Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to Flight through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast where we have such a way with words.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Richard.
Hi.
We're not off to play all day in our little green cathedral, but
very close to it, as we call it the creature from the pit.
Right, Richard, it's Eileen Way, it's Myra Francis, and it's all
yours.
It's it's all everybody's.
Is this the greatest Doctor Who story ever made?
I know you want to say this.
This was one of the ones as Todd has said before.
This is one of the ones that had to that came wrapped in plastic
and had remained wrapped in plastic.
I had to unseal it from its feroic tomb last night.
And again, I only just watched it and it's pretty damn good.
It is good.
It's pretty damn good. funnier than I remember.
Let's begin before the beginning where we were with this... from
the last point.
What is this thing and where is it coming from?
Okay, we're on a jungle of blah, blah.
And there's lots of other science fiction stuff.
There's green living things and it's all a set.
Cozzies are great.
There's reasons that some of this really, really works and they're
all called Eileen Way.
And yeah, my Maya's pretty good.
But how amazing is Carella?
She does serious single note.
I'm not corpsing.
I really believe in this performance.
It's like we've got Billy back on set because I, can you tell the
difference between Eileen Way and William Hartler wasn't a very
tall actor.
Wasn't very social in the same room, did you?
Can we just remind people who Eileen Way is...
Eileen Way, apart from a cat whisperer, you know, as I've
mentioned before, she was the woman during this shooting of this
that brought in a cassette tape of her cat singing and she would
sing with her cats and she gave it to Tom.
So Tom loved her forever. because of that.
But she started off as old mother in tribe of gum. whatever we
call that thing.
There shall be no fire, but she's actually even more fabulous for
being that rather naughty lady in the in the 2nd Dalek film, who
cottages, cruelly cottages, and sells Roberta Toby for some cans
of Heinz baked beans.
And you know what?
I hope she got some change as well.
Here we have, the doctor responding to a distress signal by Romana
finding an egg timer and sticking it on the console, along with a
lovely box of stuff.
From the 4th box of room full of stuff, including bits of the
hyperspace gate generator from Stones of Blood.
Did you notice that?
Yes, I did.
Bits of that sticking in the esky.
And it's the ball of string that he used to get Theseus out of the
labyrinth.
And even better.
Which will be referred to again.
With a thank you note.
And even better than that, the 1st and I think only biblical tie
in reference with a drawbone of an ass.
Don't be a Philistine.
That's right.
As the listener will no doubt know being biblical scholars like us
all, that Samson apparently killed a 1000 Philistines with that
said same jawbone.
Of course, it was all fun and games in the Old Testament, wasn't
it, until a kiddie lost Jawbones.
Until you lost both your eyes.
That's right.
So, but it also starts off most importantly, picking up from where
we were is that Time Lords dig Beatrix Potter.
And more importantly, both have the time to read Beatrix Potter to
the point that Romana has been what?
It isn't long from season 16 to season 17, because the doctor
quotes his age as being still in 760 or 750. 3 or 4 years.
Romana's rounding down these days.
She does.
Yeah, she goes.
She said 140 to 125.
Well, you know, a girl can do that.
But don't you think that's part of coding Romana as an
aristocrat?
Because those things, the Beatrix Potter books are, you know
quintessentially part of that kind of aristocratic upbringing
they're the things that everyone who, you know, has read, who was
brought up at a particular time in the mid-20th century.
And the reason Roman has read them is not because they have them
on Galafre or anything like that, but because she's, you know, a
lovely, proper Poschberg.
Yes she really is.
But it's also a very middle-class thing.
And yes, they're nodding to Mitford and war and that period.
But I think they're also saying that, well, to me, they're
actually saying that time wants a bookish, time wants to live in
books.
This whole season is again about a life of mind internal as averse
to a life of acquisition.
We'll get it to the point at Charter where we have a book that's
actually synicline on of the story and the point of power itself.
There is power in books.
I think it also ties in with Lala's vision of the character.
And that's not hugely prevalent in this story, of course, because
this was the 1st story she recorded.
It was still being written for Mary by one of Mary's great writers
David Fisher, because of course Mary has wonderful things to do in
Stones of Blood and Androids of Tara.
But I think the line can be read in 2 different ways.
It can be read in the Mary way of saying, oh, doctor, but Peter
gets away.
Don't you know?
Whereas the way Lala reads it is more how a child might react to
saying, but it's okay.
I've read this one.
I know what happens.
Don't be silly.
He's fine.
Why are you so concerned?
A child would react like that to a story they already know.
And I think that's Lala sort of bringing, bringing that already.
You know, that childlike thing of, yeah, calm down.
That's fine, Mum, you know, there's no actual monster under the
bed, you know?
So she hasn't bedded her performance down quite yet, though.
No, no, and she talks about that on the commentary.
This is her 1st story.
Yeah, it's and it's also the 1st story four.
David Rowley.
He's really irritating, isn't he?
He's sort of Aurac.
It's canine.
Very much so.
Actually, very high pitched.
He's like Tampa.
Yeah, incorrect master.
The transceiver is fully operative.
You know, it's a. am not made of tin.
Oh, this is where he gets called a tin dog as well.
Probably.
Point the dog against the rock.
So he's very arch.
He's doing a sort of Aurac thing.
He's much camper and much less cute.
Like, John Leeson does cute computer voice.
Briarly's a little bit more sassy and a little bit more sarcastic
and stuff.
Well, I think you're seeing the difference in performance as to
the difference in this rehearsal setup where we had John Leeson
crawling around on all 4s and being terribly engaging with the 2
leads, but David Brierly quickly realised you could just use any
toy pram.
So it's actually a toy perambulator, but it's pushed around during
rehearsals.
Really?
He's sitting in the sidewalk.
Yeah, sitting in the sightseeing.
Just having a fag and just Yeah, a big catty.
Yeah, yeah.
I, you know, I quite like David Bryanley's performance.
I did have I think I had 2 friends when I was a child who watched
her as well.
Not in general, Richard.
And one of them.
One of them was imaginary.
One of them was imaginary, and the one was a leaf. wouldn't watch
a story with the wrong canine as he put it.
No, that's not the record.
Whereas as a child, I didn't particularly, I didn't particularly
notice the difference in the voice.
No, I didn't.
No, no.
I think as adults, you know, it's very easy to tell.
Yeah, I didn't notice until he pointed out, and even then I didn't
care.
I think the 3 David Brierly stories are where we have the most
memory of canine being a smart ass and being snooty.
I think he brought that to the role and John Leeson has carried
that on.
John Leeson's canine was a bit more petulant than snooty, like
when he has some tantrum.
Well, not exactly tantrums, but when he sulks when Leila tells him
off and when Mary Tam tells him off.
And but yeah, John Leeson, as he played the role in, say, Sarah
Jane adventures with the constant bitching with Mr. Smith.
That's David Brierly.
That's what David Riley brought.
So do we know why Leason's not in these stories?
He just had enough.
No, he was off to find and exploit lots of exciting opportunities
that came from his exposure and Doctor Who.
He'll be back soon.
Such as Mission to Destiny in Blake 7.
Yeah, pretty much.
It's an interesting correlation of canine with the Zeit cost of
humour at the time.
We had the cerebral self knowledge, but generosity of Douglas
Adams, but Above and beyond that, the humour in Britain and in
Australia at the time was actually very catty.
The spirit of the age was bitchy.
Bitchy humour was the thing.
And you know, we look at it now and we think, well, that's kind of
a bit wrong, simply because society has progressed.
But it was all about the, um, It was all about the progression or
the, the self-progression of the individual over everybody else.
And you see it in, it started with Python, which really lampooned
that, but also kind of celebrated that John Cleese's perfect
example of that, of his style and his tone.
The television series at the time, the soap operas, like dynasty
that were about to come.
But that catty tone, which you're pun intended, of the tin dog, is
very much the period of the period of humour.
So it couches really nicely with Adam's intention.
And I would like to think David Fisher's as well. of where this
season is going.
This, if you ever had any doubt, this story is about capitalism
having gone bonkers.
You have all these opportunities and what do you do?
You stick it down in the ground.
You know, we could be talking about uranium.
We could be talking about the exploitation of whatever else.
The story is explicitly about the economy, isn't it?
Even to the point that it doesn't even bother using metaphor.
It's about British steel.
And it's about how the unions, I can't criticise them for it. we're
locking down and saying, because imports from, it was actually
Eastern block metals coming in.
It was an inferior product, but it was cheaper.
Wages pretty much because inflation was going up so much.
We've seen how that affects the Doctor Who production schedule
itself, but it was over and over again.
But it was also affecting the pound, and to us over here, the
dollar.
Also, the owners of British steel, or the people who were in
charge, were actually giving themselves plain risers every year
and knocking back hours and laying people off.
So, of course, there was this impasse, where metal was that metal
was the point around which there were whole towns like Sheffield
where there was one industry for generations and generations, and
that was steel.
So this couldn't be more accurately about England.
The scientists of the '60s, noted here, have moved on to be the
exploiters of the '70s, the ideas of technology freeing us.
And now, well, we're actually just using it to You seeing the
beginnings of what we're seeing now with world finance, and world
banking, and the pressure on the actual worker.
Pressure.
Mind you, they never had as nice hats, did they?
as they're having this one.
All these amazing What are these outfits that, like any oppressive
regime and its final bands will wear a lot of black and a lot of
capes, will see that in Nylon, but my goodness, can we mention the
wolf weeds and the perhaps the huntsman?
The huntsman in those wolfweeds.
David Telfer.
Does he make his own little outfit, do you think?
Or do you think Madame Carella designed everything for everybody?
rubber nodules.
They're the ones.
The Ren and stinky rubber nodules.
Yeah.
You know, he probably didn't strike me in the way that he struck
you two, but he has such an important role in the pool.
It ends up running the planet.
Yeah, precisely.
And it is, what Adrast is doing is deliberately perpetuating
scarcity so that she remains wealthy at the expense of everyone
else in her society.
And she gets away with that because the underclass.
And I think this is the most unfortunate flaw in the thing.
So you have the brigands or bandits.
I can't remember what the dialogue calls on the bandits.
And they're the underclass and their job is to steal stuff from
the rich.
But the scarcity benefits them as well, once they get successful
once they actually get their hands on some metal, the scarcity
benefits them.
And we talked last week about fetishising objects beyond the...
We talked about Brenton's action figures.
That's it.
That was essentially the context.
But they start to fetishize metal.
You know, it's not something you can eat, you know, like none of
the things that they make out of it are particularly useful.
There is a little bit of talk about using metal tools to cultivate
the planet or something like that.
But they just value it in itself because it's something rare.
Not because it makes their lives any better.
And so, so you've got both sides of the political equation
depending on this scarcity.
And Torven and his men actually reject the idea of a deal with
Erato.
And so does Eileen Wei, you know, very forcibly.
She would prefer the planet to be destroyed.
She would risk the planet being destroyed, because she doesn't
want to surrender her wealth.
The doctor gives her one line after address has been...
How do you say subsumed by Erato?
There's really, no, we're avoiding the elephantine, a dumper in a
room, a room.
Yes.
Yeah.
And she says, no, I would rather have the wealth and the power.
And then the doctors, so be it.
So again, there's a serious moment where the doctor could actually
you know, gives them a chance to be free and to liberate and think
for themselves, but they choose not to take it.
And you know what?
In a way, this story makes me angry.
And it doesn't make me angry in the way that underworld makes me
angry that it's an opportunity.
It makes me angry because why are all these things still
relevant?
You know?
That's a good question.
Why didn't Creature from the Pit solve this issue once and for
all?
You know what, you know what I mean?
We are still, we are still living in a scarcity-based thing. more
so now.
Despite our environmental problems.
We have the power to start solving our environmental problems.
We have the ability to feed and clothe everyone on the planet.
We have the ability to provide everyone with free or cheap power
and we don't do it.
Why?
Because the world is run by Adrasters.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, this is the point.
Why this story is great.
Literacy, and therefore irony, build a civilised society.
And what is erata but the muse of epic poetry?
What is he bringing?
Words, ideas, thoughts.
Yeah.
Yeah, I always wondered why he's called...
And massive willies.
Yeah, so can we talk about that?
There's a whole documentary on the on the DVD.
Yeah, full of people just apologising for how...
I don't think he's crap at all.
I thought it was great at the time.
And it's probably the only alien to receive a blowey from a
doctor.
I can't put it any other way.
They should have just cut the appendages off.
I'm sorry.
Every listener crosses their legs.
Yeah, he's meant to be a giant brain.
Don't give him appendages.
Just the blob is great.
And the CSO work with Tom against the gigantic blob in the huge
cavern?
That looks wonderful.
There's nothing wrong with it.
And then you give him these 2 piffly little cock arms.
They're crazy, aren't they?
And there are other things about the production that are really
good.
As we said, the sets are great.
The decision to shoot the exteriors, the forest exteriors, studio
scenes on film really pays off. so much better than Eden will next
time.
This is Christopher Barry, isn't it?
Yeah, Christopher is back to the last one.
He puts a lot of time and effort and he's done his pros and his
cons are both in evidence here.
Puts a lot of effort into getting the look of it right.
So, as you say, the sets are right.
That lovely moment of the shell in the 1st episode, some love and
model work.
He's the one that demanded there were 3 reshoots of the Erato
models and 2 shoots at the space scenes.
Matt Irvine was dragged across Coles, literally.
They do that kind of thing in the BBC for all of that stuff that
was going wrong.
It had another, it's now been put on, oh, it's the space billy of
doom.
Well, actually, no, it was that's just a really convenient thing
on peg on which to hang your complaints.
Yeah, you see what I did there?
But the real problem was that, you know, you could see the string
on the TARDIS model in space in the 1st time.
This is what I've said before.
Matt Irvine is a lovely, charming bloke, and further on now, you
know, a lot of fun, but he's not a designer and he's not a visual
guy.
He likes making things, but I never thought his designs were up
there.
And this is the point where it all comes home for him.
He almost loses his job.
And yeah, there were 3 reshoots of the models.
Be that as it may, it's ultimately the directors comes back onto
the director.
I mean, a lot of Christopher Berry spent a lot of time trying to
get all of that rights and all the rest of it.
But again, timing malfunction.
All the stuff that should be good, he just rushes in the last
episode.
The thing is that the countdown 24 hours till the Dumo.
That's the script.
But there's all these things that should be interesting and could
actually propel a narrative and we just get episode 3 of padding
and we get episode 4 all squished up into a little box in the
end.
I mean, I think that that bit at the end is boring.
You know, the actual resolution and it makes no sense.
So, you know, there's an approaching neutron star and that's quite
good.
The destruction of the world is going to be the inevitable
consequence of the greed of a draster that works.
But then there's 15 minutes after she's...
Yeah, just wandering about.
Well, and in the Tartar set.
And, you know, they have this charming idea that they think they
can reduce the neutron stars' gravity by weaving a big aluminium
shell around it.
But Tim Foil hunt on it.
Presumably will weigh something.
Do you know what I mean?
It sounds like a shore fire wave increasing its gravity.
But again, no one on this show ever knows how gravity works.
There's something coming in and it looks a little bit stranger
than usual.
Oh, it's wrapped in tinfoil.
It's Todd.
You know what?
I quite like Creature from the Pit.
I like Carella, the wolf weeds, Adraster, even though she's a bit
shrill towards the end of her life.
And I think Geoffrey Bowden's performance is a tour de force.
But since I've actually activated the randomiser, there are other
elements of this story, that just working against it.
I mean, canine and Romana are not quite themselves, but with good
reason.
And, guys, what were they thinking with all the appendages of
Arato?
I'll never know.
But I guess the thing that undermines, I think, the whole story is
the robbers.
They're, like, out of a Monty Python sketch.
In fact, it all becomes a bit of a nightmare.
Oh, wait, that's next.
We've got to the year to the room.
Bacon now, haven't we?
Yeah, yeah, the...
The vegan thing is really terrible.
Yeah, yeah.
We were talking about this, Nathan and I and I were saying that
you know, there's a point I would counter that with, is that Mel
Brooks was an afficionado of this.
If the listener remembers young Frankenstein and blazing
saddellers and all the rest of it.
And he's been criticised by other members in the in the theatre
group as being, why do you always year it up?
Why do you always make the Jew, the Joker in the Room?
And he said, because of their laughing at us, they're not hating
us.
And he said, also, my villains are even more laughable and played
by Jews.
So he would cast his Nazis.
Wonder Woman, the 1st series of Wonder Woman did the same thing
and used Mel Brooks's character actors as their nasties.
I'm sure I've said that before.
But no, his argument was that if you make light of everything, if
you make it a point of humour, there is the repose after laughter
of the pause after laughter, when the air is expelled, where you
can then receive the information, if you like, where you then
receive the information as stable and measured, a position as
possible, and you've got rid of the emotion.
So you've got rid of the anger as well as with the laughter.
He thought about this that carefully.
The difference is that Mel Brooks, being Jewish, is allowed to do
comedy Jews, but other people are...
Well, this is the thing.
I don't know about that actually.
Well, I think, you know, Fagan is...
But I deplorable character and it undermines the character in a
way because he's immediately coded as stupid and greedy.
And it should be a discovery that he is stupid and greedy, that he
is willing to sacrifice these people for exactly the same reason
as Adraster will.
I don't think that comedic model necessarily applies in this
narrative in this story, for the similar reason, and that it's an
add on.
It's a distress signal stuck onto the console of the TARDIS.
This is not part of the story.
This is a comedy Jew put in for the sake of being a comedy Jew.
It's not growing or contributing to anything.
It's just that that's a funny character.
And so if you'd been in blackface or yellowface, it wouldn't have
made much difference.
We're talking about money, we're talking about usury and
acquisitiveness.
So therefore we use a Jew.
I think it's really unfortunate.
And I think it's, I actually agree that in this context
Christopher Barry kind of got it wrong.
Yeah, yeah, no.
It does.
Is it funny, though?
No, it's not.
That's the other thing too.
He's not that funny.
And it is the thing that Douglas has complained about a lot of
times where people think, well, there are jokes in this.
There are brilliant jokes in this script.
They're great.
David Fisher is really funny.
He's been fit vetted by Douglas Adams.
They're some really good jokes here.
But whoever plays Torven, I can't remember his name, has looked at
the script, seen those jokes and decided to be silly.
The way that Louis Fiander will next week.
And it spoils it, I think.
But it's Chris Barry's. choice.
The scripts just say, you know, they're huge.
They just say hairy buggers. excuse us.
They seem to cast them as bacon, yeah.
I do have to wonder about that, though, because his offsiders, the
main 2 of whom are called Idu and Ainu.
His 2 offsiders aren't ridiculous and over the top, you know, and
stupid.
There is some comedy.
They do get to do some jokes, but they don't do this gross
stereotype.
Yeah, exactly.
And the through line that David Fisher writes in there is that
those 2 kind of slowly start to realise... actually, Torpen's
pretty much as bad as a dress.
Yeah, he hasn't actually killed anyone, but he's as greedy and
whatnot.
Maybe we shouldn't be like that.
And yeah, I think that message is kind of spoiled with how OTT
Tourbon is.
Torden should have been a sort of slightly knockabout, laddish
kind of character with a mean streak.
He needs to be a revolutionary, and then we discover that he's
operating by the same rules as a Draft Star.
Maybe they don't have room for the complexity of that.
I would have liked that subtlety, but I think that they're all
seeing Williams and Douglas Adams do have a message here.
And it is that all forms of usury and acquisitiveness, unless
they're of intellect and the generosity of self-development, which
does go outwards, is by its own nature corrupting and destructive
of society.
Well, I mean, that's right.
These people prioritise possession of things over their own well
being.
And rich and poor are just as guilty.
You know, a dresser is morally worse than Torven because she has
power.
But, But yeah, the moment he's he's still operating by the same
rules and same priorities that she is.
There's a scene early on where Adraster is grilling 2 of her
engineers.
Welsh watch.
Yes, it's the last appearance of Terry Walsh in the classic series
as Doran and he gets some dialogue.
And also one of her engineers, I think it's the engineer, she
throws in the pit.
Holland is played by Maurice Barry. director of tomb of the side
of it.
So we have...
And a more fitting fate, you could have come up.
Yes, I wanted to throw him in a pizza, actually, after watching
team of the sign of me.
So we have the director of the Daleks, throwing the director of 2
of the Sidemen.
In the pit.
Ah, Jeffrey Balden.
As Organon.
Or no organ, if you want to.
So I didn't really watch Cat Weasel, I have to say.
I think I watched the final series, maybe.
Is that the one where he's on the search for like the 13th?
Yeah, to the Manor Bourne series where they think that you can
stick one series into another, although it was before all of
that.
The 1st series is sublime.
Really perfect.
And so this was a children's television program.
And then we played television 69 to 70.
He played a wizard from... 900, yes.
Well, from, you know, from 1066, who's transported to 1969.
Yeah.
And was he considered at some point a possible doctor?
He was actually on Verity's quite long list of doctors way back in
the day, but he didn't want to get locked into anything in the
same way that Crowden did for 3 years.
Although it was 18 episodes, though, words.
I don't know where that was coming from.
He's superb, although he kind of always plays his same part.
The thing is, verity was offering contracts for 52 weeks and she
wasn't telling anyone.
She only had 13.
You know, she wanted to be able to turn around and say to the
BBC.
Oh, well we might as well carry on.
I've got all these actors Actors.
God, he's good.
He is really good.
So good with Tom.
It's these little moments that make this season work.
Well, again, it's like you have Julian Glover and Tom, you get
Jeffrey Balden and Tom and the 2 of them are wonderful.
That thing where Tom goes up to him and sort of claps his arm
around him and says, you know, Sorry, old chap.
I particularly like, um, The past explained the future foretold
the present apologised for.
It's so well developed.
Delivered, isn't it?
It's terrific.
And it is great, Douglas Adams dialogue, you know, and he's
metering the whole thing.
Well, I love the line about lady Adrastus throwing the ambassador
down the pit and throwing astrologers at him.
You do see Jeffrey bailed in in the background, just sort of
smashing at that.
Hey, I'm right here.
It is such a strong cast, isn't it?
Fantastic.
You know, I really think that Torven as played by John Bryant's.
He is the only weak link, in my opinion.
I think a draster is spectacularly good, isn't she?
She really, actually, she could, you could say, well, I mean, she
eats the entire room, but Arlingway definitely, I wouldn't say
underplays it, but plays it as it needs to be. plays it straight.
Unique. admirer balances off that.
It could so easily have been even more so.
And it is, but it's nicely done.
It's not too, it's too much, but it's not too much.
When Doctor Who has more than one villain, normally at the end of
the story, you have to dispatch.
Well, in fact, there's no rule.
Sometimes you dispatch them in order of scariness and sometimes
you dispatch them in decreasing order of scariness.
And I think Lady Adraster looks like she's the villain all the way
through.
But Karela is seen on camera murdering someone.
Do you know what I mean?
Like she murders talk.
I've got 6 inches of it right behind you if you want that.
She's terrifying.
It's not my line.
She is really frightening and but she needs to play it in such a
way that we think she's just a Draster's way, you know, lady in
waiting and so that her total fabulous evilness at the end comes
as a complete surprise.
And she's got a face for it.
She does.
But she's the one who whose behaviour that threatens to destroy
the planet.
I mean, Adraster.
You know, is dead.
It was her mistake that sent the attack from Typhonus in the 1st
place.
But the person who's preventing them from stopping it is Karela.
She's happy to destroy the planet.
And she's not there for wealth.
She just left power.
Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you know, if it was something else other than metal.
Yeah, fine. stuff about that, yeah, she just wants power.
And you know, the power to destroy the world.
We saw it with Professor Zarov, you know, think of the achieve
Darov. and Sutek.
You know, it doesn't matter if you can't do anything practical
with it.
Or if you're just a cat, you still want to destroy the world.
And that's the point, isn't it?
There are many different forms of power, but it all comes back to
clinching onto that which cannot be possessed.
Because it doesn't really exist.
All that exists is the life of the mind.
It's your own position in the world as you choose to be.
I would like to say that I think this is a really intelligent
science fiction script.
Like, obviously, the science in the last episode bonkers and, you
know, adding stuff to a star should increase its math rather than
decrease it, whatever.
But what I love about it is it gives us an alien who is so
different that it has no way to communicate via speech by itself.
It needs to use other people's voices, which is a fascinating
idea.
It gives us some the concept of the scarcity that we were living
within our world.
As you said, Richard, taken to a bonkers extreme to use your
description as well.
And, you know, we we're made to pity Arato for 3 episodes.
And then in episode four, He just like, well, thanks for freeing
me.
This planet's about to explode.
I'll be off.
You know, and so he has this weird morality.
Do we pity him for 3 episodes, though?
Don't we think he's a terrifying murderous monster for the 1st
one?
And why isn't he?
Because if he's that intelligent, maybe he's all brain space.
Would he not have worked out if you're trying to talk to these
moral philosophers that they keep chucking down the pit?
If you roll over and get a bit too close, they go squishy and they
die.
I think he was just bored and cross and we're quite happy to kill
them all.
He does kill he does kill a draster.
Yeah, well, he does say after...
I think it's Romona chastises him for eating people.
He's like, well, I didn't have anything else.
It's kind of like a sore film.
Speaking of a sore film, it's very kind of you to say that this
was clever and concept science fiction, and I think it certainly
had been in the 30s when it was 1st written.
But this is mostly taking, and this is one of the things we didn't
have this in the 70s, but Britain had Star Trek over and over and
over again.
And the BBC didn't quite get that Doctor Who and Star Trek can't
be positioned one against the other.
Then the BBC thought that they were the same, but the viewer and
the certainly the production team knew better.
This is a piss take of an episode called Devil in the Dark, that
you remember from, I think, season episode 25, Not that I would
know these things.
Where it's the water, hoarder, which is a big rock sentient rock.
And even writes on the wall, I kill no, or I do not kill, and
there's, you know, instead of a mind meld with Spock, you have the
shield, but it's that story, but it takes the piss because whereas
that is about, you know, the Star Trek universe of just reduced
military intelligence contradiction in terms with the doctor.
This is actually about the creative individual coming in and
turning over.
No, this is definitely a piss take on Star Trek.
I mean, it has the political thing that the Star Trek of that
period doesn't explicitly have.
I think, you know, original Star Trek, much as we love it, isn't
sending the political message that it thinks it is. sending a
racial mess, more of a social message.
Yeah, it's still very much about military might.
Well, that's right.
And American imperialism and stuff.
And it, um, but it's, you know, like it's well-intentioned.
And I guess the point of devil in the dark is that we have moral
obligations to things that we can't even imagine we do.
You know, once we discover the hoarder is sentient, it's got
children, it cares about its children, it's distressed for that
reason.
It's enough like us that we now have a moral obligation to it, even
though it's a big rock eating, blobby rock thing.
It's still like us.
Yeah, it is a duna, isn't it?
It's like that thing that attacks them in Claus Vaxos.
Yeah, whereas Doctor Who's allowed to have aliens, even other
humanoids are completely different from us, but that's also okay.
Yeah.
One thing I have noticed that David Fisher tends to do in his
scripts, and we'll see it again next year, is that he's one of
Doctor Who's best world builders.
You know, stones of blood, he doesn't just do the Bob Baker and
Dave Martin thing of, oh, we're a modern day earth.
There's a nuclear power station.
Let set it there.
Yeah.
Yeah, stones of blood.
He sort of says, oh, okay, we'll set it in this stone circle.
Well, what happened in this stone circle 2000 years ago?
Let's look, that's our story.
Androids Atara.
What happened 200 years ago?
That's the fallout of our story.
Creature from the pit.
This creature has come here 20 years ago and this planet has been
like this for 50 years.
And then, of course, Leisure Hive.
We had this war here and it was horrible and now a 100 years later
the species is almost dead.
A lot of doctor writers don't put that kind of thought.
I mean, Chris Boucher comes to mind as one who does, but Holmes
does as well.
Holmes tends to create worlds where you think there's more going
on outside the frame.
But most Doctor Who Riders in the classic series.
I'm very immediate.
Like this is the story we're telling now. you know, let's say the
dominators.
We might hear that, oh yes, we gave up on more centuries ago.
But that's pretty much it.
Terry Nation.
Oh yeah, there was a war here.
And yeah, that's a creature there from the war.
You know, it's David Fisher has seems to have this thing about the
past directly influencing the present.
Which we don't see a lot of.
I think he may, he's definitely, as I've said before, Android
Atara is my favourite of who story, he may well be my favourite
classic writer, and it's a shame that this is his 2nd last
script.
He is very good.
And he's funny.
He tends to be funny as well, and that's going to be interesting
next year when the war on funny begins.
That's all the time we have on the planet of chloros, dear
listener, but we're warming up our CET machines in preparation for
Nightmare of Eden next week.
Until then, you can find us online at flightthroughentirety.com
flight through entirety on Facebook and iTunes and at FTE podcast
on Twitter.
Please do share and comment on this.
It's the only way that new people find out about us.
And also, please check out bondfinger.com where we have a variety
of Sean Connery commentaries and a commentary on David Nevin's
Casino Royale.
Gentlemen, I do want to finish off by just saying, as I mentioned
early, this is our last Welsh watch.
Thank you, Terry, wherever you are now.
We've really enjoyed having you on the program and yeah, I think
it's going to be a slightly less fun place without you.
But listeners, thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
That was flight to entirety with Nathan Bottomley, Brendan Jones
and Richard Stone.
This episode, There Shall Be No Fire, was recording on the 6th of
December, 2015.
The next episode will be released on February 14th, 2016
approximately 159 odds from... now.
Creature from the pit, 6th of December.
What's that look?
It's creature from Tip Pit.
From Tip Pit.
Stop it.
Ooh, aye, we got a tactonian down pet.
Hmm, are you doing the accent?
Sorry, I forgot to cleanse.
And release, yes.
I don't know what I'm gonna do with this polystyrene.
What am I gonna do with all this points?
Build them in myself?
Oh, I'm gonna build.
No, no, I think I'm gonna build the Excelon City and then just
like pour ass it all over.
Oh, it works too.
You just need turpentine.
Nail polish remover. yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You could grind it up and make your very own reboss streetscape.
That's staying in as well, isn't it?
Oh, pirate planet cities.
Yeah, planet villages.
Save it, we'll do a blue Peter style video.