Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to Flightthrough Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast produced exclusively for work units.
Praise the company.
I'm Brandon.
I'm Nathan.
I'm a sever team steamed dumpling for this.
And 17 steamed dumplings are only served in Macropolis 6 in the
Sunmakers.
Or is it McGroppos one?
I'd love to say I love this story.
Do you all love this story?
Yeah, I do.
If Nathan's not gonna find it tiresome, I'll have to jump in.
It should be great.
It's Louise's favourite story, but, you know, as a boy.
There are lovely moments and beautiful lions, but this is the kind
of the point for me that some shows are better done by Nick Briggs
on Big Finish and this is one of them.
When they don't have a budget, you've got to sit and look at it.
And I'm sorry, you've also got to look at people standing in a car
park with a few machines going blink, blink.
The arguments between Manfred, if that's what his name, Manfred
Mann and everybody else, about who's going to be the most vicious
underling in a, no, my dad's bigger than yours and I'm going to
get you first.
Oh, do you mean, do you mean Ventris from heartbeat?
Oh, God.
It's interminable.
So yes, I get to be Nathan today.
I think it's just because the costumes look like a blue Peter
puppet theatre reimagining a Fritzlang's metropolis, but with
bumblebees.
Like the, I know that the, um, the gatherer, how it is meant to be
an Aztec thing in their very Aztec moments.
Okay, let's talk about why this is great.
Isn't it good?
I thought I might take the opportunity to leap in and agree with
you on some of these things.
This is the story I like.
That might be my favourite story of the season.
But the production is lamentably bad.
And it's it's something that they seem to get right next season.
I think next season has more hits.
You know, they can't have any more money, but it just generally
looks better.
But here the production fails.
Those white corridors are terrible.
And I've got lots to say about the longest white corridor in
Doctor Who history before or after.
That is the longest corridor shot you'll ever see and don't you
feel every single centimetre of it?
You wonder why they do. shoot that on videotape too, so that it
looks like, you know, it's an interior.
They've done that before.
You're right about next season.
I think that there'll be a big change, the big difference now that
those budget blowouts from Hinchcliffe and his epicanthic folds.
How much do latex epicanthic folds actually cost?
Very, very expensive and they will cost you your soul as well.
Well, and they did.
Well, plus every time John Bennett blinked, he'd tear the mask in
too.
So, you know.
Yeah, well, apparently, yeah, you're probably covered with Todd
that Weng Chung, that terrific 80s group, just paying them for the
rights, for the name, talents, chewed up so much of the budget for
the future.
Isn't Hinchcliffe a monster if we haven't even covered that yet.
This is the 3rd companion who was going to be killed.
Leila was going to be absolutely minced in this one.
Were they going to steam?
Yep.
She was actually going, I don't know about the final thing.
We'll have to look up the notes again to check, but she was going
to die.
The brig was going to die in the original hand of fear, writing.
And of course, Sarah was going to be killed in Seeds of Doom in
the compost mincer.
Yeah.
Although, this was actually Graham Williams, considering killing
Leila.
So they were considering killing her in the steam sequence.
So they were going to subvert the usual cliffhanger by having the
companion die instead, and then Robert Holmes objected, because he
was still around, and he wrote this script on his way out.
This year, this is actually, even though it's noted as Tony Reed
as Anthony Reed, it's actually Holmes's last full job of doing
everything, apparently.
And also, they were considering killing Leila in the collector's
office.
You know, when they Leila runs through that door when the doctor
tells her not to when she gets zapped.
Yeah, that is strange.
I'm not surprised to hear that actually.
Yeah, yeah, they were considering killing her.
How do you both feel that would have worked out on screen
considering the tone of the rest of the season and the impact of
Leela herself as a character?
That would have, it would have just been a terrible idea.
In my opinion.
It sounds like an episode of Blake 7.
Yes, yeah.
We'll get to that because...
This is almost an episode of Blake 7.
I'm kind of loading that statement.
It's even got Villa in it.
He's great.
Marvocating his gallantry.
It's got the woman who plays Vit is in a blanket.
Which is a hair removal cream.
Yeah, yeah.
It's Australia.
Yes, if I wanted, it's a dilipatory cream and a new series of
Julia Louis Dreyfus.
I think it might be V.
Yeah, same difference.
It's also got Tom Kelly in it, who we've mentioned before.
So he was killed over the face of evil.
He is Nova.
So he gets stuck in a wall by Leila in the face of evil.
He gets stuck in a wall in the 1st episode of Blake 7.
He gets stuck in barbed wire in the 2nd sapphire and steel story
and here he gets stuck under a mound of work units, revolting work
units, right?
I can't complain about variation of career prospects.
Is this his very last performance?
No, he appeared.
He appears in the invasion of time, and his appearance are...
Under a sand dune, under a piece of moulded fibreglass furniture.
Well, it gets trapped in some tin foil in the invasion.
Todd would...
Can't wait for that one.
Richard, we have a rare occurrency.
Todd agrees with you.
And he's about the flying in and he can comment.
It's very common.
Well, come, there's no surprise to you that as a child, I really
dislike this story as much as the other Robert Holmes classic, The
Carnival of the Monsters.
And I would have given this one two out of 10 as well.
I really, really disliked all the stuff underground, and I really
thought it looked really cheap.
But I did quite like mine.
In my mature, well, in my old age, well, in my middle age, I
actually think this is a really funny script, and I think there's
some wonderful performances, especially by those underground.
But I ask you, what audience is Bob Holmes actually directing this
story too?
Because I actually don't think it's the traditional Doctor Who
audience.
All right, well, look, I've got some cooking to do.
I've gotta go and put a turkey in the oven.
I have to let it baste in its own juices. and I don't want it to
overcook and get too dry.
Well, it doesn't really matter, because next week, I'm going to be
serving up turkey, whether it's dry or moist, a turkey is still a
turkey.
Todd nailed it twice.
Thank you, Todd.
We have to thank Pennant Roberts.
He got a lot of the director of the story.
Got a lot of, you know, slack later on in fan circles, for, I
think, mostly for his '80s stories, which didn't quite hold up so
well, and there's a reason for that, and I don't think it's
pennant robbers.
He's good here.
Well I don't know that he's terribly bad.
I just think there's no budget and no time, but there is one line
he makes, which is gorgeous, but, um, Pennant Roberts, the
character of man was written for a man, and Pennant Robinson, every
story he's done has replaced the major secondary character with a
female actor, and full points for that.
It is a...
She's not a great actor that she's the secretary, though.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, but she's also called...
Look, I agree.
Um, you know, I like her a lot.
I think she's terrific, and there's a moment where the collector
is getting very excited about the prospect of steaming Leila.
There's a website for that.
She's kind of horrified by him and scared of him and she sells
that really well.
And her final scene where she's deciding to join the rebels.
She's also really funny in that scene.
I think she's good No, look, she's superb.
I can see why Louise loves loves this so much.
Pennant Roberts, the other line.
We go back to the corridors, is he said, you know, this was filmed
at the big old tobacco factory outside of London.
It was called, what was it called?
the Hartcliffe whiffy or something, but it was trying to tell the
actors how to stomp about under PCH, you know, the pentosylenic
methyl hydrine gas, which invests an experiment with its school.
It's the, you know, it's the dental thing.
But anyway, wandering about with, with that.
He said, and they said, well, you know, how do you want us to do
it?
one of the, you know, fortunate extras. he was trying to make his
mark.
Just look around at all the workers here in this factory.
And I doubt that they're just smoking tobacco.
They were looking so bored and wondering for their jobs to die.
Pileen 50 actually.
Exactly.
If we can just throw back to why Todd, the 2nd point of Todd's
question is that he doesn't like this as a boy.
I did like this as a boy, but it was also instantly forgettable
and I think the 2 reasons it really works is the backup cast are
so strong because Roberts cares about his actors.
It's a great audio script.
It should exist in the mind or have you got your drink ready?
Or as directed by Lang or Manao as a German expressionist film.
Those.
Thank you.
Those white so long away.
It's been so long away.
Those white corridors would have been beautiful with some
projections on them and just cut the lighting and make
everything.
You've got beautiful long white corridors are brilliant for
projecting shadows onto.
And all the great directors of the silent era and the early black
and white know the same thing.
Cut all the lights, throw some things in.
You didn't need to spend half the budget on the go-go gadget
mobile.
Mystery van thing that they're all trundling around in at .3 K an
hour trying to look terrible.ied.
Independent Roberts can direct.
It's so stupid.
But it's great because you can recreate it in Legos, as Brendan's
already done for us with our dimensions game. gone on the table.
Yeah, so lighting really lets it down.
Pennant Roberts, I think, is a great actor and theatre director.
He's not a great visual director, and it's so unwatchable because
I've always said Doctor Who, it's not what it looks like, but I
was wrong.
I was wrong.
If this was a relationship, we'd all be in counselling now.
I was wrong.
It's almost unwatchable.
See, I agree with you to a point, certainly with the film
sequences.
But in the studio, I do think Pennant is trying to get that
expressionistic side.
Like, if you look at Gatherer Hayes' office, It's sort of a bunch
of freestanding shapes in a black volume.
On a negative space.
Lots of negative space. same in the steaming room and similar in
the collector's office, which is a bit lighter, but you've got all
those wonderful panels, which, again, are evoking that sun
symbol.
Yeah, and it works that kind of that kind of idea of just using
flats and drapes works so well in celestial toy maker.
It's obvious that it should have worked as well again.
I'm absolutely giving no shrift on this.
I mean, can we talk about this because this is a very, very angry
Bob Holmes.
It's a great story.
And it's part of a big tradition, which I think does start with
say, the savages or the macraterra, the happiness patrol, gridlock
where the doctor overthrows like a tyrannous regime in one day.
He arrives and tears down a an evil political system.
And all of these stories are really allegorical.
All of these stories have just wafer thin premises.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, if you were, if you were sort of a crazy obsessive Doctor
Who fan, Richard, would you be able to fit this into the sort of
continuity of Earth's Empire?
You know, at some point we all go to Pluto and then we all come
back.
You know we don't care.
The premise.
So far.
Well, the point is, yeah, it's so far in the future, they don't
even acknowledge an earth all that.
Well, they do mention it and talk about going back to it, I think
as if it's a lost icon.
But I like where you're going.
And so what we have here, and the story goes that Holmes got a big
tax bill, and he was really irritated.
He's, you know, kind of politically conservative homes and we've
been crossed in for various things in the past.
But this doesn't read as a satire of the tax system.
This reads as an attack on capitalism.
And the doctor overthrows a vicious capitalist regime just in one
day.
So the company gets spoken of.
It's not the government, it's the company, the collector talks
sort of presciently like a, like an 80s Gordon gecko, an ongoing
insurrectionary situation wouldn't be, you know, good for, you
know, seen as positive for the company and stuff.
He talks like a corporate drone.
All of that sort of stuff, makes it read as an attack on
capitalism.
And it's really funny.
It is just terrifically funny.
It's packed full of hilarious lines.
It gives Leila something to do.
The reason Louise likes it is those scenes at the beginning of
episode two, where she's trying to encourage people to go and
rescue the doctor, and, you know, everyone's a coward and stuff
and she's speaking in thundering, Shakespearean, iambic
pentameters.
Go on, Brendan, chime in.
Revolution.
Yeah, hooray for Vicky.
But no, I do I do love that scene as well.
And I especially love it for when Cordo volunteers and she says
you're the bravest person here.
Yeah, no, there's some beautiful lines.
I love Cordo.
The reason this is such a great script, and as you say, it's
interesting to talk about presidents.
But the reason this story works, and the other ones you've talked
about working as well.
It's always been a terrific story.
It was a terrific story 25 years before when it was written. by
Frederick Paul and Cyril Kornbluth in 1953.
I had this, as I read a lot of SF as a teenager locked in my
room.
It was called the Space Merchants.
And it was, it's a really stand up book.
You can still get it in print, and you can certainly download it
on whatever device you care to use.
The reason it's so well known is that Kingsley Amos, the father of
Martin Amos, the great literary critic and poet, and huge James
Bond fan, we may well have mentioned him on Bondfinger, and I will
so again.
He called this book, The Space Merchants, the greatest SF novel in
English, when it came out, and everybody else agreed, the Prime
Minister agreed.
It's about the basis of this.
If you hadn't read it, is the advertisers running the world, and
the consees, or conscious people, who are the consumables, the
consumers, I should say, underneath.
And it's almost plot line for, it is this story.
And it's well recognised that it's, you know, by the folk at the
BBC, and they thought, Oh, how witty of you to rewrite this.
And, of course, this whole period in Doctor Who was about
rebooting.
It's also the 1st revolution.
I'll come back to it.
It's the 1st revolution I think we've had since Reign of Terror of
the Tellurians.
I think the savages.
It reminds me of the savages, where they smashed the system in
episode four.
That's true.
And kind of the crotons, but I get the gons aren't human.
And really, the gods wouldn't have done it themselves.
It is like the Croton, though, isn't it?
Because it is, it is mixing up.
Homes is supposed to think.
Yeah, exactly.
Let's make us.
Holmes has always been for an ex-cop.
He's always been surprisingly really red flag. socialist.
I think like Gene Roddenbury in a way, because Gene Roddenbury
creator of Star Trek, was an ex-police officer as well.
No, there's something about having been on the street, isn't
there?
I think that's where that cynicism comes from that Holmes writes
with.
But he's taking it somewhere positive, like he does actually have
a sort of proper message.
And then next year he'll do an anti-colonialism thing.
Like, we do think of him as a conservative, but these are
surprisingly progressive stories for him.
Yeah, I think he's perhaps a conservative in the way that some
people now are trying to distance, some conservatives now, I
should say, are trying to distance themselves from the very right
wing conservatism we see, where they say, I'm a conservative in
the sense that I want people to have a family.
I don't care the makeup of that family, but I want people to have
a family and people who love and support them, and I want people
to be able to succeed on their own success.
We've got Whigs and Tories again, as Thatcher wanted 19th century
politics.
Weve got it.
Yeah.
Something I want to say to illustrate Todd's question of who is
the audience for this.
It's a...
The novelisation of this story was, of course, written by Terrence
Dix.
And it's kind of blow by blow what happens in the script, but
there is a bit that Terence Sticks ads, which is towards the end
when the work units, sorry, people, Cordo, throw the gatherer off
the roof.
I really like that.
Because...
It is pretty astounding to see as a child, yeah.
In the TV version, it ends with V saying, and we'll do the same to
the collector when we see him.
You know, gets a little bit Oliver.
And his little dog.
But in the novel, after they throw him off, they kind of laugh.
And when they finish laughing, everyone kind of looks at each
other, with the sense that this has perhaps gone a little bit far
but a 1000 metres is a long way down.
Oh, but that's just Terry being a bit conservative as well.
Let's see.
I like how we enjoy the revolution, in fact, in the story.
I really like his sentiment and trying to teach morality to
children, but I honestly think there'd been so much adrenaline
they would have found, what can we chuck next?
Yeah, it's also, it, Cordo was going to throw himself off the roof
in episode one and they throw gatherer made off the roof.
And that's the right thing to do.
Oh, but this is my point.
We can look at that as adults and understand the allegory and we
can understand the link between those.
But at this point, the show is still ostensibly being made for, as
Tom Baker puts it, several levels.
You know, you've got the six year old child who's scared of the
monsters.
You got the 10 year old child who's being brave because the 60
year old child is scared of the monsters.
You've got the 15 year old laughing at them and you've got the
parents saying, isn't that enjoyable?
Really, I would say this story would more appeal just to the 15
year old and the adults.
There's no monsters.
God, now I'm Nathan. homes very frequently, doesn't do monsters.
Yeah, we will talk about, we've talked about that before, but, you
know, his 2 stories next year feature one monster.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, there's the magma creature.
But that's the thing.
I think design wise, this story is very much for children.
People are in colourful outfits.
Well, they're dressed as Lego mini figures presaging before
they're ever invented.
And it's canines first.
Canine's actually...
We should talk about canine.
Canine's actually pretty enjoyable in this.
I really like this.
I really like his cynicism and his pithiness.
We discover he runs on batteries.
I didn't actually know that before.
I love the tail wagging and the tail drooping thing.
I think it's so cute and then Leila goes completely out of
character and says, you know, canine announces that he's done
something.
What do you want, canine?
A biscuit?
But it's still it's still very, very witty.
No, they you can see the actors.
This is an actor's piece and it really works for actors.
It's just such a sad thing.
It's honestly, it's a minor point, but it just shows us what the
medium is of Doctor Who and that there are lines you can't cross.
It's a perfect theatre piece.
And with black drops and simple lighting.
It would have worked really well on stage.
It requires an intimacy between the screen and the audience, and
it doesn't achieve that.
It actually pulls us away from the drama.
We care little.
The only person we really care about is Leila.
Cordo, again, not necessarily.
It's the way he's framed.
It's interesting that, and the reason I mention metropolis and
German expressionism is actually a reason.
It's not called Megropolis for no other reason.
There's lots of little motifs.
The steam chamber that Leila is in is an exact copy of the
sarcophagus that Maria the robot is in in Metropolis.
There are lots.
The way the controller, whoever it was, is holding the controls is
exactly the same way that it's figured in Metropolis, if we look
at that again.
He's holding these big controls and spinning the things around.
There's a way that lighting and direction can either stimulate
intimacy or produce an intimacy, or it can actually pull you away
and that's it.
It's only one thing about this story, but it's such a big thing
that I have to agree with Todd on this.
I actually felt more of a separation.
And it annoys me, because it shouldn't.
And I remember, as a boy, thinking the novelisation, I like this
story because of that.
And latest performance is terrific.
If Louise wasn't in this, I just don't know if it would go
anywhere.
I just think the script.
I think the script is so clever that it.
I mean, you know, this is Doctor Who, we used to ignoring kind of
terrible sets and things.
They're not always a separation.
They're usually an integrative thing.
We were talking about this earlier, that, you know, you often feel
as if you're dressing up with your mates, or you're planting with
your mates when you're watching it, when things go slightly wrong
it encourages a kind of sympathy for the, in the audience, for
what's happening on screen, because we're laughing along with
them.
But I don't think that achieves it in this case.
I mean, part of the Williams thing is that it is pitching itself
older and it is, it doesn't have the budget and it doesn't really
have the design ability and it's had a few spectacular fails
already this season.
Well, won.
And so far this season.
Yeah, so far this season.
And it will sort of default to a mode that requires a little bit
of irony, uh, and, you know, like an audience that it is in some
way detach from it and aware of its tropes and all of that sort of
thing.
And so you're no longer really sympathising with the characters
but you're enjoying, you know, the story and the kind of raised
eyebrow and just generally the attitude.
And so here, there's all kinds of really terrifically funny lines
but you're not in a world that you can really believe, you know
you don't have any characters and so on to engage with, but I
think it still works.
I think it's still funny and entertaining.
I think you've just hit on 2 things there.
We're very much of an era of the postmodern theatre or the
postmodern doctrine of theatre, and that we're critiquing while
we're watching.
You've just mentioned 2 very interesting things.
The supercilious, ironic view, viewing back into it.
I guess we're both actually saying the same thing.
There's dissonance.
Sontag writes about this.
Susan Sontag, the SAist, in 70s in postmodern theatre.
It came from the French and from other people.
Beckett, of course, as an English writer, is probably the best one
to raise Samuel Beckett.
But there's a point of the distancing, or an awareness of the void
between the performance and the audience, which is meant to create
drama and heightened level of tension in the audience member and
discomfort.
That shouldn't happen in doctor.
Well, I don't think that does happen.
I think, look, it's exemplified by Mary Tam next year who just
sort of strolls through the thing raising her eyebrows and just
enjoying...
But we've very much part of Mary's view and we are, we're her
silent, invisible companion next to her.
I felt to presage what's going to be coming up with you and Todd
and Brendan next year is that I'm always right there with Mary Tam
as Romana.
I don't feel it all separated or distanced by her ironic glance.
I, I, I find it humourous and I'm encouraged to take that view
within the drama.
So because here there's no one quite like that.
Is that the problem?
I just honestly think there's a lot of cerebral attention, but
there's not a lot of love if we can bring it back to what would
Oprah do?
There's not a lot of, There's love for the ideas and there's skill
and there's wit, but I don't think there's a great deal of love
for the audience.
Everyone's realising how clever they all are.
A sort of that old phrase of everyone's obviously having a good
time.
It'd be nice for us to have it too.
That's how I felt, and I'd like to hear Todd's response, because I
suspect that's how he was feeling, as well.
But his obelisk has disappeared.
I can't get him back.
What did you think, Brendan?
Well, the funny thing, I see exactly all of what you're talking
about, but like Nathan, for me, the script still brings it
through.
Is it enough to hold you?
It's so funny.
Yeah, I think you know what?
think it is.
But I will also admit, those scenes in the long white featureless
corridors, it's only the close-ups that really hold my attention
at the moment.
It's like, great, Zoanna, and I said forward.
Which you know were all dumb in rehearsals.
Yeah, yeah.
If you, obviously, if you watch this and go and make scones in the
kitchen or something, just have this on in the other room, it's a
great story.
Yeah, you know what?
It's never gonna be on my top 10 list, but it's a great...
It should be, though.
I'm not disagreeing with an athenist.
This is a very interesting triumvirate today, isn't it?
We're all sort of both disagree. all disagreeing and agreeing.
I'd like to know what the listener thinks.
What does our friend Greg Miller think about this?
I'm sure you're writing.
An old family friend of mine, who's sadly no longer with us
introduced me to a great term. when I was staying at her house one
school holidays.
She described Star Trek 4, The Voyage Home, as her ironing movie.
You know, she'd put it on and she'd do the iron.
And I think this is one of those Doctor Who stories as well.
You can make the scones where you're doing, or you can do the
ironing.
And the thing is, every time you do sort of tune into it, You're
going to get a witty line anyway.
That is a great...
I've got an ironing era.
Oh, yes?
It's the pertwee era.
You've actually mentioned that before too, and I think I remember
going, hmm, yeah.
Because the outfits are so gorgeous.
There's all that money and attention.
I just, on Pertley's part, is being spent on his costumes, and we
know that his last season, he's just worried about his outfits.
Yes, yes.
The nice thing here is that, look, Louise is fabulous in this.
I really like the supporting cast.
It's actually up there amongst my top 25 Doctor Who stories of all
time.
Let's go through that and give the listener great fun being able
to read that on our book.
We'll do that for Christmas. in reverse alphabetical order.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Because it is there, we all do that individually.
It's a home story.
So it can never be it can never really be wrong.
But there's also that fine line of when he takes the piss and he
does out of everyone and everything, including his performers.
There's a little bit of distance.
And at this point, for me, it's just grown that much too far.
I would like to add, though, that I'm really surprised at the
amount of compassion we're getting from homes, because we don't
always get that.
I don't think we're ever going to get it again in the future from
him.
But the 2 points.
The one that you say that he was the one that was dead against, or
was it Williams, the one that was dead against writing off Louise
in this story.
It's just a complete vault face.
I'm really surprised to hear Holmes.
Maybe he's learnt from the recent very recent lessons that you
just don't do that to an audience of children.
You can do it with Matthew Waterhouse.
I'm really looking forward to seeing how we review that one
because I know.
Because he doesn't matter.
Well, I don't think anyone can.
Well, and also he's one of us.
He was a 15 year old boy.
And even teenagers don't like other teenagers.
It's funny.
It's funny you're saying that no one cares because when we get
there, I have 2 stories about that of 2 people who cared a great
deal about the...
One of the one of whom is Matthew Waterhouse.
Well, 3 then in that case.
Okay, but back to this one.
You know, I mean, we talked about this being a revolutionary thing
but the Usurians who obviously get their name.
Yeah, yeah, from the practice of charging interest.
When the collector looks the doctor up in his database.
He learns that the doctor has a long history of violence and
economic subversion.
And that the time lords are not bankable to deal with.
What the hell were they ever considering dealing with the time
laws?
And how do they know this information?
Did the time laws actually have some kind of congress with these
seaweed?
Because they're actually a fungus, aren't they?
They're a fungus with eyeballs. very Kenny Everett.
Well, yeah, no, I think I think it's just homes being rude about
the time once again. and smashed them up in the deadly assassin
he's just going to be brutal about how ineffectual they are.
And of course, it does spoiler alert and kind of prefigure what we
get at the end of the season.
It does.
And I'd actually like to go backwards as well.
Have you realised that it's the only other race that uses the term
Tulurians, other Lermans and Carnival of Monsters?
Yeah.
So I would really like to think that the Urians and the Lermans
are somehow related, and that, you know, free collective
bargaining is the greatest sin in the galaxy.
The TGP, the transgalactic pact.
Sure, we know more of that.
Well, we never heard anything about it.
It's a secret.
Something I love about the end of this story, of course, is that
you know, you've had the science fiction trope in Doctor Who
before, of Doctor Talks a computer to death.
So, you know, we had that in the green death.
Yeah, I blame Zoe for that.
She started it, didn't she?
We kind of had that in the face of evil, although he also zapped
it to death with some buttons.
Here, the doctor doesn't talk the computer to death.
The computer talks, the villain to death.
Yeah, what does he do?
He feeds a small, you know, negative growth rate into or
something.
Yeah, yeah.
He makes him buy a house in Sydney and then undercharge for the
rent.
It is, it's that crazy thing making fun of economics and it is
something that will become standard in the 1980s.
It's a bit early for it here.
But, you know, there's too many economists in the government.
You know, my dear, what you need is a wily accountant.
All of that sort of terribly funny stuff about economics which
Doctor Who has never gone to before.
And here it is just a few years too early.
That point you raised about sympathy.
You feel sympathy for every character, except the collector.
You even feel sympathy for the gatherer.
And how good is Henry Wolf?
We've really got to throw in.
It is that thing, you know, we've had this thing.
It's going to come up because it's a Williams era theme where
they'll write a funny script and then the actors will come in and
mug and do big voices and be terribly silly.
But here it really works.
Like both gather a hate and the collector are huge comedy
performances, but they work.
And I think it works so well because Marn is played so straight.
And she's just got all those reactions in the background of...
Oh God, are you really doing?
Okay.
And she's perfect Hitchcock's sitcom society blonde.
She's the budget Grace Kelly in this. her role is to be impassive
and lovely.
It's almost Felicity Kendall, Penelope Keith era, sitcom stuff
isn't it?
Henry Wolfe, who's the collector, you know?
I mean, he's just terrific in all of those sort of huge, pompous
homes-y and things that gather, hey, does like calling him your
enormity and your corpulence and stuff like that.
It's just terrific, just terribly funny, and it doesn't undermine
the satire.
He's still with us, you know, Henry Wolf.
What about who's Gatherer Hay?
No, Gatherer Hade, Richard Beach has passed on, sadly.
But no, Henry Wolf is still with us. and still acting.
Yeah, Henry Wolf was appearing in a show called Words and Pictures
as the librarian helping children to read, and in Rutland weekend
television, which was kind of like an early version of the far
show or something, a faux review show, as various con men and
transvestite continuity announcers.
Right while this was all.
It was like frocking up as Joyce Grenfell or something.
I can only wish.
It's been a while.
Well, we're taking off from Pluto now.
That's all the time we have for the Sunmakers.
We will be back next week to take on Doctor Who's biggest
adventure in CSO ever, underworld.
I'm very excited.
Yeah, I can feel the excitement from here.
Please do check us out at flightthroughentirety.com, flight
through entirety on Facebook and iTunes and FTE podcast on
Twitter.
You can also check us out on Bondfinger, where we have a variety
of comedy and drunkenness.
About the 1st few Sean Connery James Bond films, you can find that
at bondfinger.com, bondfinger on Facebook and iTunes and
bondfinger cast on Twitter.
We were never as drunk as Connery was.
I think between us though, we've got enough hair.
Just.
Don't leave it in too long ago, frizzy.
Until next week, may none of your steam balds be controlled by a
bunch of CK with eyes.
Thank you very much and good night.
Good night.
Good, everyone.
That was Flight Your Entirety with Nathan Buttonley, Brendan Jones
and Richard Stone.
This episode, Don't You Feel Every single centimetre was recorded
on the 11th of October, 2015.
The next episode will be released on November 22nd.
I can sympathise with the collector.
I get a real feeling of job satisfaction when my broccoli is
perfectly steamed.
I think it's the phones interfering with...
It could be, yeah.
Okay, it seems to be all right.
I won't be able to teleport up in an emergency if my Apple Watch
is on airplane mode.
County, counterport.
I love how when Backfinish started doing Liberated Chronicles
everyone complained, you've recreated the teleport sound, and they
had to be very diplomatic and say, that's because it comes under
the auspices of a piece of music.
It doesn't exist as a clean recording, and we would have to pay
the original composer for its use, and that's all sorts of legal
trouble where we could.
So do they...
They remade the sound of it.
They remade the sound and sound different.
Very slightly.
You know, it sounds like a really clean version of the recording.
I don't remember it sounding that different.
I've heard the whole 1st season.
It's a bit like their... love them.
Yeah, they're better.
But look at what you're comparing to.
They give everyone better work.
Cali is a much more interestingly written character.
Yeah, so they got Jan Chappell.
It's everybody.
Yeah, that everyone who's alive, except...
Is that Simon?
Because she's not in that season.
She is coming up though.
Yeah, well, season two.
They've done a season 3 set as well.
Forget Angela Bruce back again.
Well, no, the whole thing is Dana has taken an escateboard and no
one knows where she's gone.
So it's the search for Dana and she's replaced by Tom Shadbon as
Dell Grant.
Really?
Wow.
That's so crap.
I'm actually really positive about everything. leave it in.