What am I saying at the beginning of this one?
What am I saying on any of this?
You're not.
There's a scrolling thing that just comes down.
People have to actually listen to that.
Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flightthrough Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast coming to you live through the
Amplified Panatropic Computer Net, which, as we all know, is made
of a series of tubes and cats.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
And I'm Todd, and we are here today to discuss the deadly
assassin.
What other kind of bloody assassin is there?
I hate that Titan.
There's a deadliest asset, or there's a crap one.
Correct, Brendan.
I think pop homes in an interview later did actually say that
there are incompetent assassins.
Yeah, I mean, it's not quite a tortology.
It is better than the dangerous assassin.
Yeah, which was the working title.
I don't care. beginning of my irritation with many aspects of this
story.
And thankfully, it's mine.
I want to start off with one of the criticisms that's been
levelled at this story.
For those of you who haven't seen the deadly assassin, probably a
good idea for you to watch at first.
So we have the 1st story completely set on the Planet of the Time
Lords, which we now know is Galafre.
We had, of course, previously seen the Planet of the Time Lords in
the War Games.
Last episode of the War Games, and also intermittently in the 3
doctors.
But this is the 1st story entirely set there.
Now, what a lot of fans say about this story is that it changes
what we know about the time lords.
It presents them as a very insular, very stagnated society, sort
of there's lots of ornate people in robes flowing about and being
quite ineffectual.
Really, it was 1st posited in an issue of the celestial toy room
in an article by then President Jan Vincent Rudsky, who also
appears on the DVD for the deadly assassin on the making of, giving
his reaction to the story.
Personally, I don't see a problem with presenting the Time Lords
in this way.
Because what we have been previously told about the time lords and
what is even further defined here is that the time lords are an
insular isolationist society.
And remember, part of the reason that the doctor was an outcast is
because he went out into the universe, which they're not meant to
be allowed to do.
And the doctors already said is when he was Patrick Trout.
You know, he was quite bored by the time lords.
And a homogeneous isolationist culture would stagnate.
I think that homes more than anyone else defines the doctor
against the forces of rules and bureaucracy and staleness, you
know, as early as the crotons.
The crotons have the procedure that has to be obeyed.
And I think it's homes that pins that down as the thing that the
doctor is opposed to.
And so naturally when he gets his go at creating the time lords
they're hide bound and stuffy and tied down by procedure.
So, I guess it's natural that that's his take on the time lords
rather than, you know, the game show hosts of the 3 doctors or the
or the incredibly terrifying and powerful, you know, Terence Dix
version of the uh, of the time lords in in the war games.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't think it's irreconcilable with either of those 2
examples.
And I think Robert Holmes actually takes a little bit of care with
that.
You know, because when we've seen the time lords before, We've
just sort of briefly flashed to their planet and just seen a
little bit of it.
And it's kind of like when you get a program like, say, House of
Cards or the West Wing, when you see President Bartlett delivering
a speech, it's very different to when he's in the Oval Office
discussing something with a member of his staff.
You know, what we're seeing in this story is behind the scenes of
the time lords.
And that's something I quite like about it.
But I just wanted to get that out of the way 1st because it's one
of the big talking points about this story and we'll certainly
come back to it over the course of our podcast today.
In fact, nearly every, I think, modern assessment of this story is
a reaction to the review that you mentioned.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because review goes into sort of integrate detail about the fact
that there's been all of this complicated information given over
the course of the program about the time laws, and this just
flagrantly contradicts it, and where is the magic of Doctor Who?
If you haven't read this review, I couldn't find the text online
but I did find a YouTube video of a CG character saying the text.
So I'll put a link in the show notes and it's in license denied
which was a collection of fan writing that Paul Cornell put
together.
And no one has been very interested in presenting a coherent
picture of the time lords, and that's not what Doctor Who does.
I mean, you kind of think they've not been watching the same
program.
There's no coherent picture of the Daleks or the Cybermen or Units
or really anything at all.
The show, it's not Star Trek.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah.
It's Doctor Who. and so things just change from production team to
reaction.
Exactly.
You see, I don't have a love for this.
And it's because I don't have a connection to it.
It was not part of my childhood.
We didn't get to see this.
And so my galafre is the galafre from Invasion of Time.
That's...
That's my barusa.
That's my Castellan.
That's my gallifrate.
That's my set.
So when I come to this, I come to it with that baggage and that
look to it.
So I don't necessarily warm to a lot of what is presented, and how
it's presented here.
I don't have a problem with defining of the time mods and all
that.
It's more to do with what's the characters and how they're played
and that sort of thing.
It's a weird experience, isn't it?
I had exactly the same experience.
So we would go straight from the hand of fear to face of evil.
And it still works.
And then when we came a year later to the invasion of time, were
you aware, Todd, that it was like a sequel to an adventure that we
hadn't seen at the time?
I didn't know that there was this other thing.
It never existed, like it just was.
I didn't know that there was this story in there.
Because when you watch it now, of course, it's full of references
isn't it?
To the deadly assassin.
If we look at the plot, it's got a very interesting opening with
the doctor receiving the vision, you know, of being the assassin.
That is very effective and very striking.
And, of course, people kind of reference the Manchurian candidate
and certainly, there was an influence there in a way.
It hasn't been done in Doctor Who before.
So I give it those points.
So what was the call home that he received at the end of hand of
fear?
I believe that sent from the master.
Yes, exactly.
The master's bringing him there to frame him.
Okay.
Yeah.
So spoiler alert, dear list.
The masters in this one.
You know, it starts and you've got the scrolling text that stars.
Star Wars would do year later.
So I have to give them points for that, but I come into this
having had the Star Wars experience.
So it's sort of like, well, I've seen that before, right?
So that's the 1st thing that sort of doesn't quite sit the best
with me.
And also it's like, what is the background of that shot?
It's a wall with some dry ice over the top of it.
It's, yeah, it's a little bit weird, that shot.
I still like it because it tells you that this story is going to
be unusual.
And of course, we have, we have no Sarah Jane, Leela hasn't
arrived yet.
So there's no, in a way, there's no companion, but in a way, there
is, because of course, Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes didn't
really want to do a story without a companion. was Tom's demand.
So Tom demanded this.
And so they decided to do this to prove to him that it couldn't
work.
Yeah.
What a great premise for a story.
It's proved to you that it's not going to work by doing a story
doesn't work.
But wait, so we could have had 4 more episodes of Sarah Jane Smith
and then gone straight into Leila, possibly.
So that irritates me.
I'm just going to preface it to the listeners.
There's a lot of illogical things that I'm going to say here that
irritate me about this story, but it's my personal experience of
it.
So I'm just saying there's little things that begin to just etch
away at my enjoyment of this.
But please, continue.
I would argue, 1st of all, that there are companions in this
story.
They're Spandrel and Engen.
I mean, for God's sake, Engen is practically a Doctor Who
companion.
He asks lots of questions like, oh, what's that, doctor?
And how does that work, doctor?
And what should I do, doctor?
Engen's the Dottery one that's about to collapse dead.
It's wonderful.
Fantastic.
It's probably my favourite thing in this.
I love how the doctor says goodbye to him.
You know, he says goodbye, doctor, and the doctor's goodbye.
It's so good.
And of course, we've got George Pravta back as spandrel.
He's far, far better in this than he was in the Mutants.
Engen was in The Massacre, can I just say?
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
He has that going.
Yeah, it was a plot device in the massacre. that's right Okay.
There are positive things.
And there are negative things about spandral.
I love the way spandrels written in terms of he's this policeman
but he's not just gunning for the doctor.
He's willing to listen and investigate.
I do have a problem with the performance.
The performance works in this context, but the way he delivers his
lines is like it's a cold read of the script.
I do community theatre, and it's like when you do a cold reader of
the play to begin with, like, whatever you're in.
And it's like he's reading it without the commas, without the full
stops, without the expression.
He just runs his lines into each other.
And after a while, like, sometimes it works really well.
Like, I really like that.
And other times I'm just there going, oh, for God's sake, take a
breath.
Take a breath.
No, I want some expression there, please stop.
So, there are parts of this where it just begins to chip away at
my enjoyment and just begins to irritate me slightly.
Continue, brilliant.
See, see, I view that performance as being, like, a sort of hard
boiled American TV detective, you know, just the facts map kind of
thing.
But no, I see where you're coming from with that.
And in quite a bit of his acting, George Proctor can sometimes
have a sort of monotone delivery.
But I think he's very good in that.
I'm not saying it's a bad performance.
I'm just saying there's aspects of it that begin to irritate me.
So the doctor gets recalled to Gallifrey.
He has this vision of himself killing the president, but he takes
it.
From what we can see as the viewer, he fires the gun, the
president falls down dead.
Now that's shocking enough.
The idea, A, that the doctor would fire a gun because we've just
been told 3 stories previously that he may carry a gun, but he
wouldn't fire it, and we find that out in the seeds of doom.
So we see the doctor firing a gun, 0 my god, we see him killing
someone.
Oh my god.
But then he starts saying, I must get past them and warn the
president.
So we're like, hold on, what's he, and this is where the
Manchurian candidate influence comes in, Manchurian candidate
being a novel later, a film, about American soldiers being
captured and brainwashed as prisoners of war to then go back to
America and assassinate political targets.
Think of that episode where Geordie was brainwashed by the
Romulans into killing that guy.
Yes, yes.
I believe that's one of 2 episodes where Geordie wears a beard.
We get lots of faffing about from Tom and getting into robes and
whatnot, which Tom loved, of course, because like all classic
doctors, he thought about being a priest or a monk at one point.
It was a rule.
Yeah, it was actually a rule.
It was part of the interview.
Did you ever consider being a priest or a monk?
Okay, sorry, Richard Griffiths, you can't be Doctor Who.
And then we get characters like Runcible.
Runsable, fatulus.
Who is that?
Has he been in Doctor Who before?
He will be in Doctor Who again?
He will be in again.
Yeah.
So.
He's the one.
He's the reporter.
The newscast.
Okay, so we have the heliotrope of the Patrexes.
So on.
Can I just, I just want to bring up a few things there.
Obviously.
So there's a plot device where we're doing the whole reporter BBC
3 thing that we've seen before, but this time in terms of
Gallifrey, because the doctor has got no companion.
And so that we've then got all the different colours of the
academies.
I actually think J.K. Rowling must have been watching this.
No, honestly, because then she can go, well, we've got Cithern and
obviously Draco Malfoy is going to be goth.
We've got the doctor as Harry Potter.
Wait, wait, we've got oh, this one that we must not speak of
that's been erased.
The master who must be there for Voldemort.
So you know what?
I think Bob Holmes state has may have some sort of, you know, claim
claim on the whole thing.
Anyway, it's a bit of a...
If he didn't nick so much for whatever else, anyway.
Now, of course, then, going back to it, the doctor watches runs
the ball on the monitor.
Yep. and he's got to get out of the Tartars.
Yes, and okay, Todd, I'm going to just throw to you because I know
this is a point.
I loathe this.
I just think it's it's so convenient that for this season we've
got a black void at the door so the doctor can hide on one side of
the black void.
The guards can come in and then he can sneak across the other side
to get out of the actual tartars.
It just irritates me.
It's not logical, but it just irritates me.
I know it has to happen, right?
But it irritates me.
This is gonna be your refrain, this episode.
We can learn a lot about your psychology, I think, probably.
Not only that, but the doctor has a hooker in the TARDIS.
Oh, with an AH, right?
With an AH.
That's correct.
What's an H?
A water pipe.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, the doctor gets away.
He goes around, he yomps around in the Time Lord robes.
He has that wonderful conversation with Ronceble, where it runs
Bull, says her.
Weren't you expelled or something?
Some kind of fun.
In fact, Runsable's the only person he really interacts with in
the entire story.
So it is most not in the entire story.
In this 1st episode. in this 1st episode.
And so it is just basically a chase as Tom sort of, you know
evades everyone and then world building.
So we get to meet all of the main characters and find out what the
Time Lords Planet is like.
Yeah, and you get that wonderful line where Commander Hildred
reports to Spandrel that the doctor's gotten away and Spandrel
sums it up something like, so let me get this straight.
You went into his TARDIS and he managed to slip out without your
seeing him, and then you only trapped him in a building with 50
floors.
Excellent Mildred.
I think you are trying to confuse him.
He's really mean to Hillred all the way through.
But he's deservedly so because Hildred's inept.
He's such a wet fish and quite frankly, I did not cry when he got
turned into a toy at the end.
Again, Kildred is not my commander in California.
Andred, who I think is who I adore, right?
This castalan is not my castan, although I really love him.
I like Mr. Slime in Invasion of Time.
And of course, there's another character that occurs in both of
these stories.
And that's Barusa.
Barusa.
I really like the barusa in the story.
And of course, his 1st appearance, he just utterly destroys
Runcible.
Like, you didn't listen to me at school.
I talk to you now?
That's terrific.
It's the dream of every teacher to say that to a student.
Can I just say, the performance is great.
The character is great.
I like the 2nd barusa because that was my barusa as a kid
completely understand.
The other problem I have with it is I kind of think sometimes I go
through casting different shows in Doctor Who, who would I cast in
my life?
Who would I be cast as?
And I kind of look at his performance and the way he talks and I
just kind of think, I can't watch myself in a performance and
that's who I see.
Oh, yeah.
And so I just have this sort of, I can't watch him.
I just can't watch him.
It's just too sort of like, is this how I appear when I'm in class
or whatever like that?
So that's my slight irritation with that character.
And it's not logical, it just is.
Do you wear the eye makeup in class that the Lippy and I make up
that the time lords are, for some reason, affecting in this
story?
Dear listener, I just walked into that.
There's a reason why I have to have a break every season.
Why do they do that?
Why do they have the makeup?
And why didn't they put Timothy Dalton in that makeup in the end
of time?
That would have been great.
It slightly silvery, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah.
Talk amongst yourselves. thinking of Timothy Dalton.
Look, it's a good I think he's a good barusa.
And it's another good aspect to the story.
Of the main cast.
I dont think there's a weak performance.
I think Peter Pratt, when he appears with the master, is really up
against it, because he's got to talk through that mask, but I
think he's got a wonderful voice, and he gets as much expression
into the mask and moving it as much as he can.
But we're at the end of episode one now, and the cliffhanger is
also like the 3rd scene of the episode, which kind of breaks the
Doctor Who format.
And we see the doctor gun down the president.
It's less of a cliffhanger of how is the doctor going to get out
of this one.
I'm more of a cliffhanger.
What did I just see?
What did I just happened?
Now, in my opinion, the story begins to go downhill from here.
They cheat.
The reprise cheats outrageous.
The reprise cheats outrageously.
The doctor then reveals.
They insert a scene.
So you actually have someone pulling a gun in the crowd and then
the doctor shoots.
And so now we know the only reason why...
Have you actually seen that?
Oh, okay.
I'd never, I'd never noticed seeing that.
Why would you logically put yourself in that position?
I'm going to run ahead of all the guards and go up there and pull
out this gun, you know.
Why not stay in the crowd and say, he's got a gun.
It just irritates me.
I mean, it wouldn't have a story.
Not only that, but a few minutes later, you know what?
Great.
We got Bernard Horsefallback.
Longtime collaborator with director David Maloney.
Bernard Horsfall, or British Jack Thompson, if you prefer, as
Chancellor Goth.
And got says, the president died without naming his successor.
We must have an election within 48 hours.
And it just leads me to think, A, if you've got a president, he
should probably, when he retires, be replaced by an elected
official rather than then his own successor.
Secondly, okay, what happens after 48 hours if you haven't had an
election?
And he starts going on about, oh, you know, other races will be
watching and will be weak.
It's like, really?
Who's watching?
I don't understand, you know, we've had this big thing about your
isolationists and you don't interfere with other people and you've
got this massive shield around your planet and no one can get in
and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But your president is killed and it's okay.
You're not prepared for that because you're this isolationist
ideal society.
Okay, fine.
But you don't have any kind of procedure for that.
That involves catching the assassin and giving him a trial before
electing...
And why why do you have to give the assassin a trial before you
elect the president anyway?
Oh, with that, I mean, that's an objection that gets made, isn't
it, to Goth and we find out the reason?
Yeah, isn't a political reason?
It's because he wants to get the doctor out of the way and that's
the whole purpose of the assassination.
But he seems to have an argument in law because Barusa and
Spandrel kind of accept it and realise they've only got 48 hours.
No, no, no, but it isn't, it's explicitly a political decision
from Goth.
It's not a legal decision.
It doesn't have to kill it.
He has law on his side.
Otherwise he'd be challenged on it.
Then we get the whole trial scene, which, to be fair, it's made
kind of interesting by the fact that Tom Baker is drawing the yes
minister titles of all the witnesses in the box.
It's really funny though.
Yeah, it's funny because you've got Runcible, and you've got that
old guy with the hip.
With the dicky hip.
Yeah, yeah.
That's actually that's quite fun, homesy and staff.
You know, I think it is different, Doctor Who, and I think I see
it in retrospect in a lot of movies from the 90s onwards.
Like having that whole timelap sequence with them all presenting
you know, but I will criticise it in the fact that, oh, let's just
have it in my little room in my little office, basically.
And that's one of the things I have a problem with this, is that
we've got the little tiny octagonal, or whatever shape set it is
for spandrels thing.
And then we've got his little office and then I really don't like
the Panopticon. very, very narrow and small.
I never get a sense of the space.
And for me, you do get one shot, one white shot.
Yeah, with that glass...
Yeah, but and the duplicated extras who wanted to be paid more for
being...
However, I just find the whole thing quite cramped.
And for me, for what I want a galafray to be, I wanted it to be
big an expansionist and I always felt that in the invasion a time
set.
It's actually a much wider and widthier set.
And so I'm comparing it to that, which is illogical, but I wanted
more from what these sets are giving.
I mean, the whole thing is kind of modelled after, you know, an
Oxbridge college or the Vatican or something.
And so it needs to look dark and Gothic, and I think it does a
pretty remarkable job doing that with just plastic walls, green
plastic walls.
Yeah, well, I really want the, find that it does that, but I
wanted to see the outside, you know, like the, like the dome in
Castria.
Like I wanted to see that so I could put it into context.
Here it's trying to do what it's doing, what we were doing back in
the season opener, where we just had the rooms of the Renaissance
Italy rather than the whole outside.
And I think for me, this is for me.
I don't feel that expanse.
I don't feel, I just, that aspect of it just doesn't do it for
me.
I think, I mean, that's, I think, why it was so exciting when we
actually saw finally and was it sound of drums when we saw...
Well, well, Gallifray. yeah Yeah, yeah.
Maybe we needed to wait for the technology.
Because it does look great when it comes along, I think.
And I can see why it concentrates on that and it's done like that
you know?
But all the things that I praised in the masking band, Draga for
doing that and why they did it.
I'm not going to praise you.
The mask of Mandragra did have, you know, like beautiful exterior
shots of the palace and that kind of thing, which we don't get
anything like here.
But I do think given that the production isn't going to allow them
to have a giant big great hall, which is really what you kind of
need the Panopticon to be.
They do a reasonable job. of this.
I think the sets, you know, they're pretty good.
Yeah.
Can I think out one thing that I'm really irritated by this
story?
You have one thing that you're really irritated by.
Oh, sorry.
Another thing.
There's no women.
The Time Lords are just all these men.
And I just...
There's Helen Blatch.
What does she do?
She reads out the thing about Rassalon, she's the computer voice.
Yeah.
Does it count?
Well, look, we've complained and we've been complaining for ages
about Philip Hinchcliffe and Bob Holmes, production team, not
including women.
And season 12 was pretty deplorable with its 3 speaking parts for
women.
But this is terrible and there's really no excuse for it.
Why couldn't they be there?
Why?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, there's not even any female extras.
No.
I think I think the thing is, and we're going to come up against
this again, that Holmes is kind of, you know, because he does
literary pastiche, and he reaches into the past for the kinds of
stories that have been told before, and because he wants to model
this on the Vatican, and he wants to model it on a Oxbridge
colleges, which were, the Vatican is still all men, and Oxbridge
colleges were all men as well.
And so for the same reason that things get so sort of, let's use
Brendan's word problematic towards the end of the season.
It is because he'll take these literary traditions and just won't
bother to fix the problems with them.
You know, like I'm not being a social justice warrior here or
anything like that.
I'm just bored with all these men.
Do you know what I mean?
It's dull.
And the new series where you will have bunches of women or guest
casts that are predominantly women for no particular reason.
Or even when Saywood comes along or, you know, Pennant Roberts
later and just start to put women in for, you know, not for any
reason other than their 50% of the population.
You know, things improve, I think.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, The new series, when they do historical stories, there is
almost always an element of social commentary on how the times
have changed.
So, for instance, in the Shakespeare code.
Martha brings up how her skin colour may be a problem in the time
period she's in.
And in that way, it manages to address racism, without doing the
whole story about racism, but in a way that it doesn't feel
shoehorned in, it feels natural, whereas the absence of women in
this feels completely unnatural, because Robert Holmes has just
gone, oh, yes, let's have this setting without, as you say, Nathan
updating it and fixing the problems.
Another problem I have with the story is that each episode seems
to be part of a completely different story.
So the 1st episode is a political thriller.
The 2nd episode is a police procedural.
So they're collecting the evidence, slightly later.
There are some lovely moments in there and the doctor gets to be a
bit Sherlock Holmes, you know.
I can feel my hair curling.
So either I'm getting an idea or it's about to rain.
There's little charming moments in there.
We come to the 3rd episode.
Which is the episode set almost entirely inside the Matrix, which
is a real love it or hated episode.
So I'm just going to give you a few statistics about this.
First of all, it was, I believe, the highest rated episode of the
story, about 13 million viewers.
Secondly, there are approximately 54 lines of dialogue in the
episode.
Roughly two lines every minute.
That is how little dialogue there is in this episode.
That is how thin the script is.
And finally, the various geysers of goth that attack the doctor in
the matrix, so the samurai, the clown, et cetera, were actually
played by Bernard Horsport.
Was the clown burned horse?
Clown was burned at horsefall.
He says, you know, I remember getting made up and laughing into
the camera, that was very good.
Todd, was I right about the ratings?
You were, but I often judge an episode on the episode after.
Yes, because that's the impact.
And one.2 million less viewers tuned in next week.
Oh, I'm ambivalent about it.
I'm not lover or hate it.
I think it's a really, really bold decision to, because you think
of this story and you think it's a studio bound story set on
Galafray, but in fact, you know, nearly a, you know, one whole
episode is on location.
Having a virtual world created inside a computer network is
cyberpunk, you know, I mean, it's really early for that idea to
even exist.
Yeah, the problem is, though, we just end up in a quarry.
Oh, no.
No, no, I know.
It's a quarry park.
But, but, you know, it's realer than the stuff set in the real
world, because it's on film, because it's on location, because the
doctor's being attacked by things identifiable things from the
20th century or from Earth.
I think it's too violent.
I think it's incredibly misjudged.
So the doctor gets shot twice.
He tries to blow up Chancellor Goth with a grenade and seriously
injures him.
He poisons Goth, Goth catches fire, he hits him with a stick.
And then there's that notorious episode 3 cliffhanger.
And if you've seen more than 30 years in the Tartars, you know
Mary Whitehouse from the Cleanup National City.
I still see it in my mind. mind's eye.
Yeah, she, and, and, you know, she campaigned against the show in
the Hinchcliffe era.
And, like, am I wrong in my memories of the history here that when
like, Hinchcliffe gets moved off and onto Target?
And yeah, that was part of the reason.
And Graham, that's part of the reason.
Graham Williams comes on.
He's told to tone the violence down.
And Hinchcliffe, in just a massive middle finger to his successor
just blows the budget completely on this season, and particularly
on talons of Wayne Cheyang.
And so this story, it's a pivotal point in the history of the show
not because of the time lords, because who cares?
And we're better off without them.
They're terrible.
But in just the direction that the show takes, the fact that the
budget collapses and the show stops being scary and and then
eventually, like I think that there's a line, a terrible, terrible
line from here to the eventual cancellation of the show.
And I think that Hingecliffe and Holmes, who have been skirting
with being irresponsibly violent for a while, just go over the
line here.
Yeah, yeah.
And the violence is just so bizarre because we've been told that
this matrix that they're in, it can create things from your
thoughts.
And the doctor has been built up over the 70s as having these
immense mental faculties.
You know, he can survive psychic assaults.
There's the mind bending contest in Morbius, et cetera, et cetera
et cetera.
But he has no power in this area and he has to resort to brute
force.
And I think that's a huge, huge weakening of the character.
And it's not it's not really addressed.
I think the brute force is the mental... you know what I mean?
Like, I think that what we're seeing is the mental battle between
Goth and the doctor, but that it's played out in these physical
terms, you know, that's the form it takes.
It's a little bit like omega.
It's played out very crudely, though.
That's the thing.
The doctor doesn't attempt to capture or incapacitate goth.
He doesn't attempt to nullify the threat.
He attempts to remove the threat. doesn't goth create this
reality.
Isn't he in charge of it?
Well, from what the dialogue says.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Now, this is where I have a problem with this.
I didn't see this. is where you have a problem with this story.
You do not get to tell someone they can't like things, Nathan.
When have I ever accused the story of being tired?
Todd.
This is tires.
This is tiresome because I come to it from a Star Trek perspective
having watched Star Trek, where they have these people going to
these fake realities that are all in their mind and you watch the
whole episode and then it's not real.
And I loathe it.
I love it to be.
At this point in time, if you are a fan in the UK watching this
this is revolutionary.
But that's not my perspective.
What we get is we get over an episode.
Over an episode of, well, it's not really happening, right?
With all these horrible events happening, Goff is supposed to be
in charge, right?
It's supposed to be his reality.
He spends 3 quarters of an episode masked, and then the doctor
goes, oh, tell me who you really are.
So he decides, oh, yes, I'll tell you that I'm goth, right?
Up to that point, he is superhuman.
Then, the moment, science fiction cliche, that you unmask that
superhuman thing, then they're suddenly vulnerable.
He, you know, he's creating this reality.
Well, I'm going to leave the grenades here.
If it's my reality, maybe I should just make them disappear.
When I pour the poison glass of jar into the creek, Surely I would
make that disappear, right?
Yeah.
Not leave it there for the doctor to find.
And then, you know, when I do get injured, surely I could just, you
know, we'll just get rid of that wall over there on the left, and
I'll create some special medical device to heal myself.
It's all that stuff that just drives me exactly.
It's absolutely mad.
And by the end of this episode, I am so irritated with this show.
Yeah.
And that is why this is my least favourite story of the season.
It's not how the timeless work.
It's this.
And there's all this technical techno battle to set up the matrix
the data extracts, things that they go on with.
And I'm just thinking, oh, and yeah, you know what?
Much later in the show, we get Christopher Bidmead who's accused
of taking the magic out of Doctor Who.
This takes so much magic out of it.
The doctor, our magical man in the box. says that brain waves are
just electrochemical impulses.
The doctor reduces the soul to science.
Now, I am not a religious person.
I'm not really a spiritual person, but I don't think that the
doctor should be defining that.
And then we get, we get, we get all this scientific explanation of
how the Matrix works.
The doctor is a character who has managed to defeat Omega, the
most mentally powerful time lord in existence, who has a whole
universe at his disposal.
And yet, the best he can do against Goff is to try and blow him up
with a grenade.
It's like, ah, it just feels so wrong for the character.
He's taking up arms and On the one hand, you could say, oh, you
know, it's the desperation of the situation.
But, The doctor should always find another way.
I put out there that the doctor in the Matrix in this story is far
more violent than anything Colin Baker's doctor does.
I think this is the most violent the show has been.
And look, I actually find that episode pretty entertaining, I have
to say.
Oh, it's entertaining.
Oh, look, there's entertaining... action packed and stuff. know
there's a lot going on.
But it just, all those reasons why I've said just begin to just
mount up and irritate me.
And even the choo-choo train that comes at the end of whatever
episode it is.
I kind of went, oh, big whoop.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because we know what's going to happen.
It's just going to disappear because we know this is an illusory
world.
I have problems with the master's motivations in this.
Wait and get the doctor involved.
Up to this point in time, he's quite, he's quite willing to, you
know, want to take over the universe and know if the doctor dies.
Ha, ha, ha.
But here, after, you know, he's completely mentally unhinged, it's
a complete rewrite of the character.
Oh, I agree.
And when he's described, particularly by the doctor.
You know, he's described as being thoroughly evil and the
embodiment of evil.
Well, that wasn't Delgado, Delgado, used to have sword fights and
eat sandwiches and stuff.
He was lovely.
And back to what you were saying, this is going to influence the
rest of the show and what Paul Anthony Ainley has to go through in
the 1980s.
Yes.
And, you know, even in the final sequences here where the master
actually shoots them all and knocks them out.
Well, surely at this point in time, he's shrunk Hildred to nothing
wouldn't he just kill them at that point?
Like, it's just, to me, it's sort of like, you wanted to destroy
them, but no, we're just gonna stun them.
Really, honestly?
At least they don't, they don't prolong it.
And he just says immediately, no, they're just stunned.
Like we don't get to, we don't have to go, oh, you know, are they
dead?
you know.
Yeah, because he does the sort of 1930s Batman villain thing of
going, you know, no, they're not dead because you're going to
suffer when the planet explodes.
And it's like, that's the whole reason he's called the doctor back
to Gala, right?
If the doctor's premonition had been sent by the Matrix, which
could have then been, the doctor could have said, oh, maybe it's
not just electrochemical impulses, maybe there is consciousness
there.
And, you know, that's science fiction and that's interesting.
No, the masters lured him back there in order to kill him.
And that is what stops the master with the fact he's lured the
doctor back there.
So, it's the stupidest the master has ever, ever been.
You know, I think it's been...
I actually think the competition's pretty stiff.
Okay, yeah, it is, because Delgado used to get involved with these
allies and then go, oh, you've betrayed me.
Whereas in this case, the master has gotten someone who he knows
will betray him, no matter what happens, and just gone, oh, yeah
come on over here so I can have some fun with you.
It's another one of these criminals from the past.
It's another hinge of homes.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Who's back for revenge?
And we get the doctor's exile mentioned in a few things that kind
of hint to us that it's going to be the master a bit later on.
And I do like the reveal because goth calls him master.
And then we discover it the master.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, that's kind of fun.
But he is he isn't the master that we know at all.
It irritates me that the masters sort of been erased from
everything at the CIA's request.
Like to me, it's just sort of like, really?
You're going to do that?
Honestly, I thought he got in and stole his file.
Yeah, that's what I file.
You know, when he stole the doomsday weapon file and all of that.
He stole his own school reports and stuff, you know.
But then at the beginning, it says, Gallifrey Faces doesn't the
biggest sort of crisis or whatever.
And really, in the end, it's like 2 policeman pseudo-companions
commander of the guard, and a couple of people actually really do
know what's going on, and the rest of Galliprey is probably quite
oblivious to the...
No, but a big black croton head came out of the floor and nearly
destroyed the entire planet in the nearby star system.
It was a giant crisis.
No, but they're not aware of that until that point. you know what
I'm saying?
Nobody's aware of it until, well, that happens, you know?
But I mean, they rewrite it and there's that wonderful scene at
the very end with Angus Mackay's Verusa trying to decide what the
real, the real story that they're going to tell.
Yeah, I mean, that's good.
That's terrific.
You know, all that that Machiavellian politicking, which is just
the sort of cynical thing that you employ Bob Holmes to do, I
think.
I mean, I can see why at the time, fans would say that this was
you know, cutting edge.
It was like, you know, it was so different from anything else on
television, in terms of presentation and style, but I think that
I'd love, for those people out there who regard this as the be all
and indoor and really up there, to go back and rewatch it after
what Webb said and realise that it ain't all that.
I like it more than you do, I think.
And it is Bob Holmes.
You know, he is funny.
There's all sorts of reasons to dislike him, but he is a skilled
skilled writer.
He writes funny dog.
I'll acknowledge that there's good dialogue, there's good
performances.
I can see what it's trying to do.
I just, I mean, is just not there.
Yeah, they just, you know what?
The design's great.
The direction's great.
Performances are great.
The dialogue itself is great.
The plot is complete. bobbins.
The greatest threat to the Time Lords have ever faced in their
history.
Oh, yeah.
Getting sucked into a black hole by your ancient god who gave you
time travel.
No, that's nothing.
Now, that happened three times that week.
We didn't just see it.
That's true. on screen.
My favourite big, can I say, from the absolute climax is, as we
said before, this terribly unimpressive thing comes out of the top
the floor and the masters manipulating and the doctor rushes in.
And then the master ends up running after the doctor, hitting him
with the sash of wrestling.
Obviously camp way.
Yes.
It's terrific.
It's the master, it is absolute best.
The one thing I do like about the master in this.
You know, I think Peter Pratt's voice is fine, as I mentioned
before, but the one thing I really like is there's a line he gives
which implies that his mania, if you like, his obsession with the
doctor is due to the fact that he has become so deformed.
He says something to go off like, you know, once I was like you
but now in this form, and that is the only way I can imagine.
That's the only way I can accept that this is the Delgado master
because he was urbane and suave and charming, and that is where
most of his power came from, was his ability to influence, take
that away from him.
And yeah, it would lead to him being this sort of decrepit
figure.
I don't think it quite works.
But You might have to keep telling yourself, though.
I, I, I think that was the active idea they were going for.
I think they were acknowledging the past of the character.
I don't think they do it enough.
What do you think about his sausage fingers?
The gloves, the gloves are amazing.
The mask, I think, could be a little bit smaller, so it actually
looks like a skull.
But the sausage fingery gloves are very, very scary.
I think the ping-pong ball eyes are terrifying.
Yeah.
Yeah. so much more effective than Jeffrey Beavers.
Right?
Jeffrey Beavers has a lovely voice as well.
Oh, no, I think it's a great performance.
Don't get me wrong, but I think the ping pong ball eyes in this
make it that much more terrifying.
That weird final shot where you can kind of see through the
Master's Tartar's clock face.
And there's this sort of weird face and it's kind of like, is it
half regenerating or something?
Yeah, yeah, maybe maybe they're giving themselves the option of
bringing him back regenerated, but they just don't go anywhere.
I hope they don't.
I hope this is the last we see.
I agree as well.
When I watch this story, I never think that he's regenerating, but
I know that some people out there do.
There's something weird looking about him.
Yeah, he's kind of he's kind of a bit more fleshy, isn't he?
Maybe stolen goth's face.
I really didn't want to just trash this story and that's what I've
done.
You secretly like it.
It's like me and the massacre.
I watch it once a week.
Right, well, dear listener, that's all the time we have for the
deadly assassin.
Next week, I'm going to be taking us down a, uh, forest path where
we meet our new companion, Leela as played by Louise Jameson in
the face of evil.
Oh, I thought you were gonna say Little Red Riding Hood.
Until then, do check us out online, Flightthrough Entirety.com
flat through entirety on Facebook and iTunes and FTE podcast on
Twitter.
Also available on Bond Finger at the moment.
We have commentaries for Dr. No and from Russia with love, and
next Saturday.
You will be able to get the classic Sean Connery, James Bond film
Goldfinger on there as well.
You will also find Bondfinger on Facebook and Bondfinger cast on
Twitter.
Until then, may all your fingers not be sausage ones.
Good night.
See you soon.
That was Flight 2 Entirety, Todd Beale, Nathan Buffinley, and
Brendan Jones.
This episode, a hooker in the TARDIS, was recording on Sunday, the
2nd of August.
The next episode will be released on October 4th, 2015.
I do try not to flux with or change my state, but I accidentally
bought DovRule instead of Botox.
It should have stuff about like trade embargoes and stuff.
Taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems.
Oh, wait, let me put everything on airplane mode.
Oh, God, I haven't done that either.
I'd hate for us to be interrupted.
Watch my phone, my pacemaker.