The Practical Problem with Leaving Someone Alive

Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety the only Doctor Who podcast whose horoscopes from Miss Nevercott are never wrong. I'm Brendan. I'm Nathan. And did you order the avocado mousse? I didn't order this. I didn't order the avocado esta mousse. I didn't even touch the avocado oestimus. So why are we all dead? Is that avocado oyster be slithering down the stairs or is it the horror of fang rock? No, it's the moose. So this one's mine. And we kind of embarking on a bit of a contested era for the show because Hinchcliffe is headed off to do another thing. He's doing Target, or did I dream that? No, that is correct. They did the swapsies, midstream. He doing a lovely range of retail, just like Stella McCartney did Target. Remember? Target as well. I never saw the Hinchcliffe Rangers, a boy. what it was. Pandy pyjamas. Yeah, yeah, from beyond the dawn of time. Blue scalloped sleeve. So I mean, this is an era that is a bit contested. It's a bit controversial, and I have to put my cards on the table and say that I really love it to death, and I think that this is this is one of the jam. Who are you? Oh, no, what have you done with me? It still does offer plenty of scope for me to complain that things are tiresome and terrible. I've got a feeling I know why you like this, and I wonder if it's the same reason that Brendan and I like it, so I'm looking forward to hearing what you think. Well, I think this is a really strong story. So Bob Holmes is still script editor. Yeah, it does feel like a Hinchcliffe, can I jump in there and say to me, this feels like it was the carryover from last season? Doesn't it feel like a Hinchcliffe to you? No? No? No? And I'll tell you why. And Sander says something about this as well. We'll get into the show itself, but let's just dispel that because I think that people say this is like a Hinchcliffe, and it's a backdoor way of dissing Graham Williams by taking one of his best stories off him and giving it to Philip Hinchcliffe. That's also the position that occurs in that they were wrong. Oh, yeah, no, of course. But Sandopher points out that the Hingecliffe villains are overwhelmingly evils from the dawn of time or Mad Queens in a garden. Or, you know, criminals who have not been sufficiently executed enough. But here, there is something very low rent and small stakes about it, which is something that we've seen from homes before. I think carnival of monsters, you know, the stakes are very low. And here, the stakes are very low. They're kind of artificially inflated at the end of episode four and we'll get to that. But you know, it's just a small group of people being picked off in a lighthouse, and they're not being picked off by the Beast of Fang Rock. They're not being picked off by an evil from the dawn of time. They're just being picked off by some, you know, luminous oyster with delusions of grandeur. And so, just the low stakes of it all is not very hinchcliffe. But what is, I guess, Hinchcliffe, is there's a sort of atmosphere to it, and there's a... There's a lot of people we like who don't end up lasting to the through to the... Oh, yeah, I guess that's true. Who do we like? We like Vince. Well, well, whoever you pick, there's only 2 elections. We like means Harker. Captain Harker is really a sure, strong character. And even Alan Rowe. Yeah, skin sale. Skin sale. That's very nice. is redeeming. He's almost a bit Jago and Lightfoot. There's that charm of the. I mean, he's still a rogue and he's a bit of a villain as well, but he's very soft. Well, we're not meant to think so though. And one thing, I think, why this really works in that way and why the deaths were so shocking at the time, watching this as boys, or little guilds, if you, you know, if we'd known you when you were a little girl. Do you think that's true, and Missy said that last week, or spoiler a lot? one of the things that might... It might not be true. Yes, that's right. However. She's not termed good. I'd like to see Billy in pigtails. Shilly temple dressing. he could have carried it off. But it looked like all the shows we were watching at the time, it looked like Duchess of Duke Street, which had Lala Ward as the legitimate daughter of Gemma Jones, I think, that the Duchess herself, the cook who had started up a hotel, based not true story. I'm Segwaying. It looked like all those period dramas, and it was shot the same way. So it is a real shock when you see people who, especially in the history of Doctor Who. And even with Hinchcliffe that, you know, the nice ones always survive. Yeah, yeah. We had expected, but then we just seen seeds of doom, so we should have known better, shouldn't we? Can I use that as an opportunity to talk a bit about the genesis of this story? Yeah. Philip Hingcliffe tried as much as possible to be a bit like Barry Letz in leaving a few things in place for his successor. And straight away, they had this script by Terence Dix called the Vampire Mutations. Which, spoiler alert, years later would become state of decay. The problem was the BBC were also working this huge co-production with America on Dracula. They'd lose your dam, that one. And they thought that any other production doing a vampire thing would be seen as a sendup. So they veto Doctor Who from using vampires. So Graham Williams, as he put it, arrived on the job minus one script. He also arrived on the job with a big budget deficit, didn't he? I mean, didn't Philippine Schliff do a giant overspend on talons on talons. And then suddenly, you know, there's the economy tanks and inflation skyrockets and there's no money, yeah. There'll be no sign of that during the season. No, no, they managed to completely conceal that fortunately. Now, the problem with Dracula isn't just limited to the scripting and pre-production of this story. So they got Terrence Dix back in and said, look, we're going to pay you for the vampire script, but we need another script from you and we know you're reliable. Robert Holmes is still script editor. He doesn't have time to write it himself. So give us a new script. And Terence said, well, what do you want me to write about? And Bob said, write about lighthouses. And Terence said, I don't know anything about lighthouses. And Bob said, well, go out and buy the boys' book of lighthouses which is kind of the reverse conversation of what happened with the Time Warrior. Yeah, yeah, it's his revenge, isn't it? having to write a historical. But it's E.G. Jerome's lighthouses, lightships and boys. Don't make this. But then, Doctor Who's studio days for recording this at Television Centre were taken up by Dracula. So it was recorded at BBC Birmingham. Pebble Mill. at Pebble Mill, who didn't usually get to do drama. So they pulled out all the stops and that's why the sets are so fantastic. Because you give a designer a set. They've already got their job cut out for them. You give them a circular set where you also have to position 3 cameras. But because they never did drama and they really wanted to impress they really pulled out all the stops for it and Graham Williams you'd say, I appreciated it so much because we had so much trouble with this and suddenly here were all these people trying to make it work as much as we were. And so there are aspects of the production that look great. The sets are incredible. They do exteriors. Are they an healing or something on film? And they shoot them on film so that they look like they're being shot outside. There's some model shots that are really good. Some of the lighthouse exterior shots are great. At the end of episode four, when a big beam of light strikes the Rutan mothership. That looks really, really good. Well, the science behind it is water, too. Well, just nonsense, isn't it? But there are, I mean, there are already signs that things aren't going to go right with the look of the show and there are some pretty ropey special effects that are worse than what we've seen for a little while. I think the particular offender is the puppet root and crawling up the side of the lighthouse. Oh, wow. Which is pretty terrible. And I'm not a big fan of the CSO background in the lighthouse gallery, either. Yeah. It doesn't look all that great. But the actors make it work like all of these period pieces. I have to say, it really does look like all the period dramas we were watching, the BBC was full of them. So was ITV at the time. The characters are great. I think Harker, Vince is superb. People talking about this being a great strong story for Lilo, but really sure she gets to do is react to things. And sometimes that, you know, the temperature of that may be, I don't mind. I don't think Louise Jameson ever puts a foot wrong, so you're never going to hear any criticism of her from me. But it's the supporting cast. When Tom and Louise get really good people with them. The whole thing shines. Yeah, they are all very good. So it's just the three. It's Vince, Ben, and Reuben. And how good is that? So Reuben's been in it before. He was Bruce in Anime of the World. Yeah, and later appears as the 6th doctor. He does, yeah. Not many people know that. And he's lovely. He's really nice to Vince. You know, he's... I mean, he's a bit of a stock character. You know, he's the superstitious light housekeeper, sort of thing who doesn't hold with electricity and things, and he's doing a sort of mamoset accent and stuff. But he's really good. Vince is really good. Ben is in it for like half an episode, and he's really sort of strongly characterised. And then you get a whole group of people, ah, that terrible cliffhanger to episode one where everyone else turns up, and it's that shockingly bad model shot. Which wouldn't be so bad. If they didn't hold on it for 15 seconds. Terrible. But it is quite saved in the reprise in episode 2, where they cut back up to the lighthouse and someone says, the boat's crashed and Louise Jameson's looking down, she says, they shall all die then. And it's just like, whoa, okay, Leila's really not happy. And then we get the rest of our supporting cast, which is Harker and Skin Sale and Parmadale and Adelaide. do you know why they're in there? Because Terence Dix realised you can't have much of a murder mystery was only three potential victims. So he introduced more people to be killed off. Yeah, yeah. Well, and they're all just terrific, like without exception, I think. But the really striking thing is the way that Tom acts, I think, in this story, and it is a little bit different from what we've seen before. Actually, Todd has a few words he'd like to say about that is he comes down out of the fog. I'm not sure that's the lighthouse sounding though. Well, guys, it's foggy in the time vortex tonight, but, you know here I am. I can't believe that this is a replacement script. How amazing is this story? And what about Tom Baker? His performance in this is so intense and still and centred. Is this his last really great performance as the doctor? See, I don't know whether I would describe it as intense. He's in a bad mood, and I don't know whether it's Tom in a bad mood. Tom and Louise were cats in a bag. instead of this one. And Patty Russell was the one in the middle, and she was trying to find lots of ways to distract Tom. He was mad at his options. Tony Russell, too. Well, he was calling her sir, which, Brendan, you've commented on before that, you know, it might be seen as a brand of respect, but it really wasn't. And the rest of the crew and the rest of the and the rest of the troop. The actors thought this is a bit full on. She left the BBC almost immediately afterwards. Yeah, well, he's refused. And he was a big fat, naughty Tom for doing it. Well, he refuses to make eye contact with anyone. at all. I hated the fact that Louise was there, wanted, wanted, he's talking cabbage. But it works. Like, it is a great performance. So he comes in and he's super arrogant and dismissive. He continually lies to the other characters about what's going on. Not to protect them, but because he's completely contemptuous of them. He mocks Reuben for being superstitious even though we know that Reuben's actually quite a nice person. And it turns out correct, because it's electricity, that is the threat. It had the damn oil. The routine, wouldn't it, then? And he comes down into the crew room, which is full of, you know Palmadale and skin sale in Adelaide, and says, the lighthouse is under attack, and by tomorrow, we might all be dead, and he smiles and laughs, you know, he's really, really contemptuous and horrible. I loved it, all. all of them. It's great, you know, like, it's a really strong performance. And it also means that when we get that episode three cliffhanger. Yeah, it's so, so powerful because in isolation. That cliffhanger seems really strange. We don't often get a cliffhanger, which is the doctor realising something. But this realisation is so good because he's been so high and mighty all the way through and because he's been so contemptuous as you say, it's actually his fault that people are still dying. Yeah. It is terrific. And I think that you can do worse than end an episode of Doctor Who by having Tom Baker deliver a really dramatic line. After completely blowing the pronunciation of chameleon. Oh does he? He says, the chameleon factor. He must have thought it was French. Karma Chameleon. Ah, what a silly shunt. Oh, dear. Sorry. Behind the scenes of course. This was the story where Louise finally said to Tom. It's not my fault that you don't like me being here. I'm here to do a job. I'm here to fulfil a function in the show and I think you're being very unfair to me as a new actress and she did use the word unprofessional. And after that, you know, they didn't get along like a house on fire, but you see in the subsequent stories that he performs with her a lot better. He is a petulant monster, isn't he? Which is probably where he works on screen. I think that he's still cross with her in Invisible Enemy. You know, like, again, everyone's cross with everyone. I think that's right. preempting a lovely story. There are some lovely scenes between them though, which we'll get to next week. Yeah. You know, you know the poem at the end? When the doctor, when Tom foddles off, you know, and quotes the ballad of Flanen Island, do you know that one? Yes. But do you? Okay, you tell us which one. Oh, I shall love it. And it says, though, it's really great, but it's about, it preempts Maros. It's about 3 lighthouse keepers turning into birds. Flannen Isle. It goes, the 3 men dwell on Flannen Isle to keep the lamp alight. As we steered under the lee. We caught no glimmer through the night. A passing ship at dawn had brought the news, and quickly we set sail to find out what strange thing might aim the keepers of the deep sea light. I didn't say it was good. But when today broke blue and bright with glancing sun and glancing spray, as though the sweller boat made way as gallant as a goal in flight. Anyway, it goes on and on. You can look it up. Yeah, they turn into birds, or they turn into Nicola Bryant. Covered in all emu or rod hole. Or what's that green thing that Lucas dresses up as? No, they don't need the green fluffy... Turn into pate biscuit, Mongo. They turn into Yeah, they turn into birds. I suppose that's the chameleon factor at work again, isn't it? So Adelaide. Yeah, we kind of like Adelaide. Yeah. at least she's a girl. Exactly. So we do have only one woman in the guest cast, and we're introduced to Adelaide because she's doing like tiny little screams from on the model boat, you know, at the end of episode one. No, stop. No, turn around. And Harker, when he attacks Lord Palmadale, refers to her. No, in fact, it must be, it must be at some other time. He refers to her as the owner's fancy woman. So, you know, presumably, she's having an affair with Lord Parmadale. Oh, I think it's. She wouldn't be able to behave like that if she would just... Yeah, I mean, he's taken her to Doeville or something like that you know. Right up the Dauville. And she is absolutely superb. And it is, you know, Terrence has this sort of shtick that he does where he's sort of sexist and obnoxious. He claims credit for getting rid of Liz Shaw because she's too competent and intelligent and replacing her with Joe Grant, who is also, I think, terribly competent and intelligent. But in a different way. In a different way. She wasn't cast to be, though. Well, yeah, no, maybe that's true. So he puts in a very kind of stereotypical, silly, cowardly, I want to avoid the word hysterical woman, who is really, really entertaining to watch, and all of her sort of falling apart whenever anything terrible happens. There's that wonderful moment where Vince calls down from the lamp gallery, and the doctor answers it, and he goes, That's very interesting, you know? Lord Palmerdale's fallen from the lamp gallery, and she does the sort of giant screaming and all of that sort of thing. And Leila slapped Leila. She's been waiting to do. Leila just slaps her, but then walks over to the doctor and says what's happened? In fact, the contrast between Leila and Adelaide is just terrific and Leila's open contempt for Adelaide is also great. But it's wonderful how that evolves. Because they find the commonality in the idea of the astrologer. Yes. Because, you know, Adelaide says, Miss Nethercott's is never wrong. I believe in science. Yeah, and... Yeah, Leila starts talking about, I used to be like you, but now I believe in science. And the scene ends on that wonderful close-up of Adelaide, just sort of kind of thinking about it. And when we next see her again. She's perfectly calm. There's a strange sound, but she doesn't scream. What's that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, but I think that a lot of that tension is also set up by naughty skin sale right from the beginning, saying, who's this? Who's this lovely bit of tawdry chocolate velvet? Who is this gorgeous little ginger over here? That is really funny. Leila's in men's clothes, but skins how really fancies her. Well, I did go to a public school. No, no, it's Victor Victoria. No, it's not that. It's Adelaide says, were you a long time in India? Which is a fantastically racist and colonialist thing. You know, Bob Holmes is script editing after all. Not long enough to not be able to appreciate a fine looking woman. Yeah, well, that's I think that's his more or less his reply. Or do you think that he actually wasn't wearing his glasses and he thought it was Vince? Vince is a bit skinny really. He looks like a young Michael Palin, I think. Yeah, he does a bit. And of course, Ben was Captain Knight in the web of fear. Oh, really? Oh, yes. He's sort of hidden under a big wig and a moustache. Yeah, and dies 5 minutes in. You don't get to see much of it. So what do we think of the Rutan? I love it. Yeah, me too. I actually do. I've never seen anything like it. On a small TV, a small colour TV. It really popped. It was liquorious and aqueous. It was all those things. It was those things that used to be able to buy on a Friday afternoon coming home from school when you put sherbet into lime cordial frozen stuff on a really hot summer Saturday. a lime spider. A lime spider, yeah, yeah. And I have to say, I think it's the best non-humanoid, non-robotic Doctor Who alien we've had. What about the Maya Beast? Okay, so the Ruten's only got one ball. What about the sound? Because I think it's the noise that makes, and that it's Ruben's voice that I really like. There's a kind of background sound which you get right away from episode one, yeah, that noise. If you've ever had a lava land that you've dropped. and I have. That's exactly what. And if you remember the prisoner, of course, we know that they live in lava lamps. Yes, that's right. I think it is kind of effective. It's sort of cute actually in the way that it tries to go up the stairs. It's something that Graham Williams will do a lot in his tenure which is... Whereas the Hinchcliffe monsters. As soon as you looked at them, you knew they were meant to be monstrous. That's not always the case with Graham Williams. He's much better at the idea of appearances belying intent. And so when you 1st see the rooting, you might think, oh, that's a bit weird, but you might not be terrified by it, but then you get the sound design, then you get the voice. Then you get the really quite effective reversed footage of tendrils being dragged off people but reverse to show them going on to people. Like Palmerdale's death. despite the root and sort of CSOing its way up the lighthouse. His actual electrocution and death and death scream are all very effective. In fact, one of the things that I really love about that there is that the foghorn goes off at exactly the same time and conceals the screen, which I just think is terrific and just so atmospheric. Don't you think the foghorn really makes it much scarier? The score and the foley in this really gross. Yeah, yeah. And the atmospherics. Patty Russell really doesn't get it wrong, does she? I don't remember a story that I've seen her do where I thought she didn't quite come up to scratch every time. I think she lifts pyramids. I love the feel. She's good for atmospherics. Maybe that's why they gave her this one as well. Because pyramids has a lovely feel to it. I mean, this is very traditional. It really is just, you know, like a base under siege. Do you know what I mean? It's like a small group of people being picked off one by one by a monster. There's nothing really very inventive or new about it, but it's so confident and so well characterised and so well directed and the atmosphere is great. The sets are great. everyone's on form. Even though Tom is being horrible to everyone. The performance just really, really works. I think it ramps it up. Tom comes across as looking agitated and out of his depth. The doctors, looks like Tim felt to me as if he's covering up. 'Cause he's not really sure what to do. I actually think, you know, like, in the new series, he would have gone somewhere a bit further with that episode three thing where which you mentioned, Brendan, where Tom admits that he's made a mistake, you know, and that his arrogance would have got some kind of comeuppance, but, you know, it's Tom, he's kind of untouchable and it's the mid to late 70s, and we don't really do that stuff yet. But, you know, apart from that, there's really no criticism. And the very end, in episode four, you know, they try and up the stakes by doing what they did in the Santar and experiment and having a giant off scene battle fleet that's going to come and threaten them all. And that kind of does change the stakes and make it a little bit bigger. And we do spend kind of nearly half the last episode kind of dealing with that, don't we? So, uh, we kill off the root and by emptying our pockets into a mortar and firing everything we own at it. And there's one delightful moment where, um, Leila is emptying Tom's pockets into the mortar and she picks up the bag of jelly babies and just shoves it into the mortar as well. So they're firing jelly babies at the root and in order to kill it. And then the effects for the mothership are really, terribly good I think. It's a big fiery flameball, isn't it? So rather than making it look like a flying saucer or something really obvious. They keep it sort of, like, a sort of ill defined light, and it is just, sort of, flames, a big ball of flames outside the window. I think that's really good. It's Leila's idea to use the lighthouse to defeat, to defeat it. And it works. How? Oh, who cares? It's Doctor Who, for God's sake. Light amplification, simulated emission, simulated emission of radiation. Or maybe it's actually Sean Connery, diamonds are forever science. Maybe Jill St. John would have done exactly the same thing. Had she been in the same predicament? You remember when the doctor's hiding in the hiding in the crew quarters and Rubens outside? And I think Reuben does, he's terrific possessed, isn't he? Like with that smile. That wicked green, which actually does look very Colin Baker. It does actually. I think you're right. Headvances on Vince and kills him. He's terribly effective and scary. But the doctor's hiding in the crew quarters from him, and he does that terrible scene where he's dangling out the window again, which looks pretty poor. But he seems to be going through Ben's collection of naughty postcards. Yes. Yes, that's right, yes. Which, I gather, were vintage postcards from the era. But yes, to be broadcast in 1977, still had to have some clothes drawn on. They were literally, they were a little too revealing for Saturday tea time. 90 years hence. that's beautiful Hopefully avoiding the laser beam, Todd's just flying around again. He's got one more question for us. And finally, the horror of Fang Rock. Could anybody have actually survived this story? Oh, look, there's something happening to my control. Contact has been made. What? What? What? Oh, I'm heading one of my sick headaches. I've got to go and put a giant prawn on the Barbie for some reason. I don't think he wants to leave, you know, many people alive, do you know what I mean? Like, there's no good characters here. You really... The doctor doesn't want to save any people alive. I don't think Terry, I don't think Terry wants to leave anyone alive, do you know what I mean? And he could only leave a couple of people alive at the most. Think about robots of death, where you leave two Sunuvanov alive. Yeah. But they've got some way of getting back. So there's just the practical problem with leaving someone alive in that, say, skin sale survives. What does he do? Does he swim to shore? Do you know what I mean? But the other thing is skin sale is really venal and cowardly. Well, he's human. But he's horrible. He needles Parmadale, who is also an awful person. He's clearly done some cider trading. He uses that as an excuse to cut off all communications. Yeah, yeah, you know, he's to blame for the situation. And so I think he needs to die. And so I think that is really effective. The fact that no one is still alive at the end of it. And I remember, isn't the last line of the novelisation, the novelisation, which is for almost certainly by Terrence, has Tom doing the poem, and the last line was something like, There was nobody left alive to hear them or something like that. I think that's where it's coming from. If you like, it's kind of colonialism of the past. Because it's in the past, you can treat people as if they're not actually three dimensional, because they're all dead anyway. You've actually got more license. If this was a contemporary story, I believe the producers anyway or at least the audience may well have also felt it was far more impactful to kill people off, it's not more painful, but because it's the past... They would have been dead by 1977. They would have been dead anyway, and then there's this kind of unreality, and also comes with theatre from the past, and, you know, we look at the plays of the time, where we know Shaw, and we know Wild. And there is a sort of archness and theatricality to that, that's somewhat removed from humanity or from their own humanism. I think this really works in that it gives the character such well rounded. It does feel like there's a lot of Bob Holmes in this, even though it's... I think so too. You think so, yeah. The one thing that surprises me, and it wouldn't happen now, is that there doesn't seem to be much of a thematic link between the wrangling between the characters and the main plot of the root and killing them all. Do you know what I mean? thematically. Yeah, yeah, it's not like the root and wants earth for its resources, which would make sense then with the diamonds and what have you. Kind of like that because it's crueller because it, you know killing doesn't make any sense. It is just done for its own sake and that just makes it all the more cold and wasteful. Yeah, they're people who are going about their lives, have conflicts between themselves, and then they all just get mowed down sort of thing. It's also a great release for the writer and possibly for the audience because you don't often get to kill off an entire cast. All the other shows we were watching when the boat comes in, which I think was also filmed at Pebble Milt, which was a long, long going, tedious drama about the fisher boat. It was awful. I think James Bond was the hit. Anyway, I just remember it being, it went on for even longer than our series of podcasts. And you just wanted them all to die. So, yeah, it was a great sense of release when they all when they all went and it was 10. That unreleased final episode of Are You Being Served? where they're all killed in a sort of hideous mannequin accident. Yeah, with Bob Holmes was born in, that's right. It was all autons and... very cathartic. Dear listeners, that's all the time we have for horror of Fang Rock. We are taking off, but we still won't make the great exhibition I'm afraid, as we are head into the far future next week for the invisible enemy. Do find us online. Flight through entirety.com, flight through entirety on Facebook and iTunes and FTE podcast on Twitter. We also now have 3 bond finger commentaries available for Dr. No from Russia with Love and Goldfinger. Please check those out at bondfinger.com. Also Bondfingercast on Twitter and Bondfinger on Facebook and iTunes. Until we see you next, may your lime spiders never try to electrocute you. I'm Brendan, thank you very much and good night. Good night. Good, everyone. That works, Flight Through Entirety, with Nathan Boffamly, Brendan Jones and Richard Stone. This episode, the practical problem with leaving someone alive, was recorded on September the 27th, 2015. The next episode will be released on the 1st of November, top dating tip. If you're having to bash down his door with an axe screaming come out old one, maybe he's just not that into you. 27th of September The Horror of Fang Rock. Really? You doing that, are you? Well, you're doing the accent. Every time every time I do the credits. I have to go back and look at the calendar and see when we recorded it. Okay. So I'm now doing it. And if actually, if I...