Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to Flight Through
Entirety.
The only Doctor Who podcast who are always mindful of the Odd
Brontosaurus.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan, and I'm an all seeing, all knowing neuronic nucleus in
a spa for this episode.
So we've managed to kill off Adric, and I'm sure we're going to
have a deep, deep exploration of the emotional consequences
thereof and the ontological nature of...
Oh, it's no, it's time fly.
You know, Adric really wouldn't want us to mourn, you know.
He'd want us to go to the Great Exhibition and then never mention
him again.
Yeah, he'd want us to be really upset until we found out we were
going on holiday.
Miraculously, it's all over in my 30 seconds.
I'll go and crimp me here, Nissa, have you still got that thing?
What vibrates your roots?
It's really terrible.
It's got to be that episode.
We're not even drunk, do you listener?
It's going to be that end of the season thing.
Ends of the seasons have always been a certain kind of guilty
pleasure, haven't they?
Certainly during the Pertuy era, where they're written by Loman or
whoever.
Yeah, terrible.
Is anyone feeling a little bit coronavorian, slappy at this
point?
Well, that's actually enjoyable.
I mean, this does actually share a reasonable amount with a time
monster, doesn't it?
Oh, yes.
In what way?
Well, it's kind of stupid and it's got time for the title and, you
know, there's a lot of sort of hijinks with the master and stuff.
But it's really fun in a way that this just isn't at all.
It's so boring.
And so cheap looking.
To be fair, the beginning stuff in Heathrow Airport is actually
rather marvellous.
I think it's really quite fun.
It's just another one of those little diadems where the pointy
bits at the top, the 1st episode is a lot of fun.
We've had several of those.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's another example of JNT's master negotiating skills.
You know, he manages to negotiate the 1st drama to film at
Heathrow Airport, the 1st drama to film with a Concord, and he
even started a bidding war between Air France and British Airways
because British Airways were like, oh, well, you know, you have to
only film it from this angle and it can't be used for evil
purposes and this and that.
And he just kind of wrote in a letter to them.
Oh, well, thank you very much.
I'll discuss this with the writer and the script editor to make
sure we can accommodate you, and we're also expecting to hear back
from Air France.
Next later it gets from British Airways.
We're very happy to grant you filming permission.
And, you know, without any assurances that any of those things
were going to happen.
So it was a masterstroke from him.
They did get to vet the script.
But oddly enough, the stuff they wanted to cut out were not what
you'd expect. were they?
No. can't direct my brain and remember what the bloody hell they
were.
They weren't they weren't the stuff that ends up in a time
corridor or it's flown by soap stars.
They did have to change the names of the crew.
The crew all had different names who just coincidentally enough
happened to have the same names as British Airways employees, not
necessarily all captains and flight engineers.
Or Seraphim.
Khalid, yes.
Yes, your wine waiter.
Don't touch the cheesy morsels.
You know, as our podcast is likely to have as much semblance of
sticking together well as this story itself.
I'm going to chuck in.
I've met Keith Anthony Time flight drink on several occasions.
And he's actually lovely.
He plays on Scobi in this story.
So he's the flight engineer with the little moustache.
Oh he's nice.
He is absolutely lovely.
I've seen his one man show of Dorian Gray.
Oh, okay.
Where he doesn't play Dorian.
He plays a friend of Dorian's. the narrator from the book and kind
of all reported, but really scary stuff.
He is still acting for TV and audio and lots of stage work and
yeah, living happily in the south of England and he's just a
lovely, lovely chap.
It has to be said.
I quite like him in this.
I mean, you know, they're all quite likeable.
I'd watch a show of that, you know, I walked the spinoff sitcom.
Captain Statley.
Well, maybe Big Finish should get on it.
Maybe, you know, they're in the TARDIS and they have a few missing
adventures before like turning up in hover mode in episode 3 or
whenever it is.
Yes, of course.
And Michael Cashman, who plays the most openly gay character on
EastEnders, back in about 96, 97.
And also an openly gay man himself.
And I think the 1st openly gay MEP from the UK, which is a mobile
excursion person, personnel suit thing.
Yes, a member of the European Parliament, which Britain may not
have for much longer.
But that's not for here.
But no, so yeah, Michael Cashman went on, as you say, Richard, 1st
gay character, primetime British television on EastEnders, but
also a huge campaigner for gay rights and campaigned against
Section 28 for many years.
You know, a lot of people hold up Ian McKellen and rightly so.
But Michael Cashman was there right alongside Ian McCellen in the
70s and 80s, you know, going on these protests when going on the
protests, got you beaten up by police.
You know, so greatly erect.
Yes, he's very in this.
He managed to convince me fancied Tegan in this, I believe.
There's acting.
There you go, yes.
We'll take more care of you.
He said it was the jingle.
Do you remember it was on the transmitted version but not in the
DVD release?
There was a lot more BA propaganda in this one.
No, and apparently the techie stuff that they wanted to change was
with the enormous flight control deck for Concord, which, yes, is
one bloke with frizzy hair, looking at a scanner, waiting for
fibreglass meteorites to fall on John Pertwee.
Bush.
It's even smaller than the set on Speared from Spain.
Oh, the pixeless ones Yes, it's even smaller than that.
I was about to say.
They had a massive air traffic controller, Gatwick, in that
faceless ones, and now it's just one bloke with a TRS 80, for
God's sake.
You know, if they had a sense something like, we're monitoring the
Concorde separately because they keep disappearing.
You know, lampshade that stuff.
But it's Ron Jones again and he doesn't really care.
Then what did Andrew Morgan?
Yes.
Busy doing squadron. was about, oh, I guess, planes.
Right, yes.
They do get him later.
They do. pretty good.
I'd like to read you something here at this point.
It's by a very, very witty writer, namely Me.
There's a book coming up called Hating to Love, where J.R.
Southall of the Blue Box podcast and Starburst magazine and the U
and Who series of books has got a bunch of us together and we're
all writing about a story which is considered the worst from each
season of Doctor Who.
So one of the stories I was given to write about is time flight.
Now the book's not out yet, but I'd just like to read you my 1st
paragraph.
1979.
Peter Grimwade, a longtime Doctor Who crew member, aspiring writer
and director, and robot detractor, pictures to then script editor
Douglas Adams, the concept of an evil force overtaking a gestolt
alien entity.
By the time Time Flight came to be produced in 1982, little of
this original idea remained.
The concept had been through 4 script editors, 2 producers, one
executive producer, 5 companions, 2 doctors, and the most unlikely
shopping list ever to contribute to a collapsing souffle.
And we refer back to the novel, the plasmaton accumulation enter
his chamber.
Even ah, he cried.
So I don't think even by the time they get to the novelisation
they're actually bumping that one up, anyway.
This is such a glorious mess of a story.
It's just been through so many hands and just thrown before the
cameras.
I think we're actually doing it as a live podcast now where you're
actually going to do an oration on it.
Yeah, that might be fun.
It does mean having to watch it again, though.
Watch the sound down, putting something else.
I have to say that the thing that I like about this is it's kind
of ambition.
So Cornell Day and topping say that the moment it featured a
Concorde going through to prehistoric Earth, the script should
have been thrown in the bin.
I think that that's not the problem with the script at all.
I think the high concept idea is actually really great.
You know, they have fun filming at Heathrow Airport, the fact that
there's a giant big concept and all of that, that's not the
problem.
The problem is the execution, and then what happens in episodes
two, 3, and four.
Mikano.
Yeah.
Oh, well, 4 is just terrible. isn't it?
A whole episode, they're just putting machines together.
They're building a flotation tank for they're building an intimate
spa for a whole lot of daggy old Doctor Who extras.
Do you know who the flight crew are, the people who can't talk and
everyone's, you know, receive fan wisdom as these people are all
terrible?
It's Val McCrimmon.
Remember who remember production associate type person?
Yeah, she took up a gun in the last story.
That's the one.
Business per- Oh, there's Leslie Weeks and Barney Lawrence.
Graham Cole, who was the Melcor, is one of the passengers standing
around.
You can tell because he's still a little bit arthritic.
And even they don't really help, do they?
I just want to see them in the spa scene at the end when they
finally break through.
You know the French and Saunders sketch.
With the Silurians.
Yeah, with the cellularians.
We quoted it before.
And the way that it characterises how Doctor Who episodes sound is
they're full of just sort of lamentable techno babble and like
stupid planet names and stupid.
This is when the show becomes that.
Yeah, yeah, this is it.
And it got some really good ratings for viewers to support that.
It got over 10000000 in episode one, remember?
I think we speculated that people were tuning in to see what their
fallout would be from Andrix dead.
Yeah, how they how they scraped him off the windchill.
Not much, really.
Well, he was still in the cast list.
And apparently that's another JNT thing that he wanted to not give
away the surprise of Earthshock.
And that's the only reason you get a cameo if it was me being
terrifying all the time, which was really pretty impressive on 1st
transmission.
I remember as a boy of 14 thinking, oh, it was another block
transfer computation thing or it was another one.
Maybe this Adric is maybe we've not had the real Adrical season
and he's coming back.
All kinds of interesting things go through your head, but what is
wrong with this story is that it ends up being very much like a
Sloman script or indeed our favourite baker and Martin.
Yeah, the boys from Bristol, that lots of ideas, little seeds are
there, but they never germinate.
They're just tossed away for the next scene.
Yeah, yeah.
As I mentioned last week.
This is one that I came to during the 1993, 4 AM repeat season of
Doctor Who.
Drunkenly, yes.
So already this story had as much mythic status for me as, say, the
keys of Marinas or the Aztecs.
You know, it was something I'd only read about in books.
Right.
So coming to it.
The thing I really latched onto and the thing that really excited
me was the stuff in episode 3 with Xeraphim.
They're terrible.
Well, that's the thing.
I look at it now when I go, this is such a brilliant concept and
it was the central concept that Peter Grimwade came up with, but
it just gets buried under all this crap.
I'm more concerned that we end up on the set of Jurassic Park.
Well, that's...
There's the BBC in terms.
But that's the other thing too. is that there's no money at this
point.
And really bites, doesn't it?
It's terrible.
Like the exteriors are just lamentable.
I mean, they're so poor.
You do expect Billy to wander past them casting his shadow on the
distance.
I was just seeing Barbara in that feathered hat.
Oi, who's in charge?
I am worship me.
I wanted a bit of that.
That's what they need to do with the characters.
Again, Nissa is standing around being meaningful and slumping
against a bit of polystyrene and getting Osmos at they're not
using the wit or the drive.
Janet gets to, you know, do a few welcome aboard speeches and it's
reasonably truculent with that.
But it's still not enough, is it?
We're sorry for the delay passengers. script.
It was a messy, as you were saying, it's a messy conjoining, isn't
it?
The growth and birth of this story.
Yeah.
Something that really doesn't help in.
And for years, I've been fighting against people who complain that
in the studio, Concord is represented by one very slim wheel.
But I've just realised the problem with that is we've already seen
shots of Concord on location with that wheel and you can see the
shadow of the thing overhead.
And whenever anyone's standing next to the wheel of the Concord.
I've literally just realised this in the last 20 seconds.
There's no shadow over the top of them.
The lighting in this is it's the lighting that lets this one
down.
It's the bland, flat Star Trek next gen season 2 problem of, no
actually even they were aware of it by then.
Flat overarching.
Acorn antiques.
It's Ron Jones.
Is it really Ron Jones?
Because, okay, Ron Jones has done Black Orchard this season?
And it's a bit hard.
He doesn't get the right, like, you can't get the lighting wrong
on Black Orchard.
But he does this.
He does, I think, Arc of Infinity next season.
He does vengeance on Varos.
Yeah, Ron Jones is very much your point the cameras at the actors
when they say the words, okay.
Is it time to go?
And you're getting a lovely line or 6 of you just straight up
there and just, oh, look, 3 quarters that way and the camera will
shoot you?
It's very high school Shakespeare, isn't it?
Just the arrangements of the actors, the 4th wall thing.
And the monster that looks like a poo with leg.
What are they thinking?
What our favourite, favourite characters have not gone much
further than that.
There's an emoji of it.
Have you seen it?
Yes.
The smiling plasmaton emoji.
Yeah, to the lies in a brown thing.
Well, you remember that we used to get white dog poo on the lawn?
We did used to.
This is the white dog poo of a gel guard because they've got the
same kind of clear bubble.
And when you get a few close-ups of them.
You do see an eye moving around inside their gel guards.
Oh, calcified dog turts.
This is exactly what happened to the milk core.
Speaking of calcified dog turds, of course, the masters in this
one.
Oh, can we get to Khalid?
I was at one of my best friend at school was called Khalil and
didn't he cop it this week?
with this coming up because again, not doing the accent.
But okay, I'll admit it.
I was 14 years old, I thought I was a little bit swank.
I didn't guess it was Anthony Aimling.
No, because he's doing your sort of racist grandfather's imitation
of an Arabian kind of wizard.
That being said, is Ronnie Barker, isn't it?
Khalid is at least entertaining.
Yeah, no, he was.
He's certainly entertaining, Pete, because Pete is laughing.
Yeah, he really is.
I mean, the thing is, when people say, you know, it's an Arabic
stereotype.
I certainly see that now, but I think they have tried to mitigate
it by making his exterior so obviously alien.
It's not another Lee Sen Chang situation.
I was just thinking, have we come this far down because that ain't
Magnus Greal anymore?
No, no.
I mean, you know, obviously he's an alien.
For some reason, they've decided to make him the size Doria
Maldova would be.
And I'm not entirely sure why they've done that.
Not that they necessarily need a reason, but earlier this season
we've already had Stratford Johns. you know, so he begins to look
a bit.
There's just not quite the visual variety.
I quite like his inner sanctum set.
I like the interior sets are good.
And they're nicely designed and the colorations and just the
diagonals of them, the sloping seats, a little bit of Ken Adam. you
notice?
Every wall's at an angle.
Yeah, Nathan's not smiling, don't listen.
I don't like the inside the sanctum thing and I don't like the...
What a great episode title that would have been inside the sanctum
episode two.
What could possibly go wrong?
Matthew Warthouse was, according to the rest of the cast, very
unhappy about having to make the cameo.
Oh, really?
And if you look at on the DVD, there is behind the scenes footage
and he does seem, he does seem a little bit unhappy.
But personally, I don't think that's, oh, you know, they've killed
me off last week and they've asked me to come back because if he
really didn't want to be there.
He wasn't, he had to be issued a separate contract for that
episode and could have easily said no.
But I think it's probably more that if you look at that, he's got
like 2 lines and he has to say them about 10 times and he's just
being told, oh, could you give it a bit more this and there's just
his look at his face of, how many ways could I say, if you come
any closer, you'll kill me.
Okay, fine.
Chatter than missing.
Dashed.
It would be great.
He could say, I want you to sound bored now, man.
I want you to give it a come hither, sort of speed.
Can you do it like Richard Todd?
If you do it with the camera here, Matthew, like Richard Todd, do
the camera here.
Yes, all right. how to act.
I bet they had fun that day.
In the in the Earthshot commentary, Janet Fielding talks about all
of her nicknames for Matthew during the shooting and he was like
called Matt Finish and Boom Boom Waterhouse and stuff.
So they were teasing him just like he complains about in episode
one.
There's something I forgot to measure last week that there's a
great moment on that commentary.
You know, they've all gone quiet during the death scene.
This is for earth shock.
They gone quiet, the ship's about to blow up.
And when NISA screams out, Patrick!
Janet Fielding says, you can't hear you, love.
And at that point, they all kind of flood in and start, including
Matthew start making comments, but they've all kind of been
hanging back because, oh, no, we should be very quiet for this
bit.
Janet's just like, nah.
They are the best commentaries with these terrible run of
stories.
The commentaries are just terrific.
I think the only story Davison doesn't give a commentary on is the
Awakening.
You know, he's, of the doctors, he's the, he and Colin are the
most prolific on their own commentaries.
Also most alive.
Yeah, it was pretty hard to get Billy back in for the Aztec
special edition, wasn't it?
Without a Ouija board.
And I don't know if you heard this.
Richard Handel just wasn't up for it, so yeah.
I don't know if you've heard this, but Sylvester McCoy couldn't do
all his commentaries because he was making some little film called
The Hobbit.
Did you hear about that?
He might have mentioned it.
Yeah, once or Schwarz.
And again, we're avoiding talking about the story at hand.
Nigel Stock.
Oh, hooray.
The other number six.
That's right Is he Professor Hayter?
Yeah, there's always one, isn't there?
Yeah, for haters.
Well, I love how his professor hater and he's a complete
scientific sceptic.
And an 11th doctor fanboy.
Yes, he's straight.
Where is his entire fan read cosplay?
I am your future.
It's stupid Why does he sacrifice himself?
And then zombie hater comes in and it's all a sort of profound
scary mystery.
See, I, the thing is, I think that's a little bit of bit me
lingering because that's the kind of thing bit me would do.
And certainly, Professor Hayter, all the way through the story, is
a scientific man searching for facts he can latch onto and he's
offered every single fact in the universe.
It's a beautiful and terrifying moment.
This is a really weird Doctor Who story.
In the episode three, in my opinion, is actually the best one that
has the best character moments and actually moves the prolong and
the best concepts.
And it is still the doctor episode where the doctor spends an
episode locked in a room.
And that scene where Professor Hayter kind of melts is kind of
horrible as well.
And when Khalid melts, it's definitely a 2 Kleenex box scene, isn't
it, as they used to say in Hollywood.
It's like gone with the wind, but for nasal cavities.
They're awful.
And you find out in the DVD, on the studio floor footage, it is
actually Anthony Ainley under all that while they're pumping it.
Really didn't like him.
Because they couldn't afford a stuntman, I imagine.
That's the thing.
Like, when it's all gushing out, you can hear the floor manager
saying, Anthony, you know, give it a few more wriggles, you're
dying, you're dying. career is dying.
I can't remember who it was, but years ago, when I used to go on
Girlfrow Base or Outpost Galifray, or we'll ban you if you put up
the wrong kind of link, whatever they call it.
Now There was someone who said that he went to watch one of the
rehearsal sessions for time flight, because when they were doing
the camera rehearsals at the BBC, the gallery was actually open
and you could go in and watch things being filmed during JNZ's
tenure, they only closed it during Earth Shock, I believe, because
he wanted to maintain all the surprises.
And whoever this person was, he was saying that Anthony Ainley
after he gets the Khalid makeup of, initially was giving a very
subtle, very menacing performance.
It was coming down from JNT via Ron Jones.
No, no, no, no, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger.
Not stupid enough, Tony.
Yeah, not stupid enough.
And apparently like Anthony Anley would just kind of sigh and get
on with it because, you know, it's what the director wants.
But yeah, you know, we give him so much flack, but it looks like
he actually wanted to play the character a little more sensitively
which I think he eventually gets to do in about 7 years.
It's weird because, you know, Khalid's ridiculous and over the top
but I really like Leon Noite as Khalid.
I think he's really entertaining.
I think at the time too is the best, most colourful character in
the story.
You know, just moved around more.
It's feeling a bit, it's crossways of other shows, whereas Doctor
Who, this season, managed to be looking forward to trends, like
the Avengers used to and predicting what was going to come in the
next decade.
This one's actually doing a whole lot of 70s and unfortunately
American shows.
It's a bit fantastic voyage.
It's a bit, oh, gosh, even 60s films.
Like, let's get into a submarine and get injected into somebody's
veins.
Are we going to do that in Doctor Who as well?
aren't we?
You know?
But there's, again, the high concept of American stuff that you
really need a big budget to do because most of this is meant to be
driven.
Like this plot is not an action plot.
It's a visual spectacle.
Maybe it works great on radio.
What's it like as a novel let?
Has anyone read it?
I've not read the novel, but I can't imagine that it would be very
good.
It's very light.
I remember that.
I read it.
I have no memory of it at all.
Does Grimwade himself write it?
Grimway does write it.
Simtra Recall, he was interviewed years later and he sort of said
for that, I think it was the 1st target novel he wrote and he kind
of said, oh, you know, I just put the shooting script on paper.
It wasn't until I came to do like Planet of Fire and later stuff
that I realised, I'm allowed to embellish things.
Even...
Page 65.
Chuckodemus went when the walls fell.
Yes.
Because he does say at one point, I will summon Chuckodemus
supplier.
It's terribly exciting for the inner fan person what I am to see
up than fuselage of a Concorde, so to speak, get right inside the
elementary canal and just sort of how bloody tiny it really was.
And just how unattractive the passenger lists were in those days.
The biggest plot hole for me is that an academic can actually
afford to fly Concord in 1981, 82.
He was obviously being employed by Big Farmer, and it's just as
well he got sucked back, Professor Hayter, and turned into a bit
of loft insulation or whatever he ended up because he was
obviously preparing drugs that would no doubt destroy our
civilisation.
Can I share a few words about the unsung hero of this story?
Me?
Is it?
Angela Clifford.
Oh, she's fabulous.
Also the announced tricks, isn't she?
Yes, I think so.
But she is lovely in this.
Well, she's a moment of genuineness.
Jenna, are you watching?
That's what an air stewardess is like.
She's not an idiot and she's not incredibly irritating.
She actually just a normal person doing a job.
Yeah, I think sorry.
The captain wants us to try that new Indonesian restaurant is
found.
Oh, no, it really does segue to Surbanon, doesn't it?
They're all off next door to Margot and Jerry Ledbeders.
She does kind of disappear though.
Angela Clifford.
Like, you know, she goes into the master's TARDIS, but you never
see her cub out.
That's true.
You see the other ones, but of course, she's a girl person.
They don't need to bother getting her back on set.
Well, I don't know, maybe she wasn't available for that studio
session or whatever, but you see her dragging the TARDAS across
the tundra, the gigantic tundra that we've got.
I mean, the thing is, like, that scene where all the passengers
are dragging the TARTAS across in that huge wide shot.
It feels like the scene with the Trojan rabbit in Monty Python and
the Holy Grail.
God, it is too.
Do you think they were all marginal?
Oh, she is the announcer, though, in the episode four, I think
against... she's there.
She's paid for the 4 episodes.
Yeah, I don't know. don't know.
Just seems to be a lot of walking around, going in and out of
TARDIS is carrying things, waving your arms around.
I mean, there's a lot of early 80s G-rated Tom of Finland desk
calendar air crew stuff going on too, aren't there?
There's a lot of blow drying and mustaching going on with...
Well, you say it with some convincing flirting with Janet
Feldick.
So there you go.
Built-in doesn't actually flirt with Tegan, but Stapley brings
built-in out of his hypnotism by saying, do you remember Tegan?
And, you know, Builtin says, yes, of course, we cut away before he
says, yes, this is why I quit women.
Because, of course, it doesn't work that way.
Take one step closer towards me, Janet.
Oh, die.
We're going.
I must say, I love I love Stapley and built-in attempting to fly
the Tartars.
Yeah.
Oh, it is really good.
It can't be that big red one.
They are a great team.
They should be the Jago and Lightfoot spinoff of the 80s, shouldn't
they?
And you know what?
The master's stuff with them, the master's stuff with the flight
crew is so much better than his stuff with Davidson.
I mean, given, and I think it was Robert Sherman wrote this in an
issue of time space visualiser, Doctor Who Story should have some
big showdown at the end, and here we get the doctor and the master
slightly reluctant to hand 2 science projects to watch.
It's so true.
It's my mini Aurak.
Well, further off on the tundra, we're draining sort of brake
fluid from, you know, one Concord and putting it in another one.
The commentary track is terrific.
Ooh, it looks like lime cordial says China.
No, it's terribly corrosive. the real thing.
Brake fluid is green, is it?
Yes, it's a lubricant.
Eric Saywood is similating all of that in.
So what is on the audio cast of these once when he's sitting there
with Pete and Janet and Sarah is surprisingly diffident and
mellow.
And look, I just always expected, say, to have a big blustery
blessed slash Brian kind of sound to him, because I just imagine
that's what he was like as a script editor.
But he's almost quietly, you know, he's almost Marple-esque in the
background.
He just sitting there quietly knitting while the others take the
pierce.
Do you think that's just many years of mellowing in hindsight or
the fact that I've outlived almost everyone?
I think it's a little bit of mellowing, but also that sort of
spokenness kind of hides the things he does say sometimes.
Because especially in the documentaries, he quite often when he's
talking about the story, the phrase, I told John this didn't work
but he insisted.
Is there a lot?
It's kind of like Bid Me didn't seem to have this problem.
Andrew Cartmel didn't seem to have this problem.
Both of them did comment that John would like ideas that needed a
lot of work, but it seems like Eric Saywood is was a lot more
ready to just put his hands up and say, whatever.
And I can't even put that down to his age because he was, I think
in his 30s.
But Andrew Cartmel was in his 20s, you know.
And John Nathan Turner's instincts aren't always wrong.
You know, Sabard always presents it as, say, was knew what's right
for the program and that Nathan Turner had stupid ideas.
You know, he carved Bonnie Langford and his Beryl Reed for
Earthshock.
But, you know, those 2 casting decisions aren't so bad.
And certainly the program was better before, say, would became
script editor and after he left.
Yeah, I think both John Nathan Turner and Eric Say would make good
decisions and bad ones.
And I think both don't really own up to their own responsibility
as much as they should.
I mean, obviously John is no longer with us and can't, but
certainly the interviews I saw with him when he was still alive, he
doesn't seem to acknowledge some of the decisions he made, but
Eric Say would vehemently denies there's anything wrong with his
decisions.
You know, it's a very odd relationship.
I don't recall seeing Peter Grimway talk that much about his
writing.
It's mostly about his directing because he's an excellent
director.
I think he's, I think he's a good writer, but I think this story
suffers from having been on the planning board for 3 years
terrible fanfic where nothing very interesting happens and there's
a lot of people standing around saying stupid things.
I'm not going to mention this podcast But, you know, the sexy.
The central conceit of the Gestolt entity and the master trying to
take them over and some of them agreeing with the master and some
of them disagree.
That's a fascinating idea.
No, no it isn't.
And there's our title.
No, go on.
Sorry.
No, no, I think that is a fascinating idea.
I just, it's not given enough airtime and it's not given enough
care.
You know, we only see 2 of these people and, you know, one of them
is, I am totally 4 and I am totally against.
I'm with you.
A bit of Socratic dialogue is fine, but actually develop it in the
way that Plato would have done it, that we really need some
development, some character development here.
Professor Hayter.
Nigel Stock's a pretty good actor.
He's pretty prestigious and he's been in some very big stuff, but
here it's just a big stuffing, isn't it?
You know, what if, at the end of episode three, we discover that
all this time we've actually been inside the sarcophagus and
everyone we've meta elements of this gestolt.
Much more interesting, you know, as they dissolve into fairy
liquid soap suds, yes.
It wouldn't have changed the budget because everyone would have
just looked human.
You would have had a reason to give all the characters.
They would have had to take some side in the argument. you know
and it would have given the doctor something to figure out rather
than just the end of episode 3 with, oh, the master has teleported
a thing out of a room.
It looks like he's finally defeated me.
There's some really serious word peril of that cliffhanger.
There is.
You see, I've voted best of the season by the Doctor Who
appreciation society.
Did they like it more than Earth?
The time they liked it more than anything.
They liked Earthstock's 2nd bestest.
Yeah, I think Kinder was like four.
Oh, no, they hated Kinder.
I think possibly achieved that poll.
Maybe because it was the most recent story.
Like when you consider the Dwim 50 years poll from a few years ago
day of the doctor comes out on top.
Now, I'm not saying Day of the Doctor is as deficient in quality
as this story anywhere near.
It is still an excellent piece.
But it comes out number one, and I think part of it is the newness
of it.
That always happens.
Because we've been teasing Todd, who gives the story a -one out of
10.
We've been teasing him all week that I love this story.
And it's another story that I enjoy watching for what it attempts
to do.
And the main reason it fails so dismally is because they just
haven't taken care of it.
They've kind of gone, like Andrew Morgan pulled out at the last
minute because he didn't let the scripts and they had to get Ron
Jones in who was still very new to directing at this point, they
obviously don't have much money left because they've spent it all
on.
They finished shooting a week before transmission.
Yeah, really?
Yeah, that was that close.
It's so bizarre considering that season 18, they took such good
care with money.
Yes, they do, didn't they?
So every...
JNT's experienced with holding the shekels.
Yeah, yeah, so to speak.
And JNT had been there throughout the Williams era, seeing what
happens when you don't leave enough money for your finale.
And then we get this.
And the thing is, we've already had canine and company, which, you
know, would have needed to design and set construction, but didn't
need specialist stuff like this.
A lot of it was shot on location.
It was budgeted out of 2 episodes.
Black Orchid, you know, that's BBC period drama, the visitation
was a period drama.
So that leaves you with Castra Valver, 4 to Doomsday, Kinder, and
Earthshock, as your big spenders of the season.
You'd think there should be some way that this story could have
had more care and money spending.
Bassie intro maybe?
Big spender as an ironic reference.
I was at party last week where someone sucked the helium out of a
balloon and sang Moonraaker.
Who hasn't done that at a party, honestly?
I don't think money's the only problem, I think.
This is a poorly written script where the dialogue is just
unspeakable.
And that argument between the Zeraphims is so stupid.
It is exactly what people think crummy science fiction sounds
like.
No one talks normally.
This is a another feature of the script that ending of say word.
You know, everyone, they must think us fools.
You know, whoever says stuff like that.
That's ridiculous.
It's like he's never actually had a conversation with another
human being and listen to, you know, how people talk.
Is that harsh?
Am I being harsh?
Maybe it was radiation sickness.
Maybe that's talking a bit queasy after the long trip.
It really is a return to the dreary season closes of season 15 and
season 16, but it doesn't even have the wit and warmth, that
invasion of time, and arguably bits of the Armageddon factor had.
Indeed, or going back, because we were saying, I found Time
Monster, whether deliberately or not, laughable and I really
enjoyed it.
I laughed all through time.
I think it's entertaining.
And it is meant to be a comedy.
Maybe we're just not getting many jokes in this.
Do you get the feeling that GNT was sort of saying, you know, we've
got to pitch this at a higher level and higher meant serious for
some reason?
Yeah, yeah.
Whereas the most recent season of Doctor Who, I would argue.
They're trying to pitch higher ideas and we had the bootstrap
paradox and we had the moral discussion between the doctor and
Davros, lady me, et cetera, et cetera.
But they don't do it at expense of the humour.
There's still humour in those.
And they're not being written for the Doctor Who Monster book
contingent.
And I think that's the problem because fans hate funny.
They hate the gunfighters. you know, this is a proper serious
science fiction program and so it needs to be full of people
declaiming ludicrous technical terms and space terminology at each
other.
Yeah.
There's one last thing.
Tegan leaves.
I was heartbroken when this happened as a kid.
Take a drink to your listeners.
I actually didn't tune in to Arc of Infinity episode one because I
was so cross at Pete leaving Tegan behind because clearly she
decides that she wants to stay.
You know, they finally get her to Heathrow Airport.
She's wandering through the airport.
She's clearly thinking that she doesn't belong here and she wants
to go with the doctor.
She has been willingly travelling with the doctor since Black
Orchid.
You know, it's kind of funny that he accidentally turns up at
Heathrow Airport when he's been trying to get her home there for
weeks and weeks.
It's a nice scene, you know, she has a bit of interiority, that
sort of thing, and she's really crushed when he leaves her
behind.
After losing Andric last week and now he's lost Tegan, and I was
that was it, I was out the door.
Yeah, yeah.
Janet plays it really well.
You see, it's difficult because I have never seen Time Flight
without the awareness that she's coming back next week, as it
were.
Yeah, yeah.
No, you see, we didn't have.
No, no.
So you were genuinely convinced.
I thought that was it, that she was gone on.
Right, I did too.
Oh, okay, wow.
All right.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, I mean, it serves its purpose in that way then.
I also thought I was probably developing an unhealthy obsession
with the program that might one day lead to participating in a
multi-year podcast project of it.
I really wanted to nip that in the bar.
Yeah, it has been a very long time.
That's just time flown.
Sometimes it doesn't.
What kind of sad person would you have to be to come up with this
podcast idea?
What even is that?
This is 1982.
There's no podcast yet, and I haven't been born.
Oh, leave him behind.
Close the door.
The only one who looks happy in that final scene is Pete and
Sarah.
I think, woo, finally we can go off and do all those terrific big
finish audios together in our whole season. kind of primeval.
Actually, it's not a bad story.
Spare parts.
Circular time?
There you go.
So maybe Janet wasn't a bad thing.
You enjoy yourself.
Go and get yourself into a nice white bodicey courtesy type of air
and get your air cut. maybe we'll see you next year So it's the
end of the season, so it's time for our picks of the week and we
were just talking a few seconds ago about the big finish audios
because initially Janet Fielding opted not to come back for about
the 1st 12 years of their production and but has now come back.
So a lot of the Peter Davidson stories were with Sarah Sutton is
Nissa, and they greatly expanded her character, gave her a lot of
great stuff to do.
And there's all sorts of really good stories.
But the one I'm going to recommend is creatures of beauty.
Ooh, I was thinking circular time.
This is interesting.
Circular time is excellent as well.
I mean, there's so many good ones, but I'm going to recommend
Creatures of Beauty because it's a play that surprised me as to
what it was about.
It's told in a nonlinear fashion and it's about an environmental
disaster.
And that's really all I can say without spoiling it.
But it's Peter Davidson and Sarah Sutton. as the doctor and
Nissa.
But it's one of big finishes early ones.
It was released in 2003, which now means that for Australian
listeners, you can buy it as a download for $3.
Oh wow.
It's a full 100 minute, four-part story.
You can no longer get it on CD.
You can only get it on download.
So I suspect if it's 3 Australian dollars, it's probably 3
American dollars and 3 British pounds, because that's how they
tend to do the pricing.
But yeah, that's my recommendation.
Creatures of beauty.
That's fantastic.
Well, I have two.
We got tweeted during the week by Johnny Spandrel and he has a
blog called Randomhooness.com and it's really, really terrifically
funny.
He just goes, he doesn't fly through in entirety, you know, the
sort of linear way.
He does it at random.
He posts once a week.
He's been doing it reliably for some time.
It's really funny and really clever.
I can really recommend it My other pick is for fans of non
Euclidean geometry.
There's always one.
So Castro Valba was inspired by the works of MC Esher.
And there's a game.
I think it may be available on Android, but I don't care.
It's certainly available on the iPad, and it's called Monument
Valley, and it's utterly beautiful, a puzzler game with all sorts
of weird sort of isometric geometry, and beautiful music and
affecting visuals, and, you know, it's really fun.
So I recommend that too.
I was going to go the path of Brendan because that's often how we
lay our tracks in these stories, but I would say if you want to
see it as, you know, as I expected this season to be as a kid, Chin
Chin.
And also now I'd go back to reading the Edith Nesbitt or Enesbitt
books, the most famous being the railway children, but there's
also 5 children and it, the Phoenix and the Carpet, both starring
Bond Girl and fan of the podcast, Gary Russell.
And yeah, back in the day, but they're just really lovely books.
And I get the feeling that there were several directions they were
going to take Peter's era as the doctor and the costume and even
the casting of the characters around him.
And you get little flavours of it early on.
You certainly get it in Castrovolver and Black Orchard.
And actually, in all the in all the early stories.
So yeah, I would go back and read anything of Venus, but I'd start
with, and the would be goods is lovely.
They are still around in print, they're certainly downloadable for
nothing.
But the sense of that Edwardian children's drama that's written
for pretty much anyone, a young disposition, or anyone who
believes that there is an eternal Indian summer out there
somewhere, and that there is always hope, even when awful things
happen around you, which is generally what our books are about.
There was a sense of great hope.
He was the Obama all the time, of heat, and much like the soon to
be over presidential candidacy, the last, what, 8, 2 terms.
Maybe what we get as delivered is not quite what was expected or
hoped for.
So Jenny Laird awards for puzzling creative choices.
I've already referred to this episode, but it becomes an
increasing problem over Pete's tenure.
Each year of Pete's tenure.
The penultimate story is considered great and sublime and held up
as an example.
So earth shock enlightenment, the caves of Andrazani.
And even if one doesn't appreciate them personally, one can
usually look at them and go, look, you know, I don't enjoy this.
Like, I've said before, I'm not a huge fan of K's of Andresani, but
I'm able to look at it and go, this is an amazing piece of
television and really well made, and I can see why people like
it.
And it's then followed by a season finale, which is at best
lacklustre and at worst awful.
Time flight.
The King's Demons.
The twin dilemma.
My puzzling creative choice is, why is this so horribly mismanaged
not just once, but for 3 years, and for at least 2 stories, dealing
with the fallout of a death of a character, dealing with a fallout
of Adrick and dealing with the death of the 5th doctor.
Why are 2 of those so horribly handled and in, given to, in this
case, a new writer and a new director, and in the case of doing
dilemma, a brand new writer who, when we get there, we'll discuss
had horrible, horrible problems with his script, I just don't
understand that rationale, and, you know, the King's Demons, they
get bloody Terence Dudley back again for reasons completely beyond
me.
So that's the thing.
I am not so much picking up a specific fault.
I'm saying why does this keep happening?
Is it Eric Saywood?
I want to blame Eric, so It's never just one thing.
No, I guess my puzzling creative choice is something that I talked
about in the Castro Valver episode where I just don't think enough
thought is being given to who the doctor should be.
And he's introduced in such a kind of lacklustre away.
He spends so much time in a cupboard.
And I think they've decided that they're going to react against
Tom's doctor rather than building up an interesting character who
could have been sort of central to the show from the beginning.
And they're going keep doing this.
And so while Tom is compelling, they go for somewhere off the edge
of the screen with Pete, who isn't a bad actor, but the character
is just not that interesting.
Yeah, rather than defining a presence. they're defining an absence
Yeah, and I think you'll get it right.
I haven't looked ahead because, you know, Arc of Infinity
obviously.
But my memory is that he does a good job in season 21 and there
are glimpses of good moments, but he shouldn't just be left to
define the character through his performance.
Some thought needed to be given to why we care about this man and
his collection of bit players from previous stories that seem to
have been assembled more or less at random.
We just watching the show out of habit now.
Exactly.
My puzzle and creative choice is almost along the same lines, and
I'm just asking, why do we not have a script header to appointed
who actually likes stories other than his own, or has something to
say, or has some generosity or some sense of play or fun?
Even bid meat had his own sense of fun.
It was just science-y.
But, you know, he was passionate.
I'm not getting a lot of passion here.
No.
And Bidmead in particular loved working with new writers.
Like, you know, he said he really enjoyed working with Flanagan
and McCulloch and kind of working with them to work the story into
shape.
Whereas you look at Eric Zayward talking about, oh, there's these
writers who don't understand Doctor Who.
Eric, there, unaware. of what colour his kettle is, I think.
But yeah, well, bit meat is, you know, by and larger fanboy.
It still is. his youth and his enthusiasm from, whereas I think
they would always, well, embittered is possibly a harsh term, but.
Well, I mean, it's telling that when Bob Holmes comes back, say it
chums up with him, do you know what I mean?
And like he doesn't have homes as talent, but he does seem to have
his cynicism.
Yeah, and what a conflagration that is.
Well, dear, listen, I'm afraid that's all the time we have in
season 19.
I'm not afraid that that's all the time we have a time flight.
We'll be back next week with season 20, where Tob will join us to
travel from Arc of Infinity, right through to the King's Demons.
We will then be taking on the 5 doctors with what else but a
commentary with all 4 of us and lots of alcohol.
Also, you can visit our Facebook page where each of us have
nominated a 1st doctor story.
We'd love to do a commentary on and you can vote for it there.
Until then, you can find us online at our new website
flightthroughentirety.sexy.
Flight Through Entirety on Facebook and iTunes and FTE podcast on
Twitter over on Bondfinger.
We're still enjoying maybe the Roger Moore era of James Bond.
That's Bondfinger.com, Bondfinger on Facebook and iTunes and
Bondfinger cast on Twitter, and Doctor Who in 10 seconds has some
idiot talking very quickly.
I don't know.
Until next week May none of your Zentai suited men escape from
their sarcophagus.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
That was Flight for Entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley, Brendan
Jones and Richard Stone, theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, Smiling Plasmaton emoji, was recorded on the 10th of
June 2016.
The next episode will be released on the 31st of July.
Online chat enthusiasts can find the smiling plasmaton emoji, the
grumpy pteroreptil, and the extremely horny mara, in the flight
through entirety custom keyboard for sale at all good app stores
everywhere.
Interesting Jungian archetypes here.
We're going back to the Christopher Priest enemy with anything, but
you know, the good and the evil, I know...
It's sort of fat, middle aged man in sort of hen tie suit, you
know, they're going back 140 minutes. not the word.
Zen Thai?
Zentai, that's it.
It's a Zentai.
Yeah, dear listener, if you're going to Google one of those words
Google Zendai, don't, well, at least not on our back.
Don't Google Hentai.
You're welcome to.
This is a safe space, not judging out loud, but yeah, maybe don't
Google Hentai.
I'm cutting all this out.
I'm more concerned that we end up on the set of direct.