Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flightthrough Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast whose walk isn't quite right.
And then there's the accents.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
I'm here too.
And we're being sucked down to one of the last planets of humanity
and a very young Geoff Rawl.
It's Frontios.
Hey, let's drop the dead donkey.
So, um, Christopher Hamilton bit me. fan of the podcast.
Oh, patron of the podcast.
Patron saint of the podcast.
For those of you who don't know, when we recorded our Castro
Volver commentary, during the 1st 5 minutes, Nathan referred to
Castro Volver as being plotless.
Well, I think I said flawed and plotless, to be fair.
That's right.
To which, um, and I did say that about Lagopolis as well, let's
just say.
To which Christopher Hamilton bid me delivered a sick burn, which
is the Ramblingest Doctor Who podcast I've ever heard, has the
nerve to call Castraval the plotless, to which we...
You call us ramblingers in a braggadocious name.
Is that even a word?
To which we asked if we could use that as a quotation.
And as you'll see, the ticker on our website, flight through
entirety.sexy, where you can occasionally see ramblingist CH
bidmate because he told us we could cut out any padding. a lot of
padding in that tweet.
I'll tell you what.
We did actually ask if he might like to join us for this podcast
to which he very thankfully, but graciously declined.
So we won't be joined by Christopher Hamilton with me.
This is terrific. and we think he's terrific. and I'm serious
really is good.
In fact, it is a little bit unfortunate because I imagine that
Christopher H.
Bidmeat has a lot on his plate and he probably only had time to
listen to the 1st 5 minutes of me bitching about Castrovolver, but
we did spend a lot of time during season 18 and even during the
Castrovolver episode.
Well, no, I think we said he was great.
And I think here, I think this is a really strong story.
He's one of us.
He grew up reading Fred and Jeffrey Hoyle.
This is good old 60s, 70s hard SF.
It really is.
It's even got, I wanted to say Jeff Coons.
It's even got, it feels like the cover of a 70s Chris Foss
spaceship covered SF novel.
It's a proper 60s Doctor Who story.
Do you feel that really we're just in the land of the savages
again or indeed?
Hartner, not even Troughton, but the high concept, big thinking SF
ideas of the early shows.
Yeah, it's landing on a world like ours, but something has changed
which was one of the central tenets of Hartnell.
I don't just think this is Mead's best script.
I think this is the best story this season.
Oh for sure.
Definitely.
And I mean, I'm including caves in that.
I think this is a strong season, though.
People disagree, but I do think that Caves is really incredibly
good, but this there's something special about this one.
I actually agree with you.
I think that 5 of this season stories are very strong stories and
this is the top of those 5 and 2 of them very clearly languish
behind.
I think I know which 2 are.
Yeah, yeah, we'll discuss that more at the end of the season.
Harsh, but fair.
Yeah, in fact, I think there's more than two, but even the ones
that I don't like, even the remakes of Earthshock from last year
they still have things going for them from a production
standpoint.
I think they're really misconceived, but they're not terrible
terrible.
I think it's very telling that you refer to Earth Shock as being
last year, forgetting we've had a whole season, a whole rather
mediocre season, in between Earth Shock and Warriors.
So what is the deep?
18, 19, 21?
That's all right.
So 19 was Earthshock.
This is 21.
What comes between 19 and 21?
20.
You're making me kiddy.
This is like we were living in Castrovalva.
Oh, again, where's the child at the washing basin to ask?
We needed the sendant of Carol and John to help us.
Descendant relative, I'm not sure.
So we do have that great sci-fi concept and what's really kind of
wonderful about it is, and it's kind of odd that it starts with
Davison being wonderfully eccentric with that stuff about the hat
stand.
You're not hat people, are you?
He does it really well.
And friend of the podcast, Peter Griffiths, actually. told me this
week that he thinks that this is the best portrayal of the doctor
by anyone in any story.
And I'm not sure that I would go quite that far. strong talk, isn't
it?
But Bidmead gets the character. got a head on that one, hasn't
it?
It's a bold claim.
I think Bidmead writes better dialogue for the doctor than we've
had for a while and he gets that the doctor is snarky.
He's obnoxious.
He doesn't listen to people.
He's kind of dismissive.
All those Thomas things that, you know, they were trying to avoid
for Pete.
Bitmead seems to just come in and do them anyway. right into the
doctor and it's always the same doctor.
And that's a really good take on it.
Let the actor put the spin on it, right generically. let the actor
in rehearsals develop the character.
That's what I actors do Yeah.
And so the idea that Pete's bland.
I think it's just fundamentally... still wearing the beige.
Yeah, the beige. huge costume change.
Yeah, he's a new costume, though.
The whole thing.
Even the shoes.
But he's snarky.
He torments Tegan.
He's impatient.
So he's really at one with a viewer on this one, isn't he?
Well, he's he's the one. yucky, though, because we still get the
even though we've got bid meat, who's a powerful force in
narrative writings in Doctor Who, we still get, say, would stick
in his little bilious green finger in it, don't we?
and get a lot of deaths, there are a lot of deaths, but I don't
feel it's like...
It's not as good as we...
It's not, this isn't, this was actually the human centipede.
Yeah, for Doctor Who.
You know, you know what the original plot was, don't you?
So, yeah, the machine that we see at the end was meant to be
entirely made out of human body parts.
Out of dancers.
Tiny made of dances coupled over each other. crawling along. would
have been spectacular.
I've just been to a Sydney dance company show and everything they
do is inspired by Christopher H.
Bitmeans.
There's no way they were ever going to be able to do that.
Oh, why not?
No, I've seen it on stage.
I'll send you clips Yeah, it's called untamed if you want to look
it up.
SDC.
You know what, though?
After the disappointing realisation of the murker earlier this
year, I'm kind of glad they went for a less is more approach with
that because...
Yeah, big cardboard disc with a head sticking out the front of it
in front of a glad wrap, Klingfoil box, serrated edge.
You know what?
So you can cut off your lunch wrap with it.
I haven't seen the dance shows you've seen, but certainly I've
seen dance shows where dancers will move together as a single
thing, but that takes months of rehearsal.
Very hard work and they need to do it very well.
But you have seen the human centipede one and two, haven't you?
have not.
I will say. look that up immediately.
I have.
No, I really don't if you're under a certain I have.
I have seen the South Park episode, The Human Scent I pack.
Yeah, it's very similar.
Um, where um, they tie a few humans together because they won't
read the Apple terms and conditions and that's actually in the
Apple conditions that Apple can do this to you.
But I wrote down an observation in the 1st episode of this. at the
moment to do listener.
Mouth and ear.
I don't know.
Don't have the veal.
Okay.
I had lettuce.
Like, I got halfway through the 1st episode of this and I'm like
we've gone well drawn characters.
We do.
My gravis has no nose.
How does it smell?
He went to his own accord.
Well-drawn characters.
Sparkling dialogue, sympathetic music.
And I just wrote, what series is this?
It's Patty Kingsland.
It's Patty Kingsley's.
But it's Ron Jones directing.
It actually does a really good joke.
I think he suffered a savage blow to the head in post-production.
Is it just that when everything else goes well, you kind of
competence.
And he is a competent director.
Because it's not visionary.
You know what I think it might be?
At this point he's still relatively inexperienced.
There's some crappy moments, like the violent stuff of the killing
of one of the outer people, and you think this is just like a
static camera, and it goes on too long, and it's yucky pants
that's true.
Yeah, they're in really nice ways that have shot it, but the ship
itself, the idea of the ship is so beautifully realised.
It looks like OB, doesn't it?
Even though it's all studio.
It's a studio bound story that doesn't feel studio bound.
You don't feel like you've got a roof because the sky is decent.
The proportions are well done.
Leslie Dunlop is just delightful.
And not covered in pink.
Once again.
You know, for the 2nd story running, we have someone where you're
like, why don't you join the TARDIS at the end?
Again.
Who's her dad again?
Peter Gilmore from the Enedon line, isn't it?
Well, her dad is Peter Gilmore is in the story, but her dad is
William Lucas.
Oh, that's fine.
She's also lovely.
And this is a bit sad.
We might as well tell this story now.
Mr. Range played by William Lucas.
Originally cast was Peter Arn.
Is there a delicate way to say that his interests in a personal
level were ones that would lead to extreme behaviour and
eventually lead to his death?
And he had a very difficult and repressed life and wasn't out, but
he was very big.
He was mates with George, who was Francis Bacon's lover, and very
heavily into the SM London underground scene, the art scene.
So he was mates with Francis Bacon and Jordan very much on that
extreme end. proclivity and he died a very unpleasant death by a
lover who killed him.
It's a bit difficult to determine exactly what happened, but he
was found bludgeoned to death on the afternoon after a costume
fitting for this story, and a few days later, someone he was known
to have associated with was found to have committed suicide. with
Peter Arm's blood on his clothes.
So it's very unpleasant.
William Lucas was kind of called in.
So he never got to the stage where he met the rest of the cast, but
the rest of the cast were aware they were having Peter on on the
show and it was a big deal to have people on the show.
Very good actor. saturnine, very controlled, very cool, great
drama because of course he brought that aspect of his own life
into the light and that's what a good actor can do.
There are 2 Kathy Gale Avengers episodes he's in.
Warlock and the Golden Eggs, which were shot 2 months apart.
So the idea was in the latter one, he had his hair lightened.
He put glasses on, played it with different accent, et cetera.
Due to a scheduling quirk, they were broadcast 2 weeks apart.
But if you watch them that way, you still don't quite twig because
his 2 characters are so different.
And that is his strength as an actor.
And of course, he did.
The prisoner and other shows of the time, the saint, that sort of
thing.
So yeah, he was quite a coup to get.
And he was replaced by William Lucas.
Now, I think William Lucas is absolutely lovely in the role, and
he's such warmth with Leslie Dunlop as his daughter as Norna.
Really lovely.
Yeah, and it's kind of odd because he's sort of a bit of a fuddy
duddy character and a bit of a fuddy-duddy performance, but you
never feel he is a comedy character.
He provides some comic relief, but he's never a comedy character.
Peter Gilmore is brazen.
I kind of fancy him.
He's got great hair.
Lots and lots of hair.
Huge quantities of it.
And there's that...
Like enough for 4 per twees from season 11, I think.
There's a great bit, I think, in episode 3 where during the
hearing, Turlow keeps going on about the tractators and everyone
tries to shut him up and Gilmore just sidles up to him and says, I
want to hear all about this.
He's a great.
He is a great character because do you remember Cree song in
the...
Yes, Norman Jones, later Hieronymus.
He starts off as being sort of really military and rigid and ends
up being quite thoughtful and interesting.
And I think Brazen does that as well.
You know, you think that Brazen's an antagonist because he's Mr
Shouty, and because he doesn't care about the retrogrades being
killed and all of that sort of thing, and, you know, he's the
obstacle trying to prevent them from getting into the ship to get
the battery.
So he looks like he's going to be an antagonist, but he's actually
really genuinely sympathetic.
And when he reveals that he saw what happened to Captain Revere
towards the end, Yeah.
You know, it becomes clear that he really does care about what
happens to the colony.
He really does want to protect people.
He's not not just acting out of kind of military discipline or
something.
And then of course, he sacrifices himself.
And it's really clear that he really loves Plantagenet as well
like a father. you know, that comes across.
And his sacrifice, again, yeah, you're right, Richard, that
machine is very, very clumsy and it kind of it kind of robs the
moment somewhat.
That and the realisation that the tractators ruin the show.
We wanted zombie, didn't we?
And we thought that's what beginning.
Again, the flexibility that you talked about that's envisioned by
the writers and that these things would, you know, be dancers and
be able to roll up into a ball and roll about.
But they were never going to be able to realise that.
So they end up being big, stupid looking fibreglass things with
the hands.
But compare the reveal of the Tractators at the end of episode two
when Turlo and Norna walk past them and they're just part of the
walls and then they turn.
You know, I think I think it cuts a few seconds too late, but
compare that to excellent skimmers.
I'm just going to do that every week.
God, Ron Jones, after your last 2 failures.
Well, bloody done, mate.
Well, you are doing a brilliant job with this.
I think everyone liked him and got on.
It was still a very tight shoot, wasn't it?
They were really running behind.
I'm like, worries of the deep, which at least had a little bit of
pre-filming.
This was entirely studio bound and compared to other studio bound
stories, like say, actually, not even terminus, because terminus
had pre-filming.
Actually, the studio pound stories of the Davidson era tend to do
quite well for like...
For to Doomsday is quite...
Enlightenment.
You know, they're up against the clock, but I think possibly
because they don't have the filming element, the crews are a bit
more aware we've got to try and make this look good.
I think the sets look amazing. good, actually.
I think we've gone on about this, so they won't do it again.
I don't think we mind doing that though.
Everything's visually interesting.
Like, the shots are interesting.
The colour is really good.
Gorgeous matte paintings to make the ship look huge.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
It does feel like proper 70s.
Well, who am I thinking of?
But maybe Philip C.
Dick.
Anyway, that doesn't matter, does it?
a whole lot of writers.
And that great set for the track tators down underneath with the
big spherical cage to keep Plantagenet in and like it's a weird
open space with all this sort of negative space instead of walls.
Yes, we love the negative space.
Yeah, no, I think it's really, it looks great.
I think the music is fantastic Tastes surreal.
Possibly go wrong, yeah.
And it's kind of weird because most of episodes two, three, and 4
is people wandering about caves, but it never feels boring.
No.
And there's lots of capture and escape and release of what have
you.
You get that beautiful moment where the doctor and Tegan are
captured and they're sliding along on their butts.
So to speak.
And again, they're really charming in that scene, and the whole
thing with Tegan being an android, and the doctor and the gravis
flirting outrageously.
I mean, the doctor really torments Tegan quite a lot in this story
and it's really fun to watch and there's really something going on
with the relationship there.
Is there a moment in episode one where like Turlow and Teagan just
roll their eyes at each other about how irritating the doctor is?
Yeah, yeah.
I think it's when he he's been saying, we can't interfere, we
can't interfere, we can't interfere.
Right, I'm going to operate.
You go get this stuff from the TARDS and they just go, oh, fuck
God.
I love it when he rushes in to save Plantagenet and tells Tegan to
rip the wires down off the walls.
Just put them up.
Yes, jolly good. go and rip them down again.
He's so great.
I mean, there are a few things I look at with the story and go
well, why is that like the doctor being so concerned about the
time lords finding Addy's interfering?
But at the same time...
It is lovely.
It's very 60s, except it's got time laws.
We're at the edge of the known universe.
And there's some really great fan wanky things to think about why
the Tartars can't go any further and where this is.
You know, is this 2000000 years in the future with the mysterious
planet?
No, the Marcus 10 million.
So are we, or are we the end of the world with Eccleston?
No, I think that we would be foolish to try.
No, chronology of the guy.
But this does give rise to the fantastic scene where Turlo is
reading off about the planet in the Varuna system where he's
talking about the doomed planet Earth with absolute relish, just
just Susan.
Yes, just to piss off Tegan slash.
But what I love is Tegan in season 19 would have stomped her feet
and been shouting and screaming.
Tegan in this just kind of gives him daggers.
You know, she doesn't need, you know, makes a political statement
without even raising her eyebrows.
So let's think about the things that lift what is essentially a
story about people wandering around studio corridors talking to
one another.
What lifts it?
And like it is the music, it is the set design.
But I think that there are some things in the plot and you touched
upon it, the incredible high concept, the fact that this is a
colony of people from the future, maybe the last people alive, you
know, who the doctor's trying to save, and that gives it a kind of
mythical quality.
It certainly does.
And it, again, it's doing stuff that bid me does really well that
we don't see many other writers in Doctor Who doing.
That's being brave.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
I was having a discussion.
This is a bit off topic, but I was having a discussion with a
friend the other day about, um, uh, the hungry earth and cold
blood.
Yes.
I'm meant to mention that here.
And, you know, you've got the link to Frontios with people being
dragged under the earth.
But the other thing is, people talk about that story being so
disappointing because of the ending.
And I agree the ending's disappointing because that was a real
chance to go, you know, we're not in Russell T. Davies, Doctor Who
universe anymore.
We're now going to have lizard people wandering about the streets
with humans for the next few years.
And that would have been a brave thing to do.
And that is the kind of brave thing that Christopher Hamilton bid
me does here.
At the end of the story, they don't have a thriving colony.
They're still on starvation point.
They just have a chance to start again and the doctor just goes
off.
It's not the end of the sun makers where it's like, now you're
completely free and you have all this technology.
It's like, actually, you're in the same position you were before.
There's just nothing acting externally on you now.
It's a happy ending, but not a miraculous ending.
And I think it's more realistic because of that.
And it raises the stakes.
It just makes it a little bit more interesting.
I think your stuff as well, Richard, about the doctor's reluctance
to interfere because he's a timelord and he'll be in trouble for
intervening at what must be a crunch point in human history.
And the fact that Gravis knows of Galifrea knows what a TARDIS is
and, you know, knows about the doctor, I think.
Although there's a lot of that.
We had the Silurians knowing far too much about all of that in the
story.
But I do like what you're saying here.
This to me, because Bidmeat is so clever and so good.
Hello, Chris, is so good at what he does and the high concept
stuff.
I think this also touches on philosophy.
You know about Wittkenstein's piece on Tractatus, which Bidmead
said, you know, bully for him for saying he said he wasn't aware
of or hadn't recalled when he wrote this, but it was basically
with constraints, Tractatus's piece was on the mathematical
promulgations and the way we're viewing the world a purely
solipsistic and that there isn't anything a priori.
So in other words, it's all nurture, it's not nature.
So our way of living in the world, a way of viewing the world, our
social constructs, all the rest of it, even and he's coming from a
mathematical point that what we see as universal truths, and this
is pre-Hawkins, but what we see as universal truths, are actually
simply out applied code for rationalising, in a Newtonian sense
that very small sliver of reality that we can see.
And I like that Bidmead looks at pretty much all his scripts and
says that we are actually little microbes on a Petri dish and we
can only deal with what we have and what we have here.
And that is both terrifying and humbling, and actually kind and
isolating, but it's actually kind of, well, we just have to do the
best we can and make the most of it.
And there's actually a really lovely, if you want to say, almost a
Buddhist concept to it, because Doctor Who talks about that a lot
as well as we've noticed, is to just say, be the best you possibly
can, that is your purpose in life.
Your only purpose is you have a very limited horizon.
You live on a tiny speck at the end of a barely fashionable arm of
the spiral galaxy.
Do what you can and be the best that you can be.
And this story seems to say the same thing, even with threats that
are, that couldn't be any greater.
You actually have the sky falling on your heads.
We've got an asterisk comic villain here that distends and
distorts gravity and destroys the whole process of Doctor Who
itself, which is the TARDIS.
This script is about pulling apart the concept and precept of what
Doctor Who is.
Did you get a sense when you were watching this that the TARDIS
was gone now?
Where is this gonna go?
You know what?
I only have very vague memories of this story as a kid.
It was one I had when I was 5 years old.
And what I remember about it is watching it with my brother.
And my brother was 9 years older than me, so we weren't incredibly
close as kids.
But I was so terrified after watching this at the age of 5 that my
brother actually let me sleep with him in his bed because I
couldn't sleep otherwise.
We had a bunk.
And I remember for years afterwards, if I ever pulled it off the
shelves, he would say you're not allowed to watch that one.
Because we're never having that evening again.
Was it the cliffhanger to episode one that scared you?
I think it was the decapitation.
Yeah, that is awful.
But that's the thing.
I can't remember the Cliffhanger to episode one, but watching it
now.
I kind of feel like it's similar to when the same thing happens in
the magician's apprentice.
You know the TARDIS is not going to be destroyed because then you
don't have a show.
You know the backstory, don't you?
JNT.
Thank you.
He wanted to get rid of the TARDS, yeah.
But I think it was him just doing his normal publicity thing to
try and up the stakes.
D dog dog.
Remember that we were watching it at the time at the 1st run when
we saw Frontios, we hadn't seen Resurrection of the Daleks.
Yeah, true.
And so we didn't know that it was going to be fair.
So you thought it might actually?
Possibly, it was we're young and maybe, you know, a little bit
naive, but I remember being incredibly shocked by that cliffhanger
and finding the beginning of episode 2 really bleak.
And I think it is a shame that they don't really follow through on
it.
The closest analogue I could think of was the impossible planet
where you get that scene between Billy and the doctor talking
about having to settle down and get mortgages and carpet and stuff
like that because they don't have carpet doesn't it?
It does.
Tenants obsessed with it.
Oh, it really brings on my allergies.
But this doesn't quite do that, does it?
There's one or 2 lines about not having a tartus, but they never
really reflect about it.
It does the usual thing of, I'll just put that over there and not
think about it.
He's been the busiest doctor.
And he's done that before.
Something horrible has happened.
Adrik, I just won't think about that right now.
It's like that scene in The Simpsons where Ned's got his 2 sons
that I can't remember why, but they're talking about women and one
of his sons.
Yeah, I think I think Rod, his youngest son says, girls are so
lucky, they get to wear dresses, and they just says, one problem
at a time, running.
I think there's something in that for most listeners.
I think as a kid, I looked at that.
And with the magician's apprentice.
It's like, I don't care that I know that this cliffhanger will
have a solution.
I care about what the solution is.
I don't actually think the lady's been sawn in half.
I care about how the trick works.
That's what Bidmead wants us to do.
He wants us to be right in there with the characters and solve the
problem in the moment.
Yeah, but we don't get a resolution until episode four.
I mean we are left with it.
And I think that resolution he does.
And we've talked about this before how Christopher Hamilton
Bidmead is a huge fan of using science in the program, real
measurable science, but he uses magic as well.
He always does.
And I do think that putting the TARDIS back together, there is a
bit of an explanation, but it's a great combination of science and
magic.
And I love the, like the doctor says, you know, the internal
dimensions have been dispersed.
It's like, actually, yes, that fits everything we know about the
title, so that it could just disperse its dimensions around this
area.
It is a little bit of a cheat.
It's a little bit of a cheat, but at the same time, it still works
within the context.
Like in a way, as much as I enjoy the magician's apprentice, which
is familiar, the doctor at the end just saying, oh, it's the
hostile action dispersal system.
It's like, um you've never mentioned this before.
It's like that bit at the end of day of the doctor where he says
Clara often asks me if I dream.
It's like, no, she has never asked you that for the last 8
episodes.
Not once.
But they never stop talking about it between episodes.
Yeah, that's all they do, which is why, thankfully, we never get
to see that.
It's a shame that camera was off because we were just talking.
I think this is a little bit fairer and once it's explained, you
kind of go, oh, you know, I can understand how that works within
the rules of the program.
But you don't think the gravis should have realised that we'd have
been cut off from his chums once he put the TARDIS back together?
It's Peter Rabbit and the farmer, you know, oh no, you couldn't
possibly be strong enough to do that.
I've got friends working on that film right now. getting shot here
in Sydney.
Oh, Peter Rabbit.
Not that I've ever done this at work.
I've totally done this.
But I think we have all at some point, there's been something
that's actually someone else's job to do, and they try to put it
on you, and you just point out how actually they're much better
suited to it, and you do it in such a way that they go, oh, yes
you're quite right.
I'm much better. and that's what the doctor does here.
You know, he uses flattery to fool the gravis to the point that
gravis doesn't really know he's being fooled until it's too late.
I know you never realised.
He looks so sweet.
But it must be one passive aggressive number.
It's like an inverted Oreo.
All the dark stuff's in the middle.
Lick it out and see listeners.
Oh my.
I was talking about biscuits.
I love Peter's performance in that scene.
I was like, no, no, leave me the TARDIS, please.
Yeah, that he's so good in that scene.
And the sort of Turlo pops up.
What are you doing?
Get down.
I like that they are actually witcherty grubs.
Fibreglass, which is grubs, yeah.
Is the gravis a different species or is it like a rank?
Like, do you get promoted to gravis?
It's like Queen Admiral and all soldier ants.
He's the only one with an intelligence and then the rest of it's
the gestalt.
They call it an society's 4th level intelligences, and we still
don't understand quite how something with such a simple autonomic
nervous system can actually behave, like in a collective
intelligence in such very complex ways.
Lots of good stuff in this.
And the zerbie was based on the same thing, as you know, Bill
Strutton sitting and watching his tiny farm of Christopher H.
Bidmeads in Adelaide. that he kept all running about being told
off by Lala Wards.
It's the TARDIS.
Chris.
What's that?
Is that pure science or is that magic?
You can hear her doing it, can't you, in her missy hat and the
umbrella?
10 years before this, there was a great film.
Thank you for reminding me, Richard, called Phase 4, which is
about extremely intelligent ants, not giant ants, regular size
ants, and these scientists investigating them.
I won't say much more about it at this stage.
Dear listeners, I do suggest tracking it down, because recently
they've released it with its original ending, because the studio
truncated the ending, because it's a 70s sci-fi film, the ending
is not necessarily narrative, I will just say, but it's an
excellent film, and it kind of this story explores a little bit
the different thought processes from humanoid and insectoid life.
Phase 4 goes even further with that.
And it would not surprise me at all if, if Christopher Hamilton
Fibbean had seen phase four.
It seems like the kind of thing.
Or indeed, that John Collins Empire of the Ants, or whatever it
was called when similar thing when she played the Lala Ward
character in Pearl.
I'm just making this up as I go along.
Well, she is actually in an ant film.
No, no, it's in Lucky Pictures, remember?
That's right.
Or William Shatner's Kingdom of the Spiders.
Yeah, where he played Jenny Lick. that's right So I want to talk
about another thing because Christopher Hamilton bit me. is
obsessed with Shakespeare.
Yes.
Yeah, there's a lot of Shakespeare.
Just think he likes good stories.
Well, he went to Rada, you know.
We're going to really psych up to him and ask that he listens to
this.
There's a stack of Shakespeare.
There always is, yes, Shakespeare in season 18.
And then here he's got a character called Plantagenet.
And there's a huge plot.
Yes, and nothing went wrong with those Henrys.
But it's the idea of the importance of the king to the health of a
society. and also about fitness to be king.
And so he's got these sort of really obviously named characters
like revere, brazen.
Revere, whom everyone reveres, you know, like he's a father figure
to the entire colony.
Like Norna tells in that beautifully acted moment.
Norna tells that story about sitting on his lap and being told
that the earth is hungry.
You know, all he has to do is demand that the research room is
sealed and it's sealed even after he's died.
You know, in some ways he's kind of the perfect leader.
And then you've got Jeff Rawl, who'll go on to play the Mona
Lisa's gay sidekick in the Sarah Jane Adventures, who's physically
small and...
Yeah, he did other things as well on television.
No, I know.
But do you know what I mean?
skinny and young looking.
Yeah, he's great in this.
And he's trying to be Shakespearean.
He's trying to be a Shakespearean king.
He even does that thing where, you know, he's injured by the
bombardment and he tries not to show it for a long period of
time.
And that idiot in worries even deep had done something sort of
fairly similar, but here it's done really well.
And it is all about what makes someone fit to be a leader.
And it's a shame that, you know, kind of the overall conclusion is
sort of conservative because all of the people who kind of leave
the colony and become retrogrades.
They're bad people and they kind of virtually lose their humanity
you know, including the one who looks like he's from the village
people.
Yeah, the one with the moustache, the Scottish guy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. he's amazing That's a part of the story that
doesn't quite work because you've got cockerel, the chief orderly
who's Brazen's right hand man and then betrays him when
Plantagenet goes missing and starts to lead a revolt.
But then all it needs is for Norna to walk in and say, oh
Plantagenet might still be alive, you know.
And that's it.
No, they stop.
It's like, oh, okay, we better stop.
But it is chaos.
And you know the idea as well, that Shakespearean idea where Nate
is disrupted when the, you know, pathetic fantasy, I believe
it's.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, you know, got Duncan's horses eating each other and the sheet
are dead, shrieking and gibbering in the Roman streets.
Brussels sprouts begin to taste delicious.
Cats and dogs living together.
Corey Bernardi becoming a senator in South Australia.
Yeah, yeah, again.
That trick never works.
I also think the other thing.
Can I just say one other thing, which I think is amazingly good
and lifts this, you know, above kind of the general quality of the
material, is the reveal halfway through that the threat comes from
below the ground and not from the sky?
That's gorgeous.
Yeah, clever.
And really gets to base guttural primal fears.
Stephen Moffatt does it very nicely as well, but Bidme did it
first.
Yes, yes.
One person we briefly mentioned, but plays a very large role in
the story is Mark Strickson, who sort of has that meltdown at the
end of the story.
Yes he does.
And I find that so effective, and I find it particularly effective
because he's been uneasy, uneasy, uneasy, and then we don't see
him for a while, and then he runs in screaming.
I think it's so good that we don't see the moment he breaks
because I think for an actor, that would be the toughest moment to
portray convincingly, but going straight to the point of breakdown
and then slowly coming out of that.
And it's not like in the next scene he's fine and he's lucid.
It takes him time and he has to be coaxed out of it, as would
happen in real life.
It's obviously still compressed from what would probably happen in
real life.
But Mark plays it so well.
And, you know, in that scene where he's with William Lucas as Mr
Range and Norna's gone missing, he's just staring off and drooling
and there's no one there behind the eyes.
He's completely retreated in on himself. is gingers.
Did you?
We haven't mentioned that before.
We may have much.
No souls, you see.
We had Mark Strickson living here in New South Wales.
He was at UND at the University of New England and Armadale.
And he used to come to conventions and we used to have plays.
We used to write plays and act in them.
I was very famous myself.
Yeah, actually, at one point.
But Mark Strickson was in one of them.
Do you remember this, Richard?
Yes, he played Travis, didn't he?
He actually did his line, attractators, I've seen them line.
But he did it like with a beer, a can of beer in one hand, and he
took a giant swig of beer and then said track taker that I've seen
them and he was going all over the place.
He was spinning it over everyone. that's exactly how you recorded
the original.
He gets to redeem himself.
Like he gets to lose it and have some kind of, you know, as of his
stick, ancestral memory crisis thing.
But then he gets to be brave.
He goes back down in the Yeah, yeah.
Comodores.
It's like the chemistry between Mark Strickson and Leslie Donlop
is lovely and it's it's very rare in the 80s that we get a hint of
romance between characters.
We had it between Tegan and Mariner, but that was a bit
uncomfortable because of the controlling shit.
Exactly.
It was really...
And him being so incredibly kind of...
Oh, I meant her baby.
But here we have a relationship between equals where they tease
each other a bit and they're obviously fond of each other. do each
other's own makeup. right.
Tell stories.
But they're beautiful in each other's jumpsuits.
Oh, sorry, I'm back on worries if I do.
Well, back in Worries of Deep, I was talking about how Turlo wants
to impress the doctor.
What is something Davison always does when he's deciding where to
go?
He flips a coin.
How does Turlow decide what to do?
He uses...
He uses coins.
He puts a coin behind his back and she has to pick.
But it turns out because this is Turlow, he's actually put a coin
in both hands.
So he'll always go down, but he's kind of trying to impress her
anyway.
Even that 2 Corpira piece dialogue where you blow through it for
luck.
Like, that doesn't need to be there or anything.
It's just a bit of detail.
Yeah, which is just good.
It's a bit, yeah, considering they had so little time.
They've done very well on this one.
I remember strictly complaining about the lack of rehearsal time
and just how raw and how awful.
There's that scene back in Warriors of the Deep, dear listener
when Tara Ward and Janet were mucking around, believing it was a
rehearsal, and they were actually taking the piss out of it, and
then they were told, no, that's in the can. what we're going
with.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And they were horrified.
Well, Mark says the same thing, and he said on this one, he said, I
remember him talking about how embarrassed he was by the hyperbole
of his performance.
I think it's fine.
But again, he also said this 15 years ago or whatever, he may have
a different view now.
Yeah, I think it's the scene where Norna and Range are escorting
Turlow back and he stops and gives a bit of an info dump.
And I seem to recall what the story was.
It was the last scene before the lights went out at 10 and the
word came down that, okay, we need to get this done in 45
seconds.
And Mark said, it's a 92nd speech.
Oh, darling, just edit it as you go.
So that's the thing.
He's having to give his performance, get all the information in
there, but also cut out half the content.
He does an amazing job.
That is not to say that Peter, like Peter's doing an amazing job
here.
Janet and Brazen actually have a really good chemistry.
You know, they start antagonistic.
They get friendly, antagonistic friendly, and it keeps going back
and forth.
And even that scene with the inquiry where you've got this
character who's just brought in for one scene, like, I think she's
a chief petty officer or something, and she just plays it, sort of
straight down the line, very believable, and she only gets a few
reactions and a few lines, but suddenly this world is opened up
because this person exists.
I think she's straight from episode one of Blake 7 actually.
Yeah, she's a bit like that.
She's good. really good.
I love the uniforms.
They're so much more convincing than Warriors of the Deep.
I mean, it's still a terrific 80s cast to them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I would cosplay in one of those.
I wouldn't cosplay in one of the worries of the deep one.
People are pointing staying.
Why are you wearing that?
Well, if I wore it in the street, I'd get comments.
But I mean, you'd end up like a self-sourcing pudding at the end
of it, wouldn't you?
There's no natural fibres anywhere.
It'd be like your own personal steam room that you carried around
with, which I'm reminded as what Davison said when you know, what
why did Johnny do 3 years?
And you didn't actually say, well, terminus, but, you know, other
fans have said we could have had him for 5 if they'd just got some
of the key things right.
And one of them was rehearsal and film time.
Even one extra day per story is only 7 days on the schedule for
the BBC, 5 days and 2 days.
That would have made an enormous difference to this entire
season.
Probably kept the regular cast happy and kept everything tighter.
As much as I love Colin, imagine a season with Peter and Nicola.
That was actually my big fanboy dream.
And when the big finish started bringing out Red Dawn, I think was
which is the story of Dawn French as the leader of the Ice
Warriors with Nicola.
And it's a lovely story.
And then they bring in...
And the Church and the Crown is a lovely...
Yeah, the Peter and Nicholas stories are terrific.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
I find it very hard to fault this story.
There's the fact that cockerel kind of disappears halfway
through.
There is the fact that the earth borrowing machine. is not quite
horrific enough.
You kind of get the impression that he's just a torso, but that
doesn't really become clear until Brazen's in there.
So it's like when the threat is actually carried out, is when you
realise what the threat is and you need a bit of buildup to that.
But those are very minor niggles.
We have Ron Jones knocking out of the park in terms of direction
especially compared with what he's delivered before.
And since. and since Paddy Kingsland being amazing.
Set design by David Buckingham looks excellent.
There is not a poor performance in the show, even the village
person retrograde.
He's not part of the officer class.
He is not the Shakespearean.
He's the porter at the door in Macbeth, you know.
Excellent script from Christopher H been made.
Brilliant performances from the regulars.
This is the finest story this season and 2nd finest Davidson story
next to Enlightenment for me anyway.
And I'm so glad the randomiser gave me this one because...
Yes.
Yeah.
I did not watch this story between when I 1st watched it when I
was 5 and was terrified by it and when it came out on DVD.
And then when I watched it on DVD, I just thought, I can see why
I'm scared by this, but this, it's really excellent.
As a boy, the visuals let it down for me at also the frustration
that the TARDIS was so easily destroyed because when you're 14
15.
But it's not technically accurate to the rest of the narrative of
the show.
So, of course, you know, now, yeah, I'm with you.
Well, things will be back to normal next week. obviously, when we
have a story to really rip into.
But I think that this is probably the high point of the season.
Yes, thank you.
Thank you, Christopher Hamilton Bidmead.
Thank you.
Yes.
We're trapped in a time tunnel as we take off from Frontier, so do
come back next week for resurrection of the Daleks.
Until then, you can find us online at FlightthroughEntirety.com
flight through entirety on Facebook and iTunes and at FTE podcast
on Twitter.
Over on Bondfinger, we've recently completed the Roger Moore era
so make sure you catch up on those before we move on to the
Timothy Dalton in the new year.
You lose your will to live.
You can find that at bondfinger.com, bondfinger on Facebook and
iTunes and bondfinger cast on Twitter.
Spoiler alert.
Dalton is my favourite bond.
Until next week.
May none of your wood lice bring down meteors on your home.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
Woody Allen's mine.
Good night.
That was Flight through Entirety, starring Nathan Bottley, Brendan
Jones, and Richard Stone.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, not allowed to watch that one, was recorded on 19th
of November 2016.
The next episode will be released on the 11th of December.
Are you suffering from an infestation of vile parasitic fibreglass
insects with the power to control gravity?
Uh, I know I am.
We really should be ashamed of ourselves.
Okay.
Oh, okay.
Frank, uh, Frank, uh, Frank Frontbottom.
Do we have to say that 3 times?
19th November.
Or just Fronty to his mates.
Who is Frank Frontbottom?
Oh, Frontios.
Yes, Frank's sidebottom.
Frank front bottom.
I'm glad this one's not mine.
No, this is my nurse.
I can't stop it.
Okey-dokey.
Wait for the plane.
Can I rattle my Lego?
No.
That one thing.
You need us?
To be fair, like living living by myself for a month, I was like, I
was like, should I go get a magnum?
No, yes.
Oh okay.
You're Tom in episode one of The Deadly Assassin.
Or was Planet of the Spiders.
I even had a hooker.
Here we go.
Don't touch me like that.
And if you have to.