Hello and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety, the only Doctor
Who podcast with the warning label, No Touch Todd could be
dangerous.
I'm Brendan.
I Nathan.
Me too.
How can I come back from that?
And we're taking a helicopter down to Antarctica to battle the
seeds of doom.
Oh, I can start if you like.
Oh, Tor is mine.
I don't know, you know...
I have been I've been gifted with this one, which is coming for
surprisingly.
We loved this and it was one of the very later ones to be released
on DVD because fan law says it's just terrific.
And yet, in later fan criticism, the gods who criticise such as
Tat Wood and such as Santa, and such as Nathan Bottomley, and
Tog.
Well, I don't know, I'm kind of with them as well.
Again, tonally, it doesn't quite fit with the nature of what we
understand Doctor Who to be because it's so violent.
And it is a lot of other films.
But then we've also, if you've, if you've deigned to listen to the
entirety of this podcast, we've always said Doctor Who has been
great because it's never been so much about Doctor Who, but about
everything else being within the realm of the Doctor Who
universe.
So this is a lot of other films and a lot of other ideas then put
under the Doctor Who umbrella.
So it is hugely popular.
And, you know, the for the 50th anniversary, DWM, you know, Doctor
Who magazine did a poll the 1st 50 years.
I referred to it before.
These came 20th out of 241 stories.
It is massively popular, but as Richard says, both Tat Wood and
Philip Sander.
Tatwood says it's his least favourite story of Tom's 1st 6
seasons.
Philip Sander thinks that the violence in it is irresponsible, but
in fact, we see Hinchcliffe taken off the program, essentially, at
the end of next year, partly because of an outcry from the Mary
White House.
Or is it because the Target, because this while we're on the topic
of one, which was the BBC's answer to an incredibly popular thing
that the Avengers producers were doing called the Professionals
with Lewis Collins and Martin Shaw.
And that was the nature of TV at the time.
It was gritty ultraviolence, urban realistic violence, I should
say.
And very, really Doctor Who's just responding to that.
That's right.
But when Hinchcliffe gets taken off and Williams replaces him.
You know, he's told that he's not to do that violence and horror
anymore.
There's kind of a direct.
So Sandaphase, Hinchcliffe is irresponsibly playing with fire by
making a story quite as violent as this.
But what's violent about it exactly?
Like why people say this?
physical violence that is actually repeatable by children, that
the, and come on, that compost.
It's pretty...
It's pretty tumulture.
But even before we get there, we've got quite extreme body horror
and I would say even worse body horror than in the arc in space
because the crinoid makeup for when it's taking over a person
because it's plant-based, it's easier to replicate than an alien
life form, obviously.
So it looks, it looks more convincing.
And the later horror anthology film creep show would do a similar
plot line with vegetation growing on someone.
And again, even though the effects in that are better.
The horror still remains in this case.
So we have that.
We have, um, the doctor and Sarah being tied to various bombs over
the course of the story, things that have gone.
I love it when they tie people to bombs.
I'm a huge fan of that.
We've got we've got Scorbi.
And until now, sort of villains and henchmen in colour Doctor Who
often have a sense of humour or a wry sense of humour, as we saw
with soul and last story, he's quite funny and witty.
Scorbi doesn't have any real wit about him.
You know, he's actually a really nasty character, which is funny
because when you see John Challis interviewed, John Challis was
very plummy and hello.
Oh is he really?
Yeah, yeah.
He actually says that he had this rough looking face.
So when he was out in pubs, he's like, you know, these very big
heavy med would come up and say, want to dance?
He actually says, then come up and say, oh, I want to play.
I want to buy you a drink.
And he's like...
He's like, okay, okay, okay, okay.
And saw it as a bit of an acting challenge to then not totally
misrepresent himself, but to at least, you know, chop off his... chop
off his words and what have you.
But he said that helped him immeasurably with when he got these
heavy type roles.
And he's like, you know, it's amazing because I look like a heavy
but I don't, there's nothing about that with me in real life.
But the Scorbi character is lifted.
This is what we're referring to earlier, lifted directly from the
current schedules of other television.
Yeah, absolutely.
He's very, very professional.
Well, there were questions in Parliament at the time about these
British mercenaries that were in the Angolan war, which only
lasted 20 days, but there were there were a whole lot of problems
with British and Irish military men who really were too wacked, as
in psychotic, to stay in the army.
British Army were having a purge at the time of recalcitrants
shall we say?
So in all the turf wars and the oil wars in the Middle East, it
was full of Brits and Irish psychos, and it was being, it was so
known and so reported on that it was being repeated in films and
television.
And he explicitly says he's been in the Middle East.
He does, exactly.
It directly references that because there were questions in
Parliament at the time.
So it was on the news.
But it's funny that you mentioned those films because, of course
we haven't got to the greatest villain of probably all time
Harrison Chase.
Well, we have now our 1st question for this episode from Todd.
These together, Todd, we can see up here.
I can't believe that I am stuck here in my time bubble, whilst you
guys get to talk about one of my most favourite stories of all
time.
One of the strengths of this production, the supporting characters
and how they are portrayed.
In particular, Mr. Dunbar, Hargraves, the butler, and Mr. Tequila
all 3 actors give tremendous performances.
Obviously, 3 of the most memorable performances in Doctor Who are
those of Harrison Chase, Scorbi, and Amelia Ducas.
In fact, Richard, I think you are Amelia Ducar.
And despite everything, I really wanted Scorbi to live.
Your thoughts, gentlemen.
I have to say that, again, one of the reasons this story outshines
other stories in season 13 is just the incredible set of guest
characters, and I think that they're all really interesting. like
Mobley and Winleton, they're all terribly disposable, but they're
dead quite soon.
But the humour is lovely.
And yeah, they are well drawn for such small characters.
And the tonality is exactly right.
It feels genuine when they're in that base.
Lovely designs too.
But you've got Scorbi, Dunbar, Amelia Ducant.
So Colin, Colin, the virtual new companion.
They ask him off on the...
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wouldn't that have been great?
It would have been terrific in Masks of Mandranger, wouldn't it?
My wife is expecting me home fatigue.
And they're all, they're all really fun and enjoyable characters
and it really, really matters.
You know, there's a kind of boy's own adventure approach where, you
know, so long as people have guns and are sort of running around
that imperil and stuff, that's entertaining enough.
And that gave us planet of evil.
But here, you've got actual, you know, really, really interesting
characters, and really interesting relationships between
characters.
Keila and Scorbia are fantastic together.
And Keila is wonderful.
There's a scene where he ties up Stevenson in episode 2 and he
says, excuse me before he comes.
And then he says, sorry when he's finished.
You know, he's delightful.
Harrison Ford is absolutely uproar Harrison Ford.
One of us was bound to do it.
Harrison Chase is uproariously funny.
There's that scene again in episode three.
The crinoid's not in it.
We're just introduced to Harrison Chase, you know, the doctor and
Sarah are there and he's playing that terrible, terrible music
absolutely straight.
Not for a 2nd Is there a moment of self-awareness or anything like
that in Chase's demeanour.
He plays it completely straight and he's absolutely ridiculous.
I also love, I think it's his very 1st line or close to it.
What are you doing about the savage art of Bonsai?
Mutilation and torture, Mr. Dunbar.
For someone who, for someone who objects to Bonsai, there's an
awful lot of topiary, you know, in his estate.
Maybe he anaesthetises those plants first. before carving them
into pyramids.
I think you're talking about him playing it straight.
Have you seen the Italian job?
It's right to make...
The original in the original...
Is he called Camp Freddy?
thank you.
He is Camp Freddy in that and one of the best characters in it.
So I think that there's some longevity in his character. clearly
you know, he's clearly playing game.
Oh, he's the anti-Mr. Humphreys from IUB, so...
But it's a lack of humour and a lack of self-awareness, which is
wonderful. a great villain.
Yeah, he's hilarious, but at no point.
Is he trying to make a joke?
No Oh, no, but he has endless funny lines.
Remember Dunbar explains that he's taking the bribe because all
these, you know, worthless non-entities have been promotion above
him.
He just goes, yes, that must be most calling.
He's just terrific. you know, in every scene he's in.
And I think, I think the tension in the story, and I think the
thing that saves it from the accusation of being too violent is
that there are 2 things going.
There is the professionals and there's, you know, everyone
including the doctor carrying guns, you know, the private army, the
mercenaries, the body horror and stuff.
But then there's there's Amelia Ducart, and there's Colin, and
then there's, you know, Harrison Chase, and there's the whole
premise.
The whole premise is utterly ludicrous.
Like, all I can say, or all I can think when I see Harrison
Chase's estate is, you know, overrun by men carrying machine guns
is that the Chelsea Flower show must be just absolute hell in the
late 70s.
Why does he have a private army?
You know, like, is it to prevent people walking on the grass?
So the whole thing, that whole thing is so grotesque.
You know, the eccentric millionnaire obsessed with plants and
stuff and so silly that the script at least doesn't want us to
read this as being in the real world.
Is that is that fair?
No, I think I think you are absolutely right there.
And in a way, we're not even in the real world of Doctor Who
anymore because we 1st see the doctor in this story.
He is reporting to the World Ecology Bureau, at the BBC
television.
At the BBC television centre.
It's the worldwide web.
Yes, of course, yes.
It's a nice segue, isn't it?
Sarah and the doctors seem to have just come back to Earth and
have been there for some little while since he's called in
obviously back with unit, or at least hanging about a bit.
Well, the thing is, he's not because his 1st response when he
arrives and starts talking to Sir Colin is, where's the
brigadier?
So, and at least this time we get like one mention of the
brigadier and that's it.
We don't constantly have a sign showing his name as we did in the
Android invasion.
You know, it's not that tease for the audience.
It's the brigadier is not in this one.
And as we go through, we don't even get perfunctory appearances by
anyone else from unit.
At the end of the story, we do get, I think it's Major Beresford
and Sergeant Henderson.
Sergeant Henderson is really pretty, but a terrible actor.
He's such a red shirt though.
He's such at the moment he arrives.
It does make me dead.
It does make me wonder...
It does make me wonder if Sergeant Benton was originally destined
for the mulcher.
Oh that would have been great.
You know, and that would have, you know, I wouldn't want to see
Benton go like that, but that would have added so much more to
that last episode.
Although you know what?
I wouldn't have put it past home.
Yeah.
And well, the thing is, I would have loved to have then seen the
doctor's reaction to that because, of course, we haven't had a
companion die since Sara and Catherina, and even then the doctor
didn't have that much emotional investment in them, and neither
did we, as the audience.
You know, having a long-running character being killed off, as
they were considering writing out Sarah Jane at this time by
killing her off, that would have been a terrible mistake.
Oh, yeah.
It absolutely would.
But as we will see in a few months time when we're up to that
point, when they do do that in the show, it does have a very
strong emotional impact.
Um, we're talking about Andre.
Yeah, I'm not sure about that.
So the one of the other huge characters of this story, of course.
Amelia Ducan.
Can I, again, pitch in and say Philip Hinchcliffe novelizes this?
and it's a great novelisation, the Doctor Who and the Seeds of
Doom novelisation, and he nearly completely cuts Amelia out.
So we do get the scene, I think, where they consult Amelia about
the painting in the boot, which is used to get them to the next
plot, but she doesn't get to go undercover into Chase's mansion or
any of that sort of stuff.
That sounds brilliant.
I know. so Hingescliffe thinks it's padding.
And so here I think on the other side, where we've got the sort of
camp silly...
So an Avengers style, you know, world that we're in, the really
gun, you know, world is what Hinchcliffe wants from it because he
thinks of me is a waste of time.
And I think it's what Douglas Canfield wants as the director as
well.
Well, we start off with ice station, Zebra, and end up in Day of
the Truford Stone.
Well, yeah, and also it's Howard Hawks and thing from another
world.
And this is the thing, 1951, yes.
Yeah.
And also, as we may discuss later, a certain Avengers episode
called The Man Eater of Surrey Green.
But we won't talk about that too much today.
And that episode of, are you being served when they all bring in
the pot plants?
Yes, that's great one.
So Amelia.
She is just such a wonderful, wonderful character.
Is it actually a merely a pond all grown up and old and now...
No, it's Amelia Rumford, the same age.
I wish it wasn't there.
Why did none of these women end up going hanging about in the
TARDIS?
Because, you know, we could jump forward and say that Tom did want
to play around with that kind of thing and have different people
coming in.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
They teased him by throwing a line in and then just not carrying
it through.
To start it all off, in the 1st thing we see her, she is smoking.
She smokes laser in, like, Chase's study and stuff.
Yeah, she's smoking all the time.
And, you know, I can't recall where we've seen a smoking character
in Doctor Who since once or twice in the 60s. about the doctor
smoking in the 2nd episode?
Yeah, and of course, Ian carries matches, so there's an
implication that he smokes.
And of course, smoking isn't cool.
Smoking isn't cool kids who are listening.
But because she is a character seemingly from a bygone age, not
just because of her age, but because of her demeanour, it evokes
that sense of 1940s, 50s films and people in smoking parlours and
what have you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm sure I'm sure that the actress insisted on it.
Yes, it's Coolridge.
And, you know, immediately she's set up as the type of character
she is with that famous lift from the importance of being earnest
when she's told the painting was found in a car boot.
A car boot?
A Daimler carbo.
The car?
Is it material?
And yet Hinchcliffe saw that as padding.
I'm starting to see the in a very different light, you know.
This is not quite as glorious and fun and wonderful as I thought
as a child.
It is for its tonality and for its visuals and for doing fresh and
exciting new things.
But gee, is it time to have a little bit more lightness of touch?
I think it might be, but it also goes to show that when the
Hinchcliffe Holmes team, right in a main female character, you
can't really count Tessa from the Android invasion because Tessa
isn't really a main character in that.
But when you've got viral, when you've got Betan, when you've got
Amelia Dukan, when you've got the matron in Terror of the Zion.
Sister Lemon, Sister Lemon, they're all characters who push the
plot forward and have their own actions going on in the plot.
And Amelia Dukar is probably the strongest example of that we've
seen so far because she gets that whole spying mission, which we
don't, it's so excellent because we don't know it's a spying
mission.
We think she's just turned up out of the blue.
And then Sarah gets a message to her and you think, well, how is
she going to get?
Oh, she's been working for Sir Colin all the time.
That's very Avengers as well.
Yeah, it is.
There's a hilarious scene at the very end where it is kind of
Padding where they're just sitting in Sir Charles's office
afterwards.
She's volunteering to do other spy missions for the world ecology
bureau in future.
Wouldn't you have loved to have seen that spinoff?
That would have been great.
And she talks about her wartime experience and stuff.
And we all raised it..
So Colin and so Colin and Miss Dukar. would be so wonderful.
Big finish. get on it Oh, no, it is a really strong guest cast.
There's not a weak link in the bunch Do you know what really works
though?
What pulls it all together?
Yes, the actors are great, but I keep coming back to the scoring.
And I know that...
Jeffrey Bergen is one of my all-time favourite.
Yeah, he was a choral composer.
We talked about this previously that he main thing in life was to
write coral music and he and he did his musicology degree on
Gregorian chance or coral chances.
So this one is lovely.
And again, we've got beautiful ancient instruments in this.
We have a clever chord. and reads, which are then put through a
synth.
So it's still nice and woo-woo.
And the microphone on the clever court.
He had a clever court at home and what he would do at home is he
would...
That's what I was thinking.
He would put the microphone inside the chamber of the clapper
called right up against the wood that the strings were attached to
and it would produce this very strange, metallic cold vibrato.
Now the thing is, the sound engineers at the BBC refused to do
that.
They said it would damage the microphone.
So they put it like a millimetre away and it completely changed
the sound.
He's like, it's not quite what I wanted, but those are those sort
of pinging sounds we hear when we were in the Arctic.
Also, he deliberately used classical musicians who he'd worked
with before who weren't necessarily session musicians for
television because Dudley always used session musicians.
By using the classical musicians, he's like, that's how I got the
sound I wanted because session musicians are all wonderful, but
they're more specialists in modern techniques and I wanted people
who are specialists in classic techniques to give this idea of
being ancient and cold.
Oh, because classical musicians are cold.
Well, they also know how to listen to each other, possibly unlike
our podcast.
Yeah, there's a lot.
Text toast, please.
Exactly.
There's a lot more tonality and inference and sympathetic, if you
want to say that, between the musicians on this school, you can
tell they're actually behaving as a chamber orchestra and not
merely as a set of disparate parts.
It's a beautiful score.
It makes it work.
The effect of it is, I mean, it is eerie and frightening.
And again, but it's also somnambulistic and it's sort of rather
gorgeous and you feel as if you're in a waking dream.
Yeah.
I think I think if we're going to, you know, say who's on the gun
side in this story and who's on the frock side, do you know what I
mean?
Like if we've got Canfield and Hinchcliffe.
Have you explained guns and frocks on this podcast before?
I don't have at some point.
I keep meaning to put a website up explaining.
I own gunsandfrocks.com.
So I shouldn't really put a web.
How about we give the listeners a 102nd version of what it used to
be a gun and what it used to be a frock?
So it's 2 ways of watching Doctor Who that we talked about a lot
when the new adventures came out.
And the gun way is, you know, Doctor Who is a serious science
fiction program, it's action adventure, it's got continuity, you
know, it's at its best when it's sort of grim.
And I guess, like if you think about earth shock, do you know what
I mean?
then you're thinking gun.
Frock is Doctor Who is funny and occasionally silly, that it's got
a lot of humour, that part of the fun of watching it is the fun of
enjoying the sort of silliness and the campness of the program.
Androids of Tara.
Well, I'm actually thinking Beryl Reed in it.
And so Gareth Roberts famously said of the new adventures that he
wanted more frocks, less guns.
And so this is a very gun story. in one sense, because a lot of
people with guns, even the doctor carries a gun, you know, in the
episode.
I've got a problem with that as well.
I haven't touched on that yet.
But they do hang a lantern on the fact that Sarah says you'd never
use it.
Well, they don't know that.
And it's that's, you know, still, like if he's carrying it. for
that half of the episode.
And so they're the gun things.
I think Jeffrey Bergen has to go in the gun camp for this one.
Just because his score heightens the horror.
You know, there's no hilarious comedy plinky harp music or
tubers.
We got Harositos for that.
And his and his craft verk organ.
Green Cathedral.
Kerry Blyton does not live here anymore.
And, you know, the frock side would be would be Sir Colin and
Amelia and...
Yeah, yeah.
And Dunbar skirts, the line, android.
Yeah.
Yeah, poor...
Petticoat.
Paul Kenneth Gilbert. poor Dunbar.
Got chicken pox halfway through filming.
And plague on this on this story, didn't they?
People coming back.
So what happened to him?
Well, they just delayed the 2nd studio for about 3 weeks for him
to get better.
Yeah.
He's really great.
There's a cliffhanger to episode four, which is when we 1st see
the crinoid properly.
So the crinoid's been the rubber mattress running towards the
camera.
But before that, it's been an axe on kind of in, sort of in a
sparkly painted green.
And you can see a fair amount of orange, though, there in close-up
still.
But then it turns into the giant rubber mattress.
And I think that that cliffhanger is beautifully directed.
It's shot at night.
There's heats are black in the frame because it's Douglas
Campfield, lots of shadow and stuff.
Low angle.
Low angle. with the thing.
Sarah screams, you know, Dun Bun has just been killed.
It's a really, really terrifically memorable cliffhanger and it is
beautifully shot, like Canfield, maybe a gun, but those pictures
that he creates are just they're welcome.
You know, really nicely, really nicely done.
I like to think it's the fat bird from the end of Morecolm and
Wise, you know, in a big latex Mumu running towards the camera in
the end.
Thank you all.
Thank you all for watching my little show tonight, Doctor.
Mark Jones plays voice at the crinoid, but you kind of, I kind of
wish it had been Tony Beckley doing the voice, perhaps, in a
different tone, but maybe Tony Beckley only has one tone.
You know, there is something so love craft in about the crime.
Yes, we haven't talked about love.
You know, it's a force from prehistory, so that's obvious enough.
But also one of the big things about Lovecraft's monsters is that
they cannot communicate on the same level as humanity and the
crinoid only directly, verbally communicates once in the whole
story when he's outside the cottage, you do say, give us the
doctor and your lives will be spared.
Rue for one offer this weekend only.
And then it communicates with Chase telepathically and we're never
pretty to the conversation.
Chase has sex with the crinole.
He has that wonderful Barbarella and Pyga moment in the woods and
he has the 8th all true.
I get it all now.
He's lying down there grip.
He is, isn't he?
Oh, Italy.
I always thought that was stupid as a child, but this time I
thought, oh, my God, you guess it now.
There's a lot of tendrils in that guy.
But yeah, there is succulence.
There is something for want of a better description.
There is something unholy and unnatural, a bounty.
And for cunt in all its ripe and horrible glory.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
It's such an effective villain because of that.
Because, you know, the Wiran could be reasoned with because the
human portion was still there.
The human has been completely subsumed and consumed in the
crinoid.
You know, you can't reason with the Androids in the Android
invasion, but just knock them over and their faces fall off.
You're fine.
But yeah, this is an enemy that's completely implacable.
And I think what we have here is we have the 1st of a new
tradition of season finale, because in the Barry Letts tradition
of season finale, it was throw everything in the kitchen sink, and
let's all have a fabulous time. unless you're a member of the
audience.
In the Tom Baker era, the 6 parters are more about, let's
introduce a massive, massive threat that the doctor must work
harder than he's ever worked before to defeat it.
So in this, you know, he's got to eventually use methods he would
never normally use calling in an airstrike against the crinoid.
And, um, you know, next season, we'll see him go to Jurassic
lengths and the invasion of time even. you know, drastic lengths
once again.
It starts to fall apart a bit after that.
And we don't really get season finales like that in the 80s.
So, but this is, this is the beginning of the, All bets are off
season finale.
Oh, I think we have a time bubble circling round again.
Here he comes.
The horror for Sarah Jane Smith continues in this episode.
And for the 3rd story in a row, she lists some of the obstacles
facing her.
We had burn up and reentry, suffocate on the way down, crushed on
impact from the Android invasion.
We had blinded, attacked by a giant claw and falling down a flight
of stairs from the brain of Morbius, and here, at the end of the
seeds of doom, she lists steam, threatened to be shot a number of
times, almost blown up by a huge bomb in Antarctica, the crinoid
in all of its form, and almost being turned into a crinoid itself
and then she has to face the mincing machine.
And I'm not talking necessarily about Harrison Chase, but he does
attack Sarah and then put her into the machine.
So, do you think enough is enough, rather than comedy ending for
the season?
Do you think Sarah should have said, it's time to go, doctor?
She's into it.
She's up for it.
She into it.
She is.
It's not just Stockholm syndrome.
Sarah seems to really get a great kick.
Just how miserable must Croydon really be.
She, of course, is going to lampshade it in her last scene in Hand
of Fear, where she lists all of the things that you seek of
happening to her.
I actually think it's a mistake and I think it is comes completely
from Hingecliff's misunderstanding of the premise of the show.
You would never, ever be able to do those things to Ian and
Barbara because we identified with them too strongly.
Oh, Audrey Fawkes Hamilton or Tom and Barbara in the good life.
It doesn't happen in other shows for a reason, Philip.
Because it's unpleasant to watch, you know.
And so Sarah has is becoming less of a character and turning into
a plot device.
Well, I actually thought more of an SM toy at this point, really.
Do you know what I mean?
She's still likeable.
You know, the performance is fantastic.
All of that.
I actually mean that quite seriously, that if we did go to Sasha
Masakum.
We've already mentioned Venus in Furs previously, is a great
seminal novel on the notion of the subversion of the female
archetype to a sexual dominant stereotype, but also one that is
the passive and the dominant become the one thing it's a complex
thing, but she actually does become objectified in the most anti
feminist way you can imagine.
She's, she's a, a figure to be oppressed and dominated and
repelled and humiliated and tortured.
That's kind of not really great, Phil.
No, and I don't want to agree with that very much, but I think
it's probably an unavoidable conclusion.
And given just the massive underrepresentation of women in the
entire era, the massive lack of interest that Hinchcliffe and
Holmes have, even in including women just for variety, maybe
you're right, that maybe there is something really unpleasant
about mistreating the female lead over and over again.
Can you imagine any of this having been done to Joe Grant?
No, no.
And I mean, Joe Grant did face horrors.
And I think this highlights the problem with getting rid of Ian
Martyr because Joe faced horrors, but the brigadier faced horrors
alongside her.
And so did Mike Gates and so did Sergeant Benton.
Now, if Harry was still there, he would be able to get, if you
like, his share of the horror, like putting his foot in the clam
and getting tortured by Dav Ross and getting poked along by Vogans
with gums.
Yeah, getting captured by Hilda Winters.
Yeah, those are all examples of things that happen to Harry losing
issues.
But terrible things.
You know, if he was there in that season and say in Brain of
Morbius, Sarah got blinded, but Harry fell down the stairs.
Yeah.
In Terror of the Zygons.
I mean, Harry gets shot and surrogates suffocated.
If that had happened to one character alone, that would be
absolutely, absolutely horrible and horrific, you know?
There are other problems with getting rid of Ian Martyr in that
he's just fabulous and they were really good triumvirate.
But yeah, I think if you're gonna have the one companion.
You have to lessen the amount of jeopardy they are put in because
it just becomes unbelievable that they would allow themselves to
keep being put in this jeopardy, as we'll later see with Tegan
Tegan leaves for exactly that reason.
You know, I don't think the old show, the classic series asks
itself the question very much of why the companions are travelling
with the doctor.
And initially the premise was that they were doing it because they
couldn't get home because you can't control it.
But Sarah has had a couple of opportunities to leave now and the
show just doesn't even ask the question why he's travelling with
her.
And we could we can leap in and say, you know, Tom and Liz smile
at each other a lot.
So Sarah's travelling with the doctor because she really likes
him.
But the show never explicitly makes that claim.
It really isn't interested.
She's there because you need a female lead.
She's there because Liz Sladen's contract isn't up yet.
You know, that's really the only reason why Sarah is travelling
with the doctor.
Liz is fantastic.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, I mean, we're lucky that she is such a great character and
such a wonderful actress that we really like watching her.
And even when she's given these unrealistic, and I mean
unrealistic in the sense of why you still there, things to do, we
still find her compelling and interesting and captivating.
But it's a detriment to the character and the thought processes
they're in.
It's an imbalance and it's a, yeah, a misdirection.
She has an inquisitive nature.
She's a reporter, but I don't know that that's enough to compel
the characters.
And certainly they never suggest that that's the reason.
Do you know what I mean?
Not having to leap in and write our own reason.
And there isn't really a good one, I think.
Quick question.
Is this the best season we've had so far?
No.
No?
But it was a good one, but I'm really seeing last season as being
terrific for all its flaws and rushes.
And as Hinchcliffe was always complaining, always complaining that
the so many of his stories were inherited, and he didn't really
get to do what he wanted to do.
This is the 1st year.
He said, we got to do exactly what we pleased.
Well, I don't know that I'm completely pleased by.
No, I'm not.
And I'm really surprised.
Yeah, memory cheats.
This is not how I recall it.
And of course, with him being such a satisfying villain, we
actually get a kind of uncomfortably satisfying end for Harrison
Chase as he's trying to, he's already tried to mulch Sarah and
that hasn't worked, he's mulch Sergeant Henderson and he tries to
mulch the doctor.
Sarah saves the doctor again.
You know, she saves him several times in this story, once again.
And in the course of the struggle, Chase gets knocked into the
multure, the doctor tries to pull him out, but Chase is trying to
pull the doctor in.
So the doctor has to step away.
We get his wonderful deathly scream, which is an absolutely
beautiful.
Yeah, you know, in terms of terror.
It's an absolutely beautiful sound.
And we then get, and I think this, it seeks to redress.
I'm not sure if it's entirely successful, but it seeks to redress
the balance of the season. with the doctor shell shocked that is
saying I tried to save him.
He tried.
Eddie keeps saying I try.
I tried to save.
And he kept trying to pull me in.
Yeah.
And for this doctor who has been so emotionally distant, as we've
seen in Pyramids of Mars, but can be so flippant, as well, and
usually when he's faced with tragedy, he just sort of stares off
into the middle distance.
It's a wonderfully human moment from Tom's doctor.
And I think it just enhances an already brilliant story.
The acting in this is impeccable and that's what saves it
ultimately, that in the score.
And there's so much love about this.
It's difficult to say why it isn't quite as beautiful as I
remember it to be.
It's a hell of a lot more enjoyable for me than Brain of Morbius.
Probably because visually it's so interesting and orally.
It's so interesting.
But no, it's certainly not my highlight of the season.
Should we talk about the last scene?
It might be the worst season closing scene, even vastly, vastly
worse than the Brigadier and Mike Yates.
Why wouldn't you wear a bikini in -20 temperature?
Or naked Benton.
Naked Benton.
Yes, that's a great cliffhaker.
So this one tries to do the humour.
So they are heading off to Cassiopeia on a holiday.
So Sarah's in a bikini.
They end up in Antarctica because the doctor hasn't reprogrammed
the coordinates.
Even though we went there by helicopter, as everyone knows.
Then they're supposed to say a funny line, which isn't funny.
So have we been here before or are we yet to come?
Which isn't actually a funny line.
They're both desperately looking at each other to get the timing
right, but they don't manage to do it.
So they don't manage to say it at the same time.
You know why they're so hysterical, though.
The TARDIS prop roof had fallen in.
Yeah.
This is the last time we see the original 1963 on Earthly Child
police box Shell, and yes, dear listeners, it's been the same prop
all the way through just redressed.
So yeah, goodbye.
No, apparently it almost injured Liz Sladden as the roof fell in.
And we thought, well, what else could happen to her at this season
you know?
And then and then they do the just the most appalling fake laugh
to win the season.
And of course, it's Antarctica, brilliantly lit.
Antarctica doesn't have long days and nights in the doctor
universe.
We've landed in the daytime.
It's really lit, and of course, it's just, you know, some
haphazardly fake sprayed fake snow on sort of black dirt. really
really unconvincing.
And so it is, I think, the worst season closing scene in Doctor
Who's history.
I think we're getting very close to picks and specs, aren't we?
So, Nathan, what's your Jenny Laird award for this season?
Originally when I thought about this, I thought it had to be Bob
Holmes for rewriting Terrence Dix, but not rewriting Terry
Nation.
But I have sort of said that before.
And so I'm going to preempt all of your picks because I can just
sense what's bubbling under the surface as I look across the table
at you, which is utterly wasting Ian Marta, completely
squandering.
Agreed.
And he was such a terrific story.
He gets a really perfunctory farewell in terror of the cycons.
He comes back in Android invasion, and he just, like, he doesn't
say a word to the doctor.
Like, robot replica, Harry, gets to deliver some very boring.
You know the script actually had a lot more involvement.
And Hinchcliffe cut it all out.
Yeah.
It was all in Hinchcliffe's behest and he and Holmes had yet
another blue about it.
So I think I've heard something about this.
He just thought it was confusing or didn't.
No, he said, I don't emphasise Sarah, I believe.
He simply said that.
He said, I don't want the audience is exactly what you're saying.
I don't want the audience to regret something they've lost.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, it just causes us to regret.
Of course it does.
Yeah, and you know, Sarah gets puzzling at the age of 10.
Sarah gets one line with him and then the rest of the time he's
completely wasted.
And you've already said this episode, Brendan, how he would have
had a salutary effect on the tone of the whole season.
He and Scorpion, a Biffo, would have been true.
Would have been great.
He's funny, you know, he's lovely and he would have just lightened
me.
And Amelia Ducar in a Biffo would have been.
He would have taken her out for a lovely drink or something.
I was just taking her out, just take a butt at her and take the
vice versa.
I spoke to you.
Okay, my Jenny Led award.
It's related to the Android invasion, which generally I quite
like.
And I've already talked about the absence of the brigadier and how
it's a cheat for the audience.
So my Jenny later award is going to be this.
If you're going to have Patrick Newell in there at the end as
Colonel Faraday, have him in the replica Earth as well.
So his character is established, because I don't think that
Patrick Newell puts in a bad performance.
He's just given very, very generic, thankless material.
And if he hadn't been there from the beginning.
It might have actually added a bit of mystery as well.
It's like, oh, we have a new military leader here.
It's a bit of a coup too, isn't it?
Because of course he's famous for playing.
He's famous for playing Mother in the Avengers.
What's his character called again?
Colonel Faraday.
So out of if Colonel Faraday and Major Beresford had a fight, who
would win?
I think Faraday.
It's far more interesting than Beresford.
Beresford's got a great growly voice, though.
He does have a great growling voice, but it's so one note, whereas
whereas Faraday, we in the sort of 5 lines he gets.
We see him happy we see him impatient.
We see him.
No nonsense.
And you know, that is all through his performance, not through the
dialogue, Meryl Streep.
There's a hole in my stomach.
Richard, what's your Jenny Leah?
Is that how we lost all that weight?
Oh, poor old love.
He was almost unrecognisable.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
It's so odd.
I think we've covered it really certainly what you're saying.
My Journey Led Award was really also the trouble with Harry, and
then he's just not there.
It was disappointing as a little boy and it's even more so now.
But really, the blinding of Sarah is so the Nadir. so the bottom
line of you've crossed that Hinchcliffe.
And again, as a child.
Well, I didn't see it.
And I think if this story had been cared.
Exactly.
She didn't see it coming.
Oh, thank you, listener.
Did you hear the collective sigh across the interwear, Pierce?
I was in the, yes, it was a texture in the force then.
It was all dark gray.
If Brain of Morbius had been shown in Australia in the original
run.
I don't know that I would have enjoyed this season as much.
It just, and simply for what's done to Sarah. drops it all out.
So, yeah.
Okay, pics of the week.
This one isn't strictly Doctor Who related, but when I watched it
it gave me a sense of part of this season.
It's a short film called Refuge.
And it is a short film that has been shot entirely with
moonlight.
Ooh.
It's set on an alien planet and to get a different lighting effect
they shot with moonlight and reflectiboards reflecting the
moonlight.
I can't say too much about it because it is only 7 minutes long.
What I found it very evocative of was Planet of Evil.
So, it's up on Vimeo, will include a link to it on the website.
I will say that it does have a level of violence and a level of
body horror.
So please be aware of that as you watch it.
I wouldn't say there was anything you couldn't put in an M15 film
probably a PG film, to be honest.
But yeah, I do recommend it.
Refuge, short film, shot entirely in moonlight, I believe 51,000
ISO to capture the lighting effect.
And just done with just 3 actors and minimal special effects.
It's really good.
Well, my one is a little bit more prosaic than that.
Yours sounds intriguing though, Brendan, I have to say, I hear it
Richards, and like all of us, he has boxes of old issues of DWM
around the place.
Yes we do.
And I'd subscribe to it and had it sent to me from, you know, at
great expense from England.
It turns out that there is an app for the iPad, which is the DWM
app.
It's vastly cheaper to buy individual issues.
They're weightless.
You can have them with you at all times and they don't pile up in
big dusty boxes in your in your attic.
So that's what I've been doing.
I've downloaded it.
I've got it with me at all times and so I don't even have to read
it.
So can I recommend?
Can I recommend the DWM app for the app?
That's actually great because I buy them and don't take them out
of the plastic.
Yeah, I believe the subscription rate is $50 Australian for a
year.
And if you would like to read the interview with Robert Banks
Stewart, the writer of Terror of the Zigons and Seeds of Doom from
this season, that is an issue 443 because I had a quick look at
that in preparation for the podcast.
Good to know.
Well, my pick is, again, Doctor Who related not, but sort of-ish
and from my least favourite story of the season, brain of Morbius
but I really love the antecedents of this story, and one of my
favourite takes on that whole wonderful universal period of horror
which is a lovely filmmic thing in and of itself, and imbues so
much of this season's atmosphere, just as much in Seeds of Doom
actually.
Bill Condon is a director who's been around for about 20 or so
years.
He's does really nice, interesting quirky little things off the
fringe.
She did a beautiful film with Brendan Fraser.
Ian McCellen, and our very own Pamela Salem, called Gods and
Monsters in the late 90s, which is the story of James Whale, and a
young man he met called Brendan Fraser.
And it's mostly shot around a swimming pool.
The director of Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, and it's
set around the filming of Bride of Frankenstein.
It's just a beautiful story of old Hollywood and introduces a very
young Brendan Fraser, who is delightful in the part.
And yes, we have Pamela Salem as James Wales wife.
A lot of odd things, gods and monsters, it's called.
I saw it at a, at its premiere in Sydney at one of the film
festivals, and I asked Bill Condon, who was a sort of early
archetype of the hipster set in tweed jacket and big bushy beard
and he was very comely, and I asked him out afterwards.
I said, what are you doing after this?
And he said, queen of the Jews.
And I said, no, it's just a trick of the light.
But that was the film he made next.
I don't know if it ever got released.
That's all the time we have for this season.
We will be back next week, but doing something slightly different
and Richard's talk of antecedents is actually what's inspiring us
next week, to have a look at the Avengers episode, the man eater
of Surrey Green.
As a drink listener.
So you have a week to track yourself down a copy of the episode.
It is available as part of various series 4 Avengers sets.
They're available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon UK.
It is actually on YouTube.
It is on YouTube. entirety, and I will put a link in the show
notes so that you can prepare for next week's episode by watching
it.
There we go.
Uh, because uh, Many believe that it has some very strong links to
the seeds of doom.
So we'll be exploring that as well.
The week after that, however, we will be back on with the Mask of
Man, Dragara, and Todd will rejoin us again for season 14.
Until then, please check us out on Flightthrough Entirety.com, at
FTE podcast on Twitter, and Flight Through Entirety on Facebook
and iTunes, and we would like to thank the listeners who have left
us reviews so far.
We now have an aggregate iTunes rating.
So thank you very much for that because you need a minimum amount
of reviews for that.
So thank you all of those of you who have left reviews so far.
Until next week.
Do take care of yourselves, and remember, no touch, Todd, could be
dangerous.
Good night.
You've been listening to Flight 2 Entirety with Nathan Bottomley
Brendan Jones and Richard Stone.
This episode, playing it straight, was recorded on July the 11th
2015.
The next episode will be released on September 6th.
Have you listened to Bondfinger yet?
Or are you yet to come to the Bondfinger website?
That wasn't an innuendo.
I'm going to go.
I see you next week.
Well, I'm sick of being trapped in my time, Bubble.
So I'm off to the Mandraggera Helix.
They've promised me a way to get back to earth in time for season
14.
Let's see if I make it.