Not Sufficiently Executed Enough
It’s time to bid a fond farewell to Lis Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, and what better way to do that than blowing her up, hypnotising her, sticking her in an exploding nuclear reactor and dangling her over the edge of a precipice in The Hand of Fear? Till we meet again, Sarah.
Buy the story!
The Hand of Fear was released on DVD way back in 2006. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
Fans of Bob Baker and Dave Martin’s tendency to run out of ideas will enjoy K9 and the Time Trap, one of four K9 adventure books written by Dave Martin and published in 1980.
Here’s a picture of Judith Paris playing Elizabeth Siddal in Ken Russell’s Dante’s Inferno (1967).
Florana is the beautiful planet that Pertwee persuaded Sarah to visit on holiday at the end of Invasion of the Dinosaurs.
Outland (2012) is a six-part ABC comedy series written by John Richards and Adam Richard, about a group of gay SF fans, full to the brim of hilarious Doctor Who references. John Richards is also one of the hosts of the Splendid Chaps podcast, which reflected on the history of Doctor Who in the lead-up to the 50th anniversary.
Follow us!
Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll drop you off in a street somewhere in Aberdeen with nothing but a stuffed owl and a labrador for company.
Bondfinger
The Flight Through Entirety vanity James Bond project continues with Bondfinger, our commentary podcast on the James Bond films. We have already done two commentaries: From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962), with more on the way. You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news — including an upcoming commentary on Goldfinger early next month — on Twitter and Facebook.
Episode 45: Not Sufficiently Executed Enough · Download (49.9 MB)
Transcript
Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety the only Doctor Who podcast. You're sick of being cold and wet and hypnotised, left, right, and centre, savage by bug eyed monsters, never knowing if I'm coming or going or being. And boy, are we sick of that Sonic screwdriver. I am Brendan. I'm Nathan. Are you all right, darling? And I'm Todd. And I'm worried about you, though. Are you okay? I'm fine. I just want my hair washed and to feel human again. And it's not for a lack of shampoo. for a lack of hair. We are onto one of the most memorable stories of the run of Doctor Who. It is the most recent story shown on, in his most recent classic Doctor Who story shown on BBC 4, in fact. It is the hand of fear. Well, this one's mine, and it's terrible, isn't it? It really, really is totally bad. Can I just say, the script falls through from Dougie Campfield to write out Sarah Jane Smith? So, oh, I know, we're going to go to our dynamic duo of Bob Baker and Dave Martin. They're going to be great to write out Sarah Jane. So Dougie Campfood was going to write the script. Is that the story? writing a script that involved Sarah dying in the end. She's going to be killed off, some sort of... That was a terrible idea, though. Yeah, it was called, it was called the Red Fort, and it was going to be based around the French Foreign Legion. It was initially thought to be the finale of the last season. They were thinking about writing Sarah out in that story. And then, you know, they were thinking about mulching her in Seeds of Doom. Were they really? Yeah. That, that, that's part of the reason the mulchers in the script. They were going to mulch. They were going to mulch Sarah Jane. Why do people like him? Well, that's the thing. I think once they realised once it's like, hey, let's have a multure in there. Hey, let's put the compa- Oh maybe not. No, they could have done the alternative, which was actually to turn her into the crinoid and force the doctor then to blow her up with it. With the airstrike. Oh, really? I mean, they're not going to kill Sorenson in Planet of Evil mulching Sarah might be a good idea. That really frigging annoys me. I don't get to say it. It annoyed us as well. Don't worry. We mentioned it. Instead, with the red fort. I can't remember if there was even going to be an alien influence. It may have just been a historical, but Sarah was going to die at the end. The French Foreign Legion were going to sort of give her a full military funeral with honours for fighting alongside the Legion and the doctor was going to leave alone because, you know, this is a fun family program. Thanks, Dougie. But this script, this script had been around for a while as well. Yeah, yeah. And also had, I think, the brigadier from the future or something sacrificing himself. It was it was also going to be like 6 parts. Castria was called Omega 3 or Omega 3, and Bob Holmes had to point out to these writers that there's a character called Omega. Omega? Oh, my God, whatever, who they actually wrote it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not only that, when Dave Martin comes back much later to write 4 canine kids books, he's got a villain in that who's this tall guy in a mask and a cloak called Omegon. Omegon, brilliant. That's his brother, actually. A little known figure in Time Lord history. So back in the 70s. You know, Bob Baker and Dave Martin wrote some decent things. I, you know, Clause of Axos is all right, I suppose. They were kind of accused of having too many ideas and not developing any of them, remember that? But here, that got no ideas at all. There's really, really nothing going for this. So it's set on Earth, at least in theory, but this version of Earth consists of a quarry, the most underpopulated hospital you've ever seen, and a nuclear power plant. At no point are we anywhere in anything recognisable as Earth, as far as the people at home are concerned. You know, the quarry has the most lamentably poor security procedures you've ever seen. Sarah gets dug out, you know, clutching the hand. She's carried off by 2 of the most leisurely kind of slow moving paramedics in television history. She gets taken to a deserted hospital that consists of, you know like a corridor, um, and really that's about it. 3 flats, you know reconstructed for like 2 different sets, one with, is it Rex? Yeah, Rex Robinson's back. And he's lovely. He's Gebek. He is lovely. Tyler. But I agree with you completely, Nathan. It's like this cliche little set piece to get from here to here to here to get to the nuclear power station. Nothing is real. It ties into what I was saying in the last podcast that Sarah Jane has become not a real character. We're not really in a real situation. It's just for moments and nothing much more than that. And Bob Baker and Dave Martin. My god. I have this theory, and the theory is they write 2 good episodes of Doctor Who, a season, you've just got to find them among the 4 or 8, you know? Thank God in the next season. That's all I can say. But they're just... Philip Sandafar has this theory that people's television careers see them gradually get worse at writing for television. as television evolves. Do you know what I mean? So someone who's quite a good writer in the early 70s is not quite so good a writer, sort of later on. And certainly these later Doctor Who's that they do are pretty terrible. But this, I think, oh, well, there's underworld next year. But this, I mean, this is really, really bad. There's no characters to speak of. You know, there's Dr. Carter, who is very charmingly played by Rex Robinson. You know, he's really very likeable, but he has nothing to do. And all he's there for is to plummet to his death. I mean, what a horrible, horrible thing. Well, he gets some nice lines with the doctor doing the exposition about the nature of the hand. But yeah, but then he grabs a big rubber spanner and sort of lunges at the doctor and falls off a catwalk. And that's really terrible and awful, you know, why does that happen? And then you get Professor Watson, you know, he's basically our only other human character, and he's just a sort of base commander but it's also undeveloped that really nothing very much can be, you know, said about him either. So it's really thin. There's hardly any guest cast at all. I mean, you've got his assistant woman up in the control box, which I think is the director's wife, and they had to develop that character, which was originally a man, and they made it into a woman. Thank goodness there's a woman. It's Ms. Jackson. She's fabulous. Yes, yeah. And then there's that unfortunate dude whose name I can't think of at the moment. Driscoll? Yeah, who goes into the nuclear reactor. He's got great pants. Okay, I'm just gonna jump in here and say, I really like this one. We haven't finished. I'm not finished. Okay, I'm just, I'm just foreshadowing, so carry on. I need to go back to episode one. Yeah, right? Because I hate the Andy-Pandy outfit. It is one of my least favourite outfits on Sarah Jane after a season where I think she's looked dynamic. I just want to just go, ah! But Rex Robinson actually has some dialogue in there about how crummy it is. Remember, he's on the phone and she's escaping. She's wearing a pink overalls thing. Yes, yes, like Andy Pandy. Like someone has clearly snuck that into the script after seeing the costume that she's been given. Well, I think she's had some really wonderful outfits. I love terror of zigons, that the green thing. The green thing is great. I really like the little blue outfit in evil. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. with the scallop sleeves. Yeah, dress in Pyramids of Mars. I adore the pink thing in Android invasion and she looks fantastic in the last story and in Seeds of Doom. I'm not a big fan of Brain of Morbius, but I think, you know, what the hey. I thought I liked that. I think you did like that one, but, you know, I just think this is one of her worst ones. And I kind of looked at it and I kind of thought, what is that? And she puts some of that white thing later on in the story. And even as a kid, I went, that's a Joe Grant thing. It is. It's actually Katie's coat from the Green Day. It is Joe Groundsco. It is the original. But can I go back to the beginning and it's like, you know, poor Sarah Jane Smith. Since the Android Invasion, she's been giving us lists of everything that she's been put through, like in the Android Invasion, like she just, like, we're either going to burn up in the atmosphere, suffocate, be crushed to death, in the brain of Morbius. I've fallen out a flight of stairs, menaced by a huge claw and blinded. Then in the seeds of doom, I think it's going to be blown up, shot minced machine, managed by the crinoid, you know? And now here, we walk out into the quarry and the whole wall, the whole side of it just blows up and she's buried alive. Even the doctor's not buried alive. She's put through another trauma and later on in the story, she gets the gas at her. She almost falls down some huge crevice, you know, she's going to walk into a nuclear reactor. You know, this poor woman. Poor, poor woman. And this is what we've been saying. The fact that she doesn't really respond to any of these things beyond sort of vaguely bitching about them makes her less right real as a person. But, I mean, this is in an environment where nothing is really real, I think. But I'll say this. I love Elizabeth Staten, and I just think she does a wonderful job despite these unreal situations to try and give this character believability. Let's move beyond Sarah in the setting and let's actually talk about the aliens. So we actually open on the planet Castria, which is very cheaply realised. It's a couple of people in anorax growling and shouting doing Stephen Thorne impersonations. Yeah, it's so cheap that one of them is Roy Skelton. Oh really? They only have one set of gloves for the costumes. The other one actually has to have mittens, so you don't take pants. And it's really just the most involved way of executing someone. I don't know. Can you not shoot a castro in the head or something? Or just electrocute them? And it's 5 minutes. Like I actually sit there going, 0 my goodness, this is still going on. Like in a new series, this would be a pre-credits. Yeah, take 20 seconds. Yeah, yeah. So they have to shoot him into space and then explode him by remote control, even though they've got no power and no resources and the whole planet's falling to pieces. Yeah, and you know what? Planets falling to pieces. We find out later they know their planet's dying anyway. Why did they have to shoot him off into space? Why not just blow him up on the surface? So this is another thing too. It is one of the things that Holmes does during his tenure script editor, is introduced just any number of villains who are criminals from the past. And so last year we had Morbius, who was not sufficiently executed enough by the time laws. Now we have Eldrad, who's not sufficiently executed enough by the Castrians. We've had Soutec, of course, who was not... who wasn't executed. Cuted enough by sirens. And we are actually going to have coming up in the end of the series just for change, a criminal from the distant future instead of the distant past. So this is something that happens over and over again. And here it's so much like Morbius that it is just completely lacking in sort of inventiveness or imagination, I think. Now, Richard hasn't commandeered Todd's time bubble, but he has sent me a text. He wants me to mention, which is, of course, we have another transgender character in Doctor Who in the form of Eldrad. You know, that's like I like Judith Paris as the monster. And I don't like Stephen Thorne because his costume is terrible and it's Stephen Thorne and he just shouts and he's completely one node. And they even address it in the dialogue of, like her, couldn't stand him. Yeah, yeah, but did you think that that was odd at the time as a child? You know what I mean? I would have had no experience at all with trans people back then. It didn't strike me as strange. As a child. It didn't strike me as that, you know, you did have David Bowie and Ziggy Stardust and that sort of androgynous sort of look, and that's where I think as a child, I kind of thought that's where Judith Paris took it. They treat her voice, don't they, to lower her? Yes, yes. But to sort of say that it's a trans thing. Like, that's very, like, taking what is very relevant now. and putting that back onto what was then. They would never have gone into that thinking that this is going to be a trans person or anything like that, you know? I mean. No, but it's much like, it's much like the relationship between um between Giuliano and Marco. The trans community did exist in the 70s, but was far less visible than it is now, just like the gay community lesbian community whichever rainbow community you want to mention. But I think a very telling thing here, of course, is that Eldrad is quite surprised by his new form when he is the Judith Paris Eldrad. So there is an element of being trans in there because one of a definition of trans is when your body gender does not conform with your internal gender and 21 out there who is trans and if I'm getting the terminology wrong, I do apologise. But yeah, I think for Doctor Who to do that, especially when today we still have all these violent or vehement debates about whether we could have a female doctor. You know, for me as a kid, Eldrad changing gender wasn't a weird thing because the doctor had changed face. So why can't you change from male to female? I didn't necessarily find it a weird thing? It was just a monster thing. And I thought, oh, that's original, that's a twist, that's different, you know, that's the way I saw things, you know? What do you think is the purpose behind it? It is a bit strange. I mean, she's supposed to like have modelled herself on Sarah. Yeah. I mean, it at least gives us a war. Yeah, I think I think it's the whole woman thing and I think it is a twist on the thing. Oh, everybody's going to expect that it's a man. Because it always is. And this time that's the twist. And I think that's why they did it. But I do take it now that if somebody who is trans, who might be very young, like, you know, I'm talking in their teenage years, to watch a show like this now to see this sort of thing, maybe that's something that, you know, they would identify with or, you know, go oh, wow, you know, look at this. Obviously at the time, something never crossed my mind. Oh yeah, and you know what? I am reasonably sure that Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes had no idea of that possible, possible connection with it. But yeah, I think it's a very good decision for the show because we've had one trans or gender queer character before in the form of Alpha Centauri, who is identified as having no gender, but has the voice of the feminine gender. Oh, he gets he gets masculine pronouns. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So there's a sort of trans element or gender queer element there. Not only does Judith Paris give a great performance, but there are elements of both gender in her performance as well. Tom absolutely adored her, and you can see that he cannot keep his hands off her. He's constantly carting her around. He's constantly touching her. I've never seen a picture of her outside of the makeup. That's right I'd really love to know actually what she looks like but I think the performance is absolutely stunning and it's what saves the middle part of this story, in my opinion, her performance. and the connection that she begins to have with the doctor and with Sarah. and how manipulative the character is, and it has to adapt to its situation to get what it wants. And that's one of the aspects of this story that I really, really like. There's one beautiful shot of her, where she's in the TARDIS, and they've just landed on Castria, and the doctors opened up the scanner, and she's standing in front of the scanner, but you can't see, like she's just in front of the scanner, all that you can see is her standing in front of that sort of miniature blasted landscape. And I think it's, you know, really well framed. In fact, one of the things this show does have going for it is, of course, it's Lenny Maine, who's directing. And there's a lot of film work and particularly the film stuff when Sarah and Driscoll are both possessed wandering around the nuclear reactor. And it's like there's some kind of fisheye lens or something and it's shot in really uncomfortable close-ups and it really makes a character who, you know, we're normally reassured by in Sarah really quite sort of alien and disturbing looking in those scenes. So there are moments of good direction, I think. No, I agree with you. I think the direction saves a lot of this. at times I don't know whether it saves it. Well, it holds it together when it should be just falling to pieces, you know? I can forgive this story a lot. Probably by Judith Paris' performance, knowing, in hindsight, it's Elizabeth Sadden's final performance. Except it's not, though, is it? We get her for years and years to come. But at the time. at the same time. Those last minutes in the show. Well, before we come to that, though, can we talk about how terrible Castria is? Well, can I just say how terrible Castro is? What a boring place it is. The set's really terrible. It is, again, no, because Leisure Grotto with a bottomless pit. We defeat Eldrad by tripping him with the doctor's scarf so that he falls into a pit. It really is just terrible. And Stephen Thorne's trip is terrible itself because he doesn't trip. He steps over it and then they just cut to him falling down. And then they throw the doctor throws the ring down after him. I mean, that makes a hell of a lot of sense guys. So, I mean, all of that's kind of terrible. But I want to step back for a minute and hear Brendan's spirited and full-throated defence of this story. Really? Yeah. That's another thing. The hand in the box, is that modelled after Stephen Thorne or somebody else? Oh, I don't know. I suspect it's modelled after one of the visual effects crew. It doesn't look like Stephen Thorne's hand. It doesn't look like Judith Paris's hand. Thorne has 6 fingers on each hand. Did you know that? Yeah, yeah, I did. Yeah, he got one of them from Reg Whitehead. But I'm just saying if Eldred's normal form is a male, shouty like Stephen Thorne, should it look like him? Shouldn't a hand look like him, not something completely different? It's sort of a man's hand. Do you know what I mean? And by then we haven't seen Stephen Thorne, so... I think one of those... The thing, the problems with his is the fact that Stephen Thorne never saw Judith Paris in studio. They never saw each other in the studio. Yeah, of course. It was only at the rap party dinner that they actually saw each other. So you were me, darling. And I kind of think that's... I think that you were me. I think that's a mistake. Yeah, they should have been discussed on to have a look to see what she was doing. Because I actually do quite like... He could have picked up some acting tips from that. But I do quite like the fact that when he comes out of the regeneration thing he talks about, he goes, doctor. Sarah. I always like it when the baddies, you know, have a connection with, you know, the companion, you're like, you know, that's kind of nice, but go ahead, Brendan, defend away. You know, I want to hear it. Okay, as I said, I quite like the story. So we arrive on earth. We are now in timeline number two. Todd, you haven't heard our Pyramids of Miles podcast yet, but suffice it to say I've solved the unit dating problem, and Sarah is now slightly in the wrong timeline. Moving on. So we have the whole quarry accident. Quarry falls on Sarah, et cetera, et cetera. I like the scene in the hospital. Yes, you know, it's very sparsely populated. But I love the doctor's scene with the doctor in the hospital and the whole discussion about, oh, Gallifroy. I haven't heard of it. Maybe it's in Ireland. I think that's the 1st time we get the island gag. He's a terrible actor, that guy. No, I think he's very good because to him there's nothing extraordinary about what is happening. No, no, no, no. The dialogue is fine. The actor is not good. That's all continue. Thank you, Mr. Beal. Moving on, you know, we then get Rex Robinson, who is, of course fabulous. And yeah, I love the idea that the doctor has just grabbed, you know, your everyday pathologist in a hospital and introduced him to the idea of silicon life. Yeah, I'm not saying this is a brilliant story by any means. saying I like it. We go to the Nunton power complex, and I think they missed a trick there by not having the Newton power complex from the claws of Axos kind of drawing at full circle there. I really like Glenn Houston's performance as the director there. I like his interplay with Miss Jackson. I even like the cliche thing of calling home and kiss the children for me. Kiss the children for me. It is really cliche. It is really cliche, but he performs it so well. It's not histrionic, and I know he's a bit of an idiot, you know shooting at Eldred and not listening to the doctor and blah, blah blah, but he's also a genuinely heroic character in that he's facing down his death. He demands that everyone leaves. You know, someone has to stay in case things can go on and Miss Jackson tries to say he's like, no, you have to go as well. And then he has the moment calling his wife. It's a very heroic moment because it's not about comforting himself. It's about comforting the people around him and thankfully he survives at the end. You know, if he had been killed by Eldrad. I think that would have been even worse than Sorenson surviving. I don't disagree with you. I actually agree with you on this. I think that I actually like his performance. and I like all those things that you've commented on. We've got Judith Paris, of course, and her wonderful interplay. Yeah, she's got the great interplay with Tom, but you've come to expect Tom to have a really good interplay with the villains. Like Tom always seems to step up his game a bit in the villain scenes. What we get here that we don't really see elsewhere is Sarah getting really strong interplay with the villain. In Doctor Who stories, where the villain overtakes the companion's body or bases himself on the companions form, say, look at New Earth. There's sort of lots of commentary from Cassandra in New Earth about the eccentricities of the body and whatnot. Whereas Eldra just goes, oh, you know, it'll do, I suppose. I have to slub it. The thing I really like. The crux of it is, you know, when they meet Morbius, they taunt him and then push him off a cliff, and when they, when they with Stigren, they taunt him and, you know, flip him into a virus, and they're always taunting the villains. But in this situation. They get 2 episodes of the villain being like another companion. That's something new. You know, all the things you said that are wrong with the story the uneven pacing, cliche, the lack of focus. I agree that they're there. But as always, what Bob Baker and Dave Martin do is they bring a new idea. And it's not necessarily the best fleshed out idea. You know, we've just had Louis Marx giving us a great historical runaround and before that, we had Robert Banks Stewart. Yeah, it's certainly not as good as those other 2 stories. But that idea is intriguing. I'm glad Doctor Who don't do it all the time, but the idea of a villain coming along. Kind of coercing, but not really coercing the doctor. The doctor's still happy to help in a fashion. The idea of a villain coming along as a companion is very interesting. And the story leads and builds to that. And then we get the traditional villainy comeuppance at the end. No, I think it's really good. Okay. So I think I agree with you on all that you've said, like in terms of those positives in the story. And I really do like that, which is why I forgive this story a lot. I see all of its negatives and I do like it. I like the teaming up with the villain. I think that is good. But what we do need to talk about is the final scene. So we've had, we have a moment where earlier on, I think it must be episode three, where the doctor is going into the complex to meet Eldred and Sarah follows him. And the doctor's not very demonstrative. You know, in fact, a lot of the time he's really distant and he doesn't show much affection towards Sarah. He's a little bit like Capaldi and Jenner, I think. Do you know what I mean? You don't actually see, there's no physical affection between them. He's frequently kind of short with her and things. But there is, there's that little moment where they say that they worry about each other. You know, I worry about you and she says, well, I worry about you. And that's, you know, as close as we get to them kind of expressing how much they love each other. And it is that thing, you know, I've said that it's essentially poor writing that Sarah has kept following him into the TARDIS. But within the show, it is because she really likes him. And she's the longest serving companion. Is she definitely the longest serving companion? Distance. Yes. from her start to her end. Yeah, in terms of episodes? No, no. Yeah, yeah, it's still... Fraser Heinz has more, yeah. Yeah. Janet might have more time because there's a big gap between... Moncopolis in season 19. And Castraval. Right, right. But and she had a very short gap between her 1st and 2nd season too. L years. I really, if you go with 3 seasons +2 on, yeah. that is more. And, you know, since the 60s, you know, she's done more than Joe She's been here for a long time. She's, you know, introduced us to Tom Bacon. She was the 1st companion I ever saw. And so, remember, Brandon got a bit emotional when Pertry left even as we were discussing it. And I said at the time, that never happened to me when the doctor changed, but it always did when the companions changed. And this was the first time that I had ever seen that happen. And I was inconsolable. And this time I held it together, because I know that she's, she goes on, she'll be back in the 5 doctors and venture, we are lucky enough to have her for, you know, the Sarah Jane adventures for all those seasons. So we know that this isn't the end of Lee Sladen's time as Sarah Jane Smith. But it is a pretty good scene. It's a tremendous scene and I remember as a kid, as this was unfolding, I was just there going, this isn't happening. I was like in my own self and I was trying to hold back tears. I was blubbering, like, you know, and I went to bed, just distressed, and I remember having dreams, rewriting the end of this so that she would not leave. Like I was that devastated by the whole thing. convincing myself that next episode that there'll be some rewrite and somehow that he'll go back and get it. I just couldn't cope with it. She does overact a little bit in it, and it is partly because the character is bunging it on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So she lists all the terrible things that have happened to her and she's going to leave, but she's just waiting for that Florana moment, isn't she? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Florana or cassiopear? Yeah. And it just doesn't come. And Tom is, again, it's hard to imagine like David Tennant not hugging or mugging or, you know, all of those kinds of things, you know, because he's so demonstrous, but Tom, like Tom even just does this sort of monosyllambic bye, you know, as she walks out. And then we get the, you know, remember me, don't forget me, and I won't forget you, but he doesn't really overtly show very much affection towards her at all. But that doesn't mean I think that it's not there. No, no, absolutely. I mean, especially sort of as she as she goes towards the door, he can't look at her. You know, he puts on his coat. Eddie, he turns up his collar to block his view of her. You know? The turn up collar would become a thing for him later, but he's never done it before. And yeah, I think it's the whole thing of I'm going to look very intently at the console now, so I don't have to watch you go. He only turns around when she speaks again. Yeah. So I'm getting emotional again. Yeah, no, I can see it. I can see it. It is, it's, look, it's not quite as devastating a moment as Joe No, no. Which is weird because in a way, it's it's sadder because it's not her choice. Or his. Or he is, I mean, in a way, yeah. Yeah, it's sadder in that way. But at the same time, it's also more hopeful because even though it's not her choice, she accepts it and we kind of know she's got a life to go back to, in Aberdeen. In Aberdeen, in Aberdeen, 2 years out of time, yeah. And it's, um, she mentions Harry and the brigadier. I think it's so, it's so funny that, you know, the brigadier hasn't been in the show for a year, but he's still mentioned, and you still mentioned all the way up to this and then no more. Yeah, yeah. Same with Harry. We'll never get another mention. But I'm talking about the brigadier. Yeah, yeah. It's been, you know, although it hasn't been in it for a year. He, you know, since the web of fear or whatever. you know, that that long, that grounding back to earth, that connection with the audience, which has been whittled away piece by piece is now gone. I won't attempt it again. Will they? It's going to be a very long time before we get a companion from contemporary earth. We won't. And I think it's going to have a bigger impact on the show and it's success in terms of ratings, then we realise at this point in time. That impact is not there yet, but it's about to be. Yeah, yeah. Talking about the impact of this, just moving way, way, way forward. One of the inspirations for flight through entirety was the podcast Splendid Chaps, which part of the creative team behind that was also behind the ABC series outlanded, which is about a group of gay science fiction fans, including Christine Anou as a lesbian character, whose girlfriend, played by Roz Hammond, comes over at one point during a meeting to collect her stuff because they've broken up. The stuff Ross Hammond has is all the stuff that Sarah Jane has when she leaves the Tartars. Oh, like a stuff. She's got a stuffed out, a pot plant, a yellow mac, and a tennis racket. And you know, I've never seen the show. Her hair is done like Sarah Jane, and I'm pretty sure there's even the line in there of Don't Forget Me. Yeah. And it's very, it's very much observed. It's Adam Richard and Co. and he's a big Doctor Who fan. Yeah, so, you know, that's the impact, that's the impact of this scene. It's the impact of Sarah Jane. You know, if you ask people, if they remember Doctor Who from their childhood, they're going to remember Tom Baker, maybe John Pertwee, but they're going to remember Sarah Jones Smith. Well, dear, so before we get too emotional, we're heading off into that undiscovered territory that Nathan and Todd were just talking about, we don't have contemporary Earth companions, and indeed, in the next story, we don't have any Earth characters at all. I'll be taking over the discussion of deadly assassin, regarded by some as a massive classic. It's very sweet how hopeful you are. Yes, I agree. And as you can see by some, perhaps not. Do find us online at flightthroughentirety.com, flight through entirety on Facebook and iTunes and FTE podcast on Twitter. And if you check out bondfinger.com. We have 2 commentaries available, one for Dr. No and one for from Russia with love. Also, Bondfinger on Facebook, Bondfinger on iTunes and Bondfinger cast on Twitter. Until then, thank you very much for listening and good night. Good night. See you soon. That one's flat your entirety with Todd Beeley, Nathan Buttonley and Brendan Jones. This episode, not sufficiently executed enough, was recorded on Sunday, the 2nd of August. The next episode will be released on September 27, 2015. If Eldred wanted to be hailed as king of nothing, he could have just become Australian prime minister. Two different sets, one with, is it Rex? Who's Rex Harrison? Rex Harrison's back. You know? A radiology department. Oh, sorry. It's not Rex Harrison. Oh, X Robinson. We'll do that again. put that on the credits.
