Episode 63
Crushed with Disappointment
Monday 25 January 2016
This week, Brendan, Richard and Nathan tackle City of Death, by Douglas Adams and Graham Williams. How many superlatives can fit in a single 40-minute podcast episode?
Buy the story!
City of Death was released on DVD in 2005. Seriously, if you don’t have a copy, just buy it. At once. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
We’ve uploaded some photos from Brendan’s Facebook album Toys on Tour, which is the best place to go to see a plastic Tom Baker crawling up the gate to the Galerie Denise René in Paris.
After Hitch Hiker’s and Doctor Who, Douglas Adams wrote two novels featuring holistic detective Dirk Gently, which reused elements from City of Death and Shada. Those novels were Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988). They’re very good.
Ken Grieve, with whom Douglas Adams went to Paris for lunch that one time, was the director of Destiny of the Daleks.
We talked about Cornell, Day and Topping’s The Discontinuity Guide a couple of weeks ago. Here’s their take on City of Death.
Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s weird spoof version of The Hound of the Baskervilles was released in 1978. It just sounds amazing!
When she wasn’t busy helping her husband to steal the Mona Lisa, Catherine Schell appeared in the second season of Space: 1999 as Maya, a shape-changing alien from the planet Psychon. It’s really much worse than you could possibly imagine.
Fans of erudite discussions of art, scarcity and authenticity will enjoy Elizabeth Sandifer’s take on this story from TARDIS Eruditorum.
For two years, from 1911 to 1913, the Mona Lisa was no longer in the Louvre: it was hidden in a trunk in Vincenzo Peruggia’s apartment after he entered the Louvre, hid it under his smock and made off with it. See, we’re educational as well as entertaining.
Captain Tancredi’s bodyguard is played by Peter Halliday, who won our hearts in his role as Packer in The Invasion.
Romana’s naughty schoolgirl outfit seems to be inspired by the St Trinian’s film series in the 50s and 60s. Another inspiration might be Madeline, the heroine of a series of children’s books written by Austrian author Ludwig Bemelmans in the 1950s and 60s.
Licence Denied was a collection of fan writing edited by Paul Cornell and first published in 1997. It is, sadly, out of print. Notable essays include Tom the Second, Gareth Roberts’s defence of the Williams Era, and Why the Nimon Should Be Our Friends, by Phillip J. Gray. And no, you can’t borrow my copy.
James Goss’s novelisation of City of Death was released by BBC Books in 2015. It’s good. Buy it. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Comic Book Guy kidnaps Lucy Lawless in The Simpsons Halloween episode Treehouse of Horror X. Hilariously, the Simpsons Wikia page warns that “this episode is considered non-canon and the events featured do not relate to the series and therefore may not have actually happened/existed”. Which is nice to know.
Follow us!
Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll cancel the wine and bring the vitamin pill. Continue with your work, professor. Enjoy it, or you will die.
Bondfinger
Our Casino Royale (1967) commentary will be released early in February. With hilarious results. Until then, you can enjoy our first five commentary tracks: You Only Live Twice (1967), Thunderball (1965), Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.