Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to Flight through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast with 3 hearts, one for casual, one for
best, and one for Saturday night.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
And I'm a family-sized tub of Spack off for this episode.
We're heading into our sand pit, possibly in Dorset then at this
point.
Who the hell cares?
It's destiny of the Daleks.
Hey.
Right, so, Terry Nation's back.
Is he?
Do you have a checklist, Brandon?
Well, I was going I was going to leave that over to you because
this is the last time.
We can do a terry nation checklist.
So let's count them off. there's radiation Yes.
It is the same radiation planet that he's used, you know, a couple
of times before.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I think this is the only time that Terry's been back to
Scaro, aside from Genesis of the Dialects, which arguably was
written by Robert Holmes anyway.
And Terry's only written the 1st episode of this anyway.
Yeah, Ken Greaves says that he got a completed script for episode
one, a draft script for episode 2, an outline for episode 3 and 4
and that he, Graham Williams, an incoming script editor, Douglas
Adams.
Hooray, we've got Douglas came up with the ending.
So...
That ending again.
And Terry wasn't allowed to write the introduction scene with
Lala.
This is the one where it starts as every Terry Nations episode
starts, the story starts.
And I think it does this one really well.
It works.
It doesn't matter that it's 20 years old.
Well, it's not quite, is it?
But, you know, wandering around on a planet with an apparently
hostile intruder and just getting our bearings.
Yeah, absolutely.
And hats off to Kangreve for going with steady cam for
dislocation.
How a beautiful time, isn't it?
It's the 1st time in Doctor Who.
And it was very new for drama at that point.
It was actually the 1st time for drama.
These things cost a fortune and the BBC was allowed to have it and
they were allowed to have it for Doctor Who.
So we have the most interesting things we look at.
Uh, the comment chasing down the corridor scenes because they're
dumbest dedicate.
We have the very 1st time that the doctor's on his back staring at
the ceiling and happy about it.
We have ceilings.
Yes, that's true.
Yeah, the sound zone's wonderful.
Yeah, when was Khaled dome-based lime green?
Yeah, it's weird because the sets have the sets that are meant to
be the same sets as from Genesis of Daleks.
They have pretty much the same construction, but completely
different colours.
It's like they didn't have any reference photos to work from.
They were just going from the blueprints.
Actually, I think that obviously Terry didn't write very much of
it.
But you remember that Davros is actually in the bunker, of
course.
And I got the impression that the bunker was some distance from
the Khaled dough.
But here it's several levels below the car led city.
See, I always thought it was below the Carled City because when
the Carled City is bombed in Genesis, they survive, but they feel
it.
I seem to recall.
But I could be wrong.
I just want to say a few words about SteadyCam because some of the
shows I work on.
We still use a steady cam rig.
And it really hasn't changed that much since the 70s.
So for listeners who don't realise, the steady game is sort of a
body armour slash harness that goes over the camera operator with
an arm.
So imagine sort of an Allen key, if you like, that you get an IKEA
furniture.
So that sticks in the back of the harness, goes over the camera
operator's head and has pretty much a strong rope hanging down to
the camera.
So the camop holds the camera, but what is keeping it steady is
this harness on their back.
And that's why if you ever meet a cameraman, they are almost
always quite tall, quite fit, quite muscular, because the job just
does that to you.
You can hear a window into Brendan's life here, aren't we?
It's a bit exciting.
So they don't just get an iPhone and like balance it on the back
of their hand sort of thing and walk along.
Don't talk to me about iPhone footage and television. 30 frames a
second, Apple with no way to adjust it.
Actually, no, sorry. 27 frames a 2nd on some occasions, but we're
digressing massively.
So, Terry Nathan checklist, we have radiation, we have almost only
the regulars in the 1st episode with one person wandering around
after them.
We have anti-radiation, drugs, gloves.
Gloves.
Oh, and everyone says this, why does the doctor give Lala the
bleeper but doesn't give her the drugs?
Well, he's expecting her not to wander off.
Oh, okay, because he's never been in a terry nation story before.
So there's humanoids mining.
Yes, there's mining servants of the Daleks and drilling.
Yes.
Yeah.
Fundamental concepts of daleks being misunderstood.
Yeah, he thinks they're robot. being misunderstood by the author.
Exactly.
There are some show notes wandering about might have been written
after the fact that the Daleks were being taken to a new point.
Terry assumed that everybody else would be keeping up with him and
that they're now this completely logical post.
You must have seen Star Wars, that, you know, the battle computers
are running the Dalek story.
And you see, in the next Dialect story, trying to...
They're trying to recon that and it doesn't really work either
does it?
More fun within the future for that one.
Yeah, I mean, it's strange, it is a very strange thing.
So you've got 2 robot races.
Yes, we haven't mentioned the Mavellans yet.
We'll get to them.
Do you know where this was coming from, this story?
This was a Terry's last ditch attempt to boot a Dalek spinoff
series.
Ah, Daleks V move Allens.
Yeah.
You know what?
I think I would have, I think I would have watched that.
But you would have had to have the Mavellans a bit more like a bit
more human. movie version with Bo Derek.
Does anyone under 30 even know who I'm talking about?
Probably not.
Yeah, yeah.
I know, I know.
I know of Bo Derek, yeah.
The hair.
Well, I did I did have to wonder if this is Terry Nation sort of
trying to do computers because the Daleks came from post-war
Britain and sort of generational memory of the Nazis, end of
communism, as we discussed all those, all those months ago.
Whereas now, as we discover later in the year with Tom and Lala
advertising the terribly interactive prime computers.
I'm computers.
Oh, that was very exciting.
They were shown in the cinema in the cinemas here in 1990.
It was shown before the Muppet movie and infinitely better.
They didn't have it in England, I don't think.
Prime computers.
No, they're an Australian company on computers, yeah.
Yeah, it was while they were out here, and I believe it was the
last time Tom came out here.
He was allowed to do the keep Australia beautiful stuff, but he
apparently paid for some of the trip himself, so I don't know what
was going on there.
I believe he's got family in New Zealand.
Oh, okay.
So it wouldn't surprise me.
But he was being played to do the keep Australia beautiful stuff.
He did some paid work for the ABC for promos and then he also did
It was a WHL in those days, the target books.
He did signings as Nathan and I remember.
It's a very moving time for us.
And this is the outfit that he wore.
Like this seems to be like the canonical form of the doctors, the
4th doctor's outfit with that fabulous jacket.
But, you know, at the time, sort of the home computer market was
burgeoning.
And so Terry Nation seemed to be someone who would look at ideas
that were happening now, well, I say now is in the time he was
writing the script.
So, you know, Planet of the Daleks, we have a battle in a jungle
at the same time the Vietnam War was going on.
And here we have terrination sort of going, computers.
What if someone computerised their weapon systems?
What if the computers couldn't find a way around each other?
And yeah, it's a...
We were getting films, sorry, we were getting films from 78 about
this very concept.
When's war games?
That's a good point. 79, isn't it?
I thought it was 84, but I could be wrong.
Could be.
Isn't Quill Wheaton in that?
No, it's Matthew Broderick, isn't it?
Oh, yeah, that's right.
Matthew Waterhouse.
Yeah, yeah.
A young Matthew Waterhouse.
Will Wheaton is apparently interviewing Peter Capaldi and Jenna
Coleman for the series 9 box set.
I'm excited by that Yeah, he's pretty good.
As we record this, dear listener.
Hellbent has gone out but we haven't seen it yet.
We really care about new podcast listeners, which is why we're not
currently sitting on the couch watching Hell Band.
That's right.
Well, plus, Rod would kill me if I watched it without it.
Yeah, fair enough.
But back to Destin.
Is it rather telling that we're talking about anything else, rub
and destiny of the Daleks?
I want to talk about why this is such a great show and why you
just said it.
It was new.
It hadn't been seen before.
A nation does, even though we go for tropisms, is that the term, I
believe, we've used before?
Possibly.
Yeah, terry tropes.
It is fresh and new.
It looked startlingly, beautifully new.
And once you get the aggressors, the Dalek aggressors in there.
Once you get the Mavellans.
We had seen these sorts of sets before in Space 1979, but we had
never seen it in Doctor Who.
It was bright and beautiful.
The ship design is gorgeous and fresh.
Lala, should we start with Lala?
Yeah, why haven't we spoken about last?
Gorgeous and fresh.
We haven't spoken about that scene, but we haven't spoken about
her.
And, you know, like I was a big proponent of the theory that Mary
Tam takes a brief sabbatical from acting during her year on Doctor
Who.
I don't really have an argument.
But that actually kind of works because, you know, she takes a
tone of ironic detachment.
Lala, I think is very, very different from Mary.
Yeah, engaged.
It's much clearer, I think, in Creature from the Pit, which is her
first story.
First story recorder.
This is actually the 3rd story she recorded because they went into
City of Death after that.
So funny story later on.
So she's quite confident and I think, you know, she's established
the character.
And the thing that she differs from Mary in is that she does
actually feel human emotions about things.
Do you know what I mean?
She's often really happy.
Like she likes being with the doctor.
She's smart, you know, the 2 of them are just terribly good
together.
That won't last.
No, no, yeah.
They bounce off one another.
You know, she reacts with smiles to funny things that he says, you
know, there's a real, there's a real enthusiasm in Lala's
performance.
Well, you know, Tom wanted to leave at the end of the previous
season.
There are stories that, yeah, that Williams, part of the thing was
Lala on board, and Douglas kept Tom on.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. because Tom and Lala really hit it off on
the set of Armageddon factor, obviously.
And also Tom and Douglas were of a very similar sense of humour.
And Lala and Douglas were great friends as well. sort of Tom was
enchanted by Lala and I don't know if Lala suggested Douglas Adams
and Anthony Reed doesn't know who suggested Douglas Adams, but he
approved of the idea.
No, sadly, he passed away just...
After the riding horns of 91, career wise.
But yeah, so we have sort of a powerful triumvirate from the
beginning.
I have one problem with Lull Award's performance in this story.
Yeah.
Just one and that is her interrogation by the Daleks.
She just goes to pieces far too quickly.
It could have been mitigated if then later on, she said, you know
you just have to, you just have to act like you're perfectly
terrified, and the Daleks expect that.
But it is actually a nice change to get her reacting to peril
because Mary barely ever bothers to do that.
She goes, you know, oh, no, don't push me over that cliff doctor
but, you know, she does.
It looked more convincing.
Yeah, yeah.
She's really not that into it.
Whereas...
Yes, this from mine is engaged.
I fully with that.
This is a new person in a new body and there's the Katie factor
the Katie Manning factor we haven't mentioned.
Lala constantly in interviews back then, and now when she graces
us, you know, rarely with a few words, was playing it for the
teeny tots.
Yes, yeah.
Not for the teenagers.
And this is why she did things with the costume, or later on when
she starts to have more control over that sort of thing.
She wanted to play it for the small children.
So you're going to be getting some Katie memes.
We can say meme because her husband coined the word.
Well, that's definitely supported by the fact that Lola is still
writing literature for children, writing and illustrating and
painting beautiful stuff for children.
And I think that's possibly in part because...
She was at the time as well, you know.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
She did an astrology book for cats as a colouring in thing.
Yeah, she really did.
And of course, she didn't have a great time at school herself.
So I think that's possibly why she's so keen on children's
intelligence and children's learning.
And there's a wonderful sort of moral there that she tells the
story and Richard Dawkins tells the story about questioning
things.
And I think it was, she's in her late teens or early 20s and told
her parents, no, I hated school.
And you know, I know you were paying for a lot of money for me to
go there, but I hated it.
And I said, darling, why didn't you say anything?
And she said, I didn't know I could.
Yeah.
And I think that's that's a big part of her performance as it goes
on as well because she's suddenly a character who can do
anything.
But at the same time, she's a character who, unlike the doctor
understands the responsibility of I can do anything.
And I'm going to go out there and say, you know, this is the year
that everyone says that Tom starts doing silly walks and not
taking it seriously and da da da da.
I think in every story this season, we have great examples of yet
Tom is larking about and having the jokes, but each story has a
great scene where the doctor is just cold and steel again.
It never goes away.
I think people forget that.
Yeah, and it's exactly. to have one thing overshadowed by another
but it's just that this is the 1st time he's had the opportunity
like a puppy left at home by itself, to play and be playful
because there's someone of equal measure in charge.
Moffatt talks about the co-leads of Doctor Who, you know, that
Jenna has been, you know, a co-lead, and, you know, she's even
been in the opening credits and things.
Here, Romana is the doctor's equal. in a way that she wasn't
really in Rebos operation, 'cause she didn't have the experience.
Now she's been travelling with the doctor, the 2 of them just get
on terribly well.
And so you can just give the doctor's bits to Lala to do.
And, you know, she's wearing a pink facsimile of the doctor's
outfit.
As you are today, Richard.
I am.
I'm looking good.
The scarf is delighted.
And right from the word go, even though it's a bit warm in here.
June Hudson and Lala. a great deal of control over together over
how the character would develop through the costume and Lana
definitely saw characters development through her costumes.
She gets great costumes this year too, with one notable
exception.
Indeed, which will come to later.
So can we talk about why she's here?
Because this is one of the things that really irritated me when I
1st watched this as a child was the carelessness on the part of
whoever was running the show of actually not making sure that 2
out of your 3 leads were coming back next year.
And so suddenly, you know, we have to scramble to replace Mary
because we didn't get her back.
We have this story, canine has laryngitis, which is preparing him
for the big change in his voice that will come, you know, in 2
months time.
And he did the same thing at the end of last year.
You know, like suddenly Leela goes and he's got no sort of
particular plan to replace her and has to have, you know, the
Romana has to be magically materialised inside the TARDIS, you
know, with no sort of pre-existing life or anything like that
because we need a girl, you know, in the in the regular cast.
You know, he doesn't care about...
You got a hole in the console for them.
You know, Graham Williams wanted to be very strong on story and he
wanted to have interesting story hooks.
But he cared less about character.
It's like he kind of thought the characters were there to serve
the story.
Which, to an extent, is very true of Doctor Who, just last night I
watched a great documentary called Chaos on the Bridge, which is
all about Gene Roddenbury's involvement in Star Trek, the Next
Generation, and how it almost all fell apart until other people
took over from him.
We'll be getting to that with creature from the pit, aren't we?
It's produced by it's produced by William Shatner.
But one of the comments in it comes from Ronald D. Moore, who was
a writer for Star Trek, came up with a new Battlestar Galactica.
So, you know, lots of stuff, and he said the problem with Gene
Star Trek is it was plot driven rather than character driven.
Yeah.
And the thing is, that works for something like Doctor Who.
The classic Doctor Who.
But now new Doctor Who.
Is character driven rather than plot driven.
So it's an interesting observation.
I think Graham Williams, more than any other Doctor Who producer
was a plot driven producer for better or for worse, rather than a
character driven one.
Yeah, the actors were notable enough to be able to play around and
develop their own little moments and lives.
I think that that's okay.
Do you know what I mean?
And like, I'm not demanding that, you know, Romana has to sort of
cry or reminisce about her father or, you know, like anything like
that.
Um, you know, we're used to classic Doctor Who being plot driven.
But there's just a kind of carelessness and like a lack of
interest in making convincing people.
You know, like, Barbara and Ian didn't have, you know
sophisticated interiority or anything like that.
You know, they didn't spend a lot of time talking about their
feelings.
But at least... came out both, yeah.
And they were kind of identifiable as people and it mattered when
they left and it mattered what happened to them, you know, I'm
still really upset about that actually.
I'm just giggling because anytime you talk about sort of Ian's
performance, I always think of that moment in the keys of marinace
where he's marvelling at the pyramid saying, it must have been
built with tremendous accuracy.
Yeah, it wasn't exactly right.
But it's also that we had the time and the time was put into not
only longer seasons, but the time to develop between characters
and characters themselves.
Whereas in this one, yes, and they have a great introduction.
I don't mind Lala being thrown into it.
She takes control very quickly and very easily.
And there's a sort of fun of the party's already started.
There's nothing more fun than turning up at a party an hour after
it started when everybody's there and the energies in full swing.
You don't want to be the 1st guest.
No.
And look, I mean, she works.
I have no objection.
And, you know, like, I think Todd Todd took a little while to get
used to Lala and was texting us about it for a bit, but I actually
think Lala is superior to Mary.
She's not as, she's not as glamorous and not quite as ironic.
She's more engaged.
She loves it and her and Tom just hit it off and they're saying
Douglas Adams things.
And so they're suddenly funny and the smartest people in the room
and, you know, each as smart as each other.
And, you know, I think that there's a reason, for instance, that
Gareth Roberts loves this season.
You know, it's just, it's smart, fun, funny people having fun, and
that's the other thing, too.
It's the F word.
Yeah, it is the F word.
The doctor's not on an emission.
His trips are completely random.
When does he actually say, I don't know.
I'm just having fun.
I mean, there is, he even just, he even gets to say that.
There is...
It's in the nightmare of Eden.
I't work for anyone.
I'm just having fun.
Yeah, yeah.
And he really is.
It's infectious, you know, and like I think this season has all
kinds of problems with production and script and stuff like that.
But just the underlying feel of it.
Just, it seems, it's so enjoyable.
You know, it comes back to something you were saying earlier
Richard, in that when I was a child, I preferred Lila War to Mary
Tann.
Int you, interesting.
Now, as an adult, I prefer Mary Tam Talal Award.
But that's like saying, and I'm sure I've used this analogy on the
podcast before.
I prefer dark chocolate to milk chocolate.
Also, Tim terms, too.
Yeah, they're very different.
Lovely sweetness.
They're very different.
And it works.
The character is strong for having both of them.
I think what also helps is, you know, for us as fans and we've
seen interviews and been to conventions and whatnot.
Mary Tam and Lala Ward always speak so highly of each other. and
their respective strengths.
We'll come back to that, again, in creature, creature from the
pit.
But when Lala talks about her outfit, she says, you know, at the
beginning they were giving me stuff for Mary Tam, who is this
bombshell model.
And, you know, I'm more and, oh, I don't want to say that Mary
isn't.
But I'm more, I'm more girly.
I have a well, I have that sort of small mousy English figure, I
think she says at one point.
Oh, I'm glad you said that because I thought you were talking
about yourself then.
Both hands were.
Have we talked about regeneration?
Ah, yes, the regeneration of the triangle.
And of the body.
So what happened?
She burns through half her regeneration.
Projections?
Just like Choji.
Or projections or remember David Tennant grows a hand back.
So, you know, it's morphic.
And of course, she is more of an establishment time lord.
So maybe time lords can control where a generation is today.
It's also been a few 100 years since doctors left Gallifrey. you
know, and she's got a triple first.
Yeah, that's true.
That's part of the whole.
There's a lot of the lovely Tibetan stuff.
I don't think you mentioned, I haven't heard it yet in your last
podcast.
I believe that part of Romana's 1st Romana stoicism, and she is a
product of the academy, so that her removal from or disengagement
from the narrative was entirely at one with the character.
She's, as you say, disdained to act.
Yeah, you know, I think it's just Mary, Tam Slum, giving his TV
for a year.
Yeah, possibly show.
But it also works for the character of Romana having never been
engaged.
And when she's tortured by the shadow, the radiation treatment.
The thing that struck me, although it didn't hit me at the time
because I was too busy just getting excited and watching this
change, is that you remember when Billy regenerated, there was no
reference to, in fact, there are a couple of moments we've talked
about in the past of him having one heart, and it's mentioned that
you know, he only has a single heart, and it seems to be that time
lords only get the wrestle on body after the, there is a
suggestion of that.
There is except that the Dulcians and the dominators have 2 hearts
each.
Yeah, well.
So it kind of kicked in for Pad either.
Ah, but the dominators didn't scan Patrick.
Oh, I didn't know.
They only scaned Jamie and then they said, shall we scan the shall
we scan the other one?
No, no, they must be the same.
They look they all look the same to us.
But there's some Billy references that he only had a single one.
Yes.
I would just to just think that she was more fragile and she
needed to, and she didn't make a big deal of it.
She just made a party of it.
But it is also just a fun thing to get time off.
Sorry to do.
Douglas Adams take on the whole.
It's why the master gets introduced to the new series by having
him regenerate because that's something that we've seen a time or
due.
It's the thing that the time laws do is they regenerate and they
are the star of Doctor Who. and that's the thing that the master
tries to do.
It's just been the last story.
Yes.
Come to think of it, the only time lord, we'd seen regenerate in
different incarnations where it's been confirmed that it's random
is the doctor.
Barusa regenerates and he never comments whether he wanted this
body or not.
He never seems to be disdainful of his body.
We get that line later on in the 5 doctors.
Your regeneration has not improved your stubbornness.
That doesn't tell us it's random.
Because he chooses to be campy 20 old British character.
Yeah, you know, you would, wouldn't you?
He sits there watching RKO pictures and going, yeah, I'll have
that one. with Everett Horton.
Thank you again.
Now, there are 2 fan theories I'm going to mention for Lala's
regeneration.
Now, when I say fan, there is these are officially published.
One of them is in the galafray audio, so I'm not going to say what
that explanation is because that's still available.
Yeah, I've enjoyed.
And Richard, that was your recommendation at the end of season
15.
I do recommend people go out and get that.
But there's also a short story, which is out of print.
So I will discuss that called The Lying Old Witch in the
wardrobe.
And the concept behind that is Mary Tams Romana is stumbling
around the Tartars after the Armageddon factor.
The fake section of the key to time was radiating evil particles
and is forcing her to regenerate.
She stumbles into the TARDIS wardrobe, and there's this old, pretty
much librarian there of the TARDIS wardrobe, and she says, oh dear
you know, you're so weak, you know, sit down here, and imprisons
Romana.
It's an avatar of the Tartars, jealous of all the fun the doctor
and Romana are having.
And so, it takes the form of Princess Astra and dresses up like
the doctor and goes out and has this horrible adventure on Skyrim
tortured by these dalek things and then it's buried under rocks.
So it comes back and says, no, you know what, dear, you can have
him, but now you have to look like this zap.
And that's why she comes out looking like, wow, what an incredibly
silly.
But I thought it was worth mentioning.
Richard you look very unimpressed.
That's just the point of it, is that it's all open and the more
woolly it appears, the more you can play with and write.
You notice we're not talking a lot about the plot or indeed the
narrative or the ideas behind this because you don't really need
to, do you?
It felt fun.
When I was a kid, you will know this place.
There was an old brickworks behind my house halfway up a
mountain.
No, no, but not that.
So you, the brickworks, it's at a French's forest, there was a
giant, there was a big chimney stack, and there were all these, all
of these sort of broken buildings and stuff that looked heaps like
Destiny of the Dark.
A very small boy in some poor woman's stolen pink dressing gown.
That was me with a tire pressure gauge as my Sonic Screwdriver
playing in the backyard.
I mean, this was the doctor who, you know, it was, you know, the
2nd time maybe that I was aware that there was a new season.
Like, I think I would have been in 6th class.
You know, this was hugely hugely exciting.
This is our season.
Tom came amongst us to send us maybe the 2nd coming, 1st coming
actually.
Yeah, no, well, I think Creature from the Pit was on when Tom came
to the famous Grace Brothers car park thing.
And he was certainly wearing this outfit from Destiny.
So should we talk about rock, paper, scissors?
A game theory.
We've mentioned before John von Neumann's game theory of 1928
which was used by the Americans to, from 28 onwards as part of
their wargaming strategy, is how will America succeed in post-war
and Cold War?
How will we conduct our battles?
And it actually dictated the post-war US CIA in military
strategies.
So rock, paper, scissors, then comes in as Iching.
Yeah, it encounters that.
Oh, because it's random?
Yeah, there are 2 forces here in this whole season where we can
get to it.
Let's get to it now.
There's a sense that it works because it makes something that's
you know, a little bit complex and a little bit abstract, visible
you know, through physical action, so we can see the doctor in
Romana playing scissors rock paper.
Roxy's paper.
Pepsis?
Anyway.
Lizard Spock.
And you can see the Mofellans doing it, and you can see a very
different outcome in it.
It's kind of fun and funny.
You know, it adds to a kind of lighthearted atmosphere.
But, of course, it makes no sense.
There is no logical move to make in scissors, rock, paper, and it
is essentially random.
There is no way that the 2 robots would do the same.
Although they're looking at the pattern that the doctor, as you
said, getting it in order.
So they're just repeating a pattern, you know, we've started with
the rock, then we'll start because the paper, then the scissors.
So they're each repeating, but you could go an arbitrary number of
levels back, 2nd guessing someone.
Do you know what I mean?
Which means that there's actually no right answer.
It does suggest that their battle computers were actually
mastermind plastic sets that were around in the day before we had
our own.
We used to put little coloured pegs in.
They were great.
I love like that.
They were good.
And they made good dalek bumps on your cardboard dialects when you
had to make them.
But yeah, I remember that plastic game.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But there was, yes, because really if they're super, super clever
computers can generate random stuff. codes, so...
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, this, this, you know, is it's Terry Nation trying to
understand computers.
Yeah, it's Terrenation trying to understand anything after 1965.
Whereas, you know, Douglas Adams was mad on computers and what
something like owned one of the 1st Apple computers in the UK when
it was just some circuit boards glued to a piece of wood.
Does that bring us to the Mavellans then?
So they're very poorly designed, aren't they?
No, they're beautiful.
Oh, you mean from a security standpoint?
Well, they just rip their battery off.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I love that they look like my bionic woman, $6000000 man doll when
you roll them up and they've got a plastic insert and they're back
exactly the same as the plastic thing with the stuff, which I
still have, yes.
Exactly the same.
And of course, we've got Tony is sober.
Yes, we own him.
He's gorgeous.
He was also in Journey Into Space, one of the reboot ones.
You know, we talked about Charles Crichton's Landmark 50s space
opera, which was the last thing in British broadcasting to outrage
television at the same time.
It was actually play the 2nd series was in the 60s.
Antonio sober was in one of the reboots in the early 70s.
Again, by Charles Crichton.
Really clever.
They're not just rockets in space.
They were all Philip K. Dick, mind screwy stuff of believing
they're somewhere else.
So one of the astronauts believes he's in the Australian desert
and living with a kangaroo, and the flying doctor.
Yes.
So before Skippy ever came in.
But anyway, yeah, Tony Osoba's been part of British SF tradition
for a long time, and he's in porridge.
We've got Peter Straker.
It's very good.
Under Cheryl.
Yes, and the opposite of Dar Ross.
We now all know a new way of pronouncing...
Star Ross.
He's really good. really cool and menacing, isn't he?
He's sort of fabulously androgynous as well.
He's actually a butch Peter Wingard, isn't he?
And quite, you know, he's quite good looking.
Suzanne Danielle.
And what about the press at the time when her agent was pissing
off Williams and everybody else, but, you know, the publicity...
Oh, yeah, remember all that?
Every woman who was in Doctor Who in the 1970s seemed to get their
agent to say that to the press.
Yeah, not Beatrix Lehman.
Couldn't we've had Beatrix or even running around time and space
trying to hit Kroll with a truncheon?
It worked.
Try and hit a roto with a crunch.
No, the Mavellans are such a great design.
I mean, they're so 70s.
They disco robots, aren't they?
Yes, they are, which is what they should be.
Yeah, but also...
You can make them pretty.
It is telling that they don't turn up in the 80s even though they
get mentioned.
Yeah, it doesn't want us to look at them again.
They're too they're too silly for Eric Saywood.
They're 270s.
They do part of, exactly.
And they're too much fun for our exam.
Yes.
Something we've criticised the series 4 often is, of course, that
everyone cast is white.
Whereas the Mavelans are not.
The Mavellans are all different nationalities.
The, um, the extras are a mix of nationalities as well.
Unfortunately, the extras are mostly crap in terms of...
To the point, there must have been something awful going on with
the unions or the pacers because they really want to get shot
don't they?
Yeah, well, that's awful.
That's really great for you.
I believe Ken Greaves says on the commentary.
You know, I had such problems with this scene because I told them
you know, we didn't know what the dialect Ray did, but it's like
it kills you in a 2nd.
That must be painful at that out.
And they said, you're not paying us to act.
It doesn't have dropped. it was another union.
And that's why they're smiling.
Yeah, it's another union.
We outsmarted the director.
Yeah, well, it's your face looking stupid on this production. and
showing that you can't act.
You know, it's it's not a very smart decision, Saturday.
But that is interesting you touch on that because we're going to
see those problems as this season progresses.
The BBC was very much at the point of things that maybe you and I
would support the union movement.
I certainly do.
Oh, the emotion of it, but my God, there were some greedy people
that got in there and ruined it, ruined the party for everybody
else, and that's just one more example of it.
You know, of course I support them saying, look, this isn't what
we're getting paid for.
But at the same time, and yeah, I've, when I came to work in
television and they told me how much I was getting paid, I went
very quiet on the phone.
And the thing is, they thought I was reacting because it was a
crap wage.
And no, I was reacting to the fact that I'm sitting behind a
computer. paid as much as I am to teach.
So I'm fine with that.
But at the same time, in my 1st contract, I was asked to do a lot
of stuff that wasn't strictly in my job, but I thought...
A lot of extra time.
And a lot of extra time.
But you know what?
I thought, okay, I want to actually get somewhere in this
industry.
And it's sad that you can't get somewhere without giving a little
bit extra to what you're asked to do.
But it's like, you know what?
Get to the point where you can say no.
And that is capitalism, though.
I'm being a little bit older than you.
I have to say it never gets any better. it's actually getting
worse than when it did when I started out.
We're probably back to the script now, aren't we?
Well, I'm just wondering how much more time it takes to do a bit
of a vague scream and fall over rather than just lower yourself
gently to the ground when the dalek shoots.
With a big grin on your face.
It is nice to see some old costumes in those scenes.
Yeah, there's that huge guy who dresses like a draconian.
I think he does that to relax, actually.
Yeah, he'll get in anything.
Well, that's sort of the equivalent of like a futuristic furry, you
know, instead of dressing as a fox, you dress as a rectilian
alien.
There's a couple of merestrons, I believe.
Someone's wearing someone's wearing desks, trousers from the
robots of death.
Oh, I should notice that.
There's a kind of Charles Brosnan character too, isn't there?
Is there a sort of, oh, but that's also Tom.
Is this the 1st time we've ever seen Tom go the full Chuck Norris
and threatened to blow up?
And actually, well, he's halfhearted about it.
But he does set the detonators off to kill Davros. when we get the
whole back offline.
Doesn't doesn't doesn't he let the Daleks kill 2 people before he
responds?
Really?
But Patrick Track that?
do that kind of thing too.
You know?
Yeah.
But, you know, it's well, it harks back to his argument of, could
you then kill that child?
you know?
He's like, what is one life worth to the daleks?
And here, he's kind of inverting it.
He's like, how many lives are worth Davros?
And in the end it's two.
Still pretty awful.
Oh, yeah, it is awful.
But that's the thing.
This is Tom's moment in this story where he's not larking about.
And we get we get the old fire and we get the old steel.
And we get it in every story this season.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. pointing out each time.
Yeah.
No, it's really good.
He really loses his temper.
It makes those moments even more effective because, you know, one
moment he's gabbling on about Alpha Centauri winning the table
tennis championships or whatever it was.
The intergalactic games.
And then the next I ducked it.
It's a very Douglas Adams thing, he does it in Hitchcock because
he does it in Duke gently.
It's you build up tension with humour, with attention
correspondent to that, so that when you take the humour away, the
tension is ramped up.
Yeah.
You really see it in City of Death.
Yeah, absolutely.
We have an obelisk circling around us, gentlemen.
Todd has a question you'd like to ask about Daros.
Dar Ross.
Sorry, I was being King Greve.
So you'll be pleased to note that I've installed a brand new
device in my time bubble.
It's called the Randomiser, and it takes me to stories of varying
quality.
You know what?
I actually quite like a lot of this story.
I really like the boney M's.
I mean the Movellans, and I like all of the location work around
the ruins.
But what is it, guys, with the Daleks?
And with Davros?
The dog is dire.
And what do you think of David Goodison's performance?
Why does it fail?
I've got to activate the randomiser?
Apparently, it works on the process of potluck, or as I like to
call it, I'm taking a gamble with time.
I remember being horrendously, hideously crushed with
disappointment when I first saw Davros.
So, Davros is the... he's the end of episode two reveal, isn't
he?
He doesn't appear for the first couple of episodes, we get our
traditional end of episode one is the Daleks appear.
Then we get Davros appear at the end of episode two.
So he only gets 2 episodes where he gets dialogue.
The mask is vastly worse.
It's the same mask.
The same mask. glueing it to the guy's face.
Because David Gooderson's head is bigger than Michael wishes.
They had to split it up the back.
And it still didn't fit properly.
So, you know, it's his own chin, rub and the chin of the mask.
Yeah, it was a mess.
Yeah, it just looks terrible.
I mean, it looks terrible.
And like it allowed Michael Wisher to show his bottom lip.
Like they just coloured Michael Wish's bottom lip.
But there's something odd about Goodison's face.
I'm not sure what he looks like, although I think he's the barman
in the 1st episode of Hitchhikers, the TV series.
He can't do the voice.
No, it's really weird.
He's not showing the accent.
And like, I think they do treat the voice later.
I gathered that he was picked because he could do impressions.
No, they actually did careful auditions.
As they did with the K9, Yeah, they were doing it last year.
David Bryant, it was picked, of course, he was the best available
and David Goodison was also the best.
Yes, he was picked because he can do impressions.
Yeah, because, I mean, I think Michael Wisher, when we did our
Pertwee retrospect, if I said that I thought Michael Wisher was
the best guest star in the Pertwee era as car league, I think he's
just terrifically funny, and his performances, Davros is really
extremely good.
Yeah, even though coming up, Terry Malloy gives a completely
different performance from Michael Wisher, it's still very good.
It does the thing that we should does of having 2 voices.
You know, he's got the ranty, shouty voice.
And then he's got that sort of Philip Maddock, quiet, menacing
voice.
David Gooderson is just always somewhere in between.
It's not it's not quiet and but it's not shouting megalomaniacal.
Yeah, it's just not good.
It's not like Davros.
I mean, I think I think Julian Bleach puts in a quite different
performance as well, isn't that?
Pretty spectacular, yeah.
It is.
You know, like, I think he's probably better than Wishan.
He's helped by the fact that he's given a mask that lets him act
whereas we should have, you know, had a rubber bag on his head.
But that all of them get, that sort of gentle, quiet voice being
happening. as well as the scary Randy voice.
Gudeson isn't used as anything so much as a toddler in a
wheelchair being pushed around at a fun fair, is he?
No, exactly.
You know, yeah, he's not given a great script to work with.
And the weird thing is, Tom, in those scenes, it's like he's still
acting against Michael Wisher, you know, he's every bidding good
as good in the scenes with Davros, here as he was with the scenes
with Davros in Genesis, despite the fact that Gudison isn't
anywhere approaching that.
There's the scene in episode 4 later on where they talk about the
you know, those sort of weird paradox that they found themselves
in with the stalemate computers thing, you know, which virtually
echos the, you know, let us talk as men of science.
It is a very similar scene.
I mean, even Terry has realised that putting Davros and the doctor
together and just getting them to talk is pretty spectacular and
that seems to have been the basis for the witches familiar in this
year's Doctor Who.
You know, it's something that works reliably.
But Gooderson's performance isn't really up to it.
Something I do like about Davros in this.
And you could see it as a plot hole is, of course, the doctor
resolves everything by arm wrestling, Davros, and, you know
forcing him to press the button himself.
And some might ask, why has he got the destruct button on his
chair?
Well, the last time he put a really important button on the other
side of the room, he got exterminated, didn't he?
He hasn't had time to put that in yet.
He did also have the button that turned his uh turned his life
support system off on his chair as well.
Which seemed like a fairly pointless one.
We talked about that at the time.
Yeah, sort of risque fun and games with neither.
It doesn't have neither this time either.
And, you know, it doesn't.
There's no analogue to Nider. either.
You know, there's no sort of assistant character.
And, you know, when he gets to Terry Malloy, the only kind of
assistance, he has, he has to brainwash, you know, I think the
story of Dazros in the original series is all about how he's
missing Nider.
Well, I'm missing night.
Yeah, me too.
That's all I wanted to know.
Romana versus Cheryl.
She does kick his arm off.
Does it really?
Yeah, yeah.
Romana versus Cheryl. yeah Actually, that would be a fun little
UFC electronic game, wouldn't it?
to see Romana and Cheryl.
This is from, if anyone's wondering, because you know, we like to
play antecedents.
There's a magazine called Astounding Science Fiction, which was
one of the seminals, you know, the pulp fiction stuff. 1953 in
March, Robert Sheckley wrote a story called Fools Mate, which was
essentially 2 vast Battle Fleet suspended in space, pointing at
each other for decades until one of them worked out how to pull a
random.
They could just call a random function.
They could.
But more interestingly, and we're going to get this through this
season, the counterculture of the 70s has really come home to
Doctor Who now with Adams and Lala and Tom and Williams.
The biggest giveaway in this is the rock, paper, scissors, the
random thing, but people were tossing coins.
We'll see that next season as well.
People were tossing coins.
It was actually part of a deliberate Hayde Ashbury kind of
thinking positioning itself against the reductionism of the
military thinking, Vietnam and post-Vietnam.
And when we were talking before about battle fleets and poising
this actually has a direct correlation to published outcomes of
military theory when we were talking about Von Neumann's game
theory, and also Alfred Northwhited's symbolic logic, which is
actually cited in this, which, if you know, computer language, and
or Nand, nor those gates, which is, you know, giving numerical
values to score the success for particular. tested strategy.
But using this system, it came out in 69.
The algorithms anachronistically demonstrated that the US had won
in Vietnam in 1965.
So there was this whole thing that's coming about to get us out of
this war getting, you know, Nixon, of course, falling apart with
Watergate, the oil crash, the dollar being removed from the gold
standard.
In America was really, and therefore, the rest of the world
Britain was having the same problem with the resources as we're
going to be seeing.
The counterculture was saying, bring back the human element, bring
back the random happenstance of human folly and fun, and that's, I
think, certainly a driver for Douglas Adams, who, of course, had
his final year at Cambridge in '74, when this information was all
coming out.
So we're going to be seeing a lot of that this year.
And the vellans are just toking it, aren't they?
It's no wonder they've been sitting around not being able to win a
war because they're spliffing it up in there with their raster
rolls and they're, of course, they're one of those green things on
their shoulders.
I don't I think that's the same stuff that villas being sucking
away on in the liberator for the last summer.
Bong water.
Exactly.
It explains what Davros is shrouded in at the end.
It's not cryogenic gas.
Don't you love that they've actually got a perfectly sized daddy
and Davros caviare cum freezer casket on the Mavellan ship?
He must be delicious.
He must be delicious, but they didn't know they were going to find
Dar Ross.
I didn't know that.
I would continue doing that for the rest of the podcast.
Oh, of course.
Just interesting what you said there about counterculture because
the other big BBC series happening about counterculture and
reintroducing the human element.
Blake 7. is going on at this time.
And Terry Nation ends his involvement with Doctor Who this year.
Yep, yep.
And with Blake 7 this year.
Terry Nations takes a step back from Blake 7 after this year.
Blake 7 series 3 in 1980, had a lot of other writers working on
it.
Phew.
Series one is him, but it's him in the sense that this story is
him.
Yeah, him via Chris Bounce show.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's him.
He wrote the 1st script and by the end it was, you know, like a
summary on the back of a napkin for episode 13.
Yeah, he, you know, he was certainly writing less and less as the
series went on and then wrote nothing for the 4th series because
he was moving to America where, you know, he became quite a, quite
a success in Hollywood and wrote, wrote in scripted, things like
MacGyver and what have you.
You know, he had quite a good career there.
But it's very interesting that someone who is so traditional in
his storytelling and wasn't resistant, say, to strong female
characters, but had to have it pointed out to him that Terry might
be an idea to have some strong women in your script, to which
point he'd go, oh, oh yes, if you think so.
All right.
It's interesting that he did sort of seem to embrace this
counterculture.
And despite sort of his very gun mentality of writing.
Always did seem to be interested in the human element and the idea
of humanity, triumphing over mechanisation.
We see that in the early Dalek stories of his Dalek flicks.
So he's not entirely horrid, is he?
No, no, he's not Eric Sable.
Well, dear listeners, we've hit the randomiser, and we're taking
off from Skaro, who knows where we'll end up next, depending on
which way you look at it, we're either gonna end up in Paris, or
possibly on board the Azure Starline up, don't...
Don't forget to come back next week.
Don't forget.
I reckon he's bit.
Oh, this is good.
Get it in.
Don't forget to come back next week where we'll be discussing City
of Death.
You can also check out bondfinger.com, where we have commentaries
for the 1st 5 Sean Connery Bond films.
Don't forget, you can find us online at flightsthroughentirety.com
flight through entirety on Facebook and iTunes and FTE podcast on
Twitter.
Until we see you next, make all your globules of little protoplasm
that sit around on your home planet, not get delusions of grandeur
and reprogram your battle computers.
Thank you very much and good night.
Good night.
Good everyone.
That let's fight through entirety with Nathan Bottomley, Brendan
Jones and Richard Stone.
This episode, circuit boards glued to a piece of wood was recorded
on the 6th of December, 2015.
The next episode will be released on January 24th, 2016.
We dedicate this episode to Terry Nation, creator of survivors
Blake 7, the Daleks, the Kraals, the Mecanoids, and the alien
Vorb.
Okay, Destiny Empity, boy.
Sorry.
That's okay.
Destiny of the Dalek.
Destiny of the Daleks.
Dog ass.
Keep that in.
That's the name of the episode.
Sog ass.
Yeah.
Sixth of December.
Actually, and there's your there's your tag.
I won't have you flushing my dog's ass about on a podcast.
Oh, he looks so dignified.