Bernard Cribbins in Vinyl

And there we are. There's our theme music, which means it's time for another episode of Flight Through Entirety. I'm Brendan. I'm Nathan. And I'm Richard. everything to you. Yes, well, we don't know what time you're listening. And we have actually fully laid out the table this time. There will be a photo on the website, but we have all the season 2 action figures currently released, which consist of a William Hartnell and Dalek, and a Dalek, and a Dalek Supreme, and another Dalek Supreme, and a source of commander Dalek, and a mechanoid. Standing in for Carol Anne Ford. And would you like to tell us about the one of our 1st baked good for this season of podcasts? Oh, yes, so we have the walnut and chocolate question mark pod cake made by a friend of the podcast, Robert. We haven't actually solicited any cakes from everyone, but I I think if anyone wants to email us a cake. For, you know, a subsequent recording, that would be good. Egan, bacon, oblong, cake flavoured thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be perfect. From the food machine. So thanks very much to Robert for that. Maybe that's what we should call the recipe section of the website the food machine food machine, actually. That's not a bad idea. Yeah, so by the time you listen to this, that is what that segment of the website is going to be called, it's going to be called the food machine. So I don't know if people go to the website very much, but we do have recipes for every cake and every biscuit and every baked good ever. Well, not ever. But anyone that we've actually sort of consumed prior to, you know babbling on about Doctor Who in the podcast. Yeah, so I think at the moment there we've got the recipes for the macaroons, which we had with the pilot podcast. And also the recipe for the pecan slice we had with season one. The recipe for this chocolate walnut question mark pod cake. I think I got that name right. It's probably all be up. to mention at this point that we are all dressed as John Pertwee from the Green Death at this very present time in pinnies and little headscarves with rolling pins in our hands. And a big bucket. That's right. Vera Similitude is number one on this podcast. We did we did really underplay the cake, I think, in the last 2 episodes. I'm glad that we're giving this. not going to do that again. Thank you, Robert. you, Robert. And especially, it's very difficult for you, listener, to appreciate this. But when you look at the chocolate icing topping. That's not icing. That's actually chocolate gnash. Solid, solid chocolate gnash. It's a robo man's helmet of chocolate. It's like eating gold. It was marvellous. That's that's one cake out of the way, but we will have another baked good in a later podcast for this season. The ever expanding podcast. And now for a little bit of housekeeping. You may have noticed last season we had 145 minute podcast and won one. 5 hour podcast. So I've taken the decision that this podcast will be broken up into 3 episodes. So we'll discuss 3 stories, 3 stories, and 3 stories along with the Jenny Laird award for most puzzling creative choice, and our recommendations for other extended areas to look into at the end. So we start today with the story that was meant to start the series and it was a story that just wouldn't die. It went through so many different drafts before it finally got on the air, and that is Planet of Giants by Louis Marx. Do we get a noise? Oh, yeah, there it is. Planet of Giants was originally meant to be the very 1st Doctor Who story. Wasn't it the Doctor Who story that Newman had in mind when he broached the series? Exactly, because Newman's concept was backwards in time, forwards in time, and sideways in time, and different states of matter. And his 1st thought with different states of matter was changing size. So you were going to get the 1st episode of our earthly child much the same as we saw it with 2 teachers investigating their mysterious student, at which point the TARDIS would actually shrink them down and they'd have to make their way through cliffs laboratory. Remember, Cliff? That's a really terrible idea. Yes it is. It's an interesting point maybe at this point to Terese where Newman was coming from and maybe why this show had so much electricity, static electricity, and mercury and alchemy behind it. Thank you, David Whittaker, was because Newman had come from a northern, um, and very Eastern. Mysticism, i.e. the United States and Canadian. And he'd grown up on, whereas the Brits had grown up on, say Dandair and British weeklies and boys own, that kind of thing. He'd grown up with the likes of Hugo Goernsbeck and the pulp fiction, the wonder stories, that the thrilling adventures, which came out every week and there were myriads of them. It was the golden age of science fiction was not actually novel and certainly not film. It was these pulp magazines. So many ideas came from them when we get to the web planet. We'll see exactly where that idea comes from. It isn't just a boy getting bitten on the in the outback, so to speak. It's, it's, um, it's these tropes and one of them. And you see them also in 50s sci-fi films, but they all come from the same route to these pulp fiction. The thing of having the hero shrunk down is absolutely a trope in so many of those stories along the scantily clad maidens being hazard, hazarded in vacuums. The thing the thing I find really fascinating about Planet of Giants as well because as you say, it's because it's influenced from so many other places. Yeah. But a big influence for me seems to be, especially considering Sidney Newman's involvement, is that it feels like a videotape era episode of the Avengers, like the main plot with this whole idea of... Mission highly improbable. But this whole idea of technology affording this pesticide, which will make a man very rich, but kill people, but that's okay because it'll make the man very rich, and that's very much the kind of thing that was in the early seasons of the Avengers. And there was, there was a whole, It's interesting that we think about green politics as being, you know, a relatively new thing or you know, when when they were talking about shows like the Green Death in the 70s, they thought they were groundbreaking, but there's a book if either of you read it called the Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. I much heard of it. I've not read it. Okay. It was at school. I remember reading it in the school library. was one of the things that was there, you know, so if it was in our school library would have been quite a few of them. It was pretty groundbreaking. And the way that um, Robert, um, Early. The population bomb, which came out in 68. But yeah, after this one, but it's another one of those groundbreaking dystopian pieces of work by a science writer that says, you know, this is happening and you should be really worried and pretty much talking about the nitrates and pesticides, which ended up feeding the world after Second World War. They allowed the agrarian expansion. They allowed what we saw to expansion of Europe and the building up of Europe after World War II. But these chemicals as Carson Wrights in the book side spring, also may affect the food chain and the whole biological network of Earth. So what's happening here is that they arrive and they come across all these sort of dead insects and things and it's because, is it Forrester? Yes, the ironically named Forrester, yes. has invented like DN 6 or something or DN. DN6, not D84. D84 comes later. But yeah, DN6. which is going to sort of wipe insects out of the food chain and kill the bees and all of that sort of thing and prevent. But not only that is dangerous to larger animals if ingested directly, say offgrains because something that's glossed over in the televised version, but is present in the reconstructive version, which you can find on the DVD, a very good reconstruction of the excised material from Ian Levine. And I'll explain more about that excise material in a moment. The cat is exposed to DN6 and dies. Oh, I didn't know that. That's terrible. And that's when Forrester's assistant, Smithers, realises, hold on. Smithers. Yes. It's the 1st cat death joke in Doctor Who and Simpsons reference. My God, it really is twisty turning. It is, isn't it? Very prescient. But yeah, so there is that sort of direct danger. But I suppose, um, But those of you who don't realise planet of Giants, which is a three-part story, was made as a four-part story and um, Verity Lambert, the producer, and I think also um, the head of serials, wasn't happy with the pace of the four-part and edited episodes 3 and 4 down to one episode. So for instance, that's something we lose a bit of. It's still referred to. But I think they thought that with Barbara being sick, the point had already been made that larger organisms can be affected. Not that she's a larger organism. the larger organism at the time but something I find very interesting. Now that we know what some of the original concepts of the show were about, which we discussed in previous episodes, this one interestingly ties in a lot to that concept, which was vetoed by Sidney Newman, of the doctor being a radical anti-scientific anti progress character. As you say, Richard, people were concerned that these new pesticides would kill when in fact they allowed more crops to grow and more people to have food. And so this story could have gone very much in another direction because here we see that original concept of the doctor would have been going, oh, yes, well, we must destroy this pesticide because we can't have pesticides on foods, whereas the doctor in this case goes, well, pesticides are a very good idea, but not if they kill people. You know, so he's not... But he's fair enough. He's not standing in the way of progress for the sake of standing the way of progress. He's standing in the way of this form of progress because it's like, well, you're thinking on the right lines, but what you're doing is going, it's throwing the baby out with the bathwater you're going to cause more harm than good, and that's why he stands up against it. A bit like Keith of Marinus is sort of a defining trait for his doctor to be able to step up and go, I appreciate what you're trying to do, but this is not the way to do it. In fact, this is a, this is another kind of step towards him becoming the hero that he actually ends up being because, um, and we have to talk about Barbara in this as well. Because, you know, they stay and try and put a stop to it despite the fact that they're miniaturised, despite the fact there's very little that they can actually do. And so they do something heroic. They not just scampering back to the TARDS to readjust their heights or anything like that. And to say, Barbara, you know, they know that Barbara is sick and dying, but she still says, no, we have to do something. And can I just say that I absolutely adore Barbara in this? So, I mean, I adore her. Yeah, she goes without saying, but but here, like she touches the grain and then is pretty quickly told by Ian that that's a bad idea and it's horribly poisonous. And she's sort of embarrassed about having done it. Do you know what I mean? And she's starting to feel ill effects and things. But partly because she doesn't really want to admit it to herself but also just because she's embarrassed, but, you know, about being so silly. She just doesn't bring it up. And she doesn't let her own sort of sickness and things distract from their task of putting a stop to the pesticide. And I just think it's wonderfully human and I think it's a really you know, it's, it's that instinct that prevents you from going to the doctor when something is clearly wrong. You know, she doesn't quite want to admit it, she doesn't want to look silly in front of Ian. I think it's just terribly sweet and terribly real and she's, she's just tremendous in it. It's, it's a very heroic trope and especially in the 1960s, a very masculine trope to go. I am injured, I am hurt, but I am going to cover the wound and not let anyone see, so it doesn't get in the way of our mission. Because Barbara gets ill, there's that simultaneous realisation that, oh, Barbara's going to die if we don't do it, everyone's going to die, if we don't do something, and I think that is Barbara's conflict in this story of, you know, I need I need to survive, but at the same time, how can I survive if nobody else survives? Everyone else needs to survive and then I can survive because then we'll know what to do. Um, But I also rather love that the solution is to blow up a can of aerosol into the villain's face. There's a certain borrowers aspect to that, like a mischievousness. Yeah, it's like, oh, we're tiny, so we can't stop the factory. Well, we don't need to stop the factory. You don't need to stop the manufacturer. We need to get the police here and stop them at. It really, really benefits enormously from the editing of episodes 3 and four. Like it would have been very boring, I think, towards the end. And given that we know some of the scenes that were kind, you know like I'm really grateful not to have to sit through those scenes to be quite honest. So the whole thing's sort of out of the way in 3 episodes. And it doesn't drag. doesn't get tiresome. And can we just talk about the sets for a 2nd as well? Well, in the props? Spectacular. Well, it's very much that world's fair, uh, symbolism, you know super big, supersized me, big props. It's very much, again, the graphic, we would now call them graphic novels, but those pulp fiction comics. Batman in the 50s was always climbing over enormous phones and all those props. Everybody else, everyone, everyone in a cape has done it. It's just, again, one of those tropes that comes from, comes from America with a, you know, the big worldfare thing. The big one was, I think, 39. That was the Futurama show. wasn't it? Oh, look, possibly. I'm actually thinking back to the things I've seen over the books of those images. But yeah, building supersized things for our supersized super big world that's coming up. So this is a really interesting take on the borrowers go to dystopia. The borrowers end up on, in the, in the next chapter of Thomas Moore where that we're all held, breaks loose. Arietti meets Flyspray. Yeah, okay. It's true. And it is a pretty dark thing for them to have done. And I think really kind of surprising and forward thinking. And it looks really fresh to me today. terribly overlooked and terribly underrated, I think. It is really good. It doesn't have any ribbed for her pleasure, rubber faced aliens. No. We can sometimes do without them. Oh, every so long. Scandalous words. Oh, yes, it doesn't have rubber face. I think it does have a giant ant and a giant. The 1st of many this year. Yes. Yes, indeed. Answer a thing this year, aren't they? And something that we've commented on and off as we watch series one in the use of Susan. Susan is very proactive in this story as well. It's Susan who realises before Ian that they've been shrunk down and the implications about and how it happened. And with Barbara sick in the last episode, Susan sort of becomes the female lead and she's coming up with ideas and jumping in where Barbara, you know, there's none of these sort of, oh, we're shrunk. We never going to get out of here as we might have expected in the reign of terror. Doesn't she do that in episode one? Doesn't she have a big giant screaming panic about ants or something? Well, she just in case you think we shouldn't get rid of her next story. The thing is she does see the ant, but she doesn't freak out. She just kind of goes... The only time she freaks out is when the TARVIS doors open, which is kind of understandable. It's like if you're in a plane and the door opens, you'd freak out a little. Yeah, I suppose, but it's still, you know, like, can we get rid of her soon? The damage has already been done to her character. I just wanted to say that she is a bit better served by this story than she was in the reign of terror or the Aztecs. Yeah. She's pretty good in this. I mean, the only problem in this is she is dressed like she's 12. They were doing that to her a lot and she complained about it. She was meant to have Avengers Girls rig and actually hidden flack about as an Avengers girl was supposed to. You know, just get much chance to do that, does she? Yeah, I mean, even if they just let her wear her own casual gear occasionally because that that iconic stripe jumper she has that she wears in the next story was hers and the jeans were hers. And they kind of veto that, no, you have to dress younger. It's like, well, no, that's how a teenage girl would dress at home. Yeah, if she, you know, well-to-do and had the clothes. What had they? Yeah, exactly. But if you wanted to be a... not from roundeer. Yeah. If you wanted to be a teenager, let her dress like a teenager, not like Alice in Wonderland. It's the whole thing of this show is straining against the norms and you know, pulling against the leash and trying to do and doing really extraordinarily new things. And even with a woman producer who was only, what, 26 at the time when she was doing this. It still is really protracted in its treatment of the 1st companion and really who should have been, not just a cypher to the doctor, but the, um, Oh, it's get a bit Yungi in here, the anima of the doctor. An animus will come up later in the season, won't it? Because there is a bit of young in Whittaker's script editing. She really is that should be the female foil to Billy. And I think that Jackie took that role on very quickly because A she's 10, 13 years older than Caroline Ford at the time when they started and was until the end of her run. Still 13? Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's strange, relative dimensions, weren't they relative? But she... Yeah, it's kind of a shame that they couldn't just allow a bit more fluidity between the female leads. It had to be so rigid, is really a very 50s way of writing, and you would have thought that it had been allowed that kind of progression that they had in the rest of the show, but sadly not it doesn't seem to have been that way. I do wonder if they were allowed, well, there's a language, if they were allowed to have certain degrees of progression. So, for instance, they could have a progressive script with a female villain in Carla in the Keys of Mariners, and that, okay yes, you can have the aliens that are little tanks, but then you get to the point of having 2 strong female leads and someone upstairs puts their foot down. And if Verity Lambert and David Whitaker just had to say, okay well, look, we've got 90% of what we wanted. And we have to film tomorrow. So should we, you know, should we fight for Susan now or should we just get on and film it the best way we can? Because there would have been so much resistance to almost everything they were doing. You have to wonder if occasionally they didn't just go, look, we've got most of what we want. Yeah, I have to think though. I mean, the clear counterixample to that, we're going to discover in a little while is that they do eventually get it right. And in just a very few episodes from now, they managed to introduce a young female character who contrasts with Barbara, but actually works on her own terms in a way that Susan really never does, who isn't the sort of panicky idiot that we've learned to... But this is where I see the cleaver having come down or Madame Guillotine having swiped down. And no wonder she was panicking and whinging about being mauled and having a rat's act going at her. Because that to me is the end of one possibility and the finite progression, even though so far it's had no end of the type of a companion who is in a neat little box and will play a particular kind of young female and always tick these sorts of roles and play this thing and I'm looking at. Joe Grant, and I'm looking at no matter how far, even to the point okay, the only one who may be further on broke that mould was Leila. But look how hard she had to try and how quickly she was pushed back a lot. They did with her. How interesting that what they did with her, about to see, you know, kind of similar way. It's no, no, back in your box. Don't get too uppity or we'll marry off to someone. We get to that next story. The one thing I did like if I can give you super nerdy here, if you'll allow only a moment of indulgence, if we can start talk about the TARDIS as a thingy. Yes. Love the time as a thingy. The time and relative dimension space. When I 1st saw this, which was back in the 80s on some bootleg copy, all graining and hissy at Stephen Roberts Theatre, thank you Doctor Who Club of Australia for putting that on. My 1st take was, oh, the relative dimensions mean the TARDIS will materialise in context of scale. So we could have an adventure with microbes. And then, of course, we get a couple of stories onto adventures in entomology. And of course, that the wasps and the termites and the butterflies a human skull, because the TARDIS is adapted to suit the environment. That's clever. So I didn't really see this. I know the Tartar stores open and everything, but did you ever have that take on it as well? I have... You know what? I've always thought the TARDIS can shrink or grow to any size. It's relative. It's relative. And, you know, you get things happening in the books like the doctor materialising around planets and stuff. Exactly. But it never happens. Where? when? What? I'm sure that happens in an 8th doctor novel. It's definitely, you know, everything happens in 8th doctor's. I think he's pregnant. Not that he remembers. But it never occurred to me to relate that back to Planet of Giants, and that's a brilliant explanation. The doctor gets something out of the TARDIS to shrink the Leela and Dr. Clones invisible. Invisible Enemy, which... The TARDS photocopier. Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no. He doesn't climb them. shrinks them. No, it isn't. It's the tallest photocopier. Isn't that the same thing? Oh, no, no. Professor Marius clones them. And then they shrink the clones, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. And wrap up. Actually, and wrapper Welsh is about to do it one year on in Fantastic Voyage and my bubber witch suit. Yes. That's for later. Now, just before we move on, the thing I do want to say about Planet of Giants, because you've got this commentary of an ecological thriller and concerns about the use of pesticides in foods and the effect on people. And then you have This whole other weird, strange subplot with Burton Hilda, the postmistress and her policeman husband. I think they're married. I'm not quite sure. I thought they were just gone together. But it's just so very strange that, um, well, I suppose they have to be introduced very early on in the story in a sort of Chekhov's gun effect, but would you like to go on more about Chekhov's gun? Oh, well, Chekhov's gun, for those of you who don't know, is the concept by the playwright Anton Chekhov. He made a comment about writing drama for stage in that if you have a gun which someone fires at the end of the play to kill someone, you have to have had the gun featured earlier on in the play, say as a decoration on the wall. It's kind of the other way around, isn't it? If you have someone preparing a gun in act one, you have to have a goal. Hitchcock trope as well, this movie. Yeah. But that's the concept. You know, it at the very least has to be seen prominently. And that's the thing with Bert and Hilda because Bert bursts in at the end. They have to be seen towards the beginning as being somehow involved in the plot. But the strange thing is, and sort of the wonderful thing, again giving a woman a prominent role in this 60s science fiction series is it's actually Hilda, who is more suspicious of what's going on at the farmhouse and keeps having to say to Bert. you should go up there. Oh no, well, I have to go investigate Mr. Malaprop's thingy over here. No, you should go up there. They're straight and I don't like that, Mr. Forrester, you know. And they're these 2 wonderful comedy characters in the middle of this story of animals being killed by pesticide. It's it's a wonderful Doctor Who-ish, but also, and I know I keep coming back to this, especially with this story. It's a very Avengers kind of juxtaposition of the macabre and the deadly and the humourous village life. And I think Hilda is a bit of an unsung hero in this because Bert makes his arrest, but never sort of says, oh, I'm glad I listened to Hilda. Because if it weren't for Hilda. You know, he would have never come along and made the arrest. of us would be here. None of us have been here now. Barbara would have died and the show would have died with her. The 1st George and Mildred of Doctor. And it's funny you should say that because we have, you know coming up soon. A whole decade of poachers and tramps and blokes and cottages putting glowing modular, 1960s desk lights into their shared box and having their wives get cross about it or, you know, just disappearing up a upper fundament of spookiness. saying, oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So again, it's another, it's another 1st for Doctor Who. Lots of great things established this year that will just go on being great. Ah, and that means, yes, it's time to move on from Planet of Giants and talk about the Dalek invasion of Earth instead. And what was the end of the 1st production block of Doctor Who? The end of the era and when Doctor Who becomes a show that knows what it's about. The 1st time that we're actually got a show that responds to audience, interest and audience demands. This is the show that had to happen and apparently, according to the show notes, the reason We've got another season of it and the reason it's probably still here today. So whether you like them or not. We've got a lot to thank the blokes in the dustbins for. This is, I mean, this is the hugest thing ever, isn't it? It is the biggest thing ever. It's actually, you know, just as Butler's holiday camps were starting to get bored because Marvella and the Spanish coast was opening up and the British tourists were actually starting to get a little bit of spending money, you know, the war, you know, the war was something that was in the past and rationing it ended a few years ago. We've actually got the Daleks doing their own thing coming to London and taking holiday snaps and all for selfies with each other. And tagging the little buggers. They even go around and tell you... vetoed. Yes, yes, but that lettering on, um, on Lancey's, um, Lions in Trafalgar Square. Yes. And of course, they've got their own groupies who wear that as a t shirt and start putting on, you know, years before Bjork, start putting all gaga. They're putting on really groovy, safe hair dry things and just saying that, you know, we want to be part of this set. That's how big the Daleks really work. Yeah, I suppose the Robermen are like they're fans. They're imitating the Daleks. And just as annoying as fanboys really are, as you'll know by this episode of the podcast. Suddenly, too, things just look amazing, don't they? I mean, we've had location scale, aren't they? We've had location footage before. Like we had the doctor ambling sort of uninterestingly along a country lane in Paris, you know, late last year. Like a daguerreotype. We felt like the 1st moment of cinema when you record a chain pulling in or a very simple little one point perspective static camera shop. It's as if Doctor Who has been reflecting the beginning of cinema in its own little tiny TV world and it'll do that further on in the season as well. But this, you know, suddenly, for the very 1st time, our regular cast on location. Am I wrong about that? No, you're quite right. And episode one, I don't think episode 2 has any location footage. I think we have to wait. And the location footage is a bit sparing, but episode one is just massive, you know, all of them are running around. It looks really suddenly very spectacular, especially Jacqueline Hill running around all the collapsed buildings and she just does that very subtle thing with her face that that's when she sort of starts to figure out there's something wrong and they're not in 1963. Definitely. By this stage, they'd realise that it's Billy and Jackie running the narrative. Ian is there as the action pivot points and the one that will actually push the plot along. We've seen previously when he's not in an episode, nothing happens. So he's definitely there as the as the answer to the antagonism of the plot. He's the one that proacts, but Billy and Jackie are the cerebral members of the cast and the ones that reactive. And again, this is the story where you can really see. Susan will get to Susan. What does she have to do? What does she have to say? It's really just there as a series of scenes of telling her that her time has come. I don't think she has much to say in this at all. Yeah, David says to Barbara, like, can you cook? And she says, yes. Oh, good, we need good cooks. And says, what can you do? I eat. And that's where things start to get a bit irritating, I think because it does sort of work. And it is a massive spectacle and obviously all that iconic footage of, you know, Westminster Bridge and Trafalda Square and all of that sort of thing is really spectacular. But there is that thing, that terry nation thing where he thinks he's being sort of terrifically gone and grim and macho. And so he just creates these incredibly tiresome characters. And everyone's very jaded and very, um, you know, uh, just sort of unpleasant. You've got Jenny, who's just not a very nice character and and not Dortmund. Everyone's called Dortmund in... So the other guy, you know, like he's just really sort of grim, and then there is something sort of bizarrely racist about the, uh about the plague that kills everyone except for Europeans, which is... It's the 1st time we have plagues. They do, it does. And the E-word. First time we get the E word. Yeah, extermination. Ah, but you know, singer rather than plural, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, experiment age. The plague that kills everyone except for white middle class people is something that... What is that? It's so imperial, but we've kept India. Oh, India is still there. No, that's referred to. Yeah, well, yeah, the Daleks say they're masters of India. So there must be people there for them to be masters. They seem to have got rid of every other coloured race. There's a lot. He does reuse that for survivors. That's the premise of survivors. He's a giant plague that kills everyone except for middle class. White people. This os a lot. And it's funny you're talking about Barbara running through those deconstructed ruins. It owes a lot, I think, to other British SF, because, you know it's Terry Nation, so he's not going to let any good idea go, even if it's somebody else's, especially if it's somebody else's. So there's a lot of John Wyndham in this. You get that as well. Oh, that just... British SF was severely dystopian after the war. It was the darkest writing. When is Day La Trifford's? 50s. Is it? Yes, yeah. Okay. So is Midwitch cuckoos. Is it about again? And we've also seen a bit of quite a bit of equator mess in this story too, aren't we? So, you know, we've seen things that we've already seen on BBC. The day of the Triffords thing is exactly it, though. And it is that sort of, you know, the world has gone to hell. And there is something about the day of the trip. You get meteorites coming in 6 months before the story or whenever it was. Well, that's how the plague comes, is it, by meteorites? And so... I really hate Day of the Tricians, because it is entertaining, but it annoys the hell out of me in that the Triffords are the author's agents. So you get this sort of picture of, of, we can edit all this out. Do you get this? because the Daleks are really just the author's agent. They're nothing. other than to be a beautiful, bluscious piece of pop art, like a Margaret, even doing a bathing beauty shop coming out of the game. Ursula, I just did it a year before and doctor. Dalek doing it in this. Does Rod mention that? No, no, no. It's not that homeowned. unless you're another girl. Support your back to your dustbin. Before we get to your comment, I can throw in what Rod did say about Darlic Invasion of Earth. I think you might like it. It's quite good, but I prefer the film version, better sets, more action, and it had burden cribbons. Eileen Way. I like Bernard Cribbons in vinyl. I don't think anybody. He did record on vinyl. We'll clean this up. Has anyone ever said that before? Well, he was he was quite handsome in his youth. I think he was too. a bit of a matinee idol. So the thing about the thing about this and day of the truth is they're both about examining how society works under stress and about different ways of constituting society. So when Susan and Barbara turn up at the underground based thing they're given jobs to do, you know, no one can be kind of useless. That's why Susan's thing is confronting. You know, she admits to being of no sort of practical value. Within the narrative. Well, as anyone who's watched the show up to now would realise. And so it's about different ways of constituting society. And the thing about Day of the Triffords is, there are lots of different ways of constituting society that come into conflict. And he sets these up. There are, you know, different groups who operate under different rules and laws. And Wyndham just sends the Triffords in to kill any group that he disapproves of. So, you know, there's those Christians who sort of set things up and they're all sort of marrying and stuff. And then later we come back and the trippards have killed them all. So he uses them as a sort of authorial bully property to express his own political opinions, I think. That's a very good point because thinking about that in terms of Dalek Invasion of Earth. You've got the character Ashton, the black marketeer at the labour cap, who comes in, and when we see him, he sells someone some food demands more money from them, gives them less food because they can't give him enough money, and is immediately killed by the slither. The slither. The wicked liver. We will get to talk about this as well, but this is the 1st of Terry's. Is it the 1st? No, I guess there are sort of stupid monsters in... Well, he did have the sort of inflatable octopus in the Daleks. The thing that comes up out of the spot, and then we need... A sporadic pseudopology. But he will, you know, in complete defiance of any knowledge of what the production team is actually able to put on the screen. He will say, let's have a big scary monster. And I mean, the slither really is like truly, truly dismal, isn't it? It's filmed, though. I like the idea of it being part, um, green bugeye thing and part vegetable and part two. It's actually kind of crinoid. and look how good that was. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's also that the suit lacks the sort of texture that the crinoid would later have because the crinoid and the axle, I suppose, had a sort of base level, which was then covered in tendril. So if the tendrils move, you can see the skin beneath it, whereas the slither just has the skin and actor wobbling inside it. And was it Nick Evans? I think was the actor inside it going? This is the point. And again, we've got a, because he's considered, you know, reliable but this is another Richard Martin directed story and not a Duggee Canfield directed story. That's true. I think you would have seen something kind of different. But he would have kept it off the screen as much as possible perhaps. I know you guys aren't the biggest fans of Richard Martin's work but I think he sort of falls between the stalls of, you know, he's he is no Dougie Canfield, but his film work is very, very good. Yeah, he's got no time to do it. When he's got time to do it. And his studio work is It is technically proficient. You don't tend to say. Are you sure you want to say that so soon? We're going to discuss the chase with its many cameras in shot and studio noise in the background. I will say it for this story. You know, you don't tend to have as many cameras running into things. You don't. I am just talking about this story for now. And also, whenever he's got a crowd scene, he makes sure there is something happening in the background, somebody happening in the midground and something happening in the foreground. And a zombie running into the camera. And a zombie running into the camera. I am just talking about this story. He does wear a fantastic... He does though, doesn't he? It's got a full points with that. And is he still around? Yeah, yeah. So there you go. So we've got to love him. He's lovely. really nice. I think that's the problem. He's obviously a genuine gentleman of the old school. Hence the flirtatious neck where he's also, for that reason, I think, just too sweet and people took advantage of it. It's like, this is why Dougie Canfield stuff is so tight and regimented because he cracked a whip. And if you bug it up, that was it. You were off the set. you were, no, that's it. You don't work with me ever again. And he worked with very, it was a very tight military crew. We should mutter. hello, darling, hello, lovely. It's lovely to see you. So, of course, they're all standing around having a smoke. And if that door bangs or if that prop falls over. Well, it's videotape you can't edit it. Yeah, but who got better results? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's what you got to watch. interesting point, isn't it? Because there's different textural effects that you get. The cast may actually be giving more or be sharing more between each other, the regular cost in Martin's stories. There's some lovely close shots between them that you may not get say. Because they're so comfortable with research. Exactly. Exactly. We haven't discussed World War II. Oh, there's a lot to say about. Oh, look, the problem is Susan. Should we finish with season, though? I think we should do. Yeah, so we not too World War II. I mean, this is, again, you know, the famous science fiction trope of what if the Nazis had won. Yes. And so you get them, you know, goose stepping, they don't really have legs, but they're sort of rolling into Trafalda Square and doing a... They are doing a... Yeah, with their plunges and the black marketeer thing and those the collaborator women who make clothes for the for the prison camp. Do you know what I mean? And there's clearly food rationing and things going on. And so Richard, in when we talked about the dialects, you talked about them as a sort of analogue of communism. And we've lost that with this one. This is very much the blitz reformed. This is really, and there were other novels at the time talking about this, what's going to happen, what would have happened if Robert Harrison was. Yeah, it lost. You know, 19441, that was so close to happening. It was really only the Yanks stepping in. Which is funny when you see American actors in this in this series. They're always seen in that kind of duality of being rescuing heroes, but also if they're a little bit clotsy, aren't they? And you see that the Americans portrayed in this. Um, we've got the wonderful Bernard Kay, of course, is Tyler being the I think the real centre of the narrative of this story outside of the TARDIS crew. Dortmund is just kind of there to be Dortmund and utterly futile thing. This is a show that looks and should be wonderful. We've got great ratings, but he's actually a bit pants when it comes down to plotting and can we just get to what the hell were they doing here in the 1st place? You've, okay, you've got space technology. Yes, you're finally flying, we could shoot, this is the original Daleks just moved on a little bit, but you're going to hollow out the magnetic core of a planet and put a motor in it and drive it around the solar system very, very slowly. No, no, um, Philip Sanders says that it's he's driving it around the galaxy to pick up girls. Do you think they saw mom desk and thought, I've got a bit jealous. Well, no, it's all right now because Russell T. Navy's explained everything in the stolen earth. Oh, they were creating a big thing out of 26 planets in the lost mood of Pooh. to do a thing to destroy everything. Yeah. It takes more sex than this time. Well, okay, that was a sound of a result who said that perhaps these Daleks are actually genuinely insane. That's it from the past, by the way. The doctor says Renny says it's a 1000000 years. Yeah, yeah, that was... Well, I think I think the fan sort of retcorn of it is that they left Scaro long before the Daleks we see on Scaro, which is why they're also more advanced because they had to come up with a way to leave their ship. But I mean, there is a sense in which the why they're there is the McGuffin. I mean, the reason that they're there is because they were hugely successful last time and the reason they're in London is because you know, that's where all these viewers are and it makes it really sort of present and exciting. And it really, that really works in episodes one and three, I keep thinking it's three. You know, that is the season, the episodes, the story's biggest success. I guess that's the point, isn't it? Daleks are not driven by logic, but by really human, um, dark, uh you know, such as racial impulses such as, you know, racial racial purity. Mars doesn't have a magnetosphere. They could have just used that. But it makes so much easier. Well, the no population. They're driven by the needs of the narrative, I think. The Daleks are there to give the audience what they want and we'll see them, you know, featuring really prominently for the next couple of years just because just out of narrative necessity, you know. Yeah. I wonder if we could retcon, um, Darlic Convasion of Earth enlighten the latest story, the Pirate Planet. In the chase. They have dematerialisation rematerialization technology. So could they have been hollowing out Earth to rematerialize around the other planets in the solar system because I believe Earth is the largest terrestrial planet in the solar system. The larger sort of non-gas giant. Yes, exactly. I know Venus is around the same size. I'm not sure if Venus is larger than Earth or not, but it could then materialise around Mercury. Mars, um, Pluto and asteroids at the very least. And mine, mine resources from it. Well, I think that just ternation isn't remotely interested in anything like that and it really is just as silly as possible. And, you know, let's have some minds and all that sort of thing, I guess. And, you know, um, so it really is just sort of a pulp B grade science fiction reason for them to be there. But that's not what we're interested in. We are interested in the Dalek emerging from the Thames and Daleks you know, going down Westminster Bridge and things. It's about Britain finding its identity in that period of the 60s because the Daleks do represent the Nazis, but they kind of also represent the Yanks. Don't forget it, it's George Orler. We talked about Britain being airship one. And there was a whole lot of... Yeah, that is it. Thank you. Looking at how Britain had just become a base for the Yanks and their military tech and nuclear tech and that this was something that the Brits should be very angry about. Not that dissimilar from Australia and Pine Gap and the bases were allowing to be built in the north. So they're seen as they're seen as the very neat cookie cutter for everything that's not us and everything that is of us that we would wish not to be or that we haven't properly acknowledged, so we'll put it in a tin suit. They're the perfect villain, actually. It's it's our hate and our shadow and, you know, neatly... Compact... In a symbol, we can hate. Exactly. Perfect. And we and we can hate it. But be righteous in our hatred. Exactly. Because they've denied the humanity and they do all the naughty things that we also do, but we like to pretend that we also capable of good. Dialects don't appear to be capable of any good at all, except by haphazard. And don't wish to be... don't wish to be. Got no design. No, which is precisely why Billy leaves his granddaughter right in the middle of their mess after they bugged him off. We need to come to that, don't we? because it really bothers me because we've mentioned in the 1st podcast that the day before Doctor Who's 1st episode went out. Both C.S. Lewis and all this Huxley passed away, so that's correct isn't it? Do you remember in the end of Liner Witch and the Wardrobe and before the saga moved on, the only member of the original cast of children who went through the wardrobe that were left behind was Susan? That's not quite right. That's not quite right. The problem from Susan comes from the last battle, which is the very last of the series. Um, and uh, the last battle sees all of the children and probably their parents and things go to an idealised version of Narnia that represents heaven because they've all died in a horrific train accident, which is exactly how you want your child heroes of, you know, like a long running series to uh, to end up. And it's one of the reasons, like the last battle, I've grown to really dislike Lewis over the years. I think he's a sort of pompous conservative. It's really old Anglican theology, isn't it? quite horrible from really steadfast. Aslan is really appalling. Not very progressive New Testament, is he? He's just not very much like Jesus. He's like a horrible. He's a lot of Old Testament in Asland's Isaacs as well, yeah. He's a bully. And so and so at the end, they all go to heaven, but the only person who has been to Narnia who doesn't go is Susan. The reason that she doesn't go to heaven is that she now says that the Narnia stuff was stuff that they did as kids, but they that it never really happened. And I think Lucy says that she's more interested in nylons and lipsticks and boys. Thank you. And that's my memory of it as well. It's hazy because I hadn't read them since school. But my memory of Sarah Lewis is Susan is denied because she's achieved womanhood. Yeah, she's discovered her sexuality. And I'm sorry, we don't have room for you anymore. Isn't that exactly what we're seeing here? And when I say the problem with Susan, it's not just Carol Anne's performance that I think was sadly neglected, there are many levels on which this character could have really opened up something in the way that, not just British science fiction writing, but very much so, was so much more profound and deep than anything we got on TV with a few sparse choices here and there. So much more involved with character and real consternation and real conflict. And we get little hints of that, but we brought back to toe the line in each story, stories like the sensory rights, we've seen previously where we get her being able to step out of her mould and actually start being the progressive force in the narrative and certain the thing that's pulling it along. No, no, back in back in the darkest. There we have it. Lewis's voice is still very loud in this. So Sandra brings the problem of Susan, terminology to bear on Susan, and says that if you've got a character like Susan, who is the doctor's granddaughter, he can never really properly go adventuring because he's always being pulled back, buys a protective. Yeah, that's right. And so, so he can't, and this is something that they fix when Vicky comes along, as we'll see quite soon. He's fond of Vicki, but he's not related to her and doesn't have to protect her in quite the same way, and so Vicki's allowed to do things that Susan isn't allowed to do. Within such a rigid formulaic construct of what a little girl character... No, I disagree with you completely about Vicky I'm going to be constantly contradicting you. I think she's absolutely superb. And one of the... She's a love... I think she's a very good actress and possibly, you know, whatever how you're the one. You see it, but you want to see it. But she was, of course, she was able to do more because the character itself was so rigidly structured and finite and it was there with which you could do so much. Susan could have been anything and because of that, nobody knew what to do with her other than bring her back in line. Well, but I mean, in practice, what you have is, you know, as I've said before, a panicky idiot who's really not very pleasant to watch, as opposed to someone who's really having fun, who the doctor is really fond of. I think Vicki is them getting it right. They don't jettison the sort of star child thing. She's still from the future. She's still unearthly. But she's enjoying herself rather than being terrified by everything. And she's just much more fun to watch. She still leaves, you know, the relationships with Ian and Barbara intact. Do you know what I mean? They still get to be a bit parental. But she's just not tiresome in a way that Susan was. And I don't know why Susan couldn't have been like that from the outset. They didn't have that pocketed. They didn't have that structure in place. The thing with Vicki is that she's written out of the future. She's the most contemporary of all the characters. She's absolutely Mersey beat, ready, steady, go. kid on a Saturday night, um, jukebox jury, absolutely of the time. She's so, it's 1964. She's the most dated character to watch when you're looking at it now. Dodo? We haven't got this. I don't know her time in her place. The interesting thing I find, Richard, were you talking about the fact that Susan and Vicky fit in the same in the same structure, in the same mould, but that structure was actually very broad and Susan only was only utilised in a little bit of that structure and Vicky was allowed to expand a bit more. I think also there's there's an aspect of semiotics in there. Because spoiler alert, Susan and Vicky leave in much the same way. They meet a young man, they'd rather take him with him and go off with him. I skipped over the word beside because one goes by choice. one goes by choice. Susan is the doctor's granddaughter. He gives her away. Vicki is autonomous. She is not, she is the granddaughter figure, but she is not the granddaughter. She chooses to leave, and the doctor actually seems more heartbroken about that than he does about Susan going a lot. Because with Susan, it's his choice. But I think possibly that's why Susan was never used to the full capacity of that mould because the 1st thing she was was a dutiful granddaughter. And writers had in their mind what a dutiful granddaughter was in 1963, long white socks and a bit whingy. Yeah. But I actually think that I actually think that they made a mistake and what they thought she needed to be was someone to get into peril and someone to take on that sort of traditional panicky female role. Exactly, because she was the granddaughter. Yeah, I think so, but Barbara is the one that's always getting nicked him. Yeah, maybe it's because she's the granddaughter or maybe it's just a horrible, horrible mistake because, um, you know, I think I think that once she starts panicking in episode two, she, that's really her done, you know, she's she's useless. She's hamstrungen by that, I think. And I don't know whether the granddaughter, whether she had to be like that because she was the granddaughter or because, uh, you know, that's how they thought the juvenile female lead should behave. But clearly they discover it's a mistake and they do get the chance to rectify it with Vicky. So her introduction has preceded her. So now... Ah, yes, time for the rescue, Doctor Who's 1st? Oh, I was going to say Doctor Who's 1st 2 parts, sorry. Doctor's 1st two-part story that works. I think I'll say. The rescue. So. Well, I just think this is terrific, isn't it? I mean it is really, really tremendous. We're going to quote Sandra for again. But we've left London in ruins and we've left David Campbell and Susan to fix it and this next story is set in the future after that and there is an English spaceship with the Union Jack on the side of it. So clearly it has been rebuilt. and there's hope for the future. And inside the spaceship is Vicky. And as we've said before. Oh, as we've just been saying, she's, um, she's a terrific character and this, this story is really structured around introducing her. So we had an episode to introduce Susan. We get a two-part story to introduce uh, Vicky, and the, and the two-part story, it's very definitely designed to, to give Maureen a chance to do a whole bunch of things. So she gets to be sort of scared and desperate. She gets to be kind of plucky. She gets to be a bit funny. She gets to be won over by the doctor. And it's so clear right from the get go that, um, that Billy really likes her. And the relationship between them is is so warm. It's really, it's, it's really tremendous. But it is a big acting tour de force. It is, it is something that's just designed to give the companion something to do. And I think at this stage, it's still important to the program that the regulars all have a reason to be there and are all very clearly defined. So Ian and Barbara and now Vicky are all kind of well-defined characters, and that's something that we're going to lose very quickly next year in season 3 where the characters are all kind of just brought in and dumped and no one really thinks about them very carefully at all or, you know, their accents change halfway through their run or whatever. Whereas, whereas here, you know, David Whittaker's really, you know, uh, taking the opportunity to, am I right? Yeah, David Whitaker, taking the opportunity to really... his 1st go now that he's not grouped editor. Spooner has come in. Yeah, it started the tradition, which carried on through to really the 80s of the outgoing script editor writing the 1st script for the new script editor. Yeah. Although Terrence Dix, I think, said that he made up that tradition in order to believe... There's a lot of that. Yeah, but he invented it. He happened to be in the room. Including saying all you need is an original idea. It doesn't have to be yours. So I think he covers... Because that's exactly what Doctor Who is still doing well and why. Even though, you know, we've got other friends who listen to this who have said, hi, Greg Miller, have said that they feel that this is the weakest story of the season because it's so simplistic, I would add, I'm into caps. I believe it works because it does what the BBC very much did at the time was, it's not just a piece of science fiction, there are other layers as well. And what the BBC did terrifically was historical fiction and cod Shakespeare. This is the tempest. And interestingly, you've got Prospero and Caliban as the same character. And the spoiler alert, but you're not... And that is... I mean, that's tremendous as well. And again, Sandafar, the idea that the big reveal is that the guy in a rubber suit is actually playing a guy in a rubber suit rather than a monster. isn't it? Yeah. And so, you know, that's a that's a sort of great gag. And it's simple, you know, like Greg might complain that it's too simple, but, you know, the given that the show in long stories will complicate things by trudging through a swamp for 3 episodes or having us go back to prison for no reason, you know, just to pad the whole thing out. I think this is really refreshing. And I think that as we discovered this millennium, that a story roughly sort of 45 minutes long actually quite works as a doctor story because it cuts out all of the sort of being captured and escaping that we are. I like a 3 parter. I like a bit of exposition just for character development in the middle. It's the reason that Thunderbirds is such a great piece of geriaterson and everything else isn't because it's half the length. I was actually thinking about the story in terms of the new series so I'm glad you brought that up. Something I sort of realised last year, I was watching a new episode of Doctor Who, and I thought, in terms of structure, and stakes. This is very similar to the Bells of St. John. Because you've got the doctor arriving and discovering, um, okay in the rescue, an orphan in Bells of St. John, a girl who's lost her mother, and instead of going on and living her own dream, she's looking after some children, looking after an old man, the great intelligence was to take Clara's personhood and make her a husk. Bennett wants Vicky to be his mouthpiece. And sort of the confrontation at the end with Billy just sort of sitting there saying, I was waiting for you. And then suddenly this click moment when... My favourite scene and the reason this really works for me, that in the Hall of Judgement, they call it... Not only is it a beautiful set, we should just say the lighting in this is superb, but when you get 2 really good actors together and someone who can be a fall for Billy and the person Ray Barrett, who is just perfect. and also did a lot of honeyloops. It's it's just such a gorgeous thing, isn't it? There's a great moment and it's the kind of thing that Matt Smith does so well as well. Like after Billy's confronted Bennett and got the conversion. There's this slight flicker on Billy's face on the doctor's face of, and I'm in a room with one exit and someone who's killed 50 people. I'm going to throw a chair. Very much so. But yeah, this lovely gilded spanner that I happened to have alien spanner happened to have find it. I wonder how much of Matt's performance, even though he watched Paddy, um, is based on Billio, isn't that? Matt is just such a cognisant and natural actor that he manages to get it right. It's really good So I will just say out there because we have we have a lot more people listening to us than we personally know which is lovely. If you found us off the back of a new series and you haven't seen much Hartnell, if you like Matt Smith's doctrine, especially the Bells of St. John, you'll really love the rescue. Very good point, yeah. And I think I'll just go on to say Vicky, from the moment she steps in, is just such a wonderful character for the audience because her 1st scene is going, oh, we're going to be rescued. Oh, how wonderful, and she just gets shot down, like, nowhere, not you, a stupid girl, and you kind of go, no, actually, I really like you. You're in a desperate situation and instead of crying that, 0 my god, there's rats and there's dirty water. Sorry, that the comparison to Susan is unavoidable. Instead of that, you had this character who Is, well, she is downtrodden because she's constantly being told. No, it's not like this, but she never loses her spirit and her hope in the situation. made the structure in the mould for her written for her in exactly the right way. They had looked at the faults and errors of the previous season and said, no, we're not going to give a young female companion to be the same because we've recognised our mistakes. I think that's a kind of a tragedy. When you look at what they should have done with Susan. We can just see here again what they could have got right. Yeah, they didn't need to have someone like Susan as the juvenile league female. She could have met someone. Good. But I think as Susan, she would have been great had she been allowed, had they actually allowed the narrative, just like Wyndham's chocky, if you like. It would have gone to his interesting fantasy levels and supernatural writing, but Robert Aikman's another terrific British writer we haven't mentioned yet, who turns out to be Mark Gaitis and Sheer Smith's. Reish Smith. Reish Smith's favourite writers, and Neil Gaiman cites him as well. He's practically out of print, but he's up there with Poe and again, with Wyndham, there's really great left of field, frog brain, back of the head, scary stuff, writing this whole take you out of your safety zone. Pro characters into places you don't and just see what they do. I'll put some notes on his writing at the end of this because there are some that have recently been republished for his stories. Oh, excellent. Excellent. Just before we move on, a couple more words about Ray Barrett's performance. We've already said that he's a really, as you said, Richard, a really good foil for Billy. But also, it turns out he remembers working on the show quite fondly. He appears on the DVD, giving an interview and talks about not only working on the show, but how he came to the character, and his thoughts on the character, which for an actor who was so busy in the 1960s, especially with voice work on Jerry Anderson productions, and very often in those productions, playing heroic characters. And ladies occasionally. And ladies, occasionally. Well, didn't. Well, he plays Edith Evans. Does he read it as a handbag? The Duchess of Royston. Yeah, yeah. Well, weren't we all? But for him to, you know, remember 2 weeks of work he did on Doctor Who. On a 2 episode story straight after a Dalek story and straight before the Romans, which we'll get onto in the next episode. Yeah, for him to remember all that and speak so fondly about it just speaks not only of his professionalism, but of that old phrase, there's no such thing as small parts, only small actors. And I think from that and from his performance here, he's definitely not a small actor. Well, he's no longer with us, Paul Ray. Sally, yeah. Yes, he passed away last year, I think. It was fairly recently. Not many clips of him in the Coquillian outfit on Channel 7 news though, when they announced it. Funny that. lost opportunity. Well, I think that's all we have time for this episode. Yep. The engines are going, so it's time for us to head off, but we will be back next week, looking at the Romans, the web planet, and the crusade. So do come back. Push up your swords and togers for that. Yes, indeed. Gentlemen, anything you'd like to say? Before I Before I cast us into the hall of judgement. No, I have nothing. I'm going to see you in about 5 minutes, my time, in a week's your time. step sideways in time and see you via another piece of code. And I'm going to be miniaturised, although at 5 foot four. very difficult for anyone to notice. Good night, everybody. Night, everyone. You have been listening to quite your entire team, Nathan Bottomley, Brendan Jones, and Richard Stone. This episode, Donan Cribbons and Vinyl, was recorded on Sunday, the 4th of July in Sydney, Australia. The next episode will be released on Sunday the 27th of July. You can find us online at flights your entirety.com, flights your entirety on Facebook and iTunes or FTE podcast on Twitter. One day we shall come back. Next Sunday as it happens. Anything else? Anything else people want to say about the rescue? Let me look for my notes. And cough. All the Didoians we seem seem to be men, they do. Did Rod find that homoerotic? No, he didn't even mention it.