Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast who doesn't have any eyebrows.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan, and I'm a curiously redundant vestige of my previous
use as Bouillabaise.
Yum, yum.
And yum, yum, indeed, as we head to the cafes of Paris.
It's death.
Hooray, it's Grey Perrie.
Possibly more accurately called City that has some death in it.
It was raining.
Well, just before you start off, Nathan, because I may forget to
mention this.
Some of you out there may know if you follow me on Facebook that I
have an album called Toys on Tour.
I've recently uploaded some photos I took ages ago where I took a
Tom Baker toy to Paris, and I found the gallery where the Tannis
is parked and I found the door to Scaroth's Chateau.
So yeah, expect some toys on tour shots in Paris accompanying this
podcast.
They're nice toys.
You can show your grandmother.
Well, so this is this is absolute shock, isn't it, really?
terrible.
Tiresome, tiresome, tiresome.
Is there anything that's wrong with this?
Let's...
That is actually a good point to start.
What is wrong with this show?
I actually think it is the best story so far.
In Doctor Who.
Yeah, it's the most fun.
At this point, but it's not just that it's fun, and all of that
stuff we talked about in last week's episode about the chemistry
between Laura and Tom, and having Laura, Tom, and Douglas all
together on the show.
That's one aspect of it.
And it's a hugely important aspect because Douglas has written the
thing.
All of the dialogue just sings.
There's just funny line after funny line after funny line.
So all of that element's there.
But it's also really, really tightly plotted.
You know, there's nothing wasted, everything's paid off.
Douglas eventually, you know, when he starts writing the Dirk
Gently novels.
His books are like, his plots, rather, are like puzzle boxes, you
know, everything just sort of slots into place really well.
And you can see that happening here.
It happens to a lesser extent in the pirate planet.
And then you've just got, we're in Paris, we're actually shooting
overseas.
There's stacks of outdoor stuff, stacks of stuff on film.
Just Tom and Lala running hand in hand through the streets of
Paris.
With Doggan. obviously. is just wonderful, fun to watch.
Dudley's on form.
It's well-direct...
Listen, Dudley on four.
He's terrific.
And it is well directed.
Everyone felt like, you could feel that everyone was having a
great time.
It was a holiday for everybody, not just a holiday for the
doctor.
Well, the funny thing is do you want to know who it wasn't a
holiday for?
Because at the time, this was in, at the time, this was in
production, Destiny of the Dialects was in pre-production.
So in Paris, you had Tom Baker, Lala Ward, Tom Shadbond, who plays
Duggan, you had Graham Williams, who had the director Michael
Hayes, and a small film crew, so one camera guy, 2 sound guys, I
think.
So the noticeable name absent from there. is co-writer Douglas
Adams, who was back in England minding the fort.
For how long though?
Uh, I believe they were in Paris for about 5 days.
You know what really happened, don't you?
Kit with Kenny.
With Ken Greve.
Ken Greve came in to have a meeting with Graham Williams and
Douglas Evans said, well, look, they've all gone to Paris.
And Ken Green said, well, you know, you and I can only get so much
done without the producer here.
You know, we can't decide locations and props and what have you.
And he's like, oh, yeah.
Oh, do you want to go for lunch?
Yeah, okay, let's go for lunch.
Where should we go for lunch?
How about Paris?
And so they got on the train.
And went to Paris.
And yeah, really became good mates and they stayed friends until
Douglas Adams died.
I got chucked out of the same place that Tom and Lala and the rest
of the crew were having, like, just a few hours afterwards and
said, thrown out and said, where can we go?
There's a bar open in West Berlin.
They were in West Berlin and they got back to the London Studios
just a few hours before the other lot came in.
Yes.
Not a lot happened that week.
Graham Williams, like, saw them in Paris and was so annoyed.
He's like, you're meant to be back in London working. just Douglas
apparently said something lines off.
Well so are you.
They must have been down too well.
There must have been some kind of impending writing deadline in
Douglas's head.
Go to those lengths.
But that's true, actually. was the great procrastinator.
But no, apparently Williams wrote this story with Douglas as
well.
Yeah, absolutely.
Of course, it was originally a David Fisher story called a Gamble
with Time.
Setting 1930s, Monte Carlo, setting Roger Moore.
It was set in Roger Moore and Tony Curtis.
Because there was an episode of The Persuaders.
There's one going to be one of those ITC kind of shows where
there's a few little moments in Paris, but it was all going to be
a backlot and some studio sets and set in the 20s Paris, but they
realised when they got there.
Well, exactly, you know why it's all in Paris?
Because John Nathan Turner?
The bean counter said it's actually slightly, it was £25 cheaper.
Do the whole thing there than do the show that they'd started?
£25.
I mean, part of part of the rewrite was that we could spend all
this money making it look like 1930s or we can go to Paris and
just have it look fabulous and still be 1979 and we can still have
this time travel aspect.
The other thing was it was to be set in a casino and then Graham
Williams went cold on the casino idea because he didn't like the
idea of promoting gambling to children.
So, you know, this is another example of Graham Williams being
very plot driven, for instance.
I think that might have been a, you know, a 13th hour, I think
because Williams was very good at playing the producers.
And, you know, producers will always do it.
There's a story, you know, a posteriori from the events.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because it was the Thursday.
It was the Thursday that it changed and the shooting was the
Monday.
So he had no qualms about promoting art forgery. children.
But to his to his great credit, David Fisher looked at the final
script and said, look, this is wonderful, but please, I can't put
my name on it.
It's not right.
I'll do you another...
Sorry, so he decreed from the pit and started developing the story
called the Fermasi, but we'll get to that.
So yeah, we have a script written by Douglas Adams and Graham
Williams credited to David Agnew.
And hasn't David Agnew got much better?
He really has. since the invasion of time.
But yeah, it is wonderful.
I'd like to quote, if I may, from the discontinuity guide.
So Cornell Day and topping.
This is their bottom line for the city of death.
Witty, happy, plotted so hard that you can sing it.
This is as gorgeous as this old heart of mine, sung by the Isley
Brothers outside your window on a spring morning, while Emma
Thompson gently massages your feet with aromatic oils.
That's Cornell.
But you know what?
I read that as a gay man, I go, you know what?
I'd be very happy with it.
Mainly because, you know, you get to chat with Emma Thompson.
I know.
And of course, Emma Thompson was, I believe, a friend of Douglas
Adams as well. wasn't everyone?
Yes.
And as they finish off, just when you think it can't get any
better, John Bloody Cleese turns up.
It's not just John Bodycleese, though.
It's Eleanor...
And as the Lions illustrates, it's vestigial function.
She's wonderful.
She's just terrific in it.
She's, you know, funnier than him and it is, it's such a
surprise.
It's such an incredible surprise little cameo.
And I feel so sorry that they didn't, they didn't go with John's
wish to be credited under a pseudonym.
Because John said, look, the whole joke is that I'm there and it's
a cameo.
If you credit me as John Cleese in the radio times, people are
going to know.
Oh, so was he credited?
He was credited in the radio times and in the credits.
He asked to be credited as Kim Bread.
And I think maybe I think maybe, you know, if he if he'd gone for
Jonathan Smith or something like that, which is a slight in joke.
But I think maybe if you'd gone for that, David Reid would have
said, yeah, okay, but in the end, David Reid said, no, we're not
calling you Kim Bread. just stupid.
He should have asked to be credited as Robin Bland, really.
Or David Agnew.
Or John Cheese.
Don't she?
Yes.
Even better What do you praise first is the question in this
story?
Because coming back to the original question.
I can't criticise anything.
The elongated running around with absolutely nothing happening.
Who cares, though?
Do you know what I mean?
television's visual.
That stuff creates the atmosphere that we pray.
I'm about to remove my Julian mask and have Nathan underneath and
Nathan's about to move his mask and have me underneath.
Yeah, because I'm being so relentlessly positive.
So Julian Julian Glover is unbelievably good in it, like just...
As John Travolta in his Saturday night fever white disco suit with
a suit.
But even that idea, and maybe it's the 1st time Doctor Who's done
it, where you have hideous green tentacled monster with a lovely
crevant.
Like, I think that's just terrific and it's the sort of thing that
Doctor Who now does as, you know, routine.
But I think it's the 1st time we have it here.
I think it's just terrific.
I love his silk dressing gown thing that he threatens Kerensky in
a bit later on.
He's really funny and tremendously good.
Like one of the best villains we've ever had.
That 1st scene where Tom and Duggan and Romana come round to his
place, and you know, Duggan tries to hit him with a chair and all
of that sort of thing, all of that dialogue is just spectacularly
good, just unbelievably funny.
I just wish that when they'd come home, but Glover had still been
in his mother's dressing gown, aping the performance of Peter Cook
as Sherlock Holmes in drag in the Paul Morrissey Hound of the
Baskerville.
Paul Morrissey was Warhol's filmmaker, but he went to England, did
a spoof version of Hound of the Baskervilles with Peter Cook and
Dudley Moore as Watson.
And Holmes is Jewish and terribly camp, in full makeup and hair
curlers, and his mother's dressing gun.
And Watson is Welsh and Kenneth Williams, is Lord Baskerville.
And Irene Handel is one of the women with a dog that, an
incontinent dog that, in her garden, It's one of the greatest
films of all time.
And possibly my pick of the week.
But the humour, the humour that imbues that imbues this story as
well.
I haven't I haven't seen that, but I'm looking forward to finding
it through Nathan's show notes.
But you've almost got, we've almost got, it's actually really hard
to track down.
We've almost got that level of humour of self lampoon in this, and
there are many reasons why this shouldn't work.
Because when you're having that much fun, you said it last week
than when we were recording, that, Brendan, that everyone has fun
except the audience.
And there's always a danger.
But I don't think we get that in this thing, do we?
No, you know, the performance that's closest to caricature, I
guess, is Kuransky.
And yet, that's, of course...
The accent?
Yeah, yeah. you know the story?
It's David Graham.
It's Parker, from Thunderbird.
One of the original Daleks.
The original Dalek.
And that's his maternal grandparents' actual accent.
She said, no, they were Russian Jews and they actually started
just like that.
I'm not going to do that.
It is an accent.
It is, you know, but it's not really a comedy actor.
But he is playing it as a character, as a Thunderbirds puppet
hyperbole humour.
That works because the balance, I think it just ups the menace of
Scaroff.
Even Dugan too.
Do you know what I mean?
Who's a bit of an idiot and, you know, his character thing is that
he breaks glass and he punches people in the hand and stuff.
And, you know, he is desperately earnest and not very bright.
But again, that's allowed to work because he's the one who
actually saves humanity by punching someone in the head, which is
precisely what the doctor's been telling him not to do.
Notes came from Donald.
She was a Grey McDonald, who was the head of series, and he got, he
was a no fun sign, a lot of things that he was arguing against.
But one of the notes that came down to Williams and Adams was
there's too much hitting in this story.
The chair leg, the whole thing was cut out.
Tom was, you know, with Louis Khan's chair, but there was a thing
with Tom doing the same thing that was cut.
And I have to agree with him.
At the time, Duggan was a real lodestone of dulness in this for me
and he still is.
This isn't perfect.
I like him paired with Romana in the cafe in the evening after
they escape from the Louvre.
And they have that lovely chance and what's, do you know what I
don't understand?
Yes, I. Yeah, of course, it always gives later a wonderful
opportunity, but it's kind of their easy punches, aren't they?
Pun intended.
The violence in terms of Duggan.
I do kind of see where you're coming from because, of course
Duggan is presented as an heroic character, but I think what helps
in a way is not only does the doctor comment on it.
But, for instance, in the scene where the Countess Scarlioni is
trying to shoot them and Duggan hits her with a vase.
He's genuinely apologetic that he's hit a lady.
You know?
So he does have some scruples.
And of course, he's a hangover from when the story was set in the
30s.
He's bulldog Drummond in the 1930s, but just set in the 1970s.
So of course he doesn't quite fit in.
I think it's also a comment on shows like the professionals, for
instance, which was all brute force. and you've got the doctor and
Romana saving the day by being hilariously witty and putting in... by
being Steve and Mrs. Peel.
That 1st opening scene with them is a complete, it feels like an
exact, you know, it's a bouquet.
It's Rig and McNee's.
And you know what?
When they're running away from the tower, you can just imagine
that ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. ding, ding, ding, ding
ding, ding, ding.
And, you know, I may redub that.
They're so amazingly smart.
They're so brilliant.
Everything that they say is a Bormo.
Every comeback, you know, they outwit Duggan all the time in
conversation, you know, and they pride themselves on being smart.
It's the whole, you know, this season has a, you know, has a
bouquet, and it's just them being immensely clever.
And so to have Duggan defeat the enemy and not them is just
perfect.
I think it is, but why is Duggan punching people worse than canine
zapping people?
A good point, because it's easier to copy because it comes from a
human because, yeah, it's real low as, as opposed to fake.
And because and there is the trouble with Tom this season. that
we'll get to on precisely that point.
But Duncan doesn't fit is so much the opposite of the 2 leads that
it ends up being, it's just a point of inertia.
I like his performance actually.
I really do.
I like Tom Chad. some charm.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And Tom Chadman certainly proven his worth on other things.
Well, yeah, like the mysterious planet.
Yeah, not that he needs to prove it to us. terrific.
All that day glow on that helmet.
I used to do divorce investigations.
They were never anything like this. wonderful.
I mentioned her earlier, Catherine Shell, fresh from space 1939.
And rather interestingly, you know, in space 1939, she was sort of
an animal in human form.
So awful.
But now she's married to an animal in human form instead.
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
She isn't wearing the giant sideburns that she...
Or the...
Or the herpes like eyebrows, doesn't she?
Awful.
But look, when we were when again, when we were 10, 12, it was
terrific.
No, it wasn't.
I remember being crushed, crushed with disappointment when a
season 2 episode of Space 1999 came on.
Where's that lovely Sam?
Who's that terrible woman?
Ryan Blisser.
Where's Muffet?
Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.
It's the wrong.
That's the wrong.
Professor Watson. was his name?
Victor, where's Victor?
Because, you know, he looks like Muffet.
Oh I see.
She's fantastic.
What do we think?
Like, I do remember people speculating about the nature of the
count and countess's marriage, given that she seemed to be aware
of.
Yes, what else have I been doing?
I think we know exactly what's going on.
It's just terribly discreet.
They have a perfect French marriage, which means that, you know
she loves wealth and to be sitting on the arm of a handsome
gentleman.
He also likes the company of other handsome gentlemen, and that's
terribly exotic.
She probably has Herman doing for her, actually.
Actually, yeah.
Herman actually works really well if you want to relive this in
the privacy of your own playroom, Brendan, with a Roger Delgado
master figure and you just white up his hair.
He's, you know, perfect or something.
I do fancy Herman a bit.
It's the gloves.
But I will note that, you know, there could be a different reading
to Count Scarlione's line about, you know, it hasn't taken much to
fool you.
A few trinkets, a bit of nefarious excitement.
He didn't say that he was the provider.
He might have just been turning the other way.
I thought she assumed he was gay.
I'm assuming.
Every man must have a hobby.
She gets very defensive when he's in the company of other men.
He does, doesn't she?
Yes, there's a scene of, oh, she's not...
With the professor...
There's plenty in that for everyone, isn't it?
So yeah, she assumes he likes some wizened old daddies.
I'm really surprised that they're all sets.
The Louis Can's palazzo said, although we're in Paris.
Is a set?
Yes, yes, I assumed that they're just on some Paris filming one of
their charmers, but no, no, it's all them.
No, is it?
Paris, W-12.
Well, they would have only taken.
They would have only taken a film camera over.
And 3 cam show. videotape, yeah.
Copies, art copies.
This is something that Sandra goes on about.
The thing about art, there's something about scarcity and there's
something about authenticity.
Are you talking about Walter Benjamin?
art in the age of mechanical reproduction.
Yeah, well, Duchamps taking Azamut taking a fountain and saying
that this is now art because I've written Amut on the side of it.
It goes back to Rembrandt.
Rembrandt's students painted his, he was the 1st Warhol.
He barely touched and stuff.
He was just sort of lying pang.
Make that guy look out at the view.
Yeah, yeah.
He was one of the first, he was the first entrepreneur.
He had a factory.
So you get all that stuff about computer paintings, you get all
that stuff about rarity and scarcity.
And this thing, which I thought was really terrible as a kid and
now I think it's spectacular, where the only surviving Mona Lisa
has the words, this is a fake, written in fell tip under the
paint.
I just think it's spectacularly gray.
Has anyone heard of Vincent, so Perugia?
No one, not even his mother has heard.
Vincenzo Carusia.
He stole the Monalisa in 1911, by sticking it under his smock, and
he's had it for two weeks.
It is a very pretty painting.
Hope it wasn't under a smock for 2 weeks.
And it wasn't really, stop it.
It wasn't really valued.
It was one of the huge hordes.
Lots of stuff that brought back my Napoleon, the first Napoleon.
Right.
With his with his his old nick and spree.
But it wasn't really, people, for those 2 weeks in Paris, 1911, was
queueing up to look at the blank spot on the wall, apparently.
They really were.
That, I think, is what Adams is really getting right here.
And there's some really, really clever meta going on about what
Doctor Who is and what television is and what art is and are we
making art?
Well, I think we actually are.
You kids are sitting watching this and your family, folk at home
and you're thinking this is a lovely romp, or this is another ITC
Persuaders Saints spy show over, or this is a lovely thing with
you know, some BBC character actors whom you've all enjoyed.
But we're actually talking about a whole lot of things on what
television is and what, art is and what fun is, it's perfectly
spelt out, what this season is doing, and it dovetails beautifully
I should say, with the development of the character of Romana, and
you adroitly pointed out last episode that this is where Romana
discovers her humanity.
In this one, she discovers her humanity in the social sense or in
the sense of how she responds to a world.
When she says, most tellingly, well, computers can draw.
Yeah.
She actually gets the whole, the whole point of this story is, is
the 2nd iteration of where we're going to end up with Shada.
It's the most socialist series, not communistic socialist series
that Doctor Who has ever done, because it's smarty pants
socialism.
It is, everyone has the right to be the best they can possibly be
but on their own individual merit in their own individual terms.
It is not about perceived or procured wealth from outside.
It is not about how much you can get.
It is not about what you can acquire.
It's not about how many iterations of the same thing you can get.
They're always end up being the baddies.
We'll see it with a draster.
We'll see it.
We've seen it with Davros.
And we're going to see it further along the line.
All the way through the season.
This is the story where Romano very gently is introduced to what
it is to be an individual in a culture where individualism is
prominent, and that is France.
France has booted all of this right from the revolution.
Did you want to throw that in now?
I just wanted to hear your Vicki...
Revolution?
Thank you.
This story is, as you say, it's a love letter to all those
things.
It's a love letter to artist, it's a love letter to the personal
response of art, and it's an indictment of A version of the
collector mentality.
Now, we're fans, you as listeners are probably fans as well.
And I imagine we all have a collection to some degree or another.
Now, what this script is talking about, it's loving the people who
collect because the objects mean something to them.
Now, when I was living in the UK.
I snapped up every doctor who action figure I could.
And then it came time when I was looking at some of them and I was
thinking, mostly the new series one, so, you know, things like the
scarecrows from human nature, family of blood and the, and the
Slovine and space pig.
I kind of looked at them and went, I've got all these, but I've
also got the Fender, and I've got the Vok, and I've got the sea
devil.
And those last three, they're the ones I have a personal response
to, and I'm happy when I see them on the shelf.
The others, it's kind of like, it's nice to have them.
They're very well put together and I don't blame anyone for whom
you know, that's your 1st monster and you love that monster.
Are you saying you weren't collecting 2 action figures for the
individuation of your own wealth and power in the world?
He was doing it so that he could finance time travel experience.
It's okay.
I could come down.
But that's the thing down the line.
Yeah, there's a difference between that and doing it just for the
sake of putting yourself up in society.
Don't think anyone buys Doctor Who action figures to give
themselves prominence in culture.
No, exactly.
So I ended up getting rid of the ones that didn't give me that
free song.
Oh my god, I can't believe I own this.
And I use that to buy more of the classic ones.
We have we have knowledge before we have wealth, and Romana and
the doctor will always be infinitely more wealthy than anyone they
come across, even though they only ever have a few song teams in
their pockets because they have the wealth of themselves and their
experience and their and their wit enough money to buy Weirbase.
They do see, I don't think they even pay.
Did you notice the car?
In the 1st trip, the thugs have to pay for the classes of water.
In France, you still have to pay for water.
But it just struck me that we're talking about copies of the Mona
Lisa being produced, but of course there is a moment in the cafe
where the TV is showing a picture of the Mona Lisa and presumably
TVs all over Paris are as well.
And so, you know, everyone has a little copy of the Mona Lisa in
their home at that one moment.
And it is that thing where Scarlioni would think that the doctor
was being naive when he talked about what the painting looks
like.
The doctor's line, it's a very pretty painting, which is why do
people want to steal the Mona Lisa?
It's a very pretty painting.
Of course, that's not the reason.
You know, it's not because it's a very pretty painting.
It's because it's unique and because it has this provenance
because it's fetishized.
Yeah, fetishising is it's the perfecting of the object, as Freud
says, it's the love object.
It's having to possess that which is no longer possessible as is
the love of the parent.
So, you know, they want to own it because they, and possessing
it.
It's the void that can never be filled.
They keep needing to acquire. some really high concept stuff in
this.
But it's all coming down.
It's actually coming down to, you could see it as an ecological
thing.
This season is about possessions and why you really want them.
Romana and the doctor don't really have very much.
Yeah, they have themselves.
And there is nothing, there is nothing intrinsically bad about
wanting possessions.
And I think that's why...
I think the season actually says there is. that's exactly what
this story is about.
But it is your purpose in wanting them.
Yeah, I don't think Dr. I think honestly, yeah, 4 parts about
copying Dr. Correction figures would probably not have had the
same.
Although they didn't have them then, did they?
Only Dennis Fisher.
To give you an example of something recent, Richard, you were
having a look at the photos before of my little Nintendo things
that you can scan into the system.
They're called Amibos.
They came out about a year ago and there was a shortage of them.
Nintendo weren't expecting such huge demand, which meant people
were walking into Kmart and Target, and soon as stock were coming
in, just arm across the shelf, all into their basket, buying them
for 17 a pop and selling them for 50.
And that is exactly what Scarlione's doing here.
Of course, you know, he's doing it with something slightly more
important than Nintendo figures.
He's doing it with Gutenberg Bibles. right.
But do we do that next week as well?
isn't creature from the pit all about economy and scare.
Even more so, yes.
Yes.
And it gets hammered home next season.
There'll be lots of metallic references only the first.
Yeah, but that's the thing.
In a way, Scarlioni, Scaroff, is the oldest human who ever lived
because he's been human in all these different points in history
but he just doesn't get it.
There's no evolution there, is there?
Exactly.
He may live for a long time, but he doesn't mutate.
He doesn't change.
Do you know we haven't mentioned perhaps the most important guest
role in the entire story?
It's Packer.
Packer is back.
Peter Halliday. holiday.
It's one of the guards, that's right.
Yeah, he's the guard for Captain Tancredi.
And that is that...
He's also one of the Jokeroth voices in the opening credits.
The other one, the other one, Tom Chapman, yeah.
Peter Halliday was the go-to guy to be voices in the 60s, wasn't
he?
He was the Nicholas Briggs of the 1960s.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's just small part, you know, like Packer is in it for 8
episodes.
He's got a huge amount to do.
Here, Peter Halliday is just at the end of, what, episode 3 in the
beginning of episode four?
Yes.
And he's really terrific.
He's just terribly good.
He doesn't steal a scene away from Tom, but he's really
tremendously charming.
And like something changes.
That cliffhanger isn't the doctor so much in peril as, oh my god
something very different is going on from what we think.
It's not just an alien trying to steal the Mona Lisa.
Something much, much more complex is going on.
It's a really good moment.
Yeah, and I love how 45 years later.
We still haven't met Leonardo da Vinci on screen.
You know, he's never should.
He's mentioned in Mask of Man Dragara.
We think we're going to meet him here and we don't.
I'm pretty sure it's been mentioned in the new series.
But it's such a Doctor Who and Douglas Adams thing to do, and it
kind of comes back to what you were saying, Richard.
You know, people might have been sitting there going, oh, we're
going to meet Leonardo da Vinci.
No, instead we're going to have a very, very funny and, but at the
same time, very tense and scary bit with just 3 actors sitting in
a room.
This series is, I think, what Graham Williams always wanted to do
and it just took him a while to get there.
He's trying to make Doctor Who a big sci-fi blockbuster with great
special effects in his 1st year and realised he couldn't do that.
And then he tried to do a story arc and that sort of collapsed in
all itself at the end.
So he's doing a series of self-contained adventures, but linked by
a common theme.
And I think, you know, recognising that his strengths are going to
lie in the quality of the writing and, you know, just getting
compelling, if not good actors, you know, to say the lines.
And if you can manage to make the sense beautiful, which
unfortunately in season 17, you almost never can.
Just so much the better.
But yeah, I think, you know, this is where that whole approach
just pays off in spades.
Now, hopefully he's not going to try and take off on warp drive
but here's a little obelisk we got hovering over our heads.
It's a it's a double-inverted optimism, yeah.
So it's just an octahedon.
Yeah, yeah.
I was never any good at geometry.
She is, though, because she gets the 2.73 by 6 metres.
That is such a funny line, though, what Scarlia.
You know where that's from, don't you?
The 1905 Arthur Conan Doyle, um, Shock Holmes story.
I keep from wanting to say Northhanger Abbey.
Do you remember the name of the story?
Anyway, Holmes works it out by there's something.
It's very Po, really, but the false room by noticing the inside
dimensions.
Oh, yeah.
And she's walking up and down with the thing, saying the, like
measuring the thing in metres and stuff.
I actually really love how she's off investigating things while
the doctor is, you know, being a dick.
She's carrying explosives.
You want to see what Ramana is to it?
Looks terribly interesting.
You know, she's quick to blow the brick ball. now.
Yeah, yeah.
Since that's why she's dressed as a centrinian student in this.
Because she's a naughty girl.
She's a bakoonist.
She just wants to blow up the establishment.
I do love how she sort of said in later interviews.
You know, people wrote in and said, oh, you're dressing as a
schoolgirl.
I never thought of that and I don't see why anyone should think of
schoolgirls in that way.
Thank you, gentlemen.
She just cuts that down.
You know why she's not right to.
At the time, she did it because they wanted her, they had, you
know the story?
The costume that they had been designed for her was a silver
lyrics one piece catsuit.
Haven't we been here before, perhaps?
Yeah, it's mind robbery again.
Well, they were still designing for Mary, weren't they?
Well, they were designing for Zoe.
It's not going to wear it.
They were designing for Wendy Padbury in 1968.
But anyway, that was the concept and Lana said, no, I hated
school.
Bren has already pointed it out.
Let's make what we dislike, we own.
Let's turn it around and love it.
The feminist movement had already brought this in.
What most oppresses you, possess it, and make it your own.
So is her outfit in leisure heights about how much she hated her
time in the Navy?
Absolutely.
Or as a Pinocchio doll or whatever it was that she was forced to
be.
It's a perfect costume.
We'll see you coming out.
It's perfect.
Yeah, nice.
And she really wears it.
Well, and there's some really clever moments where you can see the
3 of them working together where she's being a horribly clever
school girl and doing precocious things and, oh, look, there's
just opened the Chinese puzzle box because she told me not to.
Yeah.
Lots of things through this.
She's in Paris.
It's Madeline.
Yeah.
Just draw me like one of your French girls.
She says.
Anyway, sorry to keep you waiting, Tom, but we were talking about
Lala.
So here we are at the City of Death, the much lauded city of
death.
Or, as David Fisher likes to call it, 35% of the gamble with
time.
Look, there's no denying that this is a great script, great
performances, there's certainly a panache to it.
Scareth dies at the end, but does that automatically kill all of
his other versions through time?
Are they still working to the same end?
And how many times can Scarothon be knocked out?
I guess you'll want my head on a platter for actually suggesting
that this may not be the most perfect story of all time?
I guess I should jump into this giant hole that just opened up in
the ground next to me.
We call it the...
They seem to be a gestalt of one entity though, don't they?
There is an explanation, I can't remember what it is in the
novelisation.
So there's a recent novelisation by...
The lovely Gareth?
No.
No, James Gotts.
No, I tried it.
Yeah, yeah.
This is why I haven't bought it, yes.
Yeah, it's really good.
It is...
No, no, it is really good.
I was a little bit disappointed because I did like the Shada
novelisation will talk more about that later.
And I thought, oh, you know, I didn't know who James Goth was, to
be honest.
For listeners of a similar event, who aren't quite sure who James
Goss is and his Doctor Who connections, what did you call me?
Sillabent.
There Yeah, there you go.
James Goss produced Scream of the Shelter.
He did too.
He also produced the invasion animations for episodes one and
four.
He's done lots of Doctor King since then and novels and books and
comics and what have you.
And presently he is, I believe, one of the producers on Big
Finish's Dark Shadows Range, which has won several awards.
So, you know, he's got he does have his chops, but you're right in
that a lot of people, fans of the older series, may not know who
he is.
And there was this incredibly passionate fan.
You know, there was this association between season 17 and Gareth
Roberts because of things like the romance of crime and the well
mannered war and those various missing adventures he set during
that period.
He's got an essay called Tom II, I think, in license denied, which
is this sort of very full-throated defence of the Williams era.
Thank you for bringing that up.
There's a great essay in that one, which came out years ago, dear
listener, um, of just a collection of essays that Paul Cornell
cobbled together, of how good, when there was the revival of
Infandom of Love for the William series, and it was, there's an
essay in it why we should love the Naim one.
Do remember that?
No, I say.
Anyway, we'll get to that further down.
Yeah, so I had just wanted him to do it.
James Goss's novelisation is really terribly, terribly good
though.
Is it add new things?
Yes, yeah.
So it is a very, very faithful novelisation.
It doesn't always use the versions of the script or the line
readings that made their way into the transmitted version.
Sometimes he'll pick a different reading, which I think is
interesting.
You know, it adds something I can, if I want to relive a scene, any
scene at all in City of Death, I can just close my eyes for a few
minutes and, you know, I've got to memorise.
That adds something new.
He adds stuff about what it's like for Scaroff to experience his
life now that he's been splitting time.
And in fact, the cliffhanger to episode one, he has to give a
reason for it because it's a novel.
He can't just have the character go down and tear his face off.
Yes. 24 minutes into the episode.
It's about time something scary happened.
So he has, he has Scarlet only not fully aware that he's an
alien.
And so his face is itching and it's almost like he's as surprised
as we are to see the sort of green thing underneath.
And so all that's really good.
And he adds a hilarious extra depth to the John Clayson Eleanor
Bronx characters who don't just appear in a cameo.
It's terrific.
It really is great.
My thought.
Because, yeah, I never really thought about what happened to his
part, Splinters, until, until this moment, and I think it's the
it's the argument we get in the new series. in that they've
already lived and died. to lead up to this moment.
You know, they're not reacting to anything that happens any
differently because as the doctor says, it always happened, it
always has to happen, you know, you can't do it, you can't change
it.
Now, obviously, he can change it, otherwise the doctor wouldn't
try to stop him.
But the doctor has always stopped him, and those past incarnations
have always worked towards essentially nothing.
You don't actually have to be quite as tummy whiny as that, though
do you?
I mean, the only one of the incarnations, the one in 1979.
He's the only one with technology available to him to create the
time machine, and that's what he says, you know, to have this
limited level of technology available to me now in 1979.
You know, all my other selves have worked. and stuff.
So once he's gone, there's no one far enough in the future to have
access to time travel technology.
Yeah, so they can't do anything.
Maybe they don't know what's happened.
He's just disappeared?
They can't communicate with the splinters?
Yeah, yeah, he's the most future.
Yeah, he's the futurist one, which is why he's the one who has the
technology.
Although you do get the one in the Norman helmet, which is made
out of tinfoil.
And as a kid, I always thought he was in the future because he was
covered in pinfoil.
And that's the thing, as a child.
I'm like, why is the one in 1979 doing all the technical stuff?
This guy's wearing tinfoil.
He must be from the future.
Didn't you think that wasn't like that?
Exactly.
Didn't you think that if he's got a holographic projector that's
as clever as that?
He'd be the richest man on earth.
Steve Jobs didn't have that inset.
Yeah, that's true.
Why doesn't he need the paintings?
He's a narrow focussed to continue the projector metaphor, narrow
focussed, naughty person.
Isn't he?
Like all greedy collectors that can only see through the camera
obscure of their own little prim prick of line.
See, now I'm just envisioning comic book guys, the collector in
that Simpsons Halloween episode, where he kidnaps Lucy Lawless, so
he can put her between Doctor Who and Yasmin Bleef.
I don't know who any of those are.
I have no idea either.
I'm not a young person.
Well, do, listener, as we run away hand in hand from the Eiffel
Tower.
I'm flying.
What about you?
Don't be ostentatious.
We'll see you next week on the planet.
Chloris, I hope you've eaten your greens.
Don't forget, before then, you can find us at bondfinger.com, where
we have commentaries for 1st 5 Connery Bond films.
You can also find that as Bondfinger on Facebook and iTunes and
Bondfinger cast on Twitter.
Please follow us on Facebook and iTunes at Flightthrough Entirety
Flightthrough Entirety.com and FTE podcast on Twitter.
And if you could retweet or reshare this podcast, we would love
that.
So please do so.
Thank you very much.
Until next time, I'm just going to go watch City of Death again
because apparently as a child, I would watch it 3 times a week, and
that VHS is still holding up.
Did you?
I did.
According to one of my, according to my cousin who babysit me, I
drove her insane.
Until next week, thank you very much for listening and good
night.
Good night.
That was Fight through Entirety with Nathan Bottomley, Brendan
Jones and Richard Stone.
This episode, croft with disappointment, was recorded on the 6th
of December, 2015.
The next episode will be released on January 31st.
I had enough.
Yep, that living in the beginning, yeah.
Yep, this is it.
Running through France.