Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast who knows exactly what a counter
jamming frequency projector looks like.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Todd.
And we are heading onto the planet Xanak for the pirate planet.
Well, this is my fourth favourite story in the key to time
season.
And that's not a bad thing.
I really enjoy the first four stories a lot.
I just, the other three around this own, I like a little bit
more.
But, you know, we have to thank Anthony Reid. for bringing Douglas
Adams to the table, to television, in the documentary that's on
the DVD with this.
He says that Douglas had great ideas.
They just needed to be put into a structure, and here I think he
generally does succeed.
I think one of the greatest things about Douglas's work, and one
of his greatest limitations, is the fact that the ideas that he
presents are so big and overarching, that sometimes I think the
technology at the time doesn't quite match what is required to
visually interpret things, and certainly a few aspects in this
story.
But I generally like this story quite a lot.
It's a really just a terribly funny script, isn't it?
Yeah, it really is.
And, you know, there are a few things that he minds for comedy all
the way through.
So, there's all of these sort of absurd names for the various
minerals that they're mining, you know, William and Magronite 15
and PJ X18 and all of that sort of thing.
And all the planets had sort of silly, silly names, you know, Xanax
and Calufracs.
And then there's all the techno babble as well.
You know, that's probably just an old macromat field integrator or
something.
And all of that, which will sort of carry on next year when he
takes over a script and all of it just adds a kind of lightness of
tone to the whole proceedings, which is a little bit deceptive
really, given.
Yeah, it's quite, it's quite dark in terms of content.
When you get when you get to the actual concept of the story and
what's happening.
Again, a lot like the last story, death in this story is isn't
just swept onto the rug when the doctor explains to Chemus and
Romana what's going on.
Chemist actually takes a moment and gets really upset about, you
know, what's been happening.
So this planet.
So we've got this high concept, which is a planet that a hollow
planet that materialises around other planets and mines them.
And it's a ridiculous high concept premise.
But as you say, it becomes real when we're told that it has been
materialising around populated planets and killing, like literally
100s of 1000000s of people.
What's an old guy's name?
Oh, oh, Balaton.
We do need to talk about the performances.
Well, let's start, let's start with, we've got a nice Tartar scene
I think, at the beginning of the story, which I quite like, and
the doctor talks about 523 years operating the TARDIS, so we've
got a bit of a time frame to things.
I don't know whether that's quite true.
No, it'll be contradicted in by Drax in the Armageddon fact, it's
quite soon.
And I love the fact that they put the 1st segment of the key to
time in an old bridge.
I mean, that's always a great thing to see.
The limbo cupboard.
So they have that room, don't they?
That black room.
The black room.
With the old style fridge.
Yeah.
And it is called the limbo room.
That's what it said, that's what it's called in the script.
Oh okay.
I believe Graham Williams' concept was, you know, if the TARDIS is
infinite and infinitely adjustable because we've seen so many
different console rooms. then you don't actually need a corridor
leading to a specific place.
As soon as you walk out the door, the TARTAS will scan your brain
and put what you want on the other side of the door.
You know, they never explain it, because why would the doctor have
to explain that to Ramana?
She knows all about Tartases.
But I love it.
And we see a couple of times this season, they go through that
door, and there's a different thing on the other side.
Yes, yes.
There's a wardrobe at one point, isn't there?
Tahiti.
We'll come back to that.
I love that.
And of course, Mary gets to wear her lovely pink jacket, white
outfit, very sort of bucks fizz, whatever it happens to be, I
think.
It is very period, isn't it?
Yeah, I love it on her.
I think Mel takes a bit of inspiration many years later for her
little pink and white number, but, you know, I'm sure we'll
discuss that sometime along the track.
Again, Romana is trying to dematerialise the TARDIS, and at the
same time, is, Xanak materialises around califracts, and it is, and
so we get the doctor having to bump his lip and explain all of the
um, Tom's, um, dog attack attack.
Yep.
And then, of course, you get the rent a crowd.
We get BBC Rent a crowd.
There's 8 people in that crowd, I counted.
Oh, and they're so overjoyed.
Sorry, I wasn't sure when to enthuse.
Yeah, Zanak is actually populated by some pretty terrible actors
actually.
So there's Balaton, who's the grandfather, who is just appallingly
stilted in his delivery.
There's his daughter Mueller, which is just the worst name of
anyone ever.
Like, is she a mule or does she mule a lot?
Do you know what I mean?
She does get a very good comedy moment and it does involve him as
well, but I think it's all down to her.
Like, what was it?
My father wasn't killed by the man he adds.
No, he was shot by the captain's guards to save him from the
mint.
She's the one who delivers the immortal line.
Why?
But I think she makes up for it with...
You mean they pinned him to the wall with good vibrations?
No, she's terrible.
Preylix is terrible.
Yeah.
Keemus isn't bad.
And of course, he was Mr. Louise Jameson at the time.
David Warwick.
Oh, okay.
Yes, and he's been in the new series.
Yes, he was the police commissioner reporting that the ghosts were
harmless.
Oh, no, wait, stay in your homes, is that by a side map?
Yeah, excellent.
Yes, that's one of the things I will say about this is those
performances.
Do sort of let the side down a bit.
I mean, it's nice to have another woman in the car doing something
you know, who's not an evil crone or whatever it happens to be.
I think that's quite good.
I do laugh at the grandfather and the fact that he's quite willing
to take all these riches and I don't want to know what's going on
just putting his head in the sand, so to speak, as long as he gets
what he wants.
I think it would have been quite nice at the other end of the
story perhaps to see some sort of... some development. realisation
of and remorse as to that sort of thing.
But I kind of think it's a bit like maybe the British Empire and
what they did to so many countries around the world.
I mean, it's like capitalism, really.
Do you know what I mean?
Like all of us listening to this podcast on our, you know
expensive devices and things.
All of us as consumers are, you know, in some way complicit in, you
know, the exploitation and suffering experience by people
elsewhere in the world.
And we would just prefer not to think about that too much.
And that's what this planet is.
You know, it's a planet of consumption, a planet that eats other
planets, but no one on the planet can see a problem, and no one on
the planet actually wants to think about it too much.
And the whole economy of the planet makes no sense.
The doctor realises it straight away.
But, as Balaton says, we just don't ask questions about it, because
you know, the answers to those questions are too terrible.
So there is a kind of real intent, I think, behind the, you know
silly, sci fi, high concept of the premise.
I quite like pralix.
I actually think he does quite a good job, and certainly with the
setup of the Mentiads, so you think that they're actually evil, and
you get them knocking out the doctor at the end of the episode, so
you're thinking that, you know, that's a real problem, but of
course it's quite the opposite, as we come to discover.
I love all the stuff with the doctor and Romana, when they 1st
arrive in the square, and the doctor's having no luck with the
local residents, and it's up to the wonderful Mary Tam, Romana
to...
It's actually canine.
It's an idea. doesn't canine.
It's prettier than you master.
Is she?
But the fact that Romana gets...
Oh, yes, and she's so jovial and would you like a jelly baby and
all of that and the doctor's there trying to, you know, butt in
but of course, getting nowhere.
I just sit there.
The whimsy of it all just tickles my fancy.
I just love it.
Where did you get those?
Same place as you, your pocket.
I love the doctor saying, has anyone seen a planet?
You know, he describes it about so big or blade spheroids. you
know?
Like all of that is just terrifically funny and we'll get more of
that sort of stuff next year.
Then, of course, we go up the mountain to the bridge.
The bridge.
And we've got the pirate captain, Mr. Fibidly.
A number of guards who wear those, one of those...
Helmets are terrible, aren't they?
I believe they're versions of, they're not the original, but they
seem to be versions of an ice Lord helmet.
Well, they look like the Blake 7 helmet, actually.
They're very now, aren't they?
They're very 1978.
So you can have any, the same person playing the same guard
because you actually can't see their eyes and that sort of thing
over and over again just to save a bit of money if you need to.
Yes, unfortunately, we don't have Terry Walsh anymore.
He's not a guard.
Oh, we will.
Yes, we will.
Oh, yeah, yeah. but he's not in this.
All right, so we're on the bridge and we've got the captain, Mr
Fibberly and the nurse.
You said last week in the last episode that you didn't enjoy the
pirate captain's performance when you were a kid.
What do you think about it now?
When I started to watch this, I just think, oh, this is so over
the top.
This is so annoying.
But as the story went along.
And I always forget the big twist in the fact that his performance
is that big because he's actually doing something else to stop
Queen Xangxia.
I always forget it.
And so then, in retrospect, I go, well, actually that's really
good.
And I still feel that now.
I think it's a good performance.
But I, it's so big.
And then he's got his demented Leo Sayer next to him, right?
And as a kid, I thought, this is a demented Leo Sayer.
And if you don't know who that is, young people go and look him up
on the internet.
And get off Todd's lawn. 1970s pop star.
And I really, really loathe that character even more as a child.
Now I think it's a really great performance.
And again, it's a comedy double act and certainly with his death
at the end and it's, you know, very heartbreaking and sort of, you
know, it's a lovely character moment.
I think they're actually really wonderful in this.
I actually would have liked to have seen a little bit more light
and shade in Bruce Purchase's performance.
We're going to see this happening more and more, and it's
something that Douglas Adams talked about, which is the moment
that you put humour in a script, actors take the opportunity to
kind of do funny voices and ham it up.
And here, very much the humour in the script, and the high concept
and the robot parrot, and all of that sort of stuff, is all there
to distract you from the fact that something really terrible is
happening.
And that shift, that tonal shift is really exemplified in the
pirate captain's performance.
So he's a blustering over the top, Doctor Who villain, who has, you
know, a great line in sort of hilarious imprecations.
I like by the left frontal lobe of the Sky Demon, for instance.
But when it's revealed that it is a long game, that it's just a
ploy and he's trying to throw Queen Zangxia off the scent, it's a
shame that we don't get to see what he's really like.
He does dial it back a bit, but it never becomes real, and I think
that's a mistake.
I think a big problem of it is.
Sort of when he turns on Xangxia, he just kind of says, I'll be
free of you, you hag.
And then she kills him.
And it's like, I would have liked the longest speech there, which
would have emphasised.
I've been waiting years for this and you thought I was just a fool
blah, blah, blah.
And that would have actually made his death a bit more palpable
because halfway through that speech, you'd go, he's actually kind
of a good guy.
You know, he's about to be redeemed.
He's about to be.
Oh he's dead.
Instead, we just get...
Oh, be free of you, you hag.
Wait, what?
Oh, he's...
Oh, oh, he was on the okay.
I think that's a really good point that you both made.
Like, if you'd had the opportunity to rein it down and actually
see the real person.
It would have made it a real performance, whether it's it becomes
this just over-the-top thing, which is kind of what I was saying.
Yeah.
Yeah, the script, the script wants that to be a definite
performance.
Do you know what I mean?
And it's brilliant in that it gives you the opportunity to have a
fun overtop Doctor Who villain without completely throwing away
the justification for it.
We should talk about Xangxia as well.
Which one?
Well, the nurse appears on screen at the bridge in part two.
And she just gradually gets more and more important, and she's
really menacing, and you can't say why, exactly.
Yeah, yeah, she's just got that stillness and quietness.
I loved her as a kid.
It's the one thing of this story I really, really loved, and I
still love the fact that, in the background, And then suddenly
it's like, well, why is she there?
And you know how she wears that little control box thing on her
hip?
I wanted one of those.
And I love the fact that she could control things and then, you
know, the memory cheats.
I thought that when she got shot, she actually appeared over the A
frame bridge, which, of course, is back, you know, after
Underworld and the Robots of Death and Planet of Evil.
But I thought she actually appeared there, but of course she just
flickers in and out in that one spot.
I love Rosalind Lloyd's performance.
I love the split up the side of the skirt when she's standing on
the A frame leading up to the plank.
And I just love her performance.
I just think it's fantastic.
She's a great villain, actually.
And she does sort of come out of nowhere, and I think it is very
clever.
And again, it is a complex plot, and one of the things that
Douglas Adams does.
And apparently this had been paired back.
It used to be more complex.
But he's very good at very tight plotting, and he doesn't leave
any loose ends.
And anything that appears to be, like, a weird continuity thing
actually ends up getting an explanation.
And so here, there are three reasons for Xanax to be doing the
piracy thing.
Initially, we think it's just to create wealth and riches.
Then we discover that the captain is making a thing out of the
planets remains in order to disrupt the time dams that are keeping
Queen's Anxia alive and thereby kill her.
And then we discover that it's actually the power being consumed
by the time dams, that Queen Zanksia is doing it all, to stay
alive.
And create herself a new body in the form of the Rosalind Lloyd.
Xxia.
Yeah.
Can you explain it to me?
Because, like, she's creating this new body, which the doctor
picks up what appears to be some sort of camera to create his fake
self. right?
And so I'd assume that she would need multiple cameras in the
control room to sort of create this stable sort of version of
herself.
This is what I, this is, this is where item could sort of get it.
And so the doctor has to project his fake self to jump off the
literal cliffhanger, right?
But then if somebody was to stand in front of it, Surely that
would disrupt the signal and it wouldn't be there.
Well, yeah, I don't, I think it's, you know, as far advanced from
what we would see as a projector, as what we see as a projector is
to a kinoscope.
Yeah, I think magic.
Yes, it's a magic box.
It's a magic.
It doesn't quite work in my head.
Like the pirate captain's performance, right?
And like a few other visual effects.
Like, you know, they have a really good go at the flying car, which
I would, again, in my, if you're listening to last week's, you
know, I have got the movie series in my head.
So they could do that a lot better.
I love Romana's whole whimsy at the whole car and the whole flying
and everything, you know.
Didn't she have one herself or something?
She had one, she got one for a 100, no, for her 70th birth.
Yeah, something that.
And we've got the when the whole bridge does explode.
Like the explosion is so big that the whole city underneath should
surely be wiped out.
You know, we've got one of the worst special effects ever, which
is with the spanner hitting the engines and you've got the faces
of the doctor and the mentiads and it's just, that's just awful.
It's just, it just doesn't work.
And this is little things like that, those little things that, for
me, just sort of paired this back just a little bit from the other
3 stories around it.
And then we've got a parent.
A parent that apparently, I never realised as a kid, it was
actually emanating yellow urine.
You know, I never realised.
And I'm watching this and go, what the hell is this?
It's brilliant.
The parrot is fantastic.
So it's called a polyphase Avatron, which is poly for sure.
So again, that's a brilliant choice of names.
And of course, canine ends up carrying it in his mouth somehow
which he doesn't sort of normally do, but he ends up having a
fight with it, which is what we all wanted as children.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, like, it's great.
You know, he doesn't have an eye patch.
He's got an electronic eye patch.
He doesn't have a hook, he's got an electronic arm.
He doesn't have a parrot, he's got an electronic parrot.
So I think all of that, all of that works terribly well.
Yeah, I'm just saying, like, you know, I never realised like the
colour of it.
Yeah, it is urine, is it?
But as a kid it was like, yes, I wanted to see the parrot versus
canine.
Yeah, yeah, they all did.
That was the thing that wanted to be.
I must say in this story that both chemists and Romana are very
good shots with the gun.
Yeah, Romana kills someone.
Oh, I prefer to think that she's just stunned.
No, she killed him.
But yeah, yeah.
Ramada has a sort of Daphne Zeniga in spaceballs moment of he shot
my hair.
And doesn't canine fly the car as well?
Yeah, canine flies the car.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, the car, which is absolutely positively not a copy of the
Landspeeder in Star Wars.
How dare you say such thing?
No, we didn't just buy a toy.
Is it actually a speedboat?
Like I actually think it might be a speedboat that brought into
the studio.
Quite possibly, yeah.
But, you know, the sort of red colouring.
It doesn't leave much to the imagination.
So behind the scenes info.
Douglas Adams came up with the aircar because he hated scenes in
corridors.
And you'll notice that there are very few scenes of people just
walking through a featureless white corridor, Terry Nation.
There's the doctor and the mentiads occasionally in a corridor, but
that's pretty much it.
We do have the induction corridor where people wander through, but
I'll come back to that at the moment.
That's one of my favourite moments of this story where the doctor
goes, talks about Newton's revenge.
We shouldn't tamper with the laws of physics, should we, Romana?
and they standing there and they go, it goes, click click, and the
guards go, whoop, straight into the wall.
I just crack up every single time.
It's that it's that crazy and silliness that I do love in Douglas
Adams slash Anthony Reed scripts.
Yeah, well, that's the thing.
It's Douglas Adams joke about corridors.
He hates corridors so much that he makes one that kills you.
Like the rotating knives in Monty Python.
That's full of hitchhikers in jokes as well.
You know, the 1st time the doctor's in the corridor, he says he'll
never be cruel to an electron in a particle accelerator again.
Yes, yeah.
And that's, you know, I'll never be cruel to a gin and tonic again
is what Arthur Dent says.
And, you know, he talks to the guards and talks about the violence
and the long hours and what a boring job it must be, and some of
the names of the planets and stuff.
So it is full of hitchhikers references.
And the bit where Tom like knocks on the guard's helmet was
completely unscripted and Mary's reaction, that Romana's reaction
is Mary's reaction.
She almost burst out laughing just because she wasn't expecting
Tom to do that to the poor actor inside the helmet.
The script itself. which is quite common for Dougal Sadence was
far more complex to begin with.
Zangxia was actually a time lord in the midst of his last
regeneration and that's why he was slowing time down.
And his next planet for the pirate planet to go around wasn't
Earth.
It was Gallifray.
Oh, okay.
I like the idea that it's Earth.
I actually like to imagine it's Earth in 1978.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's contemporary.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, but I mean, the reason Graham Williams sort of said no to
that was.
Look, you know, we've just done a story endangering galafray.
It'll be far more meaningful if it's endangering Earth, which is
sort of what we would now consider a very Russell T. Davis thing.
You know, it always has to come back to earth.
It always has to relate to Earth.
Graham McDonald, the head of cereals, called for the pirate planet
to be scrapped.
Because it was too silly or too silly.
He didn't like the humour in the scripts and and Graham Williams.
When it was being planned, had actually gone on a daily holiday
and broken his leg, so he wasn't up to much, but he did contact
Graham McDonald and said, look, you brought me onto this series
because it was too violent.
I had to replace the violence and the horror was something.
That's why we have comedy.
The comedy is not undermining the drama. helping to sell the drama
and you approved me having this year-long story arc.
We don't have time to produce something else to go in the middle
of a year-long story arc.
If you scrap that, you're scrapping part of our year long story
which you said you really supported and liked.
The comedy in this is fine.
He's a new writer.
We're not just going to put what you've read on the screen.
We're going to edit it.
Let us do our jobs.
And he relented.
So, yeah, a lot of people kind of see Graham Williams as this is
the time when Doctor Who went wrong.
But for the most part, we've really been enjoying Graham Williams
influence.
I certainly do.
I mean, the problems we had last year with things like
underworld.
But this season is very strong.
What it is is just fun.
It's so fun.
Yeah, yeah, it is so fun.
Do either of you find, though, that now that we don't have a human
companion?
Are we losing the humanity of the show?
Because that started to go out the window with Inchcliff.
I think we got it back.
I don't mind it.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, the fact is that she's really fun to watch.
And, and like, you weren't really, you know, enjoying Joe because
she was from the same planet as you, because secretly they're
actually all from the same planet as you.
Even the Alzarians.
You were watching it because she was sort of fun and plucky and
lovely.
And I think Mary is a real pleasure to watch.
And, and, and, you get the impression that they think the audience
is smart and sophisticated enough to not need someone to have
everything explained to them.
That's a good point.
But I also think that in that one sense, too, that the audience is
smart and sophisticated.
I just feel that we're now no longer aiming the show at eight to
12 year olds, right?
I think we've shifted to it up, up.
And I think that's going to come and bite the show in the bum in a
couple of years time, when ratings do suddenly take a dive.
Like we're not renewing that younger audience.
We've got the next, we've got an audience that we, that we, that
might have been around with John in the 10th season and in his
last years are now getting older and they're going to move on and
go out with their friends and that sort of thing.
And we're not we're already seeing ratings beginning to erode.
Um, this season.
There's only 2 episodes in the entire season, over 10 million.
Right.
So there is a shrinkage happening.
And we talk about the fact that canines is for the kids and
there's childish things going on, but it's really not that
childish.
And I think it is aiming for a different audience.
Let's compare it to season 12, right?
Season 12 is, you know, the beginning of the Hinchcliffe here.
Tom's 1st year.
And at the time we talked about how kind of horrifying it was and
suggested maybe it was a bit too scary for children.
But the stories are overwhelmingly, aliens in monster suits.
Do you know what I mean?
Like in Daleks and Cybermen, and all of those traditional Doctor
Who aliens?
There are no traditional Doctor Who aliens this season at all.
Do you know what I mean?
The Tyran would beast doesn't count, Todd.
No, I was thinking of Kroll actually.
Yeah, yeah, but I mean, Proll isn't a man in a suit or a race of
aliens or anything like that.
The stories are about people.
Yeah.
And so so I can kind of see that.
But nevertheless, I think the show is really fun to watch and
maybe, maybe you're right.
Maybe it is pitched a little bit older than it has been in the
past.
Yeah, I'm not saying I don't enjoy it.
Like, I've enjoyed watching this story, you know, and I think
there's a lot of fun elements.
I think that as we've discussed, there's some elements that, for
me, just don't quite work at the same level as a few of the
stories around it.
But I think, you know, kudos to Anthony Reid for getting Douglas
Adams in and making this story work.
Vai Delmar is, of course, the old Queen Zangxia sitting in the
chair, who has such great things as David Warwick standing right
next to her and saying, Well, that old hag.
Can she hear me?
And, of course, got paid an extra fee.
Because they asked her, will you remove your false teeth to look
particularly emaciated?
And she said, yes, but only if you pay me more money.
I'm only appearing on television, in a chair, not doing anything
with my teeth out, if you pay me more, and they did.
They paid her an extra fee.
I hope they paid Binroe more for having his forced teeth out the
previous story.
I think, though, that was his suggestion.
A couple of years ago, I was an extra on rescue special ops.
Yeah, that was fun.
And a friend of mine, Adam, got me into that and we were sitting
in the makeup chairs and the makeup girls were great because we
were part of a Mardi Gras float that had overturned.
So everyone had to have different injuries.
So the makeup girls were saying, what injury would you like?
And so they gave me this head wound.
So like half my face was covered in blood.
And Adam, they said to him, well, what kind of injury would you
like?
And he said, well, how about you do something with this?
And his 2 front teeth?
on the top?
He had lost a few years previously and he just pulled out the
prosthetic.
And the make-up girl said, oh, God, yes, I can do that.
I can do that.
But for now, put them back in, put them back in.
So he just had this blood. coming down from his mouth.
It was quite graphic, and we were, like, we were one, we were one
minute of the episode.
We were the pre-title sequence.
And there was this drag queen suspended above a thing in Fox
Studios.
Nothing to do with the pirate planet, just to do with false teeth
really.
I never realised that the captain's boots are huge platforms.
Did you did you say that when you were watching it?
They're really quite cool.
Yeah, they only show they only show them, I think, once when he's
making the doctor pick something up.
But yeah, at one point, after the doctor's gone off the plank and
you got him standing up there next to Rosalind Lloyd and Mr. Fibbly
who are both quite short anyway, really emphasises his height.
Yeah.
But I do like the fact that this story integrates that you've got
location work, you know, you see them...
In fact, there's an old mine and everything there's building.
Yeah, to go down and seek califracts into the mine and then and
then Muller, Muller, whatever her name is, walking along with K9
and the mentiads.
It's just nice to have some location work in there.
In fact, can we talk very quickly about the end?
I'm a huge fan of the end of this story, partly because they
decide to blow the bridge up just with dynamite.
You know, there's, like, no, like, there's a big wire that they're
playing out and then a box with a plunger handle and everything
and I think that that's a fantastic way to go if you're going to
have your episode for explosion.
Let's just have it an explosion rather than an implosion or
anything, sort of particularly silly.
Yeah, the computer is computer, far too much computer stuff and
therefore it has to explode.
Yeah.
But the other thing I like is that they just take getting
califrancs as red.
So we don't actually get the scene, this story where you put the
tracer on the thing and it turns into the key to time thing where
you hold that over until, you know, next week.
And it's just the doctor and Romana waving goodbye and they're
heading off to get the 2nd segment, which they'll eventually get.
And I think I think the season does a good job of not allowing the
key to time thing to deform the stories.
But also, too, I mean, could you imagine on their budget trying to
make that happen with the whole planet?
I'm still going, smart move.
And something that's quite nice about not the very end, but when
the doctor kind of says, well, I dropped the planets into the
hyperspatial force shield and fling them off into the vortex ready
for us to pick up later.
And Romana says something winds off, yes, that's quite impressive
which throws back to I was almost ready to be impressed.
Do you know, for me, actually, that's one of the weaknesses of the
story is that the resolution is the doctor and Romana standing in
the TARDIS talking a whole bunch of techno babble while a terrible
special effect takes place on the screen.
And it doesn't seem to be anything that the characters do beyond
kind of pushing buttons and stuff like that.
And that does happen a little bit too often, this era.
It certainly was a huge flaw in some of the stories last year.
But it is something that we do get a bit of, and it's something
that Bob Holmes is going to make terrible fun of later in the
season.
But just before we go, there's two things I want to mention about
the sort of climax of the story, with the doctor and Romana being
mirrorlond to death in the TARDIS.
That's another moment which I think is particularly well acted
because you've got the doctor doing the psychic thing.
So Romana's piloting the TARDIS and shouting out at me, no, you
can't do that.
We'll blow up.
And, you know, so, but accepts that it's the heroic thing to do.
This is also the scene which has given rise to Spannagate.
Have you heard of Spannagate?
No.
Kita Time has had 2 DVD releases.
It was released 1st in America, I think, in 2001, when the Dr. DVD
range was starting in America.
Warner Home Video, who released it over there, wanted a full
season box set to be able to release.
So it was very basically cleaned up.
It came with comedy, wasn't it?
Vanilla.
It did have commentaries, though.
So commentaries on each story with Tom on 3 of them, Mary on 4, I
think, et cetera, et cetera.
This story didn't have either of them.
It had Bruce Purchase and Pennant Roberts, the director, and it
was also the only story.
It was special features.
It just had the raw film trims of the exterior footage.
Now, when it came time to be released properly as part of the
range with full-blown special features and what have you, they had
all the film trimmings, of course.
And when they had the film trimmings, they recreate as much as
possible, any effects done on film.
So for that scene with the doctor and prolix superimposed.
Yeah, the scene you really don't like, and the floating spanner.
They had to recreate that.
Now, in the original version, the spanner after it hits, the
explosion goes off and about half a 2nd later the spanner
disappears.
Oh, and they added a spanner that flies off.
Yeah, pretty much.
They took the original spanner, they had it hit, and when the
explosion goes off, the spanner spins and flies off.
It lasts the same amount of time.
It's about half a 2nd but it doesn't just disappear.
So Steve Robertson, the restoration team revealed that they'd done
that as part of their, as part of their website.
They had a website they updated with the notes.
The internet went insane.
And it became known as Spanagate.
All these people like, no, you must present it as an alternate
option like you do for all the other special effects, and Steve
Roberts was coming in and saying, you want us to have an alternate
option for a half 2nd clip.
No, we're not doing that.
Okay, then put it back the way.
Well, no, it's gone off for duplication.
Live with it people.
What's wrong with you?
But to this day, when, sort of, some of the new series DVDs, for
instance, some of the, like, comic relief things, what have come
out with the wrong music or the wrong sound effects.
People always refer back to Spanagate.
So, are you saying to me that the version I just watched actually
has this spinning spinner and it's not supposed to.
Yeah, that's right.
Oh my goodness.
I feel cheated.
Yes, I'm going to post something to the internet.
I've asked you, listeners, that's all the time we have for the
Pirate Planet, but do join us next week for the stones of blood.
You can find us online at flightsthroughentirety.com, flight
through entirety on Facebook and iTunes and FTE podcast on
Twitter.
Don't forget, bondfinger.com.
You can download all of our James Bond commentaries, and you can
find us as Bond Fingercast on Twitter and Bond Finger on Facebook
and iTunes.
Until next week, may your polarphase Avatron not make a yellow
laser mess on the floor.
I'm Brendan, thank you very much and good night.
Good night.
See you soon.
That was Flight Through Entirety with Todd Beelby, Nathan Boffley
and Brendan Jones.
This episode, Bucks Fizz, was recorded on the 4th of October.
The next episode will be released on December 20th.
You may find our podcast crude, but we hope that was immensely
satisfying.
Where's the toilet still going?
Do you want me to go and deal with it?
Oh, just sort of, um, press the button halfway down.
Yeah.
Not actually, it's not coming through.
The mic's, which is good, but yeah.
It's all happening, dear listeners.
See, now I can hear it.