Hello and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety, the only Doctor
Who podcast recorded in the place of land.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Todd, and we are on the unnamed world of the Sever team
encountering the face of evil.
So we've been off for six weeks.
We have, um, the doctor's been travelling around by himself.
He's not met Sharon from Blackcastle yet.
I don't know what that is.
He also hasn't gone back to pick up Sarah Jane. rather
inexplicably.
But, you see, this is the 6 weeks of mourning that we need.
Yes. to get over Sarah Jane.
Yeah, that's right.
And also to get over the fact that we don't have Engen.
Yeah, why wouldn't he angle with that?
Oh, well, at it, why don't we throw in Professor Rumford as well?
That'd be awesome.
In a heartbeat.
But you know what I love?
I love that the 1st shot is, in fact, the new girl.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, we're continuing a tradition here which Barry Let started
with Terror of the Autumns in that, even though we're familiar
with the character of the doctor, the meeting between the doctor
and the companion is really focussed on the companion and their
life.
And of course, here, it's taken to another level, because as you
say, Todd, what we get before we even see the doctor is a lot of
backstory with Leila.
So we know that she doesn't get along with the hierarchy in her
tribe, and we hear something horrible happened to her father.
And she is willing to sacrifice.
No, we don't.
Oh, we hear it.
We hear him see him go and do it.
But it's important.
She's being exiled from her tribe for blasphemy.
She's an atheist.
She doesn't believe in God.
And not only that, but immediately we have a connection between
her and the doctor, because of course, the doctor left Time Lord
Society, because he didn't agree with the way they conducted
themselves, and that's why Leila is being forced out of her
society as well.
You know, so it's a subtle connection, but I think it's quite
powerful.
Quite a few first in the story.
So we got the first script by Chris Boucher.
First story where Matt Irvine was in charge of the visual
effects.
He had previously just been an assistant.
First story for Pennant Roberts as director, and 1st story for the
aforementioned Leela, played by the fabulous, uh, wonderful, uh
Louise Jameson.
She is terrific, isn't she?
Yeah, right from the start.
Right from the get go.
She has that physical presence, the drawing of the knife that
Leila has, just that physicality.
And I think it's so easy to forget, when you look at this story
and the 2 after it.
Just, like, she's just there, boom.
Yeah, she just is.
It doesn't take it doesn't take a few stories to warm up or to
evolve.
Her speech patterns in the 17, just the way in which she phrases
things.
There are a few times where she'll say the odd line, I think, in
this story, where she sounds like BBC English.
You see, I love that.
I'm not saying I don't.
I'm not saying I don't, and she still does use that, right?
But at times it's sort of my ears prick up at that point.
I also think Louise just looks absolutely, she's so fit, and that
costume, I mean, that's, you know, that iconic costume that she's
in.
The terrible exploitative costume.
Well...
Okay.
I'm going to come back to that in a moment.
But it is, it is, you know, I'm glad that she has that costume as
the warrior, you know, I don't like the later one, that other
horrible, which one, which I think is much more... which is much
more exploitative than this one because there's no reason to go to
that one if you at all.
If you got the other one.
Were you going to say, Brendan, that it's equal opportunity or
exploitation?
Yes, 1st of all, like everyone else is quite scandally clad as
well.
Hello, David Garfield.
Oh, whose name?
David Garfield is Neva.
Oh, yes.
Hello, Neva.
That is a magnetic stare and performance that I remember.
I remember as a kid.
He's insane, but he's just mesmerising to watch.
But my favourite character is Tomas.
Oh, yeah, totally.
I like Neva.
Oh, not terrific.
Well, Tomas is my favourite.
I mean, and the great Who's yours, dear?
Who's yours?
Right in.
The great picture.
The great thing about having Tomas in there is the show has been
so very sexless. for most of its run.
And when I say sexless, I'm talking about romance and sexual
desire, you know.
What about Dodo?
We're not talking about the novels.
No, the elephant.
Of course, when Joe leaves, you know, she and Cliff, they're very
intimate and very personal.
Sarah never really gets any romantic overtures with any
characters.
Maybe she doesn't, does she?
Joe does once a year.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Joe. Joe quite often.
Leila has this sort of romantic frisson with Thomas very early
on.
And unlike a lot of other romantic fresons, especially with Joe
Joe quite often wouldn't realise for a little while that the guy
fancied her.
And then she'd have to try and figure out a way to let him down
gently.
Because she was always too fabulous for them.
Exactly.
Whereas with Leila and Thomas, you get the impression that there
is a mutual attraction there, but Leila doesn't want to endanger
him with her exile, you know, but warns him, you know, be careful
of Caleb.
But then on the other side of the program being sexless, because
we have started doing Bondfinger now, Bondfinger.com, check it out
I was just struck by the similarity between Leila and the doctor
meeting and Bond and Honey Rider.
Because, of course, the shot of Honey Rider is designed to be
sexual.
Can you explain that to viewers who may not have seen this shot?
Okay.
So Honey Rider in Doctor No, comes out of the sea.
James Bond sees her.
They talk.
She's a bit scared of him at first, but begins to trust him, blah
blah.
Now, the same thing happens in a way with Leila.
She's running through the forest, falls down, and comes across the
doctor and they're both quite startled by each other.
But in this, it takes out the element of sexual desire, obviously
because the doctor doesn't do that with his companions and to
quote Richard for a second.
That's why you don't snog them.
But Honey Rider in Doctor No has a sort of childhood naivety, which
you commented on at the time, Nathan.
And Leila has that same naivety with the doctor.
Now, of course, the doctor is a lot more respectful of that than
James Bond is because they're different characters.
But that scene, even at this point, which is about 15 years since
it was shot, that scene in Doctor No is so indelibly printed on
film culture that I'm sure it was a conscious thing by Pennant
Roberts to draw some visual parallels there.
You know, right down to the fact that she knows the lay of the
land and the doctor doesn't.
So straight away, we have a companion who, as well as being brave
as well as being independent, has unique skills and talents to
offer to the doctor.
And it's all in the 1st 10 minutes.
She's really smart, and it's something that Chris Boucher gets
right and nearly no one else does. that Leila quickly understands
the things that the doctor explains.
I mean, she knows how her world works.
Obviously.
Yeah, yeah.
And she comes up with clever things that she's the one who
realises there's a hole through the time barrier for Zoanna to
speak through.
She understands that the sound of the gong is going to attract the
bantomy things.
You know, she, she's smart, she gets, she gets things very quickly
and it's not gonna last, and I don't think it outlasts Chris
Boucher, actually.
Well, we'll see.
There's something too as we go on. we'll look at it.
But she certainly just wonderfully well written here.
And it is one of those things.
You know, you get introduced with 8 episodes of just terribly well
written Chris Boucher dialogue in your set.
But if Pip and Jane Baker write your 1st 4 to 5 episodes, You've
got terrible trouble.
Oh, I love Bunny Langford.
I love now.
She's wearing a lot of bronzer in certain shops.
She's orange. the rest of the season.
Dear listener, if you check out the making of on the DVD, you'll
see it could have been much worse.
Yeah, there's that terrible publicity shot of her in like virtual
black place.
Yeah, which is what they were considering.
And Louise Jameson is so wonderful because she says in the
interview there.
The 1st day where we had the shoot, I don't think the makeup girl
got it quite right. is her reaction to these shots looking like
and this is also a quote from her.
It looks like someone gave me a mug pack and then didn't get it
all off.
There's a few things in this episode that I want to talk about.
First of all, it's Tom arriving in the jungle and facing the
camera and giving that's terrible, isn't it?
Dialogue to the camera, and it goes on, and it goes on, and it
goes on.
I'm going, this is just crumbing.
It's really awful. fully directed.
Yeah, this is, this is, I think again, this is Philip Hingcliffe
saying, okay, Tom, you want to talk to yourself.
This is what happens.
I really like the jungle set.
I actually do, even with those funny pipe things coming down, you
know?
Yeah, they are a kind of corrugated pipe, aren't they?
Look, I think the sand on the floor of the studio is good and
makes it like that lifts it a bit.
It's not quite as good as the ealing set for Planet of Evil, but
it's a lot better than the television centre set for Planet of
Evil.
Yes, yes, we can split the difference.
Yes.
And one thing that I just burst out laughing and I always forget
it, is Neva's dance around the doctor, you know, with evil spirit
you know, and that, oh, I just... that has that line.
No, you're obviously a person of very superior internet.
Yeah.
If you keep shaking that thing at me.
We're both going to be standing in a smoky hole in the ground.
While he is beaming while saying that.
Well, that is part of the big theme of the story, which is it is
an anti-religious polemic, and we won't see the same sort of thing
onto a planet of fire, I think, when it's toned down, really
massively, but you have God, and God is a malevolent figure here.
In fact, you know, each tribe's god is the other one's evil one in
a sense.
Yeah.
And all of this stuff, like Neva gives a litany, which is readings
and responses.
It's like prayers in church, you know, he has various rituals, but
his religion is a cargo cult.
It's based on the misinterpretation of various technological
devices that have been left behind by his ancestors, you know.
And so he's got he's got that fantastic glove hat.
You know. hilarious.
All of that, like, and he's wearing a spacesuit draped over his
back and so on, you know?
So he doesn't understand the past and his his litany is all this
sort of distortion of, you know, historical events that he doesn't
understand properly.
And then we meet the test.
They have their own religion, which is the same kind of thing.
And here, God, it's, you know, it was originally going to be
called the day that God went mad, wasn't it?
And it's, it's God causing the conflict between the Seve team and
the Tesh.
And the word Zoanna on it.
I happen to know. comes from the Greek word, an ancient Greek word
which means to carve, and it means like a wooden, a carved wooden
figure that's worshipped as a god, like an idol.
Oh, I see.
So like the carving in the rock faces like echoing presence.
That's not very well done, is it that model?
No, but I think it's as well done as they could make it.
It's a pretty striking cliffhanger, though.
Yes, absolutely.
But this is something I find that I find really hard to buy, that
the doctor doesn't remember this, and they try and place this in
the timeline of the show, don't they?
Yeah, yeah.
I think it's in the novelisation.
I think it's Terrence Dix's novelisation, am I right?
Yes.
And Terrence places it during robot.
And so the doctor's still unstable from his regeneration, and he
disappears.
I don't think it's when Sarah is hammering on the door of the
TARDIS or something, but sometime during robot, he goes and meets
the more de-expedition, and that's when it happens.
Because it couldn't have happened with Sarah there because Sarah
would have slapped him out of it.
I don't, and possibly they would have worshipped Sarah like we
do.
So therefore I don't always, I never quite bought that as a kid
right?
It's one thing that I find a little bit ropey.
And the fact that the Sever team have had to have degenerated so
much, you know, there's this huge divide between both of them.
And it's now at this particular juncture that, you know, Zonan's
like completely losing it.
I mean, there's that shop where the doctor finds the electronic
device in the sand and like, you know, and leave us there and I
kind of think surely nobody somebody else could have found that
you know?
That's right.
All he does is move a leaf.
I know.
It sort of leads to the less credibility of the village.
And you only see part of the village.
And like, these young warriors are dying, left right and centred
by Janus Thorns every 2 minutes in episode one.
And sort of like, can you afford to kill off these people and send
this girl away?
Like, how big is this village?
Like, you know, I don't, I couldn't see it being several 100
people because we never see that.
So I kind of...
Leila kills 3 people in episode one.
Am I right?
There's at least 2 because I know there's at least two.
So she crossbows one of the guys pursuing her.
Okay, so there's three.
And then she stabs that one guy and then she sticks a Janus Thorne
and the other guy.
So she kills 3 people in the village and you're right.
It's only, and they must know them all. you know what I mean?
Like, she must kill the guy who, you know, used to, I don't know
sell meat or, you know, deliver the paper or something.
And there's this thing again in the season where we're given
scripts where it's like this room or this part of the village.
It's not you don't you're not seeing the whole thing because of
budget limitations or whatever.
So I always, I don't quite buy it, right?
which is one of the aspects of this story that for me is a bit of
a letdown.
I like the 1st 2 episodes.
There's a humour sequence with when the doctor's been harassed
with the, what are they called, those?
The water, and then that one, that one guy from the religious
giving is hell and he flicks that thing and it ends up on his army
going screaming off into the jungle.
I just burst out loud.
Top is really horrible, horribly violent in this as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, of course, Tom himself was not too happy at the moment
because he didn't want another companion.
He certainly didn't want a companion who drew the viewer's eye in
the frame.
Away from him.
That was his reason, that was his reason for disliking Leila's
costume.
He didn't like the way it drew the viewer's eye within the frame.
All credit to Louise Jemison, because she's had to come in as this
character, and Tom's not wanting a bar of it.
And for that not to appear on screen.
It actually does appear on the screen.
Yes, it does.
There is a sequence later on, I think, in this story where he says
something to Leila and they'll look that Louise Jemison. gives
him.
It's like, that ain't acting. is real.
You do see that from time to time too.
And he'll refuse to speak to her or make eye contact with her and
stuff.
I actually think, and I'm watching slightly ahead.
I actually think the doctor's treatment of Lima over the time in
the show.
It's pretty horrendous.
It's actually, he actually tells her to shut up and all these
things all the way through.
And I actually think up to this...
We don't see it yet, and I'm sort of jumping a bit ahead.
I just feel that it's possibly the worst treatment of a companion
up to this point.
I can't predict it.
Well, yeah.
But I'm getting sidetracked here.
The doctor didn't dislike Dodo.
He treads on her lines.
It's not just the worst treatment of a companion, but it's the
worst treatment of a regular castman because Tom repeatedly treads
on Leela's on Louise's lines and stuff as well.
Like, he's really, you know, he hasn't been in the show for that
long and he's really petulant and demanding and ungenerous already
I think.
The end of this episode, episode two.
I think it's Tomas's imperil.
Yeah.
So it's interesting to have not the companion in peril.
But it's also the fact that the monsters have taken the form of
the doctor's face.
Yeah, of course.
Which we haven't really touched on this, but I find it really odd
because in the massacre, Nathan, in the massacre, we had
essentially evil William Hartnell.
And of course, Hartnell wanted there to be another evil version of
the doctor, the son of Doctor Who, played by William Hartnock.
Thank God that didn't happen.
We had salamander, of course.
We've had Android Doctor Who.
We've had 2 Android doctors.
Where did we get evil Pertwe?
I would have loved to see Eva.
I would have thought Nathan you would have said we did have...
You know, season seven.
Well, no, Joe Sandwiches, need I say more?
But yeah, that's what I'm thinking. you know, this is our 2nd evil
Tom in 3 years.
No evil per tweet.
No evil per week.
That seems unfair.
That being said, I think this is this is a far better evil, Tom
and we'll get arguably 2 more evil tongs before Tom is finished.
But I can think of one.
Yes, exactly.
Moving on.
I think Tom's performance is Zoannan. is really, really good.
It has to be limited both in the fact that it's a voice, and of
course, Zoannan's a bit mad, and it's always a bit hard to play a
mad character.
It's like, do you go completely zany. do you go just a little bit
unhinged?
And he just goes a little bit unhinged.
And that wonderful bit, where the doctors put neither to sleep.
And thankfully, you know, he stops Leila cooperating and just puts
him to sleep.
But he has the conversation with Zoanna and starts getting
scared.
Tom is spectacular.
Yeah, he's really good.
As the doctor in that scene.
Yeah, wonderful.
You, me.
Us.
We.
And then we go inside the city of the Tesh.
Gosh, the Tesh are crummy, aren't they?
So the idea that we eventually learn that what's happening here is
that Zoanon, who's essentially God, has pit these 2 groups of
people against one another because he's crazy and he wants to
externalise his suffering and make everyone suffer.
And it's a very negative polemic against religion, as I said
before.
But he's been telling himself.
So Anon's been telling himself that it's a eugenics thing, that
he's trying to breed the best kind of people of, you know, like
strengthen courage.
How are the Tesh breeding?
There's no women.
We only see Leila and then Pocahontas runs through at some point
right?
And that's it.
And the Tesh, I mean what the hell are they wearing?
Those shoulder pads, their helmets.
Turquoise and magenta.
And they're just nappies, aren't they?
The pants.
I mean they're really, really terrible.
And they've got sort of yellow, you know, they've got yellow
makeup and the curtsey bowie.
God's doing it now.
It's terrible. just now. essentially how he says hello.
The thing is, I quite like their performances because I like the
sort of fage and useless gentility of them because, you know
they're all perfectly nice and pleasant, and now we're going to
dissect you with a laser.
With a freaking laser.
We get a bit of a stupid Doctor Who capture an escape.
It's not even a cliffhanger when they when they destroy the laser
with a handheld mirror.
What is the laser?
Where did the mirror come from?
Yeah, exactly.
You know, he's just had it up his sleeve.
And even if he's got it up his sleeve.
That's not where the laser's going.
The laser could be going in the other direction.
Yeah, I mean, coming in that direction, they'd be gone.
Like, it'd be over.
Well, Leila would be gone.
And then we get into part four.
Wait a sec.
Can I just mention that Leila shaves her armpits?
Well, It's a very modern woman.
A very modern tribeswoman.
Maybe that's part of the eugenics experiment.
Ah, they've bred out, aren't they?
They may have bred out female body hair.
They haven't bred out male body hair.
We can see that.
I like their story.
Sorry, dear listen.
No, no, no, terrible, terrible.
We're sort of trying to move past, you know, into part four.
There's a teshue cowards.
He looks like one of the McGann brothers.
Oh, the one who cowers in the corridor and the lights are going
off and yeah, it sort of explains.
It's aesthetic collapse, pathetic collapse winning.
Does he sort of lower himself gently to the ground?
Oh, I love that.
It's not good.
Do you remember the electrified walls?
I remember the electrified walls and being terrified of those as a
child.
And of course, the doctor kills someone by kicking that guy into
the electrified ball because he gets possessed by Zoana and tries
to attack him.
One of the things I always remember about the story was those
walls with the little cubes all the way up.
They look like chocolate...
Yeah, yeah.
And but the fact that it was like a triangular set that they just
seemed to be going around the same set and then neither gets in
there with the guns.
I always remember the guns with the big...
Those guns are superb.
That's a great prop.
But I always thought it was really ropey that we suddenly went up
into the doctor's face and then there was that bit of effect where
they walked through the wall and then there's a voiceover to
explain how they get from there to the rockets.
It is very odd when everything else has been so visual and had
such strong visuals and design.
It is odd that, yeah, that's all done with voice.
They don't even put a graphic on.
Like they could, they could put a little light, like in the Time
Warrior, where there's a light on a tennis pole.
But just something.
It's just like, oh, we need to get from A to B. We're just going
to say it, boom, go.
But then the 17, they just get in there.
They're just boom, suddenly they're, there's no, there's no scene
to see them discovering that.
And it's just, it's just a few little plot things like that that
and the Tesh that make this story sort of, after the 1st episodes
which I really love, just go downhill for the last two.
But I just realised we could have had a whole scene with the 7
team riding a tram for the 1st time.
That would have been great.
We have, however, glossed over the episode 3 cliffhanger, which we
should come back to.
So we've got, I believe it's Tom, of course.
Greg D'Paulne and Pamela.
Pamela Sailor, who are in the next story, but they came back.
They came back to reloop this and young Anthony Freeze, who won a
competition.
Well, funny you should say that, because as he recalls it, Pennant
Roberts wife was a teacher at his school, and they wanted a child
to voice that cliffhanger, because, of course, we're genetically
coded in such a way that children screaming is distressing to us.
Science has actually proven that, you know, socially coded and
it's in our DNA as well.
So, yeah, he was brought in and he recorded it once in a recording
session as a pre-thing and they were going to play it in.
And then for whatever reason, it didn't work out.
So he came to the set, and Pamela Salem and Greg DePolno were
there as well, and I had to record it again, and he's interviewed
on the DVD, and he's just like, it was amazing, you know, I was on
set with Tom Baker, and he gave me a poster to Anthony, a great
day's work from the doctor, 1876.
But yeah, it's, I mean, 1st of all, it's effective because it's
Tom sort of collapsing to his knees and, you know, you think of
his doctor as being this very upright figure who doesn't get
overpowered.
But as we've discovered, he's getting overpowered quite often in
these 1st few years.
You know, Stire knocks him down.
He's chained to the table by Stigren.
Morbius, knocks him out, and he easily looks.
So it's not that uncommon.
Tech makes him kneel.
So Tech makes him mad.
But also, we've had all these Doctor Who villains and monsters who
even when they are sort of determined, the doctor tries to reason
with them, and they do reason back with him, and it's a discussion
there is no reasoning with Zoanna.
Because Zoanna, 1st of all, won't accept the doctor's identity.
Just no, no, no, no, no.
And then start screaming, who am I?
It's so effective because it's such a different enemy and it's
such a different villain in that, you know, it's the doctor.
And then it's a child screaming.
And when the child starts screaming, all the other voices
disappear, all the other sound disappears and you just have the
child shouting, who am I?
am I?
Who am I?
And then the credits kick in.
It's so welled up.
You've got the visuals too, where you've got those 3 screens, you
know, with the projected pictures, like of Tom's face.
And you actually see Tom saying, who am I when the child's saying
it?
And it's really fabulously visual and hugely exciting.
And, you know, it'll be recycled later in Blake 7 for dawn of dawn
of the gods.
Don't want to say.
Harvest of the gods, Dawn of Chiros, one of those.
In fact, this whole setting, Chris Boucher completely reuses over
and over again in Blake 7.
You know?
He's the new Terry Nation.
He really is.
But it all starts here.
This is the black 7 years of Doctor Who.
Yeah.
It's just an interesting at the end of this story that the
doctor's been lying around for two days when he wakes up.
I think that's quite fun.
And the doctor leaves and the doctor leaves them bickering.
I actually really like the bit, too, that Leila's talking to him
about the situation between the Tesh and the 17 and, you know, how
they've not been getting on and they have an uneasy truce.
And then we get to see it.
But, like, the idea that the doctor's been out cold for 2 days
while those guys have been wrangling.
You know, and we're going to leave it behind as there's kind of
going to be the worst on couple kind of on coupling space sort of
premise for a sitcom sometime in the future.
And Leila narrowly misses out on the opportunity to be in charge
of it.
There is one scene that I want to mention because Douglas Adams
rips it off shamelessly in life, the universe and everything.
And that's the scene once Zoanon's been healed.
Which unfortunately the doctor just does by pressing some buttons
on thing, which is all very dull.
But, um, Zanon's been healed and the doctor and Leila go to
visit.
So, Anon, a chat, and Zanon's really nice and rash.
A little chaise launch, a gramophone.
But that's it.
The couch appears.
Yes, right.
And they sit on it.
And then for a 2nd it looks like Zoan's going to be psychoanalyse
because he says, you know, where do you think I 1st went wrong and
the doctor realises he's sitting on this couch and we've got a
therapy session in progress.
But Duncan Adams uses it in life, the universe, and everything
because remember that, um, uh, there's a, uh, supercomputer
orbiting around the planet cricket, which influences the society
of the cricketers so that they become, you know, sort of
xenophobic homicidal maniacs because of his own sort of
personality thing.
And Hakta is the name of the computer, and he's eventually
restored, and Trillion and Arthur meet him in this void, where
they have a pleasant conversation, and a Chesterfield sofa appears
and, you know, they sit and chat with him.
So Douglas has ripped off Doctor Who before, obviously, but this
is a pretty obvious one here.
Yes.
At the end of the episode, I believe there were two different
endings filmed, one where leader goes with, one where she
doesn't.
But it's really interesting that she actually asked the doctor to
be taken with him.
Like, and in the new series, if you ask for that privilege, you
end up dying.
Yes.
Or you get a hole in your head.
Of course, yes.
I mentioned earlier that Leila being cast out gives her an
immediate synergy with the doctor, if you like.
The end of this is, um, it's the same kind of thing as the ending
of the deadly assassin, because of course, the ending is deadly
assassin. doctor's been elected as president and slips away
quietly.
The ending of this, the Tesh and the 17 both say to Leila, oh, you
should lead us. you know, we both trust you. and she says, no, no
I'm voter unreasonable.
Don't you agree, doctor?
And she runs after him to avoid becoming the leader of the
planet.
You know, like doctors.
It would be a pretty thankless task.
Yeah, exactly.
But like the doctor, she runs away from the enforced
responsibility in order to make her own choice.
And yeah, even the doctor, you know, rejects her, because much
like Tom, the doctor doesn't want to travel with anyone right
now.
And then she goes inside and you get that great bit of, don't
touch that.
You know, it's the helmet regulator again.
Yeah, you know, it's stupid Scooby-Doo ending comedy, but it's
sold by the fact that she sort of skips in naughtily and the dog's
like, come out with that.
Come out.
And again, that's that's kind of Bond and Honey Rider once again.
But without the sex because.
No hanky-panky in the title.
Thank God.
Look, I have to say that I expected to like this a lot less than I
did.
And I think that there are production flaws that we've all
identified.
But for me, this has some real. real proper science fiction in it
for a change.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Some really thoughtful ideas and a, and, you know, a little bit of
sort of thematic content, which is reasonably interesting.
There are some great performances and it really does introduce a
pretty spectacular new companion.
So I think it's a net win.
Yeah.
Look, I think it's a when I like the performances.
I do think it goes downhill once we hit the Tesh, and I'm less
engrossed with that part of the story.
I know you 2 have praised all the Zoran and stuff.
Some of that leaves me a bit cold.
I think it's a better script than the previous two, but it's my
2nd least favourite of the season.
So, yeah.
Just to close out, I mean, something we really criticised Deadly
Assassin for last week was the level and tone of the violence in
the show.
Now this, I would say, is still very violent.
You know, you've got gun battles, you've got stabbings, you've got
Janus Thorns, you've got crossbows.
Leila kills 5 people.
So she kills 3 people in episode one and she does kill 2 of the
Tesh later on.
But the doctor's not doing that.
Killing.
And importantly. kill that one guy.
Yeah.
And he throws a hoarder on the other guy.
That's funny.
Importantly, the doctor comments on the violence. in this story. in
this story.
And it's been a while since he's sort of commented on people's
violent actions, as strongly as he says to Leila, who gave you
license to slaughter people.
Because when he when he kills that Tesh, the Tesh is trying to
kill him.
Yes, that self-defence.
But Leila, when she Janis Thorne's nova from Blake 7 and leaves
him in the wall, that's just to block their exit.
And I think that's the doctor's objection.
It's like that was unnecessary.
It's Nova from Blake 7.
He never survives anything he's in.
Actually, he always ends up in a wall as well.
Even in Sapphire and Steel.
Well, dear listener, that's all the time we have for the face of
evil, but we'll be back next week as Doctor Who takes another
upswing with the robots of death.
I'm not gonna say anything else about that right now, just because
I think we're all gonna have a lot to say about that.
Until then...
This is terrible.
Until then.
Oh, Nathan has been funny listeners.
Very, very funny.
That's all right.
We'll just replace him with James Selwood next week.
Until then, please come and find this online at
flightthroughentirety.com, flight through entirety on Facebook and
iTunes and FTE podcast on Twitter.
We currently have available on bondfinger.com commentaries for the
1st 3 Connery Bond film.
So, Dr. No, which we've discussed this episode from Russia with
Love and Goldfinger.
So those are on Bondfinger.com, Bondfinger on Facebook, and iTunes
and Bondfinger cast on Twitter.
Until then, thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
See you soon.
That was Fled your entirety with Todd BLB, Nathan Bottom, William
Brendan Jones.
This episode, so very sexless, was reported on Sunday, the 2nd of
August.
The next episode will be released on October the 11th, 2015.
Who knew the legends of the evil one were all just
misunderstandings?
Zoanna actually eats baby carrots.
I don't have a great opening line for Face of Evil.
So does anyone have any suggestions?
Who am I?
No, no, so the only Doctor Who podcast.
Yeah.
That's all I've got.
Right.