The Fool Idwal Morgan

[00:28]

Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety, the only Doctor Who podcast who's been arrested in New York for carrying a sausage sandwich.

I'm Brendan.

I'm Nathan.

I'm Todd.

And we are heading off to the roll right stones, which are quite deadly because they are the stones of blood.

So, it's the 100 story.

So, congratulations.

We've actually talked our way through 99 stories, and this will be our 100th one.

So happy birthday to ask.

Yes, and just like Tom Baker in this, we're not getting a cake on top.

No, they were going to have a cake, weren't they?

And it was vetoed.

Yeah, as being too self-congratulatory, which is probably fair enough.

Yeah, yeah.

The other visual gag was going to be, they were going to give the doctor a present, which was an identical scarf to the one he already had, and he'd go, oh, it's wonderful.

It's just what I always wanted and it was going to be the stump scarf.

This is a bit of a strange story, isn't it?

It's our 1st story by David Fisher. wonderful.

[01:30]

Yeah, and he'll go on to contribute to the program over the next couple of years.

He'll do Androids of Tara.

Well, in fact, next story.

He writes 8 episodes in a row.

He'll do creature from the pit next year in the leisure high of the year after that.

And he is the man that wrote the Gamble with Time, which became the City of Death.

Yeah that's right.

And of course, did somebody mention the Fumarsi?

Terrific.

It's really hard not to see this script as a kind of commentary on or reaction against the Hinchcliffe era.

Much like last season.

I think this is more proof that the Graham Williams era does horror better than Philip Hinchcliffe.

What we have here is like a criminal from the past who is masquerading as a god.

I've got my hands in my head.

I never see these things till Nathan starts...

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Start talking, listeners.

You can't unsee it, can you?

But yeah, criminal from the past.

A criminal from the past, and then we get a sort of strange Gothic building, like Fetch Priory last season, we get the big whore, which is a beautiful location, by the way.

[02:34]

I just think it looks, it was absolutely spectacular.

And we've got a priest and there's a coven of worshippers and all of that sort of thing.

And it seems like just it's not going to be a very good retread of a Graham Williams era thing.

Certainly, DeFreeze, the head of the coven is pretty terrible.

So, what?

Yeah, I think he's shockingly bad.

I think he's fantastic.

Oh, he's wonderful.

This is my favourite story of the key to time.

Is it?

I can certainly understand.

I can see that.

But what they do is they do the sort of Hinchcliffe thing and then just throw it away unexpectedly halfway through and decide to do something more fun instead.

And I think it's really terrific and it works really well as a sort of commentary on the Hinchcliffe era.

Yeah, sure.

Fine. that's how you want to see it in your head.

I just sit back, relax, and I enjoy.

And well, there's so much to enjoy, isn't there?

I mean, I'm kind of with you, Todd, in that I quite like DeFreeze.

And I think what's so great about DeFreeze is he's set up to be the villain, but of course he isn't the villain.

[03:39]

The villain is Cesare, who we will come back to, because 1st of all, we need to comment on.

Professor Amelia Rumford and Vivian Faye.

See, this is a story with a tiny, tiny guest cast, isn't it?

In fact, it's basically just those 2 women.

You get DeFreeze and Martha who are sort of horribly healed in episode two.

You get the Magara who don't come along until, what, episode three?

You get the campers who are just in one scene.

So it's basically all rests on the shoulders of those two.

And normally I don't like it when there's a small regular cast.

Like I just tend to think that's, you know, tie semi complained about pyramids of Mars, for instance.

But when the 2 characters are so wonderfully fun, it's really, really hard to object.

So you've got Vivian Faye, who is Susan Engel, and she's just arch and wonderful and funny and hilarious.

She has an instant rapport with Romana, I think, with a sort of bond over her low opinion of what men are like.

[04:44]

But she's so smooth.

Straight away, you know there's something not right, and I like that.

Like, as a kid, I just thought, not just a little bit too sickly sweet and nice.

It's just something not quite right about you.

Do you know what she reminds me of?

She reminds me of that character in K9 and company.

Remember?

Juno Baker.

Juno Baker, who's kind of hits on hits on Sarah, and looks like she's about to invite her to one of their swingers evenings.

You know what I mean?

So she's a little bit like that.

And certainly...

Yes, that the sort of leering ways she refers to sausage sandwiches.

You know what I mean?

Or there's that thing where Amelia Rumford is, you know, offers to allow Romana to ride on the back of her bike and...

It'll be a new experience for you.

There's no need to be afraid.

Yes, that's exactly right.

Oh, I just love her performance.

And I can't believe like, I can't envision anybody else playing that role.

But Anna Blackman was offered that role.

And she did not take it because she wanted Professor Rumford's wrong.

[05:46]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She wrote back.

I read the script.

But I think Bea Lehman will be having all the fun.

Well, that was a big mistake because she'll have fun 7 or 8 years later.

Which is a really terrible story.

Yeah.

I love the voice.

Interestingly enough, just Avengers connection.

Susan Engel auditioned to replace Diana Rigg.

Oh wow.

And the mute footage of her auditioning with I believe it was Moray Lang standing in the steed.

It was either Moray Lang or John Woodvine, both stood in for steed during those auditions, but she does audition for it.

So you only see her physical performance, but she's still got that sort of look that Vivian Faye does.

If any listeners who want to try and find that.

It's on the UK edition of the Avengers series 6.

I just love her sausage sandwiches.

Like I love sausage sandwiches.

Like as a kid, with tomato sauce, just fantastic.

Bit of onion.

And no, I won't go that far.

But I just remember we used to play Doctor Who charades.

And one of my clues in one of our, I don't know, silly objects was Vivian Faye sausage sandwiches, just tickled my fancy that much.

[06:52]

I mean that's ridiculous.

But, hey, what, hey.

It's like a good name for a trivia.

It's a good name for pub trivia team, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, sausage sandwiches.

Fantastic.

And of course, then we've got Amelia Rumford.

Again, she is just terrific.

This is her last performance and she's terribly old.

Gosh, I didn't realise, yeah.

I think this is the last thing that she's in.

She struggles a little bit with the dialogue at the beginning, I think, and that just comes across as her being an old lady, though.

I think that's right.

I bet she, because she's an academic and she gets to sort of rehearse these academic rivalries and past comments on various professors like that fool Lidwell Morgan and talking about treatises and, you know, the surveys and things of the 9 travellers and stuff.

Survey of Dr. Borlays.

And you can see her kind of reaching into a memory for the dialogue.

But she's really, really funny and appealing and she's really lively.

And, you know, there's a great moment.

I think it's probably an episode 2 or 3 where she wants to go and capture one of the Ogre for the sake of science, you know.

[08:00]

With a trump should.

I've never heard an Evelyn Smythe, big finish audio.

Is everyone as old as Amelia?

Evelyn is younger than Amelia, but and far sharper, but the same kind of wit and the same kind of no time for pomposity, you know, very sort of down to earth and what have you.

Because she's not as she's not as fussy as Amelia, but yeah, she's very much cut from the same cloth.

Because Amelia works really well with the doctor, the doctor is so big and so compelling to watch, but she really kind of outperforms him.

She really is able to stand up to his sort of scenery chewing and get herself seen.

I love the humour that I think David Fisher brings into the script.

But again, I mean, how much it's David, how much it's Anthony Reed on the same page.

Like, you know, you're talking about, you know, when the doctor's tied up on the stone going to be sacrificed and she she shoes everybody away and she comes, what are you doing there?

Why, you know, and pulls a knife on him.

[09:02]

I don't mean to cut him free, but still, so she pulls that next to his face.

And all the and all the stuff she gets to do with K 9.

I just think...

Yeah, she's a great double act with K9 actually.

A real success of David Fisher's scripts, and he'll do it again in all his scripts, is whereas Holmes would give you the double act of other characters.

So the master and Farrell or Jago and Lightfoot together or um, Scarman and Su Tech.

David Fisher's double acts is pairing up a guest cast member with one of the regulars.

So you've got the doctor and Professor Romford, you've got Romana and Vivian Faye, then you've got Professor Romford and K9.

Because, of course, you know, once your characters are established, it's sometimes hard to find new things to do with them.

Tom and Mary are great at finding new ways to read lines with each other, of course.

But instead, if you mix them up with other people and get to see them reacting strangely, especially with the doctor and Romana both being aliens.

And I suppose the spoiler alert, Vivian being an alien as well.

[10:03]

The only sort of real human main character we have is Professor Romford.

And that's the thing.

She is so human compared to the doctor's aliens and compared to his grandiosity.

And she brings him down without even trying.

I think that's another difference between her and Evelyn.

Evelyn like sort of tries to bring the 6 doctor down when he's being a bit bompous.

Whereas Professor Rumford, she will brings him down just because she's fabulous in talking about sausage sandwiches and bringing Romana a thermos of tea because men are so unreliable, which brings me to another great thing David Fisher does.

All of his stories have strong, well drawn roles for women, which is something that has been really sorely missing in the last few years of Doctor Who.

So here we have Professor Romford and Vivian Faye.

Even Martha as well, you know, because DeFreeze tries to send her away, but she very much knows her mind and, you know, I won't leave you, but earlier on, no, I won't do this.

It's murder.

You know, she speaks up for herself.

She's so bad I'm not going to leave you.

[11:03]

Yeah, she's terrible, but it's a great chance.

She might be terrible, but the one thing I did notice in this is that, you know, she's willing to speak up and say, look, we've sacrificed chickens or whatever it is before.

This is going too far and so I actually, she brings a bit of humanity to that sort of stuff that's going on.

So actually, you know, I have a lot more sympathy for her performance this time around than I have had previously.

Then we get the campers.

We get Pat and I don't think he's...

He doesn't get a name.

He'll be back.

She's in Dragonfire.

Well, she's dead in this.

As a kid, as a kid, I just kind of thought, oh, well, yeah, he's a bit better than, but it did freak me out as a kid, like, you know, these campers quite innocently, then like just die.

And it's happened last year with that poor guy in the woods and image of the fend dial.

That really did get to me.

It's the skeleton hand.

It's the skeleton hand and the screaming and the fade to red.

Yeah, yeah.

Again, I think it's an example of the Williams era doing horror really well and going with the less is more approach.

[12:10]

You know, you don't you don't need to see their gut spilling out or anything like that.

You get it from the performances.

Well, a pity they couldn't have done that with K9 after he's attached because you get all of that ticket tank.

And steel wool.

They're still wool wet.

I mean, it's so unconvincing, and it's so great when Romana goes back to the Tartars with him to have whatever looks like a beta from an electronic whisk, like as she's prodding into, you know, prodding into K9, you think, you know, I kind of think, oh, they could have done a bit better with that.

What they couldn't have done any better with is the giant toppling fibreglass rocks that they decide to use as our enemy aliens for this week.

They're really, really incredibly bad.

No, I disagree as well.

I find them actually quite stunning and I actually get was really frightened as a kid and I really think they look wonderful.

Do you?

And I, you know, it makes no sense that rocks move like that, but of course, they're not really rocks.

[13:10]

They're ovary.

And, you know, so I just imagine they sort of levitate very slightly, but some sort of rationing along. actually think they're fantastic.

Yeah, yeah.

I really, really like them.

I always think they look like they're about to fall over.

Not for a 2nd they look like that they're actually made of rock.

You know, they're like big fibreglass things.

I think they have great sound design. you know what I mean?

I think they're glowing yellow rocks is mental.

Maybe, but I disagree with you.

I found them terrifying as a child.

And I think part of it is the sound design, that sort of heartbeat.

But it's also, as the doctor says, And I think even before the doctor says this line, you realise it as a viewer, perhaps not consciously, how do you kill a stone?

And that's the thing.

It's just a wall coming towards you.

Now, in the original script, David Fisher had them toppling over onto people and crushing them.

That would have been great.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm glad they didn't go with that because that would have looked rather comical.

I thought that they were going to be rock men in David Fisher's group.

[14:11]

That was the other thing.

And Daryl Blake kind of said, well, look, you know, we can make the suit and it's not going to look terribly convincing and then we've got to have a special effect to get them to morph from the upright thing to the suit.

There's not that many scenes of them attacking people.

Let's just have them as upright rocks.

And I think it's actually a much better solution because if we think back to the male Eldrad's costume, we weren't we weren't big fans of that as well, and it just would have been more of the same of that.

It helps emphasise their alienness.

They're not bipedal.

They're not binocular.

You can't talk to them or reason with them because they don't communicate on the same level of rocks because they're just big rocks. they should come back in a new series.

Gareth Roberts, I think, once wrote a comic strip, must have been Gareth Roberts, but couldn't be anyone else.

Yeah, for DWM, in which the one that the doctor kind of matadors off the cliff gets crushed into sand and becomes sentient sand that attacks people.

[15:13]

Do you remember that?

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think it was Gareth Robertson.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, can I just say, though, that cliff?

There are 2 moments in classic Doctor Who where I did the behind the sofa thing.

Okay.

Except in my case, our sofa was up against the wall.

So I actually had to run into the other room where you could still just see the TV from and hide behind a bookcase.

So we had a bookcase against the wall and I put my head into the Funkin Wagnall's bookcase we had.

My parents had a set of Funkin Wagnals encyclopaedias and just sort of poked my head around until it was done.

It was the cliffhanger where Romana goes off the cliff.

I found it really confusing as a kid because Tom, of course, refused to actually participate in pushing her off the cliff and been in those sequences up to it.

And so when she's looking and the voices there, I was kind of going, what's going on?

Now I actually think it's quite effective that it's just his voice.

I actually do think it's a problem.

It is hard to tell what's meant to be happening. as a child, yeah. as a child.

Now, I think personally, I know the story, I know what's happening, but yes, it is a problem.

[16:13]

And then unfortunately you get Mary's scream and she's not really a screamer.

And then in the next episode, she spends, I don't know, she must have great carbs or something, but she's on that cliff forever.

And then you get the CSO of the sea, and then that awful shot when...

Yeah, he's pulling it back up.

Yeah.

And the sunset, which just doesn't work.

And they just stay on it too long.

It's the one sequence in this whole story that doesn't work because I actually think the outside broadcast stuff because it's done a video.

It done on video.

It looks great.

Yeah, yeah, and they have night shoots, you know?

Yeah, they have night shoes. they have some day for night and it's and it's some of the better day for night that I've seen.

I never think days great. night's any good.

It's not great, but it's better than some of the other stuff we get.

I mean, the key for Dave tonight is you either want to have a completely clear sky or a completely cloudy sky.

If you get patches like we saw in Doctor No a couple of months ago, it becomes really obvious that it's that it's day.

That cliffhanger, I rationalise to myself as a child in that we don't see who pushes Romana off the cliff, but I never thought it's a projection of the doctor.

[17:17]

I thought, they're using the doctor to call her out there and then someone else pushes her off the cliff.

But then she climbs back up and has the whole thing of, no, no, it was you, it was you.

And as a kid, I just went, oh, okay, that's what was happening.

Yeah, yeah.

I think it's most unclear.

And I think it's very surprising for Tom to say that because, of course, just 3 years earlier, he had no problem playing his robot replica.

Well, what about what about Todd pointed this out the other day in conversation that he's quite happy for the cliffhanger of episode 2 of the next story to run up to Romana and Clubber in the head.

Yeah, yeah.

Yes, yes, yes.

We were talking about this, yeah.

Yeah, I think he was probably just being a bit Tom.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He was just being crunchety, I think.

But there's so many nice little things out on location.

Like I love it when he just throws the umbrella away, you know, for no reason at all.

I assume that Romana picks it up on a way back to the Tartist.

It is littering.

It did worry me.

Like, I just love the fact that she wears the most inappropriate shoes to measure the ground density or whatever it is that she does and then I don't particularly like that outfit, but I do like the red dress that she comes back.

[18:21]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Before Vivian Fay decides to get dressed up to look like some sort of owl because that's what you do when you're the villain of the week and pushes her into the vortex.

I love that Romana doesn't react to the fact that Vivian's dressed up as an hour because for Romana, that's just, oh, okay, that's evening wear on this planet.

Fine.

She did say she'd been a brown owl before.

Exactly, maybe that's it.

I just thought the baby instead of goes, oh, what's going on there in the circle, you know, let's go find out and then pushes her in.

And so that's when the story takes a big turn because suddenly we're in hyperspace and we're throwing the kind of horror premise away a little bit and replacing it with a science fiction premise.

And I've certainly heard people express the opinion that the 2nd 2 episodes are weaker than the 1st ones, but I have to say that I really, really, really enjoy the 2nd half.

So I think the set is really good.

Like the spaceship set is, you know, well designed.

We get to see a Wiran.

We get to see a Weiran again.

Well, in a cupboard.

It is funny, like, you know, that Romana is in this cell with an Android and there's the we're in, like, there's no continuity between production teams. just like these old things around.

[19:30]

We just put them in there.

So be it.

Have you noticed that the Android has really big comedy red lips?

Yes.

Have a look again.

It's a kraal android, but with big googly eyes and comedy Jessica Rabbit red lips.

It's very strange.

And then suddenly we get the reveal that Vivian Faye, who we know is a kind of man hating villain.

She's she killed her husband on his on their wedding night.

Three of them, I think.

Yeah, Señor Kamara didn't make the crossing over from Brazil.

It's a great cliffhanger.

I love conceptual cliffhangers or reveal cliffhangers.

Things like last year with I've locked the creature in with us.

Yeah, and so this one, it's the series of portraits of Vivian Faye that are all the same person.

And originally that was going to then lead into the titles, but the episode was underrunning, so they moved the Romana getting transported scene, which still works as a cliffhanger.

You know, it's it's a double cliffhanger.

That's fine.

So then we actually get to see her in real life and she's silver.

[20:32]

And there's a fabulous moment where in the trial, which we'll get to in a minute where she says, I'm Vivian Faye of Rose Cottage, you know, ask anyone in Boscow and they'll recognise me and kind of go, yeah, but they will kind of thing, what the hell are you doing looking all silver like that?

So is she normal silver?

And she paints her body.

Yeah, foundation.

Yeah, she just puts a lot of foundation on normally.

No, no.

The, the...

Of course it's a segment.

The segment lets a change.

Yeah, because this is the 1st indication we have that the segments have individual property is in and of themselves because Romana comments that the 3rd segment has the power to change objects or at least their appearance.

So it's like, well, all the segments seem to have that power, seeing as one of them's been a lump of Jethric, and one of them's been a planet.

I like the fact that at the beginning of the story, we have enough time for them to put their segments together.

Ramana can do it and the doctor can't and we get the little recap with the...

Finding the doctor tells Ramana that it wasn't the president.

Thank goodness we get over that.

[21:33]

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I also quite like in that early on with Romana's outfits.

He sort of tries to walk through and she's like, not yet.

What do you mean, not yet?

I'm not ready yet.

What?

The doctor has no idea that we get this great joke that women like to change their clothes and what have you.

But of course, with Romana, one can understand that she is exploring new outfits and new looks because Time Lord Society is so staid and so stolid, you know.

The frocks are so terrible.

And the frocks are so terrible.

She just would have had a pink velour number like Rodan.

And I'm saying Rodana's Rodan, because of course that's a giant pterodactyl monster from Godzilla series.

No, of course, Roman is trapped in hyperspace. forever.

But of course, here in hyperspace, we do have a trial with a few interesting characters.

Yeah, so Cesare is there looking on the trial.

She's covered in silver and all I can think about when I'm watching her on screen is the makeup lady applying silver to her breasts and what that would have been like.

[22:41]

It's actually a very low plunging taste.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

This does not...

It's the Magara.

Oh, I love the Magara, the justice machines.

The flashing lights, the little bleep, bleep, bleep, bleeps, and the little conversations, they have like, you know, when the doctor makes his escape, like my eloquent defence of your client and all that sort of stuff.

It's just so funny.

And again, I kind of think that they are like Rubik's cube boxes, like actual machines, but you don't see that they've got their chameleon circuit flashing and that sort of thing.

So that sort of is hovering in space or whatever.

I think that's a great way of realising them too.

It doesn't work 100% of the time because the actor's sight lines are off and off.

But it is much better than having some stupid ball thing or, you know, something floating in the air.

I think they're really good.

And I think it helps the line, you know, where the doctor says, you know, that he's worried that he might be found guilty because they've got a bit of fluff in their sprockets or whatever you've got in there.

The fact that they're just sort of a box of flashing lights, you know, that I think that really helps that line work better.

[23:48]

We'll get back to the witnesses that he calls.

But the last witness. when he says I have another witness to call and they go, who?

And he goes, you.

I mean, that always takes me by, took me by surprise as a kid.

I just thought it was really, really clever.

You know, and then they go, they're having their little animated conversation about, you know, this is more still regulating, sort of, I just love that.

But of course, he does call other witnesses, one of which is...

Oh, yes.

This is Romana, he calls.

And, you know, in the guidebooks and the companion books and all of that sort of thing.

Romana's name is always given as Romana Verat Trilunda.

But in fact, Tom and Mary don't pronounce it that way at all this season.

So she's Romana de Varat Nalunda when she's introduced in the rebos operation.

And here, of course, in the formality of the courtroom, the doctor refers to her as Miss Devaratnalunda.

That's hilarious.

Hilarious. just love it.

You know, there's so many good things about it.

In a way, I understand when people say, oh, you know, it all goes to hell in the last 2 episodes, but really what it is, it's kind of like the horror premise has played out.

[24:57]

We've had the chase, we've had people die.

So we could leather rinse repeat, but even Hinchcliffe didn't do that.

If you look at Pyramids of Mars, you know, we go off to Mars for the last episode.

For a terrible last episode.

Yeah, and this is so much better.

And especially things like when Romana is asked to call her, call herself a mere humanoid.

She says, I object to the wording.

But in fact, the Megara, ah, great kind of Douglas Adams style creation, aren't they?

You know, they're justice machines.

Douglas Adams is very much about bureaucracy and the way that systems are cruel to individual people and also about the way that technology gets out of control or, you know, impacts negatively on our lives in a way that we don't expect.

So these are justice machines with absolute contempt for humanity.

Like, the only reason to care about justice is because you care about people.

Do you know what I mean?

Because justice is something that you do to people.

So if you don't care about people, if you've got out of contempt for them.

What the hell is the point of justice?

But these, they have absolute contempt for human beings, and we learn, of course, that they were called in one time by a big galactic federation, and they found the galactic federation in contempt of court, and blew up the entire galaxy, and that's a complete kind of Douglas Adams sort of thing.

[26:13]

And so the idea that your legal counsel might be involved in executing you later on, you know, is very much along those lines.

I want to go back to the pronunciation of Romana's now.

Because for me, it'll always be Romana Voltana.

And I'm now going to go into sidetrack, which is a bit of a convention anecdote.

I don't know, you should remember this.

Yeah, I remember him very well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So Mary Tam came out to Australia in 1993 for convention, which was the 1st convention that I was involved with helping and I was just one of the little clems and he became much more important later on.

And I picked Mary and her daughter, Lauren up from the airport.

And Mary was suffering from a throat condition.

She was already very croaky, going from hot to cold, you know, and so I was very green in those days.

And so I decided, well, we were going to Parramatta for the convention, which was about a 50 minute drive from the airport, but I thought, oh, no, what we'll do is we'll drive over the harbour bridge and we'll show you the opera house and, you know, a good adding a good 15 to 20 minutes on our trip at that time.

[27:23]

But for whatever reason, that day in Sydney, like this fog just blanketed everything.

You could see nothing.

It was so muggy and hot.

We were so hot in the car and I turned on the air conditioning.

The air conditioning had this conniption, which I just, you know, I don't know.

All this white gas just went out of the air conditioner straight into Marytown in my face.

Like, it never had it before, never had it since, right?

So I almost gassed Mary Tanned in the car.

But I might have got a handset that show had a throat that was, you know, a croaking voice.

So it wasn't my fault.

I'm just saying to people who went to that convention.

At that time, Doctor Who was getting shown, I think, on repeats in the morning on the ABC, like really early in the morning.

The cupboard managed to get an announcement to say that there was a evention coming up with various guests because back then, listeners, we didn't have the internet.

So what we had was we had an answering machine service basically ring someone's number.

So, a friend of the podcast, Peter Griffiths, had an answering machine, and they came back to the answering machine in the next few days, and there was this child's voice on there.

[28:27]

I can only imagine it's like that child that becomes the tochlophane in season three.

And the child said, oh, hello, I'd like some more information about the Huvention with Joe Grant, the Turlo, and Romana Voltran.

So Roman of Voltana got shortened and became Voltran, so Mary suffered from Voltran.

Yeah, it was a terrible illness.

Terriblely throughout that entire convention.

And yeah, she was, she was...

And if that young child is out there listening to us now.

Our voicemail is, no, they didn't leave their number.

It was just that was it.

Hang up, kick goodbye, you know, so they never found out who it was.

Please let us know so we can give you information on that convention.

I like Tom's barrister's wig.

But he's pulled off that he has a barrister's wig in his pocket and he just pulls it out.

I think that's spectacular.

I have a barrister's wig in my pocket right now, just in case.

[29:28]

But I just have all the witticisms and I think that's part of Antony Reid and David Fisher.

I'm not from outer space.

I'm from inner time.

Little things like that, but...

I love how the Magara sentence Vivian Faye to 1500 years imprisonment, followed by perpetual imprisonment, and they're to be served consecutively.

Well that's how they do things in America, you know.

I have always quite liked the idea that sometime around 3478, you know, there might be a moment where Sisera of Diplos could escape.

And you know, they could bring back Susan Engle.

She's still acting.

I saw her in Midsummer a few weeks ago, you know.

You said she's looking pretty good.

She's looking pretty good.

I just think it's so funny.

I think it's so funny the way that Amelia just has to redo the whole survey with like Vivian as a stone right there.

Three of the other stones gone.

Yeah, yeah.

And then she gets a very, very quick goodbye to the doctor Ramana.

It's very rushed there at the end, but her top is very see-through.

[30:30]

Yes, we do get some Beatrix Lehman nipple in that scene, which is a little bit unfortunate.

It was very cold.

I don't think she, I don't think she believed in wearing a bra.

No.

And I do like it's fine.

I do like the comedy ending with, again, with the doctor, failing to put the key to time together as a jigsaw and giving a withering look to...

In fact, I think we call back in the Armageddon factor, and I think Romana has to do the assembly again.

Yeah, it's something that comes up a number of times.

It's rather, I think it's quite fun. that she can't recognise what they are, but she can put them together.

And he knows what they are, but can't put them together.

This might be my favourite Graham Williams story.

It's so very good.

And there's very little to fault in it.

And what there is to fold in it, there are so many other stories guilty of as well, you know, the occasional floppy prop or whatever.

And it just seems like the entire cast had a great time making it.

Like the bit where the Magara do go, it's fed up, modulated voices of David McAllister, and Gerald Cross, and they're saying things like, ping, ping, ping.

[31:38]

There's my friend David.

Bong, bong, bong, bing, bing, bing.

So they're obviously having fun.

And there's the famous story that John Leeson, who was actually in the outside broadcast fan doing canine's voice live, which is lovely, was out one day on a break, taking photos of the stones, and got chatting with Beatrice Lehman about photography and what have you, and she loved dogs.

So, you know, in her mind.

Oh, you're a dog.

I love you.

At the cast after party, she walked up to him with this brown paper bag and said, this is for you.

Open it, and it was her, I think, 20-year-old Lika camera.

Incredibly expensive, incredibly valuable.

And John's just like, what?

And she just said, oh, I've not used it in years, darling.

You have it.

You love photography so much.

And he just left going, What?

It just sounds like everyone had such a fun time.

And unlike other stories where people say, oh, yes, we had so much fun.

The audience have fun with this as well.

And even at the end, even though, you know, Vivian Fey has killed 100s of people either by herself or by proxy through the ogre, you're kind of like, oh, she's imprisoned.

[32:47]

And yeah, the professor's lost a friend and she has to do the survey again, but she has an academic reputation to consider.

It's such a good script and I'm so glad that we get more of David Fisher further down the line as well.

I just, you know, as Nathan was saying so far this season, every story puts a smile to my face and I'm enjoying Doctor Who again.

Yeah, it really is a fun year.

Well, that is all the time we have for the Stones of Blood.

We will be back next week for my personal favourite ever Doctor Who story, the Androids of Tara.

Wow.

Yeah, I know.

That's a big call.

I know.

I will be explaining myself.

Good.

Until then, you can find us at our website, flightthroughentirety.com, flight through entirety on Facebook and iTunes and FTE podcast on Twitter.

[33:50]

Over on Bondfinger, we have the 1st 5 Sean Connery films available as commentary.

So that's Dr. No from Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, and you only live twice.

You can find those on Bondfinger.com, Bondfinger on Facebook and iTunes and Bondfinger cast on Twitter.

Until then, may all your citric acid products be used in the defence of planet Earth.

Thank you very much and good night.

Good night.

See you soon.

That was flight through entirety with Todd BLB, Nathan Bottonley, and Brendan Jones.

This episode, the full Ed Will Morgan, was recorded on the 4th of October, 2015.

The next episode will be released on December 27th. much like hyperspace, we hope that this podcast is a theoretical absurdity that you've always wanted to get lost in.

I am on.

You are on.

Fantastic.

Uh, well, I just need to remember what my, my thing was...

[34:53]

Things of blood.

Oh, yeah, I remember.