Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast with an hour or so to kill on
Christmas Day, and no real idea of what to do with it.
I'm Nathan.
I'm James.
I'm Simon.
And I'm a partially defrosted but very soggy emotional Christmas
pudding for this one.
Well, it's 709 episodes since the doctor regenerated for the 1st
time, and he's going to be doing it again in about 57.5 minutes
from now.
So let's get on with it and discuss twice upon a time.
Now, this is kind of an odd one, because Moffatt is riding with a
particularly weird constraint, which is that really, this is an
episode where nothing can possibly happen, because the original
intention, I think, was for the doctor to regenerate at the end of
the Doctor Falls and for the Moffatt era end there.
But I think, and I could be wrong, I might put an updated version
of this story in the show notes, if I am.
But Chibnell didn't want to start his era with a Christmas
special.
And Moffatt thought that it would be a bad idea for Doctor Who not
to have a Christmas special because the Christmas special slot was
super important for the program.
It was already reserved for it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And so he does an episode, but he does this very, very weird
episode. and I think horse more common wise and no longer
producing Christmas material.
Nor is Lulu, and that's why we actually have a slot because all
the other people we love are no longer here.
Lulu is here It is actually a bit more common wise.
It is a little bit.
So what we have to do is we have to kind of fill this hour.
And I think it's telling that not only does it start with this is
a television program and here's William Hartnell turning into
David Bradley in order to come onto our new television program.
But then at the end of the episode, Hartnell gets put back into
his television program and time freezes so that nothing can
happen.
And so this whole thing happens in this sort of weird frozen time
in a couple of...
There's quite a bit like a family Christmas here, I think.
And so it does seem very thin.
It is very, very clearly Moffat vamping for 60 minutes.
Yes, I actually felt, because I didn't think I didn't dislike it
but I wasn't overly warm to it at the time.
I really, really loved it this time because I think that watching
it now with a distance.
I think what it is is Moffatt's basically done the same thing that
he does in time of the doctor because like time of the doctor.
It's not really about anything and that nothing really
consequential happens apart from the regeneration.
And I think it just becomes this lovely, gentle study of the
character of the doctor.
I completely agree with you, Simon.
I love this story because of that.
It is very thin, not much happens, but it deals with some like
real intense kind of questions about what this character's purpose
is, you know, like he's considering suicide basically at the end
of it.
Like, I'm, you know, like, if you were able to regenerate your
body when you're dying, choosing not to, like, that is basically
contemplating suicide at Christmas. which is, it's a pretty big
kind of thing to deal with.
And, and it's, it's not within a really thoughtful way.
Um, and in some ways, she, like, you know what it reminds me of, in
future hindsight is the end of the 3rd 60th anniversary special is
shooty helping David's doctor start to work through his trauma.
This is kind of like that.
It's him seeing himself at the end of his 1st life. contemplating
not going on and then both deciding, yes, I won't give up.
I find it really emotional.
I think, in fact, the person who has the big character arc is
probably the 1st doctor.
Absolutely.
And that's what's super interesting about it because we get the
1st doctor and I think Bradley does an amazingly good job
actually.
The more I see him, the more I like his version of the 1st
doctor.
I mean, you know, Richard Herndle becomes the 1st doctor at a time
when none of us have really seen the 1st doctor in action.
Just 9 seconds of Darlic Invasion of it.
Yes, actually.
Whereas Bradley really gets him, I think.
He does a really, really terrifically good job.
Bradley also says, you know, like every jobbing actor of the
generation, it's the Colin Baker syndrome.
Oh, I watched from the 1st episode, loved it.
Bill was marvellous.
I think it actually treads the right line between parody and
trying to just do his own version of the 1st doctor's
performance.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's not just an imitation, his not Mike Yarwood or
something doing a sort of comedy imitation of him.
I think he's really good.
But the differences between him and Capaldi's doctrine, I think
the big moment is where the doctor says to the glass woman, earth
is protected and the 1st doctor goes, like, what?
By who?
And then you get all of that stuff about the doctor of war and you
get to see what the doctor becomes like in the future.
And then that lovely moment at the end where he says, oh, so
that's what it means to be a doctor.
Yeah.
Like you're there to try and help and make things better.
And it's actually an understanding of how the program works that
isn't always there, I think, because the 1st doctor isn't what the
doctor eventually becomes.
Until the very end of his era.
Yeah, until the very end of his era.
And it's a gradual thing, isn't it?
Gradually he gets moved to the centre of the program.
At the beginning, he's just the crazy old man who gets them into
scrapes.
And he isn't the doctor yet.
And so Moffat creates an origin story for this doctor in a way, and
there's a series of important moments where there's the doctor of
war moment where it looks like he might actually decide not to go
in that direction because the doctor's sort of terrible and
frightening.
You get Bill hugging him and telling him he's amazing, which I
think is really important there.
And then you get that bit at the end where he witnesses the doctor
saving the German soldier and Archibald, the captain.
And I think all of that is just truly great.
And in a way, this is we take the 1st doctor out and we get the
future of the program to kind of comment on him and then he gets
sent back to become the hero that the doctor becomes, he's his own
origin story.
I think it's really good.
It also reminds me a little bit of the day of the doctor as well
because you get a stand in for the classic series, doctors in the
day of the doctor, in John Hertz, doctor, who is able to come in
and comment on how stupid the 10th and 11th doctors are, how
ridiculous they are.
And we get bits of that, don't we?
We get the sunglasses and the sonic screwdriver, the audio
screwdriver.
The kitchen for a French...
Yeah.
So he gets to sort of comment on that and it looks like he's not
on board.
I like where you're going with this, Nathan.
We also get a culmination of Moffatt's entire era and why this
season is probably my favourite because he talks about it's it's
Dickens and all quiet on the Western Front.
But it is in sentiment, and I feel that Moffat is a very deep man
who has allowed himself to go, and it's gone through terrible
things.
And so did Mark Gatis, and I believe that this is like sort of
paying to the 2nd unofficial story runner, Mark, and a lovely
moment for him, and also a moment about remembrance and
contemplation, and the feelings of loss that Christmas will bring
around you.
So, yes, there's gayety and tinsel and snowflakes.
But, you know, as he says, this is cold to the touch.
And holding that is painful and burns you.
This is a burning story.
And if you really do allow this to just sit and it's quite
subsuming and moving in a way that there aren't many shows like
Doctor Who that can do this.
And it's not just, it's the gravity or density of mass, but it's
also the gravitas of it.
It's very nicely done.
I'm looking back at this, I want to know what you will think at
the end of this, but Stephen Moffat has really come out on a
golden limb of skill, considering how quickly you have to do
things and how we remember Mark wasn't available to help for
Sherlock because of all the tragedies that were going on for him
and then Stephen was having all of those awful problems as well
going on personally and just to be able to pull all of this
together.
You tell me, but David Bradley and our lovely mate, lovely Pete
really are perfect.
And I really would love speaking welcome and wise, a little
Christmas special with just the 2 of them, playing silly buggers
behind the curtains and doing actually just an hour of comedic
routine and maybe some of those old sketches, because they'd be
hilarious.
And they can do the high and the low together.
It gorgeous. really is.
I mean, their reputation is that this episode was written in a
terrible hurry and wasn't planned, et cetera, et cetera, et
cetera.
But I think like so many of the great Doctor Who stories, something
wonderful has come out of that because he's done something that I
think he's always been in the back of his mind and he's always
been thinking about, and it actually is much better crafted than I
think we thought it was back in the day, much better.
Yes, I agree with you, Simon, it's that necessity to get something
written in such a short period of time has kind of led to a bit of
a gem in a way.
You've got a great cast.
It's a small cast.
And they riff off each other.
There's discussions of loss and love and friendship and what it
means to be alive.
I wholeheartedly disagree with the received fan wisdom that this
is a bit crap.
So I have to say that at the time, and I've talked about the
circumstances under which I watched this before and I'm not going
to do it again.
Partly because it is, the doctor spending an hour deciding whether
or not to kill himself at Christmas.
I think that is kind of miserable.
I buy it now.
I like it better now, although I think it is the most undercooked
part of the actual episode.
Maybe we can talk about why.
And also, I think by that point I was getting a bit weary of the
doctor's kind of low-level self-hatred.
And it's critiqued here a little bit by Bill, isn't it?
You know, the doctor never realises that he's the person who goes
around fixing the universe and making everything better, and he's
spending all of this time in self-critique, and he never kind of
ever properly learns it.
And I do like Until his final speech, basically.
Yeah, well, even the final speech.
I mean, I just remember that moment of relief when Jody turned up
and she sees herself in the screen and smiles and says, brilliant.
And you just think, wow, you know, there's some real enthusiasm
about being the doctor back. the end of the era of man pain.
Yes, I think that's what I said at the time.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There is a sort of thread of criticism here, which sees this as a
real kind of betrayal of the character of the 1st doctor, and it
is because of the sexism.
I think it's hard to object to the jolly good smacked bottom line
given that the 1st doctor actually does say that.
Yes, but to someone who is, he's supposed to be his
granddaughter.
Not just some random woman he's barely met.
That's right But, you know, the stuff about Polly cleaning the
TARDIS and all of that sort of thing.
Well, Barbara does say, is it in the web planet or the chase, and
it says, one of these days, doctor, I'm going to have a jolly good
spring cleaner around here.
Yeah.
And in essence, I think that what's happening here is, remember
that the 1st doctor in this episode is plucked out of a place 709
episodes ago and he's put back into the television program at the
end.
He's a character from TV, and in a way, he's standing for the
whole show, a version of the show where the doctor isn't the hero
yet and a version of the show that is, however much we might not
want it to be the case, kind of sexist.
Yeah, pretty problematic in places.
Yeah, yeah.
That's why I don't have a problem with it because the character in
the 60s is an old man who's a bit, you know, he's a bit close
minded, he's a bit sharp, he's a bit difficult with people.
I don't really have a problem with the sexism because it kind of
actually feels right that he would have those antiquated views.
I, at the time, was a little bit grumpy about the portrayal of the
1st doctor because I, what I felt was that they were confusing
deliberately confusing, the actor with the character.
And, you know, we heard stories about, you know, Bill leaving the
driver out on the cold and so on because he's quote unquote, only
the driver and all those sorts of stories that have come mainly
from Anika.
Yes.
But watching it again now.
It's not so much that I forgave that, but when I saw it all in a
different light because as what you're saying, Nathan, a slight
variation in what you're saying, the David Bradley doctor
represents the show as it was how many years ago it was at the
time.
And so they're using that to reflect on the kind of things we
watched on television, or others watched on television, and the
way it treated women and so on.
Now, fortunately, we don't get into any kind of other aspects, like
race issues, for example, and it kind of, it's all just distilled
into the idea of, well, women are around to do the cleaning, and
women are nurses, not men, and all that kind of stuff that's
there.
I would actually go further than that.
I would say that his character possibly stands in for all of
television of that era.
Not just...
Well, no, exactly.
I mean, but basically, remember, we are talking and you know, the
actor playing the because Capaldi and Hartnell are roughly the
same age, aren't they?
Yeah, Kelty is older in this than Hartnell was.
At the end of his run.
At the end of his run?
Yes, because they're the same age when he starts.
Right.
And of course, he's there a bit longer because of, yeah, production
time.
But Hartnell is born in, what, 19078, something like that.
You know, he's lived through 2 world wars, et cetera, et cetera
you know, the shape of a country is very, very different.
And that is kind of now reflected.
You see that reflected in what they're giving it.
But what I like is that I don't think it's too judgy about it.
Like, I think I would have been more upset if they were trying to
judge that character for it because you've got the Mark Gates's
character, to kind of that he can kind of play off. and it's, oh
that's a fair and circular, oh, he has water. you know, that kind
of thing. and we're laughing.
And where, and where, and where, yes, and we're, and we're
laughing at that.
We're laughing at them a little bit, but it's gentle enough that I
don't think it's saying how awful these people were.
Yeah, we're not cancelling because of products because of their
because they're just the products of their era.
Yes, yeah.
Agreed.
And the show was a product of its era.
And they lived through many Christmases of the black and white
minstrels.
Yes.
Right up until the 80s.
They suffered that generation.
Of course, the other thing is that at Christmas, those kinds of
conversations had with your elderly relatives all the time and
having to tell them that they can't say this now and all of that
is probably happening in the homes of the people watching it.
The best, the best part of those interactions is the, is Bill, like
revealing her sexuality to the man that, them being speechless
because they're, these 2 old white men weren't quite old, but 2
old-fashioned white men who, it's wonderful.
What is this heavy industrial strength lesbian is immortal?
So she says that she's had plenty of experience with the uh, with
the fairer sex, which is actually pretty great.
And it's also a testament to how far the show has come as well.
And all of that stuff is entirely.
I think in the project of the episode, which is here, you know, at
the end of a huge era of the show, let's reevaluate, you know
where it's come from and how we started.
Do you reckon Leila actually hang back at the Capitol to hang out
with Rodan?
for sure I think we're redacting.
The interesting thing, though, that I'm always a bit kind of
unsure about how you should do a contemporary character expressing
their sexuality to someone from the past because of the different
moral codes of the era.
I'm not 100% on board with the way it's done here, but at the same
time, I think that the reaction that I see from David Bradley's
doctor and Mark Gates is, is, is more kind of a, these things
aren't talked about.
It's comedy boggle reaction.
It's a comedy boggle reaction.
Exactly.
It's just done for laughs.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, it's not moral disapprobation or anything like that, which is
funny. and it puts that doctor on the back foot.
And but not in a terminal way.
I mean, she is there at the end of the episode telling him how
great he is and giving him that hug.
When they're out on Villengard.
The villain guard.
Someone really needs to let shoot you know he's not pronouncing
that, right?
No, I think everyone else is pronouncing it incorrectly.
Exactly.
Spiriton.
Yeah, exactly.
Metabolist.
Where she asks him, why did you run away, you know, what did you
run to?
And so I always I always looked at that and went, oh, but we just
had that last season. with the whole hype thing, but it's not.
It's not the same conversation.
It's the hybrid is I was running away because I was scared of what
I might become.
And this conversation is, where were you going?
Like, where did you run too?
So, like, I was quite critical of that being so soon after another
reason for leaving Gala.
I kind of missed the point.
No, this is a different conversation.
Yeah, and it's a conversation about the difference between the 1st
doctor and Capaldi's doctor, you know, the gradual transformation
that that 1st doctor undergoes to become the star of the show.
And then the hero of the program, you know, to the point where
he's the person who holds that universe that he inhabits
together.
He's the one who ensures that good is rewarded and stuff.
And, you know, that's kind of an overstatement and people kind of
dislike the idea that the doctor's a superhero, but that's Bean
Moffatt's take on the character because he inherits the show after
30 seasons or something, you know.
Was anyone else thinking back to the literary antecedents?
I was thinking of Burt Facy, you know, fortunate life, not in the
incidents, but just in the tonality, and there's an innocence.
There's a wonderful innocence to David Bradley's doctor, and again
which comes out as grandpa sexism and grandpa or the rest of it.
I'm ignorant and innocence, both, you know, hold hands on that
sudet and line.
But there is just the sweetness, I feel, it's, Dickens is, it
nails it for me.
It's Moffatt looking at what Doctor Who has been all the years
that he loved it and RTD loved it and everybody else and Mr
Chibnall, all loved it in their own ways and for different reasons
and this is, I feel Stephen saying, this is why it always worked
because of the frailty.
So you're talking about the superhero thing.
He's played with those memes, hasn't he?
And with Matt saying, well, I, the very 1st moment with a massive
floating Kenny Everett space cadet eyeball.
Well, I'm the doctor, so basically run.
Yeah, in his best posh boy film.
And I thought, I don't know that I want, but I get why you're
doing that because of how Russell, in the end, had David Tennant's
doctor had become so big, he had to fall.
So I do believe that perhaps, because Stephen Moffatt, although
he's a gentle and kind man, he doesn't mind pointing things out
and there's that, the writer, the writer's incision, the pen has a
sharp point.
So he might actually be playing with, well, Russell, you were
doing this with the doctor, but I'm showing everybody that's only
the surface underneath.
There are just catacombs of frailty.
The TARDIS console were in beautifully reconstruct.
I mean, as we saw in adventure space and time, anyway.
Just things like that, even though I think that the bend at the
beginning is quite rubbish and wrong, but...
Just too tall, I think.
Well, just too tall and just too wrong.
I just think he's wrong.
It's, it's, I think for someone who only has to deliver 2 or 3
lines, you find someone who is much more the spitting image and
you, and you save the performance in editing if you have to. you
know.
But I loved all that and that's the thing that sort of makes makes
you very warm inside my favourite thing it was when we're on
villain guard and we're in the 1st doctor's TARDIS, the way that
the doors open just out onto the set, you know, from inside.
And from the other side, it's all black on the inside.
Yes, yes.
Like looking in, it's just black.
I'm pretty sure they've treated that.
It's not just the shadows they've painted out. the box to make it
as black as possible.
Yeah, yeah.
But I was watching it again last night with some friends.
And the way that the TARDIS studio floor, like, merches into the
area.
It's wonderful.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Sam, scattered across the front, like, where does the box end from
the outside beginning?
It's like Joe leaving the Tartars to step out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's just tremendous.
I love it so much.
And I remember when the show came back thinking, oh, you know
giving it the white wooden door is a stroke of genius because that
was always a kind of weird realism.
Yes, we'll just pretend we're not seeing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But yes, okay.
Didn't Russell originally have it just black inside?
And one of the other producers or something said, wait a minute
what's going on here?
We can't have that.
He said, oh, well, if that's just the way it is, because of course
that's the way it grew up. just the way it is.
And they said, no, no, no, no, no.
And so then they had to go back and fix their early shot in
whatever...
I think.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and to row.
Well, maybe... in World War III. because that was the first...
Oh yes, of course.
And they did that and then they fixed it from then on because this
idea that you don't see inside.
You just seem black. isn't it isn't it lamb shaded somewhere in
the classic era where they say it's the crossing over the real
world interface and everything.
Support between dimensions.
Yes.
And David, we describes it beautifully in an adventure with the
Daleks.
Which is why also you don't get, you know, when you're always
looking out from the classic year console room, virtually always
apart from the early time, you just see black as well.
And it sort of, so it does work.
It's an interstitial...
So it only changes when your perception changes when you walk
through it because Doctor Who.
I think I remember them digging with it.
I prefer that.
I mean, they deal with it in the secondary console room, don't
they, by just having it a black space.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. kind of go sideways.
Yes, they go they go side.
There's an antichamber.
Yes, yes, yes.
Walk into and then outsideways.
So you can never actually see the outside.
That's great was good.
But that set is beautiful, isn't it?
I mean, it's so good that recreation is great.
I noticed the wall, the curator's wall is there, probably
replacing a photographic blow up, something.
But it looks great.
It's wonderful to have the fault locator and all of that there.
It really, really does look really good.
And Moffatt's toyed with that a little bit.
I think we probably had it at the end of series nine, didn't we?
a similar set, but this is kind of the most extensive recreation
cause it's taken from an adventure in space and time.
While we're talking about resurrecting great obelisks of the past
wasn't Carol Anne Ford going to be in this episode?
Wasn't there fan rooms of the thing?
I mean, I know that Capaldi really wanted a scene with her a cameo
with her and he and Stephen were talking about it.
I think there was some chatting back in the day.
Because, I mean, she does come back, doesn't she?
She is briefly in an adventure in space and time.
Dave, your dinner's on the table.
Yeah, yeah.
It's not quite...
No, it's not quite the same thing.
It's not her stepping through the ruins of 22nd century London.
No. and still here.
That is the photo of her in the pilot on Capoldi's desk in his
office.
So we've got her and River.
Yeah, they haven't got around to picking her up, taking her back
to the time where I'm probably killing her off yet in big finish.
The war, Susan.
The war season war season.
It's not really the wars.
Nothing would surprise me.
It's called Susan's War.
But like the war, Susan, was right there.
Maybe, maybe when she eventually...
That could be the war, Susan.
Yeah Were we wondering what had happened to Rusty?
Oh.
No, no.
I can't even remember what Rusty was.
Rusty was the Dalek from Into the Dark.
Oh, that's right.
That was a sequence, which I Having only watched it yesterday.
I've now completely forgotten again.
You know, when you open up the old box of decorations before you
put them on the tree and there's always one or 2 that you'd made
at school for mum more.
I don't care.
Do we still love it?
Do we?
I don't know.
We'll just leave it there.
It's incredibly thin, right?
isn't it?
Because we start off in Antarctica.
We end up in that room, the Chamber of the Dead, which looks like
the lightning temple in Tears of the Kingdom.
It does, doesn't it?
And then we are on Villengard to find out who those people are
like who the testimony is.
We very quickly find that out from Rusty and then we just sort of
fap around for a while.
We go back to, you know, we drop.
That is an unkind.
Well, I mean, it's vamping in a sense.
It is super thin.
Like it is incredibly thin kind of plot wise.
And I think the thing that Richard alluded to, and maybe that the
dialogue starts to refer to at the end, is that there's a frozen
wasteland and 2 battlefield.
You know, there's nowhere comfortable or Christmassy or anything
in it.
All 3 of them are kind of harrowing playing.
Yes, there's no lovely light reflecting from beautiful Christmas
decorations, tree with some snow glistening on the window sill.
That's right, sure.
But then you also have one of one of the most sort of meaningful
moments in sort of early 20th century wartime history, the
Christmas armistices.
And I can forgive it slack of comfort for showing that moment and
that humankinders can overcome differences for that moment in time
is that there's something really beautiful about showing that
moment in a show which is just talked about war and death and and
you know, what it is to be a good person and and and I can forgive
the fact that it's not a comfortable little Christmas special
because it does something meaningful with Christmas.
Yeah.
I was going to ask, is it Christmasy enough?
I was actually going to wonder when I was watching it.
I couldn't remember whether this was the 1st New Year's special.
And then, of course, oh, no, it's the Christmas Armises.
Of course it's Christmas because it's the least, probably the
least Christmassy of any of the Christmas specials.
I think it was great that they did the Christmas armistice, the
kind of thing that we would hear about when we were kids, and I'd
be curious to know whether it's the kind of thing that kids now
find out about because it is that, you know, that extra distance
ago, this remarkable moment in time.
I was thinking of the novels we had to read at school, like Bert
Facey, who died when I was in year age.
I mean, you were a bit younger.
Yeah, unfortunately.
Yeah, he lived till 82.
Yes, I mean, we remember World War I veterans. marching down.
Yeah, and the indifference, actually, of our generation.
Because that was, yes, that was the era when the post in the
aftermath of Vietnam when we didn't appreciate these people in the
same way that we do once again now.
But the interesting thing with the Christmas Armistice, which is
actually terribly upsetting is after they've played their football
and they've tended to their wounded and they've shaken hands and
probably exchanged stuff.
They then wave at each other and go back to their trenches because
tomorrow they're going to start killing each other again, which is
actually probably the most tragic part of the whole thing.
And a presage to the new era.
So it is a thing that breaks out on the Western Front in various
different places that Christmas because it's the 1st Christmas.
No one has experienced.
It's supposed to be over bakers.
Yeah, no one has Well, in fact, Archibald says that.
No one has yet experienced the full horror of 1915 where things
get really very nice.
And the people in command are furious about the Christmas
armistice and give very strict orders that it's not to happen
again.
Right.
And because people make accommodations, do you know what I mean?
They're there for months just sitting there opposite one another
and eventually people have kind of arrangements where, you know
they don't fire on each other when they're exercising or
whatever.
Like just little informal arrangements arise as a way of kind of
just living in those circumstances.
And the thing is that the Christmas armistice is the thing that
the doctor uses to save Archibald.
And there's a wonderful moment.
There's a really crap moment where we hear the singing and
Archibald goes, is that singing?
You can't tell?
Like, but there's a moment when the singing breaks out and you get
a shot of Capoldi looking really shifty because he's engineered
this.
He sent him back.
No, he sent Archibald back a few hours later.
So instead of dying at that moment, his death is interrupted by
the outbreak of the Christmas.
So we just assume that the German soldier's been frozen for that
period.
Who cares?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. right.
And so he says something, you know, if I've got my timing right
you know, he actually...
That's why he volunteered to take Archibald back rather than
letting testimony do it so that he can save him.
And it's saving those 2 men that persuades the 1st doctor that
being the doctor is the right thing to do.
And he's not changing history.
He is a beard.
No, no, no.
In that, like, Joe, he's not making the history of 70s Doctor Who
happen because he's already had his sons, which means that...
Oh, yeah, if he had died.
In terms of, sorry, Archibald having...
Yeah, like he's not altering history that greatly.
Archipur will just die slightly later.
Fortunately, there wasn't a line in invasion of the dinosaurs
where the brigadier talks about his his grandfather who died in
the father who died in the trenches the day before Christmas
19th.
So part 2 of this is boom.
Oh, no, it is just beautifully done.
I think I think it's lovely and I think not having a too
Christmassy one.
I think you get the spirit of Christmas without the visuals of
Christmas.
I feel it's the truth of Christmas, as we were saying earlier, is
what it's like.
But it's also that Doctor Who comes every year at Christmas.
Doctor Who is like Santa.
And in the curse of Fatal Death, Emma says that the doctor is like
Santa Claus.
And we now have the doctor arriving.
Every Christmas, I think, you know, since 2005, this is 2017.
Even when there hasn't been a proper season.
Yeah, there's always been a Christmas special.
And we've had the doctor equated to Santa.
I think I was going to ask you, Simon.
My favourite 2 Christmas specials, I would say, are a Christmas
Carol, which I think is absolutely brilliant.
And last Christmas, I think.
And they're both incredibly Christmassy. so much so that last
Christmas has Santa in it.
But Santa and the doctor are equated in all sorts of ways.
Even Moffatt's 1st regular episode doesn't Moffatt have the doctor
go back in time and give Rose a red bicycle when she's 6 for
Christmas.
So he's Santa.
Just it's a throwaway line of dialogue in the empty child, I
think.
And so the doctor is always Santa.
And so here is the doctor saving Archibald on Christmas Day.
The brigadier's uncle allegedly.
Well, I think maybe it's complicated because there's some spinoff
material.
Estate was getting mountain thingy about it or something at the
time.
He was going to be the grandfather, you know.
Mark Godas talked about how tearing up in the screw reading the
script, realising this, I'm actually playing the grandfather of
the brig, but anyway.
Well, I mean, he is.
There's nothing in dialogue that suggests he is, and it's the
obvious thing to decide.
There is some spinoff material that suggests that there was all
sorts of adultery going on and blah, blah, blah, and that he's
both his uncle and his father and all sorts of things that we
don't really want to know and that don't care.
And don't count.
Exactly.
More important.
The other thing I noticed watching it this time round is just
after the sequence where, you know, Archibald to say, blah, blah
blah, and we're obviously now moving to the final part of the
episode, which we all know is going to be regeneration, et cetera
generation of both of them, and it's great that we see the heart
on one too.
But, I actually got this real case of Andrew Zani feel.
And I know there isn't some Davison Moffatt's favourite classic
series, doctor. an ear and so on.
And I got this wonderful.
I mean, 1st for a start, you get this wonderful in the music, this
wonderful echo of Spiegel and Spiegel, uh, which is, it's Arbo pet
piece.
Did you hear that as well?
Richard?
Yes, it's very it's quite clearly quoting it.
And that actually means mirror in the mirror.
And it actually works really well because it's when the doctor, the
2 doctors are sort of talking to each other.
You know, they're the 2 doctors in the mirrors.
As a Louis Borker's line that a putt pert is also a fan of Borkers
in the dream of the man who was dreaming the dreamt man woke.
It's the beginning of the circular ruins.
There's a whole lot of lovely Argentine, Spanish, you know, magic
realism, in pets, work, and the subtleties of it.
But it's almost the mirror thing, like there's a sort of certain
through the looking glass nature of when you're comparing the 1st
doctor with the contemporary doctor in terms of and all the things
we've talked about before in terms of how the program, how life
how the world has changed.
People have television, don't you?
For example. have changed during that time.
But it reminds me then of caves because when you've got Clara
appearing and Najol appearing and so on and all that.
There's this whole don't die doctor thing.
Uh, you know, you mustn't die part of like the K's regeneration
sequence and it just really, really reminded me of that.
I don't know whether I'm stretching it.
No, not at all.
No, I did not realise that until you just said it.
Yeah, it is, isn't it?
3D. Yeah, into 3D, not floating heads version.
You know, interactive equivalent of those scenes.
And the great thing is that we've established because of testimony
even though, yes, this is not, in some ways, this is not really
Bill.
And the episode actually deals with this.
It actually is Bill because it's the complete distillation of all
her memories, all her everything, just recreated in this body.
So what's the difference between that?
And Bill a 2nd before she died.
And it actually kind of deals with that, like, was there actually
a difference between these 2 things?
And the doctor is able to accept her as that?
And then and then decide that he's going to accept.
Finally, stop putting off the inevitable.
Do you think that the Fajarians, Missy and Testimony, like, take
little tickets so that they know what order to process the people
on the point of death?
I think like Santa Claus being able to deliver all those presents
in a single ego.
Sometimes magic can just happen.
It is great, isn't it?
And I do think that there's a sort of generosity in kind of fixing
the doctor's memory about Clara. kind of nice.
It's like that kind of, yeah, that was a stupid idea.
It's like, I mean, we were made to, we were forced to wait for a
while before Catherine Tate gets her memories back.
Yes of the doctor.
And again, that was a bad idea.
It's wonderful hearing Capoldi say Clara again, which is just
awesome.
It does make me sad, though, that like I was sad when Matt Smith
left, because I think both of them are brilliant doctors who both
deserved more episodes, and my understanding is that they would
have done more episodes, had more episodes, that we suffer.
So basically each of them should have had a 4th season.
But also, particularly Capaldi, should have had another
companion.
Like, it's just so sad when you've, even, you know, Davison's only
around for 3 years.
Lots of doctors are running around for 3 years, but you've got
more people, more floating heads around the regenerating doctor.
Do you know what I mean?
And you sort of think, God, it's just really the people that are
just here. a bit sparse, isn't it?
Yeah.
There's that, but then you have the beauty of, and we've talked
about this in earlier episodes this season.
The beauty of the cast in this season that we've just had with
Capoldi, Pearl Mackey, Matt Lucas, and Cherl Gomez is one of the
strongest casts this show has ever had.
And it's really lovely getting Matt Lucas turned up at the end.
He counts.
Yeah, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, like Michelle Gomez should, frankly, turn.
And the invisible hair thing.
Like, you know, he has all of those silly lines about, like
changing his body or he was blue for a while.
Like, just sort of strange lines about his physicality all the way
through the season and now here, finally, it's canon that he has
hair, but it's invisible, which I just think is great.
And we also talked about the cuddle thing, which he did before
which is an improvised line by Matt Lucas originally, and now it
makes it into the script, which is really cool.
Does anyone else actually know where Nardle came from?
I've watched this all this thing at least twice.
No idea.
He was the husbands of River Song.
Yes, but he just appeared.
Yes, yeah.
He just appears.
It is...
It's like Mel.
He's the Mel we we had all the time.
It's just in the wrong place of the wrong time and gets, you know
eaten by a giant red robot.
And that's reconstituted because we want him back in the show.
Exactly.
Like, yeah.
I kind of love that you don't see that.
He's just back.
He was like, oh, I put you back together.
It would be a crime if you did see it.
Yeah, it makes him a strange sort of marginal figure, doesn't it?
A jolly cyber thing.
Yeah, yeah.
So he only really properly becomes a companion during the course
of series 10 and then here, he's definitely a companion because
he's there in the farewell sequence.
What about once he gets into the TARDIS, though?
I think it's great.
Okay.
And I know that I don't know whether this is still regarded.
Now as man explaining, but I remember back at the time, there was
some critique of the speeches being mansplaining.
I think that was always a joke.
Like, I do think that the mansplaining thing was always a joke.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, because I remember the original thing, the original thing of
it.
I think I think it was clearly a joke.
And then people might have taken it more seriously.
Well, including people in this room, because you were all in the
pub with us, you know, 8 years ago and however, it was just saying
pity about all the man's planning at the end.
Very serious look on your face.
I think that that speech is bad and kind of boring.
Well, we've seen it all before.
And I think part of the problem is it's the end of Zion inversion
where we learn that Capoli can just take half an episode and just
talk, right?
until we get him to do it again.
Yeah, it's leaning into that.
It's saying, yes, he can do this.
This is how we're going to end this doctor.
Yes, my take on that.
Is it?
I don't think it is mansplating.
I think it can be seen as man explaining.
I think the objects of it are a little problematic when you're
getting your 1st female doctor to have an old white man basically
saying, hey, doctor, I'm going to explain to how to be me.
The optics of that are not great.
The same as the optics of having having the TARDIS blow up and
throw her out.
I know they do that at the end of every regeneration up until this
point.
So why is it different?
Why is that the problem?
And it does not throw her out.
There was crap in the media following that about women drivers.
But I mean, the 1st thing Capoldi says is to Clara, do you know
how to drive this?
Yeah, no, no.
No, do you know how to fly distinct?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They should have been aware of the way that could be taken.
Yeah, maybe doing something different.
I don't think we need to appease those who just need to be
outraged about stuff.
And so I'm sure people can see it as mansplaining and I'm not
saying that they're idiots, but let's just say that I think that
it's a stretch, a real stretch.
You're really trying hard to be offended by this is what I think
by grandpa.
Yes, Capaldi is a late middle-aged white-haired man.
I'm right.
Yes, yes, exactly.
But he is, who's only basically the same age as 3 of us in this
room, vaguely at the time of filming this.
Oh, God, I am the doctor.
But he does not present as an old man in any other way.
No, no, right?
He's just physically like that.
Secondly, the speech is wrapping up where we started with the
Capaldi era, which is am I a good man?
And what it's saying is, following his entire run, you know, having
lived through his entire run and also having lived through this
particular episode, he's finally, finally accepted the fact that
yes, he is a good man.
And, you know, in the same way that you have all those wonderful
minds like, you know, I don't want to go or I'll always remember
when the doctor was me.
Each of those modern era doctors, particularly gets, and Eccleston
as well, you know, it was really great and you know what?
So was I. They all get a chance to say, farewell me.
I was brilliant.
It wasn't this fun.
Good luck to whoever I'm about to be.
And even Jody, I mean, what does Jody say at the end of hers?
She says, right then, doctor, whoever I'm going to be, tag your
it.
Exactly.
The other thing about this speech is, and whilst I do agree that
sometimes these speeches, I do find rather tiresome, I think the
best example is in the Zydon inversion, 100%, those kind of
speeches.
But in the 21st century, the doctor every now and again does that
thing where he or she talks about the meaning of life, the
universe and everything, in the way that Capaldi is going on now.
The other thing why I think this episode, this sequence works on
its own terms, is because it wraps up the whole season that we've
just had, where Missy is being trying to be rehabilitated in the
vault.
And the moral of that story is that you're not inherently good or
inherently evil, good and evil, that's a choice you make, and
Missy is capable of make, and was finally capable of making that
choice.
So that's also what Capaldi is basically talking about here is, you
know, the doctor, who am I?
I am this wonderful person and I'm making sure that my next
iteration of this myself remembers all that rather than going
through another regenerative cycle, saying, am I a good person, et
cetera.
I think for it to be mansplaining, it needs to be patronising, and
I don't think it's patronising.
That's usually also the other the other thing about it.
I think that's a really nice way of looking at it.
It's him.
And again, I hadn't, I'm having the tot experience.
I hadn't considered that either, that it's not him.
And I didn't think it was mainsplaining either.
There was just talk of it at the time that he is telling himself
how to be himself because he spent so much of this life
questioning whether he's a good person.
I think, though, that the real role of it is, you know, Moffatt
saying who the doctor is, and I think by this point in the script
he's run out of new ways of doing that.
And I also, yeah, I can also see Capoli kind of desperately trying
to inject interest into the script because it's not that
interesting, a speech because it is just, he says a lot of things
and there's no real through line.
It's not really about anything.
That moment where Capoldi, you know, tries to tell the line about
pairs.
You know, he's suddenly excited about having to deliver the line
about pears and then he falls over and tries to say things.
It's kind of like, we've had all of this.
The whole episode's been about this.
We don't need a final speech.
Let's just do the regeneration.
And I think that's one of the things I struggle with. like, I
don't necessarily have a problem with the speech.
I think the speech is just goes on a little too long.
And he's throwing himself drunkenly around the set because.
Well, he's trying to hold it all back.
Yeah.
Yeah, like, and I get that in the story sense, but it's just, like
just so that don't ever tell anybody your name except for
children.
Yeah.
Yeah, obviously, yes.
But basically, I've kind of, by the time I've gotten to this point
in 21st century Doctor Who, I'm kind of accepting that there's
going to be...
That's what we have to have.
And if you imagine, I mean, one of the things that I think I think
I've mentioned before is I'm kind of sick of the thing of, you
know, the doctor spending, you know, all this time regenerating
and like, you know, we kind of got it with David Tennant's doctor
we kind of got it here again as well.
It's just that thing of, oh, for God's sake, just have them fall
from a radio telescope and die.
If they didn't keep holding it in, it wouldn't blow the Tartars up
when they finally let go.
That's the problem, exactly.
I just got the line from a, from a silly fabulous.
Oh, for God's sake, just die.
There is something from that.
But look, I accepting all of that, accepting the limitations that
or at least the constraints.
I think it's perfectly fun and wraps up the year and what the year
has been doing.
And when the new doctor arrives, there's 2 things that I really
really like, and the 1st one is that we see Capoldi's ring, fall
from her.
Lovely, lovely.
And we did see it.
Did we see it with David Bradley regenerating?
We didn't, but it does happen, doesn't it?
The ring falls off.
The ring falls off in power of the Dala. doesn't it?
The ring falls off in power.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, no, well, the ring has already fallen off and Ben gives it
back to him to say if you were the real man in this ring, which is
a completely idiotic line, obviously. leaving that to one side.
But, and Capaldi's ring, like, it was just about the 1st thing
that we saw of that doctor in that special introducing...
Because it had 12th doctor. real wedding ring, which his wife
wasn't going to allow him to take off.
Well, I think that he didn't want to have to take it on and off
and have to remember whether it was on or off.
There's that and also, you know, it's my wedding ring. don't want
to take that.
That's right.
But they made, they made a... a thing to cover... to make it kind
of look like Hardmal's ring.
Yes, exactly.
But I mean, it was the 1st thing we saw because before we heard
the announcement, we actually saw Capoldi's hand.
We saw that shot of his hand, remember?
And it's like, that was the moment where we all went, oh, goodness
me, it is Kabaldi.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
That's the moment we knew.
And he had the wedding ring on.
And so that's associated with him.
It's like Matt Smith dropping the bow tie at the very end.
And it does hard back to the 1st doctor's regeneration as well.
I thought that was really great.
It's a great way to summarising this is an entirely different
facility.
It's really good.
And then the other one, which I thought was good, was that we
don't see the doctor's face until she sees it.
Oh yeah.
So she sees it first.
We're not allowed to see it. see her eyes and her hair and stuff
but we only see her face once she's seen it 1st and gets to react
to it.
And it's great.
It's sort of summarising it, you know, finally the doctors were, oh
brilliant, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
I finally got the girl gig after all this time.
It's just really lovely.
And I think she plays those moments beautifully.
Now, can I ask?
Because I believe this happened at the end of the ITD era.
Does Chipnell come in and direct this last sequence and is a
different music, et cetera?
Or is it still still still Murray?
It's still Murray, isn't it?
But he clearly decides what happens.
Like, it's Chibnall's decision to have her fallout of the TARDIS
and to see her heading sort of, there's a city in the background.
Sheffield.
Yeah, she's heading towards Sheffield, I guess.
Oh, God.
Plummeting towards Sheffield, I believe is the expression.
Well, that's all the time we have for this Christmas.
We'll be back on New Year's Day to say goodbye to Peter Capoldi
and Stephen Moffat and au revoir to flight through entirety in the
Capoldi Moffat retrospective.
In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts
and you can keep up with us on our website, flythroughentirety.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, sleep in heavenly peace.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
The moment has been prepared for.
Good then.
That was Flight 3 Entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley, Simon Moore
James Selwood, and Richard Stone, theme arrangement by Cameron
Lamb.
This episode, plummeting towards Sheffield, was recorded on the
24th of November 2024 and released on Christmas Day.
In just a couple of days, we'll be talking about the 2024
Christmas special, Joy to the World on the 2nd great and bountiful
Human Empire, which is available wherever good podcasts can be
found.
We'll see you then, and of course, in the meantime, Merry
Christmas.
I think that's probably it If you care what the media's saying, you
should fight something better to do.
No, no, I didn't care what the media was saying at the time.
I was like, oh, maybe, maybe...
Yeah, because I could have done something different.
I think that's what, what, it's, that's what, yeah, because shaded
that to me is that you did the same thing again.
It's Matt Smith.
Well, you have Matt Smith hanging from the TARDIS, you know, like
we are just doing that. like stop, stop regenerating.
And you know, they learned their lesson.
She doesn't regenerate at the end.
No, no, she doesn't regenerate inside the table.
They're outside the TARDIS. nevertheless, nevertheless.
And it just changes whilst...
And her clothes change as well, which is, I think, a worse scene
than anything you might think is wrong with this.
I think that's the greatest sin.
No, no, but like the reason is that we don't have David wearing
that horrible outfit for any time.
Yes, I know, but that's, that's, I think, made for bad reasons and
I don't think that's.
That's the reason. good reason, I think.
Well, that's production fees.
Look, no, like, I mean, one of the reasons that...
David Tennant...
Yes, I know.
Okay, so it happened once before, but that was...
Actually, claims that the reason he did that was so that people
wouldn't mock him being in drag.
But I mean, that's ridiculous. to be in that outfit.
I know, I know, but I think it's just a horrible outfit.
He just didn't want David.
No, exactly.
But it's...
And he didn't have time to do a wardrobe scene or anything like
that.
Like all of that stuff. like all of that.
They have time to do a whole lot of other crap. they do a
wardrobe.
Or maybe they didn't have to, they didn't have the costume.
They may not have had the costume.
Because it's a different production company.
Yeah, yeah.
The only thing that they...
It doesn't so tenant's not actually there when they film the...
Oh, no, no, no.
Oh, they do it all again.
No, it was done like a year later.
Yeah, yeah, they're nowhere near.
Like, it's not like Matt and David going in the thing and then
out.
It's completely different.
That's, no wonder the whole thing was a sh then back.
I just bleep that.
No, no, no.
Yeah, yeah, that's what Styer's robot is for.
That's a bleeping noise.
I mean, surely you could just have him go into the police box at
the end and then come out and children in need wearing his
outfit.
No, no, you don't.
In a Poirot outfit.
Anyway, anyway, it was Neil Patrick Harris did it because for
fashion reasons.
Fine.