Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to Flightthrough Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast coming to you live from the 5th
planet.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
What's the Fendal's obsession with Ingrid Pitt, then?
That's right.
We are on Chris Boucher's final story for the series.
It's image of the Fender.
All the Island of Fandor, if you're the Doctor Who Appreciation
Society with a bad phone line.
This is an interesting one because I said last week that I didn't
have a copy of The Invisible Enemy as a child.
I did have a copy of Image of the Fendal as a child, but it's a
bit weird because it was on the end of my copy of the 5 doctors.
And also it was unlabelled.
So I didn't know it was there until I was about 10 years old.
Oh my god.
I was older than 10.
The 5 dogs just went out.
I remember watching.
I was younger than 10 when the 5 doctors, actually, when the 5
doctors went out...
No, I was alive.
I was born in October 83.
Now, I'm just going to ask Todd to open us up with a comment
here.
Don't say open us up.
Oh, look, I've just bought my shopping list with me.
I'm going to make a souffl today.
It's called the Faux Hinchcliffe Home Souffle.
So let's see what's on my shopping list.
A Victorian country mansion, a cupboard, a glowing skull, a mad
scientist, a woman with sixth sense, an invisible enemy.
Oh, I'm supposed to have a Philip Hinchcliffe, but I can only come
up with a Graham Williams, and it does say here on the packaging
that I've got a Robert Holmes, but I believe that it's actually
Anthony Reed.
Oh, yes, and we'll also throw in Chris Boucher, writing for his
companion, Elila.
It's gonna be a roaring success.
Well, actually, I think there's too many elements going on in this
story to make it a roaring success.
I actually find it's like a souffle that rises and you think, Well
it looks great, it smells great, it's going to taste great.
But it just, for me, isn't all there.
Episode three in particular, guys, what did the doctor and Leila
do?
Nothing.
All right, well, I'm feeling a bit peaky.
I think I need to go outside and catch some rays of the sun, and I
think I need a good steaming as well.
Now, I wonder where can I go for that?
Okay, so I'm going to take Todd's first point first there.
And I do think that this feels like a hangover from the
Hinchcliffe era.
It's got so many elements that Hinchcliffe would love to use.
It's even got Stargrove's estate, which was the house of Marcus
and Lawrence Garman.
Happiest couple.
George and Ira Gushman.
And Mar Tyler's cottage, who is Mrs. Pooh from...
To the Manor.
Oh, right.
Oh, is she?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I've never read that connection.
I see something dark.
See something, yes.
That was just Penelope case.
Her cottage is, of course, Lawrence Garman's hunting lodge.
So, you know, the whole estate's being used again.
But I'm going to go for something very contentious here.
I think the Williams era does horror far, far better than the
Hinchcliffe era.
It does moody very, very well, doesn't it?
And on that point, I'd just like to know what Muck Jagger's home
and contents insurance must be now because isn't that 2 years in a
row, the place is burnt down?
I think his mum was living there.
Yeah, he was.
His mum was living in the 1st one.
What you and Todd haven't identified is the other commonality
which is that the villain isn't just, you know, like a crazy
murderous oyster or a giant prawn.
There's a seafood theme, isn't there?
Yes, there is.
It's an evil from the dawn of time.
It's, you know, death, you know, turned into a monster.
It's David Tennant's prop from his Hamlet.
It's love crafty.
Do you know what I mean?
Because we don't mention Lovecraft enough.
It is pure Lovecraft stuff.
It's one of the Titans.
Yes, yes.
So this is beautiful.
This, can we just say, isn't it nice?
Where does this story come from?
Propped up in the middle of the season?
Like a lovely nasturtium amongst all the toadstools.
It's really, it might not smell good, but it got a lot of colour
and movement.
So why do you say that it's done better in the Williams era than
it was by Hinchcliffe?
Well, I've had to think a lot about that.
And I think it comes back to something we were constantly saying
about Hinchcliffe.
With Hinchcliffe, we don't care about supporting characters.
Yeah.
Where there might be one story we care about, like Vira or
Lawrence Scarman or Guy Crayford.
You know, you do feel...
I didn't care about Guy Crowford.
Giuliano and his friend can never remember it.
Giuliano and Marco.
Yeah.
Whereas in this, you've got Adam Colby, you've got Max Stale
you've got Dr. Fendleman, you've got Mar Tyler, you've got Jack
Tyler.
They are all...
Interestingly, they're all interestingly drawn characters.
Even the security guard Mitchell who gets killed in the kitchen.
He only gets about 5 lines, but they really cement his character
as his job's worth security.
That's Bouchung.
Is that voucher, though, because he gave us robots of dare.
I think it is voucher.
But I also think that the horror in this is really well offset by
the comedy.
And robots have had some comedic moments, but it didn't have as
much comedy as this, but the comedy here doesn't undermine the
horror that we're facing.
And a big part of that is the character of Adam Colby.
He's so funny.
He's set up to not die, right from the beginning, you can't not
like him.
And George Spenton Foster, the director, really gets that these
things are British character actors standing around on a set
talking out to each other.
Yes.
That's when Doctor Who's at its best.
So.
Yeah, and I mean, something that a lot of people credit as a
source for this is, of course, Quace Madison, the Pitt, which have
the notion of ancient aliens coming to Earth and influencing
humankind indirectly.
But I think another very strong influence, also by Nigel Neil, is
the stone tape.
Oh, I've heard of this.
Tell us about this.
So the stone tape was a telemovie with Jane Asher.
Oh, she's lovely.
Lovely cakes.
The concept is you have a group of scientists.
A group of scientists go to a haunted castle.
And in this story, Fendelman says the woods are meant to be
haunted.
A group of scientists go to a haunted castle because one of the
scientists has a theory that there's no such thing as ghosts.
What happens is psychic impressions are recorded onto a building.
And that's why it's called the stone tape because he's trying to
pretty much discover steady state hard drives.
They can hear this eerie scream and what have you.
And I won't spoil the twist in the end, but the scream is not what
they were expecting it to be.
It's the kind of tone that films like paranormal activity try to
capture.
But I don't think they capture it anywhere near as well.
This is 1972 production.
Is it good?
It's very good.
It sounds sapphire and steelish.
It's a bit sapphire and steel is to bit Doctor Who, it's a bit
equator mass.
Is it on oneself tube?
It might be on one self-tube?
I'll look for it.
I'll put a link.
I see that.
I was thinking, I really liked that you say that because I was
actually thinking it was Chris Belcher just showing us how utterly
clever he really is, and dragging out the nasal juices of all the
nonsense that we've had with Von Danniken.
We talked about mid times before the chariots of the gods and also
um, lampooning the Desmomoris stuff with, um, you know, explaining
out, Desmomoris is really big with a naked ape at the time, that
book.
Do remember that one?
What was that thing, man watching?
No, what was it called?
Yeah, yep, yep, yep.
He was on Parkinson all the time when we were kids and just
talking about, you know, of how our ancestors ancestors survived
through complex social systems and through humour and through
exchange.
But Chris Boucher just throws all of that up in the air and says
well, it could just be this version, and this makes just as much
sense.
I think he's really taking a piss out of the 70s with this.
It's really nicely underplayed, but the understory of it has
gravitas and has a whole weight to it.
But unlike bob and day.
If you don't need to throw them all up in the air and point the
ideas, you can just suggest that they're there and let the
audience ruminate on that while the actors go about being dazzling
and charming and in the place of style, Max style.
Really menacing.
Some really nice counterpoints.
And of course, want to vent them, a mother cumberbatch is just
delightful.
And obviously that Pilates was big in the 70s as well because she
manages to get herself right up off the floor in all her Ingrid
Pippa slap later on in the story, doesn't it?
Yeah, she must have great abs.
I tell you.
Well, it's all fun.
Lana from Archer, isn't she?
Her great abs are all from supporting her 2 wonderful wigs in this
story.
Do you know why she's wearing that dark wig?
I do, but do tell us?
No, no, you're tourist is not my story.
Okay.
The reason she is wearing that dark wig is because she is
naturally blonde, as we saw... as we saw in UFO.
And Gene Rock in the faceless ones.
And as we'll later see in time of the run, yeah.
Did you realise her real hair?
Her 3 Doctor Who stories are 1967, 1977 and 1987.
And 2 of them have Donald Pickering in them.
Two of them have...
Yes, exactly.
But the reason she has that wig is that Graham Williams said no
one would take a pretty blonde scientist seriously will have to
make you a brunette.
Oh, God.
Do you think he'd been talking to Barry Letts and Terence Dixon?
about women scientists with blonde hair?
So, you know, well done, Graham, for having speaking women roles
in the last 3 stories?
For a change.
There are more girls, yeah.
Yeah, if he had have said, you know what, we had a blonde woman 2
stories ago and she was our main female guest cast.
That's still a bit ropey, but you'd kind of go, Adelaide, yeah.
You know, yeah, there's no danger to anyone that they'll confuse.
Wait, why is Adelaide back?
Yeah, you know, you're not going to confuse Annette Woodlet with
Wanda Bentham.
I think just in case we weren't sure, the 70s really was the 70s
long ago.
But thankfully, it doesn't spoil the fact that she is an excellent
character and portrayed so well and the humanity in her
performance is so touching.
And when she starts to freak out about what's happening to her.
Freaking eight.
You know, compared to Mac Style, who knows what's going on or
thinks he does, and is looking forward to the power of it.
She doesn't want any of that power.
She knows what's happening to her and she doesn't want it.
And it's so human and it makes it so sad what happens to her in
the end.
In fact, that's one of the things that I don't like about this.
There are a few.
I think the story has a few flaws, but I think maybe chief among
them is the way that Wanda Anthem is treated.
And it makes style is a great cartoon villain.
And I think he's a terrific actor.
You know, he's sort of terribly handsome and all that sort of
thing.
But he, like, he's a creeper.
Do you know what I mean?
He drugs women and chains them up.
It's like watching the Cosby show in White Beach.
It really is.
He's horrible.
That's not the episode.
Well, okay, but there are other...
Other episode titles are available.
How about blank sections for cow inserts?
Did you notice in that, sorry to do this to Segway, but this has a
lot of nice OB, and there's a lot of, the extra footage, if you've
watched it on the DVDs, there are of Leila, raising her kneecaps
off because this is for general listening in cow fields, in
Huddersstock, or wherever she is, Huddersfield, or whatever.
And Tom just mooning about, but there's a lot of points where
they're just standing about waiting for a cow to walk past.
So and there is actually a line in the camera scripts, blank
sections for cow inserts.
I just wish we'd had more of that.
Now, something else Todd has said in his little bubble is, of
course, that the doctor and Leila do very little in this story.
I do find myself very surprised, of course, because the doctor and
Leila have very little bearing in the plot in the 1st 2 episodes.
That's why it's good.
And then in the 3rd episode, they bugger off in the TARDIS to go
try and check out the 5th planet and discover it's in a time loop
and come back.
So the doctor and Leila don't really do anything useful within the
plot until halfway through episode three.
And yet this is still so much better than when that happens with
Colin Baker.
But why is that?
Not to go forward, but to go back.
Do you know, sorry, do you know why I feel that's really great is
because it hearkens back to Billy and Barbara and Susan and Ian
that we are not organic to the plot, we've jumped in, and these
things, terrible things are going to happen, whether we were here
or not.
And it's real, we don't know.
It's touch and go.
I really don't like it when the story is integral to the doctor
and the doctor's movements and my least favourite doctor whose
stories are when it's about the doctor.
You magician's apprentices.
Exactly.
Q episode one of season 9 of the new series.
I just find when it's about the doctor, it's really tedious.
The more he's removed from it, the more the threat is tangible.
Who lets him out of the cupboard?
It's cut from the scene now.
It was, I think it was Theo, do you remember?
No.
Theo goes looking for him.
Fear goes looking for him.
I don't think he's let out. think it's Max?
I think it's Max because Theo goes looking for him and then
stumbles across the Sonic Time scanner.
When she's still in that closet.
When she is in the Sonic Times scanner, Max comes in and says
something to the she says I was looking for that man and Max says
he's gone.
How does he know he's, because Max has already had the
conversation, I'm the doctor can't be any danger to our plans.
So he lets him know.
So why does he want to let him go though?
Because he can't be any danger to our plans?
Why not?
If he's the thing is, if he's let go and he's running around and
he gets caught again, that's even more of a distraction for Max to
then get on with what he's doing.
That's logical, yeah.
I actually just thought that he's kicking the door and all of that
sort of thing just sort of eventually dislodges it.
I mean, it's a sort of gag about the fact that you hear the lock
go, you know, and suddenly he can get out.
I wasn't reading it as someone has had secretly let him out.
Fair enough.
And there are jokes at his expense there.
Isn't there?
We segue from Leila talking about his great wisdom and a kind of
gentleness. segue to him locked in a cupboard, kicking the door
furiously, you know, like a giant idiot.
The episode 3 thing, I think, is a bit of a problem.
And I think it's something that will come up again with stones of
blood where we go for a Gothic horror thing and then we segue into
a science fiction thing as if we kind of bottle out at the last
moment.
And here, I think a lot of effort and energy is spent in
explaining the Fendal.
So the Fandali's death itself.
It eats death.
You know, like, it is a horror from, you know, the prehistory of
the universe.
But we spend episode 3 establishing that it comes from the 5th
planet, which is the planet between Mars and Jupiter that breaks
up to form the asteroid belt, and that the time lords destroyed it
or time looped it or whatever the hell they did.
How can it be an asteroid?
No, no, but I mean, I think that that is what they say. that is
the question.
It's 2 things at once.
And then you get the giant that big bit of dialogue between Colby
and the doctor talking about evolution taking a blind alley on the
5th planet and there's this and all of these sorts of things.
Which is entirely plausible.
But he offers all of these theories and then says, oh, it could
just be one giant coincidence.
Do you know what I mean?
That's what I mean about Boucher taking the Mickey out of the
entire 70s conspiracy stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
But it seems like wasted time.
But is that how people would discuss it?
I just think it's more naturalistic.
It gives so much flesh to these characters that I really am
interested.
And no one dies not to preempt if you haven't seen it, do listener
but no one dies as horridly as Fendelman himself in the final
scenes.
He's not necessarily bad.
He's just narcissistic and a bit, you know, monodirectional and
linear.
In fact, I actually think the story tries to make us think he's
the villain initially because he has the accent.
He's called Fendelman.
You doing the accent?
Yeah, same doings, the accent, Adam.
He's got moustache.
Yeah, he's got the giant Dennis Lil moustache.
The trademark, Dennis Lil Moustache.
He's in survivors.
I don't know if you've seen Survivors, but Survivors is the 70s
Terry Nation thing where everyone's wiped out by a virus except
for a bunch of white middle class people in England.
In about episode 4 or 5 of the 1st season of Survivors.
They come across a colony of people, which is run by Dennis Lil
and Dennis Lil has decided to repopulate the entire Earth single
handedly.
So he lives in a colony with a whole bunch of women whom he's
having sex with and stuff.
And then later they get him back and sort of rehabilitate him so
that he can take over when Watt's his face from Warriors of the
Deep leaves the show and he has to Ingrid it.
And he has to take over as the lead of the show.
Why am I saying all of this?
I'm sure I was thinking about something.
I think I was distracted.
I was distracted by Dennisville's moustache.
So survivors is kind of like The Walking Dead without zombies.
Otherwise known as the Walking Dead series 2.
Well, it's kind of the walking.
Yeah, in fact, it is a lot like that.
They raise, they have a farm, you know, they raise things.
There's no real tension.
Are they Amish?
No.
No, it's not a very good series.
I haven't watched it.
No, no, I'm scared of zombies.
I can't watch Walking Dead too.
So Dennis Lil is presented as our villain, but then, of course
style takes over.
And he's Boaz from Day of the Daleks.
Yes, he's Scott Fredericks.
Feather Boers.
And as we called him.
And he's rather handsome, it has to be said.
Malcolm McDowell's psycho stab you in the back of the head with a
knitting needle handsome way.
That's off my Friday night.
He's Carnell in Blake 7 in the episode of Blake 7 called Weapon
which is by Chris Boucher, and he plays a psycho strategist who's
able to predict other people's behaviour.
And I believe it's also directed by George Spenton Foster.
Well, that's why I spent in Foster doesn't direct again, does he?
Does he direct again here, please?
He's back on for Ryboss operation.
That's right, but then after that, he's Blake 7.
Yeah.
So Carnell is brought back by Chris Boucher to be in the Caldor
City audios, remember?
He's a character in the big Finnish audios that are sort of
sequels to Robots of Death.
So it's all a rich tapestry, really.
It is a lovely, rich bouillabaise, really, isn't it?
Back onto the theme.
Food theme of the... seafood.
Hmm.
Now, despite the fact that the doctor and Leila don't get much to
do in the first two episodes, the doctor and Leila, for the 1st
one, are the subject of the 1st 2 cliffhangers.
And the 1st cliffhanger is completely mental because it's just...
It seems to just have half its footage cut out of it.
And it does.
It does, yeah, because Tom in the Woods, we're meant to see him
slowly becoming stuck.
Instead, he's walking along, we cut to Leila, poking ahead around
a door or not as we discover next week.
Thank you, perils of Pauline style.
It's a real sheet.
Yes, it is.
But then we cut back to the doctor just standing there and
completely stock still.
And that would work if when the hiker had been attacked.
He'd just been standing there stock still, but instead he was
screaming.
So it's kind...
As just a cliffhanger, if you just watch it, it's absolutely fine
but the buildup comes out of nowhere.
The 2nd cliffhanger also comes out of nowhere, but it's a great
what the hell moment.
Remind me.
It's the doctor putting his hand on the skull.
And we have heard a reference that it's like the skull was full of
energy.
But instead of being told, if you touch the skull, it will drain
your life energy, we kind of realise when the doctor puts his hand
on it, and it hangs on that moment longer than usual, which has a
few effects.
First of all, it gives us time to twig.
That's how it absorbs energy through touch.
But 2nd of all, and this would become increasingly rarer as Tom's
attitude to the role became bigger and bigger and bigger, as we'll
see in the next few series, we see the doctor genuinely in pain
and genuinely terrified by what's happening.
Well, that was a feature of the Hingecliffia as well.
Tom and Payne is a very frequent thing and that goes away as he
becomes kind of inviolate.
Yeah.
And it does give us a great, a great reprise and a great solution
where Leila kicks the chair out from under him and he lands on top
of her.
And yeah, in any other show, that'd be a moment of sexual
tension.
But in this, it's Leila says, you are very heavy.
Hey, did I did I just save your life?
It's so cute.
It's great.
Well, it's nice to have Leila written by Chris Boucher again.
He gets her.
She's not an idiot.
She's different.
Do you know what I mean?
Do they throw those lines in themselves in rehearsal?
Quite possibly.
But at the same time, Chris Boucher is just really, really, really
good with character.
And funny dialogue and particularly bitchy dialogue between
characters who aren't getting on, you know, he's really good.
Mother Tyler, the highlight.
I was really missing.
I'm expecting Sylvia Coleridge at any moment.
She got busting in painting.
But there's, you don't need Amelia Ducar because you have...
You have Martai?
You have Bonnie Tyler, yeah.
Yeah.
No, she's actually Martha Tyler.
So she's a weird combination of the 1st 2 companions of the new
series.
Does Rose Tyler have an Uncle Jack, possibly?
Uncle Jack Tyler.
We may never know.
Something which this story is kind of missing is Dudley Simpson.
The 1st 2 episodes only have 6 minutes of music between them.
It's very Graham Williams.
We haven't mentioned how the scoring has changed so much. since.
You know, we had all that meticulous and quite expensive use of
scoring directly for scenes that culminated, of course, in seeing
Dudley on stage at the old Bournbush in Weng Chaiang.
But now, yeah, it's very sparse, isn't it?
And it's mostly Foley.
It's Mo, he's going back to the sound effects people, so you get
the woo-woo noise of the washing machine fend doll maker.
And I like it for that.
I like that the score is held off.
Do you know, I actually think the Dudley has a pretty good year
this year, and he writes some formatic stuff.
I even think that he's OK in underworld.
I think he's really good in sun makers.
I think this is the season where the fourth doctor's theme really
becomes a thing, you know, like, we got...
But I think it really comes to the fore, I think, in season 16 and
17, but it's used here more often.
I think he does a pretty good job.
I have to agree with you, really, especially with Underworld, which
we'll talk about in a couple of weeks time.
But where I think the music is so good here is because it's so
sparse at the beginning, that emphasises the horror and the
eeriness of the situation, because, you know, say brain of Morbius
really, it's okay to be scared because you've got bum, bum, bum
bum, bum, all the way through.
Whereas here, the music doesn't really start to take hold until
fear transforms into the fendoline.
And even then, it's sort of magical and I dream of genie, but with
a really sinister undercurrent.
It's the music from the Blake 7 episode duel.
Remember that, don't you think?
It's that ethereal sort of female voice thing when Thea does her
sort of raising up and turning into a sort of gold helga sort of
thing.
I am going to go backwards in the story just for a moment.
And this is just about a personal experience I had with this
story.
As I mentioned earlier, it was on the end of a tape which had the
5 doctors.
It wasn't written on the label, so I didn't know it was there for
ages.
I just discovered it late one night on the tape.
I let the 5 doctors credits run through and sort of halfway
through the credits, it cut to image of the fend up.
Now, of course this was in the era of videotape, dear listeners.
I'm sure many of you would remember that It's much like cuniform
tablets, only it doesn't quite have the durability.
Well, this is a very good point.
And something you had to use to do with videotapes was adjust the
tracking.
Do you remember adjusting tracking?
Yes.
Yeah, and of course, if there was any sort of, say, physical dust
or a blemish on the tape.
If a bird flew overhand.
Yeah, that's right.
It could actually mess up the heads, which were playing the tape
which is similar to, and I'm not trying to take the Mick here, but
if there's those of you out here who've never used videotape.
It would be similar to a smudge on a DVD disrupting the laser.
But instead of just stopping, it could actually then damage the
heads itself.
And they would like plough their way through.
I had videotapes that the heads would just chew their way
through.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, there was some kind of some kind, there was something stuck
to a particular point in the tape.
And if you played it at normal speed through that scene, uh, it
would become a snowstorm.
You have to clean your videotape heads with alcohol.
If you fast forwarded through that scene, it was absolutely fine.
The scene in question was when they are discussing how the
pentagram got on the skull and it's really eerie and it's lighting
their faces up.
So when I'm watching that as a kid, as they're discussing how this
thing can absorb your energy, the screen turns into static.
And there's all this discussion and I'm watching this at about one
AM during the school holidays by myself.
And I'm terrified for 2 things.
One, the story is terrifying too.
Oh, I've got to get the video head cleaning tape.
There are lots of indications.
I don't know if you've done any history at school at that stage
when you saw it, but I like that the Fendal in its human form
looks like one of the bull leaping priestesses of Nossos of Troy.
Really?
Did they?
They painted giant eyes on their eyelids.
I was thinking, put the hair and the dress she's wearing is really
harking back again to Time Monster, if you like the same
antecedents.
Was that why you were making cracks about Ingrid Pitt earlier?
I was, yes.
It's the same look.
But without the painted eyelids.
But the notion that the Fandal has been inculcating humanity
throughout, it hasn't just woken up after 12000000 years.
It's actually had an influence that entire period.
But it mostly likes hammer horror and it plays your family.
It really is, isn't it?
Maybe, maybe Peter Cushing used to live above it. with
Christopher...
Peter Fendelman... right.
Is there anyone in this that doesn't work?
Is there anyone who?
I don't think there's anyone in the cast.
No, no, I think the casts are all really good.
And the pacing is good.
Yeah, I think the writing is lovely.
I think there's, I think that there's exposition scenes, as I said
before, in 3 and 4 that don't really work and aren't really
necessary.
And I think it's an attempt by Williams to move away from the kind
of Gothic horror of the Hingecliffe thing and make it a bit more
science-based.
But I think the horror, I agree with Brendan.
I think the horror actually works more here because it's implicit
rather than the explicit horror of the Hinchcliffe here.
And, of course, borrowing from Lovecraft, you can't go wrong if
you're talking about horror from before, the vocal memory of human
culture.
Absolutely.
The horror, instead of being given front and centre screen.
It's what a lot of horror films do now in that they might be
focussing on, say, Adam Colby, but really what's going on and the
important thing to the plot is how Fear Ransom is reacting behind
him.
And doesn't she do it beautifully in a, in a, what should be a
very passive role and being, you know, pretty much the Pauline
character, perilously impaled on her own Pilates washboard, but
she's actually, for me, really giving the impetus to it.
She's the one that's showing the true horror.
And Adam is actually kind of nicely as the audience figure.
He's just sitting there, just standing there.
You know, he and Tom were mates in rep.
It comes across.
Yeah, those actors had a rapport when they were both young men.
We've got another story here which is similar to horror, fang rock
in terms of the body count.
You know, so many people we meet during the course of the story
die.
But we do have people, as Richard observed, like Adam Colby is
very definitely he's going to be alive.
Mark Tyler, Jack Tyler.
You'll notice that the recipe for the fruit muffins today has come
from the doctors.
I buried it for 2 weeks in my team in the garden before I served
it, yeah.
The cat didn't get to it.
We asked 2 weeks ago.
Could any of the characters have survived Horror of Fang Rock?
And I think we kind of have an answer here in that, it's more
effective in a way, because the deaths we have, and especially
Thea's death, mean more.
It's awful.
And Matt, even Max's death, and we're meant to hate Max and the
doctors say, I can't do anything for you.
And Max asked for the gun and the doctor's like, don't be stupid.
It won't do anything.
He says, it's not for her.
Do you know that was a compromise?
They actually were going to show, they showed him putting the gun
in the mouth.
Yeah, that was in the script.
And that was it. and this was a compromise between Graham and
Williams and the heads of the BBC.
So, well, I think...
Same of the complains about that, but I think it would have been
terrible to see him put the gun on. you don't need it?
Also, I'm really glad to see that Williams isn't actually
compromising on what made Doctor Who so popular in the last few
years.
He knows.
He's had a bit of shrift.
I'm not sure where the popular continuum of fandom opinion is, he
got a lovely reprise in the 90s when people like Paul Canell and
Kate Orman were just, you know, going back to the reason he loved
Graham Williams.
Well, the reason I love Graham Williams is, and he does it in this
one as well, he always talks about books, and as a young boy, I
liked that there was a Bob Holmes thing, that the doctor gave us
the meaning of a new word in each story, and he would mention
books, and this is the one where I read a lot.
And I still use that line at work when people ask a question and
it absolutely silences everyone to this day, but because I can't
believe I'm doing such a twat impersonation.
Just speaking of, I read a lot.
I once had a boss who didn't know who Martin Luther King was.
Ah.
Wankaw.
No, absolutely.
I think you really played the Harlem Globetrotters, didn't you?
Graham Williams came into the program with the instruction to
reduce the quotient of horror.
And I don't think he does at this point.
No, he doesn't.
Horror Fang Rock, as the title suggests, was a horror.
This is a horror.
What he's done is he has made the characterisation more real and
that means that the characters have light as well as dark.
I think the problem with the Hinchcliffe era was not so much the
horror.
It was the lack of light in the stories.
Yeah, I, oh, that it's sustensible.
I like this, again, I like this one because it's implicit.
It feels far more like a literature.
It feels far more like Lovecraft in the written version than it.
It's not very filmic. in the way that it implies horror.
You disagree?
Well, I just think Lovecraft is actually has some great ideas, but
is a truly, truly terrible right. and a brutal racist.
Do you know what I mean?
Well, he's obviously...
Yeah, I agree with the other races and his implicit.
He actually makes very good drama, the audio drama, the BBC do
quite a few radio versions of...
Yeah, but that way you don't have to actually read his pro.
In the mountains of madness has just been repeated again on BBC
4.
It's really well done.
Yeah, they're great ideas.
And certainly Hinchcliffe plunders them relentlessly, and this is
kind of the last hurrah of that approach.
And I actually wonder whether despite, you know, William's
innovations, that approach to Doctor Who has now played out.
Yeah, and we will see less of the horror.
We get sort of one horror story next year and then in William's
final year.
We don't really, we get some horror horror aspects in stories, but
we don't get another horror story after.
Well, in fact, next year's horror story does what this one does
which is take a quick left turn into science fiction in episode
three.
Do you know what I mean?
And it becomes something different from what we expected.
And I would argue as much as I love that story.
It's not anywhere near as effective as image of the fender.
Yeah, no, I think that's probably true.
I love both of them, though, I have to say.
Before we finish up, I'd just like to discuss the interplay
between the 2 regulars.
So I think Tom and Louise are getting on much better now.
They had some rapport.
They have some comedic dialogue.
Louise has that horrible haircut because of an overzealous BBC.
Oh my goodness.
BBC hairdresser.
Did Todd not leave a question about this because Todd has been
bitching for weeks about how awful Leila's costume is and how
terrible her hair is?
Well, that's the thing.
He did actually include that it is recording, but I decided not to
include it because he's been talking about it so much.
I figured long term listeners would understand.
Might be terrible.
Mine's a big disappointment is that the intention for the
character.
Maybe Boucher puts that into this one, but, you know, maybe it was
more a Hinchcliffe thing, is that Leela was going to progress
along the lines of Eliza Doolittle.
And she would never wear the skins again after Weng Chiang, when
she changes.
It was, it was, and they carried that forward a little with
horrifying, right?
She's wearing an outfit.
But then they've gone back to dumbing her down and then treating
her like an idiot sometimes.
It doesn't happen to her in this story.
But you haven't heard our talents of Wing Shayang episode yet, but
I actually object strongly to her being put in that dress because
she turns into a sort of simpering girly, you know, and so...
She's got a rat at her nethers.
No, no, that's when she's in her undies later.
I know.
Well, she's dressed as the artful dog, yeah.
She's dressed as a boy.
In those velvets.
No, he doesn't win Cheyenne.
When Lightfoot chooses a guy in for her, yes.
When Rex Harrison and Colonel Pickering go out and buy her address
and put her in it and then she smiles like a proper girl.
Like, I don't think the journey from huntress to a woman.
But she's a girl.
I mean, you know, this is the thing.
This is an all boy cast.
Girls like dress frocking up.
They do, and so do quite a few boys.
I think I need to look too far. this tabletop.
Pate biscuit indeed.
This is, you know, it's, she, I think that was actually really
charming that she was still able to to play along with the girly
stuff.
She's a woman.
She's allowed to frock up and be feminine.
I mean, she's not all the other things aren't as valid.
Anyway, we've kind of done this.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, it's fresh for me anyway.
Head back about 3 weeks too.
If you'd like to hear that conversation again.
Well, I still, it's still pertinent to this, to the exposition of
Lita's character as we're going along, because I feel she's
hitting the brakes too often.
She doesn't know this story, but she has in the one previous to
this one, and I think she will in the next one.
I think that Baker and Martin write her poorly.
I think Boucher does a good job.
I think Bob Holmes's initial stab at the character in Talons of
Wing Chang is terrible, but that he does a great job of her in
Sunmakers.
I think Terence, to my surprise, does a good job of her, you know
he does.
Yeah, yeah.
But she is a character who really, because she's so high concept
she kind of lives and dies on the writing.
It's not the normal thing where you invent a very thin character
and just rely on the actor to create the character.
This is a high concept character of the kind that we'll get later
on, and it does depend very strongly on how it's being written, I
think.
It's the ultimate polar opposite to the doctor, which is why
there's nowhere else that can go, and it's the legacy of Liz
Sledden.
There's nowhere else they can go preempting the next season, but
the direction they go in.
Yeah.
What I love about Leila is her character has evolved. which is
partially due to the writing, but mainly due to Louise's
performance and Tom Louise, I don't know if Tom was cooperating at
this stage, was he?
But something that is in evidence here, as was in evidence in
horror of fang rock.
Of course, Leila accepts science now and she tries to understand
science.
So, you know, when the doctor says Sonic time scan.
She remembers it and she knows that's the problem and she expects
everyone else to know it because you understand science, aren't
you?
But there's that great bit where she's very respectful of Mart
Heiler's old traditions and talks about how important they are.
She's great in that scene.
She also understands psychology because when Jack says, what
happened, Ma?
Don't ask her that.
It's because she does not want to remember that she's like this.
She's really strong and clever in this.
She keeps a foot in both her worlds.
In her traditional world, which, of course, has got her to the
point where she is today, you know.
So she doesn't throw out the old ways, but as she says in horror
of Fang Rock, there are better ways in science.
Should we talk about Hyde?
Yes, please.
Hyde is series 7.
It's Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman, and it's very, very closely a
kind of retread of this, isn't it?
It's set in the same period.
It's set in a haunted priory.
It has a female character who is kind of psychic and in touch with
the alien threat, as we think it is.
It has a whole section in Act 4, where they faff about and the
TARD is kind of wasting time and finding out what's going on.
And it does that sort of traditional horror thing.
And I think it's very definitely a kind of lift or a retread of
image of the fendile.
See, I'd never picked up on that.
Now that you come to mention it, yes, I do see it, but I had never
picked up on that at the time.
It even has a very sort of strong look, you know, it seems very
much like it in the way that it looks and the way that it goes
from straightforward horror into something a bit more science
fiction later.
And yeah, even the doctor and Clara just kind of walk into the
house.
It's like, hi.
But all I can think of with that story.
And I quite enjoyed that one.
There were ones of series 7.
I didn't enjoy, but I quite enjoyed that one.
All I can think of that story is, of course, you have Jessica Rain
who would go on to be Verity Lambert in an adventure in space and
time.
You've got Doug Ray Scott, who was the 1st choice for Wolverine in
the X-Men films, which he turned down and the role went to Hugh
Jackman.
Do you know what he turned it down to do?
Mission Impossible 2.
Oh, dear.
He might have already been contracted to it.
Let's give him the benefit of the doubt.
No, he no, he was cast with Wolverine and got it.
He was cast Wolverine and got the other offer and thought that
would be a bigger, fairly imbued, the level of bitterness that we
saw in Hyde. a very good performance.
Can we talk finally about the fender?
Oh, when it kind of finally arises because I actually...
Can we talk about why it's got frills?
Cheap frills and how veins. you mean the...
Do you mean the fender lane?
That's the word.
Yes.
It was actually John Nathan Turner who asked for the cheap frills
to be able to because he said it reminded him of something.
That he had it home.
I think maybe he needs some cream then, if that reminds me of
something.
I know, really, without the paint and without, because a lot of
that paint was added and without the neck pieces.
That is just Doctor Who's response to anything that's remotely
phallic, isn't it?
Put a cloak on it.
Yes, it'll be it'll be fine.
The resolution isn't that great.
And that's that's another flaw that this story has.
So the moment that we discover that the fandoline are vulnerable
to rock salt, we can just kind of kill them sort of fairly
easily.
Oh, they've got some horrible ace and gold coins moments, haven't
we?
Yeah, it's that's, I mean, that's not that great.
And then when fear appears as the Fendal core, all she really does
is sort of roll back and mix into various scenes, wave her arms
around and then disappear.
Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean?
And if you look at her, she'll turn you into a fendoline.
I actually think is the... they're so cute. you get in the action
figure pack.
You get a cute puppet fendoline, a full-sized fendoline and a
Leila, and a skull on a plinth, and the skull is translucent.
Wow.
So you can die.
I want a puppet fenderling so badly.
They're so cute But, you know, they don't kind of do anything and
then and then the doctor sort of talks and this is going to be a
problem in a few stories this year where it's all just resolved by
the doctor saying he's going to do something technical, then he
explodes the whole kind of, uh, you know, priory and stuff and
it's all over.
And I think that that's a little bit too easy and a little bit too
uninteresting.
And the resolutions like this really should hinge on some kind of
character moment or some kind of clever plot moment.
But instead we just sort of talk our way out of it and there's a
big explosion.
Yeah, we've had that for the last 3 stories now.
And possibly going back even further.
Well, no, talent of waiting trying doesn't end with an explosion.
But yeah, horror of fang rock, invisible enemy, and image of the
fend, I'll all end with, oh, and then it exploded.
Thankfully next week we won't have that.
Sorry, Richard, did you?
No, I was going to say, that's what Doctor Who always does. and
that's...
The big end. explosion.
Well, also they're talking our way out of it.
It's getting action figures are just, it's my dinner with Andre
action figure assortment.
But I don't mean talk at each other.
I don't mean cleverly talking our way out of it by doing some
character thing or persuading someone of something or anything
like that.
I think it's just, we'll connect the bliz bloss to the biz bang
bong and...
That is what Doctor Who does.
And you're right, it is a bit Adam West Batman.
It's too crummy and just not very interesting.
It's connected into Dick Grayson.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Reverse the polarity and...
Dick Grayson.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That comes back to your cloaking suggestion, doesn't it?
That if anything's a bit dick grossing, you just throw it.
Do you think that's why Paul McGann refers to the chameleon
circuit is the cloaking device of the TV movie?
Let's try to throw it over the entire production.
More of that later.
I would just like to comment on the ending.
We get some lovely, low, low key comedy between Tom and Louise
about gendering canine and gendering machines and what have you
which pays off from an earlier scene.
What I really love is Adam Colby, who's the last surviving member
of the scientific expedition.
The house has been exploded, so he's going to have a horrible time
with the police.
What does he do?
Sits down for a cup of tea with Ma and Jack Tyler.
Bless.
Well done, listener. time to deactivate the time scanner, because
that's all the time we have for the image of the Fendal.
Don't forget, you can find us online at flatthroughentirety.com
flat through entirety on Facebook and iTunes and FTE podcast on
Twitter.
We also now have 4 James Bond commentaries available on
Bondfield.
Oh, that was quick.
Yes, for Dr. No, Goldfinger from Russia with Love and Thunderball
but not necessarily in that order.
And you can find those on Bondfinger.com, Bondfinger on Facebook
and iTunes and Bondfinger cast on Twitter.
Until we see you next time for one of those, may all your x-rays
not reveal a pentagram on the back of your skull.
Good night.
Good then.
That was Flat Your Entirety with Nathan Bottomley, Brendan Jones
and Richard Stone.
This episode, remotely Phallic, was recorded on the 27th of
September 2015.
The next episode will be released on November 15.
Once again, Doctor Who is oddly prescient, predicting a woman with
huge hair who sucks the life out of everything, 18 months before
she became Prime Minister.
You can find us online at flatthroughentirety.com, flight through
entirety on face tits.
That's staying in.