what I think it is.
I think it's no coincidence, that in a story that foregrounds the
Catholic church, the villains are the monks, and that the monks
look like corpses, and that they're wandering these sort of
corridors and things, they're wearing kind of robes that, not like
a Franciscan friar or something, but glamorous monks' robes.
And I have to think that given the way the story pans out, that
they have to, in some sense, be religious leaders, and hence why
they need to be loved, why they need your consent in order to
dominate you.
And that's why I think that they're called monks.
And this time for the 1st time, I think I kind of got that.
I mean, in the lie of the land, their pyramid in London is called
the cathedral.
And imagine what this would have been like had the pyramid at the
end of the world, and then the pyramid in the 3rd episode, instead
been some crazed Gothic monstrosity.
And instead of being sort of essentially plywood flats, you know
the interior of the pyramid is astoundingly cheap and crappy.
But if it had been much more gothic and terrifying.
So, so when we go to the Catholic Church, when we see the pope and
we go to the Vatican and stuff, we're stepping back in time in a
way to a way of understanding things that's kind of passed, but
but that lingers on, and then you've got the monks who are like a
dead, more ancient and terrifying version of that, that's coercive
that wants to rule the world.
So I think that that's what the monks are.
And I think that there are some failures of design, and maybe a
reluctance to fully commit to that idea, that means the monks end
up ultimately not landing.
Because, I mean, they're the angels and the silence that have a
very clear look.
You know, the monks are like that.
They've got this stupid thing where the monk opens his mouth and
then the actor says the lines, which I just think looks dreadful.
This is why I was thinking that they were going to be cybermen.
Yeah, and that's because, was it, Jerry Davis or Cabe Hedler
imagine the Cyberman to be Star Monks at the very beginning?
And maybe that was just being led down the wrong path by Moffatt.
But Moffatt does, you know, there's it keeps coming up, the
headless monks, the clerics, that whatever that church was that
Tasha Lane's in.
Yeah, the mainframe.
Yeah.
So it's clearly a matter of interest to him.
Even his most recent episode, this season, boom.
Like, like a tax faith, really, you know, quite head on. and has
the monks and I think they're Anglican, aren't they?
So we've kind of dealt with the Anglicans, they're out of the
way.
And now doing the Catholic Church this season.
But it is a clear obsession of his, isn't it?
Yeah, it's not something you see in RTD's war, but it's this sort
of, maybe it's his interest in the juxtaposition of people of
faith or people of religion being also morally ambiguous because
not all of these religious characters that Moffat puts up are
villains.
No.
Some of them are heroes, but it's a sense, it's a sense of slight
A, I think it's a sense of slight wonder that these, these
structures are going to last that far into the future.
And then secondly, this idea that if you talk about a church or a
series of religion, you know it's made up of a hierarchy.
So you can talk about archbishops or priests or, you know, and
people will kind of go, okay, I kind of know.
It's kind of shorthand for a sort of schema that they kind of get
already.
So it's not a bad shorthand.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, he's remaking aliens when he introduces that church for
the 1st time.
And so instead of saying generals and and and colonels and things
like that, He's, you know, verge of fetch the ammunition and they
think, like all of that's funny.
And the biscuits.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So I think you're right.
He just substitutes one hierarchical organisation for another
gives it a bit of colour, makes it much more interesting than it
would have been had it just been space mercenaries.
And then he does go on to investigate things about religion and
how odd it is and the ambiguities that you mentioned.
It does become a thing of his.
There's another deleted bit that talks about religion and that's
when the doctor's wondering, you know, why has he sent this to
CERN?
You know, pretty much what did the church and nuclear physicists
have in common?
And it's actually Nardol, who says both are looking for ways to
measure and honour the invisible?
Oh, that's interesting.
And, you know, that introduces the idea that the translator is
like, okay, well, the church know.
Now our scientific equivalent needs to know.
Yeah, you know, and they respond in the same way.
Like the translators are like, we must remove ourselves from the
data.
And the scientists are like, we must remove ourselves from the
data.
And again, that would have been great if it hadn't been... just a
little bit more spelled out.
Like, it's there, but perhaps we have to dig a bit too deeply for
it in a 45 minute episode.
I think we're also spoilt because Moffatt's scripts are usually so
polished and this one just doesn't doesn't quite have it.
And, you know, as you're saying, it's nearly there.
I think that's really right.
It's kind of one draft away from really nailing it.
The structure's even so brilliant that I always like to pause the
episode roughly halfway to see if there is a cliffhanger.
And the cliffhanger in this is just as the doctor switches on the
reader device and it falls unconscious, having said this may burn
out my brain and it cuts to black.
And that is the exact midpoint of the episode.
It's like, there's, you know, there's your 25 minute cliffhanger
Mr. Levin, you know.
I think another way in which the episode sort of shows that it's
not particularly polished and maybe flaws this in a way that's
greater than the way it fails to sort of capture and hold all of
the different and conflicting ideas is the denimant or the
resolution at the end, where we cut back to the missy execution
sequence.
And in particular, there's that sort of bit of more mythologising
which I'm usually pro, to be perfectly honest, in terms of Moffat
scripts, and, you know, the executioner asks, are you are unarmed
doctors as always, you stand alone, often.
You should be the one who is afraid.
Never.
And there's that comic piece where the executioner runs away.
Have a nice day then.
You write about this in random hooners, Johnny.
I think it actually is a failure in the way that the doctor is
presented, almost as a moral force at the end of the story, and
what's being celebrated here, and my initial assumption, which was
actually wrong when I go back and rewatch it, was that it's not
the number of deaths that he's responsible for, but a number of
times he has cheated death, which I think would have been far more
perhaps, in keeping with the doctor as a figure of hope and life
and renewal, et cetera.
But here it's actually, as you say, in your blog, Johnny, it's
actually really quite nasty because it's basically we'll have a
look at all the number and, you know, perhaps even 1000000s of
people that I've killed and fear me for it.
It is the same trick that he pulls with the Vashta Narada in
silence in the library.
And so it is a thing that Moffatt has done before.
And remember, it was the question that Bill asked of him just a
few episodes ago in thin ice.
How many people have you killed?
And so this, because there's this really funny bit at the
beginning, the fatality index and he gets to be, the character's
called Refando, I think.
Refando.
Yeah, he gets to do the opening monologue at the sort of very
beginning of the episode.
And he says death is an increasing problem.
And I kind of think, well, no everyone just gets one of them.
I don't know I'm not sure that it's increasing.
But there's so many different people and it's really hard to be
able to kill them all.
He's really great.
Super plea.
And then to have him kind of terrified by the doctor, and it is a
really funny moment, isn't it?
Where he looks it up and like his watch is just beeping and
beeping and beeping.
And by the time he runs away, it's trilling.
Like it's beeping faster and faster and faster as all of these
people are killed.
And yes, it does sort of undermine the doctor a bit, you know, in
a pretty serious way, but the show has been going for so long and
he is responsible for a bunch of deaths every episode and that's
what Moffatt wants to look at.
You know, Moffatt wants to look at, what it's like for this person
who every 4 episodes explodes all the bad guys and wins every
single time.
Even that, that 1st uh, Matt Smith thing, the 1st Moffatt episode
where he just confronts the attraction says, I'm the doctor
basically runs.
You know, like making him a terrifying figure is something that I
like, problematizing the doctor is interesting.
And I think when the new series doesn't do that when it tries to
walk away from it.
That's one of the reasons why I think it fails.
You see, I've never liked the doctor waving his CV as a way of
ending the episode.
And I've never liked it from Silence in the Library onwards.
And it props up again and again again.
I think not only does it strike me as as, um, presuming a level of
knowledge about Doctor Who, that that your general audience
perhaps doesn't necessarily have, but in this case, it just seems
particularly nasty because it's positioning the doctor very
clearly as a killer.
Yeah.
And so, I think you're right, Nathan, that there's this undeniable
there's this inescapable truth that actually what he does is kill
a lot of people.
And then say at the end of the 11th hour, he says, you know, I'm
the doctor and actually, I'm responsible for, I'm the guy who's
going to police all you bad guys, so you should be aware of that.
He's one level.
This level, which is, actually, look how many people I've killed.
So that builds upon my initial dislike of the whole gimmick on it
which gets wheeled out over and over again.
And I don't actually think it's very funny.
And I think the joke doesn't really land.
And I think the poor actor playing Rodolfo has to kind of over-reg
it a bit to try and make it work.
And so I think it, I think it's, you know, a cleverer way of
ending that scene might have been.
And I think the clever ending actually is.
What has he done?
He hasn't killed Missy.
He just saved her, right?
He's a champion of life and time to sort of borrow from the 8th
doctor adventures.
And that's the out here. you know, this is not someone that you
can kill easily.
And if you try, you're going to fail.
So you may as well run away rather than he's killed lots of people
and you may well kill you, so run away.
I don't have a problem with him waving the CV.
The, you know, on the rooftop of the hospital in, um, the 11th
hour.
I think is wonderful.
It's like the Christmas invasion where the doctor says it is
defended.
You know, it is the same moment, isn't it?
Like, I'm defending you.
Oh, no, because he's just.
He's just defeated the enemy before he says it.
He's shown something and then he said, you know, I'll do it again
if you.
Oh, no, but doesn't doesn't he do that with the attracti?
He actually calls them back.
Now, now this is why you stay away.
And I think doing that occasionally works really well.
The silence in the library bit.
I love that because I like to imagine that there's all the target
books of eternity.
And, you know, they're able to read them for themselves.
But, you know, the alliance, the Stonehenge, and, you know, he
basically is staring into strike.
Who would be the 1st to take that shot?
And what if you missed?
Like, it's wonderful.
But in this sort of instance, I just sort of think there's another
way out here and it's not positioning the doctor as a killer, but
as someone who just is undefeatable.
Well, in fact, what you have is Nardol turning up with a message
from River Song saying you're not allowed to kill her.
You know, I won't tolerate it.
I'll kick your ass from beyond the grave if you do it.
And that is one of the roles of the companion as well, is to stay
the doctor's hand.
You know.
We saw what the doctor is like.
Even pre-moffit in the runaway bride, you know, where the doctor
flushes all those spiders down the scene, and Donna is kind of
horrified by what he's become without someone with him.
So it's, it's still, it's something that Russell does as well.
And I think it's something that Moffatt really properly leans
into.
I think because it's not resolving the episode, because it's in a
you know, Doctor Who often plays the future for comedy in a way
that it doesn't play the present or the past necessarily.
And so this is an absurd, you know, this is this subplot is is
kind of absurd.
But I think it's a good way to resolve this subplot and to get us
to where we are.
And it's in the context of the season, where at the halfway point
this is episode six.
We already suspect it's missier, I think.
And just that opening scene too, it's absolutely not clear who's
going to kill who.
Like we don't know who is being executed.
And it's only when Missy kneels down that we know that it's her.
Like all of that stuff is sort of pretty fun.
And for a silly throwaway scene like that, the amount of effort
that they've gone to to make it look just incredible, you know
like where are they?
And they've all, we've talked, we've talked about, like in thin
ice and we talked about in smile, the way that they are able
seamlessly, I think, to create these landscapes.
Here it's not quite seamless, but it is still very good, I think.
Yeah, it's a beautiful location.
Yeah.
And the weaker bits of sort of CGI, they don't linger on too
long.
So I think it's quite, it's quite pitiful.
And actually, that fellow's wearing a kind of religious robe.
Yeah, yeah, execution, to add into this.
But I think that there's something about, I'm not mad about the
pacing of that whole subplot.
So I think there's, because we cut backwards and forwards from the
Veritas plot. to this plot and there's a lot going on in the
Veritas plot and there's a lot to it. explain.
There's not so much going on in the execution plot.
And so it feels like we're being drawn back to that and it's
moving more slowly.
In fact, you mentioned Castro Valva.
I thought of Inferno because I thought of constantly flipping back
and forwards between those 2 worlds.
But in Inferno, they're running, they're running more or less at
the same speed where this feels like we have to slow down to go
back to the execution applaud.
It, I mean, that thing is present at the beginning, you know, it's
it's present at the beginning of the episode and at the end of the
episode, but we can't back to it during the simulation, the bit
that's been demarcated during the simulation.
And I think in a way, it tells us that the doctor's real, because
both our doctor, from the beginning and the end of the episode, and
the doctor within the episode has the same flashbacks and
remembers Missy.
That's not a simulation because the monks are simulating earth.
They're not simulating the entire universe.
And so the shadow doctor has the doctor's memory.
And it does comment perhaps not as cleverly as it might in a
normal Moffat script, but it does kind of comment on what just has
gone before, I think.
There tends to be a link between, you know, the framing story and
the flashback.
But I think, you know, like we get to see Michelle Copez.
Give almost anything.
Yeah, look, it's the doctor and the master in a quarry.
What more do you need?
And you know, I think there's possibly a way to still have the
doctor give that speech about how many people he's killed, but
just change the emphasis slightly too.
Yes, I have killed all these people.
Don't you think I have a good reason to save her life?
And, you know, there's been a big deal in the lead up made to made
the fact that these people are very serious about death and there
are rules to follow when there are protocols and they had to get
someone of their own species to do it.
You know, they don't throw the switch.
Someone from our own species does, which in a way gives the doctor
the power to say, no, I do know better than you in this scenario.
And also that being said, Nardol has been expressing doubt as to
whether this is a good idea all the way through.
So for the doctor to then be, you know, really unpleasant with
saying, hey, look up my 1000000s of deaths, it's kind of saying, oh
yeah, this, this, this may not end well. and that tension is
maintained over the next few episodes, especially in the lie of
the land where, again, Michelle Gomez is the best thing in the lie
of land and her scenes there.
You know, the tension in Empress of Mars when she comes to rescue
them and then, of course, the finale, which we'll get to.
I think I agree that it might have been better if the doctor's
point had been more about, I've cheated death so much.
She's cheated death so much.
If I'd done that something, just, you know, something else would
have happened, you know, and she'd still be alive, just let us get
away with this.
I mean, I still just think the point is that the doctor is so much
better at this than Refano. is.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, he's the expert on killing people.
And he just goes, actually, look me up.
And the guy goes, oh, yeah, all right.
You know, and even in that situation, even if Refando wasn't
scared, but instead went, oh, you know about death.
I know about...
Okay, fine.
I'll go have a cup of tea because clearly I'm dealing with an
expert.
Yeah, that would have been, yeah, heroic of the doctor to say
missy, but also funny instead of the usual thing of, I'm the
doctor basically run.
We're building up to I'm the doctor basically one, and Rafando
just goes, oh, I didn't know you were an expert.
Oh okay.
Look, I've got I've got some Dravans over here that I need to like
chuck into an acid pond on Bortis, you know, so I'm just going to
go do that. a busy man.
Death is an increasing problem.
One other thing I will say about missy with this is B&M, the UK
chain of stores have been releasing and re-releasing Doctor 2
action figures and new paintways and what have you.
And they released a set based on this season.
So it's Capaldi in his red velvet coat.
Bill in, I think, one of her outfits from the pilot, and Missy
from this.
And you'll notice in this story, Missy has sort of this blue
eyeshadow.
Yeah, the action figure, they really slap it on there.
She really slaps it on there, to be honest.
She really slaps it on.
But on Michelle Gomez, the actual physical person, it really looks
great.
On this figure, it looks like Homer Simpson's makeup gun.
To the point that I have thought, um, if I've got a spare Yaz
lying around.
I could make a Nicola Tesla's Night of Terror, Yaz out of this
just...
Get around the missing...
Ingrid Pitt in, more is it the D?
He's a bit like that, isn't it?
Yes.
With karate chop action.
Yeah, you really can't have enough Michelle Gomez is an episode
really.
I think that she, um, she's obviously limited in what she can do.
But because she manages to do so much with stillness.
You know, so that a lot of her scenes with the doctor, of her
pleading or of her making wisecracks, you know, minutes before her
own death.
She feels a much bigger part of episode than I think than her
screen time would show.
Like, I think she's a bigger presence always in an episode than
the lines that she delivers.
I think there's one really beautiful moment which kind of
prefigures where she's going as a character, which is where she
says, I thought you'd retired, domestic bliss on derelium, what
happened?
And the doctor just looks at her, and she says, oh, I'm sorry, my
condolences, but she means it, like she's not being arch.
She actually genuinely means it.
And there was another line cut there, which is a good thing it was
cut, which is when he's about to throw the switch.
She says goodbye, sweetie, which would have totally undermined
that. genuine expression.
And, you know, one thing you can say about Moffat is he's really
good at killing his darlings.
Like he'll put every idea on paper and then as soon as it doesn't
work, he'll say, no, get rid of it.
Yeah.
Another indication of the problems with pays comes about in that
simulation storyline when them and Cardinal Angelo walking around
and they're almost about to go into the cage, but one of the monks
comes through the wall and then they repel them somehow and then
Cardinal Angelo says, I've got to stay here and check there's not
a breach.
And I don't know who the actor is, but he's clearly gone to Rada
for wall acting, right?
Because he's standing there and he's checking the wall.
There's really not much he can do.
He's got one hand up, he puts the other hand up, and then the
doctor and co walk away and have a really lengthy scene.
They have a really lengthy piece of dialogue and it's about 4 or 5
minutes before we cut back to Cardinal Angelo.
He's still checking the war.
Right, and it's not...
I don't know how long it takes to check a wall on the Radicum, but
I suspect not that much, and that's when he gets eaten by the
monk.
And it's just another little thing of us going, yeah, this all
just needs tightening up just a little bit, I think.
It's a little bit like Piero as well.
You know, the last translator who sort of runs off and then waits
around for a bit before shooting himself to the point where it's
funny.
Do you know what I mean?
Can you delay committing suicide until we can put the joke in
front of you?
That's right.
I've got a great line.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a bit like ADSF movie.
No, don't jump.
Okay, I've got the camera set up.
You can you can jump now.
I'm filming Before we were recording, Nathan and I were discussing
the great missing text, which is not the veritas, it is, in fact
the series 10 soundtrack.
And totally independently.
Nathan and I have come up with 2 different theories from this
episode as to why it hasn't been released yet.
So Nathan, you go first.
I think Murray's phoning it in this year.
Right.
There's a lot of use of just the doctor's theme in a way where
it's just like, okay, it's time in the episode for the doctor's
theme and he just puts it in.
I did think here there was a pretty good version of the galafray
theme that was very stately and fitted with the atmosphere and
with Capaldi, you know, which it's a shame that we're not going to
be able to hear that without the dialogue in front of it.
But just generally, like sometimes I think I got it a bit in
series 3 as well, where he does tend to use the same music cues
over and over again and there was some good stuff here, but on the
whole, I haven't been wowed by the music this season at all.
What's your theory?
Well, I have to thank Rod for this.
We watched this episode together because he loves Bill, so he's
been rewatching these ones with me.
And um, halfway through that scene where the doctor's waking up
having shocked himself and his vision's coming back and what have
you.
Rod was just like, we have to come back to this bit.
And I paused.
He's like, no, no, not now.
We finish watching the episode.
And then finished watching the episode and we rewound to it.
And we played it through a few more times.
And then he got YouTube up and he looked up a song called Once
Upon a Time by Donna Summer.
And the music that is playing in the background as the doctor
recovers his site bears a startling similarity to the opening bars
of Once Upon a Time by Donna Summer.
Wow.
And it's, um, it's also got an album title from it.
And it's sort of Donna Summer's retelling of Cinderella.
But with a self-aware Cinderella.
And the lyrics from Once upon a Time, start with Once upon a Time
there was a girl who lived in a land of dreams unreal, hiding from
reality, treated like a stranger, living in her fantasies trapped
within their world.
And now Rod had no idea of the whole season 10 soundtrack has been
released thing, but I'm just thinking, okay, if Murray has used
that refrain, without, say, the release permissions or thought
okay, you know, and music copyright is very complicated.
So I'm not suggesting Murray has knowingly done anything wrong.
But I'm just wondering if that might be the reason we haven't had
the soundtrack.
But then I think you can just take that track off.
But it's very interesting that a song that refers to fake worlds
and illusions and becoming aware of them may have been referenced
in this soundtrack.
Oh, I like it.
I reckon Dan Brown could write a story about it.
It's got that sort of conspiracy theory edge to it. like it.
Well, see, some of the chord progressions made me think that maybe
the music from Andor had fallen into some kind of time tunnel and
gone back in time to 2017 for this episode as well.
Who knows?
I hadn't noticed it too much, except I noticed there's sort of a
sort of fewer instruments in the score, it seems to me.
And maybe maybe there were some budgetary pressures as well too.
I don't know.
Well, that's all the time we have for this week.
We'll be back next week to find a way to fill that monk shaped
hole in our hearts in the pyramid at the end of the world.
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 grace and bountiful human empire.
Until next time, computer, end program.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
Good seeing you.
See you later.
That was Flight Through Entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley
Stephen B, Brenda Jones, and Johnny Spandral.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, honour the invisible, was recorded on the 1st of
September 2024 and released on the 20th of October.
Stay tuned for FDE publications, upcoming unauthorised da Vinci
code sequel, in which renowned symbologist Robert Langdon
investigates the BBC archives only to discover with mounting
horror that none of the part threes in the classic series are
canon.
Um, I'm gonna put him out.
Have we, I think we've got an out.
Well, there's just the stuff we need, we wanted to talk about the
soundtrack, why you think it hasn't been released and why I think
it has been.
Okay.
Yeah.
Can I feel the inside?
Just let me, I just need to.
I need to wee and I need to get rid of him. obviously.
I was going to say one more thing about pace.
Okay, cool.
Yeah, we'll do that when Nathan gets back and, you know, fittingly
for something about pace, it won't take very long.
I've got something pretty inconsequential, but like there's that
moment where the monk wants information.
It's just like the village in the prisoner wanting information
from number six.
And he rebels in the same way.
You know, he just, I love that sort of triumph of the individual
through free will.
And yeah, I just sort of thought, oh, that's the prisoner.
We've been watching the 1980 Astro boy.
And there was an episode we watched the other day where this
person has a secret compound and he's stolen the plans for the
robot before Astro Boy and built one.
So it's like enclosed and she's a prisoner and what have you.
And his observation thing is like the seesaw, brilliant
observation in a dome from the prisoner.
And like, you know, Jerry Anderson and and 1960s, um, British
psychedelia were very popular in Japan in the 70s.
That's interesting.
Like, there's a Japanese anime series called Thunderbirds 2086.
It's officially licensed.
It is meant to be set 20 years after Thunderbirds.
It doesn't reference anything from the original Thunderbirds, but
it wasn't officially like, you know, Thunderbirds copyright, Jerry
and Sylvia Anderson, um, is under the title, so...
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, sort of, if you imagine like Robotech, but without the
intricate plotting kind of thing, it's that kind of art style.
That's incredible Yeah, I'm sure all this will be cut.
No, I hope that was funny because that's almost certainly the tag.