Hello and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety, the only Doctor
Who podcast whose flames are enhanced by powdered rime weed.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
And I'm a lovely Victoria Sponge, atop Cynthia Grenville's Bons.
She is wearing a cake.
She is very okay.
As we head down deep powered to the planet of Khan for the brain
of Morbius.
So can I talk ancient history?
Richard and I, of course, uh, well, you know, went from 1980 and
uh, several months.
We didn't get to see this for a long time.
They used to strip Doctor Who at 6.30 on the ABC, as you all know
and everything was repeated over. like minky wallpaper.
And that continued well, you know, the late 80s.
Sylvester McCoy's first run.
I think from...
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
After Inspector Gadget, I see what you recall.
So this was 6.30.
It would be the goodies and then Doctor Who, essentially, or Kenny
over it and then Doctor Who.
And they would screen season 13, but they would always skip this
one on the grounds that it was just too violent.
It was given an A rating by Australian census and that was
adults.
Interestingly enough, episode one, which features the beheading
and the screaming, didn't receive the A-Ration, but every other
episode did.
Episode one could have been screened in its entirety, even with
insect decapitation.
Kids love beheadings, you know.
So eventually we did get to see it.
I've looked this up.
It was on the 24th of January 1980.
It was screened, I think, at 9 o'clock at night.
I thought it was 9.30.
Oh, it could have been 9.30. to stay up terribly late.
Yeah, no, I had to stay out very late and my mother didn't want me
to watch it and she told my father that he had to sit with me to
ensure that it didn't become too scary or violent.
And it was a 60 minute cut together version, which apparently left
out, some of the really horrible bits.
I can't really remember, but it still got an A rating.
And I think my father decided 5 minutes in that the whole thing
was too boring and silly and stopped paying attention to it.
So I got to watch it all the way through.
I did watch it all the way through, but I think I was with your
father after the 1st 5 minutes.
So, tonally, it just never... anyway, it didn't click for me in
the cutdown version.
It felt out of place.
And at the time, I thought, oh, this is simply because we've come
to it so late.
You know, we've moved on.
We're about to get a new doctor-ish.
You know, we were just about to start.
Well, actually, it was Tom's last season with Lala that was just
about to be broadcast in Australia that year.
So we didn't know that Tom was moving on, but he'd certainly been
there a terribly long time.
And hadn't he just done a tour of Australia and done keep
Australia beautiful?
And yes, that was when you guys went to meet him and Nathan, you
got something autographed by him and Richard was right behind you
in the line and didn't...
But you had no idea who each other was.
I didn't realise it was him until much.
It was like the Romans episode four, you know, like I would dash
in and then Richard would dash in and we'd just keep missing.
I remember Nathan and his father in the family being there.
I just, I'm sure you still bear the psychic scars of my bail... on
the back of your neck.
Yeah, I was the very last one to miss out. only because I was
looking through the bookshop.
I got there horribly early and thought, no one's going to turn
up.
It's Tom Baker.
Grace Brothers car park for Ingamore.
Oh, the cynicism of you.
So glad we've grown out of that one.
I love that it wasn't even indoors.
It was in a car park.
Yeah, yeah, rooftop car park.
It was a roof car park.
Yeah, yeah.
Tom didn't want to.
He looked great and he frocked up for it and, you know, he was in
his season 17 outfit.
He was absolutely monstrous and covered in heat pimples.
Monstrously tall.
He's took both my hands as it held...
I gave him a Tardis I'd made.
Oh, that's it at the end of it.
He said, who's very lovely?
I think he gave it to his assistant. disposed of, you know
technically.
I'm just imagining in the divorce years later.
No, Lala, you can have that.
There you go.
Richard Dawkins now owns your tartar.
I gave one to Davison as well, and he left it behind as well.
So they both had to leave the series quite soon. immediately
following, but in no way influenced by...
No, no.
No, no, nothing to do with the menu hired.
This story is considered one of the classics, and I believe we
have a space bubble on its way down to us being drawn in by the
energy field.
Todd has a few words to say about that.
I feel that this story, like the previous one, has some great
moments, but the overall story really doesn't quite hang
together.
Everyone's trying really hard, and it's great to see some female
characters for a change, but I just think that it ultimately is
not as good as people make it out to be.
Do you guys have the same experience?
I find the beginning of this story rather horrific.
The poor mutant climbing through, and then that horrible squeal it
makes just before it gets stabbed.
Is it just taking things too far?
Is enough enough, guys?
Well, I've been doing a spot of gardening.
Oh, I found a couple of pods in my backyard.
I wonder what that's all about.
Probably nothing.
Well, the horror question, that is really something quite relevant
for this story because it's the only doctor story in Australia
that was edited down like this.
Indeed, the original video release, I believe, used in the 60
minute cut in America.
Yeah.
But can I just say something because it'll take no time at all
whereas we've got lots to say about the horror.
But Todd's crazy about the production design.
It's really amazing.
It's Barry Newbury, who'll come back next year to do Mask of Man
Dragra.
He, but he...
He did lots of fabulous 60s stuff.
He was in Dalek's master plan and things.
Marco Polo.
Yeah, Marco Polo.
And so these sets are really detailed and really, really
terrific.
The outdoor stuff looks convincing compared to that, you know
terrible polystarine lake in Planet of Evil.
Well, okay, but when we say convincing, we should say BBC cod
Shakespeare convincing because this is how I'm not denigrating
it.
This is how we saw theatre on television in the late 70s in the
early 80s.
And the acting, I think, is very much informed by that.
It's not a bad thing.
It's a good thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Stylistically.
I mean, they're detailed sets, though.
No one's going to imagine that it's really an alien planet and not
you know, studio 3 in the BBC television centre for a second.
But they're really, really well done sets.
And I had actually thought, because I didn't really like this
before seeing it again.
I thought originally that one of the, you know, strikes against it
was the just the whole set bound thing, particularly after, you
know, the incredible, fantastic location film work on Android
Invasion.
But these sets are great.
Sometimes it's nighttime and it's sort of gloomily lit.
There's dry ice.
I think it's great.
And the weird thing is, I actually think the exterior sets look
better under the daytime lighting.
Now we only get one or 2 scenes like that because of course this
is a horror movie and horror movies are best set at night, which
is something I still maintain was the main problem with Jurassic
Park 3 being entirely set during the day.
There was very little suspension.
Pyramids of Mars.
Well, yeah, pyramids of Mars in a way.
I mean, the one area where a horror film in Daylight Works is
Santaran experiment, which we discussed a few weeks ago because of
course, there's nowhere to run to.
And it's cold and winter.
Yes, the Dario Argente thing, the goblins running over your roof.
It's all day lit.
The setting is, Well, apparently Hinchcliffe was quite
disappointed because he wanted something more technical and
futuristic, and he said, I'm just stuck with James Whale.
James Whale, of course, was the director of the 1st 2 Universal
Horror Frankenstein films.
Bride of Frankenstein, I think, is the better one with Boris
Karlov being in the 1st and Elsa Manchester playing Boris Kolov in
the 2nd one.
But the set, the set is quite interesting.
Newberry talks about alien tech and that it was a refinery, you
know, it feels a bit blade runner-ish, and it's got, um, it's got
flying buttresses that are actually on the inside with a ball
joint because the tectonic movement of the planet would allow it
if, you know, if you're in...
Yeah, that's diagonal pillars.
And you actually do use forms, you know, they don't look like that
but you do use things like that in structure when you're trying to
build a building.
We put rubber cones under the Perth performing art centre, because
it's right opposite the Horseshoe Bridge Railway.
So the whole of that theatre actually sits on a huge rubber zygon
spaceship.
I'm pretty excited.
But yeah, this set is Kafka's castle, but I also like that it's
Barbarella's city of Sogo in the window motifs.
But mostly, and I'll, Brendan, I'll give you a picture.
It's Breugel's 1563 ruin of the tower of Babel.
The external is that before it falls down.
And in a way, Solon is trying to build a tower to God by creating
life.
Yes, that's beautiful.
There is lots and lots of classical and filmic references in
this.
So I should, but mostly it's the Rocky Horror picture show.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, they come knocking at the door with a watering can being
poured over them.
Can you smell a glass of water?
Exactly.
It's Dr. Brad and this is my lovely assistant, Janet.
The sets are really, really good.
And indeed, the sets for the exterior areas are probably the best
we've seen on Doctor Who for many a year.
I think really Planet of Evil wins for the high entire season for
external internal set.
Well, I only think on film, though, not on videotape.
I think it's terrible.
I'm halfway between.
I think this certainly gives it a run for its money.
I think Planet of Evil trumps it because of the film, and you've
still got the flavour of the film, if you like, when you switch to
the video.
We haven't gone on to how awful this story is.
You mean horror?
I just think it's awful.
It never worked.
I don't miss it at all.
I don't even see it as canon, and I think that's because we didn't
get to see it.
Can I just say, you don't blind a companion.
It's, I haven't seen anything as bad until they inseminate Amy
Pond and then whisk the child away and then we're all just
supposed to forget about it for the rest of the summer.
Oh, and she has the child back, but it turns into a pile of goo.
Oh, very unkindly. don't say about Alex Kingston.
I have to agree with that.
And she falls down the stairs after that. bloody awful.
And Holmes actually lampshades that because she claims to have a
nightmare.
Oh, I had this nightmare where I was blinded and I fell down the
stairs.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And there was this body made of spare parts.
Yeah, and that is awful.
And I think it has been a problem with the way that Sarah's been
treated all the way along.
So you have this strong character who's introduced by Lets.
And back in Lets's day, the companions used to have fun and all of
that sort of thing.
But Sarah's being tied up and tortured and hypnotised and dropped
off a rocket gantry and and, you know, has confronted Nazis and
dead bodies and all of these things.
Like she's had a really, really horrible time and all the way
through season 12, I was saying why would she ever get in the
TARDIS again and now here she's been really, really, brutally
isn't it?
It's awful, I think.
And it is a mistake.
I think it's a terrible mistake.
I think and I think even Hinchcliffe said afterwards that we tried
to inject it with humour and the humour is some of the best in the
season.
The problem is, is the total variance between what's going on
visually and what's being said in the dialogue.
The lines are fantastic and especially between Solon and Condo.
If you're looking for his arm again.
There are some really, really lovely moments, but they don't leave
in the flat, the dead, dark flatness of this.
I'm really with Todd on this one Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's the juxtaposition of the humour to the horror
quotient is just as bad, in my opinion, as the early Colin
Bakers.
I would like to say that I really like Colin Baker's doctor.
I think he was given some very poorly conceived and poorly
balanced scripts.
I'd say you were half right.
It's just a variance, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. between what they're trying to do.
And yeah, the brutality and the lightness of touch doesn't work.
The brutality of with which the characters are treated, but the
doctor and Sarah.
And yet the fun they're having.
And when you listen to the audio commentary on it.
They're all delighted by it.
It's the usual thing of directors can be terribly violent when
they're looking through the aperture of a camera, and yet you
often find they're the most pacifist of people when you're outside
of that because when it's seen through a lens, there's the divorce
of self and involvement of self with the action going on.
Absolutely, absolutely.
And I think I think they missed the beat here.
So let's itemise the horrors that happened in this story.
Chris, the mutt.
Why he is still in mutt form and why he hasn't evolved into the
rainbow super being. don't know.
Because Glam Rock was dead by now.
Yeah, that's trying.
It was no longer fashionable to turn into rainbow high.
Maybe there's a maybe there's a mutt purity movement on the planet
solos.
I actually think they just found a costume in the stores with the
word mutt on it, and they had no idea what it was, no one in the
production had seen the mutants, and so they just went with it.
Except it's still John Scott Martin in the costume.
I think he just took it home.
So, um, Cruz the Mark gets decapitated.
We learn it.
It gets turned into a Muppet.
Yeah, an electronic.
We learn early on that condo has lost an arm and also he's a bit
horrific to look at.
The doctor and Sarah are... with a thyroid problem, isn't he?
is an acromagallic.
Don't you love how Tom still gives us a new word to learn every
story?
So that's Holmes.
That is Bob Hunt.
More of him later.
So, Chris gets decapitated.
Condo's lost an arm.
The doctor and Sarah get drugged.
The doctor then gets put on the operating table is going to have
his head chopped.
Just gets drunk.
Yeah, he slames it.
He actually doesn't play it like he's drunk.
He plays it drunk.
And Liz has this huge grin on her face when she can see him
because she doesn't she pours the wine out.
It's not really wine at some petrol or something.
It's green cordial, like heavily diluted green cordial.
But he he just plays it straightforwardly drunk and she's laughing
at him.
Yeah, just as a quick aside, we've had we've had Zigon lactic
fluid.
Where's this wine coming from?
I didn't see any vineyards.
The doctor then gets tied to a steak and he's going to be burned
to death, at which point Sarah gets blinded trying to rescue him.
And I will say that although Sarah's blinding is horrific.
I think it's a very brave decision to have her blind for an
episode and a half .
There is not a quick fix for this problem.
In fact, for a while, we, I mean, you know, we never think she's
going to be permanently blinded, but there is that scene, the
doctor takes her back to be treated by Solon, and Solon is crazy
but he's professional and he behaves like a proper doctor, except
that he does lie and say that the blinding is permanent.
And it's done really well.
It's just a little head movement to say, yeah.
You do believe him for a moment.
Yeah, you do it.
So what do you think then is that the elixir is going to cure her
by the end or whatever.
Yeah, exactly.
Look, the production crew have had so much fun with it.
They tried it on Leila.
Yes.
Moving on from there, you then get the sisters trying to kill the
doctor again.
Hello, Sutek.
Now, and I may get the order of these events wrong, but Morbius's
brain falls on the floor, which is what attracted the most
complaints in the UK broadcast.
I do too.
It's absolutely superb.
And I really, you can really see it's a big rubbery thing.
Condo gets shot in the stomach, which attracted no complaints.
Really?
Even though Blunt explodes, everyone explodes everywhere.
Blunt all over his head.
Yeah, Solon is 1st strangled by the Morbius monster and then
gassed to death by the doctor.
One of the sisters is strangled by the Morbius monster as well
before that.
And then the doctor and Morbius do their mind-bending.
Morbius is full of shop a cliff, and the doctor is near death and
has to be revived with the elixir.
And then Maran throws herself into the flame because she's too old
to go on anymore.
It is pretty, pretty horrific, but at least...
I still enjoy it.
Do you know, I actually think it's superb.
And, and I think it's, it's vying with one or 2 other stories to
be my favourite of the season, and I'll explain why.
We have had a number of stories with no actual discernable guest
characters with any personalities or anything.
So Mind of Evil, you know, Sorenson, sort of, you know, Salamar
he's execrable, you know, there's Vashinsky and his off-putting
gray, you know, chest.
Then there's invasion of the dinosaurs, which wastes all of these
guest stars and has no interesting characters.
I think maybe Pyramids of Mars has one. 5 interesting characters.
Here, it is a theatre piece and all of the characters are really
terrifically interesting.
You've got Solon who's Philip Maddock, who is superbly played.
He doesn't get to do his usual Maddock, you know, quiet, calm
controlled thing that he does in the war games are in the in that
Dalek movie.
He is crazy, but it's such a great performance.
And he has such enthusiasm as the character.
You're right, this head obsession.
Yeah, his voice is very different.
I mean, it's still his voice.
But the cadence and the quality of it.
Sort of when he's making small talk with Dr. and Sarah about, oh
this is why I came to this planet, da da da.
It's very conversational, but it's forced conversational.
He's not used to dealing with people and you can tell it's such a
wonderful performance.
I was going to say subtle, but it's not really subtle, but it's
not over the top.
Yeah, he does pull it in.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, like it.
Like when the doctor visits, you know, later to consult about
Sarah's blindness.
He's wonderfully underplayed.
He's terrific.
And he has all those homes, lines about, you know, calling Marina
Palsied Harrogan and chicken brained biological animation.
Every organ is mine with my own hand.
Yes.
And I think one of my favourite moments.
And it's just the way he plays it.
When the doctor's unconscious and Sarah's pretending to be
unconscious.
Condo says, what about girl?
And so just, what girl?
It's very queer.
Stop that cottage, doesn't like.
Yeah, that's wonderful and condo.
Then there's Condo, you know, who's sort of big and dumb, but has
a crush on Sarah. someone says, oh, he's such an old romantic or
something like that when he's trying to sort of stroke Sarah's
face and he's, you know, obsessed with his hand.
You know, Morbius is obsessed with heads, condos obsessed with
hands.
You know, he's really terrifically funny.
You have, you know, Maranana Hoheka, who are again...
Oh, he can with her giant staring eyes.
She's terrifically funny, Marns are sort of a grumpy old lesbian
you know?
It's she's terrific.
You know, all of that stuff about their their relationship with
the time lords is really interesting, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's still putting the time lords as this mysterious force
across in the program.
But it is one thing, the difference between the time lords and the
sisterhood is.
And, you know, the doctor is dismissive of all of the, you know
the ability of the sisterhood to transport the TARDIS across to
their place or to transport the doctor across. you know he thinks
that's sort of really primitive.
And he says the reason is that their society has ossified because
they're immortal, there can be no progress at all.
And so, So they don't have the thing where Ohika has replaced
Maran as the leader.
And we see that start to happen.
Marin's too old to lead the expedition against Morbius.
That's nearly the expedition.
I even did the hand gestures, dear listener.
What is in that?
She's really stoked.
So they are great.
You know, she's sort of brutally horrible and all of that, but
there is all of this stuff about progress in it.
And then you get the brain and the brain is absolutely hilarious
you know, the great megalomaniac reduced to sort of being a
rubbery thing in a in a jar.
It's a Scooby-Doo.
And it rants, you know, and the voice.
What is that voice?
It's magnus where the horror goes.
It's a micro spice.
Well, the lesser known Spice Girl.
But it's actually, even more so, it's Gort, leader of the thugs
from Captain Kremen.
All the mice from hitchhikers.
Yeah.
Thank you snarky part, faster.
He's terrific, and the brain on the floor is absolutely
hilarious.
Like there's that's homes.
Do you know what I mean?
Just being truly horrible and brutal.
And I think that is Solon's best scene where he's picking it up.
The greatest intellect destroyed by an animal.
But he says Morbius's brain on the floor.
I mean, yeah, that is the moment where they've gone as far rocky
horror as they can without putting Philip Maddock in fishnets.
So, but it's great.
You know he's wearing them underneath.
Of course, of course.
They're very good for horse riding.
And ask William Shatner.
So it's grotesque and it's really funny.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, um, and but it's still, it's still a big threat.
You know, Morbius is still scary.
It's a large scale threat as usual played out in this small
environment.
Just like Pyramids of Mars was. you know, the entire universe was
at stake in pyramids of Mars.
Here, you know, we're resurrecting a long dead, you know, evil
that was thought to have disappeared just like in periods of
Mars.
Only this time it's a time lord evil.
You know, all of that stuff, I think, is really good.
And so it manages to be interesting and enjoyable in a way I think
that some stories earlier in this season aren't.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Just something I want to mention about Cynthia Grenville and Gilly
Jones, is it?
Who plays?
They're actually around the same age at this point.
She's got a lot of latex on.
Really, I mean, not.
It was lovely seeing Cynthia Gremble in the Doco on the disc and
seeing just how little she's changed.
But I believe it was either it was either Philip Hinchcliffe or
the director Christopher Barry. who, while casting, saw Cynthia
Gremble in the BBC canteen and came up to her and said, oh, I've
got a part I would really like you to play on Doctor Who.
You know, it's the head priestess of sort of a nunnery or
sisterhood out in space.
And she's like, oh, oh, oh, that's very interesting.
That's great.
Tell me more about the character.
Well, she's this wizened old chrome.
You should start going death.
And that's where that comes from.
In fact, one of the sisterhood does the choreography and we have
our 1st movement for credit. sings Rosalind de Winter.
The dancing is great.
The dancing is wonderful.
And what I think is really wonderful is when Sarah's impersonating
one of them and can't quite get the steps around.
So she's just doing the best she can.
It's pump class.
Coming back to something you alluded to earlier, Richard, with the
psychedelic dancing, the overlapping sounds of sacred.
Sad flag.
With those overlapping, with the smoke going everywhere and the
crossfades.
There is something psychotropic about these sequences, you know.
And I think that's very clever on the part of Christopher Barry.
He directs this so so well.
He was very unhappy when Philip Hinchcliffe cut it down to 60
minutes for an omnibus edition.
He didn't think it should have been cut down at all, but he
understood that was a practice in the BBC.
He thought he should have at least been informed and consulted.
It should have been, yeah exactly.
Yeah, because with the next story we're going to look at.
Douglas Canfield did actually plan notes for a 90 minute version
of the Seeds of Death.
It never came about.
It was never ordered, but he actually planned, I would cut this.
I knew arranged.
No, it was actually called the Seeds of Death.
Oh, sorry, until they realised they'd already done one.
Newly formed Dwas, Doctor Who Depreciation Society. what a title.
You've done that.
Yeah, tell Tom Spillsbury, that with the mutants. was Ian Levine's
1st go in the show.
All right.
And then he rescued the Darwix.
We have a lot to thank you.
On a few notes of casting.
We could have seen a few old faces back in this.
So on the short list for condo were Stephen Thorne, which as much
as I love Stephen Thorne, it would be a mistake in my opinion, to
make him a henchman.
Well, I think it'd be a mistake, yeah, to have Philip Maddock, you
know, out shouted by shouting on Stephen Thorn.
And Bernard Breslau.
Oh, no, that could have been a major return.
And I think he was seriously on the cards, but he was doing
something else.
Isn't what's his name?
Colin Faye.
He's an opera singer He's an opera singer.
And a bit like Shara's Jack in a few years' time.
He was actually a very handsome man and they had to make him up.
And he rather enjoyed it because he got to do television.
And it was something very, very different for him.
But his vocal quality helped him push through the mouth
prosthetics, yeah, because he had spaces in his mouth to give him
a malformed jaw.
And excitingly, they used the same wig of condo's wig on Liz
Sladden for K9 and company.
Yeah, it was great.
Solon, the shortlist included Freddie Jones.
John Bennett.
Oh, yeah.
Peter Cushing.
Oh, wow.
And Vincent Price.
Okay.
I don't think they would have got Vincent's list, really.
But you know what?
They probably could have got Peter.
He seemed kind of game for anything.
He did Star Wars the year after this.
And in the original Star Wars before Darth Vader took off as the
villain.
Grand Morph Tarkin was considered the villain of that movie, and
that's how it was marketed, that Peter Cushing was the villain.
That's what Lia says, you know, that he was holding Vader's
leash.
And of course, do we know the story of his footwear in that film?
His imperial his imperial officer boots.
That's what he was known as his Imperial Heights.
His imperial officer boots were incredibly uncomfortable.
So he only wore them in long shots.
So he would say to George, look, George, can you tell me when I
have to wear these when you have to see them?
And otherwise he was wearing pink floppy slippers.
So all those close-ups where he was having to confront Carrie
Fisher, one Carrie Fisher is going, oh, my God, it's Peter
Cushing.
The other thing she's trying going, don't look down.
You're meant to be scared of this guy.
Don't look down.
Pink mules.
Do they have faces on them, little oinky piglets?
Oh, can we talk faces in a brilliant segue?
Yes, of course, to that mind bending contest.
So mind bending contest, A, has the stupidest name of any sport
ever.
I just happen to have one.
And yes, we just happen to have that here.
I don't know why.
I think he was drawing tea towels on it.
Yeah, no, I think that might have been it.
I don't know how that got Oh, picking up BBC 2.
The knights were sold on a long and dark...
So he would just plug the brain into one end and have a go on the
other end.
The big thing, the big continuity nerd thing, which I just refuse
to care about, yes.
Morbius cast the doctor back in time, and you know, he goes back
to being per, you know, visions of pertry over the title sequence
so pertry, and then Trouton, and then Billy.
And then you get these mysterious other people who are, you know
Graham Harper and Philip Hinchcliffe and Bob Holmes and stuff.
Christopher Berry.
People from the thing.
And yeah, and Bobby's a nice old bird who makes the tea.
She's there, yeah.
Goes back, you know, go back, back, doctor back.
And so these are clearly passed incarnations of the doctor and
people have all said.
Oh, well, Morbius is losing the mind-bending contest.
So they're past Morbius's, or they say they're all just younger
versions of William Hartner, which really makes absolutely no
sense at all.
So it just must be intended to be past doctors.
And so when Richard Herndle turns up and claims to be the original
Doctor Who.
That's all clearly nonsense, obviously, in the 5 doctors.
But do we really have to care about that?
Does everything have to be pinned down?
not Star Wars.
It's not canon, you know?
It's Doctor Who.
Anything can be true and everything can be true.
Xander's rule, I think, is that in the Doctor Who universe
everything is canon, except noddy, unless the doctor was lying
during the unicorn and the wasp.
That's a very very good point.
I mean, the whole point about Canon, for instance, Star Wars with
its new films coming up.
Lucasfilm has officially said, look, the novels, the comics are no
longer considered canon.
Yeah, they didn't really happen in the way that the films really
happened.
But the thing is, they did it in a very tasteful way where they
acknowledge, look, people have been putting these creative efforts
in for so long, but we're making films, we want to surprise people
and entertain people.
We don't want to make other people stories we want to make our
own.
So you can still enjoy those stories, but they're not in the same
world as a film, which I think is a very sympathetic way to do
it.
Doctor Who fans, when we argue about canon and continuity, It can
get quite heated.
The idea I like about this is actually what the new adventures did
because the new adventures, the novels from the 90s, did attempt
to reconcile a lot of cannon.
And what they sort of said is these faces were the being the
doctor was before the doctor. the doctor.
The other, exactly.
And, you know, the other is still a bit of a silly idea, but it's
an attempt to kind of do that thing of everything has happened
somewhere and somehow.
And you've got to you've got to appreciate that sort of
inclusiveness rather than putting your foot down and saying it
didn't happen.
Personally, I like the idea that the heads are Morbius, just
because we don't see any of Morbius's other incarnations, but I'm
not losing sleep over the idea that there are doctors before
William Hartman.
That's pretty obvious it's the doctor.
I think they mean it to be the doctor.
I really like that and I love how Morbius Wanders staggers off
from the contest with like all this smoke in his head globe
pillowing out of that smoke. my terrarium.
There's a song that animated it.
So Nigel Robinson's quiz books.
They're also canon, aren't they?
That's right.
And Gary Downey's cookbook.
And Gary Downey's cookbook, that's Canon.
Travel without the Tardis by those 2 fabulous...
Yep, absolutely.
Jean-airy and Lori.
How oldelman?
The the Michael Holt quiz book of science.
Yes.
For instance, their Canon.
I loved those books as a kid.
The doctor and Perry going on a picnic and we've only got a 15
ounce glass and an 8 ounce glass, but I'm only meant to have 4
ounces of water doctor.
How are we going to do this?
You know what?
Those were the setup. say that life is short.
I think it's inexorably long.
Far, far too long.
So given that we have gone on far, far too long.
I just like to take a minute to talk about the end of the story.
Now, I've said this season that I consider most of the stories
either to have a really poor beginning episode and to build up
towards the end or a really good buildup and to fall off at the
end, like the Android invasion last week.
I think this is one that starts as a solid 6 out of 10 with the
1st episode and has made its way to 8 out of 10 by the by the
end.
It never goes down in my opinion.
It's always really good.
And there are some moments I love from the last episode, which I
just have to mention.
I did the whole of Hika thing earlier. nearly the sisters Maran.
That is such a great rallying call because all the way through.
She's been saying, you know, we must act. and Burrow's like, oh, I
don't want to.
You know, I've got a sore heel and that sort of thing.
I should have said, have your tea cosies off.
Some of them are also wearing tea cosies on their head.
I can see a cosplay coming up for you, Brandon.
Yes, that's very true.
And while the doctor does gas solon to death, Solon is not in a
locked room.
Let's just point back.
So you're saying he had a chance to.
Yeah, you know, he could have left.
Morbius has tribbles in his lab, in his downstairs lab.
When Sarah calls him Chop Suey, the galactic emperor.
See, that's a bit racist, I think.
The doctor calls him a mongrel as well.
I actually think it's, again, Holmes lazily failing to avoid being
racist.
More of that next year.
More of this race.
There's any doubt.
I quite like the sisterhood with the torches.
It's a good inversion of the villagers attacking the Franco.
That is great.
Because, you know, in that, the villages of the villains in this
the sisterhood are saving saving their planet and saving the
universe from Morbius.
And the magic potion saving the doctor.
When I was a child, that was such a magical moment, the elixir
saving the doctor.
I had the junior Doctor Who novelisation.
Yes, they did the junior novelisation.
They did, they did Brain of Morbius, and they did, um, giant
robot.
And I would just read that last chapter again and again and it
affected me so much.
But I think my favourite moment from the last episode, Rod and I
have been making our way through and watching the Mary Tyler Moore
show.
And that bit where they discover the air vent, and Sarah just
channels Mary Tyler Moore, and she says, do you want me to get the
what do you want?
That's very Mary Tyler Moore.
And Mary Tyler Moore was big at this stage, of course.
Now, I realise, and I'm going to hang a lantern on this for the
audience, we are running out of time.
We haven't really discussed the whole script situation, but it's
pretty well known.
Terrence Robin Bland is actually Terrence Dix.
Terrence Dix wrote the script, went off on holiday, and the
original script was this robot constructing an efficient but ugly
body for a very vain intellect.
And Philip Hinchcliffe went off the science fiction idea.
He wanted it more Gothic, and therefore Robert Holmes...
Holmes wanted it more Gothic, and Hinchcliffe said we just don't
have the money, but he actually still wanted the spaciness, and
that's why Hinchcliffe said I was very disappointed in the set.
With the script, though. like Holmes makes it more Gothic and
tries to downplay the science fiction elements.
And, you know, I think he's aware that any robot that they create
is going to look terrible.
Well, the thing is, this is where the idea for the Raston Warrior
robot came from because that's what Terrence thought it would be.
It would be a man in a fill reflective bodysuit.
And it wouldn't be sort of bits... and a bicycle helmet. and it
wouldn't be sort of bits bolted on or anything like that to
distinguish it from the cybermen.
And of course, Terrence then got the finalised scripts back from
Bob Holmes and set off this wonderfully passive aggressive letter
saying, you know, this is such a wonderful set of scripts, but I
didn't write them.
And I, you know, I think it would be, I think it would be
inappropriate to have my name on them.
Also, I'm not very happy about this.
And well, he says, why don't you just take my name off and slap on
some bland pseudonym?
And then it came out as Robin Bland and he went, okay, Bob
Ferrer.
That is all the time we have for the brain of Morbius, but do come
back next week.
We'll be finishing off the season, looking at the seeds of doom.
Until then, do please check us out.
FlightthroughEntirety.com, at FTE podcast, on Twitter, and Flight
Through Entirety on Facebook, and the very review capable iTunes.
Until then, may all your brains stay in your own glass jars.
Thank you very much and good night.
Good night.
Thank you.
That was flat to entirety with Nathan Botterley, Brendan Jones and
Richard Stone.
This episode, Philip Maddock in Fishnets, was recorded on the 11th
of July, 2015.
The next episode will be released on August 13th.
This story often comes at the head of fan polls.
Sorry about that pun, but I'm sure you'll take it on the chin.
Hello and welcome back to Flightthrough Entirety, the only Doctor
Who podcast whose flames are powered by powered wine weed.
It's Rhine Weed.
Yeah.
I tried saying that as well, and I can't.
It's a very hard line. don't know why.