Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to Flight Through
Entirety.
The only Doctor Who podcast whose hosts are a result of the
Hillbracken cloning technique.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
I'm a lovely prawn bisque for this.
And food with you, isn't it?
And we're headed deep into the asteroid belt, breaking out like a
plague of locusts for the invisible enemy.
Richard, you've been saddled with this prawn.
Mmm, yum, yum.
So where do we start off with this one?
Oh, I'm very excited.
The fish people are back.
We've got the underwater menace.
We've refound the episode.
They're wearing exactly the same makeup.
Contact has been made.
I left my dictionary at home, so I won't be able to spell check
myself for this episode, but it turns out neither could any of the
design people.
Have you seen how they spell the signage on this story?
It's worth watching.
And yet...
I like exit with eggs. with eggs in it.
Yes, yes.
It feels a bit red and stimpy, doesn't it?
There's a lot of Frudian jokes underneath all of this.
So is it a Shavian thing where we've where we've adopted phonetic
spelling and...
So far in the future that we can just direct and lighten film and
script anything anyway we want to.
The reason this story, I feel maybe not the most successful of all
Doctor Who stories of all time?
Yeah, possibly.
We're assuming that, you know, the listeners has watched it.
And if you haven't, oh, you don't need to. can just listen to us.
A bit quicker.
And we've got a higher budget, actually.
You know, when I say that Doctor Who really works when it's trying
to do other things.
Well, this is where I'm proven disastrously wrong.
Doctor Who works, I feel, when it does other literary or filmic
tropes.
Was that the word?
I think that might be a word.
Chin chin.
But it doesn't work where it rips off other looks or other styles
or tries to be another someone else's success.
Now, Brendan, you were talking about the S word, I believe, this
one and that would be George Lucas.
Oh, okay.
Star Wars.
But this story is filmed in April 77.
So all the spaceship shots and the inclusion of a new companion, if
you want to call him that, which we'll get to, um, you would feel
is aping the success.
It's not.
It's actually nodding to Kubrick and to, of course, Jerry
Anderson.
Sylvia Atson with Space 1979.
Star Wars was in production, so people were seeing pictures and
whatnot.
So certainly there may have been some influence there.
But yes, it didn't come out for several months after December.
It wasn't predicted to be the success that it was going to be
unless you were a complete fanboy and picking up copies of Starlog
which was the magazine to go to in the 70s that it wasn't in the
popular imagination.
So, and yet this thing has the biggest model effect, shooting time
of the whole history of Doctor Who.
It's spent more money on it.
Apparently, since the space pirates will actually get an even
bigger one with a story called Underworld later on in the season
which is just terrific for lots and lots of good reasons.
I'm looking forward to that one.
The model work is spectacular.
Is it though?
No, it's terrible.
It's so bad.
I love model work and as you can see around our lovely withdrawing
room.
There are quite a few models here, but no.
Look, I think it's no, it really doesn't work and it really
should.
And don't let Matt Irvin ever design anything because his
spaceships look like toilet rolls with washing up bottles glued to
the front of them.
So the Titan base is just about acceptable, I think.
The model is all right.
The spaceships really look cheap and terrible.
There's one scene.
They're expensive models.
The movement?
There's one scene in episode one where the spaceship lands and it
goes down this sort of cardboard corridor, which just looks like
zen and bass, you know, with sort of very low property values.
And then we get the we get the Bio Foundation, which is like a
papier mache rock.
And it comes with a landing pad.
It comes pre-crashed into.
It comes pretty crashed into.
Because the 1st shot.
Yeah, that's right.
It's really terrible.
And the spaceship hitting the bi our foundation thing in episode 2
is awful.
I think the models are just universally terrible.
And I have very few good things to say about underworld later in
the season, but the models for underworld are better than they are
here.
This is true.
I really like the Titan shuttle because, in my mind anyway, It's
aping the look of the space shuttle.
Which was a very, very new idea in 1977.
I think it was...
That's true.
Oh, there was the Dino Saw, which had been actually around since
the very early 70s and there's a test vehicle of that in the
opening credits sold the $6000000 man.
Oh, right.
It looks like a fat space shuttle, the Titan shit, which when you
think about the way design goes forward, 1st you come up with your
basic technological vehicle design, then it actually gets bigger
but then it becomes more streamlined.
So I certainly see what they were going for there.
Yeah, I agree some of the model work isn't so good, especially the
crash into the thing where they've obviously just put it on a
piece of string and spun it on the string and thrown it towards
the camera.
Yeah, pretty much.
But at the same time, it's very quick and you get that wonderful
nose cone view where they put the camera on the front of the ship
and you see the asteroid spinning as the ship rushes towards it
that's very effective.
Blake 7, isn't it?
Yes, but well, and Blake 7 was in its was in its early stages at
this point.
Chris Boucher's last script is about to appear because he's going
to go off and rewrite Terry Nations notes on the backs of
envelopes.
And why we have no more David Maloney.
Yeah.
Have you ever heard of an artist called Roger Dean?
Just passing an image to the fellow podcast casters.
Oh, yeah.
Dear listener, which...
Yeah, yeah.
And then that's something called lighthouse.
But he did a lot of...
Mouse House from Hitchhiking.
Here's the most hikers, but those little square windows.
It does look a lot like the Bayau Foundation.
Yeah, so we'll stick that up there.
You know, this was borrowing a lot from Prog Rock and there were
some really interesting SF ideas around in the 70s. 70s were a
good time to be reading SF.
So this always felt kind of the 2D poor man's version of what was
actually happening outside and Doctor Who shouldn't do that.
It should reference, but it shouldn't ape.
So that's kind of my feeling of why it's not working.
But the ideas behind this are really interesting.
We haven't got to the prawn yet.
But the notion of a buy our foundation.
Jared O'Neill was someone that was kind of contracted to NASA.
The notions of asteroids as colossal arcologies.
You were aware of that word arcology.
It's like an enclosed community.
Exactly.
It's giant things if you've ever watched Thunderbirds 2086.
Brendan, you'll recall that was actually Techno Voyager, the
Japanese 80s show that ITC rebranded and broadcast as an animated
Thunderbirds in the 80s. anyway, their big island base was called
the Arcology.
It was a big octahedron.
The kind of thing that Todd floats around in when he calls
questions out.
Yeah, Palo Solari was the Italian architect who came up with a
notion of that.
And the idea was that it was a cities, cities that could be self
fulfilling and self-powered and have a whole Hermetic community
either on Earth or in space.
And they, you know, this was something that we were talking about
and the concept for the next stage of mankind.
We forget how venturesome, our thinking was in this time.
There was a lot of optimism around, as well as also a lot of fear
being preempted by Robert Ehrlich's book.
Of course, we've talked about the population bomb and the films
like Soylent Green, that were a few years before that talked about
overpopulation, strangling mankind.
We needed to move out.
The asteroid belt were seen as a logical place because there'd be
a lot of opportunities for mining there and even people believed
that frozen, the ice in moons contained oxygen.
All these ideas were going around anyway.
So there's lots of really nice concepts behind this, but my
goodness, you've got to trudge to find them, haven't you?
Well, in fact, I think that there's, I think there's a problem.
This is Bob Baker and Dave Martin, and as usual, have another
drink listener, yeah.
It's just full of ideas that they dredge up, play with the 10
minutes and then throw away.
Do you know what I mean?
And so the cloning is, you know, just a perfect example.
Oh, I'm going to finish up with the cloning because the cloning is
the massive thing for me on this story and why it works and maybe
why it really colossally fails.
But it's right.
Like you're saying, I don't think, I think reason Bob Baker and
Dave Martha's stories work when they work is that they have a
brilliant designer behind them to coalesce it all and make you
feel as if you're actually in a prog rock album from the 70s.
Look at Claws of Axos.
It was beautiful at the time and I think it's still stunning to
look at now and distracts you.
You just get overwhelmed by the sensorialness of everything.
But this one, maybe design isn't really up there on this story.
So this is Barry Newbury as the designer and he's actually been
really good.
I think he's great.
You really like it?
Mask of Mandragara. you know, is terrific, but he can't overcome
the budget restrictions for this one.
And so the set is terrible.
Is that why he's moved the TARDIS console room into the back of a
butcher's fan?
so tiny, isn't it?
It's a butcher's man.
It's white.
It's cold, it's cramped, and there's a big old Liner pork hanging
up there.
I'm sorry, Tom.
And yeah, of course, yeah, we no longer have the wooden console
room because apparently it was warped in storage, but also
visually the console wasn't interesting to look at.
So the old console's been refurbished.
It was actually, I mean, we've heard those stories and it's
possibly true, but they could have just rebuilt a couple of
flats.
It was really that Graham Williams wanted to return to the
gleaming white sensation of spaciness.
He wanted to go into space and he didn't want, and he didn't want
to be identified with his cliff in any way.
Which is understandable.
You know, you're a new person.
I'm a certain way, but I quite like this console room as well.
I prefer it when it's refined in the 80s and we get a bit more
adornment on the walls. but I especially like Leila's reaction to
it.
Oh, God, I can't swing a mini skirt in here.
A leather strap.
We've never been in here.
You've never been in here before.
So it is it is the console room that we're stuck with for the rest
of the run of the original series, essentially.
They'll replace the they replace the console itself.
But...
Well, I think when they eventually replace the console, the walls
are also new.
I think the scanner piece stays.
So that scanner piece is refurbished.
Yeah, the round also look the way they do for the rest of the run
of the show and so on.
I think Titan-based, there's an attempt to make it sort of Ken
Adamish by having some exposed rock and at ceilings and stuff.
But it, it's not very good.
And, and, and the bio foundation, like a lot of plain white walls
which are less boring than I remember because there's an, you know
again, an attempt to put columns and things in there, but he's
just got no money and he can't hide that.
And so the design looks terrible.
Yeah, I think the Bio Foundation, it's too neat and it's too
pristine.
It's just, yeah, just. boring.
Yeah, it's really cool.
And that's why Doctor Who always relies on the magnetic quality of
its supporting cast to draw those disparate elements together and
make a cohesive whole.
And then we end up with this story.
Are there any actors in this at all that really shine for you?
No, none of them.
Michael Sheard, do you know?
Who is terrible, although he's really enjoying himself as a
villain in episode three.
He lifts it a little bit.
You've got Frederick Jeager, who was Jano in the savages and who
was Sorenson, who's really good, who's a proper actor, and here he
just puts on a stupid accent and larks about.
He terrible.
This is a theme of the Williams...
Yeah, yeah.
It's a theme of the Williams era where people think it's supposed
to be funny or for children or whatever and they do silly voices
and they ruin it.
Spoiler alert will get more of that in nightmare of Eden.
So he's terrible.
You know, there's really no one else.
There's those terrible people on Titan base who are being relieved
who are kind of swiftly massacred.
So to speak.
And remember, they're having a Titan.
You're welcome to it.
They're having the world's most listless and desultory party, you
know, in the history of the solar system.
But they say, come in, get your gear off.
Do you remember?
It's like...
They're a swinging...
Well, you know what?
It's the 51st century and they're 51st century guys.
Thank you.
You're talking about Jack.
They've gotten bored with each other, you see.
Do you really reckon?
I think they've actually all had horrible exposure to Zigma
radiation.
And they've all gone horribly wrong.
What did the doctor say about it?
It's humanity?
Blind alley.
Yeah, humanity ends up its own scientific fundament of the 51st
century and this story proves that.
Yeah, so the guest cast are terrible.
It's directed.
It's directed by...
It's very rushed directing, it feels...
Derek Flatt.
Derek Goodwin, who never worked before or again on the program.
But did do a behind the scenes guy, and then he moved into this
one.
He points his wife as the receptionist nurse.
Yeah, yeah, no.
He's most famous for directing a bunch of episodes of on the
buses.
Do you know what I mean?
Like he's not... wouldn't Blakey have been great as the Michael
Shoot character?
Yeah, so he's terrible.
Everything's directed really flatly and uninterestingly.
You want to hear something interesting about Derek Goodwin.
He had a third nipple.
I'm sorry, I've clicked on the wrong name.
I was going to say, every story he's worked, Tom, was by Bob Baker
and Dave Martin, and then I realised I was looking at the
Wikipedia entry for Dave Martin.
I have a lot to say about the actual underlying point of this
story.
Should we get to canine?
Or are we still on, or are we still on Paul Leela, who's commented
on us being a bit of a mongrel in this?
Well, she's she's terrible.
And again, is she?
Yeah, yeah.
So, Leila varies.
Like I'm not saying the acting is terrible, but both her and Tom
seem to be phoning it in a bit this week.
She's suffering a bit of the granddaughter complex in this one.
Have you know, she's displaying Susan, like, powers.
She is able to sense the virus, even from within the TARDIS, and
she seems to be time sensitive too about recognition of...
She can pilot the TARDIS.
Yeah, what's that?
I think they've thought they're writing for Carol Anne Ford, which
is probably why you're saying the character goes nowhere and she's
ill served throughout the story.
She gets very little to do.
And she's stupid.
And in fact, the doctor...
Yeah, and this is what I don't like about how, thank you for
bringing that up.
This is what I don't like how Williams has taken.
He seems to be kind of not so much as Tom, but there's a similar
resentfulness to both of them as, you don't agree?
I don't think he I don't think he likes having other people's
characters in his show.
No, later on in the season, she's really good and it really
depends on who the writer is.
So if it's homes or voucher, she's great.
In this, she's an idiot.
And in fact, Tom... an idiot too often this season, though
compared to how she how she was served.
I mean, Tom theorises that the reason that she's immune to the
virus is that she's not very bright, essentially.
Well, the thing is, the line the doctor has given is that Leila is
all intuition.
He doesn't speculate as to her intelligence.
He just kind of says, you know, whereas you or I would sit down
and try and figure out the scientific formula.
Leila functions on whether she likes it or not.
Her feet, her feeling.
And the doctor's interpretation of that seems very respectful of
the fact that Leila is very different to him.
It's Marius and then everyone else afterwards who says, oh, perhaps
it's a matter of intelligence.
And I think that was meant to be a very clever gag, but no one's
told Tom that it's meant to be a gag.
So he just plays the line as normal and it adds Bob Baker and Dave
Martin again not picking up on something later on.
In fact, that's not the reason, is it?
It's her antibodies come from her ancestors.
Come from her ancestors, but she gives them to her ancestors.
And again, it's a really interesting time paradox concept that
isn't really commented on.
So much isn't commented on, though, in this one. much of it should
be wonderful.
It just really needs a bit of bob.
I'm into it, don't you?
And he was still working on it.
Well, don't you feel it?
Yes, I can't really tell him here at all.
Should we get to the cloning or are we still going?
No, we're talking about the cloning.
Lovely canine.
Yeah, let's go on canine first.
Okay, so April 77, it was being filmed.
Yeah, I know we've all said it a 100 times before, but, you know
Star Wars wasn't out.
He wasn't based on R2D2.
No, but there were all...
Was it based on Muffet from Battle Circle accidentally?
No, that's 2 years later.
No, it was a one year later.
No, it's, there were the sci-fi robots in um, in silent running
with Bruce Stern.
There have been kids, Q robots in SF.
Look, I like the idea that he was only going to be in it for one
episode. for one story.
And I really liked the idea of the Dobeman Pincer, Wizard of Oz
outfit that they... actually originally designed.
I'd love to see a picture of that.
What they were going to dress a dog up as a robot.
John Leeson was going to actually be in the costume.
And, you know, he was doing the rehearsal on set and doing the
Times Cross with Tom.
I think we've talked before about how Moffat from Battlestar
Galactica was a chimp in a dog costume.
It was sometimes.
Yeah, sometimes it was awesome.
That's a very unkind thing to say about John Lee.
And again, that comes 78, 79.
So, yeah, it's, I don't know what to say about Kane.
I actually loved him as a boy.
I think he does too much and rescues the currier, but I like that
he's Aurak light.
I like that he's irascible and cranky.
He becomes much more like that next in 2 years time, doesn't he
when they can't get John Leeson back.
But his motor is really distractingly loud, really loud.
It's not a great prop, is it, in retrospect?
No.
Well, you know that what his idea was to not have the bloke in
it.
It was John Nathan Turnham.
Oh, right.
And he came to regret it later.
He said, no, no, we can spend more money on this and keep it as an
ongoing thing.
And then, of course, he had no money for stories later on.
Yeah.
Matt Ovine says that part of the problem was when he and I think
it was Ian Scones were given the design brief.
It's like, look, we only need this to work for 4 weeks, it can
fall apart after that.
And he has said since several times.
If we had have known then that they were considering keeping it on
we would have constructed it very differently.
We would have spent more money because we could argue that a bit
would come out of the budget for this story and the next and the
next and the next because, of course, canine was very expensive to
produce and it all came out of the invisible enemy budget.
But the budget runs out partly for that.
I mean, don't they keep it to amortise the cost over the remaining
stories of the season and then they have to rebuild the prop again
anyway for the following year.
Well, they had to rebuild it slightly for the sun makers.
Right, yeah.
Because he started as normal dogs with lamp posts, canine with
cameras.
Yeah, yeah, he used to run into the didn't he?
And there is footage of that on the DVD.
Oh, I'm going haywire, running off screen, and you just see the
sort of back end of him and he runs into something and you hear a
cameraman go, ah.
Like, I think John Leeson is terrific and I think K9 is great.
And you know, it just makes me happy.
Now we're in the canine thing.
I've watched all the way through season 15 now, of course. and I
love him in it and I love Leila with him.
They have an immediate rapport, aren't they?
They really do.
And you'll notice that canine goes into the TARDIS with Leila and
an invasion of time coming up, not to spoil it, but he seems to
still be Leila's dog, not the dog.
Yeah, yeah, he's not the doctor's dog.
Absolutely.
Canine Mark one.
It not the doctor's dog.
And that's why he, spoiler alert, builds another one. right.
Yes, he doesn't really seem to like the doctor anymore than the
last one.
That's not a bad thing.
I think that's why canine really works for me.
You need a foil to the doctors, I'm going to say, to Tom's
arrogance, to the doctor's arrogance.
Yeah, Leila can oppose him in the, you know, for humanity and for
morality, but you need someone to approach him on intellect.
And I think that's where my doctor, Tom was my doctor, falls down
in the season that his irascibility is overweening.
It actually goes further than it needs to and kind of, there's
contradiction with the, with the intention of the part.
And I don't know that we actually end up disliking the doctor.
I don't think I've ever gone that far.
But, um, and, you know, you might argue that that irascibility is
exactly what propelled the writing of the 6th doctor.
People thought that that would be refreshing.
But I don't know, how do you feel about it?
Like we talked last week about how Tom being annoyed actually
helped the performance in Horror of Fang Rock.
Here, I think he's just phoning it in.
I just don't think he's bothering.
And I think both him and Louise. are not doing their best work.
Tom also gets to spend a lot of time unconscious as well.
Do you know what I mean?
Wrong me about his own head.
Yeah.
Should we talk about the cloning?
Science Subway.
I love to talk about the cloning because this, for me, is why it
didn't work.
And even as a boy, I thought, hang on, they're saying 3922, was it
the Kilbracken technique that we've developed cloning?
Oh, they only last 10 minutes.
How you could spawn a whole battle army in 10 minutes.
He says, oh, you know, it's a sideshow.
There's no use for medical, you know, we don't use in medic
medical treatments.
Yet, you've got an enormous phone box there, which seems to the
only reason is that you can reduce people down, put them into a
room.
Oh, no, the reducing people down is because the doctors are being
out of the TARDS.
TARDIS, you think, OK. So the cloning couldn't have been used for
that, but there must have been...
So, come on, it's ridiculous to say this is, this is, I definitely
think it's sigma energy.
They've all been crazy.
All the sherbet sticks and sigma energy, yeah.
So we're doing fantastic voyage, aren't we, essentially?
And we're doing it 100 years before the broadcast of Into the
Dalek from season eight, which did it very, very well.
You did, actually.
But this is not very good.
And so it is one of those things where we're just throwing up yet
another idea in abandoning it.
It's mostly confined to episode three and they only last 10
minutes, but they do seem to last the entirety of episode three.
You know what?
The last time I watched it, I timed it?
I timed how long the clones were on screen.
Wow, you don't get out very much.
I don't.
But I timed how long they were on screen and it does tally.
If we take it that the clone scenes are happening at the same time
as the real world scenes either side of them.
The timeline actually tallies.
Timelines are my thing as we know.
Well, I just thought it was, it was an attempt.
You know, it's what Chris Chibnell does in Hungary Earth, where he
just adds a bunch of countdowns in order to ramp up the 1010s.
He said after he sang the theme to Casino Royale.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He was great in that too.
Just terrific.
There are some magical moments in the cloned sequences.
The doctor and Leila yomping around the doctor's brain as silly as
it is, Tom and Louise are obviously having a lot of fun and their
humour and interplay with that is great.
And we get 10 it's terrific fun, yeah.
And we get that beautiful moment where, which is why, I think, at
this point, they had definitely settled their differences, when
they cross the mind brain interface and stare off into the void
and they get the wind machine and Lilo says, where are we going
doctor?
into the land of dreams and fantasies, Leila.
And for me, that's the byline of the whole season.
It would have been so great to take that somewhere as well.
You know, like the going about the brain isn't naturalistic at
all.
Do you know what I mean?
Like they're not crawling through arteries or anything like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. and it's funny.
I can even breathe I mean, maybe clones don't need to breathe, but
you know, there's no way they could at that score.
There's all these other things that just make no sense.
No, but it's Doctor Who, we don't care. exactly Well, the only way
you can is that it's an alternate reality in some way or that is
more of the Lewis Carroll through the rabbit hole.
Well, it's the mind brain interface, I think, is the telling thing
and they stare off into that void and there's all those columns
and stuff.
And so there's a kind of dualistic conception of it, the mind, the
brain isn't purely organic, the mind isn't something the brain
does, you know, they're separate entities that are kind of joined
together and you could actually travel from one to the other.
And I think all of that stuff is lovely and it gets like a scene
you know, and it's never developed. that's what Baker and Martin
do.
They don't, last year, we complained about hand fear where they
had no ideas at all.
Here they have a whole bunch of ideas, that they just dredge up
fling at the screen for 5 minutes and then abandon, you know?
and so nothing gets developed.
There's nothing satisfying.
The invisible enemy doesn't seem to be about anything.
Richard, do you think the story might have been better if the
whole thing had been the fantastic voyage?
Oh, because the case with so many Bob Baker and Dave Martin
stories, Would it have been better if it had just been one of the
4 or 5 stories they're throwing up on screen, as Nathan's saying?
I think it would have been a lot better with different writers
involved.
Different directors, maybe a different set designer.
It's such an interesting question.
What comes first?
What actually makes the story work?
Is it the direction?
Is it the cast?
Is it, the design?
It's kind of cardo intuitive for me, but it seems to be that they
work when everyone is working together.
But then I haven't seen a story I haven't liked, that Paddy
Russell has done.
I haven't seen a story that I thought was unsuccessful that Dougie
Canfield did.
So maybe it does come down to direction in the end.
As I say, you can none of these people, and this is the difference
of 70s actors.
They'd all been doing rep for at least a year, 18 months before
they gone on to a show like this, which means they've played every
single part of every tutoring play that was around that time.
So they do have the range if they need to.
They're just not given a chance to shine.
And we've certainly seen these actors like Michael Shed.
And Frederick Yeger.
And Freddie Yega, who can be terrific and nuanced and, oh, my
goodness.
I think the fact that he's wearing a school protractor on his face
probably.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I think it's a giant intersection of everyone having their
worst possible day, combined with, you know, some crummy old Zen
cars director who will never work on the show again.
Like I just think it's a huge, it's a huge mess.
And then there's the prawn off.
Well, so this is a particularly horny prawn, isn't it?
Because all it can talk about is the need to spawn.
And this is a theme that comes in episode one where all of these
men, they're very keen to breed.
They're constantly talking about how they want to breed and then
the prawn.
He's gagging for it.
I mean, you know, like, it's twitching in anxiety about the need
to get off the entire time.
Sullivan was still in these stories because you know, he'd be
qualified to work on space sailors.
They'll be very much...
What I do like about this story.
And I didn't notice it as a child, of course, is that the basic
premise seems to be a moral balance between humanity and every
other form of life, that humanity's burgeoning growth and diaspora
is no different from the replication of a virus.
And again, I'm back to Robert Erlich's population bomb theories.
The virus is as much right to swarm and multiplies as the human
species.
And Tom, actually, there's an argument that they have. between the
2 of them, the doctor and the, I think it's one that's a melanoma
isn't it?
That's stupid...
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Cat poo effect that it does.
So, but therefore the doctor has the right to dispose of the virus
equally.
You see where that moral argument goes?
That's almost something thematic, isn't it?
Like it's the time of humanity's great breakout.
It's nearly the time of the prawns great breakout, but it's not a
very interesting moral.
Do you know what I mean?
But it is something.
Someone's paying attention fitfully to the script.
You would think so.
But then later, the doctor states that the virus has to be stopped
because it threatens the macro world of the humans, as much as the
micro world of other viruses.
So therefore, ethics has scale.
And I just don't see how that can be a problem.
Yeah, it breaks out of its sort of natural place.
Which is the most stupid thing to do because it's now really
easily bumped off.
Yeah, yeah.
Why did it do that?
Because it's called hubris, I guess.
It wants to be.
I should have had it been its own star.
I just love that it's wheeling around on it, the raw prawl.
It gets the raw prawn award for my season, complete with its own
mounting base and casters.
And they have cast.
It has cast.
Oh, Yatick, my love, where are you?
Well, of course, it's John Scott Martin inside it.
I was hoping it was Stuart Furlow, indeed, Tony Starr.
That would have made it very different.
And has those Alpha Centauri arms too, where it has 3 arms on each
side all linked together by string?
So the actor who only has 2 arms or one arm on each side can
operate them all.
You know what I mean?
That's right.
Because the Alpha Centauri character was so successful.
They already brought it back again.
They reincarnated it as this one. yeah.
I mean, is it so good?
It's hilarious and funny.
No, because it's not fun.
It's not fun.
I mean, it's a boy.
Okay, because we were lucky we were their 1st time round.
What did we think of it then?
No, I can't remember having a strong opinion.
I don't remember.
The only thing I remember of this story is canine. and that I had
to hurriedly go and build yet another TARDIS set, because they've
reached, they've changed the console room.
That's it.
I didn't actually own the story as a child.
I didn't see it until my teenage years.
So I don't have childhood nostalgia for it, which you may notice.
Usually I'm the 1st with a crap story to go, oh, isn't it
wonderful and isn't it lovely?
No, I'm very much aware of the limitations of this one.
How did you feel when you 1st saw it now?
You know, I still enjoyed it.
But I saw a lot, a lot of problems.
And actually, Todd's taking this as his queue to fly in for a
moment and restate something he said last season.
Well, guys, I stand by my statement that Bob Baker and Dave Martin
write 2 pretty good episodes of Doctor Who a year.
After that, well, it's anybody's business.
And I must say this, I actually quite enjoy the 1st couple of
episodes of this story.
But in episode three, things just start to go horribly wrong.
I actually don't have a problem with the prawn prop, which I think
is really well realised.
It's that stupid, black clothed, one clawed thing at the end of
episode three, which I just think is absolutely diabolical.
And how much noise does K9 make?
Oh, look, that's all the time I've got time for.
I've got to go outside and exercise leaking.
So, guys...
Todd's very generous giving them two.
So, yeah, we have the first four episodes of eight that Bob Baker
and Dave Martin write this year.
And it occurs to me this story.
It's a four-part story, but really, it's 4 one parts.
You know, you've got the mystery of Titan Base and the doctor
being taken over.
That's one story and that's kind of dealt with.
And then you've got the doctor being treated in hospital while the
virus spreads and that's the 2nd story.
Then you've got fantastic voyage.
Then you've got the more typical Doctor Who monster thing, where
it's the doctor versus the monster who wants to take over
humanity.
I mean, that is a problem with the story, isn't it?
But it can't settle on what it's about.
Is this the last year that they work on the program?
No, they're back for the key to time.
What wonder do they do in that?
Armageddon factor.
God, they're so terrible.
They were terrible.
Who's hiring?
Williams trusted them with that one because they've, you know
they've got such great tenure.
But I mean, we can cheat.
They're really bad and they used to be good.
Like a Midlands Hall, quick and cheap.
But they've done hand of fear, and invisible enemy, and underworld
and the Armageddon factor, and then got to be contestants for the
worst stories about...
You did it here first.
You know, they are bad.
Like, I, you know, like I bitched about them before this.
I just don't think I'd realised the full scale of their
incompetence and utter utter evil.
Is this the 1st time Nathan and I have actually sat on the same
side of the table on this?
As a boy, I kind of, I did enjoy these because this is how I was
writing my fanfic.
However, I was 10.
And that's really all I can say in its defence.
So, yeah, I think Nathan and I are sitting on the same sofa of
reasonable comfort for this one.
How about you?
Oh, look, yeah, guys, for once we found a story that we all agree
is bad, because quite often we will all agree that a story is good
especially if it had Barbara in it.
But, um, yeah, this is one that, as much as I love the Williams
era, and I do adore the Williams, I think this is, I think this is
the biggest misfire of the 70s so far.
Really?
Well, so far.
Yeah.
They're still underworld.
And you know how much I didn't like them.
Mutants like Bob Baker and Dave Martin.
Which, see, I did like that.
Yeah, I liked it too.
I like Axos. terrible in many ways.
Well, but Axos is just a disco I want to hang out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Plus both of those have really quite relevant and well-stated
social commentary.
Yeah, they do, especially mutants.
I think that was really fresh It still is.
This has a giant prawn on a skateboard.
Which should be everything you've ever wanted.
Sounds delicious.
Unfortunately, or perhaps, thankfully, that's all the time we have
to spend at the Baiowl Foundation.
I have so much more today. about how much I hate this story.
Please switch over to ABC 2 for Nathan's extended analysis.
Don't forget, you can find us online at flatthroughentirety.com
flight through entirety on Facebook and iTunes and at FTE podcast
on Twitter.
Next Saturday, we release our commentary on Bondfinger for
Thunderball, which is possibly the invisible enemy of James Bond
films.
So you can check that out on Bondfinger.com, Bondfinger on
Facebook and iTunes and Bondfinger cast on Twitter.
So until we see you for Bondfinger or for Doctor Who, may all your
prawns not try to take you over with a deadly virus.
Thank you very much and good night.
Good night.
I'll just chuck a virus on the Barbie.
See you soon.
That words flight to entirety, Nathan Bottomley, Brendan Jones and
Richard Stone.
This episode, Ren and Stinky, was recorded on the 27th of
September 2015.
The next episode will be released on November the 8th.
The scales may have fallen from our eyes on this one.
If they were ever on there to begin with.
Fish people, did we mention that's gone fish people?