We're back again for part three of our epic four part podcast of
Doctor Who season three.
This is Flight Through Entirety, the only Doctor Who podcast
coming at you live from the Security Kitchen.
Hooray.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
And I'm here too.
And we're starting off with a classic of Doctor Who, Nathan, I'm
gagging you for now.
The massacre.
Take it away, Richard.
Okay, I begged for this on bent knee.
And other things that we're not allowed to mention.
So many reasons.
It happens to occur on my birth date.
It's one of, I think, the most interesting points in modern Euro
history in that it never has a story had a more apt name than
this.
It's about the conflagration of religion that's been burning away
pretty much for the last 1000 years.
Protestants and Catholics coming together and just the incendiary
results of that in a modern city.
Paris.
Okay, we're talking the TARDIS lands in 1572.
We're at the point of of the Renaissance.
We're at a point now where modern humanity, modern, learned men.
Take note as being educated, civilised, responding to the world
and then all hell breaks loose.
This is something that really talks about.
A whole lot of things that are completely outside the domain of
Doctor Who, and one of the reasons that people, when I, when I'm
asked, why are you a fan of Doctor Who?
I said, because it's everything you want it to be.
You can drop it into anything and it will take it on board and do
something really interesting with it and hopefully, and this
certainly does for me, give you a perspective you might not have
thought of before.
Nathan, you're a fan of the massacre too, aren't you?
Well, listen, I, you know, I watched the Massic for the 1st time
to prepare for the podcast and I had already, even before the idea
of the podcast came up.
I'd already kind of had the idea that I would watch Doctor Who, you
know, all the way through the 60s.
And I've got several friends.
We call it the Great Journey of Life, you know, like Horns of
Nimon style, where they just watch, you know, an episode and
you've been doing it as well with Rod.
Yeah, Brandon.
So we're almost up to the horns of Nimon, actually.
Well, lucky you.
And I had long heard that this was terrific.
I think Cornell, Day and Topping, rave about it in the
discontinuity guy.
Sandifer says that it's, you know, extraordinary and...
Yeah, one of the best things that...
And so I was prepared to be impressed.
And it was just so boring.
I really, like, like, I know that I've been flogging to death the
idea that stories are much better when they have, you know, flange
faced villains in this.
That's right.
Are you saying the cliffhagger for episode 2 should have been
Stephen walks into the De Medici throne room and the queen uses
her perception filter and suddenly turns around and says, you dare
disturb me at this time.
That would be great or if she pulled a rubber face off and she was
a Jaguar.
But, like, I just founded the lion heart.
Sorry, carry on. just found this so incredibly tiresome.
I'll tell you why.
Like every time we go to the past, we spend time in a tavern and
then prison, you know, just have it then prison and we get that
again here.
The doctor's barely in it.
And like, and everyone goes, oh, he does a masterful acting thing
as the abbot of Amboise, where he doesn't do all of his ticks and
all that, but they have it if Amboise is only in it for like a
couple of minutes and then he's dead.
And like Stephen, who we've already said to someone with no
discernable characteristics, who isn't, you know, like he's a
great actor.
He's quite charismatic to watch, but he's not a character in the
way that Ian and Barbara were characters.
This is the 1st story where the doctor is absent, as you say
and...
He has to carry the narrative, but there's not enough there to
carry the narrative.
I don't know, but you need a backstory.
I think the casual viewer, not everyone's watching every week
would just take him as being...
But he could have just been some guy who came across from London
you know, and didn't know the local thing.
I mean, does that matter?
I think it matters because why am I watching this?
You know, like, it's not Doctor Who then.
The doctor's not in it.
Stephen has like nothing that happens to Stephen couldn't have
happened to some someone who had just come across this week.
This whole scenes where they're explaining the details of this
historical period to each other.
That scene with the queen where it's all just just huge, huge
wodges of exposition where they're all explaining to each other.
I don't know what's going on here as well because I actually love
an extent.
I have to say, I love a plot dump.
This story takes place the day after the marriage of Protestant
Henri of Navarre to Charles Neurf's sister, Sir Charles IX.
Navarre was a principality at the south of France.
You should say that at this stage in history, France is all the
reasons that I'm going into now that Nathan loves this story. with
all their background history.
Tell us more about France. when you get real stuff and real
history thrown into Doctor Who because it becomes more dangerous.
The whole stuff if you can't change time.
I just think it's more interesting because it's relevant to real
to real events.
It's not simply Planet Zog with the Zogloids.
It's actually something you can look up and there's a whole lot
more going on.
And I think the narrative takes it more seriously.
The cast does, the writers and directors take it more seriously
because it's based on real events.
It might be a prejudice to science fiction.
Certainly at this time, as we've said before, science fiction, was
predominantly the nature and state of the pulp magazines and the
Saturday matter.
This is what I...
Yeah, it is.
And but it also is able to then plumb greater depths.
And lateralness in characterisation, which for me, Doctor Who is
about how much of a reaction and characterisation you get in the
story.
It's not for me so much about whether or not they've got a
rubbery.
Oh, no, but there's no characterisation either.
Everyone's... just had a moment.
There is.
The players in this. are absolutely fabulous and you don't need to
see this.
I recommend that if you want to have a look at this.
Let's just listen to the audio version of it because it works
beautifully as a radio play.
They aren't actually, it's not helped by the reconstruction.
I wouldn't bother the rest.
There's like one picture of what's the...
Yeah, there's one picture of gas.
And they just Photoshop him over different backgrounds in the
state.
It would be very distracting trying to watch it. recon on this.
Although...
I really enjoyed the recon.
It helped the story come to light for me.
And when we finished watching the Recorn.
Because after each story, I take down Rod's reaction, anything he
wants to say about it.
And he actually said, um, actually, give me a minute. still
processing this.
And he hates the recons.
He watched them, but, you know, he's like, I want moving images.
He said, I actually didn't miss the moving images this time.
I know nothing about this period in history.
I did not, I'd heard the name Huguenots.
But I didn't know what happened.
This story makes me want to find out more and no other Doctor Who
story, no other Doctor Who story historical has made me want to
find out more about the period than this story.
I agree.
And I mean, to me, in a way, Rod is my acid test for a lot of
Doctor Who stories.
Because, interestingly, as I just said, we're halfway through
Nightmare of Eden, he gave City of Death and 8.
He gave creature from the pit 8.5 .
You know, so it's very...
It's very interesting to see his... to see his reactions.
And the massacre.
I'm sorry, Nathan, but I'm with Richard on this one.
I think it's a wonderful piece of drama.
I think it's a great vehicle for Peter Purvis.
And I think that Peter Purpose being that Stephen, I should say
rather, being a space pilot is not so important here as the
morality of Stephen's character and as someone who has just been
through a massacre and has just seen his friends die and has seen
people die for specifically for him.
Because Katerina sacrifices herself for him.
Brett Vion is killed because he's trying to help him and the
doctor.
Sarah sacrifices herself for him and the doctor.
He, you know, he is so sick and tired of death, but he can do
nothing to stop it.
And it, it also raises, and Stephen raises the question of, where
was the doctor, you know, he was off trying to meet the
scientist.
If the doctor has been here?
What could he have done?
And a bit like Dalek's master plan?
It's like the doctor can't do anything.
Yeah, and that's, but here, for some reason it feels better.
Not better, but...
It does feel better.
Should we talk a bit about the story?
Because a lot, you know, maybe the person listening hasn't. doesn't
know what this show is.
Yes, sorry, I didn't interrupt you.
He turns up and goes to a pub.
And people who are not very interesting.
The doctor goes away and talks to bin row the heretic from the
60s.
He's a bit riotless operation.
It's not been Rober heretic, actually. coordinator Engen...
No, no, I know, but do you know what I mean?
He's Susan to his mates.
Didn't Susan N going to play Vivian Faye?
When I say being with a heretic, I don't mean the actor.
Okay, he's someone...
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and like, all of this is going on. making it, you're saying
it's, you know, the when the modern, you know, like this, the
striking thing about this is it happens so close to our own time
and it happens, it happens with very much modern politics.
Just as modernity is kind of, and that's what, um, cheaty...
What's he called?
Scientist.
Charles Preslam.
Press Lan is a scientist in Paris when the term itself was almost
a reason for expulsion. under the current Catholic rule.
Really interesting times.
Catherine de Medici was the mother of King Charles, the knight.
See, I'm just falling asleep during that scene.
Well, I'll tell you what, one of the things she's credited for is
introducing Morton French cuisine, the actual, the, the types of
yeah, the tropes of, is what I was looking for.
Oh, the drink. of Italian cooking brought to France and modern
cooking actually started.
This is not me saying this, this is the wonderful.
La Ruth.
The wonderful Laris and his Larisk astronomique.
It's got 3 fantastic performances from 3 major players of the
time.
You just wouldn't expect in these roles.
As you mentioned, it's got Eric Chitty as Preslan, a scientist
who's very, who's when research was something that was very
dangerous to do, who've got Admiral de Colony, and Gas Bar de
Colony, played by Leonard Sucks, who is our very own Barusa in the
Ark of Infinity.
We own him.
And better than that, Eric Thompson, the father of Eriton, Emma
Thompson. their father of Emma Thompson, and the author, and the
complete rewriting of the magic roundabout.
It's amazingly bizarre thing.
As Gaston. notice that.
It's Eric Thompson.
Now, Eric Thompson was known at the time as pretty much the Peter
Purvis of the 60s in that he was the face of children's television
in England.
And the gentle, lovely, make-do and men's guy who was the go-to
whenever you wanted someone charming to talk to the kids.
And he, as Emma Thompson speaks of, because he sadly he died quite
young.
Emma Toxin herself speaks of her father as being all of these
extraordinary things.
Here he plays a volatile, acerbic, pick up a sword and cut his way
through the opposition character, everyone's playing against type
and better than that.
The reason I really love this story is not just the history stuff
although it falls on my birthday, which is in fact the day of the
massacres are kind of resonant for that, is that you really get to
see Billy Shine and stick one in the eye to John Wiles, who was
trying to get rid of him because He plays the dual role, not to
spoil this for you.
Although it's actually intrinsic to the story. you not meant to
know how this is going to end up.
Yeah, whether it's a dream.
Billy, for some reason, Billy plays the abbot of Ambroise, and
hence the confusion and the narrative being able to go the way it
does.
When Stephen sees him in the street and thinks that the abbot is
the doctor, so a whole lot of confusion, terrible things happen
because of this.
Billy plays the abbot, contrary to all expectations, absolutely
note and word perfect.
Not a lot of lines in it, but he is phlegmatic and cold and
measured and controlled.
There's no, none of the usual things that we assume is something
of Billy's own name before. person in the pub, absolutely not.
Which makes you think at this point even the fluffs maybe are
deliberate.
Maybe they are because who can say it because he just gets this so
cold and so right.
I mean, he is barely in it.
And and like the Abbott isn't in it all that much.
And and and the other thing is, you know, this is just so worthy
in such an important document of historical blah, blah, blah, blah
blah, blah.
I just think that's all fun. having a stupid science fiction
conceit where it just so happens that the abbot looks exactly like
the doctor for no reason at all.
But that kind of undermines it a little bit.
I like that it's kind of the oddness of it, the fact this isn't, it
plays with history, but then it throws in fantasy.
It doesn't have to be always BSF.
Doctor Who can be anything.
Nathan is exactly what you like.
Well, what I love is that we've also got references, because it's
my story.
I can keep going with this, just like Brendan Karl, Nathan, last
time.
If you've fed any of Brian Green's stuff, here's the...
That's from Beverly Hills known.
He is indeed.
He's the kind of scary smiling scientist, the Canadian scientist
has written some fantastic books and done some great TV shows, even
though it often feels like he's selling Amway when you watch him
on TV, but he writes really well.
And the last chapter in one of his last books, which I have just
here to hand, we'll mention at the end, um, is that he, um, that
modern physics seems to be showing that we are a holographic three
dimensional representation of an alternate universe of a surface
reality and that we are a mere reflection via a black hole of that
reality.
Therefore, the idea of the doctor and other time lords, as we've
seen, the 2nd doctor has the face of salamata.
Salamata.
The 12 doctor looks like that.
That, the 12 doctor... old Rome, and the 3rd doctor looks like a
washerwoman from a, from an electronics and mining base in the
middle of Wales.
Yeah.
I just like that there are so many things that doctors can
reference and bring in and that the fantasy side of this, that the
doppelganger of the doctor is just a lovely little conceit in what
is otherwise a really hard story.
Can we get to the girls?
Because this is all about what we can do to the girls.
Could I just say something about the...
Just build on what you were saying about the Abbot having the same
face as the doctor.
For those of you who don't know, around this time, William
Hartnell was actually pitching story ideas.
Ah, yes, the production crew.
And one of the story ideas he pitched and he sent a letter in
reply to a fan that has been reprinted in a book somewhere.
I'm sorry, I don't know what it is.
Son of Doctor Who, was one of Billy's ideas.
And it, Billy, it seems like most of the actors who play the
doctors say they were getting slightly restless playing the one
part all the time.
So Billy's idea was that Doctor Who's villainous sum would turn up
with his own TARDIS and be played by Billy in a black wig.
As his younger self?
Because Billy looks 10 years older, as the doctor, then he did in
real life.
So it's feasible that he could look.
It's visible that he had had a bit of a hard one.
It's feasible that he could look younger with makeup and whatnot.
And that didn't happen, but there is a theory, which makes a lot
of sense, that the Abbot of Amboise, uh, Billy playing the Abbot
of Amboise, was John Wild's way of doing 2 things.
A, it was taking the emphasis away from Billy, because the Abbott
of Amboise is in so little of the story.
Yeah, it's like in 2 scenes and one of them is lying dead in the
gutter.
I mean, really, it's not bad.
Also, it was a way to...
Some people think it was way for John Wiles to prove that, look
you can't even play, you can't play another part.
You can't even play your own part and much like Tom Baker later in
The Deadly Assassin, where Tom turned around and said, I don't
need an assistant.
And Philip H Quiff said, we're going to give you a story to show
you it doesn't work.
And it happened to be brilliant.
Just like Billy happens to be brilliant.
Nothing comes of it.
Billy doesn't play another part again on the show, but as you were
saying, he was bloody good.
Really good.
You were going to say something about the women, I think.
Well, it makes me think funny.
Thank you for mentioning that, though, because it makes me think
that maybe Donald Tosh was more on Billy's side than we record.
I still get that impression hearing Donald talk now in that...
Damn good writer.
He wrote this.
Well, yeah, exactly.
It's John Lucarati's best script when it's actually so much Donald
Tosh that John Lucarati refused to have his name on it.
Yeah, Lukarotti kind of didn't...
So a lot of it was...
No one's credited for episodes one to three.
Really?
Lukarotti entered.
There's no writing.
Yeah, because by the time of episode four, the head of serials, I
believe.
You need a writer's credits, so they both...
Nathan will need someone to blame in 48 years time.
What happened with this is that Donald Tosh had to rewrite the
scripts that more interestingly, and this is something that
Lucarotti was really opposed to and why he took his name off the
rights, he brought about the duality of the doctor and the abbot.
In the original scripts, Billy was in the scenes against, not
exactly up against the atmosphere as we know, but it was always
clear that they were separate people.
Why this is so good is that we're seeing it from Steven's place.
We don't know that the abbot is not...
Until he's dead in the ditch.
And then we, yes.
Oh, really?
That could be the doctor dead in the ditch.
We've just seen 2 companions killed in the previous series.
I don't think we I don't buy that.
It's certainly one of the best cliffhangers of the whole series
which is what I'm saying.
Yeah, I'm sorry to cut you off, Richard, but Nathan, by that logic
we should never have a cliffhanger with the doctor in danger
because we know it's not effective because we know we get out.
No, that's not at all.
How will it get out of it?
will he get out of it?
It's not like next week will I come back and the main character
will be dead and then the show will have to go on without him.
The doctor in Peril cliffhanger works because we're going, ooh
how's he going to get out of that?
Yeah, well you don't get much more imperilled than being dead in a
gutter.
Yeah, well then we know it's not him.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, I just, oh, it just exhausts me this story and it really is
them. experimenting with getting rid of Hartnell and like
flailing.
They don't know what to do.
And so they, let's try with Stephen as the leading man.
Let's marginalise Hartnell, who is barely in it for 4 episodes.
And I just think that the result is just not very interesting.
You know, it's not a Doctor Who story.
And the doctor, like the doctor leaves.
And all of the, like massacre, is sort of realised, and I, this is
the recon, and I don't know how it was realised in the actual
thing, but it's realised with sort of contemporary engravings
showing pictures of people being.
Yes, that was the case in the original. like there's no even real
peril.
It's sort of just a historical thing that happened.
It had happened before the story came.
It still happened when the story ended.
We've had no effect on it.
We haven't really learned from it.
Like, have we learned something about religious intolerance?
Not really.
Do you know what I mean?
Like it's all just...
Oh, I have to, I have to terribly...
Sorry, David, I only tell you.
I adjust my monoid wing.
My Margaret role?
No, I think I'm sorry you're wrong, David, you're wrong, you're
wrong, you're wrong.
I think Judith was about to come out again.
This time she did.
We miss her.
There's just lovely stuff.
This is some really serious things going on here and there's the
friction between Protestant and Catholic.
Look, in Australia, at this time in the early 60s, you still, as a
Catholic person, couldn't be a member of the Australia Club.
There are lots of positions that were not open to you because
Protestants and the Masons, in fact, were still running the jobs
and the business.
You couldn't, you could get, you could rise to a certain high
place in the public service, but that's about it.
So this story would have been very relevant for a lot of people
watching it at the time.
It's very much a modern story.
That's evil in it.
Do you know what I mean?
It's like the Catholics are bad guys.
We're automatically on the same...
They're doing a bit of massacring.
This is what I love about this.
Admiral Admiral de Colligny, the, the, um, Hello, it sucks
character is the biggest warmonger of the lot.
He's the one in this story whose advocating war with Spain as an
alliance for to get in with the Dutch.
And I'm not going into the background in the history of the story
because you know I'm busting to.
But because it's really complex, and I can talk for 10 minutes
about the history of this, which is why I love it.
There's so much complexity in the backstory.
Whether or not the casual viewer would have known it then.
Well, you certainly wouldn't have got any of it on the screen
because it's just lots of people in talking to each other in a set
that's kind of...
Yeah, possibly.
Yeah, sadly, we don't know what the direction would have been like
but the audio performances are certainly fantastic.
The final seeings, then Tosh chose these drawings because, you
know, obviously that are budget considerations.
So when they actually showed the massacre, what they actually
showed was contemporary engravings, you know, of the time of what
was going on, and the BBC was apparently, you know, Inverted Com
was flooded with letters because the engravings themselves were so
violent and expletive.
So this is this would have, I think, had a lot of temerity to it
as well for going out there, but a lot of texture.
I think that this season is actually pretty fantastic for its
experimentalism and I love this one, forgiving me as my kind of
viewer.
I can't be the only one out there who really loves. but it's
strength and complexity.
Absolutely.
No, no, no, no.
I like complexity.
I like strength.
My objection is I don't think this has either of those.
I think it's just, it's really talky.
It's full of exposition.
It has none of the characters that I'm interested in watching.
No one really seems to learn anything from it.
It's just like life.
Yeah, that's right.
Well, that's it, if I, that's the old quote.
If I want a long, boring story with no point to it.
I've got my life, you know, like I don't want to watch the
massacre.
Can I just urge everyone, this is one of the reason I love this
and I begged for this story?
I wasn't given it is because of the performances and nuances and
the language and also it's beautifully done.
Tosh is a really good writer and he really, really cements that
for me in this.
The man can write.
And just the tonalities and textures in the in the performances.
It's a lovely radio play.
And it's really worth listening to.
Can I just say, I also miss out on someone I would have loved.
No, it does get a bit Jennifer Saunders with the Mamoset, Mamoset
accent, but the character that Anne Robertson plays in this, who
is...
Chaplet.
Yeah, and Chapelain and Chapelain.
She's really lovely and she has this absolutely demonstrable
squeeze on Stephen.
There's a real crush happening here.
And it's a lovely a lovely moment.
And it's handled maturely.
Very maturely.
Thank you.
She's and she is a strong female character.
She's the 1st strong female character we've had since, um, well
not including... um, recurring or regular characters.
However, a lot of sort of wine and panicky stuff in the thing.
No, she's strong and she's the 1st underclass, not just working
class.
She's the 1st modern slave class that actually gets a voice.
And they kill her.
Spoiler alert.
Well, they do.
Yeah.
Oh, God, do they?
Are we up to the point where we get to the last five?
Yes, can we just get rid of this story?
before we go. on to the bad thing that happens in the last 5
minutes, let's go on to the good thing, which is Steven's tirade
at the doctor.
Oh, it's so nice.
He's going to storm.
Oh, yeah, that would be great.
Okay, okay.
Okay, let's what, someone's lost their beagle or their tennis
ball.
Okay, Wimbledon Comic.
Sorry, sorry.
Let's put a cork on that.
Nathan, cork on that and just talk about Stevens just utter fed
up.
Stephen has had a year of seeing everyone bogged off.
Everyone dead and the doctor has a chance to rescue a girl who has
actively assisted them in this story and actually in a way allowed
this, allowed them both to be saved and come through this.
And the doctor just leaves her in Paris.
And the only advice he says is stay the shut up for 4 days inside
because everyone else is going to get horribly murdered.
And when you consider...
Where Stephen's character has come from, you know, he's been
imprisoned by the... by the McAnoys.
Very painful. for 2 or 3 years, you know, and so, you know, he
desperately wants his freedom.
But as soon as he gets out, like he has a couple of nice
adventures with the doctor and Vicky, and then he just travels
around seeing people horribly...
People, you know, people, people helping him and, you know, each
of the leading up situations, he's like, yeah, the doctor can't do
anything about that.
Like, Catarina, the doctor can't do anything about that.
Sarah, the doctor was in danger as well.
No, I'm agreeing with that.
But yeah, as you say, this the doctor has a chance to do
something.
This is the 1st time the doctor can actually exactly enter into
the narrative and save a girl and he doesn't do it.
Is it because she doesn't remind him of his granddaughter?
Well, I think it's...
Because that might be a reason why the next one's allowed to
stay.
I think it might actually more be a reason, more be an indication
of what he said way back in the Aztecs if you can't change
history.
And unlike a lot of other doctors, he actually stands by that.
But that's for major characters.
He's always allowed himself to assist minor characters and you
can't...
He didn't assist Richard.
He didn't assist King Richard.
King is not a major character.
No, no, but as you said, no, no, but that's my point. is not
important in world in world narrative.
So, yeah, we get there.
Yeah, he leaves it pretty much leaves it to our own devices and
Stephen wants to storm off because and it's a really nicely
written scene. if you're only going to listen to a bit of it
listen to the last part.
See, Stephen just for the last part is good advice.
Yes, because then you get that speech and it's the speech in, in
adventuring space and time as well, where the doctor, has this
speech where he says everyone leaves him in the end and none of
them understood him, not even Susan and things. and he talks about
Eden and Barbara and Vicky and mentions everyone who's been a
companion before.
Stephen has stormed off because The doctor hasn't saved everyone.
Which I would nearly do as well because I'm just sick to death of
this. you know, like everyone gets killed.
And here, you know, there's no even sort of redeeming spectacle or
anything for 4 previous episodes and then we get a giant, you know
massacre at the end.
So he storms off and the doctor gives a spectacular speech and he
really does a great job of it.
And in adventures in an adventure in space and time, that's the
scene where he kind of fluffs it, you know, and it loses it and
that's the scene that Gates uses to illustrate that Hartnell's
suffering from arteriosclerosis.
And it's good that it happens.
Thematically it happens in a scene where he's reflecting on all of
the people who he loved, who have left the program.
So in an adventure in space and time, Billy ruins that speech.
But in the actual show. spectacular.
He does a great job.
But then after all of that, Stephen comes back because, like, a
policeman's coming because, you know, and that's awful.
And then so it all just goes nowhere.
We don't learn anything, nowhere.
We have drum roll.
We have the introduction of the very...
We've just lost a mirror ball off the Chumley cake.
How prescient is that, just as we're about to announce the
introduction of the new companion?
All together now.
Dodo Chaplet.
Now, the giveaway is that she has a name that means stupid
person.
Like a name that means extinction.
Yeah, yeah, but like dodoes are not just dead as a dodo, but
they're kind of stupid, you know, like and so like instantly she's
on the back.
The 1st thing she says, walking into a time and space machine
that's dimensionally transient.
Where's the phone?
And that's it.
And she has a terrible northern accent, like a terrible fake...
Not long.
She was meant to be cockney.
And until about the 3rd scene of the...
That's what we were thrust out of that.
We were doing the army already.
We're in the ark.
Oh, sorry, I thought we were.
Thank you all for listening to the massacre, as I'm sure you've
all just gone and done because it really is the best one ever
moving on.
Yeah, so by the 3rd scene of the art, Dodo is no longer cockney
because the big bods at the BBC said, you can't.
I know, because Jared Savoury said, I don't want her accent
ricocheting up and down the airport, which didn't actually exist
at the time.
But it really doesn't.
No, they said we still want to import it.
Yeah, she starts off northern, then goes Colkney, then goes
terribly RP.
Yeah, and then on, like by the time of the celestial toy maker.
She's like a play school presenter with the RP accent.
There is an instroid explanation for because she says something
and she says something cool or modern.
She says something that Christopher Eccleston might say.
She says something's dead, dead, cool, or dead, something.
Like she uses a modern language.
She does say it's fab.
Of the kind that Vicky used sort of as well.
And Hartnell says, oh, you know, we have to teach you to speak
proper English, you know, don't use that appalling mongrel
dialect.
That's not him.
But do you know what I mean?
He critiques her speech.
And it is that thing too, where that's the 1st hint that the
doctor's turning conservative.
So the doctor liked Vicky.
The doctor burns down Rome.
The doctor has a happy time.
Do you know what I mean?
The doctor can't tolerate you cutting your G's.
Yeah, that's right.
But now he's now he's suddenly your primary school teacher, you
know, he'll tell you off for having a working class accent.
But he also adopts this girl and he does adopt it because not only
was, we mentioned Jackie Lane, not only was she, he says that she
reminds him of her granddaughter, that he's lost in extraordinary
circumstances, because he locked the bloody door and didn't let
her back in.
I think there's a whole lot of Mia Cooper in this.
I think that you can actually see this as the doctor having, ever
since that moment, just being trying to make it up to whoever his
whomever is with and to whoever blunders into the Tartars who had
auditioned to play, Susan.
Well, this is the thing, you'd audition to play, McLane did
audition.
John Wiles had worked with her previously and she was apparently
really good and quite respected as a young actor.
I don't think it's her fault.
I'm going to jump on this.
Yeah, that she said so.
The accent is not good.
Like, the accent is not good right now.
Do you know who cuts that?
Do you know who actually ordered that?
Jared Savoury?
Jared Savoury, who recently appointed head of series and serials
who was getting letters each week from Billy going over John
Well's head saying, this is happening and it's atrocious and
appalling.
Savoury started taking an interest in the program because he was
responding to it, and here's the reason that, as we're going to
see later on the season, that Bill is still in the show.
Yeah, it's actually pretty much Bill won that round, but not for
long, sadly.
Yeah, it's a bit of a pyrhic victory, isn't it?
And whiles it really does deal, like the fatal blow, I think.
He's, I mean, he's completely sidelined Billy in in the massacre.
The Arc is his last one, isn't it?
John?
No, no, it's not his last one.
He sticks around for a bit longer and Billy gets Billy gets a lot
more of a role in the art, but it is up to Stephen to make the
speeches.
Yeah, true.
And also, you know, it was around the time of the myth makers that
Billy was actually diagnosed with arteriosclerosis.
So by this time, it was known in the production office that this
is why his memory was so bad.
But he still gives great performances later on and we're going to
talk next episode about gunfighters.
And he's good enough. savages.
Oh, savages, isn't that?
Yeah, we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Sideline.
And so the arc.
Are we talking about the...
We're talking about the ark.
They arrive, I think this is yours, isn't it?
It's a big spaceshippy thing.
It is.
I've just been riveted by the 2 of you.
I still want to spend Daddy and Daddy are fighting.
Can I spend another 15 minutes talking about how much I hate the
massacre?
No.
Okay.
So, yeah, we have we have the arc, which, again, going back to
something I was saying about earlier stories, it's a story about
one central concept, and it's a story around this concept, which
would have been revolutionary at the time.
Richard, you alluded earlier in Dalek's master plan to the fact
that viewers would have no idea when the story would end.
So, you know, you get to the end of part 2 of the arc and you're
like, oh, that was a quick one, but they sorted that out quick.
And, oh my god, they've gone 700 years in the future and the
statue is finished.
It is, it is a powerful cliffhanger and that's sort of the central
the central idea is, you know, seeing the death of the earth and
then seeing what happens to humanity.
But it's, it is very, very problematically done.
On one level, it's a very, it's a very interesting science fiction
idea.
It, um...
Richard Challenge.
Well, it's not a new idea.
It's not a new idea to call us things to come and it's, you know
it's HG Wells, obviously.
It's all Stapleton, actually.
Did you ever read him when you were a kid?
No, but I've heard C.S. Lewis, my immortal enemy.
I was a big fan of all I was saying.
Honest Stapleton wrote the things about the end of the end of the
end of time, books are serious, and I think the last and 1st men.
Um, it's, they're kind of like um, Doc Smith.
They were, you know, like teenage fiction stuff.
Oh, gosh, they were terrible.
Well, same sort of thing they're worth looking at.
But it's pretty much this story.
Far, far, far future.
Because it is super far future. well outside where we've been
segmented. of time. and all of Nero and all of them. that we've
just seen.
Everything.
In fact, everything in Doctor Who so far has been the 1st segment
of time.
Yeah, so this is except for the Daleks, which happens a 1000000
years in the future.
Oh, yeah, apparently.
That's one. segment of time.
This is, can we say, this is beautifully directed by the one off
Michael Imerson.
That 1st episode is cinematic.
See, I would love to talk about parts one and 2 and say lovely
things and then parts 3 and 4 and just...
Okay, let's start with parts one and two.
Absolutely.
It's things to come on.
And it's possibly that the 1st time that in a science fiction
story, Doctor Who is directly copying something else, because it
was all the other time.
In terms of design, certainly earlier on, it's taken ideas.
But yeah, as you were saying, Richard, it's the 1st time it's kind
of taking the plot from other things and doing it in a Doctor Who
kind of way.
And what I find very interesting about it is Stephen's big speech
um, when he's on trial for, you know, because they brought Dodo's
cold on board.
And, uh, yeah, I don't think that's a great idea to introduce a
character, her 1st full story, and she almost commits into that
genocide.
Can we just say, the doctor then suggests, oh, maybe we've just
spread diseases all through space and time.
In every place we visited, ever since the show began.
And so not everything, not save everyone.
It's too terrible to think about. been infecting people.
Let's not worry about it.
Yeah, and he has that beautiful speech where, you know, the humans
are saying, oh, so advanced, so marvellous, so there's always so
that and Steven turns around and says, yeah, but you're still
bigoted, terrible people.
You know, you are still afraid of anything unlike you, which
starts to introduce the tone that's really problematic.
Everyone in the ship is white.
Yeah, they are. except the monoids.
So the monoids.
Can we just say for those of you at home who have, you know
hobbies and full, rich and satisfying lives and haven't seen the
ark as a result?
there's no one, is there?
And so they're sort of people and they have sort of waddly legs
and dark skin and the people.
They have web legs in their mouths.
And I don't mean web toes.
No web legs. webbing between their legs.
Yeah, they are.
John Mandeville's travels, which are 18th century, or Baron
Mulkausen's stories, which you'd know from the Terry Gilliam
film.
They're actually, then, yeah, they're drawn straight from, actually
going to hold them up these up for the listener at home because
it's the joy of audio.
But here we go.
I'm just going to show the boys here and we'll put this up on
site.
But these are the kind of drawings that are around in the OT
century of creatures with, you know, a ping-pong ball in their
mouth and a beetle.
Yeah, yeah.
And you get that, like, you do get that stuff.
Like even there's a...
Where is it in Shakespeare?
In Shakespeare, you know, the anthropophagan man whose heads do
grow beneath their shoulders or between their shoulders?
Which is from the same thing.
That idea, you know, that idea that when you when you travel
Caliban's a bit like that.
Yeah, yeah, all that sort of stuff.
But, I mean, basically the idea is they're dark skinned servants.
And they come...
They're all yak skin.
They're all yak here.
Some of them are blocked.
They're in beta wigs.
And so they do like hilariously bad sign language. and they
communicate with sign language and we are very kind to them and
you know, they're allowed to kind of, you know, carry our books
when we put people on trial and all of that sort of thing.
And, and, you know, they start to die of dodo's cold and they're a
bit upset by that, but no one else is particularly phased.
Yeah, they don't do anything until the humans are dying.
Humans are dying that it's like a giant thing and we'll put
everyone on trial.
And so it's already a little bit problematic.
Well, no, look, vastly hugely hideously problematic and racist.
But I kind of wanted to at least say that there are things about
the design and the production in those 1st 2 episodes, which are
stunning.
I mean, the thing looks vastly better than it had before.
I mean, even the costumes, which were a bit silly.
Yeah, well, it's the Fenian League.
You've got to look again at...
Yeah, you know, the undersea.
They're going back in history with the costumes and forward in
history.
It is an interesting sort of melding to imply that it's this
perfect society, except that they look like, you know, like a milk
bar, like the, the, uh, the strips that hang down on the door.
Yeah.
And they're all kind of wearing them no matter how old they are.
But, you know, the sets are big.
They have an elephant.
They have an elephant and like real animals.
You know, really nicely, it's on as a cutaway.
So you assume it's just another...
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. and that's around the crew, the cast
actually reached out.
Jo actually goes...
So that thing's probably died of the fluid as well.
Monarchy, yeah.
But then and that cliffhanger, I agree with you.
That cliffhanger.
The great thing about it is we even get the sort of, like we get
quite a way into the credits.
We may even get the sort of next week, you know, whatever it is
the return.
Like, we get quite a way into it before we see that the head of
the statue is a more...
Yeah, yeah.
So it is, and we linger on that and all of that.
And that is really remarkable and really fantastic and something
that they've never done before.
Like we've never landed in the same place twice.
Except for, except for Campbell.
Yeah, but certainly not in a different time period, yeah.
This is one of those stories from our friends who were there for
the 1st time round, along with Web Planet. seems to be, that are
most remembered from the Hartmorp era.
So, again, because this is a story that's supposed to be propelled
by its visual qualities and content rather than its players
because honestly, that security kitchen really gets a workout
doesn't it?
Love the security kitchen.
We love the security kitchen.
And it's a good idea.
So, you know, the mono's obviously thinking, well, at least you
can bake while you're prisoners.
It's actually very modern getting prisoners too.
No, but like the mono, it's and they don't have mouths, right?
No, they have...
Sunny bono amulets.
They get served with food.
They just kind of look at it.
You do actually see them like put it behind their neck.
Oh, so they've got like a neck.
I thought their mouths were in their chest, which is where their
voice box things are.
Maybe it's also their chest.
I thought it was their neck.
I just sort of think they sort of waving around and add attention
to this story.
But where it all goes to hell, right?
Yeah.
Where it all goes to hell is episode three.
And so what's happened is we, we humans, we, lovely white people
have been so kind to the monoids, you know, by patronising them
and allowing them to speak.
In fact we've allowed them, we've taught them to speak. loudest.
Yeah, you know, we've let them carry our books and drive our
things around and all that sort of thing.
And then a flu dodo's flu has infected the humans and caused them
to lose the will to live.
Much like the massacre, actually, has...
Moving on.
And, um, build a cross channel total.
I'll be back.
And suddenly the monoids are in charge and they're not the
benevolent overlords that the white people were.
They're in fact cruel and mean and they have numbers instead of
names and they explain their plans to each other in loud voices
and all of that sort of thing.
And the whole thing just sort of goes to hell.
It's really just terribly, terribly awful.
And at a time, are you going to mention Rhodesia?
I was going to mention, well, I wasn't even going to go to that
because we've covered it before, but I was going to mention, you
know, John Welles is an Afrikana.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I know. a white South African of that time.
I don't know what his own political views.
Look, I'm prepared to... really racist.
I prepared to give the gentleman the benefit of the doubt simply
because he's a man in theatre and a lot of people in theatre had
more of a lateral kind of thinking, even in these unprocessed
times.
But, you know, that people make political thoughts and positions
were much more black and white, I guess, in those days, as far as
we can see from that.
I saw what you did there.
Yeah, but boomtish.
But the, um, but whiles, look, I, okay, my personal take on this
this is the one that Wiles wanted to make.
This is the one that he came in.
Yeah, this is his vision of Doctor Who.
It was the very story he wanted to do, which is super duper.
It's a lovely idea because again, it's classic trope, I believe, is
the word, of science fiction.
It's the super duper art that's bigger than anything you can
possibly film and given it to someone a one off.
I think this is an interesting story in a lot of times.
A lot of reasons.
The director of this story, Michael Emerson, was giving his
marching orders.
You're not just going off this story.
You'll never be hired again by the BBC.
And then I think the end of one of episode one or 2 while he was
shooting it.
So the fact that he carried on might well indicate why episodes 2
and 3 and 4 is a pretty dull because the man...
I think they're badly directed.
I think it's all down the script.
I think it's all down to the...
So what happens is that the moment that these black people are in
control and we're talking at a time where, as you said before, you
know, England's former colonies in Africa, being given kind of
self-rule.
And so what happens here, the black people are stupid.
They explain their plans loudly to each other and tip off the
white people and they fight one another.
Do you know what I mean?
They can't be trusted not to fight among themselves.
And, you know, they're just sort of stupid and primitive and the
whole thing is just absolutely, absolutely monstrous and
terrible.
The only redeeming feature of episodes 3 and 4 is the fact that
there are a few sins have lost their physical shape in a galaxy
accident.
Fantastic, isn't it?
The thing is, even the refusian element is incredibly problematic
because, um, Mentos, that's the leader.
Mentos.
He's the fresh AK.
People, he all day sucker.
Well, he says we're going to this planet called Refuses 2.
It has similar earthlike properties, and the idea that it will
take 700 years to get there, unlike later Doctor Who, this is an
era of Doctor Who saying that earthlike planets are few and far
between, which is what we're seeing now when we're looking out
into the universe.
But he, um, but not fully plays of the, of the, in either the, the
the, the, the, No, none of them are particularly interesting.
Yeah, but they're not poorly played.
No, no, and there are some interesting moments.
And they're final shared.
Again, Michael Sheard makes his 1st of six, something
appearances.
God, I'm such a nerd.
It's true.
But no, I really think that there are things about this.
The fact that it was visually astounding at the time.
It got huge coverage here.
I've actually got newspapers from the time I found secondhand and
saved giving this huge coverage.
It got a big promotion by the ABC and Australian when it was shown
big promotion, promotion by the BBC.
Visually, it was the show.
And the audience figures reflected that. appreciation figures
reflected that.
And as I say, from fans like my friend Robert living in WA now, he
says, this is this and the web of fear and the web plan are the
only ones he remembers as a seven-year-old child watching.
So when Mentos says that, you know, we're going to this planet
refuses to, Stephen says, well, it's either Stephen or Dodo, who
says, oh, well, aren't there people living there?
And it's just pretty much, oh, we'll deal with that when we get
there.
Which in a colonial sense is. shoot them with our guns until they
give us their land.
And, you know, we're from Australia, we'd see how that turns out.
Yeah, yeah.
You know?
But it's all okay.
And that whole problem is voted because the refusians are
invisible, you know?
In fact, we're quite happy for you to come in.
It's the colonial dream of a native that says, oh, you're so
wonderful.
Why don't you come live in these houses we've already built for?
They did. actually did my car. castle for them.
The refusions as well.
Because they're sort of invisible, godlike entities and stuff.
They certainly speak in a god way.
Yeah, yeah. the ones who kind of end up as the moral centre of the
story.
Who tells them that they have to live together?
It's the refusing...
Yeah, you see, they're the ones who enforce.
And so...
Billy during all of this?
Yeah.
Oh, you know, facting about.
He doesn't, I think he is involved in the negotiations.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it is the refusians who kind of deliver the moral.
And so they say you have to learn to live together and all of that
sort of thing.
And you sort of think, oh, maybe this is kind of an attempt to
make it into a non-racist thing.
But it just doesn't really ring true.
And it's come after such horrendous nonsense for the last couple
of episodes that you just can't buy it.
Do you know what I mean?
Maybe, maybe the monoid should just learn their place.
Yeah, I mean...
It's a while before we get to it.
But it's a bit like the end of the 2 doctors where the doctor says
I think we're going to be vegetarians from now on.
Like, that does not make up for the past 135 minutes of horrible
Texas chainsaw massacre kind of stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, that's it.
And that's precisely.
They fig leaf, the kind of racism, but essentially this is a
pretty horrendous racist parable.
It's a shame because the plot on paper is quite interesting.
Yeah, the high concept is great.
The design is great.
I think it's really well directed.
The whole thing looks spectacular, but it's just horrendous.
I think it could have been saved if when the Monoids take over.
They are actually very good leaders.
Like if they were very good leaders and they were very intelligent
that would have been turning the whole colonialism, nation seeking
independence thing on its head because when the nations were
seeking independence, lots of people were saying, oh, well, they
won't be able, you know, they won't be able to run their own
country.
They need us.
If we had have seen the monoids actually being fairer than the
humans, rather than being out and out villains, and it had been a
thing of, you know, okay, you're being very fair to them, but they
are still your subjects and your prisoners, you must learn to be
equal.
Yeah.
That would have said that.
No, I don't think that is...
Milly is not angered by the monoid's oppression in episodes one
and two.
But he's very, yeah, very...
We take it as red that they're not of a sophisticated human level
of intelligence, but they don't speak that they're very robotic in
their movement.
We take it that they're only semi-centuent.
This is why I actually got to argue, since you've had you go on
the massacre, but it's not really a, it's a later reading that
this is racist, because these are lizards.
They're not people.
So you can actually talk about a special form of racism, but I
don't think it's a stand in for humanity.
It certainly wasn't seen that way at the time.
Okay, yes, you're saying that they were far more unenlightened
times.
Well, maybe they weren't.
Maybe they weren't.
Maybe people were actually a lot more aware of this because the
Commonwealth was splitting up.
I think people were very aware at the time of race.
That's why I think it's a consciously racist hero.
I don't think it is.
I think this is lizard guys from the 18th century in Beatle wigs.
Stop around being me.
Well, then servants, black, dark skinned servants. black and white
television.
They're black.
That's not enough to make it.
It really is.
I don't I think it is racist.
I do not think it is actively racist.
I think it's racist in the same way as early Warner Brothers and
Disney cartoons.
They're really racist.
Yes.
That's a bad thing.
Listen, listen, listen.
At the time, they were not setting out to be to be racial
vilification.
They were setting out to be amusing and missing and not getting it
right.
But as Whoopi Goldberg says, because the Looney Tunes DVDs come
with an intro, come with an intro by Whoopi Goldberg saying, you
know, I loved Looney Tunes as a kid, and what you're about to see
some of these things, they're racist.
They were wrong then, they are wrong now.
But if we deny it happened.
If we deny that this was a form of entertainment, that's as bad as
saying it never happened.
And that's why, in a way, this is an important Doctor Who story
because no Doctor Who story after this is as problematic in terms
of race.
Except for the next one, obviously.
Well.
Yeah, okay.
It's not quite as problematic.
It's one scene in that that's problematic.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
The whole we'll get there.
We'll get there. more than that.
The key word is celestial.
Yeah, I actually genuinely think that this is a story that the
writer is in control of, and that the writer is deliberately
choosing to say that, um, that the people to whom we are giving
independence in Africa are unable to govern themselves, and that
it's very...
But that's what the story seems to be.
But we don't necessarily take the lyrics to this point.
I'm of the perspective that, yeah, we, somewhere along the line, I
think it becomes that, whether it starts out...
Yeah, maybe it doesn't come from the weather or whether it is
designed like that.
Who knows?
The designer is Barry Newbury.
I don't mean the designer.
I mean the writer.
Ericsson.
Like, I'm not saying that Ericsson, I don't know who's responsible
for it, but the story that we have essentially has that as a
message.
Right.
Well, but otherwise it was terrific.
That's great.
Yep.
So I think I think we can boil that down too.
It's a great concept.
I'd like to know what other people, if any, if anyone is listening
to this.
What you think yourself.
If you could just leave a comment on the Facebook page. or on the
website. on the website.
Yeah, or the website even better because, you know, some of our
people have already been leaving.
Greg's left great comments just on what they think.
Do you think it's racist?
I, I, sort of, I sent my piece and you certainly hope from the
rest of us.
Yeah, we seem to be sort of coming from 3 different perspectives
of not racist, entirely racist. a little bit racist.
I don't believe it's intentionally signite.
Yeah, so I think we can sort of boil that down too.
It's a great concept, but with very, very questionable execution.
And speaking of questionable execution, we're off into a land of
dreams and fantasy.
Is this the one where I get to talk for 15 minutes about how much
I hate the massacre again?
No.
Oh, okay.
That is my fantasy though.
It's the celestial toy maker.
No, those chimes in the willow trees started to go off now.
This one's been given to me because I'm a lucky one.
This is another one of those things that on paper should have been
extraordinary.
It does and says things about, you know, the doctor facing a
godlike villain, the ultimate power, um, gods and monsters thing
of, you know, being taken out into a form of reality that's beyond
the reality of the universe that we know, we're going through
Brian Green's black hole.
He wasn't even around in those days, but black holes had actually
only, hang on, they hadn't even been promulgated yet.
Black holes were only a year old when they made the 3 doctors.
That's how early we are.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
It was a very new idea.
7172.
And it turns out, doctor who got it totally right.
Spoiler alert for...
Really?
There's like...
An ancient time lord with a sort of magical realm.
Stop it.
Do you know Do you know that there isn't?
You weren't there.
You don't know.
It's right.
Sorry, tuna. in the room with us.
Ah, this should have been amazing.
And you can see why fans like Gary Russell and the other guys were
saying that, you know, in Germany, in the memory of, oh, Nathan, do
you actually have a copy of Peter Haning's celebration?
It just so happens I do. with you at this very moment and we're
going to, we're going to relate this to the gentle listener
because I think you've got to be reminded of just what the
received idea of this was.
It's the doctor meeting, finally, his equal in a univer- in a part
of the world that doesn't belong in space and time, as we know it
that there are archetypes of, of, um, not just villains, but of, of
characters, that we only realise halfway through the narration
were once people, but have been denuded to be mere automatons and
mere dolls.
There's some really dark ideas in this.
And yet, it's really terrible.
It never quite pulls them off.
You're so sweet, Brendan.
It's awful from beginning to end.
Like we were discussing earlier.
My function of this podcast is to go, but everything's wonderful.
You think something.
So I'm not going to read...
I threw my hands above my head there, dear listener, like Nadia
comedy.
So I have Doctor Who Celebration by Peter Haning.
And this is a hugely important document because it's the 20th
anniversary thing.
So it's 1983.
It's before very much a very good year, listener.
Brendan's 1st viewing.
Really?
That was our 1st view on your friend.
Well, it was his, no, it was his moment, if you remember when we
were born, yeah.
So 1983.
And had any had there been any DVD releases?
Have there been any VHS?
And then came out that time on VHS and it cost the equivalent of
80.
Yeah, so you just couldn't watch old...
No, if you lived in Australia, you were very lucky because they
were stripping it on the ABC and we got to see things over and
over again.
Yes.
But essentially, you could never watch old Doctor Who.
And so this was most people's only source for, you know, what the
old stories had been like.
And this one raves about celestial toymaker.
I'm going to read one sentence because reading things out on the
podcast that are killing momentum stone dead.
Maybe I can add an echo to you.
I wouldn't do that.
Few drama productions on television have ever achieved the unique
atmosphere present in the 4 episodes of the celestial toy.
What does this say about the character of the Toymaker himself
though, because he's seen as being extraordinary.
I've got a bit to say about him.
He's really sax Romas, again, Fu Manchu, he's being the merciless
racist and celestial.
Oh, Celestial was a pass.
Thank you to Sandafar.
Well, it's actually a 19th century thing for Chinese and... drug
addled Chinese person.
Yeah, it does.
He, Chang in...
When Chang calls himself the Celestial Chang.
And apparently in Deadwood, Celestial gets used as a term of abuse
but I've never seen Deadwood, so God knows.
Is Inis Lloyd involved in this one?
Inis Lloyd and Jerry Davis are starting to come around.
This is during the handover.
So this is at the point where we're at a weird transition because
of course the doctor disappears for half of this story. more than
half of this story.
And that was as a result of John Welles still trying to get rid of
Hartnell.
And the original idea for changing the actor, which was vetoed by
Gerald Savoy.
Savoury.
I do beg your pardon.
Vetoed by Gerald Sabre, it was that the toy maker would make the
doctor disappear and then when he came back, he would be a new
actor. together, but the same persona.
So he would have the same look. but be a different actor.
And that was that was vetoed.
And I think that was actually the straw that broke the camel back
for whiles, who just kind of turned around and said, look, you
want me to make this show, but I cannot make this show because the
lead actor is impossible for me to work with.
Therefore, I will not make the show.
I will quit.
Yeah, Billy won that round.
And of course, Billy was, but it's also because in this story
Gerald Savoury himself had immediate involvement in it.
Where this comes from.
Can we just briefly say the TARDIS appears in something that is
like the land of fiction.
Only crummy.
The doctor, the doctor, suddenly turns somewhat invisible. and and
all the rest returns some way.
So the doctor has to play Towers of Hanoi with Michael Goff and
he's invisible and then inaudible and it's like some guy's hand
moving the things.
So the companions have to step out of the TARDIS and they find
themselves in the land in a land of one-to-one scale toys, a nice
little thing of planet of giants.
Again, you think that the TARDIS can take on the scale of whatever
universe is.
There's visually, there's kind of really exciting things that are
happening here.
The idea of these, and the design is actually gorgeous for a show
with no budget.
The tin robots are massive.
The TV sets in the chest, especially in the colour photos that you
can see of this.
They're really gorgeous looking.
And Michael Goff, of course, has come straight from the Avengers
where he was the inventor of the cybernauts.
Absolutely, the precursors to Doctor Who's cybermen a year later.
Really nicely done.
Now, This is actually the story that on paper was supposed to
propel the idea of Doctor Who as an international saleable
commodity online with the Avengers, and this story itself is the
story that is supposed to mime or mimic what the Avengers is
doing.
They did it beautifully with the kind of the fantasy in reality
the house that Jack built.
Thank you, which in itself actually kind of references the
TARDIS.
It's an M appeal story where a house is actually built just to
menace the chief protagonist in this case, Mrs. Peel.
So the idea of this one was that it would be, um, that it would
actually be something that would be, everyone would love and the
Americans would want to watch and buy.
Whereas it's really just 2 people running around playing really
rubbish children's games with no narrative connection at all.
It's extraordinary to watch it just how dull it is to actually
have to sit through.
And it is, there's no real peril.
Like, or there's no sort of properly to, you know, will be burned
or whatever.
And, you know, it's got lines like, what have you done now, you
clown you?
Well, clowns aren't even scary clowns.
As Rod said at the time, because I've got my notebook here.
I wish they would stop talking about the solutions and actually do
them.
And when they, when it occurs to them in the 1st 10 minutes of
each episode, it's such a waste.
You're so right.
You know, this comes from absurdist theatre, which is very...
Eugenie and Eska, the rhinoceros. good.
You know, this is really nice.
But on paper this was the same thing.
This is also absurdist theatre, um, if you don't know, it is that
is about the futility of the mundane and the everyday of life and
juxtaposed with um, with fantasy with very dark notions of where
we are.
It also presages Joe Orton's work, because it's very much like
this later.
And in fact, you've got dodo dressed as Joe Orton in the train
driver's cap.
Um, and, you know, Harold Pinter, of course, and people are
watching.
But those are good.
Do you know what this is?
You can actually say existentialism without blanching.
This idea is existentialist theatre.
But as you say, there's none of the production or the writing that
holds that together.
There's no threat.
There's no, like, all we have to do is get the TARDIS.
Everything's completely arbitrary.
The threat is only explained to us in dialogue and we never see
it.
There are no actual characters anywhere.
The games are deadly boring and protracted.
It really is.
I mean, it may be my least favourite Doctor Who story. terrible.
The reason that exists is because it was all taken out, and that
was by the head of series and serials.
Gerald Savoury had written a play in the 30s called George and
Margaret.
The characters George and Mildred from that about the house and
later their own show.
Well, based on that.
Shades of Samuel Beckett, maybe.
The characters of George and Margaret never actually show up in
this play.
The other characters sitting around waiting for them and there's
the drama of, you know, it's the existential loss of living in an
urban environment, blah, blah. in Britain in the 1930s.
It was still considered quite a literary piece and was very well
known enough for the casual viewer to have actually known who
these people were.
The idea of this one was that George and Margaret are played by
Carmen Silvera and...
Campbell Singer.
And they're actually in this.
So it's a kind of part two. what happens when you explore this.
Really, interesting take literary values and put them into a
reality.
So the TARDIS does actually can actually fly into the land of
fiction. know that now.
And but Gerard Savoury, because he was siding with Billy on this
and hearing that Wiles was corrupting the show, then thought, no
you're not having my characters, looked at the scripts and said, oh
actually, this note.
So the reason why I was left is because of this story.
And the reason Billy is here was stayed on because of the story.
And the reason it's pants is because of the politics going on at
the time.
Because otherwise, explicitly, you know, Joey and Clara, the king
and queen, Sergeant Rag and Mrs. Week, would have been the same
character.
They have been George and Margaret all the way true.
And then, you know, you've got that extra tension of, I believe at
the time George and Margaret was actually being performed and it
was very big in London.
Oh, okay.
And that was where Brian Hale's idea came from, you know, these
characters never show up. wouldn't it be great at use to these
characters, to which Donald Tosh said, oh, well, that's our boss.
I'm sure he'll let us.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, he did it first.
Yeah. until the scripts were written and then went, no, you can't
have them.
And yeah, that takes a big part of the wind out of the sales.
You know, it would be like David Whittaker writing the crusade and
then the sort of family trust of King Richard saying, no, you
can't use King Richard.
You know, it's that kind of narrative.
He's been watching it.
Oh, it's really rough.
I mean, it really is so boring.
Michael Goff is cool.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, he just spends a lot of time declaiming to an empty
room.
Look, I'm someone who loves, you know, this is the 1st of...
It's the 1st of a series, I've heard of Doctor Who stories, like
the Mind Robber or the Macraterra.
Or the greatest show in the Galaxy, which I think is a remake of
this.
All of which I think are great, but this is just awful.
And it is because there's no plot.
There's just a bunch of things that happen.
You know, you get to the end of the level and you get the TARDIS
and the crappy rhyme, which then appears over the credits, and
then you get to the next level and stuff.
It's something that could have gone on for like 50 episodes.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's something that doesn't help is that when they were
planning on bringing the toy maker back in the 1980s and they were
planning on making it nightmare fair, they were planning on making
it about video games and amusement parks.
Now, as the book?
It's not bad.
And the thing is, as much as you go, oh, I don't know if that
would work.
That is the modern entertainment of that era.
Whereas the games they are playing seem to me not to be the modern
entertainment of the 60s.
You know, even the dancing bit.
It's ballroom dancing and it's ballet.
It's not groovy house dancing that we'll see in just a few stories
in the war machines.
But isn't it isn't the point of it?
It's Victorian children's literature?
Like that, it has...
Yeah, it's Lewis Korean thing.
But I think I think it would have been far more effective if it
had been stuff that children in the 60s would more easily
recognise.
I mean, imagine, imagine if they had have just gone, right, We
can't use the meta of this play we wanted to use.
Let's use the meta of Doctor Who.
Let's have Stephen and Dodo playing Daleks around a dance floor.
It's Doctor Who does pop symbolism as it was in 1965.
It's actually Carnaby Street stuff.
Lewis Carroll was getting a huge revival. animation styles.
Later on, you're going to see yellow submarine with the Beatles
using the same kind of language, visual language.
It's very much what's groovy right now.
Ah, yeah, and then it just goes, because you know what?
Ideas are great. visual cues are great, but you've got to have
a...
You've got to have characters and you've got to have a plot and
you don't have either of those. needed a lot of work.
It was a last thing.
Well, you can see this is a political deflation of the Doctor Who
program where some people win, but as you said, it's a pyrrhic
victory for our hero, Billy.
Yeah, I don't think so much that it was a rough script. the
rewrite was rushed.
The rewrite was very much rush.
It was essentially rewritten from the ground up by Jerry Davis.
You know who we haven't mentioned?
Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of Mr. Davis, as you're going to find
out.
We haven't mentioned Jackie Lane's portrayal of Dodo.
Oh, dear, even...
And so now she's got a receive pronunciation accent and she's like
a blue Peter presenter.
But no one's got much to do, but she seems to play that her part
in this show as if she is a Blue Peter presenter.
I think she's been told she's playing a show for four-year-olds.
And she's ridiculously thought that that's true.
And yeah, just...
Doctor Who is not a children's program.
Dodo in this story is ridiculously stupid.
But do you think they're both on mock?
You think they're both drugged out of their minds?
They found Adrian Hill's stash in the target.
The thing is, if she was going to play it like that.
They should have thrown in a line about how she's being affected
by the environment because in the last episode, which we still
have.
There's no tension.
I mean, the last episode, I would say, is the best of the four.
Because they...
No, also some stuff that happens, so that finally has some drama.
Yeah, they have a decent adversary.
So it was quite a... is terrific.
Yeah, again, another character, they thought that...
I'd like to know what older fans who were there for the 1st time
around, and, you know, didn't remember it so well, but what do
they think about it now?
Yeah.
Well, Rod did say, because, as I've said before, he started
watching Patrick Grant, and he said, if I had a seen this when I
was a child, I would have switched off.
What did he give it?
He gave it one out of 10, wow.
Wow, he's a child.
Which is his 2nd lowest score.
And yet at the time, people thought it was great.
Yeah, they were crazy.
They just finished rationing.
No, I think because it heats all the all the pop images of the
time.
Visually, kids remember it as being cool because it looks like it
should be right.
Last episode when we were talking about things like the web planet
you mentioned people being on substances and whatnot.
I think this is another one that would have been very popular with
the students.
The older university college polytechnics, you think so?
Yeah, maybe, yeah.
I think you would have had visual imagery.
Yeah.
I thought the arc, maybe, or definitely the web planet, maybe more
of that.
The viewers still stayed around 9000000 for this.
They didn't go beyond below 8.9.
They had nothing else to do. what they're going to do.
ITV.
I suppose they didn't analyse it and talk about it, Richard.
It did, yeah, but you know, it's...
Terrible, to be so.
All right, well, that's a lovely way to...
Are we concluding our episodes?
I think I think we are.
We've just been bitching nonstop.
Well, can we, I just think, if we could just go for another 15
minutes so that I could talk about how much I hate the massacre
that would be a perfect ending to this episode.
And probably the loss of the listener as well.
Yeah, I think that would be a perfect ending to you going home and
doing that by yourself.
But I think I actually do actually write out things about how much
I hate them.
And tape them to telephone poles.
Oh, that's you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I live.
Yeah, yeah.
Or sample, put pixels.
Someone's actually given your picture of Leonard Sachs at the
admiral did holding an even bigger moustache.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's quite elaborate.
But no, I think I think it just goes...
I think it just goes to show.
I mean, these 3 stories are the 3 stories when John Wiles was in
total control.
It just shows...
How terrible he was for Doctor Who.
You know, I don't want to say anything against the man.
Obviously, he's no longer with us, and I know very little about
him outside of Doctor Who.
He did kick puppies though, I'm told.
Well, his background is, I thought he ate them.
His background is in children's theatre for the death.
I'd like to think that, actually, maybe he's a nice person.
That there's more to him than that.
Yeah.
I think he had a lot of battle with Billy, and he was coming in on
the back of, you know, an extraordinary producer, and he look, I
mean, he probably only kicked puppies on really bad days.
When he was like really cross.
Yeah, well, you know what?
That's the thing.
Everyone's got their own story.
And when we come down to it, each of these stories does have
something to redeem them. even in the celestial toy maker.
Well, it's only 4 episodes.
It's only could have been eight.
It could have been 20.
It's only 4 episodes.
Michael Goff's very good.
The arc has a really good idea behind it.
And the massacre is brilliant.
And as we're ending now, you're not going to say anything else
Nathan.
Good night.
The mess is terrible.
Thank you very much for taking a partisan, a bipartisan view.
This, dear listener.
Thank you.
Bye.
You have been listening to Flight Through Entirety with Nathan
Botomley, Brendan Jones and Richard Stone.
This episode, someone lost their veagle, who was recorded on
Sunday, the 10th of August.
The next episode will be released on September 14th.
You can find us at flightthroughentirety.com, flight through
entirety on Facebook and iTunes and FTE podcast on Twitter.
If we are to play endless games together.
My choice is Mario Kart.
This is Flight through Entirety.
Now, what was my thing?
My thing, what stories are we doing?
Who am I?
We're the only podcast without a ping pong balling.